Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 12 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The Path Astray of Lucifer’s Strike

The ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, ready to crush the heavens and the fools who rule them, Lucifer’s Strike—this was the title that had been bestowed upon Kiryuu Hajime and, by extension, the name of the power he’d awakened to, which granted him the ability to desecrate the force of gravity itself. The one who had bestowed it, needless to say, was none other than Hajime himself. Between “the ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, ready to crush the heavens and the fools who rule them” serving as its tediously long-winded intro and the English words “Lucifer’s Strike” providing a foreign flair, it was a truly elegant and awesome name for a power to have...according to Hajime and no one else.

If you want my impression of the name, then honestly, all I can say is “Man, that sure is long.” The intro on its own was eighteen words long, and it came out to a stunning twenty when you put it all together. The maximum line length for a GA Bunko light novel was standardized, and as it so happened, Hajime’s power’s name was just a couple letters shy of taking up a half line all on its own. From a cost performance perspective—or rather, a word performance perspective—it was just way too inefficient.

Now, I’ll admit, the first time you hear the name, it comes across as kind of cool...though it also might come across as something of a joke, depending on perspective. Regardless, the more and more you heard it, the thinner and thinner it would wear in no time at all. Like, imagine a battle scene that went...

“I-Impossible! Hajime’s ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, ready to crush the heavens and the fools who rule them, Lucifer’s Strike, didn’t work?!”

The ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, ready to crush the heavens and the fools who rule them, Lucifer’s Strike, had had no effect—or so I thought, but no. It wasn’t that simple. The ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, ready to crush the heavens and the fools who rule them, Lucifer’s Strike, had come into effect, and it had even scored a direct hit on its target. The ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, ready to crush the heavens and the fools who rule them, Lucifer’s Strike’s ability to freely manipulate gravity was working just as it always did, and it was perfectly capable of banishing Hajime’s foe into a realm of unending darkness...at least, in theory.

In truth, however, the moment the ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, ready to crush the heavens and the fools who rule them, Lucifer’s Strike, had made contact with Hajime’s foe’s body, the power had ceased to be. It hadn’t just been blocked, clearly...but the alternative was too terrifying to consider.

Could it really be...that the ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, ready to crush the heavens and the fools who rule them, Lucifer’s Strike, had been undone?! The ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, ready to crush the heavens and the fools who rule them, Lucifer’s Strike, hadn’t just been blocked or had its effects reduced. It had been completely nullified. In other words, the enemy’s power had to be—

...it would be seriously freaking irritating, right?! No way anyone would be able to visualize a battle with a description like that! Your eyes would start glazing over before you knew it! And that’s not even starting on the fact that when a name that’s so long it has its own comma gets dropped into the middle of a sentence, the punctuation turns into a huge mess!

Now, I have to admit, there are plenty of stories out there that have managed to put in an ultra-long power name and still keep the plot moving forward without making it into a big, stressful pain for their readers. A cumbersome name like that can serve as an opportunity for the story’s author to show their stuff and prove they have the storytelling chops to pull it off. In this case, the storyteller would be...well, me, I guess. Looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Working with a name like that is honestly a lot harder than you’d think. There was a period when I seriously considered abbreviating it to “LS,” but it just never quite felt right. Just think about how ridiculous I’d look shouting stuff like “He did it! Hajime’s LS did the trick!” I may not get any of this chuuni crap, but even I could tell how lame that would come across.

The ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, ready to crush the heavens and the fools who rule them, Lucifer’s Strike...yeah. Much as I hate to admit it, it really was cooler that way than LS could ever be. In the end, it was probably better to just skip the preamble, not bother tweaking the name, and live with it.

Sheesh. Guess it’s all up to me to make this work, then. No way around it, much as I wish there was. From now on, I’ll just have to make sure that any of Hajime’s battles that get seen from my perspective—not that I know how many spin-off novels that follow our crew there’ll even be—get depicted in a way that doesn’t bludgeon the readers with Hajime’s power’s full name over and over again.

Oh. Right. So, umm, this is a little late, but my name is Saitou Hitomi. I imagine that most of you already know about me, but for those who don’t, I should give a quick self introduction. You can think of me as the partner of that absolute dumbass who pops into the main story every once in a while—which is to say, the partner of Kiryuu Hajime. His partner, and, at the moment, also his roommate.

To make a long story short, I’m a perfectly ordinary person who got dragged into the Fifth Spirit War—an over-the-top supernatural battle royale—thanks to Kiryuu’s capricious whims. I’d known Hajime since high school, but I’d never imagined that our acquaintance would see me getting wrapped up in such an absurd story.

I guess rather than calling us partners, it’d be more accurate to say that I was stuck with him? Or that I was his...l-l-love interest, maybe...? Ahem, ahem!

Anyway, to put it simply: you know that part of the anime’s OP when the chorus is in full swing and it cuts to a group of shadowy figures posing on a pile of rubble? I’m one of them. I think that pretty much sums it up, so let’s just move along, thanks!

...I’m not even sure if that whole self-intro was useful for anyone at all, now that it’s over, but it did feel necessary to make that sort of accommodation, one way or the other. It was probably pointless for everyone who’s read all the prior volumes of the original series, of course, but for all I know, some people might’ve skipped volumes 5 and 9 on the basis that they never read light novel spin-off volumes.

Apparently, a surprisingly large number of people don’t bother with that sort of spin-off as a matter of principle. People talk about how volumes numbered whatever-point-five don’t tend to sell as well as the full-number volumes all the time, at least. You know, at one point, the spin-off about me and Hajime was actually going to be published as the first volume of a completely different series called The Commonplace Exists for the Sake of Supernatural Battles, but ultimately, a bunch of boring business circumstances led to it getting released as a normal volume instead, slotting right into the normal numbering scheme and... Oh, whoops! Looks like someone’s coming over to tell me to stop. Time to get back on topic!

In any event, I, Saitou Hitomi, will endeavor to serve the role of narrator to the best of my ability. To all the readers who were hoping for lighthearted banter between Andou Jurai and his associated heroines, I can only offer my sincerest apologies. Instead, this fifth bonus story will feature me, Hajime, and our merry band of companions, serving as something of a side story, if you will.

This was the plan from the outset, for the record...but, honestly, getting here was still kind of a process. Thanks to the anime’s second episode, a girl named Kudou ended up becoming way more popular than anyone ever expected she’d be. That popularity is how Kudou suddenly ended up getting put on the cover of the fifth Blu-ray case, and there was talk about making this bonus story into The Path to Grateful Robber as well to match. And, I mean, when you really sit down and think about it, it is pretty weird for us side story characters to take the spotlight for the fifth Blu-ray collection, considering we don’t even show up in any of the episodes it—

...Am I giving away too much behind-the-scenes info, here? Maybe I am, but seriously, can you blame me?! I’m not used to doing all this meta junk! And this is the fifth of these things, for crying out loud! The fifth! They’ve been getting more and more meta with each passing story, so number five feels like it has to be just inches away from crossing the line! Or at least that’s the sense I get, for some weird reason... Anyway, the point is that I really don’t want it to end up looking like the meta level dropped off the second I took over as narrator. It’s like I have to push the boundaries, or else all the readers won’t be satisfied...

Ugh. This must be how sports manga end up slowly shifting into battle manga the longer they run, isn’t it? Anyway, back on topic: round two! It’s high time we closed the book on this intro and got to the main plot!

Long story short: I, Saitou Hitomi, will be your narrator this time, and the story will center around Kiryuu Hajime and his power, the ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, ready to crush the heavens and the fools who rule them, Lucifer’s Strike. No, I won’t be writing out the whole name in full every single time—you and I both saw how that last sentence turned out. I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to live without.

I’ll be taking this chance to depict a small slice of Fallen Black’s daily lives. The whole premise of our spin-off is to be a battle-focused tale that contrasts with the slice-of-life focus of the main story, but we have our own day-to-day lives as well. We’re not always fighting someone. We go through plenty of commonplace events that are barely even worth talking about, and today, I want to talk about one of them.

It all began on one summer’s day, when I came across a certain notebook...

Some time had passed since either the events of the anime’s eighth episode or the events of the original series’s fifth volume, depending on how you’re counting. Umeko had joined our little team, and she, Hajime, and I had wound up sharing my apartment in a pretty peculiar sort of three-person roommate situation.

On that day in particular, Umeko and I woke up to find that Hajime had vanished. That was most likely...okay, make that definitely on account of the fact that the evening before, I’d forced him to promise that he’d help clean the apartment today. The jerk had up and run away on me.

I thought about chasing him down, but I had a feeling that even if I searched as hard as I possibly could, I wouldn’t find any trace of him, so in the end, Umeko and I just brushed it off and got to work cleaning on our own. My apartment wasn’t super big in the first place, and having all three of us clean it probably would’ve been overkill...but I still wanted to make Hajime clean up anyway. Most of the clutter was his fault anyway! Why did I have to literally pick up his messes?!

“Friggin’ Hajime... I swear, when he gets home tonight, I’m ignoring his stupid ass! I really mean it this time! In fact, I might not let him in at all! He can sleep on the doorstep until he decides to apologize!”

“I recall you saying much the same thing barely a month ago, Hitomi.”

“Ugh!”

“And yet, in spite of all the oaths you swore to leave him outside, the moment First arrived home and revealed he’d bought you pudding from the convenience store, you let him in with a smile as bright as the sun itself...”

“C-C-Come on, Umeko, we should be working, not chatting!” I yelped.

The look on Umeko’s face didn’t shift in the slightest, but she did let out a little sigh. She wasn’t a very expressive kid, as a general rule, but she had her ways of getting her exasperation across very clearly, at least.

Our cleaning work proceeded apace. We dusted the furniture, then shifted it to clean underneath everything before moving it all back again, and so on and so forth...until eventually, we stopped in our tracks. By pure happenstance, we’d stumbled across something as we cleaned: a single notebook.

“I-Isn’t this...?” I stammered as I laid the jet-black notebook down on my newly cleaned table. The notebook’s cover had an inverted cross drawn upon it, and I knew what that meant. “The Reverse Crux Record...” I muttered, then I instantly felt embarrassed for actually saying those words out loud.

That was, however, indeed the notebook’s name. It was the Reverse Crux Record: a notebook that Hajime had written in habitually since high school, and what most people would call his horrifically humiliating cringe compilation.

“That’s First’s notebook, is it not?” asked Umeko, who was watching from off to the side. “I believe that he makes a point of keeping it constantly by his side, wherever he goes...but it seems he must have forgotten it today.”

“Yeah, looks like it,” I agreed.

I’d discovered it while cleaning out the space behind the TV. My best guess was that it had found its way in there when Hajime had thrown his coat across the room the day before. In any case, I stared fixedly at the notebook, not saying a word.

That notebook was where all of Hajime’s cringiest chuuni fantasies were recorded. He kept it in one of his coat’s inside pockets whenever he went out, jumping on any and every excuse he could to show it off but never actually letting anyone see what was written inside. Kiryuu Hajime himself was the only person who knew what it contained.

“Hmm...”

Well, what now? Yes, I’m curious. I mean, I’m really curious. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and if I let it slip past, I may never get another one.

The slumbering serpent of curiosity within me was rearing its head, freshly awakened and all too willing to take a bite out of the prey before it.

“H-Hey, Umeko?” I said, flashing her a smile as I turned to face her. It was a really unnatural smile—so much so that even I could tell—but I didn’t let it get to me and pressed on. “So...do you wanna take a peek into this notebook with me?”

“Hmm,” Umeko grunted with an understanding nod. “Allow me to speculate: you fear the thought of being singly responsible for this trespass and seek to implicate me in your crime. ’Tis always easier to commit an offense when one is but a member of a cohort.”

“Augh!”

“Hitomi—this hardly bears saying, but you are aware that what you propose would be a grave violation of First’s privacy, correct? Everyone has something or other they would prefer others not be privy to. To deny your fellow this sanctity without sound reasoning is a truly unforgivable deed. You would be no better than a common brigand.”

I didn’t say a word. I, a twenty-two-year-old woman, had just been argued into complete submission by a little girl. Umeko had acted like a puppet back when we’d first met, but over the course of the time she’d spent living with me and Hajime, she’d somehow developed into what I could only describe as a wise and perceptive young lady who was disconcertingly well-versed in decorum and social standards.

“B-But Umeko...” I finally said. “Aren’t you curious?”

“Even if I were, it would not serve as just cause for peeking at his private writings.”

“But...”

“Imagine, Hitomi, if someone were to read the plans that you’ve secretly written for your dates with First. If you were the one whose fantasies were—”

“O-O-Okay, I get it! I get it! You’ve made your point!” I shouted so loudly, I figured I’d be getting some complaints from my neighbors in the near future. I would die. I could say with confidence that if anyone read those plans, I would very literally bite off my tongue and end myself.

“So long as you understand,” Umeko replied offhandedly. I didn’t know if she was being stubborn, or conscientious, or what, but one way or another, it didn’t seem like she had any intention of overlooking a misdeed that was transpiring right in front of her.

I had to admit that, in this case, I was one hundred percent in the wrong...but I still wanted to look. I knew it’d be a breach of privacy, but I wanted to do it anyway. That book had a fragment of Hajime’s completely indecipherable patterns of thought transcribed within it, and I desperately wanted to read that for myself.

“Hey, Umeko?”

“Cease this, Hitomi. I owe you much for the care and shelter you have provided me, but First is just as much my benefactor. I could never betray him.”

“Want some HI-CHEW?”

“Make haste, Hitomi—we must read what we can before First returns home. How shall we approach this endeavor? Would it be best for me to stand watch outside, perhaps? Or shall I transcribe the notebook word for word, allowing you to read it at your leisure at a later date?”

I think I just witnessed the world’s fastest betrayal! Buying her off was way too easy!

Tanaka Umeko, the girl formerly known as System, had once turned her back on her whole organization after Hajime had given her a piece of HI-CHEW. Now, that same candy had tempted her into betraying Hajime himself.

“Okay, I know that this was my plan and all...but are you really sure about this, Umeko?” I asked.

“I am powerless to resist. If anything is to blame, it is the irresistible lure of that captivating confection.”

A brief period of negotiations ensued, and ultimately, we decided that the next time I went out, I’d buy her three packs of HI-CHEW as payment for her services. Her loyalty came at a very reasonable price.

“It’s a deal, then,” I said.

“Indeed. However...a question occurs to me, Hitomi. If memory serves, in the anime, the HI-CHEW that I so adore was referred to as ‘soft candy.’ Why is that?”

“Oooh, yeah. It’s complicated. It’s a business thing, basically.”

Sometimes not dropping specific brand names was just the better way to go. When it comes to that sort of thing, novels and anime are, well... The standards are sort of just different, for some reason. Producing an anime involves a ton of people working together, and the resulting product gets broadcast to even more people on public airwaves, so it’s important to be careful about that sort of thing.

Here’s a good example: there’s this one famous manga called Hell Teacher Nube, the title of which was actually the result of that exact same sort of consideration. Apparently, it was actually supposed to be called Hell Teacher Nubo initially, and it even ran under that title back when it was just a one-shot. The problem was that a candy company had a product on the market called the “nubo” at the time, and there were worries that if the series ever got an anime and a rival candy company ended up sponsoring the show, things could get messy. As a result, before the manga’s serialization began, its title was changed to “Nube,” which ended up sticking.

When Hajime first told me that story, one thought had immediately sprung to mind: doesn’t “Nube” just sound better, all questions of anime and candy companies aside?!

What am I even talking about? Not anything on topic, that’s for sure, but the point I’m trying to make is that sometimes when you make anime, things get complicated.

“All right, then,” I said. I’d successfully bought off my one obstacle, which meant that now it was finally time to unveil the notebook’s contents. I couldn’t help but feel nervous, and I hesitated a little as a result, but I also knew that Hajime could come home at any minute—there was no time to waste. “Let’s do this, Umeko!”

“Very well.”

I steeled my resolve...and opened the notebook up, turning to its first page.

The first feature that caught my eye was a very sinister-looking magic circle. It was made up of several overlapping circles, within which were words tightly written in some language I couldn’t identify (most likely the sort of runes you see in Nordic mythology). The image was chaotic, but there was something about its design that struck me as oddly natural as well. I didn’t quite know how to put it into words—it was a real mystery. There was also writing beneath it, preceded by an asterisk.

*In the event that this notebook is opened by anyone other than its owner, it will self-destruct for the sake of security.

“Gah?!”

A trap?! Seriously?!

It seemed that the notebook’s owner had prepared countermeasures just in case someone happened to take a peek inside or something happened to him that would prevent him from keeping it hidden. That magic circle, clearly, was an explosive rune, like the sort you’d find in ancient, forbidden grimoires. It was the sort of measure that you’d take when you were so afraid of a book’s contents coming to light, you were willing to sacrifice the book itself to keep your secrets.

“A-Aaaaaaugh!” I yelped as I flung the ticking time bomb in my hands as hard as I could. The notebook flopped against the window and fell to the floor.

Crap! You have to open the window at times like these, or at least throw the bomb hard enough to break through the glass! Otherwise, throwing it’s totally pointless!

I didn’t have the time or the courage to go pick the notebook up and try again though. Instead I hit the deck, diving headfirst in the opposite direction, slamming right into the flooring, and letting out an undignified “Bwaugh!” as I had the wind knocked out of me. I bore with the pain, though, plugging my ears, shutting my eyes, and bracing for impact.

I’ll admit that I only knew this from movies and police dramas on TV, but I was pretty sure that this was the right pose to take when you were in the proximity of an imminent explosion...or, well, kinda sure, anyway? The fact that the explosive had fallen to the floor after I threw it made taking shelter on the floor feel sorta silly, on second thought. In fact, I was starting to think that making for the door and getting the hell away from the apartment would’ve been a much better idea than hitting the deck, period.

Meanwhile, as I was thinking all of that through with my eyes still clamped firmly shut, ten seconds passed by. Then twenty. The room was silent, and there was no sign of any sort of explosion whatsoever.

“Hitomi,” Umeko finally said. Her expression was as blank as ever, but something about the look in her eyes still felt deeply belittling. “Surely you did not believe that it would actually explode?”

I didn’t reply. I just stood up and walked back over to her.

Gaaaaaaaaah! The shame! I took that completely at face value! I was dodging for my life!

But, yeah, no crap! Of course it wouldn’t explode! Magical explosion traps aren’t a real thing! This isn’t that kind of story!

“This was nothing more than a practical joke on First’s part,” Umeko continued.

Personally, I didn’t see it as a practical joke so much as him being a poser, as usual. He’d probably thought about how cool it would be if he made his notebook look like a booby-trapped grimoire, then realized that the magic circle wouldn’t get that idea across on its own and added in the note to clarify things.

“Yeah, this definitely does seem like something Hajime would think up,” I sighed.

“You make it sound as if you saw through his designs, which is a rather comical attitude for you to take when you were thoroughly deceived.”

“O-Oh, stuff it!”

“What I find even more remarkable, however, is that when you were hoodwinked into bracing yourself for an oncoming detonation, you chose to abandon me to my fate and prioritize your own longevity.”

“Oh. Uh...”

“I take this to mean that should another such situation arise, you will pay no regard to my safety and flee alone. Duly noted. I shall have to account for this as I evaluate our relationship from this point forward.”

“I-I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like that, honestly! I just panicked! I wasn’t trying to abandon you! I just, umm...well,” I babbled, throwing out excuse after excuse.

“I jest,” said Umeko, her expression as blank as ever.

I wanted to gripe about how she should try to be a little less deadpan with her jokes, but honestly, I really had abandoned her. That was an undeniable fact, and I didn’t think I had any real right to complain this time around.

I let out a sigh. “If I’d known it would be this physically and mentally exhausting to read starting from the very first page, I wouldn’t have opened it at all,” I grumbled as I picked the notebook up again. Naturally, it didn’t explode. I flipped past the supposed self-destruction sigil, and found...

*If you wish to read further, you must decipher the following code and recite the resulting incantation after placing this tome in the specified location and at the specified angle. Only then will you be spared the unknowable wrath of a fallen angel’s curse.

“Oh, get real!” I shouted.

I didn’t quite know how to put it into words, but...well, this was just one too many gimmicks for the notebook to have, right? He’d put way too much effort into making it a distinct and attention-grabbing item. I’d been totally convinced that he was just using it as his personal notepad, but as it turned out, he’d packed in way more stuff to entertain potential readers than I’d ever imagined.

“So, I guess this is the code we’re supposed to decipher...?”

“It certainly seems dense,” Umeko noted.

She wasn’t wrong about that. The code in question filled up an entire page. It turned out not to be just one step long either—deciphering it involved going through a full thirteen distinct problems, and I could tell even just skimming them that they were all quite elaborate. They contained allusions to the Bible, the Kojiki, Norse mythology, and Greek mythology, all so overwrought that you’d think solving the code would produce an actual, genuine magical incantation.

Man. Dealing with chuunibyou that’s slid this far down the bell curve is such a pain in the ass.

“So...he really devoted the first pages of his notebook to a gimmick like this? This reminds me of those choose-your-own-adventure books that were popular back in the day. Like, the ones that had you turn a particular number of pages forward or backward to progress the story and stuff.”

Part of me thought that taking the time to work through the code might actually be sort of fun, but I didn’t have the time or patience to go through with it. Instead, I decided to abandon the idea of reading through the notebook page by page and opened up to an arbitrary point in the middle instead. As best as I could tell, the gamelike portion of the notebook ended somewhere around there, and past that point, he’d started using it as more of a normal notepad to jot random ideas down in.

I picked a page at random and read its title.

One-Liners to Use Later

“Oof...”

I sure opened to an excruciating page right off the bat, huh? I’d known perfectly well that peeking into Hajime’s archive of cringey horrors would put me at serious risk of stumbling across something like this, but that did nothing to lessen the almost physically painful surge of secondhand shame that crashed into me the moment I actually saw it.

“One-liners... In other words, First has dedicated himself, day in and day out, to penning phrases that would make him look cool should he speak them at a climactic moment?”

“Umeko...no narration, please. This really doesn’t need a commentary track.” It’s not even my notebook, and I still can’t bear hearing it picked apart like that. “Oh god, there’s so many of them!” I said as I looked closer. The entire page was packed full of one-liners, from top to bottom. “I have a feeling I’ve heard some of these too... Ah, like this one!”

• “The only things that’re allowed to control me are the crazed, destructive impulses that run through my head.”

-Said while pointing my finger at my head like a gun, in a tone that laces each and every word with an unmistakable tinge of madness, with my eyes open as wide as possible and with a slight smile, acting crazy in a way that makes my opponent think “Holy shit, this guy’s nuts...”

Talk about a detailed note... Also, “acting crazy”? You’re really just straight-up saying it’s an act, huh? Not only does that mean you’re not as crazy as you want people to think you are, it’s actually a sign you’re being super calculating about all your “crazy” behavior! This couldn’t look like more of a charade if you’d tried!

I was pretty sure I remembered Hajime having used that exact line on Leatia back when we were arguing about how to deal with F. Wow, okay... I guess he didn’t come up with that on the spot after all, then.

That meant that, in the heat of a really tense and serious moment, Hajime had almost certainly been thinking “Oh, hey! Isn’t this situation the perfect chance to drop that one-liner I came up with the other day?” I didn’t know how to cope with that newfound knowledge, so I decided to just keep reading the list instead.

“Hmm. I lack a clear standard through which to judge prose of this variety...yet it is my impression that the bulk of these lines are rather clever. Are they not?” Umeko asked.

“Hmm,” I grunted. “I mean, yeah, I guess. I hate to admit it, but Hajime can be frustratingly good at coming up with these things sometimes. He says stuff that sounds like it came straight out of a Hollywood movie all the time... But now that I know he’s been thinking up all those lines in advance, it kinda hurts to—” I began, only to trail off halfway through my sentence as I spotted a new one-liner that grabbed my attention.

• “Are you listening, Hitomi? I offer up these flames of ruin—this hellish tune of infernal devastation—as my requiem to your memory.”

-Use when I awaken to a new power as a consequence of Hitomi dying, then crush the organization that killed her and end up standing on top of a pile of rubble, looking down over what used to be their base.

“He has one for me dying?!”

Why would he plan for a situation like that?! And it’s specifically for if I get killed by an enemy organization, of all things?! Also, what was all that crap about him awakening to a power or whatever?!

“You must be pleased, Hitomi. First would awaken to a new power in the event of your demise. That lends credence to the weight of his feelings for you, does it not?”

“Nooope, nope nope nope. I am not gonna get happy about this. This is just Hajime using me as fodder for his own stupid power-up, and I know it!”

Awakening to a new power after someone you’re close to dies was sort of a trope—or a cliché, maybe? In any case, it was a well-established storytelling pattern that some people tended to critique as being trite and predictable, but which could still be really exciting and impactful when done well, in my opinion.

And yet...the moment it became clear that it was all calculated in advance, the whole thing was completely ruined. It was so easy to imagine that if I actually did die, Hajime would clutch my corpse in utter despair...all the while thinking “All right, now’s my chance for an awakening!” internally. Arrrgh, I’m getting pissed off just thinking about it!

“That settles it!” I said. “No matter what happens, I am not dying! I refuse to die in front of Hajime, at the very least!”

“Your resolve is truly admirable,” Umeko said with a satisfied nod.

Right? Honestly, I’m a little impressed by myself this time.

“However, Hitomi...from an alternate perspective, would serving as fodder for First’s awakening not be quite a desirable role to play? This is merely my vague impression, but I gather that the girl who dies and prompts the protagonist to awaken to new power is widely considered to be a defining character in a story. It firmly establishes that girl’s position as a love interest, does it not?”

“Ack! I mean... I can see where you’re coming from, but I’m not really trying to set myself up as the sort of heroine who fights by the hero’s side on the front lines. I’m trying to be more of a ‘childhood friend who stays in the village and waits for the hero to come home to her’ sort of heroine.”

“It is my understanding that those heroines almost always either fade into the background or get kidnapped toward the end of the story.”

“Those...aren’t exactly great options, huh?”

All other factors aside, Umeko’s argument did get me thinking. On the one hand, knowing that Hajime had gone straight to me when he had to pick someone to die for the sake of the despair-fueled awakening scene of his wildest fantasies was deeply irritating, but on the other hand, it was kinda nice too. I wasn’t okay with the idea of dying, of course...but I found myself thinking that maybe Umeko was right and it really was a heroine role, in an appealing sort of way. Being the tragic damsel in Hajime’s fantasies certainly wasn’t the most upsetting thing that I could think of—in fact, it didn’t feel bad at all. Actually, if it meant that I was at least a little special in his mind, I couldn’t see it as anything other than a good—

“Hmm. It would seem that he wrote scenes in which each of our members could prompt an awakening in him.”

And just like that, I slumped over onto the table with a thud. I took a moment to peel myself off its surface, then looked at the page Umeko was reading—the page right after the one with the bit about my death—and found that he’d plotted out scenarios for how each and every one of Fallen Black’s other members’ deaths could achieve the same effect.

He’d planned for every possibility. I wasn’t special at all, and I felt like a complete idiot for feeling pleased by the thought I could be for even a second. My happiness was pathetically short-lived.

“If I were to perish... Hmm? Remarkable. It seems that he would be delivered from perishing to a bullet wound thanks to having fortuitously positioned a package of HI-CHEW in his breast pocket—HI-CHEW which he had procured with the intent to confer it to me. First certainly has a way of coming up with the most fascinating stories.”

“That’s a wild overestimation of how much force a pouch of candy could block...” And while I’m at it, it’s a mystery why Umeko looks so pleased by that scenario. She’s a bit too fond of HI-CHEW for her own good. “There’s versions for the others too, right? What are theirs like?”

“Hmm. In Shuugo’s case...his knife would survive him as a memento, and the instant First touches it, a blinding effulgence would herald its metamorphosis into a legendary sword known as ‘Á Bao A Qu, the tower’s blade of certain victory.’”

“Where in the hell did that stupid twist come from?! Nothing’s foreshadowed that knife being special at all! Toki literally told us he bought it from a store!”

“Should Yanagi die, we would be astonished to learn his will bequeathed all his video games, his computer, his apartment, his pecuniary interests, and various other personal possessions to First.”

“Where’s this materialism coming from?!”

“It would suffice to simplify Aki’s scenario to a single line of dialogue: ‘I have to tell Ryuu about this power, no matter what... Blargh, I’m dead!’ It seems she would suffer a tragic demise while attempting to inform First of an overarching nemesis’s power.”

“That’s the most cliché way for a character with an analysis power to die! I bet she’s supposed to have left a secret message behind that somehow makes its way to him anyway, letting him look super clever for deciphering the clue, right?!”

“Moments before Fantasia’s death, she would succumb to fear and urinate involuntarily. Upon discovering her shamefully soiled corpse, First would have the mercy to cover her with his coat.”

“We’re seriously still dragging out the Fantasia-wetting-herself gag?!”

“As for Hinoemata—”

“Oh! Actually, we should probably just skip over that one,” I said. That has high odds of spoiling stuff from volume 10, after all. For all we know, some people might end up reading this bonus story before they get their hands on that one.

In any case, it was clear that Umeko hadn’t been exaggerating. Hajime had seriously written out full scenarios for all of our deaths, as well as how they would impact him.

“What sort of leader fantasizes about what would happen if all of his followers died, anyway...?” I sighed.

“I, for one, would say that it’s very typical of him,” Umeko replied indifferently.

I kept reading further into the notebook. There was a page on which Hajime had written the incantation that would prompt him to shift into the form of a fallen angel (which was way too elaborately phrased for its own good), and a section in which he’d drawn a manga starring himself as its main character (which...I decided to just forget about. That one was really rough, in so many ways). And then...

“Ah. What’s this...?” I muttered as I stopped at the beginning of one particular section of the notebook. Its first line read “Titles for the Powers of the Twelve Wings of Fallen Black.” “It looks like he took a bunch of notes on our powers’ names here.”

“Come to think of it, First did create all of them independently, did he not?”

“Yeah. Nobody even asked him to, but he did it anyway.”

“He changed my power’s name, System, to one that struck me as rather long and unwieldy in comparison.”

“Yeah, he sure did...”

Seeing as she’d brought her power’s name up, I casually decided to flip to its page—and was struck dumb. My gaze fell upon an overwhelming wall of text, packed from end to end, top to bottom, with barely any gaps. Line after line was filled with brainstorming, and countless notes were written in what little space remained in the margins.

-Taking all the above into consideration, I can set “decalogue” and “rulebook” in stone as words that definitely have to be used. Using “System” somewhere in the name would be possible, but I’m ruling it out to draw a firm line between her past name and current name.

The immutable decalogue, the irreconcilable decalogue, the conglomerate decalogue, the ruined decalogue, the devastating decalogue, the anarchic decalogue, the chaos-bringing decalogue

-Alternate possibility: associate the “decalogue” less with destructive, chaotic words, and more with words that reflect order and structure?

The immaculate decalogue, the infinite decalogue, the unbeginning decalogue, the forever-changing decalogue

-“Changing” may be a worthy word to use for a power that generates endless, repeated asspull awakenings. Counterpoint: “changing” is artless and inelegant.

Revise? Alter? Amend? Refit? Reform?

-“Revise” and “Alter” are both appealing in their own right. They’re very close to synonymous, but “Revise” can carry connotations of “review” or “study” while “Alter” is focused more specifically on the single intended meaning I’m going for. As such, I’ll be using “Alter.”

The altered decalogue

-The title’s almost good enough, but it needs just a little something more.

Repeatedly altered? Countlessly altered? Endlessly altered? Eternally altered?

-On a pure wordfeel basis, I’m choosing “endlessly altered.” That just leaves the title proper. “Rulebook” is set in stone, but I’d like whatever comes before or after it to have a chaotic feel to contrast with its sense of order.

Chaotic Rulebook -No. Too simplistic.

Chaos Rulebook -Same problem

Rulebook Breaker -Again, too simple

Rulebook Maker -A play on “rulebook” and “bookmaker.” Also stupid and trite. No.

Crisis Rulebook -Too simple! Still too damn simple!

-Damn it all! This isn’t working! Everything that comes to mind is too damn simplistic! None of this crap’s good enough! Umeko’s power is mighty enough to tear this whole War up by its roots, breaking it down on a fundamental level! Its name needs to be worthy of that potential!

-I’m better than this! I’m better than this, gods damn it all!

Rulebook Dominator, Dominated Rulebook, Rulebook Rule, Rulebook of Rulebooks, Rulebook of the End, Endless Rulebook, Rewritten Rulebook, Rulebook Rewriter, Black Rulebook, Raven Rulebook, White Rulebook, Abnormal Rulebook, Pandemic Rulebook, Look Rulebook, Restart Rulebook, Repeated Rulebook, Lost Rulebook, Rulebook Destroyer, Rulebook Must Die, Pure Rulebook, Dirty Rulebook—

-It’s between Black Rulebook and White Rulebook. Considering the power’s abilities alongside Umeko’s appearance and character, it seems worth deliberately avoiding any overly complex vocabulary to give the power’s name a sense of immaturity and innocence, thus amplifying the lurking terror of its true potential.

-And in that case...White feels right. It has a pure, blank feel to it—like a sheet of white paper—which ties in thematically with/emphasizes the ordered feeling of Rulebook, while at the same time outright contradicting it.

The endlessly altered decalogue: White Rulebook

-That’s it. That’s the one.

“O-Oh, wow...” I muttered in amazement, entirely unintentionally.

I’d never dreamed that a single power’s name could have taken that much careful consideration. Apparently, each and every word in the name and title for Umeko’s power had depths of layered meaning to it. None of it had been off the cuff—it was a name that had been deliberately constructed and polished from start to finish.

I had to admit that part of me thought that was incredible...but on the other hand, another part of me was starting to feel more than a little exasperated with him. Just how much time and energy did you put into that one single name, Hajime...? And that’s not even starting on how he went into a serious slump partway through! Just how much intense and passionate drama did the process of overcoming that writer’s block and finishing the name take?

“Did First truly approach the task of naming my power this wholeheartedly?” said Umeko, who looked vaguely moved by the thought. I was pretty sure that he’d only been so wholehearted about it because naming stuff was his hobby—or more like his pathological obsession, really—but I wasn’t about to dump that cynicism on her when she was so clearly pleased.

In any case, it really was impressive. Hajime never gave me any insight into his naming processes beyond seeing the final, completed names themselves, so I’d had no idea how lengthy and peculiar the way he created them was. I could feel a truly remarkable sort of passion and persistence in the multiple-page-spanning process of trial and error that I was now witnessing secondhand.

Yeah...having someone put that much thought and enthusiasm into making up a name for you would be kind of nice, actually.

“L-Let’s take a look at my power’s section!” I said as a mixture of jealousy and curiosity drove me to turn the pages back, looking for the one where his efforts to name my power were recorded.

All right, let’s see just how much drama he went through while he was working on my—

The Evil Eye under lock and key: Eternal Wink

Came to me in a flash.

“That’s it?!” The whole origin story only takes up a single line?! ‘In a flash’?! Seriously?! “R-Really...? He was totally slacking off when he came up with my power’s name! It was a slapdash hack job in comparison! He couldn’t have worried and agonized over it at least a little...?”

“Do not let this information bedevil you, Hitomi,” said Umeko. “Such circumstances are surely not unheard-of. The fact that the creation of your power’s name took a thousandth of the time and attention mine did is no cause for concern.”

I knew she was trying to console me, but somehow, Umeko’s words came across as sort of condescending at the same time. Her expression was as blank as ever, but for some reason, it felt like there was a glaze of superiority forming over her usually clear, unclouded eyes.

“H-Hmph! Whatever, it’s fine!” I huffed. “It’s just a matter of perspective—you could also say that the fact he came up with my power’s name without having to spend much time or effort thinking about it at all is a sign of how perfect the name he did come up with is!”

“Surely you aren’t proffering that analysis in good faith. It goes without saying that a name derived from copious consideration would be superior to one decided capriciously.”

“No, it doesn’t! The best ideas are the ones that come to you on the spur of the moment. All that overthinking these things does is tie your mind into knots and lead you down the wrong track.”

“Hmm. Your words, Hitomi, make it clear to me that you have a common fool’s understanding of the meaning of effort. Do you have any conception of how much energy and anguish those whom society deems geniuses pour into their fields in order to accomplish their revolutionizing feats? Truly spectacular ideas are birthed only from the most infernal depths of despair.”

“Oh, really? It sounds to me like you’re making just as many assumptions as I am! You know that saying of Edison’s—‘Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration’? People like to think he meant that hard work is important, but supposedly, what he actually meant was that if you don’t have that one percent of inspiration, the ninety-nine percent of perspiration’s all wasted. When all’s said and done, that flash of inspiration’s what really matters.”

“Is that so? It seems to me you’re quite set upon proving this point.”

“Look who’s talking!”

Umeko and I glared at each other. For a moment sparks flew between us...and then, a few seconds later, we came back to our senses.

“Let’s call this here, Umeko. This is really, really stupid.”

“Yes...it certainly is.”

What on earth were we going to accomplish by arguing over Hajime’s names? Of all the idiotic wastes of time! It didn’t matter at all whether he’d thought our powers’ names through carefully or came up with them in an instant. Oh, and while I’m at it, that thing I said about the Edison quote is just one of many possible interpretations. Only Edison himself knew whether he was trying to emphasize the importance of hard work or of flashes of genius.

Edison talked about how vital hard work is in interviews in his later years, supposedly, which I’d say makes the effort interpretation the more likely answer...but, like, come on. If you get asked about that sort of thing in an interview, of course you’d talk about how effort’s important. Just imagine how much crap people would give you if you said that talent’s all that matters. If you feed them a few empty platitudes, on the other hand—like “there’s no such thing as wasted effort” or “it’s up to you to make your dreams come true”—people will eat them up. It’d be weird if a genius inventor didn’t take that fact into consideration and act accordingly...though I appreciate that might just be me being cynical.

“Judging by the number of pages it took him to settle on a name, your power’s the one that gave him the most trouble, and mine was the easiest,” I muttered as the two of us flipped through the pages together. All the other members’ powers’ names had taken up about two or three pages of deliberation, on average.

“It would seem he was torn on whether or not the religious connotation of ‘sinful’ in ‘the toothed blade of sinful misalignment: Zigzag Jigsaw’ was appropriate right up to the very end,” noted Umeko.

“Ahh, yeah, Hajime’s pretty sensitive about that sort of thing.”

“Why would that be? Surely sinful is a ‘cool’ word, per his standards.”

“Yeah, but it’s so cool, it ends up making you look like you’re trying too hard and becomes lame instead. Talking about sin or gods is a really easy way to look cool, but when you become overreliant on it, you end up... Actually, you know what? Sorry, forget I said all that. I don’t really get it either, honestly. It’s all a matter of Hajime’s weird standards, in the end.”

“It appears the name of Yanagi’s power, the seeker in realms unsought: Dead Space, was chosen rather quickly. He considered Dead Angle and Dead Stock as well, but he settled upon its current name after relatively little deliberation.”

“Yeah, honestly, Akutagawa’s power’s name turned out really nicely. It fits his power really well, and it feels a little childish in a way that matches up with Akutagawa’s looks perfectly.”

Umeko gave me a look.

“Huh? Wh-What? What’s wrong?”

“Hitomi. If you truly find the name inspired, then why not simply say so? First would be elated to hear it.”

“O-Oh, hell no! I can’t praise Hajime’s names in front of him! That’d be... Well, it’d just be super embarrassing! It’d feel like I was admitting defeat to him!”

“Yours is truly a troublesome disposition.”

“Look, just drop it, okay...?”

“Aki’s power—the oath of inevitable decapitation: Head Hunting—seems to have been chosen relatively quickly as well, but following its completion, First added a note stating that he ‘might have gone a little overboard on this one.’ It seems the thought troubled him greatly for quite some time.”

“He really is sensitive when it comes to names, isn’t he...?”

“For all of First’s day-to-day arrogance, he has moments of worry, hesitation, and anguish, just the same as everyone else.”

“I can think of a few other things that I’d like him to hesitate a little more about...”

“Fantasia’s power, the lunar goddess who ravishes the solar deities: Sex Eclipse, was apparently intended as a play on ‘The Sex Pistols.’”

“Yup, figured as much.”

“‘The Sex Pistols’... I believe they were a foreign band, were they not?”

“Yeah, they are...but in Hajime’s case, I’m pretty sure that he was thinking of the Stand when he picked it.”

“It would appear that his chief desire was to have a power’s name begin with the word ‘sex.’ The majority of the page, in fact, is covered in that word alone.”

“This is one obscene notebook, huh...?”

So, yeah—to make a long story short, Umeko and I kept flipping through the notebook, reading about the origins of the members of Fallen Black’s powers’ names and chatting all the while. Until, finally...

“I guess it’s time,” I muttered with a gulp. There was just one page left in the notebook, and that final page would be about Hajime’s own power. In other words, it would detail the origins of the ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, powerful enough to crush even the heavens and the fools who rule them: Lucifer’s Strike.

“Why, however, would his be last? Did First not give his power a name long before he chose names for ours?” asked Umeko.

“I bet he wrote his on the last page way before he actually got there naturally, since having it come last makes it look more important.”

“Does it, now?”

“To him, anyway.”

I steeled myself, preparing to turn the page. Maybe I was just imagining it, but it felt like my heartbeat was way louder than usual. I’d found the Reverse Crux Record by pure chance, and I had decided to peek into it mostly out of a mixture of curiosity and mischievous impulse...but I’d had one concrete objective in mind as well.

Kiryuu Hajime—Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First—had granted a name to his own power. Surely there was a story there. There must have been a sequence of events that’d led him to the name he chose, and considering how he threw himself into every name he thought up, I just had to wonder what those events had been like. What sort of dramatic twists and tribulations had he faced?

I’d love to say I wasn’t curious, but that would have been a filthy lie. Hajime was all too willing to shout his power’s name to the high heavens, but he clammed up instantly when it came to its origins. I could always just ask him, sure...but, well, my pride just wouldn’t let me go through with it. I never, ever wanted him to figure out that I was curious. And so, now was the moment that I’d finally get the answer to a question that my own stubbornness had kept me from asking for oh so very long...

“Huh?”

...but when I finally worked up the nerve to flip to that final page, what I saw left me speechless.

The ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, powerful enough to crush even the heavens and the fools who rule them: Lucifer’s Strike

-Solve all of the codes found within this tome and use them to fill in the blanks below. In doing so, the truth hidden behind my profane power’s name will surely be revealed to you.

〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇

“Wh-What, seriously...? We came this far, all for a coded message?”

“So it would seem. However...this defies my understanding. First used this book to keep notes in as he came up with the names for our powers, did he not? If that’s truly the case, then what purpose would he have for adding in a bothersome gimmick such as this?”

“I know, right...? Oh, but then again, writing research documents or forbidden texts in code to make sure that the techniques and truths within them don’t get out into society is a whole trope. Like how Edward Elric writes his notes in a way that makes them sound like a travelogue if you don’t know it’s a code, and all.”

“You mean to say that some hidden truth so terrible it could never be allowed to spread into the world at large is buried within his power’s name?”

“Nah... I’m absolutely positive he was just doing it to look cool.”

If there was one thing we could always count on, it was Kiryuu Hajime’s dedication to form above function and affection for weird gimmicks.

“There are thirteen blank spaces, huh? Wait, does that mean...?”

“Come to think of it, there were thirteen codes at the beginning of the notebook that were theoretically required to reveal its deepest secrets, were there not?”

“Oh, oof... So we have to solve all of them? This feels like it’s going to be a really time-consuming, obnoxious pain in the ass...”

“How shall we proceed, Hitomi?”

I let out a long, deep sigh. “Let’s do it,” I said.

We couldn’t just stop now after coming this far. I knew how much pride Hajime took in this sort of thing, which meant that the codes weren’t going to be a bunch of fake, indecipherable nonsense. They’d be genuine codes that we could legitimately decipher, if we could figure out how to crack them. Hajime would definitely have made them as hard as possible, hoping that any potential reader would bash their head against them over and over again, all so that he could reveal the trick to decoding them and make that reader feel like an idiot for not figuring it out in the end. That meant that as long as we could outwit him, it’d be totally possible for us to solve them without any help.

“Well, they say that once you’ve eaten the poison, you may as well eat the plate it came on, right?”

“Regarding that expression...would eating a plate not render you horrifically ill, regardless of whether or not you’d ingested poison beforehand?”

“Let’s not quibble about aphorisms right now, okay?”

From that point onward, Umeko and I immersed ourselves in solving Hajime’s codes, losing track of time as we tackled one puzzle after another. Every single one of them was a complex and high-level challenge in its own right. My own knowledge reserves could never have been enough to solve them, so I ended up bringing out my smartphone and even my computer to gather the extra information we needed. They really were just that convoluted—though, of course, the fact that they were so tough made the satisfaction of solving them all the greater. I really hate to admit it...but working through them really was a lot of fun.

By the way, I ended up looking into aphorisms over the course of cracking one of the codes, and while I was at it, I happened to coincidentally stumble across an explanation for the poison one. It turns out that originally, the expression went “Once you’ve eaten the poison, you may as well lick the plate.” The whole eating the plate thing was a corruption of the original saying, I guess.

“Th-Th-This is it... The last code, cracked,” I said, slumping over onto my table the instant I wrote the final results down. S-So...tired...

A truly outlandish wave of fatigue washed over me from head to foot. I wasn’t physically tired at all, but I’d worked my mind like never before, and the mental exhaustion I was feeling was something else. Not even my college entrance exams had been a mental workout on this level. I felt like I’d burned through about a kilogram’s worth of calories just from all the thinking I’d done. This, I imagined, must be how professional shogi or competitive karuta players felt after a match was over.

“It’s finally finished, then...?” muttered Umeko. Even she looked visibly fatigued, for once. She, the girl who had annihilated the remnants of F without so much as breaking a sweat, was actually tired. Hajime’s codes really were a force to be reckoned with.

“I’m beat...but, yeah, that was pretty fun,” I admitted. “It was like one eureka moment after another, basically. I feel like I’ve learned a lifetime’s worth of ancient mythology trivia too. I almost danced a jig back when we solved the third problem, for crying out loud!”

“I, for one, found solving the eighth problem especially invigorating. I had never considered that a code could be solved by folding the page it was written on... Who knew one could engineer a three-dimensional puzzle into a two-dimensional medium like the written word?”

“Then there was the eleventh problem. That one was wild too, right? It never even crossed my mind that the magic circles scribbled all throughout the notebook were all hints for a larger puzzle! And the way we had to bend the notebook into a circle to make them line up just right and form a diagram together...? That was just crazy.”

All we’d done was win a showdown with a notebook, but Umeko and I felt so accomplished, you’d think we’d just conquered the deepest, most dangerous dungeon imaginable. That said, we weren’t quite finished just yet.

“So, the thirteen codes gave us thirteen groups of three letters to work with: und, tuf, fhi, tsn, qui, ron, tom, ing, iyo, aro, umo, oop, and mys. That doesn’t mean much on its own, but if we follow the instructions that we found in the hidden zeroth code to line them up in the correct order, it should form a complete, coherent sentence...”

I’d worked my brain so hard I was nearing the limits of my endurance, but I pushed through the fatigue and rearranged the letters in their proper order. By doing so, they formed a sentence—a final, hidden truth that all the other codes had been building toward, granted only to those who solved them...

qui tsn oop ing aro und mys tuf fhi tom iyo umo ron

“‘Quit snooping around my stuff, Hitomi, you moron’...? Huh?”

“Bwa ha ha! Well, there you have it.”

“Gah?!”

A laugh that I was all too familiar with rang out from the blue, and I stiffened up so thoroughly, you’d think I’d just been doused with a bucket of ice water. Before I could even turn around, an arm reached out from behind me and plucked the notebook from my hands.

“You’re a real piece of work, y’know that? Takes some nerve to peek into a guy’s private belongings.”

“H-Hajime?!”

“Wrong. Not Hajime—I’m Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First.”

There he was: our organization’s boss and my apartment’s freeloader, Kiryuu Hajime. Glancing outside, I noticed that the sun was already well on its way to setting. I’d screwed up. I’d been so absorbed in solving the notebook’s codes, I’d completely failed to keep track of time.

“O-O-Oh, Hajime! Welcome home!” I blathered. “I, umm, well... So, umm, i-it’s not what you think! I wasn’t snooping, or anything... I just, err, couldn’t tell whose notebook this was, so I had to look inside to figure it out...”

It wasn’t the greatest excuse, even considering how much I’d been put on the spot. Partway through stammering it out, though, I realized that something was strange about all this.

Huh? Wait a second. The code was chewing me out for snooping, even before Hajime started his lecture. It’s almost like he wanted me to decipher the message, and that means...

“Bwa ha ha!” Hajime cackled as, still holding the notebook aloft, he reached into his coat with his other hand and pulled out a certain something to show me.

My jaw dropped. The item Hajime had produced...was none other than a jet-black notebook with an inverted cross drawn on its cover. It was the Reverse Crux Record.

“Wha— But... Why are there two of them...?”

“This is the only real one,” Hajime said as he flapped the notebook he’d just pulled out in the air.

“W-Wait a minute... Does that mean the one I was looking at...?”

“Gevanni duplicated it overnight...not. As friggin’ if. It is a fake, though—one that I made.”

“I-It’s...a fake...?”

That notebook...was a forgery? Are you saying that all of its contents—all the ludicrously overwrought tricks and codes—were for the sake of delivering the message “quit snooping around my stuff, Hitomi, you moron”? This was all exclusively for the sake of making me look like an idiot?

“Just felt like messing with you a bit,” said Hajime. He admitted it so nonchalantly, it was downright infuriating—and that’s not even starting on his shit-eating smirk.

“O-Oh, you little—”

“Whoa there! Do you really think you have any right to get mad at me, Little Miss Invasion-of-privacy? You wouldn’t have gotten tricked if you hadn’t gone looking through my crap, y’know?”

When he put it that way...I really couldn’t disagree.

Dammit! I guess he saw all of this coming, huh? Hajime had read me like a book—I’d fallen for his trap hook, line, and sinker.

There was one thing that I still just couldn’t believe, though. Surely not everything in that notebook could have been a fabrication...?

“H-Hey, Hajime...you didn’t make up everything in there out of nowhere, did you? Like the origins of our powers’ names, or your one-liners...some of them have to have been real, right? Heck, maybe this whole ‘that was a fake’ thing is just a bluff, and the notebook I read was actually the real one...?”

I didn’t have any basis for the wild theories I was spouting, of course, and Hajime’s smirk just grew wider. “Who knows?” is all he said. I felt myself go limp. Solving all those codes had already left me exhausted, and those two words felt like they’d dealt the coup de grâce.

“It seems we’ve been had,” Umeko muttered with an air of exasperation.

Yup. Couldn’t have put it better myself.

We’d been had—there was just no other way of looking at it. I’d thought that Hajime’s goal was to get at me with the codes, making them so hard I could never possibly solve them, but much to my surprise, he’d been setting traps on so much higher of a level than that, they might as well have been in another dimension entirely. I thought that I’d gotten the better of him, but it turned out he’d been the one to pull a fast one on me. Now that all was said and done, it was clear that I’d been dancing in the palm of his hand, as usual.

Actually...wait. He wrote out a whole notebook just for the sake of messing with me? That’s...really, really stupid!

As usual, the lengths to which Kiryuu Hajime would go for the sake of his own little games were extreme to an idiotic degree. It was just like how he went all out in enjoying the game that was the Spirit War, really...

“Hey, Hitomi, what’d you make for dinner?” Hajime asked in an insufferably casual tone as he walked into the kitchen.

“Nothing,” I grunted. “And I’m not in the mood to cook anything either, so let’s just eat out. Are you okay with that, Umeko?”

“Very well. There’s one thing I would like to confirm, however. It concerns our deal... I trust you still intend to uphold your side of the bargain? First’s notebook being a forgery, after all, is in no way a direct consequence of my—”

“I know, I know... I’ll buy them for you on the way home, I promise.”

Just like that, the three of us set out from home, going off to enjoy a rare meal out together like a happy little family. I’d never managed to reach the truth behind Lucifer’s Strike in the end. The innermost workings of Kiryuu Hajime’s mind were as hopelessly inscrutable as ever. For better or for worse, its depths were simply unfathomable.

Ugh...sheesh. I really did pick one pain in the ass of a man to fall for, didn’t I?