Chapter One: The Long Goodbye?

My name is Kanou Shinichi. I’m a former home security guard who’s now General Manager of the Parallel-World First General Entertainment Company, Amutech.

That’s right—parallel world. You know: an isekai. The kind of place you can’t normally get to by car or boat or airplane. (Although rumor has it they’re easy to reach by getting hit by a truck.)

When the Japanese government happened to discover a parallel world linked to Japan’s largest island, they decided to take control of this untouched land in hopes of extracting mineral or biological resources from it, or whatever else they could get. Being an alternate world, international law didn’t seem to apply—and in fact, they were careful to make sure no other country on Earth knew about it. In other words, they were shooting to keep this mysterious place all to themselves.

But things are never that simple. The portal connecting this other world to the “Sea of Trees” near Mount Fuji (a portal we referred to as a hyperspace wormhole) was pretty narrow, so large weapons wouldn’t fit through, and copious amounts of resources couldn’t be brought back all at once. What’s more, the other world was made up of countries populated by people with a very different culture and level of technology from Japan’s, and the government felt a military takeover attempt would be risky without a better grasp of the other side’s military strength.

So, they decided, they wouldn’t try a military invasion. They would attempt a cultural one instead. If you can’t overpower the opponent physically, they seemed to reason, do it spiritually.

They tried a bunch of different things, and when this nation on the other side of the wormhole discovered “Cool Japan”—in other words, otaku stuff—they went wild for it. (Apparently, entertainment had been the last thing to develop in that world.)

A lot happened after that, but when I discovered the government’s real intentions, I fought back. The bigwigs panicked and sent a special ops squad to assassinate me, but I managed to escape (long story) and now I live in this world as an otaku evangelist. Not in any sort of attempt to overpower the locals culturally, but in hopes of promoting an equal friendship between Japan and the Holy Eldant Empire here on this side of the wormhole. I have a system set up now, and I spend my days importing otaku stuff from Japan.

I found it fulfilling. Lovely, in fact. Who could have imagined that a worthless otaku, who went full home security guard after being completely shot down by a childhood friend, would get to put his interest and knowledge to use in actual diplomacy? It interested me, it made me happy, and I worked hard at it. I liked to think I did my best.

That hard work had gained me a lot of friends and acquaintances over here. The Holy Eldant Empire had become my second home, the place I belonged. Or so I thought.

My breath fogged in the air. I looked up to see snowflakes drifting out of the clouds.

“Not coming... I knew it.” I heaved a sigh and pulled myself away from the window I’d been looking longingly out of, forcing myself to sit back in my seat.

I was on a train, one of those rural lines that looks like it’s on the verge of being shut down. The train cars were visibly aging, and they had a musty smell like a secondhand bookshop or a library. From long days and years of service, no doubt. Who knew how many people they had carried who, like me, had left this place with only the utmost reluctance.

A tone sounded indicating that the train was about to leave, and then the doors all shut at once. I sighed again as the scenery began to drift slowly past the window.

And then... I thought I heard something. Someone faintly calling my name.

It was my imagination. It had to be. There was no one who would come to see me off. How could there be? I was running away. From a certain perspective, you could even say I was abandoning this place. Betraying all the memories I’d made here...

“Myusel...” The name came to my lips almost before I knew what I was saying.

Those days seemed radiant, like a mirage. She’d always been beside me. Just having her there, everything about the world seemed to shine brighter. But I was sure she was—

“...chi...-sa...ma...!”

“Huh?”

Did my ears deceive me? Was I hearing things out of sheer self-recrimination?

But then I heard it again, a voice clear in the winter air.

“Shinichi-sama!”

There was no mistaking it. Almost slipping on the suitcase at my feet, I scrambled out of my seat and over to the window. I threw it open, feeling a blast of cold air and snow against my face, but I was so excited, I hardly noticed.

Where? Where?! Where is she? I scanned around eagerly. And then...

“Myusel!” I found her.

The train was already leaving the platform, picking up speed. The scenery was threatening to blur by, but there she was. Running, running as fast as she could, chasing the train I was on...

“Shinichi-sama! Shinichi-sama!”

But it was impossible for her to keep up with the speeding train for very long. She seemed to get smaller even as I watched. The rush of wind around the train made it hard to hear or talk to her. But I didn’t care. In a voice so loud I thought it would tear my throat up, I said, “Myuuseeellll!”

My sweet Myusel. My kind Myusel. She’d come. She’d come to see me off—me. Maybe even to try to stop me. Surely, I thought, a guy could be forgiven for feeling a little lovestruck in the face of a miracle like that. Although of course, she was too late.

I would never see her again. It would be as if we were dead to each other. So if I were to risk my life jumping out this window, what did I have to lose...?

I thought about it for a long second. Nah... Not a good plan.

The two of us couldn’t be together anymore. Those shimmering summer days were long over, the warm and beautiful autumn ended, and now it was winter—the season of parting. There was no turning back time, and regret couldn’t get us anything. No matter how much we might hate it, the distance between us would never grow smaller, only wider.

But... Oh, if only...

Even knowing that fact, I still thought...

“Shinichi-sama!” Myusel kept shouting. She looked like she might trip over herself. Miraculously, I could hear her clearly. “Goodbye... Take care!” Maybe my infatuation with her was making me imagine the little sparkling droplets I thought I saw coming from her eyes. Or maybe... “Goodbye... Goodbye... Please... remember me...”

“How could I forget?!” I shouted back. How could I ever forget? I would always remember. It was impossible for me to forget Myusel. But then...

“Ah, no. You’ll have to forget—lot of trouble otherwise,” someone said from behind me.

I’d thought I was the only one in the train car. And even though I should have been using this instant to burn a last image of Myusel into my retinas, instead I turned, with an intensely bad feeling.

Someone was standing there in a grayish suit. The squint of his eyes made him look a little like he was always smiling, but I suspected really smiling was one thing he’d never done in his life. He wore a smile as a mask, and it didn’t make him hesitate for an instant to do the cruelest things.

“Matoba-san...”

“We need you to forget,” he said. “All of it.” Then he raised his hand, raised something he held in his hand...

“N-No, stop!”

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

He brought the thing down toward me. For some reason, it had 1,000,000 TONS written on the side in big letters—a hammer large enough to take away your life, let alone your memories.

Long pause.

Longer pause.

“Um... Shinichi-sama?” I heard Myusel ask.

“Guh?!” I exclaimed, snapping back to reality.

Ahh... I’d thought that might be what was happening. I always seemed to have these strange dreams or fantasies or whatever you wanted to call them.

Still, what had that whole thing been about? The rural train station, the farewell as she ran alongside the departing train. I mean, there’s clichéd and then there’s clichéd. Couldn’t my brain come up with anything more original? All right, admittedly, things had gotten pretty surreal at the end there.

“Are you okay, sir?” said the young woman looking at me and blinking. She had big, violet eyes, and her cheeks were pale with just a touch of scarlet. Her long, rich flaxen hair and the pointed ears that revealed her Elvish blood were all just like they always were—just like they had been in my dream. She was wearing her usual maid uniform, too.

Myusel Fourant: lively, lovely, half-elfy, maid-y, and just a little bit vulnerable. Plus, to top it all off, she was charmingly clumsy, and overeager in exactly the right way. My adorable maid, just as moe-able as ever.

“E-Er, yeah, I’m fine. Just one of my, uh, attacks.”

“Attacks? Do you need any medicine, sir?”

“It’s all right.” I didn’t think there was medicine that would cure a bout of otaku nerdery—and if there was, maybe that would be worse than the disease.

I shook my head to chase away the last vestiges of my vision, and looked around. I was in a very familiar place: the dining area of the mansion I lived in, which is to say, Amutech’s headquarters. Morning light was streaming in through the window, and the whole place seemed refreshing. On a normal day, everyone would have been gathered around the table, chatting and enjoying one of Myusel’s homemade breakfasts. In fact, that’s exactly what we’d been doing until just a moment ago.

But now, everything felt different.

“Are you quite all right, Shinichi-kun?” Matoba-san asked. He was the reason for all of this. He looked just like he had in my vision, too. Without the hammer, though.

Matoba Jinzaburou. Chief of the Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau—to put it more succinctly, he was the face of the Japanese government’s interactions with the Eldant Empire. My boss at Amutech, if you will, and our conduit to Japan. For better or for worse, he’d shown himself to be pretty proactive. I owed him a lot, and yet when it came right down to it, I never felt entirely sure I could trust him.

When Matoba-san took the time to personally show up at our mansion, it usually wasn’t good news... and this time was no exception. In fact, it was worse than that; he’d launched into just about the most awful news he could have had.

“So, uh, let me make sure I have this straight, Matoba-san.”

“Mm. Yes, of course. It’s important to make sure we’re all on the same page,” he said, nodding. He could be a tricky guy to read, the way he always had that mask of a smile on his face. And yet, was I seeing things, or did he look a little bit worried? I was sort of surprised to learn he was capable of that.

“When you say withdraw, are you talking about an agile bandito?”

“That’s a quickdraw.”

“Okay, let’s talk about permanently. You mean...”

“Permanently. Forever.”

“Uh-huh. As in, a quartet of Argentine political leaders?”

“That’s four Evas.”

“I see. So we’re talking about the Prototype, the Test Type, the first Production Model—”

“Shinichi-kun.” Matoba-san sighed. “I understand you don’t want to accept it, but I do need you to face reality. Let me repeat myself, and I hope you’ll listen closely: the Japanese government has made up its mind to withdraw from this world forever. We are going to leave and never come back. That’s simply the way it is.” He sounded completely calm, inflectionless. So I hadn’t misheard.

A permanent withdrawal. Never coming back. That would mean...

“No... But...” I looked around for some kind of help. Some kind of salvation.

Myusel and the others from this world looked at me blankly. It was only then that I realized Matoba-san had removed his interpreter ring. Most of the people around here couldn’t follow a Japanese conversation. Myusel was the exception; she could even read and write some Japanese—but too many difficult words or too much quick talking became difficult for her to keep up with. So if two people having a conversation both removed their magic rings, the Japanese people in the room could pretty much have a private conversation.

“Has this decision really been finalized?” The question, delivered with calm resolve, came from a bespectacled WAC, Koganuma Minori-san. She lived here at Amutech headquarters with us, as the bodyguard for the company’s Japanese employees. She normally came across as a sweet, comforting, and big-busted young lady, but the reality was that she was also trained in all sorts of fighting, including hand-to-hand, and was the most reliable big-sister type you could hope for.

Uh, if you ignored the flood of BL that pretty much kept her alive, that is.

In any event, she seemed fine at the moment. Certainly not as shaken as I was by this news.

“Yes, finalized and approved. It’s a cabinet decision. The existence of this world obviously hasn’t been revealed to the public at large, and this matter required urgency, so it was a round-robin cabinet.”

“Round-robin cabinet?” I asked.

“When there’s no time for a meeting, the cabinet’s director general can go around to each of the members personally to get their signature. At least, that’s what I hear.” The explanation came from Ayasaki Hikaru-san. Hikaru-san looked just like a very pretty girl with black hair in a cool Gothic-Lolita dress—but only looked like. He was actually a man. A cross-dresser, effectively. He only did it because he thought it looked good, though. As far as I knew, he was straight.

She—or rather, he—was originally sent here by the Japanese government to replace me, but instead he ended up working alongside me (long story). He could be pretty sarcastic when he wanted to, but he was also quick on his feet and knew his otaku stuff backwards and forwards, so he was an excellent worker and an excellent fit for our company.

“The point is, this is a government decision. There’s not going to be any getting out of it,” Matoba-san repeated, looking me squarely in the eye. So the Japanese government was going to break off all relations with the Holy Eldant Empire, forbid its people and assets from moving back and forth anymore, and get them all out of here.

“No—uhh—I mean, wait... But that would mean...” I understood intellectually, but I could still barely get the words out.

“This is all very sudden,” Hikaru-san said instead, sipping his tea elegantly. “What might be the reason?” He looked at Matoba-san almost with a glare. Yikes. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who was upset? Blargh. Hikaru-san went on: “I know it might not be much in the grand scheme of the government’s diplomatic expenditures, but the investment in this world hasn’t been nothing, either. To give up on that now—well, it would be strange if there was no good reason.”

He was certainly right about that. It wasn’t just all the manga and anime and games we’d bought to bring into this world. The Japanese government had provided a bodyguard for me and Hikaru-san, had done all kinds of surveys of this world, sent dozens of JSDF troops, and even set up proper barracks for them. And let’s talk weaponry: Type 89 rifles, LAVs, Panzerfaust 3s—all this stuff alone had to represent hundreds of millions of yen. Throw in the fact that they’d been trying all sorts of diplomatic approaches before I got here as General Manager of Amutech, and we had to be talking about an investment of billions of yen in total. At least. Granted, maybe that didn’t seem like so much when you hear newscasts casually talking about national budgets in the trillions of yen. But still.

“Shinichi-san alone—” Hikaru-san glanced at me—“has been ordering stupid numbers of manga, Blu-rays, games, everything. Plus spending taxpayer money like water on freemium stuff. He’s blowing huge amounts on limited-edition figures, three of every character, to look at or touch or trade or whatever he says he wants to do with them...”

“I’m not blowing it! It just goes to show my dedication as an otaku!” I burst out, but Hikaru-san, Matoba-san, and even Minori-san just gave me silent looks of exasperation. Hey, you need to be prepared, just in case, right? ...Okay, never mind.

But even so, JSDF equipment and vehicles and personnel and stuff had to be way more expensive! My purchases were just a drop in the bucket! They had to be! Although I admit I had never totaled them up!

“Don’t tell us... the budget ran out?” Hikaru-san asked point-blank.

Wait? Could that possibly be true? Was this all because I’d bought too much stuff without thinking it through?! Like when I bought those life-size, two-million-yen figures three at a time?

I looked at Matoba-san, my eyes just about bulging out of my head, but he said, “No, of course not. The reason is simple: this place was judged too dangerous.”

“Wait... Dangerous?” Minori-san said, raising an eyebrow. As our bodyguard, I guess she was especially sensitive to that word. Also “man-on-man,” “top,” “bottom,” “orgasmic,” “devilish,” “switch,” (remainder of list omitted)... In fact, maybe she was a little too sensitive to those words. But anyway. “You mean some kind of physical danger?” Minori-san asked.

“Physical... Well, I guess you could say that.” Matoba-san didn’t look very sure. He was acting all kinds of out of character today. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him on the back foot before. He looked from me to Minori-san and back again with concern, then finally said: “The possibility has arisen that if Japan continues to have contact with this place, the world itself could be destroyed.”

“Huh?! What’s that supposed to mean?” I said. Suddenly we were talking about the destruction of the world? What was this, a manga? Or worse, a light novel? What, had the demon king of legend been resurrected? Was a superweapon out of control? Maybe the final war had broken out? Or aliens were attacking? Or maybe bacteria from some country’s research facility had—

“So what you’re saying,” Hikaru-san said with a bit of a smile, “is the Japanese government found out that this world isn’t another world at all, but the future of our own world.”

I took a breath. I’m embarrassed to say I had completely forgotten about that. Well... maybe not forgotten. More likely I...

“Are they worried about time paradoxes? Time-space disruptions due to confounded cause and effect? Is that the kind of danger the government is concerned about?”

“So you knew,” Matoba-san said. He blinked, as if even he was surprised to realize. Come to think of it, we hadn’t told Matoba-san about the whole “time slip” thing. We’d had our suspicions after the forbidden armor appeared, but we had deliberately tried not to think about it. What good would it have done us? At least, that’s what we’d thought. But after everything that happened in Bahairam recently, I’d had no choice but to face the truth.

“We figured it out—or at least got the proof we needed—when we went to Bahairam recently,” Minori-san explained. “There was a cyborg, or a robot or something, lying dormant there, and we met someone who told us explicitly that this was the future of our world.”

“Indeed...” Matoba-san said. “Where’s your report on this expedition?”

“I’m writing it right now, sir.” Minori-san shrugged. As a member of the JSDF, Minori-san reported all her activities to Matoba-san—which was to say, to the Japanese government. But with all the shocking things we’d discovered in Bahairam, I guess even Minori-san was still trying to get her head around it.

“However,” she added, “strictly speaking, what we learned was that this world once had countries with names like America and China, and that at least some people here once spoke English. We don’t have specific proof that our world is connected to this one.” She slid her glasses up her nose with her pointer finger.

“Hm?” Matoba-san asked with a tilt of his head. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

“What she means!” I broke in. “She means—!” I was afraid the conversation was getting away from us. What I mean is, I was afraid we would lose the chance for a shocked reaction take, like in one of those manga where they go “What did you say?!” Or “Is that true, ****?!”

“I heard what you said—humanity is going to be destroyed! Wait, no...” I said. That was enough playing M*R. “Ahem, uh... According to this cyborg, or whatever she was, in this world’s past there were things called America and China and English. Some of the stuff that came out of the ruins in Bahairam, it had writing on it that had to be English.”

Why would that cyborg—Theresa was her name—have any reason to lie to us? I had to assume she was telling the truth. Besides, a number of facts backed up her story. None of them were exactly definitive on their own, but they didn’t contradict each other, either.

“But I was thinking, we don’t necessarily know that there’s only one world like that. If there’s another world, like this one, why not have more parallel worlds? Say, one exactly like ours except in some subtly different ways.”

“Hmm? Parallel worlds?” Matoba-san almost sounded interested.

“I mean, like, for example, a world where everything is exactly the same, except you’re a girl, Matoba-san. Or your name isn’t Jinzaburou, it’s Shinichirou or something...”

“Or a switch world where Shinichi-kun is the bottom and Garius-san is the top!”

“Yeah, exactly! No, wait, that world doesn’t exist, I guarantee it!! There’s no standard or switch anything!” I tried to ignore this unhelpful outburst from our WAC (rotten to the bone). I went on: “It’s the idea of worlds that might be, representing branching possibilities. Countless worlds all existing right next to each other. It wouldn’t be that surprising to have one with more or less the same geopolitics or culture that we have in our world, but small details that are different. It happens in sci-fi all the time. They generally treat ‘parallel worlds’ as meaning parallel worlds that resemble our own...”

Strictly speaking, a parallel world only meant one that existed, well, in parallel. It didn’t mean it had to look like the world we lived in. So I figured even an “other world” like this one with the Holy Eldant Empire could be considered parallel to the world containing Japan.

“I see,” Matoba-san said, stroking his chin and nodding a little bit. “So the history of this world that you learned isn’t decisively the future of our own planet?”

“Right. Even those proper nouns—America, China—we only heard them in passing. Someone could have been lying, or we could have misheard. We don’t have any indisputable physical proof that this world is the future of ours. We only—”

“Ahem, if you’ll pardon me...” Matoba-san interrupted, looking faintly apologetic. “Setting aside any question of parallel whatevers, we do have it. Physical proof, I mean.”

“What?” Hikaru-san said.

“You’ll remember we took blood samples when you all went back to Japan, yes?” Yeah, I did remember, now that he mentioned it. But so what? “We went ahead and did additional, more detailed testing on the samples from Myusel-kun and Elvia-kun. By special request of the government, you see.”

“What about it?” I said, glancing at Myusel and Elvia.

“Whazzat?” Elvia asked, blinking. “Somethin’ about me?” She wasn’t really able to follow a Japanese conversation without help, but she would at least have picked up her own name.

Elvia Harneiman: originally a spy from the neighboring country of Bahairam, a werewolf girl sent to get a good look at us—or rather, at Amutech and its mansion. She was open and cheerful, sort of like a big puppy, and now she was Amutech’s resident artist.

Anyway, like Matoba-san said, Myusel and Elvia had had their blood tested when they went to Japan, allegedly to screen for any communicable diseases. It was an obvious thing to do—you didn’t want any strange bacteria coming through the hyperspace tunnel or anything. But what if they had done other tests, ones they hadn’t told us about?

“And you also once received an energy drink to help revitalize you, did you not? From Brooke-kun,” Matoba-san said.

“Huh? Oh—Oh, yeah. It was made from Cerise-san’s tail or something,” I said, looking this time at our lizardman couple. Our gardener Brooke Darwin, and our maid, his wife Cerise. Elves and werewolves looked a lot like humans, just with some minor differences—pointy ears or bushy tails—but lizardmen were another thing altogether. At first glance, they looked like walking lizards. Brooke in particular was especially tall and broad-shouldered, so he could give you a serious fright if you ran into him in a dark hallway. You could practically wet yourself from fear. In spite of his threatening looks, though, Brooke was diligent and kindly.

As for the energy drink Matoba-san had mentioned, the lizardmen had cut off the ends of their own tails, which were roasted and prepared in a concoction of honey and carbonated water. It tasted awful; I mean, the stuff was hard to get down. But it was seriously effective, plus it supposedly had potent anti-aging properties. For a society like Japan’s, facing an aging population and the rising medical costs that entailed, a “fountain of youth” medicine could be big, big business.

“I suspect the thinking was, if lizardman bodies possessed such properties, what about those of other demi-humans?”

“No way... You mean they were thinking about making medicine out of elves and werewolves?” It somehow seemed almost grotesque.

Matoba-san seemed to guess what I was thinking, because he shook his head with a note of urgency. “We aren’t medieval apothecaries. We weren’t going to kill and powder them. We were thinking of something more like—what do you call it? Placenta treatments? It’s claimed this method can relieve chronic illness and menopausal disorders, perhaps even treat cancer. In the same way, people wanted to evaluate what might be possible with new tissues.”

“Uh-huh...”

Well, I guess the whole reason Japan had wanted to get involved with this other world in the first place was in part to discover heretofore unknown biological resources. These days that included a lot of microscopic stuff like useful bacteria, microbes, that sort of thing, but if larger-scale creatures could be useful, I’m sure they wouldn’t ignore it.

“In any event,” Matoba-san said. “When the girls’ blood samples were investigated—well, I didn’t ask about the specifics of the science; I wouldn’t have understood the answer. But apparently their genetic material was human, but showed signs of genetic manipulation. Indeed, a number of places in their genetic code showed close links to modern humanity.”

Close links? What, in their genetic information? Did that mean... “Is this, like, that thing you mentioned, Hikaru-san?”

“Mitochondrial Eve? Yeah, it’s probably related.” He nodded.

I’ll spare you the details to help keep this short, but basically, inside every human cell are tiny organelles called mitochondria. If you examine the DNA and Y chromosomes inside them, you can allegedly follow them back to the nearest common ancestor of all modern humans. By investigating this mitochondrial DNA, we’ve discovered evidence supporting the view that humankind emerged somewhere in Africa several hundred thousand years ago.

In short, by examining the information in people’s genes, we can grasp, at least to a point, how humanity evolved. I’ve even heard that in the womb, a human embryo undergoes what amounts to the entire evolutionary process, starting as a single-celled organism and becoming many-celled; going from a fishlike creature to an amphibian one; then going through a stage more like a land animal before finally arriving at what we would call a human.

In other words, the entire history of human evolution is encoded into our DNA. And apparently, after performing similar tests on Myusel and Elvia’s samples, they discovered genetic information that made them believe the girls were definitely descended from modern, twenty-first-century humans. And that caused people to question whether this other world was really an other world at all.

“But that doesn’t actually rule out the possibility that this is a parallel world,” I said.

“Of course, that’s not all we’re going on,” Matoba-san replied. He let out a short breath, then said, “The genetic argument is only a clue to the truth. We saw a number of other... unusual things as well.”

“Meaning?”

“Ahem...” He took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Shinichi-kun. What’s that anime you like?”

“Uh, there’s a few.” Too many to count on one hand, in fact. I could list them all day and all night.

“I think it was titled... Rental Video? No, er...”

“Oh! Rental☆Madoka? Is that what you’re thinking of?”

“Ah, yes, that one.” Matoba-san held up a professorly finger. “Do you realize that that anime is three years old already?”

“Huh?” I said, without really meaning to. Madoka had shown on TV just before I came to this world. “But—huh? Three years? But I’ve only been here a year or so...”

“Yes. Here,” Matoba-san said. “And the JSDF’s clocks indicate that’s roughly the amount of time that has passed. The clocks here do appear accurate. But in Japan, three years have elapsed.”

“What?! But that’s ridiculous!”

“I compared some records, and discovered that in the past three months—that’s three months here on the Eldant side, mind you—the flow of time has picked up pace dramatically. There’s an unmistakable gap between how time advances in Japan versus how it does here. What’s more, we’ve continued to carefully monitor the progression since we noticed this difference, and we’ve found that there are... discrepancies in the discrepancy. The gap isn’t stable.”

“............Wait...”

“You mean, like, the Urashima effect?” Hikaru-san said, tilting his head. He was referring to a concept that pops up pretty regularly in sci-fi—that when a spaceship approaches the speed of light, time slows down. The exact reasons why involve the theory of relativity and some other difficult stuff, and I couldn’t really explain it personally. It was just this weird thing that happens. At least, theoretically.

For example, people on board a spaceship traveling at light- or near-light speed wouldn’t age compared to people waiting for them on Earth. You could have two identical twins, and if one of them stayed on the ground while the other was on a spaceship traveling at light speed and then came back, the twin on the spaceship would still be young, while the one on Earth would be an old person. Again, that’s the idea, anyway. It’s called the Urashima effect after the Japanese folktale of Urashima Tarou, and it’s sometimes also known as the “twin paradox” on account of the weird thing with the twins.

Anyway.

“I can’t say I’m sure,” Matoba-san replied. “Our esteemed scientists had a great deal to say about the situation, but I confess I understood very little of it.” He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “The fact is, we’re dealing with a ‘hole’ punched through time and space across thousands or even tens of thousands of years. I wouldn’t be too shocked no matter what strange effects it might produce, personally. We don’t even know the principle by which this thing exists.”

He was right about that. We’d called the passage a hyperspace wormhole and pretended that meant we understood what it was, but all we’d done was give it a name. We didn’t really know anything about it. The same way we can use a computer without knowing exactly how it was built or what makes it work, we had been using the hyperspace tunnel with no real clue what was actually going on.

Matoba-san continued: “The physical distance represented by the hyperspace tunnel has also proven unstable. For some time now it’s been expanding and contracting. Consider some worst-case scenarios. Say the elevator is in transit when the tunnel expands to a distance of tens of thousands of kilometers, trapping the thing in hyperspace. Alternatively, a scenario in which the distance reduces to zero, and our two worlds collide. Some propose that either or both is possible.”

The rest of us could only look at him, silent with shock.

“If this instability is caused by mutual interference between the past and future, then there’s a distinct possibility that further interference will worsen the situation. Or so the people over my head surmise.”

I was sure the Japanese government had brought in scientists to investigate and come up with this conclusion, but because this situation was completely unprecedented, nobody knew exactly what to do about it. If we didn’t want to just wait and see what happened, then we had to go with our best guess—to do what we predicted would be the easiest, safest thing. And because we couldn’t do anything about the hyperspace tunnel itself, then like Matoba-san said, minimizing crossover and interference was the logical solution. And that meant...

“Permanent withdrawal from this world...”

The words came out of my own mouth, but they still sounded unbelievable. Unreal.

When I awoke from my long, long sleep, I found the world had changed, almost beyond recognition. I was surprised, sure, but it wasn’t enough to shake me, let alone drive me to despair. Hell, I was already dead. So what if time left me behind? That’s what time does.

Yes, I existed once. As a human—a soldier named Theresa Bigelow. But anything that once bore that name is gone now. Or at least, the physical stuff hasn’t been arranged in the shape of a body for quite some time. If that’s how we’re defining death, then I guess I’m dead.

Humans learned how to extend their physical lifespans, sure enough, but not by much. They never reached more than two hundred years. The brain can be transferred into a new physical body prepared with cultivated undifferentiated cells, but there’s a biological limit to how long the neurons themselves can go on, so it’s not exactly eternal life. For better or for worse, all living bodies are part of the great cycle. Death is a part of life and all that. You were born? You’re gonna die.

If you still want to go on existing beyond the limits of your meaty bits, then by definition you’re walking away from being a living thing. It’s like you’re saying to the Grim Reaper, “You can’t fire me, I quit!”

And that’s the choice I made, once upon a time.

Advances in genetic manipulation and bioengineering enabled the creation of completely new biological species by human hands, and with each new creature, the definition of life, the concept of what it meant to be human, took a fresh beating. Let’s just say not everyone agreed on the right values, the perspective to take on all this stuff, and there was a lot of, well... arguing.

Speaking purely for myself, I didn’t have any real compunctions about quitting Team Biological Life. My flesh body had nearly died two different times in terrorist attacks while I was in the military. Not everyone has a near-death experience—I’ve had two. They convinced me there’s nothing waiting on the other side, and they also convinced me I didn’t want to just disappear. Cogito, ergo sum, amirite? I was terrified of winking out of existence.

So I signed a mountain of paperwork and they stuck my consciousness—my soul, if you want—into a man-made body, and I became an “immortal” soldier. Allegedly, I got to keep my human rights, but the fact was, I became the property of the military. I was never going to be discharged, and I was going to have to work as a soldier the rest of my life. But I didn’t care. Frankly, that’s what I wanted.

I was born in a woman’s body, it’s true, but I was more competitive, more of a fighter, than a lot of the men around me, and I didn’t have any interest in a quiet, peaceful life. The military seemed like the only way to go for me, and once I was there, I couldn’t imagine going back to civilian life.

So there I was, and I figured there I would be until the military decided it didn’t need me anymore. Until it erased all my personality data from all its servers, all its backups, and threw my pieces out with the rest of the trash. A soldier forever.

But then...

“Never counted on waking up from the long sleep to find out there’s no military at all,” I said to myself. Hell, the whole national system that had existed when I went under was gone now. America, China, Russia, Japan, England, France, Italy, India, no sign of any of ’em. No sign of anything. After I woke up, it was all new names.

“Right, then.” I stood up and looked around. Obviously, it’d been a while. I’d flown partway on an airborne BOU—one of our “Dragoon” units—but I didn’t think that’d be the smartest means to reach my destination. After I crossed the border, I decided to hoof it the rest of the way.

My body might have been artificial, but it was about the same size as an average human, and it walked about the same pace. So even though I could go without rest or sleep, my actual movement speed wasn’t dramatically better than an ordinary person’s. I could run several times faster than a flesh-and-blood human, but that would cause issues with heat dissipation, and I didn’t think I could keep it up for several dozen hours.

“Pretty sure that guy was supposed to be around here somewhere...”

I was in the middle of the woods. A huge forest of gigantic trees—which meant bad visibility. I was pretty sure I was going the right way, but everything looked the same no matter where I turned, so it was impossible to be absolutely certain. It was bad enough that the GPS satellite had never come back online, but on top of that, the topography around here was completely different from my geographic data files, so I could only take the broadest guess which way I was supposed to be going.

“...Well now, what ’ave we ’ere? What’re you doing ’ere, little girl? You all by yourself?” Long pause. “Oi, little girl. Don’t you give me the cold shoulder.”

“Hrm?” Only when the owner of the voice grabbed my hand did I realize he was talking to me.

I had been nearly forty years old when I’d first assumed this body. I hadn’t looked anything like a “little girl” then, and from the time I took on this avatar to the time I went to sleep was another thirty years of soldiering. Sometimes people called me by my name. Mostly they called me by my rank. They certainly never called me “little girl.”

“Heh, whazza matter, sweetheart, all alone in the woods?”

Holding my hand was a man in weathered military equipment—which was only to say leather armor. Three more men, similarly attired, stood behind him. I didn’t recognize the equipment, but I sure knew the look in their eyes. Toughs. Roughnecks. I’d seen more than enough of their type when I was on “peacekeeping” missions in countries all over the world. It happened all the time: some state goes belly-up and there’s no more army, but there are plenty of weapons, and the bastards who have them go to ground...

Guess I’m not all that different from them right now, I thought. They were probably the leftovers from a military of their own, or at least deserters. With no leaders and no mission, they’d turned to banditry. They carried primitive weapons—swords and hatchets. Rusty and warped, but enough to threaten an unarmed young woman.

“Hey, c’mere,” one of the other men said.

“Yeah, come say hello,” a third cooed.

They weren’t speaking a language I knew—not like English or Japanese or Chinese—but my translator app had picked up enough of the local tongue that I could understand them.

“Oh, you want to play with me?” I asked pointedly. “What kind of game were you after?”

“Easy,” the men said, adopting gruesome expressions. “Somethin’ nice and physical. We wanna work up a good sweat!”

“Yeah, something intense! Heh heh heh!”

“All right. Fair enough.” I grinned my biggest grin, walked right up to the man in front, and put a hand on the sword dangling from his hip. Before he could say a word, I grabbed the leather scabbard... and switched my avatar into combat mode, uncapping the energy limits in my artificial muscles. There was an audible cracking as I bent the sword backward, scabbard and all.

The men looked at me, speechless.

“All right, good sirs. Let’s play. Something physical, was it? Intense?” I gave them a sweet smile as they started to back away.

I grabbed the first guy by the collar. “Where do you think you’re going, asshole?” The next thing he saw was the ground, the instant before his face slammed into it.

“Leave this place? You mean... go away?”

We were in an audience chamber in Eldant Castle. The speaker of these words, her face grim, was a pretty young girl with silver hair and emerald eyes. Above her refined, lovely face shone a brilliant, girlish tiara. You could almost say it was over-the-top, but she wore it as naturally as anything, probably thanks to being born and bred as part of a royal family—or I guess I should say, an imperial family.

She was the all-powerful ruler of the Holy Eldant Empire. An adorable seventeen-year-old monarch. Her Majesty, Empress Petralka an Eldant III.

We’d sent people to the school to notify everyone that classes would be canceled today, while we ourselves reported to Petralka at the castle. Even though our request was sudden and unscheduled, we didn’t have any real problem getting an audience with her in one of the audience chambers—the smaller one, used for comparatively private conversations among just a few people.

Incidentally, by “we” I mean the members of Amutech who were present: me, Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and Matoba-san. Matoba-san hadn’t looked very happy when I’d said I wanted to talk to the Eldant side of things, but he admitted that they were going to find out sooner or later, and ultimately went along. I’m sure he wanted to make sure I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t.

So there we were.

“You’re saying... this will not be a temporary return home, Shinichi? You will leave and never come back?”

The pointed question came not from Petralka, but from the handsome young man standing beside the throne, Garius en Cordobal. Although still only in his twenties, he was the captain of the royal guard in Eldant, and, practically speaking, its chief military commander. In other words, sort of a big deal. He was also a blood relation of the empress—specifically, her cousin.

He had gorgeous silver hair and almond-shaped jade eyes; his face was so pretty that in the right outfit you might have mistaken him for a woman. Practically the ideal of male beauty come to life. You’d think he’d be awfully popular with the ladies—which made it all the more ironic that the man himself was, well, not interested in the opposite sex. Let’s just say he made Minori-san very, very happy.

“This is a most sudden development. And the decision, one must say, seems rather unilateral.” This remark came from the other side of the throne, from a man whose appearance screamed Prime Minister. Also, old guy. Thin, smallish, and with a white beard, his speech was as gentle as his actions. More than once I’d come away feeling all warm and fuzzy after talking to him.

Hidden among all those wrinkles, though, were his eyes—sharp and strong, showing no softness of age. What else would you expect from a top administrator for an entire nation? He wasn’t any ordinary old man. His name was Prime Minister Zahar.

“You’re not the only concerned parties here. We ourselves have invested substantial time, money, and effort in this relationship. For you to simply abandon it, and us, with a wave of the hand and a ‘Fare thee well’... It’s difficult to accept on the face of it,” Zahar said.

“Believe me, we understand your perspective completely,” Matoba-san said, wiping sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief—or at least acting like he was. He spoke up before I could say anything because, frankly, I didn’t have the wherewithal to explain the niceties of the decision. “This concerns a danger to both our worlds—both our states.”

“And what exactly does that mean? Perhaps, Matoba-dono, you could clarify,” Garius said, furrowing his brow.

“Ah...” Matoba-san said, and now he looked at me. He seemed to be thinking that Garius and the empress would take things better if they came from me, being comparatively close to them as I was. But I shook my head. It would be quicker to have him explain. I still felt all at sea myself.

“Well, you see...” Matoba-san said (mop, mop, mop). Then, accompanied by a whole lot of uncomfortable fidgeting, he told them roughly the same thing he’d told us. I wasn’t sure how much talk about space-time the Eldant people would really follow, but they listened quietly and, it seemed, more or less comprehendingly.

Was this, like, that thing Hikaru-san had said? Had all the manga and anime and games and novels from Japan brought these people to a place where things like “the destruction of the world,” “space-time,” and “time paradoxes” actually almost made sense to them? Even if only as general concepts, with no understanding of the physics involved? (Heck, that wouldn’t make them any different from me.)

“I see...” Garius said at length, nodding, his chin in his hand. Not that it made any difference, but the gesture looked so damn good on him that it practically made me angry. “I believe I understand, more or less.”

“We have likewise investigated the abnormality in the high-per space tunnel,” Elder Zahar said, nodding. I guess the Eldant people already knew about the fluctuating distance between the two worlds.

“However,” Garius said, “to be quite blunt, I’m not certain how far to trust you regarding the danger to our nation. From what I understand, no one has any positive proof that the instability of the tunnel will lead directly to the destruction of the world. Is that right?”

“Well, ahem, as far as it goes... yes,” Matoba-san said.

I could hardly blame them for not immediately getting on board with the idea that our worlds might collide. Even I couldn’t fathom exactly what that might mean. It would be easier to picture two planets running into each other. Oh, but I guess the mutual gravity fields would start to destroy the planets before they actually struck each other—that’s what I thought I’d heard. The Roche Limit or something. I didn’t remember very clearly.

“Things being, ahem, what they are,” Matoba-san went on, “we must act before it’s not, er, too late... Before something happens that can’t be undone...”

“Your Majesty,” Elder Zahar said, “what are your thoughts on the matter?”

“Our thoughts...” Petralka said. She looked too slight and too delicate for the throne she sat on, the seat of a great empire.

Incidentally, Petralka was easy to read: she was a tsundere loli-girl (I mean one of the really young-looking ones), but if you accidentally said that out loud, you might lose your head. Or at least get punched really hard, like I did once. But who cares about that now?

“This high-per space tunnel, the principle by which it exists—we do not well understand it. Thus we are ill-equipped to judge the truth or falsity or Matoba’s claims.” She crossed her legs, then her arms as she spoke. “There may be some danger in accepting the word of the Ja-panese government unquestioningly. But at the same time, if those who came to our land plotting for profit have suddenly decided to turn tail and run, it may indeed be a sign of some unprecedented danger.”

“A most perceptive analysis, Your Majesty,” Garius said.

Petralka closed her eyes and continued. “Setting aside the question of the permanent cessation of relations, if you wish to return to your country, we have no particular reason to stop you.”

“Wha?” someone said stupidly. It was me. Honestly... I hadn’t been expecting this. Petralka and I had gotten pretty close. In fact, she was basically in love with me, if you’ll forgive my saying so. So much so that it had caused some serious strife not that long ago. So when we showed up to say we were leaving the Holy Eldant Empire forever, I thought she might come up with excuses, reasons to try to stop me. For me, I thought she might do that.

Instead she all but said: “If you want to go home, then go. I won’t stop you.” (Note: paraphrased.)

“Um... Petralka?” I ventured, a bit shaken. But Petralka pointedly left her eyes closed and her limbs crossed, saying only: “If what Matoba says is true, then even the flow of time in Eldant and Ja-pan is out of sync. Whenever it is you are planning to make your withdrawal, you had best do it before you run out of time to go home.”

“Yeah, but...” I went quiet; I didn’t know what to say. Petralka was right. Everything she said was completely logical. But I never expected her to just... accept me leaving like that. I mean, I didn’t exactly think she would cling to me, weeping and crying, “Oh, don’t go!” But still...

“Petralka...”

She still didn’t open her eyes, still didn’t uncross her arms or legs—and still didn’t say anything. Her adorable face was studiously expressionless. I could almost have believed she was angry. Could it be she...?

“We most gratefully accept Your Majesty’s astute understanding and compassionate agreement,” Matoba-san said before I could come up with anything. He bowed respectfully. “All is precisely as Your Majesty says. And now that we have your understanding and acquiescence, we need to move quickly to make our preparations. The transport of our assets will begin promptly tomorrow. The transport of personnel will proceed sometime after that. Five days from now, at the latest.”

Five days? That was too soon.

There was no way of knowing exactly how long it would take all of us to get out of here, but with fewer than a hundred Japanese people living and working in the Holy Eldant Empire, including me and my friends, it was hard to believe it would actually take even that long to move us all out. In less than two weeks, I wouldn’t be here anymore. Obviously, the Japanese government wanted to cut ties with Eldant as soon as possible; they were just giving themselves a little leeway.

“Let’s go then, Shinichi-kun,” Matoba-san said, getting to his feet. I was still kneeling, and he held out his hand to me. From the corners of my eye, I could see Minori-san and Hikaru-san get up too, as if to say it was time to leave. Nobody raised any objections to saying goodbye here and now, like this. Stunned and confused, I looked at Petralka and Garius and Elder Zahar one more time, but...

“We’ll arrange a formal farewell within the next day or two,” Garius told us. The message was clear: there was nothing more to say.

No sooner had Shinichi and the others departed than an uneasy silence fell over the audience chamber. I looked once more at Her Majesty. Elder Zahar had likewise left the room, to start taking care of procedural matters, and she and I were left alone.

Her Majesty sat on the throne, staring at her knees, motionless as a doll. She’d clearly been exercising extreme self-control over the last several minutes. The question was, what was she controlling?

“Majesty...” I began, kneeling beside her, “as there are no longer any others present, may I suggest that restraint is no longer necessary?”

“Who’s restraining anything?” she said, glaring at me.

“So you are not holding yourself back?”

“Of course not.”

“Then you must pardon me, Your Majesty. I was under the impression that you forced yourself not to prevent Shinichi and the others from leaving, though you desperately wished to. I must have been mistaken.”

Her Majesty’s eyes dropped to her knees again, and she let out a short sigh.

“Truth be told,” I said, “I was on tenterhooks, afraid you would burst out with a tantrum about how you wish it were not so and for Shinichi not to leave.”

“If by throwing a tantrum we could have caused the high-per space tunnel to return to normal, we would certainly have done so. We would have kicked our legs, rolled on the floor, sobbed and wailed. If only.” She gestured with her limbs as she spoke, suggesting the flailing. But so weakly. “Or... Perhaps if we had never ourselves gone to Ja-pan.”

Her Highness had once accompanied Shinichi on a trip to his home in his own country. It seems to have been quite a pleasant experience for her; Elder Zahar and I had been subjected to many a recounting of her time there.

“But we did. And we met Shougo and Sakiko and Shizuki.”

“Ah, yes... Ahem...”

“His father, mother, and younger sister.”

Her Majesty had stayed at Shinichi’s family’s house, and had gotten along quite well with them. She always looked so happy when she spoke of those times. Ah, yes. Shinichi had a family of his own. That should have been obvious. Yet if they had been only a notional concept, mere words—if she hadn’t met them herself—it would be easy to forget, or perhaps to ignore, that they were living human beings, people who could feel joy and sorrow. How much easier it would have been to argue, to insist Shinichi should abandon his former life and choose our land.

“But to force Shinichi to make that choice—to ask him never to see his family again? We could not do that. Besides, Shinichi is a big dummy, and if we threw enough of a tantrum, he would consider it reason enough to stay here.”

“Your Majesty...”

She might have been right. This man, Kanou Shinichi, had a wide-ranging compassion; he was tenderhearted in surprising ways. I agreed with Her Majesty that if she had chosen not to hide her feelings, but had cried and begged, there was every chance Shinichi would have stayed with us.

“They are his family. He ought to be with them,” Her Majesty said in a whisper.

As for me—I understood how Her Majesty was feeling very well. Having lost her own parents at such a young age, the ideal of the family weighed even more heavily on her than on most people. With enough pressure, she might be able to steal Shinichi away from his family—but she wouldn’t want that.

“Your Majesty... Ahem, Petralka,” I said, deliberately taking an informal tone. Her Majesty’s head snapped up and she looked at me in utter surprise.

Prior to Petralka’s accession—which is to say, prior to when our parents killed each other in a power struggle—she and I had been only relatives. In fact, we had been like siblings who simply happened to have different parents. Thus the tone we took with each other had been much closer than it was now. I called her by her name, and she frequently said I was like a big brother to her.

The reality was, though, that for Petralka I was the child of her parents’ killers, and she the child of mine, and so when we assumed our current places, we had deliberately chosen to forget our former closeness; we maintained our diligent formality even when we were alone. Both of us agreed it was the right thing to do. The proper relationship between those born to the blood royal of the empire. And indeed, I still felt that way. Petralka was my ruler, and I her subject. To the end. There was no other bond between us. However...

“You have become a fine young woman,” I said with a half-smile on my face. “You’ve grown up so much, I hardly recognize you. Maybe Shinichi and his friends had something to do with it.” Whatever else might be said of it, there was no question that the encounter with Shinichi and the others had contributed greatly to Her Majesty’s maturation. She had learned much from them—and I don’t mean simply about otaku culture or the Ja-panese language. “But there’s no need to rush headlong into adulthood. I daresay it leaves me feeling somewhat lonely.”

“Garius...”

“You’re not wrong to let Shinichi go back to Ja-pan. But if you can’t accept it, on a personal level, then it will haunt you.” I knew about this: it was how I had felt after my time studying in Zwelberich. “The danger is that it may sour your heart and mind in ways you can’t predict. So if we are to say goodbye to them, let it at least be in a way that you yourself can accept.”

After a very long pause, Petralka looked down and said, “Yes, you’re right.”

And then for the first time in I didn’t know how many years, I reached out and placed my hand comfortingly on her head, the very head that bore the tiara of the empress.

The silence lay heavy on the carriage as we rode home. Only Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and I were there; we had parted ways with Matoba-san at the castle gate.

I was deep in thought. I just couldn’t let go of the way Petralka had looked. I guess I had finally managed to wear out my welcome with her. Heck, I mean, I wasn’t the main character of a gal game or whatever. It wasn’t like I had been expecting the “harem” thing to work out, yet I’d still been getting close to three different girls without actually picking one. I could hardly complain if one of them decided she hated me and cut me loose.

And yet, just yesterday, Petralka hadn’t shown any sign of acting like that. What had changed?

Is it really all because the Japanese government decided to get out of here? Had Petralka’s feelings been so affected by that? But then...

Even I knew the way I was agonizing about this was pathetic.

“Looks like someone’s sad Her Majesty didn’t try to stop us,” Minori-san said from one side of me.

“Pretty poor excuse for a man we’ve got here,” Hikaru-san said from the other.

Um, excuse me? Is that really something you say right in front of the person you’re talking about? Or from either side of him? I’m more painfully aware than anyone of how pathetic I am, so maybe you could not put so fine a point on it. Wait, was this—was this bullying? Were they bullying me?! Damn! I might just have to go back to never leaving my room!

I guess they’d probably fail to see the threat.

“Alright, listen, Shinichi-kun,” Minori-san said, sounding a touch exasperated. “What do you plan to do about this?”

“Huh? Me?” What did I plan to do about what?

I was busy being totally flummoxed by this question when Hikaru-san sighed dramatically and said, “I guess you can’t expect any initiative from an otaku.”

“What? Wait... What? What are we talking about?!”

“We’re asking,” Hikaru-san said, peering at me, “are you going to go back or stay here?”

“Huh? But that...”

“If you really wanted to, I think you could,” Hikaru-san said before I could finish. I looked to Minori-san, but our WAC bodyguard just stayed quiet and smiled. Didn’t even nod, or shrug, or anything. I guess as a member of the armed forces, she couldn’t exactly come out and say I could stay—but she wasn’t going to contradict Hikaru-san, either.

“It really is a little late to be worrying about the whole cause-and-effect thing,” Hikaru-san said. “We’ve already scrambled everything. Can’t turn back time now, so to speak. And I really doubt you staying here alone would make that much difference, Shinichi-san.”

“Well...”

Maybe he was right. The whole issue right now was the ongoing instability in the hyperspace tunnel and the increasing desynchronization in time between the two sides. They wanted to get rid of anything that might cause further instability, not undo all the interference that had already taken place.

“You have to decide for yourself,” Hikaru-san said with a sort of smile. “You can go back to Japan, the land of your birth, or you can stay here in the Holy Eldant Empire as a... let’s say permanent resident. I assume the Japanese government wouldn’t let you go without a bit of arguing, but based on what I’ve heard about their behavior, I don’t think they can do anything drastic. If you insisted you were going to stay here, I don’t think they would force things.”

The fact was that before Hikaru-san came here, the Japanese government had tried to have me killed, or otherwise forcibly repatriated—but they hadn’t managed to pull it off. So they’d know what could happen if I really wanted to put up a fight. Given that they were interested in getting out of here as quickly and with as little fanfare as possible, if I dug in my heels, they probably wouldn’t force me—at least the JSDF wouldn’t—out of respect for the Eldant side of things.

“And if they do try to use force, you can just ask Garius-san and Her Majesty to help you out. It’s not like you have to hide forever or anything. Just keep out of sight until the Japanese forces get out of here.”

“But Petralka, she...” If she’d really had enough of me, she might not protect me even if I said I was going to stay. And I didn’t expect to last long by myself against professional soldiers (ahem, self-defense forces). Even with the magic I’d learned here, I wasn’t exactly a combat expert.

“Oh my god, how dense can you be?” Hikaru-san said, grimacing. I could tell he was annoyed, I just couldn’t tell why. “Her Majesty didn’t try to stop you because she cares for you. She’s head over heels for you, and then we rock up and say you’re never going to see her again? What, did you think it wouldn’t bother her?”

Uh... Head over heels? Just hearing the words was immensely blush-inducing.

“But didn’t she just tell us to go home if we wanted to? Garius-san didn’t really say anything, either. I just assumed they were sick of me...”

“Do you even have a working memory?!” Hikaru-san demanded, sounding more and more frustrated. Uh, what was he talking about? A working memory?

“You were the one who said Her Majesty is really sensitive to talk about families and parents and stuff, right?”

“Oh...”

Yeah, I guess I had. Wait... Did that mean she was trying not to separate me from my family? Did she deliberately shove me away so I wouldn’t have to be on the fence about it? I mean, it would make sense...

“You are the densest... I mean, you have this weirdly low opinion of yourself,” Hikaru-san said with another exaggerated sigh.

“Aw, that’s what makes him fun,” Minori-san said. “But Shinichi-kun? Setting aside the question of whether you really can stay here or not, you understand Her Majesty wanted to stop you, right?”

“Well... I mean... Now I do, I guess.”

They were right. You didn’t even have to think of it as a matter of love. If you heard that a really good friend of yours was going away and you’d never see them again, wouldn’t you want to stop them? I definitely thought of Petralka as a friend, and I was fairly sure she felt the same way about me.

“But then that would mean someone else making the decision for you. Whether to stay or go,” Minori-san said.

“Huh? Oh... Right.”

What if Petralka had begged me to stay? What if she’d said she hated the thought of never seeing me again? Then I sort of would’ve had no choice but to stay here—and what if I hadn’t wanted to? Like Minori-san and Hikaru-san said, it would mean someone else taking responsibility for what should be my decision.

I hated the thought of never seeing Petralka again. It scared me.

I hated the thought of never seeing Myusel again. It scared me.

I hated the thought of never seeing Elvia (etc.)

And it wasn’t just them. There were all kinds of people in this world I’d grown close to. Brooke and his family; students at my school like Loek and Romilda and Eduardo; Garius and Zahar-san; the dwarf Lauron; Amatena, Clara. Being rejected by my childhood friend had left me scared to interact with people, scared of being laughed at, and that fear had turned me into a shut-in... and yet in this world I’d made friends.

And now I was going to leave and never see them again? That hurt. It hurt in a way I had never hurt before.

From that perspective, it might have seemed like staying here was my only choice. And yet... If I did stay here...

That would mean saying goodbye to Japan, forever. Probably my family, too—my mom and dad and Shizuki. I would probably never see them again.

Then there was all the stuff from Japan, the otaku things; I would probably be cut off from those forever, too. I wouldn’t be able to buy any manga or games or anime or discs or figures anymore. I would be cut off from that abundant wellspring of stories, never to see what new characters and tales might bubble up from it. And that hurt, too. It hurt a lot. It was a little like being told you were going to be starved to death. The otaku part of me would wither away. And when that was gone, what would be left? Would I be just an empty shell?

Well, maybe it was time to move on from being an otaku, then, and start a fresh life in this other world...

But what would that even look like?

Let’s bracket questions about my family and other complicating factors. For better or for worse, I’d come to this world as an otaku evangelist, a rich source of otaku knowledge. I had been accepted here in that capacity. Petralka had first noticed me because I was an otaku, Myusel respected me for the same reason, and Elvia...

So, what if I couldn’t get any more otaku stuff? What if it was just me? What could I do? What kind of value would I have? Without Amutech to back me up, I was just a former home security guard. Not any smarter or stronger than anyone else. Probably less.

Well, truth be told, I’d had this conversation with myself the time I’d tried to rebel against the Japanese government. It was supposed to be settled. Supposed to be. But back then...

“I...”

I was worried about something, something I couldn’t quite articulate right now. What did I want to do? What should I do? The subject had come up so suddenly and so urgently that I couldn’t seem to get my thoughts straight.

Then I gasped as the carriage came to a very abrupt stop. I almost tumbled out of my seat—naturally, there were no seatbelts in these carriages—but Minori-san grabbed me by the collar and somehow kept me in place.

“Wh-What the heck was that?”

“Good question.” Minori-san motioned to me and Hikaru-san to stay seated, while she half-stood and opened the sliding window to the driver. “Everything all right out there?”

“Er, ahem, someone jumped in front of us,” the driver said, sounding shaken. I guess we had been about to hit them, and he had brought us up short to prevent it. At least it sounded like nothing awful had happened...

“You there! Pardon me!” Whoever we’d almost hit, they were evidently talking to our driver. What’s more, I thought I recognized their voice. “I’m looking for the house of a certain Shinichi Kanou. I think it’s around here. You wouldn’t know it, would you?”

“Is that—?” Hikaru-san and I looked at each other.

“The woman from the Dragon’s Den?”

I quickly opened the passenger door and stuck my head out. And there was... “Theresa-san?!”

“Hm? Shinichi! Shinichi Kanou! This was your carriage? Well, that’ll save me some time!” She greeted me with a wild smile. Despite her somewhat tough tone, she was an extraordinarily pretty girl. On the tall side, and wearing some kind of big coat, but if you looked closely you could see she was dressed in skintight clothes that hugged her body, and no shoes.

Theresa Bigelow. An artificial human from the Bahairamanian military facility—or more accurately, the facility that Bahairam had unearthed. And also more accurately, she was an actual human whose personality had been copied into an avatar—sort of a cyborg, if you will.

She was also the one who had told us that this world was our own future.

“But what are you doing here?” I thought she was going to stay in Bahairam to guard the ruins of her ancient civilization.

“Yeah, about that.” Theresa scratched her cheek, actually looking a little awkward. “Got a bit of a problem. Wanted to ask you about it.”

I read once that language is a living thing, always changing in a myriad of tiny ways. Usages that were initially mistaken come to be considered correct over time, while other words or entire tongues pass out of use entirely and die out. You might not see the changes day-to-day, but compare the language you use now with that ten or twenty years in the future—let alone one or two hundred years—and suddenly they start to look pretty different.

For example, take the period dramas that are forever running on Japanese TV. We see so many of them that we get this idea that back in the Edo Era or the Warring-States Era, they talked pretty much like we do—but that’s a mistake. It’s almost like a dub on a western movie: some say that if we heard what Edo-era people really talked like, it would sound as much like gibberish to us as any unfamiliar foreign language.

There are plenty of stories, from the latest sci-fi to the ancient Japanese fable of Urashima Tarou, about characters who face the challenges of being flung a couple of centuries into the future. When you think about it, it would be more than challenging. You might not even be able to communicate with the people of your new time, and you’d just have to wander around without the slightest idea of what year or month or even day it was.

Long story short, when you emerged from cryosleep, or your time warp, or whatever else got you hundreds or thousands of years into the future, you would be in for a real headache.

Which was exactly the situation Theresa found herself in now.

“You told me a bit about how this world works these days,” she said. We were sitting in the living room of my mansion. Theresa was drinking some tea Myusel had made and explaining what had brought her here from Bahairam. Minori-san and Hikaru-san sat with me as I listened. After bringing the tea, Myusel had left again, saying she had to make dinner.

“I sealed up that facility and left it running at a minimal level,” Theresa said. “And then I got to thinking what I should do next. Hit a brick wall.”

“What kind of brick wall?”

“You know me. I’m a soldier. More than that, I’m a piece of military property, no different from a rifle or a tank.”

Apparently Theresa had started out as part of an administrative organ overseeing various military facilities, but politically motivated terrorism had caused each of the facilities to eventually be put into sleep mode. Originally, word was that it was temporary—they were supposed to be restarted after a few years. But when she opened her eyes again, it hadn’t been a few years. It had been a few millennia. Or more.

“I know how to do one thing very well, and that’s follow orders. Now that there’s no more military, I guess that means I have to decide what to do for myself. But I’m not actually sure how to do that.”

“Right...” She sounded weirdly like a retiree trying to figure out how to keep busy years after leaving their job. I thought she should just, you know, pick something and do it. To be fair, if you woke up to find out you had drastically overslept and the world had changed completely around you, it would be understandable to feel a little nervous, a little out of place.

“Listen, I’ve got that facility to look after. If I want to know how I’m supposed to act around here, I’ve got to learn something about what the world is like these days... But it hasn’t been easy.”

I gathered that by analyzing the language around her, she’d managed to achieve baseline communication with the people of this era, but apparently she didn’t exactly feel like she was getting the most out of these discussions. She said it was like words didn’t mean quite the same thing to her and the people she was talking to. Like I said, language is a living thing; you have to understand the culture and usage behind a given word, or you might use it to mean exactly the opposite of the way it’s normally understood. And if the participants in a conversation don’t each understand that they’re talking to someone speaking a foreign language, things can get hairy in a hurry.

Besides, since Theresa had deliberately blocked off the Dragon’s Den so the people of Bahairam had no access to it, she couldn’t exactly go out and start chatting with them now. They would probably treat her as an enemy, the one who had stolen their precious Third Capital from them. Good luck getting any information out of them. She would be fortunate if they didn’t attack her the moment they saw her.

That, apparently, led her to think of us. A group of people who shared something at least resembling common sense from the world she came from, even if we were from slightly different time periods.

“So I left the maintenance and defense of the facility in the hands of the BOUs and came after you.”

“I see...” I said. I glanced at Minori-san and Hikaru-san, then looked at Theresa again. “I’m really sorry. I know you came all this way and everything, but I’m not sure we’re going to be much help to you.”

“Hm? What’s that supposed to mean?” Theresa’s eyebrow twitched. “A sweet, vulnerable girl comes to you for help, and you’re just going to ignore her?”

“Who’s sweet and vulnerable?” Hikaru-san grumbled. He knew perfectly well that Theresa’s avatar was a milspec unit capable of overpowering an average person barehanded. He probably knew it even better than Minori-san and I did, in fact, considering he had used an avatar of his own. Besides, the personality data that made up Theresa—the soldier she used to be—was hardly young enough to be called a “girl.” I had a feeling, though, that being so careless as to point that out could be hazardous to my health, so I kept it to myself.

“Look, we would love to help you out, we really would, but right now we’re, uh... we’re in a weird place. We sort of have to, uh, leave this world immediately.” (I wouldn’t mention that I hadn’t really decided yet whether I was staying or going.)

“Explain.”

“Um... Can I explain?” I said with a look at Minori-san and Hikaru-san. They nodded, so I proceeded to give Theresa a brief rundown of the hyperspace tunnel, the instability thereof, and the plan to withdraw from this “other” world in order to avoid any dangers associated therewith. Theresa looked a bit shocked, but she never interrupted me; in fact, she listened very attentively.

Finally she said, “I see. It all makes sense now.” She nodded as if she really meant it.

“What? What all makes sense?”

“After I put the reactor in sleep mode, I took a good look at the logs for the peripheral devices. The energy was disappearing, but not in any form I recognized,” Theresa said.

The “reactor” she was referring to was the Annihilation Reactor. It’s the ultimate energy generator, using antimatter to create spectacular amounts of heat. Thanks to the Bahairamanians screwing around with it, it had gone out of control and had threatened to blow up the entire continent, but I had just managed to get it dialed down in time. I didn’t stop it, exactly—it wasn’t physically possible to bring it to a complete halt. But I was able to set it to the minimum level of energy generation.

“Disappearing?” I asked. “I thought excess energy was dissipated with earthquakes.” There had been several serious ones, not just in Bahairam, but even here in Eldant. Earthquakes are—well, I won’t say a daily occurrence for people in Japan, but definitely something you get used to if you live there. Here, though, feeling the ground shift under your feet was cause for alarm. And of course, structures here weren’t built to withstand quakes.

Theresa came back at me with something unbelievable: “That’s true, but no matter how many times I run the calculations, I keep finding the earthquakes aren’t enough to have dissipated the energy.”

The earthquakes weren’t enough? How much energy did there have to be for a natural disaster not to get rid of it all?

“Looks like it was quite a while back that those Bahairamanians or whatever you call them screwed with the reactor’s settings. More than five years ago, to judge by the logs. But if the reactor was functioning properly that entire time, then it should have exceeded the facility’s dissipation thresholds much sooner.”

“Oh... I get it.”

The reactor was built to put out full power all the time—this was a military facility, after all—and although we only really knew about the BOU production plant, in Theresa’s time there had been a variety of laboratories with a range of experiments going on, with all the energy demands that would have created. A reactor that couldn’t have destroyed half the world when it went rogue would never have produced enough energy to begin with. In fact, I was sort of impressed they had dared to even build the thing. What had the people at the time been thinking?

Then again, we had nuclear reactors in our own time. Maybe outer space would have been the best place for stuff like that. Not, of course, that twenty-first-century Japan had the technology to build nuclear reactors in space, or get the power from there down to Earth.

“I thought maybe by sheer chance it was being stored up someplace, but the energy was definitely going somewhere within the experimental area. My next thought was that maybe seismic shifts had destroyed the entire place, but the power lines appear to still be connected. The fact that the energy’s being used implies some of the machinery is still running.”

“The experimental area?” I asked.

“We had our hands in a lot of cookie jars. I seem to remember some experiments in next-gen stealth tech—manipulating space-time to hide the subject.”

“Holy cow!”

Wait... Space-time manipulation? That couldn’t mean...

“I’m just guessing here, but that hyperspace tunnel you people are talking about? I think the energy put out when the reactor went rogue activated some machine like that stealth gadget, bumped it out of its suspended state or even caused it to go out of control itself, and tore open a hole in the space-time continuum.”

“How could a simple stealth experiment do all that?” I said, but then I remembered something.

There was this experiment supposedly conducted by the U.S. Navy in the state of Pennsylvania in 1943. Called the Philadelphia Experiment, or by its official name, Rainbow Project, it was a fairly famous urban legend. It was one of those military-secret things, like the claim that there were dead aliens at Area 51, or that the Nazis had used actual flying saucers.

So, what makes the Philadelphia Experiment an urban legend? The story goes that although the goal of the experiment was to use a high-frequency/high-voltage Tesla coil to render a battleship invisible to radar, instead it literally made the ship disappear from view, or in some versions, instantaneously transported it thousands of kilometers away.

The story even inspired a movie, The Philadelphia Experime*t, which includes a scene in which the battleship gets transported through space and time, and two of the crew members wind up decades in the past, in turn-of-the-century America. The ultimate stealth technology would naturally involve physically making the object disappear, or stashing it somewhere beyond normal space. Think back to that beloved old anime where it was called “hiding in subspace.” I guess the military in Theresa’s day had been seriously looking into the possibility.

“It only makes sense that your hyperspace tunnel would be unstable, too, considering you just turned off the thing that provides its energy.” She made a slicing gesture with her hand in front of her neck. “I’m no physicist, but even I understand that it’s not like flipping a switch. The tunnel won’t just pop out of existence. When you’re dealing with space and time, there’s a bit of a buffer. But one thing’s for certain: give it long enough, and that tunnel will disappear.”

We all looked at each other, not saying anything. Maybe we still had to get out of here, but it sounded like we were going to avoid the worst-case scenario, where the past and the future collided. Silver linings, I guess.

But then Theresa went on: “One thing I can’t tell you is what might happen before it does that. Can’t imagine.” She looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “If we’re lucky, the tunnel’ll just contract and vanish... But considering the instability, there could be space-time tremors or who knows what. Random connections across the continuum. And say they connect to the bottom of the ocean, or the inside of a molten volcano...”

The rest of us all caught our breath. What if one of those connections went straight to the bottom of the Mariana Trench? Seawater under thousands of pounds of pressure could come bursting out. Enough to knock down a castle wall no problem—a literal water cannon. Anyone in the vicinity wouldn’t have a chance to drown; they’d probably just be vaporized by the water.

And what if the portal attached itself to outer space? Then you’d have the opposite problem. Everything would probably be sucked into the vacuum on the other end. And a person with no spacesuit couldn’t survive for five minutes in outer space. Even if the portal didn’t hit vacuum proper, high enough up in the atmosphere, humans would freeze to death immediately. I think we turn comatose if we suffer an abrupt drop of four or five degrees of body temperature...

Heck, back when the magic from Eldant started to get sucked toward Japan, that was already a big headache.

“Say the wormhole attaches itself to the bottom of the sea, the upper atmosphere, or the Earth’s mantle... Any of them would produce a huge tragedy,” said Hikaru-san, who had been listening quietly until that moment. He looked deeply disturbed. Minori-san grunted, likewise frowning.

There was so much we didn’t understand about this—but it was so obviously serious that we could hardly just smile and ignore it.

“You’ve got that right,” Theresa said and crossed her arms. “The question is, what do we do about it?”

None of us had an answer.

After dinner, we gave Theresa a guest bedroom to sleep in. With her avatar body, which was more powerful than human flesh and made of self-repairing nanomachines to boot, she could easily have camped out just about anywhere, and she told us so, but it wasn’t like we could just go, “Okay, great, you can sleep in the yard.”

“Arrgh...” Back sitting at my desk in my own office, I heaved a sigh. I seriously didn’t know what to do. I was already worried enough about deciding whether or not to go back to Japan. Now I learned the hyperspace tunnel could attach itself to some awful place and cause a disaster. I could barely sit still. The anxiety was just about killing me.

What was I supposed to do about any of this? Say what you like, I was still just a former home security guard. I wasn’t a world-saving hero, and I didn’t have any special powers. Unless you counted my otaku knowledge, which I really didn’t. Physically, I was no more exceptional than any other young adult. Probably a little less, in fact.

I fretted about what, if anything, to tell Matoba-san and Petralka, too. By virtue of her position, Minori-san had an obligation to report the things that went on in this house, so there was a good chance Matoba-san already knew. But if the Japanese government took our stories about Theresa seriously at all, it would probably only convince them to move up the deadline for getting out of here. They wouldn’t do anything else. Probably more accurately, couldn’t do anything else.

The opponents we were facing, after all, were time and space. You couldn’t just put them in a headlock or something. Heck, with early-twenty-first-century Japanese technology, we could barely understand them. We probably didn’t have any hope of finding and stopping the experimental stealth technology that was allegedly at the bottom of all of this. It would have been hard enough if the machine had been here in Eldant, but in Bahairam, which we didn’t even have diplomatic ties with—I didn’t think a random Japanese person was going to get in on a mission of destruction. Besides, if the thing was running out of energy and would stop on its own soon, what would be the point of going to all that trouble?

As for letting Petralka and the others know, since we didn’t know what exactly would happen or when, it seemed unnecessary to frighten them with stories of potential catastrophes. It would be one thing if there was a good way to prepare for whatever might happen, but there really wasn’t.

“Hrrmm...” It was always possible, of course, that nothing would happen. That the hyperspace tunnel would just quietly wink out of existence, and all this anxiety would have been for nothing.

“In fact, I hope that’s how it turns out.” That would mean the only real call I had to make was which side of the hole to stay on. It was a pretty small problem compared to a massive disaster... but it was one I had to solve soon.

That world over there? Or this one over here? My family? Or the friends I’d made? It was a cruel choice. And even if this wasn’t as high on the list of priorities, here was another way of putting it: Japan, with its overflowing abundance of otaku stuff? Or the Holy Eldant Empire, where I was treated essentially as nobility?

If I went back to Japan, I really would be just another otaku, just a former home security guard, just a high school dropout. If I stayed in Eldant, I could expect to be treated well and maybe even live in luxury. But then again, what would happen when we lost the connection to Japan?

It was a real head-scratcher. And as much as Hikaru-san and Minori-san might ridicule me as “indecisive” or “the very picture of dithering,” I just couldn’t make up my mind that fast.

“Come to think of it...” Hikaru-san could make fun of me if he liked, but what did he plan to do? He’d come to like this world in his own way; he got along with the students and everything. I had to think Eldant had a place in his heart, and that at least part of him would find it hard to leave. Okay, so he didn’t show the slightest sign of it, but I guess that was sort of par for the course for him.

I paused for a long time. Seriously: what was I supposed to do? What did I want to do? I could feel the anxiety sapping my strength when:

“Master?” I heard Myusel, accompanied by a knock on the door. “Excuse me, but I brought tea...”

“Oh, thanks. Come on in,” I said, and as usual, Myusel entered my office pushing a cart bearing a complete tea set and some snacks. She set down a tray and cup just like I’d seen her do so many times before. Now that I thought about it, I knew Myusel could be a bit clumsy sometimes, but I’d never seen her slip up when it came to tea or cooking.

To my surprise, this time I heard a chattering as the pot and teacup touched each other. Myusel’s hand was shaking, ever so slightly. I’d never seen anything like it.

“Myusel?”

“Ah, y-yes, sir?” She turned toward me and—

“Eeyipes!”

“Oh! I’m so sorry!”

She hadn’t been done pouring the tea, which went spilling all over. The very hot tea. It splashed onto my desk, and from there onto my knees. That was dangerous territory in a number of ways...

“Shinichi-sama...!”

Myusel came around the desk and knelt beside me, meaning to wipe at my soaked legs. But—well, she was so shaken she didn’t seem to notice, but with me sitting in this chair, and her torso level with my knees, leaning toward me... It was sort of... It was a bit like— (remainder suppressed)

“Hey, uh... H-Hey, be careful, okay?”

She was somewhere very, uh, borderline. An area that could turn very, you know, dangerous if carelessly touched by a young woman. Not that everything wasn’t burning, you understand. Burning with tea. But I couldn’t exactly take my pants off...

“I’m sorry! My goodness, I’m so sorry, Shinichi-sama!” Myusel had been on the verge of simply grabbing my pants off me, but now she looked like she might break down. Caught between embarrassment and sheer, scalding pain, I caught them and stopped her.

Ugh, what am I doing?

For a moment Myusel and I sat there having a tug-of-war with my pants, but it wasn’t exactly getting us anywhere.

“I’m fine! Everything’s fine, just please let go!” I shouted, maybe a little louder than I meant to.

“Er, what?!” Myusel said. She shook once, violently, then jumped backward as if she’d been launched. She stayed on her knees, though, looking at the ground and trembling. Maybe she thought I was angry at her.

Arrgh... No, this isn’t what I wanted.

“I’m so... very sorry... I don’t mean to be so... incompetent...” Myusel was bowing as deeply as she could. I thought she might bow herself clean in half. She was making herself as small as possible. I could try to tell her I wasn’t angry, but she would probably keep blaming herself. That was just how she was. Rather than keep repeating that I wasn’t upset, it was going to be quicker to try to change the subject.

“Well, look, competence is as competence does,” I said as lightly as I could, “but I hardly ever see you make a mistake with food. Rare stuff! It’s SR—like, Super Rare. Make that SSR. Like, if it were a gachapon, it would hardly ever, ever come out. I’m actually kind of thrilled. It’s like I’ve finally completed my set: Variations On a Clumsy Girl!”

“Er... Huh?” Myusel blinked. Perfect. Seeing my chance to help break her out of her disappointment, I kept on talking: “It’s the weirdest thing, coming from you. Anything you’re wor—”

I had been about to say “worried about,” but I clapped my mouth shut.

It was too late. Crap. Now I’d done it.

Myusel’s expression clouded over. Stupid, stupid me. Anything you’re worried about? Yeah! Great.

I didn’t even have to ask. This was about me going home. We’d been to see Petralka, Theresa had shown up at our house, and things had been in a whirlwind all day. Myusel might not have gotten the details—I could hardly just sit down and chat with her about it. But she’d heard what Matoba-san had said to us in that first conversation, or at least parts of it. She would have understood the gist of what was going on.

Or maybe she’d heard something from Petralka’s side about her work. After all, if I went away and Amutech ceased to exist, Myusel, who was our maid, would effectively be fired. She worked at our mansion, but her employer was officially the Holy Eldant Empire. On paper, Petralka was her boss.

In any event, Myusel knew full well that we would soon be gone.

“Shinichi-sama...” Myusel’s voice when she said my name was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it at all. Much to my surprise, she, like Petralka, had turned out to have sort of a thing for me. In fact, according to Minori-san, Myusel might even be a flat-out yandere, the type who could get unpredictable when she really turned passionate. You know, risk death for my sake or something.

Let’s admit it: everything about who and what Myusel was checked the boxes for me. Plus, she had a great personality, and she was cute as a button, too. So honestly, I was thrilled that she felt the way she did about me. I couldn’t help but be grateful somebody had come to care about this loser otaku. I was so happy I wanted to turn around three times, bark, and then fling myself on the ground in front of her.

That’s why it was so hard for me to see her so deeply shaken. I felt like I was the one who should be apologizing. So I tried.

“U-Um, Myusel?”

“Yes, Shinichi-sama?” Still kneeling in front of me, Myusel looked at me like she might burst into tears. Yikes! That look turned the moe up to eleven... No! I mean, it tormented me with guilt. Forget the turning around three times, I could just sit there barking.

“Um... Well...” The words wouldn’t come, and I fell silent. Even I could tell how pathetic I was being. But what should I say? What could I say to her? I just didn’t know anymore.

A long, heavy silence fell between us. We both knew a wrong word could make everything that much more unpleasant. But then...

“Er, uh, Shinichi-sama...”

“Huh? Yeah, what is it?” I unconsciously straightened up.

“What Matoba-sama said this morning... Shinichi-sama, you’re going back to Ja-pan... aren’t you?”

“Oh... Uh, yeah.” I nodded like a poorly-made doll. “That’s what Matoba-san says to do, but... Well...”

Arrgh! This was no good. After all this, I was still trying to make out like it was Matoba-san’s fault. Anyway, I had another problem on my hands.

“You’ll go back, and...” Myusel glanced at the ground, as if she was trying to hold something back. “And you won’t... ever be able to come back here, will you?”

I didn’t say anything. Yep. That was pretty much the size of it. If I could have just said as much to Myusel, maybe my life would have been easier.

“And Ja-pan... Could... Could I...” She didn’t finish her sentence. It looked like she wanted to, but she couldn’t get the words out.

Come to think of it, this had come up before. Myusel had told me once that if I went back to Japan, she wanted to go with me. And in fact, when I’d gone home for a visit, she had come with me. So had Elvia. And even Petralka, although she’d had to stow away to do it. The visit hadn’t been entirely smooth, but it had been an awful lot of fun. I was happy to find that Myusel seemed to enjoy it as much as I did.

In fact, my mom had asked Myusel if she wouldn’t be interested in joining our family as a bride...

You know, is that an option that’s open to me?

A third choice—to go back to Japan but bring Myusel and the others with me. Okay, so maybe it wouldn’t be feasible to bring Petralka, who was an empress, after all... But maybe Myusel and Elvia...?

No, that would never work. I shook my head. It wasn’t possible. Matoba-san and his superiors would never agree. The whole point was that the Japanese government wanted to completely cut ties with this world. There was no way they would let anyone—Myusel or otherwise—from this world come back to ours.

And say—just for the sake of argument, say there was the most vanishingly slim chance that they agreed, how could I ever guarantee Myusel’s safety? Or Elvia’s, for that matter? If what Theresa had said was true, then Myusel, like all the other demi-humans in this world, was the product of genetic manipulation. Genetic technology was in its infancy in the twenty-first century. What could be more attractive than a living example of the tech? Myusel would be experimented on to see what they could learn from her—all in complete secrecy, of course.

Then there was the simple fact that Myusel and the others lacked any kind of family register or residence card in Japan. From a bureaucratic perspective, they didn’t exist. That made it all the more foolish to expect them to be treated humanely. They wouldn’t be living with me. They would remain experimental subjects until they died.

Was I going to protect them? No, that was ridiculous. The only reason I had been able to defy the Japanese government the last time push came to shove was precisely because I had been here in this other world, where I’d had the protection of the Holy Eldant Empire. As nothing more than a loser otaku former home security guard, it was well beyond my powers to defend Myusel or Elvia from an aggressive state government for years or decades. That game would be over before it began. And more than anything else...

“I see... It’s not possible, is it...” Myusel obviously took my silence for refusal. She looked at the ground. “I... I’m sorry. I’m so embarrassed. I just wanted to stay by your side... I thought maybe I could go back to Ja-pan with you... I know it’s beyond my station...”

“That’s not it at all!” I exclaimed, tumbling out of my chair and onto my knees in front of Myusel. She looked up in surprise to see me shaking my head. “No, no, that’s not it! If I could take you with me, if I thought it were possible, I would do it in a second! Beyond your station, my foot! I feel like I should be the one begging you to come with me!”

“Shinichi-sama...” Myusel’s eyes filled with tears. They started to slide down her pale cheeks as the confusion on her face slowly mingled with happiness.

I said, “But Myusel, what would you do about Falmelle-san?”

I saw her catch her breath. Falmelle Faugron was Myusel’s mother—she had one, of course, even though they’d been separated for many years. They’d only just recently, finally been reunited. If I took Myusel back to Japan, she and Falmelle-san would be torn apart forever. And Elvia had older sisters, Amatena and Jijilea, not to mention their parents, and she would never see any of them again. If I insisted on bringing them back to Japan because I didn’t want to be separated from them, wouldn’t I just be shifting my own burden onto the shoulders of others?

“She’s your mother,” I said. “You finally found her again, right?”

“Well, yes...”

“You were separated from her when you were very little, right? Now’s your chance to get back the time you lost with her. I know you stayed here with me when Falmelle-san tried to take you back home with her—but you did it knowing that you could see each other if you wanted to. This time would be different, you understand?”

“Shinichi-sama—”

“And I’m supposed to ask you to come with me, even though it means never seeing your family again? How could I say something so selfish?”

I couldn’t take Myusel back to Japan. I couldn’t force her to abandon her mother. So I had a choice to make: I had to choose one person, or group of people, and not another.

“Myusel, I think there’s only one way that this ends without us having to say goodbye...”

“Shinichi-sama...” She blinked rapidly, wiped the tears that were streaming down her cheeks with the back of her hand, and then she said, “Her Majesty... She felt the same way, didn’t she?”

“Huh?” That brought me up short.

“I... Y-You know, I...” Myusel reached out slowly, hesitantly, and put a hand on my chest. It seemed like she wanted to hug me, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. This was the most she could manage. It was so her. I was the one who should have been embracing her, but as a loser otaku whose number of years without a girlfriend was exactly equal to the number of years he’d been alive, I just couldn’t overcome my own awkwardness.

“It’s because... because I’m such an idiot...” Myusel finally squeezed the words out, her hand still clutching my pants. “Because I’m too stupid to... to say the proper thing, like Her Majesty did...”

“Myusel?” What did Petralka have to do with this?

“I’m so quick to... to say something so selfish to you, Shinichi-sama...”

“You mean...”

Somehow or other, Myusel had gotten wind of the conversation we’d had with Petralka at the castle. She knew Petralka hadn’t stopped me from leaving. That the empress, adorable and self-centered as she could be, didn’t insist that I stay here. But it was my own words that made Myusel realize why Petralka hadn’t tried to stop me, why she had restrained herself from saying anything to me.

“But I—”

Hikaru-san would probably have said that I was trying to shift responsibility. But still—even still—I wished Myusel would say “Please stay here.” She was the first person I’d met when I came to this world. To me, she was the ideal of the inhabitants of this place. It was because of the way she accepted a loser-otaku former shut-in like me that I had been able to resist the Japanese government when they tried to force my hand. If she would say it... If she would say that even without Japan behind me, as nothing more than a simple otaku—in fact, a simple former otaku—that even then, she still needed me...

“I can’t... I mustn’t say such a thing.” Myusel shook her head. “How can I ask something so selfish, for you to forsake your family to be with me?” She was smiling through her tears as she said almost the same thing I’d said to her just moments before.

Yeah. That was the upshot, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just Petralka. Myusel had also had to grow up never fully knowing the love of her parents. Unlike Petralka, it wasn’t death that had separated Myusel from her parents, but even if she had the chance now to get back some of that lost time, she would still understand the fear of never being able to see your family again. In fact, it might even make it worse for her.

This wouldn’t be choosing not to see them at any given time; it would mean being totally unable to see them. No matter how much she might want to. That’s not so different from them being dead. And because she understood that, Myusel couldn’t bring herself to say the words to stop me. Couldn’t ask me to choose her over my own family. Maybe the words made it to her throat, but there they stuck, and compassion for me made her swallow them back down.

She was so good, Myusel. And Petralka, too. These girls were wasted on the likes of me.

“Myusel...”

Dammit, self, this is no time to hesitate! I’ve come this far!

I made myself take Myusel’s shoulders. I didn’t have the nerve to sweep her up in a hug all of a sudden. She looked at me, surprised. “Shinichi-sama...”

Oh my god is she cute! The tears, the confusion—just adorable! It could almost kill me... Somebody help me!

We were beyond moe here. Just looking at her was enough to set my heart racing. I didn’t have to take my pulse or temperature to know they were both a lot higher than usual.

But, um, uhh, where did I go from here? What was I supposed to do? In gal games, moments like this usually led into a kiss scene, but I had to admit it was hard to get in the mood with the way things were now. It would seem too much like I was just taking advantage of the moment to fulfill my own sexual desires, and that just wasn’t...

“Shinichi-sama...!” As I dithered, Myusel, apparently unable to hold herself back any longer, threw herself into my arms. She put her hands together in front of her chest as if she was praying, like she was throwing everything she had and everything she was at me.

Even weak little me was able to hold her up, thanks to us being on our knees on the floor. I reflexively wrapped my arm around her shoulders in a hug, but again, with things as heavy as they were, I found I couldn’t do more than that. Even I didn’t have it in me to be all “Myeh heh heh, Myusel’s body is so sooooft, her hair smells so gooooood, hurr hurr” at this moment. (Well, okay, maybe it flashed through my mind for a second. I guess I really am a monster.)

I knelt there, holding the shaking Myusel, my eyes wandering around uncertain of what to focus on.

At which point I heard a metallic scraping. I looked in the direction of the sound and saw that the door, which had been open ever so slightly, as if floating away from the wall, was closed. At least, it looked like it to me. Maybe I was seeing things. Could there have been someone on the other side of the door? But who? Minori-san? Hikaru-san? Or maybe...

“Come in,” I said when I heard the knock at the door. I assumed it was Myusel arriving with tea as she usually did, but when I checked the clock, I saw it was a little early for her. Instead, when the door opened, to my surprise, in came Elvia, looking uncharacteristically shy.

Her fluffy ears always lay down on her head, but her usually energetic, wagging tail was listless and slack. She closed the door behind her and then let out a sigh that seemed to use her whole body. This was really very unusual for her. She was our resident artist, and usually irrepressibly cheerful.

“What’s up?” I said, and Elvia sat down smack where she was.

“I guess I’m... not feelin’ so well.”

“Not feeling well?”

“I can’t seem to talk... I mean, to him.”

“............Ahh...”

The pieces came together in my mind. She was talking about the next room over, a door just a few meters down from mine. That would be the one that belonged to Shinichi-san. On a normal evening, Myusel went to his room first, they had a little chat, and then she came by with tea for me. They never used to chat, but I couldn’t help noticing how Myusel would keep glancing back toward Shinichi-san’s room when she brought by my drink, so I recommended she take her time with him.

Elvia had probably gone to look in on Shinichi-san’s room, and overheard them talking. Or maybe she’d peeked through a crack in the door.

“Was the pathos overwhelming?” I asked.

“Pay-those?” Elvia looked at me blankly.

“Basically, when something is just too tragic. Were Shinichi-san and Myusel crying or something?”

“Oh...” Elvia scratched the back of her head and sighed again. “I guess so, kinda. They were talking real quiet, so I couldn’t hear exactly...”

“Yeah, I guess that’s how Myusel is, at least.” She was a tough cookie, and for better or for worse I couldn’t imagine her screaming and weeping and carrying on. Then again, holding it all inside sometimes led to unexpected explosions of action. As for Shinichi-san, he could be startlingly indecisive when something concerned him personally (a fact of which I think he was well aware). If Myusel started crying on him, he probably wouldn’t have any idea what to do. I could just picture it.

Arrgh, it just gets my goat!

“And it was too sad over there for you to burst in, so you came over here, am I right?”

“What was I supposed to do, with them like that and all?” Elvia looked away from me, kind of down at the ground. She almost seemed to be pouting. Whatever she was thinking tended to come out of her mouth as soon as she opened it, but I guess even she wasn’t so oblivious as to interrupt a moment like that. She could be surprisingly thoughtful like that sometimes. It was one of the things that made her so attrac—well, never mind.

“Elvia,” I said, closing the laptop on my desk. “If you always hold back, you’ll never beat Myusel.”

“Wha?”

“Myusel has one distinct advantage over you: she’s known Shinichi-san longer than you have. Frankly, if you aren’t prepared to shove her out of the way, maybe literally as well as figuratively, I’m not sure you have a chance.”

“Urgh...” Whf, whf. I heard Elvia’s tail twitch as she groaned. “Are y’ sure someone has to win and someone has to lose?”

“Maybe not, if Shinichi-san has a change of heart and suddenly goes the ‘You are my wings!’ harem route.” But I didn’t see him doing anything like that. He was an otaku for sure, but in this particular matter he was weirdly sensible. Then again, wings aside, it wasn’t just Myusel and Elvia who had feelings for Shinichi-san. Her Majesty Petralka an Eldant III was obviously interested, but on top of that, Elvia’s older sister Amatena and even her military subordinate Clara didn’t exactly hate him. They didn’t live with us, though, so I doubted they had much chance in the race for Shinichi-san.

“I can’t believe I’m even thinking about this stuff...” I mumbled, genuinely angry. “This isn’t the time for gal-game antics! Stupid Shinichi-san...” I sighed in hopes of breathing out the anger.

But then Elvia said, “Hikaru-sama?” It sounded like she was just having a thought. “You’re with Shinichi-sama, aren’t you?”

“How do you mean, with him?”

“Like... You have to decide whether or not to go back to Ja-pan too, right?” She looked up at me. I guess the talk of whether we would go back to Japan—and never return—hadn’t escaped Elvia. “If Shinichi-sama decides to stay here, Hikaru-sama, will you—?”

“My decision has nothing to do with his. Why do you ask?” Did she think Shinichi-san and I always did exactly the same thing? I mean, yes, I had been sent here originally to push him out of his place as head of Amutech, but still...

“I mean, because y’all love Shinichi-sama too, don’t you, Hikaru-sama?”

“................................................................................................Huh?” For a second, I hardly even knew what she was saying. “Huh? Wh-What the heck are you talking about?”

I had no memory of saying or doing anything that would have led anyone, least of all Elvia, to think I had feelings for Shinichi-san. True, despite our rocky start, I’d come to think of him as a friend and colleague, but I was sure that wasn’t what Elvia had in mind just now.

“Let me ask you something, Elvia. Have I ever once said that I was in love with Shinichi-san?”

“Don’tcha have a word for that, though? Tsundere, right? It means, uh, when you’re like, ‘Just so you know, I don’t like you at all! So there!’”

“Who’s a tsundere? Okay, first things first—I’m a man.”

“Who dresses like a girl, right?” By the blinking Elvia was doing, I could see we had a misunderstanding on our hands. Great.

“Yes, I do what some people call cross-dressing. But inside, I’m still a man.”

It might have been our job to spread otaku culture, but a bit too much of the less-savory stuff had gotten around too, in my opinion. (Then again, considering my first initiative in this world had been the distribution of ero games, I knew I wasn’t one to talk.)

“Didn’t we have this conversation once? Anyway, just to be clear, dressing like a woman doesn’t necessarily mean wanting to be a woman.”

“Really?”

“Me personally, I only started dressing this way because I’d scraped the bottom of the barrel on how to get people to like me.”

“Oh, you mean like... ‘slutty bottom’?”

“I do not.”

“Oh! Is this that ‘total bottom’ thing?”

“No, it isn’t!”

Shinichi-san was bad enough, but our rotten WAC was proving a force to be reckoned with, too. I was starting to think she could have spread some otaku culture all by herself if Shinichi-san and I hadn’t been here. Very specific otaku culture...

“What I’m saying is, the girls’ clothes are sort of a game to me. When I fall in love, it’s pretty much with girls. I’m not really interested in guys.”

“Huh! That so?” Elvia said, nodding as if pleased to have learned something new. I was glad to see the sad look on her face ease up just a little, even if it was only thanks to having changed the subject.

Then Elvia said, “So, Hikaru-sama, d’ ya secretly have a girl in mind that you like?” I couldn’t believe it. And the way her face was shining—! I guess girls in every world love a bit of romance gossip...

“Why would you ask that?”

“Aw, just, I come to you for help all the time, Hikaru-sama, but I’m always the one doin’ all the talking. I don’t hear much about you.”

“Well, that’s true...”

“And I want to.”

“.............Well...” I let out a long sigh. What was I going to do with this dog-girl? “I guess so,” I said after a very long moment. “There is one. A girl I like, I mean.” I was acutely aware of my suddenly racing heartbeat, but I tried to force myself to slow down and pick my words carefully. “She’s cheerful and lively... She’s earnest and sweet, but sometimes she can be a little, well... dense.”

“Huh! Really?”

“Maybe she’s not always completely on the ball, but she’s really kind and downright adorable. She always presses straight ahead toward what she wants. A bit of tunnel vision, I guess you could say.” I almost felt myself growing angry saying it. “But the fact is, she doesn’t feel the same way about me.” The annoyance made me finish a little more emphatically than I’d started.

“Huh... That’s a tough one,” Elvia said, crossing her arms in thought. This girl...

“They say pets end up like their owners,” I mumbled, “but seriously, we don’t need two boneheads like him...”

“Huh? Whadja say?” Elvia asked. There was the blank look, as usual.

“Nothing,” I replied. Then I opened my laptop again as if to say that this conversation was over.