“Akuto!”
The two of them fell into the water with a splash.
“Uwaahn! Akuto!”
Normally Junko was reluctant to show her feelings, but this time she couldn’t control herself. She broke down in tears. This must’ve seemed strange to Akuto, because he pulled her head back to look at her face suspiciously.
“Are you... really Junko?”
“What? How rude! What about you? Are you really Akuto...?”
Junko responded, and then she must’ve gotten scared, because she backed away from him toward the beach at incredible speed.
“Y-You really are Akuto, right?”
Akuto laughed when he saw this.
“Hahahahaha... Yeah, you really must be Junko.”
As Akuto doubled over laughing, Junko’s feelings of suspicion turned into feelings of shame.
“Y-You dummy! Normally you’d worry, right? If you were in a place like this, and somebody who had no business being here showed up.”
“That’s right. I can understand why you’d be worried. Ignoring the fact that your first action was to leap straight at me...”
Akuto was still laughing.
“D-Damn it! This is so humiliating... Y-You’d better be the real Akuto!”
Junko pointed at him. Akuto stopped laughing.
“Yeah, you and I are both probably real. This is the afterlife, after all.”
“What?”
Junko couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
○
Hiroshi had no way of knowing it, but at the same time Akuto was reunited with Junko, he was alone in the jungle.
It doesn’t feel like I’m dead... It feels more like I’m in a dangerous, unfamiliar world. Hiroshi thought to himself. This may be the afterlife, but there still seemed like there was a chance he might die.
“Why am I wearing my suit, anyway?”
He didn’t have a mirror, but he could see his visor in front of him, and when he looked at his hands he could see the Brave gloves. But the suit didn’t seem to be working. He couldn’t use his flight power or his attacks, and there was nothing lit up inside the visor. But he could still see what was around him, and it wasn’t slowing him down at all.
Normally if the battery cut out, the suit would be too heavy to easily move around in. It was hard to imagine he’d show up in the afterlife in the form he’d had when he died.
Maybe, he thought to himself, you show up in the afterlife in the form you imagine yourself. And if that’s the case... maybe I can see the people I imagine myself meeting.
But he didn’t see anybody in the dark fortress. For that matter, he couldn’t think of anybody he’d want to imagine meeting.
As he walked, he found a path through the forest. It was a narrow trail, probably only used by animals, but it lead to an area where the trees got thinner, that might have been a clearing.
Who do I want to meet that’s already dead? Hiroshi thought to himself.
A face came to him.
Actually...
By the time the thought came to him, the man he wanted to meet was already nearby.
“I didn’t expect to see you here...” A calm voice said.
There was a tree stump up ahead, and a man was sitting on it.
“Boichiro Yamato...” Hiroshi whispered.
He was the one who’d given Hiroshi the Brave Suit, the time traveler who’d created CIMO8. And, he realized, a man who knew more about what this world was than anyone else.
“So it’s you, huh?” Boichiro said. He was wearing a suit that Hiroshi recognized, and was far calmer than he should have been, considering the circumstances.
He didn’t know why the man felt so out of place here, but he knew that he didn’t like his smile.
“Actually, Yuko’s probably dead too,” Hiroshi said.
He’d forgotten that fact. If he hadn’t forgotten, perhaps he could have seen her first. He regretted remembering Boichiro instead.
“I apologize. But I’m sure you understand that I didn’t want to run into a man here, either.”
That was the kind of man Boichiro was, come to think of it: annoying and flamboyant, but smart enough to understand what Hiroshi was thinking from a single sentence.
But still, there seemed to be some kind of fate in their meeting here.
“You know... that this is the afterlife,” Hiroshi said.
Boichiro already seemed to know everything.
“I’ve been here longer than you, after all. Though from my perspective, I only just arrived.”
“You did?” Hiroshi frowned. A lot of time had passed since Boichiro’s death.
“That’s right. Just a little bit ago. Perhaps time is experienced differently here.”
“That would... make sense, actually. But how did you know this was the afterlife, then?”
“CIMO8 had a deep understanding of this world’s nature. I had The One working for me, after all. I know most things.”
Come to think of it, Boichiro had to have recruited The One.
“Then you know about the Faceless Power, and the other stuff?”
“I knew from the start. But you refused to listen to a word I said.” Bochiro grinned sardonically.
“There was no way we could believe it. Not back then.”
Hiroshi felt a little guilty, so he mumbled a bit as he spoke.
“I’m not blaming you for it. I kept my actions secret because I knew people wouldn’t understand.”
“But The One was trying to destroy humanity...”
“I knew what he wanted. That’s why I should’ve done the ritual first.”
Boichiro had been trying to perform a ritual with the Law of Identity. Looking back, the ritual would have turned humanity into beings of pure mind and sent them to another universe. At the time, he hadn’t understood that, but now he could see the logic.
“But that’s not natural...”
“Neither is the fact that we’re here in the afterlife, talking to each other. But in the end, the Faceless Power will absorb all. Humanity has already been destroyed.”
“Then we’re not safe just because the afterlife is real.”
“Mankind has, in the end, only two choices. Either be destroyed and become a Faceless Power of its own, to be used by the inhabitants of another universe. Or become beings of pure mind and transition to another universe.”
“But there may be some other way...” Hiroshi said, but Boichiro just shook his head.
“How many times do you think I’ve looped through time?”
There was a heavy weight to his words. But for some reason, Hiroshi still disagreed
“But maybe the boss...”
“What?”
Boichiro’s gaze became more intense. Hiroshi faltered for a moment, but kept talking.
“But maybe the boss... could do something you couldn’t.”
Boichiro shook his head.
“It only seems that way because the Law of Identity chose him.”
“Chose him?”
“The Law of Identity is the author of the world. There’s no escaping from what she writes. That’s why I chose to do the ritual with her, and rewrite the world... and move us to another universe.”
“Then there is no third path?” Hiroshi asked, uncertain.
Boichiro nodded.
“None. Think about what’s happening here in the afterlife. Why did we meet here? Because it’s convenient for the Law of Identity, right? Doesn’t it feel like you’re inside a story? Isn’t it the case that the man you call “boss,” Akuto Sai, is hated due to blind belief in stories? But he’s the hero of the story involving the Law of Identity, isn’t he? Can he escape from that? Even here in the world after death, we’re being forced to play out our roles. How can we escape from a story that somebody else is writing?”
Hiroshi couldn’t come up with a good answer.
“But if we can travel through time...” he said, stubbornly grasping for the first thought he had.
“Time in this world is curved. Like a mind, or no, like a story. I don’t mean relativity, like in physics. That’s why time travel is possible, because what’s important isn’t time, it’s the story. No matter what you do, the story will go on,” Boichiro said.
“But...” Hiroshi interrupted, but then he realized why he was so obsessed with finding a third path. It was because he wasn’t happy with his role in the story, as the hero.
“I just need you to tell me how to travel through time. If I can do that, then...”
He didn’t know how to finish his sentence, but he wanted something good to come out of this meeting.
“And then?” Boichiro asked, coldly.
“I... this time I will find a way to escape from this story.” Hiroshi said, his voice quiet, but firm.