“He’s an oni,” Yuichi said. “He’s looking after Monika right now. There’s a chance the Divine Vessels could start resonating out of the blue and she could get ambushed, after all. Since we can’t tell when they resonate, we need to be on our guard at all times.”
“Yeah, it was a real surprise that he asked me,” Ibaraki said. “Knowing Yuichi, I thought he’d be more like, ‘Ambushes? Yeah, bring it on!’”
“What kind of person do you think I am?” Yuichi asked, feeling slightly hurt.
“Okay, so I know all the members of your party,” Tomomi said. “Now, what are you doing here at my restaurant?”
“It’s an information meeting about Evil God stuff, obviously,” said Monika. “Everyone, make your reports!”
The disembodied parts of the Evil God were known as Divine Vessels. They resonated from time to time, which made it possible to know the locations of other Divine Vessels. But you could only sense the resonance if a Vessel had taken you as a host.
The Vessels in Monika’s possession already had hosts somewhere else, which meant she couldn’t feel them resonating. Instead, she had asked Yuichi and the others to be on the lookout for suspicious people who seemed like they might have Vessels.
But nobody responded to Monika’s call.
“Wait a minute! No one has anything?!” Monika acted surprised, but Yuichi found it only natural.
“Well, how are we even supposed to tell?” Ibaraki complained. “You told us to look for suspicious people, but everyone’s suspicious in our business, y’know? I mean, I did keep an eye out for extra-suspicious people...” He trailed off with a sigh.
“Monika never thinks these things through...” Yoriko joined in with a sigh of her own.
“Actually, there’s someone suspicious at our school I was thinking of mentioning,” said Yuichi. “She’s a teacher named Makina Shikitani.”
“Wait a minute! What’s she doing there?” Monika asked, having an immediate reaction to the name.
“She said the guy who crashed the truck into the cafe was working for her,” said Yuichi. “What do you think it means?”
Makina had appeared abruptly as a teacher at Seishin High. It seemed to Yuichi that she must be involved with the Divine Vessels business somehow.
“He only had one Divine Vessel, so he’s probably out of the fight, but...” Monika frowned.
“The new teacher, Shikitani? She’s a substitute, right? Does she really have a connection to the Divine Vessels?” Tomomi asked dubiously.
“She’s an Outer,” Yuichi said. “She seems to have some kind of plan for the school. I don’t know if it’s connected to the Divine Vessels, but... be careful around her, okay, Hamasaki?”
“But can Outers even use Divine Vessels?” Tomomi asked. “I thought event items like those were off limits for them.”
Yuichi had been told that Outers existed outside of destiny — outside of stories. Even if they could influence events in destiny, they themselves couldn’t get directly involved. That should mean that they couldn’t become hosts for Divine Vessels. At least, that was what Tomomi seemed to be thinking.
“Yeah, so she must have a proxy she’s acting through,” Monika said. “Outers often get involved in stories in ‘helper’ roles.”
“Then if we defeated her proxy and recovered the Divine Vessel, would it be safe to assume she’s not involved anymore?” Yuichi asked. There was a chance she might get a new one, of course, but if they started down that road, there would be no end to it.
“Even if she’s not connected to the Divine Vessels, you should still watch out for Makina! She’s gotta be plotting something bad!” Monika said, as if trying to keep Yuichi from getting too optimistic.
“She made it pretty clear that she’s a bad person, yeah...” Yuichi grimaced as he remembered the way Makina seemed to like toying with people.
“Yuichi. I think you’re probably underestimating her,” Monika said. “Outers are garbage people who view everyone else as disposable characters in stories, but she’s especially dangerous.”
“Yeah, she locked me up, which was pretty rough,” Yuichi responded lightly. She did seem like an inherently cruel person, but it was hard to imagine she could be that much of a threat. If he ever had to fight her, he could probably win, so it wouldn’t be hard to just force her out of their lives if things ever got desperate.
“Huh? She did what?! I’m surprised you made it out alive!” Monika exclaimed. “Listen, the world she comes from is ‘A World of Brooding Isolation.’ Put simply, it’s a death game thriller world. She locks people away and forces them into extreme situations to kill them!”
“Really? She didn’t seem like she’d go that far to me...” Yuichi thought back, and she hadn’t seemed particularly bloodthirsty.
“The goal of most Outers isn’t to kill,” Monika said. “They usually just want to play around with the stories. But she’s different. When she gets involved, people always die. Most of the time, everyone involved dies, except once in a while, when a single ‘protagonist’ gets to survive!”
If that was the case, then she really had taken it easy on Yuichi. There had been no death condition in the game Makina had set up for him.
“But all she can do is lock you in,” Yuichi said. “She can’t force people to kill each other.”
All she’d done was to make it impossible for him to leave the room. If he’d been stuck in there for a really long time, maybe it would have come to that, but most people wouldn’t get that desperate that quickly.
“I told you before that Worldview Holders known as Outers have abilities that let them to impose their worldviews on others, right?” Monika asked. “Her ability is ‘Sealed Room Game.’ She can impose rules on the people she locks up in her rooms.”
“How much can those rules make you do, though?” Yuichi asked. “I don’t think she did anything to me.”
Yuichi had been locked inside the student guidance room and made to play her game, but he didn’t remember feeling any sort of compulsion.
“It’s kind of like an irresistible hypnosis, I guess,” Monika said. “All sentient life inside the closed space must follow the rules. In extreme situations, it can even be things like, ‘If you move, you die.’”
“Then what can you even do against her?” Yuichi demanded. If she could make up rules like that, she could do literally anything.
“Well, she does them so she can enjoy the ‘game,’” Monika responded, “I doubt she’d find ‘if you move, you die’ very much fun. But it does basically leave you subject to her whims.”
“Which means if you get sealed inside, it’s over. What if you try to destroy the room?” Yuichi asked.
If the ability could only be used in a closed space, it seemed to Yuichi, destroying the room would be your best option to break out.
“Not possible,” said Monika. “She has another ability called ‘Inviolable Domain.’ It’s a protective field she uses to keep items necessary to the game from being destroyed, which includes the enclosed space, as well as herself. In other words, when she’s in her own world, she’s invincible.”
“That’s crazy...” Yuichi was stunned. If that was true, then there was no way to deal with Makina but to play along with her games.
“I told you she was dangerous! You have to be really careful! As long as you remain on your guard, you can probably avoid getting stuck in her closed spaces.” Monika’s tone was extremely serious.
“Of course, just because she’s invincible doesn’t mean there’s no way to deal with her,” Tomomi chimed in. “I mean, it stands to reason, right? If people like her could just do whatever they wanted, the world would be in chaos.”
“That may be true, but then how do you deal with her?” Monika asked.
“There are limitations that keep an Outer’s abilities from being too overpowered,” said Tomomi. “They’re more like objections than anything else, really, but what it comes down to is that they can’t activate their effe
cts within a story without fulfilling certain restrictions. It’s what keeps them from using their abilities limitlessly.”
“So... Tomomi, was it? I don’t know Makina’s restrictions. Do you?” Monika stared at her intently.
“Of course not.” Tomomi brushed the question off.
“Actually... she mentioned something about that,” Yuichi said. “That she couldn’t use the ability in closed spaces she made herself, and she had to be inside them.” The word “restrictions” had triggered a memory; he was pretty sure Makina had mentioned something like that.
“That sounds about right,” Tomomi mused. “But if those are the only restrictions, it’s still unbalanced. There must be more to it.”
She was probably right. Still, they had no way of knowing what else there might be, which meant they had to stay on their guard about Makina.
Yuichi would take Monika’s warning to heart.
Chapter 5: Dating My Club Senior (With Little Sister and Classmate Monitoring)
At first, Kanako just read books to pass the time.
She did it on the way to and from school, and she would stay in the library until dinnertime. As long as she said was studying, her mother wouldn’t stop her.
She chose the library as her refuge because no one would find it strange for an elementary school student to spend long hours there.
She spent her time in idleness, pretending to read books, wiling away hours she would otherwise have to spend with her mother. Anyone who saw her would just think she was a regular bookworm.
Then one day, a voice abruptly interrupted her routine. “You haven’t read any of it, have you?”
Kanako glanced up from the book, and looked beside her. There was a beautiful woman in glasses sitting there.
She wasn’t sure how to react to being addressed by a total stranger like this, and she was shocked to have been seen through in such a manner.
It was quiet. The library was always quiet, but it was even quieter now than it usually was. She realized that she and the woman were the only ones in the small room.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“A book-loving sorceress.”
“Are you making fun of me?” Kanako asked indignantly. Even if she was just a child, she wasn’t going to fall for something like that.
“If you want me to prove it, I will,” the woman said. “If I show you a spell, will you believe me, then? ...Ah, I know. You won’t be able to see out the windows. Instead, you’ll see a view into another world. How about that?” The woman pointed to the window.
Kanako froze.
The sight that hung before her eyes was unlike anything she could ever have imagined.
The library was not well-lit even at noon, but now, it was illuminated by blinding sunlight. A blue sky spread out wide above.
In it, an enormous dragon and bird were locked in battle. The dragon won, but just as it was about to fly off with the bird in its talons, an enormous fish jumped up from below and gobbled them both whole.
When she looked more carefully, she could see all kinds of things in that sky. Winged horses and women with wings for arms. Witches on brooms and knights on flying carpets, all going this way and that.
Kanako drew closer to the window.
“You cannot open the windows,” the woman said. “But you’ll have no trouble seeing what’s out there. Look all you like.”
Kanako looked down below.
A sea as red as blood spread out before her. The fish that had swallowed the dragon landed with a big splash.
She looked to the horizon and saw that it was curved. If this world was a sphere, then the planet must be much smaller than Earth.
Kanako looked up above.
She saw three round moons, red, black, and white, each moving in strange ways. The red throbbed, the black trembled, and the white seemed to spin. Then, as they all turned towards her, she realized that they were eyes.
It gave Kanako a jolt.
She realized that something else had entered her line of vision while she was looking up at the sky.
It was a castle, beautiful, white, and sparkling. It was floating atop an enormous island.
“Do you believe I’m a sorceress now?” the woman asked.
Kanako listened distantly to the words as she looked out the window, trying various angles. It was true that she couldn’t open the window, but it was clearly more than a simple image projected onto it.
It was really there. Kanako was convinced.
“Yeah... but why...?” Kanako came back and sat down next to the woman.
It was clear that she had some sort of mysterious power, yet Kanako didn’t find it frightening.
If this sorceress had come to her, then surely, she had come to take Kanako somewhere. To the world outside the window, perhaps? While Kanako turned over the woman’s potential intentions over and over in her mind, the woman set a book down on the desk. It was just an ordinary novel for children, though it came in a box with rather extravagant binding.
A book given to her by a sorceress. It could be something terrible, but Kanako’s reaction was not fear, but disappointment.
“I want you to read this,” the woman said. “Hmm? You seem to be disappointed... were you expecting something better?”
“No, but...” Kanako said. She had apparently been unable to conceal her disappointment.
“I had a feeling you were only pretending to read books,” the woman said. “So I wanted to teach you the joy of reading by offering you one of my favorites.”
“But even if you leave it there, I might not read it.” Kanako said sulkily.
“Then I suppose that’s what you’ll do. If I forced you to read it, it would defeat the point.” The woman stood up and left the room.
Kanako remained behind, still confused about everything.
The minute the woman left, the sunlight dimmed abruptly. When Kanako looked outside, all she could see was the dingy wall of the next building over. Then, to complete the return to normalcy, people appeared again.
It was almost like a daydream. But the sorceress had definitely been there. The book she had left behind was proof.
Unable to simply ignore all of that, Kanako decided to start reading the book.
It was a fantasy, the story of a young child brought to our world from another as a changeling, who eventually returned to the original world and had an adventure there. Kanako soon found herself engrossed in the book.
The protagonist’s circumstances matched Kanako’s own.
For a long time, she’d held a vague feeling that not everything was the way it was supposed to be. Maybe all children in circumstances like Kanako’s felt that way: Was I found somewhere? Did someone take me in?
An idea entered Kanako’s mind. Was the sorceress trying to tell her that she was not a native of this world?
Why would a sorceress appear out of nowhere and give her a book? There must be a reason. She must have come here with some special purpose.
Gradually, that appealing daydream took over Kanako’s mind. She had real parents out there somewhere. If only she could get to them, her life would be happy. Someday, maybe, they would come to get her.
Most people would find that a foolish idea. But Kanako knew that magic existed. She had seen another world — an isekai — with her own eyes.
Kanako lost herself in reading, and escaping into that daydream carried her through her elementary school years. She read piles of these “isekai” stories, dreamed of going to an isekai, and eventually started thinking about writing a story of her own. And now, in present day, having achieved her dream of becoming a writer...
...Kanako was a slave to a deadline.
✽✽✽✽✽
It was a Sunday in early September, a little before noon, at the station building.
In the middle of the station’s concourse was a meeting spot known as the Carillon Bell. Aiko was there, but she wasn’t at the bell. She was hiding behind a nearby pillar, watching.
>
Her attention was focused on Yuichi. He was wearing a light jacket and jeans combo, which she had seen him in before, and he was just standing under the bell, not doing anything in particular.
What a way to spend my day off... Aiko thought.
Yuichi was going out on the town with Kanako today, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She’d spent the whole morning fidgeting, until the next thing she knew, she was here.
“Noro.”
“Eek!” The sudden voice behind her caused Aiko to jump.
“Please, keep it down,” the voice chided her. It was a girl, wearing a hat pulled low over her face. She was dressed casually, in a T-shirt and jeans. It was possibly supposed to help her blend in, but it couldn’t hide the fact that she was a beautiful young girl.
“Huh? Yoriko?” Aiko asked.
It was indeed Yuichi’s little sister, Yoriko Sakaki, and her exasperation with Aiko was palpable. “What, exactly, are you doing here?” she asked.
“The same thing as you, probably!” Aiko said indignantly. The surprise had annoyed the already-aggravated Aiko.
“Well, yes, but you aren’t very well hidden, you know,” said Yoriko. “I spotted you right away.”
“I-I wasn’t trying to hide!” It was true she was trying to blend in, but she wasn’t trying to hide, or follow him, or anything like that... Although, now that Aiko thought about it, she wasn’t entirely sure what she was trying to do.
“But Orihara, eh?” Yoriko asked. “I never expected this development. I thought she had no interest in my brother...”
Yoriko had met Kanako for the first time during their summer training camp, so she must have made that determination then.
“Yeah, I thought the same thing...” Aiko murmured. Kanako usually referred to Yuichi as “Sakaki the Younger,” so Aiko had assumed she only thought of him as Mutsuko’s kid brother.
“Research for a story, perhaps?” Yoriko asked. “No... if that was all she was doing, she wouldn’t have to drag my brother along! She could have asked Big Sis or you!”
“I’m not sure I’d go along if she asked me, though...” said Aiko. “Hey, why don’t we meet up with them? They’re not necessarily on a date, right? And we probably wouldn’t get in the way of her research.”
The Melancholy of the High School Girl Light Novel Author?! Page 11
