Name: Yang Bibi (陽菲菲).
Read with the Chinese pronunciation, Yang Feifei.
A hacker girl from the planet “Terra,” known in the galaxy by the nickname Pale Blue Dot.
She had originally been a resident of Neo Kowloon Walled City, created under the China regional allocation system, but when the captain of the Galaxy happened to stop by for supplies, he scouted her as a crew member, and she came out onto the vast sea of stars.
In Star Beyond, she was a 5-star character released fairly early on, and thanks to her easygoing personality, slender figure, and unconventional design of a China dress plus leather jumper, there had been a time when she emptied countless captains’ wallets.
Of course, the reason that sentence is in the past tense is because at the current point in time, Yang Feifei is a character being treated as a has-been to thunderous applause.
A trash unit on par with standard-banner units.
A limited support not worth paying to pull.
Not raising her because the resources would be a waste.
Yang Feifei was a character saddled with pretty much every bad label like that, and the reason I happened to know her latest evaluation so well was because, back when I played Star Beyond, my favorite character had been Yang Feifei.
She was a character I went all the way to max dupes and max refinement for on release day just from her appearance alone, but I never imagined her evaluation would fall this far into the abyss.
***
To briefly summarize the situation I was currently in:
I had finally gotten some breathing room to play games, so I reinstalled Star Beyond, a game I’d quit ages ago, and then a character suddenly popped “again” out of the screen.
And the character who had popped out was pressing me for answers at close range in a tiny space that was barely three pyeong.
“Captain, so where is this place?”
“Uh... my bathroom.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.”
Saying that, Yang Feifei bent at the waist and picked up the smartphone she had caught on the top of her foot, correcting my misunderstanding.
“What backwater planet is this place supposed to be?”
Ah, so that’s what she meant.
Only belatedly understanding what she was getting at, I decided to explain the current situation in terms that fit the Star Beyond setting she had come from.
“This is Earth. It’s a planet with a level of civilization very similar to the past form of Terra, your home.”
“Aaah...”
Yang Feifei nodded, looking as if she could finally communicate with me.
“No wonder your personal terminal felt strangely retro, Captain.”
As she said that, she handed back the smartphone in her right hand, then said it was nice to feel moved by our reunion and all, but we should go outside instead of talking in such a cramped place.
“Shall we?”
To be honest, I had been feeling a little burdened by the position we were in, with me sitting and her standing.
Because if Yang Feifei carelessly bent over like she had a moment ago, the fabric over her chest would fall downward, leaving me with nowhere to put my eyes.
Since I had come into the bathroom in the first place to play a game without Saori noticing, I decided to do as she said and head outside for now.
“Can you move aside for a second? There’s not enough room.”
“Ah, yeah.”
When I asked her that, Yang Feifei moved out of the way with a strangely bashful expression.
Only then was I able to get up from the toilet, and after washing my hands at the sink, I opened the bathroom door that had been firmly shut.
Click!
But there was one fact I had overlooked, and that was that Saori was outside the bathroom.
In that case, here was the question.
What would happen if someone who had gone into the bathroom alone saying his stomach hurt suddenly came out together with some unknown girl?
The answer was—
“Sensei, who is that girl?”
“Captain, who is that woman?”
—the inevitable shuraba development.
***
It was cold.
It felt as if a dagger had flown in and lodged itself in my chest.
Me, Saori, and Yang Feifei.
In the living room, which had suddenly started to feel like a Korea-China-Japan summit because each of us had a different nationality, I foisted the initial responsibility of explaining onto Yang Feifei.
Because, to be honest, I didn’t really know why things had turned out this way either.
I had only holed up in the bathroom to play a game, and then she had suddenly popped out of my smartphone screen.
But after listening to her story, the circumstances that led to Yang Feifei coming here were, surprisingly, very similar to Saori’s.
“I was resting in my room when suddenly, I thought this little portal had appeared in front of my eyes, and beyond it I saw the face of the Captain who’d vanished without a trace three years ago. So before I knew it, I’d come over to this side.”
Saying that, Yang Feifei gave an awkward smile.
It seemed she had belatedly realized she had been far too reckless.
“...Three years ago? Did you perhaps run away in the middle of the night?”
After hearing Yang Feifei’s explanation, Saori looked at me with an expression full of suspicion.
Apparently, she felt a sense of kinship with Yang Feifei, who had been in a similar situation to her own.
“No, there’s no way that’s what happened.”
If I kept leaving the explanation to Yang Feifei, the story seemed likely to go completely off the rails, so I had no choice but to cut into their conversation.
“But why are you suddenly using formal speech when you don’t usually? It feels awkward.”
“Because there is someone else present.”
“Business mode, something like that?”
“I’ve decided that I only act spoiled when it’s just the two of us, Sensei.”
Saying that, Saori swept the hair beside her ear back with a prim expression, then asked as if she had only just remembered.
“More importantly, Sensei, what does the ‘Captain’ this person mentioned mean?”
“Oh, I was wondering that too. Sensei? What the heck is that supposed to mean?”
“Uh... well, you see.”
This was bad. The world settings of the two games were colliding.
How was I supposed to explain this?
It wasn’t as if I could say, Actually, you two are characters from games, and I’m just someone who played those games.
If they found that out, I had no idea how the two of them would react.
So after falling into deep thought, I decided to use a setting that often gets cited in quite a lot of subculture games.
“Have either of you heard of parallel universes?”
“Parallel... universes?”
“You know, that kind of theory where if you’re choosing what to eat for lunch today, the universe branches off infinitely depending on your choice.”
After hearing my explanation, Yang Feifei said with a bored expression,
“Because of the multidimensional overlap phenomenon that occurs during warp drive, we vaguely know parallel universes exist, but no one has ever succeeded in actually observing them. So why bring up that ancient theory all of a sudden?”
“What if there were a way to intentionally interfere with those parallel universes?”
“What...?”
Once I’d come this far, I had to push the lie through with sheer momentum.
“The truth is, I have an ability that lets me send different avatars of myself into parallel universes and experience life there ‘indirectly.’”
The moment I said that, the living room fell silent.
“......”
Was this lie too large in scale?
But since neither of them showed any reaction, I couldn’t easily judge.
Then, a beat later, Saori made a face as if she had realized something.
“So that is why, back then, you described it as having only ‘memories.’”
Unlike Yang Feifei, who looked half-doubtful, Saori seemed to have recalled something I’d said before.
‘At times like this, being smart actually helps.’
Even if I didn’t bother adding any further explanation, she would think on her own and accept it on her own.
But Yang Feifei, who was even more well-versed than Saori in things like quantum mechanics and that sort of knowledge, said with an expression that looked slightly angry,
“Are you telling me to believe such an absurd story?”
“No, it’s not completely absurd—”
“Stop!”
Yang Feifei suddenly cut me off mid-sentence.
“Of course, I know very well that you were sick of the war and wanted to retire, Captain. But no matter what, you shouldn’t lie like this!”
It seemed she thought I was lying to get out of the current situation.
‘I knew she wouldn’t buy it.’
Should I try to come up with another excuse even now?
I was thinking that when it happened.
Saori, who had been quietly listening beside us, suddenly extended a helping hand.
“No, it is not a lie.”
“What? How would you know that?”
“Because if I put my mind to it, I can read other people’s thoughts. I am fairly sensitive to lies.”
As she said that, Saori glanced sideways at me.
“Sensei did not lie at all just now.”
It was true I hadn’t lied, but that didn’t mean I’d said everything either.
Because “an ability that lets me indirectly experience what another me in another world has experienced” was just a roundabout way of describing playing games.
But Yang Feifei still looked unconvinced.
“What if you’re lying to cover for this guy?”
“Yang Feifei. Born November 18, 2058 by the Terra calendar. Raised in a wealthy environment as a child, but after her father’s company went bankrupt when she was eight, she began working as a hacker in order to find a way to make a living. The reason she replaced nearly fifty percent of her body with machinery before she even came of age was because, at fourteen, while hacking the financial assets of the Arataki faction, the boss—”
“Stop! Stop!”
When Saori suddenly began rattling off her past history, Yang Feifei cut her off in horror, then let out a deep sigh and said,
“I get what your ability is, so stop talking about my personal information.”
“Very well.”
When Saori readily agreed, Yang Feifei said with an expression that looked slightly exhausted,
“Then what’s the reason you suddenly disappeared three years ago? Because the Captain, who was our focal point, vanished, the crew of the Galaxy scattered in every direction.”
“Ah, about that...”
“Your ability must have a time limit.”
Huh?
“An ability that powerful could not possibly have no restrictions. Just as the Captain disappeared from your world three years ago, Sensei disappeared from ours two years ago.”
Am I right?
Saori winked at me as if to say that.
Thanks to her, I no longer needed to come up with the setting myself, but it felt like the fanon lore had multiplied in an instant.
Still, if she had assisted me this far, I supposed I had to handle the finish myself.
If I wanted to embrace all these settings that had suddenly snowballed, there was only this.
“Right. The truth is, I was using that ability to protect about ten different worlds at the same time.”