Chapter One: A Novel, but... Light

Chapter One: A Novel, but... Light

The air in the classroom was so tense with expectation, it was almost painful.

Stare met stare. The hostility was unmistakable.

Of course, it was only a handful of the students who were glaring at each other—about ten of them, not quite half the class. But those ten were so intense, the other students were swallowed up, overpowered by the situation.

Eyes narrowed. Stances were assumed with total determination.

They were squaring off smack in the middle of the classroom. The tension between them was so high that even I, supposedly the teacher, was hesitant to try to break it up.

As for the other students, they just tried to keep their distance as they looked on. Maybe they saw that if they weren’t careful, they could easily get burned by what was going on. But in the tight confines of the classroom, the charged atmosphere let no one escape, allowed no observer to pretend they were indifferent to what was happening.

And then...

“Just you say that again,” a diminutive girl growled.

Obviously, the person she was talking to had to have heard her. Had to have heard what amounted to: Let me hear you make that nasty jibe again, if you dare.

But usually, confrontations didn’t get to this point if one party could be scared off by an implied threat like that. People always say “just talk it out,” but sometimes words aren’t enough to cool the situation down. Sometimes, in fact, they can add fuel to the fire.

With appropriately withering contempt, the other person replied, “Hah! I’ll say it as many times as you want.” The young man—tall and slim—representing this second side of the argument looked down, literally and figuratively, on the girl who had spoken first. “I’m getting awfully tired of shallow people who only see the most superficial meaning in things.”

“Who’s superficial? What’s superficial?”

“Oh, you don’t know? No, I suppose you wouldn’t.” The boy smirked. “It means to see only the surface of something. It means when you just stare stupidly at something you’ve been given, like a cow!”

“Who’s a cow?! You’re even worse, with your sick fantasies!”

“What fantasies?! Imagination gives you wings, I say—wings! Argh, one word is hardly enough to express the shallowness of you people!”

“Wings, my foot! You just want the fantasies that suit you! You just have air for brains, so you can’t follow the video!”

“Who’s got air for brains?! You rock-head!”

I watched in bemusement. Yes, you can try to “talk it out,” but sometimes you have to resort to another proverbial expression: “Talk is useless.” Actually, wasn’t that what they said in the May 15 Incident?

Well, it was certainly true here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not siding with the militarists—that attempted coup d’état was terrorism, plain and simple—but there are times when talk isn’t just useless, it’s downright inappropriate. Sometimes talk just leads to... well, moments like this.

“Arrrgh...” I, Kanou Shinichi, could only put my head in my hands.

Two large LCD monitors stood beside my lectern, one to either side. The ending card of the animated work I’d been showing until just a moment earlier—in other words, the screen with a little illustration and a caption like “That’s all for now” or “See you next week!”—was still on the screens.

The show was Cast-off Princess, an anime based on a light novel. It was also the reason for what was happening just then.

“Aw, man, why is it the prickliest parts of otakuism that have to spread...”

Around the world, people who obsess over anime and manga and games are called otaku. This springs from the fact that members of this subculture used to refer to each other not with the casual second-person pronoun kimi, or even the formal anata, but with the slangy, irreverent term otaku.

But forget about the linguistics lesson for a moment. For such a short word, otaku can cover a wide range of people. There’s an old saying that holds that where three people are gathered, two of them will join forces against the other one, and otaku are no different. Each has their own opinions and perspectives on things. That’s only natural when you’re dealing with artistic works; they aren’t math problems with a single, absolutely right answer. Even among people who are all fans of a particular work, you might have someone who views it from the perspective of the hero, another who sees it from the heroine’s point of view, and a third person who looks at it from the bad guy’s perspective—so you wind up with three wildly different impressions.

To put it in extreme terms, stories are often crafted so that things ultimately break in the hero’s favor. And if you sympathize with the main character while you’re watching or reading them, that doesn’t bother you. You can even enjoy those events. But if you’re sympathizing with the villain, then it can all start to look pretty convenient for the hero, and even be downright unpleasant.

These disputes can get even uglier with a media mix like this, where you have, say, an anime based on an original light novel. The most basic division is between fans of the original work, the anime, and the manga versions, each of whom think “their” version is the best and that all the others are dumb versions for stupid people. Sometimes you even get divisions between fans who only like the first season of an anime and those who prefer the second.

I’m not saying any of this is surprising, mind you. Heck, sometimes people can’t even agree on what they think about a single character. So when you have a complex story in which a whole cast of characters appear, each with their own complex of relationships and personal concerns, is it any wonder no one can agree on what’s good or bad about them? That sometimes people even feel exactly opposite ways about something?

Me personally, I tend to figure you should just like what you like, how you like it, but the more someone gets into a work, the more likely they seem to be to think that they’re the only ones who truly love it and to have a negative opinion of people with other points of view.

And that brings us back to...

“I’m telling you, the Cast-off Princess anime is a masterpiece!” the girl exclaimed, clenching her fist to emphasize her point.

Well, that in itself wasn’t so surprising. Otaku love superlatives: masterpiece. Staggering work of incredible genius. If anything, I thought it was just a sign of how involved a person was in a work.

What was strange was this particular otaku herself. Earlier, I called her diminutive, but that’s a bit of an understatement. This girl—Romilda Guld—couldn’t have been 130 centimeters tall. She wouldn’t have looked out of place at an elementary school, or even a kindergarten.

Admittedly, that wasn’t so odd. There are otaku elementary-schoolers, for sure. But considering that her ears were pointy and her hair was so crimson that “redhead” didn’t do it justice, it was a different story. Her hair especially—it was so red you might have thought it was made from ruby or something. Rich and lustrous. Anyway, not your everyday hair. And we weren’t talking about spray-on color, either.

You’re getting the picture: Romilda was not homo sapiens. And she wasn’t the only one. The boys lined up on either side of her in support all had pointed ears, too. And on top of that...

“She’s right!”

“We love Alty-tan!”

“The main heroine is just there for show! True fans know that already.”

The boys offering this backup were just as short as Romilda, but they each had a scraggly beard. They looked from every angle like the most ancient of old men. They were actually in their teens—most of them were even younger than me—but it was easy to forget that and start speaking to them in deferential language. I wouldn’t have been surprised, on talking to one of them, to have him shoot back, “What is it, whippersnapper?”

Dwarves.

That’s what they were. Half-sprite demi-humans, a staple of Western fantasy works. They looked like humans, but shorter and with tremendous physical strength. They were deeply knowledgeable about earth and mining, and the magic that went with it. And they had personalities to match.

That’s right: one of the groups of students squaring off in my classroom were dwarves.

“Huh! So you’re all excited about an anime that takes over only the most superficial elements of the story. How characteristic of a bunch of filthy casuals!” the boy standing across from Romilda sneered.

His name was Loek Slayson. He was tall and slim, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and the boys and girls flanking him all looked like models, too. The guys in particular, with their stately features and flawless skin, looked like the polar opposite of the rugged dwarves.

But they weren’t technically human, either. For proof, look no further than Loek’s ears, and those of all his friends. They were all pointy. The exact length and pointiness varied from one to the next, but they were clearly not typical human ears.

Elves.

In Western fantasy works, a race just as famous as dwarves. They always live in the woods, are close to nature, and usually have an affinity for wind magic. They aren’t as strong as dwarves, but they’re usually better at casting spells, and they’re always fantastic archers.

“Casual? Who’s a casual?”

“You are, that’s why I called you that!”

“Well, you guys were all like, ‘Raru’s so mooooeeee!’”

“Moe is culture! And sweet, oblivious older-sister-type characters are—”

Anyway, you get the idea. These elves and dwarves, the sort of people you might only expect to see in novels or movies or manga or anime—they were right here, arguing about the merits of an anime right in my classroom.

Believe me, it was every bit as surreal as it sounds. Although I was pretty much used to it by now.

Anyway...

Like I said, Cast-off Princess had originally been a light novel. After that, it had gotten two different manga versions before being turned into an anime—and of course, because it’s impossible to bring every detail of the novel to the screen, they had to shuffle some things around for the anime. What else would you expect from two completely different media?

As obvious as that might seem, though...

“What I’m saying is, the original light novels are so much deeper!”

“They cut out at least three or four major parts of the original, so Winea’s change of heart makes no sense! Listen, the main character of this story—”

The elves listed off the virtues of the light novel. Obviously, they preferred it over the anime.

The dwarves, it seemed, favored the animated version.

“Shut your mouths, you original work-ists!”

“Reading is such a pain.”

“The anime’s easier to follow.”

No, nooo, you can’t be that direct...!

Still, they weren’t exactly wrong, and I wasn’t about to go after them about it. I all but had my head in my hands when—

“So even a light novel is too hard for you to read, huh, gravel-brain?”

“Like reading makes you such a big shot!”

“You know what I think? I think the anime gets rid of the pointless filler from the books and makes it easier to tell what the themes are.”

“Wouldn’t the manga be even better, then?”

“The manga doesn’t have Fafare-tan in it! It’s trash!”

......And so on and so forth.

I had deliberately introduced them to the novel, manga, and anime versions of Cast-off Princess all at once. My thinking had been that since they were used to otaku culture, it was time to show them the joys of a media mix, which is like a festival for the senses in which a single work is revised and adapted to the strengths of each medium.

But why did they have to get so obsessed with ranking every last piece of that franchise?

“...Who even cares?” I sighed to myself. “Can’t they all be good?”

To be fair, the elves and the dwarves had a long history of animosity, and this would hardly be the first time they’d fought over something trivial. It seems they used to argue over the differences between their peoples, but they had increasingly set that aside in favor of disputes about preferred characters or works. I wasn’t sure whether to consider that progress.

I did figure that if they were fighting a little less about interracial differences—even if it was just my students—then that was probably a good thing. I guess it’s good to get your kicks from shouting about whether the anime or the light novel was better instead of from racial discrimination. Probably. It was still kind of murky.

“Say, Sensei...”

One student approached me as if ducking under the proverbial bullets flying between the elves and the dwarves. He was a short-ish boy in his teens, with golden hair and a diligent look about him. He came across as really sweet, actually. But his ears, just like mine, weren’t pointed.

His name was Eduardo Teodoro Pertini, and he was human.

Nearly half my class was human, but they mostly stayed out of the arguments between the elves and the dwarves. Humans occupied the highest rung of the social ladder in this world, and they probably saw the demi-humans’ disputes as the bickering of the low-born. At the same time, because an elf/dwarf argument could break out into a magic-slinging battle at any time, everyone was also keeping one ear on the fight, quietly poised to run.

Anyway...

“Eduardo? What is it?” I answered, deliberately averting my eyes from the reality before me.

Eduardo, incidentally, was one of the more distinguished students among the humans. He had a real gift for language, and had learned to read and write Japanese pretty well, even texts that used both kanji and kana. I think he understood the most Japanese of any of my students. He had already translated more than ten light novels into the Eldant language. I had my eye on him—I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him start writing a novel of his own pretty soon.

“About this back page here...”

He showed me a novel he was holding. It was the original version of the very series that had inspired the argument I’d been watching—Cast-off Princess.

“Hm? Oh yeah, it’s an advertisement,” I said, nodding.

Light novels usually contain the actual story, an afterword, and then a handful of advertisements to fill out the page count. What happens—and this isn’t specific to light novels—is that a book isn’t printed one page at a time. Instead, several pages are printed on a single large sheet that’s then cut into pieces. Apparently, that’s the most efficient way to do it.

So for example, A6, the standard paper size for novels in Japan, is about half as long and wide as a sheet of A4 paper; in other words, it has about one-quarter the surface area. That makes it one-thirty-second the size of the paper known as A1. Factor in both sides of the paper and you get double that number—in other words, one sheet of A1 can contain sixty-four A6-size pages. The full sheet is cut down to size and turned into a book.

That means that if you had a book that was 256 pages long, you could simply print it on the front and back of four large sheets, and then cut each into thirty-two pieces. That’s why A6-size books often have 256 pages, or 320, or other numbers like that. Of course, with light novels, the illustrations or color pages are sometimes printed separately, so the page number can vary a little bit.

But the content of a novel doesn’t always cooperate with a nice, neat page count. Sometimes you’ll have a book with 257 pages (including the title page and table of contents), so that you have a huge A1 sheet with just one printed page on it, and sixty-three “extra” pages.

It would be a real waste just to leave all those pages sitting there blank, so often editors will do things like use those pages for advertisements for other series from the same publisher.

All right, there’s your lesson on the publishing world. The page Eduardo was showing me was an advertisement for a different series from the novel-turned-anime that was currently at issue.

Angelica—The Burdened Princess, said the ad. Written By: Kanno Shougo; Illustrated By: Yakiniku BUL.

I didn’t say anything at first.

“I’d like to read this book,” Eduardo said. “You haven’t imported it yet, have you? Is there any chance you could add it to the manifest for the next shipment?”

“Oh, uh, you’re interested in that? Ahh.” I couldn’t help it if my answer was ambiguous; I sort of half-nodded.

Eduardo, though, was too sharp; he noticed something was off about my answer. “What’s wrong, Sensei? Don’t you like this series?”

“Oh, uh, I don’t have anything against it,” I said, shaking my head and smiling weakly. “You really want to read it?”

“Yes, sir!” Eduardo said, his face shining.

Hmmm...

I definitely, unquestionably felt a little funny about this. But I didn’t bear Eduardo any ill will, and I had no real reason to turn him down. Apparently the series had sold enough to get an anime adaptation; it would make sense to import it to Eldant as a part of otaku culture. And yet...

“I’ll think about it,” I answered after a moment, forcing myself to smile. Then I turned back to the classroom.

“That’s ridiculous! In the original, Pacifié is all lovey-dovey for the brother she doesn’t share a blood connection with.”

“You guys just want to turn everything into a harem, don’t you!”

The impressively passionate argument between the elves and the dwarves was still going full force.

Nobody knew when it had first come into existence.

What was “it”? A hyperspace wormhole somewhere in the “Sea of Trees” near Mount Fuji—the so-called “hole.”

The hole connected twenty-first-century Japan to another world. That other world was more on the technological level of Middle Ages Europe, but it was also a place where humans and demi-humans lived side by side, and where magic was the technology underpinning all of society. It was like something out of a storybook.

The specific place the hole connected Japan to was called the Holy Eldant Empire. The bureaucrats in Japan got it into their heads to open international relations with this country, in hopes that despite the constrained tunnel linking our two lands, the possibilities in this new world—where the laws, economy, and even sometimes physics were all different from Japan—could give Japan an economic boost, maybe even make the country really powerful again.

But again, we were dealing with a completely different world here. A place with a history, culture, and values unlike our own. So although communication was quickly established via telepathic magic, Japan ended up floundering as it tried to find some way to become “friends” with the Eldant Empire.

The one thing that showed any promise was a very specific subculture: the stuff sometimes known as “Cool Japan.” Manga, anime, games. In short, otaku culture.

Japan had been exporting its popular culture overseas for quite some time, and it turned out the same stuff was relatively widely accepted in the Eldant Empire as well. A few otaku works were imported on a trial basis, and met a warm reception in a country where, because they were perpetually in a state of quasi-war, no real entertainment industry had developed.

So Japan decided to make popular culture the primary pillar of its diplomatic relations with the Eldant Empire. As part of that policy, they joined forces with the government in Eldant to open the first interdimensional general entertainment company, Amutech—and they brought over a Japanese otaku to be its general manager.

That otaku was Kanou Shinichi. Me.

I ran my finger along the LCD display of my smartphone.

“Hmmm...”

In response to my touch, the screen showed one new photo after another. It was too hard to make out the important details on such a small screen, though. I would have to transfer the data to my computer later so I could have a closer look.

“That reminds me... I haven’t done a single backup since I got here,” I said to myself, leaning back in my comfy chair.

I may not need to point out that in this world, there were no wireless-phone base stations. We most often used our smartphones almost like portable battery packs or digital cameras.

“It’s such a big deal, whether or not you have internet.” I pressed the power button on my laptop computer and took another glance at my phone’s pictures while I waited for it to boot up. Most of the photos were ones I’d taken after I arrived here in the Eldant Empire. So in addition to other humans, they showed elves and dwarves, werewolves and lizardmen, even dragons... To a Japanese person who didn’t know any better, it might just look like I had been to the world’s biggest cosplay convention.

“And it’s so easy to Photoshop digital images these days,” I muttered. “No one in Japan would ever believe me about all this, even if I showed them these pictures.”

So the photos were really just for me, so I could remember.

There was an incident once when some video taken here in Eldant had leaked in Japan—but for better and for worse, these days image technology has gotten so advanced it’s almost impossible to tell the real from the fake. You could put a UFO into a photo, for example, and laypeople would have no way of knowing whether the picture was doctored or not. You might see some testimony from experts or scholars on the web stating that the picture is real—but you never know if even those quotes are invented. So sometimes you’re left with no choice but to believe only what you want to, or what’s easiest...

“Master.”

My thoughts were interrupted by a voice like a tinkling bell from the other side of the door. I’d heard that voice more times now than I could count—but just that one word was enough to get me moe. I’m not very knowledgeable about voice actors or anything, but I’m sure this is what they mean when they talk about “getting moe for someone’s voice.”

“I’ve brought tea.”

“Oh, sure, come in,” I said, setting my phone on the desk.

“Thank you.”

The door opened, and in walked my maid.

She had long, flaxen hair tied in braids on either side of her head, a headpiece, and a frilly hair band. All of it screamed maid, as did the rest of her clothing: an equally frilly apron and a short-ish dress. Honestly, that alone was as nourishing to me as three square meals, but this girl looked sweet and adorable to boot. Her eyes sat wide and round in her face, their purple color making me think of some sort of gemstone.

Myusel Fourant.

As Amutech’s maid, she took care of this house I lived in. Me being general manager, she was practically my personal assistant. Hence why she called me “Master.” In fact, sometimes when it was just the two of us, she even called me “Shinichi-sama,” and it was really... I mean, when she looked at me with those puppy-dog eyes and said my name that way, it was enough to make me squirm with the cuteness. But, er, anyway...

“Hm? Slightly different tea leaves today?” I could tell the aroma from the cart Myusel was pushing wasn’t quite the usual.

“I thought I would try the leaves that Brooke-san and Cerise-san brought us.”

“Ahh, okay.”

Brooke, he was our gardener—and a lizardman. Cerise was his wife, also a lizardman and our other maid. The two of them had recently gone home on account of a meeting of the lizardman Tribal Council or something, and when they came back, they had brought us some local tea leaves. Brooke had warned us about it—“We don’t know much about tea ourselves, so you’ll have to forgive us if the taste is unpleasant”—but from what I was smelling at that moment, I didn’t think it was going to be bad.

“Here you go... Shinichi-sama.”

“Thank you.” I took the cup Myusel had given me.

“Oh...” Myusel made a sound, as if she had suddenly noticed something.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s... me,” she said, pointing with one pale finger to the smartphone on the desk. Specifically, to its LCD screen. Even more specifically, to the photo displayed there.

It showed Myusel herself. It was from back when I had first come here. I’d been so overwhelmed with emotion at the sight of her that I’d taken several photos.

Myusel, I should mention, is a half-elf. So her ears, like those of Loek and Romilda, are kind of pointed, although she often hides them. She looks like she came straight out of a manga or an anime.

To be fair, though, Myusel is awfully beautiful, ears or no ears.

As I mentioned, the Holy Eldant Empire functioned on the social system with humans on top, and elves and dwarves below them. Half-elves—people like Myusel, whom society viewed as “mixed-bloods”—and lizardmen, who were simply too different from humans, ranked even below them. So at first, Myusel had tried to hide her ears from me.

She had been in the military once; it hadn’t matched her personality very well, but it had given her a way to gain citizenship. Then she had worked hard to earn her job at this mansion, but she was justifiably afraid that I would fire her just for being a half-elf—just for something she couldn’t control.

In fact, though, it was the exact opposite. When I discovered her pointy ears, it actually made me feel even closer to her. As someone who had become a home security guard after being shot down by my oldest female friend, the manga/anime-esque (you might even say unreal) nature of Myusel as an elf and a maid actually made it easier for me to talk to her. It was sort of like, those “fictional” elements helped to distance me from the cold reality that had hurt me before.

Anyway...

“I’ve shown you photos before, haven’t I?” I said, looking at the phone. “This thing can take hundreds of them.”

“It’s amazing,” Myusel said, her already round eyes getting even bigger.

Fired up by her interest, I started running my finger all over the phone’s screen, showing her one photograph after another. “I have pictures of Brooke and Elvia in here, too.”

“To think, this magic can capture such a detailed image in an instant...”

“Well, it’s not magic,” I said with a wry grin.

Myusel understood that things like my cell phone’s camera existed; she had known about them for a long time now. But she wasn’t very clear on the science—how it did what it did—and for her, everything mysterious in the world tended to fall under the category of magic. There’s a famous rule in SF that holds that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and plenty of twenty-first-century Japanese technology was “sufficiently advanced” to look like magic by the Middle Ages European technological standard of the Eldant Empire.

“What’s that?” Myusel asked, looking at the screen of my phone again.

Whoops. I’d just kept swiping, lost in thought, and I’d ended up showing Myusel some old photos I’d never really meant to. Now the display was showing pictures from quite a while ago, back when I’d first bought the phone. I guess I’d forgotten to take them off the phone after I’d backed them up to my computer.

These pictures featured all humans. All in Japan, obviously. These photos were from back before my friend had shot me down. Back before I’d shut myself away.

“Oh, those are my parents, and that’s my little sister.”

It wasn’t some neat, posed group photo, just a picture I’d snapped one day when we were all at breakfast, all of us in the same room, eating together. Since I had been taking the picture, of course, I wasn’t in it.

There was my dad, the light-novel author. My mom, the former-game-designer turned housewife. And my little sister, two years younger than me—Shizuki.

“So these people are your family, Shinichi-sama...” Myusel somehow sounded deeply moved as she looked at the picture. “Your honored mother and father. And this girl... she’s your honored little sister?”

“That’s right. Not that we got along all that well...”

Shizuki found my otakuism repugnant, and we had hardly spoken in years. She looked surprised in this photo because I’d just snapped it out of the blue, but then she had immediately gone after me about likeness usage rights or whatever. After I stopped leaving my room, we hardly even saw each other anymore, let alone talked.

“So these are the people who raised you.”

“Sure. Or made me, you might say.”

My mom and dad both had basically otaku jobs, and I’d come into the fold myself because of the piles of manga and anime and games all over the house. The reason I was familiar with so many old tropes compared to most modern otaku was because of all the time I’d spent poring over my family’s collection. As long as I wasn’t too picky, there were enough manga and anime and games in the house to last me pretty much my entire life without me ever having to actually buy anything new.

Then there was Shizuki. While my mom and dad and I went deep into otakuism, she, almost as a reaction, went the other way. She hated otaku and otaku stuff.

“Honestly, I’d completely forgotten this was even here...” Oddly embarrassed, I moved my finger across the screen, sweeping the family photo away. The next picture came up instead—one I’d taken even before the family shot.

“Yikes,” I gulped. So I hadn’t erased this one, either.

“Who’s this...?” Myusel asked, cocking her head.

What on earth was I supposed to say? I sat and fretted for a few seconds—but then I decided to just answer honestly.

“Uhh,” I said, scratching my cheek in embarrassment at how long it was taking me to come out with it. “That’s... I guess you’d call her... the first girl I was ever in love with.”

The childhood friend I mentioned.

She’d lived near us, so we’d grown up together. We went to the same kindergarten, primary school, and middle school. Because our houses were so close, we walked to school together a lot, and because of all the manga and stuff at my house, she came over to visit pretty regularly. We had at least been friends. Of that much, I was sure.

She had never made fun of me for being an otaku. But that was when we were just friends—and apparently, the standard for would-be boyfriends was different.

That was the part I hadn’t understood. After class one day, in that most classic of locations, a twilit schoolyard, I confessed my feelings for her, only to be given the coldest of shoulders. “You’re an otaku, right?” she said. I don’t think she really meant it to be mean... but it was the reason I stopped coming to school.

Ugh... Just remembering that mistake was enough to make my chest hurt. Enough to make me wish there was a hole I could just fling myself into.

I didn’t resent that girl anymore. I still object to the idea that there’s something inherently wrong with being an otaku, but I guess it’s a matter of taste. They say all’s well that ends well, and in a convoluted way, her shooting me down ultimately led me here to the Holy Eldant Empire.

And, if I may say so, to this adorable maid of mine.

Speaking of whom...

“Shinichi-sama, your...!” Myusel looked downright shocked, her lavender eyes fixed on the phone’s screen.

Just for a second, I didn’t really comprehend her reaction. She seemed anxious, or sad, or—anyway, definitely disturbed as she turned to me and asked, “S-So you left this person behind to come here...?”

“Huh? No, I—”

Ahh.

That’s when I put the pieces together.

Usually when we talk about “first love,” we understand it implies that nothing ultimately came of it. After all, having a “first” love suggests there was a second, or a third, or however many others. But the rings we were wearing, although they enabled telepathic communication, sometimes failed to bring across subtle nuances of meaning. Differences in our knowledge or experience could cause these little misunderstandings. In this case, the only thing that had come across was that this girl was the first person I had ever come to feel love for, and Myusel simply assumed that this girl and I had been dating, and I’d left her in Japan to come to the Holy Eldant Empire.

“It must have been... so hard for you...” Myusel said, looking at me with compassion in her eyes.

There was no cause to panic, but I sort of did. I had the vague sense that I was experiencing something like what a husband would feel when his wife discovers he’s been unfaithful to her. (Not that I had any idea what that would be like.) I didn’t even really understand why I felt that way, but I rushed to clarify.

“No! No no no! You’ve got the wrong idea!”

“What...?”

“That love—it didn’t last, and she didn’t return it anyway, and in the end she shot me down. Because I’m an otaku.”

“Because you’re... an otaku?” Now Myusel looked truly confused.

This, too, was a reaction I could only have gotten in the Eldant Empire. Here, the word otaku didn’t have the pejorative meaning it often carried in my world. If anything, I was regarded as something of an expert, an authority on the entertainment products arriving from Japan. Myusel couldn’t quite figure out why being an otaku would lead to me being rejected by a girl.

“Do you mean... she didn’t want to become an obstacle as you continued to become a better and better otaku, Shinichi-sama?”

Why did she sound so nervous?

“No, no. Definitely not.” That would be an awfully flattering explanation for me, I’ll admit. It was just like Myusel to come up with something like that. “It’s, well... in my country, there are people who don’t like otaku. People who look down on them. Remember how I said to Petralka once that I knew what it was like to be teased because I was different?”

“Yes, I do...”

“Some people say otaku make them sick, or that otaku are worthless, that sort of thing. Back in my world.”

“Do... Do they really?” Myusel was shocked.

Well, I went and said it.

The people of this world, including Myusel, had a very high opinion of otaku culture—and part of me had always worried what would happen if they found out how that culture was viewed in the very country that produced it. I worried they might think of otaku differently. Might think of me differently.

But instead...

“Even though... How do I say it? Even being so wonderful...” Myusel said in amazement.

Wonderful? Oh... She meant otaku culture.

In any event, learning that some people in Japan made fun of otaku and the things they liked didn’t seem to upset Myusel. That just went to show that she had internalized her own understanding of otaku culture, which she respected. “Everyone loves so-and-so or such-and-such, so I should too”: Japanese people, including me, sometimes had a way of ignoring how we really felt about something and just going along with whatever the people around us thought. But that was no good, I was convinced. If you’re just going along with the trends, it’s really hard to enjoy the stories and the works.

And that, I thought, was fertile ground for cultural invasion.

Whatever the case, I was glad. Obviously, there were no guarantees that other people would react as favorably as Myusel—but as the first person I met in this world, whatever she thought about things sort of set a bar for me.

“But Shinichi-sama,” Myusel said, looking at my phone’s screen again. “The fact that you still have her photo with you means...”

She looked up at me, almost like she was afraid. Why the timidity? (Although I admit it was cute!)

Did she practice this? Did she do it on purpose? Look down, then bring your eyes up by so many degrees... The fire of moe it lit within me was fearsome! Myusel, you terror...!

“Could it be, Shinichi-sama, that you still...?”

“No!” I exclaimed, shaking my head vigorously. “Absolutely not!”

Why did she have to think that?! The photos on my phone—most of them were pictures I’d taken since coming here, and most of those were of her. I had so many photos of her, in fact, that they threatened to bury all the others, and I was planning to make a “Myusel” folder on my computer.

“She shot me down about as unequivocally as she possibly could. I only have that photo because I’ve been forgetting to clean up my pictures for so long. I swear that’s the only reason! I’d forgotten all about her until just now!”

“I... I see.” Myusel put her hand to the chest of her maid uniform and smiled, looking somehow relieved.

Seeing her feel better made me feel better, too.

Japan and the Eldant Empire are connected by a hyperspace wormhole. It makes my country contiguous with a place that shouldn’t exist in 3D space. There’s obviously some kind of extraordinary power at work. I’m told Japan has been investigating just what power that might be and the principle on which the wormhole operates, but the entire thing is conducted with the utmost secrecy, so it’s impossible to commit too many resources or personnel to the project. That means slow progress.

One issue we faced with the wormhole was “noise.” Something about the portal—be it electromagnetic interference or whatever—prevented radio waves from reaching the other side. So the JSDF tried running a conventional telecommunications cable through the hole, but noise was still too much of an issue. The interference with digital signals was especially severe.

They finally tried using an undersea internet cable, the kind with several intertwined layers of shielding, and managed to get an analog signal across. I’d lost track at that point of whether this was the most cutting-edge technology or the oldest. In any event, at last we could communicate by voice and video with the other side of the wormhole.

The upshot, though, was that casual internet browsing in the Eldant Empire was still what you might call a dream within a dream.

I have to admit, I thought maybe I saw the hand of the Japanese government in this. I suspected one reason they didn’t test out more solutions for our telecommunications woes was from a fear that an Eldant people with access to the internet would learn a bit too much about what was going on in Japan and the world at large, and it might not be advantageous to Japan’s diplomatic position. Japan was hoping to exercise a certain amount of control over the information that reached Eldant. That was my speculation, anyway.

In an extreme case, what if the Eldant Empire learned about countries like America, China, or Russia—places vastly bigger than Japan—and decided it would be more profitable to trade with them? All our work here would be gone like a puff of smoke.

And then there was the fact that even by connecting just me to the internet, the risk of information leakage got that much greater. On the net these days, there are dangerous sites that will siphon the data right off your computer if you follow a bad link, places that can get you no matter how many firewalls or anti-virus programs you have. There was always a risk that something confidential might slip out. One more reason for the Japanese government to try to keep the Eldant Empire off the internet.

It simply isn’t possible, though, to “do” otaku culture today without the web. If you want to get the latest info, keep up on the trends, you have to make the rounds of a whole slew of websites and bulletin boards on a regular basis.

So what to do?

Here was our solution: I specified a handful of sites and forums, which were then downloaded wholesale onto a hard drive and shipped to me on a weekly basis. Talk about your time delays. It kept me from actively participating in any big hubbubs—including any flame wars—but, well, I would just have to deal with it.

I was resigned to the way things were. But then...

“Huh?” I muttered at my computer display.

Myusel had already left the room after bringing me tea; I was just planning to do a quick info check before going to bed.

Kanno Shougo’s New Work, Angelica—The Burdened Princess, Vol. 9, Has Been Delayed

Publication Date Unknown

Author Hospitalized

I was on the website of a certain publisher. And that was what I was reading.

I went further into the article and discovered that just before the publication of the newest volume of Angelica, the author, Kanno Shougo, had been taken to the hospital, and now the book was indefinitely delayed.

“It can’t be...!”

When an author misses a deadline or has to redo a draft, the publisher says the book has been delayed until “next month” or “two months from now.” Publishers never say “indefinitely delayed.” It makes readers think the series isn’t going to continue, and sales drop off.

That was what my dad had told me, anyway. In fact, publishers were usually pretty leery of revealing any details of their authors’ personal lives. They had probably mentioned the hospitalization as a way of saying, “Don’t worry, we plan to continue the series, but this is beyond our control!”

Meaning...

“Was he really hospitalized? But an indefinite delay means...”

It meant they didn’t know when he would be out of the hospital. It meant this wasn’t a kidney stone or an inflamed appendix, something that would require just a short stay.

“But... But I just can’t believe it...”

My imagination kept going to darker and darker places, and I couldn’t stop it.

The next morning, at breakfast. We were all in the dining room as usual, eating the breakfast Myusel had made for us.

The morning scene here at the headquarters of Amutech, the trans-dimensional-first entertainment company, was apparently pretty unusual by Eldant standards. I was essentially treated like a noble here. Such “high-ranking” people didn’t typically eat with their servants. But the truth was, I was just a commoner at heart, and I could never get comfortable with the idea of sitting and enjoying a meal all by myself while my maids and servants stood at attention and looked on. In my house, therefore, we all shared the table together without regard to social standing.

Anyway, a meal tastes better when you eat it together. I had spent long enough shut up in my own room, eating by myself, to appreciate that.

But this morning...

“Um... Master...?” Myusel, sitting across from me, asked hesitantly.

“Huh? Oh, yeah? What is it?” I forced myself to focus on her. “Something wrong?”

“No, it’s just, er... I thought you seemed rather... distracted...”

She looked at me anxiously—no, with concern.

Ahh... Well, I definitely didn’t get a ton of sleep last night...

I tried to pass it off with an ambiguous smile. “Just burning the candle at both ends, I guess. I’m a little sleepy.”

“Is that all...?”

“Not gettin’ enough sleep, Shinichi-sama?”

The question came from the beast girl sitting diagonally across from me: Elvia Harneiman. She was a werewolf—a kind of beast person. She was originally from the neighboring country of Bahairam, and in fact had been one of their spies. When she came to stake out our mansion, we discovered and captured her, but it turned out she was really good at drawing, so I talked to the Eldant Empire about keeping her on as our resident artist, and she ended up living here with us.

She was cheerful, energetic, and even better, she had ears and a tail that were covered in soft, fluffy fur. Not only that, she regularly wore clothes that exposed her midriff, and she had a serious chest. Much like Myusel, but for different reasons, she was a character... er, I mean girl... that I could get seriously moe for.

Elvia also had a cute face and a genuinely infectious laugh. Okay, so she could be a bit ditzy, and occasionally her instincts took over in a way that led to trouble, but it was impossible not to like this beast girl.

“Me, neither,” she said now.

“Huh? You’re not sleeping well, either?”

She didn’t look like someone who wasn’t sleeping. In fact, she seemed to be bursting with energy this morning. In fact... were her cheeks a bit flushed? And her breathing a bit fast?

“.........Oh, that,” I said, bracing myself.

That was sort of like a human girl’s “time of the month”—but instead, it was a period of being in heat that only beast people experienced. They got all hot and bothered. And Elvia had only started to experience this pretty recently, so she still had some trouble controlling it. It had actually caused her to knock me over once, and I don’t mean because she bumped into me in the hallway. It’s a long story, but, uh, nothing ultimately happened that time.

“I’ve been drawing, trying to let it out. But man, it just keeps me from getting any shut-eye.”

“Ah... Yeah, understandable,” I said with a nod.

Who hasn’t experienced being too wound up to sleep? Beast people like Elvia tended to have energy to spare to begin with, so they didn’t usually wear themselves out with a little physical activity and then just drop off. They really needed an outlet.

“Me, I had to deal with one of the alarms in the middle of the night last night,” the girl sitting beside me said with a look of annoyance.

She was Koganuma Minori-san. A WAC—a female member of the JSDF—and my bodyguard. She was beautiful and bespectacled and big-boobed, plus she was one of those martial-artist girls. All the ingredients for yet another moe-fest, right?

The only problem was, inside, she was well and truly rotten. I don’t mean she was unpleasant. I mean she was a fujoshi, one of those so-called “rotten girls” who adore Boys’ Love, stories of guys doing you-know-what together. To be fair, that did make her a type of otaku.

“Said there was something running around the house at an incredible speed. When I saw the camera, I realized it was just Elvia, so at least I was able to go back to sleep after that,” Minori-san explained.

Since this mansion was Amutech’s employee housing as well as our home, the JSDF supplied us with perimeter alarm systems, which Minori-san, as my bodyguard, could control from her smartphone.

“Werewolves, such trouble.”

“I’m so sorry for you, dear.”

These perspectives came from two of the house’s other residents—who were also beast people, but looked nothing like Elvia. They were a lizardman couple, Brooke Darwin and his wife, Cerise Darwin. Brooke was our gardener, while Cerise helped Myusel as a maid.

I’ve already mentioned how different they looked from a human like me. They were bipedal and used their hands, but that was about as far as the similarities went. Appearance-wise, they really did look like giant lizards. A long time ago, I’d run into Brooke in a dark building and accidentally punched him out of sheer terror. Even now, I was confident I would freak out a little if I saw him in the dark. What kind of confidence is that, you ask? Never mind.

As imposing as the two of them looked, Brooke was a good man, dedicated and responsible, and Cerise was a hard worker. Apparently she came from pretty high up in lizardman society, and sometimes you could detect traces of an aristocratic upbringing in her, but nothing that ever caused us any grief.

The two of them had actually been living apart for a time—they had been on the cusp of what you might call divorce—but now they were both living here and were very sweet with each other (another long story). Lizardman affection looked so different from the human variety that thankfully I didn’t have to be weirded out by public displays of it.

“Brooke, do you guys ever have... a time like that in your lives?”

“We do, sir. But us bein’ cold-blooded,” he said, “it’s always from spring into summer.”

“Oh, that makes sense.”

So it was regular, but not in short bursts every month. Fair enough—it would be hard for people so influenced by the ambient temperature to do anything, like get it on or care for an egg, in the middle of winter.

“Speaking o’ which, Master... Just to let you know, we may, ah, need to beg a small favor of you eventually.”

“Huh? Wh-What’s that? What do you need to let me know?”

Brooke didn’t usually talk like this. Beside him, Cerise was nodding along.

“As I believe you’ll recall, sir,” he began, “we lost an egg in the past. That bein’ what caused that dark stretch for me.”

“Sure,” I said.

The story was that Brooke had been with the army, so he hadn’t been able to protect Cerise and their egg. Because of that, their children—or rather, the eggs that would have been their children—had been broken and lost to them.

“This time I’ll be with them. Keep them safe. So, er...” Brooke scratched the end of his nose with one long, sharp claw. “Sooner than later, I expect m’ wife will bear eggs, and when the spawn emerge, I wondered if y’ might be so kind as to let them live here, too...”

“Absolutely!” I answered immediately. “I mean... a family should be together.”

That was the idea, anyway. I know I’d spent a year as a shut-in, hardly seeing my own family, and now I was in another world entirely, so maybe I had no right to talk. But I thought even lizardman families would want to be with each other.

There was a pause; Brooke and Cerise looked at each other.

“What? Something wrong?”

“Oh... no,” Cerise said, shaking her head. I wasn’t an expert reader of lizardman expressions, but I had become accustomed enough to them that I could tell she had a sort of awkward smile on her face. “We simply didn’t think it would be quite so... well, easy to gain your approval.”

“It’s not about ‘easy,’ it’s— Oh, but since the Eldant Empire technically owns this house, do you think we’ll need to ask Petralka for permission?”

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” Minori-san said with a sort of grin. “She’s never stopped you from moving whoever you wanted into this house before, up to and including a Bahairamanian spy. Why start now? I do think we’ll have to let her know, though.”

“S-Spy? Are you talkin’ about me?” Elvia said, pointing to herself.

“How many other spies are there in this house?”

Minori-san had a point. Compared to letting an enemy intelligence agent live in the company headquarters, adding Brooke’s children to our group should hardly cause a fuss. Partly for biological reasons, Brooke and Cerise actually often slept outside the mansion, so we could just expand their outbuilding.

But... But...

Me, I really did have no right to talk about this subject.

I sat silently.

“Master,” Myusel said, concern in her voice. “Are you sure there’s nothing—”

Maybe my thoughts were showing on my face, or maybe Myusel was just that perceptive. They say elves have good ears; maybe she’d picked up on some slight tremor in my voice or something.

“Forgive me for being so forward, but, er, if there’s anything I can do...”

“Shinichi-kun?” Minori-san said, looking equally mystified.

Argh... Maybe there was no point in trying to hide it.

I sighed and said, “It’s just, er, I guess my dad’s in the hospital or something. They said his new book is delayed indefinitely.”

“What? But that means—”

This expression of surprise came from the person sitting beside me and across from Minori-san—my assistant, Ayasaki Hikaru. He was a special one: he had long, black hair, and wore Gothic Lolita outfits with such regularity that I half assumed he slept in them, too.

He was originally dispatched here by the Japanese government to be Amutech’s second general manager—a replacement for me with my inconvenient tendency to ignore what the higher-ups wanted. That made him, in some sense, my enemy, a potential usurper. But eventually (yet another long story), we had made peace with each other, or at least reached a sort of detente.

Now, Hikaru-san looked in my face as he said, “Shinichi-san, is your dad, by chance, Kanno Shougo?”

Man, that was fast.

Come to think of it, Hikaru-san also kept an eye on the net on that one-week delay.

“The author of Angelica—The Burdened Princess, right?” he asked.

“Er, uh, actually... yes,” I said.

Minori-san and Hikaru-san both knew my dad was a light-novel author, and Minori-san might even have known his pen name already, but I had never told Hikaru-san the nitty-gritty details. Of course, Eduardo at school didn’t know about it, and neither did Myusel or any of the others.

“Huh? Wh-What did you say?” Myusel and the others asked, flabbergasted.

“Oh my God,” Hikaru-san said, looking at them. “Have you been hiding it?”

“No, uh, not hiding it, exactly...”

I had just sort of... never had a chance to tell them.

“You know about light novels, right?” Hikaru-san said to my housemates. “Shinichi’s dad, he writes those. He’s almost as prolific as Ebihara Keisuke, the guy who writes A Far Song.”

“Is that true?!”

Myusel, Elvia, and Brooke all looked shocked.

I must have been right about Minori-san knowing about my dad already, because she didn’t look surprised; instead she asked, “Why did he go into the hospital? Did you get this off the internet?”

“Yeah. His new book was indefinitely delayed, and the reason they gave was hospitalization.”

“I see,” she said, crossing her arms. “And you were so worried you couldn’t sleep?”

“Worried? I mean... Well, yeah, I was.” I scratched my cheek. I felt embarrassed somehow, as if I might come across like some kid who’s never been away from home before. Was this—how do I put it?—a belated fit of chuunibyouism? Was I at that age where I wanted to pretend like, I don’t care whether my parents live or die!

In any event, I went on: “It was the ‘indefinite’ part that bothered me... If he had a kidney stone or appendicitis or something, a problem they could fix with a few days in the hospital, wouldn’t the book just be put off for a month or two?”

Hikaru-san frowned. “So you’re thinking... it might be something potentially fatal?”

Myusel all but jumped out of her chair.

“Then you have to hurry back to Ja-pan and—!” She cut herself off, looking startled. Brooke and Elvia looked at each other, too.

Cerise hadn’t been around at the time, but Myusel, Brooke, and Elvia would all have remembered the time I had been attacked by a special forces unit of the JSDF, dispatched from the Japan side. Whether they’d been seeking to kidnap or simply assassinate me had never been established.

Although there had been some uncomfortable moments since then, nothing had ever happened to make me really think the Japanese government was after me again—at the very least because they didn’t want to ruin their diplomatic relations with the Holy Eldant Empire.

Having said that, Hikaru-san’s arrival had made it all too clear that the government wanted me out of the picture. Meaning...

“If you go back to Japan, they might really kill you this time,” Hikaru-san said, calmly taking a sip of tea.

He was right. There was a nonzero chance that would happen. There was also the possibility that once I was home, they wouldn’t let me return to the Eldant Empire. There was even the chance that they simply wouldn’t allow me to go home at all.

That didn’t leave me with a lot of options. My dad was in the hospital, but there was virtually nothing I could do. That’s why I’d wanted to stay quiet about it.

“Well, it, you know—it’ll be all right,” I said. I had no idea what would be all right, or how, but I didn’t want to worry Myusel and the others any more than I had to. “We don’t know—maybe he just decided to skip his deadline. People joke all the time about how a manga must have stopped running because the author suddenly got comically sick...”

Although, in reality, I thought it was a lot more common to miss a deadline because you were suddenly in the hospital for real.

“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” I concluded, and tried my best to smile at Myusel.

Breakfast was over, and I was making my preparations to go to Eldant Castle and then to school.

I was in my room changing, when it suddenly occurred to me that the clothes I was putting on were ones I had brought with me from Japan. It was the so-called “recruit suit” I’d worn to the hiring interview for Amutech.

It was also a reminder of what had given me the push to join this company: my parents informing me that if I didn’t want to go back to school or be kicked out of the house, my only other option was to get a job. The suit, needless to say, wasn’t the fanciest: it probably hadn’t cost more than 30,000 yen.

I stood there silently for a moment. Truth be told, until now, I had gone out of my way not to think too much about my family in Japan. It was going on a year since I had come here, and I tried not to wonder how my parents and Shizuki must feel about my disappearance.

Were they worried? Had they already given me up for dead? Or were they downright relieved that their good-for-nothing son, their embarrassing older brother, had shown himself out? Either of those latter two seemed like possibilities, but the more I thought about them, the uglier the thoughts got whirling around in my head.

And so I shut my family out of my consciousness. But not thinking about them didn’t mean they suddenly stopped existing.

I sighed and started doing up the buttons of my shirt.

That was when I heard a voice just outside the door.

“Master?” It was Myusel. “Um, have you finished changing?”

“Er... yeah, it’s okay,” I said as I did up the last button and double checked that my fly was zipped.

“Then... May I have a moment...?”

“Hm? Yeah, sure...”

“Thank you, Master,” she said, and came into the room.

This was all a little unusual. When I had first arrived here, Myusel had tried to help me get dressed, but I’d told her that was just too embarrassing for me, so she didn’t usually come to my room this early. Usually she would do a quick clean-up from breakfast, then wait by the front door to see us off for the day.

“What’s up, Myusel?”

“Well, I... ahem...”

Now that she was in my room, she seemed hesitant. Like she had something to say, but couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“Something you wanted to talk about?”

“Yes... I—I apologize if I’m overstepping myself but...” She screwed up her courage and looked at me. “Shinichi-sama, I... Shinichi-sama, I really think you should g—go back home... sir.”

“Myusel...?”

I was completely surprised: this was so sudden. And from Myusel, of all people. She had rarely if ever specifically told me to do something before. Maybe she thought that, as my maid, it would be improper to go against my expressed opinion. She had occasionally offered her own perspectives on things, and once in a great while she had made requests of me. But the words “you should”? I didn’t think I had ever heard them from Myusel before.

I was sure she knew that—it was probably why she had hesitated. But now...

“A ch-child and his parents,” she said, obviously summoning up all her courage to get the words out, afraid that I might reprimand her for saying too much, “they... Well, I d-don’t necessarily think a family has to live together... but I do think... I think that if there’s anger, or resentment... they ought to... to try to patch things up...”

“Myusel...”

“I m-met my own mother, and I feel like... like we at least came to understand each other. And that was... it was thanks to you, Shinichi-sama...”

“Me? How?”

A bit back, just before Hikaru-san had arrived, Myusel had been reunited with her birth mother, who had come from quite some ways away to visit. As a half-elf, a “mixed-blood,” Myusel had been shunned in her mother’s family, the beginning of a difficult childhood. So when her mother had reappeared more than a decade later, Myusel had been understandably uncertain at first, but eventually came to accept her mother.

And now she was saying that was somehow something I’d done. To be honest, I didn’t remember doing anything special. I guess maybe I had spoken to Myusel’s mom a little bit...

Anyway, that wasn’t the point now.

“I’m really, really grateful for that,” Myusel said. “And I want... Shinichi-sama, I want you not to have any regrets, either... I don’t want you to have to just grin and bear anything...”

She seemed to be looking for the exact words she wanted, and her speech dissolved into a flurry of “um”s and “ahh”s.

“I see,” I said after a moment, a small smile on my face. “Maybe you’re right.”

I have an unfortunate tendency to let my imagination take me to the worst possible places, and to try to keep myself from getting hurt as much as possible. Could it be—just possibly—that my mom and dad were actually really upset that I was gone? Could even Shizuki be a little lonely without me?

“Thank you, Myusel.”

“Oh, don’t thank me...” Myusel’s face went red and she looked at the ground.

Arrrgh! How freakin’ cute can one maid be?!

In spite of all this, there was one thing I was still leery about. It was the specter Hikaru-san had raised of the Japanese government’s involvement.

Would they let me go home just because I wanted to? And if they did, would I be safe once I was there? And if I was, would I ever be able to come back to Eldant?

Questions two and three especially nagged at me. I had Minori-san as my bodyguard, but ultimately, she was a soldier in the JSDF—she had to follow government orders if it came down to it. I wasn’t sure if she could still guard me back in Japan, and if the government relieved her of duty, well, I didn’t want to make her keep protecting me as some sort of personal favor.

I had to find a way to keep myself safe without relying on Minori-san.

“Um, Shinichi-sama.” Myusel looked up just a little. She looked even more firmly resolved than before... but why? While I was still trying to puzzle it out, she spoke up. “If... If we can get permission, I would like to... I will... do my best to protect you, Shinichi-sama...!”

“Huh?” I said, my eyes turning to pinpoints.

About half an hour later, I was at Holy Eldant Castle to make my report to the empress, Petralka an Eldant III, as I did every day.

And even though I saw it so often, my mind still boggled at the size of this building. The hallways stretched on and on, supported by gigantic pillars. The place had the overall look of a standard fantasy castle, but it had been created by hollowing out a mountain, and the scale was absolutely immense. The ceilings vaulted high overhead, the corridors stretched to either side, and the whole place was more than big enough to get lost in.

Minori-san and I walked with the others through this gigantic castle, heading for an audience room.

It was our basic complement: me, Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and Myusel. Myusel was our on-again, off-again teacher of Japanese at the school, so sometimes she joined us and sometimes not. It wasn’t especially typical for her to show up for these audiences. Yes, she and Her Majesty were on good terms, so Myusel was allowed in the audience chamber, but in general it was all but unheard-of that a mere maid should meet the empress face-to-face.

And just as we were walking along...

“Hullo there.” A middle-aged man appeared from the shadow of one of the giant pillars. He was the very image of a mid-level bureaucrat—hair parted in the middle, his somehow worn-looking suit the color of dead leaves. His eyes were constantly squinted as if he were laughing, and in the same way, his lips seemed to be curled in a smile at all times.

This was Matoba Jinzaburou, an employee of the Japanese government whose official title was Chief of the Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau. A high-ranking member of the organization that handled all the details of bringing the Holy Eldant Empire and Japan together, and also the one who attended to most of the administrative work involved in running Amutech.

In other words, he was sort of an enemy and also sort of a friend to me—it was a weird place to be in. He had said he was fond of me personally, but I didn’t know how far to trust him.

He traveled frequently between Japan and the alternate world, so no sooner did I think he was staying at our mansion for a while than he would disappear for days at a time. As of today, it had been nearly a week since I’d seen Matoba-san last.

And what did he ask me?

“Are Amutech’s activities going smoothly?” His face was like a mask with that unflinching smile.

It was just what you might call a polite question, so I decided to give him an answer that wouldn’t make any waves. “Sure, smooth enough.”

“That’s good to hear. And your activities—”

“Matoba-san,” I said, interrupting him. “I’d like to go back to Japan, temporarily. As soon as I can. Is that possible?”

“Hmm?” He raised an eyebrow. Then he tapped his finger thoughtfully against his chin for a moment, before he said, “I don’t know what’s prompted this urgency, Shinichi-kun, but there’s something you need to understand.” There was a note of frustration in his voice. “I can hardly imagine you’ve forgotten that as far as the Japanese government is concerned, you’re practically a traitor. And you expect to return home safely?”

“...Thought so.”

I had sort of expected as much. Or, to be more precise, I had expected the gist of it—but it was unusual for Matoba-san to be quite so direct. Maybe I had really caught him off guard saying I wanted to go home.

But then Matoba-san shrugged a little, his tone softening. “Then too, the leadership has changed. It was the hawks’ PM who went after you, but now it’s the doves who run the Home Ministry... I don’t think there’s anyone left who’s specifically out for your life.”

“Well, that’s... comforting.”

“Even the government isn’t monolithic. There’s some bickering going on—some feel that relations with Eldant should be handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while others argue that because it’s contiguous with our nation, it belongs under the purview of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. The Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau was created specifically to prevent infighting from bringing things to a stalemate, but here we are...”

“Oh...”

I’d never expected to hear Matoba-san complaining to me. I guess I wasn’t the only one with problems.

“There’s another factor,” he said, his tone changing a little. “We are beginning to see some profit from your efforts, minimal though it is at the moment. And given we had something of a failure with Hikaru-kun...”

Hikaru-san just shrugged.

I assumed the “failure” Matoba-san was referring to was an overeager effort to introduce card games and ero games to the alternate world. It had happened at the behest of the Japanese government, sure, but ultimately the Eldant Empire took issue with the entire thing, and it had to be judged a mistake from the perspective of “cultural exchange.”

“I think they might be coming to appreciate that you have a certain talent for this. However...”

He trailed off.

“However what?” I asked.

“This is an extreme possibility,” Matoba-san said, turning so that he was facing the door of the audience chamber. “But even if you were able to go back to Japan, there is always the possibility you wouldn’t be able to return to Eldant. Or that you might meet with some kind of ‘accident’ while at home. Yes?”

Yes. That was definitely a problem.

“On that note,” I said, “I’d like to request protection.”

“Protection? Not from Koganuma-san?” Matoba-san suddenly looked very serious.

“That’s right,” I said, “from someone outside the JSDF.”

I found myself deeply entertained by Matoba-san’s discomfort.

“Welcome and well come, Kanou Shinichi,” the empress said from before us.

Her Majesty Petralka an Eldant III. Her name and title were a mouthful, the sort of thing that might normally evoke images of a bearded old man—but the person sitting on the elegant throne at the head of the audience chamber was an absolutely adorable young girl.

Her hair was silver, and her eyes the color of emeralds. She looked like a doll carved with utmost care by an absolute master. She kind of made you imagine that she didn’t have body odor, or that she never used the bathroom—it was that sort of fantastical sweetness.

I practically just wanted to tuck her under my arm and take her home with me.

Of course, if I did that, it would be a one-way ticket to getting my head chopped off right then and there. So I didn’t.

But anyway...

“You seem in most rude health this day, Your Majesty.”

“Oh, do stop. You’re far too formal.”

Hey, it was Petralka who had started with the formality. Normally she just called me Shinichi. I just thought maybe it was some kind of day to be formal to each other or something, and played along.

“Are there any significant changes in Amutech’s business, or the running of the school?”

“None. But on that note, Your Majesty...” I decided to stick to “friendly mode” as I said, “Truth be told... I’d like to ask to go home temporarily.”

““To go home?””

Huh? Why was I hearing her twice? I turned a questioning gaze on the two advisors standing one to each side of her throne: the handsome knight Garius en Cordobal, and the elderly, bearded, but still somehow adorable Prime Minister Zahar. But they both shook their heads as if to say, “Wasn’t me.”

That had to mean...

“What is the meaning of this, Shinichi?!” demanded Petralka, appearing from behind the throne.

............Huh?

So the person sitting on the chair now was—

“The doll?!”

“Indeed! If you yourself did not notice, Shinichi, then there should be no more problems!”

Petralka, smiling now as if my confusion amused her, gave the person on the throne a fond pat.

You got it: it was a doll, a body double.

Not too long ago, I had introduced a plan to get Petralka a stand-in. This doll looked exactly like her, but unlike a normal doll, it did more than just sit around. With magical help, it could adopt facial expressions, speak aloud, and even sing and dance if we wanted it to. It was really something.

The plan had briefly been hampered by some quirks in the personality of the “magical technician” we’d recruited to operate the doll, but from the look of things, we were well beyond any issues now.

“Lauron, come forward!”

“...Y-Yes, ma’am.”

At Petralka’s command, the operator emerged from the shadows of the audience chamber. It was Lauron Selioz, a dwarf. She was small and cute, like most dwarves, but she tended to prefer a plain appearance—she used to be a craftsman in an underground workshop, so she kept her hair short and didn’t wear any makeup or other ornaments. The reserved look was nice on her, though.

“Huh? Lauron...?”

Why was I so surprised? Her entire appearance had changed.

Now she was wearing a maid uniform. It looked a lot like the one Myusel wore, although it was probably made from a different material; it looked awfully expensive. It seemed to be wearing Lauron more than the other way around.

I guess if you were going to serve an empress, you had to be ready to wear a maid uniform. But it was enough that I almost hadn’t recognized her—in fact, I hadn’t recognized her.

She was extremely cute. Before, she’d always worn something like hotpants, and combined with her short hair it had given her a sort of boyish look. I was astonished to realize how much a person could change just by putting on a skirt. No, wait. Was this the sheer power of a maid uniform...?!

“It is perfectly natural for a maid to be by our side, is it not?” Petralka said.

Like I said, Lauron was recruited to work Petralka’s body double, but however talented she might be, even she couldn’t operate the doll from another room, or from dozens of meters away or whatever. Instead, they’d come up with a ruse, dressing her in a maid uniform so no one would wonder why she was attending the empress. In addition to her royal guard, Petralka was always attended by several dwarven maids, so Lauron looked right at home.

“Now we can entrust our public duties to Lauron at any time and go goof off!”

“Your Majesty...” Garius said reprovingly.

“Yes, yes, we know. It is only a joke,” Petralka replied jovially. Garius, however, sighed, his lovely face still dark. He probably guessed that the joke might stop being a joke one day. I had developed the body-double plan in part, though, to help relieve Petralka of some of the burden of her public appearances, and Garius and Zahar had both agreed to that.

“Still,” Petralka said, “someday we would love to visit this ‘holy land,’ Akiba, in Ja-pan. If only—” Then she stopped. “Shinichi, what did you say a moment ago? You spoke of going home?” She seemed to be only just remembering my request.

“Uh, yeah. Actually, my dad—he’s been hospitalized.”

“Is this true?!” Petralka exclaimed, more forcefully than I’d expected.

Oh...

It was then that I remembered: Petralka had lost her own parents at a young age. After a bout of political infighting, they’d been poisoned. So maybe it hadn’t been the best idea to bring up my dad in front of her.

“That would weigh heavily on the heart,” Petralka said. “It is only natural to wish to go home.” She crossed her arms.

“But... Shinichi.” Garius spoke up from beside her. “Do you not understand? Are you not in a rather tenuous position vis-à-vis your country of Ja-pan?”

“Believe me, I know,” I said.

Garius was one of Eldant’s military leaders, and this proved it—that was the first thing he thought of. He understood that I occupied an unusual place in Japan-Eldant relations, one I held in part because there wasn’t much my country could do about it. But he grasped quicker than anyone else that going back to Japan could mean risk—even risk of assassination for me.

“As far as it goes, a change in leadership means that the prime minister who bore a special grudge against him is no longer part of the government,” Matoba-san said. “I wouldn’t expect a kill squad to move against him immediately.”

“What is this ‘change in leadership’ you refer to?” Garius asked.

“It’s rather like when one emperor or empress is succeeded by another,” Matoba-san explained. “Our current prime minister is somewhat less inclined to violence...”

“But this does not mean that all of those involved have left the government—does it, Matoba?” Petralka said, unmistakable irony in her voice. Given that Matoba-san, the face of the Japanese government as far as the Eldant Empire was concerned, had remained in his post, the acerbic touch was understandable.

“I’ve actually got sort of an idea about the safety thing,” I said, glancing at Myusel. “I’d like to take someone along for protection. Someone from this side.”

“What? You mean—someone from our nation. Someone besides Minori?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I nodded.

“We understand—you seek our help in doing this thing. Very well, Shinichi; allow us to handle this. We shall immediately deputize a division of knights to guard you more impenetrably than a wall of steel, to keep—”

“No, no, not what I meant!” I shook my head quickly. If I went around accompanied by a squadron of knights in full armor, confidentiality was going to go out the window. The Japanese government would never allow it, anyway. “I’d like to bring Myusel—and Elvia, even though she’s not technically from Eldant.”

“Come again? You wish to take Myusel?” Petralka said, looking at my maid. “And the beast girl, is it? A werewolf is one thing, perhaps, but Myusel...”

Petralka’s face clouded over, and no wonder. Just recently, there had been a commotion over a “magical vacuum” that had occurred, revealing that elves and dwarves all but collapsed in places without magical power. Myusel was only half elf, but it was easy to imagine the lack of magic in a place like Japan would affect her; it would at least keep her from working as hard as she normally did.

However...

“I’ll bring a sprite bottle, and a stone with a magical charge,” Myusel said.

Certain minerals, it seemed, had the ability to store magical energy, and in Eldant it was possible to use them like a magical battery. On top of that, because magical power could evidently be constrained by simple physical barriers, a large glass bottle was enough to transport the sprites that produced magical energy, kind of like the sprite equivalent of an oxygen tank. The dwarves frequently carried items like these in their underground workshops, where magic could be scarce.

It was a simple concept: if you were going somewhere there wasn’t enough magic, just bring some along.

Because Myusel was only half elf, moreover, she wouldn’t immediately collapse in a magic-less area, unlike full-blooded elves and dwarves. Even without magical support, she would just get very tired.

“If I bring enough, it might even be possible to actually use magic spells there...”

“It may be as you say. But... hrm.” Petralka crossed her arms as if thinking about something.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Zahar turned to me. “In that case, Shinichi-dono, what do you intend to do about the running of Amutech, and of your school, during your absence? Will activities simply be suspended for the duration?”

That was a perfectly legitimate question. And I was ready with an answer.

“Hikaru-san is going to fill in for me at Amutech while I’m away.”

“...Say what?”

The surprised response came from none other than Hikaru-san himself. He blinked his eyes girlishly (or was that technically boyishly?) at me and I nodded, suppressing a smile. “Won’t you?” I asked, pressing the point.

“Wait, won’t I—what? Shinichi-san, you...”

Ooh, I had him confused. Call it my very small form of payback.

Hikaru-san knew perfectly well that he had been sent here originally as my replacement, so he must have been a little surprised at how readily I was handing over control to him. But from my perspective...

“You’re very capable, Hikaru-san. I’m confident I can expect the best from you. Even without me here, I think—no, I know—that you’ll do great. Maybe even better than me.”

Hikaru-san listened in silence, his eyes the size of saucers.

I don’t mean to sound smug, but I felt like I was starting to get a handle on Hikaru-san’s personality. Judging by what I’d heard from Myusel, when someone expected something of Hikaru-san, placed their trust in him, he instinctively did his best to meet those expectations. That impulse had driven even the incident with the card and ero games.

He didn’t have any special desire to usurp my place. That was simply what had been expected of him by the Japanese government, and he had dutifully tried to do it.

“G-Gee, you do?” Hikaru-san looked at the ground and blushed a little. “If you expect all that, I g-guess I’ll just have to do my best not to disappoint you...”

...Wait, what?

Geez, this was just way too cute...! Was he—was he actually being bashful?

No, stop! Don’t be deceived, Kanou Shinichi—Hikaru-san is a guy! Bashful or not, you don’t want to go down that road! Not one step! All you’ll do is make Minori-san really happy!

As I engaged in this desperate mental shouting, the conversation around me went on.

“Whatever we end up doing,” Garius said—he was frowning a bit, like he was annoyed, but why?—“if it should happen that Shinichi did not come back here, it would be an international incident.” His almond-shaped eyes fixed on Matoba-san.

He wasn’t wrong. The truth was, I wore one of the magical rings that represented the rights of citizenship in the Eldant Empire, even if I had come by mine in a somewhat unusual way. I was treated virtually as one of their own. In light of my job as what amounted to a diplomat, I was shown a deference usually reserved for nobles.

Garius was making a none-too-subtle threat to Matoba-san, indicating that if I was killed, the Holy Eldant Empire would not respond kindly.

That was Garius for you, knight and minister. I was awfully grateful.

“Understood,” Petralka said finally with a nod and a sigh. “We see we could not stop you if we wished, nor would it be right to prevent your going home with a parent in crisis. We shall requisition a magical stone of the highest quality and a sprite bottle with the utmost urgency. Wait a short while. And Myusel, be certain you protect your master.”

“I will... And thank you, Your Majesty!” Myusel bowed deeply to Petralka, and the rest of us followed suit.

A hyperspace portal.

It sounds so sci-fi, but on the top of a small hill, in a cleft in the earth, there it was.

I had expected it to be more... like something you’d see in an anime. You know, flashes of light, the scenery distorting around it—but everything on the hilltop looked perfectly normal. If I had to name something that seemed other than ordinary, I would say it was less the hole itself than the area around it. Specifically, the Eldant Empire had built a fence around the vicinity and installed a small guardhouse. Inside the fence was a gray steel crane the JSDF had put there.

The crane was for transporting goods and people through the portal. What actually happened was that the crane raised and lowered a sort of box, like a gondola system or an extremely simple elevator.

Beside the crane was what looked like a massive piece of stained glass, or at least some big sheet constructed of semi-translucent pieces. This must have been the “gate” Petralka had mentioned, a barrier made of glass and magical stones intended to keep magic from escaping to Japan. It had been set to one side temporarily so that we could transit.

“This way, please.” JSDF servicemembers led us into the gondola. “Us” included me, Myusel, Elvia, Minori-san, Matoba-san, and a bevy of luggage. Petralka really had worked hard on our behalf, and a couple of boxes containing the expensive magical stone and sprite container accompanied us, too.

The gondola itself struck me as the strangest thing of all. It was a sort of box that hung suspended between two steel frames. The box was roughly the size of an industrial elevator—heck, maybe they had just grabbed an elevator wholesale to use here.

The box, it seemed, could rotate lengthwise between the frames. Maybe that was so a little rocking during the trip wouldn’t send things flying. Then again, apparently the portal led to a similar rift in the earth on the Japan side—maybe gravity switched around halfway through or something.

“Huh,” I offered. “Not very fancy in here.”

“Well, it is just for transport,” Matoba-san said.

The interior reinforced the image of an industrial elevator, its furnishings limited to enough chairs to seat all of us. It felt a lot like getting in a Ferris wheel car.

Incidentally, boxes like these were only used when transporting people, and objects small enough for people to hold. Bigger things were suspended from wires directly and passed through the portal. That’s how stuff like the frame of the LAV, the JSDF’s chosen mode of transport, got across.

Myusel and Elvia came in almost hesitantly.

“Don’t... Don’t mind me...”

“Wow... This is kinda... wow.”

For purposes of safety, the JSDF helped us fasten the seat belts on our chairs, then brought in luggage to fill the rest of the space. There were three duffel bags and backpacks stuffed with our changes of clothes and other necessities, along with the two large boxes, just this side of too big for an adult to handle. Each item was secured with a rubber strap.

“Shinichi-sama?” Myusel asked, looking at me a little puzzled.

“Huh? What?”

“Oh, nothing. You were just... smiling a little...”

“Oh, sorry about that. I know now’s not really the time, but I’m kind of excited.”

The last time I’d passed through the hyperspace tunnel, I’d been drugged to sleep, so I had no idea what was involved. Climbing into the gondola like this, I felt like I was going on a sort of adventure. Plus I had Myusel and Elvia and Minori-san with me, beautiful girls all around. (Just pretend Matoba-san wasn’t there.)

If that wasn’t enough to make me grin, well, then I wasn’t an otaku.

The PA speaker in the gondola crackled. “Beginning transit.”

A second later, I had a strange sensation, like I was floating. I assumed that was the box being picked up and then put into the hole. There were no windows, though, so I couldn’t be sure.

Then the gondola was falling. I could tell because of the slight but persistent floating feeling. It was almost like being suspended in water—although thankfully, I could breathe normally.

Myusel and Elvia didn’t say a word; maybe they were feeling anxious. I definitely was, and I didn’t talk, either.

Minori-san was fiddling with something on her phone. And Matoba-san—he had a book open and was reading, like a salaryman on his commute. That was the sort of calm you could only get by making this trip a whole bunch of times.

“Eek!” Myusel gave a little shout, and I tensed, too, as a really weird sensation passed through me. It was like the “direction” of the floating had reversed, a bizarre feeling like up and down had suddenly changed places. That might be something astronauts knew about, but as an earth-dweller, it wasn’t something I had ever expected to experience. It was like everything had suddenly flipped around, turned upside down. Although nothing had obviously changed in the gondola...

“Okay. We’ve switched over to being pulled by the Japan side,” Minori-san said.

Evidently, until halfway through the portal the gondola was “lowered” from the Eldant side, afterwhich wires attached from the Japanese end began to pull the gondola up.

In other words, we were making our approach to Japan...

“Myusel,” I said to the half-elf girl beside me. “You okay? Any trouble? Not feeling tired?”

“No... Not at all,” Myusel said, shaking her head.

Huh? But she wasn’t using the magic stone or the sprite bottle yet. How could she not be tired? Was there still some magical energy left in the gondola? Or was some of the energy that had been sucked into the portal still here?

Come to think of it... what was magical energy?

I started to wonder: we’d slapped the name “magical energy” on this phenomenon, so we felt like we understood it, but we didn’t have any idea what it actually was. Apparently it existed within people’s bodies, but also in the surrounding atmosphere, and by letting out the stuff inside yourself and mixing it with the stuff outside, you could achieve magical effects... Anyway, that was my understanding.

Given that magical energy seemed to just float around in the atmosphere, and that it could be contained using glass, it seemed to be a little different from the mental power or ki energy so common in manga and anime. There were also racial differences in magical aptitude, like how lizardmen could use interpreter rings but not actual magic spells.

As I busied myself ruminating on all this, though, Matoba-san closed his book and said, “Anytime now, I expect.”

Almost immediately after that, the floating sensation vanished. The gondola had stopped moving.

That meant...

Someone in a forest-green JSDF uniform, presumably stationed at the garrison here, opened the door of the gondola and smiled at us.

“You’ve arrived safely. Welcome home. And to our visitors, welcome to Japan.”