[101] Meeting God (3)
Shirone felt as if he'd been struck on the head with a hammer. He could accept the plausibility that this place might be the afterlife, but meeting a god was an entirely different matter.
"You're saying you're a god?"
"You don't believe me?"
"Well... I didn't even know gods existed, and if they did, I wouldn't have expected them to be this... human."
The woman smiled.
"All created things inevitably resemble their creator. Just as any object made by humans bears human thought and form, plants, animals, mountains, and seas all echo their maker. But the degree varies. The measure is creativity. A squirrel, for example, is more creative than a rock. In that sense, humans resemble gods quite a lot. And Shirone. You are one of the people who most resemble a god."
She reached out and stroked Shirone's face.
"Shirone. Will you create the world with me?"
Shirone was bewildered. Everything happened so suddenly and felt so unfamiliar. Above all, the woman's claim that this wasn't the afterlife stuck in his mind. It might mean a sliver of hope was possible.
"Is there no way to go back?"
She regarded him as if surprised, then shook her head.
"I'm afraid not, Shirone. There's no going back. Didn't you choose to end your life? You want to go back now?"
"That's not it. I was prepared for it, and if it weren't for you I wouldn't have come to. Ah—may I call you that?"
"Of course. The idea of 'god' is just a concept. I have no name."
"Then may I ask you one more thing?"
"Heh heh — anything."
"Why do you lie?"
Her brows tightened. The temple seemed to tremble at the motion.
"Gods do not lie. No — gods are beings that cannot lie."
An omniscient, omnipotent god could not lie; any statement could be made true. Still, Shirone read something in her eyes. She was hiding something.
"When I asked if there was a way to return, you said there wasn't. But that's not true."
"Whether such a way exists or not, once I say there isn't, there isn't. That's the reason."
"That's a lie."
"You don't understand, Shirone. I said there's no way back. So you cannot go back—absolutely not!"
"Then I'll put it another way. Regardless of what you intend, I want to know whether a method exists to return to the original world."
"There is no such method!"
"Another lie!"
Her shoulders twitched. Shirone didn't miss the flicker of unease. As she faltered, the temple's scenery rippled like something submerged.
"Are you really a god?"
He had been suspicious from the start. Of course a god needn't look like the ones people imagine, but her reactions were too human.
She nodded as if coming to understand.
"Shirone. We have different concepts of what a god is. That's where the misunderstanding comes from. A god is not the exalted being you imagine. I'm merely an architect of worlds."
She held out her hand. A glass sphere appeared in her palm, inside it a small village with a few people standing about.
"As you can see, I created this village. It's a model, of course. But I can move people like this."
She slipped a finger into the sphere and shifted a farmer feeding his horse to a nearby field.
"There—the farmer moved. If space changes, that means time was given. Can you find any difference from the world you lived in? None. This is what a god is. I am the god of this village."
She brought the glass sphere up to Shirone's face.
"A god is, in the end, just an architect who can create a dimension one level below the one they inhabit. Why, then, does a god feel absolute? That's the interesting part. This farmer won't sense that any force moved him."
She drew the sphere back and cupped it between both hands. As she spread her arms, the village expanded and swallowed the temple.
Shirone looked around. They were standing inside the village now, the two of them facing one another from opposite ends of a lane. The other people remained frozen.
The woman approached the farmer in the field.
"This farmer doesn't know how imperfect my world is. He was born here. There's only one way to make him know."
"Immortal Function," Shirone said.
"Right. The Immortal Function expands perception to the whole. This village is contained inside the glass sphere. It's not an exaggeration to say there's no world beyond the sphere."
She placed a hand on the farmer's shoulder. He became light that spread across the sky. When she thrust out her fist, the landscape contracted and the whole village returned to the sphere.
Shirone stared at the globe, now filled with the light that had flowed from the farmer.
"This farmer expanded into the whole through the Immortal Function. Even so, he cannot perceive me. The same goes for you, Shirone."
The farmer's fate felt uncomfortably close to home. If she hadn't tried to hijack the process, he would have dissipated into meaningless light too.
"What do you want from me? Knowing this doesn't tell me what I can possibly do."
"This," she said, pressing the sphere between her palms. It shrank until it became a single black dot.
"Spot..."
"Yes. This is the true nature of the world we live in. The world you inhabit is also nothing more than a dot. But inside that dot lie infinite worlds. A space-time matrix."
She demonstrated. The scene in the sphere vanished into a dot, and a new world unfurled. Inside that world was another world, and inside that one another... When she pressed her palms together, the sphere vanished. Billions of worlds winked out in an instant.
"Enter the space-time I created. Create your own space-time there. Then a perfect universe will be born."
For reasons he couldn't fully grasp, she wanted innovation in her world. It wasn't an unpleasant offer. Becoming a god of another world in exchange for the risk of death could be a tolerable end.
"I can't do that."
She looked genuinely puzzled.
"Why not? You have no reason or justification to refuse."
"If I enter your space-time, you'll have to sacrifice someone like me again."
Sadness flashed in her eyes for a moment. It passed quickly; her expression cooled as she spoke.
"What does that matter? It's a world you created anyway."
"But you're not a god."
For the first time, hostility rose in her gaze.
"You're a human who belongs to the same world I do. The fact I brought you here before I was fully disassembled proves it. If I were truly a god, wouldn't I be outside the world?"
She did not deny it. That didn't change the stakes.
"Shirone, you must obey me. I summoned you for a reason. If you refuse, I can begin the disassembly process right now."
This was a mind reconstructed by her power. Perhaps it could be undone. But the mere possibility—even the slightest chance—of returning to his original world was enough for Shirone to resist compliance.
"You won't disassemble me."
She reached toward him and invoked the omnipotent power of disassembly. Shirone did not break apart. He was already inside the Spirit Zone.
"Another problem solved. Excellent choice."
Her arm fell slowly.
"Now I see. The Spirit Zone was a spot as well."
A spot could nest infinitely under the space-time matrix's rules. That was why Shirone's spirit could enter the Spirit Zone again.
"And this place... is your Spirit Zone."
Shirone concentrated his light. The woman winced. The red radiance blooming from his body pressed on her like a menacing presence.
Geumgangseung (1)
Five days after Shirone's death.
The students had all regained their memories. The younger ones were particularly shaken. Still, they were gifted youths with stronger-than-average mental fortitude, so the aftereffects were less severe than feared.
But the real crisis was only beginning.
That the school had been overrun by monsters exposed the weakness of its security. For a school that ran dormitories, safety should have been the top priority.
The biggest problem was that a student had died. And it was the school's promising talent, Shirone Arian.
At Iruki and Nade's request, Shirone was in the infirmary instead of the morgue. Logically there should have been a funeral, but the faculty were skittish.
The student council hadn't moved to assign blame because no official declaration of death had been issued.
In short, some were scheming to present Shirone as an apparition and dodge responsibility.
Of course, many teachers felt guilty about such a plan. They had gathered in the faculty meeting room to stress the urgency of the matter.
"We must hold Shirone's funeral immediately. Notify the guardians. If we don't deal with this now, the school's policies will be criticized later."
"This isn't an easy decision. If word gets out that a student died, the fallout will be immense. We could lose the reputation we've built."
"Does that mean we lie and say the dead student is alive? It will come out eventually! The school should make a declaration of conscience. It's not just reputation—the school could be shut down."
"Who doesn't know that? Can't we have a little more time to consider?"
"Don't you see that delay works against us? The whereabouts of Arcane's disciples are still unknown. Letting criminals go free is also critical. We must act now."
The teachers postponing the funeral split into two camps. Those making political calculations wanted to buy time to placate students' anger.
Others genuinely couldn't accept Shirone's death. Etella, Sad, and Shiina—who had been directly involved at the scene—were among those who doubted Shirone was truly dead.
"Principal, please! I heard the student council is convening today. The teachers must take action."
The faculty's anxiety grew because of the student council's influence. If students backed by powerful families began accusing the school, the chance to control the situation would be lost.
"I'm inclined to watch and see."
Most of the teachers stood up in agreement.
"Principal!"
Alpheas understood their feelings. The more they delayed, the worse it would be for the school. But for him there was something more important than the institution's survival: Shirone's true condition.
Was Shirone dead?
Raising such a question at a school that stood for reason and intellect felt absurd.
All the more reason to be cautious. If the dead person weren't Shirone, would anyone even be asking this?
'I must think logically. But I can't.'
Maybe Shirone alone was getting special treatment. Even knowing that, Alpheas couldn't shake the subtle unease lodged in the back of his mind.