I was at home base in my Sacred Yuri Empire.
The useless Crystal Palace had been dismantled as I’d instructed, and only a stilt house remained on the spot.
Seven shadows stirred within that house.
Three nonhumans sat on one sofa, and three other nonhumans, in a different sense, were seated on the other couch.
I was perched on the throne, which wasn’t very comfortable (the emperor’s seat consisted of two three-seater sofas from which I could observe the yuri girls from two directions).
The girls were sitting on the sofas, spending their time as they pleased. In front of them was a long dining table, which we’d obtained for meetings. Maguro and Bonito, appointed to do the chores, were busy in the adjacent kitchen, making us a midnight snack.
“Okay, let’s start our regular meeting… Hiiro Sanjo. Would you like me to take the lead? I think it would be better for a lower-ranking girl like me to take on the task than to have Ms. Sylphiel handle it.”
“Don’t worry about me, Luri. Lead has decreed that we are all equal. We have renewed our opinions about humans at this time, and there’s no need for concern.”
“But—”
Hizumi looked at me, and I nodded.
“Hizumi, you do the honors. I trust you. It’s reassuring to have you serve in a type of secretarial position.”
“Y-yeah…? Well, then, okay…”
She brushed back her hair and started up her PC.
A huge screen appeared, and Hizumi picked up a pen-shaped magic device and began writing.
“Okay, then, let us begin a regular meeting of the Sacred Yuri Empire. As proposed by Emperor Hiiro Sanjo, the meeting will be a venue where our six executives bring agenda topics, which we will discuss and resolve.”
“Wow, Lead is our emperor. Wow.”
“Thank you. I am your emperor, Hiiro Sanjo. I have decided to promote the dictatorship of the Yuri Regime.”
Riina’s eyes became sharp, then she started clapping.
“Hee-hee-hee… You look really cool, Lead…!”
“Your face is annoying. It’s creepy. It’s sickening.”
“Heine, Lead stays depressed forever when something starts to bother him, so please, stop hurling combination insults.”
The girls lavished me with praise, and I crossed my legs, struck a pose, and raised a hand.
“Go on, Hizumi.” (I said with a smart look on my face.)
“……”
“Sorry, I got a little carried away!” (All serious.)
Hizumi cleared her throat as the meeting settled down, and she began writing.
Ruby placed her PC on her lap. Her ten fingers began wriggling freely, like an animal without a spine, as she touch-typed to add to what Hizumi was writing.
It appeared that she was volunteering to take the meeting minutes.
“Our first order of business is to decide on our positions. Put in simple terms, who will do what? First, we have to establish the policies for our activities and the people in charge, or we’ll end up wasting our human resources. The performance of homogeneous role groups declines, and people don’t work if they don’t have roles and objectives.”
“Oh, I know what you’re talking about… Hee-hee… You mean like a minister of economy, military affairs, foreign affairs, science…stuff like that…”
“Civilization, huh, Rii-chan?”
Ruby promptly responded to Riina’s Hee-hee game theory.
“It does sound quite on the mark. At the very least, those are roles we should decide on. We should also appoint someone to take charge of assisting with state affairs, agriculture, information, education, and maintaining public order.”
“We won’t need an education minister or a person to oversee public security for a while if we aren’t expanding the scale of our nation. We should divide the remaining roles between us.”
“That’s not fair!! No!! Totally unfair!!” Wallachia exclaimed, slurping her noodles as she interrupted what Sylphiel and Hizumi were saying, and her voice echoed through the room. The sound of Wallachia slurping her noodles was categorized as an environmental sound in the Empire, equal to the chirping of birds and the buzzing of cicadas. No one was bothered by it, and Hizumi wrote the names of seven ministers on the screen.
“The final decision is up to you as the high priest, emperor, and three-striped light…but can I assign the roles based on what I think would be best?”
I nodded, and the facilitator wrote down the names.
Assistant to the State: Riina Shiina
Military Minister: Wallachia Tsepesh
Minister of the Economy and Foreign Affairs: Luri Hizumi
Minister of Science: Ruby Oliet
Minister of Agriculture: Heine Skullface
Minister of Information: Sylphiel Diabloto
“…Shouldn’t Heine and Wallachia have each other’s role?”
“Hey, Lead, are you implying that I’m a foodie?! That’s not nice! You’re discriminating to assume that a foodie should be in charge of agriculture!”
“Ow!! The soup! It’s too piping hot, and it’s been splashing around like a passionate fan jumping me—”
A blob of her soup did a hole in one in my eye, and I tumbled to the floor, pressing it with my hands.
“My eye! My eye!”
“Ha-ha-ha! Hey, Lead, I’ve seen an anime character do that before!”
“Hiiro. Quit fooling around and act more like an emperor…”
Wearing fluffy pajamas and slurping away at her ramen, Wallachia pointed to me and laughed hysterically as Hizumi pointed at me, looking disgusted.
Katsuo trembled as he offered Wallachia her third bowl of noodles.
“Yay! I love ramen!”
“You probably don’t know this, Lead, but Wallachia is a genius when it comes to battle.”
“Are you serious? If you keep harassing him with your ramen and the extra oil, Lead will seriously set up a consultation to make noodles without the oil.”
Ruby, Riina, and Hizumi looked at one another and nodded, and Sylphiel also agreed with that opinion.