Yoshio is 30 years old, with no job and a shut-in lifestyle. His mundane days and nights are suddenly interrupted when he receives a copy of The Village of Fate, an experimental game with graphics like nothing he's ever seen before. In the game, he takes on the role of a guardian deity who watches over the people of a new village, but he finds that the game characters are so intelligent, reactive, and human that he starts wondering if they could be real people somehow. Through his connection to their strangely vivid lives, Yoshio begins to discover the brightness that had been missing from his own existence. (W) Namako Hirukuma (A) Kazuhiko Morita