Chapter Three: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité

My name is Kanou Shinichi, and I’m the general manager of Amutech, the first general entertainment company in this alternate world.

Yeah, that sounds cool, I guess, but it didn’t change the reality. The fact is, I was thrown headfirst into a situation where even the bureaucrats immediately admitted they had no idea what would sell here, and now I was supposed to sell things here.

Anyway, never mind the details. Basically, my job was to bring things in that I thought might possibly be interesting to the people of this other world, or at least the Holy Eldant Empire. I didn’t expect to hit it out of the park the first time. I was just trying to lay the groundwork to have a hit later.

And that required research.

“Might as well start with what’s right here.”

I looked around my first-floor office. “Library” might have been a better word. I had made a long list of “otaku goods” for Matoba-san; now the shelves were overflowing with manga, anime DVDs and Blu-rays, game discs, and more. Of course, manga and novels weren’t the only paper goods I’d requested; there were also plenty of design books and posters.

The result was that my office looked like some otaku-centric bookstore or DVD shop in Akiba. All this stuff wasn’t going to be gold, but just seeing it there was impressive.

“It’s sort of a dream come true,” I murmured, slightly overwhelmed.

Each thing I’d gotten was a necessary expense. Forget sales tax; the Bureau was footing the entire bill. Matoba-san had obviously gotten a bit of sticker shock, but getting everything over here was actually a bigger problem than money.

Just as a note, there seemed to be some weird magnetism or something in the hyperspace tunnel, because wireless communication devices wouldn’t work through it at all, and even wired lines were subject to large amounts of noise. So unfortunately, internet connection had to be scratched off my wish list.

That being the case, I created a separate list of sites that needed regular checking. People on the other side would have a look periodically, download any important articles, and put them on physical media that could be brought to me. We would lose the immediacy, but I was just going to have to roll with it.

“Is this y’r ‘otaku culture,’ Master?” The lizardman Brooke was standing beside me, looking around the room in amazement. At least, I thought it was amazement. His scaly face made his expression difficult to read as always, but his tone and gestures gave me just about enough to go on.

At the moment, Brooke was helping me bring box after box of merchandise from the containers outside into this room. Now that things had quieted down a little, he had a chance to see what was in all those boxes he had been carrying.

Myusel and I had carried out the work of taking the books and DVDs and such out of the boxes and lining them up on the shelves. We had started early and spent the entire day on it, yet we were still only about sixty percent done.

“Yeah, this is it. But hey, just staring at it won’t get us anywhere. Brooke, if you see anything that looks interesting to you, feel free to grab it.”

“May I really? A servant like me, touch your honored possessions?”

“It’s fine,” I said with a smile. “I don’t care if you’re a servant or a king, the point is to get as many people reading this stuff as possible. But I need feedback, so if you check any of this stuff out, let me know what you think.”

Brooke looked at me. His eyes never blinked; they looked like glass. I think he was a little surprised...

“Still not sure? What if I said... Pick anything you like. That’s an order.”

“Hmmm...”

Brooke hunched his shoulders and scratched what I assumed was the back of his head, then walked over to the shelf. As a matter of fact, Myusel, with whom I had had virtually the same conversation earlier, had already taken an armful of manga with great interest.

It was ten days or so since I’d given her the hiragana chart. She had already memorized all the hiragana, and could read katakana, too. Because I was helping her study every night, she could even recognize a couple hundred everyday Japanese words. It turned out she was actually a pretty smart cookie. Not to mention she was apparently thrilled to be learning to read and write, even if it was in the language of a completely different world, and she was picking up Japanese awfully fast.

Maybe part of it was that she was living with me. Like I said before, the magic rings we wore acted almost like simultaneous interpreters; Myusel could still hear the actual words I was saying. And sort of like watching a subtitled movie, when she heard the same words over and over again, she started to learn some Japanese in spite of herself.

Naturally, she couldn’t yet read kanji to speak of, but a lot of manga include pronunciations in hiragana next to the kanji, and the pictures themselves are a form of communication in graphic novels, so she could actually work out what was going on in some relatively simple series.

I had ordered Brooke to pick up a book for much the same reason. He and Myusel would be valuable research subjects.

Just as I was thinking about all this, I heard an indistinct voice. It sounded like somebody was fighting, maybe out in the hallway, but I couldn’t quite make out what was being said. Although, if they were speaking Eldant, I wouldn’t be able to understand them anyway. The ring’s powers weren’t absolute. If you couldn’t see the other person or if you were too far away, it wouldn’t always work. But then, suddenly—

“KANOU SHINICHI!!”

The door burst open. When I saw who had come storming into my office, my jaw dropped.

“Empress Eldant?!”

“Indeed!” her Not-Actually-an-Archetypal-Little-Girl-Character Majesty replied. “So this is where you’ve been hiding, Kanou Shinichi. We’ve come to observe your evangelism firsthand and as soon as possible!” Petralka harrumphed, seeming to think I should be grateful for this.

Apparently, she had gotten word that large amounts of otaku merchandise had been brought in and had come to see for herself. I knew we were in the castle town, but was it really safe for the empress to come out without so much as a bodyguard? Wait... Just how fast could she travel, anyway?

I was busy keeping these interjections bottled up when:

“Y-Your M-Majesty...!” Several steps behind her came a frail old man, his shoulders heaving painfully—Zahar, the prime minister. “Y-Your Majesty... an empress must not run... down a hallway,” he wheezed. “A-And slamming a door is most unfitting...!”

In games, manga, anime, and light novels, prime ministers always seem to fall into one of a few categories. You’ve got the pathetic guys who are just puffing themselves up in the ruler’s reflected glory, the evil guys who are controlling the ruler like a puppet, and the last-boss types who pretend to be faithful subjects but are secretly plotting rebellion. But this old guy just seemed to really want to bring the empress up right, even if he was a little indulgent. A genuinely good servant.

Petralka, however, didn’t quite seem to be picking up on his particular expression of loyalty.

“Quit your blabbering, old man. We did not run, we merely walked quickly.”

“Ohh, Your Majesty, not more of your royal pedantry...” Zahar let out a groan and put his hands to his face. Evidently this wasn’t the first time they’d been through something like this. I felt bad for him. Surely, he had prime ministerial duties to attend to.

“Hmm!” Petralka looked around my office, which, on its own small scale, had been Akiba-fied, and made an impressed noise. “Most arresting! Is this the ‘otaku culture’ of which you spoke to us?” Her eyes sparkled with anticipation.

Mm-hmm. That’s the perfect expression for a loli girl.

Wait... Myusel was sixteen too, right? I might have been conservative, but I prided myself on having a wide range of expertise when it came to moe characters. And Petralka was moe in a slightly different way than Myusel.

“How very different these are from your extravagantly colored wall hangings!”

Unlike Brooke, Petralka hadn’t even thought of asking permission; she’d dragged Zahar over to the bookshelves with her and was now paging through one manga after another with exclamations of “Ooh!” or “Hmm!” As far as I knew, she couldn’t read a word of Japanese—but that didn’t seem to stop her from enjoying the books.

Phew. The sight of her getting up on her little tippy-toes to reach the higher shelves was so cute, it should have been illegal.

“...Hmm?” Petralka made a mystified sound as she flipped through the pages of one book. “We don’t understand!”

“Well, er, you wouldn’t,” I grinned.

She was different from Myusel in every conceivable way. Brooke, too, although he looked interested, probably didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on in any of the books. In any event, he and Myusel had both frozen against the wall the instant Petralka came in.

I guess it was a natural reaction. Anyone would be surprised to have an empress show up out of the blue. And in a medieval-ish world like this one, she was basically an absolute ruler. If either of them said or did anything careless in front of her, their lives could be over before they knew it. Telling them to calm down would probably have been pointless.

“Sigh. And here the pictures look so interesting,” Petralka said disappointedly.

I’m sorry—I knew how sensitive she was about her young looks—but she was just so freakin’ adorable with that expression on her face that I simply couldn’t think of her as the ruler of an entire nation. I desperately wanted to do something for her.

“...You. Kanou Shinichi.”

“What is it, Your Majesty? Um, you can call me Shinichi, by the way. Saying ‘Kanou Shinichi’ all the time is like if I were to address you as ‘Your Imperial Majesty Petralka an Eldant the Third’ every single time we talked.”

“Mm. You say we should call you Shinichi, then?” She looked confused for just a second.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, giving a little, almost butler-esque, bow.

“Mm. We do have a proverb: ‘When in Kamara, eat what the Kamarans eat.’ In order to enjoy otaku culture, we shall accede to your ways.” She smiled benignly and nodded.

I wasn’t quite clear on what “Kamara” was, but the sentiment was familiar enough. Maybe it was something all humans shared.

“Shinichi,” she said, giving a very loli smile.

“Yes, Your Majesty?”

“We give you special dispensation to address us as Petralka.”

“Your Majesty,” Zahar protested, “that’s altogether—”

“Was it not you who taught us that each land has its own people and each people their own values? And that to ignore those values only breeds resentment? And that for that reason, a leader must sometimes bow to conventions not her own?”

“Erm... I... I did indeed teach you that...”

“Then do not worry. It will be only within this mansion. This house is, if you will, the fief we have given to Shinichi. You see, Shinichi? Outside these walls, continue to call us Your Majesty. It is true that any who overheard you calling us by our first name might well misunderstand.”

“Misunderstand?”

“Normally,” Prime Minister Zahar said, taking a handkerchief out of a bag and wiping the sweat from his brow, “only members of the royal family may use each other’s given names. Besides those related by blood and marriage, only one other person may use the Imperial name—and that is her fiancé.”

“............Erm.” Now I was the one who was starting to sweat. “Are you sure about this?”

“Sure about what?” Petralka said with a look of perplexity.

“Er, well... Never mind.”

If it didn’t bother her, it didn’t make sense for me to act all fussy about it, you know? If only members of her family could call her Petralka, then I just needed to think of this as though we were family. As if she were my little sister, say...

I didn’t speak for a moment.

“What is wrong, Shinichi?” Petralka asked.

“Oh, uh, nothing.”

I was definitely not trying to keep myself from having a huge nosebleed over the image of Petralka calling me “Big Bro ♪.”

I actually had a little sister back in Japan, so the whole idea of “little-sister moe” never really clicked with me. But if it was someone like Petralka—basically a two-dimensional character come to life, literally the image of the sweet but slightly sassy little sister—well, maybe I could sort of see it.

“More importantly, what’s on your mind, Your Majesty—I mean, Petralka?”

“Hm? Ah, yes, Shinichi, that’s right. As things stand, we cannot enjoy otaku culture. These rings only work with someone else who is wearing one; we cannot read these letters.”

“That’s true.”

“And therefore,” Petralka said with a smirk...

The expression was very cute, no question. But for some reason, I had a bad feeling about this.

How did this happen...?

I really didn’t know how.

To my right sat Myusel, looking slightly terrified. To my left sat Petralka, the picture of seriousness.

And I sat in between the two girls, my teeth all but chattering from nervousness. After all, we were practically shoulder to shoulder. I could have smelled their body odor, if you want to be blunt. And almost as if that weren’t enough for them, they both kept creeping closer to me.

Trapped between two young women, I was only just holding on to my emotional equilibrium. I felt like if I made so much as a weird noise, there might be a critical rupture.

Sweat slid down my cheek. My whole body stiff, I whispered in a trembling voice: “P-Please don’t kill me...”

Neither Myusel nor Petralka said anything. I thought I would scream from the weight of the silence.

But just then, Petralka whispered to me, “Hey!”

She whispered. Right in my ear. Her breath... The breath of the loli empress was right in my ear...

But as these moe-crazed thoughts were running through my head, she went on, “Hurry and turn the page! We are eager to know what happens next!”

We were still in my office, sitting together on a sofa in my impromptu slice of Akiba.

A manga was open on my knees. It was a fantasy-adventure drama, something I’d chosen because I thought it might be easy for Petralka and Myusel to connect with. I didn’t think SF or hard-boiled action would necessarily make any sense to them at the moment, and a four-panel gag strip about everyday life, even less so.

On top of that, I was reading the comic book aloud for the benefit of these two girls who couldn’t understand Japanese. As a note, it was only Petralka and Myusel in the room with me. Brooke had excused himself on the grounds that he had work to do in the garden, while Zahar and Minori-san were waiting outside. Petralka had chased them out, judging them a distraction to reading manga.

Then why was Myusel with us, you ask? Because I had asked Petralka to let her stay. After all that stuff about calling her by her first name, I had the sense it would be a pretty bad idea to be alone in a room with her—and anyway, I wanted Myusel to learn some more Japanese, so I asked that she be allowed to stay while I read.

Normally, I’d be really thankful for a situation like this, but...

Feeling the warmth of a girl to each side of me, I pushed down the groan that threatened to escape.

Scene description in comics is obviously mostly visual; it relies on pictures. Which means that three people trying to read a comic book together naturally get very close to each other as they all lean in to look at the same thing. As result, although the girls didn’t seem to notice it, they were cozying up to me in a way that would never normally have happened.

Every time I made to turn the page, my elbow would brush the swell of Myusel’s... well, you know. And my other arm was basically pressed permanently against Petralka’s modest endowment. Not only that, but the sweet, flowery scent that drifted from their hair enveloped me from both sides. For a healthy teenage guy, it was sort of like an endurance race.

Is this how all those guys in those ero games feel?

I was desperately regretting my choice of a manga. If I had picked a light novel, something where the story is told primarily through prose, I might have been able to avoid this situation... But it was too late for should-haves. Both of my companions were absorbed in the first story they’d ever seen from another world, and if I tried to say “Let’s read something else” now, even Myusel might kill me, let alone Petralka.

And then...

“Oh...!” When I turned the page, Myusel made a happy noise from beside me. “This is about you, isn’t it, Master? I recognize this word.”

She was pointing to the kanji 可能, glossed with the hiragana reading kanou. The word meant “able,” “capable,” or “possible,” and was written with different characters than my name, for which the kanji were 加納. But she was right that they sounded the same.

“Oh,” I said. “You’re right, the readings are the same. But it isn’t actually my name—it means something else.”

“It does?”

“Kanji characters each have their own meaning. Sometimes you get words that sound the same but mean different things.”

“You do?”

Myusel blinked, at once confused and impressed.

“Wow, you’re really a quick learner, Myusel,” I said.

Yes, it was just hiragana and katakana, barely a hundred characters in total, but trying to pick up things like that when the only time you could study was late at night after a full day of work was no mean feat. I knew she was smart.

“Oh, no, Master. It’s all because you stay up so late helping me study. I never imagined the day might come when I would be able to read any type of writing,” she murmured.

She had discovered the joy of being able to read and write, even if she was learning the language of another world, and it had motivated her to soak up Japanese like a sponge. As for me, seeing this lovely young woman so happy made me realize all the time I’d spent teaching her had been worth it.

“What are these characters here?” she asked.

“Those are called onomatopoeia. They’re sort of tricky...”

However, all this joy had caused me to completely forget the girl sitting on the other side of me. Just for a moment, mind you, but I totally missed the glare Petralka had fixed on me.

“Shinichi!” Petralka exclaimed. She jumped up from the sofa, the spell broken.

“Huh? Oh! Right, right. Sorry, Your Majesty.”

“I thought I told you to call me Petralka!”

“Oh, sorry about that, Petralka,” I said hastily, but it was too little, too late. Without a word, Petralka grabbed my arm and pulled straight up—and then, to my disbelief, she plopped herself down right where the manga had been a second ago.

I.e., right on my knees.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?!

“P-Petralka?!”

She grabbed my flailing hand and brought it, comic book at all, down on her own knees. So I ended up with her sitting on my lap and me basically hugging her from behind. And yes, she was small, but to read manga like this, I would basically have to rest my chin on her shoulder...!

We were definitely a bit too close now.

I was embarrassed and also kind of happy to have this loli-ish girl on my lap, but I didn’t even want to think about the misunderstandings that would ensue if anyone caught us like this.

“Th-Th-Th-This is definitely not okay!”

“Silence! Our neck gets tired when we have to look from the side!”

“I’m not arguing that point, but—”

“Do not concern yourself—read! And you, maid,” she said, fixing her eyes on Myusel. “Go make us tea! Our cup has gotten cold; boil us a new one!”

“Wha? Oh! Y-Yes, right away!” Myusel was up quick as a shot.

“Servants ought to serve,” Petralka said with a triumphant look.

The words were victorious and hurtful. Myusel, a terrified expression on her face, bowed again and left the room almost at a run.

“Erm, Your Majesty?”

“Petralka.”

“Sorry. Petralka. Are you... angry?”

“No, we are not!” she bellowed.

Y’know, in Japanese, the word for “bellow” is literally written with the characters “to shout angrily.” But, sure. You’re not upset.

Not that I could say that to Her Imperial Majesty. Anyway, I felt bad for having ignored her, even if it was just for a moment, so I didn’t press the point.

“You animal. Getting all excited the moment you see a woman.”

“Guh...?!”

Excited? What does she mean, excited? To hear a girl talk like that was enough to bring a tear to Big Bro’s eye.

Anyway, was I getting the “animal” treatment? I mean, I guess it was because she wasn’t looking at me as human that she was comfortable sitting on my lap with my arms around her. A nice hug, as if from a pet.

I admit, when Petralka first tossed herself down on my lap, I felt my heart rate spike... but now I saw the reality of it all too clearly.

I sighed inwardly and resumed reading.

It was several days after Petralka’s sudden visit. I had managed to clean up my office a little bit, so one morning I decided to go to town.

I felt I needed to get a grasp of the cultural level of the Eldant Empire. Of course, I could ask Matoba-san for copies of the report from the initial survey team, but then I would have to slog through a dense bureaucratic white paper, and anyway, I wanted to see for myself what my future customers looked like.

If we really wanted to get otaku culture to “stick” in the Empire, we couldn’t just deal with nobles and royals forever. Nerd culture is a real melting pot; anything goes so long as it’s interesting. You could even say otaku culture stands on the shoulders of countless works where sheer interest was counted as righteousness, even if those works have been largely forgotten.

That means that for otaku culture, those who actually pony up the cash and buy the works—the customers whose purchases support the creators and distributors—dictate what’s right; an anime could have the biggest budget in the world, but if it fails to take the otaku into account, it’s going to bomb. This all led to one conclusion—if I was going to spread otaku-ism around here, I would have to get buy-in from the biggest demographic around: the commoners.

We couldn’t just bring in a bunch of random geeky stuff and hope for the best. An electrical grid would be necessary at some point, and if we couldn’t teach people to read, this would all be for nothing. Never mind books; even to get anime and games out there, we would need theaters and stuff.

Forget SimCity: this was SimAkiba.

And so it was that I was walking to town, accompanied by Minori-san, who was acting as my bodyguard, and Brooke, who was acting as my guide and baggage carrier. This was the first time I’d seen the town up close, not counting when I had glimpsed it out the window of our horse-drawn—or rather, bird-drawn—carriage.

“Huh...”

It looked more or less like it had passing by, but actually getting out and walking around revealed details I hadn’t noticed until then.

The smell, for instance. There was a burned odor, enough to be noticeable but not enough to be really off-putting, along with the smell of something rotten. The burning was probably from hearths or cook fires; the reek was probably trash or toilets. In fact, I recalled hearing that the palace at Versailles didn’t have any toilets. What a crappy bit of trivia.

Without a sewage system, or even businesses that specialized in taking the stuff away, having a toilet inside would only have resulted in trapping the smell in your house. It seemed there were only a few options, and most people picked one of them: throw it in a river, use it as fertilizer, or just leave it in a field someplace. I’d heard that in Europe, they used to just dump it out the back of the building or even feed it to the pigs as slop. Maybe they did similar things here.

Incidentally, at our mansion, Brooke took the stuff away, allegedly to use as compost in an outbuilding, so we were able to use the toilet without worrying too much—but that probably wasn’t practical among the commoners.

“I guess you don’t think about two-dimensional characters having to do that sort of thing.”

This was basically a straight-up fantasy world, but these were living people, with all the biological functions that entailed.

Another thing I noticed was that most signs had pictures on them. Presumably this was because so few people could read. Obviously, drawing lifelike images takes a lot of skill, and most of the pictures on these signs were more symbolic than anything. The upshot was that even though I couldn’t read the local alphabet, I knew that this place was a tavern, that one was a blacksmith, over here was a bakery, and so on and so forth.

But the number-one thing that struck me as I walked around town was...

“Does something amuse y’, Master?” Brooke, walking just ahead of me, turned and asked. At first I’d been a little intimidated to have him so close, but as I got used to him I found his wide, round eyes and his huge mouth, which looked like he was forever smiling, surprisingly lovable. Lots of people keep snakes as pets. I thought maybe I was beginning to see the attraction.

“Everything. There’s a lot of food for thought here.”

“Is that so? I’m sure I see only the same things I do every day.” His face didn’t change, but from the lilt of his voice and the way his tongue flicked in and out of his mouth, I guessed he was being a little sardonic.

“Well, we didn’t have lizardmen or elves where I come from, for one thing.”

We’d had enough “races,” black and white and Asian and whatever, to drive us crazy. Here, though, everyone seemed to have some unique trait—there were humans everywhere, but about one out of every ten people was an elf or a lizardman or something else. Brooke didn’t draw any special attention.

“If y’ want to see demi-humans,” Brooke said, “I suggest you try th’ training grounds just outside town.”

“Training grounds?”

“Sort of a military base,” Minori-san broke in. “It’s got dormitories for the rank-and-file, along with some training facilities. A platoon from the JSDF is actually borrowing some space there. Apparently, the military is the easiest place for demi-humans to get work in this country.”

“Huh...”

You know, I had been wondering where the other soldiers stayed who had been riding in the LAV. I guess it was these training grounds.

I decided to go have a look.

The training grounds turned out to look like a gigantic schoolyard. In one corner, I could see the dormitories and what looked like a storehouse, but other than that it was just a big, flat space. It definitely seemed like the sort of place soldiers would use to train. Incidentally, it looked like the JSDF was holed up in tents around the storehouse and the dorms. The words “Japan Self-Defense Force” printed across the dark-green tents were unmistakably out of place in this fantasy world.

But whatever.

“Are those—” My eyes went wide as I observed what I thought—what I was pretty sure—were soldiers training. Ten humans. Ten elves. Ten lizardmen. “—children?!”

“Well, yes,” Brooke said, with a tone of What is this guy so surprised about?

“But... But...”

Under the laws of Japan, I was still a minor myself, and the soldiers (?) on that field definitely included some kids who looked like they were in their mid-teens, or maybe even younger. About half of them were practicing with wooden swords, but the other half were making complicated gestures. Then they thrust out their right hands, and—

“Yikes!”

Popopopop! There was a series of small explosions, and a row of sparks showered the ground in front of them. Just for a second, I thought I’d seen balls of light come out of their outstretched palms.

“Is that...”

“Magic practice,” Minori-san confirmed. “Although they aren’t strong enough to really hurt anyone yet.”

“...Are they practicing Fireball?”

“Probably.”

No way. Before this display of genuine offensive magic I could only stand open-mouthed.

I was pretty sure I had heard that lizardmen lacked magical power, so it was impossible for them to really use magic, and indeed, it was all humans and elves standing there making sparks.

Even so, though...

“This is a training ground, after all,” Minori-san said with a bit of a frown. It was weird. She didn’t seem very happy about what she was seeing. “They’re mostly focused on those kids, who are going to be soldiers. Like we said, around here, the quickest way for a demi-human to find gainful employment is to join the army.”

According to Minori-san, demi-humans normally didn’t even have what we would think of as citizenship. But they could gain it if they joined the military and spent a certain amount of time as a soldier. Whether they stayed in the military after that or went and got a civilian job, service in the armed forces was the quickest way for demi-humans to make their way in the human world.

“I m’self was in the military once,” Brooke said.

“Really?” I asked.

“Of course. Otherwise, I surely wouldn’t have been allowed to work in a noble’s house.”

As a manservant, Brooke had to do a lot of physical labor; it was actually probably a pretty good job for a lizardman. A stint in the military would, I guessed, acted as proof that he was a halfway decent person and improved his chances of getting hired. Although Brooke had a magic ring just like the rest of us, it apparently wasn’t given to him because he worked with me, but rather had been granted when he joined the army.

“I presume Myusel was also in the armed forces at some point,” he said.

“No. Seriously?” I asked.

I didn’t doubt him; I just couldn’t imagine the willowy, vulnerable Myusel in the army. I guess there are a lot of different kinds of jobs in the military, so she wouldn’t necessarily have been on the front lines or anything.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Minori-san said, “but I wouldn’t press anyone about it if I were you. There are class divisions in our own world, too, and societies that accept them. Think about India, where there’s still effectively a caste system, even if it’s been officially outlawed.”

“...Yeah,” I said. “And I hear you can get citizenship through military service in the US, too.”

The point was, in a multiracial—practically multi-species—environment like this one, it wasn’t easy to just demand peace or equality. This went beyond skin color; lizardmen, for example, were clearly a different form of life. It was sort of like saying cats or dogs should be treated equally.

But still...

I heard some kind of bell ring.

“Oh,” Brooke said. “They’re on break.”

Apparently so: the kids scattered in small groups around the training grounds. A group of three elvish children headed straight for us.

“What’re you doing?” they asked, their eyes shining with curiosity. This sort of thing made it obvious that they really were still children—they couldn’t restrain their interest in something new.

“You seem different from the ‘sehlf dee-fens fource’ people. What are you here for?”

“Hmm...” I pondered how to explain, then beckoned Brooke over. I pulled out one of the manga I’d brought from the carrier on his back and showed it to the elf kids.

“I want to tell everyone about these things.”

“What’s that?”

The cover of this particular manga boasted a young man holding a sword. Maybe everyone here was already used to simplified or symbolic language because of all the signs around town; the people in the Eldant Empire didn’t seem to show any aversion to manga images like this. If anything, they really seemed to like them.

One of the kids took the manga from me and began turning the pages with obvious eagerness. But then...

“Hey, what’s it say?” he asked, upset.

He could get a sort of general sense that something interesting was going on, but being unable to read the thing sucked the fun out of it. We were definitely going to need to get our hands on a translator as quickly as possible.

Wait a second. Remember Myusel. Even if we translated these books, these kids probably couldn’t read their own language.

What was the educational system like here, anyway?

“What do you guys normally do for fun?” I asked.

“Fun? We don’t get to have any,” the elf children responded, puffing out their cheeks. “When there’s no training, we have to help cut the grass on the training field. Plus, there’s livestock to look after and fields to plant.” The boys were speaking quickly. They seemed to think I was making fun of them.

“H-Hold on. You mean...”

They didn’t have any time set aside just to play? Back in Japan, young children had all sorts of free time, and plenty of ways to enjoy it. Some kids might be inspired by the patrol cars on children’s TV programming to become detectives; others might find they enjoy collecting bugs so much that they decide to become a scholar.

But kids in this world didn’t have that kind of time. Adults around here just quietly did their jobs, and they would naturally expect kids to help. There was no way and no time to disseminate media. And anyway, they would subconsciously believe, based on experience, that that was simply the way the world was. It was practically brainwashing.

I pictured Myusel, studying hiragana late at night. How surprised she had been when I offered to help her learn to read and write, even though there was no practical benefit to me.

It struck me once again how much I—and all Japanese kids—had been brought up under a thick protective blanket. It wasn’t just a question of an educational system. It was a fundamental difference in national systems, in economic power, in the very construction of society. My happiness was a miraculous gift provided by the fortuitous alignment of a very, very specific set of circumstances.

Otaku are all about Japanese pop culture. Maybe that’s just a way of saying otaku couldn’t exist except in Japan or somewhere like it.

“You don’t read books or anything?”

“How could we? They’re super expensive, and only nobles and scholars can read and write, anyway,” the kids answered, pursing their lips.

“Nobody teaches you? I mean, how to read and write?”

“What noble would teach a commoner how to do that?” the elves answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“...Hm.”

The most interesting manga. The most heart-pounding novels. The most exciting anime and games. These kids didn’t know about any of it; they didn’t even have the ability to understand it.

I just—

I patted one of the elf kids on the head. He gave me a mystified look. Suddenly, I found a wish forming in my heart. A wish to give kids like this something they could enjoy, even if only for a short while. To give them entertainment.

I was in a fantasy world, for crying out loud. At the very least, we could all enjoy ourselves by pretending to go on a little adventure.

We took a quick tour of town and got back to the mansion around three in the afternoon. That was the number on my watch, anyway; obviously, it wasn’t specifically a way of telling time used in this world. Matoba-san had told me that the length of a day and even a week here were about the same as in our world, so there was no need for me to reset my watch.

There was, of course, a reason we’d come back so early. There was a guest we had to entertain, one who visited nearly every day.

“Hmm!” Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Petralka of the Holy Eldant Empire, peered at a manga from where she was perched on my knees, which were now where she always sat. “To think that a bard would confront a crimson dragon, a designated dangerous species! Surely he stands no chance, armed only with his bow and his songs. What could he be thinking? Shinichi, will you not read the next page posthaste?!”

Petralka was in high spirits. Ever since her visit a few days ago, she had shown up every day at about this time and ordered me to read comic books to her. The way her voice rose as she demanded that I continue showed how earnestly the young ruler was enjoying the manga.

But what was the story here? Was it really all right for the ruler of the whole empire to take daily jaunts out of the castle like this? Yes, Zahar and several bodyguards waited just outside the room, but she still seemed just a little too cavalier. Even if, as I guessed, that knight Garius and Prime Minister Zahar were taking care of the real administrative work.

So here I was, all but wrapping my arms around a beautiful young woman sitting on my lap—if anyone had seen it, they might have wondered what I’d done to deserve such a reward. Yet from my perspective, it was surprisingly problematic.

Think of it this way: if I let even a remotely dirty thought enter my head, and if that should cause any biological change in me, Petralka would know immediately, and would probably have me beheaded for lèse-majesté.

It’s possible I might get away with a very profuse apology. Either way, these were not favorable working conditions. However light a girl might be, having her sitting on your lap for an hour or more will make your legs go numb. Reading all the dialogue and sound effects made my throat dry, so my voice started to crack. I really hoped she would let me go soon.

Just about at the time when, on a normal day, I figured we would soon be taking a break—

“Your Majesty. Master.” A knock and Myusel’s voice came from the other side of the door. “If you’ll pardon me.”

The door opened, and Myusel entered the office wheeling a silver cart. A sweet scent reached my nose. I looked at the cart and saw a silver platter piled with pastries that looked an awful lot like cream puffs. My eyes went wide; Myusel, with a shy smile, said, “Here’s tea, and cream runto to go with it.”

I found myself looking intently at her. “I didn’t ask for tea.”

“No, sir,” she said. “But I thought both of you might be getting tired about now...”

That was a maid for you! Very considerate. She’d brought us some sweets to revive our flagging energy.

“Thanks, that’s a help,” I said. “How about we take a little break, then?”

“What are you talking about?!” Petralka demanded angrily. “We’re just getting to a good part!”

“My throat’s bone-dry, I can hardly read. Come on, let’s have tea.” I smiled and adopted a tone like I was talking to a small child. But that had the opposite of the effect I wanted.

In retrospect, I realized how much it bothered Petralka that she looked so young, and how much she hated to be treated like a child. I knew she was sixteen, but not only did she not look like it, her constant, self-centered demands made her seem younger than she was and led me to speak the way I had.

Her displeasure was obvious. Slowly, the child empress got off my lap. I felt a momentary relief—until she spun and glared at Myusel. Then she began to upbraid her: “Who do you think you are, anyway! Base woman, always... always interfering!”

Perhaps she had been, in her own way, quietly putting up with Myusel’s behavior until now. Finally, all her annoyance came pouring out.

“Like just now! It’s as though you knew we were at a good part of the story!”

“I— I—!” Myusel had turned completely white under this withering assault. And no wonder. Childish or no, she was dealing with the empress of the entire nation here. “I just thought the master might be tired...”

That made perfect sense, but to the enraged absolute monarch, her words were like throwing gas on a fire.

“Do you dare speak back to us?!” Petralka’s voice was shaking; her face was as red as if she had been insulted. “You— You vile half-breed!”

“I’m v-very sorry...!” Myusel said, throwing herself prostrate on the ground.

Petralka almost made it sound like being a half-elf was a crime, and Myusel didn’t seem to know how to defend herself. She could only beg for forgiveness. I just stood there, agog at the textbook example of discrimination playing out before my eyes.

I have to do something. I don’t know what, but I have to stop this.

Despite the thought running through my head, anything I could say only seemed likely to fan the flames of Petralka’s rage. So I stood there, working my mouth open and closed.

Then, someone jumped straight into the middle of this hideous battle.

An exasperated voice came from the direction of the still-open door. “What’s all this commotion?”

“Oh...!”

I stiffened involuntarily. It was the silver-haired hunk, the knight Garius. He didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me, partly because I had flat-out contradicted him the very first time we’d met, and partly because of Minori-san’s fujoshi fantasies about us. There was also his serious, unbending demeanor, the fact that he was both a scholar and a warrior, and just his overall air of total competence—it was all a bit much for me to handle.

“I heard you were here, Your Majesty, and when I come to check on you, what do I find?” He was looking into the office with a frown.

Garius’s appearance practically screamed goody two-shoes royal knight!!, so maybe he would take Petralka to task for abusing Myusel. I mean, knights were supposed to defend the defenseless, right?

“Petralka... Ahem, Your Majesty.”

“Hm?”

He glanced at Petralka, as well as the long-suffering Myusel, who was still on the ground, and heaved a sigh. Then he began walking toward the ruler...

“Er... Garius...-san...?”

...and then right past her. He calmly sat down on the sofa on the far side of the desk from me. He made no sign of trying to intervene with Petralka—in fact, it was almost as if he didn’t see either her or Myusel.

“Aren’t you going to stop her?”

“Once Her Majesty’s ire is aroused, it doesn’t easily subside,” he said bluntly. “Just bear with her until she tires herself out.”

He sounded like an older brother who had resigned himself to his little sister’s temper tantrums. Actually, come to think of it, I guess the two of them were technically related.

“No, wait, hang on, we have to stop this!”

“Stop it? Why?” Garius asked, genuinely mystified. “If she’s too loud for you, just plug your ears.”

Is this guy for real?

“That’s not the problem! Myusel is—”

“Hm?” Garius blinked and took another look at Petralka and Myusel, as if noticing the maid’s existence for the first time. “Myusel? Is she that half-elf servant? What about her?”

“The empress is shouting her lungs out at her, even though she didn’t do anything wrong.”

“If the servant has done something to displease Her Majesty, what else would you expect?” He really didn’t seem to understand what I was getting at. “It’s not likely she’ll be killed, anyway. The occasional beating is an occupational hazard. Anyway, as a half-elf, she wouldn’t normally have been able to become a servant in a noble household. All the more reason she can consider this part of the job. I’m sure she knew this might happen. And if she didn’t, it only shows she’s not qualified to be a maid.”

“What the—?!” I stared at him, all but lost for words.

Right in front of my eyes, Myusel was being attacked for something she bore no responsibility for—a mere accident of birth—and there was nothing she could say to defend herself; she could only huddle in fear.

“If you want to hit me, try this.”

Those were the words with which Brooke had handed me a stick. I remembered how Myusel had been more worried about my injured hand than about Brooke, who had been beaten through no fault of his own.

Apparently, it was only natural. Here in the Eldant Empire, it was considered normal.

“Hrrgh...”

I felt an uncharacteristic anger simmering deep in my guts.

“Whatever happened to the knightly virtues?” I growled.

“Knightly virtues?” Garius raised a bemused eyebrow.

Even this simple gesture managed to ooze refinement. Outwardly, he really was the picture of the perfect knight. But everything he said was full of casual discrimination and bias. And I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“What have the knightly virtues to do with this situation?” Garius drawled.

He doesn’t know. He really doesn’t know.

“The nobles who stake their names as knights for the glory of the Holy Eldant Empire are thoroughly schooled in etiquette and their own military duties. That is a knight’s virtue.”

So apparently, humbling the strong and protecting the weak didn’t enter into it around here.

Now that I thought about it, bushido, “the way of the warrior”—a system of ethics often compared with the ways of knights—was said by some to have been developed in the Edo era, starting in the seventeenth century. Some people claim it didn’t exist during the time when the samurai were actually fighting. Supposedly it wasn’t a practical battlefield philosophy, but a sort of armchair samurai-ism developed by warriors trying to feed themselves in a time when the fighting arts were in decline.

From that perspective, given that the Eldant Empire was currently facing border skirmishes with its neighbors, it might simply be that hard-eyed realism was the order of the day; there was no room for ideals of defending the defenseless.

“It looks to me like you’ve misunderstood what it means to be a knight,” Garius said. “Listen to me. A knight protects this state, the Holy Eldant Empire; he is the embodiment of its laws and principles. If something threatens those principles, he will of course give himself in the fight against it, but he has no right to intervene when things are as they should be.”

“As they should be?!”

“She isn’t even an elf—she’s a half-blood, a mixed-breed, and Petralka is the empress of the Holy Eldant Empire. Her Majesty holds the power of life and death.”

I didn’t say anything immediately, but boy was I pissed. The people here swallowed that kind of thinking hook, line, and sinker, without sparing so much as a thought for how much the objects of their indifference would be hurt.

Ah. Now I see it. I got a bit dizzy as the thought hit me.

It was all about the labels we gave things.

That’s just the way it is.

He’s just that kind of guy.

Labels cause us to see something, or someone, from only one angle.

He’s just an otaku. He’s just an off-worlder. She’s only a half-breed.

Simple, symbolic words like that pigeonhole a person; make us feel as if we understand them. And I hated that. There are all kinds of different otaku, for example. Good guys and bad. Even the “lolicon” crowd, who are often broadbrushed as practically criminals, isn’t a group you can boil down to a single word or idea. Yes, there are those nut jobs who kidnap children in order to sexually torment them. But there are also loli fans who would give their lives to keep children from getting hurt.

And yet people find the lowest common denominator and then stop trying to learn anything else.

It’s okay to make fun of him because he’s an otaku.

It’s okay to discriminate against her because she has mixed blood.

It’s okay—

Petralka was still shouting. “How can you expect us to drink tea made by a half-elf, anyway?! We heard even the elves wouldn’t take the likes of you! We heard you had to crawl off and live in a swamp! Stay back—We don’t want the stink of mud to get on us!”

There was no way any of that could be true. Myusel must have been paralyzed by fear and despair; I could see her jaw hanging open as she lay on the ground.

I saw... myself.

I thought back to the time I had tried to confess my love to my old friend and she had shot me down, saying, “You’re an otaku, right?” Her judgment had been based on what the world thought about otaku; she hadn’t considered me for me.

And what about me? At the time, I told myself something like, Girls these days just don’t care. I’d put my friend in a box just like she’d done to me. It was how I tried to cope.

She hadn’t had any real rationale for the way she’d insulted me, yet I couldn’t answer back. I simply told myself that that’s how the world works and gave up. It left me to dream of that moment again and again, pathetically howling the words I hadn’t been able to say.

I wanted to become one of those admirable main characters of a manga or anime or game or light novel. Let them say I was hung up on the weirdest things—I wanted to be one of those awesome people who would dropkick injustice wherever he found it, boldly proclaim what he believed, even if it made enemies of everyone around him.

My textbooks. Manga and anime and games and novels. This was what they’d taught me.

“Petralka!”

Before I knew what I was doing, I had grabbed her wrist. It was an impulsive action. Garius jumped up from the sofa in shock.

Everything froze, the atmosphere in the room practically icing over.

I had meant to yell at Petralka. To make her understand the pain of being shouted at like she was doing to Myusel. I suspected no one had ever yelled at her before. Yeah, yeah, not very mature. I didn’t care!

That was my plan.......................................................................................... But.

“...Shinichi...?”

Petralka looked back at me, her arm still raised to throw one of the cream puffs—or cream runto or whatever—at the cowering Myusel. She didn’t look angry, just completely baffled. I took the expression for surprise. Maybe even a bit of fear.

She looked so young, like a scolded child. I felt the anger drain out of me like the air from a popped balloon. I gently took the pastry from the wide-eyed child and tried to smile.

“Ahem. Well, er... How do I put this...?”

Crap. I needed some really cool line, and I wasn’t getting anything.

What would a main character say at a time like this? I did a high-speed search through my mental library, but came up empty.

As I stood there dumbly, Petralka’s expression began to change. She frowned, then glared at me.

“Shinichi, you cur! What do you mean by trying to take the part of such a base creature?!”

At a loss for anything better, I spoke from the heart. “What do you mean, what do I mean?! It was too painful to watch anymore! I know what it’s like to be taunted just because of some dumb label.”

“Label? What are you talking—”

“Petralka, listen,” I said quietly. I wasn’t lecturing. I was practically pleading. “In my culture, we don’t have social differences like this, okay?”

“Hrm?”

She looked at me, puzzled. She really didn’t know what I was talking about. Honestly, I could feel myself turning hot with embarrassment—but I told myself to just deal with it and kept talking. “Our culture is built on, you know... Liberty and equality and fellowship.”

You know, I’d heard Japanese otaku culture had made particular headway in France. Maybe it was because those were precisely the principles that country was built on? What a random thought. Never mind.

“If you’re going to enjoy the culture I’m bringing here, you have to learn from it, too... Er, I think. Maybe you don’t. But anyway, you have to at least understand it.”

Petralka was looking at me as though I had broken into an even foreign-er language than the one I had already been speaking. I glanced around the room to find Garius and even the much-abused Myusel staring at me wide-eyed.

The room was full of silence. Whether it was a heavy silence or light one, I couldn’t tell. But then...

“Shinichi...” Petralka was the first to open her mouth. “What is this ‘equality’ you speak of? Is it the name of a philosopher?”

I didn’t say anything, but just stood there, one hundred percent flummoxed.

I guess sometimes there are words even a magic ring of telepathy can’t help the other person understand. Sometimes translation fails when two languages simply don’t share a particular concept. But... Wait. Did Petralka really not know what equality was? Or had she just never been taught, having been brought up as the empress?

I felt an odd shudder go through me. Garius was giving me an incredulous look.

“Freedom means to be unbound or without limits—Do you, Kanou Shinichi, speak of being not held accountable to the law for your actions?”

Wait, wait, wait, where’d he get that idea?!

“Um...” Myusel spoke up hesitantly. “Is ‘fellowship’... Is it some kind of romantic feeling...?”

“That’s what you’re worried about?!” I said desperately, and more loudly than I meant to.

My initial angry outburst had been because of the bald discrimination I’d witnessed, but this went beyond a question of who was right or wrong about what. Myusel was one thing, but even the authorities here, Petralka and Garius, were completely trapped by their fixed views of the world and made no effort to see any other possibility. Their consciousness was pervaded by the notion of class structure—in fact, their own self-concept was built on it, so that they couldn’t so much as question it. It’s like how a frog in a well can’t imagine the ocean.

“Aw, for cryin’ out loud,” I groaned, holding my head. I had expected we would need to establish an infrastructure before bringing in otaku stuff—electricity, literacy, that sort of thing. But now I was finding I would have to teach them the simplest philosophical concepts, too?!

Really, though, otaku stories were products of modern Japan, meaning things like individuality and equality were fundamental to them. A lot of them were hostile to things like totalitarianism and discrimination. But as a result, if the reader had no understanding of individuality or equality, they were likely to find it hard to sympathize with a lot of main characters.

I was just starting to give in to despair when Garius spoke up.

“Most interesting.”

Interesting? Did he just say interesting?

“I believe you were about to let your anger lead you to criticize Her Majesty,” he said. “Was that also a product of your so-called liberty, equality, and fellowship? Whatever the case, it is most intriguing to see Her Majesty’s anger abate on account of a few words.”

This reaction from Garius was completely unexpected.

“Truth be told, the culture here in our Holy Eldant Empire has been stagnant for nearly half a century. Some even claim we’ve reached a cultural nadir. As the war drags on, it leaves us with scant opportunity to enjoy new culture or gain anything from beyond our borders.”

I didn’t speak, but I thought that that made sense. Culture, especially a robust and diverse one, is only possible if you have the spare resources for it. Culture does develop during wartime, of course, and it can even become quite mature, but it will always be more limited than in peacetime—only certain things will be permitted. That’s obvious enough from looking at the likes of Japan during World War II, or China during the Cultural Revolution.

“For some time now, the literati have conjectured that this impedes the ability of the common people to live full lives. But because the problem is effectively an invisible one, we’ve put off dealing with it time and again.”

“Yeah, I guess I could see that.”

I knew this knight was a sharp one. In a really broad sense, he was practically talking sociology. He had a bird’s-eye view of the world, and yes, it might be a borrowed way of thinking, but for a basically medieval place like this, I couldn’t blame him.

“It’s precisely the reason Prime Minister Zahar and his cohort encouraged trade with your delegation. I was skeptical of his thinking—but I may have to reconsider.”

The handsome knight stood and walked toward me. He stopped almost nose-to-nose with me. If I’d been a woman, I probably would have just swooned.

He’s close! He’s way too close! What’s the deal with standing right there?!

And he had this little smile on his face. Garius took my hand, like a valiant knight taking a maiden’s—guuuhh?!

“You seemed an effete and untrustworthy boy to me, but then you risk your own reputation in order to intercede for a worthless servant girl. I must say, I’m rather interested in your culture.”

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is he saying he’s interested in me?!

“I shall cooperate with you. You may yet break through the barrier that lies between us.” He was whispering. Somehow, it was almost sensual. A chill passed through me and all the hair on my body stood up, but then—

“Garius!” Petralka’s voice scattered the rose petals. “You shouldn’t be so forward!”

“...Ah.” Garius dropped my hand and bowed. “My apologies, Your Majesty.”

“Such things are not for you alone to decide,” Petralka said, angry once again. “You should go through us, as is proper.” Then she looked at me and said, “Shinichi. As Garius said, today you risked your own dishonor to remonstrate with us. In deference to your boldness, we forgive both you and that servant.”

“Th... Thanks.”

“However, we have another order for you.” She narrowed her eyes. “Teach me your so-called ‘Japan-ese’ as well. We find it unbearable that a serving girl should possess knowledge the empress does not. We shall become the most adept at your Japan-ese, and then we shall judge whether or not the culture you bring shall save the culture of our own nation!”

...In other words, she was trying to dress it up, but she pretty much just wanted to hurry up and read some manga, right? Not that I was about to voice a thought that could lead to my immediate and gruesome demise; I only nodded.

“Garius,” Petralka said, “we’re going back to the castle. Call Zahar. Inform him that we will henceforth be visiting this mansion every day as part of our duties of office!”

...So she was sneaking out of the castle all this time.

“Starting tomorrow, Shinichi, make sure you have time in your schedule for us!”

“Erm, about as much as today...?”

“Starting tomorrow”? You’ve been coming here every day!

“That will suffice!” Petralka nodded in satisfaction, then eyed Myusel. The maid shrunk away from her. “In addition. Myusel, was it? We shall not permit any laxity from you,” the empress said haughtily.

“Eh? O-Of course, Your Majesty.” Myusel nodded so quickly that I couldn’t imagine she’d even had time to really absorb what Petralka had said.

“And you and Shinichi shall not take it upon yourselves to study Japanese together.”

“...O-Of course not, Your Majesty.” Still nodding emphatically.

It looked like Petralka had given up insulting Myusel—but instead, she’d developed a strange hostility toward her. I had a very bad feeling about this, but I was terrified that if I tried to clarify the situation here and now, the conversation would spiral off to places I really didn’t want it to go.

“We shall see you tomorrow, then. Garius, let’s go!”

“Your Majesty. I wait upon you.”

And then the Empress and her knight whirled out of the room like a departing tornado.

They left an uncomfortable silence behind them.

“Ahem...” Myusel and I looked at each other. I scratched my cheek in embarrassment. “Myusel. I’m really sorry, but could you make some more tea? This stuff must be cold by now. You went to all the trouble of making these snacks, so I’d like to enjoy them with proper hot tea.”

“Oh, yes, sir.” Myusel stood up, smiling happily. “I’ll bring it right away, Master.”

I watched her push the cart out of the room, and let out a sigh of relief.

But at the moment, there was something I still didn’t know—what did the Holy Eldant Empire make of what I was doing there?