/
The sun was shining brightly.
There were various kinds of trays lying here and there on the ground of the royal capital.
Ranged from the small wooden trays to large metal trays.
Some of the trays had the logos of the various companies who produced them.
The most popular of them would be the yellow-colored ones with the ‘Gaurin Headache’ logo on them. Personally, I liked their tasteful design.
There were also trays with advertisements on them, like ‘Monthly Inudo’, ‘Wanko Confectioner’ and ‘Wanko Search Detective Agency’.
The bright blue sky, decorated by the white clouds. The contrast of that with the red roofs, white walls, the shadow of houses, and various trays would often be featured in tourist magazines in the other countries as a ‘summer tradition’ of the Kennel Kingdom.
* * *
The summer cuts incident had finally been resolved and the massive cases of heatstroke had subsided.
With the sound of the wind chimes in the background, the shopkeepers had finally come back to reopen their stores.
In the calm neighborhood of the royal capital, various barbershops, decorated with conspicuous banners that said ‘Hiyashi Dog Service’ could be seen.
‘Hiyashi Dog Service’ was a service that provided the Dog-Kins with a tub of cold water that they could soak themselves in. The service also included ice and shampoo that could be applied to their fur.
Of course, they couldn’t stay inside the water for too long since they could catch a cold, but it was a great way to ward the heat away for a while and make them feel refreshed.
Sometimes they would also served watermelons with a tray.
However, for some reason, they also served unpeeled vegetables and fruits along with the watermelons, which made me concerned about the hygiene…
While life in the Kingdom had finally stabilized, the numbers of foreigners in here were steadily increasing.
Their appearances weren’t much different from the Dog-Kins in their human forms, but when they shapeshifted to their other forms, you could see clearly that they weren’t Dog-Kins.
Those people were refugees from the Empire.
Because of the civil war that occurred in the Empire, the number of refugees was steadily increasing day by day.
In order to temporarily house most of the refugees, a town had been established near the border.
Two of the Ministers, Growley von Rottweiler-sama and Angela Leonberger-sama played a major role in establishing temporary housing at a rapid pace.
The First and Second Division of the Order had also been dispatched there to maintain the town’s security.
Civil servants had been busy preparing visas and immigration forms.
Most of the refugees were Snake-Kins, Crocodile-Kins, and Bird-Kins, along with a few of the Dragon-Kins who tagged along.
There were also Turtle-Kins, which were a minority even in the Empire, they were widely known for their narrow views of the world.[1]
They were known to be laid-back and because of that, a lot of their populations were lost in the mountains near the old Kennel-Humanist borderline.
It was to the point that they almost wiped themselves out of the continent.
And now…
I was holding my head in my hands. My elbows were touching the study desk, made for children, that was placed inside my room.
I told Mars-sama that I needed some time to be alone, so he went outside to help the soldiers out.
In his place, the small dogs of the Fifth Division were the ones who guarded me. I saw their shadows occasionally through the window.
Previously, Mazo von Borzoi-sama, the Head of the Sixth Division gave me precious advice.
‘Treat Dog-Kins as dogs, because we aren’t human.’ It was advice on how to properly discipline the Dog-Kins.
However, before I could apply that advice properly, huge trouble broke out inside the Kingdom.
The refugees and the purists had clashed.
Initially, Leonhardt-sama and the other higher-ups of the Kingdom had decided on how to take care of the refugees who came from the Empire.
“Send the refugees to the Liselotte Continent (temporary name) with large fleets. Those people are a bunch of jobless people that the Empire threw away anyway.”
It was a simple plan.
While it was amazing how easily that they could easily throw the Empire into chaos, but their idea of cleaning after the mess they created was too lackluster.
They were really acting like dogs, randomly digging a hole but never putting in the effort to patch the hole back.
It was also like this during the terrorism case with the Purists as well.
They would rather use brute force than anything to solve their problems.
Especially a certain Marquis who went ahead and said, ‘They are retaliating? It’s a war then.’
But, since they decided on what to do, Mameta-sama, who was in charge of the continent, departed as soon as he received the order. There was a rumor that he actually ran because he was afraid of a certain mongrel, but who knows.
Anyway, as soon as he arrived at the continent, the plan was to discuss the matter with Lobo-sama, the representative of the natives.
The continent’s population was drastically dwindled due to years of war in the past.
Reconstruction was underway, but there was a severe lack of manpower there, especially regarding infrastructure construction.
Therefore, since they had enough food, they could readily accept the immigrants.
However, in reality, things weren’t that simple.
After all, the refugees weren’t homogenous.
Refugees were people too. It wasn’t like they left their homeland because they wanted to.
Rather than suddenly moving to a distant continent, most of them would rather wait in a neighboring country until the fires of war had died down so they could return to their homeland at a moment’s notice. They also planned to limit their relationship with the said neighboring country’s citizens so they could cut them off at any time they wanted.
The Dog-Kins were caught off guard by this, especially the higher-ranking nobles within the Mad Dogs Order since they weren’t expecting that the people who shared this view was in the majority of the refugees.
“Sensei, what does this mean?”
I remembered my conversation with Dr. Schnauzer, I asked that question, then he presented me a book filled with sticky notes.
The title of the book was ‘Good Child’s Severe Domestic Governance IV’.
I had a bad feeling as I flipped through the pages, and in one of them, it said ‘Prioritize the natives, only protect those who are willing to die for Her Majesty. If they show any possibility of rioting, send them back to the Empire. If they insist on coming back here, then when they approach our borders… kya!’
What was that last sentence??
I knew that they would do something terrible like this…
It was that moment when I realized that this country is not a good place for a multi-racial population to reside in.
Aside from that, of course, there was the issue with religion, actually, that was my main concern.
Both the purists and the reptilians started to fight each other.
There were a small number of Purists in the Empire, but they weren’t considered a nuisance by the population since people hated the Dragon-Kins more than them.
However, here, there were a large number of Purists.
Among the refugees, fights broke out among those who escaped into the Humanist territory.
There was that revolt by the Purists last spring…
Because of Dashiba? Maybe? The revolt was resolved.
As a result of this revolt, Leonhardt-sama and the others made an effort to clean up after the Purist (with the instruction manual), the Dog-Kins stopped caring about the Purists’ discriminatory attitude and instead dismissed them by calling them ‘the mongrel’s fans.’
While the Purists softened their attitude towards the Dog-Kin out of respect for my love toward Dashiba.
The sight of the Archbishop visiting the castle with jerky in his hand had become a daily occurrence. Because of that we also succeeded in creating a reasonable distance between the people and their religion, among both the new citizens and the old citizens.
Lord Doberman and the Legal Affair Bureau was also happy that ‘the number of cases of arguments between the Dog-Kins and the Purists has decreased, so we could finally spend more time training our troops.’
But this wasn’t the case with the people from the other countries.
From the perspective of the Alters, the Purists were ‘evil zealots with religion based on racism.’
While from the perspective of the Purists, they antagonize the Alters by saying ‘How dare these inferior races trespass on our land?’
In particular, there were many sparks flying between the belligerent Snake-Kins and Crocodile-Kins and the more radical faction of the Pure Humanist Religion.
While the Empire had many problems, it had also succeeded in controlling the multiracial population by concentrating both its power and hostility toward the Dragon-Kins.
In comparison, our country had only recently been able to find a balance between two races.
We were totally lacking experience in this regard.
According to Seventh Division— Yoch-sama’s information, conversations like this were taking place in various parts of the former Humanist Kingdom territory.
“You Alters before you ask for our help, you should kneel down and say, ‘though we are of the lowly races, please grant us mercy and let us live here even if it’s temporarily.’”
[Huh?! Although we couldn’t defeat the Dragons, we the Snake-Kins and the Crocodile-Kins were still the ruler of this continent (tens of millions ago)! Why would we bow down to you?!]
“Heathens, we have no intention to associate ourselves with the Alters who don’t believe in Dashiba-sama.”
[Who the hell is Dashiba?!]
“I won’t associate with the Alters who don’t show their respect to Dashiba-sama, at least follow his beastly ways, you heathens!”
[Like I said, who the hell is this Dashiba?!]
Then, a huge fight broke out between the Purists and the refugees.
Initially, it was only between a small group of people, but as the number of refugees increased, the number became bigger and the possibility that it would become bigger than this was also high.
I held my head in my hands as I listened to this report.
By the way, I was stepping on Mazo-sama’s head, as I started to think about the matter more.
As long as the majority of this country’s population was the Dog-Kins.
This country should never try to have a multiracial policy.
The ideal policy that this country should take was to have a decent relationship with the neighboring countries instead of invading them or such.
And if the number of the permanent residents that weren’t Dog-Kins increased, there should be a law for them to moderately distance themselves from the Dog-Kins so they could live on with their peaceful lives.
This was all because of the Dog-Kins’ nature, they could be even more radical than the Purists, especially their beliefs of ‘Her Majesty the Queen reign supreme!’, it would surely raise unnecessary conflicts.
All of them have bloody mindsets… Seriously…
Still, as expected, this happened because of their traumatic experience caused by the loss of all the royalty who they adored…
If they were to ask someone to give them affection, I would be the only one who could answer them…
Taking care of each one of them would take a very long time.
Come to think of it, Darius-sama also couldn’t get over the death of Father Abel…
I wonder if it was because their dog’s instinct kicked in so that they felt like this?
Is there some kind of hint?
I’ve been flipping through the journal of my blood father, Abel.
I read and ponder over the contents of the other deceased royalty as well.
My other father who raised me, Cain, once said…
“The best thing to do when you encounter a dog fight is to let them go at it. After all, once one of them gives up, it’ll be over, as long as they settled on who’s at the top of their relationship, they’ll settle down eventually.”
However, the Dog-Kins were starved of the affections that they received from the royalties, and their sense of relationship was going berserk.
The proof of this was that they would use dangerous words like annihilate, kill and murder without batting an eye.
“As a family dog, I think it’s my job to create a perfect environment for Lize-sama to live. If there are people who don’t worship Your Majesty the Queen in this country, they will be treated as parasites, and naturally, we’ll kick them out. It’s for the sake of Lize-sama’s health.”
That was what Leonhardt-sama’s gaze told me back then.
If someone wouldn’t worship the Queen, they would be punished.
The death penalty for them wouldn’t be out of the question too.
Again, I remembered Leonhardt-sama’s pale, yet beautiful face back then when he said those words with his gaze.
—Oh yeah, Leonhardt-sama was still in his sickbed.
After all, he had been overexerting himself with the domestic affairs, the fight with the Empire, his own heatstroke, and many other problems. In the end, he caught pneumonia.
His assistant, Leonberger, and his secretary, Lord Shepherd took over his work temporarily, but, it didn’t take long for them to also be carried on a stretcher and had to stay on their sickbeds.
One after another, issues concerning the refugees rose up and the civil servants were frantically running back and forth, trying to solve them.
Including my stepbrother…
As I was remembering him, there was a knock at the door, and Theresa-san called out to me from behind the door.
“Lize-sama, it’s time for your visit to the Nursery School. Since Mars-sama is currently out with his work, me and the Fifth Division will accompany you instead.”
“Yes, I understand.”
I was unable to do many things in this situation.
Sometimes, I would go to help out the departments that were abnormally busy by comforting the tired personnel, petting the overworked dogs, and taking them personally to the break room. If their body were too big, I would escort them instead.
I also put my stamps on various documents (I used signs at first, but my wrist started hurting after signing for a while, so I changed it to stamps).
This was because some of the civil servants were too lazy to sign or stamp their documents, so they would normally just ink their paws and press them against the documents.
Of course, they would forget to wipe their paws clean afterward and leave their footprints all over the castle floor.
I believe Lord Afghan Hound, the Head of the Military Affairs was one of the culprits. Though considering that he was from the Fourth Division, I understood his behavior.
I heard that both Lord Boxer, the treasurer, and Lord Doberman the Chief of the Legal Affairs Bureau were angry about this, but the dog in question didn’t care about their opinion at all.
What a troublesome dog.
* * *
When I entered through the nursery’s door, which was decorated with lovely paper cutouts, I found three boys bickering with each other.
“My, so energetic.”
Theresa-san who was experienced in taking care of children, smiled at me, despite my confusion.
Normally, whenever I came here, the children would immediately take on their dog form and come rushing at me to play with me.
But, today wasn’t the case.
Instead, they were still in their human form, watching the three bickering boys from afar.
One of the boys was the boy who suffered a nose injury when the terrorists attacked the royal capital a while back, Schrader.
In his human form, his brown hair was bouncing all over the place, and he looked perfectly healthy.
Apparently, he was the son of Lady Angela Leonberger.
The other one, I believe, was Daniel, the son of a high-ranking noble from the former humanist territory.
His father was a moderate of the Purists, and he was currently working at the castle. The boy had blonde hair, and he dressed like a prideful priest.
The last boy was Pluto, he was the son of… the Duke of Hainuwele, another prideful boy.
His pupils were narrowed vertically and his red, fiery hair, was tied up.
Recently, the Duke made his decision to head toward the Empire to quell the civil war. Because the situation in the Empire was still dangerous, he left his wife and children in the Kennel Kingdom. That aside, why would those three be fighting here?
“You Purists are dumb!”
“You reptiles are even dumber!”
“The one who called people dumb is the dumb one, dumb!”
“Do you even know words other than ‘dumb’? What a childish guy!”
The fighting between the Purist and the Dragon-Kin had spread to even the children?!
“Jeez, I don’t understand what are you guys trying to say anymore! Speak in turns! …Ah, it’s Lize-sama!”
The boy with the brown hair immediately turned into a puppy when he noticed me and jumped into my hands. I picked him up as he pressed his head against me vigorously.
…Huh, his fur was shorter than before?
[Lize-sama! Daniel-kun and Pluto-kun keep fighting whenever they are together!]
This other dog who placed her paw on my shoe was Jadwiga, a Pomeranian. Like Schrader, her nose was also injured a while ago.
She had completely recovered now and she was wearing a ribbon with a strand of my hair around her neck as a good luck charm.
I also gave Schrader-kun a strand of my hair, but, his mother, Angela, took it from him for safekeeping since she couldn’t trust her son to not lose it because he was a little bit clumsy.
Anyway, apparently both Daniel and Pluto were affected by the adult of their groups, the radical purists and the racist Dragon-Kins, respectively.
Seriously, they were badly influencing the little kids!
“Both of you, if you keep this up, this will never end, you know?”
[Right! Just duke it out with each other instead, then start your relationship anew!]
[Schrader-kun! If they do that, Pluto-kun would be beaten in one hit!]
The Dragon-Kin would be the one who lost in one hit??
—Well, forget about that for a second.
The two who were quarreling stopped and turned their gaze down after they heard my voice.
“But, I’m not wrong! My dad told me the Purists are crazy!”
“I’m also not in the wrong! My uncle used to say that reptiles are dumb since while their bodies got bigger as they grow older, their brain didn’t! Not only they are slow, but they are also dumb! Pluto especially, is a tiny Dragon-Kin! He isn’t even big, but he is also dumb! There’s nothing good about him!”
“What are you talking about? I’m not tiny!”
Daniel proceeded to show off his overwhelming vocabulary based on cryptic reasoning that was hard to believe that it came from the mouth of a toddler.
Pluto got angry at him and immediately turned himself into a dragon.
…A palm-sized dragon.
C-cute…
The tiny dragon moved his wings and desperately clung to Daniel, in which the latter raised his hand and—
“Wait, no!”
“Kyu!”
With my free hand, my other hand was holding Schrader, I moved to take the tiny dragon away.
Theresa-san and the nurse entered my vision, but they signaled with their eyes that everything was okay.
And they were right, the tiny dragon was startled, but he was safe. His already big eyes looked even bigger as he flapped around.
The other toddler, Daniel was also startled by my loud voice.
He was glaring at me as he retorted.
“Your Majesty, I don’t think it’s appropriate for yourself to get involved in a children’s quarrel. If you are a sensible adult, just let the children decide who win or lose, and then you can protest, take it to court, go on a witch hunt, or whatev–”
“Daniel-kun.”
I called his name with a stern tone.
I held the tiny dragon a little bit tighter so that he wouldn’t fall down before I bend down my knees to look toward the other child’s eyes directly.
“This is not about being a Dragon-Kin or a Purist. Daniel-kun, you went ahead and made fun of someone who is insecure about his size by calling him names over and over. You understand this much, right?”
“…Yes…”
Daniel awkwardly nodded.
I stared at him and admonished him slowly.
“Apologize to him for that, okay? You don’t really need to apologize for anything else, but if you want to keep being friends with everyone, you should never make fun of someone else like that, okay?”
“…”
The tiny dragon in my hand twitched.
I stared at him.
Daniel-kun, also stared at the tiny dragon, struggled to keep his pride in check while whining that his uncle was right for a while, but after some time, he finally said, ‘I’m sorry, I was out of line.’
Schrader, in my other arm, moved around while wagging his tail, saying ‘Yeaaah!!’. It hurt.
…Schrader, you were heavy, please stop moving too much.
At this rate, I’ll accidentally squish this tiny dragon in my other hand.
* * *
After playing with the children who had finally calmed down for a while, I headed home.
I was overwhelmed by those energetic children, so I rode Theresa-san, in her dog form, secretly.
When the male soldiers who greeted us on our way back saw us, they looked at me as if they wanted me to ride them too. Even the medium and small size dogs gave me the same look. Seriously, I can’t, I’ll crush you.
In the first place, only the female Dog-Kins were allowed to carry me.
Theresa-san, Josee-sama, and other women told the men to back off because it was an ‘inappropriate act because she isn’t betrothed yet.’
Theresa-san turned her head and complimented me with a smile on her face.
[That was wonderful, Lize-sama. You were such an amazing big sister.”
“Thank you, Theresa-san, but the children getting influenced by the grownups’ problems…”
[It can’t be helped. We knew it was inevitable the moment we annexed the Humanist. This is something that is bound to happen sooner or later.]
“That’s true, but, if the ships aren’t prepared soon and the situation worsens…”
[Lize-sama, you are overthinking this. Leave everything to the Commander and the Prime Minister, okay?]
“But…”
Toward the troubled me, Theresa-san firmly said.
[Lize-sama is a child too, so, please just leave it to us. If Lize-sama keeps pushing herself like this, you’ll get sick, you know?]
“Yes… but, my duty—”
[Lize-sama. Don’t overthink it. I know, Lize-sama is trying to be a good girl, but it’s okay for you to be a little bit more selfish. You’re a child before you’re a queen.]
“…Yes… Uhhh…”
[For today’s snack, how about a big watermelon jelly? We’ll tell the chef to make it heart-shaped.]
“…Yes.”
I clung tightly to Theresa-san’s fur and kept my gaze down.
Then I thought of those two children.
According to Schrader, in the past, Daniel and Pluto were very close.
But as the problem with refugees arose, the atmosphere of the adults around them changed.
They then started to mimic that atmosphere because of it. After that, they naturally stopped seeing eye-to-eye with each other and began to overreact over every single little thing.
The problem even reached the children, could it be there are worse things happening over on the border?
My hunches were usually right.
After all, whenever I asked Leonhardt-sama to buy me a raffle chocolate, I never won anything.
—We kept walking and eventually were blocked by a Greyhound in front of the corridor.
[Your Majesty! The Prime Minister has announced that an emergency meeting will be held! Before that, please visit him in the Prime Minister’s office first.]
I let out a sigh.