Chapter 4: A Day Off in Parnam (part 4)

◇ ◇ ◇

After leaving the park, we walked around the castle town some more. It was noon

and we were getting hungry, so the three of us decided to head to the singing cafe

where Juna worked.

As we walked down a cobblestone path, Liscia said, "So, about what we were

talking about earlier..." and asked me a question. "You mentioned changing the laws,

as well. What was that about?"

"Oh. What I did was convert the smaller roads into pedestrian paradises and

nationalize garbage disposal."

"...I'm sorry. I have no idea what that means."

Well, no, I suppose she wouldn't have. They both tied back into the hygiene and

sanitation problem, though.

"Well, first, let me explain the pedestrian paradise thing. This one's simple. I

prohibited carriages from using anything but the largest of thoroughfares. Carriages

that carry merchandise receive a special exemption, but only for a few hours in the

morning. We've been walking in the middle of the street all this time, and nobody's

run us over yet, right?"

"Now that you mention it..." Liscia looked all around, not spotting a single horse.

"This provides an easy reduction in the number of horse accidents, creating a

safe environment for people to shop, which helps to stimulate the economy, but... the

main goal was to clean up all the horse dung."

"Horse dung?" Liscia repeated.

"When a horse is on the move, you generally just leave its droppings behind,

right? Well, that dung dries out, gets picked up by the wind, and it harms the lungs of

those who inhale it. The more unsanitary a place was to begin with, the more likely

horse dung is to be left alone. If we limit the horses to the main roads, it makes

collecting their droppings easy. This ought to bring down the number of people

contracting pneumonia considerably."

"Huh?! That's all it takes?!" Liscia exclaimed.

"...Yeah," I said. "'That's all' it would have taken to save lives."

"Urkh..."

It may have been a harsh way to say it, but I couldn't have her writing off

something that would mean the difference between life and death for people with a

"that's all it takes."

"Well, in some ways, I can't blame you," I said. "The concept of hygiene doesn't

exist yet in this country. In fact, only two of the medical professionals I've met with

understood it."

I think I've mentioned before that because this country had magic, its technology

was sort of all over the place. Well, that was true in the field of medicine, as well.

As you might expect from a fantasy world, this place had what was called

recovery magic. By converting magic into certain wavelengths within the body, it

heightened the body's natural healing ability. It was effective in treating external

injuries, such as scratches, cuts, and bruises. Really impressive practitioners could

even reattach an arm that had just been severed.

If this was all someone saw of it, it would seem like a miracle.

On the other hand, recovery magic couldn't treat viruses and infections that the

body's natural ability to recover couldn't. All people had to lessen the symptoms of

those were medicine men and women who could brew herbal remedies.

Furthermore, for the elderly, whose natural healing ability had declined, it wasn't

effective in treating external injuries, either.

Once you know how something works, it might be easy to think, "Oh, that's

simple," but most people in this country didn't even know about microbes, let alone

viruses. When people try to find answers to questions they don't have the necessary

knowledge to answer, they're prone to finding answers that fall within what's

common sense to them.

"Healing magic doesn't work" would equate to "Even miracles can't cure it," and

then turn into "It's a devil's curse."

People put together these sorts of formulas in their heads, then end up using

bizarre occult goods in their attempts to treat the illness.

"If you buy this pot, you'll never get sick" actually worked as a sales pitch in this

world, so it was nothing to laugh at. If you're going to buy something like that, you

might as well wrap a leek around your neck before you go to sleep instead.

However, there were buds of hope. The two doctors I just mentioned. If I could

have those two lead a reformation of medical practice in this country...

"Hey, Souma, what are you mumbling to yourself for?" Liscia's voice snapped me

back to reality.

"Sorry," I said. "I got to thinking for a moment there."

"Geez... Okay, so what did you mean when you said you nationalized garbage

disposal?"

"Exactly what it sounds like," I said. "Liscia, do you know how trash is generally

disposed of in this country?"

"Garbage is sorted into 'burnable' and 'non-burnable,' then burned or buried

accordingly, right?"

"Wow, you were able to answer that pretty easily," I said.

"Did you think I was ignorant of the peoples' lives just because I'm royalty? Don't

insult me. I lived in the dorms when I went to military academy, I'll have you know,"

she said indignantly.

I see. So she's not as ignorant of the world as I thought...

"But you're still wrong."

"Huh?" she asked.

"I said 'generally,' didn't I? Your answer is still only representative of upper class

thinking. It's a world away from the common way of thinking."

"W-Well, what is the common way of thinking about it, then?" she asked.

"Aisha, how do your people dispose of garbage in the God-Protected Forest?" I

queried.

"Hm? Garbage?" Aisha's eyes went a little wide when I suddenly turned the

conversation to her, but she was able to come up with an answer right away. "Let me

think... We burn it."

"Is that all?" I asked.

"That is all."

"That can't be right! What do you do about the things that won't burn?!" Liscia

objected, but Aisha just stared blankly back at her.

"Would you even throw out things that aren't burnable to begin with?" Aisha

asked.

"Of course you would! What else would you do with broken tools?" Liscia

demanded.

"We fix them and keep using them."

"...Huh?"

"We use kitchen waste as fertilizer. With pottery that is too broken to repair, we

break it into fine pieces and scatter it over the ground. If metal tools break, we fix

them so they can be used again. If they can't be fixed, we sell them to a used metal

dealer." (A type of merchant who collects scrap metal.) "The only things we throw

out are splintered wood and damaged leather armor, but... we burn those in our

campfires."

This time, it was Liscia's turn for wide-eyed surprise. I couldn't help but laugh a

little at their exchange.

"Ha ha! Aisha's got it right this time."

"Soumaaaa..." Liscia moaned.

"Don't let it get you down so much," I said. "For the upper classes who have to

keep up appearances, and for the military whose equipment can mean the difference

between life and death, it's probably best for them if the things they have are

practically brand new. However, for ordinary households, that isn't the case. Now,

Aisha's example takes it to an extreme, but people in the capital handle things in a

similar fashion. The main difference would be that they burn their kitchen waste,

too, I guess? Also, for oversized trash, like wooden furniture, they customarily

gather it all in the main plaza once a year for burning, don't they? So they're the

same in that they only have burnable trash."

In this world, there was nothing like plastic or styrofoam that needed special

treatment before it could be reused. Most tools were made of iron, stone, soil (which

includes glass and ceramic) or wood. They could reuse iron by melting it down, and

if they just left stone lying around, it would blend in with the natural scenery around

it. The one exception was artificial substances that were created by mages using

magic (magic substances), but these were valuable in and of themselves, so they

were almost never thrown away.

As for things made of metal, they could be expensive, too, so the common people

did everything within their power to repair them. Beating iron back into shape was

easy, after all. When there was really nothing they could do, and it seemed cheaper

to just buy a new one, they would sell it to a used metal dealer for small change.

Used metal dealers collected this metal and melted it down, recasting it into other

metal products.

However, this was being done by individuals, so they didn't have good facilities

for it, or the ability to devote a large amount of time, so they could only produce lowquality metal as a result. All they did was melt it down and then let it harden, so

impurities got mixed in in the process. As a result, low-quality metal ended up

circulating in the country.

This country was resource-poor. If low-quality metal was all that could be

obtained locally, people would be forced to import high-quality metal from other

countries. I wanted to limit that spending as much as possible. However, if I tried to

tell the used metal dealers, who were acting as individuals, to reuse the metal in

high-quality impurity-free metal, it wasn't going to happen.

"So, that's why I've nationalized garbage disposal... Basically, I had the country

take over handling it. Even if it's difficult for an individual to do, when the state does

it, we can afford to spend money on it, arrange for specialized facilities, and we can

take the time to do it right, too. We can pull every last nail out of the wooden boards

people throw out, then reuse the iron."

"That's amazing and all... but what about the used metal dealers? Aren't you

stealing their jobs?"

"Oh, that's fine," I said. "For that work, I'm retaining the used metal dealers as

civil servants."

They were low-wage workers anyway. They paid a small amount to buy up scrap

metal, then melted it all down to sell to the trade guilds wholesale. However, since

they could only produce low-quality metal, their prices got haggled down to almost

nothing, and they saw very little profit for themselves. As a matter of fact, used metal

dealers were at the very bottom of this world's hierarchy. Because they dealt in

garbage, people looked down on them.

"However, now that it's a public sector undertaking, the cost of buying the metal

will be footed by the country," I said. "The items to be melted down can be recast as

high-quality metal in good facilities provided by the country, and the country will

negotiate with the trade guilds, so there's no need to worry about their prices being

haggled down to nothing. What's more, they will be paid a monthly salary that's

equal to the average monthly income in this country. If you compare that to what

they were making before, it's probably a ten-fold increase, don't you think?"

"Well... I can't see them complaining about that," Liscia admitted.

As a matter of fact, we hadn't received a single complaint. Quite the contrary:

when the minister of state who had been given the garbage disposal portfolio had

gone to survey the reprocessing facility, he had been greeted with tearful thanks by

all of the workers.

"But, if you aren't careful, couldn't that be more expensive than importing it from

another country?" Liscia asked.

In response to Liscia's point, I nodded and said, "Yeah, kinda."

Elaborating, I added: "At this stage, we're probably a little worse off doing it this

way. However, money spent inside the country has a completely different meaning

from money spent outside the country. If we spend money outside the country,

that's an outflow of capital, but if we spend it inside the country, it stimulates our

own economy."

"Th-The economy again, huh..." For Liscia with her military background, it

seemed she wasn't as strong with this sort of topic. The military had its own

bureaucracy, so officers probably only needed to think about maintaining supply

lines.

"Okay then, I'll give you the military angle," I said. "Let's talk diplomacy. If we can

conserve the resources in our country, other countries can't use the resources we

import from them as a card in their diplomacy. For instance, what would we do if the

Principality of Amidonia, which has been eagerly eyeing our country, were to halt

their export of iron to us?"

"...We'd be in trouble," Liscia said. "There's no telling what demands they might

present us with to reopen trade."

"That's right. I did it with an eye to preventing that sort of situation, too."

I'm not going to name names, but in my world, there had been a country that

used the rare resources they produced as a diplomatic tool to pressure other

nations. Though, once a certain island country got serious, they found new import

routes from other resource-rich countries, and they developed alternative

technologies, which caused the other country's rare resources to plummet in value.

"If we can be frugal with our resources, that will limit the damage if another

country halts its exports to us, and if we store the excess we have in peacetime, we

can be prepared for that if it comes to it," I explained.

"I see," Liscia said. "So even if it puts us in the red, there's still meaning in

nationalizing it."

Liscia was a quick learner when it came to military and diplomatic matters. She

was probably the type whose ability or inability to learn a subject was a faithful

reflection of her personal preferences.

Incidentally, while we were talking about this stuff, Aisha announced, "Forget

about that, I want to eat!"

She looked ready to cry, like a dog that had been forced to wait for a long time.

The singing cafe, Lorelei, stood on a sunny street corner. This was the place

where Juna worked.

When I had heard the words "singing cafe," I'd imagined a place with a karaoke

machine, where the customers could sing freely, but the singing cafes in this country

were a place to enjoy your afternoon tea while listening to the loreleis sing. In the

evenings, it stayed open and turned into a jazz bar. Were there places like this back

in Japan, too?

"You're going to show your face in there, right?" Liscia asked. "Let's hurry up and

go in."

"I'm hungry..." Aisha moaned.

With both of them urging me onward, we went through the door and into Lorelei.

From the moment we entered the cafe, I could hear Juna singing. When I heard

that voice, I went weak in the knees.