Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 10 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Inherit the Presidency

“Hey, Jurai—are you on Team Chocolate Mushroom or Team Chocolate Bamboo Shoot?”

It’d all started with an almost unbelievably banal conversational prompt courtesy of Sagami. Normally, when I recalled mundane exchanges like that one, the details of when exactly the conversation had occurred would escape me, even if I could remember who I’d been talking to or what we’d been talking about. I think that’s pretty normal for most people, but in my case, there was one major exception to the rule: when I happened to remember a conversation with Sagami in particular, the content and time period of the exchange would both emerge from the depths of my memory in tandem.

The logic was simple: I would know in an instant when the conversation had taken place based on how we’d referred to each other. If he’d called me by my first name, Jurai, and if I’d called him by the nickname Sagamin, then it was certain beyond a doubt that the exchange had taken place during my second year of middle school.

“Neither,” I replied. “I really can’t stand that sorta stuff.”

“Oh, really? But they’re both so tasty,” said Sagami.

“No, that’s not—I mean, I like the chocolates! Both types are awesome!”

“Hmm? Well, now I’m confused. What exactly is it that you can’t stand?”

“It’s the whole premise that you have to be on either Team Mushroom or Team Bamboo Shoot,” I explained. “Like, how people act like there’s no choice but to line up behind one of two big factions and march off into a never-ending chocolate war. There’s this pressure to pick one or the other that just... I dunno, it feels wrong to me. They’re both good, so why not just pick whichever one you feel like on any given day, y’know?”

Back during that period—the period where I’d been in the eighth grade and out of the eighth-grade sickness sufferer’s club—I would take any excuse I could get to be as stuck up, cynical, offhanded, and apathetic as possible, not to mention act like a total know-it-all. I’d fallen into despair after reaching the realization that all the fictional worlds I’d admired so deeply were nothing more than calculated works of crass commercialism made up by adults looking to further their business, and as a result, I’d come to hold those works, the diligent effort that the adults had put in to produce them, and everything else that fell in a broadly related category with disdain.

That included Christmas, a holiday that had been turned into a family or romance-centric event for the sake of commercial interests. It included Valentine’s Day, a holiday that had wound up dedicated to expressions of love for the sake of commercial interests. It included Halloween, a holiday that had been twisted to center around candy and costume parties for the sake of commercial interests. I’d come to see the creeping hands of commercialism in anything and everything, and the moment I’d realize that something was the product of a store or manufacturer’s sales scheme, the fun would be sucked right out of it.

Looking back on it nowadays, the whole thing seems so stupid. I’d been downright fastidious back then. No, not fastidious—I’d just been petty, plain and simple. I’d been no better than those nitpicky little kids who think that asking why amusement parks would charge entry fees if they were really fantasy dreamlands is some sort of ultimate gotcha. All I’d proved was my own narrow-mindedness.

“And besides,” I continued, “there’s all sorts of sweets and snacks out there, so why would you narrow it down to a contest between just two of them to begin with? I’d get it if this were, like, an election or something, but I have no idea why you’d throw me into the final round of a popularity contest out of nowhere.”

“Hmm. Well, I more or less get where you’re coming from. In short: you take issue with the fact that you’re being forced into a choice. You can’t bring yourself to go along with it when you’re given a binary option and compelled to pick just one side,” said Sagami, summing up my opinion in that very particular know-it-all sort of way he’d been so prone to. I’d tended to act like a pretty big know-it-all when I’d been in the eighth grade, but being one had been a core component of Sagami’s very nature—and for better or worse, the way it’d manifest had been in a completely different dimension compared to my behavior.

“I get where you’re coming from, yes...but isn’t that just how society works?” Sagami continued. “Even bigger than that, actually—that’s just how the world works. People love to talk about how you can choose the things you like by your own free will, but the truth is that you were choosing from a limited set of options from the outset. That’s how it always goes.”

Your choices are limited from the outset. His claim felt like it held true, in a sense. Take how people always say that kids have the potential to be anything when they grow up. It sounds nice and all, but the truth is that the paths a child can take in the future will inevitably be limited by their talents, their parents’ resources, and all sorts of other factors. I’d thought that was what Sagami had been getting at, anyway...until he shook his head.

“No, no, that’s not it at all. I wasn’t talking about picking holes in the logic of choices that people are actually aware of. I’m talking about unconscious choices,” he’d said with a shrug.

“Unconscious, meaning...?”

“Let me think of an example... Okay, you know how J-pop lyrics always seem to have verses about what a miracle it was that the singer found their one true love in the big, wide world they live in? They’re trying to make a whole thing out of how incredible it is that they found their one true love out of the seven billion people on the planet Earth. But, you know,” Sagami continued, a sly grin creeping across his face, “the truth is that no one will ever actually meet all seven billion of those people.”

“I mean, no crap they won’t,” I said with a shrug.

If you could meet one new person each and every second, you’d need seven billion seconds to meet the whole world. Assuming a human lifetime lasts about eighty years, that gives us roughly two and a half billion seconds to work with. In other words, if you were to spend your entire lifetime meeting one person a second, from the moment of your birth to the moment of your death, without ever stopping for so much as a wink of sleep, you wouldn’t have met even half of the global population by the time you kicked the bucket. That whole hypothetical is also flawed from the get-go, seeing as a second’s worth of interaction isn’t so much a meeting as it is a passing glance.

All of this, of course, had raised a question: just how many people do we meet over the course of our lifetimes?

“I’m sure it varies a fair bit from person to person, but on average, I imagine that in terms of people you know well enough to count as acquaintances, those on the high end of the spectrum would have met a few thousand people, while those on the lower end might have met fewer than a hundred,” said Sagami.

“That’s a pretty big range, isn’t it?”

“It’s barely a blip compared to seven billion. And if you narrow the range further from ‘acquaintances’ to ‘potential romantic partners,’ that blip gets even smaller. I figure most people would be lucky to have ten or so. In other words,” said Sagami, finally moving toward his conclusion, “we choose our partners for romance and marriage out of a tiny handful of potential candidates. When all’s said and done, life’s no different from a dating sim! We start our lives out with a small set of routes to choose from, and pursuing a side-heroine who doesn’t have a route’s out of the question.”

I’d really wanted to call him out for steering the conversation toward dating sims, of all things, but I’d unfortunately had to admit that it actually had been a pretty apt metaphor in this one particular instance and resisted the urge. It was just another forced decision, compelling us to choose from a predetermined set of options. You couldn’t romance a heroine without a route, and you couldn’t fall in love with a girl who you didn’t even know existed.

“It’s kind of hilarious, when you really think about it,” said Sagami. “When all’s said and done, all that we do is pick someone we happen to share a school or workplace with, or who we happen to meet at a group date or marriage interview, or who we happen to hit it off with in a game or on social media. We just fall in love with people who happen to share some convenient trait with us—or, to put it in less flattering terms, we make do with whoever happens to be within arm’s reach—yet we then go on to kick up a fuss about ‘soulmates’ or ‘my one-in-seven-billion’ anyway.”

His perspective on all this had struck me as pretty unconventional, to put it nicely, but at the same time, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to disagree. You just can’t fall in love with someone you’ve never met or interacted with. What some people frame as miraculously finding their soulmate in a seven-billion-to-one gamble could just as easily be seen as them picking a partner from the eligible candidates who’d just happened to be close at hand. I have to imagine we’re driven to do so on an instinctual, even genetic level—driven to find a mate, breed, and multiply. It’s been a biological impulse present in all organisms since time immemorial.

“Sagamin,” I said after a moment’s hesitation. “Promise me that you’ll never, ever tell Tamaki about this whole theory of yours.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t. She loves all that destiny stuff—a real romanticist, you know? Come to think of it, was listening to this whole dreary, cynical, brutally honest spiel hard for you too, Jurai?”

“Why would it be?”

“Because for all your talk about being a cynic, you’re actually still purehearted deep down. You’re an idealist, so it just occurred to me that listening to a theory grounded in brutal realism might’ve been hard for you to stomach.”

“Wait a second, what? What the heck would make you think I’m an idealist?!”

“The fact that you are one, obviously. It’s obvious from an outside perspective—anyone who watches you for long enough would know. You’re far from disillusioned when it comes to romance. Here’s an example—has it ever bothered you when you hear the other boys in your class talk about how they want to get girlfriends?”

I’d paused and fallen silent. That had bothered me, in the past—or, rather, I’d thought it was weird. They want girlfriends? Why? Surely “a girlfriend” isn’t something anyone would want in and of itself? I can understand wanting to date the person you have a crush on or wanting to better yourself so your crush will take an interest in you, but why would anyone just want a girlfriend?

The concept of saying you wanted a girlfriend when you didn’t even have someone you were interested in had felt somehow self-contradictory to me. Well, maybe it hadn’t seemed like an outright contradiction, but at the very least, it’d felt like they were getting the order of operations all wrong. It’d felt backward, in the literal sense rather than the figurative one.

“See? What’d I tell you? You’re so purehearted, it’s adorable,” said Sagami, who was clearly incredibly entertained by all this. “I’ll admit, developing feelings for someone, learning that they have a thing for you too, and starting a relationship as a result paints a nice, pretty picture. If it actually worked out that well for everyone, however, then group dates and marriage interviews would be a thing of the past. The truth is that, rather than falling in love and starting a relationship, plenty of people start relationships to find someone to fall in love with. It sounds misordered, but it’s really quite common.”

“Misordered, huh?”

“I’ll admit...there are times when even I get turned around. Do I jack off because I’m horny, or do I go looking for porn to make myself horny so I can jack off?”

“Next time you decide to smash-cut from philosophizing to stupid sex jokes, do you think you could at least warn me first?!” You could’ve just gone with the chicken and egg metaphor, for crying out loud!

In any case, the word “misordered” had stood out to me. It’d hinted at the core question of this whole matter: whether you should go out with someone because you love them, or whether you should love someone because you want to go out with them.

“The way I see it, this is just what human romance boils down to,” said Sagami with a somewhat patronizing shake of his head. “I said that you weren’t disillusioned about romance a moment ago, but really, romance might be nothing more than one big illusion in and of itself.”

“You think romance is an illusion?”

“Imagine wanting a girlfriend so badly that you’d take anyone so long as she was vaguely your type. You put yourself out there, find a girl to date, then declare that she’s your soulmate. All you’d have done was pick a girl out of all the ones you’d met—or rather, all the ones in the tiny selection who’d fit your criteria—yet, when all’s said and done, you’d still end up going on about how you chose your partner out of all the people on planet Earth. People have taken a vague, deceptive illusion, propped it up on a pedestal, declared it the most beautiful and sublime concept to ever exist...and chosen to call it ‘romance.’”

Society—or rather, the human race...no, the world at large—has celebrated and extolled romance for as long as the concept has existed. To fall in love is treated like the most wonderful thing in the world...and yet, in truth, all that it really entails is picking someone who happened to be close at hand and pairing up with them.

I’d paused once more, mulling over the theory...then paused again to mull over something completely different. Wait. Why are we even talking about this? How and when did this conversation go this far off the rails?

“Weren’t we talking about chocolate mushrooms and bamboo shoots a minute ago? How the hell did we end up here?” I asked.

“I’ll admit that the topic got a bit blown out of proportion—not to mention logically dubious—but the core of the matter’s still the same,” said Sagami. “You, Jurai, were upset by the ongoing feud between two types of chocolate. It wasn’t that you didn’t like the chocolates themselves, but rather, that you didn’t like being forced to choose from a limited set of options. What I’m trying to say is that if that question struck you as being arbitrary and in bad faith...then don’t you think the same argument applies to this country’s perception of romance at large? If you disavow one, you’re disavowing the other.”

“I’m...disavowing romance?”

“Not in the sense that you dislike the basic concept of romance—that would actually be a less extreme stance to take. No, you have a distinct set of ideals when it comes to romance, which is why romance that doesn’t live up to your standards is anathema to you. You have yet to be disillusioned regarding romance, which is why you have yet to accept the fact that romance is, on a fundamental level, nothing more than an illusion.”

“I never said—”

“You know, if you ever feel like some light reading, you should give Lolita a try. It’s the book responsible for the coining of the term lolicon—you know, ‘Lolita complex’? I think you’ll find it quite thought-provoking, and I think I know what you’ll say when you’re done,” Sagami said with a look that told me he could see right through me. It’d felt like he could see through everything about me, even, from that moment until far off into my future. “You’ll say ‘love that comes and goes depending on your partner’s age isn’t worthy of being called love.’”

I’d stared at him in stony-faced silence.

“I, however, feel differently. In my mind, choosing a partner based on their age is a perfectly natural thing to do. Whether your feelings for your partner change as they grow older, whether you determine if you could love someone based on if they are or aren’t they’re a virgin, whether you fall for someone you agreed to go out with on a whim, whether you lose all interest in a partner you swore to love forever after they cheat on you a single time, whether you fall for someone solely because they’re in the same club as you, whether you break up with someone the second the two of you end up going long-distance, whether you get super into a character exclusively because you like their voice actor, whether you ignore a song because it’s sung by a Vocaloid until an anime popularizes it and you decide you like it after all, whether you take interest in an anime’s source material only after watching the show, whether you lose interest in that source material the moment the anime ends, or whether you drop a light novel series exclusively because it swapped artists partway through its run—I don’t think there’s anything strange or insincere about love like that whatsoever. To me, all of those things are totally natural.”

Sagami smiled. “Falling in love with someone or something isn’t a grand, earth-shattering act at all. It’s a lot more vague and arbitrary than you think it is, Jurai,” he concluded, summing up his ramble in a neat and simple thesis statement.

Simple though it’d been, when all was said and done, I hadn’t really understood what he was trying to say at all. I hadn’t been able to accept the idea that I’d harbored illusions about romance, or that romance itself was an illusion, and the way Sagami had talked circles around me to try to impose that label had accomplished nothing beyond letting him play silly word games, as far as I’d been concerned.

In the fall of that same year, however, everything had changed. I’d witnessed the catastrophic collapse of Sagami Shizumu and Futaba Tamaki’s relationship, and I’d suffered an astonishing, even off-putting degree of shock as a result. That, above all else, had proved that I really had harbored illusions with regard to romance. I had harbored illusions, and I’d thus feared the possibility of disillusionment. Sagami had acted like he’d seen through to the core of what’d driven me as a character...and his assessment had proved terrifyingly accurate.

And yet...

“Okay, but you know,” I had said at the time, preparing to offer a counterpoint before I knew it. Not even I had understood why I’d felt the need to do so—I’d just felt, for some reason, that I’d needed to push back against his ideas. Maybe it’d just been that the pompous, pretentious way he’d presented his thoughts had gotten on my nerves...or maybe it was something else entirely.

“You might be right that romance is something pretty close to an illusion, and it’s true that not everyone ends up living out their perfect, ideal romance. Maybe schoolkids really do love to say that their relationships were the work of destiny or a miracle, even though the truth is that they just got together because they happened to be in the same class or club or whatever. But the way I see it...”

I’d told Sagami how I’d felt, and he’d grinned.

“See? You really are fastidious, Jurai.”

Fastidious. All throughout the eighth grade, whenever Sagami had offered an opinion of me, it had always boiled down to that one single word.

☆

“Oh! Hey, Andou.”

“Ah, hey! Afternoon, Kudou.”

It was a few days after our fun-filled tropical resort event, and school had just let out for the day. I’d decided to stop by one of the vending machines set up outside our school before heading to the club room, and I’d happened to run into Kudou, who was getting a drink for herself.

“Thanks again for the other day,” said Kudou. “It was really nice to get a chance to go all out messing around at the beach like that.”

“Oh, it’s cool! No need to thank me—we had a ton of fun too, so it’s all good. Tomoyo and Sayumi were both talking about how happy they were to get to wear their swimsuits since they’d missed their chance for it over summer break,” I replied.

“Right. Their swimsuits,” Kudou muttered. She seemed a little troubled by the thought as she pushed one of the machine’s buttons and collected the café au lait that dropped out of it.

“Something on your mind about them?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” said Kudou. “It’s just... I was remembering how everyone’s swimsuits were pretty flashy, that’s all.”

Flashy? Were they? Hmm... I mean, I guess they sorta were, if I had to call it one way or the other. Chifuyu had worn a standard-issue school swimsuit, but the literary club’s other three girls had all worn relatively revealing outfits. “Relatively” was the key word, though—none of them had been beyond the bounds of decency by any means. The way I saw it, it wasn’t so much that everyone else had been wearing flashy swimsuits, but rather...

“Come to think of it, your swimsuit was pretty normal, huh? Or, like, simple, I guess?” I commented.

“W-Well, what was I supposed to do?! My mom—”

“Your mom?”

“Ah!” Kudou yelped, then clammed up. That had clearly been an embarrassing slip of the tongue on her part, but eventually, she started reluctantly explaining herself. “My mother, umm...says that I’m still too young to wear bikinis and stuff.”

“...”

“Wh-Why’re you looking at me like that?! If you have something to say, then say it! Go ahead! Laugh it up!”

“Oh, nah, that’s not it! This isn’t really laugh-worthy, in my book,” I explained. I’d been thinking that it was kind of cute how Kudou was so conscientious about following her mom’s orders, and that wasn’t something I felt like laughing about at all. I also didn’t have any right to laugh about it, considering that my sister had long since reserved the right to do all my clothes shopping for me.

Man, though... I guess this means that Kudou really does have a mom, huh? Wonder if it’s the same one her curry had her buy ingredients to make that one time.

“Hmph... Is dressing like that normal for high schoolers? Does everyone wear sorta extreme swimsuits...? But I can’t just jump straight into wearing something like that right away, can I...? Hmm,” Kudou muttered, her expression completely serious despite how adorably petty the subject at hand was.

There was something heartwarming about the sight, and I watched with amusement as I stepped up to the vending machine. Needless to say, I ordered my usual stygian solution: a drink suitable indeed for a mature, hardboiled, and stylish man such as I.

“Oh? Black coffee, huh?” Kudou commented as I crouched down to scoop up my drink. “I didn’t know you drank yours black. You’re pretty mature, huh, Andou?”

“Hgkgh?!” I gasped. She’d said it so quietly—so perfectly casually—yet her words had impacted my heart with all the force of a literal supernova.

“I can’t stand black coffee, personally. It’s just so bitter! Café au lait and caramel macchiatos are pretty good, but— Whoa, Andou?!”

I just... I just...couldn’t. My legs gave way beneath me, and I fell to my hands and knees, essentially kneeling down before her. The can of coffee I’d only just bought clattered to the ground and rolled away, but I didn’t have it in me to chase after it.

“I... Ugh... I-I... B-Bwaaaaaah...”

“Oh god, you’re crying?! Why?! What on earth are you bawling about, Andou?! Huh?! Whaaa?! W-Was it me?! Did I say something wrong?!”

“N-No... I’m just... So, so happy... W-Waaaaaah...”

This was the first time. The very first time in my whole life that anyone had said that drinking black coffee made me look mature. She’d complimented me. I’d been forcing myself to swill that bitter black sludge in front of people for years on end, and finally, finally those efforts had all been rewarded.

The truth is that deep down...part of me had always been scared. I’d been going so far out of my way to show off how I drank the stuff for so long, but no one had ever complimented me for it, and my anxiety had been reaching critical mass. Time and time again, I’d thought about just giving up on the whole thing, but I couldn’t stop after having come so far, and I’d just kept at it instead...

...And thank goodness for that. I wasn’t wrong! Drinking black coffee really does make you look super cool and mature!

“Kudou... Kudooou... Thank you so, so much... I’m... I’m so happy right nooow!”

“C-Cut it out! Stop clinging to me! And stop crying already, please! You’re making it look like I’m the one making you have a breakdown!”

Whoops! That was almost bad—I wouldn’t want to put my newly found goddess and savior Kudou in an uncomfortable position!

I stood back up, brushed myself off, and dried my tears. No longer would I hesitate. I’d be drinking black coffee from now until the day I died!

“Sorry! I was just so overcome with emotion, I ended up making a scene,” I said.

“No kidding,” Kudou grumbled.

“By the way, are you heading out after this?”

“That’s the plan. I’m guessing you’re going to your club?”

“Yeah. The conversation might end up dragging on for a pretty long time today, so I figured I’d stop for a black coffee on the way to hype myself up for it.”

“Oh, right. I remember hearing that today’s the day, huh...?”

“Yup. We’ll be having a meeting to choose the literary club’s next president.”

We’d chosen the date of our discussion shortly after our tropical resort excursion. We’d dragged the choice out for as long as we possibly could, but it was now finally time for the next president to be picked.

“So, we’ll finally know who Takanashi’s successor will be...” said Kudou. “Come to think of it, how are you going to pick the next president? Your club doesn’t even have a vice president right now, does it?”

“Not sure—that’s actually one of the things we’re going to be talking about. We have to pick a method for picking the president before we can, y’know, pick the president.”

“Ah. I see what you meant about the conversation being likely to drag.”

“Do you want to come along, Kudou?” I offered.

“Me?” said Kudou. “I’m not even a member of your club! It’d be weird for an outsider to stick her nose into your business, wouldn’t it?”

“What’re you talking about? You’re totally an honorary literary club member at this point!” I countered.

Kudou looked a little taken aback about that, but she bashfully shook her head. “I appreciate it, really, but I’ll have to pass. I actually already have plans this afternoon. I’m heading out to meet up with someone I got to know online.”

“Ah, gotcha. No problem... But, wait—you’re meeting someone you met online?”

“Yeah. She’s my age, and she’ll be going to the same college as me next year, apparently. We met on social media and ended up chatting a few times before we decided to meet up in person,” Kudou explained.

“Huh! That sounds kinda nerve-racking, huh?” I commented.

I’d never met up with a friend I’d made online before, and honestly, I couldn’t even imagine how it would feel. I figured it’d probably be pretty freaky...but on the other hand, it seemed like that sort of thing had been getting more and more normal lately. I’d heard that making friends online with people who’d be going to the same college as you like Kudou had was actually quite common in this day and age.

Oh, and speaking of which, Kudou had apparently already been accepted into a college by recommendation. Sayumi had received a recommendation as well, and to make it even more impressive, both of them had been accepted into their first-choice schools. I’d befriended a pair of truly exceptional upperclassmen, no doubt about it.

“Oh, sorry! Speak of the devil,” said Kudou as she pulled out her cell phone, which had started vibrating. It looked like she had a call coming in from the girl she was meeting up with. We said a quick goodbye and split up, me heading toward the literary club’s room, and Kudou toward the school’s back gate.

“Hello? Yes, this is Kudou. I’m actually still at school right now... Yeah, I’ll call you back when I’m there. Sorry about that,” Kudou said as we walked away from each other.

The use of cell phones and smartphones on school grounds was technically banned, but basically none of the students bothered following that rule, and the teachers turned a blind eye to it as long as you weren’t pulling your phone out during class or anything. Kudou had always been so zealously dedicated to her student council work that it was sort of surprising to see her break the rule as well—apparently, she could be pretty flexible about that sort of thing after all. Though I guess we did exchange email addresses in school ages ago, come to think of it.

“Yeah. Okay, see you soon...” Kudou said just before she dropped out of earshot. I caught just one additional word of her conversation—the name of the girl she was talking to.

“...Hinoemata.”

Hinoemata. Needless to say, it was a name that meant absolutely nothing to me.

“Now that all of us have arrived, I hereby call our meeting to determine the next president of the literary club to order,” Sayumi said as she looked out across our assembled members. Tomoyo, Hatoko, Chifuyu, and I were present, meaning that all current members of the literary club, formal and informal alike, were in attendance. “Being the current club president, I will serve as this discussion’s moderator, as per usual. That said, I do not intend to contribute to the conversation in a personal capacity. I hope you will all give this matter careful consideration and discuss your options thoroughly.”

With that, Sayumi turned to look each of the second-year members—me, Tomoyo, and Hatoko—in the eye. In all likelihood, one of us would become the next president.

“I guess Chifuyu’s probably not gonna get much out of this whole— Ah?!” I muttered as I looked over at the one member of our crew who wasn’t in the running, only to cut myself off as I realized what I was saying partway through.

Oh, come on, you know that’s not right! What are you even saying? Do you want to make the cultural festival disaster play out all over again?

Back when we were deciding who would get the role of Juliet in our play for the cultural festival, my thoughtless choices had deeply hurt Chifuyu’s feelings. I’d drawn a line between her and the rest of us, rationalizing my actions with the excuse that she was a grade schooler. I’d supposedly learned my lesson, and yet there I was, once again assuming she’d be excluded from the running for president—and for the exact same reason, at that! I was more or less treating her like an outsider!

Dammit, what is wrong with me? Am I completely incapable of learning from my mistakes, or what?!

“...not gonna get much from this whole explanation, since I’m sure she already figured all that out for herself! After all, Chifuyu’s a full-blown member of the literary club, just like the rest of us! Maybe she’ll be the next president! That’d be perfectly fine and normal!” I said. Well, more like shouted, really, in an effort to break myself out of the brainless rut I’d apparently gotten stuck in.

“No, it wouldn’t. That would be weird,” said Chifuyu, providing a counterpoint so normal and reasonable, it was actually stunning. “I’m still an elementary schooler.”

“...”

“It would be weird for me to be president of a club at a school I don’t go to.”

“...”

“Anyone with common sense could see it’s not okay.”

“...Yup. True enough.”

How strange. Why is it that hearing Chifuyu say “Anyone with common sense could see it” makes me feel so very begrieved? Maybe it’s because she is, very literally, the single last person on earth who could possibly have the right to say that to someone?

My little overreaction on account of semirecent events had turned out to be mismatched with Chifuyu’s own perspective. Clearly, being counted out of the running for club president didn’t make her feel any sense of estrangement whatsoever.

“I can’t be the president, so instead, I’ll be a witness,” Chifuyu said in a tone that somehow made it sound like she was doing us all a favor. “Andou, Tomoyo, Hatoko... Which one of you will be my leader from now on, I wonder?”

H-Huuuh. Okay, then. It’s sort of weird how much it feels like she’s looking down on me right now. Seriously, where’s this condescension coming from? It’s like she’s our club’s biggest shareholder and she’s decided to sit in on our meeting for a lark!

It was becoming increasingly clear that in Chifuyu’s world, who exactly happened to be the club’s president was a petty technicality, at most. I had a feeling she was in a “Whoever the president is, I’m the real power behind the throne” sort of mindset. Everyone treated her as the literary club’s beloved mascot, but in truth, she ruled from the shadows (in her mind, anyway).

“Well, if Chifuyu’s out of the running, I guess it’s gonna be one of us second-years after all,” I said. “Oh, but wait a second, Sayumi. Don’t club presidents usually nominate someone to be their successor? Aren’t you gonna do that?”

“I considered it...but ultimately, I came to the conclusion that it would be for the best for all of you to discuss the matter among yourselves,” said Sayumi. “After all, this club won’t be mine from now on—it will be all of yours.”

Okay, I get where she’s coming from. She’s decided that it’d be better to step down gracefully and keep her hands off what happens next.

I looked over at the other two second-years once more. “So, we have to pick one of us to be the next president...?” I muttered.

“Looks like it,” said Tomoyo.

“I guess so!” Hatoko agreed.

The three of us exchanged glances. Nobody seemed especially inclined to kick off our deliberations. Eventually, the silence became so awkward that I decided to give it a go myself.

“Okay, umm... Raise your hand if you wanna be the president!” I said, testing the waters for aspiring candidates. Neither Tomoyo nor Hatoko raised their hands.

“I mean, not really...? If anyone else wants to do it, I’m cool with that,” said Tomoyo.

“I don’t really think I’m a president sort of person,” Hatoko added.

“Hmm. Okay, so no one’s invested in the job,” I said. “All right, let’s go at this from the opposite direction: anyone who absolutely does not want to be president, raise your hand.”

Once again, not a single hand was raised.

“I’m not gonna say I absolutely won’t do it,” said Tomoyo. “Like, if you and Hatoko have other stuff going on and I’m the only one left who could, I’d give it some serious thought...”

“I guess I could do it if you and Tomoyo don’t want to,” said Hatoko. “I don’t want to force someone into taking the job if they’d prefer not to!”

“Hmm. Gotcha, gotcha. So neither of you is completely opposed to taking the job. Makes sense...not! What are you two, a couple Japanese people or something?!” I shouted. It definitely felt like the situation needed to be called out somehow, and while “Are you Japanese?” might not have been the most apt choice imaginable, it was the first that came to mind.

That exact sort of vague ambivalence—the unwillingness to just make your opinion clear—was just one of those things that Japanese people seemed to share. Our inability to just say “no” was a byproduct of a society that treated modesty and reservation as virtues. Ours was a culture in which even in the most egregious of circumstances, when we had to say “no” no matter what, we would muddy the rejection by saying “I’m fine, thank you” instead. When asked to score something on a scale of one through five, we would feel driven on a psychological level to never give anything a flat one or a perfect five for fear of seeming too extreme.

“Tomoyo, Hatoko, why’re you both being so noncommittal all of a sudden?” I asked. “We’re picking our president for the whole next year, for crying out loud! Put some spirit into it!”

“And what about you, Andou?” asked Sayumi.

“Huh...? Me?” I grunted. “You mean, like, me as president? I mean... It’s not like I wanna be president no matter what, or anything, but if those two don’t want the job, I guess I could do it.”

Sayumi heaved a sigh. “So you’re in the same boat as they are, then.”

The three of us second-years exchanged glances once again, this time adding rather strained smiles to go with them. We were officially in a bit of a pickle. It wasn’t terribly surprising in retrospect, but I don’t think that any of us had really predicted that neither Tomoyo, Hatoko, nor I would actively want to be the president of the literary club. Worse still, none of us were opposed enough to the idea to take ourselves out of the running entirely, leaving us with zero nominations and zero withdrawals. None of us thought we were the right choice for the job, but we also didn’t want to shove it off on someone who didn’t want it, leaving us in a state of deadlock.

“Well...rats,” I said. The combination of our mutual lack of assertiveness, tendency toward being considerate and reserved, and sense of responsibility toward the literary club had all come together to put us in a downright obnoxious situation.

No amount of discussion seemed likely to move us forward, but none of us seemed interested in putting our foot down either. If I were putting it nicely, I’d say that we were just a little too cooperative, and if I decided not to mince words, I’d say that none of us had squat for initiative. I could see this turning into a terrible battle, only rather than fighting to claim or reject the position, we’d be fighting to not fight in the first place.

Yup. This is gonna drag, all right. Grabbing that can of coffee was the right call.

—“Okay, what’re we gonna do about this, Tomoyo?” “Hey, don’t ask me!” “Juu, Tomoyo, I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to do it. I could take the job, if you want?” “Nah, it’s not like I’m opposed to it!” “What he said. Plus, I don’t want to push all our busywork off on you.” “Tomoyo...you really shouldn’t call being the president busywork.” “Th-That’s not what I meant, and you know it! Stop reading into everything I say in the worst possible way!” “Hmm. Being the president would probably be pretty hard, right? I don’t know if I could handle it.” “You totally could, Hatoko! You’re really responsible, and you always do a good job on all the work you’re given. Plus, there’s no telling how good you’d be at this sorta work if you’ve never tried, right?” “Okay, but ‘There’s no telling how good you’d be’ isn’t gonna get us anywhere, Andou.” “I know, I know!” “But what about you, Tomoyo? You and Juu both read tons of books. Wouldn’t that make you two good presidents?” “I dunno about Tomoyo, but I don’t actually read many book-books at all. I’m basically all about manga and light novels.” “I’m not as huge of a reader as you might think either. As far as actual literature goes, I’ve just read Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Miyazawa Kenji’s stuff since I thought it’d help me write better.” “Well, when you put it that way, I guess I’ve read Shakespeare and Goethe’s stuff!” “This isn’t a contest, Andou, god! And quit lying about your reading record—you’re gonna make me look like as much of a cringey poser as you are!” “Setting Juu aside, wow, Tomoyo! You read all of Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Miyazawa Kenji’s books? That’s amazing!” “Huh...? Uh, I mean... Not all of them so much as just Rashomon, The Spider’s Thread, and Night on the Galactic Railroad, really.” “Three total? Seriously?! And they’re all the really famous ones too! ‘I’ve read their stuff’ my rear, Tomoyo! Talk about talking yourself up!” “Sh-Shut your trap! I don’t wanna hear that from you!”—

Fruitless. Our discussion was utterly, excruciatingly fruitless. We, the literary club’s second-years, had proved ourselves completely incapable of reaching a consensus. The vague unassertiveness and equally vague sense of responsibility we all shared was working against us in the worst way possible.

Sayumi, meanwhile, sighed deeply as she watched our non-debate ouroboros its way to nowhere in particular. “I can’t say I’m impressed by this club’s next generation at this particular moment. In fact, I’m starting to think we should have handed the presidential reins to Chifuyu after all,” she remarked sarcastically.

“Yeah. Maybe I’ll do it,” said Chifuyu, jumping right aboard the criticism train.

We second-years were, collectively, ashamed of ourselves. If I could take a moment to defend us, though, I couldn’t help but feel that Sayumi, our current president, shared at least some small portion of the blame for our obnoxious deadlock. Sayumi had been as good of a president as you could possibly ask for, and her act would be so hard to follow up that it was only natural we’d balk a little. Maybe it was silly for us to feel so pressured about taking over a five-person club, but still, the point remained.

In any case, Sayumi and Chifuyu watched on as we second-years continued to fail to make progress. We were at a standstill, and one that I couldn’t see us breaking out of without some kind of outside intervention. Just as I was wondering what we could possibly do to solve the matter, however...

“Okay, sorry I’m late!”

...outside intervention arrived. The literary club room’s door opened with a clack, and a woman stepped inside. She looked as sleepy as a person could possibly seem while still being conscious, and she had an eye mask with “Rest In Peace” written on it in English.

Wh-Whoa, that actually looks hella cool when you write it in another language! Who knew?

The woman strolled into the club room like she owned the place. It was like she was walking into her own living room—or, rather, her own bedroom. Her name was Satomi Shiharu, and she was my homeroom teacher, Chifuyu’s aunt, and, most relevantly, the literary club’s faculty advisor.

“Oh, Miss Satomi! Sure has been a while,” I said.

“Huh? Since what? I see you basically every day,” Miss Satomi replied.

“Right, but I meant it’s been a while since I’ve seen you here.”

On the whole, Miss Satomi was something of an absentee advisor. She barely ever showed her face in the club room, even during the cultural festival. She’d stop in on the very rare occasion when she happened to be walking around the school, but that was about the extent of her involvement with our organization. If I wanted to frame it nicely, I’d say that she had a lot of respect for her students’ autonomy, but considering she was related to Chifuyu, I couldn’t see it as anything other than her having decided that nap time was a higher priority than her responsibilities as a club advisor. She’d be out like a light nine times out of ten when I went to see her in the faculty office, after all.

“You’re picking your next president today, right? That means that I should at least make an appearance, according to Takanashi,” Miss Satomi explained.

“According to Takanashi,” huh? Figures.

“So, how’s it going, Andou? Picked the next prez yet?”

“About that,” I awkwardly muttered. Not only had we not picked a president, our deliberations were going nowhere fast. It wasn’t anyone’s fault in particular—just a disastrous combination of reservation and consideration that had put us at an impasse. I explained that in broad strokes to Miss Satomi, who gave me a nod of understanding and sank into thought for a few seconds.

“Okay, then—you do it, Kanzaki,” she eventually said with a casual ease as she turned to face Tomoyo.

“M-Me?!” Tomoyo replied.

“Yeah. You’re not against it, right?”

“Right, but...”

“Then do it. Okay, that’s settled!”

Just like that, the deadlock was shattered. Miss Satomi had cut our dilemma down in a single stroke. Her unilateral decision had made all the time we’d spent blabbing on and on about nothing look like a downright idiotic waste.

“W-Wait a minute, Miss Satomi,” I said. I just couldn’t let this pass without some sort of comment. “Why Tomoyo?”

“Why not? Do you have something against her being president?”

“I mean, no, not really...”

“Then it’s settled. You’ve got the job, Kanzaki. Advisor’s orders,” Miss Satomi said in a tone that brooked no argument.

She had a lot of gall to go giving us “advisor’s orders” considering she’d barely done anything advisor-like at all up until that very moment, but she seemed set on making Tomoyo president one way or another. I didn’t actually have a problem with that, to be clear, and judging by how the conversation had gone up to that point, none of the other members would either. Tomoyo herself didn’t seem opposed at all. The only problem, then, was the fact that I just couldn’t accept having the decision imposed on us unilaterally.

“I’m totally okay with Tomoyo being the president, Miss Satomi, but it’d be nice if you’d at least tell us why you picked her,” I said.

“Why I picked her, huh...? Well, if I’m being totally honest, I don’t even think it matters that much who ends up being the president of a club that might not even exist when next year rolls around,” she said. That was brutally direct enough on its own, but she wasn’t quite finished. “Really, though, I picked her because her older brother was the president of this club too,” she added with a look that seemed somewhat pensive...or actually, like she’d just remembered something deeply irritating from her past.

Tomoyo’s brother? Does she mean...? “You mean Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First?!”

“Huh? Who’s that supposed to be?”

Ugh! Guess his true name hasn’t made the rounds in these parts. Fine, then—I’ll just have to use the moniker he goes by in this realm! “I mean Kiryuu, you know? Like, are you talking about Kiryuu Hajime?”

“Ooh, yeah, that’s the guy! Didn’t know you knew him, Andou. He was a student of mine.”

Now that was a shocking coincidence if I’d ever seen one. I’d learned that Kiryuu was a former literary club member the very first time we’d met, but I hadn’t realized that he’d been the president nor that he’d been one of Miss Satomi’s students.

“Boy, talk about a crazy coincidence...nay, not a coincidence, but rather the strings of fate pulling us together once more!” I said. “Could this mean that our destinies are even more closely intertwined than I realized?!”

“Why the hell are you freaking out about this, Andou?” Tomoyo sighed.

“If this isn’t the right moment to freak out, then when would be?! This is Kiryuu we’re talking about! I have a slight but concrete connection to him! Of course I’m happy about that!”

“Just how big of a man-crush do you have on my brother?! You’ve met him, like, once!”

That was true...but sometimes, one meeting was enough. Over the course of that single fleeting encounter, we’d hit it off so shockingly well, you’d think we’d been a married couple in our past lives. He’d spoken to something deep within me—something that I could only possibly express as my inner wellspring of chuuni power. We’d met by chance, but the way I saw it, that chance meeting had been the work of destiny.

“Andou does always seem to have a certain look come across his face when he thinks of your brother,” said Sayumi. “The look of a lustful maiden, that is.”

“I’m sorry, Sayumi—what? A lustful maiden? What sort of look is that?!”

“Tomoyo’s brother, though? I see,” she continued, her gaze drifting downward as she muttered thoughtfully to herself.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“No... Pardon me. It’s nothing,” Sayumi said. I could tell from her tone that there was something more to it, but before I had the chance to probe further, Miss Satomi hustled the conversation along.

“Kiryuu was the first student to join the literary club after the school forced me to be its advisor. There was another kid who joined too—a girl named Saitou Hitomi—and the two of them got up to all sorts of stupid shenanigans together. Well, I guess it was more like Kiryuu dragging Saitou into his stupid shenanigans, but same difference really,” Miss Satomi said with an air of flat indifference. She didn’t seem to think much of recounting Kiryuu’s student days at all. “Come to think of it, I actually saw him...must’ve been a couple months ago, before summer break? He just showed up at school one day—no warning, nothing.”

That, in all likelihood, would have been the same day that I’d met him. The day that we’d fulfilled our long-destined chance meeting, that is! Oh...I get it. So Kiryuu actually did have permission to be walking around in the school. He wasn’t trespassing after all, I guess.

“He said that he’d dropped out of school and gotten fired from his job, and I was going to give him the lecture of a lifetime, but he just wouldn’t listen. Then he said this to me,” Miss Satomi said before dropping into a half-hearted imitation of Kiryuu’s voice. “‘I consider you my benefactor, Miss Satomi, so I’ll give you a warning: this town will soon be swept up in a maelstrom of battle, ravaged and razed by forces beyond your comprehension. I won’t mince words: you should flee now, before it’s too late.’”

H-Hoooly crap, that’s so friggin’ cool! A harsh, brooding tone, but with the baseline decency to want to keep his old teacher safe! Talk about nailing the low-key tsundere antihero vibe! So! Cool!

“Why...? Why is that jackass always like this?” Tomoyo groaned, clutching at her head in shame while I literally shivered with profound respect for her brother.

That’s when Hatoko spoke up. “Hey, Juu?” she said, tugging at my sleeve and giving me a rather anxious look. “Tomoyo’s brother’s surname is Kiryuu? Not Kanzaki?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “His name’s Kiryuu, for sure. It’s... Well, apparently it’s sorta complicated.”

“Oh...”

Hatoko looked a little downcast. Oddly, it felt less like she was surprised that Tomoyo and her brother had different last names, and more like something about the name “Kiryuu” in and of itself had set her off somehow.

“Hey, Hatoko—do you know something about Kiryuu?” I asked.

“N-No, I don’t... I mean, I shouldn’t,” said Hatoko. “Hmm... It’s the strangest thing. I have this feeling that I’ve heard that name before somewhere, but I just can’t put my finger on it...”

Apparently, both Sayumi and Hatoko had some sort of baggage regarding Kiryuu, which was weird since, as far as I knew, the two of them had never even met him. A strange sensation that I couldn’t identify was beginning to build up within me. It was like there was something stuck in my throat that I just couldn’t quite seem to swallow down—like a fistful of sand had been dropped into the gears of my mind, causing them to grind and stick.

It was as if, before I knew it, someone had intervened in our lives. As if, before I knew it, a great change had come about us. As if, before I knew it, the curtain had raised on a production we hadn’t known we were part of. His presence was working its way into my relationships, manifesting in my life like an evening fog, its moisture beginning to quietly bead up on my skin.

“Okay, I think that’s enough getting sidetracked on Kiryuu’s account. Sheesh—this happens every time he comes up, I swear. There’s no lack of out-there anecdotes about him, that’s for sure. Seriously, I’ve got an endless stock of great stories thanks to that little troublemaker,” said Miss Satomi. She was treating Kiryuu’s surely heroic exploits like they were material for a stand-up comedy act. “Where to even start...? If I had to pick a single classic example, I’d probably have to go with the Crisis Clown incident. That one’s never failed to impress at parties.”

“The what incident?! That’s such a cool name, what the heck!” I exclaimed.

“Yeah, he named it himself.”

“Kiryuu did?! The culprit named his own crime?!”

“Yup. He kept muttering, ‘This will go down in history as the Crisis Clown incident, surely!’ while he was at it, and it ended up sticking.”

“He was talking about how the incident would go down in history before he was even finished causing it?! Talk about stealth marketing, only without the stealth!”

“Right... But anyway, the point is that Kiryuu was this club’s president in his time, and Kanzaki’s his little sister, so I figured she might as well be the next one.”

“Way to pivot away from the story you were telling on a dime! Is it just me, or did you get bored with it halfway through and decide not to bother telling the rest?!” Seriously, what the heck was the Crisis Clown incident?! I’m so friggin’ curious now! It’s supposed to be your surefire story to tell at parties, isn’t it?! Why set it up and not follow through?!

I was completely invested in hearing the rest of the tale, but Miss Satomi ignored me entirely and turned to face Tomoyo instead. “I sorta alluded to this a minute ago, but back when I had this club shoved off on me, it had lost its last members and was due to be suspended. It would’ve gone through too, if your brother hadn’t jumped in to keep it alive. So, I sorta figured...well, you know! It’d just make sense for you to carry on his responsibility and keep it going...or something along those lines, I guess. Should work out just fine. And hey, it’ll look good on your record and stuff.”

Wow, talk about a muddled disaster of an argument! Just look at Tomoyo’s face—could an expression get any more skeptical than that?

“All right! Looks like the next president’s all sorted, so I think we’re done here. Don’t forget to lock the door on your way out!” said Miss Satomi, stretching as she shut the conversation down and departed from the room before any of us could get a word in edgewise.

I did try to get a word in, for the record—it would’ve been “wait” or “stop,” most likely—but by the time I’d opened the door again and stepped out into the hall, she was already long gone. She’d actually headed home, just like that. It felt like a localized rainstorm had swept into our club room and had departed just as quickly. She’d just stepped in, made a super important decision on our behalf, and then vanished again before we even knew what had happened.

“Your aunt sure is something, huh, Chifuyu?” I commented.

“Yeah. Shiharu’s super amazing,” Chifuyu proudly agreed. Apparently, she hadn’t picked up on my sarcasm.

Super amazing, huh? I had to admit that she had solved the problem that we’d been waffling over in a snap, even if she’d done it in the most arbitrary way possible. I could see her being amazing in a certain sense of the word, at least.

“So, what’s it gonna be, Tomoyo?” I asked.

“What’s what gonna be?” Tomoyo replied.

“If you want to turn the job down, you should probably chase her now while you still can. When Miss Satomi has actual work to do, she gets it done as quickly as possible so she can have more slacking-off time later on. I’d bet that she’s heading to the staff room and filing the paperwork to make you the next president right about now.”

“Oh... Jeez, what should I do?”

“Why not accept the position? I don’t see any particular reason why you shouldn’t,” Sayumi chimed in, her gentle words cutting Tomoyo’s bewildered skittishness off before it could escalate. “I hadn’t imagined the choice would be made in this manner, but that being said, I have no objections whatsoever to you serving as our club’s next president. For that matter, if you had requested that I nominate my successor, I suspect I would have settled on you.”

“Oh. Really?” I asked.

Sayumi gave me a nod. “Yes, on account of the fact that out of all our second-year students...no, out of all of us, myself and Chifuyu included, Tomoyo has applied herself to her writing more earnestly and consistently than anyone.”

Oooh. Yeah, that’s true, actually.

Literary clubs were far from a rarity. It would be hard to find a person who wasn’t aware of them, at least on a conceptual level, but for people who had never actually been in a literary club, their actual activities were probably something of a mystery. It wasn’t rare for people to be under the misapprehension that everyone who belonged to a literary club was hoping to be an author in the future as a result.

The truth, however, was that the actual nature of a literary club’s activities varied wildly from club to club and school to school, making it very hard to sum up the whole concept in simple terms. Plenty of the people who joined them had no aspirations of future authorship as well...but at the same time, some literary club members really did hope to go pro in the long term. Some members, in other words, actually took their writing activities seriously—even in our own little club.

“Yeah, when you put it that way, you’re right. Tomoyo really does work the hardest when it comes to our actual literary club stuff,” I admitted.

I’d had an up close and personal perspective on her activities, so I knew that very well. I knew exactly how hard she’d been applying herself, not just to her own personal writing, but also to writing and editing stories for our literary magazines, penning the story for the game everyone had made as a birthday present for me, and putting together the script for the play we’d staged just recently as well. She’d thrown herself headfirst into all sorts of activities.

“That’s a good point. I think Tomoyo would do a great job too!” Hatoko said with a smile.

“Me too. Tomoyo would be a good president,” Chifuyu agreed.

Sayumi stood up and stepped in front of Tomoyo. “Well, Tomoyo? Are you willing to take on the position?”

“I...don’t know if I’ll be able to be as good of a president as you were,” Tomoyo hesitantly replied.

“There’s no need for you to try to emulate my methods. After all...I don’t believe that I was an exemplary enough president to serve as a model for my underclassmen,” said Sayumi.

I’m pretty sure that everyone else in the room thought something to the tune of “How modest can you possibly get?!” in unison. Sayumi, however, spoke on with a somewhat bitter smile on her face.

“I’ve spoken about this with Andou before...but initially, I had hoped to be the president of the student council. Frankly, I’d viewed participating in this club’s activities, and even becoming its president, as a temporary affair. I’d fully intended to resign once I’d won the election and assumed the student council president’s office.”

I’d already heard this story from Sayumi’s sister, Maiya; from Kudou; and from Sayumi herself. Her aspiration to lead the student council had started before she’d even enrolled in our school. She’d intended to put her name forward when the election arrived, square off in a fair fight with her rival Kudou, and emerge victorious when all was said and done...until I’d come along and ruined her whole plan.

“Last year, I’d seen this club as nothing more than a temporary occupation. I was given the position of president for lack of other members, and I’d fully intended to retire from it to focus upon my student council campaign when election season rolled around. However,” Sayumi said, pausing to look out across our faces, “Andou, Tomoyo, and Hatoko joined, and soon after, Chifuyu started attending on Miss Satomi’s recommendation...and before I knew it, the literary club had become something irreplaceable to me. I began to take pride in my position as its president, and I came to the realization that I would prefer to continue serving that role than strive to join the student council after all. That is a decision that I have never regretted in the least.”

She looked me in the eye as she said those final words. I’d probably failed to hide the fact that I was feeling guilty again, and she’d chosen to make it clear that she didn’t hold what had happened against me.

“I believe I’ve made it clear by now, Tomoyo, that when I became this club’s president, I’d had no attachment to it or its activities. I believe, however, that the same cannot be said for you,” Sayumi continued with an ever so slight grin. “I still remember very well the time when, before you’d even formally joined the club, you told me everything there was to know about the novel that you were writing.”

“D-Do you really have to drag that back up now? That was ages ago,” Tomoyo muttered, dropping her gaze to the ground as a blush crept across her face.

The story that she’d told Sayumi about, I knew, was one that she’d written just for the fun of it: a flagrant self-insert power fantasy that she’d penned during the thick of her chuuni era. That story had been the trigger that’d finally let me put the pieces together and realize that Tomoyo had been the girl I’d met on a particularly impactful day in my own past.

“You appreciate the joy and pain inherent to writing better than anyone else in this club, so I believe you are worthy to assume the mantle of its president,” Sayumi concluded. The look in her eyes and the tone of her voice, both laden with sincerity, made it abundantly clear that she wasn’t just being considerate or paying lip service to Tomoyo—she’d meant every word of it.

For a moment, Tomoyo thought to herself in silence. “Okay, then,” she finally said with a powerful nod. “I’ll... I’ll do it. I’ll be Sayumi’s successor and take over as this club’s president.”

That was the moment when our next leader was well and truly decided upon. She would carry on what had become a strange sort of family tradition through Kiryuu, and she would carry on Sayumi’s will to keep the club going as well. From tomorrow onward, Kanzaki Tomoyo would be our new president.

Our meeting to determine Sayumi’s successor had more or less turned into an impromptu retirement ceremony for her as well, but that being said, she wasn’t going to be pulling out of the club entirely just yet. She’d still be stopping by to hang out on occasion until she graduated, it seemed.

“Though considering how well the passing of the torch went over in the end, I’m afraid it would rather spoil the mood if I were to show up tomorrow as if nothing had changed whatsoever,” Sayumi had said with a somewhat self-deprecating air, but the rest of us quickly jumped in to tell her that she could—and should—show up anyway, which she’d agreed to with an exasperated chuckle.

After that, we set about discussing a proper farewell party for Sayumi, and we also talked about picking a vice president as well. That prompted Chifuyu to ask for an official position in the club’s leadership structure, which spiraled off into a whole different conversation. Before long, the time had arrived for the school to close for the evening, and we prepared to leave. Chifuyu used her power to warp right home, and I was just about to follow Tomoyo and Hatoko out the door when Sayumi called out to me.

“A-Andou,” she said in an unusually restless tone.

“Yeah? Need something?” I asked.

“I, well... That is...”

Up until just moments before, Sayumi had been giving off the aura of an ideal club president, gentle and dignified in equal measure, but now she was acting more like a nervous trespasser. Her gaze drifted from one side of the room to the other, and her hands fidgeted restlessly.

“So, uh... Something wrong?” I asked once more.

“N-No, I’m perfectly fine. Pay me no mind,” Sayumi replied before taking a long, deep breath, then she looked me straight in the eye. “Andou. Do you have anything planned tomorrow after school?”

“Tomorrow? Nah, nothing in particular.”

“Is that so...?”

“Yup.”

“Nor do I, as it so happens.”

“Huh. That so?”

“Quite...”

“...”

“...”

“...Wait, is that it?! You’re just gonna confirm that both of us don’t have anything planned and drop the conversation there?! What are you getting at here, Sayumi?! Is this some sort of psychological test, or what?!”

“N-Not at all! My mistake—let me start over. What I meant was...if you don’t have anything planned after school tomorrow, would you mind meeting up with me behind the gymnasium?” Sayumi said, her voice trembling with every word. It seemed it had taken all of her courage to force the question out.

Behind the gymnasium? “I mean, sure, but why— Ah?!” I gasped. An instant before I asked what her goal was, the truth had hit me like a bolt from the blue. “Don’t tell me... Sayumi, is this what I think it is?”

“Huh?”

“You want to meet behind the gymnasium? That could only mean one thing, right?”

“Huh...? Huuuh?!” Sayumi all but shrieked. “Y-You mean...y-you figured it out...?”

“Well, I mean, duh. I think pretty much anyone would jump to the right conclusion if you asked to meet them there.”

Sayumi was blushing vividly. My best guess was that she was embarrassed I’d seen through her intentions that easily. “B-But... How? Why? Why would you see through me now, of all times...?” she asked.

“It just makes sense. You’ve stepped down from your position as president, so you’ve also stepped away from all the responsibilities it carried. There’s only one thing a girl in that sort of situation could be looking for when she asks someone like me to talk with her in private.”

Sayumi took in a sharp breath. “Wh-Why is today the one day you have to be so quick on the uptake?!”

“I’m right, aren’t I? Sayumi, you want—”

“No! W-Wait a moment, please! Th-This isn’t what you think! I mean, well...maybe it is, after all...but I’m not emotionally ready, and I haven’t finished planning at all yet...”

I ignored Sayumi’s teary-eyed pleas and pressed onward.

“Long story short—you’re saying you want a rematch with me, aren’t you?!”

“...Pardon?”

“How could I ever forget the history we share behind that gym? That’s where the two of us fought with our lives on the line, isn’t it?!”

Sayumi gaped at me.

“Yes, and our desperate struggle ended in my decisive victory! Clearly, you’ve borne a grudge this whole time and have been waiting for the perfect moment to challenge me to a rematch for the ages, haven’t you?!”

“I, umm—”

“Worry not—I understand. Perhaps the others would be mystified, but I know exactly how you feel. You’ve always been responsible to a fault, Sayumi, and given your position as the club’s president, you could never allow yourself to challenge me to single combat before now. Isn’t that right?”

As of today, however, we’d elected a new president. Starting tomorrow, Sayumi would no longer hold her old office. She would be free to do as she pleased, up to and including seeking out a rematch to make up for the humiliation of her past defeat! Yup! Everything fits together perfectly when I look at it in this context! For sure!

“Mwa ha ha! Very well—I accept! It is, after all, a sovereign’s duty to rise to meet any and all challenges from those who would seek to claim his throne!”

Sayumi just...gave me a look.

“Ah—b-but just to set expectations where they should be, it won’t be a full-on battle this time, okay? I mean, it’s not like I’m scared of fighting you again or anything! It’s just like, y’know, doing the same thing twice in a row would be super stale, right? So instead of a supernatural battle, we can have a supernatural pose-off, or a supernatural naming contest, or something along those lines...”

“...Right. Of course,” Sayumi listlessly agreed. For some reason, she seemed really, really tired all of a sudden. “I-In any case, Andou, meet me behind the gymnasium tomorrow after school—our rematch, or whatever it turns out to be, can happen then. And come alone, please, without telling anyone.”

“Wha—?! You mean you’re looking for a no-holds-barred deathmatch?! No rules, and no referee?!”

“I’ve lost the will to argue about this. Just be there,” Sayumi said, pressing a hand to her temple before leaving the club room behind her—though just before she stepped out the door, she turned around for one final comment.

“Please, Andou.”

The way she said those last words made her seem equal parts earnest and at her wits’ end.

To be completely honest: at that point, I’d had yet to figure out what was going through Sayumi’s mind at all. I’d had no clue why she’d really called me behind the gymnasium, and I hadn’t the foggiest idea how much courage and resolve it had taken for her to make that request.

I had, however, had a feeling. Somehow, I’d known that tomorrow, something would happen—tomorrow, something would change, and the daily lives that we’d been carrying on with as if they’d last forever were about to come crumbling down around us. I hadn’t been able to explain where that premonition was coming from, but it’d lurked within me, silently building in the depths of my heart.

To make a long story short: that premonition would turn out to be right on the money. The incident that followed would blow my—and, for that matter, Sayumi’s—expectations right out of the water, leaving us to stand with jaws dropped as the consequences poured down around us. I could hardly blame us, though. I don’t think anyone could have ever predicted what would become of our school lives—of our world—the very next day.