A visitor appeared at My Castle.
The Goddess. The very Goddess who reincarnated me.
She had been working in a world called [The Boundary], which lies between the world and the Divine Realm; when her homeland, the Divine Realm, ceased to exist, she came rushing to me in a panic.
Trace the destruction of the Divine Realm back to its source and it is all the Goddess's doing, and the Goddess was aware of that.
Which is why the woman who presented herself before me had gone completely white.
"U-um… couldn't you, you know, forgive me now…?"
"You've come to plead at this stage? Bit late, isn't it?"
Like every god, she wore a single length of white cloth wound about her. Waved pale blonde hair down to her waist.
It had once been beautiful hair; now split ends stuck out here and there, because she had been clawing at her scalp from stress.
"But…"
"But? Oho. There is room for a defense, is there. Let us hear it."
"Uh, no, I mean, that's…"
The Goddess, who had done nothing this whole time but run from reality, had panicked at the destruction of the Divine Realm and come here on pure reflex.
She has a habit of reaching straight for an excuse to smooth things over, so "but" had soaked into her as a verbal tic.
And she has one more bad habit.
When she is pressed too hard about her responsibility, she turns defiant.
There. Here it comes!
"For a start, you erased your own memory, so you don't even remember what I did to you, do you?! Revenge for something you don't remember—that is completely insane!"
Fair enough, I suppose. Inwardly the Goddess was riding high on having landed an unanswerable point. She even imagined I would be stuck for a reply.
This idiot was under the impression that she had gained the upper hand. In which case her own shallowness would have to be brought home to her thoroughly.
"Are you sure?"
"…What?"
"Are you sure you want me to remember? If I recall what passed between the two of us, my anger comes back fresh. You're fine with that, are you?"
"Wh— ah, wait, um, that's…"
The Goddess floundered, dropped her head, and shut her mouth.
"Not good enough. You apologize at once and beg me: 'please don't remember.'"
"I'm sorry. Please don't remember."
"Too late! Doing it only once you've been told is no good, and doing exactly as told with no embellishment is no good either. Put an 'I beg you' on the front, say 'please, I'm asking you' at the end, throw yourself flat on the floor—doing something over and above what you were told is what sincerity means, is it not?"
At that the Goddess slowly began to lower her knees to the floor.
But I stopped her.
"Ah—never mind. You needn't. That one comes after I said it too, so it's too late."
At that the Goddess straightened her half-bent knees.
"Hmm. I'd have said that was a moment to shake off the refusal and do it anyway. Wrong answer, every single time."
The Goddess clicked her tongue and stamped her feet. Inwardly.
But all of it is transparent to me, so it makes no difference from having actually done it.
Face down, the Goddess trembled.
She seemed to think I was being unreasonable, but the one behaving in bad faith here is the Goddess. She has not the faintest intention of apologizing from the heart; all she is doing is working out which response is the correct one.
I had had enough of humoring the Goddess's calculations.
"Which means—perhaps I shall remember juuust a little."
I began to recall, a little at a time, starting from where I first encountered the Goddess. As one might turn back the cover sheet of a document slowly, bit by bit, to peek at what is written on page two—like that, a little at a time.
"Ahh, it's coming back. Yes, that's right—you were in a foul mood from the very start. It didn't add up, so I asked you why, didn't I? And what did you answer?"
"…That you looked like my ex-boyfriend… and that seeing you hurt."
Head still down, the Goddess cut her eyes away to the side. For an instant she turned them toward me, flinched at my cold stare, and hurriedly looked away again.
"Don't go softening it on your own initiative. What you said was: 'You look exactly like my ex and it makes me sick!' You did not say it like a woman nursing a broken heart. You were snarling at me."
…………
"Oi. Going quiet on me? The scheme to sit tight and wait out my anger is transparent too, you know."
"…I'm sorry."
The Goddess mumbled it. An apology of pure form and nothing else—yet as form goes, delivered without even keeping up appearances. Rather like a new hire who dropped out of school and used to run with a gang.
"You also said this, didn't you: 'Big attitude, for a human! I am a goddess! You might at least prostrate yourself reverently!' What do you make of that one?"
The Goddess's eyelid was twitching. A stress reflex, and therefore beyond even the Goddess's own control.
Head down, she clenched the white cloth at her hip.
"Um… I'm sorry. I got carried away."
"Oi. Don't lie. You weren't carried away, were you. You think that about humans as a matter of course, so what is at fault is not your mood in that moment. It is your character itself."
"Nngh…"
"Excuse me?"
"Ah, nothing…"
There is no making this one feel genuine remorse. Force remorse on her with omnipotence and her personality changes and she becomes someone else entirely.
Not that I particularly want the Goddess to repent. All I want is for her to regret.
Hm? My own character is bad enough that I am in no position to talk?
Wrong. Do not rank me alongside the Goddess. My character is far, far worse than hers. That much is plain.
The thing is, only one of us is a fool. The difference between the Goddess and me is whether one recognizes and admits how bad one's character is. The Goddess has no idea that she is nasty, and that is what makes her a fool.
And this fool of a Goddess, having learned nothing, turned defiant all over again.
She raised her lowered face and shot me a hard glare.
"Stop looking at me with those contemptuous, pitying eyes. Don't you feel the slightest gratitude for having been reincarnated?!"
"None. I never wanted to be reincarnated, and you reincarnated me for your own convenience. To discharge your mission—defeating the Demon Lord and bringing peace to humankind. You shove a mission onto someone and then act as though you'd done them a favor? That's backwards. Shouldn't you be looking apologetic instead?"
By now I must be a more unpleasant presence to her than the ex-boyfriend ever was.
As I should be. As if I would stand for being ranked alongside the ex-boyfriend of a mere goddess.
The Goddess clawed at her head and threw her hair into disarray.
"Oh, fine! I don't care! Do whatever you like! If you hate me that much then torture me or kill me or whatever you want. Do as you please!"
"Very well. I shall grant the wish of a pitiable creature who, goddess though she is, gets no Goddess's Gift of her own. Your wish is [To Have Me Do Exactly As I Please With You]. It is received!"
I took forcible control of the Goddess's body.
Before me, as I sat on the throne with my chin propped on my hand, the Goddess folded her knees and sat back on her heels. Then she set both hands out in front of her, neatly together, and lowered her upper body.
This is what is known as dogeza, the full prostration to the floor. A beautiful one, in the shape of perfect and heartfelt sincerity.
"I am most terribly sorry!"
"Mm, very good! I am, whatever I may look like, a magnanimous being. I forgive you. Consider it mercy. Die."
The Goddess died instantly. Heart, brain, bloodflow, cells—everything came to a complete stop in a single moment, and she died.
I burned the Goddess's corpse away with light until nothing remained.
I annihilated the Boundary, her place of work, along with it.
With that, the entire existence of the dubious tribe called gods was completely and utterly gone.
As for life on this planet, every living thing but me and my pet Mofu has been eradicated.
Feeling thoroughly refreshed, I erased the monoliths from the planet.
Then I altered what the planet was made of.
Land of nothing but rock and soil and sand, a sea of pure water, and an atmosphere without clouds.
On this planet no life exists but me and the Mofu, and none will ever arise.
Only My Castle standing on the brown earth, and inside it, in the throne room, only me, stroking the Mofu on my lap.
This planet exists for that and nothing else.