“I even remembered how to use a water bottle!”
Some people might have frowned at that, but there was no one here to shoot back at me. I was alone in my room. I could eat in bed, play my gal games buck naked, it didn’t matter. No one would scold me. The girls on my monitor would just sit there smiling at me until I clicked on something.
What release! What freedom!
I sped through the meal Myusel had brought me, clapped my hands together again—“Go-chisou-sama!”—put the plate back on the cart, and reached for the mouse to resume my game.
“Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo...” I couldn’t help chuckling to myself as I went back to working on the heroine.
Let me take this opportunity to be completely honest: the shut-in life is the best!
I looked up when I heard the long, heavy sigh. Minori-sama had her cheek pressed against the dinner table, looking rather melancholy.
“Um, Minori-sama, was the food not to your liking?”
“Huh?” She blinked in confusion, then shook her head quickly when she realized what I had asked. “No, no, that’s not it at all. Your cooking was the best, Myusel, just like it always is.” She smiled, although it wasn’t quite a happy one.
Koganuma Minori-sama. Shinichi-sama’s bodyguard and a member of an organization called the Jay Ess Dee Eff. This was, I gathered, the army of Ja-pan, though when I asked Minori-sama whether I understood that correctly, she just gave me a half-smile and said I should “think of it as something a little different.” I didn’t really understand.
But setting that aside...
“But that sigh...”
“Minori-san’s sigh can mean only one thing.”
This came from Ayasaki Hikaru-sama, likewise seated at the table. Like Shinichi-sama, Hikaru-sama came to spread Ja-pan’s otaku culture in the Eldant Empire. He was originally chosen to replace Shinichi-sama, but now he was more of a subordinate, almost a companion.
He sipped his tea luxuriously, putting the white ceramic cup to his lips, giving the slightest shake of his long, black hair. He looked quite beautiful and refined, radiating a sort of eroticism that appealed even to me, a woman. I would never be able to be as elegant as he was. Seeing him there, effortlessly beautiful, it felt like it must have been some kind of mistake that he was a man.
“You mean... Shinichi-sama?”
I poured him another cup of after-dinner tea, and Minori-sama gave another long sigh. “What else could it be?” she said.
“I’m very sorry...” I bent myself nearly in half in my bow of apology.
It was my fault that Shinichi-sama wouldn’t come out of his room.
But Minori-sama and Hikaru-sama both shook their heads and smiled.
“Why should you apologize, Myusel?” Minori-sama said.
“Yeah, it’s not your fault.”
“But—” I said, and stopped. I heard footsteps coming down the hall.
Elf ears are not just long for show. We have much better hearing than other races. I’m just half elf, but even so, I had the best hearing of anyone in the room. I could detect the approaching footsteps even though we were right in the middle of a conversation.
There were three people coming. I could even take a good guess who they were based on subtle differences in their footfalls.
“No reaction at all!”
The complaint came from a beautiful, but rather petite, girl with long, silver hair who appeared in the kitchen.
Empress Petralka an Eldant III. She was the ruler of the Holy Eldant Empire. Normally she would never even speak to someone of my station, let alone sit at the same table as me, but for a whole host of reasons, she had taken me into her fold and in fact treated me quite well.
“Are you certain Shinichi is in there?”
Behind the empress came a lovely man with silver hair just like hers. Minister Garius en Cordobal was Her Majesty’s cousin and head of the country’s military, including the royal guard. Finally there came...
“I could smell Shinichi-sama, I’m telling you!”
Elvia Harneiman-san. She had ears and a tail like those of an animal, because she was a beast person—a werewolf. She had also once been a spy for the neighboring Kingdom of Bahairam, but now she lived at this mansion (another rather long story). It seemed neither Her Majesty nor Minister Cordobal were suspicious of her any longer, hence why she could walk casually along with them.
Her Majesty. And Elvia-san. When it came to Shinichi-sama, they and I had... Well, we had fought. I still trembled to remember it. Elvia-san was one thing, but for me, a subject of the Eldant Empire, to do battle with the revered Empress, should have been unthinkable. It could easily have resulted in me being beheaded, but Her Majesty, in her mercy, had quickly proclaimed that I was not to be punished.
“She was under the control of the ‘forbidden armor.’ As we were.”
This “forbidden armor” had an unfortunate way of bringing out whatever was most deeply buried in the wearer. We aren’t normally used to announcing our deepest secrets to everyone within hearing, or to being privy to the secrets of others. Confusion was the result, and honesty began to sound like fighting words, until we were carried away by the madness of it all. That was the primary problem with the forbidden armor. It was a bit like getting drunk on very strong wine. Thinking of it that way, it was obvious why the armor would have been forbidden.
“Shinichi-kun can be such a handful when he wants to,” Minori-sama sighed. “Her Majesty and Garius-san specifically came here to visit him...”
“Perhaps he failed to respond because he is collapsed in his room. Are you quite certain he is okay?”
“Myusel brought him dinner just a few minutes ago, and got her usual ‘letter’ back.” Minori-sama showed Her Majesty and the others the note. I received one of them each time I brought food, assuring me
