Real Name: Tsugiyoshi SUMINO
Born: March 3
Height: 170 cm
Weight: 55 kg
Tsugiyoshi is a soldier and a high school student. His most prominent ability in battle, the Hundred Paths of Nezumi-san, allows him to tamper with the realm of probability. Tsugiyoshi can carry out a hundred different choices at once, then select which course of events becomes reality. For example, if he were playing rock-paper-scissors, he could throw rock, paper, and scissors at the same time. Should he settle on rock, then reality acts as if he never tried paper or scissors.
If you considered the power as predicting the future one hundred different ways and then selecting one of them, you’d be fairly close, but for two major differences: the predictions are based on actions of his choosing, and he experiences every one.
If time is like a flowchart, he can test one hundred of its forked paths, then choose whichever route he likes the best. This may seem a bit like cheating, but most paths end up being largely similar, and simultaneously experiencing one hundred potential realities comes with a heavy mental burden—in other words, it’s exhausting.
The discarded paths are remembered only by him (with some exceptions), but he doesn’t have perfect recall—one hundred different experiences make for too much to retain completely.
Another major downside is the potential for experiencing a hundred times more failures. He can confess his feelings to a crush in one hundred different ways and be spurned each and every time. (Once, he had to suffer through being dumped one hundred times simultaneously.)
Ultimately, Tsugiyoshi considers his ability not much good for anything except playing rock-paper-scissors—but he was chosen for the Zodiac War despite his young age because he possessed a hundred times more combat experience than typically afforded by the actual number of battles he’d seen. He tried to escape being selected for the Zodiac War, but of the hundred paths, not even one was successful.
His experiences have taught him that there is no one correct path in life, and that even if the concept of truth exists, there’s no one right answer. This learning has given him a distinctly philosophical personality.
The only time he gets excited is when he’s eating cheese—no two cheeses taste the same.
Congratulations, Fighter Nezumi. You are the winner of the Twelfth Zodiac War. Everybody, clap your hands!”
The judge, Duodecuple, vigorously applauded. “Everyone” didn’t join in—not, as in the opening ceremony, because no one felt like it, but because there was no one left to clap.
In a small, dreary reception office on anther floor in the same high-rise, Nezumi, the Fighter of the Rat, sat absently listening to the judge speak.
Duodecuple said, “We’ve neutralized the poison. The jewel will dissolve in your stomach without any trace or harmful effect.”
“That’s good,” Rat said. “Can I go home now?”
“Not yet. Your presence is required just a little longer.” Duodecuple chuckled. “After all, that was a brilliant victory. We’d like to conduct a short interview for posterity’s sake. I’m sure you understand.”
More like an interrogation, Rat thought, rubbing his tired head. He used his power to refuse the questioning in a hundred different ways, but all attempts failed—and forty ended with him getting killed. It seemed there was no getting out of this.
Compared to what I just went through—getting killed ninety-nine times out of a hundred—a sixty percent survival rate is nothing to worry about.
Of the sixty where he remained alive, he chose a route that preserved a relatively amicable atmosphere between him and the old man. The potential route became the reality.
Rat said, “Well, what do you want to ask?”
“First, I’d like to hear you explain the actions you took during the war. With your particular talent, no one outside yourself could observe your behavior, or its results, which leaves us no opportunity to study or judge your deeds. We need to hear it from you, if you’ll be so kind.”
Annoyed by the old man’s insincere, patronizing attitude, Rat lunged at Duodecuple to give the judge a good beating—at the same time as he obediently answered, “I didn’t do anything that unusual.”
Rat decided to make the latter choice in reality, since the first path ended with him being dead so fast he didn’t know what killed him.
Rat continued. “I just did what I always do, and I tried a hundred different strategies at once. One simply happened to work. I got lucky, that’s all.”
“I see, I see,” Duodecuple said, smiling happily for some reason. “No matter how superior the fighter, be they hero or prodigy—or corpse even—they get to take only one course of action. Whatever they decide, whatever they do, they can’t turn left and right at the same time. But you, Fighter Nezumi, with your unique power over probability, you can. In this Zodiac War, we were graced with a variety of competitors who possessed unusual talents, but now that it’s over, it’s clear you managed an overwhelming victory.”
That’s easy for you to say, Rat thought.
“That’s easy for you to say,” Rat said simultaneously.
Neither resulted in a remarkable difference, and he chose the reality where he kept the thought to himself.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to carry out a hundred different battles at once? Ah, I’m so unbelievably tired right now.
He didn’t merely desire sleep, he felt as if his mind was being chipped away. All this constant, ceaseless thinking was beginning to seriously affect his ability to stay conscious. He just wanted to go home. He wanted to go home and sleep. He suspected that being more cooperative would get this over with more quickly and tested ten different levels of cooperation to see which was most effective.
Duodecuple continued, “You’re like Schrödinger’s cat. Inside the box, the cat is both dead and alive—although I suppose you would be Schrödinger’s rat. You know, that reminds me about a story of how the zodiac was created. They say the reason there’s no cat in the zodiac is because Rat tricked him.”
Rat suspected this bit of small talk was intended to loosen his lips.
The judge added, “Although this time, you could say that Rat got rid of all the other animals.”
“I think there is a cat in the zodiac,” Rat said. “Tigers are like cats, aren’t they?”
“They are indeed,” Duodecuple said, nodding agreeably.
Rat thought about Tiger. In the branch he chose, he hadn’t encountered her at all, but in others, the two rivals had joined forces.
We weren’t bad as a team, Rat thought. But Ox and Tiger were wicked strong. In the end, I basically rode their coat tails …But I owe someone else even more.
Rat said, “Of the hundred strategies I came up with by wracking my inferior mind, this is the only path where I won—and I owe it to Sharyū more than anything I thought up.”
“Oh?” the judge said.
Of all the ways Rat tried his previous response, this was the way that most drew Duodecuple’s interest, and Rat went with it. This questioning had him feeling as if he were walking on thin ice. It seems my battle isn’t yet over, he thought.
That kind of thinking only depressed him. Instead, he went with a path where he hadn’t thought so hard about it.
Rat said, “It was something she told me in the sewers after Chicken warned us about the necromanticist. Sharyū told me that if she ever died and was brought under the necromanticist’s control, she wanted me to kill her.”
Duodecuple’s smile deepened here, as it had in every path Rat investigated. Ultimately, the boy’s powers were limited, and often all his choices found the same result—much like the ninety-nine of one hundred attempts at the Zodiac War that resulted in his death. This power, no matter how highly Duodecuple lauded it, fundamentally existed for the sole purpose of showing Rat how powerless he was. In order to survive, he died ninety-nine times. When thought of as a process of trial and error, his victory might seem a product of effort and perseverance, but a more accurate description would be to say that of one hundred Rats, ninety-nine died. His deaths had been erased along with the paths that contained them, remaining only in Rat’s memories.