Chapter 3:
A New Year and a New Start
CAROL ENJOYED her first taste of soba. She cleared her plate, and then began to look tired. I put her in the spare room to get some rest.
“Do you think you can sleep on this futon—um, bed?”
“Yeah! It’s so fluffy! And so white and pretty! Can I really lie on it?”
Carol poked at the sheets and blanket nervously. Compared to the coarse beds they had in the cave, these must seem almost too clean and fresh. They did laundry in the village of course, but their sheets were made of different materials and far more worn. It was the difference between your sheets at home and sheets at a five-star hotel.
“Of course you can sleep on it. Make yourself at home.”
“Okay. I’m so glad you’re nice, Yoshio. Um…Mommy and Daddy and Gams are all okay, aren’t they?”
Carol looked up at me as she lay down timidly on the futon. She seemed frightened, like the smile she’d worn all day was only a brave face. She was just a kid, but she still did her best to act cheerful out of politeness.
“Don’t worry about them now. Just get some rest.” I held her tiny hand in mine.
“Okay.” She closed her eyes, relaxing a bit.
I waited until her breathing evened out before letting go of her hand and stepping silently out of the room. I turned to make sure she was really asleep and then slid the door shut behind me.
“Is Carol-chan sleeping?”
“Out like a light.”
Seika beckoned me over to the kotatsu. I sat down across from her, accepting a mug of tea. I took a grateful sip. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cook for her, too.”
“Don’t worry about it. I like kids. Even if I can’t understand her, I can tell she’s sweet and friendly.” Seika paused. “I think she might be forcing it a bit, though. She probably misses her parents.”
Seika realized it too, huh?
I took another sip of tea and sighed. “She’s smart. She doesn’t want to let it show. I just hope she can have some fun while she’s here.”
I tried to inject some levity into my voice, but I couldn’t escape the knowledge that I had no way to send her home. But as long as she was in Japan, I could take her places to take her mind off things.
“I was thinking of bringing Carol to the shrine tomorrow. For the new year. It’ll probably be interesting for someone from a different wo—a different country.”
Dammit. I almost slipped up there.
“Yeah. We used to go together every year, didn’t we?”
We did, before I became a shut-in. Every year, like clockwork. We’d go round the stalls and sample whatever we wanted. Back then it seemed so simple, but I hadn’t been to a shrine in a decade.
“Maybe I’ll ask the gods for something this year,” I said. “I mean, if there are gods. There might be.”
There’s even a god sitting by you right now, though he’s kinda pathetic.
“I thought you were an atheist, Yoshi. Wait, don’t tell me you’ve gone and joined a cult or something.”
Wow, no! Completely wrong, Seika! Ever since I started playing The Village of Fate, I just felt more in tune with gods and stuff like that. Couldn’t be helped, since I was pretending to be one myself.
“Nothin’ like that. I’m way too busy to join a cult.”
“You’ve changed, Yoshi. Wait, no, that’s not it. It’s more like you’re back to your old self.” My childhood friend smiled at me.
“I’ve changed? I guess I have. I made a real mess of the last ten years. I can’t look back on any of it without feeling incredible regret. I’m sorry for hurting you, Seika.” I straightened my posture and bowed my head to her with everything I had.
“Quit it. You never used to be so uptight. You were…selfish, prideful, arrogant, and mischievous.” Seika counted off my bad attributes on her fingers.
There was nothing I could say. She was right. “You don’t have to point that out…”
“But not just that. You had a strong sense of justice. You were kind, and you put others before yourself. I know what you were like these past ten years, but I also know what you were like before.” Seika sounded so serious that I didn’t know how to react. “The Yoshi I knew and loved is here again, and it’s great. Welcome back, Yoshi.”
“Thanks…” I was blushing hard, my face so hot I thought it would burst into flames.
How could she say all that cringey stuff with a straight face? I guess you learn to be less self-conscious when you spend enough time interacting as a full member of society. Oh, wait. Now that I looked closely, her cheeks were red, too.
“So I guess we can just keep hanging out like we used to?”
“Yeah. I’m looking forward to it.”
I automatically took the hand she held out to me. We were thirty-year-olds acting like teenagers, two adults of the opposite sex spending time together at night. Dramas and manga had taught me that things were about to get serious.
I walked Seika home and returned to my living room, slightly damp from the rain. I dried myself off with a towel and sat down with my legs under the kotatsu.
So, nothing happened with Seika.
“I guess reality can be disappointing,” I muttered, flopping myself down on the top of the kotatsu.
I was too worried about my village and Carol at the moment to try to take things any further, I reasoned with myself. I considered inviting Seika to come with us to the shrine but decided against it. I already said I wasn’t going to get her any more involved.
I couldn’t invite her anywhere until I knew exactly what was going on and I could guarantee her safety. I was still uneasy about Yamamoto-san. At first, I figured he’d flipped out due to stress, but the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. When he collapsed, I’d seen that weird dark mist come out of him. I’d convinced myself I was just seeing things, but what if I wasn’t?
“Thinkin’ about it won’t get me any answers. I hope it stops raining before the morning so we can go to the shrine.”
I finished the tea Seika had made for me, letting it rejuvenate my body and help me think a little more calmly.
“Is the village actually gone?”
I’d told Carol it was fine, but I’d last seen it on the brink of destruction. Carol only survived because they sent her to me through the altar. Her, and the holy book. That was all I knew for sure.
What happened to the other villagers? After sending Carol to me, it seemed like they were about to blow the monsters up, along with themselves. That was probably what happened.
But I hadn’t given up on them. I couldn’t give up on them, or let go of the hope that they were alive. I never saw them die. What if they threw the bomb out through a crack in the door and blew up the monsters without being harmed themselves? A slim hope, but it was the only one I had.
“I didn’t see them die. They’re alive.” I had to make myself believe it. “I just need a way to find out for sure. I can’t see anything through the game anymore.”
I took out my phone and checked anyway. Apart from the Village of Fate app, everything was working as normal. The malfunction wasn’t the phone itself. I opened the app, but the screen was totally black, just like before. I tapped it, expecting to see the same message again: that the holy book no longer existed on the map.
Except the message didn’t show up.
“Huh?”
I hit the back button, and it brought me to the miracles menu. I looked closer. The book symbol and my Fate Points balance were still at the top right of the screen.
What’s going on?
After sending Yamamoto-san away, I hadn’t been able to do anything in the app at all. It just blinked a warning message in red. But now I had access to miracles.
“But I can’t perform any of them, right?”
Most of the items on the list were struck through with a thick black line. I gave them an experimental tap and got a pop-up: “You can’t use these right now.” The only available miracle was the one that changed the weather.
“I guess that’s because it’s the only miracle that doesn’t affect my village directly?”
Confusion filled me, but it was better just to act. I activated the miracle and set the weather to “blue skies.” My FP went down, but the screen stayed black. It used points up, though, so I guess the miracle activated? That meant the game was still working, right?
The game still ran, and my villagers were still alive. I couldn’t lose hope just yet.
“I need a break from all this thinking. I should go take a bath, and—crap. I probably should’ve offered Carol one.”
The thought never even crossed my mind. I’d feel bad waking her up now, so I decided to go take one myself and then sleep on the living room couch. I opened the sliding door to the other room just a crack so that she’d be able to see me if she woke up. That way she’d know I was here.
“Man, I haven’t used my brain like this in ages. I forgot how exhausting thinking can be.”
I went up to my room to grab a blanket and check on Destiny, who was sleeping curled up in its tank. It must have gone back upstairs when I was walking Seika home.
I turned out the light. “Thanks for everything, Destiny. Have a nice, long rest.”
I was overcome with drowsiness the moment I lay down on the living room couch. “Hopefully, I’ll wake up and realize this was all a bad dream…”
I’d wake up to find my villagers safe and sound, and Carol running around beside them.
My heart wishing for nothing else, I slipped into unconsciousness.