Who Am I? The God of Gacha, Kaino Izumi—
Two wide game windows sat stacked one above the other on the screen. Needless to say, both of them were the main menu of Fate's Battle.
"A-Akabane-san plays as Y-Yukio, huh..."
One of the odd little features of Fate's Battle was that the protagonist's gender, chosen at the very start, could be switched freely whenever you liked. The story changed with it, if only by a hair. Never enough to rewrite the plot itself—just a subtle difference in a choice here, a reply there—but for the players, hunting down those tiny discrepancies was a pleasure all its own.
"Well, to be precise, this body changes gender as the situation demands. Even so, I play as Yukio in the ordinary course of things. You, I take it, are the Yukiko sort."
"O-of course a cute g-girl is better than some guy who reeks of sweat, right?"
The protagonist's official name was Takasaki Kanade. To the players, though, the nickname they had been using far longer—Yukizu—was the one that actually stuck. Set the gender to male, and it was Yukio. Set it to female, and it was Yukiko. And of course, I was on the side that played as Yukiko.
Mei-chan's yuri radar is spinning again today.
"Th-that's not what I meant!"
Ever since one unintentional yuri declaration, I could insist it wasn't like that every single time, and still not a soul believed me. I had even wondered whether I ought to just commit and ride an obvious yuri route, but no matter how I turned it over, it didn't feel like an outfit that suited me. So was I simply supposed to live the rest of my life getting dragged for it?
"Then let us begin, at our leisure."
"O-okay."
The moment I tapped the Hero Summon tab, Fate's Battle's gacha screen came up.
This banner's rate-up five-star was Heracles, out of Greek myth. The four-star was Greek myth as well: Orpheus. What I wanted, obviously, was the five-star. Heracles was a hero making a first appearance in this event, the art was some of the best the game had ever shipped, and the kit was strong besides. I had taken one look and known I was pulling, no questions asked.
"Let us confirm once more before we start. Whoever draws Heracles first is the victor. Should we draw at the same moment, the gacha continues until one of us claims an extra copy."
"R-right. And the loser takes a p-penalty!"
Fortunately, thanks to Akabane-san's consideration, we had agreed to leave an all-nighter until dawn out of the forfeit. The penalty we settled on was buying the other a meal the next time we met. Objectively speaking, it was light, and perfectly reasonable.
...Subjectively speaking, it felt heavy, and completely unreasonable.
"Then shall we roll as one?"
"O-okay. We press on three...?"
"Understood. One. Two. Three!"
"Hup—!"
To put it bluntly, I lost.
"Did I not tell you from the very beginning? The probability of your victory converges upon zero."
"Th-that can't... that can't be..."
Akabane-san had pulled Heracles in a mere thirty rolls. Two copies, at that. And I had just finished my thirty-third ten-pull.
"Wh-why is it Orpheus again...?!"
I pulled yet another Orpheus, and I had long since lost count of which one this was.
You burned through all the free stones and you're already at thirty thousand yen, right?
Is this good luck or bad luck?
The rate-up four-star is 1.5%, so if we're being technical, it's actually good luck lol
Maxing out a limit break took five copies of the same card. Which meant that if the chat was right, and I really had pulled Orpheus something like twenty times, I had already overflowed by fifteen. And in all that time, not a single Heracles.
How was that even possible?
"You have already been defeated, so there is no shame in stopping. Did this body not say as much?"
"A-a man, once he s-starts something, has to see it through to the end..."
Mei-chan, you were a guy...?
"You are a woman, however."
"Th-there's a principle!"
I shouted it and, without a moment's hesitation, hit the ten-summon button again.
The cards fanned open with a bright flutter, all ten of them. The lightning that announced a guaranteed five-star was, as if it were only natural, nowhere to be seen. In its place, the gold cards that meant four-star or higher... three of them!
"I-it's fine. One of those could still be it, r-right?"
"Oh, this body feels much the same. Of course, it has never once come true."
"Kuh..."
I wanted to argue, but there was nothing I could say that was actually true. But this time was really different! If there were three whole gold cards, then at least one of them could be a five-star, right?
Believe in me... Not the me you refuse to believe in. Believe in the me that I believe in...!
The first gold card turned. An extra animation... there wasn't one.
Yeah, I wouldn't want to hear it either lol
It's fine. There are still two left. This time, for sure...
"AAAAAAAH?!"
No matter how you looked at it, this was insane! Wasn't this a scam? Probability had to mean something. Last time they said I'd landed on 3.44 percent. What kind of odds were these even supposed to be?
"W-with odds like that, Heracles should be the one coming out...!"
If a 0.7 percent was going to lose to a 0.04 percent, then what were we even supposed to do?
"This is wrong..."
No matter how I thought about it, it was wrong. Honestly, up until now I had been on the lucky side of Fate's Battle's gacha. Lucky enough to pick up nearly every top-tier unit for free. That was why I had been confident enough to make the bet in the first place. So why, starting last time and running straight through today, was it like this?
"Well. This, I suppose, is what they call fate. Akaka!"
For the fraud who had pulled in thirty rolls to say a thing like that. The world was clearly broken.
Whatever the case, I had come all the way to pity. The ten-summon button, dyed a furious red, was the proof.
"Haa..."
I let out a sigh and pressed it, and the summon animation I was sick of both watching and hearing began to—
"...Huh?"
"Eh?"
Lightning. One, two, three...
"F-five of them...?"
As if something had taken hold of me, I skipped every three-star animation. The cards announcing a confirmed five-star were waiting in the last five.
And what stepped out of the first gold card, wreathed in lightning, was a beautiful woman.
Silver hair fell in a glossy, swaying sheet, and her crimson eyes overflowed with allure. The outfit was more than a little revealing, and yet she laughed as if she felt no shame at all, perfectly at ease.
She was this banner's rate-up: Heracles.
And then the next gold card, lightning and all.
For real?
Heracles again.
And from every one of the three cards that remained, Heracles came out as well.
"Uh... A-Akabane-san? Is this, maybe, a dream?"
"Why do you ask, Izumi? Rejoice. This is, without question, reality."
"U-uwaaaaah!"
God was real!
I was never quitting Fate's Battle for the rest of my life!
If any faction out there meant to slander a game this cosmically peak, then in the name of Kaino Izumi, I would not forgive them...
"I don't care!"
"Haah, haah, haah..."
The excitement refused to settle, and my head went faintly light.
"Ha?"
"Haa?"
What kind of bizarre question was that? Heroes with famous names, once you actually looked into them, were usually cute girls. That was simple common sense, wasn't it? King Arthur, for example...?
"Hmm. Today was most enjoyable. Should the opportunity present itself, I should like to collab once more."
"I-I had fun too. It was the f-first time I've had someone I could talk this much with about Fate's Battle..."
Fate's Battle was not a game of especially high gameplay. People liked to say they weren't playing a game, they were reading a novel—and that line was a joke, yes, but it was also a kind of sneer. Which meant that to gamers who actually wanted to play a game, Fate's Battle was not especially popular, and there were correspondingly few people you could talk to about it in any depth. I could always go to the communities where the players gathered, but I wasn't the sort to throw myself into community life.
...Be quiet.
"Then, all of you—farewell!"
"B-bye, everyone... Let's meet again...!"
The world turns toward fate...
"Hmm. She isn't answering..."
Yukari was staring at a DM on Misscode.
The messages had arrived an hour ago. And, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the conversation had ended there.
"Hmm."
Wasn't it unbearably cute, the way Izumi asked to be friends over DM after her first collab?
Recalling what Suzuha had told her, Yukari had of course assumed she would receive the exact same DM from Izumi. That had been a complete miscalculation.
"...I wanted to tease her about it."
If a message like that had come, Yukari had meant to needle Suzuha with it—see, you aren't anything special. Not that she had agreed to the collab with Izumi for that reason alone.
"I feel like I'm getting a little stubborn about this..."
Just as Izumi had no one to talk about Fate's Battle with, neither did Yukari. And for that Yukari, today's collab had been deeply satisfying—satisfying enough that she wanted to talk about the game on a regular basis. Izumi had surely felt the same.
"...I'm getting a meal out of this, so I should set a time as soon as I can."
All the better if she could pin down the next collab while she was at it. Thinking that, Yukari sent Izumi another DM.
She sent it already swearing it to herself. Next time, she would get the words out of Izumi. Let's be friends.