Outbreak Company: Volume 7

by Ichiro Sakaki

  She was a member of the unit that had been secretly posted here, to the Holy Eldant Empire, and she was also my bodyguard. Normally she lived up to that impression of quiet beauty, but when she really got mad she had been known to do things like kick a dragon in the nose. You didn’t want to screw around with her.

  Minori-san didn’t appear to notice me watching her, but went on repeating the movements of her kata. She must have been really focused.

  I assumed the framework for what she was doing came from the hand-to-hand combat training all members of the JSDF received (formally referred to, I had been told, as “Japan Self-Defense Force Empty-Handed Martial Training”). But I thought I could also see a hint of Chinese quanfa in her movements, possibly a product of her upbringing in a dojo. She had the effortlessness of someone whose father had trained her in the martial arts since she was a girl—her movements looked as instinctual as an animal’s.

  I couldn’t hold back a “Wow...”

  ...because with each move she executed, the soft (but certainly not drooping), impactful bust under her tank top gave a great jiggle. Bounce, bounce. Whoa. Soon I found my eyes pinned there.

  Minori-san had complained to me in the past that a big chest got in her way, and that even if she wrapped it, it was often uncomfortable when she moved quickly. Speaking as an observer, I considered it a blessing, but then, I didn’t have to live with it.

  Ahh... If indeed it causes her so much trouble, then let me support her all-too-soft, all-too-bouncy bust with my own two hands... Gently, pushing up from below.

  And so on, my mind overflowing with pervy thoughts that, I suspected, were perilously near obvious.

  “Oh, hey.” Minori-san finally noticed I was there, breaking off her kata. “Shinichi-kun...”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I said, walking up to her.

  “It’s no big deal,” she said, shaking her head. “I was almost done, anyway.” She took off her glasses. Then she grabbed a towel hanging from a branch of a nearby tree and wiped the sweat from her face. The sight of it gleaming on her neck, her arms unabashedly exposed, was at once innocent and erotic, giving my libido a healthy kick.

  Ahh... Look at the sweat drip from her hair and down into that soft valley. I found myself unwittingly following it with my eyes.

  Oh, sweat! Sweat! What a lucky fluid you are! If only I could be so—

  “You could have just said something, you know.”

  “Huh? Oh, uh, I mean, you were busy training and all...”

  I refocused on Minori-san’s face as quickly as I could. Obviously, I wasn’t about to tell her that I had forgotten all about what I came here for when I was taken by surprise by a pair of roguish... Well, I could tell her, but I feared the consequences.

  “So, uh, Minori-san, here.” Hoping to steer the conversation away from immediate danger, I reached into my pocket. I hadn’t come here to spy on Minori-san’s boobs—I mean, her morning training—but to give her this.

  “Your key. Try not to lose it, okay?” I pulled it out of my pocket and passed it to Minori-san, who had put her glasses back on in the meantime.

  It was a card slightly smaller than the palm of my hand. It was a square made mostly of metal, but the center consisted of a transparent material that seemed somewhere between plastic and glass. Whatever the material was, you could see a rainbow in it under light. I held it up to the sun; it was surprisingly beautiful.

  “Thanks, that’s a big help. I keep forgetting about this thing.”

  “That’s understandable. They only introduced them really recently,” I said. “Even Myusel forgets sometimes.”

  The card was a “key.” A magical item meant to help with the mansion’s security. The JSDF had set up some electronic alarm doodads around the perimeter of our house, but there was always the possibility that this world’s magic could allow someone to slip by them undetected, so we supplemented the electronic alarms with these new, magical ones.

  They consisted of two magical devices: these keys, and a “lock.” And the keys were, well, key.

  We used the term “lock” because it was a convenient way to think about it, but this magical device did much more than keep a door from opening. When it activated, the room it was guarding became completely impregnable. Not just the door, but the walls, floor, and ceiling were all magically reinforced. They could repel almost any magical or conventional weapon, up to and including firearms.

  You wound up with, in essence, a magical panic room. You could be under attack from explosive ordinance, and if you shut yourself up in that room, nobody could beat, bash, or force their way in; the occupant of the room could just sit tight and wait for help to arrive. That was the idea, anyway.

  When it came to magical items as useful as this, though, there was usually a catch. Something that could, let’s say, be improved. In this case, the magical security system—much like a self-locking door at a hotel—activated as soon as you closed the door. In other words, if you accidentally went out without your key, it would be locked down tight in the room you just left. And for security reasons, these keys were extremely difficult to duplicate.

  For the time being, we had exactly two copies of each key: each of us carried the key to our own room, and Myusel was responsible for a set of spares, just in case. It was the spare key to Minori-san’s room that I had just delivered to her.

  It wasn’t really her fault; none of us were used to this new magic security system yet. It was all too easy to just walk out the door without your key. The house itself didn’t really look any different, so our old habits often just took over.

  And so you ended up with things like what had happened this morning, with Minori-san locked firmly out of her room.

  “I’ve got to hurry up and get used to this,” she said, pocketing the key with a thin smile.

  “We need to get Brooke and Cerise in on it, too, huh?” I said.

  Brooke and Cerise were a lizardman couple who worked at our house. At the moment, though, they weren’t home. Brooke used to be a hero of his people, and Cerise was the chieftain’s daughter, so they held a pretty high place in lizardman society. It sometimes demanded that they appear at tribal councils in place of the chieftain. They had recently asked for about ten days off to go back home for that purpose.

  The new security system had been installed while they were away, so when they got back, there would be a lot to explain.

  “It’s almost time for breakfast,” Minori-san said. “Shall we head inside?”

  “Sure,” I said with a nod, and then we walked back to the house.

  I headed for the dining area with Minori-san, who was now dressed in the standard uniform of the JSDF, a white shirt and pencil skirt. When we arrived, two other women were already there.

  “Sorry, did we keep you waiting?” we asked as we took our seats.

  “No, everyone just got here,” replied a smiling girl with twintails and a maid uniform as she set out food. Myusel Fourant.

  She was a half-elf who worked at our mansion, and my heart’s oasis. Er, okay, I know that’s kind of an overwrought way of putting it, but she really worked hard for me, and I was grateful for it.

  This breakfast, of course, was her doing. Then there was—

  “Shinichi-sama, hurry, hurry up!”

  This came from the other girl at the table, who was rocking excitedly in her chair. She wore a tube top and pants that left her shoulders and midriff exposed—in fact, it left a lot of her exposed, so you could see her toned muscles and darkish skin. It made her look not so much sexy as just in very good shape.

  Also visible were her floppy ears and a big, puffy tail that poked out from beside her chair. She was a beast person—a lycanthrope. A werewolf, if you will. Not the scary monster kind, but a sort of clumsy, sort of silly, weirdly likable dog-girl.

  Elvia Harneiman. That (in case you hadn’t guessed) was her name.

  “Wait a second,” I said. “Where’s Hikaru-san?”

  “It seemed li
ke he was awake when I checked on him in his room earlier,” Myusel said.

  “I wonder if he went back to sleep or something.”

  “Good morning, everyone. What a uselessly bright morning.”

  Speak of the devil, as they say. Hikaru-san walked into the dining area.

  Even though it was first thing in the morning, he appeared in his full Gothic Lolita regalia, complete with plenty of lace, shaking his long, black hair luxuriantly. He was such a vibrant picture of beauty that it felt like a waste that he had to be a man.

  Ayasaki Hikaru-san.

  He was Japanese, like me and Minori-san, and he was technically the assistant to Amutech’s general manager—i.e., me.

  He was, as I’ve noted, a man. But he was so feminine that when you looked at him, it was hard not to wonder if there’d been some mistake.

  “Uselessly bright...?” I asked.

  First thing in the morning, and he was already barely making sense. Hikaru-san was a classic chuunibyou—sometimes he said things that sounded sort of melancholy, but also incomprehensible.

  “Where there is light, there is shadow,” Hikaru-san responded. “Light and darkness are two sides of the same coin. A world of utter light would be incomplete—for after all, the world was born from chaos.”

  “Uh...huh.”

  This was pretty much how he always talked, so I let it go in one ear and out the other.

  Once Hikaru-san was safely seated, Myusel took her own place.

  “Looks like we’re all here,” Minori-san said, surveying the table.

  “So.” I brought my palms together. Everyone else imitated me. Minori-san and Hikaru-san aside, all the Eldant people at this table were just imitating the custom of their master—which was to say, the custom of Japan.

  “Itadakimasu,” I said.

  “Itadakimasu,” everyone chorused, and then we started in on breakfast.

  Myusel always made delicious food, so we always got totally caught up in eating. For a while, only the clatter of knives and forks could be heard in the dining area.

  “Oh yeah,” Minori-san said suddenly. “Shinichi-kun, Hikaru-kun, are you going today?”

  “Going?” I asked. “Going where?”

  “To the garrison. Today’s delivery day, right?”

  “Ahh...”

  Now that I thought about it, she was right. “Delivery day” referred to the day when goods from Japan would be dropped off with the JSDF. The shipment would include weapons and consumables, of course, but also personal items not directly related to Amutech’s business ventures. I could usually get manga, or anime DVDs or whatever, brought directly to me as part of my work, but certain ingredients, sweets, and that sort of thing would only reach the Eldant Empire on these regular scheduled deliveries. For example, I sometimes got sudden cravings for Sapp**o Bar-B-Q flavored chips, so I had a set amount delivered with each shipment.

  “Not me,” Hikaru-san said, as he sliced his breakfast into bites of almost obsessively similar size. “I didn’t order anything.” It hadn’t been that long since he’d arrived here, so there probably just wasn’t much he wanted yet. As for me, as much as I loved Myusel’s cooking, sometimes I just wanted Japanese sweets or junk food.

  “Cool,” Minori-san said. “Shinichi-kun, what about you?”

  “Uhh...”

  What had I ordered this time?

  Minori-san must have guessed what the problem was, because she whipped out her smartphone and began swiping along. “You should be getting some cargo in today, Shinichi-kun. If you can’t make it, I’ll plan on picking your stuff up along with mine. All the paperwork is done, so we can go together if you want.”

  “Okay, sounds good to me.”

  “Awesome.” Minori-san smiled and put her phone back in her pocket. “Let’s go get our stuff after we’re done eating, then. We can come home, make sure everything’s there, and still have time to get to school.”

  She sure knew how to schedule. Among many other things, I should add. It was enough to make me jealous—after all, you could look up softie in the dictionary and find my picture. Minori-san, on the other hand, was decisive, could get work done, and managed to be both sweet and strong at the same time. A reliable person all around. Add to that the fact that she was cute, had a great endowment, and could even cook a decent meal (even if she usually didn’t, since Myusel handled kitchen duties)... Why had I never noticed how pretty much perfect she was?!

  These were the thoughts that ran through my head as I watched Minori-san eat.

  “All done.”

  “What, already?!”

  While I sat there staring, Minori-san had already finished her meal. She ate almost as much as I did, but she was the first person at the table to finish. I guess a healthy body really does make for a healthy appetite. She certainly had more muscle, and probably a quicker metabolism, than I did.

  “We can go as soon as you’re ready, Shinichi-kun,” she said.

  “Uh, sure!”

  She was already standing up from the table. I nodded, then wolfed down the rest of my breakfast.

  The regular deliveries were usually made to the JSDF garrison. And here in the Holy Eldant Empire, that meant a corner of the training grounds in the castle town. The JSDF had rented a part of those grounds from the empire and constructed a simple barracks there.

  Incidentally, it hadn’t escaped me that it wasn’t entirely fair that I got to live in a mansion while the soldiers had to make do with a jerry-rigged barracks, but apparently the JSDF had turned down more plush accommodations. Something about maintaining a low profile and not going soft or something.

  Anyway...

  “Ahh, it’s here, it’s here!”

  We got out of the bird-drawn carriage and started walking toward the pile of shipping containers. It wasn’t just our stuff; it included military supplies and personal items for the personnel stationed in the empire, so it was a pretty good pile. Those personnel, of course, included Minori-san.

  “You look awfully happy,” I said to her.

  She looked downright cheerful, in fact. More than that, really—like a cat who’d heard a tin of food being opened, or a dog that sees its owner getting the leash. Excited. She was light on her feet, as if she might just start skipping along. It was unusual to see Minori-san quite so pleased.

  “You can tell?” She glanced at me. She looked like the epitome of bursting with happiness. She was like a completely different person from the young woman I had seen training that morning. The austere, disciplined air was gone, replaced by a sense that she might start drooling at any time.

  “I’m getting the sequel to this one book today, and I’m really, really looking forward to it!”

  Ah, so that was it. I knew what kind of books Minori-san was into, and this “sequel” was probably something like—

  “It’s called Super-M Spectacles, and it’s about this hot teacher who—”

  “I’ll pass on the synopsis, thanks.” I waved away her explanation.

  By and large, I’m capable of loving almost any kind of otaku work. There are hardly any genres, tropes, or character types I inherently dislike. Take the simple matter of heroines: be she a maid, a refined girl of the upper crust, well-endowed or practically flat, tsundere or boyish, I can love them all equally. I like fantasy a lot, but clickety-clack hard SF is okay, too, and antiheroes and harem romantic comedies both get the thumbs-up from me. I guess “little sister stuff” and things where you’re supposed to feel moe about guys hit a little too close to home, and I’m not a big fan—but it’s not like I would criticize anyone else for liking them.

  The point is, I can enjoy almost anything.

  Unfortunately, BL is more almost than anything. In fact, I don’t get it at all. It’s not exactly that I dislike it. You could say I just don’t have the taste.

  “Oh, what?” Minori-san said, annoyed that I had interrupted her explanation.

  Aw, she’s so cute when she pouts like that.

 
Wait, was she really older than me?

  “I think this would be a great series for you to try, Shinichi-kun. You never know. It might open new doors for you...”

  “Uh, I’d prefer to leave those doors shut. Thanks anyway.”

  “Aww.”

  “You’re disappointed? What were you hoping for, anyway?”

  “Obviously, that—”

  “You know what? Forget I asked.”

  It was a perfectly ordinary conversation in its way. Before long we had arrived at the shipping crates, where the members of the garrison had gathered.

  “Good morning,” Minori-san said, saluting.

  “Good morning,” the others responded, returning the gesture. I guess there was still room for military discipline around here.

  Minori-san, though, promptly grinned and said, “Okay, where’s my stuff?”

  “Ahh...” One of the soldiers—Captain Satou—frowned and sort of groaned. “Koganuma. I’m, uh, very sorry to tell you this, but...” His expression got progressively darker.

  “What’s wrong?” Minori-san asked, tilting her head in confusion.

  “They told us that there was a bit of, er, an accident, and some of the cargo hasn’t arrived yet. Specifically, uh, yours.”

  “...What?”

  “We do have your things, Kanou-kun. We asked when Koganuma’s cargo was going to get here, but they said it would be next week at the earliest.”

  “Next... week...?” Minori-san’s face tightened.

  Next week meant, in essence, that her stuff would be sent with the next regular delivery. She wouldn’t see Super-M Spectacles or whatever for at least seven days.

  I felt bad for her, I guess. She had been on cloud nine, and now shock and disappointment had taken over her face. It was hard to watch.

  “Your cargo’s over there, Kanou-kun,” Captain Satou said, pointing.

  “Oh, thanks.” I was grateful that the container he had pointed to was in a spot that let me put my back to Minori-san.

  As I walked away, though, I could hear her muttering behind me: “Next week... new book... Super-M Spectacles...”

  I glanced back. Minori-san looked like she might just collapse where she was standing. It was like, if this were a manga, she would just be white as ash with no fill and no screen tone. Like if you gave her a little tap, she would crumble into dust.