Summary: If Keima was the web's centre, then his inexistence left the girls as frayed silk strands, floating alone and listless in the wind. No one really anticipated, however, that all it took was just one itsy-bitsy spider, before the remnants were connected into a beautiful deathtrap again.

Takes place in various different time periods within an Alternate Reality.

Disclaimer: The World God Only Knows is owned by Tamiki Wakaki. I own absolutely nothing in relation to this work, except for the plot of this particular story.

Chapter Laconic: A homeless girl and an aged artist find more in common than they realize.


Too Pretty to be a Hobo

As far as trails went, this dirt path was very unusual indeed.

One end exited by a rare oak tree childishly vandalized with several swear words and hearts containing the names of would-be hopefuls, located inside one of Maijima City's only natural parks, this one currently being lobbied to be cut down for a new mall. The other end transformed into a farmland-bordered side road which hosted only one telephone box in its entire span of several of kilometres through a town that many city teenagers colloquially referred to as "The Middle of Nowhere". And smack dab in the middle sat a girl too pretty to be a hobo but was.

It was a trail that the senile sculptor used often – today for a local otaku convention that marked the man's first time at such a thing – but he had never seen as odd a sight as this. So he did the one thing that seemed to make sense to teenagers nowadays.

He sat down and talked anime.

More specifically, he exhibited one of the samples that he had constructed and was planning to sell: an intricately detailed and vibrantly painted replica of a fire truck that was the length of the girl's hand. The man was delighted to find that his audience received his model exuberantly.

"Oooh!" she squealed, her eyes as starstruck as the night sky. "Oooooh! This is so amazing! It's so red…so cool…so squeaky!"

Indeed it was, for Elucia de Rute Irma was currently rolling the fire truck back and forth on her palm, which made the sound of the wheels turning very audible.

If only he had been so close to his own kin…

"Ho ho ho! You think that's impressive?" the grandpa boomed, feeling the need to act like a mad scientist showing off his newest mecha. "But that's not all it can do! Feast your eyes on – this!"

With well-practiced moves, the old man sequentially slid and clicked open the impressively crafted parts, transforming the toy model into an actual mecha-like being and making that much more apparent the brand on the verge of having its trademark infringed.

To his surprise, the girl looked disappointed. "Whaa~? But I liked the fire truck better!"

He had no need to act overdramatic, but he did. "Hm?! Impossible! My grandson loved these kinds of models!"

It should be noted here that while both are considered "animesque", he was making an unfair comparison between a show about cars transforming into robots and galge. It was just another thing that this grandpa never had learned from his descendant when he had the chance, unfortunately.

Not that it mattered to the girl. "Is this how you turn it back?" she asked, tugging at what she thought was a part that moved.

This action was enough to immediately wipe out the old man's antics. "Uh, wait a moment –"

It's made completely out of clay was what he would have said had the fact not become readily evident by the breast piece snapping off.

That sound echoed in his mind for a long moment. The old man stared, wide-eyed and bile suddenly threatening to rise in his throat, at that broken piece in the girl's hand and remembered. The past few weeks, sunken in the deepest levels of despair. Weeks of molding and painting, hurting and working, trying to push everything out of his mind and stop thinking. A young man, passed on long before he had any right to be. The final models, a tribute to his memory. The torso with a gaping hole.

Then he shook it off, turning back to the girl.

"Oh no!" One might wonder how she didn't get whiplash from the emotional one-eighty of happy to upset, but she managed it, looking adorably apologetic all the same. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I – I'll pay for this! Please, let me make it up to you!"

The grandpa heavily doubted she had the money to back up the comment, but tried to put a smile onto his face, all the same. "Ah – that's all right. It was only one model –"

And then he immediately choked on his words, because Elsie pulled out not one, not two, but five ten-thousand yen bills from somewhere and offered them to him. "I-is this enough?"

"You – what –?"

The girl cringed. "I'm so sorry! This is all I have!"

The old man's first thought was that this girl must have a death wish. This is all I have, she said – and she was giving it all away? What about her? Did she not think of how long could she sustain herself on food bought with that money? How much clothes she could buy to keep herself warm in the coming winter? Instead of looking after herself, the girl was offering him what must be the last of the money she had saved up?

Did she want to die?

Most people would've been angry. They'd tell her to keep the money, buy some common sense, and don't be so stupid the next time around because there will be scum who'll take her up on that offer.

But for him, her pleading expression was just the last in a surprisingly brutal series of emotional gut-punches. The innocence reminded him – and hurt him. With a snap, the despair, the sadness, that he had barely chained for the past weeks broke free. It swept through him like a torrent, filling his every thought, fueled by rage for the unreasonable mortality of youth.

He started to cry.

Elsie was taken aback. "Um – mister? Are you hurt?"

The man gestured for her to stop, for once feeling entirely his age. Tears rolled down his face for a while before he sat down heavily, leaning on a tree. Hesitantly, Elsie crouched down beside him, trying to offer what comfort she could.

"I had a grandson, once," he confessed, quite out of the blue. "He died."

The man took his glasses off with trembling hands. "I – I miss him. He was – he was around your age, maybe a little older. The tyke always puzzled me, he has, going around with that gadget shenanigan of his. Never – never really lifting his head and looking at the beautiful – beautiful – world around him. Whenever I tried to pull him out of it, he'd bite back. My wit met its end every time he was involved. But – but, it was one of his charming points – it always has been his charming point, that smart mouth of his. I never knew what he was talking about – and I thought that, I thought that it meant he was going to be a great man because he knew so much more than me!

"I hate it! I despise, with every year I've lived on this Earth, how much my grandson lost when he died! His charming personality – his grand knowledge – his life, every decade he had left! Why was he the first to go – why him, and not me? Old dogs are the ones to lie down and rest. The millennium belonged to the children! That's how it should have been! That's how…that's how it…should have been…

"…If there's anything I learned about this…it's that I'm scared. Scared for young men dying while old men still walked." The man looked up, right to Elsie's eyes. "So please, little girl. Please. For me. Please don't be so eager to throw your life away…"

It took Elsie some time to reply. She didn't completely understand what the man was trying to say – the least of reasons being that she didn't quite equate money with her life, and demons don't exactly die easily. Yet, at the same time, she understood that the man was sad, and, for whatever reason, this sadness was similar to hers. In her mind, the least she could do was to let him know he was not alone.

"I had a partner once…" she slowly started, looking at the ground. "I didn't know him that long. I couldn't understand him, so I never knew why he was mad at me. But he was way more mature than I am. He liked to play, but in school he was able to do anything he needed to. His methods were weird, but he always seemed in control. That one time I met him, I just felt…small. I thought he was going to be a great partner.

"That's why I was so sad…when I couldn't protect him. And I knew…it was my fault, that I couldn't protect him. If only I was as good as he was…except better…it wouldn't have happened. I thought that I had to get better. I had to. I don't know how, but…that time hurt so much that I wanted anything…and everything… that would make it so that I'll never see another buddy suffer.

"I decided… If God is willing to give me another chance…I'll take it, and hang on with all my might."

She looked back at him. And that was when she realized – she saw the same thing in his eyes that he had seen in hers. The thing they both knew they had.

A soul of the alone.

And then they reached an understanding, a consensus – an emotional enlightenment.

The man shakily got to his feet. "M-my daughter-in-law doesn't visit me anymore. And my wife's back is getting worse every day. A helping hand…would be really appreciated. And while I'm at it, I don't have a successor to my sculpting techniques – I can't be choosy anymore, can I?"

"I don't have a home right now," the girl said softly, as if that wasn't obvious. "But I'm good at cooking and cleaning, and I promise to work really, really hard. If you're patient with me, I can learn anything."

"I can teach you." The man offered a hand.

She gently, delicately, wonderingly – grasped it. "Then…I'm in your care."

And that was how they left: slow but sure, down the trail to the future.

They only got as far as two steps, however, before Elsie suddenly jerked to a halt. "Oh yeah! We shouldn't go to Maijima!"

"Eh? Why?"

"Well…" The girl scratched her head quizzically. "My friend Haqua told me that, any day now, all of Hell is going to break loose in Maijima City."


Endnote: I've been sitting on this chapter for a while. I actually meant to release it only when all the chapters were done, and I'm not even half done yet (about a fourth), but I figured I might as well take the publicity from the upcoming season while it lasts.

This is, in essence, a collection of one-shots for various girls involved with Keima, if Keima had never conquered them. Some happy, some sad, some fun, and some just plain weird. I'll try to update once or twice a week, but, eh, I think people know my tardiness too well by this point...

Though, you probably already saw that the situation isn't as simple as "if Keima had never conquered them". And I say a collection of one-shots, but…