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When I answered her sympathetic voice so nonchalantly, Ibara gave me a look I couldn’t quite read.

“Anyway, I’ve answered one of your questions, and I think you’ve realized I don’t mean you any harm. So… may I ask something too?”
“That’s fine. As long as it’s something we can answer.”
“Then, Fumitsuki. You may ask whatever you like.”

Once again, I nominated Fumitsuki, and she let out a startled, “Eh?”

As far as I was concerned, I already understood most of the situation, so I didn’t really feel the need to ask anything myself. I planned to give Fumitsuki the right to question them. I wasn’t giving it to Lullus because she didn’t seem particularly eager to ask anything.

“Just one question for now, right? Then… why did you wish to protect the world?”
“To protect the place where those we hold dear would return to.”
“Those you hold dear?”
“One question at a time.”

Ibara cut in, stopping Fumitsuki. Then she turned to me and threw out her second question.

“What is your role as a god?”
“I receive requests and go to worlds on the brink of destruction. What I do there depends entirely on the client, so there’s nothing fixed. Also, I preside over contracts, so I enforce them as well. To put it simply, if someone makes a promise and swears by the god Contiral, me, then it gains binding force. If it’s a world I can intervene in, I think it can work anywhere.”

The contract-god part ran automatically, so I didn’t usually pay much attention to it. Some gods even taught my name to people in their world and dumped all contract matters onto me. But contracts were basically processed mechanically, so even if I was asleep, it worked out somehow.

When I finished answering, Fumitsuki asked her earlier question again.

“Who are these people you hold dear?”
“A little girl who suddenly disappeared, and a senior of ours went searching for her. Both of them were far more powerful magicians than we could ever hope to be.”
“If you’ve been to lots of worlds, have you ever seen that little girl somewhere else? She talks strangely and has a really unusual vibe, so I think you’d recognize her right away.”
“I’ve never seen her. What about you two, Fumitsuki, Lullus?”

I checked with them because of the next question, but Lullus shook her head, and Fumitsuki tilted hers, asking, “It’s not Nano, right? She’s not… small.”

Indeed, Nano was a small child with a strange way of speaking and a strange aura. But in terms of mass, she was absolutely not small. And she wasn’t a magician either, but just to be sure,

“Is this girl of yours the world-eating type?”
“No, but… something like that exists?”
“It does. In this world, we could probably repel her, though. Anyway, what about the other one?”
“We’re not worried about Senior Alice.”
“If we’re unharmed, there’s no way something would happen to our senior.”

Fair enough. It seemed they had nothing else they wanted to ask, so the next question from Fumitsuki would likely be the last.

“Why did you turn the world into what it is now?”
“Well… if that girl disappeared, we thought maybe this world had been abandoned.”
“And the place we’d been protecting so they could return, it was destroyed.”

In the twins’ reply, I could feel a kind of emptiness. They didn’t get angry or resentful, more like… everything had just become pointless before those emotions could even form. Because of that, maybe Kaguya’s magic misfired and, unintentionally, the world ended up like this.

“Well, that’s the end of the questions. What will you do now?”

Ibara stood up energetically, blowing away the gloomy mood from moments before. The fact that she didn’t immediately leave meant they still intended to stay involved with us. Since they were here anyway, I figured they could keep my attendants busy.

“Fumitsuki, Lullus, go with them and study for a bit. It’ll be good for you to deepen your understanding of this world’s magic. I don’t know if it’ll ever be useful, but it’s definitely interesting. Oh, and this is an order, so it’s mandatory.”
“Haah… alright. I don’t know where you’re headed, but is it okay if we tag along too?”
“That’s fine. What about you, Finis?”
“I’ll just nap somewhere. There’s still time before the world collapses, and with Fumitsuki and Lullus around, they’ll figure out roughly where I’m sleeping anyway.”

Eight eyes looked at me like they wanted to say something, but I shooed them away with a lazy wave. Then, to make it clear I intended to sleep, I folded my arms into a pillow and lay down on the table.

After confirming that the four of them had gone far enough away, I lifted my head.

“You’re not going to show yourself?”

I asked the empty seat beside me, and a girl about my age quietly appeared. Her hair came to her shoulders, and she wore the same uniform as the twins. She knit her brows with a troubled look and shook her head. “I still can’t meet them.”

“I see.”
“But… we’ll see each other in the end. And from then on, we were supposed to be together forever… or we should have been…”
“One of you disappeared, didn’t she?”

The girl nodded.

“Do you think that’s cruel?”
“I don’t think she’s cruel. It’s just a pure wish anyone could have. Still, this world’s magic really is outrageous. It gives off a bit of The Monkey’s Paw vibes, but well… that’s that.”
“?”

She tilted her head in confusion.

“You don’t speak as strangely as I expected.”
“I’ve grown up, after all.”
“So those two protected the world until someone like you could grow up.”
“Yeah.”

The girl looked kindly in the direction the four had gone.

“Oh, right, someone asked me to tell you something when I met you.”
“A message?”
“They said, ‘I’ll definitely find you.’”

The girl blinked wide in surprise, then smiled so happily it was like a flower blooming.

“Mm… I’ll be waiting.”

And with that, she vanished.

◇◇◇

The fake reality, this parallel world, peeled away in sheets. Beneath it, there was no ground at all, only a mass of blazing energy. The root world had already been destroyed by its own people, and now the remaining core was falling together with the parallel worlds. The fate of the people was only a matter of falling early or falling late. Not a single ‘normal’ person would be saved.

(Those girls are probably safe.)

I silently thought of the twins and the girl. As I did, Lullus raised a question.

“What made this world special?”
“It seems the god who created this world isn’t here. At least, I wasn’t sent here by that god. I came because Chaos thought this world looked interesting and asked me to come.”
“Is something like that even possible?”
“Well, it’s happening right in front of you. Maybe the creator made it, abandoned it, and forgot…Or maybe the creator is just very good at hiding, and even Chaos couldn’t find them.”
“What do you think, Master Finis?”
“It feels like it was created in a very unusual way.”

Even though I called myself a god, there were things I didn’t understand. In fact, there were plenty of things I didn’t know or couldn’t do to begin with.