The Suggestion Box

"Hmm-hmm-hmm-hmm~"

"You're in an unusually good mood."

"What can I say? It's Valentine's Day today."

"I'm not giving you any. I'd rather eat it myself than give it to you."

"I thought you'd say that, so I made some myself."

"So you're planning to be the one giving it out?"

"I've made some for you, Goddess-sama, but I made sure to prepare plenty for myself, too."

"You made chocolate for yourself?"

"No, if I make chocolate in your space, can't I think of it as chocolate you gave me?"

"That's a pretty advanced line of reasoning. I'll refrain from showing any signs of understanding."

"Even a goddess can't easily stop me from convincing myself that I got this chocolate from you, Goddess-sama."

"I think I could stop you by sticking electrodes into your brain, fiddling with it, and using various chemicals."

"That's merciless. I was hoping you'd let me get away with that much."

"If the pheasant had kept quiet, it wouldn't have been shot. Anyway, I'll decide based on how the portion you offer me tastes."

"I think it'll be fine. Speaking of Valentine's Day, they don't have it in other worlds, do they?"

"Without Valentinus, who was a Christian priest, there wouldn't be a Valentine's Day event. Whether chocolate was available would be another question."

"Whether chocolate existed varied, but there wasn't a time in that other world when Valentinus was a priest."

"There was a Valentinus?"

"There was. He was a farmer who grew daikon radishes."

"Sounds like people would end up giving pickles for Valentine's Day."

"In another world, Valentinus-san was a comedian."

"Was that when you reincarnated into an awkward atmosphere?"

※ As mentioned in Chapter 15.

"Man, he was a tough opponent."

"I haven't heard about that, but perhaps I should look into the comedy scene in that world sometime."

"Even in worlds without Valentine's Day, there was still a custom of giving presents."

"People want an occasion to express their gratitude or feelings to someone, after all."

"That's true. The very idea of giving sweet chocolate to men feels like some baffling Japanese corporate marketing strategy."

"Maybe it's about wanting to give them sweet feelings, or something like that."

"I feel like men would prefer salty snacks over sweet ones."

"It depends on personal preference, but I think more women than men like chocolate."

"I don't have any likes or dislikes, so I'm fine with any flavor."

"Then shall I give you a cacao pod?"

"It doesn't look like it's been processed at all. But if there's a chance of getting something from you, Goddess-sama, even through a joke like that, I can't help thinking it's worth a shot."

"Well, then I'll have you make chocolate from it, and I'll eat it."

"I see. Very efficient. The chocolate's ready."

"Then I'll have a taste... You're really good at this sort of thing."

"A long life means plenty of opportunities to learn. I practice making most things that are simple enough."

"I don't think human lives are that long, but with a taste like this, I'll let you off the hook."

"Yes! Now I'll have plenty to daydream about all day."

"But it's time for your reincarnation in another world."

"Damn it, I'd forgotten."

"Draw a prompt and get out of this world already."

"I guess I have to be satisfied with having given you chocolate, Goddess-sama. All right, rummage, rummage... From Zantetsu-san: 'The Suggestion Box.'"

"The Suggestion Box, huh? That'll do."

"This one, right? If becoming this suggestion box counts as reincarnation, I might be willing to give it a try."

"It doesn't count. This is an otherworldly reincarnation, so you'll be leaving for another world either way."

"Can't be helped. Let's decide on the options for now. Um, this one and this one... I wonder if there's any World Tree wood available."

"You're pretty particular about materials."

"I can manage with whatever combat skills I end up with, so appearance and material are about the only things I can care about."

"I wonder how good your combat skills actually are by now."

"Want to find out? Though, while I was saying that, I got turned to charcoal."

"You picked a bad opponent. Well then, off you go. I'll make sure to finish off the rest of the chocolate."

"At least let me have a bite."

"It's delicious, so no."

◇

"I've got this year's ready, too... Now then."

"I'm back."

"Oh, so it didn't work out after all."

"Unfortunately not."

"These days I don't even feel disappointed anymore. Let's hear your report. This time it was simply a suggestion box, right?"

"Yes. I was a suggestion box installed in a certain kingdom."

"A suggestion box in a kingdom? That's pretty unusual."

"Yes. The queen's name was Rayuste, and she was an extremely cautious person. She installed a suggestion box to find out what her people wanted from their country in their daily lives and what they were dissatisfied with. That was me."

"I'm so used to this by now that I don't even find the flow of 'That was me' strange anymore."

"By the way, here's a picture of me, installed in a corner of the town square. Rayuste is standing beside me."

"Hmm, a queen with a lovely figure... And you're a fairly large, but otherwise ordinary, suggestion box. I suppose a suggestion box in a fantasy world wouldn't have the kanji for 'suggestion box' written on it."

"Instead, there was a sign beside me that said, 'We cannot take up every suggestion, but we will read them all. Please write down any complaints about this country or anything you would like it to do, and put them inside. However, submissions at night are not accepted.'"

"Few people would be able to speak openly to the queen, but an anonymous suggestion box might have drawn a fair number of submissions. I'm a little curious about the ban on nighttime submissions, though."

"Yes, people submitted things pretty often. Things like a sewer being blocked somewhere, or how so-and-so next door was always fighting at night and making too much noise."

"The country could deal with a blocked sewer, but having it intervene in neighborhood disputes sounds like a nuisance."

"We just gave them a discreet warning, but it worked pretty well."

"Well, it was like reporting to the country that someone was causing trouble."

"My work was more popular than I expected, and Rayuste's approval rating rose steadily, if modestly."

"It wasn't exactly your work, but installing the suggestion box did seem to have its uses."

"But as more people started submitting things, we also got more unreasonable demands and strange requests."

"Your suggestion box mostly gets strange requests anyway."

"Things like 'Triple my salary' or 'Could the queen show a little more skin?'"

"So there are people like you, too."

"As it happens, the person who submitted the latter request had to pay a fine for disrespecting the queen the next day."

"So the anonymity wasn't working. Did they have some way of dealing with that?"

"Yes. Rayuste had a way to find out who submitted what."

"Hmm. In a fantasy world, I imagine they could use magic or something."

"Nope."

"A conventional method might be to have soldiers or someone else hiding in the square, keeping an eye on the box at all times."

"Hmm, close, but not quite."

"I see. Was it handwriting analysis, then?"

"No, not that either."

"Thinking calmly about it, something unexpected is probably coming, so why don't you just tell me?"

"Rayuste was always inside the suggestion box."

"She's a terrible queen. What about her day-to-day work?"

"Rayuste was an excellent queen. She assigned the right people to the right positions without wasting resources, minimizing the work she had to do herself and making time to hide in the suggestion box. She took care of whatever daily work remained at night."

"Even though she was that capable, she was constantly hiding inside a suggestion box?"

"She was raised as a sheltered girl, after all."

"That's not what 'sheltered' means here."

"Rayuste had always liked cramped places, like boxes, and disliked interacting with other people. For her, working as the person inside the suggestion box was incredibly comforting."

"So she really did have a habit of getting into boxes?"

"There were cushions and air-conditioning inside, so it was surprisingly comfortable."

"I can imagine a child enjoying that sort of secret hideout, but I wonder how it worked for a queen."

"She made the most of it."

"There are some unusual people out there."

"I made the most of it, too."

"There were some unusual things, too. Here, eat this charcoal."

"Amazing. That's unmistakably charcoal. Well, I'll take it."

"It's unsettling that you can eat charcoal without hesitating."

"Given what's happened so far, I thought I'd be treated much more harshly, so this much is fine. I'd like some water, though."

"You can have water with charcoal dissolved in it."

"Yay!"

"Your lewdness really never goes away."

"You say that, but there's a beautiful, shapely queen relaxing inside me. What kind of man wouldn't react to that?"

"When your head is already that messed up, it's not a question of being a man or anything else. Besides, you're a box, so you don't have a gender, do you?"

"Rayuste listened to all sorts of opinions from her people through the suggestion box and granted their wishes, but she sometimes lamented that there were wishes she couldn't fulfill."

"Were there any besides tripling someone's salary?"

"Things like, 'Please heal my sister's eyes; she's lost her sight.'"

"Depending on how advanced magic was, that might have been difficult in that world."

"Yes. Magic existed, but only a tiny fraction of people could use it. It was a miraculous art. Medicine was barely developed, either."

"She would have wanted to grant the wish if she could, but I suppose it was impossible."

"But the boy who submitted that wish didn't do it just once. He kept putting the same request into the suggestion box, again and again."

"The person inside must have felt terribly awkward."

"Then one day, the boy brought his blind sister right to the suggestion box and asked for help. Rayuste wanted to grant his wish, but she had a complicated look on her face."

"Experiences like that would make a queen want to give up hiding inside a box."

"Yes, so I healed his sister's eyes with magic right in front of the boy."

"You casually used a miraculous art."

"As it happens, one of my options was the ability to 'grant wishes submitted inside me.'"

"That seems like a dangerous feature for a suggestion box. But with that option, wouldn't you also end up granting requests like tripling someone's salary or making the queen show more skin?"

"It's fine. For the salary request, I increased the number of coins and tripled their weight."

"That's a rather twisted bit of wordplay."

"I made Rayuste's long skirt end five centimeters above her knees."

"You can hardly call that a long skirt anymore. You granted that one very literally."

"I was free to decide how to grant a wish, and I could also choose not to grant it at all."

"I see. So you shortened the queen's skirt of your own free will."

"Yes."

"Have some more charcoal."

"This might mean a stomachache later."

"Charcoal is good for you."

※ Some cultures eat charcoal, including in Japan.

"This charcoal doesn't look like it has much nutritional value, though."

"I just burned some random stuff to make it. Don't worry, I have edible charcoal made from food, too."

"I see. If it was made from food, I can eat it. Another glass of water, please."

"Here you go. I stirred in plenty of charcoal."

"I'll try to think of it as better than nothing, since it's wet. Anyway, things were going well with the wishes, but whenever you perform a miracle, word spreads quickly. Submissions to the suggestion box started increasing rapidly."

"If people hear about a suggestion box that grants wishes, they'll try putting something in it."

"Rayuste granted reasonable wishes, but she couldn't grant the ones that were purely selfish."

"But humans can't resist wishing for things when they know miracles are possible."

"So I decided to grant those wishes according to my own interpretation."

"I have a bad feeling about this."

"First: 'I want to get rich without working.'"

"There are people who want to profit without paying a price."

"I forced the person to change jobs and made them a miner in a gold mine."

"Well, that is a job that gets you gold."

"Next: 'I want to date that man's girlfriend.'"

"It's common to fall for someone who's already in a relationship, but that's not something you should ask a suggestion box to solve."

"I checked whether they were serious, and they were just a sleazebag, so I put a spell on them that made everything they saw look like that woman."

"That would be a horror show for some people. You'd probably be fine, though."

"If everyone I saw looked like Goddess-sama... Well, I could enjoy that for a while, but in the end, there's only one Goddess-sama for me."

"That's a slightly disappointing answer."

"Next: 'I want to become the strongest.'"

"They have no intention of putting in the effort."

"I put a spell on them that made them think they were the strongest."

"Wouldn't that cause a disaster, depending on the circumstances?"

"I also put a humility spell on them that kept them from acting arrogant, so there weren't any problems with other people."

"Miracles really are being handed out like candy."

"Next: 'I want the queen to show more skin.'"

"That's the person who had to pay a fine for disrespecting the queen, right?"

"I made Rayuste's skirt end twenty centimeters above her knees."

"That brings it down to a micro-mini skirt. You're granting these wishes very literally. Didn't the queen mind?"

"She worried that her clothes might be cursed to always change to that size, so she threw the man who submitted the wish in jail."

"Fair enough."

"But her approval rating went way up."

"That says a lot about the people's character."

"I was satisfied, too."

"More charcoal."

"Heh, charcoal about the size of a whole cake. My mouth is watering."

"No water for you."

"That's a tough break. Anyway, Rayuste found the miracles I was performing strange, so one night she examined me, but I didn't make a peep."

"Did you seal away your ability to talk?"

"No, I wanted to startle her with a loud shout after she'd finished examining me."

"You have a lovely personality."

"Hehe."

"I wasn't complimenting you."

"It was about time I explained things to Rayuste, or things were going to get complicated. I told her that I was a suggestion box with a will of my own and that I could grant the wishes submitted inside me."

"That alone makes you a dangerous suggestion box. You have caused real harm, after all."

"So I explained that I could choose which wishes to grant, and that I had some leeway in how I granted them."

"That makes you less dangerous, but now she'll question you about the skirt length."

"I covered that up by saying it was a curse."

"You lie so casually."

"Well, I thought she might burn me if I admitted the truth right then. I told her something like, 'Any wish made to the queen who created me must be granted as far as possible.'"

"If misfortune falls on the person who made you, you're not exactly safe, either."

"Still, there was almost no actual harm, and Rayuste thought about using me to improve the country. Then she spread a rumor herself."

"Trusting an item that can perform miracles rarely ends well. I wonder if this will be all right."

"She said something like, 'The suggestion box can grant all kinds of wishes. But selfish wishes will bring fitting retribution. Any wish concerning the queen's clothing will be punished without fail.'"

"She's warning people as strongly as she can."

"After that, Rayuste examined each wish as it came in and decided whether to grant it or punish the person. Anyone who tried to get her to show more skin was thrown in jail without hesitation."

"Even after being told punishment was certain, people still tried."

"It was a skirt that ended twenty centimeters above her knees. Men are the sort who think they might get even more if they take a shot."

"That's completely useless information."

"People received all sorts of miracles and grew happier."

"Either way, being able to do things magic couldn't do was groundbreaking."

"Rayuste's neckline gaped wider, the slits in her skirt grew deeper, and her clothes became more and more fluttery."

"Looks like a fair number of people forced their way through. You can have as much charcoal as you like."

"I might literally burst my stomach. But another problem came up. Rayuste had thought that granting wishes would satisfy her people, but submissions kept increasing, and more and more of them were purely selfish. Every day, a long line formed in front of the suggestion box."

"Even when life gets more convenient, people keep wanting even more convenience."

"No matter how much she punished them, people put their own selfish desires first. After going through that over and over, Rayuste realized that granting wishes too easily would ruin people."

"Considering what happened with her clothes, it took her long enough, but she still learned a valuable lesson."

"One day, Rayuste nodded and said, 'All right.' Just as one of her people was about to put a wish in the box, she jumped out. Everyone who had been waiting in the long line saw it happen."

"So she was going to put an end to her life in a box?"

"Rayuste raised her voice and said, 'I have stayed inside this suggestion box, listening to my people's voices and wishes, and trying to grant them whenever I could. But you've given up on granting your own wishes and come to rely on this box instead. I can't bear to watch my people grow depraved because of a suggestion box I installed to make them happy. As of today, this suggestion box is closed.' She was dressed rather scantily as she said it."

"After all the trouble you'd caused her, too."

"But she was quite dignified about it. No matter what, she was a queen. And then I was removed."

"So you thought your life was over."

"No. They'd only removed me, so I was still a suggestion box, and my story continued a little longer. Rayuste took care of me in a storeroom and murmured, 'I thought that if I kept granting only good wishes, the country would surely become a better place. But in the end, I made both the country and its people worse. Does that mean I'm a failure as a ruler?'"

"I think she should worry more about hiding inside a suggestion box and the way she dressed."

"I said, 'Rayuste, you were admirable for making a decision before things reached the point of no return. You understood the true nature of wishes. Their value lies in the strength of people's desire to fulfill them, because that strength can become the fuel that carries them through each day.'"

"Those are nice words coming from a suggestion box that let lust drive it to make her show more skin, but they're true."

"Then I said, 'It's the same with the boy whose sister was blind. Even if I hadn't performed a miracle, he could have turned his kind feelings for his sister into strength and, even if it was difficult, surely led her to happiness. But there's no guarantee that everyone in the country could do the same. Someone like you, who learned this through experience, can guide them.' Rayuste lowered her eyes, looking embarrassed."

"She wasn't embarrassed about her clothes, though."

"Really. She was so sexy, too."

"Here's a final kilogram of powdered charcoal."

"Powder is rough. But first, my final report. I said, 'Even if you seal me away, the day may come when you want to rely on my miracles again. So I'll grant your wish one last time. You know what you want to wish for, don't you?' Rayuste submitted one final wish: 'Please make the suggestion box that grants miracles disappear from this world.'"

"And then you granted her wish and ended your own life."

"Yes. I was made of wood, so I turned to charcoal in no time. I feel like I'm about to turn into charcoal now from eating too much of it, too."

"That's your own fault. You were an accomplice in making wishes too easy to fulfill, so accept your punishment."

"Well, that's true. Rayuste probably went on to become a good ruler, so all's well that ends well. As a souvenir, I brought one of the high-quality cushions she used."

"Hmm, this is a rather refined cushion. ...Oh, there's a piece of paper sticking out of the pocket."

"This is... the paper with Rayuste's final wish on it. It should have burned up."

"Let me see. ...I see. This paper hasn't finished granting its wish yet. There's another wish written in small letters on the back."

"Let's see... 'May the soul of Suggestion Box-san find peace. Thank you.'"

"That's a tough one. Do your best to grant it."

"I'll give it serious consideration."

"You haven't changed, either. As an extra punishment, you're cleaning up the kitchen where you made all that charcoal."

"Sure, sure."

◇

"Oh, this was chocolate turned into charcoal. If I'd savored it a little more... No, it was charcoal, after all. Whatever. Yay!"