What is Justice

Title: [Bagun Light Ring]
Description: Loses physical form to walk through dreams.

Hiroyuki stared at it with a face full of question marks. He could understand every single word on the interface, but when strung together, they made zero sense.

Even more troublesome was that he had no idea how to use it!

The Light Key’s interface at least had some interactive buttons to guide Hiroyuki through its operation, but this Light Ring in his hand... the interface lacked any interactive elements whatsoever, consisting purely of plain text information.

The Captain led the three of them back to the conference room on the third floor of the research building, telling them to rest for a moment before turning around to busy himself with his coffee. It was at this point that Hiroyuki learned that the moment Hikari and Uncle Oda entered that temporary laboratory, they had sealed it off once again. In other words, Tregear had been locked outside.

Hiroyuki noticed that Tregear had already very familiarly dragged a chair over from the wall, sat down, crossed his legs, and assumed a thoroughly relaxed posture.

"I know, you were deliberately changing the subject."

Tregear looked at Hiroyuki with a subtle smile at the corner of his mouth: "But it's completely meaningless. No matter how much you evade it, the distinction between justice and evil is just like the light and darkness of this world... It is simply there, objectively existing."

Hiroyuki lowered his head in silence for a fleeting moment.

"Forgive me, but I cannot agree with your view."

Shaking his head, Hiroyuki’s face was painted with complete bewilderment: "I don't understand... why you all argue over a question like 'how should justice and evil be defined,' which actually has a standard answer."

As soon as these words were spoken, both Tregear and Taro looked up, and the sneer on Tregear’s face dimmed accordingly.

Meanwhile, Captain Sakomizu, who was walking in with a few cups of coffee, also lightened his footsteps.

"A standard answer?"

"Yes, of course. The standard answer I 'think' of might also be wrong, and it might not be recognized by you either, but that doesn't matter. Because all along, I have been observing this world according to such a 'standard answer,' even if it might not necessarily be the ultimate truth of this world."

Habitually, Hiroyuki began laying down disclaimers; this was merely his personal understanding, certainly not the fundamental laws governing the operation of this world.

After a brief moment of astonishment, Tregear returned to his usual self. He waved his hand impatiently, cutting off Hiroyuki’s rambling, and wore an expression of utter disbelief: "Then let's hear it."

It was probably another childish speech, and Tregear was already prepared to mock Hiroyuki.

Hiroyuki shrugged and spread his hands: "The standard answer is... self-interest is justice."

The moment Hiroyuki spoke those words, the room fell silent.

"I know, it sounds ugly when put this way, but that is genuinely what I believe, and I have always held fast to it."

"It sounds like a selfish and self-serving statement, but to me, the 'self' in 'self-interest' is not merely the me right before your eyes. The me standing here is the 'self' of natural attributes. This is the 'petite ego,' as well as the 'true ego.'"

"Things that are personally beneficial to me, I consider to be 'justice.'"

"At the same time, I also possess social attributes. I am a part of society. Because I cannot exist independently away from society, I integrate into this society and recognize society as 'myself.' This is the 'greater ego.'"

At this point, Hiroyuki couldn't help thinking that the world of the current Taiga TV series was quite simple. Perhaps it was because the writer lacked the skill yet insisted on wasting ink writing about social conflicts and racial discrimination merely to provide the villains with superficial motives for their crimes, making it appear far less complex and troublesome than the Earth of his own world. This allowed him to more easily integrate his "ego" into the broader society of the entire "Earth."

By the same token, Taiga could never truly integrate into the society of "Earth." Even if he recuperated here for twelve years and spent over thirty years on another Earth, adding the two together amounted to less than fifty years—not nearly enough to make Taiga feel that he was an Earthling rather than a native of the Land of Light.

At times like this, Hiroyuki had to be grateful for the unwritten, natural alliance between Earth and the Land of Light, and also grateful for the fact that the overall technological level of the Land of Light surpassed Earth by two hundred and seventy thousand years. The interests and demands of both sides were simply not on the same plane; otherwise, if Earth's interests and the Land of Light's interests conflicted, and the "greater ego" interests of Hiroyuki and Taiga misaligned, the author would have another excuse to pad out dozens of chapters.

"Things beneficial to society, which are things beneficial to the 'greater ego,' I also consider to be 'justice.'"

"Sometimes, things beneficial to society will harm the interests of the 'true ego.'"

"...Therefore, heroes exist."

Hiroyuki didn't spell it out explicitly, but everyone in the room understood the answer to the question: "When the interests of the 'greater ego' conflict with the interests of the 'true ego,' how should one decide?"

Those who drift along with the current are ordinary masses.

Those who swim against the current may be called heroes.

"Just like how I meddled in that 'troublesome business' of the Birthday Rocket. Admittedly, upon closer inspection, if I had simply sat back and ignored it, the whole affair would have caused me no harm."

Even...

That's right, just as the darkness in Hiroyuki's heart had said back then—

If he had turned a blind eye and ignored it, he could have actually profited from it instead.

"Yet I still went and took a risk, almost losing my life. I knew the danger involved all along; this matter was 'harmful' to me. But I still went ahead and did it, because this is my 'justice.'"

"Preserving the space station and saving those researchers is beneficial to society. That is my judgment... and also the judgment of the public. Not just me; everyone was doing their utmost to save the space station. Some went to intercept that research institute's president, some calculated trajectories, and others called in warnings to NAXA. And me—I possess greater abilities, and there were more things I could do, albeit with greater danger. True, macroscopically speaking, with greater power comes greater responsibility, but I had no obligation to save the space station, and no one could have blamed me for standing idly by. Yet I was willing to take action, and even willing to sacrifice myself for it."

"Because I wanted to become a righteous hero like Ultraman Taro."

At this, Hiroyuki paused his speech and looked at "Higashi Kotaro" right beside him.

That was the hero of his childhood admiration.

Whether in this world or that world. Even though Hiroyuki and Taiga had both lost their past memories and were living life anew, perhaps it was an inevitable decree of fate that allowed him to cross the screen and encounter that towering red figure once more.

The hero in his heart, even across dimensions, remained him, utterly unchanged.

Almost immediately, Hiroyuki caught Taro's burning gaze, along with that familiar line of Land of Light text simultaneously popping up above Taro's head.

Yet the intensity of Taro's gaze toward Hiroyuki appeared dazzling almost to the point of aggression in Tregear's eyes, stinging the depths of his eyes with pain.

"Therefore, Mr. Muruhashi, regarding the question I interrupted earlier, I am very sorry, but I think I can answer it now."

Hiroyuki looked at Tregear, who was sitting there turning his face away with an impatient expression, evidently suffering from a bit of PTSD regarding this kind of "becoming a hero" speech. Regardless of whether your logic made sense or not, listening to it simply irritated him.

"Why is it that when you pulled out the Light Ring, Mr. Taro immediately asserted that it was 'evil'?"

"Because if self-interest is justice, then conversely, what is harmful to oneself is evil."

"So, I also agree with Mr. Taro's judgment. This is an evil item. Because from my perspective, this Light Ring is extremely dangerous. Perhaps it truly is a powerful tool capable of solving the problem right in front of us."

Upon seeing this "dream-walking" skill, combined with the reason why he and Uncle Oda had come to the island, Hiroyuki understood.

"But with the slightest carelessness, I will be harmed by it. I consider it 'evil,' and that is without a doubt."

"And Mr. Taro... forgive me for overstepping, but I imagine that something harmful to me is equivalent to something harmful to Mr. Taro. Therefore, in his eyes, this is 'evil,' and that makes complete sense."

You laid a hand on his child, so you couldn't really blame him for flying into a rage and hurting someone, could you?

"In short, in the minds of a thousand people, there are a thousand different judgments of justice and evil. It is only natural that others define it differently from you. Therefore, my personal advice is to stop dwelling on this... Don't you still have answers you wish to find? There are countless wrong answers waiting for you to explore and eliminate them."

Enduring it up to this point with a trace of patience, Tregear clicked his tongue, sprang up from his chair, and reached out to grab the Light Ring from Hiroyuki's hand.

"After babbling on for so long, if you aren't going to use it, give it back."

Who knew how Sakomizu had found out that he possessed those Light Rings, but the man had walked right up and asked if he had a Light Ring made from Bagun. If not, he wanted a live one, and making one on the spot would do.

Tregear had just gotten into his groove, and being interrupted like this was deeply annoying. He had simply let it slip that he had one ready-made, so stop nagging and take it already.

Hiroyuki gripped the Light Ring tightly and dodged Tregear's reaching hand, smiling as he hid it behind his back. Taro found this exact scene painfully familiar.

Hiroyuki laughed: "Some things must be done even when you know they will harm you, because a hero cannot run away from a battle~"

Anyway, the neighboring film set wasn't going to come over and sue him for copyright infringement, so Hiroyuki stole the lines with a clear and untroubled conscience.

"Therefore, please teach me, Mr. Muruhashi, how to safely use this Light Ring?"