1 - Even in Hell, We Live Our Lives
1 - Even in Hell, We Live Our Lives
Junko refused to move away from Akuto, and Akuto didn’t try to push her away. There was a forest in front of them, and they had to enter it. That was unnerving enough on its own, but this was the afterlife. Well, they didn’t know exactly where they were, but this was all they could call it.
Either way, they had no idea where they were or why they were here.
Ahead, forest.
Behind, sea.
And the forest and the sea seemed to go on forever. They were standing on a beach.
Akuto thought to himself that waves crashing on a beach were the perfect background to the apocalypse.
“This is different than VPS... No, maybe it’s the same? But what we’re seeing...”
“Yeah. It kind of feels like... exactly how I expected the afterlife to look like,” Junko said as she looked into the forest.
“Dante’s Divine Comedy... starts in a forest, doesn’t it?”
“I know what you mean. But we never really believed anything like that. We just know what’s in the Christian books, and associate that with the afterlife. But you’re right. It’s strange that this would seem exactly like the afterlife.”
Akuto took Junko by the hand and gestured toward the forest.
“Either way, the forest is the only place to go.”
The beach didn’t go on forever. It was blocked on either side by sheer cliffs.
“Y-Yeah... But it’s a little scary, you know? There’s no path...”
Junko followed him into the forest, trembling.
“No, I can just make a path for us...” Akuto began, but just after he moved two or three trees out of the way, a path appeared.
“That’s... helpful. I guess there is a path,” Junko said, with a forced smile on her face.
“I guess that means people have been here before,” Akuto commented, stepping onto the path and looking ahead.
It was a solid dirt path, with no weeds or grass growing on it, that snaked through the forest. From here, he couldn’t see where it ended.
“Does that mean somebody’s here? I-I hope not...” Junko looked around, worried.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Akuto said, heading forward.
“Of course I’m worried. Whoever’s here is already dead...” Junko said, following after him.
“So are we.”
“Well, it doesn’t really feel that way...”
“Most of humanity must be dead. So if everybody we know is already here, it can’t be that much more dangerous than it was before.”
“Y-You know, you really adapt to things fast...”
As she traveled down the path, Junko’s trembling footsteps began to get a little more steady. She was still scared, though. But since she refused to let go of Akuto’s arm, he dropped his speed to match hers.
“It’s the same here too, I guess,” Akuto said.
“What is? This place seems really different than the world when we were alive...”
“No, I mean the fact that we can still see clearly even though we’re in a forest. Didn’t you notice? There’s light here.”
She looked around and found that he was right.
“Yeah. You’re right... I didn’t see any sun, but we could still see on the beach.”
“The leaves block out the sky here, too. There’s no light, but we can see. That’s what it means, I guess.”
“Considering we’re in the afterlife... Maybe it’s not that strange. Oh, right. In the Divine Comedy, isn’t this about where the beasts show up?” Junko said, her voice trembling.
And just then, with perfect timing, they heard a distant howl.
“Aah!” Junko screamed
Akuto, however, could tell that it was a four legged beast, perhaps a lion or a wolf. It seemed, if anything, to be a little too precise a match with the book.
“I used to work in a zoo, and I’ve never heard an animal roar like that.”
“R-Really? Then is it a monster or something?” Junko’s voice was still shaking.
“It seems unlikely... And anyway, it didn’t seem like there was anything alive in this forest until now.”
“Oh, you’re right...” Junko nodded.
The roaring stopped.
“Hmm...” Akuto said to himself, as if he’d figured something out.
“Which means that there’ll be a town at the end of the path.”
Junko’s eyes went wide.
“No way. That’s impo-”
Her sentence cut off midway. The path curved gently before reaching the end of the forest. Below them was a town. They were standing on the mountain overlooking the school, and beyond it, the imperial capital.
“W-What the hell is going on here?” Junko said, confused.
The capital looked peaceful, just like it did before the war. It felt like they’d gone back in time. From the position of the sun, it was likely a little past noon. The strange jump in time only made the dizziness she was feeling stronger. Akuto seemed to have seen it coming, but he was still a little spooked.
“I knew it... But this is still a little surprising.”
“W-What is it you knew?” She grabbed him tightly. She was shocked, but more than that, she didn’t know why it seemed like Akuto knew what was going on.
“I’m not sure, but I think this place reflects our desires.” Akuto answered
“Our desires? I’m not sure I follow.”
“It feels to me like everything that I’m seeing is something you’re thinking about.”
“Sure, it did feel like the things that I was scared of actually happened...” Junko nodded as if she understood.
“Yeah. It explains how we could see without light. And that roar in the forest.”
“Maybe, but...” Junko closed her eyes and concentrated her mind. A few seconds later, she opened them.
“You’re sure about this?”
“If this world... If the afterlife reflects our thoughts, then maybe only strong thoughts work.”
“Basic magical training means I should be able to create strong thoughts...”
Junko made a mana ball in her hand and spun it.
“You may only be able to do that because you’re used to doing it so much. Given what this world is, my thoughts should be the strongest. What we saw at the beach may have been caused by my subconscious... I wasn’t able to control my fear and uneasiness then.”
“Maybe, but...”
“Which gives me a hint as to this world’s possibilities, and its limits...” Akuto said, but then a voice interrupted them.
“Hello!”
It was Yoshie Kita, walking down the path towards them.
“Kita?”
“Yoshie?”
The two stared at her in surprise. It was indeed Yoshie Kita.
“From the look on your faces, you don’t really think it’s me, huh?”
“Of course not. I mean...”
Yoshie cut Junko off before she could continue.
“No, I understand. It makes sense. I just got here, so I’m not 100% sure what’s going on. But this phenomenon... No, this ‘event’ I guess you could call it...”
She was talking just like Yoshie usually talked. This time it was Akuto who cut her off which a chuckle.
“Essentially, we’re in a place where the wishes of the dead are granted.”
Yoshie grinned and nodded.
“You’ve got it. You always were a smart one, Akuto.”
Junko looked at them and shook her head in confusion.
“I heard that too. But if that’s the case, then it’s weird that you’re here, isn’t it? I mean, it’s possible that you only exist because Akuto or I want to see you, but...” She frowned.
She was right. If Yoshie was only there because of their wishes, there was no way of saying if she was real. But Yoshie was unconcerned.
“Of course, you’re right. But even if that’s the case, what’s the problem?”
“Huh? Are you saying... that it isn’t a problem?” Junko said, surprised.
“I’ve got memories from before I saw you. Of course, it’s possible that those memories were only created in this instant... but anyway, according to those memories, as long as you don’t think too deeply about it, you can survive here just fine,” she said, confidently.
“So we’re... safe here?” Junko said, uneasily. Yoshie nodded.
“You can pass messages from other people, and people can disagree. It feels like people have individual personalities here. Of course, I’ve got my own personality, as you know. I’ve doubted and investigated. But you know, it’s impossible to PROVE that anybody really is an independent, thinking person. So I just decided not to think about it.”
Yoshie pointed towards the town.
“Look. The town’s filled with people. It works, even when we’re not looking at it. Our lives, at least, are just like they used to be.”
Akuto raised an eyebrow. Something seemed off to him about that.
“What does that last part mean?” Yoshie shrugged, as if it was something that was hard to answer.
“Of course, a lot of stuff’s different. The student council president should explain it, not me. I’ll just make it more complicated than it needs to be,” Yoshie said, and then continued walking ahead of them. It was clear she was going to lead them to the school
“We’re going to school?” Junko asked, with a hint of nostalgia.
“That’s right. It’s the easiest place to live around here.” School seemed to be in session, and no students were outside. But when they looked at the windows, the class was filled with students.
“I guess it’s just like it used to be,” Akuto said.
“Some things you’ll find are going to surprise you, though,” Yoshie said, and then called the student council president on her student handbook. Then she took Akuto to her.
Of course, the school was just as it had been before, and Akuto didn’t need anybody to show him the way. Lily, who had evidently been called out of class, said, “You’re probably curious about this place, aren’t you?” and then pulled up a mana screen on the desk to show him the data the “gods” were displaying.
“You might have expected more of an introduction, but to me, it doesn’t feel like any time has passed. You don’t seem like that unusual of a visitor to me,” Lily said, offering Akuto a seat.
“To me, this is a touching reunion,” Akuto said, and he meant it, but Lily just grinned sardonically.
“Stop it. I don’t want to hear that from the guy who blew up the world.”
She motioned for him to look at the mana screen’s data. It was a list of statistics about the residents of the current empire.
“This is the world from before I was determined to be the Demon King, isn’t it?” Akuto said, figuring out what she wanted to show him after just a short glimpse through the list.
“You’re so smart it’s honestly annoying, you know.” Lily sighed.
“But it helps a lot. I don’t have all these stats memorized. So let’s go back as far as we can.”
Lily began to go back through the years of recorded statistics. Akuto looked at them and nodded.
“Yeah, these all match what I remember. Go back to the present. In a few minutes, the new list of births should come in. If they’re right, it means that we’re redoing history.”
“In other words... we’re in the afterlife, but it’s a reflection of how the world was about two years before we died?” Junko asked.
Lily shook her head.
“It’s similar, but no. I’m sure you’ve noticed, but there are no Liradans here.”
“There aren’t?” Junko said in shock.
“Nope. The ‘trio’ is down to a ‘duo,’ since Arnoul is gone. Korone and the laborer Liradans are gone too. Humans are doing all the work needed to keep civilization running. And...”
Akuto cut Lily off before she could finish.
“Keena.”
“Yup. Keena. Everybody else is here, but she isn’t.”
“These are the only two changes?” Junko asked Lily.
“The Empress is Kazuko. And there’s no record of the black mages being oppressed. That’s about the size of it, honestly.”
“Which means?”
“It’s peaceful. So peaceful that I’m getting bored. No black mage rebellion. No attempt by Zero to rule over humanity. No records of the Republic. Or of other countries opposing the Empire.”
Lily crossed her arms and put her elbows on the desk.
“That’s the reason I’m not surprised to see you. You’re not the Demon King.”
“Really?” Akuto asked.
Lily nodded.
“Are you happy? You may not believe it, but the Demon King is dead. He never revived, either. There’s no rumors about him. It’s kind of a letdown, honestly.”
Akuto’s face said that he didn’t know quite how to process this.
“I-It’s not a bad thing. Yeah, that’s right. It’s a good thing...” Junko whispered, clearly stunned. But she didn’t seem like she really meant it, and she kept staring at Akuto to try and discern how he really felt about the matter.
“A different timeline? Or maybe this is just the world someone wanted...” Akuto suggested. “We have our own memories of the past. Does that mean that other people don’t?”
He frowned.
“Talking about time makes things complicated, but...” Yoshie started to talk, but Lily cut her off.
“And nobody wants complicated, so shut up. The only people who have their memories are those people who got involved with you and know the truth.”
“That’s right. She told me not to talk to you about time, but there is one thing I have to at least brief you on. Time traveling technology was something from the future that only Boichiro Yamato had. You remember that, right?” Yoshie asked.
“I do. But the device I used was...”
“A different type of technology. That’s why... and maybe this is obvious, but... Brave isn’t here. He got the time traveling device from Boichiro, probably.”
Lily pulled up the demographics on the screen again.
“Hiroshi Miwa’s name is here. Which means he’s ‘here,’ but we just haven’t seen him yet.”
“Keena was never here to begin with... but Hiroshi was, huh?” Akuto mused aloud.
“So then, where did he go?”
○
Hiroshi was in the forest outside the town, meeting with a man whose existence he’d not once forgotten.
“Boichiro Yamato...”
He’d come here after his death the same way Junko and the others had. He, however, had taken another path. He’d gone into the depths of the forest, as if something was guiding him, and before too long he was standing in front of Boichiro. He didn’t know if it was fate, or if he’d wanted to see the man. But it felt like this was part of what he had to do.
He had lots of questions he had to ask. And after Boichiro’s death, he’d never gotten a chance to ask them.
“I met someone on your team,” Hiroshi said sarcastically.
“From the look of it, they gave you a rough time. They’re a rowdy bunch,” Boichiro said, laughing as if Hiroshi was an old friend. He was calmer than Hiroshi remembered him, and handsome, and there was something about him that charmed the person he was speaking to. Hiroshi had planned on complaining, but was beginning to change his mind.
“They almost killed me. A lot of times. Did you tell them to?”
“Of course not. I knew they were like that, but I couldn’t inspire them to change. All I can do is apologize.”
“I don’t need you to apologize. Did those guys all come here when they died? If they did, I want to find them and give them a piece of my mind.”
“I wouldn’t know. I assume if they did, they’d be too embarrassed to come find me,” Boichiro smiled.
“They should be too embarrassed to talk to anyone.
“Your plan... No, I don’t know if it’s your plan... but they either misunderstood it or deliberately changed it, and did something that sent a bunch of people here.”
Hiroshi decided to be a little roundabout with his words, but Boichiro knew what he meant.
“Yeah. I knew that might happen. And I’d resigned myself to it, too.”
“You sound resigned about everything.”
“Correct. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead. But I did try to stop this.”
His words just further annoyed Hiroshi.
“What are you trying to say? Just say it,” he said, his voice shaking with rage.
“I’ll explain things in the order they happened. You know that I tried to change history, yes?” Boichiro said, with a self-deprecating smile.
“Yeah, I do.”
“This was because I saw the last great demon king awaken, and the gods come from the outer universe to destroy this world.”
“I know that too. You said that you needed a ritual between the demon king and the Law of Identity to stop that, right? I didn’t really understand the words you used.”
“Correct. And I failed,” Hiroshi nodded, thinking back on the past as Boichiro spoke.
“I know that much. Zero and the other mechanical gods wanted the Law of Identity to save them, so they tried to turn humanity into data, like they were, and send them to another dimension. That way, it wouldn’t matter if mankind was destroyed. And boss tried to stop them and buy humanity time.”
“That’s right. And as a result, the future turned into something different than what I knew.”
“And that was a mistake? Is that what you’re saying?” Hiroshi asked.
Boichiro just sighed.
“It’s hard to answer that question at its core. In fact, this afterlife is essentially the ‘time’ the Demon King bought. It’s not over yet.”
“It’s not?” Hiroshi asked, confused.
“But this place may be the end. Perhaps there is an end without an ending. An ending where time is eternal, like this.”
Hiroshi sighed as well, this time in exasperation.
“Start making some damn sense.”
“I’m sorry. This is how I’ve always been. It’s not something I can do anything about,” he said. “This isn’t the future I knew, but the ending is exactly as I predicted. I know what happened in the history that you know. I attempted to negotiate with The One, their avatar, in order to make a contract with them. I thought they wanted a world where they wouldn’t have to invade other universes as well.”
Hiroshi tried his best to understand what he meant. If he pulled it apart and thought about each individual element, he found he could follow.
“But The One betrayed you.”
“Correct. And the once-calm Republic decided to invade the Empire. All these elements may seem separate, but when you understand that the invasion from the outer universe was behind them, you understand that they were all predicted, and are all connected. The devices left behind by early magical civilization. The plots of the black mages. The faceless power. These were all to prepare for the invasion. And the success of the invasion means that in the end, we failed to change the future.”
“When you put it that way, I guess I understand it. But if this place is safe for us, if it’s the ‘time’ we’ve been given, then are we still safe?” Hiroshi asked. Boichiro just sighed.
“Still safe? What do you mean?’
This time it was Boichiro’s turn to ask a question.
“There’s still a chance to change the past, right? I think it’s simple. Get rid of magical civilization. Or have Earth stop fighting with each other and prepare a plan to deal with the Gods from outer space.” Hiroshi spoke confidently, as he gestured down at the bracelet on his wrist that held the Brave suit.
“This can travel through time, right? Does that work even when you’re dead?”
“You’re jumping the gun. So you want to save humanity, is what you’re saying?”
Boichiro’s eyes went wide in surprise.
“I don’t know, but I’m feeling something like fate. At least the Demon King should be able to save humanity, right?” Hiroshi grinned.
“If that is your will, then very well. But it’s difficult to change the future.” Boichiro shook his head.
“I don’t know about that. You said the future changed when you died. So it’s not that hard to change it if change is all you want, right?”
“No, it didn’t change. In the end, I end up here,” Boichiro said, pointing down to his feet with a sarcastic expression.
“Here?”
“The afterlife.”
“That’s hard to understand. There are so many worlds, you know. Earth. Virtual Phase Space. Other dimensions. The outer universe. The afterlife... did I miss any?” Hiroshi frowned.
Boichiro corrected him.
“That’s a little off. ‘Other dimension’ and ‘outer universe’ are two words for the same thing. We don’t know a lot about other dimensions, except that there’s probably infinite numbers of them. But as for the others, you’re correct. And the Law of Identity is involved in them all. It’s likely that she made them. And that’s why they’re relatively easy to understand.”
“Keena made them? Is that why we can understand them?”
“To me, it’s Rimu Sudo that made them. By ‘understandable’ I mean that it’s easy to explain how this world works. All you need to understand is that our universe was made by the Law of Identity.”
“Is it that simple? And anyway, weren’t we talking about going through time to change history?” Hiroshi asked, confused. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted from this conversation anymore.
Boichiro laughed a little.
“If you’re going to go through time, I want you to understand that our knowledge and our world contradict each other.”
“Aren’t we getting sidetracked again?’
“We aren’t. What is our understanding of time?”
It was an abstract question, but Hiroshi realized it was something critical to the core of their problems. If he was going to start the world over and avoid this ending, he needed to understand what time actually was. And at school, he’d learned the physical definition of time.
He repeated what the textbooks had told him.
“Time is relative. It’s the same thing as space in which matter moves,” he said. ”As speed goes up, the space you can move to increases, and so does the probability that you’ll encounter various events. But matter can only move in one direction. Expressed in two dimensions, it’s like only being able to choose one point within an expanding ripple on a lake.”
“That’s more or less right. One thing cannot exist at multiple points in space at the same time. But here that law doesn’t apply. That’s why I was able to go back in time.”
Boichiro picked up a branch and used it to draw a line on the ground.
“The reason that something can’t exist in multiple places at once is that, in fact, time has a minimum unit size. If it could be infinitely divided, then the paradox of the tortoise and Achilles would be made real.”
He drew a symbol at the center of the line on the ground. And then another at the center of the right side of the newly divided line. He repeated this process 32 times, until the symbol itself was larger than the divided line.
“Imagine this symbol as the minimum unit size of time, and you’ll understand.”
“I can understand that. But what does that have to do with it being possible to go back in time? Doesn’t that make it so going back in time is impossible?”
“Correct. In the model with the rippling lake, the other points on the circle are just probabilities. In other words, they might have happened, but they didn’t. Even if matter returns to the point it was in before, the other matter is no longer there. But the world that we know is not like the lake.”
He erased the line with his foot, and drew another.
“This world is, according to standard physics, impossible. This world is like a video, or a book. It’s linear.”
Boichiro drew several squares above the line, with the number of squares increasing as the line moved to the right.
“Here, all matter exists simultaneously. The past continues to exist. Imagine blocks being piled up on top of other blocks. And these blocks can be rearranged.”
“And that’s why it’s possible to rewrite the past, and change the future.” Hiroshi nodded in understanding.
“Correct. It’s possible to change it,” Boichiro said.
“Then tell me how to use the suit.” Hiroshi pointed to the bracelet on his arm.
“Of course, I will. But as I’ve been saying this whole time, it’s pointless.” He furrowed his eyebrows in frustration.
“You keep saying that. It’s possible to change the future, but it’s pointless?”
“That’s what I said at the start. For some reason, you always come here in the end.” He pointed to the ground.
“In other words, the afterlife.” Hiroshi frowned.
Boichiro’s expression remained the same.
“Correct. And to this place, and this instant. You’ll come here again and again.”