A single choice can change everything

It was the night after I got home from the barbecue trip, and I was lying on my bed thinking about a whole bunch of stuff. My thoughts were completely scattered. I couldn't get the conversation between Mizusawa and Hinami out of my mind. Of course, it had been a shock to witness Mizusawa tell her he liked her…but something else stuck with me even more. Mizusawa had come to a decision on the trip. He'd resolved to throw away his mask and go for what he really wanted in life. Hinami had seen him make that choice, yet she hadn't budged an inch from her own chosen path—fiercely protecting her mask and delivering a flawless performance. The two of them seemed similar in some ways, and yet at their core, they were fundamentally different. The mask and the truth, the performance and the real self, the player and the character—their paths diverged according to which side of each dichotomy they valued more. To choose the mask or the truth. To continue the performance or to become their real self. To view reality as a player or a character. Weren't the choices they had made deeply connected to my own situation right now? I was wrestling with an uncomfortable hunch. Aoi Hinami, who was always right, didn't have the answer this time.

The answer was in those words that kept replaying in the back of my mind. At least, I had a hunch that's where the answer was. And then there was the LINE message Hinami had sent me a couple minutes earlier. [At the end of the fireworks, tell Kikuchi-san how you feel about her. ] I didn't know how to react to that assignment. When I asked her for more info, she said that from what I'd told her about our last date, my chances of success looked high. Plus, the special setting of the fireworks would boost my chances even more. Finally, even if Kikuchi-san rejected me, it would be good experience that I could apply in the future. Her words were convincing, and I knew what she was saying was probably right and that doing what she said would be the most efficient choice. But I felt like she was telling me to just put on a good performance. It felt wrong—repulsive. What should I do? I felt like I'd been hurled straight into impenetrable darkness. The fireworks were coming up the following night. * * * It was six thirty PM . The summer sun was low in the sky, on the cusp between evening and night. The plaza in front of Toda Koen Station was packed with people. They were everywhere I looked. No matter where I went, I'd be breathing in the air someone else had just exhaled, and I instinctively started taking shallower breaths. It was amazing that the fireworks had attracted such a huge crowd. I figured it would be hard to find Kikuchi-san among all those people, but I shouldn't have worried. Her magical powers had grown twentyfold, so it was impossible to miss her. I peered around the road running in front of the station, drawing ever nearer to the source of the magical power. "Kikuchi-san." "Oh! …Tomozaki-kun."

As soon as she spotted me, her anxious expression transformed into a peaceful one. That alone was almost enough to do me in. But there was more. "…A yukata." "Oh…yes." Kikuchi-san looked down modestly and stepped back a few paces, I guess from shyness. Her geta sandals clacked against the pavement. "I—I thought I'd go ahead and wear it…" "Oh, um, yeah." She glanced up at me, and our eyes met. "…Since it's a special occasion." "…Oh, uh-huh." Her brief explanation delivered the finishing blow. Luckily, the moment before I toppled over, I managed to chug some of my bottled tea, which saved my sanity in the nick of time, even if my ability to think was still in shambles. "Th-there are so many people." "…Yeah." "…Should we get going?" "…Okay." We headed toward Todabashi Bridge, where the fireworks would take place. We were walking a little closer than usual to make sure we wouldn't get separated. Now that I had a chance to look more closely, I saw Kikuchi-san was wearing an indigo-blue cotton kimono with a Japanese pattern on it, accented by a yellow sash. I think the reason she looked so elegant and refined despite the less-subdued color combination was her natural aura and magical energy like a clear stream of water. As I looked for the right road, my heart felt at risk of giving in completely to the overwhelming sense of summer enchantment emanating from Kikuchi-san. Each clack of her geta was reverberating evocatively through my head. I'd slacked on figuring out a route ahead of time because I'd assumed we could follow the huge crowd of people all going to the same place, but the throng of people split in several directions outside the station. Uh-oh. "Do you think everyone is headed for the fireworks?" "I'm…guessing so." Could I assume people were going different ways to avoid overcrowding any one route, since all roads led to the viewing area? To be safe, I chose the street with the most people. As they say, the king's road is the right road.

"Should we try going this way?" I suggested. "Um, okay." Kikuchi-san nodded and followed alongside me with delicate steps. Her steps were a little shorter than usual, maybe because of the geta, but she made a perfect picture walking along so elegantly. The Japanese-print yukata set off her petite shoulders and glowing white skin. My usual impression of her was as a fairy from a fantasy story, so I'd assumed she looked best in Western-style clothes like the maid uniform from the café where she worked. Seeing her in a kimono felt like a new discovery. Basically, she was a fairyslash-angel-slash-elf no matter what she wore. I couldn't stop looking at her. Suddenly, our eyes met. "Uh, um…Tomozaki-kun." "…Huh?" Suddenly coming back to earth, I saw that Kikuchi-san was looking down shyly. "…I get embarrassed…when people look at me too much…" "Oh! Uh, um…I-I'm sorry… I didn't mean…" "Oh, uh, I know you didn't mean…anything, but…um…" "Oh right…um, sorry, I…" "Uh, it's fine…" The red of her cheeks joined the dark blue and yellow of her yukata, making her into an even more beautiful fairy than before. After a while, we came to a part of the street lined with festival stalls. "Oh…look!" She'd spotted the candy apples. "D-do you want one?" "…Mm-hmm." Her geta clacking sonorously, she walked over to the stall and asked for an apple. But before I could follow her over to pay, I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of her holding it. She was so beautiful I thought I might actually faint. A minute or two passed. "…I bought it," she said, walking toward me. Her usual soft, light, fairylike appearance was married with the eye-catching yet grounded elegance of the yukata. And to top it all off, she was holding the round bright red fruit.

She was perfect. "…Uh, okay," I said, staring at her again. "Sh-should we go?" Focusing single-mindedly on keeping my cool, I barely managed to lead the way down the street. * * * "Wow, there sure are lots of people here." "Yes, it's quite the crowd!" We'd arrived at the banks of the Arakawa River and were looking for a place to sit. The show was scheduled to start in about ten minutes, and most of the free seating was already taken, so we were searching for any little gap. The whole shore was packed with people, with barely a crevice between the plastic sheets that were laid out to sit on. Kikuchi-san seemed to find the scene delightfully novel. Makes sense. I guess for someone who descended so recently from the heavens, the worldly customs of human beings must seem refreshing. "I think I see a spot over there!" "Oh, you're right!" After circling the whole area, we found a spot just big enough for the two of us between two large groups. I spread out the plastic sheet Hinami had instructed me to bring, and we sat down. "Oh…Tomozaki-kun, thank you very much…," she said, lowering her lashes. "Um, um, it's nothing…" Kikuchi-san sat down elegantly on the sheet. According to Hinami, "There are good spots and bad spots, but basically wherever you sit, it'll be beautiful." And if Hinami says so, it's probably true. "It's been ages since I went to see fireworks," Kikuchi-san said. "Really? Same here… I guess I haven't been since I used to go with my family." "Yes! …Me neither!" The conversation ended. On this day, I was doing something different from our movie date. This whole time, I hadn't brought up a single one of my memorized topics. More to the point, I didn't memorize any for today. Naturally, there were more silences than when we went to the movie.

But that was my strategy for testing out the truth of those words . "Oh, it's starting!" A small starburst lit up the crowd, announcing the start of the show. A few seconds later, there was a loud boom. "Oh, it's starting…" Another small one went off. Kikuchi-san's upturned face was tinted yellow. According to some info I'd looked up online before we came, the Todabashi fireworks happen on the same day and time as the Itabashi fireworks, and you can see the other show in the distance from either location. Both shows are fairly large on their own, and if you add up the number of fireworks from both, they can rival the largest firework shows in Tokyo. In other words, even though they're a good distance apart, the show is actually fairly major. The crowd around us was buzzing pleasantly. It wasn't hushed exactly, but for such a large gathering of people, I felt like it was impressively quiet. Most people were gazing casually at the sky, but others were looking at their phones or chatting with friends or peering down at the yakisoba they'd bought at one of the stalls. Everyone was doing their own thing. Big crowds are like that—somehow lively, considerate, and quiet all at once. The colorful fireworks blossomed in the dark sky. The delicate bursts of red, blue, green, and pink overlapped one another, sharing the sky to create a single magical fantasy. They radiated outward, drifted down to earth in a trail of white afterimages, and faded. The glittering magic seemed to fill the entire sky. There were wonders small and big, powerful explosions, and the exquisite beauty made by all of them together. Before I knew it, I was completely drawn in. Kikuchi-san seemed to be, too. "Wow…" "…Yeah." "It's so beautiful, isn't it…?" The colors of the summer night lit up Kikuchi-san's face as she gazed spellbound at the fireworks.

"Yes, it's beautiful." Sitting there on the dim riverbank, warm from the lingering heat of the afternoon sun and the crowds of people, her face lit by the magical glow, Kikuchi-san looked incredibly beautiful and sacred and serene to me. Time flowed by us in a quiet, sparkling stream. I sat wordlessly, not searching for something to say but simply drinking in the sensations around me and enjoying the moment. If words arose naturally, I said them. That was my guiding principle for the night. "Um…" I had been wondering about something. Kikuchi-san looked up at me. "…Yes?" The thought had come to me as I listened to Hinami and Mizusawa's conversation. I wanted to know. Those words. Up till the night of the barbecue, Mizusawa had looked down on the world from a player's perspective, living life in a way that ensured he was safe from pain. But that night, he broke out of the safe zone and descended to the world of the characters, being true to what he wanted and stepping forward based on his real feelings despite the risk of getting hurt. It made me wonder—what about me? The course of action I was planning to take with Kikuchi-san, under instruction from Hinami, wasn't my choice as the character living in this world. No—these were calculated actions chosen by a player who stayed a step removed from the world, a player trying to advance toward an artificial goal called an "assignment." Weren't they? And that's why I had a suspicion. "The other day you said I was hard to talk to sometimes, but what about today…?" Maybe today she felt different. "Yes. Um, t-today…?" And if she did, I might have been making a small mistake all along. "Yes, just today." That's what I wanted to know. "Well, now that you mention it…" A smile spread slowly over Kikuchi-san's face. "Today, you've been easy to talk to the whole time."

The fireworks had finally reached their climax. The sky burst with light. The explosion spread outward slowly, gently caressing the darkness and leaving behind glowing trails. Again and again, until the series of booms and flashes gradually covered the whole night sky with hovering light. The sky became steadily brighter with each overlapping burst, until everything around us was brightly illuminated. The blinking orange lights that danced around the edge of the whiteness decorated the night sky like strings of Christmas lights. I couldn't take my eyes off the magical scene. They say people become more proactive in summer, and it's probably inevitable when things like this are going on. Once you see this brilliant display, you're bound to start feeling a little romantic. I mean, I'd never been in love myself. I'd always turned my eyes away from reality—and even I couldn't help getting the bug. The trails of light slowly spread from the sky down to the water like a weeping willow tree before melting away. As I watched that last bit of magic, I thought of the assignment Hinami had given me. [At the end of the fireworks, tell Kikuchi-san how you feel about her. ] Another time, she'd told me I'd learned how to take action. I still had trouble acting on my own initiative, but I was able to implement the assignments she gave me. She was right. I had started conversations with girls, asked Mimimi for her LINE ID, and invited Kikuchi-san to a movie and the fireworks. Before I met Hinami, I couldn't even do that, and now I could. I'd grown. Maybe it was because the magical light was helping me or maybe it was because the mood was so romantic, but I felt able to say what I had to to complete my current assignment, which was probably the hardest one I'd received so far. I was sure of it. The last traces of the spell melted into the water, and the sky faded to black again, leaving only the white smoke lit up by the distant skyscrapers. Filled with confidence, I prepared to speak in the lonely, quiet afterglow. "Kikuchi-san—" And that confidence was the reason I chose my next words myself. "—let's go.

" * * * Kikuchi-san and I walked side by side down the crowded street to the station. The wide alley was packed with stalls on either side. Here and there, paper lanterns glowed red. A middle-aged man smiled at the customers as he popped small, round grilled cakes from their molds. A little boy bit into a huge okonomiyaki pancake, the sauce smearing the corners of his mouth. A young couple walked along silently, their hands firmly joined. A young woman in a suit, maybe on her way home from work, marched upstream through the crowd with a grumpy look on her face. I walked along simply absorbing each of these scenes, watching Kikuchi-san's expression and movements, experiencing the emotions that arose in response, processing the words and images going through my mind—and I realized something. At that moment, I was clearly and willfully disobeying Hinami's assignment. After all, I hadn't felt unable to tell Kikuchi-san my feelings. I simply decided not to. * * * After Kikuchi-san and I parted ways, I took the train to Kitayono Station, the nearest one to my house. When I got off the train, I sent a LINE message to Hinami. [I finished up a bunch of stuff. Can I call you? ] Judging by her response, Hinami must have sensed something unusual in my brief message. [If something major happened, should we meet in person? I can get to Kitayono fast. ]

Apparently, she'd gone to see the fireworks, too, and she was on the Saikyo Line between Toda Koen Station and Omiya Station. If she got off on the way to Omiya, we'd be able to meet right away. I told her that sounded good, and since I was still inside the ticket barrier, I took one of the seats on the platform to wait for her. Several trains stopped at the platform and departed. When the third or fourth one arrived, I sat in my chair watching the passengers flow out the doors, until eventually I saw a figure peel away from the crowd headed for the stairs and walk in my direction. It was Hinami. "…Hey." "So what happened?" She looked more serious than usual, but getting right to the point was her typical MO. I stood up, scratched my head, and looked over at the vending machine. "Wait a second; I'm thirsty. Do you want something?" "…Not particularly." "…Okay." I walked over to the vending machine and bought a can of cold cocoa. Then I sat back down next to Hinami and pulled open the tab. "So? How did she respond?" she asked in a testing tone. "Well…," I said, looking straight ahead. "I didn't tell her." Hinami gave an exasperated sigh. "I know this assignment was one of the harder ones—" "But not because I couldn't," I interrupted. "…What?" She turned quietly to me and stared at my face. I chugged down some cocoa and then looked her in the eye. "I just decided not to." I held her gaze, and she held mine. She was quiet, as if behind her black eyes she was tracing my words back to the intentions motivating them and the logic explaining them and weighing everything. Maybe she was waiting for me to make an excuse, or maybe she wasn't sure what to say in response.

In either case, she waited a long, long time, her eyes fixed on mine, but when I said nothing, she finally asked me a question. "Why?" She said that single word in an emotionless monotone, expressionless as a mannequin. To me, it sounded as sharp as a knife cutting through the string that tied Hinami and me together. I chose my words carefully but honestly. "…I went on the date today without memorizing any topics. And I didn't bring up anything I'd memorized before. I only said what came to mind." "…I see. And?" she asked icily. "Well, naturally, our conversation wasn't very smooth, and there were long silences, and…it didn't go very well." "…Obviously." Her face was a total mask. "But…I asked Kikuchi-san about it at the end. Remember, I told you she'd said after the movie that sometimes I was hard to talk to? Today, I asked her if she felt I was hard to talk to this time. What do you think she said?" Hinami didn't reply. She just kept looking me in the eye and listening. "She said, 'Today, you've been easy to talk to the whole time.'" I waited for her to say something, but when I realized she wasn't going to, I kept going. "When she first told me I was hard to talk to, I thought she meant my skills weren't developed enough, but that wasn't it at all." Hinami raised her eyebrows in surprise. I continued. "The fact was, I was hard to talk to because of those skills." I had been thinking about those words for the past few days now: "Sometimes you're suddenly very easy to talk to…and sometimes…you're suddenly very hard to talk to." I'd assumed that the former was when I smoothly introduced a conversation point from my stock and the latter was when I stumbled and spoke honestly. I mean, I think that was the normal conclusion anyone would reach. That's why I thought I had to work especially hard on memorizing more topics, improving the quality of each one, and stealing techniques for keeping a conversation going.

But I'd been completely wrong. The truth was, I was hard to talk to when I was smooth and easy to talk to when I was more awkward and honest. I thought back to the conversation between Mizusawa and Hinami. "…What I think happened was…she saw through the mask I'd created." I was trying to tell Hinami something very important. So why were her eyes so cold? "Is that so?" she asked. Her tone was flat and unimpressed. It felt like a rejection of my sincerity. "…Hinami?" "There's a countermeasure for that, isn't there? When you're with Kikuchi-san, expressing your true feelings is a more effective attack strategy than memorization—" "Listen." I interrupted her. "Would you stop doing that?" I was doing everything I could to tell her what I really thought, what I really felt. "…Doing what exactly?" She was staring deep into my eyes like she was testing me or trying to see into my mind. I didn't turn away as I answered her. "Do you really think it's a good idea to start out with countermeasures and attack strategies like you did just now? Don't you think we need to start with questions like, What do I really want? or Do I really like Kikuchi-san? " She'd left me a tiny opening, and I went for it. She remained quiet and expressionless for a few moments, then eventually said with disdain, "Did Mizusawa figure you out or something?" Her cutting tone shocked me. I had carefully poured the truth of my feelings into those words and delivered them with determination—and I had failed to reach her. "…He did, but…" True enough, Mizusawa was the catalyst for these thoughts. But that wasn't what I was trying to say. "…I see," she muttered with the same cold expression. That was all. "You seem like you want to say something." She turned her cold gaze away from me. "Not particularly. This is a classic habit of the weak.

They're easily misled by the idea of chasing what they really want, when the idea of 'what you really want' doesn't even exist. All it does is hinder forward progress. I'm not surprised to hear it from you." There was no emotion in the delivery of her orderly argument. "…What's that supposed to mean?" She gave a tired sigh. "When a person talks about what they really want, simply referring to what happens to be best for them at that particular moment, it's an illusion. Therefore, it's meaningless to let those temporary misconceptions constrain you and distract your focus from truly productive actions." She gave me another testing look. I thought about it for a moment, and I had to admit her explanation made sense. Everything she said was always correct in some way and scarily stripped of emotion. But was she really, truly right ? Was what a person really wanted always a temporary misconception? Was it really unproductive and meaningless to prioritize what you wanted in life over efficiency? No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't come up with a logical, rational counterargument for Hinami's point. But based on my intuition, my sense of the issue, and my instincts as nanashi the gamer, I felt like what I really wanted was the most important thing. "I don't think it's meaningless." "…What are you talking about?" I knew insisting I was right wouldn't be able to reach Hinami. Of course not—my point wasn't logical. If we were talking about doing something meaningless—well, this was a case in point. "…I still want to put what I want first." Nevertheless, I insisted on it like an idiot. Yes, what people say they really want can change very easily. You may think you truly want something at one point in time and act accordingly, and then as time passes, the meaning can easily change so you end up contradicting yourself. That's not at all unusual. You could even say it's the norm. In which case,

Hinami's point about what I really wanted being a temporary misconception was actually more logical than my own position. The "correct" thing to do was to avoid letting those thoughts confuse me and instead focus single-mindedly on taking the actions that led to productive, efficient personal growth. It was an exasperatingly sound argument. Which meant that nothing else I said would have any effect on her. Nevertheless, I decided to go with nanashi's instincts. After all, I'd always changed the rules of the game by using my instincts. "I think…I need to prioritize what I want." "I see. And what do you want?" Her eyes cold, Hinami gave the rational reply to advance the conversation. It made me incredibly sad. She wasn't asking because she wanted to see the truth in my heart. She was simply searching for a way to advance the conversation. "You don't want to tell Kikuchi-san you like her because you're not sure about your feelings, right? Well then, would you rather find some other person who meets your standards and set the goal as a confession to them? Who would that be?" As usual, she was firing logical questions at me. It was like she was still searching for a way for me to avoid my emotional, irrational defects and still achieve the goal. Her proposition was perfectly rational, but it wasn't what I wanted to hear. "That's…not the issue." I sensed the immense gulf between our values, but I looked her in the eye again. "Then what is the problem?" "It's…" I understood how tremendously important my answer was. I also sensed that Hinami and I might never be able to understand each other on this point. But my only option was to tell her. "I think it's weird to think of this in terms of assignments and goals… Making friends or telling someone you like them…or any kind of human connection, really." A train announcement echoed faintly over the nearly deserted platform.

Hinami didn't flinch. She just turned her impassive eyes away from me and said, "I see." "What does that mean?" I asked her. But she just kept staring wordlessly ahead. Silence fell over us for a moment. Finally, an announcement for an Omiya-bound train played over the loudspeakers, and Hinami quietly answered me. "Working toward goals was the approach that both of us always took. But if you're going to abandon your goals in life, then you're abandoning your personal improvement." I felt like she was drawing a line in the sand. "It's not that. It's…," I tried to argue back, but I couldn't think of anything to say. "…It's what?" The way she stared at me as she spoke was somehow unlike her. She seemed to be silently urging me to find the right words to answer her with. But I couldn't find them, and a long silence stretched on. "…You're different, too, aren't you?" "Huh?" For a brief second, she bit her lip as if she was trying to control the sadness surfacing in her eyes. But the next instant, the emotion disappeared like it had never existed, like she had resolved to go another way. She pulled the fireworks pin out of her bag and set it on my knee. "I'm giving this back, so I want you to give me back the bag I gave you. You can return it next time you see me, since you probably have stuff in it right now. You don't need it anymore, do you?" I didn't. I understood what those words meant, and that was why I didn't know how to respond. But if I didn't say anything now, everything would come to an end. "…But I—" "Once you drop the controller, you're done for. That's obvious, isn't it?" Hinami interrupted me and stood up. She was refusing to look at me. Everything she ever said was always correct, so what she was saying now probably was, too. I knew that, but I still felt like I had to disagree, which was why I had told her my thoughts. I'd believed that if I really engaged with her, we would be able to bridge that critical difference, that gap between us— that we had to bridge it. I wanted to find something to bring us together and keep on moving forward.

But I didn't have the words, the right answer, to counter Hinami with different but equally sound logic. And so I simply sat there silently, looking down, watching helplessly as the gap became unbridgeable. Something occurred to me at that moment. This was happening because I was a bottom-tier character. If only I could communicate my thoughts better, things wouldn't have come to this. If only I could put reason to my ideas, I would have been able to convince her. For the first time, I felt truly disgusted with myself for my stats. If I weren't so useless, I wouldn't have had this kind of disagreement and so easily lost the relationships I thought I had established. Why was I in the bottom tier? Why was I so weak ? It was so incredibly pitiful and frustrating to be such a garbage character in this game. But I knew it was entirely my own fault, because for all these years I hadn't really engaged with life. I couldn't even bring myself to watch Hinami as she turned away from me and walked onto the train. All I could do was sit there silently, looking down and clenching my fists. "Well, see you at school." It was still early August. Summer vacation had barely started. Hinami's good-bye coiled around me with a far greater weight and complexity than the words themselves warranted.