Outbreak Company: Volume 12

by Ichiro Sakaki

  What was I supposed to say next?

  In a rush, I grabbed the piece of paper folded in a pocket of my pants. Hikaru-san’s “script” was written on it. Crib notes, if you will, for what to say to Petralka. The night before, Hikaru-san had forced me to recite it more than a hundred times, so I’d been pretty sure I had it down by heart—but now I was sure glad I’d brought it. Trying to hide the piece of paper with my hand, I read unsteadily from my notes.

  “The shining jewels of your eyes that remind me of emeralds—that was it! Emeralds. And I confess you do look even more magisterial...alal... ow!” I bit my tongue. It hurt. The only thing more painful, somehow, was Hikaru-san glaring daggers into my back. I could only assume he was wondering how I could forget my lines, how I could bite my tongue, and how badly he was going to thrash me when this was all over. But I couldn’t help it! I’d never chatted up an empress before!

  I was struggling to get out the next couple words when Petralka gave me her severest look. “Shinichi...”

  “Ee-yeth?”

  “We are sickened.”

  “That hurts—!” I exclaimed without thinking. Here I had practiced so hard! Yes, I knew I didn’t sound as smooth as Prince Rubert! And yes, I agreed that Hikaru-san’s script probably laid it on a little thick! But to just dismiss all of that by saying you’re sickened?! It’s inhuman!

  “Do you have a fever?”

  “That hurts, too! I’m feeling completely fine and normal, thank you!”

  If anything, her pitying glance hurt most of all. Don’t look at me like that!

  I somehow managed to suppress the feeling that I was going to break into a million pieces (it helped that I was terrified of Hikaru-san, whom I could practically feel vibrating with rage behind me) and desperately tried to remember how the rest of the speech went.

  “Uh, a-anyway, Your Majesty’s most reverent physiognomy is akin to a great opening blossom, and, uhh...”

  “Hrm! Do not tell us...” Petralka seemed to be catching on. “Are you... a false Shinichi?!”

  “What?”

  “Reveal your true self!”

  “What makes you think I’m an imposter?!”

  “The real Shinichi would never say such things!”

  Wait, how could she be so sure about that?!

  “Just how awful do you think I am?!”

  “Awful enough to exclaim ‘IS THAT REALLY AN ARCHETYPAL LITTLE GIRL CHARACTER?!’ upon our first meeting!”

  “I told you, I’m sorry about that!”

  “Now, tell us: are you a doppelgänger? An ot**rworld monster? Or a thief in disguise?! What have you done with the real Shinichi?!”

  “I am the real Shinichi, Your Majesty!”

  ...and so it went. For a while longer, I tried my best to follow Hikaru-san’s “guaranteed strategy for getting the Petralka ending,” doing everything I could to heap praise on her.

  But she pushed it all away with just those three words, “We are sickened.”

  Report over, we left the audience chamber. We all walked silently through Eldant Castle’s huge hallways for a few minutes, but finally I stopped and looked at Hikaru-san.

  “That was a total failureeeee!” I exclaimed, my eyes brimming with tears.

  “I admit it was odd,” Hikaru-san said, cocking his head. “It should have worked...”

  I had followed Hikaru-san’s script to the letter, working my way through the unfamiliar words of praise. Oh, how I had worked for those words! Though after Petralka’s remark about being “sickened,” the rest had been a desperate struggle. But I did it: the “Your voice is as charming as the twittering of a young bird.” The “Your skin is as pale as the new-fallen snow.” Even, after a beat at the very end, the “S-Sorry... I couldn’t find the words to express your beauty, Petralka...” And...! And...!

  Arrgh! Just remembering it makes my flesh crawl!

  To have someone who’s totally not even the least bit attractive suddenly spring that sort of talk on you—that would be sickening!

  “B-But look, it was partly the way you delivered it,” Hikaru-san said. He sounded hesitant. I guess the look on my face was scaring him. “Your voice was kind of cracking, and you kept sort of choking on the words...”

  “Well, what was I supposed to do?! That stuff is embarrassing!”

  “I can say it with no problem.”

  “That’s because we’re completely different characters! If you’re so cool about saying whatever, then say, ‘Awww, my bad, I guess your sweet little Hikaru got it all wrong. I’m so orry-say! ♪’ Say it!”

  “Hrk?! What, do y-you have some sort of humiliation fetish? You want it right here, right now? Shinichi-san, I knew you had a filthy side, but—”

  “You forced me to say all that awful stuff!” I wailed. No matter how strenuously I had objected...

  “Point is,” Minori-san said, “you wouldn’t have to be an empress to think that display was suspicious. Shinichi-kun is right when he says it wasn’t very in character.”

  “I knew you’d understand!”

  Ahhh! If I had a hole, I would Lupi*-dive into it as fast as I could!

  I was squirming with the thought of how dark my own Dark History was.

  At that moment—the audience must have ended—I saw Eric-san and Rydel-san coming down the hall toward us.

  “Shinichi-dono!”

  “What in the world happened?”

  They approached at long strides, sounding less angry than bewildered, and a little afraid.

  “That isn’t going to help us very much!”

  “Have you forgotten you’re our only hope, Shinichi-dono?”

  “Come hell or high water, we simply need you to convince Her Majesty of our plan...”

  I was pretty well cornered by their intensity. “Y-Yeah, believe me, I know,” was all I could muster. But no matter how I looked at it, I could only see how impossible the situation was, how unimaginable, how badly they had chosen the guy to pin their hopes on. Did Petralka like me? Maybe, but that didn’t mean I could charge in there and suddenly start saying all these things I’d never said before in an effort to out-talk Rubert.

  But so—who was the right person? I sure didn’t have any names. Seriously, what were we going to do here? As Eric-san and Rydel-san bore down on me with their troubles, I found myself at a complete loss.

  “Shinichi-sama.” That was when a lone knight approached and called my name. “Her Majesty summons you.”

  “Huh...?”

  That was the last thing I had been expecting. Maybe the only thing that could leave me even more flummoxed than Eric-san and Rydel-san had.

  The knight took me to a terrace overlooking the courtyard. I had been here before. Petralka sometimes liked to hold little tea parties here as a break from work. And in fact, the familiar tea set was sitting out on the terrace. A round, pad foot table hosted a set of white teacups and a three-tier tea stand holding a variety of delicate treats. It looked a lot like an English afternoon tea; the whole thing oozed sophistication.

  Normally the elegance of these things didn’t bother me, but today I was freaked. I felt like I didn’t belong here, like maybe it was even a crime for me to be here. The exact reason for that feeling had to do with the other participants. Namely Petralka, Garius, and Prince Rubert, who were all seated at the round table. Knights and maids stood nearby, along with a person who looked like one of Rubert’s attendants, a woman with long hair tied into a single braid. Every one of them looked like the sort of person who was completely at home at a fancy tea party. That left me, the no-name commoner from nowhere, to agonize and wonder what I was doing.

  “So you are here, Shinichi,” Petralka said. She was smiling, as if she didn’t notice my profound discomfort. Considering the “sickening” business just a few minutes earlier, I supposed I should be grateful that she was still willing to smile at me at all. “Hm? What of Minori and Hikaru?”

  “Hikaru-san says he’s coming —er, I mean, he is, uh, humbly on
his way, Your Majesty.”

  Just before the knight had led me off, Hikaru-san remembered some kind of business he apparently had to take care of. He left me there saying he would be with me soon. I guessed he would join us before long. And as for our bodyguard...

  “Minori-san... well, uh...” I glanced back. She was standing in the shadow of a pillar a short distance away, watching me intently. She was hardly even hiding, just not getting very close.

  “Is something the matter?” Petralka asked, raising an eyebrow at Minori-san’s stalker-esque pose. Fair enough.

  “Uh... Let’s just say she’s not feeling very well...”

  “Hrm. Isn’t she indeed?”

  “Er, but I mean, she’s okay. Not awful or anything. She’s here as my bodyguard, but she’s keeping some distance, to make sure she doesn’t get in the way...” Even I thought this excuse was a stretch. Petralka was looking dubiously at Minori-san (I wasn’t sure she actually believed me). So were Garius and Rubert.

  Hmm... Okay, not the most plausible thing.

  But this was what Minori-san had emphatically wanted.

  “I’m sorry, Shinichi-kun. I just can’t be in that place,” she had said to me, blushing, when she discovered that we were being taken to a tea party not only with Petralka, but with Garius and Rubert. “I mean, Garius-san and Prince Rubert in the same place?! Just thinking about it makes my heart race...!”

  In fact, it wasn’t just the blushing. Everything about her looked different. Her breath was coming harder—maybe that was the real clue to what was going on. Frankly, it had me pretty worried.

  “But you were okay earlier.”

  “We were in the audience chamber, and they weren’t, like, right next to each other. I was able to survive somehow, but...”

  “Is that... a needle?”

  “I just need a little jab now and again. Right in the palm.”

  “Geez!”

  What was she, a samurai trying to stave off sleep?

  Was it really that bad for her? That was one fearsome fujoshi.

  “But a tea party? A private function? No way! Watching Minister Garius and Prince Rubert chat with each other, all smiles... why just picturing it... just p-p-p... ahhh!”

  And so we had decided to have Minori-san keep some space between herself and the boys. Which naturally meant not being very close to me, considering I was sitting at the same table.

  “Don’t you worry, though. I’ll still keep an eye on you.”

  And she was definitely keeping an eye on something from the shadow of that pillar, but I didn’t think it was me. I could see her gaze, intent and glimmering behind her glasses, and I was pretty sure she was looking at Garius and Rubert, who were sitting on either side of Petralka.

  “...Hmm, very well,” Petralka said finally, apparently deciding not to press the matter. She nodded to a chair. “Shinichi, you sit there.” Directly across from her.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “What is the matter, Shinichi?”

  “Er, nothing.”

  Well, Garius and Rubert were to either side of her, and it was a round table, so I guess in some sense, everyone was sitting “across from her.” No reason to worry, right? Right?

  That’s what I tried to tell myself as I sat down—and at that moment, who should appear but Hikaru-san.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said, coming quickly over to the table.

  But he wasn’t alone. Right behind him were Loek and Romilda.

  “Huh? What are—”

  Hikaru-san seated himself beside me and whispered, “I asked them to come with me.”

  So that’s what had been keeping him. But I still didn’t understand why he had gone to get the elf and the dwarf.

  Hikaru-san gave me a pointed smile. “Call it... a little insurance.” Then he turned to Petralka and the others and said, “I hope you don’t mind? I don’t mean to have them sit with us, of course. Consider them like my attendants.” He glanced at the knights, and the woman with Prince Rubert. Each of us, myself included, had various guards and servants, so we could hardly tell Hikaru-san he was the only one who wasn’t allowed.

  “We do not object, but...” Petralka glanced at Prince Rubert. I followed her look, and:

  Yikes.

  My heart went to my throat. He still looked as good as ever, beautiful enough to make even another guy fall in love with him. You would almost think there wasn’t a look that could pass over his face that would make him less gorgeous. But by the same token, it made every little shift of his expression important. And just now, his expression had shifted. He looked ever so slightly tense. Angry? Or...

  He didn’t speak right away, but I saw his blue eyes twitch in my direction. That seemed to help him get his calm smile back, and he said, “I don’t mind at all.” He sounded completely composed, not the least bit put out. As if the slip hadn’t even happened.

  “...Well, there you have it,” Petralka said.

  “My thanks,” Hikaru-san replied with an elegant bow. Loek and Romilda stood behind him, but they didn’t look very comfortable. I could tell the awkward moment hadn’t been lost on them.

  A maid approached noiselessly, setting a cup down in front of each of us and pouring tea. I watched the steam rise from the cup, somehow hardly able to stand it.

  “Our apologies for summoning you so suddenly,” Petralka said to me and Hikaru-san. It was as if the tea was our signal to begin. Incidentally, going clockwise from where Petralka was sitting, the seats belonged to Garius, Hikaru-san, me, and Rubert. There was a single vacant seat between me and the prince, originally intended for Minori-san.

  “Allow me to reintroduce myself,” the prince said. “I am Rubert Wollyn, and I am most interested in the activities of your ‘Amutech.’ It is because of me that Her Majesty Petralka brought you here so abruptly. I certainly hope I didn’t trouble you.”

  “N-No, it’s fine...” I said, feeling distinctly overwhelmed.

  “In fact, it’s an honor,” Hikaru-san jumped in, as smoothly as if he were born to this. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that his face was a little bit stiff, but it didn’t seem to keep him from rolling with the situation. Maybe that was what came of being a lifelong cosplayer: once he had a role to play, he could and would throw himself into it. “I am Ayasaki Hikaru of Amutech,” he said.

  “Oh, uh, and I’m Kanou Shinichi, Amutech’s general manager,” I added quickly. We both bowed our heads.

  “So the two of you...” Rubert glanced at Petralka and Garius as if to seek confirmation, then said, “...are the ones who are said to have come to our world from a land that cannot be reached by carriage or by boat, no matter how long the voyage.”

  “Um... yes.”

  That seemed like a bit of a mouthful—where we came from, we might have just used the one simple word isekai, but I guess when you didn’t have so much as the concept of sci-fi, you had to resort to more roundabout expressions. Granted, we’d arrived here via hyperspace wormhole; it wasn’t like we warped to lightspeed or something.

  “Mm. It sounds as remote as heaven or hell.”

  “B-Believe me, it’s a lot less interesting than that.”

  “I beg to differ. Everything I hear suggests a country of profoundly advanced culture, along with objects that are equivalent in function to magic without actually being magical.”

  “Umm...” How was I going to explain this one? For that matter, was it even acceptable for me to just go chatting away about Earth or about Japan? Zwelberich was obviously aware that we had come from another world, but I had no idea how much else they knew, and that was the problem.

  Rubert interrupted my search for the right words: “Kanou Shinichi, is that right?” A gentle smile played over his exquisite face. Even I could tell that it wasn’t spontaneous; he had put it there on purpose. Don’t worry, he seemed to be saying, I won’t bite. Then he said quietly, “I’m very... interested in the two of you.” He sounded sweet, sultry, like he thought he was in s
ome kind of romance series.

  And just then—

  Bong.

  There was a dull sound from behind us. I whipped around to find Minori-san with her head shoved against the pillar.

  Ahhh...

  “What is Minori doing?” Petralka asked.

  “I—I guess her forehead itched? Maybe?” I said with a forced laugh. The needle must not have been enough. I admired her commitment, but if we didn’t find some way to get her out of here, she was going to break her own skull.

  “The culture of one land certainly can seem inexplicable to the people of another,” Hikaru-san said, moving promptly to redirect the conversation. “We don’t have any magic in our world, and we don’t have elves and dwarves either.”

  “None at all?”

  “Not one. No beast people, no lizardmen. Just humans and animals,” Hikaru-san explained to a sincerely surprised Prince Rubert. “And dragons? They exist in our stories, but nowhere else.”

  “Hoh...” Rubert nodded, intrigued. “A society consisting entirely of humans, you say...?” His lips edged upward into a smile. He could have been a painting: The Young Prince Imagines a Land Unknown. Then he said, “Wonderful indeed,” and I found myself caught on that. I felt a prickle, like a thorn. It was—

  “Where do you live now?” Rubert asked.

  “Pretty close,” I said. “Petralka... uh, an Eldant the Third—Her Majesty—has generously provided us a mansion to live in.” I had been just about to do my normal thing and call Petralka by nothing but her first name, but I managed to save it by appending her entire name and title. I suspected it wouldn’t do to refer to the empress in such familiar terms in front of Prince Rubert. I seemed to remember Prime Minister Zahar saying something about how the only people who could call the empress by her first name were her family, people as close as family—and her betrothed.

  “Right now there’s me, Hikaru-san, and our bodyguard Minori-san, and then there’s our half-elf maid, our lizardman gardener and maid, plus—”