Infinite Dendrogram - Volume 19 - Chapter SS2

The Oddballs

April, 2042, Reiji Mukudori

“Hey prez, you gathered all the EGRS members personally, right? Like you did with me?”

“Yes. I made the club, and Vice Prez Sauda was the first member. We didn’t have enough people at first, though, so it was just an association back then...but the name was the same as it is now. ‘Electronic Game Research Society’ sounds better than ‘Electronic Game Research Club.’”

N High School of N City in the N Prefecture—the school I went to respected its students’ independence and made it really easy to start new groups and the like. That meant there were all kinds of clubs, and EGRS was one of them.

“...What standards did you use while scouting us out?”

Our club was a place you could call “a den of oddballs.”

First we had President Koyomi Hoshizora—a girl from a wealthy family who was crazy about card games and had a gacha addiction. She told people’s fortunes by building decks, drawing cards, and doing other things that didn’t seem like they’d actually work. The only problem was that she got things right so often it was scary.

Next there was Vice-President Elmo Sauda—the tall and silent hit man. His pseudo-VR (that is, VR with only video and audio) FPS skills were so insane he could completely hide his presence and shoot his enemies from point-blank range before they even realized he was there.

Then there was Yubu Munegami—the biggest and scariest-looking guy in school, but who was actually a gentle giant who did volunteer work at least three times a week. When it came to gaming, he was an all-rounder who placed high in tournaments for anything ranging from fighting games to puzzle games.

Then we had Molly Forester—the virtual madwoman who thought messing with people in games was the best thing in the world. She enjoyed tricking people in Mafia-like and trap battle games more than she enjoyed getting her three daily meals.

And finally, we had Hitsuji Kata—my perverted classmate who freaked out the entire class when he, as part of his introduction, said that he was more aroused by lips than by an actual naked body. He was also a fairly popular content creator.

With me included, that made six of us—two from each school year. That was the current EGRS member composition.

“I feel like everyone besides me is very...colorful,” I said.

“The fact that you’re excluding yourself makes it clear that you’re not looking at this objectively...wait, no. It’s more likely that your standards are just ridiculous. Please don’t use those around you as a baseline. Especially your sister.”

Good point. Compared to my sister, the EGRS people were pretty normal.

Not Kata, though.

“Anyway, to answer your question...I invited you based on my gut instinct.”

“Oh, so it wasn’t fortune-telling?”

“No. I just picked people I sensed had a common fate and thought would be fun to have around.”

“And you invited me at the most perfect time...”

She’d invited me right when I was looking for a club that wouldn’t mind if I quit after the first year.

My dad had given me a condition I had to meet if I wanted to move to Tokyo—I had to pass UTokyo entrance exams in my last year of high school. After all that had happened with my older siblings, he was really apprehensive about letting me move out, so he gave me this insane condition hoping I wouldn’t manage it. Not like that would stop me. If the possibility was there, I’d do everything to seize it.

I’d thought it would’ve been difficult to do it if I didn’t go all-in on studying once I was in year two, though, so I’d been looking for a club that would have been fine with me quitting after the first year. That was when prez invited me, literally saying, “Would you like to join us for just one year?”

Thanks to Shu’s influence, I played retro games and the like pretty often, and when I found out she was talking about a club where we’d play games, chat, and attend tourneys for genres we were good at, I felt like it was fun and had direction too, so I didn’t hesitate to join.

“Besides profit, the only reasons people ever get together are gut instinct and a common fate,” she said.

“You think so?”

“Yes. If that is your fate, you might eventually create a group like this yourself.”

“...A group of oddballs, you mean?”

“Odd or not, if the group is fun, that means it’s a good one.”

◇◇◇

I hadn’t thought much of that back then, but now that I had Death Period, looking back at the president’s words filled me with a kind of awe.

Could she actually see the future?