Chapter One: Well, Whaddaya Know — It’s Another Country!

My normal life ended when I opened my eyes.

I stared upward for a few seconds, not saying anything at first. I didn’t recognize the ceiling above me—leading me to reflexively mutter, “An unfamiliar... ceiling...”

I quoted from an anime that shall remain nameless (but which is so old that this particular quote is pretty much cliché by now), showing that I was still a total, lost-cause otaku. Which was another way of saying I was functioning normally.

Wait... What’s with this feeling of déjà vu?!

I vaguely recalled having been in this exact situation before, and even saying the exact same thing about it.

“I really don’t recognize this ceiling, though,” I said, refocusing my eyes upward.

On a normal day, the first thing I saw when I woke up was a sort of half-spherical ceiling worked with elaborate patterns.

That was because I slept in a canopy bed, as befitted my position—so the “ceiling” I’m referring to wasn’t the actual ceiling of my room... Anyway, forget it. I’m just trying to explain what I usually saw when I woke up.

Above me now, though, was a white, flat ceiling with no decoration whatsoever. If anything, it reminded me most of my room back in Japan—somewhere I hadn’t been in more than six months.

And that meant...

“No way...” I sat bolt upright in bed. “It turns out my entire story really was just a dream?!”

I was stunned.

Had all of it been nothing more than the unconscious imaginings of a pathetic home security guard? Every one of my adventures and experiences, just the passing fancies of adolescence?! Was my unconscious mind really that eager to run from reality?!

So was everything really just dreams, illusions, bubbles, and shadows?! Was the real world a dream, and my dreams reality? Was I actually just a butterfly?! Would I come back to myself to discover that I was just the product of the imagination of young ****ta, left in a vegetative state after a traffic accident?! What even is reality?!

.................................etc., etc.

But just as I was about to get sucked into the chuunibyou vortex, I realized something.

This wasn’t my room in Japan. This wasn’t my room at all.

If it had been, the first thing I would have seen upon opening my eyes would have been my life-sized poster of Madoka, heroine of the anime Rental☆Madoka. She’s a magical girl who bravely endures despite working for a really sucky company. But I saw no hint of her feeble smile.

“So where am I...?”

The bed I was sleeping in was definitely not canopied, but it was big enough to accommodate at least three full-grown adults. I knew my house in Japan hadn’t had a bed this large.

So this wasn’t my Japan house.

But it wasn’t my Eldant one, either.

So... Where?

Alert, I looked slowly around the room. I didn’t recognize the interior decoration at all. It was about the same size as my bedroom in my mansion, though—in other words, about twenty mats.

The windows were covered with thick drapes, lines of bright light leaking between them. It was enough to take the edge off the darkness in the room and allow me to see what was in there.

The furniture consisted of the bed I was in, a desk, and a chair. Not much in the way of furnishings, to be sure, but the wallpaper boasted an intricate pattern, the curtains were embroidered, and there were paintings hanging on the walls—not exactly spartan, either.

But still...

“It’s like...”

Something was different. The overall impression wasn’t the Middle Ages European one characteristic of Eldant houses. Instead the design was a little more Asian, maybe even kind of Middle Eastern. Tribal, almost. I mean, I was no anthropologist or anything; it just felt like it came from a different culture.

“Okay, seriously. Where am I?” I muttered. But then I caught my breath, struck by another wave of déjà vu.

The bed was different, and the room was different. The feeling of waking up and finding myself in a totally unfamiliar place, though? That I remembered.

“No way.”

This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen to a person several times in his life.

I had been tricked by the Japanese government, kidnapped by the Japan Self Defense Force, and before I knew it I was in a different world. Even lightning didn’t strike twice. Something as ridiculous as what had happened to me couldn’t happen a second time...

“No way...”

...Could it?

That was when I spotted something in my peripheral vision. I turned toward it with a start.

There was a single young woman, silently standing at attention.

She was standing up against the wall, almost as if she were part of the furniture.

That rang a bell, too.

So, wait, could this be—

“A loop?!” I exclaimed. “Am I trapped in an endless cycle?!”

Was some invisible force manipulating my world, rewinding it so I would experience the same things over and over again even as my memories remained unchanged?! How could I ever hope to eſcape from thiſ temporal maze?!

...Wooh. I was getting so out of sorts that I was thinking in old letterforms.

It was as I was having this moment of panic that I registered something: the girl by the wall wasn’t moving. Even though I had just been shouting in a language that she presumably didn’t understand, she just stood silently and watched me.

What was going on here? It had to mean...

“That’s... not Myusel?”

If it had been, I was sure she would have given a little yelp of surprise.

Or was she just that used to my strange behavior by now?

But then...

I squinted, taking a closer look at the girl. The darkness had kept me from realizing at first, but...

“Wuh-huh?!”

Her hair was black—or... green? In the dim light, her eyes shone a clear emerald color.

But it wasn’t her hair color that held me transfixed. It was cut short in a kind of boyish look, but that only made her most prominent features stand out all the more. Poking out from under her hair...

“IS THAT REALLY A BEAST GIRL?!” I found myself shouting, my hand clenching into a triumphant fist.

Yes! Those were animal ears!

They stood out exactly because the hair didn’t hide them. Those ears! So striking, so much a part of this girl’s particular beauty! Covered in short fur like a cat or a dog might have, they burst through her hair, making her look so real and alive!

“Ohhh...!” I trembled with admiration.

I mean, not that this was the first time I had seen a beast girl. A werewolf named Elvia lived at my mansion. She had a very upbeat and cheerful personality; she really ticked all the beast-girl boxes. She had the friendly, outgoing nature that you look for in a beast person, especially a doglike one. It was terrific.

But. But.

There were more kinds of beast girls than just doglike ones.

That’s right: I’m referring to the manga—truly a classic, practically on the level of scripture—Nishiki no Kuni☆. As Chi**-neko demonstrates, the original beast girl was a cat!

So, yes. The beast girl in front of me was a cat. She was probably a weretiger or something of the sort. I guessed as much because her cheeks and body—like her belly and her arms—clearly had some differently colored fur mixed in. It seemed unique, almost like a tattoo.

What’s that? Why could I see so much of her midriff, you ask?

That, of course, is because it was bare.

How marvelous is a girl in skimpy clothing! (I was very excited.)

Her outfit reminded me of something from some desert country—or at least from the Arabian Nights. Her chest and hips—in other words, the definite no-go zones—were covered with clothes worked with a geometric design. But her belly button was right out there, although for some reason her arms and legs were covered with sheer cloth. It didn’t hide her limbs; their color and shape was plainly visible.

Incidentally, the girl’s body shape made it look like she wasn’t yet mature—I mean she was pretty clearly young, with an underdeveloped chest and narrow hips. Practically a child.

But even so—in fact, almost because of that—those clothes were deadly.

In some ways, it was more alluring than if she had been completely exposed: revealing a little bit of flesh makes you wonder what else she’s hiding. Beautiful is the flower that blooms in secret! The vibe she gave off walked the line between virtue and deviance the way only a young body can!

That which is exuded by a body just a step—no, a half-step!—from nudity... This, this itself, is truly eros!

.................................etc., etc.

Before I knew it, I had gotten carried away with a panegyric that would probably have caused people to recoil from me if I had spoken it aloud. Now I took a fresh look at the girl.

Huh...?

“Who... are you?”

Only now did it register with me: if this was really a loop, a repeat of what had happened before, then it should have been Myusel standing there. But Myusel was a half-elf; she was no beast girl. Then again, I supposed there was always the possibility that, suspecting my affinity for beast girls, she had stuck on ears and a tail before coming to wake me up.

But no, this was definitely the first time I had ever seen this girl.

Her face was part of what made her look young; her eyes were large and her nose was petite. She had small, pursed lips. Her youthful looks reminded me of a certain empress I knew, but the impression she gave was completely different. Almost the opposite, in fact.

This maid girl watched me with a soft, emotionless expression, not so much as moving a muscle. Her silence was overwhelming. She was almost like a doll.

Who or what in the world was she?

“Ummm...”

I put a hand to my cheek and searched my memory. What was the last thing I could remember before I woke up here?

I remembered waking up early in the morning at my mansion in Eldant. I didn’t feel like going back to sleep, so I decided to kill time with a little walk around the house.

And then...

“.....................Huh...?”

No good. My recollection went fuzzy at that point.

My head felt kind of heavy. I was sure I had slept well, and yet I felt like I hadn’t slept enough. I had the sense that what I wanted was just in front of me, but I couldn’t quite reach it...

This wasn’t getting me anywhere. I decided to question the girl.

“Hey.”

She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t seem to be ignoring me. She cocked her head quizzically at me.

Whoa! That innocent gesture— That gesture—!

I set my burgeoning feelings of moe aside and asked, “Who are you? And where am I?”

It looked like she was about to answer me, because she opened her mouth...

“This is the eastern city of Borfoi. You’re in the Kingdom of Bahairam.”

The voice, however, came from someone else. I looked over in shock.

I saw a door, one that looked quite severe compared to everything else around here. It was half-open, and a young woman was entering the room.

A soldier...?

This woman was definitely not half-naked, and the clothes she was wearing looked pretty somber—very much like a military uniform, in fact. For the most part her outfit was plain and unadorned, but at her shoulders, neck, and cuffs were colors bright enough to draw the eye. She even had a sword at her hip.

What surprised me most, though, was not her clothes.

“Huh...?”

I thought I remembered this girl.

Or rather, I thought she looked exactly like someone I knew.

Elvia?

She was a dead ringer for the beast girl from my house. Her face, her hair, her height, and even the animal ears on her head were all just like Elvia’s.

The only difference was the color. Whereas Elvia had dark hair and ears, the doppelgänger in front of me had white. If you only looked at her face, you would swear it was Elvia; it was like the palette-swapped version of a character you get when you drop in as player two in a video game.

“Wh-What’s with the outfit? Going for a new look?”

Maybe she had gotten a little too into the cosplay we had done a while back. Heh, probably not...

Elvia, however, typically dressed in clothes so skimpy that she might as well just be wearing underwear. This formal, almost entirely skin-free sort of dress was definitely not the werewolf I was used to.

I had to admit, it had a certain freshness to it. She had looked adorable in the sailor uniform we had given her for our movie shoot, sure, but this had a certain...

“New look?” 2P Elvia (temp name) asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “What are you mouthing off about?”

“Um...............”

I blinked. So this... wasn’t... Elvia?

I mean, yes, I’d had some sense that it wasn’t actually Elvia, but they looked so eerily identical that I had kind of thought maybe their personalities would be similar, too. But 2P Elvia (temp name) was pretty much the other Elvia’s polar opposite in tone and voice.

For one thing, I had never seen Elvia with an expression quite like this.

In my experience, she was the picture of innocence, always smiling cheerfully. I had never known her to stare someone down the way this person was doing to me. She was kind of expressionless, a lot like the beast-girl maid I’d seen first, but this girl had a strength of will that came through just the same.

I was reminded anew how important facial expressions were for communication. One face with two different expressions could give you a very different impression.

“Um... Who... are you?”

2P Elvia came in, closing the door behind her; it shut with a click that sounded like an automatic lock. She approached the foot of the bed where I was still sitting upright and said, “I am Amatena Harneiman.”

Harneiman. That was Elvia’s family name, too.

Did that mean they were related by blood? That would explain why they looked so alike. A little too alike, really. Could they be twins or something?

I just stared stupidly at 2P Elvia—er, Amatena.

Then I finally registered something.

“Did you say Bahairam?”

I was sure she had. The eastern city of Borfoi. The Kingdom of Bahairam.

It looked like I wasn’t in the Holy Eldant Empire anymore.

The Kingdom of Bahairam, if I recalled my geography, was a neighboring country of the Eldant Empire. I was also pretty sure they were at war, and that border skirmishes had been going on for quite a while. On top of all that, Elvia was a spy for them, and—

“Bahairam!”

Whatever sleepiness had been left vanished in an instant. Now was the moment when my brain started to work at a frenzy. Where were you earlier?!

“Why am I in Bahairam?!”

She didn’t answer.

“Where is everybody, anyway?!”

She still didn’t answer. Amatena just continued to fix me with that icy gaze and not say anything.

I tried again, desperately, to remember what had happened before I woke up here.

I was walking around, and then... And then... When I opened my eyes, I was here.

What was the last thing I could remember?

I was pretty sure I had heard a noise in the shrubbery, and when I went to look... I think something covered my eyes... And then my memories cut off like a bad film clip.

“Wait...”

So was this...

You know. That thing they do in American movies all the time, where somebody gets knocked out with chloroform or something?

What I mean is, I was brought here against my will. Kidnapped! Abducted! Made off with!

And that probably implied that this room was a cell. A cage!

One ugly thought after another danced through my head, much as I wished they wouldn’t.

“B-B-B-B-But why would you do that?!”

The strange thing was, the idea made Amatena’s resemblance to Elvia seem really creepy. I was seized by an unthinking terror, the kind you would feel if your friends suddenly decided to kill you one day for no reason.

I scooched backward, trying to get even a millimeter farther away from Amatena. It was a huge bed, so I was able to gain a little space, but it wasn’t long before I found myself with my back literally against the wall.

Amatena, meanwhile, continued to look down at me with no change in her expression. There was no way to guess what she might be thinking. As I said, her resemblance to Elvia scared me now.

“Why did you k-kidnap me?”

“I am not permitted to explain that at the present time,” Amatena said.

Permitted? Permitted how?

Actually, I had been expecting her to deny that kidnap was the right word, but she completely ignored that. She might as well have come out and said I was right.

But seriously... Why?

Amatena turned on her heel so that her back was to me. The movement looked weirdly mechanical, stiff. Almost as if she were putting on for one of those by-the-books military types.

With her back to me, I could see her tail, the same white color as her ears. That was different from Elvia, too. Her fluffy tail moved nonstop, but Amatena’s didn’t so much as wag, as if it had been stuck down with glue.

Then Amatena knocked on the door and with another click, it opened. Apparently it was impossible to open it from inside.

“Kuraaara, he’s all yours,” she said as she closed the door.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The answer came from the half-naked beast girl, who had been quiet all this time. I guess her name was Clara.

“But what in the world is going on here...?” In the face of this mystifying situation, utter confusion was my only response.

My name is Kanou Shinichi.

I don’t mean to brag, but I’m a completely average, totally unremarkable high-schooler.

Or perhaps I should say I was a high-schooler. There’s a serious question of whether my old school even retains any record of me by now.

Anyway.

I... am an otaku.

In a word, I adore anime and manga and games and light novels. Your typical Akiba maniac. Again, nothing really unusual. You can see dozens of people just like me in Akihabara on any given weekend, or at Comiket or WonF*s.

The difference between me and them is that for all the otaku out there, there aren’t many who have been duped by the Japanese government and dragged off to an alternate world to spread the gospel of geek culture as the General Manager of the parallel-world-first entertainment company, Amutech.

You heard me. An alternate world.

This is top-secret stuff—but Japan is engaged in diplomacy with another world.

It all started with a hole someone discovered near Mt. Fuji in the “Sea of Trees,” an area better known as one of the most famous places in the country to commit suicide.

This hole—and no one knows exactly how yet—contained a link to another world, a Middle Ages-style fantasy land with dragons and magic, the sort of place that appears in all kinds of games and manga.

You’d think that would be the discovery of the century, wouldn’t you? The Japanese government, however, covered it up; they began to investigate the hole by themselves, keeping it a secret from any other countries.

And it was just as big a find as you would think. Virgin land, untapped resources, unknown cultures. If Japan could keep all this to itself, it could lead to an explosion of wealth, enough to lift Japan straight out of the economic doldrums it had been in for so long and make the country the world’s second-largest economy once again.

Thus the Japanese government opened diplomacy with the country it found on the far side of this secret hole—the Holy Eldant Empire.

Magic, a unique feature of this other world, made communication simple. Magical telepathy allowed relations to progress with astonishing smoothness.

The problems came after that.

Diplomacy was all well and good, but Japan couldn’t do anything too obvious. If they moved too many people or resources over to the Eldant Empire, they would be discovered by some foreign power—and anyway, the hyperspace tunnel leading to the other world was pretty tight. It was just big enough for a large-ish truck to get through.

Naturally, then, they sent a small number of people to exchange resources that were limited in both scale and size. Cultural exchange seemed like the way to go.

But as it turned out, the Eldant Empire, having a very not-Japanese history and culture, showed no interest in any of the traditional Japanese goods they were offered “as a token of friendship.”

So what’s a stymied government to do? The Japanese delegation, afraid that all the things they were hoping to gain from the Eldant Empire were about to slip through their fingers, tried every object and item they could think of. And strangely enough, the one thing the inhabitants of this world had the best reaction to was manga and anime, stuff hot off the streets of Akihabara.

It looked like otaku culture was going to be Japan’s way in here.

So it was that the Japanese government decided to make otaku culture the tent pole of their diplomatic strategy. However, they quickly discovered that no one in the government really knew that much about otaku stuff. Or rather—as I learned later—there were a few people who met the criteria, but for one reason or another, none of them were suitable for posting as the “goodwill ambassador.”

Well, then they would just have to find someone who was.

And the person they settled on was a home security guard who was in danger of being evicted from his home by his parents, and thus was dispiritedly looking for work in Akihabara. Namely, me. Kanou Shinichi.

So that’s my story.

The government pretty much tricked me—heck, they did trick me—and dragged me off to the Holy Eldant Empire in this other world. They made me General Manager of Amutech and charged me with spreading otaku culture.

Yeah, I was surprised, too, at first. And definitely confused.

But you know what else is surprising? How much this turned out to be the perfect job for me.

By and large, we had been pretty successful at spreading otaku culture to this new world. A little too successful, in fact, to the extent that I worried some people were becoming addicted.

That was when the other shoe dropped.

I learned that the whole cultural exchange thing was just a pretense. This was an invasion.

Japan’s “peace constitution” meant the country didn’t have a lot of military weapons—so they would just conduct their invasion without them. If we could get people addicted to otaku culture, so much the better in the eyes of the Japanese government. It would provide the foothold they needed to essentially make the Eldant Empire a vassal state.

When I found out about that, I rebelled. Why? Because I thought of all the friends I had made in the Eldant Empire—Myusel the maid, Brooke the gardener, the Empress Petralka, the artist Elvia, the knight Garius and the Prime Minister Zahar, among others—and I couldn’t stand the idea of becoming their enemy.

There was another reason, though, which was that I also hated the thought that my beloved manga and anime and games and light novels were being used as tools of invasion.

Naïve? Maybe. Anyway, as a result, some people in the Eldant Empire who had caught on to the fact that their culture was being undermined committed an act of terrorism, and meanwhile the Japanese government, upset that I had “gone rogue,” sent a JSDF special forces unit to liquidate me. Let’s just say it was pretty tense for a while.

With plenty of help from those around me, though, I somehow managed to get through all of it.

Even the Japanese government decided that as long as I was producing results, they would wink at what I had done (a weirdly tsundere-ish policy), and had been pretty flexible since then. The result was a relatively idyllic stretch of time.

Until now...

After 2P Elvia—I mean, Amatena—left the room, I just sat there, unable to move, staring at the door she had gone through. A good look suggested that door was by far the toughest thing in the room, and judging by the movement and sound when she closed it, it was probably made of steel. It had a doorknob but no keyhole. I guessed it could only be opened from the outside.

In other words, this might have looked like a normal room, but it was really a prison.

But hang on...

“Bahairam...”

That was the name of the place that our beast-girl-cum-artist-in-residence, Elvia, hailed from. She had actually started off as a spy for this country. On the orders of her nation, which had mistaken the Amutech mansion for some kind of military installation, she had been sent to observe us. Which is where we had caught her, but in exchange for not executing her, she was required to work at my house.

In any event, Elvia was at heart an earnest and easygoing person, so much so that I soon forgot that she was really a spy sent by an enemy nation.

And that’s what she was. Bahairam was really an enemy of the Holy Eldant Empire. As what amounted to a guest of the Eldant Empire, that effectively made them my enemies as well—or at the very least, the Kingdom of Bahairam probably regarded me as one of their enemies.

And that was dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

It meant I had effectively been kidnapped by a hostile nation.

I had no idea why they would do such a thing, but I wasn’t expecting a warm welcome.

Torture, maybe. Execution. Brainwashing. My mind was flooded with the most hideous possible imaginings.

One wrong move, and I could end up in trouble I would never get out of.

“But how in the world could I possibly...?”

And so on and so forth.

“Sire.”

My thoughts, half-frozen with panic and terror, were interrupted by a voice from nearby. The tone was very businesslike, almost emotionless.

I looked over and saw that the beast girl named Clara was suddenly at my bedside. And she was staring straight at me.

Which suggested...

“‘Sire’... Do you mean me?”

“Yes,” Clara said with a crisp nod. “I apologize for failing to introduce myself. I am called Clara Belbaris.”

“Uh—Uh, sure. Nice to meet you. I’m Kanou Shinichi.”

“I know,” Clara said with another nod.

Ooh! Man, something about that gesture was really cute. She didn’t have a lot of expression, but the way it sort of evoked a small bird or something, it was just—ahhh! You know what I mean, don’t you? Don’t you?

“I have been instructed to see to your needs, Sire.”

“My needs?”

“Yes, Sire,” Clara said forcefully.

Ahh!

My heart danced in my chest.

“Sire!” Go-shujin-sama!!

Clara’s address echoed in my head, accompanied by Japanese subtitles.

What a brilliant and beautiful thing to say!

I mean, this was go-shujin-sama we were talking about. How many maid-lovers must there be across the country who dreamed of being called such a thing, only to have to bear up with harsh reality...!

And while the person addressing me might not be wearing a maid uniform, she was a sweet young woman. Physically small, almost as if she was still growing—in fact, how old was she, anyway?

Granted, I had one very specific example of someone who wouldn’t have looked out of place with an elementary-schooler’s backpack on, yet who turned out to be nearly my age—so I knew how dangerous it could be to judge someone by their looks.

On top of all that, Clara here had animal ears and a tail. Another deliciously adorable element—they looked great on her.

“To imagine the day would come when a girl like this called me ‘Sire’...!”

I clenched my fist, overflowing with emotion.

But then through my mind—

Master...

—flashed the image of a half-elf maid.

“Huh...?!”

No! No, Myusel, it’s not like that!

As great as it is to be called “Master” by you, “Sire” is, you know—it’s the classic maid word, and so, uh, you see, I wasn’t really...!

Believe me, you’ll always be my maid of maids, number one in my maid ranking! This is just, I mean, we’re not really talking about the list right now, and, uh...!

And so on, meaningless excuses flooding my head at high speed.

“I wonder how everyone is doing...”

Myusel. Petralka. Minori-san. Elvia. Brooke. Cerise.

Did any of them know I was here, in Bahairam? Or had nobody figured out yet that I had been taken?

They must have been worried that I wasn’t there—or at least, so I liked to think.

But...

“Sire,” Clara said again. I had fallen silent. “I wish to serve you.”

“Huh—? Oh. S-Serve... me? Oh, serve me, right.”

That’s what maids do, right? They serve. Basic.

They make food, or do the laundry, or clean the house, occasionally being klutzy in the process.

I nodded, picturing Myusel bustling industriously about the mansion.

The thought of food made me pause to wonder: what time was it?

I put my hand to the curtain covering the window on my bed. All the sunlight implied it definitely wasn’t nighttime, but—

“Yikes.”

I opened the curtain a little and peeked out to discover that the window pane was reinforced and barred.

Yep. Definitely a prison.

This dose of cold, hard reality sent a serious chill down my spine.

“Will you have a meal? Or would you prefer a bath?” Clara asked, looking at me quizzically.

Gosh. She sounded just like a solicitous new wife. In my head, I could practically picture her with an apron on, a ladle in one hand, greeting her husband as he came through the front door after work.

And then she went on—

“Or will you have me instead?”

“.........Uh?”

That made me blink a couple times.

Had I misheard her? Had my otakuism taken over so completely that I had finally lost my tenuous grip on the distinction between fantasy and reality? Wait, did I just say any of that out loud?! Crap!

I was panicked but silent. Clara seemed to have her own interpretation of what this meant, because she put a hand to her clothing and...

“Just a—!”

Clara was already dressed in an outfit that would make a bikini look modest. Clearly it would take about two seconds to take off her clothes if she decided to...

“Cl—Clara...san...?!”

What was happening right now?! What was I seeing?

“Yes, Sire?” Clara answered demurely.

She didn’t stop moving even as she spoke, though, unhesitatingly removing every scrap of cloth on her small body and letting it fall to the ground.

Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa!

“Pardon me,” Clara said (I didn’t know if that was because she saw how flustered I was or not), and then she climbed onto my bed. On all fours. Like she was going to just crawl right on top of me.

“Ha-Hang on just a—wait just a second!” I cried, finally coming back to my senses.

God, that was close.

Not that this was my first experience with nearly being jumped by a girl with animal ears. Maybe that’s why I was able to keep my head, or at least get it back eventually. If this was the first time it ever happened, I might have been swept up by circumstances and let that happen, or maybe this, like an animal myself.

A moment’s sober reflection, however, revealed just how strange this all was.

Here I was, kidnapped by an enemy nation. And yet this beast girl, whom I had never met before, was perfectly happy and not the least bit embarrassed to jump into bed with me.

There had to be something behind it.

Calm down, Shinichi. You’re in Kong Ming’s trap! Not the actual Kong Ming, of course.

“Is something...?” Clara tilted her head in a gesture that looked totally innocent despite the fact that she was still practically on top of me.

What is the story with this girl?!

“Is... Is this what you meant by ‘serving me’?!”

“This? Which?”

“I mean, you know, how do I put this... serving my... my lower half...”

As renowned as I was for my ability to say totally the wrong thing at the wrong time, even I couldn’t bring myself to look a girl in the eye in a situation like this and use words like sex or ecchi or getting’ it on or unh! unh! ahh! ahh! or [remainder of list omitted].

“Yes,” Clara said with a confident nod. “There are three ways to make a man happy. Food, a bath, or interc—”

“La la la, I can’t hear you!” I shouted, cutting her off before she could finish.

Girls are not supposed to use words like sex or ecchi or making love or getting’ it on or unh! unh! ahh! ahh! or [remainder of list omitted]! It’s just not right! It would shatter my all-too-fragile dreams!

I mean... Wait a minute. What is this, some kind of ero game?

“A-Anyway, maybe you could just kind of, uh, move aside for a moment?” I begged, unable to look directly at her. I knew my voice was about half an octave too high, and believe me, it was embarrassing. But I’m a healthy teenager! How was I supposed to stay calm under these circumstances?

Clara was crawling on top of me, naked as the day she was born. The difference in height meant her face was right in front of me—but that meant that if I moved my eyes even a little downward, her modest but developing swell would be completely visible, by which I mean, her pale skin and those small, pink... [redacted by author]

“Why?” Clara asked.

I couldn’t help noticing how she looked down as she spoke. I followed her gaze and realized she was looking directly between my legs. Let’s just say I wasn’t getting any excuses from that part of my body. From that perspective, her question made a certain amount of sense. Ahhhh... I hardly understood what I was saying myself.

“Could it be,” Clara asked with a hint of surprise, “that I am not to your liking, Sire?”

“No! You’re very much to— er...”

I can go for pretty much any sort of moe character; I can be moe for just about anything except the absolute most flash-in-the-pan fad stuff. But that’s beside the point.

“So there’s no problem, then.” She moved so her face was right up next to mine.

“Th-There certainly is! Stop already!” Mustering every ounce of self-control that I possibly could, I pushed her away.

This was not the time to be getting swept up in my desires. For one thing, it might be a trap, but more importantly, if Clara was as young as she looked, getting involved with her could easily be against the law, or at least make me a total monster. I mean, granted, human laws didn’t necessarily apply in alternate worlds.

But whatever, it was still wrong! It had to stop!

Anyway, this was where endurance would bear fruit! Be silent, O my kingdom! (Meaning unknown.)

As I fought my desperate struggle to be a gentleman, Clara seemed to be watching me with perplexity. By the way, I say “seemed to be” because I was battling to not actually look at her. Still, I could practically feel her gaze on me.

Finally...

“Is there some other to whom you’ve given your heart?” Clara asked.

“......Huh?” The sudden question left me at a loss. “Someone to whom I’ve...?”

Think who we were talking about here. The guy who was brutally shot down by his childhood friend and later went full home security guard.

How could I have given my heart to anyone?

Anyway, in the last year and a half, the only girls I had really talked to were Myusel, Petralka, Elvia, Minori-san—oh, and Cerise, Romilda, and some of the female students at school.

And yeah, Myusel especially gave me these shy smiles that were adorable, and just talking to her was a lot of fun. And the way Petralka would get all huffy if I teased her even a little was pretty cute. Minori-san had that baby face and those huge boobs, but when I talked to her, it turned out there was some real sweetness there.

As for Elvia, she was so scatterbrained and naïve that you would never take her for a spy, a very healing—

.........

.........

Uh, what were we talking about again?

“A-Anyway!” I tried to keep Clara’s hands from getting any closer, bending my head back far enough to see last week. “I swear I’m not looking, so just p-put your clothes on!”

“But...”

“And, uh, then I want you to make me something to eat. I’m starving!” I exclaimed, desperate for any way out of this situation.

And it was true that my stomach was feeling pretty empty. Thankfully, the moment I thought about it, my innards gave a convincing gurgle.

“...Very well,” Clara said with a nod.

With a tremendous effort, I continued to focus on anything but her as she climbed off the bed. When I could finally sense that she was dressed again, I let out a very complicated sigh.

Her Exalted Majesty the Empress, sitting on her throne, wore an expression that was darkness itself.

Empress Petralka an Eldant the Third.

Despite her lengthy name and imposing title, she was beautiful to behold—if I may risk sounding irreverent, she appeared quite sweet. Her silver hair was like a crown itself, well-kempt and lustrous, her eyes were like two great jewels, and her features were like those of a porcelain doll carved by the most sublime master. She seemed to have no flaws.

The sight of Her Majesty laughing happily is one of true elegance. But by the same token, when her face becomes clouded, she gives off such a gloom as to make it painful even to look at her.

The way she drummed her fingers on the armrest of her throne, I thought, indicated annoyance.

She didn’t speak.

The unpleasant pallor of her face was shared by the minister who stood beside her. He had the same silver hair as Her Majesty, but he was a handsome knight—Garius en Cordobal.

He didn’t speak, either.

Hardly able to bear the strain, I looked to the woman beside me for help.

Koganuma Minori-sama.

She was a female warrior from another country, one called Ja-pan. She was the woman charged with being my master’s bodyguard.

Her uncommon strength, though, belied her tremendous kindness; she was never harsh, but acted quite sympathetically, even toward a maid like me. I have no sisters, but I’m sure having an older sister must be like this. These thoughts possessed me for a few moments.

It so happens that Koganuma-sama and the others from Ja-pan give their names in the reverse order from the way we do, with their family names first. So really, it’s most appropriate that I call her Koganuma-sama. But my master refers to her as “Minori-san” so much that I’m afraid it’s begun to rub off on me.

Minori-sama was the third person not to speak; she didn’t look any happier than the nobles in the room.

Normally, she would have smiled encouragingly and said something like “It’ll be fine!” But right now, her face showed only anxiety.

This alone was enough to suggest that this was not a situation that warranted optimism.

I couldn’t decide where to put my eyes, and so looked unhappily at the floor. But then—

“Minori. Myusel.”

When Her Majesty said my name, I quickly straightened up.

She would normally be much too far above me to speak my name, let alone admit me into her audience chamber, although Her Majesty herself had encouraged me not to worry too much about any of that...

“We assume you are already aware of why we have summoned you here,” Her Majesty said with a frown. “It is about Shinichi.”

When the empress spoke that name, my heart both went cold and jumped at the same time.

Kanou Shinichi-sama.

My master...

He had come to the Eldant Empire from his far country of Ja-pan to do the work of spreading otaku culture. Because Japan lacked a noble class, he had no title to speak of. But he was a state guest of the Holy Eldant Empire and an ambassador, and so he was effectively to be treated as a noble.

And yet, he was tremendously kind to me, even though I was not just a commoner, but a much-reviled half-elf. The very fact that Her Majesty knew my name, indeed, would speak it aloud, really had to do with Shinichi-sama’s good offices.

On any normal day, it would be Shinichi-sama, and not me, standing beside Minori-sama.

But Shinichi-sama was nowhere to be seen. In fact, at that moment, we had no idea where he was. Not me, not Minori-sama. And, it seemed, not Her Majesty or Minister Cordobal.

No one had seen Shinichi-sama anywhere since the previous morning.

Our gardener, Brooke-san, said he had seen Shinichi-sama going for a walk outside the mansion early in the morning. My master’s taking a walk around the grounds wasn’t especially unusual, so I had gone about making breakfast as normal and waited for Shinichi-sama to get home.

Except no matter how long I waited, he never did.

The time for him to go to school came and went, and when we still hadn’t seen him by noon, we started to think that something strange was going on. I, along with Minori-sama, Brooke-san, Cerise-san, and Elvia-san, mounted a search for Shinichi-sama, but even though we looked til it was dark, we never found him.

Then the next day—that is, today—a bird-drawn carriage suddenly appeared at our mansion, and we were informed that Her Majesty was summoning me and Minori-sama.

A summons from the empress is not a thing to be ignored, no matter what may be going on. Minori-sama and I asked Brooke-san and the others to keep searching, while we went to Eldant Castle for this audience.

And so...

“Shinichi has been kidnapped.”

“What...?” I couldn’t restrain a gasp.

It was a moment before I could even understand what Her Majesty had said. I immediately slapped my hands over my mouth—far be it from me to be so rude as to doubt the words of the empress—but neither Her Majesty nor Minister Cordobal looked like they were angry with me. They looked, in fact, like they had far bigger things on their minds.

Minister Cordobal clarified what Her Majesty had said. “We aren’t certain yet, but the possibility that he has been abducted seems very high.”

Shinichi-sama... kidnapped?

But why? And by whom?

I was so shaken and confused that I could hardly put two thoughts together.

“Matoba reported to us that Shinichi hasn’t been seen since yesterday morning,” Her Majesty said. “If that were all, we might simply presume that old dunce was up to another of his tricks. But we have also received another report that is much harder to ignore.”

“What’s that?” Minori-sama asked.

It was Minister Cordobal who answered. “Bahairam. We had word that a secret unit from the Kingdom of Bahairam has been active in the area around the capital over the past several days. Ever since the incident with the puppet drake, reports like this have been on the rise... We assumed they were all related to this new weapon, the puppet drake. Exercises for a hot war.”

Even before our encounter with Elvia-san, it seemed that the Kingdom of Bahairam had been making small-scale incursions into Eldant territory, sending small numbers of spies or soldiers into the Empire. For the most part, though, they just seemed to want to find out what the domestic situation was. They had never shown any sign that they intended to make off with one of Her Majesty’s subjects.

Minister Cordobal, however, said, “We’ve received reports of people who appear to be Bahairamanian soldiers from several places throughout our territory. In addition, we recovered what appears to be a possession of one such soldier not far from Shinichi’s mansion.”

Then he showed us something: a small pendant.

I had spent just enough time in the military to recognize what it was. It was something Bahairam’s soldiers wore around their necks. It served as both personal identification and proof of their loyalty to their country. The front had simple letters on it, but on the back was carved the likeness of their king.

Her Majesty said, “It’s possible there was a struggle when Shinichi was taken, causing someone to drop this. Or perhaps it was deliberate, left behind to let us know they had him hostage, so that they could use him as leverage in negotiations. It’s not clear yet which is the case.”

But that would mean...

“There’s a third possibility. The commotion with the puppet drake may not have been chance. It may have been a diversion to set up this kidnapping.”

The puppet drake—a dragon with what appeared to be a magical spike pounded into its head.

It was a type of magical weapon made in Bahairam, or so the rumors said, but we didn’t yet know for sure. We had encountered the dragon through sheer accident. I watched with my own eyes as the military force from Minori-sama’s world—the Jay Ess Dee Eff—brought it down.

We had assumed that the puppet drake was an experiment that had escaped from Bahairam and just happened to wander into the Eldant Empire and attack us. But on reflection, it was a fair distance from our border with Bahairam to the capital. Could a Bahairamanian force really have failed to recover the puppet drake before it reached us?

Was it possible that all of this was really part of a plan?

Or even...

“Even if we assume the Kingdom of Bahairam did this, why would they kidnap Shinichi-kun?” Minori-sama asked.

“I can’t claim to understand what Bahairam might be thinking,” Minister Cordobal replied. “But we haven’t exactly gone out of our way to keep Shinichi secret. Anyone sniffing around our territory, trying to uncover recent goings-on, would hear his name soon enough. There’s no telling whether they fully understand who he is and where he comes from, but they know they’ve captured someone important to our country, and that’s enough.”

He was right: Shinichi-sama had done all sorts of things here that had never been done anywhere before. The war had dragged on so long that even here in the capital, far from the fighting, people were starting to feel the fatigue. The otaku culture Shinichi-sama brought us, and all the various events that had come along with it, had given a new vibrancy not just to the capital, but to the entire nation.

Maybe that was what had attracted the attention of the Kingdom of Bahairam.

Actually, Elvia-san was a spy who had been sent to find out what was going on with Shinichi-sama. Not that she seemed to remember that.

“Minori,” Her Majesty said to break the oppressive silence that had fallen upon us. “Could the Jay Ess Dee Eff not be dispatched?”

Slightly shocked, I stole a glance at Minori-sama beside me.

Of course. The Jay Ess Dee Eff.

They had defeated that dragon without losing a single soldier. Surely rescuing Shinichi-sama would be easy work for them?

Despite our expectant gazes, though, Minori-sama lowered her eyes. “I’m afraid I... personally can’t say.”

Of course not. The Jay Ess Dee Eff was a military organization, after all. They couldn’t act without their superiors’ orders. Somebody—Matoba-sama? Minori-sama?—would probably have to take the matter back to Japan and confer with their ruler or prime minister or whoever held the power there. But that would take time.

“Of course...” Her Majesty said weakly. She sounded like she had half-expected this response.

Her Majesty next looked at Minister Cordobal. If the Jay Ess Dee Eff couldn’t do anything, then perhaps some Eldant soldiers could be sent...

But...

“Majesty. As I told you before, our country cannot send troops.”

“Garius...”

“We’ve lately achieved a sort of stalemate with Bahairam. There may be border skirmishes, but there haven’t been any large-scale battles. In fact, things are very nearly stable. Many of your most important ministers are suggesting we take this opportunity to advance the cause of peace with our neighbor.”

Her Majesty said nothing, but only bit her lip and stared at the floor. She was much too wise not to understand what Minister Cordobal was saying.

The Holy Eldant Empire and the Kingdom of Bahairam had been at war for quite some time, and both nations were tired of it. The last thing either of them wanted was for the war to get bigger or more intense. They might be an enemy country, but a careless provocation—or something that could easily be taken as provocation—would serve no one. It could all too easily spiral into a massive conflict.

“Further,” Minister Cordobal said, “Shinichi may be an important guest in our country, but he is not one of Your Majesty’s subjects.”

In other words, regardless of whether the Japanese army got involved, it would not make sense for the Eldant Empire to act on his behalf.

The Eldant Empire was a major power. That meant even the empress could not simply do whatever she wished. If her advisors all opposed her, even the imperial will could be thwarted.

“Yes, but... But...” Her Majesty stuttered for a moment, then fell silent.

Minister Cordobal did not look much happier than she did. My understanding was that he, too, had a fondness for Shinichi-sama. So although his words might sound heartless, they must have caused him great pain.

However...

I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “What will become of Shinichi-sama, then?”

Every pair of eyes in the audience chamber, including Her Majesty’s, focused on me. I instinctively shrank back, embarrassed at having overstepped myself. And yet, I had to speak. Otherwise, it seemed no one at all was going to help Shinichi-sama. And that...

“Does this mean Shinichi-sama won’t ever be able to come home again...?”

“Myusel...”

Her Majesty spoke my name with such sadness.

I understood. It hurt her, too. Maybe even more than it did me. Because unlike me, Her Majesty had the power...

“Needless to say, we don’t intend to twiddle our thumbs and do nothing,” Minister Cordobal said. “I merely mean that overt military action is out of the question. Sending a goodwill ambassador or someone of the like to negotiate, that’s a possibility. However...” The minister’s beautiful eyebrows furrowed with pain. “That is only in the event that the Kingdom of Bahairam will admit that they kidnapped Shinichi.”

I didn’t say anything.

He was right. If Bahairam chose not to acknowledge that they were holding Shinichi-sama hostage, then there would be no way for the Holy Eldant Empire to get him back...

“In the meantime, we’ll try to come up with some ideas, too,” Minori-sama said.

“Yes, please. We’ll keep you informed if we learn anything.”

“Thank you very much. I wish you the best of luck.”

Minori-sama bowed to Minister Cordobal, prompting me to hurriedly duck my head as well.

But still...

Master... Shinichi-sama...

Would the Jay Ess Dee Eff really help him? Japan had once considered Shinichi-sama such a troublemaker that they attempted to kill him. Would such a country now send its armed forces into a foreign nation in order to rescue him?

This hardly seemed like the moment to voice my concerns, however. Minori-sama and I bowed once more to Her Majesty and Minister Cordobal and then exited the audience chamber, leaving only a heavy silence behind us.

Bathing cleans both the mind and soul, they say. And they’re absolutely right.

“Ahhh...”

I slid down onto the stone bench and let out a relaxed sigh.

This place didn’t look so much like a bath as it did a sauna. That is to say, there were no actual bathtubs. There were brick tiles instead, through which hot steam rose up from who knew where.

As rooms go, it was pretty big. I didn’t exactly have a measuring tape with me, but I would guess the whole area was about ten mats.

It wasn’t like the bath back at my mansion in the Eldant Empire. That had been more the sort of thing I was used to—you know, a tub with plenty of hot water. Maybe I was just encountering a cultural difference between the two countries.

I’d heard that there were even countries on Earth where, unlike Japan, which had plenty of water, there wasn’t even a custom of using a bathtub. Some people, on seeing a large bathing area, might actually be a bit repulsed—maybe they couldn’t bear the thought of using water others had already bathed in.

But anyway, none of that really matters.

“Hmm...”

What with this and that, it had already been three days since I was kidnapped and brought to Bahairam. I spent the first two days going over my room, trying to see if there was some way I could escape, but all I’d learned was that it was locked down so tight an ant couldn’t have gotten in or out. The windows had bars over them, and the door to the room was locked and couldn’t be opened from the inside. I had pounded on it a couple of times, wondering if I might break it down, but I decided my chair was going to break first.

On that note, Clara was with me the entire time I was looking around my room, watching my every move. But she didn’t say anything. I had assumed she was there primarily to keep an eye on me, but I saw her around twenty-four hours a day; she never left to report to anyone.

Could it be that she wasn’t actually a citizen of Bahairam, but, like me, an abductee from somewhere else? Or maybe she was from this country but just especially low on the social ladder. There was always the distinct chance that in this world—which, let’s remember, had effectively a Middle-Ages cultural level—slavery was still alive and well, too. If it was possible to buy human lives, how easy would it be to consider them disposable?

I had even considered a last-resort scenario in which I took Clara hostage in order to escape... but it didn’t seem very hopeful.

As I was reviewing all this in my mind, I heard the door to the bathing area open.

“Pardon me,” someone said.

I just about choked.

Wait. Hang on.

Look, I get it. This is the classic bath scene. The most venerable of tropes. But was it really happening?

As I sat there in the bathing area pretty much panicking, someone quietly approached, eyes downcast. It was, needless to say, Clara.

Once again, she was naked as a jaybird.

I mean not a scrap of clothing.

Her modest chest, her still-widening hips, and her... uh... the place where her legs met her torso were all more or less on full display. She didn’t seem to have any thought of covering herself with a towel, but pattered toward me with only her hands to hide her chest.

“Okay... Wait...!”

I spun around on the bench as fast as I could, putting my back to her.

Not to brag, but I put the L in loser. Zero experience with the ladies, of course. I wasn’t about to let out a “Woo-hoo! ♪” and drink in the sight of Clara’s naked body.

“Pardon me,” Clara repeated, and then she sat down on the bench next to me. I could tell by the sound, and I could sense her there. I still kept my back to her, staring resolutely at the wall of the room. But then...

“Eeyikes!”

I found her arms wrapping around me toward my chest.

I felt something pressing up against my back. Is it?! Was it?! Could it be?!

No, they weren’t large; in fact, they were quite slight, but they were perfectly soft, and I could feel them stimulating the nerves in my back—! Boo... Booo... Boooooooo?! Boob... bo-ob... boooooahh!

As my language functions rapidly went haywire, Clara pressed herself up against me, embracing me from behind.

“W-W-Wai— Wait! Hold on!”

“...Okay,” Clara said, and obediently waited.

She waited, but that didn’t mean she gave me any more personal space. Hence, my galaxy was ecstasy faster than the speed of light. (Meaning unknown.)

“Look... Uh... Could you give me a little space?”

“Okay,” Clara said, and just as obediently backed away.

If nothing else, it looked like she was going to respect what I wanted—she wasn’t going to force, you know, things on me.

What exactly was going on here?

“C-Could you tell me what exactly is going on here?”

“I thought I might wash your honored back.”

“No, er... I mean, I’m very happy about that, but—”

“And that we might have relations after that.”

“I told you, no relations!”

I hadn’t meant to shout.

Clara was silent.

“Listen, it’s, er, I’m very and most humbly aware of what you’re exaltedly saying, but—”

This was no good. I had another bug in my system.

No, brain cells! We have to forge ahead!

We need a phat plan to get us out of this jam!

I’m not trying to brag, but this isn’t the first time that I, Kanou Shinichi, have been in a situation like this!

So I should be able to draw on my past experience and know exactly what to do!

Last time— Last time, I— err... What did I do?

Arrgh, it’s no good! Last time I got out of it with my purity intact because Myusel and Minori-san both showed up at the worst best moment, but this time it was just me and Clara...!

Come to think of it, I didn’t even get out of it by myself last time! Bad self! I’m disappointed in me!

Danger! Danger, Kanou Shinichi!

Come on, brain cells, think!

There’s got to be some reason—some reason not to do anything dirty...

“Ahem, er, um, there’s—there’s someone I’ve already set my—you know, my heart on!”

“Is that so?”

“Very much so!” I said, my voice cracking a little.

Yes! That would do it. That would keep Clara from pushing me into anything! I should have realized when she asked me if I was turning her down because there was someone else in my heart that even in her worldview, they understood preserving one’s chastity for the person you loved.

Perfect. Very logical.

I smiled in relief—until Clara began to speak in a quiet voice.

“In that case, you should set your heart on me instead.”

“Excuse me?!”

If you could just change the object of your affections at the drop of a hat like that, you wouldn’t be very “set” on that person, would you?!

More to the point, it really was absolutely time to clarify what in the world was going on here!

Were things going all adult here? Not-for-under-18s?!

“It doesn’t matter, we just can’t!” I nearly screamed.

Look, it’s not that I wasn’t totally eager for the plot to take an X-rated twist.

The problem was, this was the Kingdom of Bahairam. And I was their prisoner.

I didn’t have a very solid grasp of what was going on, and my gh**t (er, maybe I should say my instinctive sense of caution) was whispering that one careless move could spell very bad things for me.

But then...

“Am I not to your liking, Sire?”

IS THAT REALLY ANOTHER TROPE LINE?!

Frankly, the whole “Don’t you like me?” thing has been done to death in every manga and anime and light novel, not to mention this was the second time Clara had said it to me.

But this time she was saying it from so close that I could feel her breath tickle my ear as she whispered the words, and that hackneyed line became a force to be reckoned with.

“Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-That’s not really what I meant...!” I said, backpedaling before I knew what I was doing.

I had a certain sense that just spitting, “Damn right, how could I ever get moe for someone like you?” would actually save me a fair amount of trouble in the long run, but I could also picture her simply responding, “Let me offer you someone else, then,” and bringing in somebody even more aggressive. And that would be a whole new problem.

But this was a problem, too. Damned if I did, damned if I didn’t. Surrounded on every side!

“Would you prefer a man, perhaps?”

“No! No! Definitely not!”

Through my mind flashed the image of a certain WAC’s head exploding—but as for my own head, I shook it vigorously. I wanted to make sure this particular message got across loud and clear: no guys. The last thing I wanted was for Clara to blandly slip away and send a man in her place, no matter how happy that might make Minori-san.

At that point in my thinking, I finally stopped and breathed a sigh.

How was everyone in Eldant doing? How did they feel about my disappearance? Was there an uproar? I would feel bad if I had caused them any distress.

Or had they been basically like, “Well, he is a former home security guard,” and not worried about it in the least? That was equally painful to imagine.

I have no way to communicate, and they won’t let me out of this house, so there’s nothing I can do.

The question remained, though: what exactly did Bahairam want with kidnapping me? I had tried asking Clara about it, but she just shook her head wordlessly and wouldn’t tell me anything. And as for Amatena, who seemed to be at least somewhat responsible for what was going on, I had only seen her the one time.

When I thought about kidnapping, the word that came to mind was definitely ransom.

But am I that valuable? ...was, er, a question I hoped nobody was asking.

The Japanese government had pretty much wanted to disappear me anyway, so it didn’t seem likely that they would shell out money to get me back. As for the Holy Eldant Empire, I might have been treated as a guest of state, but I wasn’t one of their subjects, so I didn’t expect them to pay for me, either. If Bahairam was going to go to all the trouble of kidnapping somebody, why pick someone in such a precarious position as I was? The son or daughter of some noble family seemed more certain to get results.

That suggested the kidnapping had something to do with the work I was engaged in.

Otaku culture. The weapon of cultural invasion I and the Japanese had brought to this world.

“But... Does Bahairam...?”

It was true, Eldant had begun taking steps to export otaku culture itself. There had already been shipments to several other countries in the area, experiments to see what the reaction would be. But I was pretty sure none of them had gone to Bahairam, which was an enemy country, after all. Ah! But if they had spies like Elvia in Eldant, they had probably gotten at least some information on the subject.

“Sire?” Clara asked again.

Oops! I forgot. I had to deal with my little friend somehow.

“Um, right. Um. You see, I a-actually, you know, I’m all about girls, but I’m... I’m sick! It’s a very bad, very rare illness, that, uh... it makes me die! If I, you know, do that kind of... thing.”

I decided to just let my mouth do whatever it wanted. Part of me definitely wondered what the hell it was saying at that moment, but I had to come up with some kind of lie like this or they would just sic one girl after another on me, and things would only get more whoa-whoa-whoa with every new face.

But then...

“You are... sick, Sire?”

Apparently, Clara had bought my ruse.

“Yeah, sick! So if, you know... If I do anything with you, Clara, I’ll die. And that would be bad for everyone. I think.” I continued to let my mouth run the show as I attempted to escape from this honey trap. “You guys don’t want me to die, do you? You don’t want me to die, do you, Clara?”

“You’re correct. That would be very problematic,” Clara said.

“Well, er, then maybe you could leave me alone in the bath for now. Oh, hey, actually, I’m done! I’m out of here, so take your time!”

I worked my way out of the bathing area, turning my head painfully so as not to look at her, and headed for the changing room.

“Sire...”

Clara’s voice followed me, but I shut the door between the bath and the changing room. Then I slumped against it and let out a breath.

The inside of the mansion seemed dark and gloomy. Without the master, Shinichi-sama, at home, it felt like something was missing. And of course that was true, on some level, but it was more than that. It was like the color had gone out of everything; it was like the mixture of sadness and indolence you feel at twilight.

Brooke-san, Cerise-san, Elvia-san, and Minori-sama: nobody talked very much, and nobody looked very happy. I must admit that I’m not very good at reading the expressions of lizardmen like Brooke-san and Cerise-san, but their body language, the way their tongues moved, made it seem very much like they were feeling down.

I knew it was a little late for this, but all this brought home to me just what an important presence Shinichi-sama had been in all our lives.

I could hardly neglect my duties as maid just because Shinichi-sama was gone, though. In fact, it was my job to make sure the house was shipshape, so Shinichi-sama could come back at any time and find the place looking good. On top of that... Well, I was just a maid, and this was all I could do. And I had to do something, or I thought I would go mad with worry.

After breakfast was over, it was time for cleaning and laundry.

I took care of the laundry first. Things were mostly dry, and I was walking down the hallway with a basket and some rags.

“Shinichi-sama...”

I couldn’t stop his name from coming to my lips. No matter how many times I called him, though, he wouldn’t answer.

I thought the anxiety was going to crush me.

It was already five days since Shinichi-sama had gone missing. I hadn’t heard anything from Her Majesty or Minori-sama these past three days. That probably meant they hadn’t learned anything. Even our hypothesis that Shinichi-sama had been taken to the Kingdom of Bahairam wasn’t completely certain. And trying to find one single person without any kind of clues was like grasping at clouds...

I let out another sigh. I’d lost count of how many times I had done that.

School was the same way: without Shinichi-sama, nothing could move forward. Minori-sama and I, the two remaining instructors, had told the students that they would be doing “free study” until further notice, and we hadn’t been to school since then.

I was sure the students were all worried as well. Everyone so looked up to Shinichi-sama.

“Shinichi-sama...”

Are you hurt? What’s happening to you now?

His face floated through my mind over and over, and each time I felt my chest tighten. It hurt.

I was walking along with my eyes on the ground when...

“Hm...?”

Suddenly I noticed: I could hear people talking.

It was coming from the living area. It sounded like it was probably Minori-sama and her superior, Matoba-sama. It had been quite a while since Matoba-sama had been here—I believe he had gone back to Japan to make a report.

Could it be...?

Would Japan send someone to rescue Shinichi-sama?

The Jay Ess Dee Eff couldn’t act without orders from Japan’s government. But that also meant that if the government so ordered, the Jay Ess Dee Eff could turn its strength—power enough to defeat a dragon—to helping my master.

That had to be why Matoba-sama had come back!

Holding that hope in my heart, I headed toward the living area.

“That’s exactly why—!”

“But...”

I could only hear snatches of the conversation.

They were speaking Japanese. Of course, the rest of us in the house routinely heard Shinichi-sama and Minori-sama speaking this language. But our magic rings also simultaneously transformed it into the Eldant language, which enabled us to speak more readily with them.

At that moment, though, all I could hear was Japanese. That must have meant the two of them had taken off their rings. Deliberately, I suspected.

That anxiousness began to well up again.

I set the basket and rags on the ground where they would be out of the way, then pressed my back to the wall and listened hard to the words coming from the next room.

“So, you’re saying...?”

“That would..., yes. So...”

They were speaking quickly and using a lot of words I didn’t know, so I couldn’t follow everything they were saying. But then I heard Minori-sama shout, “You mean the Japanese government instigated Shinichi-kun’s kidnapping?!”

I caught my breath, feeling my heart skip what seemed to be several beats.

What had Minori-sama just said?

“Now, now, I’m not certain about that myself. I’m simply saying those above me rather seemed to... expect this. There have always been those who felt that restricting our engagement to the Eldant Empire alone was risky. Especially when the country’s empress seemed so taken with Shinichi-kun. Some have suggested he might be a twenty-first-century Rasputin or Dokyo.”

“That’s—”

“On top of that, the JSDF has been running escort missions for export shipments of otaku merchandise, has it not? And they know we defeated that dragon. In that light, it seems he was simply given the duty of approaching nations other than Eldant.”

“I wasn’t told!”

“You’re merely Shinichi-kun’s bodyguard. It didn’t concern you.”

“But sir—”

“I’m fairly confident it’s the Kingdom of Bahairam that’s behind this latest incident. I’m simply saying they might have been inspired by information passed to them by the Japanese government.”

“But why would the government...?”

“Well, without Shinichi-kun, they have the perfect excuse to send somebody new.”

“That’s what this is about?! A pretext?”

“Earlier events made clear how strongly the Eldant Empire would oppose any direct attempt by Japan to liquidate Shinichi-kun. An impolitic move on our part could even lead to war. How much easier would it be if Shinichi-kun vanished by ‘accident,’ something unrelated to the Japanese government? A smooth transition of Amutech’s management would be quite readily achieved then.”

“That’s why they fed information to Bahairam?”

“I’m only saying it’s a possibility. I have no actual proof, nor was I personally told any of this. I do know, however, that the government has already prepared a successor. That’s much too quick if they only just learned about Shinichi-kun’s kidnapping.”

“.........Grr...”

“Whatever the case, the government is not going to move on this situation. Nor is the JSDF. And I doubt the Holy Eldant Empire will, either. That’s simply the way it is.”

The meaning of their conversation slowly sank in to me, spreading darkness through me like a poison as it did so. Yes, they were using difficult words and expressions that left me unable to understand everything they had said. But I understood enough.

Was it Japan’s fault that Shinichi-sama had been kidnapped?

With Shinichi-sama gone, would somebody new come?

It was more convenient for Japan that Shinichi-sama disappear, so they were deliberately going to hold back their army...

What would happen to Shinichi-sama, then?

Who would help him?

No one? Really—no one?

Would everyone, even his own country, abandon him?!

The thought was so terrible it made me dizzy. I stumbled a bit and accidentally kicked the basket of clothes I had set on the floor.

“Who’s there?!” Minori-sama demanded instantly.

And I—horrified and overwhelmed by everything that was going on, I simply ran for my life.

“Ohh...”

What should I do?

What should I do, what should I do, what should I do, what should I do what should I do what should I do...!

Anxiety—no, terror seized my insides.

Nobody was going to rescue Shinichi-sama.

Even Minori-sama couldn’t help him.

So honestly... what would happen to him?

Would he never come back to us? Would somebody new come to replace him, like Matoba-sama said? And would I have to serve that new person?

Whoever they were, they wouldn’t be Shinichi-sama.

“I couldn’t bear that...!”

My vision went blurry... and then I fell.

I lay right there on the floor in the hallway.

“Shinichi-sama! Shinichi-samaaaa...”

Tears began pouring out of my eyes. I couldn’t stop them.

A week passed in the blink of an eye.

The window still had bars over it. The door was still locked from the outside.

My room was large enough, and pretty well-appointed. I had an attached toilet and bath, and even what seemed to be a small kitchen. Three meals a day were delivered to me.

I had just about everything I could want—but practically speaking, I was still under house arrest.

Sure, I was a former home security guard and shut-in, so being shut up in my room for a week didn’t bother me at all in principle. But back then, I’d had manga and games and light novels and anime DVDs to entertain me, plus I could sometimes figuratively “go outside” via the internet. Spending a week in a room without even one of those distractions left me with plenty of time to kill.

There was one thing in my room, though: Clara.

Clara, the serving girl with animal ears, an animal tail, and a seriously loli vibe. She may not have had the headdress, the apron, or the black dress, but she was effectively my maid.

A beast-girl maid!!

The crushing power of that combination is almost beyond the ability of words to describe.

True, she wasn’t very expressive—or anyway, I didn’t feel like I saw a lot of emotion from her—but if I thought of her as a kuudere, or one of those “weird girl” types, that could actually be seen as a positive.

Not to mention, not only was this girl doing the cooking and cleaning for me, she even wanted to offer herself to me at night. If I asked, she would literally do anything I wanted without so much as a frown. Being cooped up with a maid like that... Well, it only leaves you with one thing to do, if you know what I mean.

“Sire— how— is— this?” Clara asked, speaking in rhythmic beats. “How— does— it— feel?”

“Mm, good,” I replied in the same rhythm. The bed creaked in time underneath me.

“Really— really— good... Ah— mm— right— there—!”

“Like— this?!”

“Yes—! Ahhh...!”

It felt so good, I couldn’t keep a sigh from slipping out.

“Oh... Oh man— Clara... You— said— you were— new to— this!”

“But— I— am—!”

“So— Sooo good—! You’re— amazing!”

“Do you— mean it—?” Clara asked from where she knelt above me.

“Sire— it’s so— hard—!”

“There! Mmm—!”

Her technique—I really couldn’t believe she didn’t have a lot of experience. I gasped again.

Above me, Clara started moving faster.

“Ooh! There...!”

“You mean— here—?”

“Yes! Ahhh...!”

..........................

Er, well, you get the idea.

Clara was giving me massages on an almost daily basis.

“I just can’t do anything about my shoulders and hips all by myself.”

I lay on my stomach on the bed, my face turned to one side. Clara was astride me, her small, pale hands working the tension out of my muscles.

For the record, I was the one who taught her how to give a massage. First I gave her one, and then she gave me one.

I’m actually pretty good at giving massages, if I may say so myself. My parents are both desk jockeys, so they would often give me some pocket change in exchange for pounding their shoulders or the like. I learned about lots of different massage techniques in hopes of increasing my take even further, and in the process I actually acquired some genuine skill.

So it was easy enough to teach Clara the basics.

“Ohh. You’re a lifesaver. That really feels great.”

When you spend all your time reading books or fiddling around on the computer, your shoulders naturally become tense. But I was still just a teenager and never paid it much mind, so it just kept getting worse and worse. Sure, I could ask somebody to rub my shoulders every once in a while, but it was all women in my house—it was a little awkward asking for a massage. I guess there was always Brooke, but if he misjudged his own strength, my shoulders might end up a lot worse than just stiff.

Yes—Clara was a girl, too. So why could I ask her for a massage when I couldn’t ask Myusel or the others? Admittedly, it was a little odd. My thought was, we weren’t actually, you know, doing it, but this was plenty close.

As these thoughts were running through my head...

“It’s me.”

There was a sudden knock at the door.

“I’m coming in.”

Without waiting for us to answer, white-haired Elvia—I mean, Amatena—strode into the room.

I know it’s impolite to keep confusing them. But seriously, they look so alike! Just change the hair color and you wouldn’t know which was which.

I noticed that Clara suddenly went stiff, then hastily jumped off me. I was a little bit surprised by her reaction. She was always so muted, almost emotionless, but now—

Guhuh?

As she got off the bed, I saw that her tail was standing straight up.

I thought I remembered that dogs wag their tails from side to side when they’re happy, but an erect tail means displeasure. Not sure about cats. Don’t their tails stand up when they’re having a good time?

Clara’s face was still the picture of reserve, but might she actually be happy to see Amatena?

Wait a second... Was this a yuri flag?

Even as the thought went through my head, I rolled over and sat up in bed.

“Er...”

There were more than a few questions I wanted to ask Amatena, but she started talking first.

“Kanou Shinichi. There’s something I want to show you, you vile pig.”

“Huh? Show me?”

“Correct. Make ready to go outside, immediately.”

“Make ready? Go outside?”

Since I had been locked up in here for a week, the clothes I’d arrived in had gone out to laundry; at the moment, I was dressed in something that looked like a local outfit. I had no real idea whether it was suitable for leaving my room, but I sort of guessed not. Should I change into something else to go out?

Hold on—go out?!

Amatena looked at me, her face identical to Elvia’s but without any of easygoing-ness. It didn’t look like they were planning to set me free or anything. She was going to take me somewhere else.

“Er... Do you guys happen to distinguish between indoor and outdoor clothes?”

“...Clara,” Amatena said. Maybe she thought there was no point in talking to me. “Help Kanou Shinichi get ready. You have your assignment.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Clara nodded sharply, still expressionless. I couldn’t help but notice, though, that her tail was still standing up. But so what? you may be wondering. I was pretty sure Clara had a thing for Amatena. Anyway, I sure hadn’t seen her tail stand up like that when she was with me... But setting aside the question of whether Clara preferred the flowery realm of yuri, it looked like I had made the right choice not laying a hand on her.

“I’ll be waiting outside,” Amatena said, and left the room.

Where were they planning to take me?

I finally had a chance to get out of this cage, but all I could feel in my chest was a nameless fear.

When everything was ready, I left the house and was hustled into a carriage that was waiting outside.

It looked like people here got around pretty much the same way they did in the Eldant Empire. The difference was that the carriages here were pulled by giant lizards. Or, well, the impression they gave was more like dinosaurs. I mean tyrannosauruses or velociraptors—two-legged reptiles the size of cows. Two of them were attached to the carriage.

So it was dino-drawn carriages, not bird-drawn ones, in Bahairam.

Silence reigned in the cabin. Clara had stayed behind in the house where I had been captive; the only ones riding in the carriage were me and Amatena. The driver was a man who wore a military uniform like hers. There was no one else around. It didn’t seem like much of a guard contingent for transporting an abductee.

Then again, if Amatena’s physical capabilities were anything like Elvia’s, stopping me if I tried to fight or run would be a piece of cake for her. Pretty much an entire cake, actually. It wasn’t exactly impossible for a human to fight a beast person, but the odds were long.

Minori-san might have an actual shot, come to think of it, I reflected, the image of a certain brave WAC passing through my mind. We were talking about someone who had roundhouse-kicked a dragon, after all. She had told me she was the daughter of a dojo master and had been learning martial arts since she was very young. It’s said that an excess of practice can make up for a dearth of talent. Anyway, I would hate to be the guy who thought he could get the jump on Minori-san just because she was so laid back. I bet that’d be over in one punch.

But anyway, setting that aside...

“So this is Bahairam?”

Until this point I had known the Kingdom of Bahairam only by name, with no real idea what kind of place it actually was. So long as I was living in the Holy Eldant Empire, it was just “a neighboring country” or “an enemy country” or “Elvia’s homeland,” and nothing more. But now, here I was.

“It’s very...”

The scenery that rushed by outside the window of the dino-drawn carriage was unlike anything I’d seen in Eldant.

I mean, was this even really a city? Long, white, single-story buildings stood at regular intervals. They lined both sides of the street, all exactly alike. It was as if they had been mass-produced from a single mold and all put in place according to the same rules. It was practically the opposite of the chaotic atmosphere of Eldant.

On top of that, even though it was almost noon, the place was eerily quiet; I didn’t see anyone around.

“Very what?”

“Huh? Oh, uh... Very... neat. Organized.” I chose my words carefully.

“I see,” Amatena said with a small nod. But it took her a second.

Huh? Had she just hesitated over something?

Maybe it was just my imagination.

“It’s true that this—Borfoi, the eastern city—is one of the newer urban developments in our nation. Naturally, some of the rural settlements remain in the old style—not so well manicured. But I trust that in time all of them will be converted to be like the capital and this city.”

Amatena offered her explanation in a dispassionate tone.

I couldn’t quite figure out what to say. (“I love how dreary it is! You would hardly believe anyone lives here!” Maybe not.) Instead I asked, “Where are we going?”

Amatena only glanced at me and said, “You’ll know soon enough.”

What’s the word for this? Cold? Standoffish?

I sighed a little. Her face really did look exactly like Elvia’s—and aside from minor physical differences and, of course, the color of her fur, so did the rest of her. Notwithstanding the white hair, ears, and tail, she was the spitting image of my resident artist. Actually, her skin was maybe just a little more pale, but you would practically have to see the two of them side by side to really notice it.

Anyway, my point is, they really super looked like each other.

And yet, Amatena’s personality was pretty much the exact opposite of Elvia’s. Elvia’s face was practically locked into a gigantic, friendly smile by default—whereas Amatena hardly had any expression at all.

My entire experience of Bahairamanian people now consisted of Amatena, Clara, and Elvia, but still, the numbers made me wonder whether people from this country actually tended to be cool and expressionless like Amatena and Clara, with Elvia’s outgoing nature being the exception.

We sat in silence. It was oddly uncomfortable being in the carriage with the sour beast person. I started to wish we would hurry up and get to wherever we were going.

I spent some time looking out the window as I ruminated.

“Huh?”

That’s when I heard something getting closer.

Some kind of lively noise.

Actually, I guess it wasn’t getting closer to us. Our carriage was probably getting closer to it.

At first, the sound of our vehicle drowned out the noise outside, and I couldn’t quite make out what it was, but as it got louder and louder, I realized it was the hubbub of cheering voices.

Cheering?

I poked my head out the window of the dino-drawn carriage, trying to ascertain the source of the sound.

Up ahead, I could see a massive building. It was much bigger than my mansion. Not as big as Eldant Castle, maybe, but that wasn’t saying much. It certainly dwarfed the flat buildings I had seen along the road on the way here.

What was more, this building alone had a very unique architecture. It had a very traditional-looking, elaborate exterior, with lots of flowing curves. In fact, it made me think of...

“A temple?”

Yes. It definitely gave the impression of being some kind of religious building.

And in the square in front of it stood hundreds, maybe even more than a thousand, people, all cheering and shouting. The crowd seemed to be composed of several different races, with humans representing the majority, then beast people.

But I whispered my next observation:

“Everyone’s dressed the same.”

The people there were all wearing simple outfits—less than simple, really. From the material to the style, the staggering difference from what Amatena was wearing was inescapable.

I didn’t say anything, but I was starting to get, as they say, a bad feeling about this.

Let’s review: on the one hand, we had a town full of extremely simple buildings and a crowd of people in extremely simple clothes. On the other, we had one very ostentatious temple and a minder in a military uniform that seemed to have come from another world from what everyone else was wearing.

This was more than a difference in social class. This was...

But even as I sat there fretting and arguing with myself, the dino-drawn carriage dino-drew closer to the temple.

Then suddenly, a short distance from the crowd, it stopped. Everyone appeared focused on the temple, so no one seemed to notice our arrival.

“All right, get out.”

“Er, right.”

I got out of the carriage to discover the road surface wasn’t paved. That would explain why the ride quality had been so poor. I can only speak for the area around the capital, but back in Eldant, most of the main roads had basic paving, being lined with flagstones in most of the major areas. It suggested that Eldant was ahead as far as urban infrastructure was concerned.

Then again, since this wasn’t Bahairam’s capital city, it might be best not to compare the two.

Then I noticed something.

“Huh...?”

Right smack on the front of the temple, and up a little.

There was a balcony that looked down over the crowd.

And there was a man standing on the balcony. Er, well, maybe the word “man” doesn’t give the most precise impression. Strictly speaking, he was a white-haired old dude.

Below the mustache that covered his upper lip floated a smile; he waved magnanimously to the people gathered below. He threw back his cape: the clothes beneath were classy enough to make him look like some sort of noble.

Like the temple itself, he definitely stood out from his surroundings.

“Father!”

“...Father?”

I wrinkled my brow when I heard the shout. Father? Who? That guy on the balcony?

What, did he have a son or daughter somewhere in the crowd?

I scanned the assembled people, but everyone had the same smile on their face, all of them waving back at the man up above. I heard the shout of “Father” repeated several times.

Maybe I was mishearing something? Not likely. I had my magic ring to translate for me telepathically, so I didn’t run the risk of just misunderstanding a letter or something. They weren’t saying “bother” or “flounder” or whatever.

But I was also pretty sure this entire crowd wasn’t composed entirely of the biological children of that man on the balcony.

Actually...

Now that I thought about it, I noticed that I couldn’t understand the vast majority of what the crowd was shouting. That meant most of the people there weren’t wearing magic interpreter rings, or whatever served that function here in Bahairam. I recalled that even in the Eldant Empire, only people above a certain social station were apt to have the rings. It was just that I spent so much of my time with people who wore them that I had almost forgotten.

For what it was worth, I had actually learned a bit of the Eldant language myself, but I didn’t understand the bulk of what I was hearing now. That suggested the people of Bahairam spoke a different language. Some facets of the pronunciation sounded similar, almost like a very thick accent instead of a separate language, but the niceties were lost on me.

“He is our honored father-ruler,” Amatena said, as if she could see what I was thinking. “Although I believe in other lands you know him simply as the King of Bahairam.”

I caught my breath and hurriedly took another look at the old man on the balcony.

That was the King of Bahairam?!

But why was he...?

“Our father-ruler makes occasional tours of his kingdom. When he does so, he does us, his children, the honor of letting us see him. This morning he has been so kind as to come to this eastern city.”

“Huh...”

“Father-ruler” and “children,” huh?

So in this country, the king was literally seen as “father of the people.” And the citizens, I supposed, were all seen to be equals as his children.

“Amatena... Is this what you wanted to show me?”

I looked over at the “children” and the temple and the “father-ruler.”

I understood that the man was the King of Bahairam, but what was the point of just showing him to me? Surely, she didn’t think I would be moved to tears, fall to my knees, the moment I saw him? She couldn’t be that deluded.

Just for an instant, I thought maybe I was going to be taken to meet him. But if so, why stop outside the temple to look at him? I assumed I would have to go inside to meet him. Or was Amatena trying to give me a sense of how much the people in this country adored their leader?

But then again...

For a king, this seems...

...surprisingly sparsely attended.

I know it might sound strange to refer to a crowd that I said might top a thousand people as small, but we were talking about the king, here. Admittedly, I didn’t know what the population density of Bahairam was, let alone this specific part of the country, but wouldn’t you expect tens of thousands to turn out to get a glimpse of the royal visage? Heck, we get tens of thousands just for Comiket. Compared to that, this was a little underwhelming. Although to be fair, people come from all over the country for Comiket.

“What...?”

My thoughts were interrupted by a piece of paper Amatena suddenly thrust out in front of me.

Her face showed no expression; she just stood there with the paper outstretched, not saying anything. The sheet was folded over—was she telling me to open it and take a look?

I took the paper hesitantly and unfolded it.

“Huh?”

On it, I saw something very unexpected: Petralka.

It was the Empress of the Holy Eldant Empire, looking extra moe in her adorable magical-girl outfit, striking a pose and smiling straight at the viewer.

It was her, or rather, a picture of her. What was this, some kind of publicity photo?

No, when I looked closer, I realized that although it was photo-quality, this was an illustration.

I suspected it was a colored woodblock print. True, the school had a color copier and color printer, but the students couldn’t use them without permission. It was similar with photos. I couldn’t imagine someone had been making and selling something like that without me hearing about it. More likely, someone in the capital had taken it upon themselves to produce this image.

Not long before, we’d made a movie featuring Petralka as a magical girl. It had actually started as a cover-up for a flub on the part of the Japanese government, but we got so into it that we ended up completing the film (however crude it was) and then showing it both at Eldant Castle and at several sites around the city.

And boy, did it take off with the populace.

We never expected Her Majesty’s popularity to shoot up the way it did. Petralka herself was profoundly embarrassed by the film, but it resulted in her subjects adoring her as a person as well as an empress.

“We demand that you do something just like this,” Amatena said.

“Like this?” I asked, frowning.

Was Bahairam ordering me to produce a movie? Or just portrait pictures like this one? It didn’t really matter, because I didn’t have the equipment to make a movie, and the technology for producing prints like this had been around since long before I had.

Either way, kidnapping me wasn’t looking very useful.

“Here,” Amatena said, thrusting another piece of paper at me. This one depicted a bearded man in fancy clothes.

It took me a second, but the beard clued me in: it was the King of Bahairam. They had prettied him up so much in this picture that I almost didn’t recognize him, but I thought this was intended to be a portrait of the nation’s ruler. This, too, looked like a colored woodblock print; like the one of Petralka, it was extremely realistic, but if you looked closely, you could see it wasn’t a photograph.

I stared silently at one picture, then the other.

So Amatena was saying...

“You want me to turn this guy into a magical girl?”

An image passed through my mind of the “father-ruler” in a frilly miniskirt and knee-high socks, holding a stick and winking as he exclaimed, “That was a big meowstake!☆” Not forgetting the flirty pose, of course.

..................

..................

Urgh.

“No.” Amatena shook her head as I battled a wave of nausea.

“Thank goodness. Obviously, I guess. Why would you need something like that?”

Granted, there was probably a deeper question than one of necessity.

But wait... Could it work as a gag?!

Around and around went my irreverent thoughts.

“Kanou Shinichi,” Amatena said, staring me full in the face, “you did something that caused Petralka an Eldant III’s popularity in the Eldant Empire to increase dramatically.”

“Huh? Er, yeah, I guess.”

I guess that was me, wasn’t it? Yeah, okay, it was. I think it’s a good thing for an administrator to be popular with the people.

“You will do the same thing for our country.”

“I’m sorry...?”

“You will use your abilities to make the children many times more loyal to the father-ruler. They will work harder for him, fight harder for him, and be more overjoyed to do so.”

“............Huh?”

This request was sort of kitty-corner from what I’d been imagining, and all I could respond with was a vacant grunt. It was drowned out by the shouting and cheering, though, and I wasn’t sure Amatena even heard me.