Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 10 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: The Outcast Who Shouted Love at the Heart of the World

After a brief discussion, Sayumi and I had decided to ditch third period.

“Are you really sure about this?” I asked. “What if they revoke your college recommendation on account of delinquency or whatever...?”

“No school would declare a recommendation null and void over a single skipped lesson,” Sayumi replied. “And for that matter, I should be asking you the same question. I believe you’ve mentioned having a perfect attendance record?”

“Eh, it’s not like I’m going for a perfect attendance award or anything. I’m totally okay with skipping out early...especially considering this is an emergency.”

Sayumi nodded gravely.

The two of us were in the literary club’s room. Skipping class to hang out in your club room was probably pretty typical behavior for most high schoolers, but for me and Sayumi, it was a completely novel experience.

“I appreciate that this is less than appropriate considering the circumstances, but I must admit that cutting class like this is a little exciting,” said Sayumi. “I’ve never been a truant in any capacity before.”

“This’ll be my first time in high school too. Middle school, though... Well, I guess you could say I was sort of a slacker.”

We’d spent a few minutes more or less aimlessly chatting, but finally, Sayumi began to gently steer us toward our main order of business. “I have to say...this is dispiriting news. I knew about Kudou, of course, but I never imagined that Hatoko, Tomoyo, and Chifuyu would all be stricken by the same madness as well. What on earth is happening to our acquaintances?”

The atmosphere in the club room grew heavy. Sayumi had dispelled my worries that I was the one who’d lost my mind, which was nice and all, but it did nothing to solve the actual problem we’d been confronted with. In a sense, we’d had yet to even identify the problem, much less start figuring out how to solve it.

“If I had to pick out one trait that everyone who’s been impacted shares...” I began.

“It would be their powers, I presume?” said Sayumi.

I nodded. “That’s right. Only the people in our social circle with supernatural powers have had their characters rewritten.” Tomoyo’s turned into a chuuni, Kudou’s gone into love-drunk mode, Hatoko’s become a yandere, Chifuyu’s grown into a high school girl, and... “You’ve started wearing glasses too.”

“I must admit that my transformation feels somewhat muted compared to the others,” Sayumi muttered in a slightly bitter tone as she raised a hand to her glasses. The look on her face could hardly have been more severe. “Putting in my contact lenses is part of my morning routine. When I woke up today, however, without so much as a shred of doubt or hesitation, I found myself putting on my glasses instead. Indeed—I put on my glasses instead!”

“Not really sure what the point of the rhetorical repetition was there... But anyway, couldn’t you have just taken your glasses off and put in your contacts after you noticed?”

“I could not,” Sayumi replied with a weirdly blunt and definitive air. “It would seem that a potent sense of fear and revulsion toward contact lenses now rages within me.”

“F-Fear and revulsion?”

“Picture the instinctual fear of placing a foreign object into your eye that you might feel the first time you try wearing contacts, then amplify it by a factor of several dozen.”

“I mean, that kind of makes sense, but I also have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I attempted to put my contacts in, the same as I always have, but I was forced to give up on account of my hands’ uncontrollable trembling. No matter how I tried to overcome my fear, I couldn’t shake the intrusive thought that when I tried to remove the lenses, they might take my corneas along with them. It was like a phobia,” Sayumi explained. It sounded like her fear still had a hold on her, and she was clearly being completely earnest, but considering the actual content of her story, I just couldn’t quite bring myself to empathize. “Moreover, the dread and loathing I felt toward contacts was balanced by a sudden affection toward glasses to match,” she added.

“You mean, like...?”

“I found myself wishing that people would associate me with my glasses so strongly, they would tease me by asking what happened to my cape and costume when I took them off.”

“That’s what affection means to you?!”

“Oh, and I’ve developed an intense distaste for ramen as well.”

“Because it’d fog your glasses?! You know there are plenty of people who wear glasses and love ramen, right?!”

“I’m also hoping that at some point, I’ll be so surprised that my eyeballs bulge out of my skull and crack through my glasses’ lenses.”

“There’s something seriously messed up about your relationship with your glasses, I swear!”

Sweeping the details of that exchange under the rug for the moment, one thing was clear: Sayumi had turned into a glasses person. It was a trifling change, but a change nonetheless. This’ll probably only make sense to a certain subset of people, but it was like she’d been hit by the Power to Change One’s Opponent into a Lover of Glasses.

“I’ve harbored doubts about my transformation since this morning, but I didn’t consider it too terribly grave of a matter...that is, until I learned about what had happened to Chifuyu. It seems clear that this is far more serious than the simple alteration of one’s personal preferences.”

I had to agree. Chifuyu’s case was what had pushed the incident over the final line into something that couldn’t be ignored. A grade schooler turning into a high schooler was so outlandish, it could only be called a supernatural phenomenon—and that wasn’t even the worst of it.

“The fact that everyone has changed overnight is a problem, of course...but it’s just as concerning—if not more so—that nobody has noticed the changes that have occurred,” said Sayumi.

The changes to our world had flown completely beneath the radar. Everyone was acting as if they’d always been this way. They were treating the abnormal as commonplace. Sayumi and I were the only exceptions—the two of us aside, everyone had simply adapted and moved along.

“I’m so glad that you realized what was happening, Sayumi,” I said. “I was starting to really doubt myself before I ran into you. Like, I was seriously starting to worry that all my memories about how things should be were all just part of a really elaborate dream I had last night, or something.”

“I’d like to say you were overthinking the matter...but circumstances being as they are, I suppose I can’t dismiss the possibility out of hand,” said Sayumi. “And, in fact, it’s still entirely possible that the two of us have simply gone mad together.”

She was certainly right about that. It was still very much on the table that we, rather than the world, had changed...but having two people in the same situation was still worlds apart from going it alone. The knowledge that I wasn’t completely isolated in my disbelief was powerfully reassuring. It made a world of difference to have someone on your side who saw things the way you did.

“There’s definitely something supernatural going on...so, do you think some sort of power caused this?” I asked.

“It’s the only reasonable explanation that comes to mind,” Sayumi agreed. Blaming everything weird that happened around us on a supernatural power felt just as lazy as explaining away everything you can’t make sense of by saying “A wizard did it,” but it really was the only rational conclusion.

“It’s been about a year since we got our powers, right? Maybe... Nah, that probably has nothing to do with it. If this had happened exactly a year afterward, I’d figure some sort of anniversary event was going on, but we’re just not close enough for that,” I muttered to myself before a thought struck me. “Come to think of it, what did you do on our powers’ one-year anniversary, Sayumi?”

“Hm? Nothing in particular,” Sayumi replied with an air of casual indifference.

I very nearly passed out from sheer shock. “Y-You didn’t do anything?! You didn’t commemorate the one-year anniversary of your power’s awakening at all?!”

“Correct. Is something the matter, Andou? You sound agitated.”

“But... But it was the one-year anniversary! That basically means it was our powers’ birthday, for crying out loud! And you didn’t do anything?!”

Sayumi paused for a moment to give me a look. “Let me turn that question around on you, Andou. Did you do something to celebrate?”

“Yeah. I threw Dark and Dark a party.”

“You threw your power a birthday party?!” Sayumi repeated, her eyes wide with stupefied horror. They didn’t actually bulge out of her skull and shatter her glasses, but the expression was definitely on that general level of astonishment. She looked like she’d just glanced out a window and seen an alien walking around outside.

“Yup,” I replied. “It was Dark and Dark’s first birthday party, so I went pretty all out putting it together.”

I’d stopped by a few stores on my way home from school to pick up a cake and some party poppers, plus origami paper and balloons to decorate my room with, then threw my malevolent power, Dark and Dark, the party to end all parties. Maybe it was weird to throw a party for something I literally just described as malevolent, but come on—I loved my power to pieces, so of course I would!

So, yeah—Dark and Dark and I had had our own party, all by ourselves. I’d written out a message in chocolate on the cake, by the way. My initial plan had been to ask the bakery to do it, but when I explained what I’d wanted written, the cashier had just given me a look, so I’d ended up buying a kit and doing it myself. The end result: a bar of dark chocolate with “Happy Birthday, Dark and Dark” written on it in white chocolate. The elaborate cursive I’d written the “Dark and Dark” part in was really hard to get just right, and it’d taken me five tries before I was satisfied, but it was totally worth it in the end.

“...Then I sang happy birthday to Dark and Dark, we played games together, I gave a speech about how grateful I was for everything it did for me—you know, just normal birthday stuff.”

“My understanding of the phrase ‘normal birthday stuff’ feels like it’s about to collapse catastrophically,” said Sayumi. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she looked so repulsed. “Andou...at the absolute least, couldn’t you have invited the rest of us to participate? The image of you celebrating a birthday all on your own—well, on your own with the exception of your power—is unbelievably tragic, and it could’ve been avoided if you’d just called us.”

“Huh? No way. What are you even talking about? This was Dark and Dark’s very first birthday, so of course it’d be a private occasion for the two of us!”

“Andou...” Sayumi sighed. “Do you consider Dark and Dark to be your lover? Because you’re certainly treating it that way.”

“Hmph! And, wait a second... Judging by the way you’ve been reacting so far... D-Don’t tell me you didn’t acknowledge your power’s birthday at all?”

“I did not,” Sayumi stated, bluntly and somewhat indignantly.

I was flabbergasted. “H-How could you...? Just what do you take your power for?!”

“A power. What else?”

“D-Don’t tell me Route of Origin told you that it wouldn’t mind if you didn’t do anything for its birthday and you took it seriously? That’s the worst mistake you could make! When a girl says something like that, you always have to assume she’s actually hoping that you’re gonna surprise her, deep down!”

“I cannot for the life of me understand why I’m receiving the sort of advice that men get regarding their first girlfriends from you, of all people.”

“Oooh, I get it! It all makes sense now! All the weird stuff that’s happening today is because Route of Origin’s running out of control! You didn’t do anything for its birthday, and now it’s throwing a tantrum over it! Makes sense, right?”

Sayumi let out a deep, deep sigh. “I would appreciate it, Andou, if you would treat this situation with the gravity it deserves and discuss it seriously.”

“Can do,” I replied. “Yeah, you’re probably right—Route of Origin isn’t the sort of power that’d throw a tantrum over something as petty as a missed birthday party. It’s the most broad-minded, tolerant, and mature of all the powers in our group, after all.”

“Please...let’s move on. Let that be the last birthday-related comment for the time being,” said Sayumi, who was apparently well and truly tired of the subject.

“What else could be causing this? I guess it could be the work of someone else’s power? Like, someone not in our group?” I said, proposing the first idea that came to mind. “Like, someone somehow got a supernatural power of some sort and decided to use it on our school to do something for some reason?”

“There were far too many ‘somes’ in that hypothesis for me to make much of it in particular...but I suppose I can’t deny the possibility,” Sayumi admitted.

“If we assume that this mystery person has the ability to figure out who does and doesn’t have powers, then it would explain why only people with powers—meaning, literary club people and Kudou—were affected. Of course, that raises the question of why I wasn’t impacted at all,” I continued.

“If we’re to assume that this situation is the work of someone’s power, then what sort of objective would they be hoping to accomplish through it?” asked Sayumi. “We haven’t been attacked in any meaningful sense of the word—the alteration of our personalities strikes me as largely purposeless. What’s the point?”

“I dunno. I think it might still be too early to decide that all they’re doing is altering our personalities. For all we know, this is just the start, and the end result is going to be some totally different phenomenon we have yet to even fathom.”

“While we’re on the subject of hasty assumptions, I believe we might have been too quick to jump to the conclusion that only people with powers were altered. For all we know, other changes have transpired as well that we’re simply not aware of.”

“Ah... Right, true enough.”

I’d been totally prepared to move forward under the assumption that this was a problem for superpowered people exclusively, but it was possible that someone without powers had been impacted as well and I just hadn’t noticed. Maybe it wasn’t limited to this school, even—maybe someone on the other side of the world who I’d never met had had their personality scrambled as well.

Hmm. Yeah, this isn’t getting us anywhere. Our conversation so far had been full of ifs, maybes, and for-all-we-knows. We weren’t getting anywhere close to an actual theory. The scale of the incident was just too large compared to the quantity of information we had to work with. Of course we wouldn’t be able to come up with a concrete theory when we didn’t even have a satisfactory grasp of what was happening to us—all we could do was bring up one baseless piece of speculation after another. Theories needed a concrete basis to rest upon that we couldn’t provide. We were basically just piling up wild guesses like a house of cards.

“I believe we should narrow our focus to a single core point,” said Sayumi. “We don’t have the capability to view the phenomenon in its totality, so if we try to discuss the big picture, it’s inevitable that our theories will end up vague and superficial.”

A single core point, huh? “Okay, then—let’s approach this situation from another angle,” I said, making like George Joestar and changing my viewpoint. “Instead of thinking about why everyone’s changed, let’s think about why I haven’t changed. Figuring out the cause of the change might be tough, but the cause of the lack of change might be easier to boil down, right?”

“The cause of your lack of change...?” Sayumi repeated thoughtfully.

“That, or the reason we were able to perceive the changes. Why are the two of us the only ones who can tell that something’s up?” Nobody else, altered or not, seemed to perceive the alterations. Sayumi and I were the only exceptions.

“Why are we the only ones who don’t see the situation as normal? Well, to start, I believe the most natural hypothesis would be one we’ve already discussed: that the two of us, rather than the world at large, have lost our minds,” Sayumi declared with a sardonic smile. “Are you familiar with the five-minute hypothesis, Andou?”

“Of course I am! You know I love that sorta stuff,” I replied.

The five-minute hypothesis was more or less exactly what it said on the tin: a thought experiment centered around the hypothesis that the whole of existence was created exactly five minutes ago. The theory itself is downright farcical...and yet, when all’s said and done, it’s surprisingly hard to definitively disprove. Sure, you can say “That’s not true—I remember stuff that happened more than five minutes ago,” but when you factor in the possibility that all of your memories of the nonexistent past were created at the same moment the rest of the world was, it becomes a lot harder to argue against. Maybe, the argument goes, humanity was simply made to believe that the world had existed for more than five minutes. No person would be exempted from that rule, meaning that completely refuting the theory isn’t technically possible from a human perspective.

“We have no means of directly perceiving the world of five minutes ago, but let’s consider, for a moment, a scenario in which precisely one person in the world was aware that the world had come into being a mere five minutes beforehand. That person, I’m sure, would raise their voice and shout to the high heavens that everyone else was wrong—and yet, the world at large would surely not hesitate to tell them that, no, they were mistaken.”

“So the one person who knows the truth would end up getting cast out like an iconoclast?” I muttered. The implication didn’t escape me: we had found ourselves in that very hypothetical scenario. The vast majority of humanity had let the changes made to the world pass them by—only we could call them out.

“The world was altered rather than created, in our case, but that’s no different on a fundamental level,” said Sayumi. “Being part of what is, in all likelihood, an extreme minority that is aware that the world has gone wrong makes us the current iconoclasts. Society at large believes that this is the world we’ve always lived in, and a change that you can’t perceive doesn’t come across as any sort of change at all.”

“So change is in the eye of the beholder, basically? A change is only a change when you perceive it, and if no one ever perceives it, it’ll never be regarded as a change at all... Is it just me, or is this kinda getting into Schrödinger’s cat territory?”

Schrödinger’s cat was a thought experiment so famous and so frequently referenced by many sources—me included—that explaining it in detail would kinda feel like beating a dead horse. The important part for this purpose is that its essence revolves not around the question of whether or not the cat in the box is alive or dead, but rather around the idea that the nature of all things can only be determined through observation. Until the box is opened, the cat is neither alive nor dead—only after the box is open and the cat is observed is its nature set in stone. That’s an extremely rough and simplified version of the implications of the thought experiment from a quantum theory perspective, anyway.

“We’re the observers in this equation who establish that the world has changed,” I began, “but on the flip side, if we couldn’t be observers because we hadn’t noticed the changes—if nobody had noticed them—then those changes wouldn’t count as change to begin with. Whether the world was created five minutes ago or altered overnight, as long as nobody notices, then you may as well say that nothing’s changed at all.”

“The intersection between the five-minute hypothesis and Schrödinger’s cat? That is an interesting line of thought. You may well be right, Andou. For all we know, this world has been altered countless times before without us having ever noticed,” Sayumi said with a nod. She seemed intrigued, but a moment later, a somewhat remorseful look came over her face. “I’m sorry—I’ve led this conversation in a less than constructive direction. This has nothing to do with our actual circumstances anymore.”

“Nah, it’s fine!” I replied. “I mean, we can’t say for sure whether it has anything to do with the situation or not, and it was fun to talk about regardless.”

“It was?”

“I mean, like I said earlier, I love this sorta stuff.”

Schrödinger’s cat, Hempel’s paradox, probatio diabolica, the Ship of Theseus, Zeno’s paradoxes, Laplace’s demon, the theory of fundamental goodness, the theory of fundamental evil, cogito ergo sum, the plank of Carneades, the sword of Damocles—the list went on and on, but the point is that I absolutely adored all those philosophical anecdotes and thought experiments. Their names and nuances made my heart leap with joy. Of course, my understanding of said nuances was most likely surface level at most. I was ranting and raving about how amazing the tip of the philosophical iceberg was, and I knew it, but that didn’t change the fact that I liked what I liked, and it didn’t diminish my joy in learning about it.

“It’s kinda shocking how rarely you get a chance to talk about this stuff, though,” I said. “Or rather, it’s shocking how rarely anyone’ll give you the time of day when you try talking about it. Most of the time when I bring stuff like this up, people’s eyes glaze over before I know it.”

“I recall discussing this with you before, actually. You said that you’d explained the theories of fundamental goodness and evil to your sister, and her reaction was to ask you ‘So what?’”

Oh, right. I guess I did tell Sayumi about that when she came over to my house during summer break.

Normally, when I tried to bring up the philosophical matters that I enjoyed so much, people would ask “So what?” and that would be the end of it. More often than not, they wouldn’t identify with my excitement at all.

“Really, I consider myself lucky when someone actually listens to what I’m trying to tell them before they bust out the so-whats,” I said. “Some people just ignore me entirely or shut the conversation down partway through. A lot of people have started going all, ‘LOL, here we go again’ the second I bring up Schrödinger’s cat lately too.”

“I certainly understand your perspective,” said Sayumi, “but I’m afraid this is something you can do very little to fix. Everyone has subjects that they’re simply not interested in, after all.”

“Yeah, nothing I can do about it. It’s probably silly of me to think that anyone would take me seriously anyway, considering I barely know what I’m talking about and don’t have the knack for describing stuff well either,” I said. “But, y’know...you always listen to me, Sayumi.”

Sayumi seemed to pause as my words sank in.

“Whenever I go off about weird philosophical problems and thought experiments, or when I start rambling about my own little theories, you don’t brush me off or make fun of me. You actually listen,” I continued.

If I’m being completely honest, I’d come up with wildly outlandish theories and posited completely mistaken facts in front of Sayumi more than just a handful of times. Every time I’d go off on one of those tangents, however, she’d play along and match me point for point. She’d never shut me down without letting me explain myself—instead, she’d listen carefully to the end, then contribute her own opinion. Sometimes, she’d correct my mistakes and misunderstandings; sometimes she’d bring up new topics that would instantly draw my attention; and sometimes, she’d even make it clear that she just plain identified with my opinion.

“I...feel like I’ve made fun of you on quite a fair number of occasions, actually,” said Sayumi.

“Ha ha ha! I mean, yeah, you tease me pretty often, but, like... I dunno, it just feels different. You’re always messing with me, not attacking me.”

“Hee hee! Yes, that’s true. Messing with you is most enjoyable, after all,” Sayumi said with a smile tinged with just a hint of sadistic glee. After everything that I’d discovered had changed over the course of that morning, seeing that familiar expression on her face was almost a relief. I found myself smiling as well before I knew it.

“Yeah, I enjoy it too,” I said. “Talking with you is always super fun.”

“...”

“I always learn a ton too, and I feel like it’s making me into a better speaker long term. And, I mean, it’s just so plain fun that I’d like it if we could— Uh, Sayumi? What’s going on? Why’re you hiding your face like that?”

“I-It’s nothing at all!” Sayumi shouted, her voice slightly cracking as she buried her face even deeper into her arms.

Huh. Wonder if something’s wrong with her glasses, or what?

We kept talking for quite some time after that, but in the end, we didn’t manage to come up with any sort of viable plan and left the literary club’s room just a little before third period ended. Neither of us felt great about the prospect of skipping two classes in a row, and we’d also come to the conclusion that no amount of discussion would help, considering how little information we had to go on.

For the time being, we’d return to our usual school lives and focus on learning as much as we possibly could. That meant carefully observing the people around me, doing my best to figure out whether any of them were acting differently than they usually do, and also checking in on the friends we knew had been altered to see how their conditions were progressing. I didn’t know whether any of that would actually help, but for the time being, it was all we could do.

“Man, though—it really does feel weird to be wandering around the school while classes are in session. It’s making me feel, like, nervous and hyped up at the same time,” I muttered to myself as I made for my classroom...

“Huh? Oh, if it isn’t Andou!”

...only to stop in my tracks as an amiable voice rang out from the direction of the school’s entryway.

“Isn’t there a class going on right now? What are you doing out here? Are you late? Or cutting class? Either way, that’s not very like you, is it? We cut class together a lot in middle school, but you’ve been a real model student since we got into high school, haven’t you?”

“...”

“Oh, me? I just got here. Overslept and ended up late—the usual story! I decided to start playing the demo for a new game from one of my favorite devs last night, and the download took an eternity to finish up, honestly. I’m talking over three hours, start to finish! I actually fell asleep partway through playing it, pants around my ankles and everything. It’s a wonder I didn’t catch a cold.”

“...”

“Eroge demos tend to be pretty sizable these days, you know? A lot of them don’t just include the prologue or part of the main route—they actually let you go all the way up to the first sex scenes, most of the time! Sometimes they’ll even put in one scene for each of the heroines and stuff like that.”

“...”

“That’s the sort of demo I was playing this time...but horror of horrors, it turned out that one of the heroines wasn’t a virgin. They actually put that reveal in the demo! Normally I’d be able to tell in an instant when there’s a nonvirgin heroine in a game and avoid her route like the plague, but all the other heroines were just so good in this one! Agh, honestly... I just don’t know what to do anymore. I really think those companies need to start drawing a line in the sand about this. There should be all-virgin games and no-virgin games, and they should make which are which clear from the outset! I mean, give me a break, right? Why go with an awkward half-and-half cast when you could go all or nothing? I know there are people out there who get just as weirded out by virgin characters as virginity fetishists like me do by nonvirgins, so that’d make everyone happy! Mixing virgin and nonvirgin heroines in the same game is just...just shady, you know? It’s like they’re trying to rope in both audiences without really satisfying either of them. It really goes to show just how little integrity the devs have! I firmly believe that these things should be kept segregated!”

“...”

I was at a complete loss for words. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I did not want to hear about anyone’s masturbation habits, or that it was super gross to hear him wax philosophical about his virginity fetish. I’d come to expect my conversations with him to devolve into vulgarity in the blink of an eye—and, in fact, they did so on a daily basis—but this time, I found myself frozen stiff and unable to fire off so much as a single snide comment. It had just been one thing after another since that morning, and I’d thought that the repeated curveballs reality had thrown at me had rendered me incapable of being surprised by anything anymore...but the shock I felt in that moment was so powerful, it blew through the resistances I’d built up in the blink of an eye.

“S-Sa... Sagami? I-Is that you? Sagami Shizumu?” I just barely managed to stammer, pushing through my agitation to squeeze out that single question.

“Hmm? Why do you have to ask? Is this a bit?” Sagami asked, his head cocked in confusion. “Who else would I be other than Shizumu of the Sagamis?”

Sagami flashed his usual flippant, superficial smile. Everything about him, from his facial features to his hair color, his expressions, his mannerisms, his tone, his idiosyncrasies, his interests—it all matched up perfectly with those of the outrageous degenerate known as Sagami Shizumu...except for one thing. There was just one detail—just one massive difference that distinguished the Sagami I knew from the one who stood before me. It was a difference so profound and blatant, part of me wanted to scream that it had turned him into a totally different character in an instant.

“Ha ha ha! What’s your deal today, Andou? You’re really staring a hole in my face—and my body, for that matter. I know I don’t act like a girl, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am one, and even I get embarrassed when I get that much attention! Or what, are you trying to stare at me so hard you’ll see through my skirt and catch a peek of my panties?” Sagami said, grasping the hem of his skirt and giving me a flirtatious look accompanied by a playful smile.

It was a truly feminine gesture, which made sense, since he was plainly female. The Sagami who stood before me was, unmistakably, a high school girl, and the fact that I’d actually thought that he—or rather, she—was cute for a split second made me seriously contemplate hurling myself out the nearest open window.

This was far beyond the realm of “unexpected.” Not only had the hypothesis that just people with powers had transformed crumbled into dust, a vital, core component of my very being also felt like it had also collapsed into ruin.

Sagami...had been genderbent. He’d swapped sexes—he was a distinctly boyish girl, but he was a girl nonetheless.

Okay. Yup. This is scream-worthy.

“Who the hell asked for this?!”