Outbreak Company: Volume 14

by Ichiro Sakaki

  But getting back on topic...

  “What was in there? Was it an arm? It was an arm, wasn’t it?”

  “Why would it be just an arm?”

  “Perhaps you had best open it and see for yourself,” Her Majesty said, gesturing at the box with her chin.

  “Wha...?” Shinichi-san looked at me and Minori-san with trepidation. I think he was afraid there really was a body in there, and that it was going to burst out with a “Woo!” or a “Blargh!” or a “Together we travel the path of meifumado!” and attack him.

  “Fine, I’ll open it,” Minori-san said with a half-smile, and walked over to the box. I had a certain sympathy with Shinichi-san’s reluctance, but the empress herself had told us to open the box, so we could hardly refuse. Among the hexagons, Minori-san located a small depression that looked like it was built to accommodate a person’s hand. She grabbed hold of it with her fingers and slowly opened the box. Inside was...

  “The heck is this?” Shinichi-san said, leaning over from next to Minori-san. I guess there was no dried-out corpse in there after all. But then, Shinichi-san had been wrong, too: there was more than just an arm in it.

  The box was filled with something semitransparent. For a second, I thought it was a liquid, but when Minori-san gently tapped the side of the “coffin,” it didn’t ripple. So was it something more viscous? A gel or a jelly or something? Then I took a good look, and saw something red, like a dried plum, floating in the center. The hazy quality of the gel or whatever it was made it hard to see any details of the thing, but it was a distinct shape within the amorphous gelatin, strangely dominating the scene.

  “Guess it’s not just your average coffin,” I said.

  “Mm,” Her Majesty concurred.

  So what was it? I had to confess, I had no idea. This was a fantasy world; could it be a Slime’s coffin or something? To be fair, probably not.

  “It does indeed seem like a coffin at first glance, but no one has proven remotely able to identify what is actually in it. Not even the dwarves in the Guld Workshop,” the empress said. Then she looked at Shinichi-san. “We wished to ask for your collective opinion.”

  I guess Rydell-san and Romilda were there as representatives of the Guld Workshop.

  “We have never seen its like here in our world, but we thought perhaps in your Ja-pan, you might have encountered it before,” Her Majesty said. “Or at least something like it.”

  “Can’t say I have... I don’t think,” Shinichi-san said, cocking his head. He looked at us in turn. But we were just as perplexed as he was. Even the container itself was starting to look less like a coffin the more I looked at it. “I guess I’ve seen toys and food that sort of look a little like this goop, or that thing in there,” Shinichi-san said.

  Heck, so had I—“slime” toys on the one hand, and dried plums on the other. But I highly doubted that was an actual dried plum in there. And the other stuff? It vaguely reminded me of something you might find in industrial manufacturing, but that was way over the head of a nonspecialist like me.

  “Can you take this stuff out of here?” Shinichi-san wondered aloud.

  “Remember what’s happened the last several times you touched something without knowing what it was?” I said, and he quickly pulled his hand back. We had no idea what that stuff might be, so I didn’t think we should be going around grabbing it. This might have been an alternate world, but our common sense should still have been functioning. Even if Shinichi-san’s seemed a bit numb.

  “Mm, so none of you know anything about it, either...” Her Majesty pursed her lips. The adorable empress seemed to regard Shinichi-san uncommonly highly, but he was no scholar; he wasn’t even a fortune-teller or something. He could hardly be expected to guess what this goop was.

  “Sorry we couldn’t help,” he said.

  “No, we were simply curious. Do not let it bother you,” Her Majesty said, shaking her head. “The palace mages are prepared to conduct an investigation, and the Guld Workshop has offered to send researchers over to help. We were simply seeking any possible clue that might be had before we began.”

  “All right, that’s a relief,” Shinichi-san said with a little shrug.

  As for me, I took a fresh look at the stuff in the “coffin.” I stared at it as hard as I could, but it didn’t so much as move. Not the gelatin, not the little red ball suspended in it. They were just... there. As if time were somehow stopped inside that container. And yet...

  I shivered. Somehow, to me, the stuff looked alive.

  Class was over, and Romilda had invited us to come to the Guld Workshop. Mostly because Shinichi-san had hit on this idea that maybe if we saw the place where the “coffin” had been discovered, we might get some clue about what it was.

  Normally, we might take what we referred to as a “bird-drawn carriage”—a carriage literally pulled by an ostrich-like avian—but with Romilda being what amounted to a dwarf princess, her favored mode of conveyance was a little different. Instead of a large bird, clay golems pulled the carriage along. In spirit, I guess it was similar to a rickshaw. Unlike a rickshaw, it had two rows of seats for up to six people, and the pullers were a pair of rough-hewn clay dolls, so the whole thing looked a little strange. Although no stranger, I guess, than an automobile from our world would’ve looked to the locals here, without anything at all to pull it along. Conversely, if you thought of the golems as like an engine, maybe it turned out this wasn’t so different after all.

  “Boy. What is that thing, anyway?” Shinichi-san mused. The benches in the passenger compartment faced each other, and I was sitting beside Romilda, with Shinichi-san and Minori-san across from me.

  “I guess it can’t be some kind of toy,” Minori-san replied. “I’ll bet it’s magical, though.”

  “My father tells me it was the only one they found,” Romilda said.

  “Huh? Weren’t you with them, Romilda?”

  “No, not me. I’m not allowed where the tunneling team works—too dangerous, I’m told.” She started digging through a bag slung over her shoulder. “But sometimes they find the coolest stuff,” she grinned.

  “Like what?”

  “Like this,” she said and put a small, wooden box on her knees. She opened the lid, and when I looked inside, I was surprised to find an assortment of rings and necklaces.

  “What?” Shinichi-san said. “They found this while they were tunneling?”

  “Yeah. Every once in a while, something like this will come up,” Romilda replied.

  “Does, uh, does Petralka know about this? Isn’t this, like, treasure?”

  “It looks pretty, but there’s a lot of fakes buried down there,” Romilda said.

  The objects in the box were, it seemed, all imitations. What looked like jewels were simply glass beads, and what seemed like precious metals were only normal metals that had been specially treated. Overall, none of it was very valuable. For a while, it seems, a flood of objects like this had been found, and to save the empire the trouble of having to inspect each and every one of them, the dwarves were given special dispensation to dispose of anything that was obviously a fake.

  “Although we do check them for magical properties,” Romilda added.

  That made sense. Some items could have dangerous enchantments on them, not unlike the “forbidden armor” we had encountered, so the dwarves at least looked to make sure there was no magic on anything they found. And for better or for worse, nothing in this box had been enchanted.

  “A lot of times these things just get thrown away, so if I see one I like, I ask to keep it,” Romilda said, trawling through the box with her fingers. “Ah, here we go.” She took something and held it out to me. “When I saw this, I thought it would be perfect for you, Hikaru-sensei.”

  “Huh? For me...?”

  I was a little taken aback. I was under the impression that Shinichi-san was the most popular teacher with the students, including Romilda. Not that I thought anyone hated me or anything, but I would hav
e expected any gifts from the students to be directed at Shinichi-san. And yet here we were.

  “What’s this—a choker?” I said. When I looked at it, I could see where she was coming from. It was a small strip of black material, like leather, with a metal clasp and a single turquoise stone carved with a geometric pattern. It was too small to be a belt; it had to be a bracelet or a choker of some kind. I had never known Shinichi-san to wear any kind of jewelry other than his interpreter ring, and black was definitely more my color—it would go perfectly with a Gothic-Lolita outfit. I guess that was why Romilda had wanted to give it to me.

  “Can I really have it?”

  “Of course!” she said, nodding eagerly. Maybe there was a touch of flattery in it, but knowing she thought it would look good on me personally felt pretty nice. I took the choker from Romilda and fit it around my neck.

  It had a surprising heft in my hand—that stone was heavier than it looked—but when I put it on, I was struck by how little I noticed the weight. The clasp must have had magnetic stones in it, because the ends came together with an audible click, and it sat comfortably in place when I let go of it.

  “It looks great!” Romilda said, clearly pleased to see her judgment vindicated.

  “Wow, it really does,” Shinichi-san said.

  “You wear that well,” Minori-san nodded. I actually found myself a little embarrassed to be on the receiving end of this shower of praise from my two colleagues.

  “Thank you, Romilda,” I said, smiling at her. I brushed the choker with my finger.

  “Young Miss, we’ve arrived.” Just at that moment, the bird-drawn—er, or rather, golem-drawn carriage—came to a stop, and the dwarf directing the golems from the driver’s seat alerted us in a low, rumbling voice that we had reached our destination.

  We didn’t find any especially compelling clues at the Guld Workshop. The place was big enough that you could truthfully call it an underground city, but the spot where they found the “coffin” just looked like a dig site, rocks and dirt everywhere and not much else. We took some photos and videos and then decided to leave.

  “Okay, see you later,” I said as we entered the house. No sooner had we gotten inside than we all went our separate ways, mostly to our rooms. As the head of Amutech’s school, I had to reorganize the teaching materials we’d used that day, record everything that needed to be recorded, and do other fiddly paperwork. By the time I was done with all that, Myusel would probably be calling us for dinner.

  I pulled out my phone, checking some notes as I walked down the hall.

  “Huh?” I could see something walking in the other direction, toward me. It was a basket so big you could barely get your arms around it, packed to overflowing with laundry. Talk about a bad center of gravity: the basket wobbled to the right, then to the left, looking like it might tumble over at any moment.

  Obviously, I don’t mean a laundry basket had sprouted legs and started walking around. There was somebody holding it, somebody coming this way. They must have just been to get the laundry. There were only a couple of people who handled the laundry around here—and from the pale, white legs I could see peeking out below the basket, I knew which of our maids it had to be.

  “Myusel,” I said, coming to a halt, and the towering basket of laundry stopped, too.

  “Shinichi-sama...” The person who peeked out from behind the basket was exactly the one I had imagined. She had flaxen hair tied in twintails, a headdress on her head, and she was overall completely beautiful. Her ears were pointed like an elf’s, but she was actually a half-elf, with one elven and one human parent. She was also our mansion’s maid, Myusel Fourant. “W-Welcome back—welcome back?!”

  She sounded a little bit panicked. Normally she would have met us at the front door, but I hadn’t seen her today. The trip to Guld Workshop had meant getting home a little later than usual, so I had assumed she was busy with some job. Apparently she had been collecting the laundry out behind the house, and hadn’t realized we’d gotten home.

  “I’m so sorry, sir, I should have been there to greet youuaaahhh!”

  “Oh—!”

  I don’t know if she tripped on something, or if she just lost her balance from that awkward position, but Myusel went falling on her bottom with a shout. The basket slipped out of her grasp, depositing its contents all over the hallway. Oh well... It happens. Around here, it happens more than you might think.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, collecting some clothes as I worked my way over to Myusel.

  “I’m sorry! I’m very sorry! I’ll clean this up right away!”

  “Calm down, it’s all right,” I said with a grin as Myusel started grabbing clothing in a tizzy.

  By and large, Myusel was a perfectly capable maid and a hard worker, but once in a while she would try to push herself just a little too far. In case you’re keeping track, this means that not only was she a half-elf and a maid-san, she was also an adorable klutz. If checking too many boxes on the moe list was an arrestable offense, Myusel would have been in jail a long time ago. Er, not that I know exactly who polices those sorts of things.

  Anyway...

  “I’ll help you,” I said.

  “Thank you, sir...”

  It was a familiar sort of conversation. I started collecting whatever was nearby, draping the clothes over my arm as I went. A towel, aprons that looked like they belonged to Myusel and Cerise-san, my T-shirts. I was going along, innocently grabbing whatever was within arm’s reach, when—

  “Hrk—!”

  Something came falling out from where it had been hiding under a towel, and I froze.

  It was a piece of cloth, elegantly embroidered and covered in frills. It almost looked like some kind of 3D model: there was nothing inside the cloth, yet it ballooned out like a bowl, suggesting the shape it assumed when it was worn. A second piece of cloth just like it was attached to the first, with a cute little bow of red ribbon in the middle. The other side from the ribbon boasted a cloth belt and U-shaped clasps, matched by little hooks on the other side. It was completed by straps, if you will, that could rest over the wearer’s shoulders.

  ...........................

  Uhh, I guess this wasn’t the moment for detailed description.

  It was—it was—it was—Ahhhhh, it was—!

  “Bravooooo!”

  No, wait, that wasn’t the word—brassiere...! That was it! I started to quake as I stood there holding the brassiere.

  Okay, so, obviously, it wasn’t like I had never seen a bra before. Even the dollar stores and supermarkets sell ladies’ underwear in Japan, and I had seen mannequins wearing them plenty of times. And I had seen my mom’s and sister’s clothes drying on the wash line before. But those were all completely different from the article of underwear that was in my hand at this very moment. It didn’t belong to my family, and it wasn’t a never-worn display piece at the store. It had, in fact, been in contact with the body of a girl I knew very well. In other words, me holding this bra was like—well, not an “indirect kiss,” but you get the ideaaaaaaghhh!!

  Wait, hang on, I thought, coming back to my senses. Who does this belong to?

  It was too small to be Elvia’s, and she tended to wear tube tops anyway, so the shoulder straps wouldn’t make any sense for her. And to be honest, I thought, neither would the little red ribbon.

  This thing was clearly made in Japan. It had Japanese washing instructions on the tag. But it couldn’t belong to Minori-san, could it? Could she possibly squeeze that giant rack into something this size?

  Then—Myusel? The size was about right, but I couldn’t quite imagine her with Japanese underwear. Of course, she could have asked Minori-san or someone to get it for her...

  “...Oh.”

  “Shinichi-sama...” Myusel’s voice snapped me back to reality. She had finished gathering up the rest of the laundry and was looking at me. Or more specifically, at the white brassiere that I was clutching.

  “Oh! U-Uh, it’s n
ot what it looks like, Myusel! You’ve got it all wrong!” I exclaimed. “I just happened to pick this up! I d-definitely wasn’t standing here thinking, Gee, I wonder whose this is? Could it be Myusel’s? Could this bit of cloth have once been gently cupping Myusel’s chest? Woohoo!, or any perverted stuff like that!” As excuses go, it was a rather revealing one. “I—I’m sorry! Don’t look at me like that! I just... I...!”

  I seemed to keep digging myself in deeper. I mean, it wasn’t like I was planning to just stick it in my pocket and walk away. Really. I swear! It’s true! Please believe me!

  “P-Please, Shinichi-sama, calm down.”

  “But I’m desperate for you to believe me! I swear to God I didn’t have the slightest perverse motivation for picking this thing up!” I was a little crazed.

  “No—listen—Shinichi-sama?”

  “And I even more never thought of smelling it, or trying it on myself, or anything like that...! I’m not one of those freaks that gets all pant-pant over girls’ underwear, I mean, for starters, I think what’s inside it is so much better—no! That’s not what I mean at all!”

  I was completely failing to talk my way out of this. Flubs left, right, and center. Arrrgh, stupid, stupid Shinichi!

  “Erm... Shinichi-sama?”

  “I—I —!”

  “That belongs to... Hikaru-sama...”

  “You’re right! I’m sure if Hikaru-san were here, he would be looking at me with utter contempt, total disdain, complete—what?” I blinked and took another look at the bra in my hand. “It belongs to... Hikaru-san?”