She wagged her tail eagerly back and forth and said, “Shinichi-sama! Hikaru-sama! Minori-sama! Sorry to keep you waiti—”
But then she stopped short. Her big, round eyes were staring directly at... the autographed soccer ball Minori-san was holding. She hadn’t yet taken it out of the box (and probably never planned to), but it was one of those packages with one side cut away so you could easily see what was in it through a sheet of transparent material. Elvia could see that ball clear as day.
Minori-san started; she seemed to sense something untoward, and turned around. At which point—
“Rrrrf!”
Elvia made a sound exactly like a puppy excited by a toy and came charging in. Straight at Minori-san, or rather, at the ball she was holding.
Minori-san was pretty strong for a human woman, and super athletic too, but even she was going to find it hard to avoid a crazed werewolf. Elvia was an order of magnitude stronger than her, and Minori-san had to not only get out of the way, but protect her goods while she did it. I was sure this was going to end in a loud scream as Elvia stole another autographed ball.
“Hah!”
But at that moment, Minori-san pulled something out of a bag and flung it on the ground. There was a bright flash and a cacophonous explosion.
“A stun grenade?!”
A nonlethal flash-bang. The sort of thing the special forces would use when rescuing hostages or something. It didn’t shatter and cause injury like a normal fragmentation grenade, but the extremely bright light and extremely loud noise disoriented your opponents and sent them reeling. The blast just now wasn’t bright enough or loud enough to completely overwhelm our senses—in fact, I didn’t think it was even a real stun grenade. A little home cooking of Minori-san’s, I guessed.
What there was, though, was a whole lot of smoke.
“Yarf?!” Elvia exclaimed as she stumbled, suddenly unable to see.
“Mwahahahaha! I knew this would happen, so I got this little surprise ready!”
“If you knew this was going to happen, why didn’t you just take your precious ball to your room right away, instead of standing there staring at it?!” I quipped. It was like she had become a different character altogether—not a JSDF soldier, but a ninja.
“See ya in hell!” she exclaimed (like a certain slayer of ninjas), before turning and running away through the smoke. What was with her?
Hikaru-san went over to help Elvia up; meanwhile...
“Umm... Shinichi-sama...?”
“Master. What shall we do...?”
Myusel and Brooke stood there holding cardboard boxes, but lost in the fog. We couldn’t see three steps in front of ourselves. It would probably be almost dangerous to walk around carrying a box. Especially for someone who was already kind of clumsy, like Myusel.
“Uhh... Just hang tight. I’m sure the smoke will clear in a few minutes,” I said, and sighed.
One thing we obviously had to do with all the new stuff was find a place for it. Manga and novels went on the bookshelves. DVDs had their own special shelf, too. There were only so many places to display figures and posters and the like, so we kept them on another dedicated shelf and changed them out regularly. Besides, it was just common sense that anything—be it a book, a poster, or figure—displayed too long would end up sunbleached. Rotating them was practically a necessity.
It was also another big job. It would be hard enough if this was all purely my own personal stuff. But all the otaku goods in the house were purchased with public money, ostensibly to help foster exchange with this alternate world. Ideally, we wanted to avoid depreciation as much as possible.
That’s right: from the outside it may have looked as if I was living on Otaku Easy Street, but it wasn’t as if I was just throwing my hands in the air and crying, “Yahoo! Otaku buying spree on the government’s yen!” No, I absolutely was not! Totally not! I hadn’t the barest thought of such base personal benefit!!
..........................................Please believe me (weak voice).
Uh, anyway.
It obviously wasn’t the work of a moment to unpack everything, especially not when just flipping through a manga, trying to make sure it was what I expected, occasionally led to me sitting down and getting lost in reading it. I had a surprisingly small amount of time to really forget everything else and get completely absorbed in a book. Anyway, when I was doing this work, I made sure to split it up into lots of little pieces, taking breaks in between.
“Phew...” I left my room, stretching my arms in the air. I wasn’t going anywhere special. I just wanted a change of air. Often, my “breaks” consisted of doing a lap around the mansion and then getting back to work. Right now, my throat was feeling a little dry, so I went to the kitchen in search of some water.
“Oh.” I spotted Myusel coming down the hallway. “Hey, Myusel.”
She looked up when I called out—and her face immediately lit up. It seemed like she was really happy just to see me. We had been living in the same house for quite a while now, but still she always reacted like that. As an otaku with zero experience of dating an actual woman, I found it very, uh, heart-pounding.
“Is something the matter?” Myusel asked as she came up to me at a delicate jog.
“No, nothing. I’m just taking a little walk around the house to get a break from organizing stuff. Thought maybe I’d get myself a drink of water.”
“Let me make you tea!” she said and started back the way she had come.
“No, really, don’t worry about it. Are you cleaning right now, Myusel?” It was an educated guess: she was carrying a broom, a dustpan, and a big cloth bag.
“Yes, sir. I was going to pick up the leaves around the house and yard. And then there’s the laundry to do.” She gestured with her broom for emphasis. And that caused
