Chapter 67: Chapter 64: Fiori’s Turtle
Yamoto Tamaki.
That was the real name of Kuon no Sanka's scenarist, Fiori's Turtle. This one piece of information shouldn't have been all that hard to uncover for someone who'd worked with them—someone such as Ijuuin—but, for some reason, the process had been oddly time-consuming.
Ijuuin couldn't remember their name, and although he'd looked through all the documents he could find at his workplace, it didn't seem to appear anywhere. Searching for information about Fiori's Turtle was like grasping at straws—when he finally thought he'd gotten hold of something, it slipped right through his fingers.
In the end, he hadn't been able to figure out any information about them until the story had progressed on the other side. From that point onward, the search had become surprisingly simple. Ijuuin mysteriously remembered the name he hadn't been able to pinpoint this entire time.
At the same time, something even more peculiar occurred: Ijuuin started having trouble remembering the events of the original scenario. It was as though the two pieces of information had been exchanged inside his mind. If he concentrated hard enough, he could still remember that Ellize used to be a villain and that the story didn't go exactly as it did now, but he was starting to feel more and more like the current story was the real one—as though Ellize was always meant to be the saintly character she'd become. He was gradually starting to think like the players.
It seemed like Ijuuin would eventually forget everything about the previous story. Niito didn't know why that was happening or what it was supposed to mean. Some sort of superior power seemed to be at play, and he wasn't sure he'd find an answer even if he kept looking. To be fair, he wasn't even sure a rational explanation existed at all.
At the end of the day, there were limits to what the human mind could comprehend. Perhaps trying to understand the way the world was shifting was simply too much. He felt like a scientist researching the workings of the universe. Though he could theorize all he wanted, there was no guarantee he'd figure anything out even after a lifetime of research.
He still intended to follow every lead he could, though. If he gave up before he'd tried everything, he felt like he'd be left with the nagging feeling of dissatisfaction.
After getting a hold of Fiori's Turtle's true name, Ijuuin immediately contacted them to set up a meeting. They'd agreed, but requested to meet at an expensive café—Ijuuin's treat, of course.
As far as Niito was concerned, it was a cheap price to pay to finally get to talk to them. They couldn't let this opportunity pass them by, so Ijuuin reluctantly agreed.
The promised day finally came.
The café Yamoto had picked stood out quite a bit. It was a brick building—the type rarely seen in modern-day Japan. Wooden tables and chairs were arranged neatly on the hardwood floors, and beautiful chandeliers hung from the ceiling, giving the café a chic atmosphere. The lights were dim so as not to strain the customers' eyes and the large windows allowed them to gaze at the street freely. All in all, the place had an old, yet refined charm to it.
Ijuuin approached a server and asked them whether the person who'd made the reservation had arrived. They nodded and pointed at a table with a smile.
And there was a woman—a very young woman, at that. She didn't even seem to be over twenty. She had black hair, like a great majority of Japanese people, that was shoulder length. She was wearing a suit and was slightly prettier than average. She wasn't a stunning beauty, but she definitely wasn't unattractive either.
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The two men walked up to her table and Ijuuin asked, "Excuse me. Are you Yamoto-san?"
"Yes, I am. You're Ijuuin-san, right? I was waiting for you."
They had the right person. Now that they'd ensured she was the one they were here to see, they sat opposite her. There were already several plates in front of Yamoto. She'd been enjoying expensive delicacies while waiting for them. Obviously, she expected Ijuuin to foot the bill.
"And who might he be?" she asked, glancing Niito's way.
"He's just accompanying me," Ijuuin said.
"Is he...all right? He looks awfully pale," Yamoto said.
"He's fine. Don't mind him."
Yamoto's first instinct had been to worry about Niito. She wasn't the only one—Niito's appearance stood out.
The servers couldn't comment on a customer's appearance, so they'd all kept their mouths shut, but they often glanced their way. Most of them were probably more worried at the prospect of having to deal with him if he collapsed in the middle of the café. God forbid he passed away inside the shop. Even if they hadn't done anything wrong, distasteful rumors were sure to disrupt business for months to come. The owner probably hoped to see him leave as quickly as possible.
"Well then, may I ask what you wanted to discuss with me today? If it's about the sequel, I'm still far from done. As I've told you many times already, I never intended for Kuon no Sanka to have a sequel. You announced it out of the blue without so much as consulting me, and now you're asking me to write something I hadn't planned for at all..."
"I'm terribly sorry about that. But, as you know, Kuon no Sanka's popularity has skyrocketed. It's by far our company's best-selling game. Not releasing a sequel simply isn't an option at this point. The players are asking for it. That's why we've offered to have another scenarist write the sequel if you don't—"
"That's out of the question. I can't entrust this story to just anyone. You could just announce that the sequel isn't happening, and everything would be settled..." Yamoto snapped, looking at Ijuuin as if he were the root of all her problems.
As it turned out, the game company had unilaterally decided to announce a sequel. Niito finally understood why the project was taking so long. If the scenarist had planned for the story to be over in one game, it was no wonder they struggled to think up a continuation.
"That's not how things wo—" Ijuuin started before stopping himself. After a pause, he continued, "I didn't request this meeting to discuss this. The story I'm about to tell you is very strange, and I'm not sure you'll believe it. It's somewhat...occult. Would you care to listen anyway?"
"Occult, you say?" Yamoto repeated, puzzled.
Ijuuin gave her an overview of everything that had happened to him and Niito thus far. He told her about the original scenario and detailed the biggest change of them all: Ellize's storyline. He explained that, for some reason, Ellize was able to materialize into this world and that it seemed like the game's story changed based on her actions. He went on to say that he and Niito were the only two people who had realized something was wrong as far as he knew. All the others seemed to think the game had always been like that. He concluded by saying that a mysterious force was preventing them from seeing or even reading about events that had yet to happen for Ellize.
Yamoto listened without interrupting him. She'd brought her hand to her chin, a focused look on her face.
Once Ijuuin was finished, she murmured, "How peculiar. I'm quite certain I wrote the current scenario from the get-go, but this scenario is familiar to me. It's quite similar to what I saw on the other side. Did the timelines get mixed up, or did the possibilities start diverging...? As I thought, Ellize might just be the key..." Yamoto's mumbling was almost unintelligible. Eventually, she raised her face and looked at her interlocutors. "This is a bit of a crazy story, but I believe you."
"You believed me rather easily. I'm not sure I should be the one saying this, but the story's quite preposterous, isn't it?"
"I suppose it is. However, I've experienced my fair share of absurdity. It makes me more inclined to believe the unbelievable," Yamoto answered with a smile.
So she does know something, Niito thought. He'd expected as much. Someone who hadn't come in contact with mysterious events themselves wouldn't have even bothered listening to the entire story before dismissing it. In fact, Niito and Ijuuin had come to this place prepared to have Yamoto laugh in their faces.
Little did they know that Yamoto would say something even more unbelievable.
"The thing is..." she started, "I didn't invent the story of Kuon no Sanka. I simply recounted the events that occurred in Fiori."
"Wait, what? What do you mean?"
"I lived in Fiori. When I died, I was reincarnated in this world. We call that...the samsara, or something? I'm not quite sure how it all works. For some reason, I retained the memories of my previous life. The Ellize I know was always as she is now in the game: a fake more worthy of being a saint than any other before her. I've never met the horrible Ellize you've described, and I've never written about her."
Yamoto had lived in Fiori before being reincarnated? As she'd said, she'd experienced something even crazier than their story.
Niito'd had the time to get used to the idea of reincarnation because of what had happened to him and Ellize, but Ijuuin was flabbergasted.
"Th-There's no way I'd ever believe that! This doesn't make any sense. Even if your soul was to be reincarnated somehow, you wouldn't be able to keep your memories. It's all stored in the brain! You know that, right?!"
Ijuuin's reaction was logical. Memories were indeed stored in the brain. Even assuming that reincarnation existed, it made absolutely no sense for anyone to retain memories from a previous life. Niito, on the other hand, didn't believe common sense applied here. There were countless phenomena science had yet to explain—this was most likely one of them.
"She believed us, Ijuuin-san," Niito said. "Let's do the same. We won't get anywhere if we start doubting everything she says."
"B-But, this story..." Ijuuin paused. "All right, I get it. You're right, let's move on."
Ijuuin still seemed to have a hard time believing what Yamoto had said, but their conversation couldn't continue unless he accepted it... At least, for the time being. He cast away his doubts and gulped down his glass of water.
"So, according to you...there's nothing wrong with this world or with the scenario, and we're the only ones who believe anything has changed, right?" Niito asked.
"Yes. You told me that you couldn't access the entirety of the game and that you couldn't see what had 'yet to happen on the other side.' That's not the case for me. I know everything from start to finish. From my point of view, everything is over. Actually, the events I wrote about all occurred long before I even started writing."
Once again, Yamoto's answer overturned all of Niito's theories. Up until now, he'd been utterly convinced that the only reason he couldn't see the end of the game was because the events had yet to be set in stone. He thought that he could only see what Ellize had already done. It had made sense, and he'd told Ellize as much.
He was now finding out that he'd been wrong this entire time. The future was set in stone. He and Ijuuin just couldn't see it when others could. That meant that the game wasn't changing in real time to match Ellize's actions.
"Then...why can't we see the end of the game? No matter how much we look, we can't access information on anything beyond what Ellize has done. We can't know things Ellize herself doesn't know about," Niito said.
"You said your internet pages just loaded endlessly, right? It's only just a guess, but...I think it might be because our world itself is using its power to revise things. It might be difficult to believe, but worlds have a will of their own. In Fiori, the world's will gave birth to witches and saints. Earth's will must have forced a filter on the two of you to avoid creating a paradox. You're able to talk to Ellize. Let's assume that you knew her future—what if you told her and it prompted her to change her behavior? It would create a time paradox. The world must be blocking out all the information pertaining to Ellize's future from the two of you to avoid this. It makes sense, doesn't it?"
Niito grunted. If Yamoto was right, the world wasn't changing in real time—it had already changed, but their perception couldn't catch up to those changes...or rather, the world itself stopped them from catching up. If anything, it was more believable than assuming that the entire world was changing based on Ellize's every action. The world had been like this from the very start, and so had Kuon no Sanka's scenario.
Niito had only learned about the alternative scenario because of his connection to Ellize. As for Ijuuin, Niito suspected that he'd been lumped in together with him only because he'd contacted him. Since Niito had gotten in touch with Ijuuin, the world had been forced to impose the same restrictions on him. After all, if Ijuuin told Niito about the future, it would defeat the point of hiding anything from him in the first place. In other words, Ijuuin was simply collateral damage.
He'd most likely started feeling like the current scenario was the real one because the story was nearing its end. The need for a filter would soon disappear entirely. Before long, Ijuuin would surely go back to thinking that the current scenario was the only one that ever existed and forget about the "old" one.
"Don't you think the world would have revised your memories as well if that were the case?" Niito pondered. "I could ask you about the ending and tell Ellize afterward."
"You couldn't, because I have absolutely no intention to tell you anything. In fact, I'm fairly certain the world would alter my memories if I changed my mind," Yamoto said before sipping her coffee nonchalantly.
It doesn't look like either Ellize or I will be able to learn about the ending before it actually happens for her, Niito thought. He let out an incredibly deep sigh.
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