The Tsar Bomba Falls on the Republic's High Society

Lupin had always been good at anything done with the body.

She'd signed on believing it was a desk job, been had by an employment scam, and gotten strong simply to stay alive. It was true enough that office work at most small companies was an extreme occupation in which there was nothing you didn't end up doing—but Lupin's case had been worse. Between the work her senior dumped on her and the knots her junior tied, she'd had even less time to keep her backside in a chair. Sales, business trips, site visits, with apologies(?) thrown in on top: absolute bastards, every one of them. Prod the wrong thing and they made the job even more of a shitshow; tell them to knock it off and you were left to do it alone. An endless trap.

Lupin had prayed with all her heart for a lottery win, but she never did get to march into the office with a winning ticket and hose the place down in manure. She'd taken five days of annual leave and died of overwork before she had the chance.

In any case, perhaps because she was good at whatever the body could do, that trait hadn't gone anywhere after she became a Dimensional Wanderer. Try anything at all and Growth Values piled up until, before long, they made her an expert in the field. The moment the work crossed over into using her head, though, those same Growth Values failed their job with uncanny precision.

Noble etiquette alone was proof. Tableware? The hand that recognized a fork's size put it to the proper dish of its own accord. Wine glasses? Each one differed in size and shape, so the hand remembered that too and lifted the glass in the fitting way. But the aristocratic manner of speech folded into etiquette—that was a wall among walls. She was on her tenth day of studying nothing but speech, and there was no progress at all. Language was a task that passed through three stages—hear, judge, and send back out—so set beside the other etiquette, which needed only sensory nerves and motor nerves, it was absurdly high-difficulty.

Perhaps the fault was Lupin's own. Those damned treasure chests. Unable to endure the collaboration of chalkboard and fingernail, she had been shaking off, little by little, the memories of the slightly less important chests—and in the midst of shedding them, a Growth Value called Hearing Protection had popped up of its own accord.

And so, within a few days, Lupin had overcome even the sound attack. Once it was bearable, the desperation vanished, and she no longer wanted to let go of the memories of her precious treasure chests. Progress in speech, naturally, was next to none....

At last, with two days left until D-day, Kakavita made her declaration.

"The basics are truly perfect now."

It was a proposal of tacit agreement: you've done well enough, so let's not keep torturing each other and simply move on. In practice, it was as good as raising a white flag. Put bluntly, though, the problem with her etiquette was severe. Even Lupin knew it.

"We're... done, right?"

"For now. Everything except dancing and conversation is perfect."

"Which means it isn't perfect, doesn't it...."

Dance was ordinarily the very last course. You could always refuse a dance if you didn't want one. Even so, most people learned at least how to step through the figures, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠just in case—but Lupin hadn't had the time for even that.

"What if I just give up on talking? Seal my mouth shut."

"To be honest, it isn't a complete disaster on a scale that would require that."

"But still."

"Truly. Watch."

Kakavita set the scene. Lupin is walking with a cocktail glass when someone coming the other way collides with her and dumps the entire cocktail down her dress. The other party bows and says they're sorry, but the lie is written all over their face. It's a dirty trick meant to screw Lupin over. How should she respond?

"Hook the ankle right away and three rotations in midair—"

"No. No!"

"Oops. Ahem. First I take one step in and, pretending it's an accident, crush his shoe under mine. Once he's in pain, I lean to his ear and say this. 'I shall graciously overlook it. Just this once.'"

"Good. Well done! See? You're quietly rather good at this."

"Already thinking of three midair spins isn't normal, though...?"

In truth, crushing a shoe underfoot wasn't normal either. Lady martial artists simply ran so hot-tempered that Kakavita had rationalized it to herself however she pleased: that much, and one had shown considerable restraint.

"Anyway. We'll try a little more tomorrow morning, then move on to dance. At this point you've truly made a sufficient effort. I acknowledge it."

And if the teacher said so, what was there to do? Lupin had no choice but to accept it and let it go.

Trudge, trudge.

That evening Lupin turned up at the tailor's shop, their meeting place, looking thoroughly worn out. The two who had arrived first and been waiting greeted her.

"You've come, Miss Lupin? You've worked so hard!"

"Four days of lessons and you're already at death's door."

Lupin dropped herself, more or less, onto the stone wall. Her mental fatigue had reached its limit. But the status window she'd shoved off to one side barked at her.

Lupin's face crumpled, and she muttered.

"Studying is a bad civilization."

Vatslava was busy reading the room, so Yegor spoke.

"Even so, you seem to be making an effort. Unlike you."

"What do you mean, unlike me. I make an effort too, you know."

If she hadn't, would her Growth Values be this stacked? Every ounce of Lupin's raw weight class was the harvest of effort aimed at treasure chests. But Yegor—who ten days ago had been half-forced into the role of her mental spokesperson—couldn't help laughing at that. When was it, again, that she'd asked him to judge in her place because thinking was a bother? Well, Yegor was keenly interested in Lupin's mysterious power, so he'd never had a reason to refuse from the start. Still, refusing to think was, put another way, the same as declaring she would make no effort at all. To any sensible person, it had sounded quite naturally like I'll eat whatever you spoon-feed me and I hereby abandon my free will.

Lupin grumbled.

"If I could, I'd honestly have the etiquette judged for me too. I'm confident I could pull off the avatar role...."

But this world had no earbuds. Telepathy magic didn't exist either. So unless someone clung to her side and followed her around, Lupin's ignorance was bound to be exposed someday. To Lupin, who looked ready to flop flat on the wall because everything was a bother, Yegor thrust out a sketchbook.

"So. When exactly are you going to look at the cape design?"

"Ah. Right. I did come to check that."

At any rate, it was time—after a full ten days—to look at the cape design. She'd wanted to see it, but her state of mind hadn't been anything like sound, so she'd put it off and put it off again. Without Hearing Protection, confirming the design might well have taken several days more. Lying back, Lupin opened the sketchbook, peered at the draft, and tapped her toes with a light, cheerful rhythm.

"Hmm. Not bad?"

Standards of beauty differed from person to person. Some held a handsome, charismatic look to be the highest. Some, a line revealed only by degrees. Some, bright and lavish ornament. Taste, though, usually took the preferences of an age into account as well, and Lupin favored clothes that drew a refined, clean line with a modern feel. Astonishingly, the draft the tailor had drawn fit her heart exactly. The front was cut short; the cloth at the back fell long, but split in two, so that it barely hid the lines of her body—her best feature.

Was this what a professional tailor looked like? It felt as if the very person who had designed the Dimensional Wanderer (Phantom Thief) had stopped by, set the page down with a please go with this design, and left.

And yet, eyes closed, customizing herself inside her imagination, one thought occurred to her. People really are animals of adaptation. She was already on her tenth day of wearing a dress and taking etiquette lessons, and aside from a head gone buzzing from the overload of knowledge being poured in, she felt no discomfort. She'd tacked on this excuse and that—her master's honor, not smearing Speaker Dmitri's name—but the truth was she simply didn't care. A dress, she could wear. As much as needed, whenever it was needed. Something like that.

...Having already lived five years in this shape, throwing a fit of I have a disease where I die if I wear a dress! would have been the stranger thing. And on the commute she'd only ever checked whether she still looked like a person. The face of the guy who'd leaned his computer chair back and click-clicked his way through chests—she could hardly remember it now. In a sense, it meant Lupin was fairly satisfied with the life she was living. Treasure chests accounted for about nine-tenths of it, but the rest had their points too. People really were shameless creatures. They forgot the bad times with uncanny precision.

Of course, Lupin couldn't claim the memories weren't prettified. The body that had suddenly ballooned had inconvenienced her more than once or twice. It hurt when she ran, swinging so hard. In the heat, broth streamed from wherever flesh pressed against flesh. Unable to gauge the size, she'd even gotten wedged against a narrow wall. Starve for days and it wasn't the chest that shrank—other places did—and only then had she barely squeezed free.

Even so, she put it to plenty of use. Nothing was ever purely extreme. Where there was a downside, there was an upside, and that was that. When she was so disgustingly idle she thought she'd die of boredom, squishing them like a blob of slime and zoning out had been lovely. Fall forward drunk, and they served as a natural airbag; no broken nose. Drop a chunk of food mid-bite and it landed on the built-in bib of her chest, convenient to pick up and eat—spill soup, on the other hand, and it was pure stress. On top of that, people coming up to her of their own accord was an advantage for Lupin. She was, after all, someone who couldn't walk up first and ask to be friends. Strange sorts latched on as a side effect, but the simple fact that someone approached her couldn't be anything but a plus.

".......Ah."

Only then did Lupin realize her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thoughts had run uncharacteristically long. Proof that lessons with Teacher Kakavita were brutally hard on the mind. If she hadn't even had the nightly routine of cracking Secret Chests, she might have gone dizzy and collapsed long before now. She found herself missing, all over again, the trickster god said to have scattered Abandoned Chests across ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this world.

Aigoo, you little brat. You ought to have made 65,536 of them before you died. Why make only 32,768 treasure chests...!

"I can't die like this...."

Watching Lupin suddenly weep like someone fresh from a funeral, Yegor muttered.

"...You sick somewhere?"