by Shouji Gatou
“Tsu?”
No, not tsu! Chi! “Chitsuda Kaname! That was it, right?”
“...Tsuchida Kanae,” she corrected him coldly. “...Goodbye.”
“W-Wait, mii! I can explain! Or maybe we’d communicate better in the language of love?”
“Stop it!” she fumed. “You... you scum!” She shoved away Tiramii’s hand and flew down the stairs.
Not even he knew how to stop her like this. He dropped to his knees and wept. “Urgh... How... how did this happen?!”
That night, after the park closed...
“Is that all for your report?” Isuzu asked.
Two others were present: Tiramii, who had been the stand-in for today, and Moffle, who would be the stand-in for tomorrow.
“Yeah... that about does it, mii,” Tiramii said, looking haggard. She had accepted his explanation about the unacceptable emails being caused by his phone’s auto-correct, but that apparently wasn’t the main thing wearing at him.
“Then other than your problems emailing me, nothing in particular happened. Correct?”
“Yeah... sure...” Tiramii was clearly being evasive, but Isuzu (having done questionable things herself) chose not to press him.
“I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “Kanie-kun has recovered, thanks to the considerable rest he’s been getting these past few days. His mood has improved and he’s lashing out less. I would prefer to keep this up, if possible.” Seiya had been more diligent about his office work, and milder with his employees as well. His usual brooding atmosphere was gone, and he was enjoying his nightly conversations with Latifah. It was shocking how much a person could change when you relieved their stress and exhaustion. It was quite pleasing to see.
“So, Lord Moffle, it will be your turn tomorrow,” Isuzu said. “Can you handle it?”
“Leave it to me, fumo.” Moffle thumped his chest and gazed into the distance. “But... high school, eh? That takes me back, fumo... I came out of Fluffy-Wuffle Military High, myself.”
Fluffy-Wuffle Military High was well-known in Maple Land; it was an elite school, run directly by the military. The Royal Guard Cadet Corps that Isuzu had attended was roughly equivalent to middle school in the mortal realm, so she had known of FluffWuff High as one of her options after graduation. Since her grades had been so excellent, though, she hadn’t had to attend FluffWuff High herself—she’d skipped ahead to the Royal Guard Officer’s School.
“Those days were something, fumo. We all lived in the dorms, and the older students never let up on us. They got us up at 5:30 a.m., and if we didn’t make our beds just right, they’d beat us with their fists, fumo.”
More high school reminiscences, Isuzu thought wearily.
“Really, mii? The whole time I’ve been here, you never mentioned that, mii.”
“You knew I was in the army, right, fumo? That’s where I met Macaron. I had my commission and he was an NCO, fumo. He was a sniper during Operation Sweet Storm who... ah, but never mind that. Well, it’s funny to think of Macaron calling me ‘sir’ back then. Certainly hard to imagine now, fumo.”
Isuzu had never heard these stories before. She actually wanted to hear more, but Tiramii immediately switched back to high school talk. “Mii. You have any good times at that school?”
“Oh, not at all. I mostly remember the suffering, fumo. Getting beat up for joint liability, taking care of the guys on the cusp—it was a gray three years, fumo.”
“Hmm... any women?” Tiramii asked. “Any action?”
“No, fumo. There weren’t any girls there. The most fun we ever had was... ah, yeah. Getting to eat out on days we had leave, fumo.”
“What a boring way to spend your youth, mii.”
“Moffu. ...But the idea of ‘beautiful youth’ is an invention of TV dramas, isn’t it? The real thing’s mostly awkward, or boring and rote. Real youth is a dark and brooding time if you ask me, fumo.”
“Is that so, mii?”
“That’s so, fumo.” Moffle folded his arms and nodded, his expression oddly confident.
Isuzu cleared her throat and tapped on the packet of documents on her desk. “Philosophical discussions aside... if tomorrow passes without incident, we’ll move to keep the plan going, and draw on a greater stable of cast members to fill in for him in the future. We’re counting on you, Lord Moffle.”
“You know I can handle it, fumo,” Moffle snorted.
“I’ll be going to school tomorrow, too,” Isuzu told him.
“As you like, fumo.”
The next day...
As expected, Moffle was a perfect fill-in for Kanie Seiya. He just kept his mouth shut and projected an aura that made him seem unapproachable—and as he’d thought, the boy didn’t have any friends. Fortunately, Moffle wasn’t a nicotine addict like Macaron, so he’d be able to hold off on smoking until after school was over, and while classes were rather boring on the whole, he found some scraps of interest here and there, rather like the Open University programs he sometimes watched when the mood struck him. Most of all, this mundane high school nonsense was a breeze compared to spending each morning running ten kilometers while chanting, “FluffWuff High is invincible! Our spirits will never be broken!” and such.
Moffu. Although... It was strange. A lot of students seemed to be glaring at him; girls, mostly. There were girls who watched him from a distance and whispered to each other; girls who wrinkled their noses and backed off when they noticed him; girls who stared daggers at him when he was just passing by...
Hmm... Strange, fumo. Lone wolf students weren’t usually treated this harshly, were they?
When they changed classrooms for third period, a girl from the class next to his—she seemed the strong-willed type—stage-whispered to a friend of hers: “He’s got some nerve, coming to school after what he did...”
There were no other students around him, so it seemed clear that she was talking about him (Seiya). He could have just ignored it, but he decided it would be best, for future reference, to find out what was going on.
Moffle walked up to the girl. “Ah, excuse me...”
“Wh-What do you want?” the girl asked.
“You just said ‘after what he did.’ Were you referring to me? If so, I’d like to hear more about it.” He asked it casually, as much like Kanie Seiya would as he could.
But the girl tensed up, as if clearly on her guard. “I... I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Tsuchida-san?”
“Tsuchida?” he asked. “Who’s that?”
“Playing dumb? Really? You really are scum,” she spat, then swiftly walked away with her friends.
“Hmm...” He folded his arms and thought. Scum? She was clearly taking about Kanie Seiya... It wasn’t exactly his business how the people at school thought about the boy, but given the circumstances, he couldn’t just look the other way. Had Seiya done something? No, Seiya was too earnest (surprisingly enough) for that... At the very least, you couldn’t call him “scum.”
Fourth period ended and lunch break arrived. Moffle immediately summoned Isuzu behind the school building to talk.
“I feel like people are giving me the hairy eye...” he observed. “You have any idea why that might be?”
“Yes. Um. Well...” Isuzu said evasively.
“What kind of response is that? Speak up, fumo. I can’t do my job if I don’t know what’s going on.”
“......” Isuzu wasn’t sure what to tell him.
“Ah, fine, fumo. I’ll call Seiya, fumo. I’m not getting anywhere like—”
“Wait,” Isuzu interrupted as Moffle pulled out his smartphone. “...The truth is...”
“Moffu. The truth is...?”
“...Kanie-kun doesn’t know about it,” Isuzu confessed. “On my first day as his stand-in, I ended up in a difficult situation...” She explained about her getting the love letter on the first day; about how Macaron had apparently done something the next day, and Tiramii the day after; then about the terrible rumors that were spreading abo
ut Seiya when she arrived at school today.
“I haven’t found out the details,” she told him. “But it seems you did something awful to that Tsuchida girl. I’ve done some asking around, and there are a few different versions—”
Isuzu had heard several different things. That he’d pinned Tsuchida Kanae to the floor. That he’d tentacle-raped Tsuchida Kanae and gotten her all slimy. That he’d drugged Tsuchida Kanae and gotten her so loopy she’d done the “double peace sign ahegao.” That he’d gotten Tsuchida Kanae to a pregnancy ending and pressed his ear happily to her belly. All kinds of things.
“One way or another,” she concluded, “it sounds like his behavior was something outrageous.”
“I’m not sure how she’d get to a pregnancy end in just a day... but anyway, this is serious, fumo.”
“Macaron... he’s a level-headed person,” Isuzu pointed out. “I think the direct cause is most likely Tiramii.”
“That mongrel! Next time I see him I’m going to stuff him with onions, fumo!”
“I bear some responsibility in the matter, too. I didn’t tell him about what happened with Tsuchida Kanae...”
“Moffu! It’s true, that’s not like you either, fumo. What in the world—”
“It just slipped my mind,” she admitted.
“A rare thing like a love letter? I find that hard to—”
“It. Just. Slipped. My. Mind.” She plunged a hand under her skirt and glared at him threateningly. Moffle, cowed, decided to let it go.
“W-Well... all right, fumo. Anyway, we need to think up a plan. If we don’t, Seiya may lose his good name entirely, fumo.”
“He didn’t have a good name previously,” Isuzu said. “So... I think he’ll be fine.” It was a terrible thing to say so offhandedly.
“You don’t feel any sense of responsibility, fumo?”
“Of course I do,” she told him. “But Kanie-kun has grown quite hedonistic with these few days off. Relaxing over tea with the princess at night... I’m starting to think he might prefer it this way.”
“Hey,” Moffle objected.
“Anyway, Lord Moffle. Hearing you talk that way while looking like Kanie-kun is strangely annoying. Can’t you do something about it?” Isuzu asked.
“You really need to show more remorse, fumo...”
“...I’m just flustered. I can’t think of a plan, and I don’t know what to do.” She said it all matter-of-factly and expressionlessly, as usual.
If she was feeling the way she claimed to, he wished she’d have the decency to look a little depressed or panicked. He wouldn’t ask her to be openly crying, of course, but... no, no. This was just the kind of person Sento Isuzu was. It seemed the best course of action would be for Isuzu to meet this Tsuchida girl face-to-face and ask her what happened. Then, they could figure out how to apologize to her from there. But just as Moffle was about to propose that...
“Kanie-kun! Is this where you were hiding out?!” shouted a female voice.
A group of female students had just arrived behind the school building.
The group consisted of four girls, none of them familiar to Moffle. The one who had shouted was a willful-looking girl, with hair just past her shoulders.
“That’s Terano-san from class 2-5,” Isuzu whispered to Moffle. “She’s the leader of a group of girls. The panicked-looking one behind her is Tsuchida Kanae, the girl at the heart of this. The others must be Terano’s flunkies.”
“Thanks for the explanation,” he muttered back. “So this is pretty bad, right, fumo?”
“It certainly seems that way...” Isuzu further explained that the other two were named Yamamoto and Sasaki. They looked fairly forgettable, and he was impressed that she could remember their names. Moffle himself was bad with names, so he forgot them three seconds later.
At any rate, that Terano girl seemed to be on the attack. She parked herself in front of Moffle (Seiya) and spoke. “Do you remember me? I’m Terano Mutsumi. We were in the same class in first year.”
“Ah... ahh. Yeah,” he said. “Of course.”
“You really are a liar,” she accused him.
“...?” Moffle hesitated, unsure of what to say.
“We weren’t in the same class at all!” Terano fumed.
“Ugh...” Starting off with a light jab, Moffle thought. This girl’s come ready for an all-out brawl.
“Maybe I’m nothing to you, but I still can’t forgive you,” Terano told him. “You hurt Tsuchida-san, you know that?”
“Hmm... Moffu. Well, there was a... procedural issue, of sorts.”
“I heard everything, you know,” she said. “Exactly what is your problem? Well?”
“Ahh. Moffu. Hmm, what to say... I feel it would be inappropriate to comment until the complaint is officially reviewed...”
“Quit screwing around!” she shouted in a voice that sent a shockwave rippling through the air around them. Even Moffle was stunned into silence; the other girls all went ramrod straight and gulped. “Tsuchida-san was already in a difficult position! You knew that, but then you took her out and treated her like a plaything! It’s unbelievable! She was serious about you! Is that how you seduced her, too?!”
By “her,” she probably meant Isuzu. Despite being treated almost like a mistress, Isuzu said nothing, and just seemed to be watching things unfold silently.
“Ah...” Moffle said. “We’re just coworkers, actua—”
“You get pretty cozy with your coworkers, huh?” Terano sneered.
“Really, our relationship isn’t like tha—”
“You think I’ll buy that, huh? You really are scum. Everyone’s been walking on eggshells around you, and you’ve just been jerking them around. Kimura-kun was so traumatized he stayed home in bed today, you know!”
“K-Kimura?” Another name he didn’t recognize. Give me a break already!
Tsuchida Kanae took that moment to speak up, hesitantly. “T-Terano-san... It really isn’t that bad... Please don’t be too mean to Kanie-kun...”
“Huh?! What did you say, Tsuchida-san? He almost did something awful to you yesterday, right? You were all trying to do your best by each other, while he was just satisfying himself! And he’s got her and that Shiina girl, too! He’s a triple-timing creep!” While Terano ranted away, her two friends (Moffle had already forgotten their names) nodded along in agreement.
“Um... Shiina?” he asked cautiously.
“That first year, Chujo Shiina!” Terano shouted back. “I’ve learned all about her, you know!”
“Ahh, Shiina, eh...” Tiramii, listen to me. If you did anything to Shiina, I’m really going to lose my temper at you, fumo (in a substitute father sense). ...Though thinking about it now, he’d told him what his relationship with Shiina was like last week when they were drinking at Savage. Even a fool like Tiramii had a bit of common sense—he should know better than to make a pass at a girl about to make her singing debut at the park, too. What they were suggesting was hard to imagine. “Are you sure there isn’t some mistake?” he asked.
“Absolutely not! Tsuchida-san told me!” Terano blustered. “You took Tsuchida-san to some abandoned spot and tried to do awful things to her with your little trained toy, Chujo Shiina!”
“I-I never said that!” Tsuchida objected.
“Shut up, Tsuchida-san! That’s the gist, isn’t it?!” Terano snapped at the panicking Tsuchida.
Moffu... Moffle was starting to get an idea of these girls’ group dynamic. The leader was Terano; the two others were her flunkies. Then there was Tsuchida, who was on the bottom of the hierarchy. Terano had lost her temper when she heard Tsuchida’s story, and she’d been building the story up in her mind as time went on. Despite that, the fact that they called each other “-san” suggested that their relationship must be a rather shallow one. So this Terano girl didn’t know Tsuchida very well, yet she’d come out here to get angry on her behalf—was it possible that Terano was actually just using this situation to assert her group domi
nance? Still, I doubt I’ll be able to use that against them...
As expected, Tsuchida spoke up immediately with a clarification. “I-I ran away before he could, and he was acting so strangely at the time...”
“You’re just biased! He got a lewd email from that Sento woman, didn’t he?” Terano demanded. “She was bragging about all the perverted things they were going to do that night—”
“Enough,” said Isuzu, unable to endure it any longer. “I swear by the Goddess Libra that I have no such relationship with Kanie-kun. If that Tsuchida woman is telling you that I do, then she is lying,” she finished in a harsh whisper.
Terano smirked. “Huh? Oh, please, like Kanie-kun’s woman is a credible witness. And who the heck is Libra?”
“If you don’t know, then perhaps I shall show you. The wrath of Libra...” Isuzu was about to pull out her musket, but Moffle stopped her.
“Don’t,” he told her shortly.
“But General...” Isuzu protested.
“I said no, fumo.” The words by themselves wouldn’t sound too bizarre, except that in practice, Moffle (Seiya) had said them while stopping Isuzu from reaching under her skirt.
Terano and her gang were looking even more confused. “A-Anyway, you’ve trampled on her pure heart! Apologize at once!”
“I’m sorry (fumo).” Moffle bowed immediately. He looked like Seiya now, so he wasn’t ashamed to do it at all.
“That’s not sincere!” Terano scoffed. “Get on your hands and knees!”
“Okay. I beg of you, forgive me (fumo).” Moffle got down on all fours. He looked like Seiya now, so he wasn’t ashamed to do it in the slightest.
“You’ve given her a traumatic memory and scarred her for life!” Terano raved. “You’d better stay away from her forever!”
“Okay, I’ll stay away (fumo).” He nodded fervently while still on all fours. He looked like Seiya now, so he wasn’t ashamed to do it whatsoever.
Ahh, darn it, he thought, nonetheless. All this nonsense about love and pure feelings... it’s making me want to tell her off.