More of the same.

Ryuuki, while hanging out at night in the archives, meets Riou (the younger), who has been sent to Kiyou for some reason. Ryuuki, reminded of his lonely youth, takes a shine to Riou and begins to keep company with him while he reads books there at night. He even brings snacks for him. Riou had heard that Ryuuki was a talented king skilled both at the literary and martial arts, so he is surprised to find out what Ryuuki is really like (although, part of this is that Riou resents being treated as a child when he IS a child)、and does wonder, ‘is he a fool or actually clever?’ and does note that Ryuuki is intelligent enough to see that he’s becoming increasing isolated 　Later, Ryuuki talks about his love for Shuurei with Riou, because…. he believes that Riou is a ghost of the Hyou clan, and since he’s a ghost, he can safely talk about his love life to him. (Oh, Ryuuki…) Riou says that Ryuuki’s chances aren’t very good, because of the path Shuurei has chosen, and some secret. Riou, irritated, reveals that he is the son of Hyou Riou (the elder), and does some star-gazing for Ryuuki.

Shuurei, on a holiday, visits a salt shop, and hears about the adulteration of the salt, and also meets Tantan, who appears to be working part-time there. She decides to investigate the salt problem, and that it resembles the forgery and counterfeiting incidents; Suou tells her not to overdo it. While walking around, they run into Seiga, who agrees to help Shuurei investigate, and takes them to a fancy restaurant. Afterwards, they talk to Sai Rin, and Shuurei considers whether she is being foolish in running around investigating things on her own, when last time the Censorate was on the job anyway, and is grateful for Suou’s advice. Sai Rin says that Shuurei’s connections are a double-edged sword. Anyway, Seiga points out that high-quality salt is unaffected (which was why they went to the restaurant, because it specializes in salt cuisine), so Shuurei decides to consult Ran Shuuei, because most of the high quality salt comes from Ran Province. She goes to his house, where he lets her look at the records, and gives her some peaches to take to Ryuuki.

The next day, Shuurei meets with Ryuuki and Riou to enjoy breakfast together. Ryuuki is very happy, and notes that they’re like a family (parents + child), and Riou and Shuurei wonder which is which (hahaha). Shuurei gives Ryuuki the peaches, and Ryuuki appears to understand that Shuuei is apologizing for not visiting him.

Shuurei is trying to gain access to the Civil Administration archives, but the archivist won’t let her in because she doesn’t have permission from someone highranking. Shuurei and Seiga, dejected, decide to wait until they can look for Kouyuu, but then, that ‘oji-san’ whom Shuurei met during the summer she was working for the Finance section two years ago pops up (and beans the archivist when Shuurei’s not looking for saying ‘why, it is Minister Ko–argh!!’). Shuurei worries because he had last seen her dressed as a boy, but instead, he seems to be acting somewhat ill and staring at her in a weird way (Seiga, on the other hand, is shock). Suddenly, Anju pops up and says that there’s nothing wrong with this person’s health, it’s all in the head (he speaks the truth), and tells Shuurei that she can go into the archive. Anju says that he’ll look after the ’sick’ person, and after wards he and Reishin glare and snipe at each other.

Later, Hakumei, who had been running around everywhere looking for Shuurei, ironically finds her in his own department. He asks her who Seiga is, and he is surprised that someone of the Riku clan is a supernumerary official. He says that the antique silver bracelet that Seiga wears indicates that he is the heir-apparent, and is shocked at Shuurei’s lack of knowledge about the nobility, and suggests that she study more, because it will come in handy. But Shuurei says that she doesn’t like formalities or all of this noble stuff. Hakumei says that while she may be poor, she has the Kou name, and to never say this in front of anyone else, because while it may be sincere, it will come off as nothing but conceit. The eight noble clans are different, and she has received special treatment/used her family connections, so unless she wants to throw that away, she shouldn’t say that. [THANK YOU HAKUMEI. Shuurei has benefited a LOT from being part of the Kou clan, and has never had to do anything to help the clan. ] Shuurei, upon reflection, agrees. Anyway, the real reason that Hakumei came was to scold Shuurei for wasting her time helping the others instead of seeking employment. He says that if she gets dismissed, because she passed above him, he’ll send her unlucky letters (? curses?).

Shuurei and Seiga are in the supernumerary official room, and You Shuu asks Seiga where he used to work. Seiga refuses to say. Shuurei is worried about Tantan, because he hasn’t been coming to court, and You Shuu says that actually, no one has seen Suou looking for work. You Shuu also reveals that he heard that Suou’s father died in jail that month. Shuurei is utterly shocked to hear this, but must leave to go and see Shuuei about something. Afterwards, Seiga asks You Shuu who he really is. You Shuu, changing his voice and mannerisms complete (from unsophisticated guy from the sticks to polished, aristocratic official) says that actually, that’s the exact same question he has for Seiga.

Shuurei and Seiga review their investigation. They find out that the affected salt passes through the territory of a certain family, who also seem to have someone at court. Well, anyway, let me explain the plot: the family sells high-quality salt, and thus is adulterating the low-quality salt to make all salt prices rise, meaning that they’ll get rich, and also, someone in the family is abusing their official status to allow them to do this.

At Shuuei’s manor, Shuurei is depressed about Suou. She also finds from Shuuei that whoever the culprits are, they haven’t incurred the wrath of the Ran clan by messing with Ran Province products. Pensively, Shuuei asks Shuurei, whether she thinks Ryuuki gave them the flowers simply because they were the only ones around. Shuurei responds that Ryuuki has given only them flowers (the buds that he gave Shuurei and Eigetsu don’t really count as proper ones). [I think the nuance is that out of all the officials at court, Ryuuki only considered Shuuei and Kouyuu worthy, even after he began seriously working at being king.] After Shuurei leaves, Shuuei thinks that he and Kouyuu have, without realizing it, hurt Ryuuki, and and that he can no longer ignore the contradictions of serving him.

Somewhere, in a mansion, Suou is working as a servant and helping the lady of the house dress. The lady says that she’s with her husband only for the bling (of which she has lots), and tells Suou to help her pick out ornaments. She then begins to hit on Suou, who sees something that he’s been looking for among her things, which she says he can have.

For once, Reishin is actually in his office working. He tells Kouyuu to take a look at the document Suou had written and sent to them. Although at first glance it doesn’t appear to be anything special, after reading it three times, Kouyuu realizes something. Reishin says that although Suou is not especially talented, sort of a loser, shoots off his mouth, has no useful connections, etc…. he still wants him, but since he’s not attending court, they’re going to have to mark him down for the axe. It irritates Reishin that he must admit his spy was correct that Suou was useful. Also, Shuurei is marked as ‘not useful.’

Shuurei meets again with Seiga. She’s still worried about Suou, and reflects that if his father is dead, he has no reason to stay an official. They go to see the house of the suspect, who seems to be of the middle-rank nobility. Shuurei thinks she saw someone who looks like Suou go in, and thinks that Suou has unfortunately accidentally gotten himself involved near another crime. Later, Shuurei pulls an all-nighter writing the report, and tells You Shuu to wake her up in the evening, which he does… upon a premonition, she goes to the house of the suspect. Once she has left, You Shuu drops his mask and reads through her writings.

Arriving at the mansion, Shuurei is shocked to see Censorate troops everywhere. And Seiga is there. Changing his manner entirely (switches from boku to ore, BTW), he coldly informs Shuurei that she is a fool, and that he’s going to take all the credit for this and raise his status at the Censorate. Seiga is actually one of the officials of the Censorate, and was working undercover. He mocks Shuurei for her naivete (for not heeding Suou’s words, for foolishly leaving her documents around while she napped, for trusting people too easily), saying this is why women shouldn’t get involved in politics. As for Suou, he’ll also be going to jail, probably, as the lady of the house… is his mother. Suddenly, Suou appears, and reveals that he knew of Seiga’s true identity. When Suou was working at the Censorate, he was low ranking and thus didn’t have access to information about people like Seiga, but still heard rumors, about a young official who entered the court at the age of fourteen (not in the national exam, through the alternative selection process), joined the Censorate, and rose in the ranks, kicking aside all those in his way, doing whatever it took, winning the favor of the strict head official there. Also, he was suspicious because Seiga knew his name, even though Shuurei always called him ‘Tantan’.

Suou gives Shuurei the counterfeit mold he found in the manor, saying that will keep her from being dismissed (because I guess it counts as an accomplishment). Suou had figured out that the only reason his father would keep silent, was because the person who had gotten him involved in the forgery incident was the current husband of Suou’s mom. Suou’s father still is trying to gain the favor of his ex-wife, and that’s why he went through the trouble of making the forgeries. Using this information as bargaining chip, Suou got Kouki to agree that if he found evidence, that his father would be spared.

So yes… the lady who was hitting on Suou, was his actual mother, who has forgotten entirely about him, to the point where she made a pass at her own son. Suou sees what kind of person his mother has become, but doesn’t angst about it (wow. For not being a giant ball of angst alone, we should respect Suou. Most people would have totally lost it at seeing the mother they once admired become a gold-digger and entirely forget them, with perhaps bonus GSA.)

Kouki appears, cue dramatic music, out of a carriage. He declares that Shuurei is useless, except for her connections, because she was able to get Shuuei to help her. But, Kouki is not actually that impressed and doesn’t want such a naive person to work for him. On the other hand, he’s interested in Suou: Kouki backhandedly praises Suou for having the ability to see through Seiga, and though he has no overt value, that in itself is a value (I guess it leads people to underestimate him? He doesn’t rely on his talent?), and he has strong intuition, which allows him to grasp the truth and choose the best path, and he also has the courage to speak his mind to everyone. Those of little talent will ignore his advice and demote him, but if one is broadminded enough to accept his forthright advice, he is very useful (he has the talent to improve others?). So Kouki says that if Suou is going to work, rather than slack, he’ll let him come back to the office, and if Suou joins, then it’s okay for Shuurei to come along as well. He goes onto say that the Censorate is full of unidealistic, dirty work, and that’s what politics is like. If Shuurei wants to realize her ideals, she should stop saying pretty things, and throw them away until she reaches the position where she can put them into action. Then he goes away.

Later, Shuurei doesn’t cry over the harsh words she’s heard. Suou says that up till now, Shuurei has been among exceptional officials, often those from the Eight houses, but those from the lower nobility struggle tooth and claw to rise, using whatever methods at hand. While Ki Kouki’s words have merit, he says that it would be a problem if only people like Seiga rose to power, and that while Shuurei needs to become less naive, she shouldn’t reject all of her kindness (after all, because Shuurei tried to save Tantan and his father, Tantan has paid her back) and her desire to help the people, which Seiga doesn’t have. Shuurei swears that she will never become like Seiga, whom she identifies as her arch-rival.

Afterwards, Suou reveals that in fact his father is still alive. Someone had tried to kill him, but they botched the attempt. Afterwards, they pretended that he had in fact died, and Seiran is now guarding him in an undisclosed location. Also, Suou asked Seiran to teach him how to infiltrate and spy, which he did, after a lot of trouble. Seiran’s condition was that he should help Shuurei, even at the cost of his own life, because by helping him, Seiran was helping save Suou’s father’s life.

Later, Reishin, Kouyuu, and You Shuu are discussing their investigation. Reishin is annoyed that You Shuu wrote such a detailed description of Shuurei’s faults, and in response, You Shuu asks if he’s sure Shuurei is really related to him. You Shuu is the elite of the elite within the Civil Admin bureau (he’s one of the ‘masked officials’ who goes undercover to investigate things), and he also has the courage to argue with Reishin. Most galling of all, You Shuu ended his list by saying he wouldn’t mind marrying her. Reishin is annoyed at this, but You Shuu says that if Reishin can tell him to protect Shuurei’s virtue, then why shouldn’t he write that kind of thing in his official reports? Anyway, You Shuu says that being in the Censorate will cure Shuurei of her extreme naivete, if she survives Seiga and Kouki… well, if Suou is with her, she may have a chance. You Shuu considers Suou’s merits, and notes that Suou has great talent as an advisor and judge of people, which means that he’s exactly who the Civil Admin dept. wants. Then they get on with the more pressing work. The Civil Administration Department, instead of only investigating the supernumerary officials, actually went through the entire official list, and ended up getting rid of a lot of the upper and middle nobility. Ou Ki is pissed off, because a lot of those people were his followers; more pressingly, Ou Ki’s proposal for the government to have a salt monopoly was rejected. (So Shuurei’s actions were important, because if prices were unstable, chances are that Ou Ki would have succeeded. If the government controlled salt prices, this would mean an increase in government offices and a weakening of the Finance Department.)

Suddenly, Riou Jr. appears. His true purpose in coming to Kiyou was to become the head of the… arg, I don’t know how to translate it. The head of the dept. of the Cave of the Immortals? They’re in charge of prophecy, fortune-telling, and the marriage of the king. So he’s Uu-sama’s superior. Also, I think he outranks everyone but Yuushun. Yes. A ten or so year old boy, the second-highest ranking official in the land. Ryuuki then decides this is when he’ll declare he’s going to practice monogamy.

Later, Shuuei receives word that Jyuusan-hime will be coming to Kiyou, and is ordered to send her to the palace.

In the afterword, the author says a lot of stuff about the subtitles that I didn’t understand because it was about some kind of seasonal references. She also says the story seems to be less ‘romance’ than ‘roman’ (novel), and that there’s some kind of fork in the characters’ lives?

Commentary: HAHAHA. PWNED, SEIGA. Damn it, it’s gotta be doubly shaming to be pwned by this slacker dude. :3

This is actually the first time I’ve had any respect for Reishin as an official. In this volume, he seems to actually DO HIS JOB, reading reports and overseeing the investigation of officials. He also is able to listen to criticism from his subordinates, such as the outspoken You Shuu (I want to see more of), which is a point in his favor.

Tan-tan: 0_o Wow, he’s sort of made himself one of my favorite characters. He out-thought both Shuurei and Seiga. Maybe Shuurei is easy to steal a march on intrigue-wise, but Seiga is known to be the teacher’s pet golden boy of the Censorate, meaning that he’s supposed to be a crack spy/past master of dirty tricks, and while Suou might have seen a lot of stuff going down at court, it seems he didn’t get a chance to really do anything, yet still was able to outflank him. I think it is true what he says, that Shuurei is extremely naive, but I was resigned to not seeing this get dealt with in the story because shoujo-muke stuff tends to be rah rah, you should be PURE OF SOUL, meaning trusting of any moron who comes along and so on. But here Shuurei gets taken to task over this, and pretty much, Tantan saved the day.

Also, it is pretty funny that even though Shuurei is the protagonist, another character gets praised over and over, ahaha. Frankly, it was just becoming stupid how little Shuurei knows about political undercurrents and the nobility. If she hates that kind of stuff, then that’s actually reason to know about it, for crying out loud, so it doesn’t bite her in the ass.

It was irritating, though, that in this volume we once again don’t have a substantative ‘antagonist,’ although I think Seiga might count as one, although I would really put him more in the category of ‘rival’/person of dubious loyalties/troublesome co-worker. But Shuurei is not trying to really destroy him, just outrank him. What I’m curious about is whether Ou Ki is involved in this skullduggery. There is no overt evidence, but it seems to be suspicious that this salt case came up while he was proposing the monopoly. However, if he’s going to be Final Boss, doesn’t he need to have a lot more character development? So far he doesn’t make much of an impression as a character.

tags>>saiunkoku