Of Monster Girls and Middle-Aged Perverts
I barely managed to throw my shoes on and sprinted out into the city streets, still wearing the same wrinkled school uniform I’d never bothered to change out of the day before. The old man was nowhere to be seen, but I knew I could chase him down anyway.
“He’s gonna regret smashing that durian when I’m done with him...”
I could still faintly pick up its acrid stench in the air. Some of that was coming from me, of course, but I could distinguish our respective trails. That whole thing was weird, though—almost unnatural. Why would he go out of his way to stink us up with a durian...? No, overthinking this would be pointless. I could save all those doubts for after I caught him and beat the stuffing out of him.
As I sprinted through the streets, I caught no small number of people turning to look at me in reaction to my durian stench. I sorta felt like a celebrity. None of them tried to talk to me, of course—actually, pretty much all of them went out of their way to avoid me, which made running all the easier.
The sunset had wrapped up its daily business, and the sky was well on its way to darkness. I would’ve liked to catch him before night fell entirely, but that was probably already out of the question. I could tell from his smell and the dim sense I still had of him that the old dude was moving at a pretty rapid pace. Faster than I could actually imagine him running, considering his build.
I wasn’t worried, though. My body’s engine was gassed up, and I knew for a fact it wouldn’t lose to his. Not only had I fully recovered from my mana-drain-induced weakness, I felt better than I had in a very long time.
“Oh, hey! That you, A-senpai?”
“Huh? Was it just me, or did I just hear someone I know...? Meh, probably just me.”
Before long, the old man’s trail had led me into a fairly abandoned part of town. There wasn’t a person to be seen. I couldn’t say whether he was avoiding people on purpose or whether people were avoiding him on purpose, thus clearing the way by the time I passed through (again, the durian thing), but in any case, it definitely wasn’t the sort of situation where somebody I knew would be trying to talk to me.
“Heeey, Senpai! C’mon, don’t ignore me!”
“Again! Maybe I wasn’t imagining it...? Wait, whoa?!”
Before I knew it, a girl in a tracksuit was running alongside me. Part of me still assumed she was a hallucination, and I reached out towards her on impulse. I couldn’t even begin to guess about her thought process at that moment, but for whatever reason she grabbed my hand, and we ended up exchanging a mid-sprint handshake. Meaning I touched her; meaning she was real.
“Kazuki? What’re you doing here?!”
It was indeed Kazuki Rena, a kouhai of mine at Oumei High and ace of the track team. We went to the same school, so it made sense that we’d seen each other, but by all rights a no-clubber like me wouldn’t come into contact with her much at all. We had one other point of contact, though: my best friend, who also happened to be her first love. We’d talked a few times on account of that. Actually, we’d just talked about how she’d given up on said first love pretty darn recently, and things were definitely a bit awkward between us as a result.
“I’m doing some road running! Are you working out too, Senpai? Talk about a coincidence! I’ll run with you!”
“Sorry, who’re you talking to right now?!”
“My senpai! Duuuh!”
“Then don’t you think you should, I dunno, ask?! Respect your elders, lady!”
“You think? But we’re talking about running! You don’t need words to communicate with a fellow runner!”
“So what, you ambush every other runner you happen to come across?”
“Aha ha ha, you’re such a kidder! I don’t think I’m ambushing anyone, really. And besides, I only talk to people who’re running at my pace! Running with a slowpoke would really mess up my rhythm.”
“You can be pretty harsh, huh...?” I guess that’s only to be expected from a girl who’s famous in the track-and-field world on a national level. Supposedly, bigwigs in the business had great expectations for her future.
“And on that subject, you’re actually the first person I’ve talked to like this!”
“Yeah right!”
“No, for real, totally serious! And speaking of, you’re running at a real nice pace, Senpai! You should’ve told me you could run like this sooner!” Kazuki grinned as she ran beside me, looking pleased yet laid-back in spite of the sweat that was dripping down her face. We were actually running at a really notable speed. There wasn’t anyone else around to compare it to, but most likely, we were moving faster than most people could pedal a bike. In that sense, Kazuki and I were both solidly abnormal.
Could it be? Is my mana back?
Using mana had been like breathing for me back when I was a Hero. I couldn’t actually cast magic with it in any real capacity, of course, but I could channel it to enhance my physical abilities. Ever since I returned to this world, though, I’d been unable to refresh my mana reserves. My gas tank was stuck on empty in perpetuity, and my physical abilities were dropped down to a normal human level (albeit an abnormally well-trained one). I fit into the average high school student framework to the bitter end.
Plus, I’d only just recently used my magic in spite of being in that mana-less state, and I’d been completely incapacitated by the backlash! And yet there I was, running along at that ridiculous pace without even feeling especially tired. The logical conclusion was that, somehow, my mana had been replenished.
But, how? And when...?
“Senpai? Lost in thought? Guess this is pretty easy for you after all!”
“Like you’re one to talk—do you know how fast you’re running? It’s unbelievable!” With my mana recovered, I’d regained my former superhuman physical abilities, and yet Kazuki was keeping up with me like it was nothing. I wondered for a moment if she was in the same sort of position as me, but I wasn’t sensing any sort of magic vibes from her at all. In other words, she was genuinely, naturally that fast. Is this girl really even human?
“Sounds like you’re makin’ fun of me,” she replied. “I’m going pretty all out, for the record! This is the first time since I got into high school that I’ve felt like I might lose! Actually, make that the first time, period!”
“You sound, uhh, pretty happy about that.”
“Well, duh! It’s the first time I’ve found someone who can actually compete with me! I always thought that the only person I’d ever get to try and exceed was myself!”
“Oof, yup, sounding like a real prodigy there!” That sounds like the sort of thing you’d accidentally alienate your best friend by saying in middle school! They’d get snippy and be all “you’ll meet someone faster than you in no time!” But regardless, my speed was more or less a cheat. By this world’s standards I was effectively doping, and her ecstatic smile made me feel profoundly guilty.
“Hey, Senpai, why not join the track team? If you can run like this, you’ll do great things for the team, no question about it! The two of us could team up and aim for the top of the track-and-field world together!”
“Are there even any track events that let guys and girls team up?”
“I dunno, three-legged race?”
“That’s a field day event!”
“Let’s aim for the top of our school’s field days together!”
“Are you really okay with scaling down your ambitions like that?” Bantering with her was throwing my mind way off track. I didn’t have the time to be chattering like that in the first place. My first priority was to catch the old man, beat the ever-loving crap out of him and take vengeance for my first kiss! I felt a bit bad for Kazuki, but accomplishing that goal meant speeding up. My magically enhanced abilities would blink out the second my mana was exhausted, and I had to catch him before I hit that time limit.
“Oooh, picking up the pace, eh? All right, I like it! Let’s do this!”
It did not go as planned. I figured I could pull away from her, but she let out a carefree shout and kept pace with me perfectly.
“Okay, seriously, what the hell’s your deal?!”
“Man, you’re really something, Senpai! Here I am, thinking that I’m getting used to your pace, and you speed up at the perfect moment!”
“I didn’t do it for you!” I couldn’t tell how fast we were going, but it felt like we could race a car. I could feel myself closing in on my target, too. But then there was Kazuki.
“Oh wow, the wind feels great!” She closed her eyes and shouted with rapturous glee. She accused me of taking it easy earlier, but it felt like she was having an even easier time than I was. “Oh, by the way, Senpai?”
I hesitated. What now? “Yeah?”
“Don’t suppose you’d mind if I ask you what your name is?”
Two largely contradictory thoughts flashed through my head simultaneously: Wow, that was abrupt, and It took her this long to ask?! “Why’re you asking this now?”
“’Cause I need your name to fill out the club registration form.”
“You’re planning on making me join the track team by force?!”
“Duh! I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I let someone with legs like yours get left by the wayside! I’d be doing a disservice to all the track-and-field fans all around the world!”
“Then I guess you’d better be ready for some sleep deprivation!” Probably quite a lot of it, considering just how many fans there were all around the world. If making sure I didn’t get forced out of a rom-com world and into a sports drama one meant that Kazuki had to become an insomniac, then so be it.
The idea was even less appealing considering that extras in sports dramas are well known to have it incredibly rough, even by sidekick standards. They have to show up to their club just as often as the main-character squad and go through all the same stupidly brutal training, but somehow they still never seem to get any screen time! And it goes without saying that they absolutely never end up on the field during games, so they never get the chance to show off the fruits of their labor.
The only time they have any presence is when they’re on the bench during the big-game scenes and get to shout out the names of the main-character squad’s special moves. The only exception’s when the series is about to wrap up, and they get to take the field for a single brief, fleeting moment. It’s like a cameo appearance—nobody actually cares if they do well or not, and it’s over an instant later.
In other words: intense overtime, no pay, and zero work satisfaction. It’d be like going to work for the most disgustingly exploitative corporation imaginable. Like hell was I gonna let myself end up as one of those background characters!
“C’mon, join the club; it’ll be fun! And tell me your name while you’re at it!”
“What, so getting my name’s an afterthought?”
“Maybe I’m just too shy to admit that’s what I really want!”
“You don’t have a shy bone in your body.”
“Oh, you realized?” Kazuki was smiling as simplemindedly as ever, but by that point her face was drenched with sweat, and her breathing was wild and strained. I was in pretty much the same boat. Again: I, the guy who was doped up on mana, was having just as hard a time as she was. Where the hell does this chick hide all that energy in that small frame of hers? It’s a real mystery.
“I can imagine so many wild possibilities if you did join, though! Like, first, we’ll cram in so much training before finals we won’t even have time to sleep! Then, after summer vacation starts, we’ll have a hellish summer training camp waiting for us, and we can even hole up in the mountains together for more training after that! Like, y’know, one of those ten-day wilderness survival excursions!”
“I’d love to meet the guy who could listen to that pitch and decide that joining sounds like a good idea!” How would she even know about the hellish training camp thing? She’s still a first-year; she can’t have gone through one of those yet! On the other hand, considering the side of her I was seeing at that moment, I could easily imagine her turning it into hell for the other club members without breaking a sweat.
“Huh...?” Suddenly, the smell...stopped? Not in the sense that it stopped smelling—it was growing stronger and stronger, actually, in a manner that could only make me conclude that the man had stopped, and I was closing in on him.
“Sorry, Kazuki, but no more time to chat. I’ve gotta move.” I’d ended up getting pulled into the conversation, but I hadn’t forgotten my actual objective. I felt a bit bad about doing this to Kazuki, but it was time for me to sprint at full speed. I figured that an obsessive track maniac like her would end up taking that defeat and turning it into motivation, anyway. She’d be fine.
“Whoa?! Hey, Senpai?!” I heard her shout with shock behind me, but I accelerated in a flash and left her in the dust, running at a speed that nobody my age could possibly manage, no matter how all-out they went. Well, not in this world, anyway.
My final destination ended up being a fenced-off construction site. They were going to put up an apartment building there, best I could tell; it was an empty lot in a desolate neighborhood about five stations away from Meiou City. He stood in the center of the lot: a portly man in a suit, back turned to me like he was the final boss of a dungeon. The sun had completely set at that point and the lot was pitch black, but I knew in an instant that it was him and made the obvious first move.
“Geh heh heh! So you made it, Kunughi Kobphhaugh?!?!?!”
“DIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
I dropkicked him in the head. You better believe I put all the momentum of my sprint into it, too, and blew him most of the way across the lot. He bounced along the ground like a soccer ball. In fact, I hit him so hard that I’d almost worried about accidentally killing him, but considering our interactions up to that point he definitely wasn’t a normal person, and I was pretty sure he’d be fine.
“Heh heh heh... You certainly have a funny way of greeting people.” As expected, he stood up like nothing had happened at all. I could just make out his silhouette through the dust cloud raised by his impact. “I’m glad to see you’re back in top condition. Forcing you to drink this was worth the effort.”
He pulled the bottle from before out of his pocket again. That confirmed my suspicions—he’d force-fed it to me, and whatever it was, it had allowed me to recover my mana. Apparently, that was all according to plan for him.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Your partner for your first kiss, of course!” He pressed his fingers up to his lips, obviously provoking me.
“Oh, you are so dead!” I’d managed to cool off a bit thanks to my conversation with Kazuki, but all of a sudden I was filled with rage all over again. He walked off that first kick like it was nothing—nobody would blame me if I gave him a couple more for good measure, right...?
“I was long gone by then, but you shouted so loudly I heard you anyway. In any case, no need to worry—it was my first kiss too.”
“I don’t give a crap!” Oh god, that first kiss shout was loud enough for people outside to hear it?! This sucks! Knowing it was also his first just made the situation suck even harder. Nobody would be proud of exchanging first kisses with a greasy, middle-aged degenerate! Hell, that’s the exact opposite of reassuring! It’s a social time bomb that’ll explode the minute anyone finds out about this nightmare!
“Heh heh heh, oh, pwease, don’t be so angwy!” he snickered. “I’m sure you realize that bloodshed’s frowned upon in this world, don’tcha?”
“‘This world’... I knew it—you too?”
“That’s right. I came here from the same world as you—from that fantasy land of swords and sorcery, as they say in these parts.” He admitted it immediately and easily. Apparently, he’d had no intention of hiding it in the first place.
“What’re you after? Why would you—”
“Why would I try to assault the lovely little lady from before?” He cut me off, sneering as he predicted my line of questioning. It wasn’t the gross, sleazy grin from before. This was something altogether different.
“You didn’t try to assault her; you did assault her!”
“If I’d actually been trying, do you really believe she would have been able to escape? I wasn’t after her, Kunughi Koh. I was after you.”
“Me...?”
“You’ve gone soft, but I had a feeling that making contact with her would spur you to action.” Her—he emphasized the word in a weird way that really got my attention. It almost felt like he wasn’t really talking about Ayase at all. “Wait, really?” he continued. “You haven’t noticed?”
“Noticed what?”
“About the girl! Ayase Hikari is—” His words cut off mid-sentence. Hikari’s what? If you weren’t going after her out of pure perversion, why were you chasing her...? I waited for him to finish his thought, but he didn’t. We just stood there, silently.
“I’m waiting?”
“I’m aware, but...who is that?” His style of speech suddenly shifted—he sounded a bit stiffer than he had up until that moment. It seemed to me that he’d been caught somewhat off guard, and I had to wonder if that was how he talked normally.
More importantly, though, who is “that”? His gaze was fixed on a point behind me, and I turned to look, though I took great care to make sure not to let my guard down. I couldn’t let him get the jump on me while I was distracted. I spotted “that” immediately: Kazuki, crouched down and holding her tracksuit’s jacket in front of her as if it’d help her blend in. Who does she think she is, a ninja?
“What’re you doing over there?” I called out.
“Ah, you knew I was watching?” she responded.
“Nope! Honestly, didn’t notice at all. Kinda freaking out here.” Seriously, it felt like my heart just about leapt out through my mouth the moment I noticed her. Thankfully, I managed to hold back a yelp, which helped preserve what very little dignity I had left. Kazuki, meanwhile, abandoned all pretense of stealth the moment she was discovered. She slung her jacket over her shoulder and smiled as she walked up to me.
“I can’t believe you left me behind like that, Senpai!” She pouted. “You’ve got this really weird smell on you today, though, so I managed to follow you anyway.” The old guy’s durian might’ve let me track him, but apparently it also lured Kazuki right to us.
“You know that means it’s your fault she’s here, right? This is more complicated than ever because you just had to go and blow up a damn durian in my apartment!”
“I do believe you’re trying to pass the buck to me.”
“Can’t pass the buck to someone who already has it! Why the hell did you have a durian in the first place?! Were you trying to harass me, or what?!”
He paused. “Just a touch of humor.”
“It’s not friggin’ funny!” If barging into a sick person’s house uninvited, splattering a durian all over their room, and forcing a kiss on them counts as “humor,” then our society needs to start making laws to keep the comics of the world in check! Urge to kill: rapidly rising! I bet the price of rage is going through the roof in my internal stock market!
“Would a watermelon have been better? They are in season.”
“One: not the problem; two: why a watermelon; and three: of course that’d be better! Hello?!” Something about his blockheaded, fundamentally nonsensical sense of humor reminded me of one of my old party members back in the other world. He was a handsome man with a perpetually surly look on his face, though, and just the thought of comparing him to this disgusting old pervert made me want to snap on the spot and beat the crap out of him.
“Anyway,” I said, changing the subject, “how long were you listening, Kazuki?”
“Huh...? Ah, not long! I just got here, yup!”
“Look me in the eye and say that again.” She couldn’t. In fact, absolutely everything about her body language screamed dishonesty. “Kazuki?”
“L-Like I said, I didn’t hear anythi— Eek?!” I sandwiched her face between my palms and forced her to look me in the eye. She froze up, tried her best to look away, then gave up and finally met my gaze. “Umm, so... I started listening around the time you were saying something about having your first kiss with that guy over there.”
“That was basically the very beginning!”
“I-I’m not the type to judge, y’know?! If you’re, umm, into people like him, that’s fine by me! I’ve heard that sort of thing’s considered totally normal in other parts of the world these days!”
“Nooo! He forced it on me! Right?!”
“Wh-Why are you bringing me into this?!”
“Isn’t it obvious?! Back me up here! It’s your fault we’re even having this misunderstanding!”
“Ugh... I suppose so.” He didn’t look satisfied with the situation, but he nodded in agreement and turned to face Kazuki. “Young lady?”
“Y-Yeah?”
“I’m a woman.”
“Like hell you are!” I screeched. “Oh my god, if you were gonna lie, you could’ve at least tried to come up with a believable one!”
“Oh, you’re a lady! Wow, yeah, I totally misunderstood this whole thing. Sorry about that.”
“She bought it?!” If he tried that line on ten random people, I could basically guarantee that all ten of them would call him out on it, but Kazuki accepted it without a second thought. I had seriously mixed feelings about the whole matter, but she’d just accepted the situation as totally normal, for whatever reason, and I didn’t feel like pushing my luck.
“By the way—Senpai?”
“Yeah?”
“What was all that ‘fantasy land of swords and sorcery’ stuff about?”
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Oh god, that’s right! She was listening from the very start! That means she heard all of the conversation, including those bits! I reflexively glared at the old man, and he shot me a “boy, just look at the mess you’ve gotten us into, she totally heard us” look in return. How is this my fault?!
“Then there was that stuff about the world, and about him assaulting someone, and something about Ayase Hikari-chan... I didn’t really get most of it, to be honest.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t, and you’re better off that way. Trust me. Just go home, have a nice evening, and go to bed.”
“No way! I’m waaay too curious to sleep!” She seemed really excited. Is she enjoying this? The old man and I exchanged a glance with each other. We wouldn’t be on glance-exchanging terms under normal circumstances, but we shared a single common opinion: having a serious conversation would be impossible with her around.
“I’ll explain it all later, okay?”
“Aww, c’mooon...”
“Allow me, young lady. We were discussing a video game.” I completely failed to come up with an excuse that would convince her and was verbally flailing, but the old guy stepped up to do so instead.
“A video game?”
“Yes, that’s right. The two of us play the same online game together, and our discussion just happened to get a touch heated.”
For something he came up with on the spot, it was honestly a pretty solid lie. “Swords and sorcery” did describe a majority of that sort of game’s settings, after all. Kazuki didn’t look like the sort of girl who would have much know-how when it came to games, but as long as she was vaguely aware of their existence, she’d probably get the gist of it.
“But what about the kissing thing?”
“That’s a game mechanic.”
“And the thing about assaulting a girl to get at Senpai?”
“An event in the game.”
“I thought I heard you mention Ayase Hikari-chan, though...?”
“‘Ayase...Hikari’? You must have misheard something.”
“Oh, okay. I guess that makes sense.” It sorta fell apart at the end, but Kazuki gave a satisfied nod anyway. This old dude’s more of a fast-talker than I expected him to be...
“Oh, can I ask one more question?”
“What?” I replied.
“Why do both of you smell so bad?”
We froze. The construction site fell into deathly silence. I still didn’t even understand why he’d felt the need to blow up a durian with his bare hands in the first place, and thanks to that incredibly random decision, both of us reeked of that distinctive week-old-garbage smell. It was so horrifyingly pungent, I was sort of astonished that Kazuki hadn’t already fled in disgust.
There was no way he could write off the stench as part of the game. At the rate things were going, it seemed inevitable that we’d be filed together in her mind as partners in stench, and I didn’t want to be thought of as any sort of partner with that lunatic!
“It’s because of the game.”
“Seriously, dude?!” How the hell does he think he’s gonna spin this?! Kazuki might be a pretty dim bulb, but she’s not burnt out!
“The more you play this particular game, the more you end up emitting this scent. The two of us are hopelessly afflicted.”
“O-Oh, wow, that game’s crazy! I’ve heard that video games have been getting super advanced lately, but I didn’t know they could even make smells!”
“You believed me?!” This time it was the old man’s turn to be horrified by her credulity, in spite of the fact that he’s the one who came up with the excuse in the first place.
“Well, y’know, I don’t really know much about anything other than track and field... Wait, you were kidding?”
He hesitated for just a moment, then replied. “N-No. I was completely serious. Video games are really something these days.”
“Thought so! I know, right?!” She was so stupid, it was almost cute. I mean, she was cute to begin with (it comes with the heroine territory), but still. “Well, it still feels like you two have some real beef with each other. Are you fighting? Even though you both play the same game?”
“F-Fighting?” I stammered. “Nah, we’re not really—”
“Yes, that’s right, young lady.” Suddenly, something about the old man’s aura changed. His words were laced with anger, and that anger was very distinctly directed towards me.
He’s not seriously planning on having this conversation right in front of her?! “Hey, don’t even think about it!” I warned, to no avail.
“You see, he gave up on the game halfway through. Some of us tried to be understanding, to let him go—but not all of us could be so accepting...” He was smiling, but there wasn’t so much as a hint of amity in his voice. The contrast between his expression and tone was so stark, even Kazuki seemed a bit frightened, grabbing on to the hem of my uniform. “That’s why I came to see him. To bring him back. To make him play the ‘game’ with us once more.”
“The game...” He obscured the true meaning of his words in a metaphor on account of Kazuki’s presence. I knew that he was a denizen of that other world, and with that fact in mind, he could only mean one thing.
“I’m an outsider, so I’m not really sure it’s my place to talk,” piped up Kazuki, “but, I mean, everyone’s got their own reasons for playing games and quitting them, right...?”
“Yes, you’re quite right. You are an outsider, so you’d never understand. You can’t appreciate how serious we ‘game-folk’ are. You can’t imagine how sincerely we live our lives, and how difficult it was to accept it when he tossed us away like we were nothing.”
“Ugh...” Kazuki bowed to the pressure of his words. It was starting to get to me as well—I was sweating, and not as a result of my recent sprint. It was a cold, clammy sweat that clung unpleasantly to my skin.
“In our eyes, he was...the protagonist, I suppose. And a story can’t progress if the protagonist goes missing. Far from it—without him around, it’s only a matter of time before the villain he’s fated to defeat drives the world to ruin.”
Protagonist. The word lingered in my mind.
I’m no protagonist, not even close! I’m a sidekick, a best friend, an extra...but those are all titles of my own creation. They’re nothing more than a story I engineered to protect myself while I live in this world.
I wanted to turn this world into my paradise: a somewhat boisterous but peaceful school life rom-com where no blood has to be shed, where nobody has to die. Nobody.
“I’m no protagonist...”
“Senpai?”
“Oh, but you are!” the man continued. “Maybe not in this world...but in that one, there’s no question about it.”
“Ugh...” I couldn’t deny it. I didn’t have the right to. The fact that I’d been the protagonist led to so many things being stolen away from so many people—I couldn’t turn a blind eye to that.
I was the protagonist, so Rei and Lyra died. I was the protagonist, so I had to kill Balrog with my own two hands... That wasn’t even the end of it. My very existence warped the lives of countless people, more than I knew, and yet I abandoned that responsibility. I ran from it—all the way to another world.
The man before me knew all of that. That’s why he engineered events so that Ayase and I would meet. He probably also knew that I’d project my memories of Rei onto Ayase, and that I would try to erase her memories of me as a result. I’d been dancing in the palm of his hand since the very beginning, and in doing so, he’d proven to me that in the end, I’ll never belong in this world. No matter how much I aspire to be the comic relief in a story that’s bigger than me, it’ll never happen. I’ll never be able to support someone like that. I’ll never be able to make people happy—
“You’re not a protagonist, Senpai.”
Suddenly, Kazuki spoke up from beside me—she spoke to me.
“I mean, how could you be? You’re Ayase-senpai’s Friend A, right?” she said with a smile. An innocent smile, pure and naive, without so much as a tinge of malice to be seen. “I’ve never met anyone else who’d introduce themself like that! You didn’t even tell me your real name! You’ve been Ayase-senpai’s Friend A-senpai to me since the day we met, and what kinda protagonist would have a name like that?”
“I believe I told you that you’re an outsider?” interjected the man, spitefully.
“I mean, I’m not gonna get the whole ‘game’ thing, no matter how much I think about it. I haven’t even played it! But if we’re talking worlds, then in my book, there are as many of ’em out there as there are people and as many protagonists as there are worlds. Like, track and field’s a whole world for me, and it’s not even my only one! I’m the protagonist in my own track world, but I could never take on a leading role when it comes to an academic one.”
“What on earth are you talking about...?”
“Umm, yeah, sorry. I’m not even sure I totally get it, myself... I guess what I’m trying to say’s that Senpai might be the protagonist of that game’s world in your mind, but it might not be that important to him! He has his own worlds that’re totally different from yours, so I don’t think it makes sense for him to let what anyone else says shoehorn him into a role he doesn’t want!” she concluded with a grin.
She was probably speaking off the cuff, and it wasn’t a logical, structured argument in the slightest. In fact, it was all just her completely subjective opinion. And yet somehow, hearing her say those words made the pressure that’d been building within my chest drain away.
“That said, you’ve jumped up the character rankings for Rena-chan’s Super Track Tale pretty majorly tonight, Senpai! I’m not giving up the protagonist title, though!”
“Kazuki...”
“You’ve got your own world to live in, Senpai, so I think you should live your life like you... Huh...?” Suddenly, Kazuki staggered forward. She released my uniform and spun unsteadily in place like a wobbly top near the end of its rotation.
“A-Ahhh...”
“Kazuki?!”
A moment later, she fell to the ground. Well, not all the way, thankfully—I managed to catch her right before she landed. She lay there, completely limp, staring blankly into space.
“Hey, Kazuki?! Kazuki!”
“Ha ha,” she replied weakly, “guess I might’ve pushed myself a bit too hard... It’s been ages since I’ve run myself into the ground, and then I did all that thinking on top of it. I’m totally outta gas...”
“S-Seriously...?”
“Umm, one last thing... You’ve got a really nice smile, Senpai, so you should stop scowling like that... Next time we run together, let’s...enjoy it...” With those final words, she fell asleep in my arms. I immediately checked her neck for a pulse and was relieved to find one. She definitely wasn’t dead. From the way she’d talked about it, I’d just accidentally pushed her a lot further than I should’ve.
“Kazuki...” I slowly and gently picked her up, careful not to wake her. Can’t possibly be comfortable to sleep in my arms, but cut me some slack, girl. “I was scowling, huh?” Maybe that’s why she stuck with me to the end. And really, the ridiculous exchange I had with her while I was running around did actually help me cool off. Was that all according to her plan?
The thought made me chuckle. A girl—a kouhai, even—who I’d assumed was a total musclehead managed to pull a fast one on me. I’m kind of a sucker, aren’t I?
“Koh.”
“Look—I’ve got a thousand reasons to let you have it, but now’s not the time. Can’t exactly fight while I’m carrying someone.”
“So, you agree with her? You’ll accept everything she said, just like that?”
I hesitated. “I know I can’t escape from what happened in that world. I get it. But we’re in this world right now. Don’t drag me into that one’s problems.”
“That world is everything to me.” The old man—or rather, the person who looked like an old man—spat the words out with a somewhat defeated tone.
Compared to this world, the one that he and I had lived in was hell on earth. This world had its own problems, of course, but even taking all of them into account, it still felt like paradise to me. I had no idea how he’d managed to pursue me all the way here, but I knew that he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble if it didn’t mean quite a lot to him.
“Fine. We’ll talk about this again one day when I can spare the time.” He didn’t reply. “I’m just not good at getting mad on my own behalf, in the end. Like, I was so pissed at you I couldn’t even believe it just a minute ago, but seeing the ridiculous look on this doofus’s sleeping face was enough to totally snap me out of it.”
Kazuki was right. I just had to smile. I wasn’t particularly into running, but I was very into this world. Maybe I’d choose it, maybe I wouldn’t, but I’d make that decision myself. After Kazuki ran herself half to death and thought herself most of the rest of the way there, I owed it to her to not take her words lightly.
A moment of silence passed before he answered. “Fine,” he said, turning his back to me. “We’ll meet again. One day...”
“Works for me. Leave the fat suit at home when you do, though. You’re not pulling the look off at all.”
“Shut up,” he sulkily muttered. He sounded different in that final moment. It wasn’t the ridiculously deep voice he’d put on before. He sounded throaty and a bit hoarse. Something about his voice rang a bell, but I couldn’t pin it down.
I stayed there until he vanished from eyesight, carrying Kazuki and staring blankly up at the stars.
Your entire world can change in an instant. Somewhere along the way, the daily life I’d been enjoying with all my heart had silently crumbled around me. I hadn’t even noticed. But in the end, I’d been the one to deal the killing blow.
I had to deal with Ayase. I had to deal with the man who came all the way from another world to find me. And finally, I had to deal with the deep-seated wounds that lingered in the back of my own mind, festering away without any hope of healing.
If I wanted to choose a world for myself, I would have to confront all of them head-on.
