Hinami and I were riding on a dinosaur-shaped vehicle that slowly circled the outer perimeter of Yontendo World, where we’d had so much fun.
When we’d first got here, the refreshingly clear blue sky and the CG-like world had left an impression, but now it seemed kind of lonely in the sunset light.
“So…today,” I began quietly.
The pale-blue streetlights shone at fixed intervals, gradually illuminating the unreality of this world—with blooming flowers as thick as seat pillows and apples that were glowing orange for some reason. The white glow from the question marks on the item blocks lit up the dazzling red, blue, and yellow primary colors of the other blocks and faintly mingled with the sunset.
It really was the world of the childish video game that we loved—but it was also reality.
“I’m glad you had fun,” I said.
Hinami was still pouting, but she didn’t seem bored at all, her eyes fixed on the clock telling us it was five PM. “That roller coaster was the worst, but this area…isn’t bad.”
“Ha-ha. Right?”
With the scowling enemy characters that fell down from above when you approached…
…the red turtles with innocent expressions, hovering with the wings that grew out of their shells…
…and this place, where the characters we’d seen thousands of times through the screen, were here to welcome us.
This place itself was a common language between Hinami and me.
“I was the one who said we should come here,” I said. “I knew you’d love Yontendo World.”
“…I see.”
The conversation between us was stilted. The silence stood out, but maybe because of the world we loved surrounding us, it wasn’t at all uncomfortable.
That was why I was able to guide the conversation into the core of our situation. “Hey…do you want to end your relationship with me?”
“I’m not really ending anything. I just did the obvious,” Hinami said brusquely, but with none of her usual stubbornness.
“Obvious?”
“I don’t regret it…but when you use someone else’s life for yourself…that kind of relationship can’t go on forever, right?” Hinami sounded resigned as she gazed at an enemy character hovering while blowing bubble gum. She seemed nostalgic, but also sad.
The look in her eyes felt a little different from when she was in Sewing Room #2 or when she was in the classroom.
“Because now you know…who I am.”
There was a kind of self-rejection in her tone.
I didn’t want to hear that from Hinami. That’s why I drew in a breath and said, “Lately, I’ve been thinking.” After hearing the opinions of adults like Ashigaru-san and Rena-chan, I’d come to understand something. “Basically, everyone, I think, has something like their own karma that other people won’t understand.”
The ride slowly approached a darkened indoor area, and our view became dimmer and more closed in.
“I get that. Because I’m the same as you,” I said.
“…You mean that you try to deal with your own life yourself?” Hinami asked.
I nodded. “I’m an individualist. The more I try to make a relationship with someone special, the more it just goes wrong. And I hurt whoever was trying to get close to me. It means I leave the people I care about behind to go way off somewhere else. I think a lot of people don’t understand.”
Something I couldn’t change about myself made it harder to connect. Or maybe I just couldn’t reach a compromise with the world.
It brought pain with it, like it was denying who I am.
“But, like. That isn’t just you and me,” I continued.
“…What do you mean?”
Thinking of the people I’d been deeply involved with, I said, “Kikuchi-san is a writer down to her core. Even though she knows there’s a line with people that you can’t cross, that their minds should be respected…she sometime starts to feel okay with crossing that line for writing. That’s her karma. I think she hasn’t come to a compromise with the world in that.”
Each person’s karma would look a bit different, though.
“And Mizusawa, too. He performs formalities instead of going for something he really wants. He’s good at playing the game, but he can’t get serious about what’s right in front of him. He’s trying to change himself, but I think he still doesn’t have an answer that satisfies him. So he just has to try things out one by one.”
But in the sense of being in contradiction with the world, I’m sure anyone is the same.
“Tama-chan is like me in that she believes in herself even when she can’t fully explain why, and she can’t understand people who aren’t like that in the real sense. And that’s isolated her in the past… I think she’s managing well now, but it’s not like everything’s resolved.”
I think resolving those things is one of the themes of life.
“So—it’s not just you. Everyone acts like they’re fine in front of others, but they’re actually not. Maybe what you’re dealing with is really extreme, and just touching it hurts. But…”
I borrowed the ideas I’d gotten from Kikuchi-san to affirm Hinami.
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“…you’re not a different creature from everyone else.”
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Maybe Hinami and I…
In a different sense, maybe we were firelings.
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“So you don’t have to be alone.”
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When I told her how I really felt, Hinami’s expression didn’t change. She just gazed at the world of video games and reality that was spread below us.
“If that were really true, then maybe I could have had it easy.”
She spoke with the firm assumption that she was right and basically rejected my whole speech.
But I didn’t want to give up.
“Still, if you can’t validate yourself…then it can be just a little bit. It can just be as much as you’ll allow.”
If she couldn’t validate herself, then we should help each other.
Even if that crossed the boundaries of individualism.
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“Won’t you let me take on some of what you’re dealing with?”
✦ ✦ ✦
If two individuals both had the desire to cross that boundary line—then that should be fine.
After I said that, Hinami surveyed the world as if captivated by its beauty.
Was she looking at the beauty of this world, or the beauty of the video games in her memory? Or was it the beauty of taking the world as a game?
I didn’t know.
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But it had to be here and now.
We couldn’t talk about some things unless we were encompassed by this view.
✦ ✦ ✦
“You know, I had two younger sisters.” The words spilled out of Hinami like a droplet of water.
“!” My breath caught.
That was probably a different topic from what we’d been discussing before.
I focused on what she was saying so as to catch every word, every twitch in her facial expression.
“All three of us were close… We played games every day. We played versus in Oinko a lot… Of course, I was older, so I was better.” There was something childish about the way Hinami spoke, and it sounded like she felt nostalgic for that kind of fun. “Every time I won, every time ‘hexactly’ came up on the screen, they teased me and said their big sister was the Demon Lord Aoi. The final boss. Every single day.”
I imagined what that looked like.
That had to be before Aoi Hinami had become NO NAME. Or maybe she was talking about before she’d become the warped perfect heroine.
“My middle sister… Her name was Nagisa. She had a strong sense of justice, and she believed in herself… She was like you and Hanabi that way.” Her storytelling slowly became calmer. “When Nagisa was in elementary school…there was bullying in her class.”
“…Oh.”
For some reason, Hinami’s tone wasn’t somber at all. Something about that felt unnatural and artificial to me.
As if she was afraid of being swallowed up by the facts otherwise.
“Nagisa had a strong sense of justice, so she couldn’t pretend she didn’t see it. Even if it meant she would be the next target, she cared more about sticking to her beliefs.”
“That’s…”
“Like Hanabi, right?”
I nodded. At the same time, I remembered.
When Tama-chan had become the target of bullying, Hinami had exacted disproportionate revenge on Erika Konno.
“But there wasn’t a happy ending like with Hanabi.”
She explained as if it was nothing. As if she had to talk about it this way to keep from breaking.
“She died. It was a traffic accident.”
“…An accident?”
Her sister had died. Somewhere in my head, I’d imagined it, ever since I’d gone with Kikuchi-san to ask about her past from a former classmate.
But now she was telling me it was a traffic accident—how was that connected with bullying?
I still couldn’t imagine it.