Chapter Three: Her Own Rules?

It was another average day, when about ten students came up to me after lessons were over.

“Shinichi-sensei!”

The group looked to be roughly half boys and half girls... but all dwarves.

“Y-Yeah, what’s up?”

This wasn’t the first time I’d been surrounded by students, but it was unusual for them all to be dwarves. Especially dwarves all looking at me with a hopeful gleam in their eyes.

I knew they were after something, but this felt a little different from the times when they were after some new manga or anime. I blinked a few times. Then the students started peppering me with questions.

“How’s Lauron doing?”

“Is she killing it?”

Only then did I understand why the crowd was all dwarves.

“Lauron? Wait, you guys know?”

Lauron wasn’t a student at the school, and on top of that, her work was supposed to be top-secret—had Romilda blabbed about it? I didn’t see her among the dwarves packed in around me.

I took a second look, and discovered Romilda standing a short distance away, giving me an apologetic shrug.

Ahh...

“Romilda said it was top-secret, and she wouldn’t tell us anything about it,” one of the students said, pouting. It was one of the boys, by the way, so he looked like an old man. Have you ever seen a bearded old guy pout? It’s both funny and kind of surreal. But never mind that.

“So none of you know what Lauron is actually doing?”

“No idea.”

“But we heard she was picked for something very important!”

“Okay, I see.”

Apparently, Romilda had managed to keep the details to herself. It was understandable: craftsmen from her own father’s workshop had been summoned to be part of a project that might go so far as to influence the nation’s diplomacy, so it was only natural that she might want to brag about it a little. And Lauron’s own family and acquaintances would no doubt notice that she was being called to the castle on an almost daily basis. I guess I should’ve expected people to find out that much. If anything, I could be grateful that Romilda had held back about the most important parts of the operation.

“We know Lauron, so we know she must be working hard,” one girl said.

“Yeah, maybe too hard,” another added. “I hope she isn’t hurting herself.”

The dwarf boys (it still felt kind of funny to call them that) all had similar expressions on their faces, all clearly concerned about Lauron. Some of this might have sprung from the simple fact that one of their own had been given an important task that could benefit the social standing of every dwarf. But I sensed that it was more than that.

The fact that they were asking whether she had overworked herself was proof enough.

“So how is she doing, Sensei?” Concern and curiosity mixed in the students’ questions. I could have simply shut them down in the name of security, but...

“Well... hmm.” I smiled awkwardly. “She’s working hard, that’s for sure. Sorry, I can’t share any details with you, but I can tell you she’s doing a job that only she can do. It’s not easy.”

“Huh...” The students all looked at each other, confused.

I really wanted to be able to say more, to reassure the kids who were worried about Lauron. But confidentiality was confidentiality, even for the guy who had come up with the plan. I couldn’t go telling everyone about what was happening. That would be bad for Petralka, among other people.

“I know you’re all worried,” I said. “Trust me, I’m being careful not to overwork her.”

“Okay!” The dwarf girls finally smiled.

...Anyway.

It had been a full ten days since Lauron had started her “training.” The situation, though, was the same as ever. She was completely capable of making the doll act like a living human being. She could make it appear exactly like Petralka. But without Petralka herself there to provide a model, Lauron suddenly became unable to make the doll work. And maybe the way Hikaru-san had upbraided her had left her with some kind of trauma, because when she did try to make herself work the puppet with no one to imitate, its movements would get less and less precise, until at last she couldn’t move it at all and she burst into tears again.

Things couldn’t go on like this, and I had come up with a number of ideas to break the impasse.

For example, I thought about how Petralka was the empress; in other words, a member of the royal family. That meant that beyond simply impersonating Petralka herself, the puppet would have to be able to act like a noble well enough to deceive anyone watching—so I considered starting with upper-class manners.

To that end, I had Prime Minister Zahar make a list of the bare minimum someone would have to know to abide by good noble manners, and resolved to teach them to Lauron.

She was able to memorize every single one, and with startling speed. She learned them so accurately that if I were to read off Zahar’s list and get something wrong, she could immediately correct me.

But... that was it. She wasn’t actually able to put them to use.

Is this, like... hard-headedness? Or what?

I found myself thinking of a certain type of computer game. It’s a genre where you program instructions into a robot and then make it fight. Players don’t control the robots directly, but instead make a sort of flowchart that says, “If this happens, do this,” so that the robot can respond to varying situations. That’s what makes those games interesting, but of course, if your program has any holes in it, the robot might get stuck unable to move, or go around and around in circles, or come up with some other unhelpful thing to do.

There’s an inflexibility that runs through those games: you have to give detailed instructions for the robot to work. Very careful, very precise, so that it can replicate movements. Like a machine.

If you just said, “Do whatever,” it might say “I don’t understand” or “I can’t,” and start crying.

And that led me to...

“...sniff... Ohh... Waaah...”

Lauron’s weeping echoed through the room once again. Faced with her sitting in the middle of the room and wailing, I felt like I was somehow bullying her. Heck, from her perspective, maybe I was.

What to do?

I looked to the other two with me for help. But when I met Minori-san’s eyes, she only shook her head; and Hikaru-san offered nothing but a resigned shrug. Myusel, Loek, and Romilda weren’t currently involved in our training. If Lauron couldn’t get the hang of working the figure, there was no point in them being here.

Silent, I swallowed what threatened to be a very, very long sigh.

Petralka wasn’t here either right now, so I couldn’t have Lauron imitate her. Even if she was and I did... it wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t get us anywhere.

“Sob...” Lauron sniffled again, tears in her eyes. Beside her was the Petralka doll, standing stone still.

Hikaru-san, chin in hand, was looking at Lauron as if he was having some sort of brainstorm.

“Hey,” he said, suddenly turning to me and Minori-san. “How about we call it quits on this training for now? We’re just going in circles.”

“Huh? But...” I glanced at Lauron.

In fact, I had already considered simply giving up. If it really was impossible for Lauron, we could drop her and try to find someone else—but when I had made the hint of the suggestion, Lauron had only cried even louder, looking as if that would be the end of the world.

She cried because she couldn’t make the doll work. But if we told her she didn’t have to work the doll anymore, she cried too.

As I’d realized from the conversation at school, the other dwarves might not know what exactly was going on, but they still had high expectations for Lauron. She probably knew that perfectly well, and that was part of why she was afraid of being let go.

But Hikaru-san said, “I don’t mean in the sense of kicking Lauron out. She’s able to recreate movements she’s seen once, no problem. So as far as routine duties like waving at people from a balcony, I think she should be fine. Later, we can have Her Majesty teach Lauron more ‘movement patterns,’ and just put them together.”

“That’s...”

Well, exactly right. From some distance away, it would be impossible to tell the two of them apart. The problem would be when she had to interact at close range with another person. But when she could just replicate specific movements, Lauron was perfect.

“At the moment, I think our problem is somewhere other than actual control of the doll,” Hikaru-san said. “So I think we should focus on that issue, rather than on her puppetry.”

Lauron fell quiet and looked at Hikaru-san, blinking.

“She can only memorize her ‘responses.’”

“Ah...” So Hikaru-san had noticed it, too.

“Shinichi-san, I’m guessing you’ve figured this out yourself.”

“Yeah, more or less.”

“It’s the same thing that gets criticized sometimes about the Japanese educational system. This idea that memorization makes you ‘smart,’ even if you don’t actually understand the content. Lauron, I think it’s safe to say, has an incredible memory.” Then Hikaru-san gave a bit of a sigh. “That’s helped her get by so far. Memorizing everything. Be it at work or whatever else, she can just imitate what other people do. But for that exact reason, she hasn’t improved, either. She can’t respond to things in her own way. She isn’t very good yet at digesting things and understanding them for herself.”

“I see...”

“She gets that it’s not the same thing as memorizing. She just doesn’t seem to understand how. A copy machine can replicate an original down to the smallest detail, but it doesn’t know anything about what the original says. You could copy a million poems from Goethe or Heine on it, and it would never be able to write a poem itself. You could print out Einstein’s whole theory of special relativity, and the copy machine could never develop a new theory from it. That’s where Lauron is at right now.”

“Yeah, I get that, but...”

That was all logical, as far as it went. But what did it mean? What were we supposed to do about it?

Hikaru-san was blunt: “Right now, we need to be focusing not on increasing the fidelity of the copies or enabling the machine to make more copies—but on teaching that copy machine to think for itself.”

He added, “Cosplay and 2D creation are both the same way.”

“Huh? How’s that?”

“A cosplayer who has no love for the character he’s cosplaying, or a creator who doesn’t love the work he’s creating, they’re going to get torn down by the fans, right? So, what is that love?”

“Well, uh...”

It came down to how well the person grasped the character or the work.

Like, if someone was cosplaying a character I loved, but the cosplayer didn’t love them, and I saw the cosplayer doing something or acting in a way that character would never do or act, it would shatter the illusion. It would make me angry, like the character was being disgraced.

Can you imagine some pure, sweet bishoujo squatting on her haunches and smoking a cigarette? Unpleasant, right? Even if it were just a cosplayer, I would probably still end up shouting at them, “My precious ●● would never do that!”

“I get it. It’s understanding by absorbing actual examples—deductive, not inductive reasoning.” This came from Minori-san.

“Remind me what that’s about, again,” I said. I was embarrassed to admit that while I knew I had heard those words before, I couldn’t remember exactly what they meant.

“Inductive reasoning is taking a set of facts—call them A, B, C, and D—and trying to determine truth by looking for the common factors,” Minori-san said. “It’s like how we’ve been showing Lauron a lot of Her Majesty doing this and that, in hopes that she’ll be able to figure out the ‘Her Majesty-ish-ness’ from there.”

“Okay, sure.”

“Deductive reasoning, on the other hand, is when you take a series of propositions and use them to find the truth. Syllogism is probably the most famous example. Like, you take the major premise ‘All humans die,” and add a more specific premise like, ‘Kanou Shinichi is a human,’ to reach the conclusion ‘Kanou Shinichi will die.’”

“Why do I have to be the subject of your syllogism?”

“Details, details,” Minori-san said. “The point is, we can tell Lauron what to do, or say when she’s made a mistake, because we understand something about the empress, but that understanding comes from more than a collection of facts or examples. It’s because we understand Her Majesty’s personality and circumstances that we can say ‘This seems like something she would do’ or ‘There’s no way she would do that.’”

“I get it. Yeah, you’re right.”

So, say, you could have an overarching premise like “arrogant girls often shout,” combined with a more specific premise like “Petralka is arrogant,” to reach a conclusion like “Petralka often shouts.” I think that’s how it works, anyway.

Even if you had never actually seen Petralka shouting, from the fact that she was arrogant, you could predict that she would often shout.

Hikaru-san picked up the thread. “So instead of worrying about the doll itself, I think we need to start with an understanding of the ‘character’ Lauron is playing, and how she would act in a given situation. If what the doll does doesn’t match up with what Her Majesty would do, it’ll never fool anyone.”

“So you’re saying...” I looked at Lauron. “...we need to teach Lauron how to play Petralka—that she needs to understand her as well as we do, or better?”

“That’s the idea,” Hikaru-san said.

Getting Lauron on close terms with Petralka was all well and good, but if the problem was really about teaching her to think for herself instead of just copying, well, that sounded awfully difficult to do. Wasn’t that on par with asking her to change her personality?

“Of course—” Hikaru-san was looking at Lauron again; he sighed once more. “I’m not saying we don’t have a long road ahead...”

He couldn’t quite hide the hint of fatigue in his voice.

“You’ve worked hard today, Master.”

We were all back home, resting in the living room. Myusel had thoughtfully brought us hot tea and sweet snacks even though we hadn’t asked for them.

“Thanks, Myusel...”

“Not at all.”

She probably just considered this part of her job, but a little bit of kindness like this really went a long way toward taking the sting out of my exhausted heart. The treats she’d made today were a little less sweet than usual, but still plenty sweet enough, and most importantly, you could grab them in your hands and just eat them. In its own way, it showed how accurately she had read our feelings and situation.

That talent, or whatever you wanted to call it—it would be great if Lauron could pick up some of it, too.

“How is Lauron-san?” Myusel asked.

Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and I looked at each other—and then we all sighed.

“S...Sorry...” Myusel said, sensing the grim atmosphere.

“Don’t worry, Myusel, you don’t have to apologize,” I said quickly. “It’s not your fault—you’re just being thoughtful.”

“But that girl... I really wonder if she can go on like this.” This whisper came from Minori-san, who had leaned as far back in her chair as she could. “It’s really incredible, the way she can control magical dolls so smoothly. I’m sure no one’s better than her on that score. But...”

“Hmm...” There was nothing I could say to that; I couldn’t agree or disagree.

We had settled on getting her to understand Petralka personally, but there were no promises it would go well. We had already put no small amount of time and effort and resources into this body-double project, and we would all have hated to see it all go to waste.

That suggested the need for a plan B. Like, maybe we could have several magic-users all controlling the Petralka puppet at once. A team, if you will. If they learned to work well together, maybe they could make the doll look just as realistic as Lauron did.

“I think that personality of hers is a problem, too,” Hikaru-san said with another sigh. He took a sip of the tea Myusel had so kindly brought and shrugged. “I can wink at the way she’s so quick to cry... But I’m not so sure about how her magic dissipates the moment she starts crying. Maybe if we could at least get her to see a performance through to the end even when she’s crying, it’d be okay. But with the magic cutting out as soon as she gets upset, I’m worried about what will happen when we really need her.”

What if the doll was involved in a meeting with a foreign dignitary—and Lauron started crying in the middle of it, causing her magic to vanish?

“Yeah, that is a problem...” I frowned as I considered this worst of bad scenarios.

Was the real issue not Lauron’s abilities, but her psychological makeup?

“Lauron Selioz...” I murmured, taking a bite of one of the chocolate-ish baked goods Myusel had brought.

To me the question was, why did Lauron cry? Why did her magic stop working when she cried? Was she that afraid of people getting angry at her because she couldn’t do the job? Or was she worried about being embarrassed?

Come to think of it, Romilda had used words like “obsessive,” “way serious,” and “inflexible” to describe her. That had led me to picture her as someone stubborn and particular, but it was hard to reconcile that with the real Lauron and her frequent bouts of tears.

“Hrmmm...”

When it came down to it, I didn’t really know that much about Lauron, the girl. If this was a problem of personality—a psychological issue—maybe it would be best to start from that perspective?

“Maybe we need to get closer to Lauron, get her to open up to us a bit...”

Our relationship so far had really been dictated by our work. “Work friends” sounds great and all, but it was really just a way of saying that your job was the only thing you had in common. Which meant it could also be a wall that prevented us from really getting close.

If by becoming real friends with her we could break through that wall, she might explain to us why she cried so much.

And then maybe, just maybe, we could find a solution.

“Shinichi-san, you...” Hikaru-san was almost muttering to himself, regarding me coldly. “...really do want to expand your harem, don’t you?”

“Why does everyone keep accusing me of that?!” I groaned.

“What, you mean you really don’t? I’m sure Romilda said you picked out Lauron specifically to add her to your collection...”

“Well, I didn’t!”

Curse that Romilda! What was I supposed to do if my reputation took a beating it never recovered from?!

...Okay.

Obviously, I understood that neither Romilda nor Hikaru-san exactly meant it. From the slightly sadistic smile on Hikaru-san’s face, I could tell that he especially wasn’t really being serious. And neither was Minori-san, who was listening to our conversation and laughing.

But there are people in life who will take every joke seriously...

“Is... Is that really true...?”

No! Myusel! It’s just a joke, don’t take it seriously! I’m begging you, don’t look so shocked!

“N-No!” I shouted. “It’s a scurrilous lie! Hikaru-san and Romilda are just joking! I’m not interested in any harem!”

...All right, maybe just a little interested. But even I wasn’t stupid enough to admit that right at this moment.

“It’s true,” Hikaru-san said with a smile. “Shinichi-san isn’t the type to go for just any girl willy-nilly.”

“D-Darn straight!” I nodded.

I should have known, though, that a little imp of a cross-dresser like Hikaru-san would never offer me help like that without a catch.

“Shinichi-san is very particular. He only likes loli girls.”

“Now just a—”

“He likes them so much that he’ll chant Yes Lolita! No Touch! in front of everyone.”

Arrrrrgh!

I mean, yes, I did do that once!

“But that was about being a gentleman... I mean, I do like lolis, but I don’t only like lolis, so...”

My protestations fell on deaf ears.

“I think the only loli you really need is the empress—but oh, I see. Your harem is your harem, and you want it to be all lolis, don’t you? Is it the smooth, undeveloped—”

“I told you, it’s not true!!” I wailed, keenly aware of Myusel watching me. “Look, if you say something like that in front of Petralka, I’m gonna be executed, okay?!”

And so the day drew to a close with no definitive solution to our problems.

I got a night’s sleep, but unfortunately, that didn’t mean I was going to just conveniently have a great idea in the meantime. I headed to school still sighing.

Should I start by changing the relationship between us and Lauron? Get to know her and then think of the best way to help her?

“But where would I even start...?”

It was break time in the classroom. I looked around and saw students playing with action figures. It was just like I’d seen before. Lately, several of the students—mostly dwarves—had started playing with the figures during down time. Apparently they were certifiably popular.

It wasn’t all fighting. Some of them were using the cameras on their 3Tses to record the figures moving around to make what amounted to short films. If this world had had video-sharing sites, I’ll bet we would have seen plenty of uploads of figures having dance battles.

I looked out listlessly over the scene. Compared to Lauron’s work, the figures were jerky and awkward in the hands of the students. And yet—they seemed somehow more alive than when Lauron was moving the doll. I guess you could chalk it up to a difference in understanding—or maybe it had to do with the puppeteer’s motivation.

Like, say you were working an anime-based figure. You wouldn’t just replicate what the character does in the show; you would naturally do other things, too. But those motions would seem to “fit” that character. And they would fit because you understood the character.

Makes sense, right?

So how did the other kids achieve that understanding?

They didn’t have to be super accurate, or very detailed. Likeness wasn’t about absolute accuracy.

Didn’t my dad say something like that once...?

Likeness. What you might call believability, in a story. My dad, the light novel author, told me that the exact replication of reality wasn’t the highest form of believability. Sometimes deliberately mixing in a little lie actually made things more plausible.

And why would you include a lie?

You want to evoke likeness because you want readers to enjoy the work. Likeness makes the whole thing feel right to your audience. In other words...

Just doing what you’re told. Sticking to what’s been decided. Mechanically... machines actually do the most precise job of all. A copy machine. But the machine doesn’t understand. Machines—don’t have goals.

They don’t have motivation.

The desire to enjoy, and to allow others to enjoy. That was the motivation behind how the students moved the action figures. Pure and simple.

They worked backwards from the goal of enjoyment to find the best way to achieve it.

So what about Lauron?

“Does it have to do with... her sense of the goal?”

“Bam!”

I was interrupted by a student shouting. I looked in their direction and saw Romilda leading a whole gaggle of dwarves, all surrounding a desk where they were playing with action figures.

Suddenly curious, I watched them more closely. A figure of a pink-haired girl was rolling around on the desk as if the movement were no big thing. Beside her was a golden-haired girl holding a gun. And standing just in front of the gun was a figure of a girl with black hair. It looked like they were acting out some kind of battle.

“We have no choice but to die!”

I recognized the line one of the students was reciting. “...Rental☆Madoka, huh?”

The dwarves were re-creating a scene from the show. As I recalled, next, the pink-haired girl—the protagonist, Madoka—would shoot the golden-haired girl, and that would be the end of the scene.

“Sensei—” said one of the students, looking up from the captivating play.

“I know this scene. It’s the one where Manami-san goes crazy because the temp agency she works for is just too evil, right?”

A famous moment.

“Yeah, exactly! That’s Sensei for you!” The students started to laugh.

“It looks like you’ve really got it down,” I said.

“We’re not as good as Lauron, though,” Romilda said, a little embarrassed.

The figure continued to shamble around on the desktop while she spoke. I watched it for a moment, then said, “Actually, I’d like to ask you something.”

“What is it?”

“Is Lauron a... crybaby?”

Romilda and the other dwarves looked at each other blankly. The figures also cocked their heads delicately.

“I don’t really think so,” Romilda said, shaking her head. “She’s serious. You know, the kind who always shows up ten minutes early to everything. But I guess she does have a stubborn streak. Like, if you tell her not to move, she literally won’t move a muscle no matter what happens. And she gets real upset if people don’t follow the rules. In the worst case, she might even start crying.”

“Crying...” I said under my voice. I could feel an idea tugging at me.

Such-and-such has to be done. She can’t do it. Hence, crying.

In other words...

“Remember how she got angry the other day?” one of the students said.

“What happened, again?”

“I think she said the Faldra parts weren’t quite lined up on the shelf or something.”

“And then when she tried to fix it, the boss shouted that if she had time to sweat details like that, she should find something more productive to do! Right?”

All the students seemed amused by the recollection. Apparently, they had accepted Lauron’s hard-headedness as just part of who she was; they didn’t seem to be criticizing her for it.

“There was another time—it was a while ago now—when...” Romilda was just about to launch into another funny anecdote, but then she stopped in the middle of her sentence. “Huh...?” She looked at the desk, blinking.

“What’s up?” I said, following her troubled gaze—and then I saw it.

The action figures that had been jumping around with such vigor just a few minutes ago lay lifelessly on the desk.

Romilda reached out to one of them and intoned a spell again. But the character showed no sign of moving.

“What?” She furrowed her brow and tilted her head. I glanced around the room and saw that it was the same with all the figures the students had been playing with, and everyone else looked just as confused as Romilda.

“There, finally got it.” After a few moments of repeating her spell, Romilda’s figure slowly came back to life. She looked very relieved.

“Gosh, what was that all about?” I wondered aloud. The figures had been moving so readily a few minutes ago—why would they suddenly just stop? And not just for Romilda, either—all the figures in the classroom.

“Recently... yawn... this has been happening a lot,” Romilda said, trying to suppress a yawn between words. “We suddenly can’t use magic. It always comes back after a minute, but...”

The other students nodded in agreement. Several of them were also yawning.

What the heck was going on here? Why was everyone so tired all of a sudden?

And of course, why had the figures stopped moving—the magic stopped working?

“Oh yeah...” I felt like someone had mentioned something about temporary magic stoppages not long ago. Who was it? Hikaru-san, I thought.

What was going on? I thought I could feel my heart beating a little faster in my chest. Maybe I was imagining it.

Then I suddenly remembered what Hikaru-san had said the other day.

“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.”

“Nah, couldn’t be... Right?” I smiled grimly, but even I thought I sounded like I was trying to convince myself.

The next day—school was out, and we were in our usual room at Eldant Castle.

We were waiting for Lauron. In attendance were myself, Minori-san, Hikaru-san, Myusel, and the Petralka puppet. We had been informed ahead of time that Petralka herself might or might not be able to make it due to the demands of official business. We were doing Lauron’s training here in the castle specifically because Petralka had hoped to participate as much as possible, but official duties and urgent matters seemed to crop up more and more, and she was frequently absent.

Of course, if this body-double thing works out, maybe she won’t have to worry about all that so much, I told myself for the umpteenth time.

Incidentally, Myusel was there in Petralka’s place—if the empress herself couldn’t be present to model, we wanted everyone we could get who knew her well.

“This is kind of strange,” I said suddenly. “Lauron usually beats us here.”

“What time is it now?” Hikaru-san asked absently, leaning against the wall and looking out one of the windows.

I consulted the G-SH*CK on my wrist. “My watch shows three,” I said. “To be more precise, two minutes till.”

That was to say, it was almost three o’clock in Japan, but I wasn’t sure exactly what time it was here in Eldant. Frankly, I still wasn’t entirely clear on how to read their clocks. I had the general feeling that a day was broadly split into twenty-four hours, but I lacked a fine sense for the smaller divisions. I always felt like maybe I was a few minutes early or late. But as I didn’t really have a schedule to keep at the moment, I hadn’t worried too much about it. I knew the JSDF garrison conducted operations at specific times, so maybe they had a better grasp of it.

“Hey,” I said, thinking back to my conversation in the classroom. “Romilda said something about Lauron always showing up ten minutes early to everything.”

“She’s a diligent one, that girl,” Minori-san said with a wry smile.

“I think so too,” Myusel chimed in. “She seems fastidious and good person.”

Maybe this was her way of defending Lauron. Ahh, Myusel. What a sweetie.

“But if she’s as scrupulous as all that, why does she always end up crying and letting her magic drop?”

“Hikaru-san...” He sounded as critical as ever, and I couldn’t do anything but smile darkly about it.

As a cosplayer, Hikaru-san knew what it meant to imitate someone, to play a part, so he knew what he was talking about. He was pretty good at it, too—so it seemed natural to him, and apparently it bothered him more than the rest of us that Lauron couldn’t seem to do it. It wasn’t really a personal beef with her—I thought.

“Well, everyone has different talents.”

“Sure, but...”

And so on.

Thus we talked as we waited for Lauron, until suddenly, the door flew open so fast it practically jumped off its hinges. Lauron flew in, breathing so hard her shoulders were heaving. She looked around at us. Maybe she was upset about having arrived after we did—her brow was furrowed, and she looked like she might burst into tears right then and there.

“Cool, you’re here. Let’s get started, shall we?” I spoke as nonchalantly as I could, trying to communicate that it didn’t bother me and everything was fine. I stole a glance at my watch: precisely three o’clock. She was bang on time. It wouldn’t have crossed our minds to criticize her about it. And yet...

“L... Lauron?” Minori-san said. Her voice sounded higher than usual, uncommonly worried. I looked up from my watch to see Lauron’s expression: she hadn’t started crying, but her face was screwed up like a huge torrent of emotion was about to come rushing out. She hadn’t even closed the door.

“What? What?”

“What’s wrong...?”

“Lauron-san...?”

I was taken aback by the sudden turn and couldn’t quite muster a response, but Minori-san and Myusel collected themselves and went over to her. Minori-san pushed the door shut and looked comfortingly into Lauron’s eyes.

“...sniff...”

“Are you feeling bad?” Minori-san asked, sounding concerned, but Lauron shook her head and didn’t answer right away.

A second later, though, among half-voiced sniffles, she whispered to herself, “Wh... What am I going to do...? I didn’t... I couldn’t get here on time...”

“...Huh?”

“I couldn’t... be on time...!”

“I-It’s okay, really. Look, you’re perfectly punctual.” I rushed to show Lauron my watch. Er, but I guess she couldn’t read the watch anyway, so there was no point.

Lauron, though, just kept shaking her head, not looking up.

Huh? What the heck was going on here?!

“I couldn’t get here ten minutes early...”

“Guh?”

My eyes went wide. So what? Did Lauron consider arriving “on time” to mean being ten minutes early?

Wasn’t that just a little... weird? Normally, someone who’s described as “always ten minutes early” is someone who isn’t late, who arrives with a little leeway. I don’t think it literally means being ten minutes ahead of schedule all the time.

“Seriously, you’re okay—you’re on time! Nobody’s mad at you,” I said, trying to make Lauron feel better even though I didn’t fully comprehend what was going on. “Anyway, this is the first time you’ve ever been less than ten minutes early. If it bothers you that much, just be more careful next time.”

“Next time? I can’t...”

“Sorry...?”

“There is no next time! I have to be early. I absolutely have to follow the rule... absolutely must...”

She just kept repeating absolutely must over and over. It was kind of intimidating, actually.

What was with this yandere? Okay, so she was more yan than dere.

In any event, we weren’t going to be getting any training done like this. I had to sit Lauron in the chair and get her to calm down a little first.

Maybe aware that he was a source of pressure for Lauron, Hikaru-san had backed off and was standing near the wall. Myusel had poured some water into a cup from a carafe she had brought with us, and offered it to the dwarf while Minori-san and I knelt by Lauron’s side.

“No one’s angry at you,” I said as gently as I could, but Lauron just shook her head weakly. She made no move to take the cup Myusel offered her.

Was it really that huge a deal to her that she hadn’t arrived ten minutes early? That she hadn’t been able to observe her personal rules? I know I joke about yanderes or whatever, but things were getting weird here.

“It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not... If I don’t keep the rules...’ll die...”

“What? Die?!” I exclaimed. “How do you mean, die? Who’s going to die?”

“The bird...” Lauron sniffled.

“The bird...?” Her answer didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I looked at Minori-san for help, but she shook her head, looking as perplexed as I was.

“Bird... You mean, like...” In my mind, I tried to think of something that connected Lauron and birds. “Oh, uh, you mean like the one in the underground workshop? I guess we used to use those in my world, too. People would take them down into mines to detect dangerous gases. We called them canaries.”

Lauron didn’t say anything.

“Did... Did one of those birds die down in the workshop, maybe?”

After a long moment, she replied, “No, that’s not what happened.”

“Oh, uh, oh. Okay.”

But if that was the case, then what in the world did birds have to do with anything?

Lauron kept whuffling, but she rubbed at her eyes. “There was one... in the past. When I was still small.”

“Er, one what? One who?”

“A friend... A friend and I were... taking care of a bird...”

“Oh... Sure.”

“We took turns feeding it, and I... one day, I... forgot...” Putting it into words seemed to make the memory clearer for her. Lauron let out a strangled sob. “I thought it would be fine for one day... But... the next day, the bird was dead...”

Ahh... So that was the story. This stuff about the bird dying had to do with an episode from her past. I guess I had heard something about small birds being especially susceptible to starvation.

“That made my friend mad... They said they never wanted to see me again... And the boss got really angry, too... That’s why I have to—have to keep my promises... Absolutely...”

For the dwarves who worked in those underground worksites, birds were more than pets; they were also a warning system for the whole workshop. A lifeline, if you will. So letting one die through your own negligence would understandably make not just your friends, but also the headman of the workshop, pretty upset at you.

But still...

“I just feel so sick if I don’t...”

Ahh... That traumatic experience, having that bird die because she didn’t do what she had said she would, led her to feel ill at ease if she didn’t follow the rules.

If there was a rule, and you followed it, then you were safe. That seemed to be her line of thinking. And if there wasn’t a rule, then you made one up, and obeyed it completely. Once she had decided she would be ten minutes early to things, she felt compelled to do it all the time, or she fell into a panic.

She wasn’t thinking about the why of the rules anymore. The rules had become a way for her to forget her anxieties.

“Huh...” I sighed.

If I had to guess, I would say the reason she started to cry every time she had trouble with the doll was motivated by the same thing. Fulfilling her duty as the controller of Petralka’s body double had become a sort of “rule” for her. But she was having trouble keeping it. She was being told she wasn’t doing well enough. That she couldn’t follow the rules. It would be enough to make her physically ill...

A machine, huh?

I guess Lauron crying was sort of like when a machine spits out some weird does-not-compute noise.

I also felt, though, that we had finally connected with something within her. We knew now that the problem had to do with a trauma in her past. But was that something we could do anything about?

“I feel sick...”

While the rest of us stood there at a loss, Lauron started crying again.

In the end, we decided not to do any practice that day, but just sent Lauron home. She was upset by the idea of going home before the scheduled time, but by the same token, when that time rolled around, she seemed to collect herself a little, and obediently left.

Talk about a stickler for the details—or I guess, more to the point, she was unhappy if she didn’t stick to the framework she’d established.

This was going to be a tough one.

“We are coming in.” The door was already opening when we heard the familiar, loli voice. Then, however, Petralka pursed her lips and said, “Hrm. It seems we are too late.”

She closed the door and came walking over to me, looking me in the face. “How did Lauron seem to you today? Did it go well?”

“About that...” I was sort of lost for words. I couldn’t help glancing away from her—and my eyes met Minori-san’s. In my peripheral vision, I saw Petralka follow my glance, looking at Minori-san, too. But there was nothing she could say, and we both just shook our heads ambiguously. Myusel and Hikaru-san were no more help.

“Is that so...” Petralka slumped her shoulders, seeming to catch the drift of our reactions.

“And to think, this puppet is such an amazing piece of work,” Hikaru-san sighed from where he was leaning against the wall beside the doll.

“Regardless... We suppose that even simply having it stand at attention has a certain value,” Petralka said, as if to assuage our worries.

“But... But that won’t make your burden any lighter, Petralka,” I said.

“Hm? Our burden? Was it not our safety you were concerned for?” Petralka looked genuinely perplexed.

Oh... I guess I had just thought about this part, never really talked about it.

“I thought... I thought maybe the double could take on some of your public duties, even just a few of them. I mean, I remember you talking about how we had less time than before to be together and everything.”

“We... We did indeed say that.”

“And I thought that if we could get the doll to do more than just stand there, if we could get it to move and talk so believably that someone in the same room wouldn’t be able to tell you apart... If we could do that, maybe it could take just a little bit of the work off your hands, Petralka.”

“Shinichi...” Petralka looked at me, blinking. Her face was red and her hands seemed to be shaking, but I wasn’t sure why. I, uh, didn’t think I had done anything to provoke the imperial wrath...

But anyway, forget about my private quaking and cowering. “In any event,” I said, “if it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out, I think it might be a good idea to find someone besides Lauron. We would still have her continue her special training, of course. But for body-double duties alone, it would be easy enough to have a tag team switch off.”

“Hrmm...” Petralka looked at the floor and shook her head as if to clear something away, then she looked up at me once again. “Has it indeed been such a trial...?”

“Er, it looks like Lauron has these internal rules that she’s trapped by. She can’t do anything that doesn’t follow them.”

“What do you mean by that?” Petralka asked.

“I mean she’s got this sort of ideal inside her head, like, ‘This is what I have to do.’ If she isn’t able to live up to that ideal, even if it isn’t her fault, it makes her feel sick.”

“Is that so...” Petralka nodded thoughtfully, putting a finger to her chin. “We also recall something of the sort.”

“Uh, you do?” I was a little startled by that.

“The self we wished to be, and the self we were—there was a time when we were troubled by the difference between the two.”

“Wow...”

I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me to realize that being the empress of a major nation comes with a lot of expectations. And not just from the people you personally know. People you’ve never met, maybe thousands or tens of thousands of them, expect a whole range of different things from you.

I have to think a normal person just... wouldn’t understand what that sort of pressure was like. To have this ideal image of an empress that you had to take on... It could break you.

“But I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about it...” I sighed quietly.

Petralka, her brow furrowed, said, “Do you of all people ask this?” She sounded sort of exasperated.

“Huh...?”

“Is this not what you’re best at?”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Thanks to you, we...” She stopped in the middle of her sentence, as if rethinking things, then she shut those sweet little lips and looked away from me. “Forget it!”

“Huh? Wh-What? Why are you angry?”

“We are not angry!” Petralka snapped, crossing her arms and looking past me.

Uh... You look pretty angry to me, Your Majesty.

What the heck had I done this time...? I stood there, flummoxed by the miffed monarch, but then someone spoke up.

“Your Majesty...” It was—it was Myusel. “Shinichi-sama is a very humble man, you see...”

“Er?” I said dumbly, taken aback by this description.

Humble? What? Was she talking about me? And if so, what exactly was she saying?

“We insist this goes beyond humility. This is simple density,” Petralka replied. “We must assume he is much the same at your mansion. Myusel, surely you must be fatigued.”

“Oh, no, not at all...” she protested, but with a wry smile that said Well, y’know...

I did not understand this conversation. Was this what they call girl talk?! (Answer: no.)

I stood there, apparently the only one in the room completely mystified by this, when—

“Come to think of it,” Petralka said, seemingly mollified for the moment by her chat with Myusel. She looked at me again. “Has there been anything unusual to do with magic today?”

“Unusual?” I looked from Minori-san to Hikaru-san, and then to Myusel. Each of them looked back at me in turn, puzzled. Nobody seemed to know what she was talking about. “Nothing in particular, I think...”

I sure didn’t have any idea. “Did something happen?”

“Lately, the sprites have been in an unusual state,” Petralka said, crossing her arms, “and it is influencing magic. We’ve been busy looking into the matter.” She heaved a long sigh.

Okay. These sprites. What I was told was that when there’s a high enough density of magical power for any reason, the magic kind of clumps up and becomes these entities that behave like living things. In that sense, sprites were a sort of natural phenomenon, and in extreme terms, sprites and magical power were fundamentally the same thing.

And just as there was magic everywhere in this alternate world, so you could find sprites anywhere you went. Thus magic had proliferated as one of the basic technologies of this world, and was part of everyone’s daily life. The magical rings we all wore were an obvious example, and the wind mages keeping the castle’s toilets bearable were another.

But lately, it seemed, the number of sprites or the density of magic had become noticeably unbalanced. I had been aware that there were slight variations, of course, but they had never been enough to cause a problem. Lately, though, there had been times when people were spontaneously unable to use magic. Just small-scale incidents, but incidents nevertheless.

“You know...” I thought back to what had happened in the classroom. The way all the dwarves’ figures had stopped moving. With no warning, all the magic had suddenly become unusable.

Prompted by my look, Petralka asked, “Have you thought of something?”

“I don’t know the reason, exactly, but in the classroom the magic suddenly stopped working. It came back right away, though...”

“Is that so...” Petralka murmured.

“Is the phenomenon expected to get worse over time?” Minori-san asked.

Petralka shook her head. “No one knows. It may worsen, it may not. Such thing truly has never happened before.”

“If it looks like it may turn into a large-scale disaster, please tell us right away,” Minori-san said. “Disaster relief is the bread and butter of the JSDF. We might not be able to prevent the problem itself, but since we don’t rely on magic, I’ll bet we could do a lot to help.”

Ahh, that’s my JSDF.

“Very well. Your offer is appreciated.” Petralka nodded with all the gravity of an empress. “If any further details are discovered, we will make sure you are informed.”

When I checked my phone, it was already after ten o’clock at night.

In this place where so very few people had electricity, most of the world was engulfed in darkness—that is to say, it was as good as the middle of the night. It was all the darker tonight, when the sky was cloudy and you couldn’t see the moon.

In my room, I always kept an oil lamp, as well as a sprite light—sprites magically sealed into a glass ball—to help hold the darkness outside the window at bay.

“Hmmm...”

I reached a stopping point and sat back from my computer. I did some shoulder circles to loosen them up.

With Lauron’s “education” added to my duties, I’d found myself burning the midnight oil like this a lot recently. I often wouldn’t get to bed until the next day, sometimes two or three o’clock. Kind of a depressing thought, considering that I typically woke up around six a.m.

I was just suppressing a yawn when—

“Master?” There was a knock at the door. “I brought tea.”

“Myusel? It’s open—come on in.”

“Thank you.” She opened the door and entered the room.

Not just her, though. Behind Myusel and the tea cart, another face peeked in: Elvia.

That was unusual. Notwithstanding the times she got sucked into drawing, Elvia was usually the early-to-bed, early-to-rise type. By ten o’clock, she tended to be so soundly asleep that you could have jumped up and down right next to her and not woken her up. That didn’t strike me as making her great spy material, but I guess that point was already settled, so never mind.

“Eh heh heh. Hullo...” Elvia looked a little embarrassed as she slipped into my room.

“We tried baking radosen for a snack tonight,” Myusel said, pointing to something on the lower level of the cart. There was a plate with two slices of something very white and very flat, blackened a little here and there. Some kind of bread?

“Radosen?” I asked.

“It’s a kind of bread they like to eat in Bahairam, Elvia-san says. She taught me about it.”

“She did?” I glanced in her direction, and the Bahairamanian beast girl gave another shy chuckle. Aw, man, wicked cute!

No, not the time for that. I hadn’t thought Elvia did a lot of cooking. Maybe she hadn’t taught Myusel the recipe, but just told her that this stuff existed.

“She says they cook it on celebratory occasions, and that it gives you energy. Normally you cook it in a purpose-built oven, but of course we didn’t have one, so you could call this ‘Eldant style.’” Myusel smiled a little.

“Neat... So it’s kind of a ‘special event’ food?” I tore off a piece and put it in my mouth. Bread is bread, sure, but this had a faint sweetness. Not like it had been dusted with sugar or anything; it tasted like the sweetness came from the ingredients. It was simple, but delicious.

Beside the bread was another dish with some kind of paste on it, which it looked like you were supposed to add to the bread when you were ready for a little more flavor. It reminded me somehow of Asian homestyle cooking—and it definitely felt like Bahairam.

“You looked so tired, Shinichi-sama, that even Elvia-san started to worry about you...”

“Oh, uh, I just—” Elvia waved her hands anxiously. “I d-don’t want to be a buttinski, but you look kind of like when Big Sis Ama is getting too serious about something, and... I thought maybe you had some really tough work to deal with, so, I, uh...”

“Oh...” I scratched my cheek apologetically. In light of the fact that she was technically a spy for an enemy nation, we hadn’t told Elvia about the body-double project, so she didn’t have any idea why I was running myself ragged. Maybe she was a little concerned that I was so obviously busy and she was the only one who seemed to be left out of the loop.

“I’m sorry, Elvia. We aren’t trying to ostracize you or something.”

“N-No, don’t worry,” she said, shaking her head quickly. “I just—Shinichi-sama, I really—y’know...” And then, apparently too embarrassed to go on, Elvia looked at the ground.

Oooh, a fresh new side of her...!

The gap between this, and that moon-thing—the way she could shove me down, panting all over me, once a month—who wouldn’t get moe about that?! Wait—could this be deliberate? Could that be what she was after? Was this calculated—intentional—on purpose?! Ooh, Elvia, you fiend!

.......................................Okay, so Elvia was the one person I didn’t think would ever actually pull something like that. Her whole existence felt calculated to make me moe, but she seemed so totally oblivious to it that it would never have occurred to her to take advantage of it. Granted, that’s part of why she was so cute.

Okay, getting back on track...

“Elvia-san is worried about your health, too, Shinichi-sama,” Myusel said, trying to rescue the conversation.

“Elvia... too?”

“Yes. Her too,” Myusel said. “Of course, Her Majesty is as well.” She looked completely—well, confident would be the wrong word. She looked like this was all obvious. Her tone said, “You know that, don’t you?”

“Come to think of it,” I said slowly, “this afternoon, Petralka got angry, and you said something about modesty or humility or whatever. What was that all about?”

“What? Oh... Yes, I’m sorry.” Myusel shrugged a little as she spoke. “I didn’t mean to be forward...”

“Don’t worry, you weren’t.”

Myusel and Petralka both seemed to be on the same page about something, and I felt left out. And because they were obviously talking about me, it was that much more galling not to know what they were talking about.

“Shinichi-sama, you... I think perhaps you don’t notice it yourself, but... you have the power to change the people you come into contact with.”

“...............Huh?”

Power? What?

Wait... maybe, without me realizing it, some incredible ability had awoken within me?!

The name of my power? Auto-changer! Able to change people just by coming into contact with them!

...Er, okay, so that probably wasn’t what she meant.

“Me, Her Majesty, Elvia-san...” Myusel glanced to the side when she said that last name. Elvia, for her part, was looking at us questioningly, like she didn’t quite follow the conversation. “And Brooke-san, Cerise-san, and... probably everyone in your classroom. It’s very gradual, but thanks to you, all of us have changed somehow. Through the classes at school. Through your ‘sokker’ tournament. By working on your moo-vee. Even through what happened with Bahairam. Shinichi-sama, everyone around you—”

“Nonononono.” I shook my head. “That’s not some power of mine, it’s...”

Just what happens.

So maybe it was true that the people around me were gradually changing. Myusel was just a little less flustered than before when little things went wrong, and she and Petralka had become friends of a kind. The people who knew me maybe looked down on demi-humans and half-elves a little less. Elvia was more cheerful than when I’d first met her, a little less care-worn.

But all of that... all of that was ultimately because the environment around those people had changed. Take Petralka, for example. She was closer to Myusel because the maid had saved her life—not because of anything I’d personally done. In stronger terms, the people around me changed as a way of adapting to their new environment.

And the changes in that environment? I wasn’t the one who caused them. It was really the importation of various kinds of otaku culture through Amutech. Really, just about anyone could have been the company’s general manager—even Hikaru-san—and there’s a good chance the same things would have happened.

“None of that’s because of some power I have,” I said. “It just so happens that some things happened around me that caused you all to change for yourselves...”

“Yes,” Myusel nodded, looking extremely happy for some reason. Actually... considering how rarely she let herself smile like that, should I have taken it to be her version of a triumphant smirk? “Shinichi-sama, you always say things like that.”

“What...?”

“You never take credit for anything you’ve done.”

“Anything... I’ve done? Wait, I get it.” The lightbulb finally went on about this humility business.

Petralka and Myusel both felt they had changed. And evidently, they were kind enough to chalk that change up to me. That was where all this talk of special powers was coming from.

“Her Majesty must believe that if anyone can help Lauron-san change for the better, it would be you... Just like you’ve done for the rest of us.”

“I really think you’re overestimating me...”

If there was some “power” that had caused everyone to change, I didn’t think it was mine. Maybe more like the power in manga, anime, and games... or something like that. And maybe, at the same time, the power inside of everyone to find something meaningful in those things.

All I did was to offer them up and say, “What do you think?”

I didn’t really feel like I was responsible for any of it—but then, that had been my stance in this world all along. I just focused on the anime and manga and so on; that was my job. The moment I forgot that was the moment I would become a real invader.

That was... To me, that was all there was to it.

But...

“Overestimating? Overestimating?!” Elvia exclaimed. “Me and Big Sis Ama are back to being sisters again!”

“But that...” That really had just happened naturally. I interrupted my own objection, though, and said, “Wait...”

I started to rethink things, just a little.

I definitely wasn’t the only hardcore otaku out there with a sort of low opinion of myself, all too used to being mocked and marginalized by the world at large. I wasn’t the only one it left with a particular kind of weird stubborn streak, an insistence on discounting myself. Like how, if someone said something nice about me, I just wasn’t willing to accept it.

I would assume there had to be an ulterior motive, or tell myself that happiness goeth before the fall.

But what was the point of shooting down every compliment I ever got?

“It really makes me happy to hear that,” I finally said with a bit of a smile. “Thanks.”

Myusel and Elvia looked at each other, briefly speechless.

But then they found their voices and, grinning ear to ear, they chorused, “Of course!”