I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 3 Read online

  Prologue

  “Rekka Namidare, you need to marry me.”

  “......Huh?”

  What the hell was she talking about? I stared blankly at this girl who was standing in front of my house with her arms crossed.

  Her features were chiseled and she had the muscular build of a boy, but a pair of firm breasts were pushing up against her black shirt and leather jacket. Both her jacket and her cargo pants were covered in pockets of various sizes. Each one of them was stuffed with something. She even had a pouch at her waist, too. She was really heavily equipped.

  I’d thought she might be a soldier, but she had a different air about her than R. She was more like... a warrior, kinda? So why was this cool warrior girl asking me to marry her all of a sudden? Even going so far as to wait in front of my house in the evening... It didn’t make any sense.

  “Hmph. Didn’t you hear me, Rekka Namidare?” She pointed at me with her right hand, which was clasped in a fingerless glove. “Marry me.”

  “Um... Listen, okay?” I wasn’t sure how to react to hearing this out of the blue.

  “It’s perfect. Marry her, Rekka. That would complete my mission and make my life a lot easier.”

  Yeah, R, could you shut up for a bit? Actually, forever would be good.

  I just had to ignore the blue-haired girl from the future as usual. What was going on here, anyway?

  “Hey, do I know you from somewhere?”

  “No, today is the first time we’ve met.”

  I was hoping that maybe there was some connection between us I was missing, but no luck. And there was no way I could get a girl I’d never met before to fall in love with me... I didn’t even know if I could get a girl I had met before to do that.

  Well, putting the sad truth aside...

  “Then why do you want to marry me?”

  “To change fate.”

  “Fate...?” All right, a new embarrassing milestone in the conversation. “Isn’t this the part where you tell me that you and I were connected by fate in a past life?”

  “What are you talking about? Are you stupid?”

  “No, I mean... You’re telling me that you like me, right?”

  Though, honestly, if she had started talking about past lives, it would have been too much even for me. But then what was she trying to say?

  “You don’t understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, no. Not in the slightest.” I shook my head and shrugged.

  She sighed, as if in resignation. “I’m telling you to be the hero of my story.”

  Why hadn’t she just said so in the first place?! But, wait... That made even less sense than telling me to marry her.

  “The hero of your story?”

  The weird way she said it piqued my interest. Being the hero of a girl’s story... That sounded like my lineage was involved. It sounded as if she knew about the bloodline of the Namidare.

  “R,” I whispered to the girl from the future floating in the air next to me.

  “Yeah, looks like she’s a heroine.” R knew exactly what I was getting at, and answered my question before I could even ask.

  So this weird girl was a heroine.

  “...”

  In this world, there were plenty of stories that were heading for bad endings. Maybe the hero had been lost, or maybe they’d never even existed in the first place. That’s where the Namidare bloodline came in, meaning I had a tendency to get caught up in this kind of thing.

  It wasn’t new to me. I’d resolved several stories already, but they were all products of coincidence where I’d run into the heroines by chance. This was the first time someone who knew about the bloodline of the Namidare had come to me. Was that a good thing, or a bad thing?

  And was the bloodline of the Namidare really something that other people knew about? Dad had sort of left that part out.

  Cussing him out in my head for being so lazy, I decided to ask her directly. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Hibiki. I’m the eldest daughter of the Banjo family. We’re one of the Namidares’ branch families.” The girl—Hibiki Banjo—narrowed her eyes as she spoke in a calm and proud voice. “Just like you carry the Namidare bloodline, I carry the Banjo bloodline.”

  “The Banjo bloodline?”

  I didn’t even know we had branch families... And what was this “Banjo bloodline” supposed to be?

  “I’ve come to end this cursed blood.”

  She clenched her gloved hand into a fist, squeezing so tightly that her fingers began to turn pale. There must’ve been quite a story behind this... Even I could tell that much.

  “So marry me, Rekka Namidare.”

  But I still wasn’t sure where that part came in.

  “Well, for now...” Sweating coldly, I gestured toward my house. “Want to come inside? It’s probably best if we calm down before we talk more.”

  “...Yeah.” Hibiki relaxed her grip and gave a slight nod, but she was glaring at me as if she was somehow unsatisfied.

  “...Hahh.” I sighed a little. It seemed like things were going to be even more complicated than usual this time.

  Chapter 1: Namidare and Banjo, Brought Together?

  I led Hibiki to the living room, then went up to my room to put away my backpack. I thought about changing, but I was too curious to hear what she had to say, so I just went back to the first floor in my school uniform.

  She was still just standing there, so I motioned for her to sit on the sofa, and then brought a chair over from the dining area and took a seat across the table from her. Harissa appeared with tea for both of us.

  “H-Here you are...”

  Harissa seemed a little intimidated by Hibiki’s sharp gaze as she set the teacups on the table. She must have been in the middle of making dinner, because she was wearing her bunny apron. There were no walls between our living room and kitchen, so I could smell the miso soup cooking on the stove.

  “Harissa, thanks for the tea. I need to talk to her for a bit, so would you mind going upstairs?”

  “R-Right!”

  Harissa, fidgeting next to the table, leaped up at my request and ran out of the living room, still holding the tray. Her smoky blond hair trailed behind her as she disappeared through the doorway with a clatter.

  “Who’s the girl?”

  “Her name’s Harissa. Some stuff happened, and now she lives with me.”

  “‘Some stuff?’” Hibiki must not have liked my answer, because she started to glare at me again. “Is she a relative of yours or something?”

  “Oh, no... I mean, it’s just not a story you’d normally believe.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not normal.”

  “...Yeah, okay.”

  I still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of this Banjo bloodline thing, but from the way she was talking, it was probably similar to what I was going through. Which meant that something a little out of the ordinary wasn’t going to faze her.

  “Harissa is a sorcerer from another world, but she can’t go back home now. Since there’s no place else for her to go, I’m letting her stay here.”

  “I see...” Hibiki was frowning, seemingly lost in thought.

  Was something bothering her?

  “So... What did you come to see me for?” Since we weren’t going to get anywhere by sitting in silence, I decided to speak up.

  “To marry you, like I said.” She raised her head and spoke.

  “I understand that... I mean, I don’t understand, but let’s just start from the beginning, okay? Why do you want to marry me?”

  “Do you know anything about the Banjo blo
odline?”

  “Nope, not a thing.”

  She looked upset, but I was being honest. “To make things EXTREMELY simple, I’m like a female version of you with the Namidare bloodline.”

  “...Meaning you get caught up in stories too?”

  “Yeah. In your case, you become the hero. In my case, I become the heroine.”

  “...I see.”

  I remembered the stories I’d been caught up in so far. The ultimate mage. The Demon King from another world. The monster from the age of gods. Each encounter had nearly cost me my life. A falling meteor. A cafeteria about to go out of business. A secluded village below the surface of the earth. Every story I’d been involved in had been hard. All of them had come with great responsibility.

  Had she been caught up in stuff like that? Even though she was a girl?

  “That’s... pretty rough, yeah.”

  “Hmph. Don’t get the wrong idea, please.”

  “Huh?”

  Hibiki brushed back her bangs and shook her head like she was annoyed.

  “I didn’t come here because I wanted sympathy. I came here to put an end to our cursed bloodlines.”

  “...?”

  I didn’t understand what she was getting at. I was born Rekka Namidare. I couldn’t exactly change that. It was the same way for Hibiki. So how, really, did she intend to “end” our bloodlines?

  “...”

  Come to think of it, she’d been awfully set on marrying me. Why was that?

  “Maybe you want to get married to, uh... get a new name, or something?”

  “Are you an idiot?”

  Yeah, that probably wasn’t it...

  “But then why marry?”

  “If we get married and don’t have kids, never again will anyone inherit Namidare or Banjo blood.”

  “Bwuh?!”

  Kids... That felt like skipping a few steps, but maybe that was just a sign of how serious she was?

  “And if we’re always together, we might get caught up in the same stories.”

  “Um, so you’re saying...?”

  “For example, imagine Story A is unfolding in the town where you live, and in the town where I live, Story B is occurring at the same time. What happens then?”

  “Well, then I’d be caught up in Story A, and you’d be caught up in Story B, right?”

  “Probably, yeah. We’re basically like magnets, and these ‘stories’ are drawn to us like iron filings. But what if we get married and live in the same house?”

  “Well, I guess we’d both be involved in Story A.”

  “Right, just Story A. We’d essentially cut the number of stories in half.”

  “Well, that’s true...”

  But we’d still be getting caught up in stories, right? Well, at least I was starting to see where she was coming from.

  “I still don’t know if I could just get married though.” That was the big problem, and the part I really didn’t understand.

  Hibiki’s eyebrows twitched.

  “What? Am I not good enough for you?”

  “No, I mean I’m not even old enough to get married. And...”

  “And?”

  “I don’t think I could marry someone if we didn’t love each other.”

  “...”

  Hibiki’s eyes narrowed sharply. She seemed to get pretty miffed whenever I talked back to her.

  “Listen, I understand why you hate the position you’re in, but I don’t know about marriage... I mean, even if you’re with me, you’re still going to be getting caught up in stories.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Huh?”

  Weren’t stories precisely what she was trying to avoid? No... That wasn’t it. She seemed to understand that being with me wouldn’t change that part.

  So was this just a strategy to reduce the total amount of stories the pair of us were caught up in? But then why was she so insistent on it? There wouldn’t be anything in it for her per se.

  Without thinking, I looked at her suspiciously.

  “Our bloodlines hurt the innocent people around us.”

  The words she spoke in answer to my unasked question made me gasp.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said.” She bit her lip and balled her hands into fists.

  “But what do you—?!” I started to ask her again, but stopped myself. I could see a red trickle of blood running down from her lip.

  “...Did something happen?” There had to be some reason she felt this strongly, even when there was nothing in it for her.

  “...” Hibiki didn’t answer immediately. A moment later, she wiped away the blood and looked me in the eyes. “I grew up hearing all about the bloodline of the Banjo family nonstop.”

  “I see.”

  I’d only heard about mine from my dad the night before I turned sixteen. Was that just a difference in how our families did things?

  “I was taught how difficult it was to resolve a story, so I trained myself every single day, day after day. Weakness would only mean bad endings for the stories I was involved in, and I didn’t want that. I did my best to get stronger.”

  I could tell from how built she was that she wasn’t exaggerating.

  “Everyone around me thought I was weird. I trained instead of playing, and I spent the rest of my time reading books to get smarter. I never had any friends... until middle school.”

  With those words, I saw a gentle light in her eyes.

  “At first, she thought I was weird too. That’s why she took an interest in me. She would sit across from me as I read in the library, and just watch me silently. I tried to drive her away, but she followed me everywhere. She eventually even started coming to the dojo. I thought she was annoying, but then... Little by little, we started to talk to each other every day. When she wasn’t at school sometimes, I’d get worried. I heard she was sick. One day, she told me that she thought I was cool because I was a girl who could beat up guys... Really, the next thing I knew, we were friends.”

  “...”

  This should have been a nice story, but the longer I listened, the more anxious I became.

  “And then I turned sixteen.”

  What was it she’d said before she started talking? “Our bloodlines hurt the innocent people around us”?

  “I ended up getting involved in a story where I was up against a group of gun smugglers.”

  She started to look down more and more as she spoke.

  “She got worried about me when I started missing class in high school. I told her there was nothing to be concerned about... But that night, she got worried enough to come looking for me.”

  Her bangs hid her face so that I couldn’t read her expression.

  “...She got mixed up in the fight between me and the smugglers, and took a stray bullet to the stomach.”

  “...”

  Her voice was filled with sadness and pain, and there was nothing I could do but listen.

  “...”

  R was sitting up straight with the same deadpan look on her face as always.

  The air in the living room was frozen. The ticking of the clock seemed strangely loud.

  “What happened to her...?” I worked up the courage to ask.

  “She managed to survive, but she’s still in the hospital. She’s never woken up.” Hibiki’s voice was calm and indifferent.

  “...”

  She took a deep breath and raised her head.

  “Just so we’re clear, she had nothing to do with the story. She was badly hurt solely because she got involved with someone like me.” Her expression returned to normal as she continued. “Rekka Namidare, I can guarantee the same thing is going to happen to you.”

  “...!”

  The Namidare and Banjo bloodlines were the same thing at their core. Two sides of the same coin. But she was saying that someday, I would....

  “No, but...!”

  “We’re not normal. Our very existence spreads disaster,” Hib
iki cut me off.

  “...”

  Denying it was a defensive, emotional reaction. A single glare from her was all it took to shut me up.

  “So until this bloodline disappears, we should live as far away from other people as possible, Rekka Namidare.” Her words were heavy because they were based in experience.

  I’d had the wrong idea this whole time. I had assumed that she wanted to be rid of the Banjo and Namidare bloodlines for her own sake. But I was wrong. She just didn’t want anyone getting caught up in her stories. Being with me could potentially decrease the number of stories that happened around us, reducing the chances for innocent people to be dragged into them. That was all she wanted.

  “I understand what you’re saying...”

  And I knew that she meant it, too. That was fine. The problem was that my own feelings weren’t keeping up.

  Of course they weren’t. Even if my legacy was a little weird, I was still a normal person. That’s how I’d thought of it... But my personal hang-ups weren’t what mattered now. If my being a Namidare was going to get someone hurt...

  “...”

  But I couldn’t just stop being who I was. My thoughts from earlier flashed through my mind again. It meant that there was no obvious solution to this problem.

  Then, like Hibiki said, I should do what I could to minimize the damage. It would be better to stay away from everyone. I would just have to avoid all the people I cared about and live apart from everyone until I grew up. Even so, I knew I couldn’t make a decision like that so suddenly.

  “...”

  But not saying anything wasn’t going to solve a thing.

  “...”

  I opened my mouth to say something—anything—when...

  SMASH! The sliding glass door in the living room shattered.

  “What?!”

  “—!”

  I shouted in surprise, and Hibiki immediately readied herself for a fight.

  “I’ve found you!” A man suddenly entered the room and shouted.

  He was clearly after me or Hibiki. Did this mean that, just like she had planned, by being together we were both getting sucked into the same story? If it did, that would seem to confirm that staying together and constantly keeping our distance from other people would be an effective strategy.

  But it was all so sudden that I wasn’t ready in the slightest. Not even mentally. But the wheels of fate keep spinning whether you like it or not—and I was getting caught up in its gears.