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

A Preview for Next Time: ENDorphin

Superfluous. This whole section is utterly, intolerably superfluous. Why would you go all the way past plain “fluous” and into “super” territory? Why would you take something that was already perfectly finished and add on one final touch that ruins it all?

This whole story was wrapped up nice and neatly. If we just stopped, here and now, then the book could end on a positive, refreshing note. I don’t know if these “previews for next time” or whatever are something that the editors insist on or something that authors decide to put in independently, but regardless, I have to wonder: what possible merit could there be to shoehorning in a blatant sequel hook for the next volume right at the end of everything?

“Tamaki?!” shouted Andou from beside me. His eyes grew wide with shock as he watched a pitch-black sphere manifest in the air...and consume Tamaki whole. Mere moments after our story had concluded in the most beautiful way possible, someone had crashed onto the scene, assaulting us in our moment of mutual joy.

The sphere was a black hole: a void in space capable of swallowing up anything and everything. It had appeared directly behind Tamaki and sucked her in at a terrifying speed. There was no time to even think of rescuing her. She hadn’t even had the time to scream. Tamaki had just been silently engulfed by the singularity, vanishing without a trace. It was like reality was laughing in the face of our moment of reconciliation, ruining it all with brutal, merciless efficiency.

“T-Tamaki...? Tamaki!” Andou bellowed. His panic and astonishment weren’t hard to pick up on.

“It’s all right, Andou,” I said, my voice coming out so composed, it surprised even me. “Tamaki isn’t dead. This War doesn’t allow any of its participants to actually lose their lives in battle with each other. Even if you do ‘die,’ you’ll just come back to life again.”

I delivered my explanation in a soft, quiet tone. Behind that softness, though—within my mind—within my heart...

“That...was Pinpoint Abyss, I take it?”

It was a technique that utilized an ultra-powerful gravitational field to eliminate someone in the blink of an eye, and a maneuver that he was fond of and used often. Or, rather, that he wanted people to believe he was fond of and used often.

“Bwa ha ha!”

A dry, peculiar laugh rang out from on high—a laugh that I’d heard that very same day just two or three hours before. I looked up to find a solitary man standing atop a nearby bridge that spanned the river. I say he was standing “atop” the bridge, but to be clear, I don’t mean that he was standing on the sidewalk or the road. No, he was high up above, standing on the truss itself. It was a perilous place where only construction workers or other tradesmen would normally find themselves, but he was simply standing there like it was the most natural thing in the world, his long coat flapping in the wind behind him.

The man’s silvery hair shined eerily in the light of the crescent moon. He looked almost mythical, standing there in the moonlight—like a devilish figure who had stepped straight out of a religious mural. It was...very hard not to assume that he’d calculated his entrance with intense care. There’s just no way he hadn’t engineered his positioning just right so the moon would be located directly above him when viewed from our perspective.

Kiryuu Hajime...aka Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First. In a sense, he was the polar opposite of me and my many long years spent as an incorrigible reader. He longed for the limelight and was driven by an insatiable lust for others’ approval. In other words, the writer within him was far too strong of a force. He was an incorrigible writer—a man whose case of terminal chuunibyou had lasted well into his twenties without so much as a hint of decline—and still to this day, he strove to play the part of both author and protagonist, spinning an endless tale of pure and unfiltered self-congratulation.

“And that makes eight.”

Kiryuu’s scornful, sneering words came as more than a bit of a shock to me. “That makes eight”? Does he mean...there are only eight Players left in the war? That eliminating Tamaki has brought us down to— No, no, that can’t be right.

The numbers just couldn’t have dropped that dramatically in that short of a time frame. I’d run into more than eight Players that day after school alone.

What happened? Something must have gone down over these past few hours...so just what on earth did that man do? Who’s still in the picture, and who’s been taken out of it?

“The auditions are over, and the players have all been chosen. Now—let the beginning of the end commence,” said Kiryuu.

That told me everything I needed to know. It told me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that when he’d said “That makes eight,” he’d been referring to the Final Eight—to the new rule that had been added to the Fifth Spirit War at Kiryuu Hajime’s behest.

This War wasn’t supposed to continue to the point that the last man standing would claim its prize. Rather, the battle royal would come to an end when eight Players remained. I had gotten it into my head that the sole purpose of that rule was to turn the War into a team competition...but what if his intentions hadn’t been so simple? What if, for instance, the playing field narrowing to eight contestants would instead move the War along to a totally new stage?

“...Why?” said Andou from beside me, looking up at Kiryuu with an expression of purest confusion. Kiryuu matched that gaze with the sort of look you’d give your archenemy, or your fated rival...or, perhaps, the sort of look you’d give the subject of your yearning.

He didn’t spare me so much as a glance. Of course he didn’t. There was no point, no entertainment to be drawn, from watching an onlooker like me. He was there to be seen, and I was there to see. That was the relationship that we’d always had—the nature of our childhood friendship.

This very moment, here and now, would be Kiryuu Hajime’s long-awaited chance reunion with Andou Jurai. To him, it was surely as important of a scene as there could ever be. It was the sort of scene that an author would write with the express intent of making it stick in their readers’ minds, the sort of situation that would prompt the greatest sense of impact and catharsis possible, and I was just there, sticking out like a sore thumb and thoroughly out of the loop.

That’s not to say that I felt anything was particularly wrong with all that, of course. I was never not out of the loop, and I’d always preferred it that way. And, if I’d still been the same person I always had been, I might’ve let it slide...

“I, Sagami Shizumu, declare my intent to participate in the Fifth Spirit War.”

...but now I spoke aloud, expressing my will to join the War using the specific phrase that I had been taught. An instant later, a pale light engulfed me.

Kiryuu glanced at me, his ever-joyful smile shifting as his eyebrows furrowed with suspicion. “Shizumu... What’re you playing at?” he asked.

“Oh, just playing author,” I replied.

“...”

“You remember my hypothetical power—I believe you granted it the moniker Innocent Onlooker? Well, I’ve just awakened to it for real.”

The truth was that quite a long time ago, on the day I’d first met Leatia, my power had been awakened within me. That being said, I wasn’t in quite the same situation as the other Players. I’d pestered Leatia into putting me in a fuzzy, ambiguous state where if I decided that I wanted to join the War, I could do so independently at any given moment. In short: I had asked for, and been granted, a moratorium on my decision of whether or not to participate.

Not even I totally understood why I’d made that request. By all rights, I should have been completely disinterested in taking part in any sort of supernatural battle, but for some reason I couldn’t explain, turning the chance down outright had felt like a waste. Looking back, that feeling might well have been the faintest trace of the author within me asserting himself. The side of me that only Andou had been able to find for so long had been unwilling to give up on his right to play a part in this story.

And that brings us to now. To the moment when I, by my own will, chose to declare my participation in the War and become a Player.

“That makes nine, doesn’t it, Kiryuu?” I said. “I don’t know who all is left in the running, and I don’t know what exactly the Final Eight rule really means...but regardless, I think I can call this a success, can’t I? Have I managed to throw at least a bit of a wrench into the works of your scheme—or rather, your storyline?”

I had no idea how significant the number eight was to his plan...but if it was significant to at least some extent—if there were nine Players remaining in the War rather than eight, thanks to my participation—then the War would be unable to move along to its next stage. The story would stagnate, come to a grinding halt, and be drawn out far longer than it should have been.

“Lucky you, Kiryuu. You’re getting one of your beloved extensions. It’s still a little too early for us to let this work come to a close. Why don’t we entertain the readers for just a little while longer?”

“Well... This is a surprise. Can’t say I saw it coming at all,” Kiryuu remarked. “To think you, of all people, would stand in my way at the eleventh hour... I was convinced that you weren’t going to take anyone’s side or make anyone your enemy, all the way to the bitter end. Gotta admit, I feel kinda betrayed,” He shook his head with a cynical, exasperated smile. “I was planning on offering you a front-row seat to watch the conclusion of my story, y’know?”

“And I was planning on taking it,” I replied. “I’ve been looking forward to it all this time...but I suppose my anticipation’s gotten the better of me. It seems I just can’t be satisfied watching from the stands anymore.”

“We’re about to head into the final chapter. It’s too damn late for this. There’s no screen time left for you, Shizumu.”

“That’s perfectly fine. If there’s no screen time left for me...then I’ll just have to make some,” I said. I said it like an author—like a protagonist.

“Bwa ha ha!” Kiryuu cackled. “What is this? It’s like you’re a totally different person. What the hell happened over the past few hours?”

“Nothing particularly significant, really. I just got it into my head to give changing a try, that’s all. I’ve decided to put in just a little effort this time, for my friends’ sake.”

Kiryuu’s gaze locked with mine, and the two of us glared directly at each other. He was looking at me now. I wasn’t out of the loop anymore. After all, I’d taken a step forward. I had intentionally, personally, written the name Sagami Shizumu into this story’s dramatis personae.

“Though of course, all that said, people’s true natures don’t change quite that easily. I’m still the reader I’ve always been, and nothing more. When all’s said and done, I just want to be entertained above all else,” I said. “But...imagine if I managed to take you down. Wouldn’t that be more entertaining than anything?”

The beginning of the end wouldn’t be ending anytime soon. Not on my watch.

Thus did an onlooker who had refused to take to the stage for so long decide, after all this time, to throw a fit about how he really did want his share of the spotlight after all. He set out to pick a fight with the author himself, ruining the one big moment that the whole story had been building toward from the outset. A single egotistical reader deciding to assert himself had thrown the whole plot into a state of chaos.

Our story had jumped its rails, and no author could hope to bring it back under control anymore.