When she acted that way, she mysteriously started to look like a princess.
“…And what exactly is Princess Roroa doing here?” I asked.
“Ohh. I’ve got me a good reason for that.”
“You’re already back to speaking casually?!”
“It ain’t nothin’ to get so fussed over. I mean, after all…”
With her best smile on her face, she dropped the biggest bombshell of the day.
“After all, I came here so we can get hitched.”
“Hold on!” Liscia shouted.
While my brain was still frozen, processing Roroa’s sudden declaration that she was going to be my bride, a flustered Liscia ran over to Roroa.
“You’re a princess of Amidonia, aren’t you?! What are you talking about?!”
“I’m just doin’ what you did, Sis,” Roroa said.
“Sis?!”
Roroa was calm in the face of Liscia. “Sis, you’re a princess of Elfrieden, ain’t ya? When ya first agreed to marry Mr. Souma, it was all to give him a just cause for rulin’ the kingdom, wasn’t it?”
“How did you know that?!” Liscia burst out.
It was only natural for Liscia to be surprised. Roroa had an accurate grasp of what our situation was.
“Never underestimate a merchant’s information network,” said Roroa. “Well, anyway, it’s the same for me. If I’m marryin’ into the kingdom, and bringin’ my country with me, Mr. Souma’ll gain the Principality of Amidonia, and a just cause for rulin’ it. By mergin’ with the kingdom, the reparations the principality needed to pay’ll be wiped out, and by bein’ integrated into the kingdom, we can receive food support from there, too. Don’t you think it’s a marriage that benefits the both of us?”
Roroa was emphasizing how it was beneficial to both parties in her reasoning, but Liscia only seemed more reluctant. “That’s… I mean, yes, our betrothal was an arrangement for the country’s benefit at first. But, now, I sincerely want to support Souma. I even feel affection for him. Aisha, Juna, and myself, we all chose to be by Souma’s side of our own free will!” She practically shouted a confession of her love at the end.
I was startled. There was this girl who felt so strongly about me. Hearing her talk so passionately, I could feel my cheeks burning.
Roroa’s cheeks turned a little red at Liscia’s declaration, too, but she immediately snickered. “Ahh, there ain’t no problem there, then. I’m pretty fond of Mr. Souma myself.”
When she said that so plainly, it was Liscia’s turn to be dumbfounded. “You ‘re fond of him…? But this is the first time you’ve ever met, isn’t it?”
“I’ve seen his face before,” Roroa said. “When I was in hidin’, he was on the music program. That sure was a revolutionary new way of usin’ it. I can think of more applications, too. Dependin’ how it’s used, you could make a real mint off of it.” Roroa snapped her fingers gleefully. “I know! The royal and princely families have got a system of royal warrants of appointment, yeah? It’s a system where high quality gifts we receive are given our official approval. It’s a guarantee of the product’s quality, but it’s also an advertisement that there’s somethin’ good enough about it to make it worth guaranteein’. So, how about ya make even just a small amount of time on the Jewel Voice Broadcast where, for a price, you’ll show advertisements for people’s products? If there’s a big business lookin’ to advertise themselves and their product, don’t ya think they’d pay good money for that?”
“I see,” I said. “Run commercials, huh. I had overlooked that…”
Because the Jewel Voice Broadcast was currently being used as a public broadcaster, I hadn’t considered the idea of running commercials at all. I had never thought it would occur to anyone in a world without television to want to sponsor commercials on it, anyway. But, like Roroa was saying, there were merchants who advertised themselves as purveyors to the royal family. If we set up a place for them to advertise, the funding might start to pour in. If that let us cover the costs of producing programs, it would mean that much more room in the national budget.
While I was thinking that, Roroa put her hand on her hip and smiled. “I think you can bring the kingdom and the principality together and lead us into a more prosperous era, y’know. Besides, if I’m with ya, I figure I’ll probably be able to see more fun things like that, and I’ve always thought, if I’ve gotta marry someone, it’d better be someone interestin’.”
“…I understand your thinking, but… Are you okay with this, Roroa?” I looked Roroa straight in the eye as I asked her that. “I’m… the man who killed your father, Gaius VIII, you know.”
The moment I said that, a wave of tension ran through the people from the kingdom’s side.
Roroa’s father Gaius VIII had fallen in battle with the kingdom, and I was the one who had led that force. In other words, to this girl, I was her father’s killer.
Roroa shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. “If you’re gonna say that, well, I went and drove my own brother out of the country. Used my connections with the merchants to set up simultaneous revolts and everythin’.”
“Wha?! That was you?!” I burst out.
The only riots that the kingdom had stirred up were the ones around Van. We hadn’t been involved at all in the revolts by vassals or the popular uprisings that had broken out elsewhere, but who would have thought that she was behind it all…
What a girl.
While I was still trying to process that, Roroa waved her hand. “Ya don’t need to feel bad for what happened with my old man. Or would ya rather I give you a vengeful ‘How dare you kill my father!’? Then do you want to force me to submit to you, and make me say, ‘I can’t believe I had to bear the child of my father’s killer…’?”
“I don’t have that kind of sadistic fetish!” I shouted.
“Souma,” Liscia muttered, looking disturbed. “That’s a little much…”
“Why are you acting a little creeped out, Liscia?! That’s just something Roroa came up with on her own, all right?!”
Ahh, I didn’t know what to say. Maybe because I’d been raising my voice a lot more than I was used to; I was starting to feel dizzy. This fake Kansai-accent girl totally had me dancing to her tune.
I sighed. “Listen, Roroa…”
“What?”
“You really don’t hold it against me? Not in the least?”
“…Well, when ya say it like that, it’s not like I feel absolutely nothin’ about it.” Roroa crossed her arms in front of her chest and closed her eyes. “Even with the way he was, he was still my old man. But he was tryin’ to kill you too, wasn’t he? On the battlefield, it’s kill or be killed. There ain’t much ya can do about that. It sounds like you returned his remains good and proper, so ya won’t hear any complaints out of me.”
I was silent.
“Well… it just means the two of us got on poorly enough as father and daughter that I’m able to leave it at that.” Roroa looked a little lonely. “My old man and my brother were so obsessed with takin’ revenge on the kingdom, they couldn’t see anythin’ else. Amidonia’s a poor country. We’ve got valuable mineral resources… but that’s it. Our food self-sufficiency rate is low. It ain’t the Royal House of Elfrieden or the people of the kingdom that’re makin’ our people suffer right now. It’s hunger and poverty. What we really needed were jobs and food. That’s what Colbert, the bureaucrats, and I were all thinkin’ when we desperately worked to scrape together money. But, my old man and his lot, they would immediately put it all into the military.”