Chapter Three: Run Silent, Run Deep

Cause and effect.

Since the two are so often directly connected, we come to expect that they’ll always go hand-in-hand. If you press the switch, the machine turns on right away. If there’s a cause, the effect will be immediately apparent. Or so we tend to think. But that’s not how it actually is.

Most changes are small, so small that we can’t see them. A plant growing, for example. Sprouts shooting up, flowers blossoming—those may involve explosive changes at the cellular level, but those changes are much too small for us to observe by just sitting and watching. We only tend to notice changes in plants after something major has happened—when it finally becomes visible to us, we’re really being thrown into the middle of things.

So I believe there must have been signs. It’s just that they were too small, and I didn’t see them until they became something big.

“What the hell are you talking about?!”

The shout smacked me square in the face the moment I opened the door to the classroom.

“Why, you insolent—!”

“Look who’s talking!”

More than one voice was shouting. The yelling started a general buzz in the classroom, the air growing tense. This was bad. I didn’t know exactly what was wrong, but I could tell it was trouble. Acting on an almost instinctual danger sense, I jumped into the room.

“Will somebody tell me what’s going on?!”

It had been about five months since I’d started the school, and classes as such were going smoothly. A little too smoothly, in fact. I was nervous. The students were picking up otaku culture—or rather, Japanese and the other related foundational stuff we were teaching—very quickly, helped by the personal computers we had put in the self-study area for free use. With Matoba-san’s help, we had brought in large-volume hard drives chock full of anime, which the students were enjoying along with manga and even light novels.

One corner of the classroom was home to some figurines—mostly capsule toy-sized stuff, brought in as “samples”—which people could freely pick up and look at.

My only real complaint about the environment was that we had no internet yet, but that was understandable. Everything else was great.

On top of that, we got a flood of applications from nobles who wanted their children to attend the school. Maybe they had heard about it from our first generation of students. The upshot was that instead of waiting for the next school year, we started taking new students right away, and the school’s population doubled to more than a hundred pupils, with another hundred still waiting to get in.

At this moment, however, there was an almost unbearable tension in the classroom.

“I’ve put up with this until now! But I can’t do it anymore!”

“You took the words right out of my mouth!”

Right in the middle of the large-ish room, about twenty students had made a circle with their chairs. Half of them were elves and half were dwarves. Double that number of humans were watching from a distance.

Elves and dwarves, as I had learned from personal experience, didn’t get along very well. Left to their own devices, their arguments frequently devolved into fistfights. Minori-san and I had scolded them sternly for that sort of thing, and the number of fights had gone down recently, lulling me into a sense of security. A false one, it now seemed.

After all, if they couldn’t blow off some steam every once in a while, the mutual unhappiness was eventually going to explode.

“Crap...!” I was about to rush into the middle of the circle. But just then, one of the elves jumped up, practically knocking over his chair.

“I’m telling you,” he shouted, “Save Me, Big Brother! 4 is the most complete entry in the entire series! The graphics are sharp, and it’s got all kinds of different kiss scenes. And all the gameplay elements involved put it on a different level from almost every other gal game!”

The speaker was an elf wearing what amounted to coke-bottle glasses. (Where did he get those? Those weren’t even common on Earth anymore.) What was with the visuals here?!

“The graphics, he says! Those graphics are average at best!” Now it was one of the dwarves shouting, a blue vein bulging on his forehead. “Have a look at the pack-in figure from the limited first edition of GS3 Soft’s Onee-chan Sword! She has a brassiere made out of pearl, a sword with a completely convincing metallic texture—and the smoothness of her skin approaches art!”

“Average?!” another elf bellowed. “You wouldn’t know graphics if they bit you in the neck! Cloud is life! Everything necessary to existence can be found in it! I’ve—I’ve learned so much from that game!”

“Say what?! I suppose two-dimensional characters are appropriate for someone whose life is as flat as yours!”

“Hah! A mud-dweller like you could never appreciate such a subtle and refined story!”

“Just you say that again!”

“Oh, you wanna go?!”

Um... You guys...?

As I stood open-mouthed, another dwarf broke into the conversation. “That’s enough, both of you!” This new speaker was probably just a teen, but his long beard made him look like an old man already. But never mind his age—what mattered here was that someone with a cool head had shown up. I felt a rush of relief.

Naturally, it didn’t last long.

“Gal games?” the dwarf snorted. “Figures? Good lord. Boooooring.” Wait, wasn’t he supposed to be helping them make up? “If you have to argue, why not pick a more honorable topic, as we do?” he said confidently. Anyone else in that situation might have been looking down their nose at their listeners, but since dwarves were so short, he actually had to look up at the elf. It was sort of funny. “I refer, of course, to the Loli-Dwarf Protection Council!”

“That bunch of pedophiles?!” the elf exclaimed.

“Watch your language! Dwarf women all look forever young. Their small statures mean that even in adulthood, they hardly appear to be teenaged. They are eternal lolis! Angels among us! It’s the duty of gentlemen like ourselves to make sure they aren’t preyed upon by those with twisted predilections!”

“Oh, quiet! You realize that ‘gentleman’ isn’t a synonym for ‘pervert,’ right?”

“Hah! Ha ha ha! That word is practically a badge of honor for us!”

And on and on it went.

With a lukewarm glance at the gentleman-pervert loudly declaiming his views, I backed up a few steps and quietly closed the door.

Okay, I knew I wasn’t in any position to judge any other otaku. But... But this...

Elves and dwarves arguing passionately about ero-games? What was even going on here?

Anyway, I think you guys need to start by apologizing to Professor Tolkien and Mizuno-sensei!

I mean, sure, I was the one who had left them manga and anime and games and said they could check out whatever they wanted. And yes, I was the one who insisted that as long as we were going to all this trouble, we ought to have the original, uncensored versions, and brought in the 18+ editions of everything instead of the clean ones.

But still, I think you’re all growing up too fast!

“This is awful...”

Could this be—you know? Like when you bring drugs into a place that’s never had so much as a vaccine, and it works too well?

“I feel like this has all kind of blown up since I got here.”

Now that I thought about it, medicine usually came with dosage instructions. The math wasn’t simple, though—just because you cut the dose in half didn’t mean the effect would be half as strong. Or sometimes, if you didn’t use at least a certain amount, you wouldn’t get any effect at all. The other side of that coin was that sometimes, if you took more than the prescribed dose, the effect would be massively amplified.

That’s right: this was basically an allergic reaction.

“Yeah, right...”

I zipped down the hallway to the next room—the self-study area and library—and peeked in. This was where we kept the computers with all their data, not to mention piles of manga and anime and DVDs just like I had at home, along with a mountain of light novels I had planned to introduce once the kids could read enough Japanese. Since a lot of anime start out as light novels, I thought we could read something related to a series they had already seen as a way of getting them involved.

How naïve I had been.

“Yikes...”

Smack in the middle of the library I saw a student with a treasure trove of dictionaries around him, scribbling something on a sheet of lambskin paper. I recognized his curly golden hair. He was the son of a noble family and had been especially quick to pick up the language; he could already read and write Japanese at a middle-school level.

“Um... Hello?”

No answer. He stayed silent as the grave. Or rather, he remained totally absorbed in whatever he was doing. He didn’t even seem to know I’d come in.

I crept up behind him and looked over his shoulder. To his right was the sheet of paper; on the left was a book being held open by a wooden frame.

It was a light novel.

“Wait a second...”

It looked like this boy was working on translating the light novel. Obviously, that wasn’t something I had assigned. He had decided to do it himself. I suspected he was working on something that hadn’t yet received an anime adaptation, or a series where he wanted to know what happened.

His fixation—his passion—was intense.

Actually, I thought I had heard that in Taiwan or someplace, there was some otaku who had learned Japanese just because he wanted to be able to read light novels in the original. This was the same sort of thing. Japanese people in Japan already have access to their country’s profusion of entertainment, so they don’t hunger for it like this.

I directed my gaze farther into the room. There was a big desk there, and ten or twelve boys and girls had their notebooks open and were talking about something. The group was diverse, with three or four people each representing humans, elves, and dwarves. It seemed like some sort of study session...

“Ah...”

After observing them for a few minutes, it struck me. I detected a pattern in their conversation. Age and other factors notwithstanding, all of the human children were giving off a sort of “sempai” vibe toward the demi-humans. They were looking down their noses a little and acting a bit entitled. I guess even kids find it hard to break out of the habits they’ve been taught for as long as they’ve been alive.

But still... They’re all sitting at the same table, aren’t they?

Alessio of the assembly of patriots would no doubt have considered this sight to be an undermining of culture. Even if the extreme nature of his views was unique to terrorists, there were plenty of conservatives who thought along similar lines. The children they brought up would think the same way. From that perspective...

“...I guess it’s a step in the right direction,” I murmured to no one in particular. Then I left the library.

I wondered if there were any other changes I hadn’t noticed. With that thought in mind, I looked out the hall window. I could see everything behind the school building. Surrounded by a short earthen wall was a flat area where we had planted some grass—in effect, a schoolyard.

This was another of my ideas. There was no special need for outdoor classes if we were only going to teach otaku culture, but eventually I wanted to introduce manga about tennis and baseball, and when that happened I wanted the students to be able to play sports themselves.

Not that we had any tennis courts or baseball diamonds yet. All we had was some grass and a few trees growing inside the mud wall. We hadn’t even planted the trees ourselves. They had already been there; we just built around them.

One tree, right in the middle of the yard, was especially big. I could see close to a dozen people gathered in its shade. They were focused on an elf boy. He had a light-colored, loose-fitting cape draped over his shoulders, and he was clutching a stringed instrument, about the size of a small guitar, to his chest. He was pretty obviously a bard. Come to think of it, Myusel had mentioned to me that with their long ears, elves had a uniquely sharp sense of hearing and affinity for sound.

I could hear a gentle melody coming from the instrument. And then a clear voice, rolling along with it.

“Tejas had always been slender; to be blunt, she had the body of a virgin child. It left clothing loose upon her, so that when she put on an apron, it would slip to the left or to the right with her every movement. Her pale skin would thus be exposed; yes, there was even the promise of the cleft of her chest, the hint of which many a time drove lusty young men near to madness...”

I mulled over what I was hearing.

“Of course,” the bard went on, “if her skirt came up as it had earlier, all was plainly visible. ‘I’m not quite sure where to look...’ ‘I see!’ Tejas nodded. Indeed, she seemed quite experienced at this. ‘It gets you hot and bothered, doesn’t it?’ ‘Don’t say that!’ ‘You have a bokki, don’t you?’ ‘You can’t get away with saying that just because you used Japanese!’ ‘By the way, in English, a bokki is called an erection! ☆’ ‘And I do not!’ ‘Then there must be something wrong with you, Master!’ Tejas said to him...”

Wait—was he reciting a light novel? In song?

Don’t get me wrong. I adored light novels myself, from moe harem stuff to serious-downer battle pieces. But what the heck was a bard doing reciting them to the accompaniment of his... his lute or whatever?!

Even as this torrent of would-be interjections went through my mind, though, it dawned on me: he was imitating me. How many times had I shown some anime DVD to the students while adding my own explanations?

The magic rings we were all wearing allowed people who didn’t speak the same language to communicate essentially by telepathy, but it didn’t work if one of the participants was an inanimate object. You could put a ring on a DVD player, but it wouldn’t translate the Japanese into Eldant. So I would always sit by, explaining what the words and pictures meant, like the intertitles in an old silent film.

It looked like the young elf guy had taken a light novel that got turned into an anime, copied the soundtrack by ear, and then adapted the translation done by that kid I’d seen in the library.

Uh... Hmm.

“This... is good, right?” I said to no one in particular. I scratched my cheek.

True, I had planted the seeds. But to my surprise and, now, my belated anxiety, they had sprouted in forms I had never expected.

When I got back to the mansion, I found Myusel running around, looking very busy. She was pretty much solely responsible for taking care of the inside of the house, so there was always plenty to do, but still, I didn’t think she normally seemed this overworked. I wondered what was going on.

She didn’t even seem to notice I’d come home. That made me feel a little lonely, in a way. Hearing her say “Welcome home, Master” was an important way of replenishing my MP (by which I mean Moe Points).

“Myusel?”

“Oh... Master,” she said. She turned to me, still holding a huge basket with both hands. Then maybe she tripped on something, or maybe she just lost her balance, but whatever the case she took a terrific tumble. Just, bam.

“Eeek!” The contents of the basket spilled all over the hallway, and Myusel went down hard.

“Ahh! I’m— I’m so sorry!” I hurried over to her. Luckily, it looked like it had only been cloth in the basket, and it helped soften her fall. Anyway, she didn’t seem to be injured as far as I could see.

“Are you okay?!”

I grabbed Myusel’s hand and helped her up, then looked down at whatever had scattered all over the floor. It looked like dirty rags, but there were streaks of different colors here and there on them. I wasn’t sure where discolorations like that could have come from.

“What are these?”

I mean, they looked like laundry, but...

“They’re Elvia-san’s... clothes.”

“Elvia’s what?” I picked up one of the pieces of cloth and took another look. It was white with a gold border...

“Whoa, whoa!” I stiffened.

Elvia, as I already knew, tended to leave a lot of herself exposed—you know, the bare-midriff look. She wore loose-fitting pants (kind of desert-chic), but when it came to her upper body all she had was a tube top. Her shoulders, collarbone, and belly button were all just right out there. Frankly, she might as well have been wearing a swimsuit for all the skin she was showing.

So she basically had a bikini and underwear, and I had just grabbed at least one of them.

“Whoa, I didn’t— I don’t—!”

“Master?” Myusel blinked at me.

“I didn’t! Let’s get our stories straight! I definitely did not grab this thing because I’m the type who gets all pant pant over a girl’s underwear, okay?! For me, it’s all about her body—I mean, no! Just forget I said that!”

I suddenly found I had taken this piece of Elvia’s clothing in both hands and was holding it up to Myusel as if making a sacred offering.

“I’m... very sorry...”

“M-Master?” Myusel didn’t seem to have the slightest idea what the big deal was, but she accepted the clothing from me.

“But anyway,” I said, “I’ve never seen clothes get dirty quite like this...” They were covered in streaks of color, the slashes looking like wounds.

“I believe she said her clothes always get this way when she’s drawing,” Myusel said.

“Drawing...?”

It finally dawned on me. The streaks were from her charcoal and crayons. Initially, Elvia had only ever used charcoal, but I had gotten her some new art supplies. She didn’t seem to take to the pencils, markers, or paint brushes right away, though. Instead she went straight for the thing that most resembled her easy-to-use charcoal: crayons.

That was fine as far as it went. But apparently, any time she changed from charcoal to crayons, or from one color of crayon to another, she would wipe her fingers on her clothes. And so, three or four streaks would slash across the fabric—the same marks I was looking at now.

“She’s not some kid who eats with her hands,” I muttered. “Why would she do that?”

Myusel cocked her head slightly. “She claims that otherwise the colors run together, and she doesn’t like it.”

“...Huh?”

According to what Myusel told me, Elvia had mainly used charcoal throughout her artistic life, so she had never much needed to switch from one art supply to another. Even when she did, it would just be to a new stick of charcoal. Not something to be too concerned about.

Crayons, though, had all sorts of colors. For someone who had been a sort of “monochrome specialist,” the colors in even just a 12- or 24-pack of crayons were striking. Around here, art supplies of specific colors were made with special dyes, and they were much too valuable—and much too expensive—for someone like Elvia to dream of owning. So she was thrilled by the crayons and started using them immediately.

As we all know, if you hold a crayon long enough, the color starts to bleed onto your fingers. But suppose your fingers turn red from a red crayon, and then you grab a blue one. Elvia figured the colors would run together, and she didn’t like that idea. So she was wiping each color off her hands with a convenient cloth as she went along.

And by “a convenient cloth,” of course, I mean her clothes.

“Aw, for crying out loud...” How hard was that beast girl going to make things for me?

“She gets very absorbed in drawing her pictures,” Myusel said with a smile.

“Is that so?”

Honestly, I found that a little surprising. I had set Elvia to drawing otaku pictures, to which end I gave her some “reference material” (anime images and manga of about the same quality, along with design books) and free access to my office.

I was given to understand that people who weren’t otaku themselves often took the visual style in anime and manga to be simplistic and easy to draw—a cut below more realistic types of art. But actually, because your choice of how to convey information becomes more restricted the more highly symbolized something becomes, “anime art” has its own challenges above and beyond “normal” art. I knew that especially well, what with my mom having been an artist for ero games. She used to say that if realism and detail were the only things that mattered, art would have gone extinct the day the photograph was invented.

And Elvia? She was versed in highly realistic art. Part of me was worried she might push back against the “anime style,” maybe demand to know why she had to do such cheap-looking pictures now. But I seemed to have worried for nothing.

“I’m glad she’s so dedicated,” I said, looking into the basket again. I could see now that it wasn’t just her shirts, but her pants in there as well. “But I’m not sure I like how much extra work she’s making for you, Myusel.”

“Oh, it’s fine! It’s no problem,” Myusel said, a little too quickly.

“No problem? You were already busy, weren’t you?”

Frankly, our mansion had always been too big for one maid to handle on her own. Minori-san helped Myusel sometimes, but she couldn’t do it every day. I was actually thinking about asking Petralka if we might be able to get another maid for the house. That’s how sorry I felt for Myusel. Plus, I was the one who had brought Elvia here.

“But isn’t Elvia-san helping directly with your work, Master?”

“Huh? Sure, I guess. Even if we’re in the early stages right now.” I nodded.

I was putting Elvia to work doing otaku-friendly drawings because I hoped in the future to experiment with producing doujinshi locally and the like. It’s pleasant enough to enjoy entertainment products for their own sake, but when consumers decide they want to become creators, that’s the sort of thing that can make the world a smaller place—a friendlier place, maybe. That would be exciting.

Plus, ultimately, having an artist around would dramatically increase my options when it came to the paperwork I submitted to the Eldant Empire. She could make it pop a bit.

“So she’s helping me,” I said. “So what?”

“She’s helping you, and I... I don’t have any talents...” Myusel couldn’t quite bring herself to look at me. “All I can do is clean, and cook, and do the laundry... I can’t do anything to help my master... If I can help Elvia-san in her work by taking care of the wash, then that... that will help you, too, won’t it, Master?”

I was silent.

Ehrmahgawd. CUUUUUUUUUUTE! This girl, she’s... she’s heroic!

My moe gauge hit max. I practically felt like there must be some special skill I could activate. Then there was the way she looked at the ground sometimes. It just really fit Myusel. One wrong step, even one wrong half-step, and that sort of thing would feel like a complete affectation. But with her, and only her, it seemed totally natural and not remotely like a put-on.

But never mind that.

“No no no no no,” I said with a vigorous shake of my head. “Forget all or only or whatever. Cleaning and cooking and laundry? Those are the building blocks of life. If you could never draw a picture, it wouldn’t kill you, but the stuff you do? We’d be starving in our own filth without you. I’m able to work hard because you work so hard.”

“You really think so...?”

“I sure do. I really appreciate what you’re doing.”

“Master...” Myusel looked at me with real joy on her face.

Oh no—no! Those watery eyes and that sweet face! I can hardly stand it—! My heart was just about pounding its way out of my chest as I reached out for the basket Myusel was holding.

“Let me help you.”

“You don’t need to! I appreciate the thought, but—”

“Don’t worry, just let me help. If you fall again and hurt yourself, I’ll be even worse off than you.”

“W-Well, all right... Thank you.”

I took the basket, and Myusel and I headed for the back of the house.

Suddenly, I had a thought. “Hey... You said you don’t have any talents, but you can use magic, right?”

“Well, one or two spells, yes.” Myusel shrugged, almost shyly.

During that infamous run-in with the terrorists, I had seen Myusel send one of the “patriots” flying with a magical attack. As best I could remember, it was called “Tifu Murottsu,” or Storm Fist. As the name suggested, it summoned a powerful wind that slammed into your opponent.

Demi-humans here in the Holy Eldant Empire had limited options if they wanted to gain civil rights on par with the humans in the country. The simplest choice of all was to do military service. Myusel herself had spent about two years in the army, and given elves’ predisposition for magic, she had learned the magical arts there. I know it sounded like a bad joke to think that my cute little maid had once been a soldier—but then again, we have countries even on Earth that see military service as a civic duty and require all citizens to do a stint in the forces.

“I think being able to use magic is a pretty serious skill.”

“Aren’t you a magic-user yourself, Master?”

“Huh? Oh—you mean this?” I took out my smartphone and pointed to it. “This really isn’t any different from a sword, or... more like a stew pot or a kettle. Anyone can use it if they know how. It might look like magic, but it’s just a tool.”

Myusel looked a bit perplexed. “Magic is just a tool too, isn’t it?”

“Uh... Kind of, but isn’t it more of a talent, or a skill?”

“Don’t you need certain skills to be able to use that tool?”

“I guess so... I mean, you do have to learn how it works.”

I guess they do have tests proving how good you are at using computers, so maybe being able to use a smartphone is an admirable ability, too.

That was when it occurred to me: this was a difference in values. For Myusel and other people from this world, the ability to use magic was completely and totally unremarkable. Thoroughly un-magical as I was, I was the only one who thought it was really cool. But we could say the same thing about electronics from the Eldant perspective.

Hang on. That means...

“Do you think I could use magic, too?”

“...Aren’t you using it right now?”

“Huh? Wait—do you mean this?!” I looked down at the ring on my finger.

“Yes, sir. It’s very small-scale, but still.”

“Ahh... Now I get it.”

The ability to activate a magic item you had equipped was evidently a form of magic use in itself. From what Myusel was saying, the magical power to use the ring wasn’t supplied by the ring itself; it was coming from me. It was convenient to talk about the rings as if they were doing all the work, but there was actually magic involved.

“So if I learned the spell, could I use Such-and-Such Fist like you?”

Myusel nodded. “Since you’re a human, Master, maybe...”

Some races, like lizardmen, were said not to have magic—but apparently that didn’t mean they had no magic at all. Properly speaking, these races didn’t have enough magical power to manifest it externally, and even if they managed to do so, the effect would be negligible. So even if they were able to use magical items to achieve specific effects—in which case it would be the item manifesting the magic and not them—they weren’t able to chant spells, break seals, or perform other magical actions.

To come at it another way, because humans had been the first to invent the system of abilities called magic, humans were generally able to manifest magic outwardly via their actions.

“Huh... Okay.” So magic was actually more of a tool, a skill—at least in this world. “That’s interesting.”

We came out behind the mansion and walked toward the bucket of water that was reserved for doing the wash. Myusel dumped the laundry in, obviously used to this. As I watched, it occurred to me that there was something I wanted to ask her.

“Hey, Myusel?”

“Yes?”

“Could you teach me some magic?”

“Yes, sir, right aw—”

Then she froze.

“Y-You want me? To teach you, Master?” She was staring at me wide-eyed. “How could I ever dare to—”

“No one’s daring you.” I smiled. “Or is there some kind of law or custom or something that says you can’t teach me?”

“There is, but...”

Because magic was a tool that could be used—and turned into a weapon—by anyone who knew how, it was strictly controlled by the state. If you just leave a weapon lying around, someone will eventually pick it up and use it to commit a crime. Hence, those who had learned magic in the army of the Holy Eldant Empire were forbidden from teaching it to others without permission. And permission was granted only if the learner held a noble rank of knight or above. That is to say, only if they were part of the ruling class.

“I see... That makes me kind of a strange case, doesn’t it?”

I was being treated as a noble, certainly, but in reality I was just a foreigner. Would it be a crime to teach me magic? We wouldn’t know without asking the likes of Petralka, Garius, or Zahar.

“Either way, I could hardly venture to teach you anything, Master. And the magic I know is really only the most basic spells. I left the military before I learned anything more...”

As Myusel told it, you were taught three spells when you entered the army. One was a fire spell, one was wind magic, and the third was healing magic. In other words, these were the three things they thought would be most useful to someone as a soldier. But the stronger spells, the stuff that could maim or kill somebody—they didn’t teach you that until you rose up the ranks. Now that I thought about it, Tifu Murottsu hadn’t been a one-hit kill or anything. And the fire magic might look spectacular, but it wasn’t very powerful; it was really only good for starting campfires or disinfecting things. Even the healing magic was mostly for cuts and scrapes; it wouldn’t bring your arm back if you got it ripped off, or save your life if you were hemorrhaging blood.

I supposed that made sense. You wouldn’t hand out the most powerful weapon you had to every foot soldier in the army, either. Once they had served for a while and you were sure they were good and loyal, then you could teach them more powerful magical attacks.

“No dice, huh?” I murmured. Gee, and life would be so interesting if I could use some magic.

All the talk of teaching brought something else to mind. “Since we’re on the subject, how’s your Japanese study going? I haven’t been able to help you much lately...”

Ever since the school had started up in earnest, I had just been too busy to look after Myusel’s studies. But since she had reached a point where she was pretty capable of reading and writing, studying on her own would get more and more effective.

“I’m managing,” she said, smiling shyly. “I understand a fair amount of what you say even without the ring.”

“That’s really something,” I said. But truth be told, the same was true of me. I hadn’t been going out of my way to study, but when you’re constantly receiving “broadcasts” of a second language, with an ongoing simultaneous interpretation... Well, the way the images from the ring’s “translation” came into my head along with the spoken Eldant words was starting to feel pretty normal.

I had been hearing the language for half a year at this point, so it made sense that I had started to get used to it. I guess that’s immersion for you. Having said that, I had never studied the local writing system, so I still couldn’t read the language.

“Master,” Myusel said suddenly. “You’ll go back to your home country eventually, won’t you?”

“Well, I mean, maybe sometime,” I said. My tone was nonchalant, but it was only after I’d spoken that it struck me. Of course I didn’t figure I would be with Amutech for the rest of my life. There probably would come a time when I went back to Japan. If the world on the other side of the hyperspace tunnel knew about Eldant by then, fine, but if not, my freedom would forever be restricted by the chains of secrecy.

And that meant that one day, I would probably have to say goodbye to Myusel and everyone else in this world. Myusel had once said she hoped she could go with me when I went back to my country. At the time, I had thought she meant as a trip—the way people like to take vacations to exotic places. But the more I learned about the situation in the Holy Eldant Empire, the more I realized she might not have meant it so casually.

“But even if I go back, I’m sure it won’t be for a long time yet.”

The truth was, I hadn’t been granted permission for even a temporary visit back to Japan. Maybe they didn’t trust me yet. Matoba-san went back and forth all the time, but whenever I asked him about where exactly the famous wormhole was, he would suck his teeth, hem and haw, and ultimately not tell me anything.

I guess they wanted to make sure I wouldn’t try to run away. The upshot was, I wasn’t even free to go back to my home.

“So, Myusel, you’re saying... if and when I quit this job and go back to Japan...” I could practically feel my own embarrassment; it was like a tingle in my skin. I hesitated for a moment, then dived ahead. “You think you want to leave the Holy Eldant Empire and go back with me?”

“Yes.” Her answer was immediate. It was almost as if she had been waiting a long time for me to ask that.

“...Izzat right...”

“Yes.” Then she added, a bit fearfully, “That’s if I’m allowed, of course...”

That probably had a double meaning—whether I would allow her, and whether the Eldant Empire and Japan itself would allow her. When it came to me personally, I sure didn’t have a problem. But as for our governments... Well.

It had only been six months. But it had been a whole six months. After half a year living with Myusel and Brooke, they had started to feel like family. I felt closer to them now than I ever had to my parents or sister during my days as a home security guard. Myusel in particular, given that we had survived a terrorist attack together.

As for Minori-san, obviously, she was living with me, too, and had also been through the terrorist incident. Yet I couldn’t help mentally putting her in the same category as Matoba-san—the Japanese government lurked behind both of them. It wasn’t much, but it made it harder for me to feel close to her.

I thought silently for a long time. Would I ever be permitted to go back to Japan? Or was I now a permanent resident of the Holy Eldant Empire? It was a dumb thought, but I couldn’t seem to keep it out of my head.

Truthfully, I didn’t figure a root-and-branch otaku like me could stay here forever. At some point I would start to suffocate for want of anime and manga and light novels and games, and I would beg them to send me back to Japan. That was what I pictured, anyway. As pathetic as it looked, even in my mind’s eye.

And on top of that...

Am I really qualified to move to the Eldant Empire?

If what Alessio had said was true, I was an invader, the tip of the spear.

I didn’t mean to be, and he didn’t exactly have irrefutable proof or anything. But I couldn’t categorically deny it, either. When I asked Matoba-san about it, he had given me an ambiguous answer. Which meant...

“Master?” I realized I had been staring at the ground, looking grim. Myusel was watching me with an expression of concern. “Is... Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No. Nothing... It’s nothing.” And then I forced myself to smile.

After dinner, I headed to Elvia’s room. She was in one of several guest rooms on the second floor. Just for reference, Minori-san’s room was next door to hers, and—let’s be honest, here—Elvia’s room had been thoroughly bugged with listening devices and cameras. Minori-san was keeping an eye on her. As you might imagine, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with this, but since there was no question she was a spy, I couldn’t exactly object.

But putting all that aside.

I was going to Elvia’s room now because she hadn’t come to dinner. In fact, pretty much ever since she had become our in-house artist—more precisely, ever since the materials and supplies I’d requested from Japan had arrived—she had hardly come out of her room at all. I suggested to her that she at least join us for breakfast and dinner, but we never saw her at the table.

Normally, it would be my job to give her an attitude adjustment. But when I saw Brooke drag himself to the table despite his fatigue just because I’d asked him to, it was hard for me to want to force another member of the household to come to breakfast, too. Plus, I had spent an entire year as a shut-in myself. I wasn’t exactly in a position to criticize anyone for not leaving their room. So for the better part of two weeks, I had left her alone.

But I was starting to get worried. You’d think I could just check on her using the monitors we’d set up, but Minori-san turned me away. (“Sorry, Shinichi-kun, you can’t.”) I guess using a video monitor to peep into a girl’s room is pretty skeevy, spy or not. I didn’t press the issue.

Anyway, that’s what led me to the artist’s room to check how things were going with my own eyes and ears.

“Elvia?” I called through the door. “Elvia? Are you awake?”

There was no answer. I put my hand on the doorknob and gave a gentle tug. It opened. She hadn’t locked the door.

“Um... I’m... I’m coming in, okay?” I murmured apologetically, and then entered Elvia’s room.

No sooner was I inside than my eyes went wide and I froze in place.

“Y-Yikes.........”

Books were scattered all over the floor; there was hardly any room to walk. Mostly they were manga, although there were a few coffee table-sized art collections as well. Several of the books lay open, with something like candlesticks holding them down. I saw that they were open to pages with titles like “How to Draw Cool Guys,” “How to Draw Cute Girls,” and “How to Draw and Color Clothing”—all kinds of instructional information.

And there in the middle of it all was, of course, Elvia.

She was sitting cross-legged on the floor... And she was half-naked.

I mean, she had a black cloth wrapped around her chest and hips, but it only just covered her bust, and passed between her legs like a loincloth. It would barely have qualified as underwear. The rest of her was bare skin... kind of. She was covered in streaks of charcoal and crayon in a whole rainbow of colors. In places the streaks were so wide that they concealed the skin beneath. She was quite a sight. I had already seen the laundry—maybe Elvia had decided it was all too much trouble and she would just wipe the wax and left-over charcoal directly on her own skin.

Luckily for me, this had the effect of blunting her eroticism, which took a bit of the pressure off me.

“Elvia...?”

Had she been in here drawing this entire time?

“Wait... I recognize this...”

When I looked closer, I saw a bunch of dirty dishes in a pile. Myusel must have brought them originally. It really reminded me of my time as a shut-in. In fact, if you replaced the dishes with plastic bottles and cup ramen containers, it would have been my room exactly.

Hold on... So how long has it been since she took a bath?! I don’t care how animalistic or werewolf-y she is—a girl her age should care a little bit about hygiene, shouldn’t she?!

I got up on my mental high horse. Yes, I had once been a shut-in, but for the record, at least I had bathed.

“Elvia? Elvia!” I weaved my way among the books using the small patches of visible floor. Sometimes to get from one patch to another, I had to jump like a sumo wrestler trying to surprise his opponent. Slowly but surely I made my way over to Elvia, calling her name the whole time.

The artist herself was surrounded by illustrations. When I got a better look at them—

“Wow...”

I was surprised to find they were true moe art. Myusel seemed to be her model; there were several illustrations of a smiling maid. They weren’t colored, but they would definitely make an otaku happy. They were like manga or anime art that had evolved further away from realism.

As I’ve explained, just because this style of art isn’t realistic doesn’t mean it’s easy to draw or that everything looks the same. If realism is what you’re most interested in, you can’t beat a photograph. The individuality of different artists would disappear. The real key to this style of art, and the way artists express their individuality, has to do with what you put in and what you leave out. The style is abstracted, but you still have to decide which details count. And then there’s “super-deformed” stuff, where you deliberately add an element of unreality.

From that perspective, these moe pictures definitely bore Elvia’s mark. She had put her own spin on Myusel the maid, including the necessary information and leaving out what was unnecessary, emphasizing her cuteness and even making her look a little bit smaller than she was.

“This is incredible, Elvia, picking it up in such a short time...”

However, the most important person in this conversation, the artist herself, didn’t seem to hear my praise; she was still stretched out over a piece of paper, running some designer’s charcoal over it.

“Um... Elvia-san? Hellooooo. Elvia! Can you hear me?”

It was no good. There was no reaction whatsoever.

I looked over her shoulder at what she was drawing right then and found she was in the middle of an impressive illustration, something that could have been a full-on manga page, background and all. It showed Myusel—I thought it was Myusel—sitting by a window and smiling. It was totally adorable and plenty moe, even without color.

“But this...”

It made me uneasy in a way that was hard to describe. What could it be? I felt a bit like I had opened Pandora’s box. I couldn’t quite explain it, but I felt like we were on the verge of something very dangerous.

I was glad to see Elvia working so hard to master moe art. That had, of course, been my whole plan. But I was taken aback by how quickly her art style had changed. It seemed a bit too quick—dangerously so. Maybe I was overthinking it?

Thoughts of shapeless horrors whirled in my mind. And finally...

“Elvia!”

Almost spontaneously, I grabbed her hand to stop it from moving. The result, though, was that I was effectively hugging her from behind.

“Oh, gosh! Did you startle me!” The spell broken, she quaked in surprise—but at least she stopped drawing. “Shinichi-sama, I don’t mind you coming into my room, but you could at least announce yourself.”

“I did! Several times!”

“Oh, y-you did? Gee, I’m sorry about that. This is just how I get when I’m drawing...” She smiled ruefully.

Ah. That explained why she kept trying to get a better and better angle to draw our mansion, and didn’t notice Minori-san and the guards sneaking up on her.

Okay, wait. Never mind that.

“Say, er... Shinichi-sama?”

“Yes?”

“Could we... save that for some other time?”

“Save wha—aaaahhh!” I realized my hand had ended up clamped on Elvia’s boob. I let go as fast as I could and got off her back. “S-S-S-Sorry about that!”

“Nah, it’s okay. I don’t really mind.” She laughed a little. “Actually, I’m kind of proud...” She scratched her cheek.

Oops. She left some crayon streaks—wait.

“Huh? How’s that again?”

Did she mean she was proud of being sexually harassed? What was going on in that furry brain?

“Well, I am a werewolf and all...”

“I know that.” Her ears and tail were right out there for all to see. She was pretty much wearing nothing but underwear; they were hard to miss.

“But you’re a human, right, Shinichi-sama?”

“Uh... Yeah...”

“And they... don’t bother you?”

“What don’t?”

“My... ears and tail.” She pointed to each of them in turn.

“Bother me? No, not at all. Heck, I think they’re the most moe things about you.”

I had almost immediately ceased to pay them any mind. I mean, for an otaku, animal ears and a tail were par for the course, important moe stuff. Definitely not a negative in any way.

“Wait,” I said. “Are you saying... In this world, in the Eldant Empire or the Kingdom of Bahairam or whatever... ears and a tail are considered off-putting?”

“Well, yeah,” Elvia said with a sad smile. “Not among werewolves, obviously. Think about it—Bahairam and Eldant and most of the other countries around here, they’re controlled by humans, right? So the human form is considered the most beautiful. Some werewolves even cut off their own ears and tails so they can fit in.”

“Wow...”

Now it was starting to click for me. Human perceptions of beauty have always varied by time and place. You’ve got your otaku, who can get off on two-dimensional images, and then you’ve got the mainstream, where people just don’t understand what’s attractive about “those huge eyes.” Actually, you can check out shunga, erotic woodblock prints from the Edo era. Those were basically the equivalent of manga back then, but otaku today don’t get moe at all for them.

As for werewolves, it would make sense for them to consider the werewolf body the most beautiful, but long ages of living under human domination had made it so even beast people had come to accept human standards of beauty.

“So to have a human guy act hot and bothered over me,” Elvia concluded, “makes me a little bit proud.”

“No, uh, I’m sorry. That wasn’t why I was grabbing you.”

I mean, yes, I was hot and bothered, but that was a different story. Calm down, little guy! This isn’t the time!

“Oh, really? Too bad.” Elvia smiled without a hint of resentment.

Ahh. You know, she’s... she’s not bad.

She didn’t have that refined cuteness, the gorgeousness of Myusel or Petralka, but she did have a plain attractiveness. Even her easygoing demeanor was part of an unadorned sexiness. Then take all that and multiply it by werewolf.

“Plus, I owe my life to you,” she said. “I don’t think I’d mind if you were to get all over me.” She smiled brightly. I was almost a little disappointed not to sense anything impure in her.

“Er... Thanks?” It was all I could think to say. “Elvia, can I ask you something? You were really concentrating there. How long have you been drawing?”

“Huh. Good question.” She eyed the stack of dishes against the wall. “One, two, three... Hm. About five days, I guess.”

“That long?!”

That was definitely too many days to be doing anything nonstop. I was pretty sure I had heard news reports of somebody who dropped dead after playing an online game for three or four days straight.

“Well, how about you take a little break?” I suggested, but Elvia shook her head firmly.

“It’s all good. I want to work just a little more.” She reached into the bag next to her and pulled out a new piece of charcoal.

So she was just going to keep drawing? I guess that’s dedication. Or... craziness.

“How and why can you concentrate for that long?” I asked, the formless anxiety welling up within me again.

“Good question, too.” She looked at me like it hadn’t really occurred to her, and made a thoughtful sound. “I guess it’s... you know.”

“I really don’t.”

“It just kind of helps me feel better. Wait, that’s not quite it. How do I put it?” She shrugged her shoulders. “Werewolves are natural hunters and fighters, right? But now that we’re associated with settled societies, we can’t just do whatever we want. If we accidentally let our instincts run away with us, we can end up in serious trouble. Punished way worse than a human.”

“Huh...”

In a world of class differences, it was possible—maybe even, to them, natural—that someone of high status would get off lightly for a crime that would bring major punishment for someone of a lower class.

“Yep. And most of us... Well, we’re taught how to channel those impulses. For me, it was art. I learned to look closely at something, study it, then draw it. In some ways, it’s not that different from hunting, right?”

“Sublimation, huh?” I muttered. I supposed that would work as a substitute for hunting, where she would use her no-doubt powerful senses to their utmost in order to catch her prey. She was just “catching” it on paper.

I get it...

Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. She wasn’t specifically aiming for a realistic style for its own sake; she was trying to re-create even the smell and body heat of her subject. After all, this was a replacement activity for hunting, which uses all five senses. That was why it was so easy for her to switch over to a style of art where she got to add her own interpretation.

But still...

“That’s... kind of rough.”

“How’s that?” Elvia looked at me blankly.

“Isn’t that, like... distorting who you are, who you were meant to be, for the convenience of humans?”

“Oh. Well, I guess so, kind of. Actually, I do know werewolves who got so tired of it that they went to live in the wilderness instead.” She gave a bit of a smile, scratching her cheek. “But me, I can live with this. Drawing is fun, and I don’t think I’d last long in a survival-of-the-fittest world.”

“I see...”

To live “as nature intended” would literally mean prioritizing animal-ness. Werewolves must once have lived by the code of the strong eating the weak, but that meant that anyone who didn’t have the sharpest instincts, or anyone weakened by age, wouldn’t get to live out their natural lifespan...

Did that mean that having to bow to the needs of the humans wasn’t such a bad thing after all?

“Okay! Time for another!”

As I stood there agonizing over all this, Elvia gave herself a little pep talk. Then she grabbed her charcoal and she was at it again.

Things at the school were actually going smoothly. A little too smoothly, in fact.

My “otaku training center” was wildly popular with the people of the Holy Eldant Empire. You would never have guessed there had been a terrorist incident there. We could only take so many actual students, obviously, but we had more and more children of local nobles showing up to “audit.” Even some adults were begging to get in. I was starting to wonder how I would deal with it all.

With Minori-san as my assistant, I was introducing the students to Japanese entertainment and otaku products by the armload. And the students, like Myusel and even like me in my youth, seemed to be on the fast track to serious otakudom. Was it the simultaneous interpreting? Was it just because they were young? Or did they have some innate talent? I didn’t know, but they were progressing far more rapidly than I had planned on.

“Good morning, everyone!” I said as I came into the classroom. Just like I always did. But today, the way the students reacted was different from usual. Maybe there had been signs that I had simply missed.

It’s true: change doesn’t always proceed in neat stages. Eventually you reach a tipping point, and everything explodes, like an allergic reaction.

“Senseiiiiiiiii!”

For a second, I thought someone was yelling at me. The voice was just that loud and passionate; it hit me like a slap in the face. I took an unconscious step back.

Immediately after the voice, a student came rushing at me.

“Yikes! Wh-What the—?!”

No sooner had I entered the classroom than I was being pushed out of it. I somehow managed to stop the backward momentum before I went stumbling out the door.

There were fifty students in the room, and they were all peppering me with questions.

“When is volume 13 of Pop Dragon going to get here?!”

“...Huh?” I said stupidly.

They ignored my befuddled response; if anything, the questions came even harder and faster. I thought they might tear me to pieces... Words like rioters, nerd tsunami, and the infamous East Hall on the last day of Comiket went through my mind.

“No, wait! What about our bishoujo games?! I want the new Hell Angel Lumière!”

“Sensei! Is it true that there’s a lost twelfth episode to the anime version of O-samurai Seven?!”

“Shut up! The real issue is, in the afterword to the latest volume of Asobi ni kita YO!, the author says he did a spinoff where the vice-captain is the heroine! Do you have it on your bookshelf already?!”

...And so on and so forth. They looked like news reporters trying to get a scoop, lobbing questions at me one after another. They were all shouting over each other, but the questions all came down to the same thing: “When is the new volume/issue/episode coming out?”

“Okay, hang on. Everybody just... calm down!” I said, fending them off with both hands. I guess everyone was starved for more manga and anime and games. “Just be quiet!” I said.

The room went silent, as if someone had flipped a switch. It was such a uniform reaction that I wondered if they had had some kind of training in it—this was a fearsomely repressed society, after all.

No, no. The more fearsome thing right now was...

“Um,” I said slowly, looking around at everyone. “I understand how you guys feel, believe me. But right now... No. I don’t have them.”

I didn’t just mean I couldn’t get them. I meant there was no new whatever. They didn’t exist. Some series were being serialized and the latest collected volume hadn’t come out yet. Some games were still in development and hadn’t been released. Before we could bring them to Eldant, they had to come out in Japan.

“Awwwww!” The students began to howl as if I had sentenced them to death. “O great evangelist! Please, have mercy—grant unto us more moe!”

Were they praying to me?!

It wasn’t just one student kneeling with tears in their eyes, begging piteously. A second, then a third followed. Some of them were elves and dwarves no less, and both men and women were among the supplicants. It was the strangest sight I had ever seen.

“Grant me illustrations of comely maidens!”

“Graciously throw in some bishounen, too!”

“Confer upon us a new prophecy, a new revelation!”

Okay, you guys, stop. I think you’re leaning just a little too hard into the pity thing. My classroom had transformed into a chapel for those contaminated by otaku culture, and I was apparently the great ancestor they were praying to! This was no joke!

“Wait a mi—”

“Oooohhhhhh!”

“Sensei! Senseiiiiii!”

“Oh! Oooohhhhh!!”

This was... Well, it wasn’t like any class I had ever seen.

The students were reaching out to me like zombies. I backed up, my cheeks twitching. Then someone grabbed me by the collar...

“Okay! Today is a free-study day!” That was Minori-san, slamming the door shut.

On the other side I could still hear the students moaning. They sounded like the damned in hell, but I ignored them as hard as I could and set off running.

I was panting by the time I stopped, not sure where I had run to. I was at some far part of the hallway when difficulty breathing finally slowed me down. I bent over, trying to collect myself, then leaned against the wall as the fatigue overcame me.

“Shinichi-kun.” Minori-san, who was standing next to me, sounded annoyed. I guess that’s a WAC for you: I had run myself ragged, but she had followed along like we were going for a walk. She wasn’t even breathing hard. “Not that I don’t understand how you feel...”

“What the heck?! What the heck was going on back there?!” But even as I asked, I thought I had a pretty good idea.

They’ve accelerated.

Things like learning Japanese or becoming acquainted with otaku culture don’t happen at a constant speed. Instead, after certain point, things increase exponentially—both the rate of learning and the rate at which consumable media is, well, consumed. My supply of product was no longer able to keep up with their evolution as otaku. On top of that...

“Um...”

Someone called out to us from nearby. Minori-san and I turned and saw a woman of ambiguous age standing there.

“Are you Kanou Shinichi-sama?”

“Er... Yes, I am.”

The woman had golden hair tied up in a ponytail and was wearing a restrained brown dress. It was obvious she was a member of the nobility long before you noticed the gigantic jewel on her finger.

“Pardon me,” I said, “but you are...?”

“I’m Rauletta, wife of Bardaressa Teodoro Pertini, who was granted noble rank by the empress. Actually, I’ve come to talk to you about my son, who goes to your school...” She looked troubled.

“You... You have?”

“Yes, I simply must. Please—” Rauletta-san’s voice broke before she could go any further. She looked completely beleaguered. Honestly, I wasn’t sure this was the time to be stopping to lend an ear to other people’s troubles, but faced with this despairing noblewoman, we could hardly rush off with a “Sorry! Busy!” We ushered Rauletta-san down the hallway.

“Perhaps you remember my son, Eduardo?” she asked as we went.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “He’s pretty sharp—he learned to write in a hurry, anyway.”

Eduardo Teodoro Pertini. He was the boy I had seen earlier, translating the light novel in the library. He was only about fifteen years old, and his most conspicuous trait was his curly golden hair. He had picked up kana right away, as well as most of the kanji necessary for basic literacy. Extremely quick to memorize things, he drank in the information. I had him pegged as a scholar—he was very focused and very particular.

In other words, he was ideal otaku material. I would have certainly counted him among the top students at our otaku training center. But his mother...

“I’m very proud of my son,” Rauletta-san said, but she had a pained expression on her face. “Or, I was. But that seems so long ago now.” She had stopped in her tracks, and Minori-san and I stopped with her.

Rauletta-san pointed at a certain room. The door was ajar. A sign reading “Library” hung on the wall.

For a moment, I looked in puzzlement at Rauletta-san, who showed no sign of moving. Then I looked into the library.

We taught the kids to be quiet in the library, so it was never too noisy in there, and since it was class time now, it was practically dead. The students should have been in the classroom.

“Huh...”

And yet, I could hear a pen scratching busily inside. Deep within, I could see a young man sitting alone at a desk.

It looked a lot like what I had observed earlier. The difference was the sheer volume. Piles of dictionaries and novels towered on either side of him, and he was writing on his lambskin paper as quick as a copy machine. Yep: it was Eduardo.

There were little bags under his eyes, his face the picture of seriousness. He reminded me of a manga artist trying to make deadline. I had to admit, he didn’t exactly make one think of a promising young noble.

“He talks about nothing but those books. It’s as if he’s possessed,” his mother said, nearly weeping. “I just can’t bear to see it anymore. But if I take his books, he runs away from home, and we always find him here. We’ve tried to get him tutors for etiquette and ballroom dancing, but he insists that his translations are the only thing that’s important and won’t be moved!”

She went on to tell me that she couldn’t even badmouth otaku culture in front of her son. Especially seeing as how it was favored by the Empress...

I stood dumbfounded. I had students who seemed to be going through withdrawal when they couldn’t get their otaku goods, and now Eduardo, who had abandoned everything else for light novel translation. I knew what was happening. I had seen this before.

“I...”

I had only wanted to share the excitement and joy of my beloved manga and anime and games and light novels. That was all I had ever been after. And because that was all I had wanted, I had missed the most crucial thing.

The Eldant Empire—no, this whole world—would find the entertainments of my world overstimulating. I admit, I had never expected it to spread so fast, and that meant it could potentially spread too fast and be dangerous.

I hadn’t even considered this possibility. I had believed that anime and manga and games and light novels—really, stories of every kind—were good. Not only could they allow you to experience things that couldn’t happen in reality using the power of the imagination, not only did they help relieve fatigue and stress, but they were also a chance to gain new insight and viewpoints. They could help give life flavor, make it richer. My belief in that particular truth was unshaken.

But at the same time, there was a time and a place for everything—to say nothing of an amount. The way I brought everything in without thinking about any of that, it was almost as if I had imported powerful drugs.

There’s a limit to everything. Maybe I don’t seem qualified to say that, having spent a year as a home security guard—but then, in a way, I’m in a position to talk exactly because I’ve lived through it. And there might be other people who can talk about it in Japan, but here in the Eldant Empire, I was the only one who could or would say anything at all.

There was no precedent for this here. Nobody knew what would happen to people who lost themselves in otaku culture. And the ones who were busy enjoying themselves surely wouldn’t think that they might wind up at the worst possible end. By the time they realized what was happening, it might already be too late.

I felt my blood run cold.

“Everything I’ve done up ’til now has been...”

My knees went weak, and I thought I might collapse on the spot.

I declared the rest of the day’s classes to be self-study sessions and went home to the mansion.

Who was I to stand up in front of a class and preach at them? Eduardo might be an extreme example, but I was sure there must be plenty of other students heading down the same road. And they didn’t even know what a dangerous position they were in.

But me? Because I was an otaku and had been a shut-in, I knew. Once you get that way, it’s hard to come back.

You can’t do random tests for it and it’s not illegal—but otaku culture is a drug. Or anyway, it sure acts like it.

Sure, even narcotics can have beneficial medicinal effects if you use them right. Unlike dictionaries or specialist texts, stories let you gain knowledge almost firsthand, and I think they can be helpful in broadening your emotional horizons. Talking about your favorite works with other people is a lot of fun, and even the most taciturn among us can get garrulous if you stumble onto a subject they’re interested in. In that sense, stories can even make us more socially capable.

But all this is on the understanding that we observe certain limits. You know: “Use only as directed.” I had thoughtlessly introduced a new drug to the Eldant Empire. Now the people here were captives of the stimulation, and they were starting to overdose. If this wasn’t a narcotic, what was it?

“Oh ho?”

As my bodyguard Minori-san and I entered the foyer of the mansion, we found Matoba-san standing there.

His suit, the color of dead leaves, fit him exactly, yet I could never shake the sense that he didn’t quite blend with his surroundings. It was more than the sight of a guy in modern Japanese salaryman garb standing in the middle of a medieval European fantasy world. In my eyes, the “bureaucrat in a business suit” look suggested a set of values that I didn’t share.

Politics takes place in a realm far removed from the basic human compassion that most of us commoners are acquainted with. It would only make sense for the people who move in those circles to have unique ideas about the world.

“What seems to be the matter?” Matoba-san stood in front of us, that half-smile on his face. “Isn’t school still in session?”

“Er... Yeah. Yeah, it is.” I nodded, my expression stiff.

Matoba-san met my strained look with a relaxed smile of his own. I’m just an innocent little government prole, it seemed to say—but when I thought about it, I wondered if anyone who would deliberately project that image could actually be as harmless as they wanted to look.

“And? Is something wrong?” Matoba-san asked, finally appearing to register the expression on my face.

“Matoba-san,” I said, removing my ring. I was frightened to think of having this conversation with Myusel or Brooke within earshot. Of course, Myusel had picked up quite a bit of Japanese over the last six months, so even taking the ring off was no guarantee she wouldn’t understand what we were saying.

Eventually I went on. “It’s true, isn’t it? I really am an invader.”

Matoba-san didn’t respond right away. He blinked, then looked questioningly at Minori-san. She nodded, expressionless.

“I suppose it’s no use hiding it any longer. Well, to all things a season.” Matoba-san didn’t sound especially bothered. Sort of like an old guy who got caught in a peccadillo he would have preferred to keep quiet. He definitely wasn’t acting like someone who had just been revealed as an accessory to a national plot.

“I hope you’ll bear one thing in mind as I tell you this,” Matoba-san said, smiling to the bitter end. Now it looked like nothing more than a mask to me. “However things may appear to you, we chose the most peaceful possible way.”

As a matter of fact, I knew that already. But they hadn’t made that choice out of goodwill—it was just the quickest and quietest way to get what they wanted. A military invasion wouldn’t have been very efficient, and the US and everyone else in the world would have been likely to notice what was going on. Then there was the concern that should any of this become public, a military invasion would be seen as contravening Article 9, and everyone involved would almost certainly be subject to both domestic and international punishment.

An economic invasion wasn’t very practical, either: insofar as our economic systems differed, it would be impossible to set a meaningful exchange rate. The monetary system in the Eldant Empire might not even be as defined or stable as the one in our own world, which would only make things harder.

The only other option? Cultural invasion. Using otaku culture, no less.

“Now that I think about it,” I said, glaring at Matoba-san, “if a bunch of illiterate Eldant commoners learn to read Japanese before even their own language, then that’s all they’ll be reading. It’ll slowly distort their own system of values. It’s sort of brainwashing, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Matoba-san said, not looking the least bit disturbed by the idea. “You consider that a problem?”

“Isn’t it?!” I howled.

We weren’t just talking about language here. I thought about Elvia’s pictures. Wasn’t that a form of brainwashing, too? Elvia had learned how to draw moe characters in no time flat; her technique was nearly perfect. If we took her back to Japan, I was sure she would have made it as a pro, no problem.

But... Then what about the hyper-realistic style she’d cultivated until now? Would the tendencies of otaku culture end up overwriting the unique traditional visual styles of this world? It’s not uncommon for traditional arts to be shoved aside by whatever’s popular, gradually losing pride of place and being pushed out of their own home.

“You damnable invader!”

The words the terrorist leader of the “assembly of patriots” had spoken came back to me.

Was I—

“There’s no such thing as a person who isn’t brainwashed, Shinichi-kun,” Matoba-san said evenly. “You, me—we’ve been brainwashed with the values of modern Japan. Via television, school, magazines, newspapers, the internet.”

“Yes, but I’m Japanese!”

“Yes, you are. But does the free, undiluted culture you speak of really exist?”

I was speechless.

To a greater or lesser extent, culture is influenced by politics; that’s true enough. In the Edo Era, women were banned from appearing in kabuki stage performances in order to curtail the allegedly disruptive effects of such shows. As a result, we wound up with yarou-kabuki, all-male stage plays, which are now considered traditional culture. Kabuki began with Izumo Okuni—a woman—so it was only natural that women should perform in the plays. But you had plays performed by prostitutes, plays performed by groups of young boys, and the government, claiming that this was a detriment to public morals, decided to allow only older men to stage kabuki.

And was moe any different? Countries like the US, where it was mostly okay to show everything in your porn, were more honest in their own way, but also broader, less precise. We’re not exactly talking about a case of “the hidden flower being the most beautiful” here, but rather than just smiling and being as concerned about sex as you are about sports, we wrap it in layers, a sense of guilt hiding just behind the eroticism, and I think Japan’s “moe” is the result. The guilt, and the way you have to talk about it in these vague terms, are a result of all the public-morals laws Japan has.

Just as evolution is supposed to be urged on by each new danger, the flower of each successive generation’s culture blooms in the soil laid down by the previous one. In that sense, there really isn’t such a thing as “free” culture, totally bereft of the influences of politics and the environment.

That was all true enough. And yet...

“Matoba-san,” I said, still glaring at the bureaucrat. “I don’t want to imagine this is true, but...”

“Hm?”

“That terrorist incident...”

“Oh! No, heavens no.” Matoba-san shook his head. “We wouldn’t do such a thing. Although we did let the situation go ahead.”

“What?!”

I felt all the hair on my body stand on end. I couldn’t just let that remark pass.

Ever since the terrorist attack by the “assembly of patriots,” most criticism in the Eldant Empire of our importing otaku culture and running our school had been suppressed. Alessio and his buddies had represented the most conservative of our critics, perhaps, but because he had seen fit to use violence, all those who objected to Japanese culture now risked being considered co-conspirators—traitors to their country, even.

That was part of why things were going so well for our school.

And now that I thought about it... Wasn’t the timing of all of it just a little too convenient? That was what had prompted my question. I couldn’t believe they would really...

“I’d appreciate if you could keep calm,” Matoba-san said. “It’s not as if we knew for certain. Our information-gathering abilities here don’t amount to much. We simply had an inkling. Our own world provides plenty of examples showing that there will always be those who resist cultural invasion.”

I waited a long time before I answered. “Why didn’t you warn the Eldant Empire, then?”

“If we’d done that, they would have dealt with everything themselves, wouldn’t they?” He smiled as if wondering how I could ask such a ridiculous question. “That incident established that we can and do intervene in Eldant’s domestic matters. With that precedent in place, it will be easier to expand the JSDF’s activities and operations in the future.”

I stood in shocked silence. Even I hadn’t imagined they were thinking that far ahead, but it made sense.

“This country has a superb military of its own,” Matoba-san said. “But strictly speaking, they have nothing akin to what we would call a police force in our world. Naturally, the army will capture criminals and chase away bandits if they’re specifically requested to do so, but they remain principally a military force. If and when a war breaks out, they’ll have no more time to attend to the petty concerns of the citizens, and a wave of violence and looting will be the result.”

If and when a war breaks out...? Wasn’t the Eldant Empire already constantly engaged in border skirmishes with the neighboring nations? That could only mean...

“That’s where we come in. We offer to bring over police patrol officers. The Eldant side, seeking any port in the storm of war, will accept. And when our officers’ duties become official, the Japanese government will have that much more say in how things are done here.”

I was speechless. This was more than taking advantage of your opponent’s weakness—this was deliberately creating a weakness.

“H-Have you left no sense of decency, sir?!” I demanded.

“I confess, it hurts me to hear that,” Matoba-san said, the arch of his eyebrows falling slightly. “But this decision comes from over my head.”

“Over your head?! Oooh! This is why I hate bureaucrats!”

“All our hands are tied.” Matoba-san shrugged. “And yet you’ve deduced all this, but missed the real point.”

“Huh...?”

I thought I saw something dark pass over Matoba-san’s otherwise relaxed countenance, and it spooked me. He wasn’t specifically trying to provoke me—but that made it all the more frightening, the way he talked about the bizarre as if it were ordinary.

“You understand that these are state secrets, yes?” he said. “I believe we talked about that.”

I didn’t say anything.

“What I’m trying to say is, in the interest of preserving secrecy, any members of our staff who tried to interfere with the execution of our plans would almost certainly be... dealt with.”

“‘Dealt with’?”

He couldn’t mean...

“Me. PFC Koganuma. And you, Shinichi-kun. If those above me decide that you lack the qualifications to be our pioneer here, you could well find that you disappear. Hadn’t you realized?” Chewing over his words, never quite enunciating, Matoba-san said, “Why do you think we brought someone like you—someone incapable of doing either great good or great harm—onto a project of utmost national secrecy?”

He looked at me; I thought I saw pity in his eyes. It was the same look that self-proclaimed “average people” always give otaku. The pride of the majority over against a minority.

“Was it because of your deep knowledge of otaku culture? Was it because we thought you would make such an excellent evangelist? Surely not. As I told you, the whole idea of using two-dimensional works as the primary vector of cultural infection was only ever an experiment to the people in charge. One that might go on only until they found a more effective method.”

Yes... Yes, I remembered hearing that. But still...

“Do you know why I chose you?” Matoba-san asked. “You fit the brief I was given by my superiors: someone who could be erased wholesale from our world without anyone really noticing.”

He spoke so calmly, but I felt as if I had been punched in the gut.