Outbreak Company: Volume 11

by Ichiro Sakaki

  There was a massive audience chamber for when there was a host of advisors in attendance, and a relatively smaller one for quieter conversations. Our morning meetings about Amutech usually took place in the latter.

  This afternoon, we found ourselves once again ushered into the small audience chamber. Believe it or not, I was used to this by now: I bowed to the knights standing guard outside, then walked into the room without so much as a knot in my stomach.

  At which point—

  “Hrk?!”

  —my eyes were suddenly assaulted by a powerful light. For a second, I was blinded.

  “Wh-What...?” I groaned, squinting.

  The overexposed world slowly went back to normal. I blinked several times and cast a look around the audience chamber. My eyes settled on an elegant throne set several steps above the ground, on which sat a beautiful young girl. The most striking things about her were her long, flawless silver hair and wide emerald eyes. She was very cute. She was holding some kind of black lump in both hands and grinning at me.

  This was Petralka an Eldant III. Aka Her Majesty the Empress. Amazingly adorable and chibi size to boot. If you didn’t know any better, you’d just want to give her a big hug. Of course, if you did that, heads would roll... literally.

  I was told she was seventeen years old, but she could pass for four or five years younger than that, and she was pretty sensitive about it. If, on seeing her for the first time, someone were to exclaim “IS THAT REALLY AN ARCHETYPAL LITTLE GIRL?!” she would get very angry. To be fair, I guess any empress would be angry about a person shouting something like that, even if they didn’t have some insecurities about their looks.

  Geez, it’s... it’s a little late to be saying this, but I’m really lucky to have escaped with my life.

  Anyway...

  “Petralka...” It didn’t take me long to figure out what that black lump was that she was holding. A camera. Another expensive-looking DSLR, at that.

  She had it clasped to her chest with a look of real joy, like a child with a new toy. The bright light that had surprised me so much must have been the flash from this camera.

  “Wh-What’s going on? Where’d you get that?”

  “We have heard of their popularity at school. We wished to try one for ourselves.” She added a proud little chuckle. Then she held up the camera again and pressed the shutter.

  “Yipes—!” I shielded my eyes with my hand as the flash went off again. The school was bad enough—but I had never expected to get my picture taken in the royal audience chamber!

  I glanced back at the others. Myusel was stiff, petrified at the thought of having her photo taken by the Empress herself. Minori-san wore a sort of helpless smile, probably thinking the same thing I was; but Hikaru-san, still bothered about manners, was in a huff.

  Hmm. Maybe this wasn’t a great situation. Hikaru-san looked pretty darn mad—he wasn’t usually the type to show such open emotion in front of Her Majesty. For better or for worse, he had a sharp sense of what would be helpful and what wouldn’t, and he was usually very good at controlling himself.

  In any event, I took it upon myself to stop Petralka’s relentless barrage of photographs.

  “B-But Petralka, how did you get that camera?”

  “Hrm?”

  “I mean, I didn’t think you had anything like that.”

  I knew she owned a 3TS, but I’d had no idea she’d gotten her hands on specialty equipment like a DSLR.

  “Ah,” she said indifferently. “Zahar requested this from your Jay-Ess-Dee-Eff.”

  “Huh? Zahar-san did?” I blinked my eyes at the unexpected camera owner.

  Petralka glanced at the two people standing beside and slightly behind the throne, as if seeking confirmation. One of these people was a handsome knight with long, silver hair: the noble, Garius en Cordobal. The other was an elderly man with white hair and a white beard—Petralka’s tutor and regent, Prime Minister Zahar. Apparently, it was his camera she was using...

  “Zahar-san, is that your camera?” I asked.

  “Oh, goodness, well,” he said, nodding and smiling with evident embarrassment.

  Prime ministers in fantasy stories are usually trying to control the throne from the shadows, or turn out to be the ultimate villains, but there was no trace of any of that sort of nastiness from Zahar-san. In fact, he indulged Petralka’s demands almost like a doting grandfather.

  “I thought it might be useful for documenting Her Majesty’s growth,” he said. “I had to pull some strings, but I got one.”

  “Huh...”

  So Zahar-san had leaned on Satou-san, too.

  It sounded to me, though, like this was back before photography became such a big deal at school, and Zahar-san had only taken pictures of Petralka and her immediate surroundings; the camera had never gone outside the castle.

  He really was like a surrogate parent to her. He probably adored her. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he started cornering friends and family with a handmade Petralka photo album.

  When it came to most of the things we brought over from Japan, though, Zahar-san—maybe because he was considerably older than our target audience—never went crazy for our imports. He kept a certain distance, observing with calm detachment. But I guess he wasn’t completely immune to their influence.

  Well, anyway. When Petralka heard about the photography craze at school, she had demanded to use Zahar-san’s camera, grabbing it for herself and taking pictures of everything she could point it at.

  Ahhh... crud. This is no good.

  She was just like the students at school. Slightly frantic, I said, “Uh... Uh, Petralka? It’s not nice to ambush someone when you take their picture.”

  “It isn’t?” She put the camera on her knees, thunderstruck. Yes, this adorable empress was an absolute ruler who could and sometimes did make people bend to her every whim. Yet somehow, the power hadn’t really gone to her head; she had a remarkably sincere side as well. At least, she was willing to listen when you spelled out a situation for her.

  “We have this thing called image-use rights.”

  “Ee-mage use rites? Hrm. Is it some kind of finishing move?”

  “No, that’s dark rites.” I said pointedly.

  “So what happened in Akiba was also wrong?”

  “Akiba?”

  “You know. When we were in Akiba recently. Did all the Ja-panese not take our photo-graph? Was that not bad as well?”

  “Well, uh...”

  I didn’t know quite what to say. Petralka was talking about a brief trip back to Japan that we’d taken recently. She hadn’t been invited, but she’d stowed away in our luggage—and I figured that since she was there anyway, we might as well check out Akihabara together. Petralka, Myusel, and Elvia, though, ended up being treated as mysterious foreign actresses (it’s a long story), and in Japan there’s a widespread feeling that famous people are fair game for photographs. Call it the price of fame. Some actors and pro sports players even think of these pictures as free PR, so they don’t go around quibbling about image use.

  The result was, we ended up being the subject of a lot of pictures taken by passersby as we walked around Akiba. And yes, you could question the legality of what they were doing.

  “Hmmm...”

  I struggled with how to explain this to Petralka. I wasn’t sure she would understand if I babbled about “the price of fame.” I mean, the whole concept of image-use rights itself was somewhat strange to her and the others here. The whole reason it was even an issue in Japan was because of how easily and how readily people could take photos. Why should they worry about it at all in Eldant, where cameras hadn’t even been a thing until just recently?

  So I tried a different tack.

  “L-Listen,” I said, almost groaning out the words, “the truth is... if someone takes a careless photograph of you, it can steal your soul.”

  “What?!” Petralka’s eyes were the size of dinner plates.

  “So when
you want to take someone’s picture, you should be sure to ask for—”

  “Ye gods! Has our soul been stolen?! And have we stolen your soul, Shinichi? Or is it about to be stolen?” Petralka was clearly shaken. And as adorable as it was to see her so frantic, this was no time to be savoring her innocence and naïveté. Prime Minister Zahar looked just as shocked as the empress. I’m sure he didn’t expect this turn of the conversation any more than she did.

  And then there was...

  “Is that really true?” The anxious question came from Myusel, beside me. She was clearly terrified. Her picture had been taken dozens, maybe even hundreds, of times—just by me. That would be scary. “Am I going to lose my soul?”

  “No, look—no, no. That was just a metaphor...”

  “What...?” Myusel blinked at me. She looked thoughtful for a moment. Maybe she wasn’t sure what a metaphor was. “Does this mean you have my soul now, Master...?”

  “No, I’m telling you, it was a figurative expression.”

  “Well... That’s very comforting.” She smiled and glanced at the ground.

  So... what? She didn’t mind losing her soul if she had given it to me? Did she think it had turned into a hard, little chip somewhere that she could get back by defeating the enemy Sta*d user? ...Come to think of it, how did they conceptualize the soul around here?

  “Umm...”

  What to do, what to do? This had all started with a misunderstanding, and it was only getting worse.

  “Your Majesty.” I was saved by the intervention of someone who had been watching the conversation develop silently until that moment: Minori-san. “Shinichi-kun is only joking.”

  “Hrm? Is he indeed?”

  “Yes. On that note, Your Majesty, do you remember the magical-girl movie?”

  “Er—?” Petralka was caught off guard by the sudden change of topic.

  “The Holy Eldant Empire’s very first movie, in which Your Majesty was—”

  “Gnnrrrr! Silence! Do not speak of it!” Petralka nearly convulsed on her throne.

  The movie Minori-san was talking about was one we had produced to help cover up a leak by the JSDF, the first such film ever produced in Eldant. We had also deliberately released a making-of documentary on the net, which is what had led to Petralka and the others being treated like movie stars.

  “That thing does not exist!” Petralka went on. “It is null! Void! Strike it from the history books!”

  Er, Petralka. If you have to strike something out of history... that means it was part of history.

  But I knew better than to offer a quip in the face of her consternation.

  “It’s possible that a photograph will end up the same way,” Minori-san said calmly.

  “Hrm...?”

  “There will be an image of you that you may not approve of. Maybe even one you find deeply embarrassing. And because a photograph captures an instant in time, unlike a movie where there’s motion, you might even be making a strange face, say.”

  “Hmm...”

  “For example, Your Majesty, you blink sometimes, don’t you?”

  “Well... yes, of course we do. But we fail to see the relevance—”

  “It only lasts a fraction of a second, so we don’t think much about it, but a photograph can capture a fraction of a second.” Minori-san half-closed her eyes in demonstration. “And if you happen to be doing this when the picture is taken, then that’s what will be left to posterity. Even if you, the subject, didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  Petralka and Zahar-san both looked at Minori-san with her exaggeratedly sleepy face, then looked at each other.

  “Ahem... Your Majesty, if I may,” Zahar-san, said, reaching out for the camera and pressing some buttons. “I think your recent photo-graphs...”

  “Hrrm...”

  The two of them looked at each other and then at the camera’s LCD screen. I didn’t know what exactly it showed, but I could guess that Petralka had taken some of those “unauthorized photographs” Minori-san had warned her about.

  “You see what I’m saying, Your Majesty?” Minori-san asked, smiling softly. “A person can be pretty embarrassed by an unexpected photograph.”

  “Yes... Yes, we understand,” Petralka said meekly.

  “Phew. Thanks, Minori-san,” I said with a sigh of relief.

  It looked like I had better get that photography class, etiquette and all, up and running fast. Right now the photography craze was confined to the school, but when people found out that the empress herself was into the trend, nobles and merchants would trip over themselves to get cameras, if for no reason other than to get closer to Her Majesty.

  Cameras, though, weren’t easy to come by here in the Holy Eldant Empire. That meant supply and demand would go out of whack, and like with the card game, they would be sold at outrageous prices, or stolen. We would have to secure a reasonably steady supply to help prevent that. But once we started supplying cameras, the skyrocketing population of photographers could easily make etiquette-related problems an epidemic. We would have to get out ahead of this.

  “By the way, why did you call me here?” I suddenly remembered I was in that audience chamber by special summons. Had she requested my presence just to show off her new camera? It was one thing for a few of us to be oohing and ahhing over it in this little room. But if she brought out the camera and the photographs in front of her advisors and whoever else—well, that “outbreak” of demand for the devices could become reality in a hurry. “Did you just want to show us your camera?”

  “No, even we are above that,” Petralka said, shaking her head.

  As she spoke, Garius, who had been silent until that moment, took a step forward. “Let me answer that question.”

  Whoa. Were things about to get serious in here?

  Along with Prime Minister Zahar, Petralka’s cousin Garius helped her run the country. In particular, Garius tended to deal with military and security matters, so anything he wanted to talk about naturally tended to involve danger.

  “It so happens that over the last several days, our skirmishes with Bahairam have become somewhat more intense.”

  The Kingdom of Bahairam was a neighboring nation of the Eldant Empire. The two countries weren’t at war, exactly, but they weren’t on great terms, either. Border skirmishes and espionage were an almost daily occurrence, two hostile nations vying to keep each other in check.

  “According to reports, most of the fights have been started by the Bahairam side... But they don’t seem quite serious.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The fighting forces have been small-scale,” Garius said. “Far too few troops for an invasion. But I can’t help thinking the engagements seem more frequent than usual.”

  So we had a small number of troops getting into battles more often than normal. Hmm. Strange stuff for sure. I was no tactician, though, and I couldn’t begin to guess what Bahairam might be thinking based on that information alone.

  “In any event,” Garius said, “Shinichi, be careful.”

  “Huh? Me?”

  “You were kidnapped once. Have you forgotten?”

  “Oh, uh... no.”

  “The engagements may be small-scale, but if they happen to find a place where our defenses are weak, a group of Bahairam’s soldiers could punch straight into our territory.”

  “I’ll watch out,” I said.

  Garius was right: Bahairam had abducted me once in the past. On that occasion, Myusel, Minori-san, and a crew of others had come to rescue me. It had ultimately ended well, and we had even established friendly—which was to say cooperative—relations with some people on the Bahairam side, so I didn’t actually consider it such a bad memory.

  But then...

  “Furthermore, as regards your werewolf...”

  “Huh?! Elvia has nothing to do with it!” I exclaimed.

  By “Elvia,” I meant Elvia Harneiman, the artist-cum-wolf-girl who lived at our mansion. Bahairam had sent her to Eldant
as a disposable spy. Actually, as far as Bahairam knew, she was still undercover here. If things with Bahairam were getting more precarious, it was no surprise that Eldant’s leaders might look askance at Elvia.

  But she was one of the ones who had come to rescue me when I had been kidnapped. For better or for worse, she was as open a person as you could hope to meet; I just couldn’t picture her secretly planning our downfall or something.

  “Don’t panic, Shinichi,” Petralka interjected. “Even we do not question that girl anymore.” Petralka had come to visit us at the mansion more than once, giving her plenty of opportunity to interact with Elvia. She was well aware of Elvia’s personality and current situation. “However, it is possible to conceive of a situation in which she would be forced to betray our country—for example, if her family back in Bahairam were to be taken hostage.”

  “We understand you may not like it, but keep one eye on her for the time being.”

  “Er......... Right.”

  One look at Petralka’s face told me everything: she didn’t want to doubt Elvia any more than I did. But objectively, Garius and Petralka’s words held water. And they were bringing up the possibility mainly out of concern for my safety. I couldn’t be angry at them for that.

  “...I understand. I appreciate the warning.”

  The words came not from me—but from Minori-san, my bodyguard.

  After our audience at the castle, we went straight back to the mansion. I thanked the driver and hopped out of the carriage. As soon we got in the house, Myusel started pulling off her going-out overclothes. Apparently she just didn’t feel right if she was at the mansion but not in her maid uniform. She was always so diligent.

  “I’ll start preparing dinner, then,” she said, pulling on her frilly headpiece.

  “Thanks, Myusel,” I said.

  “Not at all, it’s my j— Oh.”

  She had turned toward the kitchen, but saw something that stopped her in her tracks. Wondering what it could be, I joined her.