After finishing all my shopping, I left my enormous collection of bags at the inn and took a stroll over to the center of town.
I was already exhausted from doing just the little bit of shopping that had got me to the Brawny Block and had been eager to hurry up and get out of there, but when we were parting, the clerk at the body building store had said something that made me really curious.
“Now, listen up. If you don’t make sure to drink the muscle drink within thirty minutes of finishing your training, its effects will—”
No, not that.
“You’re right to say that our neighborhood is comparatively peaceful, but there is an even more peaceful area. It’s called the Central Block—”
That was what he told me.
An even more peaceful place, in a city that was filled with dangerous disputes.
Naturally, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. So I went to visit it as soon as I could. The Central Block was located not all that far from the Brawny Block.
“Hoh-hoh!”
As it turned out, the Central Block did in fact seem to be where the people who enjoyed a very peaceful way of life gathered.
The scenery I could see was not all that different from other places.
There were normal cafés, and normal restaurants, and normal houses, and the residents were enjoying their free time in normal ways.
To test things out, I entered a café and tried relaxing in a seat on the terrace.
I looked at the menu, ordered a coffee without much thought, and relaxed there for several minutes. Someone brought my hot coffee over, and I took a sip.
“…Delicious.”
By no means was it some exquisite masterpiece of coffee, but after walking around town exhausting myself shopping, it was just right.
To make a long story short, everything was normal.
“Haven’t seen you around here before. Would you happen to be a traveler?”
“……”
Though I’m not really sure whether or not it was normal for a man to start talking to me while I was enjoying my time alone.
I turned and looked over my shoulder toward the sound of the voice, and I saw a lone man in the seat behind me.
“Hey,” the man said and waved his hand. “Ah, sorry. You don’t have to be on your guard. I’m not really planning to come on to you or try to do anything.”
“I feel like that’s exactly what a man would say if he did approach me looking to make a pass, though.”
“However, I can assure you I have no such intentions.” The man pulled a business card out of his breast pocket and offered it to me.
Still on my guard, I accepted it.
“Land of Diversity Steering Committee…?”
I tilted my head, puzzled.
First of all, I’ve never even heard that name before.
“We’re responsible for helping people settle in our city.”
I wondered if maybe the man before me was also an expert on muscles, because he seemed to be able to read my mind by looking at my face.
“The Land of Diversity is the name for this place, at least at the moment. We don’t have a definite name yet.”
“Uh-huh…”
“You’re a tourist, right? It’s rare for us to have a young witch like yourself here. If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear your thoughts on several topics. Not very many tourists come here, you see, so I’d like to consult you while you’re here.”
The man with the mysterious position as a member of the Land of Diversity Steering Committee then disclosed his circumstances to me.
According to what he said, the people living in the Central Block of the city were originally mostly travelers and merchants. Those people, who had passed through all sorts of different countries, had settled there together, and that settlement eventually became this city.
“As we traveled on our journeys, we saw normal people who were able to live without wanting for anything, as well as people who weren’t able to do that.”
When you travel from country to country, you do meet all sorts of different people.
He said, “Especially, we found that in most places, the majority group decided what was normal, while those in the minority were called eccentrics or weirdos or something like that. They were suppressed by the views of the greater majority, until they lost the ability to state their own opinions. Those were the sort of people we saw.”
“…Hmm.”
“When people belong to a group, they lose their individuality. The opinions of the group they belong to become that person’s own beliefs. And they lose the ability to accept differing opinions or thoughts. Everyone who disagrees with the group starts to seem strange. Because people find comfort in their place in the world, you see?”
“……”
“There is nothing more pathetic than a closed-minded person, is there? Really, humans ought to be more accepting of their differences.”
Huh.
“So then, your answer was the Land of Diversity, was it?”
“Right! We created a place where we strive for true peace through recognizing our differences with others!”
“Wow. That’s a worthy ambition. By the way, who’s in charge around here?”
“Ha-ha-ha! Miss Witch, the idea of getting any one person to govern a whole city is so behind the times!”
“……”
I see. I guess their diversity doesn’t extend to my opinions.
“Well, apparently this place is widely known among merchants for being rather dangerous—”
The man seemed like he was bothered by the fact that not many tourists were coming, so I decided I would let him know how the merchants felt about the place.
And so on and so forth.
When I told him that, the man on the steering committee groaned in a low voice with a complicated expression on his face, “Hmm…,” just like the merchants who had asked me about the place.
“A dangerous place, huh…?”
I nodded.
“That’s right. I mean, it did seem like the different cliques were doing nothing but fighting…”
“The people who live here all came here because they were outcasts somewhere else, after all…,” the man told me. “Moreover, we’ve only just started, so we’re still encountering a variety of problems. For now, by grouping together the people who have similar interests and forming communities, we’re trying to make it more difficult for friction to arise between the residents.”
“……”
“People with the same interests gather together, and they reach mutual understandings about their differences. This is the first step toward understanding our differences as fellow humans,” said the member of the steering committee.
I see, interesting.
“In that case, it seems like it’s not going very well yet.”
As I said that, I pointed across the street.
“…?”
The member of the steering committee turned to look.
Right before his eyes, events that were quite contrary to his aims were unfolding.
It was an all-out war between the weapons shops. Apparently, the uproar had spread this far—there were men who were acting as shields in order to protect the one woman, and women raising their voices to ask for help, and men brimming with a sense of justice, and all sorts of other people shouting and carrying on like it was some kind of festival.
And the people who heard the disturbance joined in with the shouting, spreading the uproar even further.
I had thought that if I left well enough alone, the flames would die out, but unfortunately, the blaze was only spreading.
My, my, seems like a tough job.
As long as we were watching from far away, some elements of the battle reminded me of an ordinary festival, but there was no way to describe the scene of a group of armed citizens tearing around the city in a great crowd other than as a sign of poor public safety.
“Oh, good grief, not again…”
According to the man on the steering committee, disturbances like that occurred fairly frequently.
He figured if that stopped, people would stop saying this was a dangerous place.
“Seems like a real problem,” I said, gazing at the riot from afar.
The man from the steering committee answered with a sigh, “It sure is… It’s a real headache for us.”
Then he said, “As long as we’ve got folks like that around, people will assume everyone who lives here is like that, don’t you think?”
✦ ✦ ✦
After that, I tied an assortment of enormous bags onto my broom and flew away to deliver the goods to the merchants.
“These are all the things you ordered.”
Apparently, that strange land was a source of many rare and exotic treasures. The merchants were delighted. I was also delighted, after receiving my money. Truly, everyone was happy, and everything worked out great.
“……”
By the way, just in case you were wondering—
While I was there, I decided to tell the merchants about the name the people in charge wanted to call the place.
“Huh, the Land of Diversity, is it…?”
“That’s such a lame name. Marble Country is so much better.”
“Nah, I prefer Patchwork Land.”
“No, Cocktail Country for sure.”
“Huh? That’s tacky.”
“Hey now, what did you say?”
“Hey, hey, don’t start a fight! But Cocktail Country really is the absolute corniest.”
“Is it really that bad…?”
Even after they’d been told the official name, their opinions were still split about what to call it, which may have revealed something about the nature of the place.
One of the merchants asked me, “By the way, Lady Witch?”
“Yes?”
“How was the Land of Diversity?”
I suppose he’s asking about the government situation and the general atmosphere of the place.
Now then, I wonder how I ought to answer that question?
I thought back on everything that had happened in the various blocks I had briefly visited and on the people I had encountered.
As a result, I groaned in a low voice.
“Mmmm…”
I’m certain that at that moment, I was wearing a complicated expression on my face.