Chapter 4:
A Call from the Developers and My Nervousness
WERE THE ACTUAL DEVELOPERS calling me?!
“Their timing’s way too perfect!”
I never put the developers’ number into my phone, though. I didn’t even know their number. But there was no mistaking the text on my phone screen. The phone kept ringing, but I couldn’t pluck up the courage to answer. I was clearly naive to think that nothing could surprise me anymore after what had happened over the past couple of days. I took a deep breath and picked up the phone.
“H-hello?”
“Hello! I’m a developer from The Village of Fate!” A cheerful voice battered against my eardrum.
It was a woman, her casual tone giving the impression she was calling to chat with an old friend. She sounded young, but I didn’t have enough experience with women to judge by her voice.
“Oh, um, hi. You’re a developer?”
“That’s right! I was going to email you, but I thought it might get intercepted, you know? Leaving textual evidence only leads to trouble! So I thought a phone call would be safer!”
“R-right.”
How did she get my number in the first place? Why did my phone know the call was from the “Developers”? I had a ton of questions for her, but I held them in.
“I’ll keep things brief, in case we’re being watched. If you come here, I think we can get Carol and the book sent back to the other world. We’d come to you if we could, but that’s not possible, I’m afraid!”
“You can send her home?! Really?! Thank you so much!” I couldn’t help but cry out in joy.
“No worries. It was kinda our fault in the first place. I guess you’d call it a bug. We never thought something like this would happen, see. We’re trying to patch it out right now. Stuff is crazy over here! We were super busy trying to finagle things so you can use the book in this world, too.”
That explained why the game had been out of commission for a while.
“Welp, I guess discovering these bugs and stuff is what you play testers are for, huh?”
Right, the game’s still in alpha. I totally forgot!
“Where are you based?” I asked.
“You should already know. Listen, I’m gonna hang up before things get dicey, but I’m looking forward to meeting you, Yoshio-kun! Oh, and make sure you don’t tell anyone about our conversation! If you post about it on the forums, no one will be able to read it.”
“Okay. And—oh, she hung up…”
I had more questions, but at least I had a starting point. Still, she said a lot of weird stuff… Her super-familiar way of speaking threw me for a loop. I’d been nursing this image of the developers as gods—I was expecting something a little more majestic.
“Will I really be meeting with gods when I get there?” I pulled out a small slip of paper from my desk drawer. The return address from one of the parcels. “This is where I need to go.”
I felt overwhelmed with how fast events were transpiring, but I finally had a clear goal. I checked the balance in my bank account and looked up routes and prices for travel to Hokkaido.
“Looks like the choices are train or plane. Oh, or we could take the ferry.”
I’d been on planes and the bullet train before, but only with my family or school. I’d never gone through the process of buying a ticket and planning a journey by myself. I was anxious, but adults did this every day. I repeated that to myself again and again.
I continued my research, feeling the old familiar sting of my own uselessness
✦ ✦ ✦
The next morning, I was surprised to remember it was only January 2nd.
“Only three days since all that crazy stuff happened.”
I’d gone through enough in the last couple of days to last me an entire month, not to mention how much had happened since I began playing The Village of Fate. My whole life had changed; it wasn’t an exaggeration to say I was an entirely different person. Between my sister’s stalker and Yamamoto-san, I’d been through two life-threatening events, plus a whole bunch of unexplainable ones.
They say adversity is supposed to make you stronger, but it didn’t feel like it. Instead, it made me realize how inexperienced I was—that was what made me want to change. I wanted to become an adult worthy of my physical age. The fact that I was struggling to organize a trip to Hokkaido showed how far I still had to go.
“There are plane tickets cheaper than the bullet train. Huh.”
The price for flying varied significantly depending on the company. I always thought flying was a classy way to travel, but I guess things changed. The new year was a popular time to fly, however, and the upcoming days were more expensive than those further off. Still cheaper than I expected.
“Looks like all the plane tickets are sold out or close to it. Flying might be difficult.”
Even if I managed to get tickets, there was still the problem of Destiny. I doubted reptiles were allowed on planes. Even if I stowed it away in my bag, they checked your luggage at airports. I couldn’t get it past security.
Maybe I could get Carol to hold it and pretend it’s just a stuffed animal?
I studied Destiny, who was sitting on the corner of my desk watching me carefully. It had tough, spiky skin and huge eyes.
“Yeah, you don’t look stuffed at all.”
Flying would be the quickest, but yeah, it was firmly out of the question. The next contender was the train, preferably the bullet train. I checked whether there were any reserved seats available, but they were all taken. Going on the day to try and get an unreserved seat was an option, but they were currently expecting a passenger rate of fifty percent above capacity. Getting a seat now was easier than on New Year’s Day, but then it got worse again around January 4th; I guessed people restarted work on the fifth. They’d want time to get home and prepare. That was common sense for most people, but for me, who’d spent the last ten years shut away from society, it never even crossed my mind.
We needed to leave for Hokkaido as soon as possible. It wasn’t just the corrupted gods I was worried about—there was my family, too. They were coming back on the fourth. If we weren’t gone by then, I’d have to explain Carol. I wanted to introduce them, of course, but realistically that would just be more trouble.
Dad would frown at me. Mom would be suspicious. Sayuki would outright hate me without waiting for an explanation.
I decided that Carol and I would leave tomorrow, on the third. We’d prepare for it to be busy but still try to get seats. That meant this was Carol’s last day here. I wanted her to have fun. I wanted her to love my world.