Outbreak Company: Volume 8 (Premium)

by Ichiro Sakaki

  “Sensei—” said one of the students, looking up from the captivating play.

  “I know this scene. It’s the one where Manami-san goes crazy because the temp agency she works for is just too evil, right?”

  A famous moment.

  “Yeah, exactly! That’s Sensei for you!” The students started to laugh.

  “It looks like you’ve really got it down,” I said.

  “We’re not as good as Lauron, though,” Romilda said, a little embarrassed.

  The figure continued to shamble around on the desktop while she spoke. I watched it for a moment, then said, “Actually, I’d like to ask you something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Is Lauron a... crybaby?”

  Romilda and the other dwarves looked at each other blankly. The figures also cocked their heads delicately.

  “I don’t really think so,” Romilda said, shaking her head. “She’s serious. You know, the kind who always shows up ten minutes early to everything. But I guess she does have a stubborn streak. Like, if you tell her not to move, she literally won’t move a muscle no matter what happens. And she gets real upset if people don’t follow the rules. In the worst case, she might even start crying.”

  “Crying...” I said under my voice. I could feel an idea tugging at me.

  Such-and-such has to be done. She can’t do it. Hence, crying.

  In other words...

  “Remember how she got angry the other day?” one of the students said.

  “What happened, again?”

  “I think she said the Faldra parts weren’t quite lined up on the shelf or something.”

  “And then when she tried to fix it, the boss shouted that if she had time to sweat details like that, she should find something more productive to do! Right?”

  All the students seemed amused by the recollection. Apparently, they had accepted Lauron’s hard-headedness as just part of who she was; they didn’t seem to be criticizing her for it.

  “There was another time—it was a while ago now—when...” Romilda was just about to launch into another funny anecdote, but then she stopped in the middle of her sentence. “Huh...?” She looked at the desk, blinking.

  “What’s up?” I said, following her troubled gaze—and then I saw it.

  The action figures that had been jumping around with such vigor just a few minutes ago lay lifelessly on the desk.

  Romilda reached out to one of them and intoned a spell again. But the character showed no sign of moving.

  “What?” She furrowed her brow and tilted her head. I glanced around the room and saw that it was the same with all the figures the students had been playing with, and everyone else looked just as confused as Romilda.

  “There, finally got it.” After a few moments of repeating her spell, Romilda’s figure slowly came back to life. She looked very relieved.

  “Gosh, what was that all about?” I wondered aloud. The figures had been moving so readily a few minutes ago—why would they suddenly just stop? And not just for Romilda, either—all the figures in the classroom.

  “Recently... yawn... this has been happening a lot,” Romilda said, trying to suppress a yawn between words. “We suddenly can’t use magic. It always comes back after a minute, but...”

  The other students nodded in agreement. Several of them were also yawning.

  What the heck was going on here? Why was everyone so tired all of a sudden?

  And of course, why had the figures stopped moving—the magic stopped working?

  “Oh yeah...” I felt like someone had mentioned something about temporary magic stoppages not long ago. Who was it? Hikaru-san, I thought.

  What was going on? I thought I could feel my heart beating a little faster in my chest. Maybe I was imagining it.

  Then I suddenly remembered what Hikaru-san had said the other day.

  “If this were a light novel or a manga or something, this is about where we would get the twist—the thing that turns everything else upside down.”

  “Nah, couldn’t be... Right?” I smiled grimly, but even I thought I sounded like I was trying to convince myself.

  The next day—school was out, and we were in our usual room at Eldant Castle.

  We were waiting for Lauron. In attendance were myself, Minori-san, Hikaru-san, Myusel, and the Petralka puppet. We had been informed ahead of time that Petralka herself might or might not be able to make it due to the demands of official business. We were doing Lauron’s training here in the castle specifically because Petralka had hoped to participate as much as possible, but official duties and urgent matters seemed to crop up more and more, and she was frequently absent.

  Of course, if this body-double thing works out, maybe she won’t have to worry about all that so much, I told myself for the umpteenth time.

  Incidentally, Myusel was there in Petralka’s place—if the empress herself couldn’t be present to model, we wanted everyone we could get who knew her well.

  “This is kind of strange,” I said suddenly. “Lauron usually beats us here.”

  “What time is it now?” Hikaru-san asked absently, leaning against the wall and looking out one of the windows.

  I consulted the G-SH*CK on my wrist. “My watch shows three,” I said. “To be more precise, two minutes till.”

  That was to say, it was almost three o’clock in Japan, but I wasn’t sure exactly what time it was here in Eldant. Frankly, I still wasn’t entirely clear on how to read their clocks. I had the general feeling that a day was broadly split into twenty-four hours, but I lacked a fine sense for the smaller divisions. I always felt like maybe I was a few minutes early or late. But as I didn’t really have a schedule to keep at the moment, I hadn’t worried too much about it. I knew the JSDF garrison conducted operations at specific times, so maybe they had a better grasp of it.

  “Hey,” I said, thinking back to my conversation in the classroom. “Romilda said something about Lauron always showing up ten minutes early to everything.”

  “She’s a diligent one, that girl,” Minori-san said with a wry smile.

  “I think so too,” Myusel chimed in. “She seems fastidious and good person.”

  Maybe this was her way of defending Lauron. Ahh, Myusel. What a sweetie.

  “But if she’s as scrupulous as all that, why does she always end up crying and letting her magic drop?”

  “Hikaru-san...” He sounded as critical as ever, and I couldn’t do anything but smile darkly about it.

  As a cosplayer, Hikaru-san knew what it meant to imitate someone, to play a part, so he knew what he was talking about. He was pretty good at it, too—so it seemed natural to him, and apparently it bothered him more than the rest of us that Lauron couldn’t seem to do it. It wasn’t really a personal beef with her—I thought.

  “Well, everyone has different talents.”

  “Sure, but...”

  And so on.

  Thus we talked as we waited for Lauron, until suddenly, the door flew open so fast it practically jumped off its hinges. Lauron flew in, breathing so hard her shoulders were heaving. She looked around at us. Maybe she was upset about having arrived after we did—her brow was furrowed, and she looked like she might burst into tears right then and there.

  “Cool, you’re here. Let’s get started, shall we?” I spoke as nonchalantly as I could, trying to communicate that it didn’t bother me and everything was fine. I stole a glance at my watch: precisely three o’clock. She was bang on time. It wouldn’t have crossed our minds to criticize her about it. And yet...

  “L... Lauron?” Minori-san said. Her voice sounded higher than usual, uncommonly worried. I looked up from my watch to see Lauron’s expression: she hadn’t started crying, but her face was screwed up like a huge torrent of emotion was about to come rushing out. She hadn’t even closed the door.

  “What? What?”

  “What’s wrong...?”

  “Lauron-san...?”

  I was taken aback by the sudden turn and
couldn’t quite muster a response, but Minori-san and Myusel collected themselves and went over to her. Minori-san pushed the door shut and looked comfortingly into Lauron’s eyes.

  “...sniff...”

  “Are you feeling bad?” Minori-san asked, sounding concerned, but Lauron shook her head and didn’t answer right away.

  A second later, though, among half-voiced sniffles, she whispered to herself, “Wh... What am I going to do...? I didn’t... I couldn’t get here on time...”

  “...Huh?”

  “I couldn’t... be on time...!”

  “I-It’s okay, really. Look, you’re perfectly punctual.” I rushed to show Lauron my watch. Er, but I guess she couldn’t read the watch anyway, so there was no point.

  Lauron, though, just kept shaking her head, not looking up.

  Huh? What the heck was going on here?!

  “I couldn’t get here ten minutes early...”

  “Guh?”

  My eyes went wide. So what? Did Lauron consider arriving “on time” to mean being ten minutes early?

  Wasn’t that just a little... weird? Normally, someone who’s described as “always ten minutes early” is someone who isn’t late, who arrives with a little leeway. I don’t think it literally means being ten minutes ahead of schedule all the time.

  “Seriously, you’re okay—you’re on time! Nobody’s mad at you,” I said, trying to make Lauron feel better even though I didn’t fully comprehend what was going on. “Anyway, this is the first time you’ve ever been less than ten minutes early. If it bothers you that much, just be more careful next time.”

  “Next time? I can’t...”

  “Sorry...?”

  “There is no next time! I have to be early. I absolutely have to follow the rule... absolutely must...”

  She just kept repeating absolutely must over and over. It was kind of intimidating, actually.

  What was with this yandere? Okay, so she was more yan than dere.

  In any event, we weren’t going to be getting any training done like this. I had to sit Lauron in the chair and get her to calm down a little first.

  Maybe aware that he was a source of pressure for Lauron, Hikaru-san had backed off and was standing near the wall. Myusel had poured some water into a cup from a carafe she had brought with us, and offered it to the dwarf while Minori-san and I knelt by Lauron’s side.

  “No one’s angry at you,” I said as gently as I could, but Lauron just shook her head weakly. She made no move to take the cup Myusel offered her.

  Was it really that huge a deal to her that she hadn’t arrived ten minutes early? That she hadn’t been able to observe her personal rules? I know I joke about yanderes or whatever, but things were getting weird here.

  “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not... If I don’t keep the rules...’ll die...”

  “What? Die?!” I exclaimed. “How do you mean, die? Who’s going to die?”

  “The bird...” Lauron sniffled.

  “The bird...?” Her answer didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I looked at Minori-san for help, but she shook her head, looking as perplexed as I was.

  “Bird... You mean, like...” In my mind, I tried to think of something that connected Lauron and birds. “Oh, uh, you mean like the one in the underground workshop? I guess we used to use those in my world, too. People would take them down into mines to detect dangerous gases. We called them canaries.”

  Lauron didn’t say anything.

  “Did... Did one of those birds die down in the workshop, maybe?”

  After a long moment, she replied, “No, that’s not what happened.”

  “Oh, uh, oh. Okay.”

  But if that was the case, then what in the world did birds have to do with anything?

  Lauron kept whuffling, but she rubbed at her eyes. “There was one... in the past. When I was still small.”

  “Er, one what? One who?”

  “A friend... A friend and I were... taking care of a bird...”

  “Oh... Sure.”

  “We took turns feeding it, and I... one day, I... forgot...” Putting it into words seemed to make the memory clearer for her. Lauron let out a strangled sob. “I thought it would be fine for one day... But... the next day, the bird was dead...”

  Ahh... So that was the story. This stuff about the bird dying had to do with an episode from her past. I guess I had heard something about small birds being especially susceptible to starvation.

  “That made my friend mad... They said they never wanted to see me again... And the boss got really angry, too... That’s why I have to—have to keep my promises... Absolutely...”

  For the dwarves who worked in those underground worksites, birds were more than pets; they were also a warning system for the whole workshop. A lifeline, if you will. So letting one die through your own negligence would understandably make not just your friends, but also the headman of the workshop, pretty upset at you.

  But still...

  “I just feel so sick if I don’t...”

  Ahh... That traumatic experience, having that bird die because she didn’t do what she had said she would, led her to feel ill at ease if she didn’t follow the rules.

  If there was a rule, and you followed it, then you were safe. That seemed to be her line of thinking. And if there wasn’t a rule, then you made one up, and obeyed it completely. Once she had decided she would be ten minutes early to things, she felt compelled to do it all the time, or she fell into a panic.

  She wasn’t thinking about the why of the rules anymore. The rules had become a way for her to forget her anxieties.

  “Huh...” I sighed.

  If I had to guess, I would say the reason she started to cry every time she had trouble with the doll was motivated by the same thing. Fulfilling her duty as the controller of Petralka’s body double had become a sort of “rule” for her. But she was having trouble keeping it. She was being told she wasn’t doing well enough. That she couldn’t follow the rules. It would be enough to make her physically ill...

  A machine, huh?

  I guess Lauron crying was sort of like when a machine spits out some weird does-not-compute noise.

  I also felt, though, that we had finally connected with something within her. We knew now that the problem had to do with a trauma in her past. But was that something we could do anything about?

  “I feel sick...”

  While the rest of us stood there at a loss, Lauron started crying again.

  In the end, we decided not to do any practice that day, but just sent Lauron home. She was upset by the idea of going home before the scheduled time, but by the same token, when that time rolled around, she seemed to collect herself a little, and obediently left.

  Talk about a stickler for the details—or I guess, more to the point, she was unhappy if she didn’t stick to the framework she’d established.

  This was going to be a tough one.

  “We are coming in.” The door was already opening when we heard the familiar, loli voice. Then, however, Petralka pursed her lips and said, “Hrm. It seems we are too late.”

  She closed the door and came walking over to me, looking me in the face. “How did Lauron seem to you today? Did it go well?”

  “About that...” I was sort of lost for words. I couldn’t help glancing away from her—and my eyes met Minori-san’s. In my peripheral vision, I saw Petralka follow my glance, looking at Minori-san, too. But there was nothing she could say, and we both just shook our heads ambiguously. Myusel and Hikaru-san were no more help.

  “Is that so...” Petralka slumped her shoulders, seeming to catch the drift of our reactions.

  “And to think, this puppet is such an amazing piece of work,” Hikaru-san sighed from where he was leaning against the wall beside the doll.

  “Regardless... We suppose that even simply having it stand at attention has a certain value,” Petralka said, as if to assuage our worries.

  “But... But that won’t make your burd
en any lighter, Petralka,” I said.

  “Hm? Our burden? Was it not our safety you were concerned for?” Petralka looked genuinely perplexed.

  Oh... I guess I had just thought about this part, never really talked about it.

  “I thought... I thought maybe the double could take on some of your public duties, even just a few of them. I mean, I remember you talking about how we had less time than before to be together and everything.”

  “We... We did indeed say that.”

  “And I thought that if we could get the doll to do more than just stand there, if we could get it to move and talk so believably that someone in the same room wouldn’t be able to tell you apart... If we could do that, maybe it could take just a little bit of the work off your hands, Petralka.”

  “Shinichi...” Petralka looked at me, blinking. Her face was red and her hands seemed to be shaking, but I wasn’t sure why. I, uh, didn’t think I had done anything to provoke the imperial wrath...

  But anyway, forget about my private quaking and cowering. “In any event,” I said, “if it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out, I think it might be a good idea to find someone besides Lauron. We would still have her continue her special training, of course. But for body-double duties alone, it would be easy enough to have a tag team switch off.”

  “Hrmm...” Petralka looked at the floor and shook her head as if to clear something away, then she looked up at me once again. “Has it indeed been such a trial...?”

  “Er, it looks like Lauron has these internal rules that she’s trapped by. She can’t do anything that doesn’t follow them.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Petralka asked.

  “I mean she’s got this sort of ideal inside her head, like, ‘This is what I have to do.’ If she isn’t able to live up to that ideal, even if it isn’t her fault, it makes her feel sick.”

  “Is that so...” Petralka nodded thoughtfully, putting a finger to her chin. “We also recall something of the sort.”

  “Uh, you do?” I was a little startled by that.

  “The self we wished to be, and the self we were—there was a time when we were troubled by the difference between the two.”