Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 12 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The Path of World Create

The empress of genesis, World Create—this was the title that had been bestowed upon Himeki Chifuyu and, by extension, the name of the power she’d awakened to, which granted her ultimate authority over creation. The one who had bestowed it, needless to say, was none other than me. Between “the empress of genesis” serving as its introductory appellation and the English words “World Create” providing a foreign flair, it was a truly minimalistic and specific name for a power to have, if I do say so myself.

World Create. The power to create worlds. Genesis. It was, well... I mean, it’s kind of just what it says on the tin, isn’t it? I prided myself on having a nature as focused and aggressive as that of Andy, the right pectoral muscle, yet I have to admit that by my standards, it was a pretty subdued name, with no real twists or tricks worked into it. It expressed the nature of Chifuyu’s abilities pretty effectively, I’d say, but something about it just, I dunno... Like, is clearly expressing what an ability does in its name even a good thing? Hmm.

Last time, during my interview with Tomoyo, I’m pretty sure I said something along the lines of “a power name’s pronunciation guide text can’t just be its Japanese characters translated directly into English” and went on a whole rant about how it has to be more elaborate than that...but, to be blunt, World Create was exactly what I’d been arguing against. Heck, it was more or less just a direct rephrasing of the concept of “genesis” into more basic terms. In terms of pure simplicity, it was barely any different from Flame of Darkness. It was simple, direct, and easy to understand, for better or for worse.

Now, I’m not saying that a complicated name with a bunch of elaborate double meanings is necessarily always going to be a good one. It’d be putting the cart before the horse to come up with a cool and deep name that has nothing to do with the actual power just because you think straightforward names are boring. If you want to produce a name with actual soul behind it, you won’t succeed by stringing together a bunch of unrelated proper nouns—instead, you’ll just make it feel like it came straight out of one of those “Enter your name to create your own superpower!” generators you can find online.

I want to reiterate that last point one more time, just for clarity’s sake. Maybe it’s something I shouldn’t be saying at all, but still, I’ll say it again: a name comprising words selected at random—words that could’ve been spat out of a random name generator—can never have any sort of soul behind it. You can’t just throw fancy terms at the wall and hope that they stick. Names for powers and titles for those powers’ wielders have value specifically because of the drama and backstory behind their creation. The thought and care that goes into a power’s name are what grant it its soul.

And besides, those random generators are totally inconsistent from the get-go. The results you get change depending on whether or not you capitalize your name, for crying out loud! Sometimes their systems are set up so poorly that you can put in the exact same name and get different outputs on the second, third, and fourth try! A power’s name has to feel like it was chosen by fate, and when you use one of those generators, that absolutely essential element of the equation is completely lacking, so—

...What? No, I’m not obsessed. Heck, I’ve never even touched those things myself. I’m just basing this on rumors. Other people have told me about those generators, and I’m relaying what they said, that’s all. I’ve absolutely never gotten salty because one of them didn’t give me an output that I liked, for your information. I’ve never tried dozens of different spellings and formats of my name in the vain hope that I’d eventually get something that would satisfy me. I did not get hooked on online name generators. I’ve never thought “A random name—in other words, a name granted by the will of the heavens themselves? Yes, perhaps that would be acceptable,” then ended up getting super depressed after my chosen generator gave me an unambiguously feminine name! Didn’t happen!

Hmm. We’re getting pretty off-topic, so let’s steer things back toward the original point.

In short: a power’s name can’t just be a super basic description of its effects, but at the same time, it can’t be a meaningless string of unrelated words cobbled together in an arbitrary mishmash. The connection between name and power has to be subtle but present, balancing concepts both related and unrelated to the power’s effect in a precarious tightrope walk where your actual life might as well be on the line! Then you must embody that life-and-death struggle in the very nature of your...uh...

Okay, not even I’m totally sure what I’m saying at this point. What’s important, though, is the idea that there are a bunch of potential naming patterns you can follow, and that World Create followed a relatively simple one. I was usually fond of names so elaborate they teetered on the brink of overwrought, so how had I ended up giving Chifuyu’s power a name so downright innocuous?

The answer...is a tale so profoundly tragic, I’m quite certain it will bring all who read it to tears.

“All right! Let’s get this one-on-one interview underway, Chifuyu!”

“Yeaaah.”

School was out for the day, we were in the club room, and Chifuyu, who had once again stopped by to hang out with us, gave an enthusiastic cheer as I kicked off the day’s task. That task: performing an interview to help me think up a name for her power. This was the second interview of the set, and the power I had to bequeath a title upon was none other than the ultimate dominion over creation itself.

“...”

Hmm. How to put this into words...? Hmm.

“So. You’re up second, huh, Chifuyu?”

“Yeah. I’m second.”

“Right... Not Hatoko, huh?”

“Yeah. Not Hatoko.”

Indeed. Hatoko would not be going second. I’d sort of gotten it into my head that Hatoko would be second for sure, for some reason, but then the next thing I knew, bam! There I was, conducting a one-on-one interview with Chifuyu instead, unable to explain how it had turned out that way. I’d been completely ready to do Hatoko’s interview, and Hatoko had seemed enthusiastic as well...but it was almost as if the invisible hand of fate had reached down and mucked up the works, compelling Chifuyu to take her place for an inscrutable purpose. This, I figured, must have been how Yugi-boy felt when he realized that Pegasus was controlling him through subliminal messages.

Hmm. Why do I have this strange sensation that we’ve skipped ahead an interview? It’s the weirdest thing.

“Andou, hurry up and think. Let’s pick a name for my power.”

“Ah, right! Let’s do this!”

Chifuyu was surprisingly enthusiastic, and I couldn’t have been happier to see it. The power she had awakened to was the power of ultimate creation—the power of genesis. To put it more bluntly, it was the power to create anything she wanted to...and I do mean anything. Literally anything.

“You know...when I really think about it, your power’s just straight-up outrageous, Chifuyu.”

“Yeah. I’m outrageous,” Chifuyu replied with a proud little nod. Even Squirrely, whom she had clasped to her chest, looked sort of pleased with himself.

“It’s not just limited to weapons and buildings and stuff—you can even make alternate dimensions and warp gates! It’s over the top!”

“Yeah. I’m over the top.”

“Just for reference, is there anything you can’t make?”

“Hmm... Time, maybe?”

“Oh, time, huh? Ha ha ha, yeah, figures,” I said with a chuckle. Of course she wouldn’t be able to make time. If Chifuyu could create the concept of time anew, and by extension gain the ability to control time, then she’d be lucky to have people calling her power an outright cheat.

“Ah,” Chifuyu grunted. She held out a hand, opening and clenching it a few times in front of her. “I think I could do it, maybe.”

“Huh?”

“I think I could make time.”

“You...whaaaaaaaaat?! Y-You can?! You can seriously make time?!”

“Yeah. If I try a little hard.”

“All it takes to make time is trying a little hard?!”

Making time?! Seriously?! How could it possibly be okay for a creation-style power’s capabilities to extend that far?! I know I said “anything,” but isn’t there an unspoken rule that time’s off the table?! Take a page out of Shenron’s book, Chifuyu!

“If I just...”

“No, don’t! Stop! You can’t!” I bellowed. Chifuyu had taken Squirrely by the hand and started trying out poses, attempting to make time through trial and error in her own eccentric sort of way, but I shut it down the moment I realized what was happening.

“Why?” asked Chifuyu.

“Why...? Because, that’s why!”

Creation and materialization-style abilities just couldn’t be used to make time. Doing so would overturn generations’ worth of supernatural battle precedent, passed down in an unbroken chain by our forefathers! Chifuyu being able to make alternate dimensions and warp gates was already pushing reason to its limit, and if she could make time on top of that, all sense of balance would be destroyed.

And, most importantly of all...if she can make time, then where does that leave Tomoyo?! That would make Closed Clock into nothing more than an unambiguous World Create downgrade!

“A-Anyway, that’s off the table! Making time is banned!” I insisted.

“Hmmmph,” Chifuyu huffed. “Andou, you ban too many things.”

“Ugh!”

“You banned making fire and water too.”

“Well, I mean...”

Just think about it, Chifuyu... If you start making elements like that, then you’d be stealing Hatoko’s thunder!

In all honesty: Chifuyu was absolutely capable of creating the fundamental elements. She couldn’t Aspect Splice them like Hatoko, to be fair, so it didn’t make her power an objective upgrade of Hatoko’s, but it was still a problem.

And that’s not to mention that Hatoko’s power already kiiinda feels like an upgrade of my black flame ability. If Chifuyu starts dabbling in elemental territory too...I’ll seriously have nothing left anymore...

“I wanted to try making black fire like you,” Chifuyu pouted.

“No! Not that! Anything but that! Don’t steal the one thing that makes me unique! Just say that you can’t make black fire, I’m begging you! Let me be the only one who can pull that off, please!”

“I think I could do what your power does, easy.”

“Easy?!” I choked out in horror. “H-Hey...Chifuyu? You... You didn’t mean that, did you? It wouldn’t be easy, right? I-It’d actually be super hard, surely? I mean...black flames like my power makes don’t exist naturally, so you’d probably have to apply all sorts of limitations and restrictions to them, or they’d take you a ton of time to prepare, or something, right...?”

“No. Your power’s simple and boring, so I could do it right away.”

“...Aaaaaauuuggghhh!” I wailed, crumpling to the floor and bursting into tears. “Damnations... Damnations... Why am I the only one who got a useless power...? Everyone else’s powers are so amazing that they’re secret boss tier—not even just final boss tier—so why am I the only one with a power like this...?”

I mean, it’s a cool power, don’t get me wrong. Like, it’s really cool, and I love it so much that I bid it good morning and good night on a daily basis as part of my routine. And yet... And yet...

I just couldn’t help but wonder, deep down in my heart of hearts, if the world couldn’t have tried a little harder to make my power more practical. I loved my power—I adored it—but couldn’t it have had just...just a little something more?

“Do you hate your power, Andou?” asked Chifuyu.

“It’s not that I hate it,” I groaned. “I love it, actually... It’s just... I also wish it could’ve been a bit more amazing, somehow... I can’t stop myself from wishing that I could’ve had a ridiculous, outrageous power like all of yours...”

I was trapped in a terrible conflict between my desire for a truly mighty supernatural power and my attachment to the black flames I already had...but the words that the girl before me spoke an instant later were so unthinkable they blew that conflict out of the water.

“Okay. Then should I make you a new one?”

“...Pardon?”

“I’ll make you a new power, Andou.”

I’ll make you a new power. She said it with an air of perfect, unflappable indifference. I, on the other hand, was so stunned I very nearly collapsed on the spot.

“A-Are you telling me...you can even make supernatural powers?!”

Hoooly crap. Actually, no, “holy crap” doesn’t do this justice anymore. She can make powers...? We’re not even working in the same dimension as final-boss tier—this is god-level stuff. Like, straight out of the actual Book of Genesis. We’re talking let-there-be-light level. Can we really be totally sure that Chifuyu did not, in fact, create this whole world?

“A-A-Are you serious, Chifuyu...? You could actually create a whole new power...?”

“Probably.”

“Probably...?”

Oh god, it feels like she might actually be able to do this if she tried. What now? This is an incredible new piece of info that just slammed into me out of left field!

How could I have possibly predicted that something that important would get unveiled in a piece of bonus material set before the main series even started? If Chifuyu’s power of genesis had the ability to make whatever new power she pleased...well, that would make so many things fall apart in an instant. The balance between the literary club girls’ powers would be thrown totally out of whack, and Chifuyu would emerge as the indisputable strongest.

Man... How do I even put this feeling into words? It’s like I just told the genie of the lamp that I wanted to wish for a hundred wishes, and I got an immediate “Sure thing, boss” in response. I mean, yes, her power lets her make anything, but...you just can’t go making new powers, right? Not being able to do that’s a given, right? It’s not like anyone would be pedantic enough to be all “Ah ha—I guess she can’t make literally anything after all, now, can she?” because of a restriction like that, would they?

In the end, all I could say was that this was classic Chifuyu, through and through. Unspoken rules and standard practices were nothing in the face of her almighty indifference.

“Andou,” said Chifuyu, who didn’t seem even slightly aware of the conflict and turmoil I was going through. “What do you want your new power to be?”

“U-Umm,” I stammered.

“Or are you happy with your boring black fire?”

“Ugh!”

Is... Is this a trial? Is my love for my power being tested? Have the gods imposed this ordeal upon me to see how deep my love truly runs?!

“Ugh... I... Graaah...”

The power to summon lightning. An evil eye. Hardening blood to use as a weapon. Refining equipment to make it stronger. Manipulating probability. Controlling the laws of cause and effect. A guaranteed one-shot instant kill attack. A power to automatically defeat anyone stronger than me...

In an instant, my imagination ran wild, and my suppressed wish for a new power spilled forth, burying my heart in a mountain of desire.

Curses! Silence! Be silent, O imagination of mine! I refuse to betray my power! I will never forsake the black flames that I awakened to!

“Grrr...graaaaaah! Hah, hah, hraaauuuggghhhhhh!”

I knelt on the ground, agonizing like Bank Director Ohwada trying to force himself to bow down to Hanzawa Naoki. Then, finally...

“I-I don’t...want one...”

...I said it. I pushed through overwhelming, heartbroken grief and said it.

“I don’t want...a new power... I’ll keep...my old one!”

With gasping, heaving breaths, I turned my back on the devil’s temptation within me, expelling its power over my mind. My love for my black flames...had prevailed!

“Oh? Okay.” Chifuyu accepted my choice without batting an eyelash.

What? Oh, come on, you could at least praise me a little! I just went through an inner battle of mythological proportions!

But...whatever. I had fulfilled my duty to my own power. The black flame that dwelled within my right arm had surely come to see me in a new light, recognizing me anew as its one and only master. I believe in you, O power of mine! I believe that someday you will awaken and evolve to your next stage! And I believe that the details of said awakening will not be left unstated for ages and have their reveal dragged out until the last few volumes of the series!

We had gotten very sidetracked, and it was time for us to actually give some serious thought to a name for Chifuyu’s power.

“...So, that’s how Tomoyo’s power ended up getting named Closed Clock. My plan’s to give your power of creation a name using that same general system.”

“Okay. Got it.”

I’d given Chifuyu an explanation of the foundational format for the names, and from what I could tell, she’d understood me. I wanted all of our powers’ names to be as stylistically unified as humanly possible, so my goal was to make sure that the rest of them fit the precedent that Closed Clock had set.

Man, though...Closed Clock. What a name, right? It had turned out so seemingly meaningful and stylish, you’d never think that it had been inspired by my older sister oversleeping. I really do like names that are nice and snappy. That makes coming up with just the right words with which to express the concept so much more satisfying!

A power name made up of two English words. That was the format I’d settled on, and the format I’d be carrying forward for the remaining four powers.

And, if I can somehow manage it...

“So, what do you think, Chifuyu? Any requests?” I asked.

“Hmm. I have one idea.”

“Oh, really? What is it?”

“Sweet and Sour—”

“Noooooope!” I shouted, stopping her with all my might. I had to stop her, no matter what. “Chifuyu...why? Why would you bring up that bit now? It makes no sense, timeline-wise... That gag hasn’t even started running yet...”

“It felt obly-gatory.”

“Obligatory, huh...?”

Never did I imagine that the curse of Sweet and Sour Pineapple would transcend the timeline to assault me here. I know I said before that we weren’t going to worry about continuity or tie down the timeline too clearly in these bonus stories, but since this was Chifuyu’s turn, I’d sort of assumed that we wouldn’t get too meta. That assumption had just been blown out of the water in a totally unexpected sneak attack.

“By the way, Andou,” said Chifuyu, “Why do you call it my ‘power of creation’? Why not ‘the power to make things’?”

“Oh? That’s a good question indeed. And the answer...is that it kinda just sounds better that way!”

It wasn’t just a matter of making things—it was a matter of creating them. Saying it that way made it sound so much more, well, creative in a way that I, for one, appreciated. It was sort of like the difference between saying “red” and “crimson,” or “blue” versus “azure,” “eat” versus “devour,” and “laugh” versus “cachinnate.” It was, in other words, a matter of feeling that it was pretty hard to explain to someone who didn’t get it already. You either had the chuuni power to feel it naturally, or you didn’t, no two ways about it.

“The difference between ‘make’ and ‘create’... I mean, it’s not exactly a heaven-and-earth sort of gap in terms of coolness, but since they mean basically the same thing anyway, you may as well pick the better one, right? ‘Create’ has that association with ‘creation’ too, in, like, the biblical sense, or when you’re talking about the world at large. It comes up in a lot of big contexts.”

That was a bit of trivia that I’d specifically prepared for the sake of today’s conversation. I’d done all sorts of research and laid the groundwork that I knew I’d need in order to think up a name for Chifuyu’s power. If there was a word that had any chance of coming up during the discussion, I’d almost definitely already looked it up in my electronic dictionary.

“I’d like to use some fancy form of ‘creation’ as one of the words in your power’s name, personally. Maybe in the preamble?” I said. “It really feels like it expresses what your power does perfectly, right? As for the actual name proper, I was definitely thinking that one of the two words should be ‘world.’”

In the naming card battle that had unfolded between me and Tomoyo the other day, a certain card had been banned on the basis that it was too powerful: End of the World. From the moment I’d first played that card, I’d been bewitched by the magic of the word “world.” The burning desire to use that word somewhere had welled up inside me with unspeakable ferocity.

The thing is, though, that I couldn’t use the word “world” as part of Tomoyo’s power’s name. After all...there was a pioneer in her power’s category who had left too much of an impact in his wake. You just can’t use “world” in the name of a power that lets you stop time anymore. Taking care to respect your forebears is a very important element of this sort of naming process.

“A form of ‘creation’ and the word ‘world.’ That’s two elements down, and they both feel like perfect fits for your power. Not bad choices, I’ve gotta say! I figure if we start there, we should able to narrow down the rest of—”

“Andou,” said Chifuyu. In contrast to my rapidly growing enthusiasm, her words and expression felt oddly cold as she cut me off. “I’m bored.”

“You’re... Huh?”

“I’m tired of thinking about names. It’s boring,” Chifuyu said with a pouty little huff. “You’re having all the fun on your own. You’re being self-centered.”

I took in a sharp gasp as Chifuyu’s words slammed into me like a full-force body blow, and I fell to my knees a moment later. The scornful, disinterested glare of an elementary schooler had shaken my heart on a foundational level.

How...? How did it come to this? How did I lose sight of something so very important?

I was the one who’d said that we should think up a name together, and yet there I was, muscling Chifuyu out of the process by badgering her with idea after idea unilaterally. I was just acting like I wanted her input, when really, all I wanted was for her to endorse the conclusions I’d already made. Just how selfish could I possibly be?

“I’m sorry, Chifuyu...”

“No. Apology not accepted.”

“B-But, why...? Let me make it up to you somehow!”

“Okay, then you get a punishment. You have to think up a name for my power in ten seconds.”

“T-Ten seconds?!”

“Yeah. Go. Ooone. Twooo.”

“What, no, wait! That’s impossible! Wait, please! Chifuyu!”

“No. Threee. Fooour.”

“Agh!”

At this point...I have no choice. I have to calm down, focus my thoughts, and blaze through this process at record pace! I’m a guy who’s fantasized on a daily basis about undergoing a series of magical operations that allow me to accelerate my thought process to several dozen times the speed of an ordinary person—I can do this!

...Actually, wait. This isn’t a situation where I should be accelerating my thoughts to go through the whole process—it’s a situation where I should be ignoring the process entirely, instead leaping straight to the correct conclusion by reverse engineering the mechanisms of cause and effect! Yeah, a power that lets me do that would be perfect for... Wait, no! This isn’t the time to be thinking about this crap! I only have five seconds left!

Umm, umm, okay... I know I want to play off “creation” somehow, and I know I want to use “world.” The preamble should express her command over the powers of creation, too, so I guess it should be “the empress of”...just plain creation? Or genesis? Origins? Formation? Hmm...out of those options, I think I’ve gotta go with “genesis.” It’s the coolest for sure.

But what about the actual name itself? I know I have to use “world” as one of the words...and, umm, she uses her power to create worlds, so...I could go with, uhh, Creator of Worlds? No, that feels a little off... World Builder? Nah, that’s not quite it either. What else could I—

“Twooo, ooone, ze—”

“The empress of genesis: World Create!”

I did it. As the very last moments of my time limit slipped away, I shouted the power name I’d come up with at the top of my lungs.

“World Create... What do you think of that, Chifuyu?”

“I like it. It’s good. That settles it,” Chifuyu agreed. She seemed satisfied...or, well, she kind of seemed like she was just done, really. It was pretty clear that she didn’t care at all. I was glad that she hadn’t objected to my idea, yeah...but I actually felt a certain reluctance to let a slipshod name that I’d come up with on the spur of the moment be adopted for formal use.

“Hey, Chifuyu...? Don’t you think it might be a little early to say it’s totally settled?” I said hopefully. “I know I’m the one who thought it up and all, but World Create feels maybe just a little too direct...? Like, I think it might be a good idea to take some time and iron out the details, you know...? Like, it’s a creation-type power, so maybe it would be cool to go in the exact opposite direction and do something destruction-themed instead? Maybe ‘World Annihilation,’ or ‘Worldly Crisis’...?”

“No. We’re done,” said Chifuyu. My complaints had fallen on deaf ears. “I’m bored of all this.”

“Oh, come on! Don’t be like that...”

“We did plenty of it already in the anime’s second episode.”

“The logic behind your boredom just devastated the timeline, here!”

We’re supposed to be half a year before the main story even starts right now! In anime terms, we’re right around the bit before the OP in episode one!

“Chifuyu, please... I’m begging you, just give it a little more thought!”

“No.”

“Okay, look... I’m actually fine with going with World Create. That’s not a problem, but...well, to be brutally honest...we need to tack a few more pages on here to meet quota. About twenty or so, to be specific,” I said, launching into a profoundly meta explanation. “See, the thing is... Basically, bonus stories like this one are kind of a pain in a bunch of ways. They can’t be too long, but they can’t be too short either, for some reason. The last one with Tomoyo in it was actually supposed to be a bit longer, but it ended up running over the limit and a few bits had to get cut out. It was really painful to do, supposedly... So anyway, the World Create story’s supposed to be somewhere around forty pages long too, so we need to fine-tune this a bit to make sure we—”

“I don’t care about all that,” Chifuyu snapped. “If I say we’re done, then we’re done.”

Her arrogant, uncompromising attitude was like that of a battle-hardened empress. She shone with the powerful glow of a girl who would stick to the choices she’d made, asserting her will through her own strength even if it meant making enemies of the anime’s entire production committee. She couldn’t have been more different from me, a guy who crumpled in the face of that sort of authority like wet tissue paper.

“B-But... But, Chifuyu...”

“We’re done. The end,” Chifuyu said...and then a slight smile spread across her face.

“We’re playing a different game next.”

Who could have possibly seen this coming? Who would’ve guessed that our power name brainstorming session would end halfway through the story and the remaining half would be spent on something completely unrelated?

The whole premise here was that we’d conduct one-on-one interviews to help me think up power names for everyone, yet here we were in just the second session and that concept had already fallen to pieces. Chifuyu was as uncontrollably free-spirited as ever, and my puny little mind was too bound by common sense to grasp the unfathomable depths of her nature. Nothing made me understand how petty of a person I really was quite as effectively as hanging out with her.

But, well, of course it’d turn out like this. I’m game, Chifuyu. If this is what you want, I’ll come along for the ride...and if we get in trouble for it, I’ll definitely be the one who ends up taking all the heat.

“...Three, two, one! All hidden, Chifuyu?” I called out. I’d counted down from a hundred, as promised, and since she didn’t reply to ask for more time, I figured she was probably good to go. “Okay, then! Ready or not, here I come!”

The game that Chifuyu had chosen for us to play was, indeed, hide-and-seek. And, honestly...part of me was just a little scandalized by the idea that she’d shut down our naming session early for that, of all the games she could’ve picked. That was her choice to make, though, so I decided to keep my opinions to myself and just play along.

“Not that there’s anywhere for you to hide in a room like— Huh?!”

I’d been facing the club room’s door with my eyes closed, and when I turned around and opened them, I was greeted by a sight that made my jaw drop. It was not the perfectly normal club room I’d been expecting. The table, whiteboard, and all the anime DVDs, light novels, and Jump back issues that had populated the shelves of the Used Bookstore of the Divine: God Off had all vanished.

“Wh-What the heck is this...?”

The door I’d been leaning against was the only part of the club room left. Everything else had been transformed into a completely different space—a space that, at a glance, I could only describe as a cave. A single path led off into the distance, enclosed by earthen walls and lit only by the occasional candlestick here and there.

Wait, no. This isn’t a cave...

“I-It’s a dungeon... This is totally a dungeon!”

The shock and fear that I’d felt at first gradually faded away as a surge of joyous curiosity welled up within me.

“Hoooly crap! Oh, man, this is straight out of an RPG!” I gushed. It was exactly the sort of cavern that made you want to set out on an adventure, and it could only have been brought into being by Chifuyu’s power. “Okay, Chifuyu...you’ve won this round. I never thought you’d wield the power of genesis to make it as hard as possible for me to find you.”

When she’d suggested that we play hide-and-seek in the club room, my first thought had been “Really?” It hadn’t seemed like the sort of thing a mostly grown high school boy would want to get up to, so I hadn’t exactly been enthusiastic...but dungeon crawling was another matter entirely. I was brimming with motivation! I’m talking maxed-out endorphins! My adventurer’s blood—or rather, my video gamer’s blood—was boiling!

“Mwa ha ha! Interesting indeed! Very well, then—I, Guiltia Sin Jurai, shall be the first one to explore this labyrinth from top to bottom!”

With that noble declaration, I strode forth toward heroic conquest, making my way down the dim, candlelit hallway.

“Ahhh, holy crap, holy crap! I can’t believe she seriously made a whole friggin’ dungeon while I had my eyes closed! She didn’t even make a sound!”

The power of genesis: capable of creating anything, from physical objects to space itself. It was very easy to let yourself get preoccupied by its capacity in terms of scale...but what made it truly threatening, perhaps, was the speed and silence with which it could be invoked.

Yup... Gotta say, that’s a pretty astute observation on my part. Nice job, me. It’s super awesome when powers have depths and capabilities that only the people who fight side by side with their users can appreciate.

I sincerely hoped that someday a villain would have all sorts of precautions worked out to handle the scale of Chifuyu’s power, only for me to say something like “Sorry...but you’ve failed to understand what Chifuyu’s truly capable of” from off on the sidelines. Not that I had any clue when, or if, any villains would actually show up.

“Oh? Time to choose a path, huh?”

The corridor in front of me had finally branched off into three separate hallways. I glanced around, and my gaze soon fell on a piece of paper that was stuck to the rocky wall.

“Let’s see here... ‘Obstacle number one. Decode the secret message to find the right path,’ huh...? Heh heh, I see how it is! So that’s the game we’re playing.”

In short: this is less of a dungeon crawl than it is one of those escape rooms that’ve been all the rage lately! Like, the really big ones that companies will rent out the Tokyo Dome to set up as promotional events. Heh heh, interesting!

The page with the code on it had most certainly been created by Chifuyu’s power, but the code itself had to be something that she’d thought up on her own. There was no way that she, as an elementary schooler, could invent a code that a high schooler like me couldn’t crack—I got treated like a moron on a pretty regular basis, and this was looking like the perfect opportunity for me to show off how I was, in fact, pretty clever when all was said and done!

I took a look at the code.

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

BBBBBBBmiddlepathBBBBBBB

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

“Kinda heavy on the Bs, huh?!”

It was such a swarm of Bs that part of me wanted to ask if Chifuyu had awakened to some kind of insect-whispering power. Then I gave the “Hint” section on the sheet an apprehensive glance, and I found that it was just a doodle of a door with a big arrow pointing at its knob—“kno B,” I figured. Hard though it was to believe, Chifuyu had apparently attempted to make one of those codes where you had to disregard one letter, causing the remaining letters to spell out a message.

Chifuyu...was unbelievably bad at writing codes. It wasn’t even a code at all. Forget encryption—I’d say she practically highlighted the solution. Not only was the answer staring me in the face, it was shining a spotlight in my eyes. The words that should’ve been scattered throughout the whole block of letters were written in a single straight line. Had Chifuyu thought that the code’s difficulty would be proportional to the number of Bs she wrote?

“Well...anyway, guess I’d better move along.”

I followed the code’s directions and headed down the middle of the three paths. A few steps later, a ding ding ding ding—like the chime that plays when you walk into a convenience store—rang out, indicating that I’d gotten it right. This was, clearly, a very user-friendly dungeon.

As I walked along, the scenery around me began to gradually change. The muddy walls of the cave transitioned into blocks of carved stone like you’d see in the underground portions of a castle from the middle ages.

“Oh...? What do we have here?” I said as I stepped out from the narrow corridor into a larger, open chamber.

In the center of the room lay what I could only describe as an extremely obvious switch—the sort that looks like a slightly off floor panel. Meanwhile, a dragon statue made of stone that definitely looked pushable was resting in a corner of the room. Completing the ensemble was a steel door with no knob and no immediately obvious means of opening it on the other end of the chamber.

“Hmm, hmm. I see how it is.”

Being the game aficionado I was, I knew what I was looking at in a flash. Yup, this is one of those puzzles—the ones where the door only stays open as long as something’s holding down the switch!

It was an elementary-grade puzzle that came up all the time in the early stages of dungeon-crawling RPGs. You could step on the switch to open the door, but the second you stepped off it would close again, so you had to find some sort of object nearby and use it to hold down the switch instead.

“Heh heh heh! Sorry, Chifuyu, but for a gamer at my level, a puzzle like this may as well be solved the moment I lay eyes on it!” I decided to skip right over trying to step on the switch and seeing what happened and jumped straight to pushing the statue onto it. “Hmngggphhh!” The dragon was pretty heavy, but I could just move it, and when I finally got it to the center of the room, it fit atop the switch like a glove. However...the door didn’t open.

“Wha—?! I-Impossible... Did I misread what sort of puzzle I was dealing with?!”

Could it be that this puzzle had been made to look elementary-grade, but it was actually a high-level brain twister that only a seasoned gamer could get past? Oh, it’s on now, Chifuyu! Think you can outsmart me, huh? Well, I’ll show you how clever you really are, I thought as I stepped closer to the door...

Bvrrr.

...only for a mechanical whirring noise to ring out as it slid open before me. The big, solid door that hadn’t looked like it could be opened by any conventional means just...smoothly glided off to the side.

“...”

I took a step back, and the door closed with another whir. Then I stepped forward, and it opened right up again.

“It’s a friggin’ automatic door?!”

There had never been a puzzle in the room to begin with. I was, apparently, supposed to have just passed right on through, and I was starting to feel very embarrassed for having gotten so worked up about the puzzle that I’d conjured in my imagination...but I shook off the shame and headed through the door, moving onward.

I passed through a few more rooms after that point, but in spite of the decor that just screamed “this is part of a puzzle,” all the doors I encountered slid open automatically without me having to so much as touch anything.

Why is this dungeon so easy, and why is it so weirdly high-tech?!

“Oh! Time to choose a path again, huh?” I muttered to myself as I stepped up to a set of four big, heavy-looking doors.

Each of the doors had a title written above it. They read, respectively, “Door of Spring,” “Door of Summer,” “Door of Fall,” and “Door of Winter.” Meanwhile, a message on a nearby wall read “Obstacle number two: decode the secret message.”

“So this is the second obstacle, huh...? I guess that means that all those rooms I passed through really were just padding... The statues with swords that looked like you had to move them to get the door to open, the set of statues with one missing that looked like one would have to fall into the room through a hole in the ceiling, and all those other exciting puzzle-coded decorations were all pointless after all...”

But anyway, looks like it’s time for more cryptography. Considering the difficulty of the first challenge, I think I can assume this’ll be a breeze too... But, no, I can’t let my guard down. It’s standard practice for these challenges to get harder and harder as the dungeon goes on! Plus, I’m up against Chifuyu here. It’s totally possible that she’ll throw out standard practice altogether and put a max difficulty puzzle on the very second door!

I took a moment to steel myself, then looked at the second coded message.

What’s Chifuyu’s favorite season?

“Oh come on, that’s not even a code!”

It’s just a multiple choice question! Please, Chifuyu, try at least a little harder when you’re making these up... I don’t care if it’s another “kno B” level puzzle, at least make it look like a code! Did you already get bored of thinking up questions by the time you had to write the second one?

I briefly considered reading into the question and analyzing it for layers of deep, hidden meaning...but then I decided that it would be a waste of time and gave up without bothering. I was dealing with Chifuyu, and that meant that what I saw was what I got.

“But, actually...this is kinda tough. What is her favorite season...?”

We’d known each other for half a year, and we’d chatted about anything and everything on an almost daily basis over the course of that time, but I couldn’t remember the subject of favorite seasons having come up even once.

“Maybe I’m just misremembering and she actually let that info slip at some point in the past...? Or maybe it’s something that I should be able to deduce based on stuff she’s told me before? Gah... I have no clue!”

Chifuyu loves napping more than she loves life itself, so maybe she’d like the nice, warm, perfect-for-napping weather in spring? Summer doesn’t feel super likely, since she seems like the sort of person who wouldn’t like it when it’s too hot out. Fall... Well, fall’s a pretty temperate season like spring, so maybe? I don’t think she’d like the fact that it’s cold in winter...but on the other hand, her given name does mean “thousand winters,” so maybe she’d appreciate it because of that? She said her birthday’s in December too.

“Feels like it’s probably gonna be spring or winter,” I muttered to myself.

Finally, at the end of my deliberations, I chose the Door of Winter on the basis that a season that was part of her name just had to be special to her somehow. I opened up the door, stepped inside, and instantly...

Duh-dunnn!

...a noise that sorta just screamed “Wrong!” played. It sounded like a clarion call for someone backstage to pie me in the face or open a trap door at my feet or something.

“Wha...? Y-You’re kidding! I got it wrong?!”

I barely had time to start freaking out before the door slammed behind me and locked with a loud clack. To make matters worse, the ceiling in front of me slammed downward as well, forming a wall that blocked the path entirely. My routes forward and backward were both sealed. I was trapped.

“H-Huh? What? What’s going on...? This is actually seriously freaking me out here,” I babbled.

Getting suddenly shut up in a fully sealed room was scary enough...but then a moment later, a light began to glow beneath me. Not just any light—a Gate: one of the dimensional portals that Chifuyu could make with her power, which allowed her to travel anywhere she wanted at a moment’s notice. And, of course, a portal forming right beneath my feet could only mean one thing.

“Wait, wha— O-Oh god, I’m falling! Aaaagh! If you were gonna drop me anyway, then what was the point of sealing off the hallwaaaaaaaaay?!”

I plummeted through the Gate...and was dumped right back into the dungeon’s first room.

“Oof, ouch... Uh, okay. So, I guess this means I’m supposed to start over?”

“That’s right,” said a voice that seemingly rang out from nowhere. “If you get a question wrong, you have to go back to the start.” It goes without saying, of course, who that disembodied voice belonged to.

“Ch-Chifuyu...? Where are you talking to me from?”

“Right now, I’m all the way at the end of the dungeon.”

“The end of the dungeon, huh...? And I guess you’re watching me from there? How the heck are you pulling that off? I didn’t see any cameras or anything... And wait, how are you even broadcasting your voice like that?”

“Don’t sweat the small stuff,” Chifuyu replied bluntly.

Fair enough. This is just a bonus story, so we may as well just brush that off and move along.

“You messed up on the second question, Andou. That’s pathetic.”

“I guess winter really wasn’t the right answer, huh...? Okay, so what was right? What’s your favorite season, Chifuyu?”

“The right answer...is that I like all the seasons as much as each other.”

“How the heck was I supposed to know that?!”

“If I picked one season as my favorite, I’d feel bad for the other three.”

“What a pointless thing to feel bad about! And wait, that totally breaks the whole question, doesn’t it?! What was I supposed to do to get it right?!”

“You should’ve opened all four doors at the same time.”

“How?! Even if I did have four hands, that’d be impossible! Forget the Four Witches Technique—this would call for the Multi-Form Attack!”

“Andou, stop making excuses. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“Ugh...”

“If you get a question wrong, you have to start over. The first and second questions will be different now too, so be careful. Good luck,” Chifuyu concluded, cutting off her transmission—or whatever I was supposed to call it—with what was probably supposed to be words of encouragement but which sure sounded like a taunt at the same time, somehow.

“Heh... Heh heh heh! You’ve cooked up quite the fun little system here,” I said as I rose to my feet and clenched my fists. All right, then. Bring it on. The crappier you make this shovelware-tier game, the more motivated it makes me! “Know this, Himeki Chifuyu: making a fool of Guiltia Sin Jurai is a grievous sin for which you’ll pay a hefty price! A dungeon like this will be over in a flash if I choose to apply myself! Rest your feet on that lofty throne of yours while you can—I’ll reach your inner sanctum and drag you off it before you know it!”

“My feet aren’t on my throne. That’d be bad manners.”

“Um...Chifuyu? Sorry, but could you not chime in out of nowhere like that? This was supposed to be, y’know, more of a monologue-style, talking to myself to get hyped-up for the dungeon sort of deal...”

And so, I took on Himeki Chifuyu’s specially designed and directed dungeon. Sometimes, the questions that awaited me at the checkpoints would be stunningly easy to breeze past in an instant, and sometimes, they’d be so unreasonably hard that I’d be sent straight back to the beginning with no recourse. I took on the trial over and over again, overcoming one barrier after another as I strove to reach the labyrinth’s innermost point.

Moving forward through the dungeon took brains and brawn in equal measure, but more so than either of them, one skill was absolutely paramount: the ability to stand strong in the face of utter absurdity. In other words, it was vital to be able to remain calm and composed when, for instance, you reached a fork in the road with instructions that said “Take the right path,” you turned right, and you were then informed that “That’s the left path from my perspective” before getting sent back to the beginning again.

Indeed, the dungeon was irrational above all else—irrational, and also enormous. Traversing a dungeon with no companions or enemies to meet, alone with only my mind and Chifuyu’s voice, made me realize just how fragile my own psyche really was under this sort of pressure. Nothing weakened the human heart quite like solitude. I wanted to run into someone—anyone. Word was still out on whether it was wrong to pick up girls in a dungeon, but I could say with confidence that a dungeon without anyone to talk to was wrong in its own right.

And so, I resorted to the only option available to me: I spoke with the black flames that manifested upon my own right hand. They were cold and curt at first, sure, but with patience and persistence, they started opening up to me, and a true dialogue commenced. My flames couldn’t communicate through words, of course, but that did nothing to dampen my understanding of the meaning they meant to convey to me—they would flicker once for yes and twice for no, as easy as that.

At first, all I wanted out of my flames was someone to talk to. As the journey wore on, however, they became a truly indispensable partner to me—one I never would’ve been able to carry on without. When danger bore down on me, their unparalleled instincts would kick into high gear and warn me of the oncoming crisis in the nick of time, raising the alarm with a spirited flare.

They were meager flames, so frail that the slightest spray of water could extinguish them outright—and on top of that, the fact that they were black meant they couldn’t light up anything in the dungeon’s darkness—but they were nevertheless a partner the likes of which could never be replaced. Without the flames upon my right hand, surmounting the dungeon would have been simply unthinkable.

All the trials we overcame together sowed the seeds of an unbreakable bond between the flames on my right hand and me. Yes, there were times we came to blows, but it was always only a matter of time before we would mutually apologize and emerge from the crucible of conflict with our spirits aflame and our souls tempered.

Honestly—those flames of mine are too stubborn for their own good sometimes...though of course, that’s part of what makes them who they are. It’s one of many ways they’re ever so charming...and so very, very dear to me.

The feelings I held for my flames had long since transcended mere love. Being together was nothing less than the natural state of being for us—and being apart? Unfathomable. Day and night, we were by each other’s side, in the dining room and bathroom alike. We were closer than lovers, closer than family, and we could never, ever be torn asunder. We were one in body and soul.

That wasn’t hyperbole, and I wasn’t speaking figuratively either—I meant it in a very literal sense. It wasn’t my body anymore. It was our body. A vessel of flesh over which we held joint ownership, making my flame a part of my very being. We were one and the same. If I had to compare it to something, I’d say that my flames were like... Yes, of course. I’d say I knew them like the back of my—

“...Wait, it’s literally my own hand!”

Whoa boy, okay! It’s definitely time to reel it in! I was seriously talking to my own hand for a while there!

The sheer absurdity of Chifuyu’s puzzles had driven my spirit to its breaking point, and unable to bear her dungeon’s isolation, I’d ended up talking to my own body part before I even knew what was happening.

Sheesh, that was a close one. I was dangerously close to sailing into some seriously risky uncharted waters.

Fortunately, I was back in reality now, and I could focus once again on the challenge before me. That challenge: a stupidly huge door, right in front of my face, beyond which lay the dungeon’s creator and final boss, Chifuyu herself. I knew this for a fact because the guardian I’d beaten to pass through this last gate just came out and told me about it.

The guardian blocking the path to the final gateway, by the way, had been none other than that one giant robot (giant monster? giant god warrior?) that showed up for that one bit in the anime’s OP. The final obstacle had had it challenging me to a riddle competition. It’d asked me “What has two legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and two legs at night?” and I’d managed to hold back the urge to shout “Wait, you can talk?!” for long enough to give “A person!” as my answer, which had apparently been correct. I’d really wanted to question that one, but, like...it wasn’t wrong, was it? That description sure did apply to people, but, like...seriously?

Anyway, after our very brief riddle-off was over, the Gainax-esque giant robot had said “My master...my creator...lies...just...ahead...” then crumbled to pieces before my eyes. Considering how dramatic it’d made the whole spectacle, you’d have almost thought it had been guarding that gateway for hundreds of years, carrying out its final order to protect its master to the bitter end, but honestly, it really didn’t do much for me on an emotional level. It did feel like I should do something to acknowledge its sacrifice, though, so I silently wished it well in whatever afterlife it had moved on to.

Thanks, giant robot dude. You were super badass in the OP.

“And now, it’s finally time for me to cross paths with the captive princess, I guess.”

Or rather, maybe it’s time for the final boss battle to begin? I had no clue what was about to happen, but one way or another, standing around wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Plus, honestly? I just really wanna go home already...

With my mind set on the noble goal of making it back to my own house, I pushed open the door.

“Here I am, Chifuyu! Now—let us begin the end of the beginning!”

I opened with my signature catchphrase just for the hell of it, but I didn’t get a response. I found myself in a luxurious room—the sort that nobles in fantasy worlds tended to live in—and in the center of that room was a fittingly extravagant bed. Atop that bed, Chifuyu was...

“Oh, come on... She’s asleep?”

I heaved a sigh as I gazed down at the bed. Chifuyu was lying on its fluffy sheets, slumbering away without a care in the world. She had Squirrely clutched in her arms, and she looked as pure and divine as a literal angel. Apparently, I’d kept her waiting long enough for her to get sleepy. I’d been wondering why the voice of the heavens had clammed up partway through the dungeon crawl—she’d been really chatty up to the seventh gateway or so—and this certainly explained it.

“I’m friggin’ exhausted, and after all the times this place nearly broke my spirit, I really wanted to give her a piece of my mind...but I can’t exactly go through with that now, huh?” I muttered to myself as I sat down on the bed and gave Chifuyu a gentle pat on the head.

Ugh... Give me a break. How’d a one-on-one interview to pick a name for her power turn out like this, anyway? Looks like I’ve got no choice but to let her power’s temporary name, World Create, go through as the final version.

I paused as I ran the name through my mind once more.

Okay, but y’know what? Maybe this was for the best.

World Create. It felt a little too simple, sure, but it certainly wasn’t bad by any means. In fact, it was actually sorta fantastic. It fit the format we’d laid out in the first session perfectly, using two English words for the name proper, and the Japanese spelling thereof happened to be nine characters long. By pure coincidence, that was the exact same number of characters that the Japanese spelling for Closed Clock required as well. I’d been hoping to make those numbers line up from the start, and as luck would have it, the name I’d sprung for in the heat of the moment had worked out perfectly in that respect.

I hadn’t told Tomoyo about that part of my plan—it’d just felt a little too awkward to bring up—but my goal was to make sure that all of our powers’ names used the same number of nonfiller English words and the same number of Japanese characters. The goal was to give our powers’ names a strong sense of unity...and, in doing so, to strengthen the bonds between the five of us as well.

“World Create. Yeah, I like it. Not a bad name at all.”

That was two names down and three to go, mine included. I’d be following the two-word, nine-character structure for all three of them as best as I could. Plenty of works had their powers’ names follow a theme in one way or the other, but I’d never seen one that had them all match up in both of those respects, which was exactly why I’d decided to go for it. I wanted the ties that bound us to be stronger than those of any other party of main characters in any work of fiction. If any new members joined up with us in the future, I’d give their powers names in the same fashion. I knew that all of this was really just for my own self-satisfaction when all was said and done, but still...

“...That’s just what you do for your friends.”

You take care of them. You look them in the eye and face them head-on. And, no matter what...I’ll never let what happened back in the eighth grade come to pass ever again.

“Let’s keep up the good fight, Chifuyu—nay, World Create,” I said, whispering the profoundly sinful name I’d granted her as I patted her head once more. I knew that I might wake her if I kept that up for long, but I kept it up anyway. Or, well, really...I patted her head because I wanted to wake her up.

“Chifuyu? Wakey wakey! It’s time to get up!”

“...”

“W-Wake up, okay...? I, uh, kinda can’t go home until you get up, so please...?”

“...”

Chifuyu was out like a light, and I wasn’t cruel enough to bring myself to rouse her. All I could do was sit there on the bed, spacing out as I waited for the moment of her awakening.