The Hero's Rib

"Where am I? I can't see a thing."

"Welcome. This is... somewhere or other, I think. Probably a pretty amazing place."

"Could you give me a little more information? Who are you, beautiful woman who suddenly appeared in this pitch-black space?"

"Thank you. Now, allow me to explain your circumstances."

"Give me information."

"I'm a goddess."

"A goddess?"

"Unfortunately, you... sort of died in the world you came from."

"Give me information."

"Well, I don't know, see?"

"A screen suddenly appeared in the room, showing scenes from my past. This is my house, but isn't that a crime...?"

"The law does not apply to goddesses."

"You have a great figure. Can I run my hands all over you?"

"Please stop. I'll sue you."

"So the law does apply."

"I'm allowed to use it."

"I don't accept that."

"Anyway, back to the point. This is you three years before your death."

"I thought I looked young. Isn't that way too far back?"

"And here you are, three minutes after death."

"I missed the crucial moment. Could you show it again?"

"And here you are, three seconds before death. Three, two, one... There, dead."

"Amazing. I really did sort of die."

"What are you, some kind of funny guy? Have you made a career out of it?"

"I've never practiced dying in a funny way, at least."

"But the fact remains that you died an untimely death. This is a place where we give pathetic, wretched losers at life another chance to struggle on, though it may not mean much."

"I'd prefer a kinder goddess."

"Half of Ba○arin is made of me."

"You're kind."

"The other half is kindness."

"It was an artificial drug after all."

"Put simply, this is the prelude to reincarnation in another world."

"Oh, I saw an isek—"

"Oops. You can't mention other works by name. We'd get complaints from the gods of those worlds, and that's scary."

"How harsh. So, can you reincarnate me in another world?"

"Yes. Choose the world you want and the form you want to be reincarnated as."

"You're surprisingly free to choose. In other isekai stories, you don't get to pick."

"The caliber of the gods is different. Don't lump me in with inflexible underlings."

"You're going to get in trouble."

"Every god has their own personality."

"There are gods who are old men, after all. A goddess is easy on the eyes."

"I'll sue you for sexual harassment."

"Your response and personality are both pretty harsh."

"You can basically choose freely, but popular roles have a waiting list."

"There is one?"

"I'm not reincarnating only you, and the number of other worlds is limited."

"When I look online, it seems endless."

"Shall I take you to a world an acquaintance of mine stopped making halfway through?"

"So it got abandoned mid-serialization, huh?"

※To remain eternally unfinished: to stay incomplete forever.

"If you want to be the hero in a classic fantasy harem story, the wait is about fifty thousand years."

"How much desire do all these people waiting to be reincarnated have?"

"In that same world, if you want to be a villager in a rural village who spends their whole life repeating the village's name, it's five hundred years."

"That one was surprisingly popular. Do they hate hard labor too?"

"Good worlds are generally popular. The harsher the world, the shorter the wait."

"For example?"

"You can become a hero in a world where everyone spends your entire life pointing at you and laughing. You can get in within five minutes."

"I don't think that's a hero. Still, there's a wait?"

"Five people have compromised."

"One minute each? Isn't that the wrong way to compromise?"

"Being reincarnated as a monster is popular too. Starting as a Demon King is as well, but if you can eventually reach Demon King level, the wait is still long."

"Does that include Demon Kings who get wiped out?"

"Yes. Even a future Demon King destined to die after a fierce battle with the hero has a wait of a thousand years or more."

"How short is the wait in a world where you can become a Demon King?"

"You can become a Demon King in a world where everyone spends your entire life pointing at you and laughing. You can get in within eight minutes."

"I feel like you just said that one. That's more popular than being a hero."

"By now, I'm sure you've seen an otherworldly reincarnation destination that appeals to you."

"If you're serious, I think you're an evil god."

"Lately, a lot of people have been getting into good worlds by putting a clever twist on things."

"Like what?"

"They make a name for themselves as ordinary people without a single Skill, or become nothing more than farmers, merchants, or cooks."

"I see. They choose a destination no one else would think of."

"Some people become inanimate objects, too."

"Inanimate objects... like a hero's weapon?"

"Exactly. But demand has been gradually rising lately, so waits are becoming more common."

"So I have to be a pioneer."

"And since inanimate objects have long lifespans, each person's stay is longer, so the wait per person is longer."

"I can see where all those people who chose the pointing-and-laughing world end up."

"Now then, what shall we do? You're a bit of a womanizing scumbag with an adventurer's temperament, so your preferred Job will probably have a long wait."

"I won't deny it, but please be a little kinder."

"A womanizing scumbag who's kind to women, with an adventurer's temperament."

"Close."

"Just pick something already. I'm busy, and time is precious."

"You're getting sloppy with me. Does this world have time?"

"Saza○-san is about to start."

"Oh, looks like it's the same world. And it's Sunday, too."

"If I miss it, I'll make you Saza○-san's neighbor."

"That would be somewhat troublesome."

"Then hurry up. If you're dissatisfied with your life, you can always come back here anyway."

"Maybe the reason you're busy is that system's fault."

"Ah."

"You didn't realize? Well, I've decided."

"I don't know how you managed to choose after that conversation."

"I didn't expect you to say that."

"Go ahead and tell me. I'll operate the terminal while I listen and calculate your wait time."

"A well-crafted world, a harem, and a cheat-powered hero with a happy ending."

"That'll have quite a wait, you know? It's over ten thousand years."

"I'd like to be one of his ribs."

"It's zero."

"All right."

"What do you mean, a rib?"

"Well, I figured the right hand might be taken."

"No, it wouldn't—oh, someone picked it."

"And if I were the hero's right hand, I'd probably have to take care of his bathroom needs and stuff. I've seen a manga like that."

"That isn't the one where the face splits open, is it?"

"As a rib, I'd basically just get caressed by beautiful women."

"Would you? You're so perverted I can't tell."

"They're the ribs of a handsome hero. Wouldn't you want to touch them?"

"I might want to touch them a few times."

"Since he'd be in a harem, I figured all sorts of women would caress me."

"Your desires are so shallow."

"I thought I could manage if my whole body were an erogenous zone."

"You were a professional, then?"

"Anyway, please make it happen."

"Well, all right. Off you go."

◇

"I'm back. Somehow the place looks a lot more like a living room now."

"I had a feeling you'd come back."

"I did enjoy myself quite a bit, though."

"Why did you come back?"

"I couldn't get a happy ending..."

"Did you think you could? The hero gets a happy ending, not you, his rib."

"Oh, Saza○-san's on. Can I watch with you?"

"Go ahead. This is a rerun."

"It's been over a hundred years since Saza○-san ended in this world."

※Saza○-san can't be rerun due to copyright.

"Yes. Want to hear about the final episode?"

"I'll save it for next time."

"So, what went wrong?"

"Copyright, you see."

"Not Saza○-san. I'm talking about your reincarnation in another world."

"Things went pretty well for a while. I even reached climax with a lot of the heroines."

"That's not something to tell a goddess."

"At one point, I accidentally whispered my love to my favorite heroine."

"As a rib?"

"Sadly, she was grossed out."

"By your favorite, you mean?"

"That wasn't very good."

"I'll break your ribs right now."

"What a humorous goddess you are."

"Good."

"Ribs are so wonderful."

"That's not good."

"I'd desperately hidden my true identity, but the hero finally found out I existed, and I ended up declaring, 'I'm the eleventh right rib!'"

"The person you told must have been confused."

"And as you'd expect from a hero, he didn't hesitate to remove the eleventh right rib."

"Even most people who aren't heroes would remove a talking rib."

"But that part was fine."

"You were still fine after being removed?"

"The thing is, I was actually the tenth right rib."

"So that was a wasted extraction! Apologize to the eleventh right rib!"

"Come on, there's no way the eleventh right rib had a will of its own. That'd be creepy."

"Oh, right. Sorry, tenth right rib."

"Luckily, I avoided being removed and got back to my rib-caressing life, which was nice."

"That's not a phrase I hear often. Did you speak again?"

"No. The eleventh right rib that had been removed was reborn as a new kind of human, and a war broke out between humanity and the new humanity."

"So you went full Adam and Eve? That cheat hero is something else."

"There were too many Eves. It was a real hassle."

"He was a harem hero, after all. But if he was a cheat hero, couldn't he resolve it?"

"The hero born from the original hero's eleventh right rib was a cheat hero too, so it became a fierce battle."

"He became a hero with a name like that? He could've at least introduced himself by name."

"In the end, the eleventh-right-rib hero won by a single rib."

"So the number of bones made a difference in their performance? You could've helped by about one rib's worth."

"It's not like a rib can do anything."

"You declared yourself, then got removed, became a hero, and beat the current hero, didn't you?"

"And so, unfortunately, the hero died."

"It was mostly your fault. And that's why you came back?"

"No, there's a little more."

"Now I'm curious."

"The eleventh-right-rib hero thought, 'Couldn't the other ribs become heroes too?'"

"He really thought that?"

"Then he removed all twenty-three of the remaining ribs."

"And there were twenty-four heroes."

"No. I'd been reincarnated as the hero's rib, so I remained behind as one of the original hero's ribs."

"You were pointlessly conscientious."

"And then the twenty-three heroes began fighting over the world."

"It became a pretty epic-scale affair."

"By the way, the one who won in the end was the third-left-rib hero."

"They were all called that?"

"It was rough. The battle that split the stars between the fifth-right-rib hero and the seventh-left-rib hero nearly ended the world."

"Their names ruin everything."

"And the ninth-right-rib hero and the second-left-rib hero discovered they were gay."

"We'll have you write up a detailed report on that later."

"The brainy tenth-left-rib hero even created a new hero from his own ribs."

"That's the kind of plot that never ends."

"By the way, nothing came from the tenth right rib."

"I'm glad your existence seems to have had some effect on the world."

"In the end, I, the rib, could only watch helplessly."

"You don't have fingers. You're a leftover rib."

"That's right. What I was sucking on was a beast-eared heroine."

"Sucking on your lover's bones... that's quite the psychopath move."

"It felt good."

"Your whole body was an erogenous zone, after all."

"In the end, the victorious third-left-rib hero used some incredible rib miracle..."

"A rib miracle... It probably wouldn't be the first result in an exact search."

"All the dead heroes returned to being shattered ribs."

"I'm not accepting an ending where all that work was for nothing."

"No, the heroines buried them just like that, and it was over."

"And you were buried with them?"

"No, I was kept around for when the beast-eared heroine wanted something in her mouth."

"Was that heroine a reincarnator from another world? She doesn't sound sane."

"I enjoyed a fulfilling life."

"I see. I don't want to hear about it."

"But one day, a gardening-type heroine found me by accident, crushed me, and used me as fertilizer. That's how I died."

"I doubt she thought you were a hero's bone."

"And that's why I came back with regrets."

"It sounds like you enjoyed yourself more than I expected."

"Oh, here's a souvenir: the eleventh right rib."

"Throw it away. No, not here!"

"So, what should I do?"

"Well, if you weren't satisfied, I'll reincarnate you again. Choose your desired world and Job."

"I've run out of material."

"I thought that after living as a hero's rib, you'd at least question your own existence and think about your next world."

"Don't worry. I prepared this for just such an occasion."

"An idea box? Since when?"

"I used a Go○iva box while watching Saza○-san."

"Oh, my Go○iva box is gone. I was going to use it as a catchall."

"I thought I'd ask people for their impressions of my reincarnation in another world, and use them to decide my next destination and Job."

"Aren't you relying on others too much? Besides, I'm the only one here."

"I'll ask the people waiting to be reincarnated. Yes, you over there."

"I don't think Ka○o wants to be reincarnated in another world."