There was nothing I could say in response. Aisha had watched my relationship with Liscia develop from a fairly early stage, after all.
Roroa had her arms crossed and was nodding and grunting in agreement. “Yeah, yeah. Then ya can give us just as much of your love when you’re done.”
“…I understand,” I said. “When the time comes, I’ll take care of doing that with you ‘properly.’”
“Yep, that’s a promise. Ya better,” Roroa said condescendingly.
Here I was, being chided for my behavior by a girl three years my junior… I felt a little pathetic, but Roroa laughed and waved her hand.
“But, well, here we are, on a date already, so we’ve gotta have fun.”
“Indeed,” Aisha said, nodding. “Lady Liscia did say to enjoy ourselves today, after all.”
They had a point.
“Well, it is a rare day off,” I said. “Was there anywhere the two of you wanted to go?”
Aisha said, “In that case, I would…”
“Also, no food until later.”
“Shot down before I could even speak?! Wh-Why is that?” Aisha cried with eyes like a chihuahua that had been forced to wait for a treat.
“When I eat with you, I’m always stuffed full by the time we’re done, and that makes it hard to move around,” I said. “I promise we’ll stop somewhere for food later, so let’s go somewhere else first.”
“Ah, okay. If that’s why…”
“That said, it ain’t been that long since I first came to the capital,” Roroa said, tilting her head in thought. “I dunno what’s here yet. Is there anywhere you’d recommend as a date spot, Darlin’?”
“A date spot, huh…” I murmured.
In my former world, the theater, the amusement park, the zoo, the aquarium, karaoke, and the arcade would all have been options, but not in this world. It was that lack of leisure facilities that had made the entertainment programs over the Jewel Voice Broadcast such a hit.
Well, if I was looking for a date spot other than a place for entertainment… Ah.
“That place might be good,” I said.
“What, what? Did ya come up with somethin’ good?” Roroa asked eagerly.
“It’s a facility we opened just the other day, actually, and I think there should be plenty of interesting things to see if we go there,” I said. “Though it’s more of an educational institution than a leisure facility.”
“Learnin’, even though we’re on a date? What kinda place is that?” Roroa asked, tilting her head to the side.
“The Royal Parnam Museum,” I said. “Not that the name’s terribly inventive.”
“So huge?!” Roroa cried out in surprise when we came up to the entrance of the Royal Parnam Museum and she saw what was on display there. If we’d been talking about a massive display in front of the National Museum of Nature and Science in Ueno, it would have been the blue whale, but the Royal Parnam Museum had a massive skeletal specimen measuring more than 10 meters long out in front of it.
“What’re these bones from? Looks like a lizard or somethin’…”
“That’s the giant salamander that was lurking in the area beneath the royal capital,” I explained.
“Salamanders get that big? The ones livin’ in Amidonia grew to maybe two meters at most, but… Wait, this thing was under the royal capital?!”
“Yeah. Talk about a surprise, huh?” I said.
This salamander had been discovered when I’d commissioned the adventurers’ guild to exterminate the wild creatures living in the labyrinth of escape tunnels under the capital so that they could be repurposed as a sewer system. Or rather, the ones to find it had been Dece, Juno, and their party. I had even been there to witness it, albeit through my Little Musashibo doll.
Neither the country nor the guild had anticipated anything so big living under the capital, so there hadn’t been sufficient warning given, and I’d ended up putting Juno and her group in danger. It was good that they’d managed to retreat somehow, but when I thought about how things might have taken a turn for the worst, there was a lot I had to reflect on.
Now, about that salamander: as soon as I’d received the report from Juno and her party, I’d dispatched a unit from the Forbidden Army to kill it. Juno and her party had struggled against the salamander because they hadn’t had a mage who could use the ice-elemental water-type magic that it was weak against. When we’d deployed a group focused heavily around those who could use that sort of magic, the thing had gone down easily. The slain salamander had then been dissected, then turned into a skeletal specimen.
“Well, this is just a replica based on the original bones,” I added as I touched the skeletal specimen all over. We’d have had to worry about thieves making off with it if we displayed the real thing outside, after all. There was a sign next to it that read: “This is a 1/1 scale replica, so please try touching it to experience the size for yourself.”
“This sort of thing… How should I say it? It tickles my sense of adventure,” Aisha said, her eyes sparkling. “I think young boys would enjoy seeing it.”
“Hrm…” I said. “I thought it might be a good educational experience that helped stimulate their creativity, so I tried showing the real bones that we keep at the castle to Rou” (Tomoe’s real little brother) “and the other children at the daycare, but they bawled their eyes out… I got chewed out by Liscia pretty badly after that one.”
“What were you even doing?” Roroa asked, looking appalled.
Yeah, it’d have been important to consider their age first, huh.
“That said, while we have been preoccupied with the skeletal specimen, the building itself is also quite large and impressive. Almost like a noble’s manor,” Aisha said, looking at the building.
That was a sharp observation. “No, not ‘almost like,’” I said. “We actually remodeled a noble’s manor.”
“Is that right?” Aisha asked.
“Yeah. I executed those influential nobles who were colluding with Amidonia and manipulating the corrupt nobles in the war, remember? This building used to belong to one of them.”
It really was… one massive house.
The main building was as big as the school building of a university with a lot of history behind it, and then there were two annexes that were also quite big in and of themselves. There was a well-maintained garden, too, and I had to be impressed with the wealth this noble had managed to amass while the kingdom was in financial trouble. According to Hakuya’s investigation, they had been taking a cut of the money that the corrupt nobles had embezzled.
Regardless, when this mansion had become vacant after the noble who owned it was executed, it had been remodeled as the Royal Parnam Museum. Since it was this big and impressive a building, letting any of my retainers live in it would have provoked needless jealousy, and it would also have cost a lot of money to dismantle it. This had worked out as a perfect solution.
“Oh, when ya put it like that, it sounds like it’s probably filled with the grudge of the nobles and I don’t like it…” Roroa said with the corner of her mouth twitching.
“Ah… ah ha ha…” I laughed. “Yeah, well, it looks like there are already rumors. Like that the armor on display gets up and walks around on its own at night.”
“Of course,” said Roroa.
“But, you know, using anyone and anything we can is one of those things our country does, after all.”
“Here’s hopin’ you don’t have to use it as a haunted house someday…”