Chapter Two: I’m... Going Home
Chapter Two: I’m... Going Home
Going back to Japan.
When I thought about those words, I had only ever pictured actually going to my house, so maybe I had been a bit naïve in imagining what was entailed in getting back home from an entirely separate world.
And now came the practicalities...
“Huh?”
Some JSDF soldiers led us out of the gondola and directly into a nearby prefab hut. In fact, it turned out the entire entrance to the portal was enclosed in a warehouse-like structure, and we were going into a smaller building contained within. I guess you could say we had set foot in Japan, but not yet breathed the air.
“Is this... a medical inspection?” I asked.
“Well, we did just come back from another world,” Matoba-san replied with a wry smile as he shrugged off his jacket and rolled up his sleeve.
The inside of the prefab building looked like a doctor’s office, and there was even someone in a white coat—probably a JSDF medical technician—standing there with a hypodermic needle in hand.
“A blood test is standard procedure,” Matoba-san said as the needle plunged into his arm and the syringe slowly filled with blood.
With mounting dread, I turned around—and found Myusel and Elvia looking practically ready for a fight. Elvia in particular looked like she might just pounce on Matoba-san or the health worker at any time.
“Whazzat?” she asked. “What’re they doin’?”
“And I’d better like the answer...” Myusel grabbed the sprite bottle from its bag with her left hand.
If she broke that bottle, the immediate area would fill with magical energy. There was obviously some around already, maybe left over from whatever had gotten sucked through the portal, because the magic rings were still working—add a bottle’s worth of sprites to that, and Myusel would probably be able to summon up some pretty serious attack power.
“Whoa, wait, wait just a second,” I said.
These girls didn’t know what a health checkup was, let alone a hypodermic needle—to them, the technician was just a villain randomly stabbing people.
“Matoba-san, they aren’t going to just poison me right here or anything, are they?” I asked, simultaneously trying to calm down the girls and feel out the situation.
“It’s merely a health inspection, I assure you. After all, nobody knows exactly what diseases one might contract in the other world.”
“I guess that’s understandable,” I said.
“Honestly, we don’t think there’s any special fear of airborne diseases. But others that spread slowly through human contact—think AIDS—could still be out there. We can’t rule out the possibility that any of you are carriers, nor myself, of course. Hence why we have our blood tested each time we come back through the portal. It’s routine by now. We’ll have the results in an hour or so.”
He sounded practically mellow. I glanced at Minori-san, and she gave me a little nod. It looked like she was already familiar with this procedure.
“You say it’s just a blood draw, but what if the needle is dipped in poison?” I asked.
“You mean the disposable, mass-produced hypodermic needle?” Matoba-san and the health worker both grinned a little.
To be fair, they were doing the blood draws with disposables from a medical supplies company so big even I had heard of them, and the needles came out of sealed packages. You had to open a new one for each draw, then throw it away when you were done.
“If you’re still that worried, maybe you’d like to borrow a scalpel and make a cut yourself? It’s all the same to us as long as we can get a little blood,” the tech offered.
Meanwhile, Minori-san had rolled up her sleeve and stood in front of the tech, who tore open a new needle package and started the blood draw...
We looked at each other.
“All right,” I said. “Um, what about Myusel and Elvia?”
“They would be included,” Matoba-san said. “In fact, they could be threatened by diseases that mean virtually nothing to the rest of us, due to a lack of immunity. We would love to do full medical exams on them in the interest of making vaccines or discovering other treatments.”
I guess that made sense—hadn’t the Martians in H. G. Wells’ classic SF tale War of the Worlds been destroyed by the common cold or something?
Anyway, we didn’t have a choice. I turned to Elvia and Myusel and said, “So, uh... I guess this is something everybody has to do? Do you guys even understand what a communicable disease is? If we have any, they don’t want us to bring them into Japan, so they have to check us to see if there are any in our bodies.”
“Hmm...” Myusel and Elvia looked at each other. It didn’t seem like this was making much sense to them.
“Look, anyway,” I said, “all they want is to draw a little blood. They’ll stick you with a needle like that, and it’ll sort of pinch a little, but just roll with it and it’ll be over in a minute.”
“Um, o-okay.”
“Yeah, all right.”
Both girls nodded. The technician drew blood from me, then Elvia, then Myusel with complete confidence. My friends from the other world understandably squeaked a little when the needle went in, but there was no crying or fighting, and the blood draw ended successfully.
“We appreciate your cooperation,” the tech said. “We’ll be running a few other tests—checking your weight, doing an x-ray, and so on. After that’s all done, you’ll find some clothes to change into in the next room. Just pick whatever you like. Meanwhile, we’ll be fast-tracking the results of these blood draws.” Then the tech left the building.
The rest of the tests followed, and then we went into the next room, and just as the technician had said, a fairly wide selection of clothing was hanging there. There were a handful of JSDF uniforms, certainly, but the majority of the stuff was actually civilian clothing.
“Remember that the hyperspace tunnel and this whole facility are top secret,” Minori-san said, grabbing an outfit off the rack. “It would look suspicious for Mount Fuji to be crawling with soldiers, so we usually change into civilian clothing.”
“Oh... That makes sense.”
“You can pass, Shinichi-kun, but Myusel and Elvia will need to change. Elvia especially.”
“Why me?” the beast girl asked, her eyes wide.
“The ears... and the tail.”
“...Er?” Elvia put one hand over her ears and the other on her tail.
Hey. That was a pretty cute pose. Elvia was usually so freewheeling, I didn’t get to see her looking embarrassed or self-conscious much, and it was sort of sweet.
“Maybe something like this?” Minori-san said, holding up a hooded half-coat and a cap lined with some kind of fake fur. Both excellent “ear hiders.”
She passed the coat to Elvia and the hat to Myusel. “Try this on, Myusel.”
“Uh, all right.”
“As for the rest of your outfit...”
“Um, can I not go out like this?” Myusel asked. “I made some adjustments to my uniform before we left the mansion. I added some places to keep magic rocks or sprites...”
“Ah...” Minori-san stopped and thought about that for a moment. Then she said, “Okay. For the time being, we can just pretend you’re one of those slightly ‘off’ kids who cosplays constantly.”
Wait, are we really going with that?!
I resisted the urge to interject my smart remark—as long as we could keep Myusel’s ears hidden, then we could pass her off as “some foreign kid.” Anyway, I knew from when I had first met her that she could hide her ears pretty effectively with her twintails. A large-ish hat would complete the deception.
With Elvia, though, we might not get away so easily. She was going to have to actually change clothes.
“Okay, well, I’ll wait outside,” I said, heading for the door.
“No, you can’t!” The objection came from, of all people, Elvia herself. “I’m s’posed to be your bodyguard, Shinichi-sama! I’m not supposed to take my eyes off you!”
“Well, look, I’ve got Myusel and everything...”
“It takes time to come up with an offensive spell! If you need to respond in an instant, I’m your girl!”
“Well, I mean, that’s true, but...”
So what was I supposed to do?
“It won’t take me long to change, Shinichi-sama. I’d rather you were here.”
“Look, I just don’t think that’s... appropriate?” I looked to Minori-san for salvation.
“You’re worried about this now?” Minori-san sounded downright exasperated “You all changed in the same room when you were doing the movie, right?”
Argh, this wasn’t getting me anywhere. Back during filming, it had been me and Myusel and Petralka, too, and I had been able to somehow find a place to put my eyes, so I’d managed to scrape by. But now it would be just Elvia, stripping down to her underwear, right there in the middle of the—gah! Look away, my eyes!
I was busy struggling with my evil eye (is that what that means?), Elvia was busily taking off her clothing. And since the tube top covering her chest was basically just underwear already, when that came off—when that came off—nggaahhhh.
All bouncy, and jouncy, and jiggly, and two very soft-looking, well, um... (Technical difficulties... Please stand by...)
“Um, Master...” Myusel said from beside me.
“Y—Yef?”
“Should... Should I change, too...?”
“Wh-Why would you do that?!”
Did I really look that happy?!
Wh-What, my hand? What about my hand? It’s not doing anything. It was definitely not stretching out unconsciously toward Elvia’s chest! It was... her tail! That’s it, I was going to touch that big, poofy tail! Please believe me!
“If—If it’s your wish, Master...”
“I-It’s fine, you don’t have to change! I’ve got my hands full with Elvia here; if you did it, too, my Kurobe Dam might break! Not that I know what that means!”
“Shinichi-kun,” Minori-san said, her eyes uncharacteristically cold behind her glasses. “Hasn’t it occurred to you to just turn around?”
“Yeah! Great idea! Gosh, silly me! Kanou Shinichi here, looking at the wall!”
Then I turned my back on Elvia.
But...
“Hey, Minori-sama. How’s this work?”
“Oh, the bra? It goes lengthwise, like—yeah, that’s it.”
“Y-Yikes, it kinda tickles...”
“Just live with it.”
...............
My brain conjured up achingly realistic scenes of a beast girl and a woman soldier sharing a yuri moment. Wait—why was Minori-san in her underwear in my imagination? And why did I feel guilty, like I was peeping into the girls’ changing room...?
“Urgh...”
Turning my back only invited the most depraved fantasies! My fantasies...!
Curse my bounteous imagination! Did they want me to technobreak and die?!
“Master, are you okay?”
“I’m okay... I think!” I answered. I picked a rivet on the wall and stared at it as hard as I could.
So it was a little hectic for a while there. Happily, though, we all got clean bills of health, and with Myusel and Elvia in tow I was finally able to officially come home to Japan.
Minori-san had changed into civilian clothing; she was going to continue to act as my bodyguard. Paperwork had been filed with the JSDF beforehand, and they’d furnished us with a vehicle—a small van that was waiting on the road just outside the Sea of Trees. Minori-san would be our driver.
I think a personal vehicle was the right choice. Things being what they were, Myusel and Elvia seemed more likely to attract attention on the train. I could just imagine the things that might go wrong trying to help them take public transport.
“This is all our luggage, right?” Minori-san said, surveying the pile of bags and wooden boxes in the back of the van.
As I said, she was in civilian clothes now, not the uniform I was so used to. Her outer layer was a sort of anorak—a parka-like thing in military green—but under that she was wearing a lavender shirt with white English lettering, a pair of hotpants, black stockings, and a pair of boots. Talk about casual.
To be totally honest, she looked wicked cute. Usually, the uniform made her look sort of grown-up by default (and remember, she was older than me), but the way she looked now, you could have mistaken her for a high-schooler.
But anyway...
“So this is the box with the magic stone in it, right?”
“Yes it is the one Her Majesty gave to me,” Myusel said.
Now that we were outside the Sea of Trees, we were apparently beyond the zone of usable magic; the interpreter rings weren’t working very well. Myusel decided to resort to her stumbling but usable Japanese. Elvia knew a smattering of Japanese vocabulary, but she didn’t have Myusel’s mastery of grammar, and could only manage to speak in small bursts.
“Something wrong...?” Myusel asked.
“No, I was just thinking it’s awfully light for a box that’s supposed to have a rock in it,” Minori-san said, pointing. “Mind if I open it?”
“The court mages, they said to not open unless at the time that I need to use it,” Myusel said.
The stone was essentially like a magical battery: open it up and it would start to release energy, however slowly. I was told that for that reason, the stone had been enclosed in a glass case, as well.
“Hrm, well, okay,” Minori-san said, giving the box a dubious smack.
“Heek!”
“Huh...?” Minori-san said, looking around and blinking. “Myusel? Did you say something?”
“...Eh? Noh...”
“Elvia?”
Elvia made a sort of curious noise in response.
“I guess not,” Minori-san said.
Elvia, for one, had gone around to the front of the van and was examining it with interest. It was the first time she’d ever seen anything like it—it looked awfully different from the army’s LAV—and she was probably eager to sketch it. From that position, we wouldn’t have heard her muttering to herself, and if she’d said anything loud enough for us to hear, Myusel would have certainly noticed it.
“And it wasn’t you, was it, Shinichi-kun? I was sure I heard someone...”
“Maybe you’d hear better if you had a pair of cat ears, Minori-san...”
“Dream on!”
Dumb conversation notwithstanding, we ushered Myusel and Elvia into the van. Minori-san hopped in the driver’s seat, and I rode shotgun.
Minori-san fired the engine and made sure the van was running smoothly; meanwhile, two men in black suits appeared seemingly out of nowhere and looked in the window. “Everything ready?”
“Yes, sir,” Minori-san said with a salute. “No problems.” I guess these guys were from the JSDF, too.
“Get going, then,” the man said. “We’ll tail you for safety.” He pointed to a black van parked about ten meters away. It was bigger than our vehicle, with smoked glass windows. Pretty intimidating stuff.
“Hold on. I didn’t hear anything about this,” Minori-san said with a frown.
“Orders came down from Ichigaya just a little while ago,” the man said expressionlessly.
“Why so sudden? Our only business this time is to take Kanou Shinichi to visit his fam—”
“Orders are orders,” the man interrupted. “The reasons are above our pay grade.”
Yuck. I didn’t like this one bit. Like Matoba-san said, it didn’t look like they were out to murder me immediately (otherwise, they could have just shot or stabbed me without the small talk), but that didn’t make it a whole lot easier to just trust that they really were here for my protection.
“Sergeant Koganuma Minori. These are your written orders. Acknowledge receipt, please.” One of the men passed her a piece of paper.
...Wait, what? I thought Minori-san was a Private First-Class.
“...Orders received,” Minori-san said, but she didn’t look happy about it.
“Good,” the man said, and then he and the other guy went to their van.
“Minori, sama,” Myusel said with obvious concern in her voice, “these people, they were friends of ours?”
“You’re just full of questions I can’t answer, aren’t you?” Minori-san said with a bitter smile.
Minori-san’s alarm at the conversation with the men in suits wasn’t lost on Myusel. And considering how much Japanese she could understand...
“I wouldn’t call them friends just yet,” Minori-san said. “But I wouldn’t call them enemies, either. To be honest with you, I don’t know what kind of take the higher-ups have on Shinichi’s little trip home. It happened so fast, they probably haven’t had time to call their meetings and decide what to do, but that makes it all the more likely that someone lower down the totem pole will take matters into their own hands...”
Myusel looked a little confused. “I do not quite understand, but you think there may be trubull, yes?”
“Let’s say I’m feeling cautious,” Minori-san said with a nod.
Then I realized Myusel and Elvia were nodding at each other in the back seat. A second later...
“Uh, Myusel?”
She was mumbling something, and then she was leaning out the open window of our van. She pulled a bottle out of her bag and flung it away. It smashed on the ground, but there was nothing inside.
Wait. Was that—?
“......Tifu murottsu.”
Myusel spoke so softly and calmly that at first, it didn’t even register with me that she was intoning offensive magic. A second later, though, there was a rush of wind, so strong I could feel the lift. The van the two men in suits were riding in went wumph and tilted crazily. It looked like the front tires had come clean off.
“Now, this is our chance,” Myusel said to me and Minori-san. The two of us were just watching, flabbergasted.
No, no, no—no?!
Huh? What?
Had Myusel just attacked a JSDF vehicle?!
“But why...?!” I wailed.
“I am your bodee-guard, Master,” Myusel said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “It is not right that dangerous people are following you. Carriages, they do not move if you break the wheels. So I have broken their wheels.”
Minori-san and I looked at each other.
“Shinichi-kun,” she said, leaning in so she could whisper to me.
Minori-san, your, uh, face is very close to mine. Your breathing, I can feel your—ahhhh.
No, no, not the time!
“I just realized,” she said, “there’s something I never told you. Something about that time you were captured by Bahairam.”
“Yes?”
Why was she bringing this up now?
“Myusel grabbed my pistol and threatened Elvia into taking us to Bahairam. I had a thought then—that maybe Myusel gets tunnel vision when it comes to you. She really might do anything for you. She’s got a touch of yandere in her. Lucky you, huh?”
“Is this where you expect me to be all, ‘Yaay! Shinichi loves yanderes!’?”
“I’m just saying, if she starts stirring an empty stewpot, watch out.”
Then Minori-san gunned the engine and got us out of there.
“Hey!” It took the men in black a moment to comprehend what had happened to them, but when they figured out their ride wasn’t going anywhere, they jumped out and started shouting at us. By that time, though, our little van had gotten up some speed, and they weren’t going to catch us on foot.
“Can we really do that?” I asked, looking out the back window at the swiftly shrinking figures of the two men. “They’re JSDF just like you, aren’t they, Minori-san?”
“They’re not with the people who give me orders on the org chart. They must be suits from the Ministry’s information or intelligence divisions. I haven’t heard anything from my superiors, so I don’t have to listen to them.”
She sounded awfully confident about that.
I wasn’t sure that was really allowed—but then again, how many movies had I seen where someone from another department tries to horn in on an investigation or something, and the commander on the ground goes, “I don’t care if you’re military, this isn’t your turf?”
“Is this what they mean when they talk about the dangers of bureaucratic infighting?” I asked.
“I guess you could say that,” Minori-san said. She had a surprisingly happy smile on her face as she hit the gas and picked up speed.
To get from Yamanashi Prefecture, where Mt. Fuji and the Sea of Trees are, to Tokyo, takes about two and a half hours by car.
That, of course, is assuming you don’t get caught in a traffic jam, but when you add in rest stops and whatever else, it’s really closer to three hours. And for people who aren’t used to traveling, that’s a surprisingly long time.
Especially when you’ve just come back from an alternate world to Japan—a journey you couldn’t normally make in three days or three months, let alone three hours—in about thirty minutes. And thus I found I had completely forgotten the reality of those three hours to Tokyo. Add to that my years as a shut-in, during which I’d never taken a long car trip...
“Urrrghhh...”
We were at a service area somewhere along the route. I’d begged Minori-san to pull over and had stumbled out of the car, breathing hard.
I didn’t feel good. I thought I was going to be sick.
When I glanced back, I could see Myusel and Elvia slumped against either side of the van, neither of them looking much better than I felt. Our driver, Minori-san, was the only one who looked like she was having a good time.
“That’s what you get for playing with your phone and trying to read manga in a moving vehicle,” she chirped.
“You’re right... I see that now,” I said, leaning on the hood of the van for support.
Myusel and Elvia had started out looking out the window—they were eager for their first glimpse of “Ja-pan”—but it turned out that the scenery in nature-rich Yamanashi, especially out here on the highway, wasn’t that different from anything in Eldant. So they’d eventually turned to the books and portable games I’d brought along... and got carsick.
“Important question,” Minori-san said. “Myusel, Elvia. We’ve still got more than an hour until we get to Tokyo. Either of you need the bathroom?”
“Er... I’ll u-use the bath room.”
“Bath room? Bathroom! I go!”
They both looked a little desperate.
Minori-san, though, said, “I guess neither of you probably knows how to use the toilets around here... But I bet you won’t be willing to leave Shinichi-kun alone, either. I’ll take each of you to the bathroom one at a time, and the other one can stay here with Shinichi-kun. Okay?”
Myusel gave Elvia a quick-and-dirty translation of what Minori-san had said, and the beast girl nodded vigorously. It looked like she was just about at her limit.
“Okay, Elvia, come with me. The girls’ bathrooms are always crowded...”
Then Minori-san led Elvia off in the direction of the women’s toilet.
Myusel and I didn’t have much choice—we worked our way over to a line of vending machines we could see near the van. I spotted a convenience store, but that would only take us even farther from the toilets. Eventually, Myusel would want her turn to go.
“Shinichi-sama?”
“Oh, these are vending machines,” I said, pointing to one that sold a range of beverages. I dug in my pocket and found some small change that had gone unused for a very long time. It hadn’t done me any good in a country that had never heard of Japanese yen. Now I slid a few of the coins into the machine.
“I’ll bet we’re both thirsty. How about a drink?”
“Yes? Yes, but—”
Suddenly, Myusel looked at the ground apologetically.
“What’s up?”
“I did not have my tea supplies.”
“Huh? Oh—no, no,” I said quickly.
Myusel thought I was asking her to make tea for me, like I would do back at the mansion. I wondered what kind of overbearing, selfish lord would turn to his maid after they arrived in a strange land and immediately say, “Make me some tea!” But by Eldant standards I was sort of a lord, and my maid had to be ready.
“This thing is going to make tea for us,” I said, pointing at the vending machine.
Myusel looked thoroughly perplexed.
“Just watch,” I said, and then I picked one of the tea options at random and pressed the button.
Myusel jumped a little when a paper cup came dropping from the machine. But the machine didn’t care; it just went ahead and filled the cup with tea. When it was finished, a light went on and the machine announced, “Please take your drink.”
“See?” I said, taking the cup. “Here.” I held it out to Myusel.
“......Tea? Is it... tea?”
“Yeah. Try it and see,” I said.
Myusel took the cup, looking very concerned, and brought it to her lips. But then her face lit up and she exclaimed, “It is tea!”
“Sure is,” I said with a bit of a grin.
Myusel took another sip or two, her face shining. “It is delicious tea!”
“Eh, it’s vending-machine tea. But I hear they’ve really started to get it down lately.”
“So there is a mayde...?” Myusel was trying to peek into the dispenser.
“No! No, there’s no maid,” I said, shaking my head.
But... hang on. A maid inside. A person. A beautiful girl...
There were already plenty of series in which various objects were anthropomorphized into pretty girls, but as far as I knew, none of them featured vending machines turned into girls. Aw, yeah! There were the ones that dispensed paper cups, the ones that sold cans, the ones that sold things in packets, the machines vending cup ramen. Apparently, they even had vending machines that sold bread and Calorie M**e bars now. And then there was the elusive thousand-yen vending machine!
This was my chance to get in on the ground floor of something big. I could see it now: the manga, the anime, the game(s)—and the royalties.........!
Gotta catch all the vending machines!
...The thoughts I was thinking didn’t even merit the dignity of being called ridiculous. Anyway, I bought a cup of coffee, and Myusel and I went back to the van.
Just then, though, I thought I felt the vehicle quake a little.
“Myusel?”
“Yes?”
I glanced at her, but she wasn’t touching the van. And Minori-san and Elvia still weren’t back from the bathroom. And of course, there was no one ins—
“Myusel, get back,” I said, gesturing at her.
Okay, so she was supposed to be my bodyguard, but I really felt silly constantly having to be protected by a girl. Given that Myusel didn’t really know how anything worked here in Japan, I had to take command sometimes or things would get out of control.
“And, uh, lend me one of your sprite bottles, or a magic stone or something.”
“Oh, yes, sir,” Myusel said, taking a deep-green gem—it almost looked like an emerald—that I assumed was a magic stone and pressing it into my hand. It had been made into a necklace.
It was sort of warm. A little like... a person?
Wait... Myusel had been wearing this under her clothes... meaning that the warmth I was feeling was from her beautiful valley, from the cleft in her—ahhhhhhh.
No! This wasn’t the time to be getting all excited!
This rock full of magical energy would allow me to get off at least one good magic spell. If I used Tifu Murottsu like Myusel had taught me, I might stand a chance of defending myself.
“Shinichi-sama...”
I didn’t answer. Myusel had taken out one of the sprite bottles—my look must have made her wary.
Incidentally, after attacking the JSDF van earlier, she reported that although she could draw magic from the stone, in the magical vacuum that was Japan, the energy depleted awfully quickly. It would be okay for things that were right next to her—protecting herself personally, or even just using the magic ring—but ranged attacks like Tifu Murottsu were not likely to go very far.
The most effective thing would be to smash open the sprite bottle, then draw on the stone to use a spell while the environment was still magic-rich. This was apparently what they did when fighting dragons or when around other creatures or phenomena that absorb magical energy: opened large numbers of sprite bottles all at once just before using any magic.
“Could it be from back here? From the luggage?” I said, going around and peering in the back of the van.
There was no one there, of course. And yet the van had definitely shaken.
What on earth...?
I opened the rear hatch. It looked exactly like it had when we’d set out: three bags... and the boxes of magical stones and sprite bottles Petralka had given us.
I caught my breath. One of the boxes shook. Thump.
That was it! Was there something inside?!
I thought back on my conversation with Matoba-san:
“Is this... a medical inspection?”
“Well, we did just come back from another world.”
It was true: we had been in another world just a few hours before. A world full of sprites, dragons, and other things that you only ever saw in manga, anime, games, and light novels around here. It would be all too easy to bring some unknown, invisible disease back with us, and that’s why the medical inspection was necessary.
But now that I thought about it... I had read on the net somewhere about how foreign organisms could move around by riding along on ships or planes, and end up totally destroying an ecosystem. It didn’t matter if they were brought in completely by accident; an organism that had never existed in a certain place before could ravage that environment in too many ways to count.
Was that what we had done?
For that matter—what was in that box?!
I recited an incantation so that I could use Tifu Murottsu at any moment, cutting off just before I completed the spell. The lid looked like it was ready to pop right off the box.
And then it did.
Bam! The lid went flying, hitting the ceiling of the van as if propelled by an explosion before dropping back to the floor. Finally, something emerged...
“...Huh?”
“...Wha?”
Myusel and I said in unison.
But then Myusel said, quietly: “Itosejamu?”
Itosejamu. It was an Eldant word I was very familiar with.
It meant Majesty.
And that could only mean...
“Petralka?!”
She was facing down, so I couldn’t see her immediately, but it had to be her. And then she popped up out of the box, arms thrust up as if to say “Banzai!”: our silver-haired, tsundere, loli (oops, that’s all off the record, okay?) Majesty, Empress Petralka an Eldant III.
“But... But why? How?” I let my magic spell go and stared at Petralka.
What was she doing here? Could this be the doll?
But without Lauron, that would be pointless, so—
My head whirled with the possibilities.
“...Urgh,” she said, still not looking up.
“Urgh?” I echoed.
Finally, she looked at me.
“I beel terribbbleee...”
And then Petralka collapsed.
“We cannot be more clear.”
Once I had gotten Petralka calmed down a little and Minori-san had gotten everyone to the toilet and back, we convened in the van to hear Petralka’s story.
“If anything were to happen to you without our knowledge, Shinichi, it would be most troublesome!”
We had decided to open one of the sprite bottles inside the closed vehicle so that we could use the interpreter rings to have a little conversation about exactly what was happening.
“But why would you...”
“Myusel and Elvia you had with you, and Minori as well, but with them alone we remained uneasy,” Petralka said.
“Yeah, but...” I didn’t feel like Petralka was going to add a lot to our firepower if it came to that.
Anyway, what was an imperial majesty even doing in a place like this?!
“What are you going to do about your, you know—empire?”
“Lauron has been doing quite well, has she not?” She sounded so... nonchalant.
“Oh, geez,” I groaned, picturing Lauron having to fill in for Petralka. I hoped the empress had at least alerted Garius and Zahar, and hadn’t left Lauron with the pressure of trying to deceive her two closest advisors.
Poor girl...
“We have left her with a letter in our own hand, with instructions to give it to Garius or Zahar, should they discover us. Lauron will not be blamed.”
“Maybe, but she takes everything so seriously...”
Just the fact that the empress herself had snuck out of the castle without a word to anyone was a huge deal. If people found out that Lauron had known about it, and had kept the whole thing secret... well, it didn’t matter if she had the empress’s personal permission. I had the feeling she would be lucky to escape alive.
“And anyway, is it not the business of an empress to gain firsthand knowledge of those nations with which her own country has diplomacy?” Petralka clapped her hands.
I fixed her with a stare. “You just thought that up now, didn’t you?”
“W-Watch your tongue!”
Bingo.
Anyway...
“This is bad, for sure. But what do we do...?” Minori-san said, crossing her arms. “We could get in touch with Ichigaya and request a unit to see Her Majesty safely back to the wormhole... Hrm, probably not a good idea.”
“Yeah, not my first choice...”
By the way, “Ichigaya” was basically a way of referring to the Ministry of Defense. (It’s the part of Tokyo where the building is.) But Ichigaya had sent us some people—specifically, the two men in black suits—and we had attacked them with magic.
And there was one other little concern...
“We shall not go back!” Petralka said, crossing her own arms.
“But Your Majesty,” Minori-san said, “even if we didn’t mind having you here—”
“We shall not go back until we have seen with our own eyes your ‘holy land,’ Akihabara!” Petralka insisted.
“So that’s what you wanted...” I said.
“Er, it is—ahem—one of the things.” Petralka couldn’t quite look me in the eye.
I guess that was very Petralka-esque, but... argh.
I was starting to think the whole “doll” project had been a big mistake. The presence of a useful body double seemed to have lightened the load of a young woman who had been weighed down by her royal responsibilities. But it hadn’t worked out quite the way I’d envisioned—her demands and self-indulgence seemed to have grown out of proportion to how much work the doll could do.
“All right,” Minori-san said with a sigh. “Whatever we end up doing, we aren’t going to fix anything sitting here. First we’ll focus on our original objective, visiting Shinichi-kun’s parents. Then we can decide whether to head straight back to Yamanashi, get in touch with my superiors, or what. I guess that would be the right thing to do.”
“You think...?”
Frankly, I felt like I was in over my head. I couldn’t object to anything Minori-san said, and I didn’t have any better ideas, anyway.
Minori-san started the van. “Let’s go, then,” she said. “Quickly.”
After that, things went smoothly—no traffic, no ambushes—and a little over an hour later, we arrived at my house in Tokyo.
“So this is your mansion, Shinichi?” Petralka asked, observing my house from the van. “It is decidedly small.”
“Considering the housing situation in Japan...” I said with a thin smile. “But I guess it doesn’t look like much compared to Eldant Castle.”
My family lived in a free-standing house on the fringes of a residential district. Sitting on just over 165 square meters of land, it was a 5LDK (that is, five rooms plus a living area, dining room, and kitchen) with a garage. It was a little on the large side for a family of four, I’ll admit, but my dad had had it built in a fit of excitement when he got something of a windfall—back when one of his novels got turned into an anime. So it wasn’t like our family was especially rich or anything.
My dad was fond of saying that light-novel authors were basically nothing but gamblers, and it sounds like the huge swings in our family’s income from year to year made asset management and life planning a real pain.
Anyway...
“I’m going to open the door,” Minori-san warned us. Then she pressed a button, and the van’s automatic door slid open.
“Shinichi, I must ask—ereeu era ruoi tsuneriipu?”
And Petralka, who had been talking normally until that moment, was suddenly speaking a foreign language. Er, of course, what had actually happened was that the interpreter rings had stopped working. She had been speaking in Eldant all along.
It only took Petralka a second to notice the shift, after which she coughed discreetly and said, “Ahem. Shinichi, your par-entz, where shall they be?”
Obviously, she could have used the magic stone to keep speaking in Eldant, but our supply of backup magical energy was hardly limitless. We had decided, when we were around people who didn’t have rings anyway, to do our very best to speak only in one language or the other.
“My dad might still be in the hospital,” I said, “but at this time of day, my mom... I’m not sure.”
It was 3:30 in the afternoon, kind of a weird time: I suspected my younger sister Shizuki wouldn’t be back from school yet, and a lot of times my mom went shopping about now.
In other words, it was entirely possible the house was empty.
“Minori-san, I’ve been meaning to ask,” I said. “What’s my status over here? Am I considered missing?”
“Probably, I guess,” Minori-san said with a nod. “I don’t know the details, either, but I suspect they’re just treating you as a missing person.”
“Hmm... And then I just show up back at home all of a sudden? Might cause a commotion.”
Especially if my mom and sister came back to discover their supposedly missing family member just hanging around the house. Would they be angry? Annoyed? I just couldn’t say.
“Well, I guess we aren’t going to look any less suspicious just sitting outside the house here,” I said. “Let’s go in.”
I pulled a key out of my pocket. Sure, it dated from before I’d gone to the other world, but I doubted they had changed the locks.
I opened the exterior gate, and we walked up to the front door. I put the key in the lock and turned it... click.
Ooh. It opened. It looked like I was right about the locks.
“Uh... I’m home,” I said politely, but quietly, feeling very strange as I entered the house.
I almost said “Pardon me” instead—a sign, I guess, that I had started to think of the mansion I shared with Myusel and the others as my real house. To be honest, as familiar as this place ought to have been, I didn’t quite feel, well, at home here.
Depending how long it took me to find out what was going on with my dad, maybe my stay here would be short anyway.
I took my shoes off and started farther into the house. But then...
“Hm?”
I heard a sound from down the hallway.
“Hmm...”
The room down that way was my dad’s office. I could hear a voice of some kind emanating from it. A girl’s voice, but not Shizuki’s. And... was that background music?
What the heck...?
I frowned and started walking that way. When I reached the door to my father’s office, I could hear the voice more clearly.
After a moment, I knew I had been right: the sound was coming from some kind of video game. So many of them had voice acting these days.
But... it couldn’t be.
“Dad?”
He didn’t keep the door locked, so I pushed it open and peeked inside.
At that very moment—
“Argh! It sank! That was my trump card!”
The walls to either side were lined with shelves overflowing with books, figures, model weapons, and air guns. In the middle of it all, I could see a middle-aged man, his back to me, pounding his desk like a child having a tantrum.
“Dammit, after all the time I spent on this—”
Before I knew what was happening, I exclaimed, “What the heck are you doing?!”
Even as absorbed in his game as he was, he couldn’t miss this, and the man—that is to say, my father, Kanou Shougo, alias Kanno Shougo—twitched and turned around.
A look of shock came over his face. “It’s... It’s you...!”
For the record, my dad had a sort of square-ish face and wore glasses; a pretty standard “oldish guy” look. I’d heard that at his publisher’s parties he had a habit of wearing sunglasses, which in combination with his suit made him look like a yakuza gangster. But here around the house, he stuck to sweatshirts, which made him look like the classic hopeless otaku.
Like father, like son, eh?
But now—
“You idiot!” he said, getting out of his chair. “What are you doing here?!”
“That’s my line!” I said.
Gee, Dad! Sorry I came rushing all the way from another dimension when I heard you were in the hospital—just to find you playing games in your office!
“Aren’t you supposed to be in India on some journey of self-discovery?!”
“Self-discoverwhat?!”
“You left us a note!”
All I could do was groan. This had Matoba-san’s fingerprints all over it.
A journey of self-discovery in India, though? How slapdash could you get? Why India, anyway? Because I could potentially be there for all eternity? Because I would train in the mountains until the spirit of Devadatta resided in me?
And then there was another problem: my parents had actually bought all this?
“I just assumed you’d gone off to train, just like Rainbow Man,” my dad said.
“That anime’s practically ancient! Why would I pick that one to imitate?”
I had to admit, the fact that we were thinking of exactly the same thing really gave me a sense of the bond between parent and child.
And then...
“Ahum, Shinichi, sama?”
Hesitantly peering into my father’s office from behind me was Myusel.
She blinked, looking around the room—and then, at last, her eyes met my dad’s.
He was silent.
She was silent.
They just stared at each other.
Until finally...
“IS THAT REALLY A MAID?!”
Gee, that sounded familiar somehow...
More than shocked, more than surprised, my dad sounded... happy as he pumped his fist in the air.
I sensed that connection again, but this time, it felt more like a curse.
About half an hour later, we were sitting in the living room, and I was giving my dad the third degree—er, I mean, we were having a little chat.
“Yeah, I was in the hospital. For real.” He was slouched on the sofa, not seeming the least bit concerned or remorseful. “They rushed me in for a, whaddayacallit, a ureteral calculus. You know about those? They hurt, like, on a scale of one to ten, these are an eleven!”
“I guess I’ve heard of them,” I said evasively.
I stared at my dad, who seemed to be practically enjoying himself chatting about these ureteral whatevers.
According to him, incidentally, this sort of thing happened a lot to writers. He said he’d heard about one author who had way too much to drink at a publisher’s party, fell over, hurt his face—blood everywhere—and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. He figured, What the hell, and had begged his friend (also a writer, of course) to take his picture to prove he’d been in an ambulance. The EMT got super upset at the friend, who protested that he’d only been doing what he was asked.
All pretty pathetic, if you ask me. But anyway...
“There’ve been these great advances in surgery though, see? Depending on how big the stone is, they can get rid of it without even opening you up—not a scalpel in sight! They slam it with these, like, shockwaves that turn it to dust.”
“What, really?”
“You know it started as military technology for finding subs underwater?”
“No kidding? That’s bad-ass!”
“Isn’t it?!” My dad leaned forward. “You, my son, may call me the man who got hit with the shockwave weapon and lived to tell about it.”
“I’m not calling you anything. You would’ve gotten smashed to pieces,” I said with a sigh. “But look, the point is, it was no big deal, right?”
“Aw, yeah, no biggie,” he said nonchalantly. “I was only in the hospital for about three days. I decided that since I was there, I might as well get some tests done, and they didn’t like the numbers they saw. Doc told me to rest for a while, so I got my editor to put my stuff on hiatus. Told him it was for my health.”
“Uh-huh,” I groaned.
In other words, this wasn’t a complete false alarm, but he basically figured he could get some time off by pretending things were a lot worse than they were. True, though, I did get the impression that my dad was a real workaholic who could probably do with a nice, long break.
“Well, what was I supposed to make of what they put on the net?”
“Hm? Oh, that... Hey, you’re one to talk!” my dad said, jabbing me in the face almost audibly. “Disappearing off to India like that on some journey or whatever!”
“Argh! That was just—” But before I could finish, I felt someone tug on my sleeve. I looked over to see Minori-san pointedly shaking her head. I guess I was supposed to keep the secrets secret, even from my family. “...uh, something I feel bad about,” I concluded.
“Well, somebody transfers money into your bank account periodically, so we figured you were at least alive and maybe even had a job somewhere. Our kids always have been good at pulling it out in the eleventh hour.”
“My bank account? Money? Ahh...” That was when I remembered that as Amutech’s GM, I was theoretically drawing a salary.
“Just explain something to me,” my dad said, staring at me from behind his glasses. Or more precisely, staring at me... and Myusel, and Petralka, and Elvia, and Minori-san. “You disappear off the face of the Earth, and then all of a sudden you show up with four young women. One of them a maid, one a little-sister type, one a genki girl, and one an older-sister type, no less. What is this, a harem?! It’s a harem! Who do you think you are, the MC of some hack light novel?!”
“Look who’s talking!” I said. This guy wrote half the hack light novels around.
Beside me, the girls were having a whispered conversation.
“Sishi shi esu resafu fuo Shinichi,” Petralka ventured. So this is Shinichi’s father.
“Ti shi hikasu...” Myusel said. Seems like it.
Petralka: “Diidoni chi shi reu ekira. Itsuraisebuse egunaatsu chiibusu dona tokadonokku are ekira.” I see, father and son are much alike. They are both equally odd.
Elvia: “Reu.” Yep.
Um... I’m sitting right here. Remember I can understand you, okay, girls?
Finding out I was that much like my dad was... well...
But before I could come up with exactly what it was, someone called out, “I’m home,” as they came in the back door. A second later, a middle-aged woman carrying a shopping bag appeared in the living room where we were all sitting.
It was Kanou Sakiko. My mom.
“Shougo-san, I got you the Rental☆Madoka Ichiban **ji you wanted. It was the last one they—”
That was as far as she got before she stopped talking.
For what it’s worth, my mom’s a little on the short side, and her outfits skew stylish, but otherwise she’s a pretty typical “auntie.” She prides herself on looking, in her own words, about ten years younger than she is, but speaking as her son I can’t say it’s something that matters a lot to me.
There was a rustle of plastic as the shopping bag dropped the ground.
“Oh, uh, m-mom, I’m h—”
I heard a sharp exhalation, and the next thing I knew, I had been thrown upside down on the floor.
As another point of reference, my mom may have been an ero-game designer, but she took martial arts to avoid being too sedentary, and she could toss you around with techniques more suited to a street punk than a housewife. Family lore has it that when my mom and dad were dating, they were accosted by a trio of shady characters, whom my mom happily beat to within an inch of their lives. This, evidently, was what inspired my dad to marry her: “I thought, This is someone I can live with!”
I mean... wouldn’t you normally go running the other way?
But anyway, never mind.
“Uh, hey, mom—I mean, mother dearest?”
“Shougo-san, give me some rope—no, some chains!”
“On it!”
Argh, hang on, you two!
Geez, is that how you treat a long(?)-lost son when he comes home? Like a terrorist you have to subdue? Where’s the love?!
“Just let me talk—!”
“No talk! Shut your mouth!” my mom said, grinding my face into the floor. “You can try to use your Mental Pollution, but it won’t work!”
“Why would I try that?!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Minori-san watching in exasperation. Myusel, Elvia, and Petralka had all jumped up in astonishment, never expecting that I would suddenly be attacked by my own mother.
“I’ll never believe you’re the real Shinichi! The real Shinichi is a spineless coward who disappeared into his room just because he got shot down by his childhood friend Shouko-chan, and here you are with four separate women!”
“‘Spineless coward’? Screw you! You finally see your long-lost son, and the first thing you do is pour salt in his most traumatic wound? Some mother! Hey—how do you even know about that?!”
“You must be an alien, or a fairy, or at the very least some monster from another world—some unnatural fiend using Shinichi’s face! Show your true self!” My mother looked downright triumphant.
Wait—you think someone might be an alien, fairy, or otherworldly monster, and the first thing you do is throw them?! There was something wrong with her!
“I’m not any of those things! I’m telling you, I’m Kanou Shinichi!”
“That’s just what an imposter would say!” With what felt like an audible whooshing sound, my mother produced a piece of paper seemingly out of nowhere. She held it out, unfolding it, and I saw that it was a poster. “If you can step on this, I’ll believe you’re really Shinichi!”
“B-But that’s an Absolute Madoka-tan movie poster!”
Featured proudly on the poster was Madoka, the girl who had worked at a company so brutal that her eyes were finally opened to the worst realities of corporate life, and she had resolved to bring down all the most villainous companies of the world, climbed to the top of the political ladder, and become the magical girl Prime Minister—known as “Absolute Madoka”!
I’d heard they did a feature film after the TV series ended, but...!
“I... I can’t step on that!” I wailed, staring at the poster my mother had thrust down at my feet.
It was impossible. To step on Madoka-tan’s angelic face—the “Absolute Prime Minister” version smiling up at me from the red carpet, no less—I simply couldn’t do it!
“Huh,” my mom said, frowning as she stood there watching me agonize. “So it is you.”
“Geez, don’t sound too excited...”
She’d sounded happier when she thought some alien or [...] had shown up than when she found out it was her own missing son!
I mean... I guess I could understand. I was under no illusions about who my parents were. They could have, for example, tried cutting off my internet to get me out of my room, but instead they busted through the door with a chainsaw.
“Shougo-san, it looks like he’s really our son.”
“Seems that way,” my dad agreed with a nod.
And then...
“I’m home,” said yet another person.
Ah. That would have to be...
“Huh? Do we have guests?”
She must have seen the shoes in the entranceway.
Even as she spoke, my little sister Shizuki came into the living room.
She still had the same plain-ish, shoulder-length haircut, tied with a ribbon—as close as she came to a really distinctive piece of clothing—and she still had the same eyes, big but sharp, like a cat’s. People told me all the time that the family resemblance between us was obvious, but one thing I definitely did not have was her ability to intimidate someone just by staring at them.
Well, maybe Shizuki was as surprised as I was to be told we were similar. And it’s worth remembering that she was, in a way, the black sheep of the family—which in our case meant she was the one person otakuism hadn’t touched at all.
Now Shizuki stood frozen in the doorway. Five seconds went by, then ten.
Finally there was a thump as she dropped her school bag, much the way our mom had dropped her shopping.
Then, however, Shizuki’s gaze went from me to Minori-san, from Minori-san to Myusel, and then to Petralka and Elvia.
“Get a load of this, Shizuki. Shinichi is back with a whole bushel of brides,” my dad said with—was that a note of pride?
Um, excuse me! I think you’re inviting all sorts of misunderstandings!
Shizuki’s eyes worked their way back to me. Then she walked over to me at a brisk clip, looked up at me—I was still just a little bit taller than she was—and said:
“Excuse me, big brother?”
“Huh? Uh, yeah?”
Shizuki hadn’t called me “onii-san,” big brother, in years—in fact, maybe ever, and it put me on my guard. When she was a little kid, she had always called me “onii-chan,” Big Bro; and after she got to middle school it was “aniki,” just plain old “older brother.” And after I’d become a shut-in, she’d stopped calling me anything at all.
Now she said...
“Drop dead!!”
Also, she launched a powerful kick into my stomach.
“Hrgh?!” I exclaimed, doubling over.
Shizuki, now looking down at me, spat, “I take back ever worrying about you!”
“Shinichi-sama?!” Myusel said, she and Elvia jumping up from the sofa, but Minori-san held up a hand to stop them. Thankfully. Elvia didn’t even know about Shizuki—Myusel had at least seen her picture—and my little sister could all too easily have ended up attacked by a beast girl.
Shizuki left the room without another word.
What was it she had just said? She took back worrying about me? Did that mean... Did that mean she had actually been worried about me?
Had Shizuki been worried about me?
Honestly, now that I thought about it, her reaction was a lot more natural than either of my parents’. I guess she was, after all, the only non-otaku in the Kanou household, our one bastion of common sense.
“Hrrgh... Hrmm...?”
For the moment, though, sinking to my knees on the living room floor as I watched my little sister go, all I really felt was confusion.
And that was it.
I had to go over with my parents, again, the story of why I had gone missing for more than a year, and why I had suddenly come back with all these girls from “abroad.”
“To tell you the truth...” I began. My father had called my sister back into the room, so although she stood with her arms crossed and looking hugely angry, Shizuki was there. “A bio-weapon they were developing in America leaked out and infected me, giving me strange new powers and turning me into a mutant soldier, a living weapon that every country in the world wants to get their hands on...”
“Ah-ha, I knew it!”
“I kept thinking that’s what must have happened!”
My parents were both nodding along enthusiastically.
“What do you mean, you knew it?”
“Hello? It’s practically a cliché!” my dad said. My mother nodded in agreement.
I had come up with this nonsense as a test, to see how readily my parents would buy into what I said. The answer was: very readily. They didn’t question it for a second. Honestly, I thought they were a little too credulous. Although, to be fair, that was exactly what I had been counting on.
Only one person objected.
“That’s impossible! Be serious!”
It was Shizuki, who pounded the wall and shouted.
Hmm. I knew she wouldn’t be as easy as my parents. As the only non-otaku in the family, to her, clichés were something to be avoided, not embraced.
“Okay, the real truth,” I said, clearing my throat... and then I went into the story Minori-san and I had concocted ahead of time.
Here’s how it went: the royal ruler of a country I couldn’t name had taken an interest in otaku culture. Due to a whole lot of very complicated circumstances, though, that country had no diplomatic ties with Japan, and virtually no way to trade with us. Therefore, said country requested a Japanese envoy knowledgeable in otaku matters.
And that was me: Kanou Shinichi.
Because this nameless country turned out to be a major source of minor metals, the Japanese government was eager not to upset the delicate relationship they had with it. For that reason, a JSDF unit was sent on a peacekeeping operation to protect me, a civilian.
That explained Minori-san.
The ruler of this country, thoroughly engaged by otaku culture, had decided to sneak along when I came back to Japan for a visit.
And that explained Petralka.
However, she and I—she being the ruler and me being something of a VIP in that country these days—needed protection, so a couple of servants had been sent with us.
Myusel and Elvia, of course.
That, anyway, was how I explained it to my family.
“So your little friend here is a royal—the princess-sama?” my mom asked, taking in Petralka.
“Well, uh, more or less,” I said evasively. I didn’t point out that she was technically an empress, not a princess.
“I am profoundly sorry for all the worry your family has been caused,” Minori-san said, bowing. She was a knockout combo of JSDF soldier and grown-ass woman: way more convincing than I could ever be when it came to serious conversations like this. “On account of diplomatic and strategic considerations, however, everything we’ve discussed here is top-secret information. There was no way we could easily inform you of what was going on. Shinichi-kun has been well taken care of, but he was effectively there under duress. We were concerned about it becoming an international incident and upsetting our relations with the other country if we said anything publicly. The government at the time simply wouldn’t allow it.”
“I see...”
“But Japan’s leadership has changed, as you know, and with it our diplomatic attitude toward the country in question has shifted somewhat. The nation now treats Shinichi-kun as a proper national guest, and we thought this might be an opportunity to come home and try to obtain the assent of his family.”
Minori-san didn’t miss a beat as she went through the whole convoluted tale.
The “nameless country” was of course the Holy Eldant Empire; Minori-san and I had to make sure our story didn’t give away any actual secrets, but it wasn’t all lies, either. If you ignored the fact that we didn’t say anything about the hyperspace tunnel, or that Eldant was another world entirely, or that it was actually the Japanese government that had kidnapped me, then we had actually offered a fairly accurate description of my situation. If it was enough to keep the wool over my family’s eyes, then great.
“Hmmm...” My dad crossed his arms and made a thoughtful noise. “So in other words, Shinichi is an otaku evangelist.”
“Uh, well, I guess you could say that,” I nodded.
“Ah! Fantastic! Superb! Excellent!” my dad said, whipping open a fan he’d pulled seemingly from thin air. “You are truly your mother and father’s son! Two pure sources make a beautiful concentrate!”
“What are you, some kind of juice drink?”
“We’ll have to have celebratory red rice tonight!”
“...Ah, fine, do whatever you want.”
I busied myself shooting back at my mom and dad’s ridiculous outbursts, but privately I was breathing a sigh of relief that our ruse seemed to have worked. I looked over at Minori-san, who was giving me a discreet thumbs-up.
There was just one tiny little problem. Shizuki was obviously still unhappy.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, and left the room. I could hear her going upstairs, presumably to shut herself in her own room.
“Shinichi’s moth-er and fath-er,” Petralka said suddenly. She had listened silently to our entire conversation until that point. Now she was wearing her “empress” look—formal, self-assured, and unmistakably upper-crust. “Forone thing, our travells are incognito, and all-so spring from our own impulsse. We cann and must not mayk ob-vee-us use of our authority. We are well aware, that our visit is very su-dden, but nonetheless requeste the honor of lodging here for the nyte.”
My mom and dad looked at each other. Petralka’s pronunciation was still a bit hesitant, but her Japanese as such was virtually perfect. Maybe this would lend some credibility to my claim that the royal ruler was a Japanophile.
“But our house only had one spare room... and it was Shinichi’s.”
“No choice, I guess. We’ll make Shinichi pitch a tent in the garden.”
“Now just a second!” I wailed. “Why wouldn’t I just sleep here in the living room?”
“And have an animal like you under the same roof as these beautiful, pure—”
“Hey, I’m your son, remember?”
“Then answer me this: Can you honestly say you could lie down and wake up in the same room as these young ladies without getting any untoward ideas about them? That you don’t want to get all huff-puff on their shoulders or lick-lick at their necks or any other sexual harassment-y stuff like that?! That would cause an international incident, you know—an international! Incident!”
“Erm...” Well, he had me there.
“Anyway, your room is only six mats large, a classic rokujouma! We’ve got some spare beds, but getting four additional people in there—”
“Oh, I’ll sleep outside,” Minori-san said, raising her hand. “I have to keep an eye on the equipment, so I plan to sleep in the car.”
“Oh?” my mom asked, tilting her head questioningly. “Well, anyway, dear, this is Shinichi we’re talking about. I think it’ll be fine.”
“How d’you figure?”
“There’s no way he has the nerve to jump a young woman. Although I suppose he might get jumped himself.”
Silence hung in the air. I was tempted to ask them just what they thought of this son of theirs—but given that Elvia actually had attacked me that one time, I couldn’t really say anything.
And so...
“Okay,” my dad said. “Far be it from us to begrudge a few days in our house to our son’s friends. It’s not a big place—I think the royals among us are going to find it a little cramped—but if you don’t mind...”
Petralka bowed her head. “Mm. We are moste grate-full.” Then she nodded with all the imperial grace and authority she possessed.
“Ooh!”
The exclamation of surprise came from Petralka, her emerald eyes widening as she gazed at the tabletop.
“Is this—mah-gic? Reveoo ia kunisu taato eresu sou on aira fo repusu...”
Incidentally, that last part meant “I didn’t hear any chanting.” In her excitement, Petralka produced a stew of Japanese and Eldant. Understandable enough, I guess.
“Aw, it’s no big deal,” my dad laughed, a pair of cooking chopsticks in one hand. “At least, I don’t think so. That last part didn’t make much sense to me.”
“Princess Petralka? That’s your name, right? Do you not have hot plates in your country?”
“We do not!” Petralka said, sounding oddly important about it. Luckily, people thought it was cute, her getting excited about ordinary household appliances like hot plates, so she could get away with a certain amount of pomposity.
“Heck, they don’t have any electrical appliances...”
It had been about two hours since I’d given them the broad contours of my story and explained the (fake) identities of Petralka and the others. My parents decided that the way to welcome visitors from another country was with a big meal together.
So we had a yakiniku party, complete with hot plate.
It didn’t require too much preparation, and we could use ingredients we already had on hand. The only thing we had to buy was some seasonings and yakiniku sauce.
“This, I can put it here?”
“Thank you—that’s a big help.”
In the next room over, the kitchen, Myusel was helping my mom make rice balls. When she’d seen the rice cooker full of fresh rice, she’d said, “I will make o-ni-gi-ri.”
It seemed like Myusel wasn’t very used to being on the receiving side of service like this. She couldn’t quite settle down without something to do while the meal was being made. When my mom saw her pacing and fidgeting, she invited Myusel into the kitchen.
You might remember that Myusel and Elvia had been using a hat and a hood, respectively, to hide their ears—well, they still were. Obviously, it looked pretty strange to people raised in Japan, but we just fibbed that in their country, everyone but the royal family had to cover their heads.
“I think that should be plenty,” I heard my mom say. “Myusel-san, you sit down. We’ll eat soon.”
“Yes, okaa-sama.”
Mmm.
I’d seen Myusel make dinner plenty of times before, but... it was different, somehow, watching her in a stereotypical Japanese kitchen. Somehow, just seeing her there nearly made me embarrassed myself. It was strange. Almost like...
“I almost feel like there’s a sweet young bride in the house! And so much sooner than I expected.”
Yeah, that was it. That was how it felt. Like I was watching my wife and my mom happily cooking dinner together. It made me blush, but also feel oddly—wait, did she just call my mom okaa-sama?!
I swear Myusel isn’t actually my—
“B-ri-de?” Myusel, whether or not she had any idea how I was feeling, cocked her head curiously.
“Myusel-san,” my mom said, “how do you feel about international marriage?”
Myusel’s eyes went wide and she put her hands to her mouth and blushed (up to her ears, probably, but I could only assume), but my mom just sighed.
“Then again, with Shinichi for a husband, I guess you couldn’t count on much of a future.”
“I do not agree!” Myusel said. “Shinichi-sama, he is a most excellent and honorable person! In the country of ours, he is an essential person!”
My mother was silent for a moment. Then she squinted at me. “Shinichi,” she said.
“Yes, ‘okaa-sama’?”
“Tell me. Did you use drugs? Or hypnosis?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I want to know how you brainwashed this poor girl into believing—”
“I didn’t brainwash anyone!” I exclaimed, pounding the table.
Geez, didn’t they trust me at all?
...Okay, no, they probably didn’t trust the former home security guard. Very sorry about that.
“Good, very good!”
This expression of joy at the meat my father passed around came from (I probably don’t need to tell you) Elvia. Figures a beast girl would like meat.
“Shinichi-sama, very good!”
“Yeah, I heard you,” I said to Elvia, who was brandishing a sausage at me on the end of her fork. Admittedly, it was kind of funny to watch her eat.
“I’d be happy to switch places with you if you’d like, Dad. You’ve been doing all the cooking and none of the eating.”
This kind and considerate offer came, of course, from that paragon of mature womanliness, Minori-san. She even followed up by pouring my dad some beer. She looked like she’d done it a million times.
“Wow...”
“Something the matter?” Minori-san looked at my dad, who was clenching his fist as if transported.
“Shinichi, I think you should take this girl!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The boobs, the glasses—and she’s JSDF, so you know she’s good for a fight. I never imagined the day would come when such a perfect beautiful-girl character would call me ‘Dad’! Shinichi. I’m convinced: I was born for this moment!”
“...That’s family resemblance, all right,” Minori-san said with a smirk. Where had I heard that before...?
At the very least, she had refrained from exclaiming “Don’t call me a character!” or whatever, showing that she was definitely being polite to my parents.
In any event, we were all chatting and eating and enjoying the yakiniku.
There was just one person who hadn’t said anything the entire meal: Shizuki.
My little sister had sat there in sullen silence the whole time, helping herself mostly to the vegetables. I think our eyes met for about half a second, but Shizuki crimped her whole face into the meanest glare I’d ever seen, and I quickly looked away.
Man. I was on her bad side for sure.
To be fair, her older brother had gone missing for a year, then returned out of the blue with three women from “overseas” and one beautiful onee-san. She probably found it even less forgivable than me going home security guard.
“Most in-terr-esting this is, to cook bee-fore one’s own eyes and then to eat,” Petralka said, happily taking a bite of corn. Honestly, I’d been a bit worried about how someone as accustomed to the royal treatment as Petralka was would react to a yakiniku party, but it looked like I shouldn’t have worried. Most of her meals were probably prepared out of sight, and this seemed to be the first time she had ever watched her food cook.
“And while it’s still warm, to eat it thus—we never knew how fine it would taste!”
“Good, very good! Arfh?!” Elvia yelped as she reached to take some meat with her bare hands and brushed the hot plate.
I see, I thought as I watched her. It’s just like in the comedy routine “The Sanma of Meguro.”
Petralka was an empress, and her parents had been poisoned, no less. All the food she ate went by two or three different tasters to make sure she didn’t meet the same fate, and by the time it got to her, it was usually cold. That only made this quick, crude dinner all the more surprising and delicious for her.
We may not have planned on Petralka coming with us, but I’d like her to at least have a good time before she goes home, I thought.
Here, in a foreign country where hardly anyone knew who she was, might be her only chance to enjoy not having to be “Her Majesty, the Empress.” I felt bad for what Garius, Zahar, and Lauron must have been going through, but I also hoped Petralka could enjoy the break from her imperial duties.
“Shinichi’s father! Provide more!”
“Ha ha! As you wish, Princess,” my dad said pleasantly, piling more meat and vegetables onto Petralka’s plate.
Petralka and Elvia watched over the entire merry scene. Minori-san continued to eat with perfect grace. And then, of course, there were the women who had happily made us dinner and were now sitting down to eat themselves, my mom and Myusel.
Shizuki, the only one of us who didn’t look like she was having a good time, definitely gnawed at me, but worrying about it wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Instead, I reached out with my chopsticks for the nice, salted beef tongue in front of me.
What with this and that, it had gotten pretty late.
“So this is where you sleep, Shinichi,” Petralka said, looking around my room with interest. We had decided to go ahead and open a sprite bottle, closing the door and windows to keep the magic in, so we could use the interpreter rings to communicate. “We must say, it seems rather confined.”
“I told you, the problem is you’re comparing it to an empress’s sleeping chamber,” I said with a wry grin.
Again, my room was just six mats large, and contained both a desk and a bed. So even with extra futons available, four people was the most you could hope to fit in here. I had assumed one or two of them would sleep in Shizuki’s room, and maybe someone in the living room—but Myusel and Elvia had refused to leave my side (“I’m s’posed t’ be your bodyguard, Shinichi-sama!”), so Petralka had refused, too (“We shall also stay in Shinichi’s room to, ahem, help with bodyguarding”), and thus the four of us had ended up squeezing into my room.
Spending the night in the same room as three beautiful women struck me as—I don’t know, dangerous? But my parents had no real objection (remember the assumption that I was a spineless coward who could never bring myself to lay a finger on a girl), and Shizuki flatly refused to have anyone stay in her room, so that was that.
Minori-san, true to her word, was in the van outside. Apparently it had a bunch of guns and ammunition in it—necessary to keep me safe, she claimed—so she didn’t want to just let it sit out there by itself all night.
“Okay, you want to use the bed, Petralka? The rest of us can sleep on the floor.”
“Hrm? Are we to be an outcast?” Petralka asked, annoyed.
“Not really,” I said. “But somebody’s got to take the bed.”
“Hmm,” Petralka grunted, her arms crossed. Then she clapped her hands. “That’s it—a contest. We shall have a contest to determine who shall sleep on the bed.”
“What kind of contest? You mean like soccer?” Elvia asked, her eyes sparkling.
“Nonsense. This room is much too small for soccer. Ahem, we will have—what was it? The standard form of combat in these situations. We saw it in a manga we read at your mansion, Shinichi. Myusel, you were there; do you not remember it?”
“Combat?” she asked.
“Using the bedding, like so.”
“Oh! A pillow fight!” Myusel said, grinning.
Whoa, hang on, girls.
No pillow fights in a six-mat room, please! For that matter, think of the plastic models on my shelves! How is a pillow fight going to decide anything, anyway?!
“The victor shall have the right to determine their sleeping place!”
“Please, don’t, I’m begging you!”
“For our reference, Shinichi, where do you plan to sleep? In the middle?”
“I think that would put my galaxy in danger of ecstasy,” I said.
Sleeping smack between two gorgeous women? That sounded like a one-way ticket to a whole lot of very compromising situations.
“Hrm. But if we are forbidden to pillow fight, how then are we to settle this?”
“You don’t have to settle anything,” I insisted, but Petralka didn’t seem to be listening to me.
“We have another idea! Myusel, the answer is—that thing. You know the thing. It is supposed to be secret, but somehow always appears and causes trouble when the heroine comes to the main character’s room.”
“Oh, it’s, uh—do you mean erobooks?”
“Yes, that’s it! Ero books!”
“What are you two even talking about?!” I wailed, but my cries continued to fall on deaf ears.
“The first person to find Shinichi’s ero books is the winner!”
“O-Okay... I’ll try my best!”
“I’m all over it!”
“No, don’t try! Don’t... be all over it!” I exclaimed, but finally I heaved a sigh. “Okay, I’ll sleep by the spot closest to the door. Petralka, you and the girls figure out the rest of the sleeping places with rock-paper-scissors or something. Just... no pillow fights, and no ero-book searches.”
“Mm? Where are you going, Shinichi?” Petralka asked.
“Out. I’m gonna see if Minori-san needs a hot drink or anything. It’s still cold out at night.”
“Oh, we’ll join you...” Myusel and Elvia offered, but I shook my head.
“I’m only going out the front door, I’ll be fine. I need you to watch out for Petralka—for Her Majesty. She’s way more important than I am.”
“Shinichi...” Petralka blinked at me as if surprised—but she stayed behind when I walked out into the hallway.
There had to be coffee or tea in the kitchen, I figured. I was headed for the stairs when—
“Oh...”
I ran into Shizuki coming the other way. She had probably just been getting a drink before she went to bed.
We stood there, neither of us saying anything. It didn’t feel good. It was so... stiff between us.
I forced myself to put on a calm expression, act like it didn’t bother me. I slid past Shizuki and was just about to go downstairs when—
“Looks like you’re having a good time,” I heard her mutter. “All those girls hanging off you. Even though you’re an otaku.”
“Aw, what?” I said, turning back toward her. I had to admit, her tone rankled me.
Shizuki, though, didn’t turn to look at me. But she didn’t move, either, so maybe she didn’t plan to just ignore me. Obviously, I couldn’t see her face from where I was standing.
“When a person’s brother disappears, do you have any idea how worried—” Then she stopped for a second, thought, and finally sighed before she went on. “—any idea how much trouble it is? Believe me, it’s no fun.”
“Well, pardon me very much.”
“You could at least have let us know you were alive!”
“Er...” I scratched my cheek and frowned. Actually, I couldn’t have let them know. But I understood what Shizuki was saying. After a long moment, I just said, “Sorry.”
“Didn’t you...” Shizuki’s voice was a whisper, and she still wouldn’t look at me. There was a long, long pause before she finally said, “D-Didn’t you ever think I might blame myself?”
“Huh...?”
“Because... I just... because I kept... making fun of you, otaku this and otaku that... and then my brother... just...” Shizuki’s words were punctuated with loud sniffles, but I thought I could make out what she was saying. Basically, she had been afraid that I’d disappeared because I was sick of her mocking me. I’ll grant, it had been years since Shizuki and I had had a real conversation, since even before I’d shut myself in my room, so you couldn’t exactly say we had the best brother-sister relationship.
“No! God, no,” I said, trying to keep my tone light—why in the world would I run away just because my little sister wasn’t my biggest fan? But my attempt at lightheartedness seemed to backfire.
Shizuki looked back at me over her shoulder, her head turning so suddenly that I could practically see the sound effect: krak! “Then you should have let us know what happened! Do you have any idea how much everyone worried about you?”
It was hard to see her face in the dim hallway—was it just my imagination, or were her eyes brimming?
At that second—
“““IS THIS REALLY A DERE MOMENT?!””” three voices chorused in unison.
Wait—three voices?
As Shizuki and I both looked around blinking, my mom and dad appeared from their bedroom down the hall.
“Did you see that, Mom? Shizuki is walking the path of a real, true tsundere!”
“I finally see we really raised her right...”
Uh... Excuse me? I think this is literally the definition of wrong—maybe so wrong that it does a three-sixty and... becomes right again? Aw, forget it.
Shizuki, though, gave a long, inarticulate groan of frustration. “I hate that! I hate that sort of talk, and I hate the way you all do it all the time!”
Then she ran into her room and slammed the door.
“Oh, Shinichi. You’ve upset your sister,” my mom said, looking at Shizuki’s door.
“Don’t try to pin this on me!”
“You’re the whole reason she’s upset,” my dad said pointedly. “Shizuki’s not wrong, though. When you go back to wherever it is, try to keep in touch once in a while, eh? We weren’t that worried about you, but it was pretty inconvenient not being able to talk to you at all.”
“Gee, thanks, Dad. I’ll try to keep that in mind.”