I left the Boucher house and started piecing together Gobta’s story in my head.
About one year ago, his father, Goburo, and his mother, Lyra, were having a conversation about their child’s education. Goburo was apathetic and didn’t make any suggestions, but Lyra suggested that they restrict the amount of time that Gobta was allowed to play video games.
One day, their conversation turned into a fight, and Lyra left the house. Goburo made light of the situation, assuming that she would come back in a few days. But she didn’t. Some days later, Goburo happened to be making a delivery at the church’s headquarters. Among the congregation of followers who had left behind their everyday lives to join the church, he saw his own wife.
Goburo and Gobta were shocked when they found out that Lyra had joined the church. When they tried to contact her, they were blocked by the wall between the church and the outside world. They even tried to enter the church headquarters as prospective members, but they weren’t allowed to enter because they were goblins.
After all this distress, Goburo decided to ban video games in their house. He thought if God was watching them, they might see that they had stopped playing video games and return Lyra to them. Goburo started the rule like a kind of prayer. But the two soon realized that they were underestimating the situation, thinking their wife and mother would come back to them just through exercising some self-restraint.
Living his daily life under these restrictions, Gobta’s grades started to drop. One day, angry and desperate, Gobta went past one of the church’s branches on his way home from school. A newlywed couple was being blessed at their wedding ceremony. When Gobta looked away from the scene, he noticed the building marked NO TRESPASSING next door. Out of curiosity, he peeked inside.
The building’s first floor was filled with various articles of large refuse. Among the articles, the old retro arcade game machines drew his attention. To the people of this kingdom who loved fun, new things, maybe a Japanese retro game had been too much of a stretch. Or maybe the contents had been too violent. In any case, it had been thrown away.
Gobta was fascinated by the machines, which sat silently in the building as if they were sleeping. He liked the action games and versus games the best. Street F*ghter, F*nal Fight, D*e Hard Arcade… Of course, the games didn’t turn on. But the names of ultimate attacks and their commands were written on the machines. Just looking at them and imagining what they did was fun. He could have stayed there for hours and hours, and he wrote down game ideas in his notebooks until he had filled three of them.
Gobta decided he wanted to make a game with a goblin as the player character. After visiting some used software shops, he discovered the old game production software called Pixel Game Builder. It was PC software, and he didn’t have his own PC, but he figured he could secretly use his dad’s old laptop that hadn’t been used by him at all. And so Gobta secretly immersed himself in making his game. And he grew to love games even more. It was a secret that he couldn’t tell anyone, but he was fine with that. He didn’t want to tell anyone. Not about his situation at home, or about his goblin player character. He would definitely get made fun of.
One night, around the time that the Hero’s Case was getting big, Gobta again snuck into the off-limits building. Like always, he used All Ears to make sure he didn’t run into anyone. But that day, he heard a sound coming from inside the building. There were multiple people standing around the arcade game machines.
Gobta got scared. Maybe the machines were finally going to be thrown away as trash. He peeked inside. In the darkness, he saw a person with white hair holding a candle. It was the church’s high priest. Around him were some people who looked to be other, shorter races, and the black silhouettes of yet others. He heard them talking. He overheard the words forbidden magic and saw the man hand something to one of the shorter races. And then a set of upside-down, black Balance Scales appeared.
As for what happened after that, all Gobta could say was, “I can’t explain it well…but it was something horrible, like lives were disappearing one after another.” It was probably the work of some forbidden magic, but unable to watch the situation unfolding in front of him, Gobta had decided to return home. Having snuck into the off-limits building, he wasn’t able to tell anyone about what had happened. But still, he had to know what happened to the arcade game machines. He went back into the building, this time during daylight. All nine machines that had been placed all around the building’s round pillar were gone. But there was no evidence left behind of their removal. All that was left in their place was a huge amount of mud.
Shocked and dumbfounded, Gobta exited the building. It was then that he was discovered by a police officer on patrol and treated as a juvenile delinquent. He was asked to give a statement about his trespassing, and about the mud. He didn’t want his parents to find out that he had sneaked into the building because of the game machines. He didn’t know how the mud had gotten there, and even though he felt that it had something to do with forbidden magic, he wasn’t able to put what he had seen into words. On top of everything, talking about it might get him targeted by whoever was using that forbidden magic. He didn’t think the police or the prosecution were on his side. He only thought they were there to scold him. So he decided to just stay quiet.
<<And that’s everything. What do you think?>>
That evening, walking toward the courthouse, I told Tsukasa everything over telepathy—what happened after I met up with Gobta, and everything he had told me.
<<…This is all very valuable information. I doubt he would have shared all this with anyone else but you.>>
<<I wonder.>>
I felt like that was an overstatement. I hadn’t been looking for a compliment, so it just made me feel awkward.
<<I wasn’t able to get through to him at all. But your investigative skills were excellent!>>
<<All I did was play video games with him.>>
<<There’s something called “play therapy.” One famous kind is called sandplay therapy. First and foremost, the investigator must respect the child and accept them as they are. The process aims to create a friendly relationship of trust in which the child can express their feelings freely through play. And when that happens, the investigator can read things like anxiety or fear from their unconscious expression…>>
By “investigator,” I guess she meant a family court investigator.
Having been around her talking about her work so much, I knew something about the occupation. In family court, they work together with the judge as a team. Where the judge is the pro regarding the law, the investigator is an expert on behavioral sciences such as psychology, sociology, social welfare, and pedagogy. They use various techniques to carry out their actual investigations.
<<Huh, that’s interesting. But I’ve never heard of it.>>
I never considered that there were psychological techniques that involved games. That’s not the reason I was playing games with him. He’s the one who influenced me with his passion for games.
<<I think it was even better that you weren’t conscious of it. I think you’re really good at getting up close to other people’s emotions. Without even knowing it, you managed to get the facts by using behavioral science. Actually, it’s not really about what you could do or did. It’s your natural ability to earn the trust of the people in this world.>>
<<I was just doing what I wanted to do—something I like.>>
<<Liking something and getting immersed in it means you have a natural ability. I can’t do that. And I could never like any other man in this world that isn’t you.>>
<<You’re joking, right?>>
<<Well then, now that we’ve collected some of the facts, it’s time for analysis and evaluation.>>
I struggled to keep up with the topic shifts from doting to case analysis.