Sabu Kyara 2 - (Bakarina, RaphaelWalt!SI)
I am a little Marquis and... I didn't like what I was looking at.
Truth be told, I would have ditched the role if possible- while I was indeed planning to grow 'stronger', I didn't want to gain relevance within politics. I saw no point in becoming an element in the story may it be Hamefura/Bakarina or Fortune Lover. I just didn't see a point in involving myself with that sort of madness.
But considering the royal pressure to acquire the job, it was either taking it or face some repercussions.
So, I was stuck with a 'good job' that had growth potential. And yet I had to also clean up the mess in the basement.
The basement had been a small place my mother didn't know about and... for good reasons. I told her that there was a private prison, limiting the correlation of the basement with the Dieke's Yandere-tier obsession with Dark Magic. And yet I had to also get the surviving element within that mangle mess of kids' corpses: Sarah.
Yes, the Yandere that could have turned into a very scary villain due to the depraved machinations of my 'family' was now... my little sister.
It wasn't my original plan. I had been inclined to introduce her as a maid-in-training, and then possibly have her close with my family, but the moment my mother had her eyes on her and helped in patching her up, things took a rather interesting turn that, if I have to be honest with myself, could have been predicted.
Mom was a good woman, she was proud of me but... she was still a mother. And since she couldn't baby me without making it too awkward for both, she found Sarah to be the best replacement to suddenly employ her full motherly power. And while lil' Sarah was confused within the first month, she suddenly broke out of her shell through the stubborn love of the woman.
Despite her shyness, the girl didn't look on the path of maniacal descent, and she seemed quite pleased to be put in a new family despite the many ordeals she went through. Nothing to the point of snapping her mind, but enough for some trauma to longer now and possibly for the next few months.
Still, Sarah was also a good distraction for my mother as I was able to put my hands on the treasury and take notes on the initial situation: the coffers were quite swollen due to the taxes the fief's peasants had to pay to their lord, we had a lot of things that I saw no point in keeping and had made a list of those that could be sold, and then I found myself dealing with the most concerning bunch of things - the Dark Magic books.
I had already planned to keep a few 'safe' ones around, but I knew the King had ordered for 'all' of those to be destroyed. The task was easier said and thought than done: the more advanced tomes were written by people that were quite keen to put protections to their forbidden stuff.
So, explosives and fire were not acceptable solutions. In the end, I ruled out any personal chance to destroy those at the time. Instead I looked into a few holy books for something akin to a seal to use to put them in a container and bury those in a box somewhere distant from the castle.
I had found a couple of those religious books, but while I was incredibly suspicious on the validity of some symbols, I personally created the box and carved those on its external surface. Then, once I had stored those books in the box all at once, I had them bury under a lot of dirt and rocks.
Not the most effective case of disposing of Dark Magic, but it was good enough to not have to worry about it for a few decades and, by that time, I would have planned a way to use new skills to deal with this mess for good.
With family and 'dark magic' mostly dealt with, it was time for proper accounting, and this is where the most tedious aspect of my rule came to bite my butt. Not only did I have to balance taxation and the productivity of the land, but I had to also keep in mind that the taxes I paid to the king were not working on a fixed rate.
I couldn't exactly pump out cash to invest for a greater yield of the fields, nor I could just invest in public works since there was a major unifying issue: the fief was vast, but it had a demographic problem.
There were too few people to work the land, and there was a disinterest for youths to keep around as some looked for greater opportunities beyond the fief itself. I had to revert this trend and also create a positive financial reason to get those youths to make babies.
The solution to this stemmed in two moves: the first one was investing in healthcare by hiring two doctors from the capital to work on a clinic that I ordered to be built by the principal settlement, and the second one was a 'child tax-deduction edict'.
The former was something I could get started at once to hopefully take case of potential cases of illnesses that could be treated with proper medical assistance. The latter was not something I planned to introduce at once as I could tell that a sudden baby boom would create a housing problem.
To fix this, I started by introducing the edict that would be known as the 'Seven and a Half Deduction'. The official name was '25% Child Tax Deduction' to apply with family with children. Instead of creating a too extensive and too complex tax deduction system, I just capped it at 25%.
The people were illiterate enough to not know how limited this was- hell, the point of its 'popular name' was because out of the entire explanation provided by the announcer was that, as an example, 'instead of paying ten coins, you pay seven and a half'.
The effect was to lower some more the fiscal pressure on the peasants while also giving them a chance to make money by selling their products. More cash was to then flow within the fief in due time, but this wasn't the end of it.
In light of a potential housing crisis once the population growth increased, I had thought of a rather interesting and unorthodox solution: I involved my old 'boss', and I introduced him to my idea of condominium. The creation of a two-floors building with multiple small houses within it that were to be paid by yours truly.
It took two months to have it created and, while it lacked services that would truly make it modern, that wasn't the point behind its creation: I needed to modernize the housing sector to be easier to plan out, and I also needed to create a proper urbanized town- this second goal achieved by offering the houses for free to anyone that had a) a job, b) a house, c) two children to take care of.
Without paying another dime, I was able to 'exchange' the condominium for these houses, which would then be demolished to create new condos.
The 'Raph Condos' was the name coined for this kind of building, leaving me with more prestige to brush away in due time and-
"Big Bwo?"
I paused mid-thinking and mid-paperworking, looking up from the last few documents and... realizing it was quite late. And that little Sarah was still awake.
The sight I got from looking at her melted my heart on the spot. She was wearing her... well, her 'cat-themed sleeping outfit'. She wore a pink cat-hooded pink jacket over her white sleepwear, pink warm socks, and she had yellow cat slippers. I can't stress enough how much she loves cats despite having never owned one.
She was also holding a pillow with her right hand and a fairy tale book with her other.
"Oh, you're still awake, Sarah."
"Yeah, you too."
"I was finishing the paperwork. It's tough."
"Yeah, but I am bowed. Wead me a stowy!"
I deflated a bit. "You should add 'please' to that."
"Please ow I cwy."
I have to find a way to fix that adorable accent, or I will die by diabetes before I hit 15.
I sighed. Stood up from my chair and walked up to her, she happily let me pick her up as I brought her back to her room and read her a story. She was all tuckered up in bed not even ten minutes into the narration and... I decided to call an end to the work day right now.
The papers were not going to run away... no, they were going to reproduce and multiply.
Still, the time I had to get ready for the upcoming trouble was enough to not be too concerned about minmaxxing the paperwork. At least, not this early on...
AN
Thus Raphael got a lil sis. I had to double check and it seems Sarah is around Keith's age so... she's two years younger than Raphael. For references (this is for FFN readers), I am using Kazuha from Genshin Impact for Raphael!SI and Youngified Sagisawa Fumika from Idolmaster.
Also, unrelated piece of info, I just got the two copies I asked for my first book and... man, I have no regret. The cover is smooth and the paper is quite good. It was quite the pog experience to get those out of the mail.