MaruMA:Volume 03

Prologue

There, my dear Shinou (1) from the other world, or however you’d like to name yourself. I’d say that we have raised our son just as you wish. With black hair and eyes from his Japanese DNA, he possesses a heart full of zeal, perseverance, a keen sense of justice, and the strong mind of a game leader.

It’s still a mystery to me why my wife and I had been entrusted with the heavy responsibility of raising the next Maou. Nevertheless, I am proud to say that our nurture and education have produced a masterpiece. My wife would certainly agree with me on this. However, there’s one thing we would like to clarify from the beginning. My wife and I would never completely give our son away to you! Whatever happens, he will forever remains Yuri Shibuya, our child. And if he is mistreated in anyway, we will take him back, by all means. Yuri! My boy! No one has done anything bad to you, right? If anything ever troubles your heart, remember that your father’s shoulder is always here for you to lean on. You can always talk to me about everything, as a man to a man.

But tell me, Yuri, don’t you think that lately you have become somewhat distant to your father?

Chapter 1

A date at the Sea World aquarium. With a guy. Oh, great. Why does this happen to me only?

It was summer vacation, time for the baseball. The newly formed amateur team and the Seibu Lions, of which I have been a devoted fan most of my life, took up all of my time. Until I got a call from Murata.

"She rejected me," he said moodily.

"Who? Your girlfriend?" I asked, curiously.

"No, I had planned to ask a girl to go out with me on a date to Sea World, then confess my feelings to her. So I bought pre-sale tickets, but she turned me down."

"So you confessed, and she turned you down?"

"No, I did not confess. She didn’t even want to go to Sea World with me."

"What? But that doesn’t mean she rejected you, maybe she just couldn’t join you this time."

"But I feel rejected." Murata sighed. "And I had already bought the tickets."

Although I tried to cheer him up, Murata only smiled weakly. He didn’t want to waste the tickets he had bought, but it was troublesome to return them. He was willing to give them away, but it was near the end of July, and most of our friends had already had plans.

"Well, of course that’s unfortunate."

"Don’t you want to go?"

"When is it?"

"The tickets are for the 28th."

"But that’s when we have the night game at the Seibu Dome..." I protested.

"Oh, to hell with the night game!" Murata said irritatedly, which was unusual for him. "Have you forgotten how much time I've sacrificed for your stupid baseball games? Not just the games, you dragged me along to the training sessions too. And now you choose a damned game over your good old friend, even when he has a broken heart?! Come on, it costs you nothing. I’ve already paid for tickets. Come with me, please!"

"Okay, okay, I understand, I'll go with you. But I have to say that if you’re persistent enough, she will eventually give in."

My friend looked up to the sky with an exaggerated expression.

"Shibuya Yuri Harajuku Furi, naïve as you are, you can’t possibly know how it’s like."

"Wait, Murata! How old are you after all? And this has nothing to do with Harajuku Furi at all!"

And so Murata and I, Yuri Shibuya, spent the day at the Sea World aquarium. Yes, my name is Yuri Shibuya. Yuri as in ‘advantage’ with the same kanji script as ‘interest,’ not a gentle pear or anything like that. I had spent a big part of my 15 years of life being teased for this stupid name.

As my father worked in the bank, I had thought that I had been given this name because my father was always thinking about interest rates. But then I found out that the blame was on a friendly young man who had shared his taxi ride with my mother, when she was on her way to the hospital to give birth to me. Even so, at least they could have chosen a different kanji for the name, which would have given it a different meaning! Well, yes, I consoled myself with the thought that my brother had got a worse deal: His name meant "victory"! Shibuya Victory, that was even a bigger laugh than my name!

Anyway, that afternoon I got stuck at the Sea World aquarium with a guy, who insisted that he was rejected by a girl, while it couldn’t be worse than a one-time refusal. And so the two of us, one boy wearing glasses and one baseball fan, went to Sea World together, surrounded by couples and parents with their children. Walking along the glass tunnel that ran right through the water, we could see the nautiluses, the fire fish, the banner fish, the Arapaima, and the sawfish swimming gracefully together with the delicious sardines and bonitos.

"If only I were with a sweet girl!" I sighed.

"Man, what is it now? You’re bitching all the time."

"Hey, I was only cursing my lonely existence, you know. Tomorrow I’ll turn sixteen, and I still have no girlfriend."

"Tomorrow is your birthday?! I had no idea. Tell me then, what do you want for your birthday? Look here, do you want a cell phone strap from the gift shop? This one is really cute, isn’t it?"

"A cell phone strap? But you know my phone is broken."

"Then it’s a good time to buy a new one. The texting function is quite convenient."

I sighed and looked at the back of my right hand. The entry stamp for the day visitors had been pressed on my skin with a special ink. If I held my hand under a scanner, the stamp glowed with a pale mark.

"I don’t need a cell phone. And I have no use for texting function."

"You don’t need a cell phone?! What is this nonsense? Everyone needs a cell phone. And that’s why everyone has indeed got one, except you. Sometimes I really think you come from another world!"

If you only knew!

It had only been three months ago that I fell through a toilet and landed in another world! Really! And I had even been declared king against my will. No kidding! I, a fifteen-year-old high school student with average looks and ordinary intelligence, was really and truly been appointed king of the mazokus!

Of course initially I thought I was dreaming. But when I woke up, hung around my neck was a pendant that someone from that world had given me. It was a stone the size of a 500 yen coin, which I wore around my neck ever since. It had silver rim and was of a blue color deeper than the sky, the color of the Seibu Lions. This charm stone reminded me every day that it had not been a dream. It was for real: I was born with the soul of a mazoku and had committed to protect Shin Makoku, the kingdom of the mazokus.

"Hurry up and take your number, Shibuya." Murata pushed me.

An employee at Sea World handed me a piece of green paper.

"Hmmm? Ah yes, thanks."

We had moved away from the exit of the aquarium and were now at the entrance to the show "Friends of the Sea." A heat wave suddenly hit us: we were in an open stadium and the summer sun was burning mercilessly above us. We walked down tiers of blue benches, looking for two empty seats. At the other side of the large water pool was the white performance stage.

"Shit, it's hot!" I complained.

"Stop whining! If you hadn’t come with me, you would be running around in your baseball uniform in the same heat."

Although I knew it was almost no use, I fanned with a piece of paper. A cool breeze brushed against my neck for a moment.

"Are there at least girls in swimsuits?"

"Why don’t you look at the stage?" Murata said.

Sure enough! There were the trainers - in bathing suits - with seals.

My thoughts wandered. Who was more majestic, the emperor penguin or me? Which formation should my team take for the practice match next week? Tilting my head to one side, I absentmindedly watched the seals performance: a seal headed a soccer ball through a basketball hoop, and a woman in a swimsuit tapped a pink drum vigorously.

"27! Number 27! Would you please come to the stage?"

On the adjacent seat, a toddler clung to the knees of his father and started to bawl.

"Hey, Shibuya!" Murata called out and prodded me with his elbow. "Number 27! That's you!"

"Sorry, what am I?"

"The visitor with the number 27! May I ask you to come on stage?"

"Go on, go on! Hurry up, otherwise they will think you’re not here at all."

I glanced at the piece of paper in my hand. It had indeed number 27 printed on it. With a broad smile, Murata grabbed my arm and pulled me down the stair, as if he won a lottery.

"Hey! Slow down! Not so fast!" I protested.

The trainer put a blue cap on my head and led me through an acrylic door. Then she gave me a small thing that was hanging from her fingers.

"Congratulations! These are your souvenirs, a cool dolphin cap, and a key chain with a cute little dolphin. I’ll trap it to your belt so you won’t lose it."

I was still in a daze.

Indeed, my gifts were all decorated with gray-blue dolphins. The cap had a brim shaped as the dolphin’s beak, and two black eyes on two sides. The key chain had a little dolphin dangling with his beak slightly open. It looked very cute, much nicer than the real dolphin.

"On behalf of our audience, could I ask you to shake hand with our stars today?" said the young woman smiling.

Whom am I going to shake hands with? A dolphin? No way!

Without saying a word, three people from the staff pulled me to the side of the pool.

"Wait, wait a minute! Dolphins are not really my favorite. Don’t you have a couple of whales or sea lions I could shake hands with?"

No response.

"Here we are, our friends Bando and Eiji, the bottlenose dolphins!" The trainer announced.

Two shiny gray dorsal fins came gliding through the water to the side of the pool next to us.

"Hey guys! That wasn’t a joke! I really do not get along with dolphins!"

Still no reaction.

"Hey, Murata, Murata! Please help me!"

"Shibuya, you lucky devil! I envy you!"

Then one of the two dolphins, I couldn’t tell whether he was Eiji or Bando, jumped out of the water then fell down, splashing all around. Holy shit! The beast was huge! He extended a blue-green shimmering flipper toward me, his eyes looking straight at me and his beak slightly open, showing two rows of small sharp teeth like a zipper.

"There goes my sixteenth birthday tomorrow," I muttered.

"Don’t be scared! He’s not going to bite you."

There was no way out; the staff had blocked my escape route. The dolphin was at my feet and still looked at me attentively, his flexible tail and waist muscle moving gracefully as he stood floating in the water. "Hey you, human! Let’s get this over with quickly, so I can finally have my sardines!" His eyes seemed to say to me. He opened his gaping beak and a screech filled the air "Kschaaaaaa!"

"Ahhhhh!" I also let out a small cry of terror. Hesitantly I reached out my right hand and finally touched the slippery flipper. It felt sticky and cold as ice. I felt my hand squeezed tightly.

Wait a moment! How could it be?

He was just a dolphin; he couldn’t possibly hold my hand with his flipper, could he? But then what was it that was pulling on my hand?

"Hey, let me go! Let go!" I yelled.

Just before I was pulled into the pool, I could hear the indistinctive shout of the staff and the audience, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Murata stretch his hand toward me. But the next moment, blue water engulfed me. Although the pool could not be very deep, I sank deeper and deeper into what felt like an abyss. My clothes were completely soaked and became heavy, still wrapping around my arms and legs, pulling me down. Damn it, where's the bottom of the pool?! Wait a minute. Hadn’t I been through something similar before? Twice?

"Not again!"

I was sucked backward into the depths. I swallowed a tremendous amount of water. It was really physically impossible... biologically and architecturally as well. My back ought to have hit the hard cement. Unless David Copperfield had his hands in the game. Or Princess Tenko!

"Tell me, Mama…"

"What, Yuu-chan?"

"Why are people so fond of playing with dolphins? It’s stupid."

"But they're cute! Don’t you love dolphins?"

"Well, not at all. You never know what goes on in their heads. They might shake hands with us and swim around us amicably, but what if they are secretly mocking us? What if they actually look down upon us and think to themselves “Let’s have some fun with these little humans”?"

"Ah! I got it! You can’t get along with those you can’t understand. But that’s why, for Mama, it is important that you work toward that understanding. Friendship needs time to grow and blossom. Spending time together, gazing up at the stars while talking to each other, that’s how we come to understand one another better. Do you understand what I mean, Yuu-chan?"

Friendship? With dolphins? Thanks, but no thanks.

I looked up to a blazing blue sky dappled with contrasting white shreds. Salt water burnt my eyes. Probably that meant I was floating in the ocean and not in a pool. Listlessly, my body drifted like a jellyfish, slightly rocking back and forth.