Outbreak Company: Volume 2 Read online

  By the way, Her Majesty Petralka’s eyes were green, and her hair was silver. I.e., she was the self-proclaimed “little sister” from my dream this morning.

  Admittedly, she was pretty much the embodiment of the “sassy little sister” character, so it’s possible my deep subconscious had just substituted her for my own annoying sibling. But hey, setting aside the fact that I was basically woken up by some bizarre fetish, good job, subconscious. It was a hundred times better than waking up to a dream about Shizuki.

  “Myusel,” Petralka said. “How is your health?”

  “Very good, I’m grateful to say,” Myusel said, bowing deeply once more. “And I owe it all to Your Majesty’s kind and generous—”

  “Th—The people must know that they can trust their ruler to be fair-minded in all things,” Petralka said before her praise could grow anymore fulsome. “We simply cared for you as we would for any of our subjects.”

  I think I mentioned that Myusel was wounded protecting Petralka. I found it very interesting that in such a stratified society, this one point seemed very fair. Maybe it was just Petralka. She had pretty much hated Myusel at first, but now the two more or less got along. The profound difference in their social status meant it would be wrong to call them friends exactly—especially in the castle, where other people would be watching—but apparently, they were close enough that when Myusel was released from the hospital, Petralka asked her to stop by for tea. Even the fact that Myusel, a commoner, was treated in the royal hospital, which was normally reserved for imperials and nobles, was itself a sign of how Petralka felt about her.

  I came from modern Japan, where having a tea party didn’t seem like that big a deal, but from the perspective of the Eldant nobles, who all desperately wanted to get even a little bit closer to the empress, Petralka’s attitude toward Myusel would have been something to be deeply jealous of. Not that Myusel herself seemed especially aware of this.

  “And you, Shinichi. Is your work proceeding smoothly?”

  “Yeah, no problems to speak of,” I said. “Wait... I submit a report every day. So you already know what’s going on, right?”

  “I do, but...” A shy look came over Petralka’s sweet face.

  Her Imperial Majesty the Empress was deeply interested in otaku culture. It was her backing that had allowed Amutech, the company of which I was general manager, to create a school to help establish the baseline of education that would be necessary to spread otaku culture.

  As I, a former NEET and shut-in, knew very well, manga and anime were an excellent pick-me-up. The empress had duties to attend to, and couldn’t easily go anywhere because she would have to take a contingent of bodyguards and her arrival would cause such a stir. For her, works of fiction that could help her feel better in just an hour or so would probably be a great comfort.

  “There was that... incident,” Petralka continued. “Garius is rather concerned.”

  “As well I might be.” The words came from a silver-haired hunk standing next to Petralka’s throne. He basically looked like the embodiment of the perfect knight. This went way beyond “hot”: his features were arranged just so, his hair as long as a girl’s. Like Petralka, he seemed less like a flesh-and-blood human than some delicate piece of art, so perfect it was almost scary.

  He was Garius en Cordobal. A relative of Petralka’s, and a knight, and a minister in the government on top of that. Despite his youth, he was at the top of the totem pole.

  “Your Majesty, you are the Eldant state itself,” Garius said. “We knights strive to root out evildoers wherever they may dwell, but I must beg you to care for your own person as well.”

  “Yes, we know,” Petralka said, sounding annoyed.

  Garius, too, was referring to the incident in which Myusel had been injured. A terrorist organization had taken over our newly completed school, and Petralka had been taken hostage. For the empress to be captured by an anti-government faction was unheard of—I gathered that many elements of the government, not least the royal guard, had been deeply shaken. I didn’t know the specifics, but I knew there had been an inquest into who was responsible, and a number of people among the royal guards and those responsible for security were severely punished. Now, I was there, and I don’t think anyone could have stopped that attack. But it sounds like some people weren’t going to be satisfied until someone was held responsible. It was just that big a deal.

  But whatever the case, since that day, Petralka had barely been able to leave the castle without a battalion of knights surrounding her. I saw it just once myself, and the sight reminded me of some old Japanese warlord traveling with their entourage. The way some royal knights rode ahead forcing everyone to kneel down so as to ensure no troublemakers could get close looked almost comedic to me.

  Now, of course, it was impossible for Petralka to sneak away to visit my mansion or school. I went to the castle once every three days like this because it was so much harder for her to come to me.

  But getting back to the present...

  “Honestly, I’m a little surprised,” I said. “How do I put this? People are really picking it up fast.” As I spoke, I pictured my students in the back of my mind. I wasn’t trying to be flattering. The students at my school were soaking up the basic knowledge we offered astonishingly quickly, like sponges. There were even several people who could hold basic conversations without the rings—in other words, who had learned actual Japanese.

  “Mm. Indeed. All of our subjects are exceptionally intelligent,” Petralka said.

  Admittance to the school wasn’t limited to the children of the nobility, but even so, no matter what race you came from, only families with a certain amount of spare resources could afford to send their children to study. There wasn’t much we could do about that.

  Dry land soaks up water, as they say. Eldant was in a state of near war with its neighbor. There were no full-on attacks, but there was an ongoing series of border skirmishes, leaving the Eldant Empire without much room to develop culture. The whole populace, nobles as well as commoners, were starved for entertainment.

  And then, in comes Japan’s highly developed amusement industry—developed in the peaceful half-century after its own war—and the people were taking to it like ducks to water. Students learned eagerly about modern Japan; they wanted anything that would allow them to have a wider and deeper experience of the entertainment we were bringing in. But...

  “Hm? What’s wrong, Shinichi?” Petralka looked at me questioningly.

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “We thought we saw a cloud pass over your face.”

  “Oh—Oh really? No, I’m totally cloudless. Er... well, not quite, but I’m fine, you know?”

  As the general manager of Amutech, I should have been elated at how things were going. But...

  “You outlanders seek to destroy our traditional values! You damnable invaders!”

  That was what Alessio, leader of Bedouna, a.k.a. the “assembly of patriots,” a.k.a. the terrorists I keep referring to, had said to me.

  Sometimes, you’re doing what you think is right, but it’s hurting someone else in some way. I couldn’t shake the thought that in that sense, what I was doing and what Alessio had done weren’t that different, even if one of us was maybe a little more self-aware than the other.

  I suspected I was just overthinking it, but I didn’t have any way of disproving what Alessio had said. It was the Japanese government that had decided to operate Amutech. I was just some schlub they had made general manager.

  “Anyway, uh, don’t worry about it,” I said. “Everything’s fine. If things go too smoothly, you just start to worry more!”

  “Is that so?” Petralka said with a wry smile. I had apparently managed to convince her that things were really okay.

  But I could see Minori-san looking at me out of the corner of her eye. Searching. Doubtful. Pitying. It bothered me a little.

  The weather was perfect. We were on top of a hill. The dens
e grass was soft as a carpet, so pleasant that I wanted to just throw myself down and lie there. In the distance, I could see craggy mountain peaks, and the clear sky seemed to go on forever. It was starting to get a little chilly, but the crispness of the air felt good. Why, I could practically have burst out yodeling right then and there.

  But there was one thing that reminded me that I wasn’t standing in the Alps or something. The airborne lifeforms here went beyond just birds. At that moment, I could see sprites that looked like some kind of flying fish soaring through the air, as well as wyverns, the dragons that served as the mounts of the royal knights.

  “Seriously, though...”

  After dropping off Myusel at the hospital in the castle, I made for the “otaku training center” on the outskirts of town—that is, the school I had established to facilitate cultural exchange. I traveled by this world’s favorite form of land transport, the bird-drawn carriage.

  “...I can’t believe I’m actually in a position to teach something to people,” I whispered to the sky.

  I had been a school non-attender where I came from, and now I was a teacher? Was this some kind of joke? Despite my misgivings, there was really no choice. My job title indicated that I was a merchant bringing Japanese otaku culture here to the Eldant Empire. If I wanted to move my goods, I would have to do more than just bring them over and leave them here. I would have to get the word out—and I would have to establish an infrastructure that would allow my products to realize their greatest value.

  That was what the school was for, and that was why I was a teacher. But still...

  “It’s been three months already. Aren’t you about used to it?”

  The comment came from Minori-san, standing beside me. But this was the one thing I couldn’t get used to.

  We went through the main gate, through the foyer, and then into the school building proper. It looked so good inside, you would never have guessed it was a converted warehouse. All I could say was, dwarves were some dedicated demi-humans, and they knew how to do good work. Nothing looked half-baked or improvised, like a movie set. There were no seams, no unnecessary gaps, no posts in the way anywhere. You would think this place had been planned as a school building from the ground up.

  “Good morning!”

  I opened the classroom door and came in, and found fifty students already there. They were all in their teens, or at least close to that by human standards. But they were from all kinds of different races. About half were human, but the other half included elves and dwarves. Sitting along one wall a short distance away was a group of adults that numbered almost as many as the students.

  These were the students’ “minders.” Basically, their servants. As I mentioned, most of the students at my school hailed from the nobility, or at least the more affluent commoner households. The families of farmers and skilled workers, where kids were usually expected to help out as soon as they could, didn’t have the leeway to send their children to school.

  A lot of noble families, though, believed that a familiarity with otaku culture would help their children get ahead in the world—not to mention the fact that the empress seemed to be crazy for it. So there were a lot of well-heeled young masters and mistresses in my tutelage—and of course, they never showed up alone.

  But anyway.

  Within half a day of issuing my initial call for students, I had filled up all fifty slots in the class. We weren’t teaching otaku culture yet—we had to start with more basic things than that, like Japanese language and all the different kinds of knowledge that went along with it.

  Personally, I wanted everyone, regardless of race or class, to be able to get involved in otaku culture. But it also seemed easiest to start with people who already had a baseline level of education and see how things went. Not to mention, the more people I got on my side with political and financial authority (Petralka was a good start), the better.

  And yet, I still found myself heaving a sigh. What upset me wasn’t specifically the fact that the students ignored me and didn’t return my morning greeting. They couldn’t have managed it if they’d wanted to. They were too busy glaring at each other.

  Today looked like yet another day of very bad classroom relations.

  “Argh, I can’t stand the smell anymore! They stink from being outdoors!” exclaimed a girl in a dress worked with elaborate gold and silver embroidery. “I can’t believe I’m in the same room with dwarves! It’s bad enough being near them outside, but indoors the stench is unbearable!”

  “I heartily agree with you, milady.” A young man who appeared to be the girl’s butler stepped away from the wall and stood next to the young woman. The butler was fair-skinned and slim, and his ears were obviously pointy—in other words, he was an elf. “Sons of merchants they may claim to be, but their roots are in the earth. I gather they’re quite talented at finding gemstones and putting up buildings, but everything they touch stinks of mud.”

  “What’d you say?!” A dwarf boy (at least, I think he was just a boy, even though he had a beard) jumped up, unable to take the humiliation any longer. He pointed at the elven butler and shouted angrily, “You elves have no pride, and I won’t sit here and be mocked by you!”

  “Pride? This when dwarves let themselves grow so fat that I can’t imagine how they ever respect themselves. Ah, you’re too terrible to look at!”

  “Shut your mouth! You forest apes aren’t good for anything but cutting down trees! You’re so pleased with your magic, but what good has it done you? If you hadn’t let the humans domesticate you, you’d be no better than animals now!”

  “S-Such an affront I have never endured! We prize harmony with nature.”

  “Harmony? Hah! You mean you prize lounging around in the woods!”

  And on and on it went. The argument spread like wildfire among the other elves and dwarves in the room, be they servants or pupils. They were beyond even just being personally insulting; this was about entire races to them. I thought I sensed a vicious cycle: hatred begat hatred. I know elves and dwarves are usually antagonists in fantasy worlds, and it looked like the demi-human races of the Eldant Empire were intent on carrying on the tradition.

  “Aw, for crying out loud,” I muttered, clutching my head. This was hardly the first time this had happened. These kinds of fights seemed to break out on a daily basis. It was bad enough that the younger people argued like this, but often the anger would spread to the adults as well, until the furor made it virtually impossible to conduct class. If Minori-san or I, both of whom had been invested with Petralka’s trust, imposed ourselves on the situation, things would quiet down, but only temporarily. The sparks were always there, and the next explosion was just a matter of time. It was all too common to hear students exchanging barbs before or after class.

  “They get along about as well as cats and dogs, don’t they?” Minori-san said from beside me.

  I could only sigh at the scene. “Equality might be a stretch, but I was hoping that by studying together they might at least learn to be a little less prejudiced...” I guess old habits died harder than I thought.

  But even knowing that, it was too late now to schedule separate classes for the different (ahem) classes. Still, there was no question that things were getting so bad in here that I would soon lose all semblance of control.

  Seriously, what am I going to do?

  I honestly didn’t have the courage to try to jump into the middle of this. It was time for my last resort.

  “Minori-san.”

  “Yes?”

  “Let’s show them how you do it in the military,” I said, clenching my fist.

  We had always planned on having Minori-san in the classroom, chiefly because we just didn’t have enough people to handle all the teaching duties. I wasn’t sure how she would do with high-level otaku instruction, but she could certainly teach the basics of daily life.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean channel your inner Sergeant Hartman!”


  “You mean abuse the students until they’re no longer able to laugh or cry? I guess I could.” She smirked. Then she stepped up to the lectern in front of the classroom.

  “All right, you maggots!” she bellowed. “Class is starting! Quiet in the ranks!”

  That’s a WAC for you. Her daily workouts had given her serious lung capacity, and she was putting it to good use. Her voice cut straight through the arguing. I usually thought of her as pretty easygoing, but when she raised her voice like that I found myself unconsciously straightening up.

  The adults shut their mouths and looked at her, and the kids followed a second later. The room suddenly fell silent.

  Wow. That’s really something.

  What a lady! She looked so laid-back, but when she decided to get tough, she was really tough. Way to go, Minori-san! It must be those giant lungs that make your chest so big!

  Such were the slightly sexual-harassment-ish thoughts of admiration running through my mind. Minori-san, for her part, was nodding in satisfaction at the students.

  “That’s better,” she said. “He”—she pointed at me—“is Kanou Shinichi, the principal of this school, and I am his assistant. He’s not your only instructor—I’m going to be at this lectern, too, and I warn you not to forget it.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am,” said one of the students. Then the rest of them chorused the same thing, their heads low. You would hardly have taken them for a group that had been at each other’s throats just moments before. Minori-san had taken control of them in a way you could only do in a feudalistic society. Then again, dictatorial control was a tenuous thing. One wrong move, and you might end up like a certain northern neighbor. It was a scary thought.

  “Okay, first we’re going to teach you some basic vocabulary that will aid in your comprehension of otaku culture.”