Chapter 44
At the news that he was now legally an adult, Akion…
“Thank you all very much for celebrating my birthday. Then I’ll go back to researching─.”
The moment the birthday celebration ended, he tried to get back to his overdue research.
“Seize that rascal.”
“Gweh.”
Naturally, they caught him.
Completely defeated in physical strength, Akion,
“Is research all you ever think about, Young Master?!”
“Let’s see what you think when you’re dead drunk, you little brat!!”
“Since Akion is an adult now… ahem, as his fiancée, I suppose I have to take responsibility for him until he goes to bed.”
He had to keep accepting cups of alcohol as punishment for the birthday boy trying to run away from his own party.
And at some point. Akion’s memory suddenly cut out….
- Chirp chirp!
“…….”
When he came to, it was morning.
Along with a terrible headache.
“Ugh, my head….”
In his previous life, Akion had downed plenty of alcohol at company dinners and the like.
Even then, he had possessed an iron will that never let him black out….
- Jingle jingle!
He never thought he would black out for the first time in this life.
For now, Akion rang the bell to call his assigned attendant.
- Creak.
“Goldie. Sorry, but get me a glass of cool water, quickly─.”
Goldie was his assigned attendant,
“Why is your face so red?”
“Ahh, well, you seeee….”
Goldie came into the room with her face bright red.
“It’s nothing. Anyway! G-good morning… Young Master, did you sleep well?”
For reference, when the morning bell rang, Goldie normally kicked the door halfway open and shouted, ‘G’morning!!’
In other words, this shy Goldie was not normal.
Goldie kept her head bowed, sneaking glances at Akion, then hiding her face in embarrassment again.
It was rather cute, but Akion was suddenly seized by a single uneasy thought.
“Goldie….”
“Yeees….”
“Did I perhaps do something improper to you while I was drunk last night?”
He wondered whether he had done something inappropriate while dead drunk.
In response to Akion’s exceedingly polite question, Goldie….
- Fidget fidget.
“You cherished Goldie… very, very much….”
She wiggled her fingers like a girl in love.
“I see. So what exactly was this act─.”
“Eek! Young Master, you pervert!”
When he asked her for details, Goldie blushed and hurriedly ran away.
By this point, he could guess what had happened.
“Don’t tell me I did something awful while drunk?!”
Akion went pale and hurriedly dashed out of the room.
*
“Magi Tower Master! Magi Tower Master!!”
Before blacking out, Akion had heard that the Magi Tower Master and all the other guests would be staying at the estate.
If so, the Magi Tower Master should still be somewhere in the mansion.
Believing that the Magi Tower Master would surely explain what had happened,
“Magi Tower Master!!”
Akion finally found the Magi Tower Master and Aisirel in the garden.
“Magi Tower Master, Noona Aisirel! What on earth happened yesterday─!!”
“Go away.”
“What?”
But the normally kind Magi Tower Master had ordered him to leave!
As Akion imagined how terribly rude he must have been to the Magi Tower Master while drunk, cold sweat began pouring down his face….
“W-well, don’t go….”
“……Yes, well.”
Aisirel, sitting beside her, was telling him not to leave.
Akion had no idea which tune he was supposed to follow.
Since the Magi Tower Master had not objected to Aisirel’s opinion, Akion sat in the chair opposite them.
The sharp-eyed Magi Tower Master frowned,
“Why are you sitting across from me?”
“Pardon?”
She suddenly opened up some space between herself and Aisirel, who had been sitting right beside her,
“Sit here. Hurry.”
“Yes… well….”
and urged him to sit between them.
Not knowing the circumstances, Akion was nothing but confused.
- Rustle….
A damp breeze blew in, heralding the approach of summer, and
“Akion.”
“Yes, Magi Tower Master.”
“You… seem to need to exercise a little restraint.”
The Magi Tower Master gave him a heartfelt admonition.
The problem was that Akion had no idea what he was supposed to restrain himself from doing.
“What… do you think women are? Hoo….”
“I’m sorry…?”
“Even if I may look young on the outside, to say something like that….”
Judging from her appearance, Akion’s drunken behavior seemed to have consisted of vulgar remarks, and the Magi Tower Master appeared more embarrassed than offended.
“So long as she’s young and firm, that’s all that matters?! Wh-what kind of vulgar expression is that?!”
“I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t merely vulgar; apparently, it had been outright sexual harassment.
Akion immediately stood up and tried to bow his head to the ground.
“Sit down!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And then, and then…! Even if you were drunk, you and I aren’t even married yet…!!”
Naturally, she forced him back into his seat,
and Akion was at a loss as he watched the Magi Tower Master grow increasingly embarrassed.
But what did she mean by ‘yet’? That only made him more anxious,
“You stroked my cheeks and shoulders and wrapped your arms around my waist… Such shamelessness…! Hngh….”
He had stroked her cheeks and shoulders, then even wrapped his arms around her waist?
Akion felt all the color drain from his face.
If the Magi Tower Master had been an ordinary noble lady with a fiancé,
Akion would have been rude enough to receive a duel challenge from her fiancé.
“I-I don’t like men who are so loose with their words! Do you understand?!”
Akion nodded vigorously to show that he would remember.
He would never do it again!!
“But you liked it too, Magi Tower Master.”
“W-w-whaaat, what nonsense are you spouting?! Aisirel!!”
He froze at Aisirel’s revelation in the middle of all that.
The Magi Tower Master had liked it?
The harassment Akion had inflicted on her?
By this point, Akion’s mind had gone blank.
“I remember it clearly. When Akion said you couldn’t let the passage of time steal your maturity and beauty, and stroked the Magi Tower Master’s cheek, his eyes were practically dripping with honey… Eek!”
“S-shut up! How dare you slander a dragon?! And you were grinning idiotically when Akion said the same thing to you!”
And as the two older women fiercely argued over him, Akion felt an overwhelming exhaustion.
“I’ll apologize for this for years to come, so could you please vacate the area now─.”
“Take that back, Aisirel! Take back your lie that I liked it!!”
“You might as well kill me! For that moment, the Magi Tower Master had the face of a woman─ Eek! Don’t pull my hair!”
Caught between the two of them, Akion wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed.
* * *
“Shameless bastard.”
“Is that an insult, a compliment, or an insult directed at my elder brother?”
Akion got an earful at today’s Enersis family meeting.
Unlike the sulky Akion, Count Delphord, the very person being called shameless, was merely grinning.
“All three.”
“A father is insulting his own son. Good grief, out of spite, I’ll marry into Volkov.”
Delphord had witnessed all of Akion’s harem-like maneuvers the previous night.
Drunk Akion had flirted by relying on his looks, much like Juan,
but at least he had not shown any intention of using and discarding the women he had touched.
In that respect, he was far better than Juan, but….
“Son. This father doesn’t mind if you have many daughters-in-law. The more descendants there are to carry on the family line, the better.”
“Father.”
“Heh heh, I understand. I’ll stop.”
Still, he couldn’t resist teasing him.
Delphord stopped immediately when he saw Akion’s murderous expression.
“So… today’s topic is going to be choosing and focusing.”
It was time to get to work now.
There were currently three projects underway in Enersis.
“The industrialization of clothing, as ordered by His Majesty the Emperor.”
First, there was the automation and industrialization of clothing production commissioned by Emperor Theodore Pendragon.
The scale was enormous, but it was actually a project measured in years, since they had to establish an entirely new industrial system spanning cotton harvesting, processing, and clothing production.
“Wouldn’t it be better to postpone this for now?”
“I agree as well, my lord.”
“Hmm. Since the head steward agrees too, let us follow Akion’s opinion.”
This was something the Emperor knew about as well, so they decided to move it down the priority list for the time being.
Second was the construction of a VIP public sauna for noble visitors.
“Son. You don’t need to be involved in this, do you?”
“Honestly, I think it could be handled if I just put one or two workshop employees in charge.”
“Then your mother and I will oversee it. We’ll need to pay attention to hosting the guests, too.”
“I’d be grateful if you did.”
They would have to consider everything from the materials to the guests’ routes through the facility, but this was originally the sort of household support traditionally handled by the lady of a noble house.
In that respect, Countess Lucretia was worthy of being called the queen of household management. She would be quite helpful in designing the VIP routes.
Finally, the third project.
“A machine that gives massages in place of a masseur, huh.”
“Hmmm. I wonder whether magi-engineering can truly imitate the hands that give a massage….”
The Empress Dowager’s special request.
A machine that would let her receive a massage whenever she wanted one, using the power of a machine rather than a person.
“There are several types….”
“There are?!”
In fact, there were many types.
Low-frequency therapy devices, massage chairs, and waterbeds called aquabeds, among others.
There were all sorts of devices that elderly people might enjoy.
“If that’s true… ahem, Young Master. If it has been completed, perhaps I could use it first to check whether there are any dangerous points─.”
“Ahem, Head Steward. How dare you step ahead of the head of the household!”
“I’ll set aside ones for the estate’s people separately, so please don’t fight.”
“Hahaha! Then I shall entrust this matter to you completely!”
Everything could be solved with the technology Akion had developed so far.
*
There was, however, a problem.
“How are we supposed to create massage patterns?”
There was no good way to implement all the patterns found in physical therapy devices.
In modern times, this was controlled by semiconductor chips and software, but Akion had not yet secured that level of technology.
“Repetitively….”
If so, he would have to implement it through physical means.
It was easy to say, but how could he keep inputting such patterns over and over again?
“Hmm hmm~ Hmm~”
- ♪~♬
The solution had actually been nearby all along.
As Akion paced around the garden while pondering the problem, he spotted Aisirel listening to a music box in one corner of the garden.
“Noona, is that a music box?”
“That’s right. Mother gave it to me for my tenth birthday.”
A wind-up music box.
A rotating cylinder─that is, a cylinder with pegs hammered into it according to a pattern─was turned by the rotational energy stored in a spring, causing it to strike the music box’s bells.
It was a traditional physical pattern drum, said to have been used in carillons at places like European cathedrals.
Exaggerating a little, one could call it the first form of programming.
- ♪~♬
“The tone is pretty, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
As he listened to Aisirel’s blue-green music box humming, Akion put his brain into overdrive.
Tapping, pressing, and other forms of acupressure.
Such patterns could be implemented using the low-pin cylinder, or pin drum, used in music boxes.
“Noona.”
“Hmm?”
- Hug!
“Thank you!”
“Wh-what?! A-all of a sudden?!”
Akion was as delighted as Archimedes must have been when he discovered the principle of buoyancy through the overflow of water.
Leaving Aisirel behind with her face bright red from the sudden hug, he immediately returned to the workshop and threw himself into the work.
“A music box? Is that even possible?”
“Was a miniature motor for handheld fans impossible?”
“Damn it, don’t refute me with facts!”
This project required an incredible degree of precision, comparable to that of a miniature motor.
It became so complex that even craftsmen experienced in high-precision work were left speechless.
“We’re going with the aquabed!”
“So, what you’re saying is this, Young Master? We make a warm waterbed that doesn’t leak at all, then lay over a hundred pipes beneath it that spray high-pressure water, and have them open and close according to the cylinder’s pattern?”
And above all, Akion chose an aquabed instead of a massage chair.
A massage chair would become far too complicated, so he decided to use boiler pressure to make it tap from beneath the bed instead. The pressure would be easy to control, too.
A massage chair was practically mandatory in a bathhouse, but Akion had no choice but to postpone it.
Anyway, a massage bed using boiler pressure?
In theory, it was possible.
In theory.
“Young Master. May I say one thing?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
They would have to lay over a hundred sturdy, fine pipes beneath the bed, capable of withstanding hot boiler pressure approaching ultrahigh pressure,
the leather bed forming the base could not be allowed to leak even a drop of water,
and multiple cylinders would have to be arranged by pattern to control the opening and closing of the fine pipes and regulate the pressure.
Without a single leak anywhere??!
“You might as well tell me to fetch a phoenix egg from the one said to hide atop the Eastern Mountains!”
“I can’t do it, absolutely not!”
“Akion, you crazy bastard! How are we supposed to build this!!”
It was difficult enough to make the workshop craftsmen brave enough to overcome even the difference in social rank.
It was the sort of project that naturally brought the words, ‘Young Master, are you in your right mind?’ to their lips.
In response to the workshop employees’ entirely reasonable outburst this time, Akion merely gave them a genial smile.
“I’m going to research it with you, aren’t I? And if I tell you to do it?”
“We do it. Damn it….”
“Looks like we won’t be going home for a while….”
But it was not impossible.
Akion knew that anything was possible as long as the word ‘impossible’ was not attached to it.
Raising the odds of making it possible was the job of clever researchers like himself.
“Caw. Gweeeek, croooak!”
“Eek, ki-ki-ki! Screech!”
And so Akion’s Workshop entered crunch mode.
The assigned cleric watched sorrowfully as he tended to the collapsed workshop employees, who were turning into beasts while clinging to their research equipment.
“Are you asleep?”
“Ghk, guh.”
“You are… Fine. Then I suppose the right to produce magic tools is off the table….”
“I was already awake!!”
And as he watched an employee leap upright the moment he received treatment in response to Akion’s threat(?)
‘Lord of Heaven, please watch over these people.’
he prayed inwardly that those doing good work would not die.
He only prayed.
His job was just to heal them, after all.
* * *
And so, after roughly two weeks of crunch mode comparable to a vision of hell,
“Ugh.”
Akion laid his dark-circle-rimmed body down on a brown leather bed.
- Squish~!
“Haaaaah….”
Warm water flowed beneath the bed’s leather, making his body relax in no time.
He felt as though he could fall asleep at any moment, but verification came first.
- Click. Click.
Akion pressed the [Full-Body Massage] and [Acupressure] buttons sticking out beside the bed,
- Fwoooosh─.
- Presssss~!
“Haaaaah.”
He enjoyed the warm, high-pressure water acupressure that spurted from the hundred-plus pipes laid beneath the bed according to their patterns.
“Young Master, how is it?”
“…….”
“Young Master…? Did he fall asleep?”
“Looks like it.”
It was so comfortable that even Akion, the master of staying up all night, was sent straight to dreamland.
- Zzz… zzz….
“It must be pretty good if it put him to sleep. Damn Young Master.”
“He sleeps so soundly he’s snoring after grinding us down like this. Bastard Young Master.”
“I’m not asleep.”
“Gasp.”
“Gasp.”
Of course, he woke up immediately when he heard them badmouthing him. Anyway.
The technology was somewhat outdated, but Akion had completed the warm-water bed found in modern physical therapy rooms.
notes