Where Are the High School Prodigies?
A short time had passed since the plane carrying the famous Seven High School Prodigies vanished over the Pacific Ocean. Despite Japan losing its prime minister, the country remained surprisingly calm.
Thanks to how quickly Tsukasa Mikogami’s Reformist Party had appointed an interim representative, turmoil and political stagnation were contained to a minimum.
The representative in question, Kenzo Ooiwa, had just returned home after pushing an agreement for which Tsukasa had laid the groundwork. It stipulated that Saudi Arabia would use Japanese companies in the construction of their underground maglev trains as well as other infrastructure projects.
“Good work today, Interim Prime Minister.”
“You, too, Chang. You really saved my neck out there.”
“Just doing my job, sir.”
The trip had been long, and the schedule had been brutal. Ooiwa, who was in his sixties, was visibly exhausted. As he sat down at his desk, Chief Secretary Chang handed him a cup of slightly cooled tea.
“Something to drink, sir?”
“You’re a lifesaver.”
After grumbling about how long it had been since he’d had a proper break, the acting prime minister brought the cup to his mouth. A slight look of surprise crossed his face. Its flavor was entirely unlike the Japanese tea with which he was so familiar.
“It’s sweet…almost soothing. What is this?”
“A tea made from red dates steeped in honey. They’re so nutritious and so effective at relieving fatigue that we even have a saying about them back in my homeland: yītiān chī sān zaˇo, qīngchūn yoˇng bùlaˇo—‘three red dates a day make a man never age.’”
“I can see why. It’s like they’re filling my body with warmth and melting away all my weariness. This is nice.” Ooiwa finished his tea, then took a short breather before speaking again. “So…what did the Fraternity Party get up to while I was away?”
“Much the same as always. They’re trying to take advantage of the prime minister’s absence to take the House of Representatives in the next election. They’re calling for a dissolution nonstop. However, it doesn’t appear their message is resonating with the voters. Refusing to demonstrate your own worth and just dragging others down to make yourself look better by comparison is a poor recipe for garnering support. Also, there’s the whole situation with the DDSA’s failed terrorist attack on your plane in Saudi Arabia. Thanks to the investigation into whether Fraternity Party Secretary-General Sugawara was the one who leaked them the flight plans, the group’s split into the Sugawara faction, the Koizumi faction, and the Matsudaira faction. Their infighting isn’t earning them any points, either.”
“I see. Well, I hope their internal squabbling keeps them out of our hair for a while. We have enough trouble trying to fill Prime Minister Mikogami’s shoes as it is.”
After laughing wryly about how Tsukasa Mikogami did the work of ten people and made it look easy, Ooiwa turned his gaze back to Chang.
“Still, I want to thank you again for your work back there. If things had played out differently, I’d have been blown to smithereens over that desert… Honestly, I’m amazed you were able to figure out the connection between Sugawara and those terrorists. Even most of his own party members didn’t know.”
“I’m afraid I can’t take much credit for that. The manual the prime minister left said to keep a close eye on Sugawara’s movements. I was merely carrying out instructions.”
“What an unbelievable document the Three-Year Manual is… It’s the entire reason I was able to inherit this job so uneventfully.”
The Three-Year Manual.
A document Tsukasa Mikogami had penned while he was in office. It had been written for use in the event that anything happened to him.
I’m not a prophet, so I can’t predict the future with any certainty. However, there are a number of conjectures I can make based on the state of the world today.
As such, I’ve listed countermeasures herein to deal with any and all such events.
With that brief introduction, he went on to list five paths and a hundred end points the international community might reach over the next three years, as well as strategies to deal with various incidents that could occur along each branching route. The manual’s existence was the sole reason the Reformist Party had been able to continue running the government so smoothly after Tsukasa went missing.
“Prime Minister Mikogami wanted to make sure that the country wouldn’t descend into chaos if he were to ever be assassinated,” Chang replied.
What was most shocking, though, was that the current state of international affairs was laid out more or less to the letter under the incredible guidebook’s “Root C3-1” section. When they’d seen that, the Diet’s Reformist Party members had shuddered in fear and admiration at the sheer talent of the young man with whom they’d politically allied themselves.
“As a citizen of this nation, I have nothing but the utmost respect for him. What a truly astonishing individual.”
“Because of his efforts, we should be fine for at least the next three years. I can only hope he returns before then.”
For a moment, Ooiwa was at a loss for words. “‘Return’? You still believe he’s alive?”
“Of course.” Chang’s response was instant. “True, their beacon vanished over the Pacific. The natural conclusion would be that they crashed. But even after the protracted search we conducted with the United States, we didn’t find so much as a scrap of metal from their plane. That means that there’s no hard evidence to support the assumption they ever went down.”
In other words, it was too early to give up hope.
“More importantly, Prime Minister Mikogami was the one who gave my life meaning and value after I lost not just my family but my very soul. He rescued me from being a mindless killer. Ever since then, my body and mind have existed solely to serve him. That’s why I choose to believe that, someday, he’ll come back… He’s simply in the middle of something, and it’s merely delaying his return.”
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