Today, Ashen City Runs Red with Blood
"Even so, that was way too far, all of you...."
"We're sorry."
"W-We're the victims here, you know?!"
"Aren't we the real victims...?"
"Still, you need a mess like this or where's the fun, Akakat!"
"I-I tried to stop them...."
"War, by its nature, always does the most harm to civilians. I was only trying to show you that...."
"I d-didn't know A-Aki was actually going to use that...."
All of us had been hauled together so Natchan could chew us out. More precisely, the ones being chewed out were the five who had actually gone to war: me, Kurokami-senpai, Namikawa-senpai, Yuzuki-senpai, and Aki.
What Aki had used a moment ago was one of Ashen City's special weapons, the nuclear bomb. Set it off, and every player on the map died while the server itself rewound to the very beginning — a weapon optimized for trolling, in the most literal sense. It had been made for single-player, something you were meant to reach for only when a run had collapsed so completely that you would never see an ending. Drop the same thing into multiplayer, where a crowd of people had gathered, and it was a trolling weapon. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Which was why, under any normal circumstances, you were supposed to forbid nukes in the settings before the session even started....
And that was how Aki had been able to use the nuke at all. From what I heard afterward, she had even taken every material Yuzuki-senpai had stockpiled and poured the lot of it into crafting the bomb. Well, that tracked. A nuke demanded an absurd quantity of materials and wasn't a weapon you could throw together easily, so it had felt like it showed up far too early.
Though something had bothered me since the last time I played Ashen City. How, exactly, was a person supposed to develop a nuclear bomb in a world that had already ended? Call it a gameplay concession if you want, but this is a bit much, isn't it...?
"The house I spent two whole hours building is completely gone...."
"...I'm sorry."
At those words from Natchan, even Aki seemed to feel the guilt at last. She went through the motion of bowing her head, and she apologized.
"I won't go so far as to say fighting each other is banned. But keep it reasonable...."
"Okay...."
"Got it."
"I'm sorry."
"I-I'll restrain myself...."
And so, in the end, our war came to a close.
"I-It might not be completely over, but showing a little restraint for a while would be b-better, wouldn't it...?"
Even I wasn't about to pick another fight the second after getting yelled at. And they had been going on for a while now about needing the resolve to turn the whole world against you — Kurokami-senpai included. What was that even supposed to mean?
"Hnn, haaah...."
"I-I was just stretching...."
This isn't my fault. Your ears are the ones that are wrong, hearing it like that. Reflect on yourselves.
And for the record, mentally I'm a man in his forties, so there is absolutely nothing wrong with something a little lewd.
Anyway, it seemed about time to end the stream. I had school tomorrow.
"Then I-I'll wrap up here for now and g-get going. See you next time...."
"Hmm."
What was I supposed to do for today's stream?
Lunchtime found me alone in the classroom, eating my bento while I turned the question over. Wouldn't I be embarrassed, having people watch me eat by myself? As if. If something like that still shamed me, I wouldn't deserve to call myself a professional shut-in loser. I had graduated from that particular feeling a long time ago.
What mattered was today's broadcast. If nothing else came up, I would almost certainly be back in Ashen City, and I still had no idea what kind of play would actually be good.
I had been catching the other members' streams whenever I found a gap, but unfortunately there was almost nothing there I could use. Which stood to reason. Unlike me, they didn't stammer, and they were professionals who had been on the air long before any of this. Not even half a year had passed since I started, and I was still finding my feet, while they could carry a show without a single snag no matter the situation. There was plenty I might learn from them. Very little I could borrow on the spot.
Besides, the war had only started because I dragged everyone into it. They must each have had a way they meant to play. The only one with a problem right now, in other words, was me.
"Just... play normally...."
Even that was full of things that made me anxious. The heaviest of them was still the dead air I would have to fill while I farmed materials in the early game. I had kept up a steady run of chat streams, and yet talking because the broadcast existed for chatter, and talking because the game had gone quiet and someone had to fill it, were unmistakably different feelings. That was exactly why I had tried to center the whole thing on PK....
"This is really hard...."
Did the Iztomo have any idea I worried about my streams this seriously? No. They didn't, and that was why they worked so hard to torment me.
"Haa...."
Way too many of the abuse faction....
Lunch in Class 1-A of Shiodome Private High School always staged the same peculiar scene. Today was no exception.
At the center of the classroom, a single girl was eating her lunch. Furikake scattered over the rice, a rolled omelet beside it, octopus-shaped little sausages for a side dish — the sort of bento you might have found in any high school anywhere. What made the moment strange was that no one sat anywhere near her.
Eating alone was, depending on the person, something that could burn with embarrassment. Most people, finding themselves in that position, would move to a place where almost no one else was, or to somewhere eating alone wouldn't look strange at all. She did neither. As if it meant nothing, she sat alone and poised, lifting each side dish slowly to her mouth, as though this were obvious, and familiar.
Her name was Kayano Mina. According to Tateyama, she was Class 1-A's Ice Princess. Of course, not a single person other than Tateyama actually called her that.
"Haa...."
And today, for the first time, a crack ran through that peculiar routine. The girl who had always eaten her lunch without a word let out a sigh in the middle of it.
The first to catch that crack was Miyauchi, class president of 1-A. She had finished a light meal at the school store, come back to the classroom, and been studying ahead when Kayano's sigh turned her head. What she saw was Kayano's brow, faintly drawn, as if the girl had sunk into some deep anguish.
"Just... normally... this is really, hard...."
The words that followed were murmured so quietly that Miyauchi couldn't properly catch them. But then—
"...Haa."
The sigh that came after was enough. Miyauchi understood the whole of it.
A girl who wanted nothing more than an ordinary school life, and yet found drawing near to anyone unbearably awkward because of old wounds. Kayano, kind by nature, did not blame the classmates who kept their distance. She blamed herself, for still clinging to that old hurt. How pitiful a reality it was.
"Kayano...."
Miyauchi clenched her jaw against the ache of it. Only for a moment. She turned over the fact that she was Class 1-A's president, and she rose from her seat.
If what Kayano truly wanted was an ordinary school life, and if old wounds were all that made her shrink from reaching toward anyone, then someone else had to take the first step. If even that was too difficult, then Miyauchi herself would have to create a proper opening.
She swallowed that sense of mission as she stood. The end of the year was close, besides — as easy a season as there would ever be for making such a moment, or such a place.
"Wait for me, Kayano."
The school life you want — I swear I'll be the one to help you have it.
So Miyauchi resolved, and she began to draw up a plan for Kayano, never once doubting that this was the best she could do.
"Hehe...."
In the end, I had found the answer.
If the problem was the early stretch, where all you did was dig up materials, then I could simply skip that early stretch entirely. How simple a solution was that? Think about it — just because I wasn't in Ashen City didn't mean everyone else had logged off. Akabane, from what I'd heard, had kept right on playing even after I went to sleep. Which meant I could finish the opening material grind before the stream ever started. I really was smart. A complete TS bishoujo.
At first I had also wondered about forming an alliance with someone from the very start, but I let the idea go. The fun of a survival game like this was the way a party, and a story, came together according to the situation. Akabane and Utsumi — the very pairing everyone called Ayakari — were acting separately themselves.
"Hm, hm."
Somehow it was already just before six-thirty.
Before I went live I read the DM from Natchan, the one pillar holding up my heart, and the instant the clock struck six-thirty, I started the stream.
"K-Konzumi~. Everyone's mood-maker, I-Izumi here...."
"Today, f-following yesterday, it's Ashen City."
"...A-And what's wrong with my streams."
Anyone hearing that would take me for a shut-in loser with trash-tier communication skills, someone who skipped the early game ahead of time because she was scared of the audio going dead. All I did was a small kindness, because I thought you might get a little bored. If you call yourselves Iztomo, then have a little heart for how I feel....
"T-Today? The truth is, I was planning to p-play normally, but.... I changed my m-mind."
I really had meant to play normally today. The early materials were already gathered and the house was already built, so I had pictured a stream where I conquered Ashen City's content one piece at a time. But I had changed my mind.
I declared it without flinching — that I would show them the ferocious nature of a man, the one I had been crushing down all this time. The me of today was no reaper quietly harvesting lives. I was a beast, wilder than anyone. And I was going to make sure every last one of them understood it.