Chapter Four: Only One Smart Move?

And so the next day came.

I made an appearance at Eldant Castle with Minori-san and Hikaru-san. Just like the day before, Petralka, Garius, and Prime Minister Zahar were present in the audience chamber. The previous night, I had alerted them that I wanted to present a fresh explanation.

“Well, Shinichi,” Petralka said, opening discussions for the Eldant side. “You asked us to grant you some time, and so we have. How is it that you intend to explain yesterday’s incident?”

“It’s true that the game in question made its way into Eldant with Amutech’s help. But because it was an experimental item, almost a personal effect, oversight of it wasn’t strict enough. I take responsibility for that.” I bowed my head as I spoke. No matter what else I might say, this was one fact I couldn’t avoid.

Then I went on. “Now, in regards to the game in question. It isn’t specifically a game about putting nobles or royals in terrible positions. There’s a great deal of freedom in how you design the character in that game, so it is possible to create a girl who looks like nobility. Whether or not to do so is up to the owner of the game.”

“And what is your point?” Petralka asked, her eyes narrowing. “Are you claiming that the humiliation of the nobility and the royal family were not your intention with this ‘ero game’ or whatever you call it?”

“What I’m going to say next relies somewhat on speculation,” I said. “The question is whether the person who obtained and played that game had a specific intent to mock the nobility or the imperial family. Most of the people who currently possess 3TS and PLP systems are members of the nobility. The consoles originated as prizes in our soccer tournament, and were given to the lizardman team.”

Of course, from there, most of them had been sold to rich merchants or noble families.

“And what kind of character designs would they readily understand? Members of the opposite sex whom they’re already familiar with.”

A large degree of freedom can be a blessing when designing a character, but if you’re not used to that much freedom of choice, you can just end up lost instead, not knowing where to even start. So it’s not that surprising if someone, creating a character in 3D, were to model it on someone they knew.

“I want to repeat, the game itself was never conceived with the intention of humiliating anyone in the Eldant Empire.”

I had realized something the night before. Thinking about all this in the context of a game made in Japan had left me blind to it at first, but the Eldant Empire was part of another world, a place whose values and morals were closer to Middle Ages Europe than contemporary Japan.

In a word, this was a place where it wasn’t uncommon for the children of nobles to get married in their early teens, where demi-human kids trained so that they could enter the military in order to gain citizenship, and all of this was considered perfectly normal. The social mores that caused Japan to view violence and sex as “harmful” just... didn’t exist.

What did the Eldant Empire think was a problem? A game that involved humiliating someone who appeared to be a noblegirl—in other words, one that might encourage the mockery of the nobility. And then the fact that, at the same time they were worrying about this game, a young noblewoman had actually been kidnapped.

“Having said that, at the moment, we don’t know the perpetrator’s identity, nor do we know whose game system the game in question was played on. Until we have the facts, I recommend confiscating all games and game systems from the students.”

“Hold on just a moment.” The objection came from Hikaru-san. “Whatever happened to freedom of speech? You don’t get to make the laws around here.”

“This is Eldant. Not Japan,” I replied with a shake of my head. “That’s why you won’t be punished for giving an X-rated game to kids under eighteen.”

Hikaru-san caught his breath.

“However, the Eldant Empire needs an appropriate response to this situation. Freedom of expression isn’t an excuse to do anything you want, anytime you want, anywhere you want. Again: this is the Holy Eldant Empire. Things aren’t the same here as they are where we came from.”

Hikaru-san stood silent, biting his lip. I had spent all night thinking of this argument; it was no surprise if he didn’t immediately have a comeback.

“What do you think of confiscation, Your Majesty?” I asked.

“Hmm.” Petralka tapped her chin. “A good question. We agree with your suggestion that it might remove the cause of the kidnapping. Of course, we don’t wish this to be taken as an absolute declaration that such things are the cause...”

Petralka trailed off. I understood: Petralka was the one who had approved of otaku culture and encouraged it to spread. She didn’t want to think that her beloved import might be implicated in a crime.

But even so, it was still a fact that a crystal ball with an image from an ero game on it had been discovered at the scene of the crime. And we certainly didn’t have the evidence to declare that simple coincidence.

“Shinichi,” she said. “If you take away these ‘gayme sys-tems,’ it will be equivalent to admitting that the ‘sys-tems’ were at the root of this incident. Can you live with that? Depending how things go, it could even lead to restrictions on Amutech’s activities.”

You didn’t have to look as far as the Assembly of Patriots to find people who didn’t look kindly on what me and my friends were doing here. Some of our opponents were probably right here, in this castle. They would surely see this as a prime opportunity to attack me, to press Petralka to strip away some of the diplomatic privileges Amutech had enjoyed. And even the empress herself couldn’t ignore her advisors forever.

I understood her thinking, and her concerns. And it made me happy to know she was worried about us. But still...

“One of the students is in a grave condition,” I said. “He’s addicted in the worst possible way. I’m given to understand that there are others in a similar state as well. I assume you have people who drown themselves in alcohol here in Eldant. Well, drowning yourself in an ero game is no more healthy. I know I’m really only in a position to make suggestions, not to force anything. But I don’t want to sell things here that are obviously detrimental to our customers’ health, on the logic that they chose it, so it’s their fault.”

“Shinichi...”

“Your Majesty. I think Shinichi-dono may have the right of this,” Prime Minister Zahar said to Petralka. “Be it alcohol or medicine, there is a proper way to imbibe all things. Those who don’t know it, but only use it at will for their own pleasure, invite destruction.”

Petralka was silent for a long moment, then heaved a sigh. As far as it went, though, it looked like she had come around.

“We’re going to go from house to house and confiscate any students’ game systems we find,” I said, and looked at Minori-san. I had explained my plan to her ahead of time. Having seen what happened to Shade, I worried that trying to take away the systems might result in an argument, or even violence. This was part of why I needed Petralka’s approval.

Minori-san didn’t say anything, but she nodded: Leave it to me.

“Very well,” Petralka said finally. “We will trust you to dispose of the games properly.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. With your permission...”

Our report was over. I prepared to leave with Minori-san to repossess the games. Hikaru-san got ready to go, too, looking none too happy about it.

But just as we were about to leave, I heard a voice behind me.

“Wait, Shinichi.” It was Garius.

I looked back and saw someone who looked like a knight whispering in his ear. When had that guy gotten there? Garius nodded several times, then turned back to me.

“It seems a communication has reached the home of the kidnapped girl. Along with ransom money, their demands include the dissolution of Amutech, the execution of Kanou Shinichi, and the release of certain imprisoned criminals.”

“Uh... What?”

“For what it’s worth, Shinichi, this clears up any suspicion against you,” Garius said, but he was frowning. “However... The criminals this kidnapper wants freed are the Assembly of Patriots.”

I gasped. Minori-san and I looked at each other, shocked.

The Assembly of Patriots, a.k.a. “Bedouna.”

They were what you might call a terrorist group. They were not fans of the otaku culture being imported from Japan, regarding it as cultural invasion, and they weren’t afraid to use violent means to oppose it. When they attacked our school, they had taken hostages, including me, Myusel, Minori-san, a number of students—and Petralka, who had happened to be present at the time. As I was the representative of Amutech, they had even tried to kill me.

I won’t bore you with the details of our miraculous escape, but in short, the terrorists had been captured, and I hadn’t given the Assembly of Patriots any more thought.

On reflection, though, there were no guarantees that the leader of the terrorist organization had been present that day. Why should I be surprised if the group had officials and foot soldiers who were still running free?

“Minori,” Garius said. “You had best take caution. There is reason to fear that Shinichi and Matoba, as well as you and your Jay-Ess-Dee-Eff, may be targeted. That rabble is still hiding among the citizenry.”

“Yes, sir,” Minori-san said, nodding to Garius, a severe expression on her face. “Thank you very much for telling us.”

“Yes... Be careful indeed,” Petralka said, looking at me. With the suspicions against me cleared, it seemed her trust had returned. But as happy as that made me...

“The Assembly of Patriots...”

What a time for such a dangerous group of people to resurface. The three of us left the audience chamber, all with a sense of foreboding.

After we left the castle, we found Matoba-san, who had been waiting for us. Just back from Japan again, it seemed. His trips had certainly been frequent recently.

“I gather there’s been some kind of trouble,” Matoba-san said, pointedly taking off his magic ring. This was a clear indicator that he was about to say something he didn’t want the Eldant people to hear. We each followed his example, taking off our rings as well.

“Hikaru-kun,” Matoba-san began, looking at the newcomer before he even turned to me. “I’ve read Koganuma-kun’s reports.”

Incidentally, the Holy Eldant Empire didn’t yet have an internet connection to Japan, but there were local area networks established at several locations nearby—specifically, our mansion, the JSDF garrison, and the school. Minori-san submitted daily reports to the garrison server, and Matoba-san must have looked at them first thing on getting back here.

“Don’t you think perhaps you’ve overreached yourself?”

His tone wasn’t harsh, but his words were clearly critical.

“I—”

Hikaru-san seemed about to say something, but then stopped unhappily.

“The thing we must fear most in our work is losing the trust of the Eldant Empire. Your failure threatens to undo everything Shinichi-kun has built. You were supposed to be his assistant—but instead you’ve undermined him.”

Hikaru-san listened in absolute silence.

“I had high hopes for you, but...” Matoba-san let out a very long, very pointed sigh.

Wow, that’s rough.

I couldn’t help sympathizing, even though I wasn’t the one being criticized, and maybe I should even have felt a bit of schadenfreude.

“Shinichi-kun,” Matoba-san said, finally turning to me. “What was the outcome in there?”

“Well, I’ve been cleared of suspicion for the kidnapping as such, but...” I gave him the gist of our talk in the audience chamber.

“Mm. So you’ve been put in charge of the confiscations, eh?”

“You’re making it sound like a bigger operation than it is. It’s just me, Minori-san, and Hikaru-san for now.”

“Hmmm...” Matoba-san held his chin thoughtfully. “All right. Kindly take care of things,” he said, and nodded.

The Eldant capital of Marinos is built with the imperial castle at its center. The castle itself is made from a hollowed-out mountain, and countless buildings spread out from there along a gently sloping field.

You can probably guess that the closer you get to the castle, the more important the residents.

Actually, that made Amutech’s mansion—done in the style of the Eldant nobility, but located on the outskirts of town, far away from the most prestigious districts—something of an oddity. But that’s neither here nor there.

We left the castle and made right for where all the nobles lived. Hikaru-san was with us, not least in the interest of his own safety. He’d been looking pretty put out and hadn’t said a word since we left the audience. There were some things I would have to talk with him about, and more than a few things I wanted to ask him, but they could wait until we had cleaned up this mess.

And that was what found us at one noble’s house...

“We need to take back your game system and check the contents—”

“Nooooo! That’s miiiiine!” the boy wailed, totally ignoring our explanation. He was one of our students. He flailed his arms and kicked his legs until the maids and butlers managed to get a hold of him and drag him off into the house. On the orders of their masters—the boy’s parents—I assumed. I heard the heavy interior front door shut, muting the boy’s shouts.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Minori-san said with a bow, putting the game system into a suitcase.

I knew appearances were important when doing something like this, so I mostly left the legwork to Minori-san, who looked soft and gentle. I bowed too, of course—only Hikaru-san stood over by the bird-drawn carriage, his back turned to all of us.

“I sincerely apologize for having to cause such a commotion...”

“Not at all. If anything, it’s a relief,” said the student’s mother, who had come out to the foyer. “He’s just been shut up in his room all the time, fiddling with that... gayme sys-tem, did you call it? And every time he opens his mouth, the most incomprehensible things come out...”

“I’m... I’m very sorry about that...” I offered, shrinking into myself.

The student may or may not have been playing Hikaru-san’s ero game, but it was perfectly possible to get addicted to non-X-rated titles, too. I really should have been alert to the possibility that this would happen.

I really should have known.

The people of Eldant didn’t have any “immunity” to these sorts of things. Even in Japan, there were kids who played games 24/7, and parents who worried about them. In a land with so few entertainments, bringing the most cutting-edge technology in was a recipe for addiction.

“Once we’ve inspected the system’s contents, the system itself will be returned to you,” Minori-san said. “After that, we leave it up to your discretion whether to give it back to him or not.”

I don’t know... Somehow, it was like we were doing a recall of a bad product.

“We’ll be moving along, then,” I said. Bowing repeatedly to the student’s mother, we returned to the carriage and headed for the next house.

Of course, that makes it sound farther away than it was. The houses we wanted were all packed in here, so we could have walked from place to place without losing much time.

“Next is... here.”

A moment later, as I double-checked the map and the register of student names, we arrived at our sixth house.

There was a guard in a small guardhouse by the gate. We gave him our names and reason for visiting, and then he opened the big iron gate. As we got out of the carriage and went up the path to the front door, I gave Minori-san a weary look.

“How many more of these?”

“You ought to know. Four to go.”

“Right...”

We went from house to house, talking to the students, collecting game systems.

Some of the pupils sulked, but nonetheless handed over their games—maybe they felt guilty, or really were playing ero games and didn’t want to be found out. But frankly, the ones who got angry and fought us about it to the bitter end were more common. Confiscation is such a simple word, but having to actually do it is amazingly exhausting. You would think we were devils who had come to take away these kids’ most precious treasures.

The door of the latest house opened, and a middle-aged woman appeared from inside. “Yes, hello?” She blinked in surprise and looked at each of us in turn, then said, “You’re... the teachers from my son’s school, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Minori-san said with a nod. “I’m Koganuma Minori, and this is Kanou Shinichi and Ayasaki Hikaru.”

“And what brings you here today?”

“I apologize for the suddenness, but we’d like to speak to Claus-san. Is he here? It happens that a small problem has been found with the game systems that were given out as prizes after the soccer tournament some time ago. We’re visiting all the families who bought systems from the lizardmen, and collecting the systems in order to investigate the problem.”

“Gayme sys-tem? Ah... yes,” the woman said, overcoming a moment’s incomprehension to nod at us. “I’m very sorry, but Claus isn’t at home right now.”

“All right. We’ll come back again later, then. Do you know when he might be back?”

“Perhaps around evening... Ahem, more to the point, my son no longer has your gayme sys-tem.”

“Huh?” I asked blankly.

He didn’t have it? Meaning...?

“I must tell you, he sold it.”

“He sold the game system?”

“Indeed,” his mother said with a sigh. “After my husband went to such trouble to buy it from the lizardmen, he went and... Well, he wanted to buy something or other that’s apparently very popular at school right now. Picture-cards or some such?”

Minori-san and I looked at each other, our eyes wide.

She meant the trading cards. Probably rare ones, at that.

Wow... Who knew that would come up here and now?!

“Even after he comes home, he just spends all his time playing with those cards. He keeps talking about how he has to get stronger and stronger ones... It’s gotten a little frightening recently.”

Obviously, I knew that some of the trading cards had become quite valuable in the classroom. But I never dreamed that someone would sell a game system just to get them. Granted this was a pilot program created with an eye toward full-scale sales in the Eldant Empire, we had introduced the trading cards specifically as low-price items. They just weren’t worth that much. I’d wanted them to be at a price common people could afford.

In contrast, the game systems were prizes for the soccer tournament, which we had never intended to sell. In other words, there were currently no plans to bring any more of them over here, and everyone knew it—hence why they commanded such a high price. The main reason the lizardmen had sold them off was because they didn’t really understand video games, while they had a certain currency among students who had been introduced to games by the home consoles we had set up at the school.

Put it this way: the students were well aware just how rare these things were. If one of them had sold his game system, it meant he wanted rare cards even more than that game.

So this wasn’t just about ero games. The trading cards fed into some serious addiction, too.

“I’ll speak with him too,” Minori-san said with a deep bow, “when the school is back in session.” Then we thanked the woman and went back to where our carriage waited at the gate.

“Looks like it’s worse than we thought,” I said.

“Yeah,” Minori-san said, sighing.

The ero-game thing happened entirely without my knowledge, but the game systems were originally my idea, notwithstanding that the students had asked for them. And I had known that the trading cards would be imported, of course. I had agreed to it without reservation, in fact. I bore some of the responsibility for not predicting this outcome.

It was a failure of experience.

Amutech’s work had been going so swimmingly that maybe I had acted a little naïve. It was easy to criticize Hikaru-san, but I don’t think he was the only problem here.

Speaking of Hikaru-san, he continued to look upset and not say a word. He just followed around behind us silently.

He seemed to be ridiculing otaku, but it was probably...

Didn’t he say something about his parents wanting a little girl?

If you want to have fun dressing someone up, a girl is best. So his parents had been disappointed to get a son.

I paused thoughtfully. How would it feel to have your parents tell you they wanted a girl instead of a boy?

Hikaru-san had said to Myusel that he felt empty. He had behaved like a little girl so as not to make his parents any more unhappy. Loath to disappoint anyone, he became exceptionally sensitive to the feelings of those around him and tried to make their wishes come true before they had even articulated them. Whatever he wanted went on the back burner; he focused entirely on meeting others’ expectations, until suddenly he realized he didn’t even know what he wanted anymore...

Maybe the emptiness he described was the result of living that life. And that made me sad.

“Okay. Better get to the next house.”

“Sure thing.”

Minori-san and I nodded at each other, and I pulled out the map to check our destination.

All of a sudden, I heard a noise I couldn’t quite make out.

I thought it was a woman’s scream. I stopped and blinked.

“Was that—”

My imagination?

For a moment, I thought so, but when I looked up at Minori-san, it seemed like she had heard it, too; she had her suitcase in her hand. Ever since our hostage crisis with the Assembly of Patriots, she had kept a 9mm handgun in that case to give us the upper hand even if we were attacked by multiple enemies.

“What’s going on?” Hikaru-san stopped, looking around doubtfully.

Minori-san was vigilant and ready to fight. “Shinichi-kun, Hikaru-kun,” she said. “Get back to the carriage, it’s—”

—dangerous, is where I suppose she was going with that, but I was already running in the direction of the scream.

“Hey! Don’t! Hold on!” Minori-san tried to stop me, but I ignored her and kept running.

All I could think about was the kidnapped noblegirl. I didn’t know her name or what she looked like, but if she really had been kidnapped because of our work—Amutech’s work—then we had to do something. We had to do something about the next kidnapping that might occur.

I rounded a corner onto another street. There, to my shock, I saw several men trying to drag a girl into a bird-drawn carriage. She was probably the daughter of one of the families that lived around here. Two women who looked like her attendants were collapsed on the ground.

I instinctively hid myself in the shadows.

Apparently I had found myself smack in the middle of an actual kidnapping. So were these guys part of the Assembly of Patriots?

“No way...” Hikaru-san whispered. He had followed me and now joined me in my inconspicuous location. Minori-san did the same, even as she pulled the 9mm out of the suitcase and prepared to use it. It didn’t look like the men had noticed us. I guess Minori-san figured there was no reason to waste a perfectly good opportunity for a surprise attack.

There was a total of five men forcing the girl into the carriage. It was a big one, pulled by no less than four head of birds. (Wait, is that how you count birds pulling a carriage?) The men climbed aboard themselves and got ready to leave. This was the noble quarter, and with houses so big, there was a good chance no one would hear the girl screaming. Even if they did, it would take time for people to reach the area.

“Let’s follow them.”

“Right,” Minori-san said, and clicked the sliding switch on her gun’s safety device—marked S, 1, M—from S (for “Safe”) to 1 (for “Single Round”). Machine pistols can spray bullets in a way that’s useful for suppressing multiple enemies, but worthless for pinpoint sharpshooting. From a distance, it would be impossible to get the men but not the girl. We’d be more likely to kill the hostage than rescue her.

We would be better off breaking into the enemy base. If it worked, we might even be able to save the other kidnapping victim.

“I’ll go get our carriage,” I said, jumping up and running for our ride.

Bad luck: I was making a break for it just as one of the men looked my way.

It probably really was just coincidence, but it was also the worst possible timing.

Our eyes met.

“Oh, crap,” I muttered, but it was already too late.

The man shouted something to his companions, and the ones in the carriage all turned to look at me. I didn’t understand what the man was saying, which suggested he wasn’t wearing a magic ring. Those only functioned if both parties to a conversation were wearing one. And although I had learned to speak a bit of the local language, if someone was talking fast or had a heavy accent, my chances of understanding them were pretty well nil.

The men had a short, brusque conversation that went over my head.

“Shinichi-kun, get back!”

No point in hiding anymore: Minori-san came out with her gun in her hand.

At the same moment, the men shouted something. And a second later, BAM! The whole carriage shook.

“Huh?!” From my spot, I couldn’t see what exactly had happened, but the yoke holding the Cho**bos—er, I mean, the large birds—had come flying loose.

I wondered what they thought they were doing—but it became clear a second later.

One of the oversized birds came charging straight at us.

“Uh...”

Why was this happening?!

All the birds pulling all the carriages I had ever ridden in had been docile and polite. They were the size of cows or horses, but when you spent enough time around them, they became pretty endearing—maybe it was the plump, round bodies.

The one making for us now, though, was definitely not endearing. Sure, it looked like any other such animal, but it was foaming at the beak and making a sound that might best be described as: “GYOOOO!!” Being a bird, the whites of its eyes weren’t really visible, but I assumed they were bloodshot.

On top of that, I could see now that it wasn’t just their size that was threatening: this bird’s beak was fear itself. It was as thick around as my wrist, and as sharp as a pickax. If that thing ran you through, you would be lucky to survive the experience. These were birds with the strength to pull a carriage; they were certainly capable of delivering a lethal blow to a human being.

The thing that startled me most, though, was the animal’s face.

Specifically, a place just between its eyes and up a little.

It almost looked like it was growing a horn.

No. That wasn’t a horn...

“Puppet...!”

It was one of the spikes Bahairam had developed to control living things. The last time I’d seen one it had been pounded into a dragon, and this one was much smaller—but the shape, and the effect, were the same.

The bird was being controlled with puppet magic. But why was Bahairamanian magic being used here?

BLAM.

A gunshot rang out. It came from Minori-san’s machine pistol.

The huge bird slowed and pitched forward.

“You hit it?!”

That was Minori-san for you. She could land her shot even with the relatively low-accuracy machine pistol. Granted, it was a large target charging straight toward us, which made the shot comparatively easy, but still.

“Minori-san—”

But Minori-san just waved her hand in my direction, as if to say, Go! She kept her eyes on the bird.

With a jolt, I saw why. Yes, the bullet had hit the bird. You could actually see blood dripping from its lower leg. But it showed no sign of pain or fear. In fact, it was frothing and screeching even more, as if to say that now it was angry...

Then it charged at Minori-san.

She fired again, and this time the bird didn’t even stop.

You really can’t underestimate an animal’s ability to survive. I didn’t know the biological specifics of this bird, but I did know that if you were hunting big game like deer or bear, you would want a large-gauge magnum rifle. A 9mm handgun just didn’t have the stopping power.

For that matter, there was the possibility that creatures being controlled with a puppet spike didn’t feel pain. The spikes themselves seemed to be a sort of weak point, but between the low accuracy of the machine pistol and the violent thrashing of the target’s head, it would be difficult to hit it squarely.

With a sharp exhalation, Minori-san dove to the side, out of the way of the bird’s mad charge. She rolled along the ground, firing her gun again—in automatic mode, this time.

Brrapapapapapap!

A continuous roar, like a machine hard at work, echoed around. She must have fired at least a dozen rounds, and although some of them missed, several lodged themselves in the big bird, sending feathers flying. And still the animal didn’t flinch. In fact—

“Minori-san, look out!”

Minori-san immediately rolled out of the way. A second huge bird smashed into the spot where she had been just a second ago.

Now it was two on one, against a pair of raging opponents who didn’t appear to feel pain. Opponents who could put a human out of a fight with one good blow.

Maybe even Minori-san couldn’t get out of this one. But just as I was starting to really worry...

“Hey...!”

I heard Hikaru-san make a sound. I looked in his direction, to see the bird-drawn carriage rumbling off. When combined with the power of puppet magic, apparently it only took two birds to pull the carriage. Or maybe the two birds that had been set on Minori-san had always been intended for just this sort of situation.

Hikaru-san gave a cluck of his tongue and set off running.

“Whoa—hang on!” It almost looked like he intended to catch the carriage on foot. True, with just two birds, their speed would be somewhat reduced. Hikaru-san left the scene of the crime at a pace that suggested he was darn well going to catch them.

This was bad. It would be bad to lose track of those guys, but it would be bad too if Hikaru-san got too caught up in chasing them and they captured him.

“Shinichi-kun?!” Minori-san shouted, eyeing the two massive birds.

“I’m going to go get Hikaru-san back!” I shouted back.

I didn’t think there was anything he could do by himself. Minori-san, meanwhile, was trapped by her avian antagonists. Whether I stopped Hikaru-san or helped Minori-san, I was the only one currently capable of doing anything.

“Hey...!” Minori-san called, paling—but I had no time to wait. I hated to leave her, but I went dashing off after Hikaru-san.

I’ve got to admit, I definitely didn’t expect Hikaru-san to go dashing off after that carriage.

Why not? I just figured he wouldn’t care if a stranger got kidnapped. He had told us in so many words that it was perfectly natural for otaku to commit crimes, and he had expected them to do so—so I took him for someone cold and unfeeling.

But apparently he was not going to stand by and watch this girl get dragged off.

His pursuit didn’t strike me as a calculated move.

“But... even... so...” I muttered, my breath coming in ragged gasps. “How far... are they... gonna go...?!”

The carriage had already led us to the edge of town—to the very entrance to the forest. Maybe the Patriots meant to lose us in the woods. It was true that wherever they went in the city, there were likely to be witnesses, just like we had stumbled upon them committing their crime. There was hardly anyone to see them in the forest, and the trees would block the view of anyone looking in...

“Huff... puff...”

At last I lost sight of the carriage, and came to a standstill on the outer edges of the wood.

Pathetic. And also, extremely uncool. I made a nice, dramatic, I’ve-gotta-do-something! exit, and then I run out of breath and lose track of them.

I leaned against the trunk of a nearby tree and tried to catch my breath.

“What... are you... doing here?”

Several steps ahead of me, there was Hikaru-san, also breathing hard, but not looking any worse than I was. His face was sweaty and he looked thoroughly annoyed.

“Well, you... just went running... off. And you were... in danger... by yourself.”

Hikaru-san’s brow creased as he looked at me. Finally, he gave a short sigh and started walking into the forest. I followed after him, saying, “Shouldn’t we... go back to Minori-san... and call for help...?”

“And what if they get away while we’re doing that?” Hikaru-san practically spat.

“It can’t be easy... to drive a carriage through a forest... Whether they ditch it... or just hide it... it would have to be close to their base...”

Say the two of us managed to track the Patriots to their base. What were we going to do then? Neither of us had a weapon. I knew simple offensive magic, but nothing that was likely to help me against multiple opponents, especially when they had a hostage.

“You can go back if you want. I’m going on.” Hikaru-san’s walk turned into a march.

Now that we couldn’t see them, we had no idea where in this forest the Assembly of Patriots might be. Which meant we didn’t know when we might suddenly be attacked...

“Hikaru-san,” I said. He was catching his skirt on the foliage and just generally having a hard time walking.

“Yes, what?”

“Why’d you go after them like that?”

For a guy who was always calculating risk, it seemed like pretty long odds.

Hikaru-san stopped walking. The expression on his face, which I could see in profile, suggested I had asked a question he didn’t want to answer.

“I’m sorry. Since we don’t know what’s going to happen next... I’ll apologize now.”

“Huh...?” That was definitely not what I had been expecting him to say.

“Until I saw that kidnapping with my own eyes... I was taking it all too lightly.”

“Taking what too lightly?”

“The effects my actions would have on the real world.”

I didn’t say anything right away, but at that moment, it made sense to me.

Pretty much everyone has a different impression of things they know intellectually versus things they’ve experienced for themselves. For example, we have a fundamental fear of the fact that people die, yet when we see wars or murders on television or in the newspaper, they honestly don’t feel that real to us. They might involve dead people, but to the extent we don’t perceive those deaths with our own senses, the impression we get is similar to when a character dies in fiction.

Maybe we hear about someone we don’t know dying in a far-off country. We may sympathize, but we aren’t tormented by feelings of guilt or powerlessness. We understand that it doesn’t really have anything to do with us—that in a way, we’re totally separate from it.

Sometimes, online or on TV, I had seen video footage of wars, but even when I knew that they showed something currently happening somewhere in the world, that real people were really dying—that intellectual understanding never made me want to drop everything, run off to a war zone, and try to help. Maybe donate to charities for the less fortunate, but that’s about it.

But what if someone you know is in a situation like that? Or what if it appears someone might be killed before your eyes?

Suddenly, you can’t look away; grim reality bears down upon you. You can’t pretend it doesn’t affect you. You don’t have to be the one being kidnapped to know that you’re involved.

Someone is being kidnapped. Depending how things turn out, she might even be killed.

The thought had left Hikaru-san unable to just stand there. It wasn’t a matter of numbers or buy-in. It was simply emotion, and it was the truth. Which meant...

“What’s with the smile?” Hikaru-san asked, looking at me in puzzlement.

“Nothing,” I said ambiguously, shaking my head.

He had no weapon.

It was entirely possible he was putting himself in danger.

And yet even so, he hadn’t been able to look the other way.

Maybe this person, Hikaru-san, wasn’t really rotten to the core. In fact, I felt a twinge of affection for him, because I had run into lots of people like him online. He was a total chuunibyou—saw the world on a slant, pretty cynical, yet still, somewhere in his heart, there was real goodness, a real belief in what was right. The kind of person who could easily tell those he didn’t get along with to “Just die,” but who also could never ignore people who came to him for help.

Maybe, after all this, it turned out he really was an otaku. The kind only a peace-addled country like Japan could have produced: someone equally susceptible to both the brutal nature of reality and the kind of impossibly beautiful ideals you can only find in fiction.

Hikaru-san turned away from me irritably. And then, without a word, we started forward again.

The thing was, I didn’t know if we were actually going in the right direction, and I suspected Hikaru-san didn’t, either. We either followed what appeared to be wheel tracks from a carriage, or went wherever there seemed to be enough space for a carriage to fit through.

“Where are they?” I muttered in an effort to hide my unease.

This kidnapping wasn’t likely to be an impulsive act. The kidnappers probably had their escape route worked out ahead of time. They would know the geography of the forest. Which meant they could almost certainly get through the woods and out again much faster than a couple of kids bumbling aimlessly among the trees. Depending how far in advance they had planned this, they could even have cut some trees down to make a path their carriage could use.

We had to find them, and soon.

Wait... Was I sure it wouldn’t be better to join up with Minori-san again first?

Hikaru-san didn’t say anything, but it looked like he was starting to sweat having lost the trail of the Assembly of Patriots guys. Still, he walked pretty authoritatively. Feeling not at all comfortable, I followed him.

“Wait, isn’t this—”

Then he stopped.

“Huh?”

My foot came down... but didn’t find the ground.

No ground?

...............Cliff?!

“No way!” I drew back as quickly as I could, but Hikaru-san, who had been half a step ahead of me, grabbed my hand. Just as I was leaning over, hoping to grab his shoulder to stop him...

“Yikes!”

“Whoaaaa!”

There was no escaping gravity. Hikaru-san and I went tumbling down.

Ahh! Falling!

As I instinctively squeezed my eyes shut, a flurry of thoughts went racing through my mind. The girl we weren’t able to save. Minori-san, fighting with the huge bird. Myusel and the others, back at the mansion. That last anime episode. How my short life was coming to an end, and I’d never even gotten to ditch my virginity...!

Okay, so I’m not proud of all of those regrets. Hikaru-san and I kept falling.

Thud! The impact rattled me from my butt all the way up to my brain.

Apparently we hadn’t actually fallen that far. Luckily—I mean seriously, by sheer, dumb luck—I had fallen in a sitting position. I felt like I’d taken a hard kick in the behind, but if I had been leaning over any further when I fell, who knew what might’ve happened?

“Eeyow,” I moaned, rubbing my sore bottom. Then my eyes flew open. “Wait, what?!”

Hikaru-san was sitting beside me, looking equally shocked.

“Huh...?”

I looked down, and as I registered what I had landed on, my eyes got wider and wider.

Beneath me was something covered in feathers.

I could see a rope connected to a stout neck and a round head.

What’s more, there was something sticking out of its head...

Was I, by any chance, sitting on top of a giant bird? One with a spike pounded through its forehead, no less?

And wouldn’t that mean...?

Pressed by an uninvited feeling that things were going nowhere good, I turned around.

“Hey...”

Behind me I saw several very surprised men and one kidnapped young woman looking at me from inside a carriage.

Well! It’s a small world after all!

Apparently, when Hikaru-san and I tumbled over that cliff, we were lucky enough to fall smack on top of the guys from the Assembly of Patriots—or rather, on top of the birds pulling their carriage.

Wait... Lucky?

No contemporary manga artist would lower themselves to such base coincidence—yet there we all were, me and Hikaru-san and the Patriots, frozen and staring at each other. All of us were transfixed by what seemed to be the sick sense of humor of the man upstairs.

For a moment, the only sound was that of the carriage wheels crunching over fallen leaves.

Hikaru-san was the quickest to come back to his senses. He grabbed for the spike in the head of the bird he was sitting on. That was fair enough. Anyone could see those spikes practically screamed weak point. I wondered how the Bahairam mages felt about that.

In any event—

Caaaaaaaaaawwwwww!

These were animals that didn’t seem to mind being shot with a 9mm pistol, but pulling on that spike was evidently not pleasant. It let out a tremendous howl and stomped the ground like a fighting bull.

“Y-Yikes!” I exclaimed. The bird Hikaru-san was riding was connected to the one I was on!

Both of us ended up thrown to the ground. Thankfully, all the leaves and leaf mold made for a soft landing. Frankly, it was nicer than when we had landed on the birds.

“Are... Are you okay?” I asked, turning to Hikaru-san.

“That’s weird,” he said ruefully as he sat up. “That spike is practically begging to be pulled out... But I couldn’t get it.”

“I’m not that surprised,” I said tiredly. If it were that easy to get the spike out, these things wouldn’t do well as weapons. Granted, the spikes really didn’t look very solid. But still—use your head, guy!

Okay. Forget about that for now.

The carriage rumbled past us—then stopped a few meters farther on. It looked like both of the birds wanted to go in different directions, halting forward progress. At least Hikaru-san had managed to stop the kidnappers.

There was a shout that I couldn’t understand. The door flew open, and the men jumped out, carrying the girl with them. As they dragged her out of the carriage, they held a knife at her throat, making sure we could see it.

One of the men spat something that sounded unpleasant, but I didn’t know what he was saying.

Five men emerged from the carriage. Four of them carried swords at their hips and glared at us with undisguised contempt. The last one had the girl and the dagger. And...

A crystal ball?

The man dragging the woman along had a crystal ball dangling from his belt. Why would he have one of those? Was it similar to the one on which we had been shown the game screen the day before? The ball was glowing faintly, but I didn’t see any image in it...

“Hey...”

Then I remembered. Could it be one of those crystal balls that detects magic by reacting to the presence of magical power? The Assembly of Patriots had used one the first time I had encountered them. But that glow meant there was some kind of magic going on right now...

Huh. It must be reacting to the puppet magic.

I couldn’t be sure which of them was the magic user, but somebody in that group of men had to be controlling the birds using puppet magic.

Grumbling and growling, the four men with swords drew them all at once.

“Whoa... Hang on...!”

This situation had just gone from bad to deadly.

Hikaru-san and I scrambled to our feet, facing the men across a gap of several meters. Not counting the guy with the hostage, it was four vs. two, and we didn’t have any weapons. Plus, at least one of them was a magic user.

It didn’t look like much of a fight.

Of course, I could draw on Tifu Murottsu, which Myusel had taught me, but as offensive magic goes, it was the simplest of the simple. An amateur like me could hardly expect to be very accurate with it anyway, and I couldn’t use it repeatedly. So even if I managed to get the spell off, I would only be able to do so once, and could only hope to produce a basic attack in their general direction. But that crystal ball would probably warn them before I did.

I took a trembling step back.

I’m pathetic. I’m embarrassed by myself.

We’d chased them all this way, but so far from rescuing the girl, we had to run away with our tails between our legs in the face of their superior fighting strength.

Hikaru-san stared at the men for a long moment. Then finally he said, “I guess I have no choice. This was the one thing I wanted to avoid... but I guess it’s time to reveal my true power.”

“Huh?”

His true what?!

Don’t tell me we were in for some convenient plot twist like that Hikaru-san secretly had incredible psychic powers or something?! I mean, not that this was a plot per se, but seriously, what the heck?!

As I stared at Hikaru-san in disbelief, he intoned: “Darkness! O power of the dark tribe that has lain in the eternal purgatory! Gather here now and become my sword! Be thou my wrath upon my enemies!”

Was that a... a spell, or something?

“Appear now! O Great Flare!”

The rest of us drew in a collective breath. I threw myself to the ground. Hikaru-san definitely sounded like he meant business.

And then...

Silence.

More silence.

Ten seconds passed, and nothing happened.

Still more silence.

Hikaru-san stood there looking as if he expected to fire a laser beam out of his palm or something. I spotted a single bead of sweat running down his forehead.

“Wait, were you just trying to scare them?!” I cried, jumping to my feet. “What was the point?!”

“I thought if I distracted them, you would take the opening to attack them or something!”

“What are you, crazy?!”

“I thought you’d be able to think on your feet!”

“I told you, the problem is, that’s completely crazy!”

We were at it like some kind of twisted comedy duo, but the Assembly of Patriots wasn’t going to stand there and watch us forever. In fact, seeing Hikaru-san’s “attack” fizzle out seemed to convince the men that we didn’t have any power to speak of. Mocking grins came over their faces and they approached us with swords in hand.

This was not good. We were about to be chopped into little, tiny pieces.

Trying to blow them away with magic really might be my only hope... But if I wasn’t careful, they would notice the moment I started chanting and just cut me straight down. They had that crystal to let them know when—

Wait... Huh?

Something occurred to me.

When Hikaru-san had been making his big show of having a magic spell up his sleeve, the guy with the magic detector hadn’t even glanced at it. You’d think that would be the first place you’d look if your opponent seemed like he was going to use magic.

Hold on...

That was it! There was no point in looking at the crystal ball!

The puppet magic controlling the big birds was constantly active. The animals, who had been ready to rampage moments before, were already calmed down and standing sedately.

All of which meant...

“Okay,” I said, holding up both hands. Even the Patriots should have understood that it was a gesture of surrender; I was obviously showing that I didn’t have any weapons. It was a bit of body language that could be understood no matter which dimension you were from.

“We have no hope of beating you. But I’m the empress’s favorite. I think I’d make a valuable hostage, so please, don’t kill me yet.” I tried to make myself look and sound as servile as possible.

“Sh-Shinichi-san?!” Hikaru-san’s eyes were practically popping out of his head. “How can you be so—wait! They can’t even understand you, how are you going to negotiate?”

I kept talking as I got closer to the men. “Oh, don’t listen to him. Please, at least save me. I don’t want to die yet. Living is all that matters to me.”

Our opponents watched me suspiciously. I kept taking one step closer, then another, as slowly as possible, so as not to antagonize them. And then...

“Whoops.”

The men grabbed me.

“What are you doing?! Have you gone stupid?!” Hikaru-san shouted, clearly freaking out.

The men were all grinning cruelly, ridicule plain on their faces. I’m sure they thought I was foolish and self-serving. They didn’t have to understand what I was saying to catch my facial expression and tone of voice. Plus, Hikaru-san’s reaction probably helped them comprehend what I was getting at.

“Ahh—!”

Beside me, the girl with the knife at her neck froze. The fact that I could understand what she said showed that, as a member of the nobility, she was wearing a magic ring. Meaning...

The girl wore an expression of despair. When she first saw us, she must have been overjoyed to think help had come, and now she was doubly despondent. I sighed and said to her, “Sorry. Looks like we weren’t up to it.”

She didn’t say anything.

“These men are probably going to XX and 〇〇 you before they finally △△, I’m sure of it. You might not like it, but they’ll probably force a □□ ☆☆ into your—”

She still didn’t say anything, but she gave a sharp intake of breath and the blood drained from her face.

I’m sure she was picturing the sort of depraved stuff that would have violated the Under-18 law in Japan. The girl started to weep.

“What are you saying?!” Hikaru-san demanded. “Have you gone completely insane?!”

“Oh... no...” the girl moaned.

“Oh, you poor, unfortunate soul!” I cried.

“Will you shut up already?!” Hikaru-san shouted.

I, however, went on tossing out one idea after another, listing off things that would give an ero game writer pause. Honestly, I was a little bit frightened by how readily I could reel off a whole slew of words you definitely could not say on television. But, uh, let’s not worry about that for now.

“N... N... Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!”

The girl’s terror had finally reached a fever pitch. She trembled and wept as if she had completely forgotten she even had a knife at her neck.

“So on that note,” I said, “do you think you could crouch down for me? I’m going to fire off some magic.”

“Huh...?”

With all the strength I could muster, I swiped away the hand of the guy grasping my shoulder, raising my own right arm. It was my extreme good luck that the men, confident of their victory, hadn’t immediately stopped me from talking to the young woman.

For a second, the girl was as surprised as they were, but as I swept the man’s arm aside, she closed her eyes and ducked down. And then—

“Tifu Murottsu!”

A gust of wind slammed into the men. With a collection of short cries, they were blown away... along with the girl.

I thought I had aimed the spell high enough that it would just catch the men’s heads, but apparently the girl had gotten tangled up with the kidnappers as they all went tumbling and had been pulled along.

Geez. I am really, really sorry about this.

As I mentally apologized, I rushed over to the groaning men. I thought there was a chance I would have to hit them with another burst of magic. But maybe I really nailed them, because they all just lay there moaning, not showing any sign of getting up.

“Gosh...”

For better or for worse, it looked like my magic had come out considerably stronger than I’d expected. Okay, so it wasn’t great that I had caught the girl in the blast, but she looked uninjured, and she was still breathing.

All’s well that ends well, right?

..................No?

As I was nervously hauling the girl up, I heard Hikaru-san whisper, “Don’t tell me... Did you deliberately get yourself captured?”

“I was afraid it wouldn’t be strong enough if I didn’t get close,” I said. “I’m just a beginner, so my magic isn’t very accurate, either. Then again, that helped me hit all of them, I guess.”

“And all those terrible things you were saying...?”

“To cover up my chanting,” I said with a rueful smile.

Their crystal wouldn’t let them know I was using magic, so the only real problem was actually intoning the spell. I needed the girl to scream in order to cover the sound of my muttering an incantation.

Trust me, making girls cry by describing horrific carnal acts to them is not how I get my kicks.

......Seriously, trust me. Please?

The girl’s eyes drifted open.

“Oh, you’ve come to.”

“Ahhhhh!” she screamed.

H-Hey, no, I swear I wasn’t—

I was just about to try to explain myself when I felt something cold against my neck. I didn’t have to turn around to know what it was. I could see the tip of a sword out of the corner of my eye. Someone was holding a blade to my neck from behind me. Whoever it was, if they wanted to, they could slit my throat with the slightest motion.

The man exclaimed angrily.

Now that was something I understood, ring or no ring. Nice try, or something like that.

Crap. I dropped the ball here.

I knew that when it came to magical attacks, my amateur abilities couldn’t stand up to those of a full-fledged mage; I wasn’t as accurate and couldn’t use a spell repeatedly. But it looked like there was a real difference in power, too. Given that the girl had regained consciousness, I shouldn’t have been surprised that her more physically fit captors had one or two members who would recover quickly. Maybe this guy had just pretended to be knocked out like the rest of his friends and waited for a moment when my guard was down.

This was very bad. I was going to die.

Panic caused my mind to go blank. Here I thought we had cleverly escaped the Assembly of Patriots, but I had badly underestimated them. What to do? What to do? Was there any possible way I could escape this situation?

I tried to think over the fear inspired by the cold steel, when—

Shunk.

There was a dull noise. Just for a second, I thought maybe it was the sound of my throat being slit, but I felt no pain, and there was no blood.

At length, there came a heavy thump, like something hitting the ground. That was when I noticed: I no longer felt the blade at my neck.

Ever so slowly, I turned around.

And there was Hikaru-san with a sword in his hand.

He must have snuck up behind the guy and attacked him. I assumed he had gotten the weapon from one of the Patriots who was still on the ground. From the fact that my own antagonist wasn’t spurting blood, I guessed Hikaru-san had hit him with the flat of the blade rather than stabbing him.

“Yikes...”

The man’s eyes had rolled up into his head. That must have been a pretty powerful blow.

“What?” Hikaru-san asked almost sulkily as I looked at him.

“Nothing, that’s just... really something. Swords are heavier than they look. I’m impressed you were able to swing that thing around.”

I had once gotten an opportunity to hold the weapon of one of the royal guards at Eldant Castle, and I had felt like it weighed a ton. Apparently these wide, double-edged longswords were created less to cut than to smash through armor, and as such were naturally heavy.

“I like to keep in shape,” Hikaru-san said, putting his hands on his hips. “You think it’s easy to wear girls’ clothes? You put on one ounce of excess weight, and suddenly you don’t fit anymore.” He sounded like he was in his element.

“Heh, right,” I said drily.

Then we both gave very, very long sighs, relaxing at last.

First things first: we tied the Assembly of Patriots guys to a nearby tree with some rope. Conveniently for us, it was in the carriage along with several pairs of handcuffs and manacles; presumably, they had been planning to kidnap more than one person. The birds had become docile—in fact, they hardly moved at all, so we just tied them to the tree. I guessed this effect was deliberate so that if whoever was controlling them with magic lost consciousness, they wouldn’t just wander off somewhere.

I wondered if that meant the birds who had attacked Minori-san had calmed down, too.

Then Hikaru-san and I, along with the kidnapped girl, got some distance from the men and waited for Minori-san.

After what had happened with Bahairam, Minori-san had given me a super small broadcasting device to carry. The battery was only good for about twelve hours, so she had warned me only to turn it on in the event something happened to me. She would come running.

“Um...”

Suddenly Hikaru-san was looking at me uncomfortably. He held up his hand so I could see him removing his ring. He must have wanted to talk about something that he didn’t want the girl to overhear. Since both parties to a conversation had to be wearing rings for them to work, we could prevent her from understanding our words by taking ours off. Well, technically, she wouldn’t be understanding our words regardless, but anyway...

I took off my magic ring.

Only then did Hikaru-san begin to speak, his eyes on the ground. “About that ero game...”

His eyebrows furrowed. Maybe it was the way his shoulders were slumped, but he looked oddly small. It was especially weird to me because it made him seem—well, kind of sweet, almost endearing; even though I knew he was a guy. The way he was usually so brazen—almost sadistic—gave this vulnerable side of him a “moe of the gaps” quality.

No! I wasn’t moe for him. I was not moe for him. I wasn’t.

Or so I insisted to myself like a mantra.

“And the trading cards, too... I didn’t... I guess I didn’t quite think them through. I admit there was... a failure of imagination on my part. And I’m sorry for that.”

I looked at him with my mouth hanging open. I had never expected him to admit his mistakes so candidly. The game and the cards might not actually have anything to do with the kidnapping by the Assembly of Patriots—but seeing real addicts appear among the student population, and finally being present at a real kidnapping, had apparently shocked him into reconsidering his perspective. Had made him realize that things don’t always go the way you expect.

“But what are we going to do? Even if we confiscate them all—”

His point seemed to be that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

Then there was the issue of that crystal ball with that image recorded on it. We could confiscate all the game systems and all the ero games around, but the content would continue to circulate in the form of those crystal balls. It made me think of all the gameplay videos on all the video sites on the web and all the views they got.

It was testimony to how hard it was to stop people from seeking out what they wanted. Regardless of what the original creator might have intended...

“Oh, that.” I, however, gave a confident nod. “I have... well, let’s call it a special plan.”

Hikaru-san looked at me, puzzled. Maybe it seemed strange that I should be so confident at this point. But I could at least say this: Hikaru-san might have been smarter than me, and a better businessman, but there was just one way in which I overwhelmingly outclassed him.

Experience.

I had been in the Eldant Empire for close to a year and had a sense of things that he couldn’t possibly have after just a month. I knew who the people of this country really were, much better than he did.

For better and for worse, the people of the Eldant Empire had a pure approach to culture. They had accepted trading cards and ero games, which we had simply floated as ideas, eagerly. It’s just like how, if you’re not used to drugs or alcohol, even the weakest stuff can have a profound effect on you. I had learned that firsthand long ago.

“Anyway... Just leave it to me.”

I clenched my fist and then gave him a big thumbs-up.

Three days later.

I was at Eldant Castle.

“Shinichi. This way,” Petralka said, beckoning to me.

Specifically, I was on a balcony overlooking the central courtyard, along with Petralka, Minori-san, Garius, and Prime Minister Zahar. Down in the courtyard was a huge crowd including knights, nobles, the nobles’ kids, and on and on. There probably hadn’t been a gathering this big since our infamous movie showing.

“Ahem. I believe all is ready,” the prime minister said.

“That’s a big help,” I replied. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Garius said. “It was you who caught the gang we were all after, Shinichi. This hardly amounts to a reward, but the least we can do is accommodate your request.”

The people from the Assembly of Patriots had been arrested, thanks to which the other kidnapped girl had also been safely recovered. In general, things were looking up.

Incidentally, Eldant also captured and was investigating the big birds with the spikes through their heads—there seemed to be every indication that Bahairam had been pulling the strings here. More to the point, that made it appear that Bahairam was supporting anti-government factions in Eldant behind the scenes. The Patriots’ profound class prejudice seemed antithetical to the all-are-equal ideals of Bahairam, but apparently they figured that the enemy of their enemy was their friend. Garius, as head of military matters in the nation, evaluated the situation like so: “There is danger in having such an unprincipled and undiscriminating group for enemies, but the silver lining is that we’ve obtained a perfect example of the Bahairamanian secret weapon about which we wondered so much.” Then again, given that it was a secret weapon and they knew they were giving it to a group with opposite ideas to theirs from whence it might fall into the hands of the enemy, I thought it would have been logical to attach a self-destruct device or something. But whatever.

I stepped forward, holding in my hand a megaphone I’d borrowed from the JSDF. Petralka stood beside me, to lend me authority. I took a deep breath to relieve my nervousness, then looked out once more over the courtyard.

The gathered crowd looked back at me, quiet, waiting for me to speak. They didn’t know yet what I was going to say. I had simply asked that the nobles and other people who lived around here—specifically, anyone who had been involved with the ero game in this instance or who seemed like they might encounter such a game in the future—be brought here to hear something important that Kanou Shinichi, the evangelist of otaku culture, had to say.

That meant everyone here was of a certain social station—and they all possessed magic rings.

I swallowed audibly. This had been my idea, but faced with so many people, I couldn’t help being a little nervous. Ugh—hang on. Were my knees trembling?

“Shinichi...” From beside me, Petralka discreetly took my hand.

“Petralka...” I looked at her, and she nodded to me with a small smile.

Ahhhh! You’re so cute, Your Majesty! You’re adorable!

Even as the moe excitement welled up in my heart, outwardly, I became more calm.

All right. I can do this.

I took a deep breath.

“My friends, it has often been said that I like pretty girls.”

I didn’t have to talk very loud for the megaphone to pick up my voice and carry it to the entire courtyard.

“My friends, I like pretty girls. No, friends, I love pretty girls!”

A mutter ran through the crowd at this startling pronouncement.

“I love maids. I love loli girls. I love big-sister types. I love kouhai characters. I love sailor suits, blazers, and swimsuits. I love tsunderes and boyish girls. At school, in the classroom, in the hallway, in the schoolyard, at home, at the pool, at the beach, in town, in a big mansion, in the woods—I adore every type of girl that exists in two dimensions!”

I could hear my own voice getting louder and louder as I spoke.

Yes! I can speak! Mein Führer, I can speak!

“I love when a powerful tsundere character thunders something and sends the protagonist flying with a kick. My heart leaps with joy when, later, she shows her softer side. I love yanderes who do the most outrageous things because they love the protagonist so much. And the feeling when she chopped off that disgusting MC’s head and put an ax in her rival’s belly was so exquisite. I love kuuderes, with their expressionless faces and sharp gazes. It moves me deep within my heart when an otherwise impassive heroine blushes just for a second.”

The murmuring among the nobles became louder. I ignored them, clenching my fist emphatically.

Yeah. Now would be the perfect time to have some glasses, or at least a Charlie Chaplin moustache.

“Gentlemen, all I ask for is beautiful girls—for two heavenly dimensions! Gentlemen, I ask you, as fellow brothers-in-arms, what is it that you really want? Three dimensions? Merciless, stinking reality? No! Yearn for 2D!”

As my shout trailed off, I heard someone in the crowd shout back: “Two-dee!”

Uh, actually, I have to admit... I had engineered that one.

I’d heard how important timing was in getting a spark to catch when it came to things like this, so I had planted Myusel and Elvia in the crowd, dressed in Hikaru-san’s clothes so they looked like nobles. And then...

“2D!” someone else shouted.

Perfect! The spark is burning!

“2D! 2D! 2D!”

The shouts began to overlap, filling the air with a rumbling echo. It was mostly students who were shouting—them, and their brothers and sisters. In other words, the people who had already been “infected” by otaku culture. Their parents seemed, for the most part, just surprised. But that wasn’t a problem.

“2D! 2D! 2D! 2D! 2D! 2D!”

To any outside observer, I’m sure it would have been a truly bizarre sight. But as far as I was concerned, it was exactly what I had been waiting for.

“Very well. Then 2D is what you shall have.” Unconsciously, the corners of my mouth turned up. The point here was to make sure it was the nastiest, cruelest smile I could muster. “We are a clenched fist, about to come crashing down with all the strength we can muster. For we who have wallowed in the darkness of reality for so long, simple ‘ordinary’ 2D will no longer suffice! 2D! Exceptionally beautiful girls!”

Mmm. That felt good.

I went on in high spirits.

“We are just one part of one country, numbering less than a thousand strong. But I believe that each of you is a tried and true warrior, every single one of you worth a thousand troops. So between us, we represent a Comiket with the power of a million and one men!”

Caught up in the excitement, I raised both hands. I didn’t even know if the megaphone was still projecting my voice, but by this point everyone was hanging on my every word, and frankly, it didn’t much matter what I said.

“Let us bring low those who will not turn their eye toward 2D! Let us show them the joy of beautiful two-dimensional girls! They shall know how wonderful the second dimension is! They shall know that there is more moe in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in their philosophy! Our kampfgruppe of one thousand otaku is going to burn this world down to moe ash! Stand with me, friends!”

A cheer went up.

Excellent! My audience was good and warm now.

Mentally, I switched to my next subject.

When it came to giving speeches, I was right up there with a certain Lieutenant Commander.

“Let me be clear—I mean loli!”

To be fair, I was moe about a lot more things than just loli, but for my purposes here we would let it slide. Why? Stay tuned.

“I declare that we good-hearted lolicons cannot turn to crime. It is in feeling moe for that most hallowed of types of 2D girl that lolicons first taste the life eternal. To progress from that to laying hands on a 3D loli would be a danger to loliconism itself! We must give notice to those fools who would discriminate against us. This is the time when we must stand up for the future of lolicon!”

I shouted as lustily as I could.

“We must not confuse 2D with 3D! Because we are gentlemen! It is precisely our love for the 2D that prevents us from laying hands on the 3D! The moment you touch such a person, you cease to love the two-dimensional! How boorish! How crude and tactless! May any otaku so blind as to forget the precepts of the venerable second dimension be cursed!”

It would have been easy enough to tell them, “Don’t do this.”

But this was just the opposite. It would be more effective, more memorable, to tell them, “Doing this instead is cooler,” or “If you do that, it’ll be shameful.”

“Yes! Now give voice!” I said, shaking my fist at the sky. “Yes lolita! Nooooo touch!”

I raised my right hand. There was a moment of shocked silence... and then the courtyard audience, very much on my side by now, responded:

“Yes lolita! No touch!”

“Yes lolita! No touch!”

“Yes lolita! No touch!”

Every fist punched the sky in rhythm with the chanting.

“Yes lolita! No touch!”

Ahh! Every heart in the courtyard was beating as one!

“Yes lolita! No touch!”

“Yes lolita! No touch!”

“Yes lolita! No touch!”

And on and on. The cries of “Yes lolita! No touch!” continued until the very walls of Holy Eldant Castle shook.

And they all lived happily ever after.

.........Probably.

I turned my back on the still-enthusiastic crowd and withdrew—and was soon met by Myusel, Elvia, and Hikaru-san, who all came running up to me.

“Great work,” Myusel and Elvia both said. They were each in dresses that really did make them look like nobility. They also looked difficult to walk in, and for a moment I wondered who these girls were—but they were also extremely cute, so much so that I thought I could fall in love at first sight.

“Thanks,” I said, and I meant it for all three of them, including Hikaru-san.

I’d been fairly confident I could pull this off, but without people to light the spark right when I needed them to, I might have been considerably less likely to succeed.

“Thanks to all your help, this was a big success—I think.”

“Was this your big, secret plan?” Hikaru-san asked, seeming half annoyed and half shocked.

For what it’s worth, Hikaru-san wasn’t directly involved in getting the crowd going, but he had been standing with Myusel in the courtyard, and so had seen my little performance.

“One wrong move, and you would have been just another dictator at the rostrum,” he said.

“Ah ha ha ha, ha ha... Well, yeah.” I scratched my cheek.

“Anyway, it turned out the kidnapping didn’t really have anything to do with the ero game, right?”

“That’s what it looks like,” I nodded.

It seemed like the remaining members of the Assembly of Patriots had been hoping to both secure money for their activities and commit a little terrorism simultaneously by kidnapping nobles; there was no fundamental connection to the game. The scrying orb that had been dropped at the scene of that first crime turned out to be pure coincidence. One of the students who had gotten sucked into the ero game had apparently created the orb so that he could “see” his virtual girlfriend even when the batteries in his game system died—and then he had dropped it as he was walking around.

Obviously, the student couldn’t tell anyone about this, much less let it slip that he had designed his character to look like Petralka. So instead he resolved to play dumb if the issue came up. Prime Minister Zahar investigated which orbs had been made recently and who they belonged to. Since scrying orbs weren’t printed with serial numbers or anything, it was apparently a tricky process, but eventually we were able to uncover the story.

In short, there had never been a criminal committing a kidnapping because of his ero game.

In many cases, that might have meant Amutech could simply say, “Welp, nothing to do with us,” and everything could go back to normal. And by our good fortune, that was how things had turned out this time... but that wasn’t really the end of it.

For better or for worse, the people of Eldant had come to be thoroughly influenced by otaku culture. And so I decided to take the initiative, in hopes of preventing any highly-improbable-but-still-possible problems.

“Don’t you think it’s ultimately just a problem of feelings, though?” I said.

“Feelings?” Hikaru-san asked.

“Or, you know, etiquette or something. You were right, Hikaru-san, that there have been crimes committed by otaku, and I assume there’ll be otaku who commit crimes in the future. But I don’t think the percentages will be any higher than in the general population.”

There are plenty of criminals who aren’t otaku. And plenty of otaku who aren’t criminals. Most of them, in fact. So it was mostly a problem of feelings—of the impression people had. To put it a bit more bluntly, it was nothing more than an emotional reaction backed up by no real proof. At least, I thought so.

It was just a hazy image people had.

In that case, why not change the image?

This is the kind of people otaku are.

These are the kinds of things otaku won’t tolerate.

These are the things otaku will deride as uncool.

If you could get out ahead of it, create that sort of atmosphere around otakuism, that would do the trick. It would help inoculate people against the notion that otaku were more likely to commit crimes, and serve as a sort of self-policing mechanism among otaku themselves. Happily, most people in this world didn’t yet have a negative bias against otaku. So what better time than now to secure a positive image for them?

That was my thinking, and so I decided to create an understanding that crime was not cool.

You know: Whoa, man, wait, what? You’re doin’ crimes? Ugh! Pass!

“It’s possible you’re right,” Hikaru-san said, glancing back at the courtyard, from which frenzied chanting could still be heard. “But I don’t think a normal person would come up with this particular method. I’m pretty sure only villains do this sort of thing.”

“Maybe you’re right. But one thing otaku never accept is goody-two-shoes orders from above.” I shrugged.

“And another thing. Wasn’t that entire speech basically just a rip-off of the Major and Gi***n?”

“I prefer to think of it as an homage. Or parody.” I puffed out my chest. “And anyway, I’ve always wanted to try doing something like that once.”

It’s every guy’s dream. Notwithstanding the actual content I ended up with.

“Uh...huh.” Hikaru-san gave a wry smile. “I admit, you’ve got me completely beat—this time.”

“Shinichi.”

I heard my name just as we got back to the bird-drawn carriage parked by the inner gate of Eldant Castle, all of us ready to go home.

I looked back and saw Petralka standing at the castle entrance. She seemed gloomy; she was looking at me with her arms crossed as if she wanted to say something.

Huh? I wondered what was going on. My visit was already technically over.

“Hang on,” I said to the others, then went over to Petralka, feeling puzzled. This was Her Majesty the Empress I was dealing with. Normally you would kneel before her and say something like, “How can I serve you?”

Instead I said: “...Yeah?”

As I approached, Petralka backed into the entranceway, beckoning for me to follow. What in the world could she want? Maybe there was something she wanted to say that she didn’t want anyone to hear, because even the royal guard, although present, were keeping a noticeable distance.

Seriously, what gave?

“Shinichi,” she said again, looking up at me. “This incident was a real brush with danger.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m sorry about that.” It seemed a little late now, after that speech I had made, but part of the problem this time around had been my failure to keep a close enough eye on Hikaru-san, and I wanted to apologize properly. “But I swear, I never meant to cause so much trouble for you and the others—”

“That’s not what we meant, dunce.” Petralka frowned.

“It’s not...?”

“What we were most worried about...” She paused for an instant, as if hesitant. Was it just me, or did her cheeks flush ever so slightly? “...was that you... ahem...”

“Something about me?”

“...that you might leave us...”

“Ah,” I said after a moment.

Even if she didn’t know exactly what the Japanese government had in mind by sending Hikaru-san over here, Petralka would certainly understand that something like what we had just dealt with could have threatened Amutech’s position in the Eldant Empire—and by extension, mine too.

In fact, given that she was well aware of Japan’s attempt on my life, she probably knew perfectly well that my status as Amutech’s general manager was precarious at best, resting as it did on a delicate balance. Not that we ever really talked about it as such.

The point is, I could vanish from this world at any time. There were people, in both Japan and Eldant, who hoped I would. And so...

“Shinichi.” Petralka stretched up to take hold of the collar of my shirt. “For you to simply... go away, after all the important-sounding things you’ve said... We won’t permit it, you understand?”

“I—”

“We granted our royal permission for you to spread otaku culture in our Eldant Empire. You may not leave until your mission is completed. Do you understand?”

She seemed to grow embarrassed halfway through her little speech; still holding my collar, she looked down, resting her adorable forehead against my chest, the last of her words coming in a whisper.

“Petralka...”

“Do you understand?!” She was red up to her ears.

Ahh! Be still, O my arms! I thought, fighting down the urge to embrace her small body—which I figured could well get me beheaded by the royal guards still keeping a watchful eye on us. Instead I said, “Yeah... I understand.”

At one point, I had wondered whether, now that Hikaru-san was here, anyone would even notice if I disappeared. I would never think anything so foolish again. There were people who wanted me here. And I wanted to be here. So what did it matter who else was here too?

“I won’t go anywhere until you say so, Petralka. I’ll do what I can to make sure I don’t have to go anywhere.

“...You won’t,” Petralka said, letting go of me. Then she fixed me with her pointer finger. “Kanou Shinichi!”

“Y-Yes?”

“We renew our command to you to spread otaku culture. We have chosen you. Therefore, answer our demand with all your strength and all your mind!”

Now, that was an imperial order. Even if she was blushing adorably while she gave it.

Ahh, Your Moe Majesty!

“As you wish,” I said with a soft smile. I placed my right hand over my heart, like a butler responding to his master’s command, and gave an ever so slightly pretentious bow.

And so, life in the Eldant Empire—or at least at General Entertainment Company Amutech—returned to normal.

We collected all the game systems and ero games, erased any potentially problematic data, and returned them. A few people who were already in the throes of addiction objected forcefully, but by way of apology Amutech provided specially made body pillows, and that seemed to mollify them. I supposed all the addicts were busy hugging their pillows and panting by now.

Somehow things didn’t feel quite... resolved, but it was probably my imagination. Yeah, that had to be it.

As for the trading cards, we rebalanced the strength of the rarest cards as well as how frequently they appeared, making it so people wouldn’t be paying illegal premiums for them. Anyway, the whole trading card thing had been a pilot program, and I expected to be able to sell a fair, balanced product when we began offering the cards in earnest. Assuming nobody became hell-bent on using only the first run of cards, it would no longer be possible to use one or two overpowered cards to walk all over opponents.

The lesson, of which we were so vividly reminded, was that you had to think very hard before introducing new products.

And so...

“My feeling is we should be a little more thoughtful going forward,” I said. I spoke to someone sitting on the couch opposite me—Matoba-san, who had dropped by to see how things were going.

“Yes, that might be a good idea,” he said, as if it didn’t really involve him. He still seemed like the quintessential bureaucrat. It was almost as if he were saying that all of this was outside his immediate jurisdiction, and so no responsibility of his—even though it had all started when he brought Hikaru-san here.

“Matoba-san,” I said, a bit miffed at the way he was acting detached from all this. “Why do you think Hikaru-san was brought here from Japan at this particular time?”

Of course, I knew full well that Matoba-san knew what the Japanese government was thinking—if nothing else, Myusel had told me that she’d overheard Matoba-san and Minori-san having conversations about it. In my mind, the question was just to rankle him.

But he simply replied with a smile, “I’m sure I don’t know. Perhaps it’s coincidence.”

“You think so, huh?”

Apparently he was going to stick to his story. On the other hand, if I was wrong about Hikaru-san having been sent here to replace me as General Manager of Amutech, then that meant they weren’t going to drag Hikaru-san back to Japan to punish him or, in a worst-case scenario, kill him to keep his mouth shut.

For now, that was enough.

“Okay. Well, I guess that’s about all I’ve got to report for now.”

“I see,” Matoba-san nodded, then looked at Hikaru-san, who was sitting beside me. “And what about you, Hikaru-kun? It sounds like you had a difficult introduction. Do you think you can continue here?”

“Absolutely,” Hikaru-san said with a firm nod. He looked at the trading cards sitting on the table. “Despite how things turned out this time, they do say failure is the mother of success. Whatever I do next, I’ll make sure it succeeds without giving anyone reason to complain.”

“How heartening,” Matoba-san said easily. “Shinichi-kun, be careful he doesn’t show you up, eh?”

“Yeah, I’ll have to be on my guard,” I said, and all I could do was smile tiredly at how Matoba-san pointedly put a bow on everything.

“Shinichi-san,” Hikaru-san said, turning to me. “I acknowledge my failure this time, and I recognize my mistakes. But that doesn’t mean I recognize you, okay? Just so you know—”

“What’s with the tsundere tropes?!”

“Ts-Tsundere?! I am not!” For some reason, Hikaru-san had turned red. It only made him look even more tsundere-ish—like, if this were a game, it would be a clear sign of exactly how to deal with this character. A real-life tsundere? What the heck? I know what I said in my courtyard speech, but it was hard to just abandon three dimensions like— No, no, no, no, no, wait! I don’t care how pretty he is, Hikaru-san’s a man! He’s got all the equipment!

Don’t get moe for him, O my heart! Don’t race for him, O pulse!

A new world doesn’t have to begin here!

As I repeated these lines to myself like mantras, Hikaru-san said, “Someday I’ll show you who’s really fit to be general manager!” Which only compounded the sense of tsundere-ish-ness.

Aw, gimmie a break.

“I really doubt it,” I said with a wry smile. “You and I just have different levels of experience.”

I meant both as otaku, and as potential general managers of Amutech.

Of course, with time, Hikaru-san would gain experience too. But I wasn’t going to make the hare’s mistake and be overcome by this tortoise.

“Obviously, you get a handicap,” Hikaru-san said, smirking. “It wouldn’t be any fun to win too easily.”

“If you’re thinking of me as some kind of final boss, you’re going to let your guard down and get clobbered.”

“Who said anything about a final boss?” Hikaru-san said. Then he looked at me (he’s so cute, I still can’t believe he’s not a girl!) and proclaimed, “I’m just saying it would be boring if you didn’t put up a fight. I only play games on hard mode.”

I was completely lost for words.

The response came instead from Matoba-san, who grinned to himself and said, “Now, where have I heard that before?”

（つづく）

To Be Cont’d...