Everyone was gone. The lights were out. And a dark shadow was dragging something toward me through the murk.
What is going on in this mansion?
What had happened out here while I was shut away in my room? Was this really all because of that epidemic? Or... was this the true face of the illness? This was an entirely separate world. A fantasy land of magic and elves and dragons. Why should I expect a sickness here to look anything like anything I was used to in Japan? Diseases here might be completely different.
They might turn you into a monster, for example. Or they might cause your desiccated corpse to wander around after you were gone.
“Oh... God...”
Magic, I thought desperately. I raised my right hand, but I was shaking so hard I could barely say the words. It was probably for the best. I was trapped in an enclosed space; busting out Tifu Murottsu here would probably take me down along with whatever that thing was.
At last the dark shape emerged into the lamplight, revealing itself. It had to be less than three meters away...!
“Yaaaaaargh!” Instead of a spell, I let out a scream.
Crap, I’m gonna die!
“Oh, hullo, Master. Come out of your room?”
“Aaaaahh—huh?”
I blinked at the familiar voice. Then I took another, closer look at what was standing there in the hazy light of the lamp. It was a bipedal creature covered in scales. To a modern Japanese, it—no, he—probably looked like the very picture of an inhuman monster, but he could use tools and even speak. He was very much considered a person in this world. He was a lizardman.
“Brooke...?”
“Yessir.”
“And Cerise-san...”
“Yes, sir.”
Standing in front of me were the lizardman couple that lived in this house: Brooke, the gardener, and his wife Cerise-san, who was now one of our maids. I knew them perfectly well, but when they walked together, their shadows melded into each other and looked like some other, even bigger and more terrifying beast.
“G-Geez, wow...” I felt myself go weak, and finally just sat down right there on the floor.
That’s right. There were two residents of this mansion I hadn’t been accounting for. Our lizardmen didn’t live in the main house—it was more convenient for them to stay in a separate building—so I very rarely saw them around the mansion after dinner, let alone in the middle of the night. And they didn’t use computers, so I hadn’t spoken a word to them for two entire weeks. I had practically forgotten about them.
“Are you all right, sir?” Cerise-san said, reaching out to help me up.
“Thanks...” I took her hand and stood unsteadily. That was when I spotted Cerise-san’s tail, a distinctive feature of lizardman physiology, behind her. That would explain the dragging noise I’d heard. Plus, the two normally went around barefoot, which was why I hadn’t heard any shoes.
I tried to consciously slow my heart, still pounding with the lingering adrenaline, but I had never been so relieved to run into some friendly faces.
“W-Wait,” I said, “you two are okay?!”
“Sir...?” Cerise-san said.
“Shouldn’t we be?” Brooke asked.
The two of them weren’t very expressive, but by the tone of their voices and the way their tongues slid in and out of their mouths, I could take a good guess at how they were feeling. Right now, they seemed to be surprised.
“I mean... the sickness... Everyone else...”
They had all collapsed and disappeared. I thought...
“Sickness, sir?” Brooke said. He looked at his wife.
“You know, I did hear something about an outbreak in the vicinity of the castle,” she said. Apparently they were both feeling perfectly normal. I guess whatever this thing was, it didn’t affect lizardmen. Or maybe...
“Hang on... Wait a second,” I said, almost to myself.
Had everyone really collapsed from illness? Even if they had all been infected, would they really all succumb at the same time, in the same way, in less than an hour? And with no warning at all?
Obviously, I had only seen Myusel and the others online, via their avatars, so it was always possible the illness had been steadily progressing as we played. But... would they really be playing a video game if they felt that bad? My head was spinning.
That was when Brooke said: “By the by, Master, all the others seem to be gathered in the yard. Is something the matter?”
“Excuse me?”
Ex-cuse me?
“Yard” is such a small word, but the one at our mansion was pretty darn big. Just about anything a building wasn’t actively standing on could be considered a yard, so by sheer land area, there was more “yard” than house around here. Some parts of it had neat, geometrical arrangements of flower plots or fountain ponds, but get far enough out and it became hard to tell the so-called yard from the forest beyond. Thanks to Brooke’s consistent hard work, at least it never got to looking like an abandoned lot or anything.
Now I was behind the house, on the other side from the main gate and entryway. There was a bush, about waist-high... and from behind it came the faint glow of an electric light.
I got a little closer: it was the monitor of a laptop computer. A tarp had been laid on the ground, under the computer; and I could see several shadows surrounding the machine. It was Myusel, Petralka, Elvia, Minori-san, and Hikaru-san. Not far off, I spotted the royal guard, too.
And...
“See, Shinichi-kun went to your room first, right, Hikaru-kun?”
Minori-san pressed a button on the laptop. Just like she said, the screen showed me leaving my room and heading for Hikaru-san’s. She was obviously playing back a recording from one of the mansion’s cameras.
“So this indicates that Shinichi considers Hikaru most important of all to him...?”
“I don’t think so,” Minori-san said with a smile. “He was going to where Myusel was. He knew she’d gone to Hikaru-kun’s room. If he’d thought she was in her own room, I guarantee he would’ve gone there first.”
“Hrm,”
