“Wow...”
I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me to realize that being the empress of a major nation comes with a lot of expectations. And not just from the people you personally know. People you’ve never met, maybe thousands or tens of thousands of them, expect a whole range of different things from you.
I have to think a normal person just... wouldn’t understand what that sort of pressure was like. To have this ideal image of an empress that you had to take on... It could break you.
“But I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about it...” I sighed quietly.
Petralka, her brow furrowed, said, “Do you of all people ask this?” She sounded sort of exasperated.
“Huh...?”
“Is this not what you’re best at?”
I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Thanks to you, we...” She stopped in the middle of her sentence, as if rethinking things, then she shut those sweet little lips and looked away from me. “Forget it!”
“Huh? Wh-What? Why are you angry?”
“We are not angry!” Petralka snapped, crossing her arms and looking past me.
Uh... You look pretty angry to me, Your Majesty.
What the heck had I done this time...? I stood there, flummoxed by the miffed monarch, but then someone spoke up.
“Your Majesty...” It was—it was Myusel. “Shinichi-sama is a very humble man, you see...”
“Er?” I said dumbly, taken aback by this description.
Humble? What? Was she talking about me? And if so, what exactly was she saying?
“We insist this goes beyond humility. This is simple density,” Petralka replied. “We must assume he is much the same at your mansion. Myusel, surely you must be fatigued.”
“Oh, no, not at all...” she protested, but with a wry smile that said Well, y’know...
I did not understand this conversation. Was this what they call girl talk?! (Answer: no.)
I stood there, apparently the only one in the room completely mystified by this, when—
“Come to think of it,” Petralka said, seemingly mollified for the moment by her chat with Myusel. She looked at me again. “Has there been anything unusual to do with magic today?”
“Unusual?” I looked from Minori-san to Hikaru-san, and then to Myusel. Each of them looked back at me in turn, puzzled. Nobody seemed to know what she was talking about. “Nothing in particular, I think...”
I sure didn’t have any idea. “Did something happen?”
“Lately, the sprites have been in an unusual state,” Petralka said, crossing her arms, “and it is influencing magic. We’ve been busy looking into the matter.” She heaved a long sigh.
Okay. These sprites. What I was told was that when there’s a high enough density of magical power for any reason, the magic kind of clumps up and becomes these entities that behave like living things. In that sense, sprites were a sort of natural phenomenon, and in extreme terms, sprites and magical power were fundamentally the same thing.
And just as there was magic everywhere in this alternate world, so you could find sprites anywhere you went. Thus magic had proliferated as one of the basic technologies of this world, and was part of everyone’s daily life. The magical rings we all wore were an obvious example, and the wind mages keeping the castle’s toilets bearable were another.
But lately, it seemed, the number of sprites or the density of magic had become noticeably unbalanced. I had been aware that there were slight variations, of course, but they had never been enough to cause a problem. Lately, though, there had been times when people were spontaneously unable to use magic. Just small-scale incidents, but incidents nevertheless.
“You know...” I thought back to what had happened in the classroom. The way all the dwarves’ figures had stopped moving. With no warning, all the magic had suddenly become unusable.
Prompted by my look, Petralka asked, “Have you thought of something?”
“I don’t know the reason, exactly, but in the classroom the magic suddenly stopped working. It came back right away, though...”
“Is that so...” Petralka murmured.
“Is the phenomenon expected to get worse over time?” Minori-san asked.
Petralka shook her head. “No one knows. It may worsen, it may not. Such thing truly has never happened before.”
“If it looks like it may turn into a large-scale disaster, please tell us right away,” Minori-san said. “Disaster relief is the bread and butter of the JSDF. We might not be able to prevent the problem itself, but since we don’t rely on magic, I’ll bet we could do a lot to help.”
Ahh, that’s my JSDF.
“Very well. Your offer is appreciated.” Petralka nodded with all the gravity of an empress. “If any further details are discovered, we will make sure you are informed.”
When I checked my phone, it was already after ten o’clock at night.
In this place where so very few people had electricity, most of the world was engulfed in darkness—that is to say, it was as good as the middle of the night. It was all the darker tonight, when the sky was cloudy and you couldn’t see the moon.
In my room, I always kept an oil lamp, as well as a sprite light—sprites magically sealed into a glass ball—to help hold the darkness outside the window at bay.
“Hmmm...”
I reached a stopping point and sat back from my computer. I did some shoulder circles to loosen them up.
With Lauron’s “education” added to my duties, I’d found myself burning the midnight oil like this a lot recently. I often wouldn’t get to bed until the next day, sometimes two or three o’clock. Kind of a depressing thought, considering that I typically woke up around six a.m.
I was just suppressing a yawn when—
“Master?” There was a knock at the door. “I brought tea.”
“Myusel? It’s open—come on in.”
“Thank you.” She opened the door and entered the room.
Not just her, though. Behind Myusel and the tea cart, another face peeked in: Elvia.
That was unusual. Notwithstanding the times she got sucked into drawing, Elvia was usually the early-to-bed, early-to-rise type. By ten o’clock, she tended to be so soundly asleep that you could have jumped up and down right next to her and not woken her up. That didn’t strike me as making her great spy material, but I guess that point was already settled, so never mind.
“Eh heh heh. Hullo...” Elvia looked a little embarrassed as she slipped into my room.
“We tried baking radosen for a snack tonight,” Myusel said, pointing to something on the lower level of the cart. There was a plate with two slices of something very white and very flat, blackened a little here and there. Some kind of bread?
“Radosen?” I asked.
“It’s a kind of bread they like to eat in Bahairam, Elvia-san says. She taught me about it.”
“She did?” I glanced in her direction, and the Bahairamanian beast girl gave another shy chuckle. Aw, man, wicked cute!
No, not the time for that. I hadn’t thought Elvia did a lot of cooking. Maybe she hadn’t taught Myusel the recipe, but just told her that this stuff existed.
“She says they cook it on celebratory occasions, and that it gives you energy. Normally you cook it in a purpose-built oven, but of course we didn’t have one, so you could call this ‘Eldant style.’” Myusel smiled a little.
“Neat... So it’s kind of a ‘special event’ food?” I tore off a piece and put it in my mouth. Bread is bread, sure, but this had a faint sweetness. Not like it had been dusted with sugar or anything; it tasted like the sweetness came from the ingredients. It was simple, but delicious.
Beside the bread was another dish with some kind of paste on it, which it looked like you were supposed to add to the bread when you were ready for a little more flavor. It reminded me somehow of Asian homestyle cooking—and it definitely felt like Bahairam.
“You looked so tired, Shinichi-sama, that
even Elvia-san started to worry about you...”
“Oh, uh, I just—” Elvia waved her hands anxiously. “I d-don’t want to be a buttinski, but you look kind of like when Big Sis Ama is getting too serious about something, and... I thought maybe you had some really tough work to deal with, so, I, uh...”
“Oh...” I scratched my cheek apologetically. In light of the fact that she was technically a spy for an enemy nation, we hadn’t told Elvia about the body-double project, so she didn’t have any idea why I was running myself ragged. Maybe she was a little concerned that I was so obviously busy and she was the only one who seemed to be left out of the loop.
“I’m sorry, Elvia. We aren’t trying to ostracize you or something.”
“N-No, don’t worry,” she said, shaking her head quickly. “I just—Shinichi-sama, I really—y’know...” And then, apparently too embarrassed to go on, Elvia looked at the ground.
Oooh, a fresh new side of her...!
The gap between this, and that moon-thing—the way she could shove me down, panting all over me, once a month—who wouldn’t get moe about that?! Wait—could this be deliberate? Could that be what she was after? Was this calculated—intentional—on purpose?! Ooh, Elvia, you fiend!
.......................................Okay, so Elvia was the one person I didn’t think would ever actually pull something like that. Her whole existence felt calculated to make me moe, but she seemed so totally oblivious to it that it would never have occurred to her to take advantage of it. Granted, that’s part of why she was so cute.
Okay, getting back on track...
“Elvia-san is worried about your health, too, Shinichi-sama,” Myusel said, trying to rescue the conversation.
“Elvia... too?”
“Yes. Her too,” Myusel said. “Of course, Her Majesty is as well.” She looked completely—well, confident would be the wrong word. She looked like this was all obvious. Her tone said, “You know that, don’t you?”
“Come to think of it,” I said slowly, “this afternoon, Petralka got angry, and you said something about modesty or humility or whatever. What was that all about?”
“What? Oh... Yes, I’m sorry.” Myusel shrugged a little as she spoke. “I didn’t mean to be forward...”
“Don’t worry, you weren’t.”
Myusel and Petralka both seemed to be on the same page about something, and I felt left out. And because they were obviously talking about me, it was that much more galling not to know what they were talking about.
“Shinichi-sama, you... I think perhaps you don’t notice it yourself, but... you have the power to change the people you come into contact with.”
“...............Huh?”
Power? What?
Wait... maybe, without me realizing it, some incredible ability had awoken within me?!
The name of my power? Auto-changer! Able to change people just by coming into contact with them!
...Er, okay, so that probably wasn’t what she meant.
“Me, Her Majesty, Elvia-san...” Myusel glanced to the side when she said that last name. Elvia, for her part, was looking at us questioningly, like she didn’t quite follow the conversation. “And Brooke-san, Cerise-san, and... probably everyone in your classroom. It’s very gradual, but thanks to you, all of us have changed somehow. Through the classes at school. Through your ‘sokker’ tournament. By working on your moo-vee. Even through what happened with Bahairam. Shinichi-sama, everyone around you—”
“Nonononono.” I shook my head. “That’s not some power of mine, it’s...”
Just what happens.
So maybe it was true that the people around me were gradually changing. Myusel was just a little less flustered than before when little things went wrong, and she and Petralka had become friends of a kind. The people who knew me maybe looked down on demi-humans and half-elves a little less. Elvia was more cheerful than when I’d first met her, a little less care-worn.
But all of that... all of that was ultimately because the environment around those people had changed. Take Petralka, for example. She was closer to Myusel because the maid had saved her life—not because of anything I’d personally done. In stronger terms, the people around me changed as a way of adapting to their new environment.
And the changes in that environment? I wasn’t the one who caused them. It was really the importation of various kinds of otaku culture through Amutech. Really, just about anyone could have been the company’s general manager—even Hikaru-san—and there’s a good chance the same things would have happened.
“None of that’s because of some power I have,” I said. “It just so happens that some things happened around me that caused you all to change for yourselves...”
“Yes,” Myusel nodded, looking extremely happy for some reason. Actually... considering how rarely she let herself smile like that, should I have taken it to be her version of a triumphant smirk? “Shinichi-sama, you always say things like that.”
“What...?”
“You never take credit for anything you’ve done.”
“Anything... I’ve done? Wait, I get it.” The lightbulb finally went on about this humility business.
Petralka and Myusel both felt they had changed. And evidently, they were kind enough to chalk that change up to me. That was where all this talk of special powers was coming from.
“Her Majesty must believe that if anyone can help Lauron-san change for the better, it would be you... Just like you’ve done for the rest of us.”
“I really think you’re overestimating me...”
If there was some “power” that had caused everyone to change, I didn’t think it was mine. Maybe more like the power in manga, anime, and games... or something like that. And maybe, at the same time, the power inside of everyone to find something meaningful in those things.
All I did was to offer them up and say, “What do you think?”
I didn’t really feel like I was responsible for any of it—but then, that had been my stance in this world all along. I just focused on the anime and manga and so on; that was my job. The moment I forgot that was the moment I would become a real invader.
That was... To me, that was all there was to it.
But...
“Overestimating? Overestimating?!” Elvia exclaimed. “Me and Big Sis Ama are back to being sisters again!”
“But that...” That really had just happened naturally. I interrupted my own objection, though, and said, “Wait...”
I started to rethink things, just a little.
I definitely wasn’t the only hardcore otaku out there with a sort of low opinion of myself, all too used to being mocked and marginalized by the world at large. I wasn’t the only one it left with a particular kind of weird stubborn streak, an insistence on discounting myself. Like how, if someone said something nice about me, I just wasn’t willing to accept it.
I would assume there had to be an ulterior motive, or tell myself that happiness goeth before the fall.
But what was the point of shooting down every compliment I ever got?
“It really makes me happy to hear that,” I finally said with a bit of a smile. “Thanks.”
Myusel and Elvia looked at each other, briefly speechless.
But then they found their voices and, grinning ear to ear, they chorused, “Of course!”
Chapter Four: Vanishing Magic?
It happened very suddenly.
I was at school, like normal. It was break time, like normal. Everything was just the way it always was. There would have been nothing worth mentioning, except for what came next.
In the classroom, everyone was playing with the magically controlled action figures with which the entire student body (it had gone well beyond the dwarves now) was obsessed.
“I told you, my name isn’t Bunny...” One person was playing with a figure from a certain “buddy hero” anime.
“The only ones you can shoot are the ones who are ready to be shot!” Another was playing with
a figure of a character from Order of the Dark Knights: Zero’s Revenge, who saw a lot of use.
“I’m such a fool...” And still another had a Rental☆Madoka character.
They were each playing in their own way, in their own space. The desks became miniature stages for acting out scenes from anime.
Until they weren’t.
To everyone’s shock, and virtually simultaneously, the figures collapsed to the desktops like puppets whose strings had been cut. Clack, clack, clack. They fell over like they had been mowed down by some kind of weapon. Without the magic that had been bringing them to life, they returned to being inert objects.
The students all looked on, dumbfounded.
“Wha...?”
I don’t know who made the first sound of confusion and alarm. Everyone immediately started muttering their spells again, trying to bring the figures back. But none of the characters got up; none even twitched. I guess you wouldn’t normally expect them to—they were toys, after all—but the way they lay like bodies scattered around the room was unsettling.
Even that, though, turned out to be nothing but a foreshock.
“..............................Oh.”
I don’t know who collapsed first, but a number of students went thumping to the floor. It almost looked like they were imitating the figures—like some kind of disease had jumped from the characters to the people.
“What the heck?!
“So sleepy...” Loek muttered, and then down he went—right beside Romilda, who had shoved herself up against the wall but was sliding slowly to the ground.
“Seriously, what?! What in the world is going on here?!” I shouted.
I had seen the figures stop moving before. But the students?!
Hang on... I did remember that when the action figures stopped working, Romilda and the others had been trying not to yawn. Was this somehow related?
“Sensei?!”
Some of the students looked at me, panicked, but I was even more confused than they were and didn’t know what to do.
“What in the heck...?”
Outbreak Company: Volume 8 (Premium) Page 14