Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 2 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Awakening——Aborted

I have a childhood friend. His name is Andou Jurai, but I’ve called him Juu for as long as I can remember. We live right next to each other, and our parents have always been on good terms, so we’ve been close ever since we were little kids.

We went to the same kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and even high school, purely by chance! Juu likes to say that we’re “stuck with each other”...which is rich coming from a guy who’s always going on about “fate” this and “destiny” that. Why couldn’t he say that our friendship was destined too? Not that it really matters to me or anything...

Speaking of Juu, he’s always loved playing make-believe. He couldn’t get enough of those “riders” and “rangers” on TV, and I used to pretend to transform into superheroes with him all the time. Every time whatever show that was airing introduced a new transformation pose or a new special attack, Juu would have it mastered within the day, and he’d show it off to me the first chance he got.

I always loved those little performances of his...though actually, that’s not quite right. Honestly, I didn’t care about “riders” or “rangers” or any of that stuff at all. What I loved was watching Juu enjoy himself to his heart’s content.

As we grew older, though, Juu started maturing in a really strange direction. For example, one time in sixth grade, he came up to me and said, in the most serious tone possible, “Hey, Hatoko. Have you ever considered the possibility that the world we live in is all just a long, elaborate dream playing out deep within my subconscious? Can you prove that it isn’t? You can’t, right?”

Frankly, all I could think was, “How on earth does he say stuff like that with a straight face?”

Then there was one time in our first year of middle school. “Why do you think people die, Hatoko? I’ll tell you: it’s because somewhere, deep down, they believe they’re going to die someday. Thus, it stands to reason that the opposite is also true: if one truly believes with every fiber of their being that they’ll never die...”

All I could think was, “Why does he look so satisfied with himself?”

Then there was something he told me in our third year of middle school—the pièce de résistance of Juu-isms. It happened right after I’d called him Juu, just like I always did.

“You really need to stop calling me that, Hatoko. We’re in our last year of middle school, you know? Isn’t it about time to give that tired old nickname a rest?” he said, his voice cold and indifferent.

It was a bit of a shock, honestly, but it was also pretty easy for me to accept. Juu was a boy, after all. He was probably just embarrassed about a girl calling him by a friendly, cutesy nickname.

“Yeah...okay,” I replied, doing my best to keep my disappointment from showing on my face. “What should I call you, then?”

Juu grinned—maybe the biggest and brightest grin I’d ever seen from him. “From now on, call me Guiltia Sin Jurai!”

Not even joking.

All I could think was, “Oh, god, he’s actually serious.”

To make a long story short: my childhood friend Juu is a really strange person.

☆

“Oh...it’s you, Andou. Hey, do you know why I asked you to come talk with me?”

One day after school, I found myself in the staff room speaking with my conspicuously irritated English teacher, Miss Satomi.

“Actually, no.”

“You don’t, huh...? Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t,” she replied offhandedly before failing to stifle a big, long yawn.

Aside from being my English teacher, Satomi Shiharu was also my homeroom teacher and the faculty advisor for the literary club. As such, I had a pretty close working relationship with her. She looked well put together on a superficial level—she seemed to be in decent shape, and she had a nice enough face—but she suffered from a critical lack of motivation and projected a constant not-my-problem sort of aura, which made it hard to describe her as attractive on the whole.

The sleep mask that she kept more or less constantly strapped around her head, just in case she got the chance for a power-nap, certainly didn’t help either. She had a ton of them, all with different designs. Today’s happened to have writing on it, which read “Sleep Well, Grow Well.” Where does she even buy those things?

“So, I wanted to talk with you about...yeah. You know. About...that. Uhh...what was it again?”

“Don’t ask me!” She’s as groggy as ever...

Miss Satomi was actually the aunt of Himeki Chifuyu, an elementary schooler who came by the literary club to hang out almost every day. If they had one thing in common, it was their mutual tendency to fall asleep at the drop of a hat. Their exhaustion meter was always turned up to eleven. It made me wonder if it was genetic or something. Could their whole family be like that?

“Ah, right, that’s it!” she said, finally remembering why she’d called me to the staff room. “It’s about the test you took the other day.”

“You mean the English test? Why, was there a problem?”

“A problem? Of course there was! There were a bunch of them, even—it wouldn’t be a test if there weren’t!”

“Not that sort of problem! I’m asking if there was a problem with any of my answers!”

“Ohhh, okay. Yeah, that makes more sense. Anyway, yeah, you could say there was a problem, in a manner of speaking,” she said, pulling my answer sheet out of a folder and laying it down on her desk.

What could the issue be? I wondered. We’d taken the test just recently, and I was actually pretty confident that I’d done well on it, so I couldn’t imagine what merited a personal callout like this.

“Let’s start here,” said Miss Satomi, pointing at one of the questions. It was a translation problem; we were given an English sentence, and I was supposed to translate it into Japanese. The English sentence read:

•Tom wakes up at six every morning.

And I translated it as:

Tom Awakens at six every morning.

Hmm. Nope, don’t see a problem here.

“‘Awakens’? Seriously...? And why did you capitalize it? Is it supposed to be some sort of proper noun? Just what on earth happens to Tom at six a.m. every morning?”

“Search me. You’d have to ask Tom.”

“Right... We’ll come back to that. Next is this problem,” said Miss Satomi, pointing at a different spot on my test.

•She continued crying in the dark room.

She continued lamenting in the stygian chamber.

“What sort of high schooler just casually uses the word ‘lamenting’ like that? Heck, I had to think for a hot minute before I could remember what ‘stygian’ meant! That’s the sort of word you usually only see in old gothic horror novels!”

“Ha ha, thanks!”

“That wasn’t a compliment. I was criticizing you, actually.” She sighed listlessly. “I have so many other examples, it’s hardly even worth trying to list them all. You put ‘cachinnate’ instead of ‘laugh,’ ‘forfend’ instead of ‘protect,’ ‘expeditious’ instead of ‘fast,’ ‘circumscribe’ instead of ‘circle,’ ‘relinquish’ instead of ‘drop,’ ‘absolve’ instead of ‘forgive,’ ‘befouled’ instead of ‘dirty’... Hey, Andou?”

Miss Satomi looked up at me. She didn’t sound accusatory so much as just plain curious. “Why do you go so far out of your way to use weird, rare words?” she asked.

I chuckled internally. Really now? What an utterly silly question. “Because they’re just sorta, I dunno...neat, I guess. Right?”

It’s the same reason I dropped a “stygian” into Dark and Dark’s preamble. I couldn’t think of a better way to explain it than calling them just plain neat, but that didn’t change the fact that they are most certainly that thing. Complicated words: cool. Weird, archaic words that nobody else ever uses: hella cool.

Miss Satomi sighed once again. “Yup, that’s the Andou I know—totally incomprehensible. Speaking of which, you know that all those nonsense words you use make it really hard to understand what you’re actually trying to say, right? Not that I care that much, really,” she clarified, giving me a look that made it very clear I was a certifiable problem child in her eyes. “The fact that you actually get decent grades in spite of it all is pretty obnoxious, though.”

That’s right. I, Andou Jurai, the second-year high schooler, got grades that put me in the upper-middle tiers of my class’s rankings. I was actually pretty diligent about studying in my free time.

“I’d love to mark all the questions you decided to screw around on as wrong, but I have to admit, they’re technically close enough to correct that I can’t really justify it...”

Mwa ha ha! That’s right! I’ve mastered the nuances that let me get away with this stuff! Take “sneer,” for instance. You can’t swap that out for “smile” when it’s a happy, friendly sort of expression. No, a sneer has to be scornful, disdainful!

“Ughhh...” Miss Satomi spent a moment longer glaring at my test, then she let out a big yawn. “Oh, whatever. I’m too sleepy to bother anymore. Bringing you back into polite society’s a lost cause—or at the very least, I’ve lost all motivation to make it happen. I’ll leave rehabilitating you up to Takanashi.”

Let the record show that I didn’t think I was in any need of rehabilitation in the first place. From a purely objective perspective, I’d actually call myself a pretty diligent student! My grades were just fine, and my attendance record was totally unblemished: not so much as a single tardy on the books. I’ll grant you that every once in a while I had a little bit of trouble on the impulse control front, but that aside, I was just an average high schooler who’d been chosen by the fates for a higher purpose.

Anyway, Miss Satomi seemed to have decided she was done with me and pulled her sleep mask down over her eyes. That was her way of saying that it was naptime and I could go on my way, so I quietly turned around to oblige her. Or at least, that was the plan until the staff room’s door slid open before I managed to get there.

“Oh, hey, Andou. What’re you doing here?” asked an excessively handsome young man as he stepped inside. He had the sort of face that was better described as beautiful rather than studly, and his slender, delicate figure gave him an overall air of elegant refinement. His hair was also longer than most boys kept theirs, tied back in a ponytail.

“Oh. Sagami,” I bluntly replied. His full name was Sagami Shizumu, and he was...well, not a friend of mine, that’s for darn sure. More of an acquaintance, really. Or rather, just a guy I happened to have been stuck in the same class with for two years running. We tended to eat lunch in our classroom together, but that was pretty much where our relationship began and ended.

Sagami walked over to me and gave me the sort of look that would make his admirers swoon. “What do you mean, ‘Sagami’? How many times have I told you to stop treating me like a stranger and call me Sagamin, already?”

“Not happening! If I call you by a nickname, people are gonna start thinking we’re friends or something.”

“Is that how it is? What a shame.”

“And besides, you’re the one who never shows me the reverence and awe I deserve! How many times have I told you to call me Guiltia Sin Jurai?”

“Absolutely not. If I call you by your true name, people are going to start thinking I’m a lunatic,” he quipped harshly. “But anyway, what are you doing here, Andou?”

I gave Sagami a quick rundown on what had landed me in the staff room, and he blithely replied that he wasn’t surprised. He sure didn’t seem to care much for somebody who’d gone out of his way to ask about it, but I already knew he was that sort of person and didn’t pay it much mind.

“Your turn,” I said after I’d finished explaining. “What’re you here for?”

“Me? I’m just here to pick up the love of my life, that’s all.” With that, he strolled over to Miss Satomi (who was out like a light at that point) and shook her by the shoulder.

“Mnhgh...whaddya want? Oh...Sagami?”

“Yes, it’s me, and I’d appreciate it if you’d return my lover now.”

“Oooh, right... Totally forgot about that.” She slowly, stiffly heaved herself to her feet, plodded over to a corner of the staff room, and then plodded her way right back again carrying Sagami’s lover...by which I mean his Nintendo 3DS. “Here. Hope this taught you a lesson about playing video games in class.”

“Excuse me, but I wasn’t playing anything. I was fostering a beautiful, budding relationship!” proclaimed Sagami, his brilliant smile contrasting with how hopelessly gross his proclamation actually was.

Sagami’s looks were so off the charts it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call him a living personification of beauty itself, but that just served to cover up his true identity. He was a nerd, and even worse, he was one of those nerds: the sort of nerd that falls hopelessly in love with 2D girls; the kind of nerd who calls anime characters his “waifus” and video game characters his “lovers.”

That thought process reminded me of something. “Hey, speaking of lovers, didn’t you tell me you were dating a first-year girl just a little while back?”

“Oh yeah, her. That’s old news. She dumped me, as usual.”

“Already? It didn’t even last a week this time?!”

“Just awful, right? And she was the one who asked me out in the first place!”

“Let me guess: you decided to stop to buy some scantily clad anime girl figure while you were walking home with her, right?”

“Wrong. I was buying an eroge this time. Then she shouted something about how I wasn’t the person she thought I was and dumped me on the spot.”

“That’s the same thing, moron!”

Thanks to his peerless looks, Sagami was stupidly popular with the opposite sex. He got asked out often enough to get more than a little on my nerves, and what was even more irritating was the fact that he said yes every single time.

The problem, though, was that even when he was in a relationship, he made absolutely no effort whatsoever to adjust his lifestyle to suit his partner. Nobody would ever imagine him as the sort of person who indulged in hyper-nerdy hobbies judging by his looks alone, and when his girlfriends would find out about said hobbies (more or less instantly, thanks to his behavior), they would dump him soon after

The rumor that the quality of Sagami Shizumu’s looks and his personality had a perfectly inverse relationship with each other had spread far and wide among the second- and third-year girls at that point, and the flood of prospective girlfriends had finally started to die down. The moment a new school year and a new class of first-years had arrived, though, history began repeating itself. God, I can’t stand this guy. Sure would be nice if he got hit by a truck or something.

“Give it to me straight, Sagami. What side are you on? 2D or 3D? Which one are you really into?”

“Both of them, but if I absolutely had to choose, I suppose I’d have to pick 2D girls. 3D ones are just a close second. They’re nice and all, but they’re also a pain in way too many ways.”

What an absolute waste of a pretty face. If he had any sense of decency, he’d raise his hands in the air, shout “People of Earth! Let me give you my hottie energy!” and pull a reverse Spirit Bomb, sacrificing himself for the sake of men all around the world.

“I see you two are still a couple peas in a pod,” muttered Miss Satomi as she watched our exchange. “Guess problem students of a feather flock together, or something to that tune. Look, Andou, Sagami—I’m not saying that having geeky hobbies is a bad thing! I’m just saying you should learn to tone it down a little, that’s all.”

The two of us did a synchronized double take. We’d been just about ready to leave, but there was no way we were letting a comment like that go unchallenged.

Not that I was mad about getting called a geek, to be clear! I was perfectly aware that the word was pretty much made to describe people like me, and I was way too forgiving of a person to snap over something that petty. Getting lumped in with Sagami, though? Now that was unforgivable!

“Please,” I replied, “give me a break, Miss Satomi! I’m nothing like that moé-swilling, waifu-wrangling creeper! He’s one of those losers who picks anime to watch based on which voice actresses are in them!”

“That’s right! We’re nothing alike! I refuse to even consider the idea that I have anything in common with that chuuni nutjob. He’s the sort of cringelord who dreams up self-insert OCs for every new anime he gets into, and I’ll thank you for not putting me on his level.”

Sparks flew as we spent a couple seconds glaring daggers at each other. Neither of us was willing to budge an inch, even if said sparks lit the room aflame around us.

“Well, you only ever watch those stupid, boring harem anime!” I snapped. “What’s so fun about seeing some random guy flirt around with a bunch of girls? There’s literally no substance to those shows at all!”

“No substance? What on earth are you talking about? When it comes to shows like that, flirting around with girls is the substance, and I happen to enjoy them!”

“Oh, and while I’m at it, how about you stop buying all the Blu-rays for the smuttier ones? I know for a fact you only get them ’cause you’re hoping that all the steam and light rays covering up the boobs got edited out! If you wanna see nipples that badly, just buy actual hentai like a normal person!”

“You just don’t get it! Nipples in a work of popular media have a very particular appeal that nipples in pornography could never hope to achieve.”

“Hmph!”

“And besides, who are you to talk, Andou? The shows you watch are all so ridiculously convoluted that trying to understand them on a first viewing is a total lost cause. Unless, of course, you track down their official websites and memorize a technical manual’s worth of jargon and diagrams in advance—because that’s a totally normal thing to do, right?”

“Hah! They’re good because they’re convoluted! Highly developed, finely tuned worldbuilding is all about seeing how all those tiny, intricate details fit together!”

“At the very least, they could stop using made-up words for all their technical terms. You don’t get all the exposition on them when the story’s adapted to anime, so it ends up sounding like a load of hot nonsense.”

“Why do you think the official sites have lists of all the terminology in the first place?! Or, you know, you could just read the original work!”

“You’re impossible, really. This is exactly why I can’t stand chuunis like you.”

“Yeah, well it’s better than being an obnoxious moé freak!”

“You’d best watch yourself, Andou, or I’ll Pretty your Cure!”

“As if, Sagami! Just wait till you witness the true depths of the sins of Guiltia. They’ll make your head spin!”

“Uh, guys?” said Miss Satomi, irritably cutting into our little spat. “I’m barely keeping up with all this, but if you think each others’ favorite anime are boring, why don’t you just not watch them?”

Sagami and I fell silent. She had spoken the most taboo of phrases: “If it’s bad, then just don’t watch it.”

You just don’t say stuff like that! Any good anime viewer knows that when you find a show you’re not really into, you’re supposed to watch each episode like clockwork, from start to finish, griping and flaming it all the way, just so that you can be all, “Oh, that show? Yeah, it totally sucks, I don’t even know why I’m still watching it!”

It’s the same with serialized comics! Even if you go on and on about how bad the magazine’s been lately and how you basically don’t even read it anymore, you’ve still gotta keep buying it week after week! That’s what makes us good readers! It’s an identity thing!

“Anyway, if you’re gonna fight, do it outside. I’m going back to sleep,” said Miss Satomi, shooing us out of the staff room.

“Miss Satomi certainly is a waste of a pretty face, isn’t she?” commented Sagami as we filed into the hallway. There wasn’t a trace of remorse in his tone, and he’d clearly learned nothing from her mini-lecture.

“Right?” I agreed, exactly as flippant as he was. “She’d be so much more charming if she acted like the teachers who show up in light novels all the time. Like, imagine if she were always worrying about her prospects for marriage or something!”

“Teachers are way out of my strike zone, so I really couldn’t care less. Any girl who’s past the age of twenty’s an old hag in my book—excluding nonhuman waifus, of course.”

Suddenly, I felt a very firm pressure on my shoulder. Somebody had grabbed on to both Sagami and me. I slowly, carefully turned around to find Miss Sagami directly behind us, her ever-slothful expression now laced with an unmistakable dose of pure, unrestrained malice.

“Here’s another lesson for you two: if you’re gonna bad-mouth someone, make sure to do it behind their back.”

And so, we were dragged right back into the staff room...

In the end, I got off easier than Sagami this time around. Miss Satomi clearly had a lot more lecture left in her for him at the point she decided to let me go. Apparently, his “any girl who’s past the age of twenty’s a hag, excluding nonhuman waifus” declaration—which, incidentally, was a clear sign that he’d totally lost the ability to distinguish reality from fiction—had earned him her wrath. The fact that she was closing in on thirty might’ve had something to do with it.

As I strolled out into the hallway, I ran into another familiar face.

“Oh, if it isn’t Andou!” said Sayumi, the president of the literary club I belonged to. “You were in the staff room? I was wondering where you’d gone off to.”

“Hey, Sayumi,” I replied. “What’re you doing here? Oh, wait, I know! Were you searching for me?”

“No, I just have something to discuss with Miss Satomi. Try not to assume that everyone’s actions revolve around you.”

“I’ll, uh, keep that in mind.”

You’ll note that she didn’t say something along the lines of “Don’t get the wrong idea!” Those sorts of phrases had become so intrinsically associated with the tsundere archetype lately that you couldn’t really use them for their actual original purposes lest you cause a hilarious misunderstanding. Leave it to Sayumi to find a way around that problem—the line she’d just dropped on me was a perfect substitution that left absolutely no room for doubt regarding her intent! She wasn’t about to let me misunderstand her in the slightest.

“Anyway,” I continued, “you should probably save talking with her for another time. She’s busy chewing out Sagami right now.”

“Oh, Sagami, huh...? Yes, I understand.” Sagami was well-known, in the worst possible sense of the phrase, so I wasn’t shocked that Sayumi had heard of him. “I have to say, I’m impressed by how well you get along with him. It feels like the two of you are always together.”

“Nah, not really. It’d be awkward to be the only ones eating lunch alone, so we sort of just end up sitting together. That’s really all there is between us.”

“Oh? I do believe that was a very ‘tsundere’ sort of response, wasn’t it?”

“Please, do not call it that!”

I didn’t despise the guy or anything, but when everyone around me refused to shut up about how well the two of us got along, it made me reflexively want to deny it. We just sort of ended up together, and that’s really all there was to it. You could say that we were on the same wavelength, but our tastes were critically incompatible.

“I do have to say, though, the two of you certainly look like you’re good friends.”

“We’re not, seriously! That guy’s a total creeper, no two ways about it. Like, when we go to karaoke together, he sings nothing but anime and Vocaloid songs!”

“In other words, you’re good friends.”

“And when we went to go see a movie the other day, I ended up losing at rock paper scissors and he forced me to watch friggin’ Precure, of all things! I wanted to see the latest Kamen Rider movie! I mean, it ended up being pretty good in the end, but still.”

“In other words, you’re very good friends.”

Okay, she might have a point. From an outside perspective, we probably do look like we get along super well. Weird, that.

“I guess, like...he just comes on so strong, and I can’t handle it. I’d rather be friends with someone who’s got less of a stand-out personality, you know? Somebody I can count on to put me in the spotlight—like, the role the protagonist’s best friend always ends up playing in light novels!”

“‘The protagonist’s best friend’?”

Allow me to explain! The protagonist’s best friend is a stock character that appears with impressive frequency in light novels. To put it simply, their job is to be the protagonist’s ultimate supporter, devoting their very bodies and souls to the thankless task of ensuring the plot develops as planned.

Typically, they’ll be cheerful, sociable, and astonishingly well-informed. When the protagonist turns out to be inexplicably clueless about their school’s social circles, it’s the best friend’s job to painstakingly evaluate the heroines and pass along each and every rumor about them that comes the best friend’s way.

In spite of the vital role they play in the plot, however, it’s a best friend’s tragic fate to fade into the background and barely interact with the story at all when it hits its endgame. They never overstep their boundaries, never let themselves obstruct the protagonist’s or heroines’ plot arcs, and remain supporting characters to the bitter end.

Such is the lot of the protagonist’s best friend! I consider them to be one of the three pillars of light novels, along with awakenings and crane games.

“Oh, I think I understand now. In other words, both of you are excessively assertive when it comes to your preferences, and you end up clashing as a result.”

“That’s right!”

“That’s almost tragic. Really, don’t be like that! You have precious few male friends, and you need to treasure those relationships!”

Sayumi almost sounded like a real role model for a moment there, but then I noticed the quiet, almost inaudible chuckle she let out and the sort of unnerving smile on her face. I was struck with a terrible premonition. She wouldn’t have gone out of her way to specify male friends if she wasn’t thinking along the lines I suspected she was.

“Umm...Sayumi? Just for the record, there is absolutely nothing romantic going on between me and Sagami. Like, zip, zero, not in the slightest! Please don’t turn us into some sort of fujoshi fantasy fodder, okay?”

I knew exactly how much of a BL fanatic Sayumi was, and I decided to nip that potential problem in the bud before it had the chance to bite me. I tried to keep my request casual and friendly, but Sayumi’s smile vanished from her face in the blink of an eye.

“Andou,” she said in an overwhelmingly serious tone of voice, “I’m extremely disappointed that you would look down on fujoshi so openly.”

“You...what?”

“The idea that when a fujoshi sees two men getting along she’ll inevitably start fantasizing about them being a couple is an incredibly played-out and downright rude stereotype. I believe you owe us an apology,” she said with a (frankly terrifying) glare. She seemed genuinely angry. “I understand where your misapprehension is coming from. It’s become more and more common recently for male-targeted media to feature fujoshi characters who can’t restrain themselves from going to extremes for their interests. They, however, are characters written specifically to appeal to that male audience, and they are nothing like real-life fujoshi.”

“Nothing like them? Not at all...?”

“As such, it’s extremely upsetting when people assume that we’re prone to the same sort of behavior as those characters. Surely you understand, Andou? If somebody implied that all nerds are overweight, flannel-clad man-children who wear silly bandannas and constantly carry around backpacks full of anime posters, you’d be upset too, wouldn’t you?”

“I would, yeah.” I was starting to understand what she was trying to say, more or less.

My idea of a typical fujoshi was an image that had been fed to me by media that wasn’t written by or for fujoshi themselves. I had absolutely no interest in BL, and as a natural consequence of that fact, I didn’t have many opportunities to get to know what real fujoshi are actually like. I only got exposed to the fictional ones and the major outliers who went so far beyond the pale with their hobby that they ended up getting posted about on the internet.

In short, Sayumi was asking me not to automatically lump her in with those eccentric outliers purely on the basis of her being a fujoshi. It was just like how I hated the idea of getting lumped into the same category as Sagami.

“I get it, Sayumi. You’re saying that people who learn about fujoshi from fujoshi characters in anime are making the same mistake as people who learn about sex by watching porn!”

“That’s...a rather apt comparison, yes, but I would highly recommend against bringing up porn apropos of nothing when you’re speaking with a woman.” She gave me a cold, unblinking stare for a moment, then she let out a weary sigh. “People have a hard time picking out the distinguishing details of things they have no interest in, so it might be inevitable that everyone has some form of prejudice or another. Still, though, I’d hoped that at least you would understand me, Andou.”

“Sayumi...you’re right, and I’m sorry.” She was smiling, but in an almost tragic sort of way that tugged at my heartstrings like nothing else. I found myself apologizing before I even knew it. Jeez, I can’t believe I said something that mean without even thinking about it.

“All that said,” Sayumi continued, “you were actually right. I absolutely was envisioning you and Sagami in the throes of passion, and I happened to let a chuckle slip out of pure carelessness.”

“Oh, come on!” That whole friggin’ ramble was just a lead-in?! That was way too long to set up a stupid joke! I was actually completely sincere about that apology too!

“Oh, to be clear, I did mean everything I said. I wouldn’t fantasize about just anyone. I restrict my delusions solely to the very few ships I’ve analyzed in scrupulous detail and have determined to be too good to not drool over.”

“That makes this so much worse, holy crap! What, you’re saying that me and Sagami make the best ship ever, or something?!”

“Frankly, I can’t get enough of it.”

“Frankly, what the hell?! And no, wait a second...you were listening when I explained that Sagami and I aren’t super close or anything, right? Like, we may be more than just acquaintances, but we’re definitely not even close to being friends.”

“I’m afraid you just don’t understand, Andou. From a fujoshi’s perspective, a pair of boys who are constantly quarreling and snapping at each other is a thousand times more shippable than a pair that’s excessively all over each other.”

“H-Huh, really? Is that how it works?”

“Quite! If anything, the best ships are between two characters who hate each other, at least a little. When they’re prone to breaking out in fights the moment they make eye contact, but deep in their hearts, the flames of love smolder...that is the sort of ship it’s most fun to fantasize about.”

The conversation was veering into dangerously deep waters, and I had a feeling it was time to bring it to a close before I found myself drowning. I decided to try to change the subject, hoping it would send the message that fujoshi talk time was at an end.

“Anyway, wanna head to the club room, Sayumi?”

“Yes, we probably should. Everyone except you was already there when I left, and I imagine they’re getting tired of waiting for us.”

Under normal circumstances, there wouldn’t be anything to wait for. Our literary club made a point of never bothering with typical club activities, so if somebody showed up late, it usually wouldn’t be an inconvenience for the rest of the members at all. That particular day, however, was different: it was the chosen day for our monthly superpower checkup.

An innumerable quantity of jet-black spears materialized in the air, blotting out the blue sky above. They rained down upon the ashen landscape, filling every inch of it with terrifyingly sharp blades.

This transparently lethal attack was but one of World Create’s many combat applications. Specifically, it was the second form of the twenty-fourth verse of the Book of Assault: Spear Tempest!

The countless spears, birthed by the power of Genesis, perforated the ground with a piercing, clamorous crash. Said ground, incidentally—and for that matter, the entire arena—was a Field that had been created by way of that very same power. Littered with spears, the battlefield had been transformed into a metallic forest in the blink of an eye.

In the center of that forest, a single, circular clearing remained entirely untouched. A girl stood at the very center of that circle, smiling brightly and chuckling fearlessly. Not a single spear had so much as grazed her—she was completely unharmed. Indeed, she was the spitting image of Alexander the Great, one of humanity’s oldest and grandest of heroes, who is said to have once walked through a volley of arrows and emerged on the other side completely unscathed.

How did she escape from all but certain doom? By means of one of Over Element’s Sylpheed Mode techniques: Fairy Dance! By cloaking herself in a barrier of wind, she’d rendered herself utterly impervious to attack! Insubstantial though air may be, a strong enough gale can brush aside even the strongest of blows!

It hadn’t even taken all that much in the way of force. Her mastery over the air around her allowed her to alter the trajectories of any incoming spears just enough to deflect them. To an observer like me, it almost seemed as though the spears themselves had steered around her of their own volition.

“I was actually planning on burning them all up at first! But then I noticed they looked like they’d be hard to burn, so I changed up my plan a bit!” declared the wind-cloaked girl, Kushikawa Hatoko. She smiled proudly as she explained her decision to the foe across the arena from her, Himeki Chifuyu.

“You burned up all the weapons I threw at you last time, so I thought I’d use metal spears instead so it wouldn’t work this time...” In contrast to Hatoko’s smile, Chifuyu looked a little upset. She must’ve been disappointed that the attack she’d thought so hard about had been countered so easily, and she sullenly kicked her legs in the air from atop the magnificent, almost throne-like chair she’d conjured up for herself.

That was Chifuyu’s fighting style, incidentally. She would make an elegant, luxurious chair, sit down, and not budge so much as an inch for the rest of the battle. It was an incredibly cheeky—not to mention lazy—way of doing battle, but she had the sheer ability to let her get away with it.

“Hiyah!” shouted Hatoko, gently waving her hand in the air and stirring up an enormous whirlwind around her. The raging gale swept the spears away, casting them off into the distance and clearing the battlefield in one fell swoop. Her gaze met Chifuyu’s once more.

“Okay, Chifuyu, here goes!” said Hatoko, taking a moment to stretch and catch her breath.

“C’mon,” replied Chifuyu, beckoning her foe forward with a finger.

Mere moments later, World Create and Over Element clashed together in a cacophony of violence!

“No way...Hatoko’s not seriously planning on using that, is she? Not Over Element’s Ifrit Mode Technique: Raging—ah, wait! I-It couldn’t be! Not World Create’s ninth verse from the Book of Aegis, the form of—wait, what on earth?! Hatoko’s using her Geyser of—oh, but no, Chifuyu countered it with her trump card: the first form of the first verse of the Book of Respite, Wakeless Woodland—no, it couldn’t be!”

“Your commentary’s not keeping up with the fight at all!” jabbed Tomoyo, who’d been sitting beside me since the beginning.

I slammed my fist onto the table in an overblown show of frustration. “Well, it’s not my fault their fight’s moving so friggin’ fast! It doesn’t matter how quickly I talk; I’ll never be able to keep up with that!”

“Then just give up, please. Battle manga-style exposition just doesn’t work in real life.”

“Ha! As if I’d ever surrender! If I don’t explain their fight, Hatoko and Chifuyu’s attack names will remain an eternal mystery!”

“Just for the record, if you’d made those names at least a little bit less ridiculously long, you might’ve stood more of a chance of keeping up with your commentary.”

I couldn’t argue with that one. But, like, come on! Once you start thinking up attack names, it’s really hard to stop! Who doesn’t want to have a borderline limitless number of attacks with really long names to pull out at a moment’s notice? Super long attack names: hella cool!

“You’ve got a point, though, Tomoyo. It’s probably a good idea to avoid using attacks with long names when you’re fighting a real battle. It leaves you wide open, and there’s a very real danger that the attack will end up finishing before you’re even done saying its name!”

“Okay, even assuming that superpowered battles did actually happen in real life, nobody would bother shouting out the names of their attacks in the first place.”

Oh. Yeah, that’s fair. The whole calling your attacks thing really only happens in manga, anime and light novels. Not even Kamen Riders bother shouting attack names much, and even when they do, it doesn’t really get much attention. Like, Kiva had this ridiculously cool super-kick called the Darkness Moon Break, but barely anybody even knows about it these days!

Then again, asking why fictional characters bother calling out their attack names each and every time is one of those nitpicks that you’re supposed to sorta just let slide. It goes hand in hand with not questioning why the villains always go out of their way to explain exactly how their abilities work to the hero.

“And besides,” continued Tomoyo, “it’s not like we ever actually have any reason to fight in the first place. We don’t need attacks, much less attack names! Hatoko and Chifuyu are just playing around right now.”

“What?! This isn’t a game! It’s a simulation! By taking part in mock battles so intense they’re almost indistinguishable from the real thing, we’re honing our instincts and preparing for the day our skills are put to the test!”

“Yeah, sure. And what comic did you steal that line from?”

“Listen up, Tomoyo. I assure you, I’m being completely, one hundred percent serious when I say that settling on names for your attacks and special moves in advance is incredibly important.”

“Oh, really? Lemme guess: you’re about to tell me something hilariously superficial, like how it’s important because if you don’t have them picked out beforehand, you won’t be able to sell the scene when you get your moment in the spotlight. Right?”

“Nay! It’s important because if you don’t, you’ll give the devs a really hard time when your story gets turned into a video game.”

“Why are you planning for that?!”

“A fighting game’s the best option if you want it to sell well, and you can’t make a fighting game if you don’t have any special moves! Gintama did a whole self-parody bit about it, remember?”

“And you’re citing Gintama?!”

“So, I’ve been thinking it’s about time I take up this wooden sword with ‘Lake Toya’ written on it and learn a special move of my own.”

“Who are you, Gin?!”

“Or maybe a special move that uses this naturally white and curly hair of mine.”

“Yep, that’s Gin, all right! Why are you committing this hard to doing a Gintama joke?!”

“’Cause Gintama uses so much reference humor itself, I figure there’s no way I’d get in trouble for parodying it.”

“Quit plotting to make your jokes consequence-free!”

“If you parody people, they’ll parody you back.”

“Don’t you dare bring Shaman King into this!”

Okay, I’m actually really impressed she realized I was paraphrasing one of Asakura Yoh’s most famous lines there. I can always rest easy knowing somebody’ll pick up on even the deepest of cuts when she’s around.

As Tomoyo and I bantered away with each other, I turned my gaze back to the battlefield.

Our supernatural power checkup was a monthly event where all of us got together and put our abilities to the test. We had all awakened to strange, inexplicable powers half a year beforehand. One of us had gained the power to rule over time, one had gained mastery over the elements, one had gained the power of ultimate creation, one had gained the power to return things to the way they were meant to be—and one had gained the power to conquer chaos itself.

Okay...that last one might have been an ever so slight exaggeration, but only a little! No need to think too deeply about it.

Moving right along, the point is that we’d all awakened to phenomenal superpowers, but nothing else of any particular importance had actually happened. Broadly speaking, we were still living out the same happy, fulfilling, utterly mundane school lives as ever. As such, we’d taken to using our powers however we wanted to, with one notable exception: these monthly checkups, where we’d report on our powers’ progress and relay any new information we’d gathered.

At that particular moment, Hatoko and Chifuyu were engaged in a supernatural sparring match to see whether their powers had changed at all over the course of the prior month. The rest of us were sitting off to the side and watching them throw down.

The Field in which the match was taking place, of course, was a product of Chifuyu’s power. She’d temporarily knocked out one of the club room’s walls and linked it to an extradimensional space of her own creation, allowing us to lounge around in the comfort of our own room in our own chairs as their battle unfolded.

“Watching those two fight it out never fails to impress, does it?” noted Sayumi with an unmistakable hint of admiration in her tone. She’d been off in the far corner of the room brewing tea, which she brought over to the table.

“Right?” I agreed as I accepted a cup.

Frankly, Hatoko and Chifuyu’s battle was some seriously next-level stuff. Over Element and World Create were the two most flashy powers in our group by a mile, and when Hatoko and Chifuyu sparred, it very quickly approached the level of combat you’d expect to turn up in some epic myth.

On one side of the ring, we had the overwhelming power of nature itself. On the other, we had the almighty power of civilization. The fundamental building blocks of the universe were stacked up against an inexhaustible supply of man’s most lethal armaments, pulled from all ages and civilizations. When those two powers clashed together, “battle” hardly did the spectacle justice. Nay—it was a war.

And a ridiculously cool one, at that! God, I am so friggin’ jealous! I wanna be part of a super crazy, all-out battle too!

“Okay!” Hatoko said with a chuckle as she called forth a thick wall of rock from the ground, blocking the barrel of the 88 mm antiaircraft flak cannon that Chifuyu had made moments earlier. “I think it’s time to show off the special trick I’ve been saving!”

The rock wall vanished as Hatoko spread her arms wide open. On some instinctual level, I could tell what she was doing: she was focusing on two different types of power at once, directing one of them into her right hand and the other into her left.

“Put fire and earth together, and you geeet...” Hatoko crouched down, planting both of her hands on the ground and channeling their contrasting elements simultaneously. “Maaagma!”

The ground rumbled with a thunderous crash.

“Wh-What?!” I exclaimed, leaping to my feet. “N-No...she wouldn’t!” My voice trembled with fear as I forced the words out, one after another...and glanced over to the girl sitting beside me. “Of all the moves to make...I can’t believe she’d go with that!”

Glance. “Dammit, that, really?! That...?”

Glance. “That! That! Thaaat!”

“Oh my god, please, shut up!” My persistence finally got the better of Tomoyo, who’d been doing her damndest to ignore me. “I don’t care how much you want me to say something like ‘That?! You know what she’s doing, Andou?!’ It’s not happening! Stop looking at me like that!”

“Oh, come on! You can’t do commentary on a battle without somebody on the sidelines asking you questions. The least you could do is help out with that!”

“Not happening! Commentate all you want, but don’t try to drag me into it!”

What a killjoy. The ideal way for that to play out would’ve been for everyone to beg me for an explanation, but tragically, absolutely nobody was interested in hearing my commentary in the slightest. That left me with no choice but to just go ahead and do it on my own initiative.

“Mwa ha ha! It seems we’ll have a rare chance to bear witness to Over Element’s true potential: the Aspect Splice!” By combining two elements of differing aspects, Hatoko could enhance the destructive power of both of them! She was the only one in our club who could hope to pull off such a feat. “Over Element: Kagutsuchi Mode Technique: Blazing Stratum!”

“Hey, Andou?” said Tomoyo. “I know you’re really satisfied about getting to shout that technique name, and I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but the fight moved on from that bit ages ago.”

“It did?!” Damnations! Looks like expositing on this battle’s a lost cause.

I looked back to the battleground, and I was surprised to find that nothing in particular was happening at all. No...it looked like nothing was happening, but the moment I noticed how fiercely the two of them were concentrating, I realized I was wrong. The arena was calm at a glance, but behind closed doors—nay, beneath the surface, the battle still raged on.

If Hatoko’s move had gone as planned, the moment she’d laid hands upon the ground, the earth would’ve roared, the battlefield would’ve been cleaved in twain, and a geyser of red-hot magma would’ve erupted from the crevasse. The almighty Empress of Genesis across the field from her, however, had no intention of letting that happen.

As best as I could tell, for every layer of earth Hatoko’s magma surged through, Chifuyu was creating another stratum to hold it down. She was effectively putting a lid on the eruption, over and over again.

“World Create’s most dangerous attribute isn’t the breadth or number of weapons it can create,” I exposited. “No—its most fearsome trait by far is the speed of its powers of creation!”

If Chifuyu felt like it, she could activate her power literally instantaneously. Rapid-fire activations were a snap as well. Her power could be overtly flashy in other ways, but it wouldn’t do to let yourself get tricked by that initial impression. Just like a certain Bankai that had an effective range of up to thirteen kilometers (a personal favorite of mine, by the way), what really made her power incredible was its speed—a far less immediately obvious factor.

Hatoko furrowed her brow as she realized that her magma attack had been foiled. “You’re pretty good, Chifuyu,” she begrudgingly admitted.

“I haven’t even started yet.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I haven’t even started yet either!”

“I haven’t even started starting yet.”

From an outside perspective, it really did look like they were just staring at each other, but just beneath them, two impossibly powerful forces were vying for supremacy, one pushing up and the other bearing down. It was a pure, head-on battle of brute force, and the victor would be determined by who had the stamina to hold out the longest. The second either of them lost focus, the match would be decided.

I paused for a moment. It was beginning to dawn on me that Hatoko and Chifuyu might’ve been taking their sparring match a little too seriously. The point was to measure their powers’ growth and development, so they didn’t have to go that all out, did they?

Yeah, I think it’s time to pull the plug. Don’t want them taking it too far and getting hurt—that’d be a disaster! We have Sayumi around to undo any injuries, of course, but that’s no excuse to get complacent about getting hurt. That said, jumping into the middle of this ridiculous joke of a battle’s way beyond me, that’s for sure...

While I was busy worrying, somebody else took the initiative. “Tomoyo?” said Sayumi. She spoke quietly, not standing up or even making any particular gestures. She just gave Tomoyo a look.

“Got it.” Tomoyo nodded without asking for so much as a word of clarification—and then she disappeared.

“Okay, you two. Playtime’s over,” she said, suddenly standing in the middle of the battlefield with her arms crossed.

“Huh? Whaaa?” stammered Hatoko, who’d been turned upside-down before she knew it. She was still in the same pose as before, only now with her back on the ground and her hands up in the air. She looked sorta like an overturned turtle.

“Uh...?” grunted Chifuyu, whose chair had been turned to face the opposite direction. Suddenly she was staring off at the horizon, and she didn’t seem to know what to make of it. Both combatants’ concentration had been thoroughly disrupted, of course, and the ground’s rumbling quickly faded away.

“You guys were both going way too hard!” Tomoyo scolded. “This is just a check-in! You don’t have to take it that seriously, do you?”

“Tomoyo...” muttered Hatoko, looking a bit chagrined. “Heh heh, sorry. I guess I got a little too into the moment.”

“I did too, a little,” admitted Chifuyu.

It was like we’d been watching a video that had skipped a few seconds, shunting us from mere moments before the battle’s climax to several seconds after its resolution. This could only be the work of Kanzaki Tomoyo’s power, Closed Clock. She could stroll right into the most savage and violent of clashes with ease. No matter how absurdly fast the action was taking place, to a girl who ruled over time itself, it would look like it was standing still—because to her, it literally would be.

“Good effort out there, Hatoko, Chifuyu,” I said as they returned to the club room. “You too, Tomoyo.”

“It’s not like I put in any effort, really,” Tomoyo casually quipped in response.

“Really? But wasn’t it super hard to move the two of them while time was stopped?” I hadn’t meant anything by the question, really, but Tomoyo stiffened up with a little grunt-like gasp, her eyes wide.

When she stopped time, the rest of us perceived anything she did as happening instantaneously. We only saw the result, which made Closed Clock one of the most ridiculously cool powers out there to see in action. For Tomoyo herself, though, it was a lot more of an ordeal to pull that sort of stuff off.

Most likely, the second after she’d stopped time, she’d dashed out into the arena, gone to great effort to flip Hatoko over, gone to even greater effort to spin Chifuyu around, chair and all, then finally gone to the trouble of sprinting back out in between them, just so she could pull off a pose the second her power disengaged.

Man... Now that I’m imagining it, that’s actually kinda heartwarming. Tomoyo’s never had much in the way of muscle, and human beings aren’t exactly light, even if they are schoolgirls. Moving both of them must’ve really winded her, but she still managed to catch her breath in time, fold her arms, and drop a “playtime’s over” on top of it all. What do I even call that? Hamming it up? Putting on airs? In any case, all I can say is: man.

“Ah, now that you mention it, that’s true!” agreed Hatoko. “You put in some hard work out there too, huh, Tomoyo? Good work!”

“Nice, Tomoyo,” Chifuyu chimed in.

“Ah, n-no, I didn’t—d-don’t thank me! It’s weird! I-I didn’t work hard or anything at all!” shouted Tomoyo. Hatoko and Chifuyu’s genuine appreciation had thrown her into a panic.

“But, you know—why did you go out of your way to move us like that?” Hatoko asked, cocking her head curiously. “You didn’t have to bother, did you? We would’ve stopped the moment you came out here anyway!”

Tomoyo’s face flushed red in an instant. She tried to stammer a reply, but couldn’t get so much as a word out.

Ahh, here we go again. I guess it’s time for me to step up to the plate and throw Tomoyo a lifeline. After all, I understand exactly why she did it that way.

“Don’t be stupid, Hatoko! You can’t ask why when people do stuff like that—you’ll spoil her whole act!”

“Her ‘act’?”

“Yeah! She did it to show off her power, duh! Most likely, she was thinking something along the lines of ‘Oh, man, if this were a manga, they’d totally pull out a two-page spread for this moment!’ or whatever.”

“Huh? But why would she do something like that?”

“’Cause it’s cool! Anyway, that’s more than enough picking her act apart for now. We should just keep quiet so she can bask in it for a little. Let her have this!”

“I can hear you, dumbass!” Something slammed into the back of my head. All of a sudden, I had a newfound appreciation for the phrase “no good deed goes unpunished.”

“Quit acting all considerate about this!” she yelled. “It makes it so much worse!”

“Look, Tomoyo,” I said, turning around to face my attacker. “I get you. I really do! I know exactly what you’re going through right now. If I could stop time, I’d want to show it off like that too! I’d put on an act so terrifying that nobody would dare to approach me, no matter how badly they wanted to kick my ass!”

“Please, stop trying to comfort me... Don’t sympathize with me... Just laugh already, get it over with...” moaned Tomoyo. All sorts of complicated emotions were flashing across her face all at once. I could imagine she was feeling pretty darn conflicted, considering she was someone who used to share my particular sense of aesthetics and showmanship. “A-And besides, Sayumi’s the one who started it!”

“Oh? Am I?”

“Yeah, you are! You asked me to break them up, and you did it in a way that made you look like a super calm, collected, final boss sorta character who ordered her subordinate to do the dirty work since she couldn’t be bothered! And I sorta got caught up in that whole image, and...well...”

I got where she was coming from. The way Sayumi had gotten the point across while barely saying a word was super friggin’ cool. She’d played out the ideal that every club president should aspire to...but apparently, that impression of mine had been hopelessly off base.

“No, actually, all I wanted to say was ‘Tomoyo, be careful—your teacup’s about to fall off the table.’ That’s all.”

Tomoyo’s jaw dropped. “Y-You—what?”

“But before I could finish my sentence, you said ‘got it,’ gave me the most confident little nod, and vanished without giving me the chance to get a word in edgewise. Frankly, I almost panicked.”

Ooof! The shame! Talk about a humiliating misunderstanding! I’d misunderstood right along with her, of course, but Tomoyo’s the one who actually took action, so it was up to her to bear the brunt of the embarrassment.

She wasn’t bearing it very well, though. In fact, she was kinda just groaning incoherently. I’d never seen her get driven that far up against a wall before. She clutched at her head, face shifting from flushed to pale and back again, trembling violently.

“I get it!” shouted Chifuyu, breaking into the conversation. Her eyes glimmered with a light that spoke of a sudden revelation. “I understand now!”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Understand what?”

“I understand all that stuff you told me the other day!”

Chifuyu trotted over to Tomoyo, whose self-respect was clearly teetering on the brink of absolute ruin. Chifuyu looked up at her, then began to slowly speak.

“You worked really hard, but you said you didn’t. You tried to act cool in weird ways you saw in manga, and you said stuff that sounded like cool lines you’d read in a manga too. That means...”

Chifuyu pointed a little finger directly at Tomoyo’s face.

“Tomoyo, you’re a chuuni!”

“Ugyaaaugh!” Convulsions wracked Tomoyo’s body. The damage she’d taken was so critical, she crumpled to her knees.

Chifuyu had a really hard time figuring out the whole chuuni concept when we’d explained it to her a little while back, but apparently, Tomoyo had just inadvertently helped her come to terms with it. Normally, I’d call that a good thing, but I could only imagine the sort of existential crisis that being the trigger for Chifuyu’s revelation was causing Tomoyo to go through.

Tomoyo tottered over to a corner of the club room in a stupor, sat down on the floor, and clutched her knees to her chest in the fetal position. There was no doubt about it: Chifuyu had dealt the killing blow to her psyche.

“T-Tomoyo?” I said, reflexively walking over to check on her. “You okay?”

A moment of silence passed before she droned, “I’m never using my power again.” I could practically see dark clouds of gloom looming over her, and her cheeks were puffed out in a sullen frown.

Ahh, yup, she’s in hardcore sulk mode. We should probably just leave her alone for now. I wandered back over to the rest of my clubmates.

“How about we get back to our power checkup for now?” I suggested. We’d drifted way off topic for quite a long while, but that was our whole objective for the day, in theory. “How was it, Hatoko? Did anything feel different this time around?”

“Hmm... Nope, it was just like always! Aspect Splicing’s still a little tough, but I can just manage it if I focus really hard. Oh, and using water right after I use fire or using wind right after I use earth is still pretty hard too.”

“So, using opposing elements in succession still makes them harder to pull off, huh? I’m starting to think that’s not gonna change, no matter how much you practice.”

“Hmm...are you really sure about that? I haven’t been practicing at all, so how would we know?”

“Fair point. What about you, Chifuyu? Anything change?”

“Nothing. It was all normal.”

“Gotcha...” I sighed. “Sheesh, nothing ever changes, does it? Makes me wonder if there’s even any point in keeping these checkups going.”

We’d been doing them every month like clockwork ever since our powers had awakened, but as of yet, they hadn’t revealed so much as a single real development. There were slight variations from trial to trial, but those seemed to depend more on how well-rested we were and what sort of state of mind we were in than anything else. Measurement errors, basically. As far as real improvement or deterioration went, we hadn’t noticed a thing.

“Though, then again, since we haven’t done any real fighting or training, I guess it makes sense we haven’t improved,” I mused. “Right, Sayumi?”

“Quite. Although I feel I should note that there’s no particular need for us to improve our powers in the first place,” she dryly agreed.

For better or worse, we had no driving objective. That meant we had no reason to polish our abilities at all. We’d quickly reached the conclusion that if we were going to spend time practicing anything, focusing on our schoolwork would be way more productive than anything involving our powers. All the girls’ powers were already so outlandishly godlike I couldn’t even imagine how they’d get any more powerful than they already were, anyway.

“And all that said,” Sayumi continued, “even if we wanted our powers to develop, we don’t know how to go about making that happen.” She had a point. It would’ve been nice if there were some simple, readily understandable system driving their growth—like if our mastery of our powers improved every time we used them—but all available evidence suggested that wasn’t the case. “After all, Andou, you’ve been using your power at the drop of a hat ever since you obtained it, and it hasn’t developed in the slightest.”

Ooof, that one stung. Again, though, she was right. I’d played around with—ahem, made effective use of my power more than anyone. I was constantly striving to take my ability to new heights, but its actual output hadn’t improved in the least.

“Dammit... Now I know how it feels to be the one member of your crew who actually bothers working out but somehow never seems to get any stronger than any of your fellow crewmates...”

“The idea of you comparing yourself to a certain legendary swordmaster is absolutely laughable. Stop,” said Sayumi with a cold, biting glare. “In any case, these checkups may be fruitless, yes, but I would personally vote to continue them regardless. They hardly take much time or effort, and we don’t lose anything by carrying them out. There’s also a chance that we’ll be able to identify aspects of our powers’ potential that we’d never notice on our own. An outside perspective is always helpful in that respect.”

I couldn’t think of any reason to object to Sayumi’s logic, and I nodded in agreement. Hatoko and Chifuyu agreed as well.

“All right then, how about we check out your power next, Sayumi?” I suggested. “Though I guess for you, there’s not much we can do other than ask you how it’s been lately.”

“Quite, and I’ve noticed no changes in particular. As you can see...”

Sayumi walked over to Hatoko and Chifuyu and laid one hand on each of their uniforms, which were rather disheveled from their battle. An instant later, they were so fresh and clean they looked almost brand new. That was Sayumi’s power, Route of Origin: the power to return things to the way they were meant to be.

“...my power is working as well as ever,” she concluded with a shrug and a smile. Hatoko and Chifuyu quickly thanked her for cleaning them up.

Sayumi’s ability was probably the most unique out of all of ours, to the point that it was actually pretty hard to explain in succinct terms. As a result, the idea of her power getting stronger or weaker didn’t exactly make sense. The concepts didn’t even seem to apply to her, really.

The ability to return things to how they were meant to be had virtually no potential as far as direct attacks went. It might sound like I’m talking her down when I put it this way, but it was undeniably a purely defensive power. I wouldn’t even know how to go about measuring stuff like its level of output or speed of activation, so her part of the superpower checkups tended to be over in a couple sentences. This time was no exception—we were already set to move on to the next member.

“Guess Tomoyo’s up next. Heeey, Tomoyo!”

Seconds passed. No reply. It had been a few minutes since she’d taken up her fetal position in the corner, but she still hadn’t budged an inch. Her emotional wounds this time might’ve been deeper than I’d given them credit for.

“Psst! Hey, Juu! Why’s Tomoyo so upset?” asked Hatoko.

“That’s kinda hard to explain, honestly... Let’s just say that she’s locked in a pitched battle with her own past self. That girl, I swear—she’d have a way easier time of it if she unleashed her deep-seated impulses and let them run rampant!”

“What would happen then?”

“Mwa ha ha! She would join me in the ranks of those who have been chosen by fate, that’s what!”

“Ooh. I hope she doesn’t, then. I don’t want Tomoyo to end up like you.”

“Wow, jeez! That was a really casual way to say something really nasty... But, well, whatever. Hey, Chifuyu? Sorry, but would you mind apologizing to Tomoyo? You don’t have to actually mean it.”

“Huh?” Chifuyu cocked her head. “I should say I’m sorry?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t have to be a real apology, like I said—just go up to her and say ‘I’m sorry for telling the truth.’ I’ll buy you some candy sometime if you do, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Umm...Andou?” said Sayumi. “You do realize that’s liable to make Tomoyo feel even worse, don’t you?”

“Nah, it’ll be fine. Pretty sure she’s already bounced back, anyway.”

“How’s that?”

“I figure she actually got over it ages ago, but since she made such a big show out of getting depressed, it’d feel really awkward to rejoin the conversation like nothing happened, so she’s been pretending to still be upset this whole time.”

“I see... When you put it that way, that is perfectly plausible. Tomoyo always makes an effort to act calm and aloof, but she can be surprisingly prone to attention-seeking when all is said and done.”

“We just have to give her a chance to jump back into the group. I bet she’s going out of her mind waiting for someone to say something to her right about now.”

“Yes, I believe you’re right about that. The fetal position practically screams ‘I’m depressed, please comfort me,’ after all.”

“Ha ha ha, I know, right? Okay, Chifuyu, think you can go fake an apology to the needy little drama queen in the corner over—”

“I can hear you, dammit!” Tomoyo appeared in front of me and smacked me upside the head. Or, rather, Tomoyo appeared in front of me having already smacked me upside the head.

“Ow! Jeez, Tomoyo!” So much for never using your power again!

“I can’t take any more of this crap!” Tomoyo wailed. “Just how much do you have to rub it in before you’re satisfied?! You could at least have your stupid little strategy meeting somewhere where I can’t hear you!”

“Man, and here I was thinking you’d be grateful we were trying to spare your feelings...”

“Sometimes, sparing somebody’s feelings is the most hurtful thing you can possibly do to them!” Tomoyo’s shoulders heaved as she gasped for breath, her face flushed bright red. Finally, she let out a long, beleaguered sigh and corrected her posture. “Whatever! I’m done with this! We’re moving on, already! I’m next, right? Let’s just get this over with!”

Carrying on that conversation for any longer was clearly just going to make it worse, so I decided not to object to Tomoyo’s attempt to brush it off. We all gathered around her.

“All right, Tomoyo! Whenever you’re ready!” I said. We measured her power by one simple metric: how long she could keep time stopped in a single activation of her power.

“Okay, here goes—forty-seven. And, that’s it! Looks like a bit less than forty-seven seconds today.”

“I know it’s always fast, but dang, that never stops surprising me!”

Her power really was consistently astonishing. The moment she said “here goes,” Tomoyo had stopped time and started counting out loud. Her power deactivated just an instant before she got to forty-seven, and to us, of course, it looked like no time at all had passed in between.

“Forty-seven seconds, huh?” I repeated. “Guess that’s about average.”

“I mean, in theory, yeah, but my sense of time isn’t exactly perfect. I’m probably not counting at the same exact speed every time, so who knows how far off I am.”

“Stopping time means stopping all the clocks, so not much you can do about that.”

The length of Closed Clock’s time stop effect varied considerably depending on Tomoyo’s condition on any given day. Typically, it fell somewhere in the range of thirty seconds to a minute in duration. Considering the nature of its effect, though, we had absolutely no way to gather data about it other than Tomoyo’s own personal reports, which not even she considered a hundred percent reliable.

Only Tomoyo could perceive what happened when she brought the world to a standstill. Clocks and stopwatches froze right along with time, of course, so the best that we could do was trust in her ability to count out loud. Man. The power to stop time is surprisingly fiddly in a lot of ways.

“Well then, I believe that concludes our examination of everyone’s powers,” said Sayumi, clapping her hands together. “It’s time to bring our club’s sixth monthly superpower checkup to a close.”

“Yup, nice work, everyone!” I said, kicking off the usual wrap-up speech. “Let’s all take care to keep our superpowers in check, even after the checkup’s over! Just because we’re finished for today doesn’t mean we can stop paying attention to our development! See you all again at the seventh monthly...hey, wait a minute!”

I played along until the last second before finally slamming the brakes. Let it never be said that I’m not cooperative when it comes to other people’s comedy bits!

“Hold up a second, Sayumi! What sort of played out joke do you think you’re pulling?! We’re not done yet—we still haven’t made it to the main event!”

“Oh, Andou. I didn’t realize you were still here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?! Of course I am, and this checkup isn’t over yet! I haven’t used my power yet!”

“Oh, that was a From the Northern Country reference, wasn’t it? How very clever.”

“No, it wasn’t! I just happened to use a phrasing that sounded sorta similar to a line from the show! Totally unintentional!”

“Oh, is that so? In that case, you need to be more careful. You have to commit to your parodies. If you’re going to do one, then do it, but if you’re not, then don’t make it sound like you might be! If you don’t make these things extremely clear, people will think you’re just ripping the source material off.”

Was this really the moment to lecture me on parody theory, Sayumi? “Fair enough, but not the point! We can’t come this far and wrap it up without checking all of our powers, can we? Haven’t you skipped over an extremely important member of the club?”

“Have I? And who might that be?”

“Me! It’s me! Me!”

“Rigaton-me,” said Chifuyu, jumping into the conversation at the weirdest possible moment.

“Uhh, Chifuyu?” I said after hesitating for a moment. “We’re kind of in the middle of something here. Do you think you could save the unfunny surrealism for later?”

“It wasn’t funny...?”

“Gah! No, sorry, I didn’t mean it! Don’t get upset! It was super hilarious! You’re such a kidder!”

“Really...?”

“Yeah, really! I’m seriously gonna die of laughter! Literally busting a gut over here!”

“Okay, then. One more time.”

“Huh?”

“I wanna do it again. You first.”

“Me...first? Oh, umm—M-Me, it’s me! Me!”

“Macaro-me.”

“...”

“...”

“Sooo...Chifuyu?”

“Yeah?”

“Was that good enough?”

“Yeah. I’m done now.”

“Awesome. If that’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me...”

And now I’m tired... A wave of exhaustion washed over me all at once. Dealing with Chifuyu, the ultimate free spirit, always really took a chunk out of my mental stamina bar.

“Well then, I think that’s just about enough messing with Andou for the moment,” said Sayumi. “Let’s move on to his checkup, shall we?”

“Okaaay,” the other members reluctantly droned. Everything about their tone screamed that, to them, this was an unpleasant obligation to be suffered through, but I couldn’t care less about their bad attitudes.

“Mwa ha ha...” A dauntless grin spread across my face. The time has finally come—this is my moment! It was worth waiting and holding back until the very last second!

“Mwa ha ha, mwaaa ha ha ha ha ha! Yes, indeed—it’s only right that we’d save me for the final round!” Note: “the final round,” not just “last.” Very important distinction. “Very well, then! Allow me to demonstrate the power that some call the Umbral Tempest!”

Tomoyo sighed. “Another title? Really?”

“You sure love the word tempest, don’t you, Juu?” added Hatoko curiously.

Do I really need to even explain why the word “tempest” is so amazingly cool? It sort of goes without saying, right? By which I mean, I’m not sure I could explain it even if I wanted to. Just what is it about that word that resonates so deeply within the core of my being? Whatever it is, I can say this with certainty: tempests are hella cool.

“‘Kay, here I go!” I stood at the center of attention and raised my right arm up in front of me.

“I am he who conquers chaos! O purgatorial flame that sways upon the brink of the Abyss, O twisted blaze of sable darkness, blighted crimson of deepest night! O howling, maddening inferno that paves the road to oblivion! Fetter sin with sin, pierce my being with thine onyx sigil, and bare thine fangs at the arrogance of providence! Dark and Dark!”

A jet-black blaze flared up from the palm of my hand. It danced in the air, twisting, flickering, and coiling about itself. It burned fiercely, yet it had a certain frailty to it as well—truly a manifestation of my very self.

“Oh, Dark and Dark... Tonight, your flames burn darker and lovelier than ever...”

“Okay, everyone, time for the usual,” said Sayumi, totally ignoring me as I reveled in my superpower’s unearthly beauty. The others followed her example, carrying out their part of my power’s checkup.

Each member of the literary club walked up and stuck a hand into my blazing black inferno. That would be insane if Dark and Dark burned like a normal flame—they’d end up with major burns, at the very least—but it was, well...suffice to say that it, uhh, was fire of a very particular and peculiar composition. No matter what part of your body you shoved into it, you wouldn’t get burned in the least.

As my clubmates got a taste of my flame most foul, they each gave a quick impression of it.

“Kinda tepid.”

“Warm, I’d say!”

“Lukewarm, at the absolute most.”

“Lukewarm.”

The verdict was unanimous: Dark and Dark wasn’t hot by any conceivable standard.

“You can’t be serious...” I said, stunned. “No, that can’t be right. Try it again, guys! It’s gotta feel a little hotter than last time, right?”

“Wrong. It’s exactly the same as ever,” Tomoyo replied mercilessly. “’Bout as warm as the water in the tub after the rest of your family have already taken their baths.”

“Damnations! I’ve unleashed my ability every day for a half year—a half year, never tiring, never resting, devoting myself solely to my power—and look at all the good it did me...”

“I’m sorry, ‘devoting yourself to your power’?” said Tomoyo, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “What exactly have you done other than coming up with that ridiculous Malediction and making up names for a bunch of attacks you can’t even pull off?”

That was a real gotcha question, and I decided to ignore it. I quickly broke eye contact, dispelled my ability, and sighed. Guess my power is as useless as always...or so the past me would think! It’s not gonna end there, though—not this time!

“I hate to say this when you guys are all ready to be done, but this isn’t over yet!” I declared. After all, just the other day, my power had finally achieved a new form! In other words, I had undergone an awakening! Some doors can only be opened by those who dedicate themselves fully to their abilities, and I’d gone and opened mine! I’d reached my power’s next stage!

“The time has come! I shall allow you to bask in the glory of Dark and Dark...of the End!”

What happened next must’ve taken less than a second in total.

The moment I said my new power’s name, everyone’s expressions had shifted dramatically. As best as I could tell, Tomoyo had instantly used her power to circle around behind me and pin my arms behind my back. A moment later, Sayumi was in front of me, one hand held up against my chest in just the right place to completely immobilize me. Something to do with my center of gravity, probably.

The other two just jumped to their feet and distanced themselves from me as quickly as possible, evacuating to the far corner of the room. They were now standing on guard, watching me carefully and ready to react to anything that might happen. All four of them looked incredibly on-edge.

“Uh, umm...?” I stammered. I had no clue what to make of whatever had just happened.

“I really hope you weren’t seriously thinking of using The End, Andou.” Tomoyo spoke right into my ear. She was scolding me, no doubt about it, but there was also a subtle hint of nervous tension to her tone.

“O-Of course I wasn’t! I was kidding! Just a little joke, jeez...”

“Some things are okay to joke about. Others are most emphatically not,” chided Sayumi, finally removing her hand from my chest. Tomoyo let me go around that point as well, and Hatoko and Chifuyu crept back out from the corner. “You haven’t forgotten what happened last time, have you?”

Sayumi’s stare was really intense, and I quickly averted my gaze, caving under the pressure. “I know, I know... I’ll never use The End again, I promise.”

The day of my second awakening, the day I unlocked my power’s next stage, I had activated it without a moment’s hesitation. The consequences were dire. If I had to express the whole incident in a single word, I’d have to go with “horrific.” If I were allowed to use two words, I might pick “utterly hellish” or “ultimate suffering,” maybe.

I didn’t even want to think about it. It was the first time in my life I genuinely thought I was going to die, and it was the first time in my life I genuinely thought I might kill someone. When I consider what might’ve happened if Sayumi and Chifuyu hadn’t been around at the time...it sends a chill down my spine.

“Really, the only thing that your awakening changed was that it made your already useless power somehow even more useless than before,” said Tomoyo. Which was mean, but also true. I couldn’t object.

A thousand damnations... Why does my power still have to be worthless post-awakening? What sort of torture is this?!

“Seriously,” she continued, “I don’t know if I should call you difficult, or just plain crazy, or what... First, you get a black flame that doesn’t burn—the weirdest, most incomprehensible power I could possibly think of—and then you get an ability that feels like it’s picking a fight with the supernatural battle genre itself...”

“Heh. I really am out of place, no matter where I go... Y’know, every once in a while, I wonder: if it weren’t for this power of mine, would I just be another ordinary person, living out some commonplace little life?”

“Ugggh.” Tomoyo cringed. “Of course you’d do the thing where your chuuni delusions wrap so far around you end up pretending you want to be normal.”

“If he’s reached that stage of behavior, that would imply that he’s reached the far end of the chuuni spectrum, wouldn’t it?” added Sayumi.

What’s “the chuuni spectrum” even supposed to be?

Anyway, with that, we’d tested out everyone’s powers. Our superpower checkup had finally reached its end. As such, we went back to our usual daily activity: doing whatever we felt like.

As for what I felt like doing, I hadn’t actually figured that out yet. I considered reading the light novel I was partway through, or challenging someone to a game of Othello, or maybe thinking up a new special move for Dark and Dark (or thinking up a name for one, anyway). I didn’t get to carry that thought process to its conclusion, though, before somebody opened the door and stepped into our room.

“Excuse me,” said the interloper in a clear, carefully controlled tone of voice. “All five of you are here again, I see? You’re as close-knit as ever. If there’s one thing this club of yours has to brag about, it’s your members’ attendance rate.”

Our snide, scowling visitor was none other than the president of the student council, Kudou Mirei. Her glare was as sharp as her posture was dignified, and her formal, well-enunciated manner of speaking made her seem incredibly straitlaced. Most importantly, she happened to be like us in that she’d awakened to her own supernatural power.

A few days earlier, Kudou had attempted a raid on our club’s room. This will probably make it sound like a lot bigger of a deal than it actually turned out to be, but we ended up battling her, more or less, and winning by an overwhelming margin.

Kudou’s power—the power to steal other people’s powers—was as terrifying as could be. It was an ability worthy of a final boss, and yet by our powers combined, we had managed to drive her back. Well, I say our powers combined, but really, everyone knows I did the bulk of the heavy lifting.

“Oh, Miss Kudou. What brings you here today?” asked Sayumi, who happened to be in both the same grade and the same class as her. Meanwhile, the two second-year girls beside me struck up their own hushed conversation.

“I wonder why Kudou is here again,” pondered Hatoko. “Do you have any idea, Tomoyo?”

“No clue. The whole trying-to-get-our-club-shut-down thing was all an act, so who knows why she’d be back.”

“Y’know what I think?” I said, cutting into the exchange. “I think she’s here for round two! She was so frustrated by her humiliating defeat, she decided to come get payback! This is the beginning of Kudou Mirei’s revenge arc!”

“As if! The real world doesn’t work like a battle manga.”

While we were busy speculating, Sayumi was moving her conversation forward. “Do you have business with the literary club today? If you have a request for us, I’d be happy to assist.”

“No, I don’t,” Kudou bluntly replied.

“In that case...can I assume this has something to do with our powers?”

A subtle tension fell over the room. Kudou, a girl with a superpower, came to see us knowing very well that we had powers too. I think it goes without saying that there had to be some greater significance to her visit. But what could it be? I gulped, but my expectations were immediately betrayed.

“No, actually. I don’t have anything in particular to report when it comes to our powers. I haven’t noticed any new developments lately.”

Her reply immediately broke the rising tension, and I felt my muscles slowly unclench. I do have to admit I had mixed feelings about it, though. I was half relieved and half disappointed. Nothing happening was the absolute best case scenario, but at the same time, deep down inside, a small part of me wanted some sort of crazy, exciting development to strike.

“I’m here for a purely personal reason,” explained Kudou. “I’m not visiting in my capacity as the president of the student council or as someone with a superpower. No, I’m simply here as myself.” At that point, Kudou’s intense, ever-serious gaze turned to me.

“Andou Jurai. I came here today to speak with you.”

“W-With me?”

I hadn’t expected her to call me out at all, but I stood up and walked over to her anyway. What on earth does she want? D-Don’t tell me she’s actually here for vengeance?! Is she pissed that I barely did anything in our last battle but took all the credit and gloated in the end anyway?! Does she want to 1v1 me?!

What should I do?! I’m so screwed! I can’t handle a fistfight, no way, no how! Ah, erm, I mean, umm...my power is far too mighty and terrible to ever consider using on a mere civilian! Pulling out a world-ending force of devastation in a basic brawl is just terrible form.

As I trembled with fear, Kudou was still staring straight at me. Her eyes burned with a crazed fervor, and her cheeks looked a little flushed. Maybe she took the time to warm up before she came here?

“S-Stop staring at me, Andou,” said Kudou. “Y-You’re embarrassing me.”

“Huh? Ah, right, sorry!”

“G-Good... Ah, no, I-I mean, I didn’t say not to look at me at all!”

“Okaaay?”

The situation was getting awkward, and I had no clue why. She wasn’t there to throw down, at least; I was fairly certain of that.

Kudou took a moment to stop, clear her throat, and resolve herself before she spoke up once more. “Andou. I came here today to reply to the letter you gave me.”

“Letter? What letter?”

“Don’t play dumb. I’m talking about the letter you left in my shoe cubby by the entryway.”

“Oooh, that! Okay, I see now.”

“You wrote Kudou a letter, Andou?” asked Sayumi, who was still standing next to me.

“Yeah, basically.” I had slipped a note into her shoe cubby the day after we kicked her ass in an epic battle. I didn’t know her phone number or anything, so it was the only way I could think of to contact her. I was at a total loss as to what part of that note she felt needed a reply, though... Oh, wait! I think I see what’s going on here!

“Andou,” Kudou continued, “you’ve made the depth of your feelings exceptionally clear, and I want you to know that I understand them perfectly.”

“Really? That’s great! Seriously, I’m super happy to hear it.”

“I would have rather had this conversation in private, frankly...but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. I’m sure everyone here would find out before long regardless.”

“Yeah, agreed! You’ve gotta brag to everyone about this sorta stuff, right?”

“B-Brag to them? I...I suppose so...”

At that point, Kudou suddenly fell silent. Her eyes darted hesitantly about the room, and her cheeks were now very clearly flushed.

“A-Andou Jurai!” she shouted, her voice shrill. “I’ve come today to reply to your letter—to your love letter, here and now!”

“To...what?” My love letter? What’s she talking about? I could practically feel the question mark floating above my head, but Kudou ignored my confusion and continued.

“I love you too! Let’s date!”

In that instant, the very air in the club room froze solid. I hadn’t noticed Hatoko use Over Element: Niflheim Mode Technique: Absolute Zero, so I had to assume that Kudou’s declaration was the cause of our paralysis. All available evidence would suggest that she’d just asked me out. Told me she loved me, straight up, point-blank.

It took a few seconds for all of our thought processes to resume. There was no end to the exclamations that needed saying and questions that desperately needed asking, but for us literary club members, one phrase took precedence above all others.

What the hell kind of plot twist was that?! LMAO!