Matoba-san paused thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “Well, not that I think they’re to be trusted,” and shrugged. “The prior assassination attempt went forward without the unanimous consent of the government. And we did just get another new prime minister.”
“Great...” I muttered.
True, Japan had long been a country that was ready to change prime ministers at the drop of hat.
“This was not some mere hot-mic gaffe or campaign-finance irregularity. It was too big to be papered over. The prime minister who signed off on having you killed is no longer part of the government.”
“So I’m supposed to treat it as water under the bridge?”
“More or less, yes,” Matoba-san said.
How totally ridiculous—and totally bureaucratic. “We changed the guy in charge, so everything’s different now! Let’s just pretend none of this ever happened, okay?” I wouldn’t be surprised if they wound up creating an Office of Taking Sole Responsibility for Wrongdoing. We could call the guy “Scapegoat” for short.
“Aren’t you embarrassed?”
“I should say so,” Matoba-san said, but his smile got even wry-er. “Regardless, this does represent an unprecedented degree of accommodation to an individual on the part of the government. I presume due punishment is being meted out internally. You can rebuff them, of course, but in that case the budget won’t be passed, and it won’t be possible to requisition new anime, manga, games, and light novels.”
“So that’s how it’s gonna be.”
You might be wondering what this was all about. Well, the manga and anime and games and light novels I was bringing into the Holy Eldant Empire were all being provided by the Japanese government. Given that it was the Japanese government that controlled the hyperspace tunnel representing the one route for exchange between the two countries, that made a certain amount of sense.
The government also fronted the cash to purchase all these otaku goods, which were (natch) made in Japan.
“I suppose this is what we should have done from the beginning. Using budgetary constraints to keep people’s hands tied is Politics 101.”
I couldn’t believe he could say that with such a straight face when he was talking directly to the person whose hands were being tied.
“Bear in mind that the prime minister at the time of all that unpleasantness was... rather hawkish, you might say. He liked to use force. Which, sadly, eventually led to the attempt on your life.”
“How the hell does a guy like that get into the prime minister’s office?”
For that matter, how the hell did a guy like that get into politics?
“It was the people who chose him, remember. He was quite popular. The things he said and did were very radical.”
I didn’t say anything. I mean, he was right, unfortunately. People who are careful to toe the line never get as much attention as the ones who say and do things that are memorable, even if those things are a little outrageous. Everyone tells themselves, “Well, what we’ve been doing hasn’t worked, so why not?”
Anyway, forget about that.
What it came down to was, I had no choice but to accept the government’s proposal. If I couldn’t keep this situation stable, there’d be no hope.
“Right, then.”
As I was contemplating this, we arrived at the audience chamber.
Holy Eldant Castle had several different audience chambers; we were at the smallest one. It was a useful little room—good for personal meetings with the empress, when you didn’t want too many nobles or imperial staff members to hear what you were saying.
In the big, official audience chamber, every time anyone came in, the knights by the door would bellow out their name and order of business, but in this smaller room such pomp and ceremony wasn’t observed. The knights on guard gave us the once over and then nodded silently before opening the door and ushering us through.
I stepped onto the red carpet that ran down the center of the room. I said this was the small audience chamber, but it was still probably about twenty mats in size.
“We are glad you’ve come, Shinichi.”
At the far end, up on a dais, sat the throne, and upon the throne sat the empress.
The confidence and authority in her words should have been intimidating, but I felt like grinning. That was because I knew what her personality was like—and above all, what she looked like.
“Ruler of the Holy Eldant Empire” seems like a pretty darned impressive title, but the person who stared down at me from the throne—
“Your Majesty, I am overjoyed to see you in good health and high spirits this day.”
“Oh, stop that.”
—was a little girl.
Not that I would ever say that to her face. It would totally tick her off.
Petralka an Eldant III. She appeared to be hardly into her teens; in fact, it wouldn’t be all that hard to picture her with a backpack, heading off to elementary school. But she was the absolute monarch of this country.
That didn’t prevent her from also being pretty much the perfect loli character. Her silver hair and emerald eyes were practically a form of jewelry in and of themselves; she was utterly beautiful and you just wanted to put her in a glass case for safekeeping. I’m proud to say that I’m capable of getting moe over just about anything from a loli girl to a big-sister type, so whether you considered her an “archetypical little girl character” or something else, the point was, I found her very attractive.
“Why do you stand on formality? Are you upset?”
“Well, I’m meeting an empress. It’s a pretty formal occasion.”
“Did we not give you permission to call us by our name?”
“Well, uh, yes, you did.”
It was only then that it dawned on me: this was something that Her Majesty—or rather, Petralka—was doing specifically to nettle Matoba-san, or perhaps to control him. Pointedly showing that I was in her good graces was also a warning to him of what might happen if he and his friends tried to do anything to me again. That was the Empress of Eldant for you: she might look like jailbait, but you couldn’t take her lightly.
I guessed this would be a good moment for me to play along.
“Okay, then, Petralka,” I said in my friendliest tone. “Let’s read plenty of manga together next time we get a chance, just the two of us.”
“Wha?!” Petralka’s eyes went wide and she stiffened.
Huh? Did I say something wrong?
“Ahh. We see now.” She collected herself, then nodded as if considering. “Shinichi.”
“Huh? Yes?”
“We are somewhat surprised to hear such an idea from your own lips.”
“Huh? Oh, uh, you are?”
I thought we were acting super friendly to put the pressure on Matoba-san. No?
At the same time, this loli-ish empress was a bit like an instant water heater. If I said the wrong thing, I could find myself in a lot of trouble very quickly. I doubted she would have me executed or anything, but she packed a mean punch despite her small size. I could say from experience that when she hit you, it hurt.
Hence my resolve to tread lightly.
“Ahem. A-At any rate,” Petralka said in a somewhat strained voice, “we shall endeavor to, erm, clear some time in our schedule and... Yes, that’s it. We shall have a special villa readied for the purpose.”
“Er... Right.”
That seemed like a pretty serious thing to say, actually. I mean, a special villa? She wasn’t really going to build a whole satellite palace just to read manga with me, right? I didn’t think she had to go that far to make the point to Matoba-san.
I guess absolute rulers have a different perspective on money than the rest of us, though. Here I thought we were just joking, but there was always the chance that she would actually build a palace. It was sort of like if someone said “I’ll give you your allowance,” and you held out your hands only to have them drop a huge sack of money into them.
/> “Uh, be that as it may, Petralka, my report...”
“Erm, yes. Your report.”
Huh? What was with the disappointed look? Not that it wasn’t awfully cute on Petralka’s face.
“Things at the school are... Ahem. I’d like to say they’re going well, but...”
The “school” I was referring to was the place where we were teaching people everything they’d need to enjoy otaku culture (manga, novels, anime, and so forth), like Japanese language and the cultural knowledge to go with it. I had asked Petralka to build it for me, but as a matter of fact it was the first public educational institution in the Eldant Empire. And so, much like how Petralka was simply “the empress,” everyone knew that “the school” referred to my otaku training center.
That school, it so happened, was immensely popular. I wanted as many people as possible to be able to enjoy otaku culture, so I did away with exacting entrance standards; Amutech was even footing tuition. But that turned out to be a bad idea. Fueled by rumors that the empress had a special place in her heart for this project, everyone from commoner to noble was champing at the bit to get in.
Our initial plan had been to have about fifty students, but we received twenty times that many applicants, a thousand people. Obviously we couldn’t take them all, and so as much as it hurt me, we started out by limiting admittance to the children of the nobility, along with some of the more well-to-do commoners. Families with influence, you might say. That was how we picked our fifty pupils.
Despite this, however, we still suffered from a dearth of teachers—specifically, the instructional staff consisted of me and Minori-san.
“What is it? Is there some problem?”
“We just don’t have enough staff. I mean ever, for anything.”
We were somehow getting by for the time being, but I eventually wanted the school to be able to live by a creed of accepting all who would come and not trying to detain anyone who wanted to leave. If you try to force culture on people, it all too easily becomes a weapon of invasion. That was why I wanted attending or not attending my school to be entirely the free choice of the students.
But that in turn meant that we needed to accept everyone who applied, and I didn’t have the slightest clue how we were going to deal with twenty times our current number of students. It was possible that we could take our cue from some university classes: just have all the students in one giant room and have a teacher lecture at them, knowledge flowing unilaterally from us to them. Even at that, though, two instructors was obviously not enough.
“One idea is to separate the students into class years and have the higher-level students, like Myusel, teach the beginners.”
Whether it be manga, anime, novels, or games, first you had to learn a minimum of Japanese writing. There were some students who were already so advanced that they were translating light novels from the Japanese; we could take them on as instructors in the more basic classes to rectify our chronic shortage of personnel.
Petralka, however, looked surprised. “Have Myusel do it?”
“Uh... No go?”
Myusel was nominally my maid, but strictly speaking, the Holy Eldant Empire itself was her employer—in other words, Petralka was her boss. If she vetoed the idea of Myusel teaching, we could never go forward with it.
“We are not necessarily saying you can’t do it,” Petralka said, but she seemed unusually hesitant to speak her mind.
I went on, “But I am concerned that if Myusel’s time is taken up with teaching, she won’t be able to attend to housework. I’d love to get another maid to pick up the slack...”
This was definitely something I had to ask Petralka to handle for us. True, it was possible Amutech itself could hire a housekeeper, but bringing someone over from Earth seemed like potentially a lot of hassle, and as far as finding someone around here, letting the Empire do the hiring seemed a lot safer in terms of checking candidates’ backgrounds and so on.
“Shinichi.”
“Yes?”
“Is this not essentially a request to increase the number of women around you?” Petralka was looking squarely at me.
“Huh? Uh—no! That was definitely not what I had in mind!” I said, shaking my head vigorously.
Now that I thought about it, living with me at the mansion were Myusel, Elvia, and Minori-san—three eligible young women. Of course, there was another guy there (Brooke), but he was a lizardman and, as groundskeeper, spent most of his time outside. His totally inhuman appearance, combined with the relative infrequency with which he was inside the house... Well, I could understand where it might leave the impression that I had something of a harem going.
“And?” Petralka asked, drumming her fingers on the armrest of her throne. “Are you hoping for another large-chested helper?” Her gaze was so cold she could have been shooting freeze rays out of her eyes.
“Whaddaya mean, another?! I told you that was all a big misunderstanding, can’t you let it go already?!” I all but shouted.
It seemed like Petralka had pigeonholed me as having a big-boob fixation. And sure, I had nothing against a great rack, but I liked small ones, too! Take Petralka herself, for instance. She had this perfect little swell, noticeable but not overwhelming, like it would fit right in the palm of your hand... But if I let any of that out of my mouth, there was a distinct chance of my head winding up on the chopping block.
“As long as we get someone to help Myusel around the house, it doesn’t matter who they are.”
“Hmm. But if Myusel starts going to the school...”
“Something the matter with that?”
“It would mean the two of you would be together practically morning, noon, and night.”
It looked like this was a topic of considerable reflection for her, but as far as I was concerned, I would be perfectly happy to be with Myusel all the time, and I didn’t see what particular problems it could pose for Petralka. Or was there some nuance to this situation that I wasn’t noticing?
“Petralka?”
“Oh—no. It’s nothing.” She shook her head a bit too emphatically.
Seriously, what’s going on?
“At any rate, very well. We will consider your petition for a maid. Finding someone suitable for a position like this can take a surprisingly long time, though...”
“Thank you for your help,” I said earnestly, bowing.
“Is there anything else?”
“Uh, this and that,” I said with a sigh.
We were getting more pupils—that was a good thing as far as it went. Directly or indirectly, more and more people were becoming interested in otaku culture, and since we were teaching reading and writing as well, it meant the cultural level of the whole Eldant Empire would go up. But also...
“If we get dozens of times more students than we have now... I have to worry that the fighting will get worse, too.”
“Fighting?”
“Sometimes people of different races just don’t seem to get along...”
I thought back to the commotion at the school the other day.
Bam! A fist slammed down on a desk. Everyone looked in the direction of the sound. A short girl and a taller guy were standing there, absolutely staring daggers at each other. The girl was a dwarf, and the boy was an elf.
If you were wondering, it was the dwarf who had pounded her fist on the desk. She left a dent a centimeter deep in the wood surface. Dwarves were inevitably short, and the girls in particular had cherubic faces, so it was easy to think of them like children—but they were also fearsomely strong, and if you figured “they’re just shrimp” or “they’re just kids,” you could be in for a world of hurt. I had seen a unit of JSDF special-ops forces, the elite of the elite, get beaten down by dwarf women who weren’t carrying any weapons at all.
In the JSDF’s defense, the troopers probably saw the dwarves as being women and children (possibly both at once), and so didn’t fight with their full strength. The soldiers had also been hit with mag
ic, and their opponents’ short size made them hard to fight anyway. No matter how well-trained they were, the soldiers had probably never imagined they might have to fight enemies who were barely 1.5 meters tall.
“Just you say that again!”
“Gladly! How many times do you want to hear it?” The elf looked down on the dwarf—I mean literally, being the better part of fifty centimeters taller than she was—and snorted. “How can you imagine that Ko**tsu and Bar**by are all lovey-dovey?! That’s ridiculous! Why do you so enjoy forcing everyone into homosexual relationships? You disgusting dwarf. Does it ultimately come from all the time you spend around dirt? That’s what I said.”
Not to be outdone, the dwarf replied, “Awfully big talk from someone without the muscle to back it up! I’ve heard you! ‘Ka*de-chan is my wife!’ ‘Blue **se-chan is so moe!’ You ought to be embarrassed! What kind of moron are you?”
A volume of some manga or other was sitting on the table between them. When I saw the title, I realized it was the manga version of a particular anime. The DVD must have been available in the library, which we had set up so people could watch videos. It looked like they were having some sort of argument about the characters from the manga...
“Embarrassed? What do I have to be embarrassed about? Moe is culture! Ultimately, it—”
“Ultimately! Ultimately! Do you think you get to stop thinking because you know what everything ‘ultimately’ is? Now I know why elves are so light—you don’t have a brain to weigh you down!”
“Better than a head full of rocks, like dwarves have!”
They were really going at it, trading a parade of insults that would make your toes curl.
I had pretty much grasped what was going on, though. The dwarf was putting a yaoi spin on this manga, and the elf was making fun of her for it.
“Sigh...” I knew from personal experience that what girls and guys wanted out of a given otaku work was sometimes very different. But unlike most manga and novels, anime often wasn’t separated by “label,” so men and women frequently found themselves consuming the same works together, but each interpreting and enjoying it in light of their own preferences.
Outbreak Company: Volume 3 Page 4
