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“Ugh, fine,” Maine groaned as she shook her head.
She seemed to understand that I had no intention of fixing the match in her favor.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” she said as she stood up, her throne disappearing from under her as soon as she did.
Now that I think about it... Does this place look like an arena because Maine wanted it to?
If so, had Maine expected this to happen from the get-go?
“So... how does this work? Wait, you’re not going to be the one fighting us, right?” I asked, the trepidation in my voice obvious.
In response, Maine laughed.
“No way. You can’t have a fair match between a god and a human.”
“Then do you have a representative for your world?” Yuuhi stepped in and asked, her sharp gaze fixed on Maine.
“Of course. I know just the person to fight you.”
“Well, so who is it?”
“Someone you two are both very familiar with, actually.”
“?”
Someone Yuuhi and I were both familiar with?
Is it a heroine? The doctor? Wait, would the doctor even agree to fighting us?
I mean, she could possibly be forced into fighting... But that didn’t seem right for some reason. Just who was it, then?
“Allow me to summon him.”
The moment Maine said that, a lone man appeared next to her. While his sudden arrival was shocking enough, that wasn’t what made both me and Yuuhi go wide-eyed. It was his face.
Indeed, he was someone we were both quite familiar with. Yuuhi had met him previously, and although I couldn’t say the same, I knew exactly who he was on sight. After all, I saw him in the mirror every day.
“So we’ll be fighting... me?” I asked.
“Don’t look so disgruntled about it... Granted, I understand how you feel,” the other me replied with an extremely sour face.
I suppressed the initial surge of emotions that swelled up within me and asked...
“Are you really my future self?”
“Just as you’re my past self,” he said with a nod.
His face, his voice, his tone... Everything about him was virtually identical to me.
“If you’re my future self, why don’t you look any older than me?”
“Ah, that’s because I became part vampire when I was about your age. I haven’t aged a day since then.”
“Oh.”
I’d opened my mouth and asked that without really thinking about it, but the answer he gave me was simple enough to understand.
“It sure is confusing having two Rekkas around... As a denizen of the future, the Rekka over there is really the Rekka Namidare from my timeline,” R noted as she glanced over at me. “But since I’m your heroine, I’ll continue to call you just ‘Rekka’ and the one over there ‘future Rekka.’”
R was right. It was confusing to have two Rekkas, so I’ll stick with her way of differentiating us too.
“And so, future Rekka, why are you on that side?” I asked, throwing the obvious question out.
If he was really me, then we should have similar ways of thinking. Shouldn’t he want to save not just Maine’s world, but Sith’s as well?
“Listen, we’re the same person. I know what you’re getting at,” future Rekka said bitterly, his expression the same as before. “But I’m sorry. I can’t afford to part with my Namidare power.”
“Why not? It’s not like you’re losing all of it, right? We just need to return the excess that wasn’t ours to begin with.”
“I need that excess power.”
“Huh?”
From where I stood, future Rekka was incredibly powerful on his own already. I couldn’t even imagine why he’d need excess power, and cocked my head to the side accordingly.
“Since I... Since we received Sith’s Namidare power, we’ve become involved in far more stories than any other Namidare in history. You know that much, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then think about it. If we go back to just being normal Namidares, what do you think is going to happen to the number of stories that come our way?”
“Huh? Well, that should go back to normal too—ait!”
When he put it like that, the light bulb came on. I finally understood. That’s what future Rekka was fighting for right now, but it wasn’t just about him. It applied equally to me. If he—if we return to being normal Namidares, then...
“That’s right. Just like Dad and our ancestors before us, the number of stories we get caught up in will decrease dramatically. And so will the number of heroines we can save.”
“!”
The Namidare power that Maine took from Sith was transferred to Rekka Namidare... In other words, me. Future Rekka’s past self. So if I lost that power now, future Rekka’s past would change accordingly. What exactly would that mean?
“The stories you’ve solved would most likely remain that way, so the heroines you already know will still be saved. But there’s no guarantee regarding what will happen to the heroines I saved after that.”
As it stood, I’d had a hand in resolving less than fifty stories. But Future Rekka had saved several hundred of them. So if I lost a significant amount of my Namidare power now, I’d only end up caught up in a fraction of the stories my future self had. That would change his past, effectively removing him from the stories I never got to. That would mean he’d never meet the heroines involved those stories, and that would mean he’d be unable to save them. While that was all hypothetical and in the future for me... For future Rekka, it was like sending hundreds of heroines to their graves. And that number would only grow. Unlike me, future Rekka was immortal. If he lost a significant portion of his power now, there would be an untold number of tragedies in the future, too.
I see. So what my future self really fears is becoming unable to save people...
Ah, damn it. That was indeed a very Rekka-like way of thinking.
“I understand now.”
“Do you really?”
“All too well, unfortunately...”
I couldn’t help averting my gaze. Even though I was supposed to be the one doing the interrogating here, the tables had been turned on me. I had genuinely believed that winning this match would save both worlds. No, I still did. But at the same time, it would mean sacrificing several hundred heroines I didn’t yet know. Was that really okay? I had to wonder. This story just outright refused to have any easy answers...