Outbreak Company: Volume 13

by Ichiro Sakaki

  About an instant later, though, I found my warm, smiley dream interrupted when somebody grabbed me by the collar.

  “Which?” Petralka demanded, raising an eyebrow.

  “Er...?” I said.

  “Which lunch is absolutely delicious?”

  “Well, both, of course...”

  “Which is more delicious?”

  “Uh... W-Well...” I thought I had managed to avoid the worst by eating from both lunches, but now I had to rank them?! “Wellll...” I glanced away from Petralka’s intense stare as if in hopes of escape, but I only found myself looking into the expectant eyes of Myusel. “Hrk...?” She was looking at me almost as intently as Petralka. Her gaze was one of supplication, of creeping self-doubt as she waited for my answer.

  Ahhhhh, she’s so cute, but no, this isn’t the time!

  I was starting to panic. I wasn’t sure how long I could hold it together. I had to come up with an answer, fast. But ranking one above the other was virtually impossible—I just wanted to enjoy the flavors—and above all, I didn’t want to say something that would hurt Myusel or Petralka.

  “I c-can’t compare them,” I finally managed. “I mean, it’d be like comparing apples to oranges!”

  “Apples to oranges?”

  “But I didn’t use any Ja-panese fruits...” Myusel fretted.

  It was a figure of speech!

  Okay, no time for a comedy routine. Having found my way out, I couldn’t permit myself to get sidetracked with quipping. I decided that going full restaurant-reviewer was the best plan.

  “This one here, it’s fluffy and melts in your mouth! I have to imagine that eating a cloud would be just like this! But this one over here, you can really feel it when you bite down, and the taste lingers on the palate! Yet the flavor is never overbearing or tiring! How can one of these possibly rank above the other?!”

  I was trying to distract them, but I wasn’t lying. Still—and maybe I should have expected this—neither Myusel nor Petralka looked really happy with my answer. Fair enough. I was being honest, though—I couldn’t say one of these was number one, and the other second-best. I was just starting to feel so apologetic I thought I might drown when—

  “Now that you’ve brought him lunches, you know what the next stage is.” Hikaru-san sounded nonchalant, but he had a broad smile on his face.

  Oh, the bad feelings this inspires in me!

  “Better say ahh, Shinichi-san.”

  “Hrk...?!”

  Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, hold on! We were way beyond pouring oil on a fire—he was practically throwing rocket fuel on there! And I had been trying so hard to get out of this situation! What an ambush! What skulduggery!

  “Say ahh?” Myusel said.

  “Is it some form of intimidation?” Petralka asked, cocking her head.

  Er, no, Your Majesty. You’re thinking of how thugs and crime bosses greet people. The important thing is to tilt the head down a little and rake the other person with your gaze.

  Okay, something else this isn’t the time for.

  “I mean you have to feed it to him. ‘Open your mouth and say ahh,’ that’s what I’m talking about. When a girl brings a guy a lunch, that’s what she always does. It’s an ironclad rule. Am I right, Minori-san?”

  “You sure are. Happens every time.”

  Hikaru-san and Minori-san looked at each other. They were obviously, unmistakably, truly enjoying this. Was it possible they both secretly kind of hated me...? I could sort of understand why! Believe me, I could! But I wished they would stop jerking me around at times like this! I was so desperate not to hurt Myusel or Petralka!

  But these cries from my heart went unheard.

  “Indeed!” Petralka said, and then she snatched the fork from my hand and stabbed a random item from the lunchbox. It was a piece of meat. The meal might have been French, but someone had been thinking ahead enough to make sure everything was cut down to bite-size. Petralka brought it to my mouth. “A most useful lesson. Here now, Shinichi, you will... say ahh.”

  “Er, um, uhh...”

  “U-Um, Shinichi-sama...”

  While I dithered, Myusel, eager not to be outdone by Petralka, likewise grabbed a bit of food from her lunchbox on a fork and pushed it toward my mouth. The two bites of food were practically pressed up against my lips before I could open my mouth, urging me on. If my lips had been even the slightest bit open, I think the girls would have shoved both bites of food straight down my throat.

  “Uh, okay, w-wai—hrmf!” I wanted to urge them to calm down, but the moment I opened my mouth, I found food in it from two directions at once. I almost literally choked on my words. I somehow managed to chew and swallow, hoping I could then resume trying to talk them down, but I didn’t have the chance: one bit of bento after another was crammed into my mouth.

  “Mrgh! Mrrfgh!”

  “How about that, Myusel? We have made Shinichi ahh for far more of our food!”

  “O-Oh, no... I w-won’t let you beat me...!”

  “Mrrrghhh!”

  I couldn’t even beg them to stop anymore—my mouth was so full of food it could practically have qualified as a bento box itself. There was way too much for me to appreciate any distinct flavors or textures. Anyway, this wasn’t even “saying ahh” anymore! I couldn’t open my mouth far enough to say it!

  “Mrfgh!”

  At this rate, it’s going to end up in my throat and I’m gonna choke! Argh! My throat! My throat! (Diary ends here.)

  ...Okay, enough cosmic horror.

  “How delightful.”

  “Yes, wonderful.

  I reached out to Hikaru-san and Minori-san, my hand trembling with agony, but they only stood there smiling beatifically.

  C-Curse you booooth...!

  “Come, Shinichi, eat more.”

  “Shinichi-sama, here, have some of this...”

  And so it went. This continued until Minori-san, having savored enough of my suffering, clapped her hands and said, “We’d better get back.”

  “Ahhhhhhh...”

  Back at the mansion, I was in my office, cradling my head in my hands. After the incident with the lunchboxes, Petralka, still not looking entirely convinced, had gone back to the castle with her guards. Which lunch had been more delicious, or for that matter which one had ended up filling the most of my mouth as I said “ahhh,” remained inconclusive. Petralka seemed prickly about it, but Myusel looked downright relieved.

  “What am I going to do?” I asked myself. “What am I going to do?”

  As General Manager of Amutech, I had a mountain of work to get done, but I just couldn’t seem to focus on any of it. My brain was too full of Myusel and Petralka. Their smiling faces kept floating in my mind’s eye and wouldn’t go away.

  Both of them, allegedly, were in love with me. And that made me happy. I mean, really. If just one of them had confessed to me, I probably would have spun around from sheer happiness so fast that I would have bored into the earth like an industrial drilling machine.

  But both of them? I could pray to God or Godzilla, and still not have an answer. I could be Akira or Agira, and never have the power to solve this problem. Speaking of which, I feel like as capsule monsters go, Agira was way less well-known than Windom or Miclas. I wonder why that was. I mean, I readily acknowledge how cool Windom was, but—

  No! Focus!

  What was I supposed to do? Pick one of them and say “Sorry, better luck next time!” to the other one? Was I even capable of that?! I, who was absolutely, totally ordinary in every way other than my inveterate otakuism? Was I supposed to shoot down either Myusel or Petralka—beautiful women like them?! I had an embarrassment of riches here, and I was supposed to throw some of them away? Wouldn’t the Waste-Not Ghost come and get me?

  “Urrrgh...” I slumped over on my desk, too tired even to fret any more. The mental fatigue didn’t help, but I wasn’t exactly feeling my best physically, either. I felt like the food from that afternoon was still trapped
in my stomach, just sitting there. Petralka and Myusel both seemed to have made an inordinate amount of lunch. A full stomach is an important part of happiness, but after a point, you go from full to overstuffed, and that’s no fun.

  “God, what am I going to do...”

  Me, I just wanted time to think, but it looked like Petralka and Myusel both were suddenly in some kind of hurry. I didn’t think they were going to cut me a lot of slack.

  Myusel? Petralka? Or—and I thought the chances of this were very slim indeed—maybe neither of them? Those were my only choices at the moment. I guess I also had the option of exclaiming, “You two are my wings!” like a certain (TV) kabuki actor, and just going for harem mode—but truth be told, I couldn’t imagine myself saying those words.

  Besides, I had a sneaking suspicion that if I took that route, I’d end up stabbed by someone.

  “...Siiiigh...” I sighed for the umpteenth time. I lay on my desk like some kind of invertebrate—but suddenly a knock came at my door.

  “Yeah?” I asked, springing up again. Maybe it was Myusel? Wh-What should I do? What if she was here to say “I love you”?! My heart wasn’t ready! I would probably be torn to pieces between my happiness, and my guilt towards Petralka!

  But when I said, “Wh-Who’s there?” the voice I heard back through the door was confident and bright.

  “’s me! Shinichi-sama!”

  “Elvia?” I muttered, blinking.

  So... not Myusel.

  Partially relieved, I stood up and went to open the door. Standing there was a girl with a cheerful smile on her face. Her eyes darted this way and that, her short brown hair curled in places; everything about her said “full of energy” even when she was just standing still. She had all the sweetness of a big dog.

  Her body was lean and well-exercised, her midriff exposed, and her generous chest practically spilling out of her tube top—the look was downright dirty, but her forthrightness and brightness kept me from feeling too steamy about it.

  Her name was Elvia Harneiman. She was a former spy for the nation of Bahairam, but—well, things happen. Now she was living here as Amutech’s artist in residence. Other details? Each side of her head boasted a floppy ear, and her behind was home to a bushy tail—that’s right, she was a demi-human. Specifically, a werewolf.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Can I come in?” Elvia said with an innocent smile.

  “Huh? Yeah, sure.” I stepped to one side and gestured Elvia into the room. She took a few steps into my office, then stopped and looked me right in the face. I looked back, not completely sure what was going on. Looking at her face, though, it was impossible not to notice the cleft, the valley between those huge, soft peaks, just at the bottom of my vision. We’d been living in the same house for quite a while now, and you’d think that valley would have lost some of its power to entrance me, but not so. Elvia, in fact, wasn’t very modest toward me—she didn’t get upset even if she noticed me staring at her boobs—and I had the distinct sensation that I spent more and more time doing exactly that.

  “Shinichi-sama?”

  “Er, yeah!” I quickly pried my eyes away from her chest.

  “So Myusel and Her Majesty both made lunch for you today.”

  “Oh, uh, yeah... At school...”

  I didn’t think Myusel would deliberately tell Elvia about that; I suspected she had heard from Minori-san or Hikaru-san. Both of them seemed to have enjoyed the little scene, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they had told Elvia about it to entertain themselves.

  “Well, I’d like for ya to eat mine next.”

  Huh? What? Don’t tell me Elvia made a—

  I took a good look at her, but she didn’t look like she had anything edible with her. She was standing there empty-handed, looking just like always.

  No, wait—on closer inspection, I saw she had a white ribbon or scarf of some kind wrapped around her neck, but that was about the only difference from usual.

  “Um... What am I eating, exactly?”

  She grinned and replied, “Me!”

  “What?!” I goggled at her very energetic answer and reflexively took a couple of steps back, only to find myself bumping up against my desk. Elvia took a couple of steps forward, still grinning, so we were just as close as we were before, or maybe even closer.

  “No... Wait...”

  Eat—Elvia—eat... What did that even mean?!

  Was that white thing wrapped around her neck—was it supposed to be a table napkin?! Eat? “Eat”?! If that didn’t mean, you know, like, splatter-movie-type... like... outright cannibalism, then the only thing I could think of was, it had to be, an 18-and-up-rated— [technical difficulties]

  “E-Eat? You mean, like, eat? Like, umm, you can’t mean—l-like s-s-sexually?!”

  “I mean sexually.”

  Thus said Elvia, still smiling innocently.

  As far as I knew, the once-a-month thing where Elvia went into heat (a special characteristic of her people) was supposed to be a ways off yet, so why was this coming up now? Why at this moment? What was with this girl’s timing?!

  And then the pieces fell into place.

  “Hikaru-san! I know you’re there!” I shouted at the door, which Elvia had left hanging open.

  For better and for worse, Elvia was a very straightforward person. That extended to her speech; she always said exactly what she meant. She wouldn’t think of an expression like “eat me,” and she certainly wouldn’t think to accompany it with a table napkin.

  Several seconds passed. Then, the fringe of a Gothic-Loli skirt appeared in the doorway.

  “I knew it!” I said. Hikaru-san, frowning in a you-got-me sort of way, looked into the room. “I knew you had to be behind this! Why won’t you stop teaching Elvia all this sick stuff?!”

  “You’d think a fundamentally unpopular loser of an otaku, finally getting his once-in-a-century moment to hit it off with the girls, would be more, you know, excited. That he would do something. I mean anything.”

  “You’re not wrong, but I can’t believe you would put it that way!”

  “Herbivores should just shut up and be eaten by carnivores!”

  “What does that even mean?! How can you drag Elvia into your stupid little games?!”

  Elvia was so innocent that it was easy for a villain like Hikaru-san to string her along without her really knowing what was going on. It wasn’t like I didn’t understand that it was funny to get a rise out of me, but I objected to his using Elvia as a tool to do it.

  “I didn’t drag her,” Hikaru-san said, looking away poutily. The way he made that gesture was really cute—even though he was a he—and I wondered if that was why he was so mischievous. But never mind.

  “I just thought, Elvia’s the only one who’s sort of behind here, so I wanted to help her out,” Hikaru-san said.

  “Help her out.”

  Yeah, right.

  “You know, be her cheerleader.”

  “For what? What were your cheers leading her to do?”

  There was a pause. Hikaru-san looked back at me and narrowed his eyes. Finding myself pinned by his exasperated glare, I involuntarily gave ground. “Wh-What...?”

  “Are you seriously asking me?”

  “Am I asking you—what? Anyway, Elvia’s got nothing to do with this, so—”

  “What are you talking about?” Hikaru-san said with an elaborate sigh. “Elvia, you love Shinichi-san, too, don’t you?”

  “Now you’re the one who’s not making any—”

  “Sure, I love ’im!”

  “—sense?”

  I froze when I heard Elvia’s energetic response.

  “You love him as a man, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely!”

  “Sexually, right?”

  “How... How else would I love him?” Her answers were unhesitating and unfiltered.

  ..........Wait.

  Both of you, just wait.

  I looked at Elvia to find her look
ing back at me with her usual bright grin. Then there was her fluffy tail (gosh, it looked like it would feel good to touch), which was wagging so hard you could practically hear it.

  Oof... This was—

  “Um, do you really... Does she really—?”

  “I can’t believe you haven’t noticed it. Elvia obviously isn’t interested in anyone but you, Shinichi-san.” That was Hikaru-san, still sounding thoroughly sick of me.

  “N-No, nonono, hang on. That’s just because of her phase of the moon or whatever, right?”

  I mean yes, Elvia had shoved me down on the bed once, and one time she dragged me to the bathing area and tore off my clothes! But those were both because she was in heat! Her thoughts and feelings had nothing to do with it!

  “If she was just possessed by the moon—if she really didn’t care who she did it with—she’d be out in town right this minute hunting down a random man.”

  “Erk...?”

  C-Come to think of it, Elvia had mentioned once that not just anyone would do.

  “Shall we find out for certain? Elvia, do you love Shinichi-san here?”

  “I adore him!” Her smile was the picture of innocence. There was no room to think she might mean “as a friend” or “as a housemate.”

  Which left only one option...

  “E—Elvia...”

  This girl was inescapably direct. When I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t heard the words “I love you” even from Myusel or Petralka. Hearing them from Elvia, with no hint of shyness or embarrassment, was actually really moving. By which I mean the blood was rushing to my head.

  On top of that, having made this cheerful pronouncement, Elvia did something very unusual: she blushed, a demure look coming over her face.

  “Eh heh heh,” she added. “Guess I’m feelin’ a little shy.” She fidgeted and looked at me hesitantly.

  G-Geez, this is a totally new side of her!

  But wait, did this mean...?

  “E-Elvia, you too...?”

  “Are you just noticing?” Hikaru-san said.

  Okay, so now that I thought about it, maybe there had been clues! Maybe a few! But! But!