Regrets?
There are plenty of those.
If only I had done this back then. If only I had done that back then.
Once you start thinking about it, there's no end.
Especially in my case, there were far more options available.
No, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that only I had them.
If I had chosen something, a different future should have been possible.
Once I start down that line of thinking, I sink deeper and deeper into a swamp of speculation.
But in the end, no matter how much I agonize over it, I cannot change the past.
If that's the case, then I have no choice but to accept it as my own choice.
Unlike
Well, but that's precisely why I still remain unable to choose.
Whether it's Dustin or me, our past choices have become shackles that continue to narrow the range of choices available to us now.
Dustin simply keeps walking the path he chose in the past.
No matter how thorny that path may be, no matter how it wears down his spirit, he never stops walking.
And what makes him remarkable is that he has never once set foot off that path.
In terms of mental fortitude, that man far surpasses the likes of me.
He may not be a god, but in that regard, he is a monster who surpasses even gods.
My choice?
I didn't make a choice.
I couldn't choose anything.
Always, always half-hearted. No matter what I did, I never left any results behind.
I couldn't do anything, I did nothing, and even now I'm still doing nothing.
The only thing I did was go crying to D.
It's embarrassing beyond words.
Even that—going crying to D—I can't even judge whether it was the right thing to do.
I can't help but wonder whether there might have been some other way.
I understand well enough that D didn't help me out of goodwill.
No, I didn't understand that at the time.
It was only afterward that I began to feel something was off, and I only grew certain when I lost contact.
I was quite slow on the uptake, wasn't I?
What D's purpose was—I don't know that either.
They say it's because it seemed entertaining, and that's no doubt part of the truth, but I believe there were other objectives as well.
One of them, I suspect, was an experiment.
I'd heard that Earth has something called insect venom.
The System is the same thing.
It's a massive dose of insect venom.
A device designed to pit the creatures living on it against one another and produce a stronger species.
The ultimate goal: a god.
The fact that the Skill descriptions for the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Virtues contain the phrase "to reach godhood" makes that abundantly clear.
The System must have been an experimental apparatus designed to artificially produce a god.
What meaning such a thing could have, I honestly can't say.
Perhaps it really was just because it seemed entertaining.
Beyond that, the System also contains numerous features that seem to reflect D's playfulness.
I'm incapable of finding rational explanations for all of them.
I suppose I'd have to ask D directly to know.
Though even then, I probably wouldn't understand.
That's the kind of person they are.
To understand them is to lose.
Yes—they were incomprehensible to me.
I could not for the life of me grasp what struck a chord with D.
I still can't.
If I acted on my own and somehow offended D…
That thought left me with no option but to dutifully carry out whatever I was told.
Here again, I was abandoning the act of choosing.
Or perhaps, given D's personality, if I had been able to make them find something interesting, I might have been afforded a certain degree of freedom.
But me?
Do you really think that I, of all people, could make D find something interesting?
I say it myself, but I can't imagine that being possible.
And if I thought that trying might ruin everything, then I simply couldn't muster the courage to take a single step forward.
So, even as this planet was being treated as D's plaything, I did nothing and said nothing.
That said, it's also true that thanks to that person, I was saved.
When I consider the situation as it stands now, it's worth wondering whether my choice back then was correct, but there were no other means available, and it was undeniably the best option there was.
Yes, if I were to be transported back to that moment, I would rely on D once more.
Hmm, when I think about it that way, perhaps this really was the only future I could have chosen.
No matter how much I agonize, I can see myself all too clearly—agonizing and agonizing until the moment to choose has slipped away.
It's no wonder they call me a coward.
Hmph.
Ah, yes.
I'm always spinning my wheels.
I hesitate to phrase it this way, but I suppose I'm the type to simply go with the flow.
No different from the masses.
An existence that merely follows the great current of the world, swept along without resistance.
If the heroes and protagonists are those who oppose the world's current, who carry through with their own will, who reshape the very nature of existence—then I am what you'd call an extra, one who exists to fill out the edges of that story.
But I can't change the world's current, and yet I possess power.
So I can't fully commit to being a mere extra either—I end up as a half-hearted presence, hovering restlessly at the edge of the stage.
No matter how far you push it, that's what I am: half-hearted.
But half-hearted or not, extra or not, I am here, as myself.
I who never chose—I am not choosing nothing.
I who have only been swept along—I am also moving forward with the current.
I serve as D's errand runner, but I am not a being that was manufactured, like the System.
I am here of my own volition.
I want you to remember that.
……Well, I suppose you probably won't remember any of this if you've been drinking, though.
There's still sake left.
Keep me company a while longer. I've got more grievances to air.