“Yuu, I heard you’re making something.”
Lunch break. As I sat on the edge of the sandbox, Haru sat down next to me as usual.
In the past few days, we’d been spending more time together without either of us inviting the other. Yesterday we expanded the port we’d made in the sandbox, and the day before that we walked around the garden looking for insects.
“I’m making a game on the computer my parents bought me the other day.”
“Huh?”
After saying that, Haru immediately returned his gaze to his feet.
He was poking around a small hole in the ground with a thin branch in his hand. Apparently, he was waiting for ants to come out from inside.
I’d thought he would bite a little more, so I was a little disappointed.
“Don’t you want to see the game?”
“I’ll see it. But it doesn’t have to be now. I’m still waiting to see where this guy comes out.”
Haru answered without taking his eyes off the ground.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in games. However, at that moment, the ant nest was more interesting than the game. It seemed that for that reason alone, he’d decided what to do without hesitation.
“I see.”
“Do you want to see too, Yuu?”
“Then I’ll watch.”
As the two of us waited with our faces close to the ground, a little while later a small ant appeared from inside the hole.
“Ah, it’s out!”
Haru laughed happily, and I laughed too.
In my previous life, I would have decided what to prioritize based on factors such as importance, urgency, success rate, and required resources. That was the norm.
But Haru was different.
I’ll do this now because it’s interesting.
I thought it was a fairly simple way to decide. However, it didn’t seem like such a bad decision.
◇
That weekend, Haru came to visit my house for the first time.
“Sorry to bother you!”
From the moment he entered the front door, his voice was so loud that it could be heard throughout the house.
“Welcome, Haru-kun. I’ve been hearing a lot about you from Yuu.”
When my mother greeted him, I couldn’t help but turn around.
“Did I talk about him that much?”
“You tell me what you did with Haru-kun that day almost every day.”
“…That much?”
“He does, he does.”
For some reason, even Haru agreed with my mother. No, Haru doesn’t know what happens at home.
It seemed like arguing in a two-on-one situation would be a bad idea, so I stopped there and headed to the living room first.
While my mother prepared sweets and juice, I placed my laptop on the table and started it up.
“This is the game I was talking about the other day.”
“Did Yuu make this?”
“Yes. Do you want to play?”
“Let’s do it!”
It seemed he’d become more interested in the game itself now.
Haru sat down next to me and looked at the screen of 《LITTLE FRONTIER》 as it started up.
Even when a forest and a small village appeared, he didn’t ask me over and over again, “Did you really make this?” like my father had.
Yuu said he made it, so he must have made it.
Apparently, for Haru, that was the end of the story.
I only taught him the bare basics, such as how to move, crouch, and talk to villagers. I didn’t explain how to use a bow or give tips for hunting.
I thought it would be a good idea to teach him when the need arose.
However, after a few minutes, I realized that there was no need to do that.
To begin with, Haru had no desire to hunt.
“Ah, this deer.”
When Haru spotted one eating grass on the outskirts of the village, he headed straight for it.
“What’s this guy’s name?”
“I haven’t given it a name. It’s just a deer.”
“Then I’ll give it one. This one is Pochi.”
“Even though it’s a deer?”
“It feels like a Pochi.”
I have no idea what’s so pooch-like about it.
However, in Haru’s mind, that seemed to be settled.
The deer had no way of knowing that it had become a pooch, and continued to eat grass as if nothing had happened.
After looking at Pochi with satisfaction for a while, Haru returned to the village.
“Who is this old man?”
“He’s one of the villagers. Why don’t you talk to him?”
As Haru approached, the old man turned towards him.
“Be careful if you go to the western forest. Apparently the bridge was damaged by yesterday’s rain.”
“Is the bridge broken?”
“It seems so.”
If it were me, after hearing that story, I would head west to see what the bridge was like.
I thought Haru would do the same, but he didn’t move.
He talked to the old man again.
“Be careful if you go to the western forest. Apparently the bridge was damaged by yesterday’s rain.”
“He said the same thing again.”
“I guess that’s what he’s really worried about right now.”
“So he doesn’t know anything else?”
“I’m sure he knows other things, but I haven’t made a function to choose the topic.”
Then, after thinking for a while, Haru said simply,
“Then I’ll just talk to him a lot.”
I see.
Haru really did talk to the old man many times.
The first few times, the old man talked about the broken bridge, but then he started talking about the weather, and told us that there had been an increase in the number of wolves in the forest lately.
As Haru kept going, we got stories that had little to do with the strategy, such as the village chief hurting his back or the butcher drinking too much lately.
“This grandpa knows a lot.”
“He’s lived in this village for a long time, so I guess he’s seen a lot of things.”
“What’s his name?”
“I didn’t set it to display.”
“Then Grandpa’s fine.”
“Is that what you’re calling him?”
“It’s good because it’s easy to understand.”
That seemed to be enough for Haru.
After that, he continued to walk around the village and give names to things he found. The stray dog was Koro, the rabbit near the field was Shiro, and the tall woodcutter carrying an ax was Gan.
“Why Mr. Gan?”
“He looks strong.”
“That’s right…”
When I asked about it, the reasons I got back were usually like that.
However, strangely, once something was given a name, it seemed it was no longer just an NPC to Haru.
“Mr. Gan’s chopping wood again.”
“Grandpa’s still sitting there today.”
“Ah, there he is!”
Until yesterday, they’d been nothing more than objects I was processing, but without asking my permission, Haru had turned them into acquaintances.
He was different from the players doing verification on the bulletin board.
When they talked to villagers over and over again, they had a purpose, such as wanting to find out about building conditions or how an event would occur.
But Haru didn’t have anything like that.
He talked to them because he was curious about them, chased them because they seemed interesting, and gave them names because they didn’t have any.
Although the way he played was far from efficient, from what I saw, he seemed to be having more fun than anyone else.
◇
“Ah…”
Haru’s voice, which had been lively until then, suddenly stopped.
Three wolves had appeared on the outskirts of the village.
Perhaps they’d run out of food in the forest, and had come down quite close to the village.
A villager acting as a lookout noticed and rang the bell.
As soon as the high-pitched sound echoed throughout the village, the residents’ movements changed completely. Children and the elderly fled into their homes, while those who could fight gathered at the village entrance with bows and axes in hand.
“The wolves are here!”
Haru hurriedly ran his character over too, but the wolves were far away.
He wasn’t going to make it in time.
One of them jumped at a villager.
The moment Haru saw who it was, he gasped.
“Mr. Gan!”
It was the woodcutter holding an ax.
Gan-san struck back at the wolf that jumped at him, but another one came around from the side and knocked him down.
The surrounding villagers shot arrows one after another, and eventually all the wolves were killed.
Silence returned to the village, and the bell stopped.
Still, Gan-san was the only one who didn’t get up.
“…Gan-san.”
Haru let go of the mouse.
His fingers, which had been busy moving until then, stopped completely.
“Yuu. Is Gan-san dead?”
“He didn’t have enough health left… He can’t move anymore.”
“Won’t he come back to life later?”
He looked at me with an expectant look on his face.
For a moment, I thought it would be better to lie.
However, there was no point in lying.
“The game doesn’t have that kind of system. Once someone dies, they stay that way.”
“…I see.”
Haru returned his gaze to the screen.
After a while, the nearby villagers began to gather around Mr. Gan. Some people carried the body, and others followed for a short while.
“Why didn’t Mr. Gan run away?”
“He’s a lumberjack, so he has an ax. I guess he thought he could fight too. I think he was trying to protect the village.”
“Didn’t Yuu make him fight?”
“I didn’t decide that Gan-san would fight here. The village was in danger because of the wolves, so he chose to fight on his own.”
“Because he wanted to protect the village?”
“Maybe.”
Haru didn’t ask anything more.
On the screen, as time passed, the village’s daily life began to return. Someone drew water from the well, and another woodcutter went back to work. The butcher’s shop, which had been closed, reopened shortly after.
However, a few villagers remained in front of Mr. Gan’s house for a while.
Haru looked at the scene and said in a low voice,
“This is a game, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“But… it’s kind of sad that Gan-san died.”
I couldn’t answer those words right away.
In the first place, there’s no character called “Gan-san.” All I’d created was an NPC who cut trees in the village, and Haru had met him for the first time today and given him a name.
However, to Haru, he was no longer just a lumberjack.
He was Mr. Gan.
In my previous life, I shot down many enemies.
13 enemy planes, 2 enemy ships, ally loss rate 6%.
On the battlefield, there are too many cases where even a person’s death has to be translated into numbers, and if you thought about who was on the other side of each aircraft, you wouldn’t be able to fight.
But right now, the five-year-old next to me was genuinely saddened by the death of an imaginary lumberjack he’d been with for only a short time.
That wasn’t even an event I’d set up for the game.
It was born inside Haru.
“…Do you want to start over from the beginning?”
When Haru heard that, he thought for a while and then nodded.
“I won’t let Gan die this time.”
“If you start over, you won’t necessarily get the same villagers.”
“If there’s someone similar, I’ll make that person the second-generation Gan-san.”
“A second generation?”
“I’ll protect him properly this time.”
It seemed he wouldn’t compromise on that.
For the next hour, Haru kept protecting the woodcutter he found in the new village, calling him “Gan-san II” and ignoring the game’s original purpose.
If there was a wolf nearby, he took the initiative and chased it away, and if Gan-san II went deep into the forest to cut a tree, Haru followed him without being asked. Even when Gan-san II carried lumber to the village, Haru walked behind him as if to protect him.
“You don’t have to go that far. He won’t be attacked by wolves every time.”
“But he might get attacked.”
“If you follow him all the time, you won’t be able to do much else. I think the development of the village will slow down too.”
“It doesn’t matter. Mr. Gan is alive.”
If you only think about efficiency, this is a pretty bad way to play.
Still, Haru was satisfied.
I thought for a moment while watching him.
I hadn’t created a character named Gan-san or a quest to protect him. Even if he kept escorting him, he wouldn’t receive any special rewards.
Even so, Haru had given him a name of his own, decided he was important, and even created his own way to play the game: “protecting this person.”
Perhaps what I should be creating isn’t a way to play, but a place where someone can find their own way to play.
◇
A few days later.
It had been raining since morning, and outdoor play had been canceled at the kindergarten.
Beyond the window, the slide and swings were wet, and puddles were forming all over the garden.
In the classroom, the children who couldn’t go outside were killing time.
“I’m bored.”
“I want to play tag.”
“Let’s do something.”
Voices like that could be heard from everywhere.
While I was looking at a picture book at my desk, Haru pulled out the chair next to me and sat down.
“Yuu, let’s do something fun.”
“Like what?”
“Yuu, think of something.”
“You’re leaving it all to me…”
However, I was bored too.
There was paper and a pencil in my bag.
When I saw them, I thought of something.
“Then, would you like to try making a game here?”
Haru’s eyes went wide.
“Right now?”
“We don’t have a computer, but we can still make games.”
“We can!?”
In response to Haru’s voice, even the nearby children came over.
“Are you making a game?”
“What game?”
“I’m going to think about that now.”
Since I couldn’t bring my computer to kindergarten, I decided to make something that we could play with on paper.
I asked the teacher if I could borrow one of the dice from the board game in the classroom.
“First, let’s make a path on this paper.”
I connected the squares with a pencil and drew forests, rivers, mountains, treasure chests, and places where monsters were located along the way. The player would roll the dice and advance their piece by the number rolled, aiming for the destination deep in the forest.
Up until that point, the children around me were looking on happily.
The problem was after that.
“If you’re going to travel, you’ll need food too. You use up a little each time you walk, and when you run out of food, your stamina goes down. Also, I’ll add a fatigue value so that mountain roads use up more than flatlands…”
“Yuu.”
Haru stopped me.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t get it.”
“Which part?”
“A lot of it.”
Isn’t that all of it?
“When you run out of food, your stamina goes down. That’s why you need to hunt and replenish your supplies along the way. Also, if you don’t rest when you get tired, the distance you can advance next time will be shorter…”
“Now I understand even less than before!”
Haru threw up his hands.
The children around me had roughly the same look on their faces.
“Easier is better!”
“I was planning on making this pretty easy, though.”
“Easier!”
“Even more…”
After hearing that, I looked at the paper again.
In addition to food, stamina, and fatigue, I’d been trying to write down weather modifiers, distance traveled by terrain, hunting checks, and the weight of the tools being carried.
If you think of it as something five-year-olds would play on a rainy day, it was certainly too much.
“So, do we need food?”
I erased what I’d written.
“We don’t need tiredness!”
“No tiredness either, then. What about stamina?”
“I don’t really understand that either!”
“Then let’s get rid of stamina too.”
It seemed to me that every time I erased something, the content of the game disappeared.
However, Haru and the others seemed to be having fun.
Haru checked while looking at the paper.
“You roll the dice, right?”
“We’ll keep that.”
“And you move forward by the number you rolled?”
“Let’s do that.”
“If I land on the treasure chest, do I get the treasure?”
“We’ll keep that too.”
“Then that’s fine!”
Is that really all you need?
The final rules that remained were surprisingly simple.
You roll the dice and move forward by the number rolled, and if you land on a treasure chest square, you get some treasure. Only when you land on a monster square do you play rock-paper-scissors: if you win, you stay put, and if you lose, you skip a turn.
That was pretty much it.
“…Is this really fun?”
I couldn’t help but ask.
Then Haru looked at me as if I was asking something obvious.
“You’ll understand if you try.”
“Is that so?”
We started playing.
And my anxiety was blown away within a few minutes.
“I got a six!”
“No fair! You’re going too fast!”
“It’s a treasure chest!”
“What’s in there!?”
I hadn’t decided anything, so I thought about it for a moment.
“Um… a sword, I guess.”
“I get a sword!?”
The children around were more pleased than the kid who’d landed on it.
“Then let’s say there’s a sword in there.”
“Yay!”
The next child rolled the dice.
“It’s a monster!”
“Let’s play rock-paper-scissors!”
“Starting with rock!”
Hands shot out with a whoosh.
“I lost!”
Laughter echoed throughout the classroom.
Whenever someone rolled a six, they cheered, and whenever someone lost at rock-paper-scissors to a monster, they were really disappointed.
Since I hadn’t decided on the contents of the treasure chests, I added whatever I wanted on the spot: swords, shields, sweets, and dragon eggs.
“There’s even a dragon egg in the treasure chest?”
“It’s a treasure chest, so it’s in there!”
“With that logic, anything goes.”
“Then let’s make it a treasure chest that can hold anything!”
“I wonder if a rule like that is okay…”
Apparently it’s fine.
I wrote down the rules as I was told.
It was getting further and further away from the game I’d originally envisioned, but the further it got, the more everyone seemed to be having fun with it.
“Let’s do it again!”
“I’m next!”
“Yuu, make a new map!”
“A longer one!”
“I want a river too!”
“Let’s make something happen when you cross the river!”
The children came up with ideas one after another.
I didn’t even have time to think on my own.
“Then how about we roll the dice again when we get to the river? If it’s an even number, we can cross, and if it’s an odd number, we move back one square.”
“What are even and odd numbers?”
“You can cross if it’s 2, 4, or 6, but not with anything else.”
“Let’s do it!”
“I’ll definitely roll a six!”
“You can cross with two or four, though.”
“Six is the strongest, so six!”
The probability is the same, but it didn’t seem necessary to explain that now.
I added the rule, and we started playing again.
When a girl arrived at the river and grabbed the dice, even the children around her leaned forward.
“Here I go!”
“Ready, set!”
The dice rolled and stopped with the three facing up.
“Aaaaaaaaaa!”
“You got swept away!”
“Go back! Go back!”
“Let’s do it again!”
Everyone was making a fuss over just one number.
I watched the scene silently for a while.
◇
It was still raining outside.
We still couldn’t go out into the kindergarten yard, play on the slide, or play tag.
However, the boring atmosphere that had filled the classroom just a moment ago was gone.
A number of children had gathered around the paper, laughing each time the dice were rolled.
In this paper game, there were no NPCs who thought and acted on their own like in 《LITTLE FRONTIER》. There were no ecosystems, no precise physics calculations, no weather simulations, and no artificial intelligence.
All I had was a slightly crooked grid drawn with a pencil and a die I’d borrowed from the classroom.
Moreover, many of the rules were decided on the spot while playing.
“Yay! Another treasure chest!”
“What’s in there!?”
“This time… a spaceship!”
“It’s bigger than the treasure chest!”
“It was folded up!”
“What’s that!”
Everyone was laughing.
It looked like they were really having fun.
In 《LITTLE FRONTIER》, deer notice humans by smell, and meat rots over time. Villagers also look at their surroundings and decide for themselves what to do.
Those are things that exist in the game because I put so much effort into it.
But there was nothing like that on the paper in front of me.
Still, everyone was deciding the contents of the treasure chests, increasing the number of dragons, and even thinking up the rules for crossing the river.
Games that I hadn’t created were growing on their own.
It was the same as Haru continuing to protect Gan-san II.
“Yuu!”
I looked up when I was called.
Haru was pointing to a new piece of paper.
“Let’s make the next map a mountain! A really scary one!”
“A scary mountain? Then let’s increase the number of monsters.”
“There’s a dragon too!”
“What about putting a cave in the middle of the mountain and letting people choose whether to go in or not?”
“Definitely go in!”
“It might be dangerous, you know?”
“Dangerous is more fun!”
I couldn’t help but laugh at the obvious answer.
“Then, let’s make it.”
I spread out a new piece of paper, drew a mountain path, and placed a cave in the middle. I also added treasure chests and drew a large monster mark on the mountaintop.
Even while I was moving my pencil, orders kept coming in one after another from around me.
“Make this a pitfall!”
“This is a shortcut!”
“Add more treasure chests!”
“Three dragons!”
“Do you need three?”
“It’s stronger when there’s lots!”
In my previous life, having required specifications added one after another right before completion would have been a nightmare.
But right now, it was strangely fun.
As I listened to everyone’s words, new ideas came to mind.
Eventually, the new mountain map was completed.
“It’s done.”
When I placed the paper in the center of the desk, Haru and the others all leaned forward.
“Wow, it’s a mountain!”
“There’s a cave!”
“Where’s the dragon!?”
“That’s something to look forward to when you get there.”
“Let’s do it quickly!”
The next game was about to begin.
I was thinking while watching the scene.
Until now, I might have thought that if I made something technically amazing, I could make it that much more interesting. More precise, more complex, able to do more. As an engineer, that was a completely natural way of thinking.
However, the paper game in front of us was surprisingly simple, yet everyone was hooked.
If you have advanced technology, you can do interesting things.
But just because something is advanced doesn’t mean it’s interesting.
So, what do people find interesting?
I still can’t properly explain why Haru named the deer Pochi, why he felt so sad when Gan-san died, or why he could smile so happily just by rolling a six.
But for the first time, not knowing seemed a little interesting.
“Yuu, hurry up! It’s Yuu’s turn next!”
Haru called me, and I joined the group.
“Okay. I’ll go now.”
I held the die that was handed to me in my palm.
I didn’t know what would come up.
I swung my hand and rolled it onto the desk.
I stared at the little hexahedron as it tumbled forward with a clattering sound.
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