“I told you, that’s not the problem.”
“Then carry on.” She fixed her gaze forward again. Somehow she looked almost... amused. Maybe she enjoyed watching me squirm?
“Ah, yes. Shinichi.”
“Yes...?” I responded. Meanwhile I resumed taking her measurements, trying to pretend I was a machine with no feelings.
“When the time comes that the spellcaster is found who will operate the double, I leave their education in your hands as well. Is that acceptable?”
“Their education?”
“We assume some practice will be necessary to make the doll move and act like us. We are instructing you to provide the spellcaster that guidance.”
“Me...?” I shot a glance at Minori-san and Hikaru-san. They looked almost as surprised as I felt.
“Your Majesty,” Hikaru-san said, “please forgive my presumption, but wouldn’t it be better to entrust that task to someone personally closer to you?”
I agreed one hundred percent. Garius and Zahar, for example, had both known her way longer than I had; they must have had a better sense of Petralka’s smallest tics.
But Petralka shook her head. “No...” The long silver hair fluttered in front of me.
Wow. Her hair brushed my nose, and it tickled, but it also smelled good. My Kurobe Dam was already about to burst.
“We found your direction during the production of the moo-vee to be quite appropriate. One who is too close may be prone to missing certain details—so Garius tells us. In any event, we are not out to deceive friends and family. As far as catching the ‘gist’ of us—Shinichi. We believe you understand it well.”
“The movie?” Hikaru-san said, putting a finger to his chin and looking puzzled. “I know what you mean. That’s one of the projects you did before I got here, right? Didn’t it feature Her Majesty as a magical girl who—”
“Silence!” Petralka exclaimed suddenly. “We shall not permit further discussion of that thing!”
“Oh... Of course.” Hikaru-san nodded, cowed by the sudden outburst. Petralka, for her part, was red up to her ears.
“Petralka... Calm down,” I said with a grin. Apparently that movie was still a raw nerve for her. Personally, I thought that was too bad—she’d been adorable in it. Even her somewhat awkward performance was sweet in its own way.
“..................Anyway,” Petralka said with a single, pointed cough, bringing us back to the original subject. “We wish to entrust the matter to you.”
“Well, if you insist...” I could hardly refuse.
“We request that you focus on things here. You may reduce your workload at school or delegate that business to others for a while. A room will be prepared here for you.”
“Is it really that urgent?” I asked in surprise.
“Not precisely,” Petralka replied, “but still...” She spared another glance back at me. “Shinichi, it has been some time since you visited the castle for any reason other than to make your regular reports, has it not?”
“Er... I guess so. I didn’t think a castle was the sort of place you just dropped by to hang out, you know?”
Being a castle and all.
It was Petralka’s home, but it was also the seat of the government of the Holy Eldant Empire, like the Japanese Prime Minister’s residence and all the cabinet offices all rolled into one. I didn’t think you just popped in for a visit the way you might at a friend’s house.
Petralka, though, looked forward again, almost seeming to pout as she said, “Come even when you have no specific business.”
“That would be totally out of line...”
“We are unable to go to you, therefore you must come to us, must you not?”
“............Ah.”
You might recall that the terrorist incident with the Assembly of Patriots was one of the background causes for this whole discussion of a body double. Petralka had been an actual hostage—the Patriots could have killed her anytime they wanted. The whole thing came as a shock to the empress’s advisors, and for reasons of safety, Petralka’s excursions had been severely limited since then.
“Come here sometimes. Even if you do not have... ahem... any specific business.” Petralka seemed almost hesitant; after a moment’s silence she added, “It—It gets lonely, does it not?”
“Petralka...”
I looked at her, she looked at the ground, and I felt an almost painful squeezing in my heart. How could an absolute monarch be so dang cute?! I was gonna die! Die of moe! Or if not from moe, then because I just couldn’t hold myself back from giving her a big hug and getting my head chopped off! Danger! Stay calm, my arms!
I fought valiantly to push back the rising tide of chuunibyou-ishness within me.
But, uh, anyway, she was right. I had school. Petralka had an empire to run. That didn’t leave us with a lot of opportunities to see each other, and because of our respective positions, we rarely got the chance to just talk as friends.
Could it be... Had she asked me to handle these measurements for the same reason?
Wait... Was she... Could she be inventing excuses to see me?
..........................................................................................
Ahhhhhhhhhh!! The bittersweetness! Why is this bittersweetness filling my—nay, overflowing from my heart?! What’s going on here?!
This feeling—is this feeling moe?!
Okay, so I was maybe putting all these pieces together a little late.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Petralka’s back. “I get it. I’ll be sure to stop by sometimes, even if I don’t need anything.”
“Th-That will be well.”
I couldn’t see her face, but I could see her beet-red ears, and it made me break out in a smile.
Chapter Two: A Puppet Master?
When I arrived at school that day, I didn’t immediately start preparing for lessons. There was someone I wanted to find first.
Students were chatting with each other in the classroom during the few free moments before lessons started. I sought out the person in the crowd that I was looking for and called out to her.
“Hey, Romilda. Sorry, could I have a moment?”
“Yes?” The diminutive girl looked over when I called her name. Well, I say diminutive, but that’s only by my standards. Compared to other dwarves, she was about average. But anyway. “What is it?” She left off talking with her friends and came over to me.
“Just come over here for a second,” I said, leading her out into the hallway. Then I looked around. I made sure there was no one else in the vicinity, then lowered my voice and said, “We’re going to be making a doll version of Petralka—of Her Majesty.”
I told her about wanting to make a doll that could fill in for the empress. About how we hoped the dwarves could help us with it. Sparing the details, I told Romilda as quickly as I could about the Make Petralka a Kagemusha Plan.
Learning all of this left Romilda wide-eyed and silent. We didn’t have much time, though, so I forged ahead. “I assume Prime Minister Zahar or Minister Garius will contact your father to discuss this officially. But the point is—” here I got to what I was really wanting to ask—“we need a dwarf who’s good at controlling dolls, but can also keep a secret. Can you think of anyone like that? A girl would be best. Do any of the other students fit that description?”
“Uh... Um...” Romilda cocked her head. Apparently no one came to mind immediately.
I pressed the point. “What about—you know how lately there have been kids playing with action figures in the classroom, making them move?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Like that. But—hmm, it’s got to be like, if the figures do the dance from the Prepure ending, people would have to be like, ‘Wow, did these guys just jump off the screen?’ The kid has to be that good.”
“I’ve got to admit, that’s...” Romilda frowned.
No dice, huh? Well, I had kind of expected as much. I’d seen the kids playing with t
he figures, but the movements always looked a little strange, a far cry from seeming practically alive. Handling Petralka’s double would mean even more things to think about, too—facial expressions and small finger movements. If they couldn’t make an action figure move smoothly, they weren’t going to be able to handle that.
I’d told Petralka and the others that I had an idea, and I did, but first I’d wanted to ask Romilda, since she would know who was who among the dwarves better than I would.
“So on that note, I’ve got a favor to ask.”
“Yes, sir?”
“You remember when I came to the underground workshop the other day? And there was that super skilled clay-doll user. The girl using three of them at once?”
“Oh, Lauron, sure!” Romilda clapped her hands and nodded.
“Yeah, exactly. Can she keep a secret?”
“I’m pretty sure...” Romilda looked thoughtful. “It’s like... She’s stubborn. Or maybe diligent would be a better word? If you tell her not to talk, I think she’d keep her mouth shut to the grave.”
“G-Gee, really?”
“Anyway, she’s plenty serious... No, that’s not quite the word. Inflexible, maybe.”
“Hmm...”
A bit obstinate, I guessed. She hadn’t really looked it, but...
“Anyway, I definitely think Lauron fits your criteria, Sensei. I’ve never seen her work anything but the clay dolls in the workshop, but...”
“But if she can handle three at once, it means that if she focused entirely on a single doll, she’d probably be something else, right?”
“Yeah, I sure think so.” Romilda nodded. “She might really be able to re-create the Prepure dance!”
Romilda looked genuinely happy. Maybe she was pleased to think one of her acquaintances would be entrusted with the immensely important task of helping to keep the empress safe. If this worked, it might do even more for the dwarves than mass-producing Faldras.
In any event, it looked like I’d been on the right track.
“Do you think you could bring her by my mansion?”
“You want me to bring Lauron to your house?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Sensei, don’t tell me...” She seemed to have an inkling of an idea.
“Huh? Tell you what?”
“Are you trying to grow your harem?”
“As if!” I exclaimed. “That’s practically slander!”
A few students peeked out from the classroom to see what was going on. I instinctively shifted a little and whispered into Romilda’s ear, so no one else would hear what we were talking about.
“What about this conversation made you think that was where this was going?”
“Men are all about harems, right? They’re at the center of so many plots.”
I mean, yes, men like harems! Wait—who had she heard that from?!
“Any man who deliberately did that for real would just be a disgusting crook!”
“But you have Minori-sensei and Myusel-sensei and Elvia-san living right there with you...”
“Yes! Yes, we are all living in the same house, that’s true!”
Minori-san was my bodyguard, Myusel was my maid, and as for Elvia, she was Amutech’s in-house artist—not one of them was in any way romantically involved with me. In fact, unless one of them actually asked me to do something with her, I would never imagine thinking of my pure, sweet housemates in those terms. It would make me feel terrible. In fact, I couldn’t believe she’d said it.
“And if you can go for someone like Elvia-san, then a dwarf would obviously—”
“Okay, I’m not saying I can’t get moe for elves or dwarves or whatever, but that’s a totally different subject!”
By the way, traditional fantasy works usually depict even female dwarves as having beards and looking like elderly guys, but at least in this world, that’s not how it was. Much like the elves—maybe because they both shared a close affinity with the sprites—the prime of their lives (that is to say, their youth) seemed to last a long time.
“Huh? So you wanted something else?”
“Of course I did!”
What did she take me for?! Was this how I looked to my students?
Just as I was trying to produce an expression that would make clear exactly how much I regretted this misunderstanding, the bell rang. It was time for class.
We had to go back in the classroom—for that matter, my standing out here alone with Romilda could fuel exactly the sort of talk I was upset about.
“Uh, anyway, take care of things for me, will you? And just to be extra clear, this is absolutely secret, okay?”
“Yes, sir!” Romilda nodded firmly, and then the two of us returned to the classroom.
A few days later, we really got down to the business of producing Petralka’s double.
The place: my mansion. True, the dwarf workshop would have had more tools, better facilities, and been overall more convenient, but it was too big; too many people came and went there to guarantee secrecy. Anyway, since I was the general director of the project, doing things at my house made a certain kind of practical sense.
Then again, it also happened to be home to Elvia, who was nominally a Bahairamanian spy. But as far as she went... eh, I figured it would be fine. Call it a product of the trust we’d built up for each other, or chalk it up to the fact that she never seemed very diligent in reporting anything back home. (She sort of seemed to leave something to be desired as an agent of espionage.) Even if some sudden fit of loyalty to the motherland welled up in her, I figured we would notice the change in her behavior. Honestly, it would’ve been way harder to manage information security without knowing who the spy was.
And so, with all that settled...
“Man, this is amazing, though,” I said, putting my hands on my hips and checking out the new addition. Namely, the workshop now standing out behind the house. “Or, I guess I should say you’re amazing, Brooke.”
“How’s that, sir?” my main builder asked from beside me.
Brooke Darwin was the lizardman groundskeeper at our mansion. Just like the name suggests, lizardmen looks like big, bipedal lizards. Plus, Brooke was a lot taller than me—including the length of his tail, probably something like three meters. To be blunt, not the sort of person you’d want to run into in a dark alley.
But notwithstanding how he looked, Brooke was loyal and honest—not to mention a passionately celebrated hero of his people. He had a fair amount of pull with the lizardmen; in this case, for example, he’d brought several of his tribesmen, and in less than three days they’d constructed an entire small workshop.
I do mean small, really just enough to keep out the elements—but still, considering that they weren’t professionals and didn’t have special building materials, it was still pretty shocking. They had even made a set of big double doors so that we could bring in materials as necessary.
“I mean, you put up an entire building in less than three days.”
“Well, I was in th’ army,” Brooke said. “Digging and building are a soldier’s bread and butter.”
“Oh... That makes sense.”
Being able to set up a base quickly and reliably right on the front would certainly be useful in the military.
As I was thinking about this, Minori-san called from the mansion. “The dwarves’ll be here soon!”
I could see Hikaru-san standing beside her.
“Right,” I called, “I’ll be right there. Brooke, good work—thanks again.” Then I went over to Minori-san and we all headed for the front door.
“Huh, hope it works out okay,” I said.
“You almost sound like it’s someone else’s business,” Hikaru-san said, shooting me a pointed, sidelong glance. “You masterminded this entire thing, right?”
“Well, yeah, sure. But I won’t be doing the actual work work...”
“We’ll just have to trust the dwarves for that, won’t we?” Minori-san said.
“I tru
st them,” Hikaru-san said. “But whenever you do something for the first time—not just this doll thing—nothing ever goes quite according to plan. There are always screw-ups and problems you could never have predicted.”
“That’s when we’ll have to call on the talents of our project manager,” Minori-san said, smiling pleasantly.
I frowned. “Lay off the pressure, please...” Then I thought about it for a moment. “You know, though, speaking of what always happens, think about how if we were in a manga or a drama, once the body double was built the dwarves would all be poisoned or something to preserve secrecy. I’d be all, Your work here is done! Mwahaha!”
“Good luck getting the thing maintenanced if you kill all the mechanics,” Hikaru-san shrugged.
Before I knew it, we were all back in the front hall.
“Master.”
I looked up at the voice and saw Myusel walking toward us. Behind her came a line of dwarves.
“The guests from the Guld Workshop have arrived.”
“Thanks for showing them in, Myusel.”
“Yes, sir.” Myusel gave a bow and stood off to the side.
As for me, I turned to the newly arrived dwarf builders. At a glance, most of them appeared to be adult dwarf men. I guessed the importance of the job had led to the most experienced workers being sent to me.
Dwarves are never very tall, but the men in particular look rugged, bulging with muscles that made me feel like I had to be careful when I shook their hands, lest they crush my poor, weak fingers. A whole crowd of these dwarves was even more intimidating than one by himself. Several of them were frowning—not from annoyance, I suspected, but from an understandable nervousness.
Then I heard a familiar voice from behind the line of dwarves. “Sensei!”
Romilda shoved her way out from the pack of old men.
“Huh? Romilda, you’re here, too?”
I had left it to the boss of Guld Workshop (read: Romilda’s dad) to pick the workers. Was she actually a long-standing, experienced craftsman herself?
“My father asked me to observe.”
Outbreak Company: Volume 8 (Premium) Page 6
