Chapter Two: A Puppet Master?

When I arrived at school that day, I didn’t immediately start preparing for lessons. There was someone I wanted to find first.

Students were chatting with each other in the classroom during the few free moments before lessons started. I sought out the person in the crowd that I was looking for and called out to her.

“Hey, Romilda. Sorry, could I have a moment?”

“Yes?” The diminutive girl looked over when I called her name. Well, I say diminutive, but that’s only by my standards. Compared to other dwarves, she was about average. But anyway. “What is it?” She left off talking with her friends and came over to me.

“Just come over here for a second,” I said, leading her out into the hallway. Then I looked around. I made sure there was no one else in the vicinity, then lowered my voice and said, “We’re going to be making a doll version of Petralka—of Her Majesty.”

I told her about wanting to make a doll that could fill in for the empress. About how we hoped the dwarves could help us with it. Sparing the details, I told Romilda as quickly as I could about the Make Petralka a Kagemusha Plan.

Learning all of this left Romilda wide-eyed and silent. We didn’t have much time, though, so I forged ahead. “I assume Prime Minister Zahar or Minister Garius will contact your father to discuss this officially. But the point is—” here I got to what I was really wanting to ask—“we need a dwarf who’s good at controlling dolls, but can also keep a secret. Can you think of anyone like that? A girl would be best. Do any of the other students fit that description?”

“Uh... Um...” Romilda cocked her head. Apparently no one came to mind immediately.

I pressed the point. “What about—you know how lately there have been kids playing with action figures in the classroom, making them move?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Like that. But—hmm, it’s got to be like, if the figures do the dance from the Prepure ending, people would have to be like, ‘Wow, did these guys just jump off the screen?’ The kid has to be that good.”

“I’ve got to admit, that’s...” Romilda frowned.

No dice, huh? Well, I had kind of expected as much. I’d seen the kids playing with the figures, but the movements always looked a little strange, a far cry from seeming practically alive. Handling Petralka’s double would mean even more things to think about, too—facial expressions and small finger movements. If they couldn’t make an action figure move smoothly, they weren’t going to be able to handle that.

I’d told Petralka and the others that I had an idea, and I did, but first I’d wanted to ask Romilda, since she would know who was who among the dwarves better than I would.

“So on that note, I’ve got a favor to ask.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You remember when I came to the underground workshop the other day? And there was that super skilled clay-doll user. The girl using three of them at once?”

“Oh, Lauron, sure!” Romilda clapped her hands and nodded.

“Yeah, exactly. Can she keep a secret?”

“I’m pretty sure...” Romilda looked thoughtful. “It’s like... She’s stubborn. Or maybe diligent would be a better word? If you tell her not to talk, I think she’d keep her mouth shut to the grave.”

“G-Gee, really?”

“Anyway, she’s plenty serious... No, that’s not quite the word. Inflexible, maybe.”

“Hmm...”

A bit obstinate, I guessed. She hadn’t really looked it, but...

“Anyway, I definitely think Lauron fits your criteria, Sensei. I’ve never seen her work anything but the clay dolls in the workshop, but...”

“But if she can handle three at once, it means that if she focused entirely on a single doll, she’d probably be something else, right?”

“Yeah, I sure think so.” Romilda nodded. “She might really be able to re-create the Prepure dance!”

Romilda looked genuinely happy. Maybe she was pleased to think one of her acquaintances would be entrusted with the immensely important task of helping to keep the empress safe. If this worked, it might do even more for the dwarves than mass-producing Faldras.

In any event, it looked like I’d been on the right track.

“Do you think you could bring her by my mansion?”

“You want me to bring Lauron to your house?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sensei, don’t tell me...” She seemed to have an inkling of an idea.

“Huh? Tell you what?”

“Are you trying to grow your harem?”

“As if!” I exclaimed. “That’s practically slander!”

A few students peeked out from the classroom to see what was going on. I instinctively shifted a little and whispered into Romilda’s ear, so no one else would hear what we were talking about.

“What about this conversation made you think that was where this was going?”

“Men are all about harems, right? They’re at the center of so many plots.”

I mean, yes, men like harems! Wait—who had she heard that from?!

“Any man who deliberately did that for real would just be a disgusting crook!”

“But you have Minori-sensei and Myusel-sensei and Elvia-san living right there with you...”

“Yes! Yes, we are all living in the same house, that’s true!”

Minori-san was my bodyguard, Myusel was my maid, and as for Elvia, she was Amutech’s in-house artist—not one of them was in any way romantically involved with me. In fact, unless one of them actually asked me to do something with her, I would never imagine thinking of my pure, sweet housemates in those terms. It would make me feel terrible. In fact, I couldn’t believe she’d said it.

“And if you can go for someone like Elvia-san, then a dwarf would obviously—”

“Okay, I’m not saying I can’t get moe for elves or dwarves or whatever, but that’s a totally different subject!”

By the way, traditional fantasy works usually depict even female dwarves as having beards and looking like elderly guys, but at least in this world, that’s not how it was. Much like the elves—maybe because they both shared a close affinity with the sprites—the prime of their lives (that is to say, their youth) seemed to last a long time.

“Huh? So you wanted something else?”

“Of course I did!”

What did she take me for?! Was this how I looked to my students?

Just as I was trying to produce an expression that would make clear exactly how much I regretted this misunderstanding, the bell rang. It was time for class.

We had to go back in the classroom—for that matter, my standing out here alone with Romilda could fuel exactly the sort of talk I was upset about.

“Uh, anyway, take care of things for me, will you? And just to be extra clear, this is absolutely secret, okay?”

“Yes, sir!” Romilda nodded firmly, and then the two of us returned to the classroom.

A few days later, we really got down to the business of producing Petralka’s double.

The place: my mansion. True, the dwarf workshop would have had more tools, better facilities, and been overall more convenient, but it was too big; too many people came and went there to guarantee secrecy. Anyway, since I was the general director of the project, doing things at my house made a certain kind of practical sense.

Then again, it also happened to be home to Elvia, who was nominally a Bahairamanian spy. But as far as she went... eh, I figured it would be fine. Call it a product of the trust we’d built up for each other, or chalk it up to the fact that she never seemed very diligent in reporting anything back home. (She sort of seemed to leave something to be desired as an agent of espionage.) Even if some sudden fit of loyalty to the motherland welled up in her, I figured we would notice the change in her behavior. Honestly, it would’ve been way harder to manage information security without knowing who the spy was.

And so, with all that settled...

“Man, this is amazing, though,” I said, putting my hands on my hips and checking out the new addition. Namely, the workshop now standing out behind the house. “Or, I guess I should say you’re amazing, Brooke.”

“How’s that, sir?” my main builder asked from beside me.

Brooke Darwin was the lizardman groundskeeper at our mansion. Just like the name suggests, lizardmen looks like big, bipedal lizards. Plus, Brooke was a lot taller than me—including the length of his tail, probably something like three meters. To be blunt, not the sort of person you’d want to run into in a dark alley.

But notwithstanding how he looked, Brooke was loyal and honest—not to mention a passionately celebrated hero of his people. He had a fair amount of pull with the lizardmen; in this case, for example, he’d brought several of his tribesmen, and in less than three days they’d constructed an entire small workshop.

I do mean small, really just enough to keep out the elements—but still, considering that they weren’t professionals and didn’t have special building materials, it was still pretty shocking. They had even made a set of big double doors so that we could bring in materials as necessary.

“I mean, you put up an entire building in less than three days.”

“Well, I was in th’ army,” Brooke said. “Digging and building are a soldier’s bread and butter.”

“Oh... That makes sense.”

Being able to set up a base quickly and reliably right on the front would certainly be useful in the military.

As I was thinking about this, Minori-san called from the mansion. “The dwarves’ll be here soon!”

I could see Hikaru-san standing beside her.

“Right,” I called, “I’ll be right there. Brooke, good work—thanks again.” Then I went over to Minori-san and we all headed for the front door.

“Huh, hope it works out okay,” I said.

“You almost sound like it’s someone else’s business,” Hikaru-san said, shooting me a pointed, sidelong glance. “You masterminded this entire thing, right?”

“Well, yeah, sure. But I won’t be doing the actual work work...”

“We’ll just have to trust the dwarves for that, won’t we?” Minori-san said.

“I trust them,” Hikaru-san said. “But whenever you do something for the first time—not just this doll thing—nothing ever goes quite according to plan. There are always screw-ups and problems you could never have predicted.”

“That’s when we’ll have to call on the talents of our project manager,” Minori-san said, smiling pleasantly.

I frowned. “Lay off the pressure, please...” Then I thought about it for a moment. “You know, though, speaking of what always happens, think about how if we were in a manga or a drama, once the body double was built the dwarves would all be poisoned or something to preserve secrecy. I’d be all, Your work here is done! Mwahaha!”

“Good luck getting the thing maintenanced if you kill all the mechanics,” Hikaru-san shrugged.

Before I knew it, we were all back in the front hall.

“Master.”

I looked up at the voice and saw Myusel walking toward us. Behind her came a line of dwarves.

“The guests from the Guld Workshop have arrived.”

“Thanks for showing them in, Myusel.”

“Yes, sir.” Myusel gave a bow and stood off to the side.

As for me, I turned to the newly arrived dwarf builders. At a glance, most of them appeared to be adult dwarf men. I guessed the importance of the job had led to the most experienced workers being sent to me.

Dwarves are never very tall, but the men in particular look rugged, bulging with muscles that made me feel like I had to be careful when I shook their hands, lest they crush my poor, weak fingers. A whole crowd of these dwarves was even more intimidating than one by himself. Several of them were frowning—not from annoyance, I suspected, but from an understandable nervousness.

Then I heard a familiar voice from behind the line of dwarves. “Sensei!”

Romilda shoved her way out from the pack of old men.

“Huh? Romilda, you’re here, too?”

I had left it to the boss of Guld Workshop (read: Romilda’s dad) to pick the workers. Was she actually a long-standing, experienced craftsman herself?

“My father asked me to observe.”

“Oh. Sure, okay.”

“And I brought someone else, too.” Romilda tugged on someone’s hand, pulling them out in front of the crowd. “Here’s Lauron, just like you asked.”

A dwarf girl stood there, with short gray hair under a black cap. Romilda gave her a little push, and she stepped forward, bowing her head in our direction.

“Lauron Selioz, at your service.”

Lauron was about a head shorter than me. Her baby face and big eyes gave her a youthful appearance—I would have believed you if you’d said she was in primary school. But as I recalled, she was actually Romilda’s age. So... in her teens?

“I’ve heard about the situation,” she said. “I appreciate your asking for me. I look forward to working with you.”

“Oh, uh, me too, definitely.”

She bowed her head again, and I found myself bowing back.

Lauron came across as really... serious. There was something formalistic about the way she talked, almost like she’d learned the right phrases to use and was reciting them from memory. Well, maybe she was just anxious, like the others.

“I’d like to speak to you privately,” I said. I had to give her the details of her other assignment: not just building the Petralka doll, but learning to make it act like the empress.

“Shinichi-kun?” Minori-san asked dubiously. “This girl is—”

Oh, I’d forgotten. All of our discussions had been about the actual production; I hadn’t mentioned picking someone to control the puppet to Minori-san.

“She—”

I started to explain, but Romilda jumped in. “Sensei was set on Lauron at first sight!”

“Shinichi-kun,” Minori-san said in a tone of exasperation. “I know you talk about how every man dreams of having his own harem, but this—”

“That’s not what this is about!” I exclaimed. “Romilda, I thought I told you not to say things that could get me in trouble like that!”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” All the same, she shrugged and stuck out her tongue. With that, I was certain: she had done this on purpose. On purpose!

Romilda, do you really want to make me out to be some kind of perverted manimal, heaving with lust?! I may have a whole parade of two-dimensional bride-sans, but I’ll have you know that on their three-dimensional counterparts I’ve never laid a hand!

“I mean, when you start out by asking to talk privately...” Minori-san looked at me, less reproachfully than expectantly.

Wait... was it Minori-san spreading the “Kanou harem” theory?!

“In any case,” I said, coughing and shooting a look around, “Lauron isn’t here for production. I picked her to handle the next phase. I just want to talk to her about the details. Hikaru-san, Minori-san, come with me, please. Myusel, please show everyone else to the outbuilding. Brooke is around back.”

“Certainly.”

Myusel nodded, and I left Romilda and the other dwarves with her, while Lauron and I headed for the living area.

I asked Lauron to have a seat, then took a place on the other side of the table.

“All right.” I asked Hikaru-san to serve tea in place of Myusel, who was showing the dwarves around, and turned back to Lauron. “I’m sorry to make you come all the way over here.”

“It’s all right,” Lauron said. She sat up straight, hands on her knees. It was a very “proper” posture—it made her serious character perfectly clear.

“Uh, maybe I should start by introducing myself for real. I’m Kanou Shinichi.”

“Yes, I’ve heard from the young lady.” Lauron looked straight at me. She must have been talking about Romilda. They were the same age, but Lauron wasn’t a student; she was a laborer in the workshop. Romilda was, for her, the daughter of her employer. “She described you as an evangelist for otaku culture. Teacher at the school. From a country called Ja-pan.”

“Er, oh.” Well, that saved me time introducing myself.

Then Lauron, still looking straight at me and perfectly serious, continued, “And also a total bottom.”

“Uh... Pause there, will you?”

“A man whose main hobby is surrounding himself with women to serve him.”

“Waitwaitwaitwait!” I interrupted her, more desperately than I meant to.

What had Romilda been telling people?! I was starting to think there were some pretty ugly rumors about me going around!

“That’s not true! None of that is even remotely true!”

“He’s right, it isn’t,” Minori-san said from beside me. “He’s a slutty bottom.”

“Pipe down, you rotten WAC!” I was practically in tears.

“So it’s... not true...?” Lauron was looking at us, puzzled. There was a note of confusion in her voice.

Was it really that surprising? Anyway, she seemed a little strange herself...

“Absolutely not.”

“I... I see...” She nodded, still not looking entirely sure. She sounded so different from before, in fact, that it was almost like she was another person.

Then again, the first time I’d seen her—the time that dwarf was getting angry at her—she’d reacted more or less like this. Maybe this was baseline for her.

But anyway...

“I don’t fully understand the expression ‘total bottom’... Is a ‘slutty bottom’ the same sort of thing?”

“Let’s save the lessons for something more productive,” I said, forcing the conversation back on track. “Ahem. So Romilda has pretty much told you what this is about?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. On that note...” I took an action figure I’d put in here earlier and flipped it faceup. It was a girl with golden hair, wearing a short pink leotard and skirt. Pureheart, from Prepure.

Lauron looked at the figure with a mixture of surprise and curiosity. Since she didn’t go to the school, she had probably never seen one of these, even if maybe she’d heard of them.

“Here you are.” Hikaru-san put tea down in front of each of us.

“Thanks, Hikaru-san,” I said.

“Thank you very much,” Lauron said, looking up at Hikaru-san.

She reached out. I thought she was going to take a drink immediately, but instead, she gave the cup a small push with her finger. Maybe the angle had bothered her somehow? It seemed a bit obsessive.

What was that about...?

“Umm. May I go on?”

“Certainly.” She nodded.

“I want you to move this,” I said, pointing to the figure. “Realistically. I want you to make it look like Her Majesty the Empress, if you can.”

At the workshop, I had seen for myself how talented Lauron was when it came to controlling puppets. And what I’d witnessed in the classroom had shown me that the same magic that controlled clay dolls could manipulate action figures. So if we took a genius like Lauron and gave her a life-size doll to work with, would she be able to make it look human?

That was the real question. Of course, if we just wanted the doll to stand at attention during ceremonial occasions, or wave to the people from a balcony someplace, it might not have required that much magical skill. Someone other than Lauron might have been able to operate the body double. That’s why we had started working on it before we actually confirmed whether Lauron would be able to do what we wanted.

But if possible, I was interested in using the doll as more than just a display piece. If it could trick someone when they were close enough to reach out and touch it, make them think it was the real person, then the situations in which we could use the stand-in would increase exponentially. The absolutely ideal outcome? Maybe the doll could even help reduce Petralka’s workload a little bit. That was my thought.

“Can you do it?”

The figure, by the way, had been manufactured with plastic joints, but we had stuck a bit of metal into each of the points of articulation. That would make it easier for the dwarven magic to work on it.

“Making it move won’t be a problem,” Lauron told me. She didn’t qualify that: no maybe, probably, or I think. A simple declaration. She was back to the seriousness she had displayed at first.

“I can control three clay dolls at once, so I should be able to control one doll with three times as many joints. Though it may take me some time to figure out exactly what’s possible.”

“Wow...”

My understanding was that one of those dolls had at least a hundred points of articulation—maybe even two or three times that, depending how you counted. Of course, you weren’t focusing on each and every one of them at once when controlling a clay doll, but still.

“However...” Lauron frowned at the action figure. “What does moving it mean, specifically...?”

She sounded less sure of herself again.

“I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

“There are all kinds of movements. Walking, sitting, eating... And the definition of realistic—that could be any number of things. As far as making it look like Her Majesty, that’s a rather... open-ended order as well...”

“Ah...” Even I could understand what Lauron was getting at. I had been thinking that because the clay dolls were roughly humanoid in shape, making the movements look more “human” would just be a matter of refining them.

Petralka had said herself that the clay dolls were used much like forklifts or earth movers, or like the robotic arms you see on an assembly line—they were designed for labor purposes. It didn’t really matter what they looked like. Yes, they were based on people, but they had never been intended to replicate them. The dwarves had never given any thought to how to make the movements “more realistic” because that had never been the point.

“Hmmm...”

What to do? I could try to model some movements, but just having someone dance around in front of her didn’t seem likely to help much. I needed some example of something that wasn’t human, but seemed like it was.

That was when it hit me. “Oh. I’ve got it. I’m sure I have it downloaded here somewhere...”

I pulled my smartphone out of my pocket and started going through my folders of video files.

There. I selected one file in particular.

“Something like this. See?”

A jaunty melody played through the phone’s speaker.

“What’s this...?” Lauron looked at the screen, eyes wide.

It was the ending song from Prepure.

Prepure was a typical anime, done the old-fashioned way: by stringing 2D images together so they looked like they were moving. The ending, though, that was different. It showed 3D renderings of the characters from the show, dancing and singing in virtual space.

In other words, acting like dolls moving on their own.

I’d heard that the characters in this ending clip did more than just flounce around. There were a lot of little gimmicks worked in that the uninitiated would never notice.

Human motion is nothing like mechanical, motor-driven movement. Bundles of muscles expand and contract, creating movement. So for example, the animators did a lot of research into how to make an arm go up and down, trying to figure out how to make the doll’s joints move in the way that most closely resembled a human doing the same thing.

Hence why characters who didn’t really exist appeared almost as if they were flesh and blood. Add in shadows and hair movement, and they started to look really real.

Lauron watched the Prepure ED with rapt attention. Finally the song ended, the video freezing on the characters with their hands in the air and big smiles on their faces, but Lauron continued to stare at the smartphone for a moment more.

Then she said, “You want it to move like that, is that right?” She didn’t even look away from the screen as she spoke.

“Yeah, more or less.”

“May I see it again?”

“Sure.”

I started the song again and handed my phone to Lauron. She stared fixedly at the screen, her violet eyes wide. She seemed to be drinking it in; when the song ended, I reached out and started it again.

Lauron watched it five times through.

Then she nodded and handed the phone back to me.

“Understood,” she said.

“Understood? What do you understand?”

“I can move it,” she declared. She sounded absolutely certain.

“Oh, uh—really? Give it a try, then.”

“All right.”

Lauron raised her hands over the action figure. At the same time, I saw her lips moving slightly—I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I was sure it must be the words of a spell.

And then I practically jumped as the action figure started moving.

First it bounced to its feet and stood stock-still. Then it did a half-turn and faced me. The movements had the same awkward, jerky quality I’d seen in the classroom.

I guess she needs a moment to get used to it.

“Huh...?”

No sooner had I had the thought than the action figure started dancing. It re-created the ending from Prepure perfectly.

“Whoa...!” I exclaimed. It was like the table was a stage, with the action figure dancing vigorously on it. It looked exactly like the ending dance I’d shown Lauron a few minutes earlier, as smooth as if the character had jumped off the screen.

There wasn’t a hint of hesitation or reluctance. The figure’s expression didn’t change, true enough, but for someone who’d seen the video clip as many times as I had, she even seemed to smile at the right moments.

What’s going on here? This is incredible.

I watched the dance vacantly until, after the exact length of the ending theme, the action figure crumpled to the tabletop like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Is that about right?”

Lauron’s question didn’t sound proud at all, almost disinterested. She sounded like she’d simply shown me something totally normal and unremarkable.

“It was amazing!” I exclaimed, pumping my fist.

It was beyond my wildest dreams. And she’d learned the entire dance just by watching the video a few times. Every single movement. That meant she was more than just good at magic—she had a mean memory, to boot.

“I mean it, seriously, that was great! You’ll be perfect!”

“I’m glad I seem to have satisfied your expectations.”

I was ecstatic, but Lauron still didn’t seem either prideful or humble. She still sounded like none of this meant much to her at all.

So the construction of a life-size doll began. We had found the person to control it. Everything was going just the way I’d imagined—even better, in fact.

That was fantastic. But taking on a whole project like this meant my responsibilities increased dramatically. Petralka had told me to prioritize this and let Minori-san and Hikaru-san handle things at school, but it wasn’t that simple.

Here’s what I mean: in the mornings, I would go to school and conduct otaku training classes just like always; then in the evenings, I would come back home and go to the dwarves’ outbuilding to check on their progress. As each piece was completed—first the head, then the arms, legs, and body, I would point out things that should be refined, then make a note. I also handled all the red tape to get the paint, surface covering, and other supplies from Japan.

And then, after dinner each night, I went over to the castle to report directly to Petralka on the day’s progress. As I’d promised, I was being more proactive about visiting her.

On top of all that, Lauron was staying at our mansion for the time being. I had gotten my hands on some new video clips of 3D models, picked the best ones, and shown them to her so she could continue to practice re-creating their motions with the action figure. When I had some spare time, being a part of these practice sessions was another of my jobs.

...Yeesh. Spelling it all out like that makes me realize just how much I’d taken on.

Anyway, that’s where I was at.

“...r.”

“...ergh...”

“...-ter?”

“Y-Yeah...?”

“Master?”

“Huh?”

I snapped back to consciousness. All the hazy stuff around me suddenly came back into focus.

“Oh, M-Myusel.”

I looked up, and there was Myusel, looking concerned.

Ohh. Her beauty was endlessly multiplied by looking up at her. The worry that wreathed her face only made her more lovely still.

Ah, my blessed eyes! Er, okay, not the time for that.

“Master, if I may say so, if you’re going to sleep, I think it would be healthiest for you to go back to your room first.”

“Uh... What...?”

I nodded dimly, not really grasping my own situation, and looked around.

Myusel and I were in the dining area. I was sitting in one of the chairs, and Myusel was standing beside me. There were other people there, too. Minori-san and Hikaru-san, Elvia and Lauron. Brooke and his wife Cerise. They were all staring at me.

“Oh, uh... did I fall asleep?”

“Yes, sir.” Myusel nodded. “It would be terrible if you caught a cold. If you’re going to sleep, maybe your bed would be—”

“No, uh, I’m okay.” I shook my head gently from side to side, trying to clear away the fog. “How long was I out?”

“Maybe ten minutes?” Minori-san said, glancing at her watch. “We all ate, Myusel came in to start cleaning up, and you were off to dreamland.”

When I looked down at the table, I saw that indeed, there weren’t many plates left on it.

Yikes. I really just conked out.

I had fallen asleep playing online games in the past, but never during a meal. It only went to show how tired I really was.

Elvia looked at me, equally concerned. “You sure you’re okay, Shinichi-sama?” When I saw her usually sunny face clouded with worry, it made me realize how obvious my fatigue must have been to everyone else.

“I guess I’m okay for the moment. Thanks.”

“You have been working awful hard lately,” Minori-san said with a half smile.

“Master, if you like, I can bring you a drink that will help with your tiredness...”

“Thanks, Myusel. But I’m fine for now.” I forced myself to smile.

I was touched by everyone’s concern. I suddenly felt like maybe I could understand those breadwinners who tragically died of overwork. It was like, the more concerned everyone was for you, the more you wanted to repay that thoughtfulness by working hard. I guess that wasn’t a good thing in the long run.

“Look, if you’re really that tired, you should go to bed early,” Minori-san said, like a solicitous older sister.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll at least make sure I don’t fall asleep at school.”

“Speaking of school,” Hikaru-san said, “have you heard?” Until then, he had just been listening to the conversation with a small smile on his face, but now he spoke up.

“Heard what? Something about the school?” I asked.

“The students were saying—” and here he cocked his head, maybe trying to remember exactly what he’d heard—“that recently when they use magic, something kind of strange happens.”

“What’s that about?” It was the first I’d heard of it. Or maybe I’d heard of it, and then forgotten while I was asleep.

“Apparently the effect varies from place to place.”

“You mean like... magical rampage?”

“It sounds less like overpowering and more like they can’t quite use the magic.”

“Hmm?”

They couldn’t use magic? What was going on here?

I knew that if you happened to be right up close to a dragon, which was part sprite, any magical power you released would be absorbed—basically, eaten—by the dragon, and your spell wouldn’t work. Surely there wasn’t some huge True Drake hanging out near Marinos, was there?

If there was a dragon anywhere near school, we would have known about it sooner—the whole area would have been in an uproar long before we were reduced to speculating on rumors about what had happened to all the magic.

“Does this sort of thing happen often?” I asked, turning to Myusel.

She looked surprised to suddenly be drawn into the conversation, but after a moment she shook her head hesitantly and said, “I’ve never heard of it. It would seem to suggest that the sprites in that place, the magical power released by nature, have decreased for some reason, but...”

“But you don’t think that’s really possible?”

“I doubt it. Oh, but then again, a dragon or other large, part-sprite creature in the area could cause an effect like that. But only if you were right near them...”

“And people would notice if there was a dragon traipsing through the capital.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then what, I wonder.” I cocked my head—which happened to bring Lauron into view.

She was fidgeting with her place settings, moving the cups and plates so they were next to others of the same type. She wasn’t just piling things together so they were easy to clean up. It was more like she was... rearranging them.

“Something wrong, Lauron?”

Was she... looking for something?

She didn’t look up at me as she shook her head. “No... It’s just that these dishes...”

As she murmured, she finished fiddling with the settings and nodded in satisfaction. The cups and plates were now all the exact same distance apart from each other.

“Oh... I’m sorry, I’ll clean those up right away, so please, just leave them!” Myusel insisted when she saw what Lauron had done.

Maybe she thought Lauron was implicitly criticizing her for having put off the cleanup to talk with us. Myusel rushed off to the kitchen, coming back with a cart onto which she quickly loaded the empty dinnerware.

My maid—always such a hard worker. It made me feel warm and fuzzy inside to watch her.

I could still see Lauron out of the corner of my eye, though, and she still looked a bit put out about something. She was usually so expressionless—like her face had the potential to assume an infinite variety of looks—that a small change like this was noticeable.

“Lauron?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Starting by piling up the biggest plates, and finishing by cleaning up the glasses, would be the most efficient thing.”

“Oh, uh, is—is that right?” I was a bit taken aback by her serious attempt at an explanation. True, Myusel had gotten a bit flustered and was picking up table settings sort of willy-nilly, but still. “It looks like she’s getting everything just fine to me...”

At that, Lauron blinked, as if surprised. “I... I see... I’m sorry...” She cast her eyes down again; she sounded apologetic. Her voice suddenly took on that slightly lost quality, her words sort of trailing off.

What was the story here?

I was a little worried about what was going on with Lauron, but I hesitated to press her, and ultimately I didn’t say anything else about it that day.

Most fantasy stories depict dwarves as sprite-people who are exceptionally good at working with metal. The world I was in seemed to be no exception to the rule. As amazing as it had been to see Brooke put up the workshop in three days flat, the dwarves now working in it were even more incredible.

Just three days after they started working, and they’d already had a functioning prototype.

They weren’t just making a statue, remember. An action figure has a bunch of moving parts; it’s almost a type of machine. And because it was going to be Petralka’s body double, it would need to be capable of things like opening its mouth and blinking. Any one part out of place could have sent the whole thing haywire, yet the dwarves had assembled it almost by feel.

Of course, it was still a prototype. There were some issues that meant it couldn’t be offered up for actual use; I took a look at it and consulted with the dwarves about what to change. But frequently, it would be less than three days before a new prototype was ready, reflecting my suggestions.

All told, it took less than two weeks after starting on the doll. Half a month to safely complete Petralka’s kagemusha.

We immediately contacted Eldant Castle, applying for an audience to show the finished product to Petralka and the others. “We,” incidentally, being me, Minori-san, and Hikaru-san, along with Romilda and the dwarves who had created the double.

The dwarves wore identical expressions of concern as a knight led us through the halls of the castle. Despite a handful of dwarves who were treated as nobility, most of them were simply seen as demi-humans, and therefore socially inferior to humans. Most of them had never been in the castle. A handful of the dwarves involved in this body-double project had been part of the moviemaking effort earlier, but even they had only come as far as the courtyard—everyone was naturally anxious about an imperial audience.

The audience chamber we were shown to wasn’t the small room I was used to giving my reports in. It was much, much bigger. Several times bigger, I would guess, and vastly more opulent.

I was starting to sympathize with the nervous dwarves.

“Wait, is this...”

I was almost certain it was the room I’d been led to the very first time I had come to Eldant Castle. That took me back.

Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and I stood in a row, with the dwarves lined up behind us. I heard something behind me and looked back to find that the dwarves had collectively fallen to their knees and bowed their heads. Oh, right. I’d been told to greet Petralka the same way that first day. I had almost completely forgotten about it, since Petralka insisted I not be formal with her.

“Shinichi-kun,” Minori-san said, tugging on my arm. I realized she was bowing just like the dwarves. So was Hikaru-san. I let her pull me down so I was on my knees like everyone else. “We’re not alone today,” she reminded me.

Oh, right. As chummy as we normally were, I was still dealing with the empress. And today, we had to stand on ceremony for the dwarves’ sake. At least, that’s what I figured was going on.

Petralka’s voice reached us: “We appreciate your work on our behalf.” My head was down, so I couldn’t actually see her, but I could easily imagine her sitting on her throne with her legs crossed. “Raise your heads.”

Slowly, we all looked up in accordance with the royal command.

There she was, just like I’d pictured her, arms and legs crossed at the exact angles I’d imagined as she sat on her throne. Beside her stood Garius and Prime Minister Zahar, also as I’d imagined.

“We are told the doll is complete.”

“Yes, Majesty,” Minori-san replied. “Just last night.”

“Mm!” Petralka nodded, unable to hide the curiosity on her face. At the same time, some knights came forward carrying a largish, plain wood box just about big enough for a person—to put it bluntly, it looked a bit like a coffin—and set it in front of the throne.

“Open it.”

“Ma’am!” One of the knights stepped back and removed the lid.

Inside, we could see... a girl. A girl with long, beautiful silver hair, lying inside the box. Her lovely, delicate hands were folded at the neckline of her indigo dress. Her eyes were closed, the lashes long, like a sleeping princess in a fairytale. She looked identical to the young woman who sat on the throne.

“Ho...!” Petralka’s eyes went wide to see how perfect it was. Garius and Prime Minister Zahar looked from the box to the empress several times, the figure apparently far more convincing than they had expected.

Good, all good. I smiled in satisfaction.

Truth be told, I had been pretty shocked myself when I’d seen the finished product for the first time the night before. Yes, I had been head of production and had seen the doll go through both a very un-Petralka-like prototype phase and then increasingly convincing renditions—but even so. I thought if you put Petralka in the same dress and a similar box, and lined the two boxes up, even the people who knew her best wouldn’t be able to pick out the real empress.

“Ho...!” Petralka repeated, her eyes shining as she stood up from her throne.

“Magnificent!” she declared.

“It’s an honor, Your Majesty,” one dwarf said humbly, bowing again. The speaker was Rydel Guld—Romilda’s father.

“It almost seems to have Your Majesty’s own air of wisdom,” Zahar said.

“I’m not confident I could tell them apart if they were standing side by side,” Garius added. Their comments could hardly have been higher praise. Frankly, I had wondered if they would complain that it looked too much like a dead body and was unsettling, so this was a happy surprise.

“It is more than we expected,” Petralka said. “However...” Her eyebrows furrowed. “Could you not perhaps have made the bust just a little larger?”

“Huh? I kind of thought we had,” I said without thinking—and Petralka fixed me with a look that could kill.

Ugh. When am I going to learn to keep my mouth shut?

I thought I was about to receive another royal right hook, but, maybe restrained by the presence of the dwarves and her various attendants, Petralka merely coughed and changed the subject.

“Well, then—is it safe to take it out of the box?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Excellent! Then unpack it and stand it before us!” Petralka ordered the knights. They extracted the life-size doll from the crate with the utmost care, as if they were handling something very fragile. I guess considering—as I’ve mentioned repeatedly—the fact that the doll looked exactly like Petralka, they probably hesitated to treat it as just a thing. In fact, they looked downright reverent as they stood the replica before the empress. Unfortunately for them, it looked like it was going to fall over the moment they let go of it.

“Oh, here, this goes like this...” I walked over, widening the doll’s stance a little, changing the angle of the hips. Hrmm. Have I mentioned how lifelike this doll was? I was touching its leg, and it sort of felt like I was touching the real Petralka’s leg—in other words, like I was basically committing a crime. That made me a little reluctant, myself.

“Maybe this will do the trick?” I muttered, and the knights let go.

And it stood! Petralka stayed standing!

I privately felt like a girl yodeling in the Alps.

But then...

“Huh?”

My elation only lasted for a second. I guess I hadn’t done the job as well as I thought, because the Petralka doll slowly tipped forward—and then fell square on top of me.

“Grrgh?!” I exclaimed as Petralka—or rather, her doppelgänger—squished me. “It’s... It’s so heavy...” I grunted. It was crushing my chest.

As small and light as the doll looked, the metal bones and complicated mechanicals actually made it pretty heavy. We hadn’t taken any official measurements, but I would say it weighed... well, plenty.

“What do you mean, heavy!” Petralka bellowed. “Are you calling us fat?!”

“I—I’m not talking about you, Petralka, I mean the doll...”

The dwarves, who did know how heavy the thing was, must have decided that I was going to suffocate if they didn’t do something, because two of them came forward and lifted the doll off me.

This time, they stood it up. Leave it to the people who made it to know how to get the balance right. Now two Petralkas stood before us, neither of them listing dangerously.

When the doll was standing properly, it was even harder to tell the two of them apart. I really was seriously impressed with the craftsmanship.

“Uh, anyway,” I ventured, “do you like it?”

“Mm. It is indeed fine work, there is no question.” Petralka nodded.

“I sure think so. Dwarf construction is something else, huh? Granted, we got the covering from Japan, but they managed to cram enough joints in there that it can move almost exactly like a human being...”

“Plus, it can transform, too.”

“Yeah, and it can transform, too, so— Wait a second!” I wheeled on Romilda, who had whispered the addendum to me. “Since when can it transform?!”

I had been at the worksite virtually every day, but I didn’t know anything about that! How could they have added a huge chunk of functionality without me, the overseer, having any idea?!

Jeez! Dwarves weren’t just demi-human—they were superhuman.

Okay, hold on, maybe this wasn’t the time to be getting lost in admiration.

“Huh? But—” Romilda looked surprised. “It’s what you taught us, Sensei. Robots transform.”

“That’s only giant robots!”

“Whaaat?!” Romilda took a trembling step back, her eyes wide.

“What’s wrong, Romilda?” her father, Rydel, whispered to her.

“Dad, it sounds like it didn’t need to transform after all...”

“What’s that?!” Mr. Guld sounded every bit as shocked as his daughter. “But Romilda, you insisted—”

I guess the whole thing had been at Romilda’s instigation. Whatever weird ideas she had suggested to her father, they had made their way through him into the project. The other dwarves were looking at each other, realizing too late that they had gone above and beyond in the most ridiculous way possible.

Ahh. It was starting to make sense to me.

These dwarves were professional craftsmen. And craftsmen like to test themselves, like to pour their hearts and souls into their work. Plus, they already understood the basics of how to make a machine transform from working on the Faldra, so...

“What would people think if the empress transformed right in front of them?!”

“Oh, uh... I thought maybe they would think it was really cool.”

It was dawning on me that Romilda was maybe not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

“Then everyone would know for sure she wasn’t the real empress!”

“Not true,” Hikaru-san (so uninvolved in this matter) whispered to me. “They might worship her as some new kind of god.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever—!”

Look, I think Romilda made an innocent mistake, but Hikaru-san—you’re doing this on purpose!

What exactly did this doll even transform into? Could it fly? Was any kind of cannon involved? Or did it have a beast mode? Whatever, that would explain why it was so darn heavy!

“Er, anyway, if you don’t have it transform, it’ll just look like this!” I said and chuckled, trying to make the best of things as Petralka and her attendants looked at me with sincere doubt. Sometimes all you can do is laugh, right?

Ugh. Just give it up, Shinichi.

A while later, after everyone had had plenty of time to admire the product, I walked up to the doll and gave it a pat on the back, just to emphasize how great it was.

“Hrm...?” Petralka and the others watched me with surprise, apparently not understanding what I was doing.

Unfortunately, the pat on the back caused the Petralka doll to lose its balance again, and it—

“Eep?!”

—didn’t fall over.

As everyone looked on in shock, it opened its eyes and thrust a leg forward to catch itself.

“Goodness!”

In fact, it kept moving after that. With its hands at its sides, it turned its hips and bowed its head. And then, as smooth as anything, it started to dance.

Just as we had planned, when the Prepure ending theme started playing through my phone, Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and the dwarves all stepped back.

The room was filled with music, and the doll danced along.

“Oh ho...!” Petralka, and even Prime Minister Zahar and Garius, leaned forward to get a closer look. In fact, the members of the royal guard even seemed totally absorbed as they watched the Petralka look-alike do the adorable, vigorous dance from the TV show.

Turn! Turn! Arms wide, and—jump!

The song, just ninety seconds or so long, seemed to be over in a flash, and ended with the doll striking the final pose, leaving her audience to stare in total silence.

It was Garius who broke the quiet at last. “Truly spectacular.”

Petralka looked around the audience chamber. “Who has done this?” She seemed to apprehend immediately that the doll had been controlled with magic, and she must have been looking for the magic-user.

Good. All the effort had been worth an effect like this.

I smiled, and nodded at Guld-san. “Would you do the introductions?”

“Lauron,” he said, and a girl stepped forward from where she had been hidden behind the other dwarves. She was never very expressive, but there was evident anxiousness on her face now—only natural in the presence of Her Majesty the Empress, I suppose.

“Lauron Selioz. She’s young, but she is a full craftsman in the Guld Workshop.”

Lauron didn’t say anything, but faced Petralka and the others and gave a single deep bow.

Lauron’s magical abilities were staggering, there was no question. But don’t take my word for it. As absolute ruler, Petralka had probably seen her fair share of magic-users. Garius and Zahar presumably had, too—and they were all stunned. That had to mean Lauron was some kind of genius.

There was one thing, though. We had reached the point where the doll moved as smoothly as a real human being, but that was it. To achieve our ultimate objective, substituting it for Petralka, the doll would have to move like Petralka, and that would take more practice.

The mansion wasn’t going to be a convenient base anymore. That meant moving into the room that had been prepared for me here at the castle, as well as getting the cooperation of Petralka herself.

“Mm. Is this everyone?” Petralka said, looking around at the people gathered in the room. That included me, Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and Lauron, along with Romilda (who was there as Lauron’s assistant), and even the elf Loek, who would help to take us to another level of Petralka-ishness.

Just as dwarves tend to be talented in earth-related magic, elves in general are superb with spells that use wind—or more specifically, air. And sound is caused by waves of oscillations traveling through the air. So I thought maybe wind magic, appropriately applied, could even help us change someone’s voice. I checked with an elf I knew—namely, Loek—and he said it could be done, so I added him to the roll of people involved with this project.

Loek and Romilda each looked at each other out of the corner of their eye. Neither said anything. Normally the pair argued nonstop, but here in Eldant Castle, discussing a political matter in front of the empress herself, it looked like they were either too nervous or too smart to start in with each other.

“Let us begin, then.” Petralka turned her gaze, naturally, upon the life-size replica of herself, which was sitting in a chair at the center of the room. The two of them right next to each other practically looked like twins. If the doll were to start moving, to put its hands together and dance or something, it would be almost impossible to tell which of them was which.

None of us spoke. Lauron and all of us waited for Her Majesty to give orders. But then—

“Shinichi.” Petralka looked directly at me.

“Yes?”

“Will you not give the orders already?”

“Er...?”

Petralka put her hands on her hips. “‘Er?’ is not the answer we seek. We have charged you as our educational adjunct, Shinichi. As such, it is naturally you who would give the orders now.”

Geez, really? With the regal note of “Let us begin, then,” I just assumed the empress would be the one telling people what to do.

“Ohh... Huh. Okay...” First I turned to Loek. “For starters, I’m going to prioritize Lauron’s work on the movements, but maybe you could go ahead and just take a shot at changing the voice. It’s our first time, so just see what you can do.”

“Yes, sir,” Loek said. He spoke readily, but his expression was stiff—couldn’t quite beat the nerves, I guess.

“And then... Petralka.”

“Hm? Us?” She sounded surprised. Maybe she’d thought she would just be observing.

“Could you walk a little bit for us? I want to have Lauron imitate you. Once she can replicate something you’re actually doing, then we can move on to having her choose the motions.”

“Mm. Understood.” Petralka walked to the middle of the room. Her movements were suffused with absolute elegance, like a noble girl at a ball. I guess, in a way, she was a noble girl—being the empress and all.

“Hmm,” I found myself muttering. “That’s not quite right.”

“What is not right?” Petralka asked (she must have overheard me), stopping where she was and looking annoyed.

“Just act normal,” I said.

“Is that not what we were doing?”

“Not quite...”

How could I put this? She was a little too aware of her audience, and was taking extra care, trying to present her best self.

“You usually puff your chest out a little more when you walk, right?” I said. “Like, Important person, coming through!”

I thrust my chest forward and walked around to demonstrate, Petralka watching me with undisguised displeasure. “W-We do not walk in such a bizarre fashion!”

“You’ve gotta look—what’s the word?—more self-centered.”

“Who are you calling self-centered!”

“W-Wait, you never realized?!” I exclaimed, once again unfortunately speaking my mind.

The next instant, Garius and Prime Minister Zahar both exploded.

“Why are you laughing?!” Petralka demanded, getting angrier and angrier.

Most people would cringe and cower when they realized they had upset their absolute monarch, but Garius (who was a relative of Petralka’s, after all) kept up the uncharacteristic merriment as he answered, “Oh, it’s merely that one can’t quite deny the logic of Shinichi’s statement...”

“Garius!” Petralka said, stomping her foot and turning beet red. It looked both youthful and adorable—that was our empress for you.

“Well, anyway, just relax and act normal. Please. If we don’t practice imitating you how you usually move, it’ll defeat the point.”

“Hrm...” Petralka puffed out her cheeks but, maybe understanding just how important this “training” was, didn’t object further. Again, I urged, and Petralka started walking slowly around the room, looking a bit more like her usual self this time.

“Ready, Lauron?” I asked the dwarf.

“Yes, sir, I’m ready.”

No sooner had she answered than the Petralka doll jumped up from the chair as if it had a spring in its behind. The movement didn’t look remotely human, but a few seconds later, the double lined up alongside Petralka as she marched around and began imitating her movements.

The length of each step. The swing of the arms. The direction of the gaze. Bit by bit, Lauron brought the doll’s movements closer to Petralka’s example.

“Excellent, just like that,” I said, talking to both Lauron and Petralka.

That was the beginning of Lauron’s training in imitating Her Majesty the Empress, Petralka an Eldant III.

Still, though. We couldn’t exactly stay at Eldant Castle twenty-four-seven. Thus Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and I went back home. Lauron, for her part, had been cooped up at our house since she arrived—but here between phases of the project, we decided to send her back home for a little while, too.

And so, for the first time in a couple of weeks, the dinner table looked like it normally did.

Minori-san and Hikaru-san were there, of course, but so were Myusel, Elvia, Brooke, and Cerise. Things had been so hectic lately that we’d hardly had time to sit down and enjoy one of Myusel’s homemade meals.

“I’m glad it seems like it’s going to go well, though,” I said, thinking back on Lauron’s work as I ate.

“That’s wonderful,” Myusel said with a smile. As usual, she looked almost as pleased as if it were her work, not mine. Her smile had become sort of a barometer of success for me.

“I don’t quite get it, but I wish I coulda been there to see it,” said Elvia, looking at me with curiosity in her eyes as she shoveled food into her mouth. She looked a bit like a kid begging a parent for an unusual toy. Admittedly, it was still pretty cute.

“Sorry, I don’t really think we could do that...” Elvia being technically a Bahairamanian spy and all. “What with the dwarves switching from prototyping to mass production, things have calmed down a little, at least. I think we can all take a breath now. Thanks, everyone, for everything.”

The development phase of the body-double doll was over already. All that was left was the production of spare parts—and that just meant repeating familiar work, so there was less need for me to observe or give instructions. Again, since this was sort of a natural place to pause, I had told the dwarves to go home for the time being.

The whole project had really put a lot of strain on everybody, but I think it really hit Brooke, Myusel, and Cerise particularly hard. Myusel and Cerise were constantly having to bring food to the dwarves shut up in that shed, clean the guest rooms where they slept, and wash their clothes. Brooke not only built the little outbuilding, but helped bring in additional materials too. All these things were above and beyond everyone’s normal duties.

“If that girl you found can do the job, then we’re all set,” Minori-san said, cutting up some duck meat with a fork and knife. “And offhand, it looks like she’s going to be fine.”

“I’m so glad everything seems to be going well,” I said.

For the moment, all the little details surrounding Petralka’s body double seemed to be coming along smoothly.

Too smoothly, if you asked me. I couldn’t shake an occasional anxiety that I’d missed something.

“If this were a light novel or a manga or something, this is about where we would get the twist—the thing that turns everything else upside down.”

“Stop that, Hikaru-san,” I said, a strained look on my face. He sounded so calm talking about it.

“Don’t worry, I’m just joking.”

“It sounds scary somehow when you say it.”

“Oh yeah?” He sipped his tea, evidently unbothered. But then his face suddenly turned serious and he said, “There is something I keep thinking about, though.”

“Huh? What’s that?” I shifted in my seat.

Hikaru-san had originally been sent here by the Japanese government to replace me—to replace someone who didn’t listen to them with someone who did. He was an official usurper. Even, in extreme terms, my enemy, fighting for the control of Amutech. A lot had happened, but I had managed to broker an uneasy detente—or so it seemed to me, though I was never completely sure what Hikaru-san thought privately.

“A life-size action figure like that...” Hikaru-san started quietly. “Isn’t it basically just a Dutch wi—”

“Okay, that’ll be quite enough of that!” I cried, smacking the table. “Why would you just come up with that out of the blue, anyway?! You had me really worried!”

“I’m just looking at it objectively.”

“Yes, I know it looks exactly like Petralka in every way, and yes, we built in all the crucial parts, but I think it looks even more stimulating than a body pillow, I mean—wait, well, there’s no telling what functions Romilda and her friends might have built in without telling anyone, but it’s so heavy you definitely wouldn’t want it on top of—ugh! No! The point is, you’re wrong! You are so wrong!”

That is not why we built this thing!

I admit, I could see the resemblance, but it was intended for a totally different purpose, so I claim innocence! Pretty much!

Thus I fulminated both mentally and verbally. But then...

“A dutchwi?” Myusel asked, perplexed.

“Whazzat?” Elvia inquired.

“It’s nothing!” I exclaimed. “It’s nothing either of you needs to know about!”

It’s not for the sweet, innocent minds of virginal young women! That sort of thing is just for private, secret, personal use! I think! Even though I guess some people are putting them in the passenger seats of their cars these days!

“Let me explain.”

“Stoppit, Hikaru-san!”

He looked like he was relishing the prospect of enlightening Myusel and Elvia, and I tried desperately to stop him. Anyway, it was bad enough for Myusel and Elvia to hear this sort of talk, but if Petralka got so much as a whisper of a rumor that the doll was actually a sex toy, they would chop off my head and then throw my body in jail.

I looked to my bodyguard for help. “M-Minori-san! Don’t you say anything either, okay?!”

She, however, had her elbows on the table, fingers interlaced. They hid her mouth as she looked at me. I could almost have mistaken her for someone’s dad—someone’s dad who was the commander of a secret organization, using a humanoid weapon in an effort to instrumentalize humanity.

“Is a male version ready yet?”

“Minori-san...?”

Her glasses flashed dangerously as she spoke. I almost thought I could see a huge black stone slab looming behind her. Maybe it was just my imagination.

“Hello? Earth to Minori-san?”

“Is a male version ready yet?” she repeated. “If we were to prepare two male versions, Real BL would not be beyond our reach... With a Shinichi-kun version, a Hikaru-kun version, and a Minister Cordobal version, the three combined could—”

“Stop it already, will you!”

Just shut up, you rotten girl!

“What? What could they do?”

“Well, let me tell you...”

“Hikaru-san! Don’t tell them that! No filth at meal times!”

Please, Myusel! Please don’t let yourself be polluted! Elvia has her phase—her phase of the moon—and that can’t be helped, but please! Just you alone, please remain my sweet, pure maid-san!

And so on and so forth.

So I was panicking. Minori-san was so rotten she was practically fermenting. Hikaru-san still looked as calm as anything. And Myusel and Elvia were both blinking in confusion.

But we weren’t the only ones at the table.

“Brooke, dear, seconds?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Brooke and Cerise, at least, seemed to be enjoying a pleasant dinner together.

Anyway, on to the next day. After class, Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and I went with Myusel, Loek, and Romilda over to Eldant Castle. This, of course, was about Lauron’s training.

Why had we brought Myusel? She’d been at school to give some lectures, but since she was here, I wanted her opinion on Lauron’s “Petralka-ishness.” Despite the massive gap in their social positions, Myusel and Petralka had been pretty good friends since the Assembly of Patriots incident—Myusel at least knew the empress better than Loek or Romilda.

And so...

“I’m thrilled to be able to spend some time with you after school, Minori-sensei.”

“...Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t worry, Sensei, when this woodland stalker goes out of control, I’ll beat him back into line.”

“...Gee, thanks.”

I listened to Loek, Romilda, and Minori-san chat as a knight showed us through the castle to the training room.

“Geez, there isn’t a space in here that’s small, huh?” I said as we walked.

The passageway seemed to go on forever, and we were the only ones in it; and the farther inside we went, the darker it got. Honestly, it was a little scary. I sure as heck wouldn’t want to be walking around here by myself in the middle of the night.

The interior looked sort of Middle-Ages European, and it wouldn’t have surprised me to find a ghost floating around, or statues that followed you with their eyes, or other weird stuff like that.

“Where are we, anyway...?”

Truth be told, I didn’t know this part of the castle very well.

It didn’t help that the building was staggeringly huge. The population density here was abysmal. The place was just too big even for all the nobles, knights, officials, and sundry others who used it. Hence why you could tramp through it for long stretches without seeing anybody.

On top of that, the castle wasn’t just the empress’s residence. It was also a military structure—a fortress into which everyone could retreat in case of emergency. The interior was more complicated than you would expect, with multiple passageways twisting around and around the same places. If by chance an enemy did break in, they could easily get lost or just waste tons of time trying to find their way around. The castle itself functioned as a sort of maze.

I could get around okay by myself in the areas I knew well. The courtyard, for example, or the audience chambers—places I’d been to often before. But take one step away from the places I knew, and I would probably be lost in the blink of an eye. I didn’t think Eldant trusted us enough to just tell us the layout of the entire castle.

Hence, a knightly guide was indispensable.

We had been walking through the castle corridors for nearly fifteen minutes before we finally arrived at our destination.

“We have been waiting for you, Shinichi.”

We were greeted by the sight of two Petralkas, sitting in chairs with their legs crossed.

“Er, wha?” I found myself transfixed by the pair of them. They sat side-by-side in matching postures. Even the way their lips curled up in amusement at my reaction was identical.

This went beyond looking like twins. It was like she was sitting next to a mirror.

Lauron, incidentally, was standing against the far wall, watching Petralka. Presumably, she had to have her eyes on her in order to follow what she was doing. I glanced back and found everyone with me looking as shocked as I felt.

“You’re identical...” I said, returning my gaze to the Petralkas. “Almost too identical. It’s kind of disturbing.”

“What did you say?!”

My appraisal caused the Petralka on the left to raise her eyebrows and jump up vigorously. A second later, the one on the right did the same.

“Ah, now I know which one’s real.”

The doll was always going to be a beat behind her human counterpart. A little conversation, or a slight change of expression, could be handled with minimal delay, but a sudden action like jumping up was always going to produce a hesitation.

Then again, this was probably the only place we were going to see the person and the body double lined up next to each other, so it didn’t especially matter.

“Are you mocking us, Shinichi?”

“No, no. I didn’t mean it like that.”

I guess that was the wrong choice of words; both Petralkas glared angrily at me.

“I couldn’t tell which was which, you know? So I said something that would get a rise out of you so that I could tell which was the real Petralka by the slight delay in the reaction. Sorry.”

“Hrm...”

This seemed to placate Petralka, because she didn’t complain any further.

“They really do look identical, don’t they?” Minori-san said in admiration. “From a bit of a distance, you literally can’t tell them apart.”

She was right: it was natural that the doll’s facial features and whatever else would look just like Petralka’s, because that was how it had been made. But even so, if it had just been standing there, or lying on the ground, it would still have felt like a doll. It wouldn’t have had this... vitality, this liveliness.

But as Petralka and Lauron had demonstrated moments earlier, when the doll and the human struck the same pose and had the same expression, that doll-ishness all but vanished. I suppose if you were to get your nose right up next to it, you would probably notice some subtle differences. But that was chiefly because the real Petralka was standing right there for comparison. At a glance, from a distance? You’d never be able to tell. And when they started moving, you had to pay attention or you would quickly lose track of which was which. Even we ourselves could hardly say, and we already knew about the doll. People who didn’t know about it would never imagine that it was a fake. When Lauron really got Petralka’s tics and habits down, I could easily picture the day when I came into the audience chamber and wasn’t sure which of them I was dealing with.

“What do you think, Myusel?” I asked the maid standing beside me.

She had seen the doll under construction a few times, but she had never seen it right next to Petralka, let alone moving and expressing itself.

“It’s incredible,” she breathed. “It really looks like there are two of Her Majesty.”

From her tone, I could tell that this wasn’t just politeness. The two of them really looked the same to her. Perfect.

“All right, shall we go ahead and get started, then?” I said, and everyone nodded. “Lauron, would you make the doll imitate Petralka?”

“Yes, sir.” Lauron nodded.

“Romilda, Myusel, if you notice anything off, speak up. Loek, get your voice-changing magic ready. And Petralka, I want you to just say and do whatever, for Lauron to copy.”

With that, everyone but Petralka lined up along the far wall by Lauron, the better to see the doll.

There was a moment of silence. Petralka, with the eyes of everyone in the room focused on her, took a deep breath. She opened her mouth as if to speak. But...

“Hrrn...”

No words came out from between those pink lips. Just a sort of grunt, accompanied by a panicked expression.

“What’s wrong?”

“It turns out this is rather difficult to do on command...” Petralka muttered, crossing her arms. An instant later, the doll crossed its arms.

And then its lips moved. “It turrrns out this is razzer diffyicult to do-on-com-mand.”

Hmm. I should have guessed it would also be hard to change someone’s voice with wind magic. The words sounded a little awkward. Loek, though, had claimed to me that with a little practice, the speech would become completely natural.

“Just talk like normal,” I advised her.

“Hrm...”

“Hrbb...”

“Like, try laughing,” I suggested. “Oh ho ho ho!”

I thought I was helping, but Petralka didn’t look very appreciative. One eyebrow stood up in annoyance.

“We do not laugh like that!”

“Huh? You think?”

“Wee do not laugh like thad!”

“I think if you take it a little slower on the voice, it’ll sound more regal,” Hikaru-san said.

“...Yes, sir,” Lauron answered. Actually changing the voice was Loek’s job, but Lauron was providing what amounted to the raw material.

“Myusel, Romilda,” I said, “how’s it sound to you?”

This was actually one of the reasons I’d brought Myusel along today: that magic ring. We were able to communicate telepathically using these magical items, but it was a sort of mind-to-mind translation of what was being said. It didn’t work with recordings on machines, or with written letters.

The voice we were hearing was really Lauron’s voice, modified by Loek’s magic. With this magical intermediary, we could hear the sound of the voice, but it wouldn’t carry over into the translation. Of course, Minori-san and I both had at least a working knowledge of spoken Eldant, but things like tone and inflection escaped us. Hence why we needed the opinion of a native speaker of the language.

“I’m sorry,” Romilda said, “but it just sounds like Lauron talking to me.”

“That’s nonsense! Are you saying my magic isn’t getting the job done?!”

“I didn’t say that! I just said what it sounded like to me!” Loek was furious, and Romilda was thoroughly annoyed. “Yes, it sounds a little different, but I talk with Lauron a lot, and I know her quirks. She might sound funny, but she still sounds like Lauron.”

“...I agree,” Myusel said apologetically. “I’ve had the honor of hearing Her Majesty speak several times now... But if I had to compare this to those occasions...”

“No dice, huh?” I sighed.

Lauron’s performance looked like our bottleneck now. Once Loek had the magic worked out—once he understood the basics of how to change the voice—we wouldn’t need to make further modifications based on the situation. We could just stuff it into a magical item.

But the doll, acting as Petralka’s body double, would need to be able to answer basic questions. The overall quality of the voice was one thing, but the nuances were something we couldn’t augment with magic.

“It’s starting to look like the talking is going to be the hardest part,” I said.

“It’s possible we could get someone else specifically to do the voice,” Hikaru-san said.

Then, to our collective surprise, there was a knock on the door.

“Who is it?” Petralka said, implicitly pausing our practice.

“It is I, Your Majesty.”

“Garius. Enter.”

“Majesty.” The door opened even as he spoke, and the silver-haired knight came in.

“What is wrong?”

“An urgent matter requires your attention.”

“We are over here.”

“...How rude of me.” Garius, who had been addressing the doll, gave a discreet cough and turned to the real Petralka. “We implore you to return with us,” he said softly.

“Hmm?” Petralka pursed her lips. Incidentally, so did the puppet standing next to her.

“Majesty...” Garius said pleadingly.

“There appears no choice,” Petralka said with a sigh. “We must excuse ourselves for the time being. The rest of you, do not forbear to practice in our absence.”

Then she and Garius left the room.

Okay, understandable. I could have seen this coming. Petralka was the empress. No matter how carefully she arranged her schedule, there was always going to be a mountain of business to attend to. Frankly, I expected plenty more interruptions like this in the future.

“All right, well, Lauron, how about you just start imitating Petralka doing whatever?”

I looked at Lauron... but she didn’t move. She didn’t seem to be using magic; the Petralka figure was just standing there motionless.

“What’s wrong?” Hikaru-san asked the frozen dwarf.

“Um...” Lauron blinked and looked at Hikaru-san, sounding lost. Then she looked at me. She wore her usual detached expression—but was it my imagination, or did she look upset?

“When you say... doing whatever... what exactly do you mean...?”

“Huh...? Oh, right.” I realized my instructions had been a little too vague. Fair enough. She had only just started training—maybe suddenly saying “just make it like Petralka” was a bit much to ask. Even Petralka had had trouble when I’d told her to just act like herself.

“Hmm, uh, okay, could you walk from the chair to the wall and back, then sit down again?”

“Understood.” Lauron nodded, then raised her arms and pointed her palms at the Petralka figure. She spent a second intoning a spell, and then Petralka’s feet began to move. She walked to the wall, turned around, and swinging her arms like a marching soldier, she went back to the chair and sat again.

“Was that... to your satisfaction?”

“Hrm...”

For a second, I wasn’t sure what to say. Sure, she’d done exactly what I asked. To the wall, come back, sit down. On target as far as it went, but... But...

“It just didn’t feel like Petralka...”

The problem was bigger than that, in fact. Not only did it not feel like Petralka, it didn’t feel human: the movements had looked just like a puppet’s. Like a machine that looked human. You could practically hear the gears clanking.

So I stood there, not sure how to answer—not sure how to explain.

I was saved when Hikaru-san, who had been watching from the wall, took a step forward. “You’re imitating the empress, so I think when she walks, she should puff out her chest and look a little more important.” He strutted to demonstrate. Fists clenched, chest out, marching in place.

Lauron watched silently, then gave a small nod and started moving the doll. Just the way Hikaru-san had shown her—exactly. Now it looked plenty human. In fact, it was like having another Hikaru-san standing right...

Huh?

I was starting to get an unpleasant feeling. Could this be...?

“I think she sort of crosses her legs when she sits. You could try that,” Hikaru-san said, back in his place by the wall.

“Switch your legs back and forth a few times,” Minori-san added.

“Understood,” Lauron said, nodding again, and again the puppet started moving. Petralka’s look-alike seated herself in the chair once more—awkwardly and mechanically—and crossed her legs. But something was obviously wrong. It was like her energy was in the wrong places.

“Switch... several times...” Lauron murmured. As she did so, the puppet crossed its legs. A few seconds later, it recrossed them. Then a few seconds later, it did it again. And a few seconds after that...

“Okay, whoa, stop, stop!” I called, waving my arms. “Just crossing and uncrossing your legs forever is super weird, right?!”

She looked set to keep shifting positions at precise intervals pretty much all day. And wasn’t that practically the definition of mechanical? And there was something off about the way the doll looked with its legs crossed. Like, normally when you cross your legs, the upper leg sort of rests on the lower one, with the lower leg supporting the weight of the upper one. But that wasn’t what the doll was doing. It had the basic action down, but its strength seemed to be distributed evenly throughout its body. It was almost like it was forcing itself to hold a pose.

“What? But... you said to cross and uncross the legs...”

“Okay, yes, we did! But there’s a limit to these things!”

Lauron furrowed her brow, seemingly deep in thought.

I should have guessed.

The exact reason for that unpleasant feeling I’d had was becoming clear to me.

Earlier, Lauron had been able to imitate Petralka’s movements when she’d been physically there as a model. But she hadn’t absorbed those movements and taken them into herself; she hadn’t needed to. She just needed to copy what was in front of her.

But what about when you took the model away?

In other words, when you’re not copying, but reproducing...

Like, say there was a math problem. The teacher solves it, the student sees them do it and learns the answer, so the next time the same problem comes up, they can give the right response. But they don’t really understand the problem; they’ve just learned by rote what the teacher showed them. So when it comes to a different problem, when they have to apply the idea, they’re lost.

Or pretend someone likes the work of a certain illustrator, and all they do is copy that person’s pictures. After making hundreds or thousands of copies, they can reproduce that illustrator’s work at a level that’s indistinguishable from the original—but they still don’t necessarily understand character anatomy, or how to put flesh on a design; they’ve just specialized in copying 2D points and lines. So that person still wouldn’t be able to produce an original work in the illustrator’s style. They could only imitate what had already been created.

“You’ve seen Her Majesty up close a number of times now, right?” Hikaru-san said to Lauron. “Did you never notice at all how she walks or sits?”

“I did...”

“Sure you did. So just imitate what you saw, right? What’s so hard about that?”

“H-Hikaru-san...” I said. He didn’t sound especially critical, but you could never tell how a person was going to take something. “Maybe you could be just a little more... gentle...”

“Gentle? What?” he said, blinking in confusion.

Hikaru-san is so smooth in so many ways that I think he may not fully grasp the feelings of people who aren’t as socially adept as he is. To say this should be obvious, so why aren’t you doing it? might just be an innocent question in his eyes, but the socially maladroit might feel like they’re being made fun of or even attacked.

I had grown up with a light novel author for a dad and a game artist for a mother—in other words, with a couple of creative types—so I was well aware of the gulf between people who “could do” and people who couldn’t.

What Hikaru-san was saying wasn’t wrong—but it wasn’t going to help solve the problem, either.

“Okay, okay,” Minori-san broke in with a wry smile, as if to say, Let’s all calm down. Hikaru-san didn’t look thrilled, but he backed off, and then we all looked again at Lauron.

And I boggled.

“Wha—”

Lauron was standing there with her eyes full of tears, her whole body shaking.

“...oh...” A tiny sound escaped her. It was almost like she was trying to stifle a cough—but instead, it turned out to be the signal for a total breakdown. Huge tears rolled down her cheeks, and she let out one wracking sob after another.

“I don’t... understand... I don’t understand... Why...”

“Whoa, whoa, uhh!”

Why? That’s what I wanted to ask! But I was afraid that would sound too critical, so instead I just took a few steps closer to her.

“Y-You don’t have to get it right away. It’s your first time and all!” I said, but Lauron just rubbed at her eyes and continued to cry.

Ahhhh. What to do, what to do? I hate when girls cry...!

I was just about at the end of my rope.

“Uhh, uhhh, uhhh, I’ve got it! This is Hikaru-san’s fault!”

When in doubt, start with the classic: blame someone else.

“What?! How is this my fault?!” Hikaru-san exclaimed, sounding uncharacteristically unsettled. I’m sure he hadn’t expected Lauron to burst out sobbing, either. She had always seemed so stoic, and she was good at magic and very serious. Maybe that had given us the mistaken impression that she was just an unflappable hard worker. We had never imagined that she might also be so vulnerable.

Ohh, for— What am I gonna do?

“Uh, umm... Okay, let’s all take a break! Take five! Im’a use the bathroom—see ya!”

Maybe it was the tense situation that inspired my sudden need to answer nature’s call. Whatever the case, it was the perfect excuse to flee the room.

There’s a relatively well-known story about the Palace of Versailles: that at first, it didn’t have any separate bathrooms.

Maybe that seems obvious enough. Before the development of sewage pipes and bathrooms with running water, the pit latrine was the most common method of collecting waste, which would then be used as fertilizer.

In Middle-Ages Europe, I’ve heard, human waste was typically thrown away in courtyards or in the street.

And remember what I said about the Eldant Empire being a lot like Middle-Ages Europe?

The “toilets” in our mansion were... yep. Pit latrines.

That was manageable when you were in a one-story building, or when there were toilets on just one floor... But when it came to a massive, complex structure like Eldant Castle, things got a lot more complicated.

For a serviceable pit latrine, you need some height. You can’t just flush the waste away like with a flushing toilet. Build a bunch of toilets above each other on each floor, and it would just come straight down on the head of the guy beneath, which would not only be stinky and unsanitary but downright psychologically damaging. In light of how many people needed to use the toilet in a building this big, the sheer amount of waste was no laughing matter, either.

So how did the toilets work in this castle? They were... surprisingly cutting edge, actually.

The toilets were mostly located around the outside edge of the castle, in order to make it easier to bring in air from outside (or so I was told). Believe it or not, they had toilet-specialist mages whose whole job was to periodically gust magical wind through the bathrooms. The wind would go down into the areas where waste was collected along the outer wall, helping to both keep down the smell and disperse the humidity, as well as dry out the contents of the waste collection vessels and tamp down the material. It virtually eliminated the smell.

People charged with waste collection would then take this stuff and use it for fertilizer. The whole process had apparently been systematized.

I have to admit, I was pretty impressed when I first heard about all this. Not that doing your business at Eldant Castle was exactly fun. As I’ve written, the toilets were mostly towards the outer wall, and the passageways running around the castle were plenty complicated... So if you had a real emergency but didn’t know your way around, you could waste a lot of time rushing around the hallways.

And thus I found myself...

“Sigh...” I sighed as I walked down the hall.

Where the heck am I?

I had no idea, let alone any sense of how to get back to the room I’d come from.

I was completely and totally lost.

I remembered the same thing happening at the workshop and realized to my chagrin that getting hopelessly lost was becoming something of a routine with me. I wasn’t even especially bad with directions, but here we were. The castle was just too big for me. I was amazed Petralka and the others could get around without getting lost.

I was looking around, hoping I would find someone I could ask for directions, but unfortunately I didn’t see anyone. The twists and turns of the hallways made it hard to see very far, and a palpable silence reigned in the corridors. It was enough to make you wonder if the building was actually abandoned. You got the impression that the castle was too big and the number of guards too small.

“Hmmm...”

Would just walking around at random get me back? No... Walking around at random was part of what had gotten me lost at the workshop. I’ve been told that the best thing to do if you’re lost is to stay where you are, so I resolved not to move and just wait until everyone noticed I hadn’t come back and came looking for me.

Then again, the castle was a closed environment. If I walked enough, maybe I would wander into a part of it I recognized? The simplest way of solving a maze is to put your hand on the wall and never let go, and just keep walking. I had read somewhere that eventually, you would get to an exit. Although considering it was a bit of a needle-in-a-haystack method, it seemed like it could take an awful lot of time.

I was reflecting on these things as I wandered through the castle, when suddenly I found myself in front of a huge door.

“Huh...?”

It was really big, and looked sturdy to boot. Probably pretty thick, I had to imagine. It looked even more impenetrable than the doors to the audience chamber, though it was noticeably free of decoration. This door didn’t need a Do Not Enter sign: it pretty much was one. What in the world was behind it?

Could I have found the Eldant treasury?! But it was awfully plain for that...

“Who’s there?!”

“Hagh?!”

I had only casually rested my hand on the door when I was caught by an angry shout. I turned around to find two soldiers in light armor, swords at their hips, one to the left and one to the right as if to keep me pinned. Each was reaching for his sword already, clearly prepared to kill.

What was going on here? Had I stumbled into some real trouble? Tripped some kind of trap?!

“Get away from the door!”

“Huh? Oh, yes, absolutely!” I pulled my hand back and all but jumped away from the door.

The soldiers didn’t look entirely satisfied, though; they kept watchful eyes on me as they approached.

The soldier to my right growled, “Listen, filth, what do you think you’re—”

But the guy on the left stopped him. “Hey, hold on, this kid—I mean, this man is...”

And then an instant later someone was bellowing at the top of their lungs: “What is going on here?!”

I looked down the hall to see a silver-haired girl approaching at long strides. Behind her came two bodyguards.

“Your Majesty!” the soldiers said, bowing hurriedly.

“P-Petralka...”

“We go out of our way to conclude quickly, and this is what we find? What is this?” she demanded of the soldiers.

“M-Majesty, this kid, he—”

“Kid?” Petralka narrowed her eyes. “He is a distinguished and important guest of our empire—and you call him ‘this kid’?”

“N-No, Majesty! Th-This honored personage had his hand on the door of the storeroom, so—”

Both of the soldiers were shaking in their boots in front of Petralka. Most likely, they were charged with protecting whatever was on the other side of the door, and had come rushing from some nearby guard post when they saw someone they didn’t recognize going past. In other words, they were just doing their job. That they didn’t recognize me was just a bit of bad luck on their part. Honestly, I felt kind of sorry for them.

“Er, Petralka, these men were just—”

“We know.” Petralka sighed, then spoke to the two soldiers. “We praise your faithfulness to your duty. But we wish you would judge with cooler heads.”

“Y-Yes, yes, Majesty!” The men kowtowed.

Petralka gestured me over to her. “Shinichi, this is a place you must not approach too lightly.”

“No?”

“First, back away.” She took me by the wrist and pulled me away from the door. With no particular reason to resist, I let her tow me along but... B-But Petralka-san, your hand!

Her hand grasping my wrist somehow managed to make my face feel hot. As someone whose years of not having a girlfriend were precisely equal to his years of being alive, I found myself a little bit excited just holding hands with a girl like this. Especially one as cute as Petralka.

“G-Gosh, I’m sorry, I got lost...”

“We understand perfectly well that you didn’t come here on purpose,” Petralka said as we walked. “But you must not come near this place, even accidentally. No good will come of it.”

“What’s in that room, exactly?”

From Petralka’s tone, it didn’t sound like a treasure chamber. I knew it would be better just to let the subject drop, but I couldn’t resist my curiosity.

Petralka thought silently for a moment, probably trying to decide whether she should tell me. “Er, if you can’t say, that’s all right...”

“No, we do not mind if you know, Shinichi.” She nodded back over her shoulder at me—no, not at me, but at the door behind me. “That is a storeroom.”

“So it is a treasure chamber?! Is it one of those rooms heaped with gold and jewels and stuff?!”

“No, it isn’t,” Petralka said, coldly interrupting my ridiculous flight of fantasy. “That room holds something very, very dangerous.”

“Very dangerous...”

“We believe it came up in conversation recently. Imarufe Bisurupeguze, such as the Assembly of Patriots had.”

“Th-That’s where it is?”

You know, I did remember somebody saying they had one of those here at the castle. So that was where they kept it.

“But didn’t you say it was in the basement or something?”

“Strictly speaking, beyond that door is a staircase that leads down to the storage room. Of course, it’s so closely guarded that in principle it should not be possible to steal it. But if you wish to avoid undue suspicion, you would do best to keep your distance.”

“R-Right...”

It sounded like it was on par with the armory of a military base, or the room where they kept seized enemy weapons. Who could blame them for being suspicious of unauthorized personnel who got too close? An unwary visitor might even find themselves caught in some trap meant to stop any burglars.

“It is quite lucky that we happened to be passing by at the right moment.”

“You’re telling me... And I really appreciate it, by the way.”

If Petralka hadn’t showed up, that might have turned into quite the little incident.

“Regardless, Shinichi, how did you come to be so lost?”

“Oh, uh—I went to do my business. I was trying to get back to the room we were using, and couldn’t find the way.”

“Mm,” Petralka said, still holding my hand—all I could see was the back of her head, but I could hear the grim smile in her voice. “That room is in the opposite direction from here.”

“Oh...”

So I had gotten completely turned around. I decided I had better resolve to stop just walking when I got lost.

“Hey, Petralka, I get it, I’ll stay clear of that room, so stop—stop pulling...”

Petralka was silent. She never loosened her grip; in fact, she squeezed tighter and picked up her pace.

Finally she said, “Ye gods! Shinichi, you are the most oblivious...”

“Huh?”

“The moment we are not constantly at your side, you become lost!”

Er, okay, so yes, I did lose my way in the underground workshop, too. But to hear it put like that—it made me sound like some kind of child, and it was kind of embarrassing. Actually, although I still couldn’t see Petralka’s expression, I got the sense she almost sounded like she was... enjoying this? Happy about it? Maybe I was just imagining things.

Whatever the case, it didn’t look like she was going to be letting go of my hand anytime soon.

“And how are things?” she asked.

“Wha?”

“We will need more than ‘wha.’ We mean Lauron. She seems to be quite capable.”

I belatedly caught on that Petralka was changing the subject. It looked like she was done with whatever had called her away, and she was going to take me back to the practice room. Which I was sure grateful for, but—

“Ahh...”

I didn’t quite know how to answer her question.

Yeah, Lauron wasn’t bad. Not bad at all.

But... Just think about...

I pictured Lauron’s crying face. If anyone was at fault here, it was probably me for misjudging her personality and abilities.

There was no question of her immense talent, but she was imitating, rather than emulating a model as we had hoped. And she did it by feel, not logic, so that even she wasn’t sure of the difference. Maybe that was why she kept wondering what was wrong with her, why she felt we were attacking her.

As long as she had Petralka there to imitate, she could copy everything perfectly. But she couldn’t do more than that. That meant to have the doll be really convincing, Petralka would have to be nearby at all times—which would defeat the point of a double.

What to do, what to do?

“Shinichi?” Petralka was perplexed by my silence. At the same moment she spoke, though, she stopped moving.

I looked—and saw a familiar door in front of us. Our training room. I could just catch Hikaru-san’s voice from inside.

Phew! We’d made it back.

As I was breathing this internal sigh of relief, though, I saw Petralka glance at our hands. She was still holding mine. There was a beat before she let me go. It felt almost like she was hesitating—regretful? No, I had to be overthinking it.

As Petralka opened the door, she called out, “We are back. How are things g—”

“All I’m asking,” a voice exclaimed—at first I wondered whose, but then I realized it was Hikaru-san’s—“is why you can’t do it!”

Hikaru-san was standing in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips, shouting at Lauron. His voice contained a frustration I’d never heard from the seemingly unflappable young man.

Uh..........................................oh.

“Surely you could do it if you’d just think about it a little bit, right?!”

“Okay, Hikaru-kun, calm down...”

“You’re, uh, scaring Lauron-san...”

“Waaaaahh!”

“Lauron, Lauron, Hikaru-sensei isn’t really yelling at you, you know—”

Hikaru-san was shouting, Minori-san and Myusel were trying to calm him down, Lauron was a teary mess, and while Romilda tried to comfort her, all Loek could do was stand there and watch the whole thing in shock.

Damn.

I had hoped that while I was using the toilet, everyone would just take a collective deep breath, get their heads about them—but it turned out to be exactly the opposite.

I gave a very long, very deep sigh.

Petralka turned to me, her eyes wide. It must have been a pretty surprising thing to walk in on. “What in the world is happening here...?”

Well, uh, Your Majesty, it’s pretty much what it looks like...

Man, I hate to think about where we go from here.

For the moment, I just looked at Petralka and shook my head in surrender—then I waded in between Hikaru-san and Lauron to see if I could patch things up.