“Oww! Do you mean... Oh!”
Akuto realized that the Law of Identity knew what he was up to in the afterlife, and began to sweat. She was talking about Junko, Fujiko, and Yoshie.
“No, um... well...” he stammered, but Keena just smiled.
“But I forgive you. From now on, we’ll always be together, right?” Keena said, and held his hand tightly.
“I don’t know what our life will be like, though.”
“Hmm... We’re heading to where all stories end. Where humanity will always strive to go... That’s what she says.”
Keena must have heard this from the Law of Identity, because she seemed to not know what it meant.
“The place humanity always strives to go, huh?” Akuto whispered.
Humanity would dream an eternal dream through “light” stories, striving for a place where the weight of the stories would eventually become zero.
“We’re doing a ritual to create an imaginary body, is that right?” Akuto asked.
“I guess so. I don’t really think I could understand the details, but it’s basically our real marriage, right?”
Keena spoke excitedly, and began without even waiting for Akuto. It was a ritual where not only stories, but the body, would cross over zero and become imaginary. They would create a negative body, an imaginary body, the first step to becoming something not of this world. Data, existing as imaginary numbers.
A space without time.
A place where physical laws ended.
Beyond causality.
Beyond reality.
The salvation of all beings.
Keena took Akuto’s hand. All the whispering souls moved from Akuto to Keena in order to become negative. Voices were heard. Many voices filled them. Junko’s. Yoshie’s. Fujiko’s. Lily’s. Men. Women. So many feelings.
“What does it feel like to be saved?”
“I don’t know, ’cause I’ve never felt it. But, well, we’ll know when we do experience it.”
“It will feel like I’m truly connected to Akuto for the first time!”
“Life must be really easy when you’re that air-headed. I guess to me, it doesn’t matter.”
“President, you should get a little more greedy.”
“Greedy for food, gyah.”
“Gugah.”
“Will our desire for honor be fulfilled as well?”
“You barbarians only think of hem-hem when you think of salvation!”
“Silence, you tan-colored barbarian! It’s the Student Council President, not me, who lives life on easy street!”
“I just don’t stress, is all. Anyway, there’s a few more people who we should be seeing, right?”
“We won’t see them if the author’s forgotten about them.”
“That’s a pretty meta comment... is that okay?”
“But if we try to do everyone we’ll end up with rubbers, and then that fly-guy too.”
“That... would not be what I wanted.”
“Want to call the guy who ate all that ramen?”
“No!”
“It’s wrong to discriminate against male characters.”
“Headmaster!”
“But still, outside of me, most of the characters are basically the same as the author. They’re not here.”
“What about that black metal band who worshipped the Demon King? Those guys had names, right?”
“They get saved too, huh?”
“Anybody who’s got a soul gets saved, I think.”
“Hmph. Well, forget it then! Everybody, come on out!” Junko yelled.
All the souls gathered. Anger, sorrow, jealousy, envy, all of those feelings were spat out, to be left behind in this world. The universe began to contract. Space folded around Akuto, and closed.
“Are you taking me too?” Korone asked, as she was absorbed into Akuto.
“Just like Zero, a personality can affix itself to a liradan and gain a self. You have a self too.”
Akuto smiled. His body began to shrink as well. He was absorbed into Keena too.
Eventually Keena turned inside out, and disappeared into this new world — the anti-universe. All that was left was void was within void. Void without even words. In other words, a new void universe was born.
But just before that happened...
A conversation was held in a fraction of an instant, in the smallest possible amount of time that could be recorded. One thing was left behind in the void universe.
Just one thing.
“Am I... am I left behind?”
The voice of the hero. It was Hiroshi, and Boichiro, and Kento, and the author too.
“Yes. As you were told already, you will be left behind,” the Law of Identity answered.
She’d looked like a goddess of salvation, but she was a cruel goddess as well.
“Why?!”
A scream.
A scream of pain.
He’d half-expected it. But he’d hoped there would be salvation for him too. That hope was betrayed.
“You must leave behind stories as stories. So that the next souls can go to that place as well.”
He shook his head, as if he found this impossible to believe.
“That’s so cruel...!”
“The concept of ‘cruel’ is only something you feel because you view things through stories. You will simply start over from the beginning. In the next instant, you’ll go to the void universe, and then you will shift to the faceless universe, and then the gravity universe. Though it may take tens of thousands of years.”
“Don’t say that! Am I starting the story over from scratch?”
“There’s nothing that can be done about it. Because you are you.”
“Because I am me? I can’t escape from that.”
“That is called the Law of Identity.”
“I’m going to become the Law of Identity?”
“You will be the next Law of Identity. If you are next to be saved, it will be when you become the guide for the next group of people. When you lead the stories that are trapped by gravity to lightness.”
“But that’s so sad... I have to leave everyone behind...”
“In the next moment, even sadness will no longer exist. This is not a goodbye. There were other souls besides you in this story, ‘Demon King Daimaou,’ that were not saved. So if you become the next Law of Identity, you won’t be alone.”
This conversation took place in the smallest amount of time possible, but in the hero’s next conscious moment, he was in the void universe, where time did not exist.
The hero thought for eternity. He would mumble to himself, thinking of who he would call as a witness to the fact that he was still sane. But the answer was the same. All he would do was speak.
“Anyone?”
He would search.
“I found someone!”
He would cry.
He couldn’t help but create stories.
Aiming for the greatest salvation, and heading for the worst.
But even so—
If he kept going—
Somewhere far away—
There was a faint vision he’d seen once, just for an instant—
Something he prayed wasn’t an illusion—
If he could—
If he could get there—
What would he do, again?
“Know that there is still more to come.”
He understood. He would begin again.
✦ ✦ ✦
