“As long as you understand, that’s all that matters. Erotic games are the sole signpost guiding human reason to triumph over instinct. So long as we have erotic games, we don’t need anything more to do with real women. Erotic games are our hope. So, Satou, have you just about finished your plan for the game?”

“J-just a little longer… Anyway, don’t you think the games you lent me are sort of skewed?”

“Skewed how?”

“Well, you know… I mean, the characters in the games are a bit too young; like, the heroines all appear to be no more than elementary school children…”

“Ha! What are you saying now, Satou? This isn’t like you. To start with, the heroines of erotic games are no more than fictional characters, drawn with two-dimensional computer graphics. In order to express innocence, purity, and femininity, there’s no personification more appropriate than a little girl, is there? We’re relaxed by the symbol of the little girl. And when they’re 2D characters, they have no chance of dealing any blows to our fragile emotional state. On top of that, the motif becomes that of the weakest character possible in social, physical, and emotional senses—the little girl. Because of that double safety lock, we are protected from being hurt, and we can escape the fear of being rejected. That is to say, this is the true meaning of moe: ideal, young, innocent femininity. Do you understand? You do understand, don’t you?”

I mulled over his words… I don’t understand at all! I tried to scream, but by that time, Yamazaki already had disappeared from my room.

On top of my kotatsu, he’d left a present: a single CD.

Part Two

I thought carefully about it the next morning. It sounded like Yamazaki had been dumped by a girl previously. In response, he’d gotten drunk in despair and had decided, “Screw real women—I have erotic games!” At least, that might explain what had happened.

However, if that were the whole story, he wouldn’t have had to go out of his way to share his embarrassment with me. He hadn’t needed to declare that he was this huge lolicon. He had hedged the confession with a rather incomprehensible theory; ultimately, though, he was still a lolicon who liked erotic games. He was dangerous. Or, at the very least, Yamazaki was more dangerous than I had ever imagined.

When I put the CD he had left the night before into my computer, I was horrified by the contents. This was no good; it was too dangerous. The 700MB CD-R had been stuffed with JPEG images. They were photographs—portraits of a girl who appeared to be in the latter years of elementary school. Worse, she was completely naked. In short, they were nude photos.