“Seriously, though, you look as young as ever,” Mayuzumi observed.

  I chuckled.

  “Well, I am eternally twenty-one, you know.”

  We shared a laugh and parted ways, but I knew the day she would disappear from my life forever wouldn’t be too far off.

  Commentary

  How did you like this crossover between dungeon fantasy and the legends from Wakasa?

  The title, “Ashes to Ashes,” is from a famous passage that appears in a Christian prayer book. The passage states that “from dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” suggesting that people should place their trust in God “in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.” Yoshimura also name-dropped the chapter title near the end, as I’m sure you saw.

  Due to how memorable the phrase is, it’s frequently used in song and album titles. The most famous one is probably the track by David Bowie, but another artist that comes to mind is Joe Sample.

  “Dust to dust” is another commonly quoted phrase from the same passage, though it’s perhaps not quite as ubiquitous as “ashes to ashes.” On the other hand, the ill-fated first phrase in the trio, “earth to earth,” is hardly ever quoted.

  If you’re wondering why the name on the church in the story was written in Galician, it’s simply because Miyoshi was influenced by the Spanish horror film Dagon, released in 2001. (Apparently the 2007 American film Cthulhu and the 1994 Japanese novel Insumasu o Oou Kage didn’t do her much good.) The church that appears in Dagon just so happens to be “Esoterica Orde de Dagon.” Interestingly, all the actors in the movie pronounced it “deegon” or “daygon” rather than “daggon.” All it took for Miyoshi to go overboard and throw Yoshimura into a state of complete chaos was a simple, “Hey, this seems kinda neat!” Fear her.

  By the way, these may just be short stories, but this is still D-Genesis. That means just about everything that shows up actually exists, including but not limited to: the strange sign, the round stones on shrine grounds (these were actually “lifting stones”—a nearby sign explained that the young people of the village would pick them up to use in strength contests), the Tomari Disposal Facility, the strange gate with the Shimazu family crest on it, the shipping containers scattered along the side of the road, and the shipping containers that had been smashed in. The first time I visited this area, it felt like I had slipped into the Twilight Zone.

  (Of course, keep in mind that this is a work of fiction, so whatever appears in the book has no actual relation to the real versions of these things, no matter how similar they may seem.)

  Naturally, the whole area is actually Tomari, and there is no “Sukusu” beyond the gate, nor are there any farmhouses further down the other path mentioned when Ryoko visited the gate. The road I saw there was barely even a road; it was so overgrown by the surrounding vegetation, I seriously wondered if it was usable whatsoever.

  When I’m wandering around strange locations across Japan that aren’t considered your typical tourist destinations, I run into a lot of mysterious places like this. Examples include Kudaka Island, a tiny abandoned shrine deep in the mountains of Okuizumo, and a set of stairs in an alley in the back streets of Shibuya that leads to a bizarre space. Oh, the keystone shrine on the west side of Kashima Jingu Shrine was pretty wild too!

  Going to a city you’ve never been to before, turning down a narrow alley, following it to the end, and seeing that it suddenly opens up into a mysterious wide-open area... Stuff like that really gets me fired up! Those places always manage to stimulate my imagination, and I’d love to write another story like this if I ever get the chance.

  By the way, regarding the eight-hundred-year-old Buddhist priestess mentioned once in the story, I used to confidently pronounce it “Yaobikuni,” but they apparently pronounce it “Happyakubikuni” in Obama. Hoo boy. I guess they would call that a “big oof...”

  However, as they say: What happens in Obama, stays in Obama. If you embarrass yourself once on a trip, there’s no way you’ll ever make the same mistake again, so no worries! Yep, no worries at all. Sniffle.

  Chapter 3: The Queen’s Coronation

  Foreword

  While I’m in the process of writing D-Genesis, a lot of the time I’ll look up and realize that my character count has kind of exploded. (And by “a lot of the time,” I mean “basically every time,” much to the chagrin of my editor...)

  Now, understand that modern-day Japanese consists of a bit under 59,000 characters, roughly. If you exclude English letters and numbers and stick to the list of kanji for common use, that leaves about 2,300 characters. If you write just ten characters from that list, the number of possible combinations you could make with them would be 2,300^10. And by that logic, if you write a whopping 200,000 characters, that would be 2,300^200,000 possible combinations! The more you write, the more explosive things get. This phenomenon is known as a “combinatorial explosion.” (Not really though.) It makes me wonder how that teacher from Miraikan’s animated short The Art of 10^64: Understanding Vastness is doing these days...

  Since exploding character counts happen to me so often, I ended up making the decision to deal with them in the most aggressively counterproductive way possible: I just write as much as I feel like writing, then worry about trimming things down at the end. My billowing character count cannot be contained! It’s not even on my radar before I reach 140k characters, but by the time I break the 160k barrier, I start to get a bit concerned. After 180k, I find myself surrounded by a nasty puddle of sweat, and at 200k, my soul is actively trying to escape my body. Needless to say, by the 250k mark, I have no choice but to resign myself to my fate.

  When that happens, if perchance there’s an event in the plotline that’s just the right length, sometimes I end up having to bite the bullet, hold back my tears, and put the whole segment on the chopping block. It’s a clear-cut case of reaping what I sow. Argh! Who the hell can pull together all their plot threads within a specific number of characters, anyway?! (The answer: anyone who writes novels.) If someone finishes writing their story and happens to randomly end within an acceptable character count, they just managed to get stupid lucky! (It’s very rarely luck.)

  The short story for volume 3 was born as a manifestation of that suffering, and was originally prefaced by the following statement: “It’s highly recommended that you read this short story after reading volume 3.” Of course, that makes perfect sense when you realize it’s just a cut portion of the volume that was reworked and touched up...

  And, of course, in volume 3, something awakened inside Asha. There’s no denying that Miyoshi committed a grievous sin indeed by facilitating this. We can only pray that Asha’s Papa Bear never learns what “topping all the bottoms” actually means.

  Preface

  This story features a fictional version of Akihabara that is incredibly similar to the real one, and contains fictional versions of several curry restaurants that are incredibly similar to real places. However, it makes no judgments on the quality of each restaurant’s food. Every customer has a unique palate and their own unique opinions; that fact is part of the essence of curry itself.

  Naturally, the names of all restaurants and their dishes used here are fictitious ones, and I will reiterate that they have no relation whatsoever to the real ones they happen to sound incredibly similar to. They do have slight differences as well, which was unavoidable—it was, to put it succinctly, a requirement.

  The story that follows is a chronicle of the wisdom, courage, and trust between three specific individuals who end up being tested by the gods.

  Annotations

  The gods: Or the author, if you prefer.

  December 27, 2018 (Thursday)

  Akihabara

  “Wow, so this is Akihabara!”

  With a blithe “Riding the train is a huge part of sightseeing in Japan!” from Miyoshi, the three of us had hopped on the Sobu Line and headed out through the Electric Town ticket gate into Akihabara.

  “Though I admit, it’s not quite the same as I’d envisioned,” Asha added, turning her head every which way to take in the sights.

  Asha’s knowledge of Akiba had apparently come from hardcore American nerds she had met online in the modern age of shut-ins, and no doubt it was biased by their perspective. Whether that meant in favor of electronics or moe culture, I couldn’t be sure.

  She was right, though: The area in front of the station didn’t have nearly the same sense of depth it had back in the day. When you went out via the Electric Town exit on the UDX side (the one on your right), there would be giant banners hanging off buildings on the right side depicting anime and video game characters. Lately, though, a lot of video game characters were drawn in Western-style art, so the view no longer really blasted people in the face with anime vibes. At most there were occasional advertising campaigns in the open spaces around the streetlights along Chuo-dori. Alternatively, you could check out Denpa Kaikan, which retained some of that same flavor from before moe culture began dominating everything.

  If you were specifically looking to immerse yourself in moe, you’d go out the Electric Town South exit (the one on your left) and walk around the Radio Kaikan area. That’s where the main Gamers location was, after all—you couldn’t go wrong with that.

  Across Chuo-dori stood the Sega and Sofmap buildings, which also preserved some of the atmosphere of the old days, but it was nothing like the bygone era when huge posters for adult-only games had been plastered on every other building; the area had become much more normal, comparatively.

  “Hey, Miyoshi, is it just me, or are people staring at us?”

  Maybe it was because the three of us were wearing T-shirts with weirdly cheap-looking logos on them, and hooded jackets with the words “My Prayer: Akiba Curry Pilgrimage” printed on their backs.

  “Whoa, look at those three weirdos!”

  “‘Akiba Curry Pilgrimage’?”

  “Who are these Gyoshin wannabes?”

  “Why would they reference such an ancient manga...?”

  “It just had a new series start up, actually.”

  “Huh? It did?”

  “That’s not the point. Do they realize how many curry shops there are in Akiba nowadays? There’s no way anyone could hit them all up in one day. Besides, how many bowls do they even think they can eat?”

  “No joke. They’ve got some pretty hefty portion sizes around here.”

  “And look how skinny that girl is!”

  “Y’know, now that I look at her, she’s kinda hot. Maybe we should tag along...”

  And so the voices from the peanut gallery reached my ears. We were drawing a fair amount of attention, and the passersby kept shooting us amused glances.

  “So far, everything’s going ‘just according to keikaku,’” Miyoshi joked, referencing an infamous meme from an anime about a lethal notebook. “That being said...” She brought up her phone and showed us the route for the day’s curry crawl.

  “Oh!” Asha exclaimed.

  I stared in disbelief.

  “What the hell? Are there really that many curry shops just around the station here?!” Incredibly, there were over twenty locations pinned on Miyoshi’s map.

  “Yup, there sure are!”

  “Kaygo, Kaygo! We’re going to visit all of them, right?”

  “All of them...? Even with the three of us sharing a plate every time, that’s still roughly seven plates per person.”

  “That’s what you might think, at least,” Miyoshi stated.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Uh, is there something wrong with my math...?”

  “No, there are just some places she probably won’t be able to eat.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the type of meat served. As lax as the Jain household may be, beef is still sacred, and pork is still unclean, you know?”

  “If it’s just a few bites, I’m sure God would look the other way,” I shot back matter-of-factly.

  From what I had been told, some city-dwelling Indian people ate beef on occasion. And when practicing Hindus stayed in Japan, a fair number would eat tonkatsu or drink beer. It all depended on the person, apparently. Faith is a contract between an individual and God, after all, and interfering with others’ eating norms is like interfering with their faith, so I doubt anyone would get after her for it...

  “Well, for today, let’s stick with what her Papa Bear told us before: chicken, lamb, or goat, okay? We wouldn’t want anyone to get in trouble,” Miyoshi added in a solemn murmur.

  We sure as heck weren’t going to be tracking down any goat curry, so that meant we’d have to go for chicken or lamb when vegetarian wasn’t available.

  “Aww...” Asha thought for a moment, then looked up at us. “Can we go to Ugo Ugo Curry?”

  “Ugo Ugo Curry?” I repeated, not following.

  “It’s a Kanazawa-style curry chain...” Miyoshi explained. “Unfortunately Ugo is a no-go, though.”

  “Awww!”

  “The same group has a chain called Samrat that serves chicken curry, but there aren’t any locations in Akiba.”

  Apparently Asha’s American nerd associates had recommended Ugo Ugo Curry to her. However, even if you nixed the pork cutlet on top, it was still a rich Kanazawa pork curry roux, through and through.

  Asha was dejected when she heard that, but we wanted to avoid any potential death glares from her Papa Bear. Miyoshi and I had a sense of self-preservation, after all.

  “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine! How about we put ourselves back on track and head to our first stop? It looks pretty promising to me!”

  With that, Miyoshi took us to a curry shop that happened to be right there on the first floor of the Atré building we were already in. For some reason, the place was named after a country that didn’t seem like it had anything to do with curry whatsoever.

  “Excuse me! I am the great Curry Daiou—a king who loves curry! May I request a single bowl of curry to split between me and my two loyal subjects?” I asked, gesturing toward the word “Pilgrimage” on Asha’s hoodie. The person taking our order responded with an enthusiastic “OK” hand gesture.

  “That’s kind of playing with fire, making a gesture like that in front of someone of Indian descent like Asha,” Miyoshi muttered.

  “What are you even talking about?” I asked, confused yet again.

  Miyoshi then explained to me that a rumor was going around in the United States that the “OK” gesture had supposedly taken on a new meaning. Allegedly it had been usurped as a white supremacist symbol, with the three fingers sticking up forming a “W” and the thumb and forefinger together plus the arm forming a “P,” which were the initials for “white power.”

  “The hell?”

  “That’s a perfectly natural reaction for you to have, Kei, but it just goes to show that some people out there are really sensitive to these things.”

  I mean, you certainly won’t find any Nazi flags flying in Kyoto, but symbols that look like swastikas are pretty much all over the place. Why? Well, because a lot of wooden architecture there uses the left-facing manji, and when you look at one of those from behind, it becomes the much-maligned right-facing swastika. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to be up in arms about that in this day and age, I’d think.

  “If people can just usurp the gestures and symbols we use every day and make them bigoted, we won’t be able to say or do anything at all anymore!”

  Miyoshi frowned.

  “It’s a pretty complicated issue...”

  “Kaygo, what does this say?”

  “Let’s see, it says you can choose how spicy you want to make it, up to level 70.”

  “Wow!”

  “Also, this one right here is beef, so make sure to steer clear,” Miyoshi chimed in, then helped Asha through the menu, assuring her that anything else should be safe to eat.

  “Maybe we should go with bean, just to be safe...?” I suggested.

  “Okay, let’s do the bean curry, then. That’ll help with the portion sizes too.”

  Most of the other curries were typically stacked sky-high with ingredients, making them pretty massive. That would’ve been way too heavy on the stomach if we were going for seven bowls each.

  “And for the spice level, let’s go with—”

  “Seventy!”

  Upon hearing Asha’s energetic contribution to our order, Miyoshi and I both let out a simultaneous “Huh?!”

  When the order came out, we let Asha eat first. Supposedly saliva was one vector for uncleanliness. Asha just smiled awkwardly and told us not to worry about it, but yeah, self-preservation and whatnot.

  “Spicy, runny curry like this reminds me of the South,” Asha said between bites.

  “The South?”

  Geographically speaking, India had a roughly triangular shape, with one edge oriented north to south, and its other vertex pointing east. Most of the population was concentrated along the Ganges River across the northeast edge of the triangle, as well as near the vertices. Therefore, the country was largely divided into the North and the South, followed by the East if further separation was needed.

  “I always thought Mumbai was in the West, though.” Technically, the city was more or less centrally located on the west coast of India, facing the Arabian Sea.

  “Why? Because of how westernized it has become under the influence of British rule?” Asha countered, a grin on her face.

  For a moment, I didn’t quite register what she had said, but as soon as I realized she had been making a play on words, I cracked a half smile myself.

  “We should give the puns a west for a while.”

  According to her, Indian curry had extremely distinct regional flavors, so much so that the versions in North and South India might as well have been completely different dishes. The North often used milk or fresh cream, making it rich, thick, and oily, while the South added things like coconut milk, which gave the curry a smoother, runnier texture.