CH 102

Chapter 102: In The Corner of The World

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「「Thank you for your hard work!!」」

The sound of our beer glass clinking together resounded before I took a big gulp of my cold beer. 

“Finally my project settled down…”

“The program for Company A, right? I see. So you’ve finished delivering the product for them.”

“We already got the system up and running without any bugs. Now we just need to prepare the adjustment for next month’s big day…”

“You’ve worked hard. Even when I invite you for a drink, you always still have some work to do… You also kept coming home late these days.”

“I’ve been working overtime this month… I’m going to take a day off next week and go somewhere for a break…”

I had been going nowhere but the office and my house for a while. I could finally go shopping for some daily necessities now that my work had finally settled down. I was able to leave on time tonight so I went for a drink with Aoki in our usual pub. This pub was the kind of pub where old men flocked together. Although the pub might have looked disordered, the alcohol and the food here tasted great. They had reasonable prices too so this pub was pretty convenient for us.

I took one of the karaage into my mouth. 

Mmhmm….This yuzugoshou paste tastes so good.

“I need to go buy a ring this weekend.”

“Oh, Aoki. You’re going to propose to her?”

“Hehehe…”

“….. For real.”

“For real, for real. I’ve finally got my job under control so I’m going to take a day off for Christmas.”

I originally only wanted to tease him but turned out I had hit the bullseye.

“Otonashi… I’ll need you to make a speech for my wedding as the representative of my friend.”

“You sure move quick, huh.”

I was with him when he first met with his girlfriend, Shizuka-san. It was the first time I ever saw someone falling in love instantly. That Aoki, his face turned bright red and all of his stuff was dropping on the floor with a loud thud. But still, I didn’t think that I would be seeing the next step of the encounter that started their three years relationship. 

“Fufufu. You should get yourself a girlfriend too.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I guess it’s fine if you take your right hand as your lover too~”

“Shut up.”

Aoki became a busybody when he was drunk. What a pain in the ass.

“I didn’t expect for you to get so pent up you ended up having a lewd dream though~”

“Huh?”

This guy. What is he talking about?

Aoki returned the glare I sent him with a confused expression on his face. 

“I mean, the one you told me today.”

“What?”

I… What did I dream about?

“You know, the one with loli Maou-chan doing lewd things with monsters. The one that looks like R18 games.”

“Errr… Umm…”

I couldn’t remember. I vaguely remember I had told Aoki about my dream but… Did I really have that kind of dream?

“It’s a dream where a loli Maou suddenly got born into the world and had to do lewd stuff with the demon to restore demonkind.”

“Huh… Did I really dream of something like that…”

Yeah. I can’t remember at all. 

Aoki once again told me about the dream that I had told him about but I completely had no recollection of it. Even after I tried to search through the nook and cranny of my memories, I still couldn’t find anything about it. 

“Well~ Dreams are usually quickly forgotten by the one who experiences it after all.”

“But if the dream had such a big impact on me, I should’ve been able to remember it.”

“Oh well. That dream is so interesting so I was thinking of digging more detail from you and using it as a material for my spring comiket book. It’s a shame that you, the source of the information, had forgotten about it.”

This guy, Aoki, was serious about his cosplay hobby but he was also a high-spec handsome man who could write a book. His drawing was pretty good too. This guy was too damn enviable. 

“Sorry I can’t remember about it.”

“It’s alright, were you pent up though?”

“I’m not pent up.”

What a rude guy. But still… Come to think of it. That loli Maou? Or something.

“Hey, Aoki. It just occurred to me that…”

“Hm?”

“That… I don’t know how to say it but what do you think happens to an existence that has served its purpose to the world?”

“Hm? Hmmmm?”

“Well… I mean… That… I’m thinking about the Maou that was summoned into another world. If the Maou had fulfilled the purpose of the summoning or rather, if the Maou’s existence was not needed anymore, maybe the Maou might disappear from that world?”

I don’t even understand what I’m talking about. I can’t really formulate my thoughts properly. 

“Otonashi, do you meant to ask 『what happened to a Maou who was no longer needed?』. Is that what you’re talking about?”

“Oh. Yeah. That kind of thing.”

“Shouldn’t the Maou return to her original world then?”

“Ah, you think so too?”

“There’s a lot of story where the hero who was summoned to another world is able to return to his original world after saving the world that had summoned him, right?”

“Huh? But recently there’s plenty of stories where the main character is reincarnated into another world. 『The main character has died so they will be reborn into a new world.』There’s a lot of story with that plot”

“That’s the mainstream genre these days. Certainly there’s a lot of story with only one way ticket to the other world but back in the day, there’s a lot of traveller stuff where the main character go back and forth between their original world and the another world in one day”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. After all back then, the main purpose of the main character embarking on a dangerous adventure is 『to return to their original world』. Nowadays though, the ‘original’ world has lost its hope. Living in a new world has become the new dream.”

“I see.”

I guess rather than living as a corporate slave, it’s better to live in an unknown new world?

Turned out Aoki had a lot of thoughts about this sort of stuff. He groaned as he tried to probe for more knowledge about it.

“I think it all started with the legend of Urashima Taro.”

“Huh? Aoki? Why are you bringing Urashima Taro out of nowhere like this?”

“After saving a turtle, Urashima Taro was brought into another world, which was the Dragon Palace but in the end, Urashima returned to his original world, right? Urashima Taro is also a story about another world.”

“I see…?”

“To be precise, it’s a genre where the main character is visiting a far away place or ‘ikyou houmon’.”

“Ikyou…? You’re surprisingly well versed about this kind of thing.”

“Back then, I was interested in the mystery genre so I researched more about that kind of stuff. Incidentally, the legend of Hades and Kojiki also fall under the ikyou houmon category.”

I replied with a bunch of ‘oooh’ and ‘huh’, not really giving any hint whether I truly understood or not.

…. I was recalling the story of a very famous folk tale. Urashima Taro was taken into the Dragon Palace and returned to this world but in the end he became an old man to balance the equilibrium between this world and that world. 

I wonder what he was thinking at the last moment? I wonder what Otohime, the one who sent him off, was thinking about?

“The people who were left behind, I wonder what was on their mind.”

“Huh?”

“No, I mean… In a legend where the character is transferred into another world, the one who was transferred left the people in the other world and returned to their original world, right? I wonder what was on the mind of the people being left behind in that other world.”

“I don’t think they have anything to say about it though?”

“Huh….”

“They were never there to begin with. I think they just go back to their old routine without the transferred people.”

“Well, you’re right but…”

“Rather than that, I would be more worried about my parents and my friend that I left behind after my death. After all, in the mainstream reincarnation story these days, the trigger to get transferred into another world is death. Thinking about the people I left behind after my death made me sad.”

“Well, of course…”

“The main character has a new world waiting for them but the people who were left behind … They only had grief waiting for them.”

Aoki might be able to say all of these without any hint of doubt because he already got his life together in this world. 

“Well either way, whatever it is, it’s all just a bunch of theories of mine.”

“For sure.”

“But still, Otonashi, I think I got an inspiration for a new story based on our conversation just then. Let me write down the plot for my next story….”

“Oh? I can’t wait to see how it turns out.”

“The loli Maou’s name gotta be Mao-tan.”

“Fuck off.”

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We left the pub after drinking and eating for some more. We were then assaulted by a flurry of white snow as soon as we stepped outside. No wonder it was so cold. The pocket warmer I had left in my coat had long since overstayed its usage, it had already fulfilled its role as a tool to provide temporary warmth.

Waving to Aoki, I bid him goodbye and wished him a nice holiday. Though I was feeling a little tipsy, my feet were still going forward, walking toward the station to catch the train so I could go home to my apartment. 

The dream that I had, the one Aoki was talking about… I couldn’t remember anything about it but the Maou that appeared in that dream…. Had the Maou fulfilled her role? Had she found the purpose of her birth? 

I don’t understand.

I don’t understand.

But….

I looked up to the sky, the snow was fluttering down.

――It’d be nice if she was able to fulfil her role.

It was something completely unrelated to me but I still wished for it. 

If she was able to serve her purpose for that world then….

“The hell. I’m wishing for something unrelated to me…”

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I got off the train at the station closest to my house and walked down the same old landscape. The snow was fluttering even more and more, maybe the snow might be starting to pile up tonight. I shivered in the cold and quickened my pace home. 

I was about to reach my home when I saw a figure of a person standing under the dimly lit street light. That person was just standing there, staring at nothing. As I inched even closer, the figure became even more vivid.

I knew it. I wasn’t mistaken. That person was standing in front of my apartment. The snow was piling up on his shoulder, he must have been waiting there for a long time already. That person was quite tall… And he also had mesmerizing grey hair. 

That tall man then turned his head toward me. 

“……….”

The moment those deep purple eyes met upon me, that person’s eyes widened in shock. 

――As if we had just stepped out of this world. 

The remarkably handsome man shouted something before he tried to run at me but failed to do so. He was crouching down almost immediately, as if he was in great pain. 

“Ah… Err… A-are you alright?!”

I rushed over to that man. He looked like… A foreigner but even though he looked like someone from northern europe, I couldn’t really tell which country he came from. Of course, he might not be from english-speaking country either. I didn’t understand what was happening right now. 

As I drew near and propped his body up, the man started coughing terribly. Blood was dripping out of the corner of that man’s mouth. 

H-he’s vomiting blood! E-Err…! S-should I call for an ambulance?!

Within my state of confusion and panic, I took out my smartphone in order to call for an ambulance but the man suddenly grabbed my hand. From our touch, a rush of various emotions flowed through.

Exhaustion… Despair… Longing and…

――Longing.

The man pulled me by the hand, making me tumble down on top of that tall man’s chest. Softly, the man’s long, faded grey hair brushed against my cheeks. 

『I found you, my Master.』

His voice, filled with deep, deep sorrow but also overflowing with extreme longing, echoed in my mind.