Amagi Brilliant Park: Volume 6

by Shouji Gatou

  “What’s going on here?” Seiya asked, not bothering to hide his frustration. They had just moved Latifah into the shade of a tree in the rooftop garden. “I thought her memory only reset once a year. It’s July now! This doesn’t make sense!”

  “I don’t... particularly understand it,” Isuzu explained. “As far as I know, this has never happened before. Well, I suppose it’s possible it has happened before and simply not been recorded, but...”

  “It hasn’t, fumo.” Moffle appeared from a corner of the garden. “I came to this park when Latifah did, and I’ve never seen it, fumo.”

  “But...”

  “Trust me, fumo. I’m not hiding anything. I really don’t get it, fumo. It was only yesterday we were promising to eat miso nikomi udon together...”

  As Moffle slumped over, Isuzu inquired, “Lord Moffle. Doesn’t Task Force ABC have a practice today? Shouldn’t you be there?”

  “I asked Sylphie to stand in, fumo. I’m in no position to be teaching anyone right now...” He tried to say it wryly, but he failed. Seiya had rarely heard the mascot sounding so grim; he seemed even more depressed and confused than Seiya himself.

  Latifah reset once per year. That was exceptionally draining for the people around her, and likely took a massive toll on Latifah herself.

  Resetting your memories and physical development every year might not sound so bad on the face of it, but for her, it was a cruelty; a curse equivalent to death. It meant losing everything she had gained over the previous year, and it happened annually, without fail.

  Remembering his position, Seiya endeavored to keep his voice even as he probed further. “Who all knows about this?”

  “Only the three of us,” Isuzu answered. “I told Nick and the Mogutes that the princess was laid up with a summer cold.”

  Nick was in charge of the food division; he often helped Latifah make her wonderful croquettes, but of course, that wasn’t going to happen today. And while the Mogute Clan frequently helped Latifah in her day-to-day life, they’d probably realize the issue the moment they saw her. In other words, they couldn’t let them see her; they couldn’t have rumors of Latifah’s condition circulating among the cast right now.

  There were only a few people in the park who knew about Latifah’s “reset problem” to begin with— The more veteran members of the cast had inevitably figured it out, even if Moffle hadn’t told them. After all, she never aged, and they’d have repeated interactions with her where she’d act like it was their first. Someone like Macaron would have easily figured out the situation on his own, and yet, he hadn’t said anything. Anyone who had been in the park long enough to catch on to the secret, would also realize that Latifah and Moffle wouldn’t want it getting out. (And then there were those, like Mirai-kun and Wanipii, who were probably too dense to catch on to start with.) They didn’t talk about Latifah’s problem because she wouldn’t want them to.

  “Honestly. When it rains, it pours...” He’d meant it to sound joking, but neither Isuzu nor Moffle responded in kind. It had been such a shock to Seiya, after all; he could imagine how much harder it must be for the two who had known her so much longer. They were in no condition, now, to advise him on the issue with Amagi Development and Hojo, or on his talk with Kurisu (now Kurayama of Cosmic Studios) via phone.

  Seiya took a deep breath; he had to get it together. “But isn’t it strange?” The thought rose up in the back of his mind unbidden, and he whispered it out loud, as if to give it form.

  That’s right, he realized. It is strange. Latifah lost her memory every year in spring. For it to happen in summer, there had to be a reason. But what could that reason be?

  Did anything strange happen to her yesterday? he wondered. Of course, she went on the “date” with me... But that in itself isn’t strange. We’ve done it before, and she was enjoying herself. I guess there was the merry-go-round... She got hurt there— hurt?

  “Hang on,” he said abruptly. “Latifah still has her bandage on today, right?”

  “Yes, I changed it myself,” Isuzu responded.

  “How was her injury?”

  “It’s nothing serious. Merely a scrape...” she responded, then gasped. “You’re right... the wound was still there this morning.”

  “Moffu. Which means...” Moffle’s button eyes shone as he joined them in realization.

  “Right,” Seiya answered. “Even though her memory was erased, her physical form wasn’t reset.”

  “Isn’t that a bit of a leap?” Isuzu questioned. “We can’t be so sure that the changes in the princess’s body—”

  “No, he’s right! That’s never happened before, fumo!” Moffle shouted excitedly, cutting Isuzu off. “Latifah always reverts to being 14 years old, fumo. She’s never had an injury linger through the change before, fumo!”

  “Which means whatever is behind this is irregular?” Seiya questioned. “It’s not the ‘usual curse’?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s possible, fumo! Either way, we need to have a specialist come and investigate.”

  “A specialist, eh?” Seiya was thoughtful. “Who are you thinking of?”

  “Maple Land’s royal doctor comes periodically,” Isuzu said. “But they usually only see her once per year, and it’s become more of a formality than anything.”

  “Can you call them right away?” Seiya asked.

  “I can,” she answered, “but... I wouldn’t expect them to know anything.”

  “Moffu,” Moffle agreed. “They haven’t done much for her in the past, fumo. And if we call for them now, it might cause ugly rumors to spread throughout the court, fumo.”

  Seiya furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”

  “Well... moffu.”

  “It could spread speculation that the princess’s condition is worsening, which would in turn cause trouble,” Isuzu explained, substituting for the stymied Moffle. “Rumors of her failing health could influence Maple Land’s political situation. It could spur a crisis of succession, and even cast blame upon Lord Moffle and myself. Not that I care for my own sake... of greater concern is that it might embolden the forces opposed to AmaBri’s very existence.”

  “I see,” Seiya replied. Tricen and others had been providing him articles from Maple Land to read. The myriad political dramas he was learning about really took the wonder out of these so-called “magical realms,” and there were apparently groups that were passionate about shutting AmaBri down.

  “If it’s not keeping Latifah in good health, there’s no need to go to such lengths to keep AmaBri in business,” they would likely assert if this got out.

  “Understood,” Seiya concluded. “So we’ll have to call in him, right?”

  “...?” Isuzu looked suspicious.

  Moffle clapped his paws together in realization. “Ah... him, fumo. Well, we don’t have much of a choice, do we, fumo?”

  “I don’t understand,” Isuzu said. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Not telling. You’d just be against it anyway.” Seiya pulled out his smartphone.

  That evening, the person(?) in question arrived at AmaBri.

  “Ohhhh! I’ve missed you, Setsuko-saaan! Lemme at them tiddies!” The coarse, fanged, man-eating oni charged, tears streaming down his face, towards Isuzu. More precisely, towards Isuzu’s breasts.

  Isuzu fired her gun. “Guh...” The elderly oni toppled over.

  “I knew it would start like this, fumo...” Moffle nodded.

  “I’m already regretting it,” Seiya whispered.

  “Why must it be him, of all people?” Isuzu asked, voice trembling, hands gripping her smoking musket.

  “Don’t write him off too quickly...” Seiya advised her. “He did exorcise Bando Biino, after all.” They’d invited the old oni, Obiza, once before to inspect a part-timer possessed by an evil spirit, and he had indeed managed to exorcise her. He had a flaw (a terrible flaw) that he lost his mind when he saw large breasts, but his talents remained formidable.

  �
��We’re the ones who did the heavy lifting there, fumo...” Moffle grumbled.

  “I just hope we don’t have to suffer through another quiz...” Isuzu sighed.

  Obiza sat himself up sulkily. “What’s the matter with you people?” he complained. “You call an old man all this way, and this is the welcome you give him?”

  “Shut up! We did feel bad about it until you started acting that way,” Seiya told him. “Why don’t you think about your own actions for once?”

  “Well, I’m busy!” Obiza said, trying to defend himself. “I was doing a replay of the SRWα series!”

  “Why now?”

  “I’m playing Z too, of course,” the oni went on, “Since it’s got FMP! in it.”

  “Then you can’t be very busy, can you?”

  “Oh... shut up! Point is, you can’t call a man out here and then then treat ’im like this! Show a little appreciation, then give me that girl’s panties!”

  “Ugh, just follow us!” Ignoring his gripes, Seiya guided Obiza to Maple Castle. Obiza looked grumpy about it, but was apparently willing to do as he was told.

  “You’ll recall that I explained the situation in my email,” Seiya began. “We want you to give Latifah a physical.”

  “Ah, so it’s more of that, eh?” Obiza’s expression suddenly turned serious. It was an odd thing to say about a literal ogre, but he did indeed seem pensive and thoughtful. “I’ve been thinking about that princess of yours for a while, now. The animus starvation curse... I’ve been poring through old texts day and night, but I couldn’t find much in the way of precedent.”

  I thought you were playing Super Robot Wars, Seiya thought, but opted not to say it out loud. “You couldn’t find much, you said. Does that mean you found something?”

  “Well, of a sort...” Obiza admitted. “I found a record of a princess with a similar curse from several centuries ago, in a magical kingdom that’s now dead and gone. But it didn’t have much in the way of detail... Nothing about how to remove the curse, or even if the princess was ever cured.”

  “Hmm...”

  “With nothing in the old texts to go on, I’ll just have to go with some educated guesses. It seems likely to me that the animus starvation and the reset of growth and memories are closely intertwined,” Obiza went on. “As you’re a mortal, I’ll explain what I mean: for magical realm residents like us, animus is like the fuel we run on. But there’s more to it than that.”

  “What do you mean?” Seiya questioned.

  “It’s also the power through which we gain experience, mature, and rise to higher planes of existence. Animus empowers us to grow up, and in time, to grow old.”

  “I suppose that makes sense... But what do you mean, rise to higher planes of existence?” Seiya cast a dubious glance at Obiza, and then at Moffle. It was hard to believe they were on a higher plane of existence than young girls (“children,” supposedly) like Latifah and Isuzu.

  “Seiya!” Moffle objected furiously. “Were you just doubting that I’m on a higher plane of existence, fumo?!”

  “You bet I am.”

  “Moffu! How dare you trivialize my experiences! You’re just a child, fumo! Puff you, fumo!”

  “The gutter language isn’t helping your case!” Seiya retorted.

  “M-Moffu...”

  That old man, Obiza, is quite an idiot, too, Seiya reflected. If he were a spirit or fairy or whatever on a higher plane of existence, why would he say things like “let me squeeze your boobs” and “give me your panties”?

  “Young man, that’s a superficial way of looking at things,” Obiza defended himself. “There’s a deeper meaning to everything I say.”

  “I find that very hard to believe,” Seiya said in return.

  “Oh, really?” Obiza raised an eyebrow. “What if I said that in the old language of the Schubert Empire, ‘let me squeeze your boobs’ means ‘peace be on your soul’?”

  “I’d say you were lying!”

  “And you’d be right,” Obiza chortled. “Anyway, I’d compare it more to... the way that, as your people grow older, they grow tired of being self-conscious about every little thing, and start telling dirty jokes just to rile up the young’uns.”

  “I don’t understand,” Seiya complained,

  “Ahh, yes, fumo. I understand what you mean precisely,” Moffle said with exaggerated wisdom.

  “That’s right,” the oni said. “You get tired of projecting self-important seriousness all the time.”

  “Moffu,” Moffle agreed. “And you stop pretending to be smarter than you are.”

  Moffle and Obiza seemed to have reached some kind of mutual understanding. Seiya was still only sixteen and had no frame of reference for any of it, so it all sounded like nonsense to him. He looked at Isuzu quizzically, but she was just standing there, slumped over.

  “Ah, fine, whatever,” he finally said. “Let’s assume you and Moffle are fairies on a higher plane of existence, or whatever. You’re saying that growth is being blocked in Latifah’s case, right?”

  “Right,” Obiza confirmed. “The animus starvation is hindering her growth.”

  “Even the Maple Land physicians were able to infer that much,” Isuzu interrupted. “That doesn’t explain why her mind and body reset every year at the end of March, does it? Nor why it’s happening now, in July...”

  “Indeed. So it’s time to ask the question: why the end of March?”

  “Moffu. Well... because the curse was applied at the end of March, fumo.”

  “Hmm. And it resets after a year. But who decided that?”

  “The magician who put the curse on her, fumo.”

  “How do you know?” Obiza asked. “Can you be sure it’s the magician who decided that the curse would reset her every year on the anniversary?”

  “M-Moffu... Well, now that you mention it...” Moffle sank deep into thought.

  All the talk of magic and curses went a little beyond Seiya’s understanding. Perhaps noticing his confusion, Isuzu explained: “Seiya-kun. You could liken a spell to a computer program; a curse is like a virus. Its activation is reliant on certain conditions or deadlines.”

  “Ahh...” That made sense. Latifah’s “reset curse” had been activating at the end of March every year for over ten years; it was behaving, in a way, like a time-sensitive virus, so that’s what the Maple Land doctors (in the analogy, the programmers) had decided it must be. But Obiza was raising doubts: Was the virus really time reliant?

  “It’s been the same conditions resetting her for the past ten years, right?” Obiza asked. “Then maybe this year it was some other condition that triggered it. Any idea what that could be?”

  “Hmm...” Seiya’s murmuring wasn’t because he was thinking it over; it was because the old man’s question had hit a bullseye. He did indeed have an idea. “Me?”

  Isuzu then nodded hesitantly. “Normally I’d say you think too highly of yourself... But I agree. The park has changed significantly since your arrival; it wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that your presence had affected things. ...What do you think, Lord Moffle?”

  “Moffu. Sounds right to me,” Moffle agreed, reluctantly. “It’s a slow road AmaBri’s been walking these past ten years, fumo. Almost no changes, just gradual decline... Then Seiya arrives and gives it this big jolt of life, fumo.”

  “I see.” Obiza nodded, frowning. “That’s a start, to be sure.”

  “Really?” Seiya asked.

  “Now, don’t go getting your hopes up,” the old oni warned them. “I’ve never dealt with a condition like this before, either...”

  “Doctor...”

  “Don’t get too down, though. I’ll do everything I can. My pride’s riding on it, and the princess is a fine girl. God cannot have abandoned her! Right?” Obiza’s uncharacteristically kind words seemed to lift a weight off of Isuzu, Moffle, and even Seiya.

  Silently, they led him to the rooftop garden. They brought Latifah to be introduced to him.

  “Ah...
Doctor... I must apologize for taking this time out of your busy day... but I thank you for coming to see me.” Latifah appeared to be very nervous. That was understandable; Obiza was a stranger to her too, now.

  “Yes,” Obiza said, pulling out his stethoscope. “Then first, let’s get those panties off.”

  Seiya kicked him in the side, Moffle slammed a paw into him, and Isuzu shot him multiple times.

  “You old bastard!” Seiya bellowed.

  “I knew he’d say it, fumo. I knew he’d say it, fumo!”

  “I don’t know why I thought, for a minute, that he might really be a decent person...” Isuzu said self-loathingly as she backed away from Obiza, who lay there twitching on the flagstones.

  “For the love of...” Seiya groaned. “Latifah, don’t take him seriously! Keep your panties on!”

  “Wh-What?! Ah, forgive me...” Latifah, who had been reaching for the hem of her skirt, straightened up abruptly in shock. She looked panicked, and her manner was terribly formal.

  In his mind, Seiya had just been warning her the way he usually did; but to Latifah, Seiya was effectively a stranger right now. “Um... I’m sorry,” he told her, struggling to explain himself. “It’s just... this is how we always used to talk...”

  “Y-Yes, I see... Er... by all means, then,” Latifah said apologetically, even though Seiya knew he was the one in the wrong.

  “Anyway... well, the old man— I mean, the doctor—knows what he’s doing, I think. We’ll leave Sento here to watch him, so let him give you a full checkup.”

  “...Of course.” Still, he remembered, Latifah didn’t know Sento well right now, either. He was struck by the urge to put his arms tightly around the anxious, trembling girl. Fighting back the urge, Seiya helped Obiza up. “All right, Doctor. We’re counting on you.”

  “Ah... right.”

  “And don’t take off her panties,” Seiya ordered.

  “Well, I’ll try,” Obiza grumbled.

  Too annoyed to argue further, Seiya silently turned away, and told Moffle, “let’s go.”