“…It’s still only noon, you realize, clergyman,” I said. “Is this Merula?”
“Hello, King Souma,” the hooded Merula waved to me cheerily.
It was Merula, right? It would be a problem if people found out she was a high elf, so she was probably trying to keep a low profile.
Souji knocked back his drink, and said with glazed eyes, “Whew… It sure is a festival. Don’t be such a stiff. Aren’t you out on the town with Aisha and Tomoe? You’ve got a beautiful flower on each arm, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah… Have to spend time with the family, you know.”
The reason I was heading out in secret today was to survey the castle town, but also to have a date with Aisha.
Though I had… um… developed my relationship with Liscia, I hadn’t laid a hand on any of my other fiancées yet. That was to prevent a troublesome birth order of the children, in order to prevent it developing into a succession issue. Especially with Roroa, who was in the dicey position of being the sovereign princess of a former enemy state; for her sake, and the sake of the child who would eventually be born, I couldn’t go laying a hand on her yet.
It probably wouldn’t be an issue if I laid a hand on my secondary queen, Juna, whose children wouldn’t have the right to inherit, or on Aisha, who was from a long-lived race and would have trouble conceiving to begin with, but they were holding back out of consideration for Roroa.
Honestly… they were all such lovely women.
Well, the result was that Liscia now had my other fiancées asking her to, “Hurry up with the heir already,” and she’d complained to me, “I swear, the pressure is making my stomach hurt.”
…I kind of felt bad for her.
Ahem… Anyway, even if I couldn’t lay my hands on them, it was important that I still do other things with Aisha and the others.
When I explained that to Souji, he said, “Hmm. Must be tough having to be a family man when you’re so young,” as if it was none of his problem, and then he knocked back his mug and polished off the rest of his wine as if rubbing it in my face. “Pwah!”
“Don’t you think you’ve had more than enough?” I asked.
“In Lunarian Orthodoxy, wine is sacred. In other words, by pouring this liquid into my body, I’m accumulating virtue.”
“That absolutely sounds like the excuse of a drunkard,” I informed him. “You really are irresponsible.”
“But it’s convenient for your people that I’m so irresponsible, right?” Souji grinned.
…Honestly, this octopus-headed old man.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, yeah. I mean, Hakuya’s plan is to use you to sever the believers from the homeland.”
“Well, you scratch my back, I scratch yours, Your Majesty. I’ll slack off with everything I’ve got.”
“I’m counting on you,” I said. “Now then, I should get back to Aisha and Tomoe.”
“Sure. May God’s protection and peace be upon you and your family.”
Hearing the delinquent bishop’s prayer behind me, which it was hard to know how serious he was about, I headed back to where Aisha and Tomoe were.
Epilogue: Towards the First Trip Abroad
1st day, 4th month, 1,547th year, Continental Calendar
It was the day after the Lunarian Orthodoxy’s Spring Announcement Festival was held.
The Spring Announcement Festival yesterday had been pretty lively, so the castle town would be busily cleaning up after it today. I was spending the day in the governmental affairs office, staring down a single piece of paper.
Liscia, who had just come into the room, looked suspiciously at me and asked, “Is something the matter, Souma?”
“Hmm? Oh, I was looking at this.” I showed Liscia the piece of paper I had been staring at.
The piece of paper had three characters, or symbols, something that I couldn’t make sense of, lined up on it. Starting from the left there was “an arrow-like triangle pointing to the left, combined with a square;” “two vertical lines and something made with a vertical line with five horizontal lines crossing it;” and “an umbrella-shaped symbol.”
Liscia looked sideways at the piece of paper I’d given her. “What’s this?”
“It’s apparently a portion of the Lunalith oracle that Merula saw.” 
Merula Merlin had come along with Souji Lester, the bishop we’d invited as a countermeasure against the Lunarian Orthodoxy. Her research primarily focused on spirits and magic, and her long years of research had produced an incredible wealth of knowledge, so I had welcomed her with open arms.
Now Merula was at Genia the overscientist’s laboratory where there was all sorts of equipment available.
It seemed curse ore, which absorbed magic, was a very interesting subject of research for Merula. She and Genia were spending day after day together, engrossed in their research.
What sort of chemical reaction would the meeting of overscientist and magic researcher have on this country? I was kind of looking forward to it, and kind of worried…
Something had happened the first time I’d met Merula.
The oracle she’d said had appeared on the Lunalith came up in conversation, and when I asked her for details, Merula shook her head in disappointment.
“They call it an oracle, so I think what appeared was text; but it wasn’t in a writing system from any country in this world, so I couldn’t figure out what it said. If I’d had a little more time, I might have at least been able to figure out if they were phonographs or ideographs, but…”
It seemed she hadn’t had the time to properly commit it to memory. Her life had been in danger, so I could hardly blame her for that.
When I asked her if there was anything she remembered, no matter how minor, she’d said, “It really is just a small fraction, but I recall… it went like this…”
And then she’d written these three incomprehensible characters or symbols onto a piece of paper. Merula’s memories were vague, so these probably were exactly as she’d seen them.
In the end, the only thing we knew was that these sorts of incomprehensible characters or symbols had appeared as an oracle.
Liscia seemed to realize something and said, “Ah…! If the writing isn’t from this world, could it be from yours?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That was something I suspected, too, but I’ve got absolutely no idea what they are…”
I couldn’t claim familiarity with every writing system on Earth, obviously, but I could at least say that in more than a decade of living in Japan, I had no recollection of seeing this kind of writing (?) before. The one in the middle might look a bit like the kanji for “pray” or “samurai” if you looked at it the right way, but as for what the arrow-like one that came before it, and the umbrella-like one that came after it were… I had no idea.
I gave up and put the piece of paper away inside the governmental affairs office’s desk. “Well, even if I could read just three characters of it, it wouldn’t do me any good. I can’t neglect my duties just because I’m curious about it, after all. Let’s forget about it for now.”
And so, Liscia and I got started on my paperwork for the day, but… I had one of the consciousnesses I had split off thinking about it.
Events sometimes took place outside the Kingdom of Friedonia. If something bothered me, when it was a domestic matter, I could bring on new people, assign personnel to the issue, and assign a budget to get it investigated. I had my position as king, after all.