Chapter 1: The Path of Closed Clock
The sovereign of eternity, Closed Clock—this was the title that had been bestowed upon Kanzaki Tomoyo and, by extension, the name of the power she’d awakened to, which granted her domain over time itself. The one who had bestowed it, needless to say, was none other than me. Between “the sovereign of eternity” serving as its introductory appellation and the English words “Closed Clock” providing a foreign flair, it was a truly dramatic and terrific name for a power to have, if I do say so myself.
Now, you might be thinking “Wait, where’s this ‘sovereign of eternity’ part coming from?” and that would be fair enough, considering how little-known that aspect of the name is. In fact, it seemed likely that I was the only one who knew it, period. Closed Clock was a thoroughly serviceable name on its own, and when you have a name like that, nobody really cares that much about the preamble, but it was still very much established Closed Clock canon to me.
Why? Simple: because it was cooler that way. If there was a way to make a name more unique and elaborate, it was my personal policy to always go for it.
Why say “a storm” when you can say “a tempest”? Why say “one hundred” when you can say “fivescore”? Why say “forever” when you can say “perpetuity”? “Perpetuity” was actually a solid candidate for Closed Clock’s preamble, at one point, but ultimately “eternity” won out on the basis that even if it was a slightly more common word, it was nonetheless still a fancier one.
Tomoyo wasn’t the only one whose power I’d named, by the way. No, I had come up with the names of every member of the literary club’s abilities, including mine. Five members, to whom I’d bequeathed five names and titles...but among those titles, Closed Clock was perhaps the one I was most deeply attached to. Not only did it perfectly depict the power’s capabilities without being too on the nose about it, it also just had a certain linguistic something to it that made the urge to say it out loud almost irresistible.
That was not, however, the biggest reason I was especially fond of Closed Clock. That reason was actually quite simple: it was because out of all five of our powers’ names, Closed Clock was the one I’d come up with first.
“...And with that said, let’s get this one-on-one interview underway!”
“With what said?! I have no idea what the point of this is! How about you try actually explaining yourself, Andou? What do you mean you want to do ‘one-on-one interviews’ with all of us?!”
School was out for the day, and Tomoyo and I were staying late in the club room. We were seated on opposite sides of the long table in the center of the room and facing each other.
“Everyone else already left, so what’re we doing here...?” asked Tomoyo. “What could you possibly want the two of us on our own for?”
“Isn’t that obvious?” I said. “Starting now...the two of us will speak of love.”
“Bwahuh?!” Tomoyo wildly shrieked before leaning forward over the table. “Wh-What are you saying?! A-And wh-wh-what’re you getting at, here...?”
“Well, we’re finally alone, aren’t we? It’s the perfect chance for us to convey the depths of affection within our hearts!” I replied.
“Right, but...I’m saying that’s, like... W-Wait a second, I need a moment to prepare myself, like, emotionally— I mean, no! Forget that! We’re not even at the being-emotionally-ready stage! You can’t just go skipping steps with th-this sort of stuff...”
“Yes, indeed: today, we shall reveal to one another the depths of our love for our powers!”
A very long pause ensued.
“We’ll...what?” Tomoyo finally said.
“Huh? Come on, Tomoyo, keep up! What’s with the blank stare?”
“You meant our love...for our powers?”
“Yeah. Why, what else would I have meant?”
“You know what...? Nothing. Forget it. Whatever,” said Tomoyo with an exasperated shake of her head that I, for one, couldn’t make any sense of.
Roughly one week earlier, all five members of our literary club had suddenly been engulfed in a mysterious light. When we’d awoken some time later, we’d found that we had awoken in another sense as well: all of us had obtained supernatural powers.
It’d been a sudden awakening—an unexpected manifestation of paranormal phenomena and a momentously, absurdly abnormal situation that’d sent tidal waves crashing through the commonplace lives we’d led up to that point. We were bewildered, panicked, and confused as could be...but we couldn’t stay passive forever. If we kept quaking in fear without actually doing anything to resolve the situation, then no resolution would ever come. We had to accept the powers we’d awakened to for what they were and decide how we would go about dealing with them from now on. And for that sake, the first thing we needed to do...
“...is give our powers names!”
“Is it? Is it really?!”
“Of course it is!” I said with a confident nod. Power Naming 101 was a required course in the supernatural battle curriculum, after all. “Technique names that you scream at the top of your lungs, even though it means alerting your foe that you’re about to attack them! Titles so stylish they make you want to scream ‘Who the hell decided to call you that’! The drive to describe your power and its name in granular detail, smirking all the while! These are the true charms that draw all and sundry to the supernatural battle genre!”
“Why did all of those descriptions sound so backhanded?!”
“And so, starting here and now, I’ll be conducting individual interviews with each of you, one by one, and using the information I attain through them to grant all of your powers names!”
“Hence the one-on-one interviews... Okay, so I get the basic reasoning, but do we even really need to talk this through one-on-one in the first place? Couldn’t you just whip up some names on your own and call it a day?” asked Tomoyo.
“Absolutely not,” I replied. “My pride would never allow me to grant a power a name through that sloppy of a process!”
“Just how significant do you think these names are, anyway...?”
“Extremely! If one fails to take both a supernatural power and its owner into consideration over the course of the naming process, probing painstakingly into their deepest nature, then there’s no point to giving that power a name in the first place! Mwa ha ha! Oh, and just so you know, you do not have the right to veto my choice! I’ve been appointed the Grand Overseer of Naming by President Sayumi herself, meaning that I hold all authority when it comes to the naming rights of our powers, and none can stand against me!”
“Okay...but when you say she ‘appointed’ you, what you really mean is that you wouldn’t shut up about how you wanted to do it and she said sure because nobody else really cared, right?” Tomoyo noted with a contemptuous stare.
To be fair: that’s more or less exactly what’d happened. Sayumi’s exact words had been “Ugh. Well...if you’re that dedicated to going through with this, then do as you will,” and she’d sounded really fed up when she said it.
But nevertheless! The fact that I had been granted total and unilateral authority over our powers’ names was indisputable! Thus, I had no choice but to pour every fiber of my being into seeing the task through!
“And so, our momentous first naming session will be dedicated to your power, Tomoyo!” I declared.
Kanzaki Tomoyo had awoken to the power to manipulate the flow of time as she pleased. Not only could she stop time, she was also capable of slowing it, essentially putting the whole world into slow motion and causing herself to move at superspeed by comparison. Strictly speaking, I figured it gave her the power to shift the flow of her own personal timeline as she pleased.
We’d conducted an investigation of our powers after we’d awakened to them, and for the time being, that was our full understanding of Tomoyo’s capabilities. We’d only been at this for a very short time, of course, and the tests we were capable of were quite limited, so it was entirely possible that there were still hidden depths of potential to her power that we just hadn’t discovered yet—hers, and the rest of ours as well.
Speaking of which...I really, really hope that my power has a ton of hidden potential, because I’m gonna be in a major fix if it doesn’t! I’m counting on you, O power of mine!
“Prepare yourself, Tomoyo. It has fallen upon your shoulders to be our top batter!” I declared, looking her straight in the eye once more. “That means that it’s no exaggeration to say that your power’s name will set the standard for all the powers that will come after it!”
“W-Would you stop making such a big deal out of this?! I don’t need this sort of pressure in my life!”
However much Tomoyo objected, it was a clear and undeniable fact that the first power name was incredibly important. The first name to come up in a series would tell readers all about the aesthetics of its story and setting, not to mention the tastes of its author. First impressions were always important, and this was by no means an exception to that rule.
“I definitely wanna have all of our power names be stylistically unified, after all,” I explained. “You should go into this assuming that the overall style of your power’s name will be used for all of ours too. In other words, Tomoyo, your power’s name is going to become the basic format for everything that comes after it!”
“I just told you to stop pressuring me like this!” shouted Tomoyo. “Ugh... Why are you like this? Now I can’t just brush this off and get it over with as quickly as possible...”
“Mwa ha ha! It seems you’ve finally reached an understanding of our task’s monumental import!”
“Right...but actually, why am I the top batter in the first place? This whole thing was your idea, so shouldn’t you pick one for yourself first? Just name your black fire power and use that as the format. Haven’t you been thinking up names for that sort of crap since way before all of this even started?”
“...”
“Huh...? Wh-What? Why’re you grimacing like that? What’s going—”
“Oh, can it, would you?! I’d have come up with a name ages ago if it were that easy!”
“Why’re you snapping at me?!”
Believe me, I would’ve made my power the template-setter in a heartbeat if I could’ve. I’d wanted to be the one who chose which napkin to take and set the standard for the rest of the world. And yet...
“And yet... And yet... Ugh...”
“First you snap at me, and now you’re crying?! S-Seriously, Andou, are you, like...okay? You’re acting really emotionally unstable right now...”
“The thing is... The thing is, Tomoyo...you’re right. I can usually think up tons of power names! I’ve always really, really wished I could awaken to a power of my own, and I’ve always thought super-duper hard about what name I could give one if I got it...”
“The way you’re describing this is making you sound like a little kid, and it’s seriously grossing me out. Stop. Please.”
“But the thing is, when the time came for me to really give my power a name...I just lost my touch. I didn’t know what to do anymore,” I said as I slumped over the table and broke down in tears. I was so utterly dismayed at my own impotence that I couldn’t hold back my grief.
“So, uh, if I’m understanding this right...you can come up with names for fictional powers at the drop of a hat, but when you had to name your actual, real power, you ended up caving under the pressure and couldn’t do it?” asked Tomoyo.
“Yeah,” I confirmed with a nod. “It’s like...all the knowledge and aesthetic sense I’ve spent my whole life building up’s actually dragging me down, now that push has come to shove. It feels like I have to make it something really special, but when I try to actually sit down and do it, everything I come up with turns out super overwrought. It ends up making me look like I’m being a total tryhard, and I just can’t stand that thought.”
“You’ve really mastered the art of self-destruction here, haven’t you...? Just what’re you trying to prove, and who’re you trying to prove it to?”
“So anyway,” I said, moving right along, “I figured I’d start by thinking up everyone else’s powers’ names, nail down the format and style to an extent, then come up with a name for my own power.”
“So you’re using our powers’ names as warm-ups for yours, huh? Well, that’s fine, I guess. Not like any of us care about this crap to begin with.”
“All right! Let’s get started!”
With the preamble all out of the way, I pulled the Bloody Bible out from my bag, pausing for a moment to revel in the sinful allure of its jet-black cover. It was a tome within which the fundamental truth of this world’s principles was inscribed...and also the notebook in which I jotted down all the cool, stylish words that I encountered in my day-to-day life, among other things. As such, it served as both a notebook—packed to the brim with content that could inspire me on my quest to think up our powers’ names—as well as a shockingly ordinary memo pad that I could brainstorm in: a true multiuse item if I’d ever seen one.
“First things first, we have to settle on a style,” I said. That was a factor that we had to pay particular attention to, since Tomoyo’s power’s name would be the first in the series. All the other members’ powers, mine included, would have to conform to the format hers established. “As far as fundamental naming conventions go for this sort of thing, we can break the usual styles up into three broad categories.”
As I spoke, I jotted down three bullet points:
• Direct style. Ex: the English word “Fire,” transliterated to Japanese.
• Indirect style. Ex: the word “Fire,” written in literary Japanese characters with a semiambiguous reading.
• Amalgam style. Ex: the word “Fire” written in literary Japanese characters, with the English word “Fire” transliterated to Japanese as pronunciation guide text above it, explicitly defining the reading.
“There are tons of exceptions, of course, but I’d call those the three basic categories if I had to nail them down. ’Course, I probably didn’t need to bother explaining all of this to you, did I?”
“Nah, not really. And yeah, I guess the sort of names and titles you see in manga and light novels do mostly fit into those three.”
“To put it in even simpler terms: shinigami powers have indirect-style names, Arrancar powers use amalgam style, and Fullbring powers use direct style.”
“...BLEACH really covers all the bases for this explanation on its own, huh?”
“And if I wanted to come up with exceptions to those categories...I guess powers with Japanese names that are written phonetically as well as powers with literary Japanese in their guide text would break the pattern. You see those sometimes.”
“Don’t forget powers with names that are in actual, full-on English, and ones that are Japanese transliterated to English.”
“Right, exactly. You get the picture.”
There might very well have been other exceptions that we just didn’t know about, but if we wanted to keep things as basic as possible, then the three categories I’d listed did the job nicely for most cases.
“Of course, you could subcategorize within those three types forever, if you felt like it. Take the amalgam style, for instance—you could break it down like this,” I continued, once again scribbling down examples into my notebook.
Ex: Literary Japanese characters that mean “black fire” with an ambiguous reading, with “Flame of Darkness” in English as the pronunciation guide text.
Ex: Normal Japanese that means “fire of darkness,” with “Flame of Darkness” in English as the pronunciation guide text.
“You can further divide them by whether or not they maintain or elide normal Japanese,” I explained.
Take, for instance, a hypothetical series that gave all of its powers literary Japanese names comprising four characters. By eliding the normal Japanese you’d use with those characters in everyday writing, you could give them all a sense of thematic unity that I was a fan of. If just one of those names had normal Japanese inserted into it, it would stand out like a sore thumb and spoil the theming, or something like that.
Then again, there are plenty of series that have no sense of unity at all and just do whatever on a case-by-case, power-by-power basis. No small number of fictional works used direct, indirect, and amalgam-style names for their powers and titles in a seemingly random mishmash.
And, like, when you think about it from a realism standpoint, if the characters in the series were actually making up their powers’ names in isolation, it made more sense for them not to all fit a common style...but I still liked it better when there was a sense of unity! My favorite works were the ones that really pinned down their naming theory and rules. As such, I intended to give our powers’ names as much of a sense of unity as I could possibly manage.
“Hey, Andou,” Tomoyo said while I was reaffirming my determination. It seemed like she’d just realized something.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Your power lets you make black fire, so couldn’t you just use this one for it? Flame of Darkness?”
“Never!”
“Why not? It suits it perfectly.”
“Maybe it does, but I don’t wanna give my power the sort of name I could think up in a split second!”
I mean, come on—Flame of Darkness? That’s just...it’s just wrong, right?! Shouldn’t my power’s name have more...more...something to it?!
“Surely you of all people must get it, right, Tomoyo? You’ve gotta understand how Flame of Darkness lacks that certain je ne sais quoi?” I moaned.
“You think? Personally, I’d say it’s so simple it actually wraps around and ends up working pretty well in the end,” said Tomoyo.
“Even if it does, that means I have to wrap it around a time further than that!”
“Plus, characters whose powers have simple names like this tend to end up actually being the most powerful, right? Seems that way to me, anyway.”
“U-Uhh... I-I guess they might, maybe...?”
I was starting to feel more and more sold on Tomoyo’s logic, and my will to resist was breaking down.
Hmm. When she puts it that way, I guess Flame of Darkness may not be so bad after all...? The fact that it’s not overwrought may actually earn it some major points. When all the other characters in a series have powers with names that are super elaborate and clever—like, that reflect the conditions that have to be fulfilled to use them, or have some deep causal link to their history—a power with a simple name feels like it’d blow everything else away with pure, concentrated firepower. I’m usually into complex power names with tons of hidden meaning, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like simple but dynamic powers for their own merits.
“Yeah...you really might have a point... But wait! Maybe I’m looking at this from totally the wrong perspective...? Though if I look at it from the total opposite direction, then maybe it’s pretty great after all...? What if I turn it upside down, though... No, inside out... Or maybe it all just wraps around to— Wait, how many times have we already wrapped it at this point?”
“Don’t ask me!” shouted Tomoyo.
“Curses...this isn’t working! My train of thought’s stuck in a dead end—no, an unsolvable, spiraling labyrinth! The moment I started thinking ‘But maybe that makes it good after all?’ the brakes were off and I couldn’t reengage them anymore!”
“Well, there’s one thing for sure: I know exactly why you couldn’t manage to name your own power in the end.”
“A-Anyway, this isn’t about my power to begin with! We’re here to think about yours!” I said, forcing my thought process to shift gears and get back on track. “First off, the styles! I’m guessing that we’re both in favor of making it an amalgam, right?”
“Well, yeah,” Tomoyo agreed without hesitation.
The fact that we were on the same page about this really sped things along. Yup, for sure. Out of those three styles, amalgam’s the clear winner!
“An interweaving symphony of the literary and explicit! Gaah, it’s just the best! That’s something you can only pull off when you’re writing in Japanese—in other words, it’s the very sacred spirit of the Far East! I can declare this with absolute confidence: Japanese’s multilayered writing style with its plurality of orthographies—the quality that makes it such a massive pain in the butt to learn compared to all the other languages from all around the world—was designed for the sole and specific purpose of allowing us to put super awesome guide text above names to make them cooler!”
“It was not! No way in hell!”
“Okay, but you’ve gotta admit: creative guide text is an aesthetic touch that you only ever see in Japanese, right?”
“Well, I mean...”
“I, for one, firmly believe that stylish and idiosyncratic guide text is a cornerstone of Japanese culture that we as a nation can be proud of!”
You’d think we’d formally declare it to be part of our cultural heritage or something. My secret dream was that someday, the notoriety of Japanese titles would spread to all corners of the world in much the same way the notoriety of the Japanese writing system had. If we could sell T-shirts with Japanese characters written on them, then why not try selling T-shirts with fancy guide text on them too? I had a feeling they’d be a major commercial hit!
“Okay, so we’ve settled that your power—and, by extension, all of our powers—will have an amalgam-style name. Next up...”
“Is the hard part, right?”
“Sure is, yup.”
The two of us sank into thought.
“I guess this probably goes without saying, but amalgam-style names are the hardest to actually come up with,” I said.
“Since you have to come up with an explicit reading and meaningful literary characters, they’re twice the work,” said Tomoyo.
That was, indeed, the rub. Obviously, you couldn’t just translate the literary characters directly into English and transliterate it back as the guide text. No, you had to come up with guide text that had a true affinity with the nonphonetic text, bringing forth a sense of synergy between the two. The effort that took was, most likely, even more than twice the work of thinking up a simple, singular name...though on the other hand, that was also what made amalgam-style names so much fun to come up with.
“So, we want an amalgam-style name...but the more I think about it, the more I think that’s just too broad of a starting point,” I said.
“It’s hard to know where to start if we don’t narrow it down a bit first, yeah,” Tomoyo agreed.
Once we had that first power name set in stone, we’d be able to follow its format for the remaining members...but establishing said format really was quite the task.
“Well, seeing as I’ve gone through the trouble of setting up this whole one-on-one interview, you should feel free to bring up any ideas or opinions you have, Tomoyo,” I said.
“Opinions on what, even?”
“Well, like, do you like really long, drawn-out names that flow super nicely? Or are you a short and sweet sort of person?”
“Would you please try to look a little less excited about this? I don’t have a preference like that at all—either way is whatever for me.”
“C’mon, don’t be such a killjoy! And anyway, I already know the answer. You like long names, don’t you? Like, that title you came up with in middle school—the Witch of Antinomy Who Smirks in the Face of Twilight: Endless Paradox, right? That’s on the longer side for sure.”
“I told you that bringing up that title was taboo, didn’t I?!”
“Oh! Come to think of it, Kiryuu said something about liking his names to be practically a sentence long. ‘The ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, powerful enough to crush even the heavens and the fools who rule them: Lucifer’s Strike’ has one hell of a preamble for a power name...but man, is it ever hella cool too! It would’ve been super easy for the fallen angel imagery to come across as played out, but he used it with an artisan’s touch, seriously! The superlong preamble would be a pain to read out over and over, but then the actual power name in the guide text is nice and simple, bringing it all together in a perfectly functional, harmonious whole!”
“Don’t talk about my deadbeat brother’s naming aesthetics like you’re some sort of critic, please... I know you’re complimenting him, but it’s still humiliating to listen to,” Tomoyo said, hanging her head in shame...
“Hm...? Wait. H-Huh?”
...only for her to bolt upright and let out a confused grunt just a moment later.
“W-Wait a second, Andou,” said Tomoyo.
“What?” I replied.
Tomoyo took a second to compose herself, suppressing the agitation in her voice. “What month is it, again?” she finally said.
“October.”
“Right. Yeah. It’s October right now. And what’s our grade level?”
“Where’s this coming from? We’re first-years, duh.”
Andou Jurai: a first-year high schooler. Kanzaki Tomoyo: also a first-year high schooler. In other words, this was our first fall at our current school. The cultural festival, for which our sole contribution had been a literary magazine, had come to a close just recently. A week after that, we’d awakened to our powers, and another week past that brought us up to the present moment.
“R-Right, exactly. This really is the fall of our first year in high school, isn’t it?” said Tomoyo. “So then...why do you know about Endless Paradox, or about Hajime? Isn’t that weird, continuity-wise?”
“Oooh... Yeah, about that.”
Tomoyo seemed seriously freaked out by all this, but I had a perfectly calm and collected explanation to offer.
“Basically, we’re just not worrying about all that stuff this time around.”
“We’re not worrying about it?!”
“Yeah. ’Cause, like, honestly? Nailing down the timeline for this sort of thing’s a huge pain. What does anyone even get out of being super careful about all that stuff? So we’re just gonna prioritize going with the flow and brush off any weird little inconsistencies we might cause in the process.”
“And you think that’s okay why?!”
Because it is. Letting yourself get preoccupied with petty continuity nitpicks and losing out on what should’ve made the story interesting in the first place would be putting the cart before the horse, right? Plus, it felt like there was a real trend lately of people acting like whoever could pick out the most petty contradictions in a story was somehow better than everyone else, and frankly, I wasn’t into that at all.
Like, is getting up on a high horse and explaining all the continuity errors and inconsistencies in a story with a super obnoxious smirk on your face really something to be proud of? Sure, plenty of developments in plenty of stories strain logic and credulity, but if that makes the story more interesting, then what’s the big deal? It’s not like obsessive faultfinding ever makes anyone happy, right?
Though, of course...I have to admit that the reason I had all of those opinions was because I, too, bore the impulse to be exactly that sort of obnoxious reader as well. When you find a continuity error in a story, it’s so hard to suppress the urge to spread the news to anyone who’ll listen. Even if it’s a work you love—or really, especially if it’s a work you love—you end up wanting to quibble over the smallest of errors. You kinda have to be into a story to quibble that specifically in the first place, and that sort of obsessive attention to detail can be intoxicating.
I figure it’s probably a little like how some kids end up teasing the kid they have a crush on. It’s not an act driven by any sort of malicious intent. They say that love and hate are two sides of the same coin, and the same principle applies here.
But, all that being said, if that behavior ends up making someone else have a bad day, then personally, I think it’s better to hold off. I don’t want to become the sort of cowardly excuse for a geek who’d bash other people’s favorite stories relentlessly while never saying so much as a peep about the stories they do like, nor the kind who criticizes freely but never praises anything.
I want you to cast your memory back to a time long ago—to a stage of life that, at some point, everyone goes through. An era when you didn’t give the slightest hint of a crap about online reviews, continuity nitpicking, hilariously inaccurate historical details, or how a story was selling relative to its contemporaries. An era when you could just enjoy stories with an open mind, a peaceful heart, and a childlike innocence. Cast your mind back to that time...and do your best to approach stories with that mindset once more.
“So, yup! As far as the timeline goes, it’s currently the fall of our first year in high school—so, half a year before the original story starts—but also, I know that you’re a former chuuni and an aspiring light novel author, and also about Kiryuu. Let’s just run with that, ’kay?”
“Could you get any more meta about this...?”
“Eh, it’s fine. This is just a bonus story that’s gonna get packed in with the Blu-rays, after all.”
Actually, wait. I’m definitely not saying that it’s okay for bonus stories to be sloppy and off the cuff, for the record! I just mean that bonus stories are a great opportunity to do things that you couldn’t get away with in the main series. In short: I wanna cut loose, dangit! This is the perfect chance to pull out the stops and turn the meta up to eleven, so let’s go for it!
“Just because it’s a bonus story that comes with the anime doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want in it, you know?” said Tomoyo. “And besides, Andou, you know how these things go, right? It’s super common for bonus stories like this to get compiled together and released as an actual volume, isn’t it? Have you thought about how all of this is gonna look if that happens? Don’t you think you’re being pretty inconsiderate toward all the readers who haven’t even seen the anime?”
“As far as they go, all I have to say...is that I’m deeply, deeply sorry.”
“Admitting fault doesn’t make everything suddenly okay again, you know?”
“Oh, and by the way, you know how you’ve been going all tsundere about not caring about your power’s name? I know that’s what your initial character was like—specifically, your before-the-events-of-volume-one character—but I also know perfectly well that you’re actually super invested in all this deep down, so no worries there.”
“How’s that supposed to make me not worry?! And what do you mean, my ‘initial character’?!”
Tomoyo’s initial character was, in short, “the girl who stands back and shakes her head at everyone else’s crap.” She was skeptical and cynical as a matter of policy, and she kept her cool no matter what was thrown at her. She didn’t hide the fact that she was into geeky stuff, but she was very harsh toward anything chuuni-adjacent, and she was constantly exasperated by my day-to-day antics...but then pretty much all of that broke down spectacularly the instant the fact that she was a former chuuni herself got revealed. Tomoyo’s coolheaded persona was toast by volume two of the novels and halfway through the anime’s first episode. It had broken down so quickly that it felt less like her initial character and more like the foundation her actual initial character was built on.
“For crying out loud, Andou! Give me some specifics already! What volume are you even from?! How many volumes’ worth of memories does the Andou Jurai I’m talking to have?!”
“Let’s just go ahead and handwave all those details, okay?”
“Seriously?!”
“Yeah. We’ll play it by ear and see what happens. Like, in the main story’s continuity, we’re supposed to have spent the period after we awakened to god-tier powers scared to death of what might happen next, right? The whole atmosphere was supposed to have been all dark and apprehensive and stuff...but we’re just gonna ignore that whole setup and pretend it wasn’t a thing. Doing these interviews with that sort of mood as the backdrop would be a total drag, after all.”
“You can’t just...say crap like that out loud!”
“And that, Tomoyo, is why you don’t have to force yourself to act like you did back in the start of the story. I already know that you’re a former chuuni, so why bother hiding it? The truth is that you’re super invested in your power’s name, right? You really want to help think it up yourself, don’t you?”
“Ugh... I... I...”
“Mwa ha ha! And who could blame you? It’s your power’s name, after all! You talk a big game about not caring, but the truth is that you’re burning with desire to think up a name yourself, right? Come on, admit it! No sense lying to yourself!” I said, doubling down on the pressure like I was the protagonist of one of those games where you play as a huge creep who exploits women.
“U-Uggh,” Tomoyo groaned, squirming with a tortured expression on her face.
“You have the power to stop time...and you’re really okay with giving up the chance to name it? You’d let someone else make off with the naming rights to a power among powers?”
“Grr... Ahh, graaaaaah!”
“Come on, hurry up! If you don’t say something soon, I’m gonna hog all the fun for myself! I’ll make a mess of your power’s name, and you’ll just have to sit back and watch!”
“N-No...”
“Hmmm? I can’t heeear you!”
“I said noooooo!”
“That’s more like it! Good job admitting it, you dirty little girl!”
“...”
“Mwa ha ha! Your mouth may lie, but the chuuni power within you will forever tell a tale of the truth!”
“Ugh... O-Okay, yes, you’re right. I can’t take this anymore... Please, Andou, let me brainstorm a name for my power with— Wait, what the hell even is this bit?!” Tomoyo shouted, pivoting on a dime at the last possible second. Like, really, the absolute last second. She’d dragged that one out so far that I wasn’t really sure how I would’ve replied if she’d kept it going. We’d been in serious danger of letting the situation spiral out of control for a minute there.
“Okay, look...to start, let me just say that I basically get what you’re trying to tell me here,” said Tomoyo. “But, don’t you think you’re getting into, like, serious time paradox territory with all this? Like, you figured out that I was a former chuuni in part because of my power to stop time, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah. That’s how it happened, all right. I caught you posing in front of the mirror in the club room, reciting the catchphrase I’d come up with for you, and everything came to light from there.”
“You don’t have to recap the whole stupid thing! Anyway...the point I’m getting at is that if my power and its name were part of what made me screw up and let my former chuuni secret slip, but now you and I think up that power’s name together, knowing the whole time that all of that’s going to happen... Well, doesn’t that all add up to a stupidly high-level time paradox? We’re destroying all sense of consistency here!”
Tomoyo was being completely candid with her analysis, and I, in turn, looked her straight in the eye as I gave her my response.
“Tomoyo...you need to embrace the inconsistency,” I said. “‘Consistency’? That’s not a real thing! I can assure you that as you live your life, you’ll encounter a countless number of irrational, inconsistent absurdities. Events that make no sense will occur, and misfortunes that you can’t accept will assail you. But tell me, Tomoyo—when life comes knocking, do you think that complaining about consistency will be of any help to you?”
I...kinda lost track of what my point with all of this was at some point, but my only option now’s to double down. Just gotta keep saying things that sound like they make sense, more or less!
“Life is a ceaseless series of inconsistencies! Indeed...inconsistency itself is the driving law of this world! And, thusly—we’ve no choice but to enjoy those inconsistencies for all their worth!” I declared dauntlessly with a sneering grin. I was forging ahead at a breakneck pace, pulling out all the stops to make sure nobody noticed I was making it all up as I went!
A few seconds of silence passed until, finally, Tomoyo spoke up.
“Yeah...I guess I was wrong,” she said.
She hadn’t been wrong at all, but she still admitted fault. It seemed that my full-steam-ahead approach had overwhelmed her. Part of me thought Man, she’s kind of a pushover, huh? but I didn’t let it show on my face.
“This is a bonus side story that comes with the anime—one set in the past relative to the main series—and when I think about taking the time to make sure there aren’t any continuity errors, acting out the role of myself from about half a year before the main story started, and rewinding our relationship to the one we had in that time frame...honestly, all I can say is it all sounds like a huge pain in the ass!”
“Exactly! Like, why friggin’ bother, right?!”
“Nobody even wants that crap!”
“Right?! Who the hell would?!”
Our exchange had ascended to extraordinary new heights of meta. Tomoyo, it seemed, had finally broken out of her shell.
“Heh, heh heh heh! Yeah, that’s right... Screw paying deference to continuity! What’s the fun in holding back when you could say whatever you want whenever you want?!” said Tomoyo.
“Exactly! Better to lay it out on the table for all to see!” I agreed.
“Then, if I’m gonna be honest...the truth is, I really did want to help name my power! I thought I had to keep the fact that I used to be a chuuni secret no matter what, but really, I wanted to help make up a name with you!”
“Mwa ha ha! Well said, Tomoyo. You’ve done well to not let the shackles of continuity bind you! Here and now, in this moment, our combined chuuni potential will transcend the timeline altogether!”
Tomoyo and I exchanged a resolute fist bump. In that moment, the stance regarding our side story’s approach to storytelling had been determined.
The timeline? Ignore it! Continuity errors? Ignore them! Comedic momentum and manic energy were the name of the game, and any inconsistencies would be handwaved without mercy!
Anyway, it was high time we stopped dragging out all that meta nonsense and got down to brass tacks with our discussion of Tomoyo’s power’s name. To start things off, Tomoyo and I took a moment to jot down any random ideas that came into our heads. Our thinking was that finding a name we could both agree on would be a lot more efficient if we had a stock of ideas built up beforehand to work with.
We spent some time thinking up anything and everything that could serve as a name for a time manipulation power, chatting all the while...and when we had plenty of proposals written and ready, it was time to present our results.
“Hey, Tomoyo?” I said before we began. “Don’t you think that just reading all our ideas out would be kinda boring?”
I went on to propose an alternate method for sharing our concepts. At first, Tomoyo acted like I’d completely lost my marbles, but as I eloquently and skillfully elaborated on my suggestion, she started getting more and more on board—before long, she was smiling and completely all in on what I was thinking.
I’d figured something out about Tomoyo: it wasn’t that she caved to pressure easily or that she was a sucker. No, the truth of the matter was that she was just a total tsundere when it came to chuuni stuff specifically. She wanted to unleash her true self, deep down, but she just couldn’t bring herself to go ahead with that sort of thing without putting up a fight first.
In any case, the two of us took a moment to prepare ourselves...and then it was time. I’d put my all into this idea, and now we’d finally make it a reality. Yes—our card game-style idea presentation was a go!
“My turn first. I draw!”
“Ah! That’s not fair, Andou! We should decide who goes first by playing rock paper scissors or flipping a coin or something!”
“Ha! How very naive of you, Tomoyo! When true duelists duel, the turn order is determined by who says they’re going first quickest!”
That’s right: we were playing by manga and anime card game rules, and that meant that I could unilaterally declare that I got the first turn! I drew a card from my deck—which is to say, the deck of power name concepts that I’d written out for myself.
“I play one card from my hand to summon a theme word: Hourglass!”
With a deep, resonant boom—that I made with my mouth—I laid my homemade card down on the homemade playing field in front of me. The Solid Vision system then caused the card to materialize in physical form...in the fantasy that flashed through my mind’s eye, anyway.
“‘Hourglass’...? Hmm. That’s a pretty subdued name by your standards, huh?” Tomoyo said with a derisive chuckle—but I was about to throw that laugh right back in her face.
“My turn’s not over just yet!”
I pulled a second card from my hand and played it next to the Hourglass card.
“I equip the guide text card, End of the World, to Hourglass!”
“You what?!”
“That prompts a Synergy Effect, which increases the Hourglass card’s chuuni points by a factor of ten!”
“Ugh!” Tomoyo grunted, reeling with frustrated chagrin. “End of the World... You really came out swinging with that one, didn’t you? I can’t believe you threw down a trump card like that on the very first turn...”
“I’m not pulling any punches here. I’m going on the attack from turn one!”
I stacked the End of the World card atop the Hourglass card...and from that union, a new power name was born. The hourglass of fateful finality: End of the World!
“Not bad, Andou... I have to admit, I didn’t think you had the guts to bring out End of the World this early in the game. Now I understand why you went with a simple base card like Hourglass. It’s lacking on its own, but when you pair it up with End of the World, it evokes a fragile sense of profound transience...”
“Mwa ha ha! Let me guess—you’re already thinking of throwing in the towel?”
“Hmph! This duel’s just getting started! My turn now—I draw!” Tomoyo said, snatching a card from the top of her deck. “And now I summon a name: The Hands of a Ticking Clock Spin Inexorably!”
“Oh? So you’re coming at me with one of your beloved sentence-style names, are you? And evoking an image of a clock’s hands to represent a time-based power... You really gave that name a certain womanly touch, didn’t you?”
“Next, I equip the guide text card Timeless to it, prompting a Synergy Effect! That multiplies The Hands of a Ticking Clock Spin Inexorably’s chuuni points by thirty!”
“Wh-Whaaat?!” I yelped, my eyes wide with shock.
Tomoyo’s completed power name: the hands of a ticking clock spin inexorably: Timeless.
“Dammit! That’s one hell of a combo...” I muttered. “Timeless... It’s simple, sure, but as far as guide text goes, it’s beyond reproach. Coupled with the clock imagery of the preamble, it evokes an image of someone who’s detached from the laws of time that bind the world at large!”
We’d each played our chosen cards. The hourglass of fateful finality: End of the World would face off against the hands of a ticking clock spin inexorably: Timeless. Now, it was finally time for the Battle Phase to begin.
How, then, would we go about determining which of our completed power names would be crowned victorious and which would be consigned to ignoble defeat?
“So, Tomoyo. This is my win, right?”
“What, are you kidding me? I totally got this one.”
By talking, that’s how. This duel would play out in the form of a conversation, and that conversation would continue until we’d reached a conclusion that both of us could agree on. In other words, all that stuff about chuuni points being multiplied by whatever...had basically nothing to do with who would win at all.
“Nah, I totally won this round! I know you, Tomoyo, and I know you get why a short, to-the-point name accompanied by a ruby text powerhouse like the one I played is basically the coolest thing ever. Right?”
“I mean, I get it, yeah...but my name represents what my power actually does, right? Yours is all style, no substance.”
“But, Tomoyo: End of the World.”
“Ugh!”
“Are you really saying that you can imagine someone playing End of the World...and losing?”
Tomoyo hesitated...then gave in. “All right, I’ll admit it. The hands of a ticking clock spin inexorably could never win against End of the World.”
And so it was settled. The winner was the hourglass of fateful finality: End of the World, with its guide text card propelling it to a decisive victory. Tomoyo’s cards were sent to her graveyard.
“My turn. I draw! And I end my turn.”
I didn’t actually have anything to do on my turn other than draw this time. I sort of wanted to attack Tomoyo’s life points directly since she didn’t have any power names on the field, but we were making this game up as we went, so it didn’t actually have any rules that would cause that to make sense; we hadn’t put any thought into what would happen if our opponent didn’t have any cards out on our turn. I guess it was a little like how in the early stages of the manga, the game— Actually, y’know what? Forget I said anything.
“My turn. I draw! Then I play two cards from my hand,” Tomoyo said as she laid a pair of cards on the field. “First, I summon the name card, Play on the End of Time!”
“Hmm?” I grunted as I furrowed my brow. Play on the End of Time... It just looks like a normal phrase at a glance, but something about that wording feels so specific... “Wait a minute. Tomoyo... Could that name...be a reference?!”
“Heh! I’m impressed you noticed,” Tomoyo said with a confident smirk. “That’s right. ‘Play on the End of Time’ is the name of an oratorio written by German composer Carl Orff! It was the very last work he composed, a masterpiece centering on philosophical musings into the nature of the end of the world!”
“C-Curses! I can’t believe you went there...you used one of the highest-level techniques in our field: invoking the title of a masterpiece!”
Invoking the title of a masterpiece: a powerful, difficult-to-master technique used extensively by the likes of JoJo’s and Hunter x Hunter. Works of artistic significance from all eras and all corners of the world have been appropriated to serve as the names of powers or as the titles of their bearers, lending characters truly inimitable aesthetic appeal. It, like, makes them seem all intellectual and awesome and stuff, basically.
The method works particularly well when you use the title of a foreign masterpiece. As a general rule, the titles of foreign movies and music end up sounding ludicrously cool when rendered in Japanese more often than not. I don’t just mean the original titles—their official translations tend to be cool as hell too. Take, for instance, the song “Another One Bites the Dust,” the official Japanese title of which is “Dragged Down to Hell.” Whoever came up with that translation had some seriously impressive taste.
“Next up, I summon the guide text card: Doomsday!”
“What?! Doomsday?! I-Impossible!” I shouted, reeling as I trembled with horror. Doomsday: a word signifying the day of ultimate judgment, on which the world itself would come to an end—a word that really couldn’t have possibly been any cooler.
She’s pulling out a card like that, is she...? No doubt about it—Tomoyo’s moving in for the kill!
“That means my finished power name is Play on the End of Time: Doomsday! That gives me a Synergy Effect bonus of fifty million chuuni points!”
“Fifty million?! Ugh! You’ve steered us into the realm of numbers so big, just saying them makes you sound like an idiot!”
“Sh-Shut up, you!”
“That’s not good enough to beat my Hourglass, though! When faced with a formidable enemy like this, it gains one billion points!”
“Why would you counter my stupid number with an even stupider one?!”
The hourglass of fateful finality: End of the World vs. Play on the End of Time: Doomsday. Our cards were on the table, and it was time for our battle to begin—in other words, we were ready for our discussion to start!
“This...is a pretty close match, huh?”
“Yeah. Close match, all right.”
Tomoyo and I sank into thought. “A close match” was the only phrase that came to mind. If you’d asked me to explain why it was a close match, I would’ve found myself at a complete loss for an answer, but it certainly was that thing.
“It kinda feels like we’ve both played our trump cards, doesn’t it?” I finally said. “I really didn’t think this match would get quite this heated just two turns out of the gate.”
“Well, you’re the one who played End of the World on turn friggin’ one. Not my fault. How was I supposed to hold back against guide text like that?” said Tomoyo.
“Ugggh, this is tough! How’re we supposed to pick a winner between names like these...?”
“It’s easy to imagine either of them winning, yeah. Actually, the fact that we have to declare one of them the loser is frustrating in its own right.”
This was a battle of words, and we were perfectly free to sing our own name’s praises. We could make whatever egotistical, questionably rational arguments we pleased, but Tomoyo and I were being almost terrifyingly fair with our judgment. We just couldn’t lie when it came to a name’s chuuni potential.
“I think we’re gonna have to call this a draw, huh?” I finally said.
“Yeah,” Tomoyo agreed. “This round’s a tie.”
And so, our debate concluded. Both of our card sets were banished to our graveyards—but that’s when I made my move.
“Mwa ha ha! Reveal face-down card!” I declared as I flipped a card I’d set down on my playing field. Ha ha ha ha! I’ve been waiting for this moment! “I activate the Creative Card, Rehash!”
Allow me to explain! Creative Cards were a type of card meant to make our naming card game more interesting. As for their nature...well, basically, as long as they were kinda sorta thematically related to creative work, they got the green light.
“Rehash allows me to choose a card that’s been sent to the graveyard and return it to the playing field! In other words...it lets me reuse an old idea!”
“Wha— Wait, you wouldn’t—”
“But I would! Needless to say, the card I choose to reuse is none other than the guide text card, End of the World!”
And just like that, End of the World returned to my side of the field.
“No way... You can’t seriously mean you want that whole tragedy to play out all over again...?!” said Tomoyo, her shoulders slumping as despair washed over her.
“Mwa ha ha! What a shame, Tomoyo. You thought you’d used up your ultimate card to put mine to rest, but now it’s back from the dead, and you have nothing to show for it!”
“Ugh...!”
“End of the World is an all but unbeatable piece of guide text! No matter what text you equip it to, it will amplify its chuuni points tremendously! Mwa ha ha, mwaaa ha ha ha ha ha! Bow down and grovel, for the nightmare that is End of the World shall never end!”
I cackled from on high, certain that I’d already won. However...
“Heh... Heh heh heh! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!”
...suddenly, Tomoyo matched my laugh with one of her own, and one no less confident. I thought she’d been covering her face out of sheer despair, but as it turned out, the truth was that she’d been quivering with barely suppressed laughter.
“Wh-What...? What’s so funny?!”
“What’s funny, Andou, is that you fell for it hook, line, and sinker! Reveal face-down card!” Tomoyo said as she flipped over a card of her own. “I activate the Creative Card: Works Cited!”
“Wh-Whaaat?!”
“Works Cited allows me to choose any card on my opponent’s playing field and create an exact copy of it on my own side! That means that I have a copy of End of the World in play now too!”
“Th-That’s not fair, Tomoyo! You ripped my name off!”
“It’s not a rip-off if I cite my source, now is it?! That makes it a perfectly respectable reference!”
“That’s so friggin’ cheating! Rip-off! Thief! Plagiarist!”
“Oh? So then, I guess End of the World must have been a completely original idea on your part, right? You came up with it totally independently, and you don’t have any sources of inspiration that you should’ve cited? You were the very first person in the world who thought to use those words?”
“Agh! I...ugh. Grr...”
“Yup, thought so. Mine now!”
Tomoyo had conclusively out-argued me, and she quickly wrote down “End of the World” on one of our spare cards.
Damnations! I can’t believe she ripped off my precious End of the World!
“Hmph... Well, fine,” I said. “That just means we’re on an even playing field now.”
No need to panic just yet, I thought...but that composure wouldn’t last.
“Heh heh—oh, does it? Too bad, because my turn’s not over yet!”
“Wha—?!”
“Reveal face-down card!” Tomoyo said in a downright elated tone as she flipped over another card. “I activate the Creative Card: German!”
“The...what?” I gasped. I felt myself break out in goose bumps. The extraordinary power that emanated from that card seemed like it might consume me then and there.
German. I knew instantly—better than anyone else ever could—what significance the use of that language in this battle would have.
“German allows me to translate the text of any card on my field...into German! And—as if you even have to ask—I choose to apply that effect to your trump card!”
Tomoyo drew a line through End of the World and wrote a new series of words beside it.
Ende der Welt
“A-A-Aaauuuggghhhhhhhhh!”
I reeled backward, sending my chair clattering to the floor as I fell to my hands and knees. The vast, overwhelming surge of chuuni energy that had just slammed into me had rendered me unable to stand. If I’d been even slightly less prepared for it, I probably would’ve passed out on the spot.
H-Holy crap! Holy crap, German’s incredible! How could a simple translation make a phrase that much more amazing? Not only is it slick and stylish, it’s also practically oozing a boldness so intense it could never be concealed! It unifies the strong and the sublime into a single superlative tongue! German: hella cool!
“Haaa ha ha ha ha! Looks like it’s my win, Andou! My Ende der Welt’s chuuni points leave your End of the World in the dust! It’s a straight-up upgrade—no, it’s your card’s final form!” declared Tomoyo. She was really reveling in her success this time, cackling away like nobody’s business. I couldn’t stop her, though. The pure chuuni power of her card was so potent that I couldn’t bring myself to even try.
Ende der Welt. I had to admit it: there was a real chance I couldn’t beat the chuuni power that card wielded. I quickly thought through all sorts of other languages—Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and others still—but nothing was able to come even close to German’s chuuni might...or, well, nothing that I could come up with on the fly, since I didn’t have my electronic dictionary handy and could only manage so much translation on my own.
What can I do? What’s my next move...? A-Ah, of course!
“I’m not going down without a fight! I’ll use my own Creative Card!” I said, quickly scrawling a few words onto a blank card. At this point, we were ignoring the turn order—and, for that matter, all the other rules—entirely. “I activate a Creative Card: The Alphabet!”
“The alphabet...? So, like, English?”
“No, not English! The alphabet!”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Where’re you going with this?”
Tomoyo was befuddled...and I was about to show her what I could really do. I was going to violate a truly terrible taboo—to tread closer to the ultimate line than anyone else dared to go. I was going to risk prompting the ire of many, many people, some much more dangerous than others.
What do you get when you translate the English phrase End of the World into Japanese and write it out using the alphabet?
“SEKAI NO OW—”
“Wha— No! Stop, stop! Seriously, bad idea!”
“Haaa ha ha ha ha! How do you like that, Tomoyo?! Wanna talk smack about my new power name? Go right ahead! Just know that the moment you do, you’ll turn tens of thousands of music fans all across this country into your mortal enemies! Your Twitter’s gonna go up in flames!”
“That’s fighting dirty!”
“Heh! Sounds to me like you don’t have a counter for this one. How very tragic... No matter the era, no hero or villain could ever be mighty enough to overcome the sheer power of the general public...”
“Stop trying to sound like a world-weary warrior! You’re just plain cheating!”
“Yeah right! If that’s cheating, then Ende der Welt’s cheating too!”
“Why?!”
“’Cause it’s banned for being too powerful! It’s one of those cards that comes packed in with a video game or whatever that’s never actually legal to play in any format!”
“You’re saying it’s a God Card?!”
After much debate, it was eventually determined that End of the World and Ende der Welt would both be put on the banlist. Watching those lists gradually fill up with more and more banned cards was one of the joys of being a trading card game player...or if not a joy, then at least an inevitability.
Anyway, it was time for us to get back on track and jump right back into our naming card battle!
“My turn! I attack with the power name den of darkness: Chronos!”
“Ugh! Not bad, Andou—it’s a simple name, but it’s got a real ominous note to it... That’s a name with chuuni power that sorta creeps up on you the more you think about it. I can do better, though! I defend with the power name time’s eternal guardian: Yggdrashield!”
“Oh? A portmanteau of ‘Yggdrasil’ and ‘shield’...? That’s quite the play on words you have going there.”
“That’s a successful block, then. You take half a million psychological damage.”
“What? No, wait a second, I never said the block worked! My Den of Darkness totally pierced your defenses!”
“Not a chance. Maybe it would’ve had the penetrating power to break through if you’d gone with Den of the Void, but Den of Darkness? Not happening.”
“Ahh, yeah, I went back and forth on that one. I was thinking about Den of the Void at first, but I decided that the alliteration would make losing ‘void’ worthwhile. Maybe sticking with the more impactful word would’ve been better after all?”
“Well, one way or another, it means the defense works out. Your Den of Darkness is going straight to the graveyard.”
“Hah—I don’t think so! My turn’s not over just yet—reveal face-down card! I activate the Creative Card: German!”
“Wha— You had a German too?!”
“And by the way, I’m limiting its effects to the ‘Darkness’ portion of Den of Darkness! Darkness is black, and ‘black’ translated into German...is schwarz!”
“Schwarz?! D-Dang, that’s cool...”
“Haaah hah hah hah! That’s right! Bask in that word, in all its foul, fiendish glory! It’s downright irresistible even on its own, isn’t it?! But it’s not on its own—my German card transforms Den of Darkness...into Den of Schwarz!”
“Um...”
“Ah...”
“Yeah, uh... That’s kinda lame, isn’t it?”
“Yeah... Extremely lame,” I admitted. “Into the graveyard it goes.”
“Okay, so my turn. I—”
“Not so fast! My turn’s not over yet!”
“Still?! Quit my-turn-never-ends-ing me! The turn order’s a thing for a reason!”
“Shaddup! I’m playing an instant Creative Card from my hand: Rehash! It allows me to return one card from my graveyard to the field, and needless to say, I’m picking End of the—”
“We banned that card, remember?! Ugh, whatever—I’m playing a Creative Card Counter from my hand: Writer’s Block! It nullifies the effects of any Creative Card!”
“I don’t think so! I counter your counter with a counter! My Writer’s Block nullifies your Writer’s Block!”
“That’s so cheap! Nobody likes a counter-counter player! Cut that crap out!”
“Ah ha ha ha ha! All’s fair in cards and war!”
“Oh, is that so...? Well then, I guess it’s time for me to take the kid gloves off! I activate a Creative Card: I’ll Try Harder Tomorrow! It skips your turn and jumps directly to mine!”
“What?! Well, I use the Creative Card: Total Rejection! It sends all of your cards directly to the graveyard!”
“Not so fast! I play the Creative Card: Deadline—and you die.”
“I die?! Me, the player?! Now that’s one hell of a card!”
“Hey...Andou?”
“Yeah?”
“All this Creative Card cross-countering’s taking us way off topic. We should stop.”
“...Yeaaah.”
“Okay, so my turn. I—”
“My turn’s not over yet!”
“Oh, give it a goddamn rest!”
And so our battle raged on.
Our card game dragged on for quite a long time, but at the end of the day, we still hadn’t managed to settle on a name for Tomoyo’s power.
“Well, it’s getting late,” said Tomoyo. “We should probably head home...but what do you think, Andou? Are you gonna be able to get a name worked out?”
“Am I ever! I’ve got this in the bag! I’m brimming with inspiration right now!” I said with a confident nod.
I’d gotten plenty of info from my one-on-one interview with Tomoyo, and we’d both freely displayed our ideas and stylistic views over the course of our card battle. I couldn’t let that wealth of material go to waste. No—I wouldn’t allow it to go to waste!
“I’ll spend tonight thinking it over, and if I haven’t settled on anything by tomorrow, it’s card game time again!” I said.
“Nah...” Tomoyo said with a sigh. “I’ll pass on doing this again. I don’t think I can keep that energy level up for days on end.”
Whaaat? But it was so much fun!
Anyway, we both made our way home. The night came and went—and the next day, I called Tomoyo to the club room first thing in the morning, before anyone else arrived.
“Mwa ha ha! Feast your eyes and bear witness!” I said, flipping open my Bloody Bible and showing her the name I’d written within.
The sovereign of eternity: Closed Clock
“So...that’s my power’s name?”
“That’s right. What do you think? It’s, y’know...pretty nice, right?”
“Y-Yeah... I-I mean, it’s fine, I guess. I’ll throw you a bone and live with it,” said Tomoyo.
Her curt tone, however, couldn’t conceal the smile that she was failing to keep from showing through on her face. She did like it, and I was relieved to see it.
“But wait, Andou—how’d you actually pick that name? I don’t remember anything like Closed Clock coming up during yesterday’s card battle.”
“Mwa ha ha! Curious, are you? Very well, then! I shall reveal all!”
Thus, I began to explain. I told Tomoyo the true origins of Closed Clock...
It all started early one morning—or, well, early that very same morning.
“Come on, Machi, wake up! Friggin’ wake up already!”
“Mmngh... Shut it, Jurai. I was up late last night...”
“I know, but you’re the one who asked me to wake you up anyway, aren’t you?”
“...Zzz.”
“Oh, for the— Don’t fall back asleep! I said wake up, O stupid sister of mine!”
“Shaddup. I’mma sleep for eternity.”
“Come on... How unreasonable can you even get? And what happened to your alarm clock? Doesn’t that have a snooze function you could be using instead of making me do this?”
“Oh, that...? It was obnoxious, so I hid it over there...”
“Over where...? Oh. You buried it under your covers so you couldn’t hear it? What’s the point of even having an alarm clock if you’re just gonna disable it? You know that sealing away your clock doesn’t actually stop time from—”
In that instant—that split second—a flash of lightning rushed through my mind.
“Sealing...your clock...”
A clock. Sealing. Shutting. Blockading? Closing—putting that in a form that indicates the action is being done to the clock, Closed Clock. The guide text would be that in English, making it the power’s proper name. Then to lead into it...wait. What did Machi say a second ago? I know it was something good... Remember! What was it?! Machi said...
“Shaddup. I’mma sleep for eternity.”
Eternal slumber. Time, frozen for eternity by its ruler. Its sovereign...the sovereign of eternity?!
“...So, yeah. It came to me in a flash of inspiration this morning.”
“...”
“Like, honestly, it just hit me all at once! That’s gotta be how mystery protagonists feel when they finally crack the case at the end of a story.”
“...”
I’d finished my tale, but for some reason, Tomoyo was just standing there, staring at me, stunned, not saying a word. Finally, very slowly, she opened her mouth.
“Andou... You said it came to you this morning? In a flash?”
“Yeah. Though I guess it’s still ‘this morning’ right now, technically. Must’ve been about an hour ago or so?”
“In that case...what was the point of that incredibly long interview we spent all of yesterday afternoon on?”
“That’s...a very good question.”
What else could I say? Our endless conversation and interminable process of trial and error had been overridden by a single flash of inspiration. That’s just how it goes when you’re making up names sometimes.
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