by Mamare Touno
Pretending not to register Calasin’s worried gaze, Minori drew a deep breath. This was a battlefield.
But in her eyes, the mountains of documents in the office looked like something else.
The connection came naturally to her mind, and a new vision rose up.
In other words, it’s just like that.
The problem was their lack of processing ability.
In concept, it was equivalent to a lack of recovery ability.
She remembered murderous intent that chilled her spine and a suffocating sense of tension. Slowly, she opened and clenched her hand, intentionally helping her blood circulate. Minori was currently visualizing a raid.
Just remembering made her throat dry, and her temperature was falling.
All she had to do was what had been done at Ragranda, Choushi, and Zantleaf. To mimic what she’d seen Shiroe do.
“I’ll stay here and handle the storehouse work. Would it be all right if we had them bring all the storehouse paperwork in, too?”
“Huh? Oh. Yes, I see, you’re right. …Of course, if you’ll do it, that would be terrific.”
Calasin gave the order to the young man Taro, who was nearby.
Storehouse meant the materials storehouses managed by the Round Table Council. The small and midsized guilds could rent the storehouses by the month, and the facilities had been created at a relatively early stage after the establishment of the Round Table Council.
After the Catastrophe, the world had changed, and now the quality of materials affected the quality of created items. As a result, it had become important for producers to judge materials carefully before buying.
Before, in the case of tomato items, no matter what kind of tomatoes they were, the quality of the finished food had been the same (although it had been nothing more than soggy rice crackers.) However, at present, if you used damaged tomatoes, the tomato salad would be only as good as a salad made with damaged tomatoes. It would inevitably taste bad. As a result, at present, it had grown more necessary to look at an item directly and confirm its quality before making your purchase.
That meant that, unlike before, large storehouses with solid management systems were necessary. Big guilds could run their own storehouses, but small and midsized guilds didn’t have that kind of strength. In response to requests from these smaller guilds, the Round Table Council had established several large storehouses, and it continued to manage them.
During the Libra Festival, these storehouses had been made available to People of the Earth as well.
The service was necessary for People of the Earth merchants who’d come with freight wagons.
Much of their merchandise consisted of bulky items and the types of things that couldn’t be left alone at inn stables. In a storehouse cooled by summoning Heavenly Winter Robes—high-level ice spirits—items would also stay a bit fresher.
However, it was also true that since they’d been opened to the People of the Earth, the procedures themselves had grown more complicated. If they didn’t record the details of the items placed in their care, they couldn’t be responsible. In addition, the storehouses had been designed on the assumption that a fixed amount would be taken out each morning and what remained unsold would be put back at night. They hadn’t assumed frequent use, such as merchandise being removed each time a sale was made.
The plain truth was that the burden placed on the contact personnel far exceeded their processing abilities. It was a typical example of the attack Akiba was experiencing.
“Sorry about the wait, Minori.”
“Hi, Touya.”
Touya had entered the office without so much as a greeting, and Minori nodded to him.
The twins had each other’s addresses registered at the very top of their friend lists. To them, these were irreplaceable. They’d contacted each other via telechat so often that they could perform the operations unconsciously, to the point where it had gone past the territory of a direct call and was beginning to border on telepathy.
“Calasin, this is my twin brother, Touya. I had him come to help.”
“Yes. I haven’t seen you for a while. I’m sorry, and thanks in advance.”
“Roger that. Okay, Minori, I’m off.”
With a hasty greeting, Touya set his bag down and left the office. Minori didn’t ask where he was going.
Merchandise claim checks from several publicly run storehouses had been delivered to this floor. As she and Calasin had discussed earlier, Touya had probably gone to pick up those checks.
Before long, it was likely that all sorts of files would begin to stream into the office at double the previous speed. The claim checks from the storehouse group would be brought to the office, in addition to the reports that were arriving from the flea market.
They’d created space in the office by organizing the current paperwork, and now they would process these vast quantities of documents here in parallel.
That was the battlefield Minori had chosen.
“Calasin, take care of this as well, please.”
Minori passed a list of high-priority reports to him. It had “urgent” written in red in its top right corner. Calasin was flustered, but he nodded and began to rapidly glance through it.
Calasin was a guild leader with the sort of business abilities even Shiroe held in high esteem. He fielded hot matters, the sort Minori couldn’t handle, regarding materials entrusted to them—such as the fact that the same huge heap of potatoes had been withdrawn twice—with short telechats, settling matters by compensating for damages.
As she watched him, Minori was sure of it:
Running back to Shiroe right now would be a poor move.
Now, when the battle lines were being overwhelmed, was the time for the rear guard to display iron determination that continuously supported the vanguard. The rear guard had a duty to trust the vanguard.
I don’t know whether I’ll be any help, but…
Even so, at this moment, there was no one in this office. Only Calasin and two Shopping District 8 volunteers. Even with the additions of Minori and Touya, there were only five of them.
This was the core of the Libra Festival, and yet there were just five staff members.
The only instruction Shiroe had given her was to meet up with Touya.
Minori thought about the intent that might hold.
The first thing she’d picked up on was the message that the circumstances currently bearing down on Akiba weren’t the sort of danger that would cause direct, physical damage. If the situation had held that kind of peril, Shiroe would have told her to join them at any cost. If necessary, he would have sent someone to get her.
However, after the relief, the next thing she’d sensed was the message that she’d been given her freedom.
This didn’t simply mean that he’d granted her freedom of movement. Minori had been given this concession after sharing the information that they were under attack, and she interpreted this to mean that he was hoping she would act as reinforcements.
A small expectation from distant Shiroe.
The possibility might have been no more than a misunderstanding, but it kindled a blaze in Minori’s soul.
But if that’s true… If Shiroe’s hoping for something, even a very little something, from me, then I…
In this office, she’d imitate Shiroe.
That was what Minori had resolved.
She’d recreate Shiroe’s controlled encounter.
There would be no point in having two Shiroes in the same place, but here, where there was no Shiroe, she might find value in imitating him.
The people in charge of reception at the storehouses, who were continuing to take complaints from the People of the Earth, were the vanguard tank. That would probably make Calasin—who was using the time they bought him to resolve the vanguard’s problems—the healer.
On this battlefield, the very best Minori could do was to sort the problems by size, foresee the next move, and shape the information so t
hat everything ran smoothly.
She couldn’t be the vanguard or the healer.
Even though her ideals were high, all she was really doing was organizing paperwork, transferring its content to another piece of paper and distributing it. She felt a furious helplessness and irritation at herself in the pit of her stomach, but she valiantly froze the emotions.
She was a middle schooler. If she was incompetent, that was only natural.
Besides, Shiroe had taught her that nothing was more useless than irritation in the middle of a conflict or the tormenting oneself therefore. She couldn’t betray him.
The flow of battle isn’t something you read. It’s something you become.
She remembered Shiroe’s kind voice. He’d been laughing, as if he were joking.
Become the flow…
To Minori, right now, “combat” and “the flow” were the continuous sequence of documents that were brought in one after another, and the telechats that flew in asking for instructions. She had to become these things.
Worry about nothing.
Think about nothing.
Become the documents themselves, the solution itself.
As she chased a sensation she could feel only faintly, Minori threw herself into the work in front of her.
5
A resplendent atmosphere enveloped the dinner party venue.
This was the great hall on the first floor of Water Maple Manor, where Raynesia lived. The manor had been created by repairing one of Akiba’s many destroyed buildings, which the Cowen duchy of Maihama had purchased when Raynesia was sent to Akiba.
The building had been very nearly in ruins, so they’d kept only the basic structure and redesigned it in the style of an aristocratic People of the Earth manor.
As an official residence, the manor sometimes housed guests, and regular business, including meetings and appraisals of specialty products, was often conducted here. As a result, although it was Raynesia’s private residence, it had been built on a rather large scale. There were three halls, a total of eighty rooms, and as a rule, there were more than thirty servants.
Now, just before the largest event this residence had ever seen, the number of staff had ballooned to a number that was beyond comparison with the usual thirty. This was a banquet on a huge scale: The chefs and bards and serving girls they’d summoned from Maihama hadn’t been enough, and they’d hastily recruited and mobilized kitchen staff and a wide variety of artisans in Akiba.
As a matter of fact, not all those who’d responded to the advertisement had been People of the Earth.
Although there weren’t many of them, there were Adventurers among the Chefs, the servers, the musicians, and the behind-the-scenes staff. Adventurers’ income level was high. The wages Raynesia’s people had proposed had been based on People of the Earth standards, and they hadn’t dreamed that Adventurers would respond to the advertisement, but this was the town of Akiba. Some Adventurers had stepped up, mostly for fun.
It was probably more than half in a spirit of volunteering. As these Adventurers worked busily behind the scenes of the grand banquet, some grew closer to People of the Earth of the opposite gender who were working alongside them and rather charming relationships began, but that’s another story.
“Thank you very much.”
Raynesia smiled and bowed to the Adventurer in front of her. The young Adventurer averted his gaze brusquely and muttered, “Nah, anybody would’ve done that.”
Apparently the young man had acted as rear-guard support and participated in the encircling operation during the Zantleaf War. All Raynesia could do was express her gratitude, but after all, the day’s dinner party existed in order to formally convey that gratitude.
“Thanks to you and your people, Maihama and the League of Cities were saved. I am eternally grateful to you.”
She lifted her skirt very slightly, bowing her head.
Seeing this, the young man waved a hand, interrupting her and speaking rapidly: “You don’t have to thank us all over the place. It wasn’t anything big. We’re Adventurers, and anybody would’ve done it, and we got paid. Plus…it wasn’t all that much trouble.”
Then the young man, whose face had gone red, said, “Just don’t worry about it. Not even a little, okay?!” He sounded uncomfortable, and he left in a hurry.
“They all seem rather gauche, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do… They really do.”
Raynesia responded to Elissa, who was waiting behind her.
Many of the Adventurers—particularly the young men—seemed to be shy. Most knights were romantics, but they were so absorbed in their chivalry that they tended to force their own way of doing things onto others.
On that point, the young Adventurers often grew flustered and ran away when Raynesia thanked them.
At first she’d wondered whether they were shunning her out of dislike, but she’d come to understand that that wasn’t the case. In Eastal, she’d been called “a beautiful princess filled with melancholy,” treated as a decoration, and admired for her beauty. Here in Akiba, apparently, she was the object of a similar, yet different, longing.
The Adventurers were just bashful and self-conscious.
Elissa had laughed—“My, my, my. They all show their shyness like children”—but Raynesia thought it was rather nice. It was better than being fawned over; it gave her a light, pleasant feeling and left her with a good impression of them.
There were about three hundred invited guests in the hall.
Two-thirds were Adventurers, and one-third were People of the Earth. The latter included shopkeepers who traded extensively in the town, and the litigation officers of the Kunie tribe, who were in charge of bank services. There were also commercial representatives from trading companies who’d traveled in from eastern territories for today’s festival.
The hall was filled with savory aromas.
The main point of this dinner party was light conversation, but the main subject—the food—hadn’t been neglected, either. Apparently the Chefs who’d come from Maihama had outdone themselves for Raynesia. They were creating sumptuous dishes, as if showing off for Akiba’s Adventurers.
Dishes like fish soup and veal with raspberry sauce had been rediscovered. They were traditional dishes that had been handed down in Zantleaf, but before the Revolution, they’d been created from the item creation menu.
Her memories of how food had tasted at the time were already misty, but naturally, the items had been dull and flavorless, and the only remaining impression was a dreary one. It was bad enough that she marveled at the fact that they’d kept themselves alive on food which tasted like that.
However, there were many dishes that they’d stopped being able to make after the Revolution. If they looked at the necessary recipe on the item creation menu, they could tell what sort of ingredients it was made from, but they couldn’t tell how those ingredients needed to be prepared, or in what order, to reproduce a dish that even superficially resembled the one they’d made from the item creation menu.
It could be said that the Catastrophe had exposed the ignorance of the People of the Earth. At that point, they’d been shown their own warped shapes: They couldn’t even make with their own hands the items they’d previously been able to make with the item creation menu. However, the Chefs of Maihama had tackled that situation boldly. In an attempt to create local specialties when the actual preparation methods were unclear, they’d worked to form hypotheses from the lists of ingredients used.
Possibly as a result of the pains they’d taken, most of the guests here today seemed satisfied. Raynesia went around the venue, introducing People of the Earth to Adventurers and presenting Adventurers to People of the Earth.
At this point, the dinner party seemed to be a success, and it looked as if it was going quite well. Raynesia’s grandfather Sergiad had said that the bonds between Adventurers and People of the Earth would become Eastal’s treasure.
Raynesia thought he might
be right.
However, that result would come about only if both parties took care of those bonds and polished them on a daily basis. Raynesia thought her role was to shower the bonds with affection.
That might have been her grandfather’s purpose in sending her to Akiba.
Even though Raynesia herself only wanted to live an idle life indolently, comfortably, or possibly limply…
“Princess…”
“What is it, Elissa?”
Waiting for a break in the crowd, the lady-in-waiting who’d been standing behind Raynesia spoke to her. It probably had something to do with the maid who’d run up to Elissa and given her a message a moment ago; her color wasn’t good.
Raynesia braced herself for bad news.
She’d been ready for it ever since she’d heard that Malves would be coming.
Raynesia hadn’t greeted Malves at this dinner party. She’d been informed that he hadn’t yet reached the venue, and this hinted at the possibility that he was the true form of the bad news.
“It’s bad news.”
“…I’d rather not hear it, but tell me.”
“They say Lord Malves is on his way here now, and that he will reach the hall in ten minutes.”
“I see.”
She’d expected this. The information depressed her and stressed her out, but it wasn’t really bad news.
“And…”
“What is it?”
On her best behavior, Raynesia prompted her messenger.
“As a matter of fact, Lord Malves’s ship is offshore from Akiba, and he has rather a lot of material. He says he’d like to have that cargo placed in a storehouse. But…”
“Is there some sort of problem?”
“Yes, as you know, this came up suddenly, and there really is a large quantity… But in any case, storehouse depositing is a service intended for Adventurers.”
As she spoke, Elissa sounded troubled.
That was only natural. If some sort of problem came up, she’d have to advise Lord Malves. It was Raynesia’s duty to mediate between the People of the Earth and the Adventurers.
