Volume 3, Armelina’s☆Matching SNS Lobby
The Detached Magic Palace of Roppongi, Tokyo, was a white building in a green paradise carved out of the city center’s best district. It was made so the resident, servants, and guests would each walk down their oddly separate hallways without ever crossing paths. That complex structure may have been similar to a TV station.
And one of the Detached Magic Palace’s living spaces for servants was a bath.
The 3 maids – sized large, medium, and small – were soothing the day’s exhaustion there.
“Now, a surprise visit from your master!”
“Gyaaahh!? M-m-milady!?”
When a girl with long black twintails suddenly showed up and jumped into the large bath, the shortest maid, Haruka, screamed.
“Nooo, now I have to take care of your hair again, milady. Umm, moisture cream, extra virgin olive oil, and camellia extract...”
“Oh? Sounds like her hair is going to be delicious.”
“It sounds more like you’re repairing a cathedral fresco!!”
The girl whose long hair spread out on the bathwater’s surface did not seem to mind.
The normal height and sporty second sister, Misoka, looked exasperated as she rested her head on the tub with her semi-long hair tied back with a hair tie.
“So the lady’s back to her bad habits, is she? But isn’t this a little soon? It’s normally only once a month that she’s so starved for attention she acts like she’ll die without it.”
“Given her background, I do not mind letting her indulge in this. But, miss, I’ve been meaning to tell you that you need to wash your body before getting in the bath. This is poor manners.”
The largest (breast-wise) maid who kept her tutor glasses on even in the bath, Iroka, gently scolded the girl, but it would not have much effect. While Iroka had her long hair carefully wrapped in a towel, their master was a troublesome girl who would relieve her stress by jumping into the gazebo jacuzzi without even removing her red dress.
As she floated face up in the bathwater like usual and Haruka quickly placed a towel over the important bits, the twintail girl used some kind of device.
“Bff!? Your smartphone!? Please don’t bring a camera-equipped communication device into a bath full of soft maiden skin!!”
“I’m talking with Armelina, so it’s fine. She’s apparently a strict civil servant who was too much of a stickler for the rules to stay at Sakuradamon.”
She was not entirely focused on this conversation because she was also facing a problem on the screen.
The career woman on the screen had this to say:
“Anyway, I’ve started using that Nanskagram thing. I heard raising your online status can make it easier to put together a Party for exploring the Labyrinth.”
“I see, I see. Well, you don’t want to sit around in an inn town tavern all the time. We can only stay in Ground’s Nir for a few days at a time, so I understand wanting to get as much done in this world as you can so you can focus on the Labyrinth once you’re there.”
People’s appearances and occupations were entirely different between the real world and Ground’s Nir, but that did not mean relationships had to restart from zero.
If you got along with some people at your school or workplace, you could Sign In together. And on the internet, you could act differently than in real life to gather people. You could also build a connection by exchanging contact information after meeting in Ground’s Nir. Both lies and the truth could be used freely. An unpopular student at a prep school could act like a heroic character online and become a leader who ended up visiting the Labyrinth with an idol or a foreign princess who had changed their appearance to preserve their anonymity.
Whether in reality or online, those connections were vital.
...Of course, those also led to the creation of troublesome Guilds like the military Elkiad or the extremist Religious Society, so it was not always a good thing.
“Now, I’d like some advice about that. You’re the human bagworm who uses the internet to put together a Party without taking a step out of your home, so I’d like to call you master. You understand, don’t you?”
“What!? Who’re you calling a human bagworm!?”
The career woman on the screen ignored the caged bird who lived off of taxes and got to the point.
“No matter what I do, I can’t get more than 3 ‘sures’. Can you tell me what I’m doing wrong? I’m about to die of loneliness.”
“Let’s see. Where’s your page?”
“Here!! So it’s not just the rest of the world!? Not even my friends are checking it!?”
The twintail girl left the white building and entered a night so tranquil it was hard to believe this was in the city center.
The Detached Magic Palace’s grounds were a kilometer-wide circle. If you thought of pi as about 3 (ha ha), then the circumference was approximately 3 kilometers. A lap would make for a decent jog.
...She had been nearly helpless during the recent Demon Tselika incident. She did not feel like she had fully protected Boo Boo’s heart, so she was in the process of remaking her body as a form of penance.
As the girl ran alongside the tall wall “again”, she sent an annoyed voice into her smartphone.
“...Um, Armelina.”
“Yeah, what did you think? I tried to include as many of the things I like as I could. I didn’t hold anything back! And I put up more than 200 photos pretty quickly. I worked hard! So how in the world do I have less than 3 ‘sures’ when the internet is connected to the entire human race!?”
“Mind explaining why every last one of those photos has your face blotted out!?”
“Eh? With my job, I can’t exactly reveal my face, now can I?”
“And look at this profile. Name: Unknown. Sex: Unknown. Age: Unknown. Academic History: Unknown. Occupation: Unknown. Favorite Food: No-Bake Cheesecake. ...What is with all these redactions!? Am I reading a classified document I shouldn’t be touching!?”
“I can’t help it. I work for a private detective agency that gathered retired police officers and JSDF officers to handle the special investigations the police can’t touch! A-and it wasn’t all redacted! I made sure to mention the no-bake cheesecake!”
“And what are we supposed to make of this photo of the mysterious sweet tooth rejoicing as she fires a Gatling gun in an underground shooting range?”
“Oh, now that was fun! Thanks to my JSDF connections, I was invited below Fuji! I bet I’m 1 of only like 3 Japanese people who have held that in their hands as it rotated 12 thousand times a minute. When I told the Yokosuka marines about it at the bar, you should’ve seen how wide their eyes got.”
“I’m saying no one can understand what it means if you don’t explain the story behind it! Just from your page, you look like a dangerous person of unknown identity having fun firing heavy weaponry in a secret base built below your home!”
“Ehh?”
The career woman’s voice was entirely void of tension.
The twintail girl sighed in the cutting-edge “sportswear” that Iroka had recommended to her (while unable to stop grinning).
“Armelina, we’re not uploading meme videos to a video sharing site, so you don’t need anything fancy.”
“But then how am I supposed to gather attention? I’m sick of these days where my number of ‘sures’ would round down to 0. It’s just depressing seeing people upload a commentless photo of a dandelion and then get around 100 ‘sures’.”
“Don’t cry, police woman. Just be yourself. Then you’re sure to get plenty of Party members on Nanskagram. Here, I’ll upload a photo of me to show you. There are plenty of ways to make friends while hiding your identity.”
“Wha-!?”
In a far distance place, a chair clattered against the floor. A career woman in glasses and a tight skirt suit was looking down at her smartphone.
(Wh-what the hell is this!? Is she that clueless? Did she start wearing that because someone told her it was cutting-edge sportswear? She’s no emperor, so is this the Princess’s New Clothes!?)
This is what she found on her friend’s page:
(Photo)
A sweaty girl with black twintails stands on a jogging course at night. She is breathing heavily, her cheeks are red, she is wearing a PE uniform with red bloomers, her hand covers her eyes, and she has a thin smile on her lips.
(Comment)
“Could anyone accompany me to the Labyrinth for a bit? Looking for friends☆”
Five minutes after uploading, it had more than 600 thousand “sures”. The comments included some that were clearly not in Japanese, so this was a worldwide celebration.
The career woman’s efforts and her 200+ mountain of photos had been easily surpassed and blown away in only 5 minutes. Her dead eyes read through comments like “She’s got some pretty nice tits”, “If you’re going to upload photos like you’re a model, you need to be at least this good”, or “Whether professional or amateur, anything below this would be worthless”. Her hands naturally rubbed lightly at her chest instead of the smartphone.
Flaaaaat.
“...”
On that day, a career woman with a lopsided frown drank tequila (which she normally avoided) until the first train of the day left, greatly worrying the elderly bartender.
“I thought you said we weren’t supposed to upload meme images, you moron!!”
“Ma’am, I think you’ve had enough.”
“Shuddup! I’m not reahy for cold waher yed. Bring out alllll the tehila you got! I’m nod leavin’ till I’ve had 600 thouhand boddles!”