Outbreak Company: Volume 7

by Ichiro Sakaki

  ...Huh?! Was it really that big a deal?!

  Her veritable despair was obvious to everyone, and even the other soldiers didn’t seem quite sure what to say to her; they just stood there looking uncomfortably at each other.

  “Ahh,” I sighed. I felt bad for her, but what were you gonna do? I looked back in the direction of the shipping crate Captain Satou had pointed out. “Hup!” I pulled a cardboard box from the crate and opened the lid. When I was sure it was really my stuff, I picked up the box and went back to Minori-san. Now we just had to get home.

  Minori-san was still standing there, frozen.

  “Minori-san,” I said.

  No answer.

  “Minori-san.”

  No answer.

  “Heh heh heh! ’Ey, lady, them’s some fine melons y’ got there!”

  Still nothing.

  Uh-oh. This was serious.

  I took a deep breath, then bellowed, “Private First Class Koganuma Minori!!”

  “Huh?! Wha?! Yessir!” She blinked rapidly, then her eyes focused on me. “Oh... Sh-Shinichi-kun. Morning.”

  Morning, what? Were you asleep?

  “Minori-san, let’s go.”

  “Oh............ Y-Yeah, sure...”

  This time I at least got a nod out of her, but she didn’t show any sign of moving. In the end, I had to take her hand and drag her back to the carriage.

  The next day. Myusel told me something was wrong with the clock in her room, so I went to take a look.

  “Hm?”

  I was confronted with a big grandfather clock of a muddy brown color, like the kind you might see in some western period piece. The design was antique—or if you like, retro—with the clock face on top and a glass door below looking in on the pendulum. It had to be at least a full meter tall, and reminded me of the clock in the children’s rhyme. Not that it was bought on the morn of the day that I was born or anything.

  The way it told time with a shorter hand and a longer hand was the same as in our world. Given that the length of a day here was roughly the same as on Earth, that made a certain amount of sense. The difference was, the numbers on the face were written in Eldant characters, and the divisions of time were slightly different from what I was used to, so I normally ignored this clock. I typically referred to the G-Sh*ck on my wrist, or at least to my cell phone.

  “It’s stopped all right,” I said as I looked at it. The hands were frozen precisely at what I would think of as six o’clock. The pendulum sat completely still. “I guess there’s no chance it’s battery-powered?”

  “It’s spring-powered... but winding it didn’t help.”

  “A spring, huh?”

  In other words, getting this thing running again wasn’t going to be as simple as swapping the battery.

  “What to do. Maybe it’s full of dust, or lost a gear...?” I pulled the clock away from the wall as I muttered to myself, moving around behind it. Maybe if I shook it or smacked it or something...

  “Hmm...”

  But the hands were still frozen, and the pendulum still hung immobile. I should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy. A layperson like me could hardly take it apart and clean it, though. One wrong move and I could really break it.

  So what to do?

  I glanced at Myusel.

  Minori-san happened to be wandering by, and stuck her head in the open door of the room. “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Clock’s stopped,” I said as she came in. “I thought maybe I could just fiddle with it and get it working again, but...”

  “...Fiddle...?” Minori-san murmured.

  Huh? She sounded—

  “...Fiddle. That’s... dirty...”

  “Huh?”

  “Huh?”

  No sooner had I spoken than Minori-san blinked as if awakening from a dream.

  “Uh, never mind,” I said quickly.

  Had I misheard her? Yeah. That had to be it. Minori-san seemed as surprised as I was. It had to have just been my mistake.

  “If you can’t get it working again, we should call a specialist,” Minori-san said, sounding as calm as ever once more.

  “Yeah, you’re right.” I gave the clock a gentle tap. Of course, it didn’t flinch.

  “Gadgets with a lot of wooden pieces can be affected by the humidity in the air,” she said. “It makes the parts expand and contract. Give it a few minutes and then try winding the spring again. If that doesn’t work, we’ll ask someone to come look at it.”

  “Right,” I nodded. I liked how quickly Minori-san made these sorts of decisions.

  “I do think for the household’s sake, we should get it fixed as soon as possible,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  I didn’t use this clock myself, but others might. Myusel, in particular, probably used it pretty often to parcel out her time for chores.

  “I mean, it’s so sad...”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It’s bad enough that they can only ever pass by each other, and even worse that it only happens once an hour—but now they’ll be apart from each other forever, frozen in place...” Minori-san sounded positively tragic.

  My eyes went dot-shaped. Myusel, for her part, was checking her magic ring, convinced that it had gone on the fritz.

  I didn’t understand what she was talking about.

  “Minori-san,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “What are you talking about? What’s sad?”

  I had been talking about the clock...

  “Huh? I mean...” She paused before something seemed to dawn on her and she said, “Ah... Forget it.”

  I wonder what that was all about?

  “It’s fine. It’s nothing. I hope the clock gets fixed. Yeah, that’s what I meant.”

  The smile on her face was obviously forced and she was talking too fast; she was trying to hide something. Then she spun on her heel and left the room.

  After a long moment, Myusel and I stuck our heads out the door, watching Minori-san retreat down the hall. Myusel whispered, “What do you think is wrong with Minori-sama?”

  “No idea,” I answered. All I could do was shake my head.

  Several hours after the events in the living room...

  We were already getting towards the middle of the night. Myusel was done with her chores, and I was teaching her Japanese in the living area. We used to do this discreetly in the kitchen or my office, but all the lights in the living room had proven pretty convenient, and it had now become the home base for the Kanou School of Japanese Language Education (student population: one).

  “Shinichi-sama, how do you read this?”

  “What, this?” I said, looking at the kanji Myusel was pointing to. “It says tenjou.”

  She could already read hiragana and katakana pretty much without trouble, so now she was tackling texts that included kanji. She was capable of holding basic conversations in Japanese without the help of her magic ring, but reading kanji without any aids was still a bit much for her. I mean, there are native kun-yomi readings, Chinese-derived on-yomi readings, scads of homonyms... Come to think of it, Japanese is kind of a pain in the neck.

  Instead of using a textbook, I was having her translate light novels, on the assumption that they would be comparatively easier to read.

  “Say, Shinichi-sama...” Myusel looked down at the open book, sounding like something had just occurred to her. “What does tenjou mean?”

  “Huh?”

  “I sort of understand from reading the book, but not quite... Yuka and kabe, too.”

  She looked truly puzzled. I was pretty surprised to realize she was only now asking about these words. But I said, “You know—tenjou is the ceiling. Yuka is the floor. Kabe are walls.”

  I almost felt like I was getting confused myself, having to spell it out like that, but when I really thought about what Myusel was saying, I realized the problem was due to linguistic differences. In the Eldant language, ceilings, floors, and walls were all refer
red to as “walls.” Specifically, as I understood it, they were the “upper wall,” “side walls,” and “lower walls.” In so far as they all fulfilled the function of defining the space of a room, they really were sort of the same thing, just in different places.

  Once in a while, you hear how people who live in cold places have a million different words for snow. When you’re faced with snow and ice 24/7, it becomes intimately intertwined with your daily life, and constantly referring to just “snow” wouldn’t be very helpful. So instead the various different states and types of snow are treated almost like separate objects with their own special vocabulary.

  In any event, our magic rings technically functioned as translation machines, but what they really did was take the concepts we were thinking of and turn them into vocabulary the other person would recognize. So Myusel might use the Eldant expression “upper wall,” but I would understand it as “ceiling.” But the rings didn’t work for translating a written text.

  “I tried asking Minori-sama, but I couldn’t quite understand her explanation...”

  “Oh, you did?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I wondered how exactly Minori-san had tried to explain the concept. I would have thought she would be better at it than I was.

  “What happened was...”

  And then, a little distraught, she told me the following story.

  Myusel had begun working on her Japanese on her own for a bit before we were to study together. While reading, she had come across these perplexing words, ceiling, floor, and walls, and although the context gave her an idea of what they must mean, she couldn’t be sure, because her own language didn’t distinguish among them.

  Minori-san happened to be passing by the living room at just that moment, and Myusel asked her what the relationship was between a floor and a ceiling.

  “A floor and a ceiling...” Minori-san had replied vacantly. “They can only ever stare longingly at each other, unable to touch, the ultimate form of love.”

  Huh? Hang on, what the heck are you talking about?

  Her response was so dumb I found myself shooting one-liners at her right in the middle of Myusel’s flashback.

  Myusel told me that Minori-san went on chatting happily after that, but Myusel couldn’t understand what she was saying.

  Well, I wouldn’t, either!

  “It just didn’t make any sense,” Myusel said apologetically. “I’m sure if I were smarter...”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I don’t think intelligence has anything to do with it.” Myusel’s shoulders remained slumped. “Look, don’t let it bother you,” I went on. “I mean, you really shouldn’t.”

  “Sigh...”

  “I can explain it to you, anyway. You already know that kabe is a side wall. So yuka is a—”

  Thus I went on teaching Myusel, trying to ignore the ominous feeling building inside me.

  When Myusel and I were done with our Japanese lesson, I headed down the hall towards my room with the intention of getting some sleep. But then I saw someone standing in the hallway. It was Minori-san.

  “Huh?” I stopped. “Minori-san, what are you doing there?”

  “Shinichi-kun...”

  She was dressed the way she had been the previous morning, in pants and a tank top, a pretty casual outfit.

  “Are you practicing your martial arts this late at night?” I asked, noticing the towel in her right hand.

  “Eh, y’know,” she said. “Just trying to chase away the bad thoughts...”

  “Bad thoughts?” In spite of myself, my eyes started to wander down to where the cleft of her fantastic chest was visible above the neckline of her tank top. Talk about bad thoughts.

  Minori-san shrugged and said, “I’m trying to get over the pain of not being able to read my new book.”

  “Oh, I get it.”

  That Super-M Spectacles thing again. I was actually sort of impressed that it had affected her so deeply.

  “They do say exercise is the cure for many ills,” I said. “So, all done training?” I could see a healthy glow in Minori-san’s skin, and there were traces of sweat on her tank top. A sweaty dude was uninteresting at best and kind of depressing at worst, but on a beauty like Minori-san it had a certain allure of its own...

  “Yeah. I was just going to change...”

  “Gotcha.”

  Then we both stood there. I didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything. She just stood by the door to her room, the silence spreading between us.

  “Minori-san?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why don’t you go into your room?”

  “............Oh. I just...”

  She looked away from me, creasing her brow. I glanced down and noticed that her left hand was digging in her pocket.

  Could it be...?

  “Minori-san, don’t tell me...”

  “...Eh heh.”

  She smiled shyly and stuck out her tongue in a way that definitely made her look too cute to be older than me.

  “You forgot your key again...”

  “What are we going to do, Shinichi-kun?”

  “We’ll just have to ask Myusel for the spare again.”

  “I guess that’s our only choice, huh...” Her shoulders slumped dispiritedly. She had just needed the spare yesterday—for this to happen two days in a row was understandably embarrassing. Still, we couldn’t leave Minori-san standing outside her room forever.

  “I wonder where Myusel went,” I muttered, turning around—just in time, coincidentally, to see her on the stairs. “Myusel!” I called out.

  She turned toward me, then came hurrying in our direction.

  “Perfect timing,” I said.

  “Yes? What do you need?”

  “Could you lend Minori-san the spare key to her room again?” I said with a bit of a smile.

  “I’m sorry, Myusel,” Minori-san said, looking remorseful. “I forgot again.”

  Myusel being as nice as she was, I fully expected her to just smile a little herself and say, “Sure thing.”

  But instead she looked blankly at me and Minori-san. “Huh? Uhh...” She gradually looked more and more troubled.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Myusel was hesitant. “I gave her the spare key yesterday, and...”

  “What? No way,” Minori-san said, a note of panic entering her voice. “I mean, Shinichi-kun brought it to me, and then—”

  “I... I never got it back...”

  Minori-san stiffened. Myusel had no reason to lie about this. Meaning...

  “Minori-san,” I said, “is the spare in your room, too?”

  “No way!” Minori-san wailed, shoving her hands back into her pockets. Unfortunately, if just looking hard enough were all it took to find something, she would have already had the key before I showed up.

  “I can’t believe this! This isn’t happening!” Minori-san tried desperately to turn the doorknob, but of course the door wasn’t about to open. She started pounding on it as if she thought she might be able to break in, but the magically reinforced door didn’t even flinch.

  “I can’t believe this...”

  It was clearly dawning on her that no amount of struggle was going to gain her access to her room. She wobbled and then sank to her knees, resting her hands on the floor. She was the very picture of despair.

  Myusel and I were both alarmed.

  “M-Minori-san?!”

  “Minori-sama?!”

  “No... What do I do...” Minori-san just stared fixedly at a point on the floor as if we didn’t exist for her. I guess a bit of shock was understandable. I wouldn’t be happy either, if I suddenly couldn’t get into my room. But still...

  “U-Uh, Minori-sama, if you need some clothes, you’re welcome to use mine, if you don’t mind,” Myusel said. Then she realized that the chest, at least, was not likely to fit, and quickly added, “If we, you know, if we ask Hikaru-sama to tailor them a little, I’m sure...”

  Minori-san d
idn’t make a sound, crouched over as if she was pretending to be the orz emoticon.

  Uh... gosh. Was it really that bad?

  “If there’s anything I can do,” I said hesitantly, “just...”

  But Minori-san didn’t react to me, either. She stared at the floor, muttering something to herself.

  “...Can’t read my new book... Can’t get in my room...”

  “Huh? New book?”

  “Can’t even read the old ones... Ahhh...”

  “Is that what you’re worried about?!” I shot at her reflexively.

  She suddenly sat upright and shouted back, “What else could I be worried about?! Oh, what am I going to doooo?!” She hugged herself and flailed back and forth.

  ...Is this what we’ve come to?

  She looked like she was going through withdrawal from some kind of narcotic. And there was nothing Myusel or I could do for her as we stood there in the hall.

  Well, if you don’t have a key, you can make one that fits, right? In other words, call a locksmith.

  Hence, the next day found us at Holy Eldant Castle first thing in the morning. The castle was a massive structure that looked a lot like a really big version of a Middle Ages European fortress, but in fact it was a mountain that had been hollowed out with magic. That made it about as strong as strong gets.

  In one corner of the gigantic building, we were being ushered into one of the palace’s various audience chambers.

  “Hmm...?”

  On the far (far, far) side of the room, sitting on a raised throne, was the Empress of the Holy Eldant Empire: Her Majesty Petralka an Eldant III.

  Maybe words like “Her Majesty” and “the empress” evoke images of stern, authoritarian figures, but little could be further from the truth. Seated on the throne was a young woman so delicate she could almost have been a doll. She looked young enough to carry around an elementary schooler’s backpack, but in reality she was my own age. Atop her silver-haired head she wore a crown full of jewels, material evidence that she was a ruler, but truth be told, she wasn’t very imposing.

  “Can’t you do something about this? Seeing Minori-san so upset is, I dunno, kind of disturbing...” I glanced at Minori-san, who was standing beside me.