Bonus Short Stories

Question Corner

Tomochika: Hello! This is Tomochika Dannoura! This time we’d like to change things up a little bit and answer your questions! Or at least, so I was told, but we didn’t collect any questions, so I’m not sure how we’re going to do that...

Mokomoko: It likely happened at some point, don’t you think? Time doesn’t simply flow in one direction. It is a rather vague thing. As such, if we begin collecting questions now, those from other universes or dimensions who see it can send their questions to us in the past.

Tomochika: That’s a sloppy explanation! Come on, you can come up with a better excuse than that!

Mokomoko: As such, do not concern yourself with the source of the questions!

Tomochika: Fine. Let’s go ahead and answer the first question then!

Q: Good evening, Tomochii! My favorite kind of rice ball filling is tuna-mayonnaise! By the way, Mokomoko said that your body is really high-density, so it’s heavier than it looks. So how heavy are you, exactly?

Tomochika: Why do we have to talk about that?

Mokomoko: Getting straight to the important stuff, are we?

Tomochika: Couldn’t we, like, find some interesting questions that have something to do with the actual story? Something that would be fun to talk about?

Mokomoko: Talking about your weight is fun, isn’t it?

Tomochika: It’s not, so let’s move on.

Mokomoko: You can’t just ignore all the questions...

Q: Hello, Dannoura! My favorite kind of rice ball filling is salmon. By the way, it seems you have pretty large breasts, so what size bra do you wear? Please tell me your top bust and underbust sizes. Also, if you don’t mind, please tell me all of your measurements.

Tomochika: Okay, this is just sexual harassment at this point! We’re ignoring all of these! Moving on!

Q: Hello, Tomochika! I like kombu rice balls. When is your birthday? Also, please tell me Yogiri’s birthday as well.

Tomochika: Wait, why is everyone starting with talking about rice balls? Isn’t just asking a question good enough?

Mokomoko: It’s a bit late to be worrying about that, don’t you think?

Tomochika: Anyway, birthdays. My birthday is May third. I don’t know about Takatou’s, so let’s ask him.

Yogiri: My birthday? I have no idea.

Tomochika: You have no idea?!

Yogiri: No one is really sure when I was born.

Mokomoko: I am surprised you were allowed into high school.

Yogiri: I had someone make a family registry for me. The birthday listed on that is January first.

Tomochika: That was because they couldn’t be bothered to think of a real date, so they just picked the first one, right?

Yogiri: Well, it’s not like it really matters when it was.

Tomochika: Don’t you celebrate it at all?

Yogiri: I do. On Asaka’s birthday, we would celebrate my birthday too.

Tomochika: Asaka...please don’t be lazy. Celebrate them separately...

Q: Happy New Year, Tomo! My favorite rice ball filling is plum. What about you?

Tomochika: And now it’s all about the rice balls! Why are they asking about that?

Mokomoko: Come, you can just answer the question, can’t you?

Tomochika: I suppose. I like them with meat inside. Like grilled meat and sukiyaki, I guess? I like the strong flavor.

Mokomoko: You really have no charm at all, do you?

Tomochika: They didn’t ask Takatou, but I guess I’ll ask him anyway. What kind of rice ball do you like?

Yogiri: Pollock roe, I guess.

Tomochika: I know I’m the one who asked, but this is really a pointless topic, isn’t it?

Q: Hello, Dannoura. My favorite kind of rice ball is with the hard boiled egg inside. I really like your sense of comedy. How did you learn to do it so well?

Tomochika: Is it really something you learn?! I just say what naturally comes to mind!

Mokomoko: Well in your case, you’ve naturally been like that since long ago.

Tomochika: By the way, the first time I remember being funny was when I was in kindergarten, when I said, “There’s too much stuff in that fridge!”

Mokomoko: What on Earth could that situation have been?

Tomochika: That’s it for this time. We’re always accepting questions, so please send them in anytime! Will we actually get any, though?

Mokomoko: If we don’t, we will just have to intercept radio waves from the cosmos and interpret them as questions!

Tomochika: So in other words, come up with the questions ourselves.

Mokomoko: If that is the will of the cosmos, there is little we can do.

Tomochika: Anyway! If we actually get any responses, we will happily do this again, so we look forward to your submissions!

Rhythm Games

Leaving behind the City of the War God, they headed by carriage towards their next destination. Yogiri and Tomochika sat side by side in the luxurious carriage. Mokomoko was entirely occupied with driving the carriage through Enju, so they were effectively alone.

“Just sitting here doing nothing is kind of boring...but you have your games, right? Must be nice.”

Tomochika looked over at the screen of Yogiri’s handheld. Objects appeared one after another, and Yogiri had to press a button in time with the marker overlapping them. It looked to be some kind of rhythm game. He wasn’t very good at it. He was a full beat behind the actual tempo.

“If you’re bored, do you want to try?” he asked, holding the game out to her after he got a Game Over.

“Sure.”

Taking the console, Tomochika hit Retry on the stage he had just failed. Though it was her first time playing, she had no problem clearing it. The difficulty was fairly high, but she ended up with an almost perfect score.

“Ha!” Tomochika immediately put on a triumphant face.

“You’re pretty good at these.”

For a moment, she’d been worried she had gotten too carried away, but Yogiri seemed honestly impressed.

“No, it was just super easy. You’re trying to do it with your eyes, right? If you only follow them visually, you’ll definitely miss.”

“I mean, it’s called a ‘rhythm game,’ so I know that I’m supposed to hit the button in time with the rhythm. When the difficulty was low, I could do it, but once it got harder, don’t you think the timing on the markers feels kind of weird? Maybe it’s still linked to the rhythm, but it doesn’t feel like it’s in the right spot.”

“I suppose. Just hitting the button when it feels right becomes less and less effective as it gets harder.” But a change like that was necessary to increase the difficulty.

“Also, aren’t there just too many markers? Like seriously, are they even related to the rhythm anymore? I just can’t hit the buttons fast enough.”

“Yeah, well, when it comes to rhythm games, when you get into the harder difficulties, it’s kind of the norm to be forced to do stuff like that to clear the stages.”

“Well, I’m done. I’ll just watch you play.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’ve already given up.”

“If you say so.”

With nothing else to do, Tomochika decided to play the game for a while. Yogiri seemed to enjoy himself just as much watching her play.

Command Selection

“Aren’t you bored just hanging out in our room the whole time, Takatou?” Tomochika asked with a sigh as she entered their special-class cabin on the luxurious cruise ship.

“We’re traveling, so there isn’t much point leaving the room.” Yogiri was lying on the sofa, playing on his handheld. “We’re just killing time, so I’m fine with this.”

“You’re the kind of person who plays video games the whole time they’re on vacation somewhere, aren’t you?”

Yogiri had barely left their room. He would either sleep or play his games. That was all he had been doing for their entire trip.

“If it’s about enjoying the luxury, I can do that just fine in here.”

“That may be true, but...” Tomochika forced her way onto the sofa where he was lying, prompting him to sit up. Maybe he had felt bad for taking up the whole space. “Well, if you’re fine with it, then whatever. What are you playing now?”

She looked at the screen. The game looked vaguely familiar. It was a pretty old adventure game based on folk tales, with plenty of recognizable names appearing among the characters.

“With a game like that, even you could beat it no problem, huh?”

“What do you mean, ‘even you’?” Yogiri pouted.

“I mean, retro action games are ridiculously hard. There’s no way you could beat one of those, right?”

“I guess. Things like Ghosts ’n Goblins are too much for me.” But even adventure games that didn’t have much in the way of action elements seemed like a struggle for him. He’d get stuck on individual scenes, repeatedly getting Game Overs. “The commands are all multiple choice, so eventually I’ll be able to do it.” There weren’t that many options. Yogiri figured if he went through all of them, he’d eventually beat the game.

“Yeah, about that. Can I tell you the answer?”

“Please.” After having worried over it for a bit, it seemed like he had given up.

“You’re not supposed to do anything. Just wait for a bit.”

“Wait, is that an option?! It’s supposed to be multiple choice!”

“That gimmick came up in a number of games back then. And that’s one of the better ones. One game I heard about made you wait five minutes.”

“Well, now that you mention it, I guess it makes sense.” Within the game, it was just hiding and waiting. That wasn’t such a difficult concept, but it wasn’t listed as one of the options, so it was easy to miss.

“It’s better than having to press the Start button, right?” One game Tomochika remembered involved climbing a tower, and in one stage you had to hit the Start button to make a chest appear. It was totally beyond the norm to have to press the Start button in the middle of an arcade game, so it seemed illogical. At that point, the puzzle wasn’t part of the game anymore. “Older games had a way of leaving you completely lost, didn’t they?”

Tomochika recalled all sorts of games that made her want to throw her controller across the room.

ESP

Within the mansion in the mysterious underground space, they had received a delivery just like always. It was a number of things that Asaka had requested on a whim. Yogiri brought the large cardboard box in from the entrance to the living room.

“Can I open it?”

“Go ahead,” Asaka responded offhandedly, snacking on some rice crackers. She didn’t remember what she had asked for this time, but it shouldn’t have been anything she would be embarrassed to let him see.

“What is this?”

“Oh, that looks like something used to help train your abs.” It was a device that used electric stimulation to develop the muscles.

“You put this on your stomach?”

“Yep. It’s for adults, though, so don’t use it without permission. You might shock yourself.”

She didn’t think it was particularly safe for children to use, so she felt obligated to warn him not to. She wasn’t even particularly sure she wanted to use it. She had been excited when she had first heard about it, but her enthusiasm had dampened in the time it had taken to actually arrive.

“Okay... Oh, there’s a game in here!” Yogiri pulled a Nintendo game out of the box.

“What game was it again? Oh, that ESP game. It’s kind of legendary for being terrible.”

“ESP? Is it an RPG?” Yogiri imagined a game where one used psychic powers to fight instead of magic, but it wasn’t as simple as that.

“It’s a game to help you train your ESP. I bet you’d be able to clear it, no problem.”

Asaka loaded the cartridge into the console, her expectations high. The title screen came up, and after pressing the Start button, it prompted them to enter a name. After putting his name in, Yogiri started the game. It began in a room in a suspicious lab where they were trying to develop psychic powers. For a while, he followed the instructions and moved through the game.

“Is this really a game?”

He seemed uneasy. Despite how long he had been playing, there hadn’t really been any game-like elements yet. It had just given instructions like relax, meditate, and look at the screen.

“Hmm. I don’t know much about the game itself.”

“Oh, looks like the actual game is getting started.” It was a minigame where they laid cards face down on the table, and you had to guess what was written on them. There were five choices. There were no hints at all, so it really seemed like you would need psychic abilities to guess correctly. Besides that, there was one where they set up five lamps, and you had to guess which one would light up. All the minigames were equally absurd.

“So? Do you think you can figure it out?”

As if feeling the pressure of her expectations, Yogiri focused hard on the game. But he gave up right away.

“This doesn’t seem possible...”

Apparently, he didn’t have x-ray vision or prescience.

“Of course...” That was just asking way too much of him.

IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers

In their special-class cabin on the cruise ship, while Tomochika was trying to decide what to wear for the day, she heard the sound of something knocking on the window.

“Huh? What was that?”

“Oh, it looks like the pigeon is here,” Yogiri said, opening the window and letting the bird inside. The pigeon cooed as it stepped into the room.

“So that’s what they look like. This is my first time seeing one up close.” It was white and plump, and actually rather cute. “Does it have a name?”

“No idea. I’ve never thought about it.”

Stepping in front of Yogiri, the bird revealed a Play button. Or rather, it jumped up in front of him as if trying to tell him to press it. Yogiri did so, causing a voice to play from the pigeon. It was the voice of the concierge Celestina, whom they had met at the hotel in Quenza. She sent financial reports to them regularly. While one might question whether it was acceptable to put the responsibility of handling their money on the shoulders of a simple concierge, they were paying her a commission of thirty percent of their returns, so it was a profitable arrangement for her as well.

“If she’s that good at this, I feel like she’d be better off focusing on investing rather than being a concierge,” Tomochika commented.

“She said she works as a concierge because she enjoys it,” Yogiri replied.

“But this pigeon network is kind of strange. I wonder if it’s unique to this world.”

“That is not the case,” Mokomoko said through the Enju robot she was controlling. “Even our home world thought up a communication network built on the backs of pigeons.”

“Really?”

“Indeed. Are you aware of the OSI model for internet communication?”

“You know full well that I’m not, don’t you?”

“Leaving out the detailed explanation, on the third layer of the OSI model, once the IP datagrams are transformed into packets, it was thought to have pigeons transport those packets!”

“Yep, no idea what you’re talking about!”

“To put it simply, an IP datagram is like a letter containing the destination address and the contents of the message for internet communication. They thought to have pigeons carry those letters.”

“So just acting like carrier pigeons then.”

“That is true, but it is rather difficult to determine where a pigeon will fly, and you cannot construct a communication network just by letting pigeons fly around. So a proposal was made to develop technical specifications for them.”

“Really? This is starting to sound super fake.”

“It is true. It was described in a document named RFC1149. An RFC is a document published by the IETF, an organization that works to standardize internet technology. If you look up this document number, you can confirm for yourself the existence of a technical document describing ‘IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers’!”

Though Tomochika felt the story was suspicious, she couldn’t argue with it if Mokomoko even had a reference number for it.

“Well, it was an RFC published as an April Fools joke.”

“So it was a lie!”

“It was not a lie at all. The proposal was real, and there are those who even attempted to make it work! Unfortunately, the success rate was only around fifty percent, so the theory was deemed impractical for actual use.”

“The birds just flew away, didn’t they?”

“They were only pigeons, after all.”

It seemed the magical carrier pigeons of this world were far more reliable.