Chapter One: What If She Wore a Swimsuit?
From the very start, my excitement levels were at C-L-I-M-A-X.
“Look at all this sunlight!”
A blue sky without a cloud in sight!
The sun pounding brilliantly down!
Even the sun’s skin-scorching rays practically feel good at this moment!
Oh, it’s great to be alive!
And why!
“Look at the white sand stretching off as far as the eye can see!”
The sand felt lovely, crunching under my bare feet.
“Look at the spray from the water!”
Droplets came raining down, turning rainbow colored where they reflected the sun.
“Listen to those sweet, dulcet tones!”
Girls’ playful voices overlapped one another, a pleasure to my ears.
I spread both arms wide, as if to take in the sun overhead and the whole world before me.
“Yes! Here we are at the beach in summer! ............Uh, I mean, not technically.”
But the feeling was close enough.
Yes: the place where we were was like the sea, but it wasn’t the sea.
It was a lake.
We had come to this lake, a short ride from Amutech’s mansion by bird-drawn carriage, for some R&R. It was a piece of land near the capital of Marinos that was owned directly by the Holy Eldant Empire itself, and rulers had long used it to chase away the heat. It was, in essence, a summer palace.
There was a pretty good-sized lake here—not huge, but big enough to have a beach and even waves, and you could swim in it.
That’s right. Swim.
And swimming meant...
“Oh, how wonderful to be alive!” I gave thanks to all the gods and Buddhas that I had been born into this world.
It was time for me to experience the full power of three dimensions! I tried to act cool about it, but it didn’t last very long.
After all...
“What are you up to?”
The question came from my approaching bodyguard, the WAC Koganuma Minori-san.
Normally she dressed in a shirt and tight skirt, very much an I’m-a-public-servant thing. But not now. Oh, not now. For starters, the surface area of visible skin was an order of magnitude different.
“We came all this way. How about a swim?” she asked.
Because now, she was wearing a swimsuit.
And it was, of all things... a black bikini!!
Her chest, it was like, bounce, bounce, and her butt, it was like, squeezing from side to side as she moved—and her toned hips, they were like, calling out to me... Ahhh.
Her whole body was a weapon!
All she had to do was walk, and she had me within an inch of my life.
Especially the cleft of that chest! The valley that ran between her two pale hills! I just wanted to shove my face into it until I suffocated. Please! I would prostrate myself, do anything, just let me bury myself in there!
I fought the urge to let my thoughts out of my mouth at a high volume, saying instead, “Heh heh heh. Yes, the opportunity isn’t lost on me...”
“Not that I care, but you’ve got a nosebleed.” Minori-san narrowed her eyes at me behind her glasses.
“Ergh. I’d like to bring charges against you for walking around with a weapon...”
“What are you talking about? Come on, Myusel’s waiting, too.”
She pointed in the direction of the water. And there...
“Ohhhhhh...”
I let out a breath without meaning to.
Myusel Fourant.
My adorable maid.
And now she was like a fairy, no, a goddess of the water.
For work, Myusel normally wore an outfit that left comparatively little to the imagination, but the chest and thigh areas were relaxed, to make it easy to move, and so I rarely get a sense of her true, uh, proportions.
Now, however, it was all there for me to see.
The white halter-neck bikini Minori-san had gotten for her was practically blinding! I had heard in the past that my maid was surprisingly chesty, but now I understood! Not too big, not too small, but undeniably announcing its presence—a perfectly balanced and beautiful bust! And complementing that by covering her lower body with a sarong was the perfect decision.
Yes, shyness! A bashful expression was the perfect look for Myusel!
“Minori-san,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I think I might have been born to witness this very day.”
“...You know, I think you might be right.” There was a hint of exasperation in her voice, but I ignored it.
“Master...” Myusel noticed me looking at her and immediately looked at the ground. The way she looked when she was shy like that was absolutely adorable. “It, uh, it doesn’t look strange?”
“What doesn’t?”
“I mean... Uh, my...”
“Perish the thought!” I said, clenching my fist emphatically. “I think it’s absolutely wonderful!”
“I—I see... Th-That’s good, then,” she said, stuttering and blushing. “I’ve never... gone out looking like this before, so... But if it makes you happy, Master, then...”
Come to think of it, when did swimsuits assume their current form?
I saw in a book somewhere that in the old days, they simply consisted of cloth that could safely get wet, and they covered the entire body, sort of like a modern wetsuit. Considering Eldant culture and values, the way the girls were dressed now could well be viewed as equivalent to going out in your underwear. It was no surprise that Myusel felt a little shy.
But that was excellent, too! Points for bashfulness!
Even as I was mulling over these happy thoughts...
“Oof!”
Out of the corner of my vision, I saw something throw sand in the air like a snowplow kicking up fresh snow.
I looked over to see a girl with animal ears and a tail, partly concealed by the flying sand, digging madly into the shore.
Elvia Harneiman.
A werewolf girl.
“I guess she really is a puppy,” I said with a fond smile.
Elvia, of course, was also wearing a swimsuit. With her, however, that meant she didn’t look all that different from usual. A tube top was standard with her, and when she was in her own room she tended to hang around in what amounted to underwear, so it wasn’t like this was the first time I’d seen her this way. But still...
“Mm... Scandalous.”
Motion was definitely the key to making the most out of Elvia’s attractiveness. The heart-leapingness that poured from her entire body! Skin and more skin! It seemed to increase her eroticism by at least fifty percent over just standing still. Yes, as if every bead of sweat on her forehead were a diamond!
And at the moment, she was digging furiously in the sand.
Which is to say, from my perspective, her behind was clearly visible, and because of the need to give her tail somewhere to go, the bottom of her swimsuit was pretty risqué. And then there was the way she moved left and right and left and right as she dug, as if hitting my libido with a take this! And this! And one of these!
And then...
“Shinichi!”
I turned at the sound of my name to find the owner of this lake. That is, the ruler of the Holy Eldant Empire, Empress Petralka an Eldant III.
Despite her imposing name, she looked like a young girl, practically a kid.
She was in a swimsuit, too, but of course her chest was less robust than the others’.
But let me be clear: that’s great!
“What is it you’re doing?”
On top of that, her suit was an old-style school one. It even had a tag on the front, diligently labeled “Pe-tral-ka” in hiragana. This was the essential point when it came to olden-style school swimsuits like this one. I had no idea whose stroke of genius it had been—Petralka had enough manga and anime knowledge that she might even have come up with it herself—but it was perfect, the absolute ultimate!
...etc., etc.
I was busy drinking in her beautiful form when—
“Come on, get in the water,” Minori-san said, giving me a push from behind. “You already spend all your time indoors anyway.”
“Uh, no, thanks, I’m full—er, I mean...” I looked back at her over my shoulder as she continued to push me closer to Myusel and Petralka. “I thought this was supposed to be your vacation, Minori-san.”
“Yeah, I guess,” smiled the baby-faced, big-boobed WAC. “But routine is routine. Just because someone tells you, ‘Hey, go out and play’...”
“Is that it?”
When it came to a comparison between outdoors and indoors, I think it was fair to say that a member of the Ground Self-Defense Force did most of her work outside, except maybe for paperwork. I bet a lot of people in the JSDF actually preferred to spend their time off lounging at home.
“I’m actually not the only one taking off today. I wonder what the others are up to,” Minori-san said, cocking her head.
“I guess there aren’t that many places to go for fun in the Eldant Empire, huh?” I joined her in her puzzlement.
As I mentioned, this “Ooh! Girls Galore Swimsuit Contest! Can You Believe (etc.)” event was originally about helping Minori-san burn some vacation time. Both she and the other JSDF soldiers here were on a strictly confidential assignment, which was another way of saying that they were essentially on the clock every moment that they were here. In order to preserve secrecy, they also didn’t get many chances to go back to Japan.
In short, their vacation days just piled up.
Apparently, a command had come down from above for the soldiers stationed in Eldant to use up some of their accrued leave. If they couldn’t at least report on paper that their troops had had a break, there would be administrative headaches later.
As we’ve discussed, however, there was a lot of red tape involved in going back to Japan. That left the JSDF people to find something to do with their free time here in Eldant, so there was a distinct risk of defeating the point.
One of the proposed solutions to this search for diversion was a day in the water. The Eldant summer was just starting, we were getting into the sweaty season, and in addition, Petralka had recently asked me, “What does the expression ‘swimsuit episode’ in this anime mean?” It all added up to one thing: everyone getting together for a day at the beach.
“All I’m saying is, don’t hide in some corner, just come play,” Minori-san said.
As we talked over my shoulder, I naturally started walking more slowly. And where Minori-san had initially been shoving me with her arms out, she had begun to lean into the project, using her whole body against my back, her whole— my back— her chest was— her boobs were...!
“Everyone wants to play with you, Shinichi-kun.”
“Y-Y-Y-Yeah, you’re right!” Hearing the word play while feeling that soft, round, soft roundness against my back sent my mind directly to the gutter. I retrieved it with an immense effort and heaved a sigh. I would have liked another moment to record this scene of paradise on the hard drive of my brain.
Incidentally, the female royal knights who had accompanied Petralka were also in swimsuits, allegedly “for protection.” They wore bikini-style suits and a minimum of armor—pauldrons and boots, along with a sword, a combination that looked a bit like the “bikini armor” of the good old days, and it was great.
I gathered that Minori-san had arranged the suits for them. The designs were kind of plain, but the bodies these women had achieved through rigorous daily training more than made up for it.
“How wonderful, this peach village! Incredible! La**ta really does exist!” I howled to the shining sun.
“Rather than talk, why don’t you swim, Kanou Shinichi?” a voice said.
I stiffened a little and looked to the owner of the voice.
A young man stood there regally. He had the same silver hair and emerald eyes as Petralka, but it was the fineness of his features above all that gave him away as a member of the royal bloodline. He looked practically perfect; if I were a woman, I think I would fall in love with him at first sight.
Minister Garius en Cordobal.
He was the head of the knight forces, the person with practical control over the imperial military. He was beautiful and noble and powerful; he had the brains and he had the brawn—they say heaven doesn’t give two gifts, but he had three or four, and as a fellow man, I had a thing or two to say about how unfair God could be.
There was just one thing about Garius that I wasn’t envious of at all: his interest in men.
This knight was, as we say, homo-homoshii: gay. Not, like, happy-gay, I mean gay-gay. Super gay.
Now, normally he was very self-restrained, so there wasn’t really any trouble, but at the moment I was in a swimsuit too—and I was a little unsettled by the sense that Garius couldn’t take his eyes off me.
“I know we’re at the beach, but what do you think you’re wearing?” I said.
“Hm?” he replied, and even his gesture of puzzlement seemed like it could conjure rose blossoms out of thin air. “Koganuma Minori prepared it for me as the most fitting swimsuit for myself. Do you have some sort of objection?”
Garius’s swimsuit was a male bikini.
But that wasn’t really the part I had a problem with.
No, my real concern was the black bowtie he was wearing around his bare neck. How perverted did you have to be to think that up?!
Worse, Garius seemed to believe that this was proper swim attire as dictated by Japanese culture, so rather than being embarrassed, he wore the whole thing proudly.
“Minori-san...”
“Yes?” The root of all evil (or at least all rottenness) around here acted perfectly calm despite the what-have-you-done look emanating from my squinting eyes.
“What is that?”
“What’s what? It’s the Bare Butler.”
“You have some awfully weird terms at your disposal.”
“You think so?”
Minori-san looked at Garius, who was smiling unabashedly. I thought I would get dizzy just looking at him. And to top it all off...
“Now, Shinichi.” Garius came over and put a hand on my shoulder. I almost choked at the touch of bare skin on bare skin, a sensation I had previously been spared by the presence of clothing.
The gesture was casual, yet I felt his fingers lightly trace the line of my collarbone.
I was just suppressing a scream when I noticed a female knight coming in our direction, playing with a 3TS. It was one of the prizes we had given the top teams at the imperial soccer exhibition a while ago—specifically, we had given them to the lizardman team, but most of them had no interest in video games, and so had sold them to nobles and prominent merchants who wanted them. So it wasn’t that surprising if Garius or one of his knights should have a system.
At the moment, the camera on the back of the 3TS was aimed directly at me...
“Were you able to get it?” Garius asked.
“Yes, sir. I’m used to controlling this thing by now, so it was simple.”
She had taken my picture.
“Hey, just what do you think you’re photographing?”
“Why, you, Shinichi, of course.” Garius sounded perfectly satisfied and not the least bit guilty about this.
“You can’t just—”
“It’s only a personal photograph. There’s no problem.”
“There sure is! The rights to the use of my likeness—”
That was as far as I got before I stopped. This was a place that didn’t have so much as the concept of equality—what was the likelihood that “image-use rights” would mean anything to them? Cameras weren’t a thing here, which meant sneaking photos wasn’t, either. So they certainly wouldn’t share my feeling that randomly snapping someone’s picture was some kind of issue.
“I just wanted to use this Japanese contraption to capture every detail of your body,” Garius said. I thought maybe he blushed ever so slightly—but that had to be my imagination, right? Right. My imagination. It had to be. Imagination!
Garius gestured to a nearby tree and said, “If you don’t wish to swim, perhaps you’d like to relax in the shade of that tree?” I felt my hair stand on end at the distinct sense that he was inviting me to, uh, join him.
“Oh, no, uh, I’ll swim. I think swimming sounds like a great idea!”
Clowning around with Myusel and the others sounded about a hundred-thousand times better than standing here having a vaguely sexually charged conversation with Garius.
“Okay, cool! Swim time!”
“Hmm,” Garius said, sounding somehow disappointed, but I left him standing there and ran as fast as I could over to the girls at the water’s edge.
Let’s turn back the clock to about a week before our beach adventure.
I was taking care of some random work in my room at our mansion. I was the general manager of the entertainment company Amutech, for what it was worth. I didn’t know what the job looked like from other people’s perspective, but there was actually a lot to do. Other people handled the really fiddly red tape for me, but there was still no shortage of paperwork that I had to make decisions about.
On top of that, I was teaching classes at our school, so I had to prepare for lessons. All of this still probably made me look pretty relaxed compared to a member of the Japanese workforce or some kid studying for college entrance exams, but for someone whose past experience was primarily as a home security guard, I was awfully busy.
“Hmmm...”
And so, on days when I didn’t have to be at school, I was usually surrounded by paperwork. I looked at each item in turn and decided whether or not to go forward with it. Plus, I still had to create a list of stuff we needed to bring over here.
“Shinichi-sama,” Myusel said with concern as she set a cup of tea on my desk. “If you let yourself get too busy... I’m afraid you’ll harm your health...”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. I grunted “Thanks for the tea” and took a sip. The faint, sweet flavor of fruit balmed my tired brain and eyes. Oh yeah—weren’t berries supposed to contain nutrients that were good for your eyes? I didn’t suppose Myusel actually knew that, but it was always possible she’d heard it from Minori-san or something.
Speaking of whom, she was set up at a desk and chair in the corner of the room, checking the papers I had finished with. She was technically my bodyguard, so in principle this was totally outside her job description, but as I got busier, she had been kind enough to help me like this.
“She is right, Shinichi.” This came from Petralka, who was reclining on the sofa. “We cannot help but notice that despite the imperial presence, you are not playing host to us very well. What is this business that is so important?”
She picked up one of the papers I had been working on until a few minutes ago and looked it over. It was what we called a “materials order”—in a word, a list of the otaku goods I thought we should import to Eldant next.
Petralka looked over the list, offering comments like “We don’t have that yet” or “What’s that?” as she read. She had gotten pretty good at reading and writing Japanese, so she could probably grasp a fair amount of what was on the list. Sometimes that made her more of a hindrance than a help, but she was still the empress, and officially my employer, so I certainly couldn’t ignore her.
“Thanks, Myusel,” I said. “And I’m sorry, Petralka. I’ll be able to make some time if I can just finish what I’m doing right now. Myusel, I’d really appreciate if you could make some kind of light snack that I could eat while I’m working.”
“Oh—I’m sorry I didn’t notice! I’ll bring something right away!” Myusel bowed deeply and rushed off to the kitchen.
I mean... I wasn’t trying to criticize her...
As a matter of fact, I had been slammed with work that day, and Minori-san and I still hadn’t had lunch. I normally liked for everyone in the mansion to eat together, but it simply hadn’t been possible. I picked up another piece of paper, all too aware of my growling stomach...
There was a knock at the open door. “Hullo.” I looked up and saw a middle-aged man standing there. “Shinichi-kun, Koganuma-kun. May I have a moment?”
The man who came into the room as Myusel was leaving it was Matoba Jinzaburou-san, Chief of the Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau. Although it wasn’t immediately obvious from the organizational chart, he was basically my superior.
More specifically, you could say he was the thread that connected me to the organization above me—namely, the Japanese government. Because of that position, Matoba-san made frequent trips between Japan and Eldant, and we often went days without seeing him at the mansion. Then he would wander in, tell us about some business or other, and then disappear again.
Today, uncharacteristically, he had a companion with him, a uniformed JSDF soldier. Maybe his bodyguard? But it would be unusual for his bodyguard to come inside with him.
“Matoba-san,” I asked, “were you back in Japan again?” I realized it had been nearly a month since we had seen him last.
“Such is work,” he said with a shrug. Then he turned to Minori-san. “Speaking of which—Koganuma-kun. I’m not here for Shinichi-kun today, but for you.”
“Me, sir? What’s going on?” Minori-san was openly surprised.
Matoba-san pulled a notebook out of the inside pocket of his business suit. Then he licked his finger and started flipping pages, an immensely bureaucrat-esque gesture that looked oddly appropriate for him.
“We want members of the Eldant expeditionary force, including yourself, to take some vacation time. Specifically, about three shifts’ worth.”
“Huh?” Minori-san blinked.
“It seems you haven’t properly taken vacation since you arrived here.”
“Vacation time... I guess that is something I get, isn’t it?” Minori-san said with an amused look.
It was true that since I had come here, Minori-san had been “on the job” as my bodyguard pretty much 24/7. Except for when we were sleeping, we were practically attached at the hip.
“Indeed you do. And if you don’t use it up, at least on paper, it will mean trouble for us. Thus, I would like the lot of you to take some time off—say next week?”
“So you’ll be able to take a break too, Captain Satou?” Minori-san asked, addressing the man standing beside Matoba-san.
Hmm, so Captain Satou was his name. He had a square chin, narrow eyes, a craggy nose, and overall conveyed the earnestness of a down-home country kid. He wore the JSDF uniform well. I had seen him before, like at the soccer tournament and when dealing with the dragon, but I realized I had never spoken to him. I knew him by appearance, but I would have hesitated to call him an acquaintance. And he was a captain—a pretty big deal, then.
“That’s right,” Captain Satou said. “Our unit will take breaks by shifts.”
“And how do you plan to spend your vacation, sir?”
Captain Satou smirked. “Our unit is officially posted to the Middle East for PKO, so we could hardly go back to Japan. There must be some tourist sites here in Eldant. We have our magic rings, so language won’t be a problem.” He held up his hand to display the ring he was wearing.
These rings were a crucial part of how we Japanese communicated (telepathically, that is) with the people of the Eldant Empire. Two people both wearing magic rings could be speaking different languages—Japanese and the local tongue, for example—and the rings would “translate” everything instantly.
I was wearing such a ring myself, and the JSDF forces dispatched to Eldant got them as well. They also functioned as a status symbol, and people wearing them were treated—not quite as nobles, but certainly better than the average commoner. Within the borders of the empire, the soldiers wouldn’t have any trouble doing some sightseeing.
“So there you have it,” Matoba-san said. “I’ll send around a memo tomorrow or the next day detailing who will be off when. How you spend your time off is of course up to you. Spread your wings, my dear Koganuma-kun.”
“Yes, sir. ...............Spread my wings...?” It was a weird order, coming from a superior. “I don’t know if that’s something I can do on command.”
“By the way, Shinichi-kun, you should take a bit of a break as well.” It was an uncharacteristically considerate thing for Matoba-san to say to me. I wasn’t sure what could be behind it. I guess if I were to collapse from overwork, it wouldn’t make his life any easier.
“How to spend vacation time,” I said, crossing my arms and looking thoughtful. “Usually vacation is a chance to refresh yourself, I guess. Refresh. Refresh...”
“In Japan, it’s about time for beachgoing,” Captain Satou said, narrowing his eyes.
“Beachgoing?” Petralka said suddenly, blinking. “That is it. Beachgoing!”
“Huh?” I offered.
“In an anime I saw recently, the protagonist suggested beachgoing to refresh himself. Is this not the basic method of restoring one’s spirits in Japan?”
“Oh yeah,” I said, thinking back on the show Petralka had been watching. “That was the swimsuit episode, wasn’t it? I guess you always wind up with one of those eventually.”
“‘Swimsuit episode’? What is that?”
Petralka picked up immediately on an expression that I hadn’t given any thought. The loli(-ish) empress was, in her own way, hungrier than anyone in the nation for otaku culture.
“Well, it’s, uh—that anime you were watching, Petralka, it was really aimed more at guys, so... And guys are like, uh, happy to see cute girls in swimsuits. And so, well, the show’s producers want their audience to be happy, so sometimes they include an episode where all the girl characters are in swimsuits. I guess you could say it’s just kind of the way things are done in the Japanese television or anime industry...”
I was trying to explain the concept, but it was turning out to be remarkably difficult. Incidentally, the reason that Petralka’s magic ring wasn’t translating expressions like ‘beachgoing’ and ‘swimsuit episode’ was because her language lacked equivalent concepts. She was just using foreign expressions she had heard in her anime wholesale.
“I see,” she said, “so this is your so-called ‘swimsuit episode’?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“And do they make you happy too, Shinichi?”
“Well, sure!” I exclaimed, clenching my fist. “Swimsuit episodes are an oasis for the heart! Even the grimmest, darkest stories can shore up viewers with a swimsuit episode, preparing them to endure whatever awful plot twist comes next! Any heroine ought to get at least one chance to shine in a—”
“W-We don’t entirely follow. But they please you, is this not so?”
“Absolutely!”
“Very well.” Petralka gave an emphatic nod. “Then let us have our own ‘swimsuit episode’!”
“Huh...?” I said stupidly. What was going through this crazy monarch’s loli head?
“Thus we declare that we shall accompany you on your trip to the ocean!”
“Wha... I... Ahh...”
Personally, I had no reason to object to Petralka’s coming along. But she was the empress. Any time she went anywhere, it was likely to turn into a pretty big affair.
“But wait,” Minori-san said with a puzzled look. “I thought there weren’t any oceans around here. Isn’t Eldant landlocked?”
Oh yeah. She was right.
There were no oceans in Eldant.
That wasn’t to say there were no oceans in this entire world; just that Eldant didn’t border on any of them. Thus the idea of going to the ocean would have meant an excursion to a foreign country—and that would have brought its own challenges.
But then she said, “I guess it doesn’t necessarily have to be an ocean.”
“We have not been to the sea ourself,” Petralka said, but then added triumphantly, “but one of the royal retreats outside the capital does have a large lake. It is plenty big enough to swim in!”
“There you have it, I guess, Minori-san.”
“Sounds good to me.” I was actually a little surprised how quickly Minori-san got on board. “I’ll buy swimsuits for everyone—as a gift!”
In fact, she was practically raring to go.
Matoba-san and Captain Satou watched the scene with a touch of amusement.
Looking back on it, this was when I should have started to suspect.
I should have realized a nefarious plot was brewing behind the carefree conversation.
It was a picture out of paradise itself.
Beautiful women younger and older alike frolicked beside the lake. Granted, at the edge of my vision I could see the “bare butlers”—that is, the knights in their so-called swimsuits—but I chased them out of my consciousness and tried to focus entirely on all the glory I could see before my eyes.
“Yah!” Minori-san gave a cheerful shout and gently smacked a yellow-and-white beach ball. It went sailing over toward Myusel.
“Eh? Wha? T-To me?! Ohh, I—I’ve got it!” She flailed around a bit, but managed to hit the incoming ball. This was probably her first experience of playing a game like this, but nonetheless—whether because she had muscles, or just through sheer luck—the ball spiked up into the air and went flying again, this time toward Petralka.
“Hrm? So now it is our turn!” She smacked the ball, which now headed for Elvia. She must not have hit it in quite the right place, because rather than bouncing up in the air, the ball went flying straight toward the other girl. It was not going to be easy to return. Normally, this was where the ball would drop to the ground and the volley would be over.
But this was Elvia. A beast girl. Her reflexes and physical abilities were on a different level from the rest of us.
Her tail stood straight up as she prepared to meet the incoming ball. And then...
“Yarf!”
In the blink of an eye, she made her move—but rather than hitting the ball, she launched herself into the air and wrapped all four of her limbs around it.
“I can’t control myself!”
“Ahhhh...” I let out a sigh as I watched her roll around in the sand with the ball. I might have guessed this would happen.
“Elvia!” Petralka said sharply. “Will you not give back the ball!” Her female knights quickly moved to chase down the beast girl. But Elvia, still holding the ball, rolled away at a terrific pace (how this worked was something of a mystery), and they weren’t able to catch her.
Elvia and other beast people like her are strongly influenced by the phase of the moon. For that reason, they’ve developed a unique religious outlook in which they treat the moon as effectively divine—a view that extends to anything round that reminds them of that celestial body.
I suppose a yellow-and-white beach ball the perfect size for hugging to yourself does look a bit like the moon. It seemed like we had run afoul of Elvia’s instincts.
“And after I said all those times that you would never get a game of beach volleyball going with Elvia involved,” I said.
“But we couldn’t let Elvia-san be the only one left out,” Myusel said.
In the end, the knights couldn’t catch Elvia; they gave up the chase while Elvia, covered in sand, happily played with the ball by herself.
“How about another game, then?” Minori-san suggested. “Your Highness, Shinichi-kun, Myusel. How about watermelon busting?”
“Watermelon busting?” I asked in surprise. “Did you bring any watermelons, Minori-san?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Then she shouted in the direction of the beast girl, “Elvia! Come here a moment!”
Elvia actually looked up when Minori-san shouted. “Yes? You want me?” Maybe she had played with the ball enough to restore some of her sanity.
“Elvia,” Minori-san said, “could you dig a hole here big enough for a person to climb into?”
“Not a problem! But... What are you gonna do with it?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Sure thing...”
Elvia nodded, then began burrowing into the sand with tremendous energy. It was incredible. I had seen her dig before, but the speed always staggered me. If you asked her to dig a trench, she could probably out-race an earth mover.
We watched in astonishment as a hole, comfortably big enough for a person, appeared before our eyes.
“How’s this?” Elvia asked.
“Thanks, Elvia,” Minori-san said. “All right, Shinichi-kun, you’re up next. Would you be so kind as to get in the hole?”
“You want me to get in the hole.”
“Uh-huh. Come on, get down there.”
“Hmm...”
I didn’t know what she was up to, but for the time being I decided to play along and climbed obediently into the pit. Where...
“Oooh...!”
My view was now, to use a technical term, an up shot of the various beautiful women around me! From this low angle, the curves of their thighs and above all the swell of their busts were brought out to mind-boggling effect! Ahh! Even Petralka boasted that modest but unmistakable rise and fall! Amazing! Incredible! Minori-san, what a gift you’ve given me...!
Etc., etc.
“Huh?”
As I was busy admiring the women, they had come up and begun piling sand around me. I felt the hole filling in like a rising tide...
“What are you guys doing?! Why are you burying me?!”
“Why, you ask?” the loli empress said loftily as she piled in some more sand. “It can only be in preparation for watermelon busting, can it not?”
“I—I don’t see how this is—”
“Watermelon busting,” Petralka said, crossing her arms, “is an old Ja-panese custom when at the beach in summer, in which a criminal’s head is compared to the fruit known as a watermelon and is then broken open—is this not the case? The name comes from the red color when the head is smashed, which looks much like—”
“No! That’s wrong! Who taught you that ridiculous misinformation?!”
“It’s not ridiculous or misinformation,” Minori-san said with perfect poise.
“I should have known you were behind this, you rotten WAC!” I howled, looking up at her with tears in my eyes.
It was well past the moment when I might have been able to run away. The sand was already up to my neck.
“Well, look, Shinichi,” Minori-san said, chortling as if she hadn’t had a hand in this. “It’s not like we’re using a katana or anything. I promise you won’t die.”
“I better not!”
“Here, I have a watermelon hat for you to wear.”
“I don’t want any watermelon hat! And what’s with that huge stick in your other hand?”
I spotted the weapon Minori-san was holding and pointed—or rather, because I couldn’t do that anymore, glared angrily at it.
No matter how you sliced it, that was a club. The classic starting weapon of so many RPGs. It was such low-level equipment that many people ridiculed it, but looking at it another way, it was what you got instead of a steel sword—and if you swung it hard enough, it could be plenty dangerous.
“You’ll be fine. Even watermelons don’t break that easily in this game.”
“And what if you’re wrong?!” I cried, but with both my arms buried, there wasn’t much I could offer by way of resistance.
And so it was that a green-and-black striped hat was shoved over my head.
“Huh! You make a pretty convincing watermelon, Shinichi-kun.”
“Minori-san, I thought you were supposed to be my bodyguard! How can you justify—”
“Today’s my day off.”
“Ahhhhhhhh crap, you’re right!”
Okay, this conversation was getting kind of stupid. But then...
“Shinichi-sama...”
A dark shadow fell across the only head I had left on this planet.
“Shinichi-sama... I just... You’re really...”
It was Elvia. Her obsession with round things had relented briefly, but I could tell from her voice that it was back now.
“Shinichi-sama, your head... Your head...!”
“Hang on, wait a second!”
“I can’t!”
An instant later, Elvia had grabbed onto my great, round watermelon head just like she had the ball earlier.
“E-Elvia—hrgh?!”
The soft, pale thing that filled my vision had to be Elvia’s thigh. Compared to Myusel or Petralka, her skin was a little more tan, a darker color, but this particular spot, perhaps because it was normally covered by her shorts, was almost white.
That’s right—my head was now clutched firmly between Elvia’s thighs. And the thing touching the back of my head—was that Elvia’s chest?
Ahhhh.
How can a situation make me so happy and so embarrassed at the same time?!
I can’t help feeling that having a girl’s chest and thighs pressed up, you know, right against my head is, uh, not very good for my upbringing as a decent young man, but—
“How scandalous! How... outrageous?”
Suddenly, I thought I saw a flash in the corner of my vision, like something catching the sunlight.
What could it be? It was over in the woods—and I didn’t think there was anything especially reflective in there.
“Minori-san!” I called to the WAC just beside me. “I think I saw a flash over there...”
“Nice try, but you’re not getting away that easy, Shinichi-kun,” she said.
“No, I swear—”
But Minori-san, probably assuming this was a scheme on my part to get out of this, ignored everything else I said and prepared for “watermelon busting.”
“All right,” she said with a cheerful smile, “who wants to go first?”
“I wanna try it!”
“You, Elvia? All right, first we blindfold you.” Minori-san wrapped a towel she’d brought around Elvia’s eyes.
This was bad. If Elvia with all her physical strength were to hit me, especially on or around her “phase,” my head really might split open like a fruit, no matter what she was hitting me with.
No, wait, Shinichi. It’s all right. You’ve nothing to fear.
Elvia was a beginner at watermelon busting. It wouldn’t be that easy for her to figure out where I was. What I needed to do now was not inadvertently give away my position by groaning or something, but instead to remain as quiet and inconspicuous as a stone by the roadside, and wait for Elvia to miss me...
“Okay, spin, spin!” Minori-san called out, spinning Elvia around. Now she wouldn’t even know which direction I was in.
That’s right, there had never been any reason to feel—
“Shinichi-sama!” Elvia exclaimed, confident despite the blindfold. “I might be blindfolded, but I know you by your scent! Ooh, you’re gonna be so busted!”
“No, stoooooooooppppp!”
I might die here by this lake today.
That was the realization that fueled my desperate scream.
Amidst the thick, dark underbrush hid two men in camouflage.
This wasn’t the sort of camouflage that had come to be a fashion statement, a simple pattern of mixed green and brown and black. This was far more than color... The men hardly looked human.
They wore cloth that appeared plant-like, covered in a profusion of thread, as if the uniforms themselves were some kind of vegetation. So-called “ghillie suits.”
Of course, they wouldn’t wear such serious disguises without making sure everything else was on the same level. Their faces were daubed with camouflage paint, and their scopes, which could all too easily catch the light, were kept covered unless they were in use.
From even a slight distance, the men vanished completely into the foliage. In fact, someone could be standing right next to them and not notice the men as long as they didn’t move.
The two men were currently observing their target.
This was, of course, a preliminary step. When they had an opportunity, when the time was right, the men were authorized to proceed with the operation. Everything they carried and wore was for that purpose.
It was quite some distance from the bushes where the men waited to the lakeside. The cheerful shouts of the girls playing in the sand didn’t even reach them. What tickled the men’s eardrums was nothing more than an occasional sibilance of leaves in the wind and the calls of birds in the trees.
The man crouched on the left, watching Shinichi and his friends through a powerful scope, muttered, “Awfully carefree, aren’t they?”
What the man saw through his scope was a girl with a wooden club working her way over to a boy wearing a watermelon hat. The boy was buried up to his neck in the sand, completely immobilized. The girl, who had ears and a tail like a dog, proceeded straight toward him despite the fact that she was blindfolded, and brought the club down.
The club missed the boy’s head, gouging into the sand.
“Lucky kid,” the man grunted. “Got away with his head in one piece.”
The whole group was playing innocently, completely unaware of him and the other man watching them. They obviously didn’t suspect anything. Even the knights who would normally be guarding them were wearing swimsuits and had even joined the circle.
“Let ’em have their fun while they still can,” said the man beside him, his spotter, who was looking through a large spotter scope. “Playtime’ll be over pretty soon.” His voice was totally emotionless. “I’ll bet they’d never dream they’re being targeted from here.”
Wrapped in their camouflage clothing, melting into the vegetation around them, the men were now little more than machines focused on their mission.
“By the time they notice us, it’ll be too late,” the spotter said, not taking his eye from his scope.
“You’re right about that,” his companion replied. “Now, enough chatter. It’s time to get down to business.”
He focused once more on tracking his target with his scope. The spotter resumed watching as well.
In the end, I survived the nightmare game of watermelon busting without anyone actually cracking my head open.
I mean, do you even usually use a word like “survived” for watermelon busting? When did it become such a dangerous activity?
“That was not pleasant,” I groaned. Elvia had dug me out of the hole, and now I was wobbling my way over toward a big beach umbrella Minori-san had set up. I hadn’t moved at all during that game, not one finger, but I was tired down to my bones.
As I sheltered under the huge umbrella, Myusel gave me something to drink. Granted, in a world with no coolers or refrigerators, it wasn’t an ice-cold, refreshing soft drink, but still.
“You looked like you were having so much fun, Shinichi-sama.”
“I did? When?”
Personally, I had been battling fear of severe brain damage the entire time, but I guess to Myusel it had looked like I was enjoying myself.
“Wait—whoa!”
I casually sipped the tea Myusel gave me, and my eyes went wide. It was cold. Obviously much colder than the surrounding environment.
“What’s the story here? This is cold.”
“Oh, I used magic...” Myusel sounded a little bit shy.
“Cooling magic? Do you know that sort of thing?”
I knew she could use fire magic, and wind magic, and healing magic, and that unlike me—someone who was still learning the ropes—she could apply them in a variety of ways. But...
“No, sir. Minori-sama taught me...”
Myusel said she had put the pot of tea in a larger container, filled the container with water, and then hit the water with carefully modulated wind magic.
That’s right: vaporization. When water evaporates, it takes heat from the surrounding area with it. By using wind to lower the humidity level of the surface of the water, the water would naturally start to evaporate, and the water that remained would be colder. Which, of course, would cool the teapot as well.
“So you continuously used wind magic, keeping an eye on the strength the entire time?”
“Yes, sir,” Myusel said with a nod. “I so wanted you to be able to enjoy a cold drink...”
“What consideration!” I exclaimed. This was a truly sweet and kind maid-san. “But Myusel, part of the reason we came here was so that you could have some time off, too. Don’t overwork yourself, okay?”
Using so much magic, controlling the intensity all the while, had to be tiring.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. Very much!” Myusel smiled. “I did some aquatic training while I was in the military, but I’ve never come to the water just to enjoy myself like this. And...”
“And... what?”
Myusel couldn’t quite look at me, but she smiled and said quietly, “It’s... my first chance to go somewhere with you, Shinichi-sama.”
My breath caught in my throat, and I could feel my heart pound.
True, it was our first trip together, if you didn’t count the excursion to Bahairam when I got kidnapped. But just having an adorable half-elf maid shyly use an expression like “my first” was enough to make me desperately moe.
Argh! My chest hurts! I think I’m going to die of moe!
O white-bikini’d goddess (Shinichi vision)! Do you mean to strike me down with moe?!
And so on and so forth, me working myself into a lather over Myusel’s cuteness.
“The two of you seem quite happy together despite the imperial presence.”
I didn’t know when Petralka had gotten there, but she didn’t sound very pleased.
“Y-Your Majesty!” Myusel said, jumping back from me as if she’d been shot. “I— It wasn’t my intention to—”
“We think you appeared to be having fun.”
“Uh... Petralka...?”
“We think you appeared to be having fun!” Petralka growled, less at Myusel than at me. Her Majesty was angry—in a full-on sulk, in fact.
Myusel looked like she might weep, and as for Petralka, she continued to give me the glaring of a lifetime. What did she want from me?
“Um... What is it you want me to do?”
“You ninja-poop!”
“Ninja-poop?!”
“Or should we say, ‘Strike your head against the corner of a tofu square and die!’? Not that we know precisely what ‘tofu’ is.”
“Petralka. I think the word you’re looking for is nincompoop.”
“Hrm,” Petralka said, crossing her arms. “We are not sure, but in any event, you are a ninja-poop.”
“You’ve picked up some awfully strange Japanese...”
“We are given to understand that it describes a man who cannot see what’s going on around him, is that not true?”
“Er... Well, basically, yeah.”
But why would she call me something like that just because I was a little slow to notice she’d walked over?
Whatever the case, I was fretting over how to handle this situation when...
“Hmm...”
Minori-san, who had disappeared for a few minutes after the watermelon busting was over, wandered back to us. I’d figured she had some sort of errand to handle, but maybe not.
“Minori-san?”
She had a strange look in her eye. It was... hard. Like, normally she seemed so soft and gentle, but now there was a tension in her expression. Often, this look meant that she was in her “JSDF soldier” mode, that she was thinking about her job.
Could that mean there was danger nearby?
“Minori-san?” I asked again. “Did something happen?”
“Shinichi-kun,” she said, “you said earlier that you saw something flash in the forest.”
I thought back to the light I had seen out of the corner of my eye just before the watermelon busting began. “Yeah, I did...”
I had also been totally ignored, so I hadn’t given it much thought after that.
“It just bugged me a little, and I went to have a look,” Minori-san said.
“Did you learn anything?”
“Not much to speak of. There was no sign that anyone had been there...”
“Really? Nothing at all?”
Minori-san crossed her arms in front of a chest larger than anything you would expect from someone so baby-faced and tilted her head in puzzlement.
Ooh! The placement of her arms emphasized the valley between— No! This wasn’t the time to be getting excited about that.
“I’ve had the same basic combat training as every other soldier,” she said, “but I’m a lot less knowledgeable when it comes to things like guerrilla warfare and special operations.”
That brought back memories of the special forces squad that had tried to kill me on one occasion.
“Rangers and the like are specialists at those kinds of things, so if someone with those qualifications were to be engaging in operations, I probably wouldn’t find them.”
Rangers were soldiers who had completed the Ground Self-Defense Force’s Ranger Courses and were entitled to wear the Ranger badge. They learned every conceivable form of combat and shooting, and polished their skills to an exceptionally high degree. The training included field fortifications, infiltration, air drops, waterborne infiltration, swimming while armed, emergency exfil, and every kind of fighting: in forests, at night, in the mountains, in the snow, in urban close quarters, and on and on. In other words, they were the JSDF’s elite of the elite. So naturally, special-ops commands tended to be Ranger parties.
“So... Does this mean we’re being targeted again?!”
I remembered all too well when the JSDF, who I had thought were on my side, came after me—with a commando unit, no less. Since that event, there hadn’t been any obvious interference from the Japanese government. The prime minister had changed, and I thought their approach had gotten calmer, or at least more subtle. Maybe I was being naïve.
“I don’t know yet,” Minori-san said. “They might be from Eldant, or Bahairam, or some other country. Although I doubt anywhere around here would use sniper rifles.”
“Sniper rifles?!”
“This is just a hunch, but I’m betting the light you saw was the reflection from a sniper scope lens. And you were targeted by special ops once before. If the higher-ups’ feelings haven’t changed, we shouldn’t be surprised if we find ourselves looking down the barrel of a sniper rifle.”
“So you mean some army force is after me again?!”
“We’re not at home, we’re not even in Marinos. Our security would naturally be lighter. Maybe they figured this was their chance.”
“But that’s ridiculous...!”
“I hope we can laugh it off like that,” Minori-san said. I could see her eyes behind her glasses, and I could tell that she was now really and truly the soldier, Koganuma Minori.
One male knight walked through the dim forest.
He was one of Garius’s direct subordinates, a distinguished and discerning man even among knights. There were more than a thousand knights in the Holy Eldant Empire, but not even a hundred of them reported directly to Garius. This man was still young, but his family background was impeccable, and he could expect to one day have a hundred or two hundred knights of his own reporting to him. In other words, an elite.
He didn’t speak as he walked through the woods. This forest was a fair distance from the lake, and the voices of Petralka and the others didn’t reach him. In fact, silence reigned around him.
The knight had received orders from Garius not to let anyone into the area near the lake.
The orders weren’t for this man alone, of course. There were more than thirty hand-picked knights patrolling the area, protecting it from any outside threats.
Garius judged that having a bunch of stern-looking men in full armor wandering around would make it hard to relax, and so he had chosen to station the empress’s royal guards as a second line of defense.
From the capital, the lake was a long ride even by bird-drawn carriage, and only fishers and woodspeople lived in the area. They had all been strictly ordered not to leave their homes for the day.
This all might be considered paranoia, but the time the empress had been kidnapped by the Assembly of Patriots still cast a long shadow over the empire’s thinking, and Garius and the other ministers expended no small amount of effort on protecting their leader.
The knight walked wordlessly through the forest.
There wasn’t a sound around him.
He had stuck cloth to the seams of his armor to mute any clanking of metal, and the leaf mold on the ground absorbed even the sound of his footsteps. The only noises to speak of were the occasional twig snapping under his boot, and the twittering of songbirds—nothing else disturbed the quiet.
The canopy blocked out the strong sunlight, and although shafts of sun broke through in places, for the most part the woods were dark.
“Sigh...” the knight exhaled, and then suddenly he stopped walking.
Wasn’t this whole thing futile?
He knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t stop the thought from occurring to him.
Nothing was happening. He was just walking back and forth around the same little spot. The work was mundane, boring, a far cry from the glorious life he had expected as a knight.
“No,” he told himself after a second, shaking his head. “This is part of a knight’s duty. The honorable work of protecting the person of the Empress. I will not neglect it.”
If nothing happened, that was a good thing. If all their patrolling ended in no more than tired legs, it would show that they really had done their job to protect Her Majesty.
Having thus reconsidered his situation, the knight focused afresh on the space around him.
A second later, though, he gasped as someone or something reached out from behind him, clapping a hand over his mouth.
Were they being attacked?!
But he hadn’t sensed anyone—he, a knight. He had a fair amount of confidence in his martial abilities, regardless of the discipline. He could use sword and bow. He knew horseback riding. Even hand-to-hand combat. He knew that against anything less than a professional opponent, he could emerge victorious without even drawing his blade.
And yet he had so readily allowed this person to get behind him, which in combat was equivalent to begging for death.
He was so shaken that it took him a moment to properly understand what had happened to him. As he reached for the sword at his belt, though, a voice whispered in his ear.
“...Koe wo dasu na.”
It was low, a man’s voice. It spoke in a foreign language the knight had never heard before, but the meaning was clear enough. He felt a touch of cold metal against his neck—presumably a blade. Make a sound and you die was the obvious message.
The knight grunted softly behind the hand covering his mouth.
If he made a careless move, he would be killed. But was there any guarantee that just going along at this moment would save him?
If not, then he had to resist, even at the cost of his life; he had to let his brethren know of the danger.
As he was having this thought, though, the voice said, “Sugu ni, raku ni shite yaru.”
Then the knight felt the hand on his neck tighten. The blood that should have made it to his brain was cut off, and shortly thereafter he lost consciousness.
The body of the unconscious knight was dragged into the bushes.
And then the forest returned to silence, as if nothing had even happened.
The shimmering sun was high in the southern sky—it was almost midday, and we were all resting under the big sun umbrella.
Everyone had worn themselves out playing during the morning, but they also agreed—especially Myusel and Elvia and the others—that they still hadn’t played enough.
For me and Minori-san, the Japanese here, going to the seashore (okay, the lakeshore—close enough) in summer, putting on swimsuits and playing in the water was just normal, but I guess it wasn’t something they often did in the Eldant Empire. It probably didn’t help that the nation was landlocked.
So although everyone looked a little confused at first, once they caught on to how much fun it could be, they got super into it.
I include Petralka and her female knights in that statement. This lake was officially an imperial retreat, land open only to the empress and her family, but it appeared that their use of the water consisted mainly of going on lazy boat rides; putting on a swimsuit to run and swim was not part of the agenda.
Not to mention, for the empress to clown around with people of lower station like this was practically unheard of. And if it ever had been heard of, I’m sure it hadn’t been welcomed or approved of. That was just the nature of class differences. But now...
“The ‘o-bentou’ you make are indeed delicious, Myusel,” Petralka said as she sampled lunch from our picnic basket.
When you picture an empress eating, you probably imagine a white tablecloth lined with an array of knives and forks—but none of that could be found here. All the games hadn’t just made people tired, but hungry too, and they wanted something they could chow down on quickly.
“This ‘onigiri’ is a food from Ja-pan, is it not?”
“Yes, Majesty. I’ve been learning from Minori-sama.”
Minori-san and I had ended up as the catalysts for an otherwise uncommon meeting of royal and commoner. We were effectively treated as nobles, but what we really were was citizens of a foreign country, not nobility. We weren’t technically commoners, either, but instead had the flexibility to move freely between the two—and that alone naturally helped close the gap.
Even granting that Petralka and Myusel were a special case, Garius and the female knights had started to talk directly to Myusel and Elvia, at least a few words at a time—they must have been tired of constantly having to go through me and Minori-san.
“Hm. At first we found this dark ‘nori’ of yours unpleasant, but in fact the taste is delicious! We understand it is made from an underwater plant?”
“Seaweed, technically,” I said.
“Hrm? Are these different? They are both frequently used in foreign cooking...”
Petralka openly praised Myusel’s culinary skills as she munched on a big riceball.
And she was right: I was Japanese, and even I found Myusel’s cooking delicious. Just the right amount of salt; the consistency not too hard and not too soft.
Some people might dismiss it as just a riceball. But the simpler something is, the more difficult it is to pursue its true essence. It can’t come apart in your hand, but it should melt when you put it in your mouth. I’ll bet even Minori-san didn’t expect Myusel to master making onigiri so thoroughly in such a short time. Maybe this was Myusel’s particular genius. She might even be able to swing sushi, if maybe not at the level of a master with years of training.
I was mulling this over, riceball in hand, when—
“Um... Shinichi-sama? Is it not to your liking?”
Myusel was looking at me, concerned.
“No, it’s delicious.”
“Really? Thank goodness...” Her face softened into a relieved smile.
I was flattered that I could make her so happy with just a few simple words. The true spice to this food is your beautiful smile. Yeah, sure. If I could say that sort of thing with a straight face, maybe I could actually get somewhere with someone, but just thinking about it made my stomach clench.
“Sensei!”
At that moment, I heard a familiar voice. I looked over to see a tall boy and a short girl walking over.
It was the elf, Loek, and the dwarf, Romilda. Both were pupils at my school—in other words, my students.
Elves and dwarves didn’t usually get along, and these two had once been known to fight about every little thing, but I felt like I was seeing them together more and more often. Would it be giving myself too much credit to imagine I was the “catalyst” for this, too...?
“Sorry to crash your party, sensei!” Loek said, looking pleased with himself.
The parents of both of these students possessed a certain standing in the empire. Despite being an elf—a demi-human—Loek’s father had enough stature to stand in the imperial council, and that must have been how Loek got wind of us coming here.
Which was all well and good, but...
“Sensei! When I heard you and the other teachers were coming here to escape the heat—well, I just couldn’t sit still!” Loek said.
“And I came along to keep an eye on this dumb-elf...”
“What are you two doing here?!” a swimsuit-clad female knight demanded.
“Uh...” The sudden shouting set both newcomers back on their heels.
The knights advanced with their hands on their swords. It was Minori-san who stopped them.
“These kids are okay. They’re our students.”
“Hrm. Is... Is that so...” The knights didn’t look prepared to accept this immediately, but they let go of their weapons—and Loek and Romilda.
“But as for you,” Minori-san said, narrowing her eyes at our visitors, “how did you get here? No one but us is supposed to be allowed in right now. Didn’t any of the patrols stop you?”
At the moment, the area was being diligently patrolled to prevent anyone unauthorized from getting close. From what I had heard, something like thirty knights were on the job. There was no way a couple of laypeople like Loek and Romilda could have just waltzed in here.
And yet here they were.
“We... didn’t see anyone,” Loek replied, surprised.
He had no reason to lie, so it must have been true that they hadn’t run into any guards.
“Hmm. What are Reydas and the others doing?” Garius, an uncharacteristic cloud on his face, pulled out a magic crystal, maybe something he used to communicate with his knights. “What’s the point of having patrols if they’re just going to let a couple of kids—”
Here were Loek and Romilda, who had reached us without being delayed by a single knight.
Could that be just luck? Were the knights being lazy?
Or else...
“No way...” I remembered the flash I had seen earlier. Hadn’t Minori-san said that it could be a sniper rifle?
“I think something might have happened!” I said to Garius in a panic. “We’d better investigate!”
“I agree, Minister Cordobal,” Minori-san said. “I think it might be best to get your knights together and do a head count.”
I had been told that Garius’s subordinates were true elites, even among the ranks of Eldant’s knights. They had to be skilled in every kind of combat, of course, but they also had to have good personalities and above-par mental fortitude. I couldn’t imagine them abandoning their duty.
And that meant there had to be something else going on. Like, say, that they had somehow been rendered unable to patrol.
“Minori-san is right,” I said. “Something may have happened to them. We really need to go make sure that—”
But Garius shook his head, interrupting me. “No,” he said. “Calm yourself, Shinichi, and you, Minori. I know my knights better than anyone. I doubt there’s any cause for concern. I think a bout of significant luck may account for these children.”
“But...”
“There’s no need to worry.” His expression softened a little. “I’ll send one of the female knights to make contact. And in the unlikely event that someone did breach our perimeter, we have the female knights here with us. Were this boy and girl not stopped by that very line?”
He was right; Loek and Romilda had found themselves confronted by the royal contingent. But still...
“You must have more faith in us,” Garius said firmly, and there was nothing more I could say.
The water was still and calm. It was clear, but the light could only reach down so far, and this particular spot was as opaque as if ink had been spilled into the water. The wind caused occasional little ripples, along with quiet splashes, but otherwise there was no sign of movement.
The water, and everything about it, was quiet.
Then, with no warning, a greenish shadow began to surface. It was almost as if the water itself was bubbling up—and then breaking. Out of the receding water appeared a strange but unmistakably human face. A carbon-Kevlar helmet, along with black-and-green face paint, made it hard to immediately recognize the figure as human because of the color and shape. The figure emerged up to its nose, causing only the slightest of ripples.
It never made a sound.
Maybe the first figure was scouting out the situation, because others soon appeared from the water in the same way. They breathed quietly through their noses, looking left and right—and then they disappeared beneath the water again.
A short while later, the alien figures reappeared in a spot a short distance away, looked around again, and then once again submerged.
They repeated this process several times. The men changed their position just a little each time, coming closer.
Closer to what?
Of course, it was...
None of the men spoke a single word. They didn’t need to.
The silhouette leading them glanced back at the shapes behind him. They all returned his gaze, silent. They could give and receive signals with just a look, and they were advancing inexorably on their target.
Slowly but surely, unnoticed.
After we’d had lunch and rested for a bit, we set about playing again.
I was still worried about the flash and the knights, but Garius insisted everything was fine, so I couldn’t really press the matter. Plus, I didn’t want to make Myusel and the others any more nervous than I had to, so we decided to go on with our plans.
And thus...
“K-Keep a good hold! Absolutely do not let go!” Petralka said with what could have been taken for desperation.
She said she had never been swimming, so I had gone into the lake with her to teach her. As I’d expected, in a landlocked country like Eldant, the majority of people who had never served the army and therefore hadn’t received aquatic training didn’t know how to swim. Garius, as a knight, could handle himself in the water, but for Petralka this was all new. It sounded like she had never even put her face underwater. Swimming was nothing like washing your face; she knew you couldn’t breathe and that it was all too easy to suck in water and suffocate, so she seemed to have a healthy fear of drowning.
That was why I decided to start by taking her out to where the water was no deeper than her ankles so she could get used to it. Then we would work on actually getting into the water, and finally on the basics of swimming—a bog standard pool training regimen.
“If you take your hands away, we shall die!”
“Uh-huh. Don’t worry, Your Majesty, I know. I won’t let you go, so go ahead and kick.”
Petralka really must have been afraid of putting her face in the water, because she executed her flutter kicks with her head held as high as she could.
Unfortunately, a person has to put their head down in order to float. Otherwise, the lower body just progressively sinks. The head is the heaviest single part of the human body, so with it sticking up in the air, it’s impossible to float. It only makes sense.
Understanding a physical principal like that, though, and getting your body to act on it are two different things.
“Shinichi! Do you think your teaching method may be flawed? We are kicking just as you said, yet we continue to sink!”
“I told you, you have to put your face in the water if you want this to work!”
“B—But!”
“Come on, just try it.”
“We do not wish to! You, teach us to float without putting our face in the water!”
“It just doesn’t work that way...”
And there you had it. Kanou Shinichi’s Swim Lessons, gone for naught thanks to the stubbornness of their only pupil.
Myusel, watching from nearby, said, “Er, ahem, Your Majesty? I learned to swim in the military. If you wish, perhaps I could teach—”
“Leave us be, Myusel! We are happy like this!”
“Er...?” It seemed like this surprised me more than it did Myusel.
What did she mean, she was happy? Practically since we’d started, it had been a constant stream of “You are a terrible teacher” and “Are you sure you know how to swim?”
Or did she really mean that she liked teasing me more than learning anything about being in the water? That would be one sadistic empress...!
“But Petralka, instead of having me bumble through this, I bet it would be a lot faster to have someone who learned to swim here help you—”
“Silence, knave! We shall learn how to swim in the Ja-panese style, from you, Shinichi!”
“Uh... Sure...”
“And Myusel, you must be more sensitive!”
“Yes? I—I’m very sorry!” She blinked as if to say she wasn’t quite sure what she was apologizing for, but nonetheless bowed her head and withdrew.
“Now, let us resume our lesson! Shinichi, make sure you’re holding our hands!” She re-tightened her grip on me. The loli(-ish) empress returned to kicking her legs, holding my hands—and still keeping her face out of the water.
“Look, you’ve got to get your face down.”
“We shall not! This way is more fun!”
“Fun?”
“Er... What we mean is, you should not complain, but do as your empress commands!”
“As you wish, Your Majesty...”
I half-sighed, but clasped her hands as instructed.
I knew how much Petralka had to put up with by virtue of being empress. When I thought of all that, I figured there was no harm in indulging her a little bit. A lot of people saw her as the empress before they saw her as just a young woman, so she always had to watch what she was saying. Maybe that had built up until it expressed itself this way.
“Shinichi-kun!”
I heard my name from the shore just about the time Petralka was finally beginning to lower her face as she kicked.
Still holding the empress’s hands, I looked over my shoulder. The first thing I saw was an ample bosom wrapped in a black bikini, bouncing as it approached me at high speed.
Ohhh! What volume! What bounciness!
It was pretty stimulating for a healthy young man of my age.
“Ohhh...”
The assault of the bouncing boobs upon my instincts caused me to completely forget what I was currently doing.
Which is to say, I let go of the hands I was holding.
“Hrfp! Hack! Coughgh!”
Ack! C-Crap! The sight of that bouncing bust had caused me to totally forget about Petralka for an instant...!
“Wh-What are you doing?!” Petralka exclaimed, somehow managing to grab onto my body and try to pull herself up.
“S-Sorry about that...!”
“And after we instructed you so many times not to let go of us—”
“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry!”
And I did feel guilty. But boobs—those boobs were calling to me! They jiggled up and down, calling my name as they got ever nearer! What young man wouldn’t find his mind full of them? Innocent on account of boobies, right?!
A great deal of basically meaningless self-defense was rushing through my brain at that moment.
“Shinichi-kun, Your Majesty! It’s terrible!” the boobs—I mean, Minori-san—said as she came up to us, not trying to hide the panic on her face. “Your Majesty, we can’t account for the full number of knights assigned to patrol duty!”
“What’s this?” Petralka asked, frowning. She was still hanging off me in roughly the same way as a koala bear, so between us we looked pretty silly, but forget about that for a moment. “Tell us more, Minori!”
“Right...”
Minori-san said that the female knight Garius had sent to check on the patrols never came back, so he dispatched a further pair of knights. They discovered that of the thirty male knights on patrol, over half—twenty individuals—were missing. They were on a triple shift with ten people resting at a time, with each knight assigned to a specific area. But allegedly, the twenty men who had been out patrolling never came to switch shifts.
“And what’s the meaning of this?” Petralka asked, going pale. “Have twenty of Garius’s picked men disappeared without the other ten even noticing?”
“What Minori says is true, Your Majesty.”
One more person approached us—the bare butler himself, Garius.
“And I don’t believe it will be possible to fully protect the imperial retreat with just ten male and four female knights. I suggest we tighten the perimeter and withdraw promptly.” He squinted at us. “Without knowing how numerous our enemies are, we cannot fight them.”
“‘Enemies’...” Petralka’s eyes widened at the word. “So you think those knights were felled by something or someone?”
“Every one of them was a skilled warrior, elite fighters who understood vigilance. I cannot imagine that even one of them would deliberately abandon their post, let alone all of them together. I think it’s reasonable to suspect that they were overcome by something.”
We all looked at each other, silent. Our nightmares were coming true in the worst way possible. An enemy was close. Someone or something powerful enough to take out twenty trained knights without making a sound.
Most likely soldiers, armed with modern tactics and weaponry. Otherwise, I couldn’t fathom what could have done this to Garius’s men.
Wait... The sniper rifle. Why haven’t they picked us off yet?
The idea bugged me. Why would they need to whittle down our patrol? We were totally vulnerable, absorbed in playing in the lake. They should have been able to snipe us any time they felt like it.
So why didn’t they?
The idea that they were draining our fighting strength was supremely unsettling, not least because we had no idea why. Could it be that killing wasn’t their objective? That they meant to capture someone here as a hostage?
When it came to candidates for hostages around here, the obvious choices were Petralka or Garius.
Or maybe... me.
Loek and Romilda were both from noble families, so they would have some value as captives. But they hadn’t arrived until after the number of knights started to drop, and more importantly, nobody but them had even known that they were going to show up. I doubted the “enemy” knew something like that if we didn’t.
Still, if they take a hostage, what do they do then? Negotiate with the Holy Eldant Empire? Things have been so quiet, though—why now? Did a change in leadership produce a new policy? Or...
I couldn’t seem to get my thoughts straight.
And I certainly had no idea what this enemy of ours was after.
Even though it was the middle of the day, everything around us was covered by a clinging darkness.
The dense foliage blocked out the sunlight. A few shafts of sun poked through the trees, so it was at least possible to see what was around us—but the view felt awfully confined.
On top of that, the soft leaf mold underfoot gave us the impression that we were sinking into the ground with every step we took. Tree roots poked up here and there, a hazard that could easily trip an unwary traveler.
In short, this wasn’t a place that was made for walking. I felt a pang of sympathy when I thought of the knights who’d had to patrol here.
“All right,” I said, brushing sand off my body and looking around. “Show time.”
The vegetation was especially thick here. If an enemy were wearing camouflage, he might be standing right next to you and you wouldn’t notice.
I thought back to what had happened about fifteen minutes earlier.
I’d had just one idea about how to deal with an enemy we couldn’t see.
Assuming they were part of the JSDF, or were otherwise armed with modern weaponry, we couldn’t hope to beat them in a straight fight. We might not even be able to run away. When it came to the hunt, pros might as well be a different form of life from amateurs like us. Confronting them head-on would be the most foolish possible choice.
And so we decided to do something unorthodox.
Specifically...
“Elvia,” I called to the beast girl who was swimming in the lake. She was somehow managing to kick up geysers of water to either side even though she was just doing the doggy paddle. “I need your help. Can you dig another hole like you did earlier?”
“A hole? Well, not to brag, but holes are kind of my specialty!” She gave a little snort. “But, uh... why?”
Minori-san grabbed one of Elvia’s floppy ears and whispered, “Well...” Slowly but unmistakably, Elvia’s expression tightened into one of anxiety.
When all was said, she replied, “I get it. I’m happy to help however I can!”
And what was our battle plan?
First, in order to throw the enemy off, we would deliberately appear to continue to just keep playing. Another game of “watermelon busting.”
So, just like that morning, Elvia dug another hole.
Earlier, she had popped out of the pit and I had climbed in—but this time, Elvia didn’t emerge. I climbed in after her, then Minori-san and Myusel, along with the female knights, filled the hole in.
As they did so, I proceeded through the tunnel Elvia had dug.
Once the hole was covered, the girls set up a beach ball impersonating my head and covered it with the watermelon hat, then Myusel and the others proceeded to start busting. It would look to the enemy like I was trapped, just as I had been that morning.
While whoever was after us was distracted, Elvia and I would surface somewhere well distanced from everyone else and go to the bird-drawn carriage we had used to get here. Our lizardman couple, Brooke and Cerise, were waiting there as drivers. We would link up with them and catch the enemy from behind...
To be perfectly honest, it was a ridiculous idea, one that I would never normally have even considered trying. But this wasn’t Japan; it was another world, it was the Holy Eldant Empire. A world where it wasn’t actually surprising to see lizardmen and werewolves walking around—and most likely, modern Japanese thinking didn’t account for their special talents.
Elvia’s tunnel-digging, for example, I could only describe as incredible. I had expected this to take about half an hour and had worried (among other things) that I might be buried alive in the process, but neither of those things came true; we soon found ourselves above ground, just near the woods.
“Phew, glad that went so well!” Elvia said, grinning from ear to ear, her face covered in dirt and sand. “I’m so glad my digging skills could help us out!”
“And us,” said Brooke, “we need simply find this ‘enemy,’ yes?”
We had another unexpected ability on our side—the lizardmen’s senses. Reptiles have what you might call a type of infrared sensor built right into their bodies. With their so-called pit organs, they can search out even animals that are trying to hide. Standard camo wouldn’t fool these two.
“That’s right. Please?” I said. “You’re the only ones who can do this.”
“I must say, Master, those are words to get one’s blood stirring,” Brooke said. “Don’t y’ agree?”
“Indeed,” Cerise said with a nod.
Unlike elves or werewolves, lizardman expressions can be hard to read, but I had the faint sense that Brooke was grinning.
“We’ll do all we can to help you,” he said.
“Okay then, here’s the plan,” I said. “We split up. I’ll go with Brooke, Elvia with Cerise. If anything happens, just shout as loud as you can. Don’t assume you have to handle whatever comes up on your own.”
“Got it! I’m sure Cerise-san will protect me!”
“I appreciate your confidence,” Cerise said, “but I think you’re quite capable of protecting yourself.”
Lizardmen were demi-humans, too; they had physical capabilities exceeding those of a normal human. Their main weakness was cold temperatures, but in the middle of summer like this, that wasn’t likely to matter.
“All right,” I said. Then we split up in the woods, one pair of us going left and the other right.
These woods ran from north to south along the shore of the lake. Brooke and I were checking the northern half, while Elvia and Cerise handled the southern side.
Wordlessly, Brooke and I worked our way northward. The forest got thicker and thicker. It was fearfully dark, even though I knew it was the middle of the day. Maybe not “can’t see your hand in front of your face” dark, but dark enough that you couldn’t be certain what was hiding in the denser vegetation. If there was anyone camouflaged around here, then I, with only the visible spectrum at my disposal, had no hope of finding them.
“Man, am I glad you and Cerise are here,” I said.
“I must admit I’m a bit embarrassed to be so well thought of,” Brooke replied, although I didn’t see anything resembling a blush.
“I’m just saying it because it’s true.”
“Master,” Brooke said after a moment’s pause, “you truly are a strange one.”
The conversation progressed a little bit at a time, line by line, as we worked our way through the woods, relying on Brooke’s pit organs to search. At length...
“Master,” Brooke said suddenly, coming to a halt. “There’s something over there with the same temperature as a human.”
“How many?”
“I’m not sure, but... more than just one or two.”
Were they enemies—or our missing knights? At that moment, I had no way to know. I figured it would be best to avoid immediately making direct contact.
“Let’s go around, see if we can come up from behind. If they’re enemies, we could get ourselves in trouble.”
“As you say, sir.”
Brooke started walking in a new direction, glancing to me and nodding. He seemed to be saying, Follow me—and implying that silence was called for from here on.
Given that he had reputedly been a great warrior once, I decided to listen to him.
We took a sharp left from the direction we had been going and began approaching whatever it was that had a similar temperature to humans. We moved as quietly as we could, trying to avoid even letting our clothes rustle.
The silence weighed heavily on me. You’d think this place would be cool from the lack of sunlight, yet I felt an unpleasant bead of sweat trickling down my forehead.
I hoped they weren’t enemies. If they happened to be our allies, the knights, that would be great.
But what if we were walking into an ambush?
I wasn’t alone—I had Brooke, a very heartening companion. But he’d said we were dealing with more than just a small number here. Maybe enough that we would have scant hope of victory if it came to a fight. That’s why I was hoping it wouldn’t. In fact, I was mostly hoping to stay out of Brooke’s way.
Hence, my plan involved doing the absolute minimum to confirm who we were dealing with.
Suddenly, Brooke stopped, pointing at a bush. He seemed to mean, Over there.
His tongue slid in and out of his mouth quickly. He was nervous, too.
The bush started to bother me. It seemed unnatural—sort of like it was only partly there. Like it was floating or something.
Could it be a trap? Or...
Brooke turned toward me and made a pushing gesture. I assumed he wanted me to wait here.
I nodded and crouched down. When Brooke saw that I was safely hidden, he cautiously began to approach the bush.
He reached out ever so slowly, parting the leaves—and just as I expected, they slid aside readily. I was right: it was just a fake made of dried branches.
Brooke looked back at me, and I nodded again to encourage him. He began to clear away the pretend bush—
And then stopped in shock. Underneath it were the bodies of the male knights. A female knight in a swimsuit was visible, too. For some reason, they had been lain politely on a sheet stretched over the moss and leaf detritus.
“I knew it...” I came up to Brooke and took the female knight’s hand, checking her pulse. She still had one. That meant she was alive. Her heart was beating. Her body was still warm. But...
“Hm...?” Brooke made to rouse one of the male knights, but then looked puzzled.
He had discovered a hard, dark-green ball about the size of a fist.
I had seen something like it in a magazine or someplace.
It was a hand grenade.
“Brooke, get back! It’s a trap!”
It was a familiar trick from war movies and such—hide a hand grenade under a dead body to get any friends who come to help the guy...!
I backpedaled as fast as I could, trying to get some distance from the bomb. Brooke started to do the same, but an instant later he yelped and flew into the air.
He hadn’t jumped of his own accord. He had been pulled up, backwards. He had been caught in one of the oldest traps in the book, a rope tied to a tree.
“Brooke!”
Just for a second, I was distracted by my friend hanging there in the air. But that second was all the enemy needed. I felt something at my neck from behind me, probably a knife.
“Don’t move,” a man’s voice growled.
He was speaking Japanese.
I knew it...!
He had to be with the JSDF.
“Hrk...”
Even if I were to call out, my voice would never reach Myusel and the others. And then we would be killed. That would be it: a quick, useless death.
I could see they had a knife to Brooke, too. Something bigger, large enough to cut through underbrush—a so-called jungle knife. I didn’t think I could expect help from him.
And that was it. I was out of ideas.
Vacation? I was going to get the ultimate in time off.
I felt the despair start to press down on me.
And then...
The lakeside was home to the strangest of sights.
“What... the... hell?”
Specifically, almost a dozen camouflaged JSDF soldiers, each of them ripped.
Plus, they were sitting in a line on the ground.
Standing in front of them and staring them down, though, in a wide stance with her hands clasped behind her back, was a girl in glasses, a black bikini covering her generous endowment. And woman or not, she, too, was JSDF.
I’m referring, as you may have guessed, to Minori-san.
Towering behind her was a giant dragon—er, or actually, the giant Faldra, a transforming, dragon-shaped mecha created by Loek and Romilda on behalf of the Eldant Empire.
It had, I gathered, been their ride over here.
All this made for a perfectly surreal picture, but what made it even stranger was the silver badge that glittered on the left arm of each and every person sitting on the ground. A diamond sitting atop a laurel wreath: the Ranger badge.
As I said before, this was proof that they were the elite of the elite of the Ground Self-Defense Force. Famous for having the most grueling training in every discipline. Earning your Ranger badge meant three long months of brutal exercises, and demanded the mental fortitude to match. I had heard all sorts of things: like how no matter what your superiors asked you to do, no matter how much abuse they heaped on you, you could only answer “Ranger!!”; no talking back was permitted; and the last four days or so of the training were an extended combat simulation in which you went with no sleep and hardly any rest of any kind.
I didn’t know how much of it was actually true, of course, but it was a world a home security guard like me could hardly even imagine.
Now, these men among men sat with their equipment splayed out before them. Instead of the standard Type-89 normally issued to members of the JSDF, they had... these.
“Cameras?”
I couldn’t hold back a surprised mutter. They had stocks and grips like sniper rifles—but they were cameras, with extreme telephoto lenses. This had to be what I had seen flashing in the sunlight.
There was a panoply of similar equipment as well: waterproof, high-res digital cameras; similarly water-tested high-fidelity movie cameras.
Huh.
So...
“Are they... paparazzi?”
“Shinichi-sama! Welcome back,” Myusel exclaimed. She came over toward me from where she had been watching the soldiers from a distance. Petralka, Garius, and the four female knights were all there as well.
“Thank goodness you’re safe!” Myusel said.
“Well, I mean, safe...”
Brooke and I had really been something of a diversion all along. No matter how strong Brooke might be, and even if Elvia and Cerise represented considerable physical capacity themselves, it wouldn’t have been smart to try to confront the JSDF head-on. If they’d had guns, we would have been killed for sure.
That’s why we had decided to scout things out first. But even then, there was a risk of being detected. So we decided that if we were spotted, our rule would immediately change from scouting to diversion. While the enemy was focused on us, Loek and Romilda would make for the Faldra, bring it over, and exfiltrate the lot of us. That was the plan, anyway.
Based on the fact that Loek and Romilda had walked straight through the enemy’s perimeter even after the knights had been taken out, I assumed a little movement wasn’t going to be a problem.
“Then the two of them kindly brought the Faldra here,” Myusel said. “The wind magic they were using stirred up the surface of the lake.”
And just so happened to reveal the JSDF soldiers creeping towards us under the water. Strangely enough, no sooner had they been discovered than the soldiers put up their hands in a game-over gesture and surrendered.
What was it they were after? It didn’t look like a single one of them was carrying a gun; instead, they each had a camera. Even if they were on an intelligence-gathering mission, you’d think some kind of weaponry would be called for...
“Captain Satou,” Minori-san said. Her mouth turned up into a small smile, but behind her spectacles, her eyes weren’t laughing at all. “What is the meaning of this?”
The way her arms were crossed in front of her chest pushed her boobs up, which made for a fantastic visual as far as I was concerned—but I got the feeling that a careless word to Minori-san at this moment could result in my untimely demise. She didn’t have a weapon, or even really proper clothing, but she was vastly more intimidating than any of the soldiers thanks to her palpable rage.
“If you have any excuses, any pleas to make, now’s the time to try them out.”
“Er...” one of the soldiers said uncomfortably. I thought I recognized him. His face was covered in camouflage paint, but I could tell it was Captain Satou, the man I had seen with Matoba-san. He ran an embarrassed finger along his cheek and said, “Well, uh, calm down, Koganuma.”
“I’m very calm,” Minori-san said. “But I’m not amused by any of this. Are you aware that Shinichi-kun was attacked once before by special forces?! How much thinking does it take to realize how anxious he and I would be with you guys skulking around out there?!”
“I understand what you’re saying, but we had our reasons!”
“Well, perhaps you could enlighten me, Captain Satou.”
Minori-san sounded polite, but she obviously had Captain Satou by the short hairs. In a rank-based organization like the JSDF, a Private First-Class like Minori-san was farther away from someone like Captain Satou than she was from God, and for her to take him to task like this would normally be unimaginable...
“Koganuma,” Captain Satou said, straightening up with a discreet cough and a less than discreet glance at Minori-san’s chest. “You’re the reason.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Your, uh... your body!” Captain Satou clenched his fist emphatically.
“I’m sorry?”
“You may not know it, but there are many silent fans of yours throughout the Eldant expedition,” the captain said, speaking fluently now. “When it became known that you and Kanou-kun were going to be beachgoing—or maybe I should say lakegoing in this case—in any event, that you were going to go swimming, well, the demand for a picture of you in a bathing suit was immense...!”
Minori-san was absolutely dumbfounded. I’m not sure what Captain Satou made of that, but he nodded and continued, “Requests came in for those of us who were going to be on break the same time as you to please get photographs. I myself could hardly sit still when I heard you were going to be here in a swimsuit. The thought of your profound assets—that they—the image of them cradled by a swimsuit—how could I not—!”
Captain Satou boldly made a confession that could easily have been the most embarrassing moment of his life.
Hmm. A man’s man, indeed.
“Once we had agreed to the plan, the rest was easy, and our unity was unquestioned. We immediately requisitioned photographic equipment from Japan, including Russian-made items like these.” He gestured toward the sniper rifle-like stock and scope. “They were only too easy for those of us accustomed to modern weaponry to use...”
Minori-san raised a beach-sandal-clad foot... and brought it down hard on the camera. There was a snapping sound from inside the long lens that made me want to cover my ears.
Yikes...!
“K-Koganuma! Do you know how much that cost?”
“Like I care!”
That wasn’t the end of Minori-san’s destructive rampage, either. The pro-quality digital cameras, the video recorders, equipment totaling I didn’t even know how much cash was smashed like so many toys under Minori-san’s enraged hands and feet. And it wasn’t just the cameras themselves that fell victim to her. She even pulled the memory cards out of their slots and made sure they were thoroughly mangled.
It might have looked to the untrained eye like she was just going berserk. But there was a method to her madness. She was launching kicks straight down. She was a trained martial artist, and no delicate precision equipment was going to withstand her moves.
“Ahhhh...!” The pained exclamations came not just from Captain Satou, but from every member of his unit. “Oh... Our blood and sweat and tears...”
I did, in fact, spot a genuine tear in Captain Satou’s eye. He must have really wanted those swimsuit shots of Minori-san...
“Captain Satou... and all of you!” Minori-san shouted at the seated soldiers when the destruction was over. Her shoulders were heaving. “What you’ve done is a disgrace to your Ranger abilities! Is this what you all went through three months of hell for? Is this what those badges symbolize to you?! And think about what would happen if you pulled a stunt like this and caused an international incident! If you spark a war between Eldant and Japan, how do you mean to pay for it?!”
“Erk...” Captain Satou flinched, thoroughly intimidated. After a moment, though, he said, “I will admit that this was shortsighted of us. But Koganuma, I must disagree that we’ve disgraced our capabilities as Rangers. This was not a waste of our training!” He wiped the tears from his eyes and puffed out his chest. I couldn’t quite decide if he looked really manly or completely pathetic.
“I don’t think you understand,” he said, “how many hearts will be buoyed by the pictures we took of you, or how much it will improve our morale! This is—yes, it is the love and dream of every man!”
“There’s nothing to understand!!”
An instant later, Minori-san’s iron fist was planted squarely in Captain Satou’s face.
Anyway, that’s the story.
Several days after our adventure by the lake...
“Thank you for the other day,” I said, bowing to a JSDF officer.
I was at the JSDF garrison at the training grounds on Amutech business. Today was the day that the items we’d ordered were due to arrive. Minori-san was all excited about the new BL stuff she was going to get. She’d been restless all day, and the moment we opened the door of the bird-drawn carriage, she bounded over to the containers.
“Ahh. It’s you.” Captain Satou greeted me with a thin smile. Despite taking Minori-san’s best punch, he didn’t show a single sign of injury now. I guess training really does elevate you above normal people.
With him, oddly enough, was Matoba-san.
“Say, I wanted to ask you,” Captain Satou said suddenly, turning to me. “We got a good photo. Maybe you’d like to buy it?”
“I’m sorry? Photo?”
He couldn’t mean...
“Gimmie.”
“I like that decisiveness,” Captain Satou grinned. He took the two thousand-yen bills I held out and traded me for a photograph. It was a glossy thing that showed Minori-san’s bikini-clad body with remarkable clarity.
“But Satou-san...”
“Yeah?”
“I thought Minori-san smashed all your cameras. I even saw her destroy the memory cards. So where did this come from?”
“Oh, that.” A corner of Captain Satou’s mouth tugged up, and he seemed just the tiniest bit pleased with himself. “Under the circumstances, I’m not surprised you didn’t notice. We weren’t the only ones out there. There was another squad—two others, in fact.”
“What?! Really?”
Captain Satou had to suppress a laugh. Was my reaction really that funny?
“They were the ones who were really tasked with taking the photographs. Our whole squad was a diversion. And by the way, all the memory cards had communications functions built in. As soon as we took a photo, they went to a simple server in the LAV. So she can smash ’em, but we’ve still got the data!”
Such careful preparation...!
I was belatedly shocked at how trained and prepared the JSDF was. If they had been really serious, and also out to kill us instead of photograph us, we would all have been dead by that lakeside, no question. After all, they had eliminated a squad of trained knights within just a couple of hours.
I thought back on the special ops squad that had come after me before. I saw now that their fatal flaw was that they didn’t know the territory well enough. If they’d had time to train in the Eldant Empire before the attack, the outcome would have been very, very different. The thought gave me the chills.
“Well, such is strategy,” Captain Satou said. “We got to see just how good we are and came out with some pictures of her. I’d call that a win.”
“You’d do all that just for some pictures of a girl in a swimsuit? Geez, the JSDF doesn’t mess around,” I said. “But we’re lucky it didn’t become an issue, huh, Matoba-san?”
“An issue?” he asked.
“I mean, I know Captain Satou and the others were just trying to get some photographs, but they really did knock out those knights. If the Eldant Empire found out about it, I don’t think they’d be happy...”
“Ah,” Matoba-san said, with a meaningful look at Captain Satou. “Well, maybe I can let him in on it.” Then he looked back at me. “That operation was conducted with the full knowledge of the Eldant Empire, so I don’t think there will be any problems.”
“Huh? The full knowledge?”
“The knights weren’t in on it, though. It was the JSDF’s way of teaching them a thing or two about strategy.”
“Teaching strategy? What are you talking about?”
“Simply put, we were showing them how to fight,” Captain Satou said. “Minister Cordobal and a lot of other retainers of the Eldant Empire are most interested in the Japanese military’s modern tactics. We did bring down a dragon, after all.”
“Ah...”
It was true: they had done it when we were filming our movie. The knights could only barely handle a dragon even with their mages to help them, yet the JSDF had done it with hardly any casualties. That’s the sort of thing that would get an empire’s attention.
“At the time, everyone assumed it was just a difference in firepower,” Captain Satou. “But they’ve started to think maybe it’s not just the guns. Maybe the way we fight is different, too. So they reached out to us.”
“But, uh, isn’t that sort of contrary to the policy the Japanese government is pursuing? I have to think there are all kinds of legal hurdles here...”
“No, the government was quite forward-thinking about this exercise,” Matoba-san said with a shrug. “Otherwise, we certainly couldn’t have deployed the troops.”
The government wanted this? But what in the world for?
“There was a certain instance in which the Eldant forces overcame a Japanese special ops unit, as I recall,” Matoba-san said, his voice laced with sarcasm. “That incident has caused the Eldant side to somewhat undervalue the achievements of the JSDF. To fail to give us our due, as they say. So while this was about imparting strategic principles, it was also something of a display of strength.”
“Geez...”
“Now, legally, as you say, there would be many problems with the JSDF conducting actual strategic training. We are a peaceful country that’s renounced war, after all. Still, though, Minister Cordobal has been most inquisitive regarding the state of our military strategy. And again, the JSDF was eager to demonstrate their capabilities to the Eldant side. So we hit upon the idea of strategic training in the form of what you might call a mock battle.”
“As shades of gray go, that’s pretty close to black...”
“The Eldant forces get to observe our tactics up close, and we get to show them just how able we are. Everybody gets what they want.”
“Uh...huh.”
Apparently, just under the surface, there had been a whole lot of shady dealings. Political maneuvering was way over my head; my only response to it was sheer exasperation. For better or for worse, though, it seemed like the Japanese government was taking a lot of different angles, and I couldn’t help being impressed by that.
“Sensei!! Satou-san!!” The voice of a boy I recognized reached us from the training ground.
“Oh—Loek?” Yes, there he was, the elf boy. “What are you doing here?”
Loek jogged up to Captain Satou, ignored my question, and instead pelted the officer with a burst of enthusiasm. “Satou-san! I hear you’re selling photos of Minori-sensei such as men treasure!”
“Hm?” Captain Satou said. Then he grinned and took Loek by the shoulders. “Quite a grapevine you’ve got, kid.”
“My burning passion for Minori-sensei makes the impossible possible!”
“That’s what I like to hear. Now... What’ve you got?”
“L-Let me see the goods first! Then we’ll talk!”
“Fine. Feast your eyes on... this.”
Captain Satou pulled several pictures out of his bag—photos in which the vivacious, and largely bare-skinned, Minori-san featured prominently.
“Y—Yes!! Minori-sensei’s boldly bikini’d body! Here I believed I had fixed it in my memory, and yet—! This Ja-panese technology truly is incredible! It produces such clear pictures...! What kind of ‘ca-me-ra’ did you use?!”
Loek gazed lasciviously at each of the photos with an enthusiasm that bordered on the frightening.
“Ahh, this and this and this and this! I can hardly choose! What wonderful pictures!”
“Hmm? Which wonderful pictures are you talking about, Loek?”
“All of them, obviously! I could spend my entire allowance on these without regret! These Made-in-Ja-pan magical items are just...! Don’t you agree, Romilda—”
And that was when it hit him.
“Huh?!”
Loek turned his saucer-sized eyes from the photos to what was immediately behind him. A small dwarf girl had inserted herself between me and him, standing there with her arms crossed.
“When did you get here?!” Loek exclaimed.
“You... You perverted elf!”
“Hrgh?!”
The next thing that hit him was Romilda. She may have been a girl, but dwarves were known for their strength. Loek’s slim body went tumbling through the air, then he crashed face-first into the ground.
Look, he’s twitching.
“Let me handle this pointy-eared creep,” Romilda said, then she grabbed Loek by the collar and dragged him away.
Captain Saotu and I watched them go. All we could do was look at each other and exchange wry smiles.