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After the battle, the observing goddesses came over.
“Yuuhi... You okay?”
“Yeah...”
Sith was taking care of the now-conscious Yuuhi, leaving me to deal with the other goddess—Maine.
“Wow, what a twist that was. I never expected you would actually win. I suppose I underestimated you as a Namidare.”
“Th-Thanks...”
I didn’t really like dealing with Maine. There was something about the way she acted and talked... Really, she was the cause of all this trouble in the first place. I guess I just resented her for it.
“But you know what this means, don’t you? By returning Sith’s Namidare power, the happiness levels of the two worlds will balance out again and we’ll be back to square one.”
“Then you should just call off your stupid game,” I blurted out. “Why did you even start such a game anyway? If you’re that bored, there are plenty of other games you could play.”
“Well...” There, Maine turned to Sith and broke eye contact with me. “Sith told you how we deities can’t help but create worlds, right?”
“Huh? Well, yeah. Something about biology and all that.”
Funny... Maine wasn’t around when we had that conversation. Were deities all-hearing too?
“So what do you think happens to a god that quits creating worlds?” she asked.
“?”
“If a god stops creating worlds, they disappear.”
“Huh?!”
The shocking reveal left me reeling in bewilderment.
“Wh-What? But Sith said there was no particular reason for doing it.”
“Humans and animals also create offspring instinctually, no? If they fight that instinct and stop reproducing, that species would go extinct.”
“...”
So that’s what all that stuff about biology meant...?
Maine continued without meeting my gaze, “We’ve been creating and ending worlds for a long time now... Before we created our current worlds, Sith was in real trouble. She was on the brink of disappearing.”
“...That’s why you started the game?”
“Yup, that’s right. I wanted her to regain her passion for making worlds.”
“Then why would you want to destroy her world now?”
Based on everything she’d said before the fight, Sith had already rediscovered her love for her world-making. So if that was Maine’s goal, then she’d already gotten what she wanted. But Maine shook her head.
“I didn’t think destroying her world would be such a bad ending. If I did that, she would detest me and challenge me to another game... to avenge her world and destroy mine in turn.”
Hearing Maine’s real objective made me shudder. Man... What a goddess, am I right?
“So your little sister means more to you than all of the lives you would destroy in the process?”
“Of course. She’s the only sister I have,” Maine replied without hesitation.
There, she finally turned to look at me again. On her lips was a faint hint of a smile.
“Neither you nor I are real heroes, you know? We’re just doing what we can to protect the people precious to us.”
“Jeez, I get what you’re saying... But please pick a less destructive plan next time.”
“Hmph, I’ll consider it.”
Maine seemed to have said her piece and left my side to go hug her sister. It was an endearing display of sisterly love, though I worried about what exactly Maine’s love might mean for Sith in the future.
“Gosh, what a terrifying goddess. A textbook yandere, don’t you think?” R said from where she was floating beside me.
I felt like the life had been sucked out of me.
“Please save me from the yandere goddess that drags entire worlds into her games...”
And so I prayed that I would never end up in a story like this again.
Wait, if I pray for that, then the one who hears it is going to be...
The despair that weighed on me made my shoulders droop even more than they already had.
“Rekka...”
“Hm?”
“I was actually thinking about something.”
“What is it?”
“Why you and future Rekka are so different.”
R’s words piqued my interest. It was also something I’d wondered many a time before now. It didn’t really matter that much anymore, but I was still curious.
“Did you come to any conclusions, R?”
“Well, it’s all mostly conjecture.”
“Come on! Just tell me!”
“All right, all right... You have an excessive amount of Namidare power—the power to change fate—right?”
“Yeah. Though it’s gradually lessening now.”
Like we promised before the battle, Main was now returning the excess Namidare power to Sith’s world. It was apparently a highly condensed power, and it would take some time to disperse throughout the world as it was, meaning I had to stay up here in the spiritual realm for a few days while that happened. That gave me plenty of time to discuss things with R.
“Based on the way that only you were able to alter the past, my conjecture is that your fate-changing Namidare power can also affect time and space.”
“I see, I see.”
“That’s how, as you witnessed for yourself, the Rekka of the future gained too much power and hit a dead end.”
“Huh? But that’s—”
“Yes, it was recently corrected. I know,” R said, raising a hand to stop my interruption. “However, like I said, I believe that Namidare power can affect space-time itself. So perhaps somewhere in a different timeline, or even in a different world we can’t perceive... Perhaps there’s a Rekka Namidare somewhere that realized things couldn’t keep on this way.”
R was comparing me with my future self and Yuuhi.
“Perhaps that thought produced a change... A change that manifested at the very beginning of the story of Rekka Namidare. A change that would forever alter his life. And perhaps—just maybe—that’s how we got to where we are now.”
“Umm, so... In other words...” I racked my head trying to break down R’s so-called conjecture and get to the bottom of it. “What you’re trying to say is that... Maybe somewhere else in the universe, some other me changed my fate?”
“Like I said, it’s all just conjecture.”
R paused there to adjust her hat.
“Well, who cares about that anyway?” she said, the corners of her mouth turning upwards slightly. “Because as you can see, everything’s been settled peacefully thanks to you now.”
“Well... You’re right about that.”
Thinking the gist of what she’d said was right, I shrugged and smiled back at her in a similar fashion.