Enjoy the Present
When I got home with Makina and Ushia, a bizarre sight was waiting. The Demon God, who spent more than half of every day on the sofa in my room, was—for once—seated in a chair, legs crossed and propped up on the dining table.
Laplace sat across from her in a neat, composed posture, and he welcomed us with those signature sleepy, half-lidded eyes.
"I knew you would be arriving just now."
The mood was ordinary enough, and yet somehow it felt grave. Ushia, her voice a little lower than usual, asked Laplace what was going on.
"God, is something wrong?"
"Mm. Is something the matter, you ask? More precisely, something is about to be."
Elbows planted on the table, one hand covering his mouth in the classic mastermind pose, Laplace regarded us. If he had been wearing glasses, they surely would have flashed white with a sharp little pshing.
By now he was giving off the unmistakable air of someone facing a serious matter. Ushia swallowed and asked, her voice rising.
"…Then what is it?"
"Why, choosing dinner, of course."
What?
Had I misheard? Certain that I had, I dug a pinky into my ear. It would be a problem if my hearing were already going, at an age when I had not even started elementary school.
But as I tried to blame the whole thing on my ears and deny the situation, Laplace spoke again, as if to say I had not misheard at all.
"Please choose the dinner menu."
We had barely walked through the door, and already this. Still, at the words choose the dinner menu—more precisely, make a decision—my eyes went first to the Demon God. Whether she was sitting in that chair or lying in it was anyone's guess; the crooked sprawl looked actively dangerous to her lower back as she spectated us. Even so, the highest decision-maker in the room was, without question, the Demon God.
Normally she just decides on whatever she feels like.
Maybe she noticed me looking at her. Maybe, true to a god of omniscience, she simply knew through her Authority. Either way, though I had not asked, Laplace took it upon himself to explain why the Demon God was staying out of it.
"Mm. The Demon God has already said she is fine eating anything. And by my Authority of Omniscience, she truly is fine with anything, so please don't worry."
His explanation was blunt, and yet somehow it inspired confidence. Reassured, I joined the debate already underway.
Hmm. All else being equal, I should probably side with Makina.
Sugar had slipped out of my shadow at some point and joined the discussion, and one look said she would simply pick whatever she felt like eating. The Demon God, who usually doted on Makina, was sitting this one out. Laplace seemed ready to throw his weight behind his own Incarnation, Ushia. In this room, I was Makina's only ally.
"Makina, what do you want to eat?"
"I want Hawaiian pizza!"
What? Hawaiian pizza? Why was the name of that monstrous dish—fruit piled onto a perfectly good pizza, like dumping ash over a finished bowl of rice—coming out of Makina's mouth?
"What—Hawaiian pizza? Why?"
I asked why she wanted that infamous pizza, and even as I did, I thought it over.
Has Makina even eaten Hawaiian pizza before?
I turned it over carefully, and nowhere in my memory was there any trace of Makina eating Hawaiian pizza.
"Umm, the internet said it was good and told me to try it!"
You again.
When something goes wrong, pin it on the internet—that bastard—and you will be right about half the time. And if the internet is not the culprit? Pin it on the Demon God, and you catch the other half. There just are not that many beings in this world who cause problems.
Normally even the Demon God would have gone yeah, that's a bit much and shaken her head, and I would have stopped Makina in horror at the internet's latest crime. This time, though, talking her down felt a little awkward.
I've never even tried it myself.
Hawaiian pizza is a food that divides people. Plenty hate it, which means plenty love it, too. If I had tried it and been sure it was awful, I would have shut Makina down without hesitation. Stopping her on nothing but prejudice, without ever having tasted the thing, did not sit right.
Right. The attempt itself is worth something.
"All right. Then I'll back you."
"Waaah! Thank you!"
While Makina and I founded the Hawaiian Pizza Party, the other two factions settled on the foods they would support.
"God and I are picking chicken!"
The food Ushia chose, with Laplace behind her, was chicken—a top-tier contender that would not lose a fight against most dishes. The Demon God was quite fond of it herself, which tacked on an extra advantage.
"U-um, then I'll go with this food called a hamburger…"
She had charged out determined to found a party of her own, only to have no idea what foods actually existed on Earth, so she had been floundering until I lent her my phone for a bit. Somehow she managed to find hamburgers and bring them back. Well, on any floor of the Tower there was probably some dish of meat and vegetables stuffed between bread, so maybe she had simply chosen the most familiar thing.
"A hamburger, huh. Decent choice. Now you're out."
"Eeehh?! Wh-why?!"
"Because you're one person to begin with. And it's not like your strength is on the Demon God's level. No numbers, no quality. So out."
No one objected to my flat verdict. The Demon God seemed intent on spectating from start to finish, and the parties backing other foods were only too happy to see a rival disappear. Under everyone's tacit consent, Sugar's Hamburger Party collapsed completely.
That left my and Makina's Hawaiian Pizza Party, and Laplace and Ushia's Chicken Party. With two parties remaining, it was hard to say which had the edge. Frankly, starting a two-on-two civil war right here and eating whatever the winners wanted would have been way out of line. So I had been waiting for the hamburger party to die before playing the card I had been saving.
"There are six of us anyway. That's plenty. Let's just order both."
As if he had been waiting for me to say exactly that, Laplace agreed at once.
"That would be best. There are quite a few of us. No need to force everything onto a single menu."
The two parties that were supposed to be fighting had just colluded, but who cared. This was not real politics. All that remained was the consent of the highest authority in the room, who had been spectating the entire time. She had said anything was fine, and Laplace had vouched for the truth of it, but who knew whether that fickle Demon God might suddenly change her mind?
"Demon God, that's all right, isn't it?"
"It matters not. This body will not so much as let that grotesque pizza touch these lips."
With the Demon God's agreement secured, the rest flew by.
"I shall place the order."
"And the money?"
"I will cover that as well."
Now that was a god. How was a god who dumped every chore on her Incarnation and did nothing but play supposed to walk around with a god label stuck on her? That was why this one got called a demon god.
Whether he read it off my strangely refreshed expression or read the thought itself, Laplace suddenly started in on the Demon God.
"And yet, Aszato. You were the one who said a god is a being entire unto itself—so why have you come to leave every last task to your Incarnation? To the point that she has grown quite used to paying out of her own pocket."
"Hmph! Everything that child uses was built up by this body's Authority."
To my ears it was an absurd answer, but Laplace nodded as if that alone had been answer enough.
"You haven't changed. Still arrogant, still absolute, and still convinced that you are complete all on your own."
Arrogance. A sin that had been with the Demon God since the moment of her birth, and the very word that defined her.
Absolute. The Demon God was a necessary being, an immortal one. The instant Laplace, God of Omniscience, laid eyes on her, he had declared that even in the moment the Tower fell, she alone would survive and keep her seat at the summit.
A being entire unto itself. How could anyone who depended on another, who lived as a parasite on another, ever be called a god? And so the Demon God was complete on her own, with no need of anyone's help.
And yet Laplace's tone carried a hint that the Demon God was not, in fact, entire unto herself. She caught the scent of it, too. She stared at him as if to glare a hole straight through him.
"Then you claim this body is not a being entire unto itself?"
"Not quite. Only—if someone asked, 'Would you rather be alone, or be together?' you would answer that you would rather be together, would you not?"
The killing pressure she had been giving off, as if she might end Laplace at any moment, went still in a single instant. In all the years I had spent at her side as her Incarnation, I had never seen her like this. Curious, I looked at her, and the head that was always held high was tilted down.
The usual confident tone—arrogant, in the Demon God's case—was gone. For her, she murmured almost humbly.
"That is merely a personal preference."
Of course, if an ordinary person had said it in that tone, they still would have been called extremely arrogant.