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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.