Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 10 - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: The Only Praiseworthy Thing to Do

How had Sagami found out about our powers? He’d told me that I’d be able to puzzle it out if I just applied myself to the question, so I decided to try doing just that. Lo and behold, it took only a small amount of serious thought for me to reach my answer. It was easy, in fact, though I would call the process more akin to a word-association game than any serious deductive reasoning.

The main point that led me to my ultimate conclusion was the fact that he had been aware of my power’s name, Route of Origin. Even if he’d happened to witness one of us using a power by chance, it wouldn’t make sense for him to also know their names. Furthermore, the nature of my power in particular was exceptionally hard to grasp from an outside perspective, yet he’d been able to not only name it, but also describe its effects in accurate detail.

It was clear, then, that Sagami had been told of our powers. That being said, I found it very hard to believe that Andou—or, for that matter, any member of the literary club—had opened up to him about them. I had faith that my underclassmen would never make that foolish of a mistake, and I had faith that the same was true of Kudou as well.

But then, who? Who had revealed Route of Origin’s name, a name that only we knew, to Sagami? The instant I formed the question, its answer sprang to mind of its own accord. There was one person—the sole individual, as far as I was aware, who was not a member of our group but who was aware of our powers’ names.

A few months earlier, while we were leaving school together, Andou had split off from the group to run back and pick up a notebook full of his cringiest chuuni fantasies—his so-called Bloody Bible—that he’d forgotten in our club room. Before he’d had the chance, however, the book had been found by a man called Kiryuu Hajime, who happened to be Tomoyo’s older brother.

Andou had later told us that Kiryuu had read the notebook at the time. Apparently, he’d picked up on Andou’s intent to have the “route” in Route of Origin serve as a double meaning, since it could also be interpreted as “root” when spoken out loud. I remembered very well how ecstatic Andou had been to find someone who understood his sense of naming aesthetics.

In short: Kiryuu had read the Bloody Bible, and he’d learned all about our powers in the process, from the names Andou had given them to the details of how they functioned. Although Andou was never shy about showing the notebook itself off to all and sundry, he was loath to let anyone actually read its contents. He would use it as a simple notepad from time to time, and he would share in those cases, but some of those pages had been written with the intent of never showing them to anyone—not even the rest of the literary club. The only people on this earth who would have seen those secret sections were the book’s owner, Andou, and the man who had read them more or less by accident, Kiryuu.

With all that established, my conclusion was simple: Sagami had learned the names and natures of our powers from Kiryuu. I’d already known that the two of them were acquainted, thanks to a conversation I’d had with Sagami in the past. They were connected through a set of circumstances that Tomoyo had had nothing to do with whatsoever, apparently, which might have explained why Kiryuu didn’t think anything of telling Sagami about our powers. Presumably, he’d thought of them as nothing more than a funny story to share.

Needless to say, I had no solid proof that the assumption I was beginning to lean toward was correct. I couldn’t be confident in it at all, but nevertheless, I found it compelling enough that I couldn’t let myself ignore it either. I was growing increasingly convinced that that man, Kiryuu Hajime, held the keys to everything that was happening around us. Perhaps he had only told Sagami about Andou’s names and knew nothing about our actual powers themselves. Perhaps he did know the powers were actual. Or perhaps...he was tied to us in a far, far deeper manner than I had even begun to realize.

There were a plethora of matters that I needed to think about. I had to tell my friends everything I’d learned, then start looking into Kiryuu Hajime at once—and for that sake, I needed to resolve the current abnormal circumstances as soon as I possibly could. My hesitation and cowardice had brought this alternate world into being, so it was my responsibility to set things right.

“Ah, Sayumi!”

School had ended for the day, and I’d made my way behind the gymnasium, which I found abandoned. A short wait later, Andou arrived to meet me.

“I had a feeling you’d be here,” said Andou as he jogged up to me.

“Of course,” I said. “I’m just glad that you came as well. I certainly wouldn’t have begrudged you for forgetting our promise, the circumstances being as they are.”

“I mean, a promise is a promise, right?” Andou said with a shrug. He had indeed been true to his word, and came to meet me alone at just the time he’d said he would the day before. “But anyway,” he continued, “to be totally honest...I just don’t think this is the right time for us to be having our rematch, Sayumi. We should really find a way to work out this situation, and then we can—”

“I’m sorry, Andou,” I said, cutting off his misunderstanding before it could steer the discussion in a silly direction and offering a deep, apologetic bow. “I’m afraid...that I lied to you.”

“Huh? Y-You did?”

“The truth is... The truth is that I know what’s going on. I know exactly what the cause of this phenomenon is, and I’ve known it from the start.”

I could hear the tremble in my own voice, and I felt a painful tightness in my chest, but I couldn’t stop. This was my responsibility—my indiscretion to make up for. I had to open up about the entire truth, and then tell Andou how I felt about him. That was the one way I knew that could bring the chaos that Route of Origin’s rampage had caused to an end.

This world had begun on account of my indecision, and so by overcoming that hesitation, I hoped to end it. I had no proof it would turn out that way—it was just speculation, really—but I felt an intuitive, instinctual sense that it would, in fact, work. It was almost as if Route of Origin itself was shouting it out loud—as if it was telling me to stop running away.

Whether or not my power was upset that I didn’t throw it a birthday party was beyond me, but I did suspect that, just maybe, this was exactly the situation that it had desired. As matters stood, I couldn’t bring this altered world to an end without telling Andou that I loved him. In other words, getting cold feet simply wasn’t an option anymore. Just as I had driven myself into a corner by declaring my intentions to Sagami and asking Andou to meet me here, so too had Route of Origin walled me in further by way of its rampage.

Oh, please. If there’s one thing this thought process proves, it’s that Andou’s become a little too much of an influence on me.

“Wait... From the very beginning? Seriously?” Andou asked, his eyes wide with shock.

I, however, couldn’t bring myself to meet his gaze, and spoke on at a rapid pace as I glanced away. “It’s all my fault. This whole situation, from start to finish, came about because of me.”

“Sayumi...”

“Route of Origin is deeply related to how everyone’s personalities have become twisted. I could call it an accident, or say my power went out of control, and that wouldn’t be wrong...but it also wouldn’t change the fact that I am responsible. I’m truly sorry for hiding the truth from you.”

I’d come this far, yet still, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him anything truly specific about what had happened. I just apologized, again and again. How perfectly disgraceful, I thought to myself. My inability to manage my own power caused all this trouble for my friends, yet I can’t so much as bring myself to admit it. Have I always been this shallow?

I was humiliated—chagrined beyond measure. To think that at the very last second, I would expose such an inexcusably foolish side of myself to Andou... I felt a lump in my throat from the shame and disappointment welling up within me, and my face felt like it was aflame. I was so mortified that I wanted to break down in tears.

“So, wait,” said Andou. “It was your fault...meaning that it was Route of Origin’s fault, right?”

I took a deep breath. “Th-That’s correct, yes.”

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Andou would be disappointed in me. Up until yesterday, I had been the trusted president who pulled everyone in the club together, and now, I was acting like a child trying to conceal her involvement in a petty prank. I hung my head, horrified by the thought of seeing his dejection at my behavior showing on his face...

“Thought so.”

...until his calm, gentle words reached my ears, and I jerked my eyes back up again.

“Huh...? Wha...? Wh-What do you...?” I babbled. My confusion was plain to see, and Andou was nice enough to quickly clarify.

“I kinda had a feeling that Route of Origin was the cause of all of this,” he said. “It’s the only one of our powers that has the potential to change things on a world-altering scale, after all.”

“So then...you knew from the very beginning?” I asked.

“Nah, not the very beginning,” Andou replied. “I had a bunch of possibilities in mind, and it took a while for me to conclude that Route of Origin running out of control was the most likely scenario. Besides that—honestly, your whole attitude today was sort of a hint too. You’ve seemed kinda preoccupied, and it didn’t feel like you were really serious about figuring out how we could deal with the world going crazy.”

“In that case...why didn’t you say something sooner?” I asked, raising my voice slightly.

Andou hesitated for a moment, seeming to search for the right words. “I guess...I figured if you didn’t want to talk about it, I shouldn’t try to force you to,” he finally said. “Plus, finding out what caused the problem wouldn’t really help much, right? Fixing it was my highest priority.”

That was a lie—and a transparent one. Seeking the cause of the problem was an obvious and necessary step toward resolving it. Andou’s true motive, I was certain, was driven by consideration toward me. He’d chosen to respect my desire to keep my secrets by refraining from calling me out on them.

How is he like this? Just how powerful is his drive to prioritize his friends’ best interests?

“Anyway, this wasn’t your fault, Sayumi,” Andou said, presumably in an effort to cheer me up. “No need to beat yourself up over your power going a little haywire! I dunno how to explain this exactly, but Route of Origin’s, like...an easy power to lose control of, I guess?”

“Why would you say that?” I asked.

“I mean, it’s super fuzzy how it even works, right?”

Route of Origin was the ability to return anything—truly, anything under the sun—to the way it was meant to be. The world could be rendered in any state so long as it was what the user perceived as “the way it was meant to be.”

“You can alter the world itself if your perspective is in line with your desires,” Andou observed, “but if your perspective isn’t willing to play ball, your hands are completely tied. It seems like a pretty straightforward rule at a glance...but the problem’s that people’s perspectives and opinions are usually really vague and arbitrary when it comes down to it.”

If I could align my perspective with my intentions, Route of Origin was indeed a power with an incredibly broad and potent set of capabilities. Unfortunately, my perspective was not so easy to freely manipulate.

“You can’t just change your perspective that easily. Same goes for your values, morals, and ideologies too—at least, not intentionally. On the other hand, it’s just as hard to stop them from changing as it is to change them on purpose. To live is to have the ways you experience and think about the world constantly adapt. Sometimes you can trace any transformations back to a single inciting incident, but sometimes your worldview shifts gradually and naturally. People’s perspectives can totally metamorphose even when they’re just living their normal lives,” Andou said as he gazed off into the distance.

I had a feeling that he was thinking back on his time in the eighth grade as he spoke—to the moment when he’d met Tomoyo, the God of Chuunibyou, and had his perspective on reality and fiction turned on its head in an instant.

“It’s not easy to change your perspective, yet sometimes, it can change in the blink of an eye,” said Andou. “The hard part is manipulating it intentionally, whether you want it to stay the same or not. After all, such goals are based on your perspective of your perspective.”

I paused for a moment as his words sank in.

“So, yeah,” Andou continued. “In that sense, the ways we view the world are fluid and unstable in a way that makes it hard to tell whether they even are fluid or unstable in any given moment. Route of Origin relies on something formless and ambiguous to determine how it’ll turn out every time you use it.”

That was the power I’d awakened to in a nutshell. It was ambiguous in every way, with human subjectivity being all it had to give itself any sort of structure.

“Like, remember how you used Route of Origin: Ouroboros’s Circle to bring Hatoko back to the club room when she went missing? For all we know, you won’t be able to summon us there anymore now that you’re not the club president.”

I didn’t say a word.

“Or like how you used your power to undo Grateful Robber’s effects the other day—it’s totally possible that that wouldn’t work at all, depending on the time and circumstances when you tried it. Your attitude in any given moment can change your power’s capabilities entirely,” said Andou. “That’s why it’s only natural that its effects would be kind of unstable. There’s no way you could stop it from going out of control every once in a while. Of course you couldn’t! You’re still a kid, after all.”

“...Pff!”

“Wh-What? Why’re you cracking up?!”

“E-Excuse me,” I stammered. “It’s just that the thought that you might treat me like a child someday never so much as crossed my mind until this moment.”

“W-Well, you are, right? We’re both still kids, so it’s fine for the way we think about things to be inconsistent and arbitrary! Trying to set our perspectives in stone now would just make life harder for us when we grow up,” Andou said in a rapid but definitive tone.

I felt a certain warmth growing in my chest. “You’re certainly right, Andou. Our perspectives truly are inconsistent and arbitrary, and the ways we think about and view our world will keep changing for as long as we live. Falling in and out of love, for instance, is more or less an everyday occurrence,” I said, testing the waters.

Andou looked shocked. “That’s...kinda weird for you, huh? It’s not every day you bring romance into a conversation.”

“The thought just sprang to mind, is all. It struck me that feelings of love and romance are another matter of inconsistent and arbitrary perspective.”

If a child’s perspective is especially fluid, then perhaps a student’s romance is by its nature nothing more than giving in to a transient emotion and allowing it to sweep you away. Perhaps, I thought, that was true of my feelings for Andou as well.

As I was caught up in a spell of self-doubt, Andou seemed to sink deeply into thought himself. “You know...Sagami told me something like that too, a long time ago,” he eventually said.

“Did he?”

“Yeah. The whole thing was pretty cynical and depressing...but basically, he talked about how romance is nothing more than people falling for those who just happen to work with them, or happen to be in their club, or whatever—just picking someone who’s conveniently nearby—then declaring it to have been the work of fate itself. He said it’s all just an illusion, and that falling in love isn’t a grand, earth-shattering act so much as it is a vague and arbitrary one.”

“Well. That certainly is cynical and depressing,” I concurred...but at the same time, some part of me couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment.

I had feelings for Andou, yes—but would those feelings have developed if I hadn’t been in the same club as him? Would I have come to realize his charms if the awakening of our powers hadn’t thrust us into an extraordinary set of circumstances? I understood that pondering aimless what-ifs wasn’t productive in any sense, but they filled me with anxiety all the same.

“And how did you reply to Sagami?” I asked.

“I...well, I tried to argue with him.”

“You did?”

“He was really condescending about it, and it got under my skin. And more than anything, I was annoyed with myself for almost letting him talk me into agreeing.”

And so, Andou recounted the story. He repeated the argument he’d made so many years ago.

“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...”

“...the way I see it, that’s worth calling destiny anyway,” said Andou, looking me straight in the eye as he spoke.

Destiny. A word beloved by chuunibyou sufferers everywhere.

“If you fall for someone in your class, then why not let yourself think that you were bonded in a past life? If you fall from someone in your club, then why not believe that you were led together to fulfill a fated future? Romance may be nothing more than an illusion; love may be nothing more than a vague, ambiguous feeling; this world might have come into being five minutes ago; and existence itself may only be defined as real by way of observation—but still, at the end of the day, I’d rather call all of it destiny anyway.”

“After all,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “it’s way cooler that way.”

It was the strangest thing. Normally, a speech like that would have left me shaking my head with exasperation, but for some reason, it was resonating with me deeply today.

“Same for reuniting with Tomoyo, joining the literary club on Hatoko’s recommendation, Miss Satomi bringing Chifuyu to school with her, Kudou mistaking my note for a love letter... The way I see it, all of that was written in destiny’s ledger aeons ago...or, I mean, that’s the way I choose to see it. Looking at it in that way’s just, like... It’s way more exciting that way, isn’t it?” Andou explained, his eyes sparkling with glee.

Destiny. Anything, given the slightest excuse, was destiny. It all boiled down to destiny. A chuuni’s favorite word—destiny. If not destiny, then some variant thereof—experiences from a past life, or truths writ in the Akashic Records. I knew that everything he was saying was so cheap and flimsy it should have reduced me to heaving conniptions...so why? Why was it hitting so, so close to home?

“I said that our perspectives were inconsistent and arbitrary a while back...but I don’t think that necessarily means they’re not worth something,” said Andou. “Even if a perspective’s fleeting, I’m still positive that it has meaning.”

A fleeting perspective. I had to wonder: was he talking about chuunibyou itself? It was, after all, a sense of values that one could only bear for a fleeting period of one’s life. It was a philosophy that, by its very nature, mandated its own abandonment after a given period of time. It was called eighth-grade sickness for a reason—its period of validity was baked into its very name. It was brought on by a sense of self-importance enlarged by one’s ambiguous, unstable childhood perspective, and when one grew up and came to understand society at large, their ability to maintain that peculiar set of values would gradually slip away from them.

And yet... Just because a set of values would inevitably be lost didn’t necessarily mean that it was, in and of itself, without value.

“I think that everything in this world has meaning and that all of it’s part of one big destiny. That’s why I figure that Route of Origin’s rampage was probably just the gods deciding to impose a trial on the two of us. If that’s what’s going on, then all we can do is overcome it together, right? Plus, I did make that promise and all.”

“What promise?” I asked.

Andou paused to glance around the area. His eyes drifted partially closed as a look of nostalgia came across his face.

“The one I made to you last year, right around this time of year...after our battle came to an end. I promised that if any of us ever lost control of our power, I would stop them.”

Oh...that’s right. He really had said that, though the way I remembered it, it hadn’t so much been a promise as a unilateral declaration. Thinking back, that was the moment my feelings began to change...

“When I make a promise, you’d better believe I’m gonna keep it. I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t,” Andou said, grinning boldly as he struck a somewhat understated pose. I assumed he was under the impression it was a flawlessly cool thing to say, but the logic of the line fell apart under the slightest hint of rational scrutiny. It was exactly the sort of nonsensical, meaningless statement that having a case of chuunibyou made sound like the most incredible declaration in history.

It was comical. Truly laughable. And what was laughable above all else was the fact that such an absurd man had managed to fill my heart with such boundless euphoria that it was on the verge of bursting. I was the most laughable joke of all.

At that point, I lost all sense of self-control. I felt ecstatic, embarrassed, irritated, awkward, frustrated, and elated all at once. My feelings for Andou felt too great to contain, like my heart and mind would rupture under their pressure, and before I knew it, I’d stepped up to him, spread my arms wide, and thrown them around him. I embraced him, pulling the two of us together with all my might.

“Huh? Uh— What? Whaaat?! S-Sayumi?!” Andou, perhaps understandably, yelped. Practically shrieked, really. “Wh-Where is this coming from? Did you have a head rush and almost fall over, or something?”

“Have you ever seen anyone proactively step forward to grab someone during a dizzy spell?” I countered.

“Well then, why...?”

Why indeed. Not even I had an answer to that. I simply hadn’t been able to suppress the impulse. Andou had just looked so dashing, so adorable, so cheeky, and so downright wonderful—my affection for him had grown too powerful for me to even comprehend what I could possibly do about it.

“A-Andou!” I said, doing my absolute best to keep my flustered panic from coming through in my voice, not releasing my grip on his torso for so much as a second. “Th-There’s something I have to tell you.”

“Wh-What is it?” asked Andou. “And a-actually, do you think you could let go first...?”

“No. Please just stay still and listen.”

I didn’t have to look in a mirror to know that my face was as red as a boiled lobster, and I wasn’t about to let the boy I had feelings for see me in such a state. Not to mention...I was simply too embarrassed to look Andou in the eye. I knew for a fact that I would be rendered entirely speechless if I did, so clinging to him as I pushed onward was my only option.

“B-But, Sayumi...”

“No buts. Just listen, please.”

“But...your, um, chest...”

“Hggkhkh?! I-It’s perfectly fine!”

It was not fine in the slightest. I was in a state of blind panic. My mind was entirely blank. I had gone into this with a plan, and I had known exactly what words I would use to communicate my feelings to him, but all of that had been expelled from my mind at the speed of sound. I tried desperately to remember even a handful of the words, but the pounding beat of my heart drowned out everything else.

Still—I couldn’t back down. Not now. I had to follow through and put an end to this. To the backward world we’d found ourselves in...and to the love within my own heart.

“Andou...thank you,” I said. My plans had been scattered to the winds, and I couldn’t recall a single line that I’d prepared, so instead, I found myself expressing my truly heartfelt gratitude to him. “You’ve done so much for me. Ever since we met, every day has been a joy. It was thanks to you that we were able to overcome the trial that awakening to our powers posed.”

“O-Okay, why do you sound so serious all of a sudden?”

“When we first met...in complete honesty, I couldn’t stand you. I saw you as nothing more than a cringey, irritating boy. But then you joined my club, and as we spent more time together, I came to appreciate your kindness and consideration—to appreciate that underneath it all, you were genuinely strong, and even manly.”

“W-Wait, seriously, where is this coming from?!”

Andou was growing more and more agitated by the second, but I was confident that his agitation didn’t hold a candle to mine. My heart was pounding at an unbelievable pace, and I felt certain that, considering how closely I was holding him, he could feel it through my...my, umm, chest. My hands were damp with sweat, and my legs were shifting restlessly. I was so nervous, it was almost making me dizzy.

But this was it. This was my chance. Now, I could finally say it.

“Andou, I—”

And that’s when it happened. At that very instant—the moment I’d steeled my resolve to make my once-in-a-lifetime, do-or-die gamble—I heard a loud, ringing crack, as if something nearby had begun to break into pieces.

“Wha—?” I gasped, jerking my head up reflexively. There, right before my eyes, a crack had formed in the air. It was as if I was looking through a pane of glass that had taken such an intense impact that it was on the verge of shattering to pieces.

Crack! Crack, crack!

Again and again, the sound rang out, and more and more ruptures appeared in the air. Or, no, not in the air. Rather, it was as if space—as if the world itself was falling to pieces.

“S-Sayumi,” said Andou, “is this what I think it is? Is the world going back to normal?”

I gasped. He was right—the world was collapsing around us. Collapsing and returning to how it used to be...but why? Why would this be happening now, when I hadn’t even seen my goal through?

The fissures in space spiderwebbed outward, spreading at a terrifying speed, as if to laugh in the face of Andou’s and my bewilderment. The altered world—the world born of my hesitation—was falling to pieces.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

Suddenly, a voice rose up from my memory—the voice of a certain reader. It was something he’d said to me on the first day of the cultural festival, right after I’d told him that I would reveal my feelings to Andou.

“I’d really recommend against it, Takanashi.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it won’t go well.”

“Hmm. It’s almost refreshing to hear you put it so directly, somehow.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong! I’m not saying it’ll turn out badly because of you. Take Kanzaki Tomoyo, for example—she’s the main heroine, and even she’d fail if she asked Andou out right now. After all, Andou’s ability to fall in love is frozen.”

“Frozen...?”

“I don’t think he’s realized it himself, but it’s pretty obvious just looking at him. He hasn’t gotten over his trauma at all yet. That’s why he’s so thickheaded when it comes to anything romantic.”

“And...that trauma would be the incident he went through in the eighth grade?”

“Right. So, I guess you could say that this is partially my fault.”

“...”

“You know, Takanashi, if you’d just stuck to my plan and hadn’t betrayed me, my intent was to have you help me heal Andou’s trauma in the long term. After all, if nothing’s done to help him get over what happened in the eighth grade, he’ll never manage to fall in love or start up a relationship with anyone.”

“So...you mean to say that you were collaborating with me out of guilt? You wanted to save Andou from—”

“Oh, no, that’s giving me way too much credit. I guess I can’t say I didn’t feel that way at all, to be fair—it was partially my responsibility and everything—but considering how quickly I gave up on it, I think we can safely conclude that I was doing it more out of morbid curiosity than anything else.”

“...”

“Ever since back then...Andou hasn’t changed a bit. He’s still the same fanciful, idealistic child he used to be. His heart is trapped in the eighth grade, and the eighth-grade sickness within it has been left to fester.”

Sagami’s advice had been clear, and in the end...I had ignored it. I hadn’t been able to believe what he’d told me—I hadn’t wanted to believe it. Even if he had been right about Andou’s trauma, I’d thought that I would just have to do something about that myself. I wouldn’t let it stop me.

But now here I was, my confession of love failing before my very eyes. It wasn’t being turned down or brushed off, but it was failing nonetheless. Not even Sagami could have possibly foreseen it happening in this manner, to be sure, but it had still turned out just the way he’d said it would.

Why? Why is this happening?

The world’s collapse continued without cease, and I simply stood there in a dumbfounded daze. The gymnasium vanished, followed by the schoolhouse, the sky, the land, and finally, before I knew it, Andou himself. Then, when everything except for me had faded and I was left alone in a world of nothingness...I heard a faint voice.

“It seems like whenever there’s a time loop or the world gets altered in some big, inexplicable way, it always ends up turning out to have been caused by a major character’s emotional troubles, doesn’t it? It’s sort of a cliché, at this point.”

The voice wasn’t a familiar one. It was full of disdainful, sneering contempt—a voice that made it clear the speaker was looking down on everything, including you.

“It’s a conventional plot twist in every way—and I reject it.”

The instant those words rang out in faint but decisive denial, the world collapsed entirely. It had been born from my indecision, and it had ended before it could be explained, suddenly and without any sense of resolution. It was utterly irrational. How could the story be allowed to take a turn like this? How could it be forced to this premature end, before I could even make my feelings clear?

But then again...what if? What if Andou was right, and even this was part of some greater destiny? If there really was some deeper meaning to this seemingly nonsensical conclusion...then perhaps it was my just deserts.

I had joined forces with Sagami, deceived Andou, and forced him to open up about the darkest point in his past. I’d never apologized for that indiscretion. I’d simply let it sit unresolved, attempting to tell Andou my feelings in spite of it. Perhaps this, then, was the punishment the gods saw fit to grant me for my cowardice.