by Mamare Touno
People said Shiroe was an introvert and that he overthought things. It meant his fantasies and delusions tended to ramble in all directions, but Shiroe had one unique weapon in the struggle to integrate them: his internal scale. Shiroe’s scale weighed their true strengths with ruthless realism.
He thought of advice he could give to Marielle’s group.
There were twelve types.
He examined each type.
About half of them would be useful. They could raise the probability of success and shorten travel time.
He thought of alternatives to the proposals he’d discarded and came up with four types.
He examined the feasibility of each proposal.
He rejected half of them, added several elements to the remaining half, and recalculated. The tracks of his thoughts were like lightning. At their tips was the realm of the unconscious; Shiroe knew the shape of his thoughts only by the paths the lightning traced.
But—
Advice? Alternate proposals?
So what?
Did Marielle even want advice? Did he have the right to give it in the first place? Forget the right to give it; did he even have the right to want to? It wasn’t as though he could take responsibility for any of it.
Calculations—utility—right—want.
Yes, want.
What did he want? What had he thought he wanted to do?
Just as he got that much put into words, Shiroe’s mind returned to his body. When he looked up, drawn by some impulse, Naotsugu and Akatsuki were both nodding as if they’d expected this.
“Speak, Shiro.”
“It’s your turn, my liege.”
If he’d thought for five seconds longer, Shiroe would have managed to paralyze himself. He would have been trapped by his own thoughts, his sense of responsibility, and the feeling that it was presumptuous to interfere with the affairs of someone else’s guild. However, in that one moment, like a ship whose sails had filled with the wind Naotsugu and Akatsuki had sent his way, the words leapt from his mouth.
“We’ll go.”
“You’ll what?”
“We’re the best people for the job.”
“Oh no, kiddo, we—We weren’t askin’ you to do all that.”
Ignoring Marielle’s objections, Shiroe turned to his friends.
“Abso-friggin’-lutely.”
“Just leave everything to us.”
They’d timed their answers perfectly. Naotsugu stood, as if the conversation was already over, and Akatsuki followed.
“We’ll go on the expedition. Let your group stay here instead, Miss Mari. We’d make lousy babysitters anyway.”
“A ninja’s clandestine orders never include the word failure.”
Marielle looked up at them from where she sat on the couch, openmouthed, truly flabbergasted this time. Shiroe couldn’t bear to look her in the face.
He was embarrassed. We’re the best people for the job. The arrogance of that statement mortified him now. There had to have been a better way to put it. He was sure he’d managed to appall Marielle. The idea made his cheeks burn.
I know she’s thinking, What just came out of that kid’s mouth? I put my foot in it this time, for sure!! I’ve turned into one of those people who say complete garbage!!
At this point, he felt nothing but shame for his attempt at looking cool. Desperately hiding the fact that he was very close to seeing flickering black-and-white spots, Shiroe wrapped things up in an even firmer tone than usual.
“We’ll set out first thing tomorrow morning. Just leave it all to us, Mari, Miss Henrietta.”
1
“You’re sure you don’t mind? Really?”
Marielle asked, checking for what had to be the thousandth time. She’d come out to Ueno Rogues’ Castle to say good-bye to Shiroe and the others. At night, this zone was overrun with bands of thieves made up of demihumans and non-player characters, but now, white and weightless in the morning mist, it was simply beautiful. Shiroe, Naotsugu, and Akatsuki stood in the damp morning air with Marielle and a few of the Crescent Moon League guild members who’d come to see them off.
“No worries, Miss Mari. This Serara girl’s cute, right? I’m not letting any other guys lay a finger on her before I get a chance to talk to her. Long-distance pickup city!”
To the casual listener, Naotsugu might have sounded as if he wasn’t taking this seriously. “Quiet, stupid,” Akatsuki said, elbowing him hard.
“It’s fine. We’re used to camping, and we’ve spent the past two weeks training,” Shiroe assured Marielle.
Objectively, they had a better chance of success than Marielle’s group. That was quite true, but the posturing he’d done the previous night still embarrassed him, and he was having a hard time looking Marielle in the eye.
“…Here. Unfortunately, it’s exactly like the usual stuff, but it is food. Eat it on your way, okay? Thanks so much for doing this, Mr. Shiro.”
“Akatsuki, this is an ointment the guild members made. Please be careful.”
Shiroe and Akatsuki accepted the Crescent Moon League’s modest relief supplies. Shiroe said a brief thank-you, and Akatsuki only nodded, but the guild members seemed to understand anyway.
“You be careful, too, Mari… You know. Look out for PKs.”
“Mm-hm. We’ll be fine. We’ll keep collectin’ information.”
“Just leave everything to us, Miss Mari.”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha! You, too, Naotsugu. Make sure you come home safe and sound, you hear? It looks like Shiro doesn’t want ’em, so I’ll let you cop a feel. C’mon, hon. They’re real soft.”
Marielle laughed, as if to hide her embarrassment, and hugged Naotsugu’s arm to her rather eye-catching bosom.
“Hey— Whoa, Miss Mari, time out!”
“Oh, what! Are you gonna pull a Shiro and turn me down, too, hon?”
“I didn’t say that, I just…”
Marielle—a little bit macho, everyone’s big sister, good at looking after people—always took shelter in risqué talk when she felt flustered or embarrassed. Shiroe remembered her saying she wasn’t shy about broadcasting the fact that she didn’t have a feminine personality, so even if she talked about stuff like this, no one would take her up on it. She’d laughed then, her generous mouth wide open.
Mari’s the only one who thinks she isn’t popular…
Shiroe snuck a sidelong glance at Akatsuki. She’d stealthily cupped her hands to her mouth and was whispering, “Moron, mooooron! Die, Naotsugu the Lech.”
Given the fact that the Crescent Moon League members were letting this go with no more than a wry smile, it probably happened on a regular basis.
“No? Can’t do it? Are you sayin’ these boobs are worthless?”
“Wai… Th-that’s not it… How am I supposed to feel you up when you’re throwing yourself at me like that? Argh, forget it. Never mind that, we will rescue your girl!! And quit talking dirty!!”
“Less than convincing, coming from you.”
Akatsuki aimed a small kick at Naotsugu. Of course, the Guardian’s thick armor blocked the kick so that the only effect was a dull clang, but he took the opportunity to free himself from Marielle.
“As long as you come back safe, I don’t care what happens to my ‘fatty growths.’ …Right. Come back safe, and thanks for doin’ this for us. Take care, you hear?”
At that, their departure was nearly upon them. Naotsugu, still red-faced but free of Marielle’s embrace, was already walking down the road through the mist in an attempt to hide his embarrassment.
“Shiro, Naotsugu, Akatsuki. Please take care of Serara for us.”
Naotsugu turned in the morning sunlight and raised his shield high. Shiroe waved, too, while Akatsuki lifted her short sword slightly, then let it fall back into its sheath with a loud clang. With those parting salutes, the three of them began their journey to the far north.
2
The early summer haze only lasted for a short while that morning
, and afterward, the sky was clear and blue. The group pressed ever northward, traveling along a crumbling elevated roadway—what had been known in the ancient world (in other words, the world they used to live in) as the Metropolitan Expressway—that looked like an enormous overpass. As far as they could see from the expressway, the zones they’d passed through so far had been fairly peaceful. The main inhabitants seemed to be wild animals, not monsters, and they saw herds of deer and the occasional shambling bear in the forest that spread below them.
Players spoke about the idea that the Elder Tales world was Earth several thousand years in the future as if it were part of the official scenario. According to Elder Tales folklore, there had been some sort of great war, and the world had been destroyed…then miraculously re-created by the gods. It was a typical fantasy game creation myth.
The beauty of a world rendered by successive generations of outstanding graphics engines had fascinated players, but the world they saw with their own eyes after the Catastrophe was more beautiful than images from even the highest-performing graphics board.
In the world of Elder Tales, the word journey meant the travel you did between leaving one point and arriving at another. However, smelling the scents the wind carried and running over the wide world this way was such a novel experience that it could easily have been the point of their journey in and of itself.
Although none of the three had experience with horseback riding in the real world, they were able to ride with ease here. Horses were a comparatively major mode of transportation in Elder Tales, and any player was able to ride without special training. Horses could be purchased at a stable or rented for a set number of days, and it was normal for players in the higher levels to have their own horses.
When Elder Tales was a game, horses had been classified as a type of summoned item. When a player purchased or rented a horse, they were given a whistle. The player could blow this whistle in any field, and the horse would appear almost immediately. This had been re-created to a certain extent in this other world. If one blew a whistle, their horse would come running up to them from the distance. That meant a player didn’t have to worry about where to tie the horse when they were exploring a dungeon and that its safety was guaranteed.
During the game, since horses had been treated as items, they’d never died, but there was no telling how far that could be trusted to hold true here. If they summoned their horses somewhere dangerous, they might actually lose them, and since they didn’t dare experiment to find out, at this point in time, Shiroe and the others had no way of knowing what would happen.
The three of them planned to journey across field zones. As the name suggested, field zones tended to be composed of open country, and they were the basic units of this world. Large buildings could be independent zones, if conditions were good and their interiors were still enclosed, but as a rule, ruined buildings tended to be objects placed in field zones.
One of the characteristics of field zones was their vague boundaries. The links between closed zones were shown by doors, trapdoors, or stairs, but there were no set gates to symbolize the boundaries between field zones. When one reached the end of a zone, they crossed seamlessly into the next one. For that reason, as long as they traveled on land, they didn’t pay much attention to zone boundaries or which zone they were currently in. If they happened to check their menus for information, they’d see the name of their current zone; that was about it.
The highway they were traveling along was crumbling in places and littered with chunks of rubble. Sometimes they had to dismount and travel on foot. Once, in order to detour around a thicket so large and dense it was practically a forest in a tract of heath that had swallowed up the road, they had to walk through a wasteland of bushes.
A little after noon, they started to think about taking a break. The windswept highway sketched a complicated curve and joined up with another wider expressway. However, the asphalt underfoot had felt disturbingly fragile for a while now, and they knew it would be dangerous to stay on this route for much longer.
“Let’s get off the road and eat.”
Naotsugu had been in the lead, and at Shiroe’s suggestion, he dismounted, sighing heavily. “Horses are great. I’m not complaining. My body knows exactly how to ride ’em, and that’s fine. But I’ve gotta say, my butt hurts.”
“Agreed,” Shiroe said.
Akatsuki watched them steadily, her expression perplexed. “Really?” she asked, sounding mystified. Shiroe thought Akatsuki was about thirty centimeters shorter than he was, and she probably only weighed half what he did. She was agile, too. It might not be as hard on her.
“How much distance do you think we’ve covered?”
“It’s only been half a day. Don’t be so impatient, stupid Naotsugu.”
Naotsugu didn’t even blink at Akatsuki’s retort. By now, this sort of exchange was second nature to both of them, and it had almost become a sort of game.
With Shiroe in the lead, they worked their way down from the elevated highway on a slope of rubble. In ancient times, this area might have been filled with housing. Now it was a wasteland dotted with sparse trees, and all that was left were the skeletal remains of telephone poles jutting up from the ground.
In the folds of the rolling red earth, the three of them found a boulder that would make a decent table and settled down to rest. They spread a cloth over the boulder and laid their food and canteens out on it, along with a map and writing instruments. The map was a full rendering of Japan, and Shiroe had written in all the zone names he could remember.
“What’s this, my liege? That’s quite an impressive map.”
Akatsuki’s eyes were round. She was right: The hand-drawn map was very detailed. Unfolded, the paper was about one meter square, and it showed the area administered by the Japanese Elder Tales server, an archipelago roughly the same shape as Japan. The map had been drawn in four colors and included rivers, forests, and even villages. It didn’t look like an amateur’s hand-drawn map.
“I am a Scribe, you know, even if I don’t look like it. I copied one of the maps from the archives in Akiba.”
“I see. You’re good, my liege.”
“…And? Whereabouts are we?” Naotsugu asked, loosening the cap on a canteen.
“Probably here or close to it.”
Shiroe pointed to a spot on the map a bit to the north of Tokyo, not far from the town of Akiba.
“So we’ve come, what, ten meters?”
“There’s no help for that. It’s only been half a day… We’ll fly this afternoon, though.”
“Roger that.”
As Naotsugu and Shiroe talked, they ate the soggy rice crackers that looked like turkey sandwiches, which had been packed in the basket. Akatsuki didn’t usually participate in this sort of conversation. Lately, Shiroe had begun to think that this was more because she trusted them than because she wasn’t interested. When asked, she could give an accurate rundown of what they’d been talking about, so she did listen.
While they were eating, the horses grazed on the dry brown grass nearby; after a while, though, they seemed to grow tired of it and wandered off. Horses tended to leave shortly after their riders dismounted. Shiroe and the others didn’t pay much attention to them; they knew they’d come back when they whistled for them.
“…I wonder if it’s going to stay uncomfortable.”
Akatsuki nibbled on a pseudo-turkey sandwich as she mused. She was gazing into the distance in front of her, deep into the wasteland; it would have been easy to assume she’d been talking to herself and let it slide. What she’d said had probably been a very abridged version of what she was thinking.
I do know what she means, though, thought Shiroe.
It was true that the Elder Tales specs had been meticulously re-created here. However, Elder Tales had been a game, not a real world. In Elder Tales, there had been no sleep and no pain. This world was not a game. Even if it had inherited the Elder Tales specs and memories, they had
to think of it as something completely different. Somehow, Shiroe was sure of it. Ever since the day of the Catastrophe, he’d had the uneasy feeling that, the instant he thought of this world as being the Elder Tales world, he’d make some terrible mistake.
Everyone’s forgetting something big. There’s something important we’re not sure about yet, but they’re already trying to move on. I don’t know what that “something” is, but… Even if this place is linked to Elder Tales somehow, it’s another world… That’s why everyone’s gone a little crazy.
Public order wasn’t deteriorating, come to think of it. Saying that it was made it sound as though public order had been good to begin with, but that hadn’t been the case. If you thought of this world as being another world, separate from Elder Tales, it was more accurate to think that no “public order” had ever existed. All they had—and it wasn’t much—were the noncombat zone settings, a flimsy restriction that seemed to mimic the Elder Tales specs. Limitations like that weren’t laws in any sense of the word.
This world had never had any order to lose. It was lawless.
Akatsuki was well aware of that, of course… And even though she knew, she’d muttered those words to herself.
What was the feeling that flickered there, deep in her serious eyes?
I can’t tell…
Shiroe didn’t have a clear idea of what Akatsuki was feeling. It could have been unease or a type of homesickness. It might even have been despair, but when Shiroe looked inside himself for something similar, what he found was irritation. Maybe that was it.
It was revulsion. Loathing for the ugly situation. The “it” in Akatsuki’s “I wonder if it’s going to stay uncomfortable” had probably stood for “this world,” but at the same time, she’d meant “us.”
Is this really all we are? he asked himself. Is somebody out there underestimating us? Do they think all they have to do is shake us up a bit and we’ll rob and kill each other, arbitrarily riot and cry and despair?
Are we really the sort of beings who’d turn on our friends at the drop of a hat, attacking them and stealing their property, just because we’ve been thrown into a lawless wasteland?
