“Y-Yes?!”
From the next little while, it was time for Liscia to lecture me. We would be causing trouble for the other visitors if we did it in front of the exhibit, so we relocated to a corner of the garden and she made me kneel in front of her on the lawn while she lectured me.
What did I think I was doing with national treasures? How dare I, as one who was summoned as a hero, put the hero’s equipment on display like some curiosity? I needed to have more awareness of my role as king! It went on, and on, and on. Liscia was too serious for her own good, so she couldn’t stand it when I didn’t do these things properly.
“Um… Lady Liscia, it’s not as if His Majesty meant any harm,” Aisha said.
“He did it for the benefit of this country, so cut him some slack,” Roroa added.
“This is Lady Roroa’s day to go on a date, so I think you’ve lectured him enough…” Juna murmured.
Aisha, Roroa, and Juna stepped in, so the lecture was comparatively short. Yes, her lectures were usually longer.
“Honestly, I’ll let it slide this time, in deference to you three, but… Listen, Souma,” Liscia snapped. “Some of the nobles that care about authority hate things like this. That’s why you need to consult with me properly before just doing this sort of thing. If I, as someone from the Royal House of Elfrieden, give permission, you won’t needlessly upset the nobles.”
“…Yes, ma’am,” I said humbly. “I’m very sorry.”
She was so right that there was nothing I could say in response. The reason Liscia would lecture me for so long was that she truly cared for my well-being. I knew that, so I gladly accepted it.
Once the lecture was over and done with, Roroa clapped her hands twice. “Now then, let’s get back to that date, shall we?”
“Ah! Sorry, Roroa,” Liscia said guiltily. “Sorry for coming along after saying I’d let you have it to yourselves.”
“Hmm, well, it’s not like I don’t understand how you two feel. Ain’t much I can do about it now that you’re here, anyway, so let’s go around together.” Roroa wrapped herself around Liscia’s arm fawningly. “We’ve got quite a crowd here, so how’s about some shopping?”
“That sounds good,” Liscia nodded. “Why don’t we have Souma carry everyone’s bags as a punishment?”
“I–I’m starting to get hungry, you know,” Aisha complained.
“Hee hee! Then why don’t we go to Cafe Lorelei first?” Juna giggled.
“““Sounds good.”””
Before I knew it, our plans for the afternoon had been decided without my being able to get a word in edgewise.
When faced with these powerful girls, even if I was the king or the hero, I was no match for them.
“Come on, Souma, let’s hurry along,” Liscia announced, taking my hand.
“There’s more fun to be had yet, Darlin’,” Roroa added, grabbing the other one.
Somehow, as they pulled me along by the arms, I felt like I was being shown exactly what the future balance of power between us was going to look like.
By the way, we discussed the matter of the hero’s equipment later, and settled on displaying it just once a year for a limited time only. It meant less security was needed, and the event would feel like something special, so that was good.
Chapter 5: Weighing Nostalgia Against the Future
— The middle of the 12th month, 1,546th year, Continental Calendar
The royal capital was thoroughly wrapped in a wintery atmosphere, and there had been enough cold days in a row that it felt like the snow might start to fall soon. It was a morning where I didn’t really want to get out from under a warm blanket.
“I have some important business to attend to in the castle town today…” I said, bringing up the topic while eating breakfast with my four fiancées, as usual. “It’d help to have a woman come along. Would one of you mind?”
“Is that for work? It doesn’t sound like you’re heading out to play.” Liscia asked as a representative of the group, to which I nodded with a wry smile.
“Sadly, it is. It’s an important matter this time, so I have to head out personally.”
“I see… I can go. How about everyone else?” Liscia asked, turning the topic to the other three. It felt like she already had the dignity of the first queen, bringing all of the others together under her.
Roroa was the first to raise her arms above her head in an X. “I’m afraid you’re gonna have to count me out, sadly. Darlin’s already asked me to negotiate with the merchant’s guild.”
“About making the slave traders public servants, you mean?” Liscia asked.
“That’s right. Darlin’s already made the used metal dealers into public servants and has them workin’ in the recyclin’ industry, or somethin’ like that, but this time it’s not gonna go so easily. The used metal dealers were like trash pickers, so they weren’t part of a guild. Slave traders, on the other hand, while they may be looked down on, they’re proper, registered members of a guild. If we’re takin’ them away from the guild and puttin’ them under the control of the state, that’s effectively creatin’ a monopoly on slaves.”
Roroa picked up the salt shaker as she said this, then continued.
“If it were metal or salt, there’d be some precedent, but I ain’t never heard of anyone creatin’ a monopoly on slaves before. Slaves aren’t somethin’ you produce locally for local consumption. Naturally, they come in from other countries, too. If we’re nationalizin’ the slave trade, we’ll also need to stop those flows from other countries. As public servants, their wages’ll be stable, but they’ll never make money hand over fist. That’s why the slave traders who want to make the big bucks will go to other countries. There’ll be some pushback, too.”
“I’m ready to accept some pushback on this,” I said.
I was fine with convict slaves being sentenced to hard labor, but I wanted to put an end to the era where women and children were sold off so there would be fewer mouths to feed, and where it was taken as a given that the child of a slave was also a slave. That wasn’t only from a humanitarian point of view, it was also to make this country more prosperous as a whole.
However, Roroa, who had been tasked with the negotiations, had a grim look on her face. “I’m sure your aim is to downsize the system of slavery, Darlin’… but I’m not sure there’re enough convict slaves and economic slaves in this country alone to meet demand. It’s a real problem.”
“Is it going to be too difficult?” I asked.
Roroa shook her head. “I’ll do it. I want to see this world after slavery that you’ve been tellin’ me about, after all. One where everyone earns money, everyone uses money, and everyone makes the economy turn… That’s the world I want to see.”
I had told the clever Roroa a bit about the economic history of my world. I had told her about that era of technological revolution where goods had begun to be mass-produced. There had been a demand for markets to sell those goods to, and so there had been a movement toward freeing the slaves who’d held no assets in order to create that market.
Naturally, I knew there were people who had fought under the ideology that all people should have equal rights. I couldn’t deny the hard work of the slaves who’d fought to win their own freedom, or the efforts of those who’d wished for them to be free. However, with any system, it always came down to whether or not that system was suitable for the time it existed in.
The war between the North and South United States had been called a war of emancipation, but it was more that the North had held up the ideal of freeing the slaves in order to gather support against the forces of the South, which had included many plantation owners. What had once been considered an impractical ideal was accomplished the moment it aligned with the facts of the situation.