I Became the Final Subjugation Target of That Era’s Light Novel

Oh!

Kagami’s first words when we met in front of the house.

Did she think I’d be so surprised?

This wasn’t the first time Kagami had come by unannounced.

Besides, these days, I was already suffering at the hands of someone worse than Kagami. Unless she brought along a transparent monster, I didn’t see any reason to be shocked.

Not that I was saying I’d like her to bring one, though.

“Today, you’re not throwing a fit the moment you see me.”

“…When did I ever throw a fit?”

“Uu.”

While I frowned and replied, Koko hid behind me.

“Oh, was that so? Have you been nice to me every time we met until now?”

No, that never happened.

“….”

As I silently headed toward the house, Kagami naturally followed behind me.

“Mya.”

As soon as I entered, Kuro dashed right at my feet.

I scooped up Kuro and stepped inside. Good thing I’d piled up a lot of food in the bowl just in case. Kuro didn’t seem to be starving.

I filled Kuro’s empty bowl with food again and refilled the water dish.

I even cleaned out the bathroom.

Kagami stood quietly in the corner, waiting until I finished my chores. It was like she knew I’d be annoyed if she started touching things around the place.

Normally I would wash up the moment I got back, but today Kagami was here. It felt a bit awkward to make her wait while Koko and I washed up, so I laid out the table and brought out the cups.

When I opened the refrigerator, I was surprised to see a lot more food supplies compared to when I first started living here.

Not that it was stuffed full or anything.

Oh, there’s still some left.

I pulled out a half-full 2-liter bottle of oolong tea.

After pouring it into Kagami’s and Koko’s cups, I sat down, feeling a little proud of myself. I even had drinks to offer guests now. Though I did serve food when I first met Kagami too.

“So, what do you want to talk about?”

I directly asked Kagami while ignoring Koko, who was guzzling down her oolong tea.

“Well, you see, I suddenly have a whole lot to tell you over the past few days.”

Kagami rarely looked up, staring into space, before she began arranging her thoughts.

“First, are you feeling okay? I heard you bled a lot.”

“For me, bleeding is just a part of daily life.”

“How many teens in the world think that way?”

Kagami asked with a somewhat bitter laugh.

Isn’t it quite a lot? East Asia might be relatively peaceful, so we’re not really aware of it, but wars are always happening somewhere on the globe. Naturally, many teens must be dying.

“Well, if they bled as much as me, they’d probably be dead before it even became a daily routine.”

“Let’s just say you look okay on the outside and move on.”

Noticing that I seemed to be thinking too negatively, Kagami shrugged her shoulders and moved on to the next topic.

“I didn’t realize you meant you wanted to jump into a place filled with flames when you asked us to find one.”

“Are you blaming me for that?”

“Who knows.”

Kagami tilted her head, looking like she didn’t quite understand what she was thinking either.

“To be fair, if you were to die, it would only be a loss for us.”

“…You created me, right?”

“You could say that.”

Kagami nodded, but that didn’t feel like the whole truth.

“From our perspective, when your sister starts moving, you are the only one who can effectively stop her.”

“….”

I fixed my gaze on Kagami and said.

“If I’m related to that… well, wouldn’t that give me ample reason to be served?”

“That might give you some reason to be served.”

Kagami looked back and forth between me and Koko before continuing.

“What if that story involves your safety as well?”

“….”

“We still don’t know exactly what your sister is trying to do. But we all know it won’t be anything positive.”

That was true.

I may not know the exact goal, but… she probably has some grand scheme in mind that might destroy the world, dominate it, or some monstrous effort to give her existence meaning.

“So?”

I interrupted Kagami, who seemed to be dancing around the topic a bit too much, and she leaned slightly towards me with a serious expression.

“If your existence causes Kosuzu to drag people around her into it, and if that purpose centers around you, the high-ranking officials of this country won’t just sit idly by. Just think about it. You know well for what purpose your body was created.”

“…For God.”

“That’s right.”

As I confirmed, Kagami nodded.

“There are few people in the world who know that exact intention. Most likely, they will think your existence is that of a wicked cultist torturing innocent beings. That’s why you can use the powers of something that isn’t human.”

“…Would Koko think that too?”

“There’s no reason for her not to think so. Whether it’s transforming blood or her entire body, what are you to people in the end, but two pitiable young girls?”

“…So?”

“If the government is hunting you, and beings capable of creating monsters that can’t be seen by humans are after you too, wouldn’t you need a safe place to rely on?”

I understood what she was getting at.

“But you—”

“I know. To you, we must seem immoral. I don’t understand why you would even worry about ‘such things,’ but—”

Kagami leaned over the table. Even though the table wasn’t extremely close, I couldn’t help but feel an odd pressure and had to pull my face back slightly.

“But among those who are hunting you, do you think there are any pure and innocent beings? Even if they are, can they really protect you and—”

Kagami’s gaze flickered to Koko.

“—that being? To forge a proper cooperation, the only way is to share everything we know. Can you really expose both your identity and Koko’s exact nature to these supposedly innocent beings?”

“…….”

I looked at Koko.

“Uwa?”

Koko seemed flustered, caught between the wary eyes of the one she was cautious of and mine.

I bit my lip, suppressing a sigh, and poured oolong tea into Koko’s empty cup.

“I’ve already received quite a bit of aid like Health insurance. To be honest, can I ask your friends—wasn’t it Yuuki you mentioned?”

Kagami spoke nonchalantly, undeterred by my glare.

“Don’t you think you can’t always rely on that person?”

“…….”

“We can help. Sure, there’s money, but we can also prepare the blood you spill every time. It may not be a comprehensive hospital, but we can provide a place for transfusions, and we can also secure places for both of you to flee when necessary. The best part is we don’t need to be separated during the process. That way, you wouldn’t need to worry as much.”

“I—”

I couldn’t respond.

Yuuka’s mention was decisive.

Yeah, I couldn’t keep relying on help forever. Everything in this room—even the table in front of us—was something I had received from Yuuka.

I had been trying to stay as far away from others’ help as possible, even working part-time, yet I ended up relying on even more help. Lately, my boss seemed to watch me with sympathy.

“There’s no need to feel embarrassed for a child to get help from their parents. At the age when they can’t be independent yet, it’s natural.”

Hearing Kagami’s words lightly added with humor made me scoff.

The so-called ‘parents’ were merely a story on paper, and they weren’t even universally understood as true parents among people.

“There are positive sides too. With your existence in front of them, it would be much easier to gather followers. The more people there are, the more information you can gather. Of course, there may be others with better infrastructure than us, but could you get accurate information from cooperating with them?”

I couldn’t help but narrow my eyes at that.

There was no proof that they would be like that.

But Kagami effortlessly brushed off my gaze yet again.

“…I’ll think about it.”

In the end, I had no choice but to leave that opening.

“Good thinking.”

Kagami replied with a smile on her face.

*

The next morning, I felt strangely odd.

It was because, just yesterday alone, I had both happy and somewhat unpleasant experiences.

The good part was obviously the sports festival.

Despite having some not-so-good circumstances right before, jumping around excitedly and screaming all day helped relieve quite a bit of stress.

I had been wondering why my chest felt so tight in my previous life, but maybe it was because I hadn’t gotten a chance to relieve stress all at once.

The somewhat bad part was obviously meeting Kagami.

To be honest, it’s not so much that I felt bad about meeting Kagami in itself.

While she wasn’t someone I could freely enjoy being around, she was at least favorable toward me and generally agreed to what I asked of her.

However, generally, the presence of that person was not a sign that good news would come, and—

“…A cult.”

“A cult?”

As I muttered alone while changing clothes in the morning, Koko nodded along to my words.

“….”

How should I explain that word, I wondered, but I simply patted Koko’s head without saying anything.

In doing so, I was mulling over the proposal I had received yesterday in my mind.

That’s right. A cult.

A religion that uses the character for “evil” (邪) when saying “crafty.” Even Kagami herself had directly thrown that word at me.

I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to make it easier for me to understand or if she was bold enough to admit it herself—no, on second thought, seeing her work in such outfits at bars proves that she definitely thinks that way.

Didn’t she say they hadn’t even decided on a name for the religion yet?

From just the explanation, it seems without a doubt like a new religion. Yet, looking into the stories regarding the Kurosawa family, it looks like it’s not just a recent development either.

Perhaps, it was not so long ago that it wasn’t a ‘specific religion’ like Yuuki had mentioned; it may have only been recently isolated from it.

Or maybe they started worshipping another god after abandoning their previous one for some reason.

… Let alone the original name, ‘Shub-Niggurath,’ from Lovecraft’s mythos is hard to call.

The name ‘Shura-Nirlas’ in this world still sounds like it wouldn’t come from the East no matter how I think about it.

Why didn’t that author explain such essential settings?

… Or maybe Koto Ne of the Kurosawa family, a character I couldn’t read in the original work, is a forced addition in the later part of the story. Until then, I haven’t seen any proper foreshadowing, let alone mentions of her.

If only there had been some bait, I might have noticed immediately upon arriving in this world.

Originally designed to end in a single volume, I wonder if the story got stretched out because it gained a little popularity and then needed an ‘ending.’

But this world isn’t a novel. Though it’s incredibly similar to the world within that novel.

So, in this manner, another story must have already begun behind the scenes.

“…Hah.”

Koto Ne?

“No, don’t worry.”

“Uu?”

Koko tilted her head at my words.

I’m sure I can manage somehow.

Even if I were to get involved with a cult, I had no intentions of dragging Koko along with me.

No matter how many sticky descriptions come from those good ol’ light novels that were prevalent back then, some parts won’t be so different from the ones released these days. Especially the endings are mostly happy endings. Even if characters might die mid-way.

The evil-doers all face their demise by the end, and the protagonist and heroine survive to get a happy ending.

Sure, this story may have veered off course, but—

Well, as long as I think that the protagonist and heroine are both present, I should be fine.

“Shall we eat?”

“Yeah!”

Koko’s smile at my words made me chuckle back.

There’s a lot to do today.

Since it was Sunday, I had to start my part-time job a bit earlier and deliver the lunchbox I had received.

My boss had said I could just keep it, but even so, I had already received way too much until now.

I think I might have started to take it for granted after receiving so much up to this point.

It’s better not to owe too much. Even if it’s a debt others don’t want to accept, it will still remain in one’s heart eventually.

*

I left for my part-time job a little earlier than usual and returned the lunchbox to my boss.

“You could have just kept it.”

Although my boss said that, he still took back the lunchbox.

I had considered filling it with something before returning it, as what I received wasn’t just a lunchbox.

But then again, with my cooking skills, it would just turn out to be tasteless food.

And I wouldn’t know when my boss had his meals, and suddenly piling up lunchboxes could be an inconvenience.

“Huh?”

As my boss received the lunchbox, he looked surprised by the sound it made when shaking inside.

When he opened the lid of the lunchbox, his eyes widened slightly.

Inside were some chocolates and a handful of candies.

I wasn’t sure what my boss’s taste was like, but I had often seen him pulling out cakes to eat along with coffee, so I figured he might quite like these.

“Thank you for coming.”

I said that as I slightly bowed my waist.

“The things inside were picked out together with Koko.”

“Uh… you really didn’t need to do this.”

“If it weren’t for you, I would have just bought some bread from the store.”

“…Fine.”

My boss quietly nodded and closed the lunchbox lid again.

“I’ll… enjoy this. Thank you.”

My boss said with a small smile.

It was a very small smile, but it stood out so much that it seemed incredibly bright for a rare grin from my boss.

*

Thus, the sports festival came to an end.

It felt a bit empty as it wrapped up in just one day after a lengthy practice period, but the process itself was enjoyable, so it didn’t really matter.

In the second semester, besides the sports festival, several events were prepared. The school trip was next month, and then the cultural festival after that.

Not to mention Christmas or the end of the year, which are essential in light novels.

Well, while youkai may pop out during those events, that’s something I can just take care of.

Monday morning really felt surprisingly ordinary.

Although the sports festival had just taken place two days ago, it didn’t mean I could stay drenched in its aftereffects. That’s how all things go, right? Even the four-year cycle Olympic Games or World Cups settle back down swiftly after they’re over.

Everyone just goes on living their ordinary lives like that.

Light novels deal with events that happen when the ordinary daily life breaks apart. Though, there are those light novels that are simply about daily life itself as well.

Koko and I headed toward the rooftop.

Though summer was over, and it had been some time since the sports festival, the weather was still bearable for the time being.

Koto Ne. Koko.

As we stood side by side looking up at the blue autumn sky, a voice called out from behind us.

Turning around, I saw Yuuka.

As usual, she held bread in both hands.

“Here!”

“Uwa!”

When Yuuka handed over melon bread, Koko cheered.

…Yeah, this is everyday life.

It’s been a long while since I stepped into the extraordinary from the moment I crossed over here, but perhaps even that extraordinary could turn into routine through daily repetition.

Everyone makes efforts to protect their life. Working, studying… whatever it may be.

So, I simply move and work hard like ‘everyone’ does.

“Thank you.”

“What’s this all of a sudden?”

As I expressed my gratitude, Yuuka awkwardly replied.

Yeah.

No matter how the results turn out.

“…….”

We leaned against the rooftop railing and ate our bread.

The rooftop was surrounded by a fence, so there was no risk of falling backward.

While having a meal with the cool autumn breeze brushing against us,

“……Hey, Koto Ne.”

Yuuka started speaking.

“Yeah?”

As I turned my gaze to Yuuka, noticing her somewhat hesitant voice, she stammered for a moment before saying.

“Uh, never mind, it’s nothing.”

“Huh?”

I tilted my head.

But Yuuka didn’t seem willing to share what she was pondering.

Hmm.

Given Yuuka’s hesitation, it seemed like it might be a pretty important topic.

However, conversely, her unwillingness to share with me could also mean it was a sensitive matter.

I decided to wait until eventually, Yuuka told me later.

Rather than rushing her, I finished the bread in my hand.

After finishing the bread, Koko gazed longingly at the transparent bag she was holding as if she still wanted more.

“…Shall we go get something else to eat?”

There should still be a lot of dorayaki left in the literature club room.

Seeing Koko and I eat well, Izumi had stocked it abundantly, even slicing some money from the book purchases.

I wasn’t entirely sure if that was acceptable, but well, if it was okay with her, then it must be acceptable.

I decided not to worry too much.

“Let’s go!”

Koko enthusiastically replied and took the lead, followed by Yuuka and me as we trailed behind her with amused smiles.

---