Chapter Three: Seven Rotten Days
It was almost like watching a dance.
It was straightforward, unadorned. But somehow beautiful.
You could argue about whether it was closer to dancing or fighting. There was no question that, insofar as they were about executing every movement with the maximum efficiency, kata had a lot in common with dancing. If you wanted to maximize your power, you couldn’t ignore your breathing and even pulse; you had to establish a rhythm.
It was almost like a physical exercise regimen, performed repeatedly following specific steps. A hand moved gently through the air—then a leg lashed out, suddenly, like a flash of light. Although it might look surprising to an observer, I suspected the movement had a logic all its own.
That fact made everything flow together seamlessly. It made it look natural, and strong, and above all, beautiful.
I was in the mansion’s backyard. Unlike out front of the house, the ground here was pretty level—it was almost idyllic.
The person I’d been looking for was standing right in the middle of it, silently moving her body.
At first glance, she didn’t seem very muscular. Her long hair was tied up in a bun, and she wore glasses; it made her look kind of like a librarian, although she also had a restrained beauty. When I saw her practicing her martial arts, though, it reminded me that she was one of those modern-day samurai who protected Japan—the soldiers of the Japan Self-Defense Force.
Koganuma Minori, Private First Class in the Ground Self-Defense Force.
She was a member of the unit that had been secretly posted here, to the Holy Eldant Empire, and she was also my bodyguard. Normally she lived up to that impression of quiet beauty, but when she really got mad she had been known to do things like kick a dragon in the nose. You didn’t want to screw around with her.
Minori-san didn’t appear to notice me watching her, but went on repeating the movements of her kata. She must have been really focused.
I assumed the framework for what she was doing came from the hand-to-hand combat training all members of the JSDF received (formally referred to, I had been told, as “Japan Self-Defense Force Empty-Handed Martial Training”). But I thought I could also see a hint of Chinese quanfa in her movements, possibly a product of her upbringing in a dojo. She had the effortlessness of someone whose father had trained her in the martial arts since she was a girl—her movements looked as instinctual as an animal’s.
I couldn’t hold back a “Wow...”
...because with each move she executed, the soft (but certainly not drooping), impactful bust under her tank top gave a great jiggle. Bounce, bounce. Whoa. Soon I found my eyes pinned there.
Minori-san had complained to me in the past that a big chest got in her way, and that even if she wrapped it, it was often uncomfortable when she moved quickly. Speaking as an observer, I considered it a blessing, but then, I didn’t have to live with it.
Ahh... If indeed it causes her so much trouble, then let me support her all-too-soft, all-too-bouncy bust with my own two hands... Gently, pushing up from below.
And so on, my mind overflowing with pervy thoughts that, I suspected, were perilously near obvious.
“Oh, hey.” Minori-san finally noticed I was there, breaking off her kata. “Shinichi-kun...”
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said, walking up to her.
“It’s no big deal,” she said, shaking her head. “I was almost done, anyway.” She took off her glasses. Then she grabbed a towel hanging from a branch of a nearby tree and wiped the sweat from her face. The sight of it gleaming on her neck, her arms unabashedly exposed, was at once innocent and erotic, giving my libido a healthy kick.
Ahh... Look at the sweat drip from her hair and down into that soft valley. I found myself unwittingly following it with my eyes.
Oh, sweat! Sweat! What a lucky fluid you are! If only I could be so—
“You could have just said something, you know.”
“Huh? Oh, uh, I mean, you were busy training and all...”
I refocused on Minori-san’s face as quickly as I could. Obviously, I wasn’t about to tell her that I had forgotten all about what I came here for when I was taken by surprise by a pair of roguish... Well, I could tell her, but I feared the consequences.
“So, uh, Minori-san, here.” Hoping to steer the conversation away from immediate danger, I reached into my pocket. I hadn’t come here to spy on Minori-san’s boobs—I mean, her morning training—but to give her this.
“Your key. Try not to lose it, okay?” I pulled it out of my pocket and passed it to Minori-san, who had put her glasses back on in the meantime.
It was a card slightly smaller than the palm of my hand. It was a square made mostly of metal, but the center consisted of a transparent material that seemed somewhere between plastic and glass. Whatever the material was, you could see a rainbow in it under light. I held it up to the sun; it was surprisingly beautiful.
“Thanks, that’s a big help. I keep forgetting about this thing.”
“That’s understandable. They only introduced them really recently,” I said. “Even Myusel forgets sometimes.”
The card was a “key.” A magical item meant to help with the mansion’s security. The JSDF had set up some electronic alarm doodads around the perimeter of our house, but there was always the possibility that this world’s magic could allow someone to slip by them undetected, so we supplemented the electronic alarms with these new, magical ones.
They consisted of two magical devices: these keys, and a “lock.” And the keys were, well, key.
We used the term “lock” because it was a convenient way to think about it, but this magical device did much more than keep a door from opening. When it activated, the room it was guarding became completely impregnable. Not just the door, but the walls, floor, and ceiling were all magically reinforced. They could repel almost any magical or conventional weapon, up to and including firearms.
You wound up with, in essence, a magical panic room. You could be under attack from explosive ordinance, and if you shut yourself up in that room, nobody could beat, bash, or force their way in; the occupant of the room could just sit tight and wait for help to arrive. That was the idea, anyway.
When it came to magical items as useful as this, though, there was usually a catch. Something that could, let’s say, be improved. In this case, the magical security system—much like a self-locking door at a hotel—activated as soon as you closed the door. In other words, if you accidentally went out without your key, it would be locked down tight in the room you just left. And for security reasons, these keys were extremely difficult to duplicate.
For the time being, we had exactly two copies of each key: each of us carried the key to our own room, and Myusel was responsible for a set of spares, just in case. It was the spare key to Minori-san’s room that I had just delivered to her.
It wasn’t really her fault; none of us were used to this new magic security system yet. It was all too easy to just walk out the door without your key. The house itself didn’t really look any different, so our old habits often just took over.
And so you ended up with things like what had happened this morning, with Minori-san locked firmly out of her room.
“I’ve got to hurry up and get used to this,” she said, pocketing the key with a thin smile.
“We need to get Brooke and Cerise in on it, too, huh?” I said.
Brooke and Cerise were a lizardman couple who worked at our house. At the moment, though, they weren’t home. Brooke used to be a hero of his people, and Cerise was the chieftain’s daughter, so they held a pretty high place in lizardman society. It sometimes demanded that they appear at tribal councils in place of the chieftain. They had recently asked for about ten days off to go back home for that purpose.
The new security system had been installed while they were away, so when they got back, there would be a lot to explain.
“It’s almost time for breakfast,” Minori-san said. “Shall we head inside?”
“Sure,” I said with a nod, and then we walked back to the house.
I headed for the dining area with Minori-san, who was now dressed in the standard uniform of the JSDF, a white shirt and pencil skirt. When we arrived, two other women were already there.
“Sorry, did we keep you waiting?” we asked as we took our seats.
“No, everyone just got here,” replied a smiling girl with twintails and a maid uniform as she set out food. Myusel Fourant.
She was a half-elf who worked at our mansion, and my heart’s oasis. Er, okay, I know that’s kind of an overwrought way of putting it, but she really worked hard for me, and I was grateful for it.
This breakfast, of course, was her doing. Then there was—
“Shinichi-sama, hurry, hurry up!”
This came from the other girl at the table, who was rocking excitedly in her chair. She wore a tube top and pants that left her shoulders and midriff exposed—in fact, it left a lot of her exposed, so you could see her toned muscles and darkish skin. It made her look not so much sexy as just in very good shape.
Also visible were her floppy ears and a big, puffy tail that poked out from beside her chair. She was a beast person—a lycanthrope. A werewolf, if you will. Not the scary monster kind, but a sort of clumsy, sort of silly, weirdly likable dog-girl.
Elvia Harneiman. That (in case you hadn’t guessed) was her name.
“Wait a second,” I said. “Where’s Hikaru-san?”
“It seemed like he was awake when I checked on him in his room earlier,” Myusel said.
“I wonder if he went back to sleep or something.”
“Good morning, everyone. What a uselessly bright morning.”
Speak of the devil, as they say. Hikaru-san walked into the dining area.
Even though it was first thing in the morning, he appeared in his full Gothic Lolita regalia, complete with plenty of lace, shaking his long, black hair luxuriantly. He was such a vibrant picture of beauty that it felt like a waste that he had to be a man.
Ayasaki Hikaru-san.
He was Japanese, like me and Minori-san, and he was technically the assistant to Amutech’s general manager—i.e., me.
He was, as I’ve noted, a man. But he was so feminine that when you looked at him, it was hard not to wonder if there’d been some mistake.
“Uselessly bright...?” I asked.
First thing in the morning, and he was already barely making sense. Hikaru-san was a classic chuunibyou—sometimes he said things that sounded sort of melancholy, but also incomprehensible.
“Where there is light, there is shadow,” Hikaru-san responded. “Light and darkness are two sides of the same coin. A world of utter light would be incomplete—for after all, the world was born from chaos.”
“Uh...huh.”
This was pretty much how he always talked, so I let it go in one ear and out the other.
Once Hikaru-san was safely seated, Myusel took her own place.
“Looks like we’re all here,” Minori-san said, surveying the table.
“So.” I brought my palms together. Everyone else imitated me. Minori-san and Hikaru-san aside, all the Eldant people at this table were just imitating the custom of their master—which was to say, the custom of Japan.
“Itadakimasu,” I said.
“Itadakimasu,” everyone chorused, and then we started in on breakfast.
Myusel always made delicious food, so we always got totally caught up in eating. For a while, only the clatter of knives and forks could be heard in the dining area.
“Oh yeah,” Minori-san said suddenly. “Shinichi-kun, Hikaru-kun, are you going today?”
“Going?” I asked. “Going where?”
“To the garrison. Today’s delivery day, right?”
“Ahh...”
Now that I thought about it, she was right. “Delivery day” referred to the day when goods from Japan would be dropped off with the JSDF. The shipment would include weapons and consumables, of course, but also personal items not directly related to Amutech’s business ventures. I could usually get manga, or anime DVDs or whatever, brought directly to me as part of my work, but certain ingredients, sweets, and that sort of thing would only reach the Eldant Empire on these regular scheduled deliveries. For example, I sometimes got sudden cravings for Sapp**o Bar-B-Q flavored chips, so I had a set amount delivered with each shipment.
“Not me,” Hikaru-san said, as he sliced his breakfast into bites of almost obsessively similar size. “I didn’t order anything.” It hadn’t been that long since he’d arrived here, so there probably just wasn’t much he wanted yet. As for me, as much as I loved Myusel’s cooking, sometimes I just wanted Japanese sweets or junk food.
“Cool,” Minori-san said. “Shinichi-kun, what about you?”
“Uhh...”
What had I ordered this time?
Minori-san must have guessed what the problem was, because she whipped out her smartphone and began swiping along. “You should be getting some cargo in today, Shinichi-kun. If you can’t make it, I’ll plan on picking your stuff up along with mine. All the paperwork is done, so we can go together if you want.”
“Okay, sounds good to me.”
“Awesome.” Minori-san smiled and put her phone back in her pocket. “Let’s go get our stuff after we’re done eating, then. We can come home, make sure everything’s there, and still have time to get to school.”
She sure knew how to schedule. Among many other things, I should add. It was enough to make me jealous—after all, you could look up softie in the dictionary and find my picture. Minori-san, on the other hand, was decisive, could get work done, and managed to be both sweet and strong at the same time. A reliable person all around. Add to that the fact that she was cute, had a great endowment, and could even cook a decent meal (even if she usually didn’t, since Myusel handled kitchen duties)... Why had I never noticed how pretty much perfect she was?!
These were the thoughts that ran through my head as I watched Minori-san eat.
“All done.”
“What, already?!”
While I sat there staring, Minori-san had already finished her meal. She ate almost as much as I did, but she was the first person at the table to finish. I guess a healthy body really does make for a healthy appetite. She certainly had more muscle, and probably a quicker metabolism, than I did.
“We can go as soon as you’re ready, Shinichi-kun,” she said.
“Uh, sure!”
She was already standing up from the table. I nodded, then wolfed down the rest of my breakfast.
The regular deliveries were usually made to the JSDF garrison. And here in the Holy Eldant Empire, that meant a corner of the training grounds in the castle town. The JSDF had rented a part of those grounds from the empire and constructed a simple barracks there.
Incidentally, it hadn’t escaped me that it wasn’t entirely fair that I got to live in a mansion while the soldiers had to make do with a jerry-rigged barracks, but apparently the JSDF had turned down more plush accommodations. Something about maintaining a low profile and not going soft or something.
Anyway...
“Ahh, it’s here, it’s here!”
We got out of the bird-drawn carriage and started walking toward the pile of shipping containers. It wasn’t just our stuff; it included military supplies and personal items for the personnel stationed in the empire, so it was a pretty good pile. Those personnel, of course, included Minori-san.
“You look awfully happy,” I said to her.
She looked downright cheerful, in fact. More than that, really—like a cat who’d heard a tin of food being opened, or a dog that sees its owner getting the leash. Excited. She was light on her feet, as if she might just start skipping along. It was unusual to see Minori-san quite so pleased.
“You can tell?” She glanced at me. She looked like the epitome of bursting with happiness. She was like a completely different person from the young woman I had seen training that morning. The austere, disciplined air was gone, replaced by a sense that she might start drooling at any time.
“I’m getting the sequel to this one book today, and I’m really, really looking forward to it!”
Ah, so that was it. I knew what kind of books Minori-san was into, and this “sequel” was probably something like—
“It’s called Super-M Spectacles, and it’s about this hot teacher who—”
“I’ll pass on the synopsis, thanks.” I waved away her explanation.
By and large, I’m capable of loving almost any kind of otaku work. There are hardly any genres, tropes, or character types I inherently dislike. Take the simple matter of heroines: be she a maid, a refined girl of the upper crust, well-endowed or practically flat, tsundere or boyish, I can love them all equally. I like fantasy a lot, but clickety-clack hard SF is okay, too, and antiheroes and harem romantic comedies both get the thumbs-up from me. I guess “little sister stuff” and things where you’re supposed to feel moe about guys hit a little too close to home, and I’m not a big fan—but it’s not like I would criticize anyone else for liking them.
The point is, I can enjoy almost anything.
Unfortunately, BL is more almost than anything. In fact, I don’t get it at all. It’s not exactly that I dislike it. You could say I just don’t have the taste.
“Oh, what?” Minori-san said, annoyed that I had interrupted her explanation.
Aw, she’s so cute when she pouts like that.
Wait, was she really older than me?
“I think this would be a great series for you to try, Shinichi-kun. You never know. It might open new doors for you...”
“Uh, I’d prefer to leave those doors shut. Thanks anyway.”
“Aww.”
“You’re disappointed? What were you hoping for, anyway?”
“Obviously, that—”
“You know what? Forget I asked.”
It was a perfectly ordinary conversation in its way. Before long we had arrived at the shipping crates, where the members of the garrison had gathered.
“Good morning,” Minori-san said, saluting.
“Good morning,” the others responded, returning the gesture. I guess there was still room for military discipline around here.
Minori-san, though, promptly grinned and said, “Okay, where’s my stuff?”
“Ahh...” One of the soldiers—Captain Satou—frowned and sort of groaned. “Koganuma. I’m, uh, very sorry to tell you this, but...” His expression got progressively darker.
“What’s wrong?” Minori-san asked, tilting her head in confusion.
“They told us that there was a bit of, er, an accident, and some of the cargo hasn’t arrived yet. Specifically, uh, yours.”
“...What?”
“We do have your things, Kanou-kun. We asked when Koganuma’s cargo was going to get here, but they said it would be next week at the earliest.”
“Next... week...?” Minori-san’s face tightened.
Next week meant, in essence, that her stuff would be sent with the next regular delivery. She wouldn’t see Super-M Spectacles or whatever for at least seven days.
I felt bad for her, I guess. She had been on cloud nine, and now shock and disappointment had taken over her face. It was hard to watch.
“Your cargo’s over there, Kanou-kun,” Captain Satou said, pointing.
“Oh, thanks.” I was grateful that the container he had pointed to was in a spot that let me put my back to Minori-san.
As I walked away, though, I could hear her muttering behind me: “Next week... new book... Super-M Spectacles...”
I glanced back. Minori-san looked like she might just collapse where she was standing. It was like, if this were a manga, she would just be white as ash with no fill and no screen tone. Like if you gave her a little tap, she would crumble into dust.
...Huh?! Was it really that big a deal?!
Her veritable despair was obvious to everyone, and even the other soldiers didn’t seem quite sure what to say to her; they just stood there looking uncomfortably at each other.
“Ahh,” I sighed. I felt bad for her, but what were you gonna do? I looked back in the direction of the shipping crate Captain Satou had pointed out. “Hup!” I pulled a cardboard box from the crate and opened the lid. When I was sure it was really my stuff, I picked up the box and went back to Minori-san. Now we just had to get home.
Minori-san was still standing there, frozen.
“Minori-san,” I said.
No answer.
“Minori-san.”
No answer.
“Heh heh heh! ’Ey, lady, them’s some fine melons y’ got there!”
Still nothing.
Uh-oh. This was serious.
I took a deep breath, then bellowed, “Private First Class Koganuma Minori!!”
“Huh?! Wha?! Yessir!” She blinked rapidly, then her eyes focused on me. “Oh... Sh-Shinichi-kun. Morning.”
Morning, what? Were you asleep?
“Minori-san, let’s go.”
“Oh............ Y-Yeah, sure...”
This time I at least got a nod out of her, but she didn’t show any sign of moving. In the end, I had to take her hand and drag her back to the carriage.
The next day. Myusel told me something was wrong with the clock in her room, so I went to take a look.
“Hm?”
I was confronted with a big grandfather clock of a muddy brown color, like the kind you might see in some western period piece. The design was antique—or if you like, retro—with the clock face on top and a glass door below looking in on the pendulum. It had to be at least a full meter tall, and reminded me of the clock in the children’s rhyme. Not that it was bought on the morn of the day that I was born or anything.
The way it told time with a shorter hand and a longer hand was the same as in our world. Given that the length of a day here was roughly the same as on Earth, that made a certain amount of sense. The difference was, the numbers on the face were written in Eldant characters, and the divisions of time were slightly different from what I was used to, so I normally ignored this clock. I typically referred to the G-Sh*ck on my wrist, or at least to my cell phone.
“It’s stopped all right,” I said as I looked at it. The hands were frozen precisely at what I would think of as six o’clock. The pendulum sat completely still. “I guess there’s no chance it’s battery-powered?”
“It’s spring-powered... but winding it didn’t help.”
“A spring, huh?”
In other words, getting this thing running again wasn’t going to be as simple as swapping the battery.
“What to do. Maybe it’s full of dust, or lost a gear...?” I pulled the clock away from the wall as I muttered to myself, moving around behind it. Maybe if I shook it or smacked it or something...
“Hmm...”
But the hands were still frozen, and the pendulum still hung immobile. I should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy. A layperson like me could hardly take it apart and clean it, though. One wrong move and I could really break it.
So what to do?
I glanced at Myusel.
Minori-san happened to be wandering by, and stuck her head in the open door of the room. “What’s up?” she asked.
“Clock’s stopped,” I said as she came in. “I thought maybe I could just fiddle with it and get it working again, but...”
“...Fiddle...?” Minori-san murmured.
Huh? She sounded—
“...Fiddle. That’s... dirty...”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
No sooner had I spoken than Minori-san blinked as if awakening from a dream.
“Uh, never mind,” I said quickly.
Had I misheard her? Yeah. That had to be it. Minori-san seemed as surprised as I was. It had to have just been my mistake.
“If you can’t get it working again, we should call a specialist,” Minori-san said, sounding as calm as ever once more.
“Yeah, you’re right.” I gave the clock a gentle tap. Of course, it didn’t flinch.
“Gadgets with a lot of wooden pieces can be affected by the humidity in the air,” she said. “It makes the parts expand and contract. Give it a few minutes and then try winding the spring again. If that doesn’t work, we’ll ask someone to come look at it.”
“Right,” I nodded. I liked how quickly Minori-san made these sorts of decisions.
“I do think for the household’s sake, we should get it fixed as soon as possible,” she said.
“Yeah.”
I didn’t use this clock myself, but others might. Myusel, in particular, probably used it pretty often to parcel out her time for chores.
“I mean, it’s so sad...”
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s bad enough that they can only ever pass by each other, and even worse that it only happens once an hour—but now they’ll be apart from each other forever, frozen in place...” Minori-san sounded positively tragic.
My eyes went dot-shaped. Myusel, for her part, was checking her magic ring, convinced that it had gone on the fritz.
I didn’t understand what she was talking about.
“Minori-san,” I said.
“Yes?”
“What are you talking about? What’s sad?”
I had been talking about the clock...
“Huh? I mean...” She paused before something seemed to dawn on her and she said, “Ah... Forget it.”
I wonder what that was all about?
“It’s fine. It’s nothing. I hope the clock gets fixed. Yeah, that’s what I meant.”
The smile on her face was obviously forced and she was talking too fast; she was trying to hide something. Then she spun on her heel and left the room.
After a long moment, Myusel and I stuck our heads out the door, watching Minori-san retreat down the hall. Myusel whispered, “What do you think is wrong with Minori-sama?”
“No idea,” I answered. All I could do was shake my head.
Several hours after the events in the living room...
We were already getting towards the middle of the night. Myusel was done with her chores, and I was teaching her Japanese in the living area. We used to do this discreetly in the kitchen or my office, but all the lights in the living room had proven pretty convenient, and it had now become the home base for the Kanou School of Japanese Language Education (student population: one).
“Shinichi-sama, how do you read this?”
“What, this?” I said, looking at the kanji Myusel was pointing to. “It says tenjou.”
She could already read hiragana and katakana pretty much without trouble, so now she was tackling texts that included kanji. She was capable of holding basic conversations in Japanese without the help of her magic ring, but reading kanji without any aids was still a bit much for her. I mean, there are native kun-yomi readings, Chinese-derived on-yomi readings, scads of homonyms... Come to think of it, Japanese is kind of a pain in the neck.
Instead of using a textbook, I was having her translate light novels, on the assumption that they would be comparatively easier to read.
“Say, Shinichi-sama...” Myusel looked down at the open book, sounding like something had just occurred to her. “What does tenjou mean?”
“Huh?”
“I sort of understand from reading the book, but not quite... Yuka and kabe, too.”
She looked truly puzzled. I was pretty surprised to realize she was only now asking about these words. But I said, “You know—tenjou is the ceiling. Yuka is the floor. Kabe are walls.”
I almost felt like I was getting confused myself, having to spell it out like that, but when I really thought about what Myusel was saying, I realized the problem was due to linguistic differences. In the Eldant language, ceilings, floors, and walls were all referred to as “walls.” Specifically, as I understood it, they were the “upper wall,” “side walls,” and “lower walls.” In so far as they all fulfilled the function of defining the space of a room, they really were sort of the same thing, just in different places.
Once in a while, you hear how people who live in cold places have a million different words for snow. When you’re faced with snow and ice 24/7, it becomes intimately intertwined with your daily life, and constantly referring to just “snow” wouldn’t be very helpful. So instead the various different states and types of snow are treated almost like separate objects with their own special vocabulary.
In any event, our magic rings technically functioned as translation machines, but what they really did was take the concepts we were thinking of and turn them into vocabulary the other person would recognize. So Myusel might use the Eldant expression “upper wall,” but I would understand it as “ceiling.” But the rings didn’t work for translating a written text.
“I tried asking Minori-sama, but I couldn’t quite understand her explanation...”
“Oh, you did?”
“Uh-huh.”
I wondered how exactly Minori-san had tried to explain the concept. I would have thought she would be better at it than I was.
“What happened was...”
And then, a little distraught, she told me the following story.
Myusel had begun working on her Japanese on her own for a bit before we were to study together. While reading, she had come across these perplexing words, ceiling, floor, and walls, and although the context gave her an idea of what they must mean, she couldn’t be sure, because her own language didn’t distinguish among them.
Minori-san happened to be passing by the living room at just that moment, and Myusel asked her what the relationship was between a floor and a ceiling.
“A floor and a ceiling...” Minori-san had replied vacantly. “They can only ever stare longingly at each other, unable to touch, the ultimate form of love.”
Huh? Hang on, what the heck are you talking about?
Her response was so dumb I found myself shooting one-liners at her right in the middle of Myusel’s flashback.
Myusel told me that Minori-san went on chatting happily after that, but Myusel couldn’t understand what she was saying.
Well, I wouldn’t, either!
“It just didn’t make any sense,” Myusel said apologetically. “I’m sure if I were smarter...”
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I don’t think intelligence has anything to do with it.” Myusel’s shoulders remained slumped. “Look, don’t let it bother you,” I went on. “I mean, you really shouldn’t.”
“Sigh...”
“I can explain it to you, anyway. You already know that kabe is a side wall. So yuka is a—”
Thus I went on teaching Myusel, trying to ignore the ominous feeling building inside me.
When Myusel and I were done with our Japanese lesson, I headed down the hall towards my room with the intention of getting some sleep. But then I saw someone standing in the hallway. It was Minori-san.
“Huh?” I stopped. “Minori-san, what are you doing there?”
“Shinichi-kun...”
She was dressed the way she had been the previous morning, in pants and a tank top, a pretty casual outfit.
“Are you practicing your martial arts this late at night?” I asked, noticing the towel in her right hand.
“Eh, y’know,” she said. “Just trying to chase away the bad thoughts...”
“Bad thoughts?” In spite of myself, my eyes started to wander down to where the cleft of her fantastic chest was visible above the neckline of her tank top. Talk about bad thoughts.
Minori-san shrugged and said, “I’m trying to get over the pain of not being able to read my new book.”
“Oh, I get it.”
That Super-M Spectacles thing again. I was actually sort of impressed that it had affected her so deeply.
“They do say exercise is the cure for many ills,” I said. “So, all done training?” I could see a healthy glow in Minori-san’s skin, and there were traces of sweat on her tank top. A sweaty dude was uninteresting at best and kind of depressing at worst, but on a beauty like Minori-san it had a certain allure of its own...
“Yeah. I was just going to change...”
“Gotcha.”
Then we both stood there. I didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything. She just stood by the door to her room, the silence spreading between us.
“Minori-san?”
“Yes?”
“Why don’t you go into your room?”
“............Oh. I just...”
She looked away from me, creasing her brow. I glanced down and noticed that her left hand was digging in her pocket.
Could it be...?
“Minori-san, don’t tell me...”
“...Eh heh.”
She smiled shyly and stuck out her tongue in a way that definitely made her look too cute to be older than me.
“You forgot your key again...”
“What are we going to do, Shinichi-kun?”
“We’ll just have to ask Myusel for the spare again.”
“I guess that’s our only choice, huh...” Her shoulders slumped dispiritedly. She had just needed the spare yesterday—for this to happen two days in a row was understandably embarrassing. Still, we couldn’t leave Minori-san standing outside her room forever.
“I wonder where Myusel went,” I muttered, turning around—just in time, coincidentally, to see her on the stairs. “Myusel!” I called out.
She turned toward me, then came hurrying in our direction.
“Perfect timing,” I said.
“Yes? What do you need?”
“Could you lend Minori-san the spare key to her room again?” I said with a bit of a smile.
“I’m sorry, Myusel,” Minori-san said, looking remorseful. “I forgot again.”
Myusel being as nice as she was, I fully expected her to just smile a little herself and say, “Sure thing.”
But instead she looked blankly at me and Minori-san. “Huh? Uhh...” She gradually looked more and more troubled.
“What’s wrong?”
Myusel was hesitant. “I gave her the spare key yesterday, and...”
“What? No way,” Minori-san said, a note of panic entering her voice. “I mean, Shinichi-kun brought it to me, and then—”
“I... I never got it back...”
Minori-san stiffened. Myusel had no reason to lie about this. Meaning...
“Minori-san,” I said, “is the spare in your room, too?”
“No way!” Minori-san wailed, shoving her hands back into her pockets. Unfortunately, if just looking hard enough were all it took to find something, she would have already had the key before I showed up.
“I can’t believe this! This isn’t happening!” Minori-san tried desperately to turn the doorknob, but of course the door wasn’t about to open. She started pounding on it as if she thought she might be able to break in, but the magically reinforced door didn’t even flinch.
“I can’t believe this...”
It was clearly dawning on her that no amount of struggle was going to gain her access to her room. She wobbled and then sank to her knees, resting her hands on the floor. She was the very picture of despair.
Myusel and I were both alarmed.
“M-Minori-san?!”
“Minori-sama?!”
“No... What do I do...” Minori-san just stared fixedly at a point on the floor as if we didn’t exist for her. I guess a bit of shock was understandable. I wouldn’t be happy either, if I suddenly couldn’t get into my room. But still...
“U-Uh, Minori-sama, if you need some clothes, you’re welcome to use mine, if you don’t mind,” Myusel said. Then she realized that the chest, at least, was not likely to fit, and quickly added, “If we, you know, if we ask Hikaru-sama to tailor them a little, I’m sure...”
Minori-san didn’t make a sound, crouched over as if she was pretending to be the orz emoticon.
Uh... gosh. Was it really that bad?
“If there’s anything I can do,” I said hesitantly, “just...”
But Minori-san didn’t react to me, either. She stared at the floor, muttering something to herself.
“...Can’t read my new book... Can’t get in my room...”
“Huh? New book?”
“Can’t even read the old ones... Ahhh...”
“Is that what you’re worried about?!” I shot at her reflexively.
She suddenly sat upright and shouted back, “What else could I be worried about?! Oh, what am I going to doooo?!” She hugged herself and flailed back and forth.
...Is this what we’ve come to?
She looked like she was going through withdrawal from some kind of narcotic. And there was nothing Myusel or I could do for her as we stood there in the hall.
Well, if you don’t have a key, you can make one that fits, right? In other words, call a locksmith.
Hence, the next day found us at Holy Eldant Castle first thing in the morning. The castle was a massive structure that looked a lot like a really big version of a Middle Ages European fortress, but in fact it was a mountain that had been hollowed out with magic. That made it about as strong as strong gets.
In one corner of the gigantic building, we were being ushered into one of the palace’s various audience chambers.
“Hmm...?”
On the far (far, far) side of the room, sitting on a raised throne, was the Empress of the Holy Eldant Empire: Her Majesty Petralka an Eldant III.
Maybe words like “Her Majesty” and “the empress” evoke images of stern, authoritarian figures, but little could be further from the truth. Seated on the throne was a young woman so delicate she could almost have been a doll. She looked young enough to carry around an elementary schooler’s backpack, but in reality she was my own age. Atop her silver-haired head she wore a crown full of jewels, material evidence that she was a ruler, but truth be told, she wasn’t very imposing.
“Can’t you do something about this? Seeing Minori-san so upset is, I dunno, kind of disturbing...” I glanced at Minori-san, who was standing beside me.
The fact that she was there suggested that for the time being, she remembered she was my bodyguard—but I wasn’t entirely confident I could count on her in a pinch. She obviously hadn’t slept—she looked exhausted, with big bags under her eyes. What a waste of a beautiful woman.
“Hmm...” Petralka crossed her arms, her expression vexed.
“Myusel says only the magic-user who cast the locking spell can undo it...” I offered.
“Indeed,” Petralka said. There were plenty of what you might call royal mages at the castle, but if just anyone could dispel the magic lock, there would be no point in having it.
“Just making sure,” I said, “but you don’t happen to have a set of spares here at the castle...?”
“No,” Petralka said flatly.
The old man standing next to her—Prime Minister Zahar—nodded as if to confirm this. “We never imagined such a situation might arise, you see.”
“And there’s no other way to open the door?”
“Normally, one would call the magician who created the magical device,” Petralka said. “That’s the quickest way to resolve a problem.”
“Okay then!” Minori-san said, brightening up.
“However,” Petralka went on, shaking her head and casting a glance at Minori-san, “though we may call him, the man is very busy. At the moment, he’s headed to a remote frontier area far distant from the capital. His abilities are much needed in the rough places and battlefields of the land, you see. Even if we called him back immediately, his return would take days. We don’t even know precisely where he is right now.”
She looked at the young man who stood to the other side of her throne. He had the same silver hair as she did, along with a slim, elegant beauty. He was Minister Garius en Cordobal. One of Petralka’s relatives, a knight, and a close personal advisor.
“Even if by good fortune our communication should reach that spellcaster, and he should come back, it would take a certain amount of time,” Garius said. “About six months, I would estimate.”
“S-Six months?” Minori-san repeated, her voice almost breaking. You could practically see the boooong sound effect written above her head. “What about some other mage...?” she asked, without much hope.
“Not possible,” Petralka said firmly. “We advise you to wait patiently for the creator’s return.”
So there was no choice but to wait for this wizard to get back? Even though we had no idea how long that would be? With Minori-san locked out of her room the whole time?
“Oh... my... God...” Minori-san’s eyes had gone blank again. We’d come to Petralka hoping that, as the absolute ruler of this empire, she might be able to do something—even though we knew it was a lot to ask. And in fact, it had turned out to be too much.
Minori-san looked like she was only staying on her feet because of Petralka and her advisors—in other words, because we were technically in public. Otherwise, it looked like she would have collapsed to all fours as she had the night before. In fact, she looked like she might have just gone out cold.
“My... My BL...” she murmured vacantly.
Petralka arched an eyebrow. “Bee ell?”
“If Minori-san can’t get into her room, it means she can’t read her BL books,” I explained.
“What...?!” came the startled response. From...
“Garius?” Petralka said, casting a dubious eye on the knight beside her.
Ahh, yes. This distinguished, beautiful, aristocratic knight-minister had certain tendencies that made him like to borrow BL books from Minori-san. He was being infected by otaku culture, too, in his own way...
“Six months? Six whole months...? Ha ha ha ha...” A laugh came from deep in her throat.
“M-Minori-san, just remember, the new shipment will be here soon...” It looked like despair had driven her to the brink of madness, and I was anxious to talk her down.
If only.
“Ha, hah... Ooh hoo hoo... ufu-fu-fu... fu-fu-fu-fu-fu... FU!”
Uh-oh. Did she mean fu as in 腐? As in, rotten? Her laughter was starting to sound really depraved. But it was already out of my control...
“FU FU FU FU FUFUFUFU腐腐腐腐腐腐腐...”
Rotten, rotten, rotten. The crazed noise poured from her half open lips, and all I could do was stare helplessly.
The first signs of an unmistakable change came the next morning.
We were having breakfast, like always. Gathered in the dining area, like always.
Me, Myusel, Elvia, Hikaru-san, Minori-san. All sitting in our chairs.
Everyone looked the same as usual. But there was an oppressive air in the room.
It originated, needless to say, with Minori-san. She sat with her hands braced against her knees, obviously not feeling well at all. In fact, she looked almost lifeless, staring listlessly at the table—she looked like a drug addict, or someone with a terminal disease or something. Little sighs constantly came out of her mouth.
“Is Minori-san okay?” Hikaru-san asked me quietly.
“Not sure,” I murmured.
“I never expected it to be this bad...”
“Me neither. You don’t have any BL, do you, Hikaru-san?”
“Not one volume, I’m afraid,” he said with a shrug. “You know me—I’m all about cosplay. Homoeroticism isn’t really my thing.”
“...Oh, uh, oh yeah. That’s right, huh? Sorry.”
BL and beautiful guys go hand in hand, so I guess someone who enjoys dressing up as attractive women probably wouldn’t be into it. Not that I would know for sure.
That meant, though, that nobody here had any BL-type stuff we could lend Minori-san. I even thought for a moment that maybe Garius had something on loan from her, but then I remembered he had already returned it quite a while ago.
So apparently this was going to go on until the next shipment arrived...
That would be in four days. Was Minori-san going to be like this the entire time? Honestly, the thought frightened me.
“A-Anyway, let’s eat!” I said, a little too loudly, eager to dispel some of the gloom radiating from our resident WAC. “Let’s enjoy this nice breakfast before it goes cold!” I turned to Minori-san specifically. “Come on, Minori-san, a good day starts with a full stomach!” I made my smile wider.
Minori-san looked up at me slowly. Her lips slowly formed two moaning syllables.
“Hooomooo...”
That set me on the back foot. “M-Minori...san...?”
“Homoooo...” She looked at me, her gaze empty. I didn’t know if she had completely given up, or if this was a sort of self-mockery, or if withdrawal had completely broken her brain, but her lips were twisted into a sort of grim half-smile. The way she was smiling despite a total absence of emotion in her eyes was deeply unsettling. She looked like a zombie.
“Homoooo...”
“Wh—What’s wrong, Minori-san?!” Before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. But she just kept repeating “Homooo,” that smile never wavering.
“Could this be... Vitamin BL Deficiency?!” Hikaru-san exclaimed.
“Wh-What the heck is that?” I shot back.
“It’s a condition unique to fujoshi who desperately want to watch or read some BL but can’t. They fixate completely on one word, ‘homo,’ and can’t think about anything else...”
“Is that even a real thing?!”
Granted, Hikaru-san’s description sounded an awful lot like what we were observing in Minori-san. But I had never heard of any unique fujoshi illnesses...
Hikaru-san only shrugged. “Nah. I made it up just now.”
“...Bah!”
Don’t give me that innocent little stuck-out tongue! It’s very cute!
This guy was just too much.
“Er... Well,” I said, “l-let’s just go ahead and eat.”
“Homooo...”
“I—Itadakimasu...”
“Homooo...”
Not quite sure what to do, I brought my hands together, and Minori-san, although still fixated on that single word, did the same, then started eating. Her brain might have been in the grip of BL withdrawal, but at least her body retained its instinctive drive to take in nutrients.
Having said that...
“Homooo...”
Pause.
“Homooo...”
Pause.
Minori-san’s repetitive wail echoed around the room, like the chanting of monks at a funeral.
What the heck was going on here?
It was pretty hard for the rest of us to enjoy our meals with Minori-san looking as if at any moment she might pounce down on all fours and go in search of BL to absorb like some Ultimate All-Purpose Humanoid Decisive Battle Weapon. Even Myusel’s typically delicious cooking was difficult to appreciate.
“M-Minori-sama, you okay?” Elvia ventured.
She was being polite. She was just worried about Minori-san, probably. I’m sure she didn’t for one second expect what came next.
The moment Elvia spoke to her, Minori-san stopped mechanically eating her breakfast. She looked at Elvia, haggard. There was a long silence.
“Minori-sama?”
“Elvia...” Abruptly, a light went on in Minori-san’s eyes. Her expression brightened, her mouth twisting into a smile.
Uh-oh. This is bad, my instincts told me, but it was too late.
Minori-san, her eyes sparkling like a child who’s spotted a long-desired toy, rose up from her chair and leaned across the table. She grabbed Elvia’s hands before the beast girl could pull them away.
“How interested are you in naked men?”
“Huh?” Elvia asked blankly. She was probably still processing the question. “Uh, um...”
“You are interested in them, aren’t you?”
“Minori-sa—”
“Are you interested or not?!” There was a crazed smile on her face. Elvia’s expression was stiff, unable or unwilling to answer one way or the other. At last she seemed to understand what was wrong with Minori-san, but it was too little, too late.
Elvia shifted her shoulders this way and that, apparently trying to escape from Minori-san’s grasp, but she couldn’t seem to manage. Was she holding back, or did Minori-san’s insanity give her the strength to overpower a werewolf?
“Shinichi-sama...!” She turned to me, almost in tears, but as none of us knew what to do, either, we all just looked away.
Sorry, Elvia... There’s nothing more... we can do...
So the meal went on, until finally—
“I’m full!”
—we finished eating and hurried out of the dining area, leaving Elvia with Minori-san like a sacrifice to appease some angry god.
I know. It was a terrible thing to do. But what other choice did we have...?!
“Hey—Shinichi-sama?!”
Thank you, Elvia. We’ll never forget your sacrifice!
I spoke, not to the girl shouting to me, but to her face floating in the blue sky (note: pure fantasy) as I left the dining room behind.
It was about time to go to school. After breakfast, I spent a few minutes lounging around in my room, then started getting ready to go.
Not that I had much to get ready. I mostly just had to make sure I was halfway presentable.
“You’ve got everything you need?” asked Myusel, waiting outside my room.
“Yeah, I think I’m all set,” I nodded.
There was something about—I mean, this little exchange we had as I went off to work. The day I was dressed in a suit and Myusel straightened my necktie for me, we would be the very picture of a freshly married young couple. I admit, it made me blush a little.
Incidentally, Myusel didn’t have to teach today, which was why she was staying home.
“You have your key?”
“Oh...!” I dug quickly through my pockets.
“Here you go.” Myusel, in the meantime, had gone into my room and gotten the key from on top of my desk. She handed it to me, smiling. “I hope you have a great day today.”
“Sure, thanks.”
Argh, my maid is so dang cute!
I felt something almost like a tickle as I returned Myusel’s smile. The two of us headed for the front door.
So far, so good. A normal morning.
“Oh...”
Down the hallway, I spotted Minori-san and Elvia. They were walking together, but both their shoulders were slumped, their backs arched like cats. Their footsteps were obviously heavy; it was clear even from here that they were depressed.
And they were coming this way.
“Wh-What’s going on?” I asked. “Has it even gotten to you, Elvia...?”
Minori-san’s condition was—well, if not all right, at least to be expected, but even Elvia was heaving these big sighs.
Minori-san turned her lifeless eyes on me and sighed deeply.
There was a piece of paper in her hand. It looked like there was some sort of picture on it. Had she gotten Elvia to draw something for her? Minori-san might not be able to get at her manga or novels, but Elvia could probably draw something approximating BL for her.
But if that was the case, why did both of them look like such zombies?
“Hm...?” Without really thinking about it, I glanced down at the sheet of paper Minori-san was holding.
And then I was struck dumb.
Yes, it was more or less what I had been expecting: a drawing of two naked men that filled the page. Young, strapping men standing intimidatingly with their arms crossed.
The picture, though, wasn’t really done in the “moe” style—it was very realistic, as if the two guys had wandered in out of a photograph somewhere. I could probably have looked at an artsy, moe-ish BL illustration without gagging, but for me, this was a little much...
What’s more, the crucial parts of the picture, the ones that would have been blanked out with a mosaic for civility’s sake in most pictures, were rendered with impeccable fidelity in this one, so real that they looked like they might, uh, pop off the page, if you know what I mean. You could practically hear the two guys whispering, “Hey, baby. Have a look. Whatcha think?”
“Very... very big...” I said, unintentionally replying to the voices in my internal monologue.
I noticed that the stuff between their legs was a little sketchier and more manga-esque than the rest of the picture; Elvia had probably been drawing from her imagination there. She understood what a guy was supposed to look like, but she didn’t have any firsthand experience of the details.
Elvia had once made a kyara-ben depicting a BL scene with spectacular quality, but in that case she’d had an example to work from—that is, she’d had a picture from a BL book to copy. She hadn’t had to produce it from scratch.
Come to think of it, it was my understanding that Elvia had only hit puberty pretty recently. Since her siblings were all sisters, the only one of those she was likely to have seen might have been her dad’s back when she was little and they could bathe together.
Whatever the case, though, I could tell this wasn’t the sort of BL Minori-san had in mind. This was more of a ‘hard gay’ type thing—a far cry from scenes of are-they-or-aren’t-they-legal guys tangled up together to strains of classical music.
Ah, so that was it: Minori-san had had the bright idea of getting Elvia to draw her something, but when it turned out not to be what she wanted, she went on suffering from withdrawal, while for her part, Elvia was depressed that she couldn’t understand what to draw.
Gah! Everyone was turning out to be so much trouble.
“I see now, naked guys alone aren’t enough,” Minori-san muttered to herself as Myusel and I stood there speechless. “It’s the situation that makes it...”
Beside her, Elvia was keeping up her own private monologue. “It’s... It’s all my fault... If I were a better artist, I could make them look more real...”
“Uh, I think if they looked any more real, we’d have a serious problem on our hands,” I said.
“Realism, that’s what Minori-san needs to feel moe about them...”
Elvia, it seemed, was hung up on the idea that a lack of realism was what was keeping Minori-san from feeling moe about her BL drawings. But if you take “realism” to mean how much a drawing looks like the real thing, then Elvia was completely mistaken. Realism in art has more to do with whether readers (or viewers or listeners) feel like something is faithful to the reality it depicts. Sometimes, an exaggerated, “unreal” representation is the best way to get a response.
It might be tough, though, to get Elvia to understand that.
Elvia stopped where she was, still muttering. “More realism... Need to study the real thing...”
“Elvia...?” I said. I looked up from the picture as I felt her hungry eyes on me. They were gleaming dangerously.
“Shinichi-sama,” she said, “strip down, please.”
“Huh?” I was, suffice to say, surprised by the request.
“I need realism!”
“Uh, Elvia, I don’t think the realism you’re talking about—”
“I’ve never really seen a man’s body. If I could just get a look at yours, Shinichi-sama, then I could draw something Minori-sama could get moe about!”
“I think your drawing is just great already, actually!” Granted, it was lacking something in detail between the legs—but I really didn’t think that was the main problem.
“Show it to me, Shinichi-sama,” Elvia said, her gaze increasingly fixated on me. “I’m beggin’ you... Shinichi-sama... Let me see you naked...!”
“I don’t wanna! Where I come from, this is harassment!”
“I have to see the real thing... with my own eyes... Yours...!” She shambled toward me, holding both arms out in front of her like a zombie.
Ahh, crap, I’m done for!
It didn’t look like I was going to get out of this without being indecently exposed.
“Nope! Uh-uh! No!” I scuttled backward moments before Elvia could grab me. Her fingers, bent like claws, swiped at thin air. “I—I’ve gotta go to school! See you!”
“Oh! Have a good day, Shinichi-sama!” Myusel called to me as I, seeking to escape immediate bodily danger, turned and fled.
Normally, Minori-san would accompany me as my bodyguard, but she wasn’t in a fit state to be at school right now.
“Ugh,” I said, giving into a long fit of the shakes.
I hurried toward the front door, where Hikaru-san was waiting. I could feel Minori-san’s and Elvia’s eyes boring into me the whole time.
Things only got worse the next day.
“Morning, everyone...”
Back in Japan, I had tended to just lounge around the house on Saturdays and Sundays. But since coming to Eldant, I had started to lead a more rigorous lifestyle, and my eyes opened early in the morning. I didn’t indulge in oversleeping just because it was the weekend—breakfast was the same time as always.
“...Er.”
The charged atmosphere in the dining area made my hair stand on end. The first thing I noticed as my eyes swept the room was Elvia, sitting in her chair, looking downcast and muttering to herself.
“What d’ I do...? What’s moe, anyway...? What angle would be the moe-est? What should I...?”
She was looking down, so I couldn’t see her eyes, and she didn’t so much as twitch a muscle as she sat there. It gave the impression that her lips had a life of their own, and frankly, it was pretty scary.
“Good morning, Shinichi-sama.” Myusel came out of the kitchen and greeted me where I stood frozen in front of Elvia.
“Hey, Myusel,” I said, “do you think Elvia looks a little worse than before...?”
“I tried talking to her, but she didn’t answer,” Myusel said worriedly.
I felt a gaze on me and looked up to see Hikaru-san, who was already seated. Our eyes met. He shrugged silently and shook his head. It’s too late, the gesture seemed to say.
Then I noticed: someone was missing. “Huh? Where’s Minori-san?”
If Elvia was getting worse, was it possible that Minori-san was, too? Had her symptoms gotten so bad she couldn’t even get out of bed?
Starting to worry, I was about to go to her room—her new room, which was one of the guest rooms—to check on her.
“Good morning, everyone!” a bright, cheerful voice burst out. Everyone but Elvia looked over in surprise.
“M-Minori-san?!”
Standing behind us was Minori-san, all sign of the previous day’s depression gone as if it had been a delusion on our part.
Huh...?
“Hm? Why the weird looks?” Minori-san glanced from one of us to the next with a big smile, then practically skipped over to her seat. Our jaws collectively dropped to see her this way.
“Are you okay, Minori-san?” Hikaru-san asked suspiciously. Not even twenty-four hours before, she had been in the grip of severe BL withdrawal, not even able to hold a conversation. So what was this all about?
“Hmm? Am I okay how?” Minori-san asked, still smiling. Myusel and I looked at each other. “What are you two doing?” Minori-san interjected. “Hurry up, or your lovely, hot breakfasts will go cold! ☆”
She wasn’t wrong. We obediently sat down, though we were still perplexed.
“Right then, itadakimaaaasu!” Minori-san exclaimed, and began eating with gusto.
“I-Itadakimasu,” Myusel, Hikaru-san, and I echoed hesitantly before starting in on our breakfasts. Elvia started listlessly eating her food, too, muttering the whole time.
What in the world was going on here?
I glanced at Minori-san as I ate. She was energetically stuffing food into her mouth. Was she back to normal? Had she finally resigned herself to the situation? Myusel and Hikaru-san, maybe equally worried, were both stealing little looks at her, too.
Well, if she was really her normal self again, that was great, but...
No one said anything. The dining room was filled with the placid sounds of eating utensils.
There was something wrong here, I just didn’t know what it was.
It was frustrating. In the end, no one could quite figure out the best way to start a conversation, and we finished our meal in silence. Except for Elvia, who murmured softly the whole time before going back to her room. Then Myusel excused herself to start cleaning up.
That left me, the broadly smiling Minori-san, and Hikaru-san, who was still watching Minori-san carefully.
“Guess I’ll go back to my room, too,” Hikaru-san said, dabbing his mouth with a napkin and standing up.
“Oh, uh, me too,” I said, also standing quickly.
“Oh, hold on,” Minori-san called to us before we could leave the dining room. We both turned around. She was looking at the two of us with that same giant grin. Behind her glasses, her eyes had turned into a happy little n.n thing, and the corners of her mouth were somewhere up near her ears.
What was going through her head?
Minori-san was just smiling, and yet... well, I thought she was smiling.
So why did I feel like my body was about to be torn apart by dread?
“I have a favor to ask.” She got up and stood in front of me and Hikaru-san—between us and the door. As if to say, You shall not pass.
“Er, uh, Minori-san?”
Still smiling. Her face looked almost like a mask, in that her expression seemed to bear no connection to what she was feeling inside.
Hikaru-san and I found ourselves unable to move, as if pinned in place by some unseen force. Suddenly, Minori-san ducked out into the hallway, then immediately returned carrying a cardboard box. I hadn’t noticed it earlier, but it must have been sitting there next to the dining room door all morning.
“Would you put these on for me?”
So saying, Minori-san put the box on the ground and pulled something out, spreading it out in front of us.
“......Huh?” Hikaru-san and I said in unison.
It was two pairs of clothes. Or... uniforms?
One was sort of a black leotard, something that looked an awful lot like a woman’s swimsuit.
The other item was a set of black swim briefs—practically a banana hammock.
Minori-san left the clothes on the floor... and continued producing items from the cardboard box. Frills and headbands, frilly white aprons, bowties. Shoes. High-heeled shoes.
What was... going on here?
Wait... “Put these on”? She said “put these on,” right?
Put them on who?
“Er, hey, uh, Minori-san...”
“Yeeeeesss?”
“I think this stuff is pretty weird to just ‘put on’...”
“How so?”
“Uh, how do you mean, how so?”
Minori-san just kept grinning.
No good. This was getting me nowhere.
“I don’t want to.” Personally, I was standing there speechless, but Hikaru-san refused categorically. “You have to break down a character, understand them, and re-create them in your own way—that’s the essence of cosplay. It’s a form of self-expression. My pride as a cosplayer won’t allow this. I can’t just take some random items you pulled out of a box and slap them on. I’m just not interested.”
Wow. He sounded so sure of himself. I guess that’s what you get from a guy who’s spent so many years of his life cosplaying.
“I’ll thank you to let me go back to my room now.”
He made to push past the smiling Minori-san—but the next instant, he was upside down.
There was a sort of surprised intake of breath, but no crash. He came down on the floor as light as a feather, maybe because Minori-san was still holding onto his sleeve and collar. She took the force out of the throw just before it ended.
Wait... the throw?!
Did Minori-san just throw Hikaru-san?
Hikaru-san scrambled to his feet. Minori-san was still standing in the exact same place she had been a few seconds before. It had happened so fast, I hadn’t quite been able to process it, but...
“Koganuma-san...?” Hikaru-san said, almost like a groan, as it dawned on him what had happened. Minori-san was both a soldier in the Japan Self-Defense Force and a lifelong practitioner of the martial arts. She would know that when you wanted to overwhelm an opponent quickly, powerful, targeted strikes were less effective than a throw that impacted the entire body at once—or anyway, I thought I remembered reading as much somewhere.
“You’re not getting away, all right?”
Her smile deepened.
Hikaru-san and I spotted the unfathomable depths in that expression and looked at each other. We could see an inhuman light in Minori-san’s eyes.
I should’ve realized. Minori-san wasn’t cheerful because she was back to normal.
She had gone to the uttermost extremes of BL withdrawal, and it had broken her completely.
“This is humiliating...!” Hikaru-san whispered painfully.
He really did look ridiculous. His long black hair was tied behind his head, and the top half of him was bare except for a detachable collar and a bowtie. As for the lower half, it was those black competition swim trunks, knee-high socks, and loafers.
And nothing else.
I guess the black briefs alone could have been passed off as a swimsuit, but when you started in with all the accessories, it began to feel a little weird. In any event, Hikaru-san ended up showing an awful lot of skin...
“Ooh, I love a good butler,” Minori-san crooned, smiling. “Cute little knees are so important for a guy. Fufufufufu!”
Did she say... butler...?
I considered: to me, the outfit just looked perverse from every angle, but apparently to her, it looked like a butler. She must have been adding a lot with her imagination.
Come to think of it, back when we had gone to the “beach,” she had dressed Garius in something similar and referred to him as the “bare butler.”
Because Hikaru-san made such a convincing girl most of the time, it was easy to forget he was actually a guy, but the totally flat chest and black swim briefs made it inescapable. I was almost relieved, in a way.
“What are you looking at?” Hikaru-san said sharply when he noticed me. The way he was blushing made it obvious how embarrassed he was, despite the fact that he was apparently perfectly comfortable dressing like a girl. I admit, his particular hang-ups didn’t make complete sense to me. Then again, he seemed like a fairly odd person, no matter what kind of clothes he was wearing.
“Ooh, and you look just divine!” Minori-san went on. “Why don’t you go have a look in the mirror?!”
“Urgh...” I said.
Argh. And just when I had managed to focus enough on Hikaru-san to distract myself from my own situation.
Yes: I was a pretty bizarre sight, myself.
Hikaru-san at least got to start with a men’s swimsuit. Mine was a girl’s. Well, maybe it wasn’t so much a swimsuit as a leotard. Whatever, it was covered with a white apron.
“Shinichi-kun... The ‘bunny maid’ look really works for you,” Minori-san said thoughtfully.
“Please! Make it stop!” I cried.
She had forced a rabbit-eared headband on my head. On my feet—I had no idea where she had gotten these—was a pair of red high-heeled shoes. I didn’t even know they made heels big enough for men. Most frightening of all was simply that Minori-san had brought them here to Eldant at some point.
My shoulders, collarbone, and thighs were all out in the open, and I thought I might weep from the embarrassment.
Anyway, why did I have to be the girl?! Wasn’t that Hikaru-san’s specialty? I mean, not that I was eager to be a bare butler or anything!
“I love it...” Minori-san let out a long, impassioned, satisfied breath. There was no trace of the fearsome monster she had briefly shown us when Hikaru-san tried to mutiny on her plans to dress us up. She had completely overpowered us, reminding me exactly how awesome JSDF soldiers could be. It was reassuring to know Japan was in good hands...!
No, no, wait.
“Oooh hoo hoo! The look on your face, Shinichi-kun... It’s perfect...” she said. “And even though you say things like, ‘Forget perfect! I’m a man! Why should I have to dress up like a girl?!’, you have to obey your sempai, until eventually embarrassment turns to pleasure, and you see the poignant beauty of it all...!”
Th-This runs deep! Like, deeper than the Marianas Trench!
I could only shudder at this glimpse of the abyss of Minori-san’s obsession.
But it was really all built on BL, wasn’t it? I understood that. Even if I didn’t want to.
“The gap really makes the difference, doesn’t it?” she said. “It’s the contrast with your normal look that makes it so moe.”
Yes! I got that! And I had to admit it was just the same as less deviant tastes! But that didn’t mean—
“Koganuma-san, have you had enough yet?! Give me my clothes back!” Hikaru-san demanded. Minori-san, for her part, was practically spinning with joy.
You get the picture: Hikaru-san and I had changed clothes as Minori-san requested, albeit under extreme duress. But surely she’d seen enough by now. This must have released some of the pressure of that thwarted desire.
Minori-san, by the way, had stuffed Hikaru-san’s and my clothes into her cardboard box and kicked it out into the hallway. If we wanted to get them back, we would have to get past Minori-san first. And it was already abundantly clear that even the two of us together wouldn’t be able to manage that.
“Koganuma-san! Are you listening to me?!”
Minori-san stopped in mid-spin.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, still smiling. “A moment of moe is good, but I want an eternity!”
“Huh?”
“In! Other! Words!” Minori-san said with undisguised glee, “Now we’re going to have a lovely little photo shoot! ♪”
“Wha...?”
Wait—these embarrassing-to-death outfits were going to be immortalized as data?!
Sh-She wasn’t a woman! She was a demon!
Minori-san, humming happily as Hikaru-san and I stood there trembling, reached into her pocket. But then...
“Hm—?” She was confused. “Aw, no! I got so caught up in making those clothes that I forgot it. Hehe!” I guess Minori-san had forgotten her camera. Normally it’s kind of cute when a girl sticks out her tongue in embarrassment. I’d never seen it look so scary as at this moment.
“I’ll go get it—you just wait right there!” she said, darting out of the dining room.
The instant she was gone, Hikaru-san and I didn’t even share a glance before we launched into action. As if we were going to just wait politely for her to come back!
We came flying out of the kitchen, then went dashing in the opposite direction from where Minori-san was walking along humming, “La diddly daah ♪” I would have liked to grab the box with our clothes in it, but it was over in Minori-san’s direction, so we had to leave it there.
“Oh!” Minori-san noticed us right away, of course, but maybe excitement about that photo shoot had made her relax her guard, because she wasn’t quite as quick as usual, and didn’t manage to get a hand on either of us.
We could sure hear her shouting, though. “Stop! Hold it right there! My moe! My Beeee Ellllll!”
She probably wasn’t far behind us. With no time to look back and check, I huffed and puffed along, running as fast as I could through the halls of the mansion.
The windows of the room were covered with thick curtains. I could see dust dancing in the slim shafts of light that leaked in between the blinds, and the room smelled musty. Maybe not the healthiest place to be for an extended length of time, but at that moment, we had nowhere else to go.
The space was dark and confined. The only sound was of two people breathing—Hikaru-san and I, as we sat in the stretching silence.
I leaned against the wall, wrapping a blanket around myself as I glanced at Hikaru-san. He was wrapped in another blanket, so that all I could see was his head and neck. His lips were pulled tight.
Then there was a knock at the door. A shock ran between us. We had to keep Minori-san from finding out we were here. If we could have stopped breathing, we would have.
One second, two... We watched the door.
Then, finally, we heard a familiar voice from the other side. “Master, Hikaru-sama, it’s me. It’s Myusel.”
With the blanket still wrapped around me to silence my footsteps, I crept toward the door. “What’s the password?” I asked.
“Beast ears, beast tail,” she answered immediately.
I let out a sigh of relief and opened the attic door.
“Pardon me,” Myusel said, coming in with a tray. I quickly shut the door again, as if there were a vacuum outside or something. The magic kicked in, making it impossible to open the door from the outside.
Yes, even this attic had one of those magic locks on it.
Myusel knelt by Hikaru-san and set the tray on the ground. “I brought your breakfast.”
I crouched down, too, passing one of the plates of food to Hikaru-san. “How’s Minori-san look?” I asked Myusel.
“The same as yesterday,” she said, looking nervous. “She just wanders around the mansion, muttering ‘homoo, homooo.’ Elvia-san isn’t any better...”
“Great...”
After Minori-san’s freaky dress-up escapade the previous day, Hikaru-san and I had fled to this room. Minori-san had confiscated our clothes, and we could hardly run outside dressed the way we were. We had considered our rooms, but our keys had been with our clothes, so we were locked out—and even if we had been able to get in, we could never have repelled Minori-san’s attacks.
Wherever we went, Minori-san could easily just steal a spare key from Myusel and break in—so the safest place would be one where she didn’t know where we were.
I had, of course, considered having Myusel go get clothes for us, but—perhaps because she was one step ahead, or perhaps just by a fujoshi’s instinct—Minori-san was shambling around near our rooms, and even Myusel couldn’t get too close.
So as much as we hated it, Hikaru-san and I were stuck in Minori-san’s outfits.
Of course, I had taken off the bunny ears and heels. Hikaru-san had ditched the collar and bowtie.
And that was what led us to this moment. With Myusel’s help, we had managed to survive an entire day in the attic. In case you were curious, we used a pot in the back of the room to answer nature’s call. I have to admit, it wasn’t the most comfortable feeling in the world, but beggars can’t be choosers. Much as they wish they could be... (sob)
Still, we hardly felt safe. If Minori-san caught on to the existence of this room, it would be the end.
Hikaru-san ate breakfast, his expression drained. He was probably tired from being stuck in a room we weren’t used to, with no beds, and not even space to really stretch ourselves out.
Even so, and with all apologies to Hikaru-san, I was grateful I wasn’t the only one suffering here. If I had been by myself, I’m sure I would have broken down by now.
Feeling the sort of solidarity with Hikaru-san that can only come from shared agony, I started eating my breakfast. As I did so, I peeked out the curtain of the nearest window to steal a glance outside. I was hoping Minori-san might, just might, have left the building, as unlikely as that was. If she put enough distance between herself and our rooms, we might even be able to take the chance to get our clothes back. After that, maybe we could go—I didn’t know. To the JSDF soldiers at the garrison, or to Petralka at the castle, for help.
I was pretty sure it was hopeless even as I looked out the window... But then I gasped. I saw something I had never expected: a bird-drawn carriage stopped outside our house. It was very elaborate, which might mean...
“Could that be...?” I whispered.
“Is something happening?” Myusel and Hikaru-san came up behind me and also looked out the window.
Disembarking from the carriage were Petralka and Garius, along with four women. They weren’t wearing armor, but each was armed, suggesting that they were Petralka’s royal guard.
I watched, hardly daring to breathe, as the six of them disappeared into the house.
“Could it be—could the magician be here?!” Hikaru-san asked elatedly.
“Hrm, maybe they’re just coming to check on her?” I suggested. No one in that group looked like a spellcaster, and they’d already told us they expected it to be six months before the guy came back—no way he’d shown up in just a couple of days.
“Yeah,” Hikaru-san said, shoulders slumping, “I guess you’re right.” He went back where he had been, wrapping the blanket once more around his nearly naked body. He was always a little bit on the sulky side, but the anxiety he was obviously feeling today had softened his hardest edges.
“Hey,” I said, watching Hikaru-san trudge back to his place. “What if we get Petralka to help us? I know we don’t have a way out, and we don’t want too many people to see us this way... but it wouldn’t be that bad, if it were just her. Maybe she could sneak us into her carriage...”
I did have the distinct sense that I didn’t want Garius to see me this way, but I was caught in the beggars/choosers conundrum again.
“When Petralka and the others come back out of the house, we’ll signal them from here, get them to notice us. We can even climb out the window if we have to.” We could crawl across the roof... Right?
“Maybe...”
“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Myusel said. They both nodded.
And so we waited for Petralka and her entourage to emerge. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Then thirty. Finally, it had been a whole hour, but there was still no sign of them.
“Don’t you think it’s taking a while?” Hikaru-san said.
“Yeah.” I nodded uncomfortably.
If they had just come to check on us, I would have expected to see them come back out right away.
“I... I’m going to go see them myself!” Hikaru-san had apparently shaken off his numbness, because he got to his feet, blanket and all.
“Huh? But...”
“If worst comes to worst, we can have Garius fight for us!”
“Such violence...”
Hikaru-san rushed over to the door, put his hand on the knob. Seeing him like that, I had a thought.
“Okay,” I said, going over in my own blanket. “I’ll go, too. I can’t let you face danger all alone.”
“...You’re sure you’re not just afraid to stay here by yourself?”
Oops. Bingo.
I pretended not to hear his question and simply said, “Let’s go.”
“I’ll accompany you both.” Myusel came up to us, and together the three of us went downstairs, to the second floor of the mansion.
We walked down the hallway as quietly as we could, so as to keep Minori-san from noticing us. Myusel was at the front of our formation, then me, with Hikaru-san bringing up the rear. The blankets were long and hard to walk in, but it was better than prancing around in those perverted outfits, plus the cloth absorbed our footsteps to a certain degree.
Then Myusel said, quietly but sharply, “Halt, please!” and Hikaru-san and I ground to a stop. An almost painful tension hung among us.
“I hear something,” Myusel said. She pressed herself against the wall, peeking down the hallway. “It’s...!”
Unable to restrain ourselves, Hikaru-san and I also poked our faces around the corner to see what was out there.
“Crap...!”
It was Minori-san. And she was running.
And it got worse. Elvia was there, and she was running, too.
But it got even worse than that. Hot on their heels were Petralka, Garius, and the four knights, all of them going full tilt.
They all ran in unison, easily, in formation. It was almost like... military training.
“The top and the bottom were lying in bed! ♪” Minori-san was singing.
Wait, what?!
“The top and the bottom were lying in bed! ♪” Elvia, Petralka, Garius, and, God help us, even the knights, chorused in unison.
“The bottom rolled over, this is what he said: ♪ A-gimmie some! ♪ Being with you is a-ma-zing! ♪”
“The bottom rolled over, this is what he said: ♪ A-gimmie some! ♪ Being with you is a-ma-zing! ♪”
“Homo for you! ♪ Homo for me! ♪ Mmm, homoo! ♪”
“Homo for you! ♪ Homo for me! ♪ Mmm, homoo! ♪”
I felt my brain starting to go rotten just listening to the song.
“This cadence... Isn’t this from Ad***ce Wars?”
“You recognize that, but you don’t realize it’s originally from Sergeant Hartman? You know, the Full-**tal Jacket guy?”
Hikaru-san, dread written on his face, burst my blank-minded bubble with his jab. Thank goodness.
“Up in the morning to the rising sun! ♪ Gotta cum all day til the cumming’s done! ♪ Covered ding-a-lings are a genuine joy! ♪ Shotacons are fallen straight boys! ♪ I love BL, it’s my jam! ♪ Lets me know just who I am! ♪”
Okay, wait, waitwaitwaitwait.
Forget where we were and what was happening. I had to suppress a raging urge to just run over there and launch one-liner after one-liner.
“One, two, three, four!”
“My BL!”
“One, two, three, four!”
“Your BL!”
Each time Minori-san called out, the others responded in time.
“Shotas’ corp! Old-guys’ corp! Homos’ corp! BOYS LOVE!”
For a moment I just watched them run, totally dumbfounded. Then it struck me: all their eyes had lost focus; their heads were just bobbing up and down. In manga terms, they had those “spiral eyes.”
“It looks like we’re too late,” Hikaru-san said, voicing my own thought.
Too late. I had no idea what Minori-san had done, but in just a short time she had brainwashed everyone, up to and including Petralka and her entourage. Or maybe infected would be a better word.
The mind of a fujoshi is something to fear. The BL virus is one to dread. How powerful might this contagion be? If we didn’t do something, there might be... an outbreak!
Whatever the case, this scuppered our hopes of getting help from Petralka. She and the others were totally in Minori-san’s thrall.
“Let’s go back,” Hikaru-san said. “It’s dangerous to stay here.”
“Yeah...”
I learned then that normal despair is nowhere near as bad as the despair that comes on the far side of hope.
“I don’t want no bishoujo queen! ♪”
“I don’t want no bishoujo queen! ♪”
“All I want’s a cute male teen! ♪”
“All I want’s a cute male teen! ♪”
Gosh.
We headed back to our attic hideout, our shoulders drooping as if under a terrible, invisible weight. Behind us, we could still hear Minori-san and the others reciting their rotten perversion of the Marine Corps cadence. Chanting, chanting, on and on.
I was sitting on the floor of the attic room, wrapped in my blanket and sighing. Hikaru-san, also in a blanket, was leaning against one wall, and Myusel was watching us both with a pained expression.
This was hopeless. I had been so sure this was our chance to escape, but now we had more enemies than ever.
“Myusel, you’re the last person I can count on...”
“I-It’s an honor... I think...”
“You know, you are the only one,” I said.
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re the only one who hasn’t been brainwashed by Minori-san.” Or infected, or whatever. Even Petralka had succumbed in hardly an hour’s time. Yet Myusel, who lived in the same house as Minori-san, seemed to be safe. Why was that?
Maybe she had some sort of antibody that helped her fight the fujovirus (named by: Kanou Shinichi).
“It’s probably...” Myusel blushed. “I wouldn’t want to see anyone do that sort of thing with you, Master, not even Hikaru-sama.”
“That sort of thing?” I echoed.
“N-Never mind, forget I said anything! I’ve g-g-got some chores to do now!” She stood up quickly and bustled out of the room, still red-faced.
Now it was just me and Hikaru-san in the attic.
“Ahh, so that’s it,” Hikaru-san said, half smirking, half smiling.
“What? What’s it?” I asked.
“No hints for dull boys,” he said. I would almost have sworn he was enjoying himself.
But what in the world was he talking about?
Unless...
Our conversation broke off there. Silence descended once again.
“Ugh,” I said finally. It was hot. The temperature must have been going up as the day went on.
This attic room was perfect for trapping heat. Yesterday had been cloudy, so it wasn’t so bad, but today the sky was totally clear. The temperature in the room would probably keep climbing.
“So hot...” I felt myself sweating through my clothes. It was like a steam bath in here. My energy was slowly seeping away.
Pretty soon, Hikaru-san and I had both gotten rid of our blankets. It was just the two of us in here, anyway. We had already seen each other; there was nothing to be embarrassed about now. Putting up a front turned out to be awfully tiring.
“I wonder what we should do now,” Hikaru-san murmured.
“Try to hold out until the day after tomorrow,” I said.
“The day after tomorrow?” Hikaru-san replied. But then he added, “Oh. You mean when the delivery gets here...”
It would be two more days until the garrison got its delivery. If the cargo included a couple of new BL books, Minori-san might come around.
If she didn’t, we were in real trouble.
“Just gotta... hang in there...”
I looked blankly around the room. Rabbit ears, heels, a collar, and a bowtie were scattered on the floor.
Hikaru-san did the same, looking at the items we’d discarded. He picked up the closest one, the rabbit ears. Maybe he was just bored.
“What on earth was Minori-san thinking?” I said. “Making us wear crap like this?”
“It looks surprisingly...” Hikaru-san paused. “...Good.”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
I could hardly comprehend what Hikaru-san was saying. It seemed like he hardly could either—the moment he registered what had come out of his own mouth, he blinked in shock.
We looked at each other for a long few seconds.
“Hikaru-san?! Wh-What are you saying?!”
“Ah... Ahh ha ha ha ha! Right, what am I talking about?” He laughed a little too loud. “I guess I just looked at it so long I started to think it was... normal or something.”
“Well, it’s not! It is 100% not normal!” I covered my ears and wrapped myself back in my blanket. “Please! I’m begging you, I need you of all people to stay sane! Don’t leave me alone!”
Had the fujovirus reached even our enclave?! Or was this one of those things like, you know, when people in extreme situations and terrible isolation try to forget their fear and, like, start feeling affection towards terrorists and stuff? Uh, what was it, again? Chloroform syndrome! No, uhh, Bågenholm Syndrome! Wait—Stockholm Syndrome! Yes! That was it!
Argh! Even without direct exposure, we were at risk of falling under the fujoshi’s spell!
“I mustn’t be infected I mustn’t be infected I mustn’t be infected,” Hikaru-san and I repeated to ourselves, like a mantra.
It was all I could do for the rest of that day.
Anyway... Come the next day, I was awakened from a restless sleep by a knock at the door.
“Hrrmm?” I grunted.
The heat and stuffiness conspired to keep me from thinking clearly. I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, but I definitely felt tired.
“Master, it’s Myusel,” came the voice on the other side of the door.
I pushed aside my fuzzy-headedness by sheer force of will and got up.
“What’s the password?”
“Beast ears, beast tail.”
“Okay, just a moment...”
I sleepily opened the door. Myusel, bearing breakfast on a tray, entered slowly.
“Mmm? Is it morning already?” Hikaru-san said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.
“I’ve brought you breakfast.”
“Thanks, Myusel.”
“Yes, sir.”
As I went to close the door, I happened to glance at Myusel. Still armed with the tray, she was looking at the ground for some reason.
I wondered what was wrong. Was she not feeling well?
“Myusel?” I asked, concerned.
At just that moment, she looked up—and she was smiling.
“Homooo...”
I was struck speechless. Oh no! Myusel, my sweet maid, my last hope—her indigo eyes had all but gone spiral. She looked just like Petralka and Elvia had the day before—in other words, she was obviously, totally, well and truly brainwashed.
“Myusel?!”
She stood before us, grinning. There was nothing fun or pleasant about this situation—yet she couldn’t stop smiling.
G-Geez, that’s scary!
“Et tu, Brutus—I mean, Myusel?!”
“Homoooo!”
A howl came from the direction of the door, which I hadn’t yet closed. And not just a howl. Hands came clawing out from behind Myusel. It was like a scene straight out of a zombie movie.
“A fujoshi horde!” I was feeling too blitzed to react immediately, but Hikaru-san was quicker. He shoved past Myusel, towards the rotten crowd behind her, throwing all his body weight against the door and slamming it shut.
“We’re getting out of here!”
“B-But Myusel—”
“There’s no hope for her now!”
“But! But...!”
Even as we argued, we could hear pounding and scrabbling from the other side of the door, which shook desperately. With the magic ward, it ought to hold, but...
“If Myusel’s on their side now, it means our enemies have the key! It won’t take them long to get in here!”
I caught my breath. He was right. We weren’t safe here anymore!
“Quick!” Hikaru-san grabbed my hand. I just followed him, no longer able to resist. The image of Myusel, her eyes spinning mindlessly, was burned into my memory.
Ahh... Myusel, who had brought our meals to this attic room. Myusel, who had been our ally. She had been safe until yesterday. So why... Why!
“Damn it allllll!” With a yell that was neither quite rage nor sadness, Hikaru-san and I jumped through the window to the outside. Luckily, the slope of the roof was gentle, so we didn’t have to fear immediately rolling off.
We made our way to the edge of the roof, where we leapt to the branches of a big tree that grew next to the mansion. Honestly, it was far enough that I don’t think I could ever have made the jump if no one had been chasing me, but a man can do amazing things when he’s being pursued by the BL equivalent of the walking dead. Hikaru-san and I jumped to the tree, then scrambled down the trunk to the ground.
But I had a question.
“Where are we running to?!”
We couldn’t go back in the house; Minori-san and her rotten army would find us immediately. But we could hardly leave the house, either...!
“Over there!” Running around the grounds, we spotted a small log shed—Brooke’s workshop.
Brooke and Cerise weren’t back yet, and the shed had a few advantages—it was on the grounds but not in the house, and it had no magic locks on it. Hikaru-san and I dove inside.
I kicked the door shut, and Hikaru-san locked it soundly.
Then we finally had a moment to breathe. I took a look around the little building. There was just one small window, and it was firmly shuttered, so the shed was dim inside.
“There’s got to be... There’s got to be somewhere to hide,” I said. One crude lock was not going to keep us safe.
Still panting, we huddled down in a crevice between the wall and the stuff inside. I was pressed up against everything around me, and my revealing outfit made my skin feel sticky, but I couldn’t worry about that now. I just had to make myself as small, as invisible, as possible.
For a long moment, neither Hikaru-san nor I said anything. We both knew we really had to be completely silent this time. To avoid breathing, if possible. And yet, we also knew it was probably just a matter of time until they found us.
What to do? What could we possibly do next? I wondered if I could silence my heartbeat as well as my breath.
Sometime later—I had no idea how much time had passed—I thought I heard a sound. “Hm?” I murmured. “What was that?”
It wasn’t anything natural. Hikaru-san must have heard the sound too, because the despair on his face was briefly interrupted by curiosity.
The sound was coming closer.
No, wait.
This wasn’t just a “sound.”
“If I could do something like that ♪ wouldn’t that be great? ♪”
It was Minori-san and her troupe, singing another song.
“Is that... Dora*mon?”
She was singing the theme song to an anime beloved by people all over Japan, something anyone from that nation would recognize immediately.
“Holes here, holes there, holes everywhere ♪”
“Huh...?”
“I hope, I hope, they all come true ♪ I hope they come true with that wonderful butt ♪”
Wait, what?!
“How I’d love to put it in that cute little butt! ♪”
“Right! YAOI HOLE!”
The window was too far away to see for certain, but the way the singing faded in and out made it sound like Minori-san was marching everyone around the shed.
Hang on—who was it that had answered “Right!” in that Do**emon voice?! It was really weird because it sounded just like him! I actually had this sudden image of a future robo-cat pulling a Yaoi Hole out of his pocket—talk about your hair standing on end!
“Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! ♂ I just love it! ♪”
“That’s not how it goes, and you know it!” I exclaimed reflexively.
“Shut up, idiot!” Hikaru-san whispered fiercely, but the damage was done.
“S-Sorry...”
But I mean, those lyrics were just too... You know? They were like a test of how long I could hold myself back—how was I supposed to listen to that and not say anything?!
Okay, granted, we had other problems right now.
A sudden, chill silence fell all around us. Maybe they hadn’t heard me, so they went away someplace?
As hopes go, it wasn’t much, but I clung to it. Until the instant—
Bam!
The instant someone pounded on the door, hard. And not just the one time. Not even twice. It was a flurry of blows. The first few were searching, sporadic. But somewhere around knock number ten, it became a constant stream, bambambambam!
It wasn’t just the door, either. It seemed like every side of the shed was being pounded on from the outside.
“Heeek?!”
I was pretty sure I knew how people in zombie apocalypses felt now. This was really and truly the end. We were surrounded. There was nowhere to run.
“Ahhh...” Trembling, I drew up to Hikaru-san.
“Shinichi-kuuun? Hikaru-kuuun?” It was Minori-san. She sounded weirdly... pleasant. “We know you’re in there, okay? Just come on out!”
Under her sweet voice we could hear the doorknob rattle as she turned it hard enough to break it off. Almost as if in harmony, the pounding on the door and walls continued. I was terrified, sure that she would bust open the door, or that one of the walls would give way.
This was it. This was all she wrote.
“Eeeyaarrrghhh!”
Screaming, Hikaru-san and I jumped out from our place by the wall and flung all our body weight against the door, our last bulwark. This was no time to be hiding. Not if there was one single, solitary thing we could do to keep that door from opening.
Bambambambambam!
Now that we were leaning against the door, the impacts rattled directly into our bodies.
What were we going to do?! Was there any possible way out of this situation?!
I tried desperately to think through the chaos in my brain.
But at that instant, I heard another sound.
A gunshot?
“Huh...?”
I felt a sort of floating sensation.
The smack that came a second later clarified what had happened. The door’s hinges had cracked, and the weight of our bodies against the door had pushed it outward, sending us tumbling outside.
In other words...
“Eeyikes!”
The momentum carried Hikaru-san and me along the ground.
“...Yow...”
It took a second to register.
I was lying faceup on the ground.
And Hikaru-san was all but on top of me.
Almost as if he were pushing me down...
“Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhh!!”
I heard some kind of howl—or was that a cheer?—split the air.
“Huh? What?”
Before we could blink, Hikaru-san and I were surrounded by fujoshi.
Minori-san was there. And Myusel. And Petralka. And Elvia and the knights. And even...
Yes, Garius too. To be fair, he didn’t shout. But that kind of made him even scarier.
Wait, had Petralka and everyone been away from the castle this whole time?
That was some brainwashing. O fujoshi, greatly to be feared!
Wait, I don’t have time to be awestruck by something like that!
“Ah... Ahhh...”
I could feel their gazes drilling into me.
Stoppit. I’m scared. Don’t look at me...!
Minori-san took a step forward, away from the circle of cheering women. She stopped just beside me and Hikaru-san. At that exact moment, the light caught her glasses in just such a way as to hide her eyes.
But then she raised both hands with gusto, like a conductor beginning some piece of classical music. Like she was going to catch a falling sky.
And she said...
“I shall forgive all!”
“Huh...?”
Our eyes turned to dots at her impassioned proclamation.
A cloud rolled lazily over the sun. It cut the light just enough that we could see Minori-san’s eyes again. She looked a little bit... better.
I caught my breath. She looked a little like, you know, how you feel after... you know. Like she was enjoying the afterglow.
And everyone else—Petralka and Myusel, Elvia and everyone—had the same sort of expression on their faces. At the very least, they didn’t have the crazy spiral eyes anymore. I was no longer worried that Minori-san and her friends were going to tear us apart.
Could it be we were... safe?
Hikaru-san looked down at me, and I looked up at him.
“The two gaze into each other’s eyes!” Minori-san intoned, her hands raised to the sky like an opera singer bursting into an aria. “All creation grows dim and distant! They’re alone in their own world! Hot, blazing, burns the passion that flows between them! Though covered in mud, they are still—indeed, its besmirching touch makes them all the more—beautiful!”
“Uh. Minori-s—san? I think—”
“Photo time!!”
The next thing I heard was a cascade of digital camera shutter sounds. Minori-san had whipped out a camera from who knew where and started taking pictures of us. She switched from one angle to another with the speed of a pro photographer, so fast we didn’t even have time to butt in with a smart remark.
“Hoo hoo! Ufu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu!”
The sound of the shutter mingled with her unnerving laughter. Hikaru-san and I, both utterly exhausted, couldn’t fight, couldn’t run, couldn’t do anything at all.
Day eight.
The long-awaited day of the delivery.
Minori-san came home clutching a cardboard box that presumably included the infamous BL book (Super-M Spectacles, was it?) and smiling like there was no tomorrow.
I happened to run into her in the front entryway. “Finally! I thought I was going to die!” she announced, even though I hadn’t said anything. I guess she really was happy about that book.
“You thought you were going to die?” I said scornfully. Just the memory of the outfit Minori-san had forced me to wear for the past three days was enough to paralyze me with the heebie-jeebies. If I had a time machine, the first thing I would do would be to erase—not the data, but that whole disgusting past experience.
Incidentally, Minori-san’s little photo session with me and Hikaru-san the day before must have finally sated her, because afterwards, she seemed to regain her sanity. Shortly after that, all our brainwashed (?) friends went back to normal, all at once. They had simply been captive to the force of her passion.
“I really was! That’s why I had you dress up like that.”
“Well, next time you feel that way, I hope you’ll pick dying instead.”
Hikaru-san, probably having reached the limit of his endurance, was in bed with a fever today. I wasn’t sick, but my body felt impossibly heavy.
“Aww.”
“C’mon, don’t give me that look.”
“It’s okay, don’t worry,” Minori-san said. “I’ll be able to look at yesterday’s photos and get all moe.”
The way she puffed out her cheeks was so adorable—what was I supposed to do?
“Jeez, stop it already!” I found myself exclaiming.
In response, Minori-san gave me a surprisingly languid smile. “I’m so glad you both came around. You even ended up posing for me and everything.”
“You pulled your gun on us.”
“What? No, no, I just happened to be holding it.”
“That’s the JSDF for you... Always an excuse.” I gave a long, long sigh. Then I said, “Huh. You know, you got a shot of us looking like we were into each other, but never one where we were really about to, like, get hot and heavy.”
And thank God for that.
Knowing Minori-san, I’d been afraid she might force us to do something that would require a mosaic in the final photo, but thankfully, Hikaru-san and I never got closer than nose to nose. ...Not that I was thrilled about that.
In other words, we never crossed the final frontier.
“Of course,” Minori-san said with a smile. “The beauty of BL is the fade to black.”
“Really?”
“The moment before the kiss is the one that lets your imagination really take flight.”
“...Huh. Huh.”
“And...” Minori-san looked into the distance for a second. “There’s more to love than shoving your bodies together. Sometimes love is most perfect when you never touch at all.”
“Gee, I... I feel like that’s really profound, but on second thought, it’s not profound at all.”
Minori-san stood there with a beatific look on her face. There was nothing I could do but tiredly roll my eyes.
And that’s the story. The tale of the week that would go down in history as the Seven Days of Rottenness, a memory of fear and shame to Amutech’s employees.
And it left us with a lesson:
Thou shalt not take BL from Koganuma Minori.
（つづく）
To Be Cont’d...