An invitation arrived for me.
Because I had gone about crushing every country in the world flat with monoliths, there was nowhere left for a reincarnate to be reincarnated into, so the Goddess took to letting reincarnates be born into whatever world they liked.
The upshot was that this latest reincarnate had reincarnated into a favorite gag manga of his—one he calls his bible.
Naturally, the Goddess had reincarnated him in order to have me defeated, so the invitation he sent me was sent at the Goddess's instruction, and it was likewise the Goddess who forwarded it across worlds.
"Honestly. Forward the reincarnate, not the letter. Why should I be the one to go out?"
I muttered this to myself while stroking the Mofu on my lap.
Obviously I could have ignored the invitation, or simply hauled the reincarnate to My Castle by force. But the letter had a provocation written into it—"inside a gag manga, there is no way I can lose"—which was a line quite beyond its author's station, and so, in order to teach him where that station was, I decided to let myself be duly lured out.
"Mofu. I am going out for a while. You mind the castle."
"Pu, pu."
I stood, set my pet Mofu down on the throne, and by the same method as teleportation performed a transit between worlds, into the gag manga world where the reincarnate was.
Waiting in front of me on arrival was a long flight of ascending stairs.
Black stone steps, with a red carpet laid down over them.
Precisely the sort of staircase that leads to the final boss room in a game.
And from the top of it came the sound of a piano.
Solemn music with the flavor of the classical repertoire—though the piece was being improvised on the spot.
An atmosphere singularly ill-suited to a gag world. But as to why such a stage had been set, it was all perfectly transparent to me.
Teleporting would have been quicker, but I graciously climbed the stairs.
Then I opened the door at the top and went in.
In the middle of a tastefully appointed room, a man in a tuxedo was playing the piano; sensing that I had arrived, he steered the piece toward its closing cadence.
—Taaaan! Jing, jing, jing.
The instant the piano stopped, a breezy rattle of tambourine went through the room.
And the one who had shaken that tambourine was the reincarnate. Got up as gaudily as a circus clown. The tambourine was meant as an outrage that wrecked the piano performance.
For the record, the man at the piano was a completely unrelated party. Just a pianist.
The man tapped the tambourine—tap, tap—and the pianist bowed and left the room.
"Whaaat?! You didn't even crack a smile!"
"Well, I knew it was coming."
An ordinary person would presumably have laughed and said, "There goes the recital!"
"You knew, did you?! Ah—that one's waiting on a comeback too."
The man threw both arms wide, arched backward as he delivered his own comeback line, then pointed at me and demanded one from me.
"What, something like 'You're the reincarnate?!' Have you no respect at all for comedy? If you need a straight man, supply your own partner. Do not pin your own failings on other people."
"Ngh! I haven't got a peep to say against that. —hang on, that was a peep! Damn it. Right, in that case: may you be crushed to death by a falling block of tofu!"
The tambourine man leveled a finger at me again, and a block of steel tofu came down on top of the man himself and flattened him.
Then the tofu vanished, and the pancaked man sproinged back out into his original shape.
"It fell on me! Ah—did you think I was dead? I'm not deaaad! Even when I look dead it all gets written off as a gag, so I'm invincible~!"
This was the source of the fellow's confidence. Which was why he had to get me onto his own ground.
Not that it would cost me the slightest effort to ignore all of that and kill the tambourine man anyway.
"Do not waste my time. Come at me and be done with it."
"Oi! Saying things that clash with the world-setting and killing the comic mood—that's cheating!"
"Cheating? I am offering to stand on your ground. The Goddess told you that I am [The Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One], did she not? And because you claimed you could beat that very me in this world, I came all this way. So. How do you intend to beat me?"
"We settle it with comedy! If you lose, you take your own life."
Once again the tambourine man snapped a fingertip at me.
"By all means. But how do you propose to decide who has won?"
"First one to make the other laugh wins—how's that? Gags, double-act patter, sketches, anything goes. We just take turns doing whatever might make the other one laugh."
How much confidence in his own comic sense can one man possibly have? In his previous life he was no comedian—just an ordinary member of the public.
"Don't. I will absolutely not laugh. And I can force you to laugh whenever I please. Gags are meaningless here. In a contest judged by a subjective standard you have no chance whatsoever."
One would hope he appreciated the kindly warning.
Having gone to the trouble of coming out here, I may as well fight thoroughly on my opponent's ground.
"Tch. The way you settle everything with omniscience and omnipotence is far too cheap. Well—I'm in an invincible world where everything gets settled with a gag, so I can't point too many fingers."
"Do not rank yourself alongside me. Now. The format?"
The tambourine man shut his eyes, folded his arms, and thought, heel planted and the toe of his right foot tapping the floor—tap, tap, tap.
After a while he smacked his right fist into his left palm. The joy of inspiration had opened not only his eyes but his mouth.
"How about a pun contest?! Ah—you're not one of those nonsense types who hears a pun and reflexively goes 'that's so lame' or 'sorry, what?' and makes a show of being unamused, are you?"
"I am not so graceless as that. Very well. And how is the winner decided?"
"One of us goes first with a pun, and it gets scored. Then the other has three minutes to come back with a better one. We alternate like that, and whoever first fails to top the other loses. Scoring is by the Reibon Pun Evaluation Standard. You know it?"
"I do. And the format is acceptable."
Reibon is Mr. Reibon, the author of the gag manga that constitutes this world, and the Reibon Pun Evaluation Standard is the scoring method he devised and used inside the manga.
The Reibon Pun Evaluation Standard runs as follows.
■ TECHNICAL SCORE (objective evaluation)
① Character length of the pun element (points added)
The longer the punning portion, the higher the score.
"Characters in the pun element × 5 points"
Example: kakkou no kakkou (a cuckoo's getup) → kakkou, 4 characters × 5 points = 20 points
② Combo count (points added)
How many times the pun word turns up. The more, the higher the score.
"Appearances of the pun word × 5 points"
Example: niwa ni wa niwa niwatori ga iru (in the garden there are two chickens) → "niwa" (also "ni wa") × 4 → 4 appearances × 5 points = 20 points
However, where the word carries the same meaning each time, 0 points.
Example 1: ashi ga ashikase ni naru (the foot becomes a fetter) → ashi means the same thing in both
Example 2: ishi ga sutoon to ochiru (the stone drops with a plonk) → ishi and sutoon are the same stone
Likewise, where the readings of the pun element merely resemble one another without matching, 0 points.
Example 1: dajare o itta no wa dare ja (who was it that made that pun) → dajare and dareja do not match as words
Example 2: kakkou no gakkou (a cuckoo's school) → kakkou and gakkou do not match as words
③ Proportion of the sentence occupied by the pun element (up or down from a base of 10 points)
How much of the sentence is actually pun. The less dead weight, the higher the score.
Add to the 10 points the figure for "characters in the pun element – characters not in the pun element."
Character counts are taken in hiragana. Minimum score is 0.
Example 1: arumikan no ue ni aru mikan (a mandarin sitting on an aluminum can)
→ pun element: 10 characters; non-pun element: 4 characters
→ 10 – 4 = 6 → 6 added to the 10 points, for 16 points
Example 2: kakkou no kakkou (a cuckoo's getup)
→ pun element: 8 characters; non-pun element: 1 character
→ 8 – 1 = 7 → 7 added to the 10 points, for 17 points
■ ARTISTIC SCORE (subjective evaluation)
④ Difficulty of the pun element (10 points, deduction method)
Points are deducted where it is easy to work the pun into a sentence. Maximum 10 points.
Little-known proper nouns, personal names, and conversational sentence-endings (-ja, -dawa, and the like) are subject to deduction.
Example: Tanaa-kun, tana o ketta na? (Tanner, you kicked the shelf, didn't you?)
→ A personal name like Tanaa can be invented at will. The second half builds its pun on a conversational sentence-ending, which is easy.
→ 2 points
Likewise, where the readings of the pun element merely resemble one another without matching, 0 points.
Example: dajare o itta no wa dare ja (who was it that made that pun) → dajare and dareja do not match as words
⑤ Naturalness of the sentence (10 points, deduction method)
Points are deducted where the sentence as constructed feels forced. Maximum 10 points.
Example: mausu o katte kimausu (I'll go and buy a mouse, with the verb ending bent from kimasu to kimausu)
→ The ending has been deformed by main force to make it fit.
→ 0 points
⑥ Originality (20 points, deduction method)
Anything already famous (well-worn material, tongue twisters, and so on) is deducted. Maximum 20 points.
The judgment is intuitive, but where it is a difficult call, check whether the pun has been used before.
■ TOTAL
Total score = technical score + artistic score
That settled, I put a final question to the tambourine man about the rules.
"The artistic score is a subjective evaluation, and there is no third party present. Shall we score on the technical component alone? Being omniscient, I could of course pull Mr. Reibon's subjective evaluation out for us—but that depends on whether you take my word for it."
"You came this far onto my ground. I'll take your word for it. Let's go with the total, artistic score included. You can have first move. Let's see what you've got."
And so I unveiled a pun.
"Tomato to mato to maton." (A tomato, and a target, and mutton.)
The evaluation of this pun runs as follows.
■ TECHNICAL SCORE
① Length of the pun element
tomato: 3 characters → 3 × 5 = 15 points
② Combo count
tomato / to-mato / to-mato / n: 3 appearances → 3 × 5 = 15 points
③ Proportion of the sentence occupied by the pun element
10 + ( 9 – 1 ) = 18 points
■ ARTISTIC SCORE
④ Difficulty of the pun element
There are two places where the items are strung together a little forcibly with the coordinating "to" (and), so 2 points off the 10
→ 8 points
⑤ Naturalness of the sentence
One can just about imagine the reading "the full set of supplies for a tournament in which the prize for the game of hitting a target with a tomato is mutton"—but the three items, tomato, target and mutton, have little connection with one another, so 5 points off the 10
→ 5 points
⑥ Originality
Reibon has never heard this pun before, and it does not look easy to arrive at, so no deduction
→ 20 points
■ SCORE
Technical total = 48 points; artistic total = 33 points; total score = 81 points
"My pun scores 81. If you cannot produce a better one inside three minutes, you lose."
"Wha—hang on, hang on… There's no way I'm thinking up a pun that scores that high, come onnn!"
On this day, this manga world ceased to exist, and the tambourine man with it.