Chapter 2: Wow! Sans!
As a side note, I’d actually never played Undertale. I’d only seen streamers play it on YouTube because people online kept shouting, “Wow! Sans!” and I kept wondering what the hell Undertale was supposed to be for them to act like that.
From the pacifist route to the neutral route, and then from pacifist to genocide. And if you took the genocide route, Sans showed up and then waaaaaaah!
...I’d been spoiled so much online that I didn’t really feel much about the genocide route or anything else, but I did think the music that played during the Sans fight was really nice.
But why had I, someone who’d never even played the game, ended up becoming Sans?
“So Sans had this kind of ability too.”
Early in the morning, I’d come up the mountain and was casually testing the ability I’d used yesterday one more time.
With my body suspended in the air, I reached toward a rock, and a faint blue light flickered in my left eye as I watched a boulder the size of a car slowly rise into the sky.
Telekinesis. Yeah, this was telekinesis. Except it turned out not to be telekinesis.
At first, I’d been amazed, shouting “WA!!” and thinking, “Holy shit, that’s insane! He can use psychokinesis too!” But my memories were insisting that this wasn’t telekinesis. According to the memories in my head, from some unknown source, it was exactly the same as telekinesis except for one thing, and the proper name wasn’t telekinesis but “blue magic.”
...Not just magic, but blue magic. That name was totally my type.
“Sans is seriously broken, isn’t he? What was it, Chara? How did that kid even kill him?”
After dropping back to the ground and checking my surroundings for a moment, I snapped my fingers this time. The instant I heard the click, my vision flipped. When I looked around, I was now about twenty meters away from where I’d been a moment ago.
Another of Sans’s abilities from my memories: teleportation. YouTubers who reviewed Undertale had speculated that Sans might be able to teleport too, but I never thought that guess would actually be right.
Telekinesis, teleportation, bone summoning, and Gaster Blasters. Is Sans’s ability level for real? This is seriously the power of the strongest being in the setting. Was this really the same pathetic-looking Sans from fan works? My chest was swelling for real....
For just a little while, I could understand how the fandom used to get called bone freaks.
“...Phew. That’s enough testing for now. I should head to school.”
The current time was 8:10. Checking the time on my phone, I took the school uniform out of the bag I’d brought separately. I quickly changed out of my light clothes and into the uniform, getting ready for school.
Today marked the second day since I’d turned into Sans. After changing into the stiff uniform, I slung the bag over my shoulder and looked down at the neighborhood from the mountain peak.
...It had changed. It had definitely changed. A lot of things were still the same, but overall the neighborhood looked very different. The facilities and infrastructure seemed a little better, and the atmosphere felt cleaner than usual.
“Man, what the hell is even going on?”
Staring at the view, which was clearly different from the neighborhood I remembered, I muttered in a complicated mood I couldn’t quite put into words. But I couldn’t just keep sitting here blankly forever. School would be starting soon. And once the bell rang, I’d still be stuck here and end up late.
“Let’s see... if I do it like this, will it work?”
Somehow taming the power writhing inside me, I pictured it in my head. My right hand lifted to my chest. My middle finger and thumb touched each other... and then I snapped my fingers with a click.
My vision flipped, and the forest around me vanished. What came into view next was the rooftop floor of a familiar building.
It was the school.
“Teleportation is seriously broken.”
Arriving at school in less than a second, I muttered in admiration and shouted, “Wow! Sans!” as a sign of praise.
○○○
“Maybe I shouldn’t have dyed it yesterday....”
I muttered to myself while fiddling with a strand of white hair in my hand.
I’d been too busy dealing with the fact that the world had changed, but because I still had to go to school, I’d gone to a salon yesterday and paid 50,000 won to dye my hair black. And yet when I woke up today, my hair had gone back to white.
Since I couldn’t exactly dye it again, I’d come to school in this state for now, but for some reason the school that should’ve been full of black-haired students was now full of kids with red, yellow, and green hair, like a traffic light, wandering around freely.
I figured this was probably one of the effects of the world turning into a light novel setting.
...But thinking about it now, it was annoying. If that was the case, I’d just wasted money on dye for nothing.
Damn it.
“Oh, Haneul? What, you’re early today?”
“...Ah, Cheolsu!”
A male student had arrived first and was sitting at his desk, calling out to me. When I smiled at the familiar face and waved, he waved back warmly.
Cheolsu was one of the friends who had stepped up and helped me back when I was going through a rough time. The world might have turned into a light novel setting, but the fact that the friends I’d made were still around made me let out a sigh of relief.
“What about Younghee and the others?”
“The teacher called them to the staff room. Said there was paperwork to move for the Tengu City exchange students, and they dragged them off because they were short-handed.”
I flinched. The words “Tengu City” that came out of Cheolsu’s mouth felt strangely familiar to me.
Tengu City. It was the name of a city located in the southern part of Tokyo Metropolis and the northern part of Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. It was a huge experimental city redeveloped on the site where the Great Disaster of Eurasia had occurred thirty years ago, so the terrain the city sat on was shaped like a massive basin. These days it was rare, but there had once been a time when Spacequakes happened there unusually often, making it one of the places with the best shelter coverage in the world... or so people generally knew Tengu City.
But the Tengu City I knew was a little different from the one everyone else knew. It was the same in that it was in Japan and that Spacequakes happened there often, but I knew one more thing that other people didn’t.
Tengu City didn’t actually exist in the first place. Tengu City was a fictional city from the light novel Date A Live. And yet that fictional city was being casually mentioned in everyday conversation.
Right. Until last week, the world had been perfectly normal, and then it suddenly turned into a light novel world. I’d realized that two days ago, but hearing the word “Tengu City” come out of my friend’s mouth like this made the change feel real.
“...Wow.”
“Why are you acting weird all of a sudden?”
“No. I just thought it was a relief that you were here.”
“That’s gross. What kind of thing is that supposed to mean?”
Date A Live was a Japanese light novel written by Tachibana Koushi and illustrated by Tsunako. Its genre was fantasy and harem, and the rough story was about a protagonist building a harem with beautiful girls called Spirits while working himself to death.
Of course, the twist was that these beautiful girls called “Spirits” were special disaster-designated life forms that went around causing catastrophic Spacequakes in the real world, but anyway, the overall genre was basically harem.
Anyway, since the world had suddenly turned into a light novel setting, a few changes had happened in Korea too. From small things like students having flashy hair colors, to huge things like Spacequakes happening all over the world.
And another change was that our school had formed a sister-school relationship with Raizen High School in Tengu City.
I’d found that out by chance while researching Tengu City. And since our school and theirs were sister schools, they apparently sent exchange students back and forth around this time of year.
The “Tengu City exchange students” Cheolsu had just mentioned were about that.
“Hey, Cheolsu. About those Tengu City exchange students.”
“Huh? Yeah, what about them?”
“Is there any room left? If it’s okay, I want to go too.”
“All of a sudden?”
At my words, Cheolsu tilted his head with a puzzled look.
“Well... if you want to go, I guess you can. But are you sure? I heard Spacequakes have been happening there a lot lately.”
“Nah, it’s fine. I’m not gonna die anyway.”
To Cheolsu’s worried question, I answered with a laugh. And when I’d learned that this world had become the Date A Live world, I’d wanted to visit Tengu City at least once someday anyway.
Sure, I’d only watched Date A Live as an anime... and only up through season 1 and 2 at that, and it had already been five years since I’d seen it, so I barely remembered the exact plot. But I still remembered that the Spirits from the anime were really pretty.
As an otaku, there was no way I could pass up the chance to see scenes I’d only ever watched on a screen in real life. I also wanted to meet the protagonist at least once, and since I had Sans’s power too, I could probably get through situations where a normal human would just go, “I’m dead!”
If a Spacequake happened, I’d just teleport away. There was no way I’d die, right?
It was the confidence that came from having both the ability and the self-assurance to survive. But Cheolsu, hearing my declaration, only let out a quiet sigh and shook his head.
“...Looks like we’ll be holding your funeral before long.”
“Hey?!”
“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure to dunk the files on your computer’s D drive in a bathtub and erase the data completely.”
“Don’t start treating me like I’m already dead...!”
But at that moment, a hidden file on my D drive full of my private tastes flashed through my mind. At the same time, another scene flashed by too.
A funeral procession with seven Black dancers in black suits, wearing fedoras, silk hats, and dancing shoes, carrying a coffin and dancing. And the emcee at the funeral saying, “You are now about to enjoy the deceased’s insanely awesome perverted tastes while they were alive.”
“You little...!”
I hurriedly changed my words and grabbed Cheolsu’s hand tightly.
“Thanks for that──!!”
“As a friend, this much is only natural.”
And I offered heartfelt thanks to Cheolsu, my true friend.
Monday, April 3. 08:23.
And so I ended up choosing, on a sudden impulse, to go as an exchange student to Raizen High School in Tengu City.
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