Outbreak Company: Volume 4 Read online

  The government higher-ups may (or may not) have thought that fellow humans would be easier to deal with than outright aliens, but in any event, they sent a small cadre of researchers and planners to open intercourse with this world under a veil of utmost secrecy. Eventually, Japan succeeded in establishing a certain level of diplomacy. All of this without any foreign country or even most people in Japan ever finding out.

  Of course, the government had good reason to keep this discovery secret.

  We were talking about another world, here. One that, investigation revealed, was at a technological level roughly equivalent to Middle Ages Europe in our own world.

  Did that mean that all the resources we were worried about running out of on “our side” might be found there? Did it mean there might be untouched precious minerals or biological resources of kinds we had never even encountered? Maybe it even meant that in the future, this newly discovered world would be a source of labor and a new market.

  If any of these very attractive possibilities proved true, Japan wanted an exclusive claim on them, and that meant keeping the hole, and the world on the other side of it, absolutely secret.

  As it happened, the very first expected hurdle—communication—was quickly overcome when it turned out the unique magic here allowed people to understand each other well enough to get along.

  The problems started after that.

  They had managed to make first contact, and even to communicate successfully. But they just couldn’t seem to get any further than that.

  Actually... that sounds like a lot of romantic relationships I’ve heard about...

  Japan just couldn’t find a way to increase its Affinity with the new country it had discovered, the Holy Eldant Empire.

  After all—not to be repetitive, but this was a nation in a completely different world that they were dealing with. It had a history and culture completely distinct from Japan’s, which meant the things its people were interested in were different too.

  Differing systems of currency made economic exchange hard, so it wasn’t really possible just to buy their interest. Japan could offer goods in kind instead, but if they weren’t careful, their new friends might realize Japan was just after fresh resources. Above all, the hyperspace tunnel wasn’t big enough to allow for the transportation of large volumes of material—not to mention that pouring too much down the hole might attract the attention of foreign nations.

  So it had to be something you could carry across.

  Something harmless.

  And, ideally, cheap.

  Hey! What about traditional Japanese craft products, then?

  It turned out they didn’t make much sense to the Eldant Empire, and weren’t well received.

  At the end of its rope, Japan tried everything it could think of. And wouldn’t you know it—the thing that got the best response from the Eldant people was Japanese subculture entertainment. In other words, otaku stuff like manga and anime.

  Fair enough. The Japanese government resolved to conduct diplomacy with the Empire via a trade policy focused on otaku culture. The first step in this plan was to establish Amutech, General Entertainment Company, in this alternate world. It was actually funded jointly by Japan and the Eldant government.

  That was all well and good, but exactly what works should they bring over here?

  The Japanese government was bereft of anyone with the sense to judge such a thing. Theoretically, there were a few measurements they could have used, but when the government gets involved with subculture, bad things tend to happen. They just think too bureaucratically, or maybe it’s the top-down approach to something the brass considers beneath them. Whatever the case, even the government officials seemed to realize they were asking for trouble.

  It became their mission to find someone with the subjective sense to make these calls. It would be best if it were someone who was readily expendable if things went south. And by a series of coincidences, the person they chose—by which I mean the person they forcibly dragged off to the Holy Eldant Empire—was me, now former home security guard Kanou Shinichi.

  I liked us all to eat together as much as possible.

  I guess it wasn’t exactly what you would call a corporate policy of Amutech, but it was a practice I liked to encourage in the mansion I was renting. It was my call; apparently, it wasn’t typical in the Eldant Empire, but that didn’t bother me.

  “Bon appétit!” I clapped my hands together and then reached out for my knife and fork. Everyone else, all five of them, took my words as the signal to start eating.

  By the way, although I liked us to eat together, the food we were eating varied from person to person. This had less to do with “favorite foods” and more to do with racial differences. A quick census of our breakfast table showed we had people of four different races eating together—human, half-elf, lizardman, and werewolf. And biologically, each species was a little bit different.

  As you might imagine, this made food preparation a pretty serious task.

  “Do you like it, Master?” Myusel asked, cocking her head like a sparrow. She sat beside me, her flaxen hair tied into a ponytail. She was wearing a maid outfit—as that suggested, she worked in this mansion as a maid. In fact, it was usually her job to make breakfast. It had to be a lot of trouble to prepare meals that were to each person’s taste, and a little different each day, but she did an exemplary job and never complained.

  “It’s delicious.” I smiled, wolfing down my food.

  To top it all off, Myusel was an excellent cook. This was the first time I had eaten a girl’s homemade cooking (I have a younger sister, incidentally, but Shizuki never once showed any interest in anything resembling cooking), so it’s entirely possible my perceptions were colored by the moe-ness of it, but Minori-san and Elvia seemed to agree that the food was good, so it probably really was.

  “That’s wonderful,” Myusel said, a happy grin spreading over her face.

  Ahhhh!

  An energetic and beautiful young woman whose joy and sorrow followed from my every word! And she was a maid and a half-elf! What a dramatic overachiever! We had been living together for more than six months now, but every single day at breakfast I thought I might die from the moe.

  I had been worried that the whole thing with Minori-san earlier might have left a bad taste in Myusel’s mouth, but it didn’t look like she was remotely worried about it. Still, I would have to be sure to clear things up with her later, just because.

  It was a relief, though.

  “Um...” But it was Myusel who spoke up first, a cloud passing over her face. “I’m... very sorry about earlier.”

  “Huh?”

  I froze. When she said earlier, she could only mean the ruckus in the hallway. But what did she have to apologize for?

  “I was just... so surprised, I left without asking for permission...”

  “Huh? Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re fine!” I said quickly. “Just, don’t get the wrong idea. Please?”

  “The... The wrong idea?” Myusel said hesitantly.

  “I mean, Minori-san and I aren’t— we weren’t—”

  “I think he’s trying to say they weren’t copulating,” interjected the beast girl on the other side of me. Had her comment just saved my skin or doomed me?

  The beast girl was Elvia Harneiman. As I’ve mentioned, she was a demi-human with animal ears and a tail. Pretty much literally a werewolf.

  She claimed to be an itinerant artist, but it turned out she was actually a spy sent to the Eldant Empire by the neighboring kingdom of Bahairam. Normally, given that this was a Middle Ages-type world where the main thing people wanted to know about human rights was whether they were edible, the punishment for spying would be immediate execution. But... well, let’s just say it’s complicated, but Elvia was now under my care as our resident illustrator.

  So now you’re up to speed.

  Elvia was generally affable, a typical cute beast girl, and that was all well and good—but she co
uld also be a little rough around the edges. Sometimes I wished she would be just a little more sensitive to the mood in a room when she spoke.

  “C-C-Copula—!”

  There, see? Myusel was left speechless again. Her skin, white as a pearl, had gone red with embarrassment, and although it was adorable, Elvia’s unfortunate choice of words threatened to make things much more awkward than they needed to be.

  “Elvia...”

  “Aw, I was a li’l surprised at first, too,” she said, and then she laughed. Unlike Myusel, she had stuck around, and as a result had a pretty good idea of what had actually happened.

  “What is it you’re talking about?”

  The question came from my left, where Brooke was seated. Brooke Darwin. He was a servant—really, the groundskeeper—at this house, and he was a lizardman.

  As a demi-human, he was technically in the same category as Elvia, but whereas werewolves looked a lot like people who just happen to have fuzzy ears and tails, lizardmen were exactly the opposite. They may have had a basically humanoid shape, but mostly they looked (you guessed it) like lizards. Conical facial structure, big jaws, scaly reptilian skin. The sort of creature kids might imagine hiding under their beds.

  Naturally, lizardman expressions were almost unreadable, and their speech always sounded oddly slow, so it could be hard to guess what they were thinking.

  Nonetheless, at heart Brooke was a really decent guy, and I knew well that despite being a reptile he could act very “hot-blooded.” Recently he had begun to open up a little, and would even join the breakfast conversation from time to time.

  “Er, actually—”

  “This morning Shinichi-sama jumped Minori-sama in the hallway!”

  “Elvia!!”

  How could she sound so pleased with herself when she was making an announcement practically calculated to cause misunderstanding?

  “I told you, it was all a mistake!” I said in a panic. “It just so happened that I was staring at Minori-san’s chest and her buttons—wait! Let me start that again!”

  “Uh-huh...” Brooke nodded his long head slightly. For better or for worse, I couldn’t tell if it was a gesture of surprise or exasperation.

  “It’s a mistake, I swear,” I said. “I mean, yes, I did push her over, that’s true, I can’t deny it, but—an accident! It was an accident!”

  I was desperate to get the words out of my mouth. Somehow being stared at by Brooke’s lidless eyes made me blather; it was as though his gaze made even the slightest shred of guilt on my conscience multiply until it became impossible to bear. I mean, not that I had a guilty conscience! Not at all!

  Finally, Brooke nodded. “I understand, Master. You want Minori-san t’ bear your eggs.”

  “I really don’t think you understand, Brooke!”

  Actually, I had been under the impression that Brooke and I had managed to connect with each other to a certain extent—but maybe I had been imagining things.

  “Oh...”

  “He’s right, Brooke,” said our other maid from across the table. “Humans don’t lay eggs.”

  Nobody spoke. She was right, as far as it went.

  Now, I use the word “maid,” but I doubt you’re imagining exactly who was sitting at my table. For starters, maids don’t usually have scales.

  Yes: sitting across from Brooke was another lizardman.

  Cerise Darwin, Brooke’s wife.

  Being female, she was physically smaller than Brooke, but she was still a lizardman. Let’s just say a maid outfit didn’t look quite right on her. Not only was her body the wrong shape for it, but the intimidating cast of her face made the uniform seem altogether inappropriate. (I understand this may not sound like the politest thing to say about Cerise.)

  “I see. Yes, you’re right.”

  “Indeed,” Cerise said, and she and Brooke nodded at each other. “By the way, Brooke, would you like another apple?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a bit.”

  “Here you are.”

  Gosh, it’s like they’re off in their own little world.

  Their faces looked about as distinguishable to me as two statues, but they projected a bubble of genuine friendship with a diameter of about two meters. I was certainly glad that Brooke and his wife seemed to be happy together, but the whole “Look at us get along!” thing was just... you know.

  ...Who’s jealous? I’m not jealous. I’m definitely not thinking: You can take your dumb, fulfilled life and—and blow it up! Blow it all up! I am not thinking that even for a second. Lonely? The word isn’t even in my vocabulary.

  “Look, that’s not the point,” I said, waving my hands. “The whole idea that I shoved her over is a mistake! When I fell over, I just happened to take her with me! Honest! Minori-san? Come on, back me up!” I turned to my alleged partner in crime, looking for support.

  Incidentally, Minori-san had changed back into her usual outfit. It was still a bit damp, but it would hardly do for her to keep destroying Myusel’s uniforms.

  I had to admit, it was a real shame. She had looked awfully good in that outfit.

  “How about you take a deep breath and calm down?” Minori-san said with a grin. “When you protest too much, you start to look pretty suspicious.”

  “Erk... But...”

  “Oh, but Minori-sama,” Elvia said eagerly, “it may’ve been an accident, but you didn’t look too unhappy.”

  “I guess not,” Minori-san said with a slight smile, the picture of composure. “That’s the first time anything like that has ever happened to me, and it was definitely a surprise. But it sort of helped me understand how it feels to ‘bottom,’ and that’s important knowledge for someone like me. But yes, it was an accident, and no one has to worry about it.”

  Phew. How adult.

  Wait, though... What was that about bottoming?

  I had pretty much straight-up sexually harassed her, and she was going to pass it off by looking at it like that? The fujoshi mind was opaque to me............... Hey.

  Something suddenly occurred to me.

  “Ahem. Minori-san?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you mean you don’t have a boyfriend?”

  “I’m a boyfriendless wonder of an old maid of a spinster, yes. What about it?”

  “Er, nothing.” She was awfully forthright about it. “I’m just surprised. You seem like someone who’d be really popular.”

  “Maybe you could not stare at my chest while you say that.”

  “Sorry.”

  But that’s where the boobs are!

  “I just mean, you must have met lots of nice guys, notwithstanding home security guards like me.”

  “Hrmm... Well...”

  I don’t mean to make this entirely about her chest. Minori-san had a really pretty face, too. Kind of childish and cute. When combined with her modest, restrained expressions, it was really moe. It gave the sense that being with her would be really... comfortable, I guess. Healing. I had to think there were plenty of guys who would go for someone like that.

  I knew there were lots more men than women in the military, too, so I assumed that if anything, Minori-san would be flooded with suitors, so many that it would actually become a problem. Maybe she just had really high standards or something?

  “Minori-san, is your type—”

  “Oh, say, Shinichi-kun,” Minori-san jumped in, ruthlessly changing the subject. Hey—was she dodging me? “You’re going to the castle today, aren’t you?”

  “Huh? Uh, yeah, I think so...”

  “Cool. Well, I’ve got to go get ready, then. Breakfast was great! Sorry to eat and run.”

  She stopped eating and stood up. I could see she still had some food left. Not enough to warrant a “How can you waste that?” but pretty unusual for someone who was normally as thorough cleaning her plate as Minori-san was.

  Maybe she really was trying to avoid that question, I thought distantly as I watched her leave the room.

  Then again, she seem
ed to have some interest in love as a topic of discussion—or at least, she wasn’t above teasing me and Myusel or Elvia. That meant the subject wasn’t completely off-limits.

  Was she just uncomfortable being the center of attention when it came to that? Could she be one of those girls who looked all mature on the outside, but way deep-down was an inexperienced, shy maiden?

  Oh, man. That is wicked moe.

  As I sat there thinking my usual ridiculous thoughts, I decided for the time being to focus on the breakfast in front of me.

  The Holy Eldant Empire.

  As I explained earlier, this other-world nation was the entity with which I was to do commerce.

  The Eldant Empire, it seemed, was a large country even by the standards of this world, which was rife with multiethnic and military states. As the name suggested, it was run under an imperial system, meaning power was located with an emperor or empress.

  In this case, it was the latter—specifically, Petralka an Eldant III, the current head of state.

  I know the words Imperial Majesty can conjure up images of a beard-stroking old man, but Petralka was as far from that picture as you could get. She was young—in fact, she practically looked like a little girl. Her actual age wasn’t so different from mine, but her youthful appearance rendered her adorable; she looked like she could just put on a little backpack and trundle off to school. Yet she was the ruler of this nation.

  She wasn’t just cute, either. She was also genuinely beautiful, startlingly so. Her long silver hair and big, green eyes evoked jewels, while her neat facial features were the picture of well-born class. Truly, her beauty exemplified what it means to be of noble birth. The tiaras and dresses she was frequently outfitted in never appeared to “wear her”; in fact, on her, they looked completely natural.

  You could almost say she looked like one of those big antique dolls—it was almost hard to believe she breathed the same air and ate the same food as the rest of humanity. Sometimes you hear it said that an emperor isn’t defiled by natural human bodily functions. With Petralka, you could almost believe it.

  Anyway—

  It was part of my job to go see that empress once every three days. Amutech, the general entertainment company that I worked for, was a joint venture between Japan and the Holy Eldant Empire, so Petralka was, in a sense, my boss. I had an obligation to let her know how business was going. Then again, to be honest, I probably would have gone to see her periodically even without that duty. Professional relationship aside, I considered Petralka a friend.