Kapitel 41: Chapter 39: Meeting the Game Developer
"I'll have the pancakes and a coffee, please," Ijuuin ordered before turning to Niito. "Can I get you something, Fudou-san?"
"No, thank you. I'm not hungry."
Niito and Ijuuin Haruto—the leader of the team who'd developed Kuon no Sanka—had headed to a nearby coffee shop to talk. Niito was currently sitting across from the man who'd been dubbed "the god of the gaming world."
Ijuuin had retained his youthful features, but Niito estimated he was already in his thirties. He had short, neatly combed black hair and black eyes. The man wore a pair of angular glasses that gave him the look of an intellectual—though, truth be told, Niito thought that the whole idea of equating glasses to intelligence was pretty outdated. In this day and age, everyone and their grandma had terrible eyesight because of phones and computers. Wearing glasses or contact lenses had simply become the norm.
"Now, then... I do hope you'll forgive me for cutting to the chase, but I'd very much like to hear what you meant by 'Ellize, 102.'"
"That number was Ellize's original weight," Niito answered immediately.
Ijuuin laughed. "That's a funny joke. However, Ellize weighs forty-four kilograms. You've never played Kuon no Sanka, have you?"
Niito refused to let him play dumb. In a confident tone, he asked, "If you seriously thought I was joking, you wouldn't have agreed to see me, right? You only made time in your busy schedule for a nameless web writer like myself because you knew what I was talking about, right?"
If Ijuuin hadn't had any idea about what that number had meant, he never would've agreed to meet with Niito. He would've made excuses and insisted things were busy at the company or something. It wasn't like giving an interview to a random writer held any value to him—it would have been a waste of time.
And yet, here he was, sitting in front of Niito. That told Niito everything he needed to know.
He continued to push the subject. "The original Ellize wasn't anything like the current one—she was a villain through and through, meant to be hated. Really, she was mostly there to make Eterna look good. She played a big part during the second semester—from the end of the summer holiday to the winter one—where she wreaked havoc and abused her status until she was finally ousted for good."
Ijuuin stayed silent for a few moments before nodding. "So you really do know about her..." The coffee and the pancakes he'd ordered had arrived, and he added two creamers to his cup. He mindlessly stirred his coffee as he continued, "You're correct, Fudou-san... Ellize was always meant to be the main villain until the witch showed up. And yet, the current Ellize is even more of a saint than Eterna. As you yourself said, she's nothing like the original. She doesn't even look the same anymore. The worst part is...everyone seems convinced that Ellize has always been like that...even the members of my team. To be honest with you, I was starting to think there was something wrong with me."
"So you weren't the one who made these changes?"
"How could I have done that? Certainly, my team could have created a patch with a different Ellize and commercialized it, but how in the world could we have made others believe the game had been like that from the start? Do you think I'm capable of changing the past somehow?" Ijuuin asked. He poured syrup all over his pancakes, cut them, took a bite, and topped it all off with a sip of coffee. "In truth, I was hoping you would know something. That's why I agreed to meet you."
"I do know some things... But it's such a crazy story that I'm afraid you won't believe me," Niito said.
"I'll decide that after I hear it."
Niito almost laughed at the irony of the situation. He'd come to this man seeking information, but he was going to be the one explaining things away. There was a chance this conversation would prove to be useful, though, so he decided to go for it anyway. Still, he was certain Ijuuin wouldn't believe him if he suddenly blurted out that he was Ellize, so he decided to alter his story a little.
"Ellize—the current one, I should say—sometimes becomes a...ghost, of sorts. She's visited me several times. Her actions are changing the course of the game and everyone's perception of it. I'm not sure whether the same applies to you, but there are some parts of the game that I can't see. I've concluded that it's because these events have yet to occur in her world. I can't see them because they haven't been set in stone yet."
"You're right—that is absurd. Do you have any evidence?"
"The easiest way to prove I'm telling the truth would be to have you meet Ellize. The only issue is...I have no way to know when she'll show up next. She always appears in my room, though, and I think it's because of the link we share that I still remember the original game."
Ijuuin started massaging the bridge of his nose as he pondered over what Niito had just said. He took another mouthful of pancake and started chewing mechanically. He seemed to be hoping the sugar would help him think.
"Fudou-san, where do you live at the moment?"
"I have a room in a shabby apartment building in Sunekajiri."
"I see... Do you happen to know if the building has any vacant rooms?"
"Yes. The flat right next to mine is empty."
"How convenient," Ijuuin noted with a nod. He took another sip of coffee and continued, "I'll move there for the time being. If Ellize visits you, please inform me immediately, no matter what time of day."
"A-Are you sure? You don't have that much free time on your hands, do you?"
"No, I'm a very busy man. However, I don't think I'll be able to focus on anything else until I get answers. Something I created with my own two hands is out there, and it's changing all on its own. It's scaring me."
Niito understood where the other man was coming from. Ijuuin had to be creeped out beyond belief. To him, it must've been like watching a drawing you'd made suddenly come to life. He must've wanted to understand what was going on even more than Niito himself.
As it turned out, the day when Niito would be able to show him proof came much faster than he'd thought.
◇
After I'd made up (?) with Verner, nothing really big happened until a few days before the winter holiday started. Suddenly, I'd found myself in my previous world once more. Fudou Niito—me—noticed me and got out of bed.
"Here you are again," he greeted me.
"Indeed, here I am again."
Damn, you look like shit, me.
Niito—me—basically looked like a zombie at this point. His skin was ashen, his cheeks were sunken, and his undereye area looked incredibly hollow. He had dark circles that would put pandas to shame, and he'd lost so much weight that I could make out his bones.
He doesn't have much longer to live, does he?
Niito—me—abruptly picked up his smartphone and started to type something.
"I'm going to invite someone here, Ellize," he warned me. "I haven't told him that we're the same person because it'd be a pain to explain, so hold your tongue."
"Okay... But are you sure it's a good idea to invite an outsider here?"
"I wouldn't exactly call him an 'outsider.' He's the leader of the team that worked on Kuon no Sanka."
Apparently, Niito—me—had gotten chummy with the developers. I'm guessing he's looking into the links that tie this world and the other one together.
If you were to stop and think about it for five minutes, transmigrating into a game was absurd. At the end of the day, Kuon no Sanka was nothing more than a clever collection of character sprites, CGs, background illustrations, and BGMs held together by a bunch of lines of code. Oh, and some cool effects for the fight scenes, but that's beside the point!
Anyway, that was no world, which raised an important question: what exactly was the world I lived in? Did it just happen to be modeled off the game, or had the game been created with that world as its basis? Since the contents of the game changed depending on what I did, the latter seemed more likely, but...
"Oh, he'll be here any minute," Niito—me—said, walking to the entrance.
I could hear someone running along the corridor. Niito—me—looked through the peephole and opened the door. A man who seemed to be in his thirties or perhaps his early forties came in.
So this is the dude who made Kuon no Sanka, huh?
He stared at me, flabbergasted. "I can't believe it... She's really here..."
"Hmm... Nice to meet you, I'm Ellize," I said, figuring a light greeting couldn't hurt.
I was meeting one of the developers, which was akin to meeting God, considering my position as one of the characters of the game. For all I knew, he could erase my entire world at will if I pissed him off. I'd better not annoy him for the time being.
"Ah..." he hesitated. "It's a pleasure to...meet you as well. My name is Ijuuin Haruto. I'm the leader of the team that handled Kuon no Sanka's development."
Ijuuin-san, huh? I committed his name to memory.
"So, what would you like to discuss today?" I asked.
"Isn't it obvious?" Niito—me—interjected, like I was an idiot for even asking. "We're here to talk about the connection between our world and yours. Whenever you do something, the people here somehow get the idea that the game has always been like that from the start. We're trying to understand why."
"Did you bring Ijuuin-san here because he has the answer?" I inquired.
"I'm afraid not," the developer answered. "The members of my teams aren't noticing any of the changes either. They're convinced that we've made the game like that..."
I was hoping Ijuuin-san would be able to cast some light on the mystery, but it sounded like he wouldn't be much help. He'd noticed something was wrong, but he didn't seem to know anything beyond that. If the God who'd quite literally created that world didn't know anything, the situation was hopeless.
"Still, I'm certain that Kuon no Sanka is the key to unraveling this mystery," Niito—me—said. "I want all of us to stop and go over everything we know about the game together. There has to be a hint somewhere."
Ijuuin-san nodded, and I ended up getting swept up by the atmosphere and nodded along too. With one of the devs here, we'd get to hear about the inside stories, so maybe we had a teeny tiny chance of finding a clue.
At Niito—my—'s insistence, Ijuuin-san started talking. "First of all, the full name of the game is Kuon no Sanka ~Fiore caduto eterna~. It was released four years ago, and we've sold around four hundred and twenty thousand copies. The name of the company I work for is Attimo Game Project, and Kuon no Sanka is, without a shadow of a doubt, its greatest hit. I lead a team of six developers—including myself—and we're currently working on a sequel, as well as a spin-off with Marie as the main heroine. Although, for the time being, these projects have been put on hold."
"Why?"
"The scenarist is suffering from a severe case of writer's block. We keep asking them to hand in their work, but they never send us anything. Online novelists have no professional consciousness, I swear!"
There'd been rumors about Kuon no Sanka getting a sequel for years, but nothing had been released yet. Apparently, the culprit was the scenarist.
I guess they can't do much without the scenario. I'm curious though... Did he say the scenarist was an online novelist?
"Could you tell us what kind of person the scenarist is?" I asked.
"I don't know much about them either," he answered. "I've never met them face-to-face. They use a pseudonym, and we've only talked by message. I don't know what they look like."
"You've never met? Even though you're both part of the production team?"
"The initial story of Kuon no Sanka actually comes from a contest that our company held in collaboration with a popular online novel platform. The winner won the right to have their story published, a nice monetary prize, and a game award. Kuon no Sanka won that particular prize, and it was subsequently turned into a game. Fiori's Turtle—that's the writer's username—refused to meet anyone directly. They said they'd only agree to work with us if we agreed to communicate with them online. It's not like remote work is that rare nowadays, so we didn't think much of it. We did invite them to celebrate the game's success over a meal several times, but they always declined. Anyway, the scenarist isn't one of our employees."
As it turned out, that scenarist was an amateur that'd been given a chance after wooing the game company during the contest.
"In a way, we could say this man—or woman, I don't know—is the true creator of Kuon no Sanka," Ijuuin concluded. "All we did was add pictures and music to the words that this person wrote. We hired illustrators to work on the art, but Fiori's Turtle sent very detailed descriptions of the characters' looks as well."
"We need to talk to them, then. Where do they live? What's their name? If you signed a contract with them, you must've gotten their full name at some point," Niito—me—asked.
"We did. We needed their address to send them the game demo, so I do know both their name and address. They're called... Hmm..." Ijuuin-san trailed off and started rubbing his forehead. After thinking for a while, he raised his head, an awkward expression on his face. "I'm sorry... I've forgotten."
Dude... C'mon...
To be fair, the scenarist wasn't even one of his colleagues, and he probably used their pseudonym whenever he talked to them online.
But still, get a grip! This doesn't bode well...
(2.3k word count)
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