“But I guess with me being a shut-in now and all...”
When I opened the chat window, there was just one sentence:
“How about you come out of there already?”
It was just words on the screen, but I could practically see Minori-san rolling her eyes as she typed at her keyboard.
I responded with about the shortest possible answer:
“No.”
The words “Minori_K is typing” appeared and disappeared a few times, then another sentence finally showed up. I guess Minori-san had been kind enough to wait by her computer until I responded.
“Everyone’s worried about you.”
“Liar!” I replied, attaching a picture of a girl in a white one-piece holding a hatchet. “I know what you’ll do if I come out of this room. You’ll all point and laugh at me!”
“No, we won’t.”
“Then you’ll all hit me! My own father never hit me!” To this I attached a picture of a certain pilot.
“What, really? Never?”
“Hey, I was just trying to make a G*ndam reference! No fair taking it so seriously!”
“I was never that into the original series. I was all about Wing.”
Well, she was a fujoshi.
“Got smacked by my mom a few times, tho. (Also by my sister.)”
“Yeah, and by Her Majesty the first day you met. I guess there’s just something really smack-able about you, Shinichi-kun.”
“Smack-able!”
“Or maybe it’s, like, your destiny or something.”
“Feeling a lot of despair, here!”
And so on and so forth. After a bit more of this maybe-meaningful-maybe-not chitchat, I finally concluded:
“Anyway, I’m not coming out of my room! No way, no how!”
I thought that would be the end of it, but after a moment, another sentence appeared:
“Fine, then.”
Then her status icon changed to “Away.”
I guess she had finally given up.
“Phew...” I closed my eyes, and felt a huge smile spread across my face. “I won!”
I mean, even I didn’t really know what I had won, or how, but whatever.
“Back to work!”
I made sure I had my save point, then continued to attack the transfer-student route in my game.
Minori-sama sighed as she leaned away from her ‘lap-top com-puter.’ We had moved from the dining room into the living room, and had been trying to use the ‘meszenjer’ to contact Shinichi-sama, as we had discussed earlier.
“What happened?” Her Majesty demanded, leaning forward from her place on the sofa.
“Nothing happened,” Minori-sama said, shaking her head. “I couldn’t get him to come around.”
That caused Her Majesty to sigh as well, clearly just as dispirited as Minori-sama. I thought she must also have felt some responsibility for Shinichi-sama’s being shut up in his room.
“If he was going to come out just because you sent him some texts via instant messenger, I don’t think things would have gotten this bad in the first place,” Hikaru-sama said calmly. He seemed to have expected this outcome. He sipped his tea, looking quite fresh as he said, “I think using the messenger app is a good idea, though. Sometimes it gives you a sort of psychological cushion. Like, it can be a little easier to say what you’re really thinking when you can do it through text.”
“Maybe?” Minori-sama said.
“Let’s not write off talking to him this way.”
“These Ja-panese thingamabobs are really useful,” Elvia-san said, eyeing the ‘lap-top’ with curiosity. She had seen and even used such a device several times, but this was the first time she had seen it used in quite this way. I suppose I wasn’t one to talk: I was no more familiar with this ‘instant meszenjer’ than she was.
“This means we can make minimal contact at least, I guess,” Minori-sama said, sinking into the sofa. Another sigh. “The question is what we do from here. What’s the next step?”
“Yeah, it’s not like there’s best practices for dealing with shut-ins,” Hikaru-sama said, clearly troubled.
If the two of them couldn’t think of anything, then the rest of us here were as good as useless.
I was just about to heave a sigh myself when I had a thought. “Um, Hikaru-sama,” I said experimentally. “The god in the story of the Heavenly Cave that you told us—did she stay in there forever?”
“Nah, they got her out of there in the end,” he said with a smile. “The story goes that the other gods threw this huge party right outside the cave. They sounded like they were having so much fun that the goddess peeked out of the cave in spite of herself, and...” Hikaru-sama stopped in midsentence, as if he’d had a thought. He put one of his fingers to his chin, so delicate you could hardly believe it belonged to a man, and cocked his head. “You know, the Heavenly Cave makes a pretty good metaphor. That just might work.”
“What might work?” Minister Cordobal inquired.
Hikaru-sama held up one finger. “Having a crazy good time.”
“I get it,” Minori-sama said. “Have so much fun out here that Shinichi-kun won’t be able to help wanting to be part of it.” She nodded eagerly. “Make it as lively as possible...”
“You’re talkin’ about a party!” Elvia-san said, holding her hand up. “Everyone drinkin’ and eatin’! And eatin’ and drinkin’!”
“That’s how we always act at meal times, though,” Minori-sama said. “And sure, there’s usually drinking at parties, but we can’t go giving alcohol to minors...”
“Minors? To whom do you refer?” Her Majesty looked around pointedly. Elvia-san and I both shook our heads.
“Well, Your Majesty and Myusel and Elvia are all... I get it, we’re in Eldant, aren’t we?” Minori-sama shrugged.
In point of fact, the age of majority in the Holy Eldant Empire was sixteen years for most purposes. So myself, Her Majesty, and Elvia-san were all adults, and by the local standards, Minori-sama and Hikaru-sama were both very much of the age of majority as well.
“In Japan, you’re not allowed
