Chapter One: Well, Whaddya Know—It’s Another World!

Everything in sight was drenched in the color of the setting sun.

The twilight scene looked like a faded photograph, filling me with a strange melancholy. A kind of sadness welled up in my heart, like love for something already gone, never to be regained. In contrast to the inexplicable impatience I felt, everything around me seemed sluggish, as if this moment might drag on for eternity...

What a ridiculous thought. But there it was, in the corner of my mind.

“I really... like you.”

It was a textbook confession scene.

We stood facing each other in the schoolyard, the place crimson in the light. No one else was around, just our shadows stretching out along the ground. The voices of the baseball team practicing on the school field seemed somehow far away. Nothing felt real, as though it were all happening according to a script, as if she and I were the only ones left in this unending twilight world. I struggled a little for breath.

“Would you go out with me?”

I dived right in: the words that begged for love. The sign of my commitment.

If I didn’t tell her about the feelings swelling in my heart, we would just go on as we always had, a familiar, comfortable, yet ambiguous distance between us. It would have been easy enough just to go along with it.

But that would condemn me to endless waiting.

Feelings are living things. If you keep them shut up for too long, eventually they die.

I had mustered all my willpower in order to say the words, and now they faded into the silence.

She blinked twice, three times. And then she said...

“No way!”

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

“I’m sorry... What did you say...?” I asked tremblingly.

“I said no way,” she said indifferently. And then, as if to really drive the stake through my heart, she went on, “I have zero plans of going out with you, Shin-chan.”

There was a long pause. I grunted as if all the blood in my body had suddenly reversed direction.

I couldn’t believe she’d rejected me. I couldn’t believe I’d failed.

I had been so sure she would say yes to me. The two of us were friends growing up: our houses were close by, and we were practically a part of each other’s families. I’m not the type to make risky gambles. I’d told her how I felt because I thought I knew how she’d respond.

Then, pathetically, I pressed the issue.

“What? But—”

Even as I was saying it, part of me knew how bad it was. There’s still time, it told me. I could still laugh it off, say, “Of course you don’t! I was just kidding!” I didn’t have to make the wound any deeper. Maybe I could at least end the conversation gracefully. Then I could still look my old friend in the eye when I saw her the next day.

But the refusal to leave well enough alone gave me a shove, and I went tumbling toward a far more tragic outcome.

“Why...?”

Was it because I wasn’t handsome?

Were my grades not good enough?

Was I not a talented enough athlete?

Was I—

The possibilities rolled through my mind, not helping anything.

“Well, Shin-chan—” She batted her big eyes at me.

She seemed to be genuinely puzzled, as if she wanted to ask why I didn’t know the answer to such an obvious question. And even that expression looked adorable on her face. I really was hopeless.

Finally, the reason came out:

“—you’re an otaku, right?”

My normal life ended when I opened my eyes. It happened entirely without my consent—in two or three senses.

“What’s wrong with being an otakuuuuuuuuuuuu?!”

I woke to my own scream.

I blinked a few times, the tension leaving my body. It was hardly the first time I’d had a bad dream, but today... Today, my head hurt for some reason. Maybe it was from yelling at the top of my lungs. It felt like I had a giant spitball buried in the middle of my noggin.

“...Just a dream.”

It had happened more than a year ago, yet in my dream, the memory was as clear as if it were yesterday. On the other hand, though, I couldn’t quite think straight, as if the dream were still clinging to me. Thinking of anything at all felt like a tremendous effort.

I was lying on my back. I slowly opened my eyes and looked up.

“An unfamiliar... ceiling...”

Immediately I quoted from an anime that shall remain nameless (note: it’s from episode two of the TV series). Okay, so even I had to admit it showed what a lost-cause otaku I am. But never mind that. There was an unfamiliar ceiling above me, for no apparent reason at all.

Wait. Doesn’t it seem kind of... close? Like, pretty low?

“Where... am I...?”

The ceiling I was looking at was definitely not the ceiling of my own room, which I’d spent an awful lot of time staring at. If it were, it would have had a life-size poster of Madoka, the heroine of the masterpiece magical-girl anime I so loved, Rental☆Madoka. But the ceiling I was looking at now showed no sign of that magical (in every sense) girl, whose invigorating smile would be enough to keep your spirits up even if you worked at the blackest, most awful temp agency.

What I saw instead was an oddly rigid pattern carved into the ceiling.

Wait a second... It wasn’t the ceiling of a room at all.

The surface wasn’t flat, but gently curved; in other words, it formed a half-sphere. The four pillars supporting it were attached to the edges of the bed I was sleeping in. I was in a canopy bed.

Yes, a canopy bed, the very symbol for “rich guy” in anime, manga, games, and light novels. A commoner like me could barely hope to lay eyes on such a thing unless I was transported into the middle of one of those stories.

And here I was, sleeping on just such an expensive piece of furniture.

I sat up with one question in my mind: Why?

A look around revealed a startlingly large Western-style room. I would say it was at least three times the size of my room at home, nearly twenty tatami mats. But I hardly saw any furniture; the bed was sitting smack in the middle of the room, as if to boast that the owner of the house could afford to waste all this space. The room was dim, most likely on account of the heavy curtains drawn over the windows. Bright light leaked in between the curtains, probably on purpose to prevent the room from being completely dark.

“Okay, seriously—where am I?!” I practically groaned.

For a place with so few furnishings, the wallpaper bore an elaborate pattern, the curtains were embroidered, and there were decorations all over the window frames and the pillars that stuck out slightly from the walls. The walls also bore lamps that had another detailed pattern on them.

I had never seen anything like it except in anime, manga, games, and light novels. It sort of looked like a traditional European mansion. If anything, it seemed like the sort of place that might show up in one of those stories where the house is as much the star as the characters.

Maybe that was why I didn’t notice her at first. She seemed like such a natural part of the room that she almost faded into the scenery.

I looked right past her once, then jumped a little and looked again. Someone was standing against the wall.

“A m-m-m...”

As soon as the realization hit, it ran like fireworks along my gray matter. The black dress. The white, frilly apron. The similarly frilly headdress. The dark-red ribbon with its jade-green clasp at her neck.

Could it be? It was! One of the stalwarts of the adorableness that was moe, with admirers aplenty whether she appeared in anime, manga, games, or light novels! And that costume! Practically an aphrodisiac, despite how little skin it shows. How many pop-culture addicts has it sent into a moe-addled lather?

“IS THAT REALLY A MAID?!”

The maid standing against the wall jumped in surprise when I pumped my fist and shouted. In fact... it almost looked like she was against the wall because she had been trying to keep her distance from me. Well, I guess anyone would stand back if they saw a guy jump out of bed and start shouting.

But to think! To imagine the day would come when I would see a maid! In real life! In 3D! In the flesh!

“Ohhh...” I was overcome with emotion.

Some might say: “Hey, we’ve got maid cafés, don’t we?” Amateurs! Maid cafés are ultimately just a form of cosplay. They’re fake, a performance—they lack the gravitas of true maids. Those ersatz au pairs are really just high school or college girls. That is to say, they lack the heart, the spirit, the ineffable quality one only achieves through absolute devotion to the Way of the Maid!

But this maid, right here in front of me, she had it. I could tell. My eyes could not be deceived...!

I mean, there’s a difference between someone who wears a maid costume for fun and someone who wears it every day of her life. She just seemed more comfortable in it.

A second look revealed something else: she wasn’t Japanese. I couldn’t quite tell what color her hair was in the darkness, but I could at least make out that it wasn’t black.

Her long hair was tied in twintails, one falling to the left and one to the right, tied high on her head. She was blinking her large eyes in confusion—indeed, fear. I could tell even in the dim room that her skin was as pale and smooth as porcelain, her features finely formed but not ostentatious—the very picture of refined beauty. She was the perfect example of how an air of purity could turn plain looks into a virtue.

She seemed to be about my age; i.e., in her late teens. That maid outfit embraced a willowy body. We often describe such people by saying that they look like they might break in half if you gave them a strong hug—but she looked almost like glass, as if she might be damaged if handled carelessly.

It was practically perfect. If I were a judge for a Maid Achievement Test, I could comfortably give her a 90. Where did those other ten points go, you ask? She could earn them if she were holding a broom. A broom is fundamental for a maid. Otherwise it’s like drawing an oni without his club, or—

Well, never mind.

Still clinging to the wall, the maid hesitantly began to speak.

“Re... Retosamu?”

What was that? What had she said?

“E... Efasu uoi er, Retosamu?”

I stared blankly at her, so the maid repeated herself... I think. If a rising intonation at the end of the sentence indicated a question, then she was asking again.

It wasn’t Japanese; that was for sure. The pronunciation suggested it wasn’t English, either, but what, then? It didn’t seem to be German or French or Chinese. It didn’t really matter, because I didn’t have the foggiest idea what she was saying, in any case.

“Well, this is trouble,” I muttered. I finally had a chance to meet a real-life, in-the-flesh maid, and I couldn’t even make small talk.

I know, I know. Some people might say, “Whatever! First worry about the important stuff, like asking where you are!” Do these people have no dreams? How boorish would you have to be to focus on any of that? I was meeting an honest-to-God, three-dimensional moe character. Before this miracle, every other concern was like a molehill before a mountain!

“Retosamu,” the maid said, sounding at a loss. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one frustrated by the inability to communicate.

Suddenly, she nodded as if remembering something and began hurriedly patting her uniform. For a second I wondered what she was doing, but then I realized she was looking for something somewhere in her clothes.

“Sou tei!”

A smile crossed her face, and she pulled some kind of box out of her pocket.

She began walking toward me hesitantly and showed me what was in the box, which opened from the middle, like a clam.

It was a small silver ring.

“Huh? What’s this?”

The ring looked a little too big, like maybe it wasn’t made very well—but the surface was covered with tiny carved letters.

Just like the kind of magic ring that so often appears in anime, manga, and games.

I wondered what kind of letters these were. It wasn’t the Roman alphabet, and of course, it wasn’t Japanese writing, either. I’d seen the Hebrew alphabet, too—aleph and zayin and such; it shows up pretty regularly in fantasy manga and anime. But it wasn’t that, either.

“Retosamu, regunifu ruoi shisu ete tsupu.”

The maid held the ring out, then looked at me expectantly. Was she telling me to put it on?

I hesitated somewhat to just equip an unfamiliar item. It didn’t feel right. How often has someone put on a magic ring just to be immediately under its control? I mean... I know that hasn’t literally happened, but still.

But then—

“Retosamu.”

The maid pointed to her own hand. On her left ring finger, she had a ring that looked a lot like the one she was holding out to me. She took it off, handed it to me, and instead put the ring she had offered me on her own hand.

What was going on here?

It seemed like she was trying to show me the ring was safe to put on, sort of like how someone might eat a bite of food to prove it isn’t poisoned.

But it was also kind of like the way a couple exchanges rings when they get married, and that left me a little embarrassed. Now I was reluctant for a whole new reason...

“Retosamu...?”

She spoke again, a look of anxiety on her pale face. Holy crap, is she cute!

But that very cuteness made me feel guilty. The maid didn’t seem sure what to do if I wouldn’t put on the ring.

“Aw, fer... Okay, I get it.”

I’m a man. And an otaku, too. To have an ideal woman like this maid turn such pleading eyes on me couldn’t fail to move me. My heart burned with the moe-ness of it all, urging me to hurry up and put on the ring.

“All right, here goes...”

With much fear and trembling, I put the ring on my finger. There was no flash of light or explosion, nor did it suddenly start burying itself in my flesh. It just slipped on.

“Like this?” I asked.

“Yes! Can you understand me now, Master?” (Sei shisu moufu donatosuredonu uoi naku, Retosamu?)

“Hwah?!”

I let out a whoop of surprise. All of a sudden I could understand what she was saying.

And it wasn’t like she had spoken Japanese. She was still speaking that weird language, but I heard the Japanese meaning in my head, almost overlaid with hers, like a simultaneous interpreter.

How the heck does this work?

Okay, wait. Never mind that for now. What had she just said?

Master? Who was that? Did she mean me?

“Yesss!”

In a fit of emotion, I looked up at the ceiling and sighed.

Master! Master! MASTERRRRRR! Listen to the sweet sound of it! Normally a maid calls her employer “sir”—but to be called “Master”! What a feeling!

Thank God I’m alive! If I’d had a time machine, I would have gone back to myself a year ago and told him, “Be glad you’re alive! Just hang in there, one day a maid is going to call you ‘Master’!”

This and other sundry joyous thoughts went through my head, but after a while I could no longer ignore the unresolved situation in front of me.

I.e., What was going on here?

Where was I, who was this girl, and how did I end up like this?

“Hrmm...”

Wracking my brain cells, which didn’t really want to work that hard because of a dull ache, I went back through my memories.

I recalled that I had been looking for a job in Akiba, the otaku haven in central Tokyo. I was there for an interview. I was pretty sure there was a break, during which time I got an oolong tea from a drink machine.

I remember drinking it, and then... nothing.

Huh? That didn’t explain what I was doing here at all.

“Master...?”

When I stood frozen for too long, the maid spoke again, sounding worried. I still didn’t know the details of her language, but apparently the word Retosamu, which she’d used several times, meant Master.

“Oh, um.” I looked at her. “Sorry, can I ask you something?”

“Certainly. Anything at all.” She nodded, seeming relieved—even happy—to finally have a conversation going.

“For starters, who are you? What’s your name?”

“I’m Myusel—Myusel Fourant.” She gave me an adorable little bow.

“Myusel...” What a sweet name. It fit her. I was just trying the name out, but she seemed to think I was calling her, because she said, “Yes?”

“Um... What’s your social status, exactly?”

Notwithstanding the wave of ecstasy that transfixed me the first time she called me Master, I was hardly enough of a hopeless jerk to be all, Yes, I am your master!! Like a maid would just pop out of thin air and serve me? Come on.

“I will be seeing to all your needs from today forward, Master.”

“Okay, but... Who’s this ‘Master’? Who are you talking about?”

“...I’m sorry?” Myusel blinked. Then she said apologetically, “Oh... Would you rather I called you something else?” She ducked her head slightly. “Kanou... Shinichi-sama.”

Kanou Shinichi.

That was my name, all right. In other words, the “master” this girl kept referring to was... me!

“I’m your... master?”

“Yes, sir.” Myusel looked perplexed, as if wondering how I could find this so difficult.

This made no sense! What the heck was going on here?!

“Okay, so... So...”

Let’s forget why I’m her master for now. I decided to try to find out where I was instead. I tried again to remember, but once more I found my memories stopped cold in the otaku mecca, Akihabara. Wherever I was, assuming I didn’t have a second personality or some kind of amnesia, I hadn’t come here of my own free will.

“Where... are we?”

“In the Latatos Forest on the edge of Marinos, capital of the Holy Eldant Empire.”

The answer came—well, not from Myusel. I looked around in surprise to see who had spoken, and found a woman standing there.

She was young, wearing a dark green outfit—a military uniform. But it wasn’t a combat uniform, just the sort of thing you would wear around the office. What the armed forces might call a work uniform. Jacket above, tight skirt below. Special job and rank insignia on the collar, even a necktie.

What really caught my eye, though, wasn’t the uniform, but the person wearing it.

Specifically, her chest.

It... It’s huge!

That was the first thing I noticed. Not the necktie, not the job insignia or the badge of rank—it was all about those two towering hills...! She was an F cup for sure, maybe even a G. Incredible. When I thought of the juicy white peaches concealed under the highly regulated costume called a uniform...! She couldn’t have hidden the plumpness of them if she’d tried, and I was instantly lost in them. Who knew such massive breasts actually existed! Did this mean not all of those photos of pop idols were photoshopped?! Amazing! La**ta really does exist...! (I was starting to grow incoherent from sheer excitement.)

“Are you all right...?” the woman asked dubiously, as I stood there with my eyes frozen on her chest. “Can you hear me, Kanou Shinichi-kun?”

“Huh? Oh... Yeah.”

Hearing my name snapped me back to reality. With tremendous effort and no small regret, I was able to stop my leering and look my conversation partner in the face.

Her chest might have been the first thing I noticed, but her face was lovely, too. I suspected she was in her early twenties. Her hair was short. Or—judging by the fact that I couldn’t see any hair near her collar, I guessed it just looked short from the front. Most likely, she had it done up in a bun or something in the back.

Her features were well-formed, but had just a hint of vulnerability, a feminine softness to them. She was wearing glasses, which took the edge off of everything, giving the impression of a sweet, round face. I guess you could say she was one of those archetypal characters who made you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

She was, though, still wearing a military uniform. Unlike Myusel, she was also obviously speaking actual Japanese, and her features were unmistakably Asian. So I assumed she was a member of the Japan Self-Defense Force—what you might call a WAC. (It stood for “Women’s Army Corp,” but basically meant a lady soldier.)

“Your surprise is understandable,” she said with a smile. “But you’d better calm down. Otherwise, this won’t last.”

“Is... Is that right?” I found my expression frozen from shock. “I see... So it won’t last... I’d heard how easily they sagged, but... I understand. I’ll calm down. I will absolutely calm down. If by calming down I can preserve humanity’s most precious treasure, I will calm down as much as it takes! You can count on me!” I clenched both my hands into fists as I made this emphatic declaration.

Still, I wasn’t sure how my calming down could keep her boobs from sagging. Was that my secret power? My superhero name could be “The Buster,” lifesaver in boob emergencies! I just needed to stay calm and focus on my powers in order to prevent women’s chests from sagging.

“Erm... Kanou Shinichi-kun?” The WAC was looking at me with a perplexed smile. “It looks like what we have here is a failure to communicate... What’s this about ‘sagging’? What in the world are you talking about?”

“Huh? Aren’t we talking about boobs...?”

The WAC was still smiling, but she was completely silent. That smile just sat there, as though someone had hit the pause button on her, until—

“How about we start with introductions?” The smile became a little more real again as she forcefully changed the subject.

Apparently, she intended to pretend like the whole discussion about boobs hadn’t happened. That’s a public servant for you. They know how to ignore things.

“I’m Koganuma Minori.” She placed her white-gloved hand on her chest as she spoke. Even that was enough to subtly change the shape of her bust. Whoa. Must be soft. “I’m a Private First Class with the Eastern Army of the Ground Self-Defense Force, First Division. My assigned duty is your protection.”

Thus the lady from the SDF—or I should say, Koganuma Minori—identified herself. I could have called her “Koganuma-san,” but that sounded so stiff and formal. So in my mind, at least, I decided to call her “Minori-san.” ............................................................Wait a second.

“Protection?!”

But that implied danger! Protection meant I had to be protected from something. Which meant I was in a position where something might threaten me.

“Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-Why?!”

I wasn’t aware of anyone who was out for my life. But then again, you never know who’s going to turn out to have it in for you. Maybe that guy I beat in that Yahoo auction for that bishoujo figure got so ticked that now he wanted to kill me!

“But that’s ridiculous! I mean, yes, I kept putting in crazy-high bids right at the end, but I would’ve sold my soul for that Kuuko figure! She’s super rare and you can take her clothes off and they got her breasts perfect and I would’ve died if I didn’t get her and—”

“Again, please calm down, and— What are you talking about, anyway?” Minori-san asked, furrowing her brow.

“You mean the guy who lost that auction isn’t out to kill me?”

“I really don’t think that’s the kind of situation the JSDF would get involved in.”

“How can you sound so dismissive?! This is a limited-edition Kuuko figure we’re talking about! I grant she’s not the main heroine, and her breasts aren’t as big as yours, Minori-san, but she’s wonderful in her own way!”

“...Pretty sure my breasts have nothing to do with this.” She crossed her arms over her chest as if trying to hide them. It only made them look even bigger. She didn’t seem very savvy about them.

“In any event,” she said. “If a criminal were after you, it would be the police’s job to protect you.”

“I... I guess you’re right. But why are you here, then?”

Who would the JSDF fight? They only came out for foreign armies and natural disasters and Godzilla and stuff. I couldn’t picture a situation that would get them to protect a lone regular guy.

“Your protection is incidental to my main duty. If there were really a clear and present danger, do you think they’d send a WAC like me? No, you’d have a fully equipped squadron waiting for you.”

“I guess that makes sense.” It’s just pretty surprising when an SDF officer appears out of thin air with no explanation whatsoever.

“I’m sorry we dragged you here so suddenly and with no explanation whatsoever, but we had to maintain secrecy and such. That’s why we had to resort to strong-arm tactics. Sorry again.”

“Maintain secrecy?!”

Another phrase that fails to inspire confidence. Maintain secrecy is a profoundly dangerous phrase, one that could easily cause someone’s death, and (I assumed) frequently did. And of course, if the SDF was involved, that was as good as saying it was a state secret. That’s an order of magnitude more dangerous than a corporate secret.

Wait, hang on. Didn’t she say I was “dragged” here? So I’d basically been kidnapped and taken to a strange place by the JSDF?

“No way...” I began to tremble at the situation I was in. “So a developmental bioweapon got out and infected me, and as a result I’ve got incredible new powers?! So I’m a mutant soldier, a living military secret, and that’s why they’re after me?!”

“...Again: What?”

“Or is it that a spaceship with hyper-advanced technology came crashing down from overhead, and the control mechanism, manifesting itself as a beautiful girl, has chosen to request a pact with me out of all earthlings?!”

No response.

“Or is it that a 3,000-year-old seal has been broken, freeing the Demon King, and the kingdom has mustered all its might to keep him at bay, but the one clan that could seal him away again is already extinct, and I’m the last descendent of that clan’s bloodline?!”

Minori-san still didn’t say anything, just stood there with that smile on her face, her eyes growing colder and colder. In light of her expression, I decided this would be a good place to stop my chuunibyou rant.

“Are you quite done?”

“For now.”

“Obviously, everything will be explained to you in due course,” Minori-san said, walking over to the window. “I don’t think it would ever make sense to you, no matter how much I talked. And even if it did, I bet you wouldn’t believe it. I sure didn’t, at first.”

I gave her a puzzled look at what seemed like an oddly roundabout way of talking. What was she trying to say?

“So you should see it with your own eyes first. Then we’ll explain.”

Minori-san drew back the curtain. Suddenly, the room was awash in bright light. It must have been morning; the light was cold and clear. I squinted against the sudden brightness and waited for my eyes to adjust. And then—

“Whoa...”

A vast green spread out before me. Trees bursting with leaves stood like a wall as far as the eye could see. I wasn’t sure, but I thought they couldn’t be more than a hundred meters away. It looked like our room was on the second floor—we were looking down from up high, but our view was mostly blocked by the trees.

Some of the things Minori-san had said earlier came back to me: Marinos. Latatos Forest.

And Holy Eldant Empire.

I’d never heard any of those names before. I mean... I hadn’t been paying a lot of attention earlier, but this was obviously a foreign country, right? I was supposed to be looking for a job in Akiba. When did I end up in another country?!

I was definitely starting to panic a little. But then...

“Wha...?”

Being in a foreign country all of a sudden wasn’t the most unbelievable thing about this.

“That thing just now, was that—?”

Something had passed by the window. Something impossibly big. It wasn’t a bird; it was too large for that. I only saw it for an instant, but it filled up my vision. In other words, it was bigger than the window I was standing in front of. And it had wings like a bat. And a very long tail. And to top it all off, instead of feathers, it was covered in blue scales.

“A... dragon...?!”

The flying object made a lazy circle in the sky, coming back into my field of view. An incredible creature floating elegantly in the blue sky above the wall of green. Its wingspan had to be at least ten meters. As I recalled, Quetzalcoatlus, the largest flying lizard discovered by archaeologists, had a wingspan of around twelve meters. This thing had to be at least as large as that. I’d seen a model of Quetzalcoatlus once at a dinosaur exhibit in middle school.

“A dragon... That is a dragon, isn’t it?!”

“That’s right,” Minori-san said, nodding at me.

I was on the edge of freaking out. “Wh-What the heck is this place?!”

“I told you, it’s Latatos Forest, on the edge of Marinos, capital of the Holy Eldant Empire.” She had a bit of a grin on her face as she spoke. And then, as if to confirm my suspicions, she added, “In simple terms, you’re in another world.”

I, Kanou Shinichi, was what you might call a home security guard.

Maybe you’re not sure what that means. In that case, you could say I was a NEET, or a shut-in. Or, in extreme terms, a good-for-nothing parasite. All of those words more or less describe how I was living. Or, because I apparently had a school register sitting around somewhere, maybe the most precise term for me would be a “school non-attender.”

And speaking of precision, I guess I should say I had been a home security guard. Because after living my cloistered life for a whole year, my parents put a forcible end to it.

I lived shut up in my room for more than a year, during which time my parents were occupied with my younger sister’s high school entrance exams (she was a far better person than me), and, for better or for worse, left me alone.

But once my sister was safely accepted by her chosen school, my parents, perhaps understandably, started to be bothered by the fact that their oldest son was busy idling his life away. To be fair, it probably doesn’t look very good when your daughter has just gotten into the best high school in the area, but your son is perpetually engaged as a home security guard.

Unfortunately for me, my parents were people of extremes. They were normally pretty easy-going, but once they started something, they saw it through to the bitter end. They believed there was no time like the present—which is maybe just another way of saying they were impatient. If they started a war, the first thing they would have done would be to launch a nuclear missile. They weren’t the type to take stock of a situation or start small and build up; the last resort seemed to be the only resort they had. What a pair.

Specifically, one day I suddenly found my door split in two.

That door had faithfully protected me from any contact with the outside world—I mean, of course I opened it when I went to the toilet or took a bath or whatever—and then there was a chainsaw eating through it.

I want you to try to picture this.

There I am, absorbed in leveling up my character in some MMO, when with absolutely no warning, I hear a chainsaw starting up, and suddenly my door is being split open. And for some reason my parents, who tended to get hung up on the strangest things, are wearing hockey masks, like they thought that was the uniform when you’re wielding a chainsaw. I don’t mind saying I gave myself a pat on the back for not wetting my pants.

Then...

“All right, Shinichi. Pop quiz. What are you going to do now? You have three choices: 1. Go back to school. 2. Get a job. 3. Get the hell out of our house.”

“What? That’s an impossible choice!”

“Impossible nothing! It shocked us to realize our own son could have shut-in genes in him, but we decided to give it time and see what would happen. But when we went easy on you, you made a beeline for NEET-itude! And then you started ordering all this crap cash-on-delivery! Manga! Games! On and on! Who do you think made that money, you good-for-nothing parasite?”

“Adults always wound us children with their heartless words.”

“This isn’t about genes at all—you’re just a loser, aren’t you?”

“You too, Mom? ...Hey, could you take off those hockey masks? You’re freaking me out.”

“The point is, your father and I have had it. You either need to go back to school, or get a job. Immediately. Otherwise, I’m going to erase all your files, starting with that folder of ‘landscape photos’ you love so much!”

“Wha—?! Hey, I gave that thing an innocuous name and buried it all those layers down so that—when did you touch my computer, anyway?!”

“You underestimate me. I’m a former ero-game triple threat! At small regional publishers, it’s not so unusual for the same person to be the writer, programmer, and graphic designer.”

“Are you saying you hacked me?!”

“Just how much porn can you stash on a terabyte drive, anyway? I thought I was going to faint clean away by the fourth thing I looked at!”

“Yaaaaaahh! You looked at it?!”

“You see how it is, Shinichi,” my dad said. “If you don’t want the terabyte of precious images you’ve accumulated in your wanderings on the net, and your seven online game accounts, and everything else on your hard drive to be erased, you either work or you go to school. And you do it like the devil himself was chasing you.”

................................................Aaaand that was our conversation.

Three hundred sixty-eight days after it had begun, my life as a home security guard came to this ignominious end.

“Ah. And that’s why you’re looking for a job.”

The words came from a middle-aged man on the other side of a folding conference table. It was the day after my parents had chainsawed their way into my room, and I was in Akiba.

The natural light I had avoided for so long pounded mercilessly down on me; I felt my skin and eyes burning, like I was some kind of vampire. I came out to this otaku mecca for the first time in almost a year. In other words, I had taken choice number two.

I was going to get a job.

Honestly, I just couldn’t get excited about going back to school at this point. Not that I had ever been that excited about school; otherwise, maybe I wouldn’t have stopped attending and become a shut-in. An otaku like me was already an easy target for bullies, and if I went back after taking off school for a year, I was sure to be a laughingstock. I decided it would be better to try to make my way in the world. Or so I thought.

It turned out not to be so easy, as obvious as that may seem. It turned out no one was eager to hire a high school dropout former home security guard. Maybe if I’d had something to set me apart, it would have been different, but I didn’t have what you could call skills. The only thing I could boast about to other people was my vast store of otaku knowledge. Actually, come to think of it, I didn’t really want to boast about that.

And anyway, the number of jobs that call for geek cred are limited. You pretty much either have to become a creator, like my parents, or work at a shop that hawks merchandise to nerds. At least, that was about all I could think of.

There were a lot of hurdles to becoming a creator, by which I mean you couldn’t just show up at a company’s front door and say, “Please let me make manga/anime/video games.” I could tell that much by looking at my parents.

That being the case, there was only one road open to me: get hired by a bookstore, DVD shop, computer place, game store, model seller, toy emporium, or some other otaku-centric business establishment.

There are plenty of job-search sites on the web these days, and a lot of the stores had their own employment opportunities pages, too, so I just searched for “jobs” plus whatever otaku words came to mind, and I found all sorts of places.

It was during one of these searches that I found it. At the very top of the page, they’d written OTAKU WANTED! in huge letters. In fact... that seemed to be the only requirement for applicants. Normally there’s all kinds of stuff, like they want you to have experience, or a driver’s license, or a high school diploma, or to be older than eighteen and younger than thirty. But this place just seemed to want people with plenty of otaku knowledge.

And what they were offering looked surprisingly attractive. The pay was 300,000 yen a month, awfully good for a recession. They said there was even the possibility of a raise for good workers. On top of that, they said housing was available, like you could live there. This obviously wasn’t some part-time gig. They were looking for real employees.

The company name at the bottom of the page was Amutech Co., General Entertainment Provider. Of course, it was possible this was some evil corporation looking to turn innocent, unworldly sheep (like me) into corporate slaves. But what the hey? I could worry about that after the interview.

I clicked on the “Apply” button at the bottom of the page.

When I did, a new window opened, with the title “How Much of an Otaku are You?” To my chagrin, I realized I was going to take an employment test right there on the web.

I vaguely recalled a national “Otaku Test” being held once. Were they going to have me take that...? While I was busy wondering this, a timer appeared in the corner of the screen. Apparently, this was a timed test.

I guessed that made sense enough. With the internet, you could look up all the otaku facts you wanted. Without a time limit, anybody could have gotten a perfect score. In other words, they weren’t going to give you long enough to look everything up—or perhaps they would give you enough time to look things up if you already had the base knowledge to know what to look for.

Honestly, I was kind of fired up about this. Maybe I could find out where I ranked in the annals of otakudom.

But no sooner had I started than I found myself disappointed. Too easy. These questions were too easy by half! Anime. Manga. Games. Novels. Figures. Doujinshi. And on and on. They pretty much just listed some of the most famous works of each type, then asked a bunch of questions that tested how much you knew about the content, what the draw was, why that particular work had become a hit.

And to top it all off, it was a multiple-choice test!

During my time as a home security guard, I had encountered each and every one of the things they asked about and had gotten into furious arguments online about everything from what made them great to the pros and cons of how they’d been marketed.

I might not have been able to come up with an essay answer to every question, but filling in bubbles, I could do. In the process of taking the test, I started to get the feeling that the person who had written it wasn’t actually an otaku themselves.

How do I put this? It was just sort of... off, like a reporter who wrote about something without actually going to the scene. There were no major mistakes, but it just seemed to miss the point, like they didn’t quite understand any of it. Like maybe some cultural critic or economist had just read some outlines of a bunch of manga and such, never the books themselves, then gotten publication numbers and photos of the lines from when these things came out, and he’d written the test with that objective data. It was an outsider’s perspective. That was the sense I got.

Who had created this test, and why? It puzzled me, but I filled in the answers easily enough, finishing the last question with almost half the time still left.

When I submitted my responses, the words Congratulations, you’ve passed! appeared on the screen, along with an interview time for the next day and a map of the interview location. It was somewhere in Akiba—in a building right by the Manseibashi police station, no less. This whole job offer smelled fishy, but if they were swindling applicants or kidnapping them to join their cult or whatever, they wouldn’t set up shop right next to a police station, would they?

I convinced myself that they wouldn’t, and so I found myself interviewing at Amutech, General Entertainment Provider.

“I see.” The middle-aged man, very much the “interviewer” type, nodded his head. The business card he gave me at the beginning of our interview said his name was Matoba Jinzaburou. For such an oddly antique-sounding name, the guy himself seemed pretty ordinary. He looked like your garden-variety salaryman, a little white in his neatly parted hair, a business suit the color of dead leaves ensconcing his medium build. His eyes were as narrow as threads, giving the impression that he was always smiling—in fact, that smile looked so comfortable there that I really couldn’t imagine him having any other expression. At any rate, he looked like a people person.

Then again, they say swindlers all look nice at first glance. If this “Amutech” really was some awful, evil corporation, it would be dangerous to judge them by first impressions.

“Out of curiosity, what do your parents do for a living?” Matoba-san asked.

This was after I had explained the broad contours of the position I was in. How I had been a home security guard, how my parents had threatened me—I didn’t try to hide the fact that I was getting this job under duress. I didn’t figure the first place I went to was going to hire me, anyway. This was just kind of a warm-up—or maybe I just felt that what was hopeless was hopeless.

“My parents? My dad writes light novels, and my mom’s a housewife. Although she used to be involved in ero games.”

“Light novels?”

“Yeah... They’re these novels that are kind of like manga.”

“Oh-ho.” Matoba-san nodded and wrote something down.

I didn’t know what my parents’ jobs had to do with my job. Isn’t that, like... job discrimination or something? Maybe it’s not. I don’t know.

“And... ‘ero games,’ those are...?”

“Like ‘erotic games’? She was a visual designer.”

“...Ero games. Visual designer.” He frowned and muttered the words to himself, as if he were repeating new vocabulary in a foreign language. They specifically said they were looking for otaku, so I thought maybe the company was sort of in that area, but it didn’t look like it. Maybe they’d put out the call exactly because they didn’t have anyone who fit the description?

“Um... In other words, she was an illustrator for adult games. You know, uh, ones you can’t play unless you’re eighteen or older.”

“Ah! Ah, yes, I see.” Matoba-san gave an enthusiastic nod. “Yes, that makes sense! So that makes you a thoroughbred otaku, yes?”

“Thoroughbred?” I frowned. “I mean, I guess you could say that...”

It was true that there had been manga and anime and computer disks piled around my house practically for as long as I could remember, and that that was what had inspired me to become an otaku. But since my younger sister showed none of those tendencies, I found it oddly disquieting to have all my nerdliness attributed to the one word, bloodline.

“You aced the test on our website.”

“Pretty much anyone with a bit of pop-culture knowledge could have done that,” I said. “There were a lot of questions, but that’s all.” I was being somewhat humble, but the questions really weren’t that hard.

“Hmm...” Matoba-san flipped through his papers, looking at them. “Excellent. Honestly, I had nearly given up hope. I never thought someone so perfectly suited would come along...”

“I’m sorry...?” I had begun to doubt my own ears. What had this old man just said?

“Knowledge, completely satisfactory. Former shut-in, seeking to strike out on his own... Absolutely ideal.”

“Huh...? But—”

True, I’d had no trouble with their test. But I really didn’t think a high school dropout former home security guard was the kind of candidate most employers would consider “absolutely ideal” or “excellent.” Or were they really and truly just looking for otaku ability?

What exactly did Amutech do, anyway? Matoba-san described them as a “general entertainment provider,” but that didn’t explain anything. “General” could mean anything or everything.

And this interview room. It practically screamed, We’re just borrowing a random room in a random building. There was nothing at all that seemed to belong to Amutech or even give the place a corporate feel. The room had a desk and a chair and a drink machine, and that was literally it. Not even a poster or anything.

That seemed to imply the company’s real work was carried out elsewhere...

“Very good. I’m going to go in the back and check some things on your resume, so please wait here. Oh, and you can help yourself to something from the drink machine.” Then Matoba-san took his papers and left the room.

“I don’t get it,” I muttered, but just the same I gratefully did as Matoba-san said and went over to the drink machine. I set a paper cup in the machine and picked oolong tea. It dispensed the drink in the blink of an eye, and as I sipped my tea, I looked around again.

There really wasn’t anything there. It was almost as if they wanted to be sure they could get out of there at any time.

“This isn’t anything, like... shady, is it?”

Just outside the window, I could see the Manseibashi police office. I still didn’t believe criminals would operate this close to the long arm of the law.

I drained the rest of my tea as if to chase away my fears, then sat back down. When was Matoba-san going to come back? He’d said he was going to check a few things, so maybe he was trying to verify things I’d said in the interview or written on my resume? Were employers normally that thorough with entry-level applicants? I knew they sometimes did background checks if you wanted to become a civil servant or something, but...

Maybe this was a civil service job? I vaguely remembered a few prime ministers back, someone had suggested an anime museum in Akiba. It was supposed to be part of a national policy promoting anime, this jewel of global entertainment. But it was another one of those plans that kind of missed the point because the guy who suggested it was just an administrator with no real interest in anime. But maybe some vestige of that idea had survived, and now they needed people who actually knew something about the medium to make it work.

“Yeah, right.” If that were the case, I was sure they would have found a better way to advertise. Smiling at my own silly fantasy, I gave a big yawn—

And that’s where my memory blacked out.

Okay, flashback over. We’re back to the present now. Where I—

“Whoaaa!”

—was exclaiming in amazement. I stepped out the door and looked back at the building. It was a huge brick construct that filled my vision in every direction. In essence, a Western-style mansion.

But it didn’t have the old-fashioned look so common in games and manga. Instead, it seemed oddly new. Of course, it wasn’t like a piece of set design—like you would see the seams if you looked too closely. It was there, all right, every inch of it, and it loomed over me with an overwhelming power.

In other words, it was an honest-to-God mansion, and newly built to boot. I had gotten a pretty good sense of how big this building must be from the bedroom, and now that I was seeing it up close, I could tell how right I’d been. It was all too obvious that we weren’t in Akiba anymore, or even Japan.

But honestly, it wasn’t the house that really surprised me.

It was what was behind it.

“It’s huge...!”

It was an intimidating building so large that it was unmistakable even though it was obviously far away, less like a man-made object than like a feature of the terrain, like a mountain.

“That’s the Holy Eldant castle,” Minori-san, standing next to me, said.

Much like the house I’d woken up in, it had a strong flavor of Middle Ages Europe. There was a gate that looked wide enough for a whole herd of elephants to pass through, sturdy-looking ramparts, and plenty of what appeared to be observation and guard towers... In other words, pretty typical.

But...

“The castle has the same name as the empire. In other words, it’s where the Emperor lives. Allegedly, they excavated a mountain or something to build it—but I don’t know the details.”

The castle was bigger than any piece of architecture I had ever seen in my life. Even the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, a template for a Demon King’s castle if there ever was one, looked puny compared to this. It was nothing beside this Eldant castle; even ignoring the height, it was wider and deeper than you could imagine. It wasn’t just that the castle was really tall or covered a lot of ground. It was straight-up big.

Of course, you might see bigger structures in anime, manga, games, and light novels—you know, fiction—where they might be space fortresses the size of small moons or something. But I was seeing this with my own eyes, and it gave me goosebumps.

At the “foot” of this mountain of a castle was a collection of other buildings of various sizes. They all looked like they were from medieval Europe, too, and several cobblestone streets ran among them like arteries. The mansion was well removed from them—in other words, on the outskirts of the castle town. The ground sloped gently in the direction of the castle, giving the feeling that I was looking down on the town.

“It really looks just like a fantasy setting,” I breathed.

“Doesn’t it, though?” Minori-san grinned.

“Can I go explore the town?”

“No fear, huh?” she said with a hint of admiration. “I was worried you might just shut yourself up in this house and never come out. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that this isn’t your run-of-the-mill foreign country. It’s another world. An alternate universe. You understand that?”

“Look, not to brag,” I said, a smile tugging on my lips, “but this is meat and drink to me.”

I was one serious otaku. Fantasy worlds? I’d seen ’em in everything from games to anime and manga, even light novels. The only difference was that now it was in three dimensions instead of two. The realism had leveled up, you might say. I practically felt like I already knew the place, like I was finally coming home.

Stay shut up in that house? Hardly.

“Well, I admit I panicked a little when I saw that dragon earlier.”

“That’s understandable,” Minori-san said.

If I looked really hard, I could see two or three dragon-like shapes in the sky above the castle. Apparently in this world, you could ride dragons like horses. The one I’d seen earlier had had some kind of saddle on its neck, too.

“Strictly speaking, what you saw earlier was a wyvern,” Minori-san said. “Actual live dragons are a lot bigger and a lot more violent.”

“Fantasy down to the bones.”

Dragons and wyverns. At this rate, I wouldn’t have been surprised if a sea serpent turned up, or a cho**bo you could ride like a horse.

“In any case, maybe you could put off going to town for a while,” Minori-san said, squinting her eyes. “Our official explainer is here.”

Puzzled, I followed her gaze toward the town, looking down the road that led away from the mansion. And there I saw something that looked altogether out of place.

An automobile. Dark green, or in other words, the same color as Minori-san’s skirt. The squarish body made it obvious that this was a military vehicle—and I thought I recognized it. It was a light armored vehicle used by the self-defense forces—sometimes called “light armor” or an LAV. It had been used on some overseas deployments, and was pretty common in fiction featuring the SDF.

And there it was, an SDF military vehicle rolling right past the medieval European fantasy scenery. It definitely did not look like it belonged there—that was some serious anachronism.

Before long, the LAV trundled up to us and stopped. The back door opened and someone climbed out—and I recognized him, too. Neatly parted hair and a suit the color of dead leaves, as if he were trying to look as ordinary as possible.

“I-Interview Guy?!”

Matoba Jinzaburou, I think his name was. I had expected some SDF soldier in field camo, or maybe someone in fantasy attire, but this was the polar opposite. His Hello, my name is Average Salaryman outfit looked as weird here as that armored vehicle. Not that Minori-san or I fit in any better.

“Kanou Shinichi-kun, hello.” Matoba-san had a calm smile on his face. “Welcome to the Holy Eldant Empire—or should I say, to another world entirely.”

He sounded like he was greeting a visitor from abroad. I mean, I guess if I hadn’t seen a dragon, I might have believed this was some tourist trap in western Europe.

“What... exactly is going on here?” I asked, frowning. “How did I get from an interview room in Akihabara to this place?”

“Yes, I intend to explain everything. I ended talks at the castle early so I could come back here,” Matoba-san said.

“Talks at the castle?”

“Well, that’s part of ‘everything.’ Anyway, come inside.”

And with that, Matoba-san started walking toward the house.

“Now, then.” Matoba-san had a cup of tea in his hand. We were in the mansion’s reception room. It was big enough to feel like a party hall, boasting a table that must have been about three meters long. Matoba-san and I sat in a couple of chairs around it.

Minori-san had set a chair in the corner of the room and was sitting there. Apparently, she didn’t intend to participate in our conversation. Myusel stood beside her, attending to a cart with a teapot on it. She had poured the tea Matoba-san was drinking, as well as the cup that sat steaming in front of me.

“Before I explain things,” Matoba-san said with a glance at Myusel, “Kanou-kun. Could you remove your ring?”

“Huh...?”

Did he mean the magic one on my finger? I looked at it. It was the one Myusel had given me. Apparently, it worked like a translator; as long as we were wearing them, we could understand each other, even if we were speaking our own languages.

“I wouldn’t want there to be any... misunderstandings. And there are a few things I wouldn’t want the people here to hear.”

Matoba-san, I noticed, wasn’t wearing a ring. I glanced over at Minori-san and saw she didn’t have one, either. I was pretty sure she’d been wearing one earlier, though.

“Right... This good?”

I took off the ring.

“Perfect.” Matoba-san nodded, then leaned his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers. “This all started a year ago, when a strange ‘hole’ was found in Fuji’s Sea of Trees.”

“A hole...?”

He said it all so nonchalantly. The Sea of Trees—that was the famous Aokigahara Forest, right? Notorious for suicides and messing up compasses. Supposedly haunted.

“Strictly speaking, it’s more of a fissure. But everyone simply calls it ‘the hole.’ The researchers say it’s a hyperspace portal.”

A hyperspace portal? He was suddenly trotting out these unbelievable words.

“Close investigation of the hole revealed something interesting. Specifically, that it pierces three-dimensional space and leads to a different world.”

I didn’t respond.

“You don’t seem very surprised,” Matoba-san smiled.

“Well, obviously. What could be more cliché than that?”

Wormholes. Warp gates. Shift portals. Passages leading through space and time to other worlds had been a standard plot device from the oldest legends to the most modern SF and fantasy stories.

“Anyway. When we sent someone through the hole, they discovered an unknown land. Further, they found that creatures normally considered to be the stuff of myths and children’s stories really existed there, as did a developed human civilization much like our own. But not entirely like.”

“Not entirely? You mean... magic?”

“...Indeed.”

I had said it jokingly, half-expecting him to deny it—but Matoba-san nodded vehemently.

Silent, I looked at the ring on the table. So the whole simultaneous interpreting thing must have been because of the ring’s magic.

“That’s one of the objects created by magic,” Matoba-san said, as if he had read my thoughts. “And so, Japan finds itself adjacent to this unreal land.”

“Adjacent.” Somehow that didn’t seem like quite the right word—but since you got to this other world through a hole in Japan, it wasn’t exactly wrong, either.

“The Japanese government organized an investigative expedition. In so doing, they made contact with the group that controls the area including the hole. A state, if you will. That’s the Holy Eldant Empire, where we are now. The hole falls within their territory.”

“We’re lucky there wasn’t a war.”

If manga and novels had taught me anything, it was that when two different worlds, two different cultures, suddenly collide, there’s a pretty good chance of conflict. You don’t have to turn to fiction; human history has more than a few similar examples.

“We’re no fools. And our advance party included some wise heads.” Matoba-san shrugged. “After we had carefully sized each other up, we were soon working out a way to cooperate that would be to our mutual benefit.”

Of course: someone who already knew what was likely to happen (i.e., war) could approach the situation delicately, so as not to do anything careless that might ignite the situation. So in a sense, manga and novels’ endlessly recycling this plot point had actually been helpful.

“Following me so far?”

“I... I guess so.”

Frankly, it was still hard to believe, but it looked like the only person who could explain any of this—the castle, the dragon, the whole bizarre world I’d been sucked into—was Matoba-san.

“The one thing I don’t get is, what does any of this discovery-of-another-world stuff have to do with me?”

Assuming anything he was saying was true, how did it relate to a former home security guard like myself? This was an earth-shaking discovery, and I would fully expect representatives of Japan and maybe foreign governments to get together and do something about it, but what was the point of dragging a private citizen here, even giving them JSDF protection?

“Don’t tell me—I’m actually a prince of this world, sent to the human world when I was just a child, but now destiny has brought me back to defeat the Demon King?”

“Relax. We’re not indulging in such tired, old plot lines here,” Matoba-san said with a smile. “I’m the chief of the Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau, which reports directly to the cabinet.”

“C-Come again?” That name seemed surprisingly difficult to parse.

“Well, that name is just for public purposes. The Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau is an organization dedicated to cultivating the relationship between Japan and this other world. And General Entertainment Provider Amutech is a half-public, half-private company operating under the umbrella of the Bureau. Japan and the Holy Eldant Empire are both invested in it—a parallel-world first!”

“Uh...huh.”

“And you,” he said, “have been hired as Amutech’s general manager.”

“Its what?”

A first-of-its-kind cross-world entertainment company?!

General manager?! Me?!

But... why?!

“Not as, like, gofer or new guy or anything?”

“Is that what surprises you most?” Matoba-san grinned. “We could just as well call you the president or CEO, or anything you like. Whatever title you choose, you’re at the top, you’re the person in charge.” He sounded so calm. “Your job as Amutech’s general manager is to import Japanese anime, manga, games, and so forth to this country.”

Anime, manga, games, and so forth were an export Japan took great pride in, as any otaku would know. But again... why?

“Leisure culture seems to be rather underdeveloped in this world, so we thought we would begin by exporting it to them. As a way of bringing our two nations closer.”

“Huuuuuh?!”

They were going to foster international relations by exporting anime and manga and games?!

I may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, but even I knew that when a government official starts talking about getting “close” to another nation, you can’t take them at face value. It’s a question of diplomacy. And this wasn’t some other Earth nation we were dealing with. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think there had ever been such an outrageously delicate situation.

And in light of all that, their first move was to introduce otaku industry?

“Ah. I understand what you’re getting at,” Matoba-san said, still smiling. “Of course, we first thought of pottery, textiles—traditional cultural items. We tried those for the first several months, but they just didn’t seem to take.”

Apparently, they hadn’t been enough to interest the people of the Holy Eldant Empire. This was a difference of culture, which is closely related to history and style, so it was hard to say anything one way or the other. Some things about Japanese culture struck me as potentially difficult for foreigners to grasp, such as wabi-sabi, the “perfection of imperfection” the Japanese so cherish. Maybe the Holy Eldant Empire didn’t get it, either.

“So we mentioned to them that Japan has another worldwide export we’re quite proud of, called Japanimation, along with video games and the like. We mentioned the huge lines of people waiting to buy new games, and the blackmail cases that occur around limited editions.”

“I don’t think—”

“They want hot new culture, the kind that can inspire social phenomena like that. When we actually showed them some anime, the reaction was favorable.”

“Yes, I understand, but—”

A good deal of anime these days got exported overseas; in fact, it was often made with the assumption that it would be seen internationally. In other words, you ended up with a sort of basic quality to the entertainment; it didn’t put too much emphasis on culture or anything. It didn’t demand the amount of knowledge going in that a Noh or kabuki play might. In comparison, anime and so on had a simple-to-understand amusement that could engage boys and girls all over the world.

“But some felt that art like this... well, maybe it would be best if it weren’t handled by government officials. They feared bureaucrats would lack a certain finesse, that the bureaucracy might skew the project in strange or unexpected ways. Just look at what happens when the government builds public buildings. They get mismanaged and shut down, again and again. Make sense?”

“...Huh.”

I thought back to what had been on the test. How everything had been technically correct, but somehow off, as though an outsider had written it without seeing any of the material for himself.

“Hence, we hit upon the idea of having Amutech managed by someone with firsthand experience, someone who knew the trends. This is all unprecedented, which makes it awfully difficult for public servants to handle.” A note of self-deprecation entered his voice. “We much prefer rules and manuals, as I’m sure you know.”

“Okay, sure,” I said. “But why me?”

I had already admitted to myself that I was a lost cause of an otaku. But you could find people like me in every nook and cranny of Japan. Why go out of your way to hire someone who had, until just recently, been a home security guard?

Matoba-san didn’t say anything. Concerned, I looked over at Minori-san, but she was watching me with an ambiguous expression. Half smile, half pity.

.............................Pity?

“Well, it’s... You know.” Matoba-san didn’t seem quite able to bring himself to say it. “The existence of the hole, and our interaction with the Eldant Empire, could have a major impact on the future of our country. It’s very much a secret.”

“Yeah, I got that...”

“We needed someone with whom the secret would be easy to keep,” he said.

“And you picked me because I’m so good at zipping my lips?”

I tried to remember if they had asked me anything at the interview that might have told them one way or the other.

“No. I don’t think how tight your lips may or may not be is likely to pose much of a problem.” He still wasn’t getting to the point. “After all, you’ll be living here from now on, so who would you tell?”

“...Huh?”

Living? Here? Like, here-here. In this mansion in the Holy Eldant Empire? In this other world?

But that meant...

“H-Hang on a second...”

“It’s just... Well. Having someone whose disappearance wouldn’t cause too much of a stir... Well, it was quite convenient for us.”

“Whaaaaaaat?!” I bellowed.

So this was all because if a home security guard like me went missing, everybody would just be like, “Yeah, we figured that was gonna happen,” and go on with their lives?

I felt an unpleasant sweat trickling down my back. State secrets. With an excuse like that, they could do pretty much anything they wanted. I mean, people were routinely killed for state secrets, right? And with something as crazy as actual contact with an actual other world, foreign governments were sure to be interested, so—

“Um... Can I go home now?”

With a dry grin, Matoba-san replied, “How?”

I was lost for words.

He was right: I had no idea where this “hole,” this passage through hyperspace, even was. If they left me alone in this world—and I’m not trying to brag here, but I’m 100% completely certain that I wouldn’t last three days.

Wait. It was worse than that. I’d been told state secrets. There was no way they were just going to be like, “Well, it’s a shame you’re not on board,” and send me back. At worst, if I tried to run, they might even chase me down and... erase me!

“It’s all right. We wouldn’t do anything so ridiculous,” Matoba-san said, as if he had read my terrified thoughts. He probably hadn’t needed to. I suspected it was obvious from my face.

“Once we’ve achieved certain goals and Amutech is firmly on the right path, we’ll be able to release you. Of course, you’ll be paid a salary from the national treasury—that is, from the Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau’s budget. The Eldant Empire is similarly prepared to grant you treatment befitting a guest of state, so I promise you won’t go wanting.”

“Uh... Okay, but...”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of all of the paperwork,” Matoba-san said, tapping his own chest gently.

Never mind the fact that he didn’t exactly inspire much confidence. The bureau chief himself was going to handle my paperwork? Was it possible the Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau... didn’t have any other members at all?

“All you need to do is relax and help popularize otaku culture in its various forms here in the Eldant Empire. You know, the—what do you call it? ‘Akiba-type’ things? Magical girls and tsunderes and moes and what have you. That sort of thing.”

Reeling, I thought, This is impossible.

This had already been settled by all kinds of official bodies. It wouldn’t do any good for me to object now. I was being pressed into service by a fait accompli.

“Now... Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?” Matoba-san said. He didn’t sound concerned at all.

Several hours later. I was fiddling with my smartphone.

“Hmm...”

You’re probably wondering, why would a home security guard have something like that? But I had actually owned this phone since before I became a shut-in. It was one of my principles that any self-respecting otaku should be an early adopter with gadgets like this.

But anyway.

A series of sentences I had written showed on the liquid crystal display. I had decided to jot a few notes about today as a way of understanding what was going on and organizing my feelings about it. In a word, I was keeping a diary.

Honestly, I felt a little funny using an electronic device like this in a world that didn’t seem likely to have electricity, but Minori-san told me I could bum a little juice off the LAV’s battery or something, so for the time being, I was using my phone as a notepad.

At the moment, I was in the room assigned as my office. This mansion had an almost wasteful number of rooms, but the ones I would be using for the most part were this office in the middle of the second floor and the bedroom right next to it. In addition, there were several other bedrooms and guestrooms, one of which my bodyguard Minori-san would be sleeping in.

“Master?”

There was a knock at the door, accompanied by a voice as lovely as a tinkling bell. It was Myusel, the maid girl.

“I... ahem... I brought you tea.”

“Oh, thanks.” I stood up, still holding my phone, and went over and opened the door. But when I did—

“Wha—?” There was Myusel in the hallway, standing next to a tea tray on a cart, looking startled.

“What?” I said.

“Oh... No, thank you very much.”

I gave her a puzzled look. “Don’t mention it...” I didn’t know why she was thanking me, but I stood aside so Myusel and the cart could enter the room. “Come on in.”

“Eh? Oh... Y-Yes, of course.” She bowed her head, almost like she was frightened, then wheeled the cart into the room. Something seemed to be confusing her; she kept glancing at me, then looking down at the floor as if she was upset about something.

Oh... Right.

I finally got it. I was her “master,” so I didn’t have to come open the door as if I were welcoming a guest. It was the same reason the tea was on a tray and not a dish. She had assumed she would open the door herself, so when it was suddenly opened for her, it threw off her rhythm.

She pointed to a spot on the desk. “Shall I set it here?”

“Oh, sure.” I nodded. Then I stood kind of dumbly for a moment, watching her prepare the tea.

“Er... Is... Is there anything...?” She finished making the tea and was looking at me again. She was definitely concerned.

“Is there anything what?”

“Oh, no, it’s... Since you’ve been staring...” Myusel said with a look of confusion.

“Oh. Sorry, it’s just— This is all kind of new to me.”

Not counting earlier that afternoon, and ignoring video games, this was the first time in my life that a maid had come to make tea for me. I was pretty much straight out of my comfort zone, and it left me unsure of what to do.

“New, sir...?” Was I imagining things, or did Myusel look even more worried than before?

Afraid that this would turn into some kind of misunderstanding, I hurriedly added, “I’ve just never been served tea by a maid before, so I kind of...”

“Oh. Is that so?” She smiled, looking somehow relieved. Gah! She was really, really cute...

She usually looked so vulnerable that a genuine smile like this really stood out. I felt my heart beating faster as I said, “Um... So you’re Myusel Fourant-san, right...?”

“Yes! I’m Myusel Fourant...!”

The maid, Myusel, smiled happily. She just looked so innocent. It was super moe.

“All right,” I said, straightening up and giving a small bow of my head. “Let me introduce myself right. I’m Kanou Shinichi. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Y-Yes, sir, the p-pleasure’s all mine...!” Myusel bowed deeply and practically shouted her greeting. She seemed kind of... anxious. Almost like she was afraid of me. I was happy that I’d been able to get a little closer to this adorable maid, but having her be this nervous around me all the time was going to wear on me. I mean, I guess Matoba-san had said that I was like a state guest here in the Holy Eldant Empire—a real VIP. So it was understandable.

“...Huh?” Suddenly I noticed something, and blinked. I hadn’t paid it any mind earlier in the day—or rather, most of the time, her hair draped over the sides of her head and hid them. But...

“Myusel. Your ears...”

“...Oh!” Myusel hurriedly pressed her hands to her head, looking upset.

Huh?

“I’m—I’m so sorry...!” Her voice was practically a sob.

“Huh?”

I had no idea what she was apologizing for. She, however, looked like this was a tragedy, and she kept sputtering: “But I—I promise you, Master, I wasn’t trying to—to deceive you, I mean, I was hiding them, but—”

“Okay, hang on, calm down. I don’t know what you’re so afraid of, but Myusel... Are you an elf, or some wild race like that?”

That’s right. When she had bowed deeply to me, I was able to see her ears. They poked out from the sides of her head, ever so slightly pointy at the tips.

After a long moment, Myusel said, “Yes.” She nodded, seeming a little calmer now. “I’m a halfbreed, elf and human.”

“I knew it!” A half-elf! Another well-trod, and very moe, fantasy character. The beauty of an elf and the familiarity of a human—a character with the best of both worlds. But wait, so Myusel here was both a maid and a half-elf? Talk about your overachievers! I thought I was going to die from the sheer moe-ness of it.

“But I... I swear I wasn’t trying to hide it from you, Master...”

“Absolutely perfect!” I howled, clenching my fist.

“It—It is?!” Myusel froze in place, shocked.

I drew closer to her, saying, “A maid and a half-elf! Fantastic! I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say my entire life has been leading up to this moment!”

“.........Huh? Huh?”

“Myusel! Myusel, show me your ears again!”

“What? Er—y-yes, sir...”

Unable to resist my insistence, she took one hand away from her head, revealing her ear. It was the quintessential fantasy-elf ear.

“Whoa...! A real elf ear...!”

It was something to admire. Myusel, however, didn’t seem to understand why I was so happy.

“M-Master...” she said, turning red.

“Oh, sorry about that. Thanks.” I took a step back. Now that I thought about it, I realized any girl would be embarrassed to have someone checking her out at close range like that, whether it was her ears or whatever.

“Still, that’s incredible,” I said. “I’ve seen something truly amazing today.”

Myusel only looked more confused as she said, “You—You aren’t angry?”

“Huh? Why would I be?”

“I mean... because I hid the fact that I’m a half-elf...”

“Why would that make me angry?”

Myusel seemed lost for words.

In the back of my mind, something clicked. “I don’t know much about this place, but is it that half-elves aren’t very well-liked? By humans, or elves, or both?” That’s a familiar enough trope in fantasy.

“...Yes, sir.” Myusel gave a small nod.

Even saying “aren’t very well-liked” was putting it gently, an expression I used to spare her feelings. Most likely, there was outright discrimination. So much that being born with mixed elf blood would be reason enough to be persecuted.

Myusel’s discomfort only confirmed my hypothesis. She was used to being abused and hated.

“Um... Myusel-san?”

“...Wha? Oh.” She looked zoned out for a second, but then hurriedly said, “Master, please, don’t add an honorific to my name!”

“Huh? But... Hey, Myusel-san, how old are you? Aren’t you older than me?”

In fantasy stories, elves always live a long time. So even if Myusel looked like she was just in her late teens, it was entirely possible she was much older than me.

“How old am I? I’m six—sixteen, sir...” She sounded downright nervous.

“Oh. Younger than me, huh? Well, okay, then. I’ll just call you Myusel.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But Myusel. Let me be clear about one thing.”

“Y-Yes, sir?”

“I’m very happy that you’re a half-elf. Frankly, I wonder what I did to deserve it!”

“Huh? Huh...”

“So I promise I won’t get angry about you being a half-elf, or upset, or anything. Okay?”

For an instant, Myusel looked at me silently. Then she said, “Thank you very much, sir,” and bowed deeply again. When she did, her pointy ears peeked out once more.

I crossed my arms and muttered, “It looks like I’ve got a lot to learn around here.”

If I were surrounded by silicon-based life forms, or octo-astronauts or something, like in an SF story, where it was hard to find commonalities with humanity, it would put me on notice that what was normal or valuable to them might not be what was normal or valuable to me. But with people who looked like regular humans and lived in a familiar medieval European-type fantasy setting, it was easy to be misled.

“I only just got here, and I only learned what’s going on even more recently than that. Myusel, what did they tell you about me?”

“They said you were a very, very important visitor to the Empire, and that you were going to live here for a while, and that Brooke-san and I were to look after you.”

“Brooke-san?”

I blinked. This was new.

“I’ll introduce you later. Right now, I need to check the grounds and do some cleaning...”

So apparently, I had another servant assigned to me. That meant there were four people living in this mansion. Me (the master), my bodyguard Minori-san, the maid Myusel, and Brooke-san. (Having no idea what kind of person this was, I thought of them with -san for the time being.)

The house seemed too big for four people, but Minori-san claimed it was small by the standards of Eldant nobles. Yes: nobles. As a guest of state, I was considered on par with nobility.

“Do you know what I’m here to do?”

“You’re here to ‘promote commerce’ between the Empire and ‘Japan,’ so that both of our nations can ‘mutually flourish.’” She sounded like she was reading off a cue card. I suspected she was just parroting what she’d been taught, without any real idea of what most of the words meant.

“Yeah,” I nodded with a dry grin. “Commerce. Right.”

“You came from a far-off country, didn’t you, Master?”

“Yeah, I did.” Well, I didn’t know how far it was, but she was right that it was another country. “A far-off world, actually.”

“World...?” Myusel cocked her head. The gesture had the innocence of a little bird, and I had to struggle to suppress the flood of moe feeling that welled up in my heart.

“Not another country?” she asked.

“Yes, another country. In another world.”

She seemed to be giving this serious consideration.

Ahh. Now I understood. Minori-san and Matoba-san had both told me that there was effectively no leisure industry in this country. Magic aside, in a world with medieval technology, where the printing press didn’t exist, books would be a valuable commodity. Nobles might have them, but they would be unobtainable for the common people. The way commoners enjoyed stories would be by telling them to each other—like parents telling fairytales to children, or a poet or bard to his apprentices. Everything would be subject to the imperfections and limitations of the oral tradition.

For that matter, what was the literacy rate around here? In any event, under the circumstances, they might not have even had a concept of ‘other worlds.’ This was a tried-and-true plot device to an otaku like me, but it might have been totally unfamiliar territory for Myusel. It was much like how medieval and modern peoples didn’t know that there was such a thing as “space” once you got past the sky.

“I’m very sorry,” Myusel said with a disappointed—almost fearful—expression. “I’m a fool with no real education...”

“No. It’s totally natural not to understand. I’m sorry.”

“You mustn’t be!” Myusel said, shaking her head furiously. I could see her pointy ears as she did so, shaking along with her head—the whole impression was like that of a cat or dog flicking its ears. Gaaah, this girl is sooo cute!

“If only I had some kind of picture that could explain it...” I played around with the smartphone in my hand, looking for something appropriate. And then I noticed it.

Network unavailable.

I was only just realizing, but it probably should have been obvious. This was another world. There wouldn’t be any cell phone carriers anywhere. Although if the passageway really was connected to Aokigahara Forest, maybe I could connect if I got close enough to it.

“Aww, dangit! I have to go without internet, too?!”

This meant I couldn’t go to the news sites I always checked, or the forums I always lurked on, to say nothing of all the online games where I had accounts. This was a problem. I had to get them to set up an antenna or do something, or I was going to suffocate from lack of information.

As I was thinking all this, Myusel was looking at my hand in befuddlement.

“Master... What’s that?”

“Huh? Oh, this? It’s my... Well, it’s a magic item from my country.” I smiled and showed her the memo pad screen I’d been writing on earlier.

“Are those... letters?”

“Yep. My country’s language.”

Myusel stared at my smartphone, eyes wide. She looked so earnest...

“What is it?”

“Oh, no, forgive me.” She quickly bowed her head. “I was just amazed that you use such complicated letters, Master...!”

“Huh? Oh, uh, I guess.”

She had been looking at the Japanese sentences. In other words, lines with complicated kanji characters in them. Having been born and raised with this system of writing, I’d never thought too much about it, but cultures that used this many types of letters at once were pretty unusual on Earth. The English alphabet only has twenty-six letters. Japanese is said to have “fifty sounds,” but there are twice that many characters in kana syllables alone. Add in kanji and you have many, many times that number of characters.

How many? Suddenly curious, I checked my phone’s dictionary. It said the basic number of kanji for literacy was around three thousand. But the most accomplished readers might know in excess of ten thousand characters. As far as I could tell, only the “kanji countries” used this many characters to write. And it seemed like only Japan and Korea made things even more complicated by adding syllabic characters.

...I could see why foreigners might think we were crazy.

“I guess you guys don’t use too many letters around here?”

“Oh... I’m sorry.” Myusel looked down. “I can’t... read or write...”

“...Oh.”

Come to think of it, another distinctive quality of Japan is its unusually high literacy rate. Visiting foreigners are sometimes surprised to see homeless people reading the newspaper. Or anyway, that’s what I heard on the net someplace.

Now I got it. From the perspective of someone who can’t read or write at all, a guy reading and writing using complicated combinations of characters might look a lot smarter than he was. Maybe the way someone who spoke five different languages would look to me.

“Hmm, paper, paper...”

I went back to my desk and opened the drawer. There were several sheets of somewhat rough paper inside. Maybe paper production technology wasn’t as advanced here, either, because it looked pretty crude compared to what I was used to. But of course I could still write on it.

I took out a ballpoint pen, which, like my smartphone, I’d had on me when I got here, and began to write at the top of the paper.

A-i-u-e-o. Ka-ki-ku-ke-ko. Sa-shi-su-se-so. Ta-chi-tsu-te-to. Basically, the hiragana syllabary. I wrote the characters as neatly as I could at the top of the page, then handed it to Myusel.

“Here.”

“...Eh?”

“Call it a symbol of our friendship. Er... Maybe it’s a little cheap for that, but...”

“Wha? Y-You’re... giving it to me...?!” Her eyes were wide.

“It’s a chart of ‘hiragana.’ It’s the most basic way of writing in my country; it’s simple, but everything starts here. I’ll teach you the sounds they make later.”

Then I had a thought. I grabbed the paper back and wrote Myusel on it in hiragana.

“This is how you write your name in my language. You can find the characters on the chart later.”

“...Master...!” she whispered, sounding overwhelmed. She held my hiragana chart as if it were some kind of priceless award, the first one she’d ever won in her life.

At first I thought it was a little silly, but I soon thought better of that. If printing technology wasn’t very developed, then books and the like must largely have been hand-copied manuscripts. So, naturally, they would be valuable artifacts that only nobles and some rich people were able to get a hold of. And a chart of characters from an entirely different world? All the more so.

It might just be a sheet of paper, but Myusel must have felt she’d received something wonderful.

For a while, she simply stared at the chart—but gradually, a happy smile began to spread across her face. Her happiness seemed to come less from the fact that she’d been given something valuable, and more from the simple fact that she’d been given a gift. She held the paper to her chest as if clasping a treasure. And then she said, in a voice so quiet it was barely audible:

“Th-Thank you very much.”

Her cheeks were rose-red, perhaps from the excitement, and her smile was shy.

Whoa. Hold on now, I could get seriously moe for this. I never thought I would feel so moe for a three-dimensional girl. She’s so dang cute, I think I feel a tightness in my chest...!

As I stood there, getting swept up in a rising tide of moe-ness, Myusel said, “Oh!” as though something had just occurred to her.

“It looks like Brooke-san is home.”

“It does?”

Apparently, those large ears weren’t just for show. I hadn’t heard anything at all, but she had picked up the sound of someone getting back.

“I’ll bring Brooke-san in.”

“Oh, uh, sure, please do.” I nodded. Myusel went scurrying out of the room and—

“Oh.”

Fell flat on her face.

“Yikes!” She had taken a serious tumble, but before I could so much as ask if she was okay, she had jumped up, given me a panicked bow, and set off again.

Hmm. She was awfully clumsy. And it wasn’t calculated; it was completely natural. She was the maid who was going to be looking after me, which meant that at least as long as I lived in this house, we were going to be seeing a lot of each other. Plus, I was her “master,” which meant that unlike my classmates or my old friend, at least she wouldn’t mock me as an otaku, look down on me, or respond to my heartfelt confession of love with a flat “No way.”

“Heh heh heh heh heh!”

I knew it wasn’t exactly right, yet a happy grin spread over my face. This meant...

“Master?” A knock came at the door. “I’ve brought Brooke-san.”

“Sure, please come in,” I said, trying to sound as easygoing as I could.

I wondered what kind of person Brooke would turn out to be. Another elf? Was the Holy Eldant Empire a country of elves?

Wait, hang on. This was a different world. I couldn’t assume that what seemed obvious to me would be obvious to the people here. Meaning “Brooke” might be a beautiful woman! After all, it sort of sounded like a man’s name, but this was another world, and maybe they named their gorgeous women Brooke here. And if it turned out “Brooke” was a last name, then who knew? All these thoughts were running through my head as the door opened.

“’Scuse me,” a voice said. “I’m Brooke Darwin, your manservant. I’m a gardener, for the most part, but you can count on me for any sort of manual labor.” This deferential self-introduction came from a huge humanoid figure. Wait... Humanoid?

I felt the blood leave my face, the way it would have if I’d gotten too close to a wolf or tiger at the zoo. I thought all the cartoons and illustrations had desensitized me, so this shouldn’t have frightened me, but seeing the real thing up close—how huge it actually was, the way everything about it screamed carnivore...

Standing beside Myusel was a creature at least two meters tall. He wore a tunic, dirty and torn in places, and pants that were in no better condition.

That would have been enough to freeze me in place. The real issue was that although this creature was humanoid, he wasn’t human. His face, neck, arms, and all the skin that I could see, right down to the feet poking out of his trousers, was covered in blue scales, and he had a missile-shaped head. In other words, just like a snake.

In front of me, so close he could practically breathe on me, was a creature of the type popularly known as a lizardman.

You didn’t have to look to “giant monsters” like Godzilla or Gamera: a two-meter-tall snake-thing was more than big enough to look like he could pick me up and eat me. Frankly, I was surprised my pants were still dry. I’m not ashamed to admit I wanted to run away as fast as I could, but the lizardman was standing between me and the only exit.

“Master?”

Myusel was looking at me strangely. She didn’t seem at all unsettled by the thing standing next to her.

“...I forgot.” This was another world. Things that were obvious to them might not be obvious to me, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, no matter what happened. A lizardman gardener? Not surprising. Totally normal. Maybe?

“My greetings t’ you, Master.” The lizardman—Brooke—bent down to look me in the eye. A forked red tongue darted in and out of his mouth, another little detail to give me the willies.

Yes, he was scary, but...

“P-Pleased to meet you,” I said, somehow managing a smile.