The Empty Box and Zeroth Maria
Book 3: Chapter 4

Day 1 <C> Private Meeting with Maria Otonashi – Maria Otonashi’s Room

The blackness makes it seem as if I might fall into a void, but when I take a step out into it, I find a room almost identical to my own on the other side. In fact, it’s so similar that it feels like the room I left simply rotated around me to become my destination.

“There you are.”

Sitting on her bed gazing at me, Maria pats the bed and beckons me to sit next to her.

“We don’t have any time for small talk, so let’s get right down to business.”

“…Um, and what exactly is that?”

“How we’re going to get the Box away from Oomine, what else? Don’t tell me you actually plan on playing along with this Kingdom Royale?”

Sitting next to Maria, I vigorously shake my head no.

“We’re going to put an end to the Game of Indolence. Our objective is the same as always. The only thing that’s a bit easier this time is that we already know who the owner is.”

“…But I wonder if Daiya will hand over the Box…”

Maria’s brow furrows a bit at my words. “…That’s true. We have to find a way to persuade Oomine…”

“Do you think that’ll be difficult?”

“Do you think it’ll be easy?”

I shake my head. We can’t persuade him. That means we won’t be able to get him to produce the Box on his own.

In that case, our only option is to crush it by force. Namely, crush Daiya himself.

“…Hey, Maria. If Daiya loses at Kingdom Royale, do you think it would spell the end of the Game of Indolence, too?”

“That all depends on the nature of the Game of Indolence, so I can’t really say… But thanks to the Rejecting Classroom, I had plenty of opportunities to learn about Daiya’s personality. After observing him for so long, I think if Daiya has made it so others die if they lose his game, he will die if he loses, too. I’m sure you agree, right?”

I nod. While I can’t be certain as long as I don’t know what Daiya’s endgame is…it’s hard to believe someone as prideful as Daiya would exempt himself from the rules of his game.

“……Hey.”

Maria gazes deep into my eyes as I mull over the situation.

“Kazuki… Do you hope Oomine will die?”

“Huh?”

She looks as collected as ever, but I can see the slightest hint of unease in her face as she watches me.

…Of course she would be. It’s not too farfetched to think my last question implies we should get rid of Daiya.

“No. I’d never want Daiya to die, I can tell you that.”

“…I see,” Maria says, and the smile flickering across her face is clearly born from a sense of relief.

…Which makes sense. There’s no reason she’d want to resort to such methods.

“Getting out of here because Daiya’s dead isn’t a real solution,” I continue.

“Yeah. You’re right.”

“Still, that doesn’t leave us any closer to figuring out what to do…”

At my noncommittal reply, Maria scowls and starts to speak.

“…I’m a bit reluctant to do this. But I think we may need to enlist the aid of the others aside from Oomine…particularly Shindo. If all of us are on the same page, then we have nothing to fear from Kingdom Royale.”

“…What do you mean?”

“If we can get them to understand the gist of what Boxes are and convince them that Oomine is the owner, then we can make it clear who everyone’s real enemy is. We can avoid the worst-case scenario, where no one knows who’s going to kill who. Kingdom Royale will never even start as long as no one falls prey to paranoia.”

“…But it’ll probably be hard to convince them about the Box, huh?”

“Yes, exactly. It’s going to be difficult to even bring it up when drawing attention puts you directly in the line of fire.”

“Yeah… I can understand why you’d be reluctant to do it.”

“…I’m not saying that because I think I’d have trouble pulling it off.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you get it? I talk about who the owner is. I inform everyone that their real enemy is Daiya Oomine. And once I do that, they will all know that Oomine’s death will set them free. And they can kill someone with a single button.”

I automatically choke back what I was going to say.

“Oomine isn’t the type to be easily persuaded. Even if Shindo and the others learn the truth, he’s unlikely to call off the Game of Indolence. What do you think the others will do when they see that? Do you really think they’re all going to wait patiently for him to change his mind when we have a time limit, and when they could be killed as well? I don’t think so. If things come to a standstill, it’s possible that—”

Maria finishes her sentence with some difficulty.

“—Shindo will kill Oomine.”

“That—” I stop and take a big breath before continuing, “That isn’t necessarily true… I—I mean the president said herself, right? That she could never kill anybody.”

“That was enough to put you at ease?”

“…Do you think she was lying?”

“I don’t know whether everything was a lie. However, if Shindo was being sincere, that just makes her all the more dangerous.”

“Wh-why…?”

Without a word, Maria stands up, takes the portable device sitting on the table, and fiddles with it. It plays back a voice recording.

“I would bear the weight of that sin until I collapsed under it and my life fell apart. I have enough imagination to know that, so it is categorically impossible for me to go through with it.”

“Do you see the danger in these words?”

I shake my head.

“Here’s what Shindo is saying: She can kill as long as she is prepared for her life to fall apart.”

That sure seems like a really shrewd conclusion, but…yeah, I guess I can see how you might interpret it that way?

“B-but there’s no way she would be prepared to ruin her life without an extremely important reason.”

“Do you think she wouldn’t have one? I can come up with one right now. Let’s see… Wouldn’t saving Yanagi constitute a really good reason in Shindo’s book?”

I fall silent at how easily she fires back. That would definitely give the president enough motivation to cross the line.

That’s right—we aren’t in the regular world. This is an abnormal place twisted by the Box. This means many “extremely good reasons” could exist here.

“Kazuki, I’m sure you know this, but I cannot kill, no matter the reason.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I believe you are the same. Can you give an instantaneous explanation, like Shindo did?”

Her words make me wonder.

Why can’t I kill anyone?

…Is it because I believe it’s arrogant for a person to assume it’s okay to kill another?

…Is it because I feel pity when I imagine myself as the victim?

…Is it because my sense of ethics won’t allow it?

I can come up with several, but none of them really fit the bill. I don’t think they’re totally wrong, but they’re also not right. They’re all reasons you’d apply after the fact, and the resulting inability to kill actually comes first.

“Can’t come up with anything, huh?”

“…Yeah.” I respond with my head hanging low.

“That’s for the best.”

“Huh?”

“What Shindo said about her imagination, it isn’t right. Those who are truly incapable of killing others don’t need any reasons. You and I—we simply cannot do it.”

…She’s right. That’s exactly how it is. It feels more correct to me than anything else.

“Coming up with some pretext for why you can’t kill and then expounding on it without a hitch—that’s unnatural. That speech of Shindo’s was nothing more than lip service to a case that she isn’t dangerous. But I still think that’s more levelheaded than acting blatantly hostile like Oomine.”

“Why would Daiya do that when he has to know it would place him in danger…?”

“Well, given his normal attitude, the claims of ‘I could never kill anyone’ from Shindo and the others probably don’t sound very convincing to him. If you think about it, his personality actually places him at a disadvantage in Kingdom Royale.”

…There’s no denying that his general behavior would seem to make him the biggest target.

In contrast, the safest would be Yuri, oddly enough.

“True. There’s one thing I’m curious about, though: Is the Game of Indolence an external type or an internal type?”

Maria’s gaze sharpens at my question.

“S-sorry, I didn’t think before I asked. Y-yeah, a Box as messed up as this would have to be an internal—”

“It’s external.”

“…Huh?”

“The Game of Indolence is an external-type Box. As for level, I’d say it’s around a five.”

I’m pretty sure she said the Week in the Mud was an external level four. That means we’re dealing with a Box much more powerful than the one that simply caused people to switch places.

But if it’s an external type…

“That means he does possess a certain level of firm belief in this situation… In this case, it’s possible the owner has mastered the use of the Box.”

I swallow hard at her explanation. That means…we’re dealing with something pretty serious here, doesn’t it?

“That’s why persuading him will be difficult. Up to this point, all the owners still possessed a sense of logic when they used their Boxes, at the end of the day. That’s why their wishes lacked confidence and had open seams in them. We were able to dig into those weaknesses and get them to reveal their Boxes.”

“…But it won’t work like that this time.”

In all honesty, I had trouble believing Daiya could use a Box so well. He’s a realist, after all. He seems like exactly the type of person who would have trouble with a Box that consummates a wish—a desire for something that would never happen in reality.

“At any rate, we won’t be able to escape its effects on the real world. The memories of what we experience here during Kingdom Royale will most likely never vanish, and whatever happens will probably carry over into the real world.”

“So that means dying in the game means dying for real…?”

“Yeah, it’s best to think that… Just to be clear, death has a massive effect, even when we’re talking about an internal type instead of an external type. The only reason I’m here unaffected now after losing my life so many times in the Rejecting Classroom is due to the nature of that Box, because it became as if those deaths never happened. If I had perished during the final 27,756th transfer, I would have died in reality, or at least been affected in some way that would leave me functionally dead.”

“…I see.”

So that’s how things stand.

Dying here is the same as dying for real.

“That’s why we cannot allow Kingdom Royale to start, by any means.”

To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t really felt that much danger. Describing this as a game makes it all sound so frivolous, and a “death” delivered with a single button—since this Box is divorced from reality, part of me was sort of treating this like events in a game, after all.

But I was wrong.

Even if a single button is all it takes to kill me or for me to kill, there’s no resetting those deaths like we would in a game.

“…Anyway, we don’t have time. For now, let’s think of what you’re going to do in your meeting with Oomine.”

“Okay.”

We may not have a clue as to how to resolve this situation, but we still need to focus first on what we can do.

“Well, my guess is, the first thing Daiya will do is try to figure out my Class. What do you think?”

“You’re probably right… By the way, I should warn you: Unless there are some sort of extenuating circumstances, you should never, ever reveal your Class to Oomine or anyone else.”

“Gotcha.”

I of course understand the danger of that, but…

“But I can tell you, Maria. I’m the Sorcerer.”

“…And what would you do if my Class pit me against you?”

“Nothing. I’d still tell you.”

“…I see. I suppose that’s how it should be. You and I wouldn’t hide such a trivial thing from each other.”

Maria smiles as she says this, and I feel my face relax a bit at the sight of it.

The information could place our lives in danger if someone else found out about it, and she had just described it as “a trivial thing.”

“As it happens, my Class is the Prince. I would’ve been more relieved if I had gotten the Revolutionary.”

I hear that. The one most likely to kill someone is the Revolutionary, the only Class that can dispatch others autonomously. But Maria would never make such a mistake, even if the time limit was approaching.

There is no doubt in my mind that Maria could never kill anybody.

“……Ah.”

As the thought crosses my mind, something comes to my attention.

“What is it?”

“U-um…”

Maria looks at me questioningly as I glance at her out of the corner of my eye, and I think:

Maria is powerless within this Box.

I mean, Kingdom Royale is a game of murder and deception. Maria can’t do either, so she has no chance of winning.

In all our past struggles involving Boxes, I was completely reliant upon her. I’m sure I’ll need her help this time around, too.

But—I’m sure a time will come when I’ll have to rely on my abilities alone to do what I have to.

“……It’s nothing.”

Maria frowns and keeps scrutinizing me as I respond.

She has put her faith in my inability to kill someone else. But if I learned of a future where Maria would die, and that I could prevent it by killing someone, then I…

…What would I do?

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