February 23rd, 1945. Dresden.
Akuto was there.
The allies launched a completely meaningless bombing raid, and both he and Junko were caught up in a terrible explosion. Akuto was badly injured, and could only watch as Junko died in front of him. After that, he stood in the city as a wounded veteran, living off donations, until he died from malnutrition. That possibility ended there.
Akuto was born with the strange power to see ghosts. Using that power, he solved complex mysteries with the help of Korone, a ghost.
Hundreds of thousands of stories were tested, and all of them discarded.
July, 1950. Korea.
People belonging to the Bodo league were gathered from nearby villages in an old cobalt mine that the Japanese army had run during its occupation, and massacred. They were suspected of being communists. However, the Bodo League was created to re-educate communists.
And what was worse, in an effort to increase its numbers, the league had begun offering employment to anyone who joined it, which meant that most of its members had no idea what communism was. There were barely any communists there who would sympathize with North Korea. The cobalt mine had been chosen because it would make it easy to bury the bodies.
Akuto was killed there. He’d been a member of the league. What shocked him, just before his death, was that the Korean police who killed him didn’t even know what communism was.
Yoshie was reborn in another world, carrying her memories of her previous life. This other world was medieval, and she used the power of science to do great deeds there. This story was easily ended when he realized that the ending wouldn’t be a story. He couldn’t be sure that it wouldn’t end with the modern world being proven superior to the medieval one.
Junko ran away from home. She’d always been a wild child, so her parents didn’t go to the police. She was walking down the street at night when she was kidnapped by a band of thugs. When she told them her story, they realized that no one would look for her. So they drugged her, raped her, and dumped her in the mountains. They’d given her enough drugs to cause an overdose, and she died in the mountains. Her body was found, but her killers never were.
Akuto was an ordinary boy who was visited by a ninja. The ninja’s name was Junko. She was a beautiful girl, but had grown up in the countryside with no knowledge of the modern world. She causes chaos in Akuto’s peaceful town. Countless variations of this story were tried, but it ultimately became clear that it would never see a real ending. Thus, it was abandoned.
Fujiko was born to wealthy parents. Her parents, however, were gaudy socialites who disliked having to care for a child. Despite the fact that they had the money to hire nannies, though, they held the odd belief that it was a parent’s responsibility to care for a child themselves. Fujiko was, of course, abused almost from the moment she was born. With no one to rely upon but her parents, and no concept that a higher power like god, might exist, she worshipped the parents that abused her, and only made them hate her more, and fear her.
The murder was done by her father. He spun her around by the leg, slamming her into a wall and splitting her skull. She died. The family doctor was well-paid to keep this quiet. A year later they’d forgotten she’d existed.
Akuto awoke to psychic powers in a world where only girls could be psychics. He became the one male student at an all-girls psychic training school...
That was where Akuto gave up making stories. It had all started to seem pointless. The stories were all developing, but everything he made felt so... stupid. The only thing he seemed to want was a world where he could feel peace and comfort forever.
Perhaps in a way, that was the final form of a story. If he focused his attention on times that were hard, he could even make a story where he did nothing more than eat a full belly of food. And in any era, it was possible to find happiness by interacting with people.
On the other hand, the stories where the outer gods intervened involved the things he wanted being destroyed. They would also hide the fact that they were stories, and make it seem as if, instead, they were reality.
This, too, was another form of story concluding.
It had taken thousands of years to reach this point, and still stories hid themselves from mankind, he now believed. This belief had started as a doubt, and had only grown stronger. To make the stories flat, Akuto prepared an infinite plane, with a chair and table on it, drinks, and a few fruits. Even here, stories still emerged, but they could be kept under control.
People can only recognize reality through stories. And he was searching for the end of stories. This meant he was looking for the end of reality. For an end to time.
The stories started to fight back, as if they were trying to survive even past humanity’s demise.
An infinite flat plane. Akuto summoned a visitor into that space. There were very few personalities outside his influence now. And only one who could give him advice.
Hiroshi was there, with a blushing smile on his face.
“It’s our first time talking like this, isn’t it?” Hiroshi said. He wasn’t wearing the suit, but he was still Brave.
“We’ve spent a lot of time apart, haven’t we?”
“I never thought about trying to talk with you as an equal.”
“Maybe not. But I think we knew that this time would come.”
“I didn’t come here because you called me. I chose this spacetime to warp to. I knew this time would come. So for me it’s been a few months. For you, a few thousand years? That’s a long time.”
“Sorry I couldn’t find a better place to invite you.” Akuto laughed as he offered a drink.