Somehow, Living Life in Another World is Wrong, as I Expected Ch. 14.3 (Patreon)

The official at the podium had notes. I noticed this immediately, mostly because I didn't have any, and the existence of a prepared speech suggested that somebody here had been given advance warning. Several somebodies, judging by how readily they made room for Karsten. 

Wonderful. There had been a meeting about my suffering, and I hadn't even been invited.

Karsten murmured something about keeping it brief and sounding reassuring as we climbed the steps. The first part, I could manage. The second was an unreasonable demand from management, considering that she had brought someone whose resting expression regularly made strangers check their pockets.

The official introduced me. I caught my name, something about the Whale, enough praise that I briefly considered checking whether another Hachiman had arrived behind me, the usual spiel. Then he stepped aside, leaving me to grip a podium that probably cost three months of rent while trying to remember how greetings worked.

“Good afternoon.” Nobody answered, which was fair enough. This was a speech not a conversation, “The White Whale and the Great Rabbit are dead. A lot of people worked to make that happen. Soldiers, healers, the people hauling supplies. Please remember them when you're deciding who deserves a free drink.” I laid out the most important bits that people needed to know immediately. The Archbishops, I quietly left alone for now, as I didn’t have enough proof on me, unlike the Whale’s corpse being brought to the capital.

A few people laughed, and I loosened my grip on the podium. Oh, thank fuck. Apparently, my chances of surviving this improved considerably when I talked about alcohol. I was just considering whether that counted as understanding my audience when someone near the front raised his voice.

“Does that mean the western road is safe?” The man had patches at the elbows of his coat, and he wasn't smiling, “I have three wagons waiting. Are you saying we can leave?” A merchant, then. Probably part of the merchant’s guild that had been struggling in getting their goods out of the city, what with the border between Lugunica and Vollachia being closed.

My mouth opened, then closed. Saying that a monster was dead and telling someone to put their employees on a road were two very different things. Beside me, Karsten shifted closer, while I looked toward the officials, “Do we have the latest patrol report?”

One of them stopped smiling. I waited for him to check his papers, or call someone over, or do anything that suggested the answer was somewhere within reach. He looked at Karsten instead. 

Ah. That would be a no.

“Looks like I don’t have an answer to that.” I said, turning back to the man before the official could find a more decorative way of saying it, “What I can say is that the Whale won't be eating your cargo. As for everything else that might happen along the way, I'd rather check before giving you advice that gets someone killed.”

The man opened his mouth again, but I raised a hand before we could turn this into an argument about whose responsibility it was to inspect every ditch between here and his destination, “The knights can answer questions about patrols. I'm here because the Council has decided to give me the title of Black, in recognition for what the Karsten camp, the Emilia camp, and I have done.” There. Back on topic. If I was going to embarrass myself, I could at least do it for the reason everyone had gathered here.

Saying it aloud felt strange. Black. One word, and suddenly the same people who would have walked past my shop without looking inside were interested in my opinion. My ability hadn't changed since yesterday - neither had my face, unfortunately. Yet a handful of important old men agreeing that I deserved a color apparently made both considerably more acceptable.

“Some of you already know me as a blacksmith.” I continued, looking past the merchant toward the rest of the crowd, “That's still my job. Giving me a title doesn't mean I'm closing the shop, and it definitely doesn't mean I'm suddenly qualified to run the roads.” A few shoulders relaxed, mostly the official looking ones. Ha. They thought that they were losing their jobs to me, weren’t they? I could feel Karsten watching me, probably waiting to find out whether I intended to reject the entire honor in public.

“I accepted because there are things I can do with magic that are useful to this country. You've already heard about some of them. I'd like the next ones to involve fewer people nearly dying.” That got a quieter response. Fair enough. Difficult to laugh when someone reminded you that the celebrated victory had involved actual casualties.

“The title means people will expect more of my work. That's reasonable. What I deliver should justify that.” I glanced toward Karsten. She gave a small nod, and I faced the crowd again, “Judge me by what I make of it.”

…

Responsibility is a convenient word. Parents use it when they want you to study. Teachers use it when nobody volunteers to clean the classroom. Employers presumably use it whenever paying overtime starts looking expensive. It sounds respectable enough that you can attach it to almost any unreasonable demand and make the person refusing seem like the problem. Naturally, I had developed a healthy suspicion of it. Along with employment, committees, and anyone who began a conversation by telling me how much potential I had.

Unfortunately, some of those demands were entirely reasonable. The people waiting for their pay didn't particularly care that I had been busy preventing a national disaster. They still needed to eat. A customer who brought me a broken tool needed it repaired properly, regardless of whether I considered myself too important to spend an afternoon on it. I understood that well enough when there was a ledger in front of me. Put me behind a podium, apparently, and I started talking like someone whose greatest contribution to society was attending meetings.

Judge me by what I make of it. Really, Hachiman? Were you running for student council? The irritating part was that I had meant it. Between being dragged out of the shop and hearing myself speak, I had made a promise that I actually wanted to keep. Calling it political necessity afterwards wouldn't change that. Neither would blaming Karsten, though I reserved the right to complain about her methods for the foreseeable future.

I had wanted something genuine, once upon a time. Still did, if I was being honest, which was an exhausting habit and therefore something I practiced sparingly. But wanting people to take me seriously while treating every obligation of my own as an unfortunate misunderstanding was a pretty convenient arrangement. 

I couldn't keep expecting them to find the sincerity underneath everything I said. At some point, making myself difficult to understand stopped being their problem.

That didn't mean accepting every request thrown at me. I was already losing sleep over work I could have taught someone else to handle. Felt could learn the accounts. Slowly. With considerable complaining from both of us, probably. If I kept deciding that explaining things took too long, then I was choosing to remain indispensable and acting offended by the consequences. An impressively stupid business model, even by my standards.

However, this was a request that I can’t deny.

Fundamentally, I was doing this out of my own needs and wants. If I was the Black, I would be able to keep the soft power that Mathers would eventually lose. This soft power, as much as it disgusted me to think about, was the only way I had a chance of finding my way back home, in a reasonable time. Particularly because I realized that there is no other option for me, not anymore.

Any other path I ventured down would be met by those same politicians. I was satisfied being nothing more than a blacksmith, because that meant that their attention towards me was non-existent. However, through my own contributions, any little thing I do will be scrutinized. Every attempt to find more ways back home would be met by a deluge of paranoid officials thinking I was going to seize their power.

I would be barred from doing anything, and most likely assassinated, within a year. That is, if I hadn’t accepted the title of Black.

Which made the whole thing sound considerably less noble than what I had just told the crowd. Congratulations, everyone. Your newest celebrated mage accepted the position because he wanted access to things you would otherwise have kept away from him. Please direct any complaints to the Council. They approved the appointment, after all.

Except I hadn't lied. That was the painfully annoying part. I did want to make things that helped people. I wanted the people working for me to get paid, and I wanted Karsten to succeed because I had seen enough to believe that she would actually try to do her job properly. Those things didn't conveniently disappear because I also wanted to see my sister again. Apparently, a person could have several reasons for doing something. Shocking discovery, I know. Someone inform the philosophers.

The problem came afterwards. Say I found it - a spell, a doorway, whatever ridiculous mechanism had dumped me here in the first place. What happened to everyone who had started depending on me? Did I leave Felt with a pile of unfinished orders and tell her to work it out? Did Karsten get a note explaining that her newly appointed Black had resigned, effective yesterday? I could almost imagine writing it. Short, apologetic, carefully worded to avoid giving anyone a chance to answer.

That was familiar enough to make me uncomfortable.

I wasn't going to promise that I would stay. I couldn't. There were people back home who hadn't been given a choice in any of this either, and pretending that I had stopped wanting to return would be considerably more dishonest than accepting a title for selfish reasons. But I could make sure that leaving, if it ever became possible, didn't mean dropping everything onto the nearest available person. That I would leave the connections I had so foolishly made to be in the same situation as the people I had already left. 

I refuse to do so. No, if - when - I left, I needed to make sure that the people here understood that it was my choice. That they were not the ones at fault, that I did not up and leave due to some misunderstood conversation in the past. And most importantly, that this was always my plan, and nothing they said could have stopped me.

…Maybe-

“Hikigaya-kun.” Karsten's voice brought my attention back to her before I could spiral any further. The official had reclaimed the podium, and she was waiting beside the steps, “Is something troubling you?”

“Several things. Most of them can wait.” I followed her down, lowering my voice once we were clear of the platform, “When we discuss the appointment, I want the actual duties written down. What they expect, what I can refuse, and how much time I'll have for my own research.”

Her expression grew more attentive, “You intend to negotiate?”

“I’m not gonna work for people that don’t compensate me properly, you know.” That apparently pleased her. Oh right, I remember her ranting about Hoshin’s monopoly possibly causing the minimum wage to go lower. Apparently, if you own a significant portion of a city, you can price gouge even wages from would-be competitors. Who knew?

“Then we should begin with what you need.” Karsten said, adjusting her pace to match mine as we moved away from the platform, “The Council will find it easier to accommodate a specific request than a general desire to be left alone.”

“I have a very specific desire to be left alone.” The look she gave me suggested that this was unlikely to survive the first round of negotiations. Fair enough, “Access to magical research. Records, old studies, anything to do with yin magic, the like. And permission to actually work with them, of course.”

“Need I remind you that you can request access to the Karsten library?” She paused, watching me rather than the people still gathered around the platform, “As well as that library the Great Spirit of Yin spoke of. Though you will need to explain the purpose of your research.”

Of course I would. Somewhere, there was probably a form demanding that I describe my entire life in the space provided. I could already imagine trying to fit ‘involuntarily relocated to another world’ between two carefully ruled lines. The more immediate problem was that Karsten was waiting for an answer, and I had spent enough time thinking about sincerity to recognize how stupid dodging her would be.

“I’ll get Mathers’ shit when the time comes. As for the purpose…it's personal.” I said, then caught myself before leaving it there, “I'll explain when we're somewhere private. Before we write anything down.”

Her expression changed slightly. She didn't press, which somehow made the promise feel more difficult to take back, “At the manor, then.”

I nodded. There went my opportunity to retreat into the shop and pretend that today's problems belonged to tomorrow's Hachiman. Poor bastard. For once, I was going to have to help him out.

…