Chapter Two: Operation Rescue Minori-san

It was morning by the time we finished straightening up the living room. I wasn’t too sleepy, though—maybe it was the few winks I had managed to catch, or maybe it was just the excitement—and I proceeded immediately to hold a strategy meeting with Myusel in my room.

“These are all the sprite bottles we have left...” I looked at the row of palm-sized ceramic jars. They looked strangely like bullets. I guess, in the sense that they allowed us to fire off our magic, they sort of were. “As for the magic stones, we should probably have as many on us as we can.”

“Shinichi-sama, there are still more.”

From my gun-nut father’s stash of airsoft equipment we’d gotten a field vest with plenty of pockets, which we’d stuffed with all the sprite bottles they would hold. Our fingers, meanwhile, were bedecked with magical stones, which we treated like accessories. There were still bottles and stones we weren’t able to keep directly on us; these we put in a backpack also procured from my dad’s stuff.

Once we were outfitted with every magic-supplying item we could manage, we discovered it was all pretty heavy.

“Is... Is this all of it?” I mumbled, looking around the room—and that was when I noticed the door was slightly ajar. Myusel had spotted it before I had, and was staring intently in that direction. And then...

“...Oops.”

Our eyes met hers.

“What’re you peeping at?” I said.

“I’m not p-peeping at anything!” Shizuki said from the crack in the door, through which she was clearly peeping. “The door just happened to be open! I just wanted to make sure my big brother wasn’t doing anything weird to Myusel-san, alone in this room together...”

“If you want to know what’s going on in here, then just come right in!” We weren’t doing anything wrong, and didn’t have anything to hide.

Er... except I guess it would be tricky if she asked what the bottles or the rocks were for. I still hadn’t used magic in front of my family. If worst really came to worst, I didn’t think I would be able to pass it all off by muttering about state secrets.

“It’s creepy to have you just peering in there,” I added. “It’s like some kind of horror movie.”

“You’re one to talk about creepy, you nasty otaku!” Shizuki exclaimed.

I let out a sigh, then looked down and went back to my preparations. Maybe I should bring the stun guns the agents had dropped? Or maybe it would be better not to fool around with weapons I didn’t really understand. Hmmm.

I kept mulling it over, but Shizuki didn’t go anywhere; she just stood at the door watching me.

“What do you want?” I finally asked.

“Huh? I, uh, I just...” She couldn’t quite come up with anything. Why was she here?

After a moment of what seemed to be intense thought, Shizuki looked first to the right, then to the left, then up, then down... anywhere except at me. She crossed her arms, obviously deeply uncomfortable, but finally she said softly, “I guess I... misjudged you. A little.”

“What...?” I said dumbly. I was completely shocked to hear her say that, when just a minute ago she had been accusing me of being a “nasty otaku.” So shocked, in fact, that I thought I’d misheard her. “C... Come again?”

“I mean the way you chased off those, like, spies from China or wherever. I always thought you were just a good-for-nothing otaku, but...”

I wasn’t sure whether it was worse to be a nasty otaku or a good-for-nothing one... but I guess it wasn’t exactly worth worrying about at that moment. More than anything, I was just stunned to hear Shizuki say that. She was practically complimenting me.

Hoping to act the part of the cool, composed older brother, I put a sort of wry smile on my face. “The truth is, I didn’t do anything. It was Mom and Dad’s security system that even gave us anything to put on Egao Video. And you were the one who helped spread it all over the web.”

Shizuki didn’t say anything, so neither did I.

I counted the bottles and stones in the vest and backpack one more time, made sure we hadn’t forgotten anything, then zipped everything up. “Okay,” I finally said.

Myusel appeared to be ready, too; we looked at each other and nodded. We seemed to be thinking the exact same thing, without saying a word to each other. It made me happy somehow.

I was just savoring that little thrill when...

“What are you doing, anyway?” Shizuki asked with just a hint of annoyance.

“Hm? Getting ready,” I said.

“Are you... planning something else?” As I hefted a backpack, Shizuki frowned and took a step into the room. “You scared off those guys. Isn’t that enough?”

“We have to go rescue the princess,” I said. “Er... although, she’s not a princess.”

“What?” Shizuki said flatly, furrowing her eyebrows. Now she was ticked for sure. Ah, I knew this expression. It was the same look she got when me and our parents were geeking out over something and she was the only one who wasn’t part of the fun. The look was part mocking and part angry. “That’s a really creepy way of putting it.”

“Wh-What’s creepy about it?”

“It’s the whole let’s-pretend thing. Like you’re in a manga or something. It’s stupid. That’s why I hate otaku.”

“Shizuki-sama...” Myusel looked distressed by Shizuki’s aggressive tone. She hated to hear me, her master, attacked like this, but the person doing it was my own younger sister, so Myusel couldn’t outright fight back—and she didn’t know what to do instead.

I guess to an outside observer, we would have just looked like two siblings fighting. But I didn’t really think of it as a fight at all.

“Shizuki...”

I faced her square on. She seemed a little surprised, but she didn’t look away, just blinked and held eye contact with me. I realized it had been years probably since I had looked her full in the face like this. After all, we had hardly even talked much.

“You’re right. Lots of manga and anime show someone defenseless or captured being saved.”

“Huh? Er, yeah, I... I guess...”

“But that’s perfectly normal, right?”

My sister didn’t say anything.

“It was manga and anime that taught me that,” I said as evenly as I could.

I didn’t mind if Shizuki said she hated otaku. Everyone had their own tastes and preferences, and if you were free to like whatever you wanted, then I thought you were free to dislike whatever you wanted, too. I didn’t want to force her to like anime or manga or games or anything.

But for some people, anime, manga, novels, and the like could actually be like a textbook, giving you some direction for how to live. At least, they had been for me. So if nothing else, I didn’t want her to act as if they shouldn’t exist.

“A teacher in elementary school told me once... Manga are books, too. If you read them carefully, you can learn from them.”

I could remember it like it was yesterday. Then, long afterwards, I had gone to Eldant. I had been used as a tool of cultural invasion. But that was all the more reason why I understood: the real question lay with the people who were being exposed to these things. It could be a poison—or it could be a cure.

This wasn’t just true of otaku stuff—pretty much anything could be that way, I suspected. It might seem so ordinary, so widespread, as to be beneath notice. And that was exactly why people would take it for granted...

Shizuki stood pouting for a moment, but she didn’t shoot back at me right away. She wasn’t going to pass off everything I said just because she had pigeonholed me as a “nasty otaku.” My guess was she was actually chewing on what I’d said, digesting it in her own way. I thought that explained the pout: there was still something there she wasn’t quite buying.

Gosh. This was all I had to do: talk to her. Why hadn’t I been able to do that during my days as a home security guard?

Despite the creeping sense of self-loathing, I smiled at Shizuki. “Shizuki, if you really thought I was just pretending... Well, I hope at least I looked good doing it.”

“What are you, an idiot?” she said instantly, still in a perfectly awful mood.

Wooh. I guess Shizuki was still Shizuki. I couldn’t expect us just to go back to the way we used to be; it was too much to think she might suddenly exclaim, “I love you, Big Bro!” Which I guess would be kind of embarrassing at this point, anyway.

I watched her leave my room, then turned to Myusel with a half-grin on my face. “Did you see that? I think she was actually worried about me there.”

“Yes, sir!” Myusel nodded, her face shining.

“All right, shall we go?” I asked, pulling on the vest and then the backpack.

“Uh—Um, Shinichi-sama?” Myusel grabbed my hand before I could walk out.

“Something wrong?”

“Well, uh...” Now that we were touching, the magic ring could work. Myusel lowered her eyes shyly and said, “Shinichi-sama, I think... I think you are always ‘cool.’”

For an instant, my mind virtually froze in a cascade of joy.

Her fingers touching mine seemed warm somehow; it was probably, I’m sure, most likely, just my imagination, so... on reflection, yes, it was just so we could talk, but here I was alone in my room with Myusel, holding hands, and I know maybe you’re like yeah what you’re just noticing this now? but still, uh.

“Uh, um... th—well, thanks...” I managed to squeak out.

Don’t be deceived, Kanou Shinichi! Myusel’s just reassuring you, she’s trying to counter Shizuki’s parting shot...!

Arrrrgh, she is just so sweet!!

.........etc., etc.

Anyway, things were what they were, so I kept insisting to myself that this was all there was to it, trying to slow the furious beating of my heart. I nodded at Myusel. “L-Let’s get going, eh?”

“Y-Yes, sir.”

We both nodded hesitantly at each other and left the room.

We found everyone in the living room. Petralka and Elvia were sitting listlessly on the sofa, but my dad had his laptop open and was typing away, while my mom and Shizuki had a tablet and a smartphone out, respectively.

Matoba-san, incidentally, wasn’t here; he’d said something about having to make a report and left. He’d said he would be back soon, but there was also something about not being able to call us because the phones might be bugged. Reito-san wasn’t in the living room, either. Maybe he’d gone home. Too bad: I hadn’t had a chance to thank him for all he’d done.

“So... Any luck?” I said, sitting down next to my father. “Did you find anything?”

Twitter was open on his laptop. I assumed it was the same for my mom and Shizuki. What were they all doing? Well... they were using Twitter to try to find information about Minori-san.

As some of the comments on our chasing-away-Chinese-agents video remarked, we were unquestionably internet famous now. We had been in that making-of video, and the trailer for the alleged fantasy movie. After all, that’s why there had been such a big crowd in Akihabara in the first place after news of our presence there went viral.

This was the age of a billion spies, when everyone had smartphones or mobile devices; you could find information anywhere and upload it to the net. That was doubly so when somebody happened to see the star of a movie somewhere—a movie that had aroused controversy (I thought) and whose stars were all debuting in this film, with no prior record of them anywhere. When people spotted someone like that, they tended to take pictures, and those pictures tended to end up online.

I’m not saying that’s inherently a good thing—there are all kinds of concerns about image-use rights and privacy and such—but in this particular case, we were willing to let it work for us. No matter how good that Russian agent was, they wouldn’t have just thrown a sack over Minori-san in the middle of Akihabara. Whatever they did—knock her unconscious, threaten her with a gun, force her into a car—there must have been people who saw it happen. Maybe even people who saw her when they moved her from the car to confinement.

“Aww, man, this is great,” my dad said, grinning and pointing at the screen. He was doing searches on terms like Akihabara, a certain movie, and sneak tourism. “Can you believe it? Shinichi, they’re saying, ‘Explode, you damn real!’ They’re saying, ‘Explode, you damn real!’ About you! It’s so important, I said it twice!”

“Why?!”

“Because you were walking around surrounded by beautiful ladies, obviously. No matter how you cut it, it totally looks like you’ve got a harem.”

The tweet he was talking about included a picture of me with Myusel holding one hand, Petralka holding the other, and Elvia riding on my back.

Yikes, they even got shots of that...?!

The internet was terrifying!

...Okay, this wasn’t the moment for such un-otaku-ish declarations.

“Fine, but what about Minori-san? Did you find anything?”

“All the searches just turn up tweets about your walk around Akiba this afternoon,” my mom said, still swiping at her tablet. “I tried searching by name, but I didn’t get anything.”

Well, that was understandable. If you could find the name Koganuma Minori just from a picture of her face, that would already put you on a level with the CIA or some other intelligence operation. Not something the average person could do.

“Searching for girl with big boobs and glasses gets some good stuff,” my dad said.

“Really? Let me see!” My mom said, leaning forward.

“Are you that interested in those pictures?!” I exclaimed.

As an ero-game designer, my mom had seen plenty of pop-idol swimsuit photo collections, nude photo shoots by actresses, and so on, so she had a pretty high tolerance for X-rated pictures.

“...Hey,” Shizuki broke in. “Isn’t this her?”

She set her phone face-up on the table so everyone could see it. We all leaned in.

On the screen was the ubiquitous Twitter app. And there was a photo, with the caption, “Spotted this lady with a huge rack in the love hotel district—and she was with a white guy!”

“The tweet is, you know, whatever. But isn’t that her in the picture?” Shizuki asked, enlarging the image attached to the post. It showed a white man walking through the love hotel district, accompanied by a woman. The quality wasn’t great, but it was definitely Minori-san.

“That’s her, that’s Minori-san!” I exclaimed.

“You found her?!” Petralka shouted, jumping up from the sofa. Myusel and Elvia joined her in rushing to look at the screen.

“Geeeez...” I said. Sure, this post helped us out—but you really couldn’t let your guard down for a second! You could be on an actual date, and someone could just sneak a bunch of photos of you and throw them up on the web. (Since people thought Minori-san was an actress, this apparently fell under what they considered to be the price of fame, a tacit understanding that it was okay to ignore her privacy.)

“And with a white guy,” my dad said. “That’s something.”

“How do you figure?!” I interjected before I could stop myself—but now wasn’t the time. “Where is this, anyway?”

I’m ashamed to say I had never so much as set foot in the part of town with all the love hotels—for that matter, I had never gone to a love hotel at all, so I didn’t have the first idea where this photo might’ve been taken.

“Looks like the time stamp is in the evening,” my dad offered, his arms crossed.

“Look at the shop with the sign back here,” my mom said. “Isn’t that—you know?” She was pointing to a big billboard just visible behind the hotel. It looked like some sort of fast food chain... “This place is pretty well known, but I think they just put it up recently. Hmm...” She fiddled with her tablet, pulling up what looked like the home page of the restaurant. “Yeah, here it is. Hmm, Shougo-san, let me use that computer?”

“Sure,” my dad said, passing the laptop to her.

My mom set it on her knees, her fingers flying across the keyboard even quicker than my dad’s. “Shinichi, do you know Minori-san’s cell number?”

“Huh? Uhh...”

My mom was working so quick, I could barely keep up with her. I pulled out my own cell phone and gave her Minori-san’s number. Then I watched, stupefied, as she worked at the computer. And then...

“Bingo.” After a wait that felt like forever, my mom stopped and nodded. “Minori-san’s phone was destroyed in the evening.”

“Huh?” How could she be so sure?

“It’s close to the time stamp on the post. So’s the location. I think that makes this post seem awfully believable, don’t you?”

“But... But how did you...”

What had she been doing with that laptop?!

My mom only grinned slyly at me.

Ahh. I knew that look. It was the expression of bliss she’d gotten long ago when I had cut some scheduled summer activity to attend a certain anime event, and she’d triumphantly given the timing of my playing hooky down to the minute. She refused to tell me how she had done it, but I’m sure she had analyzed the GPS signal from my phone. That wasn’t really something the average person could do, though...

“That’s Mom for you,” my dad said, slapping his knees.

Uh, was this really praiseworthy? It seemed like maybe we were awful close to the wrong side of the law. But I let those doubts pass through my brain without letting them out my mouth.

“Mom, could you look at that location in Google Street View?”

“I’m on it.”

We would compare the picture with Minori-san to the street view of the location where her cell phone was destroyed. If they were the same, we were locked on.

My mom turned the laptop toward me so I could see the screen. It showed the same place as the photo of Minori-san.

Deliberately imitating my mother, I said, “...Bingo.”

Now we had a pretty good idea of where Minori-san was being held. The only thing left to do was act.

I put on the backpack stuffed with sprite bottles, magic stones, and the captured stun guns and got ready to leave the house with Myusel, Elvia, and Petralka. My mom said the love hotel district in the picture was a bit of a hike, so we would catch a taxi someplace to get over there.

But just as I was reviewing all this in my mind...

“Huh?”

The intercom buzzed.

I looked at the terminal my dad had put in the living room, where the intercom’s camera revealed a man with parted hair, wearing a drab suit.

Of course, it was Matoba-san.

“Erk,” I mumbled. “This is no good.”

I was sure Matoba-san would try to stop us from going to help Minori-san. In his position, it was only natural. The whole reason they had classified Minori-san as already dead was so it would be easier to make her disappear in a situation just like this. I could even imagine him saying something like, “This was part of the plan all along.”

I stood there frowning.

“Hello? Kanou household.”

That was my dad, answering the intercom. He waved a hand at me, the sort of shooing gesture you might make at a cat or a dog. Let me handle this, he seemed to be saying. I guess he could tell what I was thinking.

“Oh—Matoba-san, wasn’t it?” he said. “What brings you here today?” He was playing innocent, buying us time.

“You guys, slip out the back door,” my mom whispered. “I don’t see anyone over there on the security cameras.”

“Mom...”

As my dad chatted with Matoba-san, continuing to hold him off, he typed something on his laptop, then turned it toward me: It’s incredible, Shinichi. You’re like the protagonist of a light novel. Now, go rescue Minori-san.

I was so grateful. I mentally thanked him, holding up one hand in a sort of prayerful pose towards my parents. Then I nodded at Myusel and the others. “Let’s go.”

We hustled out the back door as quick as we could.

Oh—but what about our shoes? By the time the thought occurred to me, I was already at the door. To my surprise, though, I found shoes—not just mine, but Myusel’s and everyone else’s—lined up there neatly, the door already open.

“Quick!” The urging came from Shizuki. She must have been the one who had brought the shoes over. I could see that the rear gate was propped open, too.

“Thanks, Shizuki.”

“Thank yoo.”

Shizuki didn’t quite look at us—I guess she felt a little shy with us thanking her in person like this—and then we slipped through the back door.

There was just one problem.

“If we don’t get out on the main road, there’s no way we’ll find a taxi.”

What taxi ever just went down a random suburban side street? I searched my memory, trying to recall where the closest well-traveled thoroughfare was.

“Yo.”

The voice sounded so free and easy—and it accompanied a car sliding into view.

A Subaru Impreza—a WRX STI, at that.

It was one of Japan’s representative vehicles, a model even I, with a minimum of car knowledge, recognized. The design wasn’t as flashy as a Supra, a Skyline, or a Fairlady Z, and the displacement wasn’t that big, but it was a textbook example of simplicity and quality, a restrained but immensely capable vehicle that had dominated world rally time and time again.

This one, though, was adorned with the images of Madoka and Manami-san from Rental☆Madoka. It was a so-called itasha, with artwork of the girls covering every surface: across the hood and on the doors they lounged in swimsuits and smiled coquettishly. It would probably make a (non-otaku) car lover weep.

“Reito-san...!”

Looking out at us from the driver’s seat of the ita-Impreza was Reito-san. I thought he had gone home—had he just been puttering around the neighborhood?

“Hop in,” he said, flashing us a smile full of pearly whites. Then he added by way of explanation, “It looked like things were going to keep getting more interesting, so I took the liberty of hanging around.”

“Well, thank you.”

“You can thank me later. Now—come on!”

I nodded to Myusel and the others, then opened the rear door and motioned them inside. Myusel got in, then Petralka, then Elvia. Finally, I jumped in the front passenger seat.

“So—where to?”

“Here,” I said, showing him the map of the love hotel district that I’d saved on my phone.

“Looks good. Seatbelts on!” Then he floored it. The Impreza launched forward like a bullet from a gun, my house receding quickly behind us.

That was when I noticed something: Shizuki had never gone back inside. She was watching us from the back door. As she vanished swiftly into the distance, I spotted a look of worry on her face.

Aaaargh, what was with her being so adorable?!

I didn’t know if she could see me or not, but I poked my head out the window and nodded to say everything was okay. She opened her mouth and might have been saying something back, but I couldn’t hear her over the roar of the accelerating Impreza.

The house got smaller and smaller, and then the car turned a corner, and I couldn’t see my home anymore.

It’s okay. Yeah. I’m sure of it.

I felt more like I was trying to convince myself than anyone else.

I swear: we will rescue Minori-san, together.

And then we would all go home.

We’re coming, Minori-san, I said to myself, and gave an uncharacteristically serious clench of my fist.

We arrived among the love hotels. It really would have been too far to walk, but with a car it wasn’t that bad. The streets were pretty empty, and our Impreza made it there in just over half an hour.

We got out and looked around. Considering the time, there was virtually no one there. Granted, half the places nearby were love hotels that were probably open 24/7. The rest were buildings dedicated to purposes I couldn’t fathom.

And somewhere among all of it was Minori-san.

We didn’t know what building or what room she might be in. Maybe we would just have to search them all...

“Hey, just a second,” Reito-san said—he had gotten out of the car, too—as I was about to walk off with a sprite bottle in hand. He pulled out his phone and did something. Was he looking something up? What could it be?

“Reito-san...?”

Finally satisfied, he held the phone at about eye level and nodded at us. “Yep. That’s the place.” Then he pointed—not to a love hotel, but to a three-story building standing next to one. There was no sign and it didn’t look very used; I would have believed you if you said it was abandoned.

“This building, it...”

“It’s where Koganuma Minori is being held,” Reito-san said confidently.

“Huh?! H-How do you know that?”

“Because it’s leased to a company that does business with Russia,” he said, again confidently.

Myusel, Petralka, and Elvia all looked at us perplexed, not quite able to follow what Reito-san and I were saying. The thing was, I didn’t understand much better than they did.

“How did you figure that out so fast?” Smartphone or no smartphone, that seemed like awfully obscure info to come up with so quick. Some people might suspect an owner with a Russian name, but the building of a company supposedly doing business with Russia? Not everyone would come up with that off the top of their head. I’d already thought Reito-san might be smarter than he looked, but this...

“Who exactly—”

—are you? I was going to ask, but Reito-san interrupted me.

“There he is,” he said and glanced over, his expression darkening.

“What...?”

I followed his gaze—and at that exact moment, I saw a white man emerge from the building and head in our direction. He was tall and very well-built. He had sculpted features, but was completely expressionless, like some kind of android. It was—

“Huh? Ah...”

Before I could stop him, Reito-san walked forward.

“What it is? What’s wrong?” Petralka asked, clearly concerned, but I had no chance to answer.

Reito-san had slouched up to the white guy and was talking to him. “Uhh, hey, sorry man, but I’m a little lost. Could you—”

The guy didn’t wait for the rest; he grabbed Reito-san. I didn’t know much about martial arts, but even I could tell that this wasn’t some get-em-by-the-collar intimidation tactic. He wasn’t just taking hold of Reito-san, he was trying to fold his entire body—clearly a joint lock on the way to a choke. So this was sambo at work, or maybe systema. In any event, some kind of Russian military martial art.

All of a sudden, though, Reito-san was no longer in the man’s arms. He took a half-step to the side, grabbed the man’s extended arm, and—

“Ah?!”

The exclamation of surprise came from Elvia. With her exceptional eye for movement, she was probably the only one who fully appreciated what Reito-san had done. As for the rest of us, by the time we registered what was happening, the white guy had already been slammed into the asphalt by the throw.

“No way!”

“Hrgh...” the guy groaned. This wasn’t like getting thrown onto a wood floor or a mat, something designed to help disperse some of the impact. Landing on solid ground would have been enough to put most people out of commission already (or so I had read in a book somewhere). The reason the police and even some military units learned the seemingly more subdued arts of judo and aikido, as opposed to more aggressive styles like karate or kenpo, was exactly because of their ability to overwhelm and control.

“Don’t move.”

Next thing that happened, the white guy discovered there was a gun stuck in his face. He froze.

Holding the weapon was Reito-san. He was standing a step away, the gun fixed on his opponent. Exactly far enough to react if the guy tried to pull anything, I guessed.

No matter how you cut it, this obviously wasn’t his first rodeo.

“R-Reito-san...”

He hadn’t looked especially athletic, and he had seemed like the textbook otaku. Now he had flung an obviously powerful man to the ground and was standing there holding a gun on him. It was a picture we couldn’t have imagined five seconds before, and all of us stared in shock.

“...Say good night,” Reito-san growled, and then he let loose with a vicious stomp on the man’s stomach. The Russian agent (I’m assuming he was) passed out without a sound.

And then...

“I figured this was the place,” Reito-san said, stepping back from the Russian and glancing at us. “Ready to go?”

I stayed where I was, about three meters away from him, and said, “Hang on a second, Reito-san. Who in the heck are you?” And I wasn’t going to be buying any more just-a-passing-otaku stuff.

“Just a passing otaku.”

“Don’t you have any other lines?!”

“Hm?”

“Okay, not the point—would a normal otaku have a gun?”

And not just any gun, but what appeared to be a pistol with a small silencer on the barrel—in other words, special-issue military stuff. I seemed to remember seeing the same kind of thing in my dad’s airsoft collection. A SIG Sauer P228—a German model favored by Japanese police Special Assault Teams and the Coast Guard’s Special Security Team.

In other words...

“It’s a model gun.” Reito-san tapped the P228 as if to say, Look, plastic.

“But... But you took down that huge guy so fast I hardly saw it.”

“Oh, I’ve loved martial arts since I was a kid. You’ve practiced the kame**meha, right? It’s pretty much the same thing.”

“Reito-san...”

He was laughing loudly in an attempt to throw me off. Finally, though, he looked at Elvia and Myusel standing beside me and sighed, apparently deciding this wasn’t the time for deception. “Just don’t one-hit me with your magic, okay?”

I caught my breath, and my questions turned to certainty. He knew about magic—which meant he knew about the other world. I admit, we had used magic in front of him once, but we had never told him what it was. It could have been some special martial art, or ESP, for all he knew.

“I’m not your enemy,” he said, the thin smile vanishing from his face.

“Okay, but what are you?”

“You know about the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office?”

I didn’t say anything. How could I? The words took my breath away.

We stood in two groups in front of the nameless building. Elvia, Petralka, and I were to the right of the doorway. To the left were Myusel and Reito-san.

This was the division we’d come up with while trying to make sure that both groups had someone capable of ranged magic and someone who could survive hand-to-hand combat. Elvia and Reito-san would be our front line of defense. Myusel and I would be there for support.

We didn’t speak. Reito-san nodded to us, then leaned over to peek inside.

I took an involuntary swallow. I could feel how nervous I was. To this point, it had always been the enemy moving against us, and I had been completely occupied with how to respond, but now I was going to go flying into the jaws of danger. Terror started wailing in a corner of my mind. A little late. There was no way we were turning back now.

I was standing there thinking vacantly about tracing the character for “person” on my palm—an old Japanese remedy for the jitters—when someone took my hand. Surprised, I glanced over and found myself looking into Petralka’s eyes.

She nodded at me as if to say both Calm down and It’s okay. I was sure she was as nervous as I was, but she was also an empress, and she knew how to appear under control. Looking into her emerald eyes, I somehow found her composure contagious.

I nodded back: Thanks, I’ll be fine.

She smiled a little and let go of my hand. I was just a little bit sorry about that.

I wished I could get back the sensation of her small, warm hand. I knew she had to let go; otherwise we wouldn’t be able to move freely. But still...

Silently, Reito-san gave us the signal. He pointed into the building, then held up his pointer and middle fingers. Two people inside, it meant.

We had devised a strategy, albeit a simple one, ahead of time. We would take a look in the building, and if there was no one at the entrance, then we would sneak in with Reito-san at the head of our group. If it looked like there were agents inside, though, then Myusel and I would burst in and take them out with our magic.

Evidently there were people in there. That meant Myusel and I were up.

Unlike a gun, there’s no explosion when you use Tifu Murottsu. And because it’s a ranged attack, you can get the opponent before he can get to you. Perfect for a situation like this.

I took one deep breath. Forcing myself to be calm, I glanced into the building.

Yep: there was a sort of lobby or reception area up front; I could see elevator doors farther in. Two white men were sitting in chairs on either side of the elevator.

I took a sprite bottle from my vest and lobbed it into the building like a grenade.

The men jumped up, alarmed. When they realized that the thing lying shattered next to them was just some kind of ceramic jar, they looked at each other in relief. They must have assumed it was a grenade at first.

Naturally, they couldn’t see the magical energy spilling out of the broken jar. It looked completely empty to them.

“Myusel!” I shouted.

“Yes, sir!” she said.

And then both of us jumped into the building.

The two guys were even more surprised to see us show up. We, however, were ready for them: we intoned the final words of the incantations we’d been reciting and held our hands out toward them.

“Tifu Murottsu!” we exclaimed together.

A violent wind erupted from our outstretched hands, a tornado that should never have existed indoors. It blew the men backward, slamming them against the wall. There were twin thumps, two groans, and then they both slid to the floor. They didn’t move again—they must have been knocked unconscious.

“We did it!” Myusel and I looked at each other and both clenched our fists, ecstatic about our success.

Look at us—we’re really strong!

That was probably giving ourselves too much credit—something we realized just a moment later.

Maybe someone heard the men crash against the wall, or maybe there were security cameras in there, but soon we heard rushing footsteps and voices shouting in a foreign language. Before Myusel and I could hide, four more men were in the room.

There was a lot more shouting (maybe in Russian?), and the men pulled their guns on us.

Two of them, however, were almost immediately knocked over by kicks from Reito-san and Elvia, who emerged from a hallway. Their guns went flying through the air. While Myusel and I had been dealing with the first two men, our close-combat troops had snuck in and ducked into the hallway.

Now Reito-san and Elvia were amidst our attackers. Two of them still had guns, but those were much harder to use in this chaotic situation. It would be too easy to shoot one of their friends—and in close quarters, a punch or kick is faster than trying to aim and shoot.

Of course, Myusel and I couldn’t offer backup, for the same reasons. So it was four agents versus our two friends—outnumbered two to one.

Aware of what had happened to their predecessors, though, the enemy obviously knew they couldn’t discount me and Myusel. With their attention divided, a punch from Reito-san and a kick from Elvia sent the men reeling.

And then—

“Fire!” Reito-san shouted, diving to the side. Elvia leapt in the other direction. Leaving just four vulnerable men right in front of me and Myusel.

“Tifu Murottsu!” we shouted again.

These four, like the first two, were slammed against the wall, grunted, and crumpled. Reito-san went over and gave each of them a kick for good measure. It looked brutal, but it was the only way to be sure they were out cold.

At last, silence descended on the building.

“Is it over...?” Petralka asked, peeking in from the entryway.

“For now,” I nodded, and she came into the building.

“Are these filth the foreign spies who kidnapped Minori?”

We could tell the area was filled with the sprites from the bottle because the magic rings were working.

“Maybe, but I guarantee this isn’t all of them,” Reito-san said.

I was sure he was right. Even if there were some intruders, it wouldn’t make sense to send everyone in the building down at once. They must have had at least one or two people keeping an eye on Minori-san.

By the way, Reito-san had a magic ring now, too. Matoba-san had sent an extra one with us, just in case—apparently one that they had brought back to Japan to study. Letting Reito-san communicate telepathically with Myusel and Elvia was going to make the rescue operation go a lot smoother.

“It’s too early to celebrate,” Reito-san said. “We can’t let down our guard.”

This was definitely the time to let a professional take the lead, so we put Reito-san at the head of our group and set out to search the building for Minori-san.

“I downloaded the registered blueprints for the building to get us started,” Reito-san said, looking at his cell phone screen. “I don’t think the Russians would have enough architectural expertise here to screw with the floor plan, so the rooms ought to be where we expect them. Meaning...”

Reito-san apparently had something in mind. The rest of us followed behind him, working our way up to a third-floor hallway. He pointed to a door at the very end of it. “...She’s probably in there.”

The door was closed, but there didn’t seem to be any guards in front of it. We came slowly, carefully closer, and finally Reito-san put a hand to the door. He gently turned the knob. I guess it wasn’t locked.

Reito-san didn’t say anything, but he turned back and nodded at us. Without waiting another instant, we piled into the room.

“Minori-san!”

Yes, she was there. The room was barren. Minori-san was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, her hands and feet bound. She must have been just clinging to consciousness, because when we came in, I could see her eyes widen slightly behind her glasses.

Thank goodness. At least she was safe.

“Sh—Shinichi-kun? And Myusel and Elvia... Your Majesty, even you...!”

“Minori-sama, are yoo oh-kay?!” Myusel rushed over to Minori-san and started working on her bindings, but they were tied tight and wouldn’t come loose.

“You let me! Let me!” Elvia said. She gave Myusel a little push to the side and grabbed the ropes... “Hrrrrrnnnggg!”

“Hey... Elvia?”

Was she trying to just tear them in two? No way, that wasn’t possible, no matter how strong you were. Not with today’s nylon ropes and such.

“Elvia, you don’t have to—ouch, that hurts!” Minori-san shouted.

“Ahh, I’ve got it, don’t worry,” Reito-san said. He produced a folding knife from his pocket and started systematically cutting through the ropes.

“Hmph!” Elvia snorted, but Minori-san was free shortly after. “Here!” She and Reito-san sliced through the rope around Minori-san’s legs, and soon enough she was free.

“Thanks, Elvia,” Minori-san said, massaging her wrists where they had been rubbed raw by the ropes. Myusel helped her to her feet and she looked at us again. “But why are you all here...?”

“Ress-cue!” Elvia said emphatically.

“Ress-cue...? You came to save me?” Minori-san almost sounded more exasperated than surprised. “I can’t believe you found me here.”

“My mom and Reito-san did all the work.”

“Reito...?” She looked at me, puzzled, and then at Reito-san, who was standing a step away from our joyous reunion, scanning the room alertly. Minori-san herself looked ever so slightly suspicious of him.

“Oh, uh, Reito-san is an agent from the government, or I guess CIRO, who’s here to protect us...”

“CIRO?” Minori-san raised an eyebrow.

“Well, more of a subcontractor, technically,” Reito-san laughed.

Incidentally, the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office was one of Japan’s intelligence agencies. Strictly speaking, it’s a division of the Cabinet Secretariat. In Japanese, it’s sometimes known as naichou (“CabInt”) or CIRO for short. It was originally established with the aim of being a Japanese CIA, but unfavorable public opinion and other criticism seems to have kept it from doing much in the way of gathering HUMINT.

“Just like your zombie unit, they want to be able to cut me loose anytime they need to. On paper, I’m not an official employee of CabInt. But let’s save the org chart for later. We need to get out of here.” Reito-san had his gun in his hand and was looking down the hall. “Tell me, Minori-san, how many agents are there in total?”

“I’ve confirmed nine.”

We had taken out one outside, two guards, and four reinforcements: seven in total. That meant there should be two more...

“Two of them were here until just a moment ago,” Minori-san said, pointing to a desk in the corner. A laptop sat open on top of it. “They were working on something on that computer. They looked pretty upset. Then they ran out of here.”

“‘A bird that takes flight leaves no tracks,’ huh?” Reito-san said, quoting a Japanese proverb. “That computer must be hooked up to the security camera network. When they saw their friends eating it, they wiped the most damning information and ran for it.”

“Oh... Makes sense,” I said.

Security camera tricks were hardly the sole domain of the Kanou household. You could tell these guys were professionals in part because they didn’t get obsessed with taking revenge for their comrades or something—when they saw the tide had turned against them, they just beat feet.

The upshot was that all our opponents were either unconscious or gone. There were no guarantees that those first casualties wouldn’t be waking up soon, though, so we didn’t have time for a lengthy reunion here.

“Minori-san, can you walk?”

“I’m a little tingly, but I can do it.”

A quick glance at Minori-san didn’t reveal any obvious injuries. Her clothes weren’t even too rumpled. They really had just tied her up. Then again, it hadn’t even been a full day since she’d been kidnapped, so maybe whatever they had been planning to do to her, they had been planning to do it later... Hmm.

“They didn’t... torture you or anything, did they?” I asked as we piled out into the hallway.

“Why do you look so disappointed about that?”

“I—I’m not disappointed. But they didn’t, like, beat you or tear off your clothes or anything?”

“Not once. They did drag me here and tie me up, though.” Minori-san shrugged. “I tried not to give them too much trouble. There was no way I was going to beat that many people.”

Minori-san might have been an accomplished martial artist, but even she couldn’t hope to overcome five or six grown men all likewise trained in combat. Invincible heroes who can single-handedly take down dozens of enemies without breaking a sweat are the stuff of games and manga.

But I had another question in mind. “Was it just that there were too many of them to fight? It wasn’t because they had two hot guys and you couldn’t bring yourself to run away?”

“What are you talking about?” Minori-san said.

Hmm. I guess my dream had been completely off. I was surprised to realize the Russian intelligence agency was apparently operating by the seat of its pants, not doing its homework. If I had been in their shoes, I would definitely have checked out Minori-san’s proclivities ahead of time so I could use them to make her talk.

Of course, if they had wandered into yaoi territory, all the Russian agents might have ended up brainwashed by Minori-san...

“...Shinichi, you do seem most unpleased,” Petralka said, glancing at me.

“Huh? N-No, I am not like that,” I said.

“Hoh?” Her eyes were cold. Minori-san seemed to be glaring at me too for some reason. She even had her arms crossed over her chest, as if she was hiding it from me.

“W-Wait! You don’t think I’m the kind of guy who would picture you in that sort of situation?!”

“I think I know you all too well, Shinichi...” Minori-san said, looking at me suspiciously.

Well, to be fair, I had thought about it.

“All right, come on,” Reito-san said. “We have to hurry.”

We exchanged small smiles—and then we all left the building. Just then...

“Shinichi-kun.” Minori-san came up close to me and whispered in my ear. I naturally slowed my pace, and she slowed down to walk beside me. “Don’t do something this foolish again—I’m serious. You know that if anything happens to Her Majesty, it’ll be a way bigger deal than one human life.”

“...Yeah.” Boy, did I ever know.

“But... thanks,” Minori-san went on. “Your big sis is actually sort of impressed.” She sounded almost... shy.

Aaahhhh?! How can she be older than me and still so dang cute?!

From Minori-san’s perspective, did I maybe, just maybe, look like a prince on a white horse (exaggeration)?!

Had the age of big boobs and glasses really come?! Had my dad been right?!

And so on and so forth...

“Shinichi! What are you doing?!”

Petralka, who was well ahead of me by now, must have sensed my inner moe turmoil, because she called out to me with thorns in her voice.

“S-Sorry!” I said. Then Minori-san and I looked at each other, and raced to catch up with the others.