It was an imaginary creature that managed the debt that Monika owed Yuichi, and was the one who had actually transferred Soul Reader to him.
Monika’s life had been threatened, and she had used an ability called “Save Me, My Prince” to try to save herself. It was an ability that warped the laws of causality to make sure that someone saved her, and in exchange, it came with a heavy price.
When Yuichi had appeared to save her, Monika had tried to welch on the deal, which had turned out to be a huge mistake; the daifuku mochi creature had appeared and without her permission had transferred her ability, Soul Reader, to Yuichi as payment.
“Huh? Huh? Huh? So what happens now?” Monika seemed completely panicked.
“The ability belonged to Yuichi, so it was his to throw away, destroy, or give to someone else... but could I ask exactly what happened?” the daifuku mochi asked.
“Yeah, looks like it was stolen.”
“‘Looks like it was stolen’? Give me a break! At least sound like you care!” Monika shouted.
Yuichi was aware he perhaps wasn’t giving it the gravity it deserved. But what else could he do? It was a mostly useless ability that had caused him more harm than good. Now it was gone, and he couldn’t be happier.
“Go get it back! It was mine to begin with! I was just loaning it to you!” Monika yelled.
“She’s right! You’re taking this way too lightly, Yu!” Mutsuko seemed to agree.
“Look, Soul Reader wasn’t even the thing I actually wanted to talk about,” Yuichi said. “I just thought I should probably let you know... but, fine. Assuming it’s even possible, I’ll try to get it back.” He realized the conversation wasn’t going to progress unless he said that. He really had no intention of playing host to Soul Reader again, but if he could find a way to give it back to Monika directly, he’d do it.
“Okay,” Monika said after a pause. “So what’s the real issue? Something more important than Soul Reader?”
“Um, I was thinking. Could we drop out of the Divine Vessels War?”
Everyone except for Yuichi froze up, shocked.
“What?! You mean that because you lost Soul Reader, you don’t need the wish anymore? What the heck?! You said you’d save my friend! You said that a human life was more important! Were you really just planning to use the wish to get rid of Soul Reader?”
“I’m not going to abandon your friend,” Yuichi said.
If you collected the Divine Vessels, you could get a wish granted — but only one. Yuichi knew that, and he certainly had said Monika could have his wish.
But Monika’s wish was to save her friend from psychopaths who were coming after her, and it seemed to him like there must be a way to save her without resorting to something as overblown as the Divine Vessels War.
Of course, it was true that he had come up with the idea because Soul Reader was gone, and he might not have thought of it otherwise.
“I was told that if the Evil God revives, humanity goes extinct,” Yuichi said. “Did you know that?”
“No way! No one mentioned that!”
“Well, I don’t know if that’s really true,” Yuichi said. “A guy calling himself the Evil God’s avatar said it. He did say he’d grant a wish, but that he’d move to kill off humanity the moment the Evil God was resurrected. So if that happens, what good would it do to save your friend?”
Yuichi’s instincts told him that the Evil God hadn’t been lying.
“But... what’s the point, then? No one’s wish could possibly matter, then!” Monika cried.
“That’s true. But the question is whether the participants in the war know that.”
The Evil God wanted them to fight, but if they knew what he had planned, they might lose the will to do so. That made it in his best interest not to tell them.
“Well, I don’t know the participants’ motivations,” Yuichi said. “But I do know that I don’t want to stay mixed up in this nonsense forever.”
“But then what about Wakana?!” Monika cried.
Wakana was Monika’s best friend, a denizen of Monika’s original worldview, now in her first year of high school.
Monika’s worldview had been “A Hopelessly Romantic Little World.” It had apparently been a worldview where shojo manga-like love stories played out, but because Monika had been expelled from her world as an Outer, her friend had ended up on an entirely different track. The ones pining for Wakana were now twelve psychopaths.
“You said things would get dicey once she got into high school,” Yuichi said. “How’s it looking?”
“It’s a stalemate right now, with a trepidatious balance. The twelve are sizing each other up rather than approaching Wakana directly. I don’t think she even realizes what’s going on yet.”
“Okay. I’ll take care of them, then. Once I give them a smackdown, things should probably work out.”
“As usual, you’re a violence-obsessed brute. It’s not as if you can kill them, so won’t they just come back for revenge?” Yuri had been listening quietly, but she apparently couldn’t stay silent through that.
“Good point. Sis, you think you can do something about that?” Yuichi looked to Mutsuko for backup, but she turned up her nose and ignored him. It was strange; this was usually the part where she’d start jabbering endless nonsense about what she could do to interfere.
“Well, perhaps I could be of assistance,” Yuri said. “I have no issue with burying a dozen high schoolers in darkness. And as your girlfriend, I’m happy to help.”
“What are you, the mafia? I don’t want a girlfriend who can do that kind of thing, and you’re not even my girlfriend anyway. Don’t think you can slip that stuff in when I’m not paying attention.”
“Well, I don’t actually have that level of influence just yet, anyway,” Yuri admitted. “You’ll need to secure my position as heir first.”
“You sure are trying to slip a lot in...” he muttered.
Yuri was part of a group of people competing to become the heir of the Sumeragi family, which were apparently the shadow rulers of Japan. She seemed to think that Yuichi would help her with that competition.
“The point is, we don’t need to take part in the Divine Vessels War to save your friend, so there’s no benefit to us in continuing with it,” he said. “We’d be more likely to save her if we go and interfere directly, anyway. Right?”
“Well... that... may be true, certainly...” Monika sounded a bit disoriented about the thought of just dropping out of the war, but she was also starting to come around to the idea.
“What are you talking about, Yu? Are you crazy? Once you’re in battle royal... I mean, battle royale, you can’t just drop out of it!” Mutsuko, by contrast, was not coming around. She stood up, slamming a fist on the table.
“Why did you correct yourself?” Yuichi asked, rhetorically. All she had done was change the pronunciation to sound more French, but that didn’t change the meaning.
“What kind of protagonist drops out of a game once it’s started? It’s bizarre!” she exclaimed. “This is a superpower bloodbath! It’s a melting pot of battle, betrayals, alliances, greed, and karmic retribution! Suddenly, a third faction appears! The whole universe is at stake, the life of all sentient beings on the line! And now what, you want to just quit?! You’ve ruined the storyline! The high concept is out the window! What’s wrong with you? This is like a weekly shonen manga that abruptly ends after ten weeks with ‘And so their battle continues!’”
“I’m telling you, I don’t want to do it!” Yuichi snapped. “Listen, the only reason I’ve gone along with fighting all these weirdos is because I had Soul Reader! I could see the Serial Killers and the Gods and stuff, so I felt like I had to do something about them! But now that’s all in the past! I just want to be an ordinary person who doesn’t have to deal with any of this ever again!”
It was the truth. Now that he was free of Soul Reader, he couldn’t understand why he had bothered getting involved with all the nonsense in the first place. It was like looking back on a fever dream.