“What exactly were you doing in the past, then?” Yogiri asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
“Anyway, let’s put all that depressing talk behind us!”
The deaths of your classmates amounts to no more than “depressing talk”?
“What do we want to do when we get back? We should talk about that instead!”
“After we get back? I guess I have a lot of games to catch up on.” Though it wasn’t like he didn’t enjoy his portable games, Yogiri’s real desire was to play on the big screen.
“Going back to your hunting games?” Tomochika asked.
“I only played that one because it was popular at the time. Normally, I play RPGs.”
“What we just went through was basically a fantasy RPG, but you didn’t seem all that excited about it.”
“I think I was pretty excited,” Yogiri replied. From monsters, to beastkin, to dungeons, to otherworldly sights...though he hadn’t caused much of a fuss at seeing them, he had found it all quite intriguing.
“You didn’t show it at all!”
“What about you? What do you want to do when you get back?”
“Hmm...maybe go clothes shopping?”
“Didn’t you buy an awful lot of clothes on our trip?”
“Even if I brought them back with me, I couldn’t exactly wear clothes like that back home!”
“Oh, is that it?” It felt like bringing things back from another world would cause problems, but whatever the reason, it seemed like they had made the right choice in not doing so.
“What about you, Takatou? What kind of clothes do you wear?”
“What kind of clothes? I mean, basically the same as always. Like a T-shirt and jeans.”
“Yeah, I guess a lot of guys are like that.”
As their conversation wandered, from what stores they wanted to visit to what foods they wanted to eat, the scenery outside the window changed. The sparkling lights flying by disappeared.
“Does that mean we made it?”
“I wonder. It’s kind of hard to tell what’s going on.” It still didn’t feel like they’d moved at all, so it was hard to gauge whether they had stopped. As they puzzled over the problem, the door of the lift opened on its own.
“I guess that means we’re here?”
“We don’t have much choice but to get off.” Picking up his bag, Yogiri stood up and walked over to the door. The view outside was the same dim corridor they had seen before boarding the lift. But nothing would change if they didn’t disembark, so Yogiri stepped off the lift, followed soon after by Tomochika. They still seemed to be in the Celestial Axis, as the area looked identical to the one Kouryu had brought them to earlier.
“So, assuming we’re here...where’s the exit?” Yogiri asked. There didn’t seem to be any way out.
“We maintain control of the Celestial Axis. You cannot simply enter and exit as you please.”
Yogiri turned towards the new voice and saw a woman in an ancient-looking robe. It seemed even older than the Heian-era clothing Mokomoko wore.
“Who are you?”
“I am a god.”
“I see. You look like someone who’d show up in Japanese mythology. You’re from Earth, right?”
“Correct. This is the world you two came from.”
“Is it okay for a god to wear such culturally specific clothing?” Yogiri asked.
“There are far too many gods in this world to count. I am responsible only for a small part of Japan.”
“Huh...so there really are gods...” Tomochika seemed impressed. They had met people claiming to be gods in the other world, but that had been an entirely different world, so it hadn’t quite felt the same. Meeting a god from her own world felt real in a whole different sense.
To be fair, even I am rather close to a god in some ways, Mokomoko commented.
“Among the countless gods, I suppose there are some at such a low level. However, they hardly matter.”
“Apparently, you’re really low level,” Tomochika echoed.
I hardly matter? Mokomoko asked, despondent.
“I kind of want to go home. Can you get us out of here?” Yogiri interjected.
“Of course. But just in case, I must ask you: as of right now, it is still possible to return to the world you just came from. Are you not interested?”
“Not at all.”
“I see. That is rather aggravating. Here I thought I had finally gotten rid of you.”
“Wait, does this god actually dislike us?” Tomochika asked.
“Worry not. The gods of the present age hardly ever interfere with human endeavors. The most we can do is tilt your fortune-telling to a negative light.”
“That’s still kind of annoying!” It seemed she was saying that asking anything of the gods was next to pointless.
“This is your final chance. Once you leave the Celestial Axis, you will have no option to return.”
“That’s fine.” There was nothing for Yogiri to think about.
“Then I shall send you inside. Are you happy to appear in the place you vanished?”
“I guess that’s a good question. If we suddenly appeared back home, things would look pretty suspicious. Yeah, that works.”
“Very well.”
The scenery in front of them instantly transformed.
“Ah! Gah! It’s so cold!” The gusting snow seemed to rob Tomochika of much of her vocabulary. With all that had happened, they had almost forgotten that their school trip had been to go skiing. Being sent back to the place they vanished from meant they were going to appear in the snowy mountains.
“I probably have some clothing for this weather in here.” Yogiri pulled a sweater out of his bag. It made sense that they’d have prepared for this climate if they were going somewhere so cold for their trip.
Tomochika followed suit, hurriedly digging through her things for a down jacket. “So, where exactly are we?”
“Hmm...we were in the other world after going through a tunnel, so we’re probably pretty close to there?”
Fool. You are back on Earth. You can just use the GPS on your phone, Mokomoko quipped.
“Oh, right.”
Yogiri pulled out his phone and checked their location. Luckily, they still had reception, so he was able to find out they weren’t that far from the ski resort.
“The date is the same as our school trip’s...and it’s about 7 p.m. That’s probably close to when we were expecting to arrive, right?” Having connected to the network, his phone was able to synchronize its date and time again. As Kouryu had mentioned, barely any time seemed to have passed in this world.
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Tomochika replied. They could check the paperwork for their trip to find out for sure, but they had better things to do than stand around in a snowstorm and read. The two began walking towards the ski resort.