Several days had passed since the incident with the “assembly of patriots.” All the perpetrators had been taken into custody, but that hardly meant the problem had gone away. The impact of their actions could still be felt. Just to give a personal example, without Myusel, the housework was on the verge of overwhelming us. Minori-san was doing her best to keep up with at least the cooking and laundry (she said the JSDF were excellent at making plenty of food in a short time, which they had to do during disaster relief efforts and the like), but without Myusel, it was like most of the light in our house had gone out.
Still silent, we arrived at our destination. It was a big, heavy-looking door. On either side of it stood a knight whose armor bore the crest of the royal guard. They looked very intimidating. This was another effect of recent events. Before this, the guard had prized formality and ceremony, but now they were in full armor as if ready to go out on the battlefield. I assumed there was a wizard somewhere nearby as well. I heard that the empress’s captivity, however brief, had caused heads to roll among the guards’ higher-ups...
I pushed aside my hesitation and knocked on the door.
“Petralka? Erm, I mean, Your Majesty? It’s me. Can I... Can I come in?”
There was a beat before a voice on the other side of the door said, “Enter.”
With the permission of the empress herself, I slowly pushed the door open.
The room on the other side was the picture of opulence. The ceiling formed an elegant arch; you could see smooth wood here and there. A huge window let the sunlight in—or you could go out on the attached patio to enjoy the day. A fluffy carpet covered the extensive floor space.
In the middle of the room sat a huge bed—canopied, of course. It was draped in red sheets of the highest quality.
“You’re late, Shinichi.”
Petralka sat on a chair in front of the fireplace. Her silver hair reflected the sunlight, as if it were itself a luxurious ornament. She was as adorable as ever, but—it was hard to put my finger on it, but since the attack, I thought her expression looked a little more grown-up. It wasn’t that she was less expressive; if anything, it was the opposite. I thought she expressed more things more naturally. Maybe she had been holding back before.
“When we call, you should come with more urgency. Your tea’s getting cold.”
“Sorry,” I said with a bit of a smile. I sat down in the seat next to her.
“But Your Majesty... Shinichi-sama’s house is a bit of a distance...” The girl who so kindly spoke up on my behalf was wearing white bedclothes and sitting up in the bed nearby.
“Are you okay to sit up already?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” Myusel responded with a smile. “And it’s all thanks to Her Majesty.” Her smile widened; it was so beautiful that it would have put any flower to shame.
So, as you may have guessed, Myusel did not die. On Petralka’s orders, she was brought to the imperial hospital inside the castle, where magic (of course) as well as every available medicine was put to good effect. No expense was spared, and the most famous doctors in the land operated on her. Normally, the imperial hospital was only used when members of the imperial family were gravely wounded; a commoner like Myusel would normally never even have set foot inside. But again, Petralka was the empress, and this was what she wanted.
Petralka’s intervention saved Myusel’s life. Until she was fully recovered, however, Myusel would have to stay here in the hospital. Even the gorgeous room we were in was actually a hospital room. I was sure it looked as nice as it did because it was really supposed to be for noble use. The elegance probably didn’t make the place any more sanitary, but people want what they want.
“You were pretty darn impressive, Your Majesty,” I said. “‘If anyone lets this girl die, I’ll treat them as rebels against the state—and have them executed!’ Hah! Those doctors went white as sheets!”
“We— We were just—” Petralka turned bright red, flustered. So cute. “Y-You know those doctors. They only ever work on nobles, and all old people at that. We were afraid they might be... unaccustomed to working on a young woman. We simply reminded them to do their duty!”
“Right. Of course,” I said with a smile and a nod.
Petralka only turned redder. “A-Anyway, we couldn’t have it getting out that Empress Eldant was saved by the death of some maid! Our ministers would never listen to us again!”
“Right. Of course.”
Petralka was practically cringing with embarrassment at this point. If we had been standing up, I was sure she would have given the ground a good stomp. Talk about your stereotypical tsundere.
“But listen, Petralka, I want Myusel back in my mansion as soon as possible...” Truth be told, what I really wanted, of course, was for her to take her time and rest up. But I had a reason for saying what I did. It was a strategy. “Without her around, the laundry is piling up!”
“I’m very sorry, Master. I’ll try to get better as quickly as I can,” Myusel said. But then she exclaimed, “Oh...!” and stopped with an uncertain look on her face.
Ahh. So they hadn’t talked about that yet—it had probably only just occurred to Myusel as she was speaking. Knowing Petralka, it would probably be awfully hard for her to take back something she had said—at least if someone didn’t give her a little push.
“We said we would see to it that you were sent another helper,” Petralka said, frowning. “It was you who refused. Myusel was stabbed through the stomach. That is not a wound one recovers from in a few days. We are surprised by your ignorance of the world, Shinichi!”
“No, I know that. I was just afraid that if someone else gets settled in the house, maybe Myusel would find it hard to come back.”
“You need not be concerned. Myusel will be returned to you when she is fully healed.”
“You have my gratitude for your generous consideration, Your Majesty.”
“Hrmph. Interesting how you’re only deferential when you’re in a good mood.” Personally, I wondered whether an empress should be snorting like that, but I kept my mouth shut.
Myusel seemed to grasp what was going on. “Um... Does this mean...” Petralka and I had held our entire conversation on the presumption that Myusel would return to be my maid. In other words, that her firing would be null and void.
I knew Petralka—as both an empress and a person. I didn’t expect her to ever say, “I’m sorry, forget I ever said that.” But I did manage to help her admit, indirectly, that we could ignore the whole incident. I was sure that would put Myusel’s mind at ease, too.
“Your Majesty...”
Petralka didn’t answer, but when Myusel looked at her, she turned her head away as if pretending to pout.
You’re not as hard to read as you think you are, kid!
“Th... Thank you...” Myusel said with tears in her eyes.
Granted, it was Petralka’s impulsive decision that we were undoing in the first place. But even so, for the empress to budge, even implicitly, for a commoner was something very special. Myusel was obviously moved, and Petralka—well, she wasn’t exactly open about her feelings, but she seemed to be going in the right direction.
It looked like this particular problem had been solved. The two of them talked affably after that. In fact, they were kind of ignoring me; I started to get a bit of a confusing yuri vibe from them. But we had averted one potential conflict, and I was glad for that.
“We’ll visit you again,” I promised, and then Minori-san and I quietly left the room.
I saw a face I recognized at the far end of the long hallway: Matoba Jinzaburou, chief of the Far East Culture Exchange Promotion Bureau.
When he saw me, he said, “It seems Her Majesty is in a fine mood.”
His neatly parted hair, starting to show signs of white, was the same as ever, as was his dead-leaf-colored suit. He looked as average as it was possible to look; he practically screamed, I’m totally harmless!
“Yeah, I guess,” I muttered.
Matoba-san looked at me questioningly for a moment, but he quickly returned to his vague bureaucrat’s smile.
“Ahem. On the subject of the terrorists. It appears an anti-Imperial faction within the Empire was behind them. I believe it was they who arranged for the magical weapon you encountered.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Not surprised?” He looked at me curiously.
“Matoba-san,” I said. There was something that had been bothering me ever since that day. “Am I... an invader?”
He went quiet. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Minori-san’s face stiffen.
Matoba-san smiled ambiguously, still not saying anything. He wasn’t going to confirm it, but he wasn’t going to deny it. He didn’t look surprised that I had asked, either. It seemed like this was very much something he’d expected.
And now that I thought about it, why not? The whole “cultural exchange” thing was just a façade. There were all kinds of reasons the Japanese government couldn’t move against Eldant militarily, so instead they decided to change how people thought.
A cultural invasion was the ultimate takeover tactic. Military encroachment takes huge amounts of money, not to mention the risk to people and equipment. If your only goal is to destroy the other country, you can rely on carpet-bombing or even nuclear weapons, but then you have to deal with world opinion—not to mention you wind up with a wasteland of a conquered nation. Not worth much.
Compared to that, cultural invasion has a lot of perks. You can affect the whole population, not just the people running the place. If things go well, you could even end up taking over. I’ve heard this was one of the reasons Christianity spread so widely in the Middle Ages. Setting aside the question of whether the Christians did it intentionally or not...
For better or for worse, modern-day Japan didn’t have a religion that so many people got so invested in. Even the stuff we did have was of the “new religion” variety, and they looked too cultish for most people to be interested.
Otaku stuff, then. The people in the Japanese government looked around and saw how young people would happily dump ten or twenty thousand yen in one day on doujinshi, how people trampled each other to buy the hottest video games, and they realized that otaku-ism has a religious aspect. So why not get the people of this new world to enjoy anime and manga and stuff—and then make sure they depended on Japan to provide it?
I had been right about Minori-san—she was a fujoshi, even though she sometimes tried to pretend otherwise. She was actually an otaku herself. I was sure she wasn’t happy to see her beloved media being cynically used to make inroads into another country, but she was also a member of the JSDF, and she couldn’t defy the government.
“Kanou Shinichi-kun,” Matoba-san said, smiling. “Our job is to look after Japan’s national interests.”
That was an awfully nice way of putting it. But then he went on: “The definition of things can change depending on how you look at them. If you believe you’re an invader, then you are, and if you don’t, then you’re not. It’s best not to think too hard about it. All you need to do is figure out how to make otaku culture popular in this nation. It should be a pleasant job for you.”
He spoke so quietly, but to me, it sounded like a threat.
つづく
(To be continued...)
Afterword
Hello, hello. Light novel author Sakaki here.
I’m an itinerant author, plying my trade at one publisher and then another. This book is my first work for Kodansha. Which only makes sense, since it’s one of their launch titles (hah).
So, on the subject of this book, Outbreak Company: The Power of Moe. I’ve actually had the basic idea for the story in my mind for quite some time. I was wracking my brain to come up with some sort of fantasy setting, and since I’m a little twisted myself, I didn’t hit on your regular swords-and-sorcery adventure. Instead I started to wonder: What would be the strangest way to approach a fantasy world?
Ever since I started writing novels, dragons have been basically boss characters in fantasy settings. But I thought to myself that if a dragon showed up today, the army would just shoot it full of rockets and that would be the end of it. So I thought about telling the story of a dragon who found himself in the modern world.
With that in mind, I started to think of things that would seem strange in a fantasy setting, and one of the things that drifted through my head was “a company.” Wouldn’t it be weird, I thought, if you had a company (maybe even a publicly traded one!) staffed by elves, dwarves, lizardmen, and the like? And wouldn’t it be even weirder if that company’s specialty was manga? The ideas kept flowing and ultimately resulted in this book.
Both our modern world and the annals of history attest that when people and cultures encounter something totally unprecedented, near-chemical changes take place, often in very unexpected ways. How would the entertainment of our own world fare in another? I suspect it would be transformed in surprising ways. I hope my readers will follow these changes with interest, just like the main characters do.
Ichiro Sakaki
27 Oct 2011
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Copyright
Outbreak Company: Volume 1
by Ichiro Sakaki
Translated by Kevin Steinbach
Edited by Sasha McGlynn
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 Ichiro Sakaki
Illustrations by Yuugen
All rights reserved.
First published in Japan in 2011 by Kodansha Ltd., Tokyo.
Publication rights for this English edition arranged through Kodansha Ltd., Tokyo.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Ebook edition 1.0: November 2017
The Power of Moe Page 19