Outbreak Company: Volume 13 by Ichiro Sakaki

Author:Ichiro Sakaki [Sakaki, Ichiro]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: J-Novel Club
Published: 2020-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three: Believed Forbidden

An unexpected visitor arrived first thing in the morning the day after Petralka had come to see me.

I had just finished getting dressed and was heading out of my room to breakfast when I heard voices in the front hall. I went to see what was going on and found Myusel and Cerise, greeting guests.

“Wh—What brings you here?” I asked of the unexpected party I saw standing there.

One of them, just like yesterday, was Petralka. She had sneaked out of the castle yesterday, and I had been sure Garius was going to find out, give her a scolding, and then ground her for a while... and that’s why she was unexpected.

But there was someone else I hadn’t counted on: Garius himself. He very rarely visited the mansion. Instead, we typically saw him when we went to the castle ourselves. If he was here, it was usually to accompany Petralka—and it looked like that was what he was doing today, too. In addition to the two of them, there were several knights who I assumed were bodyguards.

Finally, there was a diminutive girl with short hair and sort of grayish skin. Lauron Selioz, the dwarf. I knew her for her exceptional skill in controlling magical puppets—she spent most of her time at the castle, having been given the duty of puppeteering Petralka’s body double. Today, though, I didn’t see the double, but rather a burly-looking puppet standing behind her. I recognized it as one of the work dolls from the Guld workshop.

“Lauron, you’re here too? But why?”

She didn’t respond, but bowed slightly when she saw me. She still wasn’t very expressive, and it was a little hard to tell what she might be thinking.

“What’s going on?” The question came from Minori-san as she and Hikaru-san wandered into the foyer. Minori-san was in her uniform, and was even carrying her suitcase, the one with the concealed 9mm machine pistol. Her cell phone was hooked into the mansion’s security network, and she’d likely known about Garius and the others before I did. The weapon was probably inspired by the unusual fact that they’d brought a detachment of knights and even a work puppet.

What in the world was going on here? I looked at Lauron again—and then I realized.

“Shinichi. We must talk about—”

“I’m so s-sorry!” I exclaimed before Garius could finish, throwing my head down in a bow. “I know I should have sent Petralka home as soon as she showed up yesterday, but... I just... I couldn’t...”

Lauron, as I said, was responsible for Petralka’s body double. Meaning that while Petralka was away from the castle, she had to play the part of the empress. When Garius found out what had happened, he would have been angry not just at Petralka, but Lauron, too. He had obviously brought Lauron here to talk about yesterday’s shenanigans. In a word, he was here to complain about Petralka’s stopping by for a visit. Or so I had assumed.

But instead...

“No, that’s a separate topic,” he said brusquely.

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