Chapter One: Uninvited Guests
Chapter One: Uninvited Guests
The wind blew gently down city streets bathed in soft sunlight. It wasn’t too hot, and it wasn’t too cold. The perfect day for a little walk, some shopping, a daytrip... anything, really. Maybe that explained why the town surrounding Holy Eldant Castle in the heart of Marinos, the capital of the Holy Eldant Empire, was bustling today.
Everyone seemed filled with energy and enthusiasm as they went by. Earthquakes had taken their toll on the buildings and furniture not long ago, but that just meant more business for the dwarven craftspeople who specialized in repairs and carpentry. It meant demand for new furnishings to replace what had been broken, so that vendors of furniture and kitchenware were right in the middle of it all, competing to see who could shout the loudest and attract the most customers.
There were other signs of a booming economy as well: not just sales of specific items, but the fact that every place in the capital seemed to be busy. I hardly knew the first thing about economics, but this looked like a boom to me. Everyone in Marinos seemed to be at the top of their game.
“Sigh...” And yet all I could do was sigh as I walked down the street.
It had been quite a while since I’d first come to this other world. As a former home security guard, I used to feel a bit out of place walking these quasi-medieval streets, but these days I felt like I belonged here. As much as I thought back fondly on Japan, I no longer felt like a stranger here in Marinos, and hadn’t for some time.
“Shinichi-sama, we should go there next.”
“Oh yeah, sure thing.”
Despite the hubbub, I reacted quickly when I heard my name. The voice was so familiar, yet I knew I would never get tired of it. It had the endearing quality of the twittering of a small bird, but it was also refreshing, even healing. I knew my ears would always pick it up no matter how much distraction, how much noise there was around us. I was certain that if she said my name, I would always hear her.
Myusel Fourant. The very first person I’d met when I came here—and a maid-san in my own house! Of course, she only wore her maid uniform at home; right now, she was in a going-out dress, but the reserved look of the outfit suited her. It wasn’t some gaudy color, and she had kept the accessories to a minimum, but I thought that only highlighted her actual appearance. Her lustrous, flaxen hair; her round eyes the color of purple gems; her smooth skin, pale as ceramic... My point is, she was beautiful, so beautiful that the plain clothes actually highlighted how lovely she looked. Then again, maybe a girl as pretty as her would look good no matter what she wore.
She turned back, and suddenly, my eyes met hers. She smiled happily—really, truly happily.
Hwhoa! Unexpected emotional offensive!
My heart started going a mile a minute (even though it didn’t need to). I thought it might burst. If she’d added “Isn’t this fun, Shinichi-sama?” then I, whose years without a girlfriend exactly equaled my years of being alive, might have just exploded right on the spot.
“Uh, uhh, so remind me, what else do we need to buy, again?” I asked, desperately trying to slow my pounding heart.
Myusel cocked her head like a little bird; apparently, she kept the entire shopping list in her brain. “We just need some vegetables and... oh, seasonings.” Her flaxen twintails bounced slightly. I could just spot the elf ears under her hair. How cunning! How flirtatious! She was threatening to pierce my heart and she didn’t even know it! Just, like, bashooom!
I hardly knew where I was going! Or... coming, or something!
Come to think of it, I thought, my heart still pounding, I never got a lot of chances to go shopping with Myusel, just the two of us like this.
It was her job as the maid to take care of the shopping, and I usually had school anyway. If she really needed help, she could call on our gardener, the lizardman Brooke, or his wife Cerise, who was also a maid in our house. There was never really a reason for me to go with. That’s what made this little shopping trip so exciting.
No, hold on. Wait. Was this...?
.........
“Wanna have some lunch?”
“Sure. We could eat somewhere. Where would you like to go, Fosse?”
“Oh, anywhere you like, Lew-kun!”
“What I really like best is your home cooking, Fosse!”
“Oh, Lew-kun!
.........
It was almost like we were... you know. It was... you know.
Yes—that legendary, much-rumored privilege of the socially fulfilled, a “date”! Yes, a date! That word which, if appended to the title of a light novel, can prevent it from being sold in China (according to my dad)—a date!
Then perhaps I, Kanou Shinichi, am taking my next step into adulthood! Am I still a Cinderella? Oh, surely happiness— Wait, I’m afraid I might get a cease-and-desist if I write any more, so I’ll leave off the rest! (Transmission scrambled.)
.........Uh, okay. Time to calm down.
A man and woman, very obviously a couple, walked by holding hands like total lovebirds. Their sweet conversation had whisked my mind off to far places. But really, I was nothing more than a manservant helping a maid do the shopping. This wasn’t a date or anything. At least, it wasn’t supposed to be. So there was no need for me to get all excited. No need, you hear that, self? You listening? Y’all calm down now, ya hear?
At least, that was what I kept telling myself.
.........
“Sweetheart, that’s our next stop.”
“Sure, I hear you. Wait up.”
“It’s so rare for you to do the shopping with me.”
“Yeah?”
“I’d like to stop for a drink somewhere. Since we’re together. Can we?”
“Sure, of course. Just go easy on me, okay?”
“Hee hee hee...”
.........
A date? Heck, we were practically like young newlyweds going out together. Maybe Myusel and I even looked like a husband and wife to other people walking down the street. Maybe? Just like the completely obviously totally nuts-about-each other couple that had just walked by. Maybe?!
I must have looked a little weird, because Myusel stopped and turned back again. “Um... Shinichi-sama? Is everything okay?”
“Sure, of course. Just go easy on me, okay?”
“Er...?”
My response left her blinking.
“Uh, it’s nothing. Sorry,” I said. I took a deep breath and came up beside her.
But then again, maybe Myusel...
I mean, maybe she really did like me. In a romantic sense. And I sure didn’t hate her. Just the opposite, in fact.
...Meaning, maybe we’ll go out on a real date someday?
To tell the truth, we hadn’t really been planning this. It was just that the school where I usually taught was closed, my work as both a cultural ambassador and General Manager of Amutech was suspended, and I didn’t see any benefit in just hanging around the house, so I decided to come out with Myusel for a breath of fresh air. But if she and I kept spending time together after this, maybe we really would end up going on a date like boyfriend and girlfriend, and then... Well, then I guess we would get married, and spend our time chatting like couples do.
If we were able to keep spending time together after this.
“Hey, Myusel...” I looked at the bags she was holding in both hands. “Isn’t that stuff heavy? Are you sure you don’t want me to hold something?”
“Oh, no, sir. This is supposed to be my job,” Myusel said, shaking her head. Incidentally, what she was carrying were the ingredients for tonight’s dinner. Any way you sliced it, a lot of people lived in our house—there had already been seven of us to begin with, but lately Brooke and Cerise’s kids had nearly doubled that. So you needed a lot of food, and a lot of ingredients. It all looked like an awful lot for Myusel to carry all by herself, but the first time I’d offered to help, she’d politely declined just like this time.
To be fair, Myusel did the shopping every day. I was the one who had gotten it into my head that this was some sort of date. Frankly, I was embarrassed for myself.
Then I heard something unusual. Myusel, walking beside me, was... humming. Very quietly; I didn’t even notice until I was right beside her. But she sounded really happy, like she was genuinely enjoying herself.
“Something good happen, Myusel?” I asked.
“Huh?” She looked at me blankly. Only then did she seem to realize what she was doing. “Oh... Well, er, I...” She looked at the ground, her cheeks and ears turning bright red. Not because she was embarrassed to be humming specifically... “Ahem... I’m just so happy... to be here like this with you, Shinichi-sama.”
That struck me dumb.
Yes. Right. That made me feel quite, uh, shy.
The way she looked at the ground, speaking in the quietest possible voice, and with such obvious joy—it was enough to drive my shyness quotient through the roof. If I thought my heart was racing before, it was flying now. I practically wanted to run in circles right there and then.
“Myusel... Myusel...” I was brimming with the desire to sweep her up in a hug right here, all these bystanders be damned. In fact, I was close to overflowing...
But then—
“When I think... that now I’ll have more memories of you, Shinichi-sama...”
Myusel’s words were like a blunt instrument to the back of my head. My heart spontaneously stopped its furious activity and I felt a chill all the way through my body.
That’s right. I’d been forgetting.
No, that wasn’t true. I hadn’t forgotten. I would’ve loved to, if it were possible, but I couldn’t—that was exactly why I was so desperate for a change of pace, which was why I’d come with Myusel on this shopping trip in the first place.
I couldn’t muster any words. I didn’t know what I should say.
Reality was merciless, and me—I was helpless.
“Oh—” When she saw me go silent, Myusel must have thought I was upset by what she’d said. In the space of an instant, she went from happy to troubled, her eyes darting this way and that. “O—Oh yes, Shinichi-sama, I just remembered, that shop over there—eek!”
In her confusion and panic, Myusel tried to make an abrupt turn from where she had been going, to head for some other shop. I’m sure she just wanted to help disperse the painful feeling that had settled between us. But as she changed direction, she bumped smack into somebody coming the other way.
The bulging shopping bag fell out of her hand. It was so tightly packed that it actually managed not to scatter its contents everywhere, but a few pieces of fruit went rolling away.
“I—I’m so sorry!” Myusel reflexively apologized, then crouched down to pick up the fruit.
To our surprise, a rough hand got to it first. My eyes followed the fingers up the hand, then the arm, until I was looking at a very solid-looking man. He was big and bulky, his muscles obvious even under his clothes. He had short-cropped golden hair and a rugged face. Most noticeably of all, he was wearing a combat uniform with the latest optical-camo pattern. I recognized all this from seeing these things in anime and movies and stuff, but to someone like Myusel, they must have been the strangest-looking clothes around. The M4 carbine hanging around the man’s neck would only have heightened the bizarre impression.
In other words, uniform or no uniform, he was the quintessential macho man. You could just picture him stepping out of a movie screen and growling, “Remember when I said I would kill you last? I lied,” while dropping someone off a building. He was completely intimidating even just standing there.
At the moment, his amber eyes were fixed on Myusel.
“Er—I’m very sorry!” Before I could think about what I was doing, I put myself between him and her. It seemed like he might just reach out and wrench off Myusel’s head. He didn’t look like the type who really needed a gun or a knife or whatever to kill someone. His bare hands were enough to ice a couple of obnoxious twerps. I thought it was well within the realm of possibility.
But then...
“Not at all. It was my fault.” I was startled to see the man smile and apologize without even a “Come on, Bennett, throw away the chickenshit gun!” He seemed amazingly friendly.
And he was speaking English.
I guess that shouldn’t have surprised me—he was one of the U.S. Marines who had shown up in Marinos recently. But it obviously wasn’t my exquisite fluency in English that allowed me to understand him—we were both wearing magic interpreter rings.
What a weird feeling, though, to hear English right in the middle of a marketplace in the Eldant Empire. To be fair, I guess in its own way, it seemed more appropriate to this quasi-European fantasy world than Japanese did.
“Everything around here is just so unusual. I wasn’t looking where I was going,” the sailor said, and then he held out his hand—offering us the fruit he’d picked up.
“Th—Thank you... very much...” Myusel sounded a bit overwrought as she took the fruit.
Just then someone shouted, “Harrison, what are you doing?!” The voice came from a group of guys a short distance away, dressed the same as this sailor—his comrades, I supposed.
“Sorry, Sarge—I was building bridges with the locals!”
“Real admirable, but you’re on duty! Don’t break formation!”
“Sir, yes sir! Sorry, sir!” Harrison shouted, and then he winked at us—his way of saying “See ya,” I guess—and jogged back to his group.
If nothing else, I was glad it turned out he wasn’t the violent type. That was great and all, but still...
“The United States... Marines...” I mumbled, taking a quick look around the castle town. Brick houses and shops were everywhere, and instead of cars, carriages pulled by giant birds filled the streets. People’s outfits, like the architecture, had a medieval European vibe. Some of those people, though, were fantastical things like elves and lycanthropes. It was a classic fantasy world, like something straight out of a movie or anime.
Maybe that was why they stood out so much, these men walking innocently around town in modern combat fatigues. Or maybe I was the only one paying them this much attention. They were calm and polite whenever they interacted with the townspeople, and for their part, the people—maybe thanks to having already met the JSDF—didn’t seem particularly bothered by the troops. But still...
You know, wasn’t the M16A4 retired from service? I thought I read an article saying they were getting new rifles or something...
I thought distantly about the M4 carbine the sailor had been carrying. They’d come armed. Well, so had the JSDF, but they didn’t walk around in full kit, to avoid frightening the civilians.
That was it. The Americans were walking around innocently enough, but if they wanted to, they could start a bloodbath at any moment. The people around here didn’t know what guns were; they probably wouldn’t be able to put up an effective resistance. Imagining the outcome, people drowning helplessly in blood, sent a chill down my spine.
They weren’t just foreign bodies here in this fantasy world. They would have looked bizarre in an otherwise ordinary scene like this anywhere. However decent and gentlemanly they might be acting, when you got right down to it, they were fear itself.
“Shinichi-sama?”
I looked at Myusel when she spoke. She was looking at me strangely. Maybe she didn’t understand what I was thinking about that could make me frown so hard. In her mind, the sailors had turned out to be nice, and she was relieved. At least, they didn’t seem to frighten her.
But that fact frightened me. I could just picture a day when the Americans’ colors turned, and it was Myusel being shot down helplessly. I could see the blank expression on her face as she bled out from her chest and stomach, not even knowing what had happened to her. Maybe someone else could laugh and say it would never happen, but the image seemed all too real to me.
“Is something the matter, sir?”
“Nah,” I said after a moment. “It’s nothing.”
I had a lot to think about, but for the moment I put it all in its own little mental compartment and shook my head.
The ten days since the nuclear aircraft carrier Nimitz had arrived in this world had passed quickly. It had only made our situation that much more complicated. My friends and I had had to go to Bahairam to prevent an all-out war between the Bahairamanians and the Nimitz’s crew, which we somehow managed to do. We communicated that there was a way to get home from this world, which (we also told them) was actually the very, very far future of our own. We urged them to leave the Nimitz and come to Eldant with us.
Naturally, the crew wasn’t eager to abandon the ship. To them, it was the last bastion of familiarity in this strange world they’d been thrown into. If we hadn’t been able to guarantee them that they would be able to get back to their original world, I doubt they would have agreed to shut down the ship’s nuclear reactors, cutting off its functionality, and leave it behind.
Luckily (I think—there was still some question about that), one of the Super Hornets that had been sent on a recon mission into Eldant territory radioed in with a transmission that backed us up. A special envoy had arrived from the U.S. along with his Marine Corps bodyguards. They had heard about the Nimitz from Japan, and had brought in some high-powered radio equipment that allowed them to communicate with the pilot of the Super Hornet and explain what was going on. They instructed him to convey orders from headquarters to abandon the Nimitz and relocate to Eldant.
That got the job done pretty effectively. Using the helicopters based on the carrier, along with some dragons Theresa called up for us, we managed to transport all five thousand or so crewmembers into Eldant territory.
Personally, I had been a bit worried about what would happen if the Bahairamanians attacked again while we were trying to get everybody out of there, but to my surprise, their army withdrew while we were talking to the Nimitz. I thought maybe one of our acquaintances in the ranks—Elvia’s older sister Amatena—had something to do with it, but it turned out I was wrong. Through Elvia, Amatena informed us that the Bahairamanian forces had withdrawn simply because something came up that made them realize they had other problems. Apparently there had been a massive flood in Bahairam’s Second Capital.
The mountainous area around the Second Capital hardly ever saw flooding, until an absolute deluge of rain began right out of the blue. In fact, there was so much water that rain almost didn’t seem like the right word. It was more like a bucket had been upended over their heads.
What’s more, it was saltwater, complete with a bunch of fish. That was when it struck me: this had to do with the hyperspace wormhole. It was a temporary fluctuation in the portal, just like the one that had brought the Nimitz over. The wormhole had connected itself to some ocean somewhere and dumped a bunch of the water on the Second Capital.
The Bahairamanian city, normally a very dry environment, obviously wasn’t prepared for such extensive water damage. It was as if a tsunami had suddenly deposited itself in the middle of a city. Buildings were crushed, people were washed away, and any interest in dealing with “tertiary matters” evaporated. The army was ordered to rush to the Second Capital to help with flood relief, and so the units engaged with the Nimitz withdrew, just happy that the ship itself seemed to have quieted down.
The wormhole fluctuation over Bahairam had been brief enough that the city wasn’t simply washed away by a relentless flood of water. But imagine if the fluctuation hadn’t been brief. Imagine if it had stayed stuck open, like the portal we used here in Eldant. Just think what would have happened. An endless flood of seawater would have inundated Bahairam, maybe Eldant and the surrounding countries, maybe even this entire world. Meanwhile, the other side of the portal could lose so much seawater that it would have huge environmental effects. It would probably change the temperature of the entire earth. A drop of even ten degrees could trigger a new Ice Age...
We couldn’t go on like this. The ocean was bad enough; if that wormhole attached itself to the inside of a nuclear reactor, or a volcano, or even outer space, it could destroy this entire world. I knew we had no choice but to close off the unstable connection between our two worlds. And yet...
We finished the shopping and were on the way home. Our mansion was situated on the edge of Marinos, so walking there could take upwards of half an hour. But it was no farther than Myusel normally walked, and besides, I wanted to cherish the time we had together, so I decided to go by foot.
We’d split the load of purchases. (I’d sort of insisted.) If I didn’t get to do something to help, I was going to start wondering why I was even there, and with her load lightened, I thought Myusel might be more open to chatting, even if it wasn’t about anything in particular. But then...
“Hullo there.” We weren’t far from the main shopping avenue when we ran into someone I never expected to see around there.
“Matoba-san?” Matoba Jinzaburou-san was standing on a street corner nearby.
He was a Japanese government official, and my boss at Amutech, the half-public, half-private company I worked for here in this other world. He looked harmless at first glance; he didn’t have a lot of charisma, and he could act a little out of it. The sort of guy you could see sitting at a desk somewhere, staring out a window as he compiled a company history.
He was smiling his usual slight smile—which meant it was almost impossible to figure out what he was thinking. His face and voice never gave anything away. It was like he was wearing a mask. He wore a classic businessman’s suit, and his parted, graying hair was standard Japanese working stiff. Like the American sailors, he looked out of place in this European-ish fantasy world. He didn’t seem like he was quite a part of the street he was standing in. Anyway, he stood out.
“Surprised to see you here,” I said. “And all by yourself.”
It was, indeed, unusual for Matoba-san to visit the castle town. In fact, I wasn’t sure I had ever seen him out walking around like this. Without a single bodyguard, either. But whatever you thought about him, he was important to Eldant, and important to Japan.
“My carriage is just up the way,” he said, and shrugged. “I saw you walking there, so I thought I might say hello.”
“Hmm...”
That wasn’t very typical, either. For better or for worse, Matoba-san was relentlessly logical; he wasn’t the type to bring his carriage to a halt and jump out just because he’d seen someone he knew walking around. Had he had some change of heart? Or was there more to it?
“Out on a date?” he asked. The question caught me off guard.
“A da— A da— Adgghh...?!” I said. First he showed up where I never expected him, when I never expected him, and then he asked a question that made it sound like he could read my mind. My voice failed me. This was embarrassing. Humiliating. And right in front of Myusel...
“N-N-N-No, it’s not...! I was just helping Myusel with the shopping!”
I mean, yes, it sort of felt like a date. And Myusel seemed to be enjoying herself, kind of like she was on a date. Ugh, but would that be a bad thing? Was this bad, what we were doing? But if I was like, “No! I swear this is not a date!” wouldn’t that hurt Myusel?
No! No, that’s not what I meant, Myusel! I promise it’s not that I don’t like you! Wait, is this—tsundere?! No, wait, could it be...?! It’s so simple to get moe, but when the moment comes, it’s a lot harder, isn’t it, you tsundere?! No, not the point! Uh, uhhh... (transmission scrambled)
“I was merely joking.”
I was busy getting completely lost in my own head, but it turned out he hadn’t really meant it. His face scrunched as he smiled a slight smile.
“I didn’t know you ever told jokes, Matoba-san.” Honestly, I was a little surprised.
“Hm? No?”
“I guess,” I said, and sighed. “Really, though, Matoba-san—why are you here?”
Normally, the only places I ever ran into Matoba-san were at Eldant Castle, or else at the mansion. I say he was my boss, but he wasn’t exactly stationed in Eldant; instead, he went back and forth to Japan a lot. That made it even less likely that I would just run into him on the street. When I did see him, it usually meant he wanted something. So it crossed my mind that he had been waiting here because he had some kind of urgent business with me.
“I thought I might see how the town was looking on my way to the mansion,” he told me.
“How the town was looking?”
“Those earthquakes weren’t that long ago, yet it’s already bustling again. Of course, a few places still have a ways to go, but they got back on their feet quite quickly. Magic is a most convenient thing, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh...”
What was he getting at? The rampaging reactor at the Dragon’s Den in Bahairam had caused earthquakes in Eldant, something that otherwise occurred maybe once every hundred years. A lot of people had been hurt or driven out of their homes. Some say you can’t have creation without destruction, though, and the people of Eldant got to work building new buildings and implementing a variety of recovery projects, so that as we had seen, the market was busy again. It was partly thanks to the technology we called magic, sure, but it showed that the inhabitants of this world were made of tough stuff.
Could Matoba-san possibly be here just to have a look at the city?
“I do have a duty to report on a wide range of matters to my superiors,” Matoba-san said, as if answering my unspoken question. Then he gave me a pointed look and slipped the ring off his finger, so I did the same. Usually it was a sign that he wanted to talk Japanese to Japanese. In other words, there was something going on that he didn’t want anyone else to know about. It was sort of pointless with Myusel, because she spoke a fair amount of Japanese, but Matoba-san knew that, so I guess it was up to him.
“Have you noticed there are more American troops on the streets every day?” he asked—in Japanese, of course.
“Huh? What do you mean, more?” I said. I had thought there were plenty of Americans already, but I only knew of the five thousand people from the Nimitz and a few dozen Marines sent over from Japan. Was he saying there were going to be even more of them?
For that matter... hang on. Maybe the reason Matoba-san had taken off his ring wasn’t because he didn’t want the Eldant people around us to understand us...
“The Japanese government has decided to withdraw from this world. For the sake of argument, let’s say for now that you’re going along with that.”
Matoba-san knew me well enough by now to know how indecisive I was. He was also familiar with the flip side of that part of my personality: that once I’d decided to do something, I tended to go to any length to do it, even if it got kind of crazy. He knew he couldn’t simply order me to get out of here the way he could with the JSDF. It wouldn’t work. Even though I was sure he would have liked me to just go along with whatever the government decided.
The point was, he wasn’t here to argue with me.
“We spelled out our reasoning to the Americans, and provided them with all the materials we had. We thought they would see things our way. After all, one of their carriers got sucked over here. But... well.” Matoba-san sighed. For once, he actually looked tired. “They don’t seem to have any interest in withdrawing from this world until they’ve had a good look around and ascertained for themselves that it’s the right thing to do. We hid this place for long enough that they don’t precisely trust us on the subject.”
“Right...” I guess you couldn’t really blame them.
“But the end result is that they’ve been bringing more people in every day for some as-yet unclear objective.”
As the JSDF took its troops out, the Americans brought theirs in.
“They’ve even commandeered the garrison the JSDF abandoned.”
“What? But...”
“They claim to be searching for a handful of MIAs.”
MIA—that meant missing in action, people who couldn’t be found when the dust settled after an operation. The story was that several sailors had disappeared in the rush to evacuate the Nimitz. Now the Americans were bringing in more troops on the pretext of looking for them. But that’s all it was—a pretext. The Americans argued that because there had already been skirmishes with Bahairam, they couldn’t be certain there might not be further firefights during the search-and-rescue operations. Ergo, they were bringing in plenty of munitions in the name of self-defense. So far they were limited to things the grunts could carry, but combined with the helicopters from the Nimitz, they still had a pretty serious force.
Self-defense, right. They could practically storm Eldant Castle and make it their base if they wanted.
“So their real goal...” I said.
The Americans were bringing in men and materiel under false pretenses. Did they want to invade Eldant, or even this entire world? Just like the Japanese government had once planned?
Japan had been hampered by reluctance, as well as a limited ability to bring people and supplies through the hyperspace tunnel. They’d decided a military invasion posed too much of a risk, and had settled on the cultural route instead. But with the Nimitz, a massive piece of military hardware, already over here, the Americans had no reason to pussyfoot around like that.
Matoba-san didn’t answer me; he just smiled that ambiguous smile of his. He didn’t deny anything, though. Coming from him, that was practically confirmation.
“I’m afraid we aren’t in a position to negotiate with the American government,” he said. “All we can do is withdraw from this world as initially planned.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“You should be careful as well,” Matoba-san said, cutting me off before I could object further. Then he slipped his magic ring back on, showing that he was done with this conversation. “I’m going to head back to the mansion directly. Would you like a ride?”
He turned without waiting for an answer. He was looking down the way, where a single bird-drawn carriage stood waiting. His carriage, I supposed. Come to think of it, he normally rode around in a JSDF LAV. Maybe he was in a carriage today because the JSDF had already pulled out everything else. Minori-san was still here as my bodyguard, but as a member of the armed forces, I presumed she would have to obey any orders from her superiors. I didn’t know how long she would be here with me.
“No thanks,” I said after a moment. “I think I’d rather take the time to walk home with Myusel.”
“I see. Suit yourself.” Matoba-san didn’t look the least bit bothered by my refusal, but neither was he going to push the offer. Instead, he gave me a quick bow and then headed for his carriage.
This time I really did heave a long, long sigh.
“Be careful, he says. How?” I gave Myusel a weary smile, my own interpreter ring back on my finger. Like I said, Myusel was literate in Japanese, and she had probably at least gotten the gist of Matoba-san’s and my conversation. Still, the political content seemed to have lost her somewhat, and she didn’t say anything to me.
The United States of America. The country that had, practically speaking, the most powerful military in the world where I came from. The entire Japanese government couldn’t stop them from doing what they wanted, so what was I personally supposed to do?
“How about we head home?” I tried to smile at Myusel, but I wasn’t sure I was doing a good job. I had no idea what was going to happen. Not to this world, and not to us. There were so many things I wasn’t sure about—but all I could do was watch things play out.
At least, that’s what I thought at the time.
There was no carriage at the mansion by the time we got back. We must have missed Matoba-san.
“All right, I’m going to go make dinner,” Myusel said, taking back the bag and heading for the kitchen. Left alone in the vestibule, I let out another sigh.
“Okay... What do I do now?” I guess I could go back to my room. “But it seems kind of... I don’t know.”
It almost sounded like I was trying to offer an excuse. To whom, I didn’t know. It wasn’t that I had trouble being by myself. Heck, I’d been a shut-in once upon a time. I knew how to keep myself company, watching anime or reading manga. In fact, I needed time to just be alone every once in a while. Normally, I probably would have zipped right to my room without a second thought. I had lots of games piled up and books waiting to be read; the backlog was going to take a while to get through.
But today...
Still feeling indecisive, I headed for the living room. I kind of just didn’t feel like being alone. Maybe it would be refreshing if I could find someone. By myself, all alone in my room, there were some thoughts I wouldn’t be able to avoid anymore. All the things I didn’t want to think about, the things I couldn’t change by thinking about them. They would all come piling in on me.
There would probably be someone in the living room, I thought as I walked along, and lo and behold, I heard chatter from that direction. A bright, cheerful voice. Elvia, probably.
I finally caught a few words: “You looked so cool right then, Hikaru-sama!” The voice sounded really excited. It was definitely Elvia. A werewolf girl, complete with fuzzy ears and tail. She was always energetic, easygoing, and lively, but she was also a skilled artist; in fact, she was Amutech’s artist-in-residence. Or maybe more like had been, I guess. For all practical purposes, Amutech was defunct.
“N-No, I’d hardly say that...” I heard another voice, huskier than Elvia’s. That would be Hikaru-san. Sounding a bit cornered, no less. Ayasaki Hikaru had been sent from Japan to fill in for me—in fact, to take over as General Manager of Amutech. It had been a pretty rocky road for a while there, but now he was a trusted ally. You could almost have called him my right hand, although I didn’t think of us too much in terms of superior and subordinate. Incidentally, he always dressed in Gothic-Loli outfits, but he was actually a guy.
“I’m with Elvia. You really showed another side of yourself.”
This third voice was clearly feminine, but it carried an authoritative, borderline gruff tone. If Hikaru-san was a man who sounded a bit like a woman, this was the exact opposite.
The owner of that voice was the one who greeted me as I walked into the living room. “Hey, you’re back.” Waving at me from her spot on the couch was a girl with flaxen twintails. That might make her sound a bit like Myusel, but she came across as very different—the polar opposite, in fact.
This woman looked downright adorable, but she sat on the couch with her legs spread, her arms splayed across the backrest. If you looked in the dictionary under uncouth, you might have found her picture. She was acting like some yakuza gangster. The fact that she was wearing little more than a leotard that didn’t leave much to the imagination practically made it embarrassing to look at her.
Her name was Theresa Bigelow, and truth be told, she wasn’t human. At least, not anymore. She used to be a living, breathing human being, a woman in the army, no less, but now she existed as personality data residing in what amounted to a puppet. Somewhere between a cyborg and an android, I guess you could say.
“Hey, welcome back!”
“Yeah, good to see you.”
Elvia and Hikaru-san spoke up from the sofa they were sitting on, across the other side of the table from Theresa.
“Hey, guys,” I said. I observed the half-eaten snacks and half-empty teacups on the table and smiled a little. The snacks were Japanese. Myusel had been out, so I guess Hikaru-san had just grabbed whatever was available. “Boy, you’re a regular, uh, regular these days, Theresa,” I said. They looked like a trio of friends hanging out for some girl talk. I mean, okay, Hikaru-san wasn’t actually a girl (even if he did wear dresses), but he still looked like one. Plus, he had an avatar that was built like one, and he made liberal use of it these days, so maybe he was actually in a girl’s body right now.
Anyway...
“But how long are you going to stay?” I asked Theresa.
“What, you don’t want me around?” She pulled one of her arms off the backrest and braced her hand against her cheek. “After that night of burning passion we spent together, you’re just going to chase me out?”
“Well, it certainly was burning, all right... No, that’s not the point,” I said, shaking my head with a tired smile.
It wasn’t that I specifically wanted Theresa to go home. If anything, it was comforting having her around, what with her military background and everything. But Theresa was supposed to be the guardian of the Dragon’s Den in Bahairam, a veritable mountain of hypertechnology. By being here, she was practically leaving the place unattended, and I wondered if that was really safe.
“I told you, didn’t I? The BOUs can handle maintenance and security.” It was like she was reading my mind. Theresa grinned at me. “Not to mention, I’ve still got a direct line to them, even way out here. So what’s the problem?”
“I hope you’re right...”
“Hey, I’m not the only one who should be worrying about whether they can stay here.”
“Er?”
“You know...” Theresa squinted at me. “You’ve gotta decide sooner rather than later, right? About whether you’re going back to the past or whatever.”
Her words pinned me in place, and I fell silent. I knew that. In fact, I had come to this room hoping to escape that one overwhelming fact, and here I was having it rubbed in my face.
“Er, uh... Yeah,” I said, avoiding Theresa’s eyes and not really answering. Unfortunately, trying not to look at Theresa left me looking directly at Hikaru-san. Come to think of it... what was he planning to do about this? He’d come here significantly later than I had, but I thought he enjoyed life here, in his own way. He seemed particularly close to Elvia. I wondered if he would decide to stay here, or go back to Japan. I didn’t know what he was thinking or what he might choose.
I looked at him questioningly. Hikaru-san glanced away, reaching for his teacup. He looked as calm and collected as ever, but I thought I could see a dark cloud pass over his profile. Maybe I was imagining it.
I guess he was worrying, same as I was.
The cheerful atmosphere vanished, replaced by silence. Hikaru-san and I both sort of looked at the ground, while Theresa just shrugged.
“U—Um, Hikaru-sama? Shinichi-sama?” Only Elvia seemed confused, looking from me to Hikaru-san and back for help. When she twisted her body from one of us to the other, her floppy ears, the color of old leaves, flopped back and forth, and her massive chest, crammed into a tube top—no, no, this was a serious moment! This was no time to be getting all pant-pant moe-moe. No dirty jokes!
Wait, who am I talking to?
“A—Ahem, Shinichi-sama?”
This time the voice came from behind me. I turned, surprised, to find Myusel had emerged from the kitchen. “Yeah, Myusel? What’s up?”
“Um... We have a visitor...” She sounded hesitant, and looked almost troubled.
“A visitor?” I blinked. Not many people made their way to our mansion. Myusel would have known most of them by name. If she recognized them, she would have just told me who it was. That meant...
“Hello. Sorry to barge in.”
Before I could even ask who it was, they appeared.
“Huh?”
It was a white guy with short golden hair and blue eyes. He had a square jaw with a perfect cleft in it, and muscles that were abundantly apparent even with his shirt on. He looked a lot like the American I’d met in town—but this was someone else. One big difference? This guy was wearing a dark-navy suit and a necktie. But he gave the exact opposite impression of that other frequent suit-wearer that I knew, Matoba-san. This guy seemed ready to burst into action at any moment.
As if that wasn’t enough, he was accompanied by four other men, all equally ripped. Two of them were obviously white, one was black, and one seemed to be of Asian extraction. I didn’t have to look at their combat fatigues or the rifles hanging from their shoulders to know they were American troops. Marines, I suspected...
“Would you be Kanou Shinichi?” the man in the suit asked. He was speaking English, but thanks to the interpreter ring on his finger, I was able to understand everything he said.
“Ahem... Yes...?”
“Mm.” The man’s blue eyes narrowed, giving me an appraising look. I unconsciously straightened up a little. That searching gaze wasn’t pleasant. There was a forcefulness in it that I hadn’t felt with anyone from the JSDF; these Americans practically exuded power.
The man looked over at the couch where Theresa, Elvia, and Hikaru-san were sitting. “And these are...?” He did a double take when he saw Elvia, squinting to get a better look at her, but it only lasted a fraction of a second. “Ayasaki Hikaru... and Theresa Bigelow, I’m sure. I see, exactly like the report described.”
Report? What was he talking about?
The others sat up a little, like I had, and after the man had taken each of us in, the corners of his mouth turned up in a sneer. I felt a chill run down my spine. He looked less like a smiling person than like a wild animal licking its lips at the sight of its next meal.
“There’s something we’d like your help with.” His words were innocuous enough, but he definitely didn’t sound like he was asking for a favor. In fact, he was practically giving an order. I suspected that this man was used to conversations where the hierarchy was clearly defined—where one person talked and the other person listened and then did what they were told. And he definitely saw me as below him in the hierarchy.
It felt like the anxiety I’d had over the last several days had taken on concrete form and was standing in front of me.
The man in the suit introduced himself as George Grisham. He was here in the Holy Eldant Empire as a special diplomatic envoy from the United States of America. He said that because America had never encountered another country quite like this, and what with the exigencies (his word) of the Nimitz situation, he had been appointed head diplomat for alternate-world relations. He showed me some identification, but frankly, I would never have been able to tell if it was real or not. I figured Matoba-san and the Japanese government would know better than I would, and had probably already checked him out.
“Perhaps you could leave us alone for a moment,” Grisham said, taking it upon himself to turn Myusel and Elvia out of the living room. He alleged that the discussion was going to turn complicated, and he didn’t want to waste any of the servants’ time—but to me, it just looked like he didn’t want anyone from Eldant anywhere nearby. As for me, I asked Myusel to go get Minori-san, and Grisham agreed to letting her sit in on the conversation.
Minori-san—namely, Koganuma Minori-san—was a WAC and my bodyguard. Well, emphasis on the was, as far as being my bodyguard. What with the Japanese government cutting all ties with the other world and the JSDF pulling out, she really had no reason to protect me anymore.
To my relief, it didn’t take long for Minori-san to show up. Myusel politely cleaned up the snacks Hikaru-san had put out, taking them from the room and returning with Minori-san, as well as enough tea for everyone. Then, just as Grisham had asked, Myusel made herself scarce—leaving us confronting the American envoy and his bodyguards.
Grisham began the conversation with a bombshell: “America is going to assume control of the hyperspace wormhole.”
He was seated by himself on the couch Theresa had occupied until a few minutes earlier, his bodyguards standing behind him, looking threatening. How did Grisham manage to be so much more imposing than Theresa when he was just sitting down? Maybe it was his tone, or the look on his face.
Hikaru-san and I looked at each other. I didn’t know why Grisham had decided to have this conversation with us of all people, but I knew that a careless answer could have very unpleasant consequences, and I suspected Hikaru-san knew it, too.
Neither of us could muster a response. Instead it was Minori-san, standing behind us with Theresa, who said, “What exactly do you mean?”
Minori-san was an accomplished marksman and hand-to-hand fighter, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her. At first glance, she looked like a sweet, easygoing young woman. From her glasses to her cheerful demeanor to her bulging chest, she looked completely harmless, maybe even restorative. At this moment, though, she wasn’t wearing her usual bright expression. Her face was tense with concern.
“Why, precisely what I said,” Grisham replied, shrugging and making a sort of circle with his hand, a very American gesture. “My understanding is that the facility that created the hyperspace tunnel went on the fritz thanks to the interference of the... what was it? Baha... Bahairaq? Yes, the Bahairaqi army.”
“It’s Bahairam, sir,” Minori-san corrected him.
“Bahairam, yes, I see. Well, the name doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that that facility could annihilate the entire world if it isn’t handled very, very carefully. As I believe you know.”
Yes, we certainly did. You didn’t have to look at the flooding in Bahairam’s Second Capital to imagine that the hyperspace tunnel could conceivably inundate this world, or flood it with radiation, depending on where it opened next.
Grisham went on with assurance: “Such unprecedented danger needs people with sound thinking and an unerring sense of justice to look after it. Just like with nuclear weapons. And the United States is the country to do it. It’s only logical, only right, for us to assume oversight of the hyperspace tunnel. It’s the quickest path to peace.” He made it sound like the most obvious thing in the world. But I felt like I could have barfed.
On one level, I was shocked that not only did someone who saw things so simplistically really exist, he was a diplomat for a major nation. This wasn’t about delicacy or etiquette. For better or for worse, this guy Grisham came across as a patriot. For his beloved America, he would find the logic where he needed it, force even the most impossible things to seem right and just.
“From what I’ve seen in the reports I read from Mister Matoba and Miss Koganuma, you’re the only ones to have seen this facility firsthand. And only you, Kanou Shinichi, and Miss Bigelow there have administrative privileges for it.”
Now I remembered Matoba-san mentioning that the government had shared materials with the Americans. So they had some idea of what had happened at the Dragon’s Den, even if only from the vantage point of some paperwork. That was why Grisham was here. Why he had come to this mansion to find me and Theresa.
I knew what was coming next.
“Can we count on your cooperation, Kanou Shinichi? And yours, Theresa Bigelow?” Once again, his request was clearly an order. He never doubted we would help the Americans. He believed with all his heart that Theresa and I would listen to him. He had come all the way out here not to negotiate about whether we would help him, but just to double-check that we would. Talk about unilateral. I felt my eyebrows furrow.
Hikaru-san, Minori-san, and Theresa all seemed to feel the same way. I took in their expressions at a glance, then looked back at Grisham.
“I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here,” I said, paying careful attention to my tone and choosing my words delicately. The magic rings could interpret individual words, but your gestures or the sound of your voice could make them mean something very different than first appeared. For example, a seemingly polite request could become a threat. “But that isn’t something we can decide on our own authority. Perhaps you could come back another time.”
I was trembling inside as I spoke. I wasn’t sure I was doing this right.
Grisham frowned, possibly annoyed that I wasn’t agreeing with him. I tensed up, wondering what I would do if he started yelling or something, but apparently he wasn’t so short-tempered as to fly off the handle right here. Instead he snorted derisively and shook his head as if to say: I just don’t get it. Have you ever seen such idiots?
Aloud, though, he only said, “I see. I do urge you to think carefully about it.” Then he stood up. He hadn’t touched the tea Myusel had brought. “We’ll be going for now.” Grisham was about to leave the room, but then stopped as if he had remembered something, and turned back to me. “It seems there’s been quite a lot going on recently. I’m not sure I would feel entirely comfortable with just a single bodyguard. I’ll have some Marines stationed near this mansion. Anything we can do to help.”
And then he finally left, his bodyguards following silently after him. Only when their footsteps were completely gone did I finally feel like I could breathe again. I felt my body go slack, letting out all the tension I’d been holding in throughout the conversation.
“God... I th-thought I was gonna have a heart attack...”
It might have sounded pathetic, but it was the unvarnished truth. Grisham was bad enough by himself, but with his personal squad of muscly macho men behind him, he was even more threatening. It had nothing to do with anything he had said or done; his mere presence was almost enough to break me.
“Peace and justice, my ass. He’s the exact opposite of both those things,” Hikaru-san grumbled from beside me. “He can talk himself up all he wants, but that guy’s an absolute racist. He thinks he can push us around just because we’re Japanese.”
I wasn’t entirely sure about that, to be fair, but in any case, I turned to our WAC and said, “Minori-san... He said he would post some bodyguards. But...”
“Yeah. Human watchdogs.” Minori-san shrugged.
“Argh!” Theresa exclaimed from beside her, tearing at her hair. It was almost unsettling, the way she had stayed completely silent throughout the exchange. I guess she was just playing the game; she wasn’t any happier with Grisham’s pronouncements than the rest of us were.
“As if we needed any more trouble,” Hikaru-san said darkly, and he spoke for all of us.
We were in an audience chamber of Holy Eldant Castle, the political heart of the Holy Eldant Empire. At this moment, the chamber was filled with advisors whom we, Petralka an Eldant III, had summoned by our orders. Not everyone had been able to attend in person due to the sudden nature of the summons, but those who could not be present had sent representatives who lived in the capital, which was perfectly sufficient to convene a council.
“Hmm... so we see.” We frowned at the report from our subjects.
The subject of this meeting was the warriors from another world who had recently come to our empire—the so-called Americans. Normally, when we spoke of “the other world,” we were referring to Ja-pan, but just as the Holy Eldant Empire had neighbors like Zwelberich and Bahairam, Ja-pan was not the only nation in their world. And apparently this “United States of America” was the greatest military power among them.
Quite a number of their military forces had taken up residence in our land recently; indeed, in our very capital. They comported themselves peacefully, but their very presence was a threat.
“The crew of the Nimitz we could countenance, but this...”
This had all begun when a massive warship from the other world was dropped into ours, and in Bahairam, at that. From what we had been told, this single ship was capable of annihilating not just an entire country, but perhaps half a world. It was crewed by five thousand people, a staggering number. They had been just on the cusp of an all-out battle with the forces of Bahairam when Shinichi and his friends had intervened and, with the help of an American special envoy who had arrived later via the hyperspace tunnel, convinced the crew to abandon ship, successfully diffusing the situation. And then they had moved here to Marinos.
That was well and good, as far as it went. The problems started after that.
The American envoy and his bodyguards alleged that they had too few personnel, even with the ship’s crew. Apparently, either during the fighting with Bahairam or the move to Eldant, several members of the crew had gone missing. In order to find them, America brought masses of troops into the Holy Eldant Empire, stationing them directly in Marinos.
It was clear for all to see, however, that the “missing sailors” were a pretext at best. It couldn’t conceivably be necessary to bring more than a thousand men and all their equipment to bear on the task of finding a few sailors. We had even offered to have our own army search for the missing people, but we were roundly rebuffed.
Even now, American people and weaponry continued to flood through the hyperspace tunnel. We requested the Ja-panese government to ask them to stop, but as the Ja-panese had already decided to leave our land, their response was flaccid and unhelpful.
Even we, with our comparative lack of guile, could see what the Americans were up to. They would continue to bring forces into our country in the name of saving their comrades, until they had for practical purposes established a beachhead here. They brought in “gasoleen”—food for the flying iron boxes they called “helly-copters”—and soon they were making regular trips to the allegedly abandoned Nimitz. Presumably they would soon be able to use the ship’s weaponry to effect an invasion of Eldant or Bahairam if they so wished. This stage was merely the preparation.
“But what does America want?” our advisors asked, frowning.
The answer came from the man standing beside us, Garius en Cordobal. He was our cousin and first in line for the imperial succession after us, as well as the commander-in-chief of our armies. His appearance was somewhat effeminate, such that people who met him for the first time were given to underestimating him, but he was highly capable and indeed something of a hawk.
“According to what we’ve heard from Shinichi and the others,” he said, “their interest is in the resources they believe they can find in this world, mineral, organic, and whatever else. Supposedly, what we regard only as rocks can command substantial amounts of money back in their world. What’s more, by carefully using ‘microbes’—living creatures so small they can’t be seen—the Americans believe they may gain a great deal of wealth.”
“I can hardly imagine,” one person said.
“Are these microbes something like sprites, then?” asked another.
“Perhaps, but I thought there was no magic on the other side of the tunnel.”
This was only some of the conversation inspired by Garius’s remark. Some of the advisors knew more about the other world than others, and some had some rather distorted ideas about the place. It was proving something of an obstacle to a smooth discussion. That made the entire situation precarious. But the talk wasn’t over.
“Didn’t Ja-pan want the same thing at first?”
“Yes, their Jay Ess Dee Eff arrived just like the Americans’ army.”
“True—but with a hundred people at most.”
“And they never walked around carrying weapons.”
A sigh came from a white-bearded old man standing on our other side, across from Garius. This was the prime minister of our country, and our own tutor, Zahar Lo Hardeen. He was in many ways a contrast to Garius, and ordinarily the picture of a warm elderly man, but at the moment his face was dark, his lips twisted into a rueful smile. A most unusual expression from him.
“I suppose this makes clear,” Zahar said, “just how light a hand the Ja-panese took.”
“They at least had the decency to try to hide what they were doing.”
Seeing the Americans use bald force like this, it made the delicacy of the Japanese approach seem downright quaint.
“The question is, if the Americans intend to use our nation as a base of operations, when will they begin to implement their real objectives?”
“Mm,” Garius grunted. “Knowing nothing of their strategy or tactics, it’s impossible to say...”
For the moment, the American troops had set up tents, chiefly along the fringes of our castle town, and were staying there. For the time being, they had caused no notable trouble. But who knew how long that would last?
“One wishes one could ask Shinichi and his friends for their opinion,” we said.
“I agree completely,” Garius replied.
Shinichi at least came from the same world as the Americans; he would know more about how they thought and behaved than we did. And experience had taught us that the man often had unusual ideas that would not have occurred to us.
“But... we suppose the Americans will be expecting us to consult with him.”
We had reports that American troops had already been stationed around Amutech’s headquarters—Shinichi’s mansion. They were there to keep an eye on him, we had no doubt. They wouldn’t want Shinichi to conspire with us in anything that might be disadvantageous to them. We couldn’t discount the possibility that they might even take him hostage if they felt it was necessary.
The Jay Ess Dee Eff had largely withdrawn to Ja-pan at this point, although Minori still resided with Shinichi and Hikaru as their bodyguard, and the forbidden armor had been stored at the mansion as well, just in case it might be needed. However diehard the American troops might be, however powerful their weapons, that armor would likely allow Shinichi to get out of danger. But it was well and truly a last resort.
“What should we do?” We sighed aloud. But none of our advisors had any ideas that made us feel better.
I peeked outside through a crack in the curtains. “Yep... There they are...”
It was the day after Grisham had asked us to help him. The gorgeous weather today seemed to make it easier than usual to see what was going on around the mansion. And what I saw right now was several American soldiers trying to blend in with the nearby trees. Grisham’s “security” forces. If they’d really wanted to hide, I didn’t think we ever would have seen them; the fact that they were showing themselves to us meant that they were also threatening us. It was like they were telling us, “We’re always watching you.”
I had a feeling they would keep on watching until we gave in to Grisham. In fact, it probably wouldn’t stop then. They didn’t trust us farther than they could throw us. Which I guess was maybe fair in its own way, considering they had probably heard about how I had defied the Japanese government.
But they didn’t have to trust us to believe they could use us. In fact, they needed us. They needed a guide to this world—and they needed someone to help them get the hyperspace tunnel to do what they wanted. They intended to keep me and Theresa pinned down as the keys to their objectives. It looked like whether I wanted to go back to Japan or not might be a moot point now.
The question in my mind was, how much did the Americans really know? It sounded like they’d seen all the reports Minori-san had submitted while she was here, but did they know about the things she hadn’t written in those papers? For that matter, how much had Minori-san written? Exactly what had she described, and in how much detail?
Whatever it was, it had been enough to convince the Japanese government that it was dangerous to continue interfering here, so the Americans should have been equally aware of the potential consequences. But it didn’t look like that was going to stop them from messing around in this other world—this future world. Or maybe...
Don’t tell me... Do they figure they’re going to be fine, just because this is the future? They can’t be that simplistic, can they?
Things from the past influenced the future; that was common sense. But the other way around? Maybe the Americans thought that interfering in this world might be dangerous for Eldant or Bahairam, the people on this side of the wormhole, but that Japan and America, safely back in the past, would be fine.
But we still didn’t understand what time really was. Everything we said about it was theoretical, speculative—practically fictional. Even the time tech from Theresa’s era involved a lot of unknowns, and there had never been any experiments done on temporal interference. That was the whole reason why the situation we were in had blindsided us so completely.
The possibility of a spontaneous time warp causing a massive catastrophe was always there. Theresa and her helpers might be able to figure out how to consciously control the wormhole with enough research and investigation, but we weren’t there at the moment. The portal had to be closed, at least for now. As quickly as possible.
“Urgh...” I sighed. I couldn’t believe this was happening.
Staring outside was only going to make me feel worse. I was just about to close the curtains when—
“Huh?”
I saw two familiar silhouettes approaching the house. A young man with long hair, accompanied by a stout young woman. They almost seemed made to contrast with each other...
I turned to leave the room and bumped right into Myusel.
“Shinichi-sama?” she said.
“Oh, Myusel.”
“I brought tea... er, is anything the matter?”
“Uh, let me get back to you on that,” I said. Then I had a thought. “The tea—uh, put it out in the living room instead. And set a couple more places.”
“Oh, certainly.” She didn’t ask why; she just nodded. I hurried to the front door.
I opened the door and called out to the two figures, who were arguing about something as they walked: “Loek! Romilda!”
“Shinichi-sensei!” They both smiled and came jogging up. It was the elf boy Loek Slayson and the dwarf girl Romilda Guld. Both of them were students at the school where I taught. I’d seen them nearly every day when school was in session—but this was the first time since classes had ended. I’d had so much on my mind and on my plate that I didn’t stop to worry about them. It had really only been a handful of days since we’d seen each other last, yet it felt like forever.
“What brings you here?” I asked.
“We wanted to see you, Sensei!” Romilda replied, as if to say, What else? “We haven’t seen you even once since the school closed...”
“Romilda...” I said. They’d come all this way just to see me. It sort of gave me a lump in my throat.
Being a dwarf, Romilda was short, with a round face, so she looked even younger than she was. She couldn’t have been more than five years younger than me, but she was so sweet, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking stuff like, If I had a daughter, maybe she would look like this. I felt like if I was ever invited to Romilda’s wedding, I would cry as hard as her dad.
Anyway...
“You came all this way just for that?”
“Well, this pathetic excuse for an elf wouldn’t stop getting all weepy about how it was killing him not to see Minori-sensei. So of course I got dragged along.”
“N-No one was getting all weepy!” Loek said hotly. Well, it was hardly a secret that Loek had a huge (albeit one-sided) crush on Minori-san. I could totally imagine him blubbering into Romilda’s shoulder. I smiled a little in spite of myself (sorry, Loek).
Loek, being an elf, was tall and slim, and with his flowing golden hair he could be quite handsome. His eyes and nose had an elegant aspect, and he really looked the part of the son of nobility—at least when he kept his mouth shut. When he started arguing with Romilda, though, he immediately seemed childish. He had a tendency to needle her about every little thing.
As much as the two of them bickered, though, you also hardly ever saw them apart. It warmed the heart to see them together. I guess it’s like they say: the more you fight, the closer you are. Hate is just the other side of love and all that. Maybe they even enjoyed arguing. Honestly, I kept expecting them to start dating one of these days.
“I think Minori-san might be in her room. I can probably get her to come join us down here. You came all this way, so why not have a cup of tea?” I said, motioning them to come inside. But they just looked at each other and didn’t move.
“Thank you, we appreciate that. But there’s something else.”
Something else? Another reason they’d come here? I looked at them blankly.
Suddenly someone said, “Put your hands in the air.”
I froze. I could feel something hard pressing into my back. “Wha—?”
“Hey there... It’s been a long five years,” the person behind me growled. Wait—could it be?! Was one of those titanic creatures—maybe a colossal one—attacking on us?! Was there a face peeking out from the wall around our house?! Was this a scarlet bow and arrow?! Or freedom, freedom with wings?!
Heck, even I barely understood what I was thinking. I blinked again. I’d panicked for a second there, but when I realized it was Japanese that I was hearing—well, that made things simple. And I remembered that voice.
“No way...”
Why would he be here?
I felt the thing pressed into my back move away, and I turned to see if it could possibly be who I thought it was. “Reito-san?!” I knew from his voice that it had to be him, but I was still shocked. Standing behind me was someone I owed a lot to from my visit back to Japan—Ariga Reito-san. “What are you doing here? And... dressed like that!”
The Reito-san I knew always dressed in dark shirts and pants and wore fingerless gloves, pretty much the picture of an otaku. To be honest, even I thought he took it a little far sometimes. But the guy I was seeing now... he was in a JSDF combat uniform.
I’d known that Reito-san was somehow secretly connected with the government, but at this moment he looked and felt completely different from the way I remembered him. How could he look so cool all of a sudden?! Okay, hold on...
“It’s a visitor of yours from Ja-pan!” Romilda said as I stood there, still dumbfounded.
“We ran into him on the way here, and since he didn’t know where the mansion was, we showed him!” Loek added proudly. Could it be coincidence? They had to at least have recognized his uniform.
“Here,” Reito-san said and thrust a paper bag at me.
That was when I realized he wasn’t wearing ammo pouches or a gun holster or anything else that matched his JSDF uniform, but he was carrying an Akihabara Ga**rs bag. So maybe he didn’t look as cool as I’d thought.
“You brought this all this way?” I grinned, indicating the bag.
“It’s part of my souvenir for you.”
I accepted it gratefully and looked inside. Ooh, was that the Kameda-kun figure from Shin Ga**ra?! He evolves from an amphibian into a reptile, vomiting blood-colored—er, I mean, crying blood-colored tears as he marches around town. And now he was mine, all mine!
“That’s limited-edition merch from the blu-ray release!” Reito-san exclaimed, his fist clenched. Only now did I notice he was wearing a magic interpreter ring on his finger.
“Reito-san, that’s...”
“Yep. They dropped me over here as a point person. Came along with the U.S. Marines.” Next he pulled something out of a bag he’d been holding in his other hand. “Got something else for you. Two somethings, actually. Here.”
It was a square, transparent case. Inside were some writable media discs. DVD-Rs or BD-Rs, I guessed. (Probably not CD-Rs. I mean, what century was this?)
“Wait, are those all the newest anime?!”
“Don’t tell me—the director’s cut of Shin Ga**ra?! Sensei, no fair keeping it all to yourself!”
Reito-san grinned at Loek and Romilda’s reaction. “’fraid not,” he said. He and the two kids seemed surprisingly tight. Maybe they’d become friends on the way over here. I’m sure Reito-san was supposed to play nice with the locals as part of his job, but he was also just basically a pretty sociable otaku, so he’d probably hit it off with them right away. “We’re not in the business of making illegal copies, you know!”
“NO MORE EIGA DOROBOU!” Loek and Romilda chorused, breaking into a bizarre dance.
Yep, yep. I could see I’d taught them well.
Er, anyway...
“They’re video messages. From your families.”
“Huh?” I had expected a lot of things, but not this.
“I’ve got one for you, and one for a guy named Ayasaki Hikaru. The Japanese government asked me to get them to you.”
For a second, I hesitated to take the discs—but in the end, I accepted them. “Thanks...” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
I thought about my dad. My mom. About Shizuki. About Japan. All the things I’d been trying not to think about flashed through my mind. For some reason, the two discs felt a lot heavier than that action figure.
I was sitting at my desk in my room, staring into space, when I heard a somewhat reluctant knock at my door. It was so quiet, in fact, that at first I thought I’d imagined it. Only when the knock came again a second later did I turn toward the door and say, “Come in.”
The door opened just as hesitantly as the knock. I hadn’t asked who it was because I had a pretty good idea. I didn’t have to look at my watch to know that about four hours after dinner, Myusel would come by with a bite to eat.
“Shinichi-sama...” There she was, with a cart loaded with tea and treats. “I brought you an evening snack.”
“Thanks,” I said. Myusel rolled the cart over to me and started setting things out on my desk, just like every night. In fact, I had no idea how many times we’d done this by now. At first, the cup and saucer always used to clatter—I guess Myusel had been nervous. But now the room was almost silent. The only noise was the rustling of her uniform.
Man, was it that time already? I’d stayed shut up in my room ever since dinner and my bath, so I had sort of lost track of time. Now I looked at the clock to discover it was 10:30—no wonder the mansion seemed so quiet.
“Where is everyone? Where’s Reito-san?”
“Theresa-san and Ariga-sama are both resting in the guest bedrooms. Everyone else is in their own room.”
“Huh. So am I the only one still up?”
“No, sir. Minori-sama and Hikaru-sama were still awake when I brought them their snacks. Minori-sama didn’t want hers, though. She said she would be going to bed soon. Hikaru-sama took his, but... I must say, he didn’t seem very happy.”
“Huh, okay...” I nodded, thinking of Hikaru-san. Nothing ever seemed to faze him, but maybe he just managed to keep up a calm front. Maybe he felt as mixed up inside as I did right now.
“Aren’t you going to watch it, sir?”
Myusel’s question caught me off guard. I looked up to find she had finished setting out my snack and had folded her hands in front of herself. She was looking at me... No, she was looking at the disc on my desk. “The message from your family. The one Ariga-sama brought.”
“Oh... Yeah.” I probably should have watched the video Reito-san had delivered as soon as I had a chance, but instead it was sitting on my desk, still unopened. “Was Hikaru-san watching his when you went to his room?”
Reito-san had brought a disc for him, too. Hikaru-san had seemed awfully conflicted when I gave it to him. The look on his face had really stuck with me. Partly because I’d never seen him look like that before, but also because I was sure I looked the same way.
“It didn’t seem so, sir...”
“Huh.” Maybe Hikaru-san was just as torn as I was about whether to watch the video.
To go back to Japan, or not to go back to Japan. I didn’t even know which I really wanted. If I saw videos of my family in this state of mind, the homesickness might decide things for me. For that matter, maybe this was a ploy by the Japanese government to get me to hurry up and come back. They knew I would only fight if they tried to force me—Matoba-san especially knew—so they were trying to manipulate me instead. If I saw my parents and sister weeping and begging me to come home, I had no idea what I might do. I hadn’t even watched the video yet, and just imagining seeing that sort of thing was already making my chest tight.
At this point, though, to go back home would mean saying goodbye to everything in this world forever. Myusel, Petralka, Elvia, Brooke and Cerise and their family, Garius and Zahar-san, Loren and Loek and Romilda, students like Eduardo, not to mention Amatena and Clara... All the people I’d met, all the friends I’d made—I would never see any of them again as long as I lived. And that thought made me sad. Crushingly sad. Add it to the list of things that made me hurt just thinking about them.
All this made me respect Minori-san’s guts even more. She had to have her own attachments to this world, yet as far as I knew she wasn’t agonizing the way I was about leaving. Maybe she’d already made up her mind a long time ago, or maybe she just wasn’t letting on about her internal struggle—whichever it was, as a JSDF soldier and a true adult, she had way more mental fortitude than I did.
Maybe it was as simple as this: when her superiors in Japan told her to ship out, then as a member of the JSDF, she had no choice but to obey. Me, I had supposedly come here to work, yet somewhere along the line, life here had ceased to feel like a job.
I met Myusel’s eyes. I thought I saw her lip tremble. A very slight movement, like she was about to say something, but then couldn’t.
I waited for her to speak, but she just looked back at the ground and didn’t say anything.
Argh. I was completely pathetic. I was acting like she should solve my problem. Here I was hoping she would say “Please stay here” or something—but what I was really looking for was an excuse to say, “Well, if you say so,” a reason to foist responsibility on someone else. I knew that. And that was why I couldn’t blame Myusel for not saying anything. She was staying quiet for my sake.
She was so thoughtful. She was denying her own feelings out of consideration for mine.
That only made it hurt worse.
The deep, dark silence of the night hung between us, never broken.
Holy Eldant Castle. The crowning building of the empire also took the empire’s own name: it was the residence of Her Majesty the Empress, as well as the political, economic, and cultural heart of the nation. Along with the empress, it was home to a great many important counselors and advisors, and countless priceless treasures. Needless to say, security was tight.
The castle was manned by the royal guard, as well as many simple soldiers like myself, so that there was always someone patrolling, day or night. The lights in the guardhouses never went out, and if some thief or enemy ever tried to sneak in, they would find themselves set upon by more than a hundred people before they could take two steps. And if that wasn’t enough, the barracks on the castle grounds contained five thousand troops, ready to leap up and spring into action at a moment’s notice, even in the middle of the night.
Add to all that the fact that attempting to infiltrate the castle for any reason was a serious crime. Any soldier in the building could kill an intruder with impunity. Yes, trying to enter Holy Eldant Castle without permission was tantamount to suicide. No one would be crazy or stupid enough to try it.
Or so we had assumed.
“Yawn...” That assumption was what found me letting out an involuntary yawn one night. I stole a quick glance at the man next to me, but he just grinned and nodded sympathetically. I guess he knew how I felt. It was near dawn by now, and our watch would be coming to an end. We expected our relief to show up anytime. The castle was quiet—in fact, the entire town was.
The calm lulled us into a false sense of security. No one had ever tried to break into the castle. We assumed they never would. And so, moments before my watch ended, I found my attention wandering.
I did this same thing every day. Nothing ever happened. It was peaceful, like it always was. I—
“Hngh?!”
That’s why I didn’t notice. Didn’t notice the silhouette slipping from shadow to shadow through the night; didn’t see it coming up behind me. I didn’t even know there was anyone there until they had my arms pinned.
“Wha—!”
My comrade and I both struggled, but our attackers pressed some kind of cloth to our mouths and noses. What was it? I only had a couple seconds to entertain the thought. Something prickled my nose and throat, and then I felt my consciousness growing dim.
“Hrgh...”
The cloth must have had some kind of drug on it. Or maybe this was magic. We both felt ourselves go weak in a matter of moments, until we couldn’t even cry out. Our assailants let go of our arms, but we couldn’t stand up; we just slumped to the ground.
My consciousness was fading fast. In the instant before it disappeared, I saw several dark, humanoid shapes slipping soundlessly into the castle.