On a Godless Planet:Volume1B Chapter 36
Chapter 36: Lemmings[edit]
–I think humans die too much.
●
I learned that Sumeragi-kun had come here.
“Ehh!? How!?”
I quickly checked my Revelation Board and saw he was still requesting to be my partner. That meant he had not become partners with someone else.
“Thank goodness.”
Wait, no. This wasn’t good. I was going to forcibly end things here and return to a virtual manifestation.
If I went through the proper channels, Omokane-san and the others might stop me, so I had to let someone else forcibly end it for me.
I was using the flame dragons, this planet’s spirits, for that.
I felt bad for the others working so hard outside, but I really wished they would just leave already. And I couldn’t let Sumeragi-kun inside this stone hut, so…
“It’s too dangerous here, Sumeragi-kun!”
His reading vanished from the Revelation Board and the word “rollback” appeared in its place.
“Hmmmm!?”
●
Oh? thought Eshita.
A flame dragon dropped down from above and crashed against the ground in front of her.
It had to have been around 100m long. Well, you can think of it as a flame spirit of that size.
She concluded those things were pretty smart for not using a lava vessel. They must have understood that using lave would have turned their remains into reinforcing materials for this land once they self-destructed.
So they came as pure fire.
This could be trouble, she thought while looking ahead to the stone hut.
“Oh?”
Something was not right.
Hadn’t there been something else between her and the stone hut? Something felt extremely off to her, but when she did not understand something, she would simply ask a cleverer god who could actually answer her questions.
“Hey, wasn’t there something here?”
In the distance, Enkidu tilted her head while using a freezing Auth Spell.
“Wasn’t the human there?”
“The human?”
Then it came back to her.
“Oh, yeah! The human!”
Several more things came back to her too.
“Humans die when a flame dragon hits them, don’t they!? How silly of me to forget! It’s been so long it completely slipped my mind!”
Everyone stopped fighting to glare at her.
Eventually, Shifu tilted her head and raised a hand.
“Eshita-chaaan? Why did you even bother showing up?”
“W-wait, wait, wait, wait! I did my job!”
“I can’t believe you.”
She could tell they were criticizing her in some way, so she denied all responsibility.
“It’s not my fault!”
●
What exactly had happened was unclear from within the stone hut.
“U-um, what was that?”
The rollback popup had disappeared.
Sumeragi-kun was dead.
But I wasn’t sure when it had happened.
Did he really not have any divine protections when he came here? If he could last a little bit before dying, that is about when it would have happened.
Or was he caught up in the fighting out there? But either way…
“I-it’s my fault, isn’t it?”
I hated that I couldn’t confirm anything from here. But what did it matter that I hated it?
I was here because I wanted to forcibly eliminate myself so I could return to the virtual manifestation world.
But…
…I’m so worried about Sumeragi-kun.
Was he going to do more weird things?
Was he going to rush into danger without thinking, shout weird things while rushing out into traffic, or provoke someone more than was wise?
I was so very worried.
But come to think of it…
“I’m being a real pain in the butt, aren’t I!?”
That realization was followed by a shout from outside the stone hut.
“Senpai-chaaan! Can you hear me!?”
●
Have the gods degenerated? wondered Balancer.
The very structure of the stone hut was a divine barrier that kept external sound out. Divine transmissions could get through, but that was meaningless if the recipient refused to accept the call. So instead…
<A tin can telephone?>
“No, no, no. It’s a direct megaphone connection.”
The megaphone was made out of Balancer.
The malleability of the screen was used to role them up into a tube that was pressed against the rock wall.
The Balancer-megaphone localized the voice, converted that portion of the wall into a diaphragm, and allowed the voice through to the other side.
The stone hut created a soundproofing barrier, but what if the hut itself was producing the sound? The megaphone was meant to try out that idea.
<Do you think it is working?>
“Maybe I should send her a message afterwards. But anyway.”
Shifu resumed shouting through the Balancer-megaphone.
“Senpai-chaaan! No matter what happens to Sumeragi-chan, it isn’t your fault!”
●
“Eh!? Then are you saying it’s my fault!? Surely not! Right!?”
“You only feel the need to say that because you feel responsible.”
“Eshtar, you talk big, but you’re actually pretty pathetic.”
“It’s called gap moe! And it means I’m cute! Get it straight!!”
●
“Listen, Senpai-chan! Anything Sumeragi-chan does is his decision! So it isn’t your fault! I mean, this is about his faith! And faith isn’t about asking for something in return!”
So…
“You can be proud of the effort he goes to! Because that shows just how valuable you are as a god!”
Oh, and one more thing.
“If you do need to blame someone, you can always blame Eshita-chan!”
●
Oh, I thought.
“I can’t believe Shifu-san is being so nice after everything I’ve done.”
I had a hard time accepting what she was saying. If it was that easy for me, I wouldn’t have felt the need to come here.
But I did very much agree with one thing she had said.
“I-I definitely agree that this is Eshita-chan’s fault!!”
●
“Waiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit! Don’t make it sound like I’m picking a fight with a god who can pull off a Cancel Lifespan one-hit kill!”
“I mean, you came here as an inspector, remember?”
“I wonder if she’d come out if you prostrated yourself in front of that stone hut and apologized.”
“Th-this isn’t my fault! And inspectors don’t apologize!”
“We’re gonna be here a while, aren’t we?”
“Quit chatting and help! These flame dragons won’t leave us alone!”
●
“Hm, does this mean responsibility for this whole affair lies with Eshita-kun? I see. That would mean no responsibility for me.”
Then…
“Then I need to send a complaint to the Mesopotamians. Eshita-kun’s outrageous behavior has caused us nothing but trouble! Oh, yes! So much trouble! Why would you do that to us, Eshita-kun!?”
“Yatsui! Wait! Wait! Sit right there! Hurry!”
“Is Omokane-senpai just trying to see how much she can get away with now?
●
Kuwajiri was irritated beyond belief.
She was back in her own room on the second floor of an apartment-style student dorm to the west of the Tachikawa city hall. She used the dining room as a work room.
Raidou and Shifu lived on the first floor and a lot of the Norse group lived nearby.
She knew a lot of people here and she could usually hear other people around at this time.
But it was quiet today. Because…
“Norse mythology’s summers are short.”
But Japan’s summers were long, so most of the Norse group were on trips to enjoy the divine world’s summer. However…
“I was hoping to complete the homework that was piling up thanks to work.”
Seeing Sumeragi in front of the club room had been bad. What had been bad about it? Her luck had been. She had always had bad luck even in the age of mythology. Her luck was devastatingly bad.
Today was just more of the same there.
Senpai-san was in trouble, but since Kuwajiri was not a physical fighter, there was nothing for her to do there. That was why she had decided to check on things at the club room and then do her homework.
For some inexplicable reason, the idiot had been there.
And for some even more inexplicable reason, she had decided to accommodate him.
“I might as well have been giving myself more work to do.
And sure enough, another job had arrived for her.
<Um, uh, Kuwajiri?>
She ignored the screen.
She wanted to get her homework done. What’s this about a scenic painting? Using watercolors? I’ve heard of those, but how do you actually paint with them? she wondered while opening her sketchbook.
<Um, Kuwajiri? Do you have a moment?>
She continued to ignore the screen. However…
“Kuwajiri-chaaan?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“How’s Sumeragi-chan’s rollback coming along?”
“I really don’t want to think about that, so can I go to Showa Memorial Park to do my summer homework?”
“Hmm, I’d really prefer if you focused a bit – just a bit – more on this.”
Kuwajiri was still unsure what she should do here.
“Hey, Kuwajiri. I’ve finished the body and shoved in the soul, so you input all the data.”
She did not have much of a choice now. She was one step in the assembly-line-like process, so…
“Understood. Give me 10 minutes. I’ll input the template data.”
●
“Hey, everyone! Can you wait 10 minutes!? Kuwajiri-chan is finishing up Sumeragi-chan.”
Everyone responded to Shifu with battle cries.
“Just 10 minutes!?”
“If that’s all, I can fight at full strength without issue!”
“And I won’t have to hold any of my Auth Spells in reserve!”
“Yeah. I shoulllld be able to manage.”
'Good,' thought Shifu.
Now they just had to put in the effort.
<Excuse me, Shifu? Even if the ape is rolled back, he still has to wake up in bed and learn about the current situation.>
“…”
<Shifu! Shifu! Don’t just avert your gaze and ignore me!>
Yeah, but what else can I do?
●
I awoke with a start.
I felt like I just had an awful dream. Or rather…
“I died!!”
I had a feeling I had died the instant I stepped up onto the stage. But anyway, I caught my breath while just sitting in bed in a T-shirt and boxers with the morning sun shining in on me.
I checked the digital clock on the same shelf as the TV next to the bed and saw it was 11:32 of 8/5/1990. I liked how the time and date matched…wait, those don’t match at all!
Why did I think they did for a second? There must be something wrong with me today.
But that aside…
“Is this what it was??”
A screen had fallen onto the bed.
“A screen?”
<…>
Yeah.
That’s a screen all right.
But what is it for? I wondered while picking it up.
<Good morning, ape. The usual process is such a pain that I decided to show up first thing, but that meant I had to lie in bed alongside you. Doing the things yesterday’s AIs never wanted to do proves just how excellent I am.>
“Woahhhhhh!! What’s with this screen!? It talked!”
<Shut up. I am about to explain the current situation, so get to remembering what you need to remember!>
●
Raidou checked the stopwatch on his Revelation Board.
The passage of time was hard to judge on a planet that did not rotate and barely had any land or a sky, so he was watching the numbers there while eliminating the flame dragons.
“It’s been 12 minutes!”
<Sorry about that. The idiot got a little overexcited when I revealed that a busty goddess lives next door to him.>
“Has he remembered Senpai-chan?”
<Yes, he did just now. And this is a pain, so I think it is time to send him in and have him remember the rest on-site.>
This divine transmission was reaching the others too.
Raidou looked over to see Eshita raising her hand from in front of the stone hut.
“I’m ready whenever!”
He was worried about that, but an inspector outranked them. Hopefully it was fine.
But he did decide to ask.
“Hey! Are you sure you’ve got this!?”
“Huh!? You saw the human surviving here just fine before, right!? I don’t make mistakes!”
There were no flame dragons in the area or in the sky above.
I guess it is fine, thought Raidou just as something appeared.
They were Revelation Boards.
Several of them appeared near Eshita and they gradually formed a humanoid shape.
Sumeragi was being summoned here.
“He’s finally here!”
“…”
Kidou’s silence seemed odd to Raidou.
“Hey, Kidou, did you have a question?”
“Not really. I was just wondering something is all.”
She cast a freezing Auth Spell to solidify a portion of the lava sea.
“Do Eshtar’s divine protections remain in effect after he rolls back?”
That was exactly when Sumeragi actually appeared. And…
“Hell yeah!! It’s blazing hot and I can’t breeeeeeeathe!!”
He burst into ether light and vanished.
●
Shifu looked down at her Revelation Board.
She could track some objective data on Sumeragi-chan, although not as much as Senpai-chan could. And his current state was listed as…
“Rollback?”
●
Meanwhile, Eshita was meaninglessly raising a hand in front of the stone hut.
“…”
She had meant to say something once the human arrived, but…
<Um, Eshtar? When the idiot is rolled back, any externally-applied settings are reset. So, um.>
Um…
<This is a unique case, so I have determined it would be best if you returned to the Divine World and applied your divine protections on the idiot there.>
She nodded repeatedly at Balancer’s suggestion.
They knew what the problem was. This was a unique case, so she could not be blamed for getting it wrong. And yet…
“Really?”
“I knew it.”
“I thought you said you were ready.”
“Wow, what am I supposed to tell Kuwajiri-chan this time?”
They all glared at her.
“W-wait! This wasn’t my fault!”
●
“Kuwajiri-chaaan?”
Kuwajiri sucked in a deep breath when Shifu’s questioning voice reached her.
…Nhhhhh!
She had more work to do.
Or rather, her previous work had been for nothing.
No, it wasn’t for nothing. Don’t insult your own work like that, Kuwajiri Tsubomi. You need to keep a positive outlook. This was only…
“An unfortunate accident.”
Yes. She could not be mad about that. Shifu was a victim here too.
Then whose fault was it?
Eshtar…well, no one was going to call her bright, but this had been an unprecedented situation. You could not blame her for not being ready.
Senpai-san was the overall cause of this entire situation, but she had not been directly involved in this particular mistake. Besides, Kuwajiri herself had been worried about the stress Senpai-san was under. She would be lying if she said she understood what Senpai-san was doing, but she wanted to understand.
Then what was the fundamental cause of this?
“How frail that idiot is.”
If humanity was not so frail, she would have so much less work to do. Or to put it another way…
“If I were the Demon King in a game or novel, I’d wipe humanity out day one on the job.”
●
<How did it go? Is Kuwajiri mad?>
“Yeah. Absolutely livid.”
“Eh? What’d she say?”
“Well, uh, something about wiping out humanity?”
“Yeah, eeeeveryone should do that at leeeast once. It makes for a fun storrrry at parties.”
“You hate your believers, don’t you? Don’t you?”
“Wait! If she wipes out humanity, there won’t be any more Karamucho or grilled beef flavored chips! If you’re gonna destroy the world, you need to preserve Calbee and Koikeya!”
“You need Yamayoshi on that list if you want Wasabeef to survive.”
“Shouldn’t Eshtar get back to the divine world soon?”
●
Kuwajiri walked to her kitchen which was lit only by natural light. She opened the fridge, crouched to look inside, and tried to think.
She was irritated at having to redo some work due to no fault of her own, but was that feeling a waste of time, or was it the correct reaction?
No, this was not the time to decide whether it was correct or not.
She grabbed a 350mL can from the drink holder. It had a male silhouette drawn in light blue.
“Post Water.”
She opened the can and drank the contents.
She actually liked its oddly light and frankly insufficient flavor. Was that because her life here had been full of so many strong flavors? No, she had seasoned everything with lots of salt and fish sauce back home too. And she liked strong alcoholic drinks. She had always been in dire need of some lighter flavors.
She took a breath.
Everything around her had been so strongly flavored since her real manifestation.
As a wisdom god, it felt like she was gaining new experiences with very little new wisdom to go with it, which was extremely exhausting. Her upperclassmen were enjoying it, but she honestly felt pushed around by everyone else. None of them were bad people – they just didn’t mesh well with her.
But she knew why she was thinking about all this.
“I want to fit in better, don’t I?”
What was she to this world?
Was she a strong or a light flavor?
“This is silly.”
She was feeling refreshed now. That was the power of Post Water.
She took another breath, stood up, and walked toward the dining room desk.
She had a rollback to complete.
So for the first step…
“Kunugi-senpai, are you ready?”
●
“Huh? Kuwajiri? What’s this? Do we really have another rollback already?”
“I didn’t want to believe it either, but yes. Please produce one of the base data entities.”
“Sure, I created a spare just now, but this could be bad.”
“Hm? Did you make some kind of mistake?”
“Just as I decided to create the spare, Keito stopped by after pulling an all-nighter, so we decided to create it together.”
“Oh, yeah. Keito-senpai was the one that made Sumeragi’s female version.”
“Right. That’s why I accepted the offer to help. Anyway, we just finished combining our two parts a bit ago.”
“Then can you send that on over?”
“Yeah, that’s the thing…”
“What is it?”
“I made my part compressed down to 1/12 size like I always do, but Keito did it at 1/6 size.”
“What does that mean?”
“We only noticed after combining the parts, but…Sumeragi, was it? His dick was made a 1/6 while the rest is 1/12, so its twice the size it should be. And now Keito won’t stop rolling on the floor laughing. You know how people get after an all-nighter.”
“Kunugi-senpai.”
“Y-yeah?”
“Immediately incinerate the double-sized one and then send me the other spare one. You know the spare I mean, right?”
●
Shifu heard some kind of chime go off.
She looked over to see several summoning Revelation Boards rapidly forming a humanoid shape.
“Ohh, Sumeragi-chan is here.”
“Wait, I thought they couldn’t send him over right away because they made him double-sized.”
Sumeragi-chan appeared where the boards had been.
“Hellooooo!! I’m a girl agaiiiiiiiin!”
●
So that’s what they did, thought Shifu. But…
“Huh?”
Sumeragi-chan’s position was off.
The rest of them were in front of the stone hut. That was where Sumeragi-chan had been summoned twice in a row already.
But she appeared elsewhere this time. She was on the far southeast end from them.
That was about 150m away from the stone hut.
Shifu was wondering why that would happen when En-chan suggested an answer.
“Could his summoning point be based on Eshtar?”
“Oh, yeah! Since Eshita-chan isn’t here to give him a summoning location, his summoning defaulted to a random respawn!”
With that mystery solved, she turned back toward Sumeragi-chan only to see a flame dragon sticking out of the lava and a humanoid cluster of ether light scattering away.
Uh, oh.
“Ahhhh! Sumeragi-chaaaaaaan!?”
“That was fast!! Wish he’d give us more of a chance to react!”
Shifu very much agreed, but that was not an actual solution.
●
Kuwajiri stretched in her chair.
“There! A job well done!”
She was glad Kunugi really did still have a spare version of female Sumeragi. It was always worth asking.
She finished off her can of Post Water and then slammed the empty can down on her desk.
“Okay!”
She had completed the task given to her by Shifu and her other superiors.
A third rollback request in one day when she had done nothing wrong sounded like a sick joke, but she had managed to get the job done without voicing her complaints.
She had done well.
An excellent job if I say so myself.
I deserve some self-praise for that one. Yes, good job, Kuwajiri Tsubomi. You’re such a good wisdom god.
“I need to eat some meat today!”
She had had some yesterday too, but she would buy her own today. A thick slice. Around 450g would be perfect. And she could fry it up in a frying pan filled with grease. Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll do.
I’ve done a full day’s worth of work and it’s only midday!
She would have meat for dinner.
She also wanted to stop by Will to buy some bread. And one other thing.
“Do I have any beer left?”
The stores had started selling dark beer recently. As a Norse god, she had been all over that and she thought she still had some stocked up in her fridge, but she also wondered if she had finished it all off.
“I’d better go check.”
She felt weirdly excited about it, but that was fine. The day could only go up from here.
●
“Oh, no. Who’s going to tell Kuwajiri-chan she has to do another rollback?”
Shifu looked around and they all held out their palms in a “you do the honors” way.
I had a feeling, she thought. It looked like she had to do this. But…
“Tooru.”
“I’ll go clothes shopping with you sometime soon.”
“I’m gonna need more than that.”
“Hm. How about I do anything you ask for a whole day?”
“Okay, now we’re talking. Let’s go with that. But…”
She made a suggestion.
“Is there any way to make sure that doesn’t happen again?”
●
Kidou raised her hand because she had been wondering about something here.
“I don’t understand everything about this since things were already like this when Balancer brought Bil and me here, but can’t that monotheistic god fix this with his absurdities?”
“I allllready aaaam doing that.”
Shifu raised her hand in response.
“He made a meteor strike on the other side of the planet before you two arrived. Took a 4km one and – boom! – dropped it right onto the planet.”
“Why?”
“That creates a huge crater and the planet’s primitive spirits have to work at fixing and acclimating to that, right? That leaves less of them to attack here.”
“I’ve allllso set up a barrier around 2/3 of this hemispherrrre to keep out all the biiiig ones. Although maintaining a solid barrier is exhaaaausting, so it’s more like a net.”
In other words, they only had to fight the 100m flame dragons right now because the monotheistic god was restricting the planet.
“That is wild.”
“That’s just how Yomoji-chan is.”
Shifu raised her hand
“I know it sounds violent, but could Bilgamesh there use his White Sword thing to slice the stone hut open?”
“I kind of love how you Norse gods will suggest any old idea that comes to mind.”
But that was a question for Bil himself, so Kidou turned his way and he nodded.
“To be honest, the size of the attack means it has a margin of error of about 3m.”
“That’s a big margin, but does it not matter thanks to the shockwave?”
“Exactly. I can increase its drawing speed when I use my Gauntlet with it, but even at normal speed, it’s fast enough to produce a shockwave. I could destroy the stone hut, but I can’t guarantee the safety of the goddess within.”
“Also.” Kidou raised her hand. “I honestly don’t want to earn her resentment over some minor mistake.”
“Yeah, you two already have a lifespan since you’re half-god, half-human, so you wouldn’t want to get that shortened any.”
“That’s it, yeah.”
Then everyone turned toward Shifu.
“Calling her is your job.”
“Do I really have to do it?”
●
Kuwajiri sat in front of the opened fridge and opened a can.
That was her final can of beer in the fridge, but she could always buy a new case while out shopping for meat. And if she was going to eat meat for dinner, she might as well go on a solo drinking binge afterwards.
That was fun every so often.
And after enjoying her free time like that, she could ask Shifu or someone how things had turned out today. But…
“Hey, Kuwajiri-chan? You got a moment?”
“Huh? What do you want, Shifu-senpai?”
“Well, um, what are you doing right now?”
“I was just opening a can of beer to signal the end of a long day full of too much work.”
●
“Oh, wow. That is a lot of pressure I’m feeling now.”
“I’m rooting for you, okay? Not that it helps any.”
●
Kuwajiri checked how much yogurt and cheese she had left while asking a question through her Revelation Board.
“What’s this about? Are you done with Sumeragi?”
“Yeah, about that…”
“Yes?”
A cheese sandwich might be good, thought Kuwajiri while the words entered her ears.
“Sumeragi-chan died again, so could you handle the rollback?”
●
Since when can a wisdom god like me smash a Revelation Board with such a quick jab?
●
“Oh, no. She’s rejecting my calls.”
<I-is she doing it?>
“How about you go ask her yourself? She’ll probably smash you on sight.”
●
Kuwajiri opened her fridge again and stuck her head inside.
She needed to cool down. Badly. But she felt shutting down that conversation had been the right call. Who knows what she would have said to Shifu otherwise.
“…”
A quiet curse escaped her throat.
Then a frozen pack of hamburger steaks fell on her head. It was a 6-pack of mini hamburger steaks from Nichirei. She grabbed that, a package of creamy corn croquettes, and a bag of fried chicken.
She dumped them all on a plate sitting in the sink and shoved that in the microwave.
At 600W, that would be…ugh, what a pain. 5 minutes should do.
She opened the fridge, pulled out some yakiniku sauce and Worcestershire sauce and gave the storage area below the sink a nice hard kick.
It made a nice sound.
Afraid that had been a mistake, she checked to make sure she had not split a toenail, but she had not. And for now…
“5 minutes!”
After 5 minutes passed, she would have a plate full of hamburger steaks, croquettes, and fried chicken.
Once she had eaten all that and finished that final beer, she would forgive the others for everything.
Yes. Eating could put you in a better mood.
This was the mature thing to do. Even if I am only in the second year of high school. But as she watched the microwave work…
“No, I should have known the creamy corn croquettes would burst!”
But it was all still spinning inside the microwave, so there was nothing she could do.
●
They were discussing how they could calm Kuwajiri’s anger. Yomoji was keeping the flame dragons away for the time being, so Shifu asked the others for their opinions.
“The problem is that Sumeragi is making random respawns, right?”
“Should we spread out over as much of the area as we can?”
“But what do we do once we have him? Make a mad dash toward the stone hut?”
“If it was just me and Bil, Bil could grab him and I could use Call Bil in front of the stone hut.”
“That won’t work this time. …Could we have Eshtar come here?”
<That would be a solution.>
“Huh!? I’m an inspector! Which means I’m important!” said Eshtar via divine transmission. “You don’t get to order me back and forth all the time! My job is done when I give him my divine protections!”
“Hmm, but if you don’t come here, we’ll just have to redo it again.”
Then a Revelation Board appeared next to Shifu.
Who’s that from? As soon as she saw the answer, she quickly raised her index finger toward the others.
“Shh! It’s Kuwajiri-chan!”
For some reason, they all ducked down when she said that. I see the Druaga duo is already playing along with our nonsense, she thought, but maybe they were just that infectious. And…
“Hi, Kuwajiri-chan? How’re things going?”
●
Shifu heard the response.
“Have you already told Kunugi-senpai?”
“Yeah, we’ve already arranged everything with him!”
Balancer quickly shook their screen in a nod and she gave him an OK sign.
“Yeah! Kunugi-chan’s all done! He says things are ready to go!”
How long has it been since I told such a blatant lie? I so hope Kunugi-chan really is ready.
●
“Hey! I can only work so fast! Or what? Did you want a Sumeragi with a chicken face? We can have some fun with it every once in a while, right!?”
<Enough jokes! Just hurry! This is a matter of trust!>
●
Kuwajiri sighed. Once back at her desk, she found that Kunugi really had sent over a base data entity. Now she only had to arrange some minor adjustments from some other gods and do her part.
“…”
It all felt like such a pain in the rear. She was so sick of this. That was a dangerous sign when working and it could influence the quality of the finished product, so she wanted to avoid this if she could. So…
“Shifu-senpai, a question.”
“What is it?”
“Organizing the idiot’s memories is a ton of work, so I’m going to skip that step. Balancer acts as his teacher after he wakes up, right? Then Balancer can deal with it.”
“Sure, sure! That’s fine! Great work, Kuwajiri-chan!”
She was not done yet, but she did finally realize Shifu was trying to be considerate.
I need to pay more attention, she thought while finishing up the work.
She took a breath, and…
“Shifu-senpai, I just uploaded him.”
And…
“Sorry for being in such a bad mood. I’ll try to be a better team player in the future.”
“No, no. It’s perfectly fine. We can deal with some of that and we really did drop the ball this time.”
“Then,” said Kuwajiri while closing the Revelation Board. “Balancer, you can handle the rest. Bring his memories back.”
●
“Whew! All done! But, Balancer, isn’t it going to take a while to bring his memories back!?”
<Don’t worry about that! I called in the perfect person for the job!>
●
I awoke with a start.
I felt like I just had an awful dream. Or rather…
“I died!!”
I had a feeling I had died the instant I stepped up onto the stage. But anyway, I caught my breath while just sitting in bed in a T-shirt and boxers with the morning sun shining in on me.
I checked the digital clock on the same shelf as the TV next to the bed and saw it was 11:32 of 8/5/1990. I liked how the time and date matched…wait, those don’t match at all!
Why did I think they did for a second? There must be something wrong with me today.
But that aside…
“Eh?”
Someone was standing next to my bed.
That shouldn’t have been possible. I lived alone and I could have sworn I locked the door last night. But…
“Who the hell are you!? And why are you eating Karamucho and wearing so many layers in the middle of summer!?”
“What!? Balancer, this idiot really has lost his memories!”
<Yes, his memory links have deteriorated. Can you restore them?>
“Ehhhhh!? What’s happening here!? Some kinda prank!?”
“You could say that, but I have authority over knowledge, so I will use an Auth Spell to restore your memories.”
“Huh!? What kinda spiritual mumbo jumbo is that!? Besides, who even are you!? Wait, are you my separated-at-birth sister!? You mean I have biggish boobs blood flowing in my veins!?”
“Biggish!? You can’t possibly tell through so many layers of clothing, but that ‘ish’ is uncalled for!”
She raised her fist and then it slammed into me.
“Eshtar Attack: Memory Restoring Fist of Compassion!!”
●
Shifu saw Eshita being summoned in front of the stone hut.
“Okay, we’re here.”
She was not alone. Several more Revelation Boards appeared in front of her to produce…
“Hiiiiii! I’ve got as many of my memories as she could give meeeeeeeeeeee!”
Shifu sighed when she saw the idiot hopping around.
She exchanged a glance with the others and clapped her hands.
“Okay, meeting’s over. Sumeragi-kun’s here, so get back to work.”
“Back to work!”'
“Ehhhh!? Hold on! Don’t you need to celebrate my arrival!?”
Everyone stopped, looked back, and gave some scattered applause.
“Wow! I never knew applause could sound so unwelcoming!”
“Do they all hate you?”
“Stop! My identity is fragile, so don’t say anything that could cause it to come crashing down! Papa won’t allow it!”
“Just get over there and convince Senpai-chan to come out.”
“Oh, right!”
He faced the stone hut again, so he clearly knew what he needed to do here.
“Anyway, um, I’m not sure how to put this.”
Give it your all, human. That sounds good.
Interlude[edit]
“Come to think of it, Sumeragi-chan might be better off if he doesn’t give it his all.”
<I literally could not agree more.>
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