Taking breaks along the way, we climbed the mountain behind the villa and arrived on the stone-paved area arranged as a lookout platform.
“It’s so biiig! The imperial capital is huge!”
“It’s so hiiigh! The palace is so tall!”
Wernel and Fel were in high spirits, crying out at the sight of the imperial capital spreading beyond the lake.
Even I let out a sigh at the sight of the palace from a perspective different than usual.
Behind the palace was the mountain that served as the water source, and the vast palace had been built by leveling the high ground that extended from it.
Farther down the slope of the high ground stood noble estates and large government buildings, and once the land flattened out, the cityscape of the imperial capital had developed broadly along the lake.
To think that, without electronic equipment or cars, all of this had been built by people using their own bodies—it was overwhelming.
“I wonder just how vast a country really is…”
At the murmur I heard close by, I turned my head and found Terry there with an anxious look on his face.
When our eyes met, the awkward smile he gave me only looked like bravado, as if he were trying not to show weakness.
“Terry.”
“Yes, Brother.”
He answered obediently when I called him, but he was still a little stiff.
Figuring out how to get him to relax was difficult.
No matter what logic I laid out, in the end there was no solution except for Terry to accept it and come to terms with it himself.
As I was thinking, Terry was the one who posed a question to me.
“Brother, what sort of insight did you gain from leading the army?”
“I said this earlier too, but I only went along with them. I can’t really say anything very useful.”
“But Brother, you resolved in no time a problem that took your predecessor seven years to solve and returned home. …I could never…”
Terry’s profile as he brooded painfully still held a childlike innocence.
And yet the expression on his face was that of someone driven into a corner.
And the more a single thought takes over your mind, the narrower your field of vision becomes and the more rigid your thinking gets.
Somehow, it made me remember the time when I was taking entrance exams.
I have to do this. I have to get this result.
Once you become possessed by thoughts like that, even though it would be better to set your goal while taking broad measures, before you know it, you feel as though you’re just going around in circles in the same place and can’t move forward.
“Brother, what’s wrong? Are you tired after all?”
“Brother, what were you talking about?”
The twins, who should have been enjoying the scenery, had somehow drawn close on either side of us.
The moment they did, Terry tightened his expression. Was it because, as an older brother, he couldn’t show his younger brothers an anxious side?
But Wernel and Fel seemed sharp too, so I think they had noticed quite a bit.
Still, as his older brother, I would respect my younger brother’s attempt to put on a brave front.
“We were talking about how much you’ve grown in a year. You two have gotten taller too, but I was surprised that I’m looking at Terry at nearly the same height now.”
“Huh, my height? …Oh.”
Terry’s eyes widened as if he had only just noticed.
There was only about a fist’s difference between us now, so even though I was three years older, he might overtake me once he hit his growth spurt.
“Wernel, Fel. Going down will be hard too, so you should rest while you can. Do your feet hurt?”
“Aww, I don’t want to go down yet. It’s a trip with everyone, so I want to look more.”
“Ah, but if Brother comes with us and talks to us, I don’t mind resting.”
“Hey, you mustn’t be selfish. Your clothes are getting disheveled too. It looks unsightly.”
It was selfish, sure, but it was the cute sort, and I didn’t think Terry needed to scold them so seriously.
Wernel and Fel would push themselves if they were told that, so I decided to change the subject.
“Then let’s start by talking here at a leisurely pace. Let’s see, a year has passed and things have changed, so are you two still interested in swordsmanship and alchemy?”
“I am! I’m going to become an alchemist like you, Brother. This year, I memorized the names of medicinal herbs.”
Fel said something that made me happy, but Wernel lowered his gaze.
“I want to do magic and swordsmanship, but maybe I should aim to be an alchemist too.”
Was this the sort of thing I shouldn’t say made me happy?
Before, he had admired Terry and taken an interest in swordsmanship and magic.
Terry, who knew that too, widened his eyes as if he had been shocked.
If being scolded made them hesitate even to adore him, that was nothing but a minus for Terry.
Somehow, I had to use the extraordinary setting of a family trip to get him to learn how to loosen his shoulders.
“What about you, Terry? I hear you’ve been working hard at your studies. What are you aiming for?”
“I… I have to become like you, Brother… no, I have to become even greater than you.”
“Me? Ah, greater than me sounds good. I haven’t done anything worth praising, after all.”
“That’s…! The people who don’t value you are the strange ones. Even this time, Brother, you slipped through danger and returned like this, and yet no one is trying to change their opinion of you.”
At Terry’s frustrated voice, I hesitated over whether I should tell him what was going on behind the scenes.
Then my hands were tugged from both sides.
“Hey, Brother. Why don’t the adults understand that you’re amazing?”
“Why don’t they properly evaluate you even though they see the results you’ve produced?”
That was right. The twins were clever too, so they understood that my low evaluation this time was strange.
They had also heard the explanation that when General Wageris came storming in, it hadn’t been to complain.
In that case, this question was only natural.
(I, too, request the particulars. This is far too unreasonable.)
(Could you not join in here? It’s not as if I know what’s in other people’s hearts either.)
Still, perhaps because I had experience in society, I understood how unreasonable people could be when they were biased.
When I was a new employee at a company, the other party’s company was on the rise, and the person in charge there was someone who spoke to us quite condescendingly. To put it simply, because of my youth and the hierarchy between our companies, they looked down on me.
But several years later, that other company stumbled in work unrelated to us, and their performance deteriorated.
I, who had taken over responsibility for that company from my senior, was instructed to reduce our work with them and move toward cutting ties.
And yet the person in charge, the same one from when I was a rookie, remained just as condescending as ever, and because they looked down on me, they didn’t even make a proper effort to keep us.
I had no inclination to be considerate toward them either, and in less than a year, it was goodbye.
“When I moved to the palace, I was a child who couldn’t do anything. No matter what I said, the people around me wouldn’t listen because I was a child, and I was so small that if it came down to it, they could pick me up with one hand.”
Being a child was, in other words, the weakness of my position at the time.
If things reached the point where they could pick me up with one hand, then all that would happen afterward was that I’d be tossed out.
“So I had to show them through my actions that I wasn’t dangerous, that I wouldn’t do anything.”
I had expressed it softly, but as expected, Terry seemed to have connected it to the commotion when we first met.
A wrinkle appeared between his brows.
“Well, once I realized that being left alone that way meant I could do alchemy as I pleased, there were times when I deliberately pretended to be weak.”
By imitating a battlefield cameraman, I succeeded in making them think I wasn’t an enemy and that I was harmless even if they left me alone.
However, I understand now that I ended up giving them a decisive reason to look down on me.
At the time, running and hiding, staying out of other people’s sight, was the best way to protect myself, but as General Wageris had told me, it was probably also necessary to show that I was strong so I wouldn’t be underestimated.
“As a result, for those who first recognized me as incompetent, no matter what I do, it only looks like an incompetent person getting above himself. Even if there are results, they decide as a premise that an incompetent person couldn’t possibly have done such a thing. Even if I act reasonably, they assume that an incompetent person can’t be right and use that as a reason to criticize me.”
“That’s far too malicious. Are you all right with that, Brother?”
As I said it myself, I thought they would probably reject it in that way, but even Terry tugged on my hand and appealed to me.
It was true that there were people in the imperial capital saying it was my fault that a rebellion had occurred this time, so it was a troublesome matter.
That said, even if I counterattacked now, it would make me feel better, but I would lose my only advantage: that my enemies would show a great opening.
If I were carelessly lifted up, there would probably be people who tried to carry me as a figurehead, and blood relatives fighting over the right of succession would be the very same path as the downfall of the Tryan Kingdom we had heard about after coming to the villa.
“Right now, you see, I’m still in the middle of preparing.”
I noticed that the twins were also looking dissatisfied, so I made a show of being mysterious.
Then I lowered myself and held one finger in front of my mouth.
Terry leaned in as well, waiting seriously for my next words.
I couldn’t help but laugh, but that was because my younger brothers were so obedient and adorable, so it couldn’t be helped.
“You see, I intend to use my own power to create an incredible invention that even the great alchemists of the past never made.”
“An incredible… invention.”
Terry repeated the words with great interest, and the twins nodded expectantly, waiting for more.
“I won’t say what I’m going to make yet. It’s a secret. I want to surprise you. But for that, I don’t want to attract attention yet and have to deal with all sorts of people. So for now, I’ll accept the bad reputation. Someday, when my invention comes into the world, there won’t be anyone left saying bad things about me.”
When I exaggerated like that, my younger brothers all looked at me together.
Their faces practically had written on them that they wanted to ask what I planned to make, but the truth was, I was still thinking about it.
Wearerel had beaten me to the telephone, and cars would require infrastructure development before they could spread.
What I was aiming for was an invention that anyone could use and that would be convenient.
“Let’s see. If you’re curious, how about doing alchemy with me and trying to figure it out?”
At my invitation to play under the name of alchemy, not only the twins, but even Terry, who had once refused because of his studies, nodded with enthusiasm.
Regular update
Next time: Family Trip 3