It Was Like Finding Out the New Hire Was Actually the Chairman's Son
The banquet was disgustingly lavish.
As the youngest son of a conglomerate family, I had attended plenty of hotel galas in my previous life, but a banquet held inside an actual castle was something else entirely. So this was an imperial banquet of the empire ruled by the Emperor himself.
Airships festooned with lights drifted across the night sky.
Isn't that light pollution?
Doesn't anyone file complaints?
I entertained those useless thoughts while sipping my drink.
Huh. It tasted blue.
Why were they serving sports drinks at a banquet…?
No idea.
I supposed this was what they called imperial sensibility.
"Everyone's running around so busily…"
Ah. There were people everywhere, thick as trash on the street.
Watching them hustle about just to network was almost pitiful.
They eyed one another's clothes and ranks, hid knives under their tongues, pretended to praise each other while quietly looking down on them, and flattered anyone they wanted to get close to.
It was a den of snakes, pure and simple.
Why do people live so frantically like that?
Everyone here was already part of the establishment. Nobles, merchant guild masters, Magic Tower lords, military officers… Each of them already occupied a solid position of their own. They had no worries about making a living.
So why not enjoy life a little more? Why did they have to live so fiercely?
I couldn't understand it.
True happiness was pocket money and scratching your belly, if you asked me.
"I wonder if my past-life self looked the same to other people…"
Hard to say.
Someone driven like a dog by debt and survival, versus someone driven just as hard by their own desires. From the outside, the difference might not have looked all that big.
I was feeling oddly sentimental today.
Had whatever I just drank not been a sports drink after all, but actual alcohol?
"Time for some air…"
In the end I let out a sigh and slipped quietly out into the garden. I would just hide somewhere and kill time.
"Hm?"
And there, in that sparsely populated garden, I spotted someone familiar.
The other person noticed my face at the same time and visibly flinched.
"…Ellie-Ellie?"
"…Pardon?"
"Wait, you are Ellie-Ellie, right?"
Elise Elysia.
Ellie-Ellie for short.
The top executive of the Cave Merchant Group—someone I had personally interviewed and hired—was standing right there in the garden.
The makeup made her look quite different, but not so different that I couldn't recognize her at all.
Just the sort of "Wait… wait, oh! It is her!" level of almost.
"My goodness. I'm not quite sure what you mean."
"Huh?"
"You must have the wrong person."
"No, it's definitely you."
"I must resemble this Elise person a great deal, then?"
"I never said the name Elise…"
"Ah."
I had said Ellie-Ellie.
"So it really is you, Ellie-Ellie."
"…Yes."
"Hmm. Was this a situation where I wasn't supposed to acknowledge you?"
"Tha…t's not exactly it…"
I suddenly felt like the boss who texts an employee on their day off.
Well. That was just how office life worked.
"Judging by the fact that you're out here, Ellie-Ellie, you got tired and came to hide too, right?"
"Something… like that."
"Yeah, same. Dealing with people just isn't my strong suit."
"You, Guild Master?"
She tilted her head as if that surprised her. I wondered what sort of person I looked like to others.
I had long since grown too tired even to correct the misunderstandings.
"You'd be shocked if you knew how introverted I really am."
"That's… unexpected."
"By the way, Ellie-Ellie, are you a noble?"
"Ahaha… Not me, exactly. My father is a noble… yes."
"Well, same difference. You must get exhausted too. Forced to attend banquets like this even on your rare days off."
"I know, right…"
I had always thought she enjoyed working. Apparently even she found these social functions burdensome. Liking work didn't mean you liked every kind of work.
She was probably better suited to handling numbers. Realizing that, I felt a surprising sense of kinship. So workaholics were people too.
Though of course she was still different from someone like me, whose dream was simply to be a youth who rests.
"Ellie, why did you become a professional manager?"
"A professional manager?"
"Yeah. You graduated top of the Academy's graduate business school, right? I figured there had to be a reason you studied that hard."
"A reason… I've never really thought about it…"
She pondered for a moment, then let out a soft "Ah" of realization and continued.
"I had so many things, yet there was nothing I could decide for myself."
"Decide?"
"Yes. So I think I came to admire management. Making choices, producing results, taking responsibility. It's cool, don't you think?"
"Hmm…"
"Under imperial law a merchant group is called a legal person… meaning it's granted the same rights and duties as a human being. So managing a merchant group is like deciding the course of one person's life, isn't it? I was so envious of that."
I couldn't fully relate… but I understood that she was trying hard to live with agency.
Not a passive life of merely running someone else's merchant group, but an active one of managing even another person's group as if it were her own.
Was this that "sense of ownership" they always talked about at my old company?
Of course, the boss who preached that used to fly into a rage whenever anyone did things differently from him. He once cursed me out just for using a function in Excel. Absolute lunatic.
"What about you, Guild Master? Why do you run a merchant group?"
"Because Dad made me."
"Pardon?"
"I don't want to work, but Father forced me into it. And then, somehow, with a string of good luck, the group just ballooned on its own."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"You can… dislike working?"
"Huh?"
Wait, that was the part that shocked her?
She really was an unusual person.
"Ah, n-no, I mean… everything you touch succeeds and keeps growing, Guild Master."
"As a result, yes."
"So I thought you would enjoy whatever you did."
"I prefer leisure over success."
I didn't think people who lived fiercely were foolish.
On the contrary, I respected them.
Manager Kissinger, who had run a merchant group under his own name; Ellie-Ellie, who worked as hard as if the company were her own; my brother and sisters, each giving their best in their own fields. I liked all of them.
But I had already worked far too hard in my previous life. I had already died of overwork once and been reborn. So this time around… I simply wanted to rest as much as I hadn't been able to rest before.
I didn't want to work.
I wanted to live as a youth who just rests.
I wanted to do absolutely nothing.
I wanted to waste my life receiving pocket money from my older siblings.
"Ah. It would have been nice if you were a Rothringen, Ellie-Ellie."
"…Pardon?"
"You could inherit the merchant group in my place, own it in my place, and manage it in my place. Someone like you suits the position of guild master far better than someone like me."
"Th-that is… huh?"
"If I could give it to you, I'd hand the entire group over right now."
"I-I… I'm perfectly content just being a professional manager… I-it's far too sudden… a-and of course you must be joking, but…"
"I'm serious."
"…What?"
Ellie visibly panicked. Her face flushed red as she fanned herself with one hand and snuck glances at me. Well, I couldn't actually give it to her, but the wish that I could was completely genuine.
She really would make a better guild master than I would.
"W-wouldn't we need time to get to know each other better first…?"
"You don't always need a lot of time to understand someone, do you?"
"I-I mean, mentally preparing myself…"
"Huh? Ah. No need to feel pressured. It's just that I'd like to if it were possible… but realistically it isn't."
"Ah… r-right."
"The world never flows exactly the way we want it to, after all."
"But you… do have the desire?"
"Yeah. Pretty much."
Ellie listened to me seriously.
Even when I said I didn't want to inherit the merchant group, everyone else treated it as a joke. She, surprisingly, seemed to take my words at face value.
No prejudices, huh.
It would be nice if other people were more like Ellie.
I don't want to work…!
I don't want to inherit the merchant group…!
Just let me rest…!
Honestly, the world was a complete circus.
"Um, Guild Master."
"Yes, Ellie."
"P-please don't be shocked when you hear this. My true identity is actually…"
"True identity?"
What, was she an industrial spy or something? That might actually startle me a little.
"I'm one of the guests of honor at tonight's banquet…"
"Pardon?"
"In other words, I-I'm the Emperor's daughter. The surname Elysia is an alias…"
"Ahh. The Emperor's daughter…"
Ahh. So that was it.
Thankfully not an industrial spy. His Majesty's daughter…
"What?"
"I'm sorry for hiding it…"
"Uh, so, wait, what?"
"My true identity is the Third Princess, Elise…"
"What?"
My professional manager was a princess?
The Emperor's daughter? Imperial royalty?
Was this for real?
"You're… shocked, right…?"
"Uh, well, it is surprising, but…"
"But…?"
"So many shocking things have already happened that I've just accepted this one as natural too."
"Pardon?"
"So this is the twist this time…"
I bought trash and it became a resource of the future. I bought a failed mine and it turned out to contain ruins. I invested in a heart medication and they suddenly developed an aphrodisiac. I went on strike and artists got inspired…
Absurdities had been piling up nonstop.
So running into a company employee at a social function only to discover she was actually imperial royalty… well, of course it was surprising, but somehow not that surprising…?
"U-um? I said I'm a princess?"
"Yes, yes. Of course you are."
"I'm serious! I'm the Third Princess of the Empire, Elise!"
"Yes. I believe you."
"You don't believe me at all, do you?!"
"I said I believe you."
"Hiiing… I worked up the courage to tell you…"
"Yes, yes. Looking forward to working with you going forward, Your Highness the Princess."
Ellie-Ellie started pounding on my arm in frustration.
Why was she getting mad…?