Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 10 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Sin Is a Harsh Mistress

The instant our lunch break began, I went out to meet with Sayumi again. We’d ducked into a secluded corner on an unpopulated floor of our school.

“I see,” she said after I wrapped up my report. “Sagami has turned into a young woman...”

Sayumi’s reaction to my informing her of Sagami’s genderbend was an expression of distaste so potent, I could only assume the news had left her physically ill. I knew exactly how that felt. I was still sick to my stomach.

Having a guy I was acquainted with suddenly become a girl out of the blue was enough to overload my brain on its own, but when that guy was Sagami, a truly phenomenal dose of disgust was added into the mix. It was not a pleasant thought to consider. I actually felt like I might throw up. He hadn’t looked bad as a girl, to be fair—maybe on account of the fact that he’d had a pretty androgynous sort of look to begin with. In fact, I would’ve gone as far as to call him downright pretty...if it weren’t for the fact that internally, he was still the same nauseatingly vulgar pervert as ever.

“Ugh, I really am sleepy! Math-class-right-after-swimming levels of sleepy, even. I guess it’s never a good idea to jerk it before school, no matter how horny you are when you wake up. It’s weird, though—why does rubbing one out make you so tired? You know what I mean, don’t you, Andou? Some nights when you just can’t seem to get to sleep and you know that you have to be up early tomorrow, all you have to do is knock one out real quick, then you’re out like a light, right? That’s gotta be universal. I think every guy’s done that at least once...but on the other hand, isn’t it just wrong, somehow? It’s, like...disrespectful to the essence of masturbation, don’t you think?”

Hearing the sort of casual vulgarity that would make even guys cringe coming out of the mouth of a girl had left me at a complete loss for a reaction. If this was a parallel world, I really had to wonder just what sort of relationship the parallel me and Sagami had had.

“But wait, Andou. Are we absolutely certain that Sagami’s transformed into a woman? It seems possible that he could simply be cross-dressing, for instance,” said Sayumi.

“Nah, I’m pretty sure he’s a girl through and through,” I replied. “His face and body both seemed more feminine, somehow, and his voice is super cutesy and high-pitched now.”

“Still—maybe we should check, just to be certain?”

“Check how?”

“By flipping his skirt, for instance.”

“...No.”

I did not want to do that. I was genuinely, earnestly not interested. I would’ve rather died. It didn’t matter whether he’d actually become a girl or he was a cross-dressing guy—either way, I could only see the deepest depths of hell lying in wait for me at the end of that path.

“That suggestion was a joke, of course,” Sayumi casually added.

“Please don’t make jokes like that, seriously” I groaned. “I actually ended up picturing it for a split second.”

“For the time being, let’s proceed under the assumption that Sagami is currently a woman,” said Sayumi. “Whether or not his physical sex has actually changed is hardly pertinent. What is worthy of our attention is the fact that he—an individual who is not in possession of a supernatural power—has changed at all.”

That really was the key point. We’d been under the impression that only people with powers had been altered, but Sagami getting thrown into the mix had torn that idea down by its foundations. It was one of the very few seemingly valuable conclusions we’d come to in this incomprehensibly out-there situation, and it had now been proved hopelessly wrong. The whole basis of our working theory had been uprooted, leaving us to start from a blank slate.

There was always the chance that Sagami secretly did have a power, I guess. I saw the odds of that as being really low, but knowing what sort of person Sagami Shizumu was, I couldn’t discount the possibility entirely. He had a particular sort of troublesome personality that made it pretty easy to imagine him casually dropping an “Oh, by the way, I have a superpower,” into a conversation.

“I suppose that in the end, all we can do is devote ourselves to gathering information,” Sayumi ultimately concluded.

Gathering information, huh? I wasn’t opposed to that, per se...but something was bothering me: Sayumi’s attitude. I didn’t quite know how to put it—it was almost as if she wasn’t taking the situation entirely seriously. Gathering information certainly wasn’t a bad plan, but it didn’t strike me as being the most effective course of action either. It was like we were just treading water, or pushing the problem down the road.

Normally, when something goes wrong like this, Sayumi would be the one to take the reins and put together a calm and effective plan to... Actually, no, I shouldn’t think like this. She’s incredible, sure, but I’m expecting way too much from her right now.

We’d been dropped headfirst into a confusing mess of a situation. It would throw anyone off their game—leave anyone in a state of befuddlement. Why would I be at all surprised that Sayumi wasn’t able to step up and perform like she usually did? She was just so dependable that I’d developed an unfortunate habit of relying on her as a result...but, in the end, she was still just a kid, the same as I was. And moreover, she wasn’t even our club president anymore. I couldn’t let myself impose on her forever, and I knew it.

“Huh? Chifuyu?”

I’d decided to start out by probing everyone who I knew for a fact had been affected, only to run into a certain familiar little girl in the hallway before I’d even started looking. Though, really, calling her a little girl wasn’t the best description at this particular moment—she was, after all, currently a high schooler whose appearance I wasn’t used to at all yet.

“What’re you doing out in the hall?” I asked as I walked up to Chifuyu. Hmm. Yeah, it sure does feel pretty weird to not have to look down to make eye contact.

“Oh, Andou—good,” Chifuyu said with a look of relief in her eyes. “I got lost.”

“Lost?” I repeated.

“Yeah. I couldn’t figure out how to get around here at all.”

“Ahh, right—I guess you’ve mentioned getting lost at school sometimes, haven’t you?”

“Yeah...but it feels a little different today...I think?” Chifuyu said, her voice trembling slightly. “It feels like...I’ve never been to this school before. I’ve been coming here every day, but it just feels that way anyway...”

Chifuyu’s anxious words snapped me immediately to attention. Oh, of course! This is nothing like how she usually gets lost in her elementary school. After all, she’s a high schooler now!

Chifuyu had been to the literary club’s room time after time, but she’d only actually been to the part of the school where the classrooms and staff room were found on a handful of occasions, at most. It made total sense that she wouldn’t have a clear understanding of how to navigate the building, and it was no wonder she felt like she’d never been here before, in spite of the fact that she’d supposedly been going to school here on a daily basis.

You hear people talk about déjà vu a lot, but there’s a word for the opposite sensation as well: jamais vu, the inexplicable sense that you’re experiencing something for the first time when, in truth, you’ve done it many times before. I had a feeling that phrase summed up the sensation Chifuyu was feeling pretty nicely.

“I feel weird today, I think,” said Chifuyu as she pressed a hand to her breast. “My chest sort of hurts.”

“Y-Your chest? Are you, like, okay? What sort of pain are we talking?” I asked.

“It’s like...when I run, or move around a lot, it starts bouncing around and hurts.”

I froze. How was I supposed to react to that? I’d assumed that this was a psychological sort of distress—like, chest pain brought about by stress or despair, or something—but no, it turned out it was actually purely physical.

“It’s weird,” said Chifuyu. “Have my boobs always been like this?”

“Um, Chifuyu...? Would you please try not to squeeze your chest like that? It’s making it really hard to, y’know, look at you,” I pleaded, but Chifuyu kept right at it, groping away with a sort of quizzical look on her face.

Not just groping, actually—she threw in some shaking, lifting, and pinching as well. It was like she wasn’t totally convinced her chest was part of her own body, and I could see her breasts—which were by no means small—squish and shift with each motion. And I mean, like, a lot. Like, way more than you’d think they would, considering she was wearing her uniform’s jacket. I was instantly struck by a terrible premonition.

“H-Hey, Chifuyu...? I’m about to ask you a really uncomfortable question, so I apologize in advance, okay? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, and if you feel the urge to punch me out or whatever, feel free,” I said. The preamble was out of the way—now, I just had to steel my resolve and ask away. “Are you...wearing a bra today?”

“Uh-uh,” Chifuyu grunted, seemingly indifferent to the fact that my question was teetering right on the brink of open sexual harassment. It was simultaneously the worst and best answer I could’ve expected. “I’ve never worn a bra.”

I choked on nothing. Never?! Seriously?! A high school girl with a figure like that, going perpetually braless?! Surely that has to violate some sort of public decency standard!

“Mom and Shiharu say it’s too early for me to wear one,” Chifuyu continued. “They say that they’ll buy me some when I start middle school and my boobs grow a little.”

“Right, but...you’re a high schooler, aren’t you?”

“Ah. Right,” Chifuyu said as a mystified look came across her face. “Why am I not wearing a bra?” she muttered anxiously, once again groping at her chest. It was a motion that could’ve surely gathered the gazes of men for miles around, but my mind was too occupied by a completely different matter for me to really register it.

A crack was rapidly beginning to show. Chifuyu’s cleavage—ahem, Chifuyu’s character was beginning to strain, and the cracks were becoming more and more apparent by the moment, as the details of her backstory grew more and more warped. The elementary-school-aged Chifuyu who I knew so well was beginning to shine through the gaps in her high school-aged exterior.

My mind drifted back to the five-minute hypothesis. Let’s assume for a moment that everything I remembered up until the night before was accurate—that all my memories represented real experiences rather than delusions or fantasies. If that was true, then it seemed likely that that morning, Chifuyu had been altered in such a way as to make her have retroactively been a high schooler all along. That seemed to explain the Chifuyu I was currently speaking to nicely...but if that was the case, then it seemed very probable that the modification had been flawed. Those flaws were why I’d been able to recognize the change in her character, and why she herself was starting to harbor doubts as well.

It struck me that the situation I’d been thrown into was, potentially, much more dangerous than I’d given it credit for. The world, I now realized, was unstable...and there was no telling when it might collapse under its own weight.

I ended up leading Chifuyu back to our classroom...or at least, leading her partway there.

“Ah! There you are, darling! I went to visit you in your classroom, but you weren’t there—I’ve been looking everywhere for you! You weren’t responding to my texts and LINEs at all! But anyway, it’s finally lunchtime! Come on, let’s go eat together!”

“Juu! Oh, good. I finally found you. Hey, let’s eat lunch together, okay? I made a boxed lunch for you, full of all your favorite foods. I made the karaage that you told me you liked on the second Monday in June five years ago, and the meat and potato stew that you said you ‘could eat every single day’ on the first Tuesday of October two years ago too.”

To make a long story short, love-drunk Kudou and yandere Hatoko had caught up to me, so all four of us wound up eating lunch together. Both Kudou and Hatoko had been trying to get ahold of me by phone, by the way, but I’d set mine to silent mode and hadn’t noticed at all. Why had I done that? Because the two of them had been spamming me with a genuinely ungodly number of messages, even before lunchtime had rolled around. Both of them had started messaging me no more than five minutes after we’d split up that morning. I wasn’t ignoring the texts maliciously, to be clear, and I hadn’t left them on read either. I was just...well, just too terrified to bring myself to look at them, that’s all.

So, yeah—basically, Kudou and Hatoko were both coming on way too strong. I wasn’t nearly brave enough to eat in the classroom with both the two of them and Chifuyu, so we all ended up making our way to the literary club’s room for lunch instead.

“Okay, darling, say aah!”

“Open wide, Juu!”

Two bites of food—a piece of rolled omelet (made by Kudou) from one side and a piece of karaage (made by Hatoko) from the other—bore down upon me...

“Ahm! Ahm!”

...and were quickly intercepted and devoured by Chifuyu, who stuffed her little cheeks completely full with both bites, chewed, and gulped them down.

“Mmh. That was great,” said Chifuyu. “Thanks, Kudou, Hatoko.”

A deafening silence descended upon the room. Kudou and Hatoko scowled as they loaded up another round (of food) and took aim once more, holding their chopsticks with the grace and precision of a pair of trained snipers...

“Ahm! Ahm!”

...but it was no use. Chifuyu’s defenses were impenetrable.

“Grr... Hey, Chifuyu!” shouted Kudou. “Why are you stopping me from expressing my love for my darling?!”

“If you want to feed Andou, you have to defeat me first,” Chifuyu defiantly replied.

“Okay then, Chifuyu—can you block this?” piped up Hatoko.

“Ugh... Hatoko, feeding him peppers is cheating.”

“Don’t worry! The peppers were stewed in the meat and potato stew, so they’re really tasty, even if they are a little bitter! Come on, don’t be picky! Eat up!”

“That’s right, Chifuyu,” chimed in Kudou. “You’ll never grow up if you don’t eat your vegetables! I’m sure your teacher scolds you if you don’t finish them when they serve veggies with your school lunch, right?”

“No,” Chifuyu said with a shake of her head. “Cookie eats them for me, so it’s always fine.”

Before I knew it, the three of them had started chatting away happily. I’d been in a majorly tough spot when Hatoko and Kudou had tried to feed me simultaneously, but being ignored entirely was hard to deal with in its own sort of way. Then again, that slight sense of isolation was nothing compared to the sense that something was distinctly wrong as I watched them chat.

Hatoko and Kudou were both treating Chifuyu, a high schooler, as if she were an elementary-school-aged child—and as best as I could tell, none of them had even noticed. The cracks really were starting to show, both in their characters and in the world itself.

“Is something wrong, Juu?” Hatoko asked. My anxiety must’ve shown through in my expression. “You look like you’re watching a comedian who’d made it big after one of their signature gags caught on, gotten invited onto a talk show, then had a sudden crisis onstage when they realized they didn’t know whether to act like the character from their famous bit or their actual, genuine self!”

“What sort of look is that?!” I yelped reflexively, but a moment later, it struck me that Hatoko’s comparison was actually pretty apt, in a sense. It wasn’t so much that I felt like something was out of place as I felt an impatient sort of unease. They were all acting like their personalities had been altered, but at the same time, their acts were flawed. I was feeling the restless frustration of watching someone play an unpolished, inconsistent representation of a character I knew.

“Are you feeling sick, darling?”

“Nah, I’m fine,” I said after a moment of hesitation. “Don’t worry about me, Kudou.”

“Well, all right... But,” Kudou added with an irate pout and a pointed glare.

“Ah, uh... Mirei?” I frantically corrected myself.

Kudou’s expression, however, didn’t change this time. “Are you really that opposed to calling me by name?” she grumbled.

“N-No, I’m not against it! I’m just not used to it, that’s all...”

“You call everyone in the literary club by their names. You’re always so friendly with them.”

“Please stop sulking, okay...? It’s not like there’s some big reason why I use their given names. It just sort of happened...”

“Really? So you didn’t start using all of their given names because you were interested in someone in particular, but knew that singling just one of them out to call by name would make it obvious who you were aiming for?”

“You’re reading way, way too deep into this!”

“Hmph! Well, I’m not going to doubt your word, one way or another. I’ll try to do better,” said Kudou. “But while we’re on the subject, why did you join the literary club, darling?”

“Huh?” I grunted.

“The literary club. Why did you decide to join it?”

“Oh... I mean, it’s not like I had one big, clear reason for it, or anything. This is gonna sound sorta rude, but it was more or less process of elimination for me,” I explained.

With hindsight, I was incredibly glad I’d decided to join the club, of course, but I hadn’t had the sort of motive for choosing it that you could really make a story out of. If it weren’t for our school’s policy that mandated all its students join some sort of club, I probably would’ve just gone home in the afternoons instead.

“I wasn’t into the idea of joining a sports club at all, so I started by looking through the cultural clubs... But, like, the brass band club and the chorus club seemed to take things super seriously, which I wasn’t into either. I wanted something with a pretty small number of members where I could kinda just take it easy. I’d ended up finding the art club, the computer club, and the Go club, and I was thinking of joining one of them,” I said, then I glanced over at a certain childhood friend of mine who’d already picked her club out at the time. “But then Hatoko invited me to join the literary club, and the rest is history.”

Indeed, Hatoko was the one who had pulled me into the literary club. That was common knowledge—the sort of factoid that would be written in my character profile on our anime’s promotional website—but looking back on it, I was shocked to realize that I’d never really had a proper conversation with her about the circumstances of my recruitment.

“Come to think of it, Hatoko, why did you decide to join the literary club?” I asked. I remembered her mentioning that she just hadn’t felt like playing soft tennis in high school, but I realized that I’d never actually learned why she’d picked the literary club in particular to replace it. It wasn’t like she was especially into reading or writing, so it seemed like an odd choice.

“Hmm. Well, I didn’t really have a reason either. It was process of elimination for me too—I’d wanted to join some sort of cultural club, just like you, and I’d picked the literary club in the end because...um...”

At that point, Hatoko seemed to hesitate. She fell silent for a moment, but then she smiled faintly and carried on, slowly and quietly adding, “I guess...I picked it because I wanted to understand you, Juu.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Do you remember the start of our second year in middle school, when I returned that light novel to you? The one I didn’t actually read?”

“Y-Yeah,” I replied. There was no way I could have forgotten it. That incident, after all, was the impetus that had led me to temporarily abandon my chuuni ways.

“Well...the truth is, I had always felt really bad about that.”

“You did? But...why? You didn’t do anything wrong, did you? I was the one who was obsessed with forcing my hobbies off on—”

“Yeah, maybe. You really do try to make people like the things that you do, sometimes. But I think...I might’ve wanted you to push even harder, in my case.”

I fell silent.

“I wanted to be someone you could always be pushy with—someone you could say anything to, no matter how selfish it was. We’re childhood friends, after all,” said Hatoko. “And...that’s why I decided to try joining the literary club. When I’d gone to the club room to check the club out and saw the bookshelves, I’d realized that they were full of light novels just like the one you’d loaned me. I’d thought that if I could read books with you here, and write them too, then maybe...maybe I’d be able to understand you just a little better.”

“So, you joined the literary club for me...?” I asked.

“No, not for you,” said Hatoko with a shake of her head. “I joined it for myself. To solve a problem that was eating at me.”

Once more, I didn’t know what to say.

“Of course, in the end, I didn’t figure much of anything out after all!” Hatoko said, doing her best to laugh the matter off, but I felt like I could still hear a hint of gloom in her voice. I knew for a fact that it wasn’t just the result of her being in yandere mode today either. “Sorry, Juu. I’m a real pain sometimes, aren’t I? I’d always thought it was annoying when you’d try to get me into your hobbies, honestly, but then when you stopped—for my sake—I ended up wanting you to start doing it again. Talk about obnoxious, right...?”

“Wrong,” I said. I put my foot down, clearly and immediately. “I mean, okay, maybe it was a pain in a sense, but it’s a sort of pain that everyone ends up turning into sometimes.”

I was no exception. Deep down, I’m sure that some part of me had known that Hatoko would never understand the things that I liked, but I’d still extolled the virtues of my favorite media and shown off the cool names and poses that I’d made up to her at every chance. I’d done it because I’d wanted her to understand me—and, to the same extent, because I hadn’t wanted her to understand me. I’d been a pain in the very particular sort of way that chuunis like me tended to.

“And anyway,” I continued, “you don’t always have to be the one getting stuff pushed off onto you, y’know? You can return the favor sometimes! I feel the same way you do—I want you to get pushy about the stuff you like sometimes.”

“Huh?” Hatoko grunted.

“What’s with the blank stare? Isn’t that obvious? I’m your childhood friend as much as you are mine! I wouldn’t cut you out of my life just because you were being a bit of a pain—come on!”

“Yeah... Yeah, of course you wouldn’t.”

“Right?”

“I’ve thought that you were being a huuuge pain plenty of times myself...but we’re still together anyway, aren’t we?”

“Yeah... Wait, a huge pain?! Plenty of times?! Am I really that obnoxious?”

“...”

“Why’d you clam up?! It’s that bad?!”

My reaction, apparently, was just too over the top for Hatoko to take. She cracked up, and seconds later, I was laughing along with her.

“She’s not one of my beloved waifus. She’s an obnoxious, pain-in-the-ass real-world girl.”

I suddenly remembered what Sagami had said about Hatoko, back when I’d learned about a side of her personality I’d never taken notice of before. I’d learned just how hard she’d been trying to understand me, and just how much pain her inability to do so had caused her.

Choosing a club was one of the biggest events in a student’s high school career, and Hatoko had used it to further her quest to understand me. Some people would probably think that made her a pain. They’d say it was a weirdly heavy thing of her to have done, most likely. I, however, was delighted by that sort of obnoxiousness. It made me feel more fond of her than ever. I was proud that my childhood friend would go to such lengths—more so than anyone else—just to understand me.

Hatoko wasn’t in her right mind today, sure, but looking back, I was mortified that I’d decided to boil down her weirdness by saying she’d gone yandere on me. Hatoko was no yandere—the version of her I’d known up until now and the version of her I’d come to know today weren’t such simple and straightforward people to be summed up in a single word like that, no matter what word it was. She was earnest, dedicated, honest, and just a bit of an excessively heavy pain in the rear...and above all else, she was just Hatoko, plain and simple.

After that, the three of us enjoyed the rest of our lunch period in calm and quiet...or that’s what I’d thought would happen, until reality had surprised me yet again with another mid-meal disturbance. It’d happened as Hatoko and Kudou were busy feeding me the handmade lunches they’d brought.

“Kye ki ki!”

The next thing I knew, a girl with silvery hair and a pair of round sunglasses was standing right in front of me.

“What the— T-Tomoyo?!” I yelped.

“Nay, not Tomoyo. I am Endless Paradox!” Tomoyo shouted, flicking her unnaturally colored hair and swishing her coat with a satisfying snap.

I had no clue what was going on, so to start, I tried to get a grasp of my surroundings. I was not, it seemed, sitting in the club room anymore. Somehow, I’d ended up sitting on a small flight of stairs behind the club building, where students didn’t tend to go very often.

“Did you...?” I began, then shook my head. “Nah, not like I even have to ask. You used Closed Clock and carried me here, right?”

“Kye ki ki! Insightful as ever, Guiltia,” Tomoyo replied. “Yours is a keen eye to have seen through my methods!”

“I mean, I’m kinda just used to it at this point. Wasn’t hard to figure out. Me suddenly being in a totally different place and you being out of breath are both dead giveaways.”

“I-I am not out of breath!” Tomoyo shouted, which just made the fact that she was a bit out of breath all the more obvious. Closed Clock was a fearsome power indeed, but moving something while time was stopped still required a fair amount of heavy lifting on its user’s part.

“I’m actually kinda impressed you carried me all the way out here,” I said. “Hauling a teenage guy all the way through the school couldn’t have been easy, right?”

“Hmph! Your concern is unwarranted,” said Tomoyo. “I’ve memorized the locations of all the carts and trolleys in the school for precisely these occasions!”

“Just how much groundwork have you put into this...?” I sighed. Glancing around us, I noticed what looked like tire tracks—from, say, a handcart—on the ground nearby. She seriously carted me over here? I mean, I guess it’s better than if she’d dragged me along the ground.

Clearly, Tomoyo had spared no effort in ensuring she’d be able to show off her time-stopping power to its fullest potential. She’d made up for her lack of muscle mass through sheer ingenuity. It hadn’t been a bad idea on her part, by any means, but something about it still struck me as fundamentally stupid for reasons I couldn’t quite seem to articulate.

“So, what do you want, anyway?” I asked.

“I-I, well,” Tomoyo stammered, her arrogant persona vanishing into the ether as a helpless anxiety moved in to replace it. She reached up to pop her coat’s collar, partially concealing her face, while at the same time reaching behind her back with her other hand to produce...

“...A lunch box?”

“Agggh! N-No, no! This isn’t what it looks like!” Tomoyo shrieked as she tried to hide the cloth-wrapped parcel in her oversized coat.

“It isn’t? I mean, what else would it be? That’s totally a lunch box, right?”

“W-Well, it is, but, I mean...”

“Wait, did you want to eat together? You could’ve just joined in with everyone in the club room, you know?”

“Th-The thing is, um... Kye ki ki! I’ve no desire to dine in the presence of others. To eat is to render oneself vulnerable—such is the nature of all life—and so to eat with another is to put your very being at no small amount of risk,” said Tomoyo.

“Huh...? You mean, like, you hide to eat your lunch?”

“I do not!” Tomoyo shrieked as her persona vanished into the wind once again. “I-I’m saying, umm... Th-This!” she said after a few seconds of hesitation so intense and anguished I could see it in her eyes. She pulled out the lunch box she’d hidden in her coat once more and shoved it toward me.

“Uh... What about it?” I asked.

“Y-You, um...should have it for lunch. I’m giving it to you,” Tomoyo explained. I was a little dazed, at that point, but I accepted the box, freeing her hands so she could hide her rapidly reddening face.

“Did you make this?” I asked.

Tomoyo let out a barely audible gasp.

“Like, for me?”

The gasp turned into more of a pained groan. “Look,” said Tomoyo, “just hurry up and eat it already!”

This was a thoroughly unforeseen situation. I hadn’t been counting on Kudou and Hatoko making me lunch, but Tomoyo making me one too just doubled down on the shock. Apparently, she’d been so opposed to letting anyone else see her handing the lunch box over that she’d stopped time to make sure we were alone when it happened—that, or she’d just really not wanted me to compare her lunch with Hatoko’s or Kudou’s. One way or another, it was sorta cute of her...or maybe charming would be a better word for it?

“Well, okay. Thanks,” I said. I was already totally full, to be honest, but speaking as a guy, not eating it just didn’t feel like a valid option. I thanked her, untied the cloth wrapped around the box, opened it up...and froze.

I doubted my own eyes, but no matter how long I stared, the contents of the lunch box remained the same as ever. It’s not that they looked repulsive, or that it contained a single slab of pickled radish or a lump of unidentifiable dark matter. It wasn’t exceptionally out-there in any particular way, really. In fact, in terms of appearance, it was about as average of a lunch box as you could find. The box itself was one of those cute little containers with dividers to keep each dish separate, and contained within were pieces of rolled omelet, karaage, hot dogs cut to look like little octopuses, and so on, plus a compartment of rice for good measure. Nothing about it was worthy of comment, but it looked well-balanced and appetizing overall.

There was just one thing—one single element of the lunch that’d caught my attention: the strips of seaweed laid out on the rice, which spelled out a series of words in a plain, angular typeface:

“Love you, Tomoyo!”

“...Hey, Tomo—” I began, but before I could even finish saying her name, the lunch box had vanished into thin air, wrapping, chopsticks, and all. Tomoyo, meanwhile, was suddenly standing in front of me, and on a second glance, I realized that she was now holding the once again sealed box.

“So...was that—”

“Forget it.”

“Yeah, no, that’s not happening. Wasn’t that just—”

“I-I said forget it!” Tomoyo shouted desperately, but I wasn’t having it this time. I couldn’t let a fib like that slide without calling it out.

“You didn’t make that lunch for me, did you?” I said. “Your mom made it for you, right?”

“I told you to forget it!” Tomoyo wailed, sinking to her knees as she clutched her head. That pretty much confirmed it: the lunch she’d tried to pass off as her own handiwork had, in fact, been made by her mother.

“Why on earth would you lie about something like that?” I sighed.

“I-I didn’t lie!” Tomoyo yelped. “For the record, I never said a single word about making it myself, or about having made it for you! That was all just your misunderstanding, okay?!”

“I mean, technically, I guess...but you didn’t say I was wrong either, did you? You had a bunch of chances to correct me. Seems pretty obvious you were trying to frame it in a way that I’d misunderstand.”

Tomoyo clammed up. I still didn’t know what the point of all this was, but clearly, I was right about her passing her mom’s cooking off as her own not being an accident. Considering that I had no idea whether or not Tomoyo was any good at cooking, she probably would’ve gotten away with it...if it weren’t for her mother deciding to write a supportive message to help her beloved daughter get through another school day.

“Oh, for crying out loud!” Tomoyo finally shouted. “Why?! Like, come on, mom, why?! Why would you write a message in my lunch today, of all friggin’ days?! Your lunches are usually totally normal, but you just had to go all out for once, didn’t you?!”

“Don’t go pinning this on your mom! She was just being nice!” I countered. “Look, Tomoyo, I’m not trying to give you the third degree about lying or anything. I just want to know—why?”

“I-I just, I mean... I sort of, well, panicked,” said Tomoyo.

“How so?” I asked, cocking my head in confusion.

Tomoyo—who, by the way, was still slumped over dejectedly on the ground—began to tell her story in a depressed mumble. “Kudou and Hatoko made lunch boxes for you today, right?” she said. “I saw you eating them in the club room earlier, and they both looked like they’d turned out really well, and...I’ve never even made my own lunch before, so... I sorta just...”

“Sorta just decided to show off by pretending that you made the lunch your mom made for you?”

“Yeah,” Tomoyo said with a listless nod.

“You fixate on the weirdest things sometimes, you know that? Honestly, why would you panic over us finding out that you can’t cook?”

“It’s not like I can’t cook! I’ve just never tried making a lunch box, that’s all!”

“Oh, really? I dunno why, but I’ve always had the sense that you weren’t interested in cooking and stuff like that.”

“G-Give me some credit! I’m really good at all that housekeeping stuff, actually!”

“Oh, really? Okay, quiz time: what are the five S’s of Japanese cooking?”

“Huh? U-Umm... S-Sugar, salt, soy sauce, um...salmon? And, uh...soda?”

“Yikes. That wasn’t even wrong in a funny way—it was just plain wrong.”

“Who asked you?!”

“Okay, next up: an opera singer suffering from a toothache once asked—”

“Chaliapin steak!”

“...Correct. Okay, last question: the French word for garnish—”

“Garniture!”

“Correct,” I sighed. She didn’t know the first thing about the fundamentals of cooking, but she had internalized every piece of trivia that’d been brought up in Food Wars. It was, well, very Tomoyo of her.

“A-Anyway!” Tomoyo shouted as she shot to her feet and pointed a finger toward me. “Next time I’ll actually make a lunch box...f-for you, okay?!”

“For me?”

“Y-Yeah, that’s right! ’Cause I have to prove to you that I can actually cook! I-It’s not like I actually want to try making a lunch box or anything—I just don’t like you looking down on me like this. I’m doing it because I have to!” Tomoyo concluded, crossing her arms with a mighty harumph.

“Oh? Okay, guess I’ll look forward to that... Pff! Heh, hah hah, hah hah hah hah!”

“Wh-What’s so funny?!”

“Nothing, it’s just... Well, I was thinking that the Witch of Antinomy who Smirks in the Face of Twilight has turned out to be way more of a homemaker than I’d figured she’d be.”

Tomoyo looked confused for just a moment, then flinched. “K-Kye ki ki! E-Even I feel the need to amuse myself with trivial jests, from time to time!” she said, having finally remembered to get back into character.

Said character, however, was just all over the place at this point. Whether that was because the usual Tomoyo’s and chuuni Tomoyo’s personalities were clashing with each other or because chuuni Tomoyo’s persona had always been unstable was an unsettled question, of course.

I didn’t know any of the particulars of the situation, but there was one thing I could say for sure: I was, without question, dealing with the real Tomoyo. She was a stubborn show-off who could also be a bit of a scatterbrain, and she never seemed to stick the landing on any of the stunts she attempted, but she’d always dedicate herself wholeheartedly to everything she’d decide to do. It didn’t matter that she was wearing her chuuni getup, or trying to drop back into her chuuni persona—none of it would change the fact that she was still the Tomoyo I knew at heart.

That didn’t just apply to Tomoyo either. The same was true of Kudou, Hatoko, and Chifuyu as well. However much their characters shifted, and however deep the cracks in their personas grew, on a fundamental level, every one of them was still the same person I’d come to know so well. That understanding reaffirmed a conviction within me: I was, more than ever, dedicated to returning to my old world—to returning the world to the way it used to be.

☆

The truth of the matter was that I had figured it all out from the very beginning. Everything about the sudden phenomenon that had manifested in our world—Tomoyo’s onset of chuunibyou, Hatoko’s yandere turn, Chifuyu’s high school reinvention, Kudou’s romance-addled confusion, and Sagami’s feminization—had occurred on account of a cause that I had long since guessed.

And yet, I hadn’t said a word about my conjecture to Andou. I’d feigned ignorance, putting on a show of my mystification. I knew very well that my conduct was cowardly and beneath me...but I couldn’t help myself.

I sighed deeply as I gazed into one of the mirrors in the women’s restroom, then took off my glasses and lightly massaged the bridge of my nose and the area behind my ears. They felt ever so slightly sore, presumably because of my unfamiliar eyewear. In spite of the deep-seated love for glasses I felt within my heart—an attachment so strong you’d think I’d been wearing them my whole life—my body simply wasn’t used to keeping them on for long periods of time. There was a gap between my psychology and physiology that made the inconsistency in my current character remarkably apparent.

Perhaps it wasn’t just me. Perhaps the others’ makeshift personalities had begun unraveling at the seams, as well. Something had to be done, and fast. I couldn’t allow myself to leave it all to Andou. I knew that, intellectually...yet I simply couldn’t bring myself to take that essential, pivotal step forward.

My doubts and internal conflict remained steadfast as I lifted my glasses once more, looking my mirror image in the eye as I raised them to my face, and...

“Those red glasses! I remember them very well—you tried to put them on in the park, way back whenever, only for me to stop you.”

...that’s when a voice rang out from somewhere to my side. I reflexively stood on guard, which was only natural, I believe. The voice in question was one that never should have emerged from this particular location—any woman would have been put on edge, really.

“S-Sagami?!” I yelped.

“Wearing glasses is a surefire way to throw the game. The glasses girl’s the secondary heroine to the bitter end—it’s an unwritten rule of fiction these days. I told you that, didn’t I?” Sagami replied.

“You realize this is the women’s restroom?!”

“I sure do.”

“Then hurry up and—”

“Hurry up and what?”

“Huh...?”

“Is there some sort of problem with me being in the girls’ room?” Sagami asked with a faint smile. He was wearing a skirt, which was certainly abnormal, and his voice seemed higher pitched than usual. His face seemed a little more feminine as well. In fact, no matter how I looked at him, I could only see him as a girl.

Oh, that’s right. The sense of nausea that had welled up within me the moment I’d realized who was in the room with me had, momentarily, caused me to forget that at the moment, Sagami was a girl himself. In other words, it was only natural for him to be in the women’s room. It was perfectly natural...and yet, that knowledge did nothing to quell the intense discomfort that the situation caused me.

“Come on, Takanashi,” said Sagami. “Sure, I might be a terminal deviant with literally no filter, but not even I’d have the creeper chops to stroll into the girls’ room if I were still a guy. That would be way out of character for me! If I started doing stuff like that, we’d know we’d been trapped in a trash-tier spin-off.”

I had to pause for a moment to collect myself. It was strange—he was on the verge of crossing several lines he shouldn’t, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. Why was he acting so provocatively—as if he wanted to pick a fight with anyone who might be observing?

No. No, that’s not it at all. I’d been so preoccupied by his dangerously meta choice of subject matter that I’d very nearly let the portion of his speech that’d actually merited my attention slip past me. “If I were still a guy”?

“Sagami...” I said. “Are you—”

“That’s right. I’m aware of everything that’s changed,” Sagami admitted with an almost stunning degree of ease. “I remember being a guy up until last night, and I’m very aware that Kudou and the rest of the literary club have all lost their marbles.”

He’d perceived the changes in our world—just like me and Andou. That was a shocking enough revelation on its own, but it was about to be outdone.

“And that’s not all,” Sagami continued, so casually that you’d never have thought his next words would elicit a sense of shock and astonishment within me unlike any I’d felt throughout my entire life.

“I’ve also figured out that your power is to blame for this whole kerfuffle, Takanashi.”

“Wha...?” I said in a choking half gasp.

For a moment, I thought that my heart might stop. I could barely breathe, and droplets of cold sweat began to crawl down my back. Then there were his eyes. There was something terrifying about them—about the way he seemed to be looking straight through me. It seemed that whether he was a man or a woman, the unique perspective from which Sagami Shizumu saw the world would not change in the slightest. No, it remained as upsetting and revolting as ever.

“Your power, Takanashi. Route of Origin. The power to return anything to the way it was meant to be. Its effects are especially vague, as far as powers go, and that ambiguity is what’s led to the amusingly abnormal circumstances we’ve found ourselves in. Isn’t that right?”

“Sagami,” I said after a moment of hesitation. “You know about our powers?”

“That’s right. I certainly do,” Sagami replied.

“Did Andou tell—” I began, but I shook my head before I could even finish the question. There was no way that could be true. Andou would never have told him.

When the five of us had gained our powers, we’d made a series of promises to one another. Among those was the promise that we would never reveal the existence of our powers to anyone else, under any circumstances. There was simply no way that Andou would have broken that oath.

“No, Andou wasn’t my source—as if that even needs to be said,” said Sagami. “Don’t worry. The man you fell for isn’t anywhere near that loose-lipped.”

“Then, who...?”

“Who did I learn about the existence of supernatural powers from? Well...let me put it this way: I believe that if you were to seriously apply yourself to figuring out who my source was using the information you’ve gained up until now, you’d manage to puzzle it out without too much trouble. That, however, isn’t what’s important right now. What is important...is whether or not my guess was on the mark,” said Sagami. “So? How about it? Did I call out the culprit? Were you the one behind this plot arc’s big problem?”

Once again, I hesitated. “What makes you think I was?” I finally said, a slight tremble entering my voice.

Sagami grinned. “Well, I’ll admit that I jumped to a number of conclusions,” he said. “I had you singled out as suspicious from the start, so I just boiled the situation down to its bare essentials, then figured out what direction to take my logic in from there. I used the Saikawa Souhei method, basically.”

“You suspected me...from the very beginning?”

“Well, yeah. It’s important to note that this all occurred the day after you stepped down from your position as club president—in other words, the day you declared you would profess your love to Andou. That alone is enough to make me assume that anything strange that’s happened was probably tied to you in some way or another.”

I fell silent, and Sagami spoke on.

“Once I proceeded under the assumption that you were suspicious, I quickly concluded that all of the phenomena that have impacted us today—the world-changing-level alterations to our characters—could have been brought about by Route of Origin.”

Sagami began to count on his fingers. “Kanzaki Tomoyo’s chuuni regression. Kushikawa Hatoko’s yandere turn. Himeki Chifuyu’s high schooler transformation. Takanashi Sayumi’s adoption of glasses. Kudou Mirei’s love-drunkenness. The phenomenon manifested in those five girls exactly. Given that, the simplest hypothesis would be that it impacted girls in possession of supernatural powers, but from my perspective—as someone who knows your intent to declare your affection—a different point of commonality springs to mind,” he said in a matter of fact tone. “All five of the girls in question have feelings for Andou.”

I clenched my teeth.

“When you assess the situation from that perspective, coupled with the fact that you were preparing for your big confession event, it’s pretty easy to imagine what you did. Takanashi—you used Route of Origin on yourself. You attempted to return your feelings of love for Andou Jurai to the way they were meant to be...didn’t you?” Sagami concluded.

He seemed to be waiting for me to confirm his theory, but I found myself at a loss for words. I felt so drained I feared I might fall to my knees, but given that I was still in the women’s restroom, I did everything I could to resist the urge.

Sagami’s explanation had been terrifyingly accurate from start to finish. My intention had, of course, been to reveal my feelings to Andou after school was over. I’d already asked him to meet up with me for that purpose, so backing out was no longer an option. However...when I’d woken up this morning, I’d found myself overcome with fear. I’d been scared of getting rejected—scared of ruining the relationship that we’d already established—and in spite of the fact that it had been my idea to finally tell him, I’d found myself unable to work up the courage to do so.

I had woken up earlier than usual, possibly thanks to my nervous anxiety, but my fear had kept me huddled up in my bed for quite some time regardless. As the minutes had ticked by, moment by painful, agonizing, excruciating moment, the time for me to leave for school had drawn closer, my inner turmoil had grown greater...and, finally, I’d used Route of Origin on myself. Like a drowning man grasping at straws, I’d clung to my power in a desperate attempt to save myself—I’d attempted to put the feelings I held for Andou in order, changing them into the way they were meant to be. That, I’d believed, would allow me to regain a measure of courage. The actual results of that act, however, proved far more impactful.

“I never imagined it would turn out like this,” I said after a lengthy period of silence. “I’d certainly never intended for anyone else to be drawn into my power’s effects.”

“I guess you could say you lost control,” said Sagami. “Or that using Route of Origin on something as vague and insubstantial as affection led to it more or less malfunctioning. That would explain why the other girls who’ve been affected are most certainly not the way they’re meant to be at the moment.”

What is a feeling of affection’s ideal form? What sort of love is worthy of praise? How were my feelings meant to be? The answer, in every case, was the same: nonexistent. I’d known perfectly well that there was no answer to be found, yet I had used my power anyway. It was hardly a surprise it had turned out this poorly.

“Judging by the way they’ve all changed, I’d say it’s less that they’ve become the way they were meant to be and more that their deepest desires have all been brought to the surface, or something along those lines,” Sagami continued. “I’ve gotta say, your power really is something! It can’t do much as far as direct attacks go, sure, but it can rewrite the world itself! That certainly doesn’t sound like a balanced ability to me.”

“The way I see it, there’s nothing more troublesome than an unbalanced ability that you’re incapable of controlling,” I countered.

Route of Origin allowed me to return anything in existence to the way it was meant to be. That applied to both items of organic and inorganic nature, of course, but when used in a more esoteric manner—or, as Andou would put it, when invoking its evolved form: Route of Origin: Ouroboros’s Circle—I could return even the conceptual to the way it was meant to be. It was, in some senses, an almighty power, and I could hardly dispute the idea that it was unbalanced...were it not for my lack of control.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t control my power, precisely. No, the issue was that I couldn’t control my own perceptions. An individual who couldn’t even control their own sense of affection could never possibly hope to master a power that relies upon their perspective of the world to determine its effects.

“There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” I said. “Sagami...why have you turned into a girl?”

“Oh, well,” said Sagami, “this is a little embarrassing to admit, but the truth is, I’ve always wanted to get genderbent deep down! I’d say this is probably just that desire put into practice. It’s such a good subgenre, honestly—I was really hooked on genderbender stuff a while back, and I’ve gotten into it all over again just recently as well. I think pretty much every guy’s wanted to get turned into a hot girl at some point! One of those universal fantasies, you know? And thanks to you, I got to have that dream granted, so thanks! Seriously, I’m really grateful for this. Wow, though—girls’ bodies really are something, aren’t they? I’ve heard all the rumors about how they’re more sensitive than guys’ bodies, of course, but I wasn’t expecting it to be quite this much... Honestly, I could get used to it. I tested a bunch of stuff out this morning, and my plan’s to do a lot more experimenting as soon as I’m back from school. But, well...to be totally serious for a second? I’m honestly pretty freaked out about what I’d do if my period starts. That’s, like, a blood everywhere sort of situation, right? Hey, Takanashi—if my period happens to start up during the school day today...help me out, will you? I’d really appreciate it if you’d show me the ropes, in detail.”

I took a deep breath. “That is not, in fact, what I meant,” I said as I held back the near overwhelming urge to punch him directly in the face. Considering that I was the cause of this particular incident, I had to exercise at least that much self-restraint. “I wasn’t asking why you were turned into a girl, as opposed to some other alteration. I was asking why you were affected in the first place.”

This whole incident had come about because I’d used Route of Origin on myself. That act had resulted in not just me, but everyone who viewed Andou in an especially favorable light being fundamentally altered. It followed, then, that if Sagami Shizumu’s character was also altered...

“Yes, well,” said Sagami. His eyes narrowed as a faint, somewhat bitter smile spread across his face. “I do love Andou, after all.”

It was like I’d been struck in the back of the head with a sledgehammer. The sense of impact was so pronounced, I could practically hear the crash.

“S-S-Sagami?! D-Did you—?! You just—?! You! Huh?! You finally admitted it?! It’s canon?! Whaaat?!”

“I’m sorry to ruin your moment of shipper’s euphoria, but tragically, I didn’t mean it in a BL sense. I meant that I love him as a friend... Or, no, not quite,” Sagami said, pausing for a moment to find the right words. “Not as a friend—not quite. It’s definitely not a romantic sort of love either, though... I think the best way to put it would be that he’s my favorite character.”

“Is that so?” I said flatly after a moment’s pause. It was, perhaps, the most characteristic answer that Sagami could have given. Or, to put it another way, it was the most Sagamiesque way of loving someone I could imagine.

“I mean, you know me,” said Sagami. “I’m a completely irredeemable piece of shit, right?”

“Quite,” I replied immediately. It was a moment of carelessness on my part—I’d simply agreed so strongly, I’d let my opinion slip out unfiltered.

Sagami chuckled. “Yup—I’m a scumbag, and everyone knows it, me included. I mean, the thing I do where I call myself a ‘reader’? That must be stupidly creepy, right?”

“...You were aware, then.”

“Oh, very much so. But being aware that it’s creepy doesn’t mean I’m planning on fixing it. People like me are the hardest type to deal with: the ones who know they’re hopeless trash-humans but like themselves anyway, just the way they are. We know we’re trash, but we’re not interested in fixing ourselves or hiding our nature. I’d go out on a limb and guess that we’re also the sort of people you despise more than anyone else, right, Takanashi?”

“I can’t deny it.”

“Anyway, me being like this drives people away from me like you wouldn’t believe. That’s never particularly bothered me, to be clear...but, you know,” Sagami said, a somewhat faraway expression coming across his face, “Andou’s the only one who’s still stuck around in spite of it all.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

“He treats a piece of living waste like me almost as if I’m his friend. I’ve never met anyone else like him,” Sagami said with a smile. It was a gentle, genial expression, but with a hint of sadness behind it. A quiet smile—almost the precise opposite of the hollow, flippant one he usually wore. “Jurai really is one interesting guy.”

As Sagami muttered those final words to himself—muttered the name that, supposedly, he’d sealed away years ago—he turned his back to me and began to walk away.

“Wh-Where are you going?” I asked.

“Back to class, of course. Our lunch break is ending,” he said blithely, glancing back at me over his shoulder. “I didn’t come here to blame you for this, for what it’s worth! No need to worry about that. I really did just want to see if I’d guessed right. My whole theory was nothing but guesswork and conclusion jumping, so there was a chance I was completely off the mark about everything.”

“You were just checking your answer? That’s all? Really?”

“Really. I have nothing in particular to say to you as far as the actual incident goes. After all—I already said everything I wanted to back during the cultural festival.”

“...”

It had happened on the first day of the festival, right after the first showing of our play. Immediately after I’d declared my intention to profess my love to Andou, Sagami had said something to me. He hadn’t intended to encourage or discourage me, or for that matter to give me any form of advice at all. He’d simply given me his impression—told me the result he’d predicted my declaration of love would bring about when all was said and done.

“I take it that you took what I said into consideration before you decided to do things this way?” asked Sagami.

I paused, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Then I have nothing left to say to you. I’ll simply stand back and watch, like the reader I am. I’d like nothing more than to observe how Takanashi Sayumi’s time as a heroine comes to a close.”