Outbreak Company: Volume 12

by Ichiro Sakaki

  “B-But...”

  “I’m sure Petralka can’t just get married any old time she wants, either—and I’m sure she knows that!”

  It was obvious. I thought. Probably. The more I thought about it, the less sure I was, but saying so was only going to make things that much harder, so I decided to stick to my guns.

  Even if—purely hypothetically, now—even if Petralka and I were head over heels in love, and got married (just a thought experiment, remember), I didn’t believe for a second that Garius, Zahar, and all the important members of Petralka’s court would give their blessings to our union. I was just a commoner with no social status at all—worse than that, I was an outworlder who had once been a tool of invasion against the Eldant Empire. The very fact that I was basically free to do what I wanted here right now was nothing short of miraculous.

  So a guy like that was going to marry the empress? The nation’s ministers would have to think Petralka had gone nuts. It would literally make me the absolute dictator of the Eldant Empire—and if I happened to have a single bad bone in my body, the Empire could find itself Japan’s vassal state overnight.

  The thing was, I didn’t even really know if Petralka liked me as a man. As a friend, sure; I was pretty confident about that. But as more than that...?

  “Yeah, no,” I said flatly. But even then, Myusel still looked anxious. Her face, clouded by sadness, looked so mournful, so delicate, and so simply beautiful that it tugged on my heartstrings harder than ever before.

  Ahhhhhhhh...?!

  G-Geeze, it’s reactions like this that give a person the wrong idea! And just think of all the light novels where maids and their masters fall in love!

  But at the same time...

  Speaking of differences in status...

  Part of me was coldly analyzing the situation: me and Myusel. Me and Petralka. Myusel and Petralka. Each of us had our own status, and our own situation.

  Confronted with the empress, the absolute ruler, a commoner—even a commoner in love with her—had to make way when she came down the street. On the other hand, even if she were in love with him, madly, passionately, social status would form an impassable wall between the two of them. Love between a servant and her master was similar: status came between them, making a love between equals almost impossible. I had never given it much thought before, but it turned out to be a very thorny problem.

  I felt like I had once heard it said that the love two people recognize between each other is romance; the love everyone else recognizes between them is marriage. But being in love and actually getting married were different things, even if they had a lot in common. Even I understood that much.

  “Look, anyway, it’s never going to happen,” I insisted, trying to close out the conversation.

  “I... I see...” Myusel must have understood that I wanted to stop talking about this, because with the slightest hint of a pained smile, she bowed to me and rolled her cart out of the room.

  ◎

  What with this and that, we reached the next day. We went to Eldant Castle, just as Petralka had instructed us. Incidentally, the night before, we had contacted our students to let them know that school was canceled for the day. I knew about how long our morning reports would usually take, but a meeting with an ambassador? I was pretty sure we couldn’t just say hello and goodbye, and I had no idea how long we might spend talking to them. We couldn’t very well put our classes ahead of a diplomatic meeting.

  Eldant Castle was just as imposing as ever. Carved out of a mountain by the use of magic, it was staggeringly big. You could stand in front of the main gate and crane your neck as far back as it would go, and you could still barely see the whole thing. Even with magic involved, a construction project on this scale must have been an enormous undertaking. I’m sure it involved the equivalent of billions of yen to complete.

  I didn’t normally think too hard about it, but this was not a place a commoner like me typically got to just walk in and out of. Being reminded of the fact kind of gave me the shivers.

  “What’s the matter, Shinichi-san?” someone asked from just ahead of me. They were walking beside Minori-san, and looked back when I had stopped to peer up at the castle.

  This person was Ayasaki Hikaru-san, one of Amutech’s employees. In other words, one of my subordinates—strictly speaking, my assistant.

  “Oh... Coming.” I gave a noncommittal nod and followed after the others.

  It’s almost like Hikaru-san is more comfortable here than I am, I thought, looking at Hikaru-san walking ahead of me. Hikaru-san didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by the castle, at least not that I could tell. In fact, this person moved through it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Hikaru-san was technically a commoner, a regular Japanese person just like me, but refined manners and way of speaking somehow made my assistant seem more like the well-bred daughter of some noble family somewhere. And the outfit: frills everywhere, delicate embroidery, a Gothic Lolita thing that would look right at home in a noble mansion. Long, beautiful black hair caught the sunlight, making Hikaru-san look like a vision out of a dream, like a creature completely divorced from whatever I was.

  It was completely perfect. Except for one thing: this princess, this picture of feminine elegance, was a guy. He—yes, he—was one of those otoko-no-ko. Not as in the Japanese word for “boy,” but the one that uses the kanji for “daughter” and means “cross-dresser.”

  Anyway, never mind about that.

  “Is it really all right for someone like me to be welcoming an ambassador...?” I asked. In this world, I was pretty sure—no, make that completely sure—that any ambassador would be of noble stature. Nobody would give a nameless commoner the job of representing an entire nation.

  “Doesn’t matter, does it?” Minori-san said, smiling a little over her shoulder at me. “They asked you to come.”

  “That’s true, but...” Today of all days, I wasn’t feeling my bravest. Maybe the last night’s conversation with Myusel was still on my mind.

  I do remember telling Petralka once that we don’t have nobles and commoners in Japan. But that was a long time ago.

  It was a little late for me to be worrying about status differences, I told myself as we walked along.

  “...Ah.”

  When we arrived at our usual hallway through the castle, three people were waiting for us. I recognized two of them; they were knights in the castle guard. I recognized the other guy, too, the one flanked by the knights, but he didn’t look anything like them. He wore a strangely threadbare-looking suit, an outfit that stuck out like a sore thumb in this Middle Ages-ish setting.

  “Hullo.” Suit raised a hand in greeting and smiled genially.

  Matoba Jinzaburou: in a word, my boss. But because he traveled so frequently between Japan and Eldant, he wasn’t really a resident of Amutech’s mansion. Actually, it seemed like a long time since I’d seen him.

  With his gentle, never-changing smile, Matoba-san looked like the kind of person who wouldn’t hurt a fly. The quintessential middle manager, the kind you see wiping sweat off their brow with a handkerchief all the time. But his very generic-ness made him hard to read, and although he wasn’t an enemy, I hesitated to call him a friend. It was a complicated relationship. But basically, he was the Japanese government’s man, there to keep an eye on me and curb my tendency to come down on the side of the Eldant Empire. As a fellow member of Amutech, it made sense that he’d been summoned to meet the ambassador.

  “Sorry,” I said, “are we late?”

  “No, I’ve just arrived myself,” Matoba-san said, sounding as mellow as ever.

  “We’ll show you in,” one of the knights said. Then one of them took up a position in front of us and the other followed behind as we started through the castle.

  Finding the silence somehow uncomfortable, I said, “So, uh, what do you suppose this ambassador is like?”

  “Yeah, we don’t know whether they’re a man or woman, young or old
, or anything,” Minori-san chipped in.

  “I asked Myusel about this other country—uhh, the Kingdom of Zwelberich, I think it was. I asked her what it was like there, and she said their magical technology is supposed to be way more advanced than Eldant’s.” Although personally, I thought Eldant magic was nothing to sneeze at. I couldn’t imagine what something “much more advanced” than this would look like. Myusel only seemed to know that the Kingdom’s magic was ahead of her own country’s; she couldn’t tell me what exactly that meant. “I guess discrimination against demi-humans is really severe there, though...”

  Even in Eldant there was some bias against so-called “demi-humans”—elves, dwarves, and beast people. Half-elves like Myusel were especially looked down on, and I have to think it must have been pretty awful for her when she first got here. Petralka had even denounced Myusel once as a “half-breed,” if I recalled correctly.

  Petralka and Myusel were pretty good friends now, and at school, elves and dwarves seemed to be treated much the same as the human students. In my personal bubble, discrimination seemed almost like nothing more than a word—but I’m sure that there was real anti-demi-human sentiment in places I couldn’t see. Thinking that’s been formed by centuries doesn’t get wiped out after a year or two, I figured. And apparently, discrimination against demi-humans in the Kingdom of Zwelberich was way worse than it was here in Eldant.

  “She says they would never make an elf or a dwarf a minister like we do here,” I said. “Although she’s never been there, so she couldn’t tell me much more than that.”

  The Eldant Empire bordered on being a meritocracy, and a small handful of demi-humans had risen to fairly high positions within the government. Yes, they were sort of exceptional, but apparently exceptions like that would never have been permitted in Zwelberich.

  “Shinichi-kun...” Minori-san said warningly.

  “I know,” I said. I understood what she was trying to say. “I’ll behave.”

  I had occasionally been known to make a bit of a scene here in Eldant. I had spoken out against discrimination more than once to Petralka (Her Majesty the Empress, remember) as well as Garius (noble) and Zahar (the Prime Minister). They were kind enough to indulge me, but there were people who might not smile on that sort of thing—people who might take it as an affront, as me overstepping the boundaries of class. In fact, that was essentially what had gotten me captured by the Assembly of Patriots.

  Basically, if I went around saying “Don’t discriminate! Bad, bad, bad!” to the wrong people, I might not walk away from the experience alive. Not that I meant to actively accept discrimination, but there was a time and a place to say certain things. At the moment, I was an honored guest of the Eldant Empire, and if I carelessly said something inflammatory, it might be equated with an act of ill will on the part of my hosts.

  At length we spotted someone rounding a corner, and stopped.

  “Garius-san.”

  There was the long, silver hair; the composed features; a young man so beautiful he burned himself into your memory. His eyes, emerald like Petralka’s, flashed, sharp and perceptive. He looked like he had stepped straight out of the pages of some shoujo manga: which is to say, he was a total hunk. He was slim and regal, of course, but not gaunt; you could almost see the toned muscles moving under his clothes.

  Ladies and gentlemen, Minister Garius en Cordobal: the guy with all the gifts, the realest of all the “damn Reals” I had ever met.

  Despite all that, though, I honestly wasn’t what you would call jealous of him. Like Petralka, he lived a life constrained by class and station. And also, so the very popular rumor went, he wasn’t the type to be interested in girls. Although I had to admit I didn’t know how true it was.

  We all watched Garius: he was walking toward us quickly, but he wasn’t looking at us. He hardly seemed to know we were there.

  The two knights with us silently dropped their heads when Garius appeared. Normally, I would expect him to give them a salute or a nod, maybe say a brief word of greeting to us. But today evidently was not normal. Garius walked right past us without ever slowing down or even seeming to notice us. His face as he went by was far more stern than usual.

  Everything wasn’t right in the world of Garius. But what was going on?

  “Uh, G-Garius-san?” I reflexively called after him. With a start, he halted and finally turned to us.

  “Oh, Shinichi.” He blinked, as if coming out of a trance. “Ah, yes... You were summoned today as well.” He nodded to himself, but his tone of voice gave the distinct impression that his thoughts were elsewhere.

  It was weird. Very out of character. Garius always seemed ready for anything; for as young as he was, he was very cool and collected. For him not to notice when he walked by people he knew, or to forget who had been scheduled to visit the castle, would ordinarily have been unthinkable.

  Actually, Garius didn’t just seem preoccupied—he looked like a cornered animal. When I looked closely, I could see dark bags under his eyes, like he hadn’t been sleeping much.

  “You tired?” I asked, and he looked pointedly away from me.

  “Not at all...”

  I knew for a fact I had never seen him look this way. He seemed unsettled, almost nervous or anxious... anyway, whatever it was, it certainly didn’t suit Garius’s almost disgustingly beautiful face.

  “Gosh, I wonder what’s the matter with Garius-san,” Minori-san whispered into my ear.

  “Yeah, I agree, something’s wrong.” If Minori-san thought so, too, then at least I knew it wasn’t my imagination or a simple mistake.

  “He’s restless and fidgety... like a maiden in the first blush of love!”

  “A maiden in what?” Where did she come up with these expressions?

  I unconsciously moved my eyes from Minori-san back to Garius. Now that she mentioned it, I had to admit, he didn’t not look like... but there had to be better metaphors than that, right?

  Garius probably didn’t know what we were whispering about, but he gave a long, pathos-laden sigh that came dangerously close to supporting Minori-san’s hypothesis. My bodyguard clenched her fist.

  “Don’t tell me—you’re heartsick?!”

  Curse this rotten WAC!

  “Who is it?! Is it Shinichi-kun?! I can’t believe you’re only discovering your feelings for him now!”

  “Your fantasies are showing, Minori-san,” I interjected, in a voice so calm it shocked even me. Frankly, I kind of frightened myself with how accustomed I’d become to her rottenness. I could see it coming from a mile away and have a quip ready to go. Being used to it was one thing, but that felt like a slippery slope to thinking a fujoshi’s thoughts, and then... shiver.

  “I’m just a little on edge with the ambassador from Zwelberich coming,” Garius said. His tone was a touch more forceful than necessary—I guess he had caught the joy in Minori-san’s voice, too. “The meeting is scheduled to begin soon.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I guess Garius would have a lot on his plate with a foreign ambassador arriving. I felt a little bad about stopping him. “Sorry. I know you must be busy.”

  “Think nothing of it...” He gave an ambiguous shake of his head.

  Hmmm. Something was definitely strange here.

  “I guess we’ll get going, then,” I said.

  “Yes, do,” Garius replied with a nod—but then, to my surprise, he added in a whisper, “Having you and your companions here heartens me, Shinichi.”

  “Huh...?” I stopped in my tracks and looked back at him.

  This was completely bizarre. Garius never needed to feel “heartened.”

  Then he seemed to realize what he had said, and shook his head again. He waved a hand as if to say, “Don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s nothing,” he added. And then he walked away, still obviously hurrying. We watched him go for a long second, then started off ourselves.

  “There’s something really weird about him today,” I said. “I’ve nev
er seen him like that.”

  “He said it himself,” Hikaru-san said. “He’s nervous about the ambassador.”

  “I wonder if that’s all it is...”

  I didn’t know how big or important the Kingdom of Zwelberich was, but I couldn’t imagine something that could put even the knight Garius off his stride. When he had been meeting us (sort of the ambassadors from Japan), he had been completely cool, and even when the Japanese government had sent a special-forces unit to kill me, he had seemed totally in control. The way he was acting seemed less like anxiety and more like...

  “Love changes people,” Minori-san opined from beside me, sounding like a young girl stuck in a daydream. Although I assumed the daydream she was having was rated R.

  “Would you let it go already?”

  “Maybe it’s not Shinichi-san he’s in love with. Maybe it’s this ambassador!” Hikaru-san said. Couldn’t he ever leave well enough alone? “Happens all the time, right? One look, and a person falls head over heels. Or maybe it’s a reunion with a long-lost first love...”

  “Yeah, you’re right!” Minori-san said, nodding enthusiastically. “That would make perfect sense!”

  “I’ll get you a dictionary and you can look up the definition of perfect sense.”

  “So that’s why he was gazing at Shinichi-kun,” Minori-san said, completely ignoring my interjection. “He’s going to be reunited with his first love. Yet now he’s in love with Shinichi-kun. The heart of the beautiful knight, Garius, wavers between two men...!”

  “That’s all complete speculation,” I said, hoping to burst the rotten bubble before it got any bigger. I wished Hikaru-san would stop pouring fuel on these fires. I knew it wasn’t because he liked BL himself; he just liked seeing the subject of Minori-san’s little fantasies (namely me) squirm. “I’d much rather be popular with girls than guys.”