The Reluctant Imperialist - Chapter 124

WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Reluctant Imperialist

Chapter 124

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A Fake Play

Bolska Diplomatic District.

Hanna Usar got the time and location of an enemy weapons smuggling deal from an informant, then met Leon right after.

"Well, well."

He stepped into the office, looked around, and let out a dry laugh.

"A knight set up an office in a place like this?"

The wallpaper was freshly redone, but everything else was worn out. It was a miserable setup for a place used by an Imperial knight.

"......I did not have a choice. The budget ran dry."

Hanna gave an awkward smile and took a sip of coffee.

"I see. Since when did knights get this strapped for budget?"

A knight's salary was high, of course. But salary and budget were separate things.

They could not pick only high paying missions like mercenaries, and any personnel cost that went over budget came straight out of the knight's own pocket.

It was the kind of work that carved away at your own flesh.

"Things definitely got worse after the Imperial Guard started dominating......"

Leon trailed off. As the Imperial Palace budget shifted toward the Imperial Guard, the Sentinel Order saw nothing but cuts and freezes.

"I already used up my budget cap. Right now I am paying informants out of my own money."

Informants had to be paid. If you did not pay them, sooner or later they either turned up dead or switched sides.

Leon watched her for a moment, then pulled a sheet of paper from his inner pocket.

"......Ask Max."

"Sorry?"

"Max has been running a program inside the Order these days. Use this and submit it."

Hanna took the paper.

[ Maximilian Foundation: Knight Operation Activity Expense Support Application ]

The Maximilian Foundation. Lately, among Hanna's commoner juniors, people had been talking about that program nonstop.

"......I heard rumors he founded a foundation. They said he is even giving out scholarships at Empire Point."

"Yeah. I heard the scale is massive. Something about tax benefits for scholarship donations? Not that that's the only reason. Fill it out with your administrative officer and send it by letter. The money should be deposited quickly."

"Ah...... this even applies to fellow knights?"

"Not every knight is rich. Plenty of them are still chained to bankrupt families."

More than a few houses, quietly and not so quietly, had failed family businesses and nothing left to rely on except the title of knight. Tiana, Leon's classmate and friend, was one of them too.

"Yes. Then."

Hanna placed the application on the desk of her administrative officer, who had already gone home, then stood up.

"Should we get moving?"

"Yeah. Grab your gear."

She opened the wardrobe. Inside hung dark leather armor. It was the one Maximilian had issued in Zerpa last time.

Leon was already wearing his.

"You two look like a set."

"......We were on the same operation."

They shared a faint smile and left the office.

Bolska's night was deep, and the fog was thick. Hiding in the dark, they moved to the rooftop of an abandoned building.

"Remember this. More than the Gentra remnants, we need to catch the people selling to them. Cut off the supplier line and you pull out the root."

"Yes. Is capture the default rule?"

"Who knows."

Leon's voice dropped. The playful smile disappeared, and a numb killing intent settled over his face.

"I would rather kill most of them."

A chill ran down Hanna's spine.

That was the kind of man he was. Warm and mild on the outside, colder than anyone on the inside. It was as if his cruelty had crystallized into a hard core.

"Well, it depends on the situation, right?"

"......Yes."

Still, compared to Maximilian, Leon was easier to read.

Maximilian never showed what was inside him. You could not measure his depth or his thoughts. Maybe he was like an abyss. She could understand why people called him the Monster of Ebenholtz.

"Those Bolska bastards stink. Guess it cannot be helped."

At least Leon was transparent about his prejudice by race and ethnicity. He did not show it on his face, but it slipped out now and then in his words and behavior. If she had to guess, he hated the eastern Sled tribe the most and despised mixed bloods.

"......They are here."

"Yes."

At Leon's signal, Hanna shook off her stray thoughts.

Beyond the abandoned factory, men in suits appeared in a lit window.

"There. See the one with the blue tie?"

Leon pointed at one man. Slicked back hair, blue tie, gray suit.

"Yes."

"He is a weapons broker, one of our informants."

He handed her a small radio-like device, along with a ballpoint pen and notebook.

"It is a wiretap, but it cannot record. You need to write everything down."

"Yes. This is in Imperial language, right?"

"Yeah. Their nationalities are all mixed, so they cannot communicate in anything else."

Hanna nodded and picked up the pen and notebook.

“This deal was disappointing, you know......”

Scratch, scratch. In cursive, she scribbled down every line of their conversation.

* * *

In the Imperial capital, I lifted the Imperial opera restrictions I had promised Reynold I would lift.

The [Comprehensive Department of Culture and Arts]. Later, this bureaucratic group would be absorbed under the propaganda office. On the surface, they shouted about "Aran purity" and rejected foreign culture, but in truth they only wanted toll money. Once I paid them more than enough, translated scripts of highly rated foreign operas, along with the genre called musicals, began to enter the Empire.

At the same time, I put out a search for a playwright who would one day rise to become a master.

His name was Victor Heim.

"Why would a knight like you come to a shabby place like this......"

He ran a small theater, and my sudden visit clearly caught him off guard.

"I read your play, 「Silence of the Square」."

"......Pardon?"

Victor let out a hollow laugh.

"That piece got a performance ban a week ago. I also got hit with a heavy fine."

"I know. I got the script separately."

I shrugged.

A knight did not commit a crime simply by possessing banned scripts. Enforcement was our job.

"The reason it was banned was criticism of Imperial politics."

Victor clicked his tongue.

"Sir Knight. I do not have the luxury or the reason to debate politics."

"That is how it looked to me."

He was not someone who loaded politics into his work. That was true both in the future before my regression and now after it.

"It was an interesting script. Probably one of the villains being an Imperial Palace noble offended someone."

"Ha. The bigger villain was a commoner."

"It happens. A play changes depending on who interprets it, and that follows the logic of power."

The logic of power. In the cultural world, no one held more power than Ebenholtz.

Victor scratched his eyebrow and asked,

"......So?"

"It means I am the one speaking right now. Your work has nothing to do with politics, and you can create better works."

I leaned back in the chair. Victor quietly licked his lips.

"For example...... what kind of theme do you want?"

"Fairy tales. Or love. Beautiful things. Maybe stories about puppies."

Those were actually the kinds of plays, operas, and musicals he had written before my regression. They were excellent and won multiple awards.

"I mean, sure, I can write that kind of thing, but why are you, Sir Knight, ordering this?"

"Mm...... someone once told me."

I gave a faint smile.

I had to watch my words. Almost everything I said in public would flow back to the Imperial Palace.

"Plays let people forget reality for a while."

I agreed with what Princess Justine had said.

In a world where war was near, the public needed to forget reality. If they had to face blood, gunpowder, and the smell of death as they were, the life ahead would be too brutal. Behind battlefields where people killed and were killed, there had to be a place to escape to.

That was the role of culture. To survive, while cutting out a disease worse than cancer, the Empire needed an anesthetic to calm itself.

"Think of this as your production fee."

I pulled out my checkbook and wrote an amount.

"Happy stories come from a richer life, do they not?"

Even after the Empire's fall, Victor wrote fantasy and fairy tale stories with no political ties at all.

He would surely create good works for humanity.

......

「Arte Museum」.

I visited again and met Director Verdi. Inside, remodeling work was in full swing. That was entirely by my order.

"Haa......"

Director Verdi looked at the walls being stripped and sighed.

"It feels like my own skin is being peeled off."

"It is being repainted. Younger."

I smiled. Verdi's wrinkled hand trembled.

"......I have never seen a museum like this. Walls and ceiling all white, and not a single decoration."

"Proof that you have grown old, Director."

"But-"

"I invested and saved this place."

I cut him off coldly.

"So you should listen to me."

The remodeling motif was the White Cube.

An exhibition style that empties the whole space into white, so visitors focus only on the works themselves. The Empire did not even have this concept yet. It was a modern gallery style that would first be introduced in the Prozen Republic after the Empire fell.

"Arte Museum was a place my mother loved."

The essence was not interior design, but space. I wanted this place to endure and keep inspiring people.

For my mother too.

"So it cannot become a warehouse that just hangs paintings. It must show the Empire's unique dignity."

I walked down the corridor and gestured.

"It needs a story, in other words, a narrative."

It could not remain a simple lineup of art.

"After passing through a dark corridor at the entrance."

Step, step. You walk out of a passage rebuilt to be narrow and dark on purpose.

"Then suddenly your view opens up."

Your sight expands, and the space unfolds. The works press in as if they are pouring toward your eyes.

"Then the burning works of the masters called the Impressionists, from two hundred years ago when Imperial art was at its peak, greet us."

Verdi followed behind me, leaning on his cane.

"Everyone will feel the shiver, as if they are walking directly into Imperial history."

This was knowledge I had taken from 「The Aesthetics of Space」, which I read before regression, and from editorials and columns that often discussed museums.

"A museum is only complete when space, artwork placement, and audience movement come together."

I turned to Director Verdi.

"In times like this, when reality is already hard, people do not come to a museum just to see a few paintings. So we need to offer an experience."

The Imperial economy was reviving little by little. That came from the exploitation of foreign companies and immigrants, and from the boom in military industries.

Once money started moving through people's pockets, they would seek culture. I would show them the Empire's strength and old elegance.

"But if it is too blunt, it becomes showy vanity. The Empire's authority and Aran purity...... it is enough to reveal them subtly. Even that is already brilliant and beautiful."

This was Imperial art carrying a thousand years of time. No country could imitate that many accumulated layers.

Director Verdi looked at me with a complicated expression.

"I still find it difficult. Maybe I really am old, as you said......"

"Or maybe it is your prejudice toward me."

To him, I was a killer who slaughtered people without a second thought. A butcher who trampled Gennen.

So me talking about art probably looked absurd, pathetic, or frightening.

"That is why I will not accept your refusal."

I understood those who could not understand my intent.

"This is my way."

From now on too, probably forever.

Because I would never be understood.

* * *

Princess Justine looked at the new posters being hung on the walls of the [Royal Opera House]. New operas and the unfamiliar genre called musicals.

"......"

At the main entrance stood Maximilian. The director welcomed him, sweating heavily.

Every time Maximilian said something, the man reacted with exaggerated enthusiasm. When Maximilian offered a handshake, he took it with the expression of someone greeting an emperor.

"Her Highness says she wants to see a new stage."

His words suddenly came back to her.

He kept his promise. She still did not know what that promise had been for.

"Hah."

She gave a short scoff and turned away.

She walked through the residential streets and arrived at Arte Museum, not far away.

There were no visitors at all because of the construction, the remodeling.

As always, she did not care and stepped inside.

"......?"

Her brows drew together.

The interior was strange.

The classic wallpaper and ornaments were all stripped away, everything painted white. Floor, ceiling, walls. So white it hurt her eyes.

"You came."

Sensing someone, Director Verdi approached.

"A lot changed."

"Yes. It is under construction."

"Did you smash everything because you ran out of money?"

"No. It is remodeling."

"What kind of damned remodeling is this?"

The princess laughed in disbelief, and Verdi stayed silent as if agreeing.

"You did not throw away all the paintings, right?"

"No. This way, please."

The director guided her.

Step, step.

The two passed through a narrow, dark corridor together. Her guard knight followed two or three steps behind.

As she walked the lightless hall, Justine felt a strange tension. A suffocating pressure, like someone might lunge out with a dagger and stab her neck at any moment.

Whoooosh.

The space suddenly widened and her view opened.

A pure white space.

On a vast white expanse with no decoration and no obstruction, the canvases of Imperial Impressionism radiated fierce presence. Beauty so intense it almost stopped her breath. Natural light came through the windows and lit the frames. Sunlight spread across the hall and made it feel as if the shapes in the paintings were floating.

"......!"

Justine inhaled before she even realized it.

"Whose idea was this?"

"......Knight Maximilian's. He called it the White Cube."

The director added,

"He said a museum should feel like a single story. The works exist there, but they breathe with the space, and are only completed by the audience watching them."

The words were exactly right.

As if entranced, Justine wandered through the gallery. The route moved from grand canvases depicting the Empire's founding myth to paintings of the subjects' lives, like one full stage drama.

She was impressed.

At the same time, it felt strange.

Maximilian kept following the path she took. He was also the one who had invested and saved this museum.

"It is beautiful."

At the princess's reaction, Director Verdi belatedly realized that he had grown old.

"My lady."

Her guard knight Yanik suddenly approached from behind. Justine gave a light wave of her hand.

"You may call my name in this place."

"......Princess Justine. Closed spaces like this are dangerous."

She no longer intended to hide her status, and this was the first time Verdi had heard it directly.

"Security is weak during construction."

Yanik always wore a dissatisfied look, especially when she was out in public.

"Yanik."

Without taking her eyes off the paintings, Justine asked,

"If all of this were for me, would you believe that?"

"......"

Yanik was silent for a moment, then answered dryly.

"Knight Maximilian is praised as a loyal subject, but honestly, I am not sure."

He suspected Maximilian instead. Maximilian was the son of Sebestian, whom the Emperor trusted deeply, yet Yanik refused to trust him more than anyone.

To Yanik, those wings beating upward too perfectly looked deeply suspicious.

"Yanik. Who do you serve?"

She asked out of nowhere.

Even then, Yanik bowed his head as if he had been waiting.

"A man of the north swears loyalty to only one liege."

He held her gaze and gave the northern salute.

"For me, that is you, Princess."

Justine stared at him. She showed no emotion.

Northerners were all smooth talk.

That was the truth.

Yanik had already aligned himself with the Imperial Guard.

His loyalty now was not toward her, but toward the Imperial Guard's order to watch her.