Epilogue 2: No Four Fiends, But There Is a Hero

“Oh, Yurimaru. How could you just die like that?”

Yurika heard the voice, then awakened. She saw an arched ceiling above her. Her back felt stiff and achy, and when she checked what she was lying on, she realized it was something long, hard, and wooden, like a bench.

Groggily, she sat up.

She didn’t know where she was. Since she had just woken up, that meant she must have gone to sleep somewhere, but her memory was fuzzy.

She looked around. The area around her seemed to be a church, with lines of pews and an altar with a large cross hanging over it. Yurika’s makeshift bed was a pew in the front row.

She looked to the altar, where the voice had come from, and saw a man dressed in black, wearing a cross around his neck. She assumed he must be a priest.

“Yurimaru... you mean me?” Yurika asked. It was the first question on her mind. Her full name was Yurika Maruyama, but no one had ever called her by that nickname.

“Yes. That is your hero name.” The man’s voice was calm and gentle. Yurika decided he must be a very good priest.

“Hero... hero, hero...” she murmured. There was something familiar about that word. She’d heard it somewhere just a little while ago. After rolling it around in her mouth for a while, she remembered.

Yuichi Sakaki had called her that. Remembering that caused other memories to come flooding back to her.

“Huh? Am I dead?!” Yurika gasped. She remembered being hit into a wall by a man. She had fallen, then had her head crushed. She was sure he had killed her.

Yurika quickly checked herself over. There wasn’t a single injury; she was the picture of health. Even if she had, by some miracle, survived, it was unthinkable that she should be unharmed.

“You died, and came back to life,” the priest said to her. His voice was utterly solemn; he didn’t seem like the joking type.

“Are you serious?” Yurika burst out. “Who are you, anyway?”

Yurika’s initial impression — baseless though it was — had been that the priest was a good person. It was only now that she finally decided to be cautious.

“My name is Kiryu,” the man said. “I serve you, O hero who stands against the revival of the Evil God.”

“Huh? You’re part of this Evil God business, too?” she demanded. All Yurika knew about the Evil God was that it was the source of the power dwelling in her right arm, and that there were villainous types in a frenzy searching for his body parts.

“I am sorrowed to hear you speak that way,” the man said. “I suppose I am part of it, in that I am opposed to the Evil God.”

“You said I died, right?” Yurika demanded. “Then what am I doing here?”

“Because you are a hero,” the man said. “A hero can come back as many times as is needed to vanquish great evil, can they not?”

“No, no, no. That’s only in video games!” Yurika didn’t know much about games, but it sounded like the kind of thing you’d hear in a game that revived you instead of giving you a game over.

“You have the power of a born hero,” the man declared. “Whenever you die, you will always be miraculously resurrected in a church.”

“What?! I had no idea!” she cried.

“Certainly not. A hero never knows what they are until they die.”

“...Fine,” Yurika muttered. “Can we talk about something else now?” The hero talk still sounded fishy to her, but she knew they wouldn’t get anywhere arguing about it.

The priest nodded.

“I have the Evil God’s right arm. Does that make us enemies?” Yurika asked.

“What you have done was unavoidable. In order to interrupt the ritual of the Evil God’s resurrection, you had no choice but to participate in the ritual.”

“The person who gave me this said that if you bring together the Evil God’s body, you’ll get a wish granted,” she said. “What about that?”

“I cannot allow that to happen,” the man said. “The condition for having a wish granted is to gather all parts of the Evil God except his soul. The risk is too great. In other words, my goal of stopping the God’s revival is mutually exclusive to your goal, hero.”

“I never said that was what I wanted... I guess it’s fine,” she said. “All I wanted to do was play superhero for a bit. So? What do you want to do? Force me to cut ties with him? Is there some benefit to me for doing so?”

“No, I will not ask anything of you,” the man said. “My role is merely to ensure your safe resurrection. The power of my church building is indispensable to your ability.”

“...Can I go for now, then?” she asked. She was starting to worry that she might be confined to the church.

“You may do as you wish,” the man said.

“By the way, where are we?” Yurika asked.

The address the priest gave her was a little ways away from the town where Yurika lived. She’d have to ride a train back.

She was taking out her wallet to make sure she had her IC card with her when she noticed that something felt off. Her wallet felt a bit lighter and thinner than usual. She quickly checked it and, indeed, found it much emptier than before.

“Hey! Care to explain this?” she cried. There were only the two of them there, which meant that the priest must have been the one who took her money.

“It is only natural,” the priest declared, without a trace of shame. “When a hero is revived, they always lose half of their money on hand. That is the rule, is it not?”

✽✽✽✽✽

“So Makina lost, eh?” a voice asked.

“Heh... Makina is the weakest of us Outers.”

“To lose to a mere human. It’s a disgrace to our very name.”

Ende groaned internally as she listened to the theatrical voices. Was it really necessary to keep the room so dark? She couldn’t read the next page in her book.

It would be easy to turn on a light, or to drive out the ones playing their silly game. But Ende realized that that wouldn’t be fair. Outers generally had so little to do. If they had found a way to alleviate the boredom a little bit, she didn’t want to interrupt them.

“Oh? Would you like to try me?” a new voice asked.

At the sound of the new voice, the lights flicked on. The darkness cleared instantly, revealing a room haphazardly strewn with bookshelves and books.

Makina Shikitani was standing at the entrance to the room. At the middle of the room sat three people, facing each other.

Ende looked across the room from the corner where she was sitting atop a fallen bookshelf, a finger marking her place in a book she was in the middle of reading.

“Erk! Makina!” the “Ideal Future in Which All Are Saved” girl stammered at the sight of her.

“Er, ah, we were enjoying a bit of ‘four fiends’ roleplay. We don’t really think of you that way...” the “Fluffy Daily Life World” man said, apologetically.

“But it’s true that you’ve disgraced yourself! How could you lose to a human and come back with your tail between your legs?!” the third Outer demanded. Only he, the “Ultimate Cosmic Battle Saga” boy, continued to lay into Makina.

“Want to complain, do you?” Makina said. “Try me. Show me your strike that can punch galaxies away.”

Makina did not flinch; in fact, she seemed quite up to the challenge.

“I-I never said I could do that!” the boy dissembled. His fear of the woman almost seemed instinctive.

They must have known that they couldn’t beat Makina here.

Ende turned her attention back to the book in her hand. She’d just gotten to the part where Yuichi Sakaki picked Kanako Orihara up in his arms and jumped out of the castle. She reckoned that she was nearly at the end of the story.

“Is your injury healed?” Ende asked as Makina approached her, without looking up from her book.

“As long as it’s not instant death, I can always work something out,” Makina replied. “I believe you’re aware of that.”

“Yes, I am. But that is the way people show concern, isn’t it?” Ende asked. She hadn’t actually been worried at all, but she’d thought it important to at least make a superficial show of concern.

“Why didn’t my abilities work on him? Who is he... who is Yuichi Sakaki?” Makina asked.

Just as Ende had anticipated, Makina had come back to ask that question.

“Hmm,” Ende said. “I thought I told you not to interfere with Yuichi Sakaki. I wonder how you interpreted that...”

“Well...” Makina trailed off.

Finding her hesitance unusual, Ende looked up from her book.

Makina’s sour expression gave Ende a clear hint as to her reason.

“I see,” Ende said. “You thought I just liked him? And despite thinking that, you still did what you did. You’re a nasty person.”

“I’m not as nasty as you are.”

“Fair enough,” said Ende. “I’ll give you that, at least in regards to this most recent incident. I should have said this: You can’t beat Yuichi Sakaki. If you don’t want to die, lie low for a while. The minute Kanako Orihara became involved with the Sakaki siblings, your plan’s chance of success was nil. The turning point was an incident that took place on a roof one summer vacation. What I’m saying is, the fact that the first line of this book is about Kanako’s first meeting with Mutsuko made it clear that your plan was doomed to failure.” Ende lightly waved the book in her hand. “But I suppose even saying that wouldn’t have stopped you.”

Makina let out a sigh of defeat. Outers tended to be overly self-confident, and Makina probably had thought that she alone would be immune.

“Now, as for why your abilities didn’t work?” Ende asked. “It’s simple. You ended up thinking, ‘This might not work,’ didn’t you? The moment Yuichi Sakaki revived himself, your worldview was shaken. It was then consumed by his own. That’s how worldviews work. Strength comes from certainty. When certainty wavers, your worldview becomes open to distortion.”

“Ah... I see,” Makina said. “Even though I’m an Outer, I become just another character in a story...”

Ende had assumed she would argue, but Makina was surprisingly receptive to the idea.

“Now, as for your other question: what Yuichi Sakaki is... Let’s say he’s the vessel for Mutsuko Sakaki’s hopes and dreams,” Ende said. “He fights as she wishes, and breaks through everything. Some might see this as beautiful sibling love, whereas others might see it as vile brainwashing. I believe much of his strength comes from humanity’s shared ideas about hard work being a virtue... at least, that’s the feeling I have. To be honest, there’s still a lot I don’t know. Now, I’d like to ask this. How does it feel to lose?” Ende swiftly changed the subject, looking at Makina with curious eyes.

“Is that what you were after?” Makina demanded. “You must have realized I wouldn’t be killed, then.”

“That’s right,” said Ende. “It’s not rare for an Outer to disappear after they lose, especially when Outers fight each other. Very few of us lose and then live to tell the tale. You’re the only one I’ve ever heard of, so I’m curious. Now, tell me, please. I’ve been quite cooperative with you, haven’t I?”

“‘How does it feel,’ eh?” Makina mused. “It’s refreshing, in a way. I don’t feel any particular anger or desire for revenge. I do feel some fear towards Yuichi Sakaki... but we reached a compromise about that.”

It was not what Ende had predicted, but it did sound like it was how Makina really felt. Though it was contrary to her expectations, Ende found that interesting.

“So you won’t be needing this, then?” Ende plucked something round out of her pocket. It was a sphere with a white porcelain shine, just large enough to be held between two of her fingers.

“An eye? I thought Monika Sakurazaki had both.” Makina gazed curiously at the sphere in Ende’s palm.

Monika had had the right one from the start. The left had been held by Makina’s servant, but Yuichi Sakaki had taken it, and it was now in Monika’s hands, too.

“This is the Evil God’s upper eye. Why should a divine being look exactly like a human?” Ende said, smugly. “If you want it, I’ll give it to you. You could take part in the Evil God’s story again.”

“I don’t need it anymore,” Makina said simply.

Perhaps she really had had a change of heart, Ende observed. The old Makina would have wanted it.

“I see,” Ende mused as she rolled the Evil God’s eye around in her palm. “What to do, then? Maybe someone else will want it...”

She had been hoping to liven up the story a little bit by baiting Makina, and so she couldn’t immediately think of a better way to use it.

“...I know,” Ende said, with a smile that was brimming with curiosity. “Maybe I’ll join in myself? I’d love to see what the completed Evil God looks like, after all...”