Just thinking about it seemed to upset her.
“First... What should I even compare it to? For a god, a world is basically their own miniature sandbox.”
“Miniature sandbox?”
“That’s right. In the limitless box of their world, they create whatever worlds they want, provide them with necessities, then watch over their growth.”
“So it’s like a world simulation game, basically.”
I hadn’t played many games like it, but I was familiar with the concept—games where you made a farm or a restaurant or an amusement park, then raised cows, invented recipes, created attractions, and other various things to make your world grow bigger and bigger.
“...Which makes us the characters the gods have created to fill their worlds.”
“That’s right. That’s not a bad way to think of it,” Yuuhi said with a shrug at my unhappy muttering.
The world we lived in was a goddess’s miniature sandbox... While that may be the truth, hearing it stated outright wasn’t a great feeling.
“Well, fine... Suppose that this world is a deity’s world simulation game. How does that relate to our current situation?”
“This is what I heard from the goddess of my world,” Yuuhi explained. “One day, the goddess of my world, Sith, was challenged by the goddess of your world, Maine, to a little wager in order to alleviate their boredom.”
“This is the game you were talking about?”
“That’s right. The so-called game was to see whose world was happier.”
“Whose world was happier...?”
When it became clear I wasn’t processing what she was saying, Yuuhi went into further detail. Apparently, the goddesses were able to measure the amount of happiness within their worlds. Sith and Maine—who were sisters—decided to compare their worlds’ happiness and compete to see who could make the happier world.
“The winner was supposed to achieve a certain lead over the loser, but there was no time limit, so the game continued for thousands of years.”
“Why would they do such a thing...?”
“Even humans like to compete. This is no different.”
I didn’t really think of sim games as a competition, but... I could understand the feeling of wanting to boast about the world you made to someone playing the same game. I guess it was like how my classmates were obsessed with that one game (I think it was some kind of cat collecting app?) and loved bragging about the characters they had to everyone else. This was just the divine version of that.
“So what does the game have to do with the story of the goddess you’re involved with? Sith, was it?”
“It’s very simple from there.” Yuuhi crossed her arms as if to hold back her feelings. “The goddess who loses the game loses their world. Sith and her world are on the verge of defeat right this moment.”
“...?!”
Yuuhi stated it so simply that the ridiculousness of what she said took a second to set in on me. The goddess who lost the game would lose their world... In other words, Yuuhi’s world would vanish.
“Hold on a minute,” the doctor interjected. “The world that’s about to lose is your world? Not ours?”
Huh... She had a point. If this was a match to compete and see who could get the happier world, it certainly seemed like the world afflicted by the War of All would be on the losing end.
“I see. So in order to ensure your goddess would win, you decided to cause the War of All in our world...” the doctor mused.
“That’s not it,” Yuuhi said with a shake of her head. “Sith’s world was the first to fall behind in happiness, and I learned the truth of it all once I became involved in her story. I had to cause the War of All here just to return things to a level playing field.”
“That’s...”
I started to say something, but the words escaped me. What Yuuhi had done was unforgivable, to me and to my world. But she’d only done it in order to save herself and her world. I’d assumed the mastermind behind all this would have to be the worst enemy ever after sacrificing Iris’s father just to start an intergalactic war... But she really wasn’t the atrocious villain I thought she’d be.
When I looked at Yuuhi, I thought I saw steely determination in her eyes...
But looking at her now, I realized that wasn’t really it. As stoic as she was, she looked like she could crumble at any moment.
“Do you understand now, Rekka Namidare? Without sowing misfortune in your world, I cannot save my own.”
I clutched at my chest. What... What emotions were running through Yuuhi when she said that just now? Did she think she was the final boss that was going to destroy the world or something? That would be ridiculous. She was her world’s version of me. That meant, just like me, she was a perfectly normal girl. She just had a special bloodline that was different than most. How had things turned out so awfully for her...?
“A story about destroying one world to save another, huh?”
“...”
“You didn’t have a choice, did you?”
“That’s right. That’s why—”
“But now I’m here.”
“...!”
There, Yuuhi went a little wide-eyed, and I felt the gazes of all the other girls gather on me. Yet strangely enough, I wasn’t nervous. The scale of Yuuhi’s story was incomprehensible, and in the end, I was just a regular guy. But even so, in spite of that, I’d saved plenty of stories before now. This... This was it. From the very first time half a year ago... No, from the moment I was dragged into R’s story after my bloodline awakened... This was what it had all been leading up to.
I looked up at the blue-haired girl floating next to me.
“What is it, Rekka?”
If this was the story that would settle things between me and her, it was probably fated from the moment we met that I would make this decision. I turned to address Yuuhi, R, and everyone else.
“I’m going to save the world.”