“Hell,” Akuto whispered. The black figure, however, denied this.
“It’s not even hell. It’s not even pain. It’s nothing.”
“The only thing in the Void Universe is existence itself.”
Suddenly there was another voice. When they looked, there was nobody there. But when they looked away, a figure in red appeared. It had the exact same nature as the figure in black.
“I am the Faceless Universe.”
It was a different voice than the black figure. But its voice was just like the other, so faint it was hard to hear.
“...The same as the Faceless Power?” Akuto asked, and the red figure answered, and continued.
“In the Faceless Universe, existence melds together. Primitive life maintains external walls for the sake of its existence, but two life forms meeting results in the destruction of their walls. They devour each other. There, the existences point at each other, and shout, ‘You!’”
An image of the Faceless Universe’s vision spread out before them. There were multiple beings there. They were akin to an amoeba, or a water droplet in zero gravity, or perhaps a cloud, and were squirming in the void as if seeking each other out. They made the same sound as the ones in the void universe.
“You!”
Sometimes, they would run into each other by chance. And in that moment,
“You!”
The sound was the same as before, but now it sounded joyous.
“It’s a different ‘you’ than the Void Universe. It’s a ‘you’ of discovery,” Akuto whispered. The red figure agreed.
“Consumption. Only in that instant is another noticed. ‘You! I finally found you!’ it screams.”
The image changed. Two beings collided and became one. Then, another voice was born.
“But in the next instant, there’s no telling who’s who. However, what should be a single being is instead filled with a voice inside. Who! Who! Who! In the Faceless Universe, there is a single instant of ‘You’, followed by an eternity of terrible ‘Who!’.”
“When another is found, they cease to be another. However, others make you realize, whether you want to or not, that you yourself exist.”
Akuto whispered to himself as he gathered his thoughts. And then he had a realization, and let out a sharp gasp.
“The awfulness felt when you realized that you are you... The Law of Identity!”
When he realized this, another voice appeared.
“The Faceless Universe allows the Law of Identity to exist.”
Now it was a figure in blue.
“I am the Gravity Universe. There, existence becomes one with its outer walls and gains mass.”
The image turned to that of the gravity universe. There was light and darkness. And existence there, while still amoeba-like, had clearly defined walls separating it from its exterior. They were like the walls of a cell, shining in the reflected light.
“You!” the voices shouted. But though it was the same sound, they sounded like an angry yell. This time, the beings were aiming for each other. They would fly at each other in order to collide.
“The walls mean that the cry of ‘Who!’ never escapes to the outside. The beings advance in search of others,” the blue figure said, as they continued to see what was happening. The beings collided, and the one with the weaker walls burst. Most of its insides would melt into space, but a tiny part was absorbed by the walls of the stronger.
“Consumption?” Akuto’s voice shook as he watched this. A voice was emitted from the beings that he’d never heard before.
“The loss of the walls means the loss of being itself. So when the walls collide, a scream is heard. ‘I killed! I killed! I killed!’”
As Akuto sat in silence, a new voice could be heard.
“The Gravity Universe allows pleasure to exist.”
This one was white. The images changed again. This time he saw the brilliant sparkling of stars. There was life there, but primitive. Single-celled organisms were starting to split.
“I am the Antigravity Universe. Here, existence increases in number. Walls swell and split.”
“Voices fill the space. Me! Me! Me!”
“Me!”
It was a voice of newborn joy.
“The Antigravity Universe allows love to exist.”
Beings there consumed each other, but the moment they collided, sometimes they shared their being, and gave birth to new existence.
“Me!”
“You!”
“I killed!”
“I increased!”
Lively voices filled the space.
“I guess the universe I know is really close. Is that all the universes, then?” Akuto asked. And the outer gods said no.
“These are the original models that gave birth to the universes.”
Their voices compelled him to look behind them. He did so, looking out towards the horizon. There were shadows! Shadows! Shadows! as far as he could see. These were not simple figures like the ones he’d seen so far. They had different clothes. Different genders. Their shadows flickered in the corner of his eye. And within them, they had billions of beings. Each of the shadows had ghosts within them, just like Akuto.
“Are they all like me?” he asked, and the outer gods disappeared without answering. The people, or universes, that he’d glimpsed vanished as well. Only Boichiro and Akuto remained at the table.
“They’re probably the same as us.”
They sat in shocked silence for a while, but eventually Boichiro was the first to speak.
“They, and you, are universes. God Universes, I guess you could call them. No, you could say that until you unleashed the possibilities of the world, you alone were like them.”
Boichiro pointed at Akuto, Akuto let out a long sigh and nodded.
“The birth of a universe is like the birth of a story. If a universe is a collection of stories, there could be any number of beings on the outside that are like us.”
“Which means there should be a spectrum,” Boichiro said, suddenly sure of himself.
“A spectrum? Of what?” Akuto asked. And the outer gods responded.
“A spectrum. In other words, they can be divided into levels. Levels of ‘story density’, you could call it. Each of them has been turned into a story at different levels. That’s one way to think of it, anyway.”
“And our level of storification is strong?”
“We realize our world is fictional. So it must be strong. Don’t you think?”
Boichiro’s words made Akuto remember something. Those stories which seemed under the outer gods’ influence seemed to be those where the world’s fictional nature could not be realized. These stories were always those of people who’d only been incarnated once.
“After looking outside, only now do I feel like I understand myself.” Akuto nodded.
“But in the end, the outer gods themselves are fictional. They just can’t tell the difference between gods, humanity, and ghosts themselves. Only when a higher being tells you, and your universe is walled off, can you clearly understand what’s a god, what’s a human, and what’s a ghost. You understand who they are inside.”
Akuto thought to himself as he listened to Boichiro’s analysis.
“Now... that means we have to think of what we say to our own higher power in answer. I want to save not just what’s inside me, but everything in the Law of Identity’s universe. I want to free them from their stories. That is my wish,” Akuto said. Now it was Boichiro’s turn to think.
“...We’ll just have to assume that stories are viruses. Originally, when living creatures were born from the anti-gravity universe, they should have been considered complete. No matter how complex a creature’s cells become, and how complex their reflexes, creatures consume, kill, and give birth. That’s all. There’s no sin or forgiveness there. There can’t be.”
“But the outer gods brought the idea of an unreasonable death into me. Their story density should be low.”
“But we should still try to avoid meaningless murder.”
“You only say that because the stories tell you that you should. But you said that stories were the greatest murderers of all.”
Boichiro’s words made Akuto pause in thought for a moment, and call someone else. He waved a hand out towards the horizon. A dark-skinned, heavily-built man walked towards them from beyond the horizon.
Marine.
The man who’d once lead the Republic, used the Faceless Power, and battled with Akuto. He was also the one who, through no will of his own, caused the destruction of the world.
“I feel like I’ve been called as a representative of ideology, and I have to say it upsets me.”
Like the other ghosts that had been summoned, Marine opened with a complaint.
“Ghosts are always complaining to me.” Akuto shrugged.
“Because, of course, you killed us. But you’re here before me, unafraid of my condemnation. You deserve credit for that, at least.”
Marine laughed loudly, and sat down in the chair with bold, exaggerated movements.
“If you’re my ghost, then that’s just me praising myself,” Akuto whispered.
“Don’t worry about it. Humans and ghosts are indistinguishable from the outside,” Marine said.
“Yeah. That’s starting to seem to me to be the reason why murder should be avoided. If you’re really someone else, people should have no laws but those of living things.”
“That’s the good part of stories. If you allow others to exist inside you as ghosts, you can love them, and thus avoid consuming and murdering them. Even if that gives you no advantages in reproducing and splitting.”
Marine looked at him as if surprised that it took Akuto this long to understand.
“But I’m looking at you as a manifestation of the bad side of stories. That’s why I’m here.”
Akuto looked back at Marine.
“That can only take us back to the first debate we began with. The nature of a ghost creates others. The ghosts of the Republic citizens were oppressed by the ghosts of the Empire. Pointing out that this oppression was only a fantasy also means throwing away the good side of stories,” Marine responded.
Akuto flinched, as if he’d been caught by a weakness in his argument.
“I see. And I was a man who was willing to throw that good side away.”
“You were a man without love, is what that means.” Marine laughed.
“And that’s my sin?”
Akuto always had a serious look on his face, but now his expression was completely frozen. Marine flashed a natural smile.
“My friend, the answer of the condemned has been given. Isn’t that enough?”
“But, what does that matter? Basically, I’m stuck, unable to break out from within myself. I can’t free everyone, if it’s been decided that I’m carrying a contradiction I can’t solve.”
“Then perhaps I have a solution.”
Suddenly Boichiro spoke.
“First, erase everything but us.”
Akuto didn’t know what to make of that.
“What are you going to do?”
“Just do it.”
There was resolve in Boichiro’s words. So Akuto did as he was told, erasing both Marine and the table. There was silence, as Akuto and Hiroshi sat alone across from each other.
“Will this... do?”
“Yes.”
Hiroshi nodded, and began to speak, as if he was reluctant to say anything.
“Actually, I’d been resolved to do this from the start.”
“Resolved?”
“No, I mean I knew from the start. That it was a problem you wouldn’t be able to solve yourself.”
“That’s rather rude... But yes, I’m afraid you’re right. There’s a reason they called me the Demon King. I’m a weapon. In the end, all I have is logic, not love.”
“You should’ve noticed that when you were alive.” Hiroshi laughed.
Akuto laughed too, this time.
“You’ve got that right.”
“Now, on to the point...” Hiroshi leaned forward.
“Make a world where I’m the hero.”
“Huh?” Akuto was stunned.
“A world where I’m the hero, I said. One with as low a story density as possible.”
“You just want to be the hero? ... No, that doesn’t feel likely.”
“Correct. A world where I’m a normal person. That’s what I want you to make.”
Hiroshi was serious. And that only made Akuto more confused.
“What happens then?”
“I’m going to redo my life, with my memories, in a world which isn’t very story-fied. And there, I’m going to write a story about destroying stories.”
Akuto’s eyes went wide.
“That’s... an unexpected idea.”
“Stories have their good sides... so maybe it’s impossible to get rid of them entirely. But if nothing else, I’ll be able to put an end to your story.”
“In other words, you’re going to write my story... and end it.”
“Yes.”
Akuto wasn’t sure what to think. This was an idea he’d never come up with.
“Is it okay for me to ask you that?”
He couldn’t predict what would happen, but he knew that if it worked, it would put him on a course for a true ending.
“It’s fine. It’s something only I can do, and anyway, killing you is my goal. And by doing that, I can save this world. That’s how it feels to me,” Hiroshi said softly.
Akuto stared him in the eyes for a moment, and then smiled.
“Alright. I’ll rebuild the afterlife then. You want me to strengthen the influence of the outer gods, and return the world to its pre-mana-civilization form, right?”
“That’s right. Maybe sometime in the 1990s?”
“I’ll try it. How it works... is up to you.” Akuto balled up the world in his hands again, and then let it spread out wide.
5 - Incarnation
Our minds are infected by a virus called “stories” that someone injected into our brains. That’s what I said. We must abandon stories. I said that too. And I’ve seen the first humans, and the birth of stories, too.
The result of all that is the person I am now. The writer of this story.
But as I said at the beginning, it took me until the death of my ex-girlfriend to realize my destiny. Living in a world with a low story density had given me what amounted to amnesia. Perhaps I needed an event that was like an overdose of stories to remember.
After my memories came back, I spent a fairly long time writing about the life of Akuto Sai. This, I believe, is the end of that process.
But it wasn’t easy.
Around 2010, when the story began to reach its end, it took courage to start writing. I had no ideas in my brain, just a dull headache. It was like I was being slowly strangled by an invisible noose around my throat. There was a strange, unpleasant feeling, a weight that made it hard to move, or hard to even stand up. This unpleasant feeling only grew as my desire to write down these words increased.
I knew what writers had always called this. A slump. Writer’s block.
Someone of a more traditional literary bent might’ve called it a devouring mold, or a stalking black dog. But I gave it a stupider name: the crazy monster. The crazy monster sat in the corner of the room, and whenever I stared at it, it would leap on my shoulders.
If I slept, or did something to distract myself that involved no mental work whatsoever, it would eventually vanish. But during the times when that wasn’t possible, I would have to do a little exercise to get the unpleasantness off my shoulders.
The problem was, I would have to exercise to the point where it put a serious strain on me for it to have any effect, and this was also a bit of a gamble. Sometimes it would help, and other times, it created
a pain in my shoulders that made me want to throw up. The pain got to the point where it was devouring my life.
By the time I realized that I couldn’t defeat it, or tame it, it finally occurred to me what it was. It was lightness. The lighter I tried to make what I was writing, the harder it became to write.
I need to elaborate more about what I mean by “lightness”.
Normally, the word would refer to something superficial. Something that didn’t make you think. But in this case, I mean something virtual.
First, the main characters had left their physical bodies behind. By this I mean that they were capable of surviving physical shocks that would kill an ordinary human, and sometimes would display superhuman powers. For this reason, the characters had personalities that were extremely slanted in one direction or another, and seemed inhuman.
The story was written to have a happy ending, and even if there was some unhappiness, it was there for a reason. Sometimes, to avoid an unhappy story, the characters wouldn’t age, and their minds wouldn’t mature. When I tried to write these “light” stories, the unpleasant feeling was always there.
So what if I tried to write a “heavy” story? I tried it, just to get my mind off things, and the more “virtual” it became (that is, even if the characters seemed real, if the story was still fictional) the more the “crazy monster” would be waiting for me.
It was clear that this was an obstacle set by the stories themselves.
I felt like I’d seen the core essence of stories. This was a story written to destroy stories, and it was clear that the stories were fighting back. Looking back, there had been many obstacles in my way up until this point, but all of them were caused by the stories controlling my memories and actions. This goes for how books sell, too.
People are ashamed of “light” stories. But the lightest stories are the ones they love. Many people buy light stories in secret, stories that satisfy their base urges. The heavy stories, on the other hand, are the ones that are said to capture the essence of humanity, and those who write them are praised and called “intellectuals”. And even the most impossible stories are allowed to be believed if they become the text of a religion.
Are stories like gravity? Do they pin us to the Earth with their weight, and make us avoid lightness? And if the true nature of humans is to seek lightness...
Demon King Daimaou: Volume 13 Page 8
