Chapter 88

EPISODE 2 LET’S CONFIRM WHERE OUR EMERGENCY EVACUATION LOCATIONS ARE! Ouka’s selfishness had left everyone uncomfortable. “U-uh, we shared all the info we have for now, so are we finished here…? I doubt the enemy’s going to attack us right this moment, so…,” Ryouta suggested awkwardly. In all honesty, he wanted to go home. Something was stressing him out, and the longer he stayed, the worse it got. He could feel every eye on him, and it was suffocating. “You’re honestly too soft, Ryouta. I may as well start calling you tomato soft serve, Ryouta,” Shiren said. “Don’t bring up tomatoes in a situation like this.” “The Virginal Father and Sairi might be on their way. We have to have some discussion about countermeasures. Why do you think we came together like this?” “But we have too little information. What is there to discuss?” It was unclear when they would be coming, or how many people there would be. They didn’t even know if this was part of a military operation by the Virginal Father, or just Sairi’s personal visit to Shiren. Not only that, but Japan also surrounded the Empire on all sides. There were countless potential invasion routes. And Ryouta was sure they didn’t have the kind of armed forces needed to defend them from every point of potential attack. “We can’t go into detail, of course. But we can at least make sure we’re prepared at all times. There are so many things we can’t know until a real fire breaks out, but we can at least run fire drills, right?” Ouka said. “Yeah, a drill sounds like a great idea. But where would we evacuate to…?” “I will now inform you of the location of our national emergency evacuation shelters. They are in unique places, so you and Shiren probably aren’t familiar with them. It sounds like Sairi is after Shiren, so if something happens, Shiren can run there.” “Emergency evacuation shelters? This is the first I’m hearing about them. Well, I guess that’s pretty standard.” The Empire handled things so sloppily, Ryouta had never even thought about whether or not such facilities existed. “So it’s like how we’re told to evacuate to the school if there’s an earthquake? Though, I’m pretty familiar with where the school is.” “The Fuyukura household is much closer to the castle. It’s already on the castle grounds.” There was a garden in one part of the expansive castle grounds, and in one part of that garden stood the Fuyukura household. It was ostensibly within the bounds, but it wasn’t fancy; if anything, it was run-down. And since the castle was luxurious, the comparison made the house look even worse. Ouka pointed to the floor. “What, is that sign language for go to hell?” “No! I’m telling you there’s a shelter deep underneath the castle.” “Oh yeah, last time you showed us around, you kind of glossed over the basement. It can’t be much more than a storeroom or something, right?” “Big Sis! Don’t tell me there’s a trick to it?! Like a hidden entrance behind a hanging scroll, or an old passage at the bottom of an unused well, like in ninja houses!” Shiren suddenly grew excited. It sounded like she was hoping for ninja hiding spots. “I’m sure they don’t have anything that corny, Shiren,” Ryouta said. “There is a secret passage behind a wall scroll on the first floor. And it leads to the basement,” Ouka said. “Seriously?! You have one of those?!” Ryouta realized once again that it was anything goes in this country and its castle. “But that passage only leads to the porno reading room.” “That’s not an evacuation room!” “It is if you want to evacuate from the harshness of reality.” “No! You need to stop escaping and focus on making your harsh reality something better!” “Pfft, make this harsh reality better? Only a naive little high schooler could say something like that.” “You’re a high schooler, too! Don’t snort at me!” Ryouta was having a hard time taking any of this seriously. “Well, I figured a castle needs a touch of whimsy, so I made one.” “You know, if you used the people’s tax money for that room, your approval rating is going to go down again…” “It’s fine. No taxpayer money was used. Instead, I took a ten percent cut of all public officials’ salary for six months.” “Your officials are going to be livid!” This government was rotten to its core. “Anyway. The emergency escape routes are somewhere else, of course.” Ouka had, at some point, taken a jangling ring full of keys in her hand. It was likely meant specifically for the emperor. “I thought I’d take you all there. This is the perfect time to do so.” “Well, I guess we are all already here.” “Come along. I’ll give you a glimpse into the abyss.” “That’s a terrifying way of putting it…” “But first, I’ll take you to the porno reading room.” “No, thank you!” “Membership is free at the moment, and it only costs twelve thousand sacred yen a year.” “I’m not getting a membership!” First, they took the elevator down to the second basement level. “This is the storage floor, right, Big Sis?” Shiren, of course, did seem to know a bit about the castle. And it was indeed crammed with everything from medicine chests and emergency provisions to toilet paper and printer toner. “Yes. The second basement level is, at least.” “There sure is a lot, but I guess this is all for the castle…,” Ryouta remarked. Various items were stacked up to the ceiling. The scale of it all was closer to a corporation than a household. “Here we have A4-size paper. B5 is back there, A3 is over there, and we keep the colored paper away from the rest, but—” “I don’t need to know about the paper!” “This small box here is full of the toner we use the most. That huge one back there has toner for very special printers, so there aren’t very many of them. And over there, we have drum cartridges—” “I don’t need to know about your printer supplies, either!” “Over there, we have whiteboards and cones for special events, but we don’t really use those anymore. And that box has our event equipment set. Inside we keep utility knives, scissors, masking tape, rope, tools, pocket radios, and all other kinds of things.” “Seriously, don’t bother running through everything in the storeroom! And why do you know what’s in all these boxes? Aren’t you the emperor?!” Wasn’t that a task for her vassals? Ryouta honestly doubted that there was another emperor who knew where their printer toner was kept. “This castle is like my house, so I like to know where everything is.” “I see. So this is like working from home…” “Hey, Big Sis? Can I have a roll of packing tape from over there?” “No. Everything in here was all purchased with taxpayer money.” “Big Sis, did you just say something responsible?!” The way Shiren expressed her shock to her big sister was a bit rude. “This feels pretty relaxed for an evacuation drill…,” Ryouta said. “And this is just a regular storeroom.” “But there is a trick to it.” Ouka stopped to stand in the middle of the corridor. She tapped lightly on the wall, and the echo from the other side indicated that it was hollow. “There’s a hidden room on the other side of this wall.” “I see, so this is where you have the evacuation room.” Ryouta didn’t see an entrance, so it was unlikely a passerby would notice it. “No. That’s the porno reading room.” “I keep telling you, that’s irrelevant!” “I’d say its one shortcoming is that the walls are thin, so any loud noise leaks into the hallway.” “Then it’s not really working as a hidden room, is it?!” “But we left them thin because there are some people who get really excited—you know—about the thought that someone might hear them.” “I don’t want to hear about people’s fetishes!” “We need to be a government that considers the needs of all minorities.” “Don’t try to make it sound noble!” “Anyway, let’s keep going.” At the very end of the storeroom was a small push door. The symbol on it indicated that this was the girls’ bathroom. “Go on, Ryouta. Open it.” “Why do I have to open it?! Shouldn’t a girl open this kind of door?!” “You know I’m here, too, Big Sis…” “It’s not very interesting if you open it, Shiren.” Ryouta had apparently been chosen for the amusement factor. The sense of crisis here was truly below zero. “No need to worry, no one’s inside. Come now, open it. Your emperor commands you.” “Well, I guess it’s okay if no one’s in there… I feel like a criminal, though…” When they stepped in, they found the usual three toilet stalls. The one at the far end was closed. It was a typical bathroom. “Huh, something feels off about this place…” “Isn’t that because you’re a boy, and you’re not supposed to be here in the girls’ bathroom?” “…No, it’s not that. Something’s different… Oh!” There were keyholes on the stall doors. “These stalls can be opened with a key from the outside.” “Correct. Now, Ryouta, open the one at the back.” “No one’s in there, right…?” “It’s fine, it’s fine. You can knock if you like.” “This is another command from the emperor, isn’t it…? Fine.” With no other choice, Ryouta knocked on the stall door. “OCCUPIED.” “Why does the reply sound like text-to-speech…?” “It’s an automatic voice system. Great camouflage, right? Now use the key to open it.” Ryouta opened the door to find not a toilet, but stairs leading down. “I see… You built a hidden stairwell in the girls’ bathroom… It’s clever, in a way…” He glanced over at Ouka, and she looked rather proud of herself. “To be honest, man-made disasters trump natural disasters—an enemy attack seemed much scarier to me. That’s why I made the entrance so hard to find.” “When I left the castle, this place was still under construction. I see it’s come a long way.” Shiren was impressed by the handiwork, too. “But the reply after the knock is so unnatural, it’s not actually that well camouflaged…” “The national R&D team is working on that now. But it does have a range of replies. It’d be much more suspicious if it said the same thing every time.” “I have a feeling there’s a problem with the voice itself, but I get what you’re trying to say.” “Give it another knock, then.” Ryouta knocked on the door again. Knock, knock. “The next stop is Hara Sanchome. Please get off here for the Yoshida Clinic for Internal Medicine.” “Don’t give it a bus-stop announcement! That’s even weirder!” “We went for quantity, so there’s all sorts of them. A few may be a bit weird, of course.” “Stop requested. Please remain seated until the bus reaches a full stop.” “You included someone requesting a stop?!” “It’s creating a sense of reality.” “I don’t need such a wide range of experiences in the bathroom!” Ryouta knocked again, just in case. “Welcome to our automated teller machine. Please touch the screen to begin.” “A bank ATM?! People’d know this is fake immediately!” “Weird… I thought we had better ones…” Ouka knocked, too. “~~~~ Thank you for shopping with us. We will be closing at nine PM. We hope to see you again soon.” (store closing music) “Why is there a store closing announcement?! Did no one take this seriously?! I’ll raise taxes! I’ll lower their wages!” “You’re our guide, and you’re upset?! This is hopeless!” “Oh, whatever! I’m going on ahead! I’ll fix the automated voices later! I’ll dock the R&D team’s salary!” They proceeded down the stairs and exited into what would be the third basement corridor. It was rather spacious—about five meters wide. But that went almost unnoticed because of how long the corridor itself was. It never seemed to end. “I see… It’s made so everyone can fit, in case of an emergency…” “But the evacuation site is farther ahead. Pretend you’re in an Indiana J*nes movie.” “You didn’t put any giant boulders or traps in here, right…?” “Our budget wouldn’t allow it.” “So they were in your original plan…” “It was hard to give up the lava lake, too, but we simply couldn’t afford it.” “Good thing, too. The maintenance alone would be a disaster.” “And it would’ve been marvelous if we’d been able to install an infinite loop feature, but that’s apparently not possible with modern science.” “If you could make something like that, you wouldn’t need an evacuation shelter!” “Oh, look, Ryouta. There’s a good idea.” Shiren pointed to a soft drink vending machine. “And everything’s a hundred yen, even the big drinks! It’d be a dream to stumble across one of these in the summer!” “It’s a long journey, so I put it here in hopes that people would get thirsty and buy something,” Ouka said. “If it goes well, then it could lead to an increase in revenue.” “No way, the electricity cost will definitely outweigh any profit!” Ryouta exclaimed. “And if the vending-machine technician has to come all the way in here, it isn’t much of a secret passage, is it?” “………You’re right.” “You didn’t realize that before?!” “I was so concentrated on grabbing people’s tax money that I lost sight of what’s important.” “You can’t say ‘grab’ like that when you’re a policymaker!” “The people of this era want a politician who’s honest, not someone who hides the truth.” “Your ‘truth’ is way too much; you can keep it!” They proceeded another several hundred meters down the corridor and found another oddity. “Big Sis, why is this here…?” In front of them was a ticket machine and an automatic turnstile. And past the turnstile was another stairwell leading down. “Here, you have to buy a ticket in order to keep going. This will definitely stop people.” Ryouta looked at the ticket machine. “Your base fare is pretty steep!” “It took a lot of money to dig out this basement, so it’ll be high until we can recoup some of the cost. And Basement Four refers to the floor below us.” “What is this, a train line to a new residential area…? And I don’t get what the free pass is for.” “It’s the best value for your money if you have to come and go for work.” “When did you build a subway anyway…?” No matter how he thought about it, that wasn’t something you could build in secret. “We haven’t bought any train cars yet, so we still have to walk to the station. We’ll be walking along the underground.” “Then this is like a checkpoint system…?” Ryouta was shocked; he had no idea they’d be asking for money in a place like this. “Oh, we’ll be going and then coming back, so you should get a free pass.” “What…? You want us to pay?” “Obviously. I stick to my principles. All subjects are taxed evenly. I’m aiming for a clean government.” “I get the feeling the core is still pretty dirty.” Ryouta wished that she would install a president or something in addition to the emperor. “By the way, what’s the difference between Basement Four East and Basement Four Central?” “You can get up to the third basement from Basement Four East. But if you do that, keep in mind you will have to beat some famous retro games like Iraira Bō and Struck Out in order to proceed. That’s why it’s best to just buy a ticket to Basement Four Central.” “Sorry… I think those games are a little before my generation. I’ve never heard of them…” “You also need to beat Wagan Land.” “Okay, I can tell this is related to a personal hobby… I’m totally lost… But I guess that means that there are traps ahead if we try to keep going along the third floor, right?” “Yes.” “… You could’ve just had the third basement level on its own to begin with…” “If the creator doesn’t think something is interesting, others won’t enjoy it.” “You really don’t need to get creative about things like this.” “Oh, Ryouta,” Shiren spoke up. “I didn’t bring my wallet, so you’ll have to buy my ticket for me.” “Okay, okay… I didn’t think I’d be spending money down here… By the way, don’t you have to get a ticket, Ouka?” “I have this.” Ouka produced a strange ticket that read, Complimentary Ticket for Stockholder. “Are you sure stockholder is the right word for…? Oh, never mind. I’m tired of this…” Afterward, Ryouta bought the one-day free passes, and they all went down to the fourth sublevel, then came back up to the third floor from a staircase labeled BASEMENT 4 CENTRAL EXIT. After walking for another ten minutes, they came to a sturdy-looking door. “It looks solid, at least… Like a vault door in a bank…” “I believe it’s even stronger than the one in your average bank,” Ouka said. It looked like it was kept shut with a keylock; they would need to enter a number code to get in. “The emergency shelter is just behind here. I doubt anyone could make it this far.” “Yeah. Even if they did, they still wouldn’t be able to get through without the code. This is finally starting to feel covert. But wouldn’t it be bad if you needed to get in but couldn’t because you didn’t know the code?” Ryouta asked. Or maybe it was meant to be a place only her attendants and other special individuals could hide in. “Oh, that’s not a problem.” Ouka pressed some buttons. 1—1—1—1— Beeeeep, click. “It’s open. Go on in.” “Wait, shouldn’t your password be a little more complex?! 1111 is the worst one you could pick…” “Oh, it’s fine. Our goal today is just to confirm where our evacuation shelter is. And it’s here.” “Oh god, Big Sis, what is this room…?” Shiren brought a hand to her mouth. Before them was a room decked out in horrific decorations, like a black-magic altar. The walls of the room were covered with curtains that were embroidered with skulls and bats, and red roses were scattered across the floor. A statue of the Goddess of Blood sat in a recessed wall shrine. And in the center stood a massive wooden coffin. It appeared to have been plucked right out of a haunted house. “W-wait, Big Sis… I’m scared… I don’t like scary stuff…” “And what will being scared accomplish for you? This is our emergency shelter. Even for the Virginal Father, it will not be easy to make it this far. If worse comes to worst, then come here and hide.” “I know that, but why is there a coffin in the middle…? I keep thinking there’s someone inside…” Ryouta’s gaze was, naturally, fixed on the coffin. “Oh, of course there is. And it’s someone you know well, Shiren.” “What…?” Without a moment of hesitation, Ouka knocked on the coffin lid. “It’s time to wake up. I brought guests.” “Ooh, I am so sleepy… Allow me another fifty hours’ rest…” A voice came from inside the coffin with an unbelievable request. “That is too much sleep. Come now, wake up.” “Then allow me another forty-nine hours and sixty-five minutes’ sleep…” “You are not a child on summer vacation! And you’ve increased your time by another five minutes!” “No, no, no! There is no joy in this world but in sleeping. I shall slumber twenty-five hours a day!” Ryouta guessed the voice belonged to a woman, but he couldn’t be totally sure without seeing the speaker. “Hey, Ouka? Who on Earth would be in there? Whoever it is, they sound pretty useless…” “I’ll introduce you once she comes out. The problem is that she rarely does… This emergency shelter is her private room. She likes dark, quiet spaces.” “Apologies, but this interior design is kind of terrible…” “Ryouta, I think I know who it is… There can only be one person this useless…” Shiren’s face clouded over. “Do you not get along? Well, they do seem kind of cringe, so maybe that’s unavoidable…” Meanwhile, Ouka was still trying to coax out the coffin’s occupant. “Wa-ha-ha, no one can interrupt my restful sleep! This coffin has been specially made! Not even an elephant can break it open! But I would certainly be nervous should an elephant indeed step onto it… Well, no elephant could possibly reach this place. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!” “Come on! Come out already! This isn’t funny!” “Aaah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Feel my pain! Feel the pain of never making it to the final boss, and thus never beating a game! I was never able to beat DQ3… Perhaps I used an item in the wrong place… A bridge that was supposed to reach the fiend’s castle was not there…” “I don’t give a crap about your nostalgia!” “In DQ1, I got my Spell of Restoration password wrong and almost cried, and in DQ4, my adventure log disappeared, and I almost cried. I cursed the goddess. I thought about taking up the mantle of Dragonlord myself and obliterating the world.” “We don’t need to hear any of this! Get out here!” “When I picked Nera over Bianca in DQ5, my friend criticized my very personality, saying I was a failure of a human and that I’m always blinded by the shine of money.” Ryouta wasn’t sure who this was, but it was clear they liked games. “Ugh, now I have to use her name, don’t I…?” It sounded like Ouka had given up on conventional methods. “Mother! Sairi might be coming!” Wham! The sealed lid on the coffin flew open. The person who emerged was an adult woman, her face very similar to Ouka’s. But unlike Ouka, she wore a jet-black dress, exactly like a stereotypical vampire. And her neck was layered with accessories, giving her those final-boss vibes. “What do you mean, Sairi is coming? Had she not escaped to the distant land of Arcadia?” “She may be coming back, Mother. I will now inform you of the details.” Ouka looked awkward and uncomfortable, which was unusual. It was probably a question of status. “You keep calling her ‘Mother,’ Ouka… Does that mean…?” “Yes. This is my mother; she’s the empress dowager—” “Humble yourself, girl! Stand down! Stand down! Stand down! I am Empress Dowager Ominaeshi Elisabeta Alexandra Florentina Sylvia Rosanna Victoria Sarano!” The empress dowager proudly stated her name. “Mother, please don’t lengthen your name without letting me know. Your name is Ominaeshi Elisabeta Alexandra Florentina Sylvia Rosanna Sarano. There’s no Victoria!” “I thought I would add it to express that I have been reborn. I am a new me.” “You don’t need it! And if you want to be a new you, then you can start with going outside for once!” The royals had very long full names, and it had been a while since Ryouta had heard one unabbreviated. Even the emperor herself typically went by Ouka Sarano. That’s right, Ouka isn’t Sairi’s daughter, and I’d never heard of the emperor’s legal wife being killed, so I guess it’s a given that she’s still alive… And yet I’d never seen her around. Turns out she was here the whole time… A lot of things started making sense to Ryouta. “Mm, Shiren. Sairi’s daughter. You’ve grown considerably. You are starting to look like her, though I hope that the resemblance remains only skin-deep.” “I-it is lovely to see you, Lady Ominaeshi…,” Shiren greeted respectfully. This person was her stepmother, so she probably felt a little awkward.