Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 10 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Tropocalypse Now

Two weeks had come and gone since the cultural festival had wrapped up. At first, we’d been planning on putting together one of our usual literary magazines for the event and calling it a day, but then one thing had led to another, and we’d somehow wound up staging a full-blown play instead. All sorts of mishaps and hijinks had followed, needless to say, but in the end, we’d somehow managed to pull through it and wrap the festival up on a successful note.

Now, to be fair, I’m not saying it’d been a huge success. We hadn’t even come close to winning the award that the festival’s organizational committee gave out to the event’s best display or anything like that. Still, to the five of us, the production had become another irreplaceable memory. I knew that I sure as hell wasn’t going to forget playing the leading role in Romeo and Juliet—excuse me, Lolio and Juliet anytime soon. I mean...I’d had my first kiss stolen during a showing, so of course I wouldn’t.

...So, moving right along! The atmosphere at our school had quickly shifted from “entirely consumed by the cultural festival” to that very particular sort of wistfulness that always set in after a big event came to a close. Two weeks later, that sense had faded away as well, and things slowly returned to normal. Meanwhile, the rapidly escalating number of leaves dancing through the air signaled to us that fall was settling in in earnest.

The brutal summer heat had vanished away so rapidly you could hardly believe it had ever been a thing to begin with, moving us right along into a season of bitingly chilly mornings and evenings. I would never be like Hatoko, who wore a cardigan over her uniform all year round, but it was getting cold enough that I was starting to consider taking a leaf out of her book and throwing another layer over my uniform’s jacket. I’d decided at one point that this was the year I’d finally convince my parents to let me buy a black trench coat, by the way, and I took an honest stab at it too, but then my sister barged into the negotiations with guns blazing, shot the idea right the hell down, and declared that I’d have to wear the gray peacoat that I’d bought the year before again instead.

Damnations! How long do I have to wait before I’ll be allowed to pick out my own clothing? When do I get to abandon subtlety and walk around with silver chains wrapped around my arms like a real ancient Egyptian pharaoh...?

“Well, anyway, the point is that it’s fall! Yup—it sure is fall, all right,” I reaffirmed to myself as I gazed out at the landscape before me...that landscape being an ocean.

This wasn’t just any ocean either. This was one of those beachfronts with the sort of super clear, faintly green water that you can see right through—that is, the sort found basically nowhere in Japan. The sand beneath my feet was almost stunningly smooth to the touch as well. I’d never actually been to New Caledonia, of course, but this was more or less how I’d always visualized the beaches there would look. The sun shone bright and brilliant in the blue sky overhead, and the air was exactly as hot as you’d expect. It was the sort of tropical atmosphere that Japanese people are trying to evoke when they talk about going on vacation to a southern island, and there I was, sitting smack-dab in the middle of it all, clad only in a swimsuit and a light hoodie.

“It’s fall...but it sure as heck doesn’t feel like it, huh?” I muttered with a strained smile as I leaned back against the also extremely tropical palm tree that stood behind me.

Needless to say, I hadn’t been whisked away on a sudden trip to an actual southern isle. This was very much Japan—more specifically, the literary club’s room. World Create, the power of genesis, was capable of bringing a perfect recreation of a tropical resort into being wherever the user wanted, and that’s exactly what’d happened.

“Oh, wow, this is great! Talk about a pretty ocean,” a voice rang out next to me. I looked over to see Tomoyo, who had gone off with the other girls to change into their swimsuits in a sorta cabin-like building that’d been set up nearby. Apparently, they’d finally finished.

“I’ve only ever seen water like this on TV before,” she continued. “And we’re the only ones here, so it’s like the whole place is our own private beach! Gotta love World Create, huh?”

“No kidding,” I agreed.

When it came to enabling fun and games, World Create was second to none among the powers that we had awakened to. Through it, we could travel to all sorts of locales from all around the world without ever leaving the comfort of our club room. Blowing off the flow of the seasons to have a mid-fall beach day was child’s play with it on our side. I mean, honestly, who could have seen this coming? Summer vacation had come to a close, the cultural festival had wrapped up, and now we were jumping directly into another beach episode, of all things!

“Now that I think about it, why’d we bring our swimsuits with us in the first place?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it have been way easier to just whip those up with World Create too?”

Everything in the space we occupied had been brought into being by World Create, but for some reason, the girls had unanimously insisted that we bring our own swimsuits from home. I’d already shut mine up deep in my closet after summer break had ended, so I’d had to go through the trouble of digging it right out again as a result.

“Y-Yeah, well,” Tomoyo mumbled, slightly red in the face. “W-We didn’t want it to turn out like the time we all tried cosplaying, that’s all.”

“Oooh,” I said with a nod.

No further explanation was needed. I’d almost forgotten that back when we’d all ended up cosplaying—I mean, deciding on our combat forms together—there had been a bit of an incident, shall we say. Let’s just say it turned out that when Chifuyu made clothes with her power, she could also erase them at will.

World Create was as convenient as a power could possibly get, but the flip side of that was that it was also pretty unstable when push came to shove, and accidentally vanishing everyone’s clothes was a mistake that did not bear repeating, especially from the girls’ perspective. I was pretty certain that Chifuyu had learned from her mistake, to be fair, and I didn’t expect that we’d go through a repeat of that disaster regardless, but there was no harm in taking a few extra precautions to ensure it, I guess.

“And I guess the fact that we’re talking about swimsuits in particular just makes it worse,” I continued. “If something happened and they ended up disappearing...I mean, there’s just no recovering from that.”

“Right?” said Tomoyo. “Though, really...there were a few other reasons why I wanted to bring in my own swimsuit today too.”

“Like what?”

“Y-You know! I mean, like...I didn’t end up getting to go to the pool at all this summer, right? We’d had plans for it, but then we got rained out.”

“Oh, right,” I said with a nod.

“I’d bought a new swimsuit and all, so I was kinda disappointed I never got to actually wear it. I figured this would be a good chance to show it off.”

“Wait,” I said, “you mean you went out and bought a new swimsuit just because you had plans to go to the pool with me?”

“Well, yeah... B-But for the record, I didn’t buy it for you!” Tomoyo snapped. “I just wanted a new one, that’s all! And I know I said I wanted to show it off, but I didn’t mean to you in specific! I meant, like...like showing it off to the world in general, or something...”

“Y-Yeah, okay, I get it,” I said, flinching away from the sheer force of her motor-mouthed string of excuses. Meanwhile, I took a closer look at the swimsuit in question: a red bikini. It wasn’t super revealing, as far as bikinis went, and it suited her slender build really nicely.

“Q-Quit staring at me like that,” muttered Tomoyo.

“I’m not staring,” I replied. “I was just looking, that’s all.”

“H-Hmph! Well, fine—in that case, why not tell me what you think already?”

“Sure, I guess. It looks good on you.”

“...”

“What? Oh, come on, you literally asked me for my impression! What’re you getting embarrassed for? You’re gonna make me blush at this rate!”

“Sh-Shut up! What do you want from me?! I’m not used to this crap, okay! I’m not like you, Mister ‘I Already Went to the Pool with Hatoko, Chifuyu, and Sayumi’!”

“Why’re you lashing out at me now? Jeez,” I grumbled. Technically, I went to the ocean with Hatoko, not the pool...but anyway, I guess Tomoyo took not getting to go a lot more personally than I expected. “About that swimsuit, though,” I said as a thought struck me.

“Huh...? Wh-What?” said Tomoyo. “Is something weird about it?”

“Nah, not weird. It just really feels like I’ve seen it somewhere before,” I said as I took another, closer look—though not so close it’d get me slapped with a sexual harassment accusation—to try and jog my memory.

Hmm. Yeah, I’m definitely getting some sorta déjà vu from that swimsuit. A red bikini... Actually, not just the bikini—it’s specifically the sight of Tomoyo wearing a bikini that seems so darn familiar...

“Ah, got it!” I exclaimed. “It looks just like the bikini armor you wore that one time!”

“...”

“Man, that kinda takes me back! You remember that whole thing, right? You shot yourself in the foot with your own suggestion when we all cosplayed together and ended up wearing a set of red bikini armor! If you put a couple pauldrons on that swimsuit, it’d look just like it!”

“...”

“Oh, I know! Why don’t we take this chance to modify the swimsuit a little and make it into another set of— Wha?!”

The next thing I knew, I’d been taken captive. Specifically, my arms had been wrapped behind me around the palm tree I’d been leaning against, and my wrists had been tied together. As best as I could tell, the hoodie I’d been wearing just seconds ago had been used to bind them up in lieu of handcuffs—and bind them pretty darn tightly, by the way, meaning I couldn’t move an inch.

“Huh? Wha? Huh?” I grunted. I’d been apprehended in the blink of an eye, so quickly it was like time had literally leaped from point A to point B without bothering to go over the process between the two. Which, of course, it had, and the only person who could pull that off was the sovereign ruler of time herself. “Wh-What’s the big idea, Tomoyo?!”

“Hmph!” Tomoyo very pointedly and irritably snorted, then strolled away, leaving me bound to the tree.

“H-Hey, Tomoyo, wait up! Tomoyo?! I seriously can’t move over here!” I shouted. I tried to squirm my way to freedom, but it just wasn’t happening.

“Honestly... What on earth are you doing this time, Andou?” sighed another familiar voice. I looked up to find Sayumi, our very own club president, gazing down at me with a look of pity in her eyes. “I never could have imagined that this would be among your fetishes,” she added.

“It is not! I’m not tied up right now because I wanna be, trust me!”

“How strange,” said Sayumi. “I seem to recall you admitting that you’d always wanted to try on a straitjacket back when we’d all cosplayed together?”

She’s bringing that up now? Really?! “I mean, I said that, yeah...but this isn’t the same thing at all! It’s not that I want to be tied up—I want to be sealed away! Specifically on account of the monstrous, inhuman powers that dwell within me!”

“I have no idea what you hope to gain by telling me about this,” Sayumi said, then she let out a quick sigh before speaking on. “In any case, I think you could have easily predicted that a remark as indelicate as the one you just made would put Tomoyo in a sour mood,” she scolded me. Apparently, she was aware that Tomoyo was the culprit behind my current predicament.

“What indelicate remark...?” I asked.

“You told her that her new swimsuit looked just like a set of bikini armor. That was a horrible thing to say, no matter how you look at it, and all the more so when you consider that to Tomoyo—and, for that matter, to me—the cosplay incident is one best left forgotten in its entirety.”

“Huh? But wait, didn’t you two get pretty into the whole cosplay thing in the end? I remember you striking poses after Chifuyu suggested that we all take a picture together and everything...”

“That was an anime-original moment.”

Oooh, right. Guess it was—we didn’t really take many pictures in the original book. We’d talked about it, but Tomoyo and Sayumi shut it down before it could actually go anywhere, I think.

“This was Tomoyo’s first time wearing her swimsuit, and she seemed very happy to have the opportunity. Then you came along,” Sayumi said with a glare.

I was starting to feel awfully ashamed of myself. Apparently, I’d accidentally said something pretty darn terrible. I decided to apologize whenever I got the chance.

“Speaking of swimsuits, that’s not the one that you wore back in summer vacation, is it?” I asked.

This time, Sayumi was wearing a black swimsuit with a really mature vibe—the sort that you could imagine some foreign celebrity wearing to a beach. It wasn’t quite a one-piece, but it wasn’t quite a bikini either. I’m not really sure how to put it into words, honestly—it was sorta like if you took a one-piece then cut out a bunch of bits and pieces from it. It was less revealing than a bikini, in any case, but it somehow managed to feel weirdly sexy in a way that bikinis didn’t.

“Yeah, that’s right! Didn’t you wear a white bikini back when we— Whoa, Sayumi?!” I yelped. Just as I was starting to remember our trip to the pool, Sayumi had crumpled to the sand. She was down on her hands and knees, and I could practically see the gloomy storm clouds descending upon her. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d actually sunk straight into the ground. “Wh-What’s wrong, Sayumi...? You look like you’d finally decided to sink some real money into your favorite gacha game only for it to announce that it was shutting down the very next day!”

“I-I’m fine, thank you,” Sayumi said as she staggered to her feet. She wore the expression of a woman whose heart and soul had been shattered to pieces. “No need to worry. Just an old wound opening back up ever so slightly...”

“An old wound? What are you talking about? Was there something about that white bikini that I didn’t—”

“Augh!”

“Sayumiii?!”

It was like someone had just socked her straight in the solar plexus. Sayumi didn’t so much double over as quadruple over—like, you’d think she was trying to touch her toes the way she lurched.

“A-Andou,” said Sayumi, “I think everyone has one or two memories that they would very much prefer not to be dragged back into the light of day...”

“Right.”

“Therefore...I would like to ask you to never bring that bikini up again. For that matter, I’d prefer if you would scrub that entire incident from your memory, effective immediately.”

“...Riiight.”

I couldn’t explain why, but clearly, Sayumi considered that bikini to be a topic that must not be broached—a full-on taboo, if you will. But seriously though, why? It looked like a totally ordinary swimsuit to me. I guess she was acting kinda weirdly sketchy the whole time she was wearing it, in retrospect.

“The truth is that I had actually intended to wear this swimsuit to the pool, initially,” Sayumi explained. “Unfortunately, however, mistakes were made, and I wound up wearing the white swimsuit instead, and ultimately summer came to a close before I had the chance to wear this one at all. I’m glad an opportunity has arisen for me to correct that mistake.”

I nodded with newfound understanding. It looked like Sayumi had just as many swimsuit-related regrets as Tomoyo did.

“Huh? Whatcha doing, Juu?”

A new voice, this one cheerful and casual, caught my attention. I turned to see Hatoko strolling toward us. She was wearing the same swimsuit she’d worn when our families had gone to the beach together, though she’d ditched the sunglasses and flower this time around, it seemed.

“Why’re you all tied up?” asked Hatoko as she walked up to me.

“That’s kind of a long story. Forget that, though—what’s going on with you?” I asked as I looked up at Hatoko’s face, then turned my attention a few inches to her side, where Chifuyu had her chin resting on Hatoko’s shoulder. Apparently, Hatoko had carried her over on her back.

“Oh, you mean Chifuyu? I guess she’s not feeling super great right now,” Hatoko explained as she gently set Chifuyu down on the beach. Chifuyu clearly wasn’t up to standing at the moment, and she slumped prone on the sand like a withered piece of half-dried seaweed.

“Wh-What’s wrong, Chifuyu?” I asked.

“Andou... I don’t think I’m gonna make it...” Chifuyu weakly droned without budging an inch.

She was never the most energetic conversationalist, but she sounded even less spirited than usual now. Even Squirrely, who she was clutching in her arms, looked a little droopy. Chifuyu was wearing a school swimsuit, by the way, which, I mean... On the one hand, it was a perfectly appropriate choice of swimwear for an elementary schooler, but on the other hand, something about it just felt faintly wrong to me. Weird, that.

“You’re not gonna make it...?” I repeated. “Why, do you feel sick? Did you get sunstroke? Actually, no, it can’t be that. The suns that World Create makes are an ultra convenient model that don’t generate any harmful UV radiation at all, so it’s gotta be something else.”

“I’m not sick. I just...feel...bad...”

“Oh, wait...is it because of, y’know, that?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Chifuyu grunted. “It’s that.”

I’d sort of seen this coming, and apparently I was right after all—a certain aspect of today’s outing had Chifuyu feeling thoroughly drained.

That’s when, just a few feet away from us, space itself seemed to suddenly distort. It was a plainly supernatural phenomenon that would make an ordinary person collapse on the spot out of sheer shock...but we, of course, had awakened to our own supernatural powers and were totally used to it. It was just a Gate—that is, a shortcut through space brought into being by World Create.

Chifuyu used Gates to get around on a regular basis. In fact, that was how she usually made her way to the literary club’s room after school. The first time she’d made one, right after our powers had awakened, I’d been all “Wh-What the heck is that?! What’s going on inside of it?! Are you seriously telling me that the power of genesis can make friggin’ warp gates?!” and stuff. It had thrown me for a serious loop, but nowadays, I was completely desensitized to them...at least, under normal circumstances. This Gate was pretty different from the ones I was familiar with—or, really, it was the person who’d passed through the gate that I wasn’t used to. She was, after all, obviously not Chifuyu.

“Hmm—I didn’t know this power was capable of this sort of thing. That must come in handy,” said the Gate’s user—a girl wearing a fairly modest one-piece swimsuit—as she stepped onto the beach. She vanished the Gate away, then took a moment to let out an admiring coo as she looked out over the stunningly clear sky and the perfectly translucent seascape before her. “This is incredible! The ocean and the beach look exactly like I imagined them—actually, they’re even more amazing than I was picturing! I never realized that, uh... What was it called? World Create? Anyway, I never knew it gave you this much freedom to make things. What a power, honestly!”

Indeed. The person who had created the beach we were standing upon and the tropical scenery surrounding us was not, in fact, Chifuyu. Someone else had brought it into being—someone who had stolen World Create away and who had, seemingly, mastered it in an instant.

“All right, everyone! Let’s enjoy today, and our powers, for all they’re worth!” the girl—Kudou—exclaimed with a truly elated smile.

So, yeah. That’s about the size of it. Today, the literary club would be hanging out with the newly retired and now significantly less busy former president of the student council, Kudou Mirei.

Half a year ago, we’d awakened to supernatural powers...is the line I’ve been using for a good long while now, but at this point, saying that it’d happened “half a year ago” is starting to really strain credulity. To be technical about it, we’d awakened to our powers in September of last year...and right now, it’s October. In other words, it’d actually been over a year since our awakenings occurred.

But, I mean, it’s not like our momentous one-year superpower anniversary was marked by any change in particular. Our powers hadn’t disappeared, and we hadn’t suddenly awakened to any new ones either. It’d been more of a “Oh, hey, it’s been a year since we got our powers!” “Oh huh, you’re right,” sort of deal, at most.

In any case, I suppose that from now on, I should put it like this: a year ago, we’d awakened to supernatural powers. But of course, that phrasing leaves out one very important factor—or rather, one very important person. Another student at our school who was not a member of the literary club had awakened to her own power at a completely different time than the rest of us.

“Mwa ha ha... I see that Grateful Robber is as terribly potent a power as ever, Kudou. I really am grateful we aren’t enemies,” I said, praising her from on high metaphorically as I literally stood up, freshly freed from the tree I’d been tied to. She really did deserve the praise too, considering how quickly and completely she’d mastered World Create’s many uses.

Kudou Mirei was a third-year student in the same class as Sayumi, and she was also the former president of our school’s student council, a position she’d held until very recently. Her power, which she’d awakened to in the spring of this year, was truly fearsome: the ability to rob others of their powers!

“Potent? Do you really think so? I’ve always thought of it as being pretty useless, honestly, considering I literally can’t use it on its own,” Kudou replied.

“What are you talking about?! Don’t you have any idea how tremendously overpowered your ability is?!” I shouted, fists clenched with righteous fury. Kudou let out a frightened little yelp of shock, but that wasn’t even close to enough to quell the roiling sea of flaming-hot pathos within me! “The power to steal other people’s powers is so top-tier it should already be straight-up banned, and the requirement for you to use it is as lax as they come! And on top of all that, there’s no limit to how many powers you can keep in stock? ‘Overpowered’ doesn’t even begin to do it justice!”

Kudou was widely acknowledged (by me) to be the strongest character in our story. Whenever an argument arose (in my mind) about who would win in a no-holds-barred fight, she would always end up vying for the top spot. I had given her power the name Grateful Robber out of respect for its sheer, awe-inspiring potential, in fact!

There was, of course, a very good explanation for that name’s intended meaning: it was supposed to express both the power’s capacity to viciously and unilaterally tear its victims’ abilities away from them—hence, robber—while at the same time conveying its wielder’s pride and respect for those who became the targets of her conquest—hence, grateful. It was a deep friggin’ name, if I do say so myself, and one that had most definitely not come about because I’d screwed up my English and wrote “grateful” when I meant to write “great.” Nope. Never happened.

“I mean, if you say so, I guess...but honestly, it doesn’t really matter to me whether I’m overpowered or not,” said Kudou.

“It doesn’t matter?!” I gasped. “Don’t tell me...you’re so almighty that you’ve already ascended to a higher realm where strength and weakness are meaningless concepts?! Oh, the pride! The sheer arrogance of it all!”

“No, that’s not what I meant at all. I just don’t care,” Kudou said with an uncomfortable shrug. “I really don’t see why it even matters who has the strongest power or whatever.”

“...Right,” I weakly grunted.

I was feeling something close to vertigo—like I might fall over backward at any second. She didn’t care who was the strongest. It was just...just a complete denial of so many things that mattered to me. It was like she’d taken the values—nay, the dignity—of those precious few men such as myself who possessed the sort of warrior’s spirit that society at large had forgotten and she’d severed them cleanly in two with a single stroke of her blade. If not even this mattered, then how big of an idiot was I for stepping beyond the bounds of my own series and constantly pondering who the strongest manga or light novel characters were in general? Was this one of those gender gap things? Who could even say?

“Okay, look. This is very important, Kudou, so I need you to listen closely,” I said. “Having the power to steal your opponent’s powers—or copy them, or anything in that general category—means you’re one of two possible archetypes.”

“‘Archetypes’?”

“Either you’re an outrageously potent powerhouse, or you’re a hilariously pathetic joke character. No other options.”

This is all just my personal opinion, of course, but the way I see it, the manner in which characters who steal or copy powers in supernatural battle stories are treated tends to swing to one of two wild extremes. Sometimes they’re the single most powerful character in the series, and sometimes they get instantly curb-stomped the second they steal a power because they don’t know how to use it properly and self-destruct as a result.

Characters that fall into the former category are usually either the protagonist of the series or its final boss. It’s easy to see why—the power to steal powers is so profoundly appealing, it seriously gives me chills. As for characters who fall into the latter category, well...let’s just say it usually doesn’t end well for them. They generally end up stealing a power only to find that they can’t use it well, or when they steal the protagonist’s power it causes the protagonist to awaken to some mightier hidden potential that still slumbered within them, or something to that tune. One way or another, they get thrashed so thoroughly, you kinda have to feel bad for them. It’s a really heaven-or-hell sort of archetype to get depending purely on which story you happen to be in.

“And that, Kudou, is why you can’t take Grateful Robber’s ultra-broken capabilities lightly! Rest on your power’s laurels, and it’s only a matter of time before you’ll find yourself becoming the sort of character who gets constantly dunked on for cheap laughs. You have to keep up a strong, dignified image and make it clear to the world at large that you are, in fact, the mightiest—”

“I think it’s time for you to give it a rest, Andou. You’re making her uncomfortable,” said Sayumi, shutting down my impassioned speech midsentence before turning to Kudou. “I take it you’ve had no difficulties learning how to use Chifuyu’s power, Kudou?”

“Nope. It was a piece of cake, Takanashi,” Kudou replied with a satisfied nod. She took a moment to look out over the surrounding landscape—the world that she’d manifested from her imagination—once more. “I was so busy with preparing for the cultural festival and touring colleges that I didn’t get to go out and enjoy myself at all over our break. This feels like the perfect chance to make up for that and get the most out of summer!”

That, apparently, was why she’d decided to make a tropical paradise in particular. The part about touring colleges made sense, but I was a little surprised to hear her cite the cultural festival as part of her motivation as well. Our club had only started getting ready for it well after summer break had ended and the second semester had begun, but it seemed being the student council president had meant that Kudou had needed to start working on the festival before summer was even over. Maybe that was why the event had been such a roaring success—I’d heard that we’d had something to the tune of three times the usual number of outside visitors this year compared to our school’s average.

It struck me all over again that Kudou really was a student council president that our school could be proud of...but as of the other day, that role had come to an end for her. The cultural festival’s stunning success had been the previous student council’s last shebang, and Kudou had handed off her post to the second-year student who’d won this year’s election just the other day, stepping down after having carried out her duties to perfection. For the past year, she’d spent every afternoon working for the sake of the school as a whole, but now she was finally free to spend her after-school time for herself instead.

“I appreciate this, Andou,” said Kudou as she looked me squarely in the eye. “I was really happy to hear that you’d decided to put this event together just for me.”

“I-I mean, it’s not like this was for you or anything,” I stammered. “I’ve been wanting to conduct a thorough inspection of Grateful Robber’s capabilities for a while now, actually!”

“O-Oh, really?” said Kudou. “It lined up so perfectly with me retiring from the student council that when you told me about your plans for today, I just assumed that it was supposed to be a celebration of all the hard work I did or something. I was really happy about that, but...I see. I guess I was just jumping to conclusions...”

“Gaaah! No, no, I lied! We really did put this whole event together for you! That was the point from the very start!” I rattled off in a panic. Kudou had taken my awkward denial completely at face value and had started to seem genuinely disappointed for a second.

Hmm. This isn’t the first time this thought’s crossed my mind, but man...Kudou’s really bad at picking up on when people joke around or aren’t perfectly straightforward with her.

She was serious to a fault, in a sense—she’d treat everything that people told her with the utmost sincerity, but as a result, she had a bad habit of taking anything and everything completely seriously even when she really shouldn’t. As a direct result, she had a tendency to find herself the victim of some pretty intense misunderstandings, and one of those misunderstandings had once led to, well...let’s just say it wasn’t pretty and move right along.

“But anyway, if you want to thank someone for this, it should be all of us, not just me. We all planned the event together. Actually,” I added, as I glanced at the ground, “Chifuyu could probably use a bit of gratitude right about now. Lending you World Create hasn’t exactly been easy on her.”

Chifuyu was, in fact, still lying prone on the beach. Hatoko was doing her best to rouse her, but as of yet, she’d shown no signs of recovery. Losing World Create, it seemed, had been a more serious blow to cope with than we’d realized.

“You okay, Chifuyu?” I asked.

“Andou... I think I’m dying,” Chifuyu rasped lifelessly. “I can’t make any toys, or clothes, or a bed, or plushies... If I want to go somewhere, I can’t just pop over right away... I can’t remember how I used to live like this all the time. I can’t do anything. I don’t wanna do anything...”

...Welp. This sure looks like a terminal case of sloth. The instant I’d learned about World Create’s capabilities, my very first thought had been “Oh, wow, this is the sort of power that would definitely ruin its user’s ability to function in society.” Chifuyu, meanwhile, had started out with societal-dropout energy even before she’d obtained her power, so she’d succumbed to its almighty allure the instant she’d gotten hold of it. I could only imagine the life of pure indolence she enjoyed when she was alone at home, and having the power that enabled it abruptly stripped from her had turned her into what I could only describe as an unusually hefty beachbound sea cucumber.

“Umm... Chifuyu? If this is that difficult for you, I can always just give you your power back,” said Kudou, who apparently couldn’t stand to watch said sea-cucumberification any longer.

Chifuyu, however, shook her head. “I’m...okay. I said I’d give it to you today...and I meant it,” she groaned as she made an honest effort to force herself to her feet. “I’m a good kid...so I can get by...without my power...”

Chifuyu gritted her teeth, arms and legs trembling, and finally managed to stand herself upright. She’d broken the chains of her own laziness and lethargy, overcoming their temptation by planting her own two feet upon the ground once more. The mind boggled to imagine how great a feat of willpower and endurance that must have been for her.

“Kudou,” Chifuyu said between gasps and wheezes, “thanks for being the student council president. Good work.”

Kudou let out a quiet gasp. “Th-Thank you, Chifuyu,” she said, taking the little girl’s hand and shaking it vigorously as emotion overwhelmed her...and, for that matter, me. I was barely holding back my tears as I watched off to the side.

Oh my god, Chifuyu, how are you this precious?! You’re a literal angel, I swear! I thought...but, I mean, when I thought about it just a little harder, it did sorta strike me that she’d barely done anything at all. Still, judging using the Chifuyu scale, even the slightest bit of effort came across as a truly staggering undertaking, so I had to give her credit.

“Oh, huh— I guess we’re all here,” I noted.

Tomoyo, it seemed, had returned to the group at some point in between me getting untied and now. That meant that all of the event’s attendees were present: the five members of the literary club, plus Kudou acting as our silver or gold ranger, to put it in Sentai terms. For the first time in ages, the whole group was back together.

“Mwa ha ha... So, we’ve finally come together once more. The Chosen Sextet have gathered anew to resound our divine melody! The time has come! Let us inscribe a hexagram upon this beach, each of us standing upon one of its points, and then—”

“Hold on, Andou. Could I have a moment first?” said Kudou, brushing me aside right as I was getting to the good part and stepping forward. “There’s one matter that I have to settle before anything else...with you, Kanzaki.”

Kudou stopped directly in front of Tomoyo, who gaped at her.

“Huh? M-Me?” said Tomoyo.

“I owe you an apology, Kanzaki.”

“An apology? Um... Wait, do you? I don’t remember anything offhand.”

“I do. I said something to you that was completely indefensible, and I want to take this chance to formally apologize for that mistake.”

“Huuuh,” Tomoyo grunted. She still seemed confused by this development, but Kudou carried on with a look of total earnestness anyway.

“Several months ago...specifically, during the period when I’d misunderstood the intentions of Andou’s letter, I barged into the literary club’s room,” Kudou began.

An intense awkwardness suddenly blanketed the beach. The event that she was referring to was, well...honestly, it was something I would’ve preferred to not remember at all. I’d never be able to forget it, but boy, did I ever wish that I could. That applied to all of us, and I would’ve thought that it would’ve been an especially painful memory for Kudou in particular, so I was more than a little surprised to hear her bring it up herself.

“Kanzaki...I’m truly sorry for making light of your bust size in front of your friends!”

Kudou bowed as deeply as she could. It was an apology among apologies—as full of sincerity as it could have possibly been.

“Huh...? Wh-Wh-Whaaaaaa?!” Tomoyo shrieked. She didn’t just blush—her whole body turned beet red in an instant.

“I’ve regretted it ever since. I have no idea what possessed me to say something that horrible,” said Kudou. “Back then, I was, um...I was just a little worked up, really. I let my emotions get the better of me, and they drove me to say something incredibly thoughtless. I can’t apologize enough, but I hope you’ll forgive me for my indiscretion.”

“H-Huh?! N-No, wait, wait, wait... What?!” Tomoyo babbled.

“I’m ashamed to think that I belittled a peer’s body type. That’s not something that anyone should do for any reason, and I profoundly regret it. I expect better of myself.”

“O-Okay, no, just stop! You don’t have to apologize for this! Actually, you didn’t have to drag it back up again to begin with!”

“I do have to apologize, though. These things have to be settled, clearly and plainly. And so, Kanzaki...I’m truly sorry for saying such a terrible thing about the size of your brea—”

“Oh my god, you do not have to get this specific about it! I can barely even bring myself to listen to this... Anyway, it’s fine, okay? I’d totally forgotten you even said all that stuff!”

“That’s no good reason—”

“Would you just listen—”

What we had here was a spectacle of a perpetrator attempting to make an entirely sincere apology, and a victim suffering intense psychological damage on account of said apology. Kudou was just...just so friggin’ serious about everything! She was the sort of person who didn’t even know the meaning of flexibility! The sort of person who would never, ever tell a lie!

She wasn’t wrong, in a sense. If you slip up and carelessly say something hurtful, it’s only right to apologize...but what she’d failed to consider was that everything is circumstantial, and in this particular circumstance, the harder she pressed her apology, the sorrier I felt for poor Tomoyo. It was like... Okay, if goodwill was a knife, then every word Kudou said was gouging that knife deeper into Tomoyo’s soul. Closed Clock was unbeatable in a fight, but it was completely incapable of thwarting Kudou’s verbal violence.

“Agh, seriously, it’s fine! I honestly didn’t even care at all!” Tomoyo shouted, her indignant frustration finally erupting with the force of a volcano. “A-And why are you bringing this up now, anyway?! It’s been ages since that whole thing happened!”

“That would be because I for—” Kudou began, then coughed. “I, um, was very busy with a variety of—”

“‘For—’ what?! You totally almost said that you forgot, didn’t you?! Wait, does that mean that you were lying about having regretted it this whole time too?!”

“N-No, it doesn’t! I wasn’t lying. I really did know that I needed to apologize to you eventually. I just kept trying to find the perfect time to do it, and I ended up putting it off over and over again...”

“And this is supposed to be the perfect timing?! Why today?!”

“That,” said Kudou, her gaze fixed firmly upon Tomoyo’s chest, “would be because the moment I saw you wearing a swimsuit, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s right. I still need to apologize to her.’”

The light drained from Tomoyo’s eyes. There was nothing malicious about how Kudou had said it, per se. She’d just taken so little care to mince words, you could easily imagine her saying something along the lines of “‘Subtlety’? That’s when they put words on the screen so you can understand what people are saying in foreign movies, right?” without a trace of irony. In any case, it wasn’t long before Tomoyo’s hollow, vacant expression slowly began to twist into a distorted grin.

“...Kye ki ki!”

O-Oh god—she’s busting out the kye-ki-ki laugh again?!

This was not a good sign. Tomoyo’s mind had shorted out under the pressure of multiple cheap shots to her flat chest! That last jab had been such a shock, it’d made her regress to her eighth-grade self! She’d returned to chuuni-era Tomoyo—the version that I’d first met way back in the day!

Actually...wait a second. Is it just me, or is this basically the same thing that’d happened back when—

“You whelp... Did you truly believe that you could make a fool of me, she who is called the Witch of Antinomy Who Smirks in the Face of Twilight: Endless Paradox, and live to tell the tale?! Superterminal Climax...Winged Blades of—”

“Hmph. Too easy.”

“—Briaugh?!”

Tomoyo was all ready to unleash her power to the fullest of its lethal potency, but the instant she snapped her fingers—the trigger she’d picked to show she was about to use it—Kudou snatched Closed Clock away from her, leaving her to collapse to the sandy ground in a stupor. The battle had lasted all of half a second, and it’d ended in Kudou’s unambiguous victory. All I could say was déjà vu.

“Ugh...”

“Ah! Sorry, Kanzaki! That was a reflex,” Kudou said with an awkward half grimace. Tomoyo, meanwhile, was trembling in shame at the sheer speed and efficiency of her own spectacular self-destruction.

“But you know, Kanzaki, this reminds me that I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Kudou continued. “Why do you go out of your way to tell everyone when you’re about to stop time?”

“Eep?!” Tomoyo squeaked, her eyes widening.

“As you know, I can’t use my power to steal someone else’s unless I see them using it first. In other words, if you used your power without announcing it, then there would be nothing I could do about it.”

She’d hit the nail on the head. Kudou was right: Closed Clock was, per popular consensus, the ultimate trump card against Grateful Robber. There was no way to perceive someone using their power while time was stopped. Clearly Kudou could still steal Closed Clock if she could pick out the precise moment that Tomoyo intended to stop time, but that moment really was the smallest of split seconds. The timing requirements would be seriously severe...and yet as of just now, Kudou had managed it twice in a row.

How? Simple: both times, Tomoyo had taken the time to drop a catchphrase before she used her power. She’d even done the finger snap, which, it must be said, was completely superfluous. She’d basically gone out of her way to shout “Okay, I’m gonna stop time now! What’re you gonna do about it?!”

I mean, I get it, Tomoyo. I understand exactly how you feel, trust me. The fact that keeping quiet would win you the fight is absolutely not a good enough reason to go out of your way to fight in silence!

“I have a few other questions as well, while I’m at it. Like that noise you made a moment ago—‘Kye ki ki’? What was that? Were you laughing? Why would you suddenly start laughing in such a bizarre way?”

“...”

“And you said that people call you Endless Paradox...? Do they really? What sort of outlandish nickname is that? Are you being bullied? For the record, if you ever need someone to talk to about that sort of social trauma, I’m available anytime.”

“...”

“Also, did you say ‘whelp’...? Huh? Why ‘whelp,’ of all the words?”

“...”

Stop... Just stop, Kudou, please! Tomoyo can’t survive much more of this! She’s clenching her teeth so hard, I can practically hear them creak under the pressure! The wound’s already well seasoned, so you don’t need to keep salting it!

I could understand Tomoyo’s shame and frustration painfully, excruciatingly well—far more so than the vast majority of people probably could, in fact. Having your behavior picked apart by pointed questions asked by an overly serious stick-in-the-mud sucked, and boy, did I ever know it from experience! I’d been through a very similar bout of psychological torment thanks to Chifuyu’s friend, Kuki, back when she’d come to visit the literary club. She’d picked apart each and every thing I’d said and done by the seams... It was torturous, honestly.

Kuki and Kudou formed an odd sort of pair. They’d never met, but their mutual dedication to excessive seriousness and tendency toward terrible misunderstandings made them oddly reminiscent of each other. I had a feeling that they might hit it off if they ever met—they could probably sing a mean duet together.

“U-U-U-Ugaaahhhhhhhhh!”

In all likelihood, Tomoyo had long since passed her limit. She let out a half scream, half wail, activated Closed Clock, and curled up in fetal position, just like— Ah, wait, no, scratch that. Tomoyo’s go-to move when her shame meter had maxed out as of late was usually to stop time, curl up in a corner, and sulk...but at the moment, Closed Clock was in Kudou’s possession. In other words, Tomoyo would just have to sulk like a normal person.

Just as I was thinking Sheesh, fine, I guess I’ll go bail her out of this somehow, though, I—or rather, we—witnessed something unbelievable: Tomoyo, who we’d all just witnessed go through a hyperdramatic emotional outburst, just sort of...casually stood up again. Her face was still pretty red, but her expression was relatively calm, all things considered.

Tomoyo let out a heavy sigh. “Ugggh, this blows. Why does it always turn out like this?” she grumbled as she turned on her heel and started walking away from us. “This is all Kudou’s fault, seriously. Why’d she have to go after my boobs again...? They’re not even that small, for crying out loud! I-I mean, sure, they are compared to hers, or Sayumi’s, or Hatoko’s...b-but they’ve grown a little lately! A whole centimeter!”

She was just...grumbling to herself. It was almost as if she didn’t know we were there, or—

No. No, it couldn’t be...but what if...? D-Does... Does Tomoyo think that she actually stopped time just now?! Was the shock of it all so intense that she actually forgot that Kudou stole Closed Clock from her?! Did she just jump straight into her usual routine?! Surely not, right? But, I mean, I just can’t think of any other reason she’d—

“...WRYYYYYYYYY! Ahhh, okay! I feel a little better now.”

Oh god, no doubt about it—that’s exactly what’s happening here! She’s one hundred percent convinced that she stopped time! No way would she ever bust out a pose like that in front of us otherwise! Agggh, god... Wh-What the hell are we supposed to do now?!

“Oh, crap! Gotta get moving before time starts again—I need to pick a good sulking spot.”

A what now?!

“Not being in the club room makes this such a pain. Where should I even go? I can’t go too far away or they won’t even find me.”

I...guess that was all calculated, huh? She was always planning out her whole fetal-position-in-the-corner shticks from the very beginning? Seriously, Tomoyo, just how starved for attention are you?

Of course, when I really stopped to think about it, curling up in a ball in the corner to sulk was about as conspicuous of a “Look at me, I’m depressed” signal as you could possibly send. I mean, don’t get me wrong—I got it, okay? I totally understood that sometimes when you’re depressed, you can’t help but choose a place where people are sure to see you being sad. It’s like how you sometimes find yourself heaving really big, exaggerated sighs in the hope that somebody will notice and be all “Hey, are you okay?” or “Did something happen?” or whatever.

The problem, of course, was that Tomoyo was doing all of that completely transparently, and it was just...really hard to watch. In her misapprehension that time had stopped, Tomoyo had shown us her whole ass, metaphorically speaking. The urge to look away was overwhelming. The secondhand shame: indescribable. I actually felt sort of nauseous. It was just...just...agggh. Aaaaaaaggghhhhhhhhh...

Very, very quietly, taking great care to make sure that Tomoyo wouldn’t notice, I turned just my head, just enough to make eye contact with Hatoko and Sayumi. The two of them looked back at me and instantly nodded in understanding. The look in their eyes was intensely serious. It seemed we were all of one mind: there was no choice but to see this through.

All of us would have to keep standing there, perfectly still, and act as if time was, in fact, actually stopped. It was our only option. After all, if Tomoyo learned the truth, there was a very real chance that she might actually, literally end herself. The flat chest jokes had already put her mental state into a precarious position, and if we beat the dead horse that was her psyche any longer, her heart would shatter to pieces. And so, our only option was to back her up to the bitter end. For the sake of her psyche, every one of us would come together and play along with her ridiculous misunderstanding. We’d ride out this game of red light, green light to hell and back again!

The success or failure of our mission would hinge entirely on our ability to work as a team. If even one of us wasn’t with the program, then Tomoyo would figure out what was going on before we knew it. There were two things that I could imagine screwing us over—or, more precisely, two people. First up was Kudou. I couldn’t blame her for this, of course, but the simple fact of the matter was that she just hadn’t spent as much time with the crew as the rest of us had. Would we be able to communicate the plan to her without saying so much as a word?

I anxiously made eye contact with Kudou, and she gave me a nod. Her signal was clear: “No need to worry.” That’s when it suddenly hit me—all sound had just...stopped. The sound of the wind and the sound of the waves had vanished, almost as if the world itself had come to a standstill...

Oh! Of course! Kudou had used a supernatural power to create this whole space, meaning that everything about it, climate and weather conditions included, is under her control! Making the space behave as if time’s been stopped wouldn’t be impossible for her at all!

Phew—looks like I’ve been underestimating her. Not only is she totally on the same page as the rest of us, she’s backing us up in the biggest way possible! You’re one of us, Kudou. There’s no doubting that anymore!

I gave Kudou a spirited thumbs-up, and she responded with a modest “Nah, it wasn’t that big of a deal” sort of bashful grin. And, I mean...she was sorta the root cause of this whole problem to begin with, but I decided to not let that bother me for the time being. The point was that Kudou was clearly not going to be a problem, so I could turn my attention to the other source of potential disaster, Chifuyu.

To be completely honest...Chifuyu was so much more of a cause for concern than Kudou, I almost felt bad comparing the two of them. At times like these, her behavior was completely impossible to predict. If there was one thing that we could count on being consistent, it was her total inability to take a hint.

I fearfully turned to check on her, and sure enough, the bug-eyed look on Chifuyu’s face as she gawked at the rest of us told me that she had no clue what was happening. It was an expression that said she could pipe up to ask why none of us were moving at literally any second. I had to intervene.

I reached out and very gently tapped Chifuyu’s shoulder. She turned toward me, and I gave her a look. And I mean, like, a look. I looked like I’d never looked before. I looked so hard, I could practically feel the veins bulging on my forehead. If I wanted to make Chifuyu the Clueless actually take a hint for once, I could spare no effort in the eye contact department. This was one of those times where a little too much was just enough.

Come on, pick up on it! Let my feelings flow through you, Chifuyu! This is the perfect time for us to miraculously read each other’s minds!

Chifuyu’s eyes widened. My no-holds-barred stare, it seemed, had gotten through to her after all, and I heaved a very quiet sigh of relief...and then, for some reason, Chifuyu gave me a weirdly bashful smile.

Uh. So, umm...what does that expression mean? She looks, like, half embarrassed and half weirdly in control? That really feels like an “Oh, you” smile, if you ask me!

It was the sort of look that you’d give to your rambunctious little brother, or to your slightly younger boyfriend, and Chifuyu was giving it to me, for god knows what reason. Then, a moment later, she closed her eyes and very slightly pursed her lips. That one, at least, was easy to interpret: it was the face of a girl who was waiting for a boy to kiss her.

“But why, though?!” I bellowed with all my might. I could not let that pass by without comment. I just didn’t have it in me.

“Huh?” grunted Chifuyu. “You don’t want to kiss, Andou?”

“No! Hell no! And, like, why?! Why would you ever assume that was what was happening there?!”

“You were giving me a really intense look.”

“And that leads to the kiss conclusion how, exactly?!”

“I thought it meant you wanted to kiss again.”

“Hgghkh!”

“I thought the first kiss was so unforgettable, you wanted to do it again.”

“R-Right, point made... I get it, Chifuyu, so please just stop talking about that. I’m seriously dying of embarrassment over here...”

“A-Andou? Wh-What is she talking about? You k-kissed Chifuyu...?”

“Huh? Kudou...? Oh, right! You weren’t there for that!”

“You didn’t—”

“No, I didn’t! I mean, I can’t say it didn’t happen, but... H-Hatoko! Sayumi! Tag in! Help me explain how all that—”

“...!”

“Why are you two blushing?!”

“Wh-What did you expect, Juu? I mean... I mean...”

“I-I’m afraid you’re going to have to look elsewhere for assistance, Andou. This is beyond us.”

“Come ooon, guys!”

“Andou? I hope you’ve got a very good explanation for this.”

“Yeah, Andou. You’d better explain this.”

“Why are you on Kudou’s side, Chifuyu?! You’re taking bandwagon jumping a step too far this time! And anyway, this is no time for us to be arguing! We can’t afford to fall apart here! We’re supposed to be covering for Tomoyo’s excruciatingly embarrassing mistake right now, so we have to get on the same page and stay totally silent until— Oh.”

My shouted rant came to an abrupt conclusion as, with a synchronized “Oh,” all of us came to the same realization, all at once. We turned in unison...and found that Tomoyo was gone. There wasn’t the slightest sign she’d ever been here in the first place. Only the quiet lapping of the waves remained in her wake.

And so, on that day, Kanzaki Tomoyo vanished without a trace, never to be seen or heard from again.

...So, obviously, that was just a joke.

The rest of us talked it through, and we decided that the best thing we could possibly do for Tomoyo was just leave her alone for the time being. The psychological wounds she’d surely suffered this time were just...unfathomable, honestly. Her human dignity had been unceremoniously dumped into one of the deepest pits I’d ever witnessed, and there was nothing our words could do to lift her out of there, so we chose to refrain from searching for her and elected to enjoy ourselves instead. Tomoyo would probably sort of just show up out of nowhere before long, and we would all act as if nothing had happened whatsoever. Sometimes feigned ignorance is the greatest kindness you can offer.

In the meantime, we moved right along to our first activity: beach volleyball! A quick game of rock-paper-scissors put Hatoko on my team, while Sayumi and Kudou were our opponents. Chifuyu would be our “referee,” which was her way of saying that she’d be sitting this one out.

“Over here, Hatoko!” I shouted.

“Okaay! Here goes, Juu!” Hatoko called back as she bumped the ball into the air.

Hatoko had always been surprisingly athletic, and the ball sailed right into the perfect position for me to kick off the sandy ground, leap as high as I could into the air, and smack it down into the other side of the court. I’d seriously considered trying to pull off the Freak Quick Attack for a moment, but I’d ended up scuttling that idea after I realized how scary it would be to jump for a spike with my eyes closed in real life.

Our opponents were both standing in the back half of their side of the court. Nobody was around to block me or obstruct my vision.

I get it now! This is what people mean when they talk about the view from the summit!

I focused on the ball, and swung my arm with everything I had, and...

...Whoosh!

“H-Huh?!”

Tragically, my attack ended up being more of a misfire. My fingertips had just barely skimmed the ball. Apparently, trying to pull off a jumping spike was a little overambitious for an amateur like me. The ball bounced upward in a slow, gentle curve that I definitely hadn’t planned for, but by a stroke of sheer luck, it’d just barely managed to clear the net.

“Oh, nice! Talk about a lucky... Ah, uh, d-did you see that? Witness my secret technique, the...uh, the...the secret one!” I blathered. I’d been so surprised by my own success, I couldn’t come up with a technique name in time. Damnations, I expect better from me!

The ball dropped straight down, just on the other side of the net, and since I’d put everything I had into that all-out whiff, it had inadvertently turned into the perfect feint. Both of our opponents had read my form and prepared themselves for a spike toward the back of the court, and no human could possibly make it all the way up to the net from back there in time, especially considering we were playing on sand. The point was mine—

“In your dreams!”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. The instant before the ball touched down, one of our opponents had appeared out of thin air in a perfect reciever’s stance. It was like she’d been standing there from the very beginning—she’d just jumped from one position to the other, cutting out all the movement in between. It could only have been Closed Clock, Kanzaki Tomoyo’s signature power of temporal dominance...but of course, Tomoyo wasn’t the one currently in possession of said power.

“Takanashi!” Kudou called out as she flawlessly received the ball. She’d put herself exactly where she needed to be to intercept it with ease, passing it to Sayumi, who then passed it back overhand.

The very instant the ball cleared Sayumi’s fingertips, Kudou, who just moments before had been crouched down right by the net, was suddenly in midair. She swung without hesitation and spiked the ball directly into the sandy beach below.

All told, I gave Kudou’s attack an A for Abnormal. She’d disregarded the rules of spacetime so freely that words didn’t do it justice, and Hatoko and I had been completely incapable of even trying to stop her.

“H-Hoooly crap, she’s good,” I muttered.

“Y-Yeah,” Hatoko agreed. “The power to stop time sure is incredible, huh, Juu?”

“Tell me about it.”

“I never realized from any of the times Tomoyo’s used it!”

“...Tell me about it,” I agreed once more, a little less eagerly. She’d said it so casually, I almost hadn’t realized what a brutal diss it had actually been.

The power to control time freely, one would think, would give you the capability to play any sport under the sun at a world-class level. With it, you could theoretically take down the best players on Earth with ease. Tomoyo, however, was a total klutz with disaster-tier athletic capabilities, and she had never figured out how to make the most of her power in a sporting environment.

We’d used our club time to engage in all sorts of recreational activities in the past, and her results in pretty much all of them had been...lacking. When we’d played tennis, she’d stop time, rush over to the ball, then hit it straight into the net. When we’d played volleyball, she’d stop time, run into a receiving position, then bump the ball directly out of bounds. Basketball was somehow the most painful of them all—she’d been completely untouchable on defense, but she’d just never been able to shoot to save her life. She’d stop time to steal the ball, then stop time again to go on a one-woman offensive, only to miss the hoop by a mile despite throwing from right next to it. Like, what can you even say to that? It’d been the sort of performance that demoralized the whole court, teammates and opponents alike.

“Man, you really got us there, Kudou,” I said. “You’ve mastered Closed Clock already, huh?”

At the moment, Kudou had both World Create and Closed Clock in stock. As far as I knew, this was probably the first time she’d ever been in possession of two stolen powers at the same time. I’d half expected her power to reveal some sort of weakness when she stole the second one, but she’d proved perfectly capable of using them both at once without issue.

“Sorry about that,” replied Kudou. “I was just so curious, I couldn’t help but give Closed Clock a try. That was definitely cheating, though—I won’t use it from now on.”

“What? No, no, it’s fine! Feel free to use it as you please! After all, this isn’t beach volleyball...it’s superpowered beach volleyball!” I said with a bold and confident grin.

We got back into position and resumed the match. Sayumi served the ball, and a rally began.

“Hmm. If you’re sure about that, then I guess I’ll take you up on it!” Kudou said, then she suddenly appeared directly in front of the net, hands raised in the air to intercept the ball.

She was blocking aggressively, reaching over the net in an effort to swat the ball to the ground before it even left her opponent’s side of the court. A move like that wasn’t easy to pull off—it took serious technique, not to mention foresight and precision. With Closed Clock on your side, however, it would be like taking candy from a baby...assuming you had, like, at least average-level athletic ability and stuff, I mean. Anyway, there was no chance in hell that a rank-and-file volleyball amateur like me could cope with hyperdimensional volleyball tactics like that...or at least, not on my own, I couldn’t have!

“Let’s do this, Hatoko! Just like we planned!” I shouted.

“You got it, Juu!” Hatoko called back. With that, the two of us sprang into motion!

Oooh, nice! We nailed that! We were moving with incredible coordination, and you could just tell that we were about to pull out some sort of combo attack. If this were one of the more recent Tales games, this would be the bit where we got a super cool cut-in animation!

“Seethe, O thrice-damned flames of hell! Dark and Dark!” I chanted, swapping in a short-form Malediction substitute as I activated my power—full-length incantations just aren’t suited to sports, unfortunately. In any case, the words that I, the conqueror of chaos, spoke served as the trigger to open the gates of hell, sending a burst of jet-black flame surging across my right arm!

Meanwhile, off to the side, Hatoko was busy making her own preparations. “Heeere goes!” she shouted as she waved her hands in the air, forming a raging gale in the process. She’d used one of Over Element’s five domains: the power of wind!

The tropical wind was soon blowing so fiercely it resembled a tornado, with Hatoko and I standing in the eye of the storm, and the ball that Kudou had very nearly managed to slam back into our side was caught up in the breeze, wafting its way to a touchdown all the way outside of the court. It was out—in other words, the point was ours.

“Mwa ha ha!” I cackled. “Bear witness to the Unison Skill of Dark and Dark and Over Element: Crimson Dread: Gale Lord Mode!”

The true latent power of Hatoko’s ability could only be unlocked when it was supplemented by my stygian flames. Through them, each of her five elements could be elevated to a higher domain, resulting in a dramatic class change! Among the five modes of Crimson Dread, the Gale Lord mode was all but unparalleled in games like volleyball or ping-pong, where ambient winds could easily alter the course of the ball. In short, she could hit a Tezuka Phantom no matter what sport she was playing, as long as there was a ball involved!

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Did you see that?! This is the true might of our powers combined!” I shouted.

“That’s right!” Hatoko chimed in. “This is our power!”

“Ugh,” Kudou grunted, gritting her teeth with frustration. She’d thought that her time stop-enabled block had the point in the bag, but we’d gotten the better of her this time.

“I-I don’t understand,” said Kudou. “What did Andou’s power even contribute to that?”

I froze. She’d cut right to the crux of the matter in a single, extremely earnest question. I couldn’t exactly blame her for wondering about it, in all fairness—I’d more or less just turned my power on and stood to the side as Hatoko conjured up the actual tornado. But, like, just for the record, that’d actually been pretty hard to do! If I’d slipped up even a little, her wind would’ve blown my flames right out! I’d had to be really careful about how I’d manifested them! Imagine trying to keep a lighter lit in the middle of a typhoon—that’s about the difficulty level I’m talking here!

“Ha... Ha, ha, ha, ha!” I laughed, a little more stiffly than before. “It seems I’ve been overestimating you, Kudou!”

“Huh?” Kudou grunted.

“Perhaps it seemed, at a glance, that my Dark and Dark was accomplishing nothing...however! That’s only because the true glorious yet terrible intentions behind its use were far too cleverly hidden for the masses—that means you—to ever comprehend!”

“Wh-What...?! But...that’s impossible! Your power’s completely worthless! What sort of secret scheme could you have ever been using it for?!”

Sooo...on the one hand, I was glad that she’d bought my story, but on the other hand, the part where she’d called my power “completely worthless” had been a pretty heavy emotional blow. That’s why I decided to take the opportunity to mess with her a little.

“Oooh? Wait, so you really didn’t get it, Kudou?” I said.

That’s right—I’d resorted to a secret art commonly bound to the select button in console fighting games: the taunt! It was a skill that allowed me to use what both I and those around me acknowledged as one of my most potent traits—my obnoxiousness—to its fullest potential.

...Yup. Acknowledged by everyone, including me. Even I have to admit that’s a little sad.

“You’ve got the best grades in your year, so I just assumed you’d be able to figure out something this simple with ease,” I said.

“Wh-What...?” muttered Kudou.

“Wow, for real, huh? I guess you just don’t get it! Guess this plan was just a little too high-level for you to keep up with! You’re working a step below our pay grade! You’re in a class of your own, that happens to be below ours! You’re just not ready to step up to our stage!”

“U-Ugh...”

“But honestly, that’s nothing to be embarrassed about! It’s totally reasonable. Stuff like this is just hard for ordinary people to figure out! I should apologize, honestly—I totally forgot that I was one of the chosen ones for a second there. Should’ve tried harder to stay on your level!”

“D-Don’t you dare make light of me! I-I get it now! That’s right, I figured it out! I’ve seen through your pathetic little scheme, and—”

“Please don’t fall for his cheap provocations, Kudou. You’re making light of yourself by taking his nonsense at face value,” said Sayumi. She’d jumped in to save the day just as Kudou was starting to get dangerously worked up. “And as for you, Andou, I’d appreciate it if you’d restrain yourself. Provoking people may be your strong suit, but I have to say that it’s rather cowardly of you to lean on that skill because you couldn’t win with your power itself.”

“Please...at least say that fast-talking people is my strong suit,” I groaned. What sort of skill is “provoking” people supposed to be? That sounds like the most bit-villain-coded talent imaginable!

“Mwa ha ha—very well. And yet, details aside, our Unison Skill remains unbeatable! Our defense is impregnable—our power, superlative! That’s right: our power!” I said, putting as much emphasis on the “our” as I possibly could while I wreathed my arm in black flame once more. Hatoko took that as her signal to conjure the whirlwind up again, forming a barricade of wind around our side of the court. “From now on, this will be the game’s default state!”

The wall of wind formed a completely impenetrable defense, but that wasn’t all—Hatoko had also covered the ground on our side of the court in a barrier of compressed air! Between those two factors, I knew I’d come up with a battle plan that Closed Clock would be completely incapable of coping with (as long as we were playing beach volleyball).

The big, flashy tornado was, in truth, a trap—as in, a decoy to draw our enemies’ attention, not a means to physically ensnare them! There are just so many types of traps out there, it’s hard to pick just one sometimes.

Anyway, back on topic—thanks to the layer of compressed air covering the ground, even if Kudou stopped time to get the ball through the tornado, it would just end up floating in the air on our side of the court, and if it didn’t touch the sand, then our opponents wouldn’t score a point. It was a flawless plan, if I may say so myself!

The power to stop time: vanquished! Let’s see how you cope with our perfect defense, Team Third-Years!

“If you would, Kudou,” said Sayumi.

“On it,” Kudou replied.

“Bwehhh,” Hatoko moaned as she crumpled to the beach. Kudou had brought out Grateful Robber once more and stolen Over Element, just like that.

“What in the— Oh, come on! Just a friggin’ second! That is not fair, Kudou!” I shouted.

“How do you figure?” asked Kudou. “You’re the one who said we’re playing superpowered beach volleyball, aren’t you?”

“I mean, I did, yeah...but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any lines that shouldn’t be crossed!”

Grateful Robber was a power that just couldn’t be beaten in a straight-up fight. In other words, if Kudou decided to use it on you mid battle, there was simply no way for you to resist her.

“Listen up, Kudou,” I said. “The single most important skill for a superpowered beach volleyball player to have is the ability to read the room! I mean, yes, I get it—there’s always that small part of you that wonders, ‘Why doesn’t he open with the Spacium Beam?’ or ‘Why doesn’t he just use the Spirit Bomb at the start of the fight?’ but you have to accept the fact that pulling out your finishing move first thing is fundamentally wrong! It screws up the power scale, you know? That’s really the essence of what I’m trying to say here.”

“Andou,” Kudou said with a troubled frown, “have I ever told you that almost nothing you say ever makes sense to me?”

Meanwhile, off to my side, Hatoko seemed downright devastated to find herself stripped of her power. “Aww... I’m sorry, Juu! She took Oven Element away from me...”

“Are you...sad, Hatoko? I see... So, you’ve finally begun to develop an attachment to your power. How terribly ironic, to learn of your love for your power at the exact moment it’s stripped away from you... Though, heh, I guess that’s just what it means to be human. We’re foolish beings, never able to perceive the blessings we’ve already been granted, always reaching in vain for illusory fortune that we believe must surely— Hey! I’ve told you a thousand times, it’s Over Element, not Oven Element!”

“Oooh, wow! You really dragged out the buildup to that punch line, Juu!”

“Hey...Hatoko?”

“Yeah?”

“Be honest. You remember your power’s real name, don’t you?”

“...”

“I can accept that the names I come up with are a little hard to remember, but surely you know it by now, right? We’ve all been saying it over and over for a year!”

Hatoko awkwardly broke eye contact. A moment later, she let out a snicker.

“Hee hee hee! Guess you caught me!” she admitted.

“I knew you were doing it on purpose,” I sighed. “But why, though? What’s the point of pretending you forgot?”

“Oh, that’s because... Well, I mean... The banter’s been fun, you know? I think it’s funny to have a little gag you can shove in my face every once in a while,” Hatoko explained.

I couldn’t really argue against that—I’d been enjoying the banter just as much as she had, after all. “Well, that’s fine, I guess,” I said. “But look, Hatoko...could you at least be a little more careful about, y’know, your word choice?”

“Huh? What about my word choice?”

“I mean, like...the bit about me shoving it in your face, y’know...? Maybe don’t, like, shout that sort of thing?”

“Why not? I don’t mind if people know you shove things in my face,” said Hatoko with a look of complete bafflement.

Maybe this was on me. Maybe the fact that I couldn’t hear it as anything other than a euphemism was a sign that my heart had been corrupted. Alternately, maybe—probably—it was Sagami’s fault. Actually, yeah, I’m just gonna blame Sagami for this. Definitely all his fault.

In any case, Hatoko’s innocent gaze was starting to grow too painful for me to look at, so I glanced over at Kudou—that is to say, at the mighty plunderer who now held three superpowers in her possession—instead.

“So, she finally claimed Hatoko’s too, huh?” I muttered.

Not “took,” not “stole,” and definitely not “grabbed”—she’d claimed it. It might not’ve been quite as technically apt as some of the other options on the table, but in a situation like this, “claimed” was just the only word that felt right in an expressive sense. Claiming things that aren’t yours: hella cool.

“So, how’s it feel, Kudou? I know you said that there’s no limit to how many powers you can steal back when we first met, but does having three of them at once feel different from when you only have one, or anything?” I asked.

“Hmm... This isn’t exactly an answer to your question,” said Kudou, “but I just learned that apparently, I can’t use my power to steal two different powers at the same time.”

“At the same time?” I repeated. I didn’t quite understand what she was getting at.

“Right. You and Kushikawa both used your powers at the same time just now, right? Well, I tried to steal both of them, but I only ended up actually getting Kushikawa’s.”

In other words, she could stock as many powers at the same time as she pleased, but could only steal them one by one. It seemed that Grateful Robber, a power I’d thought was all powerful, had a single surprising drawback...if you could even call it that, considering how minor of a failing it was. Being able to steal your enemies’ powers without any risk on your part was still stupidly busted, regardless.

“Then again, it could be a psychological thing,” Kudou continued. “I did think, ‘Honestly, I don’t really need Andou’s power’ while I tried to steal them, after all.”

“You thought what?! Why not?!” I barked.

“What...? I mean, I just don’t.”

“Well, you could at least try not to look so repulsed by the thought of having it!”

“I’ve stolen your power a few times already, and to be honest, I’m just bored with it.”

“You’re bored?! But how?! Stealing it over and over should’ve made you more attached to it! You’re supposed to take care of the powers you steal! You’re basically Dark and Dark’s godmother, at this point!”

“I’m extremely uncomfortable with you calling me that.”

“You’re not even willing to admit it?! You’re just going to keep insisting it’s not your child to the bitter end?!”

“I’m also extremely uncomfortable with you treating me like a deadbeat dad!”

Damnations! Damnations, I say! Why must my dear, sweet Dark and Dark go through this terrible treatment?! Why does everyone always act like it’s such a black sheep of the superpower family?!

It’s okay, Dark and Dark. Don’t feel sad. I’ll always be on your side! I know all sorts of incredible things about you, like how your color’s hella cool, and how being all black makes you hella cool, and how your color... Yeah, wow, your color sure is hella cool... A-And how you’re gonna keep me nice and warm as the weather gets chillier too!

While I frantically consoled Dark and Dark, Kudou was off to the side being incredibly inconsiderate with Over Element. “Oh, wow! Talk about a strong flame,” she muttered as she tested out its capacity for firepower...which was really, really high, judging by looks alone. Oh, it is on, I swear!

“This brings back memories of the first time you came to the literary club’s room, doesn’t it?” said Sayumi as she walked over to our side of the court. Hatoko having her power stolen had more or less naturally brought our game of superpowered beach volleyball to a close. “I recall you declaring that you’d come to steal all of our powers, at the time.”

That’d actually slipped my mind until the moment Sayumi had brought it up. Oh yeah, I thought, Kudou really did say something like that, with a big evil grin and everything. I knew now that her whole persona back then had all been a bluff, but it struck me that, as of now, she had finally made good on her threat. She’d brought multiple god-tier superpowers under her sole and exclusive control.

“Hm? What? Why are you looking at me like that?” Kudou said as she noticed my stare and walked over to our side of the court as well.

“I was just thinking that, man, you’re pretty ridiculously powerful right now,” I admitted.

Out of the five powers in the literary club’s arsenal, Closed Clock, World Create, and Over Element were all especially suitable for combat, and at that moment, Kudou was in possession of all three of them. Not only could she use them all freely, she also still had Grateful Robber up her sleeve, just in case. Nothing could stop her now. This probably isn’t something I should say about a girl, but she was a genuine monster.

“You’re totally unbeatable at this point, huh? We managed to deal with you last time because you were only able to steal one power before the battle started, but that’s definitely not how it’d go here,” I casually admitted.

“I...see. When you put it that way...I am unbeatable right now, aren’t I...?” Kudou quietly muttered. A look of surprise came across her face, and she sank into thought. I watched, confused, until her mouth finally twisted into an ecstatic grin. “Yes. Yes, I am. Right now, I am unbeatable!” Kudou shouted, her voice quivering with delight. The look in her eyes was one truly worthy of the title Grateful Robber: a look of pure, uncontrollable avarice.

“H-Hey...Kudou...?” I stammered.

“The girls of the literary club’s powers are each a force to be reckoned with, and three of them are within my grasp...? Is this... Is this my moment? Is this the perfect chance for me to take revenge on the literary club?!”

“Revenge?!” Don’t tell me Kudou’s been holding a grudge this whole time?! She still hasn’t gotten over how we turned the tables on her after she’d shown up to pick a fight?! “W-Wait a second— When you say revenge, does that mean you want to fight us?” I asked.

“Don’t worry,” said Kudou. “I’m not saying I want a fight to the death...though I suppose you should prepare yourselves to break a bone or two, just in case.”

Oh, jeez! We’ve gone back to early-era Kudou, all right! She’s doing the thing where she tries to act like a big confident tough guy so we don’t take her lightly but ends up going just a little too far with it! This was, I had to admit, something I hadn’t anticipated. Who would’ve thought that Kudou would double-cross us now, of all times?

“Crap!” I grunted. I went into emergency mode in an instant and jumped in front of Hatoko and Chifuyu, who couldn’t protect themselves in their powerless states. This was bad—really bad. We’d beaten Kudou once before, sure, but the circumstances then and the circumstances now could hardly have been more different.

At the moment, Kudou had three of our powers under her control. It was too late to use Tomoyo’s “Just don’t let her see our powers” tactic—that could only work if she hadn’t already stolen one of them. If she had a combat-ready power in stock, Grateful Robber had no real weaknesses to speak of.

“I think now would be the perfect opportunity for me to get payback for all the humiliation I’ve been put through,” said Kudou. “We’ve been through a lot, after all. Haven’t we, Andou? Like the time with my email address. Or the time with my email address. Or the time with my email address.”

Oh god! She’s really, really holding a grudge!

A few months beforehand, I’d...well...let’s just leave it at “I did something you couldn’t make up for with an apology.” An ambiguously phrased letter had wounded Kudou’s heart in a way that would probably never fully heal. That being said, I did have one thing that I had to say—or rather, shout—while we were on the subject.

“Okay, the letter was my bad, but the email address was totally on you!”

“Shut up! Shut! Uuup!” Kudou screamed with a mixture of shame and fury. At the same moment, a violent gale began to blow, and a massive number of sandy barricades rose from the beach, boxing us in.

“Heh... Heh heh heh! This power really is incredible. With it on my side, I might even manage to beat Takanashi!” said Kudou. She had the eyes of a woman who’d been completely consumed by her own power—the eyes of a girl who was, at most, a single step away from succumbing to the Dark Side. “I could beat Takanashi...or, well, I could fight on even footing with her... I mean, I could probably get in at least one solid hit, if I can just find an opening...”

Just how much respect does this girl have for Sayumi?! She has Closed Clock, Over Element, and World Create on her side, and only now does she think she could land a single hit?!

“The odds are against me, but this is the only time I’ll ever have any shot at winning... Just gotta go for it!” Kudou said to herself before turning to face us. “All right—it’s time for the two of us to have a rematch, Takanashi! I’ll finally be paying you back for that arm bar, with intere—”

“I’m afraid you’ve gotten ahead of yourself, Kudou.”

With a resounding pat, before Kudou had even finished giving her declaration of war, Sayumi had laid a hand on Kudou’s head. I had no idea when she’d gotten so close to Kudou, or even when she’d circled around behind her, but all of a sudden, there she was.

“T-Takanashi— Ugh!” Kudou grunted. A moment later, I heard Hatoko and Chifuyu grunt from behind me as well, this time with shock.

“H-Huh? What?”

“Mnh? Hmm...”

I turned around to find both of them inspecting their hands, then glancing down at their bodies for good measure.

“Huh? Hatoko, Chifuyu, what’s going on?” I asked.

“Juu...” said Hatoko. “Well, umm... It looks like my power came back!”

Her power...came back? I was stunned, but Hatoko quickly dispelled all of our doubts by expelling a tentative burst of flame from her hand. I’d seen her use Over Element enough times to recognize its effects in an instant.

“Yeah, sure looks like it’s back, all right!” I agreed with a nod. “What about yours, Chifuyu?”

“Yeah. It’s back. I can sort of just feel it,” said Chifuyu.

The powers that Kudou had stolen from them had gone back to their original owners. Or, to put it in slightly different words, Over Element and World Create had returned to where they were meant to be.

“W-Wait,” I said. “Sayumi, did you—”

“I can’t imagine why this would surprise you, Andou,” Sayumi said, her tone as composed as ever. “After all—you yourself proved that I cannot perceive us lacking our powers as the way we are meant to be, didn’t you?”

About one year earlier, when we were still grappling with the question of what to do about our powers, Sayumi and I had gotten into a bit of a dispute. The result of that conflict had proved one simple truth: Route of Origin was incapable of erasing our powers. The presence of our powers in our lives had altered Sayumi’s perspective to such an extent that she was no longer capable of considering a lack of powers to be, by default, the way we were meant to be. By logical extrapolation, that meant that she thought of us having our powers as the way we were meant to be—and when I say “us,” I mean “us, the members of the literary club, having specifically our own individual powers.”

“So then, that means...Route of Origin just nullified the effect of Grateful Robber?!”

Sayumi’s power hadn’t been able to cancel out our powers, but Grateful Robber’s ability to usurp our powers, it seemed, was an exception to that rule.

Wait, whoa, hold up a second! Do you have any idea how messy this is gonna make our power potency tier list?! Grateful Robber was the undisputed champion for ages—who would have thought that Route of Origin would hard-counter it, even if Sayumi does have to touch Kudou to pull it off? That shuts it down even more thoroughly than Closed Clock does! I guess power levels really are all a matter of matchups, when all’s said and done.

“Ugh... But how...? All the powers I stole,” Kudou gasped, her eyes wide and her voice tinged with hopeless devastation. Karmic justice, it seemed, had come home to rest. She’d stolen countless powers—well, okay, a perfectly countable number of powers—and now, for the first time, she’d learned the horror of having powers stolen from her.

“He he he he he.”

An ominous, almost devilish laugh rang out as Kudou came to grips with her sudden depowering.

“T-Takanashi,” Kudou stammered.

“Now then, Kudou—what was it you said a moment ago? I believe you wanted a rematch?” said Sayumi.

Kudou didn’t say a word.

“He he he—that’s quite all right with me. I would be delighted to spar with you.”

“Ugh... I-I’ll get you next time!”

“I think not!”

Kudou set off with all the speed and dignity of a startled hare, with Sayumi in hot pursuit. As we watched the two of them sprint along the shoreline, Hatoko let out a chuckle.

“You know,” she said, “I think those two are actually pretty good friends!”

“I mean, that’s one way to look at it,” I replied. “I guess you’ve got a point, though. They have the sort of relationship where they don’t have to hold anything back from each other... Oh, looks like Kudou’s down.”

Sayumi and Kudou were matched academically, but athletically, Sayumi was the clear victor. Before I knew it, the arm-bar tragedy from our first meeting was playing out all over again. Kudou was on the ground and reduced to shouting “Noooooo! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry!” once more. On the one hand, it looked less like a punishment and more like the two of them were just messing around, but on the other hand, Kudou’s screams seemed maybe just a little too genuine for comfort.

“Yeesh. I kinda feel sorry for Kudou,” I said.

“Hmph. I’d say you should save your pity. She’s the one who picked this fight in the first place.”

“I mean, yeah, but— Wait, Tomoyo?!” I yelped as I did a double take. All of a sudden Tomoyo was standing right beside me, as if it was perfectly natural for her to be there. “When the heck did you get back...?”

“What?” said Tomoyo.

“What do you mean, what...?”

“What?” Tomoyo repeated. “What, as in, what do you mean, when did I get back? I’ve been here this whole time.”

I stared at Tomoyo. Tomoyo stared back.

“I’ve been here this whole time, right?” Tomoyo said with a perfectly amiable smile that was completely divorced from the glare she was giving me. The look in her eyes, in fact, was devoid of life—a bottomless darkness in which no light could ever hope to dwell. Those were the eyes of a girl who had seen hell and lived to tell the tale—the eyes of a girl who understood true despair not just intellectually, but instinctually. They were the eyes of a girl who had looked into the void and perceived the unknowable, and they were screaming out one very simple phrase: If you don’t let this go, I will kill you, then myself.

“R-Right,” I said. “Yeah, of course. My bad. No clue what I was talking about.”

Clearly, Tomoyo’s little time-stop misapprehension had inflicted a far greater blow on her spirit than I’d given it credit for. Her psyche was teetering on the brink of total collapse, and it seemed the route she’d chosen to escape that fate was to bury the whole incident and act as if it had never happened. Could any among us blame her for that decision? Not me, that’s for darn sure.

Hatoko and Chifuyu, who were standing nearby, both picked up on what was happening in an instant and refrained from acknowledging Tomoyo’s return in the slightest. We all just acted as if she’d been there from the start. The fact that even Chifuyu the Clueless had worked things out right away proved above all else just how obviously precarious Tomoyo’s mental state was. In any case, when all was said and done, I was just glad to have her back.

“So, umm... What should we do next? I’m not really feeling beach volleyball anymore,” I said. “Anything you wanted to do, Tomoyo?”

“You should ask the third-years, not me,” Tomoyo replied.

“Oh, right, fair enough. This is supposed to be Kudou’s event, and all.”

“Right. Well, Kudou’s and Sayumi’s,” said Tomoyo. There was a certain sadness to her tone, but a resigned sort of sadness, as if this was all something she’d already come to terms with. “She’s not gonna be in the literary club for very much longer, after all.”

“...Huh?” I grunted. For a second, I couldn’t even understand what she’d just said. “Wh-What’s that supposed to mean, Tomoyo...?”

“Huh? Wait, you haven’t heard?”

“No, I haven’t... Wait, heard what? Why can’t Sayumi be in the club for much longer? Don’t tell me she’s transferring out?!”

“Of course she’s not, doofus! As if anyone would transfer in the middle of their last year of high school!”

“Yeah, but mysterious transfer students showing up at weird times of year is a whole trope in school-life manga and anime!”

“So what if it is?!”

“However, if transfer students showing up at totally unreasonable times of the year is a trope, then so too is a main character’s parents deciding to force them to transfer schools unilaterally, thus compelling their friends to band together to save them! Don’t worry, Sayumi—we won’t let your transfer go through, no matter what we have to do to stop it!”

“Why the hell are you so worked up about this?!”

“And with that decided, our first course of action is to talk things through with her parents! We’ve gotta find Sayumi’s dad! Let’s get a move...on... A-Actually... Y’know, thinking this through again... Yeah, we really should respect her parents’ judgment about this sort of thing, don’t you think? Like, they wouldn’t make this sort of decision if they didn’t think it was in their kid’s best interests.”

“Way to give up at the drop of a hat! Just how terrified of Sayumi’s dad are you?!”

Well, I mean...come on, he’s Sayumi’s dad! You just know he’s scary! I mean, like, scary-scary! I bet the sheer force of his bloodlust is powerful enough to vaporize falling tree leaves midair! He’s definitely the sort of guy who’d tell you that he’ll only allow you to marry his daughter if you can score a clean blow on him in a sparring match first! I’ve never met the guy, so this is all pure imagination on my part, of course.

“Anyway, she’s not transferring schools. That’d be obvious if you, y’know, thought about it for half a second,” said Tomoyo with a roll of her eyes. “It’s just time for her to pick the next club president and retire, that’s all. We were just talking about it a minute ago while we were changing into our swimsuits.”

“Oh...right,” I said. It made total sense, but it hadn’t occurred to me at all until she’d pointed it out. The truth had completely slipped my mind until now—or rather, I’d been keeping myself from thinking about it—and now it felt like I’d been forced to reckon with it out of nowhere.

Just the other day, Kudou’s term of office had come to a close, and she’d retired from the position of student council president. Sayumi was a third-year as well, so she too would have to step down from her position as club president in short order. She would have to depart from the literary club before the rest of us. I had always known that that’s how it would happen, and I knew there was nothing we could do about it. It was an inevitability that our godlike powers could do nothing to stop—and even if that weren’t the case, it was something we couldn’t let ourselves stop, one way or another.