Part 44: Episode 29: The Lying Picture Book

Once, there was an Okosan.
There was something the Okosan wanted to find, no matter what.
So he ran to the ends of the earth.
The Okosan was very fast.
He could run anywhere.
He ran everywhere.


At the end of the earth, there was a giant hole in the ground.


The Okosan fell into the hole.
No one remembers the Okosan now.
Poor Okosan.
Poor Okosan.








We had exited the corridor and headed into the next room, where we found our first friendly bird.


Okosan!

Hostage confirmed! Moving to secure!

Okosan, let’s get out of here. Okay?
COOOOOO!

Okosan used WING ATTACK!
It’s super effective!

Ow! Ow! Okosan, that hurts! Calm down and listen to me!

You’re not being a particularly benevolent god either way.
Yeah, Okosan! A god has to listen to the voices of the downtrodden common people!
Coo!? (R-really!?)
Yes.
Coooo…! (Unnnggghhh… In that case Okosan will listen for three centimeters!)
Okosan, this pudding isn’t real! You have to kiss it goodbye and come back to reality!
Coooooooo! (Silence!)
So three centimeters is about ten seconds?

Looks like it.

Okosan, calm down! This crummy pudding isn’t the pudding you’ve been searching for all these years!

I don’t know anything about pudding!

The music stops.

Err…
Think about it, Okosan! Is the pudding you seek something I could understand? Of course not! It’s something beyond and above, something completely outside my comprehension!
!!!


Whenever you talk about pudding it’s like it’s the meaning of the universe, or final secret of the earth, or some sort of cult deity!
No matter how hard you’ve tried to explain it, I just don’t get it. I still don’t know what the pudding you’re looking for is!
But I do understand that it’s not something you can find just like that!

Doesn’t this strike you as odd, then? How could you have found that amazing treasure without doing anything?
Coo…!?
What have you been training for all these years? Haven’t you been training so you can find the pudding which sleeps forgotten at the end of the earth!?
You couldn’t possibly find a treasure like that this easily! It’s a trap, Okosan! A fake!
You have to remember, Okosan! Remember the pudding you seek!

The music stops.


The scenery around us slowly faded away to whiteness, and from the blinding white came an incredible cry.








Coo!
Coo!

And before we know it, we’re standing in a room just like the one where we started.
Was everything we saw in here before just an illusion created by The King?

Probably, yes. He was hoping to hold us back.
Coooooooo! (Okosan has remembered!)



I… don’t think I follow.
Don’t worry, I don’t either!
Coo, coooo! (Okosan must return to Earth and seek The True Pudding!)



The wall… cracked!?

We must be breaking the shell, like the migrant said.
Oh, I get it! When someone starts thinking “I want to go home!”, the egg cracks a little?

It doesn’t look like it will crack any more, though. And we probably couldn’t break it by hand… We’ll need to keep going forward.

Okosan, wai…!

Okosan gallops off into the darkness, snorting and cooing with excitement.

Well… he can probably take care of himself just fine.
Probably.

My eyes are getting used to the darkness again, and I can make out another door opposite from where we came in.
Who will we find in the next room?
Well, there’s only one way to find out. Let’s go!