Chapter 6

To preface this, SS has been advancing with two major purposes.

The first is, of course, ES. The utopia of idols which has been birthed into this world is the culmination of countless people—

To the extent that it’s beginning to move as one single, massive organism.

And every living organisms moves based on its instincts. They keep moving in order to survive, in order to grow, in order to spread. It is our nature as living beings.

Hm. It certainly is easy to understand ES if you think of it as a giant organism—as a monster.

It stretches out across the entire country, devouring anything and everything in its path. It absorbs everything it touches and makes it its own.

Precisely. SS is an act of predation by this monster known as ES. Every idol, every fan, no matter where they are in the country, will be consumed by ES—and become one with it.

It is the attack of an invasive species; the weaker beings shall become its prey and perish. And ES will be the only one to line its belly and fatten itself up.

However, do not misunderstand; there is no malice in that. This monster does not hate those other organisms, nor does it wish to destroy them.

It is simply alive. It only acts according to its instincts, and as a result, it devours everything in its path, just like the mythological taotie of China.¹

And we are but one part of that monster, a single cell inside its body. So long as we are part of ES, we cannot escape that truth.

That is why it’s difficult to oppose the great flow of things—to oppose the survival of such a monstrous existence.

Unless, just like Crazy:B did over the summer, one would turn into a cancerous cell that can squeeze the life out of ES.

Essentially, the survival and expansion of ES is beneficial to the majority of us cells.

And so, we cannot oppose them. To strike back against the monster would be to pierce, to even kill, ourselves.

Even if we break off from ES in our loathing of it, those fragments of us will just be mistaken as food—and it will subsume us once more.

That is the predaceous greed which ES has fallen to.

There are many precious things which exist within ES—So long as they remain, I, at least, cannot move to topple it.

Even if there are those who expect me to play such a role—

I cannot do it. My hands are tied. Each and every one of those countless cells which comprise the monster are my beloved neighbors.

I cannot possibly drive them to their ruin.

I understand. That’s the kind of person you are, Sakuma-senpai.

You see far too much, and so you can’t make such careless moves. It was the same thing last spring. You never tried to resist the student council—You turned a blind eye on the situation at hand.

Mm. But in the end, the zeal of those children moved me, and I ended up meddling needlessly.

If I had let them be, Trickstar would have hit a wall and been smashed to pieces.

And so I tried to make peace and minimize the sacrifices. It was dangerously unbefitting of an elderly man such as myself—

That said. Compared to Yumenosaki, ES is far too great for me to manage with my power alone.

No, it is too great for any human. If the battles waged at Yumenosaki were akin to chess or shogi, then SS is another world war.

It cannot be decided by the will of a single human, one who is not a god.

Wisdom and reason alone should make this apparent, though.

There does exist one who possesses immense power and therefore works toward those ends.

They try to move the indomitable monster that is ES by their own will.

And that person calls himself Gatekeeper. You could say he is a virus who has come from the outside and penetrated deep into the giant organism known as ES.

He is contaminating every cell he touches—capturing them, distorting them, destroying them, gradually spreading his toxins throughout the body of ES.

Even if we want to fight back, we are barricaded by both orders and secret orders. He has become untouchable.

Just who is this person—this Gatekeeper?

Yes, well. The answer remains a mystery, except that he’s well-known in the underbelly of society overseas, and he has an extraordinary amount of capital.

Between his violent tendencies and his assets, he is far too powerful to be opposed on an individual level.

For example, if he so wanted he could eradicate my entire clan with great ease.

Though I have doubts that he would be moved to such an extent.

But the mere fact that he’s capable of such a feat makes him enough of a threat that we cannot ignore him.

It’s rare that one is able to fight for the sake of justice, for the sake of love, and take upon themselves the danger of having everything they hold dear destroyed.

Do you really think so? I believe there are many people within ES who would do that without batting an eye—like Trickstar, for example.

And that is exactly why I’m worried. You only stand to lose when you involve yourself with such a disease.

Despite that, there are those who involve themselves with the virus in hopes of turning a profit—

And those who seek to gain power by mingling with the unforeseen calamities which invade from the outside world, and the phenomena they bring with them.

Who are you talking about?

Tenshouin-kun, of course. He is no stranger to using whatever he can get his hands on as his pawn—including his own life.

If my deductions are correct, Tenshouin-kun has connections with the virus which plagues ES—Gatekeeper.

They negotiate with each other and come to agreements which benefit both of them.

Tenshouin-senpai…? But I feel like he hasn’t been acting out as much recently, or rather he’s been more good-natured.

He’s extraordinarily skilled at putting on such a performance, you know.

But I doubt that even you, Adonis-kun, who believes in the innate goodness of man, would think that he’s actually a “good person,” no?

……

That man has not changed. Humans do not change so easily.

He does not lament that his life is so unfortunately short. No, he acts by the whims of his greed, never wasting even a second.

He has even attempted to nourish the utopia he’s built with that virus encroaching upon us.

And his attempt to do so appears to be going well for him at the moment. As one would expect from someone who has dealt with illness from the moment of his birth.

Why are you so sure about this? I would think you’re only suspicious of Tenshouin-senpai because of the suffering you’ve endured by his hands in the past—if this were anyone other than you, Sakuma-senpai.

Yes. Naturally, I heard it from the person himself. After Gatekeeper first showed up, we had a long conversation about it in our dorm room.

Tenshouin-kun described it as a good opportunity for him.

The greatest fortune he could ask for, even. He was standing before the disease which has afflicted and warped everyone else—and his eyes were shining like a child.

His smile was so bright even I could not help but be entranced by it.

And then, he challenged me, saying that if I were to interfere with his plans, he would show no mercy, that he would crush me once more just as he did during the War.

Well, he said it so boastfully, so he likely meant it as something of a joke. But when he said those words, his eyes were certainly not smiling.

And so I have become convinced of it. We have fought with each other to the death; I can tell if he’s serious just by the look in his eye.

I don’t know how involved his unit fine is, but at the very least, Tenshouin-kun is personally working on the side of Gatekeeper, concocting terrible conspiracies with him.

But he will definitely not save us poor, pitiable idols.

He is a man who loves idols—But at the same time, he is a man who can kill that which he loves as if they were mere insects.