Chapter 242: Expo (3)
The World Expo, operations conference room.
“The economic impact this Expo will bring, along with its tangible and intangible added value, is truly remarkable.”
The lawmakers of Prozen’s ruling party were deep in heated discussion about the rosy fantasies the coming Expo would deliver.
“Every eye and every coin on the continent will turn toward our Prozen.”
Prozen had long been renowned as a tourist destination and a center of art and culture. There was even a saying that the successful rich of other nations all wound up in Prozen in the end.
“Well said. Didn’t Professor Tudur publish a paper to that very effect recently?”
The lawmakers believed that the boost in consumption and the relief of unemployment the Expo would bring were going to wash away every ill afflicting the Republic.
Or rather, that was what they wanted to believe.
“Even those endless malcontents will shut up this time.”
But to Jean Pierre, they were a disappointment.
Because they were wrong.
Prozen’s internal problems were not the kind that a handful of new jobs could solve.
The chronic factional strife, the ideological feuds, the deepening gulf between rich and poor had already reached the breaking point. Yet the lawmakers turned their eyes from the festering wound and hung up nothing but grandiose slogans.
「Peace and Freedom, Art and Technology of the Modern Age」
Professor Jean Pierre, invited to serve as an advisor to the Expo, listened to their conversation in silence.
That was about all he could do.
“Hahahaha! Prozen’s standing truly is something.”
Before long, the lawmakers’ talk drifted toward the Empire, the Eastern Alliance, and Robrus.
“Those Robrus bastards, whatever they’re up to in there, they haven’t let a single scrap of information slip. And they’ve left their National Pavilion site sitting completely empty.”
“Too busy lopping the heads off Reactionaries, no doubt. Honestly…… how should I put it. Inferior? Barbaric?”
Prozen’s politicians could not guess the true scale of the eastern Purge, but the fact that a storm of blood was blowing over there made fine material for their ridicule.
“……I hear the Empire sent that Maximilian Ebenholtz as the man in charge.”
At the name Maximilian, sneering smiles spread around the table.
“Ah~ yes, I know. The Empire’s young Knight, standing shoulder to shoulder with the brick-hauling laborers.”
“The heir of Ebenholtz, of all people, playing construction foreman. The Empire really must be short on talent these days.”
“Truth is, they were finished ages ago. Imagine an entire nation dancing to the whims of a greenhorn like that.”
“He’s just a child playing grown-up, draped in a knight’s uniform and his father’s glory. What has he ever achieved with his own two hands…….”
Jean Pierre wondered what was in their hearts. Wondered what compelled them to voice such words aloud.
“If anything, I’d say the very existence of Maximilian is an omen of the Empire’s fall.”
“Haha, quite right. That autobiography of his, or whatever it is, is soaked in narcissism, plastered with nothing but hatred and not a single proper argument-“
“Exaggeration. Not just hatred, exaggeration too. Have you read chapter one? He seems to think he’s this continent’s great philosopher, its knight of justice. Hah~ honestly. I lost count of how many times I laughed reading it.”
Most of these men had likely never even come face to face with Maximilian.
Was it fear?
Were they tearing him down without even realizing it, because they were afraid?
If so, there was still hope. Fear, at the very least, meant they were seeing their opponent clearly.
“In the end, he’s just a boy aping his father. The Emperor’s puppet.”
But if they truly believed he was no more than that— that was the worst of all possible outcomes.
For a war begun on a misjudgment of the enemy was as good as decided from the start.
“Well now, I hadn’t intended to bring this out, but.”
Someone paused for effect, then spread a conveniently prepared stack of documents across the table.
“The toxic debts Maximilian has taken on for the Emperor number in the dozens. Dozens. Some research institute here, companies drowning in red ink there…… The rumors of his vast wealth make plenty of noise, but in reality it’s a sandcastle, plugging one debt with another.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“Yes. A glossy shell and nothing more. He’s the Emperor’s wallet, essentially.”
“Hoh. As expected, our financial advisor has quite the discerning eye~”
Arrogant, haughty, riddled through with vanity. A noble unworthy of the name.
That was how they defined Maximilian.
“And a punk like that has the nerve to spew bullshit about building the Imperial Pavilion taller than our Prozen Tower? Hahahahaha!”
“He’s probably planning to stick one flimsy toothpick of a column straight up into the sky, don’t you think?”
“As if those Empire brutes could even imagine architectural beauty like the Prozen Tower. It’s the thinking of a nouveau riche obsessed with nothing but height. How very Ebenholtz. Ebenholtz to the core.”
Prozen’s ruling class looked down on the Empire and the East.
They treated them as oversized beasts devoid of culture, and basked in their own superiority.
“What refinement could deranged imperialists possibly have, and what future? Hahahahaha!”
Their shallow laughter was more than Jean Pierre could bear.
……Monkeys busy grooming themselves before the open jaws of a lion
“I’m afraid I must excuse myself now, to prepare for my lectures.”
With that, he rose.
Whatever he said, they wouldn’t listen anyway.
“Ah, Professor. Of course. Good work today.”
Jean Pierre slipped out of the conference room as if fleeing.
Walking through the Prozen capital, he looked up toward its heart. The Prozen Tower, symbol of the city, rose above it.
A structure that could reach higher than that.
What exactly would be the ‘greatest height’ that Knight of the Empire meant to draw up in the very center of the Republic?
The politicians dismissed Maximilian’s words as common bluster, but Jean Pierre could not bring himself to do the same.
The Maximilian he had seen was never a man to speak empty words.
“…….”
He walked on through the winter wind, and found himself arriving somewhere else.
「Ezenheim Pavilion」
The pavilion the Ezenheim had built. Across from it stood a small pavilion raised by the Merin as well.
With the Expo styling itself the ‘Forum of Peace’, even the participation of weak nations, even a place for stateless minorities, had been permitted to a degree.
“…….”
Jean Pierre gazed absently at the Ezenheim Pavilion, still under construction.
“Interesting, isn’t it?”
A voice, sounding from behind him.
Someone slowly stepping up to his side.
“It has been a long time, Professor Jean Pierre.”
The hairs on the back of Jean Pierre’s neck prickled faintly, but he forced a smile.
“……Good to see you, Sir Maximilian.”
Maximilian chuckled softly and looked at the Ezenheim pavilion.
Only, there was no smile in his eyes. They were simply transparent. Cold, and sharp.
A segregationist who despised the race called Ezenheim more than anyone, who preached their separation.
“With the theme of this Expo being the ‘Forum of Peace’…….”
Pierre strained to change the subject.
“Valkania protested Mekerel’s participation as well, but there was nothing to be done.”
Maximilian smiled.
“It’s quite all right. If anything, it’s a good thing.”
If anything, a good thing.
The sentence that followed—
“After all, their names get written in the guest book.”
was somehow chilling.
“…….”
Jean Pierre watched him from the corner of his eye.
In the dusk, his profile stained by the glow of sunset was scarcely different from a sculpture.
A man who beautifully possessed the ‘Aran features’ the Empire so loudly extolled.
It was unfair, and it was unfortunate.
That the man harboring the most dangerous ideology in the Empire should, of all people, be born to one of the Empire’s foremost bloodlines and highest honors, should hold immeasurable wealth and authority and, as if that were not enough, be flawless in a noble’s bearing and dignity and cultivation, and possess, as an idol, a perfectly refined and elegant aura and striking beauty……
One might even call it a comedy.
Jean Pierre had heard countless accounts of the massacres Maximilian carried out in the Empire, and had cited them as case studies from his own lectern.
Yet the topic still burning hottest and most contentious in the faculty of arts and sciences at Prozen National University was none other than his book,「Under the Moonlight」.
To criticize, to praise, to condemn, to analyze— whichever it was, in the end it always came back to speaking of him.
Even Jean Pierre himself, standing right here beside him, watching him like this.
Now and then he found himself seized by a certain thought.
That this man might truly be one chosen by the age itself, or perhaps by the devil.
“……I hear you are overseeing the Imperial Pavilion personally, Sir.”
Pierre forced the stray thoughts away.
He did not want to become someone who defended a butcher, an imperialist, or who stood spellbound before one. Above all, his scholarship demanded that ‘subjectivity’ be excluded.
“Yes. I’ve taken full charge. The design was done by my own hand as well.”
“Will it…… truly stand taller than the Prozen Tower?”
Pure curiosity.
Maximilian gave a wry smile.
“Yes. It will. In one form or another.”
In one form or another…….
Pierre chewed over that answer, then slowly nodded.
“I shall look forward to your art, Sir.”
And then, he turned away from him.
Trudge. Trudge.
If each departing step carried a pang of regret, it was probably because the discipline he had pursued all his life was ‘people.’
Their first meeting, long ago, at the Imperial art museum. The days that followed, when only the surface of the man reached him in accounts carried across the border, until the moment he happened to meet him again right before his eyes.
Jean Pierre had come away with this intuition.
Maximilian is becoming history.
No, perhaps the man Maximilian is himself the Empire’s National Pavilion.
The single true subject that the visitors to this Expo ought to behold.
Pierre drew in a deep breath and thought.
The man called Maximilian might well be recorded as a human without parallel even in the long, unbroken history of the thousand-year Empire.
……For better, or for worse.
* * *
The World Expo. Even that, hailed as the continent’s greatest festival and grandest event, moved on the logic of power.
In truth, the fact that this continent itself was reverting to an age of power was a fortunate thing, for me and for humanity alike.
I quietly contemplated the underside of the bustling construction grounds.
「Mekerel National Pavilion」
A delegation from a weak nation wreathed in the smoke of war, men who had crossed over with a crushing weight of responsibility on their shoulders.
Mekerel, who had come to Prozen a full year in advance to prepare for the Expo, driven by the single-minded resolve to make their homeland known and to appeal for international support against Valkania’s invasion.
“Haha. Look at them, all huddled together. Like livestock. Almost cute from a distance, no?”
The imperial officials seemed to find them amusing.
Why did these bastards keep flapping their mouths at my side?
Part of the Imperial Princess’s surveillance network, most likely.
─It’s here!
─Here, over here!
Just then, a truck loaded with materials pulled up before the Mekerel National Pavilion.
─The materials have arrived!
The Mekerel people came scrambling over in a rush, as though their construction had sat halted for a long while as they waited.
─Um…… these materials. We. Requested…… they’re a little different from what we asked for
─……And what do you want us to do about it?
─The dimensions. They’re slightly-
─Just take what you’re given. And learn to speak properly while you’re at it.
The Prozen officials shouted at them, visibly annoyed.
─Yes, yes. Thank you.
The Mekerel people hurried to move the materials. They meant to push the construction forward however they could.
I turned my steps elsewhere for a moment.
「Ezenheim Pavilion」
The Ezenheim pavilion. Their construction, of all things, was running into no particular trouble. Because those creatures had money to begin with.
The Prozen authorities, wary of both the Empire and their own public opinion, would not officially supply them with materials, but they bought their own goods with their own money and built away, one thing after another, quite handily.
If I could have had my way, I would have set off a bomb on the spot and killed every last one of them.
……Such drastic measures would only turn them into pitiable martyrs.
There was a proper time to drive them to extinction, and that day would arrive before long.
For now, I had to endure.
“Just look at the state of them, Sir. Absolutely unbelievable.”
The Ministers who had trailed after me at some point grumbled as they eyed the Ezenheim pavilion, but I turned my steps back toward the Mekerel pavilion.
─W-wait! What is the meaning of this!
Chaos had already broken out on the Mekerel side.
─I told you, there was a mix-up! A delivery mix-up!
The Prozen officials were loading the freshly delivered materials back onto the truck. Giving with one hand and snatching back with the other.
─I told you these were never yours to begin with. You said it yourselves just now. That they’re different from what you requested.
─Then. Then! We are sorry, but please, just one question. When can we resume our construc-
─Ugh, hell if I know. Just wait your damn turn! Hey! Load all of this up!
The Prozen side even brought in the police to confiscate the materials by force, and the Mekerel people were left huddled together once more around their bare skeleton of a frame, dazed and helpless.
“…….”
Every so often, something was bound to happen that brushed against the feelings inside me.
There were all kinds of things to ache the heart over, it seemed, but if it was proof that my humanity remained, it was worth bearing gladly.
I called over the Operations Officer standing beside me.
“The materials Mekerel wants. Procure them and deliver them.”
“Yes, Sir. I’ll see to it at once.”
Of course, I didn’t expect those people to be of much help to me down the road.
But to rip out the Ezenheim by the roots, spread like weeds into every corner of the continent, stockpiling even these small debts of goodwill would pay off in the long run.
* * *
Two months before the World Expo’s opening.
Julian, Knight of the Sentinel, received a report that ‘subversive leaflets had been discovered’.
“Ah. You’ve come, Sir.”
The Georgen were already on site in the district he had been dispatched to,「Zestfall」.
The officer in charge approached first and saluted.
“Inspector Gewin, Sir.”
“Julian.”
“Yes. I’ve heard the name often. First, here is the leaflet.”
Julian read the leaflet pasted to the wall.
[ ……What is the difference between a citizen and one who is not? What is the difference between an Aran and one who is not? We of the Blue Rose Society ask you to think over these questions, deeply.
Darkness veils us now, but one day the sun will shine down upon us.
Our crimes will be laid bare, every last one, beneath the bright light of day.
How deep the wounds will be then, for us and for our children…… ]
Julian turned to Gewin.
“Gewin, was it?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I believe I heard your name during the Niko Weber case.”
“……Yes, that’s right. That was me.”
Gewin flicked a finger up and jabbed it at his own chest.
“The Georgen Inspector who smuggled the letter Niko Weber wrote while in Georgen custody out to the Sentinel Knight Order.”
“……”
Julian watched him blankly for a moment.
“A whistleblower, in other words.”
“No, no. Please, call me a conscience in action. My merit was recognized, and I was promoted from Sergeant to Inspector.”
Quite the character, this one.
Julian skimmed the leaflet again.
[ What we must protect are the values that set humans apart from other animals. Freedom, equality, and will…… ]
“Apparently they call themselves the Blue Rose Society? Or some such.”
“Just the sort of case Max would love.”
“—Cough.”
Gewin choked mid-sip on his coffee.
“Ah, is that so? Haha, hahaha…….”
“Have you identified anyone?”
“Yes. As luck would have it, there was a witness…… Would you like to hear him out?”
He pointed off somewhere. A Zestfall street cleaner appeared to be giving some sort of testimony, surrounded by Georgen agents.
“Let’s.”
“Hey! Bring him over! The Sentinel Knight is here!”
At Gewin’s single word, they all came hurrying over. Before hearing the witness out, Julian first drew a notebook and pen from his inner pocket.
Composite sketches were one of Julian’s specialties. Art was his hobby, after all.
“First, describe the shape of the face.”
“……Yes, Sir.”
The cleaner swallowed hard at the sight of Julian’s uniform, but soon began reciting the figure he had witnessed.
“The jaw was sort of slender…… couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman…… though he did seem like a man.”
Scritch. Scritch.
He drew the outline of the face as the account unfolded.
“He was clean. Didn’t look like some poor wretch. His nose was tall and straight, that sort of thing. Very, well, very neat-looking.”
Scritch. Scritch.
“His brows were thick. Gold-colored. His eyes were gold too. And, how should I put it, handsome? Fine, delicate features overall.”
Scritch. Scritch…….
Julian’s sketching hand faltered for a moment.
A familiar face had emerged.
Someone he himself had met once before, ‘Joshua von Alvensleben’, son of the Zestfall University Chancellor.
Which meant this was, in its own way, a big fish.
“…….”
Julian gazed at the cleaner, his sole witness, and tilted his head.
“This man. Is this him?”
~~~
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