Volume 2, Chapter 4: A Time to Chill
You are reading the official Taiyouverse light novel, Reset!!! We Tried to Run an Anime Convention… and Broke the Universe!!! Volume 2: The Controversy Game. Follow Sunny and the Sun Squad as they navigate a new reality at a school academy where popularity, reputation, and mystery shape the future. The Taiyouverse is a fictional story universe connected to Taiyou Con. Each volume takes place in a different reality. For convention news and updates, visit our Updates section.For real convention event updates, go to our Updates.)
Previously on… Volume 2: The Controversy Game! The Sun Squad woke up in a rewritten reality: Taiyou Con Academy, a walled school-city in downtown Mesa where Cred Points decide everything. Their powers are gone, but their memories survived. Sunny has been named director of this semester’s Taiyou Con
The academy courtyard at midnight was nothing like the Mesa Convention Center parking lot at midnight. No humming floodlights, no security golf carts, no Sunny doing one last walkthrough with a clipboard. Just cherry blossom petals drifting across the stone paths, the fountain making its small patient sound, and Solar hovering motionless beside it like a very expensive lawn ornament.
Sunny stopped a few feet away. “Are you asleep?”
“I do not sleep,” Solar said. “I am recharging. It is the closest equivalent.”
“Right.” She sat on the fountain’s edge. “Do you mind?”
“I do not mind.” A Solar gave a slight pause. “Sit and recharge.”
Sunny laughed before she could stop herself, and it came out thinner than she wanted. She’d spent the whole day being Director Sunny. And now, with nobody watching, her shoulders finally dropped about an inch.
Solar drifted a few inches closer. “Your heart rate is elevated. Are you malfunctioning?”
“I’m nervous, Solar.”
“I have heard students say they have butterflies in their stomachs before examinations. Is that what this is?”
“Something like that.”
“I do not have a stomach.” He said it the way someone else might say I don’t have a car. “I still get nervous but it’s probably because of the alarms in my head sensors.”
Sunny smiled at the water. “That sounds terrible.”
“I have seen a cactus army pour out of portals over downtown Mesa. This is much more relaxing and quiet.”
“Yeah.” She was quiet a moment. “Everyone’s looking to me as always. Like I know what I’m doing most of the time.”
“You do not know what you are doing most of the time.”
“Thanks.”
“You did not know what you were doing when the ballroom roof had a hole in it either during the cactus invasion.” Solar tilted, just slightly, the way he did when he was accessing something. “This school building has a roof. Statistically, you are ahead.”
That got a real laugh out of her.
“Was that a joke?” she asked.
“I have been working on my jokes, but that was just a fact I stated.”
They sat there a while, her sitting, him hovering, while the petals kept falling and the fountain kept bubbling out water. When Sunny finally stood up, her shoulders were back where they belonged.
“Thanks, Solar.”
“I will remain here,” he said. “If your heart rate elevates again, I will know.”
It was, she decided, his version of moral support.
By the end of the first week, the fifth-floor office had stopped feeling like a strange room and started feeling like theirs.
Sunny ran the first real production meeting the way she’d run a dozen in the old world: tablet in one hand, melon bread in the other, every department reporting in turn. Venue was walkthrough scheduled, and the budget spreadsheet was built. The Mesa Convention Center contract spread across the central table, already annotated in three colors.
“You look like you done this before,” Mina said, watching her work. She and Lily had adopted the office as their second home, drawn by the snacks and the drama in equal measure.
“Once or twice,” Sunny said.
“She’s being modest,” Lily said through a mouthful of melon bread. “She runs the whole thing like she’s been doing it for years.”
Mina frowned. “But you’ve only been director for a week.”
“Yes, a week,” Sunny said quickly, “it is a long story.”
It was true enough. The venue walkthrough felt like muscle memory. The loading dock logistics, the programming grid, the sponsor tiers and every little thing that is involved in running an anime convention.
What was new, what kept catching her off guard, were the new changes in this reality. Nobody in this reality was trying to kill her. Nobody was opening portals. The biggest threat on any given day was a scheduling conflict.
She was starting to like it here. That scared her more than the cactus army ever had.
The 2021 club on a weeknight smelled like polished wood and other people’s confidence. Honoka had Kenji by the sleeve and was dragging him toward the craps table with the single-minded joy of a natural disaster.
“You’re going to love this,” she announced.
“I don’t gamble,” Kenji said.
“You breathe, don’t you? Same thing, faster.”
Sakura was already there, somehow, standing at the rail with her hands folded. Leon was asleep on the bench behind them with a small stack of chips as a pillow.
“Rule one,” Honoka said, pressing two dice into Kenji’s hand like she was arming him. “These are your soldiers. Rule two:”
“The pass line has a 1.41 percent house edge,” Sakura said quietly.
Honoka pointed at her without looking. “Stop doing math at my table.”
“I’m just observing.”
“Observe quieter.”
Kenji turned the dice over in his palm, frowning at them the way he frowned at everything unfamiliar, like it might need to be punched. “So I just… throw them?”
“With feeling,” Honoka said. “The dice can tell when you’re scared.”
“They cannot,” Sakura said.
“They can and they have told me so personally.”
A passing dealer leaned in. “First time?”
“First time,” Honoka confirmed proudly, as if Kenji were her rookie fighter. “Be gentle. He’s fragile.”
“I am not fragile.”
“Throw the dice, sweetheart.”
Kenji threw. The dice tumbled, bounced off the far wall, and settled: a six and a one. Seven.
The table made that little collective sound tables make. Honoka screamed loud enough that Leon sat bolt upright, chips sliding off his face.
“WHAT did I tell you!” She grabbed Kenji’s shoulders. “Beginner’s luck! The dice have chosen you!”
Kenji stared at the dice like they’d betrayed him by cooperating. “That was… it?”
“That was it. You’re a natural. I’m furious.” Honoka was already stacking chips. “Again. We’re doing this until the universe corrects itself.”
Sakura quietly pointed out, “The universe usually does.”
Leon laid back down. “Wake me when he loses,” he mumbled. “So, keep on winning, Kenji.”
“Money is replaceable,” Honoka said, shoving a small stack of actual cash, toward Kenji. “Your points are not. That’s the Sal rule. Now roll like you mean it.”
Kenji rolled like he meant it. The dice, apparently, agreed with him.
Above the tables, the betting board glowed with its endless lines. Sunny stood at the rail with Ash, watching the names and odds flicker. Her own name was up there, small, on a line that read Sunny survives controversy.
“Do you ever wonder who writes these?” Sunny asked.
“Mr. Blocking approves every new game that is submitted,” Ash said. “Nobody’s ever seen him though.”
“How mysterious,” Sunny said. “I know the most random bets are on that screen but who submitted me surviving a controversy?”
“It could be a random submission. Who knows? I guess it’s not stranger than the tennis team winning a championship this year. I hear they suck and are currently in last place.”
“Come on,” Below them, Honoka shouted. “Kenji’s on a streak and the universe hasn’t corrected itself yet. This is historic.”
Sunny and Ash laughed at the absurd atmosphere. Things were going back to normal.
A few nights later, the conversation they’d all been avoiding finally happened the way most of their important conversations happened: late, on the office floor, surrounded by snack wreckage.
“Okay,” Ash interjected. “We keep not talking about it, so let’s talk about it. Why do we remember our past and nobody else does?”
“Here are some observations,” Solar said, descending to hover at the center of their circle. “Observation one: every person we have met in this reality has consistent memories of a history we did not live. Observation two: none of them show any sign of the rewrite. Observation three: we all retain full recall of the previous reality.”
“So we are the special ones,” Kenji said.
“Or we’re the only real ones,” Honoka said. “Maybe everyone else is, like, background characters the universe filled in.”
“That’s so unfortunate,” said Sakura. “Mina and Lily are so cool.”
“Sorry, sorry. I know they are.” Honoka forgot that they didn’t know Mina and Lily at all last year.
“Maybe there is no explanation,” said Leon, laying on the floor with his eyes closed. “Does it matter if there is nothing we can do about it? Personally, I like this place better. We are not the heroes or protector of the planet anymore. It’s so chill.”
Sunny looked at him. “I know what you mean, Leon.”
“So let’s enjoy it and not be sad about what we can’t change.”
“What if you didn’t destroy the Solis Core crystal?” Sakura said. Everyone turned and looked at her. “You did strike the crystal with your sword, Sunny. But what if he already started changing reality? And all you did was just stopping right in the middle of the rewrite?”
The room went quiet. Everyone pondered about that possibility.
“Then we’d be living in this half-finished reality?” Ash said slowly.
“Instead of the Evil King Barrel ruling the universe,” Kenji said, sitting up, “we got this. Everybody on one planet, mostly getting along.” He shrugged. “I guess that would be the better outcome universe domination by a cactus egomaniac.”
“That’s a way better outcome,” replied Ash.
Sunny stared at her hands. “Technically, I didn’t see the crystal explode but with the cavern caving in from a massive explosion, we can only assume that it has been destroyed”
“So even if we wanted to change everything back,” Sakura stood up and poured herself some water at the table, “there might not even be a way to do it.”
Luna lifted her head from the bakery box she’d claimed as a bed. “My theory is the Solis Core tried to rewrite us and we were too stubborn, and it gave up.”
“That’s not how reality works,” Ash laughed.
“Well we really don’t know that, do we?” Luna pouted and put her head back down.
Kenji stretched out flat on his back on the floor. “It’s still kind of bad that reality changed, but it is what it is. We’re back, we run Taiyou Con.” He folded his hands behind his head. “Not so bad, really.”
“Ok here’s the plan,” Sunny calmly said as she stood up. Everyone looked at her. “We live our lives like this is the real life. No more wondering if we can change it or this isn’t real. We are here now, and we have to deal with it.”
Solar approached Sunny and floated next to her. “Sunny is right about living our lives. This is the most logical course of action,” he continued, “because there is no way to change it back. You all have lost your powers and as far as we know, the crystal is destroyed.”
Honoka jumped out of her seat and shouted, “I’m living it already!”
“We are indeed living it already,” Solar responded, “and no one has been living it up more than you.”
The Sun Squad all sat back down continued with their evening of snacking and hanging out.
The lesson came on a Tuesday, in the main cafeteria, in front of about two hundred people.
A first-year boy named Daniel slipped on a wet patch near the drink station and went down hard. The tray, food and milk went across the floor. Then someone else filmed it, and by the time the boy got up wiping milk off his uniform, the clip was already moving through the academy’s feeds with a caption.
The squad watched it happen from their corner table. Then Sakura, who’d been watching the public rank board out of habit, went still as she saw his name.
“His rank just moved,” she said quietly. “Down two spots.”
“For slipping?” Kenji said in surprise. “That’s nothing. That happens to everyone.”
“It happens to everyone,” said Ash nonchalantly. “But not to everyone on video. Look.”
On the feeds, the clip was spreading. The comments weren’t cruel, exactly. They were worse than cruel. They showed that people were entertained by this accident.
Sunny was already standing.
“Sunny,” Mina said quickly, catching her sleeve. She and Lily had gone pale. “Don’t. If you go over there, the clip gets bigger. More eyes on him if you go.”
“She’s right,” Lily said. “Right now he’s a funny video for an afternoon. You make it a scene and he’s the kid an Elite had to rescue. That’s a label that sticks.”
Sunny looked at the boy, who was trying to clean milk off the floor while people filmed him. She looked at the board, where his name sat two spots lower than it had that morning. Then she looked at Mina and Lily.
Then she walked over anyway.
She didn’t make a speech. She just crouched down, grabbed a stack of napkins, and started helping him clean up. It took four minutes. When Sunny walked back to the table, Sakura was still watching the board.
“His rank stopped dropping,” she said. “It even ticked back up one.”
“Because an Elite 12 helped him.” Ash leaned back in his chair. He was looking at Sunny with something between admiration and worry. “The clip reads different now. Not ‘kid eats floor.’ It’s ‘an Elite stopped to help.’ The crowd likes that version.”
“Could have gone the other way,” Lily said quietly. “You got lucky.”
“Better to be lucky than good,” said Honoka with her mouth full.
Under the table, where no one else could see, Sunny pulled up her own personal dashboard where a student can see their own point total that is not available to the public. Her score had dropped eight points while she was down on the cafeteria floor with a stack of napkins, helping a stranger clean up spilled milk. It wasn’t enough to drop a rank, however. She stared at the number for a moment, then closed the dashboard, picked up her melon bread, and smiled like nothing had happened.
“That’s a fact,” she said to Honoka and Sakura. “Cheers to luck.”
Both Honoka and Sakura raised their melon bread.
Mina and Lily didn’t say anything but just smiled.
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