Editing Tytania:Volume 1 Chapter 2 (section)

=== III ===

Count Arses Tytania, the younger brother of Zarlisch Tytania, was 23 years old with sapphire<ref>“Gold-dark indigo” (金褐色) is here pronounced “sapphire”.</ref> hair, pale turquoise eyes, and skin as white as chalk. The word “melancholy” seemed written on his face in invisible ink.

It could be said that among those who bore the name Tytania, there wasn’t anyone incompetent. Arses was no exception, as he had a sharp intellect, and his culture surpassed that of his elder brother. He was handsome in appearance, rivalling that of Ariabert Tytania and Idris Tytania.

While he was still alive, his father seemed to hesitate about whether to choose between Zarlisch or Arses to succeed him. But Arses’s intelligence and sensitivity were mainly dominant during twilight and night. He also lacked the willpower to master his own talents. So his father had no choice but to entrust his family’s future to the sturdy Zarlisch. And also because above all else, Zarlisch was his eldest son.

It is said that originally, the surname Tytania didn’t exist in human society. It was a name that was bestowed upon the Queen of Fairies, and word has it that an ancestor some ten generations before Neville Tytania had abandoned his surname for this one, aristocratic in tone, and yet strangely pagan.

Anyhow, Tytania’s central power slipped from Arses’ grasp. Zarlisch had no desire to keep his younger brother close, nor did he place any real faith in his worldly talents. He granted him a pension sufficient for a lifetime in extravagant luxury and banished him to Ementhal. It was said that the pension amounted to 50 million dakars. Moreover, Tytanian assets were exempted from taxation.

On a side note, on the affluent planet Ementhal, the average annual income of middle-class citizens was around 40 thousand dakars, including taxes. With 50 million dakar, Fan Hyulick could have eaten omelettes at Lisa’s home around 900,900 times.

The fragrance of subtropical flowers seemed to thicken the salon’s atmosphere. Arses’ hand grasped a guinea pig from a golden cage and dropped it into a hardened glass tank.

“They are carnivorous fishes.”

Murmured Arses with a touch of tropical melancholy. Without a word, Fan Hyulick averted his gaze from the tank. The water had turned a murky dark red, with ripples and bubbles rising to the surface. Entranced Tytanian eyes were fixed on it.

Fan Hyulick had averted his gaze towards a statue. It was carved from Ementhal marble and depicted two figures embracing. Sensing that something was amiss, Fan Hyulick observed the statue one more. Once he realised what the source of his unease was, he grew gloomy. The two figures embracing were both male.

Turning his sight back at Arses Tytania, he saw the young nobleman was laughing in silence and wriggling the cushions.

That guy must be some self-proclaimed aesthetic pervert, concluded Fan Hyulick. After living some twenty-eight years, he understood that it was impossible to comprehend every soul in this world. To Fan Hyulick, Arses was a man for beyond the other shore.

From that other shore, Arses turned towards his guest and spoke in an offhand voice.

“I heard you defeated the Tytanian armada. In some battle in a star system called ‘Cerberus’ or something. We recognise that talent, and Tytania wishes to welcome you as an admiral.”

Tytania valued talent. Useful and capable individuals would either feed on Tytanian grain or be erased from society and die in freedom. Tytania seemed to think more highly of Fan Hyulick than the Ementhal employment centre. He was very grateful for that, but in the end, no matter how grand, it was but a palace<ref>I suspect there is a play on words here: 宮 can mean palace, but also some form of ancient punishment like confinement or castration.</ref>.

“So, how about it? As hard as it is to believe, you won, didn’t you? Against Tytania.”

“It was a mere blunder. I would be unable to do it a second time.”

“So by blunder you won, did you? Against Tytania.”

Abusing the inverted syntax<ref>In the last few sentences, Arses didn’t use the standard word order when speaking. For instance, instead of subject-object-verb (which is the standard in Japanese), he used verb-object-subject with a marked pause between each element. The result is still grammatically correct but very unsettling.</ref>, Arses had a thin smile and looked at Fan Hyulick with a strange glance. Though it was warm enough to make him sweat, the victor of the battle of Cerberus felt a chill.

“Tytania may forgive being defeated by a genius, but she won’t suffer losing from a blunder.”

Isn’t that your own preference? Retorted Fan Hyulick inwardly. A discordant sound echoed from the tank.

The carnivorous fish had finished devouring the guinea pig and were leaping to the surface to signify to their keeper that their appetite was not fully satiated. Throwing an affectionate look towards the aquarium, Arses continued:

“You are going to have to choose a privilege. A life with Tytania, or a death apart from Tytania.

The expression that was lingering on the Tytanian youth could be described as bewitchingly beautiful, but Fan Hyulick lacked any aesthetic sensibility and didn’t feel the slightest emotion from it.

Arses’ voice grew more emphatic.

“Should you choose the former, Tytania shall bestow upon you a portion of her abundant wealth and power. Should you choose the latter, your death shall be inevitably adorned with splendour, and you shall be buried in jewelled tears. Now, which shall you choose?”

Though he wished to decline both, Fan Hyulick didn’t immediately voice his thoughts. He feigned indecision as he surveyed the chamber covered in lace, flowers, and precious metals. If he thought that it must have cost a fortune, Arses would have retorted that it was the thought of a wretched philistine.

“As the old saying goes, men are divided into two types. Those who rule, and those who are ruled. Would you not prefer to be among the rulers, even if at the bottom?”

Fan Hyulick clicked his tongue.

“This view of humanity is far too shallow. Beyond the rulers and the ruled is a third type.”

“And what is that?”

“Those who dislike being ruled.”

He had intended it as a clever line, but it didn’t seem to weigh even half a gram of impression on the Tytanian scion. With an exaggerated shrug, he resat himself on his cushion.

“Fan Hyuren, I think that…”

“I don’t recall changing my name to Hyuren.”

Fan Hyulick was greatly annoyed. And yet that anger seemed to go past the nobleman’s ear. Such people existed. People for whom illusion mattered more than facts.

“So, in the end, what do you desire?”

“Life apart from Tytania.”

He didn’t voice it out loud. The moment he would have done so, Arses Tytania would have surely forced upon Fan Hyulick a death tailored to his own tastes.

Fan Hyulick sensed that Arses was secretly wishing for him to reject the offer. It’s as if the impurity of Tytania’s blood had accumulated over generations into this young scion. He didn’t particularly hate Arses. He just wanted for him to be happy somewhere far away. He didn’t want him close or to get close to him.

Fan Hyulick was deeply regretting his decision to come to planet Ementhal rather than Kafir.

Perhaps not noticing his state of emotional turmoil, Arses Tytania rose to his feet with a vicious smile at the corner of his lips. Fan Hyulick had heard about the Five Families of Tytania and how they incorporated the blood of exceptionally beautiful women into their lineage over the generations, producing handsome men and beautiful women. It appeared that it was true. Of course, sculptural beauty and inner beauty were completely unrelated.

He had fed a guinea pig to carnivorous fishes right in front of his guest. That was some twisted taste, though it might have been partly for show. Fan Hyulick contemplated a way to avoid becoming the carnivorous fish's meal. It seemed like there was only one possible method.

An old saying stated that “an alliance under duress needs not be honoured”. Promises between equals must be kept, but there was no obligation to uphold agreements forced on others through threats or coercion. For example, if a kidnapper demanded to “not say anything to the police”, there was no moral duty to comply with him.

Fan Hyulick resolved to engrave this old saying upon his heart. In the circumstances he found himself in, false promises were unavoidable.

“Very well, I’ll take the opportunity. I shall accept Tytania’s offer to scout my talents. We’ll discuss salary and paid leave more properly at a later date.”

Arses narrowed both eyes. He pierced Fan Hyulick with a gaze that was like a thorn dipped in salt water and scorched over a flame before muttering.

“Are you being sincere?”

''What an annoying bastard'', thought Fan Hyulick once more, saved by his acquired trait of not voicing his thoughts immediately.

At best, while looking back at the young noble, he could only muster the expression of a shallow sycophant. It reminded him of precisely the kind of expression he wore during his days as a fledgling clerk when he reported failures to his superiors. That only made him more disgusted with it.

“Your features aren’t too bad, but they aren’t to my tastes.”

Arses’ comment was focused on his guest’s face. Fan Hyulick found it to be entirely none of his business.

“My palate leans towards more refined tastes, such as the subtly alluring, the richly shadowed, or otherworldly beauty. You are quite crude. At the very best, you are some borderland kind of handsome.”

Arses’s assessment was probably accurate, but it didn’t mean that Fan Hyulick could pat his head and say, “Yes! Good girl!” When it came to sex, Fan Hyulick was an uninteresting man with healthy and simple tastes.

Holding his silver cup, Arses noticed that it no longer contained any wine and rang a bell to summon an attendant. That silver cup was no mere ornament for Arses but followed an ancient royal custom of using silverware to guard against poisoning. Although Fan Hyulick knew nothing of this, he once again felt a sense of unease when the attendant entered the room.

He appeared to be male, and yet his features and voice carried an unnerving feminine quality. Seemingly sensing Fan Hyulick’s suspicions, Count Arses Tytania explained with a rather smug expression.

“We’ve destroyed his pineal gland with chemicals to prevent the development of secondary sexual characteristics. Since he can no longer secrete male hormones, he’ll remain a young boy forever. This makes him perfectly suited as a royal attendant.”

Basically, the equivalent of the eunuchs of the ancient Eastern civilisations. Every second in this mansion raised Fan Hyulick’s disgust for its master by one extra centimetre. His chest was already brimming with the urge to beat him up.

Fan Hyulick started calculating the odds of successfully knocking him out and escaping safely but abandoned solving that equation midway. He had noticed the presence of laser guns linked to surveillance cameras. There were many of them. Fan Hyulick had no intentions of becoming so self-absorbed in the aesthetics of destroying Arses Tytania that it would lead to his own destruction.

Unaware of the imminent danger of being knocked out, Arses had his attendant pour him a drink and turned his back to Fan Hyulick. He raised his silver cup to his lips. Whether intentional or not, until now he had offered neither a beverage nor a seat to Fan Hyulick and left him standing there.

“In any case, Tytania must comply with His Clanner Highness’ wishes. Lord Fan Hyuren, I shall greet you as my guest of honour. I guess I should say that I look forward to working with you.”

Fan Hyulick ironically wondered when he became a lord. He hadn’t been particularly fond of Tytania to begin with and was growing increasingly disgusted with the decadence oozing from Arses Tytania. Though he didn’t feel directly concerned about it, Fan Hyulick felt uneasy about the current state of Tytania, who would grant such excessive power to such a man.

“Well, since these matters are settled, I shall take my leave. Tonight I hope to have the same dream as the beauties of Ementhal. Should you require my presence, just summon me and I shall appear.”

“By beauty, you mean women, right?”

''Obviously you pervert!'' is what Fan Hyulick restrained the urge to shout, simply nodding silently.

If one followed the principle of seeking shelter under a mighty tree, there could be no tree more dependable than Tytania. But if Fan Hyulick had ever harboured such opportunism, at that very moment it flew some 145 light-years away. His personality as an adult was surely distorted due to never having joy in being employed by others, and he intended to settle things for the time being with, “The circumstances aren’t right!”.

“Then have that beauty brought here. While it is beyond my comprehension, tolerance is a virtue of Tytania. You may stay here and drink. I shall send a subordinate, so inform me about the address of that beauty.”

“Ah, no, that won’t be needed.”

Fan Hyulick waved his hands, somewhat flustered.

“I’m a poor man by nature; how can I settle in such a grandiose mansion? I am more at ease in a cheap lodging house. I can’t leave Ementhal anyway, so may I be allowed to do as I please until things are properly settled?”

His loquaciousness was that of a swindler scheming, but Arses Tytania only responded with a small yawn.

“You are more at ease in a cheap lodging house? I see, I can understand this well. Quite reasonable.”

''I’m gonna strangle that bastard'', thought Fan Hyulick, picturing that scene in his mind. Anyway, they had reached a compromise, and Fan Hyulick decided to leave the residence of Count Arses Tytania for the time being. However, he could not travel alone, for two Tytania soldiers clad in grey military uniforms had to accompany him, which was a matter of course.

Now presumably a member of Tytania’s retinue, he left the salon escorted by the two soldiers. Without seeing him off, Arses Tytania tilted his silver cup as his attendant poured some wine and puffed on his opium pipe.

“Not yet? Contrary to expectations, he’s quite slow on the uptake,” he murmured some thirty minutes later, as he glanced at his watch.

Then came hurried footsteps as his butler came to report. The two soldiers had been found unconscious in the streets, and Fan Hyulick was nowhere to be found.

“Excellent, the chase is only more enjoyable if he flees.”

Arses Tytania waved dismissively as he laughed. His expression and the tone of his voice were bordering on malice.

Everything was going on as he planned. Now, he was freed from his obligation to show favour to this disagreeable Fan Hyulick. Fan Hyulick wasn’t the only one who had found the other to be unpleasant. With his morbid sensitivity, he had sensed that they were fundamentally incomprehensible to the other.

At any rate, one could not stand against Tytania with nothing but his bare hands. Did Fan Hyulick escape due to the help of some comrades? If Arses managed to capture not only him but also his accomplices, who were likely an anti-Tytania faction, it would surely earn him the praise of the overlord Ajman. And his elder brother, Zarlisch, who had banished him to Ementhal, would no longer be able to remain complacent.

Arses hated his brother. Once, his elder brother had told him these words:

''“Aestheticism is just your self-justification as a pervert. You are a disgrace to Tytania. Without Tytania’s backing, you’d be nothing but a social vermin.”''

The elder brother despised the younger brother’s aesthetic sensibilities, and the younger brother despised the elder brother’s sense of values. Arses knew that his tastes were a minority within society, as well as Tytania itself. His hatred for Fan Hyulick was in the same circle as his hatred for his elder brother. The very idea of his elder brother being one of the Four Dukes was laughable, and Arses would hate the entire world and deem it good for destruction if his brother ever became the next overlord.

Having escaped Arses’ mansion, Fan Hyulick met the girl named Lira on a backstreet road some two kilometres away. In Lira’s hand was a needle gun, and it had been a needle fired from its barrel that had set Fan Hyulick free. The needle was a frozen-solid, fast-acting anaesthetic that vaporised almost instantly from body heat upon piercing flesh, only leaving a trace mark on the skin’s surface that was barely larger than an injection needle.

“I’m grateful for your help, but I’ve changed my mind. I won’t be going to your flat.”

“Why not!?”

“I told you that I didn’t trust luck or beautiful women, didn’t I? Coincidences fall in that category.”

Fan Hyulick was plainly declaring his mischievousness. Lira fell silent, unable to protest. To sum it up, the young man with carrot-coloured hair had known all along. That she wasn’t a pickpocket.

“I don’t know who it is, but tell this to the guy who wrote the script. He needs to work on the details a little more or he won’t be able to compete with Tytania.”

He was putting on airs as if he were a critic. Fan Hyulick had been considering taking Lira up on her invitation but changed his mind. As much as he despised Arses Tytania, he didn’t underestimate his abilities and considered that it all might be a part of his plan. If he went to Lira’s flat, her companions might all be wiped out by Arses.

“Very well. As expected from the man who defeated Tytania, you’re a clever one. I’ll tell you the truth.”

Lira told him that she and her group, as well as her “grandmother”, were the remnant loyalists of the Principality of Casabianca that had been destroyed by Tytania some thirty years ago. “Was there even a country by that name?”, he wondered. There were at least thirty nations, both large and small, that had been destroyed by Tytania and a similar number of royal families overthrown, so he honestly couldn’t remember every single one.

“That’s why we wanted you to help us. We didn’t mean to deceive you. I know that expecting you to trust us would be asking for a lot.”

“Indeed, you’re quite a single-minded person.”

The name Fan Hyulick had cast the flash of a supernova into the hearts that hated Tytania. His military genius and the unity of anti-Tytanian forces made it seem that the prospect of overthrowing Tytania was possible. The information had been secretly relayed, which is why he had been discovered in Ementhal.

“We aren’t aiming to restore our Principality. We are striving for a universe without Tytania.”

“A universe without Tytania is all fine and dandy, but shouldn’t you be thinking of what might replace it?”

Fan Hyulick’s words were undeniably reasonable, though he wasn’t the kind of person who’d lecture others on such matters. He had spent a year in a Tytanian detention centre with nothing to occupy himself but deep reflection, although to be fair he thought more about women and food than politics and history.

“Wanting revenge is fine. But the majority of people live rather comfortably under Tytania’s rule. Should you turn them into your enemies, or should you rather take some time to push for a change in their minds? Well, I think you should rethink the whole plan.”

For Fan Hyulick, being elevated to an idol of the anti-Tytania faction was the last thing he wanted.

Tytania itself probably wasn’t unified by a singular will down to the molecular level. Even within their highest level of leadership there must be some hidden struggles over who would take the lead. There had to be. He wanted to believe so. It wasn’t because of some profound historical insight that Fan Hyulick thought that, but because the notion of a monolithic organisation made him feel uncomfortable.

These minor discordances and tiny fissures might expand and shatter the colossal diamond that is Tytania. But even if that were to happen, it seemed like it would be in the distant future, possibly decades after Fan Hyulick would have died of old age.