Chapter 282: Collapse (3)
The central, western, and eastern regions of the Empire.
Across the Empire, Alien Bloodlines were being rounded up under the newly introduced Bloodline Law.
Ezenheim. Dromon. Kensi. Mer. Those whom the Empire had arbitrarily classified as ‘Subspecies’ were barred from all commerce. The assets they had spent their entire lives building were stripped away in an instant.
“Fuck, how does any of this make sense?”
Reporter Alphonse gritted his teeth and raised his camera.
Click. Click.
People driven from the places where they had built their lives. Families thrown out with nothing but a single bundle of belongings.
Click. Click.
Alphonse swallowed the fire burning in his chest and photographed them.
Click. Click.
Their shops and workshops, built up over decades, were being seized, yet there was no violence in the process.
At least, it didn’t ‘look’ like there was.
Click. Click.
Men in cold uniforms took them away, citing nothing more than a single absurd document as justification.
That only made it more merciless, more absolute, and more fucked-up.
Click. Click.
An Imperial Guardsman stood smiling contentedly in front of an ownerless tailor shop. As though he had already staked his claim to it, he casually shoved another Guardsman away when the man approached.
Click. Click.
A firing squad without gunshots, a massacre without violence.
That was why photographs alone could never fully capture what this place represented.
Click. Click.
Even so, Alphonse’s lens remained firmly trained on them.
Believing that someday, the continent would understand the meaning captured in his photographs…….
Click. Click.
─Hey! Who the fuck is that bastard!
Someone shouted while pointing somewhere.
Immediately convinced they meant him, Alphonse spun around and fled.
…….
Elias Walter of the Genen Autonomous Region organized an Executive Committee and systematically cleared the Alien Bloodlines out of Genen. He tolerated neither unrest nor protests, sweeping them away with nothing more than registries and trucks.
Afterward, he stepped onto the balcony of the Governor-General’s residence and delivered a speech.
“Genen is Aran. It always has been!”
Genen, too, was Aran.
The moment Elias Walter proclaimed that fact, proven by the continent’s history,
Elias──! Elias──!
the sea of Genen people before him answered with thunderous cheers.
“Therefore, every brick in Genen, and every railway running through Genen, was built by Aran hands. Because we are Aran!”
Elias──! Elias──!
He raised a hand and briefly quieted the cheers.
“Some ask whether Genen is Imperial or Genen. I say the question itself is wrong…….”
Genen, an Autonomous Region within the Empire.
For a long time, Genen had suffered discrimination and harbored resentment, but over the course of several years, those grievances had melted away like snow.
Because life throughout Genen had improved, because they had always been brothers, and because the ‘common enemy’ was clear.
“Genen’s will is the Empire’s will, and the Empire’s will is Genen’s will. We know this. The Empire knows this.”
Elias──! Elias──!
“Genen is not a borderland. Genen is the Empire’s brother. Because the same blood that crossed the same river centuries ago still flows through the bodies of our brothers today…….”
His ancestors were Imperial nobles. Yet Elias had been born into a family that loved Genen enough to settle there, and had grown up as a native son of Genen.
The Genen people loved his words, and they loved his aristocratic, Imperial looks.
“Genen is Aran!”
Elias ended his speech on the same words with which he had begun.
Elias──! Elias──!
He turned away from the people as their cheers continued to ring out.
“You’ve done excellent work.”
An Operations Officer serving ‘someone’ smiled at Elias.
Elias smiled with satisfaction as well.
“They’ve worked far harder than I have. Please thank them for the gift.”
As he spoke, he gestured toward the exceptionally fine liquor he had received from ‘that person’.
“Yes, sir.”
Throughout Elias’s office were his family’s Genealogy Certificate, the medal his grandfather had received as an Imperial noble, and other proof of the bloodline that had been passed down ever since.
Rustle.
He unfolded the newspaper lying on his desk.
“…….”
Elias, once Genen’s student council president, stared at the front page for a long time.
[ Diplomat Stationed in the Empire Shot Dead. Ezenheim Behind Attack. Calls for the Liberation of Ezenheim. ]
“Still the same.”
Ezenheim. Bastards who manipulated others with warped ideas and convictions to achieve what they wanted.
Now that Elias understood them, he had come to trust the Empire completely.
……No.
He had come to follow the ‘person’ named Maximilian.
…….
Arthur Winston visited Gary Beaufort’s office.
Bang!
He flung the door open hard enough to nearly break it and slapped a stack of photographs down on Beaufort’s desk.
“And you still think the Empire will keep the peace?”
The photographs showed Ezenheim and Mer being taken away despite having committed no crime, along with the Concentration Camps where they would be imprisoned.
“……The Empire is going mad.”
Gary Beaufort gave a dry laugh, his fountain pen clenched in his hand.
“You’re being rude, Arthur. Did you make an appointment?”
“You wouldn’t act, so I did.”
“…….”
Gary stared at Arthur for a long moment, then,
Tap.
set down his fountain pen and asked,
“Arthur. What do you want?”
“I want the Prime Minister of my country to act a little more decisively.”
Arthur sat down across from him.
“I saw you signed off on the military buildup too.”
“……Haa.”
Gary sighed and pressed his fingers against his temple as though warding off a headache.
“What I signed off on was defense, not attack.”
Arthur glared at Gary. Gary lifted his whiskey glass and spoke.
“Knight Maximilian once said this: a man with a gun won’t try to talk to a man with empty hands.”
Because there could be no real conversation between them in the first place.
But a man with a gun could talk to another man with a gun. Therefore…….
“Attack is a matter of who fires first, but defense means bringing a pistol of your own. But even if we fired first, could we kill him?”
It was the same tiresome theory as always. Arthur ground his teeth.
“Prozen, Valkania, Yursled, Volska. If even that isn’t enough, then the East. If Volska and Highland had joined forces from the very beginning, those Imperial bastards never would’ve been able to get this far-”
“We could never have joined forces.”
Gary Beaufort tightened his grip on the glass in his hand.
“Arthur. You’re receiving support from Ezenheim and Mer, aren’t you?”
Arthur’s eyebrow twitched.
“Do you think the Empire simply sprang into existence on its own? Does that make the Empire the root of all evil and everyone else good?”
Gary shook his head.
“No. It wasn’t only the Empire. This entire continent has hated them. Ezenheim, Mer, Kensi. We’ve all despised them alike.”
They were different from us. They had never lived alongside us, yet they coveted our living space and dared to earn more money than us.
But now that the Empire had seized them by the hair and was dragging them down, here we were pretending that we alone were saints. Pretending to be the conscience of the continent.
“Let’s call things what they are, Arthur.”
Gary Beaufort placed his hand over the photographs.
“We aren’t opposing the Empire for morality or human decency. We’re doing it so Highland survives, and so Highlanders survive.”
“…….”
Arthur held his gaze and remained silent for a long time.
“……Is that where you stand?”
Gary nodded.
“That is where I stand.”
Arthur Winston and Gary Beaufort.
They stared at one another, and neither looked away.
The voices of two men clashing at the very top of the nation──
……Is that where you stand?
……That is where I stand.
──were transmitted through a listening device.
“…….”
Leonard, Highland’s Ezenheim-affiliated Army Minister, sat with members of the「Grey Apostles」beside him.
An old secret society of Highland’s upper circles. It had begun as a university alumni association, but now cabinet ministers, bankers, businessmen, and editors-in-chief sat at its table. Nearly half of them were Ezenheim.
……You’re quite the coward.
……You need to learn the difference between recklessness and courage, Arthur.
Leonard listened to the reel of the listening device turning.
“Gary Beaufort must not remain in that office.”
Gary was as stubborn as they had expected, but the Empire was calmer than they had anticipated.
Therefore, if they were to achieve their ‘cause’—
“Prepare a scandal.”
They needed to bring Gary down far sooner than planned.
***
……They say time sometimes flies like an arrow loosed from the bowstring.
Lately, even that didn’t seem fast enough.
It was more like a bullet fired from a gun.
Before I knew it, winter had come again, and the Sentinel Knight Order was already preparing for another New Year.
I was working in my office, focusing mainly on cases that needed another review.
Whether it was the Imperial Guard or Georgen, both were the sort to run wild the moment I eased up on them. The two organizations would soon become one, so keeping them in line had practically become a hobby.
On top of that, money had recently been withdrawn from Master’s account, the one I’d deposited funds into. Of the twenty million Imperial Dollars, ten million had already been spent in various places across the continent.
I marked the locations of the banks where the withdrawals had been made and dispatched Agents.
If they kept spending my money like this, it wouldn’t be long before a ‘map’ began to take shape.
“……Hm?”
On a snowy afternoon, I was walking around the Sentinel grounds to clear my head.
That was when I spotted a rather charming scene.
─The attitude 「Under the Moonlight」 emphasizes for knights is that you work even harder when no one is watching.
Hannah Usar seemed to be giving some kind of lecture in Sentinel’s auditorium. Her audience was the junior knights.
─What the Empire sees is the image of a knight descending from the sky, but that’s only the result. The descent lasts only a few minutes. The preparation beforehand and the recovery afterward take days.
Hannah Usar, a knight born a commoner in the deepest backwater imaginable.
She was famous for having risen from nothing. She was probably the most recognizable of all the knights. Mostly because she was always dashing around from place to place, giving lectures and the like.
─So, as knights and as Arans, you must constantly temper your own ideals and convictions……
Most of the juniors listening to her lecture were commoners, of course, though there were some nobles mixed in among them.
─All right, discuss what we talked about today among yourselves and have your thoughts organized by next week.
Hannah gave them instructions like some kind of teacher. In fact, compared to four years ago, even her face looked far more mature.
Hannah came outside.
“Oh!”
The moment our eyes met, her cheeks slowly flushed red. She gave an embarrassed cough.
“……Ahem. Were you watching?”
I gave a small laugh and nodded.
“You were doing well.”
“Well…… it was nothing special. A lot of them seem to be neglecting their theoretical studies lately, so I’ve been giving them a little talking-to.”
If anything, I was the one embarrassed that the theory she was teaching came straight from my textbook.
“How’s life as a knight?”
We naturally fell into step beside one another as we walked down the corridor.
“It’s fine.”
“……Feels like only yesterday you came to my office saying you couldn’t take it anymore.”
It really did feel like only yesterday.
“That was ages ago.”
Hannah narrowed her eyes.
“I’m talking about the Active Traces.”
“……I came to see you exactly once back then. Once.”
There was a forest behind the Sentinel grounds. I had deliberately bought the land and turned it into a park for the sake of the knights’ mental health.
It was fairly large, with tall trees, so they could spend time alone there.
We walked along one of the paths through the forest.
“But, sir, you don’t seem to have aged at all since then. Do you use some kind of cosmetics?”
“Why would a knight use cosmetics?”
Hannah stared at me for a moment, then her eyes widened as though something had just occurred to her.
“Ah, sir. Do you remember ‘Ruin’?”
“Of course. The rookie knight who participated in the Zerpha Civil War. Is something wrong?”
“No. It’s just that I’m going drinking with those guys today. We still pull all-nighters talking about what happened back then.”
Hahahaha.
She laughed as she said it, her voice brimming with pride.
“……That’s good.”
I had secretly worried about them. After all, they had fought in battle and cut down dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of people.
Fortunately, instead of guilt over killing, they seemed to have found a sense of belonging as knights and as members of the nation.
Was it thanks to the concept of Totalitarianism? Or had my helmet played the key role?
I still didn’t know.
─Knight! Knight Maximilian!
Just then, someone came running toward me, calling my name.
It was the Yaken Operations Officer.
“Look at this!”
That was one of the reasons I used a Yaken as an Operations Officer. No matter where I was, whenever something urgent happened, he had an uncanny knack for finding me.
“It’s urgent!”
I took the bundle of newspapers he handed me.
[ Highland Prime Minister Gary Beaufort in Secret Rendezvous with Society Woman. What Lay Beneath the ‘Umbrella of Peace’? ]
[ Exclusive: Four Photographs Obtained. At a Residence Near the Prime Minister’s Residence, Woman Reportedly the Wife of a Merchant of Imperial Nationality…… ]
[ Common Hall Opposition Demands Emergency Questioning, Prime Minister’s Office “Refuses”. ]
“…….”
I furrowed my brow.
Highland’s Prime Minister, Gary Beaufort.
The most popular Prime Minister in Highland’s history, a man whose conduct as a gentleman had always been beyond reproach, was supposedly having an affair.
“Wow. They even have photos.”
Hannah gave a disbelieving laugh. The shots were impossible to explain away.
Through a gap in the half-drawn curtains of a second-floor window, Beaufort stood in his shirt with an arm around a woman’s shoulders while she buried her face against his chest.
“What even is all this…….”
Hannah gulped as she stared at the newspaper. For someone who had never dated a man in her life, she seemed to find the sight quite titillating.
“…….”
For me, however, this was quite serious.
The future I knew had collapsed.
Nothing like this had happened before the Regression.
Beaufort had remained in office until the following spring, but someone had torn that timeline apart.
Was it Ezenheim? Or some other faction?
Either way, from this point on, history would be something new, something I knew nothing about……
“But seriously, isn’t this photo a little too explicit……?”
“Quit gulping.”
“W-What are you talking about? Gulp.”
Hannah swallowed again as she answered.
“When did I ever gulp…….”
…….
“Prime Minister Gary Beaufort! Prime Minister Beaufort!”
All of Highland was in an uproar.
Gary Beaufort’s scandal appeared in every newspaper imaginable, and reporters camped outside the Prime Minister’s residence day and night.
I, too, had disguised myself as one of the countless reporters standing outside.
“……Prime Minister Gary Beaufort! Please give us an explanation!”
This incident was undoubtedly someone’s scheme.
“Have you been carrying that umbrella all this time just to hide your affair?!”
If so, had Arthur Winston chosen such a dirty tactic?
Or had Ezenheim decided to take things one step further?
“He really looked like such a nice man.”
Hannah spoke beside me. In her arms was an issue of 「Sunday Lamp」, the tabloid notorious for exposing people’s private lives.
She had probably bought it just to see a few more photographs. At that point, she might as well have openly bought an adult magazine.
“I didn’t know the Prime Minister was this daring-”
“I told you not to talk to me.”
We were undercover under separate identities.
Hannah was posing as an Imperial tourist because her Highland Language was poor. I was a Highland reporter.
“……Yes, sir.”
For the time being, we had established an intelligence base in Highland’s capital.
And the way we did that was…… by simply buying a mid-sized Highland news outlet outright.
It wasn’t even all that expensive.
“Oh, he’s coming out! He’s coming out!”
“Prime Minister Gary Beaufort!”
“Prime Minister! Please look this way and give us just one comment…….”
At last, Gary Beaufort emerged from the residence.
Countless reporters surged toward the haggard-looking man all at once.
~~~
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