Chapter One: Marriage? Well, that Came Out of Left Field

Chapter One: Marriage? Well, that Came Out of Left Field

The room was dead silent. How silent? My breathing and the beating of my heart seemed impossibly loud in my own ears.

The population density at our mansion wasn’t exactly high to begin with. We had a house with more than twenty rooms, and all of seven people to fill it—two of whom often weren’t even there. Quiet was the norm around here. Honestly, for a twenty-first-century Japanese person like me, this house was almost too big to handle.

The silence that seemed to freeze everything around me at this moment, though—it was something different. Because I wasn’t alone. There was someone else in the room with me.

I was in my office. The walls were crammed with bookshelves overflowing with manga and light novels and picture collections and anime DVDs. The desk in my office was a big, sturdy piece of furniture, much too heavy to move by myself. The overall look of the place was sort of medieval European, making the manga and (etc. etc.), along with shelves devoted to figures of anime and game characters, stand out all the more.

Well, the room did belong to an otaku.

As I sat at the desk working, a lone young woman stood across from me in the doorway of the room. She wore a deep-navy dress under a white apron, and long, flaxen hair framed her face. She was crowned with that epitome of maid-ness, the frilly headband. No matter how you cut it, she was for sure a real and true maid-san. She had an open, honest face and perfect features which, combined with that outfit (the picture of purity itself) made for a deeply affecting impression.

Myusel Fourant. Maid of this mansion.

For a no-account son of the common class like me, a real maid—not a cosplayer at some convention or café—might as well have belonged to the realm of fantasy already, but Myusel went the extra mile: her ears were pointed. She belonged to that tribe that looks so nearly human, but isn’t quite—the elves. Myusel was a half-elf, the offspring of an elf and a human.

A half-elf, a maid, and gorgeous to boot. She ticked all the moe boxes, was like the ultimate moe weapon, and ever since she had brought me my afternoon tea a few moments ago, she had just been standing there. I had work I really needed to get done, so I didn’t spend long chatting with her, but instead of just turning and leaving like she usually did, she had been watching me from the doorway.

A long moment. I didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything. I listened to my breathing and my heartbeat a little more.

This felt... weird.

Myusel wasn’t, like, staring me down or anything; she had a sort of smile on her face. In fact, she was looking at me with genuine kindness, but still... having someone just look at me, even look at me nicely, was starting to weird me out.

What was going on?

Now that I thought about it, ever since Amatena and Clara, a couple of soldiers from the neighboring kingdom of Bahairam, had hidden out at our house, I’d felt like Myusel had been acting different somehow. It was like... she was spending more time around me. She would give me whatever she had brought, or clean whatever needed to be cleaned, but then she would just sort of hang around.

She was still getting all her work done, and done well, so it wasn’t up to me to tell her how to use her free time. But this...

Hmmm...

Not to brag, but the number of years I have not had a girlfriend is exactly equal to the number of years I’ve been alive. That’s just the kind of otaku I am. So being alone with a beautiful young woman like Myusel—if you asked whether I felt more happy or more kind of embarrassed about it, I think embarrassed would win by a nose.

Hey... I am alone with a beautiful young woman here.

Was it just me overthinking things that I felt like Myusel was going out of her way to make this time together?

“H-Hey, uh, Myusel?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask, uh, what you’re doing?”

“What?” For a second, she glanced shyly at the ground. “Oh, er, I’m just... waiting on you, Shinichi-sama.”

Waiting? Waiting... W-A-I-T-I-N-G. Hmmm.

Well, okay, so the dictionary definition she had in mind was probably the one that goes “to attend to a person of higher status,” or “to be present and ready to act,” so I guess it didn’t seem strange to her. But in this context, I definitely most associated that word with the expression “to make a beautiful woman wait on you,” and I couldn’t quite let go of the idea. And why did Myusel look so flustered about it?

Arrgh! All right, self, calm down.

“U—Um, Shinichi-sama?” Myusel’s expression suddenly darkened. “Am I bothering you...?”

“Huh? No, no!” I was suddenly slammed by a feeling of guilt. Myusel’s anxious expression—a look that suggested she might burst into tears the very next moment—really tugged at my heartstrings somehow. “No, you’re not. Definitely not. I swear you’re not.” I shook my head vigorously. “It’s just... I’m worried you’ll get bored, hanging around me with nothing to do...”

“Perish the thought,” Myusel said, shaking her head almost as hard as I had. “Just being with you, Shinichi-sama, is—” Her voice got stronger and stronger, but suddenly she stopped, putting her hands to her chest, as if to say her heart was full to overflowing. Her eyes kept drifting to the ground, and there was a little flush in her cheeks.

Yiiikes... That’s totally unfair, Myusel.

With those gestures and that expression, I was practically— I was already—

Hey, calm down, self. Myusel is just—

Half-elves faced a lot of discrimination. So she felt a lot of gratitude to me, as someone who not only didn’t discriminate against half-elves, but was positively moe about them. But it was gratitude, not love. Of course not.

Once, long ago, I’d badly, and very embarrassingly, misjudged my relationship with an old friend. To her, we were just that—old friends. But I got it into my head that she liked me, you know, as a guy. Forgetting that as far as most of the world was concerned, I was “sick.” A “weirdo.” In short: an otaku.

That experience left me with very little confidence in matters of love—and even less in stuff that looked like nothing more than a happy fantasy. I had virtually no confidence at all, but... and yet... was this... could it be... just... maybe?

Arrgh, I’ll never get any work done this way!

But seriously, could it maybe really be?

But, but, if I carelessly tried to find out, only to discover that it really was just another mistake on my part, I didn’t think I would recover this time. The humiliation would set me digging a hole to hide in faster than a spinning Je* Mogura, and I would probably just stay there for the rest of my life.

But... But...!

Are you sure about this, Shinichi?! She’s a half-elf, a maid, obviously beautiful, plus she’s got the twintails, and the clumsy-but-upbeatness, and she’s a great cook, and she’s very diligent, and she knows how to dress (can’t believe I saw her in a swimsuit once!!), and—if you let this perfect girl get away now, there might never be another... another chance...!

I knew it was a little late to be thinking about all this, but once the thoughts started, I couldn’t stop them. My heart kept pounding faster and faster. My brain kept revving harder and harder, but it wasn’t in gear.

I found myself standing up from my desk and going over to Myusel. I couldn’t just sit there. I didn’t know exactly what to do, but I had to do something.

“Shinichi-sama...?” She blinked her big eyes, lavender like jewels. Were they brimming just a little bit, or was that my imagination?

“Myusel...” I stopped in front of her. We were so close, we could feel each other’s breathing.

Myusel was sort of caught between me and the wall. “.........Shinichi-sama...” But when she looked up at me, there was no fear or disgust. In fact, she glanced away again, her cheeks flushing, and then she summoned her resolve and looked straight at me. I was glad to know she wasn’t upset with us standing here like this. Probably. I was pretty sure. I didn’t think.

So... okay, was it time for, you know? The kabe-don? The wall thump? Not the Mom-bring-me-food! one, but the one that Reals used to show they knew what they wanted? The legendary, the famous... Was now the time?! Was Gaia whispering to me, Become a Real!?

Should I just sweep her delicate body up in my arms and—

“Shinichiiiiii!!”

It only lasted an instant. The silence surrounding us was shattered by someone shouting so loud I thought the roof would cave in, followed by my office door being opened hard enough it threatened to fly off its hinges.

Which naturally meant...

“Hrgh?!”

...that I, standing right by the door, took a huge slab of aged wood square in the jaw. I went tumbling to the ground, away from Myusel.

“Shinichi-sama?!” I could hear Myusel exclaiming in concern. I guess she must not have been hurt. Phew. That was good. If you’re all right, Myusel, then I’m content. Even if this does hurt like a b—

Yes! Yes, I know. I’m not exactly cut out to be the star of some romantic drama.

Stupid God, this is all your fault!

...Okay, wait.

“Wh-What the heck?”

“Is Shinichi here?! ...Oh, Shinichi. What are you doing there?”

Into my room burst a diminutive young woman, walking with an authority you could practically hear. Her long hair was a pure silver color, her skin as white as porcelain, her features finely formed. She was lovely, but not ostentatious. As delicate as a doll. A tiara of gold and rubies sat on her head, so appropriate it almost looked like a part of her.

She was so short, she wouldn’t have looked out of place wearing an elementary-schooler’s backpack, but she was actually seventeen years old.

Petralka an Eldant III: the Empress of the Holy Eldant Empire, the country I was now living in. Maybe the word “princess” would have fit her vibe better, but she was really and truly Her Majesty the Empress, and that was that.

She was also, as it happened, my boss.

Specifically, she was one of the investors in Amutech, general entertainment company and parallel-world first.

But anyway, moving on...

“What am I doing? Just being painfully reminded of my place in life,” I said, sketching aimlessly on the floor with my fingertip.

“Hm?” Petralka looked at me curiously for a minute, then spotted Myusel standing in shock by the wall. “...Myusel.”

“Y-Yes, Your Majesty.” She sounded a little panicked.

“What was he doing?” Petralka asked, her eyes narrowing.

“‘What’? Er, uh, n-nothing in particular...”

The empress didn’t say anything, but she looked back and forth between me and Myusel as if she had her suspicions.

Finally the loli-looking empress said, “Ah, very well,” and sighed.

◎

The Holy Eldant Empire: the very first nation with which Japan made contact... in another world.

The place is technically contiguous with Japan, connected to the country by a hyperspace wormhole tunnel. The culture is pretty close to that of the Middle Ages Europe, and most of the people look like what we would consider Western Europeans.

Notice I said most. One of the most striking differences from our world is that in this one, there are elves, dwarves, and beast people, just walking around like it’s no big deal. They have dragons and spirits, and what’s really crazy is you can use magic here. Again, it’s just part of normal, everyday life to these people. In a word, it’s pretty much the sort of fantasy world we would only usually encounter in manga or anime or games or whatever.

The Japanese government decided that in order to foster friendly relations with the Holy Eldant Empire, they would do pretty much what they did with “Cool Japan”—export Japan’s world-famous entertainment products to this new place. And to get the stuff over there, they established Amutech, a parallel-world-first entertainment company. But a company has to have a manager, and they picked me—Kanou Shinichi.

Wellll... It did turn out that Amutech was nothing but a front for a plan of cultural invasion, and when I found out and raised a stink, Japan did try to assassinate me. Let’s just say a lot has happened. But anyway.

“So, Petralka...”

We had moved from my office into the living room. I might have been busy, but Petralka was my employer. I couldn’t just boot her out without so much as a pleasant hello. Amutech was actually funded equally by investment from the Japanese and Eldant governments, so the empress technically owned half the company. For that matter, she also owned the house I was staying in.

“What brings you here?” I asked. “I didn’t think you were getting out of the castle much these days.”

Petralka raised her cup and took an elegant sip of tea. Not long after I had arrived here, Petralka had been held hostage in a terrorist incident involving a group called Bedouna, a.k.a the Assembly of Patriots. As you can tell by the fact that I’m still talking about her, the terrorists were safely subdued and Petralka was rescued—but the Eldant monarch had never been captured by an anti-government force before. Obviously, some of the responsibility fell on her bodyguards and the people who managed the empire’s security, but Petralka also found she was not as free to leave the castle as she had once been. Once upon a time, she would routinely stop by my mansion or the school for a visit with just two or three escorts, but not anymore.

“But here we are. Are you suggesting we cannot drop in on you?” Petralka puffed out her cheeks poutily. It was really awfully cute, and made me just want to give her a hug and pat her on the head. But considering how sensitive Petralka was about her youthful looks, saying the wrong thing could get her really upset, even if you meant it well. And an angry empress could, in theory, mean losing your head on a charge of lèse-majesté.

“No, of course you can, but...”

“We have been careful to bring bodyguards with us. Including some magic users. Any ordinary attacker would be repelled instantaneously.”

“She’s telling the truth—I see five people waiting outside,” Koganuma Minori-san reported, looking out the window. She was a few years older than me, and wore a uniform and glasses; she was my bodyguard and our resident WAC. She was a real peach with a sweet look and easygoing attitude. The kind of person you took one look at and said, “Oh, okay, a warm-and-fuzzy older-sister type.” But you might not guess that she was a capable sniper and a killer hand-to-hand fighter.

One thing about her appearance stood out more than any other, though, and it was that D-cup (or was that E- or F-cup? Or G- or H-? How far did these letters go?), bouncy, jouncy, outrageous chest. But just forget about that for now.

“It looks like Garius-san isn’t with you, though?”

If he had been, I assumed he would have come into the house with her. Garius en Cordobal was Petralka’s cousin and a major player in the Eldant Empire, charged with overseeing military matters and the police. His silver hair and emerald eyes made it obvious at a glance that he was Petralka’s blood relative, but on top of that he was awfully handsome, and smart to boot. In Japan we say “Heaven doesn’t give two gifts,” but this guy seemed to have gotten three or four.

“Ooh, Shinichi-kun, eager to see Garius-san? Well well well well well well well!” Minori-san leaned toward me, looking inordinately pleased.

She was, I should be clear, highly reliable and totally someone you could count on, but she also had a nasty habit of trying to fix me up with Garius, the product of a particular proclivity of hers. Namely, she was a fujoshi, and sweet man-on-man romance was her moe of choice. Everything Garius and I said or did seemed to reach her through that filter.

Actually, in Garius’s case specifically, she hardly needed a filter half the time—he was right there with her. It could make things more complicated than they had to be.

“I’m not eager to see him,” I said with a sigh. “It’s just that if he were in command of the bodyguards, I could understand why there are so few of them.”

But without Garius, five people didn’t seem like nearly enough for Her Majesty to be out and about with. I mean, I knew she couldn’t have fifty or a hundred people with her all the time like some kind of feudal daimyo, but still.

I turned to Petralka. “Does this mean something came up in a hurry?” That might explain it: she just didn’t have time to get a whole entourage together. But...

“No, we would not say that,” Petralka replied calmly, taking another sip of her drink.

“Huh? Don’t tell me you just snuck out of the castle?”

“How can you use such language, Shinichi? The Empress goes where she pleases!” Petralka said with a frown.

“Well, sure, but...” If the empress had gone where she pleased without letting anyone know, Garius was probably going nuts looking for her right about now. “Garius-san isn’t going to be angry?”

I could imagine those handsome features, the very picture of beauty, with a manga-style throbbing vein at the forehead. Petralka might have been the empress, but Minister Garius en Cordobal was sort of an older brother to her. He was just about the only person I had ever seen rebuke Petralka in public, and if she was out here on her own volition, with no thought for security or safety, Garius was probably very, very upset.

Much like he had been when Petralka had stowed away with me on my trip to Japan.

So I sat there worrying, but:

“Ye of little faith, Shinichi. Of course, we’ve received Garius’s permission.” Petralka gave me a little snort.

“He agreed to this?”

“Indeed.”

“Is he feeling okay?”

“He’s quite well.” Petralka nodded nonchalantly and set her tea cup on the table.

I hadn’t seen that coming. Garius tended to be, if anything, a little too crazed about Petralka’s safety. I was sure he was honestly concerned about her—not to mention that if anything happened to Petralka, for political reasons he would be a prime suspect (after all, he was next in line for the throne), and it would help keep his name clear if he was known to be fanatical about her security.

“As a matter of fact,” Petralka said, taking a bite of one of Myusel’s homemade tea cakes, “tomorrow, an ambassador from one of our allies will be arriving.”

“An allied nation?”

I didn’t get out of the Eldant Empire very much, so I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the political situation, but I guess if there were enemy nations like Bahairam around, it made sense that there would be friendly ones as well.

“Some of our troops have been recalled from the provinces, and the capital city is on high alert. This moment is in fact far safer than normal for us to be away, so that even Garius cannot worry too much.”

That made sense. You would certainly want security to be at its highest when a friendly ambassador was coming for a visit. I absently pictured an occasion when the US President had come to Japan. You could see police officers on every street corner, news reporters were constantly remarking on the heightened security, and the entire country seemed permeated by a certain anxiousness. I had to figure that things were similar in the capital city of Marinos right now. Security forces would be watching out, not just for Petralka, but for every inch of the capital; one false move would probably get you arrested, or worse.

“He is, however, acting rather obsessed with his preparations.” Petralka was kicking her feet happily—maybe it was the feeling of freedom she was enjoying—but as she said this, her face darkened for a moment.

...Hm?

So it looked like she was happy to be able to go out, but also not one hundred percent comfortable. As the absolute ruler of the Holy Eldant Empire, Petralka spent a lot of her time in a pretty suffocating environment. And now, the chains had loosened just a bit—only for her to be told, “There’s an ambassador coming. I can’t spend all my time entertaining you.” A little boring, at best. She seemed a bit like a child who couldn’t get her big brother to play with her. I knew Petralka and Garius seemed pretty close.

Aaaaargh! Where does an empress get off being so darn cute?!

“If there’s a visitor coming tomorrow, does that mean we should skip our morning report?”

Normally, I went to Eldant Castle every morning to report on the current state of Amutech’s activities. Typically Petralka and Garius both attended, along with the prime minister, Zahar. But honestly, a big part of the reason I did this was so that I could have an excuse to see Petralka, who normally couldn’t leave the castle easily. It wasn’t like things changed that much overnight. Once a week or even once a month probably would have been plenty. Plus, I submitted written reports as well. Officially, my excuse was that meeting directly with the empress allowed us to gauge each other’s reactions in real time and get a clearer sense of how we were both feeling. It was as good a reason as any to go see Petralka.

“Not a bad idea,” Minori-san said, nodding. “With a foreign ambassador coming, I’ll bet it’s not going to be quick or easy to get in the castle, and we wouldn’t want to make any slip-ups and cause an incident.”

“No, do come,” Petralka replied. “And not just you, Shinichi. We wish Minori, Matoba, Hikaru—all the members of Amutech to be there.”

“Huh? R-Really?”

Petralka nodded firmly. “Truth be told, part of our reason for coming here is to bring you this request. Our visitor has personally asked to meet with you all.”

Minori-san’s expression suddenly grew strained. “Your Majesty, are you saying—?”

Immediately, I understood. When Minori-san got that look on her face, it meant the subject had become politically or militarily charged. Myusel, though, still looked a bit confused. She was looking back and forth between us and Petralka.

“...You’re telling me it’s not just Bahairam. Other countries know about us, too.”

“...Oh!” Myusel squeaked surprised. She wasn’t technically involved with Amutech’s business affairs, but by dint of living at the mansion, she had a fairly good idea of how the company was treated on the political front.

“Our visitor let it be known, indirectly, that they were aware of an ambassador from another world who had come to this land. And that they were distinctly interested in meeting him.”

“Sigh,” Minori-san said, but then she shrugged. “I guess we weren’t exactly keeping it a secret.”

Spreading Japanese otaku culture here in the Eldant Empire—that was Amutech’s business. Strictly speaking, our mandate extended only to the Eldant Empire. After all, Amutech had begun as a covert vehicle of cultural invasion, and the government wanted to start by experimenting with the local nation with which they had made first contact.

But when I rebelled against the government’s plans, I also sort of broke out of their framework. Specifically, I had suggested a pilot program for introducing otaku stuff to neighboring countries, and Petralka had gone along with the idea. As a result, Japanese entertainment products—with a few Eldant touches like translations—were trickling into other nearby countries.

In fact, I had been captured by the Kingdom of Bahairam once in the past, after they learned of my existence and hoped to use me as a hostage. And if an enemy country had learned about me, why shouldn’t an allied one? What with the presence of trade relations and all, how could they not know about the Japanese entertainment products that were all the rage among the children of the Eldant nobility?

The thing was, this friendly ambassador had asked to meet with us officially. That meant they saw what we were importing as more meaningful, and perhaps more valuable, than just banal foreign amusements. They wanted to talk with us because they thought our stuff could have some kind of political influence.

One dirty little secret about this entire operation was that while it may have been underhanded of the Japanese government to use otaku goods as a tool of cultural invasion, they weren’t wrong about their effect.

“We have been trading with this country for a long time,” Petralka said quickly, sensing the tension in the air among us. “We do not believe they will misuse anything we give them. In fact, Garius spent time there as a student.”

“Really? He did?”

“Indeed. Though it was when our previous emperor still reigned.”

I didn’t know how long ago that would have been, how many years, but when someone with a connection to the imperial family goes to study in your country, it means you two must be pretty close. On top of that, “studying abroad” in a place like this wasn’t like modern-day Japan, where you might do it just for the experience. There had to be some practical benefit to taking the time and trouble. Something specific you could learn that would justify sending a person to study. That meant this allied country must have excelled in something—politics? finance? military matters?—that attracted the attention of the Eldant Empire.

“So you see, we are not precisely in a position to refuse,” Petralka said. “We want you to come to the castle tomorrow.”

I glanced at Minori-san, but she gave no sign of disagreeing, so I nodded. “Yeah... sure thing.”

“Mm.” Petralka nodded in satisfaction, then finished her tea. Myusel promptly poured more into the empty cup.

“But did you really need to come all this way and tell us about this yourself, Petralka?” I asked. She could have just sent a messenger, I thought. Or for that matter, she could have just not said anything at all, and we would have shown up at the castle as usual the next morning.

“What?” Petralka asked, pursing her lips. “Are you dissatisfied that we have come to inform you?”

“No... Not, uh, dissatisfied at all...”

“Are we intruding upon you? Interrupting you?” Petralka eyed Myusel. “Interrupting a liaison with your maid, perhaps?”

“Nope! Uh-uh! Not it!” I shook my head violently.

“Then there is no problem.” Petralka crossed her legs and looked away.

Huh. Is she... pouting?

“I thought maybe you had dropped by for... you know, just a visit.”

Petralka had managed to turn the ambassador’s imminent arrival into an opportunity for a rare trip out of the castle. If she had chosen to spend that hard-won time with us... Well, that would make me very happy.

“A-An empress does not just ‘visit.’” Petralka still wasn’t looking at me, but she sounded a little less sure of herself. And was that a blush I saw in her cheeks? “We have a great many important matters to attend to.”

“Sure, of course. You’re right.”

“But, well... ahem.” Petralka seemed to have to force the words out a little. “Once in a while, even an empress needs a moment’s respite.”

“Sure,” I said again. I was glad to hear it.

◎

We spent a couple of hours in an aimless, pleasant chat before Petralka went back to the castle, accompanied by her bodyguards.

“Mmm...” I came back to my office to resume my interrupted work. I was busy typing out a summary of my report. I liked writing well enough—maybe it had to do with having a light-novel author for a dad—but having to stick to a prescribed format, to just do paperwork, was kind of a pain in the neck.

As a point of interest, because the reports I created were submitted to both the Eldant authorities and the Japanese government, every single one of them had to be done twice, in the preferred format of the respective bureaucrats. In addition to the papers I submitted, the Japanese side also got written documents from Matoba-san and Minori-san, among others.

“...Ooof...”

My shoulders were starting to get really stiff. I stretched in my chair. This wasn’t exactly hard physical labor, but I could still feel it in my poor body. Physical work left you feeling warm all over, but the fatigue from desk jockeying like this felt like your entire body cooling down, gradually seizing up. You had to be sure to work yourself out every now and again, or you could get to where you were so frozen that one wrong move could result in a torn muscle. I needed a break. Yeah, that would be good for me.

Just then, almost as if on cue, I heard a knock at my door. “Shinichi-sama, it’s Myusel. I brought tea.”

“Thanks, come on in,” I said. Myusel entered with a tea cart. She stopped beside me, taking a tea cake and saucer from the cart and putting them on my desk. The cake was like a sort of doughnut, small enough to eat with one hand, but also soft enough that it wouldn’t get crumbs all over my desk. I hadn’t specifically said anything: this was just one of Myusel’s thoughtful little touches.

Mmm. What bliss.

“I’m sorry to bother you when you’re trying to work.”

“Your timing is perfect. I was just thinking it was time for a break.”

“That’s good,” Myusel said, and smiled. I felt my heart skip a beat.

Just the two of us, alone in my office. It was... well, it was exactly how we’d been before Petralka had shown up. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her arrival—half sort of disappointed, half like I’d been saved by the bell. But now? I didn’t expect any more interruptions.

“Shinichi-sama?” Myusel asked, her head cocked like a curious little bird. I suddenly realized I’d been staring at her face.

I quickly shook my head to reassure her everything was all right. “It’s nothing. Thanks, this looks delicious.” Hoping to distract attention from the situation, I grabbed the sweet Myusel had brought. It was probably made by hand; it still radiated a gentle heat... I took a bite.

Ooh... That delicate sweetness. It filled my tired body.

“That’s fantastic,” I said, and I wasn’t trying to flatter her. Then, feeling like I should offer more than two words of appreciation, I added, “You really can do anything, can’t you, Myusel?”

“Thank you very much,” she said shyly.

“I mean, you’ve got cooking conquered, housework honed to perfection...”

“Well, it’s... those things are my job,” Myusel said, but she was smiling. “And I still have so much to learn about all of them...”

“I can’t imagine what!” I said, and suddenly the image of my little sister flashed through my mind. “Shizuki, she’s hopeless when it comes to housework. Like, she’s got brains for everything but that. You’ve gotta wonder if she’ll ever be able to find a husband that way, heh! Not like you, Myusel, you could get married any—”

Then I stopped.

Watch it, Kanou Shinichi.

This conversation was going in a very dangerous direction. I had to pick my next words extremely carefully. And I did need some next words: I couldn’t just leave it there.

Arrgh, what to do?

“...any time you wanted, or... if you didn’t want, you wouldn’t... I mean... err...” I finished lamely.

“Married?” Myusel said, sounding slightly stupefied for a moment. But then she said, “Me? I... I don’t think I could.” She glanced at the ground.

Woah! What was with this totally unexpected reaction?

No! Calm down, Shinichi. Self-consciousness is, like, one-half a word away from self-destruction!

That was it: Myusel didn’t like me, you know, that way. She saw the conversation going in a weird direction, and just wanted to make it clear she wasn’t interested in marrying the likes of me. But she had to be careful not to offend or hurt her master, so instead she said she couldn’t get married, period.

“S-Say, um, Myusel?”

“For someone in my position... t-to even think of taking Her Majesty’s rightful place...”

“Huh?” Why was she bringing up the empress? “What does Petralka have to do with this?”

Did she mean it was Petralka’s “rightful place” to decide whether a simple maid could get married? Come to think of it, it wasn’t something I had ever given much thought to before, but what was the marriage age for women here in the Eldant Empire? Back in, say, Warring States-Era Japan, a girl getting married at fifteen wouldn’t have been uncommon. Could it be that Myusel and Petralka were both of marriageable age, maybe even starting to feel like they were getting old? Maybe it was actually normal in the Eldant Empire for brides to be really, y’know, young?

Awww man, was this place secretly a loli paradise?!

As my thoughts spiraled off in a weird direction, Myusel was struggling to find the right words. “Wha? Er... ah, well... Her Majesty... You and she seem very...”

“What about Petralka and me?”

“She seems to... ahem... like you very much...”

“I guess? I mean, you don’t just drop by at the house of someone you hate, but...”

What did this have to do with who could get married and who couldn’t?

“No, you see...” Myusel started fidgeting industriously with her apron. “Her Majesty... Shinichi-sama, she... seems to... l-love you...”

“.........Come again?”

Love? Like, love-love? Like, ♪ all you need is love ♪ ?

I suddenly started to panic.

Who loves? What do they love?

Petralka? Loves me?

“Th-Th-That’s the silliest thing I ever—”

I waved vigorously with both hands. Uh-uh! No way! Not even possible!

We were talking about the Empress of the Holy Eldant Empire, right?! I was just a commoner, even if they did treat me like a VIP! A hard-core otaku and former home security guard, at that! So worthless he got rejected by his own childhood friend!

The empress—love me? I guarantee that’s not even a thing!

“P-Petralka? You think she—no way!”

Ahh, but I am a man! To hear such a thing, even if not from Petralka herself, but still, from a girl—part of me wonders, Could it be?, and that way lies ruin! Plus, I have high hopes for Petralka in the future—er, I mean, she’s really cute. Just the thought that a girl like her might like me—my heart won’t stop pounding!

“L-Look, this is the empress of an entire country we’re talking about!”

I shook my head so hard my hair got mussed up, but Myusel said, “But that’s exactly why... If Her Majesty were to be together with you, Shinichi-sama...”

“T-T-T-Together?! You mean like, m-m-married—?!”

Yet even as I said it, the words took on a strange savor of reality. I saw an image of a church, empty except for two people: me in a tuxedo, and Petralka wearing a wedding dress. Her short stature and girlish features made picturing her as a bride feel just a little funny, like seeing a child stand on their tiptoes—but there was no question the sumptuous white dress looked good on her. Holding a bouquet of flowers with both hands, she looked into my eyes and smiled...

“Nope, not happening!” I made a karate-chop motion through the empty space in front of me, quipping at my own ridiculous fantasy.

Myusel, though, seemingly unaware of my state of total confusion, was off in a world of her own, looking at the ground as she continued to talk. “Here I only want... to b-be by... by your side... but... if I were to marry... I wouldn’t even have that...”

“Come again?”

What exactly are you saying, Myusel-san?!

Her pale, pointy ears had gone as red as ripe strawberries, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to point it out. I was pretty sure I must look the same way. In fact, if we had a mirror, I probably could have seen my entire face, bright red. All I knew was that my cheeks were burning something fierce.

But even I, dim as I could be, understood what Myusel was saying. Petralka liked me. Therefore, she and I might get married. And if that happened, Myusel couldn’t marry me. But if Myusel married someone else, she couldn’t be with me. So she wouldn’t get married.

..................

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?!

J-Just hang on a second! What was with that harem trope-like—wait. Ahhh! This place had Middle Ages values—maybe harems were really legal (?) here?!

Wait, what? So, like, it could maybe really happen?! For serious?!

NO! No no no no no, wait...

“No way! Uh-uh! Again, not happening!” I shook my head for the umpteenth time, shook it as hard as I could. Actually, I had been shaking it a little too hard, and I was starting to feel sick. What was I doing here? “I told you, there’s no way someone in my position can marry an empress!”

“B-But...”

“I’m sure Petralka can’t just get married any old time she wants, either—and I’m sure she knows that!”

It was obvious. I thought. Probably. The more I thought about it, the less sure I was, but saying so was only going to make things that much harder, so I decided to stick to my guns.

Even if—purely hypothetically, now—even if Petralka and I were head over heels in love, and got married (just a thought experiment, remember), I didn’t believe for a second that Garius, Zahar, and all the important members of Petralka’s court would give their blessings to our union. I was just a commoner with no social status at all—worse than that, I was an outworlder who had once been a tool of invasion against the Eldant Empire. The very fact that I was basically free to do what I wanted here right now was nothing short of miraculous.

So a guy like that was going to marry the empress? The nation’s ministers would have to think Petralka had gone nuts. It would literally make me the absolute dictator of the Eldant Empire—and if I happened to have a single bad bone in my body, the Empire could find itself Japan’s vassal state overnight.

The thing was, I didn’t even really know if Petralka liked me as a man. As a friend, sure; I was pretty confident about that. But as more than that...?

“Yeah, no,” I said flatly. But even then, Myusel still looked anxious. Her face, clouded by sadness, looked so mournful, so delicate, and so simply beautiful that it tugged on my heartstrings harder than ever before.

Ahhhhhhhh...?!

G-Geeze, it’s reactions like this that give a person the wrong idea! And just think of all the light novels where maids and their masters fall in love!

But at the same time...

Speaking of differences in status...

Part of me was coldly analyzing the situation: me and Myusel. Me and Petralka. Myusel and Petralka. Each of us had our own status, and our own situation.

Confronted with the empress, the absolute ruler, a commoner—even a commoner in love with her—had to make way when she came down the street. On the other hand, even if she were in love with him, madly, passionately, social status would form an impassable wall between the two of them. Love between a servant and her master was similar: status came between them, making a love between equals almost impossible. I had never given it much thought before, but it turned out to be a very thorny problem.

I felt like I had once heard it said that the love two people recognize between each other is romance; the love everyone else recognizes between them is marriage. But being in love and actually getting married were different things, even if they had a lot in common. Even I understood that much.

“Look, anyway, it’s never going to happen,” I insisted, trying to close out the conversation.

“I... I see...” Myusel must have understood that I wanted to stop talking about this, because with the slightest hint of a pained smile, she bowed to me and rolled her cart out of the room.

◎

What with this and that, we reached the next day. We went to Eldant Castle, just as Petralka had instructed us. Incidentally, the night before, we had contacted our students to let them know that school was canceled for the day. I knew about how long our morning reports would usually take, but a meeting with an ambassador? I was pretty sure we couldn’t just say hello and goodbye, and I had no idea how long we might spend talking to them. We couldn’t very well put our classes ahead of a diplomatic meeting.

Eldant Castle was just as imposing as ever. Carved out of a mountain by the use of magic, it was staggeringly big. You could stand in front of the main gate and crane your neck as far back as it would go, and you could still barely see the whole thing. Even with magic involved, a construction project on this scale must have been an enormous undertaking. I’m sure it involved the equivalent of billions of yen to complete.

I didn’t normally think too hard about it, but this was not a place a commoner like me typically got to just walk in and out of. Being reminded of the fact kind of gave me the shivers.

“What’s the matter, Shinichi-san?” someone asked from just ahead of me. They were walking beside Minori-san, and looked back when I had stopped to peer up at the castle.

This person was Ayasaki Hikaru-san, one of Amutech’s employees. In other words, one of my subordinates—strictly speaking, my assistant.

“Oh... Coming.” I gave a noncommittal nod and followed after the others.

It’s almost like Hikaru-san is more comfortable here than I am, I thought, looking at Hikaru-san walking ahead of me. Hikaru-san didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by the castle, at least not that I could tell. In fact, this person moved through it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Hikaru-san was technically a commoner, a regular Japanese person just like me, but refined manners and way of speaking somehow made my assistant seem more like the well-bred daughter of some noble family somewhere. And the outfit: frills everywhere, delicate embroidery, a Gothic Lolita thing that would look right at home in a noble mansion. Long, beautiful black hair caught the sunlight, making Hikaru-san look like a vision out of a dream, like a creature completely divorced from whatever I was.

It was completely perfect. Except for one thing: this princess, this picture of feminine elegance, was a guy. He—yes, he—was one of those otoko-no-ko. Not as in the Japanese word for “boy,” but the one that uses the kanji for “daughter” and means “cross-dresser.”

Anyway, never mind about that.

“Is it really all right for someone like me to be welcoming an ambassador...?” I asked. In this world, I was pretty sure—no, make that completely sure—that any ambassador would be of noble stature. Nobody would give a nameless commoner the job of representing an entire nation.

“Doesn’t matter, does it?” Minori-san said, smiling a little over her shoulder at me. “They asked you to come.”

“That’s true, but...” Today of all days, I wasn’t feeling my bravest. Maybe the last night’s conversation with Myusel was still on my mind.

I do remember telling Petralka once that we don’t have nobles and commoners in Japan. But that was a long time ago.

It was a little late for me to be worrying about status differences, I told myself as we walked along.

“...Ah.”

When we arrived at our usual hallway through the castle, three people were waiting for us. I recognized two of them; they were knights in the castle guard. I recognized the other guy, too, the one flanked by the knights, but he didn’t look anything like them. He wore a strangely threadbare-looking suit, an outfit that stuck out like a sore thumb in this Middle Ages-ish setting.

“Hullo.” Suit raised a hand in greeting and smiled genially.

Matoba Jinzaburou: in a word, my boss. But because he traveled so frequently between Japan and Eldant, he wasn’t really a resident of Amutech’s mansion. Actually, it seemed like a long time since I’d seen him.

With his gentle, never-changing smile, Matoba-san looked like the kind of person who wouldn’t hurt a fly. The quintessential middle manager, the kind you see wiping sweat off their brow with a handkerchief all the time. But his very generic-ness made him hard to read, and although he wasn’t an enemy, I hesitated to call him a friend. It was a complicated relationship. But basically, he was the Japanese government’s man, there to keep an eye on me and curb my tendency to come down on the side of the Eldant Empire. As a fellow member of Amutech, it made sense that he’d been summoned to meet the ambassador.

“Sorry,” I said, “are we late?”

“No, I’ve just arrived myself,” Matoba-san said, sounding as mellow as ever.

“We’ll show you in,” one of the knights said. Then one of them took up a position in front of us and the other followed behind as we started through the castle.

Finding the silence somehow uncomfortable, I said, “So, uh, what do you suppose this ambassador is like?”

“Yeah, we don’t know whether they’re a man or woman, young or old, or anything,” Minori-san chipped in.

“I asked Myusel about this other country—uhh, the Kingdom of Zwelberich, I think it was. I asked her what it was like there, and she said their magical technology is supposed to be way more advanced than Eldant’s.” Although personally, I thought Eldant magic was nothing to sneeze at. I couldn’t imagine what something “much more advanced” than this would look like. Myusel only seemed to know that the Kingdom’s magic was ahead of her own country’s; she couldn’t tell me what exactly that meant. “I guess discrimination against demi-humans is really severe there, though...”

Even in Eldant there was some bias against so-called “demi-humans”—elves, dwarves, and beast people. Half-elves like Myusel were especially looked down on, and I have to think it must have been pretty awful for her when she first got here. Petralka had even denounced Myusel once as a “half-breed,” if I recalled correctly.

Petralka and Myusel were pretty good friends now, and at school, elves and dwarves seemed to be treated much the same as the human students. In my personal bubble, discrimination seemed almost like nothing more than a word—but I’m sure that there was real anti-demi-human sentiment in places I couldn’t see. Thinking that’s been formed by centuries doesn’t get wiped out after a year or two, I figured. And apparently, discrimination against demi-humans in the Kingdom of Zwelberich was way worse than it was here in Eldant.

“She says they would never make an elf or a dwarf a minister like we do here,” I said. “Although she’s never been there, so she couldn’t tell me much more than that.”

The Eldant Empire bordered on being a meritocracy, and a small handful of demi-humans had risen to fairly high positions within the government. Yes, they were sort of exceptional, but apparently exceptions like that would never have been permitted in Zwelberich.

“Shinichi-kun...” Minori-san said warningly.

“I know,” I said. I understood what she was trying to say. “I’ll behave.”

I had occasionally been known to make a bit of a scene here in Eldant. I had spoken out against discrimination more than once to Petralka (Her Majesty the Empress, remember) as well as Garius (noble) and Zahar (the Prime Minister). They were kind enough to indulge me, but there were people who might not smile on that sort of thing—people who might take it as an affront, as me overstepping the boundaries of class. In fact, that was essentially what had gotten me captured by the Assembly of Patriots.

Basically, if I went around saying “Don’t discriminate! Bad, bad, bad!” to the wrong people, I might not walk away from the experience alive. Not that I meant to actively accept discrimination, but there was a time and a place to say certain things. At the moment, I was an honored guest of the Eldant Empire, and if I carelessly said something inflammatory, it might be equated with an act of ill will on the part of my hosts.

At length we spotted someone rounding a corner, and stopped.

“Garius-san.”

There was the long, silver hair; the composed features; a young man so beautiful he burned himself into your memory. His eyes, emerald like Petralka’s, flashed, sharp and perceptive. He looked like he had stepped straight out of the pages of some shoujo manga: which is to say, he was a total hunk. He was slim and regal, of course, but not gaunt; you could almost see the toned muscles moving under his clothes.

Ladies and gentlemen, Minister Garius en Cordobal: the guy with all the gifts, the realest of all the “damn Reals” I had ever met.

Despite all that, though, I honestly wasn’t what you would call jealous of him. Like Petralka, he lived a life constrained by class and station. And also, so the very popular rumor went, he wasn’t the type to be interested in girls. Although I had to admit I didn’t know how true it was.

We all watched Garius: he was walking toward us quickly, but he wasn’t looking at us. He hardly seemed to know we were there.

The two knights with us silently dropped their heads when Garius appeared. Normally, I would expect him to give them a salute or a nod, maybe say a brief word of greeting to us. But today evidently was not normal. Garius walked right past us without ever slowing down or even seeming to notice us. His face as he went by was far more stern than usual.

Everything wasn’t right in the world of Garius. But what was going on?

“Uh, G-Garius-san?” I reflexively called after him. With a start, he halted and finally turned to us.

“Oh, Shinichi.” He blinked, as if coming out of a trance. “Ah, yes... You were summoned today as well.” He nodded to himself, but his tone of voice gave the distinct impression that his thoughts were elsewhere.

It was weird. Very out of character. Garius always seemed ready for anything; for as young as he was, he was very cool and collected. For him not to notice when he walked by people he knew, or to forget who had been scheduled to visit the castle, would ordinarily have been unthinkable.

Actually, Garius didn’t just seem preoccupied—he looked like a cornered animal. When I looked closely, I could see dark bags under his eyes, like he hadn’t been sleeping much.

“You tired?” I asked, and he looked pointedly away from me.

“Not at all...”

I knew for a fact I had never seen him look this way. He seemed unsettled, almost nervous or anxious... anyway, whatever it was, it certainly didn’t suit Garius’s almost disgustingly beautiful face.

“Gosh, I wonder what’s the matter with Garius-san,” Minori-san whispered into my ear.

“Yeah, I agree, something’s wrong.” If Minori-san thought so, too, then at least I knew it wasn’t my imagination or a simple mistake.

“He’s restless and fidgety... like a maiden in the first blush of love!”

“A maiden in what?” Where did she come up with these expressions?

I unconsciously moved my eyes from Minori-san back to Garius. Now that she mentioned it, I had to admit, he didn’t not look like... but there had to be better metaphors than that, right?

Garius probably didn’t know what we were whispering about, but he gave a long, pathos-laden sigh that came dangerously close to supporting Minori-san’s hypothesis. My bodyguard clenched her fist.

“Don’t tell me—you’re heartsick?!”

Curse this rotten WAC!

“Who is it?! Is it Shinichi-kun?! I can’t believe you’re only discovering your feelings for him now!”

“Your fantasies are showing, Minori-san,” I interjected, in a voice so calm it shocked even me. Frankly, I kind of frightened myself with how accustomed I’d become to her rottenness. I could see it coming from a mile away and have a quip ready to go. Being used to it was one thing, but that felt like a slippery slope to thinking a fujoshi’s thoughts, and then... shiver.

“I’m just a little on edge with the ambassador from Zwelberich coming,” Garius said. His tone was a touch more forceful than necessary—I guess he had caught the joy in Minori-san’s voice, too. “The meeting is scheduled to begin soon.”

“Oh, yeah.” I guess Garius would have a lot on his plate with a foreign ambassador arriving. I felt a little bad about stopping him. “Sorry. I know you must be busy.”

“Think nothing of it...” He gave an ambiguous shake of his head.

Hmmm. Something was definitely strange here.

“I guess we’ll get going, then,” I said.

“Yes, do,” Garius replied with a nod—but then, to my surprise, he added in a whisper, “Having you and your companions here heartens me, Shinichi.”

“Huh...?” I stopped in my tracks and looked back at him.

This was completely bizarre. Garius never needed to feel “heartened.”

Then he seemed to realize what he had said, and shook his head again. He waved a hand as if to say, “Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s nothing,” he added. And then he walked away, still obviously hurrying. We watched him go for a long second, then started off ourselves.

“There’s something really weird about him today,” I said. “I’ve never seen him like that.”

“He said it himself,” Hikaru-san said. “He’s nervous about the ambassador.”

“I wonder if that’s all it is...”

I didn’t know how big or important the Kingdom of Zwelberich was, but I couldn’t imagine something that could put even the knight Garius off his stride. When he had been meeting us (sort of the ambassadors from Japan), he had been completely cool, and even when the Japanese government had sent a special-forces unit to kill me, he had seemed totally in control. The way he was acting seemed less like anxiety and more like...

“Love changes people,” Minori-san opined from beside me, sounding like a young girl stuck in a daydream. Although I assumed the daydream she was having was rated R.

“Would you let it go already?”

“Maybe it’s not Shinichi-san he’s in love with. Maybe it’s this ambassador!” Hikaru-san said. Couldn’t he ever leave well enough alone? “Happens all the time, right? One look, and a person falls head over heels. Or maybe it’s a reunion with a long-lost first love...”

“Yeah, you’re right!” Minori-san said, nodding enthusiastically. “That would make perfect sense!”

“I’ll get you a dictionary and you can look up the definition of perfect sense.”

“So that’s why he was gazing at Shinichi-kun,” Minori-san said, completely ignoring my interjection. “He’s going to be reunited with his first love. Yet now he’s in love with Shinichi-kun. The heart of the beautiful knight, Garius, wavers between two men...!”

“That’s all complete speculation,” I said, hoping to burst the rotten bubble before it got any bigger. I wished Hikaru-san would stop pouring fuel on these fires. I knew it wasn’t because he liked BL himself; he just liked seeing the subject of Minori-san’s little fantasies (namely me) squirm. “I’d much rather be popular with girls than guys.”

“Minori-san, listen to his cute little dreams,” Hikaru-san said with a smile, continuing to pour poison in the WAC’s ear.

“It’s a sin to be so dense,” Minori-san replied.

“A crime.”

They were nodding constantly at each other. Even Matoba-san had turned around, arms crossed, and joined the nod-fest.

I wanted to ask what was wrong with all of them, but even I wasn’t that stupid: after yesterday, I had an inkling what they were talking about. Seriously, though, the idea that Petralka was in love with me was just Myusel’s mistaken impression—and as for Myusel herself, there was a good chance she just thought she was in love with me because she was glad that I treated her well.

Not to brag, but I don’t have a single personal quality that could possibly cause anyone to fall in love with me. Objectively speaking, I’m just a totally hopeless otaku, nothing more and nothing less. Totally average looks and abilities—or maybe below average. The type to thoughtlessly form a huge crush on a girl just because she’s nice to me (and even worse, to tell her about it).

I never wanted to feel that crushing, suffocating, wish-I-could-jump-in-a-hole-and-disappear sense of humiliation ever again.

“Ugh, a man who doesn’t know the first thing about a woman’s heart is the most terrible thing, isn’t he?” Hikaru-san said, looking at me with what might have been disgust.

“It’s okay,” Minori-san replied with a smile. “As long as he understands men’s hearts instead!”

Hey! That doesn’t make any sense!

“Fair enough. Ever thought about switching sides, Shinichi-san?”

“I told you, no way!” I said, shaking my head vigorously to drive the point home.

And then there we were, standing before the door to the audience chamber.

As I’ve explained before, there’s more than one audience chamber in Eldant Castle. We normally went to the smaller one to make our morning reports to Petralka, but the very first time I had arrived in the castle, I had been shown into the bigger one.

For the meeting with the ambassador from the Kingdom of Zwelberich, they had naturally chosen the larger room. Big enough for Eldant’s ministers, knights, and other courtiers to attend, the room was sumptuous, as befitted a chamber for the reception of foreign dignitaries. Sumptuous and, let it be said, imposing, showing any visitors just how rich and powerful the Empire was.

A knight announced us as we entered the room: “Amutech General Manager Kanou Shinichi-sama, Ayasaki Hikaru-sama, and their cohorts Matoba Jinzaburou-sama and Koganuma Minori-sama have arrived!”

The enormous door opened with a portentous creak. The first thing I saw was the red carpet laid straight down the center of the room. The royal guard stood at attention on either side, and farther along, it was lined by about a dozen ministers as well. And at the tail end, at the very far side of the room, was the throne, sitting up a step higher than everything else around. The ornately decorated seat was currently filled, of course, by Petralka.

“Mm. We are glad you’re here.”

The throne was designed to be impressively large (who would pay any attention to a tiny throne?), but it looked even bigger with the physically petite Petralka sitting in it. She looked like she belonged there, though; today she was absolutely projecting her authority as Empress. Standing to either side of her were Prime Minister Zahar and Garius, who must have circled around and beat us there using some other entrance.

“Welcome, Shinichi-dono, and all of you. How kind of you to attend on such short notice,” Zahar said, smiling broadly. To me, he looked perfectly normal, not obviously anxious about this occasion. Prime Minister Zahar was a friendly-looking man with white hair and a white beard—but he had his hand on the rudder of the nation’s political course, or so it was said. Prime Ministers in stories always turn out to be villains, taking the ear of the ruler to put their evil plots into motion. Zahar, though, appeared to break the mold. He seemed like a grandfatherly figure to Petralka, genuinely interested in looking after her and helping her grow up to be a better empress.

In any event...

I bowed to Petralka and her entourage, but then said hesitantly, “Are they sure about having us here?”

I didn’t necessarily mean here, in the audience chamber—I meant that the knights had led us almost to the far end of the room. Except for the important advisors, we were among the closest to the throne. Maybe it had been discussed in advance, because none of the other attendees showed obvious displeasure about it. I was glad to be somewhere I could see Petralka’s face clearly, but it would probably put me right up close to the Zwelberichian ambassador, too.

“Well, this was where they put us, and I guess the ambassador’s likely to call on us right away,” Minori-san whispered to me. “So why worry?”

Sometimes Minori-san sure could be—what should I call it? Bold? Optimistic? Startlingly nonchalant? I still wondered if this was really a good idea.

“What’s important is, just try not to screw anything up,” she added.

“I won’t!”

“If the ambassador turns out to be a little girl, no exclaiming ‘IS THAT REALLY AN ARCHETYPAL LITTLE GIRL CHARACTER?!’, okay?”

“Geez, I’m never going to live that down, am I?” I swear I understood by now that it had been a mistake.

I looked in the direction of the subject of my long-ago faux pas—namely, Petralka herself—and our eyes met. Just for a second, her cheeks flushed, more like an ordinary young woman than an empress. Maybe, in spite of how good she was at hiding it, she really was a little nervous.

And then the knight’s voice boomed through the chamber again. “The Sixth Prince of Zwelberich, the honorable Rubert Wollyn, has arrived!”

His voice faded away, leaving a deafening silence.

The ministers began to look toward the entrance, and we followed their gazes. Come to think of it, I had been in the castle’s audience chambers many times, but always as the guest, never as the host, if you will. Some knights approached the huge door and began to slide it open again—it looked massive and powerful, like the wall itself was moving.

A figure could be seen as the door opened...

“Is that him?” someone muttered.

A young man stepped into the audience chamber. His clothes had puffy sleeves and legs, an elegant outfit that practically screamed, “Hey! I’m a prince!” He came walking down the red carpet with an assured stride. The dark stripes on his outfit made the gold buttons and other ornaments on his chest and shoulders stand out; they glinted in the light each time he moved.

So this was our ambassador—Prince Rubert. I took him to be about the same age as Garius, or maybe a little older. He had clean, handsome features, and his radiant golden hair was kept a little shorter than Garius’s silver locks. His lips were graced with a quiet smile—he was the very picture of elegance.

I watched him as he approached the throne... and suddenly our eyes met. Realizing that it might be impolite if I seemed to be staring at the prince, I reflexively looked down, but I thought I saw Rubert’s smile widen almost imperceptibly. I sort of felt like if you looked in the dictionary under nice guy, you might find his picture. Or under prince, for that matter. I found myself wondering whether a commoner like me should even be breathing the same air as him, among other somewhat self-hateful things.

“I’ve been remiss in not calling on you sooner, Empress Petralka,” Prince Rubert said, stopping in front of the throne and kneeling. Several people behind him—I had hardly noticed them, but they must have been his attendants—likewise knelt, moving in perfect unison. The prince might have been older, but as Empress Petralka commanded the higher station, hence this show of deference.

“Raise your head, Prince Rubert,” Petralka said with great gravity. “It has indeed been some time. Is all well with you?”

“As ever. But I see Your Majesty has grown even more beautiful since we last met.”

“You may dispense with the flattery,” Petralka said with a wry smile.

“Then I will dispense with little, for I speak from the heart.”

Rubert’s finely-formed lips spoke words that would have gotten a normal guy a “Huh? What’s this BS?” reaction. But coming from a guy who could give Garius a run for his money when it came to sheer good looks, somehow they didn’t feel out of place. It was startling—in fact, kind of incredible.

Next, Rubert turned to Zahar. “It gladdens my heart to see you well, Elder Zahar.”

“I see you haven’t changed, my Prince,” Zahar replied with amusement.

It was obvious that Prince Rubert knew them. I guess that made sense, considering that they were each among the rulers of the respective countries.

Just one thing surprised me...

“...Been a while.”

Huh?

Toward Garius, and no one else, Rubert sounded different—unless I was just mishearing things. There wasn’t any obsequious deference, not even any real politeness, just three short words. Yet the emotion in them was impossible to miss; it wasn’t brusqueness so much as... a friendly familiarity, maybe...?

“Indeed...” Garius didn’t return Prince Rubert’s smile; in fact, his response seemed to be deliberately ambiguous. He didn’t even seem to want to look the prince in the eye. Someone Garius didn’t want to make eye contact with? Who was this person? If I looked very closely, I thought I could detect the slightest flush in Garius’s pale cheeks—in that regard, he really was a lot like Petralka. Could it be he was... angry? Or...

“I have come here to reaffirm the continued friendship between my Kingdom of Zwelberich and the Holy Eldant Empire, and to...”

While I stood there trying to put the pieces together in my mind, Prince Rubert launched into his ambassador’s spiel, and the discussion moved on to the state of affairs in each nation, the details of the alliance, and other topics. Honestly, political talk like this went straight over my head, so I just sort of let it go in one ear and out the other.

There’s something seriously weird going on with Garius, though...

He was forcing himself to appear composed, but to those of us who knew him, it was obvious how unsettled he was. He would stare straight at Prince Rubert, but when it seemed like their eyes might meet, he would hurriedly look away. His left hand would clench as if fighting to control some emotion, then suddenly relax.

As for Prince Rubert, he was mostly talking to Petralka, but could be seen to glance at Garius every once in a while. If their eyes happened to meet, his smile would deepen. But when Garius looked away, it seemed to amuse him even more.

What was going on here? Seriously, what was the deal?! I didn’t know the answer, but the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. Desperate to communicate how I was feeling, I turned to the person beside me...

“‘...right?’”

...and discovered that Minori-san’s lips were moving discreetly. “Hm...?”

“‘Yes, I know. I understand how you feel.’”

“Minori...san?”

“‘Wh-What do you mean by that?’ ‘I’ve longed to see you.’ ‘F-Foolishness. It’s much too late...’”

“Hello? Earth to Minori-san?”

“‘Too late? You wound me.’ ‘Then why did you abandon me all those years ago?’ ‘That was a misunderstanding.’”

Minori-san continued looking at the ground and muttering to herself. She didn’t sound normal, either. She was putting on some kind of voice, unusually low, and she changed her precise tone from line to line, like one person playing two parts. It was like she was... what was the word... doing ADR?

Okay, so there wasn’t really any dialogue to dub over, and she wasn’t recording anything anyway, but forget about that. I was blown away to realize...

“‘I want to set that misunderstanding straight. Tonight, in my room...’”

Was she improvising a BL script involving Garius and Prince Rubert?! Talk about a one-track BL mind! But... wait. I had to admit that when I listened to her dialogue, it went a long way towards explaining the weird vibe between the two of them. Her ability to come up with a BL conversation on the spot and immediately act it out, though... that was the fearsome power of Koganuma Minori............ No, not the time!

“Koganuma-kun?” I could see Matoba-san raising an eyebrow, as perplexed by Minori-san’s behavior as I was.

“Hoo... Ooh hoo hoo hoo hoo...”

The bad feeling I had about this kept getting worse and worse, and now it was accompanied by a sense of déjà vu. Minori-san’s eyes went seemingly vacant behind her spectacles, then they flashed dangerously.

“IS THAT REALLY A BL—”

“Hrk!”

The rotten WAC thrust her fists into the air, howling, but two hands immediately slapped themselves over her mouth from either side.

He didn’t say anything.

I didn’t say anything.

Matoba-san and I looked at each other from either side of the erupting Minori-san and nodded. For the first time, I sort of felt like the two of us were completely in tune... Okay, not the time for that either!

“Hm? Something the matter?” Prince Rubert turned as he noticed the two of us trying to suppress Minori-san.

This was bad. Of course we were going to stand out when we both suddenly slapped our hands over her mouth. Even Petralka and the others were goggling at us.

“Oh! Well, uh...” I sent my brain into overdrive, hoping to come up with an excuse. “This woman is, uh, she’s sick!”

“Well, well... Is she going to be all right?” the prince asked considerately. “She needn’t strain herself here. We can summon a doctor...”

“N-No need! She’ll be fine in a few minutes! She just has these little attacks!”

Yikes... this prince seemed like about the nicest guy in the world! No way could I confess that Minori-san had been secretly making up a BL conversation between him and Garius!

“I see old fondness has made my greetings overlong,” Prince Rubert said, turning back to Petralka and the others. “And when an ill person was waiting on me—my sincere apologies.”

“No, really, think nothing of it,” I said emphatically. Now Hikaru-san was helping us to restrain Minori-san, too; I felt like we were the ones who should be sincerely sorry.

Still, how I felt was one thing, how I had to act was another. With regrets to Prince Rubert, I wanted this audience to be over, and quickly. Minori-san looked like she might actually explode if things went on much longer. Having these two handsome men, Rubert and Garius, right next to her was physically dangerous.

But then Rubert said, “I do, though, have one last thing to mention.” He didn’t seem to notice how panicked I was, or at least he acted like he didn’t. “I’m afraid I didn’t come here simply to exchange pleasantries. I have an important request to make.”

“Have you?” Petralka replied. “Tell us; you needn’t hesitate.”

At that, the Sixth Prince of Zwelberich stood up straight as a post and still as a statue and looked directly at Petralka.

“I, Rubert Wollin, the Sixth Prince of Zwelberich—” His voice was clear and carrying; it almost sounded like he was singing. “—do address myself to the Holy Eldant Empire, bosom friend of my nation, and its empress, Petralka an Eldant III, worthy of all love and respect: to her I humbly propose marriage.”

The last echoes of his voice faded away in the suddenly silent audience chamber.

............

.....................

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

It took me a moment to grasp what he had said. And I wasn’t the only one.

“............Huh?” On the throne, Petralka was blinking in amazement.

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaattttttttt?!”

The audience chamber filled with my confused cry and the murmuring of every minister, counselor, and VIP in the room.