The Obvious Things Are the Scariest

I dried my damp hair and, while I did, pressed the room around me into my eyes one more time.

“……”

My room. A place whose existence here was so perfectly natural that I had lived in it for nearly twenty years. But I took that sense of the obvious, set it one step back, and heaped suspicion onto everything. Why was it obvious? Wasn’t this unnatural? I kept ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠flinging questions at it the way you’d pick a fight on purpose, and reasonable doubts began to rise against things I had always simply accepted.

“Why does this room have only that one door?”

A perfectly reasonable question. My room was large enough that it wouldn’t have looked particularly shabby beside a soccer field — the sort of scale you get from tearing down dozens of rooms that had already been there and knocking them into one. That a room like this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠could be built at all was astonishing, certainly… but call that a manga convention. Expecting common sense from a manga is the more irrational habit.

Even so, the fact that there was only one door still felt a little strange. It’s inconvenient, isn’t it? For anyone coming in, and anyone going out. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠If they could build a room this size, they could surely have managed a few more doors. And yet the only door connected to my room was the single brown one the maids had come through. Odd.

And that wasn’t even the end of it.

“The windows sit awfully high, don’t they?”

This was just as questionable. Even allowing for the average height of a woman, I was on the tall side. Set beside the man I used to be, the difference didn’t feel strange at all, which put me somewhere around five foot nine. And yet even I, tall as I was, didn’t think I could reach those windows if I stretched. I actually rose onto my toes and strained with everything I had, and I still couldn’t so much as brush the glass with a fingertip.

What possible reason was there to put the windows that high?

“If it’s like this for me, the other girls must have a miserable time of it when they clean. It’s too high.”

Thinking of the heights of the girls who show up in boys’ manga, that placement felt like a sign reading hands off. Or was it meant as decoration, the way stained glass is? I thought back, carefully, over where I had seen a structure like this before.

“It’s a lot like a prison.”

A realization that runs a little cold, once you know it. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠And now that I thought about it, the same chill was on me even in this moment. Here I was, wearing a white negligee as if it were the most natural thing in the world. For someone who had never had a taste for dressing as a woman, that was a fairly shocking state of affairs. To notice how strange it all was only after I’d already put the thing on… the obvious things really are the most frightening.

That I had been able to laugh and chatter inside a glittering prison was chilling in its own right. It made me wonder why I had ever treated any of it as a given. If this place was a prison, did that make me its prisoner?

“Hmm. I don’t think that’s quite it.”

If it were, they would simply have ignored my request. Where in the world do you find jailers who leave just because the prisoner asks them to? It seemed I at least had authority to match the role I’d been given. In the worst case — if I’d been handled like a doll, with no choices of my own — I might well have sunk a little. Not that I would have killed myself over it.

For now, one thing was certain. What was turned toward me was goodwill. That much, I was sure of.

At the end of part one of Vanguard: The Last One — Vangra, for short — Pino speaks to a certain object, and what she says is this.

Set against the arrogant, ruthless face she usually wore, it was a monologue so frail and powerless that the shock of it had been all the greater. The story never said, in so many words, who she was speaking to. But part two is Lust’s story. The answer was obvious.

Of course, now that the manga had become reality, trusting the original without question might have been a naive comfort. It was equally true that if I doubted even this, there would be nothing left I could believe.

Once you start doubting, there’s no end to it, is there?

And if even an assumption this plain turned out to be garbage, then what could I do? Die the way I did in the original, and that would be that. I’d been possessed in the middle of reading a book, so even if I died, maybe I’d get something like a one-coin continue. Stories like this usually start you with your build already in order, don’t they? For all I knew it would turn out to be infinite regression. You only learn the result by going and seeing.

“So in the end, all of this is goodwill. For now…”

The moment I thought so, the room that had looked like a prison looked like something else. A single completed world. A heaven on earth you never had to leave. Perhaps that had been the designer’s intent. Like a cradle meant to keep a young child — a finished world that met every desire a person could have, so they would never need to step outside and meet a cruel one. Hadn’t she wanted to give me something like that?

Remembering what she had said, the hypothesis held together well enough. Well. With a temperament whose passive skills were distrust of humanity and outright misanthropy, the world beyond these walls must have felt to her like a dystopia where nothing ran wild but loathing and hideous betrayal. Maybe it was better not to call this heaven on earth at all, and think of it instead as a bomb shelter. Or a sterile room.

But then another question surfaced. What Pino had wanted was a friend. A friend in the ordinary sense — someone you could trust, and lean on. So how was any meeting supposed to happen inside a world this complete?

That question answered itself the moment I looked through the memories planted in me.

“The social gathering at the royal palace.”

Half a year from now, there would be a birth festival in honor of the king’s birth. The distinguished nobles of the Yume Kingdom would gather that day to socialize, of course, and a grand assembly was already on the calendar. The Hope family, one of the powerful houses, would attend as well. Only a guess — but weren’t they planning my meeting for that day?

You know the sort of thing. It turns up constantly in romance fantasy. Young ladies of the upper crust happen to meet, they talk, their hobbies match, they become friends. That worn-out little story. Except… wasn’t this supposed to be a fantasy action manga?

“Did she learn how to make friends from romance novels?”

For some reason, a scene flickered through my head: an albino girl reading, with great concentration, a book titled something like this.

She would be staring at that chapter and murmuring to herself.

“A dramatic meeting… a place unlike the usual one…”

Then she would turn her eyes to the books piled nearby, stroke a pink volume, and nod. Only my imagination. And yet the scene felt uncomfortably real.

“Cute, though.”

It does take the shine off her a little. This was the moment I felt it, vividly enough to turn my stomach: Pino, the Witch of the Crowd, had gone entire centuries without a friend.

“The world really does change with your state of mind.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah. Up until a moment ago I wasn’t in the mood to eat anything. Now it’s delicious. Thank you. And could you bring me a little more of this? This…”

“Do you mean the galette des rois?”

“Ah. Yeah. That.”

I smiled and swallowed the rest of what I’d been about to say. I’d thought it was just walnut pie, and the name was grander than I’d expected. If I’d confidently asked for almond pie, I would have embarrassed myself. Was it something along the lines of super almond pie…? Vanguard was definitely a Japanese manga, so why was there French in it? A mystery.

Still. It tastes good.

I thought so as I carried one of the cookies set out for a snack to my mouth. All the anxiety in the world really does come from not knowing. Look at me now. That shabby little unease I’d been nursing a moment ago was nowhere to be seen, and a peace as wide as the sea was surging through my heart — how, prithee, could I fail to rejoice? My heart is a lake now, and thou art a diver~

“Ha.”

A laugh slipped out of me. I’d been spouting nonsense in my head, but I really did feel quite at ease. It was still only a guess, and yet I could guess, too, why the original me had made that extreme choice. A misunderstanding must have grown out of communication that only ever ran one way. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Not a matter of decades — centuries of shut-in, loser, people-hating, loner witch. How good at socializing could someone like that possibly be?

She must have told herself, If I do it like this, she’ll definitely like it, and then gone on throwing one bizarre event after another. The picture drew itself so clearly that a hollow laugh escaped me before I knew it. I could find it cute, because I already knew the whole story. To the Lust Hope of the novel, it would have been nothing more and nothing less than cosmic horror.

The same went for the fact that I was someone’s creation. I only got to run my mouth — An artificial human? Isn’t that way too obvious? — because I was a modern person. Someone of this era might well have taken it for a horrific taboo, or found it a story too heavy to accept in any ordinary way. Perhaps Lust Hope had looked on her own existence as something profane, and chosen to die.

Well… in the end, it came down to that. That one thing. People always overestimate whatever they don’t understand. I had, too.

I think I was only looking at her power. At the core of her, she’s just a lonely child.

Her strength stood at the peak of this world, as if she alone had set the seal on the final chapter. I had known that, and knowing it seemed to have clouded my eyes. They say that if someone’s station is high enough, even their shit looks impressive. The power of authority really is something.

“By the way.”

This time my gaze stuck fast on one of the maids.

“Yes? What is it, my lady?”

She stopped what she was doing and tilted her head. Cute as that was, I couldn’t help being baffled — because the thing she was carrying off was the fork and knife I had been using until a moment ago.

“That’s the fork and knife I was just using, isn’t it?”

“Yes. That’s right. Why do you ask?”

“Why? I understand taking them once I’m finished, but why go out of your way to seal them up before you carry them off? What are you, some legendary maid?”

“Preserving the things my lady has used, exactly as they are, is common sense, isn’t it? Isn’t that only natural?”

“Mmm. I see.”

The moment I finished, the maid smiled brightly, sealed up the utensils I had used, and carried them out of the room. I decided not to think too hard about where she was taking them. And then the thought settled over me, fond and a little helpless: our Pino, my little Pino, really does like me.