On a Godless Planet:Volume3A Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Cool Spot

–Might as well change clothes while I take my break.

●

The Mesopotamians and Yomoji were already in the clubroom.

They had all changed into track suits.

“Once you get changed, the leader, or something, of the cultural clubs wants you to register your names.”

●

That makes sense, thought Shifu as she changed in the girl’s locker room.

They must have a lot of people here, she realized after seeing how wet the locker room’s floor was. The two benches in the center were kind of shiny, another sign this place had seen heavy use.

She set her bag down, changed into the track suit she had brought from home, and opened a Revelation Board to check what the cultural club group had said to do.

“S-sorry for making you do all this work, Shifu-san!”

“Eh, I like to get things done. Hm, the cultural club group is asking for a tenth of the food we brought.”

“They’re taking a lot, aren’t they?” commented Ki via Revelation Board.

“We’ll give enough to cover you all, En-chan. I know you have dietary restrictions, so you’ll want to preserve your own food.”

“Thank you.”

“Wait!? Does that mean I don’t have to hand over one of my Karamucho boxes!? Lucky!”

“Mucho, you did bring more food than that, didn’t you? And I don’t just mean Ethnican or Wasabeef.”

“Ah ha ha! You’re so dumb! Karamucho is still my one true love, but as I begin a new life here, I’ve started getting into Umaibo! It feels great when you can buy a whole bag of them for 300 yen! Just so you know, my favorite flavor is mentai and my second favorite is Worcestershire sauce! Pretty great, huh!?”

“How do you expect us to answer that, exactly?”

“Wait, Raidou-senpai! If we’re going to bring up Umaibo, I was really hoping it would come from Senpai! Y’know, her saying, ‘Here, Sumeragi-kun, have an Umaibo’! I so wanted to know what would go through my head in that moment and see how much she leveled up from it! And while we’re at it, the salami flavor is the best! But, Mucho! You defiled the enjoyable future Senpai and I were meant to share! Listen up, Mucho! If I had a handkerchief, I’d be biting it and shrieking in frustration right now. You’re lucky I don’t have one, Mucho!”

“Did any of that long rant contain anything of value?”

“Of course it did! Every bit of it contained the carbon dioxide of my exhalations, which the plants will breathe iiiiiin, breathe ouuuuut, and stop! Boom, new oxygen! What I mean is I’m the foundation of photosynthesis around here. So if I breathe out on this potted plant here: breeeeathe, breeeathe… Did you see that, Temanko!? I just made some oxygen! I totally did!”

“What irresponsible god permitted a creature like this to exist?”

“Heyyyyy! Don’t change the subject, Kuwajiri! Oh, thanks, Raidou-senpai, but I don’t need a handkerchief anymore. That joke is old news by this point. And I’m pretty sure it’d kill me to bite a boy’s handkerchief! Kill me dead!! But if that was Senpai’s handkerchief, I’d take a big old sniff like this...n-no, I couldn’t do it! I couldn’t do anything so indecent! But I’d worship the presence of her scent on it to level her up!”

He really is committed to the bit, thought Shifu as she looked to Senpai-chan, who had just put on her track suit top.

“Would it have a scent?”

“I-I store it in the same drawer as my incense, so it would smell like that!”

“I think she meant a scent other than that.”

Senpai-chan hung her head and placed a hand on her forehead.

At any rate, they were nearly done changing. Since this wasn’t for class, they didn’t use the lockers in here. They would use the ones in their clubroom instead. And Kido-chan…

“Oh, sorry this is taking me so long. I wanted to put on some sun-blocking tights. Feel free to go on ahead.”

There wasn’t much sun out to need blocking, but if she had that excuse ready to go, this was probably habitual.

…She must have her reasons.

But Shifu chose not to ask about it. Kido-chan was getting along fine the way she was and digging into this was unlikely to benefit her in any way.

So the others decided to leave the locker room, leaving Kido-chan behind. Kido-chan was at the point where she would feel bad making them wait for her.

“Okay, we’ll be going then.”

And just as they exchanged a nod…

“Sup. …Oh, is this NOA?”

A familiar face walked in.

●

An unfamiliar face walked in.

“U-um, NOA?”

“It stands for ‘no outsiders allowed’. Each club usually has members from a single mythology, so floors, rooms, or dimensions within the club building tend to be NOA.”

This came from a sharp-faced girl with bluish-black hair worn up in a green bandanna. She looked like an underclassman to me.

“Have you never met her, Senpai-chan? This is Jehu-chan, the 2nd year head of the manga club.”

“Call me TJ.”

“TJ?”

“Touto Jehuty. I’m an Egyptian god. You’re the Senpai-san I’ve heard so much about, aren’t you? We have kind of met before – more passed by each other, I guess.”

“U-umm?”

When was that? I didn’t remember it and it must have shown because TJ-san chose her words carefully.

“It was when you were at the arcade near Nam 1975 with Shifu-san. I go to the arcade a lot and I said hi to Shifu-san then. I guess it’s not surprising you don’t remember.”

“S-sorry…”

“Don’t worry about it,” said TJ-san with a bow toward Kido-san before heading further into the locker room. She set her bag down on one of the benches in the center.

“Shifu-san, what do you make of all this rain?”

“It’s not natural, that’s for sure.”

“Yes, there is no mistaking that.”

“Makes you think some god screwed up using a divine protection, doesn’t it?”

“Eh? Are there really gods powerful enough to cause all this?”

“I mean, Yomoji-chan definitely could.”

That was true. Yomoji-san could cause this level of absurdity without breaking a sweat. But…

“I doubt it was him.”

“Oh? What makes you think that, Kuwajiri-san?”

“Well,” replied Kuwajiri-san, sounding certain. “If it was him, Tachikawa would be fully submerged.”

●

“What is he, an evil god?”

“Shifu-san! Shifu-san! You don’t have to make the usual Raidou-san comment just because he isn’t here!”

“To be clear, I could cause the storming and flooding too.”

“Wait, wait, Kido-san! Don’t remind me how much more powerful you are! It’s too much for this weakling rural god to bear!”

“Okay, I’m stopping you now before you get in another pain-in-the-ass mood.”

●

“Anyway,” said Jehu-chan as she quickly stripped off her uniform and put on her track suit. “I doubt this is Shinto, Norse, or Kido-senpai’s doing.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The river spirits haven’t come up into the floodwaters.”

Kido-chan’s silent nod meant she had noticed that too.

But just to make sure…

“Since we’re working with Shinto, if any of us caused the flooding, the Shinto-based local spirits would be in the water. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Right. The floodwaters have a current, which could be viewed as a river, but also the river water should be mixed in with it all. Yet I didn’t see a single river spirit on my way here.”

“Then what are the rivers doing?”

“I can’t say for sure without heading down to the Tama River, but I bet they’re flowing like normal down below the floodwaters.”

“I want to say that isn’t possible, but anything’s possible with divine power.”

“Um, I know the flooding is only in Tachikawa, so what does the border of the flooding look like?”

“Yeah, there’s probably a lot of compatibility issues there.”

●

“Compatibility?”

“The god who caused it could see something different from the god viewing it, or their believers.”

“You’ll want to dumb that down more.”

When Jehu-chan said that with a smile, Kuwajiri-chan crossed her arms in thought for once. And eventually…

“For example, Yomoji-senpai’s belief system says that ‘god causes calamities, so if god caused it, it must be a calamity.’ So with him, it would appear as a calamity.”

“Umm.”

“So we’d have some evil god stuff going on?”

Kuwajiri-chan nodded at that, but Shifu was a little worried this wasn’t the best way to talk about Yomoji-chan.

But Kuwajiri-chan wasn’t done.

“So if Yomoji-senpai had caused this, it would be a calamity for everyone seeing and experiencing it. Then this flood would wash away the old world. But…”

“In some cases, it can take different forms between those seeing it and experiencing it.”

“What do you mean?”

Jehu-chan nodded at that. She thought for a moment and unnecessarily pointed up toward the ceiling.

“In our mythology, floods are a blessing.”

“In Norse mythology, floods signal the coming of spring as the snow melts or the appearance of a new world.”

“That’s right. The phenomena found in myths come from taking natural phenomena and naming a god or a spirit as their cause. So whichever god or spirit is responsible for a phenomenon in a mythology can change how that phenomenon is seen.”

What did that mean?

“So if Yomoji-san did cause a flood as a calamity, if we observed it, it would become a blessing. Except…”

“Yomoji-chan’s absurdity is too powerful for us to alter with our own interpretation, so it would either be seen as a natural calamity or the work of a really evil god.”

“I remember everyone freaking out when he sent a meteor strike into Tachikawa. Was that because it was beyond anything any of the mythologies could reinterpret?”

“I-I kind of doubt any mythology would have a good interpretation of that.”

“The closest you could get was an impartial recording of a real event, maybe?”

This was a reminder they had been hanging out with a ridiculously powerful being. But them not thinking about it much was probably easier for him anyway.

And Kuwajiri-chan had something else to say.

“It’s the desire to exorcise that kind of evil foreign god that leads to a merging of religions after a war. You often see the losing side’s god abasing themselves before the winning side’s god and changing from an evil god to a valuable god.”

Yeah, Shinto has a lot of that as it spreads eastward.”

“Right,” said Jehu-chan, pointing out the window. “For me and the gods from other regions, a flood like this isn’t a truly overwhelming calamity. It’s only a dangerous area of water. So how the dividing line between flooded and not-flooded works would be based on the rules of the mythology of the god who views it.”

“For Norse gods like us, the flooding would be a snowmelt flood, so if we went to the border, it should look like all the water was rushing into the nearby rivers. I expect that would be true of most mythologies.”

“For us, it would flow into the rivers and the farmlands.”

“Tooru says the Indian mythology way would be interesting. Apparently it would fall straight down at the border and, if they looked down to see where it was going, they would see an elephant or a turtle propping everything up.”

“I think Greek and Roman mythologies would be more or less the same thing.”

Shifu decided to ask Mr. V or Sala-chan about it later.

●

It didn’t take the boys as long to change, so Raidou met up with the Mesopotamians in the courtyard in front of the clubroom.

“Sorry it took us so long to get here.”

“You contacted us before you left, so it wasn’t a problem.”

Bilgamesh and Ki had already changed into track suits and Eshita was wearing a track suit with a mountain parka over it.

Several clubs were working together to add a drainage roof over the eaves. The way they reused the scaffolding as the frame of the new structure was probably the construction club’s idea. Some of the scaffolding materials were left in the center of the courtyard, but…

“We had nothing else to do, so we did some work here too. The club head is inside getting things ready.”

Raidou nodded as Sumeragi approached and first looked to Bilgamesh.

“Your didn’t tuck in your track jacket! Are you feeling alright, Apology Man!?”

“It’s not made to be tucked in.”

“But he needs to stick to it even if it means tucking in his jacket while wearing a gakuran! This is going to dilute his characterization!”

He sure is sticking to the idiot act, was the only real thought Raidou had on that. He then turned toward those two.

“So how did you get here?”

“I went out ahead and summoned him with Call Bil. Then we repeated the process.”

“We could have traveled together, but we wanted to be safe just in case.”

“Right. Who knows what’s going on with this flooding, but I can handle most anything with my spells.”

“Why not equip that giant armor and walk here?”

“That would destroy all the homes on the way. And there’s a lot of those...what are they called? Power lines?”

<I could restore this world of mine if you did destroy it, but I would prefer if you at least tried to avoid doing so.>

“Do you know anything about what’s happening, Balancer?”

<I must remain silent on this one.>

“Does that mean the gods are involved?”

<No comment.>

“You’re being real sus about this.”

<That is all I can say. Because I am a clever AI.>

That felt like an excuse, but Raidou decided not to say so.

But based on this, it seemed likely Kido was right about the flooding being related to some god’s divine protection.

The most powerful god right here was probably Eshita.

Raidou looked her way and Sumeragi happened to ask her a question at the same moment.

“But how did you get here, Mucho? Did you build a raft using Karamucho bags as floats?”

“Huh!? I would never treat these holy snacks that way! I carried them in a box and crossed the floodwaters with a swim ring made from 30-umaibo bags!”

“Why are you like this?”

“It’s Koikeya magic! And waiiiiit! How dare you treat Senpai and my Umaibos that way!!”

And why are you like this too? thought Raidou as he noticed a new shadow on the ground. He looked over to see who it was.

“Excuse me. I am Beisu Seito from the Student Guards. I am taking a roll call, so is everyone from the game club present?”

●

“Oh,” replied Raidou. “You’re Beisu’s wife. I met you at his place a while back, didn’t I?”

“Eh? Oh, yes, I suppose so.”

Seito smiled bitterly and waved a hand side to side.

“Wait, students who are married!? How indecent!”

“Shut up.”

“You two and Raidou-senpai and Shifu-senpai are wild couples, so it’s fine! But when they’re students – and I mean in my year – then it suddenly seems way more indecent!”

<Whether or not that is indecent, I don’t want to hear it from the ape who has a stalker trying to get in through his balcony and wakes up to find his mother in his room.>

“That’s just a little spice to make our boring everyday life more exciting! You always need something like that!”

“So, uh, you are all here then?”

“D-dammit! Did she just ignore me entirely!?”

“I will be going then,” said Seito, moving on to the art club.

“What year is she in?” asked Sumeragi, now that she had left him behind.

“Well…”

How to put this? Raidou chose his words carefully.

“The same as Kuwajiri.”

“So she was the same year as me.”

Raidou and Sumeragi both looked over to see Seito bow toward Kunugi when he emerged from his clubroom.

And Sumeragi suddenly spoke up again.

“Come to think of it, some kind of patrol showed up at my place this morning and I think she was part of it. There was some loser with her.”

“That was probably her husband, Beisu Funto. He’s a 68 user.”

“D-dammit! Why are there so few 98 users at our school!?”

“What are you talking about?”

“People get territorial about what computers they use. Each model has its own faction.”

“So there is more than just that Famicom thing?”

“Yeah, I’ll tell you all about it later.”

But Raidou had to caution Sumeragi about the Beisu couple.

“The Beisu couple are a lot like childhood friends living together, so it isn’t anything like what you’re imagining. They even have separate bedrooms.”

“Eh!? They what!? You mean they’re a step ahead of Senpai and me!?”

“Is there a story behind those two?”

Raidou wasn’t sure.

“They’re Egyptian, meaning they’re not our mythology. We tend not to interfere in that kind of thing. Kunugi’s in charge of them, but he’s a fairly laissez-faire leader.”

“If they’re a couple in their mythology, their relationship will probably grow eventually. I’m a god of love too, so I know all about these things.”

“Yet you don’t understand Senpai-san at all.”

“She’s just weird, okay!?”

“Oh, but now I get it. He uses a 68 cause he’s Egyptian.”

“Hm? Why’s that?”

<He means Sharp’s 16bit X6800 PC. To show off its high specs, it had a demo that used an image of Tutankhamen’s mask to demonstrate its 65536 colors. This had a large impact, so that became the “face” of the model in all its advertisements.>

“I have a 68 because I like playing games, but now that you mention it, that might be why Beisu has one.”

Just then, Shifu’s voice came from the club building entrance on the other side of the courtyard.

“Tooruuu. We’re done changing.”

●

Shifu knew she was just going to get wet again, so she had simply put her track jacket on over her swimsuit. Dressed like that, she led the rest of the girls over toward their clubroom.

The rain was falling hard in the courtyard. She passed Seito on the way and waved a quick greeting. Seito exchanged some words with Kuwajiri, so Shifu left them to it.

“Is it raining harder now?”

“The other clubs added roofs to the eaves, so it won’t cause us any trouble.”

Shifu saw Jehu-chan also leave the club building after changing and enter the manga clubroom a short distance away. She waved this way first, so Shifu waved back. Once Jehu-chan was in the clubroom, there was some applause within. Apparently she was pretty popular or had a lot of support.

But anyway…

“Should we start preparing lunch?”

“What happened to the food we brought?”

“Any supplies that aren’t machines or batteries or whatever were carried up to the storage area by the laborer spirits. They have been organized by club, so we can retrieve ours if we bring them our chip.”

“What kind of spirits?”

“Since the club building is used by several different mythologies, there’s a wide variety. I think it was mostly kobolds and spriggans this time.”

“There really are a lot of options.”

“Shinto doesn’t have much of those occupational spirits.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” replied Tenma-chan. “Shinto has a clear division between the realm of the gods and the realm of humanity and there are clearly defined occupational gods, so while we do have divine protections to purify away the difficulties of a job, we generally don’t have creatures that assist with a job.”

“Oh, so you don’t have anyone do the work while you’re asleep?”

“Correct. With the gods having occupations and with the purification of difficulties, there is no room for creatures that live alongside humans like the Western kobolds. The closest thing is having a god visit a faithful human to purify away their difficulties.”

“So generally the gods and the humans interact directly and, while the gods will provide assistance, they want the humans to actually do the work? Sounds like a strong focus on self-responsibility.”

“When you fail, it means you failed in spite of your god’s purification, so it is still your responsibility and you can’t blame anyone but yourself. So you could see seppuku and suicide in general as a way of ‘purifying yourself from the world’ because you failed even with your god’s assistance.”

“Wait...if failure is reason enough to kill yourself, then I should be dead a hundred times over by now.”

“You don’t have to take it quite that seriously.”

“Shinto was formed by absorbing indigenous gods across Japan. It isn’t like in the West were the indigenous culture changed form but survived even as a new religion spread across the land.”

“So is Shinto a little stricter in that regard?”

“No,” replied Tenma-chan. “That is actually what makes Shinto so lax. The distinction between gods and humans and the purification rules have been set as the bare minimum necessary, so it can accept just about anything else without issue. That’s why spirits from other mythologies can be active in this club building and elsewhere without violating any Shinto rules. And there are no dietary restrictions.”

Everyone nodded in agreement. And eventually, En-chan raised her hand.

“Temanko, can I ask about something I noticed?”

“Is that just…my official nickname now?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said En-chan with a dismissive wave. And then…

“Temanko, since you’re here, are you part of the game club?”

●

“Yesssss! New member acquiiiiiired!”

“Eh? Wait, but my hobby is reading.”

“We’re fine with you belonging to another club too.”

“Okay, okay. You’re our only first year so far, but that means you’ll automatically be the leader of the club in the future. Congrats.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait. I don’t want that.”

“But you did join us on the camping trip.”

“True. And that required a payment of 3000 yen. I paid mine.”

“Hey! Temanko! 3000 yen! You don’t have it!? Then start hopping!”

●

“Huh!? What’s that, Tenma-kun!? You sold yourself to the game club for 3000 yen!? What are you talking about!?”

“Ah ha ha ha ha! I don’t get it either, but it sounds hilarious, Sugawara-kouhai! So keep at it! If we let you get away with it, you’d just read books all day long!”

“What’s wrong with letting her do that?”

●

Raidou looked away from the knowledge god who was hanging her head.

“That means we have a total of 11 members. That’s a pretty big club.”

“When we play games, we’ll have to make teams or wait our turn.”

“Um, could you at least look at me when you’re talking about me?”

“Temanko-kouhai. Some things are just lost causes.”

“I’m really starting to learn that!”

“I need to tell all the world’s entrance exam students that you can win over a god of education for just 3000 yen.”

Meanwhile, the clubroom door opened.

“Heyyyy, everything’s ready iiiinside.”

That meant it was time for a break.

●

The clubroom had become a paradise.

A forest of trees, their branches laden with nuts and fruits, grew from a grassy field mowed to just the right length. A stream of clean water flowed by, birds sang pleasantly, and the sky was pure blue.

“I haven’t maaaade something like this in soooo long. It covers a raaaadius of 10 thousand kanim, but it isn’t all flaaaat, so it should be preeeetty interesting.”

Raidou-san slapped Yomoji-san on the head.

“Shinsei, who told you to turn our clubroom into a paradise?”

“Oh, this is noooo paradise. There’s no serrrrpent here.”

“Then what is it?” everyone wondered while Sumeragi-kun spoke up.

“Is it a real-life Populous?”

“Corrrrect! We can make a buuuunch of dummy residents and compete! With some reallll calamities!”

Raidou-san slapped Yomoji-san on the head again.

“Make it more compact.”

“Tooruuuuuu?”

“C’mon, it does sound a little fun.”

“Riiiight?”

Yomoji-san then compressed it all down to handheld size.

“Absurrrrd.”

Everything that had stretched out as far as the eye could see was instantly about B4 size.

“Raiiiidou-kun, do you want to beeee the west side?”

“Already!? Have you even debugged it yet?”

I had no idea what was happening, but the compression had left the usual clubroom behind. Duckboards to act as a temporary floor were stacked up next to the wall. They had probably been distributed by the cultural club group.

“Okay, let’s just lay these out on the floor and place the mats on top.”

“Oh, sorry, Shifu. Our game’s already started.”

“What kind of absurdity is this?”

“By the away, if you’re curious about the kanim that Club Head Yomoji mentioned before, a kaneh (plural: kanim) is an ancient Middle Eastern unit of length measuring approximately 300cm. So a radius of 10 thousand kanim would be 30km.”

<Speaking of kanim, some texts say they are the same as 500 cubits. In this case, a cubit is around 45cm, so 1 kaneh would be 225m. That would mean 10 thousand kanim is 2250km, which is quite a large distance.>

“U-um, and that 2250km is only the radius?”

“For reference, Japan’s Honshu is approximately 1500km long.”

“What in the world…” I muttered a lot like Sumeragi-kun, but Shifu-san waved a hand to stop me. She was currently glaring over at Yomoji-san playing that absurd game.

“Okay, okay. We’ll set the room up, but you owe me one for this, Tooru.”

“Yeah, sorry. Come up with something you want me to do for you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Shifu-san, but she was already smiling, which made me a little jealous.

And once we had a new floor ready from the duckboards and mats…

“It doesn’t look like the rain is going to let up anytime soon, so how about we have lunch?”

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