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Cars that could have filled the roads to the brim. Packed train doors trying to close again and again. Students heading to school chatting happily. Listless salarymen. Surely a morning scene commonly seen in this country. A morning scene, just like always.

Or so it should have been.

Go to school for classes, go to the office to work, do housework at home, and play in the park. Those ordinary days were supposed to begin.

Or so they should have.

As if to laugh at that, the ground split. The people, stunned with shock, fell into the torn earth. Those who saw it screamed.

Meanwhile, at the center of the world, a figure wrapped head-to-toe in a cloak held something that glowed.

And then, suddenly, the world vanished.

◆◆◆

How many worlds had this been now? Because I doze for a hundred years between jobs, the total number of times I had done this wasn’t huge compared to how long I had existed, but personally, I thought I had wandered through more worlds than any other being.

So I thought I’d worked enough, and I brought it up with God (speaking of which, what kind of god is he anyway?) that when he turned me into a demigod, he’d promised to erase me once I got tired of living. But the answer I got was, “You technically stopped living when you became a Demigod, didn’t you?”

I had planned to press him about breaching a promise he’d made with the God of Contracts, but of course, he had anticipated that. That kind of loophole-poking was oddly human, but sadly, there was nothing I could do about it. Being a Demigod or a God wasn’t quite the same as living. Existing might be a more fitting word.

Maybe because I argued back, the next world I was sent to was particularly annoying. The job was to record everything from the moment the collapse was decided until the collapse actually happened, an utterly daft request. I spent roughly a thousand years in that world. It had no species living that long, so I had to move periodically. I remembered it being a major hassle. On top, people meddled constantly, getting dragged into incidents, being left to fester grudges, counterattacks, and the like, making it a thoroughly miserable world.

That time, I was grateful for Fumitsuki and Lullus. They took almost all the tedious work off my hands. And they did it with smiles. Not that I’d claim they managed to resolve it.

If it were a light novel title, it would go something along the lines of “We Were Teleported to Another World With Our Master. Master Won’t Wake Up, So We Support Her.”

Speaking of light novels, this world resembled the era when Toriyama existed. Buildings stood like rows of trees, obscene numbers of cars filled the roads. There were even packed commuter trains.

“It feels kind of nostalgic, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. It’s not the same world, but I think it followed a similar path.”
“Wow, there are vending machines too.”

Fumitsuki was buzzing with the kind of excitement you’d expect from someone on a first-time trip into the big city. Watching her, I thought about how to spend the next three days. My task in this world was to gather whatever remained right after the collapse and bring it back. So until the collapse, I could act as I pleased.

But these kinds of worlds were tedious to blend into. Civil registries were strict; you needed ID to get work and money, and even faking amnesia took tedious paperwork. You could spend all the time in the world on it and still fail.

Also, I stood out. I could hide slightly pointy ears with my hair, but my hair was green, so I was very conspicuous. Even my foreign-looking features didn’t appear to help.
Fumitsuki, on the other hand, blended in well. This world was uncannily like the one Toriyama was born into. Maybe the people who live here were similar, too.

It felt like a parallel world rather than a different one. To start and think along this path would mean I’d need to spend three days just thinking, so I decided not to. What I could say was that, because the world was similar, even a green-haired girl could stroll through town and only get a few stares before being ignored. Long live big cities.

More than whether this world was parallel or alternate, I wanted to know why it was collapsing. The world’s wear and tear was considerable, and looking at it with a world-eye perspective, it felt like a full collapse would still take a hundred to a thousand years. Yet this world had three days left—technically, after two more nights, it would collapse.

(If that’s so…)

Sitting on a park bench under dappled sunlight, thinking about it made me sleepy. I wanted to curl up like the cat that appeared beside me. No, rather, I wanted to doze.

“Do you think this world will really collapse?”

Fumitsuki asked, having come up beside me without my noticing. “I don’t know,” I answered. I wouldn’t say aloud that something about this world felt off to a god. Whether there was an odd feeling to it or not, my job didn’t change.

Honestly, if it collapsed sooner than I expected, I would be happy. Then I could doze for another hundred years.

“Well, if it collapses, I’m fine with that. To be honest, I want to leave things to you, Fumitsuki, and just go home.”
“You’re always like this, Fini.”
“I’ll bring Lullus with me then.”
“Isn’t the reason Lullus didn’t come that this world is one of those non-fantasy ones where she’d stick out?”
“I think I stick out plenty myself.”
“But you know what to do, right?”
“Well, more or less, yeah.”

If Lullus came, she’d solve everything by force. She’d be conspicuous and likely clash with people. Also, this was a case I had to handle anyway, so maybe someday I would abandon this job and just doze until I ceased to exist.

Working was losing!!!

“Anyway, let’s plan where to spend the next two nights.”
“Yeah… two nights is oddly short, makes it much harder to find a spot. Faking an ID is a pain, and wandering around town at night would get us picked up by the cops.”
“I saw a police station earlier. Maybe we should just hide in the mountains.”
“If we could just get some money, though… for quick cash, the only things I can think of are rough methods.”

So we decided to leave town for the time being.

◇◇◇

Day two. The weather was so mild, you wouldn’t believe the world was due to collapse tomorrow. We spent a night somewhere out of sight and then returned to town. It seemed to be a weekday. People were crammed into trains again in the morning.

“Seeing this makes you feel like you’re in a real city, doesn’t it?” Fumitsuki said.
“I’m glad I didn’t go to school in a city this big back during my days as Toriyama,” I replied.
“Yeah. If it were me, I’d give up completely during these three days.”
“People adapt surprisingly quickly.”
“And how about a God?”
“Running is faster.”

If I flew, I could circle the globe in seconds, but doing that might trigger something detecting me, so I didn’t.

“By the way, why did we come back into town?” Fumitsuki asked.
“I have some questions about this world’s collapse,” I said.
“You noticed something then?” she asked.
“Well, I’m a god, after all.”

Though my powers are awkward to use. Fumitsuki asked no more, and I wandered toward the source of the odd feeling. In the crowd, I found a lone, strange person. They wore a cloak, and their face was hidden by a hood. I couldn’t tell whether they were male or female. They simply didn’t fit in.

Yet nobody paid them any heed.

At first, I thought maybe they were similar to us, but normally, people would usually do a double-take on me when I passed by them, so this felt different. As such, it didn’t seem to be thanks to my outfit. After all, there were people dressed even more weirdly than me.

Which figured, given this was a big city.