Chapter Two: The Beast-Spy

Despite the occasional hiccups, our school was really coming along nicely. Notwithstanding the daily fights among the students and their servants, our pupils were remarkably studious—as I had reported to Petralka earlier, their education in both the Japanese language and otaku culture was proceeding apace. School dramas are plentiful in anime and manga, so I wanted the students to have some sense of what it was like at a Japanese school. I generally modeled our schedule and daily classes on the workings of a middle or high school back home.

Then again, the range of classroom activities—showing videos, reading manga or light novels aloud to the class, or bringing in my computer so I could show off some games—probably would have looked to any real teacher like we were just playing around.

But never mind that. Something else I said earlier was that dry ground soaks up water. The Eldant students, starved for genuine entertainment, absorbed Japanese language and otaku culture much more quickly than I’d expected. Of course, they were studying a single subject for six hours a day, and they were also enjoying themselves, which meant engagement was high. Add to that the desire (once again, as I mentioned) to get close to Empress Eldant, and maybe it wasn’t so surprising that their studies should be going so well.

However, we were quickly exhausting the curriculum I had devised. Hence I resorted to giving the students “free-study time” for a while. Thanks to the solar panels and emergency generators the JSDF had set up for us, we were mostly able to keep the power on. We had also obtained ten computers and taught the students the basics of how to use them. There was no internet yet, but computers specialize in the storage and retrieval of information, and my hope was that the students would be able to study more efficiently.

“I guess you can’t just throw them into the deep end, though...”

“What are you talking about?”

Minori-san and I had finished another day’s classes and were in a bird-drawn carriage on our way home. Our seats faced each other across the coach; Minori-san sat on one side while Myusel, whom we’d collected from the castle, and I sat on the other. Apparently, the hospital had given her a clean bill of health, and she was already thinking of nothing but the work she had to do—chiefly, preparing this evening’s dinner.

“Otaku culture always has this kind of ambiguous line between creator and audience,” I said.

Minori-san looked at me quizzically for a moment. I thought I’d lost her, until she said, “Oh, you mean like how people are amateur doujinshi creators at Comiket one day, and the next they’re pro manga-ka?”

I knew she was an otaku.

“More or less,” I said. “I can’t help thinking that the whole top-down approach isn’t the best.”

“Hmmm,” Minori-san said, but she didn’t look quite convinced. “Don’t you think maybe you’re just going a little too fast, Shinichi-kun?”

“You think so?”

“No matter what we do, I don’t think the people of Eldant are going to be making their own doujinshi or holding their own Comiket for years, decades even.”

“Sure, I agree, but—”

I stopped short, picturing how diligently the students studied and how well they remembered their lessons. At that rate, was it possible...?

Just as those thoughts were running through my head, Minori-san suddenly narrowed her eyes and took her smartphone out of her back pocket.

“What’s up?” I asked, thinking she must have gotten a call from someone. She didn’t answer, but only fiddled with her phone, a dangerous look in her eye.

Huh? She’s not usually so serious...

“Minori-san?”

“Just a second.” She tapped on the window of our carriage and got the driver to come to a stop. We were only a few minutes away from home. Why in the world would she want to stop here?

“Seriously, what’s up?”

“Just... hang on...” Minori-san continued to play with her phone. She was in work mode now.

“What’s Koganuma-sama doing? Is something wrong?” Myusel asked.

“Good question,” I said. “I wish I knew...”

We watched Minori-san silently for a few minutes, until she announced, “There’s an unknown figure lurking around near our house.”

She must have gotten some kind of warning on her phone. The JSDF is often pictured as having to get by with outdated technology, unlike, say, the expansively budgeted US Army, but in reality they seemed to have a lot of cutting-edge stuff. They might not be quite as up-to-date as the American military, but they appeared to have developed small observation robots.

Still—

“Unknown? You sure it’s not Brooke?”

“He’s registered with the system. He shouldn’t set off the intruder alert,” Minori-san said.

Some of those little robots I mentioned were, in fact, in use at our house as a simple security system. I had seen Minori-san placing several self-propelled monitor bots, about the size and shape of rugby balls, around the house once. I gathered that the JSDF really wanted a more robust security system but held back, maybe due to budgetary concerns or out of consideration for the Eldant Empire. I guess when you’re renting a house from an empire, it’s probably not the best idea to install a full-scale security system without asking anyone.

“Plus,” Minori-san said, picking up the suitcase at her feet and pulling out the 9mm automatic handgun within. She still carried the pistol at her hip, just like she always had, but ever since the incident with the terrorists, this suitcase had become her primary weapon. Both guns used 9mm rounds, but this one wasn’t designed for targeting one specific spot to bring your opponent down. These bullets shattered into pieces; the idea was to help clear out anyone who was getting too close.

“Brooke wouldn’t be hiding in the bushes, would he?” Minori-san concluded.

“True. He’ll fall asleep anywhere it’s warm, though!”

“This person is obviously smaller than Brooke.”

So there was someone sneaking around, trying to get close to our mansion. I had no idea who it might be.

“Wait, that’s...” With the 9mm still in one hand, Minori-san zoomed in on the feed from the observation bot on her phone and frowned at what she saw.

The bushes rustled as someone moved through them. They were definitely acting like someone who didn’t want to be seen. They moved from shadow to shadow, staying behind cover, never stopping anywhere exposed. Slowly but surely they approached their objective. It was straight out of Me**al Gear S**id. I resisted the temptation to throw in some narration, like, “This is Snake.”

Then, our mysterious visitor peeked out from behind a tree.

I was surprised to discover she was a young woman.

I couldn’t tell exactly how old she was, but I would stand by “young.” She had healthy skin tanned a light-brown color, along with short-cut brown hair. The eyebrows above her big black eyes were on the bushy side; she definitely had a certain charm.

Her green, loose-fitting trousers were tied at her ankles, and she was wearing leather sandals. A white tube top was wrapped around her chest, leaving exposed the smooth curve of her belly and the line of her shoulders—but it didn’t come off as vulgar, just pleasantly attractive.

Obviously, she wasn’t heavily dressed, but she seemed to be a traveler of some kind, because she had a bulging brown cloth sack on her back.

But her outfit wasn’t what surprised me most. It was her ears. At first, I couldn’t quite see them because they were hidden by her hair, but then I saw that she had triangular ears covered in brown fur.

Do you suppose she has...? I wondered, and looked down at the lower half of her body—where I caught glimpses of a furry tail the same color as the rest of her hair!

It was! A beast girl! An honest-to-God werewolf!

Man, this Eldant Empire really covers all the bases! What with the elves and dwarves and lizardmen, I wondered if— But there really is—!

I clenched my fist, my heart surging with moe feelings, but I at least had enough self-control not to shout out loud right there in the carriage.

“Hrm...” The beast girl rooted around in her pack and pulled out some rolled-up lambskin paper, a drawing board, and a charcoal cylinder. She hung the string on the drawing board around her neck, placed the paper on top of that, and began running the charcoal busily around the paper, looking at our mansion the entire time.

The charcoal made a scritching sound as she worked. I guess she was drawing a picture... Why? Had she snuck up to our mansion just to steal a sketch from the shadows?

She shifted slightly, and I could see what she was drawing. At first glance, it looked like she was trying to fit way too much on one piece of paper. But these were no mere doodles; she wasn’t just making lines at random. As the picture on the paper came together, it was obvious that it was our mansion, along with the windmill visible in the background, and the school building. In fact, the windmill and the school looked like they were already done. She was focusing on our house now.

The girl was able to vary the thickness of her lines by how much pressure she placed on the charcoal. I don’t know much about drawing, but her picture looked pretty darn good to me.

More troubling, though, was the content of her picture. The windmill had been converted into an electric generator by the JSDF to help provide power for the school and the mansion. It was, in essence, a power station.

What’s going on...?

This beast girl appeared to be sketching our buildings—which was to say, Amutech’s facilities.

“Guess that about does it,” she muttered in a voice with an unusual intonation. Then she set aside her charcoal. She took the strap of the drawing board off her neck and knelt down, reaching into her bulging backpack. She took out a leather cylinder, the sort of thing you might receive official documents in. She opened the lid, rolled up her newly completed drawing, and put it inside. She secured the top and used her teeth to make sure the strap was tied down tight, then—

“Don’t move.”

—she froze on Minori-san’s order. Maybe it wasn’t just Minori-san who convinced her. Maybe it was the 9mm handgun she was holding, or the two JSDF officers flanking her, each carrying a Type 89 assault rifle. The moment we had confirmed an intruder near our premises, Minori-san requested backup from the nearest JSDF base. (Granted, what passed for a base here was a part of the dormitory in the nearby castle town that was being rented out by the Japanese military.)

The Holy Eldant Empire didn’t have guns, so this beast girl couldn’t have known what the weapons were. But Type 89s have a bayonet on the end, and the way the soldiers were holding them probably would have alerted anyone that they weren’t friendly.

“What’s this? Wh-What’s going on around here?!” the beast girl said in surprise.

“This area is off-limits to civilians,” Minori-san said in an authoritative and very military tone quite unlike what I was used to hearing from her. Moments like this definitely reminded me that she was a soldier. “Didn’t you see the sign?”

“I—I can’t read!” the girl cried, holding her hands up as if to say, I surrender. Evidently that gesture is the same no matter which world you’re in. Not that this was the time or place to be intrigued by such details.

“There’s a picture along with the words,” Minori-san said sharply. “The sign is located where anyone coming down the path would see it. So either you saw it and ignored it, or you deliberately took an unusual route to get near this place.”

Whatever she was after, the beast girl had definitely looked like she was trying to avoid being seen.

“I—I swear I’m no one suspicious!” the girl said desperately. Of course, that’s just what a suspicious person would say.

“Identify yourself.”

“I’m Elvia Harneiman, and as... as you can see, I’m a wandering artist!”

“An artist, huh?” Minori-san glanced at the tube that the beast girl—Elvia—was holding. “You were drawing a picture, that much is for sure.”

“Sure it’s for sure! I’m an artist, and that’s what an artist does!” She pulled out her lambskin paper and unrolled it. Now that I had a chance to get a good look at her sketch, I could appreciate how talented she was. It was almost photo-real—she had captured the essence; every detail was there. I was amazed to realize someone could do such a precise drawing using only charcoal.

“Artists aren’t the only people who draw pictures,” Minori-san said.

Well, that was true enough. Technically, anyone can draw, regardless of how talented they are or aren’t. And her evident fixation on Amutech’s buildings... There were no guarantees that she wasn’t a forgotten element of the “assembly of patriots,” plotting how to kill me.

“But we’ll hear what you have to say,” Minori-san went on. Through the eye of the robot monitor as displayed on the smartphone, I saw the two soldiers with Minori-san approach Elvia. For safety’s sake, Myusel and I had stayed in the carriage, and I had watched the jumpy video with Myusel interpreting for me. Only now did I finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Elvia Harneiman, eighteen years old, wandering artist.

That, at least, was what the beast girl insistently repeated after the soldiers had apprehended her. Admittedly, everything in her personal effects seemed to back her up. But why would an itinerant artist have suddenly decided that our mansion was the thing she most wanted to draw? Forget about the power plant-ified windmill and the school building—the mansion was a pretty normal noble dwelling by Eldant standards, not something interesting or unique enough to warrant a sketch.

And that seemed to suggest...

“She’s a spy,” Minori-san said.

“A spy?!” I exclaimed.

We were in my office on the second floor. Elvia, still in handcuffs, was sitting on a chair, but Minori-san and I had taken off our rings in order to converse with each other. This way, neither Elvia nor any human in the Eldant Empire would understand what we were talking about. Myusel, though, had picked up a smattering of Japanese over the past four months, which posed some issues regarding confidentiality.

Speaking of Myusel, she was in the kitchen getting dinner ready, so she wasn’t present; Brooke was out taking care of the grounds as usual.

“When you say spy,” I said, swallowing heavily, “you mean like 007, or The Man from U.N.C.L.E., or ‘Good morning, Mr. Phelps’? That sort of thing?”

“For a guy in his teens, you sure make some obscure references.”

On that note, the TV show Mission: Impossible was broadcast in the 1960s, long before Minori-san and I were born. But that’s what reruns are for—I saw them on cable—and there was that big-screen reboot they did a few years ago.

“Yeah, I guess those shows aren’t very popular anymore,” I said.

“Well, this is no television show,” Minori-san said with a wistful smile. “The Eldant Empire isn’t the only country in this world, and espionage is alive and well.”

“Now that you mention it, I heard something about border skirmishes, too.” Having said that, I never quite got the sense of urgency that you might expect of a nation at war. Maybe what happened in the borderlands just didn’t translate to the way things felt in the capital.

“The Eldant Empire has a lot of citizens, and so many of them are of different races that getting a spy into the country isn’t that difficult.”

The place wasn’t surrounded by oceans like Japan was, either. If they really wanted to, it wouldn’t be so hard for someone from another country to cross the mountains and sneak in, or maybe even dig a tunnel over here. Unlike a certain Earth nation, it probably wasn’t possible for the Eldant Empire to build a wall all the way along its border, with watchtowers and everything.

“But why spy here?” Why would a spook sketch our mansion?

“Think about it. If something unusual was happening near the enemy capital, with a bunch of people you’d never seen before, and a group that appeared to be military was setting up buildings—wouldn’t you be curious?”

“I get it.” That made sense. I suspected no one thought that this “enemy country” was just setting up a center for otaku learning. If we weren’t careful, they might mistake it for a military facility of some sort. And it was, after all, members of the Eldant military and the JSDF who had put the buildings up. It was an understandable misunderstanding.

But even so...

“You really think she’s a spy?” I looked at Elvia again. Perhaps having realized that we weren’t immediately going to kill or torture her, she seemed to have relaxed somewhat. In fact, even when she had been captured and bound, she hadn’t seemed too intimidated—almost as if she had expected that it might happen, had been mentally prepared for it. That lent some credence to Minori-san’s hypothesis that she was a spy.

Yet when I looked at that open face, it just didn’t say spy to me. I would have thought a spy would kind of... give me the heebie-jeebies or something.

“And... what exactly do we plan to do with this person?” I asked.

Minori-san’s response was firm and immediate. “When you capture a spy, you interrogate them and then kill them.”

“Say what?!” I could hardly speak. I mean, I knew she was right, but...

“Eldant laws dictate what happens here.”

“Sure, I mean, yeah, but...”

No matter how many times I looked at her, Elvia just seemed too... easygoing. She didn’t look wild or crazy enough to be a spy. She looked less like someone on the front lines of information warfare and more like... I dunno. Some kind of subcontractor just doing her job, with no idea what was really going on.

“...she just doesn’t strike me as a spy,” I concluded. I looked at Elvia; she looked back with that open, frank expression. It made me think back to the mutt we had kept at home when I was a kid. It was the tail that caused me to make the connection—that, and the slightly vacant expression.

To my surprise, Minori-san nodded and said, “That’s true enough. It’s just possible that she doesn’t actually realize that what she’s doing is spying.”

“Uh, really?”

“Granted, I was using a robot observation system, but it was awfully easy to find her, and she seems a little... out of it. She doesn’t seem very intimidating, does she?”

Well, that’s what I’d been trying to say. And those qualities would get a spy captured right away, wouldn’t they?

“I think she may be just one of many, being treated like disposable goods.”

“Yikes,” I groaned. I guess numbers tell eventually... Could an enemy state have employed bunches of spies, knowing that some of them would be captured and killed? It would certainly mean they didn’t have to do too much training of their personnel, and in a medieval world where life was cheap, a strategy like that could have a certain twisted effectiveness. But it was also a deeply disturbing idea. Especially if the spies didn’t know they were being used.

I looked at Elvia sympathetically, causing her to respond with an expectant Yes, what?! expression. She was too big to pass for a pet, but the way she behaved and her overall warmth made her seem awfully friendly. It was impossible to dislike her. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she had a sweetness, like the dog you can’t stand but love at the same time.

And they were going to interrogate and then kill her like some bad over-18 rape doujinshi? You know, “They ABC her and then they force her to 1-2-3, and then they X her Y and Z using a you-know-what...!!” (Redacted in compliance with the Tokyo Municipal Government’s Statute for the Healthy Raising of Boys and Young Men.)

With these thoughts running through my head, I soon found myself in danger of panting out loud. But this wasn’t some work of fiction we were dealing with—this was actually going to happen to her! This wasn’t just a story that would go away when you shut the book.

“She wasn’t trying to steal military secrets or anything. Don’t you think there’s a chance of, you know... clemency?”

“Just a second,” Minori-san said with a sad smile. “Shinichi-kun. Do you... feel sorry for her?”

“I mean, kind of... I... I know I’m being naïve.” When I heard Minori-san talk about interrogation and execution, though, I just wanted to help the kid. Maybe I would have felt different if she had been an obvious enemy coming at us in a frontal attack, but I just didn’t feel like I had been wronged by this girl.

“Now I get it...” Minori-san nodded. “You’re all moe for animal ears, aren’t you, Shinichi-kun?”

“Wha?! I—I am not! But yes, they’re nice!”

“Which is it?” she asked, smirking.

“No, listen! I’m not trying to cover for her because of her animal ears! I’m doing it because she’s another person. But that doesn’t change the fact that animal ears and tails are nice!”

I struggled to explain. Truth be told, I had been itching to touch Elvia’s ears and tail for a while now. These weren’t clip-on accessories like for a costume; these were real, living, moving, body-heat-carrying, beast-girl animal ears and tail! I had taken another step closer to the ancient dream of all mankind! Ahh, I just want to give her a big hug and feel how fluffy she is!

“Shinichi-kun. You’re drooling.”

“Oops...” I quickly wiped my mouth.

When I looked over at Elvia, she was shrinking down into her chair. She must have sensed some kind of danger, even though she couldn’t understand what we were saying. No, Elvia! I’m not like that! Please don’t look at me with those frightened eyes!

“But anyway,” Minori-san said, crossing her arms, “we’re not in a position to object to whatever the Eldant Empire wants to do.”

“If we don’t say anything... I don’t suppose they wouldn’t find out?”

“Shinichi-kun,” Minori-san said with a hint of exasperation. “Have you not realized that we’re being watched?”

“............Huh?” I stared at her, wide-eyed. Watched? “You mean... by the Eldant Empire?”

“Yes. I suspect that knight, Garius, is behind it. Don’t look out the window,” she said, holding her phone out to me. The screen displayed a photograph. It definitely looked like it had been taken on the sly. It depicted something like a bird sitting in the branches of a tree. I say “something like” because although it looked sort of like an owl, it had only one eye, smack in the middle of its body. It seemed more like a gremlin than a bird.

“There are several trees around the house that always have these same birds in the same places,” Minori-san said. “At first I thought maybe there was a nest nearby and this was just normal behavior, but they never move from those spots, and they’re always looking in the same direction. Weird, isn’t it?”

“That’s... yep. Weird is the word I would use.”

How did she ever notice them, anyway? I was confident that I would never have picked up on them. As, in fact, I hadn’t.

“We don’t know what exactly the magic in this world is capable of, but these things are probably keeping an eye on us on behalf of the Eldant Empire. I guarantee they know about Elvia already.”

I didn’t say anything. So we really wouldn’t be able to hide her.

“Of course, there’s a chance that you might be able to intercede with the empress or Garius on her behalf...”

“Me?”

“Don’t you realize?” Minori-san was still wearing that same smirk.

Realize what?

True, I was the general manager of Amutech. But that didn’t make me any better positioned to contradict the Eldant government or army. If I was going to debate with them about something, I would have to have some pretty convincing arguments on my side.

Hmm...

If Elvia really was a spy, was there some way we could get away with not killing her?

“Hold on...”

I knew what to do in this situation. The quickest way for me to come up with a solution would be to think back to my manga and anime and games and light novels. I had learned a lot of things—in fact, most of my important life lessons—from them. They were manuals for living, practically textbooks. If there was a way to save Elvia, maybe I had seen or read it somewhere.

I drew on the vast and otherwise useless knowledge I’d accumulated during my stint as a home security guard.

Spies. Espionage. Secret intelligence agencies!

Spies were always connected to betrayal and plotting...

“Oh! I’ve got it.”

I gave a satisfied nod.

The next day, we appeared at Eldant Castle with Elvia in tow. Minori-san was convinced that staying quiet about her would cause needless misunderstandings on the part of the Holy Eldant Empire. No matter how much Petralka might like me, there would surely be some disgruntled courtier who would find this a convenient excuse to kick us—and maybe everyone Japanese—out of the Eldant Empire.

“So you’ve come, Shinichi-kun.”

I had turned Elvia over to the knights for the time being and was walking down a hallway through the castle when I found a middle-aged man standing in my path. What set me on my heels when I saw him wasn’t the fact that, in the middle of a giant castle that couldn’t have looked more medieval, he was wearing a salaryman-style suit. It wasn’t the salaryman-style part in his salaryman-style salt-and-pepper hair. It was the way his bureaucratic exterior brought back memories of my daily life in Japan, a life I’d left behind the moment I arrived in this world.

His name was Matoba Jinzaburou. At first glance, he looked like just a midlife worker drone stuck in a dead-end job. But in fact, he was head of the Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau; i.e., the organization responsible for all exchange with other worlds, including the Holy Eldant Empire. We were technically in different organizations, but he was basically my superior.

From my perspective, he was also my touchpoint with the Japanese government. Matoba-san actually lived in the same house as I did, but unlike Minori-san, he frequently traveled back and forth between Japan and the Eldant Empire, and we only rarely saw him around the mansion. It had been at least ten days since I’d seen him last. It wasn’t his fault, though—he was the guy responsible for handling all the red tape.

“I hear you apprehended a foreign spy,” he said.

“Uh, well, it was really Minori-san who did the apprehending,” I said, indicating the WAC beside me.

The perfectly honest truth was, Matoba Jinzaburou rubbed me the wrong way. In spite of his totally average exterior, I found him weirdly difficult to get my head around. Plus, the reason I was general manager of Amutech here in the Eldant Empire was because this man had tricked me.

“Hm. Well, I’m glad you didn’t attempt to shelter her out of some misguided sense of compassion. That was quite wise of you.”

Yikes! Was I that easy to read?

On the other hand, I had expected that he might say something like that.

“The Empire is rather on edge after those... unfortunate events.”

“I’m aware of that.” I gave Matoba-san a slight bow and walked by him. Frankly, I didn’t feel much like talking to him right then.

Ever since the incident with the “patriots,” I had found it harder and harder to trust the guy. Or, for that matter, the Japanese government. I couldn’t shake the sense that behind their innocent veneer, they were willing to do whatever it took to achieve their goals, and the thought scared me.

“Her Majesty is waiting,” I said by way of excuse as I slipped by.

“Indeed. Enjoy your visit.” Matoba-san didn’t seem bothered at all, but only watched us go.

We were in the same audience chamber as the day before. Not the big one that was used when all the ministers and everyone were in attendance—the smaller one that was just for when a few close associates were meeting with the empress. There was one minister, however, someone who hadn’t been present the previous day. The prime minister, specifically. Zahar. He stood next to Garius, who stood next to Petralka’s throne.

Prime Minister Zahar was a thin old man, sort of the stereotypical prime-minister type. He had obviously led a full life, and was now using his experience to advise the important people of his realm. He was soft-spoken and often smiled, and despite his age, he didn’t give much sense of being withered or weak.

Prime Minister Zahar was Petralka’s main advisor when it came to politics and economics. Garius, meanwhile, helped her with military matters. Or anyway, that was the impression I had gotten from watching them over the past several months. In other words, at that moment, I was looking at the beating heart of the empire.

And...

“Court Artist?”

...all three of them, the most important people in the Eldant Empire, were, at the moment, collectively looking at me as if I had lost my mind.

“What exactly are you talking about?” Garius asked in exasperation. Petralka and Zahar didn’t say anything, but from their expressions it looked like they were thinking the same thing.

Well, I couldn’t blame them. Here in the Eldant Empire, when you found a spy from an enemy country snooping around, standard operating procedure was to torture and then execute them. Minori-san had explained to me that this was partly about sending a message to any other spies who might be thinking about sneaking in... but, she’d added, it wasn’t without a certain emotional motivation, either.

“There’s a good chance that the werewolf in question is a spy from the kingdom of Bahairam,” Garius said. He went on soberly, “We have no firm proof, but circumstantial evidence makes it extremely likely.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” I said. I knew innocent until proven guilty wasn’t really the way things worked around here, but still... “You might be right, but what about the off chance that...”

“That what?”

“That she isn’t... guilty...”

“One is guilty until proven innocent. That is what allows the state to endure,” Garius said curtly.

I thought that might be the case. My shoulders mentally slumped. The Eldant Empire wasn’t exactly up on the latest thinking about human rights. I could talk about false charges until I was blue in the face and it probably wouldn’t mean anything to them.

That meant my only chance was to try a different approach. Petralka and Garius would both listen to reason if they knew there was some benefit to it.

“In any event,” Garius said, “I don’t think the disposal of a spy falls within your stated responsibilities.”

“Maybe not,” I said as nonchalantly as I could. I had the distinct sense that if I gave any hint that I sympathized with Elvia, it would only cause them to doubt my motives and refuse to listen. “But if she really is a spy, I think it would be more advantageous to the Eldant Empire to let her live—and give her to me.”

“Come again?” the knight asked, with an expression that clearly said he doubted my sanity.

“This used to happen all the time in my country—as you can tell from how often it shows up in manga and anime and stuff. If you kill her, there’ll just be another spy later, right?”

“Obviously. All the more reason to arrest and execute them when they—”

“But you won’t find that next spy right away, will you? They aren’t going to be all, ‘I’m a spy!’ at the border crossing.”

Garius narrowed his eyes. “One imagines not. And...?”

He was starting to look almost interested. Not interested in me! No. Just in what I had to say. This was definitely not a flag tripping.

“Well, what if you let her live, let her make her reports like usual? To this kingdom of Bahairam or wherever. But she only tells them the things we tell her to say. It doesn’t have to be the truth. It could be the opposite of the truth, if you want.”

“Hrm. What is this you’re proposing?” Petralka was looking at me dubiously, but as I had hoped, Zahar and Garius seemed to have grasped what I was trying to say. I saw comprehension and surprise slowly dawning on their faces.

“Deliberately feeding them misinformation,” Garius mused.

“Right. Wouldn’t that give us a chance to manipulate them?”

Say we were to have Elvia report that a particular part of the border was lightly defended. The enemy would charge in—but of course, we would have a major force waiting there.

“Mm,” Garius muttered. “It’s certainly possible. Rather underhanded, but... undoubtedly more beneficial than simply killing her.”

“Undoubtedly. Definitely more beneficial.”

“But would this ploy work more than once?” This time it was Prime Minister Zahar who spoke. “Once the enemy discovered that their spy’s information was unreliable, that indeed acting on it only brought them to grief, they would never trust her again.”

“No,” I said with a shake of my head, “they wouldn’t.” The important thing here was to smile as knowingly as possible—like one of those corrupt merchants working with an evil official in a samurai drama. “And that’s exactly the point.”

“...I’m sorry?” the Prime Minister said.

“If such a worthless spy were to go back to her home country, she would be executed immediately, wouldn’t she?”

The minister and the knight looked at each other for a moment. Then Garius looked back at me. “Kanou Shinichi. You—” Just for a moment, fresh astonishment colored his handsome, pale face. Then he began to smirk. “I see. Yes, very interesting. We take her in, bring her to our side.”

Yep. That’s what I was going for.

If Elvia’s report was the reason her country ended up getting mauled—well, what spy could go home then? And with nowhere to go except the place she already was, she would have to protect her newfound homeland.

“And you certainly couldn’t keep her anywhere that had anything to do with the military,” I said.

“That’s true.”

“And as it happens, my place really doesn’t have anything to do with the military.”

It wouldn’t do us any harm if Elvia let slip a few tidbits about what was going on at Amutech. If anything, keeping an eye on her in a place where she couldn’t get any military information would neutralize her, and as long as she kept sending word back home, there wouldn’t be any more spies.

“Anyway,” I went on, “art is important in otaku culture.” In manga and anime obviously, but even in games and light novels. “It looks like she can draw. It might be helpful to have someone like that around.”

“Hmm.” Garius and Zahar looked at each other again.

Petralka finally broke her silence. “Shinichi,” she said, “we hope you’re not trying to protect this Bahairam spy.”

“Huh? Uh, oh, uh, why—why would you hope that?” I said, trying to look curious and innocent at the same time. “I’m just, you know—trying to be reasonable and do the... the best thing for the kingdom.”

This was bad. I sounded nervous; it was going to give me away.

“Reports inform us that this spy is a young woman.”

“Uh, now... now that you mention it, I guess she is. Fancy that!” I felt sweat start to trickle down my armpits. “Fancy that”?! What are you thinking, Kanou Shinichi!? You’re acting super suspicious! She’ll figure you out for sure!

As I stood there cursing my slow wits, Petralka narrowed her eyes and said, “And is this young woman, perchance, well-endowed?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Are you trying to protect her because of her large breasts?”

“What, you’re still upset about that?” I blurted, but then quickly shook my head. “I mean, no! No, she isn’t and I’m not!”

This conversation was definitely not going the way I had expected. I remembered Petralka once expressing some jealousy that Myusel’s chest was larger than hers. I had wanted to tell her that not all guys go for big boobs, and that in her case, a huge rack on that tiny body would look really weird anyway—but it would only have made her mad, so I had swallowed the words.

“Anyway,” I said, “her breasts aren’t the important thing about her!”

“Oh no?”

“No! It’s those animal ears and that animal tail—they’re moe beyond belief!”

Petralka looked at me silently. The temperature in the room seemed to plunge.

“I mean, uh, never mind!” I said, holding my hand up as if I were swearing in a court of law.

The truth was, I had been so taken with Elvia’s ears and tail that I hadn’t paid much attention to the rest of her. Looking back on it, I guess she had a pretty good chest. I thought. I’d have to check later. When it came to werewolves, I definitely pictured someone slim. Shapeliness was more moe than sheer size.

Waitwaitwaitwaitwait.

“The point is,” I said, clearing my throat, “I want you to give her into my custody. If things really turn bad, just take her back and torture or execute or whatever her then. But I really don’t think she’s going to be much of a problem.”

“Very well.” I was surprised how readily Garius agreed. Maybe it had to do with those one-eyed owls Minori-san had pointed out. Maybe Garius was thinking that if we and Elvia were in the same place, it would be that much easier to keep an eye (literally, I guess) on all of us. “If it’s that important to you, Kanou Shinichi, then I believe we can release the spy into your care. If Your Majesty agrees?”

“...Hrm. Well.” Petralka didn’t look very enthused, but she didn’t have any concrete reason to object, either. And with the two of them in favor, Zahar wouldn’t argue.

“Awesome!” I whispered to myself. I had scored an illustrator.

“So there you have it.” We were in the dining room on the first floor of the mansion, which we also used for meetings. I was speaking to Elvia, whom we had brought home with us. “There was no definite proof that you’re an intelligence agent, so you’re being let go.”

“Phew! Thanks for your help!” Elvia said, scratching the back of her head even as a huge, bright smile blossomed on her face. At the same time, her ears were twitching. Man, did I want to touch those ears. “I thought they were gonna have me killed for sure.”

“Well, uh, not to put too fine a point on it, but... they were.” I smiled sadly.

Incidentally, it being dinnertime, Myusel, Brooke, and Minori-san were all here in the dining room with us. Since Minori-san had seen everything that went on at the castle earlier, there was nothing left to surprise her, although she still looked a little exasperated. Myusel, however, looked shocked. As for Brooke—well, he didn’t say a word or move a muscle, which made him hard to read, but I figured he was probably surprised, too.

I decided I needed to twist the knife just a little further. We couldn’t have her getting overconfident and spying on us again.

“This is definitely a gray zone,” I told her.

“What’s a gray zone? Are you talking about the color of my fur?”

“No, I mean we didn’t prove that you’re an intelligence agent or a spy, but normally that just means they’d lock you up until they knew for sure.”

“Guh?!”

This obviously left Elvia deeply shaken. Don’t tell me... Did she really think she had gotten off scot-free? Maybe she wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer...

“I—I swear I’m not either of those things!” she said, looking at each of us desperately. “I’m not a spy or an—an intelligence agent! I don’t have anything to do with the kingdom of Bahairam!”

“Huh,” Minori-san and I said, looking at each other. Neither of us had mentioned the name Bahairam in front of Elvia.

On that note, the Eldant Empire was involved in border skirmishes with a total of three different nations, so suspicion of spying didn’t necessarily directly equate to suspicion of being an agent of Bahairam. Garius had simply figured Bahairam was the most likely culprit in this case based on a number of different things.

“And,” Elvia went on, “nobody ever said anything to me about drawing pictures of things that look like military secrets from every possible angle and sending them to them!”

Okay. It’s... It’s time to shut your mouth. For your own sake.

It looked like Elvia had a bit of the klutz about her. Animal ears and clumsy? Score.

Someone who leaked worse than a sieve in a rainstorm didn’t seem like the sort of person you would want to do your spy work—but like Minori-san said, maybe these spies were considered disposable, so nobody cared if some loose lips got in the ranks.

“Ah, whatever,” I said. “You were drawing pictures, right?”

“Yes, but I swear they weren’t anything—”

“I happen to need an illustrator right now. And I’d like to hire you.”

“...Huh?” Elvia looked at me blankly.

“You were sketching this mansion because you were interested in it, right?”

“Th-That’s right, but...”

“Well, I’m inviting you to live here with us. In exchange, you prioritize work for me. You’ll be our in-house illustrator, essentially.” I had to make sure I wrapped this conversation up before Elvia said anything else incriminating.

The beast girl gave me a strange look. Then she looked at Minori-san, Myusel, and Brooke in turn. She saw that none of them shook their head at the idea, and so her mystified gaze came back to me.

“C-Can I really?” The hesitant way she asked was oddly cute.

“Let me tell you something about us,” I said.

I wanted to create a dictionary to help spread the Japanese language, but since so few people could read around here, that wouldn’t be enough to make otaku culture popular. The perfect solution would be something like a picture book, or one of those illustrated children’s dictionaries. The people of the Eldant Empire were already used to seeing pictures on signs and such; a book like that would probably be very approachable for them.

What was more, it wouldn’t do to just import every vaguely otaku-ish item I could think of. Even in our own world, a movie or game might get an R or an X rating based on its content. Or think about how in some countries the blood in fighting games is red, in others it’s green, and in still others it has to be taken out entirely.

If we were going to make similar alterations to the content we brought the Eldant Empire, we would need someone who could draw.

I heard once that there were certain countries where there was particular concern about sexual mores, to the extent that there were artists who specialized in drawing bikinis on the naked girls in anime and manga shower scenes, for example.

“The only condition is, you can’t go out on your own. Okay?”

Since it was now obvious that Elvia was a spy for Bahairam, we couldn’t let her into too many Eldant facilities, especially the military ones, even if we decided it was okay for her to see the inside of our house. If she was discovered sneaking around again, there would be no avoiding the death penalty. If we were going to take her outside, we would also have to make our own preparations to feed her false information.

“Er... Sure. Got it.” She nodded. It looked like she had finally gotten it through her head that if she refused, the only things that awaited her were a jail cell, unspeakable torture, and the hangman’s noose, in that order. I felt a little bad for her, but I would be pleased if she was thankful to at least have her life.

“I look forward to working with you,” I said to the still somewhat-perplexed beast girl.