It wouldn’t be the first time this sort of thing had happened in history. But things moved quickly after that. The JSDF requisitioned and distributed medicine from Japan, as well as flu vaccines for all of us and anyone else who wanted one. Everyone seemed to think the furor about the epidemic would die down before long.
And then...
“Morning...”
I came into the dining area, scratching my cheek in embarrassment. Everyone else was already there; I was the last to arrive.
Despite my declaration that I was going to go back to being a shut-in, I had eventually given up on it. I assumed Minori-san and Hikaru-san would continue to try everything they could think of to get me out of my room, and I wouldn’t have put it past them to finally resort to violent force, like my parents had done. Frankly, I was afraid they might invent some even more humiliating plan. And I didn’t think I could endure any more humiliation.
So, farewell, shut-in life! It was good while it lasted. Lounging around in bed, reading whatever manga I wanted, playing games when I got tired of that, having delicious food brought right to my door.
But now...
“Um...” Myusel interrupted serving and rushed over to me—but then her shyness seemed to catch up with her, and she looked at the ground. “G-Good morning, Sh-Shinichi-sama.” She sounded like she could hardly get the words out.
“Yeah, morning...”
“Your food... It’s ready, so...”
“Yeah. Let’s eat. Together.”
“...Yes, sir!”
The shut-in life was a fun time; I’m not gonna lie. But I have to admit, too, that meals do taste better when you share them with someone. And they taste even better than that when they’re also made by a girl like Myusel.
And so...
“Itadakimasu!” I was grateful, but not just for the food on my plate. I looked at Myusel, sitting across from me—I was grateful for her, too.
Chapter 2: Chirudoren?
You can talk about “otaku stuff,” but that term covers a wide range. Manga. DVDs. Games. Light novels. You could think of “story” as a huge tree that branches out into things like character goods. There’s a lot of diversity.
Then you’ve got figures of specific characters, or maybe image songs, body pillows, and on and on. Or there might be products representing tools and gadgets from the story world. When it comes to super popular series, there might even be tie-in food items and sweets, or stationery—you know, really working that synergy. And then sometimes branches of the main series spawn their own manga or DVDs or light novels or games. Read: spinoffs.
Anyway.
The field of otaku goods is so vast as to defy total categorization, and the mere thought of collecting everything out there is enough to make a person feel faint. Let alone the thought of having to have it all shipped over to you at regular intervals... Imagine the tower of boxes, the fleet of massive trucks it would demand, the dizzying amount of packing material. It would all take up a lot of room.
And now imagine the shipments cover three people.
When I found myself staring down the delivery of cardboard boxes, I honestly got a bit dizzy.
“Seems even more... staggering than usual today,” I mumbled as I took in the wall of boxes standing just outside our front door. About half were filled with brand-new manga, novels, anime, DVDs, and games, while the other half contained “related merchandise.”
All of it supplied and paid for by the Japanese government.
It had made its way to us here in the Eldant Empire through a hyperspace wormhole. Normally it was addressed to the JSDF garrison on the edge of the Eldant capital of Marinos. Trans-hyperspace wormhole delivery wasn’t just used to get anime stuff to needy otaku; supplies for the JSDF and personal items for the members of the garrison came, too. For that reason, we often went by bird-drawn carriage to pick up our deliveries at the garrison, but sometimes soldiers would drop things off at the mansion if they were in the area on other business. Today, that’s what had happened. Not to mention, all this stuff would never have fit in one carriage.
“Why is there so much stuff?” I asked aloud. I was the one who had placed the order, but this was clearly an unusual amount of deliveries. Or had someone else included a bunch of requests that made the pile this big?
“Probably because Summer Co**ket just wrapped up.” This calm assessment came from another employee of Amutech—and another of the three people responsible for this order—Ayasaki Hikaru-san.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “And WonFes was just recently, too.”
“We cut down on the number of genres we wanted them to check out, but there have been so many new groups making goods recently,” Hikaru-san said.
And so it was: we had ordered doujinshi and the like as well as all the official stuff, but of course it was impossible to order one copy of every doujinshi at “NatsuKomi”—Summer **miket. Instead, we had asked them to canvass only specific genres—but just like Hikaru-san said, there were lots of groups out there, and more every day. Not just making books, either, but shopping bags, body pillows, and more. Books, being all roughly of a similar size and shape, were easy to pack into cardboard boxes, but a lot of merchandise was less intuitive to ship.
And then there was WonFes (“Wonder Fe**ival”), a huge event all about plastic models and garage kits, held at almost the same time as Comi**t. Most of what came out of that show was statuettes and models, things that ate up a lot of space. But a lot of those figures and gadgets I mentioned could only be found at WonFes, so we had asked for
