“This is the place…”
Satoshi Iriya’s apartment was about three train stops away from the high school. It was located about a three-minute walk from the nearest station, and there were general retail stores, supermarkets, and entertainment facilities nearby, making it a very nice place to live.
It was completely dark outside, and the light peeking from the room had changed from daylight to an orange-tinged incandescent color. The sound of footsteps climbing the stairs echoed eerily, and Shino, who was leading the way, stopped. Room 205. Apparently, that was Satoshi Iriya’s room.
“I’ll open it.”
We nodded silently at Shino’s words. She stuck a key, which we didn’t know where she got it, into the lock, and it clicked. Of course, this was the first time we had ever broken into a place. I was worried about what would happen if someone was there or if the neighbors found out, but those fears turned out to be unfounded.
“Shall we go in?”
“I guess so…”
“Excuse us~”
“M-Me too.”
For now, it would be suspicious if we stayed outside. We hurriedly entered Satoshi Iriya’s house. The first thing we noticed was a strange odor.
“Ugh~, it smells awful~”
“It does…”
“Let’s turn on the light… I can’t see anything.”
“Right. Light, light…”
The room was, of course, empty, and since there was no moonlight, it was even darker than outside. I, who was at the back, ran my hand along the middle of the wall and found a switch. Then, I turned on the power.
“Ugh…”
When the light came on, the first thing that caught my eye was the kitchen, which looked like a garbage dump. Empty cans, plastic bottles, and plastic containers from convenience stores and deliveries were scattered all over the floor, and the liquid stains peeking through the gaps glistened wetly.
“Was Satoshi Iriya a meticulous person?”
“…Just ignore it.”
When Reon smiled maliciously, Shino pouted slightly.
Even with a handkerchief covering my mouth, the stench pierced my nose. We avoided the garbage and reached the door at the back.
“Hey, there aren’t any dead bodies, right?”
“Don’t say scary things~! Geez!”
I wonder if Akina is really scared…?
I didn’t really feel any tension, but that helped to relax the atmosphere.
“Here we go.”
When we nodded, Shino opened the door with a bang, revealing a single one-room apartment. The curtains were fluttering in the wind, and the night sky peeked in from the balcony. The room was still dirty, but it was just cluttered, and there was no strange odor.
The furniture consisted of a sofa and a small table in the center of the room, where a laptop was sitting alone. It was powered on, so the owner of the room must have left without turning it off, or it was in sleep mode. Another notable feature was a ladder at the far end of the room, leading to a loft.
“…For now, let’s do what we came here to do.”
“Right.”
Shino moved the garbage and sat in front of the laptop. Reon silently climbed the stairs to the loft.
Aren’t they both too impulsive…?
This is really a break-in. It’s strange to hesitate after coming this far, but my sense of ethics is getting in the way.
“I’m going to clean the room~ It’s too dirty like this~”
That’s also bad, isn’t it…?
I thought that if the house was clean, ‘Satoshi Iriya’ would be confused when he came back, but she had already started acting.
“Everyone is too free-spirited…”
Feeling at a loss, I decided to go up to the loft where Reon was. It seemed like a good place to hide something.
“Did you find something… what’s wrong, Reon?”
There was a futon in the center of the loft, and cardboard boxes were piled up around it. Reon was sitting with her legs tucked to one side in the back, but when I called out to her, she turned her body towards me, but her face remained down. Then, Reon threw an old, water-stained wallet in front of me.
“Sakurazuki, do you know what this is…?”
“…No?”
“It’s my mother’s… The position of the scratches is exactly the same as what I remember…”
“!”
In the Diary, Reon’s mother, angry at losing her wallet, tried to beat Reon to death. And then, he picked it up, called himself Yuto Sano, and saved her life.
“That day, when I woke up, that woman was in a good mood, and I was confused. But for some reason, the wallet was new, and she showed me a ten-thousand-yen bill. Thanks to Yuto Sano, she said…”
“Reo… Kya!”
When I reached out to call out to Reon, I tripped over a cardboard box and knocked it over.
“Oh no~! I’m sor…ry… I’m so, so, so sorry━━━”
I don’t have the guts, so I can’t really snoop around. Especially a high school boy, a boy of that age. There must be one or two things he wouldn’t want anyone to see━━━that’s what I thought.
“Wha… wha… why?”
What came out of the cardboard box was my first photo book as a gravure idol. Moreover, there were many copies of the same one.
“1… 2… 3…”
I couldn’t help but start counting them one by one. And when I finished counting, I saw another cardboard box of the same shape next to it. I didn’t feel any guilt anymore. When I opened it, the same thing was inside.
“53… 54… 55…”
I was implicitly being asked for a pillow business by my manager and president to increase sales, which were not doing well. In the midst of all that, I was overjoyed to hear that a big spender had bought a hundred copies at once. And I was happy that it was him who came to the handshake event. I was able to reaffirm how much I loved him.
“98… 99… 100”
Exactly one hundred copies. I didn’t feel the need to look for other cardboard boxes. I had a gut feeling that everything was here.
“Hahaha… I see. It was all a lie…”
The last bastion I wanted to believe in had crumbled. The feelings I had for him had completely collapsed. What remained was━━━
“I see, so that’s how it is! …Fufufu… Ahahahahahaha!”
“Huh~, that’s strange. Why do you have that? It’s strange, right~? Right~? Right~!? Right~!?”
When I looked down from the loft, Shino was laughing eerily in front of the computer, and Akina, who had found something while cleaning up, was speaking in a broken, forceful tone.
“Fufufufu… So that’s how it was…”
Reon muttered while looking down, but a crescent moon shape was floating on her lips.
“It’s so strange! Ahahahahaha!”
I was just as crazy as the other three. I wanted to be crazy.
If it was just the Diary, there was a possibility that what Shino said was a tall tale, a bad fabrication, and a coincidence.
A piercing, maniacal laugh echoed through the quiet darkness from the gap in the curtains.
This world is a fabrication━━━
Sakurazuki Saionji was not created by her parents, but by the creator of this world, and was a doll programmed to fall in love with Yuto Sano.
The life I had lived so far was all a game of make-believe on a prepared scenario.
Our joys, sorrows, experiences, origins, circumstances━━━everything was just a piece to complete the story called LoD. Even our lives.
But━━━
“I don’t want to die…”
That fear, as if our hearts were being gripped by something gooey and intangible, was the only driving force for our empty selves. Driven by impatience, we began searching the room without any signal.
Even though Satoshi Iriya had saved our lives, we were constantly worried that the World’s Compulsion would work again and make us fall in love with that man, or that we would be dragged into a scenario where our lives were on the line.
“There’s nothing… nothing is coming out.”
Many items (….) that were memories of me and him came out, but I didn’t care about any of them. We no longer had the luxury of indulging in false memories.
In the first place, even Satoshi Iriya, who was from a higher world, could not escape the World’s Compulsion. What could we do even if we knew?
“Haha, no matter what we do, it’s probably useless…”
An unpleasant sense of despair took over me. I was sorry for the other three, who were trying to find something, but I didn’t feel like moving anymore.
I sat down on the stairs to the loft and took out the Diary again. Then, I flipped through it again, page by page.
“Amazing. You’ve been helping us all along…”
It must have been hard for just me, but it was four times that. Our daily lives were supported by Satoshi Iriya. And yet━━━
“If this is what I was going to go through, wouldn’t it have been easier to die that day…?”
I’m the worst. I’m blaming the person who saved my life. Why didn’t you let me die easily? Why did you leave such a terrible Diary?
I looked down from the loft and measured the distance to the floor, but it wasn’t enough.
I wish it was a little higher…
I flipped through the Diary to the day of graduation.
The determination not to be afraid of death is what brings victory━━━
That sentence caught my eye.
“I’m so pathetic…”
‘Satoshi Iriya,’ who knew the day he would die, must have felt a hundred times more fear than we did. And yet, he sacrificed his own life to save us.
“What… what should we do?”
I looked up at the sky, but there was only the ceiling right there. It’s a loft, so that’s to be expected, but it felt like the despair of hitting a wall called the ‘World’s Compulsion’ no matter what I did had become a reality, and I hated it. However, a part of the ceiling was dented, and there were blood-like marks on it, so I couldn’t help but look.
The culprit was undoubtedly ‘Satoshi Iriya.’ He must have been trying to escape the sense of stagnation in the current situation, which he couldn’t do anything about. It seems it was futile though…
Looking down, the [Diary] that had slipped from my hand was lying open, face down. It seems I had been handling it carelessly without realizing it. Feeling guilty, I was about to pick it up carefully when something caught the edge of my vision.
“What’s that…”
Something was sticking out from under the futon, so when I flipped it over, there was a torn piece of paper hidden there. The layout and design were very similar to the [Diary], so when I looked back at the [Diary], there was a page that had been torn out.
“Eh━━━?”
My pupils widened, and I unconsciously crushed the piece of the [Diary] in my hand.
I can’t stay like this━━━
“E-everyone! Gather downstairs for a bit!”
Even though it was the middle of the night, I shouted loudly. I might have bothered the neighbors. But even if it meant disregarding consideration for others, I had to tell them.
“…What’s wrong?”
“I found it! W-we, we’re already…”
My words caught in my throat. My voice was choked with tears, and I couldn’t form words. All I could do was draw attention by crying like a baby.
I ran down the loft stairs, and jumped halfway down, but I failed the landing and fell.
“Sakurazuki-san, please calm down…”
“Yeah~, what did you find~?”
“Um, that, well…”
“Take a deep breath…”
“But… but!”
I forgot how to breathe, and the things I wanted to say wouldn’t come out as words. It would be faster to just show them, so I handed over the crumpled piece of the [Diary] as it was.
I heard the sound of it being unfolded, and then a gasp.
“T-this is…”
My vision was blurred, and I couldn’t see anything, but I could tell what the other three were feeling.
We were truly saved. We are ‘free’ now━━━
◇
To Sakurazuki, Reon, Akina, and Shino,
You probably won’t believe it, but in my previous life, I was saved by you all.
In the dark room, for me who had nothing, your joys, angers, sorrows, and pleasures, and your stories were my emotional support.
I’m sorry that I couldn’t lead you, who I owe so much to, to a happy ending.
I’m sorry for giving you a bad ending.
I’m such a terrible person, but I will protect your futures no matter what.
The scenario of [LoD] depicts the high school life centered around the protagonist: [Yuto Sano], so once you graduate, the ‘World’s Compulsion’ that bound you will disappear.
In other words, if you overcome the Total Party Kill Ending, you will be truly ‘free.’
Someone might end up with Sano, or you might find someone even better.
I don’t know what will happen in the future…
Well, not knowing what will happen is what the future is supposed to be like.
Even so, I pray for your happiness.
See ya.
━━━
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