His pursuit didn’t strike me as a calculated move.

  “But... even... so...” I muttered, my breath coming in ragged gasps. “How far... are they... gonna go...?!”

  The carriage had already led us to the edge of town—to the very entrance to the forest. Maybe the Patriots meant to lose us in the woods. It was true that wherever they went in the city, there were likely to be witnesses, just like we had stumbled upon them committing their crime. There was hardly anyone to see them in the forest, and the trees would block the view of anyone looking in...

  “Huff... puff...”

  At last I lost sight of the carriage, and came to a standstill on the outer edges of the wood.

  Pathetic. And also, extremely uncool. I made a nice, dramatic, I’ve-gotta-do-something! exit, and then I run out of breath and lose track of them.

  I leaned against the trunk of a nearby tree and tried to catch my breath.

  “What... are you... doing here?”

  Several steps ahead of me, there was Hikaru-san, also breathing hard, but not looking any worse than I was. His face was sweaty and he looked thoroughly annoyed.

  “Well, you... just went running... off. And you were... in danger... by yourself.”

  Hikaru-san’s brow creased as he looked at me. Finally, he gave a short sigh and started walking into the forest. I followed after him, saying, “Shouldn’t we... go back to Minori-san... and call for help...?”

  “And what if they get away while we’re doing that?” Hikaru-san practically spat.

  “It can’t be easy... to drive a carriage through a forest... Whether they ditch it... or just hide it... it would have to be close to their base...”

  Say the two of us managed to track the Patriots to their base. What were we going to do then? Neither of us had a weapon. I knew simple offensive magic, but nothing that was likely to help me against multiple opponents, especially when they had a hostage.

  “You can go back if you want. I’m going on.” Hikaru-san’s walk turned into a march.

  Now that we couldn’t see them, we had no idea where in this forest the Assembly of Patriots might be. Which meant we didn’t know when we might suddenly be attacked...

  “Hikaru-san,” I said. He was catching his skirt on the foliage and just generally having a hard time walking.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Why’d you go after them like that?”

  For a guy who was always calculating risk, it seemed like pretty long odds.

  Hikaru-san stopped walking. The expression on his face, which I could see in profile, suggested I had asked a question he didn’t want to answer.

  “I’m sorry. Since we don’t know what’s going to happen next... I’ll apologize now.”

  “Huh...?” That was definitely not what I had been expecting him to say.

  “Until I saw that kidnapping with my own eyes... I was taking it all too lightly.”

  “Taking what too lightly?”

  “The effects my actions would have on the real world.”

  I didn’t say anything right away, but at that moment, it made sense to me.

  Pretty much everyone has a different impression of things they know intellectually versus things they’ve experienced for themselves. For example, we have a fundamental fear of the fact that people die, yet when we see wars or murders on television or in the newspaper, they honestly don’t feel that real to us. They might involve dead people, but to the extent we don’t perceive those deaths with our own senses, the impression we get is similar to when a character dies in fiction.

  Maybe we hear about someone we don’t know dying in a far-off country. We may sympathize, but we aren’t tormented by feelings of guilt or powerlessness. We understand that it doesn’t really have anything to do with us—that in a way, we’re totally separate from it.

  Sometimes, online or on TV, I had seen video footage of wars, but even when I knew that they showed something currently happening somewhere in the world, that real people were really dying—that intellectual understanding never made me want to drop everything, run off to a war zone, and try to help. Maybe donate to charities for the less fortunate, but that’s about it.

  But what if someone you know is in a situation like that? Or what if it appears someone might be killed before your eyes?

  Suddenly, you can’t look away; grim reality bears down upon you. You can’t pretend it doesn’t affect you. You don’t have to be the one being kidnapped to know that you’re involved.

  Someone is being kidnapped. Depending how things turn out, she might even be killed.

  The thought had left Hikaru-san unable to just stand there. It wasn’t a matter of numbers or buy-in. It was simply emotion, and it was the truth. Which meant...

  “What’s with the smile?” Hikaru-san asked, looking at me in puzzlement.

  “Nothing,” I said ambiguously, shaking my head.

  He had no weapon.

  It was entirely possible he was putting himself in danger.

  And yet even so, he hadn’t been able to look the other way.

  Maybe this person, Hikaru-san, wasn’t really rotten to the core. In fact, I felt a twinge of affection for him, because I had run into lots of people like him online. He was a total chuunibyou—saw the world on a slant, pretty cynical, yet still, somewhere in his heart, there was real goodness, a real belief in what was right. The kind of person who could easily tell those he didn’t get along with to “Just die,” but who also could never ignore people who came to him for help.

  Maybe, after all this, it turned out he really was an otaku. The kind only a peace-addled country like Japan could have produced: someone equally susceptible to both the brutal nature of reality and the kind of impossibly beautiful ideals you can only find in fiction.

  Hikaru-san turned away from me irritably. And then, without a word, we started forward again.

  The thing was, I didn’t know if we were actually going in the right direction, and I suspected Hikaru-san didn’t, either. We either followed what appeared to be wheel tracks from a carriage, or went wherever there seemed to be enough space for a carriage to fit through.

  “Where are they?” I muttered in an effort to hide my unease.

  This kidnapping wasn’t likely to be an impulsive act. The kidnappers probably had their escape route worked out ahead of time. They would know the geography of the forest. Which meant they could almost certainly get through the woods and out again much faster than a couple of kids bumbling aimlessly among the trees. Depending how far in advance they had planned this, they could even have cut some trees down to make a path their carriage could use.

  We had to find them, and soon.

  Wait... Was I sure it wouldn’t be better to join up with Minori-san again first?

  Hikaru-san didn’t say anything, but it looked like he was starting to sweat having lost the trail of the Assembly of Patriots guys. Still, he walked pretty authoritatively. Feeling not at all comfortable, I followed him.

  “Wait, isn’t this—”

  Then he stopped.

  “Huh?”

  My foot came down... but didn’t find the ground.

  No ground?

  ...............Cliff?!

  “No way!” I drew back as quickly as I could, but Hikaru-san, who had been half a step ahead of me, grabbed my hand. Just as I was leaning over, hoping to grab his shoulder to stop him...

  “Yikes!”

  “Whoaaaa!”

  There was no escaping gravity. Hikaru-san and I went tumbling down.

  Ahh! Falling!

  As I instinctively squeezed my eyes shut, a flurry of thoughts went racing through my mind. The girl we weren’t able to save. Minori-san, fighting with the huge bird. Myusel and the others, back at the mansion. That last anime episode. How my short life was coming to an end, and I’d never even gotten to ditch my virginity...!

  Okay, so I’m not proud of all of those regrets. Hikaru-san and I kept falling.

  Thud! The impact rattled me from my butt all the way up to my brain.

  Apparently we hadn’t actually fallen that far. Luckily—I mean seriously, by sheer, dumb luck—I had fallen in a sitting position. I felt like I’d taken a hard kick in the behind, but if I had been leaning over any further when I fell, who knew what might’ve happened?

  “Eeyow,” I moaned, rubbing my sore bottom. Then my eyes flew open. “Wait, what?!”

  Hikaru-san was sitting beside me, looking equally shocked.

  “Huh...?”

  I looked down, and as I registered what I had landed on, my eyes got wider and wider.

  Beneath me was something covered in feathers.

  I could see a rope connected to a stout neck and a round head.

  What’s more, there was something sticking out of its head...

  Was I, by any chance, sitting on top of a giant bird? One with a spike pounded through its forehead, no less?

  And wouldn’t that mean...?

  Pressed by an uninvited feeling that things were going nowhere good, I turned around.

  “Hey...”

  Behind me I saw several very surprised men and one kidnapped young woman looking at me from inside a carriage.

  Well! It’s a small world after all!

  Apparently, when Hikaru-san and I tumbled over that cliff, we were lucky enough to fall smack on top of the guys from the Assembly of Patriots—or rather, on top of the birds pulling their carriage.

  Wait... Lucky?

  No contemporary manga artist would lower themselves to such base coincidence—yet there we all were, me and Hikaru-san and the Patriots, frozen and staring at each other. All of us were transfixed by what seemed to be the sick sense of humor of the man upstairs.

  For a moment, the only sound was that of the carriage wheels crunching over fallen leaves.

  Hikaru-san was the quickest to come back to his senses. He grabbed for the spike in the head of the bird he was sitting on. That was fair enough. Anyone could see those spikes practically screamed weak point. I wondered how the Bahairam mages felt about that.

  In any event—

  Caaaaaaaaaawwwwww!

  These were animals that didn’t seem to mind being shot with a 9mm pistol, but pulling on that spike was evidently not pleasant. It let out a tremendous howl and stomped the ground like a fighting bull.

  “Y-Yikes!” I exclaimed. The bird Hikaru-san was riding was connected to the one I was on!

  Both of us ended up thrown to the ground. Thankfully, all the leaves and leaf mold made for a soft landing. Frankly, it was nicer than when we had landed on the birds.

  “Are... Are you okay?” I asked, turning to Hikaru-san.

  “That’s weird,” he said ruefully as he sat up. “That spike is practically begging to be pulled out... But I couldn’t get it.”

  “I’m not that surprised,” I said tiredly. If it were that easy to get the spike out, these things wouldn’t do well as weapons. Granted, the spikes really didn’t look very solid. But still—use your head, guy!

  Okay. Forget about that for now.

  The carriage rumbled past us—then stopped a few meters farther on. It looked like both of the birds wanted to go in different directions, halting forward progress. At least Hikaru-san had managed to stop the kidnappers.

  There was a shout that I couldn’t understand. The door flew open, and the men jumped out, carrying the girl with them. As they dragged her out of the carriage, they held a knife at her throat, making sure we could see it.

  One of the men spat something that sounded unpleasant, but I didn’t know what he was saying.

  Five men emerged from the carriage. Four of them carried swords at their hips and glared at us with undisguised contempt. The last one had the girl and the dagger. And...

  A crystal ball?

  The man dragging the woman along had a crystal ball dangling from his belt. Why would he have one of those? Was it similar to the one on which we had been shown the game screen the day before? The ball was glowing faintly, but I didn’t see any image in it...

  “Hey...”

  Then I remembered. Could it be one of those crystal balls that detects magic by reacting to the presence of magical power? The Assembly of Patriots had used one the first time I had encountered them. But that glow meant there was some kind of magic going on right now...

  Huh. It must be reacting to the puppet magic.

  I couldn’t be sure which of them was the magic user, but somebody in that group of men had to be controlling the birds using puppet magic.

  Grumbling and growling, the four men with swords drew them all at once.

  “Whoa... Hang on...!”

  This situation had just gone from bad to deadly.

  Hikaru-san and I scrambled to our feet, facing the men across a gap of several meters. Not counting the guy with the hostage, it was four vs. two, and we didn’t have any weapons. Plus, at least one of them was a magic user.

  It didn’t look like much of a fight.

  Of course, I could draw on Tifu Murottsu, which Myusel had taught me, but as offensive magic goes, it was the simplest of the simple. An amateur like me could hardly expect to be very accurate with it anyway, and I couldn’t use it repeatedly. So even if I managed to get the spell off, I would only be able to do so once, and could only hope to produce a basic attack in their general direction. But that crystal ball would probably warn them before I did.

  I took a trembling step back.

  I’m pathetic. I’m embarrassed by myself.

  We’d chased them all this way, but so far from rescuing the girl, we had to run away with our tails between our legs in the face of their superior fighting strength.

  Hikaru-san stared at the men for a long moment. Then finally he said, “I guess I have no choice. This was the one thing I wanted to avoid... but I guess it’s time to reveal my true power.”

  “Huh?”

  His true what?!

  Don’t tell me we were in for some convenient plot twist like that Hikaru-san secretly had incredible psychic powers or something?! I mean, not that this was a plot per se, but seriously, what the heck?!

  As I stared at Hikaru-san in disbelief, he intoned: “Darkness! O power of the dark tribe that has lain in the eternal purgatory! Gather here now and become my sword! Be thou my wrath upon my enemies!”

  Was that a... a spell, or something?

  “Appear now! O Great Flare!”

  The rest of us drew in a collective breath. I threw myself to the ground. Hikaru-san definitely sounded like he meant business.

  And then...

  Silence.

  More silence.

  Ten seconds passed, and nothing happened.

  Still more silence.

  Hikaru-san stood there looking as if he expected to fire a laser beam out of his palm or something. I spotted a single bead of sweat running down his forehead.

  “Wait, were you just trying to scare them?!” I cried, jumping to my feet. “What was the point?!”

  “I thought if I distracted them, you would take the opening to attack them or something!”

  “What are you, crazy?!”

  “I thought you’d be able to think on your feet!”

  “I told you, the problem is, that’s completely crazy!”

  We were at it like some kind of twisted comedy duo, but the Assembly of Patriots wasn’t going to stand there and watch us forever. In fact, seeing Hikaru-san’s “attack” fizzle out seemed to convince the men that we didn’t have any power to speak of. Mocking grins came over their faces and they approached us with swords in hand.

  This was not good. We were about to be chopped into little, tiny pieces.

  Trying to blow them away with magic really might be my only hope... But if I wasn’t careful, they would notice the moment I started chanting and just cut me straight down. They had that crystal to let them know when—

  Wait... Huh?

  Something occurred to me.

  When Hikaru-san had been making his big show of having a magic spell up his sleeve, the guy with the magic detector hadn’t even glanced at it. You’d think that would be the first place you’d look if your opponent seemed like he was going to use magic.

  Hold on...

  That was it! There was no point in looking at the crystal ball!

  The puppet magic controlling the big birds was constantly active. The animals, who had been ready to rampage moments before, were already calmed down and standing sedately.

  All of which meant...

  “Okay,” I said, holding up both hands. Even the Patriots should have understood that it was a gesture of surrender; I was obviously showing that I didn’t have any weapons. It was a bit of body language that could be understood no matter which dimension you were from.

  “We have no hope of beating you. But I’m the empress’s favorite. I think I’d make a valuable hostage, so please, don’t kill me yet.” I tried to make myself look and sound as servile as possible.

  “Sh-Shinichi-san?!” Hikaru-san’s eyes were practically popping out of his head. “How can you be so—wait! They can’t even understand you, how are you going to negotiate?”

  I kept talking as I got closer to the men. “Oh, don’t listen to him. Please, at least save me. I don’t want to die yet. Living is all that matters to me.”

  Our opponents watched me suspiciously. I kept taking one step closer, then another, as slowly as possible, so as not to antagonize them. And then...

  “Whoops.”

  The men grabbed me.

  “What are you doing?! Have you gone stupid?!” Hikaru-san shouted, clearly freaking out.

  The men were all grinning cruelly, ridicule plain on their faces. I’m sure they thought I was foolish and self-serving. They didn’t have to understand what I was saying to catch my facial expression and tone of voice. Plus, Hikaru-san’s reaction probably helped them comprehend what I was getting at.

  “Ahh—!”

  Beside me, the girl with the knife at her neck froze. The fact that I could understand what she said showed that, as a member of the nobility, she was wearing a magic ring. Meaning...

  The girl wore an expression of despair. When she first saw us, she must have been overjoyed to think help had come, and now she was doubly despondent. I sighed and said to her, “Sorry. Looks like we weren’t up to it.”

 

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