Outbreak Company: Volume 7

by Ichiro Sakaki

  “Oh! Have a good day, Shinichi-sama!” Myusel called to me as I, seeking to escape immediate bodily danger, turned and fled.

  Normally, Minori-san would accompany me as my bodyguard, but she wasn’t in a fit state to be at school right now.

  “Ugh,” I said, giving into a long fit of the shakes.

  I hurried toward the front door, where Hikaru-san was waiting. I could feel Minori-san’s and Elvia’s eyes boring into me the whole time.

  Things only got worse the next day.

  “Morning, everyone...”

  Back in Japan, I had tended to just lounge around the house on Saturdays and Sundays. But since coming to Eldant, I had started to lead a more rigorous lifestyle, and my eyes opened early in the morning. I didn’t indulge in oversleeping just because it was the weekend—breakfast was the same time as always.

  “...Er.”

  The charged atmosphere in the dining area made my hair stand on end. The first thing I noticed as my eyes swept the room was Elvia, sitting in her chair, looking downcast and muttering to herself.

  “What d’ I do...? What’s moe, anyway...? What angle would be the moe-est? What should I...?”

  She was looking down, so I couldn’t see her eyes, and she didn’t so much as twitch a muscle as she sat there. It gave the impression that her lips had a life of their own, and frankly, it was pretty scary.

  “Good morning, Shinichi-sama.” Myusel came out of the kitchen and greeted me where I stood frozen in front of Elvia.

  “Hey, Myusel,” I said, “do you think Elvia looks a little worse than before...?”

  “I tried talking to her, but she didn’t answer,” Myusel said worriedly.

  I felt a gaze on me and looked up to see Hikaru-san, who was already seated. Our eyes met. He shrugged silently and shook his head. It’s too late, the gesture seemed to say.

  Then I noticed: someone was missing. “Huh? Where’s Minori-san?”

  If Elvia was getting worse, was it possible that Minori-san was, too? Had her symptoms gotten so bad she couldn’t even get out of bed?

  Starting to worry, I was about to go to her room—her new room, which was one of the guest rooms—to check on her.

  “Good morning, everyone!” a bright, cheerful voice burst out. Everyone but Elvia looked over in surprise.

  “M-Minori-san?!”

  Standing behind us was Minori-san, all sign of the previous day’s depression gone as if it had been a delusion on our part.

  Huh...?

  “Hm? Why the weird looks?” Minori-san glanced from one of us to the next with a big smile, then practically skipped over to her seat. Our jaws collectively dropped to see her this way.

  “Are you okay, Minori-san?” Hikaru-san asked suspiciously. Not even twenty-four hours before, she had been in the grip of severe BL withdrawal, not even able to hold a conversation. So what was this all about?

  “Hmm? Am I okay how?” Minori-san asked, still smiling. Myusel and I looked at each other. “What are you two doing?” Minori-san interjected. “Hurry up, or your lovely, hot breakfasts will go cold! ☆”

  She wasn’t wrong. We obediently sat down, though we were still perplexed.

  “Right then, itadakimaaaasu!” Minori-san exclaimed, and began eating with gusto.

  “I-Itadakimasu,” Myusel, Hikaru-san, and I echoed hesitantly before starting in on our breakfasts. Elvia started listlessly eating her food, too, muttering the whole time.

  What in the world was going on here?

  I glanced at Minori-san as I ate. She was energetically stuffing food into her mouth. Was she back to normal? Had she finally resigned herself to the situation? Myusel and Hikaru-san, maybe equally worried, were both stealing little looks at her, too.

  Well, if she was really her normal self again, that was great, but...

  No one said anything. The dining room was filled with the placid sounds of eating utensils.

  There was something wrong here, I just didn’t know what it was.

  It was frustrating. In the end, no one could quite figure out the best way to start a conversation, and we finished our meal in silence. Except for Elvia, who murmured softly the whole time before going back to her room. Then Myusel excused herself to start cleaning up.

  That left me, the broadly smiling Minori-san, and Hikaru-san, who was still watching Minori-san carefully.

  “Guess I’ll go back to my room, too,” Hikaru-san said, dabbing his mouth with a napkin and standing up.

  “Oh, uh, me too,” I said, also standing quickly.

  “Oh, hold on,” Minori-san called to us before we could leave the dining room. We both turned around. She was looking at the two of us with that same giant grin. Behind her glasses, her eyes had turned into a happy little n.n thing, and the corners of her mouth were somewhere up near her ears.

  What was going through her head?

  Minori-san was just smiling, and yet... well, I thought she was smiling.

  So why did I feel like my body was about to be torn apart by dread?

  “I have a favor to ask.” She got up and stood in front of me and Hikaru-san—between us and the door. As if to say, You shall not pass.

  “Er, uh, Minori-san?”

  Still smiling. Her face looked almost like a mask, in that her expression seemed to bear no connection to what she was feeling inside.

  Hikaru-san and I found ourselves unable to move, as if pinned in place by some unseen force. Suddenly, Minori-san ducked out into the hallway, then immediately returned carrying a cardboard box. I hadn’t noticed it earlier, but it must have been sitting there next to the dining room door all morning.

  “Would you put these on for me?”

  So saying, Minori-san put the box on the ground and pulled something out, spreading it out in front of us.

  “......Huh?” Hikaru-san and I said in unison.

  It was two pairs of clothes. Or... uniforms?

  One was sort of a black leotard, something that looked an awful lot like a woman’s swimsuit.

  The other item was a set of black swim briefs—practically a banana hammock.

  Minori-san left the clothes on the floor... and continued producing items from the cardboard box. Frills and headbands, frilly white aprons, bowties. Shoes. High-heeled shoes.

  What was... going on here?

  Wait... “Put these on”? She said “put these on,” right?

  Put them on who?

  “Er, hey, uh, Minori-san...”

  “Yeeeeesss?”

  “I think this stuff is pretty weird to just ‘put on’...”

  “How so?”

  “Uh, how do you mean, how so?”

  Minori-san just kept grinning.

  No good. This was getting me nowhere.

  “I don’t want to.” Personally, I was standing there speechless, but Hikaru-san refused categorically. “You have to break down a character, understand them, and re-create them in your own way—that’s the essence of cosplay. It’s a form of self-expression. My pride as a cosplayer won’t allow this. I can’t just take some random items you pulled out of a box and slap them on. I’m just not interested.”

  Wow. He sounded so sure of himself. I guess that’s what you get from a guy who’s spent so many years of his life cosplaying.

  “I’ll thank you to let me go back to my room now.”

  He made to push past the smiling Minori-san—but the next instant, he was upside down.

  There was a sort of surprised intake of breath, but no crash. He came down on the floor as light as a feather, maybe because Minori-san was still holding onto his sleeve and collar. She took the force out of the throw just before it ended.

  Wait... the throw?!

  Did Minori-san just throw Hikaru-san?

  Hikaru-san scrambled to his feet. Minori-san was still standing in the exact same place she had been a few seconds before. It had happened so fast, I hadn’t quite been able to process it, but...

  “Koganuma-san...?” Hikaru-san said, almost lik
e a groan, as it dawned on him what had happened. Minori-san was both a soldier in the Japan Self-Defense Force and a lifelong practitioner of the martial arts. She would know that when you wanted to overwhelm an opponent quickly, powerful, targeted strikes were less effective than a throw that impacted the entire body at once—or anyway, I thought I remembered reading as much somewhere.

  “You’re not getting away, all right?”

  Her smile deepened.

  Hikaru-san and I spotted the unfathomable depths in that expression and looked at each other. We could see an inhuman light in Minori-san’s eyes.

  I should’ve realized. Minori-san wasn’t cheerful because she was back to normal.

  She had gone to the uttermost extremes of BL withdrawal, and it had broken her completely.

  “This is humiliating...!” Hikaru-san whispered painfully.

  He really did look ridiculous. His long black hair was tied behind his head, and the top half of him was bare except for a detachable collar and a bowtie. As for the lower half, it was those black competition swim trunks, knee-high socks, and loafers.

  And nothing else.

  I guess the black briefs alone could have been passed off as a swimsuit, but when you started in with all the accessories, it began to feel a little weird. In any event, Hikaru-san ended up showing an awful lot of skin...

  “Ooh, I love a good butler,” Minori-san crooned, smiling. “Cute little knees are so important for a guy. Fufufufufu!”

  Did she say... butler...?

  I considered: to me, the outfit just looked perverse from every angle, but apparently to her, it looked like a butler. She must have been adding a lot with her imagination.

  Come to think of it, back when we had gone to the “beach,” she had dressed Garius in something similar and referred to him as the “bare butler.”

  Because Hikaru-san made such a convincing girl most of the time, it was easy to forget he was actually a guy, but the totally flat chest and black swim briefs made it inescapable. I was almost relieved, in a way.

  “What are you looking at?” Hikaru-san said sharply when he noticed me. The way he was blushing made it obvious how embarrassed he was, despite the fact that he was apparently perfectly comfortable dressing like a girl. I admit, his particular hang-ups didn’t make complete sense to me. Then again, he seemed like a fairly odd person, no matter what kind of clothes he was wearing.

  “Ooh, and you look just divine!” Minori-san went on. “Why don’t you go have a look in the mirror?!”

  “Urgh...” I said.

  Argh. And just when I had managed to focus enough on Hikaru-san to distract myself from my own situation.

  Yes: I was a pretty bizarre sight, myself.

  Hikaru-san at least got to start with a men’s swimsuit. Mine was a girl’s. Well, maybe it wasn’t so much a swimsuit as a leotard. Whatever, it was covered with a white apron.

  “Shinichi-kun... The ‘bunny maid’ look really works for you,” Minori-san said thoughtfully.

  “Please! Make it stop!” I cried.

  She had forced a rabbit-eared headband on my head. On my feet—I had no idea where she had gotten these—was a pair of red high-heeled shoes. I didn’t even know they made heels big enough for men. Most frightening of all was simply that Minori-san had brought them here to Eldant at some point.

  My shoulders, collarbone, and thighs were all out in the open, and I thought I might weep from the embarrassment.

  Anyway, why did I have to be the girl?! Wasn’t that Hikaru-san’s specialty? I mean, not that I was eager to be a bare butler or anything!

  “I love it...” Minori-san let out a long, impassioned, satisfied breath. There was no trace of the fearsome monster she had briefly shown us when Hikaru-san tried to mutiny on her plans to dress us up. She had completely overpowered us, reminding me exactly how awesome JSDF soldiers could be. It was reassuring to know Japan was in good hands...!

  No, no, wait.

  “Oooh hoo hoo! The look on your face, Shinichi-kun... It’s perfect...” she said. “And even though you say things like, ‘Forget perfect! I’m a man! Why should I have to dress up like a girl?!’, you have to obey your sempai, until eventually embarrassment turns to pleasure, and you see the poignant beauty of it all...!”

  Th-This runs deep! Like, deeper than the Marianas Trench!

  I could only shudder at this glimpse of the abyss of Minori-san’s obsession.

  But it was really all built on BL, wasn’t it? I understood that. Even if I didn’t want to.

  “The gap really makes the difference, doesn’t it?” she said. “It’s the contrast with your normal look that makes it so moe.”

  Yes! I got that! And I had to admit it was just the same as less deviant tastes! But that didn’t mean—

  “Koganuma-san, have you had enough yet?! Give me my clothes back!” Hikaru-san demanded. Minori-san, for her part, was practically spinning with joy.

  You get the picture: Hikaru-san and I had changed clothes as Minori-san requested, albeit under extreme duress. But surely she’d seen enough by now. This must have released some of the pressure of that thwarted desire.

  Minori-san, by the way, had stuffed Hikaru-san’s and my clothes into her cardboard box and kicked it out into the hallway. If we wanted to get them back, we would have to get past Minori-san first. And it was already abundantly clear that even the two of us together wouldn’t be able to manage that.

  “Koganuma-san! Are you listening to me?!”

  Minori-san stopped in mid-spin.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, still smiling. “A moment of moe is good, but I want an eternity!”

  “Huh?”

  “In! Other! Words!” Minori-san said with undisguised glee, “Now we’re going to have a lovely little photo shoot! ♪”

  “Wha...?”

  Wait—these embarrassing-to-death outfits were going to be immortalized as data?!

  Sh-She wasn’t a woman! She was a demon!

  Minori-san, humming happily as Hikaru-san and I stood there trembling, reached into her pocket. But then...

  “Hm—?” She was confused. “Aw, no! I got so caught up in making those clothes that I forgot it. Hehe!” I guess Minori-san had forgotten her camera. Normally it’s kind of cute when a girl sticks out her tongue in embarrassment. I’d never seen it look so scary as at this moment.

  “I’ll go get it—you just wait right there!” she said, darting out of the dining room.

  The instant she was gone, Hikaru-san and I didn’t even share a glance before we launched into action. As if we were going to just wait politely for her to come back!

  We came flying out of the kitchen, then went dashing in the opposite direction from where Minori-san was walking along humming, “La diddly daah ♪” I would have liked to grab the box with our clothes in it, but it was over in Minori-san’s direction, so we had to leave it there.

  “Oh!” Minori-san noticed us right away, of course, but maybe excitement about that photo shoot had made her relax her guard, because she wasn’t quite as quick as usual, and didn’t manage to get a hand on either of us.

  We could sure hear her shouting, though. “Stop! Hold it right there! My moe! My Beeee Ellllll!”

  She probably wasn’t far behind us. With no time to look back and check, I huffed and puffed along, running as fast as I could through the halls of the mansion.

  The windows of the room were covered with thick curtains. I could see dust dancing in the slim shafts of light that leaked in between the blinds, and the room smelled musty. Maybe not the healthiest place to be for an extended length of time, but at that moment, we had nowhere else to go.

  The space was dark and confined. The only sound was of two people breathing—Hikaru-san and I, as we sat in the stretching silence.

  I leaned against the wall, wrapping a blanket around myself as I glanced at Hikaru-san. He was wrapped in another blanket, so that all I could see was his head and neck. His lips were pulled tight.
<
br />   Then there was a knock at the door. A shock ran between us. We had to keep Minori-san from finding out we were here. If we could have stopped breathing, we would have.

  One second, two... We watched the door.

  Then, finally, we heard a familiar voice from the other side. “Master, Hikaru-sama, it’s me. It’s Myusel.”

  With the blanket still wrapped around me to silence my footsteps, I crept toward the door. “What’s the password?” I asked.

  “Beast ears, beast tail,” she answered immediately.

  I let out a sigh of relief and opened the attic door.

  “Pardon me,” Myusel said, coming in with a tray. I quickly shut the door again, as if there were a vacuum outside or something. The magic kicked in, making it impossible to open the door from the outside.

  Yes, even this attic had one of those magic locks on it.

  Myusel knelt by Hikaru-san and set the tray on the ground. “I brought your breakfast.”

  I crouched down, too, passing one of the plates of food to Hikaru-san. “How’s Minori-san look?” I asked Myusel.

  “The same as yesterday,” she said, looking nervous. “She just wanders around the mansion, muttering ‘homoo, homooo.’ Elvia-san isn’t any better...”

  “Great...”

  After Minori-san’s freaky dress-up escapade the previous day, Hikaru-san and I had fled to this room. Minori-san had confiscated our clothes, and we could hardly run outside dressed the way we were. We had considered our rooms, but our keys had been with our clothes, so we were locked out—and even if we had been able to get in, we could never have repelled Minori-san’s attacks.

  Wherever we went, Minori-san could easily just steal a spare key from Myusel and break in—so the safest place would be one where she didn’t know where we were.

  I had, of course, considered having Myusel go get clothes for us, but—perhaps because she was one step ahead, or perhaps just by a fujoshi’s instinct—Minori-san was shambling around near our rooms, and even Myusel couldn’t get too close.

  So as much as we hated it, Hikaru-san and I were stuck in Minori-san’s outfits.

  Of course, I had taken off the bunny ears and heels. Hikaru-san had ditched the collar and bowtie.

  And that was what led us to this moment. With Myusel’s help, we had managed to survive an entire day in the attic. In case you were curious, we used a pot in the back of the room to answer nature’s call. I have to admit, it wasn’t the most comfortable feeling in the world, but beggars can’t be choosers. Much as they wish they could be... (sob)