Bonus Short Story

Outbreak Academy

That day turned out to be... well, a little different from normal.

For most students most of the time, high school is just the same boring day over and over, never anything new. Yesterday, just like today. Today, just like tomorrow. Stretching off forever in both directions like a hall of mirrors.

It’s supposed to be good training for when you have a job. The repetition is the point. The weariness us kids feel at the simplistic rinse-and-repeat is all part of the plan of the people who created the school system. “That’s how life is,” they tell us, their young charges brimming with hope for the future. “Just a procession of the same boring things again and again.” And then they give us that glum, knowing look that adults get when they see a child who hasn’t yet figured it out.

But then, the very fact that we’re up to our necks in nondescript, stifling, boring days makes us acutely alert to any tiny change in the routine. Unlike the adults with their numb resignation, us kids are desperate for stimulation. The smallest thing can turn an ordinary day into an extraordinary one for us. Even if it’s a day that comes every year like clockwork. A special day, one out of every three hundred sixty-five. A special day with a special name...

“Not that it has anything to do with me, huh?” I said with a self-deprecating smile as I set my bag on my desk and sat down.

Here I was: my childhood friend had come in through the window to wake me up by flipping over my futon; then I’d run smack into a mysterious transfer student as we both rounded the same corner; that almost made me late, which led to me getting a scolding from the bespectacled class president, who had been standing out by the school gate. You know, just another day.

Class hadn’t started yet, and the room buzzed with the usual chatter of students. The classroom looked just like always. So did my classmates. Everything looked exactly like normal—except for one thing, something that would have been immediately obvious to anyone sensitive enough to notice it. The air in the room wasn’t quite the same as usual.

“Man, oh man...”

My name is Kanou Shinichi. A perfectly ordinary high schooler. Average looks and physical abilities. Not noticeably fat or thin. School grades, smack in the fiftieth percentile. The kind of person who might be described in a light novel as “special only because there was nothing special about him.” Everything about my personal situation was equally unremarkable. Parents who did a lot of overseas travel, so they were very rarely home. A mother who could have passed for a high-schooler herself, she was so baby-faced. A younger sister I wasn’t actually related to by blood... I could have heaved a sigh at the sheer mundaneness of it all.

All of which meant that today, February 14th, held no special meaning for me at all.

Valentine’s Day. It originated with the martyrdom of one Saint Valentinus—Valentine of Terni—during persecutions in the Roman Empire, but now? Now it was a day to celebrate romantic love, and a day for candy companies to make a tidy profit by convincing girls that this was the moment to give chocolate to the boys they liked. In other words, it was a day of no few “confession events.” The banners had been appearing on every shop in town, from the fanciest places with their handmade chocolates to the lowliest hundred-yen shop: “Valentine’s Day is coming!” “Tell him how you feel on February 14th!”

For some of us, it amounted to a solid month of being told: “A man who doesn’t get chocolates on Valentine’s Day is no man at all.” And the scores of guys in this town who, indeed, didn’t get chocolates spent the day trying to make themselves invisible. A great many of those guys seemed to go to my school. The student body was divided neatly into “winners” and “not.”

Me? I’d only ever gotten chocolates from my mom, my sister, and my childhood friend, who pretty much counted as family—none of them a statement of romantic interest, obviously. So you can guess which category I fell into. The chocolates all went to the “winners,” while the rest of us were lucky to get so much as pity candy from our family. In other words, for me, Valentine’s Day was a dark exercise in proving the old economic maxim: the rich get richer and the poor stay poor.

Listening closely to the babble in the classroom, I could pick out some unique words among the usual chatter: Valentine’s, chocolate, get, heartfelt, and just obligatory. Again, just as normal: everyone tried to act nonchalant, but there was no one who wasn’t at least a little bit interested. Even when you knew there was nothing coming to you, some small part of you couldn’t help wondering, What if? I couldn’t judge anyone for feeling that way—I felt it, too.

Suddenly, there was a shout from a corner of the room: “Huh?!”

“Wh—What the hell?!”

“What’s wrong with you?!”

“You got chocolates? Like, for real?!”

“What?!”

“I don’t believe it!”

There was a clattering of chairs as the male students jumped up and flocked to the lucky dog who’d gotten the chocolates. It took about ten seconds for him to be completely surrounded.

“Traitor!”

“You oughta go work for a candy company, you cad!”

“Show a little shame!”

“You disgust me! With the most disgustful disgustingness!”

This young man, who until today—indeed, until just seconds ago, probably—had enjoyed the company of his peers, was now enduring their wrath. He clutched his head and desperately protested, “I’m sorry!” and “I didn’t mean to!”, but the others showed no sign of forgiving him. I felt bad for the guy, but it was just human nature for the have-nots to resent the haves. If the beleaguered student had anything to regret, it was his own carelessness in having displayed his prize to his less-fortunate classmates. I had to admit, even I felt a twinge of jealousy toward him.

“Sigh...” I sighed, then began emptying out my bag and arranging things in my desk. Whereupon:

“?!”

My fingers brushed an unfamiliar object. I would have sworn my desk was empty, but there was something in there.

Could it be a bomb?!

No, of course not. I knew what it was.

“It has to be...”

With much fear and trembling, I pulled it out, and there it sat in my hand. Something I had never expected. A small box, neatly wrapped, about the size of my palm. The white ribbon tied around it seemed blindingly bright.

...

............

“IS THIS—”

I slapped my hands over my own mouth and delicately put the box back in my desk. I had almost burst out: “IS THIS REALLY HEARTFELT VALENTINE’S DAY CHOCOLATE?!” But I suppressed the nearly biological urge.

Now I reached a probing hand into my desk, carefully withdrawing the box. There it was. It was really there. It wasn’t an illusion. I could feel the weight of it in my hand.

O frabjous day...!

For a brief instant, I was completely enraptured by the tiny miracle sitting in my palm.

“Oh, crap.”

Suddenly shocked back to reality, I shoved my hand back in my desk. What if the other guys saw me? I didn’t even have to think back on the uproar of moments before to know what might happen. This school had scads of frustrated dudes just about boiling over on Valentine’s Day. I was one of them. Or... I had been. If anyone found out I’d legitimately gotten chocolates, though, they would brand me a traitor, tell me to “explode, you damn Real!” and, finally, probably strap actual bombs to me. If I’d been in their place, I would have done the same.

I couldn’t let anyone know. If they ever found out, my life was forfeit.

“Calm down, Kanou Shinichi,” I muttered to myself, trying desperately to slow my racing heartbeat. “Just calm down. You don’t know these are real, actual chocolates!”

Yes, they had the neat wrapping, the cute little ribbon—it was hard to imagine someone would do all that just out of obligation, but at the same time, it wasn’t like they had a card that said “Hi, I really mean these.” Heck, it could still turn out to be some kind of dangerous, life-threatening object.

Okay, but even if it was, it would still be better if nobody saw it. I just had to make it through the school day without anyone noticing it.

“Kanou Shinichi, I know just what you should do,” I told myself. “At the earliest possible moment, take that heartfelt-chocolate-like thing and put it in your bag where no one will see it!”

If I left the box in my desk, there was always a danger someone might happen to spot it, or that it might fall out somehow. My bag had a little lock I could secure, plus then there was no danger that I might forget this potentially deadly object in my desk at the end of the day.

I looked to the left, then to the right. Safe: no one was paying attention to me. Everyone was too busy with whatever to notice what one lone classmate was doing. Reassured, I reached for the object...

“Hey, hey, outta my way! Move it!”

But a second later, a familiar voice filled the classroom. And a second after that, someone came charging at me from the side. I had nowhere to go, and they slammed right into me.

“Hrrf!” I wheezed. I tumbled to the ground, knocking over several chairs and desks as I went, but miraculously, I didn’t damage the heartfelt-chocolate-like box. “Hey, what gives?!” I demanded, sitting up... “Oops.”

I found myself confronted by striped underwear. Blue and white bars—a more pure-seeming pattern there never was—marched across them, forming a perfect contrast with the somewhat dark skin of the two legs I was also seeing. Er... Okay, I guess this wasn’t the time for cool, rational analysis.

“Yikes!” My assailant suddenly seemed to realize the position they were in, for they slammed their knees together and pressed down their skirt. “D-Didja see anything?”

“N-No, nothing!” I said reflexively. I know, I know, it’s not nice to lie. But this was one instance where the truth wouldn’t have done anyone any good.

“Phew! That’s good.”

“Uh-huh.”

“’Cause if you’d seen anything, I woulda had to shut your mouth permanently.”

“Are striped panties that big a secret?!”

She didn’t say anything.

I didn’t say anything.

The silence between us seemed to go on forever. Until finally...

“You did see ’em!”

“No, I didn’t!”

“Can I really trust you on that?!”

“I sure wish you would, for the sake of continued peace between us!”

I looked once more at the owner of the striped panties. (This was definitely not because the impact of seeing them had been so great that it had knocked the idea of looking her in the eye clean out of my head.) It was a cute young woman. She had a full head of brown hair, and gave off a sort of “fluffy” vibe. Her facial features weren’t really striking, but her big eyes, which seemed to be constantly looking everywhere, gave her an undeniable cuteness. Her skin was on the dark side—maybe she was tanned? Although that would have been a little bit unusual in the middle of winter like this. Maybe she was from somewhere way, way down south, then.

While I was busy thinking these things, the girl exclaimed: “Hey! It’s you!” and pointed openly at my face. I smiled wanly and tried to remember her name. “Uh... Elvia, right?”

Elvia Harneiman, as I recalled. Why did I know her name, you ask? Because the mysterious transfer student I’d bumped into (literally) on the way to school was the girl standing in front of me right now. We’d introduced ourselves when we first ran into each other.

“That’s m’ name, don’t wear it out!” she said, her tail wagging. It was a big, fluffy thing that just made you want to touch it. I resisted the impulse and instead said, “So what the heck were you doing?” We’d run into each other on the street because we were both in such a hurry to get to school. But now we were safely in the classroom, so the pro-wrestling-style move really, uh, threw me.

“Ah, I was afraid I’d be late.”

“So you came running into the classroom as fast as you could?”

“They said no running in the hallway, so I had to make up for it when I got in here, didn’t I?”

Ah. Now it all made sense: this girl was an idiot.

Ahem, but setting that aside for a moment...

“You didn’t have to run into me twice, though. I’m going to start thinking you’re out to get me personally.”

“Huh, wonder if this’s what they call destiny?” Elvia said with a bright smile. Which is to say, without the slightest sign of a guilty conscience.

At that moment, there was another shout: “What is it that you are doing?!” The voice practically screamed, We are most displeased! An impression that was only increased by the smack I received to the back of my head. I turned around and saw a very familiar, very petite girl, one of her shapely eyebrows arched as she glared at me.

“Petralka...”

Her long, even, elegant silver hair and emerald eyes made her look like a porcelain doll. Her features were perfection itself; she was the very image of a bishoujo. Like a princess out of a picture book. She would have looked perfect with a tiara on her head. And she, Petralka an Eldant III, was the ultimate pampered (but metaphorical) princess. Not only was she gorgeous, she came from money; she had breeding and brains, and kicked butt at sports. If I had to try to find any kind of flaw in her, it might have been that she could have passed for an elementary-schooler. She was a superwoman, veritably perfect—up to and including dutifully having a weak point.

Petralka and I had known each other for a long time, but for some reason, every time anything happened recently, she’d been at my throat, treating me like her slave. I fully expected her to break out something like “How can you serve us while you’re busy falling all over yourself?!”

“Shinichi! How can you serve us while you’re busy falling all over yourself?!”

See? There.

“Uh, I... I’m the victim here...”

“We do not know who this animal girl is or where she came from, but the fact that she was able to ambush you is merely evidence of your own laxity, is it not?!”

“Animal girl? You think you’re going to get me to blush, complimentin’ me like that?” Elvia scratched the back of her head and chuckled.

Petralka stomped her feet. “We are not complimenting you!” They couldn’t have been more at odds if they’d tried.

“I don’t come from a warrior family or something,” I said to Petralka, sighing. “I don’t know how to dodge a sudden, sidelong ambush.”

“Hrmph! No excuses!” She grabbed my arm and pulled. She was being every bit as demanding—insistent might have been a more generous word—as she ever was. But then: “Hrm?” She looked at my right hand and frowned. “What’s this?”

“Huh? What’s what?” I promptly shoved the heartfelt-chocolate-like-thing I’d been holding in my right hand into my bag and pretended to have no idea what she meant.

“Shinichi, were you not holding something just now?”

“Yeah, I was wonderin’ about that. What was that thing?”

“What thing? Y-You’re both imagining things.” I tried to make sure my bag was hidden behind me, but the girls weren’t going to be fooled by a little shuffling. Petralka looked at me with unmistakable suspicion, while Elvia just looked profoundly curious. And then what should I hear but another voice.

“What’s going on?” someone said from beside us. Brushing his hair back with an elegant gesture, he approached: our student council president and mutual classmate, Garius en Cordobal. His appearance—from his long silver hair to his silver-rimmed glasses to the white uniform that no one ever bothered him about for some reason even though it was against school rules—was the very picture of refinement. He looked like a knight from an old story—or at the very least, like someone who was born to be student council president. He was also, incidentally, Petralka’s cousin. So I’d known him for a long time, too, sort of. A friend of a friend, to put it simply.

“Oh! Garius!” I exclaimed before I could stop myself. “Help me!”

Garius, though, leveled a cool gaze at me from behind his glasses. “Shinichi,” he began. “Far be it from me to fail to come to your aid, who have been a friend—no, indeed, so much more than a friend—for so very long.”

“You never can just get to the point, can you?”

“Far be it from me indeed,” he said, and then I saw a starburst of light reflect coldly off his glasses. “But first there is a question that I, as student council president, charged with the keeping of order, the protection of school rules, and the representation of all our vast student body, must ask you.”

“Y—Yes...?”

“What was that you just placed in your bag?” He pointed at my school bag.

Him, too?!

“G-Garius, surely you don’t have to worry about that?” I said, making sure my bag was shut tight. “I know you. I’ll bet your locker and your desk and everything were overflowing with chocolates, right?” And all heartfelt, I had no doubt.

“Hm?” Garius cocked his head. “As it so happens, you are correct—but it is a violation of school rules to bring anything into the building which is not necessary for the advancement of learning. Everything I received, I distributed to the teachers.”

“Wh-What are you, some kind of monster?!”

Just think how the poor girls would feel about that—it would probably be worse than if he’d thrown the chocolates away!

“Hmph.” Garius brushed back his long silver hair—he looked annoyingly picturesque doing so—and said, “Valentine’s Day? The day when women are supposed to confess their love to menfolk? Such frivolous customs mean nothing to me.”

“I know it’s a little late to be realizing this, but Garius...”

Garius seems like a waste of those gorgeous good looks.

“Be that as it may,” he said, looking me in the face, “insofar as you did not deny it, I presume I may assume those were chocolates you stuffed into your bag just now, were they not?”

“Nuh-uh! Th-They were not! Totally wrong!”

“I see.”

“Uh-huh!”

“Then you won’t mind if I take a look?”

“I sure wouldn’t mind!” I veritably shouted.

Garius, as I’ve said, got more than enough chocolates of his own, so it wouldn’t bother him one way or the other if I’d received some candy, but I was sure this walking rulebook would deem whatever I’d gotten as “unnecessary,” confiscate it, and pitch it right into the staff room.

Why am I friends with him again? I thought. Maybe after so long, I was just stuck with him.

“What is the matter, Shinichi?”

“We wanna see!”

Petralka and Elvia both leaned forward.

“Inquiring minds, Shinichi,” Garius said, spreading his arms as if to say they’d forced the issue. “The people want to know.” Behind him, I could see half the guys in class casting questioning looks at me. Countless gazes pierced me like needles. I was lost: if my chocolates became public knowledge, it wouldn’t end with these three. The crowd of disappointed, frustrated guys would string me up as a traitor! And worst of all, I was sure someone would take away my chocolates! The ones somebody actually meant to give me on purpose! Heck, it’s what I would do in their shoes!

What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?!

I felt sweat beading on my forehead. But I was totally average. I didn’t have any special powers, any way to bust this situation wide open. My mind revved itself into a frenzy, desperate to come up with some clever trick. And at that moment...

“All right, please take your seats, everyone.”

—God sent me salvation. Or maybe that was Goddess.

“Er... What’s been happening in here?”

Standing there in the classroom door was our teacher, Koganuma Minori-sensei. She was one adorable teacher: she wore glasses and looked so young she could have passed for a college student, or even a high-schooler like us. But that voluptuous chest of hers cried Grown woman!

“Come on, come on, now. Straighten the desks and get back to your seats.”

“Y-Yes, ma’am!” I nodded vigorously and started arranging the chaotic desks and chairs around me. Garius, Elvia, and Petralka all shot me withering looks, but now that Sensei was here, there was nothing they could do, and they went back to their seats.

Phew!

This would at least buy me some time.

“And with that,” Minori-sensei said, pushing her glasses up her nose with one finger, “we will now conduct an inspection of your belongings.”

“Nyyaaarrrghhhhh!” I howled, leaping to my feet.

“Shinichi-kun, don’t shout,” Minori-sensei said, looking at me disapprovingly.

“But—but Sensei! Why so suddenly? Why now?”

“Because it’s Van Allen’s day,” she said. But what did a radiation belt composed of protons and electrons trapped by the earth’s magnetic field from 1,000 to 40,000 kilometers’ altitude have to do with chocolate?!

“That’s Valentine’s Day, ma’am!” I cracked.

“Oh, yes, Valentine’s Day,” Minori-sensei said with a smile and a nod. “I’m sure some of you students have chocolate here, right? We’re going to find those students and string them up—I mean—”

“Just a moment, Teach! What was that you just said?!”

“I sort of thought it was my duty as a teacher to inculcate proper morals in such students.”

“I don’t think a teacher who spends all our free-study periods reading BL can just wake up to her public duty like that!”

“Your teacher has always been opposed to illicit sexual relationships,” Minori-sensei said calmly. Fair enough; she was a teacher, after all, but I hardly thought giving and getting chocolates on Valentine’s Day qualified as— “The only illicit relationships allowed are between members of the same sex!”

“Don’t sound so certain!”

“The teacher is right, Shinichi.”

“Why are you agreeing with her, Garius?!” I said, but I could feel the air in the classroom turning against me. This was bad. The moment I’d inadvertently let loose with that quip at Minori-sensei, I’d become the focus of all of the discontent in the room.

Careless!

I looked at the ground, cursing my foolishness.

“Let’s start with you, Shinichi-kun,” Minori-sensei said. “Please empty everything out of your bag and onto your desk.”

The box could fit comfortably in your palm. The restrained, coppery-colored wrapper was complemented by the elegant white ribbon tied around it, a pale band coursing along the delicate copper cover.

“And so,” Minori-sensei said, looking around the room, “we will now commence the first class trial.”

“But why?!” At the center of two concentric circles of desks, standing like a defendant in a court of law, treated like a criminal—was me, currently enduring the glares of my classmates. “Why are we doing this?! Is it a crime to get heartfelt Valentine’s Day chocolates?! Is there some attorney thing I have to ace?!” My eyes brimmed with tears.

“Shinichi.” Garius pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his middle finger. “As student council president, it is my duty to ensure there are no revolutions or insurrections at this school.”

“How is my getting some candy going to start an insurrection?!”

“I cannot overlook facts that run contrary to the natural order.”

Isn’t that a little harsh?!

“Shinichi. Make things easy on yourself.” Garius gestured at my box, which had been placed under a glass case as though it were evidence of the utmost importance. “Tell us where and from whom you received this obviously heartfelt-chocolate-like thing.”

“But you still haven’t told me why!”

“Because we are curious!” Petralka said from beside Garius, her arms crossed. “We must know.”

“Know what?!”

“Ahem—who in the world it was that stole a march on—hrm! We mean, Shinichi who in the world would be mad enough to give a muddle-brain like you heartfelt chocolates!” Petralka said. She was blushing for some reason.

“’S right!” Elvia, sitting in the jury box (I guess you could call it), said. “I wanna know, too!”

“Why would you want to know?!” I said.

“’Cause I feel like destiny’s taken a hand, y’know?” she said, and then she chuckled as if she were a little bit embarrassed. And maybe happy about something, because her tail wagged behind her. “When y’ run right into each other on the first day of school? That’s a sign, Shinichi-san. That’s a sign. Destiny’s drawing us together.” I didn’t answer that, but the air in the classroom was getting tense. It was probably the jealousy waves all the other guys were emitting.

“Ooh, curse this animal girl!” Petralka said, arching an eyebrow. “How dare she show up so late and claim the mandate of destiny! We do not know who you are or where you are from, but could it be you who gave him those chocolates?!” She pointed a finger at Elvia.

“Don’t think so. I just got here this morning, remember?” Elvia replied. Well, fair point.

“She’s right, that’s not possible,” Minori-sensei said. “In fact, she’s our new transfer student.”

Hey, Sensei, you’re ignoring homeroom and introducing the new kid and everything for this?!

“Anyway, we have to find out which poor, misguided student gave actual chocolates to Shinichi-kun. If they don’t get the guidance of a good teacher, I fear for their future!”

“What is everyone’s problem with me?!” I howled, but the others all seemed to agree with her; they stood there with their arms crossed, nodding. What was this, the Inquisition?! And why was the teacher involved?!

“For one thing, chocolates were considered an aphrodisiac in ancient times,” Minori-sensei said.

“So what?!”

“Providing an aphrodisiac and then confessing feelings of love? That’s not a very wholesome way for boys and girls to interact.”

“Y-Yes, she is right! For shame!” Petralka said, shaking her fist. “To all things there is a proper order!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! W-We don’t even know if those really are chocolates yet, do we?!” I was starting to crack. But suddenly there was a chill in the air of the courtroom—er, I mean, classroom. Minori-sensei looked around at the silent students and nodded firmly. “That much is true. There is no obvious love letter attached, which leaves us with the possibility that someone gave these chocolates out of a sense of obligation, with no intention of confessing love afterward.”

“Hrm,” Petralka grunted, her arms still crossed.

“Indeed,” added Garius, the light glinting off his glasses.

“But Sensei!” Elvia said, raising her hand. “Couldn’t there be a little letter inside the box? Or a name written on the chocolates?”

“Exactly!” Minori-sensei exclaimed, pointing at Elvia so forcefully you could practically see the sound effect. “Open that box this minute, and let’s see what’s inside!”

I couldn’t restrain a yell. “Noooo, stop!”

They were going to display me and my chocolates right there in front of everyone. Why?! Why did they have to do this?! Was it such a crime for me to get candy?! My rage at the unfairness of it all built in my chest, the pressure getting worse and worse, until suddenly I snapped. “Yaaaaarrrghhh!”

Maybe it was the adrenaline rush, one of those things where an emergency inspires a great feat. Maybe I’d awakened a power I didn’t even know I had. Whatever it was, I smashed the glass case holding the chocolates. Ignoring the shocked looks from everyone else, I grabbed the box, jumped onto one of the desks circled around me, jumped off it, and fled the classroom.

“He’s getting away!” I heard Minori-sensei shout.

“After him!” Petralka added.

“If he resists, I authorize you to shoot!” Garius said.

Wait, what?! Shoot what? Shoot who?

But I didn’t have time to, as it were, shoot back with my ridiculous quips. With the murderous shouts, footsteps, and gunshots of my classmates and homeroom teacher ringing behind me, I ran down the hallway as fast as I could.

I somehow managed to give them the slip, hiding behind a small storage shed behind the school, where I tried desperately to catch my breath. It was nothing short of a miracle that I’d made it this far. The school grounds were full of students and teachers running this way and that, shouting my name. When I saw even Matoba-sensei and Principal Zahar, armed with a machine gun, out searching for me, I just about wet my pants.

What was all this about? What had I done wrong?! This was too much! It couldn’t be happening!

“Do I... Do I not even have the right to receive heartfelt chocolates?!”

“Of course not,” someone said, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I looked back to see Petralka standing there. “Petralka...” I mumbled. Then I threw my hands in the air. “D-Don’t shoot! Please!”

“Why would we shoot you, moron?” She sighed. “How could we shoot you?”

“Huh? You... don’t think you could?”

Petralka didn’t answer, but she gave me a look of displeasure.

“How’d you know I was here, anyway?”

“Think how many years we have known each other. We always could guess your hiding spots when we played hide and seek.”

“Oh... Oh yeah.” Come to think of it, I remembered how quickly she had always found me. “But Petralka... you’re not going to attack me?” I asked timidly. If she started shouting for the others, it was all over for me.

“Ahem... No,” Petralka said. She was looking into the distance and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “But only because we have, erm, not yet given you our obligatory chocolates.”

“Oh yeah...”

Petralka and I went way back. She was the one who, for whatever reason, jumped through my window every morning and smacked me awake. Our families had known each other for ages, which meant we had, too. She was the only person outside my immediate family to give me chocolate on Valentine’s Day. Always with the word OBLIGATORY written on it in the biggest possible letters, as if she wanted to be absolutely sure I couldn’t misunderstand.

“Here,” she said, still not looking at me for some reason. She presented me with a small, white box with a cute blue ribbon tied around it. “These are our chocolates, which we give you, ahem, out of custom—duty, one might say, and certainly for no reason other than that we are of long acquaintance and it is expected that we would give you chocolates such as these. So now that you have them, throw those others away.”

“Er...?” That last bit caught me off guard. What was Petralka saying? Throw away... my chocolates? The heartfelt ones? But that would be silly.

“If you get rid of them, we presume the others will stop chasing you.”

“Petralka...” I stared vacantly at my arrogant old friend. She was right: if I abandoned my chocolates, my troubles might be over. I had the ones from Petralka, even if she only gave them to me out of a sense of duty. If I could just be satisfied with that and get rid of these heartfelt ones...

“Hurry and do it,” Petralka said with a toss of her head. “They will find you soon.”

I heard the roar of several helicopters overhead. Knowing they were all on a manhunt for a single person—the traitor, me—I could only quail. And yet...

“I’m sorry,” I said to Petralka. “I can’t do it.”

“Why not?!” she wailed, looking at me in astonishment. “Shinichi, do you know what you are saying?!”

“I know how people feel about me,” I said, clutching the heartfelt chocolates to my chest. “I know what they think. And yet someone, even if I don’t know who, gave me these chocolates. I’m sure it took all the strength she had.” I mean, look what it had turned into. “I can’t... I just can’t betray those feelings.”

“Shinichi...” Just for a second, Petralka looked at me dispiritedly. But then she pointedly looked away again and said, “W-We knew you were stupid, but we did not know how stupid!”

“Hey, that hurts...”

“Fine, go, we wash our hands of you! You cannot even be bothered to grasp the hand that reaches out to rescue you! Do whatever you want!”

“Petralka—” I looked at her for a beat, studying her profile as she stared at the ground. “Thanks,” I said, barely a whisper, and then I made to get out of there. But then:

“There he is! I found Kanou!” someone shouted from the chopper above.

“You can’t get away now, Shinichi-kun!”

“Shinichi-san, just y’ wait for me!”

With the voices of teachers and students alike ringing in my ears, combined with the crack of machine-gun fire and the roaring of the helicopter, I clutched the chocolates to my heart—the fragile, sweet evidence of my burgeoning youth given to me by a girl I hadn’t even seen yet—and ran.

Humans, when they really, desperately need to, can sometimes perform amazing feats. I, for example, ran so fast even I couldn’t believe it, bursting through the net of would-be captors and successfully making it back to my house. I had some near-misses on the way, such as with Elvia, who had transformed into a giant monster, and Garius, who was riding in some sort of mobile battle suit, but still I somehow made it home.

“Pant... Pant...” I slammed the door behind me, out of breath. Here, I would be safe from the attacks of my pursuers. I looked anew at the box of heartfelt chocolates I had been clinging to this entire time.

Ah...

Yes, this is what it had all been for. For this box of candy, I was ready to make the entire world my enemy. And I didn’t regret it. These chocolates, these heartfelt chocolates, were a validation of my existence. They told me it was all right for me to be!

I undid the ribbon with trembling fingers. Then I removed the wrapper, gently, as if helping a virginal maiden out of her clothes. And then the white box was there before me, bare, and I opened it. Within would be the hidden truth called heartfelt chocolates. I looked in, and saw...

“I... I can’t believe it...”

A heart-shaped chocolate. In white chocolate icing, it bore the words, “To my beloved Shinichi-san.” And below that—

I let out an inarticulate groan. I was sure I could hear the roar of the world coming undone, the whole universe shattering around me. Written there was—

“Home already, dear?” someone said sweetly. It was my mom, emerging from another room in her slippers. She wasn’t normally here during the day. Apparently today, she’d decided to make an exception. “Oh, that reminds me,” she said. She must have been cooking, because I saw her wipe her hands on her apron as she gave me a funny look. “Did you find the chocolates I left in your desk?”

I couldn’t speak.

“I splurged a little on some especially nice candy, so I left it in your desk at school yesterday. I admit, I was on pins and needles sneaking in.” She smiled, almost as if she were embarrassed. But as for me, my eyes were fixed on the last two words written on that chocolate heart: “Love, Mom.” All I could do was stare.

“Shinichi-san?” she asked uneasily, and I, completely exhausted, slumped to the ground.

“Yep. That’s how it went,” I said with a sigh. “That’s how the dream went.”

“Uh...huh,” Myusel said, blinking. She looked just like she always did, my half-elf maid-san. I was still the master of this mansion, and she still served me. And despite being a half-elf, she really looked pretty much human; just pointier ears, maybe. She wasn’t quite twenty—just like she looked—and she was awfully pretty. She’d brought me my clothes for the day when I woke up.

“I guess that’s what I get for watching that anime so many times,” I said, pointing to a DVD on my desk. It bore a cartoony cover and the title Valentine Panic! It was the capstone film to the anime based on a certain gal game. The story went that a microchip containing secret information that could turn the world on its head accidentally wound up inside some Valentine’s Day chocolate, and the luckless protagonist who wound up with the compromised candy found every military and intelligence service in the world after him.

The DVD was one I’d imported as part of a pilot program here in the Holy Eldant Empire. I thought it might sell pretty well if we dubbed it into the Eldant language, so I’d watched it dozens of times to create a script. I guess I’d worked so hard on it I was even dreaming about it.

“But it was like... all the characters were people I know,” I said, smiling a little. “Petralka was the aloof childhood friend, Garius was the student council president, and Elvia was the mysterious transfer student. Even Minori-sensei was there—she was the teacher.”

Myusel was still blinking, but finally she said, “Shinichi-sama...” She looked troubled, almost a little sad. “What about me?”

“Huh?”

“Was... Was I not in your dream?”

“Huh? You, Myusel?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, nodding a little.

“Sure, you were there.”

“Oh... I see.” She sounded relieved, even happy, to hear that. Maybe she was afraid she’d been the only one left out of the cast. But she shouldn’t have worried: dream or no, I would never forget her. My subconscious had made a place for her, no question. “Was I one of the pupils at your school, sir?”

“No. You were my mom.”

“Sir...?” She looked at me, stricken.

“My mom. You remember, she showed up right at the end? That was you.”

Myusel blinked again, and finally she said, “Y-Your mother, Shinichi-sama...?” It seemed like this was some kind of shock to her. For a moment she looked around as if she were in physical pain. Finally, with great reluctance, and a smile that made it obvious she was forcing the expression—she said, “Shinichi-sama...”

“Yeah?”

“D-Do I really... look that old to you...?”

“Huh? No, no, it’s not that...”

“It isn’t?”

I found myself lost for words. Or, well—I had the words, I just knew I couldn’t say them. I thought I understood, more or less, why my mind had cast Myusel in the role of my mother. Many sons see their mom as the one person who always takes their side and will always forgive them whatever they do. So the reason would be this: on some level I felt like even if the whole world were against me, Myusel alone would be in my corner. That’s why she was my mom in my dream.

But how embarrassing would that be to say to her face?

“Anyway,” I said, clearing my throat instead. “It was a pretty weird dream, but now that I’m awake and I’ve had a chance to think about it, I think maybe the reason is that—mom or not—I would be pretty happy to get chocolates from you, Myusel.” So embarrassing. I was cringing just listening to myself. “Ahem, what I mean is, er—chocolate! Maybe you could try making some kind of chocolate candy? You could get the ingredients from Japan, I’m sure...”

I was babbling, trying to cover for myself, but Myusel, looking more composed now, just smiled and nodded. “Ah, yes, sir. Of course.”