The genre was an RPG, but it was an extremely cheap RPG, with about one hundredth of the first Dragon Quest[35] game’s content. It wasn’t an erotic game any longer, and the story was utterly ridiculous—basically, the concept was something along the lines of “a journey about love and youth taken by soldiers fighting against a giant, evil organization”. The game told the story of an average young man who becomes a warrior to fight evil and protect the heroine. This wish-fulfillment scenario eventually bypassed the player, continuing meaninglessly on and on and on.

I was dumbfounded.

Come on, what idiot could have come up with such a stupid scenario? It was me. I was the very person who had written the original outline for the story.

I grew sad. It was a bittersweet sadness, because I thoroughly understood the scenario of the game: Soldiers taking a stand against evil.

This had been our exact desire; we had wanted to fight an evil organization; we had wanted to fight villains. If a war had broken out, we would have joined the JSDF[36] right away and launched kamikaze attacks. That definitely would have been a meaningful way to live and an attractive way to die. Had there been villains in the world, we would have battled them. Fists raised in the air, we would have fought. There was no mistake about it.

There weren’t any villains, though. The world was just complicated in various ways, and there weren’t any obvious villains to be found. It was excruciating.

Our personal desires had become the framework for the game. As I progressed farther into it, I realized that it actually had a wonderful story. It was a simple, beautiful story. Right now, in fact, the main character, fighting an enormously powerful enemy, vowed to protect the heroine.

“I’ll protect your life!” Heedless of his own safety, he prepared to challenge the gigantic enemy, and the final battle began. I was nearing the end of the game.

There were three battle commands: “attack”, “defend” and “special attack.” No matter how much I attacked the last boss, I couldn’t do any damage. Naturally, just trying to defend myself didn’t help, either. Finally, I had no choice but to use the special attack—the final death blow. Using my own life energy, I sacrificed myself in order to deal a mortal wound to the enemy. There was no other way to defeat the final boss. So, the hero of the game held his “Revolutionary Bomb” in his right hand and went to perform his special attack.

However, at the very, very end—at the exact second the hero executed his special attack on the final boss—the game suddenly froze! The game window closed, and the text editor started up. Yamazaki apparently had left a letter that seemed like an excuse.