Monogatari Series - Volume 25 - Chapter 3.07

007 

Long ago, although saying it like that was a bit of an exaggeration, that was a mechanic from the dawn of video games, so long ago that even I didn’t know it from experience. According to what the retro games lover Sengoku told me, in the days where there wasn’t enough space to save all the data on the game’s cartridge (this word is also pretty old), you continued the game by entering a password composed of hiragana. 

In most cases, that password was a meaningless lineup of syllables created randomly. Apparently, the kids in that era were earnestly trying to remember that lineup. Since you can’t continue anymore if you get even one letter wrong, they must have done it really seriously. 

It must have been an unimaginable hardship compared to these days, when auto-save functions, automatic password storage or even fingerprint identification are the norm. I can imagine it must have been a fun kind of hardship in its own way. 

In a way, having a mechanic that forces you to input a password became another facet of the game. Also, the inevitability of this structure meant that, as long as you knew the password, you could skip some points and start midway through. Due to all that, those passwords were closer to hidden commands, which gave birth to rumors about secret codes just before the endgame. 

Rumors. 

Just like the tale of an oddity. 

“‘BAUYOOSAKUHIRAMIDANUOWANANU’ is the password of an ancient RPG game, which had a magical girl as the main character. With it, you should be able to load a level 999 character right before the bonus stage. Among the maniacs, it’s known as a legendary password transmitted from the underworld.” 

Chinou-chan explained haughtily, but since she said “RPG game”, I bet she didn’t have much experience with video games—she didn’t feel like a maniac. 

So maybe she only knew it because it was a game focused on magical girls. She said a great number of games were being held in Shikoku, so this might be one of them. From the impression I got, judging by the fact that the result of the anagram was that legendary password, it’s possible that the organization she belongs to was involved in its creation. 

“I see… A game’s password huh. A hidden command…” 

Still, that said, I couldn’t satisfyingly claim to have found the solution. 

Purposely making the answer deductible through the anagram a meaningless lineup of letters is already ill-natured, but well, I don’t mind thinking they got us. The trick of making the answer to a code another code is a common means to up the difficulty. And even though it was unsolvable for me, since I didn’t know of the game in question, being an outsider who just barged in, I couldn’t help but admit that was the right answer. 

But what does that do for us? 

In the end, we still don’t know the essential 4-digit password we need to escape the room, right? 

Should we input 999, the level of that datasave? No, that would only be 3 digits—then, preserving the magical girl style, should we input the magic points? 

“Impossible. The magic points hit the maximum of 999 too. What a dullard, Koyomi-san. Both your thought process and instinct.” 

“… (holding in my anger).” 

“Huh? Why are you saying ‘(holding in my anger)’ aloud?” 

“So that you can hear it. Anyway, so it’s not the magic points. Then what kind of points is it?” 

“The point is the protagonist: the magical girl’s name. This game had a system where the player could choose her name at will.” 

“Um. Well, that’s the case in most games, even nowadays though— mm?” 

No. 

If you start midway through inputting a password, that’s not true anymore—in the same way that the level and magic points were, the main character’s name was fixed to the password. 

“The name of the magical girl from the legendary password is Pai.” “Pai.” 

As if having understood it thanks to my reciting, Chinou-chan grinned. 

“That’s why, I told you from the start, didn’t I? According to my inspiration, the answer was  .”