I didn’t get it, but Yuuhi glossed right over my questions.
“We Namidares are a sort of system.”
I couldn’t help cocking my head to the side at those words.
“Wait, a system? What do you mean?”
“You compared the goddesses’ worlds to a sandbox game where we’re the characters, remember?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. That’s just what it seemed like to me.”
“Well, that analogy was surprisingly on the mark,” Yuuhi said, looking up at the ceiling. “The system I mentioned just now... Rekka, you know how characters require a role in order to proceed in a sandbox game?”
So far, I was following along. In, let’s say, a village-building sim, you’d have to assign your characters roles or jobs. You’d need a village chief, villagers, workers, etc. That was how you built up your village and made progress in the game.
“As for the role of us Namidares... We’re like the jokers of this world.”
“The jokers?”
The analogy took a sudden turn from video games to playing cards, but I got the gist of what she meant. The joker in most games was a card with different rules from the others, often meant to be used as a secret weapon or to shake things up.
“You mean to say we Namidares are wild cards?”
“Yeah,” Yuuhi nodded. “When the goddesses... When Sith and Maine started this game, they made an agreement.”
“An agreement?”
“About the fairness of the game.”
“What about it?”
“Did you not find it strange how similar this world is to yours? Surely you now see why they’re called mirror worlds.”
“Well, now that you mention it... Yeah.”
The people here all looked Japanese. The language they spoke sounded like Japanese too. I’d been able to understand folks walking around town earlier, and more impressively, I was mostly able to read the signs and things in shops. Then there was Yuuhi. Just looking at her... Yeah, everything here felt an awful lot like it did back home. It was easy enough to forget we were actually in another world right now.
“The two worlds really are surprisingly similar for being... well, for being different worlds. You’re suggesting there’s a reason for that, Yuuhi?”
“It’s in the interest of fairness.”
“Meaning?”
“How should I explain it? Let’s see... Do you think a human and a grasshopper feel the same amount of happiness?”
“What the heck?”
“It’s just an example. Now, you’d be happy to see a naked woman, wouldn’t you?”
“N-No!”
“He’s lying.”
“Shut up, R!”
Yuuhi couldn’t hear R, but I still felt the need to defend myself.
“Well,” Yuuhi continued. “Most men would. But do you think a grasshopper would experience the same happiness upon seeing a naked woman?”
“I, uh... kinda doubt it.”
“Exactly.”
“Huh? What’s your point?”
“In short, creatures that are vastly different experience happiness in different ways and on different scales,” Yuuhi explained as she drew a grasshopper in the air with her finger. “This becomes somewhat inconvenient in a competition over happiness levels.”
“Inconvenient? How so?”
“The more intelligent a creature is, the more complex its own personal happiness scale is. Compared to a human, it would be a simple matter to create the happiest possible world for a grasshopper. So in order to win the goddesses’ wager, it would be all too easy to cheat. By forcibly putting a stop to the evolution of intelligent life or delaying the development of civilization, for example.”
“Ah, I see.”
While I couldn’t testify to the happiness of grasshoppers versus humans, it was clear enough even to me that trying to compare the two was indeed inconvenient. And since this contest was all about comparing happiness levels, it would be something of an issue to leave that unaddressed. Moreover, if that created a loophole wherein either goddess could win by stopping the growth of their world, it would defeat the whole point of a game centered around building worlds.
“That’s why Sith and Maine discussed it and decided to limit the scope of their wager to the happiness of humanoids.”
“Humanoids?”
“Living beings that resemble humans, basically. That means it includes humans like us, as well as mermaids like Rain, demons like Corona, and so on.”
“Hmm, I see.”
“And so Sith and Maine began their game with that in mind... but another problem cropped up.”
“What?”
“Perhaps it’s because they’re sisters, but Sith and Maine would copy the good parts of each other’s worlds.”
“...What?”
I dumbfoundedly cocked my head to the side in absolute puzzlement, but it was really quite simple. The sisters were playing a game of copycat. For example, when Sith’s world began to develop after her people discovered fire, Maine stole the idea and encouraged her people to do the same to promote a similar development. And when Maine’s world hit the Industrial Revolution, Sith copied her. Rinse, repeat.
“Okay, so that’s how they created worlds that mirrored one another?” I asked.
“Pretty much, yeah,” Yuuhi confirmed with a nod.
If that’s the case, then what about outside?
When we’d first hit this world after exiting the rift, we fell into a barren sort of wilderness. I hadn’t exactly traveled all of Japan myself, but...
Do we really have wastelands like that back home?
I had my doubts, but I decided to hold on to that question for later and continue the current conversation instead.
“If the goddesses just keep copying each other, the game will never end, right?”
They were battling it out to see who could make the happier world, but if they made sure their worlds closely resembled each other, then there wouldn’t be much of an overall difference between them—happiness included.
That said, maybe it’s better if the game never ends...
“We can only assume they eventually came to recognize that glaring flaw,” R sighed in exasperation.
Even she seemed fed up with how poorly planned this little wager was.
“To that end, the goddesses created the Namidare system,” Yuuhi explained, finally getting back to her point.
We Namidares were the wild cards of the game, and she seemed to know why.
“The copycatting I mentioned earlier... That actually has consequences.”
“Like what?”
“Forcibly altering a world causes distortions, scattering fate in uncertain ways.”
“In layman’s terms, please. Another example would be good.”
“Okay... Let’s say the world is a perfectly serene lake. If you throw a stone in it, you’re going to cause ripples. Those ripples bump into things and bounce back, some bigger and some smaller, affecting the surface of the water in different ways.”
“Uh...”
I understood ripples and all that, but I didn’t totally see the connection. Meaning it was time for me to turn to my trusty companion.