Outbreak Company: Volume 6 (Premium) Read online

  Chapter One: Do We Meet by Chance?

  Looking back on it now, maybe I had a sense that something was coming.

  There was a big, bright full moon that night. I was lying in bed, which was all well and good, but even when I closed my eyes I couldn’t quite slip into unconsciousness. Unable to fall asleep, but not able to muster up the energy to go do something, either, I just lay there, aimlessly passing the lazy time.

  This was unusual—normally I’m a pretty good sleeper.

  “Hrm...”

  I sighed and opened my eyes at last. I could see the familiar shapes of my room in the semi-darkness.

  I didn’t have any nightlight in my room, nor were there any lamps outside. When night fell around here, you were really closed in by the darkness. If there were clouds or rain at night, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. I had grown up with plenty of good old-fashioned urban light pollution, and I was a little shocked to find out how dark a night could really be.

  But that’s how the world really works after sundown, after all. And it made the moon, when it was out, all the more conspicuous, bright against the canvas of night. With no air pollution, the sky was especially clear, with nothing to interrupt the cold, indifferent light from pouring down on you.

  It all added up to the sense that the night was actually brighter outside than it was in my room.

  “Hm...?” Suddenly, I frowned.

  Despite the curtain over my window, I had the feeling something had moved outside.

  Maybe an owl or a bat or something? We did have a forest adjacent to the mansion, which was supposed to be home to a number of nocturnal species. In fact, wasn’t there a big tree just outside my window? Maybe one of those night-dwelling animals was in the branches somewhere.

  So it was no big deal. Nothing worth worrying about. Right?

  But as I lay there in the dark, I couldn’t help thinking about it.

  I snuck suspicious little glances toward the window—and I was sure I saw something like a shadow flicker there again.

  I wasn’t imagining it. And it wasn’t an owl or a bat, I could tell now.

  Naturally, I couldn’t make out the exact size or shape of whatever was out there. But I was pretty sure the birds and the bats in this area wouldn’t get any closer to our house than they had to... and they definitely wouldn’t tap insistently on the glass if they did.

  “What the heck...?”

  I sat up in bed, feeling distinctly suspicious.

  The sound came again: tap, tap.

  Two soft taps. Then a pause, then two more.

  It didn’t sound like something just blowing against the glass in the wind. It was purposeful, clearly intended to get the attention of the person in the room.

  That’s right: someone was knocking.

  “At this time of the night?” I grabbed the smartphone by my pillow to check the time. The screen said 2:30 a.m.

  I would have considered the night still young at that hour back during my time as a home security guard, but since moving to this mansion, I had adopted a more proper schedule. On most nights, I would have been sound asleep by now. So, I assumed, would everyone else in the house. It was that hour of the night when, as the proverb said, even the grass and trees were asleep.

  So who was out there?

  As I lay there in silence, I realized my whole body was stiff with fear. My mind was replaying old television programs I’d seen about paranormal phenomena.

  What if it was a ghost? This world was full of things that would be considered occult or fantastical or even superstitious in modern Japan. Magic and sprites were well within the realm of the everyday around here. So it was entirely possible I was dealing with a ghost.

  But even so...

  My more than a dozen years growing up in modern Japan had firmly cemented in my mind the idea that ghosts = scary. It was practically instinctive. So I clung to any bit of logic that might help me deny the possibility. But still, what’s scary is scary.

  Meanwhile, the sound went on.

  Of course, it crossed my mind to simply pull the covers up over my head, pretend to be asleep, and insist to myself that I was just imagining all of this. Unfortunately, the pervasive silence made the tapping all too obvious. It’s like how once you notice the ticking of a clock, you can’t take your mind off it, and then good luck falling asleep again. It becomes impossible to ignore.

  I kept lying there. And lying there.

  Finally, I gave in.

  I got out of bed and went over to the window. My heart was pounding so loud it was distracting.

  A corner of my mind was busy asking, What am I going to do if there’s some awful monster there?

  The classic Japanese ghost is a woman with half her face hidden with long, greasy black hair. Oh, but in the Western tradition there’s a lot of zombies, creatures who are rotting or whose faces are melting off. When it comes to anime, I guess weird ghosts aren’t as scary as a yandere with a hatchet who can’t quite meet your eyes and who— No! Not the time for that!

  “How stupid am I, feeding my own fears like this? What good does that do?”

  The procession of terrifying images flashed through my mind, my brain jumping from one to the next even as I wished it would stop. I’d come this far, though. It would be even worse to stop now.

  I screwed up my courage, standing in front of the window.

  Then I grabbed the curtains with both hands—and closed my eyes.

  “I’m not afraid I’m not afraid I’m not afraid I’m not afraid, Kanou Shinichi is not afraid!” I chanted like a spell. “I’m not afraid because there’s no need to be scared! Be it a ghost or a faerie or a devil or a demon, if she’s also a beautiful girl then she’s not scary! There are plenty of moe ghost characters!”

  A lot of them were even the heroines of their shows! Forcing myself to picture several such characters—aren’t those clumsy ghosts dressed as shrine maidens great?!—I pulled aside the curtains as hard as I could and flung open the window.

  “Ghost! I see your true form—Otherworld Monster!!”

  If there was really something paranormal out there, I figured I would pretty much be reduced to a tiny, frightened baby, so I shouted and struck a pose partly to encourage myself. Between me throwing the window open and the breeze gusting in, the curtains went billowing to the side.

  And then it was just me staring out into the night.

  I didn’t even get to those famous (?) words, “Spirit Wave of Light That Shines upon Immoral Beings!” before my mouth hung open.

  There, bathed in the moonlight, was a girl. For a second, I almost thought she was floating in midair, but I quickly realized my mistake. She was sitting on a tree branch, watching me.

  “Evening,” the girl said with a smile. Her voice was the slightest bit husky, as if she were caressing the ear of her listener with—

  “Er... Hello,” I said, mostly reflexively. It was about as dumb a thing as I could possibly have said at that moment, but I had completely and totally lost my nerve.

  Why? Because she was perfect.

  Sitting there in the moonlight, she was terrifyingly composed; there was no way past her guard. She almost looked like a doll or something that had been prepared with anything and everything in mind. The slight tremble, the grace note of hesitance that real humans, for better or for worse, always have, she completely lacked.

  Her big, black eyes, fringed with long lashes, stared straight at me. Well-formed brows peeked out from behind her bangs. Then there was the straight, smooth bridge of her nose, her soft-looking, fine lips. Everything combined for an enormous impact.

  “Lovely night, isn’t it?” the girl said e
asily. The wind whistled and the leaves shook as if in agreement.

  The wind picked up her hair, dark as the night itself, and tugged at the hem of her dress. She was wearing a Gothic-style dress with more frills than just about anything you would normally see. It was cinched at the waist but left the shoulders exposed, as if it existed not for the comfort of the wearer but only to make them look adorable. And on her, it worked.

  There were a lot of dark colors on the outfit, but that made the abundant frills, the bare shoulders, and her white knees all the more striking—the contrast strangely enhanced her presence.

  Wait... She seems less like a ghost and more like... a vampire!

  Her very assertiveness made her seem like she wasn’t a ghost. Disembodied spirits seem like they hardly exist, like they might melt into the night at any moment—but this girl appeared to take the night, in fact, the moonlight itself, as a stage upon which to display her beauty.

  She gave me an alluring smile, as if she could read my thoughts, and said, “The night wind shimmers in the moonlight—and it is very beautiful.”

  “Hey...”

  At that moment, I finally realized something: I recognized her dress.

  I took a fresh look at her face—or more precisely, just above her face. And just as I expected, there was a dark-purple ribbon woven into her hair.

  “Suiren...”

  She was dressed like the character Suiren from the anime Rose Princess. It’s a show about dolls who battle each other, and Suiren is one of the villains, a doll who’s hostile to the protagonist. But her Gothic Lolita design, which is frankly better balanced than the heroine’s, ended up making her the more popular of the two characters.

  Of course, in Rose Princess, Suiren is an antique doll, so she only comes up to about half the height of a person—whereas the girl in front of me now was full-size. Excepting that one detail, though, she looked like she could have come straight out of the anime.

  “You...” she said with a giggle, the edges of her lips just turning up as she looked at the person staring moronically at her, his mouth hanging open (i.e., me).

  I found it intensely seductive. I felt a shock of something akin to fear, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Just the opposite. It was almost like being emotionally moved, but it wasn’t quite that, either. Was this what they called being attracted to someone?

  “...must be Kanou Shinichi,” she said.

  “Er, yeah,” I answered, nodding reflexively. “How do you know my name...?”

  Even as I asked, though, something else occurred to me.

  Japanese. The girl was speaking Japanese. In a place where I was one of the only people who knew that language. That must mean she was—

  “I am the light that guides the darkness.” She placed both her hands over her chest, closing her eyes with their long lashes. “Yes: I am the chosen light, elected to be the guide to a new world.”

  “Um...”

  Part of me wanted to joke, “That’s cool, go ahead and speak Japanese”—but I didn’t have it in me at that moment. I was completely enraptured by the aura she exuded.

  And then...

  “Kanou Shinichi-san...”

  She reached a pale hand out to me, as if to say, “Here, take it.”

  “You have a choice. If you take my hand, it will mean that you acknowledge my existence. It shall be a bond of destiny, testament to the contract.”

  “The c-contract?”

  “If you don’t take my hand, you shall wallow in ignorance, accomplishing your reason for being while trapped in darkness. It is I who guide, but you who choose. Now—steel yourself. Once the way to Ragnarök has been opened, you will not be permitted to sit idly by.”

  I could only stare at the slim, white fingers and look into her beautiful face.

  Was this—you know, that thing that happens all the time in anime and manga and light novels?! Was I going to enter a contract as her servant, throwing myself into battle so that we could beat the bad guys together? Was it one of those?! Would she turn into a sword for me to use, or would she power up when I sang for her, or would we be stealing holy relics, or be gamblers laden with debt and betting with our lives so that we had to do burning prostrations, or—! Wait. I think that last thing is not like the others. Probably.

  I felt my heart pounding even harder than before. I mean, we were talking about “destiny” and “chosen” and “light” and “darkness” and “contracts” and “reasons for being,” and to top it all off, “Ragnarök”...! What tension was in the air! Think of the heft the word “destiny” has—we’re not just talking about fate, but fate! Consider the portentousness of “twilight of the gods” when you call it Ragnarök!! This is foundational stuff!

  Ahh! A captivating unreality appears before my eyes. This girl might have leapt straight out of my computer monitor...!

  Yes! This very moment is when I make my break with the tedious day-to-day!

  ........................

  (Insert your own deadpan comment like “Is your life really boring?” or “Didn’t you do that once already?”)

  “Me... I...”

  Hesitant, quaking, I reached out my hand toward her. Our fingers nearly touched...

  And then she pulled her hand away.

  “Huh?”

  I stood there blinking, but she closed her hand and shook her head gently. “It seems the moment is not come yet.”

  What, after stirring me up like that? It’s a little late, señorita!

  She lowered those long eyelashes and said wistfully, “But the time for the contract approaches. I believe I will see you again presently. So long as it be what is destined...”

  “What in the world are you—”

  Yes, I understood I wouldn’t get any answers by finishing that question. But I couldn’t not ask. I still didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on, even though this girl in front of me seemed satisfied enough.

  “Then... I’ll see you again.”

  “Wai—”

  I reached out in a flash as if to stop her, but a second later, she was gone.

  No...

  “Huh...?!”

  There was a rustling, and when I looked over, there she was: directly below the window, at the base of the tree.

  Had she jumped down there?! We were two stories up!

  I was just about flabbergasted when I noticed something very fine moving in the night breeze. There was some kind of wire attached to the branch on which she had been sitting. That must have been how she was able to get down without hurting herself.

  She spun on her heel and left the mansion behind, quickly vanishing into the night-clad forest around us.

  “What the heck was that...?” I wondered aloud, still conscious of my heart drumming in my chest.

  Was I dreaming? Hallucinating? Or had it all been real?

  I felt like I had started to get used to weird things happening, but even so, meeting that girl left me shaken. Something about it still felt unreal, like I really had met Suiren, come straight out of her anime.

  It all gave me a lot to think about. What future would have awaited me if I had taken her hand?

  “...Oops.” I just realized. I hadn’t even asked her name.

  I was pretty sure it wasn’t Suiren. Mostly sure.

  “Seriously... What the heck...”

  The night breeze tickled my cheek. It cooled the heat of my moment of excitement, as if washing away the last traces of proof that the girl had really been there.

  That was it. It had all been a dream. I should just forget about it. Like an argument without words.

  My name is Kanou Shinichi, and I was a perfectly normal high-schooler. Maybe the only thing that set me apart was that I was a home security guard.

  (Paaaaaause.)

  Hey... You there. Don’t go away. And don’t laugh, either. My heart is fragile like glass. I’ll cry. I will.

  Er, well, never mind.

  Various and sundry circumstances led to my refusa
l to go to school; instead, I holed up in my room enjoying the neat life of a NEET. For better or for worse, though, my parents were not soft enough to let their son live the rest of his life as a shut-in.

  To put it concretely, one day they busted down my door with a chainsaw, and (as logically follows) I was out pounding the pavement soon after.

  You may be aware, though, that the economic situation these days isn’t the greatest. For an otaku whose only work experience was as a security guard in his own house, it wasn’t that easy to find a job. I didn’t even have any particular qualifications. I figured my only hope was to try to find work in a field I had some expertise in, and so I traveled to that otaku Mecca, Akihabara, where I interviewed with a particular company.

  So far, so good.

  But this was where my daily life stopped adhering to common sense.

  Believe it or not, this very first company I interviewed with greeted me with a drink of tea that turned out to have sleeping drugs in it. I drank the tea without so much as wondering whether it might be drugged, after which I was kidnapped and woke up to find myself in another world.

  You heard me. Another world. Not Kansas anymore. An actual isekai.

  Not only that, it turned out to be a fantasy land complete with dragons flying in the sky, humanoid races like elves and dwarves walking around town, and battles full of swords and sorcery. It was in this world that I was named General Manager of the general entertainment company, Amutech, an enterprise representing a pan-dimensional first. Specifically, the company had been founded to help spread otaku culture in this other world, and I had been selected to oversee it.

  Ridiculous, right?

  That’s what I thought, too. At first.

  I wondered what anyone had to gain from any of this. But things turned out to be more serious than I had ever imagined.

  You might be wondering, what do I mean by “another world,” anyway?

  Well, exactly that: a world not our own. A place where the culture, environment, and everything else is different from Earth’s.

  There’s a country here called the Holy Eldant Empire, and it turns out Japan is connected to it via a “hole” (scholars refer to it as a hyperspace wormhole) that exists underneath the Sea of Trees at Aokigahara, near Mount Fuji.