Chapter 65: Gender Reversal Was the Motivation for Writing (4) Fin
Before sorting out the situation, let me first put one thing to rest.
Truly, truly—thankfully.
The issue of gender equality, brought about by the unexpected response to the gender-reversal story,
did not end up leading to the kind of fierce, twisted, hellish ideological conflict I remembered from my previous life.
“It really was, quite literally, closer to people demanding a little more gender equality.”
I’ve gotten used to it, so I sometimes forget, but.
This world is, strictly speaking, a “medieval fantasy world.”
In other words, compared to my previous life, the proportion of women in mainstream social roles really was quite low.
It was merely a process of trying to improve that a little.
It didn’t particularly lead to confrontation or conflict.
“Our demand is four dollars!”
“Very well. I’ll grant it, so disperse.”
“Okay! Four dollars! Okay! Thank you!”
Summed up roughly, the process was absurd enough to sound like that.
Should I say it felt like a reasonable quick deal mixed with WWE?
If anything, it was more surprising that even the royal family accepted it moderately and joined in, saying they would improve things.
“It feels a little strange for me, the one who caused this, to say it, but.
Are you really all right with accepting this as it is?”
“Of course.
Half the world is women, and among those women are talented people the kingdom needs.
If we can obtain such talent, there’s no harm in accepting them.”
“Ah.”
“We had wanted to reform this side of things at least once anyway, and thanks to you, the opportunity happened to arise.
I’m always grateful for your help.”
So when I asked Duke Lucid,
he instead thanked me, saying this was exactly what they had been aiming for.
They say life is full of ups and downs, but somehow I’m getting praised for this instead.
“Why did you think we would dislike it?
The issue of royal authority? Backlash from the existing power holders?”
“That would be it, wouldn’t it? Especially the nobles. Wouldn’t they resist fiercely?”
“That is why we took our position in advance.
We can gain the support of the kingdom’s citizens.
And if we plant seeds of discord among the existing power holders and divide them, far from resenting us, they’ll have no choice but to rely on us even more in order to protect their own positions.”
“…Oh.”
Uh… well, apparently that was the gist of it.
After that, he explained the process of scheming—how they would deliberately support ambitious women and divide factions to increase the number of royalists and so on.
But it felt like I shouldn’t be hearing such dark stories, so I deliberately didn’t listen.
Nothing… happened…!
Well, even if I didn’t understand the details, I clearly understood that this wasn’t exactly a loss for the royal family either.
And since the royal family, which had recently become the most popular and influential among the people, accepted it first like that,
at the very least, openly opposing opinions vanished completely.
Somehow or other, it all wrapped up nicely.
The side calling for gender equality also accepted the improvements, reasonably satisfied at that level.
A truly clean win-win quick deal!
Of course, wherever you go in the world, there are always impure elements who dislike such a tidy conclusion.
Using my novel, the cause of all this uproar, they argued that things shouldn’t end with a lukewarm compromise like this,
but that everything should be changed completely.
It wasn’t as though there were no extremists making such claims.
“Hey, you brainless bastard! You’re using Author Wei’s work for this pathetic agitation?
Do you think Author Wei told you to do that? Huh?
If he gets shocked by this and stops serializing, are you going to take responsibility?!”
“Isn’t this guy just a troll?
Didn’t he do this on purpose to make Author Wei look bad?!”
“Should we hang him up first and extract some information about whether there are others like him?”
“…I’ll stop! I’ll give you information about the others too! Please just spare my life!”
Fortunately, most of my readers voluntarily stepped forward and stopped the guys trying to use my work as a means of agitation through “kind persuasion.”
Thanks to that, it’s said that those people’s opinions were cut off at the level of my work’s discussion groups in each region before they could even properly surface.
“As expected of my readers!
Their self-purification is outstanding.”
In any case, like that,
the seeds of discord—unknown to the people of this world and known only to me—were safely removed.
While feeling relieved by that fact, I inwardly repeated to myself that I would have to be more careful from now on.
Even if I didn’t intend it, I had realized things could twist in strange directions like this, so of course I had to.
After all, fame, when piled up too high, can sometimes become poison.
“Well, even if I’m careful, if things are determined to get tangled up, I won’t be able to stop them.”
Isn’t that something to worry about when the time comes?
In any case, thanks to this series of commotions,
the kingdom changed once again into something slightly different.
If I had to name just one representative incident,
it would be that the first female knight was selected for the Royal Guard Knights.
Until now, the Royal Guard Knights had only chosen male knights, and it was a place female knights could not enter, no matter how skilled they were.
But this time, that custom was broken.
At the same time, the first female Royal Guard Knight was born after smashing in the heads of all the other knights with her skill.
It wasn’t as though she had been selected for free through some kind of female knight quota.
She beat down all the other knight candidates with her ability and entered.
Because of that, the first female Royal Guard Knight apparently became something like a role model for countless progressive women.
She became so famous that they might even make a novel or comic based on her, or so I heard.
Would the title be something like [The Female Knight Hides Her Strength]?
Or [I Became the First Female Royal Guard Knight]?
“Hmm, that actually sounds kind of fun?”
Anyway, perhaps thanks to such a symbolic and authoritative event occurring,
even in exclusive workplaces that originally did not accept women,
there are now occasional cases where they cannot go against the flow of the times and hire female employees while watching the mood.
Maybe such things will happen more often in the future.
Honestly, I don’t really know what results these changes will bring going forward.
Even the most capable protagonist of an alternate-history story would have a hard time predicting future changes in an irregular situation like this, wouldn’t they?
Still, if there’s one thing that’s certain,
“It’ll be hard for a super-hit gender-reversal story to come out now.”
Because people’s attention had been drawn in a completely different direction,
the gender-reversal story I had ambitiously presented seemed likely to remain a minor genre even in this world.
It looked like, for the time being, I had no choice but to be satisfied with self-sufficiency.
It was a day when I longed for alcohol after quite some time.
***
The day after I drank with Aria and vented my frustration, crying, “This isn’t what I wanted!!!” over the sad result that my motivation for writing had been buried by a series of incidents,
I was in the middle of meeting the people I had scheduled to see, with help from the Merchant Guild.
Because of what had happened recently, I was as limp as fresh seaweed, but I still had to do what needed to be done.
And if you ask who I had come to meet,
“Author Wei. We have brought the original creator of the dating simulation game [I’m a Cleric, But I Want to Date!] and the author of the adult comic [Journey to Find a Wife].”
“Ah, thank you. Please send them in one at a time.”
They were the winners of the previous contest.
Among them, these two were the creators of the dating simulation game and the adult comic, whose identities I had been especially curious about.
They were the two I had been most curious about.
But coincidentally, neither of them had been able to attend the announcement ceremony in person.
So I had invited them separately like this, both to congratulate them and to see their faces.
…Putting it that way makes me sound like some arrogant boss ordering people to come and go.
Rather than that, it was because I was playing the role of presenter.
If we’re being precise, I was also half-summoned here to work.
Well, half of it was also because I wanted to see their faces,
and because I wanted to talk with them, even briefly, about how they came to make works like these and what direction they intended to take in the future.
“Hello. My name is Radion, and I participated in the contest with [I’m a Cleric, But I Want to Date!].
It is an honor to meet you, Author Wei.”
The first person I met, Radion, the original creator of [I’m a Cleric, But I Want to Date!],
was, to be honest, the complete opposite of what I had expected.
It’s a little awkward to say this, but should I call it a face lacking credibility?
What do I mean by that?
“Whoa, incredibly handsome!”
“Pardon?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
I mean he was incredibly good-looking.
To compare him, he was about 0.7 elf-tier.
It was hard to believe he was the person who had created a game that positively reeked of desire, like a dating simulation game.
For someone like this, wasn’t reality itself basically a dating simulation game?
How did he end up making something like a dating simulation game?
“Women in reality are all monsters!”
“What.”
I soon learned the reason.
This man was terrified of real women.
“I never said anything, but they all claimed I belonged to them, deceived each other, slandered each other, fought each other…
In the end, they even became coercive toward me and tried to tie me down, ugh…”
“Oh…”
So it seemed this was a case where being too handsome had become poison.
Because of his looks, wicked women had swarmed around him and left him traumatized, causing him to keep his distance from women in reality.
“On the other hand, women in novels or comics don’t come with those worries, do they?
So I made it because I wondered whether there was some way to date women like that.”
And so, in order to date not scary 3D women, but ideal women in 2D, he had developed a dating simulation.
I never imagined that a dating simulation game would be born because of problems caused by being too handsome.
Isn’t it usually the opposite?
In any case, it was clear he was serious about the game, so it didn’t seem like there would be any particular problem with its future development.
After finishing the award, encouragement, and support for the pitiful handsome man Radion, I sent him off.
“Ah… hello…?”
The remaining award winner entered.
In a way, this was the person at the center of an even bigger commotion than the dating simulation game [I’m a Cleric, But I Want to Date!] I had just seen.
The author of the adult comic [Journey to Find a Wife] was—
“Um… why don’t you first take a seat?”
“Ah. No. It’s just. Ha… how should I explain this…”
From the moment she entered the room, she looked full of nerves.
Not only could we not even exchange names, she couldn’t even sit in the chair and kept fidgeting anxiously.
“Is there perhaps some problem?”
“It’s… eek!”
Seeing that, I felt flustered and asked if something was wrong.
Only then did she finally seem to make up her mind, taking off her hat and crying out with determination.
“I’m sorry!! The truth is, I’m a succubus!”
“Pardon?”
“I’m sorry for entering a human contest without permissionnn!!!”
“…Pardooon?”
And on the head revealed when she removed her hat, a small, adorable pair of horns had grown.
A succubus?
No.
Why is a succubus suddenly showing up here?
Am I still not sober from yesterday’s drinking?