Chapter 65
#65화 Phantom Thief Dauphin (9) - Two Unnamed People
Dahlia thought.
Calm down. She had to calm down.
The man in front of her was an ordinary civilian she was supposed to protect as a guard, and also her benefactor who had helped her out of a tight spot.
Even if his words were a little extreme and his ideas seemed somewhat dangerous, that alone was no reason to shout or browbeat him.
“In my opinion, modesty and respect are born from fear of the other person. The moment you look down on someone and think they can’t do anything to you, humans will commit absurdly cruel acts without hesitation. In other words, if they feel fear, humans can be humble. Therefore, I propose this law: 『It is not a crime to smash a rude bastard’s skull in with an axe』! What do you think? Isn’t it a good law for teaching people to respect one another?”
Her father, whom she respected, had not said that.
Dahlia’s natural constitution was so unusual that if she lost control of her emotions and ran wild, it could become a serious problem.
So she had to cultivate patience and composure.
Compared to all the insults, gossip, and subtle ostracism she had endured in the guard force, conversation like this was nothing.
In the first place, there was no need to take it seriously.
If she just let it go normally, that would be the end of it...
“Proper procedure and fairness can be terribly troublesome. Those with power use them to dodge responsibility this way and that, while the victims can only watch helplessly and cry tears of blood. So just smash the bad guy first! If the ending leaves everyone thrilled and applauding, what’s the big deal about ignoring procedure a little?”
“I’m telling you, seriously!!”
Dahlia was irritated.
She was irritated beyond measure.
“What? Make someone cry and it’s the death penalty? Are you trying to turn the whole city into a ghost town? Knights have it easy! They wouldn’t even need swords—they could just carry garlic or onions and rub them in someone’s eyes, and that would be their finishing move!”
“Oh-ho, that’s an important point. Indeed, we’ll need a safeguard against fake tears.”
“That’s not the point! I’m being sarcastic!!”
The man stroked his chin and went, “Hmm...” before asking in return.
“But if all you’re doing is pointing out problems, anyone can do that. If punishing people who commit wrongdoing indiscriminately is no good, then how exactly should they be punished?”
“That would naturally be by observing the law and procedure—”
“So I’m asking you what law.”
The man leaned forward, his eyes gleaming.
“I told you, law game. Suppose there were no existing laws or order at all—nothing like the kingdom’s law, or the city’s law. By what law should people be punished and protected? What do you think?”
“That’s...”
For a moment, Dahlia was at a loss for words.
In the first place, being asked to create and determine laws was not something an ordinary individual could casually discuss.
There was no way she could answer on the spot.
“You can’t answer, can you? Then I suppose we really should just execute all the bad guys.”
Whatever happened to the calm, gentlemanly demeanor from before, the man was now needling her as if he had won, and veins bulged on Dahlia’s forehead.
'If she were asked to create a perfect law that no one could object to,' Dahlia thought, she would probably never be able to say a single word for the rest of her life.
But at least in this moment, she could think of a law that would refute this man’s wildly reckless logic. No, she had to think of one.
“If you execute every bad guy, then the thief and the murderer are treated exactly the same. Punishment has to be divided according to the severity of the crime and handed down accordingly.”
“Hmm, so a man who steals has his hand cut off, a liar has his tongue cut out, and a murderer is killed in the same way. Something like that?”
“That’s too narrow in scope, and every single one of them is extreme. Why are you so eager to see blood?”
“But if the punishment is too light, won’t everyone just look down on it? First the penalty has to be severe, then people will at least be afraid enough to restrain themselves, won’t they?”
“That is, um...”
Dahlia racked her brains for a moment.
Her father had been a knight, but a knight in name only; in terms of living standards, he was just a highly skilled wanderer.
Dahlia, raised under such a father, had never received any proper education, and therefore lacked both erudition and refinement.
But she had experience.
Traveling around with her father, she had seen what kinds of things made people cry out in grievance, and in her life as a guard she had also seen how much bad law could torment people.
Based on those experiences, Dahlia fell into thought.
The stronger the punishment, the more criminals will hold back.
What the man had just said did not seem all that wrong, at least not on its face.
However, the side effects were just as serious.
“It may be a little different from law itself, but I’ve seen both lands ruled by a gentle lord and lands ruled by a strict lord.”
“Amazing. So there was actually such a creature as a gentle lord in the Kingdom of Birk?”
“...There was! One in a hundred, maybe! And that’s not the important part, so listen to the end!!”
“Yes.”
After clearing her throat a few times, Dahlia said.
“A gentle lord gave even wrongdoers a chance, while a strict lord would hand down the harshest punishment without mercy once someone committed a crime. At first glance, the latter seems safer from crime, but what I actually saw was different. Because even petty offenses were punished with maximum severity, criminals who had nothing left to lose actually acted out even more.”
“Hmm, is that all? You need to leave them some way out?”
“There’s also the fact that judgments can be wrong. A man was denounced as a thief and had his wrist cut off, but later it turned out he wasn’t the culprit. But a wrist that’s been cut off never comes back. So making punishments universally severe isn’t good. It can create innocent victims.”
The man seemed to consider it for a moment, and Dahlia swallowed without realizing it, tense.
And then the man nodded.
“Indeed, there is some merit to that.”
“R-right?”
Dahlia’s face visibly brightened.
Come to think of it, she had merely gotten a positive reaction out of a man, but for some reason that made her incredibly happy.
But only for a moment.
“However, I still think that crimes committed directly are evil, but enabling them or implicitly siding with them is just as bad. In other words, shouldn’t everyone involved be punished as criminals too? If the main culprit gets the death penalty, at the very least one of the accomplices should lose a limb.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
Before long, the man started saying infuriating things again, and Dahlia charged at him with a growl.
“Do you think people would actively stop crime if you did that? The opposite! They’d just keep quiet because they’d be afraid of getting punished too! It’d make catching criminals even harder!”
“I see? Then how about this?”
Even after that, the man proposed various hypothetical situations and sought Dahlia’s agreement, and Dahlia argued back against them.
Of course, it was not easy.
The man knew far more than Dahlia did, and at times he even pointed out contradictions or loopholes in what Dahlia had always taken as “obvious.”
In the face of the man’s eloquence, Dahlia was usually on the back foot or barely holding on by gritting her teeth, but even so, whenever she managed to pierce his logic and push her own opinion through, the satisfaction she felt was beyond words.
It didn’t matter what the kingdom’s law said, or what had to be done in Revbruk.
In the hypothetical questions she discussed with the man, only Dahlia’s own will, convictions, and conscience served as the standard.
Dahlia suddenly remembered that the man had called this a “game.”
She had to admit it.
The ability to confidently insist that what she believed was right was, in fact, right was fun in itself.
“Hoo...”
After talking with passionate enthusiasm for quite some time, Dahlia leaned back in her chair and let out a deep sigh.
The pleasant holiday was, before she knew it, drawing to a close, and the time for her to return was drawing near as well.
Because of that, Dahlia couldn’t help feeling a little bitter.
“You don’t look well. Is something troubling you?”
At the man’s question, Dahlia hesitated.
If she had been her usual self, she would have brushed it off with a light 'nothing’s wrong.'
But after pouring out something she had long pressed down in her heart, Dahlia wanted to savor that relief a little longer.
“I’ll admit it. It really was fun. But what does it matter? After all, whatever we talk about here has no connection to reality.”
Neither her judgment, nor her verdict, nor even her sense of right and wrong had any meaning in the real world.
No matter how fiercely Dahlia agonized over it or how desperately she forced out an answer, it would have no influence on the judgments and conclusions handed down by the city’s upper ranks.
If it was just a game, perhaps it was enough for it to simply be fun.
Knowing that, the fundamentally earnest Dahlia nevertheless felt an inexplicable pang of regret.
And then the man replied.
“You can’t simply decide that something is useless just because it’s a game. It may be difficult to put into practice right away, but at the very least, couldn’t you use it as a standard for judgment when you someday encounter something similar?”
“What’s the point of a standard you can’t even use?”
“At the very least, you can clearly decide, ‘If it were me, I would have done this in that situation.’ Rather than just feeling vague, sticky feelings without any clear conclusion, it’s far more refreshing to simply decide on an answer.”
“To draw a conclusion, huh.”
Dahlia closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again.
And then she bowed her head slightly to the man.
“...Thank you for today. I should be going now.”
“Your manner of speech has come back to normal, I see? I didn’t dislike the version from just now, either.”
“I like to keep work and personal matters separate.”
In other words, from here on out it was the realm of 'official business.'
“I won’t ask your name. And I’ll pretend I never heard what you told me.”
That was Dahlia’s own little kindness, and also a way of deceiving herself.
So that, even if the man’s identity really was the 'he' Dahlia suspected, she could at least leave him be for today.
“That’s good. Then, on the ‘next’ time as well, I shan’t ask the young lady’s name. This has its own charm too, which I quite like.”
And just like that, the man lightly stepped over the line Dahlia had drawn and kissed the back of her hand.
Dahlia’s breath stopped for an instant.
“The next time?”
“Oh? Surely you don’t mean to end this after just one day of talking to repay my kindness? You’ll have to keep me company a few more times in the future. Hahaha! This is why one mustn’t accept another person’s kindness so easily!”
At the man’s teasing words, Dahlia’s fingertips trembled.
“...Well, I do have to repay the favor, so I can keep you company a few more times.”
Even knowing it was an obvious excuse, Dahlia pretended not to notice and accepted it.
“Then until next time, my earnest young lady whose name I still don’t know.”
“I look forward to seeing you again, Mr. Mysterious Trickster.”