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Online/Offline Compatible Roguelike MO Action + Online Versus Action.
Ryu's Memory
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The Chosen Attorney - Chapter 1
This happened when I was still very young. Back then, I truly believed the world was simple, and that if one trusted in the right words, the right outcome would follow.
* * *
The back of the printing shop always smelled of paper and ink. In the office, where exhaust from the old printers lingered in the air, my father checked invoices late into the night. It was a small company, but it handled everything from local flyers and business cards to small-lot online print orders. Even after dark, the lights were rarely off.
One day, one of the office workers stopped coming in. He was a man who had been in charge of the books until only a few days earlier. He had called in sick, and my father let him rest without suspecting anything. His desk remained, along with stacks of documents and a locked drawer.
The following week, an unfamiliar envelope arrived. It had no postmark and no company name. When my father opened it, inside was a document printed with the words "Joint and Several Guarantee Agreement." The amount written on it was far beyond what an individual could reasonably bear. In the guarantor field were my father's signature and seal.
The color drained from my father's face when he saw it. He did not recognize the handwriting. And yet, no matter how one looked at it, the writing appeared to be his. The seal impression was unmistakably his as well.
My father immediately went to consult the police. But when he returned, I could tell from his expression alone that nothing had been resolved. At the time, I did not fully understand what it meant, but apparently the police would not act because it was a "civil matter." It felt as though reality itself had been placed before us: even if one wished to protest something, one might not even possess the means to do so.
* * *
When we returned home, there was an envelope from the guarantee company in the mailbox. The notice, printed on thick paper, said this:
"Should payment not be confirmed, we will proceed with legal measures. This may include seizure of assets."
My father stood motionless for a while, still holding the paper. For some reason, the seal lying on the desk drew my eye. The red ink remaining on its surface looked almost like evidence of a crime.
I watched the scene in silence.
My father, who should have done nothing wrong, was being cornered by a single sheet of paper.
Only the words written on that paper ruled reality, and no one could deny them.
That was when I first understood how the world worked.
* * *
The next day, my father went to the police station again. And he did not come back for a very long time.
Thick rain clouds sealed off the sky, and eventually rain began to fall. I took an umbrella and went out to meet him.
Past a dim alleyway, beneath a streetlight, stood a girl I had never seen before.
Her pale platinum-blonde hair flicked outward at the ends, as though wrapped in light. Her features were so perfectly balanced that they almost felt unreal. A divine being - that may be the closest way to describe her. But what drew my gaze in that moment was not the girl herself.
It was the pen in her hand.
A writing instrument decorated in white and gold, so refined that it seemed almost unnaturally complete. Its polished beauty held my eyes captive.
"Do you know the power of words?"
Her voice seemed to echo directly in the depths of my ears. Holding the end of the pen out toward me, she continued.
"A contract written with this pen can be overwritten. Unjust words, distorted promises - all can be restored to their proper form."
Overwhelmed by the atmosphere around her, I reached out without thinking. The pen was astonishingly cold, and the moment I touched it, my fingertips trembled.
When I returned home, my father was already back, slumped over the desk. When I called out to him, he weakly shook his head. I understood that nothing had come of it.
A copy of the guarantee agreement lay open on the desk.
I stared at the paper. The numbers and letters seemed to line up like living creatures.
At the center was a single sentence.
"The Party A shall jointly and severally guarantee the obligations of Party B."
At the right edge of that line, a small proviso had been added.
"Provided, however, that this guarantee shall expire upon completion of full payment at maturity."
I took the white and gold pen from my pocket. Placing its tip against the paper, I slowly traced a straight horizontal line across the written words. The letters trembled, rearranged themselves, and became a different sentence.
"This agreement shall be void from the beginning if there is any defect in the guarantor's manifestation of intent."
The next instant, the fluorescent light in the room flickered faintly. I held my breath and gripped the pen tightly.
It felt as though the entire world had fallen silent.
The following morning, a call came from the guarantee company.
"From our company's perspective, we recognize that the contract in question was never validly formed."
My father could not understand what had happened and checked the document again and again. The sentence written there was different from the night before.
I looked toward the white and gold pen hidden deep inside my desk drawer.
This is a miracle.
That was what I decided to believe.
From that day onward, the way I understood the world changed.
Justice is carved into reality in the form of words.
Contracts bind the world, and by rewriting them, one can restore the truth.
That, I believed, was the power that moved this world.
But what the being I met that day truly was, and why she had given me that pen - I would not learn until much later.
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The Chosen Attorney - Chapter 2
From that day onward, the white-and-gold pen remained locked away in the back of my desk drawer.
I did not take it out every day. The power to rewrite anything was something I feared more than anyone, even as a child.
And yet, I could never forget it.
Once every few months or so, the girl would appear again.
Sometimes on a pedestrian bridge in the rain. Sometimes on an empty train platform. Sometimes at a deserted intersection where the flow of people had long since faded away. There was no pattern to where she appeared, but she always stood there as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Words define the world."
From time to time, she would say things like that.
"Law is a wedge humanity drives into reality. That is why it must not be imperfect."
At the time, I understood less than half of what she meant. Even so, her words carried a strange sense of conviction.
Before long, I found myself studying law.
I never considered becoming a police officer. Ever since what happened to my father, that organization no longer looked like a place that protected justice. Even when someone was suffering right in front of them, they would not act if the definitions written on paper said otherwise. I found that unbearable.
On the other hand, contracts and legal documents held a peculiar fascination for me. A few lines of text could save a person's life, or destroy it. Precisely because of that, they had to be handled correctly.
As a student, I developed a knack for spotting contradictions in writing and argument. Whether in mock trials or debates, flaws in language seemed to reveal themselves to me with uncanny clarity.
And then, I became a lawyer.
Before I knew it, I had earned a reputation as a lawyer who specialized in cases involving children.
Juvenile delinquency. Abuse. Neglect. School-related disputes. For some reason, those were the kinds of cases that kept finding their way to me. Looking back now, perhaps it was unnatural. But at the time, I believed it was my mission.
To save children who were suffering.
That was what someone chosen for this role was supposed to do.
There were times when I used the power of that pen. But only when there was truly no other way.
When an abused child was about to be denied protection because of nothing more than a paperwork error. When a boy who was clearly innocent was about to lose his last chance at salvation because authorities had ruled that his confession had been given voluntarily.
Only in moments like those did I make the slightest correction to the world's text.
And each time, reality quietly rewrote itself.
Without anyone noticing.
As though it had always been that way from the beginning.
The girl would occasionally appear before me. Unchanged from the day we first met.
"You're doing well."
Whenever she said that, I felt proud.
I was doing the right thing.
I was gradually returning the world to the way it was meant to be.
I truly believed that.
Before I realized it, strands of white had begun to appear in the hair reflected in my mirror.
* * *
At some point, the girl began bringing me a particular kind of case.
One season, during a stretch of early summer rain, she appeared carrying a stack of documents and spoke in the same calm tone as always.
"An interesting case has been observed in a provincial city."
What she showed me looked less like an official report and more like a collection of unrelated fragments forcibly stitched together.
Rumors had spread through a residential neighborhood about a girl who could heal any injury. Her father had begun inviting acquaintances to their home on a regular basis, had quit his job, and was now prioritizing receiving visitors. There was even testimony claiming that a man who had lost a hand in an industrial accident had been using it normally again only days later.
None of it was particularly credible.
Rumors. Misunderstandings. Exaggerations.
Taken individually, each story could have been dismissed without a second thought. Yet together, they formed a strangely consistent picture.
The girl gave a small nod, as if confirming my reaction.
"An ability user. She possesses healing powers."
I lowered my eyes back to the documents.
The existence of ability users was hardly something I could doubt at this point.
Children burdened by strange powers and the problems those powers created. At some point, she had begun selectively bringing such cases to me.
I had encountered several unexplainable incidents before, and I myself had touched a fragment of that power through the pen.
But people like them never appeared in public.
Their stories were dismissed as coincidence, reduced to rumors, and eventually buried in ambiguity.
Cases that left this many traces over such a long period were rare.
She continued.
"Her father has begun exploiting her ability. If left alone, it will become a problem sooner or later."
"...You think she needs protection?"
"Some do."
Something about that wording caught my attention.
It was as though she herself belonged to a different side of the matter.
But I chose not to pursue it.
The only thing that mattered was that a child was in danger.
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To be continued...
Most Memorable Story
Total Votes 14
Ai
4
Taka
3
Kai
2
Maya
2
Shin
1
Ritsu
1
Saki
1
Ryu
0
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This page is updated irregularly.
Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution of this work’s text or images is prohibited.
Author: Akiyoshi Hanaoka
© Musurunsoft – PSI Masquerade DW Project
Author: Akiyoshi Hanaoka
© Musurunsoft – PSI Masquerade DW Project
The English version uses AI-generated translation.