Epilogue: “Protagonist”

Something was wriggling on top of the blanket.

The sensation woke Ryoma Takei up for a moment before indolence overtook him again.

It wasn’t very heavy. Even though it was on top of him, he could probably sleep through it.

Just a little while longer. Ryoma pulled the blanket over his head and tried again to escape from reality.

“Wake up, Big Brother!” The thing began to pound Ryoma through the blanket.

This was one thing he couldn’t sleep through. Realizing that convincing was required, Ryoma poked his head out from below the covers.

Big round eyes gazed back at him. Long, glossy black tails were bound up on both sides of her head, and she was wearing a middle school uniform. It was Ryoma’s little sister, Shiori.

“Little Sis... Big Bro wants to sleep a little longer,” he complained. “Can’t you see that from how I’ve been acting?”

“But look at the clock! You’re gonna be late!” Shiori pointed at the clock on the wall.

“Late, huh? Being late once or twice in my life won’t hurt anything,” he said. “It’ll be fine. Go on without me, Shio—”

“Hey, Ryoma! Don’t give Shiori grief!” The one who opened the door was the girl who lived next door, Mio Morikawa. Her long black hair was bound back into a single tail. Her almond-shaped eyes conveyed such fire behind them that Ryoma had a hard time fighting her.

They were childhood friends. They went to the same high school and were even in the same class — a tie he just couldn’t seem to sever.

“How many times are you gonna be late this month? Get a grip, already!” she snapped.

“What does it matter to you if I’m late?” he demanded. “You think you’re my mom or something?”

“What?!” Mio shouted.

Ryoma sat up. Now that Mio was here, there was no way he was getting back to sleep. Her presence also shook off the last of his exhaustion.

Ryoma waved his hands to shoo them both off. “Fine, I’ll get changed. Just get out.”

The two reluctantly left the room.

“I think I’ve really gotta analyze if it’s even necessary for me to go to school these days...” Ryoma muttered.

Ryoma was really busy. He’d gone to bed around 4:00 that morning and was extremely sleep-deprived.

But if he said out of the blue that he didn’t want to go to school anymore, his sisters would worry, so he’d just have to find a way to better manage his time.

Ryoma got dressed and headed to the kitchen to eat.

His big sister, Kotori, was waiting there, making breakfast. For some reason, Mio was at the table, too, looking rather unhappy. Kotori, though, was smiling as warmly as ever.

Their parents had both gone on a business trip overseas, so the three children lived there together, with Kotori assuming the role of mother. Looking at Kotori’s face, he decided once again that he didn’t want to worry her.

After rushing through breakfast, Ryoma was hurried by Mio to school. It was his usual morning routine.

Starting from his usual morning, he had his usual classes, then he returned home. He returned to his room as he usually did, and since he had no other commitments, he considered sleeping for a while. But as usual, events wouldn’t leave him alone.

An unfamiliar girl was waiting for him in his room.

She had red hair and wore a faded dress, and was sitting on the desk, reading a book as though perfectly at home.

Ryoma sighed. He tossed his bag aside and threw himself onto the bed.

“Oh? You don’t seem very surprised to see me,” the girl said without lifting her eyes from the book.

“I’m not,” he said. “I’ve had this happen a ridiculous number of times before. Girls come out of my TV and my computer and my books, and so many have come from the sky, I’ve lost count. There was even a girl who came out of the ground recently. Compared to all that, coming home to find a girl I’ve never seen before reading a book seems pretty normal.”

“I see,” the girl said. “That’s exactly what I was hoping for.”

“You know, you don’t talk like most girls nowadays,” he commented. “So, what do you want? You look like you’re from another world, right? You want me to beat another demon lord in a fantasy world? Stop a space war? I’m in the middle of a death game VRMMO right now, so it’ll have to wait.”

“Your nonplussed attitude suggests a wealth of experience, as well. But wait just a minute, please. I’ll explain after I finish reading my book.”

“Ah, I’ve never been through this one before,” he said. “It’s always people insisting I help them without even asking about my schedule. I’ve never seen someone putting off the explanation to read a book after they came to me.” He tried a little sarcasm, but the girl ignored him.

Ryoma waited.

At last, the girl closed the book. “Yuichi really is interesting. Commonplace encounters with the bizarre, huh? That sure is how it felt. Now, what were we talking about again?”

“If you don’t want anything, leave.”

The girl smiled. “I’m just kidding around. My name is Ende. I came here to give you an invitation.”

“To what? I’m busy, you know,” he shot back. “I can’t just go off with you out of the blue. We can talk later. Just put your name on the waiting list, and when it’s your turn, I’ll deal with you.”

“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “The stories have all moved on. There’s nothing left for you to do. You should be free for a while, so please, hear me out.”

“Huh? What do you mean, the stories moved on?” he asked, confused.

“The stories moved on without you,” she said. “Most of them reached a bad end, I’m sorry to say.”

“Huh?” Ryoma had no idea what Ende was talking about.

“Go ahead and see for yourself.” Ende picked the HMD — a full-face helmet called a Head Mounted Display — off the top of his desk and tossed it to him.

Ryoma scrambled to catch it.

It had been sent to him out of the blue one day. The letter that had come with it had said it was for playing a VRMMO, and while he’d found it unbelievable, when he’d put it on, he had found all five senses immersed in a virtual world of a game.

Ryoma put on the HMD and started the game. A world in ruins stretched out before his eyes. There was no sign of anyone there.

If you died in this game, you died in real life. You could log out, but to do it, you needed key items, which were hard to come by. He didn’t know what had happened, but he found it hard to believe everyone had managed to log out.

Ryoma logged out, removed the HMD, and glared at Ende.

“It’s not like I did it,” she said. “Don’t glare at me that way. The story just moved on while you were away. You knew that could happen, right? What made you think that events couldn’t occur if you weren’t there?”

Now that she mentioned it, Ryoma realized that he had gotten the idea into his head that he would resolve everything without issue.

“Now, how the upcoming negotiation goes was going to depend on your reaction, and... you don’t seem to be very angry, do you?” Ende added.

“Yeah,” Ryoma said. “I mean, I was feeling kind of paralyzed and approaching it with a sort of a ‘this again?’ feeling. If this had happened because I’d failed, I might feel differently, but as it is, it’s sort of a relief.”

That was how he really felt. He’d been drawn into situation after situation with no breaks in between, and he’d taken every one of them upon his shoulders. Lately he’d been keeping it up purely based on force of habit, and he’d given up on the idea that he could ever escape from that destiny.

“I see,” Ende said. “I have good news for you, then. If you help me, I’ll release you from all of that destiny. I’m preparing to participate in the Divine Vessels War. The Evil God will grant any wish to whoever gathers them all up. If you want to quit this life and be a normal person again, it wouldn’t be hard to wish for that. Of course, if there’s anything else you want, I can grant that, too.”

“The reason you came to me is because of the kind of person I am, right?” he asked. “I feel like that’s the reason you’re inviting me. But does that mean you understand what’s up with me?”

People had made vague overtures at him so many times, and drawn him into so many strange ongoing conflicts. At first he’d thought it was a coincidence, but it’d kept happening so much that it had almost felt like there must be some higher power at work.

“I do,” she said. “I’m hoping to acquire a power that you have. To put it simply, you’re a ‘Protagonist.’ Of course, there are a lot of different kinds of protagonists. ‘Datesim Protagonist’ and ‘Adult Datesim Protagonist,’ for instance. But you are generically and abstractly a ‘Protagonist.’ You draw stories to you and end up involved in them, and you have the power to draw stories to their end.”

“Protagonist...” he said slowly.

It did make sense, now that she mentioned it. It was said that everyone was the protagonist of their own life, but she wasn’t saying it in that way. She meant that he was the protagonist of a story with a dramatic plot. Ryoma had never considered that before. Somewhere in his heart, he may have dismissed it as an arrogant way of thinking.

“If I’m participating, then I want to win,” Ende said. “So I’ve been thinking about what my best piece would be if I want to win... and I settled on ‘Protagonist.’ Of course, if we take this to extremes, it’s always the writer who decides how a story ends. But if there’s a protagonist, things will probably turn out in a way that’s good for that protagonist. In other words, I want you to use your power to bend stories to your benefit — your self-preservation power, or in other words, your protagonist effect.”

“What the heck is a protagonist effect?” he demanded.

“For instance, you’re in a gunfight but you don’t get hit by bullets, or you just happen to acquire a new power in the face of an overwhelming enemy, or you have an ally suddenly run in to save you when things are looking bleak, or you’re able to pilot a robot you’ve never even seen before, or you go on a trip and just happen to run into a storm that gets you trapped in a place a murder is taking place, or the sword you buy at a weapons shop just happens to be a legendary magic sword. Does that make sense to you?”

It all sounded familiar to Ryoma. He hadn’t thought much of it all at the time, but it did seem everything that had happened to him had been the result of this “protagonist effect.”

“So, what do you think?” Ende asked. “Will you work with me? If you want a reward besides the wish, let me know. As long as it’s realistic, I can probably provide it.”

“Sure, I’m in,” Ryoma said. “If it’ll mean I can live a proper life from now on.”

He agreed to participate without even asking what the war was about. Ryoma had found Ende’s proposal much more enticing than anyone else’s so far.