I sat down on one of the chairs. A hot drink was placed in front of me, and I looked up to find a woman with black hair down to her waist. Well, I assumed she was a woman because she was wearing a blue dress, but her hair completely obscured her face.
“Thank you,” I said.
She held the tray to her chest and gave me a quick nod. I hadn’t even noticed her come in; I didn’t remember hearing the door open. When I looked up again from my drink, she was gone.
“Huh?”
I thought she’d left silently again, but then I noticed her sitting alone in the corner. She reminded me of a ghost, with the way she looked and acted. Maybe that was rude to think. Anyway, she seemed to be here to take part in the meeting.
She held up a small basket of snacks and beckoned to Carol and Destiny. They approached hesitantly, entranced by the promise of candy. If she kept them entertained, I could focus on what Sewatari-san was saying. I bowed my head, and she quickly waved away my thanks. I couldn’t see her face, but I’d say she was embarrassed. Neither Sewatari-san nor Nattyan-san reacted, so I decided to leave it alone.
“First, I want to apologize for lying to you about our identities. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, sorry.”
The two of them bowed their heads. I leapt to my feet, unable to deal with this.
“P-please don’t apologize! I-I don’t mind that you lied!”
This was way too much to deal with. What were a pair of gods doing apologizing to a NEET?!
“We’ll stop apologizing if you stop speaking to us so politely!” Sewatari-san glanced up at me, still bent over.
I didn’t realize this was a negotiation. “But I’m just trying to be respectful!”
“I thought Japanese people weren’t really religious? That’s what we hear in the divine business circles.”
There are divine business circles?
She was right, though. There definitely were Japanese people who celebrated Christmas or went to visit a shrine on New Year’s Day, but we still had a high percentage of atheists and were viewed as a secular country when compared to others. But that didn’t mean any reasonable person would be brave enough to act with indifference when faced with a real god. But there was really no point in holding my ground if they didn’t want me to.
“O-okay, I will… I’ll try to be more casual.”
“Great! We’ll keep going then!” Sewatari and Nattyan straightened up again. Although Sewatari said she couldn’t read my thoughts anymore, I took care not to add honorifics to their names in my mind. “First up, you should know that we never expected Carol-chan to end up in this world either. The system wasn’t supposed to let humans or other live offerings through.”
“That’s right. Humans shouldn’t be able to go through the portal.”
Living things couldn’t be sent? And what did they mean by “portal”? They were going too fast for me. I had to ask.
“Can I ask a question?”
“Go ahead, Yoshio-kun.” Sewatari, who was now wearing a black-framed pair of glasses that I hadn’t even noticed her put on, thrust a pointer at me. I didn’t know where that came from either. She was probably trying to project confidence, but she just looked like she was cosplaying a teacher.
“You said living things couldn’t be sent as offerings, but what about Destiny?”
“Ah, right. Since it was still an egg, the system probably recognized it as food. That was also our bad.”
It thought it was food? How exactly did this system work? “What did you mean about portals?”
“Oh, yes, the portal! To explain that, I think we need to go back to how us gods arrived in this world and began developing the game.”
Apparently, I’d asked something pertinent. I straightened up, ready to listen to every single word.
“You should know that the world we come from exists on a slightly higher plane than Earth. Imagine that our world and Earth are two different fish tanks. Our world’s tank is located higher than Earth’s. Geographically, I mean.” Sewatari took her drink and walked over to the tank, where the tropical fish inhabitants were floating around leisurely. She crouched down in front of it and held her mug out slightly below it. “Long ago in our world—the game world—the corrupted gods faced off against the major gods. It was a fierce battle that ended up opening a fissure in the world. An invisible crack that covered everything. Think of it as a small hole in the side of this fish tank.”
Sewatari tapped her pointer on the lower part of the tank. If there were a hole there, all the water would come streaming out.
“Us gods tried desperately to plug that hole—or portal—but repairing it proved far more difficult than we expected. It was only a small hole, so it had no effect on the powerful major or corrupted gods, but the weaker minor gods started getting sucked through it and falling down into the other fish tank.” Sewatari waved the pointer, miming water flowing into her cup.
“So you minor gods fell down into the cup—in other words, Earth?”
“Exactly! You got it.”
That made sense. Well, it did if I momentarily forgot everything I knew to be true about the world.
“When you say portal, you don’t mean something physical, right? It’s more something…spiritual?”
“I think the major gods said it was, like, some kinda barrier between worlds. Something invisible that transcends time and dimensions, uh…” Nattyan trailed off.
“Yes, that’s right.” Sewatari nodded.
A barrier? I think I get it.
“Anyway, our divine power began to leak out of that hole bit by bit. It was just like water, flowing downward, and since our world is above yours, that’s where it went. That divine power flowed down into Earth.”
“Wait, so some invisible mysterious power…like your aura or something, started pouring into Earth?”
“Yes. Yes, that’s it. ‘Aura’ is a good word to describe it.”
Really? It was just the first word that came into my head.