sworn enemies play shoji
Create your own story with WhatIf!
Create your own story with WhatIf!
Story transcript
Hitogami: You know, I always thought a shogi board was the most honest version of us. Two sides. No hiding. Every piece exactly where it needs to be.
Orsted: You've been saying that for six loops now. You still play the same opening.
Hitogami: And you still sit like something's about to attack you. Relax, Dragon God. There's nothing here to kill.
Orsted: There's you.
Hitogami: Let's talk about manipulation. You act like it's a dirty word. But every parent who steers a child away from danger is manipulating them. Every king who withholds information to prevent a panic is manipulating them. Is that evil?
Hitogami: I point people toward better outcomes. I just don't always explain why. Does the destination become wrong because I didn't show them my reasons?
Orsted: A parent loves their child. You love no one. The act is identical. The intent is not.
Orsted: You erased people, Hitogami. You dismantled lives, broke bonds, planted suffering in people who trusted you — not to help them reach a better destination. To keep yourself alive. The destination was always you.
Orsted: Do not compare what you do to a parent's love.
Hitogami: Oh, so it's about intent now. Interesting. Then let's talk about you. You've spent two hundred years killing people who got in your way. Heroes. Innocents. People who just happened to be standing next to someone you needed to reach. Was your intent so clean, Orsted?
Hitogami: You told yourself it was necessary. That the math worked out. That fewer deaths now means fewer deaths later. Congratulations. That's manipulation. That's exactly what I do.
Orsted: I do not pretend to be their friend first.
Hitogami: No. You just kill them without the kindness of a smile. Tell me which is crueler.
Orsted: Then let's speak plainly about victory. You want to survive. I want to end you. One of us gets what we want. The other doesn't. That is the only negotiation.
Orsted: You call it compromise. I call it a delay. Every loop I've watched you win through words, through patience, through making people love you before you hollow them out. And every time, someone eventually pays the price of your victory with everything they have.
Orsted: The price of victory is what you become to achieve it. Look at yourself, Hitogami. Look at what you've become.
Hitogami: What I've become. Ha. That's rich coming from the man who had everything, Orsted. Power. Destiny. Purpose. And what did you do with it? You spent two centuries hating. Two centuries alone, because every living thing recoils from you. You were given the world, and you turned it into a prison.
Hitogami: I survive because I must. I act because I have no other option. You talk about what people become — fine. I became necessary. I became the only one in this world who understands that survival isn't shameful. It's the only thing that is real.
Hitogami: And you? What did your righteousness make you?
Orsted: You want to know about the fate of the world? I'll tell you. The world doesn't need either of us to save it. It never did. Every loop where I tried to fix everything myself — I failed. Every loop where I tried to control the outcome — I failed.
Orsted: The world's fate belongs to the people who live in it. A boy reincarnated into that world with no power, no plan, no divine destiny — and he changed more in one lifetime than I did in two hundred years of trying. Because he chose to. Because the people around him chose to.
Orsted: You and I are not the answer to anything, Hitogami. We are the obstacle. The world's fate is decided the moment we stop interfering.
Hitogami: Stop interfering. How charming. You just declared check on my king and told me to stop playing the game.
Orsted: Yes.
Hitogami: Well. I suppose we've reached the limit of what two gods in an empty void can agree on. Shall we play again next loop? I'll even let you go first.
Orsted: There won't be a next loop.
Hitogami: You've said that before.
Orsted: And I'll keep saying it.