“Hmm...”
“Hey, how long are you going to drag this out?” Monika said in annoyance, as if she’d finally snapped.
Yuichi had called Monika here because he had something to talk about. He’d told her most of it on the phone, but he’d wanted to reveal the details face to face.
“Sorry,” he said. “The first thing I wanted to say is that there was a resonance, like I told you on the phone.”
“Yeah,” she said. “No one seemed to come after me, though.”
Monika was hiding in the oni settlement for protection. He’d called her to tell her to be on her guard, but it seemed nothing had happened.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that, but you shouldn’t stay in the same place for too long,” he said. It was possible they’d found where she was living. Part of Divine Vessels War strategy was to move somewhere else after each resonance.
“Yeah,” she said. “It seems the oni people have a few different hideouts, so they’ll move me to another of them. What else did you learn?”
“There were two Divine Vessel hosts close to the school. That’s about all. The resonance died down after a few minutes, so I guess something got settled somewhere.”
Resonance took place between all Divine Vessels. Generally, hosts could use that as a guide to search out fellow hosts and fight. Any time something was settled between any two parties, the resonance would die down for a while.
“So me and Dannoura decided to explore the place those two seemed to have been,” Yuichi said.
Naturally, the Divine Vessel hosts might not be there anymore, but they still couldn’t just bring non-combatants along. That was why the two of them had gone there alone.
The site had been the pedestrian walkway about halfway between the school and the station. There had been clear signs of a fight there: the sign on a nearby building was bent inwards, and the tiles of the sidewalk were cracked.
The cracks in the tiles seemed to have been caused by someone stepping on them with great force, unleashing a strike powerful enough to send someone flying into a building.
“That was about all we learned,” said Yuichi. “We still didn’t know who had fought there, but then we saw this woman at the scene...”
“Serial God Killer” had been the label, and it had sent a genuine shock through Yuichi.
It had been an extremely disconcerting sight. Yuichi had watched the woman closely, wondering who she was.
She’d worn the uniform of a certain famous bank, and had been quite beautiful despite not wearing makeup. She had seemed to be searching for something, just as Yuichi was.
“Then we made eye contact...”
When they’d done that, for some reason, tears had fallen from the woman’s eyes. She’d turned her face away and then left quickly.
“And then you remembered?” Monika asked after a pause. The fact that she’d guessed what had happened suggested she had an idea who this woman was.
“I remembered the time I first met you, but I don’t know anything about what happened before or after,” Yuichi said. “So I need you to fill in the blanks. Now that I’ve remembered, you can do that without the whatsit ability’s restrictions holding you back, right?”
Yuichi was referring to Monika’s ability, “Distant Memories,” which came with her worldview, “A Hopelessly Romantic Little World.” It was the ability to erase memories, which she apparently used to make romances more interesting. As long as that ability was still functioning, even if someone explained the circumstances of his memory loss to him, he wouldn’t be able to understand it. Of course, the memories hadn’t actually disappeared, she had said at the time. They could be unlocked under the right conditions.
“Yeah, now that that’s done, I probably can explain,” she said. “And I probably should, too.”
Yuichi nodded. “At the time, I didn’t think anything of it, but now that I remember, I understand... That woman is one of the reasons I ended up with Soul Reader, right?”
“Which means she’s hanging out around here again, huh?” Monika groaned.
Just then, a slightly smooshed little white sphere appeared from above her shoulder, looking like a daifuku mochi with eyes and a mouth. “Long time no see, Yuichi!”
“Oh yeah, I forgot about you...” he muttered.
It was apparently an imaginary creature that was the personification of the debt that Monika owed Yuichi. It would exist until Monika paid back what she owed him... which meant that she hadn’t yet done so.
“Well, let’s talk about what happened that day!” the daifuku announced.
“Wait a minute! Why are you leading the conversation?” Yuichi shot back.
“The thought of letting Monika handle the explanation by herself makes me nervous,” the daifuku said. “I think she might leave out things she doesn’t want you to hear. I’m a neutral party, so don’t worry!”
“Well, okay. It’s just a little unsettling to remember getting attacked out of the blue, and not know why.”
Knowing the reason why now might not change anything, necessarily, but he thought it might be useful reference in his decisions hereafter.
Together, the daifuku and Monika began to describe what had happened over spring vacation.
✽✽✽✽✽
Monika Sakurazaki thought back to how it had all gotten started.
It was hard to tell exactly what the triggering event had been.
Maybe it had been when Monika became an Outer, or when she’d decided to start participating in their world. Maybe the beginning of it all was something far earlier. But this was the story about how Monika had gotten involved with Yuichi Sakaki, so perhaps it would be best to start with the events that had directly led to him ending up with Soul Reader.
In that case, the start of it all was a girl named Ende.
“You want to go back to normal?” Ende called out to Monika.
She was walking down a hallway made from bookshelves on her way out from a gathering that Ende had arranged.
How long had she been there? The girl named Ende, red-haired and wearing an old dress, was leaning against one of the shelves, a book in one hand.
The perfection of her timing sent a chill up Monika’s spine; that was one of the traits those monstrous Outers possessed that had caused her to get disgusted and try to slip out.
For a long time, she’d been shouting, “No more! I want to go back to normal!” in her mind.
“What? Did you just read my mind or something?” she asked as she stopped and glared at Ende.
Apparently Ende had the power to influence worlds, so it wouldn’t be surprising for her to have the power to read minds.
“Oh, no,” said Ende. “You should know very well that I can’t do that. We may be treated as gods, but we can’t do as much as everyone thinks. It’s just that it’s so obvious what you’re thinking. I know it from experience... This is your fifth year, isn’t it, Monika? It’s just about the time for you to start to waver.”
“Don’t talk to me like you understand!” Monika snapped. “I’m fed up! Fed up with you guys, who don’t think of people as people, and with myself, for getting used to it! The thought that I might start becoming like you... an inhuman monster! A miscreant!”
The meetings Ende held didn’t have any particular agenda behind them, but they had naturally turned into participants telling stories of the worlds they’d gotten involved in and influenced.
“Yeah,” said Ende. “So you didn’t like that particular story, huh? But that kind of thing is popular lately, you know? Having allies die off one by one just like that. It might not seem fair, but it also includes foreshadowing that makes it necessary to solve the puzzle. It’s got lots of impact. Of course, personally, I think it gets boring if that’s all you do. Makina in particular likes to push for the bad end even if it means a loss of story cohesiveness... Although personally, I find it monotonous and predictable.”
It was an unsettling thing to say, and it made Monika wan
t to clamp her hands over her ears. The way they told each other those stories so gleefully...
“How... how can you talk like that? These aren’t characters in a story that you’re killing! They’re real people who are just trying to live in peace! They’d be able to live long and happy lives if you people didn’t interfere!”
“Well, that’s the road everyone goes down,” said Ende, brushing off Monika’s anger. “But you get used to it, in a way. It becomes the only enjoyment you have. You should take a more objective view of the world. We’re bystanders. We should just enjoy the stories.”
Ende showed no signs of caring about what she had to say. Monika began to feel like she was speaking to a being from another dimension. Then again, perhaps they really were beings from another dimension... and Monika was starting to take her first steps down that road, as well.
“So? What do you want?” Monika demanded. “You can’t have come here to tell me that.”
She couldn’t imagine Ende would object so strongly to her sneaking out of the meeting. There must have been another reason.
“Normally I’d just leave you be... you’ll give in soon enough, either way. But I just happened to find this...” Ende tossed the book she was reading to Monika.
Monika always found it strange that Ende was so careless with her books. She caught the book and looked it over carefully. It was trade paperback size, and the cover was blank.
“What is this?”
“It’s a silly little story about a low-born girl named Wakana Morishita who falls in love with a prince-like rich boy. At least, it was supposed to be...”
“Wakana...” The mention of the name caused Monika to hesitate. Why did Ende know it? It was the name of the best friend Monika couldn’t forget, no matter how hard she tried.
“You’d know this if you read it, but she has a best friend named Monika Sakurazaki,” said Ende. “Around the time Wakana enters fifth grade, though, Monika stops appearing. She didn’t die, or disappear, or transfer schools... she just stops appearing. Of course, I’m sure you know the reason why. It’s because you were ejected from your world.”
“So what?!” Monika snapped.
One day, when she was in fifth grade, Monika had been abruptly ejected from her world. It had happened suddenly, without forewarning. All of a sudden, her parents and her friends had stopped acknowledging her existence.
It wasn’t that she’d been invisible; she’d been able to speak to them and interact with them. But they would treat her like a total stranger. If she introduced herself as Monika Sakurazaki, they would call her that, but their fundamental relationships would have changed.
“‘A Hopelessly Romantic Little World.’ That’s the name of the world you came from,” Ende said.
Ende gave names to the various worlds she had discovered. As far as Monika knew, Ende was the oldest of them, so almost nobody ever quarreled with her about her naming sense.
All worlds were governed by rules, which they referred to as “worldviews.” The embodiment of a worldview was known as a Worldview Holder, the person who dictated the direction of that world. Monika now knew that she was one of these special people. But it was realizing that, and realizing the ways in which she could actively manipulate her world, that had resulted in her ejection from it.
“That’s just the name you gave it, isn’t it?” Monika said.
“It’s a bittersweet story set in the modern day, a tale of ordinary girls and boys...” Ende wasn’t interested in listening to Monika’s pain. She was just saying what she wanted to say. “Thanks to your loss of influence there, the story has started to go a bit off the rails. Wakana Morishita is now 15 years old. She’ll be starting high school next month, but the environment around her has been growing exponentially more dangerous. The rich boy has disappeared, and the ones now in love with Wakana are twelve psychopaths.”
“What?!” The shocking development left Monika dumbstruck.
“See, I was hoping to enjoy Wakana’s sweet love affair as a comforting palate-cleanser,” said Ende. “Like I said before, there have been too many blood-and-guts stories lately. I’d like to enjoy the story as it was originally meant to be. But at this rate, Wakana... well, they’re in love with her, so I’m sure they won’t kill her immediately...”
Monika wasn’t listening to Ende at all. The only thing she could think about was that she had to save Wakana, somehow. But nothing was coming to mind. Her thoughts just kept racing in circles.
Being thrown out of the world she was associated with allowed her to exert influence on other worlds, but it meant that she couldn’t influence her old world in any way. Maybe she could ask the others for help, but she doubted that those monsters who didn’t think of people as people would really want to save Wakana.
“...So the only way is to put you back to normal,” Ende finished. “And that’s why I addressed you.”
“Is this supposed to be a joke?” Monika snapped. “There’s no way for me to go back to normal!”
“Oh, but there is,” Ende countered lightly.
“Then why don’t you people use it?!”
“Well, it’s like you said before. We’ve all become beings who take pleasure from peering in on other worlds and tinkering with them. The thought of going back to the way things were before, living out our lives as mere characters in a story, is not exactly appealing.”
“Can’t you save Wakana yourself?” Monika demanded. If she wanted to see how the story was supposed to unfold, then maybe Ende could do it. Monika wondered why she’d had to talk to her about it at all.
“I’m not great with romance. I doubt sticking my hand into the situation would improve it at all,” Ende said with theatrical defeatism.
“So... how do I go back to normal? You’re the ones who told me that once you’re thrust out of destiny, you can never return!” Monika said heatedly.
That was what she’d been told, and why she was so suspicious of Ende’s talk about being able to go back now. At the same time, those words were her only hope.
“You’ve been driven out of your world,” said Ende. “You can’t return to your world. You can’t influence your own world... That’s the way it is, but there’s no reason that’s how it has to be. You are driven out from the world, but what you’ve been driven out into is just another world governed by different logic. You could say that the world we exist in now just exists on a meta level above our original worlds. But are the rules that govern us absolute? Might there be a rule that would let us influence our original worlds again?”
“You said before that there was a way, right? Stop putting on airs!”
“Aren’t you impatient? Ah, well...” Ende said with a shrug, then approached Monika. She took Monika’s hand and pressed something into it.
“What?” Monika looked at the object in her hand.
It was an eyeball.
“Eek!” Monika nearly threw it away reflexively.
“Hey! Don’t drop that. It’s pretty valuable. It’s probably not that easy to damage, but just in case, you know?”
“What is this thing?!” Monika shrieked.
“The Evil God’s eye. Well, the Evil God is just a name I give it... just imagine it as being a sort of nebulously bad entity. It’s your ticket to participate in the story of the Evil God, where the winner gets a wish. I’m giving it to you.”
Monika looked at the eyeball in surprise. Now that she mentioned it, it did look rather sinister, but it also looked artificial.
Right Eye of the Evil God (Eye of Red Cords)
Potential: B+
Description: Part of the Evil God’s body, also known as a Divine Vessel.
The host it possesses will be able to visualize the romantic connections of anyone they look at in the form of red lines.
Divine Vessels resonate with each other at odd intervals, telling their hosts the general location of the other Divine Vessels.
To become its host, you must press it into your own eye.
/> The vessel will be released if you lose a battle to another vessel host.
“Uh oh! You observed it, huh?” Ende said, again theatrically.
“Observing” was one power of an Outer’s eyes; they had the ability to see the roles that people and things held within their own worldview.
“What do you mean?” Monika asked suspiciously.
Ende had clearly held back on purpose. When looking at something suspicious, any Outer would unconsciously use the power of their eyes.
“Its power was determined the moment you observed it,” said Ende.
“Why didn’t you tell me that from the start?!”
“Well, I think it’s fine. It’s interesting in its own way, isn’t it?”
Eyes of Red Cords. Given its description, it must have been influenced by Monika’s worldview, “A Hopelessly Romantic Little World.” If she’d known that in advance, she would have picked a more useful ability. As it was now, it was effectively useless. Ende seemed to be doing what she did out of spite, or at least to surprise her.
“So, can making a wish really put me back to normal?” Monika asked, after recovering her calm.
“What do you think?”
Monika was getting fed up with Ende’s cryptic lack of answers. What was the point of saying all this if that wasn’t the case?
“I mean, no one’s ever tried it,” said Ende. “But it seems possible, doesn’t it? If it’s true that it can grant any wish, it should be able to grant a wish to turn you back to normal. If you can outmaneuver all the other participants and the Evil God himself, you can get your wish granted... though of course, that’s easier said than done.”
Ende smiled innocently.
Monika couldn’t help but think that she didn’t care about Wakana at all.
✽✽✽✽✽
Several days had passed since Monika had acquired the Evil God’s right eye.
She was starting to get desperate.
At the end of spring vacation, Wakana Morishita would be entering high school. She had to do something before that happened.
Wakana’s destiny was on hold for now, but when she entered high school, it would start moving again.
Humanity's Extinction Actually Happens This Time With the Evil God's Revival?! Page 6