Outbreak Company: Volume 12

by Ichiro Sakaki

  “Yes, this is a very dangerous situation,” Eric-san said with a nod. “Civil war might be the best we could hope for. But if other countries then got wind of it, they would fall on us like jackals.”

  “Oh, no...” Suddenly I pictured a long shadow falling over the Holy Eldant Empire, threatening crisis. Whoever or whatever it was, I felt a profound revulsion for it. I owed so much to so many people here—Petralka, of course, but Garius too, and everyone in this nation who had accepted me. They were friends and acquaintances that I cherished. If someone was sneaking in the shadows, preparing to do them harm...

  “I am pleased to say, though, that there is someone in our nation now who can avert this disaster,” Eric-san said.

  “Very true—one and one only,” Rydel-san agreed, his expression grim.

  Someone who could save the Eldant Empire from crisis? Who was it, some kind of superhero?

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Why, it’s you.”

  ..................

  ..................

  .......................Excuse me?

  “Kanou Shinichi-dono,” Rydel-san said, “you are the only one who can save the Empire from catastrophe.”

  Of all the things I had expected him to say, that was at the bottom of the list. My thoughts practically froze in my brain. “Um, what? Me? You mean you, like, me, right?” I looked from one face to the next for some kind of lifeline, but all of them—the parents, Loek, Romilda—simply nodded.

  What the heck? How can I possibly be the one to—?

  “Minori-san...” I looked at my bodyguard, at the end of my rope, but she was looking at the kids’ parents with an expression of disbelief. I guess she didn’t understand this any better than I did.

  “Ahem, let me apologize for not being clearer,” Eric-san said. “Her Majesty... If you’ll forgive my bluntness, she’s rather fond of you, Shinichi-dono.”

  I didn’t speak. I mean, he wasn’t wrong. At the very least, she certainly didn’t dislike me. Even if I wasn’t sure about all that love stuff Myusel had talked about...

  “And His Highness Garius feels much the same way about you.”

  “Umm...”

  Well, he wasn’t wrong about that, either. Garius talked to me like a normal person, even shared some personal stuff with me. It had even been Garius who had first told me about his and Petralka’s parents—even though the story seemed to cause him a certain amount of shame. But what he felt for me was ultimately friendship. That’s an important point. It was absolutely—

  “You are so right about that!” a voice exclaimed. Naturally, it wasn’t mine. “Garius-san is completely crazy about Shinichi-kun!”

  You there, the rotten WAC! Don’t make this any more complicated than it already is!!

  “This goes beyond suki into pure ai shiteru territory! I’m sure he’s looking for any excuse to cross that final line!”

  “That’s a complete fantasy! Your fantasy!”

  “Aww, c’mon! You don’t have to be so shy, Shinichi-kun!” Minori-san exclaimed, her eyes shining—no, glinting. Ugh, just when I thought she had come back to reality, that perverse switch got flipped again, and off she went... “It’s obvious to everyone that it’s lovey-dovey love love love!” She put her hands on her cheeks, practically squirming with joy. She was starting to seem like a fundamentally different person...

  “Ahem...” The parents had watched this truly strange display of excitement with no small amount of bemusement. In fact, they seemed to be trying to pull away a little. An understandable reaction the first time you saw something like this. As for Romilda, who had encountered this behavior before, she was just watching with a wry smile; Loek watched this madness unfold raptly.

  Are you sure, Loek? Is this what you want?

  “I’m sorry, I—” With Minori-san here, it didn’t look like we were going to get a lot of talking done, at least not about anything practical. I was looking around for help when: “Oh.” I thought I glimpsed a tuft of tail fur by the doorway.

  Evidently, somebody thought she was hiding in the shadows, watching us covertly. But she had only hidden half of herself. And only one member of this household had a bushy tail.

  “Elvia?”

  “Y-Yes?!” She poked her head into the living room. “I-I’m real sorry! I wasn’t, like, listenin’ in or anything. I was just, uh, well, wonderin’ what you were all talking about...”

  “So you were eavesdropping.”

  “Er, no, well...”

  That seemed to be all she had. Maybe she’d had too much time on her hands, or maybe curiosity had gotten the better of her. She didn’t seem to be thinking about how behaving like this could negatively impact her position. She was originally a spy sent here from Bahairam, and although we no longer had serious suspicions about her anymore—heck, we were prone to forget the fact entirely—too much sneaky listening ran the risk of raising new questions.

  “Say, Elvia. You’re just the person I wanted to see.” This came from Hikaru-san, who had been quiet until that moment. “Sorry for the trouble, but do you think you could take Minori-san somewhere?”

  “...Uh...” She blinked.

  “Her ‘illness’ has flared up again. We aren’t going to be able to have a productive conversation this way.”

  “Oh! Sure thing!” Elvia, too, was all too familiar with Minori-san’s “illness.” She nodded and came over to Minori-san, taking her arms.

  “...But I see that a new obstacle to this true love blossoming has appeared in the form of this prince! After all, they’re living in the castle together, under the selfsame roof...” Minori-san was apparently too busy with her fantasy to notice Elvia dragging her away. “And could it possibly be that nothing would happen with them a stone’s throw away from each other?! No, it’s impossible! No, wait, the story isn’t over y— Wait, nooooo~~~”

  Her voice got farther and farther away. When I was sure she was gone, I turned back to the parents.

  “...Er.”

  “She’s sick,” Hikaru-san said with a blithe smile. “These little flare-ups, they happen.”

  “Do they, indeed...” The adults still seemed somewhat taken aback.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Loek gazing out the doorway where Minori-san had disappeared. His eyes were glistening, obviously the look of a man in love. To think that he had seen Minori-san’s “illness” firsthand and still felt the same way—was it possible Loek himself had a couple of screws loose?

  Anyway, back to business.

  “So, what were we talking about?” I said, gathering myself back up.

  “Oh, yes.” The parents nodded, their faces still grim.

  Eric-san cleared his throat. “Ahem, as we were saying, Her Majesty and His Highness Garius both seem to have a soft spot for you, Shinichi-dono.”

  “Well, if you say so... But even if you’re right, what does that have to do with anything?”

  “Interesting you should ask.” Eric-san sighed, then said, “We have devised a possible solution that could resolve this factional dispute entirely.”

  “And that would be...?”

  “A marriage. Between Her Majesty and Minister Cordobal.”

  I almost choked. But when I thought about it, there was a certain logic to it. Both were legitimate members of the imperial family, meaning that there could be no objection in terms of lineage or social status. There had been royal dynasties in my own world that prized “purity of blood” so highly that they would even marry close relatives to maintain it. For that matter, modern Japanese law still recognized marriages between cousins. So the idea had real plausibility. And yet...

  As far as I knew, Petralka had never shown any romantic interest in Garius. At best he was like an older brother to her. And Garius seemed to see her the same way, like a younger sister. In fact, sometimes I almost thought I sensed a hint of reserve in the way the two treated each other. Maybe it had to do with their parents. They’d seemed pretty close recently, bu
t sometimes things could be awkward between them.

  And then there was the simple fact that Garius didn’t seem especially interested in the opposite sex. So even if we somehow convinced or cajoled the two into getting together, it would be a complete sham, a marriage with nothing in it. No further heirs to the imperial throne would be born. Then distant relatives might well appear, claiming that they had imperial blood in their veins and a right to rule—and then the power struggles would begin all over again, and things in the Holy Eldant Empire would be even more chaotic than before.

  Ultimately, having Petralka as empress and Garius as regent had been nothing more than a stopgap measure. It couldn’t last forever, and everyone knew it—yet in order to keep the peace between the loyalists of the First and Second Princes, there was no choice but to maintain this status quo.

  But the status quo stopped being the status quo when...

  “You came here.”

  “Me?”

  Kanou Shinichi. Yes, I had caused more confusion at first, but then I had earned the “imperial affection” of Petralka, and, just maybe, the “interest” of Garius, making me, in a way, the third corner of a triangle. With me in the middle, so to speak, Petralka and Garius had actually seemed to grow closer. This made the First and Second Prince factions more secure, and gave them time to look for another solution. So they actually welcomed my arrival, if only as an expedient. They even seemed to think that if this trend continued, Petralka and Garius might grow so close that the groups’ original goal—a marriage between the two royals—might actually be possible.

  ...Geez, I had no idea. They were planning this all along?

  “But if Her Majesty accepts Prince Rubert’s proposal, that delicate balance will be shattered.”

  Ahh, so the threat they’d talked about was Rubert himself.

  “Er, but, just because Petralka gets married... Does that mean she can’t go on being empress and Garius-san can’t go on being regent?”

  And again: where did I come in?

  The parents regarded me severely. “If they were to wed, then in deference to our alliance with Zwelberich, we may expect that Her Majesty would begin to keep her distance from you, Shinichi-dono.”

  “Huh? But—”

  But why should she? I had been about to object, but the lightbulb went on in a hurry. People thought the empress was in love with me. Once she married Rubert, if she were to continue to remain close to me—well, it wouldn’t look very good. Say Petralka had a baby, and people started to question whether it was really Rubert’s child... In fact, it would be all too easy for people to accuse Petralka of throwing away the long-standing alliance between the Eldant Empire and Zwelberich in favor of the much newer relationship with Japan. And that wouldn’t bode well for diplomacy.

  “What’s more, Zwelberich may be our ally. But if Prince Rubert were to be Her Majesty’s husband...” Eric-san took a handkerchief out of his bag and wiped his brow. “It would, in principle, give Prince Rubert direct and legitimate power over our nation. We worry that in the worst case, our country could be absorbed into Zwelberich.”

  There was definitely some logic to that concern. Petralka might be an empress, but she was still a seventeen-year-old girl. Next to her, Prince Rubert was an adult man. When it came to knowledge and experience, he had Petralka beat. It would be by no means impossible to look up and suddenly realize Rubert held the reins of power, and the Eldant Empire had been effectively conquered.

  There had been royal marriages between countries in the past, I was informed, but in every case they had involved a woman entering the imperial or royal household of the other country. There had rarely if ever been a case where a male entered the bride’s imperial or royal line.

  “On top of all that, Zwelberich may be our ally, but they are notorious for their ill will toward demi-humans,” Rydel-san said, grimacing. “If their prince were to rule us, then our position might become quite tenuous.”

  Ahh... Yes, that made sense. If Prince Rubert, from Zwelberich, were to be in charge of the disposition of ministers in the Eldant Empire, families like the Slaysons and the Gulds could find themselves up against the wall. Worst-case scenario, everything they had worked to build, their status and their stipends, could easily be stripped away from them.

  And not just them. The fact that there were elves and dwarves among Eldant’s elite wasn’t lost on the common people. There was discrimination against demi-humans here, sure, but it wasn’t bad compared to many other countries, and that had a lot to do with the presence of influential demi-humans like the people in front of me. If they were to be forced out of the government, the effect could trickle down until it impacted even the people around me—the Myusels and Elvias, the Brookes and Cerises of the world.

  That would be bad. Awful, in fact. Discrimination at our school was getting to be less and less, in part thanks to diligent teaching, but also in part because the Eldant Empire was already a relatively tolerant place.

  “B-But Garius-san must have thought about all this already, right...?” It was inconceivable that these courtiers and even I would pick up on an impending crisis that Garius had simply missed. Surely he would come up with some kind of stratagem without us having to get all bent out of shape over it?

  I felt so sure about this, but the parents’ faces only got darker.

  Huh? But why?

  “As a matter of fact...” Rydel-san lowered his voice and leaned forward. Sensing that he wanted to speak as secretly as possible, I leaned in, too. “Prince Rubert is said to be the, ahem... the reason His Highness Garius discovered... the way he is.”

  ............Come again?

  My brain was already all but completely overwhelmed by the relentless series of shocks to my system.

  “The way he is”? Did he mean, like... that way?

  “Discovered? But wasn’t Garius-san, you know... always...?” Even as I questioned them, I was immensely grateful that Minori-san wasn’t here right now. If she’d been privy to this conversation, we might have finally lost her for good. Er, not that I knew where we would have lost her to. A land of love where every (BL) dream came true, I guess. Gandhara! (Meaning unknown.)

  “His Highness Garius once went to the Kingdom of Zwelberich for study, and to further strengthen relations between our two nations...”

  Oh, yeah—I had heard about that. And according to Eric-san, Rubert had been his host at the time. And I guess Rubert had pounded a lot of things into Garius’s—

  Whoa, whoa, whoa.

  But then again... to be in a foreign country, far from home... Even if it was an allied nation... Even if Garius had traveling companions, it would be only natural for him to feel lonely. And if there was one person who was exceptionally kind to him, well, I could understand how his heart might turn toward them.

  Still—and I know I was late to the party on this, but—to imagine Garius really was like that... To realize Minori-san had been right all along... Yes, I get it, I should have known! But wouldn’t it have been hilarious if it had all been a joke?!

  Hm? But wait... Wouldn’t that make Prince Rubert, you know, Garius’s... uh... ex-boyfriend?

  Yikes! Even just thinking the word “ex-boyfriend” about a guy felt a bit, y’know, what-you-mean-for-real? But then again, it would help Garius’s behavior this morning make sense. But then again again, it would mean that Minori-san’s ridiculous fantasy about him and Rubert being boyfriends was... actually completely true.

  “But in that case, wouldn’t Prince Rubert...” Wouldn’t he ask Garius to marry him?

  I thought about it, and realized that in my own world, there were places that recognized gay marriage, like certain American states and even some entire countries. But here in the Eldant Empire? I guess I didn’t know what I expected. Setting aside any kind of value judgment on same-sex love, a union between two men wasn’t going to produce any children—and when a country’s political fortunes could rest entirely on the line of succession, same-sex marriag
e was not likely to be smiled upon. If anything...

  “...Oh.” I finally registered the problem. “If Garius-san still has feelings for Prince Rubert, then maybe... he wouldn’t oppose this marriage...?”

  If Petralka and Rubert got married, then by definition, Garius would be spending a lot of time around the prince. As men, they might not be able to actually get married, but this way, they would effectively be living together...

  “That is the possibility we fear,” Eric-san said, interrupting my thoughts.

  I see... This is... What can I say...?

  “That is why you are so important,” Rydel-san added, leaning in again.

  They looked so deadly serious, I wanted to draw back—but each of them placed a hand on one of my hands, almost as if to say they wouldn’t let me get away.

  “Look, I don’t understand why I—”

  “You are high in Her Majesty’s affections, and a man.” Eric-san’s wife Agnes spoke up for the first time. “In a matter like this, you have great influence over the empress.”

  “What?” How did that work? Were these parents making the same mistake Bahairam had? Did they seriously think that I was on the receiving end of the physical imperial affections?

  “In addition, you aren’t connected to either the First Prince’s faction, or the Second, or even to the Kingdom of Zwelberich. You’re a neutral third party, with nothing either to gain or to lose in the outcome of this situation. That’s why your objection to the union of Her Majesty and Prince Rubert would carry weight. And yours alone.”

  I didn’t say anything for a long time.

  So, to sum up: I was the only one who could save the empire from crisis.

  ...Okay, no, seriously, wait a minute.

  If I told Petralka not to get married, wouldn’t it come across as me being jealous of Rubert? Maybe even implicitly offering her a proposal myself?

  “Please, you must help us.” All four of the parents looked at me with imploring eyes. If nothing else, I could tell they hadn’t come to talk to me just on a whim. But still...!