Anti-Monopoly Act
The work never ends.
Money multiplies on its own, sales keep climbing, my network grows stronger by the day, and somehow the pile of things I have to do just keeps getting taller.
How did it end up like this?
And more importantly—why am I even here doing all of this in the first place?
"Hey. Little brother."
"Sister Rize! You came to save me!"
I was stamping documents with the dead-eyed look of a zombie when Sister Rize dropped by for the first time in a while.
No—was it really that long? She'd been visiting pretty often, actually. With this much work, my sense of time had completely broken down.
I could have sworn I'd been working for hours straight, only to come to and discover that barely an hour had passed.
"Heh heh. So our little brother went and caused one hell of a mess this time, huh?"
"Sniff, Sis... There's just too much work..."
I buried myself in Sister Rize's arms and whined. Ahh... I'm being healed...
It was different from Sister Rose's soft, plush embrace—this one was firm and steady. I wanted to just live like a baby in this solid hold... Waa...
"I want to quit so badly..."
"Oh dear. That's not going to happen."
"Huh?"
"I talked it over with Father this time, and we've decided to spin the barbed wire division off into its own independent merchant group. Honestly, the barbed wire division's revenue is hundreds of times larger than every other division combined."
Wait a second.
I've seen this plotline before.
"...You're kidding, right?"
"You're the group head now."
"Gyaaaaaah!"
Betrayal! Rize!
I jerked my head up in horror and stared at her.
"Why?! How could you?! Graaaaaah!"
"Well, it's only natural. From start to finish, this was a business you built. It wouldn't look right if I just freeloaded off of it, would it?"
"You can freeload! Can't you just take it...?"
"Heh heh. Freeloading gives you an upset stomach."
"But you've got a strong stomach, Sis..."
I patted her belly. Those washboard abs were reassuringly solid.
"Ahaha. Anyway, now that things have turned out this way, wouldn't it be better to grow it big and aim for becoming the richest person in the empire? A man needs ambition."
"That's sexist...!"
"Fine, then women need ambition too."
"My gender is attack helicopter..."
"Hm? What's a helicopter?"
"Ah."
Ahh... Right... She doesn't know... Let's just drop this topic...
I clamped my cursed mouth shut and buried my face in her arms again. I'd almost stepped on another landmine there.
Airships and flying machines existed, so a helicopter wouldn't have been that strange—but it could easily tangle things up in weird ways again.
I did not need more work piling up.
"Uuu... Baby Otto... Doesn't wanna work..."
"Pfft. Come on. How old are you, acting like a brat?"
"Waa."
"You little freak."
She called me a freak, but she was still stroking my hair. All those years of diligently playing cute since I was little had paid off.
Ahh. This was the privilege of being the youngest. I could still play baby. Not that I needed allowance money anymore. I already had filthy amounts of cash...
Couldn't I just retire and blow through everything I'd earned so far...?
"Here. Allowance."
"Waaah! Sister Rize is the best!"
Still, unearned income was always welcome.
I stuffed the check she'd given me into my wallet. The fact that she paid allowance in checks really drove home the Rothringen family's financial power.
I didn't bother counting the zeros. There were a lot of them, though.
"I want to be Sister Rize's kept husband."
"Pfft. No. That's incest, so no."
"Then just the kept part..."
"Whichever half you leave out, it's still incest... That actually made it worse?"
Ah. She had a point.
Kept / husband. Whichever word you keep, it's still incest. The world is a cruel place.
"I just want to marry into a rich family and be raised like a pet..."
"You're drifting further and further from humanity..."
Why was I even born human?
I should have wished to be born as a rich family's dog instead of a rich family's youngest son.
"Sister Rize."
"Yes, yes. Little brother."
"Want to raise a puppy?"
"What kind of puppy?"
"Woof."
"Heh heh. Ah. I saw that coming, but it's still funny. Hrrk."
My carefully prepared joke landed.
As expected, Sister Rize always had the best reactions.
"Haa. Honestly, maybe I should just raise you for real?"
"Woof."
"Chain you to a stake, make you crawl around on all fours, and feed you with your face shoved into a bowl on the floor—"
"On second thought, being born human was a blessing?"
"Heh heh."
No.
With Sister Rize, I was genuinely scared she might actually do it. Terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.
"Haa. I don't want to work."
"If you want to be a dog, just say the word. This big sister will raise you anytime."
"Yes'm."
Anyway, what was done was done.
I now owned one more merchant group.
"So, what are you naming the new group?"
"Hmm. I don't know."
Naming things was a pain too.
Couldn't I just call it the Barbed Wire Merchant Group?
"Rose?"
"Hm? Rose?"
"Yeah. Barbed wire itself was made to imitate rose vines, after all."
It didn't exactly scream "military supplier," but we were selling to farms and frontier settlements too, so it felt fitting enough.
"I'm not a fan..."
"Oh? Really?"
"It used to be my merchant group, so having Rose's name on it might rub me the wrong way a little...?"
"Ah."
Right—Sister Rose's name meant rose. Using that name was a bit awkward.
"Then... since it was originally Sister Liselotte's merchant group, how about Lotte Merchant Group?"
"Heh heh. You little brat. Just slapping your sister's name right onto your merchant group."
"You don't like it?"
"No. I like it."
"Then Lotte Merchant Group it is."
Well, the name wasn't that important.
Though it did sound like a name that would make good snacks. A baseball team would be the Giants. And for hamburgers, the shrimp burger would probably be delicious. Ah, the bulgogi burger would be good too.
Maybe I should have a hamburger for dinner... I'm suddenly hungry...
After all the various procedures, the "Barbed Wire Division" was officially renamed the Lotte Merchant Group.
There had already been a merchant group with the same name, but apparently you could just buy the name with money.
Trade name transactions were more common than I expected.
Some people even founded merchant groups purely to squat on trade names, but if you couldn't prove you were actually running a proper business, you lost the rights to the name. So apparently there were people who set up groups just to squat a name, ran deficits, and went bankrupt.
Anyway, there were all kinds of ways to make money.
"Hmm..."
The important thing right now was cutting down on work. At this rate I was going to get crushed to death under it.
"Manager."
"Yes! Group Head!"
I explained my plan going forward to the employee who'd been promoted to manager when I became group head.
"No matter how I look at it, the workload is way too heavy right now. Expanding more factories and warehouses beyond this is also unrealistic."
"But demand just keeps growing..."
"We're selling licenses."
"Pardon?"
Barbed wire was an extremely easy product to make in the first place. We just happened to hold the patent monopoly on it.
If we simply gave permission to manufacture it, anyone could make the stuff. It was just iron wire twisted into coils with barbs attached, after all.
"We don't necessarily have to manufacture and sell it ourselves."
"But is there any need to split the market? Besides, if we start competing with the same product, sales and profits will drop."
"If you get too greedy, you'll get sick."
I roughly quoted what my sister had said. Whether you freeload or overeat, greed makes you sick either way.
Just do what I say. Dude.
I don't want to work, okay?
This was the power of a group head.
"Understood. I'll negotiate with the merchant groups that have requested production licenses."
"The terms can be pretty loose. Make the goal selling licenses to as many groups as possible."
"Yes."
Great. That should cut the work down a bit.
Fortunately, the work started tapering off little by little.
The factories that had been running twenty-four hours a day gradually shortened their hours, sales and profits declined a little as well, and the people who'd been lobbying for priority barbed wire shipments disappeared.
My steps to work felt lighter thanks to it.
Ahh. This is what living like a human is supposed to feel like.
Of course, the ultimate goal was still to become a full-time unemployed youth, but just having less work was something to be grateful for.
Right. In the end, people have to learn to be content with their current situation...
That was the thought going through my head as I arrived at the merchant group that day.
The manager came running over with a magic newspaper device in his hands.
"G-Group Head!"
"Ah."
This pattern again?
Please tell me my work hasn't just multiplied.
Commerce Ministry Declares War on Monopolies
Forced Splits and Forced Asset Sales Now on the Table
"...What is this?"
"Whew. We nearly had our merchant group carved up into pieces and sold off to other groups."
"What?"
Wait, that sounds great.
They can sell my merchant group off to someone else?
"Fortunately, we don't have to worry about being broken up under the Anti-Monopoly Act. We're competing fairly in the market with the other groups that licensed our technology. And we're collecting licensing fees either way. All of this is thanks to your foresight, Group Head."
"Ah."
I should have just suffered a few more days.
My full-time unemployed youth life...!