“With regard to that, I’d ask you all to watch this video.”
I took the remote from Miss Hoshizaki and opened the list of videos on my own channel. There were several, and most of them hadn’t gotten above a three- or four-digit view count. I also had far fewer videos than the others—so few, in fact, that they were all visible on the screen at once.
But one of them, right in the middle of the list, had surpassed four million views.
“What in blazes? I think one of those videos is glitched,” said Ms. Futarishizuka.
“What the heck did you do, Sasaki?” asked our senior colleague. “It must have been something awful.”
“Please don’t make me out to be disreputable, Miss Hoshizaki. I assure you, this is a proper and respectable video.”
I selected the thumbnail and played the video.
In it, a middle-aged man on a walk through a nice part of Karuizawa was, to his great misfortune, attacked by a wild bear.
It had all happened while I was strolling around Ms. Futarishizuka’s neighborhood, unable to think of any ideas for a video. Peeps wasn’t with me that day, so I’d been out alone—which meant I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. At some point, a bear had come right up behind me, with two cubs.
“I used both Japanese and English in the title, which appears to have borne fruit.” In that respect, I’d done the same thing as Type Twelve.
The man ran away in a complete panic, but the bear was tenacious in its pursuit. The man tried climbing a tree, spreading his arms wide and shouting, and even throwing a rock or two in a desperate bid to deter the bear. The whole thing lasted several minutes.
And all of it was caught on camera.
“Is that you, Sasaki? Wait, but there’s a mosaic over the face.”
“I obviously didn’t want to expose my identity, so I added that in editing.”
“Mister, you literally just got attacked by a bear. Are you okay?”
“Fortunately, nobody was around to see it or record it. It’s hard to tell in the video, but I had to put up a barrier to prevent its claws and teeth from getting to me. The bear just wouldn’t give up, though…”
“I saw this video on some news sites,” mused Ms. Futarishizuka. “Dialogue between man and bear! I thought I recognized the voice, but I never thought you were the one who uploaded it.”
“What does ‘dialogue between man and bear’ mean?” I asked.
“Don’t you get it? This thing popped off because of how funny you were acting. You’re clearly flustered by the bear, but you’re still so calm. It’s a riot.”
“Oh, well. I haven’t seen any news coverage since I’ve been so busy lately…”
While I could always use magic if worse came to worst, the ordeal had still been terrifying. And I couldn’t bring myself to hurt the animal, so I’d wound up just waiting it out. It was only because of the healing magic Peeps taught me that I’d been able to take the time to consider my options.
After it was finally over, I remembered my camera had been rolling and uploaded the video. A few days had passed since then, and it had made its way through social media, reaching a shocking number of views.
“Not that I believe you’d cheat,” said Ms. Futarishizuka, “but the bird didn’t secretly help you, did he?”
“I have done no such thing, whelp. Your suspicions are unfounded. Do not direct them at me.”
Peeps had offered to help me right at the beginning of the contest. As I’d expect of the Starsage, though, he boldly denied her accusation without the slightest hint of guilt.
“Anyway, this means that you won, and I came in dead last.”
“Mister, according to the rules of the contest, whoever gets the most views can ask one favor of the person in last place, right?”
“What are you gonna have her do, Sasaki?”
My neighbor and Miss Hoshizaki were very quick to ask about the prize.
To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything. “Well…”
“Thinking of something erotic, perhaps? Oh, is my chastity in danger? Hmm?”
“I guess it’d be a waste to just tell you to stop sexually harassing me.”
“Ugh, that would be so boring!”
But there was nothing I needed from her. And I didn’t want to complicate our relationship by saying something careless. Was there anything harmless I could ask her that was still big enough to satisfy my neighbor and Miss Hoshizaki? I thought about it.
Suddenly, someone knocked on the door.
Who could that be? I hadn’t arranged any meetings. Was Miss Inukai here to deliver a follow-up report on the Winterfest situation?
I was dubious, but I’d been the one to book this room, so I took responsibility and called out, “Who is it?”
“It’s me. Sorry, but I want to talk to you for a moment.”
Through my earphone, I heard an English voice along with supplementary audio in Japanese. Maybe it was Captain Mason. “One moment, please.”
I pushed the door open and welcomed our guest inside. As I’d surmised, I found Captain Mason standing in the hallway. Magical Blue was next to him dressed in street clothes instead of her school uniform or her magical girl outfit. I’d seen her in this pre-transformation state a few times at school.
The captain looked at the others in the room. “Hrm? Everyone else is with you?”
“Should I ask them to leave?”
“No, this is fine, actually.”
I gestured for the captain and Magical Blue to come in.
Everyone looked at us, confused. This was Lady Elsa and Prince Lewis’s first meeting with them—although I was pretty sure the captain knew about the two of them from their videos.
“I apologize—there isn’t really anywhere to sit,” I said. “What can I do for you, sir?”
Though I felt bad about it, I skipped over all the introductions and got right down to business. I was filled with anxiety. Why did the captain want to talk to me?
“Ever since the mechanical life-form arrived, you all have been involved in a wide range of activities. In response, nation states and other groups both foreign and domestic have begun to take action. To cut straight the point, we’ve discovered a link between several of the terrorist groups who’ve made contact with you.”
“Should I take that to mean there’s a specific group or organization commanding them from behind the scenes?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, that’s unsettling,” remarked Ms. Futarishizuka.
“I don’t mean to claim everything is linked,” added the captain. “But when we looked into several of the incidents you’ve encountered, our investigations began to converge. I have no doubt their goal is to obtain the mechanical life-form.”
If the captain’s words were true, then our family activities, the disturbances at Type Twelve’s school, and our participation in this year’s Winterfest all began to take on a kind of meaning. Of course, this still amounted to only one portion of our many enemies.
“Mason, no lowly human will ever be able to capture a mechanical life-form.”
“Yes. We think the same, ma’am. However, there are plenty of people in the world that can’t accurately gauge their opponent’s strength. In any case, we’ve managed to uncover an international activist network behind multiple terrorist organizations.”
The captain spoke politely to Type Twelve, just like Mr. Akutsu did. It gave me a sense of the delicate power balance maintained by everyone involved.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “May I ask why you are coming to us with this?”
“We’d like your help with something,” said the captain, drawing himself up.
The way he said it filled me with apprehension.
“…What might that be?” I asked.
“Mister Sasaki, will you join us in our counteroffensive? My home country thinks very highly of you. We believe that your help will be vital to the success of this operation.”
“In that sense, sir, we’ve been fortunate enough to help you many times in the past already…”
This was strange. Why was he speaking to me about this? I doubted our boss would go against Captain Mason, so why hadn’t the captain contacted him instead? That was how our orders usually came to us.
But the captain’s next words chased away all my suppositions.
“For the time being, your boss has temporarily loaned you out to us.”
“What? Um, sir, would you mind explaining?”
Hold on a minute, I thought. Nobody told me anything about this.
“We want you to come to our country and serve under our command, Mister Sasaki.”
“……”
Of all things, a trip abroad? Right at the end of the year?
Hadn’t Mr. Akutsu promised us that once our work was over, we’d finally get a break?