Outbreak Company: Volume 5 Read online

  Chapter One: Well, Whaddaya Know — It’s Another Country!

  My normal life ended when I opened my eyes.

  I stared upward for a few seconds, not saying anything at first. I didn’t recognize the ceiling above me—leading me to reflexively mutter, “An unfamiliar... ceiling...”

  I quoted from an anime that shall remain nameless (but which is so old that this particular quote is pretty much cliché by now), showing that I was still a total, lost-cause otaku. Which was another way of saying I was functioning normally.

  Wait... What’s with this feeling of déjà vu?!

  I vaguely recalled having been in this exact situation before, and even saying the exact same thing about it.

  “I really don’t recognize this ceiling, though,” I said, refocusing my eyes upward.

  On a normal day, the first thing I saw when I woke up was a sort of half-spherical ceiling worked with elaborate patterns.

  That was because I slept in a canopy bed, as befitted my position—so the “ceiling” I’m referring to wasn’t the actual ceiling of my room... Anyway, forget it. I’m just trying to explain what I usually saw when I woke up.

  Above me now, though, was a white, flat ceiling with no decoration whatsoever. If anything, it reminded me most of my room back in Japan—somewhere I hadn’t been in more than six months.

  And that meant...

  “No way...” I sat bolt upright in bed. “It turns out my entire story really was just a dream?!”

  I was stunned.

  Had all of it been nothing more than the unconscious imaginings of a pathetic home security guard? Every one of my adventures and experiences, just the passing fancies of adolescence?! Was my unconscious mind really that eager to run from reality?!

  So was everything really just dreams, illusions, bubbles, and shadows?! Was the real world a dream, and my dreams reality? Was I actually just a butterfly?! Would I come back to myself to discover that I was just the product of the imagination of young ****ta, left in a vegetative state after a traffic accident?! What even is reality?!

  .................................etc., etc.

  But just as I was about to get sucked into the chuunibyou vortex, I realized something.

  This wasn’t my room in Japan. This wasn’t my room at all.

  If it had been, the first thing I would have seen upon opening my eyes would have been my life-sized poster of Madoka, heroine of the anime Rental☆Madoka. She’s a magical girl who bravely endures despite working for a really sucky company. But I saw no hint of her feeble smile.

  “So where am I...?”

  The bed I was sleeping in was definitely not canopied, but it was big enough to accommodate at least three full-grown adults. I knew my house in Japan hadn’t had a bed this large.

  So this wasn’t my Japan house.

  But it wasn’t my Eldant one, either.

  So... Where?

  Alert, I looked slowly around the room. I didn’t recognize the interior decoration at all. It was about the same size as my bedroom in my mansion, though—in other words, about twenty mats.

  The windows were covered with thick drapes, lines of bright light leaking between them. It was enough to take the edge off the darkness in the room and allow me to see what was in there.

  The furniture consisted of the bed I was in, a desk, and a chair. Not much in the way of furnishings, to be sure, but the wallpaper boasted an intricate pattern, the curtains were embroidered, and there were paintings hanging on the walls—not exactly spartan, either.

  But still...

  “It’s like...”

  Something was different. The overall impression wasn’t the Middle Ages European one characteristic of Eldant houses. Instead the design was a little more Asian, maybe even kind of Middle Eastern. Tribal, almost. I mean, I was no anthropologist or anything; it just felt like it came from a different culture.

  “Okay, seriously. Where am I?” I muttered. But then I caught my breath, struck by another wave of déjà vu.

  The bed was different, and the room was different. The feeling of waking up and finding myself in a totally unfamiliar place, though? That I remembered.

  “No way.”

  This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen to a person several times in his life.

  I had been tricked by the Japanese government, kidnapped by the Japan Self Defense Force, and before I knew it I was in a different world. Even lightning didn’t strike twice. Something as ridiculous as what had happened to me couldn’t happen a second time...

  “No way...”

  ...Could it?

  That was when I spotted something in my peripheral vision. I turned toward it with a start.

  There was a single young woman, silently standing at attention.

  She was standing up against the wall, almost as if she were part of the furniture.

  That rang a bell, too.

  So, wait, could this be—

  “A loop?!” I exclaimed. “Am I trapped in an endless cycle?!”

  Was some invisible force manipulating my world, rewinding it so I would experience the same things over and over again even as my memories remained unchanged?! How could I ever hope to eſcape from thiſ temporal maze?!

  ...Wooh. I was getting so out of sorts that I was thinking in old letterforms.

  It was as I was having this moment of panic that I registered something: the girl by the wall wasn’t moving. Even though I had just been shouting in a language that she presumably didn’t understand, she just stood silently and watched me.

  What was going on here? It had to mean...

  “That’s... not Myusel?”

  If it had been, I was sure she would have given a little yelp of surprise.

  Or was she just that used to my strange behavior by now?

  But then...

  I squinted, taking a closer look at the girl. The darkness had kept me from realizing at first, but...

  “Wuh-huh?!”

  Her hair was black—or... green? In the dim light, her eyes shone a clear emerald color.

  But it wasn’t her hair color that held me transfixed. It was cut short in a kind of boyish look, but that only made her most prominent features stand out all the more. Poking out from under her hair...

  “IS THAT REALLY A BEAST GIRL?!” I found myself shouting, my hand clenching into a triumphant fist.

  Yes! Those were animal ears!

  They stood out exactly because the hair didn’t hide them. Those ears! So striking, so much a part of this girl’s particular beauty! Covered in short fur like a cat or a dog might have, they burst through her hair, making her look so real and alive!

  “Ohhh...!” I trembled with admiration.

  I mean, not that this was the first time I had seen a beast girl. A werewolf named Elvia lived at my mansion. She had a very upbeat and cheerful personality; she really ticked all the beast-girl boxes. She had the friendly, outgoing nature that you look for in a beast person, especially a doglike one. It was terrific.

  But. But.

  There were more kinds of beast girls than just doglike ones.

  That’s right: I’m referring to the manga—truly a classic, practically on the level of scripture—Nishiki no Kuni☆. As Chi**-neko demonstrates, the original beast girl was a cat!

  So, yes. The beast girl in front of me was a cat. She was probably a weretiger or something of the sort. I guessed as much because her cheeks and body—like her belly and her arms—clearly had some differently colored fur mixed in. It seemed unique, almost like a tattoo.

  What’s that? Why could I see so much of her midriff, you ask?

  That, of course, is because it was bare.

  How marvelous is a girl in skimpy clothin
g! (I was very excited.)

  Her outfit reminded me of something from some desert country—or at least from the Arabian Nights. Her chest and hips—in other words, the definite no-go zones—were covered with clothes worked with a geometric design. But her belly button was right out there, although for some reason her arms and legs were covered with sheer cloth. It didn’t hide her limbs; their color and shape was plainly visible.

  Incidentally, the girl’s body shape made it look like she wasn’t yet mature—I mean she was pretty clearly young, with an underdeveloped chest and narrow hips. Practically a child.

  But even so—in fact, almost because of that—those clothes were deadly.

  In some ways, it was more alluring than if she had been completely exposed: revealing a little bit of flesh makes you wonder what else she’s hiding. Beautiful is the flower that blooms in secret! The vibe she gave off walked the line between virtue and deviance the way only a young body can!

  That which is exuded by a body just a step—no, a half-step!—from nudity... This, this itself, is truly eros!

  .................................etc., etc.

  Before I knew it, I had gotten carried away with a panegyric that would probably have caused people to recoil from me if I had spoken it aloud. Now I took a fresh look at the girl.

  Huh...?

  “Who... are you?”

  Only now did it register with me: if this was really a loop, a repeat of what had happened before, then it should have been Myusel standing there. But Myusel was a half-elf; she was no beast girl. Then again, I supposed there was always the possibility that, suspecting my affinity for beast girls, she had stuck on ears and a tail before coming to wake me up.

  But no, this was definitely the first time I had ever seen this girl.

  Her face was part of what made her look young; her eyes were large and her nose was petite. She had small, pursed lips. Her youthful looks reminded me of a certain empress I knew, but the impression she gave was completely different. Almost the opposite, in fact.

  This maid girl watched me with a soft, emotionless expression, not so much as moving a muscle. Her silence was overwhelming. She was almost like a doll.

  Who or what in the world was she?

  “Ummm...”

  I put a hand to my cheek and searched my memory. What was the last thing I could remember before I woke up here?

  I remembered waking up early in the morning at my mansion in Eldant. I didn’t feel like going back to sleep, so I decided to kill time with a little walk around the house.

  And then...

  “.....................Huh...?”

  No good. My recollection went fuzzy at that point.

  My head felt kind of heavy. I was sure I had slept well, and yet I felt like I hadn’t slept enough. I had the sense that what I wanted was just in front of me, but I couldn’t quite reach it...

  This wasn’t getting me anywhere. I decided to question the girl.

  “Hey.”

  She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t seem to be ignoring me. She cocked her head quizzically at me.

  Whoa! That innocent gesture— That gesture—!

  I set my burgeoning feelings of moe aside and asked, “Who are you? And where am I?”

  It looked like she was about to answer me, because she opened her mouth...

  “This is the eastern city of Borfoi. You’re in the Kingdom of Bahairam.”

  The voice, however, came from someone else. I looked over in shock.

  I saw a door, one that looked quite severe compared to everything else around here. It was half-open, and a young woman was entering the room.

  A soldier...?

  This woman was definitely not half-naked, and the clothes she was wearing looked pretty somber—very much like a military uniform, in fact. For the most part her outfit was plain and unadorned, but at her shoulders, neck, and cuffs were colors bright enough to draw the eye. She even had a sword at her hip.

  What surprised me most, though, was not her clothes.

  “Huh...?”

  I thought I remembered this girl.

  Or rather, I thought she looked exactly like someone I knew.

  Elvia?

  She was a dead ringer for the beast girl from my house. Her face, her hair, her height, and even the animal ears on her head were all just like Elvia’s.

  The only difference was the color. Whereas Elvia had dark hair and ears, the doppelgänger in front of me had white. If you only looked at her face, you would swear it was Elvia; it was like the palette-swapped version of a character you get when you drop in as player two in a video game.

  “Wh-What’s with the outfit? Going for a new look?”

  Maybe she had gotten a little too into the cosplay we had done a while back. Heh, probably not...

  Elvia, however, typically dressed in clothes so skimpy that she might as well just be wearing underwear. This formal, almost entirely skin-free sort of dress was definitely not the werewolf I was used to.

  I had to admit, it had a certain freshness to it. She had looked adorable in the sailor uniform we had given her for our movie shoot, sure, but this had a certain...

  “New look?” 2P Elvia (temp name) asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “What are you mouthing off about?”

  “Um...............”

  I blinked. So this... wasn’t... Elvia?

  I mean, yes, I’d had some sense that it wasn’t actually Elvia, but they looked so eerily identical that I had kind of thought maybe their personalities would be similar, too. But 2P Elvia (temp name) was pretty much the other Elvia’s polar opposite in tone and voice.

  For one thing, I had never seen Elvia with an expression quite like this.

  In my experience, she was the picture of innocence, always smiling cheerfully. I had never known her to stare someone down the way this person was doing to me. She was kind of expressionless, a lot like the beast-girl maid I’d seen first, but this girl had a strength of will that came through just the same.

  I was reminded anew how important facial expressions were for communication. One face with two different expressions could give you a very different impression.

  “Um... Who... are you?”

  2P Elvia came in, closing the door behind her; it shut with a click that sounded like an automatic lock. She approached the foot of the bed where I was still sitting upright and said, “I am Amatena Harneiman.”

  Harneiman. That was Elvia’s family name, too.

  Did that mean they were related by blood? That would explain why they looked so alike. A little too alike, really. Could they be twins or something?

  I just stared stupidly at 2P Elvia—er, Amatena.

  Then I finally registered something.

  “Did you say Bahairam?”

  I was sure she had. The eastern city of Borfoi. The Kingdom of Bahairam.

  It looked like I wasn’t in the Holy Eldant Empire anymore.

  The Kingdom of Bahairam, if I recalled my geography, was a neighboring country of the Eldant Empire. I was also pretty sure they were at war, and that border skirmishes had been going on for quite a while. On top of all that, Elvia was a spy for them, and—

  “Bahairam!”

  Whatever sleepiness had been left vanished in an instant. Now was the moment when my brain started to work at a frenzy. Where were you earlier?!

  “Why am I in Bahairam?!”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Where is everybody, anyway?!”

  She still didn’t answer. Amatena just continued to fix me with that icy gaze and not say anything.

  I tried again, desperately, to remember what had happened before I woke up here.

  I was walking around, and then... And then... When I opened my eyes, I was here.

  What was the last thing I could remember?

  I was pretty sure I had heard a noise in the shrubbery, and when I went to look... I think something covered my eyes... And then my memories cut off like a bad film clip.

  “
Wait...”

  So was this...

  You know. That thing they do in American movies all the time, where somebody gets knocked out with chloroform or something?

  What I mean is, I was brought here against my will. Kidnapped! Abducted! Made off with!

  And that probably implied that this room was a cell. A cage!

  One ugly thought after another danced through my head, much as I wished they wouldn’t.

  “B-B-B-B-But why would you do that?!”

  The strange thing was, the idea made Amatena’s resemblance to Elvia seem really creepy. I was seized by an unthinking terror, the kind you would feel if your friends suddenly decided to kill you one day for no reason.

  I scooched backward, trying to get even a millimeter farther away from Amatena. It was a huge bed, so I was able to gain a little space, but it wasn’t long before I found myself with my back literally against the wall.

  Amatena, meanwhile, continued to look down at me with no change in her expression. There was no way to guess what she might be thinking. As I said, her resemblance to Elvia scared me now.

  “Why did you k-kidnap me?”

  “I am not permitted to explain that at the present time,” Amatena said.

  Permitted? Permitted how?

  Actually, I had been expecting her to deny that kidnap was the right word, but she completely ignored that. She might as well have come out and said I was right.

  But seriously... Why?

  Amatena turned on her heel so that her back was to me. The movement looked weirdly mechanical, stiff. Almost as if she were putting on for one of those by-the-books military types.

  With her back to me, I could see her tail, the same white color as her ears. That was different from Elvia, too. Her fluffy tail moved nonstop, but Amatena’s didn’t so much as wag, as if it had been stuck down with glue.

  Then Amatena knocked on the door and with another click, it opened. Apparently it was impossible to open it from inside.

  “Kuraaara, he’s all yours,” she said as she closed the door.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The answer came from the half-naked beast girl, who had been quiet all this time. I guess her name was Clara.

  “But what in the world is going on here...?” In the face of this mystifying situation, utter confusion was my only response.