Outbreak Company: Volume 14

by Ichiro Sakaki

  “A-Anyway, I’m gonna get dressed...” I said, trying to indicate that Elvia should step out of the room, when suddenly something occurred to me. I was a woman now. And so was Elvia. So actually, it was pretty strange to be acting all embarrassed. For that matter, if this body was just a construct—just something my soul had somehow been transferred into—then the real me was sleeping on that bed, which meant she wasn’t really seeing me naked at all. So why was I so embarrassed?

  The entire thing was making my head spin.

  “Er... Hikaru-sama?” Elvia was looking at my feet for some reason. “Have y’ been outside?”

  “Huh? Outside?” Did she mean, since I got up this morning? “I don’t think so... why?”

  “Your legs, they’re kinda dirty.”

  At that, I looked down at my legs, and lo and behold, they were a little bit dirty. It looked like I had been running around in bare feet. I hadn’t left the house since I got up this morning. And I never went out of my way to go out without putting shoes on. So how had this happened?

  “I guess I did go to bed without my bath last night...” I said, but that had been in the male body that was currently asleep on the bed. I was sure I hadn’t been in this woman’s form before I drifted off last night.

  “Hikaru-sama?”

  I was getting confused by the sheer number of unanswered questions. Elvia looked at me blankly. Then she looked at my feet again, smiled with almost blinding brightness, and said, “Let’s hit the bath.”

  “Uhhh...” I hadn’t expected that. She shuffled over to me where I stood, still frozen, and grabbed my hand. “E-Elvia?!”

  “Nobody likes to go around dirty, right?”

  “Well, I mean—yeep!” She hardly waited for me to respond before she started off, dragging me behind her. I had been in Elvia’s arms once, as we jumped from a runaway carriage, and it had given me an appreciation for just how strong and powerful she was. With my weight, I don’t think she knew I was there. If she really wanted to, she could probably tuck me under one arm and run away. All of which was to say, resistance was futile.

  Still, I tried. “H-Hold on, Elvia! At least let me dress...!”

  “We’re goin’ to the bath. You’d just have to undress again.”

  “Not the point...”

  She smiled, but ignored me, as she half-dragged, half-carried me down the hallway.

  As I expected, the Guld Workshop didn’t yield much. We were able to talk personally with the dwarves who had dug up the “coffin,” but it was the same story: they found it in a tunnel they’d been digging. In other words, they’d just been working on expansions when they happened to stumble across it, and they didn’t know anything more than that.

  They could tell us, though, that diggers in a neighboring tunnel had come up with several other objects at about the same time. They seemed to assume this was just coincidence, but I wondered if there might be a connection.

  “Hmm...”

  After our investigation at the workshop, we headed to school, but it wasn’t for our normal classes. Well, for Myusel and Minori-san, it was, but Petralka and I had another goal in mind: we were going to see Romilda. She had already set off for school by the time we arrived at the workshop that morning, and we hadn’t been able to talk to her. She hadn’t been at the site when the coffin was discovered, but she had come with her father when he brought it to the castle. We wanted to know if she had noticed anything unusual at the time.

  “Oh, there she is.” It turned out it didn’t take much searching to find her. She was chattering happily with her classmates, including some of the humans and elves. It hadn’t been long ago that dwarves would only talk with other dwarves, elves would only talk with other elves, and humans stuck with humans. But recently, those kinds of racial divisions had started to ease, and everyone was learning to get along. That made me really happy, and I was reluctant to interrupt the conversation, but unfortunately, today, I had little choice.

  “Hey, Romilda, can I borrow you for a second?” I said, and led her out of the classroom to another, smaller room nearby, normally used for individual consultations with students or their families.

  “What’s the matter, Shinichi-sensei?” Romilda asked, although she didn’t seem particularly ill at ease. Nonetheless, she stiffened when she saw Petralka—along with two armed bodyguards—waiting in the room. “Er, ahem—what’s going on, if I may ask...?”

  “Petralka, I found her,” I said.

  “Mm,” Petralka responded with a nod.

  This was hardly the first time Romilda had met Petralka in person, of course, and although they could hardly be called close friends, Petralka would at least remember Romilda’s name and face. Still, Romilda had never sat down one-on-one with the empress before—there’d always been a sort of social cushion between them. Like me, or her father Rydell-san, or someone else to help mediate. Romilda was often sort of along for the ride.

  “Shinichi-sensei... Your Majesty...?” She looked uneasily from me to Petralka and back. For better or for worse, Petralka looked very serious; she obviously wasn’t here for chitchat. It was clear to Romilda that she had been asked for by name, and she had to be worrying that the empress was mad at her or something.

  “No need to look so stiff,” Petralka said. “We simply wish to ask you a few questions.”

  “Yes’m...” Romilda nodded, not quite convinced, and I gave her the rundown. The missing stuff from inside the coffin. The tracks that led from the castle in the direction of my mansion. I told her we were just curious if she knew anything at all about the incident.

  “That stuff was gone...?” Romilda said, blinking, her eyes as big as saucers. “You mean it... moved?”

  “There is always the possibility that it was stolen. But from the evidence available, the material seems to have moved under its own power.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual, Romilda? Anything at all?”

  “I’m sorry, I really didn’t...” She shook her head.

  “Okay, I see. Thanks,” I said, managing a smile.

  The reality was that neither Petralka nor I had really expected to get anything enlightening out of Romilda. We were both grasping at every last possibility. But that being the case, we were left with nothing to go on. No clues. Why had the goo vanished? Where had it gone? Petralka and I were just sharing a look and a sigh when Romilda said hesitantly, “Oh... Um, Shinichi-sensei...” It sounded like she had just had a thought.

  “What’s up?” I said. Maybe she’d remembered something. I looked at her with hopeful eyes, but she said, “Where’s Hikaru-sensei today...?” So this wasn’t about the coffin goo at all.

  “Er, uh, H-Hikaru-san? Him?” My voice almost betrayed me as I remembered the morning’s events—in particular, Hikaru-san’s complete nakedness, which I had definitely not intended or wanted to see.

  “Hrm...?” Petralka watched me squirm for a second.

  I cleared my throat, got my voice under control, and managed a reluctant smile as I said, “He’s not quite feeling himself today, so he decided to stay home...”

  I could hardly tell them he wasn’t here because he’d woken up to discover he was a girl. Nope, no way I could say that. Even if it had been a total accident. I was just about to tell Romilda I would happily take any message she had for him, when she said, “Not quite himself...?” The blood drained from her face with alarming suddenness. Romilda was usually a pretty happy-go-lucky person (even if by the standards of, say, Elvia, she seemed downright subdued), and I’d never seen her look so concerned before.

  “Um, yeah. Something the matter?”

  “I... I’m afraid it might be my fault...!”

  “Huh?” I frowned. That seemed to come out of left field. Romilda, though, looked like she might burst into tears. She said might, but it looked like in her mind there was hardly any doubt. “Why would it be your fault?” I asked.

  “You know—because I gave Hikaru-sensei that choker yesterday!” she wailed. “It
wasn’t found in the same place... But it was found on the same day...”

  “You mean the same day as—”

  “That coffin!”

  Ahh. Yes, I remembered her saying that the choker was another item that had been dug up. I was pretty sure Hikaru-san—the male one, lying asleep on the bed—was still wearing it.

  “But it was found in a different place, right? So it probably doesn’t have anything to do with—” Then I stopped. “Wait, hold on...” I was starting to sense a possibility. I was no geologist or anything, but... “What if there was a flood or something that knocked over a building, and scattered the contents all over?”

  It wouldn’t all end up in the same place. It was possible that even things that had been stored in the same location could be washed dozens or hundreds of meters apart from each other, then later buried by mud and silt. The two tunnels in question seemed like completely different places, but they had been going the same direction, at the same depth. Which meant maybe the layers of earth around them had been deposited at about the same time.

  So what if that “coffin” and Hikaru-san’s choker had once been in the same place? Heck, what if they belonged together? It was a dizzying idea. But when two strange things happened at the same time, it was probably more logical to assume they were connected than that they weren’t. For example...

  “You mean, like, maybe by putting on that choker, Hikaru-san awakened whatever was in that coffin...? And maybe he turned into a girl as a side effect? No, or maybe...”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Petralka asked, furrowing her finely shaped eyebrows at me.

  “I just thought of something,” I said, but Romilda didn’t look any less worried or Petralka any less perplexed.

  ...How had this happened? I tried to suppress a shiver as I watched the steam rise into the air. I struggled to grasp what was happening to me. Well, it should have been obvious; it was simple enough. I just couldn’t rationally accept it.

  “Whassa matter, Hikaru-sama?” A cute face appeared right in front of me, sending ripples along the surface of the water I was currently submerged in. The short hair, the floppy ears, and the innocent smile made for the perfect image of a dog-like beast girl. The faint ridiculousness of what she did and said made her seem just like a big, sweet dog that had been aggressively anthropomorphized.

  Everything below the neck looked properly like a wild animal, muscular limbs and taut body—except for the bust and behind, which had the perfect amount of swell. It was obviously a woman’s body. A woman’s naked body. And a well-endowed one at that.

  “N-N-Nothing...!” I answered quickly. I looked away from her and tried to make some space between us.

  “Hikaru-sama?” Elvia looked puzzled by my reaction. Geez, this girl was... too open. Or she had no shame or something. Yes, my body, or at least my legs, had been dirty, and she wasn’t wrong that I needed a bath. But there was no need for her to get in with me. After Elvia had dragged me, naked, relentlessly through the hallway, we’d arrived at the changing room, where she’d unhesitatingly torn off her own clothes and then pulled me straight into the bath. And so we found ourselves here.

  I let out a long breath, trying to do anything I could to stave off the rising heat in my body—not to mention my ever-increasing blood pressure as my heart got more and more out of control. For the time being, at least I could pretend my face was red because of the hot bath. Not that Elvia seemed to notice anyway.

  “It’s nothing,” I repeated, and then sank down until I was submerged almost up to my nose.

  My guess was that Elvia wasn’t even thinking of me as a man. She was never exactly shy about sex—maybe it had something to do with going into heat on a regular basis, the way beast people did—but she also had a deep-seated respect, almost reverence, for Shinichi-san. Her behavior towards him notwithstanding, I didn’t think she was so cavalier that she would go showing off her naked body to just any guy. That seemed evident enough just from watching her.

  I paused. There was a sort of distant ache in my chest, almost a pain. Like if I didn’t take care to breathe deeply, I would run out of oxygen. My heart kept pounding away, and I started to feel like my face and body were even hotter than the water.

  This body was really getting to be a lot of trouble. I couldn’t control it through sheer willpower anymore.

  “Had a nice soak, Hikaru-sama?” Elvia asked, splashing in the water like a child.

  “Er, yeah, I guess...”

  “Great! Time to help you wash up, then!”

  “Huh? No, you don’t have to—”

  Washing, of course, was why we were in the bath in the first place. Actually, you were supposed to wash before you got in. But, reluctant to sit there naked in front of Elvia, I’d lunged for the tub as soon as we arrived.

  “It’s like—I mean, it’s not that it isn’t a good idea, but—”

  “They asked me to take care of you, Hikaru-sama,” Elvia said proudly.

  “No, listen, I’m pretty sure they meant, like, as my bodyguard—”

  “We’ll wash over there.” Then she dove underwater, leaving behind only a little bubble.

  I was just thinking Huh? when I felt her grab hold of me, reservations and all.

  “Hey—hold on—” I was so shaken that I could hardly get out more than a word or two. Aw, man. It turned out I was no better than Shinichi-san. Pathetic. The feeling of Elvia’s soft chest pressing against my midriff threw my entire mental system completely out of whack.

  Elvia, seeming completely oblivious to my discombobulation, held me tight with both arms and lifted me easily out of the water. The closest thing I could do to fighting back was to kick helplessly at the air. But of course, it didn’t make any difference against the sheer physical power of a werewolf.

  “Okay, just sit right here.” Elvia plopped me happily onto a stool.

  “F-Forget about it, okay, Elvia? I’ll do it myself!”

  “Ya don’t have to worry so much! I’ll get you nice and clean!”

  Whoever had trusted Elvia with me—Minori-san, Myusel, or Shinichi-san—she was obviously stoked about it. She had a huge grin on her face. I tried to stand up, and she easily pushed me back down with one hand, then grabbed a bar of soap and began lathering it between her palms.

  “Elvia...?”

  “Don’t fret, just stay right there,” she instructed, and then she set to scrubbing me—forgoing any kind of towel, using only her soap-bubble-covered hands. Maybe that’s just how she always used soap, but still...

  “Hey...!” I said. I didn’t care what she had been told; this was too much. “Stop...”

  “Don’t move,” she said. “Ya wouldn’t want to slip, would you?” Meanwhile, she kept sweeping her hands all over my body. I was basically getting a massage from a beautiful woman...

  “Ahh... Oh...” I couldn’t prevent a moan from coming out my lips.

  “Feels good, huh?”

  “That’s not—”

  Look, I know. I know Elvia didn’t mean anything by the question. That it was hardly different from a hairdresser who says “Let me know if the water’s too hot” when she’s washing your hair. So it would have been fine for me to just say, “Yeah, it feels nice.” But then... Then there were Elvia’s hands, running over my body among the suds. There was the way she braced herself against me so I wouldn’t fall off the stool, reaching around to soap me.

  “You’re, uh, used to this, huh?”

  “Yeah, I used to help Big Sis Ama and Big Sis Jiji get clean all the time when we were kids!”

  “Oh, uh... Oh.”

  That’s right—Elvia had two sisters, didn’t she?

  In the end, I just let Elvia have her way with me, her hands going here, there, and everywhere, while I focused on trying not to make any embarrassing sounds. As for her, she was in such a good mood she was even humming a little tune. I didn’t recognize the melody—maybe it was from Bahairam. As far as she was concerned, the current situation w
asn’t any stranger than being in the bath with one of her sisters.

  And yet... And yet... Yes, I looked like a woman on the outside; at the moment, I lacked the organ that would have stood up and made my presence here inexcusable in a man’s body. But deep inside, I was painfully aware of Elvia’s nakedness, very much as a man. Elvia supposedly understood that awareness was there, yet she didn’t show the slightest hesitation in getting in the bath together.

  I’d heard about how Elvia had dragged Shinichi-san to the bath before, but that was supposedly because of something or other that happened to her on account of the moon or something. And she was crazy for Shinichi-san anyway. With me, it was different. I wondered what she really thought about all this.

  “I’m surprised you decided to jump in the bath with me, Elvia,” I mumbled.

  “Huh?” She stopped scrubbing. “Somethin’ the matter?”

  “Well, I mean, it’s just—I know I look like a woman and all, but... what’s inside hasn’t changed, you understand?”

  I was a little reluctant to say it. After all, if she burst out, “Oh yeah, that’s right!” and got upset, it would suck. But at the same time, I couldn’t just let all this happen without at least trying to make sure we were on the same page. I needed to know what Elvia thought was going on when she hopped in the bath with female me.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “I guess you’re right.” Completely matter-of-fact.

  That put me on the back foot. I blinked. I was briefly tempted to look back and see what kind of expression was on her face, but I resisted the impulse. So I guess she really hadn’t been thinking of me as a man. That made sense, I guess, but that recognition was mingled with a certain disappointment at her density—and in fact, for some reason, a certain disappointment in general. I wondered why.