The fact that she was there suggested that for the time being, she remembered she was my bodyguard—but I wasn’t entirely confident I could count on her in a pinch. She obviously hadn’t slept—she looked exhausted, with big bags under her eyes. What a waste of a beautiful woman.
“Hmm...” Petralka crossed her arms, her expression vexed.
“Myusel says only the magic-user who cast the locking spell can undo it...” I offered.
“Indeed,” Petralka said. There were plenty of what you might call royal mages at the castle, but if just anyone could dispel the magic lock, there would be no point in having it.
“Just making sure,” I said, “but you don’t happen to have a set of spares here at the castle...?”
“No,” Petralka said flatly.
The old man standing next to her—Prime Minister Zahar—nodded as if to confirm this. “We never imagined such a situation might arise, you see.”
“And there’s no other way to open the door?”
“Normally, one would call the magician who created the magical device,” Petralka said. “That’s the quickest way to resolve a problem.”
“Okay then!” Minori-san said, brightening up.
“However,” Petralka went on, shaking her head and casting a glance at Minori-san, “though we may call him, the man is very busy. At the moment, he’s headed to a remote frontier area far distant from the capital. His abilities are much needed in the rough places and battlefields of the land, you see. Even if we called him back immediately, his return would take days. We don’t even know precisely where he is right now.”
She looked at the young man who stood to the other side of her throne. He had the same silver hair as she did, along with a slim, elegant beauty. He was Minister Garius en Cordobal. One of Petralka’s relatives, a knight, and a close personal advisor.
“Even if by good fortune our communication should reach that spellcaster, and he should come back, it would take a certain amount of time,” Garius said. “About six months, I would estimate.”
“S-Six months?” Minori-san repeated, her voice almost breaking. You could practically see the boooong sound effect written above her head. “What about some other mage...?” she asked, without much hope.
“Not possible,” Petralka said firmly. “We advise you to wait patiently for the creator’s return.”
So there was no choice but to wait for this wizard to get back? Even though we had no idea how long that would be? With Minori-san locked out of her room the whole time?
“Oh... my... God...” Minori-san’s eyes had gone blank again. We’d come to Petralka hoping that, as the absolute ruler of this empire, she might be able to do something—even though we knew it was a lot to ask. And in fact, it had turned out to be too much.
Minori-san looked like she was only staying on her feet because of Petralka and her advisors—in other words, because we were technically in public. Otherwise, it looked like she would have collapsed to all fours as she had the night before. In fact, she looked like she might have just gone out cold.
“My... My BL...” she murmured vacantly.
Petralka arched an eyebrow. “Bee ell?”
“If Minori-san can’t get into her room, it means she can’t read her BL books,” I explained.
“What...?!” came the startled response. From...
“Garius?” Petralka said, casting a dubious eye on the knight beside her.
Ahh, yes. This distinguished, beautiful, aristocratic knight-minister had certain tendencies that made him like to borrow BL books from Minori-san. He was being infected by otaku culture, too, in his own way...
“Six months? Six whole months...? Ha ha ha ha...” A laugh came from deep in her throat.
“M-Minori-san, just remember, the new shipment will be here soon...” It looked like despair had driven her to the brink of madness, and I was anxious to talk her down.
If only.
“Ha, hah... Ooh hoo hoo... ufu-fu-fu... fu-fu-fu-fu-fu... FU!”
Uh-oh. Did she mean fu as in 腐? As in, rotten? Her laughter was starting to sound really depraved. But it was already out of my control...
“FU FU FU FU FUFUFUFU腐腐腐腐腐腐腐...”
Rotten, rotten, rotten. The crazed noise poured from her half open lips, and all I could do was stare helplessly.
The first signs of an unmistakable change came the next morning.
We were having breakfast, like always. Gathered in the dining area, like always.
Me, Myusel, Elvia, Hikaru-san, Minori-san. All sitting in our chairs.
Everyone looked the same as usual. But there was an oppressive air in the room.
It originated, needless to say, with Minori-san. She sat with her hands braced against her knees, obviously not feeling well at all. In fact, she looked almost lifeless, staring listlessly at the table—she looked like a drug addict, or someone with a terminal disease or something. Little sighs constantly came out of her mouth.
“Is Minori-san okay?” Hikaru-san asked me quietly.
“Not sure,” I murmured.
“I never expected it to be this bad...”
“Me neither. You don’t have any BL, do you, Hikaru-san?”
“Not one volume, I’m afraid,” he said with a shrug. “You know me—I’m all about cosplay. Homoeroticism isn’t really my thing.”
“...Oh, uh, oh yeah. That’s right, huh? Sorry.”
BL and beautiful guys go hand in hand, so I guess someone who enjoys dressing up as attractive women probably wouldn’t be into it. Not that I would know for sure.
That meant, though, that nobody here had any BL-type stuff we could lend Minori-san. I even thought for a moment that maybe Garius had something on loan from her, but then I remembered he had already returned it quite a while ago.
So apparently this was going to go on until the next shipment arrived...
That would be in four days. Was Minori-san going to be like this the entire time? Honestly, the thought frightened me.
“A-Anyway, let’s eat!” I said, a little too loudly, eager to dispel some of the gloom radiating from our resident WAC. “Let’s enjoy this nice breakfast before it goes cold!” I turned to Minori-san specifically. “Come on, Minori-san, a good day starts with a full stomach!” I made my smile wider.
Minori-san looked up at me slowly. Her lips slowly formed two moaning syllables.
“Hooomooo...”
That set me on the back foot. “M-Minori...san...?”
“Homoooo...” She looked at me, her gaze empty. I didn’t know if she had completely given up, or if this was a sort of self-mockery, or if withdrawal had completely broken her brain, but her lips were twisted into a sort of grim half-smile. The way she was smiling despite a total absence of emotion in her eyes was deeply unsettling. She looked like a zombie.
“Homoooo...”
“Wh—What’s wrong, Minori-san?!” Before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. But she just kept repeating “Homooo,” that smile never wavering.
“Could this be... Vitamin BL Deficiency?!” Hikaru-san exclaimed.
“Wh-What the heck is that?” I shot back.
“It’s a condition unique to fujoshi who desperately want to watch or read some BL but can’t. They fixate completely on one word, ‘homo,’ and can’t think about anything else...”
“Is that even a real thing?!”
Granted, Hikaru-san’s description sounded an awful lot like what we were observing in Minori-san. But I had never heard of any unique fujoshi illnesses...
Hikaru-san only shrugged. “Nah. I made it up just now.”
“...Bah!”
Don’t give me that innocent little stuck-out tongue! It’s very cute!
This guy was just too much.
“Er... Well,” I said, “l-let’s just go ahead and eat.”
“Homooo...”
“I—Itadakimasu...”
“Homooo...”
Not quite sure what t
o do, I brought my hands together, and Minori-san, although still fixated on that single word, did the same, then started eating. Her brain might have been in the grip of BL withdrawal, but at least her body retained its instinctive drive to take in nutrients.
Having said that...
“Homooo...”
Pause.
“Homooo...”
Pause.
Minori-san’s repetitive wail echoed around the room, like the chanting of monks at a funeral.
What the heck was going on here?
It was pretty hard for the rest of us to enjoy our meals with Minori-san looking as if at any moment she might pounce down on all fours and go in search of BL to absorb like some Ultimate All-Purpose Humanoid Decisive Battle Weapon. Even Myusel’s typically delicious cooking was difficult to appreciate.
“M-Minori-sama, you okay?” Elvia ventured.
She was being polite. She was just worried about Minori-san, probably. I’m sure she didn’t for one second expect what came next.
The moment Elvia spoke to her, Minori-san stopped mechanically eating her breakfast. She looked at Elvia, haggard. There was a long silence.
“Minori-sama?”
“Elvia...” Abruptly, a light went on in Minori-san’s eyes. Her expression brightened, her mouth twisting into a smile.
Uh-oh. This is bad, my instincts told me, but it was too late.
Minori-san, her eyes sparkling like a child who’s spotted a long-desired toy, rose up from her chair and leaned across the table. She grabbed Elvia’s hands before the beast girl could pull them away.
“How interested are you in naked men?”
“Huh?” Elvia asked blankly. She was probably still processing the question. “Uh, um...”
“You are interested in them, aren’t you?”
“Minori-sa—”
“Are you interested or not?!” There was a crazed smile on her face. Elvia’s expression was stiff, unable or unwilling to answer one way or the other. At last she seemed to understand what was wrong with Minori-san, but it was too little, too late.
Elvia shifted her shoulders this way and that, apparently trying to escape from Minori-san’s grasp, but she couldn’t seem to manage. Was she holding back, or did Minori-san’s insanity give her the strength to overpower a werewolf?
“Shinichi-sama...!” She turned to me, almost in tears, but as none of us knew what to do, either, we all just looked away.
Sorry, Elvia... There’s nothing more... we can do...
So the meal went on, until finally—
“I’m full!”
—we finished eating and hurried out of the dining area, leaving Elvia with Minori-san like a sacrifice to appease some angry god.
I know. It was a terrible thing to do. But what other choice did we have...?!
“Hey—Shinichi-sama?!”
Thank you, Elvia. We’ll never forget your sacrifice!
I spoke, not to the girl shouting to me, but to her face floating in the blue sky (note: pure fantasy) as I left the dining room behind.
It was about time to go to school. After breakfast, I spent a few minutes lounging around in my room, then started getting ready to go.
Not that I had much to get ready. I mostly just had to make sure I was halfway presentable.
“You’ve got everything you need?” asked Myusel, waiting outside my room.
“Yeah, I think I’m all set,” I nodded.
There was something about—I mean, this little exchange we had as I went off to work. The day I was dressed in a suit and Myusel straightened my necktie for me, we would be the very picture of a freshly married young couple. I admit, it made me blush a little.
Incidentally, Myusel didn’t have to teach today, which was why she was staying home.
“You have your key?”
“Oh...!” I dug quickly through my pockets.
“Here you go.” Myusel, in the meantime, had gone into my room and gotten the key from on top of my desk. She handed it to me, smiling. “I hope you have a great day today.”
“Sure, thanks.”
Argh, my maid is so dang cute!
I felt something almost like a tickle as I returned Myusel’s smile. The two of us headed for the front door.
So far, so good. A normal morning.
“Oh...”
Down the hallway, I spotted Minori-san and Elvia. They were walking together, but both their shoulders were slumped, their backs arched like cats. Their footsteps were obviously heavy; it was clear even from here that they were depressed.
And they were coming this way.
“Wh-What’s going on?” I asked. “Has it even gotten to you, Elvia...?”
Minori-san’s condition was—well, if not all right, at least to be expected, but even Elvia was heaving these big sighs.
Minori-san turned her lifeless eyes on me and sighed deeply.
There was a piece of paper in her hand. It looked like there was some sort of picture on it. Had she gotten Elvia to draw something for her? Minori-san might not be able to get at her manga or novels, but Elvia could probably draw something approximating BL for her.
But if that was the case, why did both of them look like such zombies?
“Hm...?” Without really thinking about it, I glanced down at the sheet of paper Minori-san was holding.
And then I was struck dumb.
Yes, it was more or less what I had been expecting: a drawing of two naked men that filled the page. Young, strapping men standing intimidatingly with their arms crossed.
The picture, though, wasn’t really done in the “moe” style—it was very realistic, as if the two guys had wandered in out of a photograph somewhere. I could probably have looked at an artsy, moe-ish BL illustration without gagging, but for me, this was a little much...
What’s more, the crucial parts of the picture, the ones that would have been blanked out with a mosaic for civility’s sake in most pictures, were rendered with impeccable fidelity in this one, so real that they looked like they might, uh, pop off the page, if you know what I mean. You could practically hear the two guys whispering, “Hey, baby. Have a look. Whatcha think?”
“Very... very big...” I said, unintentionally replying to the voices in my internal monologue.
I noticed that the stuff between their legs was a little sketchier and more manga-esque than the rest of the picture; Elvia had probably been drawing from her imagination there. She understood what a guy was supposed to look like, but she didn’t have any firsthand experience of the details.
Elvia had once made a kyara-ben depicting a BL scene with spectacular quality, but in that case she’d had an example to work from—that is, she’d had a picture from a BL book to copy. She hadn’t had to produce it from scratch.
Come to think of it, it was my understanding that Elvia had only hit puberty pretty recently. Since her siblings were all sisters, the only one of those she was likely to have seen might have been her dad’s back when she was little and they could bathe together.
Whatever the case, though, I could tell this wasn’t the sort of BL Minori-san had in mind. This was more of a ‘hard gay’ type thing—a far cry from scenes of are-they-or-aren’t-they-legal guys tangled up together to strains of classical music.
Ah, so that was it: Minori-san had had the bright idea of getting Elvia to draw her something, but when it turned out not to be what she wanted, she went on suffering from withdrawal, while for her part, Elvia was depressed that she couldn’t understand what to draw.
Gah! Everyone was turning out to be so much trouble.
“I see now, naked guys alone aren’t enough,” Minori-san muttered to herself as Myusel and I stood there speechless. “It’s the situation that makes it...”
Beside her, Elvia was keeping up her own private monologue. “It’s... It’s all my fault... If I were a better artist, I could make them look more real...”
“Uh, I think if they looked any more real, we’d have a serious problem on our hands,�
� I said.
“Realism, that’s what Minori-san needs to feel moe about them...”
Elvia, it seemed, was hung up on the idea that a lack of realism was what was keeping Minori-san from feeling moe about her BL drawings. But if you take “realism” to mean how much a drawing looks like the real thing, then Elvia was completely mistaken. Realism in art has more to do with whether readers (or viewers or listeners) feel like something is faithful to the reality it depicts. Sometimes, an exaggerated, “unreal” representation is the best way to get a response.
It might be tough, though, to get Elvia to understand that.
Elvia stopped where she was, still muttering. “More realism... Need to study the real thing...”
“Elvia...?” I said. I looked up from the picture as I felt her hungry eyes on me. They were gleaming dangerously.
“Shinichi-sama,” she said, “strip down, please.”
“Huh?” I was, suffice to say, surprised by the request.
“I need realism!”
“Uh, Elvia, I don’t think the realism you’re talking about—”
“I’ve never really seen a man’s body. If I could just get a look at yours, Shinichi-sama, then I could draw something Minori-sama could get moe about!”
“I think your drawing is just great already, actually!” Granted, it was lacking something in detail between the legs—but I really didn’t think that was the main problem.
“Show it to me, Shinichi-sama,” Elvia said, her gaze increasingly fixated on me. “I’m beggin’ you... Shinichi-sama... Let me see you naked...!”
“I don’t wanna! Where I come from, this is harassment!”
“I have to see the real thing... with my own eyes... Yours...!” She shambled toward me, holding both arms out in front of her like a zombie.
Ahh, crap, I’m done for!
It didn’t look like I was going to get out of this without being indecently exposed.
“Nope! Uh-uh! No!” I scuttled backward moments before Elvia could grab me. Her fingers, bent like claws, swiped at thin air. “I—I’ve gotta go to school! See you!”
Outbreak Company: Volume 7 Page 13
