No Game No Life, Vol. 3

by Yuu Kamiya

  LOADING

  That first moment of self-realization. What does that even mean? If you’re talking about oldest memories, though, hers was logged before the age of one. She didn’t actually remember the first words she spoke. But the motherly woman who heard them, the pale face looking down at her—that was her earliest memory.

  ……

  Soon she was left in a white institution. A girl born too white in a building with white walls. Though there were other children there, she tried to blend into the background. Keeping her strangely ruby-red eyes cast ever downward. Always facing a stack of Western books—a decided mismatch with a little Japanese girl not yet even two years old.

  …It was around then that she learned of games.

  The white-clad grown-ups brought out all these games they called “intelligence tests.” But they were all too simple, too boring. No fun to play with anyone—these games. With only the word unmeasurable left behind, after a while there was no one who would play with her. After about a year in the institution, she realized it was more tolerable to play by herself. As the little girl continued playing both sides, in chess, shogi, go, etc., she blended into the background. Eventually, not even the white-clad adults tried to talk to her.

  …Silent, stark-white memories.

  A series of memories labeled simply: boring—

  After two years, the woman who was apparently her mother came again. In the girl’s memory, the woman told her excitedly that she would have a new father, but the eyes with which the woman faced her were the same as those of the white-clad grown-ups of the white institution—an empty gaze from which could be gleaned nothing. By this time, she was three. The girl met some man called her “new father” and his son—a boy seven years older. A boy who gave calculated answers as the grown-ups talked, calculated smiles. All alone, the boy returned exactly what he was given. To this boy who distributed empty, inorganic smiles, she opened her mouth that had long been closed.

  “…You really, are…‘empty’…”

  —The boy who’d given his name as Sora, which meant Sky or Empty, opened his eyes wide at the words the girl muttered. He stared fixedly into the girl’s red eyes, with which no one had wanted to make contact. Looking for something, trying to check something silently, it seemed…and then she remembered—a color she had never seen before appearing in his face. At the time, she had no way of understanding the meaning behind that color. The boy—Sora—spoke.

  “Come on, let’s play a game.”

  —That day, for the first time, the girl found a game fun.

  They played twenty times. The first few times, the girl destroyed him utterly. But, as they played on, gradually, his moves became harder to read. Leading her on and tricking her with moves that sneered at common sense, starting to make moves so out there she never would have imagined them, Sora flew far beyond her comprehension to victory and in the end earned a 10-to-10 draw. The boy who had defeated her for the first time, yet without posing or gloating. Rather, it was as if he was the one who had lost—and as if he was giddy with joy at that. There was no more emptiness in his face. His face a color the true meaning of which she still did not understand, the boy—Sora—her brother spoke.

  “Sorry to be a no-good brother who can only win by sneaky tricks, but I hope we can get along—Shiro [White].”

  The color in his face—The girl who felt as if her name had been spoken for the first time, she realized it was the love of family and that she was wanted, for the first time. Understood that it was all right for her to be here, that she was recognized and accepted.

  —Her inorganic, monochrome memories clearly changed at this time to have color. She felt something hot welling up in her heart, but she didn’t know yet what it was. All she could do was to drop her gaze and nod subtly.

  ……

  …Time flowed on, and it came to be that the brother and sister lived together by themselves. The two who had called themselves their parents were already gone.

  “Well, I guess this means we’ll stay together from now on, too.”

  This one statement from the mouth of her brother was all the girl wanted. It was around then that they started playing online games under a single name. An account registered under a string of two spaces, from what their names spelled written together: Kuuhaku [Blank]. The brother would devise his outlandish, bizarre strategies that the sister never would have thought of, while the sister implemented his tactics far beyond his imagination with the accuracy and calculation of a precision machine.

  —This was the time the “two-in-one gamer” clearly emerged. The time when this gamer won victory after victory, beyond belief, and began to be whispered of online as an urban legend.

  * * *

  —Then began her memories that she herself could hardly believe. Beating someone who called themselves a god at online chess, and then—being dumped into another world. Where violence was forbidden by the Ten Covenants and everything was decided by games: Disboard.

  How would you normally feel when suddenly thrown into another world? Nervous, lonely, displaced…? But her memories recorded not one of these emotions. From the beginning, her place could be only in her brother’s arms. Together with her brother, she challenged the world where everything was decided by games.

  —Oh, how perfect. What more could one ask—?

  “I got it…all I have to do is become female!”

  A voice rang through the Presence Chamber of the Royal Castle in Elkia, capital of the Kingdom of Elkia. It belonged to the young man with disheveled black hair sitting on the throne—Sora. Wearing a T-shirt that said “I PPL” and the queen’s tiara twisted around his bicep like an armband to indicate that, here in this world, Disboard, he was the king of Elkia…and of Immanity. Turning suspicious gazes at the king’s sudden pronouncement were three.

  “…Whatever is His Royal Highness yapping about now?”

  One with red hair, contrasting with her icy blue gaze. Stephanie Dola, aka Steph. The granddaughter of the previous king of the Kingdom of Elkia, a girl with an air that suggested the quality of her upbringing. But in this case, the expression she had turned on Sora was unexpected.

  “—I see, my master indeed is wise; what a profound revelation.”

  Another, praising Sora’s pronouncement with a hot amber gaze. Jibril—a girl as beautiful as a fantasy, with long hair that refracted light and changed its color. The wings from her hips and the halo revolving above her head showed that she was not human, but Flügel. She, one of Rank Six of the intelligent Ixseeds of this world, accepted this wisdom from her master—one of Rank Sixteen, Immanity, the lowest of the Ixseeds—clasping her hands together as if contemplating divine word, and she extracted his intent.

  “You mean that, if you yourself were female, Master, all adult situations could be written off as mere ‘Eek! Tee-hee-hee!’ among intimate members of the same sex… I am overcome with emotion at your insight.”

  Sora, nodding, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, contentedly, made eye contact with the last one.

  “Come—my sister! Let us play a game under Aschente! And please defeat me!”

  The girl Sora called his sister, the girl on his lap with ruby eyes—Shiro. The eleven-year-old whose long hair as white as snow was tied with the king’s crown. King Sora’s sister—that is, Queen Shiro—peered into the brother’s eyes and mumbled.

  “…I, don’t think…you, can.”

  “Huh, why not? Wagers sworn by the Ten Covenants are absolutely binding, right? I forced Steph to fall in love with me and made Jibril my property. So I should be able to become female, too, right?”

  “Could you please not gloss over all your heinous deeds as if they were nothing?!”

  Though Steph screamed pi
teously—souls so gentle as to pay attention to her were absent.

  “—Even so, Master, I’m afraid Her Majesty’s point is valid.”

  “Huh, why?”

  “It is because theoretically impossible demands cannot be carried out.”

  As Shiro nodded at Jibril’s words, Sora finally understood.

  …Oh. It was obvious once you thought about it.

  “So, like, if I were to beat Steph with the condition, ‘Run a hundred meters in one second,’ it’s still physically impossible, and she could only run as fast as she could to do her best to obey the demand.”

  “Exactly, my lord.”

  “—Um… Why are you using me as an example?”

  Imagining herself forced to run like a madwoman in a suicidal attempt to run a hundred meters in one second. Steph interrupted with apparent trepidation that Sora might actually try this.

  “Wait a sec, then does that mean even if I played a game that required me to get a life, I still couldn’t?!”

  Sora imagined what he would look like with a life.

  —How about that? He could hardly come up with anything but fantasies far removed from reality.

  “Whether or not you could actually ‘get a life,’ as you put it, you should most likely be able to feel as though you have. After all, you speak of issues of your personality, which in the end is a mere abstract conception.”

  “A shut-in loser game vegetable who thinks he has a life—that’s just too horrible to contemplate!!” Sora shrieked despairingly as he tried to picture it.

  “…I guess I’d better check the limits of the covenant constraints…”

  As he started pondering more seriously than ever, Steph gave him a squinting look to say, “Work.” Meanwhile, Shiro, who had lost herself in thought just like her brother, proposed an experiment.

  “…Try…a personality change…with, some conditions?”

  “Hmm, that would make it easy to see. ’Kay, Steph, let’s do this.”

  “—Um, let me ask one more time. Why does it have to be me?”

  “Because you’re the best if we want to check how far we can go.”

  Sora’s goal as he casually dropped what passed for an explanation was still incomprehensible to Steph.

  “Come, let’s start the game. The wager—is that Steph become me.”

  —

  “……All right, fine.”

  Steph, repressing the emotion she was on the brink of revealing and answering instead with a resigned act.

  …Yes, she would probably lose to Sora no matter what she did. After all, that had consistently been the case—in fact, she still hadn’t a clue how she could win a game against him. Besides, this was an experiment, so she’d have to lose intentionally. But if the result, albeit qualified, was that she could become Sora—? (Could this be…my one and only chance to beat him?!) Desperately hiding the dark heh-heh-heh-heh that threatened to spill out of her heart…

  “There’s just no arguing with you… All I need to do is lose intentionally, right?”

  “I mean, you’re gonna lose whether you try or not. Anyway, this is an experiment, so let’s make the conditions clear… The game is chess. If I win, Steph becomes Sora for thirty minutes. For the sake of argument, if Steph wins, we’ll say I’ll give her a candy. Not that it makes any difference. So—Aschente.”

  “Yes, Aschente…hfff.”

  Even the storm of verbal abuse was tolerable to Steph when she considered what might come after she lost.

  —Making the oath of Aschente: a declaration that one submitted to an absolutely binding wager under the Ten Covenants set forth by the God—

  ……Forty seconds later.

  “…Steph, can you really suck this much? That’s hard to do even intentionally…”

  Though Steph lost in a mere five moves, still she answered Sora’s insult with a smile.

  “Heh-heh-heh…noww, this means that there is one more greatest gamer among Immanity—”

  Steph, her eyes suddenly piercing as she sported a crookedly ironic grin, taunted gleefully.

  “C’mon, let’s play us a game, ‘Sora’—it’s time for you to face yourself, bitch, the one who claims he’s gonna take down the God himself!”

  The girl’s condescending tone was incongruous with the finery in which she was adorned.

  “Heh-heh, what’s wrong? Leery of leaping into the grave you dug yourself? The wager is that you be a decent person permanently, bitch. Come—let’s get this ‘Aschente’ on!”

  Such was the pretentious manner in which Steph (in the style of Sora, allowing for some degree of error) carried herself.

  —Striking poses with each punctuation. At this display:

  “Hey, Shiro, am I this kind of character?”

  “…It’s…pretty, off.”

  “Dora is probably doing her best to fulfill the covenant, based on her view of you, Master.”

  Oh, trying to act as if she had a—not a life, as if she were Sora.

  “…It’s hard to tell whether she’s overestimating me or making fun of me…”

  Watching Steph dandily sweep at her bangs and wondering, Have I ever actually done that? Sora, with a strained expression, halfheartedly answered her challenge.

  “…Uh, okay, whatever. It is creepier than I thought, so I’m gonna demand that you turn back to Steph right now—Aschente.”

  ……Another forty seconds later.

  “Whyyy?! I thought I was going to become your equal in skill?!”

  …To Steph, beaten as always, Jibril replied, as naturally as the flow of a river.

  “What? I thought I explained that things that are physically impossible cannot be done.”

  “It’s physically impossible for me to beat Sora?!”

  The face of one betrayed by the world: Truly, that must have been as Steph’s visage now.

  “You see, little Dora, even if you intend to be Master, you still cannot share his thoughts or memories.”

  “Y-you knew this before you accepted the match, didn’t you?!”

  “Of course I did! Look back at yourself. What makes you think you looked equal?!”

  —To begin with, if she had actually become Sora, she alone, without Shiro, would never have boasted the title of greatest among humans.

  “Hngg… But I’m still not clear on this. It could have just been Steph’s insufficient specs.”

  “Could you not say I have insufficient specs?!”

  “Jibril, let’s try it with you. A Flügel should be able to emulate me, right?”

  The physical specs of Flügel were literally in a whole different dimension from those of Immanity. Could it be—? Sora prayed, but unexpectedly Jibril seemed surprised.

  “You suggest that I become you? I believe that may yet be impossible.”

  “Huh, why?”

  “…Well, if it is your wish, Master, I shall stake all my spirits to attempt it.”

  With a look of some kind of frightening resolve, Jibril lowered her head.

  ……Jibril, having lost intentionally as agreed. Bound absolutely by the Covenants—started to transform.

  “Whoa?! You transform!”

  “…I, see…Jib-ril…is, composed…of, spirits…”

  Sora and Shiro together widened their eyes and raised their voices. Huh. So for a Flügel, changing one’s appearance was not theoretically impossible! This was a result that held out a thread of hope for the Sora Sex Change Project which had all but plunged into despair—Sora’s face melted with glee but then gradually stiffened. Jibril transforming to look like Sora, like a mirror—that was all right. But, gradually—sprouting eight wings.

  “…E-eh?”

  An enormous halo even more complex than Jibril’s original one was drawn over her head. And her mouth, opening gently—formed words.

  “—I am: the most powerful.”

  …Not only Sora, but everyone, including Shiro and Steph, was dumbstruck.

  “U-umm…?!”

  “
The weakest and yet the most powerful: I am he who shall rise against the God and unite the Ixseeds. I am he who redefines the old knowledge as ignorance—and therefore I am he who shall reign over the reformation of the world… What business have ye with me, ye powerless creatures?”

  —And a long hush fell over them.

  “Uuuuumm—”

  So this is what it meant.

  “So Jibril is overestimating me with heaven-busting force…”

  It was as Jibril had said, after all: Being unable to share his memories meant that subjective perceptions would inevitably enter.

  —Well anyway, Jibril had identified him as the new lord she should serve, on an equal footing with her creator. It made sense that Jibril would see Sora as some kind of god—but.

  “Hey, am I really this much of a dweeb?”

  “…Uh? Kind, of…”

  “It is a bit of a caricature, but it does more or less accurately portray Sora’s behavior, doesn’t it?”

  As Shiro and Steph responded to his question as if it were even more surprising than Jibril’s transformation, Sora considered.

  “…Maybe I should seriously reevaluate myself.”

  Looking as if he literally wanted to crawl into a hole. Sora decided to cover his face with his hands and erase Jibril’s subjective portrayal of him from his vision.

  ……

  “…So basically, even the absolute binding power of the Covenants is unable to push people past their limits.”

  To Sora reaching this conclusion with a heavy sigh, Jibril, once more herself, replied:

  “I’m afraid so, Master. So for you to become female—”

  “—ah…regrettably, it is impossible.”

  But that was only natural.

  “Yeah…if we could enforce things that went beyond the limits and abilities of the people involved in the game, then indirectly it would be possible to give Immanity powers like magic.”

  But Sora, continuing with a “Really—”

  “That’s what I was hoping for—but I guess it’s not so easy to find a loophole in the rules.”

  “—!”