Chapter 95: “The Countermeasure Is to Hold Firm to Yourself”
“So, I’ve been forced to enter your mental world. Are you ready?”
“No clown would answer that in the affirmative!”
I spoke after Kuwajima calmed down slightly, but her stance of absolute refusal hadn’t changed.
That was unsurprising.
I’d read many textbooks—light novels—but had never encountered a character who welcomed someone else entering a place like their mental world.
More often, the visit revealed a dual nature: a normally gentle character displayed fierce rejection inside their mental world.
That was why characters normally forced by those around them to endure everything often received the spotlight in such scenes.
Kuwajima, on the other hand…
Well, she was openly rejecting the idea from the beginning, so that was fine.
“…”
I glanced at the clock.
Thanks to all our dawdling, it was already nearly three in the afternoon.
Nine hours remained until the day ended. Allowing one hour for dinner and three for planning and executing the operation left only five hours.
Even if the Sea God’s shrine maiden needed a little more time, we’d resolved almost nothing regarding the Kikkōryū ninja clan. We couldn’t devote much time to Kuwajima.
I didn’t know how time passed inside a mental world, but judging from the Fushijishi Village incident, we should assume it passed at the same rate as reality.
Even the time required to patiently persuade Kuwajima to fall asleep was precious.
And this persuasion attempt was already a long shot.
We could regard success as a major time-saving bonus. We could devise a second plan after this one failed.
“Kuwajima, which would you prefer: falling asleep quietly on your own, Taketsuru chopping you lightly on the neck, or Meiko chopping you lightly on the neck?”
“I stand at a crossroads of fate, yet every road leads to the same destination!”
Of course it did. Whatever you said, there was no escape.
The story might’ve been different if you could output one hundred percent of the Sea God’s sacred orb’s power.
If she could truly control it fully, allowing Kuwajima to fight normally would’ve been a valid plan.
But since she lacked the talent, extracting it was essential for her safety too.
If I had one preference, it was that Kuwajima fall asleep voluntarily, because knocking someone unconscious with a chop to the neck was extremely dangerous.
As I thought that, the auditory hallucination quietly spoke.
“If it’s only that girl, I could probably put her to sleep normally with a lullaby carrying my power. She has absolutely no resistance.”
“…”
“W-Why are you looking at me with pity!?”
I was thinking you truly didn’t possess a single ability.
Still, that made things quicker.
I didn’t want to perform it before others, but I would sing her a lullaby.
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“Zzz…”
Just as the auditory hallucination said, Kuwajima fell asleep within seconds. After looking at her with pity, I addressed Taketsuru and Meiko.
“I’m going to persuade Kuwajima inside her mental world. I expect to fail, so be prepared in case she starts rampaging.”
“More importantly, I have questions about you putting Kuwajima-san to sleep with a song as if that were perfectly natural. What’s that special ability? For that matter, what is this mental-world business?”
“Y-You’re forbidden from misusing it!”
What did Meiko imagine I would do after putting Kuwajima to sleep?
Wasn’t that an insult toward an ordinary university student you could find anywhere?
In roughly half the available scenarios, I was so harmless one might suspect I’d been castrated.
“Of course I won’t. I would never use hypnosis completely devoid of ordinary qualities outside an emergency. Me, of all people.”
“So convincing.”
For that matter, this wasn’t my power but the auditory hallucination’s mysterious ultrasonic hypnosis.
At minimum, it couldn’t be abused unless the auditory hallucination’s interests aligned with mine.
And the method was far too abnormal to qualify as an ordinary university student’s talent. Of course I wouldn’t use it regularly.
More importantly, Kuwajima was probably the only person it would affect this well.
“Ah, right. Meiko, prepare the watermelon in case I succeed.”
“…Like this, in front of my chest?”
“Anywhere is fine.”
What possible meaning would holding the watermelon before your chest have, Meiko?
Why did you look as though you’d suffered a humiliation, Meiko?
I hadn’t said anything.
After thinking briefly, I gave her the gentlest smile I could manage.
“Even if Meiko’s chest is numerically and significantly smaller than Kuwajima’s, your value to me doesn’t change. Above all, you’re my only ‘childhood friend,’ Meiko.”
“Absolute trust and devastating humiliation are attacking me simultaneously.”
“Then I’ll be going.”
With that, I fell asleep in order to enter Kuwajima’s mental world.
As an aside, I paid close attention to getting sufficient sleep and could usually fall asleep about four seconds after deciding to do so.
Admittedly, I couldn’t manage 0.93 seconds.
“I once synchronized people’s dream worlds to create a village festival, but that was only a surface-level dream world managed by my power.”
“Your destination this time is a world deep within one person’s mind, where even my power has difficulty reaching.”
“Her true mind—what you might call her genuine feelings—and something resembling the core of her water-manipulation ability are probably sleeping there.”
“Therefore, if you persuade her true self to remove that core, the ability should naturally be expelled.”
“However, she may resist and eject you, or you may be harmed, so be careful.”
“The countermeasure is to hold firm to yourself.”
As the auditory hallucination recited what sounded like a familiar mental-world template, I awakened inside a dream.
I knew that expression sounded strange, but it was the appropriate description.
One moment, I noticed that I was standing bolt upright.
“…Where am I?”
It was a very Kuwajima-like world.
Kuwajima strove to speak and act eccentrically, yet when the moment came, she oddly lost her nerve or became serious.
What she loved were complicated, especially meaningless strings of words epitomized by the Kumamoto dialect.
And the world where Kuwajima had kept her true feelings hidden all this time was…
“A school.”
It was a school building I didn’t recognize.
Though while I hadn’t seen it before, I’d heard about it during casual conversation.
This was the middle school Kuwajima had attended back home in Kumamoto.
It was probably the very stage where she’d come to curse herself.
──────
“The Shadow World of ___ Municipal ___ Middle School”
Width: Roughly 1.5 kilometers (Kuwajima Taeko’s sphere of daily life)
Height: The rooftop is inaccessible (It was off-limits.)
Student Population: Lots (She remembers nothing except being surrounded by the nameless masses.)
Faculty: Enemies (They were always scolding her.)
Charisma: At its peak (She was constantly filled with expectation and anxiety.)
Kuwajima Taeko’s Location: Somewhere in this world
University Student From the City: Who Art Thou?
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Why had the hallucination casually followed me into Kuwajima’s mental world?
That made it seem less like an abnormality inside my brain and more like one stuck to something else.
How dare it do something that reduced my ordinariness?
Never mind.
We could assume it would be somewhat useful in the present situation.
According to the hallucination, the school and the surrounding area of Kuwajima’s daily life comprised this entire world. Kuwajima’s true self was somewhere within that narrow territory.
The season appeared to be early spring.
There was no sunlight stabbing my skin, and the sky and air both felt springlike.
However, if the world was based on Kuwajima’s knowledge, these details could easily be inconsistent.
“First, I need to find Kuwajima.”
I’d assumed I would be sent to her from the beginning, but perhaps Kuwajima herself didn’t want to meet me.
If so, blindly searching would probably cause her to flee.
I was clearly a foreign element in this world, and the students walking nearby stared at me.
It seemed to be after school. It felt a little early compared with the real world, but perhaps Kuwajima had found class time boring.
“Hmm.”
After thinking briefly, I headed for the faculty room.
“Goetheschwarz Sanzen Sanbyaku Sanjuuin-san. Goetheschwarz Sanzen Sanbyaku Sanjuuin-san. A family member has come to see you, so please report to the faculty room immediately. If you don’t, he says he’ll begin reading over the school broadcast from the ‘Book of Truth’ reportedly written by Goetheschwarz Sanzen Sanbyaku Sanjuuin-san. Let’s see… As a sample? ‘Regarding My Minions: Loyal servants of Goetheschwarz Sanzen Sanbyaku Sanjuuin. One male model and one female model exist, both of whom have sworn absolute loyalty to Goetheschwarz Sanzen Sanbyaku Sanjuuin. That loyalty sometimes goes slightly too far and frequently troubles their master, but Goetheschwarz Sanzen Sanbyaku Sanjuuin forgives everything with her boundless compassion—'”
“Stop summoning me over the school broadcast!”
I carefully persuaded a teacher in the faculty room and devised the fastest method imaginable to reach Kuwajima’s ears. Her true self appeared within seconds.
She looked a little younger than the Kuwajima in my memory, about middle-school age.
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Typical Ordinary Answer:
Gather information about Kuwajima from the people inside her mental world, gradually learn about her true feelings, find a way to contact her, experience rejection caused by mutual misunderstanding, then open up to her and persuade her one step at a time.
Kirishiro Gouto’s Answer:
Time is precious. You come to me first. We’ll talk afterward.