That’s not a ton of time, I thought, but it does give me some breathing room to figure this out.
If I had three years, then, surely, I could do something to alter Kyouichirou’s fate.
Pathetic as it sounds, that’s what I believed at the time.
But I was wrong. I was so very, very wrong.
There would be no grace period for Kyouichirou Shimizu.
In due time, I would find that out the hard way.
After we finished dinner, I continued trying to gather intel.
“Kyou, are you sure you’re feeling all right?” Fumika asked, her expression grave. It seemed I’d started to genuinely worry her.
But thanks to my interrogation, I was able to get the gist of Kyouichirou’s life up to this point. I might have caused my sister some concern, but in the end, it was worth it. I’d done really well, in fact, if you ignored how embarrassed I felt asking all those questions.
What I learned from my sister could be roughly separated into three points:
Fact 1: The Shimizu siblings lived in a residential area of a dungeon city called Sakurabana.
A dungeon city was exactly what it sounded like—a city full of dungeons.
Dungeons and Spirits were the basic elements of Dungeon Magia. The world’s power supply was obtained from mysterious stones harvested from dungeons. And with the help of the spirits, everyone was able to use what was essentially magic. By holding out their hands, priests could heal the wounded. And instead of matches, anyone could light a barbecue with the snap of a finger. That was the type of city Sakurabana was. To the city’s residents, these strange powers were the most ordinary thing in the world. And the same went for dungeons—a workplace straight out of a dream.
The Shimizu siblings lived a quiet and modest life, hidden away in a small corner of this magical metropolis.
My sister was sixteen and enrolled in upper academia, and I was fourteen and in middle academia. Back in my original world, she’d be a first-year in high school, and I would be a second-year in middle school. Neither of us had been trained as adventurers. We were an ordinary brother and sister living ordinary lives.
Fact 2: The Shimizu siblings lived alone.
Kyouichirou and Fumika’s parents had died many years prior in a cave-in.
To be honest, I was prepared for this. When she appeared in Dungeon Magia, Fumika said she lived alone, despite being only eighteen. So it came as no surprise to me that our parents had already passed away. Despite that, the story was surprisingly painful to hear.
They’d left my sister all alone while she was in the prime of her youth—it was a real tragedy. How could they do that to their daughter when she wasn’t even in high school yet? She was far too young to play mom to a brother like Kyouichirou!
And my sister’s situation was even worse than that…
“Thank you, Kyou. It feels like you’ve really grown up. I never expected you to help me wash the dishes like this,” she said, reaching out to pat my head. But, her palm still hovering above me, she was overcome with a small coughing fit. “Ngh… I’m sorry. Give me a moment…”
“Sis! Are you okay?!”
“I’m fine, I’m fine. Ngh. I’m still not over my cold is all.”
She pretended she was all right, but it was clear that she was still in pain.
And besides, I already knew—I knew that her cough wasn’t from a cold. And I also knew that what lay waiting inside her would take her life in only three years.
Fact 3: This world was the same one I knew from Dungeon Magia, and that meant that Fumika Shimizu would die in three years.
Dungeon Magia had a reputation for excellent storytelling.
The humorous parts had players rolling on the floor. The fierce battles worked people into an absolute frenzy. And the ending of each of the different heroine’s routes was a heart-wrenching emotional finale guaranteed to make anyone ugly-cry.
Each game was hilarious, cute, exciting, and emotionally devastating. The plot’s composition and writing were so flawless that one might question whether a mere human was capable of such genius. Every game in the series was truly god-tier.
And within that expansive story, Fumika’s narrative truly encapsulated the feeling of helplessness.
Her most famous story event was called “My Last Moments with You.”
The protagonist meets her by chance in late summer and befriends her. Then, after being with her in her last moments, he quietly sends her off.
Her story was one devastatingly moving scene after another. Her brave words to the protagonist as she lays in her hospital bed, how he runs all around trying to find a way to heal her, the sincere thanks she offers him in her final moments. I could think of countless heart-rending sequences. But right now, there was only one point to focus on—if I didn’t do something, my sister would keep hurtling toward certain death.
If the world we were in now followed the plot of the game, my sister was being eaten from the inside by a curse. If I remembered correctly, she had fallen victim to a mad shaman who cursed her without her even realizing it.
The curse was slow and terrible. It crept through the host’s body, gradually consuming it until, one day, it claimed the victim’s life. It was activated by a special Astral Skill combined with a certain item, and the worst thing about it was that as it progressed, it gradually became immune to all forms of healing.
By the time the protagonist met my sister in the game, it was already too late—no healing item or Astral Skill could cure her. The protagonist could only struggle in vain as they watched her die.
It was cruel. It was beyond evil.
What sort of unjust god would assign these two siblings such abominable fates?
I bit my lip as I considered the Shimizu family’s unending bad luck.
How could this world be so cruel? Why should a brother and sister who had lost their parents at such young ages and struggled to fend for themselves both meet such untimely ends?
If this was just a game, such a thing was understandable—their deaths were necessary to give the heroes a chance to shine. They were just sacrifices to make the story more interesting for the player. I understood all that. I welcomed it with open arms!
But now that it was my reality—now that I had taken up residence in the body of Kyouichirou, I finally realized how unreasonable it all was.
I was supposed to be a punching bag to make the heroes look good? We were supposed to die to serve some higher purpose? Screw that! I wasn’t about to let some game plot ruin my life and my sister’s life for stupid reasons like that.
“I’ve made up my mind, Sis,” I said, rubbing Fumika’s back as she coughed painfully.
It took me a moment, but I slowly transformed the torrent of thoughts swirling through my mind into words. I made her a promise and swore to rebel.
“I’m going to tear down every unfair plot point in this damned world with my own two hands.”
If the official plotline was out to kill us, then I just had to stop it in its tracks!