12

Real Name: Tsugiyoshi SUMINO

Born: March 3

Height: 170 cm

Weight: 55 kg

Tsugiyoshi is a soldier and a high school student. His most prominent ability in battle, the Hundred Paths of Nezumi-san, allows him to tamper with the realm of probability. Tsugiyoshi can carry out a hundred different choices at once, then select which course of events becomes reality. For example, if he were playing rock-paper-scissors, he could throw rock, paper, and scissors at the same time. Should he settle on rock, then reality acts as if he never tried paper or scissors.

If you considered the power as predicting the future one hundred different ways and then selecting one of them, you’d be fairly close, but for two major differences: the predictions are based on actions of his choosing, and he experiences every one.

If time is like a flowchart, he can test one hundred of its forked paths, then choose whichever route he likes the best. This may seem a bit like cheating, but most paths end up being largely similar, and simultaneously experiencing one hundred potential realities comes with a heavy mental burden—in other words, it’s exhausting.

The discarded paths are remembered only by him (with some exceptions), but he doesn’t have perfect recall—one hundred different experiences make for too much to retain completely.

Another major downside is the potential for experiencing a hundred times more failures. He can confess his feelings to a crush in one hundred different ways and be spurned each and every time. (Once, he had to suffer through being dumped one hundred times simultaneously.)

Ultimately, Tsugiyoshi considers his ability not much good for anything except playing rock-paper-scissors—but he was chosen for the Zodiac War despite his young age because he possessed a hundred times more combat experience than typically afforded by the actual number of battles he’d seen. He tried to escape being selected for the Zodiac War, but of the hundred paths, not even one was successful.

His experiences have taught him that there is no one correct path in life, and that even if the concept of truth exists, there’s no one right answer. This learning has given him a distinctly philosophical personality.

The only time he gets excited is when he’s eating cheese—no two cheeses taste the same.

Congratulations, Fighter Nezumi. You are the winner of the Twelfth Zodiac War. Everybody, clap your hands!”

The judge, Duodecuple, vigorously applauded. “Everyone” didn’t join in—not, as in the opening ceremony, because no one felt like it, but because there was no one left to clap.

In a small, dreary reception office on anther floor in the same high-rise, Nezumi, the Fighter of the Rat, sat absently listening to the judge speak.

Duodecuple said, “We’ve neutralized the poison. The jewel will dissolve in your stomach without any trace or harmful effect.”

“That’s good,” Rat said. “Can I go home now?”

“Not yet. Your presence is required just a little longer.” Duodecuple chuckled. “After all, that was a brilliant victory. We’d like to conduct a short interview for posterity’s sake. I’m sure you understand.”

More like an interrogation, Rat thought, rubbing his tired head. He used his power to refuse the questioning in a hundred different ways, but all attempts failed—and forty ended with him getting killed. It seemed there was no getting out of this.

Compared to what I just went through—getting killed ninety-nine times out of a hundred—a sixty percent survival rate is nothing to worry about.

Of the sixty where he remained alive, he chose a route that preserved a relatively amicable atmosphere between him and the old man. The potential route became the reality.

Rat said, “Well, what do you want to ask?”

“First, I’d like to hear you explain the actions you took during the war. With your particular talent, no one outside yourself could observe your behavior, or its results, which leaves us no opportunity to study or judge your deeds. We need to hear it from you, if you’ll be so kind.”

Annoyed by the old man’s insincere, patronizing attitude, Rat lunged at Duodecuple to give the judge a good beating—at the same time as he obediently answered, “I didn’t do anything that unusual.”

Rat decided to make the latter choice in reality, since the first path ended with him being dead so fast he didn’t know what killed him.

Rat continued. “I just did what I always do, and I tried a hundred different strategies at once. One simply happened to work. I got lucky, that’s all.”

“I see, I see,” Duodecuple said, smiling happily for some reason. “No matter how superior the fighter, be they hero or prodigy—or corpse even—they get to take only one course of action. Whatever they decide, whatever they do, they can’t turn left and right at the same time. But you, Fighter Nezumi, with your unique power over probability, you can. In this Zodiac War, we were graced with a variety of competitors who possessed unusual talents, but now that it’s over, it’s clear you managed an overwhelming victory.”

That’s easy for you to say, Rat thought.

“That’s easy for you to say,” Rat said simultaneously.

Neither resulted in a remarkable difference, and he chose the reality where he kept the thought to himself.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to carry out a hundred different battles at once? Ah, I’m so unbelievably tired right now.

He didn’t merely desire sleep, he felt as if his mind was being chipped away. All this constant, ceaseless thinking was beginning to seriously affect his ability to stay conscious. He just wanted to go home. He wanted to go home and sleep. He suspected that being more cooperative would get this over with more quickly and tested ten different levels of cooperation to see which was most effective.

Duodecuple continued, “You’re like Schrödinger’s cat. Inside the box, the cat is both dead and alive—although I suppose you would be Schrödinger’s rat. You know, that reminds me about a story of how the zodiac was created. They say the reason there’s no cat in the zodiac is because Rat tricked him.”

Rat suspected this bit of small talk was intended to loosen his lips.

The judge added, “Although this time, you could say that Rat got rid of all the other animals.”

“I think there is a cat in the zodiac,” Rat said. “Tigers are like cats, aren’t they?”

“They are indeed,” Duodecuple said, nodding agreeably.

Rat thought about Tiger. In the branch he chose, he hadn’t encountered her at all, but in others, the two rivals had joined forces.

We weren’t bad as a team, Rat thought. But Ox and Tiger were wicked strong. In the end, I basically rode their coat tails …But I owe someone else even more.

Rat said, “Of the hundred strategies I came up with by wracking my inferior mind, this is the only path where I won—and I owe it to Sharyū more than anything I thought up.”

“Oh?” the judge said.

Of all the ways Rat tried his previous response, this was the way that most drew Duodecuple’s interest, and Rat went with it. This questioning had him feeling as if he were walking on thin ice. It seems my battle isn’t yet over, he thought.

That kind of thinking only depressed him. Instead, he went with a path where he hadn’t thought so hard about it.

Rat said, “It was something she told me in the sewers after Chicken warned us about the necromanticist. Sharyū told me that if she ever died and was brought under the necromanticist’s control, she wanted me to kill her.”

Duodecuple’s smile deepened here, as it had in every path Rat investigated. Ultimately, the boy’s powers were limited, and often all his choices found the same result—much like the ninety-nine of one hundred attempts at the Zodiac War that resulted in his death. This power, no matter how highly Duodecuple lauded it, fundamentally existed for the sole purpose of showing Rat how powerless he was. In order to survive, he died ninety-nine times. When thought of as a process of trial and error, his victory might seem a product of effort and perseverance, but a more accurate description would be to say that of one hundred Rats, ninety-nine died. His deaths had been erased along with the paths that contained them, remaining only in Rat’s memories.

In what way could ninety-nine deaths be considered a victory? It couldn’t. It was a pitiful defeat. Rat felt no victor’s elation after the Zodiac War. Everyone else had only died once, while he died ninety-nine times.

Can you even imagine what it’s like to live a life where you can’t make any excuses like, I should have done this or I should have done that? I can try anything I think of, only to learn I still fail. Ox said to do what I believe is right, but I don’t believe that anything is right. Look what happened this time …

Rat said, “I told her I wouldn’t do it. I learned how strong she was in the routes where I was unlucky enough to fight her. But then she told me that Sheep’s high explosives—the ones he mentioned when we were being told the rules—would work well against the undead. She said she could manage them alive, but not dead.”

And she had been right. Rat had told Ox that killing Rabbit was thanks to Tiger, but it was also thanks to Monkey. By that measure, Ox also played a role by keeping the former pacifist occupied—otherwise, she might have escaped the grenades.

Sharyū claimed she didn’t know who intended to attack the entire group at the beginning, but I bet she suspected Sheep—she just didn’t want to say it if she wasn’t absolutely sure.

Rat continued, “The point is, all the strategies I came up with on my own failed. Like I said, it was luck. This was the only path where the course of the contest happened to take shape in a way that benefited me.”

“You’re being too humble,” Duodecuple said. “You were able to respond admirably well to a battle that was in a state of constant and bewildering change. I imagine that experiencing one hundred branching paths at once helps you react so quickly, but it’s still impressive.”

“By the way,” Rat said, “Sharyū never told me her plan for a peaceful resolution in any of my paths.”

Had the pacifist only been bluffing, as Rat had speculated to Horse in the bank vault?

Duodecuple chuckled. “Even still, I wouldn’t be so sure she was making it up. For example, I can imagine a scenario in which she knew some of what goes on behind the Zodiac War.” The judge let this slip in only three of Rat’s hundred scenarios. “Rather than use her single wish directly, she might have intended on using it to negotiate with the organizers. That hero and savior of nations had deep connections with many states. Sitting at the big table with them, betting countries—I could see her dealing with them on equal terms.”

Betting countries? The big table? Them?

Rat didn’t know what the man was talking about. No matter how many paths he could follow, he was only one little rodent, and such secrets were not to be his—neither could he know the hero’s true intentions. He had no information-gathering ability like the Eye of the Cormorant, and his hundred-fold experience would never compare with that of a true veteran.

All I can do with my possibilities is scurry around, and if I can’t be perceptive enough to make good of it, then I’m nothing, Rat thought, though with not much sentimentality.

As for Rat’s scurrying, Horse had thought it incredible that the boy had managed to penetrate the barricaded bank vault, but there wasn’t anything incredible about it. Rat simply put his Hundred Paths ability to use.

As Horse himself had been aware, any barricade, no matter how sturdy, was still a product of haste—some gap would exist somewhere. Finding that gap, however, required time. Rat had searched the piled-up debris from one hundred different approaches and found an opening. To put it another way, Rat commanded one hundred searchers to find Horse’s mistake.

And finding the cracks is a rat’s specialty—of my hundred attempts, about ten found an entrance large enough for me to slip through.

This, too, was a stunt of little practical use, and one that counted on someone else making a mistake. In this instance, however, it had allowed him to escape Snake and Monkey’s pursuit.

Rat said, “If Sharyū wasn’t bluffing, then I can only take that to mean I didn’t have what it took to be a part of it. I hope that she would have pulled it off in one of the routes where I died. She said she had many different plans—I pray that each had a path to be successful.”

Prayer wouldn’t change the fact that he had erased all other possibilities. In that sense, just as Monkey had saved more people than any other fighter, then Rat killed more than any other fighter—or, he had killed entire worlds by wiping them from existence.

Duodecuple chuckled again. “Peaceful resolutions or not, I wonder who won in each of those other ninety-nine paths.”

Rat would have liked to know that himself, but each of those paths ended in his death and left him no knowledge of what happened after—though he seriously doubted any scenario ended with Monkey’s peace.

In any case, no route contained all twelve fighters, including myself, joining hands and finding another way—or at least, no route that led from my first choice.

Judging from everything he experienced up until his deaths, Rat guessed that Rabbit won the majority of the time, followed by Ox and Tiger. Dog’s and Sheep’s bending of the rules—or outright breaking of them—rarely paid off. Maybe that meant that a straightforward approach was the best policy—except Rat might have been the least straightforward of all.

“By the way,” Rat said, “among the hundred patterns, there was one where Rabbit and I came to a mutually beneficial arrangement. When I built up the courage to speak to him, we found more common ground than I’d have thought. Our partnership ended when I screwed up and got both of us killed by Horse.”

Working with Rabbit was an experience that was hard to come by. Rat didn’t retain a perfect recollection of all his experiences, but that one had left a vivid impression.

Rat said, “It wasn’t just him either. Aside from Sharyū, they were all scoundrels—but when I tried talking to the others, they were shockingly open with me. I didn’t know what to think of that. I scurried around asking everyone what they would wish for, and the ones who told me had wishes that were … I don’t know how to put it—normal, or common, maybe? I was surprised at how modest their wishes were.”

“I see,” Duodecuple said.

Rat was taken aback. He felt like the judge had gotten him to spill everything—even though the boy had long felt he should never speak of the alternate paths he’d erased. Rat felt like he had failed, and he supposed that meant Duodecuple had succeeded. The boy considered erasing this path, but in every other simultaneous conversation with the judge, Rat always ended up talking. His power was not unlimited.

Besides, I don’t think I can handle being any more exhausted than this.

As if reading the boy’s thoughts, Duodecuple said, “Thank you for your cooperation. I have no further questions. What you’ve told me today will inform the next Zodiac War twelve years from now. Now, go back home and have a good rest. Whenever you decide how you want to spend your single wish, please get in touch with me. I am at your disposal.”

Duodecuple bowed deeply. “You say the other fighters’ wishes were modest. I look forward to seeing how majestic yours will be.”

Rat said, “That’s a good point. As long as there’s no rush, I’ll take my time thinking it over.”

Rat made a show of standing up. He didn’t feel any tremendous pressure over choosing the right wish, but if he did it now, he might just wish to go to sleep. He had no intention of seeking any deep meaning from this battle, but that would have been too much of a waste.

“Anyway,” Rat said, “I’ll make my wish after I’ve thought of a hundred.”

The next day, the boy went to the school that was just another battlefield to him. There, as he lived one hundred lives, he thought of the one wish he really wanted to come true—and the ninety-nine others he didn’t so much.

End of the Zodiac War