What the heck…”

  Those were the first words I uttered after my consciousness groggily returned to me. Before I could process the chaotic memories I had, from close—very close, in fact—a familiar voice responded to my implicit question.

  “It seems you are awake. I apologize for the sudden teleportation from earlier. But we truly were in danger,” the angel I called Kotori Futaba responded with a rather forlorn tone.

  She was sitting right next to me with her usual mysterious expression, though tending to the troubled side. We were sitting on a subdued, but exquisitely crafted sofa, integrated into an equally luxurious room. The room itself wasn’t particularly large. The muted colors reminded me of a cozy living room in a European noble’s mansion. It even had a fireplace, the only source of light in the room, which made me notice the temperature of the room—it was noticeably higher than it had been back in Japan.

  Sitting on one of the other sofas, Shiina slept with a peaceful expression. She wasn’t wearing her large coat anymore; instead, a pink knitted sweater adorned her body.

  Now that I think about it, where are we?

  “We are in the Evening Room of my house in the Upper Realm,” the angel responded.

  Before I could ask what she meant, she jumped straight into the explanation. “The Upper Realm is the realm where angels live. It is a separate dimension from Earth.”

  “I-I see.”

  I don’t even have the energy to comment on it.

  I racked my brain trying to find some smooth way to introduce the elephant in the room. After all, from her reaction back on Earth, Futaba clearly understood the truth behind all the events we experienced so far.

  “Futaba, are you okay? Your face was pretty grim back on Earth. Did you… also realize the truth?”

  She didn’t seem surprised I figured it out on my own.

  “I’m… fine,” she replied weakly. “Just… fine.”

  I waited for her to continue, never taking my eyes off of her complex expression.

  “Really… After all this time, this is what happens? The world is virtual… after seeing Shiina’s memories for myself, there is no other way to interpret what we saw. All the faults are glitches in the system… This is so absurd, it is almost hilarious.”

  I couldn’t say anything. Heck, I didn’t even know if I should have said anything at all. So of course, I uttered the dumbest thing.

  “Futaba… I’m sorry. It was because I dragged you into this…”

  “There is no reason to apologize, Takeya. You are not responsible for this situation. If you are concerned about me, like I said before, I am fine. I’m not as devout as Shiina appears to be. I have had my own misgivings about angel society as a whole. I will not run away from the truth. Not now and not ever.”

  Hearing her assure me she was fine made my entire body relax. I let out a soft, unflattering groan of relief.

  “Didn’t you ever suspect anything? After all, looking back, these ‘faults’ really do look like something straight out of a video game.”

  “I am ashamed to admit I never did. You see, I am… not particularly well-versed in technology.”

  Oh, so that explains the flip phone.

  “I have encountered my fair share of faults over the years, but I never associated them with any ‘glitches’ or anything of the sort. Especially since they have existed long before computers ever did.”

  “How about other angels? I’m sure someone else would have figured it out.”

  “Most angels are about as unfamiliar with technology as I am, or even worse. You see, to maintain the purity of the Upper Realm, our society prohibits most human technologies. I imagine it would be a big leap of logic for most angels to associate the faults with any ‘glitches’.”

  “In other words, whoever made this whole ‘angel society’ specifically constructed it to prevent you guys from finding the truth.”

  She turned her gaze away to no place in particular. “Most likely, yes.” Now that’s a bit grim. “After the conversation Michael and Ayumi had, everything ‘strange’ I personally felt about angels is now falling into place.”

  “Wait, you mean…?”

  “Ah, right. You do not know what transpired between Ayumi and Archangel Michael last Sunday. The information I got from Shiina’s memories.” That I do not. “Very well. Instead of telling you what happened, how about I just show it? It will be faster anyway.”

  “Show? You can do that?”

  Is she going to pull out some angelic projector?

  Turns out my thought wasn’t that far off. Futaba stood up and extended her hands in front of a conspicuously empty section of the wall. From her hands came out a beam of light that got projected into the wall, forming an image.

  An image I was rather familiar with. It showed the park where we talked with Shiina, but this time the perspective wasn’t mine; it was the former angel’s.

  “Woah, that’s awesome!”

  The possibilities of this are…

  But my thoughts were interrupted by the angel.

  “The time to be impressed is later. Right now, pay attention.”

  I did as she told, and my mind was cast back to a time I didn’t live myself, but that was still rather nostalgic.

  * * *

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, mmkay? It’s time to take a nap.”

  A moment later, my body collapsed like a puppet whose strings were severed.

  “Takkun!” Ayumi called out.

  As if she was expecting it, my childhood friend rushed to catch me before I fell to the ground.

  “Takkun! Hey, wake up!”

  She slapped my face with some desperate strength. It was fruitless.

  I’m so glad I wasn’t awake at the time. That looked like it would hurt.

  “What the hell did you do to Takkun?”

  “Don’t worry, my dear Ayumi. He’s fiiine. Just taking a quick trip to dreamland. These are the sorts of things we shouldn’t have the likes of him eavesdrop on, don’t you think?”

  “Grr… Fine. It seems like he’s just knocked out after all…” Ayumi admitted. “So? What did you come here for? No, nevermind. There’s something more important than your intentions. These supernatural incidents…”

  “Yes, yes, you figured it out. Congratulations to you!” He said while clapping vigorously.

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  Ayumi’s expression turned sour. “No way. Are they truly glitches in the system? But why are they happening? Nothing like this has ever happened in Gaia’s existence as far as I’m aware.”

  “It’s all the Divers. Apparently the base OS has some trouble processing their inputs, and that causes all the glitches. The computer nerds explained that it’s kinda like how roll-back netcode works in old games. You probably know about those, right? The system can’t anticipate the Divers’ inputs, so instead it tries to predict what they’ll do. But when it makes a mistake, the fabric of the world itself gets all messed up. That’s what they told me.”

  “So it’s all our fault?” She said with a sad tone. “But why now, of all times?” Then, Ayumi appeared to have found out the answer to her own question. “Don’t tell me you’ve been letting in more people than the system can take…”

  “Very likely,” the man said, apparently unconcerned. “It’s not like anyone left us an instruction manual. Angels have been able to fix most of the glitches by themselves, so we weren’t worried. But it seems we have reached a tipping point of sorts. The glitches themselves cause more glitches, so that plus the addition of more Divers causes an exponential increase in glitches. However, the angels can only fix them at a set rate. You can see how that would get out of hand without anyone noticing.”

  Ayumi’s glare seemed to be able to cut the man in half.

  “Don’t make that face. I’m not an expert in any of this, I’m just a humble businessman. But to answer your question, I came here to stop you from getting involved with this any longer. Trust me, everything is under control.”

  “Under control? It’s only a matter of time before other Divers find out about the glitches. This is a bigger issue than…”

  The man interrupted her. “Of course we knew that the glitches were a serious problem the moment their frequency started increasing. We knew things would reach a breaking point. Naturally, we have been preparing a solution.”

  Ayumi, for once, looked shocked. “A… solution? Then why didn’t you already use it?”

  “Unfortunately, it requires the entire simulation to be shut down, and you can imagine how much of a hassle that is. Especially for our paying customers. Anyway, all that is sorted out now. There is a scheduled maintenance period planned for next week. The announcement should be broadcasted soon.”

  “Maintenance? The first one?”

  “That’s right. Next Saturday, at noon Japan Standard Time.” Isn’t that…today? “To be more precise, it’s not really maintenance. An entirely new system will be implemented. I still think a week is too much time, but the others insisted that you people needed all that time to arrange your schedules.”

  “This is the first maintenance since Gaia was restarted, right? I think it was a good idea to give people plenty of time to prepare,” Ayumi replied, her emotions now under control. “So, what’s this new system you are talking about?”

  “In a nutshell, we are replacing angels.”

  He said it like it was no big deal.

  But I knew, just from the “footage”, that even Shiina understood what this meant. I saw her hand reach for her mouth.

  Ayumi’s face morphed into one of pure horror.

  “Replacing? What do you think you are doing? Angels are an essential part of maintaining Gaia!”

  Michael sighed.

  “Don’t you think it’s odd how angels work? Think about it. You have a bunch of fallible, virtual humans keeping history in sync with the real world’s history. Plus, they have debug permissions and human-like intelligence. You have to keep them under control with a cult-like society to prevent them from going rogue. It’s convoluted, to say the least. I don’t know what they were thinking when they set-up this system.”

  “Don’t you dare badmouth…!” Ayumi cut off her own angry shout. “No matter the reason, it was precisely that flexibility that allowed angels to fix glitches. And now you say you are going to replace them?!”

  “Hmm, yes. You have a point there, but angels aren’t cut out for it anymore. Keeping the world in sync and fixing glitches is way too much work. It’s not like we can increase the number of angels right away. It takes at least eighteen years for one to become useful,” the archangel declared as he waved his arms around exuberantly.

  “The easiest and most efficient way to solve this is to cut the root of the problem entirely. We’ll replace angels with a brand-new AI system that both syncs history and fixes any glitch that might occur. That way, this world will be able to support a lot more Divers than it currently does.”

  “Then… what will happen to angels? Will they just—”

  “They disappear.”

  Ayumi took a step back in shock. “Disappear? That’s the same as saying they’ll all die! You can’t kill off virtual humans like that! According to the law—”

  The archangel dismissed her with a casual handwave. “The law this, the law that. Do you know why only rumors of angels exist outside? It’s because officially they don’t exist. Only after we took possession of Gaia did we realize what was going on. Let’s just say it was a good idea to keep quiet about it in hindsight.”

  “So next Saturday, all angels will… disappear? Just like that?”

  “Oh no, not at all. Even we’re not that cruel. Thankfully, they left us with a neat way to tie up this loose knot.” Without warning, Michael turned to Shiina who had been completely silent the whole time. “Hey, you. Shiina, wasn’t it? Can you explain the Illumination to the little brat, hmm?”

  “Of course, Archangel Michael.”

  She turned her gaze to Ayumi, whose expression was a mix of confusion and pity.

  “When God’s plan has been completed, all angels will ascend to the next plane with the gods and live an eternal life of bliss. This is the Illumination.”

  Shiina paused for a moment, gathering her bearings.

  “It is said that, during the Illumination, the eternal light will disappear from the home of the angels, the Upper Realm, and it will sink into darkness. When the light finally returns, it shall not be that of the sun, but that of God Almighty. At that point, all angels shall be reunited with their god once more.”

  “Thank you very much, my dear,” the archangel said with the fakest voice I ever heard. “And there you have it. This solution is already programmed into the very fabric of this world. As the archangels, all we need to do is activate it.”

  Michael then stopped all his pretense and gave a wicked smile.

  “Angels are born into a life of lies. Isn’t it kind of poetic that their final moments will be a lie too?”

  For once, Ayumi was quiet. Her face hung down, motionless.

  “What’s wrong, Ayumi? Cat got your tongue?”

  “There’s surely another way,” she said, her gaze still towards the ground. “I cannot let angels be erased from existence like this. I will… I will find a way to save everyone!”

  The archangel froze in place for a moment, then sighed. “What a bother. I guess you weren’t convinced by my explanation after all. So, what do you intend to do, hmm? As you can imagine, I cannot let you of all people go around recruiting angels for your cause. If you managed to grab some powerful ones and stage a mutiny, it could turn ugly. Imagine the poor things, finding out the truth just to be unable to do anything to stop their demise. If you want to save them from that suffering, it’s better if you stay quiet about this and let us do what’s best for everyone.”

  Despite the archangel’s provocation, Ayumi did not budge. In fact, when she finally raised her face, her expression was the exact opposite one would expect.

  “Hey, hey. Where is all that tenacity coming from, hmm? It’s not like you can—”

  To the surprise of everyone present, Ayumi did not reply. Instead, she spoke above him, with a weak, but determined smile.

  “System connection. Requesting log out from Gaia with a proxy at these same coordinates.”

  With those words, Ayumi closed her eyes and stayed in the exact same spot. Mere moments after, her body collapsed like a human-shaped doll.

  “Tsk. That cheeky brat, logging out at a time like this. Just giving me extra trouble to erase the memories of her proxy,” the archangel spat.

  He abruptly stopped his monologue, narrowing his eyes at Shiina. He then cupped his hand around his left ear and began whispering.

  “Gabriel, come to me at once. We have a situation to resolve. Raphael, go to the Controller and remove that brat, Ayumi, from the whitelist.”

  Then there was a pause.

  “Who else would I be talking about? Of course it’s that Ayumi,” he said angrily. “I know she can’t do anything from the outside in her state… Just to be safe. You never know with her.”

  Having completed his contact with the other archangels, Michael finally addressed her directly.

  “My dear Shiina. You did great in calling me when you did. If you hadn’t, things would have gotten pretty hairy for us. Let me assure you that you did the right thing.”

  The archangel gave a theatrical bow to the angel. This, however, was just part of his farse.

  “No, I don’t deserve such—”

  The archangel interrupted her dismissal with a sly smile.

  “However, this is a problem. Oh, so much of a problem. Even if you are weak, useless, and such a devout follower, you simply know too much. But of course, you are an angel, so it’s not like I can erase your memories like I can with that human.”

  “I swear, I don’t believe anything Ayumi said!” Shiina cried in a desperate attempt to save herself.

  “Hmm, that might be true. Will you keep quiet for me, hmm?”

  “Yes, of course! I would do anything for the archangels!”

  “That’s a good girl,” he said, with a smile that appeared innocent.

  I don’t like where this is going.

  As if on cue, a woman’s voice echoed through the empty park. “I’m here.”

  It was followed by a figure emerging from the shadows.

  “Archangel Gabriel?” Shiina exclaimed with a tone halfway between stupefied and frightened.

  The newly arrived woman looked around the park, getting a feel for the situation. Then she stopped next to Michael, in front of Shiina, with a pose of contempt.

  “Sigh. You’re so incompetent.”

  Michael’s voice cracked. “W-what do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you have an angel monitoring the brat? How did things get to this point?” The woman scoffed. “And with a human involved, no less.”

  “L-look, I don’t know what happened here either! I guess that angel was too busy fixing glitches or something to notice Ayumi had contacted this one.”

  “You’re truly useless. Anyway, let’s deal with this one first, shall we?”

  The two archangels approached Shiina. Their frowns, half obscured by the faint light of the lamp post, appeared to show their true feelings. And then—