The s.h.i.+buya’s oldest son is completely immersed in typing on his keyboard on the bench in the airport, late at night.

It’s a mini machine, about palm-sized. At first it was a simple device for sending mails, but after a hardworking antique dealer’s modifications, and over and over again, finally it was upgraded into a pride-worthy miniature PC.

Its name is ‘Betsujin 27-go’[1].

As for the original, adorable design, it was long since lost in the modifications.

This 27-go is currently refres.h.i.+ng a secretly-operated bishoujo games research site. Of course now isn’t the time to review the latest works, but if it’s blogs and BBS, then maybe a few of the regular visitors might have some opinions for reference?

The t.i.tle of the forum is ‘Is there a way to make the Niagara Falls flow backwards?’

Perfect! This way he can probably get useful information from younger-sibling-lovers all over the world… if there is any. Even if he can’t get intel, maybe when everyone is discussing their deep thoughts and ideas, Ikkyu-san will come up with something good! Such as asking the Niagara hermit, or something really neat IN Niagara… etc.

He might as well post on the military weapon forums he usually goes to as well. To Shouri, this is a time of emergency, so be it bishoujo game enthusiasts or military weapon enthusiasts, they’re all people he will ask for help. He even wants to use the judo pincer grip to force them to think.

After all, his only little brother whom he’d adored for sixteen years is currently missing. This isn’t something trivial like camping out for no reason, running away from home, or singing songs at the KTV all night, either.

He went missing in another world.

Another world!

It’s as though he has some disappearing jutsu, even radars can’t find him. Forget radars, all the technology in the world can’t help. His precious brother went to the world of swords, magic, and ‘Yuu-chan is so moe’ and never came back…

Does that RPG stuff really happen!?

Just hearing Yuuri’s friend, Murata’s words makes it hard to believe. Who’d have thought that there are such imaginative little brats in this world, this sort of person will probably go on to make movies. But after he got confirmation from his old acquaintance, Bob, the believability of it all increased significantly.

That unique American is a family friend since his grandfather’s generation, and every time they meet he says some outrageous things. To other people, he’s a guy with extremely normal Robert de Niro looks, and a man with an extremely normal platinum English Express card. There’s only one thing about him that stands out…

This Mr Bob, is the Maou.

Since the bona fide Maou of the Earth himself said it clearly, then he has no choice but to believe that his little brother is facing some sort of crisis. Besides, Bob even stared at him through those weird sungla.s.ses, so it’s really hard to laugh it off as a joke.

“Yuu-chan… poor Yuu-chan.”

Baby brother—That high school student whose head is full of only baseball bats, baseb.a.l.l.s and baseball gloves, actually went to world 180 degrees different from Earth to be the Maou. His little brain is probably being tortured by things like taxes, annual incomes, economic meltdowns, stock markets… etc, isn’t it? After all, his math isn’t good.

At any rate he has to fly there as soon as possible and bring his little brother back! If it was a stranger with no connections whatsoever then that’s another matter, but he is his older brother, Shouri! How can he just put his head into the spot-billed suck pond and pretend he didn’t see anything?

“Those two d.a.m.ned black gla.s.ses and white gla.s.ses, telling me about Niagara and Fuji, when they themselves actually ran to Haneda Domestic Airport. After talking so much about so many other places, why are there foreigners running to Haneda Domestic Airport now?”

s.h.i.+buya Shouri pushes his gla.s.ses up with his hand, muttering away. To him, his gla.s.ses are already a part of his face, so there’s no problem there.

Bob and Murata are headed to the pride of the j.a.panese people, Haneda Airport, to meet a man named Rodriguez. He’s a master amongst the Earth mazoku, and has a connection with that world.

Where did that Rodriguez come from? Russia? Korea? Or China?

On the other hand, Shouri, planning to make Niagara flow backwards, is operating along, bringing the brand new pa.s.sport from ten years ago to Haneda International Airport.

It was past eight at night when he reached Haneda. Although the international flights were still coming and going, but since evening the rain has been getting heavier and heavier. Since there aren’t any pa.s.sengers who bothered the ladies behind the counters about it yet, so they’re still smiling gracefully.

And right now the only funds he can use are his pathetic student credit card, but at least he can still buy two-way tickets to Oregon. Only, when he was asked, ‘Is Economy cla.s.s okay?’, all he could do was nod his head obediently in reply. Back then he quietly yelled in his heart, ‘Dammit! I’ll definitely make it rich—”

It’s just that the share he bought last year haven’t earned a single cent until now.

“Excuse me, do you want to be put on the waiting list?”

Since he was lining up with complicated feelings in front of the counter, when he is suddenly told that the flight is full, he really had a feeling of disappointment.

“Is Oregon that popular? Oh, right, now is the autumn tourism season, people always say ‘Autumn Starts in Oregon’[2], so that’s why it’s full…”

“Mister, if you’re headed for the Niagara Falls, shouldn’t you be going to Canada?”

“I-I know that. I also know that monkeys will fall from trees, so no matter how capable a person he will still make a mistake someday.”

s.h.i.+buya Shouri, who hasn’t been embarra.s.sed in public for a long time, is corrected by the smiling lady staff. He doesn’t want them to find out that he had allegedly returned here from America. And when he’s waiting for a replacement seat, quite a few flights can’t take off due to the weather. The pa.s.sengers who can’t get onto their flights fill up the benches, and the hall gets stuffy with their discontent. It’s only the end of October in j.a.pan, so they’re still very slapdash with the air conditioning.

But everyone doesn’t want to go outside either. Thanks to the growing winds, the rain has become a sideways-flying storm. Looking at the gale beating on the gla.s.s windows, he just realized that the Kanto area is affected by a hurricane.

There are already people ready to camp out for the night, and other graceful business travelers plan to wait patiently at a nearby hotel. People who can’t do either of the above and have a temper to boot, start venting out their frustrations on the staff, so you can hear the travelers’ dissatisfied complaints everywhere.

Having successfully updated the web page, Shouri closes his trusty ‘Bestujin 27-go’. The guy beside the guy beside the guy beside him is an office worker who can’t sit still because he can’t take a smoke—he deduced that from the smell of cigarettes on his clothes. If it was that little brother of his who puts health above everything else and hates cigarettes, he probably wouldn’t be able to sit quietly for even five minutes.

Just then Shouri plans on playing a little trick, and so he heads for the lounge especially for business cla.s.s VIPs. The friendly female staff stands beside the PC, waiting for the pa.s.sengers to come in for a break. He tries to use Bob’s name, and doesn’t expect it when he’s easily let into the VIP lounge.

Thank you, Bob. I thought all you were good for was dressing up s.e.xily with two sh.e.l.ls covering your bits in front and dancing the samba, so it never occurred to me that you could come in handy at a place like this.

The VIP lounge and the waiting area where the normal pa.s.sengers are squashed together is completely different, this is practically heaven in comparison. In the practical room painted with deep colors, there are many empty and soft sofas that let you sink in them, and the air conditioning is very suitable too. Other than providing coffee, red tea and other non-alcoholic beverages, there is also a complete display of business-related magazines on the racks, though there aren’t any newspaper sport sections.

“This is practically a different world!”

In a little booklet just lying around, it even says that they’ll give you s.h.i.+garaki ware as a souvenir for the flight, but first he must be lucky enough to get onto the plane. Surely the airline will give him a tanuki[3], right?

Just as Shouri is imagining himself carrying home a silly-looking omnivore as he adds coffee into his pure white coffee cup and prepares to go back to his seat, he sees that there’s a girl in the otherwise empty lounge. She’s sitting right beside the table where he put his luggage. There are obviously a lot of empty s.p.a.ces nearby, so why must she choose to sit near Shouri?

But since he was originally sitting there, it would be weird if he suddenly changed seats, so he takes his coffee cup and walks back to her side. Just one look would tell anyone that she’s obviously a foreigner. The natural brown hair is tied neatly, and behind those brown brows are a pair of grey-blue eyes filled with laughter. But her clothes are completely j.a.panese—the almost bright red bottom and the fish embroidered with gold thread, would not only remind people of a Nagoya lady owner, but it would also be received well, wouldn’t it? But this is an international airport with a hurricane outside, so no matter how friendly her smile is, people will only treat her as a weird foreigner.

It’s still better not to get involved with her. Conservative Shouri sips his coffee, trying to avoid meeting her gaze.

“Hi! How you do--”

“…How you do.”

She really is enthusiastic… What on earth does this foreigner pretending to know j.a.panese want to do?

“You, geisha--?”

“…No, I’m not.”

“OH! What a pity, might as well commit seppuku.”

She points at her kimono, raises her head and sticks out her chest, saying proudly, “I’m a geisha.”

“No, you probably aren’t.”

“NO—I should definitely be a geisha.”

Tears gather in those grey-blue eyes. Not only has he made a foreigner cry, it’s a tourist younger than him too, so Shouri hurriedly puts down the magazine he was reading.

“Ah—I apologize, ah—sorry. I never went for a geisha’s performance, neither have I seen a real geisha. I’m really very sorry, it was my fault.”

Though more and more j.a.panese people are going overseas for their vacations, but there aren’t many foreigners who visit j.a.pan. If he left a bad impression of j.a.pan on her, forget her coming back again for a second trip, she might even turn her friends and family anti-j.a.panese. Didn’t even the governor of Tokyo strongly pledge to make j.a.pan a tourism giant? Even if she’s the clueless heroine of ‘Kill Bill’, since he’s the first j.a.panese she came into contact with, he’ll have to treat her kindly.

“This geisha outfit is pretty good! Mn… Especially the salmon swimming upstream, it leaves a lasting impression.”

“NO—these are carp. Don’t you know it’s 1000 AD now?”

“…Haha… ahaha… It’s around 2000 AD now.”

He can’t tell at all if she’s joking, or if she’s just that clueless.

Maybe she misunderstands that he accepted her cold joke, because she starts chatting up Shouri enthusiastically. She takes out the pa.s.sport in her pocket and shows him,

“I’m here during the fall break to play at my j.a.panese’s friend’s p.e.n.i.s[4]!”

“What!?”

Upon hearing that, Shouri is shocked. How can a young girl say that word in a public area? And also, which fellow taught her wrong j.a.panese?

“Hold on a sec, miss. It’s not your friend’s p.e.n.i.s, it’s your friend’s place.”

“OH—that’s right. It’s my friend’s place…”

It’s place not p.e.n.i.s, just one sound makes a large difference… Defeated, Shouri can’t help but press his brow with three of his fingers.

This world has gone crazy. A young girl can actually say such a crude word so brazenly, what has America come to?

“The other person is my online friend, my online friend, you know—to deepen the exchange between American and j.a.panese culture, we communicate and help each other out.”

“I really don’t know if I should say, ‘good luck’…”

If what she says is true, then isn’t it a recommendable culture exchange? OH! j.a.pan has really fallen—And it’s not the influence of j.a.panese English either, but of American j.a.panese, making people sigh at the loss of the five, seven, five rhythmic beauty of the j.a.panese language.

“Isn’t your friend coming to meet you? Or are they late ‘cause of the hurricane--”

He really has been affected by her accent.

“NO, NO, NO.”

The girl raises her right hand and waves it in front of her face, symbolizing denial.

“I’m waiting for a man called BOB. Three days before I go to my friend’s p.e.n.i.s to play, I plan on first asking him to take me around his New Year’s party—”

“Is that so—”

Shouri reaches out to take the magazine he hadn’t finished reading, and starts checking the chart of last month’s stocks—staring hard at the Euro.

“I hope the Bob you’re talking about is a normal person.”

Once he said that, the two of them fall silent, just staring at the heavy rain outside.

Bob?

“When you say Bob, do you mean that Bob!?”

After blurting out that question, he just realizes how stupid that sounded. Bob is a name you can simply pick off the street, just like a ton of people are called Sanro. Besides, she’s just a tourist who just happened to sit beside him at the airport, so she shouldn’t have any relations.h.i.+p with that Bob.

“Which BOB do you mean by BOB?”

The blue-eyed girl who claims to be a geisha asks back in fluent English.

“He’s a bespectacled, sungla.s.ses-wearing c.o.c.ky old uncle.”

“Then it can’t be the same person, the BOB I know isn’t c.o.c.ky at all. The cheerful, open Uncle BOB I know is too HIGH Robert de Niro!”

“Robert de Niro? What a coincidence, the Bob I’m talking about looks a lot like him too, maybe they’re even CLONEs.”

“Eh? Your friend is a CLOWN? Your English sucks. Now even kindergarten brats don’t talk like that.”

W...w..w..w..what happened to your j.a.panese[5]!?

Shouri swallows his urge to yell, gripping his fists tightly on his knees. Shouri, you have to bear with it, at times like this you must bear with it. The person whose teacher wrote ‘bad temper’ on the family contact book isn’t him, it was his younger brother.

“Technically, it shouldn’t be that BOB looks like Robert de Niro, but de Niro who looks like BOB. Because the BOB I’m waiting for has been wearing those sungla.s.ses and sporting that hairstyle for a very, very long time, since even my great grandmother’s time!”

“From your great grandmother’s…”

“That’s right, weird, isn’t it? Just like a monster, right? And he even says half-jokingly that he’s the Maou!”

Shouri suddenly bangs the table top with his fist, and the coffee cup makes a sharp sound.

“What’s his name!?”

The Boston native in the kimono looks surprised, and then she says in her weird accented j.a.panese,

“Name? Oh~ My name is Abigail Graves.”

“Not your name, I meant Bob’s full name!”

Very few people can say the Maou of the Earth’s full name.