“R, do you understand what she’s talking about?”
“In short, when highly influential events like the discovery of fire or the Industrial Revolution are forced to happen, they have other unintended effects. And based on the way Yuuhi’s talking about them, they aren’t good.”
“Okay, Yuuhi... So you’re saying that if the goddesses interfere too much, bad stuff happens? Is that the short of it?”
When I rehashed R’s explanation, she looked exasperated.
“I’m glad the guardian you were sent with has a good head on her shoulders,” Yuuhi remarked.
“I can’t help being stupid.”
“To put it as bluntly as possible, the goddesses’ overreaching can damn their own worlds.”
Wow... Okay, so that’s what she meant. This really was bad.
“Direct interference causes calamity that ripples throughout the entire world. The discovery of fire on Earth, for example, could have consequences in a totally different corner of the galaxy.”
“You mean to say another planet might pay for what happens on Earth?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. The distortion and dispersal of fate can have consequences elsewhere on the timeline too. It might be the past or future that pays for it,” Yuuhi explained.
“Wh-What...? Why...?”
“Just so you know, Rekka, this is universally true. It may have been meddling on another planet, for example, that wiped the dinosaurs off the face of planet Earth.”
“She’s right, you know? That’s not what you should get hung up on right now.”
“I know...”
With both Yuuhi and R admonishing me, I was forced to come a reluctant acceptance. Yuuhi then continued to explain things for me.
“Because Sith and Maine repeatedly copied each other, they caused countless problems in their worlds. Solving said problems with more interference only beget a multitude of other problems, creating a vicious cycle.”
“So what did they do?”
“That’s where the Namidare system comes in,” Yuuhi said, flopping backward on her bed and staring up at the ceiling. “It’s sort of like how Doctor Laputa made you change the past yourself. If a deity interferes from the outside, it causes problems. So the answer is just to change things from the inside.”
“What?”
“The divine ability to alter the world and change fate... That is the true nature of the Namidare power.”
“What?!” Yuuhi’s words left me reeling. “Y-You’re saying we have the power of gods?!”
“A small fraction of it, but essentially, yes,” Yuuhi said, sitting up once again.
When she did, I realized something. She’d been refusing to make eye contact with me for a while now. But more importantly... she looked angry. Her eyes with filled with rage that seemed to be directed at me.
“Though I called it the Namidare power, it isn’t really limited to us Namidares. There are other people blessed with similar divine powers.”
“R-Really?”
Thinking about it, I did know people like Hibiki back in my world. That had to be what she meant.
“You could say we’re a way to clean up the goddesses’ mess. We’re drawn to calamities that occur from distortions in fate—stories en route to bad endings—and we act as special characters to help fix them.”
“Wow...”
This time, I was the one flopping over on the bed. To finally learn the truth about my bloodline... The shock of it all made me a bit dizzy.
“Rekka, this isn’t the time to flake out,” scolded R.
“What do you want from me?”
“She still hasn’t answered your initial question, you know. About what tipped the happiness scales between the worlds. About why this one is doomed now.”
“Ah, that’s right.”
Everything Yuuhi had said so far had thrown me for enough of a loop that I’d gotten completely sidetracked. Remembering my original question, however, I sat straight up and looked right at Yuuhi.
“So how did your world end up like this? Does it have something to do with the Namidare power?”
“Surely you’ve figured it out by now, but this game lives and dies by the Namidare power.”
“Umm...”
“She means that you have the power to undo the damage the goddesses wreak and thusly turn negatives into positives. And in a game where victory is determined by happiness, you could say that’s a huge plus. Get it?”
“I see...”
This time, R explained things for me before I even had to ask. Yuuhi seemed to expect as much, so she moved on without so much as slowing down.
“Unfortunately, however, that brings us to a different problem.”
“What? Another one?”
“Yes. As it turned out, we Namidares were doing too much.”
“Too much?”
I could understand how us not doing enough might be a problem, but how could we possibly do too much?
“The Namidares of both Sith’s world and Maine’s were too good at undoing the calamities of fate brought on by the goddesses’ meddling, putting the two worlds back into a deadlock, albeit a happier one.”
“Oh, that makes sense.”
So it was a problem for the goddesses. Not my biggest concern right now.
“So? If the game ended up back at a stalemate, what caused the decline in happiness in this world?”
“Eventually, you see, the sister goddesses grew impatient with their little game and made a bet.”
“A bet?”
“That’s right.”
“Another one? What was it for this time?”
“That should be obvious,” Yuuhi stated a little curtly. “They staked the reason for the game’s stalemate: the Namidare power.”
“What?!”
Just how many surprises were there in this story? I was used to twists and turns, but this was taking it to a new level.
“I can’t believe it... I guess that’s just how badly they wanted to end the game, huh?”
“It’s torture for those of us who are mere cogs in the grand scheme of things...” Yuuhi lamented with a sigh.
“Okay,” I said. “If this is going where I think it is, then that bet...”
“Sith lost.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Of course, Maine didn’t take everything, but Sith’s world had to surrender nine tenths of its Namidare power.”
As a result, Sith’s world lost the ability to resolve most of the calamities inadvertently caused by divine intervention—past, present, and future. But if Sith stopped intervening in her world after losing its Namidare power, then who was there to calm the ripples? The effects of past interventions were still being felt, and they would only add up to more calamity. The end result of that was the black hole in the sky outside—the black hole that signaled the endgame. When it got big enough, it would swallow up this world.
“You saw all the wasteland on the way into town, right?” Yuuhi suddenly asked me in a murmur.
“Yeah, I did.”
I’d wondered about it earlier, in fact. I didn’t really think there was anything like that in Japan.