Outbreak Company: Volume 14 Read online

  Chapter 1: Ama-no-Iwato?

  The clattering of the cart reverberated through the hallway. I tried to walk quickly but carefully, making sure the food on the dish riding on the cart didn’t spill anywhere. When I brought food to his room, I covered it with a cloche to keep dust off, but it wouldn’t stop the food from gradually going cold, starting the moment I put it on the plate. It couldn’t reach him fast enough.

  Shinichi-sama had said once that food was delicious when it was served so hot you had to blow on it while you ate, and so whenever I served anything grilled or fried, I made sure to heat the plate ahead of time by soaking it in hot water, and furthermore, I was careful to serve it in a timely manner.

  “Shinichi-sama...”

  In just a matter of moments, I was outside his door. A door I had become intimately used to seeing—or at least passing by. The door to the room of my master, Shinichi-sama.

  And yet, I felt a hesitation as I went to knock. Obviously I couldn’t just stand out here; the food would go cold, and nothing good would come of that. So I took a deep breath, knocked, and called out. “Shinichi-sama, it’s Myusel. I’ve brought your dinner.”

  Shinichi-sama was on the other side of the door; he had to be. He must have heard me speak to him. I strained my ears so as not to miss the slightest sound emanating from the room, and I detected motion within. My ears, the bequest of my elven blood, could hear Shinichi-sama getting up and coming over to the door.

  Today—today, at last, he would let me see his face.

  Such, at least, was the hope that flared faintly in my chest. But...

  “Oh...”

  The door didn’t open; instead, a single sheet of paper was slid out underneath it. I knelt and retrieved it. It contained a short sentence in Ja-panese. I haven’t any education, so I can’t read or write the Eldant language, but Shinichi-sama was kind enough to teach me his own, so that I can read hiragana easily.

  Just leave it there, the note said. Please.

  It was in Shinichi-sama’s handwriting; I would know it anywhere. He had been kind enough to write the whole thing in hiragana so it would be easy for me to read.

  “U-Um... Sir...!” I spoke almost before I knew what I was doing, clutching the piece of paper. But I didn’t know how to continue, so I didn’t say anything at all. Trying to make excuses at this point would just be pitiful. All I could do was wait for Shinichi-sama’s anger to pass.

  I only let out a sigh and parked the cart next to the wall. “It’s right beside the door,” I said, but as I expected, there was no answer. “Shinichi-sama...”

  I turned and went toward the kitchen, back down the hallway the way I had come.

  As I walked, I un-crinkled the note in my hand and looked at it again. How many was this now? Breakfast, lunch, and dinner—three notes a day. I had lost track of how long it had been since Shinichi-sama had shut himself up in his room. I got one of these pieces of paper each time I brought him a meal, but I never saw his face, or even heard his voice.

  I was flooded with loneliness. And what was more, I was worried about Shinichi-sama’s health—though you might think it silly of me after I had subjected him to such violence.

  “Shinichi-sama...” The whisper dropped from my lips and fell to the ground. The depression was almost like a physical presence behind me, pressing in, darkening the hallway as I walked along.

  I pressed my ear to the door, listening carefully. I waited until I heard Myusel—Myusel Fourant, my maid who had so kindly brought me food—retreat safely down the hallway, and then I slowly counted to ten before I opened the door.

  I glanced right, then left—no one around. Just as Myusel had said, the cart of food was positioned neatly next to the wall. It was the sort of thing commonly used to deliver fancy Western dishes, everything placed under a half-spherical metal covering—I guess it was called a cloche. I delicately picked it up and found my dinner, all neatly arranged on a single plate.

  I pulled my dinner, the cart, and everything into my room and locked the door, then moved the plate to my desk along with a silver knife, fork, and spoon. I sat in my chair and clapped my hands together. “Itadakimasu,” I murmured, like any good Japanese does before a meal, and then I started in on the food Myusel had made for me.

  Ahh... Delicious.

  Myusel had always been an excellent cook. The food had cooled off a little, sure, but it was of such high quality that it was still good. Sure, it could add to the flavor to eat at the table with everybody jabbering around you, but savoring a meal all alone wasn’t bad, either.

  That’s right. For the past week, I had been taking my meals alone in my room. Other than taking baths and using the bathroom—both of which I did in the dead of night, when everyone else was asleep—I didn’t emerge from my room. For a while, I’d had the excuse that bandages and muscular pain had kept me bedridden, but all that was better by now.

  I spontaneously found myself a hikikomori, a shut-in, someone who wouldn’t come out of his room. This room.

  The reason... well, it went back to a commotion from a good ten days ago.

  Myusel Fourant.

  Petralka an Eldant III.

  And Elvia Harneiman.

  The three girls had been in a war for the heart of Kanou Shinichi (that’s me). To be even more direct, I had discovered that love triangles (or would that be a love square?) are hell. Of course, I hadn’t touched any of them, so I’m not sure if you can call it any kind of love shape...

  Something called “forbidden armor” had been found deep in the storehouses of Eldant Castle, and the girls had ended up wearing it. It caused them to spout their true feelings with no filter at all, and had ultimately led to a battle with me as the prize.

  In hopes of stopping them, I had put on a suit of forbidden armor myself and jumped into the fray—but then I didn’t have any filter either, and the enraged girls ended up using me as a punching bag.

  I had been on bed rest until the wounds healed. They hadn’t been hitting me so much as the forbidden armor, so despite some nasty bruises, I was back to normal in a couple of days. And honestly, the only reason it had taken that long was because, carried away by the exuberance of piloting a superweapon, I had put on a bit too much of a show and ended up unbearably sore. So being made a punching bag hadn’t actually been my main problem—although without the forbidden armor, which was designed to enhance people’s abilities in battle, taking a punch from another suit of forbidden armor would probably have caused me to explode.

  But anyway.

  Bed rest meant no school and no work, just stuck in my room reading manga and playing cell phone games to pass the time in between the meals Myusel brought me. I declined visitors, claiming I needed to focus on getting better. Since I had turned down a visit from Petralka, the Empress of the Eldant Empire, I could hardly go admitting anyone else.

  I was, if you will, a completely legitimate (?) home security guard. And you know what? It was nicer than I had expected. Even when I turned down Petralka, it wasn’t so much because I was really afraid it would somehow interfere with my recovery, but rather because I was feeling so restless.

  I had attracted the attentions of three different girls, and I found myself unable to choose any one of them. Then I had managed to tick them all off by saying everything I really thought. My heart wasn’t strong enough for me, after all that, to smile and say, “Hey, thanks for the visit!”

  It was just too much, in any number of ways.

  What other effects had the forbidden armor had? Well, maybe the girls felt better after beating me up together, because Myusel, Petralka, and Elvia were getting along famously, as if there had never been any argument, and it didn’t even seem like they were
still mad at me. But... nonetheless, it was extremely difficult for me to face any of them.

  “Sigh...”

  Just the memory of it was enough to bring a sigh to my lips. And that wasn’t even the only problem I had. Apparently, when Loek and Romilda, two of my students, had come to check on me, somebody—maybe Minori-san or Hikaru-san—had spilled the beans to them about the forbidden armor. And then—in the style of a telephone game, with some details dropping out or changing and others being added—the story of the battle had spread among the other students.

  And I could hardly go to school like that.

  I could just imagine the scene if I did: the whispers, the pointing and laughing. I wouldn’t be able to endure it. I had come to a whole separate world—had hoped to do so many things differently, and sometimes had even managed it—and here I was, still a laughingstock.

  Why does this have to happen to me?!

  Er... Well, actually, I was painfully aware of why. But the point was, here in this other world, I was a shut-in once again. That was twice now, in two different worlds. Not that I was keeping score.

  As I ate, silently, I kept my eyes fixed on the LCD monitor on my desk. It was showing the display from my computer, currently the interface screen of a gal game. An adorable 2D girl was looking at me, her eyes moist.

  So cute. She was just so sweet.

  A text window was open just below her picture, a cursor flashing as it awaited my choice. This game had been on my pile for a while, languishing with all the others I hadn’t been able to get to because I’d been busy. Now that I was finally starting it, I discovered how lovable and moe-able the heroines were.

  “Oh, sweet Haruka-tan...” I whispered, leaning forward in my chair. I hadn’t had a character hit my moe buttons so hard in a long time. She was sweet and pure, totally committed, an upright leading lady of a kind you don’t see much of these days. Yet she deliberately avoided wearing her long, black hair down, keeping it in manageable twintails instead. It was transcendent, but at the same time, she was an excellent cook, loved to do housework—really the domestic type. But it was the occasional flashes of clumsiness that really lit my fire........................

  Long pause.

  What was this feeling of déjà vu I was getting? Eh, probably nothing.

  “Anyway, I can hardly bear for this route to end! I wonder if they’ll make an anime out of this game. Or maybe we could get a sequel or a spinoff. Bah, but it would be pointless if the spinoff didn’t have Haruka-tan in it!”

  The terrible truth... was that I was enjoying my shut-in life. I had my excuses, my reasons, my proximate causes, like being embarrassed to see Myusel and the others, or being afraid of being laughed at at school. But once I had settled into this lifestyle, I kind of got stuck in it—or maybe I should say it was so comfortingly familiar, so downright pleasant, that I had trouble getting out again.

  Besides, I had all these games I hadn’t played, books I hadn’t read, DVDs I hadn’t watched. I just hadn’t had the free time. But now I had all the time I needed, and Myusel was bringing meals right to my door. I could do whatever I wanted. Okay, so I had to bathe after everyone had gone to sleep, like I mentioned, but other than that, staying shut away in my room really had no downsides.

  “I even remembered how to use a water bottle!”

  Some people might have frowned at that, but there was no one here to shoot back at me. I was alone in my room. I could eat in bed, play my gal games buck naked, it didn’t matter. No one would scold me. The girls on my monitor would just sit there smiling at me until I clicked on something.

  What release! What freedom!

  I sped through the meal Myusel had brought me, clapped my hands together again—“Go-chisou-sama!”—put the plate back on the cart, and reached for the mouse to resume my game.

  “Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo...” I couldn’t help chuckling to myself as I went back to working on the heroine.

  Let me take this opportunity to be completely honest: the shut-in life is the best!

  I looked up when I heard the long, heavy sigh. Minori-sama had her cheek pressed against the dinner table, looking rather melancholy.

  “Um, Minori-sama, was the food not to your liking?”

  “Huh?” She blinked in confusion, then shook her head quickly when she realized what I had asked. “No, no, that’s not it at all. Your cooking was the best, Myusel, just like it always is.” She smiled, although it wasn’t quite a happy one.

  Koganuma Minori-sama. Shinichi-sama’s bodyguard and a member of an organization called the Jay Ess Dee Eff. This was, I gathered, the army of Ja-pan, though when I asked Minori-sama whether I understood that correctly, she just gave me a half-smile and said I should “think of it as something a little different.” I didn’t really understand.

  But setting that aside...

  “But that sigh...”

  “Minori-san’s sigh can mean only one thing.”

  This came from Ayasaki Hikaru-sama, likewise seated at the table. Like Shinichi-sama, Hikaru-sama came to spread Ja-pan’s otaku culture in the Eldant Empire. He was originally chosen to replace Shinichi-sama, but now he was more of a subordinate, almost a companion.

  He sipped his tea luxuriously, putting the white ceramic cup to his lips, giving the slightest shake of his long, black hair. He looked quite beautiful and refined, radiating a sort of eroticism that appealed even to me, a woman. I would never be able to be as elegant as he was. Seeing him there, effortlessly beautiful, it felt like it must have been some kind of mistake that he was a man.

  “You mean... Shinichi-sama?”

  I poured him another cup of after-dinner tea, and Minori-sama gave another long sigh. “What else could it be?” she said.

  “I’m very sorry...” I bent myself nearly in half in my bow of apology.

  It was my fault that Shinichi-sama wouldn’t come out of his room.

  But Minori-sama and Hikaru-sama both shook their heads and smiled.

  “Why should you apologize, Myusel?” Minori-sama said.

  “Yeah, it’s not your fault.”

  “But—” I said, and stopped. I heard footsteps coming down the hall.

  Elf ears are not just long for show. We have much better hearing than other races. I’m just half elf, but even so, I had the best hearing of anyone in the room. I could detect the approaching footsteps even though we were right in the middle of a conversation.

  There were three people coming. I could even take a good guess who they were based on subtle differences in their footfalls.

  “No reaction at all!”

  The complaint came from a beautiful, but rather petite, girl with long, silver hair who appeared in the kitchen.

  Empress Petralka an Eldant III. She was the ruler of the Holy Eldant Empire. Normally she would never even speak to someone of my station, let alone sit at the same table as me, but for a whole host of reasons, she had taken me into her fold and in fact treated me quite well.

  “Are you certain Shinichi is in there?”

  Behind the empress came a lovely man with silver hair just like hers. Minister Garius en Cordobal was Her Majesty’s cousin and head of the country’s military, including the royal guard. Finally there came...

  “I could smell Shinichi-sama, I’m telling you!”

  Elvia Harneiman-san. She had ears and a tail like those of an animal, because she was a beast person—a werewolf. She had also once been a spy for the neighboring Kingdom of Bahairam, but now she lived at this mansion (another rather long story). It seemed neither Her Majesty nor Minister Cordobal were suspicious of her any longer, hence why she could walk casually along with them.

  Her Majesty. And Elvia-san. When it came to Shinichi-sama, they and I had... Well, we had fought. I still trembled to remember it. Elvia-san was one thing, but for me, a subject of the Eldant Empire, to do battle with the revered Empress, should have been unthinkable. It could easily have resulted in me being beheaded, but Her Majesty, in her mercy, had quickly pro
claimed that I was not to be punished.

  “She was under the control of the ‘forbidden armor.’ As we were.”

  This “forbidden armor” had an unfortunate way of bringing out whatever was most deeply buried in the wearer. We aren’t normally used to announcing our deepest secrets to everyone within hearing, or to being privy to the secrets of others. Confusion was the result, and honesty began to sound like fighting words, until we were carried away by the madness of it all. That was the primary problem with the forbidden armor. It was a bit like getting drunk on very strong wine. Thinking of it that way, it was obvious why the armor would have been forbidden.

  “Shinichi-kun can be such a handful when he wants to,” Minori-sama sighed. “Her Majesty and Garius-san specifically came here to visit him...”

  “Perhaps he failed to respond because he is collapsed in his room. Are you quite certain he is okay?”

  “Myusel brought him dinner just a few minutes ago, and got her usual ‘letter’ back.” Minori-sama showed Her Majesty and the others the note. I received one of them each time I brought food, assuring me at least that Shinichi-sama was still alive. But we hadn’t seen his face in over a week. It was possible he could be quite sick, and still be well enough to write a letter. The thought made me distinctly uncomfortable.

  “I suspect he’s fine,” Hikaru-sama said. “He’s probably just sleeping, or maybe taking a stab at that tower of unread books he had.”

  “Here you are,” I said, presenting Her Majesty, Minister Cordobal, and Elvia-san with fresh cups of tea. Incidentally, the cup for Minister Cordobal was steaming hot, but I let Her Majesty’s and Elvia-san’s cool for a few minutes before serving them. Elvia-san lived here, of course, and the other two visited with some regularity, so I had learned their preferred temperatures.

  “But in one sense, he is very ill,” Minori-sama said, her smile widening. “Though I guess I don’t blame him for feeling a little traumatized.” Feeling more than seeing her glance in my direction, I instinctively looked at the ground. Minori-sama had been present for the denouement of the events with the forbidden armor, so she could guess why Shinichi-sama had retreated to his room.