Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 11 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Sagamicizm of the Countless Genres

I think I’ve driven this point in more than firmly enough already, but just for good measure: everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, builds up a variety of personas for themselves. Everyone’s personalities shift depending on where they are or who they’re with. Everyone acts out the character they believe others want them to be, or the character they themselves wish they were.

Take Natsu Aki. Her ability to construct characters to embody was rather exceptional. The personalities she displayed at school and in the world of supernatural battles were impressively distinct, and it seemed plausible that she had even more of them filed away that I just wasn’t aware of. She constructed personas on a place-to-place basis, and I believe the same is true of most people. As they go from gathering place to gathering place—from school, to home, to their club, to a nightclub, to cram school, to the company they work at—their personalities shift to match their current environment.

If I were to probe that train of logic further, however—if I were to take it to something of an extreme—I would say that it goes even deeper than a question of place, and that people shift personas based on who they’re interacting with as well. Even in a single group, like one’s family, some people play the perfectly obedient child with their mother and the rebellious little punk with their father. Even in the same classroom, someone could be the incessant motormouth to their peers while also being the taciturn honor student to their teacher.

Consciously or unconsciously, like it or not, people’s personalities shift depending on whom they’re with. I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to say that we have a single, dedicated persona in stock for every person we interact with...and the ultimate embodiment of that natural human tendency taken to its absolute logical extreme was the girl named Yusano Genre.

She was the apex of persona construction. After all, she made new ones for herself in a very literal sense. While normal people simply acted out their various internal characters, she brought them into being as actual, distinct personalities...

“We meet again, onlooker.”

...and when I found myself face-to-face with her, I hesitated. Who, exactly, was I speaking with? Given her remarkably unconventional appearance—recently, she’d been wearing one of those vividly pink nurses’ uniforms that you didn’t even see in eroge anymore, along with a similarly pink tracksuit jacket—you’d think I’d know who she was at a glance, but in her case...or rather, in their case, I had to work by rather different standards.

Which personality am I dealing with this time? I wondered. That said, my hesitation only lasted for a moment, as one look at her expression was all it took to clear things up for me. Her emotionless, empty gaze and the ever so faint curve to her lips were dead giveaways. As far as I knew, only one of her personalities could pull off that downright inhuman archaic smile, somehow conveying even less emotion than a complete lack of expression would have.

“Hey. It’s been a while, Genre.”

Yusano Genre: the original and core personality. She was the basis from which all her other personalities were built—the source that all her characters stemmed from. And, as expected from the core personality, my reply didn’t spark so much as a trace of visible emotion in her. She simply smiled that same empty smile, like she always did.

After splitting up with Hatoko, I had set off toward my apartment...only to find that, before I knew it, all of the passersby around me had vanished, and a middle school girl wearing a nurse’s uniform had appeared before me.

Evening had long since fallen, so we were facing each other down on a darkened, dusky street. I wasn’t particularly surprised about all the other pedestrians vanishing—after all, the individual standing before me was, in truth, somewhere close to a hundred individuals sharing the same body, each of whom possessed their own distinctive power. She was an exception among exceptions, and it wasn’t at all hard to believe that one of her many characters would have the power to drive people away from her.

“Considering you went out of your way to make a meeting place, I’m guessing you’re here to see me?” I asked.

“Correct,” said Genre. “I wanted to speak with you.”

“Well, I’d be pleased to oblige! I’m always available to chat with cuties like you,” I said offhandedly—but to be honest? I actually wasn’t a fan of dealing with her at all. I mean, could you blame me? She was terrifying. She never let that Buddha-like smile drop under any circumstances.

I’d nearly had a heart attack the first time I’d met her face-to-face, seriously. I’d been under the impression that I was about to meet up with Fantasia, a superbly cute, timid little middle schooler who looked great in a nurse’s outfit and had a fantastic rack, only to end up encountering a whole host of other personalities instead. I’d spoken with quite a few of them during that meeting, Genre included, and frankly, she’d left the least positive impression out of all of them.

You’d think she was actually a statue the way that smile of hers never budged. It scared the hell out of me even more than a total lack of expression would’ve. I mean, at least you can get some major gap moé out of expressionless characters when they finally do smile. There’s nothing to look forward to with a character who’s smiling from the very start. That said, she was still a middle school girl physically, at least, so it’s not like she had no redeeming factors. She shared a body with my beloved Fantasia and Romansa, so I generally tried to treat her nicely enough.

“All right, then. What did you want to talk about?” I asked.

“Nothing in particular,” said Genre.

“I... Huh? So, um...what? I thought you said you wanted to talk with me? Was that just lip service, and you actually ran into me by pure coincidence?”

“No. It’s true that I wanted to talk with you—I simply don’t have anything to talk about.”

Okaaay? So, that means...she doesn’t have anything specific to ask me or tell me about, and her only objective is the act of talking to me itself? She just wanted to chat...I guess? Why, though? What’s with her? Does she have a thing for me, or something?

“So then, onlooker,” said Genre while I waffled in confusion, her smile as dry as ever. “Tell me something interesting.”

I gaped. Is she stupid, or what? Everything about her screams “This is no ordinary girl,” but is she actually just a total dumbass deep down?

“H-Hey, Genre...? You may not know this, but generally speaking, that’s not the sort of conversational prompt that anyone ever uses in actual seriousness.”

“Oh? Is that so?”

“I mean, it’d bother you if someone tried it on you, right? Imagine someone telling you to tell them something interesting, apropos of nothing.”

“I wouldn’t mind in the least.”

“Huh?”

“I would be perfectly willing to tell you something interesting, if you so desire.”

“...”

Am I speaking with a living legend? Or am I speaking with a master comedian? The distance between the two is paper-thin in this case!

“Allow me to demonstrate. I will now say something interesting,” said Genre.

She’d just raised the hurdle before her to a truly unfathomable height. I almost had to think I was talking to someone from a society so hyperadvanced it was beyond my comprehension, but her tone of voice was as calm and placid as ever.

“Something interesting.”

“...”

“Well? I said ‘something interesting,’ didn’t I?” said Genre with a shit-eating smirk. Her expression didn’t change in the slightest, to be clear, but it was nevertheless very obvious to me that she was smirking.

I took in a sharp, gasping breath. Holy crap! Hoooly crap, holy crap, holy crap! This girl is terrifying! Whatever I was feeling, it had transcended indignation, disgust, or anything that straightforward—shivers raced down my spine, my whole body broke out in goose bumps, and I could feel a cold sweat coming on. Holy crap! I’m freezing, and terrified, and freezing, and terrified!

Not even grade schoolers would bother with a gag like that in this day and age, yet not only had Genre gone for it, she’d been proud she’d done so. There was simply no hope of getting close to a person like that. She had an aura that made you think “You know what, on second thought, maybe I won’t talk to that girl after all” in the blink of an eye. It was an overwhelming unapproachability—an absolute barrier of purest incomprehensibility.

Of course...from a certain perspective, it might have been inevitable that her core personality would end up being this way. By giving birth to her myriad of personalities, she had overcome a barrier in human relations that most people would need a wealth of acting, pretense, lies, and modesty to surpass...or maybe it’d be better to say that she’d circumvented the barrier rather than overcome it? The point is, she’d been granted the ability to take all the friction, strife, quarrels, and quibbles that came part and parcel with human relationships and shove them all off on her alternate personalities instead of dealing with them herself. She could simply swap personalities to take an emotion off her plate in an instant...and the inevitable price she paid for doing so was that her core personality’s communication abilities were so thoroughly unpolished, you might as well say they didn’t exist at all.

“I would appreciate it if you would say something, bystander. I would like to speak with you, after all,” said Genre.

“That’s...a taller order than you think it is,” I replied.

“Don’t you have any questions you’d like to ask me?”

“Uhh... Okay, then how about you tell me your measurements and what sort of underwear you’re wearing today?”

“From top to bottom, 86, 57, and 80. I wear an E-cup, and my underwear... Hm. It would be faster just to show you—it’s like this,” said Genre, pulling up her skirt with one hand while she pulled open her nurse’s uniform’s top with the other, all without so much as batting an eyelash. A set of frilly, shocking pink, and rather cutesy underwear entered my view.

Oof. She goes full pink even on the undies, huh? Just how much does this girl like that color?

I heaved an internal sigh. This...didn’t do it for me at all. Something was lacking. There was no value in eroticism without a trace of shame to it. Having a girl show me her underwear without displaying any sort of embarrassment or hesitation was no different from seeing that underwear on a mannequin. That went for the measurements question as well—her reaction had been as boring as could be. The actual numbers weren’t even the point. The point was seeing the girl’s reaction as she said them!

“Ugh...”

“You seem remarkably disappointed for someone who’s taking pictures as we speak.”

I mean...those were for a whole different matter—or rather, for the sake of satisfying a whole different appetite. If you get a chance to take pictures like that, then you take it. I couldn’t stand Genre’s personality, sure, but the body of a middle school girl was still something sacred indeed.

I spent a nice, long time taking about twenty pictures from every possible angle, and when I was finished, Genre asked “Do you have any other questions?” as she readjusted her outfit.

Hmm. I’d gotten my obscene joke quota out of the way, so I figured it was just about time to ask something serious for a change. “Come to think of it, Genre, I heard that you—I mean, all of you—quit Fallen Black, didn’t you? Would you mind telling me why?”

“Because I remembered,” said Genre.

“Remembered what?”

“The previous—the Fourth—Spirit War. I recovered a fragmented portion of my memories from back then, and in doing so, I recalled that Kiryuu Hajime is an enemy that I must defeat.”

In the Fourth Spirit War’s finals—not that “finals” are exactly a concept that applies to a battle royal, I suppose, but I mean at the very end of it all—Kiryuu Hajime and Yusano Genre had ended up opposing one another. They had fought to the death, and when it was all over, Kiryuu had been the last man standing.

“You remembered that, did you...? Interesting. I didn’t know that could happen. I guess the spirits aren’t as good at erasing memories as they make themselves out to be?”

“My unusual nature is likely to blame. The spirits’ methods are designed to wipe the memories of a single person. Apparently, that wasn’t sufficient to completely eliminate the memories of the close to a hundred personalities that dwell within me.”

“I could see that.”

“That said, I can recall only the slightest of traces. I still have much that I can’t grasp...but I remember very well that at the end of the previous War, I was killed by Kiryuu Hajime.”

“So you want to get back at him? You’re gunning for a rematch?”

“Partially, yes...but more so than that, I’m opposing him out of a sense of duty.”

“Duty?”

“Duty, or perhaps righteousness. Someone must stop Kiryuu Hajime. Otherwise, he will bring about a Sixth War, then a Seventh, and on and on without cease.”

Considering the sort of person Kiryuu was, that didn’t strike me as an unreasonable prediction at all. He’d already put the War on repeat once, and it wouldn’t be even remotely surprising to see him do it a second or third time. Maybe he was planning on saying “I wanna do it again” every single time he won a War, without fail. He’d prepare one stage for himself after another, dragging out his battle-packed lifestyle forevermore like a shonen manga that just couldn’t go quietly into the night. Unless someone stepped in to wrest victory away from him, his fruitless serialization would never be canceled.

“I will stop Kiryuu Hajime—and I have already obtained the secret weapon I need in order to do so.”

“You have...?”

“Do you recall a girl named Hamai Haneko?”

“Yeah. I never met her, but I heard about her, at least. She was part of Hearts, right? And you beat her, I think.”

“Correct. I defeated her—but before doing so, I spoke to her, personally.”

Hamai Haneko had conversed with Yusano Genre, the core personality. I knew exactly what that meant.

“So, you made her into a new character for yourself?”

“I did. I used Hamai Haneko as fodder to birth a new personality within me—a personality named Yusano Destinia.”

“Yusano Destinia...”

They say that you can see your true nature reflected in the people around you, but in her case, it felt more apt to say that she was the one who did all the reflecting. By interacting with others—by communicating with them—her core personality, Genre, could give birth to a new self within her. A character that corresponded to the personality of the person she’d communicated with would generate from nothingness, just like that.

“Destinia is my secret weapon against Kiryuu Hajime,” said Genre.

“Hmm. That’s rather surprising. Hamai Haneko... From what I heard about her, she was a spineless, gloomy pessimist. I didn’t get the sense that she was particularly tough at all—was she? Could a character born from her really be a secret weapon that you could use against Kiryuu?”

“Of course,” said Genre. “After all...she gave her own power a name.”

“She... Huh?”

I gawked in confusion, and Genre elaborated. “Although I can only remember fragments of the previous War...there is one thing that I recall clearly. It’s something that Kiryuu Hajime told me: ‘No way in hell would I ever lose to someone who didn’t even give their power a name.’”

“...”

“And he was proved correct. I lost to him. In other words, it is reasonable to conclude that I lost to Kiryuu Hajime on account of my lack of naming ability. Now, however, I have brought that power under my control. By way of my newest personality, I have made up for the one skill he possesses that I, until now, was lacking. Thus, with that deficit compensated for, I no longer have any weaknesses he can exploit. This time, I will finish him.”

“...”

This isn’t a bit, is it? Apparently, Genre had taken Kiryuu’s haphazard nonsense (though, of course, he’d probably meant every word of it) completely at face value. I actually felt bad for her. She was yet another victim of his remarkable tendency to ruin people’s lives with a single offhand remark.

“So...I guess this means that Destinia can give things good names, then?” I asked.

“Yes. She was all too happy to think up names for each and every one of our powers. She put her all into determining their names, and the—I believe she called them ‘titles’?—associated with them.”

Apparently, her new personality has some real chuuni potential lurking within her.

“I took this opportunity to replace my power’s name as well,” Genre added.

Yusano Genre’s power, Sex Eclipse, had received its original name from Kiryuu. It had the word “sex” in it, so needless to say, I was a fan. To be a little more specific, though, Sex Eclipse was the name of Genre’s power in particular, and it wasn’t what granted her alternate personalities. She’d had those from the get-go, and the power she got from joining the Spirit War gave her the ability to implant those personalities in other people.

On top of all that, each and every one of the personalities within her had their own entirely separate powers. “One power per person” was usually a fundamental rule of the Spirit War, but Yusano Genre’s unique circumstances had caused her to be something of an exception...or perhaps it was more that the rule had applied a little too literally to her, with outrageous consequences.

“Destinia granted my power a new name: the Queen of Snowy Oblivion, Faceless.”

“Huh,” I grunted. That was the only impression I felt like giving. Frankly, I didn’t give a crap. Actually, the one impression I did have to offer was one that I’d already felt back when System had joined the team, that being that I really wished people would stop changing names at the drop of a hat. No decent work of fiction would pull that sort of stunt—all it accomplishes is confusing the readers.

“Faceless—in other words, expressionless, indicating my natural state of being. The Queen of Snowy Oblivion, meanwhile, alludes to that same sense of nothingness while at the same time emphasizing my regal, immovable spirit, which is as pure as fresh snow. Needless to say, ‘faceless’ also alludes to the blank slate of the environment after a snowfall—”

“O-Okay, that’s enough of that, Genre,” I said, cutting her off. “There’s seriously nothing cringier than explaining the name you thought of for your own power, so please, give it a rest...”

Oh, but wait—I guess, technically, she didn’t think up the name for her own power at all? Destinia came up with it, not Genre. Hmm. Talk about confusing.

If I had to pick between Faceless and Sex Eclipse for her power name, I wouldn’t, because I didn’t care. If I really had to choose one or the other, though, I had to say that I was more a fan of Kiryuu’s naming conventions. Faceless felt like it more or less began and ended with its allusion to her expressionlessness. It barely had anything at all to do with her actual power, which lost it a lot of points for me. The part where she’d tried associating snow imagery with her personality seemed pretty strained to me as well.

“Well, anyway, good luck with that, Genre. I hope all your personalities can put their powers together and take Kiryuu down. I’m rooting for you, genuinely,” I lied.

“It goes without saying that we will do just that,” Genre replied.

“And, uhh... Oh, here’s another question: what—”

“That’s enough.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve had enough. I have no intention to speak with you any longer.”

“...”

Surely it’d be okay for me to punch her out at this point? There was only so much capriciousness a person could be expected to tolerate. She was off in her own little world, and she had no interest in so much as glancing into the reality everyone else shared. I appreciated that I wasn’t exactly one to talk, but I really did wish she’d put in at least a little effort to learn some social graces and common sense. Again: yes, I know I wasn’t one to talk.

“It seems this was pointless after all,” said Genre.

“Pointless? What was? Look, Genre—what was all of this about, in the end? Why talk to me at all?” I asked. I wasn’t at all satisfied with what little explanation I’d been given.

“I was attempting to create a new personality,” said Genre, making no attempt to mince words.

“A new personality...? You mean, one based on me?”

“Correct. That was the only reason it was necessary for me to speak with you.”

From what I understood, Yusano Genre’s personalities were created more or less automatically. Once her core personality had spent a long enough time communicating with someone, they would be used as fuel to spontaneously generate a new self within her.

Hmm. Interesting. If her goal was to make a new character, then her seemingly paradoxical “I came to talk, but don’t have anything to talk about” statement from before was suddenly a lot less inexplicable. That said...

“Wait a moment. We’ve talked before, haven’t we? I remember having a pretty long conversation with you the first time we met. I was positive that a personality based on me had already been born back—”

“It was not,” said Genre. “No such personality was born. Speaking with you did not cause a new self to be created within me.”

“W-Well...why not?”

“I don’t know. It is a mystery, even to me. This has never happened before. That’s why I decided to speak with you once more today. I wished to trade words with the being known as Sagami Shizumu, both to ensure that the phenomenon remained consistent and also to attempt to determine its cause.”

And the result of her experiment...had been failure. Once again, talking with me hadn’t given rise to a new personality.

Yusano Genre was effectively a mirror that reflected the personalities of those around her. By facing someone head-on, she was able to generate a reflection of them deep within her own heart...and apparently, when she turned that mirror upon me, for some reason, I just didn’t reflect.

“Nothing is born within me when I speak to you. Bystander...”

With the same smile she always wore, more emotionless than no expression at all would’ve been, she posed a question to me from a place of pure and genuine doubt, neither condescension nor concern sullying her sincere curiosity:

“...are you truly even alive?”