Outbreak Company: Volume 5

by Ichiro Sakaki

  “Hmm.” Minori-sama tilted her head. “I see. Bahairam matters more to you than Shinichi-kun, doesn’t it? No other choice, then. You’re a Bahairamanian spy, aren’t you, Elvia?”

  “Y-Yes... But...”

  “Ah. So you admit it.” Minori-sama’s glasses glinted eerily.

  Elvia-san shook violently.

  True, it was an open secret among all of us that she was a spy from Bahairam, but for the time being she had been granted a stay of execution, the excuse being that there wasn’t enough solid evidence to convict her.

  But now...

  “You’ve just admitted that you’re a spy from Bahairam. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “Er... Agh...”

  “Sadly, Elvia, you’ll have to be executed.”

  Elvia-san’s face went pale. In the space of a few words, Minori-sama had completely cornered her. From my perspective, sticking a hand-gun in her face seemed to make the attempt at rational persuasion redundant, but what did I know?

  “Oh, but... you’re a girl, Elvia. So who knows what they might do to you before they kill you? ‘She’s gonna die all the same!’, they’ll say, and then they’ll have their fun.”

  “What... What kind of fun will they have...?”

  “Eyteenandup dohjinshi stuff, you know? I can hardly bring myself to describe it! Just imagine, a bunch of hardened soldiers... very hardened...”

  Elvia-san trembled again. I wasn’t sure what eyteenandup dohjinshi was, and I didn’t think Elvia-san knew either, but the thrust of what Minori-sama was saying was still perfectly clear.

  “I’m really sorry, Elvia. I want to cover for you, believe me—but you’ve got to give me something to work with. Something I can present to Her Majesty and Minister Cordobal, something so compelling that they’ll have no choice but to forgive you even when they find out you’re an enemy spy!”

  Elvia-san hung her head, exhausted by the fear. She spent a moment groaning unhappily before she finally said, “Yeah, fine...”

  “Hm? What was that?” Minori-sama said, cocking her head.

  Elvia-san gave Minori-sama a scathing look and shouted, “I said, fine! You win.”

  I sat in a chair at my desk with my chin resting on my hand and let out a very long sigh. Amatena’s words from the day before kept whirling around in my head.

  “You will use your abilities to make the children many times more loyal to the father-ruler. They will work harder for him, fight harder for him, and be more overjoyed to do so.”

  That, apparently, was why the Kingdom of Bahairam had kidnapped me. Spies in the Holy Eldant Empire must have passed Amatena and her friends word of the movie we had made. They heard just how much people’s estimation of Petralka—their “loyalty,” to use Amatena’s term—had gone up after the film premiered, and they were bent on doing the same thing for their own monarch.

  In short, Amatena and whoever she was working for believed the movie had been a ploy to manipulate the populace.

  That was one serious misunderstanding, I thought. It had never been our plan for Petralka to become a pop star; that was mostly sheer dumb luck. It was never the stated goal. But then, strictly in terms of the outcome, the movie had indeed turned out to serve that purpose.

  To an absolute monarchy like Bahairam (not that the Eldant Empire was any different in this regard), that probably looked like a pretty effective political tool.

  “Oh, for...!”

  But, come on. Do the same thing here? It wasn’t that easy.

  For starters, this place didn’t even have the equipment to make a movie. To be fair, Amatena and her superiors didn’t seem hung up on the idea of a film as such. As long as the King of Bahairam—their beloved “father”—grew more popular with the people, it didn’t really matter what I did.

  For example, I could take a page from certain countries and religions in our own world, where people sometimes made up stories out of whole cloth in order to bring power to a head of state or religious leader. Anything from “he deflected lightning with his bare hands” or “he predicted an earthquake,” right up to “he spoke with august figures from the past across time and space, and they acknowledged him” or “he’s the bodily reincarnation of the soul of so-and-so.”

  Ridiculous propaganda like that wasn’t exactly uncommon even back on Earth. Plenty of national founding myths and legends were basically attempts in their own time to control people or consolidate power. That might explain why, unlike most folktales, so many of these stories are concerned with bloodlines and the legitimacy of those lineages.

  My point is, what I was being asked to do was nothing new. But that still left me wondering:

  “What the heck am I gonna do?”

  Problem one: I was more of a messenger than a creator. Making up stories has never been my strong suit.

  Problem two:

  “Pardon me, Sire.”

  I heard the words through the door—not the door to the outside that Amatena always came through, but the one that led into the kitchen and bathing areas. That door wasn’t locked.

  “I’ve brought your tea.”

  It was Clara.

  “Sure, come on in.” I stood and opened the door for her. Clara was standing there with a tray in her hands and a surprised look on her face.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said after a moment. She shook her head and came into the room.

  I remembered, then: I had gotten the same reaction from Myusel once.

  She seemed to be surprised that I had gone to the trouble of standing up and opening the door for her. Social differences were pretty pronounced in this world, and social superiors rarely showed that kind of consideration for their social inferiors. Bahairam touted how all its citizens were equal, but even just looking at the difference in clothes between the average citizen and members of the military suggested that equality only went so far.

  “Here you are.”

  “Thanks.”

  On my desk she set a brass teapot and cup, along with a baked treat like a cookie. The tea must have been freshly steeped, because it was still steaming, and the cookie must have been freshly baked, because its aroma was still rich and tempting.

  And yet, I didn’t feel like touching them. I just couldn’t seem to summon up an appetite. I was too worried about what Amatena had said.

  “It’s something the matter, Sire?”

  “Er, ah, no... I just... I guess I’m not that hungry.” Then I quickly added, “Oh, but I’m happy you took the trouble to bring them by.”

  Clara was silent. She looked confused again. The whole beast-girl thing probably amplified just how outrageously cute and moe the expression was, like a delicate bird or a tiny squirrel. But forget about that.

  “If you are pleased, Sire, then that is good,” Clara said. “Since I can’t serve you by having relations with you, I must find other ways to make you happy, or consider myself to have failed in my duties.”

  “Uh-huh...”

  I couldn’t help feeling a little exasperated. Why was this girl so hung up on “relations”? Clara was currently under the impression that I suffered from If-I-Do-Dirty-Stuff-With-Girls-I’ll-Die Syndrome (note: that name hasn’t been vetted by the medical journals), so for the time being I had avoided any more being jumped on or gotten naked with.

  But Clara believed that if she couldn’t “serve” me that way, she had to discover some other way to earn my goodwill, and she had been very assiduous about doing so.

  It felt different, though, from Myusel’s cheerful devotion. Myusel worked hard on my behalf because she personally recognized me as her master—her actions showed it, and she had even told me as much herself. But with Clara, there was something dutiful about it, like she was doing it because she had no other choice. In extreme terms, you could say there was no feeling in it, that the way she did things was kind of mechanical. Not enough to make her seem unhappy, exactly, but she didn’t seem to have any particular affect
ion for me, either.

  All the more reason, I figured, why I really wanted to avoid doing it with her.

  “Look, Clara,” I said, looking her square in the face. “You don’t especially like me, do you?”

  I succeeded only in provoking another perplexed expression.

  “I mean... You know.” I hesitated for a moment. “These... relations, or whatever. Do you have any experience with them?”

  “I do not. Do you find that unsatisfying about me, Shinichi-sama?” She cocked her head as if to ask whether I might prefer a woman with lots of experience.

  “No, look, that’s not my point. If you don’t have any experience, then... then I think it’s even more important that you do, you know, kissing and stuff... with someone you really care about.”

  “Is that how things are in Eldant?”

  “Wait, what do you mean by...”

  “Are you saying that isn’t how things are here?!” I wanted to exclaim, but somehow resisted. Cultural differences could really be... well, different. Maybe in Bahairam, this sort of, er, stuff didn’t have anything to do with love. I’ve heard that in prewar Japan, marriage partners were usually chosen for you by the people around you, and sometimes you wouldn’t even see your partner’s face until the day of the wedding.

  “Do you hate me, Shinichi-sama?”

  “No, listen, that’s not really what I’m saying. I’m asking how you feel. You’re not exactly in love with me, are you?”

  When Amatena walked into the room, Clara’s tail stood straight up. But when she was with me, it dangled listlessly behind her. Of course, it was always possible that unlike with some animals, her tail didn’t really say anything about her emotional state. But still...

  “So I just have to wonder. What makes you so interested in ‘relations’ with me?”

  As though it were blindingly obvious, Clara replied, “Because that is my duty. I have been told to please you, Sire, and to earn your exalted affections.”

  I was struck dumb. In doujinshi and stuff, two-dimensional maids offer to “serve” their “Sires” at night all the time—but those are just stories. Fiction. Not reality. That’s why it works. And yet here was an actual girl right in front of me saying this stuff, and it turned out to be a complete turn-off. At any rate, it definitely didn’t make me eager to be all, “Well, then!” and just climb on.

  I guess because that would mean...

  “It would mean completely ignoring the girl’s feelings, wouldn’t it?”

  Now Clara looked more confused than ever.

  I know: some people in the world choose to do this sort of thing for work, of their own volition, and if it’s their choice then I leave that to them. But Clara didn’t strike me as being in that category. More likely, she had just been brought up this way. That was why she believed that when it came to sex, the feelings of the people involved didn’t matter. Or at least, her feelings didn’t. It was her job, nothing more and nothing less. That was why she had thrown herself on me over my objections, all the while saying that it was in order to please me.

  This was one more reason why I couldn’t accept Amatena’s demand.

  The way that town had looked. Those people. Even that king. And now, the way Clara thought like this. What could produce any of that but a straightlaced, closely controlled society?

  People were raised to suppress their natural emotions; even the blossoming of love wasn’t permitted. They were simply supposed to be good little cogs of the state. They had to repress everything they felt, channeling it into “loyalty” and “patriotism.” And as a result, the people didn’t even realize how constricted their worldview really was...

  Maybe individualism wasn’t something they knew about in Bahairam.

  In this country of all places, Amatena wanted me to help them manipulate the populace even more thoroughly.

  And I just couldn’t do it.

  To me it was even worse, even more inhuman, than being made an accomplice to cultural invasion.

  I sat there, my brow furrowed with all these thoughts, when—

  “It’s me.”

  There was a knock on the door, and I heard Amatena on the other side.

  Without waiting for me or Clara to respond, she walked imperiously into the room.

  “Are you progressing?”

  The question was directed at... Clara?

  Huh?

  Not at me?

  I had been sure she was asking about how I was getting along with Operation Make Everyone Fall in Love with the King (provisional name). Did this imply that it was Clara, and not me, that she was going to trust for information on how things were going?

  Clara’s tail was standing straight up again. I was pretty convinced by now that this girl was happy to see Amatena.

  “Well? Is there progress or no?” Amatena asked again.

  Clara answered, “Yes,” but only after a hesitant beat.

  Wait a second...

  Maybe the progress she, or perhaps her superiors, were interested in was progress in “pleasing” me. She was asking whether I had been served, whether I had been happy with it, and whether Clara had managed to insinuate herself into my “exalted affections.”

  Had she hesitated to answer because we hadn’t actually, you know... done anything yet?

  I would definitely feel bad if that fact ended up getting her in trouble... but not bad enough to say “Welp, there you have it, no choice,” and jump into bed with her.

  “Hm. I see.” Amatena nodded, apparently satisfied with Clara’s answer.

  As for me, I stood up and spoke. “Amatena.”

  “What is it?”

  “Could I trouble you to show me the outside?”

  “As I recall, you saw it yester—”

  “I mean I want to see how the people of this country actually live,” I broke in.

  I kept wondering whether the impression I’d gotten from the scene of the “father-king” waving at the crowd, along with the vibes from Amatena and Clara, was accurate or not. Who knew? Maybe the bland townscape I’d seen was actually all warehouses or something, and the places where people lived looked different.

  Granted, I knew it probably wouldn’t be possible to learn absolutely everything and then make a completely objective judgment—but at the very least, I wanted to avoid drawing a snap conclusion from just one angle. That was dangerous and ugly. Not to mention, otaku knew something about being the victims of such narrow-minded verdicts.

  “I’m not entirely sure that’s necessary.”

  “How can you expect me to make up myths and legends about your father-king that the people will accept if I don’t know anything about the people?”

  Amatena appeared to think this over for a moment before she nodded and said, “Very well. They say that success in battle hinges upon knowing one’s enemy. Perhaps knowledge of the other is equally important in all areas of life.”

  I found myself blinking in surprise. Hang on. Could it be that Amatena is... actually pretty smart?

  It hardly took her more than a few seconds to take what I had said and cast it in a form that made sense within her worldview. You would have to think pretty hard to come up with battle as an analogy for brainwashing people. Or at least, she would have to be someone who didn’t stop at the surface meaning of words.

  “Get your outdoor clothes on. I will be waiting outside,” Amatena said, and then she left the room.

  When we told Her Majesty that we had something to report about Shinichi-sama, she admitted us to her presence immediately.

  We were shown into the audience chamber, but not the one we had been in several days before. This room was several times the size of the other one, and we weren’t the only ones there: there were at least twenty other people, ministers and influential nobles of all types. Her Majesty must have been in the middle of a meeting with her advisors, and she had interrupted it just for us. That made it obvious how worried she had been about Shinichi-sama.

  “Excuse us,�
�� Minori-sama and I said as we approached the throne were Her Majesty sat.

  Minister Cordobal and Prime Minister Zahar were in attendance beside the throne, while the rest of the audience chamber was packed with people of high station. Normally it would be unthinkable that I should so much as be near these people, let alone interrupt their conversation.

  Understandably, most of those in the room had fixed us with glares that said, What are these impudent low-borns doing here? I could practically feel their eyes burning my skin.

  Her Majesty spoke from the throne. “Minori. Myusel. You say you have something to tell us about Shinichi?”

  “Yes, Majesty,” Minori-sama said with a reverent bow. “We effectively have proof that Kanou Shinichi was abducted by the Kingdom of Bahairam. However, I’m given to understand that the Holy Eldant Empire cannot act to rescue him.”

  “It pains this nation deeply, but that is correct.”

  This answer came—not from Her Majesty, but from Minister Cordobal. Perhaps he wanted to make sure he spoke before Her Majesty had a chance to.

  “Would it be at all possible to entrust the matter to myself and Myusel?”

  “Come again?”

  “What I mean is...” Minori-sama turned and spoke, not to the shocked empress and her minister, but to Prime Minister Zahar. “Myusel and I wish to go to the Kingdom of Bahairam and bring back Kanou Shinichi. As individuals acting on our own, of course. I’m a member of the military, but not a citizen of the Holy Eldant Empire, and Myusel is currently nothing more than a household servant. On the chance that there was any kind of problem, the Eldant Empire could easily claim ignorance, and I don’t believe it would lead to any trouble for the empire.”

  That set off a buzz in the audience chamber.

  “Hmm.” Minister Cordobal, his brow furrowed, cut through the chatter. “Logical enough. But, Koganuma Minori, what good do you think the two of you can do by yourselves? You have a hunch he was captured by Bahairam, but no actual proof. You don’t, of course, know where in Bahairam he might be. We’re talking about a country with enough military might to oppose the Holy Eldant Empire—it’s not a small place. How do you intend to find him?”