29CHAPTER 1: EMILY FUJIMOTO
"Miss Fujimoto," the male teacher addressed with a frown, sitting behind his desk with his fingers crisscrossed.
Emily Fujimoto stood with her hands behind her back, her dark brown eyes brightening behind her glasses. "Yes, Mr. Tanigawa?" she asked without any hints of guilt.
Tanigawa heaved a sigh. "I received reports that you were going around… trying to be an information vendor. 500 yen per info or something."
"Oh, so selling information is wrong then?" she asked cheerfully, her head of flowing black hair bobbing.
"It's not right, the way you did it." The young teacher took of his glasses, wiping them. "It's irresponsible and is socially harmful. It's about respecting other people's privacy. As your class teacher, next time, I wouldn't hesitate to take disciplinary actions if I have to call you into my office for the same reason."
"Okay, maybe I'll turn up here with a different reason then."
"Fujimoto," Tanigawa continued, throwing a stern gaze. She avoided eye contact. "I have no idea why you would start something like that. I don't think you're hard-pressed for money, your father is a CEO."
"Eh, you don't know my father," Emily drawled, but the teacher ignored that statement.
"And you're not the kind of rowdy student who cause mindless trouble either. Your grades are not bad and you don't really flunk classes - just that the teachers mention that you always seem bored during lessons. You're just an oddball sometimes, like… I heard that you offered to do paid work for the Student Council."
"Eh, been doing odd jobs for them for two months already, you have no idea how lazy they are," Emily added.
"And you tried to bribe Mrs. Kotomori into allowing you to flunk her classes."
"It's charity with mutual benefits, my investigations told me that she was having financial troubles. Ten thousand yen per class, I didn't try that with any other teacher…"
Tanigawa paused, scratching his head of curly hair. "For heaven's sake, why won't you act or think like other fifteen-year-olds?"
"Does your expectation of how a fifteen-year-old should be like exist in the real world?"
"And then there's that one time you tacked an advertisement for 'paid private video actor wanted' in the girls' bathroom."
"Eh… I wanted to teach some people a lesson. You have no idea how many people answered that, Sir, and who - or what they thought the advertisement meant." And I gave them the address to the Principal's house.
The teacher paused. "Are all those your way of doing social experiments?"
"Wanna see the experiment reports?" The teacher didn't respond, so Emily continued, "Eh, I won't have the chance to do any of those other than at school. One day I'm going to turn eighteen, and my father would probably monopolize any decisions on my future, and hello, Vanity Fair, the cruel cruel world of adults! Why, oh why am I born in this age of rising modernity but degrading humanity…? I'll probably end up married to some husband two or three times my age with sexual impotence to boot. Then I'll be contemplating suicide, or turn into an unfaithful woman, luring young men into my fancy apartment…"
She hadn't moved since the start of the conversation. Her hands were still behind her back, her feet were still planted in the same spot, but the way she played with her tone of voice and facial expression made her points stand out effectively.
The teacher only blinked. Not finding a suitable comeback, he said, "Miss Fujimoto, I think we need to talk again about your… thoughts and aspiration. See me tomorrow."
Emily let out a nervous chuckle before hurriedly bowing and leaving the office while Tanigawa mumbled something about not being paid enough.
"I think it sounds like a setup for… something perverted," Emily said, watching her bespectacled reflection on the car's window moving against the background of grey buildings. "And that's not even the worst thing, Katrina."
"Yes, yes, young Master," the driver, Katrina said with a sigh. "I wouldn't expect anything less disturbing. But please stop making people worry with your thinking process."
"The worst thing is I half-believed what I said. What if I really do end up with a middle-aged, impotent husband with a shriveled eggplant inside his pants?"
The car swerved wildly, Katrina having entered the wrong lane by accident. "For safety reasons, please keep your unique thoughts inside your own head, Miss Emily!"
But then, after exchanging glances, they both laughed. Master and maid, they both laughed for a while.
"I wish I got your smart mouth when I was your age, Miss Emi," Katrina nodded with a grin, smoothing her dark brown locks.
"You should've read Lolita when you were nine, then. Although, lots of fifteen-year-olds these days are way worse. All the dirty talk without the wit and classiness, it's like The Dark Tongue of Mordor, just in Japanese."
"Oh my," Katrina put a gloved hand over her mouth, "so orcs talk about perverted things? I bet the real meaning behind the ring inscription is something real dirty. And all that untranslated wraith screaming, is actually 'FUUUUUCK! FUUUUUCK!'"
Emily's expression was one of disbelief. "Why you do this, Kat." Then she cleared her throat. "Anyway, I actually messed up the teacher's flow so much that he forgot to bring up the line, 'You're going to High School next year, you have to be more matured' or something." Emily then crossed her arms with a solemn expression, faking a cough. "All this will never reach Father's ears, okay?"
"Poor fellow will be so surprised if he does," Katrina shrugged, her voice heavy with sarcasm, "Who could have imagined his beloved daughter is actually like this."
"You don't know Father. He can win a staring contest against the Incredible Hulk's indestructible throbbing pants."
"Yes, yes, that's a very eloquent way to put it," Katrina nodded. "Of course, I've been babysitting you since you were ten. It's like watching a pure thing evolve into something beautiful but corrupted."
"Nice maid uniform, Kat. Oh my gosh, you even have these little bows in your hair, c-can I smell them?"
"Le usual French maid-style. It's Tuesday, maid-cosplay Tuesday."
New dress. Her book sales is going well then. "Thanks for picking me up, anyway. Evolution thanks you for helping us, the next generation, slowly lose our walking ability."
"The pleasure is mine, but please wait for me to take you home instead of walking by yourself. It's your father's explicit request. Your house is twelve kilometers from school."
Emily glanced up. The sky was cloudy, threatening to rain. "I can probably charm some young gentlemen to send me home."
"Did I hear 'gentlemen'? As in, plural?"
"There's an expanding market for Japanese schoolgirls, locally and overseas."
"So you've cast your sights on the global market? How daring," Katrina nodded, keeping her eyes on the road.
"Umm… Katrina, how does your novel writing go?" Emily changed the subject.
"Just okay. Already eight chapters into Hey Hey Harajuku 4. Ran into writer's block last night, though, and still in it. Main character's love interest was so dense he warped space and time and made a plot hole."
"Oh, so that's why I heard sobbing at the writing table last night. I thought it was about that weird church website video calling Hey Hey Harajuku a work of the devil."
"Nah, would be more upset if it was called an uplifting, inspiring, divine piece of work by those kinds of people. You know what level of literature gets their green light."
"If one day of writer's block gets you that miserable, imagine how I feel. My life is one big writer's block."
"You want to be a novelist?"
"No I want to be Hitler. Mein Kamf won't be a bestseller if Hitler wasn't a… Hitler."
"Bam, you lose! You broke Godwin's law."
Emily gave a gracious nod and curtseyed in her seat. This is how a conversation should go, you're not afraid of saying anything, baring yourself. You trust the other speaker. Holding a conversation in English with her American maid somehow made her feel a whole lot better. For some reason, she felt more at home speaking English than Japanese. Probably the influence of someone close to her.
She saw a mother walking hand-in-hand with a kindergartener by the roadside.
Mother…
Emily was not sure whether her residence counted as a house or a mansion. Too big for one, a little bit too small for the other. It was modern and designed with simplicity in mind, with straight lines for the walls, the roof, and the windows amidst a green lawn.
The small estate was slightly remotely located, being in the outskirts of the suburb where Emily went to school. She could see the trees outside peeking from above the fence.
Emily stepped out of the car, rubbing her eyes. She had fallen asleep in the short journey.
A whirring sound caught her attention, but the smell of grass gave away the noise's source. She turned her head. A robotic lawn mower zipped across the lawn, looking like a giant, shiny bug.
"Hey, Kat?" she asked, hints of sleepiness still remaining in her voice. "Can I… take a walk tonight, or something?"
The maid just finished locking the car, her arms full with plastic bags of grocery. "No, sorry, young Master. Your father explicitly instructed me that… you are to stay at home during weekdays, except for going to school."
"Please? He won't know."
The maid sighed. "I have to remind you every time, right? It would greatly endanger my paycheck. Master Fujimoto had a way of finding out things like this, and the last time I got found out, my salary was cut in half and I almost lost my job."
"I'll give you my pocket money."
"I almost lost my job," Katrina repeated gently.
"Fine," Emily stifled a yawn. "Sorry, my IQ is sleepy at the moment." Inwardly, she cursed her father's overpowering grip on her life. There was a sudden whirring sound, and, "BFEH!"
The lawn mowing robot had hit her ankle from behind, knocking her off her feet.
Seeing Emily with her legs splayed out on the ground, Katrina chuckled. "White."
The girl wearing a trench coat made a Nazi salute. "Citizens of the Fourth Reich, it is I, your Fuhrer. For the prosperity of this nation, I had abolished democracy in place of a centralized leadership around an able, honest leader aided by her circle of most capable advisers and helpers. No longer are we plagued by popularity contests, spawning power hungry people playing with lies and dirty politics. However, no person is perfect, and humans tend to get bored with something that lasted for too long. It has been four years since the day I abolished the Senate and put myself as the dictator. I have put in countless efforts in returning our nation into greatness, without succumbing into other dictators' mistakes.
"So now, lest support for me lessens, I am announcing that I am stepping down from the dictator's seat. I shall take my place as a benign Monarch, letting this nation's matters to fall back into the hands of the people, the return of a democracy. I shall continue to watch over our beloved motherland, and would minimize my interference in matters of state, unless when the elected representatives make a move that goes against the people's interest. I shall be your silent overseer, the parent watching her elder children run the family.
"And by Monarchy, I do not mean a position inherited through bloodline. Instead, I shall name a successor, a person whom I judged to be the most able candidate and has the interests of the people at heart. This successor, like myself, will still be bound by the laws and the constitution of the country. No one is above the law, not even me, the Empress.
"For glory! For greatness! For the Fourth Reich!"
Emily Fujimoto, the self-proclaimed dictator bowed amidst an ocean of imaginary applause.
In front of the mirror, she wore a wide grin. She tried to admire her own reflection. Not wearing her glasses this time, with flowing hime-cut black hair, a confident visage, and a thin, taller-than-average frame, she liked what she saw, even if, to her, anything farther than two meter looked blurry. Should've tried wearing contact lenses. Why, oh why, are they so troublesome to use…
She ran her hands along her sides, and pouted. Curses. I envy Katrina's curves. That gaijin, taller than me, still in her twenties and having that 'full' body. Me… so pitifully underweight that this trench coat actually makes me look twice as big as I really am!
Emily picked up her glasses from her bedside table. Her bedroom came into focus. It was made to suit her personal preferences: a black and white color scheme combined with soft lighting and a simple Western design, giving it a modern yet fashionable overall effect. The black carpet was thick and fluffy. A small bedside table with a shiny top had a stack of books on various subjects ranging from a wide assortment of manga, modern fantasy, and sociopolitics.
The immaculate bed with a pinkish blanket and white sheets looked like something out of a hotel. Other than the pink bed, the room didn't look very girly, but it was one corner of the world where she'd feel true comfort.
To be a conqueror, you need to think and act like a boy. You need to learn how to talk like a boy. World domination is more related to testosterone than what some people think.
Opening a bedside drawer, she pulled out handful after handful of chocolate, scattered them on the bed, and jumped onto it, enjoying the bouncing recoil. Resting on her belly, she opened another drawer, pulled out a mobile phone and dialed a number.
"Hello, Mimi, Client Number One? We're sorry, we ran into trouble with the authorities, so Fujimoto Information Trading is now dissolved to avoid legal complications. Bye!" She ended the call before the person on the other end could answer.
"Hello, Takahashi, Client Number Two…" and she repeated the statement.
"Hello, Tsunade, Client Number Three, We're sorry, we ran into trouble with the authorities, so Fujimoto Information Trading is now dissolved to avoid legal complications. And I saw your mom with a male hooker yesterday. You're welcome, bye!"
After Client Number Eight, she rolled onto her back, stretching her limbs.
"What the heck…" a voice interrupted. "Emi, this whole day was a mess. I warned you about taking too much caffeine in the morning."
Emily stood up hurriedly, facing a girl who was her exact copy except for the facial expressions. Her eyebrows were differently arched, giving her a more mellow appearance, and her eyes looked innocent and slightly sad. Her posture was also slightly bowed. Emily sighed. "Milly, I had to take over. It's been four days since we had any real fun. Face it, I might wreck a thing or two along the way, but at least I don't get upset or stressed about every little thing like you do. Being the perfectionist you are, you can't do a thing without worrying over it a thousand times. You care too much about what other people think, or feel!"
"I'm a much nicer person than you are," Milly crossed her arms. "I don't insult people, I actually show sympathy, I don't overwhelm people with sarcasm… Anyway, Mr. Tanigawa might tell father about everything stupid you said."
Emily sighed in front of the mirror. The other side of her personality could be a little annoying. True, Milly was the 'voice' of her common sense, but she was too… normal? Too vulnerable! Showing other people that you're a nice person is dangerous!
"Hey, Milly, do you think one day we're going to have a split personality?"
"Nah," Milly smiled wistfully. "We share the same memory, so it's not the real thing, just roleplay. But be warned, I'm your conscience."
Turning away from the mirror, Emily jumped onto her bed again, once more, flat on her belly. She unzipped her trench coat and threw it aside, revealing her thin frame garbed in a purple sweater and track pants. Pulling out a few of the sweets that got caught under her, she reached into a drawer and pulled out a pink laptop with a kitten motif. Ah well, being able to eat all I want and not gain weight is a godly gift.
Biting into a chocolate bar, she started to surf the internet with her usual assortment of random searches. She picked up her mobile phone again. "Hello?" After a pause, she said, "Kat, I'm a little bit hungry at the moment. It's already 8 o'clock. We respect you writing, but please, please don't forget to cook dinner. You're making me gorge on chocolate again."
It was right on that second, right on that moment, when something happened that made Emily Fujimoto realize that her life had suddenly decided to take a crazy turn.
Her laptop exploded.
A brief scream escaped her as pieces of the device blew apart, scattering across the room, leaving a field of debris and destruction.
Where her laptop was, a boy appeared, his head down between his legs and his bottom upwards. He was roughly her age, with dark brown hair and a dark suit not unlike a Japanese school uniform. "Ouch…" he said, before getting up and resting on his knees, staring into Emily's eyes.
"You… you DESTROYED MY LAPTOP!"
"Uh…"
"YOU WRECKED YUI-CHAN! YOU KILLED HER! YOU MURDERED MY BEST FRIEND!"
"Woman…" the boy got a punch straight in the face before he could complete his sentence. Yet he just stared at her in silence, with an annoyed expression and a bloody nose.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Emily buried her face in her hands. She looked like crying. The boy pulled out a piece of her laptop sticking out of her hair. "I'm upset…" she continued. "I need chocolate…"
A floating ball of sparkling black dust approached the boy's ear. He ignored Emily picking up chocolate after chocolate, munching with one hand still covering her eyes. "Astra, status report?"
"The coordinate is off by 0.0001 percent, but we're here. I think some stuff slipped out during moment of impact."
"Look around then," he half-whispered to his familiar.
"Wait, you speak English?" Emily looked up. She seemed to have given up trying to cry.
"Ahem," he finally addressed her. "This is just a top secret experiment by the US government, a joint venture with Japan's Secret Service. You saw nothing. I'm going to pick up bits and pieces of top-class confidential material, and… I'm leaving."
"JUST GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUUUT!" She threw a fit, arms flaying, only to have her fist hit her bedside table, sending the books flying in all directions and her fist through thirty centimeters of splintered wood.
And it hurt a lot.
"OOOOWWWW!" she jumped backwards, backing into the wall, nursing her right hand.
For some reason that defied everything she knew about physics, she sunk into the wall like a ghost, a second before she noticed and the wall turning solid again, leaving only the parts of her body above her waist out of concrete. "HEEEEEEEELP! I'M STUCK! This even looked like a perverted scene! Don't you DARE TOUCH ME!"
"Astra," the boy addressed his familiar again while keeping his sight on Emily. His stare was piercing yet apathetic. "What could be causing that?"
"I'll check."
The boy cleared his throat and stretched out an arm. "Narsil, I summon thee."
Nothing happened. Emily went "Huh? You read Tolkien?"
The boy tried breathing with his mouth a few times, a hand on his chest. "Astra. Locate Combat QT Astra-3."
For the first time that night, Astra's voice sounded bewildered. "Good gawd. It's… in her exact direction and location, Rain, and AI or not, I have a bad feeling about it."
The boy approached Emily, stepping on any shards of laptop that was in his way.
Emily flailed her arms. "No! Stay away from me!" She balled her fists. "I'm gonna break your nose again you pervert!"
Rain exhaled heavily. "Say 'ah'."
Emily just replied with a flat, "What the hell."
"You just have to make everything difficult!" he approached her and tried to wrest her mouth open, but she struggled with her arms, and right when he got one hand in, she bit hard, right as he said, "Narsil, out!"
Against all her incredulity, he pulled a thin-bladed sword out of her mouth, a one-meter long steel weapon covered in drool and stomach juice mixed with half-digested chocolate.
Both their mouths fell open.
Emily coughed and spluttered for a few seconds before she finally spoke, "This is so wrong."
"You ate my quantum tunnel!" Rain exclaimed, not sounding very different from Emily's tone when she freaked out about her laptop. "Of all the weird things to eat in the whole wide Multiverse, I bet you're the first human in Japan, on Earth, in history, to eat a quantum tunnel!"
"You broke my laptop," Emily replied bitterly.
"Hold still, I got my sword here, now I need to take out my data stick."
Emily's hands flailed, scratching and clawing at the boy's face. "No, stay back! Don't pull anything weird out of my body! PERVEEERT! PERRRVEEEERT!"
Just as Rain pulled out something that looked like an oversized pencil, the door opened and Katrina burst into the room armed with a hat stand. "What's-wrong-I-heard-you-screaming?"
Awkward silence ensued; Rain's hand was still in Emily's mouth.
"This is not what it looks like."
Author's Note: Reviews! I want reviews! Roar! Or at least tell me how you liked the story!
Anyway, thanks for reading!