“I’m not kinky enough to get excited by this kind of roleplay.”
“…B-because of this?”
Noticing the mistake she had made, she started to lose her composure. I went on.
“That’s not the only thing. Shiro…you’re crying.”
The head maid blinked her eyes. Her eyelashes, like delicate pieces of silverwork, were wet.
“No, I am not.”
“Maybe I haven’t known you as long as the princess has, but I consider you a friend. I can notice when something’s off about your expression. And look, your tail is trembling.”
While her eyes weren’t shedding actual tears, her dog tail, which wagged happily when she was having a good time, was now drooping and shaking slightly.
“M-my tail…? You’re wrong, that’s—”
“Shiro, you have a conscience. I know you don’t actually want to do this. You can’t hide it completely. If the princess is important to you, you’ll remember how she tried so hard to summon us here.”
“But this is the only way to protect Princess Ecstasia!”
“We’re trying to protect Princess Ecstasia right now, too.”
“…”
I sensed Shiro holding her breath. Her dog ears were twitching and starting to turn toward my direction like she wanted to hear more.
“It looks like you’ll finally listen to what I have to say.”
I felt a sense of relief wash over me. Though I still couldn’t move my arms.
“…But before that… Hey, I know you’re over there.”
Still lying down, I used my powers to draw back the fireball I had made, which was about to go out.
I visualized my mana pouring forth and used it to move the fireball over in front of the Grand Bench.
Just earlier, I had seen something move in my view from between Shiro’s legs and used All Ears to check it out.
“Ah, so I have been discovered! Your ears are keen, my boy.”
“You didn’t do a great job of hiding your giggles, you little fox.”
A small, fox-colored figure began to emerge.
“Fine, fine, that is enough. Pfft…heh-heh! Oh, how delightful! A masterpiece! Even just remembering it makes me roll with laughter!”
And out of the shadows popped Tamamo Keisei, attorney at law.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I—I do not require first aid. Tell me, what did you mean by protecting Princess Ecstasia?”
“Just sit still. Wow…this looks terrible. How did this happen? And there are all these little pebbles in the scrapes… You’re covered in wounds… Did you jump into a pit of razors or something?”
“No cause for concern, it’s already healing. And it doesn’t hurt at all, so—ah, ouch!”
“Sounds like it hurts.”
“The disinfectant is stinging…”
For the moment, I decided to ignore Tamamo as she rolled around in laughter.
I turned on the lights in the building, went back to our room, and grabbed a first aid kit.
I moved Shiro, who was lying exhausted on the floor, to a sofa. While she resisted, I tried treating some of the injuries on her legs.
“…Your hands will be dirtied by my blood.”
“Your blood isn’t dirty, Shiro.”
“If I receive assistance from you, Master, I will lose my right to call myself a maid.”
“I’m happy… You’ll still call me Master.”
“Uh… I mean… But after I did such a thing…”
“Since I won that game earlier and you have to do whatever I ask, I think I’ll ask to go back to being Master.”
“Unh… Ah, ouch…”
“How are the bandages? Too tight?”
“…U-unh…”
I wasn’t sure if she was frustrated or embarrassed, but her face had turned red, and she was hanging her head.
Having finished bandaging the raw wounds on her legs, I put back her skirt that I had moved up and out of the way.
Oh…was I doing something so risqué this whole time?
After a couple seconds, I felt my face get hot.
That was a pretty amazing view. Why didn’t I burn that more into my memory?! Ahh…argh…!
“Oh-ho, treating your enemy after defeat? How chivalrous! Is this what you Japanese people call bushido?”
The baby-faced fox-girl—actually thousands of years old—came bounding toward us.
“Oh, but I truly enjoyed when you told her she’s ‘not very good at the whole seduction thing’! That will make today’s highlight reel! I suppose your resistance to seduction must be high after being so used to Miss Judge’s big ☆ bouncy ☆ things!”
“So that was the reason, Master.”
All the redness quickly disappeared from Shiro’s face.
“Cut it out, you guys,” I begged.
I was starting to get a little annoyed.
“Tamamo, you put that whole seduction idea into Shiro’s head, didn’t you?”
“Oh-ho? What would ever make you think such a thing? What will you do if you’ve just made a false charge against me? Perhaps I could sue you for such slander!”
“So it wasn’t you, waiting for me to come back to the courthouse, disguised as the high priest to freak me out?”
Tamamo, a half-fox-spirit, was able to use many different fox-spirit magic techniques.
“I should have known you would see through such a simple trick, my boy!”
She puffed out her flat, five-year-old chest.
“I simply told her that, as a noble head maid stuck in a conundrum like this, ‘the only way to stop Miss Judge from judging Ecstasia is through ensnaring Akuto.’ And in order to ensnare a human, there are certain steps to follow. First, lure them in. Then, break their spirit using something they are skillful at against them. After that, use sweet, sultry words to make them putty in your hands! That was just a small taste of my genius technique!”
Sure am lucky I was somehow able to escape that.
“Okay. But why would you do all that in the first place?”
I had heard her side of the story, but I still didn’t understand her motivation.
“Well, what do you think? Hm? Why is it, do you suppose? Please, consider it well and give me your best hypothesis!”
…She’s more annoying than usual today. Did I do something to get on her bad side?
I thought back to what the little fox was interested in: video games…her own pleasure…deep-fried tofu…
As I mulled it over, Shiro whispered so that only I could hear, “Miss Tamamo was saying that you broke a promise to her.”
Promise…? Oh, right.
When negotiating with her in the courtyard of the Shrine of the Hero, she had told me that she wanted to challenge me on Super N*ntendo. So I had promised her to “play video games in the princess’s room while drinking real Japanese miso soup at a real Japanese table.”
I got so busy that I totally forgot.
But I couldn’t just tell her that I had been busy. That wouldn’t be convincing to her, especially since Tsukasa and I had been going to the tavern after work almost every day. But she also wasn’t the type to forgive after just a simple apology.
In that case, I needed to act like I had been working on setting up the perfect experience for her.
“Oh yeah, about that promise we made. Sorry the preparations have been taking so long.”
Tamamo’s restless fidgeting stopped dead.
“Preparations, you say?”
“That’s right. I figured since we’re going through all this trouble to get everyone together to play video games, it wouldn’t be fun to just play any old game, right?”
“Oh-ho?”
Good. She took the bait. Let’s go with this.
“I didn’t want you to be bored, so I’ve been using my free time between work to look for an interesting new release for us to play.”
“…Hmph. I suppose you are right. It wouldn’t be fair to challenge each other to a game we both already know well.”
Tamamo spoke with a mysterious look on her face, her five fox tails wagging slowly.
“Yes, exactly! But you know…it’s really too bad…”
“What is?! Hurry up and let’s do it!”
“Like the plaintiff said, there might be a flaw in the Copy-Paste Spell, right? And I’m pretty sure that the game console in the princess’s room is copy-pasted.”
“Then no need to worry. If it is operational now, then there must not have been any issue at the time of its copy-pasting.”
“Does that ever happen—issues at the time of copy-pasting?”
“I do not feel like explaining. Tell me when we will hold our event. Now!”
I was curious to know, but I didn’t think I could push the matter right now.
“Hmm… Well, you see, I had secured use of the princess’s room, but we can’t really use it now, under these circumstances. That would be trespassing, wouldn’t it?”
“Then let us trespass!”
“Are you really a lawyer?!”
I had to call her out on that one.
“…Fine! I shall double-cross the high priest!”
“Huh?”
Shiro and I simultaneously gasped in surprise.
“I had been running low on my daily dose of pleasure, so I thought I might as well try overthrowing the royal family with the high priest. But if I do that, we won’t be able to hold our fun event, correct? And if Ecstasia quits using the Copy-Paste Spell, then the kingdom’s amusements will soon run dry. And I do quite enjoy this kingdom of imitated goods.”
“Oh, so you’re suddenly a patriot?” I was baffled at how easily she chose to betray the high priest. “But what position does that put you in as a lawyer?”
“Hm? Oh. Well, I’ve only accepted the state compensation lawsuit so far. And besides, seeing as he’s the son of the previous high priest, I’m certain that he is looking down on a Japanese yokai like myself.”
“Uh…Gilvert’s father was also a high priest?”
“Yes. What, you weren’t aware?”
Tamamo spat out her words, looking disinterested.
“That damned Gilvert. He’s so desperate to surpass his father’s number of followers. Truly absurd.”
In her thousands of years of inherited memories, Tamamo must’ve known some things about Gilvert’s father as well. But even if I wanted to, it wasn’t something I could use my acquisition skill on.
“You truly are knowledgeable, Miss Tamamo. Then you must know something about the truth of the building collapse as well.”
“Don’t try to flatter me, it won’t work. Besides, I couldn’t tell you.”
“Pfft. So you decided to be the case’s lawyer even though you don’t know what happened?”
“Just so. As a lawyer, it is better not to ask clients about things that would be better ☆ left ☆ unsaid! You should read the Attorneys Act and the Basic Rules on the Duties of Practicing Attorneys. You’ve heard of an attorney’s obligation to the truth, yes? Well, there’s no obligation to the truth if you don’t know it!”
“Isn’t that fundamentally wrong?”
“It’s a skill, my boy. But I wouldn’t expect you to understand—you’re essentially just a normal, average, high school boy with that weak flame spell of yours.”
“I already have a complex about that. You don’t have to rub it in. I’ll call off our event.”