Chapter One: The Melancholy of an Empress

I, Kanou Shinichi, want to shout it from the rooftops:

Maid uniforms are good!

They are very, very good!

“Boo......”

There isn’t really a settled definition of a maid uniform. To say that it’s the uniform a maid wears might seem tautological, but it’s also completely true. Granted, we have things like sailor uniforms, which started as the outfits worn by sailors but now, at least in Japan, have practically become synonymous with female students. Do me a favor and just forget about all that.

I think the ensemble most people picture when they think of a maid is something like this: a black or dark-blue one-piece dress, a frilly apron, and maybe a headpiece (also frilly).

And that’s about right. It has a functional beauty—totally without ostentation, yet never in danger of being plain. Its very purposefulness is what makes it attractive.

“Booooooo......”

But in the modern age, and especially in Japan, maid uniforms are first and foremost cosplay.

They might come in pink or light blue, for example. The skirt might only go down to the thighs, to be combined with high socks. They might be sleeveless. They’re all about ostentation, excess, trying anything and everything.

Of course, as an otaku who prided himself on his wide-ranging tastes, I loved a good cosplay maid. It was everything I could want. Especially that absolute territory peeking out from between her socks and skirt, like a battle line between innocence and temptation... It’s art. Just the socks alone, working their way up her thighs, were enough to set my head spinning.

“Booooooooooo......”

And yet—and yet!

Does that mean I thought we should pretend as if maid uniforms intended for actual maid work don’t exist? Hardly! We can’t forget our roots—don’t you agree?!

Especially... the color. Dark tones (black being representative) make a person look thinner. Then there’s the whiteness of the apron contrasting with the dark uniform! That’s crucial! The white speaks to the innocence of a young maiden; it’s the one thing about a maid on which I absolutely refuse to compromise!

These uniforms are fundamentally different from outfits whose main appeal is how much skin they show. Praise ye the maid! Venerate her uniform! It is no mere knee-jerk reaction against sexual desire—it presents a panoply of metaphors, creating drama within all who see it. What greater degree of moe could there be?!

“Boooooooooooooooooo......!”

And so on and so forth.

“Boooooooooooooooooooooooooo......!”

Such nuanced and perceptive appraisals—

“Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo......!”

—were completely absent from my mind at that moment.

I was entirely at the mercy of the whirlwind of emotion that welled up within me. I could only lift my voice in admiration.

What a... What a... chest!!

It had just been a morning like any other, and I had just been walking down the hallway of my mansion, when suddenly I heard a door open. And when I looked over—

“Boooooooo......ooo! Boooooooooo............bs!”

It was like an orchard of peaches, a paradise.

Yes! Two rich, juicy peaches right there! Hidden from me only by a white apron and a navy dress. You could practically smell them! They practically cried, Look at us! Two great hills that strived against the fabric entrapping them, as if they might burst through it at any time. So round and perfect! O! O! They weren’t just big, but were flawless in the arc they described...

In the name of all that is good, praise these twin hills!

Sieg—OPPAI!!

“Shinichi-kun?” As I stood there shaking with gratitude, I heard a dubious voice. “What are you doing?”

“I’m worshiping,” I said, pressing my hands firmly together.

Oh thank you, thank you!

Such vast boobs were a dream come true. Boobs are love. Boobs are life.

Worship them properly, and be assured that your life will be extended by a thousand days.

“Worshiping what, exactly?”

“What else! These generous, jiggling, truly scandalous—”

That was as far as I got before, blinking—and with a great deal of effort—I succeeded in raising my eyes from her chest to her face.

“Oh, hey. It’s you, Minori-san.”

“So you didn’t even glance at my face first, huh?” the black-haired maid said in exasperation.

The woman in front of me could have passed for a teenager, but she was actually in her early twenties—a real babyface. She had nice, symmetrical features, but there was a rounded quality to her face that made her seem less beautiful than cute. The big, watery eyes lurking behind her glasses contributed to the effect.

“What? Hardly. Perish the thought. Of course I, uh—” I raised my right hand as if to emphasize my truthfulness. I decided this would be a good moment for a proper greeting. “Good morning, Minori-san.”

Her name was Koganuma Minori-san. You might say she was your archetypical warm and fuzzy type: she looked very kind and in fact was quite good at taking care of people. Her occupation, though? She was a WAC, a female member of the Japan Self-Defense Force. She was living in this mansion as my bodyguard.

We were pretty much wacky housemates!

“I didn’t recognize you at first.”

I really hadn’t. Minori-san normally wore her JSDF uniform: a shirt, tight skirt, and a necktie for fashion. An outfit that basically screamed, I’m a member of the armed forces! She sometimes changed into work clothes when there was physical labor to be done, but now that I thought about it, I had never seen Minori-san in civilian attire.

Hence, my image of Minori-san went hand-in-hand with her military uniform. For her to suddenly show up in a maid outfit—how could I not be a little Huh? Who’s that? It wasn’t like I was constantly staring at her chest all the time. Mostly.

Plus, today, Minori-san had her hair down.

Normally, she always kept her hair tied back in a bun. It was probably a lot easier to move that way, but it also meant that at a glance, it could look like she had boyishly short hair. Yet this morning, her hair fell to just below her shoulders.

Taken all together, along with her glasses, she suddenly gave the impression of a very mature woman—someone graceful and ladylike. I know they say women are masters of disguise, but she was totally different today. And on top of all of that, she was wearing a maid uniform. The picture of innocence was complete.

I guess you could say it was the moe of the unexpected.

I was so used to seeing her in her formal outfit that now her breasts just... called to me. It was like... Oh, I know. It was like when you see a normally boyish girl put on a cute dress and your heart starts pounding.

“What’s with the outfit?” I asked.

“Oh... Uh,” Minori-san replied, smiling shyly and scratching her cheek in embarrassment.

Ooh! The gesture itself seemed fresh and adorable. Even though I know those aren’t words you would normally use to praise a woman older than yourself.

“Myusel and Cerise just... you know.”

Myusel. Cerise. They were the two actual maids currently employed at our household. Originally it had just been Myusel alone, but the way things turned out, she ended up very busy, and we decided to hire a second maid. That was Cerise.

Myusel could sometimes be a little hasty; she was sort of the “clumsy girl” type. Cerise, however, wasn’t yet used to maid work—or more accurately, human life in general—and she had a tendency to mess up periodically. And if they both happened to have trouble at once, it could turn into a bit of a thing.

To take a recent example...

Mistake number one: Myusel puts all of Minori-san’s clothes in the wash at once.

Mistake number two: Cerise accidentally spills the water from a vase on Minori-san.

This clumsy combo meant Minori-san’s one set of dry clothes—the ones she was wearing—were done for. Anyway, I gathered that was what had happened. Cerise was someone’s wife, so you’d think—but forget about that.

“And I had to wear something until my clothes dried...”

“But this uniform,” I said. “It’s not Myusel’s, is it?”

“It is. The uniform she wears—I guess it’s not actually her own.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a work uniform. Provided by her employer, just like my army uniform.”

“Ah...”

Now I got it.

Although, practically speaking, this was my house, the mansion was actually the property of the Holy Eldant Empire—in other words, the state. I was just renting it from them. And to my surprise, the house came with a maid and even a gardener. So it made sense that a maid uniform would be treated as necessary equipment.

“Come to think of it, Cerise wears one with a slightly different design, doesn’t she?”

“Well, everything about her is a bit different, including her body type,” Minori-san said.

In other words, it appeared there was a range of maid outfits in different styles and sizes kept here at the mansion. Minori-san was simply wearing one of them.

“I kind of like how it’s different from Myusel’s,” I said. “Very chic.”

“It’s a little tight,” Minori-san said.

She was right: it wasn’t exactly a size too small or anything, but it did look a bit constraining. The dress buttoned all the way up to the collar, and it looked... well, heavy. Kind of “gothic” style. And in Minori-san’s case, it barely fit around her chest—the fabric seemed near to bursting. Despite how little skin she was showing, the effect was strangely erotic.

Inside, I was deeply grateful to Myusel and Cerise for making such excellent mistakes.

“I just can’t keep this skirt down,” Minori-san said, “and it really is a little too small to move comfortably. I’d like to change into something else, or maybe go get some of my laundry, even if it isn’t completely dry yet.”

And that, it seemed, was what she had been on her way to do when she had come out of her room and run smack into me.

Despite all that, though...

“You know, it really does look good on you.”

“Try not to look at my chest when you say that.”

“Pardon me very much,” I said, adjusting my gaze upward. “I mean it, though. You look good.” This was the honest truth; I meant exactly what I said. “You could get away with wearing that. You know, just around the house.”

Maybe Minori-san always wore her JSDF uniform because she was, technically, always on the job. She was supposed to be guarding me 24/7/365.

But still, maybe she could wear something more normal, even if only when she was at home.

Minori-san, however, looked away from me and said inarticulately, “Yeah, well... I don’t know about that...”

I gave her a questioning look. What was wrong? This wasn’t like her at all. Curious, I tried to look her in the face—but my eyes naturally started to wander downward to the swell below her neck. No! It’s not like that. I swear I’m not doing it on purpose—for the most part! But it’s still not like that! It’s just those boobs! Those boobs are right there...!

Bam!

I heard some kind of popping sound. Minori-san let out a voiceless sound of surprise. At the same moment, I felt pain assault my face—my eyes, in fact.

“My eyes! My eyes!”

I learned later that it was the buttons from the uniform. No longer able to withstand the strain of Minori-san’s prodigious chest, they had popped off and gone flying... straight at me, who happened to be looking directly at them.

What divine punishment! What karmic retribution!

“Sh-Shinichi-kun! Are you okay?”

“My eyes! My eyeeees!” I kept repeating, like the awful loli-con villain out of a certain nameless anime. Thankfully, Minori-san was kind enough not to intone some spell of destruction like “ba**e!”, but came to my aid instead.

“My eyes—eeyikes!”

“Wha—hey!”

As I flailed about, mad with pain, I slipped and fell—taking Minori-san with me.

Under normal circumstances, I’m sure Minori-san would have caught me. She might be a girl, but she was a heck of a lot stronger than a former home security guard like me, and had better reflexes. But now she was in an unfamiliar outfit. Plus, she was trying to cover her chest, off of which all the buttons had summarily popped. It wasn’t the most conducive situation to moving freely.

I thrust my hands out instinctively, ready for an unpleasant collision with the floor—but my face and the back of my head both got away without a pounding.

It’s... It’s so soft!

Something, some soft thing, stopped my face. Could this... Could this be? It couldn’t be! No way! No wayayayayayayayayayayay (Linguistic faculties short-circuited by excitement. Please stand by.)

“Eyow-ow...”

“Are you a-all right?”

I came back to myself and quickly opened my eyes. My vision was blurred with tears, but at least it seemed I was still able to see.

And the first thing I saw was... well, exactly what I expected.

“Whoa!”

A chest!

And because her dress was nearly popping off, Minori-san was desperately holding it down with her arm, which caused her boobs to squish in a way that made them look extra, extra cushy, as if they were exclaiming, Squeeze us! Squeeeeeze u—

No! Now was not the time!

Hold on, wait just a second. Is Minori-san not wearing...?!

Could Myusel have accidentally washed all of Minori-san’s clothes at once?

Ahhh! Myusel! Myusel! Good job! Excellent work!

Stop that! This isn’t the time to be overflowing with praise for my clumsy maid.

“Shinichi-kun?!”

“S-Sorry about that!”

I rushed to get off of Minori-san. But as if she had been waiting for that exact moment—

“M-Master?”

Her voice sounded deeply shaken.

I unconsciously froze.

Let’s review the situation Minori-san and I were in. She was lying on the floor—in a maid outfit with no buttons, not to mention her girls were running free. And then there was me, not only on top of her but with my face buried in her chest.

No matter who stumbled on us like this, their conclusion was likely to be the same: I had shoved Minori-san to the ground and was trying to do something unspeakable to her.

I was sorely tempted to just put my head back down and try to escape reality—but I knew better than that. With a great deal of effort, I turned around.

Myusel was standing there, looking as shaken as she sounded. And then there was Elvia, her eyes wide as if she was seeing something incredible.

Myusel Fourant: the half-elf girl who was a maid here.

And Elvia Harneiman: a werewolf girl and self-proclaimed wandering artist.

Both of them lived here in the mansion.

“Shinichi-sama—” Elvia’s animal ears and tail wiggled a little bit. Was she shocked or sort of... admiring? “Is it... ‘that day’?”

“It is not!” I almost screamed.

The “day” the beast girl was referring to wasn’t exactly the same as a human girl’s “day.” Instead it was a once-a-month period of being in heat. That period had caused me more than a little trouble not long ago. Was she implying that beast-person males experienced it as well? It seemed like that would make things awfully chaotic...

Okay, forget about that.

Myusel looked away from us as if to say she couldn’t stand to see any more, then spun on her heel and rushed out into the hallway.

“M-Myusel, wait!” I reached out after her rapidly vanishing form. “This is all a mistake! A mistaaaake!”

She turned a corner somewhere down the hallway and disappeared. I watched her go with a sinking feeling, while in a corner of my mind my internal monologue observed, with surprising objectivity, that I had said something very similar not that long ago.

My name is Kanou Shinichi. My dad is a light novel author and my mom is an ero-game writer-illustrator, so you could say I have two sets of otaku genes. About a year after I switched classes from average high-schooler to home security guard on account of being shot down when I confessed my love for my childhood friend, my parents ran out of patience and told me that I could either get back to school, get a job, or get the hell out of their house. Cornered, I started looking for work, and the work I found—well, let’s say it wasn’t the usual.

Specifically, I became the general manager of a company operating in another world.

If I tried to explain it like that to most people, they would probably wonder what I was talking about—and if I was in my right mind. But I swear I’m not insane. I think.

That’s right: I’m in another world. A genuine isekai. The sort of place I always thought only existed in SF and fantasy novels.

What’s the story? Well, at Aokigahara (a.k.a. Mt. Fuji’s “Sea of Trees”), the place that’s famous for suicides, they found this hole. We didn’t understand even the most basic things about it: how it got there or how long it had been there. No one even really knew what it was.

The only thing we figured out (so I’m told) was that the hole was some sort of hyperspace tunnel leading to a world entirely different from Earth.

You could say this was good luck, of a sort. I mean, what if it had led to outer space, or straight to the Earth’s mantle, or into the Schwarzchild radius of a black hole? The day the hyperspace tunnel opened could have been the last day Earth existed.

Anyway...

To make a long story short, the Japanese government secretly investigated the hole, and they discovered beings much like themselves on the other side. That is to say, there were humans here who had organized themselves into nations.

The government higher-ups may (or may not) have thought that fellow humans would be easier to deal with than outright aliens, but in any event, they sent a small cadre of researchers and planners to open intercourse with this world under a veil of utmost secrecy. Eventually, Japan succeeded in establishing a certain level of diplomacy. All of this without any foreign country or even most people in Japan ever finding out.

Of course, the government had good reason to keep this discovery secret.

We were talking about another world, here. One that, investigation revealed, was at a technological level roughly equivalent to Middle Ages Europe in our own world.

Did that mean that all the resources we were worried about running out of on “our side” might be found there? Did it mean there might be untouched precious minerals or biological resources of kinds we had never even encountered? Maybe it even meant that in the future, this newly discovered world would be a source of labor and a new market.

If any of these very attractive possibilities proved true, Japan wanted an exclusive claim on them, and that meant keeping the hole, and the world on the other side of it, absolutely secret.

As it happened, the very first expected hurdle—communication—was quickly overcome when it turned out the unique magic here allowed people to understand each other well enough to get along.

The problems started after that.

They had managed to make first contact, and even to communicate successfully. But they just couldn’t seem to get any further than that.

Actually... that sounds like a lot of romantic relationships I’ve heard about...

Japan just couldn’t find a way to increase its Affinity with the new country it had discovered, the Holy Eldant Empire.

After all—not to be repetitive, but this was a nation in a completely different world that they were dealing with. It had a history and culture completely distinct from Japan’s, which meant the things its people were interested in were different too.

Differing systems of currency made economic exchange hard, so it wasn’t really possible just to buy their interest. Japan could offer goods in kind instead, but if they weren’t careful, their new friends might realize Japan was just after fresh resources. Above all, the hyperspace tunnel wasn’t big enough to allow for the transportation of large volumes of material—not to mention that pouring too much down the hole might attract the attention of foreign nations.

So it had to be something you could carry across.

Something harmless.

And, ideally, cheap.

Hey! What about traditional Japanese craft products, then?

It turned out they didn’t make much sense to the Eldant Empire, and weren’t well received.

At the end of its rope, Japan tried everything it could think of. And wouldn’t you know it—the thing that got the best response from the Eldant people was Japanese subculture entertainment. In other words, otaku stuff like manga and anime.

Fair enough. The Japanese government resolved to conduct diplomacy with the Empire via a trade policy focused on otaku culture. The first step in this plan was to establish Amutech, General Entertainment Company, in this alternate world. It was actually funded jointly by Japan and the Eldant government.

That was all well and good, but exactly what works should they bring over here?

The Japanese government was bereft of anyone with the sense to judge such a thing. Theoretically, there were a few measurements they could have used, but when the government gets involved with subculture, bad things tend to happen. They just think too bureaucratically, or maybe it’s the top-down approach to something the brass considers beneath them. Whatever the case, even the government officials seemed to realize they were asking for trouble.

It became their mission to find someone with the subjective sense to make these calls. It would be best if it were someone who was readily expendable if things went south. And by a series of coincidences, the person they chose—by which I mean the person they forcibly dragged off to the Holy Eldant Empire—was me, now former home security guard Kanou Shinichi.

I liked us all to eat together as much as possible.

I guess it wasn’t exactly what you would call a corporate policy of Amutech, but it was a practice I liked to encourage in the mansion I was renting. It was my call; apparently, it wasn’t typical in the Eldant Empire, but that didn’t bother me.

“Bon appétit!” I clapped my hands together and then reached out for my knife and fork. Everyone else, all five of them, took my words as the signal to start eating.

By the way, although I liked us to eat together, the food we were eating varied from person to person. This had less to do with “favorite foods” and more to do with racial differences. A quick census of our breakfast table showed we had people of four different races eating together—human, half-elf, lizardman, and werewolf. And biologically, each species was a little bit different.

As you might imagine, this made food preparation a pretty serious task.

“Do you like it, Master?” Myusel asked, cocking her head like a sparrow. She sat beside me, her flaxen hair tied into a ponytail. She was wearing a maid outfit—as that suggested, she worked in this mansion as a maid. In fact, it was usually her job to make breakfast. It had to be a lot of trouble to prepare meals that were to each person’s taste, and a little different each day, but she did an exemplary job and never complained.

“It’s delicious.” I smiled, wolfing down my food.

To top it all off, Myusel was an excellent cook. This was the first time I had eaten a girl’s homemade cooking (I have a younger sister, incidentally, but Shizuki never once showed any interest in anything resembling cooking), so it’s entirely possible my perceptions were colored by the moe-ness of it, but Minori-san and Elvia seemed to agree that the food was good, so it probably really was.

“That’s wonderful,” Myusel said, a happy grin spreading over her face.

Ahhhh!

An energetic and beautiful young woman whose joy and sorrow followed from my every word! And she was a maid and a half-elf! What a dramatic overachiever! We had been living together for more than six months now, but every single day at breakfast I thought I might die from the moe.

I had been worried that the whole thing with Minori-san earlier might have left a bad taste in Myusel’s mouth, but it didn’t look like she was remotely worried about it. Still, I would have to be sure to clear things up with her later, just because.

It was a relief, though.

“Um...” But it was Myusel who spoke up first, a cloud passing over her face. “I’m... very sorry about earlier.”

“Huh?”

I froze. When she said earlier, she could only mean the ruckus in the hallway. But what did she have to apologize for?

“I was just... so surprised, I left without asking for permission...”

“Huh? Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re fine!” I said quickly. “Just, don’t get the wrong idea. Please?”

“The... The wrong idea?” Myusel said hesitantly.

“I mean, Minori-san and I aren’t— we weren’t—”

“I think he’s trying to say they weren’t copulating,” interjected the beast girl on the other side of me. Had her comment just saved my skin or doomed me?

The beast girl was Elvia Harneiman. As I’ve mentioned, she was a demi-human with animal ears and a tail. Pretty much literally a werewolf.

She claimed to be an itinerant artist, but it turned out she was actually a spy sent to the Eldant Empire by the neighboring kingdom of Bahairam. Normally, given that this was a Middle Ages-type world where the main thing people wanted to know about human rights was whether they were edible, the punishment for spying would be immediate execution. But... well, let’s just say it’s complicated, but Elvia was now under my care as our resident illustrator.

So now you’re up to speed.

Elvia was generally affable, a typical cute beast girl, and that was all well and good—but she could also be a little rough around the edges. Sometimes I wished she would be just a little more sensitive to the mood in a room when she spoke.

“C-C-Copula—!”

There, see? Myusel was left speechless again. Her skin, white as a pearl, had gone red with embarrassment, and although it was adorable, Elvia’s unfortunate choice of words threatened to make things much more awkward than they needed to be.

“Elvia...”

“Aw, I was a li’l surprised at first, too,” she said, and then she laughed. Unlike Myusel, she had stuck around, and as a result had a pretty good idea of what had actually happened.

“What is it you’re talking about?”

The question came from my left, where Brooke was seated. Brooke Darwin. He was a servant—really, the groundskeeper—at this house, and he was a lizardman.

As a demi-human, he was technically in the same category as Elvia, but whereas werewolves looked a lot like people who just happen to have fuzzy ears and tails, lizardmen were exactly the opposite. They may have had a basically humanoid shape, but mostly they looked (you guessed it) like lizards. Conical facial structure, big jaws, scaly reptilian skin. The sort of creature kids might imagine hiding under their beds.

Naturally, lizardman expressions were almost unreadable, and their speech always sounded oddly slow, so it could be hard to guess what they were thinking.

Nonetheless, at heart Brooke was a really decent guy, and I knew well that despite being a reptile he could act very “hot-blooded.” Recently he had begun to open up a little, and would even join the breakfast conversation from time to time.

“Er, actually—”

“This morning Shinichi-sama jumped Minori-sama in the hallway!”

“Elvia!!”

How could she sound so pleased with herself when she was making an announcement practically calculated to cause misunderstanding?

“I told you, it was all a mistake!” I said in a panic. “It just so happened that I was staring at Minori-san’s chest and her buttons—wait! Let me start that again!”

“Uh-huh...” Brooke nodded his long head slightly. For better or for worse, I couldn’t tell if it was a gesture of surprise or exasperation.

“It’s a mistake, I swear,” I said. “I mean, yes, I did push her over, that’s true, I can’t deny it, but—an accident! It was an accident!”

I was desperate to get the words out of my mouth. Somehow being stared at by Brooke’s lidless eyes made me blather; it was as though his gaze made even the slightest shred of guilt on my conscience multiply until it became impossible to bear. I mean, not that I had a guilty conscience! Not at all!

Finally, Brooke nodded. “I understand, Master. You want Minori-san t’ bear your eggs.”

“I really don’t think you understand, Brooke!”

Actually, I had been under the impression that Brooke and I had managed to connect with each other to a certain extent—but maybe I had been imagining things.

“Oh...”

“He’s right, Brooke,” said our other maid from across the table. “Humans don’t lay eggs.”

Nobody spoke. She was right, as far as it went.

Now, I use the word “maid,” but I doubt you’re imagining exactly who was sitting at my table. For starters, maids don’t usually have scales.

Yes: sitting across from Brooke was another lizardman.

Cerise Darwin, Brooke’s wife.

Being female, she was physically smaller than Brooke, but she was still a lizardman. Let’s just say a maid outfit didn’t look quite right on her. Not only was her body the wrong shape for it, but the intimidating cast of her face made the uniform seem altogether inappropriate. (I understand this may not sound like the politest thing to say about Cerise.)

“I see. Yes, you’re right.”

“Indeed,” Cerise said, and she and Brooke nodded at each other. “By the way, Brooke, would you like another apple?”

“I wouldn’t mind a bit.”

“Here you are.”

Gosh, it’s like they’re off in their own little world.

Their faces looked about as distinguishable to me as two statues, but they projected a bubble of genuine friendship with a diameter of about two meters. I was certainly glad that Brooke and his wife seemed to be happy together, but the whole “Look at us get along!” thing was just... you know.

...Who’s jealous? I’m not jealous. I’m definitely not thinking: You can take your dumb, fulfilled life and—and blow it up! Blow it all up! I am not thinking that even for a second. Lonely? The word isn’t even in my vocabulary.

“Look, that’s not the point,” I said, waving my hands. “The whole idea that I shoved her over is a mistake! When I fell over, I just happened to take her with me! Honest! Minori-san? Come on, back me up!” I turned to my alleged partner in crime, looking for support.

Incidentally, Minori-san had changed back into her usual outfit. It was still a bit damp, but it would hardly do for her to keep destroying Myusel’s uniforms.

I had to admit, it was a real shame. She had looked awfully good in that outfit.

“How about you take a deep breath and calm down?” Minori-san said with a grin. “When you protest too much, you start to look pretty suspicious.”

“Erk... But...”

“Oh, but Minori-sama,” Elvia said eagerly, “it may’ve been an accident, but you didn’t look too unhappy.”

“I guess not,” Minori-san said with a slight smile, the picture of composure. “That’s the first time anything like that has ever happened to me, and it was definitely a surprise. But it sort of helped me understand how it feels to ‘bottom,’ and that’s important knowledge for someone like me. But yes, it was an accident, and no one has to worry about it.”

Phew. How adult.

Wait, though... What was that about bottoming?

I had pretty much straight-up sexually harassed her, and she was going to pass it off by looking at it like that? The fujoshi mind was opaque to me............... Hey.

Something suddenly occurred to me.

“Ahem. Minori-san?”

“Yes?”

“Do you mean you don’t have a boyfriend?”

“I’m a boyfriendless wonder of an old maid of a spinster, yes. What about it?”

“Er, nothing.” She was awfully forthright about it. “I’m just surprised. You seem like someone who’d be really popular.”

“Maybe you could not stare at my chest while you say that.”

“Sorry.”

But that’s where the boobs are!

“I just mean, you must have met lots of nice guys, notwithstanding home security guards like me.”

“Hrmm... Well...”

I don’t mean to make this entirely about her chest. Minori-san had a really pretty face, too. Kind of childish and cute. When combined with her modest, restrained expressions, it was really moe. It gave the sense that being with her would be really... comfortable, I guess. Healing. I had to think there were plenty of guys who would go for someone like that.

I knew there were lots more men than women in the military, too, so I assumed that if anything, Minori-san would be flooded with suitors, so many that it would actually become a problem. Maybe she just had really high standards or something?

“Minori-san, is your type—”

“Oh, say, Shinichi-kun,” Minori-san jumped in, ruthlessly changing the subject. Hey—was she dodging me? “You’re going to the castle today, aren’t you?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah, I think so...”

“Cool. Well, I’ve got to go get ready, then. Breakfast was great! Sorry to eat and run.”

She stopped eating and stood up. I could see she still had some food left. Not enough to warrant a “How can you waste that?” but pretty unusual for someone who was normally as thorough cleaning her plate as Minori-san was.

Maybe she really was trying to avoid that question, I thought distantly as I watched her leave the room.

Then again, she seemed to have some interest in love as a topic of discussion—or at least, she wasn’t above teasing me and Myusel or Elvia. That meant the subject wasn’t completely off-limits.

Was she just uncomfortable being the center of attention when it came to that? Could she be one of those girls who looked all mature on the outside, but way deep-down was an inexperienced, shy maiden?

Oh, man. That is wicked moe.

As I sat there thinking my usual ridiculous thoughts, I decided for the time being to focus on the breakfast in front of me.

The Holy Eldant Empire.

As I explained earlier, this other-world nation was the entity with which I was to do commerce.

The Eldant Empire, it seemed, was a large country even by the standards of this world, which was rife with multiethnic and military states. As the name suggested, it was run under an imperial system, meaning power was located with an emperor or empress.

In this case, it was the latter—specifically, Petralka an Eldant III, the current head of state.

I know the words Imperial Majesty can conjure up images of a beard-stroking old man, but Petralka was as far from that picture as you could get. She was young—in fact, she practically looked like a little girl. Her actual age wasn’t so different from mine, but her youthful appearance rendered her adorable; she looked like she could just put on a little backpack and trundle off to school. Yet she was the ruler of this nation.

She wasn’t just cute, either. She was also genuinely beautiful, startlingly so. Her long silver hair and big, green eyes evoked jewels, while her neat facial features were the picture of well-born class. Truly, her beauty exemplified what it means to be of noble birth. The tiaras and dresses she was frequently outfitted in never appeared to “wear her”; in fact, on her, they looked completely natural.

You could almost say she looked like one of those big antique dolls—it was almost hard to believe she breathed the same air and ate the same food as the rest of humanity. Sometimes you hear it said that an emperor isn’t defiled by natural human bodily functions. With Petralka, you could almost believe it.

Anyway—

It was part of my job to go see that empress once every three days. Amutech, the general entertainment company that I worked for, was a joint venture between Japan and the Holy Eldant Empire, so Petralka was, in a sense, my boss. I had an obligation to let her know how business was going. Then again, to be honest, I probably would have gone to see her periodically even without that duty. Professional relationship aside, I considered Petralka a friend.

“We’re here,” Minori-san said, glancing out the window.

We thanked our coachman and climbed out of the winged carriage. (That’s what they called the form of transportation we were in: a carriage pulled not by a horse, but by a horse-sized, bipedal, flightless bird.)

For the record, Myusel had come with me and Minori-san as well. Despite the yawning chasm in their social statuses, an unusual series of events had led to Myusel and Petralka becoming friends. Plus, after our meeting with Her Majesty, I would be presenting Myusel as a teacher at the school where we taught Japanese otaku culture—so it made sense for her to come with us.

Myusel’s Japanese was now good enough that she could teach at our school, in part because we were living together. In light of her upcoming employment, I had been having her visit the place more and more often.

“Man... No matter how many times I see it, I never get used to it,” I said.

“I know what you mean.” Minori-san nodded.

Towering before us was the empress’s official residence—Eldant’s imperial castle. We frequently describe huge things as “mountainous,” but with Eldant Castle, that was no exaggeration. It wasn’t even a metaphor. It was literally true. The castle had been created by hollowing out a mountain. It was so big that when you stood at the gate, you couldn’t see the entire building.

It was less a piece of architecture than a geographical feature.

We have incredible feats of construction on Earth, too; stuff like the Great Wall of China. But let’s be honest: it may be really long, but it’s still just a wall. Pretty much nothing more than a line. This castle, though, was a huge hunk of material. It was overwhelming just to look at it. You could practically see the sound effect in the background: dooon (loooooom).

“Shall we?”

We stopped gazing up at the castle spires and proceeded through the gate.

Normally, this was where we would exchange a glance and a nod with the knights who had been posted as guards.

But today, the usual spots to the left and right of the gate were empty.

“Huh? Are they on vacation?”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Minori-san said.

“Yeah... You’re probably right.”

But then where had they gone?

I had let the castle know ahead of time that I was coming, and by now I was a familiar face there, so it shouldn’t have really been a problem for me just to go on inside—but just wandering in didn’t feel quite right. On the off chance there were any problems, blame would fall not only on me, but on the guards. If I made a wrong move, I could get us all in life-changing trouble.

“So what do we do?” I said.

“Hmmm...” Even Minori-san didn’t seem quite able to come to a decision.

The three of us were standing there by the gate when Myusel called out, “Master.”

I looked where she was pointing and saw a single figure coming towards us. Someone I recognized. I waved at him.

“Prime Minister Zahar!”

The prime minister was one of Petralka’s closest advisors. He was a thin old man with white hair and a white beard. In addition to advising the empress on politics and economics, he appeared to be responsible for educational matters, too. In video games and manga, the prime minister is all too often depicted as secretly evil, a villain trying to control the government for his own ends—but Zahar came across almost like a doting butler looking after a young mistress.

“Gracious, do pardon me,” Prime Minister Zahar said. “I’m very sorry to have kept you waiting.” He bowed his head.

“Oh, not at all,” I said, waving his apology away.

Apparently, we just had bad timing. I was about to set off in the direction of the audience chamber when Prime Minister Zahar called, “Shinichi-dono. Please wait. I deeply regret your having to come all the way here, but... for today, I must ask you to go back home.”

“Sorry...?” I said dumbly. I definitely hadn’t expected this. “Is—Is something wrong?”

“Well...” Zahar looked away from me. It looked like there was something that wasn’t easy for him to say.

At that moment, I saw two knights coming at a run from the opposite direction of the prime minister. And that wasn’t all. I saw another two knights coming from yet another direction.

Everyone looked like they were in a real hurry, not to say panicked.

The four knights came to a halt not far from us.

“Have you found her?” Prime Minister Zahar demanded. But the knights all shook their heads. “Then keep looking!”

“Yes, sir!” they responded, and rushed back off in the directions they had come.

What in the world was going on? It looked like things were awfully busy around here.

After a very long pause, Zahar heaved a sigh and said, “As a matter of fact...” He seemed to have decided that it was no use hiding it. Keeping secrets would only invite wild speculation.

“Her Majesty the Empress has been missing since this morning,” he said.

“Excuse me? Missing?”

“When a serving girl entered the royal bedchamber to bring breakfast this morning, she couldn’t find Her Majesty anywhere. At the moment, we have every single person in the castle looking for her.”

“There’s no chance she was carried off by someone, is there?” Minori-san asked, her expression hard.

It was a reasonable question. Petralka had once been held hostage by a rebel group. She had somehow managed to emerge unscathed, but if things had gone even slightly differently, she might have been killed. In any event, anyone as important as her was likely to be the target of would-be troublemakers.

But the Prime Minister said confidently, “No, I’m sure that’s not the case. There were indications that she ran away of her own free will.”

“Wh-What kind of ‘indications’?”

I was picturing a braided rope of sheets and curtains hanging out the window. It certainly happened often enough in manga and anime, but I wasn’t sure it was possible in real life.

“Can’t you use magic to find her?” Minori-san asked.

That’s right: in this country—indeed, in this world—magic was real, and very convenient. I mean, it could help bridge two languages and civilizations via telepathy with nothing more than a ring (or more accurately, two rings). It seemed like it had to be easy enough to find one missing girl.

Zahar, however, shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “Her Majesty always has magic-resistant diagrams on her person...”

“Oh.” We all looked at each other.

This went back to that thing I mentioned: when the empress was captured by rebels. Minori-san, Myusel, and I were all there—and we had all seen a burst of offensive magic used by one of the terrorists simply bounce off Petralka.

Petralka herself told us then that given the constant danger of assassination, she had magical diagrams that would reflect or negate any spells that targeted her. I certainly didn’t know the details, but apparently it wouldn’t just nullify attack magic, but spells intended to locate her as well.

“And what’s more,” the Prime Minister went on, mopping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief, “if we were to search magically on too large a scale, there’s always the chance that people might notice.”

Granted differences in size and scope, people of the Holy Eldant Empire were generally acquainted with magic. There weren’t a lot of what you would call wizards, but magical items or tools were a fairly common sight around town. The rings we used to translate each other’s languages were an example.

Maybe he meant that a large-scale magical search would have an effect on magical items in the vicinity. Did magic work like electromagnetism? Could magical items interfere with each other like electronic ones sometimes did?

“We don’t want this to get out of hand,” Zahar said. “If it became generally known that the empress was missing—well, I hardly want to think about the panic that would result.”

That made good sense. He sure wasn’t wrong.

For the average commoner, Her Imperial Majesty was almost a god. News of her disappearance could cause chaos—or inspire opportunists to try to find her before the royal knights did.

That was why Prime Minister Zahar felt he had to exhaust every other possible way of searching the castle. Now that I looked closer, I realized the old man was breathing hard, and there was sweat beading on his face. He had probably been running around, too, before he ran into us.

Come to think of it, hadn’t I heard not long before that he had been in bed with hip pain? Was it okay for him to be dashing around the castle?

“Um—would you like us to help search?” I asked.

Zahar looked at me in surprise. “Hrm? No, that won’t be—”

Almost simultaneously, Minori-san said, “Shinichi-kun?” in an exasperated voice.

“Think about it,” I said. “If I don’t see Petralka, then what was the point of coming here? We’ve still got time before classes start. Every little bit helps, right?”

Truth be told, it just hurt me to see this old man rushing around, wearing himself out. I was basically trying to say, “I’ll search instead, so you go and get some rest.”

“And what if Petralka is hiding somewhere?” The sweet face of Her Majesty passed through my mind. “I just thought... Maybe there’s a chance she’d come out for me.”

I had no proof. But everyone else in this castle was a servant or subject of Petralka’s. I stood outside that system, and sometimes that caused her to be surprisingly open with me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I thought... she might be desperate to hide from her servants, who were searching for “Her Majesty.” But if it were me, just looking for “Petralka,” maybe she could relax.

“Hmm...” An anxious look passed over Prime Minister Zahar’s face. Finally, though, he said, “Well... If you would be so kind.”

“You bet,” I said, and smiled.

So that was what led to me combing through Eldant Castle on the hunt for Petralka.

I decided to have Myusel and Minori-san go ahead to the school. With them there, at least classes could start if need be. If and when I found Petralka, I would have a winged carriage bring me to school.

“Right, then.” Myusel and Minori-san were on their way, and I had left Prime Minister Zahar. I crossed my arms. “If I were Petralka, where would I go? Where would I hide?”

What would I do if I were in her position?

Or for that matter, if I just wanted to get out of here for a while?

Well, whatever the case, I would probably start by trying to escape the castle. But in order to do that, I would have to pass through several exterior gates. There was probably no other way to get outside, meaning anyone who just tried to walk away was certain to be spotted by one of knights on guard.

“This is S**ke,” I muttered, in imitation of a certain game which shall remain nameless.

That particular game had a lot to do with sneaking in and out of places, evading enemy security in the process. You had to slip by during the instant their backs were turned, or hide under a cardboard box to move around, or go from shadow to shadow. It was really a lot of fun.

Come to think of it, I was pretty sure Petralka had been playing the cell phone version of that game. And maybe that meant...

“Hmm...”

I gradually worked my way around toward the vicinity of the castle gate. I was especially interested in any shadowed areas that would provide a vantage on the gate.

“Petralkaaa?”

I stepped off the flagstone path that connected the inner and outer gates, following the castle wall. The area was pretty mossy, and there were shrubs here and there. This was just inside the gates, but it was effectively a garden.

“Petralka? It’s me, Shinichi!”

No response. Was I too late? Could she have gone outside already? There was neither circumstantial evidence nor eyewitness testimony to suggest that she had already left the castle when I started searching, but you never knew...

I walked around for a few minutes with those thoughts swirling in my mind.

“Oh.”

Close to the wall, near an especially big bush, I spotted what I was looking for: a large wooden chest. Large enough that a small-ish girl could fit inside.

I meandered up to the box and turned around to look toward the castle gate. Yup. A nice, clear view. Perfect line of sight to the guards at the outer gate.

I was pretty sure I’d nailed it.

“Heh, heh, heh!” I said with a grin, starting to open the wooden chest. I raised my voice just a little, with a note of triumph, like when you find the ‘it’ in hide and seek. “I found you, Petralka!”

I couldn’t wait to see the shock on Petralka’s face when she realized I’d found her.

But...

“Huh?”

My eyes went wide. Petralka was there, no question. But the lovely young empress just stared at the ground, not so much as glancing in my direction. In fact, she was hugging her knees, curled up into a little ball. She didn’t move a muscle.

“Petralka...-san?” I hadn’t really meant to add the honorific, but I couldn’t help myself. I crouched down and looked at her profile.

My sweet little empress... was asleep.

She wasn’t wearing her usual flashy imperial garb, but a simple one-piece dress (a negligée?) that looked like it was probably for sleeping. Her head was resting on her knees, and she was breathing softly and evenly.

Jeez, now that’s moe.

Finding her curled up asleep like some adorable little animal—it grabbed my heartstrings and wouldn’t let go.

For a moment I could have reflexively carted the wooden chest home, empress and all, but I resisted the urge. You know—Yes! Lolita! No! Touch! Wait... Maybe that wasn’t quite the same thing. When faced with cuteness like this, maybe it didn’t matter.

“Hey... Petralka?”

Okay, so it did matter.

“Hey, what are you doing sleeping out here? Dressed like that? You’ll catch a cold.”

I took a deep breath, trying to calm the raging storm of moe within me, then gently laid a hand on Petralka’s shoulder.

Wow... She’s so small...

It took me a moment to work up the courage to touch her, but when I did, it was clear even through her nightshirt how delicate her body was. This wasn’t the first time we had ever touched, but usually it was because she was squeezing onto my knees or delivering a right hook to my face. This was the first time I had been the one to touch her. So even though I’d known she was small, this was the first time it really sunk in for me how physically slight she was.

And Petralka, the owner of this fragile body, was the empress on whose shoulders rested this entire nation.

As ruler, she had official duties to deal with every day. Of course, she had a whole list of advisors supporting her, starting with Prime Minister Zahar. But unlike Zahar and all the others, the empress was the one person who couldn’t be replaced. How could anyone not in her position understand the pressure she was under?

“I can see why you might want to run away,” I whispered. I spoke quietly so as not to wake her.

“...er...”

Suddenly, however, Petralka murmured something herself.

“‘Er’?”

It was quiet. I looked again at Petralka, sleeping there with her face buried in her knees. Only now I saw the tears squeezing out of her eyes and rolling down her cheeks.

“...Father... Mother...”

I was frozen in place. All I could do was stare at Petralka as she crouched there, crying in her sleep. I was totally incapable of anything else.

Was she dreaming of her dead father and mother? How could I possibly interrupt that?

“Shinichi.”

Someone behind me said my name as I crouched there deep in thought.

The voice belonged to a young man. I looked back reflexively and saw a knight standing there. He had the same silver hair as Petralka, falling down to his waist. He was actually quite pretty. He was the noble, Garius en Cordobal.

He was a relative of Petralka’s, as well as the minister of military and diplomatic affairs. On top of that, as a knight of the realm, he was also the captain of the First Knights. He wore a lot of hats, you might say. Hats that collectively made him very important.

“Minister Cordobal... What are you doing here?”

“I saw you going this way,” Garius answered quietly, crouching down next to me. He set a white-gloved hand on Petralka’s shoulder and shook her gently.

“Majesty?”

“Mn...?” Petralka still sounded half-asleep. But Garius continued to shake her and called her again, more firmly this time.

“Majesty.”

At this, Petralka’s eyes fluttered open. She sleepily took in the two of us. “Garius...? Shinichi?”

However, she was quick to grasp the situation. Her expression slowly changed from one of sleepiness to some kind of emotion, but I couldn’t quite tell what emotion it was. She looked to me like she was angry, smiling, and crying all at once. Maybe she was.

“Let us go back,” Garius urged gently. Petralka didn’t say anything. She seemed to be just looking at the ground, but I could see that she was biting her lip.

“Petral—” I started, but before I could get any further the empress thrust herself to her feet and said, “Let’s go.” Her face as she gazed forward was clear and sure, with no hint of the vulnerability I had seen just a moment before. Only a few tears left in the corners of her eyes remained as evidence that what I had seen was anything more than a dream or illusion.

Then she wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, and even those vanished.

Petralka glanced at me and nodded, then positioned herself between me and Garius and started taking great strides forward.

“Uh—”

I was going to call out to her, but there was something in her posture that wouldn’t permit it. There was no question that I wasn’t dealing with the girl Petralka anymore, but with Her Majesty the Empress. This was not someone I could speak to heedlessly.

“Shinichi,” Garius said as I dumbly watched the Eldant empress leave. “I thank you for finding Her Majesty.”

“Oh,” I answered, speaking almost without thinking about it. “Nothing to it... I did... promise I’d look for her...” I stood up, but then I looked at Garius.

“Um. Minister Cordobal?”

“What is it?”

“I don’t suppose Her Majesty could... take a vacation? Even just for a day?”

Garius didn’t say anything, but the moment I spoke, his eyebrows furrowed just slightly.

Uh-oh. Wrong thing to ask?

I started trying to make excuses, a little panicked. “Uh, I just mean—Petralka looks a little tired... I thought maybe she could, you know, use a break from... empress-ing...”

“As I suspect you realize, that would be impossible,” Garius said, letting out a small sigh. “There is never any end of duties to which only the empress can attend.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “Sure.”

This wasn’t like just taking a day off of school. If the absolute ruler were to be absent for a day, it would affect the national government at every level. Possibly, it could even mean life or death for the inhabitants of that nation—and not just a few of them. Maybe everyone.

And to be perfectly honest, I was one of the factors that bore responsibility for putting Petralka in this position. She was so taken with otaku culture that she went out of her way to find excuses to meet with me, and made time to read manga or watch anime despite her relentless public obligations. Those things seemed to help her feel better about life, but at the same time, any time she spent doing those things was time she didn’t spend on her real job.

“I’ll have a winged carriage prepared immediately,” Garius said, then set off after Petralka.

The message was clear: You’d better leave.

Well, even if I had that audience with Petralka, I wouldn’t know quite how to act toward her right now. After a moment’s pause, I let out a sigh and followed after them.

Class had already started when I arrived at the school. Standing at the lectern in front of the room was... Myusel.

I spent a few minutes quietly observing her teaching style from out in the hall, and I was surprised to discover how well-developed it was. Things seemed to be going smoothly.

“Ahem,” she was saying, “in other words...”

Incidentally, at my insistence, Myusel was teaching not in her usual maid uniform, but in a blazer and pencil skirt. She seemed a little self-conscious, maybe because of the unfamiliar outfit, and the clothes seemed to dominate her a little more than usual—but that wasn’t a bad thing. If, one day, she put on a pair of glasses, she would be the archetypal young female teacher fresh out of college, who still has so much to learn; or one of those sweet female assistant teachers that the students all refer to with -chan. If she said something like, “Ai yi yi, Shinichi-kun, you mustn’t do that,” I’m confident I would die of moe right on the spot.

But never mind that.

“So in Jappaneez,” she was saying, “the word moe, you see, has two distinct meanings.”

She stuttered every once in a while, but basically her delivery was logical and clean. I knew she was a smart one. In order to explain something to someone else, you can’t just memorize it; it has to make sense to you.

It really did seem to be going exceptionally well...

“Both basically mean ‘very good,’ but, ahem, one is a word used primarily with regard to women and romantic relationships, while the other has to do with admiration, the welling up of emotion, and, er, agitation. They sound the same, making them easy to confuse, so please be careful. If you really need to distinguish them, the former is called, uh, ‘the kusakanmuri one,’ and the latter is known as ‘the hihen one.’”

This... This constituted going well, didn’t it? Trying to explain the exact difference between moe as in 萌え and moe as in 燃え wasn’t easy, as it was a pretty subjective matter, but I thought Myusel had really grasped the idea and was doing a good job communicating it to the students. One could argue that there was a pile of other things the students might have been better off learning first, but whatever.

This was an otaku classroom, after all.

Myusel had been reluctant at first to consider teaching other people, but the fact was that she was the first local Japanese speaker in the Holy Eldant Empire, and there really wasn’t anyone else qualified to stand up there and teach... except maybe Petralka herself, who was in sort of a Japanese language learning contest with Myusel.

The students were actually picking up the language really quickly, such that some of them were already reading light novels in the original.

Maybe it would have been tougher if they were just trying to learn the language of some random country. But when you bring entertainment into the mix, everyone picks things up quicker. I’m picturing, you know, a series of Learn Whatever Through the Power of Moe books. English the Moe Way, that sort of thing. Books like that aren’t so uncommon, and the fact that people are buying them is basically an admission of how effective they are.

“Oh,” Myusel said as the bell rang. “That’s all for today, then.”

My timing was perfect. I opened the door and came in.

“Oh, Master,” Myusel said.

“Shinichi-sensei!” the kids all said, responding to me immediately. They used to just call me “Sensei,” but now they were calling me “Shinichi-sensei.” Properly speaking, they should have called me “Kanou-sensei,” but Minori-san’s habit of calling me “Shinichi-kun” seemed to have had a bad influence on them. Not that I really minded either way.

“Shinichi-sensei! Look!” Two elf boys, a dwarf boy, and a dwarf girl came over to me, looking excited about something.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Try reading this, Sensei!”

They thrust a sheaf of copier paper at me.

Paper, by the way, was expensive around here, but it was easy enough to import large volumes of it from Japan, so it could be used pretty freely at the school. There are a lot of subjects where writing aids memorization. And lambskin paper isn’t really suited to just making notes.

“What’s this?” I said, taking the bundle of paper and paging through it. It was packed with Eldant script.

“It’s Order of the Dark Knights: Zero’s Revenge!” the dwarf girl said happily, to my mystification.

I recognized the title, of course. It was an anime that had ended last year. The main character is granted a mysterious power by a girl who appears out of nowhere; he puts on a mask and takes the name Zero, then attempts to take over the world. He’s an antihero who engages with the world as a terrorist, but the series is also full of love and friendship, and it was popular with both guys and girls. I was pretty sure we had the DVD box set in the library; most of the students had probably seen it. I was also fairly confident that it had spawned a light novel adaptation, which was also on the shelves.

And I knew at least one student was borderline obsessed with light novel translation...

“Hm?”

Myusel had been giving me lessons as well, so I could understand a little bit of the Eldant language, but still, looking at this gave me a strange feeling.

What was this?

I recognized the title on the cover, but it felt just a little... off. Like it started too suddenly, right in the middle of things.

“What’s this?” I asked. “This isn’t a translation of the novel, is it?”

“That’s right!” the elf boy said, clenching his fist as if in victory. “After we finished the anime, we really, really wanted to know what happened next. And so Eduardo wrote it down for us!”

Talk about weird. They were already coming up with derivative works.

Eduardo was the obsessed translator I mentioned. I had seen him in the library, so bent on translating novels that he wouldn’t even sleep. I had been worried about him going completely off the deep end, so I told him to limit himself to three hours of translation per day, and that seemed to take the edge off things. Had he decided that non-translation writing was fair game and started doing fanfic?!

I looked around the classroom and spotted Eduardo in one corner, his pen working busily.

“Aw, come on...”

I mean, my dad is a light novel author, so it’s not like I don’t understand. Although translating and creating original stories are both writing, they use different parts of the brain. There’s a lot of overlap, of course, but the necessary talent is fundamentally different. It’s not a matter of one being better than the other; they’re just different things.

That’s why a translator can’t necessarily decide to just start writing a story and succeed at it.

“I always knew he was a serious otaku,” I muttered.

“It isn’t actually done yet, so we asked Eduardo to keep writing!” the other elf boy—Loek—said, sounding excited.

Beside him, the dwarf girl Romilda blushed. “Shinichi-sensei, who do you think will end up with Zero?”

“In the anime he didn’t wind up with anyone at all—that’s what bothers me most!”

“I’d ship him with Cool C!”

“No, Kanon is best for Zero!”

“I’m all for Seiryuu, obviously!”

“Seiryuu’s a guy!”

The four of them launched into an animated argument.

Er...

Loek... Romilda... I thought you guys couldn’t stand each other?

Then again, it would be a real mess if I were to remind them of that and they were to be like, “Oh yeah!” and start flinging magic spells around the classroom again, so I kept the thought to myself.

But this is a perfect example of how...

Yes! Of how anime and manga and games and light novels could bring former enemies together as friends!

That made me personally happy, and as a Japanese otaku, it made me proud, too. Although I guess in Loek and Romilda’s case, the anime appeared to be coming between them, but you know. Even so...

I gazed down at the bundle of paper in my hand. Setting aside specific quality concerns, it hadn’t even been a year since we had first introduced otaku culture to this world, and there were already people writing fan fiction...

Maybe, I thought, the day when we see a doujinshi convention here in the Eldant Empire isn’t so far off after all.

Class ended safely, and the three of us headed home together.

“There were no big fights today, huh?” Minori-san said.

Now that I thought about it, she was right; I hadn’t noticed any arguing. Maybe it was going on where I couldn’t see it, but compared to before, when students had been straight-up using magic on each other right in front of the teacher, the effort to hide any disputes could be considered progress. Even if I did realize that it wasn’t exactly a good thing.

“I could be happy if every day went like this,” I said with a half-smile.

“Oh yeah, Myusel, your lesson was great, too,” I added, turning to Myusel as we came inside.

“Oh, I would hardly say—”

“It sounded really easy to understand.”

“Well, thank you very much...” Myusel looked down shyly. The pointy ears that poked out from beneath her hair were beet red.

Gah! She is one cute maid-san!

I had been worried that the students might give her grief on account of her being a half-elf, but apparently there hadn’t been any trouble. I guess between my earlier injunctions and the fact that Myusel had saved Petralka’s life, word had spread among the students and their friends that Myusel Fourant was particularly close to the empress. In other words, this wasn’t a sign that discrimination toward half-elves was on the way out, but it was enough for now. We had to start by shrinking the gap.

“A-Ahem, well then, I’ll go get dinner ready.” Myusel bowed and pattered off quickly down the hallway. I let out an admiring breath as I watched her go.

Recently, my work had been going... really well, actually.

Obviously, there were the occasional hijinx, like this morning, but for the most part everything had been peaceful, without any serious problems. I would be happy to think my efforts had helped produce that result.

As I stood there, indulging myself in surprisingly middle-aged-guy-ish thoughts—

“Shinichi-kun!”

I heard someone call my name, a note of panic in their voice. When I turned around, there was Minori-san. A middle-aged man (an actual one) was bursting through the front door the rest of us had so recently walked through.

“This is bad!”

He was wearing an uninspiring suit that looked altogether out of place in a Middle Ages-European fantasy world, his hair parted neatly down the middle—a classic midlife salaryman. I didn’t know whether the effect was intentional or not, but he always looked that way, so anywhere he went, a vague sense that something didn’t look quite right followed.

His name was Matoba Jinzaburou. He was the chief of the Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau, the man on the ground when it came to exchange with this alternate world. Basically, he was my direct superior. He took care of a lot of the details for Amutech, like reporting back to the Japanese government, requisitioning whatever we needed, and various and sundry other stuff.

...........................Okay, so putting it like that makes it sound like we were pretty much buddy-buddy. But it was, as they say, complicated. He wasn’t my enemy, but neither was I really sure I could trust him as a friend.

The Japanese government had intended to use otaku culture as a weapon of invasion against this world, under the guise of “cultural exchange.” When I rebelled against that plan, they had sent a special JSDF strike team to take me out.

And Matoba-san was definitely more on their side than mine. Granted, he hadn’t really been directly involved in the attempt on my life, and he had even spoken and acted on my behalf, but my suspicion of him just never quite went away. He was a real plotter, Matoba-san was, and if the situation called for it, he would happily give you a friendly smile while lying through his teeth.

Starting to get the picture?

So it was more than a little surprising to see the normally unflappable bureaucrat looking so out of sorts. I had known him to leave other people lost for words at times, but I can’t say I had ever imagined him being the victim of the same.

This suggested something very un-fun had happened.

Minori-san must have had the same thought, because she gestured down the hall and said, “Let’s not have this conversation here. Come to the living room.”

“Right... Right.” Matoba-san nodded and followed us to the next room.

Is this what I got for thinking things were peaceful? I didn’t know yet what the big deal was, but if it had Matoba-san this upset, it was likely to mean a lot of trouble. I mean, he hadn’t even been this bothered when I had gone rogue on the Japanese government.

We came into the living room, and I sat down on the sofa. Minori-san and I sat next to each other, and Matoba-san sat across from us.

“You recall the recent soccer tournament, don’t you?” Matoba-san said.

“Sure.” I nodded. “How could I forget?”

The tournament he was referring to was the very first official soccer exhibition in the Holy Eldant Empire, presented in front of the empress herself. We had borrowed some land from the empire, had a soccer stadium constructed, and then had teams representing each race go up against each other.

Thanks to my failure to explain the rules, and the fact that the players therefore got most of their knowledge of soccer from manga and anime, we ended up with a ridiculous Shao*** Soccer-style dustup with magic and crazy super-moves and everything. The players and spectators all got a big kick out of it, and the tournament ended up a huge success.

“Were you aware that that tournament was being recorded?”

“Er—Was it?”

It was the first I’d heard of it. Then again, the JSDF had dragged an awful lot of equipment into that stadium. It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn there had been some cameras in there.

“We have an obligation to show that not just the military, but our public institutions, are being run prudently—and that means an obligation to submit recordings of our activities,” Minori-san informed me. “Especially in a situation like this, where there are so many firsts. We were told to keep records that are as detailed as possible. We take lots of videos. Especially with CCD cameras getting so small these days.”

She pulled what appeared to be a fountain pen out of her pocket. When I looked closely, I could see a little hole at one end—there was a lens tucked in there.

“We recorded that soccer game with some pretty hi-def equipment,” she said.

“I had no idea,” I said.

I supposed video would help prevent any strange misunderstandings, and anyway, how many pages would you fill even trying to describe a fantasy world like this one?

But at the same time, what must the government suits have thought to suddenly find themselves watching something like that?

“But what does that have to do with...”

I cocked my head. Matoba-san let out a deep sigh.

“The video was—ahem—leaked.”

“..........................................What?”

For a second, I wasn’t sure what he meant. The idea was so shocking that my brain couldn’t process it. Minori-san and I simply stared at him.

Matoba-san stared back, then added, “On YouTube, you see. It’s been viewed all over the world.”