u/AgentV1967

At last she collapsed forward and broke down sobbing.

“Rico. Horon.”

She murmured the names of the two who had come to save her. For Velti, who had lost all hope, her only remaining wish was for her friends’ safety.

But then a voice spoke up, sounding almost offended.

“Hey~… you’re not going to say my name~?”

At the sudden voice of a third person, Velti flinched in fear for an instant, thinking she had been overheard by one of Kastori’s men. But the voice belonged to someone she had never expected at all.

“Wha—?! Rory? How—?!”

Standing there, bathed in the pale blue light of the moon streaming through the window, covered in wounds from head to toe, her hands and feet stained with blood, stood a battered, bloodied Rory.

“You’re hurt so badly! I have to get you looked after right away.”

Velti sat Rory down on the bed and tried to wipe the blood crusted on her hands and feet with a handkerchief dipped in water. But Rory stopped her, saying it wasn’t as bad as it looked.

“How did you even get up here?”

“I climbed the wall, of course.”

Velti turned to check the window, and sure enough, there was a bloody handprint near the frame.

“But the walls here are covered all over in briars…”

“So I used a blanket. Worked fine for a while, but around the seventh floor the blanket wore through and gave out, and after that it was just gritting my teeth the rest of the way up. Turned out okay, somehow. Not bad for the power of my love, huh?”

“T-that’s—!”

Velti reached out to examine Rory’s hands, but Rory pulled them back behind her and laughed that there was nothing to worry about.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Never mind that, tell me what happened. What became of Rico and Horon?”

“Rico and Horon’s plan worked, right up to a point.”

That day, the guards assigned to Velti had been two priestesses, nominally acting as caretakers. What was more, this arrangement had clearly been set up to keep Velti from escaping, not to guard against an intruder from outside. Vimrico and Horon had taken this for carelessness on Kastori’s part.

“But it wasn’t. That was exactly Lord Kastori’s trap.”

Kastori had known all along that someone was watching over Velti, quietly, from the shadows and in the open alike. And to lure that person out, he had deliberately thinned Velti’s guard. They had managed to catch the priestesses off guard and get Velti out of the purification chamber, but the moment they stepped outside the Adel Sanctuary, they were surrounded by a band of heretics.

“Heretics? This is Febron Temple, isn’t it?”

“There were huge numbers of Zufmut believers hiding here, disguised as Emroy worshippers.”

“But the Zufmut faith is supposed to be forbidden.”

Rory felt a wave of dizziness. Here at Febron, the very center of Eden’s worship of Emroy — the idea that a crowd venerating a god outlawed by the state could be thriving right here made no sense to her at all.

“What happened to the two of them?”

Velti pointed at the broken tower visible from the window.

“The steward said they’d been locked away in the temple dedicated to Zufmut. In the basement there.”

“There’s a temple to Zufmut here in Febron?!”

Just what is going on around here, Rory lamented.

“It seems trying to force a country that was originally built on Zufmut worship to suddenly switch over to Emroy was always going to strain something. Father used to say that the more a faith gets banned, the deeper it goes into hiding. The Zufmut faithful must have simply become Emroy’s priests, on the surface. Even so, I never dreamed Febron, of all places, would turn out to be one of them.”

A person’s heart isn’t simple enough to change what it worships just because the law says so. If something is forbidden, all one has to do is hide it, and the line between right and wrong, being something drawn by human power, can be undone by human power in turn. In this case, all it would take is overturning Eden’s royal authority. And the very thing needed for that, the sacred sword Diva, lay inside Velti’s own body. It made perfect sense that the hidden Zufmut faithful would throw in with Kastori, the man who could turn their standing from heresy back into orthodoxy.

“Then, is the male priest guarding this tower’s entrance one of them too?”

“Everyone serving Lord Kastori is a Zufmut believer, I’m sure of it.”

“Then… Instructor Namda too?”

Rory couldn’t help wondering whether Namda, who had always been hard on both Velti and Vimrico, might be chief among the hidden Zufmut faithful.

“I can’t tell about that instructor.”

Velti shook her head and went on.

“I thought I’d be safe if I ran here. That was the mistake.”

It was bitterly ironic — the place she had fled to, to escape her enemies, had turned out to be right in the enemy’s midst. In the year and a half since becoming an acolyte, the only reason Velti and Vimrico had stayed safe this long was that the Zufmut faithful hadn’t been able to move openly.

“I understand. But it’s fine. This time I’m the one who’ll save youuu.”

“No. If I run from here, they’ll do something terrible to Rico and Horon. As long as I do what I’m told, Lord Kastori promised he won’t lay a hand on either of them.”

“But then what happens to you~?!”

Velti covered her face with both hands and wept.

“It doesn’t matter what happens to me anymore. My father and mother were killed, and now if Rico and Horon die too, I won’t be able to go on living…”

Rory pulled the sobbing Velti into her arms.

“It’s going to be all right. I’ll save Horo and Rico myself.”

“That’s impossible.”

“It’s fine. All you have to do is hold on until the morning of the wedding. Once it’s the day itself, the guards should let their attention slip, so it should be easier to sneak in. Once I’ve got the two of them out, I’ll come back for you too, and we’ll all run away together.”

“But if you disrupt the wedding, everyone gets hit with a curse for breach of contract, don’t they? Is that all right?”

It was said that carrying out a religious rite in the wrong sequence, or interrupting it, brought a curse — one that made it extremely difficult for the offender to ever perform that same rite themselves. In this case, since the rite in question was a wedding, that would mean never being able to hold “a wedding” at all. It was also said that a sufficiently strong will could carry someone through unscathed, but more often than not some obstacle arose entirely apart from one’s own intentions, and things never turned out well.

“It’s fine. I’m not planning to get married anyway~.”

Hearing the word “wedding,” it was natural to think of one’s own eventual marriage; because of that, it hadn’t occurred to Rory in the moment that a day might come when she took part as an officiant instead.

“It’s still no good. It’s too dangerous.”

“You can’t give up. If you give up here, all you’re doing is making Kastori happy.”

“Let Kastori be happy, then, for all I care! My father and mother were murdered, I’ve been hunted ever since, and it’s already unbearable just staying alive. If it weren’t for me, Rico’s father wouldn’t have been killed at all! And now if something happens to Rico, or Horon, or even you, Ro-chan, what am I supposed to do?!”

At Velti’s cry, Rory too felt a helpless ache in her chest. She had no idea how to fire this girl’s spirit back to life. Her own strength was far too small to give Velti any real hope. If Rory were stronger — the kind of being everyone feared, everyone worshipped without reservation — a single whispered word from her might be enough to light a flame of hope. But as things stood, Rory was no different from any ordinary girl one might pass on the street. She was nothing more than an unkillable monster whose wounds happened to heal fast. To make someone trust a person like that, there was no room for careful reasoning — only throwing herself in, body and soul, all at once.

“Velti. Please, just listen to me.”

Rory cupped Velti’s cheeks in both hands and spoke to her.

“Vel. I understand that you don’t want to drag everyone else into this. But let me say it anyway. Fight!”

“Rory. Please, just leave me be already!”

“No. I won’t leave you be.”

“Why would you, of all people—?!”

“Because you matter to me, Velti! If you suffer, I suffer too! If you get hurt, it hurts me too! If you’re sad, I’m sad too! So please. Don’t just throw yourself away like it’s nothing and make me suffer for it!”

“Is this… for your sake, Rory?”

“That’s right. I— no, Rico too, Horon too, we'd be better off dead than seeing you suffer like this.”

“But because of that, you ended up hurt like this, in so much pain…”

Velti let her tears fall onto Rory’s arm.

“This is nothing. Doesn’t hurt, doesn’t itch, not one bit.”

For the first time, Rory showed Velti her palm — not a single wound on it.

“Wha—?! What is this?”

Velti hurriedly checked over Rory’s hands and feet, but wherever she looked, there was no wound, no scar, nothing that could have caused the bleeding. The skin was smooth and unmarked, perfectly clean.

“Wh-what’s going on?!”

“Vel. I became one of Emroy’s apostles.”

Rory stuck out her tongue playfully.

“An apostle? Like… a demigod apostle? A god?! Wh— what?! How?!”

“Probably, I think, it’s because you kept fighting properly all this time, Vel.”

“Me?”

With that, Rory told her the story of the moment she became a demigod.

Even now, Rory still couldn’t quite bring herself to believe the day she became a Half-God had really happened. Half-convinced, half-doubting — she genuinely wondered whether it had truly occurred at all. A being that had been human simply stopped being human, from one moment to the next. As the old myths told it, the turning point was supposed to be something dramatic: immersing one’s whole body in a sacred spring, being struck by lightning, or being bitten by a snake or spider acting as a god’s messenger and burning with fever for three days and three nights — that was the generally accepted, story-shaped kind of episode that was believed to mark such a change.

But what had actually happened to Rory was this: half a year into her time as an acolyte at Febron Temple, while cleaning the altar on Namda’s orders, she had heard what she took for a trick of the ear — the words “I choose you.” The moment she reached out, on impulse, to right the halberd that stood as the sign of the god’s will, which she had accidentally knocked over, someone’s voice struck her at the very base of her brain.

“Huh… who’s there?”

“…………”

She turned around, but there was no one in the chapel. Rory concluded it had simply been her ears playing tricks on her. But from that very instant, Rory had been a demigod. Blisters healed instantly. Scraped knees left not even a mark. Questions of why, and how, ran through her body over and over, but Emroy gave no answer. In the end it had simply gone unaddressed, indefinitely, and she had arrived here with neither any real sense of having become a Half-God nor any sense of mission that came with it.

“I kept wondering why, this whole time. But now I finally get it. I think it means: go save Vel.”

“Lord Emroy did that…”

“That’s right. The god is watching, properly. So don’t give up either, Vel. If you really treasure Rico and Horon, then treasure their feelings too. If those two ever found out you’d given up everything about yourself just to save them, they’d go on regretting it forever. Are you really all right with that?”

“No. I don’t want that. I don’t want that at all! If it’s my fault they… I don’t want that!”

“Then fight, together with me. Please. I’ll be the one protecting those two, I promise.”

Held in Rory’s arms, Velti gave a small nod. She had given up everything precisely because she treasured her two friends — but now she understood the opposite was true: precisely because she treasured them, she had to fight. Rory let out a small sigh of relief, seeing a faint spark return to the eyes of a girl who had given up on absolutely everything.

“But, Rory, being a god…”

“I only just became one, so it still doesn’t feel real to me either, honestly. So for now I’ll just be your own private god, Vel. Don’t tell anyone else. Not Rico, not Horon either. Promise?”

“Y-yes.”

Having confirmed Velti’s nod, Rory decided it was about time to take her leave, and leaned out the window to check the way down. But the view from the top of the tower, the kind that seemed to pull you right down into it, made her shudder.

“Ah, wait a second!”

Velti took a blanket from her own bed and drove a shard of pottery into it, meaning to make it a replacement for the one Rory had worn to shreds on the way up.

“Even a god can’t stand pain, can she? And Rory, take off your clothes. I don’t think you should be wandering around looking like that. Here, change into this instead, if you don’t mind.”

Velti then had Rory swap out her blood-stained priest’s robe for one of her own.

Their waist sizes were nearly identical, yet the fact that it hung loose and baggy around the hips and chest left Rory feeling as though she’d been clubbed with something blunt.

“What about you, Vel? What will you wear?”

“Lord Kastori said to wear this one…”

Rory was struck speechless at the sight of the shellfish-purple dress tossed onto the bed. She had to admit it would suit Vel’s blue hair beautifully, but when she picked it up, it turned out to be made of such thin gauze that it looked as though it would show her body right through it.

“Kastori is, what, some kind of pervert?”

“I think that’s just how men are, apparently. Rory— oh, should I call you Lady Rory now?”

“Rory’s just fine, same as always.”

Rory gave a rough grab — “Hah!” — at the chest of Velti, who seemed far too tolerant of men’s tastes. She simply couldn't stand the thought of those ending up in some man's hands.

“Wha—, what?”

But the gesture only ended up rubbing salt in her own wound. The plain fact that it didn’t fit in her hand left Rory feeling all the more insulted.

“…………ugh.”

“Never mind that. Here, take this.”

Velti draped a thick blanket over both of Rory’s hands and tied it at the wrists. With this, at least, her hands wouldn’t be shredded raw again on the way down. The blanket she’d used climbing up had been such poor quality it gave out partway, but a fine blanket like the one Kastori had given Velti ought to hold.

“Thanks. See you on the wedding day, then. I’ll get Vimrico and Horon out, so hang in there till then.”

With that, Rory took hold of the briars and began climbing slowly down the outer wall.

“Rory? Are you all right?”

But right then, the stem Rory had gripped tore free of the wall with a ripping crack. The suckers anchoring the stem to the wall snapped loose one after another with a series of pops*,* and Rory plummeted straight down toward the ground.

“R-Rory!”

Velti instinctively turned her face away, already picturing Rory ending like a ripe melon dropped on a stone floor.

“W-what do I do. Rory, Rory is…”

But then—

“I’m fine, I’m fine… owowowowow.”

Rory’s voice, unbelievably, came floating up from the ground.

Velti’s eyes flew open, and there was Rory, standing below and waving cheerfully.

Oh, right — she'd almost forgotten Rory was a god now — and, still hesitant, Velti waved back.

At that, Rory smiled, looking relieved, and melted away into the darkness of the night, gone.

 
Small note: The name Kastori is another alcohol-based reference. Kastori  ( カストーリ, Kasutōri) closely resembles kasutori-zake (粕取り酒), a notoriously cheap and harsh liquor distilled from sake lees and associated with low-quality postwar rotgut. The association is especially striking because Kastori is the head of the Metanol family, another alcohol-derived name. The combination gives one of Eden's most powerful nobles a name evocative of low-grade liquor, suggesting a deliberate and rather unflattering authorial joke. If fully localized rather than transliterated, the overall effect would be something akin to ‘Lord Rotgut of the Methanol Family.’

“The financial report from House Folmar is well done. Galf Su Tream, the steward — a fine hand at this. Too nervous by nature, perhaps, but when it comes to handling finances, that’s practically a virtue. Might be worth appointing him Minister of Finance, once I take the throne...”

Piña was leafing through her usual stack of reports, mulling over her cabinet appointments for after her ascension, when Hamilton came rushing in, pale-faced.

“Your Highness! Your Highness! It’s terrible!”

“What is it, Hamilton? Why the panic?”

“His Radiance — His Radiance is here, in the capital!”

Piña shot up out of her seat as though launched from a spring.

“What?! His Radiance — you mean His Radiance Granham?!”

“Yes! His first descent in three years!”

The maids stationed in the corner of the office, heedless of decorum, let out a shrill, ear-splitting shriek.

But neither Piña nor Hamilton scolded them for it. When Granham, Apostle of the sun god Flare, showed himself in public after so long an absence, expecting anyone to keep their excitement in check was simply asking too much.

Just as Rory Mercury bore the moniker of Reaper, Granham had been given the moniker Child of the Sun by the people — a title celebrating a magnificence and radiance befitting the sun god Flare’s apostle. In a word: the most beautiful man on earth. That was Granham.

“So, where is His Radiance now? ...No, perhaps I needn’t even ask.”

Piña turned her gaze to the window. A distant clamor echoed from far away, growing louder by the moment — a sign that whatever was causing the commotion was drawing near.

“He’ll be passing before the Imperial Palace shortly.”

“Then I suppose we’d best go and behold his august countenance at once.”

Piña set down her papers with restless haste and left the office alongside Hamilton.

Out in the palace’s long corridor, maids and noble daughters alike, having caught wind of the news, went dashing past with skirts hitched up. Before long, Piña found her own feet breaking into a trot as well.

“My, he's extraordinarily popular.”

“Well, of course — he’s His Radiance Granham.”

The sheer force of the crowd — one might fairly call it a stampede — was itself proof of just how immensely popular the demigod Granham was among women.

When Piña stepped out onto the palace balcony, the sight that met her was of every street and balcony packed solid, every single window crowded with women of every description — daughters, brides, mothers-in-law, crones, toddlers, little girls, matrons, maidens, ladies, beauties — every kind of woman, of every race, clustered together like grapes on a vine.

“Lord Granham!”

Every one of them leaned out as far as she dared, waving her hands and shrieking the name of the man astride the white horse until her throat was fit to give out, each desperate for even a moment of his gaze.

“Lord Granham looked at me!”

“No, he looked at me!”

Granham appeared to be somewhere in his late twenties. His build was slender, but not frail — toned instead with lean, supple muscle, so that he gave no impression of sickliness. His face was sculpted, almost too perfect, but the ever-present smile he wore kept that perfection from turning cold. The narrow, leaf-shaped tips of his ears marked him as a Norma Elf by birth.

His hair, shimmering in seven colors — surely the origin of his moniker — streamed dazzlingly behind him, and the divine aura that clung to his entire body gave onlookers the illusion of standing right before him even from a considerable distance. He was every inch the sun god’s apostle.

The moment Piña stepped out onto the balcony, she too found herself overwhelmed by the demigod’s radiant presence, letting slip an excited “Ohhhh!” of her own.

But even that cry of hers was swallowed up by the screaming all around her, drowned out so completely that she couldn’t hear it herself — which gave some sense of just how furious a storm of noise was raging. As a result, she had to shout directly into Hamilton’s ear just to be heard.

“What? What did you say?!”

“I said — look, Yuel, his divine retaine*, is over there too!”

Where Piña pointed, riding a black horse alongside Granham, was a magnificently built man of striking looks. This one appeared to be a human in his late thirties. His wavy black hair fell to his waist, and his body was armored in nothing but slabs of muscle beneath a thin covering of leather armor, lending him a savage look. His arms were as thick around as a woman’s waist — the sort of man who, if Itami had been there to see him, would surely have blurted out something like, “What is that, a good-looking former Governor of California?” — Arnold Schwarzenegger, more or less.

If Granham could be likened to a finely ornamented blade of razor-sharp elegance, then this man was more like a crude, brutal saber — one that relied on sheer weight and impact to cut through anything in its path. He seemed to enjoy a popularity not far behind Granham’s own; the name “Yuel!” was being shrieked by the women below just as fervently.

The two of them, seemingly at a loss over the women swarming around them, traded a pair of wry, faintly exasperated smiles.

Then came a shrill, ear-splitting shriek: “Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

“D-did you see that just now, Hamilton?! That was the genuine article — real Gra x Yue! Oh, this is bad. I’m melting. I’m going to go bald from sheer moe overload!”

Piña swallowed hard, again and again, her throat working audibly.

But Hamilton, looking at Piña in surprise, ventured a dissenting opinion, hesitant and careful.

“Well — Your Highness. But public opinion is firmly on the side of Yue x Gra.”

“What are you talking about, you fool?! Gra x Yue is justice and truth incarnate, is it not?!”

“It most certainly is not. I’ve thought this for some time now, Your Highness, but your aesthetic sensibilities are somewhat askew.”

“Wh-what did you say?!”

“Since we’re on the subject, I’ll say it plainly: it’s precisely because your aesthetic judgment is so warped that you find yourself smitten with a man like that Itami fellow, isn’t it?! And that’s exactly why, no matter how much you practice, your drawings never get any better.”

“Y-you just said something you were never meant to say!”

Piña and Hamilton fell into an argument over something no ordinary person would have understood the stakes of at all — and as a result, the two of them were slow to notice something rather important.

All the while, Granham and Yuel continued drawing steadily closer to the Imperial Palace. Before long, palace guards were dispatched to clear the crowd gathered before the gates, parting what could hardly be called a human wall so much as a wall of women, to open a path through to Granham.

The one who emerged from within the castle was Lady Fre Randall. As always, Anne Luna Liger followed close behind her.

“Well, well — His Radiance Granham. Welcome to the Imperial Capital. Might you have some business with His Majesty the Emperor?”

Granham answered Lady’s greeting with a troubled expression.

“No, that’s not it at all. We were only trying to reach the Flare Temple here in the capital.”

“Is that so? But to reach the Flare Temple, wouldn’t you need to head further south? This is quite the opposite direction entirely.”

“I thought I knew where I was going, believe it or not. But then all these ladies started gathering, and the only thing to do was keep heading for wherever the road was widest, to avoid the crush — and that’s how we ended up here, purely by chance.”

“What an ordeal that must have been for you.”

The widest road in the capital was the Central Avenue connecting the Imperial Palace to the city gates — so it was only natural that seeking out the widest road would lead one straight to the palace’s front gate.

“Sorry for all the commotion in front of the palace. Do give His Majesty my regards, won’t you?”

“As you wish. Though, given the state of things, wouldn’t reaching the Flare Temple be rather difficult right now? Why not come stay at the palace as you are, and make your way to the Flare Temple once the commotion has died down? I, Lady Fre Randall, would be glad to see to arranging your audience with His Majesty and to your comfort in the meantime.”

“Is that so? What do you think, Yuel?”

Granham turned to look back at his divine retainer. Lady’s gaze fixed on him, full of expectation. But the black-haired man turned a suspicious look on her before slowly shaking his head.

“No, better not. If we stay at the palace, we’ll just end up swarmed by every high-ranking type in the place instead, and that’ll be even more trouble. It’d be one thing if there were someone strong among them, but you don't find that sort in a place like this.”

 “Yeah, you’re right... So, I’m afraid I’ll have to decline your invitation. We need to head for Alnus now. We’ve been summoned by Rory.”

“A-a summons from Her Holiness Rory?”

Hearing such an unexpected name, Lady tilted her head. The sun god Flare and the dark god Emroy were not said to be hostile toward one another, exactly, but neither were they on close terms — certainly not close enough for one to summon the other’s apostle and expect ready compliance.

At that, Granham’s expression turned troubled.

“The truth is, I owe her a personal favor. Until I’ve paid it back, I’m not exactly in a position to say no to her.”

“Whatever could she want, I wonder?”

“Apparently, Rory said she’s holding a Nasshida.”

The instant the word “Nasshida” reached his ears, Hamilton came back to his senses.

“Y-Your Highness! Isn’t this... rather bad?!”

Piña, too, came back to herself and nodded. She had imposed a gag order on everyone regarding the Nasshida — but she had no way of silencing the demigods themselves. At this rate, everything was liable to come out into the open.

“No, don’t say it! Please, don’t say it, Your Radiance!”

But even as Piña screamed from up on the balcony, to Granham it registered as nothing more than background noise — someone trying to butt into somebody else’s conversation. And so he simply kept on talking.

“I don’t know whose child it’s for, but seeing as she’s trying to round up every last one of us demigods, it must be shaping up to be a truly lavish Nasshida.”

“Wh-what?! Every single one of the demigods?!”

Lady’s breath caught in her throat.

“That’s right. Rory, Moter, me, Wareharn, and Giselle. Every last one that’s known to exist, as far as I understand it.”

Every human present was struck speechless by this.

“H-how utterly enviable...”

To give some sense of the magnitude involved, it was rather like being told that John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Prince, and Michael Jackson were all going to show up at your birthday party and sing “Happy Birthday” together, just for you. Every woman who heard this was struck utterly dumb, and a silence fell over the area so complete that one might have thought every last soul in the capital had simply dropped dead.

The rumor that all five currently active demigods were set to gather at Alnus spread through the palace gossips in no time at all. What most captured everyone’s interest, above all, was just who had managed to accomplish the feat of gathering all five.

Granham was seen as the best possible source of information. Lady paid a visit to the Flare Temple and, exercising the privilege of a ducal daughter, requested that the priests look into the matter.

“Your Radiance. This Nasshida being held at Alnus — whose is it, and for whom?”

The bishop and priests of the Flare Temple pressed him on the matter every which way, but their efforts yielded little in the way of results.

“It’s not that I’m trying to hide anything. I genuinely don’t know. Whoever's Nasshida it is doesn't really matter to me, you see — I don’t have any right to refuse.”

Granham, it turned out, truly had no idea for whom the Nasshida was being held.

“And what of Yuel?”

“If Granham doesn’t know, what makes you think I would?”

With that, the palace gossips gave up trying to extract information from him directly and instead set about gathering fragments of information from every direction, hoping to piece together a plausible answer. Eventually, a single name rose to the surface.

“Could it be... that person, perhaps?”

“One can’t jump to conclusions lightly, but the possibility does seem quite high.”

After all, the rumor that the daughter of Marquess Palesti was to be wed to a Nihonjin had only just begun circulating. And so, those who had been invited to Bozes’s wedding suddenly found themselves the focus of attention, seen as standing closest to the truth of the matter.

Ten months since the Gate had closed.

Day after day, the JSDF’s Special Region Deployment Force trained toward its mission of holding and stabilizing the territory it had secured in the Special Region, while at the same time setting to work on the business of its own survival.

Representative among these projects were the construction of an oil refinery and the development of a desulfurization unit, aimed at securing fuel, and the promotion of rice cultivation, aimed at securing food.

Fuel refining in particular was treated as an urgent task. Because of this, in one corner of the garrison, under the guidance of the officers in charge, the construction of various test facilities was proceeding at a rapid pace.

Of course, other projects were also proceeding in parallel, with a great deal of manpower and resources poured into them.

Many of the personnel, apart from their original assigned duties, were required to take on roles suited to whatever qualifications, experience, knowledge, or abilities they happened to possess — living out days that would make even an employee of a notorious “black company” think, “I still have it better than this.”

Itami was no exception.

Hazama spoke to Itami.

“With contact severed from the mainland — that is, from Ginza — the loss of ‘entertainment’ has had a bigger impact than we expected.”

To conserve fuel, meetings were held without turning on the lights unless necessary. Among the kanbu jieikan, this had already become second nature.

But sitting in a dim room, addressing silhouettes whose faces he couldn’t make out, with only voices flying back and forth, Itami sometimes thought it felt like a meeting of that shady organization called SEELE from Neon Genesis Evangelion.

“We’re also hearing from the field that maintaining troop morale is becoming difficult.”

“But it isn’t as though we’ve sat on our hands until now. We’ve encouraged leisure activities like sports and music, in hopes of channeling the men’s frustrations in a healthy direction.”

“But that alone hasn’t been enough.”

“Thinking about it, that’s only natural. We’d all grown used to receiving a constant stream of stimulation from television, the internet, newspapers. It’s no wonder the rank and file are building up frustration.”

“What we’d like to avoid, at least, is having that frustration directed somewhere troublesome that we didn’t intend.”

“With so many Tokuchi women in Alnus Province having obtained Japanese citizenship, the order restricting free romantic relationships became a dead letter. These days, if you go down the hill, you’ll see our men chatting up women all over town.”

“Don’t misunderstand me, Itami-nitō rikui. We’re not trying to forbid it. If the younger men can conduct themselves with proper manners, that’s perfectly fine.”

“But there are also men among the ranks who simply aren’t skilled at the give-and-take needed to build that kind of intimate relationship. Not everyone can carry himself as smoothly as Kengun-issa. We absolutely must prevent a man like that from getting carried away and causing a scandal.”

Why is my name being brought up? — a mutter came from somewhere, but everyone ignored it.

“Sō da. Countermeasures are urgently needed. And for that, we need to enrich our ‘entertainment’ offerings.”

“To keep the unit in a healthy state, we must keep providing ‘entertainment’ for the men’s hearts and bodies.”

“Itami-kun, how is the plan coming along?”

That’s a long preamble, Itami thought, but he lowered his voice to match everyone else’s tone and answered solemnly.

“Hai. Everything is proceeding exactly as the committee planned.”

“Ha! By ‘as planned,’ you mean the establishment of that special library stuffed full of your personal hobbies?”

“Just how much of our limited resources have you squandered doing only what you wanted to do? Because of the enormous quantities of paper and printer toner consumed, most of our office work has had to go back to being done by hand.”

“Still, it’s also true that no one but Itami could have gotten this project off the ground. If we’re trying to conserve electricity, we should keep the use of electronic devices to an absolute minimum — and on that front, reading is a good thing. We really ought to be grateful for the personal book collection and data he’s provided us. Although I’ll admit the sheer volume surprised me.”

At that, someone muttered under their breath, wondering just how he’d managed to gather enough book data to fill twenty bookshelves’ worth.

But Itami ignored it and gave a status report backing up Lieutenant General Hazama’s words.

“Well — thanks to everyone’s support, the number of users at the special library has been steadily increasing.”

“That much I can’t deny. Thanks to you, some of the men are very pleased. Emphasis on ‘some.’”

“Sō. Manga and the rest of our subculture are a source of national pride, but you’d do well to remember, Itami-nitō rikui, that not everyone considers that a good thing.”

“Next time, I’d like to see a plan that everyone can enjoy equally. Preferably one that doesn’t eat into our resources or budget.”

“Wakatte imasu. Which is exactly why my second arrow is this.”

Itami asked everyone to look at the handout.

“Lights on, please.”

At last, the lights in the conference room were switched on. The room suddenly brightened, and the eerie atmosphere dissolved.

Looking around, the people gathered there were, as always, the usual senior officers.

A female NCO walked behind them, distributing tea and documents.

The tea was barley tea, made from barley grown in the Special Region.

The handouts given to everyone were printed on rough straw paper made right there in Arnus.

It was a printing method in which characters were scratched, thin and scratchy, into paper soaked in oil, a blank sheet laid beneath it, and ink rolled onto the surface with a roller. Thanks to the spread of dry copiers back in Japan, this technology — known as “straw paper” and “mimeograph” (stencil-duplicator) printing — had all but vanished there, only to be revived here in the Special Region.

In both cases, older members of the unit had worked out the templates through trial and error, then commissioned production from the dwarven craftsmen in Arnus’s workshop district. The dwarves turned a profit selling these, and in exchange, supplied the JSDF with the finished products free of charge.

Itami waited for the handouts to make their way around the room before speaking.

“About two months ago, a woman here in Alnus gave birth to a child fathered by one of our personnel.”

“I’ve heard the report. If I recall, the mother is Bozes-san, the military attaché dispatched from the Empire. The father was Tomita-nitō rikusō. And the child’s name was, I believe—”

The baby was a girl, and her father had named her Mai.

“There’s a movement afoot to hold a celebration for little Mai’s birth — something like a reception.”

“A reception?”

“Hai. From what I understand, it’s really more of a small ceremony where you get a blessing at a shrine, but since there hasn’t been anything to celebrate for a while, and it would be the first event since the temple’s completion, the women are all quite fired up about it.”

At the soft knock — tok, tok, tok — on the door, she didn’t waste breath asking who’s there. Rory’s keen senses had already picked up, from the familiar presence outside, exactly who her visitor was.

And yet, even knowing that, she was still startled. Could it be — surely not — but then, finally... Unable to sit still, Rory bolted up so fast her chair toppled over, and covered the short distance to the door at a run.

But then, for whatever reason, she suddenly wheeled around mid-step and doubled back to stand in front of the mirror instead.

She quickly checked her reflection for anything out of place. Worrying that a single nightgown alone looked far too suggestive, she hurriedly grabbed a sheer outer robe and threw it on. She smoothed down a few loose strands of hair, wiped the ink from her fingers clean with a handkerchief, and gave herself one last quick run-through of the alluring pose and smile she’d been practicing.

Only then did she turn and run for the door a second time.

“What’s wrong? At this hour?”

Rory opened the door, lightly pressing a hand to her chest to still her racing, hopeful heart.

She pushed the outward-swinging door wide open, tilting her head slightly and smiling up through her lashes. Done this way, the neckline would fall open just enough to reveal the beautiful line of her collarbone and the curve of her neck and shoulder. This was the seductive pose Rory had worked out for herself.

Her first line was originally going to be, “I did give you a key, you know — you didn’t have to knock, you could’ve just come in.” But that felt like it was pushing things a little too hard on the visitor, so she scrapped it at the last second.

Whoever it was had almost certainly come about some work matter, so this would probably end with nothing more than a brief exchange at the doorway. In that case, she decided, the thing to do was use this as an opportunity to build an atmosphere that made future visits easier — setting things up for next time.

The visitor blinked, taken aback at the sight of Rory, and said,

“Sorry, Rory. Were you asleep, by any chance?”

“Nn-uh, I was just writing some letters.”

“Ah, good. I wanted to talk to you about something. Mind if I come in?”

At that single line, she found herself catching her breath without meaning to.

Oh no, wait, just wait a second. What on earth is going on here?

Words that felt almost impossible coming out of a man’s mouth left Rory feeling her ears and cheeks go bright red.

For some reason her heart gave a leap, and it felt like her whole body might start bouncing right along with it. Trying to forcibly suppress that up-and-down urge only made her voice come out unintentionally heavy and stiff.

“W-well, anyway, come in, come in.”

She couldn’t very well leave him standing at the entrance forever. Feeling something like the urge to hurry along a hesitant mouse dithering at the mouth of a cage trap — go on, go in, go in already — Rory pulled the door wide open, clearing the way for Itami to pass through.

“Actually, there’s something I wanted to ask you about, if you’ve got a minute...”

Itami launched straight into it the moment he stepped into the room.

For Rory, who had settled herself, giddy with anticipation, softly onto the edge of the bed, this opening line was enough to make her want to slump her shoulders — not a shred of mood to it whatsoever.

Alone with a good woman. And, as luck would have it, fresh out of the bath, too.

Sitting on the bed, patting the spot beside her as an invitation to sit down, she felt he could at least make a little more effort at atmosphere, or at the very least enjoy the moment a bit.

And yet this man wouldn’t even sit down, let alone whisper anything sweet. Having let herself get her hopes up for nothing, she deflated. Of course it’d turn out like this, she thought, disappointed.

By rights, the correct move here for a man was to pull Rory into an embrace, push her down, and let things develop into a proper — heh heh heh — sort of situation. In fact, there really shouldn’t be any other possible option.

And yet, however that might be, however true that might normally hold — not with this one. The other party here was Itami. Perhaps it was a mistake to expect something with such a high bar cleared right off the bat.

After all, this particular man seemed to hold some kind of personal creed along the lines of “a woman is something to be admired, not touched,” and appeared to be stubbornly committed to upholding it, as far as she could tell.

It was almost funny, given that he’d apparently been married once before.

He’d evidently managed to get things done properly enough back then — which made her genuinely curious, purely for future reference, how exactly he’d managed to steer things into that sort of situation with his ex-wife, Risa, should the opportunity to ask ever come up.

“Haaaaah...”

Letting out a deep sigh, Rory silently told herself, don’t get ahead of yourself, don’t get ahead of yourself, and asked, with her already-practiced smile back in place,

“So? What’s this thing you wanted to talk about?”

At that, Itami dropped down to sit directly across from her.

With Rory seated on the bed, his eye level now matched hers exactly, and his face descended to a distance startlingly close. It stirred something almost beastlike in her — an urge to pounce and devour him whole.

But the little lamb, unaware of the depths of the desire swirling inside Rory, calmly declared, right in front of the starving wolf, “Want to have a wedding?”

A single beat of silence. And then Rory’s brain simply boiled over.

“M—marriage!? W-w-wait, hold on, I haven’t even mentally prepared myself yet! But but— yes! Yes yes yes, yesyesyes, yes!”

Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined the word “marriage” would come out of Itami’s mouth.

Instantly wrapped in a wave of dizzying happiness, Rory threw herself onto him. Overwhelmed with emotion, she pressed her lips to him. Carried away entirely, she bit down.

Itami, in an absolute panic, scrambled to restrain her. Wait, wait — calm down, just calm down, he pleaded desperately.

“Hold on a second! You’ve definitely got the wrong idea here!”

“Wrong idea? What exactly is wrong about me and Yōji getting married!?”

“Because I never said we were getting married!”

“Then who exactly are you planning on marrying!? Tell me!”

Lelei, Tuka, Yao, or — don’t you dare say it’s Piña — Rory throttled Itami’s neck as she demanded an answer.

“A wedding, sure, but — ugh — it’s not mine. C-can’t... breathe.”

“Then whose wedding is it!?”

“O-of course, Tomita and Bozes’s — s-suff... suffo... cating...”

“Ohh... I see.”

At that, something seemed to click for Rory too, and she smacked her palm with a light clap.

And, incidentally, Itami also dropped — crumpling to the floor in a heap right there.

https://preview.redd.it/kwyjym1vbpkh1.png?width=320&format=png&auto=webp&s=02b19abb6ac4f38036448953a13ed98fab518d7c

Tauro’s going all out in his battle against the elves, who are coming for the World Tree growing in his garden. Unfortunately, with the Knight Corps away, it’s just him, Ponytail, and Lightning protecting the Kingdom against the elves’ sex-powered shape-shifting knight. Who will come out on top? Find out in the thrilling and scintillating climax!

https://preview.redd.it/ze0la78a5okh1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=e563733ab7feec7dbd17800917fcd9fb226a8ffc

When Hiro returns to the imperial capital, Chris has a lot of questions. In fact, she’s set on grilling him—less about his mercenary adventures, and more about Colonel Serena. If Serena herself gets wind of Chris’s prying, there’s no way she’ll let Hiro smooth things over. In fact, the prim and proper colonel will probably blow a gasket.

But Hiro will need to deal with something that poses a much greater threat than Chris’s pointed questions: an assassin who’s found their chance to strike. The situation has gone from awkward to deadly—and Hiro will have to fight tooth and nail to leave the capital in one piece!

Which god their prayers had reached, there was no telling.

“There. Get in there.”

Captured by the black-cloaked men, Tokushima and Edajima were marched off — without being roughed up, at least — to a small building tucked in a corner of the port’s warehouse district. Inside, dim and sparsely furnished, stood a plain wooden table and the barest minimum of fittings. Judging from the stationery and documents scattered about, it seemed to be some kind of office.

“I’ve been waiting for you two.”

Startled, they turned to find a man in a suit standing there. Tōdō Tetsuo, a Foreign Ministry official.

“Oh, it’s Tōdō-san. Don’t tell me you got caught too?” said Tokushima.

“Why are you here?” asked Edajima.

“You two — not like that—”

Tōdō prompted them to speak in the Special Region language, so that everyone around them could follow the conversation. Speaking in a language no one else understood would only invite suspicion that they were plotting something. Tokushima, taking the hint, asked his question again, this time in the Special Region tongue from the start.

“Why is Mr. Tōdō here?”

“Because we at the Foreign Ministry are in a cooperative relationship with these people.”

“These people, meaning?”

“They’re Tinaean government agents — the populace calls them Negri Ma. In Japanese, that would be, let’s see...”

Edajima raised a hand slightly.

“Black Hand... would that be it?”

“That translation fits perfectly. From now on, let’s use that name in our reports.”

“So in short, Mr. Tōdō, you weren’t captured — you’re working together with these people, is that it?”

Tokushima summed up the situation as best he’d pieced it together from the exchange so far.

Tōdō nodded, “That’s right” — but the black-cloaked boy corrected him.

“That’s a mistaken impression. We are not working together with you Nihonjin. We’re only doing this as a favor, and a reluctant one at that, because it came recommended and requested by the Empire’s Privy Council. Frankly, thanks to you, a perfectly good opportunity has been ruined.”

“I do apologize,” Tōdō said, bowing deeply.

“What do you mean? What did we do?” Edajima asked, and Tōdō explained.

Plagued by pirates, Tinae had been using the current buildup toward the Odette’s launch as an opportunity — setting a watch to catch whatever pirate spy might come sniffing around to learn her departure date. Given Captain Caipirinha’s widely renowned reputation, the pirates were certain to be paying close attention to his movements. So by casting a net around him, they should have been able to net the ring of spies nesting in Nasuta.

Instead, Tokushima and Edajima had walked straight into the trap. A trap could only catch one prey at a time — and so the real target had slipped away.

“A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And you’ve cost me it. I resent you for it.”

The word the boy used — resent — carried a chill in it that struck straight through anyone listening.

“S-sorry! I’m so sorry!”

Tokushima bowed his head at once. Edajima followed suit immediately.

“Even though we had no way of knowing, this was truly inexcusable of us. We had time to spare before our appointment with Mr. Tōdō, and I let greed get the better of me, wanting to learn even a little more about this country. That was the mistake.”

The black-cloaked boy listened to their apologies and let out a small sigh. Then he went on.

“You two were also the ones who slipped ashore at Robessa’s pier early this morning, under cover of fog — together with Aquas and the others, weren’t you?”

“How did you know that?”

“We received a report. Please don’t underestimate our nation’s intelligence network. Slipping a small boat deep into the harbor, fog or no fog — that’s a reckless thing to do.”

It seemed their landing had been observed by someone all along. If anything, it was entirely possible that the naval base’s thin security had been left deliberately weak, precisely to lure in pirate spies.

“Still — to be able to connect the landing of some unidentified persons to us so easily. The organization called Negri Ma is... no, perhaps it’s you personally... quite capable, it seems.”

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere with me.”

“So it was flattery, was it? Rather sharp, for someone so young.”

“...”

The boy made a face like he’d bitten into a bitter insect and looked away.

“In any case! Consider this a debt owed. I’ll be collecting on it someday.”

“Y-Yes, understood.”

“Anything I can do personally, I’ll do without limit.”

“I too, within whatever power I have, will make amends,” Edajima and Tōdō said, echoing Tokushima’s answer almost in unison.

At that, the black-cloaked boy accepted the apology, if grudgingly.

“So, Mr. Tōdō — how did it go?”

Seeing that the boy’s anger had cooled, Edajima steered the conversation back to their actual mission.

“The other party’s a greedy sort — saw us over a barrel and drove the price up considerably — but we managed to reach an agreement somehow. All that’s left now is for us to hand over payment and take receipt of the goods. We’re due to call on him this evening. Which reminds me, Mr. Edajima — you brought the payment, I trust?”

Tokushima set a duralumin case on the table.

“Right here.”

Edajima produced a key and opened the lid.

“It’s been kept exactly as entrusted to us by the Foreign Ministry. Please confirm.”

“Ah, yes.”

Tōdō peered into the duralumin case.

“Ah—”

Even the black-cloaked boy, glancing casually into the case, let out an involuntary sound. Inside, it was packed edge to edge with Special Region gold and silver coin.

“You’re paying that much for a mere slave? Is he some sort of tremendously wealthy man, then? Or a minister — a noble? Either way, for a bureaucrat to come all this way to retrieve him, he must be someone of real importance to Nihon, is that it?”

“No — he’s neither wealthy nor a minister. In fact, he isn’t even a citizen of our nation, Nihon,” Edajima said.

“Then what is he?”

Tōdō asked, sounding at a loss.

“A journalist.”

“A jaanarisuto? What’s that — some kind of privileged class? A priest of some temple?”

“How should I put it...”

Tōdō looked toward Edajima and Tokushima with something close to a plea for rescue. But neither of them could summon a suitable way to explain that particular breed of person to this world — all they could do was shrug.

Notice that I used Tōdō-san the first time, and then Mr. Tōdō afterwards. That's because Tōdō-san told Tokushima and Edajima to speak in the language of the Special Region, in effect a language switch. The characters stop speaking Japanese and begin speaking the Special Region language in-universe. That way the reader can feel the language switch without ever being explicitly told about it. IMO, It's a neat solution to a problem that is otherwise very difficult to convey in translation.

Because English cannot directly represent that switch, I need some other marker. So my solution: “Oh, it's **Tōdō-**san. Don't tell me you got caught too?”, then Tōdō prompts them to speak in the Special Region language. After which “Why is Mr. Tōdō here?”

But note: I used the words Nihonjin and jaanarisuto because they are considered loanwords in the Special Region. Nihonjin is written in the original text as ニホン人 instead of 日本人, and when Edajima said "journalist," it is in katakana as expected (ジャーナリスト), but when the boy, hearing a strange word for the first time, repeats it phonetically (jaanarisuto) and it is written in hiragana(じゃーなりすと), indicating that it is a foreign term.

The JMSDF submarine Kitashio, having rendezvoused with local cooperative members of the Aquas tribe—also known as mermaids, including Kemy — set course westward toward a shallow sea region marked on charts as the Eastern Barrier Reef.

The Eastern Barrier Reef was part of a vast coral reef system found in several areas of this special region.

The average depth was around ten meters, and in some places, coral grew so high that at high tide it nearly broke the surface. Countless such corals formed hidden reefs, strongly repelling any approaching vessels.

Unaware ships entering the area risked running aground at best — or at worst, having their hulls torn open and sinking. It was truly a treacherous sea.

Incidentally, in the “Ginza-side world,” there is a similar reef off northeastern Australia known as the Great Barrier Reef.

Captain Kurokawa surfaced the Kitashio, posting lookouts even atop the sail and dive planes, and carefully navigated through canyon-like gaps formed by sheer coral walls.

But standing on the bridge, Kurokawa felt a deep sense of dread.

No matter how hard he strained his eyes, the night sea revealed nothing.

Even with night-vision devices, one could not see beneath the surface. Though various instruments like sonar imaging were being used, handling the ever-changing seabed was difficult, and beads of sweat formed on Kurokawa’s forehead.

“Edajima… this is no different from walking along a cliff edge blindfolded.”

Edajima, standing behind him, replied:

“That’s precisely why we have the Aquas. Living on the seafloor where light does not reach, they possess highly sensitive perception. Even in complete darkness, they can sense coral reefs as if it were daylight.”

What Kurokawa and the others could make out among the waves were not the heads of Kemy and her companions — but rather the lights they held.

The ten Aquas led by Kemy were holding lights like floating markers, forming lines to the left and right.

Red to starboard, green to port. As long as she stayed between them, the Kitashio could make her way through safely without touching the coral.

“We can trust them on this, right?”

“Mochiron daijōbu desu yo. She may look like that, but she has the important things well in hand. We wouldn’t keep using them otherwise.”

Edajima vouched for them without hesitation, but Kurokawa still couldn’t shake his unease. Something about the mermaid who called herself Kemy gave him the distinct impression that even a serious safety-related blunder might get brushed off with a cutesy “tee-hee, my bad!”

Still, Edajima had known them far longer than he had — in fact, no one among the JMSDF’s senior officers understood the people of the Special Region better than he did. That was precisely why, even though he had long since reached a rank where most men warmed a desk chair with their backside all day, he could still be found out here in the field.

Kurokawa found this genuinely enviable.

That said, it was also thanks to Edajima that Kurokawa had returned to the post of captain in the first place.

Operating in the waters of the Special Region demanded a crew in which not a single member was unfamiliar with the ship, and a captain with sound judgment and deep experience. It was Edajima’s recommendation on exactly this point that had spared the Kitashio from being decommissioned and given Kurokawa himself the chance to prove himself in those same waters.

“Conn, this is the bridge. Tori-kaji ten degrees.”

The IC operator relayed the officer of the watch’s order over the battery-less telephone.

Slowly, the course shifted to port, and the stars overhead drifted to the right.

By this point, Kurokawa decided to cast aside the doubts he had harbored about Kemy.

The Kitashio was, in effect, being led forward by the hand. Blind as she was — for that was what it amounted to — the mermaids were all she had to rely on. But that meant taking the utmost care for their safety, keeping the hull well clear of them at all times.

The sweat that had been dripping from Kurokawa’s brow was not only from the sultry southern air, but also from the constant, fine-grained shiphandling the situation demanded.

“Omo-kaji, five degrees.”

“Omo-kaji five degrees, yōsorō.”

The hull’s distinctive hydrodynamic shape meant that the seawater running along its sides flowed smoothly aft toward the enormous propeller turning at the stern. Get careless, and anyone too close could be drawn into that spinning blade and torn to shreds. That was a fate he could never allow to befall them.

It’s worth adding, by way of explanation, that this is also why submarines make poor rescue vessels.

One person adrift in the water might be manageable, but if a ship were sinking nearby with many people struggling in the water around it, a submarine would have a hard time closing in to recover them. Force the attempt carelessly, and it could end up harming the very people it was trying to save.

Once clear of the Eastern Barrier Reef, the Kitashio, still surfaced, cut her diesel-electric engines.

On deck, three sailors from the navigation division each peered through a sextant up at the night sky.

The sight made fine entertainment for the mermaids out setting the buoys, though fortunately the darkness kept the crew from being distracted by their audience.

“Steeeeady... mark!”

At the signal from the executive officer, who kept his eyes fixed on his wristwatch, they all measured the altitude of their target stars.

“Hey, hey, Tokushima. What are they doing over there?”

Tokushima, saddled with the job of supervising the Aquas mermaids, fielded the question from Kemy.

“They’re measuring how high the stars are in the sky, like that — it’s how they work out where the ship is right now.”

Tokushima held a diver’s qualification, which let him work underwater alongside them, and that was why he’d ended up spending so much time with them. This time, too, if truth be told, he’d been in the water with them that very night, wearing a wetsuit with a cylinder — an air tank — strapped to his back.

“You guys can’t even tell where you are without doing all that?”

“Well, what do you expect? Once you’re out at sea, the view’s the same in front, to the right, to the left — everywhere.”

“Yeah, now that you mention it, I guess so.”

In the Special Region, with neither GPS nor LORAN (a system that fixes one’s position using long-wave radio signals transmitted from multiple stations), there was no way to establish one’s location except by this kind of old-fashioned celestial measurement. That was why Tokushima’s very first assignment in the Special Region had been gathering the data needed for this sort of star-sighting. Fortunately, the astronomers of the scholarly city of Rondel had already built up a detailed body of observational data, so all that was needed was to obtain it from them — without which the JMSDF would still be limited to primitive coastal navigation even now, and could never have made it as far as the Avion Sea.

“So how do you and the others figure out where you are, or which way home is?”

“We can pretty much tell by the shape of the seafloor. There’s mountains, there’s valleys... unlike the surface, the scenery down there isn’t all the same.”

“Naruhodo nē.”

“Tokushima-san! We’re done setting the buoy!”

Just then, three mermaids came paddling back, splashing at the surface as they swam.

“Nice work. All right, everybody up on deck — I’ve got food ready...”

“Yay! We love the food Tokushima makes, it’s so good!”

Tokushima climbed up onto the deck, pulled the meals out of the insulated container in their plastic bags, and handed them out to the Aquas one by one.

The mermaids each settled onto the deck with a chorus of giggles and squeals and began to eat.

Tokushima joined them, of course.

Surrounded by the Aquas like that, Tokushima naturally drew looks of envy and resentment from the rest of the crew.

“What’s with that guy...”

A muttered dig or two even drifted down from the lookout up on the bridge.

But women — no matter how beautiful — become considerably harder to manage once there are more than about three of them around. Especially if even one of them has a temperament like Kemy’s.

“Hey, hey, Tokushima. Seems like Yunō’s got a thing for you — what do you think?”

“I mean, ‘what do I think’... that puts me on the spot.”

“What, you got a problem with my daughter? She’s totally attached to you! She keeps going on and on about how ‘I’m gonna be big brother Tokushima’s bride’!”

“No, I mean, she really is attached to me, but she’s just... too young, or something...”

Within the large, polyandrous-polygynous Aquas family, the Yunō Kemy spoke of was her youngest daughter, not yet even four years old. Aquas mature early, so in appearance Yunō looked something like a ten-year-old human, but even so, she was far too young to think of as a woman. Tokushima, twenty-six this year, considered his target range to be, in human terms, somewhere from eighteen up to under thirty.

“Then what about my daughter?”

“What about mine?”

One mermaid after another began peppering Tokushima with the same question.

On the surface it looked like teasing, but underneath it, they seemed to be seriously trying to gauge whether he was actually a prospect.

For reasons of their own, the village of Pido, where they lived, was essentially one big extended family among all its residents. Combined with the economic pressures that forced them to work away from home as local JMSDF cooperators, the mothers’ efforts to find spouses for their daughters outside the village were dead serious.

Serious enough that their eyes gleamed at Tokushima even in the darkness of night, and words like “civil servant” and “steady income” could be heard whispered back and forth. Every instinct Tokushima had was sounding the alarm that giving a careless answer here would end badly for him.

All the more reason, then, that when the poisonous glares came at him from his fellow crewmen off in the distance, Tokushima wanted to fire back with this:

“Any of you want to swap places, I’ll swap anytime. Damn you all — just don’t come crying to me about what happens after...”

That, in truth, was Tokushima’s honest state of mind — even though, to any outside observer, his situation looked purely enviable.

The three sailors from the navigation division each reported slightly different figures, owing to instrument error and differences in individual observational skill, but the executive officer — who doubled as navigation officer — combined them all and worked out their position as 28°17′ north latitude, 14°50′ east longitude.

The Kitashio had safely reached her intended position. Here, Edajima and Tokushima were to disembark.

“Conn, Tokushima-nisō. Report to the wardroom.”

The announcement played out from the control room speakers.

Tokushima, already finished with his preparations, shouldered his gear and headed for the wardroom.

There he found Edajima waiting, dressed like a local civilian. Tokushima, of course, was dressed the same way. Look closely enough and their skin and hair color differed subtly from the locals’, but in a world where all manner of demi-human races lived mixed together, no one paid that small a difference any mind.

“Ready to go, Tokushima?”

One look at Tokushima made it obvious his preparations were already flawless, but Edajima tossed out the standard line anyway, partly to gauge his subordinate’s readiness and mood.

“Hai. Departure preparations complete.”

Edajima nodded, satisfied with the answer.

“Shall we, then?”

“Hai, let’s.”

The two of them left the wardroom together and made for the ladder toward the stern.

In the cramped passageway, crewmen were hauling a boat outboard motor, working to pass it up the ladder and out through the hatch. Another sailor was lugging out an attaché-sized duralumin case, grumbling under its unexpected weight: “Hey, Tokushima — this thing’s ridiculously heavy. What the hell’s in it, anyway?”

Tokushima answered with a laugh.

“Careful with that one. Drop it, and you’ll really regret it.”

“Wait, seriously?! Is it gonna blow up or something?”

“I mean that if the contents scatter everywhere, cleaning it all back up would be an enormous pain. So please, handle it carefully.”

Edajima added a clarification that it wasn’t anything dangerous.

Out on the main deck, it was still dim outside, though the sky near the eastern horizon had begun to pale faintly, a sign the sun was not far from rising.

Captain Kurokawa, out to see them off, called out to them.

“Edajima, take care out there. Tokushima-nisō, I’m counting on you to look after this man.”

“Yes, sir. Edajima being... well, being himself is nothing new. I’ll manage.”

Since he was out of uniform, Tokushima bowed his head rather than salute.

Turning around, he saw that the outboard motor had already been fitted to the rubber boat, with Chief of the Boat Tagami aboard as its coxswain. Loading of the duralumin case was finished as well, and Kamy and the other Aquas girls were waiting eagerly for Edajima and the others.

Tokushima went first, working his way down the rope rigged along the submarine's curved hull, and crossed over into the rubber boat. Edajima, the senior-most of them, went last.

Tokushima dipped one hand into the sea and brought his fingers to his mouth.

“Just as salty as the sea back in Japan.”

“Well, it’s the sea — it’d be weird if it tasted any different, wouldn’t it?”

Different world or not, the sea’s still the sea, isn’t it? Kamy said.

“Still, the taste really is a little different, somehow.”

“For real?”

“Yeah — this side’s sea tastes better...”

Just then, Chief of the Boat Tagami started up the outboard motor. Before long, the boat pulled slowly away from the Kitashio’s side.

“This way!”

And so, guided by Kemy and the other Aquas, they set off toward the land waiting beyond the horizon.

 
What's the difference between Rose's translation and mine?

Rose's translation frequently prioritizes how the translator wants the scene to feel over what the Japanese text actually says. My approach instead aims to preserve both the language and the institutional culture of the JMSDF. As a result, the prose is often denser, not because it is less readable, but because it attempts to carry across more of the original's information, terminology, and organizational context.

I was actually laughing a bit when I was translating Kemy's speech. So Kansai. What makes Kemy particularly amusing is that she's often the most practical person in the room despite sounding the least formal.

It was right then that a sudden peal of thunder crashed around the perimeter of the command tent.

Before and after it came the sound of metal clashing together, of something propped upright toppling over with a loud crash. And after that — total, abrupt silence.

“What was that!? Report — what’s happened out there!”

Borhos shouted. But outside the tent, there wasn’t so much as the sense of another living soul. Some thirty or forty headquarters personnel should have been posted just outside — standard-bearers, messengers, drummers, buglers, supply personnel, and a guard detail — and yet not even the sound of footsteps remained.

Borhos let out a deep, resigned sigh, the kind that carries a note of quiet acceptance, and drew his sword.

“They’ve come.”

“The enemy mage!?”

Albain drew his own sword as well. Even Canfort and the others, disarmed as they were, smashed apart the nearest chairs and armed themselves with the broken legs as makeshift clubs, bracing themselves against the overwhelming presence swelling up just outside the tent.

“Who goes there!?”

Borhos called this challenge out toward the outside of the tent.

What stepped inside in answer was a young girl in black priestess’s robes, hefting an enormous halberd over her shoulder.

“A p-priestess of the Temple of Emroy — why is she here?”

Utterly caught off guard, Borhos found himself unable to either strike or lower the sword he still held raised. It was Albain who corrected Borhos’s mistake.

“You’re wrong there, Captain Borhos. This is none other than Emroy’s own Apostle, Rory Mercury… isn’t that right, Your Holiness? It’s an honor to meet you at last. I am Albain, legitimate heir of the Seamist chieftain. Waiting behind me here are my own companions.”

Saying this, Albain dropped to one knee and bowed his head low, then introduced Canfort, Greidel, Sniist, and Zuzuzu one after another. Borhos, too, once he realized the figure before him was a demigod, wore a bewildered expression but bowed his head to show proper respect.

“Such fine manners~. I’m very impressed.”

“To receive Your Holiness’s praise is a truly overwhelming honor. And might I ask what business has brought Your Holiness to grace such an unrefined place as this?”

“I’m here lookin’ for one of my own followers~. That’d be Canfort and Greidel standin’ over there, wouldn’t it? I heard about it, you know~. That you two treated my follower well?”

“Your Holiness’s follower — meaning whom, precisely?”

Canfort tilted his head, unable to place who was being referred to at all.

Nina, who had come in trailing behind Rory, offered a supplementary explanation: “She means Itami Yōji.” At that, Canfort was stunned.

“That man!? He’s Her Holiness’s follower!?”

“Wasn’t he supposed to be the crown princess’s bodyguard?” Sniist asked.

“He’s on loan for the moment, that’s all~. What that one truly is, at his core, is my own follower~.”

Borhos, who knew nothing about Itami, was the only one utterly unable to follow the conversation.

Hoping someone would explain, he asked Albain and Canfort directly, “Who exactly is this man Her Holiness is searching for?” — not asking Rory directly himself, no doubt because doing so would simply have been too great a strain on his nerves.

It was Canfort who answered.

“The crown princess — no, the man traveling with Rose.”

“Is that man not an Imperial knight?”

By all expectation, that role should have belonged to Gray Co Aldo. But Rory cut Borhos off with a cold reprimand.

“Don’t make me say the same thing twice~.”

“My apologies… but, Your Holiness, the ones we’ve been pursuing are the pirate Rose and her associates. I have no knowledge of any crown princess or bodyguard.”

“What you happen to call it doesn’t concern me in the slightest, you know~.”

“I see. Is that how it is, then.”

Borhos realized, at last, that playing dumb simply wasn’t an option with this demigod.

“You understand now~? Then stop chasin’ after my follower, and call your men back.”

“I cannot. I too have my own duty as a soldier. Having received orders to capture Rose, I must carry them out.”

Borhos declared this and settled back into a ready stance with his sword.

“You get told you’re inflexible a lot, don’t you?”

Tuka, arriving a little behind everyone else, said this with a look of exasperation. The bolt of lightning that had felled the soldiers outside the tent in a single strike had been Tuka’s own spirit magic.

At that, Albain let out a mocking laugh.

“In this man’s case, constantly.”

“Would you mind steppin’ aside~?”

“To abandon my duty simply because I cannot win would be a betrayal of every soldier who has already fallen. If it is my fate to fight Your Holiness here and fall, then I will accept that fate gladly. Lord Albain, forgive me, but I must ask you to see to what follows. I have found, here today, the finest place to die that I could ever have hoped for.”

Through all his years as a defeated, wandering soldier, he had carried with him the sense that he’d somehow failed to die when he should have. But here, now, he could finally fight and fall without a single regret left unresolved. There was no want of a worthy opponent, and to fall in service of his duty was the very highest honor a soldier could hope to attain.

Borhos stepped forward, his expression suddenly clear and transparent, as though every last shadow of regret had lifted from him at once.

“Ohh, that’s lovely~. That’s really lovely.”

Rory, too, seemed a touch excited, her cheeks flushing faintly. Fighting a man of such proud, unbending conviction was, for her, one of life’s truly unmatched pleasures.

“Borhos… since we’re here, go on and announce your name properly~. I’ll carve it into memory here, myself.”

Rory said this with solemn formality, giving her own chest a light tap.

“Then, if I may be so bold. Formerly Chief Centurion of the Imperial Army, and presently Captain of the Seamist Watch — Borhos.”

“Borhos. I myself shall guide your soul before the presence of the Supreme God.”

Fighting spirit swelled in both of them at once. If Rory’s vast, overwhelming will to fight was the sun, then Borhos’s own was, by comparison, nothing more than a single small flame. But in this moment alone, Borhos’s fighting spirit burned fiercely, shining with a vividness that matched Rory’s own without shame.

Borhos raised his sword.

Rory swung her halberd around in a horizontal arc.

But right then, Izumo — who very much wanted to avoid any actual bloodshed here if at all possible — cut in.

“Hey, Rory. Should someone maybe mention that the soldiers lying around here are just unconscious, nothing more?”

Rory’s halberd sliced empty air and split the ground open, and Borhos, his own sword swinging clean through nothing but air, spun a full two and a half rotations in place from the sheer momentum of his own missed swing.

“Wh-what did you say?”

Kurata piled on right after.

“Cap’n~! None of the soldiers are actually dead, you know. Still got a good reason to keep fightin’, huh?”

Looking more closely, the soldiers lying scattered here and there were, in fact, still breathing. Some were even letting out faint groans. Believing that his men had all died in the line of duty — and that this alone left him with no way to retreat — was the entire foundation of Borhos’s resolve to fight. And with that foundation gone, his fighting spirit collapsed completely.

“No — I still have my duty. That’s not something I can simply abandon.”

Borhos struggled desperately to shore up his crumbling resolve. But it wasn’t working.

“Kurata. To get a stubborn old rock-head like this to bend, you’ve got to hand him an excuse. Just killing his motivation alone won’t cut it.”

“So what do we do, sir?”

“Like this.”

Izumo pressed his pistol against the side of Albain’s head.

“You and I have met before, haven’t we, in a rather similar situation?”

“Y-you!? It’s you, from back then!”

The place had been Tanska. Izumo, having taken part in an operation to rescue a Japanese hostage, had once taken a high-ranking official named Godasen hostage and threatened Borhos, demanding he clear the way

“Well? Remembering it now, are you? Then you’ll also remember that we’re perfectly capable of resorting to such cowardly tactics as harming a hostage. This man’s the legitimate heir to your chieftain, isn’t he? So — what’ll it be?”

“ Borhos, save me! I’m the chieftain’s own son! If anything happens to me, it’ll be an absolute disaster! I’m supposed to be someone you’re required to protect above all else, aren’t I! Please — save me — I don’t want to die—!”

Albain let out the most pathetically theatrical wail of a plea imaginable, milking it for all it was worth.

Had this been genuine terror, or, conversely, had he shouted something like “never mind me, just fight!”, it might well have stoked Borhos’s fighting spirit rather than the opposite. But Albain, thoroughly enjoying himself now, had his eyes clearly, unmistakably crinkled with laughter the whole time.

This total absence of any real tension was exactly what broke Borhos’s fighting spirit for good. To lose his life over a farce like this would only drag his honor and pride as a warrior into the dirt instead of elevating it.

That clear, unclouded, almost enlightened composure he’d felt only moments before had, by now, gone thoroughly murky — shattered completely.

This is the last excerpt I am giving for GAIDEN 1. I have already finished translating the first volume. It will take two to three of weeks to read through the whole thing, proofread and do the ebook.

Tuka, on her return, was half out of her mind.

Out on the road, she had run into a JSDF patrol on routine rounds and been told that Itami had been lost at sea off the coast of the Glass Peninsula. From that moment, she had ridden almost without a single break for a full day and night, driving her horse relentlessly, until she made it back to Alnus.

Half-tumbling off her horse as she dismounted, Tuka staggered to her feet and, gasping for breath, kept repeating the same words over and over.

“Father — Father’s going to die!”

From there, she went straight to the Ground Self-Defense Force Special Region Deployment Force Headquarters together with Rory and the others, and pleaded to be allowed to accompany any search party that was sent out.

But Lieutenant General Hazama refused her.

“Search and rescue will be handled by us. I need you all to wait here.”

“No! You’re telling me to just sit around some place like this and wait for word to come!?”

“That’s right. The site is far away, and it’s dangerous besides. Nothing can be allowed to happen to any of you as well.”

At that, Tuka screamed, “No! I can’t just sit here and wait for word to come!” and clung to Hazama.

“Let me go!” she cried, pounding at his broad chest with her fists.

Hazama, a career soldier hardened through the ranks, didn’t so much as budge under the blows of a slip of a girl like Tuka. Because of this, rather than physically restraining her by force, he simply stood there and absorbed her violence.

Even so, it apparently became too much to watch, and Yao and Rory stepped in to hold Tuka back. It was only once Lelei used magic to put her to sleep that she finally quieted down.

“I’m so sorry about this~…”

Rory bowed her head to Hazama.

“No need. This is nothing you need to apologize for. I understand well enough myself what kind of agony it is to simply have to wait for word on whether one’s own family is alive or not.”

“You’ve had that experience yourself~?”

“More times than I can count, doing this line of work. I remember every single time I’ve had to tell someone that their family had met with tragedy.”

“I see~… so how does the search stand~?”

“At present, the Hugo — having freed herself from her grounding — is searching the surrounding waters. We’ve also begun an aerial search. However, dispatching personnel to search the area on land requires the consent of the Kingdom of Elbe, and that hasn’t yet been secured.”

“The ruler of the Elbe kingdom — that was Durán, wasn’t it~?”

“Yes. We’re currently negotiating with the kingdom’s royal court, requesting permission to establish a temporary relay base within their territory.”

“You can’t just fly straight there~?”

“No. Without refueling along the way, we can’t make it all the way to the site.”

“Machines really are inconvenient things, aren’t they~.”

“We haven’t yet built anything quite that convenient, I’m afraid.”

“There’s going to be another commotion when this girl wakes up, isn’t there~.”

Hazama looked down, together with Rory, at Tuka lying limp on the ground, and ordered his subordinates to bring a stretcher.

“I never imagined Tuka would fall apart to this degree.”

Hazama remarked that, from her usual demeanor at work, he never would have guessed she was capable of this — he’d had the impression she was a good deal more level-headed than this.

But Lelei answered coolly:

“Tuka is only able to stay level-headed because of him. Tuka is psychologically dependent on him. This outcome was foreseeable.”

“Then all the more reason we can’t let her anywhere near the site. If anything were to happen…”

“It’s fine. Yōji is still alive~. That much~, at least, is certain~.”

“You can tell?”

Rory nodded quietly.

“While you’re at it, can’t you tell his location too?”

At that, Rory shook her head regretfully, and turned Hazama’s own earlier phrasing back on him with a slight twist:

“I can’t be quite that convenient~.”

“I suppose one shouldn’t lean too heavily on divine favor. Still, being able to trust with certainty that he’s alive changes things considerably. For those of us on the search side, the lifeblood of the whole effort is the survivor’s safety.”

Hazama promised that they would give the search everything they had.

It was the following morning when civilian participants were requested for the search party.

Durán, king of the Elbe Kingdom, had set a condition for permitting the JSDF to establish a temporary supply base within his own territory: more than half the members of the search party had to be civilians, not military personnel.

Even as a vassal state of the Empire, the Elbe Kingdom still had its own sense of appearances and pride as an independent nation to maintain. This mattered especially to the military hard-liners and a certain faction of the nobility. Even the fact that the JSDF had entered the kingdom’s territory to subjugate the Flame Dragon — despite having done so with Durán’s own permission — was something they had been openly voicing displeasure about, day after day.

“Even with just our own strength, we could have brought down that Flame Dragon.”

“If His Majesty hadn’t gone and acted on his own, the glory of destroying at least two of the newborn dragons would have been ours.”

Taking full advantage of the fact that the Flame Dragon was already gone and couldn’t contradict them, they went on making such claims and criticized Durán for having handed Japan mining and crude-oil extraction rights within the territory in exchange for his reinstatement to the throne.

And now, this time, even with the perfectly legitimate cause of searching for and rescuing a missing person, they loudly objected — insisting that having a foreign military roam freely through their territory amounted to an infringement on royal sovereignty, an act of invasion.

Durán, for his part, wasn’t running the nation single-handedly, so he couldn’t simply ignore them outright. What he came up with, in order to placate these hard-liners, was the pretext that since the great majority of the search party wouldn’t be military personnel, it wouldn’t count as a military operation at all.

“We have all sorts of thinking within our own kingdom, you understand. I’d ask that you settle for this much, if you would.”

Durán told this to Colonel Kengun, who had come to negotiate, framing it as the absolute limit of the concession he could offer.

Hazama accepted the terms. He then set about recruiting civilian volunteers in Arnus to assist with the search. Beyond that, he also arranged to have several of his own personnel change into civilian clothes, out of consideration not to provoke the kingdom’s people any further.

Naturally, Tuka declared her intent to join this call for civilian volunteers. Rory, Lelei, and Yao all wished to go as well. And once the scheduled departure time was announced, each of them began preparing to set out.

The elves, having readied their own traveling gear, watched Tuka dash off toward the civilian-volunteer registration desk, and discussed among themselves what they ought to do.

“So what are we doing, Bahl?”

“What do you mean, what are we doing? Why should we have to go somewhere dangerous just to go looking for a man like that?”

Deo said they ought to simply leave it be.

But Famas checked him, calling him “naive.”

“This is a huge opportunity, you know.”

“An opportunity, you say?”

“That’s right. Consider — what if that human, Itami, turned out to be dead?”

“Well, that'd be wonderful news for us, wouldn’t it.”

Yuro said this, openly expressing his delight.

At this ugly display of taking pleasure in another man’s death, Bahl and the rest of the elves wore sour expressions.

“But it’s not only that, is it? Even though she was — as it were — brainwashed by some suspicious technique, Miss Tuka is bound to be shocked. She’ll surely be deeply wounded by it.”

“Well, that’s probably true.”

Everyone seemed able to agree with that much, at least, and nodded together.

“And that’s exactly when you get close by her side and treat her gently. Once that happens, don’t you think her heart’s bound to fall completely for you instead?”

And if he turned out to be alive after all, well — then they could simply negotiate with Itami directly on the spot, exactly as originally planned. Even then, they’d be able to play the card of having braved danger to come help search for him, and use that as leverage to make her feel indebted.

Hearing this, Bahl let out an extremely deep sigh. Then, meaning to convey that Famas shouldn’t rate his own cousin-niece so cheaply, he struck the back of Famas’s head.

Famas clutched his head and protested, “What was that for!?” — but Bahl struck him again all the same.

“What is wrong with you, that you can only ever say things like this?”

But Famas shot back loudly:

“Spare me the noble talk. If you don’t like it, then stay behind here. We’ll go without you.”

Where Famas pointed as he said this, Adam, Shiida, and every other one of their companions, without a single exception, were already lined up at the volunteer registration window.

“Hey, aren’t you coming, Bahl?”

Beta, standing at the very back of the line, called out for Bahl to join them.

Even Bahl couldn’t quite bring himself to say he alone wouldn’t be going.

 

“You’ll really come with me?”

Tuka took the elves’ hands and offered them her thanks — “Thank you” — and the elves spoke up, one after another.

“Of course we will. He’s someone precious to you, isn’t he?”

“Leave it to us. We’ll find him for certain.”

Not knowing the elves’ true intentions, Tuka led them, all gathered at the helipad, aboard the Chinook.

Tuka, having already flown many times before, was used to the noise filling the cabin, the pressing closeness of the ceiling, and sitting shoulder to shoulder along the troop seats. But the elves, faced with a vehicle unlike anything they’d ever seen, stared wide-eyed in bewilderment.

“What is this thing?”

“A ship that floats in the sky — does that make sense to you? Everyone, please sit down.”

While all this was going on, the rear hatch began rising up. It didn’t close all the way, staying slightly open, so it wasn’t quite as though they were being sealed in — but for people with no idea what was about to happen, every little detail was enough to stir up both astonishment and unease.

“Taking off now!”

Before long, along with the sensation of lifting off, the airframe shuddered. The view through the windows tilted sharply.

“Eh!? W-wait a second!”

“Uwaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

By the time everyone had pressed themselves against the windows to look outside, the ground had already fallen far, far away below them.

As many of you well know, I am translating Gaiden 1 and I came across the name Sumanson Ho Eel (スマンソン・ホ・イール, Sumanson Ho Iru). Someone pointed out to me that it sounds it has the expression まん (suman), a casual or abbreviated form of すまない (sumanai), meaning "sorry," "my apologies," or "excuse me." While not an exact phrase, the name evokes the sound of 「すまん……」 ("Sorry..." / "My bad..."), creating the impression of someone perpetually apologizing. The joke is obscured if the name is normalized to Smanson, as the connection to the Japanese expression becomes much less apparent.

The name therefore functions much like several other pseudo-foreign names in the series that conceal Japanese phrases beneath a fantasy veneer, such as ダーレス (Dāresu) or Darles, the Oprichnik whose head got blown off during the rescue in Volume 8, which echoes だれです？ (dare desu?, "Who is it?"), and マジレスカ・ホントウスカ (Majiresu Ka Hontōsuka) or Majiles Ka Hontouska in GATE:ZERO, which resembles マジですか？ 本当ですか？ (Majiresu ka? Hontō desu ka? "Seriously?" / "Really?"). Preserving Sumanson rather than further localizing it helps retain the author's wordplay and signals to attentive readers that the name is intentionally constructed as a joke.

The name Sumanson fits, as in the scene where he first appears (Chapter 9 of Gaiden 1), he serves as the sensible and conciliatory member of the group, repeatedly attempting to moderate the discussion and propose reasonable compromises. The contrast between his level-headed behavior and a name suggestive of perpetual apology may itself be part of the humor. For that reason, the name has been retained in a form that preserves its underlying Japanese pun.