c14 3

She’d said it again! The pretty girl, saying “gomi.”
The dread knight who had been called trash bent over 90 degrees— no, 120 degrees—no, no, close to 180 degrees.
“Y-Yes’m! If ya say to do it, Io-sama, I’ll do it gladly!”
“Your voice is too loud,” the pretty girl said. “Shut up, Gomi.”
Having been insulted by the pretty girl, Gomi performed an avant garde bow that placed his face so low that it nearly touched his knees, and in a voice as quiet as the whine of a mosquito, he apologized. “S-Sorry...”
His entire body was trembling. Maybe he was crying. Actually, the tears were overflowing, so there was no maybe about it; this grown man was plainly crying.
Man, you’re over thirty, Kuzaku thought. Don’t cry...
Incidentally, Tonbe was now looking at Gomi and grinning. Well, wasn’t he a nasty piece of work?
“Well...” Kuzaku sat up, twisted his head left and right, and spinning his arms in circles. For a moment, he felt like his sleepiness vanished, but he still didn’t feel right.
“It’s true I felt like I was going to fall asleep,” Kuzaku said. “Would that have been a bad thing?”
“Well, yes,” the pretty girl said. “In Parano, when you sleep, you dream. Those dreams warp to give birth to dream monsters.”
“Hmm...”
I don’t really get it, Kuzaku thought. Do I? But, seriously. Ah... I’m tired...
He tried to yawn, but his mouth was covered. With a hand.
Whose hand?
“The wind is blowing, you know,” the pretty girl said. “The sweet wind of Parano. Don’t carelessly breathe it in.”
The pretty girl was looking up at Kuzaku. She was damn close. When did that happen? He’d felt sleepy again, and maybe he’d started to drift off. But wait, it felt like the pretty girl was covering his mouth. No, it didn’t just feel that way; she absolutely was.
“I-Io-sama!” Tonbe shrieked.
“Io-sama!” Gomi wailed.
Fatso and Trash—no, Tonbe and Gomi—were panicking. In fact, they were enraged. Why were they so mad?
“Erm... wind...?” Kuzaku asked.
“Ah!” The pretty girl’s body shuddered, and she let out a charming moan that made him jump a little.
Huh? What, what, what? What’d I do?
“What was that?” he yelped.
“It tickled!” The pretty girl withdrew the hand she had been using to cover Kuzaku’s mouth, holding it under her left arm as she turned away from him. “...Geez.”
She shot Kuzaku a sidelong glance. He saw what she was doing here.
It was so deliberate, he wanted to go, No way.
Even as he thought, Who does that? Kuzaku’s heart started to race. If he had to say whether she was cute or not, she really was cute. Pretty girls were a thing to be feared.
“How! Dare! Youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...!” Tonbe screamed.
“Th-Th-This! This is! This is! This is unforgivable...!”
Tonbe and Gomi had totally snapped. Their faces were beet red, and they looked ready to lunge at Kuzaku at any moment.
Tonbe had his war hammer ready, and Gomi was going for the greatsword slung across his back. Were they ready to kill...?
The pretty girl’s hand had touched Kuzaku. That might be what had sent the two of them into a rage. Not that he didn’t understand why. They probably liked her. They were in love. They called her Io-sama, after all. They loved her too much, maybe to the point it was something close to worship.
However, their Io-sama didn’t see them as objects of romantic interest in the slightest. She used them as lackeys.
It’s so warped, Kuzaku thought. That’s seriously gross.
“Uh... Hey... Er...”
That said, they had saved him, and they were his seniors when it came to being volunteer soldiers, and he might have other ties to them, too.
Kuzaku didn’t want to cause trouble, so though he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong here, he opted to bow his head in apology.
“If I did something to offend you, I’m sorry.”
“Y-Y-You think a-a-a-apologizing’s going to get you out of this?!” Tonbe shouted.
“Man, you’re stuttering like crazy, Tonbe-san...” Kuzaku said.
“Don’t poke fun at me! You cheeky brat! I’ve been doing this longer than you!”
“Sorry, couldn’t help myself...”
“Io-sama!” Gomi shouted as he finally drew his sword. He was crying for some reason, too. “I’m beggin’ ya, gimme permission to cut this rotten beanpole who looks like he thinks he’s hot!”
“I look like I think I’m a pretty boy?” Kuzaku asked skeptically. “Reading into things a bit much aren’t you? I mean, I don’t even think I’m hot.”
“Where’d ya get that smug, self-assured attitude?!” Gomi shouted. “Ya say yer not hot, but ya probably’re thinkin’ yer pretty hot! Yer type really makes me sick!”
“No, I seriously don’t think I am.”
“Acting casual with me?! I’m yer senior! You can’t even address me with the proper respect?! You die!” “Gomi!” Io shouted.
If she hadn’t, Gomi would absolutely have attacked Kuzaku. Then Kuzaku would have been cut down with a single stroke. Probably— no, almost certainly—he would have been cut down.
Every hair on his body stood on end.
Damn, that was scary, he thought.
The seething look Gomi had shot him. He’d been on the verge of stepping in, with a sharpness in his movements like a spring wound back all the way. On top of that, Gomi was a dread knight. For a dread knight, high mobility, movements that made their opponent hallucinate, and swordsmanship were their specialties. Kuzaku would likely have taken Gomi’s first attack, with no chance to resist.
The man wasn’t average. It was clear Gomi was a highly skilled, high level dread knight. In addition, he might have had the magic it seemed anyone in Parano could use affecting him, too. Whatever the case, his abilities were a level, maybe two or three levels, above Kuzaku’s.
Despite that, in Io’s hands, he was no more than trash. He wasn’t a likable guy, but Kuzaku had to feel a little sorry for him.
“That’s enough, Gomi,” Io said coldly. “He’s already my lackey. Do you seriously believe you have any right to punish him?”
“I do not,” Gomi mumbled. “I couldn’t possibly. I-I’m terribly sorry, Io-sama...”
“Do you truly understand? You, Gomi? You’re trash that’s unfit to live, and you claim you can hear what I say and understand it?”
“I can’t! I can’t, but let me try! I’m filthy trash, but let me be trash yer willin’ to call trash, Io-sama!”
Wow. He was bawling. Gomi was whining and crying and begging Io for forgiveness. How could he lower himself like that? Kuzaku didn’t understand at all. It was a mystery why Tonbe was looking at Io and Gomi and groaning through gritted teeth, too. What kind of relationship did they have? Kuzaku didn’t want to guess, and he wished they’d leave him out of it, but that aside...
“I’m your lackey, too... Is that it?” Kuzaku asked.
“Well, yeah?” Io said, with an implied, What of it?
No, no, no, Kuzaku thought. “Huh? Since... when?”
“Since you were born, right?”
When she responded as if it was a given, he even started to feel like maybe she was right.
No.
Like hell she was.
“I don’t even remember being born,” Kuzaku said. “I mean, I don’t even have memories from before I came to Grimgar. We just met, too.”
“You’re in the Day Breakers, right?” Io asked.
“Well... technically? It’s never felt like it, though. Soma-san, Akirasan, and even Rock-san, they all feel like they are way above us, out of our reach.”
“I am most definitely far out of your reach, too, but I fortunately happen to also be a member of the Day Breakers, and we have met here in this alternate world, this other world, called Parano. You mean to call that a coincidence?”
“Nah... uh... I dunno,” Kuzaku said. “I do think it’s lucky.”
“You’re silly. This was inevitable, you know? You met me because you were meant to.”
“You... really think so?”
“Yes, that’s right. In order to be my lackey.”
“Your lackey...”
“I will allow you to serve me. This goes without saying, but you couldn’t be luckier. Tremble with joy.”
“That’s right!” Tonbe stomped his feet, spewing spittle as he shouted.
Gross... Kuzaku thought.
“I’m not happy to see the number of lackeys go up, but Io-sama says so, then so be it!” Tonbe shouted. “Be happy! It’s an honor, so serve Io-sama with glee! Praise be to Io-sama!”
“I don’t wanna accept ya! But I ain’t got no choice! It’s the will of Iosama!” Gomi was crying again. How could he cry so easily? Had his tear ducts loosened up from old age?
“We’re going.” Io brushed back her long hair, and began to walk before stopping. She laid her gaze on Kuzaku.
When she stared at him like that, he was struck by a sensation that felt like she’d grabbed his heart. He couldn’t move a muscle. He kind of wished that when she took off her mask, her looks would turn out to be nothing special. If they weren’t, and she really was a flawless beauty, he might be in trouble.
“Bossari,” Io said in a mumble.
Kuzaku cocked his head to the side. “...?”
“It’s your name.”
“No, I’m Kuzaku...”
“From now on, you’re Bossari,” Io declared. “I decided it. Understood?”
He couldn’t possibly accept that word as his name; it meant “scruffy.” He was about to complain when Io lowered her mask to the bottom of her chin.
She was flawless.
There was an impeccable pretty girl right in front of him. Her lips in particularly were so puffy and glossy, it made her worryingly special.
“Do you understand?” Io demanded.
I don’t—Wait, what were we talking about again? Guess it doesn’t matter. Not anymore. She’s too pretty. Kuzaku almost nodded despite himself. Huh?
Is that okay? It’s not, right? It’s not right, right?
But, wait, what’s not right again...?
“Nice to meet you, Bossari!” Tonbe cried. “That’s our Io-sama! Her naming sense is wonderful, Bossari!”
“Hey, Bossari! Good for you, Bossari! I’m lookin’ forward to workin’ with ya, Bossari!”
Tonbe and Gomi surrounded Kuzaku on both sides, putting their arms around his shoulders.
“No!” Kuzaku yelped. “Bossari is not okay! There’s no way it’s okay, right?!”
“Are you a moron?! Io-sama says you’re Bossari, so it’s already decided!”
“Yessiree! Ya look like a Bossari to me! Bossari’s the only name for ya!”
“Oh, right, Gomi, lend Bossari a spare mask,” Io ordered.
“Righto, Io-sama! C’mere, put this on, Bossari!”
“By the way, Bossari, I’m a natural insomniac, so I don’t need a mask! Yes, I’m an insomniac! Get it, Bossari?! Guhuhuhuhuhohyuh!”
“I don’t care if you’re an insomniac!” Kuzaku yelled. “Come on! Hearing you guys call me ‘Bossari, Bossari’ is pissing me off even more!”
“Is that right? That’s some cheek, getting pissed off at us, Bossari!”
“Yer just a Bossari, so don’t get uppity with us, Bossari!”
“Damn it! Okay fine, we’re going, but where?! You haven’t told me a thing...”
“To the Scarlet Forest.” Io put her hand on her hip, brushing her hair back again.
Did she like that gesture? She was nailing it. With her unearthly beauty, she was nailing it so hard, it was scary.
“I’ll introduce you to the king,” Io informed him. “If you want to survive here in Parano, I would advise you to be polite, and not do anything to offend him.”
 

5. The Way of the Wise Man

[born_to_be_wise]

Once upon a time, there was a very clever boy.
The boy was born with an exceptionally good head on his shoulders, so the people around him looked like incredible fools.
The adults had lived longer than the boy, so they knew things about common sense, laws, and economics. However, that was all just knowledge they had picked up naturally.
To be smart is to have the ability to analyze things, understand them, and make decisions. If you don’t know a thing, you simply look it up. What you do or don’t know is of little consequence. Many adults could not understand that, and they would praise idiots who were even a little good at learning, saying they were good students. There was no helping them.
The wise man sees through to the nature of foolishness, so naturally he understands fools. However, for the fool who does not understand wisdom, it is impossible to understand the wise man.
The fact that he was surrounded by idiots meant, in short, that no one understood the boy.
However, the boy was wise.
“I may just be a big fish in a small pond,” the boy would say. “I’m number one here, but there may be a bigger lake, or an endless sea, and I just don’t know about it.”
That was the way he saw things. If he took a step out into the wider world, he might meet those smarter than him, better than him, and be beaten down. The boy wasn’t a fool who would think that was impossible, and discount the possibility.
Anything could happen.
Because of that, he had to predict and prepare for many, many possible situations. If he was truly wise, he could do that.
The boy always assumed the worst. Whenever he heard a terrible storm ripped through a distant country, blowing away houses, making the rivers flood, and drowning a great many people, he thought about what he would do if such a storm came to his own town.
Whenever the earth shook, he read up on past volcanic eruptions.
In the boy’s mind, his family, friends, acquaintances, and neighbors were killed off again and again. The town where the boy lived was destroyed over and over. Heaven and earth were torn apart by various disasters and were rendered uninhabitable. The moon, the sun, and the stars vanished. Even the universe itself was extinguished sometimes.
This was a secret, but the boy was constantly afraid. Even just walking down the street, a stray dog might bite him. The next person he ran into might be prone to violence and suddenly punch him. A meteor might suddenly come down and hit him.
Of course, the likelihood that any of these things would end up happening was not high. It was fair to say it was exceptionally low. However, because they couldn’t be ruled out as impossible, he couldn’t ignore them.
Meanwhile, everyone around him was an idiot. Idiots know no fear. This is because they do not know the things that they ought to be in fear of.
There was an unbridgeable gap between these idiots and the boy. The boy recognized that gap from a young age. He was the only one standing on this side. Everyone else was on the other side, and they smiled stupidly, as if they had nothing to worry about.
The boy tried, just once, to reveal his feelings to his mother, and to ask for advice. When she heard everything he had to say, she tilted her head to the side as if mystified.
“Hey, aren’t the things you’re worried about very rare?”
Apparently, the odds of getting into an accident while riding in a vehicle are nine in one million. Speaking broadly, if you ride in a car a hundred thousand times, you have a not-insignificant chance of winding up dead. If you assume you’re going to ride a hundred thousand times, at a rate of once per day, it would you take two hundred and seventy-four years.
This was easy to look up, so the boy knew it. That wasn’t the kind of thing the boy was talking about. He hadn’t said a word about not wanting to ride in a vehicle because there was a nine-in-a-million chance he might die. He didn’t even feel that way. If a vehicle was more convenient for getting where he needed to go, then even if he was scared, the boy would no doubt ride it.
The boy wasn’t an idiot.
Idiots don’t know things. That’s why, even when it comes to things that are dangerous enough that they ought to be afraid, they come up with baseless justifications like everyone is doing it, or because they were fine doing it yesterday they’ll be fine again today, or that they won’t be the only one to fail, and then they go and do it like it’s no big deal.
Furthermore, even though the odds of winning the lottery are maybe one in ten million, they say nonsense like they’re “buying a dream,” and then put down big money and lose it.
At the same time, idiots will avert their eyes from a future that is all but inevitable.
It wasn’t just the boy; his idiot family, his thoughtless friends, and many other fools he didn’t even know, all of them, would someday die. No matter what else happened, death was guaranteed. Every life had a beginning, and consequently an end.
The boy had thought fruitlessly about death, and studied up on it, too.
What happens to us when we die? What does it mean to live to begin with? You and I, we both sense we are here, and we are alive. That consciousness you and I have, what exactly is it?
No one living has ever died, so there is no way to know what happens when we die. That much should be obvious.
Sure, there are what are called near death experiences, and innumerable people testify to having experienced them. However, in the end, they can only talk because they didn’t die. Theirs are only the experiences of someone who nearly died. Death is not a thing we can experience.
Inside our heads is the brain, the center of our nervous system. Through that brain and nervous system, I feel that, “I am alive.” When it loses that function, and my consciousness ceases to be, I die.
My heart will stop, all of my cells will break down, and I will rot away. There is no coming back from that.
The mind and body are not separate entities. Without the body, there is no mind, and this idea of a soul is no more than a delusion.
After thoroughly considering the topic, that was the boy’s conclusion.
Our consciousness is a phenomenon. It is a result of the function of the brain and many organs that we gain the feeling of, “I am alive,” and can move our body around as we will it to. If that function is lost, naturally, the consciousness will be, too. The human body, even with no soul inside it, is made in a way that gives rise to consciousness.
Those who are smart, like me, can think fairly complicated things, but that is still no more than a phenomenon occurring inside my body. It’s incredible to the point of being a miracle that this sort of phenomenon is so commonplace. That’s why we can’t be faulted for assuming humans are special, and we have something like a soul, but that is not the case.
No matter how smart of a boy he was, he was merely one more phenomenon occurring somewhere in a corner of the universe.
Whether it’s you, or I, or the boy, our birth and our death is a mere phenomenon.
Naturally, to the boy, his own life was an irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind phenomenon. If it was lost, the boy would cease to be. He would vanish, completely and absolutely.
There is no heaven or hell. There can be no life after death.
I can understand why you want to believe, No, there is.
Even if we are going to die, when we think we will be able to see those who died before us in heaven, it makes dying a lot easier.
They say a certain great scholar was an atheist when he was healthy, but he came to cling to the god of a certain religion when he became sick. When the boy read that story in a book, he couldn’t help but laugh. However, the boy was wise, so he could understand it.
Faith is a refuge. It doesn’t need to be true. Even if it’s a pack of blatant lies, an utter fabrication, if you can believe it, or trick yourself into thinking you believe it, and use it as an emotional support, that’s enough.
The truth is, life and death are just phenomena. If you or I die, your or my consciousness will cease to be. Our memories are stored in our
brains. Our brains will rot, and then they will be buried or incinerated, so our memories will be gone, too.
We will return to the soil. All that you or I am will cease to be. That goes for everyone.
When we die, you and I will cease to think, cease to feel.
The boy tried to imagine himself reduced to nothing. When he did, he felt a terror like he was peering into a bottomless hole. However, if he died, he wouldn’t feel that fear anymore. As for what would come after death, there was no need to worry about it whatsoever.
Death was nothing to be feared.
What scared the boy so badly that it kept him up at night was not death, but being on the verge of it, what would happen just before he died.
One famous author, infirm and unable to speak just before they were about to die, raised four fingers, and then quickly passed away. When the boy read that story in a book, he couldn’t stop shuddering.
Why? Because that author had clearly sensed the death that was about to swallow them whole. They gradually lost the freedom to move their body, their heart weakened, they lost the ability to speak, their eyes went blind. Everything was being stolen away by death. They were slowly dying, losing it all little by little, and soon everything would be gone.
There was no escape. There was no hope, they were finished, there was nothing that could be done, it was over. Working up their last bit of strength, the author raised four fingers. They communicated to those around them that, Right now, I am going to die.
The works that person had written, their fame, their pride, all of it would return to nothing. The friends they had kept in touch with, and the family they loved, they would never see them again. They couldn’t even bask in the memories.
They wouldn’t even have time to think such things as, Oh, I’m dying. I’m going to die. There may be something left after I die, but if I myself will not be there to see it, what meaning is there to it? What was all this?
They could scream about how this was so sad, so empty, cry, Stop it, I don’t want to die! I want to live! Please, let me live somehow! but it would be in vain. They could only die. They would lose everything, because no end other than death had ever been prepared for them.
The boy wasn’t afraid of death itself. He was afraid to die gradually.
Having been born, you, I, and the boy will die.
If I have to die, I want it to be instantaneous, was the boy’s earnest wish. That, or to go in his sleep, without knowing it.
The idiots around him had no idea that the boy spent all day and all night thinking about these things. He could tell the idiots what fools they were, but he would only make enemies that way.
The idiots thought the boy was a fun guy, cheerful and always saying funny things that made everyone laugh. That was because the boy had calculatingly made himself appear that way. Putting on the act didn’t cause him any trouble, and it was advantageous for most things.
That said, no matter how well he got by in the world, and how he weaponized his wits to achieve success, it would be difficult to choose how he died. In unguarded moments, the fear of losing everything on the verge of death flashed through the boy’s mind.
That was what he would eventually taste.
What is the meaning of our lives? The question is, even though all of us are going to die in that despair, we are still living, so what is the reason for that?
Before our final moment comes, death will rob us of our wits, and even our memories will begin to fade. If we are fortunate, we may be surrounded by family and friends when that time comes. However, we will lose sight of them. We will cease to hear their voices, and eventually be unable to acknowledge their existence.
You and I will be all alone. Everyone dies alone.
When they hear news of someone’s parting, You were a good person, You were a wonderful person, I’m grateful to you, I will always love you, the living may say, but it’s utter folly. That person no longer exists. They already died all alone.
The boy spent his days thinking on and on about such things.
It happened one summer.
The boy went on vacation with his friends. He would get on a bus with a bunch of kids his own age, and they would stay overnight at a place by the lake. It was nothing special, hardly fit to be called a trip at all, really, and the boy wasn’t interested, but a friend had invited him. When he was told so-and-so and so-and-so were coming, and asked if he wanted to come, too, he figured it’d be awkward to refuse, and he could probably put up with it for one night.
Secretly, he hoped a storm would come along and the trip would be called off, but despite it being overcast in the morning, there were occasional breaks in the clouds, and it wasn’t that bad a day for traveling.
The bus with the boy and his friends in it was heading for the lake.
Inside, the boy played the fool, as always, making a stupid racket.
While he was doing that, the bus entered the mountains. At some point, a fog rolled in. There were other cars driving there, too, but they couldn’t see ahead or behind them. The thick fog limited their vision, and they couldn’t see cars they knew had to be there. It was so bad that they only realized an oncoming car was there when it was already passing them by.
One of the kids became quiet, like a dog that was afraid of its tyrannical master. One kid went blue in the face and started trembling.
When one girl burst into tears, unable to hold it in, another kid started whimpering, too. The boy was making wisecracks, trying to cheer up his friends, but in truth, he was beside himself with worry.
Suddenly, they saw the lights of an oncoming car, and their driver gripped the wheel tight, making the bus shake ominously. It happened not once, but twice.
Each time, the boy did an over-the-top imitation of screaming like a girl, which got a laugh out of his friends, and he prayed the fog would clear soon.
The bus I’m in couldn’t possibly get in an accident, was a thing he never once thought. There were any number of cars going through these mountains, and at this very moment, there were probably plenty of cars driving in worse conditions. Only a very, very small number of them would get in an accident. Possibly none of them would. However, accidents happened when they happened.
Still, why didn’t the bus slow down? It was clearly dangerous. They could take it at a slow, easy pace, couldn’t they?
No... if they slowed down, the car behind might plow into them. There was no helping it. They just had to get out of the mountains quickly. If they did, the fog would probably thin out.
That was when it happened.
“Ahh!” The driver let out a strange cry. The bus tilted heavily to the right, and, “Wahh! We’re falling!” was the next thing the driver shouted.
The boy thought, What do you think you’re doing, man? What the hell? as he clung to the back of the seat in front of him. The careless children were lifted up from their seats, and they flew around wildly inside the vehicle. There were screams the likes of which he had never heard, and given the option never would have wanted to hear, coming from all directions.
They must have hit something, because the glass window on the right-hand side shattered. The boy’s body shook violently.
There was some invisible power trying to tear the boy free from the seat in front of him. The boy got down between the seats, clinging to the legs of them.
The car turned over several times.
The boy shut his eyes tight, gritted his teeth, and held on for dear life.
The next thing he knew, the car had come to a stop. It was upsidedown, and the flattened roof was beneath the boy.
The boy got down from the seat to the roof. He was a little dizzy, but he must have done the right thing, because the boy was unharmed. He wasn’t in pain anywhere.
It was quiet.
Was there no one here other than the boy, perhaps?
That couldn’t be right. There had been a lot of people on the bus.
In fact, a number of the boy’s friends were lying on the roof that had now become a floor. He recognized all of them, and no one was saying anything. They didn’t move.
The boy thought, Maybe they’re all dead, but he didn’t want to think that, so he chose not to. Even when limbs twisted in awkward directions, or blood flowing out of a girl’s mouth entered his field of vision, the boy ignored it.

Chapter end