“This place is... an endless flat plane. Like a desert, I guess.” Hiroshi looked around.
“Of course, I can make it look like anything I want. But I’m trying to keep stories from emerging.”
“This is your world, then.”
“I guess so. What do you want to drink? I haven’t decided what this is yet,” Akuto said casually. When Hiroshi looked in the cup, there was what he could only describe as a liquid that hadn’t become anything yet.
“I’ll take water. Natural mineral water,” Hiroshi said. The liquid bubbled and became cold mineral water.
“I see.” Hiroshi swallowed the water. It felt pleasant and cool as it went down his throat.
“What’s it like being able to do anything?” Hiroshi asked after a moment.
“It feels like I’ve reached the endpoint of the pleasure I can experience as a living thing,” Akuto said. Hiroshi laughed a little.
“I’ve never felt that before.”
“Right?” Akuto smiled. “But right now we’re on the same stage. I think we’re the only ones who haven’t become concepts.”
“Concepts?”
“In this state, I can really understand the fact that a personality is something that can’t be truly understood by another person. If another person’s responses were actually mechanical, we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Perhaps the infinite personalities that exist inside us right now are actually that.”
“If you have a box that only an individual can look inside, and something with the same name but different is put inside it, can you have a conversation? If you have a dictionary in a foreign language that you don’t know, and it tells you how to respond to different greetings, if you use it are you having a conversation?” Hiroshi asked.
Akuto seemed entertained.
“Yeah. What you just said doesn’t seem like something you’d say.”
“When I’m here, I’m a unified version of the concept of Brave.”
Hiroshi grinned too.
“I see. So concepts really are concepts then.”
“But I do understand what you’re trying to say. You and I are the only incarnate beings in the Law of Identity’s world. We can call being a concept that is equal before its creator being incarnate, right? So in your world, all the people inside are equally incarnate.”
“You use the word creator, but it doesn’t feel like I’m a god. I can feel it. Stories are what are tying us down. Even if we were to attempt to create a world, the only freedom we’d have is what story we would choose. In the end, what I’m trying to do is kill that and escape from this world.”
Akuto’s voice seemed to echo a sense of loneliness.
“So you’ve reconfirmed that your goal is to kill stories.”
“I guess so. When I made the decision, I didn’t think much of it. Ever since I decided to kill the gods,” Akuto said with an exasperated sigh. Hiroshi chuckled.
“Show some consideration for those of us who got caught up in it. If you include the stories you created after that, we’ve lived countless ordinary lives, and countless extraordinary ones. And Korone and Keena are still asleep. I think they could probably endure a few thousand years of that, though.” Despite Hiroshi’s words, there was no harshness behind his criticism.
“That’s why I decided to talk to you. You’re the only one that’s outside my story,” Akuto said, his voice suddenly serious.
“I don’t mind when you sound weak like that. After all, we weren’t very well balanced. I was much lighter than you were,” Hiroshi said, jokingly.
The two of them both laughed, a little embarrassed.
“That’s right. You were always the saner of the two of us. You were normal, so you were never cut out to be caught up in something like this.”
Hiroshi shook his head confidently, however.
“That’s not true anymore. That’s why I can end this story.”
Nothing on Akuto’s face said he believed this, though.
“You mean your decision to kill me, right?”
But Hiroshi was unphased.
“Of course. With you gone, I can rewind the world and restart the story, with all its patterns. You can be there, just not as the demon king.”
“Isn’t that a waste of time? You’ve already killed me a bunch of times, haven’t you?” Akuto asked, confused. Hiroshi pointed at him, as if to say, “That’s exactly the point!”
“That’s the problem! In this world... yes... even in your world... everybody wants to kill the demon king. Of course, so do you. But it doesn’t work because the Law of Identity’s power is still in effect here!”
For the first time, Akuto seemed like he’d figured something out.
“That’s right. It was Keana who stopped me from destroying the world.”
“So first I’ll kill the Law of Identity, and then I’ll kill the demon king. That will solve it.” Hiroshi had a mischievous grin on his face. Akuto sighed and pouted.
“You know that’s impossible.”
“Right now, I’m basically fused with Boichiro. Not only do I have his knowledge, I have his sarcastic personality as well. I’ve lived a whole life without value. As a side character.”
Hiroshi reached out toward one of the fruits on the table. Only then did he realize that it was a peach.
“Well, I feel bad for what I did to you. But I don’t think it was devoid of value... No, I actually suppose I consider my own life devoid of value now.”
Akuto picked up a peach. He took out a knife and made a cut on the peach, then ran his finger down it and the peel came off.
“That’s why I can’t come up with a good solution for this problem. In the end, maybe there isn’t anything I can do. It feels like I called you here to just destroy everything.”
Akuto’s face darkened, but Hiroshi just laughed.
“Haha. I’ll stop being mean to you now.”
“Mean?” Akuto looked into Hiroshi’s eyes.
“I mean, I think there’s more you can do. I’ve got an idea, you could say.”
Hiroshi cut into the flesh of his peach with a knife, and took a big bite out of it.