Uh, yeah, I thought. I’d really rather not.
“Anyway, let’s go in. It’s pretty amazing on the inside, too,” I suggested, and we went inside.
If I had spoken to the person in charge, they would have just let us in, but in order to slip in with the regular visitors, we paid admission for three people at the entrance.
The first thing to greet us inside was a lineup of armor. These were the suits of armor that had been worn by the past commanders of the Royal Guard. They were no longer used and were gathering dust, so I’d taken this opportunity to drag them out of storage and donate them to the museum.
They must have drawn Aisha’s interest as a warrior herself, because she was looking at them in admiration. “They are old, but when you have so many lined up, it makes for quite the spectacle, doesn’t it?”
“Hold on, Darlin’, what is a museum anyway?” Roroa asked.
“Huh? Even that part wasn’t clear to you?” I asked.
Come to think of it, when I’d first established the Royal Parnam Museum, Hakuya had said, “I hadn’t heard the idea before, but that is an interesting facility. I’d very much like to go look through it myself,” hadn’t he?
In other words, this was the first museum to be built in our kingdom, and it was only natural that Roroa and the others wouldn’t know what one was. Were there museums in the Empire, maybe?
“To put it in the simplest terms, a museum is a facility that gathers various things, has academics study them, and allows the general public to see them in the form of exhibits,” I said. “The goal of the institution is to deepen the understanding of those who come to see their collection, but it’s just fun to see all the novel things on display. People went on dates there in the world I came from.”
“Hmm… It’s like puttin’ the royal treasury on display for the public, then?” Roroa asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s pretty much exactly it. The collection contains things with literary or artistic value, as well as skeletons and preserved specimens of animals for their value in the field of natural science.”
Then, while I was explaining, I noticed a familiar set of armor in with the collection.
“Is this not the armor that the Captain of the Royal Guard was wearing?” Aisha noticed it, too, and asked.
It was true, though its back was turned to us, that silver armor closely did look like Ludwin’s.
But, that’s strange, I thought. The only armor that should be on display here is the armor the state provided to the former captains of the Royal Guard. If I recall, Ludwin’s armor was bought with his own money…
Suddenly, that armor turned to face us.
“Whoa!” I shouted.
“Oh, I’m sorry…” Ludwin said. “Wait, huh? Is that you, Your Majesty?”
Huh? It’s actually him?! While I was still shocked by the unexpected appearance of the man himself, Genia poked her head out from behind him.
“What’re you doing, Big Brother Luu?” she asked.
“And Genia’s with you, too,” I said. “Are you two here on a date?”
Ludwin replied “No,” with an exhausted look on his face. “Because you said that the Royal Guard and the guards would handle security here, we’re here for a meeting on the shift rotations.”
“Oh, I see,” I said. “Sorry for the trouble.”
Because there were a fair number of valuable objects here, I had been forced to buff up security in a big way. The people managing security needed to be trustworthy, too, so I’d decided to leave it to the Royal Guard and the guards whose jobs already included watching and defending.
“And I’m here to set up the security system Big Brother Luu asked me to install,” Genia put in. “There’re places where I have spells set to go off if you get close to them, so don’t try to go anywhere you shouldn’t.”
“Now that’s scary…” I said.
The overscientist Genia’s security system… The scary part was I couldn’t predict what might happen. I was imagining something like one of the complex contraptions you’d see on P*thagoraSwitch. One that ultimately chucked the offenders out the front door.
“By the way, are you on a date here, sire?” Ludwin asked.
“We sure are,” Roroa jumped in, wrapping herself around my arm. “It’s the three of us — Darlin’, Big Sister Ai, and me.”
Ludwin looked confused. “Three of you? But… Ah! I–I see. Well, have fun.”
With that said, Ludwin took Genia and left immediately.
It seemed like he almost said something… Was it just my imagination? I wondered.
“Anyway, shall we go?” I suggested to the other two and we moved on.
Along the way Aisha stopped and looked back a number of times. Was something bothering her?
“Aisha?” I asked.
“…No, it’s nothing.” Aisha rushed over and wrapped herself around my arm.
It couldn’t have been that one of the suits of armor had actually started to move, and Aisha had noticed and been scared… or anything like that, right? I got worried and was about to ask, when Roroa tugged on my sleeve.
“Hey, hey, Darlin’. Why’re there nothin’ but bones on display here?”
When Roroa asked me that in a somewhat bothered tone, I looked in front of me to see a glass case filled with the reassembled skeletons of various creatures. From a modern person’s perspective, this was a common sight at museums of natural history, but for the people of this world, it might seem wrong.
“It’s like some bizarre ritual’s gonna start up at any moment,” she complained.
“Ha ha ha! That’s not it,” I said. “This museum collects and exhibits historical items, books, and the skeletons and preserved specimens of living creatures, along with other items of interest to the field of natural science. What we have here are the bones we happened to excavate while trying to build sedimentation pools. The ones they’ve finished researching go on display like this. It’s not just animal skeletons; there are monsters, too.”
“Monster skeletons… Is that okay? There’re monsters that’re nothin’ but bones, ya know?” Roroa said.
“Well… from what the researchers tell me, those sort of skeleton monsters need magic in their bones, and once the magic is all gone, they’re just ordinary bones,” I said. “I don’t really get it myself, though.”
They had been certified as safe by a professional mage, so I figured they were fine.
…Probably.
“Still, there sure are a lot of bones,” Aisha commented. “Is this a giant deer?” She sighed in admiration at the fossil that looked like an even more massive version of the Irish elk. “I have never seen such a massive deer before, not even in the God-protected Forest. It’s surprising to hear a creature like this once lived near the capital.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The way they stir up the imagination like that is one of the best parts about museums.”
“Yeah, the appeal of that’s not totally lost on me,” Roroa said, staring at the fossilized remains of a massive water buffalo-like creature. “I wonder what the goin’ price for a creature like this’d be. You could get a lot of meat out of it, but it wouldn’t have much flavor… Though, at this size, they ain’t gonna be much use for farming, I’m sure. I guess meat really is the best use for them…”
“That’s what you’re imagining?! How to sell them off?!”
“Meat, is it?” Aisha asked with an audible slurp.
“Oh, shoot,” I muttered. “Now Aisha’s totally imagining them roasted whole.”