“What’s that, Minori-san?”
“It’s a ball signed by one of the voice actors from Prince of Soccer! I’ve been waiting for this forever!”
Prince of Soccer—wasn’t that, you know, that anime about those boys who played soccer? I’d heard it was wildly popular with girls these days. Allegedly these guys could warp time and space with their kicks, cause entire stadiums to crack in half when they scored a goal, and float through the air on top of a soccer ball. For the life of me, I couldn’t picture it.
But in any event, Minori-san looked overjoyed, clutching the ball to her chest.
“Is that, like, a limited edition or something?”
“It’s a prize! Only three people in the entire world have one! I can’t believe I’m one of them!” She looked like a kid with a new number-one possession, her eyes sparkling behind her glasses. I guess she was really happy about winning this autographed soccer ball. You know, I seemed to remember her being thrilled about another limited-edition ball from Prince of Soccer. A gold one. Or... at least gold-colored. I also seemed to remember Elvia being even crazier about it than Minori-san.
“This time I’m gonna hide this thing so well Elvia will never find it!” Minori-san said to herself.
“Elvia? What about her?” Hikaru-san said, looking perplexed. Come to think of it, I guess he hadn’t been here for that little episode.
“The last time I got a limited-edition ball from Prince of Soccer, Elvia decided it was her new favorite toy.”
Elvia had a special weakness for round objects—maybe it was a werewolf thing. And if it was yellow or gold, so much the better. So when she’d seen that soccer ball, she’d pounced on it like a dog with a toy.
“Ahh, I get it...” Hikaru-san smiled. His face showed a mixture of emotions, but he seemed to completely believe that sort of thing could have happened.
On the one hand, it was easy to picture how cute Elvia must have been playing happily with that ball—but as an otaku, he understood how it must hurt to watch your precious new limited-edition ball rolling through the dirt. I had heard of some especially dedicated people who even put on gloves when touching their limited-edition items. It was as if they were precious art exhibits or antiques. And for the people who owned them, maybe they were just that valuable.
“Man, that takes me back,” I said, closing my eyes. “That whole soccer tournament! Although I guess it did get pretty crazy in the end.”
We’d had teams with elves, dwarves, human knights, lizardmen, and even the JSDF, all participating in a soccer tournament together. This was not long after we had arrived in Eldant, which is to say immediately after the little incident between me and the Japanese government. We needed a nice event to smooth everything over.
I don’t know why I had expected soccer here to be anything like it was in Japan, though. In the end, magic came into play, along with all the varying physical abilities of the different groups, until the whole thing was as crazy as anything on Prince of Soccer. It was enough to make you wonder if it was really soccer anymore, but one thing it unquestionably was was fun, and the Eldant people all seemed to enjoy it, too. The only thing as extensive as the enjoyment had been the property damage, though, so we hadn’t held another tournament since then.
“That was when Cerise and Brooke got back together,” I said fondly.
“Back together?” Hikaru-san echoed. “Wait... They were apart?”
The soccer tournament would have been described in the papers Hikaru-san had read before coming here, but the reports probably wouldn’t have included a description of the rapprochement between two lizardmen. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you put in a white paper.
“Some... things happened,” I explained, “and their egg, it got broken. That’s what they told me.”
“Egg? They had an egg?”
“But the whole thing wasn’t, like, anybody’s fault. There was nothing Brooke could have done about it, but it really got to him. I guess he felt like a man who can’t protect his egg isn’t fit to be a husband... so he left Cerise. But then they made up, and now they’re a couple again.”
“Gosh...” Hikaru-san blinked, but he was smiling. He could be a slippery customer, but I guess even he was a sucker for a happy ending.
“I’m pretty sure they said something about a soccer ball looking a lot like a lizardman egg, right, Minori-san?” I said, looking to her for confirmation. But she was completely absorbed in examining the autograph on her ball from every possible angle, and didn’t seem to hear me.
“You’ve never seen one for yourself?” Hikaru-san asked.
“No,” I said. Now that he mentioned it, I realized I only had Brooke and Cerise’s word to go on as far as what a lizardman egg looked like. Apparently they carried it around by rolling it with their feet, so it probably wasn’t the shape of a chicken egg, but closer to a spherical ball. Come to think of it, weren’t sea turtle eggs supposed to be almost perfectly round? (I’d seen some videos of them laying eggs somewhere.) I guess there was nothing that said all reptile eggs had to be the same shape.
“Now that you bring it up, I’ve never even seen a lizardman child,” I said.
I wondered what they looked like. I tried to picture one, but the best I could do with my minimal imagination was a sort of SD version of Brooke. You had the scales, the inscrutable expression, the kind of glinting eyes... Hmm, not very baby-like.
“I’m having some trouble with the mental picture here,” I said, tilting my head.
That was when I saw a figure emerge from the mansion, whose door had been hanging open.
“Oh,” I said.
A beast girl came
