Outbreak Company: Volume 6 (Premium), page 11
part #6 of Outbreak Company Series
Maybe that was one way in which he was genuinely different from me. I really would have to learn from him on that point.
“Does it look good?” Petralka asked.
“Yes, Your Majesty, it suits you wonderfully,” Hikaru-san answered.
This was hardly flattery—it was the simple truth.
But when Petralka asked the question again—“Does it look good?”—it took me a good ten seconds to realize she was talking to me.
“Huh? Oh, s-sorry, were you asking me?”
“Who else would we be asking?” Petralka frowned.
“S-Sorry about that. Of course, it looks great.”
“You make it sound like an afterthought. You truly are uncouth, Shinichi. Don’t you think so, Hikaru?”
“I thought perhaps he was struck dumb by your beauty, Majesty.”
“We hardly share your supposition. Did you know, the first time we met, he took one look at me and immediately—”
“I told you, I’m sorry about that!” I said, with no choice but to apologize yet again.
I stole a sidelong glance at Hikaru-san, who was smirking. Then he said, “Your Majesty. As it happens, there is one more thing I wish to present to you.” He gave another respectful bow.
“Oh? The costume of another character?”
“No...” He pulled something out of his bag. “It’s this.”
“Hrm? What’s this?” Petralka leaned from her throne to see what Hikaru-san was holding out. It was...
“A card, Your Majesty. A trading card, of the kind we’ve been experimenting with selling among the common people. The cards themselves are imported from Japan, but we’ve assigned an artist to redo the packaging here in Eldant.”
“So we’ve heard. Your little spy friend from Bahairam, as we understand.” A wry grin passed over her face.
Petralka was well aware at this point that Elvia really was a spy for Bahairam (although by now, she was more of a double agent). Petralka also knew, however, that Elvia wasn’t very committed to her job, and that she had played a big role in rescuing me when I had been kidnapped by the other nation.
Hence the Eldant Empire was inclined to wink at her, and “the spy girl from Bahairam” had become something of a tongue-in-cheek nickname.
But even so, Elvia was who she was. She would absolutely never be allowed in this audience chamber.
“This is a card for which I asked our artist to attempt a brand-new illustration.”
“Hmm?”
“It’s an extremely rare, made-in-Eldant trading card—in fact, this is the only one that exists so far. The game that’s so popular right now is called Yugi WAR, and we based the design on that.”
“Oh ho!” Petralka leaned forward. “We cannot see it from so far away. Approach us.”
“Yes, Majesty.”
Hikaru-san came up to the throne as ordered. I caught a glimpse of the card in his hand as he went by. It was—
“This is—!”
Petralka was surprised, and even Garius, leaning in to look from beside her, raised an eyebrow.
“Is this Her Majesty?”
“I’m so happy you see the resemblance,” Hikaru-san said.
Yep: the illustration on the card was done in an anime/manga style, but it was clearly a picture of Petralka. Not in her current cosplay outfit, but in her usual clothes and her crown, and with silver hair. The illustration was hardly photo-real, but all the distinctive characteristics made it impossible to mistake the person in the picture.
“The spy girl of Bahairam drew this?”
“She did. Does it not radiate reverence for Your Majesty?” Hikaru-san said with a smile.
“Hmm...”
“The pilot period for the trading cards is already over. We intend to sell them on a larger scale going forward but are aware that among the nobility, many may not look favorably on packaging drawn by Elvia Harneiman. You can see from this drawing, however, how much she respects Your Majesty. Please let it show you her esteem for this empire, and proof that she has no rebellious feelings.”
“Hrm...”
Petralka and Garius looked at each other.
Back during the movie production, Petralka and Elvia had even shared a changing room, so truthfully, I didn’t think Petralka actually had that bad an impression of the beast girl. The only thing was, however the empress might feel, the people around her wouldn’t necessarily share her sentiments. Hikaru-san was right: there were many who wouldn’t smile on a spy from Bahairam doing the art for the packaging of merchandise that was spreading all over Eldant.
If she had Petralka and Garius’s backing, though, it might be a different story. Hikaru-san, I was sure, had deliberately asked Elvia to do Petralka’s picture on a card for exactly that reason. If the empress and her closest advisors were to trumpet the girl’s work, the other nobles wouldn’t be so keen to speak out against her.
All I could do was sigh. Hikaru-san really was an expert reader of other people’s feelings, or their psychology or something. In that sense, he was certainly talented.
“Shinichi,” Petralka said after a moment.
I looked up in a hurry. “Er, yes?”
“What is the matter? You’ve looked rather pale for some time...”
“Oh, uh, I’m fine, I promise.” I shook my head and waved both my hands to emphasize my point.
Outwardly, it wasn’t as if anything had changed. There were no special problems in my work or my life—everything was going smoothly. Almost too smoothly. In fact, since entrusting some of the classes and business to Hikaru-san, I found myself with a little free time and could actually relax.
I suppose I should have been happy. But instead...
We were between classes at school, and I was wandering aimlessly down the hallway.
What Hikaru-san was attempting was a fresh cultural invasion. At the very least, that was the hope of the Japanese government, which had sent him here.
But just like what they had tried to do with me, there was no easy definition: “this plus that equals cultural invasion.” It wasn’t a simple matter of the supplier of culture causing a change in the receiver of it.
I had determined to dodge the “invasion” by giving the choice to the Eldant Empire. I was just making suggestions. It was up to Eldant whether they would listen to me, and later, by taking over the supply, it would be a matter of not cultural invasion but commercial transaction—Amutech would be doing exactly what it had always claimed it would do. That was the answer I came up with.
But now Hikaru-san had found the loopholes in what Amutech was doing and had begun an experiment in cultural invasion. By controlling supply and creating a unique set of values, he wanted to create both scarcity and a secure market. To a certain extent, that happened naturally with trading cards—hence why an experiment aimed not just at making money, but creating addicts, threatened to produce such a deleterious effect.
The people of Eldant had no defense, so to speak, against this sort of thing, so it proved immensely effective.
I had to stop it, or so I felt. But at first glance, what Hikaru-san was doing was not so different from what I had decided to do. Not on a practical level, anyway. The difference was in how Hikaru-san and I thought about what we were doing; it wasn’t something you could see with the naked eye. And so, even if I wanted to stop Hikaru-san’s trading card strategy, it would be hard to gain the support of those around me.
Meanwhile, everyone who met Hikaru-san increasingly thought of him as highly capable. And what that meant for me was...
“Um...”
As I stood there lost in these dark ruminations, someone called out to me.
I looked up and saw a woman standing in the hallway. She was young—she looked to be about Minori-san’s age—but then I saw her pointed ears and realized she was an elf. That meant she might be far older than she appeared. Her clothing marked her out as different from the elf students; her outfit was full of lovely little details and gave off a more mature vibe. She was probably related to one of the students—somebody’s mother, maybe.
“Are you Shinichi-sensei?”
“Huh? Er, yes. I’m Kanou Shinichi...”
“I’m glad to meet you. I’m Shade’s mother. Thank you for taking such good care of my son.” She bowed her head politely.
Very motherly-looking. And I recognized Shade’s name. He hung around with Loek a lot. He always seemed kind of shy, but he must have been focused, because he kept up pretty good grades.
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” This was an older woman I was dealing with—I had to remember my manners. I bowed in return.
Shade’s mother’s expression darkened. “Please pardon me for bringing this up so suddenly, but there’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”
“There is?” I asked, furrowing my brow, and the woman nodded.
Every once in a while, the parents of a student would try to get a younger sibling admitted to the school on the basis that their older brother or sister already went here—you know, trying to work their connections. But it didn’t look like that was what was going on here.
So what was?
“It’s about my son.”
Well, yes, I figured that.
“He hardly comes out of his room.”
I took a breath. “Yipes...” For me personally, it seemed like this might be a painful conversation.
As someone who had spent some time as a home security guard, this subject really struck home. According to Shade’s mother, he would just shut himself up in his room, and even when she tried to talk to him, he only gave vague, noncommittal answers.
When he finally did come out of his room to, you know, take care of business, she peeked in and found a portable game console sitting on, a Nindento 3TS.
That’s right: one of the prizes we had handed out at the soccer tournament.
The tournament had culminated in an all-out battle between some royal knights and the lizardman team. We had given the lizardmen Somy PLPs and 3TSes as prices, but because portable game consoles didn’t mean much to them, they had sold most of them, many ending up in the hands of nobility—including some of the students’ parents.
I assumed Shade’s 3TS was one of those. And that wasn’t a problem, as far as it went. The problem was...
“No matter what I say to him, he won’t come out of his room. Finally he just says, ‘Cram it, Mom!’”
“Gosh...”
Now that I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t seen Shade in a while.
“My boy never used to act like that,” Shade’s mother said, clearly at a loss.
“Hmm...”
Had the games we’d brought over for the 3TS been that addictive?
In any event, if the 3TS really was the cause, then I bore some of the responsibility for this situation.
“I understand,” I said. As a former shut-in, I had a sense of how he must be feeling. Maybe I could help him get back to a normal life. “Er, if I come to your house, I’ll be able to find Shade-kun, then?”
“Oh, no, he’s here at school now.”
“I’m sorry?”
“He does come to school every day,” Shade’s mother said, her eyes on the ground. “It’s just... the rest of the time, he never leaves his room...”
Ahh. Now it made sense. I got it.
The 3TS was battery-powered, but it couldn’t run several days on a charge. If you did nothing but play it, you would probably need to recharge it on a daily basis. And right now, the only place the average person could get access to electric power was this school. He was coming to school to charge his game.
“But where is he, then?”
I really hadn’t seen Shade lately.
So he was at school, but not in class? That would have to mean...
“Okay, I understand. I’ll need to hear Shade-kun’s side of the story first.”
“Thank you for taking care of this,” his mother said, and gave me a deep bow.
Saying I would look into it was easy enough, but that was only the beginning of the problem.
I left teaching duties to Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and Myusel, who was there to lecture that day, and started searching the school. Shade obviously wasn’t in the classroom, but I also didn’t find him in the library or even the storeroom.
“Where could he be...?”
I’d looked in just about every room we had, but I hadn’t seen him anywhere. What was going on?
Mentally scratching my head, I decided to take another look in the places I’d already checked. Maybe I’d missed something. And I had told his mother I would deal with this—I couldn’t just give up.
And so at the break period, I came up to a bunch of elf students laughing and chatting in the classroom.
“Hey, do any of you know where Shade is?”
“Shade?” They all looked at each other. “Now that you mention it, he hasn’t been around lately, has he?”
“What? I saw him,” a girl said.
“Me too,” said a guy. At least I had a couple of leads.
“Where did you see him?” I asked. The two students put their hands to their chins as if trying to remember.
“Uhh... In the classroom.”
“He charges his 3TS every day. But he disappears before class starts.”
“He was charging earlier, too. Although then he left...”
“Really?” This was bad. I must have missed him. “Do you know where he went?”
“Sorry, we really don’t...”
“Okay. Thank you.”
Then I left the classroom, too.
If he had been here until just a little while ago, that strongly suggested he was still on school grounds. He had probably shut himself up somewhere he could play his game without being interrupted, and he would reappear in the classroom when he needed a recharge.
“If I wanted to play a game by myself here at school...”
It wasn’t like all the kids had 3TSes. If you were careless enough to pull it out in the classroom, another student might grab it from you, or at least bother you when you were trying to play. That was why Shade charged in the classroom, but didn’t stay there.
Where could you be alone at school? By yourself...
“Hmmm...”
I walked down the hallway—then stopped at the one place I could think of.
The boys’ bathroom.
The foundations and exterior of this building had been built in the style of the Holy Eldant Empire, but the interior had been designed and built by the JSDF, so the place was pretty Japanese. Apparently the Eldant Empire didn’t separate men’s and women’s toilet areas, but things were different here at school.
And just like in Japan, there were individual stalls in the restroom. You could flip down the lids on the Western-style toilets to make an impromptu chair. For a while in Japan, the expression benjo-meshi had gained currency—a devastatingly sad phrase that meant “toilet meal” and referred to eating by yourself in a bathroom stall. Frankly, playing a game in the restroom was probably more attractive than eating your lunch in there. Heck, I had been known to take a manga with me, myself. Though you always had to watch out for the danger of your legs falling asleep...
I entered the boys’ bathroom and looked around. No one else was immediately visible. But, as if we were following the script from a TV show or something, the door of just one of the stalls was shut.
I approached and knocked on the door. “Excuse me. Is that Shade in there by any chance?” I wanted to be very sure I had the right person.
I waited. Ten seconds passed. No answer.
I knocked on the door again, but to no avail. Instead, I could hear someone muttering inside.
“Ahh... Myuul-tan...” The voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper.
“Shade...?” I asked, pressing my ear to the door.
“Myuul-tan, your... Your...”
The voice was hard to hear, but I was pretty sure it was Shade.
“Shade! That’s you, isn’t it? It’s me, Kanou Shinichi. I want you to open the door.”
I realized I sounded like a police officer trying to talk down a suspect. Oops. Anyway, I knocked on the door again, harder this time. But still there was no answer. All I could hear was a strained laugh and harsh breathing.
Uh-oh, I thought reflexively. This didn’t seem... quite normal.
“Sorry!” I said, then I placed my hand against the door. The next words that came out of my mouth were a magical chant. A spell Myusel had taught me, one of only two I knew.
“Tifu Murottsu!”
Bam!
A whirlwind flared up right there, the wind blowing my hair every which way. My spell slammed the door with an invisible force, and with a crack of protest the lock came free. I pulled the door open.
There, in his own personal “cave of the sun goddess,” was Shade...
“Myul-taaan...”
...but not the Shade I knew.
He didn’t show a hint of surprise at my sudden entrance, and he was missing the shy smile he’d always had. Instead, a weak grin covered his haggard face, and he just kept staring at the screen of his 3TS.
I was panicked. How could I not be, after seeing Shade that way? I had tried to talk to him, but he was completely fixated on his 3TS, and hardly even seemed to hear what I was saying. In the end, I was at least able to get him home, but not much more. I thought about taking the 3TS away, but decided not to, in case it made him turn violent.
He was completely addicted. What was worse, the thing he was addicted to was not a game I had imported. It was an ero game. I.e., an X-rated title.
Of course, the Holy Eldant Empire didn’t technically have an “X rating,” and I had imported ero games before, albeit only a few of them.
Personally, I don’t think ero games are inherently evil or anything. Thanks to my mom’s work, our house had a rotating selection of samples of such games, and I wasn’t above checking them out when I thought my parents wouldn’t notice. So I didn’t think the problem was with it being an ero game as such.
The problem had to do with the content of the game—its type, if you will.
The word “game” actually covers a wide variety of things. Ero games fall under this category, but so do adventure games, visual novels, and kamishibai games. Players face a choice in each location that can have some effect on the story, although in its most basic form the plot is already settled, just like in a manga, anime, or novel.
