The Power of Moe

by Ichiro Sakaki

  Phew. The sight of her getting up on her little tippy-toes to reach the higher shelves was so cute, it should have been illegal.

  “...Hmm?” Petralka made a mystified sound as she flipped through the pages of one book. “We don’t understand!”

  “Well, er, you wouldn’t,” I grinned.

  She was different from Myusel in every conceivable way. Brooke, too, although he looked interested, probably didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on in any of the books. In any event, he and Myusel had both frozen against the wall the instant Petralka came in.

  I guess it was a natural reaction. Anyone would be surprised to have an empress show up out of the blue. And in a medieval-ish world like this one, she was basically an absolute ruler. If either of them said or did anything careless in front of her, their lives could be over before they knew it. Telling them to calm down would probably have been pointless.

  “Sigh. And here the pictures look so interesting,” Petralka said disappointedly.

  I’m sorry—I knew how sensitive she was about her young looks—but she was just so freakin’ adorable with that expression on her face that I simply couldn’t think of her as the ruler of an entire nation. I desperately wanted to do something for her.

  “...You. Kanou Shinichi.”

  “What is it, Your Majesty? Um, you can call me Shinichi, by the way. Saying ‘Kanou Shinichi’ all the time is like if I were to address you as ‘Your Imperial Majesty Petralka an Eldant the Third’ every single time we talked.”

  “Mm. You say we should call you Shinichi, then?” She looked confused for just a second.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, giving a little, almost butler-esque, bow.

  “Mm. We do have a proverb: ‘When in Kamara, eat what the Kamarans eat.’ In order to enjoy otaku culture, we shall accede to your ways.” She smiled benignly and nodded.

  I wasn’t quite clear on what “Kamara” was, but the sentiment was familiar enough. Maybe it was something all humans shared.

  “Shinichi,” she said, giving a very loli smile.

  “Yes, Your Majesty?”

  “We give you special dispensation to address us as Petralka.”

  “Your Majesty,” Zahar protested, “that’s altogether—”

  “Was it not you who taught us that each land has its own people and each people their own values? And that to ignore those values only breeds resentment? And that for that reason, a leader must sometimes bow to conventions not her own?”

  “Erm... I... I did indeed teach you that...”

  “Then do not worry. It will be only within this mansion. This house is, if you will, the fief we have given to Shinichi. You see, Shinichi? Outside these walls, continue to call us Your Majesty. It is true that any who overheard you calling us by our first name might well misunderstand.”

  “Misunderstand?”

  “Normally,” Prime Minister Zahar said, taking a handkerchief out of a bag and wiping the sweat from his brow, “only members of the royal family may use each other’s given names. Besides those related by blood and marriage, only one other person may use the Imperial name—and that is her fiancé.”

  “............Erm.” Now I was the one who was starting to sweat. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Sure about what?” Petralka said with a look of perplexity.

  “Er, well... Never mind.”

  If it didn’t bother her, it didn’t make sense for me to act all fussy about it, you know? If only members of her family could call her Petralka, then I just needed to think of this as though we were family. As if she were my little sister, say...

  I didn’t speak for a moment.

  “What is wrong, Shinichi?” Petralka asked.

  “Oh, uh, nothing.”

  I was definitely not trying to keep myself from having a huge nosebleed over the image of Petralka calling me “Big Bro ♪.”

  I actually had a little sister back in Japan, so the whole idea of “little-sister moe” never really clicked with me. But if it was someone like Petralka—basically a two-dimensional character come to life, literally the image of the sweet but slightly sassy little sister—well, maybe I could sort of see it.

  “More importantly, what’s on your mind, Your Majesty—I mean, Petralka?”

  “Hm? Ah, yes, Shinichi, that’s right. As things stand, we cannot enjoy otaku culture. These rings only work with someone else who is wearing one; we cannot read these letters.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And therefore,” Petralka said with a smirk...

  The expression was very cute, no question. But for some reason, I had a bad feeling about this.

  How did this happen...?

  I really didn’t know how.

  To my right sat Myusel, looking slightly terrified. To my left sat Petralka, the picture of seriousness.

  And I sat in between the two girls, my teeth all but chattering from nervousness. After all, we were practically shoulder to shoulder. I could have smelled their body odor, if you want to be blunt. And almost as if that weren’t enough for them, they both kept creeping closer to me.

  Trapped between two young women, I was only just holding on to my emotional equilibrium. I felt like if I made so much as a weird noise, there might be a critical rupture.

  Sweat slid down my cheek. My whole body stiff, I whispered in a trembling voice: “P-Please don’t kill me...”

  Neither Myusel nor Petralka said anything. I thought I would scream from the weight of the silence.

  But just then, Petralka whispered to me, “Hey!”

  She whispered. Right in my ear. Her breath... The breath of the loli empress was right in my ear...

  But as these moe-crazed thoughts were running through my head, she went on, “Hurry and turn the page! We are eager to know what happens next!”

  We were still in my office, sitting together on a sofa in my impromptu slice of Akiba.

  A manga was open on my knees. It was a fantasy-adventure drama, something I’d chosen because I thought it might be easy for Petralka and Myusel to connect with. I didn’t think SF or hard-boiled action would necessarily make any sense to them at the moment, and a four-panel gag strip about everyday life, even less so.

  On top of that, I was reading the comic book aloud for the benefit of these two girls who couldn’t understand Japanese. As a note, it was only Petralka and Myusel in the room with me. Brooke had excused himself on the grounds that he had work to do in the garden, while Zahar and Minori-san were waiting outside. Petralka had chased them out, judging them a distraction to reading manga.

  Then why was Myusel with us, you ask? Because I had asked Petralka to let her stay. After all that stuff about calling her by her first name, I had the sense it would be a pretty bad idea to be alone in a room with her—and anyway, I wanted Myusel to learn some more Japanese, so I asked that she be allowed to stay while I read.

  Normally, I’d be really thankful for a situation like this, but...

  Feeling the warmth of a girl to each side of me, I pushed down the groan that threatened to escape.

  Scene description in comics is obviously mostly visual; it relies on pictures. Which means that three people trying to read a comic book together naturally get very close to each other as they all lean in to look at the same thing. As result, although the girls didn’t seem to notice it, they were cozying up to me in a way that would never normally have happened.

  Every time I made to turn the page, my elbow would brush the swell of Myusel’s... well, you know. And my other arm was basically pressed permanently against Petralka’s modest endowment. Not only that, but the sweet, flowery scent that drifted from their hair enveloped me from both sides. For a healthy teenage guy, it was sort of like an endurance race.

  Is this how all those guys in those ero games feel?

  I was desperately regretting my choice of a manga. If I had picked a light novel, something where the story is told primarily through prose, I might have been able to avoid this s
ituation... But it was too late for should-haves. Both of my companions were absorbed in the first story they’d ever seen from another world, and if I tried to say “Let’s read something else” now, even Myusel might kill me, let alone Petralka.

  And then...

  “Oh...!” When I turned the page, Myusel made a happy noise from beside me. “This is about you, isn’t it, Master? I recognize this word.”

  She was pointing to the kanji 可能, glossed with the hiragana reading kanou. The word meant “able,” “capable,” or “possible,” and was written with different characters than my name, for which the kanji were 加納. But she was right that they sounded the same.

  “Oh,” I said. “You’re right, the readings are the same. But it isn’t actually my name—it means something else.”

  “It does?”

  “Kanji characters each have their own meaning. Sometimes you get words that sound the same but mean different things.”

  “You do?”

  Myusel blinked, at once confused and impressed.

  “Wow, you’re really a quick learner, Myusel,” I said.

  Yes, it was just hiragana and katakana, barely a hundred characters in total, but trying to pick up things like that when the only time you could study was late at night after a full day of work was no mean feat. I knew she was smart.

  “Oh, no, Master. It’s all because you stay up so late helping me study. I never imagined the day might come when I would be able to read any type of writing,” she murmured.

  She had discovered the joy of being able to read and write, even if she was learning the language of another world, and it had motivated her to soak up Japanese like a sponge. As for me, seeing this lovely young woman so happy made me realize all the time I’d spent teaching her had been worth it.

  “What are these characters here?” she asked.

  “Those are called onomatopoeia. They’re sort of tricky...”

  However, all this joy had caused me to completely forget the girl sitting on the other side of me. Just for a moment, mind you, but I totally missed the glare Petralka had fixed on me.

  “Shinichi!” Petralka exclaimed. She jumped up from the sofa, the spell broken.

  “Huh? Oh! Right, right. Sorry, Your Majesty.”

  “I thought I told you to call me Petralka!”

  “Oh, sorry about that, Petralka,” I said hastily, but it was too little, too late. Without a word, Petralka grabbed my arm and pulled straight up—and then, to my disbelief, she plopped herself down right where the manga had been a second ago.

  I.e., right on my knees.

  Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?!

  “P-Petralka?!”

  She grabbed my flailing hand and brought it, comic book at all, down on her own knees. So I ended up with her sitting on my lap and me basically hugging her from behind. And yes, she was small, but to read manga like this, I would basically have to rest my chin on her shoulder...!

  We were definitely a bit too close now.

  I was embarrassed and also kind of happy to have this loli-ish girl on my lap, but I didn’t even want to think about the misunderstandings that would ensue if anyone caught us like this.

  “Th-Th-Th-This is definitely not okay!”

  “Silence! Our neck gets tired when we have to look from the side!”

  “I’m not arguing that point, but—”

  “Do not concern yourself—read! And you, maid,” she said, fixing her eyes on Myusel. “Go make us tea! Our cup has gotten cold; boil us a new one!”

  “Wha? Oh! Y-Yes, right away!” Myusel was up quick as a shot.

  “Servants ought to serve,” Petralka said with a triumphant look.

  The words were victorious and hurtful. Myusel, a terrified expression on her face, bowed again and left the room almost at a run.

  “Erm, Your Majesty?”

  “Petralka.”

  “Sorry. Petralka. Are you... angry?”

  “No, we are not!” she bellowed.

  Y’know, in Japanese, the word for “bellow” is literally written with the characters “to shout angrily.” But, sure. You’re not upset.

  Not that I could say that to Her Imperial Majesty. Anyway, I felt bad for having ignored her, even if it was just for a moment, so I didn’t press the point.

  “You animal. Getting all excited the moment you see a woman.”

  “Guh...?!”

  Excited? What does she mean, excited? To hear a girl talk like that was enough to bring a tear to Big Bro’s eye.

  Anyway, was I getting the “animal” treatment? I mean, I guess it was because she wasn’t looking at me as human that she was comfortable sitting on my lap with my arms around her. A nice hug, as if from a pet.

  I admit, when Petralka first tossed herself down on my lap, I felt my heart rate spike... but now I saw the reality of it all too clearly.

  I sighed inwardly and resumed reading.

  It was several days after Petralka’s sudden visit. I had managed to clean up my office a little bit, so one morning I decided to go to town.

  I felt I needed to get a grasp of the cultural level of the Eldant Empire. Of course, I could ask Matoba-san for copies of the report from the initial survey team, but then I would have to slog through a dense bureaucratic white paper, and anyway, I wanted to see for myself what my future customers looked like.

  If we really wanted to get otaku culture to “stick” in the Empire, we couldn’t just deal with nobles and royals forever. Nerd culture is a real melting pot; anything goes so long as it’s interesting. You could even say otaku culture stands on the shoulders of countless works where sheer interest was counted as righteousness, even if those works have been largely forgotten.

  That means that for otaku culture, those who actually pony up the cash and buy the works—the customers whose purchases support the creators and distributors—dictate what’s right; an anime could have the biggest budget in the world, but if it fails to take the otaku into account, it’s going to bomb. This all led to one conclusion—if I was going to spread otaku-ism around here, I would have to get buy-in from the biggest demographic around: the commoners.

  We couldn’t just bring in a bunch of random geeky stuff and hope for the best. An electrical grid would be necessary at some point, and if we couldn’t teach people to read, this would all be for nothing. Never mind books; even to get anime and games out there, we would need theaters and stuff.

  Forget SimCity: this was SimAkiba.

  And so it was that I was walking to town, accompanied by Minori-san, who was acting as my bodyguard, and Brooke, who was acting as my guide and baggage carrier. This was the first time I’d seen the town up close, not counting when I had glimpsed it out the window of our horse-drawn—or rather, bird-drawn—carriage.

  “Huh...”

  It looked more or less like it had passing by, but actually getting out and walking around revealed details I hadn’t noticed until then.

  The smell, for instance. There was a burned odor, enough to be noticeable but not enough to be really off-putting, along with the smell of something rotten. The burning was probably from hearths or cook fires; the reek was probably trash or toilets. In fact, I recalled hearing that the palace at Versailles didn’t have any toilets. What a crappy bit of trivia.

  Without a sewage system, or even businesses that specialized in taking the stuff away, having a toilet inside would only have resulted in trapping the smell in your house. It seemed there were only a few options, and most people picked one of them: throw it in a river, use it as fertilizer, or just leave it in a field someplace. I’d heard that in Europe, they used to just dump it out the back of the building or even feed it to the pigs as slop. Maybe they did similar things here.

  Incidentally, at our mansion, Brooke took the stuff away, allegedly to use as compost in an outbuilding, so we were able to use the toilet without worrying too much—but that probably wasn’t practical among the commoners.

  “I guess you don’t think
about two-dimensional characters having to do that sort of thing.”

  This was basically a straight-up fantasy world, but these were living people, with all the biological functions that entailed.

  Another thing I noticed was that most signs had pictures on them. Presumably this was because so few people could read. Obviously, drawing lifelike images takes a lot of skill, and most of the pictures on these signs were more symbolic than anything. The upshot was that even though I couldn’t read the local alphabet, I knew that this place was a tavern, that one was a blacksmith, over here was a bakery, and so on and so forth.

  But the number-one thing that struck me as I walked around town was...

  “Does something amuse y’, Master?” Brooke, walking just ahead of me, turned and asked. At first I’d been a little intimidated to have him so close, but as I got used to him I found his wide, round eyes and his huge mouth, which looked like he was forever smiling, surprisingly lovable. Lots of people keep snakes as pets. I thought maybe I was beginning to see the attraction.

  “Everything. There’s a lot of food for thought here.”

  “Is that so? I’m sure I see only the same things I do every day.” His face didn’t change, but from the lilt of his voice and the way his tongue flicked in and out of his mouth, I guessed he was being a little sardonic.

  “Well, we didn’t have lizardmen or elves where I come from, for one thing.”

  We’d had enough “races,” black and white and Asian and whatever, to drive us crazy. Here, though, everyone seemed to have some unique trait—there were humans everywhere, but about one out of every ten people was an elf or a lizardman or something else. Brooke didn’t draw any special attention.

  “If y’ want to see demi-humans,” Brooke said, “I suggest you try th’ training grounds just outside town.”

  “Training grounds?”

  “Sort of a military base,” Minori-san broke in. “It’s got dormitories for the rank-and-file, along with some training facilities. A platoon from the JSDF is actually borrowing some space there. Apparently, the military is the easiest place for demi-humans to get work in this country.”