Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 11 - Chapter 8

Chapter 8: July and the Wheel of Fortune

“...And that, Tamaki, is how I know that your power, Lost Regalia, is able to reject anything that you perceive as adhering to conventional storytelling patterns, ensuring that it can’t become a reality!”

“Wha?!”

“By the way, you said you have other people you’re working with, didn’t you? In that case, one of them—that is, one of the other members of Fallen Black—must have used their power to make this abandoned city we’re in right now. In terms of type and scale, that power is probably pretty similar to Chifuyu’s ability...but if their only goal had been to get the two of us alone, then there’d have been no need to make a whole city in the space they created. That means they had to do it this way, and their power must not be quite as flexible as World Create is.”

“...”

“And while I’m at it...there’s never been any real chance that either of us could actually die in this battle, right? Considering how little you’ve been hesitating to attack me for real, and the fact that you don’t seem scared of dying yourself at all, it’s the only reasonable conclusion. I don’t know if attacks that would be lethal are automatically nullified, or if we’d just come back to life after dying...but one way or another, the point is that the way you’ve been acting has dropped just enough hints for me to figure out that you know very well you’re playing with a safety net.”

“H-How in the heck...?” Tamaki stammered. By all rights, she had me driven into a corner, but now, for the first time since our battle had begun, a look of genuine shock came across her face. “Jurai...were you eyeing me like a hawk the whole time you were skittering round town? Was all that blubbering about not wanting this just an act to get me to drop my guard and skim me for information? The begging for your life, the telling me to lay it off—you didn’t mean any of it?!”

“Nah...I meant every word of that. All the begging and pleading was completely for real—and the fact that I didn’t want any of this is genuinely true. I really didn’t want to fight you, Tamaki. I still don’t...but,” I continued, “that doesn’t mean I’m just gonna lie down and let you do me in!”

Our long, meandering game of tag had led us from one end of the town to the other and back again, finally coming to an end on a floodplain by the river. My back was up against a concrete wall, and if I hadn’t had it to lean against, I probably wouldn’t have been standing at all. Despite how dire things looked, though, I kept a defiant glare firmly fixed on Tamaki. My spirits were, in fact, as high as they could be.

This was the moment the whole situation would be turned on its head...or so I’d have liked to believe, but, well, I knew it wouldn’t be that easy. I was covered in scrapes and injuries, while Tamaki was entirely unharmed. Nothing had happened to put me at an advantage, and I hadn’t actually pulled any clever tricks to turn the tide.

At the absolute least, though, it felt like I was finally standing on even footing with her—psychologically speaking, anyway. Up until now I’d been running around like a terrified rabbit, unable to do anything but desperately flee for my life...but now, I’d wheeled about and bared my fangs at the hunter who’d been chasing me! We were back to square one. It was on.

Now—the time has come for me to begin my counterattack!

“...”

...

Okay, but actually, hold the phone for a second. Why does this all feel so abrupt? What’s with the short-form recap vibe we have going on right now?

All of that pathetically awkward running around that I’d done had been a ruse. In truth, I’d just been pretending to flee for my life, tempting my opponent into letting her guard down while keeping a watchful eye out for opportunities to counterattack. Finally, after fleeing for what felt like an age, all the little tricks and traps I’d used to dredge up info had paid off all at once, and in a moment of spectacular success that had been foreshadowed all throughout the battle, I’d managed to deduce the nature of my enemy’s power!

It should have been a moment of truly spectacular, cathartic release. Iit should have been the single most exciting, climactic scene imaginable. Instead, though, it was...kinda just there. Didn’t really do much for me at all. It was like the climax had happened right at the very beginning of the scene, or had been dumped at some random, awkward place in the middle.

Ugh... Well, I guess I’ll just tell myself that I’m imagining it. The excitement of figuring out her power’s probably just doing weird things to my state of mind. Time to calm down, collect myself, and analyze the situation again!

Futaba Tamaki—nay, Hinoemata Tamaki—had assaulted me out of nowhere, and I’d run like the dickens in a single-minded effort to escape her. I’d led her on a chase all across the abandoned city. If this had been a straight up one-on-one fight, I figured that my being a guy would have given me the advantage, but unfortunately, it wasn’t quite that simple. The city we were in had been made by someone’s supernatural power, and it had clearly been built specifically to give her an edge in every way possible.

One obvious example: apparently, I wasn’t allowed to possess anything that could be used as a weapon while I was in that space. That meant blades and bats were out, of course, but it also covered wooden poles, stones, and other improvised weaponry. If there was any chance I could use something to defend myself, it would instantly disintegrate the moment I tried to pick it up. Armor seemed to fall under the “weaponry” banner, as well—I’d tried grabbing a helmet to wear and a sign to use as an improvised shield, and they’d crumbled away as well.

Tamaki, on the other hand, was permitted to use anything and everything as a weapon without any sort of restrictions. I could only assume that whoever had made the city had put that rule in place, and it wasn’t the only one. There were all sorts of restrictions and limitations that gave her the advantage, and as a result, the edge that I should’ve had in physical strength thanks to our respective sexes was rendered meaningless. In other words, running the hell away was my only choice.

And, like...honestly? Tamaki had always been a quick-tempered, heavy-fisted brawler. She’d had the sheer brute force to knock me out with a single punch back in middle school, and I still couldn’t forget what that had felt like. Even if we’d been fighting on completely even ground, it’s entirely possible that I wouldn’t have stood a chance against her.

“Hmph... Don’t go hooting and hollering just yet,” said Tamaki. She looked chagrined, but the strength of her tone hadn’t lessened.

“Don’t go hooting and hollering”... I think that means “don’t get carried away,” right?

“Sure, you know how my power shakes out—what’s that change? I know all about your power too! You can make a teeny little fire that either doesn’t burn a lick or burns you as much as anyone!”

“Agh!”

Indeed—every last detail of my power had been leaked to Tamaki. She knew about its basic form, Dark and Dark, as well as its evolved second stage, Dark and Dark of the End.

But how?! Don’t tell me she watched the anime?! I’d thought for a moment...but no, obviously, the actual reason was nothing even close to that. The truth, apparently, was that one of her allies had a power that could analyze other people’s powers. That person could even see what people’s powers were named, it seemed, which was how Tamaki had been able to roast the hell out of me for mine—in her words, “‘The end’? More like your end!” So...yeah. That was kinda humiliating.

I’d decided that Dark and Dark of the End would be the name of my power’s second stage long before I’d actually awakened to it...and to be honest, I hadn’t even considered the possibility that it would end up being that apt, least of all in that sort of manner. It seemed that what people said about names being reflected by reality was not only true, but also applied to more than just people’s names.

But seriously, though...couldn’t it have been, I dunno, just a little more user-friendly? Fire that burns you just as well as it burns everything else? Really? How’s a supernatural battle supposed to carry on after you use a power like that? I’m all for self-damaging skills, but that’s an outright self-destruct! I can’t think of any characters whose powers address the “Your own skill can’t harm you” inconsistency other than Genthru and Feitan—this stuff’s supposed to get hand-waved!

In retrospect, the fact that Dark and Dark had felt lukewarm—in other words, the fact that I, its user, was just as capable of feeling its slight warmth as everyone else—kinda foreshadowed that this was how things would turn out if it ever got really hot...but honestly? That was a running gag that I wanted no part of. Actually, it felt less like a running gag and more like a one-shot punch line—a punch line that you could literally only use once, because a single use would mean The End, just like that. It was a single-use suicide skill that brought a terminal conclusion to me, myself, and I.

This wasn’t a hypothetical, by the way. The very first time I’d used the ability, I’d come very close to doing myself in. The jet-black flames that’d burst forth from my arm had completely disregarded my commands and gone on a rampage, burning my arm to cinders from the inside out. It’d been agonizing beyond anything I’d ever imagined, and all attempts to control it failed miserably. Hatoko had doused my arm in water and even encased it in ice, but to no avail. The sinister fiendish flame had just kept on burning, no matter what we did. I realize that describing it that way makes it sound pretty darn cool, but considering that its user would be the very first person those flames burned to death, it was less “cool” and more “too pathetic to even be funny.”

In the end, all that had saved me from the inescapable, hellish pit of flames I’d been flung into was a combined effort between Sayumi and Chifuyu—or rather, between World Create and Route of Origin. I’d quickly realized that the only way to rid myself of the flames was to do so surgically, and I’d asked Chifuyu to make a guillotine for that purpose. I’d known that was a seriously messed-up thing to ask an elementary schooler to do, but I just hadn’t had the time or the presence of mind to come up with any other options. It was like how sometimes the only way to treat a cancer patient was to get rid of all the afflicted cells by removing a part of their body—only in my case, the cancer was unquenchable fire, and the only choice was to lop it off, arm and all.

Needless to say, I hadn’t resolved myself to living the rest of my life one-armed. I never would’ve been able to bring myself to go through with an out-there solution like that if Sayumi hadn’t been on the scene. She was there, though, so I’d had her use Route of Origin the very instant the guillotine’s blade fell, returning my arm to the way it was meant to be the moment it was severed at the elbow. Thanks to her swift action, the pain had only lasted for a split second...but that split second was so devastatingly agonizing, I knew I’d remember it for as long as I lived. The severed arm, meanwhile, was quickly sealed away in another dimension thanks to Chifuyu, bringing the story of the day I’d awakened anew to its conclusion.

“Your power can’t do a lick to deal with mine, can it, Jurai?” asked Tamaki. I didn’t reply. “But why not give it a pull? Use your power and hope you awaken again! You never know—maybe you’ll amble right on into a one-in-a-hundred-million miracle and get a crazy new power to pummel me with!” she added with a mocking smirk.

There was, however, no chance that any such miracle could occur. If I was understanding Lost Regalia correctly, then no one would ever go through a supernatural awakening while they were subject to it. That would be a truly conventional plot twist, after all, which meant her power would overrule it.

In short, I would not awaken to a new power while battling Tamaki, no matter what. I couldn’t expect backup to turn up and save me at the last second either, nor would I be struck by a genius idea to pull me out of the fire at the eleventh hour. It seemed like a very nitpicky ability with pretty limited utility at a glance, but under the right circumstances, its effects could be devastating.

But, all that being said, there was something else I was more focused on. Assuming—going out on a limb and assuming—that the powers we awakened to were reflections of our innermost desires and urges...then what did Tamaki’s say about hers?

Tamaki...are you really that opposed to the conventional? Do you really hate the idea that the protagonist will come out ahead at the end of the day? Can you not stand to see the hero and the heroine overcome countless trials and hardships that ultimately bring the two of them together? It’s a trite, played-out pattern that’s as boilerplate as could be...but do you really despise it that much?

Are you still that fixated on not having been able to become a heroine yourself?

“Better focus, Jurai!” Tamaki shouted. I’d been lost in my thoughts, and she raised an arm above her head, snapping her fingers as if to snap me out of my daze.

An instant later, the air above her began to swirl. It was like the atmosphere had been compressed, forming a visibly spinning mass of air that rocketed toward me. This wasn’t some new power that Tamaki had obtained—most likely, it was the work of the individual who had made the town we were in. Whoever they were, they apparently had some degree of awareness of the state of our battle, and they had taken Tamaki’s snap as a signal to generate the gust of wind. That was my best theory, anyway, based on the timing of all the techniques and abilities that I’d seen her use so far.

Unfortunately, however, seeing through the trick behind her abilities and actually defending myself against them were two entirely separate matters.

“Ugh! A-Agh,” I grunted in pain. I’d done my damnedest to dive out of the way, Monster Hunter style, but tragically, dodge rolling doesn’t give you I-frames in real life, and it hadn’t worked in the slightest. The gust of air had scored a direct hit, sending me slamming into the concrete wall behind me. My whole body was racked with pain, and since the impact had been focused on my back, it’d also winded me so badly I couldn’t even breathe for a moment.

“Guess that’s that,” Tamaki said, strolling over toward me as I gasped for breath, unable to stand. She had a metal bat grasped tightly in her hand—an improvised weapon she’d appropriated from an unstaffed sporting goods store over the course of our chase. “Don’t fret about it, though. It’ll only hurt for a tick. You were dead-on with all your prattle from before—even if one of us kicks the bucket, we won’t actually die. All the pain—and our powers—will get wiped right on out of our minds, and we’ll come back, just like that. So take it easy and die, okay?”

“So...dying means having our memories erased, huh?” I grunted. “That means...there’s a really high chance that someone’s out there who’s been monitoring and managing everyone who got powers. Putting a system into place that wipes our memories would be a perfect way to make sure that our powers stay secret and no info leaks out about them...and I guess that probably means that they’re the ones who set up this whole coming-back-to-life system too, right? Memory wipes... Immortality... I see what they’re going for. This is the perfect setup to get people to fight each other. Since all of this is supernatural, I’m guessing they’re something other than human—some sort of entity, or entities, that transcend human understanding, for sure. And if they’re making humans fight each other and watching those fights play out...the only motives I can think of are an experiment, a proxy war, a show, or a contest to gamble on.”

“Wh-What the heck? Who even are you?” Tamaki stammered. She looked terribly shaken—maybe because my analysis had been on the mark? In any case, there was only one answer I could give to the question of who I was. I’d settled that issue a long, long time ago.

“I’m Guiltia Sin Jurai,” I said. “Though come to think of it, I guess this is the first time I’ve told you that name, isn’t it?”

“Heh... Heh, ha ha ha... Honest, what the heck? What’s that even mean?” asked Tamaki with a feeble laugh. It seemed that just a little of the tension she’d built up within her this whole time had finally drained away. “I always thought that you had a lot more going on than you let on, but keeping your head on straight in a situation like this? That’s really something. You’re an awfully impressive person, you know that?”

I didn’t say a word.

“Hey, Jurai. If you really are keeping cool as a cucumber and thinking all this through...then why haven’t you asked me the real question yet?” asked Tamaki. “Don’t you wanna ask why all this is happening to you, not Sagami?”

“Oh...that,” I said.

By all rights, that really was probably the first question I should’ve asked. Why was I the one getting attacked? Sagami was the one who’d hurt her more deeply than anyone, so why was I being targeted instead of him? She was more or less just lashing out in pure resentment, so wasn’t it unreasonable for me to be the one who had to bear the brunt of that fury?

I hadn’t asked any of that, though. I hadn’t voiced any of those doubts. As to why...

“I don’t, no. After all...I already know the answer,” I said. “You were scared, right, Tamaki?”

Tamaki took in a sharp breath.

“You were scared that if you tried attacking Sagami like you’re attacking me right now, you might not be able to actually hurt him at all, weren’t you?”

Tamaki hesitated for just a moment...then shook her head. “Can’t get anything past you, can I, Jurai?” she said.

If Sagami had been the subject of Hinoemata Tamaki’s revenge-driven sneak attack—if he were standing here instead of me—how would he have reacted? I couldn’t say for sure...but I did know one possibility. It was very easy to imagine him offering up an empty apology and walking out of the situation completely unscathed, when all was said and done.

In Sagami’s mind, Tamaki’s status as a heroine had long since been rescinded. He didn’t even see her as a girl anymore, and if she were to reunite with him, she’d have to face that fact all over again. She’d put everything she had into her revenge, but there was a terrible possibility that in the end, her target wouldn’t even give her the time of day. To him, she was nothing more than an inconsequential extra who’d faded into the background. The sense of emptiness that fact would bring her—the fear, the despair it would cause her—was unfathomable.

And so, Tamaki had gone after me instead. She’d targeted me because she’d known I would accept her revenge for what it was—she’d known I would acknowledge it as the tragedy she meant it to be. She’d known that I just didn’t have it in me to make light of her feelings the way Sagami had...

“You really are one peachy guy, Jurai. You’ve always looked me right in the eye and tried your hardest to get where I’m coming from. You and Shizumu are as different as anyone’s ever been,” Tamaki said with an awkward smile. “I never could’ve said this back then, but did you know? I really loved you back in the eighth grade. Honest.”

“...”

“Shizumu would fib about loving me all the time and never actually do a lick for me, but every once in a bit, I caught myself thinking that you would treat me half proper. That’s why I went straight to you when Shizumu said goodbye.”

I felt a stinging pain in my chest. My memories of the darkest point in my life—my memories of that rainy day—were being dragged back up to the forefront of my mind. Memories of swearing that I would love and safeguard a girl who had been hurt so terribly deeply, and of how it had felt when those feelings were betrayed just moments later...

“What about Aragaki Zenya?” I asked after a pause. “How did you feel about him?”

“Oh, Zenya? Good question... I loved him too, I guess. You probably had it out for him, but when I tried chatting with him, it turned out he had a real nice manly side you’d never have thought.”

A sense of nausea-inducing self-loathing shot through me. I just couldn’t handle the way that Tamaki used the word “love.” It felt far too blasé—far too flippant for me to accept. Those feelings must have shown through on my face, and Tamaki’s expression warped into a grimace as she watched me. There was a deep sadness in her gaze, accompanied by a burning fury.

“Hey, Jurai. Why aren’t rom-com heroines allowed to take a shine to more than one guy?” asked the girl who couldn’t be a heroine herself, a certain urgency creeping into her tone. “The main guys in rom-coms always mess around with a bunch of girls at once, right? They act all sympathetic and say whatever the girls want to hear, never actually dating anyone—just keeping them all in a half-baked ‘more than a friend, less than a lover’ limbo, flirting it up the whole time. The heroines are always all, ‘The protagonist was my first love!’ and dedicate themselves to him and only him, but he’s never like that at all, is he? He’s never dedicated to anyone. He’s nice to everyone, never does anything that’d make anyone hate him, and just wafts from one heroine to another like he’s checking off events on a to-do list...”

“...”

“So come on, Jurai—clue me in. Why’s the protagonist allowed to be flighty, but the heroines aren’t? Why’re they the only ones who get slammed for it?”

There was nothing I could say to that. When Sagami was dating her, he had taken an interest in other girls like it was the most natural thing in the world for him to do...and then he’d dumped her for cheating on him a single time, just like that. He’d branded her with the mark of a failed heroine for a single indiscretion.

“I really worked my tail off, you know that? I put my everything into being the best girlfriend I could. I did it all to be Shizumu’s heroine...but he didn’t do a lick to be my hero!”

When we have feelings for someone, we naturally begin to build up a persona that we think will suit them. We put in effort to become their ideal—to become someone they could love. The question remains, though: is hoping for or expecting your partner to do the same for you right, or is it wrong? Is it just, or is it misguided? That was a question I had no answer to.

“That’s why I wafted off to you and Zenya, you know? It was because of how Shizumu acted... That’s why I ended up being as unfaithful as a rom-com protagonist. But...was that really such an awful thing? Was that really bad enough to get me booted off the heroine stand in one go?”

I’d seen a program on TV once—or something along those lines—that’d claimed when unfaithful wives were asked why they’d cheated on their husbands, a majority of respondents gave the same answer: because he hadn’t paid enough attention to them. Reducing the problem to a single, simple phrase like that would inevitably cause plenty of people to criticize them for cheating over something so seemingly petty, but only because it failed to account for the fact that there were as many different ways for a husband to not pay attention to his spouse as there were couples in the world. It just wasn’t a problem that could be boiled down to a simple statement.

On a similar subject, although the prevailing attitude seemed to be that we lived in an era of unprecedented gender equality, when it came to matters of infidelity and adultery, there was still a substantial gap between how men and women were treated. To put it frankly: on a societal level, women were sanctioned far more severely for cheating than men were. Male celebrities who got divorced after cheating on their wives could still make appearances on TV like it was nothing, but a female celebrity in the same position would be harshly criticized by men and women alike, far and wide.

That was all just a matter of public opinion, of course. I was sure that there were plenty of husbands out there who chose to treat their wife’s infidelity as a momentary indiscretion, and then they lived out the rest of their lives in happiness with their wives afterward. This wasn’t an issue that could have a definitive, one-size-fits-all sort of answer, and trying to seek one out would be a lost cause. Just as there were countless ways for an infidelity-causing problem to manifest between couples and spouses, so too were there as many solutions for that sort of strife.

However...in Sagami Shizumu and Futaba Tamaki’s case, there had been no such solution. It just hadn’t existed. Sagami hadn’t been able to perceive his girlfriend as anything other than a rom-com heroine, but at the same time, he hadn’t been willing to make any effort to play the part of the protagonist. The moment she’d deviated from his ideals, he’d lost all interest in her. To someone like him—someone obsessed with purity and virginity—a heroine who cheated or had a romantic history was a taboo among taboos. In his mind, those were sins heavier even than murder. With the sole exception of cuckoldry fetish games, a heroine turning her interest toward another man was an unthinkable and unforgivable infraction.

If—purely hypothetically if—Tamaki really were a heroine in a light novel or a dating sim, then the odds were good that virtually none of its readers would take a liking to her either. In this day and age, writing a heroine who could fall for more than one man was considered downright criminal. Simply put: the readers would never love Tamaki.

But so what? No matter how much the readers might hate Tamaki, I still never would. Even in that moment, when she was lashing out in a protracted, unjust, and violent manner, I still didn’t feel the slightest bit of resentment toward her. All that I felt was guilt—guilt for not having been able to save her on that day in the eighth grade. Guilt and regret for running away instead of facing her.

And that’s the reason, Tamaki. That’s why, even if you do end up killing me here...I’d actually be okay with it.

It would have been a totally different matter if her killing me meant me actually dying, of course, but I knew for sure now that death in this battle would result in me coming right back to life again. In that context, I was all right with letting her get one good murder in. If lashing out at me—hurting me—would help heal Tamaki’s emotional wounds even a little, then I was all right with getting killed by her. It was the punishment I felt that I deserved.

But...

“So...not saying a peep, huh? I guess that means you think this is all my fault too?”

“No! I just—”

“It’s fine. It’s all just peachy now. I’ve already decided to tear it all down, after all,” said Tamaki, disregarding my rebuttal entirely. “You’ll come back anyway, so what’s the harm in dying just once, Jurai? You’ll forget all about your power, sure, but you don’t have to worry a lick about that. I’ll take care of all your little pals before you know it, so you’ll all be amnesia buddies together. You won’t feel left out a bit.”

“...Like hell you will.”

“Huh?”

“I said like hell you will!”

For a moment, I’d planned on letting Tamaki kill me. I’d thought that wouldn’t bother me too much. But if she wasn’t just going after me...that changed everything. If my friends would be put in the same peril after I was dead, then I couldn’t afford to sit back and let it happen. I couldn’t afford to let Tamaki stay bound by her past any longer.

“That so? Hmph,” snorted Tamaki. “So, what’s your scheme? Gonna take me down to protect your friends?”

“No,” I replied. I heaved my bruised and battered body back upright, glared at her, then shouted with all my might. “I’m not gonna take you down—I’m gonna vanquish you! And I’m not gonna protect them—I’ll be their aegis!”

Tamaki blinked. “You...huh? How’s that any different?”

“In every possible way!”

“Try barely a whit!” she shouted. At the same moment she denied my unshakable sense of aesthetics, she leaped forward and swung her bat, bringing it arcing down toward my skull. But—in that split second—I moved forward as well, hurling myself toward her in a full-speed dash.

I’d spent the entire battle up to that point running away from her, but now I’d shifted to offense for the very first time...and just as planned, it caught her off guard enough to throw off her aim. Before she could brain me with her bat, I managed to close in on her and wrap my arms around her. If I were being a poser, I’d say I caught her in a clinch, and if I weren’t trying to make myself sound cool, I’d say that I basically just hugged her.

Oh, right. I hugged her like this back then too, didn’t I? I thought, despite knowing very well that this was not the time.

“Wha?! Ugh... Let go!” Tamaki shouted. She started struggling and flailing, but I held on to her with all my might—and, at the same time, I started tapping at my smartphone, which I’d pulled out mid dash. “Huh?! Wh-What’re you doing with that, Jurai?! What’s your game?!”

“I’m contacting a friend,” I replied.

“Huh? Quit talking bunk! My power’s still shutting that down! There’s not a lick of a chance you could get through to them!”

She wasn’t just pulling that out of thin air. I’d already tried to contact my clubmates whenever I’d found the chance during our extended chase, but every time, I’d miraculously lost my signal at just the right moment to screw it up. Apparently, me calling in one of my friends to save me from certain doom would be a conventional development in Tamaki’s eyes. However...

“Your power’s not gonna have a problem with me just making small talk, is it?”

I wasn’t going to ask the person I was texting for help, nor tell her what a crisis I was in. No, I was sending a perfectly normal, casual text, phrased in such a way that she’d never imagine I was currently in peril. Not even Tamaki’s ability could stop me from doing that—and, as expected, my text went through without issue.

“What difference is that supposed to—”

“Hey, Tamaki. Do you know about the Doublixir?”

“H-Huh?!”

“It’s one of Doraemon’s future gadgets: a liquid that causes anything you drip it on to double itself every five minutes. Nobita uses it to duplicate a steamed chestnut bun for himself, but he ends up not finishing all of the buns he makes, and the one he leaves behind keeps doubling itself every five minutes. The problem spirals out of control so badly that, in the end, Doraemon has to use a mini rocket to launch all the chestnut buns into space.”

“...”

“That’s where the story ends in the original work...but when you think about what must have happened to those chestnut buns afterward, the implications are actually sort of scary. Wouldn’t that mean that somewhere out in the void of space, an astronomically large number of chestnut buns is still growing exponentially every five minutes? Eventually, that entire universe will be blotted out by a limitless number of chestnut buns. Tons of people have argued about the whole theory online, apparently—like, about how it wouldn’t turn out that way because the universe is constantly expanding, or how the law of conservation of mass shuts the whole premise down from the start.”

“Wh-Why’re you prattling on about all this?!”

“Because it reminds me of something. The effects of the Doublixir seem an awful lot like those of my power, Dark and Dark of the End.”

“They... What?”

“When I first awakened to that ability, I ended up cutting my own arm off and sealing it away in another dimension. The black flame wasn’t going to go out no matter what I did, and that was the only solution I could come up with to get rid of it...but tell me, Tamaki,” I said, dropping my voice to a near whisper as I spoke right into her ear.

“I sealed that arm away...but what do you think happened afterward?”

Severed by way of the guillotine, my right arm had been cast into a realm of deepest darkness. It’d been left there in the bottomless void, burning away without anyone to observe it...so what would it look like now?

“Wh-What happened? You mean—”

“I mean it’s still burning! I can tell. I have a natural, intuitive sense of what my own power’s doing, and I feel it plain as day. If you thought that it was the sort of fire that would keep burning until its fuel was exhausted, then let me tell you: it’s not nearly that half-hearted. Once it’s been lit, it’ll keep burning forever—and I do mean forever.”

Just like an ever-growing cluster of chestnut buns occupying a corner of the universe, my flame would continue to burn within its alternate reality. It would burn...and it would spread. Even now it raged away, blindingly incandescent in its ever-deepening stygian fury.

“That flame is the end given form. The moment it’s brought into being, it marks the conclusion of both its wielder and the world they live in. If I hadn’t managed to seal it away...it would have burned the whole earth to ashes, and kept burning still.”

“Y-You’re fibbing. There’s no way that could be—”

“You think so? Then how about we go find out for ourselves?”

Tamaki gasped. “W-Wait, Jurai...did you just text—”

“That’s right. I was contacting Chifuyu. I asked her to open up a Gate into the dimension we sealed my flame in...and I asked her to open it up right here! It was a real lucky break that she bought a smartphone the other day,” I added.

I’d taken great care to phrase my message in as innocuous a manner as possible, so there was no way that Chifuyu could have figured out what sort of situation I was actually in by that alone. By keeping her unaware, I’d managed to circumvent Lost Regalia’s restrictions by way of technicality.

“I don’t know exactly how large my flame has grown by now, but speaking as someone who’s experienced it once already, I can say this for sure...it’s not gonna be a pleasant way to die. It’s not nearly as powerful as the Dragon of the Darkness Flame, see. It won’t burn you to ash in the blink of an eye. You’ll get to watch yourself burn as it slowly but surely consumes you, moment by agonizing moment, until you finally lose consciousness. I know it’s my own power, but I have to admit...it’s a real nasty one.”

“Ugh... How?!” shouted Tamaki. “How is this happening?! This doesn’t make sense! How’d you even come up with this, Jurai?! My power’s still working! It shouldn’t have been possible for you to pull out a genius idea at the last second to save yourself from certain doom!”

“It makes total sense,” I replied. “It’s simple, really—I’ve had this method thought up from the very start.”

“F-From the start? No way... You mean, from the moment you were caught in my trap...?”

“Nope. Further back than that.”

“Further...?”

“I came up with this plan the same day I awakened to my new power.”

“H-Huh?!”

“Who do you think you’re talking to, Tamaki? Don’t you know I’m Guiltia Sin Jurai?” I said, punctuating the declaration with a full-blown “Mwa ha ha!” I laughed—nay, cachinnated with all my might, rousing my spirits and steeling my resolve. “To most people, Dark and Dark of the End would seem like a power with no application, no matter how hard they thought about it. Me, though? I came up with ten applications the very same day I obtained it!”

“Wha—?!” Tamaki gasped, her eyes wide with shock.

...Okay, so I have to admit, I was exaggerating just a little when I said I’d come up with ten plans. The actual number was two. This was one of them, and the moment had finally come for it to take its turn in the spotlight.

“Looks like it’s time,” I said. A faint light was beginning to glimmer from the ground beneath our feet—the light of one of Chifuyu’s Gates. She was opening one up directly beneath me, just like I’d asked her to.

This whole plan had been a gamble. It all hinged on whether or not Chifuyu would be able to use her power in this town—a space made by someone else’s power—but apparently, I’d won that wager in a big way. The two powers were part of the same general category, but as expected, Chifuyu’s was a cut above within that category.

The moment I saw the light begin to form beneath me, I clenched my arms around Tamaki. I squeezed her as hard as I could, ensuring she couldn’t possibly get away. I’d let her go in middle school...but this time, I would hold on to her to the bitter end.

“Time for us to plunge into the abyss together, Tamaki,” I muttered.

“Ah... N-No, don’t!” Tamaki yelped. She struggled frantically to get away, but it was too late.

“The gateway to hell opens...now.”

Now—let us begin the end of the beginning.

“Inferno Gate: Maximum Genesis!”

A split second later—the doorway to Hades fell open. The ground beneath our feet vanished, and after the barest moment of weightlessness, I felt us plummet downward. It was like we’d been swallowed up—dragged into and devoured by the unfathomable darkness that stretched outward onto eternity.

“N-No... No! H-Help...” shouted Tamaki. “Help me, Shizumu!”

In those final moments, as the darkness closed in around us, she called out the name of her former lover, desperately begging him to save her.

That’s right, Tamaki. This is what you should’ve done from the start. If you’re having a hard time, just say it. If you want someone to help you, just ask for it. You should’ve just screamed it out loud from the start. Instead of deciding that there was no point asking him for help, you should have believed in your boyfriend and expected the best from him.

If you had...then I’m sure things wouldn’t have turned out this way. It would have ended differently for you and Sagami—and for you and me, as well.