Suddenly Minori-san was starting the lesson. Wait... Basic vocabulary? Did she mean, like, moe? But heck, even the word otaku was pretty ill-defined. It seemed like a difficult subject to just jump into. Or was she talking about stuff like archetype and two-dimensional?
Minori-san clasped her hands behind her back and said, “Everyone, repeat after me.” She was standing ramrod straight. It was pretty impressive, actually.
I was slightly disturbed by the prospect of starting with rote repetition; it felt a little bit like we were flirting with brainwashing. But I guess we sort of had to take the Spartan approach—if we didn’t take a firm hand, the students (and their attendants) would be so busy arguing with each other that they would never spare us a thought.
There’s a school of thought that says you have to start with outward form, and from that perspective, beginning by cramming them full of vocabulary was certainly one way of going about things.
“All right then, lesson one,” Minori-san announced, her eyes growing wide behind her glasses. And then, with great gravitas, she intoned, “Total bottom!”
I just about fell over.
What the hell kind of words does she think we’re teaching around here?!
Children are curious creatures, and one of them immediately raised his hand and asked, “Teacher, what does ‘total bottom’ mean?”
“It means one who bottoms—totally! It indicates that you desperately wish to be made love to by the people around you. But note! This word pertains only to men, chiefly those who are pene—”
“Minori-san, stop! Hold it right there!” I broke in.
“Yes, Shinichi-kun? What is it?” She looked genuinely mystified. It was adorable! So adorable I couldn’t believe she was older than me. But never mind that!
“We’re talking to kids, here,” I said. “Let’s leave off the yaoi talk. You know, the... R-rated stuff.”
“Shinichi-kun, I thought you brought over some ero games?”
“Hey, those are for my personal—wait! I mean, don’t you think they’re a little young for this stuff?!” I was definitely starting to sweat now. I thought I’d been really sneaky bringing in the over-18 stuff, so Minori-san and Myusel wouldn’t know about it. How had she found out?!
“...Fine, then,” Minori-san said, looking distinctly disappointed. I had heard there were actually a lot of otaku in the JSDF, but this...
“All right, let’s try something else,” Minori-san said, turning to face the students again. “Cross-dresser!”
“Gaaaaah!” I thought I might claw my way right through the chalkboard. I had thought she might be—but then I’d hoped perhaps not—but it turned out she really was...!
“C-Cross-dresser...?” The students, as well as their servants, were thoroughly flummoxed. Our magic rings, our “interpreters,” essentially worked via telepathy; they didn’t allow us to actually understand each other’s languages. So when they heard the term “cross-dresser”—which was actually a complicated pun in my native Japanese—there was a good chance the rings simply couldn’t translate the full meaning of the term. The class got only the dimmest idea of what was being said, and it left them confused.
That was fair enough. But Minori-san, apparently oblivious to the reigning confusion, continued to shout in military fashion, “Pay careful attention to intonation! Cross! Dress! Er!”
“Cross! Dress! Er!”
“Next! Absolute territory!” Geez! I knew that that was slang for the skin that showed between a girl’s high socks and her skirt, but how was anyone here supposed to know that?
Nonetheless, the students dutifully repeated, “Absolute territory!”
“One more! Yandere!”
“Yandere!”
The students were completely in her thrall. I looked out at the crowd of humans, elves, and dwarves all chanting various otaku words. It was utterly surreal.
“She’s an even worse otaku than I am, isn’t she...?!” I muttered, but my voice couldn’t be heard over the shouts of “Cross-dresser!” and “Absolute territory!” I sighed deeply, but they didn’t hear that, either.
Chapter Two: The Beast-Spy
Despite the occasional hiccups, our school was really coming along nicely. Notwithstanding the daily fights among the students and their servants, our pupils were remarkably studious—as I had reported to Petralka earlier, their education in both the Japanese language and otaku culture was proceeding apace. School dramas are plentiful in anime and manga, so I wanted the students to have some sense of what it was like at a Japanese school. I generally modeled our schedule and daily classes on the workings of a middle or high school back home.
Then again, the range of classroom activities—showing videos, reading manga or light novels aloud to the class, or bringing in my computer so I could show off some games—probably would have looked to any real teacher like we were just playing around.
But never mind that. Something else I said earlier was that dry ground soaks up water. The Eldant students, starved for genuine entertainment, absorbed Japanese language and otaku culture much more quickly than I’d expected. Of course, they were studying a single subject for six hours a day, and they were also enjoying themselves, which meant engagement was high. Add to that the desire (once again, as I mentioned) to get close to Empress Eldant, and maybe it wasn’t so surprising that their studies should be going so well.
However, we were quickly exhausting the curriculum I had devised. Hence I resorted to giving the students “free-study time” for a while. Thanks to the solar panels and emergency generators the JSDF had set up for us, we were mostly able to keep the power on. We had also obtained ten computers and taught the students the basics of how to use them. There was no internet yet, but computers specialize in the storage and retrieval of information, and my hope was that the students would be able to study more efficiently.
“I guess you can’t just throw them into the deep end, though...”
“What are you talking about?”
Minori-san and I had finished another day’s classes and were in a bird-drawn carriage on our way home. Our seats faced each other across the coach; Minori-san sat on one side while Myusel, whom we’d collected from the castle, and I sat on the other. Apparently, the hospital had given her a clean bill of health, and she was already thinking of nothing but the work she had to do—chiefly, preparing this evening’s dinner.
“Otaku culture always has this kind of ambiguous line between creator and audience,” I said.
Minori-san looked at me quizzically for a moment. I thought I’d lost her, until she said, “Oh, you mean like how people are amateur doujinshi creators at Comiket one day, and the next they’re pro manga-ka?”
I knew she was an otaku.
“More or less,” I said. “I can’t help thinking that the whole top-down approach isn’t the best.”
“Hmmm,” Minori-san said, but she didn’t look quite convinced. “Don’t you think maybe you’re just going a little too fast, Shinichi-kun?”
“You think so?”
“No matter what we do, I don’t think the people of Eldant are going to be making their own doujinshi or holding their own Comiket for years, decades even.”
“Sure, I agree, but—”
I stopped short, picturing how diligently the students studied and how well they remembered their lessons. At that rate, was it possible...?
Just as those thoughts were running through my head, Minori-san suddenly narrowed her eyes and took her smartphone out of her back pocket.
“What’s up?” I asked, thinking she must have gotten a call from someone. She didn’t answer, but only fiddled with her phone, a dangerous look in her eye.
Huh? She’s not usually so serious...
“Minori-san?”
“Just a second.” She tapped on the window of our carriage and got the driver to come to a stop. We were only a few minutes away from home. Why in the world would she want to stop here?
“Seriously, what’s up?�
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“Just... hang on...” Minori-san continued to play with her phone. She was in work mode now.
“What’s Koganuma-sama doing? Is something wrong?” Myusel asked.
“Good question,” I said. “I wish I knew...”
We watched Minori-san silently for a few minutes, until she announced, “There’s an unknown figure lurking around near our house.”
She must have gotten some kind of warning on her phone. The JSDF is often pictured as having to get by with outdated technology, unlike, say, the expansively budgeted US Army, but in reality they seemed to have a lot of cutting-edge stuff. They might not be quite as up-to-date as the American military, but they appeared to have developed small observation robots.
Still—
“Unknown? You sure it’s not Brooke?”
“He’s registered with the system. He shouldn’t set off the intruder alert,” Minori-san said.
Some of those little robots I mentioned were, in fact, in use at our house as a simple security system. I had seen Minori-san placing several self-propelled monitor bots, about the size and shape of rugby balls, around the house once. I gathered that the JSDF really wanted a more robust security system but held back, maybe due to budgetary concerns or out of consideration for the Eldant Empire. I guess when you’re renting a house from an empire, it’s probably not the best idea to install a full-scale security system without asking anyone.
“Plus,” Minori-san said, picking up the suitcase at her feet and pulling out the 9mm automatic handgun within. She still carried the pistol at her hip, just like she always had, but ever since the incident with the terrorists, this suitcase had become her primary weapon. Both guns used 9mm rounds, but this one wasn’t designed for targeting one specific spot to bring your opponent down. These bullets shattered into pieces; the idea was to help clear out anyone who was getting too close.
“Brooke wouldn’t be hiding in the bushes, would he?” Minori-san concluded.
“True. He’ll fall asleep anywhere it’s warm, though!”
“This person is obviously smaller than Brooke.”
So there was someone sneaking around, trying to get close to our mansion. I had no idea who it might be.
“Wait, that’s...” With the 9mm still in one hand, Minori-san zoomed in on the feed from the observation bot on her phone and frowned at what she saw.
The bushes rustled as someone moved through them. They were definitely acting like someone who didn’t want to be seen. They moved from shadow to shadow, staying behind cover, never stopping anywhere exposed. Slowly but surely they approached their objective. It was straight out of Me**al Gear S**id. I resisted the temptation to throw in some narration, like, “This is Snake.”
Then, our mysterious visitor peeked out from behind a tree.
I was surprised to discover she was a young woman.
I couldn’t tell exactly how old she was, but I would stand by “young.” She had healthy skin tanned a light-brown color, along with short-cut brown hair. The eyebrows above her big black eyes were on the bushy side; she definitely had a certain charm.
Her green, loose-fitting trousers were tied at her ankles, and she was wearing leather sandals. A white tube top was wrapped around her chest, leaving exposed the smooth curve of her belly and the line of her shoulders—but it didn’t come off as vulgar, just pleasantly attractive.
Obviously, she wasn’t heavily dressed, but she seemed to be a traveler of some kind, because she had a bulging brown cloth sack on her back.
But her outfit wasn’t what surprised me most. It was her ears. At first, I couldn’t quite see them because they were hidden by her hair, but then I saw that she had triangular ears covered in brown fur.
Do you suppose she has...? I wondered, and looked down at the lower half of her body—where I caught glimpses of a furry tail the same color as the rest of her hair!
It was! A beast girl! An honest-to-God werewolf!
Man, this Eldant Empire really covers all the bases! What with the elves and dwarves and lizardmen, I wondered if— But there really is—!
I clenched my fist, my heart surging with moe feelings, but I at least had enough self-control not to shout out loud right there in the carriage.
“Hrm...” The beast girl rooted around in her pack and pulled out some rolled-up lambskin paper, a drawing board, and a charcoal cylinder. She hung the string on the drawing board around her neck, placed the paper on top of that, and began running the charcoal busily around the paper, looking at our mansion the entire time.
The charcoal made a scritching sound as she worked. I guess she was drawing a picture... Why? Had she snuck up to our mansion just to steal a sketch from the shadows?
She shifted slightly, and I could see what she was drawing. At first glance, it looked like she was trying to fit way too much on one piece of paper. But these were no mere doodles; she wasn’t just making lines at random. As the picture on the paper came together, it was obvious that it was our mansion, along with the windmill visible in the background, and the school building. In fact, the windmill and the school looked like they were already done. She was focusing on our house now.
The girl was able to vary the thickness of her lines by how much pressure she placed on the charcoal. I don’t know much about drawing, but her picture looked pretty darn good to me.
More troubling, though, was the content of her picture. The windmill had been converted into an electric generator by the JSDF to help provide power for the school and the mansion. It was, in essence, a power station.
What’s going on...?
This beast girl appeared to be sketching our buildings—which was to say, Amutech’s facilities.
“Guess that about does it,” she muttered in a voice with an unusual intonation. Then she set aside her charcoal. She took the strap of the drawing board off her neck and knelt down, reaching into her bulging backpack. She took out a leather cylinder, the sort of thing you might receive official documents in. She opened the lid, rolled up her newly completed drawing, and put it inside. She secured the top and used her teeth to make sure the strap was tied down tight, then—
“Don’t move.”
—she froze on Minori-san’s order. Maybe it wasn’t just Minori-san who convinced her. Maybe it was the 9mm handgun she was holding, or the two JSDF officers flanking her, each carrying a Type 89 assault rifle. The moment we had confirmed an intruder near our premises, Minori-san requested backup from the nearest JSDF base. (Granted, what passed for a base here was a part of the dormitory in the nearby castle town that was being rented out by the Japanese military.)
The Holy Eldant Empire didn’t have guns, so this beast girl couldn’t have known what the weapons were. But Type 89s have a bayonet on the end, and the way the soldiers were holding them probably would have alerted anyone that they weren’t friendly.
“What’s this? Wh-What’s going on around here?!” the beast girl said in surprise.
“This area is off-limits to civilians,” Minori-san said in an authoritative and very military tone quite unlike what I was used to hearing from her. Moments like this definitely reminded me that she was a soldier. “Didn’t you see the sign?”
“I—I can’t read!” the girl cried, holding her hands up as if to say, I surrender. Evidently that gesture is the same no matter which world you’re in. Not that this was the time or place to be intrigued by such details.
“There’s a picture along with the words,” Minori-san said sharply. “The sign is located where anyone coming down the path would see it. So either you saw it and ignored it, or you deliberately took an unusual route to get near this place.”
Whatever she was after, the beast girl had definitely looked like she was trying to avoid being seen.
“I—I swear I’m no one suspicious!” the girl said desperately. Of course, that’s just what a suspicious person would say.
“Identify yourself.”
“I’m Elvia Harneiman, and as... as you can see, I’m
a wandering artist!”
“An artist, huh?” Minori-san glanced at the tube that the beast girl—Elvia—was holding. “You were drawing a picture, that much is for sure.”
“Sure it’s for sure! I’m an artist, and that’s what an artist does!” She pulled out her lambskin paper and unrolled it. Now that I had a chance to get a good look at her sketch, I could appreciate how talented she was. It was almost photo-real—she had captured the essence; every detail was there. I was amazed to realize someone could do such a precise drawing using only charcoal.
“Artists aren’t the only people who draw pictures,” Minori-san said.
Well, that was true enough. Technically, anyone can draw, regardless of how talented they are or aren’t. And her evident fixation on Amutech’s buildings... There were no guarantees that she wasn’t a forgotten element of the “assembly of patriots,” plotting how to kill me.
“But we’ll hear what you have to say,” Minori-san went on. Through the eye of the robot monitor as displayed on the smartphone, I saw the two soldiers with Minori-san approach Elvia. For safety’s sake, Myusel and I had stayed in the carriage, and I had watched the jumpy video with Myusel interpreting for me. Only now did I finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Elvia Harneiman, eighteen years old, wandering artist.
That, at least, was what the beast girl insistently repeated after the soldiers had apprehended her. Admittedly, everything in her personal effects seemed to back her up. But why would an itinerant artist have suddenly decided that our mansion was the thing she most wanted to draw? Forget about the power plant-ified windmill and the school building—the mansion was a pretty normal noble dwelling by Eldant standards, not something interesting or unique enough to warrant a sketch.
And that seemed to suggest...
“She’s a spy,” Minori-san said.
“A spy?!” I exclaimed.
We were in my office on the second floor. Elvia, still in handcuffs, was sitting on a chair, but Minori-san and I had taken off our rings in order to converse with each other. This way, neither Elvia nor any human in the Eldant Empire would understand what we were talking about. Myusel, though, had picked up a smattering of Japanese over the past four months, which posed some issues regarding confidentiality.
Outbreak Company: Volume 2 Page 4
