Chapter Two: More than Just a Palette Swap

Chapter Two: More than Just a Palette Swap

Midnight... With the lights doused in the hall, a lone, barefoot figure crept through the house.

Looking furtively from side to side, trying to walk as quietly as possible. Attempting to be totally inconspicuous. Silent but swift, like a thief sneaking in for a burglary.

She finally reached the changing room and opened the door.

Perfect timing.

“Yo, Elvia.”

She caught her breath, startled by the unexpected voice.

Then the beast girl with the towel in her hand saw me and Hikaru-san. We had been standing there, trying not to breathe. I’m pretty sure she hadn’t expected to run into us in the middle of the night, least of all smack in front of the changing room. “Elvia” was completely alert now. Her expression seemed to ask, Why? How?

But we wanted to know the same things.

“Little late for a bath, isn’t it?” I asked, grinning.

“Elvia” was lost for words for a second, but then she swallowed once and got herself together. She nodded firmly. “Yes, it is.”

“Ohh. It is, is it?”

“Indeed it is.”

Then we lapsed into silence.

The moment was intensely awkward, but “Elvia” never lost her composure. Compared to how she usually was, she was way too cool, almost like a different person.

I kept up the not-saying-anything game, but “Elvia” finally demanded, “Is that all you wanted?” Then she stepped to one side to push past us, almost like she was trying to flee.

“Hey, hold on.”

“Yes, what?” she asked dubiously, glancing back over her shoulder.

“Aren’t you gonna take a bath?”

She went quiet again.

I couldn’t say what Hikaru-san thought of her, but he did go up to “Elvia,” put his hands on her shoulders, and gently turn her around. “Now, that won’t do, Elvia. You mustn’t shirk your duties.”

“Er...”

“Wha...?”

A sound of surprise came at Hikaru-san’s words: one from “Elvia”—and one from me.

Uh, Hikaru-san? I don’t remember this being part of the plan...

“It’s your job to wash Shinichi-san’s back, remember?” he said calmly.

“What?”

“I know I agreed to cover for you, but that was only while you were in Bahairam. Now that you’re here again, I’m turning his back back over to you.”

“His back... back...?” the beast girl asked cautiously.

“Certainly. Of course, it’s sort of a figure of speech—but I’m sure you know that by now.”

“Meaning...?”

“Well, you do the front, too.”

He spoke before I could get a word in edgewise.

Just a second. The front? What front?

I mean, I thought I knew which front he meant, but was my mind in the gutter or did the way he put it sound super, super dirty? I had to admit, just imagining Elvia washing my back was extremely hot, but...

Well, at least now “Elvia” would cry uncle and we could all just—

“I see. Let’s go, then.”

“...Guh?” I looked over in surprise to see “Elvia” looking very determined. “No... Hold on, I...”

She didn’t give me a chance to make excuses, but grabbed my hand and dragged me into the changing room. I tried to resist, but her grip was like iron—she probably could have crushed an apple in that hand. I had no choice but to follow her.

“Wha... Whaaaaaaaaat?!”

I looked to Hikaru-san for help, but he just gave me a friendly wave and showed no sign of doing anything to intervene. In fact, he was clearly enjoying this.

What was going on?! How could he do this, after he had acted so offended when he heard about me getting jumped by Elvia?!

“Hikaru-sa—”

Still I tried to call out for help, but the door slammed shut, cutting me off from him.

Now there was no way out, and little chance of help. I was trapped...!

“U-Um...!”

My only hope now was to talk down “Elvia” herself.

She let go of my hand. I turned toward her and—

“Uh, listen, this—aaaaahhh?!”

The rest of my words disappeared in the face of the pair of massive boobs that greeted me, as irrefutable as if they had a ba-duuum! sound effect above them. Considering how quickly you can whip off a tube top, maybe I should have expected this, but...!

“Uh, okay, so listen, okay, this...”

As I babbled, “Elvia” ripped off the rest of her clothes and threw them aside. In other words, she was standing there just like the day she was born—or to put it even more concisely, she was stark n-n-n—!

“What are you doing? Er, oh, I guess undressing is part of your duty.”

I stood there, frozen stiff. Elvia nodded as if to herself—and then set about undressing me too.

How did this happen...?

I was seated on a little wooden stool in the bathing area, staring as hard as I could at the wall in front of me and distracting myself by trying to count by prime numbers.

I was absolutely, completely cornered.

I had a towel around my waist, and there was a wall in front of me. But behind me was “Elvia,” buck naked, not even a towel. I had nowhere to run; it was never going to be that easy. A wall ahead and a wolf behind, you might say. Of course, had I wanted to, it would have been so easy to see—and be seen. See what, exactly? Everything, including “what.”

This was a situation I’d encountered in two dimensions plenty of times, but when I found myself actually thrown into the middle of it, boy, was I panicked and confused. I could hardly think. I’m not exactly the hardiest guy out there, and with this level of stimulation, I didn’t know my how from my where from my who was doing what.

This was the first time something like this had ever......... actually, no, it wasn’t.

Back when I had been kidnapped by Bahairam, my minder, a girl named Clara, had gotten into the bath with me. Come to think of it, she had hugged me from behind, and I hadn’t been able to think any more clearly than I was now.

Seriously, what was the story with Bahairam’s views on shame and chastity? Or were beast people just special that way?

“I’ll begin, then.” The beast girl behind me sounded as stiff as if we were starting a duel, not a bath.

No... wait. Begin? Begin what? Just washing my back, right? That’s all, right?

“Heek!” My confusion was pierced by the sense of something soft pressing against my skin.

Wasn’t she going to use a... cloth to wash my back...?

I could feel soap. Had she applied it directly to her hand...?

“W-Wait just a secoooond!”

Doesn’t washing someone’s back just involve running water over them?! Oh yeah, Hikaru-san mentioned both back and front—wait, not the point! What about a towel?! Maybe her country had a tradition of washing with hands instead of towels?! Even when you were washing someone else?! Was this some you-know-what-kind-of shop?!

My brain was already heated so hot it was shaking. (Meaning unknown.) Just having a naked girl this close to me was almost more than I could bear—having her sudsy hand on me, even just on my back... It’s sort of tickled, but it also felt really naughty.

Arrgh. No, no, noooo, I’m gonna......!

“Ah... Ah, ma... maybe we could...!”

I had to stop “Elvia” somehow, but my brain was such mush that I could hardly get any words out. Calm down, just calm down, self! At times like this, just name Prepure generations! Yes! Uhh... First Black, then White, then Luminous, Bloom, Egret, Dream, Rouge, Lemonade, Mint, Aqua, Peach, Berry, Pine, Passion, Blossom, Marine... argh, what’s after that?!

“T—Time out! Seriously, wait...”

I stood up abruptly, hoping to at least get myself away from the sensation of the hand on my back. But instead I lost my balance. Just as I was about to catch myself, I stepped on a piece of soap—and went tumbling.

What a clichéeeee!

The words never had time to make it out of my mouth. “Eeyikes!” I exclaimed, falling over. I twisted, just trying to do something—but there was no going back, and I found myself tangled up with “Elvia,” square on top of her.

Just to recap: I was naked. “Elvia” was naked. Even my towel had abandoned me... meaning there was nothing, not even a sorry piece of cloth, between us to keep our skin from touching, to keep the soft, warm softness from softly...!

Neither of us said anything.

Even “Elvia” couldn’t help being a little surprised by this turn of events; she looked up at me with a hint of a frown. I could only look back, still totally flummoxed as to what to do.

You could have heard a pin drop in the bathroom. Well, maybe I couldn’t have. My head was painfully full of the pounding of my heart.

“Elvia,” meanwhile, squeezed her eyes shut as if getting ready for something she knew was coming.

Ahhhhh.

Bad news. This was such bad news. Physically and mentally, I was at my limit. My limit! My limit, you hear?! I’ll say it once more: at my limit!

Absolutely, bouncing up against, explodendingnomore (too intense; transmission garbled). As the denpa song of the turbulence in my brain went on, I thought for some reason I could hear Elvia shouting something.

“Big Sister!”

The door came flying open. I looked up at the familiar voice to discover a girl running straight for me. She was small-built and had pointy, cat-like ears on her head and a fuzzy tail growing out of her behind.

The blood drained from my face.

What was this hell I was living?!

“C-C-Clara?!”

Clara Belberith. Weretiger and member of the Bahairam military.

What was she doing here?!

Actually, when I thought about it, it made some sense. She must have been hidden in a shadowy corner of the changing room, keeping an eye on us. She was never far from the “big sister” she adored.

This was extra, extra bad. In a totally different sense from before. I figured all Clara could see was that I had shoved her sister to the ground in the bathroom. I shivered to think what conclusions she would draw.

“This is all a misunderstanding...!”

I didn’t really have time to be shouting things like that. With the speed of a wild animal, Clara covered the distance between me and “Elvia”...

“How could you? Leaving me out of this!”

“...Uh?” I grunted.

The next instant, believe it or not, Clara started pulling off her own clothes.

No, wait! I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve said that already, but really, wait! What’s going on with you?! Aren’t you going to ram me off your “big sister” and save her?! Oh crap, I forgot—there’s one other person she likes almost as much as her big sister, and it’s me! She told me—ahhhhgh?!

“Clara, you’ve got this all wrong, please stop stripping!” I wailed. If she jumped on my back and I ended up crunched between two beast girls, I would finally I would I would ahhhhhh! “So you really aren’t Elvia, are you? You’re Amatena!”

“Clara!” “Elvia” exclaimed from beneath me.

Clara snapped to attention and stopped pulling her clothes off. Ahh! Now that’s an older sister! “Elvia” sat up slightly and said, “You fool! You gave us away!”

“You think she blew your cover?!” I put my hands to my head. Amatena genuinely seemed to think we hadn’t noticed anything until that moment. “Look... Amatena, Clara.”

Thanks to the sheer ridiculousness of it all, I was able to get my head straight for a moment. I let out a sigh and looked at “Elvia”—or rather, Elvia’s older sister Amatena and her subordinate Clara.

“Could you maybe start by just telling me what’s going on?”

It took about half an hour after that. It was well after midnight, but a lamp gave us light in the living room. Standing smack in the middle of which was Minori-san, her hands imposingly on her hips. Sitting uncomfortably in front of her were Elvia, Amatena, and Clara. Also, incidentally, myself and Hikaru-san. We hadn’t been given a choice in the matter.

“Okay, I’d like to start hearing some explanations,” Minori-san said. She was smiling, but you could almost see the vein bulging in her forehead, like in a comic book. I was a little worried about her blood pressure.

Uh-oh. Minori-san looks pretty darn angry this time.

The commotion in the bathroom had brought Myusel and Minori-san running not long after Clara had joined the fray. Minori-san, who had gone one-on-one with Amatena before, was understandably serious about controlling the situation. Specifically, she’d pulled her gun and informed the beast girls that if they didn’t follow her orders, she would shoot. Amatena and Clara had seen Minori-san and Myusel use firearms when they rescued me from Bahairam, so they were well aware of how powerful the weapons could be. Somewhat to my surprise, they turned meek as lambs.

Amatena and I (completely naked) and Clara (half naked) were at least permitted to put on our clothes, but after that Minori-san marched us straight to the living room. Hikaru-san, whose proximity to the events made him a suspect, was given the same treatment. Then there was Elvia, who couldn’t possibly be innocent in all this. So Minori-san had Myusel call her in, and here we were.

All of us were silent, completely overwhelmed by Minori-san’s anger. To my surprise, the first person to speak was Elvia.

“Uh—Um, uhhh...”

“Yes? You have something to say to me, Elvia?”

“I, uh, I’ve been secretly hiding Big Sis Ama and Clara here at the mansion! I’m very sorry!” She threw herself face first on the ground, so hard that her head clonked against the floor. It sounded pretty painful.

Minori-san regarded Elvia with an almost sleepy look, then finally said, “And?” She gave an exaggerated sigh.

“Uh? I—er, I’m not sure what...”

“We figured that out ages ago,” Minori-san said, sounding bored.

“Wha?!” Elvia was shocked, shocked. Amatena and Clara looked at each other, equally surprised.

“Shinichi-kun and Hikaru-kun and I all knew already. You were acting so strangely, how could we not have?”

Yes, we’d known that Elvia was hiding Amatena somewhere. To be more precise, we had strongly suspected—but it turned to certainty when we saw that photo Loek had taken. The only thing that actually surprised us was that we hadn’t realized Clara was even here.

“You’re much easier to read than you think you are, Elvia,” Minori-san said.

“Urgh...” She sounded a little taken aback to hear it put so bluntly.

Then Minori-san sighed again and looked at me and Hikaru-san. “More importantly... Shinichi-kun, Hikaru-kun.”

“Y-Yes’m?” I said, my voice going up an octave. Hikaru-san was frowning.

“We talked about this, remember? I said Elvia was hiding Amatena, and Amatena was probably pretending to be Elvia, and that we should wait and see how things developed... right?”

“Yes...”

“All right. So how did things develop quite like this?” She crossed her arms and stared us down, and we both wilted under her gaze. “I was worried that Amatena or Clara might attack one or both of you if they were discovered.” Both of them were beast people, with physical abilities that vastly outstripped our own. They were also both trained soldiers. In other words, they wouldn’t hesitate to use violence—and it was likely to be very, very violent if they did. I assumed they could easily kill either me or Hikaru-san barehanded if they wanted to. I had my doubts whether even Minori-san, who was an experienced martial artist, could beat them in a one-on-one fight.

“That’s why I was going to do a nice, gradual investigation of this.”

“Sorry...” I knew Minori-san was only angry because she was worried about us. I felt there was nothing I could offer but an apology. “I’m the one who suggested we ambush Amatena,” I said, deciding that honesty was the best policy.

We had done it almost as a lark—knowing we would probably never get another chance to see Amatena pretending to be Elvia. She was always so serious, it seemed like it might be fun to tease her... Seemed like.

Honestly, I didn’t really think of Amatena as a citizen of a hostile country. For one thing, she was helping us to smuggle in otaku goods... but she had been ready to pound a spike into my head at one point. Minori-san was probably of the opinion that we couldn’t consider her an unqualified ally, and she was right about that. Who worked with you and who tried to kill you could shift with changing circumstances. Amatena had snuck into our mansion, and there were no guarantees she wasn’t an enemy again. We couldn’t completely trust her until we had a much better grasp on the situation.

“And I kind of... egged him on,” Hikaru-san confessed, raising his hand. “I wanted to see this identical sister Elvia had... And as for who it was that caused Shinichi-san and Amatena-san to end up in the bath together... er...” Hikaru-san stumbled over the words for a moment, then went on, “I just... thought it would be funny to see Shinichi-san freak out.”

“And what did you plan to do if Amatena had a weapon hidden on her?”

Hikaru-san didn’t have an answer for that.

“Or if she had tried to kill Shinichi-kun, since her cover was blown anyway?”

Well, in that case, I would have just been dead.

“...You’re right. I’m really sorry.” There was no hint of Hikaru-san’s usual confidence or condescending self-assurance as he apologized.

Hikaru-san had heard the story of my kidnapping, I assumed, but he hadn’t witnessed it. The very existence of Bahairam as an enemy nation to Eldant was probably something he only knew by reputation. So he probably didn’t fully appreciate how dangerous Amatena could be as an enemy—what might happen to us if she really got serious.

Minori-san glared at us for a moment longer, then said, “Thankfully, at least things didn’t get any worse than they did.”

I guess she figured scolding us more wasn’t going to do any good. Her shoulders slumped and she looked away from me and Hikaru-san—back at the Bahairamanians.

Elvia was understandably subdued, and even Amatena and Clara were behaving themselves. Maybe they were waiting for Minori-san to let her guard down—or maybe they’d never intended to attack us. Given how things had gone, I had to think it was the latter.

“Amatena Harneiman and Clara Belberith, as I recall.” The two of them nodded silently. “What would two operatives from the Bahairamanian military be doing here? What’s your objective? The specifics, if you please. I can’t rule out the possibility we may have to hand you over to the Eldant authorities.”

Yes, we had known that Elvia was keeping the other two women here. The question was why.

“...Elder Sister,” Clara said, looking questioningly at Amatena.

Amatena give the smallest of nods, then met Minori-san’s eyes. “A massive purge has started in Bahairam. We were among those under suspicion.”

“Purge...” Gosh, that sounded dangerous. “But... suspicion?”

“We escaped by the skin of our teeth, so we don’t have any details, either. But corruption in the military has been an issue for some time. Embezzlement, misappropriation of supplies. I think our superiors finally decided to bring down the hammer, and it looks like they took me for part of the problem.”

“But why would they—”

“You can’t imagine why?” Amatena said, looking at me with a hint of annoyance. “We’ve been smuggling in ‘otaku goods’ that you sent us.”

“Well, yeah... but...”

It was true, I had been using Elvia and Amatena to supply Bahairam with otaku products—principally manga with translations written in next to the word balloons—but just as an experiment. Just to see how people would react, what might happen. Amatena wasn’t getting any kind of personal benefit from it.

“Corruption and abuse of power... That could apply to just about everyone, right?”

“That’s not the point. If top brass ever found out that we had been engaged in unauthorized trade with citizens of an enemy nation, they could charge us with sedition against the Honored Father-Ruler, and we would have no defense. If I were in the MPs’ place, I wouldn’t listen to my excuses, either.”

So, she told us, they’d had no choice but to flee. And for good luck or ill, the day they decided to run was the very day they were supposed to meet Elvia to pick up another shipment of goods.

“And then I told ’em,” Elvia said. “I said Shinichi-sama, he would help hide them.”

“Oh... So that’s what you were trying to bring up...”

That day, back when she had come home from Bahairam, Elvia had been trying to say something to me. She must have been hoping to talk to me about Amatena and Clara. She must have thought I would be able to give them refuge somehow. But before she could bring it up, Minori-san and Hikaru-san and I had started talking about the fraught situation between Eldant and Bahairam, and had even emphasized that any Bahairamanian military forces found in the area might be executed.

It was probably Elvia’s first inkling of how precarious Amatena and Clara’s situation was. Bahairam wanted them as criminals. Eldant would treat them as enemy combatants. But it was too late to flee to yet another country...

“I knew you would help, Shinichi-sama, but then I thought ’bout what would happen if Her Majesty found out and... and I knew I just had to do it myself...” Elvia hung her head. “I’m real sorry.”

It was a pretty reasonable thing to think. Elvia had just been trying to protect Amatena and Clara in her own way. Granted, it was her own personality, totally unsuited to deception as she was, that had given them all away. But still...

“Huh?” Suddenly, something odd occurred to me. “Why would Bahairam be attacking Eldant if they’re busy conducting show trials?”

A moment when your internal politics are at a boil is hardly the time to go attacking other countries.

Amatena, though, shook her head. “I’m speculating somewhat, but... those border skirmishes may actually be intended as a smokescreen to distract your country from our domestic strife. A period of unrest offers a perfect opportunity for another nation to attack, so Bahairam may be putting on an aggressive front as a means of defense.”

“That makes sense...”

I thought back on Garius’s comment about small squads getting in small battles. It turned out Bahairam was actually in no position to engage in larger-scale conflict. A series of small incursions would look like probing in advance of a major attack—but it was all a sham.

“All right. I understand what brought you here, but...”

I knew now why Amatena had come to Eldant, and what was behind the border disputes. But the biggest problem of all was what to do next. Amatena and Clara were not my enemies at this moment. They were just refugees, chased out of their country on false allegations, running to be with Amatena’s sister. But they were also criminals who had once kidnapped me. If the Eldant Empire found out these two were here... would Petralka or Garius be willing to overlook that fact?

I really doubted it.

This wasn’t like the case with Elvia, who hadn’t done any actual harm. The fact that these two had infiltrated Eldant territory and led a squad to within a stone’s throw of the capital, Marinos, was impossible to overlook. Not to mention that they had then proceeded to capture a national VIP (that is, me). The Empire’s reputation might take a hit if it decided to just ignore that.

One thing was clear: we couldn’t hand Amatena and Clara over to the Eldant authorities. They hadn’t kidnapped me out of malice, but simply because they were ordered to; they hadn’t had anything to gain. They weren’t bad people. And more than anything else, Amatena was Elvia’s older sister. I couldn’t tell Elvia to just abandon her.

For a long moment, Minori-san stood there, silent, frowning. She seemed to be thinking about the same things I was. Elvia looked anxiously from one of us to the other and back. Even Myusel did the same, though she technically didn’t have a stake in this situation. Hikaru-san had a hand to his chin, mulling it over.

What should we do? What was best? What was right?

I wracked my brain, desperate to find an answer that would relieve the tension in the room.

We were back at school after the break, and cameras continued to be the hot thing in the classroom. Most kids were still shooting with their 3TSes, but a few of them could be seen with specialty digital cameras like the ones Loek and Romilda had, though no one knew how they had gotten them.

Professional equipment, though, took a lot of effort to learn to use right—it was tricky to take pictures that everyone could and would recognize as good work. In that sense, Loek and Romilda, who had gotten their cameras earlier and gone nuts with them, had a leg up on everyone else. Now the other students surrounded them as they proudly showed off the photos they had taken at the mansion the day before.

It was break now, and I was watching the students a bit distractedly. My head was full of what to do about Amatena and Clara, and to be honest, though I might have been looking at the kids, I wasn’t really registering what they were doing.

“Shinichi-sensei!”

So before I knew it, I found a crowd of them around me. It was pretty diverse: boys and girls both, of different races. But every single one of them had either a 3TS or a digital camera in their hands.

“Wh-What’s up?” I said, coming back to the moment.

One of the students stepped forward to speak on behalf of the group. “At the next break, let us photograph your house too, Sensei!”

“...Huh?” I said dumbly. Other students added their voices in a chorus:

“It’s no fair only Loek and Romilda get to do it!”

“I wanna see Hikaru-sensei’s closet, toooo!”

“I want to check out your otaku goods, Sensei!”

Every student seemed to have something they wanted to see.

Ahh... After Loek and Romilda showed off their photos, the others naturally wanted to shoot the mansion, too. It probably didn’t hurt that at my place, like at school, they wouldn’t have to worry about their batteries.

“It’s okay, isn’t it, Sensei?”

The students pressing around me looked at me with expectant eyes. Some of them had clasped their hands together and were bowing to me. What was with these displays of absolute and total passion? Was this how far cameras had come?!

“Er, uh, well, okay. Sure.” I nodded, overpowered by the collective student gaze. I had let Loek and Romilda in. I could hardly turn down the other pupils.

“Woo-hoo!” The students cheered, punched the air, and high-fived each other.

Hmm. All right, so I had essentially capitulated to group pressure, but when I saw how happy they were, I couldn’t help feeling good myself. “Is it that great? There’s nothing really special there.”

“That’s so not true!” the kids responded. “This is you we’re talking about, Sensei—your room must be full of posters and body pillows and stuff, right?”

“I’ll bet you’ve got it set up so you can reach your computer without ever leaving your bed, don’t you?!”

“I heard you have a special portable bathroom called a PET bottle!”

“What was it you said you do when you need food? Knock on the wall?”

“Dummy. That’s the floor! It’s a ‘floor-knock’!”

I keep thinking I’m used to this place, but then I’ll hear an elf using a word like ‘floor-knock,’ and it’ll all turn surreal again. I can practically hear the sound of my beautiful illusions shattering. But anyway...

“Where did you even learn a word like that?!” I exclaimed. “And for that matter, don’t you think it’s kind of mean to apply it to me?!”

They weren’t wrong: during my shut-in days, I had made sure my manga, drinks, and other stuff were all within arm’s reach so I didn’t have to leave my bed. But still!

“Awesome! We’ll see you at the next break, then, Sensei!”

“I can’t wait!”

The kids weren’t listening to me at all; they were too busy cheering and congratulating each other. They looked so earnest, so sincerely thrilled, that even I couldn’t suppress a smile.

In Japan we have an expression, “Clothes make the man.”

“Welcome home, Shinichi-sama, Minori-sama, Hikaru-sama.”

When we got back to the mansion, we were surprised by the adorable maids who came out to greet us.

“Nice to be back, Myusel.”

One of them, needless to say, was Myusel. She was in her maid uniform as always, her sweet smile an oasis for my heart. Her very existence was like a balm to me. She was the person from this world I’d known longest of all, and even though she was my maid, it still felt fresh and new every time I saw her.

“Welcome home.”

Standing beside Myusel was an expressionless beast girl.

It was Clara, showing no obvious discomfort at being dressed in a maid uniform. The design was the same as Myusel’s—kind of French-y, kind of maid-y, with her thin shoulders peeking out just a bit. From one perspective, you could call it a little inflammatory: there was enough skin showing to be a bit provocative, but in Clara’s case the effect was almost comical, like a girl who had gotten into mommy’s closet.

Anyway, there was also the little fact that the clothes Clara had been wearing when I first met her had been far more revealing.

“That looks good on you, Clara,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said with a little bow. The green hair bobbed on her head, but I couldn’t see the catlike ears that were a distinctive feature of weretigers; they were hidden by a frilly headdress. What we could see instead was a pair of pointy elf ears.

They were fake, of course. To be precise, we were using the headdress to hold her real ears down, while she wore these fake elvish ones instead. We were going with the story that Clara was a relative of Myusel’s.

This was, clearly, a move born of desperation. If we ourselves had discovered Amatena and Clara in barely three days’ time, well, it didn’t seem like we were going to get away with just hiding them. We didn’t have any setup for that, for one thing, and our house had a lot of visitors. Eventually, someone was bound to notice them—as Loek’s picture of Amatena proved.

Just as clearly, though, we couldn’t ask them to live in a storage room forever, either. So why not set them free in the mansion? It was the most obvious non-obvious thing to do.

Amatena was one thing; she looked exactly like Elvia. But with Clara, it wasn’t clear at a glance where she came from. So if we dressed her in a frilly apron and said she was our new maid, she might be able to fly under the radar.

There was just one little problem with this plan.

The mansion where we lived was not, technically, our property. Strictly speaking, the Japanese government was borrowing it from the Eldant Empire. We couldn’t just add boarders or servants willy-nilly. We had to let the owners know—which meant telling Petralka. We would certainly be expected to provide some kind of proof of who exactly Clara was.

The Holy Eldant Empire, though, wasn’t looking for the same kind of proof as an organization in modern Japan would be. A good word or an introduction should be enough. Thus, Clara became a young elf girl looking for help from her “distant relation” who was working in a mansion on the outskirts of the capital—namely, Myusel. For the time being, we were employing her on probation, sort of like Myusel’s apprentice.

Clara was wearing one of Myusel’s maid uniforms, as modified by Hikaru-san. We hid her tail inside the skirt. Her ears, as I mentioned, we tucked under the headdress, replaced with a set of elf ears imported directly from Japan.

Er, by which I mean Hikaru-san had brought them with him in case of cosplay.

“Man, these things look so real,” Hikaru-san had said with a big grin as he pulled them out of their box. They looked a little too real, if you asked me. Less like a cosplay prop than something out of a horror movie. The skin was like... I mean, at a glance, you seriously couldn’t tell whether they were real or not.

“Japanese cosplay technology, hoo boy,” Minori-san said with a wry grin. “They’ve got to be approaching Hollywood levels.”

“Well, the Japanese would put all their skill and resourcefulness into something like that,” I said. I couldn’t imagine another country that would even think to try to make, say, cat ears that moved in response to your brain waves.

Still... with her ears and tail hidden, and augmented with elf ears and a maid uniform, Clara looked every bit the adorable elvish maid. But...

“Yes?” Clara asked, tilting her head.

“Huh? Oh, no,” I said.

There was just something... off. Yes, she looked like a maid, but she didn’t feel like one. I thought it had to do with her expression. Clara rarely showed emotion, kept her hands smack at her sides, and always stood ramrod straight. It screamed soldier, and it didn’t look very friendly. If Myusel were just standing there, she would have her hands folded in front of her, radiating a sense of composure. And if her eyes met mine, she would smile sweetly. These thoughtful little gestures were what made a maid a maid. Then again, Myusel had served in the military, too, so maybe it was just a matter of getting used to it.

Whatever the case, a quick comparison between the two of them made it clear that it took more than clothes to make a maid.

“Clara-san.” Myusel seemed to have sensed the same thing herself. “As a maid, you ought to be mindful of the language you use when speaking to your master,” she advised in a bit of a chiding tone. “Also, when your master comes home after a long, hard day of work, you have to be sure to greet him properly. Your hands should be in front of you, not at your sides—place them one over the other just below your navel.”

Rather than biting back, Clara obediently followed Myusel’s directions, placing her hands in front of her. She looked a little awkward doing it, but that was understandable.

“I’ll go get dinner ready, then,” Myusel said, looking back at the rest of us with a smile. Then she gave a little bow, turned neatly, and walked into the house. Clara—she was an apprentice maid, remember—followed her “mentor” a second later. The rest of us watched them go.

“I feel like I’m seeing a new side of Myusel,” I found myself musing. Someone who hadn’t known her very long might not have noticed, but there was a hint of strength, even severity to her that day. Watching her tell Clara how to act, she didn’t sound like the retiring young woman I was used to.

Was it like in the proverb? “It takes a student to make a teacher”?

“You don’t suppose it’s her pride as a maid?” Hikaru-san said. “The girl’s wearing a maid uniform and is supposed to be a maid. Myusel wouldn’t want her besmirching the good name of her profession by not living up to standards.”

That made sense. Those two factors—professional pride and mentorship—combined to put an edge on her. This little act wasn’t just for fun, it was about keeping Clara safe, which was all the more reason to take it seriously. From that perspective, the behavior was actually very in-character for Myusel.

“A bit of whip-cracking will be perfect. Clara is supposed to be here to learn how to be a maid, after all,” Minori-san said, and I nodded.

“You’re right about that.”

The moment we arrived in the kitchen, Clara-san looked me right in the eye and asked, “What should I do first?”

“Oh—take care of this, please,” I said, pointing to a basket full of potatoes. “I’d like you to wash and peel them.”

“Understood.” She nodded and took the basket to the sink, sort of pattering as she went. It was a fairly large basket and must have been rather heavy, but she carried it as if it weighed next to nothing. I suppose it goes to show how much power is packed into the body of even a small beast person.

Clara-san didn’t talk much, and wanted something in attitude, but she seemed quite skilled at cooking and cleaning... Honestly, from a practical perspective, I felt there was very little I had to teach her. In fact, I was finding her to be quite a help at my chores.

It was just...

I was chopping vegetables, too; as I did so, I kept glancing at Clara-san.

“Yes...?”

I guess she noticed. She cocked her head at me even as she shook the basket to wash the potatoes.

“Oh, no, it’s nothing...” Yes, she was supposed to be my “apprentice,” but I realized too late that even so, stealing those little peeks at her was probably rude. So I gave a quick shake of my head, then changed the subject in an effort to dispel the tension in the air. “Er, so what was life like for Shinichi-sama while he was in Bahairam?”

It was my understanding that during his captivity in Bahairam, Clara-san had been chiefly responsible for Shinichi-sama’s care. The only thing Shinichi-sama himself would tell me, though, was that he wasn’t mistreated. He had never shared with me any details, or anything specific that had happened.

“He was in my care while he was in Bahairam,” Clara-san said, picking up a small paring knife and peeling the potatoes in a series of quick motions. “Shinichi-sama was not allowed to leave his room without Big Sister’s permission, so I was charged with seeing to his needs.”

I didn’t say anything immediately. Did that mean she had been doing... more or less the same job as me? I didn’t know why, but the thought produced in unaccustomed ache in my chest. It was a very strange feeling.

“Is... Is that right?” I nodded, forcing myself to start chopping again. I’d stopped without realizing it. I filled a pot with water to boil the vegetables.

“I would start by inquiring whether he wanted food, a bath, or me.”

“What?!” There was a clang as the pot, full of water, slipped out of my hands and struck the counter. Luckily, only a little of the water spilled over. “So... So that means... you and... you and Shinichi-sama...?”

“We bathed together.”

“Wha...?!”

I was embarrassed by the scratch in my voice, so obvious in contrast to Clara-san’s toneless affect. It practically made me sound upset.

“Together, as in... the two of you...?”

“Yes. That is what ‘together’ means,” Clara-san said with a nod. Her face stayed expressionless... but I couldn’t help thinking I saw a hint of triumph there. I finally looked down at my hands, unable to hold her gaze. My face was reflected in the water in the pot, which was still settling. The distorted image of my features looked hideous to me, so ugly it made my chest hurt.

Shinichi-sama bathed with Clara-san.

No. It was more than that. She had been looking after him all the time he had been in that room, unable to leave... the two of them, all alone, every waking moment... and presumably every sleeping one, too.

I was silent.

“Myusel-san.”

I still didn’t say anything.

“Myusel-san. What’s next?”

“Huh? Oh...” Clara-san brought me back to reality. Before I knew what had happened, she had neatly peeled our potatoes. “Uh, n-next, then, cut these, please. Into large chunks.”

“All right.”

I took the potatoes from her and exchanged them for a basket of vegetables. These, too, she washed quickly, and soon they were on the cutting board. The frills on her headdress and apron shook in time with her cutting.

Come to think of it, I remembered Shinichi-sama telling me he liked maids, and smiling. We had only just met. I seem to remember him exclaiming in joy when he first laid eyes on me, “IS THAT REALLY A MAID?!” I think that’s what he said.

According to Shinichi-sama, a girl became thirty percent more attractive just by putting on a maid uniform. It seemed there were many things that could improve a girl’s looks—glasses and a tail were apparently among them—but for whatever reason, Shinichi-sama seemed quite taken with maid outfits.

He had been so kind as to praise me on several occasions, so that I myself had become rather attached to what was in principle simply a work uniform. If it made Shinichi-sama happy, I began to think, I would wear it forever.

But... so what did that make Clara-san at this moment? How did she look in Shinichi-sama’s eyes? Although they were hidden right now, she had several of what Shinichi-sama referred to as “moe points”—her beast ears and tail. Added to her maid outfit, wouldn’t that make her look exceptionally attractive to him?

“Yes?” Clara-san asked again, once more tilting her head at my gaze.

“Oh, n-nothing!” I said, shaking my head.

A strange feeling of gloom was gathering inside me. Was it a good idea... to let Clara-san continue to wear that uniform...?

I didn’t know exactly what was right, and what was wrong. I couldn’t articulate anything concrete, but my feelings were starting to get away from me.

“Sigh...”

This state of mind left me vulnerable to mistakes. I lifted the pot, which I had refilled, and put it on the fire, determined to focus on my cooking.

While Myusel and Clara were making dinner, the rest of us gathered in the living room. Two Elvias stood in front of me and Minori-san where we sat on the sofa.

Obviously there weren’t actually two of her; one of them was Amatena, dressed up to look like Elvia. I knew that perfectly well, but I couldn’t resist the impression that I was seeing double. We had hidden the most obvious differences between the two of them. In other words...

“Well, there you have it,” Hikaru-san said proudly as he took them in. In his hand he was holding... hair spray.

That’s right: Hikaru-san had used hair spray to turn Amatena’s silvery-white fur, ears, and tail a brown color like Elvia’s.

“What’s this?” Amatena murmured, gazing at her newly brown tail. We hadn’t really told her the specifics; we’d just gone to work on her fur with an unfamiliar tool. Even the normally unflappable Amatena was understandably surprised.

“It’s something from our country that lets you change the color of hair,” I said with a smile. “I don’t think you can stay here forever, but you’ll have to hide out for a bit while we figure out if you keep running or what. The easiest thing to do was to make you look like Elvia.”

Hikaru-san added, “About this hair spray—if you shampoo yourself in the bath, it’ll come out, but it shouldn’t run if you just sweat or get a little damp. We’ll have to redo it each time you bathe, and it won’t be great for your hair, but it’s better than a total dye job.”

“You wouldn’t want to use too strong a coloring on her tail or anything,” Minori-san said.

“At least it’s better than paint.”

“Sorry about that...” Elvia said, deflated.

While she had been hiding Amatena from us, Elvia had been using paint to cover her sister’s fur. But her paints were water-soluble, so a bath—or even a good sweat—would take them right off. The sweat droplets might even wind up colored. Like Hikaru-san said, this colored hair spray was by far the better option.

Elvia looked over at her sister, amazed. She reminded me of the doll we’d had made of Petralka, so much that I almost wanted to ask them to pantomime each other. As we sat there staring at them, though, Amatena narrowed her eyes at me. “What?”

“I was just impressed. You two look like twins.”

“You think...?”

“He’s right,” Elvia said with a nod. She’d been living with us, which was to say with Japanese culture, for a while, so she was slightly less shocked than Amatena by what Japanese products could do.

“Want to see? I’ll bring you a mirror,” I offered.

“I have a better idea,” Hikaru-san said.

“Huh?”

He pulled out his phone, aimed it at Amatena, and waved with his free hand. “I’ll take a picture. Look this way! Elvia, line up next to her?”

“Sure thing!”

“Wh-What’s going on?” Amatena was distinctly unclear on what was happening.

Hikaru-san snapped away. Then he called up the picture he’d just taken and held it out for the girls to see. “There. Twins, right?”

“What’s this...? A mirror? No. Magic? But...”

“It’s called a photograph,” I said. “This is from our world, too. You guys really do look alike, don’t you?”

“Yes... So we do...”

Confronted with this irrefutable proof, Amatena finally saw that she and Elvia looked almost identical. Or maybe, now that there was no difference in their fur color to distract from it, she was noticing that even the cast of their facial features was virtually the same.

“I do foresee one problem with Amatena playing the part of Elvia,” Hikaru-san said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“They may look alike, but if they don’t act the same, this little charade won’t last.”

“Ahh...”

It sounded so obvious when he put it that way. Minori-san and I looked at each other. It was the same problem we’d had with the Petralka doll. Everything—expressions, gestures, tone—had to be the same, or the jig was up. For better or for worse, Elvia tended to be very expressive; the polar opposite of her withdrawn sister.

“Things are already tense between Eldant and Bahairam,” Hikaru-san said. “Amatena has to look and feel exactly like Elvia so there’s not a hint of suspicion.”

“Well, sure, but...”

“And on that note,” Hikaru-san said with a clap of his hands, “I’d like to get started teaching Amatena-san to perform!”

Amatena, startled, looked around at us as if she didn’t quite understand. But honestly, the rest of us had figured Hikaru-san might say something like that. When we had been trying to get Lauron, the girl running Petralka’s body double, to imitate the empress, Hikaru-san had been the one to instruct her in the finer points of gesture, expression, and tone. He had an excellent grasp of what to emphasize and what to suppress in order to fool other people.

“Teachin’ her what?” Elvia asked, not quite grasping the situation. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen the work we did with Lauron, so maybe she didn’t know exactly what was involved.

“Teaching her to act her part, you know? Like, making her walk with a book on her head, how to drink soup without slurping. That sort of thing.”

“That’s just teaching her to be polite, Shinichi-san, and it has nothing to do with what we’re after this time,” Hikaru-san said with calculated coldness.

“Oh, uh, I was just giving examples, you know?”

“I don’t think Elvia would have any problem walking around balancing a book on her head,” Minori-san said with a half-smile.

True enough: with her athletic abilities and sense of balance, Elvia could probably run with a book on her head and not drop it. But Amatena, a fellow werewolf, probably could too.

“Getting back to the point,” Hikaru-san said with a cough. He took in Elvia and Amatena together with a gentle smile. “I’ll need your help, Elvia-san.”

“Uh, sure...” She looked a little anxious. She probably knew by now that nothing good ever came of Hikaru-san smiling like that.

“Okay, let’s get started. First, Amatena-san, pretend you’re Elvia and give Shinichi-san a big hug.”

““.........Huh?”” Amatena and I said in perfect unison.

“Uh, Hikaru-san, I’m not sure what you’ve got in mind, but...”

Hikaru-san, completely ignoring me, said, “Come on, you have to pretend to be Elvia. If you can’t even do this much, they’ll find you out in no time.”

I really didn’t think Amatena had to give me a big hug to maintain her cover. In fact, why was this even necessary?

“...Very well.” Amatena nodded and walked toward me. She might be stubborn, but she was still a soldier. When duty called, she would answer, in spite of any personal qualms. And at this moment, Hikaru-san was effectively her drill instructor.

No, wait! I’d like to raise an objection!

Amatena wrapped her arms around my body, completely wooden.

Ahh. Yes, there may have been clothes between us, but that plump chest, that bountiful chest, I could still feel it pressing against me, and I didn’t know whether it felt good or made me feel bad or... But Amatena kept pressing herself closer and closer, totally oblivious.........er, uh, Amatena-san. I think that’s a little too tight...

We’re moving past the hug stage here...

“Wait—that—ow! Ow ow ow!”

No response.

“My back! You’re gonna break my back! My spine is going, here!” I could detect a creaking from my backbone as the hug—now practically on par with a boa constrictor—continued. “Amatena—Amatena, I’m begging you!”

“Yes, what?”

“This isn’t a hug! It’s strangulation!”

“A hug is simply the prelude to a choke technique, is it not?”

“No, it—yowowow!”

Hoo, that’s a soldier for you! They see things a little (very) differently!

“Amatena, I’d like you to release Shinichi-san, please.” At Hikaru-san’s instructions, the hug from hell finally ended. “I would classify that as ‘not Elvia.’”

“...Really?”

“Really. Your turn, Elvia. Show her how it’s done.”

“Huh? Can I?”

“Sure. Go nuts.”

“Uh—? Nrgh?!” I had been rubbing my back like a grandfather nursing his old bones, when I found myself bowled over by a body slam from Elvia. “Hey—!”

“Shinichi-samaaa~~!” While I was still grimacing with pain, Elvia landed on me in a crushing hug. “Shinichi-sama Shinichi-sama Shinichi-sama!”

She nuzzled my chest and neck happily. And as if that weren’t enough, she even started licking my face. If she had been saying “Arf” instead of “Shinichi-sama,” she would have been the very picture of a puppy greeting its master.

My back hurt even worse now, but, well, for this sort of hug, maybe it was worth it. Plus, with the two of us pressed together, Elvia’s bountiful chest pressed just below my solar plexus, and it was somehow sort of... it was like it might or might not maybe touch my ecstasy......

“E-Elvia, watch out, this is really—!”

I started to squirm, hoping to pull away from her just a little bit.

“Now that’s Elvia,” Hikaru-san said placidly, ignoring my struggles. “Give it a shot, Amatena.”

“You want me to do that...?”

“Uh-huh. We need you and Elvia to be indistinguishable.”

There was a moment of what seemed to be reluctance on Amatena’s part, but her expression was neutral again, and following Hikaru-san’s instructions, she glommed onto me.

Oof. My mistake, trying to sit up. It exposed my back. Since Elvia was still hanging onto the front of me, Amatena came at me at an angle from behind, wrapping herself around me.

Oooohhhh...!

Now the meat in a beast girl sandwich, I was starting to sweat. Elvia and Amatena both had generous chests, and both of them were wearing tube tops—basically underwear. Like, shoulders out there, collarbones out there, midriffs out there, we’re talking practically naked. And I hadn’t been expecting this, so I was just wearing one thin shirt. It was the only thing defending my rationality from assault.

Ahh, but those soft boobs, the boobs, they came from in front and behind, from in front and behind, and so even so I so...!

Crap, uh-oh, oh no! This was getting dangerous. I could end up losing my dignity—specifically, the dignity between my legs!

“Okay! Now stay right up close to him and start nuzzling his face and head!” Hikaru-san ordered, clearly having fun. The two girls obeyed him immediately.

Noooo you can’t, stoooorrrffff!!

“Dammit Hikaru-san, you’re enjoying this, aren’t you!”

“Who, me?” he said innocently, and looked off into the distance. But I spotted his lip and cheek trembling. “I’m just trying to teach a person to act.”

“Why, you—! Arrgh! Minori-san!”

Yes, Minori-san! Minori-san would save me! She—

“Shinichi-kun,” Minori-san said, looking down at my hand outstretched desperately for help. “Lucky you. A beast girl harem! ☆”

“Some bodyguaaaaaard!”

Even she was obviously amused by this. Giving me a big thumbs up, she pulled her phone out of her pocket.

“...Wait, Minori-san, no pictures! You too, Hikaru-san! Argh, Elvia, not there! Nooooo?!”

...And so it went.

I wasn’t finally released until a good ten or fifteen minutes later, after Hikaru-san had had his fill of making me a dog toy.

After dinner and a bath, I sat down at my computer in my room to sort out the photography seminar I was going to do at school. I wasn’t even sure yet if I was going to run it as a special course outside of our normal classes, or somehow add it to the general curriculum. Since not all the students had a 3TS or a digital camera, making everyone sit through the class would be kind of pointless.

So how to approach this?

As I was thinking over my options, I heard a knock at the door. It was probably Myusel with my evening snack. A glance at the clock on my computer, though, showed she was a little earlier than usual.

I got up and opened the door, and found myself confronted with... not Myusel, as I’d expected.

“Amatena? What’s up?”

Instead, it was Amatena, who was wearing Elvia’s clothes. She must have just come from the bath, because her hair was back to its normal white color. It wasn’t like we were expecting any visitors at this hour, so it was probably fine.

“There’s something we must discuss. Are you available now?”

“Er, yeah, I guess, but...”

I motioned her into my room and sat down in my chair. Amatena, though, didn’t take the other chair I pointed to; she stood in front of me and bowed her head.

“Wh-What’s wrong?”

“You have my thanks for hiding me.” Her tone was indifferent, but her words were unmistakable.

“Aw, don’t worry about it. C’mon, stop bowing. It really isn’t a big deal. Not to mention, it’s a little early to relax. You aren’t the most convincing Elvia in the world.”

Incidentally, Hikaru-san might have started his so-called training by teasing me, but he did settle down and give Amatena some genuine advice on how to act like Elvia. Even so, the stiff, precise Amatena found it difficult to behave quite like her sister. It wasn’t something she was going to pick up in an evening. For the time being, we decided that when there were visitors, we would hide Amatena in her room, where she would try to stay away from the windows.

“I guess it would be hard to act like Elvia no matter how good an actress you were,” I said. “Seeing as she doesn’t even know how to lie.” I smiled a little.

“That is certainly true.” I was surprised to hear Amatena sigh. “She gives herself away at every turn, to say nothing of every word. Everything shows on her face. That’s the worst thing about her.”

I guess, from a soldier’s perspective, Elvia left something to be desired in terms of surviving in a society built on competition.

“But I really feel... relaxed when I’m around her,” I said.

“Relaxed?”

“It’s like, I know she’ll just say what’s on her mind... She’s so open that I never feel like I have to dance around anything with her, I guess...”

It could be surprisingly hard work to be around flatterers all the time. Knowing that the person you were with would just say whatever was on their mind—it had a way of putting you at ease. All right, you didn’t want someone who would literally say anything—who would be mean or constantly teasing you or whatever. A little bit of restraint was necessary. But still.

“Hmm...” Amatena crossed her arms and frowned thoughtfully.

“‘Cool beauty’ is great and all, but if you always go around looking aloof, or like you’re about to kill something, it can make people worry about what you’re thinking—”

Speaking of thinking, I really hadn’t before I said that. I quickly cut myself off, afraid Amatena would feel I was being critical of her. But she didn’t seem particularly bothered. The only hitch was that she didn’t seem to get what I meant by “cool beauty.” Well, she could probably figure it out from context.

“Yet...” Amatena’s face remained impassive. “To allow your thoughts and feelings to show spontaneously is a vulnerability.”

“A vulnerability...?”

“Something your opponent can exploit. That’s why Elvia has no future in the military.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“You and your foe are constantly trying to read each other. To know the enemy without allowing him to know you—there’s nothing more fundamental,” Amatena declared.

Hmm...

I understood what she was trying to say. When you were face-to-face with an enemy, you couldn’t be too obvious about what you were thinking. And that didn’t just go for when a Bahairamanian soldier was facing down an Eldant knight or something—someone from another faction in your own organization could be just as much your enemy. If ‘having a future’ meant winning those sorts of encounters, then there was no question that a face like an open book was a disadvantage.

“But doesn’t that make you tired?” I said softly.

“Tired?” Amatena cocked her head as if I was speaking a foreign language.

“Yeah. I mean, emotionally.”

She paused. “I don’t understand.”

I looked up at Amatena from my chair—and then I had a thought. I beckoned her over. She came around the desk toward me, and I turned my computer so she could see it.

“Look at this.”

“At what?”

I pulled something up on the screen—a photo from the training session earlier that Hikaru-san had sent me. It might have been taken on a phone, but the resolution on those tiny cameras was nothing to sneeze at.

“But this is...”

The photo I was showing Amatena was the very first one we had taken of her, her face a mask of surprise. It showed none of the cool composure she normally put on; it could have been the face of any young woman.

“The way you look here. It’s... cute. I guess I mean, it puts people at ease.”

I considered that a compliment, but if I had been hoping to get a “Is this really me...? (blush!)” reaction by showing Amatena a new and attractive side of herself, I was disappointed. The Bahairamanian soldier just frowned.

“I look completely defenseless.”

“Well, look, if you never have an unguarded moment... it’s kind of like saying to everyone you meet, ‘I don’t trust you. You’re my enemy.’ And it sort of stings to be treated that way.”

Amatena didn’t say anything to that. She just blinked, as if it had never occurred to her.

“I just want you to know that not everyone is going to take advantage of you the moment they see an opening, okay? There are a lot of people who would actually want to help you. But you keep all of them at arm’s length.”

For a long beat, Amatena looked at the ground, deep in thought. Then, suddenly, she looked up, straight at me. “Do you think that is the way I feel about you?”

“I understand that’s not what you think of us right now.”

If Amatena really believed we were her enemies, she would never have come here, no matter how many assurances she had from Elvia. She would never have let Hikaru-san give her instructions on how to be like Elvia. Her prickly attitude toward us was just a matter of lifelong habit.

“So that’s how you see me.” Amatena put her chin in her hand thoughtfully.

“More or less.”

There was a pause. “I see.” It was almost a whisper, and then she was lost in thought again.

And so but anyway... the next day arrived. Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and I were at the castle for our before-school audience. Myusel didn’t have class to teach today, so she was at home with Clara, continuing to show her the ropes of being a maid. Clara was every bit as dedicated as Amatena to remaining completely expressionless, so I had to imagine that teaching her a little warmth was going to be the hardest part of the job.

In any event...

We were in the same audience chamber as usual; Petralka was seated on her throne as usual; and just as usual, she was flanked by Garius and Prime Minister Zahar.

“Er, ahem...” I started with my daily report; that is to say, the current state of Amutech’s activities as well as the school. I wrote out these reports too, but I figured they might be easier to understand if I told Petralka myself, and she encouraged me to do so. It was really no problem, especially in that it meant I got more time to see her.

The empress and her attendants nodded as I finished my report. But then...

“A new maid?” Petralka asked, raising an eyebrow at the very last thing I’d tossed out there. Obviously, I had been talking about Clara.

“Yeah. She says she’s a relative of Myusel’s, so we thought we would hire her. That okay?”

“If in your judgment you need more hands to share the work, then of course we’ve no reason to object, but... but with this, yet one more woman is serving in your circle, no...?”

“Serving in my...? I mean, it’s not like she’s attending to me personally.”

And to be accurate, it wasn’t one woman, it was two. But I could hardly say that.

“Your Majesty,” Garius said pointedly. “I believe there is a more important matter to raise this morning...”

“Mm? Ah, yes.” Petralka nodded, though she didn’t look thrilled about it.

It was Garius, though, who explained exactly what this more important matter was.

“We’ve already mentioned to you the unusual movements we’ve been seeing from Bahairam recently.” I had to work hard to squelch a flinch at that. I had an unpleasant thought that maybe they had discovered Amatena and Clara—but if so, wouldn’t they have mentioned it when I brought up my new maid?

Minori-san voiced the question I was too nervous to ask. “Has something happened?” That was an adult woman—and soldier—for you: her tone was completely level, with no hint of any personal concern. Her self-control was absolute.

“By compiling reports from our spies, we’re beginning to get a picture of the domestic situation in Bahairam,” Garius said.

Just like the Kingdom of Bahairam was sending boatloads of spies (like Elvia) into the Holy Eldant Empire, our nation was likewise sending agents over there. Like for like, for sure. And the information they had come up with?

“It seems a major purge is being conducted in the Bahairamanian military.”

“You mean...”

That would line up exactly with what Amatena had said.

“In other words, significant reforms are being made in their military. Obviously, that leaves them unable to undertake normal military action. If I had to guess—and at this point we do—I might say that the incursions are a bluff, a distraction to keep us from noticing what’s happening there.”

Again, just like Amatena told us.

“I doubt Bahairam has any serious intention of attacking us. That doesn’t quite mean we can relax, but we don’t have to be too touchy.”

It seemed Eldant’s military minds had concluded that despite the large number of border skirmishes, they weren’t the prelude to a large-scale invasion.

“But why would they be purging anything?” I asked.

“Bahairam is a country of extremes,” Garius said. “Not just the military, but the entire national structure, has been refined over the past several generations. The system doesn’t have the force of history behind it—it’s like a hastily built house, full of weak places. As such, they may expound equality under their king, but the shadows of their system hide personal grudges and private conflict at every level. The result is a gulf between rich and poor far more dramatic than anything we have here in Eldant.”

“Huh...”

“This led to two separate purges under the previous king, and a further one immediately after the accession of the current ruler. Many allegedly corrupt soldiers and civil servants have been executed under the banner of righting wrongs and making the system more honest.”

“...............Executed?”

That was a word I didn’t like. I frowned deeply.

“What is the matter, Shinichi?” Petralka asked, concerned by my reaction.

“Er, uh, nothing at all...”

“Indeed?”

“It’s just, y’know, even hearing the word executed kind of freaks me out...”

I wasn’t just saying that; it was totally true. It scared the daylights out of me, the idea of repaying a crime with the ultimate punishment, death, especially when the criminal hadn’t even killed anybody. I did understand that without anyone being made an example of, the corruption might spread—and that the deliberate creation of a dramatic gap between the rich and the poor could indirectly lead to killings. But still.

“...Ah, yes.” Something seemed to occur to Petralka out of the blue, and she smiled like a kid who had just thought of a fun game. “We have heard that over the coming break, there is to be a photo-graphy party at your house, yes?”

“Huh? What does that have to do with—”

“We simply heard rumors.”

It occurred to me that several of Petralka’s advisors were parents of my students. It would have been simple enough for word of the get-together—or the photography seminar—to travel from students to parents, then from parents to empress. But it completely blindsided me. As did what came next...

“We shall attend as well!” Petralka declared.

“What? But you—”

“You suggest this would be a problem?”

“N-No, but...”

I had been expecting Petralka to visit our house at some point. But I never imagined it would be so soon. Amatena might be able to just stay hidden, but with Clara still not having mastered the basics of maid-ing, I had to hope she wouldn’t do anything that would give her away.

“All is well, then!” Petralka was fired up about this. I glanced around and noticed that Prime Minister Zahar looked awfully tired, somehow resigned to this. I was sure he had tried to dissuade Petralka himself, but that she had overruled him. “Spare us your distraught posturing, Zahar!” Petralka slapped the arm of her throne. “We shall be properly guarded, and we shall only be at Shinichi’s mansion. There will be nothing to worry about!”

“Your Majesty... I’m sure you’re quite right about that, but...”

“And we are looking forward to it,” Petralka added.

I looked at Garius, but his shoulders slumped wordlessly. Ever since the incident with Bedouna, the Assembly of Patriots, Petralka’s comings and goings from the castle had been strictly controlled. Then she had snuck away to Japan with me. I guess Garius was trying not to stress her out too much. And the photography party would be the perfect pressure-release valve. I definitely understood that, and yet...

“Hmm...”

The students, the empress, and the empress’s bodyguards. The more pairs of eyes we had around, the greater the danger that Amatena and Clara would be discovered.

I privately vowed to come up with a strategy before the next break.

No sooner had class started than I announced a change in our curriculum.

Normally during this time, we would watch a Japanese-language anime, translating as we went. The students had picked up a fair amount of Japanese by now, and could actually understand a good chunk of what they heard in simple, slice-of-life programs.

Anyway.

“Today, we’re going to talk about how to use a camera and how to take photographs,” I told the kids from my place at the lectern.

I took out my phone and held it up so everyone could see it. Before I had given any instructions, the quicker students pulled out their 3TSes and digital cameras and put them on their desks. Many of my pupils, hungry for otaku culture, took a lot of initiative.

I had decided to start with some basic tenets of photography. I wanted to make sure to teach the kids the most fundamental principles now, before it was too late. When everyone was gathered at my house for a photography slam—along with Petralka and her knights—we wouldn’t have the leisure to explain very much. And I couldn’t imagine what would happen if I turned them loose in the mansion with no instruction in the basic manners and rules of photography. Actually, I could, and it wasn’t pretty. Even Loek and Romilda had treated the photo-taking like a duel. With a dozen times that many people, the spirit of competition seemed likely to take over completely, and the kids would probably start snapping photos indiscriminately. Whether they were of me, or Myusel, or Minori-san, or Elvia, or Hikaru-san, or Brooke, or Cerise, or any of our personal rooms... heck, maybe even of the furniture.

The photographic madness could all too easily come to include even Clara and Amatena’s hidden rooms, where Bahairamanian military uniforms might be discovered.

And that would be bad. Very bad.

So the first thing I absolutely had to get the students to understand was that it was impolite to take a picture of someone, or of their possessions or their room, without asking permission.

“Taking photos is tons of fun,” I began, “and I completely understand wanting a memento of a place or a moment. In fact, that’s what cameras are for.” Once I was sure I had the students’ attention, I doused the image I had been showing on my phone’s screen and put it on the lectern. “But you can’t always take a picture of something just because you want to.” My voice became more stern; the students looked at each other, surprised. “Think of a ’layer,” I said. “Someone doing cosplay.” I mentally pictured Hikaru-san. “In cosplay, you enjoy yourself by becoming someone that you want to be. Maybe a hero from a manga, or a heroine from an anime. But it would suck if you weren’t in character, right? And even more if somebody had a permanent record of it. Like, imagine someone cosplaying Madoka from Rental☆Madoka. No matter how tired she got, Madoka would never squat in the shadows muttering ‘Bah, this is dumb,’ would she?”

There was a growing chatter in the classroom.

“No ’layer wants to be photographed doing something like that. Obviously, everyone gets tired, and squatting isn’t inherently a bad thing. But as someone who loves Rental☆Madoka, that ’layer would only want to be photographed when they were at their very best, their very cutest, looking just like Madoka.”

I could see kids around the room nodding and saying, “That makes sense...” It looked like they were starting to get the basic idea.

“Asking a ’layer for permission to take their picture is almost like asking, ‘Would you please get completely in character?’ And it acts like an opportunity for them to switch on their persona. That character is what both of you want out of cosplay, after all.” Cosplayers wanted to completely become the character they were portraying, while fans photographing them wanted to see that character through the ’layer. “So you can see how just snapping a picture of a cosplayer unannounced is pretty rude. It has to do with the very heart of what cosplay is.”

I paused. Cosplay was a nice, simple example, an easy entrée into the subject. Now for the real challenge.

“But did you know that the same thing applies to our everyday lives?” The students looked at me, amazed. “Wouldn’t it be embarrassing to be remembered forever for making a face you wish everyone would forget? Like if you were asleep, or yawning or something. Girls, picture how you look in the mirror first thing in the morning—still sleepy, haven’t combed your hair. How about it? Would you want anyone and everyone to see you that way?”

The female students promptly shook their heads. The guys didn’t seem as sure, but maybe that was to be expected. Incidentally, I had once bumped into my little sister Shizuki in the hallway in the state I’d just described—and she had practically punted me downstairs.

I went on: “And if you deliberately hide the fact that you’re taking a photo from the other person, that’s called kakushi-tori, a sneak shot, and it’s actually a crime in Japan. Think about it: not only would there be some unflattering picture of you, but you wouldn’t even know it. Scary, huh?”

The kids looked at each other again. Hmm. They seemed to be having trouble imagining what that would be like. Okay, then.

I clenched my fist and proclaimed, “Would you want a picture of the person inside a mascot costume? Would you want to see the zipper on the back of Ultra**n’s suit?!” No one would be happy to see such dream-shattering, illusion-wrecking things! It would be tragic! My argument was that one must avoid arbitrarily taking photos so as not to produce such despair-inducing images! “There is no one inside!”

Go***lla, Ga**ra, Gaba**n, and all the others—they were all real, live creatures and were all our friends—no, more to the point, there was no one inside any of them! Let there be no child weeping piteously at the creepiness of a bunch of folded-up kaiju suits because someone somewhere sneaked into a warehouse and grabbed a few pictures!

...Seriously though, that would be traumatic. Scary stuff.

I suddenly realized the students were completely cowed by my ever more impassioned speech. I cleared my throat, hoping to get back to my subject. “Uh, that being the case, just make sure you ask before you take a picture. You’re welcome to come to my house, but you need to remember that rule.”

That was it. There was a moment of silence, and then:

“Yes, Senseiiii!” The kids all nodded obediently.

While Shinichi-sama and the others were at school, Clara-san and I did the laundry and cleaning. Clara-san was capable and a quick learner, and I had very little to teach her in terms of practical basics. At most, I sometimes gave her tips on the best ways to get work done efficiently in this particular household. For example, the best order in which to clean the rooms to finish quickly. Whose laundry to do first, and whose to do last, such that the wash water would stay clean the longest. Things like that. (If you are wondering, when it came to clothing, Elvia-san’s tended to be dirtiest, so we saved her laundry for last.)

Finally...

“Let’s take a short break in the living room.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

We were walking along hauling the bucket of dirty wash water. We put the cleaning supplies in the storage shed, wiped our hands, and went to the living room. No one else was there. Cerise-san and Brooke-san must have been off doing other work.

I had Clara-san wait in the living room, while I went to the kitchen and got two teacups. They weren’t fancy cups like I would use to serve Shinichi-sama and the others, and the tea we drank was just cheap stuff, but with a spoonful of honey it was still an excellent antidote to our fatigue.

“Here you are.”

“Thank you very much.”

We each sat on a sofa, with the table between us.

“Are you feeling tired?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” Clara-san said.

“I see.”

“Yes.”

There, our conversation broke off. When we were working together, there was little need to speak, which made things easier, but the silences could be somewhat uncomfortable when we were resting like this. I searched my mind for something to talk about.

To my surprise, it was Clara-san who spoke first. “Myusel-san.”

“Wha? Er, yes?”

Maybe she found the silence as unpleasant as I did. She didn’t look like it, but then, she hardly showed any emotions...

“What will we do next?”

“Let’s see. Around the time the master gets home, we’ll start working on dinner. I’ll have you handling the same things as yesterday. Oh, but today we’ll use deatufos. You’ll need to slice them finely and make sure they’re well cooked.”

“You don’t use them raw?” Clara-san asked, tilting her head.

Yes, it was common to eat deatufos raw, and I heard it was quite tasty. Deatufos, by the way, were apparently similar to what, according to Shinichi-sama, the Ja-panese called a “tomato.”

“That’s right. Shinichi-sama doesn’t seem to cope well with the texture of raw deatufos, and it’s hard to get him to eat them. But he enjoys them if they’re thoroughly cooked.”

When I pictured Shinichi-sama eating my food and pronouncing it delicious—well, my cheeks flushed at the very thought. To be fair, he praised most of my cooking, but there also seemed to be specific ingredients and flavors he was less fond of, so that certain things he would eat more slowly, or in a specific order. I took careful note of these and made minor adjustments to the menu. All so that Shinichi-sama would be even happier.

“Understood,” Clara-san said with a brief nod. “If that is what will make Shinichi-sama happy.”

I didn’t answer, but a thought flashed through my mind. All day yesterday, Clara-san had been asking me if each thing we did would make Shinichi-sama happy. Of course, it was essential that a maid wish to please her master. But strictly speaking, in this household we served more than just Shinichi-sama. There was Hikaru-sama, and the young men’s bodyguard Minori-sama, as well. Yes, we all sat down together for meals, but the truth was that Brooke-san, Cerise-san, and even Elvia-san were effectively servants, so as maids our primary duty was to the three masters of the house. Yet Clara-san asked only about Shinichi-sama. Why? I wondered.

“Er—ahem, Clara-san?”

“Yes?”

“Clara-san, when it comes to Shinichi-sama, do you...”

Thoughts of my journey to Bahairam flitted through my head. When we had all parted ways, Clara-san had planted a kiss on Shinichi-sama’s cheek. I kept telling myself it had only been a gesture of farewell, and Shinichi-sama had said the same thing, but...

“Do you... respect him very deeply... or... should I say...” Once the doubt crept in, I couldn’t get rid of it. “As a man... as a member of the opposite sex... do you feel any affection for...”

“Yes.”

My stumbling, confused words were met with a single, definitive answer from Clara-san. My chest ached.

Of course, it was the right of anyone who knew Shinichi-sama to feel any way about him that they pleased. And Shinichi-sama could feel how he wished about anyone else. I was only one of his helpers, and it was joyful enough for me simply to serve at his side—or it should have been. But...

“Shinichi-sama is the person I love second-most in the world.”

“Wha...? S-Second-most, did you say?”

“The first is my elder sister, Amatena Harneiman-sama,” Clara-san answered without a moment’s hesitation.

“Oh, uh, I—I see.”

I had no other answer. But Amatena-san was a woman. In that case, could Clara-san be talking not about romantic love, but about affection and respect for someone as a person? Or...

“I think the question stands for you.”

“What?”

“You asked me, but how do you feel?”

“W-Well, I...!”

I was lost for an answer. I didn’t even know for sure what kind of like or dislike Clara-san was asking about. Considering Shinichi-sama as a person, of course I didn’t dislike him. He was my master, and on top of that, he was smart, and very kind. I had no reason at all to be unhappy with him. I wanted to see his smile. I wanted to be near to him. With my whole heart, I served Shinichi-sama so that he would be happy.

Was that feeling simple respect, or...?

“Shinichi-sama,” Clara-san said as if something had just occurred to her. “He said there was someone he had set his heart on.”

“......Wha...?” It took me a moment even to process what she had said. Then my vision suddenly got dark, like I wasn’t getting enough blood to my head.

Someone he has his heart set on.

Meaning, someone Shinichi-sama hoped to have as his partner. Who... Who could it be? Minori-sama? Elvia-san? Or perhaps Her Majesty...?

Could it possibly be Minister Cordobal? (I highly doubted it.)

As my heart shattered into pieces, the names flashed through my mind. Until—

“I believe he may have been talking about you.”

“What? About me, what...?”

“The one in his heart.”

“But that can’t... I’m not...”

“To judge from what I have seen so far, though, perhaps I was wrong. It seems the two of you have not so much as ‘held hands’ yet.”

“H-H-Held hands...”

I was not so naïve as to miss that she was implying much more than she said. And she was right: what she was implying had never once taken place between Shinichi-sama and me. But then...

“Come to think of it, he did say something about being sick,” Clara-san said, cocking her head.

Sick? Shinichi-sama?

“What do you mean, sick?”

“It seems that if his body becomes entangled with that of a woman, he will die.”

“What?! Really?! Is there such an illness?”

“I hear it is quite uncommon.”

“Oh no...”

It was the first time I had heard anything about this. I felt myself growing more and more dizzy at my own fecklessness. I was aware that since Shinichi-sama’s arrival here, I had served him longer and more closely than anyone. I should have known him better than anyone else in the Holy Eldant Empire. And yet somehow, I had been completely unaware that he suffered from this life-threatening condition; somehow, I had never noticed it.

Perhaps this sickness was unique to Ja-pan. Maybe I could ask Minori-sama or Hikaru-sama about it later. I wondered if there were certain foods you shouldn’t eat because of this illness...

“Shinichi-sama...”

Somehow, the whole thing left me indescribably sad. I stood there biting my nails as some emotion flooded up from inside me. I couldn’t say what it was; I could only try to endure.

We all ate dinner together, as had been the custom in this mansion ever since I had suggested it. No one was forced to be there, of course. There were times when people just had work to do, or ate dinner on their own for some other pressing reason—but that was the exception. Eating together was the rule, at least in our house. Everyone shared the same table, regardless of position or social status.

And that included Amatena and Clara. We rarely had visitors around dinner time, and it was dark out, so they could make a quick escape through the shadows to their little shack if they needed to—at least, that was the gamble I was making.

So we found ourselves at the dinner table, with two more people than usual...

“Myusel...?” I asked, noticing that something looked a little off with her. She seemed to be letting out small sighs periodically, and she kept pausing at her meal. “You’re not eating much. Are you feeling okay?”

She didn’t answer.

“Myusel?” I said, a little louder, and this time she flinched in surprise.

“Er... wha? Oh, yes!” I guess she must have been deep in thought, and not heard me. “I’m very sorry, what is it?”

“I was just thinking, you haven’t eaten much. I was wondering if you were feeling poorly.”

“Oh, no, not at all.” She smiled, or at least tried to. It looked a little awkward—it was obvious she was forcing herself. If she didn’t want to talk about it, though, then I didn’t want to pry.

“Yeah? Okay, but if you’re ever feeling bad, just say so, all right?”

“Y-Yes, of course. Thank you...”

I nodded, and Myusel resumed eating.

When I thought about it, I realized that having Amatena and Clara here meant an increase in Myusel’s workload—more food to make, more laundry to do. Yes, she had Clara to help her, but she had to teach her as they went, so maybe it was still more work for her in the long run. Myusel was the type to put her head down and push through her work rather than ever complain about it; as master of the house, I would have to be the one to notice if she was overstressed.

So I asked, “How about you, Clara? Getting used to the job?”

The maid-uniformed Clara looked up. “Yes. I sliced and prepared the deatufos you’re eating.”

I looked at the red-colored food on my plate. It was a vegetable very similar to a tomato, and I didn’t much care for the texture when it was raw. But when sliced and grilled, the texture changed to something I enjoyed, or could at least tolerate. The taste was pretty good in any case.

“Really? Cool.”

So she was starting to get into the swing of the maid thing. She still wasn’t exactly overflowing with warmth or, like, facial expressions or anything. I didn’t expect that to change overnight. I looked at our other stolid soldier.

“What do you think, Amatena? Going to be able to imitate Elvia?”

“Do I have a choice?” Amatena answered darkly.

Oookay. Maybe it wasn’t going so well for her.

Drowning out Amatena’s noncommittal response was Elvia, pursing her lips. “Big Sis Ama is totally hopeless!” She almost sounded pleased about it.

“Elvia.”

The younger girl wilted under her sister’s glare.

“It’s only natural when you’ve got two such different personalities,” I said with a wry smile.

Given how similar Elvia and Amatena looked, I thought we might just be able to make this work if we could get their facial expressions and modes of speech to line up just a little more—but that was turning out to be the most difficult thing of all.

“We just have to be careful, since Petralka and all the students are coming to the mansion on the next break...” That put me in mind of what I’d heard from Garius that morning. “Come to think of it, they mentioned Bahairam at the castle today. It sounds like there really is a major purge going on over there.”

Amatena nodded but said nothing. I guess she wasn’t impressed; we were just saying what she already knew.

“But he mentioned...” I went on, “he said this sort of thing has happened a lot in Bahairam. Amatena, you’ve only been releasing our imports on a trial basis, right? You’re not making a bunch of money from them or anything?”

“Hardly,” Amatena said. “Personal profit is the last thing on my mind in cooperating with you, Shinichi. The ‘otaku’ items we’ve brought in haven’t caused us any particular trouble so far—our missions do officially send us into Eldant, and we simply pass them off as matériel collected on the ground.”

In other words, a handful of our otaku goods wasn’t going to be enough to get them arrested.

“But we were not, of course, given orders to collect such things. As such, possession of even one of them could in principle be the basis for an arrest.”

“Ah...”

I understood, somehow. No serious harm seemed to be coming from them, so the “imports” were mostly overlooked, but strictly speaking, they were contraband, and if somebody made a fuss about them, Amatena could get in trouble. Compare it to secondary works like doujinshi in our world.

“But in that case,” Hikaru-san broke in, “why would they make you the scapegoat, Amatena?”

“Hm. That’s—well, it’s a good question.”

Amatena was hardly the only person from Bahairam who had infiltrated Eldant territory. She probably wasn’t the only one who had brought back otaku goods—not by a long shot. To purge every single person who had done so probably wasn’t realistic. If you weren’t careful, you could end up booting out half the armed forces from the border area.

Doujinshi were sometimes handled the same way: an unhappy creator might make an example of one particular work. If you threw the book at one person, it was a warning to hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of others who were doing the same thing: “If you cross this line, this is what you get, see? Watch yourselves.”

“I don’t know.” Amatena shook her head. “To be frank... without Clara’s warning, I might not have noticed until they were slapping the cuffs on me.”

“Hmm?” That was odd.

“Just a thought,” Hikaru-san said with a probing look. “But I think you’d agree you tend to look a little stern, right, Amatena? That you aren’t very open or approachable? And let me guess—were you the same way back in the Bahairamanian military? I mean with your superiors and fellow soldiers?”

“Yes, I am and I was. No matter whom you’re talking to, whom you’re dealing with, you must not show weakness. The army isn’t precisely cutthroat, but there’s no end of people who won’t hesitate to step on others’ toes on the way up.”

“Knew it,” Hikaru-san said with an elaborate shrug.

“Knew what?” Amatena asked, squinting at him.

“That’s your problem. It’s only natural to want to get rid of people who you can’t tell what they’re thinking.”

“Hey—Hikaru-san...?!” I said, appalled at his bluntness.

Amatena, though, seemed to be thinking deeply about something. The silence lasted for a long moment before she said, almost in a whisper, “As it happens, Shinichi said much the same thing.”

“Huh? I did?”

“That refusing to show vulnerability ends up looking like hostility.”

“Oh...” I guess I had said something like that.

“Happens a lot in otaku clubs,” Hikaru-san said with a nonchalant gesture.

Otaku clubs... I was an otaku, but I had never been involved in a formal organization like that, and didn’t know much about how they worked.

“You know what they say: get even three people together and the infighting starts.”

“Is that how it goes?” I said.

“Sure is,” Hikaru-san said with a confident nod.

I gathered that cosplayers often formed groups based on people portraying characters from particular series or the like, and you would obviously get to know the people in those groups. It had to be more fun to shoot the breeze with your friends while you cosplayed than to do it alone. What if all of you were having a grand old time and just one person was sitting there, silent and unreadable. Maybe you would start to wonder: Do we really need her?

I wasn’t sure how I felt about putting otaku clubs and the military in basically the same category. But from the simple perspective of human interactions with other people...

Amatena looked down at her hands, silent, as if trying to think of something. Clara watched from her right side, and Elvia from her left, both of them clearly feeling sorry for her.

I thought I heard a sound in the dark. I opened my eyes, but I felt sluggish; I couldn’t work up the will to move my body. I felt like I was floating on a warm sea, still half sunk in a dream.

Above me I could see the ceiling of my room—or rather, the canopy of my bed. The moonlight that came in through the window kept the darkness from being total, but the chill in the air and the occasional cries of insects let me know that it was smack in the middle of the night. Still too early to get up. I closed my eyes again.

With my vision gone, I suddenly became uncomfortably aware of my body. Everything felt heavy, as if something were sitting on top of me. And the weight was slowly moving, from my feet upwards...

“Hmf...?”

Was there actually something on top of me? The Sandman kept beckoning to me, but I couldn’t ignore the weird feeling, and opened my eyes again. At which point...

“C-Clara?!”

The blanket that normally covered me was missing. Instead, there was Clara, mounted on my midriff. What’s more, she wasn’t wearing her maid uniform, but some shreds of cloth that barely covered her chest and private areas... Basically, no, I mean literally, underwear.

“Um... May I respectfully ask what it is you mean to be doing?” I slipped into keigo from being totally overwhelmed.

Clara’s eyes glinted in the dark (that’s a beast person for you), and unlike me, she sounded completely calm as she said, “This is also part of a maid’s duty.”

“In some R-18 game or something, maybe!” I shouted without meaning to.

When had this happened?! When had she gotten into my room?! I was sure I had locked the door... Wait, but maybe it hadn’t been closed all the way? Or maybe she had taken Myusel’s master key? The questions flooded my mind, but this wasn’t the time.

“Shinichi-sama...”

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I got a better look at Clara’s slender, bare legs. They were practically picture-perfect: not too slim, not too large, the lines of them so beautiful you could sigh, as if at a painting. And not only that, but I could feel her body heat through my pajamas. My heart was going full throttle, even though I wished it would slow down.

“C... Clara...?” I looked back at her face. The little flash of red that I saw—was at her tongue? The way it ran over her lips as she sat over me made me think of a predator hunting its prey. Come to think of it... she was a tiger.

“Shinichi-sama...” she repeated, and then with a sinuous motion, she slid down until she was lying on top of me.

“H-Heeeek?!

Nrrrgghhhh?!

Any desire to sleep was banished somewhere far over the horizon of cause and effect.

“Shinichi-sama...” Her lips were inches from my ear now, and I could feel her quickening breath along with her sweet, husky voice. Distantly, it occurred to me that her body seemed warmer than you would expect. Did she have a fever? ...No, was this excitement?

“Oh, no...” I recognized the state she was in. This was—that thing. The “phase of the moon” beast people got. When they went into heat each month...... “Clara, hold on a second! Just calm d—!”

I never got to finish trying to talk her down. She grabbed my pajama shirt with both hands and tore it open. She might have been small, but she was still half beast—it was no problem for her at all.

“Hyaaaagghhh!” I let out a genuine scream. Clara, though, hardly seemed to notice as she brought her face down to my now-bare chest. First I felt the softness of her cheek. Then something sort of warm and moist, carrying her heat... That had to be her lips—no, wait, her tongue?!

“Clara, stop, that tickles—!”

I got goosebumps all over as the movement of her tongue brought me to the border between ticklishness and some other sensation. Elvia had done something similar, but Clara’s tongue felt different, maybe because she was more of a cat. Wait, was this the time for such a cold, clinical assessment of their differences...?!

“Clara, no! You can’t! You can’t—”

My squeaking protestations made no impression on Clara.

“Clara!” a sharp voice said. The were-tiger froze. At the same time, a light entered the room; not the moonlight, but probably from the sprite lamp by the door. If you gave it a gentle tap, the sprites inside would light up in surprise.

Obviously, the sharp voice wasn’t mine. But I did recognize it...

“Amatena...” I said, turning toward the voice.

Had the door been left open, or just not shut properly? I didn’t know, but now Amatena was standing there.

“H-Honored sister...” Clara looked up, her face going stiff as Amatena approached with long strides. Her usual impassivity was completely gone. Then again, I guess it had been ever since she got on top of me.

“N-No... This isn’t...” Clara shook her head emphatically. Clara was willing to declare anytime, anywhere, her undying love for her honored older sister, so for that very person to see her in the situation... maybe she felt like a girl whose boyfriend had walked in on her with another man. Er, then again, I guess they were both girls, and back when I had been a prisoner in Bahairam, Clara had done stuff like this with me on Amatena’s actual orders. So maybe it wasn’t a good comparison.

“This... I...”

“Get off of Shinichi.” Amatena grabbed the sputtering Clara by the wrist and pulled her none too gently off the bed. She didn’t resist. Then she stood Clara in front of her, narrowing her eyes. “It’s that day, isn’t it? I know.”

“Older sister... I am so sorry.” Clara looked at the ground.

Amatena took this in, then turned to me. “I apologize for the trouble Clara caused you.”

“Oh, n-no, I... I understand it... just happens...”

I mean, some people would have said there was nothing to apologize for.

“It’s pathetic. As a soldier in the Bahairamanian military, it’s shameful,” Amatena said.

“Huh?” Her reaction wasn’t quite what I expected. Okay, she wasn’t thrilled, but there didn’t seem to be a trace of jealousy there from discovering her “little sister” rubbing herself all over some other person. She said it was shameful for a soldier—but what did that mean?

“To assault a man out of an excess of desire—it’s proof that she lacks self-control. And a soldier without control is less use than a wagon without its wheels. Beast people already have enough trouble rising in the ranks because of a perception that they can’t keep themselves in check.”

“Ah.........”

So that was what was going on. All the Bahairamanians I knew were beast people, so I had started to feel like they represented the country’s entire population. But when I really thought about it, I knew that humans were the majority group all over this world, not just in Eldant. I was sure there were plenty of them in Bahairam, too. Even the Father-Ruler had been a human. (Come to think of it, I even remembered Elvia asking if she didn’t disgust me...)

I had to suspect that human supremacy was the status quo for most of this world. Bahairam could crow all it wanted about everyone being equal under the Father-Ruler, but there was sure to be some discrimination, at least in the form of physical and spiritual differences among races. It would make sense if it was hard for beast people to get ahead in a human-dominated world. And it wasn’t difficult to imagine humans saying things like “beast people have no self-control” as a way of justifying that.

That was why, in order to achieve and maintain a certain position in the military, people like Amatena and Clara had to show restraint, self-control, to convince those around them that they were “safe.” But having to repress their emotions, not let them show—that meant looking more emotionless, sounding more stiff, and after years and years of that, it had become their default attitude.

Who knew? Maybe there was a sense that being able to restrain your biological impulses, your “phase of the moon,” was what made you an adult. But was it just my history as a wimpy home security guard, or did that seem like a huge amount of physical work?

Clara turned to me and said contritely, “I forgot about your illness... I’m sorry.”

“My illness...?” I repeated, but I quickly realized she must have been referring to my little lie back in Bahairam. To keep her from just overpowering me, I had told her that doing naughty stuff with a girl would kill me. She didn’t seriously still believe that, did she?

But it didn’t end there.

“What? You’re ill, Shinichi?” Amatena looked at me seriously.

“Oh, well, uh...” I wasn’t sure what to say. Confessing that it had all been a lie didn’t sound very pleasant at the moment. Maybe there was some way to change the subject. “M-More importantly...” I wracked my brain for another topic, any topic. “This, uh, happens to all beast people, not just Elvia, huh?”

“Yes. It is an unfortunate fact of life.”

“Huh, I see.” Phew. Topic change: successful. So this really was something all beast people had to deal with. But in that case... “Is it something you go through too, Amatena?”

I meant the question innocently, but the reaction was one I never expected. Amatena blushed beet red, I assumed from embarrassment. “Do not ask!”

“Y-Yes ma’am! I’m sorry!”

Her shout was so fierce that it had me seated formally on my bed, apologizing. Argh. Well, she did say how embarrassing it was. What was I thinking, asking a question like that? If this were Japan, she could probably sue me for sexual harassment.

Just as I was sweating this out...

“Shinichi-sama?!” Footsteps came pounding down the hallway. “Did something happen?!”

Myusel and Elvia appeared in the room, with Minori-san a few steps behind them. I guess they had been drawn by my shouting, eventually. Saved! Or so I thought...

“...Shinichi-kun,” Minori-san said, narrowing her eyes at me behind her glasses. The other two newcomers just stared. “What exactly are you doing?”

“‘What’? I’m...”

And then it dawned on me how this must look. Me seated formally on top of the bed, with my pajamas torn open. Amatena in front of me in her underwear, and Clara half naked to boot.

“Don’t tell me you invited Clara to your room for a little—”

“No, I didn’t!” I exclaimed, withering under Minori-san’s stare. She (and, I could only imagine, Myusel and Elvia) seemed to think that I had tried to have a little midnight assignation with Clara, only to be discovered by Amatena. “Do you really think I’m the kind of guy who would do that?!”

“I guess not. I know you don’t have the guts.” Minori-san’s words were as blunt as a slap in the face.

“...Uh, I’ve got to say, that hurts.” I was glad the misunderstanding had been cleared up, yet the fact that it hinged on being acknowledged as a gutless wonder was something of a tragedy in itself. But just then...

“That’s no fair!” Elvia exclaimed. She seemed angry for some reason. “After I’ve been holding back all this time?! So why’d the two of you get to have relations with Shinichi-sama first?”

“Can you not talk about relations?!” I could hardly keep up with the quips necessary here.

“Hold on... You two, is this about that day...?” Minori-san said, taking a step closer to me. It sounded like she was finally starting to grasp the situation.

“That’s right,” I said. I was innocent! I hadn’t done anything! I was the victim here... But then something caught my attention. “Huh?”

You two?

“I wish you wouldn’t be so selfish, Big Sis Ama!” Elvia exclaimed meanwhile.

“I have not done anything yet.”

“Yet, you say! Yet!”

“I am a proud soldier of the Bahairamanian military! To suggest that I would be overcome by a mere phase of the moon—”

“Myusel I could understand, but I won’t have my thunder stolen by you, Sis!”

“U-Um, Elvia-san...?” (That was Myusel; Elvia’s last remark had left her somewhat befuddled. But anyway...)

“Today is Clara’s phase,” I said, trying to break up the sisters’ argument before things went completely off the rails. Amatena was only here to rescue me from Clara, who had succumbed to the impulse of her phase of the moon......... right?

“Huh?” Elvia said, turning to me with a look of astonishment. “But I was sure Big Sis Ama’s day was right around now. That’s why I thought—”

The hits just kept on coming with Elvia. Who then literally got hit when Amatena smacked her in the back of the head. Yikes. That looked painful...

“Eeyowch! Wh-What the heck, Sis...” Elvia demanded piteously, crouching back.

“Keep your mouth shut!” Amatena said, red-faced.

Seeing Amatena embarrassed like that... It was a fresh, sweet side of her. Although I knew I was asking for a smacking myself if I said that out loud.

“And? Did your chastity come through intact, Shinichi-kun?”

“Please don’t talk about my chastity,” I groaned, flopping back onto my bed.

Meanwhile...

“Well, y’ didn’t have to hit me, Big Sis Ama!”

“Quiet!”

“It’s all because you were gonna attack Shinichi-sama...”

“I told you, that’s not true!”

As the beast girls argued in the background, I let out something that was half-yawn, half-sigh.