Chapter Two: Lunatic

Japan Self-Defense Force First Garrison, deep in the Holy Eldant Empire. The front-line base for the JSDF in this brave new world.

This was a haven for the members of the Japanese military who had been sent on this most secret of secret assignments. The elite of the elite gathered here, waiting for the mission that would determine the fate of their country!

.................................Yeeaaaah no.

I could act as serious as I liked, but the place really wasn’t much to look at. In the corner of a plaza in the corner of a training ground in a corner of the Eldant Empire, the JSDF had constructed a temporary barracks to sleep in. They may have named it the First Garrison, but there was no Second or Third Garrison, nor did they have any intention of building any.

It was to every appearance just a slapdash temporary residence. The size of the hyperspace portal didn’t permit any really big materials, so the scale of the building stayed modest. It afforded just enough space for one JSDF platoon—fewer than thirty people—to sleep in. Until a few months ago, it had been a collection of tents.

When I consider the vast gulf between where I was living and where they were living, the stark difference between Amutech, which was at least nominally a joint venture of the Japanese and Eldant governments, and the army, where the Japanese had to fend for themselves, became apparent.

“Hey, it’s Shinichi-sama.”

“Shinichi-sama!”

When we showed up at the training ground, the Japanese officers weren’t the first to notice us and come rushing over. Instead it was the training ground’s original residents—the kids who were getting ready to go into military service. They all seemed to be in their early teens; there were plenty of humans, but more than half of them were demi-humans, including even a handful of lizardmen.

For the record, they weren’t yet proper soldiers, but because they were treated as effectively members of the military, they were wearing magic rings. Hence we were all able to communicate with each other.

From the far side of the field, the JSDF soldiers looked up and waved. They were near a collection of shock-proof resin containers, all piled up. Those containers were why we had come to the First Garrison.

“Are those the trade goods from this Ja-pan of yours?” Elvia asked with interest.

Yep: those containers were transport crates filled with stuff from Japan. The containers themselves were military equipment, with unassuming exteriors, but they were sealed tight and completely impact-resistant. They could be rained on or handled a little roughly, and the cargo inside wouldn’t get a scratch. Great stuff.

Trade had yet to start in earnest, but the JSDF already made regular trips between Japan and the Eldant Empire, and they also handled transporting goods from Japan over to this side of the wormhole. The current shipment went beyond the usual provisions; it was what you could call an experiment in the commerce we were about to commence. It wasn’t yet completely clear what effect the hyperspace tunnel had on things that were transported over here, so these containers included some items for me and Minori-san as well as members of the garrison force.

When there were a bunch of PCs or manga or light novels or anime DVDs or games to deliver, the JSDF’s armored personnel carrier would pull up at our house. When it came to things that weren’t directly connected to Amutech’s business, though—like personal items for me or Minori-san, or food that was hard to get in the Eldant Empire—they came with these weekly deliveries. I was here to pick up a few items I’d requested.

With me, incidentally, were Minori-san, Elvia, and Brooke. The latter two were to help me carry boxes. Maybe it seems unfair to force a girl to cart cargo around, but Elvia actually volunteered, on the grounds that if she didn’t get plenty of physical exercise, there was a greater chance of her doing something crazy again.

Actually, I guess she could be trying to spy, too.

“This isn’t the stuff we want to sell,” I said. “More like personal items.”

As I said, goods for Amutech’s use would be delivered directly to us. In this case, we were just sort of piggybacking on a delivery that was mainly for the soldiers.

“Shinichi-sama, Shinichi-sama!”

“Hurry up, open it!”

The children at the training ground were insistent. Apparently, they had been waiting for me eagerly. I gathered that the JSDF troops had refused to open the containers until Minori-san and I got there, and the ever-curious kids had been on tenterhooks.

“I wonder if they’ll have rice crackers this time.”

“If they have seaweed, I’d trade them for some macha-macha berries.”

The kids sounded very excited. They saw the JSDF soldiers every day, so they weren’t intimidated by them. Every once in a while I saw a soldier hand out some sweets or a Japanese snack that they had imported. It reminded me of the way the American troops were supposed to have acted toward Japanese children after World War II.

“Come on, hurry!”

We worked our way over to the containers, the children urging us on. I bowed to the troopers posted on guard over the delivery, then made a beeline for the crate with Minori-san’s and my stuff in it. It was already unlocked, so all I had to do was open it and check that everything we had asked for was inside.

I pulled open the airtight lid with its rubber gasket and saw, inside, several cardboard boxes.

“Brooke, let’s take all these out of here and set them over there.”

“Yessir.” He came slowly forward, stuck his arms into the shipping container, and emerged with boxes of various sizes. The shipping container was pretty deep, so when we had to get boxes that were piled all the way back, Brooke with his tall height and long arms made quick work of the job.

We ended up with a collection of ten or twelve cardboard boxes, some big and some small. The system was, when I thought of something I needed, I would write it down and give it to Minori-san, who would handle the rest. It meant that I didn’t necessarily get things in the order I asked for them, so I didn’t know exactly what was in the boxes. There was only one way to find out.

Hence, I pulled the packing tape off one of the boxes and started to open it.

“Maybe you could help open the others, Elvia.”

“If you’re sure,” she said, and nodded.

This was her first experience with cardboard boxes and packing tape, and she looked very interested in getting her hands on them. She happily grabbed one of the boxes and—

Riiiiip!

“H-Hey, Elvia, what are you doing?!

“Huh...?”

She looked at me blankly. At her feet was a ruined cardboard box, its contents spilling all over the ground. I only needed her to remove the tape, but she had torn the top of the box clean off.

That’s some strength...

That was a beast person for you. Guy or girl, they were strong. Especially when it was “that phase”—or maybe she misjudged her own strength.

“D-Did I do something wrong?” She sounded a little nervous.

“No, I mean—well, it’s fine.” It was just a cardboard box, after all. Not such a big deal if she destroyed it. I could just consider it a warning to be careful what I asked Elvia to handle during that time of the moon. She looked like she could crush a plastic figurine in one hand.

“I don’t mind about the box,” I said, “but there’s some fragile stuff inside, so be careful, okay?”

“Very sorry about that,” Elvia said with an uncomfortable laugh. She started to gather up the stuff scattered on the ground—but then suddenly, she froze.

“Elvia?” I said, but I didn’t get a reaction. She had gone stiff, as if something had taken her by surprise. I followed her gaze to see—

“A ball?”

A box with pictures from some anime had come open, and a golden ball had rolled partway out. It was about the size of a soccer ball. In fact, the golden color had thrown me, but when I took a closer look, I saw the pentagon pattern—it was a soccer ball.

“Huh? This looks oddly familiar...”

“Oh, that’s mine!” Minori-san said happily, sticking her hand in the air. “Oooh! I’m so glad they were able to get it!”

“What is it?”

“It’s limited-edition merchandise from Prince of Soccer FINAL!” She scooped up the ball with a victorious look on her face.

Prince of Soccer was the soccer drama for a new generation, a story about a pretty-boy soccer player with near-supernatural abilities and techniques that bordered on magic. The franchise encompassed both a manga (perfect for fujoshi) and an anime, a classic example of multi-media marketing.

But hang on. Wasn’t FINAL supposed to be the third season of the anime? I recalled the show doing at least as well as I**zuma Eleven in the annals of outrageous soccer stories. It was immensely popular, spawning not just an animated adaptation but video games and a stage musical, too. Given that it was aimed squarely at fujoshi, it fell outside my personal interests, but I knew it by reputation: its fans were notoriously rabid.

“This is a replica of the ‘golden ball’ that the hero Masato gets at the end. Okay, so they just painted a regular soccer ball gold, but as pack-ins go it’s a pretty— Huh?”

She was halfway through her sentence when she noticed that the soccer ball had disappeared from her hands. Or, not disappeared, exactly. It had been stolen at an incredible speed. But who’d done it?

“Hey, what?!”

“Elvia?”

Minori-san and I both saw Elvia, roll-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-ling around the training field with gusto, as if she were a ball herself. She must have been the one who had jumped past and taken Minori-san’s ball, and now she was clutching it to her chest, but she had been overwhelmed by her own momentum.

“What?” Minori-san said. “What the heck?”

“Yeah, seriously,” I said.

We both looked on in astonishment, as did the soldiers and the kids. Everyone at the training ground was completely taken aback, and in the blink of an eye we were all focused on the thief, Elvia. Actually, there was one person who might or might not have been surprised; I couldn’t tell. That was Brooke. But never mind that.

With a “H-Hey, give that back!” Minori-san snapped to her senses and shot off after Elvia.

The beast, however, rolled until she came to a standstill on the far edge of the training ground, where she popped to her feet and glanced back at us. Her eyes had the same berserk look they’d had when she attacked me the other day.

Welp, this was no good. She’d checked out.

For a moment, she watched Minori-san get closer and closer, and then—

“Yarf!”

With something like a dog’s bark—or was that a wolf’s?—she turned around, the golden soccer ball still in her hands, and dashed away from Minori-san.

“What in the world? Huh?” one of the JSDF troopers said to me. We were united in our total confusion and our desire to know what the heck was going on. Was her true identity as a spy coming to the surface? Had she figured it was time to stop pretending (or maybe realized she wasn’t much suited to being a spy in the first place) and decided to make a break for it? But what was she hoping to gain by stealing one soccer ball and running away?

But just like the time when she jumped on me, Elvia had those (in manga terminology) spiral eyes again. If we worked from the premise that her instincts had taken over, the question became: which instincts could possibly have motivated her to do this? I was pretty sure she wasn’t, you know, hot and bothered for a soccer ball.

“Somebody stop her!”

“H-Hey, Minori-san, what do you think you’re doing?!” I exclaimed when I saw her reaching for the suitcase she always kept with her and extracting the 9mm machine gun.

Crap, crap, crap. She might as well have spiral eyes, too!

Granted, for her it wasn’t so much about instinct as it was the frenzy of having a precious bit of rare merchandise stolen from her; that was all (?). I guess you could call that an otaku’s instincts.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!”

“Don’t do that! Hey—if you try that, you’ll just end up hitting your merchandise, won’t you?!”

“Better that than to see somebody run off with it!” She sounded as if she had just found her lover in bed with someone else; she had no interest in my eminently rational advice.

“That’s enough, Koganuma!”

Just as I was thinking things were about to really get out of hand, three soldiers rushed up to us. Two of them pinned Minori-san’s arms behind her back, while the third ran after Elvia. I couldn’t have my artist getting shot, so I joined the chase.

“Hey, you, give that back!” one of the soldiers shouted.

“If you don’t give it back, Private Freakout here is gonna let loose with that gun!” another added.

“We soldiers usually have to be really repressed, so when we finally get a chance to let it out, we don’t hold back!” said the third.

That’s some twisted logic, I thought, but notwithstanding my mental interjections, the soldier closest to Elvia took a flying leap and managed to grab onto her right arm.

“Bow-wha?!” Elvia sounded mad. She was definitely not quite sane—or more precisely, she had gone back to her animal roots. Her exclamation sounded like a dog, and dogs were descended from wolves. She juked and tried to run away, but at the exact same time, the ball popped out of her hands and fell to the ground.

It bounced in front of her; she tried to reach out and grab it, but there was still a JSDF soldier attached to her. He wasn’t an especially big guy, but he was enough to make it hard for her to move her arm.

“Oooh!”

Elvia went racing after the ball again. Wait a second—she could run with a full-grown man hanging from her elbow?!

I guess that’s a beast person for you. Just like when she had pinned me the morning before: if you wanted to try to force Elvia to do anything when the “phase” was on her, you had to realize you were taking your life in your hands.

With a certain exasperation, I grabbed Elvia’s left arm. Now she couldn’t hold the ball.

“Elvia! Elvia, come back to us!”

“Grrr!”

Elvia kicked.

Kicked the ball, that is.

Apparently realizing that she no longer had the use of her hands, she started kicking the ball to keep moving. She would give it a gentle tap with her foot to roll it a little and then run after it, then stop it again with her foot, like a game.

And all this with a soldier hanging off one arm and me hanging off the other.

Hey hey hey hey hey hey!

“Wow!” A collective expression of surprise went up from the other JSDF troopers. Partly because she was doing all this while supporting the weight of two people, but mostly because, in a world where soccer supposedly didn’t exist, she was adroitly dribbling the ball. If you didn’t find that surprising, what would ever shock you?

There was a distinct possibility that we were all witnesses to the birth of soccer in this world!

Not that it was easy for me to appreciate all of this with Elvia whipping me around.

“Aaaaaahhh! My golden ball! That’s a limited edition!” Minori-san, still restrained by her fellow soldiers, was growing more and more agitated. I could see why: the soccer ball was a bit of anime memorabilia, never intended for real use. Plenty of people would have been upset at so much as a scratch on the box, let alone to see the actual ball getting kicked around and covered with dirt.

“Elvia!”

“Yarf!” She clearly disagreed with the fact that the soldier and I were still holding onto her; she gave us both a great shake. Distracted by Minori-san, we had relaxed our grips ever so slightly, and Elvia neatly slipped her arms away from us, sending us flying to the ground a good two meters away.

“Eeowowow...”

I landed with a thud right on my behind, feeling the impact all the way to my bones. It hurt so bad I almost fainted. The JSDF guy, however, said, “You okay, kid?” and offered his hand to help me out. He must’ve jumped to his feet after he was thrown, unlike me. That’s the JSDF for you; they’re a cut above us former home security guards. Which, uh, I guess is to be expected.

Then I looked around. “Huh?” I had only been on the ground about thirty seconds or so, but the situation between Elvia and the soldiers had changed drastically.

“Hey!”

“Yarf!”

“Over here!”

“Yarf!”

............Huh?

All of a sudden one of the troopers had the ball... at his feet?

Maybe there were some soccer players in this unit, because the JSDF soldiers were dribbling the ball around, dodging Elvia as she jumped at them. In her crazed state, Elvia had extraordinary physical abilities, but it also gave her a sort of tunnel vision—it was like she couldn’t see anything but the ball. The soldiers, working together as a team, were successfully able to keep it away from her.

Elvia, however, looked perfectly happy about this. Maybe she was more into chasing the ball than actually having it. She seemed to be enjoying playing with the ball—or rather, with the troops.

“Hey, over here!”

“Yarf yarf yarf!”

“Yeah, that’s it!”

“Yarf! Yarf yarf!”

In fact, she and the soldiers all seemed to be having fun.

Wait... Wait just a second.

Was this like... like when you toss a frisbee for your dog? “Go get it, girl!” The dog doesn’t actually want the frisbee. It wants to enjoy playing with its owner.

Wait a further second!

Maybe that meant Elvia’s real goal wasn’t the golden ball. As obsessed as she was right now with chasing it around, she didn’t seem upset that she wasn’t able to get it back.

As I watched the werewolf and the soldiers play ball together, an idea came to me.

I clapped my hands. “That’s it! It’s perfect!”

Even as I was having this epiphany, however, Minori-san was wailing, “Ahhhhh! My gollldennn balllll!”

Which might have caused some serious misunderstandings if we hadn’t known what she was talking about.

“A friendly game?” Petralka looked at me quizzically.

It was several days after the ruckus at the army training grounds, and we were in the small audience chamber. I had suggested the idea of a friendly game of soccer to Her Majesty.

“Or, you know, an exhibition for the empress or something. Whatever works.”

The idea had come to me after seeing Elvia and the JSDF playing together.

We had different races who were quick to get into fights with each other, and we had sports stories that didn’t seem to quite click for people. I was starting to think we could address both problems at once.

We’ve gotten to where the term “friendly match” can sometimes seem like just an expression, but originally it really did refer to a game that was supposed to foster friendship. Through these games, teams representing different countries or groups could come to better understand each other. You know how they say people often get along best after they have their biggest fights? With sports, you don’t actually have to come to blows; you can “fight” within a framework of rules. You can put your heart and soul into it, and when everything is over, each side can admire how well the other did.

At the same time, of course, I hoped that if my audience could discover even a little of what made soccer enjoyable, then soccer manga and anime might gain the same popularity as other things I’d brought over here. If we were lucky, interest in other sports-related stuff might blossom from there. Talk about two birds with one stone.

“If you want to enjoy baseball manga, it’s best to have played some baseball,” I said. “Same with soccer. You don’t have to go pro or anything. You just need a general idea of what’s going on.”

“Hmm.” Petralka crossed her arms.

“From the prospectus you’ve submitted, it seems this ‘soccer field’ of yours is not so difficult to construct.” These words came from an old man standing beside Petralka, holding a sheaf of paper in his hand. The man had white hair, a white beard, and was thin as a twig—he looked more like a wizard than a bureaucrat.

This was Prime Minister Zahar. He was one of the most important people in this nation, Petralka’s closest advisor after Garius. When you picture an old guy advising a young ruler, it’s hard not to imagine he’s trying to be the power behind the throne, or that he wants to use her as his puppet, but Zahar really didn’t give off any sinister vibes. He seemed more like a grandfather or a kindly old butler. Incidentally, his absence from the previous audience was, I was told, because he had been in bed with a backache.

“If we are to provide Your Majesty with a special viewing area, security considerations would certainly enter into the planning. Otherwise, it’s simply a matter of leveling the ground and planting some grass.”

Planting grass seemed like it could potentially be a bigger headache than you’d think, but according to Prime Minister Zahar, once you had chosen the type of grass you wanted, it was possible to use magic to grow it into a nice green carpet. One more reminder that I wasn’t in Japan anymore.

“Hmm. A mock battle, is it? Most intriguing.”

Support for my idea came from an unexpected quarter: the knight Garius. He had his index finger and thumb at his chin in a thoughtful expression; that alone made him look so much like a picture of a knight I could almost hate him for it.

He went on, “Participants separate into two armies and attack each other’s bases. If the goal were, say, to attempt to carry an imarufe bisurupeguze into the other army’s base—this ‘soccer’ could prove quite a valuable training exercise for the royal knights.”

“That sounds awfully dangerous,” I muttered. An imarufe bisurupeguze was a kind of magical weapon similar to a bomb. It looked like a metal ball supported by a frame; when activated, the angry fire sprites inside would come flying outward and cook whoever was nearby. I knew all this because I had seen one up close during a terrorist attack, and frankly, just hearing the name again gave me shivers.

“Perhaps we needn’t look so closely for practical applications,” Petralka said soothingly. She gave Garius a wry smile. “The First Knights have not had occasion for a large-scale engagement for some time. Surely the troops are growing bored?”

“I am... most embarrassed to admit it,” Garius said, pulling a face.

It seemed that, for better and for worse, relations with neighboring countries had been at a stalemate for the past several months. Nobody was dying, so that was good, but the knights were finding themselves with a lot of free time on their hands.

When we hear the word “knights,” we’re apt to imagine noble, elegant, cultured men—but that’s mostly an image we get from fiction. These are members of the military we’re talking about, professional soldiers. In reality, many of them have seen a lot of blood, and a lot of them are pretty rough customers. This can mean that during protracted periods of peace, they effectively don’t get to let the violence out of their system. Then the discontentment and frustration build up, and the knights start ignoring their rules and taking out their unhappiness on the citizens. (You know, it seemed a little bit like Elvia’s “phase of the moon” problem that way.)

That got me thinking: Elvia might be an extreme example, but humans do get bored and restless over time. In most cases it’s not about being unable to make war, but just about not being able to exercise their bodies to the fullest; it leaves them at loose ends.

“The First Knights have been stuck here in the capital. If we let them participate, perhaps they’ll be able to relax a bit. Maybe we can even present an award for martial valor to the winner.”

“I don’t, ahem, think that will be necessary, Your Majesty,” Zahar broke in. “Awards for valor should not be bestowed too lightly.”

“We understand that. But having such a reward on offer will bring this game that much closer to actual combat. A simple way of getting the knights engaged.”

Zahar still didn’t look very pleased. “It is as you say, Your Majesty. But I’m concerned what might happen should someone other than the knights take victory...”

Well, he wasn’t wrong. Military awards could take a number of forms, but in essence they all meant that the recipient’s social status would increase. A knight would have to really distinguish himself in battle to receive a similar award. But what if it went to a commoner? Would they suddenly become a noble? In other words, handing out these prizes too readily held the potential to undermine the entire class structure of the Holy Eldant Empire. I assumed that was what he was worried about.

However...

“Elder Zahar, I’m afraid I can’t let that pass,” Garius said with a frown. “The First Knights are highly trained and proud. Obviously, I don’t know exactly what this game of soccer entails, but we will all be equal in having no experience of it. Therefore I am confident in saying that my knights shall not lose to commoners or demi-humans.”

Elder Zahar looked like he was in a bit of a pickle. “Erm, that may be so, but...”

I guessed it only made sense that Garius, who was the knights’ leader and a knight himself, would think that way. It wasn’t a baseless opinion, either. Setting aside class considerations, knights spent every day training themselves and honing their bodies. Their endurance and fundamental physical capabilities would be different from those of commoners. The playing field would be even in the sense that none of the participants had tried soccer before, but this grounding in the basics would give the knights a distinct advantage. It made a certain amount of sense to think they couldn’t lose.

I raised my hand. “In that case, I’ve got an idea.”

“Shinichi?” The others in the room, including Petralka, looked at me.

“The award doesn’t necessarily have to be military, does it?”

“Not necessarily. But an official stipend or grant of land would be even more potential trouble,” Petralka said.

Given they hadn’t actually won any wars lately, I couldn’t imagine they just had lots of extra land sitting around that they could give away, and as for a stipend—in essence, a salary increase—you wouldn’t want to risk distorting the economy.

“What if we were to sponsor the competition?” I said.

“What’s this?” Petralka asked with a frown. “Spon-sorr?” Garius and Zahar exchanged a look.

Oops. There it went again. I’d run up against the limits of magical translation.

“It means someone who hosts an event or a festival,” I explained. “They pay the money to stage the event.”

Needless to say, a sponsor is technically someone who pays to advertise at an event, but there was no need to get hung up on the dictionary definition. As long as the general meaning got across, that was enough. Honestly, I didn’t even know if the Eldant Empire had a concept of promoting one’s business.

“Like a patron, then?” Petralka said.

“Hmm, yes and no,” I replied. “But don’t sweat the details.” I glanced at my audience again. “I know you’ve been thinking along the lines of military awards and stuff, but the prize doesn’t have to be money or land or whatever, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Petralka said doubtfully. She didn’t yet seem to have grasped what I was getting at.

“Right now, only nobles and successful merchants—a fraction of all the people in the Empire—can get into our school. What if, for example, we created a special system where exceptional teams could gain admittance to study there?”

Strictly speaking, we would give each member of the winning team the right to matriculate.

As I pointed out earlier, our school was experiencing a bit of a boom among the nobility. The empress’s alleged fondness for Japanese culture caused many noble families to want to send their children to our institution. But with only two teachers (namely, myself and Minori-san), there was a limit to how many pupils we could take on.

Right now, as a matter of fact, there were more than a thousand people who wanted to get into the school. Some nobles had actually gone so far as to negotiate with students who had already gotten in, asking them to cede or trade their spot in classes. If we were to offer a seat in the classroom as a prize, it would be very popular among the nobles. Even if a commoner with no interest in Japanese culture or otaku culture won the victory, they could sell the spot for a neat purse.

“But Shinichi, did you not tell us that you had reached your limit when it came to students? Could you accept another ten or more pupils?”

Soccer teams usually have eleven players, so at the very least we would have to have eleven slots ready for the winning team. That would mean a twenty percent increase in the size of the student body when we already just about had our hands full. Petralka was right to be worried. But...

“We’d manage somehow,” I said.

Truth be told, I had been considering bringing in Myusel—and maybe even the JSDF troopers stationed here—as temporary instructors for some time now. Myusel, in particular, could already read and write simple Japanese, so she could become something very important: our first local-born teacher. Actually, Myusel and Petralka were on about the same level when it came to Japanese language, but I figured we couldn’t have the empress running lessons in our classroom. We would, however, need that new maid for this to work.

“Or...” I said, raising one finger, “maybe the prize could be some brand-new manga or other stuff from Japan.”

This idea had come to me when I saw Minori-san fussing over her ball. When you tell people that something is a limited edition, you can usually see the gleam enter their eyes. It’s normal for uncommon items to be more valuable, but it’s purely a function of rarity, not quality or how much money was spent on distributing it.

In that respect, I figured Japan and the Eldant Empire probably weren’t so different. Books weren’t common here, and if it was a brand-new publication from Japan, the value would be that much higher.

“I see.” Prime Minister Zahar was quick to get on board.

There didn’t seem to be a formal division of duties, exactly, but although both he and Garius were close to Petralka, it appeared that the knight handled military matters for the most part, while economic concerns were Zahar’s business.

“That would solve our problem,” the Prime Minister said.

If Amutech was fronting the prizes, they wouldn’t have to give away anything that might upset the balance of the carrot-and-stick system the Empire had going, and Zahar could rest easy.

“Very well,” Petralka said. “Make it so.”

After receiving the imperial blessing, I headed to the school, as was my custom after my audiences with Petralka.

“...And that’s the story,” I told the students. “We’re going to have a friendly match, a bit of a competition... Well, we haven’t settled on what to call it yet, but it’s going to happen.”

You want to share good news right away, right?

The basic rules of soccer are easier to remember than those of, say, baseball, but there’s still a lot you have to know to have a proper game. I was hoping to get the students on board right away so that they would start studying up on the rules.

All I saw in front of me, though, was a sea of blank faces.

Really, it only made sense: I’d told them there was going to be a match, but what were they supposed to do with that information? A lot of them probably didn’t even know what soccer was—or what sports were, for that matter. Well, I could introduce the concept gradually.

One person raised his hand as if on behalf of the entire group. “Sensei...” It was, of all people, the elf boy who had been fighting with the dwarf girl earlier. His name was Loek, as I recalled. I could hardly claim to remember all the students’ names and faces, but I made sure to check who this guy was when I was making a note of the fight he was involved in. It looked like he was a pretty big deal with the elves in the classroom, and his reading and writing scores in Japanese were on the high end. You might call him the “student council president” type.

“Are you saying we’re going to participate in this ‘soccer’?” Loek asked.

“That’s right.” I nodded. “Basically, our school is going to be hosting.”

Strictly speaking, it would be the General Entertainment Company Amutech that would be putting on the event, but since Amutech and the school were basically indistinguishable from a personnel perspective, there wasn’t much point in being fussy.

“But Sensei.” Someone else put their hand up—the dwarf girl who had been the other half of that fight. Romilda, was it? Apparently she was the daughter of one of the dwarf families who had contributed to the building of Holy Eldant Castle, and that made her something unusual—a dwarven noble.

“From what you’ve said, Sensei,” Romilda went on, “a soccer team is made up of eleven people, right?”

“That’s right. That’s where we get the Eleven in Inzauma... er, well, you know.”

“Yes, but there’s more than fifty students.”

“Ahem. Yes. That is a problem.” I nodded again. “One possibility is to select eleven students from the school. However, I’d like everyone to be able to take part, so I’m thinking more along the lines of having the school field four separate teams.”

The students muttered and looked around the classroom.

“That would mean one elf team, one dwarf team, and two human teams. I think, given that some people might feel they just aren’t suited to sports, or someone might get sick or injured and not be able to play, we could go with twelve to fourteen people to a team. That should leave us with four squads.”

The chatter amongst the students increased.

Really, I had wanted to have people from all the different races on each team, but on reflection I decided that wasn’t feasible right now. Just imagine elves and dwarves on the same side: there might not be any team left after a while. I was afraid we would find the friendly had gone out of our friendly match.

“So I guess that sort of makes it a three-way battle between elves, dwarves, and humans.”

The students remained confused, and I could see why. I had always been against anything that smacked of racial hostility or discrimination in my classroom, and Minori-san had backed me up on that. The students seemed to have grasped, perhaps in spite of themselves, that their teachers weren’t very happy about bickering between the races. So it was only natural if they were a little surprised to hear me talk about something like a “three-way battle” between the different races.

“Just to be clear,” I said pointedly, “this is a nice, clean competition with no mean-spiritedness. A fair fight. Forget social status, forget everything. Anyone can win. Give it everything you’ve got—it would be disrespectful not to.”

I was concerned that, in light of their differing social statuses, the elf and dwarf teams might hold back against the humans. Then our tournament wouldn’t help build friendship; it might even foster resentment.

“Remember, though, a sports game isn’t an actual fight. Punching, kicking, and violence aren’t allowed—nothing that would hurt another player. You have to obey the rules if you want to win.”

There was hardly a peep. The students appeared to be thoroughly baffled. This wasn’t the way to get buy-in. So, with a hint of desperation, I sweetened the deal:

“Oh, say, there’s one other thing. The empress herself will be watching this game. An exhibition before the throne, you might call it. I’m sure Her Majesty will notice whoever wins... and incidentally, the winning team also gets a batch of the newest merchandise from Japan.”

There was a collective intake of breath, and the students’ eyes began to shine.

“Do you mean like a 3TS or PLP?!”

“Huh?” Those were both names of handheld game systems, but I was surprised to hear them out of the blue like that.

“What games do they come with?”

“I hear you can play Monster Buster 2 on the PLP!”

“Oh, uh...”

For a second, I wasn’t sure what to say. The 3TS and the PLP didn’t currently exist in the Eldant Empire. We had a couple of PCs and a couple of game consoles at school, and the students could play games during their free time, but I didn’t think they had ever seen a portable system. So how could they be asking for them?

It had to be because devices like those were routinely depicted in manga and anime and novels and games set in modern Japan. If you looked at how the machines were shown as being used, it would be easy enough to deduce that they were video game consoles. It was just a short hop from that to the desire to actually see and use one yourself.

So you have something that they knew about, but couldn’t get their hands on; something that would allow them to play games not just at school, but at home. Sure, anyone would want that.

Wait a second, though... There had been next to no reaction to my announcement that the empress would be watching the game, but drop in something about some new Japanese stuff, and everyone went crazy. I decided it was less the students themselves than their parents who were eager to cozy up to the throne. The kids just liked otaku culture. They were less interested in the power and authority it might bring them in the future and more in how diverting it could be.

I glanced at Minori-san. “Would it be... possible... to get enough for everybody?”

As you might guess from my conversation with Matoba-san the other day, after the whole trying-to-kill-me thing, relations with the Japanese government had cooled, and it wasn’t clear yet if they would continue to ship me whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it. So far, as long as I had gone officially through Matoba-san, they had sent me my stuff, but if I suddenly asked for eleven handheld game devices and software to go with them, it was hard to imagine a positive response.

Minori-san, however, gave me a sort-of smile and said, “We’d have to check with Matoba-san, but I don’t see why not. We’re not talking about millions of yen, and for better or for worse we’re on the state’s yen. If anything, I think batteries would be the bigger problem here...”

“Oh yeah...”

Electricity was a rare and precious thing in the Holy Eldant Empire. For the time being, we were getting by on some solar panels and wind power, along with a small gasoline-powered generator. Now we were proposing bringing handheld game consoles to a place with no outlets. The school had plugs, so students who were attending every day wouldn’t have any trouble, but other people would use up the batteries sooner rather than later and be left with a fancy paperweight.

We had toyed with the idea of having mages use lightning magic to create and store electricity, but the lightning handled by wizards tended to be closely related to the natural phenomenon—not something you did halfway, or whose voltage and current could be easily modulated. Hitting a battery with a lightning bolt was as likely to incinerate it as charge it. Minori-san and Matoba-san had shut down this idea of mine on the grounds that it was too dangerous.

“But we have a little spare electric production capacity, don’t we?”

They were just handheld games, after all. If we drew down the amount of time that students were using the PCs and game machines, there would be plenty of juice.

When I saw Minori-san nod, I turned back to the students.

“Okay. If you guys win, that’s the prize.”

“All right!”

“Woo-hoooo!”

There was whooping and cheering, and one student even broke out dancing. A little jig evidently didn’t suffice, because they started swinging their arms wildly. It was like they were so full of joy they didn’t know what to do with it all. Like a kid who found out you were going to buy him exactly what he wanted for his birthday.

When I stopped and thought about it, I realized that no one in the room was older than twenty—from the Japanese perspective, they really were kids. Their celebrations struck a chord. Yes, they looked like the inhabitants of a fantasy world to me, but at bottom, it seemed like kids in this world weren’t so different from kids in mine.

“You sure this is all right?” Minori-san whispered to me as I looked out over the student body, who were now thoroughly into this.

“Am I sure what’s all right?”

“I just don’t think this is really going to help improve relations between the races.”

“Au contraire, Minori-san,” I said, waving a finger at her. “There are some things people can only learn about each other when both sides are giving their utmost for a cause! Come on, you know this! ‘Hey, not bad.’ ‘Yeah, you too.’ A grudging but friendly respect! Isn’t that what sports are all about?”

Minori-san looked at me silently, and it almost seemed as if she didn’t like what she was seeing.

“Shinichi-kun?” she sighed at last.

“Yes?”

“You don’t play a lot of sports, do you?”

That is correct. No sports.

I didn’t say anything out loud, but internally my answer was unambiguous. A home security guard doesn’t play sports by definition, right? I guess I’d had a stepladder in my room that I occasionally did stepping exercises with...

“So you don’t think you might have an... unrealistic image of what sports really are?”

“What do you mean? What’s unrealistic about my image?”

“Well, for example, this idea that all athletes are outgoing, upstanding nice-guys.”

“.............Er.”

Weren’t they?

“Or your belief that if both sides just do their best, it doesn’t matter who wins or loses.”

“...............Um.”

“You know people have been hurt and even killed over sports-related grudges, right?”

“Maybe... But...”

“Even your precious soccer. You know about hooligans and soccer riots, don’t you?”

“.....................Y-Yeah, but th-that’s the audience, not the players!” I blurted, aware of my ever-tightening expression.

It was true; my mental picture of athletics was heavily informed by the way they were depicted in manga and anime and games. I had definitely never played any sports and only rarely watched them on TV.

“W-Well anyway, I think it’s at least worth a shot!” I said forcefully. “Even if it doesn’t work out quite the way we want, I don’t think it can make things any worse than they already are.”

Plus, I mean... sports is sports. Yes, it’s a sort of battle, but a regulated one. The two teams might run straight at and maybe even straight into each other, but there were rules; it was a lot more peaceful than just fighting. How could it be a problem? If it looked like things were going to turn into a straight-out brawl, players could be shown the yellow or red cards and ejected from the game.

That, at least, was what I believed at the time.

Classes were over, and I was standing in the foyer of the school, waiting for Minori-san to get back from the bathroom.

“Shinichi-sama!”

I turned to see Elvia and Myusel just outside. Elvia was in her usual clothes, but Myusel was dressed to go out. A maid outfit is really a sort of work uniform, not something you wear outside the house. I know manga and anime often show maids in their uniforms 24/7, but that’s just because it’s convenient for the animators, or because it’s being done as a sort of shorthand.

Anyway, Myusel’s going-out clothes were no less pretty or cute than her uniform. She had on a dress with a high neckline, simple and not too revealing—but that was the charm of it.

Incidentally, it was Elvia who had called out to me. Myusel normally called me “Master” in public.

“We brought the balls!”

I saw a pile of large-ish cardboard boxes behind Elvia. Presumably, they had brought them here from the mansion by carriage.

Oh, that’s right. I almost forgot to mention: several days before—specifically, the same day as the commotion on the practice field—I had requisitioned thirty soccer balls from the Japanese government. They must have arrived today. As necessary supplies for Amutech’s work, they would have been shipped not to the JSDF garrison, but directly to our house. And then Myusel and Elvia had been considerate enough to bring them here.

I had intended to bring soccer to the school whether or not we went ahead with the competition. I had hoped that this “substitute for war,” as Minori-san called it, would help the students let off some steam and maybe reduce the frequency of trouble in the classroom.

I wasn’t trying to win the World Cup or create a J.League-worthy team, here, so we could cobble together goalposts and nets from locally available materials. Making soccer balls from scratch, though, seemed like a bit too much, so I requested some be brought here instead.

“Thanks,” I said, going over to them. “But Myusel, why are you here?” Normally, this sort of thing would be Brooke’s domain. Not that unloading air-filled globes was physically demanding...

“Brooke-san said he had something to attend to,” Myusel replied, a rare wry look on her face. “He said he was expecting... a visitor, I believe?”

“Huh...”

Seeing Myusel with that expression was strange enough, but for Brooke to have some kind of social engagement... That was even stranger. When the JSDF special forces attacked the mansion, Brooke had brought some lizardman warriors to our aid. Other than that, though, I had never seen him so much as talk with anyone outside the house. I couldn’t picture what kind of friends he might have.

“And so... Well, so, Elvia-san and I...” Myusel didn’t quite seem to know what to say. “I stood guard, and Elvia-san did all the hard work of loading and unloading the cargo by herself...”

Elvia scratched her cheek.

“Say what?” Myusel was guarding... Elvia? Why?

No sooner had the question crossed my mind than, combined with Elvia’s embarrassed gesture, I made the connection: soccer balls and her reaction thereto.

“You mean...”

“Yes, sir.” Myusel nodded. “Things didn’t go... completely smoothly at the mansion.”

“Ah,” I sighed, picturing the imbroglio at the training grounds. No doubt the arrival of a mountain of soccer balls had set Elvia off, and Myusel and Brooke had had their hands full trying to hold her back. Elvia had told me that her “phase of the moon” should end soon...

“You know,” I said, turning to Elvia, “I never asked, but what’s the deal?” I’d been so wrapped up in my plan for “friendship through soccer” that I never got a chance to question the beast girl about her behavior. “Do you like balls that much, Elvia?”

“I’m not sure it’s a question of ‘like,’ exactly,” Elvia said, cocking her head. “Most of us beast people get the ‘phase’—well, I mean, most of us wolf-types. Tiger- and bear-types, too. Not so much lizardmen. But anyway, our bodies are influenced by the waxing and waning of the moon.”

“Right. I got that much...”

“Well, we worship the moon, especially the full moon, as a god.”

“You worship the moon?”

When I thought about it, it wasn’t that surprising. Even on Earth, most mythologies deified the sun and moon. It was a sign of how important those heavenly bodies were in people’s lives. The moon, which grew more or less full depending on the day, could almost appear “alive,” and the way it affected women’s biorhythms on a monthly basis made it especially personal.

The sun and moon in this world didn’t seem so different from those in my own. The moon came out at night, and waxed and waned day by day. For that matter, the length of a year, a month, and a week all seemed to be roughly similar to Earth’s, too. I didn’t know if this world occupied a different planet or what, but the similar environment had helped foster cultures that were alike enough to understand each other. A totally different environment might have led completely alien creatures to evolve here, like in an SF drama. There might never have been any humans at all.

“Yeah, although the Eldant Empire and the kingdom of Bahairam both treat it like a sort of evil cult.”

“Really?”

Like, as if they were offering living sacrifices to their dark god, Ba’ll?

I suddenly got this image of Elvia prostrating herself in front of a production model Mob*** Suit and chanting nonsense syllables. As if.

“They say it’s disrespectful to Her Majesty,” Elvia said with a halfhearted smile.

“Ah... Now I get it.”

Even I could see the connection here. There was no separation of church and state—this was the Holy Eldant Empire, after all. It was hardly unusual for rulers like kings and emperors to proclaim to their subjects that they were the descendants of the gods, as a way of ensuring the authority of themselves and their families. The worship of some other god in a country like that wouldn’t be warmly received.

Banning unwelcome religious practices, though, was hardly enough to get rid of them. There were plenty of “hidden Christians” during the Edo period, for example. And the more basic the object of worship, the harder it would be to uproot that faith. All the more so if it were connected directly to a biological phenomenon, as it was with Elvia.

“So, when I see something that looks just like the big, round Moon-sama...”

She shivered just thinking about it. Not from fear or cold, naturally, but more like excitement. She looked like she was practically in a trance already.

“Touching something round like that... It gives me a sense of fulfillment...” She made a gesture with her hands as if caressing an invisible ball. “Especially when it’s soft and just the right size, like those balls of yours, Shinichi-sama. Like they would just be so pleasant to fondle...”

Wait... Which balls were we talking about, again? This conversation was taking a dangerously filthy turn.

Hearing the normally adorable Elvia suddenly start talking dirty-ish like that made things hard on me, too. Specifically, the lower half of me, as my mind wandered back to the sensation of her on top of me the other day.

“I’m sure there are plenty of other round objects around, right?”

When I thought about it, though, it actually wasn’t that common in daily life to encounter something the exact size and bounciness of a soccer ball. If you could hold it in the palm of your hand, it would be too small. Any bigger than that though, and anything made of stone or metal would be too hard to really play with—while on the other end of the spectrum, anything made of softer materials like paper or cloth would never survive Elvia when her “phase” was on her.

“We don’t want resentment to build up, huh,” I said, thinking back to my conversation with Petralka. Constantly trying to repress the effects of the phase of the moon would bring its own kind of problems. Next month it might prove impossible to hold the horny Elvia back...

“Right, I’ve got it,” I said. Grinning, I pulled one of the soccer balls from its box. “Elvia, I’ll lend this to you as your personal ball.”

“Wha?” she said, her eyes going wide. “Can... Can I really have it? Isn’t it too valuable for that?”

In light of the dressing-down Minori-san had given her after the incident at the training grounds, it was understandable if Elvia thought soccer balls were rare and valuable items.

“Well, I’m not saying I can give it to you. I can only let you borrow it.”

“Y-You can?!” Her eyes were shining, and there was practically drool dribbling from her mouth. It was cute, but also... a little scary.

“Play with it to your heart’s content. But Elvia—”

“Yesh?”

She sounded a little out of it; she was already staring at the ball in my hand with a laser-like focus. She was only barely retaining control of her sanity. Is a ball really that big a deal to her?

“Do you think you can manipulate it with your feet and not your hands? Like you were doing with the JSDF guys the other day?”

“Oh. Yeah, I think I can.”

“Well, that’s soccer. You play by kicking the ball with your feet.” I made a kicking motion. For just a second, Elvia stood blinking, taking in me and the ball.

Then she said, “I’ll give it a shot.”

She took the ball and kicked it. It bounced lightly along the ground; she chased after it, corralled it with her feet, and then kicked it again. It bounced, and she stopped it once more with a foot. Hey, she was pretty good. Not for the first time, I wondered if werewolves had special athletic talents.

The whole time I was thinking about this, Elvia was single-mindedly dribbling (such as it was) the ball.

Bounce. Stop.

Bounce. Stop.

Bounce. Stop.

Bounce. Stop.

Bounce—

“Hey, Elvia?”

“Um, should we stop her?” Myusel said hesitantly. Intent on her dribbling, Elvia was getting farther and farther away. The school was built on top of a gentle hill—which made sense given that the building was originally a windmill—so there was nothing especially dangerous in the immediate area. The space was large enough that if you wanted to, you could just keep walking. Or dribbling.

“Elvia! Hello, Elvia?”

There was no response. She couldn’t hear me.

It was no good. I couldn’t see her face from here, but I was pretty sure she had those crazy eyes again. I had thought if the soccer ball wasn’t golden—if it looked just a little bit less like the moon—she might be able to restrain herself a little bit, but apparently I’d been wrong.

“Let’s go get her back.” Myusel and I jogged off after Elvia, each of us grabbing one of her arms.

“Elvia! Elvia!”

“Gwah?” she blinked, breathing audibly. The phase must have been nearing its end, because she came back to herself much more easily than at the training ground. “Oh, um... Did I do it again?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yes.”

Myusel and I nodded in unison.

“Kicking the ball is all well and good,” I said, “but there’s kind of... no point. I mean, it’s not the most fun thing, right?” I pointed to two trees growing side-by-side near the school. “To play soccer, you kick the ball through a goal. Try kicking it over that way.”

Elvia gave me a long, blank look.

“What?” I asked.

“So I can’t... just kick it?”

“I mean, you can, but...” Did she really enjoy it that much?

“Working the ball with my feet is actually a lot of fun.”

I guess she did.

“Okay, well, fair enough, but you need to score goals to win at soccer.”

Elvia didn’t look very sure about that. What? What was it, had I said something wrong?

“But... If I kick it through that goal, the game is over, right?”

“Pretty much.”

Soccer was a game contested between two teams, so naturally there was a winner and a loser. And whether you won or lost, the game would be over.

“Um...” Elvia looked up at me. Yikes. The puppy-dog eyes were bad enough from Petralka or Myusel, but coming from an actual wolf girl, I was like putty in her hands. Beast-girl eyes! It was like I was discovering a whole new horizon of moe!

Okay, easy now.

“Do I really have to kick it through the goal and end the game?” she asked slowly. She sounded like a child being told to stop her favorite game and go home. She looked so... sad. Her usual carefree demeanor gave this change of mood a special poignance.

“I guess... I guess you do, yeah.” Faced with that expression, I found I couldn’t muster much conviction. I sort of wanted to tell her we didn’t have to decide a winner and a loser.

“Master?” Myusel said, watching us dubiously.

“It’s just...” I found it hard to talk. “I feel like I’m confronting the deep issues of life... Like, ‘What are winning and losing?’ or ‘Is it really that important to win?’ or ‘It hurts, the way adults are always separating us into winners and losers.’”

“Of... Of course,” Myusel said, looking thoroughly confused.

Even as we spoke, Elvia returned to dribbling the ball, and was swiftly disappearing into the distance.

What with this and that, it was twilight by the time we came back to the mansion. The sky was a deep red, and everything seemed especially poignant. Back in Japan, this was the time of day when the shops would all be playing Auld Lang Syne as they closed up. Just the thing to make your heart a little heavy, to urge you back to your home.

The feeling, if not the ambient music, was the same here in the Eldant Empire.

“It’s like... sort of lonely, you know? Like something is ending,” I murmured as I looked out the window of the passenger compartment of our carriage.

“You mean like that lullaby? Let’s go home, let’s go home, everybody, let’s go home?”

“Yeah, like that. You just want to be back in your house.”

“What’s this? Suddenly want to go back to Japan?” Minori-san, sitting across from me, smiled softly.

At the same moment, Myusel, who was beside me, said, “Master?” She was looking at me uneasily. It wasn’t so long ago that I had confessed to her that I thought it might be better if I weren’t here in the Eldant Empire, and it seemed to have left her with a persistent anxiety that one day I would just disappear back to my home country.

“I admit I wouldn’t mind a visit,” I said.

That was the truth. Although I had taken them for granted when we were all living together, after months away from them I was surprised to discover how much I missed my parents and even my smart-mouthed little sister. This despite how, when I had been a home security guard, we had gone months without really seeing each other, and I hadn’t cared.

There was just one thing...

“These days when I say ‘go home,’ I really mean to our mansion,” I said. I pointed out the window at the house, which had come into view. The house where I lived with Myusel and Minori-san and Elvia and Brooke. That was the first thing I pictured now when I heard the word “home.”

On reflection, I saw that during my time as a shut-in, I had essentially been living on my own, even though I was under the same roof as my parents and sister. And as much as I enjoyed the freedom of the “single” life, sharing a home with other people was just... nicer.

“I guess dropping in on Japan wouldn’t be a bad thing,” I said. “Given the way otaku culture changes every six months or so.”

“We still don’t really have a net connection here, do we?” Minori-san said.

Several attempts had been made to run an internet line to our alternate world, but by all accounts they hadn’t been very successful. A simple analog connection to carry voice was something we could manage, even if there was some interference, but with a high-volume digital line the signal-to-noise ratio was simply too poor, and communication slowed to a crawl.

That was how it was with current broadband standards, anyway. Microchips were supposedly highly vulnerable to electromagnetic pulses during operation; that was why (so I’d heard) weapons designed for nuclear war used vacuum tubes (which are highly EMP-resistant) instead. Point being, maybe there was too much electromagnetic interference in the hyperspace tunnel or something.

“Looking at the anime zines they send over, I feel like a bit of an Urashima Tarou.”

“I guess so.”

As we talked, Minori-san, Myusel, and I disembarked from the carriage—to find Elvia standing in front of us and panting. She had run all the way home from school.

It wasn’t some nasty hazing ritual, or a sign we weren’t friends anymore. It was just that she wanted more than anything to kick that ball, so she had decided to jog alongside the carriage, dribbling all the way.

“Wow, Elvia, you really made it,” I said.

“Hee hee!” she responded, sounding a little embarrassed. Even then, her feet continued to swat unconsciously at the soccer ball. I would have figured it was pretty challenging to keep up with a carriage, but other than a little hard breathing, Elvia seemed to be in perfect shape. I wasn’t even sure if the harshness of her breath was really from running, or because she was excited about the ball. She really seemed to love that thing. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she slept with it by her side.

I was quiet for a moment. That image of Elvia, clasping the ball in her bed, pressing it to her cheek like a lover. Her face would be flushed, her breath coming hard as she ran her tongue along its surface...

Yikes! Just picturing it is suuuper hot...

Well, if that was what it took to take the edge off the “phase of the moon” and keep her from tackling me again, so much the better. Not that I was against a little naughtiness, being a healthy teenager as I was. In fact, I considered being attacked by a beast girl to be a reward of immense value. But what with Myusel and Minori-san in the same house with us, I couldn’t help but hesitate.

“Maybe you could give that ball back eventually,” I said. “It’d be dangerous to have it rolling around the halls. And you’ve got your art to do, too.”

We had saved Elvia from being executed as a spy on the condition that she would draw for us. For her to go several days without doing any illustrating would look bad on a number of levels.

“Yeah... I know.” Elvia handed the ball back to me. If she had been a dog, I had the feeling she would have let out one of those sad little moans. Gosh, do you really like it that much? Is it, like, your friend, or... more than that?

I felt a little guilty, but I had to at least try to keep things under control here.

Just as I was having that thought, I saw something unfamiliar move at the edge of my vision.

“Huh?”

More precisely, I saw one familiar thing and one unfamiliar thing...

“Oh, Brooke-san,” Myusel said.

I focused in his direction, and it started to make sense. There was Brooke. With him was a lizardman I didn’t recognize. Given the profound physical differences between lizardmen and other humanoids, I had some doubts whether I could really differentiate one lizardman from another, but at least I knew which of them was Brooke. They were roughly the same height, but his companion’s skin color was lighter. Almost a whitish-blue.

“That must be Brooke’s visitor,” Minori-san said. Come to think of it, Myusel had said something about Brooke “meeting somebody.” He and the newcomer were a certain distance from where we stood in the entryway of the mansion. They were talking about something, but I couldn’t hear them.

I watched them questioningly. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I saw the pale lizardman touch Brooke several times, as if asking for something. Brooke, however seemed to pay the gesture no mind. He wouldn’t even look at the lizardman next to him.

Brooke might look scary, but he was actually the picture of openness and honesty. I had never seen him act so cold toward someone.

“I wonder what’s going on with him,” Myusel said anxiously. So maybe I wasn’t imagining it.

As we stood there talking, Brooke noticed us, and leaving the visitor behind, he came over at a lope.

“Welcome back, Master.”

“Oh, uh, thanks. Is it... Is it all right?”

“All right, sir...?”

“I mean, leaving your friend like that,” I said, indicating the pale lizardman.

For once, Brooke seemed lost for words, but then he said, “Ahem, it’s quite fine.” He almost sounded like he was covering. I knew there was something odd going on here. Brooke didn’t seem to be himself. The difference was subtle, and again, it could have been my imagination, but...

“Now that you’ve said hello,” I said to him, “go back to your guest.”

“No need. She was just leaving.”

“She?” I did a double-take.

Now that he mentioned it, this lizardman did seem to have an almost feminine air. She was a little bit smaller than Brooke. I just hadn’t noticed, because I had never seen a female lizardman before. Their faces looked very similar, and her body wasn’t... well, built the way you might expect of a woman.

Come to think of it, lizardmen were born from eggs and were basically reptilian, so mothers probably didn’t breast-feed their offspring. That meant there was no need for enlarged chests like human women had. In fact, I had heard that reptiles could retract their reproductive organs and that some of them had duplicate organs. That might be part of what made it so hard to tell males and females apart.

I was suddenly moved to ask, “Brooke... is she your girlfriend?”

“Ahem...” For a second, Brooke seemed lost for how to respond. “She’s my... wife.”

“Your wife?!” I practically screamed. “Brooke, you’re married?”

“Yessir.” Brooke nodded. “Though I allow it’s rather different from human marriage.”

“Oh yeah?”

“We’ve no ceremony for it, for one thing,” he said slowly. He had never been the talkative type, but now he seemed more tongue-tied than ever, as if he didn’t want to linger too long on this subject. His facial expression, though, remained as inscrutable as ever.

“Master?” he asked after a long moment. “Is that—?”

“Hm?”

He was looking down at my hand, where I was still holding the ball Elvia had returned to me.

“Oh, right. This is a soccer ball,” I said, holding it up. “And I need you for something, so your timing is perfect.”

“Me, Master?”

“This ball? You use it to play a game called soccer. And Amutech is planning to sponsor a friendly soccer competition in front of the empress herself. We’ve got teams of humans, elves, and dwarves. You know, all the different races. I was hoping you would be part of a lizardman team. You must know a lot of lizardmen, right?”

“Ahem. Well.”

There he went with those ambiguous answers again. I didn’t understand it. Something was definitely different from usual. For some reason, Brooke was staring fixedly at the soccer ball in my hand.

“Are you... ordering me to take part in this game?” he asked hesitantly.

“Huh? Uh... kind of. I mean, it’s more of a request than an order.”

I was actually a little at a loss here. I had been under the impression that Brooke would agree pretty readily. Was there some reason he didn’t want to do this?

If there was some personal reason, I didn’t want to be too nosy. Since I was his “master,” Brooke would probably answer any questions I asked whether he really wanted to or not.

“If this is your command, sir, then I accept,” Brooke said. “I will bring it to the attention of the Tribal Council.”

Come to think of it...

I had heard him talk before about the Tribal Council or the Elders or whoever. I wasn’t an expert on lizardman society, so I could only take an educated guess, but was it possible that Brooke had a certain amount of prestige among his people?

“I must excuse m’self, then,” he said. “I’ve work to do.”

“Oh... Sure.”

We watched him shuffle away. I thought he might go over to his wife, but instead he headed for the far side of the mansion, walking right by the pale lizardman like he didn’t even see her. Like she didn’t exist.

“He didn’t seem very excited, did he?”

“He was certainly taking a good look at that ball, though,” Myusel said.

That was true enough. It wasn’t a total lack of interest on his part—more like he had been staring with unusual intensity. His expression might not change, but after months of living together, we could pick up on that much.

It was then that I noticed someone else staring. It wasn’t Brooke or Elvia fixated on the soccer ball I was holding. It was the pale lizardman, the one Brooke had said was his wife. He—or rather, she—was looking straight at the ball.

“What,” I asked, “is going on here?”

Did all beast people worship the moon, or go nuts when they saw round things, or something?

“Elvia?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Do lizardmen have a moon cult, too?”

“Nah, they’re different. Werewolves, weretigers, and werebears, we worship the moon, but I’ve never heard of a lizardman doing it.”

“Huh...”

So what was going on here? If she was Brooke’s wife, then maybe I should say hello to her. But just as I was going over to her, she gave a single bow in my direction and then left at a quick clip. Almost like she was running away.

I didn’t exactly have a good feeling about this.

“This isn’t making any sense,” I said. “I wonder what’s happening.”

“You hear how lizardmen are born from eggs and are cold-blooded and stuff,” Elvia said. “It wouldn’t be surprising if they didn’t think like us.”

“Yeah, I mean, I guess so...”

Something still nagged at me as we all headed inside.

I had eaten and bathed; all that was left in my schedule was to make some short notes about the day’s events on my phone and then go to bed.

But actually, this time belonged to me and Myusel.

“Myusel,” I said, knocking on the door to the kitchen. There was no reason we had to be secretive about this—but I admit that the kind of secret-rendezvous vibe got my heart pounding.

“Master,” Myusel said as she opened the door.

Then we sat on either side of the counter in the tidy room and opened a notebook. Myusel could already read Japanese at a surprisingly high level, but writing was still difficult for her.

Some people might argue that a little bit of telepathy was enough, but I continued to help Myusel study because I so wanted to increase the number of Eldant-language “translators.” In exchange for teaching her Japanese, Myusel helped me with my Eldant, and also taught me the basics of magic.

That bit about magic, by the way, was the one thing that would cause real trouble if the Empire got wind of it. Demi-humans like Myusel weren’t supposed to teach people magic without permission. It might have been less of an issue if she were teaching a noble, but although I was largely treated like nobility here, I didn’t know how far that would extend. And even if I escaped punishment, Myusel would certainly get in trouble for having failed to get permission.

So she taught me magic, and I didn’t tell anyone.

In general, we started off with Myusel’s Japanese and then moved on to my lessons. It wasn’t very formal; we were both at a basic level, so we just sort of traded questions back and forth about things we didn’t understand or that interested us.

I took off my ring and said, “Okay, shall we get started?”

“Yes. Shin-ichi-sama,” Myusel said, removing her ring as well.

When we were in public, or anytime anyone else was around, Myusel generally referred to me as “Master.” She only called me “Shinichi-sama” when it was just the two of us. I asked her once if she wasn’t worried she might accidentally call me the wrong thing in public, but she had blushed, looked at the floor, and replied, “Truthfully, I always call you ‘Shinichi-sama’ in my heart. I just replace it with ‘Master.’ So I’m not worried.”

Yikes. That’s suuuuper moe.

Myusel was so impossibly cute I could just eat her up, but I had to restrain myself.

“Come to think of it, Myusel, are you interested at all in playing in our competition? I’m planning to put Elvia on a mixed team.”

There weren’t too many beast people in the Eldant Empire. And most of the ones there were were lizardmen. The werewolves, weretigers, and werebears—the traditional “furry beast people”—were actually more prevalent in the neighboring country of Bahairam. And practically none of those in the Eldant Empire had the means to send their kids to school. No chance, then, of creating a were-person team.

“I will... food to take... you... in boxes,” Myusel said with a smile.

“We have a word for that,” I said. “O-bentou.”

“O-bentou.” Myusel nodded happily. “O-bentou, o-bentou. I will... make.... your o-bentou, Shinichi-sama.”

“Thanks,” I said with a nod. “So you’ll be a spectator, huh? Kind of part of the cheering section?”

“What is... spec-ta-tor? And cheering sec-tion?”

“Cheering is when you encourage someone to do their best,” I said. “And a spectator is someone who watches a match or game.” I found it surprisingly hard to come up with definitions for such everyday words. “You’re sure you don’t want to participate?”

“I am bad at... winning and... losing,” she said. She went on to explain, in her halting Japanese, that she wasn’t very interested in fighting over things or determining winners and losers. She didn’t really enjoy it.

“Winning, losing,” she said. “They are angry, the losing people. And winning people... too important. They is too cool.”

It was a little tough to follow what she was saying, but the gist seemed to be that the losers would get upset and resent the winners, while the winners would turn arrogant and lord it over the losers. But Myusel didn’t know words like resent or arrogant yet, so she had tried to muddle through with the vocabulary she had.

Judging by Myusel’s personality, I figured the words she had come up with were a serious understatement. As someone with both human and elven blood, she had firsthand experience of persecution. In a contest like the one I was proposing, victory would only make her the object of ridicule, disgust, and anger, while defeat would subject her to further shame and humiliation.

“I guess I can’t blame you,” I said, putting my ring back on to signal a shift in the conversation. “Everyone’s got their own perspective on sports. I don’t especially love them myself.”

“But,” Myusel said, replacing her ring as well, “you’ll be happy if this helps people of different races get along even a little, won’t you, Master?”

“That’s right.” I poured myself some water from a carafe. “And if we can improve interracial relations, the treatment of people with mixed blood should get better, too.”

Half-bloods were considered less worthy than pure-blooded people because of a bedrock assumption that it was okay to look down on them or hate them. But if people could come to feel a genuine respect for other races, to accept other people’s best features, then life might get better.

You can see this in the plots of plenty of half-blood-centric works aimed at otaku. In them, the mixed-blood character usually experiences discrimination or persecution, but then the half-vampire or half-elf or half-demon or half-whatever turns out to be even more capable than the people around them, and readers can see how cool they are. They help otaku audiences, at least, understand that mixed blood can be pretty awesome.

And so—

“Master,” Myusel said, her eyes wide. “You don’t intend...”

“Uh, well... Ha ha ha.” I laughed to hide what I’d really been thinking. Myusel was a sharp one, all right. It looked like she’d seen through me.

Reducing interracial strife was important from the perspective of making my classroom a little more peaceful—but it was true that it might also improve the position of mixed-race people like Myusel. That wasn’t my entire goal, but it was a big part of it.

Myusel personally, of course, was good friends with Petralka now, so she wasn’t necessarily in a bad position herself. But that was all predicated on her friendship with the empress—and there were definitely nobles who didn’t approve of Her Majesty’s friendship with a half-blood servant girl. It was entirely thinkable that they would still harass her. In that sense, the best way to make sure people stopped getting hurt was to make discrimination toward or persecution of mixed-race people a social no-no.

“Master... Shinichi-sama.”

Eep. Those eyes... That ‘Shinichi, oh Shinichi!’ Stobbit, it’s sooo mooooe!

Okay, so I didn’t actually give voice to that ridiculous thought, but an otaku like me could hardly pass up at least thinking it.

Myusel stared intently at me for a moment, then said, “But, Shinichi-sama.” Her eyes flitted to the ground. “If that happens... If half-bloods can be born without stigma... wouldn’t you... I mean, wouldn’t you end up married to Elvia-san?”

“Oh, for crying out loud, I told you, that was a misunderstanding!” I exclaimed. “Anyway, we’re, like, completely different species. Can a human and a beast person even have a baby?”

Humans and elves seemed to differ externally only by the length of their ears and some subtle facial constructions, and I didn’t think a difference in magical ability would be important in this sort of context. I thought of it as no more consequential a difference than that between white people, black people, and Asian people on earth.

When it came to beast people, though... They had things humans didn’t have. Like tails and stuff.

No, wait, hang on a second. Don’t they say that human embryos actually do have tails? Isn’t the “Mongolian spot” supposed to mark where it was? I had even heard it said that human fetuses went through a process of “evolution” in their mothers’ wombs—starting out fish-like, then resembling an amphibian, a reptile, and finally a mammal. So before birth they actually did have tails, albeit small ones.

From that perspective, maybe you could actually think of humans as having tails, even if they were practically nonexistent. Why else would we have tail bones?

Wow, man... That’s deep. Straight from “who can bone?” to the mysteries of our bones.

Uh, anyway. Moving on.

“Yes... I think they can have children,” Myusel said hesitantly. Fair enough: she had been born into a world where humans, elves, and dwarves could all be classified as “humanoids.” Myusel herself was literally the living proof that humans and elves, at least, could procreate together.

“Huh. So a human and a beast person could...”

An image floated into my mind, of Elvia holding a baby with my face. I quickly shook my head. Uh-uh. No-fly zone. I’m not quite sure why, but that’s off-limits. A kid before I’m twenty? That’s too heavy.

Now that I stopped and thought about it, it was obvious: being in heat, from a biological perspective, was precisely the time when it was easiest to get pregnant. In other words, if I wasn’t careful and ended up doing it with Elvia while she was on her phase, I really could end up with a child.

Thank God we didn’t go all the way last time...! I let out a very, very long sigh.

“Shinichi-sama?”

“Oh, uh, nothing! Not one thing.”

I gave Myusel my best (slightly panicked) smile, and tried to convince myself that it really was nothing at all.