Outbreak Company: Volume 10

by Ichiro Sakaki

“What are you doing, anyway?” Shizuki asked with just a hint of annoyance.

  “Hm? Getting ready,” I said.

  “Are you... planning something else?” As I hefted a backpack, Shizuki frowned and took a step into the room. “You scared off those guys. Isn’t that enough?”

  “We have to go rescue the princess,” I said. “Er... although, she’s not a princess.”

  “What?” Shizuki said flatly, furrowing her eyebrows. Now she was ticked for sure. Ah, I knew this expression. It was the same look she got when me and our parents were geeking out over something and she was the only one who wasn’t part of the fun. The look was part mocking and part angry. “That’s a really creepy way of putting it.”

  “Wh-What’s creepy about it?”

  “It’s the whole let’s-pretend thing. Like you’re in a manga or something. It’s stupid. That’s why I hate otaku.”

  “Shizuki-sama...” Myusel looked distressed by Shizuki’s aggressive tone. She hated to hear me, her master, attacked like this, but the person doing it was my own younger sister, so Myusel couldn’t outright fight back—and she didn’t know what to do instead.

  I guess to an outside observer, we would have just looked like two siblings fighting. But I didn’t really think of it as a fight at all.

  “Shizuki...”

  I faced her square on. She seemed a little surprised, but she didn’t look away, just blinked and held eye contact with me. I realized it had been years probably since I had looked her full in the face like this. After all, we had hardly even talked much.

  “You’re right. Lots of manga and anime show someone defenseless or captured being saved.”

  “Huh? Er, yeah, I... I guess...”

  “But that’s perfectly normal, right?”

  My sister didn’t say anything.

  “It was manga and anime that taught me that,” I said as evenly as I could.

  I didn’t mind if Shizuki said she hated otaku. Everyone had their own tastes and preferences, and if you were free to like whatever you wanted, then I thought you were free to dislike whatever you wanted, too. I didn’t want to force her to like anime or manga or games or anything.

  But for some people, anime, manga, novels, and the like could actually be like a textbook, giving you some direction for how to live. At least, they had been for me. So if nothing else, I didn’t want her to act as if they shouldn’t exist.

  “A teacher in elementary school told me once... Manga are books, too. If you read them carefully, you can learn from them.”

  I could remember it like it was yesterday. Then, long afterwards, I had gone to Eldant. I had been used as a tool of cultural invasion. But that was all the more reason why I understood: the real question lay with the people who were being exposed to these things. It could be a poison—or it could be a cure.

  This wasn’t just true of otaku stuff—pretty much anything could be that way, I suspected. It might seem so ordinary, so widespread, as to be beneath notice. And that was exactly why people would take it for granted...

  Shizuki stood pouting for a moment, but she didn’t shoot back at me right away. She wasn’t going to pass off everything I said just because she had pigeonholed me as a “nasty otaku.” My guess was she was actually chewing on what I’d said, digesting it in her own way. I thought that explained the pout: there was still something there she wasn’t quite buying.

  Gosh. This was all I had to do: talk to her. Why hadn’t I been able to do that during my days as a home security guard?

  Despite the creeping sense of self-loathing, I smiled at Shizuki. “Shizuki, if you really thought I was just pretending... Well, I hope at least I looked good doing it.”

  “What are you, an idiot?” she said instantly, still in a perfectly awful mood.

  Wooh. I guess Shizuki was still Shizuki. I couldn’t expect us just to go back to the way we used to be; it was too much to think she might suddenly exclaim, “I love you, Big Bro!” Which I guess would be kind of embarrassing at this point, anyway.

  I watched her leave my room, then turned to Myusel with a half-grin on my face. “Did you see that? I think she was actually worried about me there.”

  “Yes, sir!” Myusel nodded, her face shining.

  “All right, shall we go?” I asked, pulling on the vest and then the backpack.

  “Uh—Um, Shinichi-sama?” Myusel grabbed my hand before I could walk out.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Well, uh...” Now that we were touching, the magic ring could work. Myusel lowered her eyes shyly and said, “Shinichi-sama, I think... I think you are always ‘cool.’”

  For an instant, my mind virtually froze in a cascade of joy.

  Her fingers touching mine seemed warm somehow; it was probably, I’m sure, most likely, just my imagination, so... on reflection, yes, it was just so we could talk, but here I was alone in my room with Myusel, holding hands, and I know maybe you’re like yeah what you’re just noticing this now? but still, uh.

  “Uh, um... th—well, thanks...” I managed to squeak out.

  Don’t be deceived, Kanou Shinichi! Myusel’s just reassuring you, she’s trying to counter Shizuki’s parting shot...!

  Arrrrgh, she is just so sweet!!

  .........etc., etc.

  Anyway, things were what they were, so I kept insisting to myself that this was all there was to it, trying to slow the furious beating of my heart. I nodded at Myusel. “L-Let’s get going, eh?”

  “Y-Yes, sir.”

  We both nodded hesitantly at each other and left the room.

  We found everyone in the living room. Petralka and Elvia were sitting listlessly on the sofa, but my dad had his laptop open and was typing away, while my mom and Shizuki had a tablet and a smartphone out, respectively.

  Matoba-san, incidentally, wasn’t here; he’d said something about having to make a report and left. He’d said he would be back soon, but there was also something about not being able to call us because the phones might be bugged. Reito-san wasn’t in the living room, either. Maybe he’d gone home. Too bad: I hadn’t had a chance to thank him for all he’d done.

  “So... Any luck?” I said, sitting down next to my father. “Did you find anything?”

  Twitter was open on his laptop. I assumed it was the same for my mom and Shizuki. What were they all doing? Well... they were using Twitter to try to find information about Minori-san.

  As some of the comments on our chasing-away-Chinese-agents video remarked, we were unquestionably internet famous now. We had been in that making-of video, and the trailer for the alleged fantasy movie. After all, that’s why there had been such a big crowd in Akihabara in the first place after news of our presence there went viral.

  This was the age of a billion spies, when everyone had smartphones or mobile devices; you could find information anywhere and upload it to the net. That was doubly so when somebody happened to see the star of a movie somewhere—a movie that had aroused controversy (I thought) and whose stars were all debuting in this film, with no prior record of them anywhere. When people spotted someone like that, they tended to take pictures, and those pictures tended to end up online.

  I’m not saying that’s inherently a good thing—there are all kinds of concerns about image-use rights and privacy and such—but in this particular case, we were willing to let it work for us. No matter how good that Russian agent was, they wouldn’t have just thrown a sack over Minori-san in the middle of Akihabara. Whatever they did—knock her unconscious, threaten her with a gun, force her into a car—there must have been people who saw it happen. Maybe even people who saw her when they moved her from the car to confinement.

  “Aww, man, this is great,” my dad said, grinning and pointing at the screen. He was doing searches on terms like Akihabara, a certain movie, and sneak tourism. “Can you believe it? Shinichi, they’re saying, ‘Explode, you damn real!’ They’re saying, ‘Explode, you damn real!’ About you! It’s so important, I said it twice!”

&nbs
p; “Why?!”

  “Because you were walking around surrounded by beautiful ladies, obviously. No matter how you cut it, it totally looks like you’ve got a harem.”

  The tweet he was talking about included a picture of me with Myusel holding one hand, Petralka holding the other, and Elvia riding on my back.

  Yikes, they even got shots of that...?!

  The internet was terrifying!

  ...Okay, this wasn’t the moment for such un-otaku-ish declarations.

  “Fine, but what about Minori-san? Did you find anything?”

  “All the searches just turn up tweets about your walk around Akiba this afternoon,” my mom said, still swiping at her tablet. “I tried searching by name, but I didn’t get anything.”

  Well, that was understandable. If you could find the name Koganuma Minori just from a picture of her face, that would already put you on a level with the CIA or some other intelligence operation. Not something the average person could do.

  “Searching for girl with big boobs and glasses gets some good stuff,” my dad said.

  “Really? Let me see!” My mom said, leaning forward.

  “Are you that interested in those pictures?!” I exclaimed.

  As an ero-game designer, my mom had seen plenty of pop-idol swimsuit photo collections, nude photo shoots by actresses, and so on, so she had a pretty high tolerance for X-rated pictures.

  “...Hey,” Shizuki broke in. “Isn’t this her?”

  She set her phone face-up on the table so everyone could see it. We all leaned in.

  On the screen was the ubiquitous Twitter app. And there was a photo, with the caption, “Spotted this lady with a huge rack in the love hotel district—and she was with a white guy!”

  “The tweet is, you know, whatever. But isn’t that her in the picture?” Shizuki asked, enlarging the image attached to the post. It showed a white man walking through the love hotel district, accompanied by a woman. The quality wasn’t great, but it was definitely Minori-san.

  “That’s her, that’s Minori-san!” I exclaimed.

  “You found her?!” Petralka shouted, jumping up from the sofa. Myusel and Elvia joined her in rushing to look at the screen.

  “Geeeez...” I said. Sure, this post helped us out—but you really couldn’t let your guard down for a second! You could be on an actual date, and someone could just sneak a bunch of photos of you and throw them up on the web. (Since people thought Minori-san was an actress, this apparently fell under what they considered to be the price of fame, a tacit understanding that it was okay to ignore her privacy.)

  “And with a white guy,” my dad said. “That’s something.”

  “How do you figure?!” I interjected before I could stop myself—but now wasn’t the time. “Where is this, anyway?”

  I’m ashamed to say I had never so much as set foot in the part of town with all the love hotels—for that matter, I had never gone to a love hotel at all, so I didn’t have the first idea where this photo might’ve been taken.

  “Looks like the time stamp is in the evening,” my dad offered, his arms crossed.

  “Look at the shop with the sign back here,” my mom said. “Isn’t that—you know?” She was pointing to a big billboard just visible behind the hotel. It looked like some sort of fast food chain... “This place is pretty well known, but I think they just put it up recently. Hmm...” She fiddled with her tablet, pulling up what looked like the home page of the restaurant. “Yeah, here it is. Hmm, Shougo-san, let me use that computer?”

  “Sure,” my dad said, passing the laptop to her.

  My mom set it on her knees, her fingers flying across the keyboard even quicker than my dad’s. “Shinichi, do you know Minori-san’s cell number?”

  “Huh? Uhh...”

  My mom was working so quick, I could barely keep up with her. I pulled out my own cell phone and gave her Minori-san’s number. Then I watched, stupefied, as she worked at the computer. And then...

  “Bingo.” After a wait that felt like forever, my mom stopped and nodded. “Minori-san’s phone was destroyed in the evening.”

  “Huh?” How could she be so sure?

  “It’s close to the time stamp on the post. So’s the location. I think that makes this post seem awfully believable, don’t you?”

  “But... But how did you...”

  What had she been doing with that laptop?!

  My mom only grinned slyly at me.

  Ahh. I knew that look. It was the expression of bliss she’d gotten long ago when I had cut some scheduled summer activity to attend a certain anime event, and she’d triumphantly given the timing of my playing hooky down to the minute. She refused to tell me how she had done it, but I’m sure she had analyzed the GPS signal from my phone. That wasn’t really something the average person could do, though...

  “That’s Mom for you,” my dad said, slapping his knees.

  Uh, was this really praiseworthy? It seemed like maybe we were awful close to the wrong side of the law. But I let those doubts pass through my brain without letting them out my mouth.

  “Mom, could you look at that location in Google Street View?”

  “I’m on it.”

  We would compare the picture with Minori-san to the street view of the location where her cell phone was destroyed. If they were the same, we were locked on.

  My mom turned the laptop toward me so I could see the screen. It showed the same place as the photo of Minori-san.

  Deliberately imitating my mother, I said, “...Bingo.”

  Now we had a pretty good idea of where Minori-san was being held. The only thing left to do was act.

  I put on the backpack stuffed with sprite bottles, magic stones, and the captured stun guns and got ready to leave the house with Myusel, Elvia, and Petralka. My mom said the love hotel district in the picture was a bit of a hike, so we would catch a taxi someplace to get over there.

  But just as I was reviewing all this in my mind...

  “Huh?”

  The intercom buzzed.

  I looked at the terminal my dad had put in the living room, where the intercom’s camera revealed a man with parted hair, wearing a drab suit.

  Of course, it was Matoba-san.

  “Erk,” I mumbled. “This is no good.”

  I was sure Matoba-san would try to stop us from going to help Minori-san. In his position, it was only natural. The whole reason they had classified Minori-san as already dead was so it would be easier to make her disappear in a situation just like this. I could even imagine him saying something like, “This was part of the plan all along.”

  I stood there frowning.

  “Hello? Kanou household.”

  That was my dad, answering the intercom. He waved a hand at me, the sort of shooing gesture you might make at a cat or a dog. Let me handle this, he seemed to be saying. I guess he could tell what I was thinking.

  “Oh—Matoba-san, wasn’t it?” he said. “What brings you here today?” He was playing innocent, buying us time.

  “You guys, slip out the back door,” my mom whispered. “I don’t see anyone over there on the security cameras.”

  “Mom...”

  As my dad chatted with Matoba-san, continuing to hold him off, he typed something on his laptop, then turned it toward me: It’s incredible, Shinichi. You’re like the protagonist of a light novel. Now, go rescue Minori-san.

  I was so grateful. I mentally thanked him, holding up one hand in a sort of prayerful pose towards my parents. Then I nodded at Myusel and the others. “Let’s go.”

  We hustled out the back door as quick as we could.

  Oh—but what about our shoes? By the time the thought occurred to me, I was already at the door. To my surprise, though, I found shoes—not just mine, but Myusel’s and everyone else’s—lined up there neatly, the door already open.

  “Quick!” The urging came from Shizuki. She must have been the one who had brought the shoes over. I could see that the rear gate was propped open, too.
r />   “Thanks, Shizuki.”

  “Thank yoo.”

  Shizuki didn’t quite look at us—I guess she felt a little shy with us thanking her in person like this—and then we slipped through the back door.

  There was just one problem.

  “If we don’t get out on the main road, there’s no way we’ll find a taxi.”

  What taxi ever just went down a random suburban side street? I searched my memory, trying to recall where the closest well-traveled thoroughfare was.

  “Yo.”

  The voice sounded so free and easy—and it accompanied a car sliding into view.

  A Subaru Impreza—a WRX STI, at that.

  It was one of Japan’s representative vehicles, a model even I, with a minimum of car knowledge, recognized. The design wasn’t as flashy as a Supra, a Skyline, or a Fairlady Z, and the displacement wasn’t that big, but it was a textbook example of simplicity and quality, a restrained but immensely capable vehicle that had dominated world rally time and time again.

  This one, though, was adorned with the images of Madoka and Manami-san from Rental☆Madoka. It was a so-called itasha, with artwork of the girls covering every surface: across the hood and on the doors they lounged in swimsuits and smiled coquettishly. It would probably make a (non-otaku) car lover weep.

  “Reito-san...!”

  Looking out at us from the driver’s seat of the ita-Impreza was Reito-san. I thought he had gone home—had he just been puttering around the neighborhood?

  “Hop in,” he said, flashing us a smile full of pearly whites. Then he added by way of explanation, “It looked like things were going to keep getting more interesting, so I took the liberty of hanging around.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “You can thank me later. Now—come on!”

  I nodded to Myusel and the others, then opened the rear door and motioned them inside. Myusel got in, then Petralka, then Elvia. Finally, I jumped in the front passenger seat.

  “So—where to?”

  “Here,” I said, showing him the map of the love hotel district that I’d saved on my phone.

  “Looks good. Seatbelts on!” Then he floored it. The Impreza launched forward like a bullet from a gun, my house receding quickly behind us.