Chapter 18: Castle-Shaped Cake⇔Cake-Shaped Castle

After meeting up with Rania, Mia headed to the Perujin capital. Along the way, she stopped by a number of villages. At each one, she made sure to help the locals with their harvest (read: go fruit-picking). Emboldened by her experience with rubyfruit, she had a bite or twenty of all the produce she helped gather, ensuring that her palate was well-pampered the whole time. Needless to say, Anne and Ludwig also took great pains at each stop to prevent her from eating too much.

They continued in this fashion until the capital was only a short distance away, when Mia peered out of the carriage to find that the scenery had changed. Deep shades of green had given way to a soft lunar gold. So radical was the landscape’s shift in hue that it was as if someone had placed amber glass right before her very eyes.

“I suppose they’re not done harvesting the wheat here?” asked a curious Mia.

Rania smiled. “That’s right. It’s custom for the wheat growing near the castle to be reaped over a period of six days. The eldest child of every family, if they’re over ten years old, all gather here and participate in the harvest together. Once they’re done, the Thanksharvest Festival begins.”

Perujin’s Thanksharvest Festival was meant to offer thanks to the Lord, but it also functioned as a census. Every year, the eldest child of every family would gather in the capital and report on any changes to their family’s status, such as new births. Then, a few members of the gathered would be selected to act as royal guards for the king for two years. After that, they would return to their respective villages, where they would begin farming again while simultaneously helping to police their hometown.

“Ah, it’s a countrywide festival then.”

“Wow! Miss Mia, look! I can see it now!”

Lured by Bel’s excited voice, Mia gazed forward.

“So that’s the Perujin capital, Auro Ardea...” She glanced at the surroundings again. “Auro Ardea, the ‘skyward village of gold.’ I see where it gets its name.”

It was said that once upon a time, a Tearmoon noble had come to Perujin and decried the sight of the capital, calling it “an abject failure to live up to its name” and “little more than a piddling town in a poor vassal state.” Where, the noble had spat while leaving, was the gold?

Mia was of the opinion that had the noble come during harvest season, the story would surely have changed, for the object of his complaint would have been in plain sight—just as it was now. The village was undoubtedly adorned in gold. Finely ripened wheat grew in orderly terraced fields. From afar, it looked like a vast flight of golden stairs, at the top of which sat a rectangular structure.

Hm, that’s a rather unusual shape. Where have I seen something like that before...?

“It’s the castle, isn’t it?” asked Rania, who noticed Mia’s staring.

“Yes. It’s such a strange shape. Frankly, it doesn’t really look like a castle.”

“It sure doesn’t,” said Rania with a laugh. “It’s because castles here in Perujin aren’t built for war. There are no ramparts or guard towers. The walls are thin and made of wood. Maybe that’s why the people are so fond of it. We even have a traditional cake that’s made in the shape of the castle.”

Ah, cakes! That’s it! That’s what the castle reminds me of! Especially the color. It looks exactly like a freshly-baked cake! No wonder people are so fond of it! And apparently there are actual cakes shaped like it? I wonder what they’re like. Could the cakes...be the same size as the real thing?

“Does it interest you?” asked Rania.

“It certainly does!” Mia eagerly nodded.

As I expected, Her Highness is interested in the castle and what the Perujin royalty living there are thinking...

Ludwig had expected Mia to display some degree of curiosity in the matter. The unique architecture of Perujin castles was no surprise to him. He’d known that they were built without any consideration for their utility in warfare, which was an extremely rare approach.

Lunatear’s pride and joy, the Whitemoon Palace, was built on a design philosophy that prioritized beauty above all else, but even then, it wasn’t devoid of the faculties of a military fortress. Castles were ultimately defensive structures, and some elements of their fundamental nature always remained in their architecture.

Not in Perujin, though. Their castles threw all those considerations straight out the window. The building at the top of the terraced fields was so vulnerable that it felt naked. There was none of the crudeness usually found in structures meant to project an aura of power and intimidation. Instead, it felt...plain. Innocent. Almost cheerful. As for the source of this impression...

“It’s a weird castle, don’t you think?” said Rania in a casual manner. “If war ever broke out, it’d probably be burned down in the blink of an eye. But war would burn all the fields too, so it doesn’t matter in the end. What’s the point of having a big, beautiful castle if there’s nothing else left?”

What she expressed was essentially the national strategy of Perujin, with their vast stretches of farmland and little else. In the game of war, their winning condition was fundamentally different from the other participants. They couldn’t afford for their own territory to be turned into a battlefield. Unlike most small nations, they couldn’t even stall for time and wait for reinforcements to arrive from backing powers. The moment war touched their lands, they lost.

In fact, they had no intention of fighting wars in the first place. The overarching goal of their strategy with respect to war was “stay out and keep away.” The unspoken corollary of this approach was that if war did break out despite their best efforts, they’d simply accept their own helplessness.

Preparing for war was futile; the more they did, the more they wasted. In that case, it was better not to prepare at all.

Of course, the intimidation factor of having Tearmoon’s military at their back and the difficulty of starting a war due to the system of morality established by the Holy Principality of Belluga both worked to Perujin’s benefit. These two elements were pillars of their national security. Much of Perujin’s diplomatic maneuvering therefore centered around maximizing their effect.

Despite that, Ludwig couldn’t bring himself to believe that Perujin had absolute trust in this defensive strategy. He didn’t trust humans to be rational enough to do so. Giving up if war ever broke out was, to him, the same as saying “there’s no point in stockpiling food because no amount of food would be enough during a great famine.”

He therefore shared Mia’s supposed curiosity. What did Princess Rania think about all this?

“Is it truly possible to just...give up like that? If war ever breaks out, everything will be lost. To acknowledge that, to simply accept that nothing can be done and therefore nothing should be done... Can anyone truly do that?”

It was awkward for him to wade unprompted into the princesses’ conversation, but his curiosity got the better of him. Faced with his question, Rania paused for a pensive moment before answering.

“I think, like you said, there’s definitely an element of ‘giving up’ to it, but in my opinion, the reason my ancestors built the castle like that was because that was their ideal...”

“Their...ideal?”

“Yes. That one day, an age would come when castles meant for war would no longer be needed... That once sufficient food reached every hungry mouth, peace would come about, and looming monstrosities meant to strike fear into people would become a thing of the past. I think...they envisioned a future when all the world’s castles would look like peaceful structures.” Rania let out an embarrassed giggle. “It’s just a pet theory of mine, though. I’m sorry for going on a tangent. That must have sounded very silly.”

Silly indeed. In Ludwig’s eyes, it was nothing more than a childish fantasy. He knew, however, that the master he served was not someone who mocked the words of naive dreamers. Turning toward her, he found that, as he’d expected...

“It’s not silly at all. I think it’s wonderful.”

...Mia wore a most gentle smile.

I thought she’d say that.

No matter how fantastical the dream, how removed from reality the ideal, Mia would never belittle the effort that went into them. At the same time, Ludwig also couldn’t help but think that with Mia involved, maybe reality would be convinced to accept those dreams and ideals.

As he gazed reverently at Mia, she just so happened to giggle and say, “A cake-shaped castle. What a wonderful thought.”

Surely, she means a castle-shaped cake, Ludwig thought. But he simply smiled. He might have waded into their conversation, but he wasn’t so crass as to draw attention to a slip of the tongue.

...Was it a slip of the tongue, though?