The break room of the Third Bureau, under the Imperial Magic Department, dedicated to hostage surveillance and information control.
Normally, it would have been a place where mages, worn down by overnight shifts and mana depletion, sprawled about giving off a musty stink, gulped down coffee while catching up on backlogged work, or lay across the sofas snatching brief naps. But today, the air in the break room was distinctly different.
Because in the middle of the room sat three low-ranking mages, gnawing their fingernails as if they might draw blood at any moment, anxiously awaiting the disciplinary committee’s verdict.
Bang—!
“Here it is!!”
The colleague who had been serving as messenger burst through the break room door, panting for breath.
The three deathly pale mages sprang up from their seats all at once like coiled springs.
“W-what happened? Am I really getting kicked out to some border garrison?”
“It’s a pay cut, right? How many months? Please, just three months—anything but half a year…!”
“Count yourselves lucky, you idiots. His Majesty the Emperor said not to convene the disciplinary committee, and to just have you write and submit one proper letter of explanation and end it there.”
At the unexpectedly lenient verdict, the three mages began jumping up and down, cheering.
“Waaaaaaah!! We’re saved, fuck! We’re really saved!!”
“Long live His merciful Majesty the Emperor! Long live the Empire!!”
The profession of mage was, even within the Empire, one of the highest-grade forms of manpower, requiring enormous cost and time to cultivate.
For that reason, unless one caused a truly outrageous incident, execution was almost unheard of. At most, one would receive a pay cut or disciplinary action; in the worst case, reassignment to another post.
But even so, the crime they had committed was dereliction of duty: neglecting their surveillance in violation of a strict imperial order. They had been prepared for, at minimum, a six-month pay cut or being passed over for promotion—and in the worst case, being driven out for several years to a forward fortress watching the Northern Grand Duke.
And yet they had been forgiven with just a single sheet of paperwork.
The low-ranking mages who had caused the incident sobbed loudly as they embraced each other, and the other mages in the break room, watching the scene, began cackling and jeering in disbelief.
“You crazy bastards. Even if it was the festival period, of course this is what happens when you have no sense and drink on duty and play cards.”
“Exactly. If you were going to drink, you should’ve kept it moderate. At least one of you should’ve been sober in shifts so you could stop a suicide in time, right?”
“That’s what I’m saying. I mean, honestly, it’s not like an assassin broke through the defensive magic and got in. How hard could it possibly be to monitor that hostage with magic, and you still missed it? I checked the surveillance net records, and apparently that princess had been hanging from the ceiling by her neck for more than twenty minutes. If not a single one of you noticed her vital signs dropping during all that, doesn’t that mean your heads are just decorations?”
At their colleagues’ teasing, the mage who had been the leader of the surveillance team scratched his head awkwardly and protested as if he felt wronged.
“No, fuck, we know we were in the wrong for slacking off on duty… but it was the festival period! Honestly, who would think someone would commit suicide during a festival, at the happiest time of all!”
“Exactly. It was a festival, so we had a little drink. How were we supposed to know she’d pick that exact gap like a ghost and kill herself?”
“That’s what I mean. She ate plenty at the banquet and drank a bit too, so we figured she’d just go back and sleep it off today. That’s why we were playing around. It’s unfair…”
“Honestly, if we’re laying it all out, why do they keep blaming us when they’re the ones who starved to death because they were useless, and died like idiots because they couldn’t grasp reality? Did we hold a knife to that princess and threaten her to hang herself?”
“Well, that’s true too. What a pathetic fool. She had the courage to die, but not the courage to survive.”
At his blunt complaint, the mages around him nodded as well, letting out thick sneers.
The Empire’s mages were selected strictly by merit, whether commoner or noble, and among them were plenty whose origins were truly insignificant.
Some had been lowborn wretches who survived by catching and eating rats in the corners of slums; others had once been slaves sold off to creditors.
They were people who had crawled their way up to this position on the strength of magical talent alone, enduring pain that scraped them down to the bone.
That was why, in the eyes of these imperial mages, the hostages from defeated nations—people who merely happened to be born with good bloodlines, could do absolutely nothing for themselves, and only whined while drunk on past glory—were the most pathetic and incomprehensible breed in the world.
“If they really want to live in the Empire, they should struggle like mad somehow. Just look at that Prince Ian or whatever from the Sterling Kingdom who was newly dragged here two months ago.”
An old hand of a mage puffing on a pipe in the corner of the break room tossed out an interesting topic.
“Where’s the Sterling Kingdom?”
“That—way down south. Probably the southernmost part of the Empire.”
“Below that rice noodle kingdom?”
“Where’s the rice noodle kingdom… Ah, the Nuoc Mam Kingdom? Yeah, it’s below even that. But seriously, you bastard, why call it the rice noodle kingdom when it has a perfectly good name?”
“Because rice noodles are the only thing worth remembering about that country.”
“The fruit’s good too, asshole.”
Ignoring the low-ranking mages bickering over trivial nonsense, the veteran mages began chatting about Prince Ian.
“Anyway, why does that kid get treated so well? Sterling’s a weak little country stuck way down in the southern backwoods. It wouldn’t even be hard to annex, and it’s not like there’s anything worth seeing there. His value as a hostage should’ve run out ages ago.”
“They say he’s doing well purely on his own ability. He’s got a pretty face and a sharp head on his shoulders, so His Majesty and the imperial family keep calling him over and doting on him. I heard he even got close to the nobles at this social gathering.”
“Right. And yesterday, in the middle of the main hall, he supposedly had a drinking battle with Count Gross using forty-degree liquor and forced a win in the end.”
“Against Count Gross?”
“Exactly! He’s a real tough bastard.”
“Wow, that’s impressive. A guy desperately trying to prove his value and survive no matter what, and proudly extracting good treatment for himself… He’s almost like one of us mages.”
At the veteran mage’s words, another mage slapped the table and chimed in.
“Exactly! Fuck, if you don’t have ability, then at least throw that petty pride of yours in the trash. Do they think we became mages easily?”
“Well, us aside, there are plenty among the hostages who work insanely hard too. Look at the prince from the Torbe Kingdom over there. He cross-dresses every night and even works as a male prostitute for old, fat nobles just to earn a single coin and survive.”
“Oof, that’s not easy. I couldn’t do that.”
“Come on, if you’re on the verge of death, you can’t even do that much? You’d do nothing because of some worthless scrap of pride, get depressed and starve, then hang yourself? It’s so pathetic I can’t even stand to watch.”
“That’s how bitches raised like greenhouse flowers on nothing but bloodline are. In the Empire, incompetence is the greatest sin.”
“Do you have to sell your body? Couldn’t you run a business? I heard that famous rice noodle place is run by the Nuoc Mam prince. That prince seems to be living really well. Isn’t it the place people line up to eat at?”
“Right. Prices in the capital are ridiculously high, but a bowl of hot rice noodles there only costs one silver coin.”
“Wow, that prince is smart too. Selling cheap and in volume is a great strategy.”
“And yet it actually tastes pretty good, so business seems to be booming. It reminds me of that period when His Highness the Crown Prince got hooked on rice noodles and ate nothing but rice noodles every day.”
“Who did you hear that from?”
“My colleague posted in the Crown Prince’s office. He said he ate rice noodles ten days in a row and threw up.”
One of their cackling colleagues patted the shoulders of the mages who had, until moments ago, been pale as corpses, and grinned mischievously.
“Hey, anyway, congratulations on not getting your pay cut and not getting disciplined. Normally, you’d have had at least six months of salary stripped clean away and been left sucking your fingers, but now that money’s been saved in full, hasn’t it? Since you kept the money that would’ve been taken, tonight’s drinks are on you!”
“That’s right! It’s basically free money, isn’t it? Let’s hit the taverns tonight!”
“Ah, you crazy bastards! How is that free money? It’s my hard-earned salary! …Still, well, to celebrate not getting my head cut off, tonight I’ll treat you all properly!!”
“Waaaaaaah!!”
“Where are we going?”
“Who knows? Today, we might be fine just hopping street taverns, right? Do we really have to go somewhere expensive?”
“Look at this bastard, trying to save money even in the middle of this.”
“Hey, someone from a noble family like you wouldn’t know, but I need to work at least ten more years if I want to buy a house in the imperial capital and save money!”
“I’m an illegitimate child, so I don’t have whatever you’re imagining, you bastard! The house I live in now isn’t mine!”
“Since we’re talking about houses, make sure you buy one inside the capital, no matter what. The capital never loses. This Empire’s going to last another thousand years, so it’s cheapest right now.”
The mages cackled again and returned to their everyday lives among themselves.
A death forgotten by the Emperor, and reduced even by the watchers who had held her lifeline to a pathetic little joke to go with drinks.
The unjust and miserable life of the princess of the Goti Kingdom—who had left the homeland where she had lived all her life, been dragged away to the far-off Empire of another land, swallowed her tears alone amid terrible hunger and humiliation, and in the end had been forced to hang herself from the ceiling of a cold mansion—was thus erased perfectly from everyone’s minds.
The only trace that she had ever lived in this world would be a single letter of explanation written by the mages, tossed carelessly into a corner of the Imperial Intelligence Department’s cold document archive a few days later.