Chapter 8: Hope.
Mr. Han honestly understood the thoughts of the other villagers. It was not something he liked or had wanted to know, but the salary of 120 copper coins was simply too tempting to ignore the offer, however incredible it seemed to him.
As a former professor in the city of Sedena, he was in fact the only literate person currently in the village. The vast majority had left a long time ago, either because of the waves of thieves or succumbing to the cold after winter. To be honest, he only stayed because it was the place where he was born, and he wished to be buried at least next to his parents and siblings.
After all, a professor with no children to teach was essentially useless. However, if people could barely afford to eat, they could not afford a school for their children. Therefore, he lived off the charity shown to him by the villagers. But now, with a real job, he couldn't help but harbor the hope that he could finally have a dignified life.
With that thought in mind, he simply headed to the castle first thing in the morning. After all, he was the only one who would show up today, and therefore needed to make a good impression.
Back at the castle, Rose was standing, waiting for the applicants to arrive for the interviews. Of course, he didn't expect a large influx; after all, the town could barely subsist. However, seeing that only one person showed up, he let out a sigh. He had really divided the interviews into several days, thinking it would be necessary.
However, the story of Desmond Thomas Doss taught him that a single man was capable of making a difference. It was not for nothing that his father respected the man more than several of the empire's best generals.
Seeing the old man, he did not dismiss him immediately; on the contrary, he allowed him entry and escorted him to the castle office. "I assume you're here for the clerk position," he asked, more out of formality than actual need.
"Yes, yes..." the man replied with obvious nervousness. It wasn't as if Rose could blame him; even his own siblings felt some fear when facing him because of his gaze, and Mr. Han was now before who was, basically, the absolute king of the city.
"There's no need to be nervous. Please, have a seat," he said, pointing to the seat across from his desk.
He waited for the older man to sit down before continuing. "Basically, your job would be to help me manage the administrative affairs of the city and the corresponding territory of the barony." He got straight to the point, although his tone sounded a little rough.
"I understand," said Mr. Han. He could do it; not only could he read, but he was also good with accounts.
"I haven't had time to read all the books, and I recently found out about the problems we will face with the arrival of autumn. Could you, then, bring me up to date on the city's situation?" he asked calmly.
The man nodded and proceeded to detail, in general terms, what he knew about the town's situation. As he shared more information, his irritation grew, so much so that he felt an intense desire to find that sociopath Carter and stab him over and over in the heart until he was little more than a damned steak.
His initial perception of the city as the most marginal neighborhood turned out to be essentially correct. Not only was it the poorest city on the entire continent (although he admitted the measurement was subjective), but it also functioned as a refugee camp with a tax burden so high that even an absolutist communist dictatorship in the third world would seem like a tax haven in comparison.
Although he did not mention all of them, one of the most absurd taxes was the entrance and exit tax of the city. This was not the tax for merchants, which was logical as a way to regulate trade and avoid an excess of markets; rather, people were literally charged every time they entered and left the city.
He was not surprised, then, that most preferred to stay overnight in the cultivated fields rather than return to the city.
Furthermore, the taxes were excessive. Who in their right mind would charge a tax for being born or getting married?! Not even the Holy Inquisition had been so merciless, and his father had told him terrifying horror stories about that religious cult.
The visible trembling in Rose's body transmitted fear to Mr. Han, who regretted having come to apply for the job. His true wish was not to be in charge of collecting those taxes. If forced to do so, he would resign immediately; otherwise, he swore he would make his friends and all the people who had supported him up to his fifty years go through the same terror he experienced month after month.
"I'm going to kill Carter when I see him," he finally said, exhaling a sigh of resignation. Then he looked at the trembling old man in front of him. "We will only collect the ten taxes approved by the Empire of the Rising Sun; at this moment I don't have the exact list, but we will annul all the others."
"Huh?" was all the old man could articulate, his eyes wide with disbelief.
Rose, without answering the unasked question, simply pulled another piece of parchment from his desk and began to write quickly. It was, essentially, a royal notification of the elimination of the abusive taxes. Once finished, he took another much more formal and concise document certifying Mr. Han as the new administrator of the city of Sedena.
"Here, read this in the public square. You can start working tomorrow; you'll begin by helping me square the accounts while I conduct the job interviews."
The old man had originally intended to ask for a small advance on his salary to buy food. However, faced with the honesty of the man in front of him, who had indeed written in his own hand about the abusive taxes that had ended everything, he could only nod, take the parchment with his trembling hands, and leave the office.
[You forgot to give him an advance, genius] Desmos commented dryly.
"I'm not in the mood, Des," Rose complained in his mind.
His original intention was to give them a small advance so they could stock up for the week and thus regain some strength. After all, it was practically impossible to fight or even work on an empty stomach. However, upon learning of the absurd amount of taxes, he completely forgot.
"Does the Empire of the Rising Sun really exist?" a female voice asked.
Rose looked up, surprised to see Mina appear out of nowhere beside him.
"How did you...?" Rose tried to ask, but decided to ignore the question. After all, Mina was a feline therianthrope, and those damned cats were incredibly stealthy.
"Does the empire exist?" Mina asked again.
"Crown Prince Rose, son of the great unifier, at your service," said Rose, who would have bowed to the girl had he been in the mood.
"Why didn't you help us?" Mina insisted. She had not overlooked that he was the silver-eyed prince her mother had told her about. However, for her, who had grown up with those fairy tales about the perfect kingdom beyond the sea, where kings cared for and loved their people, learning that they had been ignored for twenty years was a crushing blow to all her beliefs.
After all, since childhood she had suffered hunger, while the people on the other side of the sea enjoyed the peace and prosperity that the Great Unifier had brought them.
"I was born at the end of the wars of unification, I'm not much older than you, do the math," Rose said dryly.
Honestly, Rose could have comforted her, but once again, he didn't have the mood or the patience to comfort a girl whose childhood hero had fallen from his pedestal. His father, although she loved him, was not perfect; in fact, he was a genocidal. The stories simply magnified his achievements, ignoring his flaws. However, he had made sure that his children knew the true story, because only by knowing it could they be prepared for the future.
Mina, without another word, simply turned around and left.
Upon returning, Mr. Han was still completely bewildered as he reached the center of the city. Once there, the townspeople who had seen him leave for the palace to apply for the bureaucrat position couldn't help but surround him, especially noticing that he was holding a parchment in his hands.
"Mr. Han, what happened? Is the job real?" asked a young woman with genuine concern. After all, she didn't want her father and older brother to end up being enslaved by an unscrupulous noble.
Immediately, more questions like that reached the old man's ears, who was still very moved.
"Please, be quiet," he asked in a barely audible whisper, too affected to raise his voice.
Even so, everyone heard him and immediately fell silent, not understanding why the man who had always been the town's most energetic advocate had lost all his vitality.
"Things have changed this year, truly. The gods have finally smiled upon us with fortune," the man said, slowly raising the parchment in his hands, almost fearing that it would disappear and everything would be just a dream.
Finally, unrolling the parchment, he began to read aloud:
"By decree of my father, the Great Emperor of the Empire of the Rising Sun, I, Crown Prince Rose, through my royal spokesman, proclaim: From this day, the city and barony of Sedena are officially incorporated into the vast and prosperous Empire of the Rising Sun. Consequently, all illegal taxes previously established by the former barons are totally annulled, and only the contributions approved by the Great Empire, of which you are now officially a part, will be collected."
Naturally, the people reacted with absolute disbelief to those words, some of the roughest men even fighting back the tears that threatened to overflow.
"Mr. Han, please, read it again... Are you sure it's not... that everything... they... they finally came?" said the same young woman from the beginning, with total incredulity.
Mr. Han, without saying a word, proceeded to read the royal decree again, word for word. He couldn't reproach them for their skepticism; after all, for almost twenty years they had waited in vain for the promised help from the lands overseas. They had believed in the fairy tales about the great empire, clinging to the hope that someday they would come to rescue them.
Naturally, upon finishing the reading, many couldn't help but fall to the ground, sobbing, overwhelmed by various emotions. They wept for their losses: fathers, mothers, children, siblings... They cursed and thanked in equal measure. If the Prince of the Rising Sun had truly come to save them, then, finally, they could afford to recover something they had lost a long time ago:
Hope.
End of chapter.