/jp/ - Otaku Culture

“Hey, Mother…” 'Twas one of many written on the pages of the book, yet it always caught my undivided attention. I adjust my reading glasses, raise an eyebrow, and let the spiky, round, greenish sigil rise to join the cluster that is Sekai. Then I read what was on her mind: “…I’m sleepy.” Oh. Interesting. So she does tire out eventually. “I've been writing non-stop for two hundred hours—” That measly invested amount of time, but enough to shape the universe above my head. Alas, godhood... “—and worked so much magic into these pages. Yeah, I am tired!” This specific set of astral ink has the same articulation as seeing a small child cross her arms and pout. It is humorous.

“That doesn't affect the book, Sekai. You may go rest and return in twelve hours, and I'll perceive your book all the same.”

“I know, but…” My frown softens at the words that follow. “… But could you tell me a bedtime story? Please?”

A bedtime story, hm? Rubbing my tired eyes, I take out my reading glasses and put them by the unlit candle on top of my table. The cosmos above make for a perfect light source. “A proper request for your perceivable age… However, with your ability to see into the future, if I were to indeed tell you one, wouldn't that mean you'd already know everything about it?” Reading her sentences deliberately and pacing them with my own to create a real dialogue is a difficult struggle; this style of reading is different from how I usually read books.

“Does that matter? I only want to hear your voice, Mother.”

… A smile, tender and kind, is half the answer. “You do have a point. Okay, then, hold on a second.” I ponder the Voilé, lonely and twisted, with dark recesses where a million stars' light does not shine through and between its cracks and crevices I seek a children’s bedtime story, which might as well be the greatest task I've ever faced in terms of finding books… But eventually I find something suitable enough—quintessential, even, coming from the massive golden tree that layers its face as it makes its way from a short flight from the towering shelves to my hands, Sekai's book floating to my other side, and I read its title out loud for her: “… The Elden Ring.”

Sekai writes, “Oooh~,” as I bookmark the page and its sigil for later. “My tree is bigger.”

“Indeed… Are you tucked in bed?” Yearning comes and goes, one that'd be soothed if I could myself fix sheets of a comfy bed, fluff a pillow and softly caress a small forehead.

But I cannot… for now, at least.

“Yup. Father is already sleeping, too.” The words bring me this peculiar nostalgia, one spawned from the remnant who lived in the HSE for a year and could never see that little girl huddled in bed to her father's side when night fell, forever out of reach, yet serene nonetheless.

Koa is resting, and Remi must be having her dramatic tea drinking session under the moon, so this means this peaceful lonesomeness should continue for a few more hours… Fixing a loose strand of purple—I need another hat to hold back this wild and long hair… Hm, no, perhaps not—I soon open the dusty book perched on my lap, forgotten in its meaning and yet presenting a rich world that could be linked to no particular author and, to a child that may as well one day be revered as a God above Gods, I begin reading it as a bedtime story.

It's gory and unforgiven as highly detailed worlds tend to be—but, carefully, I hide its grisly nature from Sekai's ears since she expressed earlier with Marisa an aversion to the unpleasantness of blood and guts—not entirely can I hide it, of course, but I downplay it just enough to not revolt the child—and we talk about a God that in more than one sense reads as Yukari, of heroes and villains scrambling for power in a civil war, lusting after the power the tree and its embers provide.

Every bedtime story needs a protagonist, obviously. “… And one day, a girl woke up in the ravaged land. Her name was Sekai.” I feel my gaze being drawn to the book.

“Heh~it was not!” Such words sound drowsy to me.

“It is now.” With a gentle smile, I carried on by recounting the adventures of an excessively inquisitive girl who bravely fought and assisted everyone in need, jumping off cliffs and into dark pits at the command of messages found on the ground. An excruciatingly clichéd good-two-shoes brat she was, but Sekai never worded a complaint, her sporadic remarks full of curiosity and marvel about well-staged battles with light shows that occasionally rivaled Danmaku. The further we got into the story, the fewer comments there were, until our protagonist stood there in amazement at the shimmering stones of a plethora of colors that scattered across the massive cave roof. A starry sky for those who had neither.

“A fake sky is still pretty.”

She would know…

… One day, she’ll know a real starry sky. I’ll ensure that.

Minutes went by. “Brat?” Nothing… Lightly, I closed the storybook and put it aside, turning back to the bookmarked sigil. “… Sleep well, Sekai.”