But what the heck was going on?
Minori-san: “I just had a thought.”
Me: “Yeah?”
Minori-san: “We’re downwind of the castle. If that sickness is airborne, maybe it could reach us here.”
Me: “Please... don’t threaten me.”
But even as I typed out the words, my mind was spinning. An infectious disease. Okay, so even most airborne pathogens couldn’t survive a trip of several kilometers. I was pretty sure I had seen a movie once where they’d explained that with an airborne illness, it wasn’t like the virus or bacteria went around flying after people. Instead, the pathogen was capable of surviving outside the body temporarily, and drifted along on the breeze for as long as it survived. If someone breathed on you while you were talking to them—or for that matter, got saliva on you—the pathogen might get around that way. It could also be in sweat. But none of those things, I figured, was going to just fly through the air forever. So it wasn’t going to spread explosively for miles around by air or anything. I thought.
But... Petralka. She had come from the castle this morning. The castle that was at the epicenter of this infection. And an infection usually has an incubation period.
“No way...”
What if Petralka, or one of her bodyguards, had been an asymptomatic carrier? And then they had come into the mansion, and...?
“No, no way. Can’t be.” I was just overthinking it. I shook my head.
Me: “Pretty sure that’s just overthinking it.”
Elvia: “yeah!”
.......
......
......Huh?
Me: “Minori-san?”
Minori-san was at least as quick a typist as I was. So why wasn’t I getting any answer from her? There was no reaction at all. Her avatar, Kyouya, just stood there, still as a stone.
.............
Hey hey hey hey hey!
Me: “Hey, Minori-san? Don’t scare me like this. What’s going on?”
I typed as fast as I could, but there was still no answer. Hang on, could something seriously be wrong?
Elvia: “what’s wrong minori-sama”
That was what I wanted to know!
Elvia: “everyone not come back why?”
Me: “No idea. Can you tell what’s going on, Elvia?”
Elvia: “nob know”
Her response seemed a little off. Maybe a sign of how uneasy she was. What in the world was happening?
......... Wait.
I furrowed my brow as a possibility occurred to me. For the last two weeks, I had been shut up in my room. Hadn’t opened the doors or windows, hadn’t had physical contact with anybody. Including Petralka, of course. But what about the others? Say for the sake of argument that Petralka, or maybe Garius or one of the royal guards, was a carrier of the disease. Could the infection have spread while everyone was together in the house? Petralka and Garius, in particular, shared meals, had tea, and participated in other social niceties with the rest of the household, or so I had heard. Maybe the infection could have spread... then...?
The members of the household had dropped out of the game in the order: Hikaru-san, Myusel, Minori-san. Elvia and I were the only ones left. Was everyone (excluding me, having never left my room) succumbing in order from weakest to strongest?
Hikaru-san was a guy, but he was awfully slight (helped with his cosplaying, at least), and didn’t come across as the hardy type. Myusel, on the other hand, was surprisingly tough: she used a lot of energy doing housework, and had even been in the military for a while.
All that led to just one conclusion...
Me: “Elvia, you okay?”
I was starting to feel really uneasy.
Elvia: “Yes. hTT”
Me: “Elvia?”
What kind of response was that? And a moment later:
Elvia: “mi oky”
Her messages were hardly even making sense anymore. I knew she was prone to typos, but this...
Elvia: “okk”
She seemed to be trying to type I’m okay, but she kept sending it when she was only halfway through. I waited for what I hoped would be a complete, coherent sentence, but nothing showed up.
Me: “Elvia...?”
There was no answer.
Me: “?”
I tried sending this one, lone symbol, but nobody responded. Everyone’s avatars just stood there, looking weirdly almost lifelike the way they breathed in and out as they waited. It was like they were in some strange place between alive and not alive, and I found it unsettling.
Could this really be...?
Just as I was starting to seriously worry, another message from Elvia popped up.
Elvia: “Itchy. Tasty.”
And that really was the last thing I got out of her.
I could only stare stupidly at the screen. All the avatars were there, but they might as well have been empty husks.
“I can’t believe it...”
Had the epidemic spread to our mansion? Had every single other person caught it and collapsed? And if they had... this was, like, really serious, wasn’t it? I didn’t know exactly what disease we were dealing with, but I did know this was a different world. I had no idea what kind of bizarre, terrifying illnesses might be lurking here. What if this was an emergency, something that was deadly if not treated immediately?
This is bad. This is so bad.
I jumped up from my chair and headed straight for the door. I already had a hand on it when I froze.
The whole reason I was still healthy was because I hadn’t taken a single step outside my room. So if I went through this door, what then? Whatever this bug was, it was so infectious that everyone else in the house had caught it. I might catch it, too. From a safety standpoint, maybe it was best for me to stay shut up in here.
“But...”
Could I really live with myself if I didn’t do anything? If I just abandoned everybody? Maybe they were all down with fevers. Maybe they were in pain. Maybe they were suffering.
Myusel. Petralka. Elvia. Minori-san. Hikaru-san.
Out of concern for me, locked away in my room, they had tried everything to get me outside—holding a barbecue, even setting up a special MMO just for us. Myusel had
