"GOD SAVE US ALL"

Pareidolia, the brain’s tendency to find patterns in the meaningless, is something we’ve all experienced, but for Kanji, it was an indecent word.

The headlamp flickered upon the dark sideroom where Kanji Okimoto had finally convinced Yuki Hatanaka to sit. His hands quivered as he pulled up his notes. As he continued speaking, his voice crackled:

"The Shinto origin story goes something like this: The universe spun in chaos, the gods created the sky and the earth, then they gave rise to two new deities. Their names, Izanagi and Izanami. Their mission was to fill the world, they fell in love and tried to consummate their union, but from this union deformed creatures were born.”

Yuki gave a half-nod. “Yes, because Izanami was the one that initiated. When Izanagi did, they gave birth to more gods.”

Kanji’s heart started racing faster, Maybe she really could help? He thought.

“Yes, but… why would deformed creatures be born just because the female proposed?”

“It’s an old story, they tried to cement the role of the male as the leader, the ruler, the natural bringer of the order of things, and so on and so forth. Just anachronistic dogma.”

“But then, what about Amaterasu? The goddess of the sun, the ordering force of heaven, and when she hides, who leads the gods? Ame-no-Uzume! The universe gets reordered because a woman initiates.”

“And that means?”

“There must be more to the story.”

Yuki laughed. “And here I thought you were becoming a feminist, Okimoto-kun.” She leaned back on her chair with a grin, “But again you go with your missing links… there’s nothing to it, just old stories.”

“I’m telling you,” Kanji leaned further towards her, a slight desperation in his voice “Myth exists for a reason, right? And there exist several layers to it, right?”

“Myth exists to explain what couldn’t be explained before science existed, these stories contradict themselves all the time, that’s why they’re unreliable in the first place. That’s all there is to it.” Yuki’s chair creaked as she stood up, her arms folded. “Is that all you wanted from me?”

Kanji’s eyes widened, “No, w-wait, where are you going?”

“Okimoto-kun. You said you wanted to discuss something urgent, as your class president, I obliged. And you know I don’t mind hearing your… conspiracies, but I’m pretty busy today. Sorry.”

“No! It is important! It is..” He said but she already started turning towards the door. He immediately dropped to his knees, and grabbed her skirt by the hem as his eyes started tearing. “Please. Just hear me out.”

She looked down at him with a look of horrified disgust.

*****

It has been about three weeks since Kanji couldn’t sleep. No matter how much he tossed and turned in his bed, or breathed deeply, or hugged his worn Chibi Shiba Inu plushie, none of it worked. It all started at the visit to Otaro's house.

Otaro laid on his couch loftily as he held the old controller, turning on the Batrix console.

“A new game?” Kanji asked.

“It’s called ‘Sollen Song’. It’s a first person horror game! Do you like horror games, Kachan?”

“Horror? I’ve never played one.”

“Really?” Otaro’s face lit up, “I have to see you play it. I’m setting it up right now!”

Kanji held the controller, his hands trembled. He was now in the dark stone room of the game. The speaker let out a low, ambient hum, and occasionally the sound of distant water drops. As his character walked forward, wet footsteps echoed. A murky staircase descended in front, which he decided to follow. At the base, the mist had a hue of red. The room appeared to be a sort of laboratory, a blooded chain hung from the wall, in front of which was a pond of red. He walked closer to the pond and on it was a letter. The letter had some strange symbols on it, which appeared to make a paragraph.

“Is this… the world’s language? Is there a dictionary or something?"

“Oh, no, it’s just something they do for immersion. Press X.”

“How… how is it for immersion if you can just press a button to translate it?”

“Because normal people don’t question every tiny thing and just play. So play!” Otaro gave Kanji a playful kick.

He pressed X, and the text turned to Japanese:

“Cervical incision complete. Abdominal tissue too thin, tears easily. So a sawbones. Filaments too weak, bones too soft for steel pins, better resewall. Mercury serum reduces resistance. Subjects still require severing of the temporal lobe to prevent identical distress upon reactivation. 23:41 Door opens, Sarah enters door yet door locked… it’s all messed up. Copper syringe still functional. Need more gauze.”

The note ended, and Kanji read it again.

“W-what the heck did I just read?”

Otaro gave a mischievous chuckle.

Kanji decided reluctantly to continue playing, he uncovered more rooms and more letters, until finally he reached a sort of church, at the front row of which was a little girl. As Kanji got closer to her she started speaking, repeated noises beeped at every syllable as she spoke.

“Who are you? Do you know where my daddy is?”

[DEAD] [ESCAPED]

Kanji pressed dead.

“What?! What do you mean dead?! You liar! Liar!” Suddenly the chatbox disappeared and the girl crouched down, her neck extended to about twice her height, and two more sets of hands came out of her sides, she started yelling a distorted cry as she chased after Kanji.

“WHAT! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!!!” Kanji started running away from her with his character, but soon after a long hang struck through his stomach, lifting him in the air.

Otaro started to roll laughing, “Pfhahahaha! Your face! I’m crying!”

Kanji blushed as he rubbed a bead of sweat from his forehead. “What the hell was that? Should I have lied to her and told her he escaped?”

“It doesn’t matter, she would’ve chased you either way. You just need to run fast enough.”

Kanji reloaded the game. He tried to choose the other option.

“Escaped? He… he left me here? Alone? No… no…” She let out the screech, which made Kanji jump just a slight this time. But she killed him again.

“Told you.”

“Boys! Dinner is ready!” Otaro’s mom called from the other room.

“We’ll continue this later. Come on, Kachan.” Otaro got up and turned off the console.

*****

The clock read 02:17 AM. The game ended after the evil surgeon was finally defeated. The title rolled up the TV screen. Otaro laid on the couch with half-closed eyes.

He said with a tired voice “You finally beat it, Kachan. Did you like it?”

Kanji was left unsatisfied by the game’s ending. It had promise in atmosphere but the story was vague, almost intentionally too generic, and yet had left a Sollen Song shaped hole in his heart.

Then, some letters in the game’s language appeared on the screen, and then the translation:

PRAISE THE LORD

Something did not sit quite right with Kanji at that moment, the characters used in the end screen, for the same vowels as the first letter, looked different.

“There’s something weird with the language, they’re using the characters differently here.”

“Oh… I don’t think there is an actual language, they probably just added these symbols randomly.”

Kanji stared at the screen, “There was. There was a pattern before. I know there was. I think I’ll play it again.” He said as he restarted the game, after which he looked at Otaro, who was sleeping soundly.

He wrote down one by one every instance of translated language in the game, and then started researching. The wiki’s never mentioned anything, and so he moved to language deciphering techniques. His wrists burned and eyes stung as he jotted frantically on his notebook for hours, trying to match the language with every combination of alphabetic systems. By 5:24 AM, he was sure of it, the first letter used a different system, and he had devised a new translation.

WELCOME BACK

BEHIND THE WALL IT WAITS

CHAIN YOURSELF TO BE FREE ONCE MORE

A shiver ran down his spine, his hands shaking from both exhaustion and ecstasy. “Is this a coincidence? I have to check,”. He reloaded that same torture room in the beginning. In there he saw the chains, he walked his character to them, but they were not interactable. He pressed all the buttons on his controller desperately, but nothing happened.

Kanji sighed as he let go of the controller, almost tossing it in frustration. He laid down on his back, hands covering his face. All this work was for nothing… he thought. He couldn’t remember any other chains being in the game, and this one was a dud. Maybe he’s just losing his mind again. But, as he looked at the screen again, his character was similarly laying on the ground, and had put the chains around his wrists. Kanji’s heart started racing, he jumped upward and grabbed the controller. He tried pressing different buttons, but the character didn’t move. In front of him, on the ground, only from this angle was noticeable that the bricks had made out the number 3. “Three, three… three!” Kanji immediately had an idea, he took the same letters from the note, and wrote down every third letter. His breath hitched, “it better work,” he muttered. He used the letters to produce a new potential translation. He looked at it, blinked twice, and then read it out loud.

“GOD SAVE US ALL”

Suddenly, his character was standing again, and the wall to his right had slid open.

Wait, but I didn’t touch the controller?