…Huh? What was that just now?
When I turned toward whoever had made that very, very rude comment, an obese mother and child were holding hands and wrinkling their noses at me in disgust.
Did they just say that about me? The mother and child met my eyes as they walked away, and the child started to holler.
"Eek, the uggo glared at meee!"
"Hey, stop looking! You'll turn ugly!"
...What in the world is going on?
I puzzled over it, but no answer was forthcoming. Eventually, I concluded that I had been imagining things.
The farther I went, the worse it got.
Or should I say, the more people I passed, the more disapproving eyes turned my way. People sometimes said it while pointing at me and sneering, and sometimes while whispering to the person next to them.
Ugly, they said.
"Oh, my word! It hurts to look!"
"Goodness, what an awful face. She shouldn't show that to anybody."
"How dare she walk around like nothing's wrong? Have some respect."
"Too thin."
"That girl looks like a skeleton."
"She's a bad influence on the children. Can't someone make her go away?"
"But she's a witch."
"Ah, she is. An ugly witch."
Well, you get the picture.
As you would expect, I didn't mind one bit that I seemed to be upsetting them.
"What, are you jealous?" I wanted to say to them. But when you're walking through an environment where open discrimination is socially acceptable, it's natural to expect objectionable things to happen.
For example, having a man (who resembles a bloated hog) laugh at you.
"Hya-ha-ha! She's far too hideous! She looks just like a servant!"
For example, frightening an old geezer (who resembles a bloated hog).
"Eek! It's the grim reaper! Don't tell me… Is it my time…?"
For example, having a child (who resembles a bloated hog) throw stones at you.
"Get outta here, uggo!"
Children don't throw very hard, at least, so the stones were easy enough to dodge.
Incidentally, I used air magic to blow him away on the wind. It helped me let off a little stress, and he had so much fat on his body that I don't think he was in any danger.
But the unpleasantries did not end after my modest revenge.
"Hey, you're in the way, damn uggo," someone snarled, slamming her shoulder into me as she went by.
What beautiful specimen might have declared me an uggo this time?
When I turned around to look, there was a large, fleshy woman.
Wow, what wonderful meat. She looks just like a sow ready for market.
To put it another way, she was an extremely fat young lady with an extremely porcine face. Her perfectly rotund body was clad in a frilly dress, and she walked down the center of the road wearing an expression of pride.
Yet she was being showered with praise.
"My, what a beauty!"
"Now that's what a girl ought to look like."
"Isn't she a little too fat?"
"That's the best. Don't you get it?"
"How incredible… I want her for my wife."
"Compared to her, what's with that witch?"
"That witch is all skin and bones."
"Too skinny."
That's about how it went. I found it very, very unpleasant that their comments somehow spread to include me.
"…Phew."
For the time being, I returned to the road I had come in on and burst into the coffee shop. I had to flee. It was too uncomfortable.
"Welcome. What'll you have? …Tch," a man with a doglike face (fat, of course) asked me, a creepy smile spreading over his lips.
"Um, I'll have the breakfast set." I chose the first thing on the menu. And the cheapest.
"Certainly." The waiter hurriedly left my side and started whispering about something with another waiter.
Well, I suppose they're making fun of my appearance.
"..."
It wasn't important enough to think about, or to say anything about.
What is the deal with this country? Beyond the second gate, the concept of ugliness was quite different than usual.
"Hey, look…an uggo's sitting over there."
"You idiot! Be careful when you talk about the uglies. What if you get infected?"
"C-crap…sorry!"
"Sheesh…"
Leaving aside the issue of whether ugliness was contagious, even here inside the coffee shop, the other customers were glaring daggers at me. I really didn't understand it at all, but it seemed that I was the target of some local prejudice.
"Apologies for the wait. Here is your morning set." The waiter looked down his nose at me as he set down coffee and bread. And jam.
A very modest set. As expected for the cheapest thing on the menu.
Still smiling his creepy smile, the waiter said, "Pardon the request, miss, but when you have finished eating, would you please leave the shop right away? We've had complaints from other guests, so…"
"Um…"
I heard laughter from one of the seats.
After finishing my breakfast extremely slowly and delicately, I headed for a bookstore.
I can't deny that I wanted to run away as quickly as I could, but I had made a promise, so I couldn't leave just yet. I reluctantly walked through the town, intently keeping my gaze ahead as yet more people pointed and laughed, until finally I arrived at the bookstore.
Inside, the store was nearly silent—as one would expect on such sacred ground. The ladies and gentlemen inside the shop (all fat, without exception) were absorbed in searching the shelves or reading the books they had in hand and did not so much as
acknowledge me.
A safe space.
"Hmm…" I drifted around the shop trying to remember the title of the book the mage had asked me to get. After a while, I found it. It was displayed faceup in the new publications corner. I took one copy and headed for the counter.
"Welcome." The clerk took the book with an appropriately polite attitude. "Shall I put a cover on it?"
"Yes, please."
The clerk wasn't openly rude to me, but I imagined she was probably laughing at me on the inside.
…With nothing to do for a moment, I looked away and saw a pile of rather tasteless bookmarks on the counter. Looking closer, they were taxidermy spiders, crushed flat. They had THIS IS A BOOKMARK written on them, so the disgusting things were indeed bookmarks.
No doubt about it.
"Ah, could I ask you to stick one of these bookmarks in every fifty pages?"
"You sure have bad taste, huh?"
Well then, why are they even here?
Just as I was leaving the bookstore, a group of adults surrounded me.
I didn't know what they were saying to me, nor exactly what had happened. The crowd was made up of people (all fat, without exception) I had encountered earlier.
"Hey, you're that traveler who sneaked in here, right?" one of the fat men asked.
I tried to remember who he was, and then I realized he was one of the men who had been unloading packages from the horse cart near the second gate earlier.
"Sneaked in?" That's awfully presumptuous.
"You slipped by while we guards were bringing in packages from outside, right? You know ugly people aren't allowed to enter this part of the country. What, were you trying to spite us?"
"Huh?" They aren't allowed?
"Don't play dumb. When you went through the first gate, the guard on your side should've explained it. The second gate marks a special place where only select people may enter. To willingly break this rule is an extremely malicious act."
"Uh-huh." Sure enough, I remembered the guard at the first gate asking me whether I knew anything about this land.
"How can you take that attitude with us? You're causing the residents a lot of trouble just by being here. Hurry up and get out."
"You don't have to tell me. I was just about to leave." I already finished my errand.
"…Humph, don't come back."
No need to worry. I wouldn't come here again even if you begged me, I nearly replied. But since I'm not stupid enough to pour oil on a fire, I just said, "Yes, of course," and left it at that.
"My, my, you're finally back."
I had returned to the old-fashioned village surrounding the flourishing interior city.
She was waiting for me in front of the secondary gate as I came out. I was glad she saved me the effort of looking for her, but I got the feeling that everything, even down to the timing of when I would go meet her, had been predicted somehow. As if I'd been playing right into her hands the whole time.
It was probably my imagination.
"Hello. I got the book, as promised."
"Great, thank you." She moved to take it from my hands.
"But first, would you tell me about this place? I'll give it to you afterward," I said, holding the book high in the air.
She pulled back her hand. "Fair enough. Okay, shall we go somewhere where we can sit down?"
Then she led me to a particularly nondescript bench. It had clearly been standing there for a long time. Moss grew around its legs, the planks were riddled with holes, it creaked when I sat down. I was a little scared I might go crashing through the seat at any moment.
My heart pounded as if I was holding a ticking time bomb, but the mage ignored me and gazed out at the quiet, tranquil scenery. "It's much better out here than it is in there, right? It's peaceful."
"…Well, I suppose so."
Though don't you think it's a little too peaceful?
"What did you want to ask?"
"I think you already know, don't you?"
The mage was quiet for a little while. And then, she told me the story in fits and starts. "—Long ago, when this land was not yet divided, there was a very ugly queen."
"An ugly queen?" I tilted my head, silently asking, "Ugly by whose standards?"
"Well, the people on the other side of that gate would have called her beautiful, but the queen was ugly by your sensibilities."
"You're not pulling any punches, eh?"
"It's simply the truth."
"..."
"To get back to the story, the queen always felt inferior because she was so ugly. In those days, everyone thought that queens ought to be beautiful, so she was very timid about her appearance."
Mm-hmm…?
The mage continued talking. "And so, the queen made a request of a certain wandering witch. 'Make my face beautiful,' she said.
However, the witch refused. She didn't know any spells for changing people's faces; plus, she thought it would be unethical."
"And that wandering witch was you?"
She shook her head. "No. I'm simply a mage. Look, I don't have a brooch or anything, do I?" She tugged on the front of her robe and showed it to me. As she said, there was nothing there.
"Then how do you know that the queen asked the wandering witch to do that?"
"Because I'm friends with her. We hit it off when she came to this country, although we were only together for a short while. She was a traveler, after all."
"Ah."
"She and I were just about the same age as you are right now, and she looked just like you. She was very smart and very beautiful."
"Ahhh…"
Is she trying to flatter me? I'm not so sure…
"Anyway, the witch declined the queen's request. Apparently, the queen wouldn't take no for an answer, and they even ended up arguing about it. In a fit of rage, the queen said, 'How dare you refuse a request from me!' and barred her from the country."
"By the way, they banished me, too, a little while ago."
"I thought as much."
"..."
As I had suspected, she had known exactly what would happen when she sent me on her little errand.
"Afterward, the queen reversed the concepts of ugliness and beauty, then sent the people who she deemed ugly to live outside the gate. And so she lived in peace, happily ever after."
"..."
"How was that?"
"Um, I don't know what to say…" My head had started to hurt.
Let's start by asking the things I want to know.
"So she just exiled everyone to the area beyond the gate, and that was fine? I would expect that some of the people who lived there would have complained."
"Of course, some did. But no one thought to rise up in revolt."
"Oh…"
"The people who were upset with the decision were sent away with large amounts of money. By now they've probably settled somewhere new, don't you think? Though I can't say that was a very clever idea. If they wanted to live in comfort, staying here was the best option. Here you can get basic food and money without even
working. It looks like a poor village, but really it's the other side of the gate that's losing out."
"..."
"Thanks to the unfortunate-looking queen imposing her values on everyone, we live peaceful and uneventful lives, and the people over there can live their lives free of disappointment. Holding us in contempt lets them feel better."
"…Ah." I see.
So to someone looking over from the other side, everyone over here lives an awful life that leaves them thinking, I never want to be like that. Each side holds on to the idea that the people beyond the gate are worse off than they are, and that keeps the peace.
It's clever, yet pathetic, and yet just…ridiculous.
"Well, that concludes my story. What do you think? Did I answer all of your questions?" She held out a hand.
As I placed the book I had bought into her hand, I said, "Yes, mostly. I don't have any more questions." I'm still stressed out, though. "By the way, why did you want this book?"
"This is a new release, but they mostly sell them inside the wall. So I got some help from a passing traveler."
"..."
I see. She used me for something very trivial, didn't she?
"And aren't you glad you got to see what it's like over there?"
"True…but I got a little angry when they were so blatantly discriminatory toward me over there."
"Oh… S-sorry about that," she apologized earnestly.
"I don't mind."
Besides, I've got a modest bit of revenge waiting for you every fifty pages in that book.
"As a traveler, what did you think of this land?" she asked me as she was opening the book.
It's very peaceful, but it has a very strange arrangement. Two places in one. If I was going to express my thoughts in one word, it would be—
"Strange. I think it's a strange country."
I felt it could be summed up in that one word.
"I think so, too," she agreed, turning the page.