Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 13 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: In the Beforemath of the Battle’s Aftermath

“Innocent Onlooker: the power of premature disclosure,” Sagami said before launching into an extended exposition dump about the nature of his ability.

He’d only just awakened to it moments before, but he already had a perfect grasp of how it functioned...which wasn’t much of a surprise at all, really. I’d had an intuitive understanding of how Dark and Dark worked back when I’d awakened to it as well, even before I’d actually tried using it. The knowledge had sort of just manifested in my mind. It hadn’t been the deepest or most specific of information, but it had been enough to give me a general grasp of how my power functioned and what it was capable of.

“To put it simply, it’s the power of precognition. I can’t use it to see people’s futures, though—instead, Innocent Onlooker allows me to make other people have visions of their own future.”

So, it lets you give other people foresight?

“That’s right! Anyone except myself.”

Huuuh...

“Let me guess: You’re thinking that sounds pretty pointless, right? Ha ha ha... Yeah, I can relate. I was all ‘What kind of lame-ass power is that?’ at first...but when I took a moment to think about it, I realized that there are a surprising number of ways to make use of it,” Sagami continued. “Here’s an example for you, Andou: You know how whenever a precognitive character shows up in a supernatural battle manga or anime, their visions of the future usually turn out to be wrong in the end? It’d almost be more of a surprise if their predictions didn’t end up missing the mark, and everyone knows it from the moment they’re introduced. Sometimes it feels like they’re put in the story just for the sake of being wrong, doesn’t it?”

I mean, yeah, I guess.

I got what Sagami was trying to say. Characters with precognitive powers spurring the main character into action by predicting a hopeless future for them to avert was a very common trope. The character with foresight would predict that somebody was going to die or that some horrible cataclysm would occur, but in the end, the main characters would usually rally together and beat the odds to make sure that the terrible future they’d been warned about wouldn’t come to pass.

“So, precognitive characters are put into stories to make predictions that end up being wrong, and precognitive powers almost never give characters visions that are guaranteed to come true. My power falls into that category as well—it doesn’t have a hundred percent hit rate. I haven’t exactly tested it, so I don’t have any hard numbers to give you, but I can tell that it’s not perfect intuitively. In fact, it might be more accurate for me to describe it as a power of intentionally imperfect precognition.”

Intentionally imperfect? Meaning that your predictions being flawed is a feature?

“Right. It grants me the ability to give other people precognitive visions, and I don’t need their permission to do it. As long as they’re within my power’s range, I can force my visions on people. The catch is that the visions are imperfectly accurate, and not even I know precisely how likely it is that the futures people see will come to pass. They might come true, and they might not. Who knows?”

The idea of a precognitive power with an ambiguous degree of accuracy struck me as, well...pretty remarkably half-baked, if I’m being honest. It was like seeing a weather report predict a fifty percent chance of rain. It wasn’t stunningly unreliable, but it also wasn’t the sort of prediction that you could structure your plans around.

“If I wanted to explain it in a little more detail, I’d say that my power chooses a single future with a nonzero chance of coming to pass, which it then shows to the person I used it on, I suppose? It picks a single branch from the countless possible paths the timeline could take, showing my target only the future that exists on that one route. But anyway,” Sagami continued, “the real question is this: How would the people I use my power on feel about being shown such unreliable visions of their futures?”

A vision of a single future with a nonzero chance of coming to pass... A single branch from the endlessly expansive tree of possibilities that is the future... What effect would forcing someone to see that sort of fragmented information—and to see it as their future—have upon them?

“Let’s say I used it on someone who was facing some form of difficulty that, under normal circumstances, they’d have a high chance of overcoming if they worked up the nerve to tackle it head-on. If my power ended up showing them a future in which they failed, then there’s a chance that they wouldn’t even try standing up to their problem at all, right? And even if they didn’t give up entirely, would they be able to handle it with the same sort of spirit they could’ve mustered back before they’d seen that possible future of failure?”

The idea that seeing the future would, in and of itself, change the future is something that got discussed and debated pretty often. Assuming that the principles of the butterfly effect and chaos theory were valid—that is to say, the slightest changes to the present could have a massive impact on the future at large—then it certainly seemed plausible that someone seeing into the future could be all it took to change their future substantially. What if the future observed with precognition was a future that took that act of precognition into account, though? It could even take into account the fact that the observer would try to change the future that they foresaw, meaning that...

Actually, I’m gonna cut this train of thought off here. I’m just confusing myself for no reason at this point.

There was no point in overthinking any of that future stuff. After all, just fixating on the future—whether it was supposed to turn out well or poorly—had the potential to change it.

To give a simple example of that phenomenon: It’s like how future Trunks asked Goku to keep his identity secret, since he was worried that if his parents found out who he was, it could bother them enough that he’d never actually end up being born. Having a vision of a future in which you’re married to a particular person could make you fixate so intensely on them that you end up acting super awkwardly and drive them away instead. Or, on the opposite side of the spectrum, a premonition could lead you to take an interest in someone whom you’d otherwise pay no attention to whatsoever, ultimately leading you to fall for them.

Seeing the future would always change the present, for better or for worse. By learning the future in advance, it becomes an aspect of your past and alters who you are in the present.

“By the way—I don’t get to know what sort of future the people I use my power on end up seeing. I get to see how confused they are by the imperfect visions my power grants them, but that’s the only part of Innocent Onlooker’s effects I actually get to witness,” said Sagami.

Interesting. I’d hadn’t had any clue how a power like his could possibly be useful at first, but it really did have a surprising number of applications if you got a little creative with it. Even more than that, however, I was struck by just how unpleasant of a power it was. Its core function seemed to be letting its user mess with people by showing them deeply flawed visions of the future, just for kicks. It was irresponsible, tasteless, and, in a sense, exactly the sort of power I’d expect Sagami to end up with.

“Ha ha ha! I’ve heard that the powers we get from the Spirit War are supposed to express something about our deep-seated, subconscious desires and psyches...but I’m not so sure that’s really true. Take my power, for instance—even if I’d ended up with something completely different, you’d probably still end up thinking that it’s perfectly suited to me, wouldn’t you? Akutagawa—a kid I’m acquainted with—once told me that ‘If it seems like someone’s power reflects their personality, that’s just the Barnum effect at work.’”

The Barnum effect, huh? That’s when you say something super broad and vague that applies to pretty much everyone and people end up thinking it’s a personalized statement specifically about them, right?

A few good examples of that sort of statement would be “you sometimes suffer from indecision” or “you’re currently worried about something”—very basic statements about someone’s personality, essentially.

When Sagami put it that way, I had to admit that the whole “your powers are representations of your innermost desires” shtick that came up so very often in supernatural battle anime and manga really could very easily be written off as a simple manifestation of the Barnum effect. It didn’t really matter what power you had—if someone told you that it reflected your psyche, you’d probably find yourself convinced. Even if your personality and your power had nothing to do with each other at a glance, it wouldn’t be too hard to come up with a satisfying explanation.

Take my power, Dark and Dark. It, well... Okay, so I’ve always been very proud of how perfectly me my power is, but imagine if I’d ended up with another power instead—say, one of the ones that one of the other literary club members had awakened to. Under those circumstances, it’s totally possible that I’d still be able to come up with a convincing explanation for why that power was perfectly me as well. If that sort of convenient self-deception could be filed under the Barnum effect, then it wasn’t hard to imagine that the same was true of the relation between everyone’s powers and personalities...though, of course, I might have just been Barnum-effecting myself into believing that theory as well.

“You know, if someone tells you that something’s the Barnum effect and you end up seeing it that way as a result, isn’t that kind of the Barnum effect in action? Then again, this is going to get way too complicated if I follow that train of logic, so I’ll just call it a day here.”

Good call. Especially since we’re hitting the point where “the Barnum effect” doesn’t even sound like a real phrase to me anymore.

“Anyway, based on what I’ve observed so far, I do think that there’s at least some small relation between an individual’s personality and the power they awaken to. That’s just the way I see it, of course, and it’s entirely possible that you and the other literary club members are exceptions anyway. This story’s author’s given all of you a little too much preferential treatment. You’re in a category of your own,” said Sagami. He was clearly implying something, but before I could get at what it was, he added, “Whoops! I’m getting off topic, aren’t I?” and dropped the subject.

“So, Andou—it seems I accidentally caught you in Innocent Onlooker’s area of effect. How was that? What sort of future did you see for yourself?”

What sort of future had I seen? I thought back on all the futures I’d just witnessed...and suddenly found myself feeling very uncomfortable.

“Ha ha ha! I’m guessing that reaction means you saw a romantic entanglement or two? Were you dating someone in your premonition? Or maybe you got a harem ending? Or a few endings, each with a different heroine—one of those open-ended what-if scenarios?”

Oh, can it. Mind your own business.

“Hmm. Who would you end up with? I’m as curious as could be...but sadly, this isn’t exactly the right time for me to be worrying about that, now, is it? Hell, I’m not even sure how long I’ll be alive at this rate,” Sagami said—though actually, said probably wasn’t the best word to describe what he’d been doing this whole time at all.

Although every bit of Sagami’s speech had been in his usual aloof, vaguely condescending tone, he hadn’t spoken a single word of it out loud. Rather, his words had rung out sourcelessly within my mind. It was like he’d been beaming them into my head telepathically without ever actually making a noise.

“Oh, nah, telepathy’s not quite right. This is actually a form of precognitive vision too—it’s a practical application of my power,” Sagami said into my mind, which it sort of felt like he’d also just read. “Right now, the real me is thinking about how he’ll say all of this stuff to you later. Making that decision means I can beam my words to you in real time in the form of a premonition. Basically, it’s a form of pseudo-telepathy made possible by way of precognition.”

Hmm. So basically...

Sagami decides something he’s going to tell me → At some point in the future, Sagami actually does tell it to me → In the here and now, he uses his power to show me a vision of him saying those words in real time

...or something like that? I kinda get it, but also, I don’t get it at all. Like, the logic more or less checks out...but isn’t it weird that we’re, y’know, talking like this? How is the you in my premonition of the future having a back-and-forth with the here-and-now me?

“Well, again, we’re not really directly talking with each other, in a strict sense of the phrase. It’s indistinguishable from you having a back-and-forth with me, but the truth is that I’m actually having this conversation with the future Andou. It may feel like a perfectly normal conversation to you, but in reality, you’re just actively caught up in another precognitive vision as we speak, and—”

Okay, nope. You’ve lost me.

“Fair enough. Frankly, I don’t totally get it either. I’d rather not talk to you in such a confusing and roundabout way, if possible...but this was the only way that I could talk to you at all, considering present circumstances.”

That made total sense. Jumping through all these convoluted hoops was the only way Sagami could reasonably speak with me right now. After all...

“Ugh! Gaaah...”

...the real Sagami was, at that very moment, dying before my eyes.

“Heh... Heh heh, ha ha ha... Yeah... Figures it’d...turn out like this,” Sagami muttered. Unlike the fluid, casual speech of the future version of him in my mind, present Sagami’s voice was terribly hoarse. He’d managed to force out a laugh, but it felt like every single word he spoke was a painful trial to spit out.

We were in a clearing by the riverbank—the very same one where I’d fought Futaba Tamaki less than half an hour beforehand. Earlier that day she had caught me in an ambush, whisking me off to an unpopulated pseudo-city that some unknown collaborator had created. She’d chased me around for quite a while until finally, I’d squared off against her by the river...and defeated her. Dark and Dark of the End had vanquished Lost Regalia.

Well... Okay, vanquished might be a strong word. It wasn’t really a victory I could brag about. I’d been driven to my absolute limits and had just barely squeaked out a win with a desperate bluff. But anyway, after things had been settled between me and Tamaki, Sagami had arrived on the scene. He and Tamaki had talked, reconciled, and put the lingering aftermath of our time in the eighth grade to rest for good. It’d seemed like everything had been wrapped up with a neat little bow...

...until suddenly, Hinoemata Tamaki had been consumed by darkness.

Bwa ha ha!

A dry, distinctive laugh had signaled his arrival: Kiryuu Hajime, aka Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First. At first, he’d focused on me—his mismatched eyes, one red and one black, had been so single-mindedly fixed on me you’d think he’d waited an age to see me once more—and yet...

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

The moment Sagami had spoken those words, Kiryuu had furrowed his brow and shot a glare in Sagami’s direction. Now it was my turn to be the third wheel, not to mention totally out of the loop. I hadn’t been able to keep up with their conversation at all, so I’d ended up just standing there in a daze. All I could say for sure was that the two of them had a very peculiar sort of relationship, and that said relationship ran deep. It felt like the hand of fate had led them to this point—like they’d been destined to do battle from the moment they’d been born.

And so, Kiryuu Hajime and Sagami Shizumu clashed. They stared one another down and invoked their powers in unison. A fated battle was about to unfold...or, well, that was the idea, anyway.

“Ayup. No way I was gonna win that one, huh?” Future Sagami nonchalantly quipped. The present version of Sagami looked like he had one foot in the grave already, but the one in my mind had the same insufferably casual attitude that I was used to from him.

Sagami...had lost. He’d lost instantly. I really mean it—he didn’t last a second. The very moment their fight began, he’d been slammed face down into the ground. I mean, like, splat. It was like an enormous, invisible hammer had crushed him in a single blow, and that single strike had ended the fight on its own.

Oh, and as a side note—apparently, Sagami had induced me to see visions of the future during that same instant. All of those futures that might come to pass I’d seen hadn’t even taken a second to play out in real time. Actually, rather than saying I’d seen them play out, it might be more accurate to say that the experiences I’d had within them had been written into my mind in a flash.

“Of course this is how it’d go if we used our powers at the same time,” said Future Sagami. “Innocent Onlooker looks like a lame excuse for a power at first glance, but when you look a layer deeper, it has a surprising number of uses...and then, when you look a layer deeper than that, it turns out it really is pretty lame after all. How the hell was I supposed to beat a guy who bends the force of gravity to his will with a crapsack power like this? Seriously, this is some broken-ass bullshit.”

I had to admit that Sagami’s power seemed more suited for a supporting role or for catching an opponent off guard in an ambush. It didn’t seem very well matched for a one-on-one showdown. Actually, it seemed straight up useless under those circumstances.

“Maaan, I swear... Couldn’t my power have taken a hint? I finally worked up the motivation to get out there and make a difference, so it could’ve at least been a little more combat-ready, y’know?”

Future Sagami was really laying on the complaints. Present Sagami, meanwhile, was slowly and painfully heaving himself upright. The power that had crushed him to the ground—which, now knowing that Kiryuu was a gravity-manipulator, I figured had been a gravitational wave—seemed to have vanished as quickly as it manifested. The damage was done, however, and it had been nasty enough that Present Sagami couldn’t quite make it to his feet.

“Heh heh... Ha ha ha ha,” Present Sagami chuckled. He was a painful mess from top to bottom, but the smile on his face looked somehow satisfied. “So...I lost, huh? It’s weird, though... For some reason, I don’t feel bad about it at all.” His voice was feeble, but there was still a brazen confidence to his words.

Unfortunately, the whole time Sagami was delivering his speech...Future Sagami was still grousing in my mind.

“I knew it from the start... There was just no way I’d be winning this battle.”

“Ugh. I really thought I could pull this off, honestly.”

“A guy like me could never beat the Kiryuu Hajime. I could never defeat Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First. It’d be a joke. But, still...I wanted to give it a shot anyway. It felt like I had to fight you, right here, and right now...”

“I figured that if I pulled a god-tier power, I’d have just one chance to really get him good. Why’d I get saddled with a trash-tier joke instead...?”

“I’ve been a manipulative, self-centered poser my whole life. A garbage ending like this is exactly what I deserve.”

“This suuucks. These powers seriously are just luck of the draw. If this is a game, it blows. Like, seriously, could we get some rebalancing in here, thanks? Make it so that everyone who didn’t get direct combat powers can still use ki or magic or something so we can still have a fighting chance, for crying out loud!”

“You know, Kiryuu...”

“You know, you can always tell how well-written a supernatural battle story is by how much someone deciding to use modern weaponry would totally ruin everything. If a story makes its readers think ‘Wait, why are these people fighting with their powers in the first place? Wouldn’t a gun be more effective? Not to mention efficient?’ then that story’s trash. And this War? It’s got that exact problem. The whole setup’s a shoddy, half-assed mess.”

“Up until now, I’ve always called myself a reader. I’ve stood on the sidelines, taking it all in from an onlooker’s viewpoint. Fighting you was the first time I’ve gotten involved—the first time I’ve tried to make myself the story’s protagonist. Sure, I got wrecked, and pretty pathetically at that...but even so, I’m proud of what I’ve done today.”

“Uggggggh. I wanted to get a super OP cheat power and kick all sorts of ass.”

Please...please shut up for a second, Future Sagami. I’m pretty sure that this is Present Sagami’s big moment, and you’re totally ruining it.

Present Sagami’s satisfied smile made it look like he’d graciously accepted his defeat, but the fact that he was super salty deep down was really, really obvious to me. He was making himself look as good as possible in the moment while having every intention of complaining bitterly to me the second he got the chance.

“By the way, Kiryuu,” Present Sagami said as he gazed up at his opponent, who had walked over to stand next to him at some point along the way. “You took me out in the blink of an eye with some insane instakill ability. You couldn’t have possibly crushed me more completely than you did...but you know, when I stop to think about that, it’s a little strange. Since when did you start instakilling your enemies?”

Present Sagami closed his eyes.

“An instakill...? Obliterating your foe before they have the chance to respond...? I mean, it’s not like there’s anything wrong with that. For most people, it’s just the sensible way to fight. If life gives you a stupid OP power, then there’s no good reason not to bring it out at full force from the very start...but that’s not you, is it? Are you really okay with this? Would Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-first really demean himself by using that boring of a fighting style?”

Kiryuu didn’t say a word. He stood there in deathly silence, staring down at Present Sagami with a severe expression on his face.

“Pounding me into the dirt with an ultra-powerful gravitational wave...? Heh... Ha ha ha! It’s just so simple, isn’t it? Sure, an attack like that’s plenty to take down someone with a bullshit power like mine...but it’s just so, so very not like you. What happened to the Kiryuu who went far out of his way to generate black holes just because they’d have the most visual impact? Why didn’t you shout your power’s name like you usually do? Why didn’t you strike one of your signature poses? Why the hell were you so panicked, Kiryuu?”

Present Sagami spoke with a smile. His body was a wreck, and he looked like he might pass out at any moment, but still, he kept grinning dauntlessly. He may have been gazing up at Kiryuu, yet it somehow felt more like he was looking down on him.

“Yeah, so, I was desperately making crap up to buy time here. Figured that if I went super far out of the way to say he’d used an ‘instakill’ attack on me over and over, it’d make it hard for him to actually instakill me later on. Like, I was trying to make a situation where he couldn’t just finish me off without making it look like I’d provoked him into doing it. Gotta say, I’ve got one hell of a knack for high-level psychological warfare when push comes to shove.”

Okay, but seriously—shut up, Future Sagami. I figured that out for myself already. You didn’t have to spell it out, and calling it “high-level psychological warfare” yourself actually makes it way harder to take you seriously.

“All that said...it’s not like it was all nonsense. I did genuinely have my doubts. Why would the Kiryuu Hajime get so worked up over me, of all opponents?”

Was “worked up” the right phrase to describe what Kiryuu had done? I couldn’t judge that. As far as I could tell, he’d just hit Sagami with a perfectly ordinary attack. He hadn’t flailed around or thrown in any unnecessary motions, really—he’d just held out a hand and crushed Sagami like a bug.

That said...I had a feeling that was the point. Sagami was saying that Kiryuu’s attack being perfectly ordinary was abnormal. An ordinary attack was a sign that he was in a panic—a sign that he was so worked up, he’d gone all out in spite of himself.

“Let me guess: You weren’t a fan of the future that you saw?” said Present Sagami.

Oh, I get it. Sagami had used Innocent Onlooker to force visions of the future upon me—but I hadn’t been his actual target. I’d just happened to be in its area of effect, so I’d ended up as collateral damage. Sagami’s actual target was the man he’d resolved himself to oppose with everything that his power had to offer...

“Well, how about that... I thought my power was hopelessly useless, but maybe it had more of an impact than I gave it credit for after all. If I actually managed to get one up on you, then I’ll call this encounter an unqualified success,” Present Sagami said with a sarcastic smirk. “I’m really quite curious now, Kiryuu—just what sort of future did you see in your vision? What kind of premonition would drive you to lose your cool so spectacularly?”

Most likely, Kiryuu had seen his future in the same manner I had. Only he knew exactly what’d been in his vision, but much like I’d experienced, it had been burned into his mind against his will in a single instant...and after he’d glimpsed that fate, the very next thing he’d chosen to do was grind Sagami into the dirt. He’d used his fastest, most effective attack to take Sagami out without so much as a hint of enjoyment or showmanship. It was like he was rejecting the future he’d seen with every ounce of his willpower.

“Bwa ha ha!”

Suddenly, Kiryuu let out his dry, distinctive laugh. He’d finally broken his extended silence, putting on one of his typical sneers.

“If—and I do mean if—you were right, and the vision you showed me made me flip out and rush our battle to a premature conclusion...” Kiryuu said in an almost performatively calm and collected tone.

“...then what about it? So what?”

“...”

“...”

...

Future Sagami, Present Sagami, and I were all struck dumb.

M-My god. He’s rolling with it! He’s acting like we’re the weird ones here!

“Heh heh heh heh!” Kiryuu chuckled. “Fine, then. I’ll admit it—you’ve outdone yourself, Shizumu. I never thought you’d outmaneuver me quite like this. Innocent Onlooker... Now that’s a power that’s nasty enough to suit you. This is the first time I’ve ever seen something that sickening,” he spat, the smile vanishing from his face.

What was it? Just what on earth had he seen? What kind of future had he witnessed? What would a future that drove Kiryuu Hajime to use the word “sickening” possibly look like?

“You honor me, Kiryuu. Honestly, you really do...but I’m afraid that this is my limit. Sheesh—this extension of mine sure did end up being a short one. Was I struggling in vain or what?” Present Sagami said with a deep sigh, a sense of resignation creeping into his voice. “With me in the running, there are nine Players left in the War—one too many to trigger the Final Eight. The second I die, though, we’ll be back to eight again...and the Fifth Spirit War will move on to its next stage.”

“That’s right—not that it’ll have anything to do with you by then,” said Kiryuu.

“It’s a shame... I would’ve loved to see your story’s conclusion. Speaking as a reader, not getting to do so is something I deeply regret.”

“You’ve got no one to blame but yourself for that. If you’d stuck to reading like you always have—if you hadn’t overstepped your bounds and tried to meddle with the story—I would’ve let you witness it all the way to the end.”

“I know, right? Ugh. This really was a terrible call,” said Present Sagami.

Then, for just an instant—the slightest of moments—he glanced in my direction. He’d kept his gaze focused so firmly on Kiryuu this whole time that the way he turned it to me felt downright unnatural. He was sending me a message. Specifically, he was telling me to hurry up and run.

“I think you’ve already figured this out, Andou, but the whole point of me dragging out this conversation and getting Kiryuu riled up for no good reason was to give you a chance to make a break for it. I was trying to get him to focus on me as much as possible—just enough to give you an opening, hopefully.”

Yeah, I figured that out, all right. The sight of Present Sagami blabbing away in spite of how beaten and broken his body was had been more than enough to tip me off. The problem, however...was that I couldn’t take so much as a single step.

I’d thought about running away, and I’d thought about trying to somehow save Sagami, but I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. I might have been subjected to one incomprehensibly stunning and surreal development after another in rapid succession...but the psychological shock of it all surprisingly wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I was literally, physically fixed in place.

“You stay right there, Guiltia,” said Kiryuu. He didn’t make it sound like an order—if anything, he sounded concerned about my safety.

Regardless, I couldn’t do anything but comply. I felt heavy. My whole body did—so heavy that I couldn’t take so much as a single step, nor could I even move my mouth precisely enough to form words. It felt like an intense weight had been placed upon every single cell in my body. It wasn’t unendurable—if I put my everything into resisting it, I could just barely stay upright—but I could tell that if I lost focus for so much as a second or shifted my center of gravity in an attempt to flee, I would crumple.

I felt like my body had been turned into a precariously balanced Jenga tower. If I shifted my weight the slightest bit in any direction, the collapse would begin. It goes without saying that this was Kiryuu’s work. He could have twisted me into a corkscrew at any moment if he’d wanted to, but instead, he’d delicately applied just the right amount of gravitational force on me to hold me in place.

“Just sit tight over there. I’ll have plenty of time to play with you once I’ve sent this uninvited reader packing and led the War in its ascension to new, unseen heights,” Kiryuu said with a wicked smile. A fiery joy blazed within his mismatched eyes.

I felt a chill run down my spine. Even if his gravitational control hadn’t had me bound in place, his piercing stare alone felt like it would have petrified me.

“So, for now, go ahead and watch. Witness the end of a truly shameless reader.”

Kiryuu turned to face Sagami once more. He slowly raised a hand aloft, his gaze brimming with bloodlust as he looked down upon the boy who’d stepped beyond the bounds of readership. “Every reader has the right to judge and critique the stories they consume. They’re free to praise and to deride—free to read and to drop whatever stories they like...but when a story doesn’t develop in the way that they wanted it to, going straight to the author and demanding the story be changed is beyond the pale. You think the author’s gonna be all ‘The readers didn’t like what I wrote, so I decided to redo it’? That shit only flies in the amateur web novel world.”

And so, Kiryuu Hajime cast judgment. He brought the ironclad hammer of justice down upon the meddling fool of a self-proclaimed reader who’d chosen far too late to take a step into the story.

“Lament your sins in the depths of Hell—Road to Abaddon.”

And then there was a hole. Where there had once been a blank patch of earth now sat a gaping pit roughly a meter in diameter. I couldn’t see its bottom—it descended seemingly forever into pitch-black darkness. I couldn’t even imagine how deep it really was. It was like the gods on high had driven a staff deep into the ground, gouging out a direct pathway to Hell in the blink of an eye.

Just how much gravitational force—just what degree of density packed into a single point—would it take to bore a hole like that in an instant? It was an attack capable of banishing the sinner it was unleashed upon far into the depths of the earth. Though, really, if a force strong enough to bore a vertical shaft into the ground were exerted upon a human body, whatever was left of that body would be completely indistinguishable from the dirt at the bottom of the pit by the time it was over.

Of course...the most important part of that last sentence was the word if.

“...Huh?” Present Sagami grunted with a cock of his head from the patch of ground he remained slumped on, still very much alive. Kiryuu’s ultra-powerful gravitational onslaught...had missed him entirely. The pit to Hell he’d bored into the ground was located just a single meter to his side. You’d think that an attack of that power would’ve done some major collateral damage to him even if he hadn’t been hit directly, but it seemed that its effects had been focused with pinpoint precision, and Present Sagami wasn’t any more wounded than he’d already been.

Sagami hadn’t dodged the attack. In fact, he hadn’t moved an inch. The moment before Kiryuu had tried to finish him off, Sagami had closed his eyes in what I’d assumed was acceptance of his inevitable end. He hadn’t even tried to evade...but then, what had happened? Why hadn’t Kiryuu’s attack obliterated him? Had Kiryuu missed on purpose? Or maybe...

“...Tch.”

Kiryuu clicked his tongue with very real irritation. That ruled out the “he missed on purpose” theory on the spot.

“Way to make a mess of things...Hitomi,” Kiryuu spat. He sounded somehow enraged and overjoyed at the same time. Now, his piercing glare was directed right behind me and Sagami.

I turned to look over my shoulder and found a lone woman standing atop the embankment. She was wearing a tasteful suit—the sort that people went to job interviews in—and her long hair was styled in a way that made it drape over her right eye. She looked a little older than us—in her early twenties, most likely—and in addition to her hair, she was holding a hand over her right eye, blocking it even more thoroughly from sight.

“Eternal Wink: the power of visual violation. You know how it works—after all, you’re the one who named it, Hajime,” said the woman. I have to admit: As dire as the situation was, the name she used for her power was awesome enough to make my heart skip a beat. “I have no idea how or why you and Sagami ended up fighting each other...but for the time being, I’ve decided to intervene. If that upset you, then good. That’s what I was going for.”

The Kitaro-haired woman flashed Kiryuu a triumphant grin. She’d called him by his first name, implying that they were pretty close, but the look she was directing at him was anything but friendly. There was a firm, resolved animosity in the one eye of hers that I could see.

“Saitou...? What’s she doing here?”

You know her, Future Sagami?

“Sure do. Her name’s Saitou Hitomi, and she’s one of Kiryuu’s crew. Well, she was—things got complicated, so she’s his enemy at this particular moment.”

Does that mean she has a power too?

“Yup. I’d say you must have heard her say its name just now, but I guess you might’ve been distracted by the metric ton of sarcasm she’d put into it. It’s called Eternal Wink: the power of visual violation. It lets her grant an Evil Eye to anyone within her field of view, which she then gets to control. She possesses the malevolent eye that rules over the Evil Eyes.”

“The malevolent eye that rules over the Evil Eyes”?! Wh-What’s coming over me? That sounded so profoundly cool it set my soul ablaze, but also, I have no friggin’ clue what it actually means at all!

“Yeah, Kiryuu’s the one who came up with all that naming jazz, and if there’s any actual difference between malevolent eyes and Evil Eyes, it only exists in his head. Long story short, she can give anyone she looks at an Evil Eye. I’m betting that she used it on me, and when Kiryuu made eye contact with me, the Evil Eye subjected him to some sort of illusion.”

So she gives people Evil Eyes, which in turn make other people see illusions?

It sounded like a bit of a pain, as far as powers go—pretty darn roundabout, to say the least—but on second thought, it struck me that the power’s complicated nature could actually be its greatest strength. If she simply used an Evil Eye herself, then the moment her opponent caught on to her power’s nature, there was a chance they would raise their guard against making eye contact with her. Having a third party act as a delivery system for the power, however, made it dramatically easier to find an opponent’s openings—the more enemies or allies you had in one place, the more people your foes would have to be wary of making eye contact with. With careful control of the particulars of an engagement, you could even lead your enemies into taking each other out by accident. It wasn’t a power that had much use in single combat, but in a messy melee, it could achieve astonishing feats.

“Of course, the Evil Eyes she gives people don’t really live up to their name, supposedly. The worst they can do is conjure simple illusions or do some basic hypnosis. Most likely, she used the Evil Eye she gave me to either slightly tweak Kiryuu’s depth perception or slightly alter where he perceived me to be.”

I get it. So he really did try to finish you off with that attack, but her power made him miss.

“I’ve gotta say, though, I’m surprised to see Saitou alive at all. Who all would Kiryuu have left alive to be in the Final Eight? Himself and the five literary club members are set in stone, but who else...?”

H-Hey...Sagami? Isn’t this a problem?

“Isn’t what a problem?”

If that woman—Saitou, I mean—used to be Kiryuu’s ally, then doesn’t he know all about her power?

“Well, obviously. He came up with its name, after all.”

In that case, the sneak attack she pulled just now—

“Won’t work again. He won’t give her another chance to use her Evil Eyes on him.”

So then, what are we supposed to—

“No need to worry. She’s an idiot when romance is on the table, but most of the time, she has a surprising mind for strategy. She’s not stupid enough to waltz on into a fight without a plan. Quite the opposite, in fact. If she’s going out of the way to show herself like this, it could very well mean that she has her sights set on an unprecedented chance to get the upper hand on Kiryuu.”

Yeah...I’m not really following this. It felt like Sagami had just struck up a conversation about characters from a story I’d never actually read. Saitou Hitomi and Kiryuu Hajime seemed to have some sort of deep connection with each other, and Sagami seemed to know all about it, but I was completely clueless.

Now then—it might seem like I just took a very extended period of time in a very tense situation to casually discuss a new character who’d just arrived, but bear in mind that said discussion transpired with Future Sagami over the course of a split-second premonition. Back in the real-world timeline, barely a moment passed after Saitou’s arrival before yet another new character came into play.

“Hraaah!”

A man sprinted onto the scene with all the speed and force of a raging hurricane, roaring like a frenzied, feral beast and carrying a large jackknife in a backhand grip. It was an incredibly decrepit blade, so beat up and jagged that its edge had grown saw-toothed, and the way he slashed at Kiryuu with it reminded me of how boxers threw jabs.

Kiryuu just barely evaded the man’s attack, dodging the knife’s edge by a paper-thin margin. He looked frustrated—almost as if he’d thought he was actually in danger for once. The way he dodged made it seem like he thought that even a scratch from the blade would spell disaster.

The knife-wielding man’s first attack had fallen short, but he moved on to the next one with such fluidity it was like he’d been counting on Kiryuu pulling off a dodge. Evading at the last second had thrown Kiryuu off-balance, so the man followed through with the motion of his slash in order to pivot into a spinning hook kick at Kiryuu’s midsection.

It was a nasty kick that the man had put all his strength into...and it scored a clean hit. The sole of the man’s work boot sank deeply into Kiryuu’s flank through his jet-black coat. Kiryuu had raised his arm to guard at the last second, but it hadn’t been enough to diminish the impact much at all, and he fell to one knee.

“Heh! What’s wrong? Wasn’t that coat supposed to have an anti-whatever barrier on it or some shit like that?” the man gloated with a savage grin that made him look like one hell of a delinquent. He didn’t give Kiryuu time to reply, instead charging forward in another brutal assault, swinging his jagged knife with wild abandon.

“Toki Shuugo... He’s another of Kiryuu’s allies-turned-enemies,” Future Sagami helpfully explained. I thought he was about to launch into another telepathic character introduction, but as it turned out, I ended up hearing from the real-world Sagami instead.

“Are you all right, Sagami?” asked Saitou. She’d run over to help him upright while the guy with the knife was occupying Kiryuu’s attention.

“Yes... Well, more or less. I have to say, though...I never thought that you’d end up saving my tail,” said Sagami. “I apologize for every single time I’ve called you an old hag up to this point. I’ll make it up to you, I swear—from now on, I’ll refer to you as a relatively young MILF instead.”

“Right... If you’re doing well enough to crack wise, then I guess you’re in better shape than I thought,” replied Saitou.

“You could say I’m hanging in there.”

“Anyway, you can keep your apologies. It’s not like I earned them—I knew perfectly well you were about to get killed, and I was totally okay with gambling your life to wait for just the right time to spring my trap.”

“Ahh, yes, of course you did. I figured as much, considering just how perfect the timing was.”

“Lucifer’s Strike is an absurdly potent power—enough so to make Hajime an indisputably superior fighter. It doesn’t have many weaknesses to speak of...but it does have one: the fact that he can’t use his biggest attacks in rapid succession,” said Saitou.

“Oh?” replied Sagami. “Ah—come to think of it, Nakki sided with you, didn’t she? That would explain why you know all about his power’s flaws.”

“His control over gravity just isn’t very efficient, energy-wise, and the bigger the move, the more of his fuel it burns. But the thing is...for who knows what reason, Hajime always brings those big moves out anyway whenever he’s finishing an opponent off. It’s like using one of his special moves is a matter of image for him, or his pride wouldn’t allow for any other way, or something like that.”

“Both, I’d imagine.”

“Well, anyway, the point is that Hajime’s MP is totally drained right now. He’ll have a hard time taking on Toki in that state—hard enough that he won’t be able to focus on anything else.”

Lo and behold, as Saitou spoke those words, the gravitational force that had been weighing on me vanished. If she was right about everything she’d just said, then Kiryuu had exhausted his MP so severely that he couldn’t afford to keep me paralyzed anymore. I felt so light all of a sudden, I lost my balance and nearly face-planted into the ground.

“It’s nice to meet you, Andou Jurai,” Saitou said as I staggered precariously, just barely managing to stay upright. “I don’t think you know anything about me at all, but I’ve known about you for quite a long time. You’re... How should I put this? I guess you could say you’re the unwitting third player in my personal love triangle.”

“I’m what?” I said, gaping at her.

“Ha ha ha! Sorry—that probably sounded like gibberish to you, huh? Long story short, I’ve thought of you as my rival in a really weird, one-sided sort of way for a while. Don’t worry about it,” Saitou replied. Her one visible eye narrowed as she flashed me a lighthearted smile, but a moment later, her expression shifted into something much more wistful. “Hajime’s been over the moon ever since he met you, you know? It’s like he finally found someone who understood him—someone who’s cut from the same cloth as him. When he talks about you, he gets this look in his eyes that I’ve never seen from him before.”

I had no clue what to say to that.

“Just so you know, I’m not really siding with you or anything like that. I’m just Kiryuu Hajime’s enemy. My objective’s to give that jerk a taste of his own medicine, and saving you just happened to take me one step further toward that goal,” Saitou said as she turned her back to me. As she directed her eye toward her foe, I could see a look of resolve in it that told me she had every intention of defeating him. “I don’t know what Hajime’s trying to accomplish, and I can’t even begin to guess what he’s planning on doing next...but one way or another, it’s pretty clear that you’re a key player in his plan. He came all the way here just to have his long-awaited reunion with you...and we’re going to do everything we possibly can to ruin that oh-so-precious event of his.”

Sagami, whom Saitou was still holding upright, turned to look straight at me. “Andou...run,” he said. “There’s no telling what Kiryuu’s thinking, but the one thing we know for sure is that his plan can’t get off the ground without you around...so run. Run as fast as you can, and make sure the story he’s writing doesn’t play out the way he wants it to.”

“Y-You want me to run...? But what about you?” I asked.

“I’m in no shape to get away, one way or another. Standing up’s taking everything I have already. I’ll stay here and do what I can to help Saitou’s crew—or, well, to jump on their bandwagon, really. I figure they wouldn’t have made a dramatic entrance like this if they didn’t have a decent shot at pulling it off. I don’t think I’ll be much help, but I’ll at least do my best to take a bullet for someone, if it comes to that.”

“A-Are you serious, Sagami...?” Saitou asked with an air of disbelief. “Since when have you been that sort of person? I thought something was weird the moment I realized you were actually fighting Hajime—just what on earth happened to you?”

Present Sagami flashed a feeble smile. “I just went through a bit of character development, that’s all. Heh heh heh... You know, I was always the sort of reader who’d gripe about it when characters like me, who’d seemed like antagonists most of the way through the series, suddenly turned a new leaf and got redeemed in the end—‘Way to pull the reader out of the story,’ I’d say—but now that I’ve tried it out myself, I’ve gotta say, I think I’m a fan of it. Guess that makes me an even bigger hypocrite than I was before.”

As Present Sagami muttered out his little monologue, he looked over at me once more. There was an intensity to his gaze that I’d never seen from him before.

“Leave this to me and get the hell out of here, Andou.”

“Sagami... But, I—”

“Oh, of course. There’s just no way Mr. Andou surprisingly-righteous-and-always-puts-his-friends-first Jurai would actually run away when I tell him to...so I’ll rephrase things a little. Andou—go find the girls and protect them.”

I took in a sharp breath.

“‘Virgin Child.’ That’s what he calls the five of you literary club folks. Apparently, you’re all somehow indispensable for his plans. He’s been making a big deal out of putting off your big reveal, but there’s no way he won’t be pulling you all into the story before long. At this rate, the four of them are going to get dragged into his narrative, like it or not.”

What was Kiryuu’s goal? What was the story he was trying to tell? Neither Sagami nor Saitou seemed to have any clue...but still, the two of them were throwing everything they had into resisting him. They were fighting with all their might to make the conclusion of his planned final chapter collapse under its own weight.

“I’ll tell you everything you need to know in premonition form using my power.”

“You heard the man. I’ll give you a broad outline of everything that happens after you leave.”

“So get out of here, Andou. Go, now.”

“If we want to prevent Kiryuu Hajime from finishing his story, then we need you to be out of the picture.”

The Sagami in my mind and the Sagami standing before me took turns urging me to flee. Then, for just a moment, Present Sagami seemed to hesitate. He leaned toward me and whispered into my ear.

“But, hey...Andou? If this doesn’t work out...”

The next words that Sagami spoke were so shocking, I couldn’t believe my ears. I just couldn’t comprehend them. They were purely irrational and flew in the face of everything that had happened up to that point.

“Sagami...? What—”

“Please. You’re the only one who can do it.”

And then, Sagami smiled at me. He clenched his hand into a fist and pressed it to my breast.

“I’m counting on you, Jurai.”

For a moment, an indescribable sense of nostalgia washed over me. For that one instant, I was back in the eighth grade—back when I’d abandoned my chuunibyou and the two of us were friends. It had only been three years since then, but it felt like it was all far, far off in the past.

“...All right, Sagamin,” I replied, pushing through my embarrassment and addressing him with my own long-unused term of endearment.

And then I ran. I turned my back on the battlefield and set off at a sprint. I still couldn’t fully understand what was even happening, but my spirit—my instincts—drove my legs to pump as fast as they possibly could. I needed to protect the most precious girls in the world to me...and to grant the wish of one of my very few male friends as well. I ran with all my might, utterly rejecting my part in the final chapter I’d been abruptly thrust into.

“Okay, but really—did I pick the perfect time to call you ‘Jurai’ or what? I gave it a lot of thought, you know? I went so far out of my way to keep calling you ‘Andou’ until right at the very end, then I let it slip out so naturally you’d think it just happened on its own. What’d you think? Did I pull it off? Was it nice and climactic? And while we’re at it, nice going calling me ‘Sagamin’ in exchange! You really had a read on the scene, didn’t you? It played out so perfectly I almost cracked up, honestly—I had to literally bite my lip to stop myself.”

I’m begging you... Please just shut the hell up, Future Sagami.