Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko:Volume7 Prologue

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Prologue - If Space Stretched Out Beyond

“I was given a game.”

Erio immediately reported this to me without even saying hello when she came back from minding the candy store.

When I went to the front door to greet my cousin and saw what she was holding up expressionlessly, I said, “Huh?” Did she receive her daily wage in kind? I wondered, as I tilted my head. But it didn’t appear to be the case.

“You were given? From whom? Anyway, wipe your feet with this,” I said, handing her a cloth. Erio, who still couldn’t shake off her habit of going outside barefoot, picked up the cloth and continued the conversation with an attitude that suggested that she was simply holding onto it for the time being.

“A stranger.”

“Don’t accept things from strangers.”

I pinched Erio’s cheek and pulled it. “Mmmph,” she protested, slapping my arm with the cloth I gave him. Even though I wanted her to wipe her feet with it instead. It was about time she got into the habit of wearing shoes.

Anyway, this was a day off, a Saturday evening. Mid-October, about three weeks after September’s school festival.

Good evening, this is Niwa Makoto. Due to certain circumstances, I used up all my Youth Points, so I was feeling pretty depleted lately. I was trying to replenish my reserves, but it was proving difficult.

“Was it really given to you by someone you don’t remember? Or rather, was it given to you at the candy store?”

“Yes, yes.”

Erio nodded twice. She then tried to go up into the hallway without wiping her feet, so I pushed her away.

“A strangely dressed middle-aged man handed it to me, saying, ‘Send my greetings to Meme.’”

“Meme? Meme-san? A middle-aged man and Meme-san… Ah, maybe it was Yamamoto-san?”

I remembered that middle-aged man who was infatuated with Meme-san. I couldn’t quite remember what he was wearing, or even what he looked like. Was he trying to apply the logic of shooting the general by trying to win over her daughter first? Seems the daughter in question doesn’t remember him at all, though. And the mother doesn’t even remember the middle-aged man’s real name. Poor guy. I gave Elio a nudge while I felt sympathy for him. Elio pouted, “Mmm”.

“Cousin, you’re trying to kill me.”

“I’m not that much of an extremist. I told you to wipe your feet.”

Seriously, why does this girl go outside barefoot? She looks more like an alien child than a wild child. By the way, her mother is forty years old. She’s a youkai whose appearance gets younger day by day, but she’s forty years old.

That point must absolutely never be forgotten. Furthermore, that youkai hasn’t returned from work yet today.

Well, I still didn’t know what she did for a living.

“Ooh.”

Erio slapped her palm with her fist. And then, as if she had come up with a brilliant idea, she made a suggestion:

“Cousin, if you wipe my feet, the problem is solved.”

“Are you a king? Rejected.”

“Uhhgh.”

She reluctantly sat down and began wiping the soles of her feet. I pondered whether I should also warn her about sitting normally on the dirt floor but decided there was no point in being so overprotective, so I waited for Erio.

“They’re all clean!”

“Yes, yes.”

I brushed off Erio, who was showing me the soles of her feet after wiping them, and decided to head back to my room. I had left the paperback I was reading on the bed, so I headed down the corridor to finish it.

Just as I stepped onto the stairs, my back, clothes and flesh together were pulled. I turned around.

“What should I do?”

Erio was holding up the game package that she received as a gift.

“Cousin, do you want to play the game too?”

“Is it designed for two people?”

Erio tilted his head. I picked it up and checked the back. It looked like an RPG. Oh well, should be fine.

“I shall humour you.” I said as I leaned back.

Erio nodded, “Mmm”, and dashed off towards the living room. She didn’t say a word about my attitude. I felt my haughty attitude was a bit pointless if she wasn’t going to call me out for it. Alone in the corridor, I scratched my cheek as I lost the urge to lean back with my hands on my hips.

“I know she’s not suited to being the tsukkomi, but still…”

I think Maekawa-san is probably the only one among us who could fill that role. Ryuushi-san was a natural airhead after all. And I could easily imagine that her only way to retort would be “I told ya”.

I followed Erio into the living room. As I watched Erio happily running around and setting up the game console, I thought, “Well, it’s not so bad, I guess, blah blah.” I’ll spare you the details.

Finally, Erio started working on the futon she had brought down from the second floor. That’s when I finally intervened.

“Why are you wrapping yourself in a futon?”

What kind of ritual was this? Where is Smakin supposed to fit in: us → game console → TV?

“Mofu?”

“No, your face is inside the futon right now.”

Erio, who never was one to pay much attention to people’s questions, gripped the controller with her futon still wrapped around her.

What was that?

Wasn’t she supposed to have become a Youthful Women last month? She keeps doing stuff like rolling herself in a futon, or refusing to wipe her feet.

She hasn’t changed much at all. Well, if she had changed dramatically and become completely independent and suddenly didn’t require any attention, I would have felt lonely… No, no, I would have become a perfect father to her.

This can’t be, I shook my head, but as I did so, company logos started appearing one after another on the TV screen. Erio frantically pressed a button, presumably to skip them. I sat cross-legged next to her, resting my elbows on my knees.

“Have you read the instruction manual?”

“I read it thoroughly in my free time while minding the shop.”

“Bad girl.”

When I playfully tapped her on the head, Erio, uncharacteristically, broke into a smile and let out a surprised “Heh”.

Games, huh? I used to play quite a bit, but I haven’t touched them much since coming here. When I get too engrossed in games, I sometimes get headaches from thinking about weird things.

Erio pressed the buttons with her index finger, as if she were using a calculator. She was an eccentric one, even counting her appearance.

When she started a new game, the first thing that appeared was a screen to set the protagonist’s name. There didn’t seem to be a default name, so it was blank. For some reason, Erio stared intently at my face.

“What?”

“Hmm.”

It was a mismatched response. Erio tapped the button with her index finger.

“Niwa Makoto”.

“Can’t you use your own name?”

Moreover, her choice of kanji was wrong. Who’s that guy? And she didn’t even confirm it with me. How irresponsible or her.

“Nickname: Mako-kun.”

“Wait!”

Cousin, transfer student, Niwa-chi. Maa-chan… She rejected all those on unspecified grounds.

Out of all the nicknames available, why did she choose that one? People around will start calling me Mako-kun or something. It gives vibes like Enma, I don’t like it. But she paid no attention to my objections, and her game started anyway.

“Teketeketeketeketeteteee, teeeteteteteee, teeete.”

“You don’t have to hum the background music.”

Out of habit, Erio continued to control the main character in the centre of the screen without stopping. The Touwa family’s game console was a generation old. Naturally, the game itself is also old-fashioned. Though it was only about seven or eight years old.

The protagonist, who was inexplicably wearing a school uniform, was also poorly depicted on the TV screen. It might be due to the TV, but the whole image was blurry, and the background was indistinct. So the protagonist was seen pacing around his room.

“Rub-rub.”

Erio was twisting the analogue controller around, toying with the protagonist. The protagonist (Makoto Niwa) was spinning at such a high speed on the futon laid out in the centre that if it were real life, he’d definitely be dizzy. Enough with this Mako-kun. I don’t even want to be called Mako-kun by anyone around me.

I watched for a while as Mako-kun, that strange man who could reverse direction faster than he could spin left and right, was still spinning, but it didn’t seem to end, so I turned my attention to the player, Erio:

“Just get out of the room.”

“Before that, I’ll open a drawer and break a vase.”

“You don’t often find vases in the private room of an average modern person.”

Just as I gave that warning, I spotted a vase in the corner of the room. It looked incredibly out of place. A vase with a pattern that looked like something you’d find in a royal palace was sitting on a tatami mat. That was completely crazy. What were they thinking?

“I found one. I found one.”

Erio pointed at the screen, triumphantly. “That’s strange,” I replied, brushing it off.

I opened the package and looked at the instruction manual inside. It’s irrelevant, but I wonder what Yamamoto-san would have done if the Touwa family didn’t have a game console. If he knew about it, that was kind of scary.

“Let’s see,” I thought, glancing at the game’s synopsis. Hmm, the protagonist is a high school student who one day awakens to a mysterious power and fights monsters with his friends? That’s a pretty typical story. Should I call it a classic? And the next page was the character introduction. The protagonist transferred schools this spring… Hoh? I felt a connection with Mako-kun.

His companion character was… “A beautiful girl who seems to emit light from her whole body, and is she the child of the relative where the protagonist lodges?” “Hum?” Erio looked up and turned to me as I read the instruction manual aloud. “No, never mind.”

I turned her to face the TV screen. I had a bad feeling about this, but I turned the page. The other companions were a tall, dignified but somewhat frail girl and an ordinary, naive girl? And a mysterious girl with superpowers?

“I sense clear malice in this selection!”

What’s going on, Earth?!

Erio’s shoulders jumped in surprise at my sudden shout. “…No, don’t worry about it,” I said, shaking my head, clutching the edge of the instruction manual. “Cousin, you’re acting weird,” muttered Erio, turning her back to the game screen. It was true that I was acting weird, but was it really something that could be resolved with just one word?

“Ah, let’s see,” I said, glancing down at the rest of the instruction manual. Depending on how things unfold, you might even become lovers with your companions, and that might even affect the ending? Ha ha ha, that’s nice, quite the dream.”

I couldn’t bring myself to read it all the way through, so I closed it and put it back in the package. Then I leaned back on my elbow and, still feeling uneasy, turned my attention to the TV. I hope my 40-year-old aunt doesn’t feature in it.

Mako-kun, controlled by Erio, finally left his room and headed to school. Even though I just got back home too.

“…………”

Sometimes… And I’m not just talking about games, but also about movies and TV shows.

I try to think about what’s on the other side of the screen. Of course, it’s just data, or footage, and such. And I also understand that there’s no “other side” to the screen in the first place.

But I find it mysterious. A never-before-seen world unfolding before my eyes. To me, there was not much difference between seeing scenery from a place I’ll never travel to in my lifetime and gazing at a game world that’s completely out of my reach through the television screen.

Both were like different worlds. It felt like peeking into another world. Was I the only one who felt that way?

Perhaps my way of thinking stemmed from a complete lack of understanding of how TVs and game consoles work. We use them daily, operating them with remotes as if it were the most natural thing in the world, yet they’re filled with the unknown. This kind of expectation, born from ignorance, made me dream about connecting myself to a distant and unperceivable world. I have always loved daydreaming.

The game’s protagonist was a transfer student. Similar circumstances, similar classmates. So, the TV screen must be showing a parallel world, right? The universe was incredibly vast, so there had to be at least one Earth far beyond our reach in which Erio and I were living similar lives… How many times have I stopped immersing myself in the game to think about that? I even got a headache from thinking about it too much, I think. Ah, I was so young.

This time, the reason was simply that I was engrossed reading a novel about parallel worlds some ten minutes ago.

I cut short my daydreams and looked at the screen to see the protagonist being called “Mako-kun-kun” by a female classmate. Mako-kun-kun? Sounds like she’s sniffing him. Sniff, sniff. Sounds like a typo. Or rather, what kind of girl calls someone Mako-kun-kun with a smile on her face? I couldn’t bring myself to look at this smile for a different reason.

I really didn’t like this alternative possibility. Please, no more Mako-kun-kun.

If it’s going to be a fantasy story anyway, it might as well be more imaginative.

That’s right, like for example…

If I were to truly pursue every possible scenario…

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