Outbreak Company: Volume 2

by Ichiro Sakaki

  I mean, sure, I was the one who had left them manga and anime and games and said they could check out whatever they wanted. And yes, I was the one who insisted that as long as we were going to all this trouble, we ought to have the original, uncensored versions, and brought in the 18+ editions of everything instead of the clean ones.

  But still, I think you’re all growing up too fast!

  “This is awful...”

  Could this be—you know? Like when you bring drugs into a place that’s never had so much as a vaccine, and it works too well?

  “I feel like this has all kind of blown up since I got here.”

  Now that I thought about it, medicine usually came with dosage instructions. The math wasn’t simple, though—just because you cut the dose in half didn’t mean the effect would be half as strong. Or sometimes, if you didn’t use at least a certain amount, you wouldn’t get any effect at all. The other side of that coin was that sometimes, if you took more than the prescribed dose, the effect would be massively amplified.

  That’s right: this was basically an allergic reaction.

  “Yeah, right...”

  I zipped down the hallway to the next room—the self-study area and library—and peeked in. This was where we kept the computers with all their data, not to mention piles of manga and anime and DVDs just like I had at home, along with a mountain of light novels I had planned to introduce once the kids could read enough Japanese. Since a lot of anime start out as light novels, I thought we could read something related to a series they had already seen as a way of getting them involved.

  How naïve I had been.

  “Yikes...”

  Smack in the middle of the library I saw a student with a treasure trove of dictionaries around him, scribbling something on a sheet of lambskin paper. I recognized his curly golden hair. He was the son of a noble family and had been especially quick to pick up the language; he could already read and write Japanese at a middle-school level.

  “Um... Hello?”

  No answer. He stayed silent as the grave. Or rather, he remained totally absorbed in whatever he was doing. He didn’t even seem to know I’d come in.

  I crept up behind him and looked over his shoulder. To his right was the sheet of paper; on the left was a book being held open by a wooden frame.

  It was a light novel.

  “Wait a second...”

  It looked like this boy was working on translating the light novel. Obviously, that wasn’t something I had assigned. He had decided to do it himself. I suspected he was working on something that hadn’t yet received an anime adaptation, or a series where he wanted to know what happened.

  His fixation—his passion—was intense.

  Actually, I thought I had heard that in Taiwan or someplace, there was some otaku who had learned Japanese just because he wanted to be able to read light novels in the original. This was the same sort of thing. Japanese people in Japan already have access to their country’s profusion of entertainment, so they don’t hunger for it like this.

  I directed my gaze farther into the room. There was a big desk there, and ten or twelve boys and girls had their notebooks open and were talking about something. The group was diverse, with three or four people each representing humans, elves, and dwarves. It seemed like some sort of study session...

  “Ah...”

  After observing them for a few minutes, it struck me. I detected a pattern in their conversation. Age and other factors notwithstanding, all of the human children were giving off a sort of “sempai” vibe toward the demi-humans. They were looking down their noses a little and acting a bit entitled. I guess even kids find it hard to break out of the habits they’ve been taught for as long as they’ve been alive.

  But still... They’re all sitting at the same table, aren’t they?

  Alessio of the assembly of patriots would no doubt have considered this sight to be an undermining of culture. Even if the extreme nature of his views was unique to terrorists, there were plenty of conservatives who thought along similar lines. The children they brought up would think the same way. From that perspective...

  “...I guess it’s a step in the right direction,” I murmured to no one in particular. Then I left the library.

  I wondered if there were any other changes I hadn’t noticed. With that thought in mind, I looked out the hall window. I could see everything behind the school building. Surrounded by a short earthen wall was a flat area where we had planted some grass—in effect, a schoolyard.

  This was another of my ideas. There was no special need for outdoor classes if we were only going to teach otaku culture, but eventually I wanted to introduce manga about tennis and baseball, and when that happened I wanted the students to be able to play sports themselves.

  Not that we had any tennis courts or baseball diamonds yet. All we had was some grass and a few trees growing inside the mud wall. We hadn’t even planted the trees ourselves. They had already been there; we just built around them.

  One tree, right in the middle of the yard, was especially big. I could see close to a dozen people gathered in its shade. They were focused on an elf boy. He had a light-colored, loose-fitting cape draped over his shoulders, and he was clutching a stringed instrument, about the size of a small guitar, to his chest. He was pretty obviously a bard. Come to think of it, Myusel had mentioned to me that with their long ears, elves had a uniquely sharp sense of hearing and affinity for sound.

  I could hear a gentle melody coming from the instrument. And then a clear voice, rolling along with it.

  “Tejas had always been slender; to be blunt, she had the body of a virgin child. It left clothing loose upon her, so that when she put on an apron, it would slip to the left or to the right with her every movement. Her pale skin would thus be exposed; yes, there was even the promise of the cleft of her chest, the hint of which many a time drove lusty young men near to madness...”

  I mulled over what I was hearing.

  “Of course,” the bard went on, “if her skirt came up as it had earlier, all was plainly visible. ‘I’m not quite sure where to look...’ ‘I see!’ Tejas nodded. Indeed, she seemed quite experienced at this. ‘It gets you hot and bothered, doesn’t it?’ ‘Don’t say that!’ ‘You have a bokki, don’t you?’ ‘You can’t get away with saying that just because you used Japanese!’ ‘By the way, in English, a bokki is called an erection! ☆’ ‘And I do not!’ ‘Then there must be something wrong with you, Master!’ Tejas said to him...”

  Wait—was he reciting a light novel? In song?

  Don’t get me wrong. I adored light novels myself, from moe harem stuff to serious-downer battle pieces. But what the heck was a bard doing reciting them to the accompaniment of his... his lute or whatever?!

  Even as this torrent of would-be interjections went through my mind, though, it dawned on me: he was imitating me. How many times had I shown some anime DVD to the students while adding my own explanations?

  The magic rings we were all wearing allowed people who didn’t speak the same language to communicate essentially by telepathy, but it didn’t work if one of the participants was an inanimate object. You could put a ring on a DVD player, but it wouldn’t translate the Japanese into Eldant. So I would always sit by, explaining what the words and pictures meant, like the intertitles in an old silent film.

  It looked like the young elf guy had taken a light novel that got turned into an anime, copied the soundtrack by ear, and then adapted the translation done by that kid I’d seen in the library.

  Uh... Hmm.

  “This... is good, right?” I said to no one in particular. I scratched my cheek.

  True, I had planted the seeds. But to my surprise and, now, my belated anxiety, they had sprouted in forms I had never expected.

  When I got back to the mansion, I found Myusel running around, looking very busy. She was pretty much solely responsible for taking care of the inside of the house, so there was always plenty to do, but still, I didn’t think she no
rmally seemed this overworked. I wondered what was going on.

  She didn’t even seem to notice I’d come home. That made me feel a little lonely, in a way. Hearing her say “Welcome home, Master” was an important way of replenishing my MP (by which I mean Moe Points).

  “Myusel?”

  “Oh... Master,” she said. She turned to me, still holding a huge basket with both hands. Then maybe she tripped on something, or maybe she just lost her balance, but whatever the case she took a terrific tumble. Just, bam.

  “Eeek!” The contents of the basket spilled all over the hallway, and Myusel went down hard.

  “Ahh! I’m— I’m so sorry!” I hurried over to her. Luckily, it looked like it had only been cloth in the basket, and it helped soften her fall. Anyway, she didn’t seem to be injured as far as I could see.

  “Are you okay?!”

  I grabbed Myusel’s hand and helped her up, then looked down at whatever had scattered all over the floor. It looked like dirty rags, but there were streaks of different colors here and there on them. I wasn’t sure where discolorations like that could have come from.

  “What are these?”

  I mean, they looked like laundry, but...

  “They’re Elvia-san’s... clothes.”

  “Elvia’s what?” I picked up one of the pieces of cloth and took another look. It was white with a gold border...

  “Whoa, whoa!” I stiffened.

  Elvia, as I already knew, tended to leave a lot of herself exposed—you know, the bare-midriff look. She wore loose-fitting pants (kind of desert-chic), but when it came to her upper body all she had was a tube top. Her shoulders, collarbone, and belly button were all just right out there. Frankly, she might as well have been wearing a swimsuit for all the skin she was showing.

  So she basically had a bikini and underwear, and I had just grabbed at least one of them.

  “Whoa, I didn’t— I don’t—!”

  “Master?” Myusel blinked at me.

  “I didn’t! Let’s get our stories straight! I definitely did not grab this thing because I’m the type who gets all pant pant over a girl’s underwear, okay?! For me, it’s all about her body—I mean, no! Just forget I said that!”

  I suddenly found I had taken this piece of Elvia’s clothing in both hands and was holding it up to Myusel as if making a sacred offering.

  “I’m... very sorry...”

  “M-Master?” Myusel didn’t seem to have the slightest idea what the big deal was, but she accepted the clothing from me.

  “But anyway,” I said, “I’ve never seen clothes get dirty quite like this...” They were covered in streaks of color, the slashes looking like wounds.

  “I believe she said her clothes always get this way when she’s drawing,” Myusel said.

  “Drawing...?”

  It finally dawned on me. The streaks were from her charcoal and crayons. Initially, Elvia had only ever used charcoal, but I had gotten her some new art supplies. She didn’t seem to take to the pencils, markers, or paint brushes right away, though. Instead she went straight for the thing that most resembled her easy-to-use charcoal: crayons.

  That was fine as far as it went. But apparently, any time she changed from charcoal to crayons, or from one color of crayon to another, she would wipe her fingers on her clothes. And so, three or four streaks would slash across the fabric—the same marks I was looking at now.

  “She’s not some kid who eats with her hands,” I muttered. “Why would she do that?”

  Myusel cocked her head slightly. “She claims that otherwise the colors run together, and she doesn’t like it.”

  “...Huh?”

  According to what Myusel told me, Elvia had mainly used charcoal throughout her artistic life, so she had never much needed to switch from one art supply to another. Even when she did, it would just be to a new stick of charcoal. Not something to be too concerned about.

  Crayons, though, had all sorts of colors. For someone who had been a sort of “monochrome specialist,” the colors in even just a 12- or 24-pack of crayons were striking. Around here, art supplies of specific colors were made with special dyes, and they were much too valuable—and much too expensive—for someone like Elvia to dream of owning. So she was thrilled by the crayons and started using them immediately.

  As we all know, if you hold a crayon long enough, the color starts to bleed onto your fingers. But suppose your fingers turn red from a red crayon, and then you grab a blue one. Elvia figured the colors would run together, and she didn’t like that idea. So she was wiping each color off her hands with a convenient cloth as she went along.

  And by “a convenient cloth,” of course, I mean her clothes.

  “Aw, for crying out loud...” How hard was that beast girl going to make things for me?

  “She gets very absorbed in drawing her pictures,” Myusel said with a smile.

  “Is that so?”

  Honestly, I found that a little surprising. I had set Elvia to drawing otaku pictures, to which end I gave her some “reference material” (anime images and manga of about the same quality, along with design books) and free access to my office.

  I was given to understand that people who weren’t otaku themselves often took the visual style in anime and manga to be simplistic and easy to draw—a cut below more realistic types of art. But actually, because your choice of how to convey information becomes more restricted the more highly symbolized something becomes, “anime art” has its own challenges above and beyond “normal” art. I knew that especially well, what with my mom having been an artist for ero games. She used to say that if realism and detail were the only things that mattered, art would have gone extinct the day the photograph was invented.

  And Elvia? She was versed in highly realistic art. Part of me was worried she might push back against the “anime style,” maybe demand to know why she had to do such cheap-looking pictures now. But I seemed to have worried for nothing.

  “I’m glad she’s so dedicated,” I said, looking into the basket again. I could see now that it wasn’t just her shirts, but her pants in there as well. “But I’m not sure I like how much extra work she’s making for you, Myusel.”

  “Oh, it’s fine! It’s no problem,” Myusel said, a little too quickly.

  “No problem? You were already busy, weren’t you?”

  Frankly, our mansion had always been too big for one maid to handle on her own. Minori-san helped Myusel sometimes, but she couldn’t do it every day. I was actually thinking about asking Petralka if we might be able to get another maid for the house. That’s how sorry I felt for Myusel. Plus, I was the one who had brought Elvia here.

  “But isn’t Elvia-san helping directly with your work, Master?”

  “Huh? Sure, I guess. Even if we’re in the early stages right now.” I nodded.

  I was putting Elvia to work doing otaku-friendly drawings because I hoped in the future to experiment with producing doujinshi locally and the like. It’s pleasant enough to enjoy entertainment products for their own sake, but when consumers decide they want to become creators, that’s the sort of thing that can make the world a smaller place—a friendlier place, maybe. That would be exciting.

  Plus, ultimately, having an artist around would dramatically increase my options when it came to the paperwork I submitted to the Eldant Empire. She could make it pop a bit.

  “So she’s helping me,” I said. “So what?”

  “She’s helping you, and I... I don’t have any talents...” Myusel couldn’t quite bring herself to look at me. “All I can do is clean, and cook, and do the laundry... I can’t do anything to help my master... If I can help Elvia-san in her work by taking care of the wash, then that... that will help you, too, won’t it, Master?”

  I was silent.

  Ehrmahgawd. CUUUUUUUUUUTE! This girl, she’s... she’s heroic!

  My moe gauge hit max. I practically felt like there must be some special skill I could activate. Then there was the way she looked at the gro
und sometimes. It just really fit Myusel. One wrong step, even one wrong half-step, and that sort of thing would feel like a complete affectation. But with her, and only her, it seemed totally natural and not remotely like a put-on.

  But never mind that.

  “No no no no no,” I said with a vigorous shake of my head. “Forget all or only or whatever. Cleaning and cooking and laundry? Those are the building blocks of life. If you could never draw a picture, it wouldn’t kill you, but the stuff you do? We’d be starving in our own filth without you. I’m able to work hard because you work so hard.”

  “You really think so...?”

  “I sure do. I really appreciate what you’re doing.”

  “Master...” Myusel looked at me with real joy on her face.

  Oh no—no! Those watery eyes and that sweet face! I can hardly stand it—! My heart was just about pounding its way out of my chest as I reached out for the basket Myusel was holding.

  “Let me help you.”

  “You don’t need to! I appreciate the thought, but—”

  “Don’t worry, just let me help. If you fall again and hurt yourself, I’ll be even worse off than you.”

  “W-Well, all right... Thank you.”

  I took the basket, and Myusel and I headed for the back of the house.

  Suddenly, I had a thought. “Hey... You said you don’t have any talents, but you can use magic, right?”

  “Well, one or two spells, yes.” Myusel shrugged, almost shyly.

  During that infamous run-in with the terrorists, I had seen Myusel send one of the “patriots” flying with a magical attack. As best I could remember, it was called “Tifu Murottsu,” or Storm Fist. As the name suggested, it summoned a powerful wind that slammed into your opponent.

  Demi-humans here in the Holy Eldant Empire had limited options if they wanted to gain civil rights on par with the humans in the country. The simplest choice of all was to do military service. Myusel herself had spent about two years in the army, and given elves’ predisposition for magic, she had learned the magical arts there. I know it sounded like a bad joke to think that my cute little maid had once been a soldier—but then again, we have countries even on Earth that see military service as a civic duty and require all citizens to do a stint in the forces.