The Girl Who Could Not Become a God

Stories

## Illustrations

Taiwan edition, reposted from Light Novel Kingdom

Translator: Li Yifan

Illustrator: Furai

Synopsis

I love the sea, and for that my people—who worship the earth—cast me out,

and even chose me as a living sacrifice to the ocean.

After I sank beneath the waves, I swam with everything I had toward the God's Rock,

and there I met a girl who claimed to be a god.

"I want to set out on a journey with you. I want to go somewhere far away.

I want to live in this world together with you."

Speaking words I did not know, she hungered for gentleness.

But where did she come from? And what purpose lay behind her?

A lonely girl and an ignorant divine girl—

a story of girls meeting each other, tenderly unfolding!

About This Book

★ Born from the deep water: a new-generation love story of a girl meeting a girl!

★ The latest work from Hitoma Iruma, a prodigy of ever-changing styles whose books have sold more than four million copies in total!

About the Author

Hitoma Iruma

Since 2007 he has translated all kinds of Japanese works. He loves Japanese anime and video games, and appears in online games and on social sites under the pen name Mikado Genryu.

Born in 1986, he officially became a writer in June 2007. He is a highly active new author. On his official site, "Iruma's Room," he publishes new fiction along with Q&A and other features.

Li Yifan

Translator Profile

Other works include: *Delusions of a Girl*, *My Small-Scale Miracle*, *My Small-Scale Suicide*, *God's Trash Can*, *The Idiot Charges Ahead Completely Naked*, *The Truth of Six Hundred and Sixty Yen*, *Yesterday I Loved Him Too*, *……

## May, Turning Toward the Evening Star

I cannot help thinking that running outside out of curiosity about what was happening was a mistake from the start. The instant I reached the outside world, the function switched itself on. To carry out its original mission, it began to emit a fierce light.

The light it fired stole the road back from us. It fell in pulses, scorching the ground and burning to death many of the companions who were investigating where the light poured in. That light struck everyone without mercy, including companions who had not yet grasped the situation. We, too, were among the things it reacted to.

Before we knew it, a vast mark had been left upon the ground. As if that mark were a sign, all sorts of living zones came into being, and we were forced to live there. No one was allowed to move on their own. We passed a long, dull stretch of life that way. Someone once said that the only things we could rely on were the tools we had brought with us at the beginning.

After a time, many creatures suddenly appeared, and those creatures treated us as enemies. The life that had briefly settled was thrown into disorder again, and we could no longer bring everyone's opinions together. During that period the environment slowly changed. We had to keep from being weeded out as we were. To that end, the only things we could do were adapt, or stand out more than the others.

We decided to stand out.

To jut forward in a straight line at a sharp angle—to straighten our backs and stretch, so we would not have to bow to anyone else.

Looking back now, even if there was no other choice, that may still have been a terrible failure.

After a still longer time, the light that had been pouring down vanished. It was probably the mach—

## Chapter 1 The End of the God's Rock

For some reason I opened the desk drawer, as if I were looking straight into my own memory. Inside were pencils left over from elementary school, and a protractor whose markings had peeled away. The ruler sat in a pencil case my mother had made; because it had been kept in the drawer all this time, it was filmed with dust. Taking it in my hand woke my memories, and with them other memories that had nothing to do with what I was looking for. My eyes and my recollections darted everywhere, and still I could not find the thing I wanted. Frantic, I spent a little time, and at last I found it.

Once I had found it, I left home with my bags to finish the errand my mother had entrusted to me. Until the first red light held me up, I walked at my usual pace, but while I waited for the green, anxiety rushed up all at once.

When the signal turned green, I quickened my steps by reflex.

Even hurrying, I blended into the town of this moment without anything about me seeming strange.

It was not only me. Lately the whole town looked a little rushed. Watching other people's hurried strides, I almost had the illusion that the clock itself was running faster and faster.

But of course it was.

The star, as if hurrying its own heartbeat, was racing to end its life.

We could not miss our departure either.

Because the spaceship would not wait.

"Satsuki."

Hearing someone call my name, I turned.

Her voice was a little blurred, and she was as beautiful as she had been yesterday.

"Mei, you look exactly like a local."

"So do you."

From somewhere higher than my head……

## Chapter 2 A Day of Enjoying Nature to the Fullest

Because we lived close by and were close in age, it was perhaps inevitable that I would become such good friends with Satsuki.

"My name is Satsuki."

"I'm Mei."

We introduced ourselves in the simplest way, but Satsuki did not seem to hear my voice clearly.

That could not be helped. I touched my own hard cheek.

"It's just like Mom and the others said~"

"What do you mean? What did they say?"

"They said a weirdo had shown up."

"Whaaat~"

Satsuki, whom I met in the old park by the shrine, was glad from the bottom of her heart to see a freak like me. I thought Satsuki was the stranger one, but in any case, because we were both odd ones, we hit it off faster than the other children.

"You've got something weird on your face."

Satsuki pointed it out happily, and I understood at once that she meant the mask on my face.

"This? Mom and Dad say if I don't wear it, I can't come out to play."

They said the outside was dirty, and they forced me to wear the mask. If I ever took it off anywhere but at home, they scolded me fiercely, faces tight—not like a reminder, but like a warning.

"Even without that on, you've still got a weird face."

"……That was mean."

I said it without thinking. Only after a long while did I notice that Satsuki, in that moment, had been a beat late in talking back. Satsuki, like me, was a girl.

After that, Satsuki and I played in the sandbox in the park. It was a sand……

## Chapter 3 The Killing Intent Born Because of Me

I do not know how many of Satsuki's birthdays this was. I went out onto the main street. Looking for a present she would like, I browsed many little shops. Whether I stepped into a store or looked at the goods inside, I could not move unless I bent my body, so my knees and thighs ached. After repeating it several times, I began to have the illusion that I was a foreigner from another age. In truth, though, I was excited.

As the years passed, my knowledge and my view of things opened a little, and I gradually came to see all sorts of things for what they were.

The school ceilings were low. My friends' houses were cramped. One careless moment, and a lump would rise on my head without mercy. The world outside was built for people other than me to live in. This society, at least, had not been made on the premise that I would live in it. I suffered my way through the town of little people, and felt like a flag flapping in the wind.

Feeling so out of place was no longer a matter of once or twice. Group activities at school, the casual movements of my parents—even just walking down the street, the difference in height when I passed someone shoulder to shoulder quietly raised a despair in the bottom of my heart.

That feeling filled ordinary life like a trap. Whenever I could not shake the mood, I left the town and drew close to nature to smooth my feelings down.

Far from the dust of the world, living on what I could provide myself, the nature that remained rose far above my height and seemed to wrap me in it, covering the top of my head……

## Chapter 4 May, Fallen onto the Planet

The assigned role had been settled: we were to become labor. That was the task given to us after we arrived on another planet. These things had been announced from the very beginning, and it had been decided that only those who set out on the journey could board the spaceship.

Abandon this planet, and begin again.

I chose that road. Mei did not.

Mei had no right to choose. From the moment she was born, it had already been decided that she would board the spaceship. She had not been born for that; it had simply ended up that way. Now Mei carried not only her family's expectations, but everyone's hopes.

It made me a little envious.

How Mei herself saw it was another matter.

Mr. Saito, who lived nearby, was said to be taking his daughter aboard the spaceship as well, but his wife would not be going with them. However harsh things were here, she would rather stay than go to a strange planet she had never seen.

There were people who thought that way. Not everyone was going to die at once. As long as you yourself could survive, that was enough. Not caring about the progress of humanity, or where it belonged, was a perfectly fine opinion too.

If it were not for Mei, I probably would not have considered boarding the spaceship.

If this meeting had never happened.

If I had never come to know Mei, I would not have had to worry about it.

But I did come to know.

I came to know Mei, that beautiful human-shaped being.

And I understood something else as well.

Thick limbs packed with muscle, a back like metal, abundant vitality, a face shaped so that no weak point jutted out, eyesight that could look far into the distance, for……

## Someday, Surpass the Gods

When I announced that I would cross this place today, she laughed and answered, "Is that so?"

I stopped the step I was about to take and looked back.

She, beside me, also cast a long shadow across the earth.

Of course her shadow was larger too.

When I complained, "I'm doing it the way you told me to," she answered, "That's true," and then guiltily looked away.

Then she added, "After all, when it comes to carving wood into a boat, all I have is the knowledge."

Fine. It did not matter. "Anyway, we've finished admiring the sunset, so let's go." When I named my other purpose, she looked dumbfounded, as if she wanted to say, "You always do this." But all of it was good. There was nothing wrong with it.

Beautiful things are worth feeling their beauty more than once. Endurance like a stone spear is a very important factor. To be something a person never tires of looking at is an excellent thing, isn't it?

After I finished explaining, she gave up on understanding and answered, "I don't get it." And I had gone to the trouble of explaining it in a slightly cumbersome way to match her. Even as I spoke, though, I felt a little anxious. Before long the sunset would be gone, and I especially love the time when sunset and night trade places.

Let's hurry. I urged her aloud.

Stone spear in hand, I walked across the plain. Daylight like dawn, mixed into the color of night, burned fiercely at the far side of the grassland. Each time the wind rose, the sun-reddened grass rustled and struck our legs.

I had said at the start that I wanted to go see……

## Afterword

Basically, I do not believe in so-called gods. Setting aside whether they exist in the world, I personally have no faith. I do believe, however, that everything must have its reason and its meaning. The process by which all things come to exist in the world, and why I am writing books and afterwords like this—I think all of it must have a meaning.

I believe in human doing more than in miracles. Perhaps that is similar to the feeling of "I fear a human swinging a metal bat more than I fear a ghost." Running into that sort of person on the road really is terrifying, isn't it.

Anyway, everything above has nothing to do with the main story.

Here I thank everyone who bought this book.

Hitoma Iruma