Chapter Three: Cornered?

Petralka was in excellent spirits.

“Ah, we understand now...!”

How do I put this? She looked... different.

Petralka had always looked like a young but well-manicured, attractive girl. But her clothes, position, and behavior had worked together to create the presence that was Petralka an Eldant III.

And so just by wearing different colors, different materials, she became like a totally new person.

“Oh ho!”

She was currently dressed in a Suiren outfit like Hikaru-san had worn at their first meeting. Of course, Hikaru-san’s costume would never have fit the empress; this was a new outfit he’d made especially for Petralka. Minori-san had already requisitioned a sewing machine back when we were doing costumes for our movie, so it was just a matter of getting some cloth and using it with the lace Hikaru-san had brought along. Add some fasteners to make it easy to get in and out of, some buttons, and a few other little details, and voila.

What was more, Petralka had taken off her crown and replaced it with a black wig, making her look even more different. She hadn’t gone so far as to wear color contacts, though, so her eyes were still their usual emerald green.

She looked... Well, she looked like a girl you could just fall in love with.

An old saying holds that one tires of a beautiful woman after three days, and it was true that I had kind of gotten used to the way Petralka looked—but the impression she made now was fresh and new, and inspired my heart to pound all over again.

“Wonderful!”

“I receive your words of praise with utmost gratitude,” said Hikaru-san, standing next to me on the carpet of the audience chamber.

Hikaru-san, Minori-san, and I were Amutech’s representatives in the audience hall at that moment. For the Eldant side there were Petralka and Garius. Royal guards waited just beyond the door, but inside, it was only us.

As ever, Hikaru-san blended perfectly into this environment. It went beyond simple etiquette; it was a matter of the ability to communicate. It was like he could choose his words and behavior in response to the way the other person looked and acted. Maybe it was a skill he had picked up from cosplaying. Dressing up just for your own amusement was one thing, but if you were going to be around other people, then you would have to branch out.

Maybe that was one way in which he was genuinely different from me. I really would have to learn from him on that point.

“Does it look good?” Petralka asked.

“Yes, Your Majesty, it suits you wonderfully,” Hikaru-san answered.

This was hardly flattery—it was the simple truth.

But when Petralka asked the question again—“Does it look good?”—it took me a good ten seconds to realize she was talking to me.

“Huh? Oh, s-sorry, were you asking me?”

“Who else would we be asking?” Petralka frowned.

“S-Sorry about that. Of course, it looks great.”

“You make it sound like an afterthought. You truly are uncouth, Shinichi. Don’t you think so, Hikaru?”

“I thought perhaps he was struck dumb by your beauty, Majesty.”

“We hardly share your supposition. Did you know, the first time we met, he took one look at me and immediately—”

“I told you, I’m sorry about that!” I said, with no choice but to apologize yet again.

I stole a sidelong glance at Hikaru-san, who was smirking. Then he said, “Your Majesty. As it happens, there is one more thing I wish to present to you.” He gave another respectful bow.

“Oh? The costume of another character?”

“No...” He pulled something out of his bag. “It’s this.”

“Hrm? What’s this?” Petralka leaned from her throne to see what Hikaru-san was holding out. It was...

“A card, Your Majesty. A trading card, of the kind we’ve been experimenting with selling among the common people. The cards themselves are imported from Japan, but we’ve assigned an artist to redo the packaging here in Eldant.”

“So we’ve heard. Your little spy friend from Bahairam, as we understand.” A wry grin passed over her face.

Petralka was well aware at this point that Elvia really was a spy for Bahairam (although by now, she was more of a double agent). Petralka also knew, however, that Elvia wasn’t very committed to her job, and that she had played a big role in rescuing me when I had been kidnapped by the other nation.

Hence the Eldant Empire was inclined to wink at her, and “the spy girl from Bahairam” had become something of a tongue-in-cheek nickname.

But even so, Elvia was who she was. She would absolutely never be allowed in this audience chamber.

“This is a card for which I asked our artist to attempt a brand-new illustration.”

“Hmm?”

“It’s an extremely rare, made-in-Eldant trading card—in fact, this is the only one that exists so far. The game that’s so popular right now is called Yugi WAR, and we based the design on that.”

“Oh ho!” Petralka leaned forward. “We cannot see it from so far away. Approach us.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

Hikaru-san came up to the throne as ordered. I caught a glimpse of the card in his hand as he went by. It was—

“This is—!”

Petralka was surprised, and even Garius, leaning in to look from beside her, raised an eyebrow.

“Is this Her Majesty?”

“I’m so happy you see the resemblance,” Hikaru-san said.

Yep: the illustration on the card was done in an anime/manga style, but it was clearly a picture of Petralka. Not in her current cosplay outfit, but in her usual clothes and her crown, and with silver hair. The illustration was hardly photo-real, but all the distinctive characteristics made it impossible to mistake the person in the picture.

“The spy girl of Bahairam drew this?”

“She did. Does it not radiate reverence for Your Majesty?” Hikaru-san said with a smile.

“Hmm...”

“The pilot period for the trading cards is already over. We intend to sell them on a larger scale going forward but are aware that among the nobility, many may not look favorably on packaging drawn by Elvia Harneiman. You can see from this drawing, however, how much she respects Your Majesty. Please let it show you her esteem for this empire, and proof that she has no rebellious feelings.”

“Hrm...”

Petralka and Garius looked at each other.

Back during the movie production, Petralka and Elvia had even shared a changing room, so truthfully, I didn’t think Petralka actually had that bad an impression of the beast girl. The only thing was, however the empress might feel, the people around her wouldn’t necessarily share her sentiments. Hikaru-san was right: there were many who wouldn’t smile on a spy from Bahairam doing the art for the packaging of merchandise that was spreading all over Eldant.

If she had Petralka and Garius’s backing, though, it might be a different story. Hikaru-san, I was sure, had deliberately asked Elvia to do Petralka’s picture on a card for exactly that reason. If the empress and her closest advisors were to trumpet the girl’s work, the other nobles wouldn’t be so keen to speak out against her.

All I could do was sigh. Hikaru-san really was an expert reader of other people’s feelings, or their psychology or something. In that sense, he was certainly talented.

“Shinichi,” Petralka said after a moment.

I looked up in a hurry. “Er, yes?”

“What is the matter? You’ve looked rather pale for some time...”

“Oh, uh, I’m fine, I promise.” I shook my head and waved both my hands to emphasize my point.

Outwardly, it wasn’t as if anything had changed. There were no special problems in my work or my life—everything was going smoothly. Almost too smoothly. In fact, since entrusting some of the classes and business to Hikaru-san, I found myself with a little free time and could actually relax.

I suppose I should have been happy. But instead...

We were between classes at school, and I was wandering aimlessly down the hallway.

What Hikaru-san was attempting was a fresh cultural invasion. At the very least, that was the hope of the Japanese government, which had sent him here.

But just like what they had tried to do with me, there was no easy definition: “this plus that equals cultural invasion.” It wasn’t a simple matter of the supplier of culture causing a change in the receiver of it.

I had determined to dodge the “invasion” by giving the choice to the Eldant Empire. I was just making suggestions. It was up to Eldant whether they would listen to me, and later, by taking over the supply, it would be a matter of not cultural invasion but commercial transaction—Amutech would be doing exactly what it had always claimed it would do. That was the answer I came up with.

But now Hikaru-san had found the loopholes in what Amutech was doing and had begun an experiment in cultural invasion. By controlling supply and creating a unique set of values, he wanted to create both scarcity and a secure market. To a certain extent, that happened naturally with trading cards—hence why an experiment aimed not just at making money, but creating addicts, threatened to produce such a deleterious effect.

The people of Eldant had no defense, so to speak, against this sort of thing, so it proved immensely effective.

I had to stop it, or so I felt. But at first glance, what Hikaru-san was doing was not so different from what I had decided to do. Not on a practical level, anyway. The difference was in how Hikaru-san and I thought about what we were doing; it wasn’t something you could see with the naked eye. And so, even if I wanted to stop Hikaru-san’s trading card strategy, it would be hard to gain the support of those around me.

Meanwhile, everyone who met Hikaru-san increasingly thought of him as highly capable. And what that meant for me was...

“Um...”

As I stood there lost in these dark ruminations, someone called out to me.

I looked up and saw a woman standing in the hallway. She was young—she looked to be about Minori-san’s age—but then I saw her pointed ears and realized she was an elf. That meant she might be far older than she appeared. Her clothing marked her out as different from the elf students; her outfit was full of lovely little details and gave off a more mature vibe. She was probably related to one of the students—somebody’s mother, maybe.

“Are you Shinichi-sensei?”

“Huh? Er, yes. I’m Kanou Shinichi...”

“I’m glad to meet you. I’m Shade’s mother. Thank you for taking such good care of my son.” She bowed her head politely.

Very motherly-looking. And I recognized Shade’s name. He hung around with Loek a lot. He always seemed kind of shy, but he must have been focused, because he kept up pretty good grades.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” This was an older woman I was dealing with—I had to remember my manners. I bowed in return.

Shade’s mother’s expression darkened. “Please pardon me for bringing this up so suddenly, but there’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

“There is?” I asked, furrowing my brow, and the woman nodded.

Every once in a while, the parents of a student would try to get a younger sibling admitted to the school on the basis that their older brother or sister already went here—you know, trying to work their connections. But it didn’t look like that was what was going on here.

So what was?

“It’s about my son.”

Well, yes, I figured that.

“He hardly comes out of his room.”

I took a breath. “Yipes...” For me personally, it seemed like this might be a painful conversation.

As someone who had spent some time as a home security guard, this subject really struck home. According to Shade’s mother, he would just shut himself up in his room, and even when she tried to talk to him, he only gave vague, noncommittal answers.

When he finally did come out of his room to, you know, take care of business, she peeked in and found a portable game console sitting on, a Nindento 3TS.

That’s right: one of the prizes we had handed out at the soccer tournament.

The tournament had culminated in an all-out battle between some royal knights and the lizardman team. We had given the lizardmen Somy PLPs and 3TSes as prices, but because portable game consoles didn’t mean much to them, they had sold most of them, many ending up in the hands of nobility—including some of the students’ parents.

I assumed Shade’s 3TS was one of those. And that wasn’t a problem, as far as it went. The problem was...

“No matter what I say to him, he won’t come out of his room. Finally he just says, ‘Cram it, Mom!’”

“Gosh...”

Now that I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t seen Shade in a while.

“My boy never used to act like that,” Shade’s mother said, clearly at a loss.

“Hmm...”

Had the games we’d brought over for the 3TS been that addictive?

In any event, if the 3TS really was the cause, then I bore some of the responsibility for this situation.

“I understand,” I said. As a former shut-in, I had a sense of how he must be feeling. Maybe I could help him get back to a normal life. “Er, if I come to your house, I’ll be able to find Shade-kun, then?”

“Oh, no, he’s here at school now.”

“I’m sorry?”

“He does come to school every day,” Shade’s mother said, her eyes on the ground. “It’s just... the rest of the time, he never leaves his room...”

Ahh. Now it made sense. I got it.

The 3TS was battery-powered, but it couldn’t run several days on a charge. If you did nothing but play it, you would probably need to recharge it on a daily basis. And right now, the only place the average person could get access to electric power was this school. He was coming to school to charge his game.

“But where is he, then?”

I really hadn’t seen Shade lately.

So he was at school, but not in class? That would have to mean...

“Okay, I understand. I’ll need to hear Shade-kun’s side of the story first.”

“Thank you for taking care of this,” his mother said, and gave me a deep bow.

Saying I would look into it was easy enough, but that was only the beginning of the problem.

I left teaching duties to Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and Myusel, who was there to lecture that day, and started searching the school. Shade obviously wasn’t in the classroom, but I also didn’t find him in the library or even the storeroom.

“Where could he be...?”

I’d looked in just about every room we had, but I hadn’t seen him anywhere. What was going on?

Mentally scratching my head, I decided to take another look in the places I’d already checked. Maybe I’d missed something. And I had told his mother I would deal with this—I couldn’t just give up.

And so at the break period, I came up to a bunch of elf students laughing and chatting in the classroom.

“Hey, do any of you know where Shade is?”

“Shade?” They all looked at each other. “Now that you mention it, he hasn’t been around lately, has he?”

“What? I saw him,” a girl said.

“Me too,” said a guy. At least I had a couple of leads.

“Where did you see him?” I asked. The two students put their hands to their chins as if trying to remember.

“Uhh... In the classroom.”

“He charges his 3TS every day. But he disappears before class starts.”

“He was charging earlier, too. Although then he left...”

“Really?” This was bad. I must have missed him. “Do you know where he went?”

“Sorry, we really don’t...”

“Okay. Thank you.”

Then I left the classroom, too.

If he had been here until just a little while ago, that strongly suggested he was still on school grounds. He had probably shut himself up somewhere he could play his game without being interrupted, and he would reappear in the classroom when he needed a recharge.

“If I wanted to play a game by myself here at school...”

It wasn’t like all the kids had 3TSes. If you were careless enough to pull it out in the classroom, another student might grab it from you, or at least bother you when you were trying to play. That was why Shade charged in the classroom, but didn’t stay there.

Where could you be alone at school? By yourself...

“Hmmm...”

I walked down the hallway—then stopped at the one place I could think of.

The boys’ bathroom.

The foundations and exterior of this building had been built in the style of the Holy Eldant Empire, but the interior had been designed and built by the JSDF, so the place was pretty Japanese. Apparently the Eldant Empire didn’t separate men’s and women’s toilet areas, but things were different here at school.

And just like in Japan, there were individual stalls in the restroom. You could flip down the lids on the Western-style toilets to make an impromptu chair. For a while in Japan, the expression benjo-meshi had gained currency—a devastatingly sad phrase that meant “toilet meal” and referred to eating by yourself in a bathroom stall. Frankly, playing a game in the restroom was probably more attractive than eating your lunch in there. Heck, I had been known to take a manga with me, myself. Though you always had to watch out for the danger of your legs falling asleep...

I entered the boys’ bathroom and looked around. No one else was immediately visible. But, as if we were following the script from a TV show or something, the door of just one of the stalls was shut.

I approached and knocked on the door. “Excuse me. Is that Shade in there by any chance?” I wanted to be very sure I had the right person.

I waited. Ten seconds passed. No answer.

I knocked on the door again, but to no avail. Instead, I could hear someone muttering inside.

“Ahh... Myuul-tan...” The voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper.

“Shade...?” I asked, pressing my ear to the door.

“Myuul-tan, your... Your...”

The voice was hard to hear, but I was pretty sure it was Shade.

“Shade! That’s you, isn’t it? It’s me, Kanou Shinichi. I want you to open the door.”

I realized I sounded like a police officer trying to talk down a suspect. Oops. Anyway, I knocked on the door again, harder this time. But still there was no answer. All I could hear was a strained laugh and harsh breathing.

Uh-oh, I thought reflexively. This didn’t seem... quite normal.

“Sorry!” I said, then I placed my hand against the door. The next words that came out of my mouth were a magical chant. A spell Myusel had taught me, one of only two I knew.

“Tifu Murottsu!”

Bam!

A whirlwind flared up right there, the wind blowing my hair every which way. My spell slammed the door with an invisible force, and with a crack of protest the lock came free. I pulled the door open.

There, in his own personal “cave of the sun goddess,” was Shade...

“Myul-taaan...”

...but not the Shade I knew.

He didn’t show a hint of surprise at my sudden entrance, and he was missing the shy smile he’d always had. Instead, a weak grin covered his haggard face, and he just kept staring at the screen of his 3TS.

I was panicked. How could I not be, after seeing Shade that way? I had tried to talk to him, but he was completely fixated on his 3TS, and hardly even seemed to hear what I was saying. In the end, I was at least able to get him home, but not much more. I thought about taking the 3TS away, but decided not to, in case it made him turn violent.

He was completely addicted. What was worse, the thing he was addicted to was not a game I had imported. It was an ero game. I.e., an X-rated title.

Of course, the Holy Eldant Empire didn’t technically have an “X rating,” and I had imported ero games before, albeit only a few of them.

Personally, I don’t think ero games are inherently evil or anything. Thanks to my mom’s work, our house had a rotating selection of samples of such games, and I wasn’t above checking them out when I thought my parents wouldn’t notice. So I didn’t think the problem was with it being an ero game as such.

The problem had to do with the content of the game—its type, if you will.

The word “game” actually covers a wide variety of things. Ero games fall under this category, but so do adventure games, visual novels, and kamishibai games. Players face a choice in each location that can have some effect on the story, although in its most basic form the plot is already settled, just like in a manga, anime, or novel.

To put it another way, if you just follow along, you’ll get to the end. If you decided to do nothing but play such a game, no matter how slow you took it, you could probably get through one in about three days. Despite a certain degree of freedom in such titles, they’re not really that different from manga, anime, or novels.

What I’m saying is: eventually, they end.

But there are also games that don’t have an “end.” Ones you can play over and over, as many times as you want, or ones whose content changes in some way based on a random number; some others you can play for ages if you want, and so on. A lot of online games are like that, but so are a lot of single-player games.

There are plenty of ero games like that, too. Games where you can choose what the heroine’s face and body look like, and where her spoken lines are chosen randomly from a large pool of possibilities. There’s a lot of replay value to be had in something like that—in fact, the play itself is often a series of lengthy loops.

In a word, you could spend an endless amount of time with an ideal woman you designed yourself and never have to come back to reality. In fact, it was all too easy to get so sucked in that you started to think, Who wants to play a crappy game like reality, anyway?

Now, as I’ve mentioned before, the people of the Holy Eldant Empire seemed especially susceptible to otaku culture. And any time you get too into something, whatever it is, there can be strange side effects. If those side effects cause real harm, then naturally people will criticize whatever the thing was that you were into. And if that thing happens to be ero games—i.e., the sort of thing widely considered depraved entertainment—then people are really going to be up in arms about it. And if people’s criticism started to extend from the game to the people who had brought the game—Amutech—we could have genuine hysteria on our hands. This was a slippery slope I’d already had too much firsthand experience of with the Assembly of Patriots.

Early on, I realized that some of the first things I’d imported had been mistakes, and ever since then, I had steered completely clear of importing any ero games. I figured those could come later, after otaku culture had become more normal here.

So then, who?

Someone on the Japanese side, obviously. And that meant one of a fairly limited number of people. Me, Minori-san, Matoba-san, Hikaru-san, and a handful of JSDF soldiers.

Minori-san was importing her share of BL books, but those were for her personal interest—notwithstanding the pleasure she took in showing them to Garius. I couldn’t picture her importing ero games to sell to the kids over here.

Matoba-san, then? I didn’t think so. He barely knew the first thing about otaku entertainment. It was entirely possible he didn’t even realize ero games existed. He hadn’t known what an “ero game triple threat” even was before he met me.

What about the soldiers from the garrison? I couldn’t be sure. They did get those regular deliveries of personal items, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out there were X-rated games in some of those boxes. But...

“...Huh?”

Thinking of those deliveries spurred a memory in me.

Hikaru-san’s delivery.

The memory cards I’d seen packed into that box.

“Now it makes sense...”

How would you get ero games for consoles like the PLP or the 3TS? You couldn’t do it with official cartridges or optical discs. Neither Somy nor Nindento wanted X-rated titles on their systems. There were no official ero releases for either console.

But modern handheld games had cameras and music players and such, along with memory card slots to hold the data for those functions. Games you downloaded could be stored on memory cards, too. If you used a PC to create a program and put it on one of those cards, you could essentially have a “doujin” ero game on PLP or 3TS. What if that was what Hikaru-san had wanted all those memory cards for?

“Bad... This is bad,” I muttered as I headed back toward the classroom.

The image of Shade, wearing a zombified expression and clinging to his 3TS, was burned into my memory. However you sliced it, that wasn’t normal. I’d heard stories of some people who had done nothing but played online games for days on end until they finally died—and it looked like Shade was heading down that path.

Ero games also naturally lend themselves to, uh, certain behavior while playing. While playing all night, if you know what I mean. I read about an experiment once where supposedly, they taught a monkey to pleasure itself, and the monkey just kept doing it until it collapsed. In the same way, when you have something that isn’t limited, and where there’s no outside pressure condemning it as “bad” or “shameful,” then it can be impossible to stop.

The result? If enough of these games made it into the hands of enough students, at least one of them was bound to just keep playing until he dropped. Just like how my students had gotten completely hooked on otaku culture because they had been starved for entertainment, it can be hard to control what you’re not used to.

I couldn’t let things get like that again.

“Damn. I should have stopped him earlier,” I groaned.

Him, of course, was Hikaru-san.

“But how should I do this?”

I wandered through the school, looking for Hikaru-san. We were past the point of “seeing how things went.” Trading cards were one thing, but I wasn’t going to let him get away with telling me that the ero games were just about business.

Finally, I spotted Hikaru-san through the window of the classroom.

“Hikaru-sa—”

I opened the door of the classroom with a mind to corner him about the games, but then I stopped in my tracks.

Hikaru-san looked like he was having so much fun. He stood in the classroom surrounded by students, chatting amiably with them. Myusel and Minori-san were beside him. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but everyone seemed really into it.

Everyone seemed to be... enjoying themselves. So much so that I, who had come to give Hikaru-san a piece of my mind, actually felt alienated. I hesitated to shatter the convivial atmosphere.

What did I think would happen if I confronted Hikaru-san about his behavior here and now? The students adored him, and even Petralka seemed to like him. Myusel, Elvia, and Minori-san all enjoyed talking about cosplay with him. If someone were to criticize Hikaru-san, wasn’t it likely that there would be somebody who took his side?

A new spear tip for the cultural invasion, sent to replace me...

In other words, a new person who could and would undermine me. If I set myself up against Hikaru-san, whose side would everybody take? That of the former shut-in and worthless otaku who was prone to saying things that invited misunderstanding? Or Hikaru-san, who was intelligent, beautiful, and a superb communicator?

I stood there in thought.

I felt pathetic—but I got scared.

I was scared they would say, “Kanou Shinichi, we don’t need you anymore.”

I was so scared, I found I couldn’t move from my spot.

“Master?” Myusel noticed me at the door and smiled. “Is something wrong?”

Her words caused everyone else in the room to stop talking and look at me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that they resented me for interrupting just when they had been chatting so happily—even though I knew how unlikely that was—and it killed me.

So I said...

“Er, no, nothing really...” I gave a reflexive shake of my head and promptly exited the classroom.

“Master?”

Myusel’s voice, sounding doubtful, followed me—but I just couldn’t stay there any longer.

We were back at the mansion for that short stretch between school and dinner.

Minori-san had gone to her room, and I saw Myusel head into the kitchen, so I talked to Hikaru-san in the hallway. Minori-san, supposedly my bodyguard, was all but attached at the hip to Hikaru-san these days, so I didn’t get a lot of chances to speak to him alone.

“Hikaru-san,” I said.

He turned to me with a smile. “Yes? What is it?”

I had what I thought was a pretty serious expression on my face, but Hikaru-san never let his smile slip. Was he just not worried? Or did he imagine that I would never attack him?

I felt like the ant challenging the elephant. In a toe-to-toe fight with Hikaru-san, I could never win, and somewhere in my mind I had the feeling of self-loathing that comes with having given up before you ever started.

But all the same...

“I just wanted to talk to you for a minute,” I said after a few seconds’ hesitation, as coldly as I could. “What is that 3TS game?”

“What? I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t act dumb,” I ordered him in a voice dangerously close to breaking. “You’re the one who gave Shade a memory card with a homebrew ero game on it, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry. I truly have no idea—”

“I said, don’t play with me!” I broke in. “I saw all those memory cards in your box the other day. You meant to use those to sell ero games, didn’t you? Otherwise, why would you need to buy so many of the same card? You have the game on your own computer, and you’re copying it to those cards for distribution, aren’t you?”

Hikaru-san was completely silent. Slowly, an inch at a time, the smile disappeared from that lovely face.

Staring—no, glaring—into my eyes, he shrugged his shoulders. “So? What if I am?” He didn’t look the least bit perturbed. In fact, he put his hands defiantly on his hips and sighed as he looked at me, as if to indicate how much of a pain in the neck this had all become.

“Then I want you to stop right away.”

“Why?” His voice was so calm, so even. “Don’t you see how much everyone is enjoying themselves?”

“Hold on a second. ‘Everyone’...?”

Not just Shade, then? Think about it: I only learned about Shade because his mother came and talked to me. I hadn’t noticed on my own. Between the varying classes of students, from noble to commoner, as well as the frequent fights that broke out in the classroom, it wasn’t that unusual to go several days without seeing a given student. Unlike in Japan with its long-established system of compulsory education, people around here didn’t necessarily feel that it was such a bad thing to miss a few days of school.

But what if a lot of those missing students were out for the same reason as Shade?

“How many are out there?!”

“I sold ten. We’re still at the pilot stage,” Hikaru-san said.

“Ten!”

“Looks like they’re hooked, too. Starting the day after I sold the games, out of those ten students, six have only shown up at the classroom when they need to recharge their batteries. Though admittedly the other four have continued to attend class as usual.”

That was still more than half the students gone, a spectacular rate of addiction.

“This is bad. You can’t do things like that.”

Shade’s health was obviously suffering, but even so, he refused to give up his 3TS.

As I mentioned, the game he was playing was one with a vast degree of replayability. It was possible to be finished with a story-based game once you had seen the story, even accounting for games that had branching paths and multiple endings. But games that emphasized simulation elements often didn’t have endings. You could design a character the way you liked her, then go on fake dates and have fake hanky-panky, and the more you indulged in this stuff, the more new images of your character you could unlock.

It was easy to see how this could turn endless.

“Games like that shouldn’t be...”

“You imported ero games yourself, didn’t you?” Hikaru-san said with a smile. “Are you eighteen? I don’t think so.”

“But—But that—”

Okay, fair point—I wasn’t eighteen. Maybe I shouldn’t be trumpeting the fact that I had played X-rated games. But...

“I just want everyone to have fun—I simply asked myself what everyone would most enjoy, and that’s why I imported those games. And because they’re just data, there isn’t even a need to physically transport them through the wormhole, unlike manga, or anime DVDs. I start by selling blank memory cards, and then sell the data later. The games are simple to duplicate on my computer. Can you think of a better business model?”

“Business model? You can only call it that because you didn’t see Shade!”

“See him? See him how? You mean see how he’s so entranced by that game that he’s destroyed his own health, like a monkey who’s learned to jack off?”

“Then you know?!”

“I can guess easily enough.” Hikaru-san shrugged.

“Don’t tell me... You knew that might happen to people, and you still—?”

“Take a population that’s not used to this kind of stimulus, and dump all-you-can-play ero games on them. What do you think’s going to happen?”

I couldn’t say anything. He was right. It was true.

Back when I had first begun importing otaku products, hadn’t it been the same way?

When you have someone who’s never been exposed to a given stimulus, even a relatively mild version of that stimulus can be extremely potent—so much so that when you take it away, it produces withdrawal symptoms. But at least with typical manga, novels, and anime, you could look at them once and be done with them. They didn’t suck away your life force, like ero games.

“So you did this knowingly?”

“Of course I did. It was an experiment, and these are exactly the results I expected,” Hikaru-san replied without a trace of guilt.

“So the experiment’s over, then. Ero games—”

“—have been a huge success,” Hikaru-san said. “We’re seeing an addiction rate of over fifty percent. That speaks well for future sales.”

God. He really saw this as nothing but a business matter, didn’t he? It just has to sell. What sells is what’s right.

“We’re not talking about sales anymore! And the same with the cards!”

“The cards?”

“People aren’t just enjoying them anymore!”

Some cards were going for prices that weren’t even funny. An actual secondhand market was forming here, albeit on a small scale.

“We need to wrap up this operation and just leave our hands off for a while!” I said.

“Why?” Hikaru-san looked genuinely puzzled. “People are having fun. Amutech’s business is booming. To a limited extent, even Japan itself is feeling the effect. And that means our reputations are on the rise, too. Where’s the problem? Do you really want to give all that up? Why would you?”

“You! Do you really think of nothing but sales numbers? Nothing but money?!”

“And just what else am I supposed to think of?!” I must have touched a nerve, because suddenly Hikaru-san didn’t sound so calm anymore. “How do you think entertainment works? How do you think the otaku industry works?! Consumers are nothing but swine who’ll throw themselves at the first thing that flashes a bit of skin at them! What’s wrong with giving them what they want?! They don’t give a rat’s ass about stories—just sex, sex, sex!”

I was left speechless by this sudden storm. I couldn’t understand Hikaru-san’s scathing tone. It was almost as if he was belittling otaku, despite being one himself. Had familiarity bred such contempt?

Or could it be that this person, Ayasaki Hikaru, wasn’t an otaku at all? That it was hatred for otaku that drove him to say these things? It wasn’t as if otaku were the only people in the world who read manga, or watched anime, or whatever. Hikaru-san had said his parents were both otaku. Was it simple exposure that had given him his knowledge of otaku works...?

“As sellers of goods, what’s wrong with bringing in what consumers want?! Or what? Are you going to tell me companies are wrong for even making those products?!”

“No— I don’t mean—”

That wasn’t what I was trying to say at all. But I didn’t know how to put it into words.

Hikaru-san looked at me as I stood there, unable to say anything, and the edges of his lips twisted. “Hmph.” He looked at me out of the corner of narrowed eyes, mockingly. “Exactly what do you think you’re playing at, anyway?”

“Huh...?”

“Being Amutech’s General Manager? Yes, of course that’s what you are. But for how much longer, do you think?”

“What are you—?”

“Have you still not figured out why I came here?”

“Wha...?”

What was he... talking about?

Hikaru-san put his face right next to mine. I instinctively twisted away a little bit, but he leaned down and whispered in my ear, as if sharing a secret. “I was the one who was chosen to replace you when you were gone.”

“When I was... gone...?”

What? Why the past tense?

“I was supposed be the second General Manager of Amutech. But then you had the gall to come back alive. So we quickly decided I would be your assistant instead. Did you really not notice any of this?”

I sucked in a breath. Hikaru-san stared into my face. He was still gorgeous, still could have passed for a woman, and he was inches away from me. But I didn’t feel my heart pounding. In fact, I could tell the blood had drained from my face. At that moment, I was a frog hypnotized by a snake.

“And when it comes right down to it, you’re not so special after all, are you? Just an otaku. Don’t you think someone with a head for business—someone like me—would make a better manager?” He giggled girlishly. “So we have you, who has hardly made any profit and even went rogue on one occasion. And we have me, someone who has achieved tangible, if experimental, results in a very short time. Which do you think the Japanese government would prefer?”

I didn’t answer. There was only one answer, anyway.

Hikaru-san.

When I had been kidnapped by the Kingdom of Bahairam, Japan had found Hikaru-san to send to replace me. It probably would have been better from the government’s perspective if I had never come back at all. If they specifically tried to get rid of me, they risked poisoning their relationship with the Eldant Empire. But if I was eliminated by a convenient accident, something that the Japanese government appeared to have no hand in, than they would have every reason to send a replacement for me.

I’ll bet there was rejoicing in Japan when they heard I had been kidnapped by Bahairam.

And then I’d come back. Thanks to Myusel and Elvia and Minori-san and Loek and Romilda, I had come home safely. And so the position of General Manager, which the government had intended to bestow upon Hikaru-san, vanished into thin air, and they were forced to send him as my assistant instead of my replacement.

After their experience with me, I assumed the government had carefully investigated Hikaru-san’s temperament and personal philosophy. They would want to be sure he would do as they wished. After that, it would just be a matter of waiting for the right opportunity to usurp me.

If Petralka, Garius, and others like them came to value Hikaru-san more than me, then Amutech’s leadership could be changed with no special fuss. That was why Matoba-san or somebody had gone out of their way to find out who Petralka’s favorite character was and work it into their plans.

I stood silently, but my mind was flooded with images from the classroom. Hikaru-san surrounded by students, chatting happily. Were they so happy that even if I disappeared, they wouldn’t mind having just Hikaru-san?

For that matter, if they were forced to choose between me and Hikaru-san, how many of them would actually take my side? Half of them? None of them?

That couldn’t be true. I tried to deny it, but once the notion had gotten into my head, I couldn’t get it out.

To my own humiliation, I realized I was shaking.

“Is that all you wanted to talk to me about?” Hikaru-san asked, smiling. Was it just me, or was that a smile of triumph?

Then Hikaru-san said, “I’m going to go relax in my room until dinner.” He turned and began walking slowly away from me.

I couldn’t do anything but watch him go.

When dinner was over, I quickly retreated to my own room, unable to stand being in the same place as Hikaru-san.

I hadn’t had much appetite, and didn’t really touch my dinner. I felt bad for Myusel, who had worked so hard to make it, but I could hardly even remember what she had served. I recalled taking two or three mechanical bites, but I hadn’t tasted anything.

“Sigh.........”

How pathetic am I?

I flopped on my bed. I had no idea what to do.

In the past, when it had come to a fight with the Japanese government, I had found I was able to square off against them. Petralka, of course, and the entire Eldant Empire, had my back—and that gave me courage.

But now? Now, I wasn’t so sure.

The reality was, Hikaru-san wasn’t even technically my enemy. He was only thinking of how best to run Amutech to serve the interests of the Japanese government; he wasn’t specifically trying to get rid of me. If he had been, there would have been plenty of opportunities to take more concrete action. I probably wouldn’t even have been able to resist.

But Hikaru-san genuinely didn’t seem hostile toward me.

I don’t think he was actually concerned about me at all. It was just that as he worked harder and harder, I was eventually going to find myself cornered. That was all there was to it.

Given my official position, I didn’t have a lot of room to criticize what he was doing, even if I personally thought it was problematic.

“But what if I wasn’t General Manager anymore...?”

Just saying it aloud made the possibility seem a little more real.

Would the Japanese government kill me? No. However accepted Hikaru-san might become, I didn’t think they would be able to do anything as heavy-handed as murdering me. It would just hurt their standing with the Eldant Empire too much.

In that case, might they simply send me back to Japan as someone who had no more business being here?

It was at that point that it dawned on me: I could go back to Japan.

When I first came over to Eldant, it was basically a kidnapping. And for confidentiality reasons I’d never been allowed to go back to Japan. I wondered sometimes if my parents might be worried about me, but then again, I thought there was a chance they were perfectly happy to have shed a worthless time-waster like me, and so I’d resolved not to think about it too hard.

............Hey.

Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t let your thoughts go in these ugly directions.

I heaved another sigh.

That was when I heard a knock at the door.

Curious, I looked over, although I didn’t bother dragging myself up off my bed. Honestly, I didn’t have the energy to get up, or even to answer.

“Um... Master, are you there?” a cautious voice called out when I didn’t say anything. “It’s Myusel.”

“Oh!” I reflexively jumped up. “Oh, uh, I’m here! You can come in!”

...Er, Kanou Shinichi? Weren’t you just saying you didn’t have the energy to get up or talk?

Disappointed by my own fickleness, I quickly straightened my clothes. As I did so, the doorknob turned slowly, hesitantly.

“Master... Shinichi-sama?”

In the narrow wedge of light between the open door and the wall, Myusel’s face appeared. I nodded, and she pushed open the door and came in.

“What’s up?” I asked.

She came in, all right, but once she closed the door behind her she stopped moving and just stood there. I watched her, but she seemed reluctant, looking at the ground and fidgeting slightly.

“Um... I... I know it might not be... my place to ask, but...” Her face was bright red, but then Myusel finally resolved herself and looked up at me. “Is... Is something the matter?”

“Huh...? Er, what makes you say that?”

I asked out of instinct, but in reality, it was a stupid question. Think about it: I’d barely touched the dinner she made before dashing off to my room. Of course she would conclude I might not be feeling very well. Then again, Myusel was prone to assuming things were her fault—like that she had messed up the cooking or something—but let’s ignore that for now.

“Y-You just haven’t seemed very... happy lately, Shinichi-sama. Especially earlier. You looked like... like you were in so much pain...” She didn’t look up as she spoke. Shyness drove the redness up to her ears.

I could only stare at Myusel. Notwithstanding tonight’s meal, I thought I had been doing everything I could to act normal. And yet Myusel, it seemed, had seen right through me.

Then on top of that, she purposely came to my room just to check on me...

Uh-oh. It would be pretty embarrassing to start crying now.

“Myusel...” I blinked to hold back the tears, then looked at the maid. “Do you have a moment?”

I patted the bed beside me gently.

Myusel looked uncomprehending for an instant, then said, “C-Certainly...!” She made her way over to me a little bit awkwardly, then sat down where I had indicated with no small hesitation. She closed her eyes and put her hands in front of her chest almost as if she were praying.

After a second I said, “I want to ask you something.”

“Me...?” She looked taken aback.

“Maybe I shouldn’t. But... I want to talk, or at least to be heard. That’s all I need.”

“Er, ah, b-but, y-yes, certainly, of course you can!” Myusel nodded vigorously, looking strangely out of sorts.

What was going on? She was even more red than before... But anyway.

“To tell the truth...”

And then I told Myusel about everything I had felt from the day Hikaru-san arrived until now. About the trading cards. About the ero games. About the Japanese government’s philosophy, and Hikaru-san’s.

I did worry that speaking ill of Hikaru-san might cause Myusel to become disillusioned with me. But if so, I felt that might help me accept that I had been wrong. It was sort of like when I had decided to rebel against the government—Myusel seemed to me like a bellwether of this world, and how she felt set something of a standard for me.

Everything I had thought and felt, I spilled out to Myusel.

When it came to explaining what an “ero game” was and what had happened to Shade, she once again blushed with embarrassment, but nonetheless listened to me all the way through. As I spoke, I couldn’t tell what she might be thinking, but she at least had the good grace to hear me out, even if my talk was approaching babble.

When I finished, she said, “So Hikaru-sama...” She looked shocked. Then, suddenly, it seemed like something had clicked into place for her. She put a hand to her mouth and said, “Oh...”

“What is it?”

“Now that you mention it... I just...”

After a moment’s hesitation, Myusel came out with it. “When you were taken hostage by the Kingdom of Bahairam, Shinichi-sama, I thought it almost seemed like the Ja-panese government had expected you to be captured all along...”

“Ahh. So that’s how it was.”

I sighed. Apparently I had been carried off by Bahairam because my own government had leaked the information that caused them to take an interest in me. That suggested my replacement, Hikaru-san, had been waiting in the wings since even before then. Maybe since... immediately after my rebellion against the government.

No doubt they’d wanted their second general manager to be someone who would follow their wishes more closely. And that was why...

I sat, silent. I remembered the way Hikaru-san had lambasted otaku as only someone who grew up among them could.

The government had really hit the jackpot with him. He had all the otaku knowledge, but basically despised otaku as consumers. Hence he would have no qualms about using otaku products or works as tools of cultural invasion—might even enjoy using them to cause consumers to dance in the palm of his hand.

It was ugly. Hideous. But hadn’t he succeeded in gaining everyone’s trust? At least, it looked to me like he had.

I was just an otaku. What was I going to do—twiddle my thumbs and watch him? If I wasn’t careful, then in trying to resist him I could find myself doing the exact same thing he was. Battling over profits. Taking what sells to be what’s right. And then, I would be just like him.

So, then... What to do?

“What should I do...?”

I had told Myusel I just need someone to listen to me, but this is where I’d wound up. It probably made me look pretty weak, but to be honest, I probably didn’t care.

“Maybe you guys don’t even need me here anymore...”

“That isn’t true!” Myusel exclaimed, almost as if to wipe out my words with her own. Then, more quietly, “Er, I... I mean, pardon me...” She looked at the floor, shrinking again in the light of my shocked silence.

The words had come out instinctively, without careful thought. But that only went to show that they were her true feelings.

“I don’t... I don’t understand these difficult or complicated things,” Myusel began, sounding hesitant once again. “I don’t even really know whether what Hikaru-sama is doing is right or wrong. But Shinichi-sama, to me... to me, you’re a very important person. We absolutely do need you here. Otherwise... why would Minori-sama, and Loek-sama, and Romilda-sama go all the way to Bahairam to rescue you...?” She squeezed her knees with her hands. “Even Her Majesty did what she could... And Elvia-san, it took a little while, but she threw herself into helping you...”

There was a long pause before I replied, “I see. You’re right. I’m sorry.” I really meant it.

She was right. Even if I was evicted from the position of General Manager of Amutech, that didn’t mean everyone would immediately hate me or something. This wasn’t a binary question: one or zero, enemy or friend. That kind of thinking only constrained what you could see. Just because people liked Hikaru-san didn’t mean they automatically disliked me.

Had I felt so totally cornered that I’d lost sight of even something as simple as that? How embarrassing...

“And... if it turns out Hikaru-sama is your enemy, Shinichi-sama, then... then even if perchance Minori-sama, Elvia-san—and even Her Majesty—if they all side with Hikaru-sama, I’ll still...” Myusel looked at me, almost beseeching. And here I’d thought I was the one who needed encouragement. “I’ll still stand by you, Shinichi-sama. That’s one thing that will never change.”

The way she spoke, it was almost as if she was begging me to let her be my ally.

Oh!

I could feel a fluttering in the depths of my heart. Yes: it was just like before. If Myusel was on my side, then I could and would fight.

“Myusel...” I opened my mouth, just... happy. Feelings are only meaningful if you tell the other person about them. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” The words may have been stale, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Oh, er, n-not at all—I just...” It seemed like she couldn’t figure out how to go on, either.

So Myusel and I sat there on the bed, both of us silent, until...

“I’m going to figure this out, somehow,” I said. “I can’t let things go on like this.”

“Yes, sir. If there’s any way I can help, please let me know.”

“Sure thing. When the time comes, I’ll tell you.” Finally, I was at least able to muster a smile.

Guuuurrrrgle.

As if to prove that my energy had come back, there was an unmistakable growl from my stomach. Myusel and I both looked at each other for a second, then burst out laughing.

I guess I had my appetite back.

“I’ll go make a nighttime snack for you.”

“Thanks. I’ll come to the dining area.”

“Oh, no, I can bring it here to your room.”

“Oh, gosh, you don’t—I mean—” I scratched my cheek with one finger. “I sort of... wanted to go with you.”

I just want to be with you for a while.

Naturally, I couldn’t bring myself to put it quite that bluntly. As Myusel blinked away her surprise, I said, partly to cover my embarrassment, “Whatever you make, I hope it’s good.”

“It will be!” Myusel said, nodding and smiling broadly. Seriously, she was cute enough to make me fall over right then and there.

Later on...

What follows isn’t from my perspective, but Myusel’s. It takes place in the middle of the night, but she related the events to me after she woke me up the next morning.

With that in mind...

“Um...” Myusel knocked twice on the door, then said, “Hikaru-sama, I’ve brought tea.”

“It’s open,” came the answer from inside. “Come in.”

Myusel excused herself and then pushed a cart with tea implements on it into Hikaru-san’s room. Hikaru-san apparently had some kind of habit of taking tea about three hours after dinner, and he had asked Myusel to bring it to him each day.

In his room, Hikaru-san was working on something on a personal laptop, but he closed it as if to hide whatever it was and turned to Myusel. “Thank you.”

“Not at all...”

This was also just as usual.

Myusel poured the tea and put it on Hikaru-san’s desk along with some tea candies. She tried hard not to disturb Hikaru-san when he was working—normally she would simply have pushed the cart back out of the room. But tonight...

“Um... Hikaru-sama?” She stood stock-still as she spoke.

“Yes? What is it?” Hikaru-san asked, looking at her.

“You always work until so late at night...” Myusel glanced at the laptop.

Hikaru-san always seemed to be doing something on that computer when she came in with tea. At that hour of the night, I would be reading manga or watching an anime in my room, and Minori-san, leaving bodyguard duties to the various security systems around the house, would probably be reading some kind of BL book or fujoshi-oriented doujinshi. It made Hikaru-san look like a bit of a workaholic.

“I hope I’m not overstepping myself, but... um... you should make sure to rest sometimes, for the sake of your health...”

Hikaru-san had closed the lid of the computer, so Myusel couldn’t see what he was doing. It was possible he was playing a game or something—but Hikaru-san’s expression didn’t look like someone who was relaxing.

“Well. I suppose you’re right.” A ghost of a smile passed over his face. “This is the only thing I’m good at. I just...”

“Wha...?” Myusel blinked at this unexpected declaration.

The whole reason she had spoken to Hikaru-san like this, unlike she usually did, was because after talking to me, she had started to wonder about the philosophy of this person, Ayasaki Hikaru... or something like that.

Myusel told me she couldn’t see Hikaru-san as a bad person. In fact, very much like me, he had been exceptionally kind to her and Elvia and Brooke and Cerise, regardless of whether they were mixed-bloods or demihumans or what have you.

Of course, that could have been part of some hidden agenda, but what was there to gain by being considerate of servants like Myusel? That was what made Myusel, at least, think that this was more than Machiavellian calculation.

Just like with me.

So if it was true that he was trying to chase me out—if that was true, then Myusel wanted to know what his thinking could be. And true enough, it was ultimately the Japanese government that was trying to get rid of me, not Ayasaki Hikaru himself.

When I thought about it, I could see that Hikaru-san had never gone out of his way to be hostile to me. He argued with me about the trading cards and the ero games, but that was only after I had started an argument with him.

“Surely you’re good at other things, too,” Myusel said, distraught. “Everyone thinks you’re really something, Hikaru-sama...”

“Yes, I imagine they do,” Hikaru-san said evenly. “That’s what I mean by the only thing I’m good at. Getting everyone to say how wonderful I am.”

Myusel fell silent, unsure what Hikaru-san was saying.

Hikaru-san looked at her, the slight smile returning to his face. “Listen. In a word, I’m only interested in meeting the expectations of those around me, playing along with them... You could say it’s the only thing I can have an interest in.”

“Oh, uh, er... Is... Isn’t that quite something in itself?” Wasn’t it Hikaru-san’s very talent that allowed him to respond to people that way?

But Hikaru-san shook his head and replied, “I’m a doll. I’m just like Suiren from Rose Princess. Empty. There’s nothing I especially want to do. I have no particular dreams for the future. When I do what the people around me expect, then they’re happy—so that’s what I do, reflexively.”

Hikaru-san said he was like a high-functioning machine: still, in the end, just a machine.

Myusel didn’t fully understand this analogy, but Hikaru-san went on: “Like this time. Matoba-san—the whole Japanese government—they all have great expectations of me, and I just... you know? What I’m doing doesn’t demand any special talent or ability. Anyone who’s willing to put in enough effort could do it. So here I am, working away. That’s all there is to it.”

“Is that... Is that right?” Myusel didn’t know quite what to say. All she could do was nod along.

Wasn’t it a good thing to meet the expectations of others? Wasn’t that supposed to be laudable? But here was Hikaru-san saying...

“I became so good at sensing what other people wanted that I... I didn’t have much of a self anymore. Cosplay started as something that delighted my parents, and I kept doing it because so many people were so impressed by it.” He shrugged.

“I... I’m not really smart enough to follow all this, but...” Myusel started. “Hikaru-sama, could it be that you... that you hate that about yourself?”

“I wonder,” Hikaru-san said, the puzzled look coming across his face once again. And then he gave that doll-like, impenetrable, perfect smile and said, “I’m not really sure myself.”

It was as if he was saying, Dolls don’t get to decide about things like that.

The next day, Hikaru-san and I were abruptly summoned to Eldant Castle. Since we had already made our routine report, this was clearly about something different. The knights who had come to summon us seemed different from usual, too—stiffer, somehow. More severe.

What could be going on?

Even as these questions ran through my mind, we were ushered into the smaller audience chamber that we normally used for Amutech’s business reports.

I glanced over at Hikaru-san, in the corner of the room. He seemed totally calm, as if the incident yesterday hadn’t happened. But I didn’t think for a second that he was intimidated by me.

“We will dispense with the pleasantries,” Petralka said as she arrived in the audience chamber. Counselor Garius and Prime Minister Zahar stood to either side of her, both looking pretty grim. A portentousness, or at least a tension, filled the room. I had known from the moment we came in that Petralka hadn’t called us here for anything fun.

But what did she want?

“Garius,” she said shortly. “Explain.”

“Majesty,” Garius said. He bowed, then took a step forward. He looked first at Hikaru-san, then at me, and then he declared: “Yesterday, the daughter of a noble family was, it seems, kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?” Minori-san and I looked at each other. It was all too easy to connect that word with memories of our Bahairam adventure.

Before we could get too far down memory lane, however, Garius said, “She isn’t a student at your school, so you may not know her.”

I definitely wasn’t familiar with all the sons and daughters of the nobility, just the ones who attended our school. In fact, as the trouble with Shade demonstrated, periodic absences were so common among the students that the kidnappee could have been from my own classroom and I might not have noticed it.

But be that as it may—why call us here specifically to talk about this?

Maybe they just wanted to warn us because so many of the students at school were children of the nobility. After all, the school had once briefly been taken over by a terrorist group calling itself the Assembly of Patriots. Even Petralka herself had been held hostage at the time, so it was something the imperial government was likely to be especially sensitive about.

“No demands have been issued as yet, so we can’t be certain this is a genuine kidnapping. However, an attendant of the girl in question reported having been struck in the back of the head and knocked unconscious. When they came to, the girl was gone. This item was found at what is believed to be the scene of the crime.”

Prime Minister Zahar approached us, holding something. He came to a halt, and we all looked closely.

“Are you gonna tell our futures?”

The impolitic mutter escaped me because there in Zahar’s hand was that classic fortune-teller’s tool, a crystal ball.

“He is not!” Petralka said sharply.

Sorry. The tension just got to me...

“It is a scrying orb,” Petralka said. “You’ve seen them before, Shinichi. They can reflect what appears in an Observer’s eye or any other crystal.”

“Oh... Sure.”

Now that she mentioned it, I vaguely remembered using some kind of crystal ball to keep an eye on the JSDF ambush at our mansion. It was almost like having security cameras around.

“Of late we have implemented some improvements,” Zahar said. “In order that we might see moo-vees without relying on the Jay-Ess-Dee-Eff’s gadgets, the crystals have been reworked so that they can replay what they have once shown. Granted, it still lags behind the technology of the Jay-Ess-Dee-Eff.”

“Er... So you’re saying...”

Apparently he meant that the crystals didn’t just show things in real time now, but could play recorded clips as well. Of course, the spherical shape of the device meant there would be inevitable distortions in the picture, and there was the issue of the small size of the crystal—in other words, I didn’t think it was going to replace video projectors or tape decks, but why worry about that?

“What about it, if I may ask?”

In response to my question, Prime Minister Zahar gave a brief nod of his head. The crystal ball began to glow.

For a second, I squinted against the light. But then the glow vanished, and I could see an image reflected in the crystal’s surface.

What it showed left me speechless—because I recognized what it was.

Or, more accurately, I knew what had to be. The crystal displayed a picture of a girl. She was drawn in a sort of “anime” style, but she was rendered in 3D. And she was half naked...

Without a word, I reflexively turned to Hikaru-san. Yes: this was a screen from the ero game he had imported. I had never seen the girl before, but the interface, the buttons and icons, were the same as the game Shade had been playing yesterday.

The reason I had never seen this particular girl was probably because players could customize the character to their liking. This one was almost symbolic: she had golden hair and green eyes; she was wearing a dress, and she even had a little jeweled crown on her head. Everything conspired to suggest she was a queen, or at least an important noblegirl.

A chain ran from a collar around the girl’s neck; she lay on a stone bed in a thoroughly compromising position. Given that she was lying there with practically no clothes on and being forced to do sex stuff, it seemed kind of incongruous that her crown managed to stay on her head. But it all added up to one thing.

“Shinichi.” Petralka’s voice was cold.

You got it: the girl onscreen seemed to be a caricature of Petralka.

Then again, unlike Petralka, the screen girl was pretty well-endowed... er, I mean, forget about that. A quick glance at the screen was enough to make clear that it appeared as if some sheltered queen or noble had been taken hostage and was being forced to perform sex acts—sadism embodied.

Petralka found herself confronted with erotic art that seemed to be based on her. It would be no surprise if she found it humiliating. I didn’t have it in me to argue that no, no, ero games are an integral part of that fine thing called otaku culture!

“What is this? What in the world is going on here?”

“No—um—this—”

“Su-Such things—” Petralka’s voice shook and she started to flush red.

The otaku culture she had been exposed to so far had included the occasional bit of fan service, but never anything outright sexual—let alone this sort of S&M, subjugate-a-noblegirl thing. Even I could tell this was very bad.

I see now...

The ero game, the one with the infinite replayability. Games like that are usually less about the story and more about being able to freely create any character you like, and being able to enjoy yourself with them in a variety of different scenarios. There may be a few basic character templates available, but it’s up to you where you go from there.

If the game included easy-to-grasp symbols like long silver hair, green eyes, and a crown, people would take a character with these characteristics to look like Petralka. Beauty is sometimes thought to be constructed statistically—for example, when the eyes aren’t too close together or too far apart, but rest at a specific distance that’s the average of a great many examples, it’s considered to be the most beautiful. If the game were to include a character template that incorporated symbols like that, it would naturally look like Petralka.

And honestly, those details probably held for a lot of young noblewomen in Eldant.

“This is a girl of the nobility, isn’t it?” Garius asked as if he wanted to be sure. “And this is clearly a product of Ja-pan, is it not?”

“Uh... Er, well, yes, technically...”

“And the one who brought it here—the owner—it is you, isn’t it, Shinichi?” Garius fixed me with a sharp glare.

“Do you...” I could feel my knees starting to shake. “Are you saying you... doubt me...?”

Maybe their thought process was: this game was mine. Say the game stirred up my passions. And say that after doing a certain thing over and over in an ero game, I finally decided I wanted to try it with a real noblegirl, and, unable to control myself—

Garius didn’t say anything, but just held me with that dangerous look. He didn’t deny it. Was that the same as confirming it?

“B-But that’s—”

“The fact remains that this was found at the scene of the crime.”

They took the fact that a noble-subjugating game like this existed, added in the fact that an actual noblegirl had been kidnapped... and came to the understandable conclusion that the culprit had been playing this game.

“B-But—”

2D and 3D were different things! Er, but the game was in 3D... I mean, no!

There were a number of comebacks I could have made: why would anyone leave behind a crystal ball showing something like that? I didn’t even know crystals like that were being made! But I suspected none of these arguments would have the persuasive power I needed. If anything, they might...

“Shinichi,” Petralka said. “Even if this is not yours, it leaves us with the question of whose it is. There seems scant room for doubt that this is a product of Ja-pan. In other words, that an object you imported caused the kidnapping in question. Is this not a natural conclusion?”

“This image alone would substantiate a charge of lèse-majesté,” Garius said with a discreet cough. “If something like this were to become popular, it could threaten the stability of our nation with its humiliating depiction of the nobility. For better and for worse, ‘Made in Ja-pan’ articles are gaining influence. If your otaku works depict the humiliation or subjugation of the nobility or the imperial family as correct and proper, there is every danger that such thinking will spread to the populace.”

I stood open-mouthed. This was bad. This was really, truly bad.

I thought of various legal cases I knew about from Japan. Practically every time a girl was kidnapped, the mass media would parade images of ero games and otaku goods from the criminal’s room as if to say, See?! It became a nice, easy scapegoat: a minority that could be oppressed with minimal inconvenience to society at large. It made people feel better if they could dismiss such criminals as mere otaku.

They’re all perverts. A brigade of criminals waiting to be unleashed.

That’s why they can, and should, be oppressed. It’s what’s right! And we’re right to do it! ...Ring a bell?

“And now...” The way things were going, the same thing could easily happen here in the Holy Eldant Empire.

I stood silent for a moment. Unsure what to say, I looked to Minori-san for help. But she was quiet, too, her lips drawn into a thin line. Maybe she was trying to figure out how to get through this situation.

It was then that I remembered something Minori-san had said: that it was dangerous just to bring the idea of equality into the Eldant Empire. The whole notion that everyone is equal was like another way of saying that you didn’t have to respect the nobility—and if you went far enough down that path, it might start to seem obvious that you would deliberately try to embarrass nobles or even the ruling family.

Of course, in our own history there are plenty of examples of illustrations and songs and such that mock those in power, and I assumed things were similar here in Eldant. I didn’t have to import the idea of equality for rebellious impulses like that to arise.

Now, though, I turned toward Hikaru-san.

He was the one who had actually brought that ero game here.

Surely he was the one who should address the situation we were in now.

I looked his way in hopes of encouraging him to do just that—but when our eyes met, he turned away from me with a cool expression as if to say none of this meant anything to him.

Crap. He was going to foist this off on me.

And after all, my proverbial business card still said “General Manager of Amutech.” Details aside, final responsibility rested with me.

“Shinichi.” Petralka said my name quietly, and I straightened up with a touch of panic. The empress glared down at me from her throne. “We want you to explain this.”

“Er... I...”

I searched for a response. I looked at Hikaru-san again—but the importer of the naughty game in question looked completely unconcerned, as if this had nothing to do with him. Out of the corner of his eye he looked back at me evenly, his face beautiful in profile.

As I’ve already said, at that moment in time, the general manager of Amutech was, in fact, me. That little title meant that the indiscretions of my subordinate, Hikaru-san, became mine as well. I might claim that everything he had done had been on his own initiative, but that would leave me open to charges of negligent management.

In the end, I admitted that the ero game in question was certainly from Japan, but swore I hadn’t imported it; I said I would conduct a thorough investigation and report back. Then I left the castle. Of course, I had no choice but to suspend school for the day. Given that I was currently a suspect in the disappearance of a noblegirl, it might cause some untoward misunderstandings if I were to be teaching classes at a school packed with other young nobles.

At least Petralka and the others had let me explain myself. But all I had done was buy some time. The fundamental problem still needed solving.

“Something’s fishy here!” I said to Hikaru-san the moment we got into the foyer of the mansion.

“How do you mean?” Hikaru-san asked, looking cool. I had no idea if he was just very good at concealing his emotions, or if the discussion at the castle had really meant nothing to him.

“How could we possibly take responsibility if something like that happened because of that ero game!”

“Ayasaki-kun,” Minori-san said, her expression stern. “Were you the one who brought that thing here?”

“Are you so quick to doubt me?” Hikaru-san asked. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, continuing, “On the basis of our interests, I would say he’s the more suspicious character, hmm?”

“Yes, Shinichi-kun has imported ero games,” Minori-san said. “But he knows all too well what can happen if you carelessly introduce new culture. He knows firsthand, you hear me? He might bring something like that over for his personal use—but to just spread it around without so much as consulting with us or even mentioning it? He wouldn’t.”

“Minori-san...”

It looked like, for the moment, I had someone’s trust. Much like with Myusel, I thought I might cry from sheer happiness—but now wasn’t the time for an embarrassing display like that.

“Looks like you got me,” Hikaru-san said with another glance at me and a shrug of his shoulders. “Yes, I’m the one who imported that game. But all of this is entirely within expectations, don’t you think?”

“Wha...?”

Minori-san and I both looked puzzled, but Hikaru-san explained with a smile, “I mean, I assumed something like this would happen eventually. Sick, disgusting otaku commit sick, disgusting crimes. It’s happened in Japan, hasn’t it?”

“Wha—?!”

Minori-san and I were both lost for words.

I’d had a sense that this was how Hikaru-san thought, but to hear him denigrate otaku so openly was still startling. These weren’t the words of someone who really thought of himself as an otaku. He sounded a lot more like the politicians who had sent a JSDF special forces unit to eliminate me.

At long last, I connected the dots.

It wasn’t that Hikaru-san had a mercantilist streak. He was only interested in numbers and whatever was presented to the public. There was a chance he had never even seen Dark Knights or Rose Princess, or that he didn’t actually like them very much. When I thought about it, I realized his remarks about both series had been either things that were objectively obvious, or that you could learn with just a little bit of digging. I didn’t remember ever hearing him talk about what he found interesting in a given show or how it had made him feel.

All of his arguments about these works had been quotations—secondhand knowledge. Something he had acquired. So it wasn’t surprising that he should have been sold the idea that “what sells is what’s right.” He had no personal basis on which to judge whether a work was interesting or boring or whatever.

A doll, huh?

I thought back on what Myusel had told me. Hikaru-san had described himself as a doll. Someone who had no aspirations of his own, but could only fulfill the role expected of him by those around him. In order to think of something as interesting or uninteresting, you have to have a basic set of likes and dislikes—Hikaru-san, who had never had preferences of his own, but had always relied on the reactions of others, probably just couldn’t say what he liked or not.

That was why he disliked things that were ambiguous, that relied on feelings. Because he couldn’t understand them himself.

That was why he liked things that could be measured and quantified with nice, simple numbers. Because those made sense to him.

In fact, he seemed to truly hate otaku works and those who cherished them.

“Otaku are all just a bunch of criminals waiting to happen—”

“We aren’t all that way!”

“But isn’t it a fact that such crimes have happened? Isn’t it?” He looked at me through lidded eyes. “All that criticism—doesn’t it proves that otaku are more prone to kidnap girls, or be gropers, or perpetrate brutal murders than people who aren’t otaku?”

“That’s a manufactured impression!”

“And what proof do you have of that?” Now Hikaru-san was calm again. “Show me the data that demonstrates that otaku aren’t more likely to commit crimes than anyone else.”

“I—”

“Probatio diabolica. The devil’s proof. That’s not a fair question,” Minori-san said, rescuing me as I stood there grasping for words. “I think the burden’s on you to provide data to back up what you’re saying.”

“Proof is hardly necessary. It’s just common sense. Everyone knows it.” Hikaru-san laughed contemptuously. Then he turned to me, his smile becoming triumphant. “More to the point, though, you keep saying ero game this and ero game that, as if you think that game is the cause of this incident.”

“Isn’t it?”

“If you think so, then haven’t you effectively accepted my thinking? Give an otaku an ero game, and he’ll turn into a criminal. That’s how otaku work.”

“Th-That’s not what I meant—”

“Then what did you mean? Isn’t your argument that we shouldn’t import ero games because they’re dangerous? You sound just like a politician. Trying to curtail freedom of speech—is that something an otaku would do?”

“Y-You’ve got it all wrong...”

Of course, that wasn’t really the point. But I felt my thoughts churning as I grew less and less able to follow Hikaru-san’s argument.

This was no good. Hikaru-san had known all along that he would be called out for this and had come armed with arguments. Right here, right now, with no preparation whatsoever, I was utterly unable to engage with him. He already knew what his conclusion was, and he had no intention of an honest exchange of views here.

“Look at Japan. Everyone loves to bash otaku, but the entertainment industry has hardly disappeared. This isn’t a serious problem we’re dealing with. ‘Once on the shore, we pray no more.’ Understand?”

With that, Hikaru-san turned on his heel and began walking briskly toward his own room.

Minori-san and I stood in the foyer for a moment.

“Shinichi-kun... What are you going to do?” Minori-san asked, not looking away from the retreating figure of Hikaru-san. “For better and for worse, this is Eldant we’re in.”

“Believe me, I know...”

In other words, this wasn’t Japan.

This wasn’t Japan, so we would see people like Shade, people who had become obsessed as a result of an overstrong stimulus. It might be just one bit of culture, but this wasn’t a world where resistance to such a thing had been built up by small exposures over time. The way I chose to handle this could cause a dramatic reaction—but if I did the wrong thing, we could find ourselves faced with a stunning backlash.

This had grown beyond a problem of what to do about Hikaru-san.

“Let me think for a bit.”

“Hm...” Minori-san responded with a small smile. “Give it your best shot. I’m expecting a lot of you.”

“Sure.”

I nodded. But really... What was I supposed to do? I chewed my lip, feeling as if I couldn’t see my proverbial hand in front of my face.