arc01 · 029-ep29

Episode 29: Her Circumstances

The words come out of nowhere, and my body stops dead.

Past life. Reincarnation.

Not words you drop on someone you've never met.

What does this woman know…?

We shouldn't have crossed paths at all—how did she find out?

And why blurt that out of nowhere?

"…What is that supposed to be? If this is some shady recruitment pitch, I'm declining."

"Sorry, sorry—it's not a recruitment thing. I just thought, if you happened to know about VTubers, maybe we could talk."

"Ohh, the V stuff. Unfortunately I'm not exactly well-versed in that, so————"

"Bingo. I knew it—you're a reincarnator, aren't you."

Huh? How'd you land on that?

"Because it's 2016 right now. Almost nobody knows what a VTuber is, and there is absolutely no way anyone connects 'V' with 'reincarnation', right?"

"…………"

Dammit. Said too much.

Wait—so that's it. Her voice sounded familiar because she's the one from that video I glanced at earlier today. Her way of talking was so different I never put it together.

"So it's you, huh. The so-called Enishi Rian. Which would make you a reincarnator too?"

"I knew it! You watched the video! I tried it on the off chance somebody would notice, but nobody ever contacted me, and I was getting pretty down about it."

"How the hell would anyone get that from that? I figured it was just character backstory. That thing is never taking off, by the way."

"So that rough way of talking is the real you, huh."

"And that polite one's the real you, huh."

Haahhhh…………

"Anyway—sobered up yet?"

"Yeah—maybe thanks to the water. Actually, meeting another reincarnator probably had more to do with it."

"You were looking that hard?"

"Yeah. All this time, I thought I was alone in this world."

"Huh. Can't say that ever once crossed my mind…"

"Thick-skinned, aren't you."

"Fair enough."

We still don't know each other's actual names, but somehow the conversation's gone easy and familiar. Maybe carrying the same secret bred a bit of kinship.

"Anyway—this isn't the kind of topic for such an open place. Can we move somewhere else?"

"Of course. How about some restaurant with a private room?"

"Nah… truth is I just stuffed my face, so—hmm, how about karaoke?"

"Okay. There's a lot I want to talk about there."

"Fine by me. We've come this far—you've got my attention."

And so the two of us set off for a karaoke joint nearby.

◇

I don't make a habit of karaoke, so the ropes are lost on me—but my companion here seems to know her way around, so I leave the front desk and everything else to her. Apparently she booked us a room on a free-time plan.

"Now then—let me start with a proper self-introduction."

"Go ahead."

"I am Azuma Mio. A reincarnator, as you've no doubt gathered. I've been searching for other reincarnators this whole time."

"……I'm Kobayakawa Takeru. Well, no point hiding it at this stage. I'm a reincarnator too. Why were you looking for reincarnators?"

"You saw that video, didn't you? Sure, some of it was dressed up to look V-ish, but more than half of it was my honest heart. This world scares me. The people around me are fundamentally, completely different from me, and I started thinking—what if I'm alone here? It frightens me. So I went looking for someone in the same position as me."

"What do you mean? What's there to be scared of?"

"Think about it—so many things are just wrong. There's this incomprehensible thing called dungeons, and yet history follows the exact path I remember. Yes, there are plenty of dungeon-related differences from my past life. But there's no way the fallout would stay that contained."

"…Well, I get the point you're making. But what does hunting down other reincarnators actually get you?"

"First, I wanted peace of mind. To know I'm not alone. And—I hoped that if you knew something I didn't, you'd tell me."

"Like what?"

"…When you reincarnated, did you meet a god, or anything like that? Get any kind of explanation?"

Ahh. So that's what this is about.

It is the textbook isekai trope, I'll give her that. Maybe there is some being that reincarnated us. Unfortunately, I don't have a single memory of anything like that.

"Sorry to say, I know nothing. I got my past-life memories back around age three, I believe, but before that or since, I've never met anyone. Honestly, I never even thought to wonder about that stuff."

"…………I see. No leads on that front, then."

"Why does that bother you so much?"

"If there is a god—if it reincarnated me, if it reincarnated us—then fine. But what if that's not it? What if there's no god at all, and I'm being subjected to some unknowable experiment, or something…? Every time that thought hit me, I got so scared, so scared, I felt like I was going out of my mind."

"Experiment…?"

Huh? What is this woman even saying?

"Come on, you have to see it, right? This world is far too game-like."

————————!

"Everyone's names being uniformly kanji-plus-katakana gives me the creeps. Monsters never leaving the dungeons is unnatural. And people have been dying in those dungeons for fifty years now, yet history has moved on almost entirely unchanged————"

"Calm down. You're overthinking it."

"But————"

"Sure—plenty about this world doesn't add up. But the reincarnation part, at least, you don't have to doubt."

"Why not?"

"Because I remember my own death, crystal clear."

"I-I think I probably died too, but…"

"Then it's even more certain. If it's the fuzziness of your own death memory that's feeding the anxiety, this ought to settle it."

"Well, true enough. So—what did you die of?"

"Accident. I was on a bus—it took a sharp mountain curve too fast and went over the edge. What caused the accident itself, I don't know. But that I died, that much is certain. Legs crushed under the crumpled frame. Glass shards stuck in me all over. The feeling of bleeding out. Breathing getting harder as the bus went up in flames. My consciousness faded bit by bit—there was never going to be any surviving that."

"…………Mine's the same."

"Huh?"

"I was on a bus too. I think I blacked out when it went over. My memory ends right about there."

She was on that bus, too.

Which means there might be even more of us reincarnators out there.

"Well, there you have it. Forget the experiment theory. We just happened to reincarnate into a game-like world. That's good enough, right?"

"…Okay. Thank you. I feel a little better now."

"Yeah. Glad if it helped."

She probably just doesn't have the toughest mental, this one. Or… maybe this is what normal looks like.

"Now then—my turn. Answer my questions."

"Sure. Ask me anything."

"How did you track me down?"

"Hm? It's not like I knew you were a reincarnator and came to find you."

"Oh? Then did you have some other lead?"

"A lead—well, more like a fortune-teller's reading. I paid a pretty decent chunk for it. Clutching at straws."

"Fortune-telling… and you actually believed that?"

"I didn't used to put much stock in it. But hey—skills exist now, don't they? And there's this famous fortune-teller who uses a skill called 【Astrology】, so…"

"Ah, right—skills! Okay, that's fair. That, I can buy."

"She got pretty specific, too. Said the thing I'm looking for would turn up at that park I was just at. Said to go around evening."

"It can get that precise… Then why were you that hammered?"

"Ah, that's, um… I figured meeting a total stranger would make me nervous, so… I thought I'd smooth it over with a drink, and apparently I overdid it."

"…………Haah. Pace yourself with the booze."

"Aye."

Well—nothing here I actually need to worry about. Good.

Also, I have now confirmed that this woman is probably a bit of an idiot.