Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 2 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Crisis——Climax

“Hmm. Interesting.”

The next day, I explained the whole ordeal I’d been thrust into to Sagami during our lunch break. He replied with a grunt that told me he was very much not interested, though he still had the same nonchalant smile plastered across his face as ever. We’d pushed our desks together for the break, so I didn’t really have anywhere else I could look.

“So, what’s your take on all this?” I asked.

“Hmm...” He thought about it for a moment. “Personally, I’d say that Hatoko’s tits are pretty much the perfect size.”

“Nobody asked!” And quit leering at my childhood friend, you creep!

“I have to admit, though, Sayumi does have one hell of a body too. Oh, and I’m not about to discount flat chests either! Little girls like Chifuyu are better when they’re flat, in my book.”

“Seriously, nobody wants to hear about your fetishes!” Aaargh, I can’t stand this guy! The demeaning, overfamiliar way he talked about girls—and, even worse, little girls—made me very literally sick to my stomach. The fact that he barely knew any of my clubmates just made it worse.

“Huh? We weren’t talking about tits?”

“No, we weren’t! And if anyone was listening to you just now, they’re gonna think I’ve been talking about them this whole time! Stop it!”

“Well, if tits aren’t the topic, then this conversation’s outside my jurisdiction.”

“Your jurisdiction’s limited exclusively to boobs?!”

“Weird, though... I could’ve sworn you said that Mirei teased Tomoyo about her tiny titties and Tomoyo blew a gasket, right?”

“I did, yeah, but that wasn’t the point of the story at all.”

“Hmm. That’s the only part I can actually remember.”

“Your memory sucks!”

“Okay, that’s enough joking around for now,” said Sagami with a mischievous grin. “I was actually listening. Mirei, the student council president, ended up falling for you thanks to a wacky misunderstanding, and she asked you out on top of it, right?”

I’d been so lost for a viable solution for the Kudou problem, I’d actually gone to Sagami, of all people, for advice. Yeah, grasping at straws, I know. He wasn’t aware of our powers, so I had to skim over a ton of the details, but it seemed that he’d more or less grasped the important points, at least.

“Right. So, what do you think? What would you do if you were in this situation?”

“Date her, I guess. Why not?”

“You make it sound so simple...” And he was totally brushing me off, to boot.

Though, actually, he was probably just being honest. If he really were in my situation, that’s probably exactly what he’d do. Sagami Shizumu was an utter degenerate with a pathological inability to judge girls on any basis other than whether or not they trigger his moé senses. He was a womanizer who never treated women well under any circumstances, and the real question was whether a guy like him was worth keeping around at all.

“You’re a surprisingly conscientious dude, aren’t you, Andou?” said Sagami, a look of bemused confusion on his face. “I bet you think that dating a girl you’re not actually into would be dishonest or something, right?”

“Yeah, because unlike you, I’m not shallow enough to go out with literally anyone who asks.”

“Hey, that’s just my personal policy. I never reject anyone who comes to me, and I never chase after anyone who leaves.”

I sighed. Sagami’s flippancy was just plain exhausting sometimes.

“Look, it’s not that I’m trying to be conscientious or whatever,” I explained. “I’m as happy about a girl asking me out as the next guy, and I don’t think it’s ethically wrong to date a girl you’re not already in love with. That said, Kudou only asked me out because of a huge misunderstanding. She might think she’s got a thing for me, but that feeling’s totally baseless. If I jumped into dating her like this, it’d feel like I’m, I dunno...taking advantage of her, I guess? I don’t really know how to put it, but you get what I mean.”

“I get that you’re a real conscientious dude, no question about it,” Sagami reiterated with a slight smirk. “But there’s one really important factor you’re not considering.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s something you have to make sure of before you decide whether or not you wanna date Mirei.”

“That being...?”

Sagami actually looked serious for once—maybe for the first time ever. There was an intensity to his gaze that made me gulp reflexively.

“Before anything else,” he began, “you have to check if she’s a virgin or not.”

“You went into serious mode for that?! What is wrong with you?!”

“Huh...? What’re you talking about, Andou?”

“Why would that reaction surprise you?! How was that anything other than horrifying?!”

“But whether or not a girl’s a virgin plays an enormous factor in determining her value, doesn’t it? Nobody wants to waste their time on used goods.”

“Get down on your knees and apologize to all the nonvirgin women around the world!”

“Any girl who isn’t a virgin isn’t a girl at all—nonhuman waifus included.”

This virginity-worshipping son of a bitch, I swear to god! How the hell can he justify mixing up reality and fiction that casually?! As a fellow man—scratch that, as a fellow human, I’m embarrassed to be associated with him! Perhaps he’d be willing to drop dead for the sake of mankind’s collective dignity?

“Wait a sec, Sagami—you’ve dated how many girls, again? You can’t expect me to believe that none of them had any experience! It’s not like you can just ask if they’re virgins before you agree to date them, right?”

“Actually, that’s exactly what I do.”

“Holy crap, you seriously do?! But, wait...do they, like, actually answer?”

“Yup. I mean, most of them don’t want to at first, but when I say I won’t go out with them if they don’t, they usually give in.”

“You’re starting to scare me, man...” Sagami was a smoking hot girl magnet, yet in spite of that, as long as I’d known him, he’d never joined the ranks of the normies. I was starting to feel like I’d solved a major piece of that puzzle.

While I was busy internally recoiling in horror, Sagami got an oddly far-off look in his eyes. “Once,” he said in a listless drone, “I ended up going out with a secondhand girl who lied about having her virginity. That was a mistake I’ll never live down till the day I die.”

“Funny—I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what she’d say about asking you out.”

“Seriously, finding out that a girl I thought was clean isn’t actually a virgin is a surprise I could do without. I straight up whited out.”

“What are you, a second-generation Pokémon protagonist?”

“Oh, speaking of whiting out, there was this super mediocre bukkake scene in the eroge I was playing last night. The devs just don’t get it: you can’t just show the money shot, you need to draw the part where she’s all covered in spunk too!”

“‘Whiting out’ is not a valid segue for ‘spunk!’ I know people say that even dirty comments can sound charming if the person saying them is hot enough, but your comments sail right past that line and just keep on going!”

Arggh, I can’t take much more of this! This is exactly why I can’t stand talking to Sagami. He forces me to spend so much time picking apart his stupidity that it becomes my defining character trait! We were supposed to be talking about my problem, but at some point along the way, this ended up being the Sagami Comedy Hour!

“You’re a real bundle of energy, you know that, Andou? That’s one of the things I like about you. Watching you is always a blast.” Sagami chuckled quietly and flashed another of his trademark smiles. If I were a girl, I might’ve fallen for him on the spot, but speaking as a guy, it just pissed me off.

In any case, I knew that I’d have to bring the whole Kudou affair to a proper conclusion, one way or another. My lack of plan aside, however, there was another big problem standing in my way: she was the president of the student council, and by extension, the representative of every student at our school.

That meant she was really busy pretty much all the time. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to find a good opportunity to sit down and talk with her. As such, there was no point in trying to rush things. I could take my time and carefully think over how to—wait she’s heeere?!

Well, so much for that thought process! The moment I stepped out of my classroom after school, I practically ran right into her. I didn’t even have to search for her—actually, she must’ve been waiting there for me.

I was painfully aware of the stares of the other students that passed us by. They were looking at us like we were some sort of show, and they were making faces that screamed “Wait, what’s the student council president doing here?” The girl responsible for their curiosity, however, was utterly unmoved by their attention, and she smiled as she struck up a conversation with me.

“Are you on your way to your club now, darling?” she asked.

“Y-Yeah, sure am,” I hesitantly replied.

“I see... I was thinking that maybe we could walk home together, but unfortunately, my student council work has me far too busy this afternoon. I barely got anything done yesterday, so I have to make up for it now!”

“That’s rough. Anyway, I’d better head out—”

“So I thought we could walk to the literary club’s room together instead! I’ll escort you to your club on my way to the student council room. Sound good, darling?”

“How is that even remotely ‘on your way’?!” The literary club’s room was on the first floor, and the student council’s room was all the way up on the top floor. She’d be going way out of her way if she actually walked me over there.

“I just want to spend a little time with you today, at least. You don’t mind, do you...?” she asked, a slight blush on her face and her head cocked to the side.

Gaaah, why does she have to be so cute?! How am I supposed to turn her down like this?! The answer, of course, was that I couldn’t. I had no choice but to reluctantly accept her offer and walk to my club with her at my side. She was humming happily the entire way, practically skipping too.

In short, Kudou was obviously in a fantastic mood. My first impression of her was that she was coolheaded and straitlaced to a fault, but that sure didn’t last long. Her personality had gone completely off the rails. I had a feeling that she wasn’t going to have very much luck with romance in the long run. Her professional life would be spotless, but her private life would be in shambles.

“Oh, that’s right! You should give me your email address, darling!” exclaimed Kudou, spinning around to face me. “I meant to ask you for it yesterday, but with all those interruptions, it slipped my mind.”

Oh, right. I guess we don’t have each other’s contact info, now that she mentions it. I didn’t have any reason to turn her down, so I pulled out my cell phone and exchanged addresses with her using our phones’ infrared sensors. Her phone was an extremely simple, basic model, with no straps or decorations on it at all. Yeah, that’s just like her.

“Oh? So this is your address?” said Kudou as the transmission completed and my email popped up on her screen.

[bloodydarkness_inthe_apocalypse666@***.ne.jp]

Heh! Now that’s an email address, if I do say so myself. At the time I came up with it, Bloody Darkness was far and away my favorite of my personal titles. As such, I wrote it out in English to make my email address’s first half, and for the second half...

“I recognize the first two words. That’s ‘bloody darkness’ in English, right?” asked Kudou. “I’m not sure about the ending, though...”

“That,” I proudly elucidated, “is how you write ‘apocalypse’ in English!” Indeed, the apocalypse! Also known as the Book of Revelations, which is, of course, umm...err...a Christian something or other.

“Oh? And why did you pick ‘666’ for the ending? That can’t possibly be your birthday.”

“Ah, yes, 666. In the Book of Revelations, that number...is the Number of the Beast.” Indeed, the Number of the Beast! Which would be... Okay, I’ll be real here, I have no clue what it actually is, but it’s called the Number of the Beast, and that’s good enough for me! The long story short of it’s that the word apocalypse and the number 666 work exceptionally well together...probably.

God damn, my email address is hella cool.

“Hmm. So, what does it all mean, in the end?” asked Kudou.

“That...is a truth best left unspoken. I’ve no desire to drag you into my tainted destiny.”

“Is that so? Well, I don’t mind if you don’t want to explain it. Nobody likes an excessively nosy woman, after all,” Kudou said, brushing off the matter of my email address like it was nothing.

Aww, c’mon, that’s the part where you’re supposed to beg me to explain it! I had so much more exposition I wanted to deliver about that address!

“More importantly...wh-what do you think of my address?” she asked, her voice slightly shrill. I glanced down at my own phone and took a look at her email address.

[mirei_jurai_foreverlove@***.ne.jp]

Umm.

Mirei, Jurai, forever love. Huh. Yeah, don’t really have to ask what that means.

Oh boy.

Oooh boy.

Ooooooh god, whyyyyyyyyy...

This is not a good sign. This is, in fact, the absolute worst sign I could ask for.

Kudou giggled. “I was thinking about you so much last night that I couldn’t manage to fall asleep,” she bashfully explained. “So, well, I just couldn’t help myself!”

Yeah, I can tell. Which is a shame, considering you desperately need help right now. Preferably professional help.

She’d made a fatal error that was all too common for people in the honeymoon phase of a relationship. A youthful indiscretion that she was absolutely guaranteed to regret, no matter how the situation was resolved in the end. The definition of awkward excess. When people turned the sappy couple crap up to eleven like that, it was always a sure sign that the relationship would be over within a week, and yet another email change would soon follow.

“Umm, darling...?” Kudou said as I stood there in stunned silence. “Ah, I see! You’re so happy you’ve been rendered speechless!”

Just how hopelessly optimistic is this girl? It’s true what they say: there really is no stopping a maiden in love! I’m so screwed—she’s even more excited about this whole dating thing than I thought!

The fact that she’d changed her address to that masterpiece of cringey horror meant without a doubt that she’d already told all her friends about our “relationship.” I was more convinced than ever that I had to resolve her misunderstanding as soon as possible...but I just couldn’t bring myself to go through with it. She just looked so happy, giggling uncontrollably as she stared at her stupidly sappy email address. How could I possibly tell her it was all a lie?

“Well, here we are! Have fun in your club today, darling!”

“Yeah, will do... Good luck with your student council stuff.”

“Oh, and I know the literary club’s full of cute girls, but don’t even think about cheating on me!”

“Uhh...right.”

“Okay, see you tomorrow! I’ll email you later tonight!”

Kudou departed, leaving me alone by the literary club room’s door. It took her a while, on account of her turning around every three steps to wave goodbye, but she finally turned a corner. I sighed wearily, then walked into our room.

“Man, this is such a disaster,” I muttered to myself. “Seriously, what am I supposed to do about—huh?”

The moment I stepped inside, I realized that something was wrong. Tomoyo, Hatoko, Sayumi, and Chifuyu had all turned to give me the coldest, unfriendliest looks I’d ever seen from them. Their glares were so pointed, I could literally feel them digging into my skin.

“Wh-What...? What’s wrong, guys...?” I nervously asked.

“Nothing,” all four of them replied in unison, immediately breaking eye contact. Every one of them was very obviously upset, though I couldn’t even begin to guess what they were mad about. The club room was usually a cozy, relaxing sanctuary for me, but suddenly it felt like I’d stepped right into enemy territory.

“H-Hey, Tomoyo, did something happen?” I asked as I took a seat.

“‘Did something happen,’ he says,” she parroted, still making no effort to conceal her irritation. “How ’bout you try asking yourself that?”

I decided to take her up on that and directed my attention inward, focusing on my deepest subconscious. “I know you can hear me, O inner self of mine. Answer me, please... Just who the hell am I?!”

“Who said anything about talking to your inner self?! That is not what I meant!”

“Huh? Wait, was I misunderstanding something?”

“Yeah—how to act like a sane human being! Not that that’s anything new,” Tomoyo jabbed, shaking her head in exasperation. Then she glanced away, nervously brushing a hand through her hair as she quietly continued. “Th-That was Kudou with you just now, wasn’t it? It’s really irritating to see the two of you flirting in public, you know?”

“Huh? She just walked with me to the room, that’s all. And it was her idea to begin with... And wait, we were not flirting!”

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that! Admit it: you’re not actually as unhappy about all this as you want us to believe, are you? I mean, just look at Kudou—she’s pretty, and she has a great figure to boot,” muttered Tomoyo, still refusing to make eye contact.

“Okay, seriously, what’s going on? Why’re you being so pissy today?”

“I’m not being pissy!”

“What, are you jealous or something?”

“A-Am I what?!” shouted Tomoyo. A blush flashed across her face, and she stiffened up so suddenly, she practically jumped out of her chair. “Wh-Wh-Why the hell would I be jealous of Kudou?! I don’t wanna d-date you at all!”

“Huh? No, I didn’t mean of Kudou specifically! I just meant, like, of couples in general. Single people always get jealous of people in relationships, right?” When you see a happy couple flirting in public, the first thing you do is curse them internally. That’s just basic human instinct.

“Oh, is that what you meant?” she sighed.

“Well, yeah,” I replied. “What did you think I meant?”

Tomoyo let out a frustrated moan and shouted, “Wh-Who cares?!” before making a point of very forcefully breaking eye contact again. She was, as always, an incredibly hard person to figure out.

Around that point, I happened to look over into the corner of the club room, where Hatoko was brewing a pot of tea. “Hey, Hatoko. Think you could pour me a cup too?”

“Ignooore.”

“Uh...” She sure did just say ‘ignore’ out loud. Okay. Huh. “H-Hey?”

“Ignooore.”

“Okay, what’s up with this ‘ignore’ thing? What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“I, Kushikawa Hatoko, am currently ignoring Juu,” she said with a frown. Frankly, that just made me more confused than ever. “Please don’t talk to me while I’m giving you the silent treatment!”

Oh, come on. What sort of moron tells the person they’re mad at that they’re getting the silent treatment? Hatoko had always been innocently good-natured, and it was once again clear that she just wasn’t suited for this sort of thing. Girl didn’t have a malicious bone in her body.

“Okay, but Hatoko—”

“Silent treatment! Please don’t talk to me!”

“But if I don’t try to talk to you, then you can’t give me the silent treatment, can you?”

“Wait, huh? What do you mean?” asked Hatoko, instantly reverting to her usual attitude.

Thank goodness she’s so predictable. “The silent treatment’s only the silent treatment if the person you’re giving it to tries to talk to you! How would they even know you’re ignoring them otherwise? In short, if you wanna give me the silent treatment, I have to try to talk to you first!”

“O-Okay, I see. Umm, but in that case, what should I do? How do I give you the silent treatment properly?”

“Why would you ask me that? Think it through yourself!”

“Right! Okay. I’ll think about it!”

That conversation could only have gotten dumber from that point on, so I decided to drop it and move along. I figured I’d go check up on Chifuyu next. I found her with a frown on her face and her cheeks puffed out sulkily. She was hugging her favorite stuffed squirrel, Squirrely.

“I guess you’re in a bad mood too, huh, Chifuyu?” I asked, trying my best to sound casual.

Chifuyu held Squirrely up to her face. “Chifuyu ain’t talkin’ to you today, pal! Shove off!” it snapped.

I mean, Squirrely didn’t really say that, of course! The stuffed animal couldn’t talk, and the voice was obviously Chifuyu’s. I could tell she was trying her best to change it, but it wasn’t really working out super well. I guess she’s trying to do a ventriloquist thing?

“So, yeah,” said Chifuyu by way of Squirrely, “you wanna talk to Chifuyu today, yer gonna have to do it through me!”

Oh, jeez, she’s so bad at this... I can see her lips moving, and I’m not even trying to catch her in the act. Even worse, she’s trying super hard to keep her mouth from moving, and her chin’s bobbing all over the place as a result. It looks like her jaw is misaligned or something! I didn’t think there was anything Chifuyu couldn’t make look cute, but a jutting jaw definitely crosses a line.

“Uhh, Ch-Chifuyu?”

“You deaf or something, pal? I told ya, if you wanna talk to Chifuyu, yer gonna have to do it through me! Them’s the breaks!”

She shoved the plushie in my face, which was actually sorta freaky. I didn’t let it stop me from pressing on with my questions, though.

“So, err, what’s with the accent?”

“Say what now? You gotta problem with how I talk? Gimme a break, pal! I ain’t got time for yer complaints!”

I didn’t know what to say to that. As best as I could tell, she was aiming to sound like some kind of gangster. I’d known Chifuyu for quite a while at that point, and she’d been carrying Squirrely around for as long as I’d known her, but I’d never had a clue that her squirrel was involved in organized crime. On the other hand, I could sorta understand why she’d make that call. After all, who doesn’t feel like busting someone’s kneecaps every once in a while?

“Gettin’ a real good eyeful, ain’tcha, pal? Come any closer and we’ll have ourselves a real dustup, you hear?!”

Oh, now her accent’s hurtling back through time. I think I’ve seen a guy in a fedora say that in a movie before.

“And just fer yer information, pal, Chifuyu’s all sortsa miffed at you!”

“Huh? She is? Why?”

“’Cause you’ve been gettin’ all chummy with that Kudou broad! Flirtin’ and leerin’ like nobody’s business!”

“That again...? How many times do I have to say that that’s not what I was trying to do?”

“Oh, and you’d better not be thinkin’ that you can pull a fast one on Chifuyu just ’cause she’s a kid!” shouted Squirrely, kicking up the intensity of its tone by a good twenty percent or so. Chifuyu’s jaw, meanwhile, jutted out about twenty percent more than it already was. Somehow, the sheer silliness of the whole situation was starting to make me want to play a little prank on her.

“’Sides, do you even realize what it means for a guy and a gal to—”

I plucked Squirrely from Chifuyu’s hands halfway through her line.

“—go...out...? Ah, ah, awaaah!” Chifuyu was left stammering in confusion. She clearly had no idea what she was supposed to do next. “G-Give it back! Andooou, give Squirrely back!”

I passed it back to her.

“Phew... Oh, no you didn’t, pal! That’s it, yer done! I’mma split yer skull like an acorn, ya cheeky little—”

I snagged it again...

“—punk... Ahh! Uggh, Andooou, give Squirrely—”

...and gave it back, only to snatch it away again a split second later!

“—back... Oh, give it a rest, pal! Now I say, just you wait, I’ll knock yer block into next Tuesday, I say!”

Ooh, I know this one! It sounds like a certain cartoon chicken. Maybe Chifuyu’s a fan of that old stuff. But anyway, better call her out now. 

“Chifuyu! You’ve got it backwards!” Squirrely was still firmly in my hands, meaning that Chifuyu was currently attempting a ventriloquist act sans ventriloquist dummy, while putting on a dubious accent and accidentally sticking her jaw out super far, no less.

She paused for a moment as the situation sank in, then let out a pathetic little whimper of shock. I could never figure out what was going through that kid’s head, but in that moment, at least, I could guess that doing a phony accent without her plushie to shield her was absolutely mortifying. Her cheeks were rapidly turning red, so I decided to give Squirrely back without making much more of a fuss about it.

The second her plushie was back in her arms, Chifuyu went running over to Hatoko. “Hatokooo! Andou’s bullying me!” she sobbed.

“Okay then, Chifuyu!” replied Hatoko. “We can give Juu the silent treatment together!”

“Yeah. I’m gonna ignore him.”

“That’s the spirit! Why, as far as I’m concerned, Juu’s not even in the room!”

The two of them actually seemed to be enjoying themselves at that point, and I had a feeling that I had nothing to gain from watching them any longer. I decided to check in on Sayumi instead. She was sitting by a desk, reading a book, and somehow came across as even more unapproachable than usual. It was like she was emitting some sort of forbidding aura.

“Hey, Sayu—”

“Perish.”

“But why, though?!”

“Oh, excuse me. I misspoke. Good day to you, Andou.”

“Nope! No way, you do not get to brush that one off as an accident! What sort of greeting could you possibly mix up with ‘perish’?!” Like, holy crap! That’s even more intense than telling me to drop dead!

Sayumi looked up at me and gasped, her eyes widening. “Andou Jurai? But how? I was so sure that, in that last battle...we would’ve all been better off if you’d died.”

“Playing it up like a dead teammate had come back to life only to end the thought by saying you wish I had died?! Not cool!”

“Explain it to me, Andou—why are you alive?”

“Abrupt much?! Look, Sayumi, I know you’ve got upperclassman authority backing you up, but that doesn’t mean you can say anything and get away with it!”

“I suppose you’re right. That was somewhat out of line. Allow me to rephrase myself.” Sayumi cleared her throat, then started over. “Explain it to me, Andou—why do you even exist?”

“Now we’re questioning my existence?! That’s even worse than what you said the first time!”

When you really think about it, the precise difference between somebody’s life and somebody’s existence is actually pretty hard to pin down, but speaking personally, I’d say that “existence” bears a lot more weight...and is a lot more cool. Like, a technique that kills your opponent is way less cool than a technique that erases your opponent’s very existence! And on the flip side, a forbidden or taboo technique that shaves away the user’s life doesn’t drive in the ephemeral nature of life itself nearly as much as one that makes the user’s very existence vanish like dust in the wind!

But, of course, all that stuff’s beside the point.

“This isn’t like you, Sayumi. You never go for the easy, straightforward options when you’re verbally abusing someone! No, this isn’t like you at all,” I declared, dropping into a thoughtful, serious tone. “You always take the roundabout route, slowly and carefully tightening the noose around your mark’s sense of self-esteem, bleeding them dry with carefully cutting remarks until there’s nothing left of them but an empty, traumatized husk!”

“I’ll take that as a complement,” Sayumi replied with a tense, forced smile after a moment of hesitation. That smile faded away in an instant, though. “Frankly, I just felt the sudden urge to pick on you. It’s a natural reaction when you see a couple get all over each other in public like that,” she explained with a sigh.

“That wasn’t my fault! Kudou—”

“Yes, I’m aware. I’m quite certain everyone else is too, for that matter. However, that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.”

I fell silent, and a moment later, Sayumi continued. “You need to do something about this situation, and fast.” Her gaze dropped to the floor. She hesitated, but she finally managed to spit out one final thought. “I received a message from Kudou last night about her new email address.”

“Oooh...” Okay, that would explain it. If she knows about that address, then it’s no wonder she looks so put off. I had a feeling that I was probably making a similar expression.

“I never imagined that she would be the type to go so thoroughly overboard when it comes to romance,” Sayumi sighed.

“Yeah, hard same.”

“Or perhaps I’m looking at this from the wrong perspective. Perhaps it’s not a matter of her personality, but rather of you being just that charming?” She just barely failed to suppress a sarcastic snicker.

“Please stop teasing me like that.” I glanced away and scratched my head awkwardly. “Anyway, I’m surprised. It feels like you know Kudou a lot better than I thought you did.” I’d been under the impression that the two of them weren’t on great terms at all, but it felt like Sayumi had been nothing but understanding and full of concern for Kudou ever since the incident had started.

“I wouldn’t say I know her all that well,” replied Sayumi with a smile I couldn’t quite get a read on. “I think the best comparison might be that my relationship with her is like your relationship with Sagami.”

“More than acquaintances, less than friends?”

“More that we don’t see eye to eye on most matters, but we accept and acknowledge each other nonetheless. I would call that a form of friendship, personally.”

Fair, but that makes it sound a hell of a lot cooler than whatever Sagami and I have going on.

“Speaking as her classmate, her acquaintance, and as a fellow woman,” Sayumi continued, “I don’t think I’ll be able to bear watching her lose herself to romance for very much longer.”

“Yeah, I get you.”

The tired, somber look Sayumi gave me said it all. I closed my eyes and fell into deep thought. I thought about myself, the people around me—everything that factored into my current situation.

As I brooded, Sayumi spoke up again. “In any case, let’s work together to come up with a solution. At this point, I can hardly expect you to resolve the issue all on your—”

“Nah, it’s fine. That won’t be necessary,” I said, interrupting before she could finish offering me help.

I opened my eyes, filled with a newfound resolve—a resolve to let myself be hurt, and a resolve to hurt someone else in the process. I couldn’t let myself hesitate anymore. The longer I put this off, the worse those inevitable wounds would sting.

“I’ll settle this on my own. You reap what you sow, after all.”

That very same day, I made my way over to the student council room after our club ended. I loitered around, waiting for them to finish their meeting, until Kudou finally emerged just a little after six. I told her we had to talk and led her somewhere we wouldn’t be observed: outside the art room on the first floor. And then, well...

“I am so, so sorry!”

I apologized. Profusely. I confessed that everything had been a huge misunderstanding. I explained it all from beginning to end, then I prostrated myself before her in the most heartfelt show of repentance I could think of. In the end, that was the only solution I could come up with.

“U-Umm...” The wavering tone of Kudou’s voice was enough to make me fear the worst. In all likelihood, I’d just shattered her self-esteem, at least as far as romance went. I’d done exactly what Sayumi had stopped me from trying to do the day before.

“S-So, you’re saying that the note you wrote me wasn’t a love letter after all, darling...?”

“That’s right.”

“And that name for my power, Grateful Lover...you really did mean to write ‘robber’ after all?”

“Right.”

“And our battle the other day... That really was all just a coincidence? You didn’t plan it out at all?”

“I’m so sorry, but that’s right. I was just lying to make myself look cool.”

“S-So you didn’t write that letter because you wanted to date me after all...?”

“I didn’t, but I know it’s my fault anyway. It ended up sounding really misleading, and I shouldn’t have written it that way.”

“My email address...”

“I am so sorry.” If it was going to end up this way no matter what, I should’ve spilled the beans yesterday. Maybe then it wouldn’t have been quite as painful for her.

Kudou paused for a moment. “Stand up, Andou,” she finally said. It didn’t escape my notice that she’d gone back to her old way of referring to me. “You’re a boy, aren’t you? You shouldn’t be so quick to bow down to people. Especially in this case—after all, from the sound of things, almost all of this was my fault. I’m the one who was presumptuous, and I’m the one who got the wrong idea, so I should be the one to apologize. I can tell that my misunderstanding has caused you a lot of trouble.”

I was struck by how much more cheerful Kudou sounded than I’d expected. I figured she might deck me in the face in the worst case, so I was honestly relieved for a moment. Then I looked up at her, and I gulped as that relief vanished as quickly as it had come.

“Yup, that’s right. I’m n-n-not even upset, anyway! Doesn’t bother me even a little bit! So don’t apologize like that! It actually makes this harder for me... No, I mean, for the record, I never actually liked you all that much in the first place! I just thought, hey, he asked me out, so I might as well go along with it and see...what happens...”

She was glancing around restlessly and fidgeting, her legs faintly trembling. She was still doing her best to act tough, but I could see through her effortlessly. Anybody would’ve been able to tell how shaken she was, most likely, and every bit of her body language made it plain as day that she was anything but fine.

“Kudou...I’m sorry!”

“Oh, enough with the apologies!” she snapped. “Like I said, I don’t even mind at all... Saying you’re sorry over and over makes it look like my feelings were hurt or something, so please, cut it out!”

“But, I—”

“Ahh, right! I-I forgot, I was supposed to buy ingredients so my curry can make mother for dinner! I’d better head home right away! Ha ha ha ha...” Kudou spun about and stiffly tottered away as quickly as she could manage, running into a couple of walls before finally vanishing from sight.

I, meanwhile, stayed exactly where I was, hanging my head. I slumped against a nearby wall, slowly sliding down it and sitting on the cold, hard floor of the hallway.

“Way to make a girl cry.”

A pair of legs stepped into my field of vision, and I looked up to find Tomoyo standing before me. She scowled as she glared down at me. I thought she would’ve already gone home by now.

“You’re a real lady-killer, aren’t you?” she jabbed sarcastically.

“Yeah, that’s right. Just another mortal sin to add to the pile,” I replied wearily. We’d had exchanges like that a thousand times over, but in that moment, my own words rang incredibly hollow in my ears. I’m hella sinful...and that’s hella lame.

“Well, this was probably for the best, don’t you think?” Tomoyo added curtly. “If you’d left Kudou to her own devices, she would’ve kept adding more and more mistakes onto her list of lifelong regrets. Cutting it off before she could hurt herself too terribly isn’t the worst solution out there. Not that there were any other solutions, really.”

“I hope you’re right about that,” I sighed.

“I mean, you might’ve been the one who kicked off the whole issue, but Kudou definitely brought it upon herself too. I’d say she’s at least half responsible, so I don’t think you have to beat yourself up about it quite that much.”

“Wait, are you trying to cheer me up?”

“Wha—?! N-No way!”

“And I’m not really beating myself up that much, honestly,” I clarified. “I was just thinking that I’m a pathetic excuse for a man. I mean, what sort of guy hurts a girl like that, even if it is by accident?”

“We have a term for that sort of thinking, y’know—it’s called beating yourself up.” Tomoyo sighed with exasperation as she sat down next to me. “Hey, while we’re at it, think you could finally explain yourself?”

“About what?”

“About why you decided to name Kudou’s power Grateful Robber.”

“I already explained that, though, didn’t I? ‘Grateful,’ as in high and mighty; ‘robber,’ as in one who succumbs to the deadly sin of greed and—”

“Not that. I mean, why’d you pick ‘robber’ when you could’ve gone with something more normal, like ‘thief’ or ‘hunter’ or whatever? If you’d called it Grateful Hunter, none of this would’ve ever happened, right?”

“Oh, that.” It was kind of a hard question to answer, especially when she asked it so directly. I had a reason, of course, but it wasn’t anything big or important enough to merit a whole explanation. And, honestly, it was just kinda embarrassing. “Y-You won’t laugh, will you?”

“You kidding me? If it’s funny, then you bet I will.” Tomoyo gave me a look, silently pressuring me to fess up. It wasn’t long before I caved under the power of her gaze and began to talk.

“It was to make the numbers match up.”

“The numbers?”

“You know how all our powers have English names, right? And they’re all two words long, if you don’t count the little words like ‘and’ and ‘of’ that don’t get capitalized.”

“Right. ’Course, that’s just because you thought them up and made them match up like that yourself.”

Exactly. I’d thought long and hard, racking my mind for ways to give our powers’ names a sense of unity. You see that all the time in manga, right? The characters all ostensibly think up their powers’ names themselves, yet, somehow, their names just happen to magically fit together in a perfectly cohesive manner. Of course, this wasn’t the moment to dissect media tropes, so I held off on bringing that part up.

“Well, I made it so they match up when you write them in Japanese too.”

Dark and Dark, Closed Clock, Over Element, World Create, and Route of Origin. Not only was each name two words long in English (or close enough, anyway), they were also each precisely nine characters long when written out in Japanese.

“Did you notice?”

“I mean, yeah, I did...but only because you wrote them all out in both languages when you first came up with them. I only noticed ’cause you made a whole show of it, and I wrote it off as that chuuni compulsion to put a weird amount of attention to detail into stuff that doesn’t deserve it.”

Is that what she thought I was doing? I guess I can’t deny that I was making a show of it, honestly. “I had a lot of reasons, but the biggest one was that I wanted to give our group a really strong sense of unity.”

“A sense of unity, huh?”

Half a year ago, our powers awakened. Half a year ago, these extraordinary abilities were forced upon us with no explanation. We had no choice but to step into the world of the unknown, and we had no idea what might happen to us as a consequence of doing so. Nothing was off the table.

We’d all gotten along pretty well before everything went crazy, but it was totally plausible that we could be driven apart by the simplest of accidents. And so, I wanted to forge a bond between us. I designed our powers’ names to bind us together—to ensure that we’d never be driven apart, no matter what happened.

“You see plenty of series where all the powers are made up of the same number of major, capitalized words, right? But it’s not every day that you find one where they do something like that in two languages.” I couldn’t name a single piece of media that did that, though I also couldn’t discount the possibility that there was one somewhere that I just hadn’t read. “I wanted our bonds to be tighter than those of any other party in history. I thought they had to be that way, or we wouldn’t be able to get by. So that’s why I did it—for that sense of unity.”

Boy oh boy, was that ever embarrassing to admit out loud! I glanced nervously over at Tomoyo, and I was surprised to find that she wasn’t snickering or smirking at all. In fact, she’d stayed perfectly silent the whole time, listening to me in complete earnestness. My eyes met hers, and my embarrassment was suddenly amplified several times over.

“Wh-What?!” I snapped. “Lemme guess: you’re thinking how weirdly girly of me it is to obsess over stuff like that, right?!”

“No, I’m not,” replied Tomoyo with a tired sigh and a shrug. “Actually, I’m thinking about how you only ever get embarrassed about the weirdest things. You’d think you’d be more ashamed of how you keep your chuuni dial turned up to eleven literally all the time.”

I scowled—she really was making fun of me. But then she kept talking. “I get it now, though. So that’s why you went with Grateful Robber: it makes the Japanese spelling match up. ‘Hunter’ and ‘thief’ would both end up being a character too long.”

She was exactly right. I’d considered both of those words while I was thinking up the name, and I thought long and hard about a different first word I could use to make them the right length in total, but in the end, nothing seemed to fit just right.

“At one point I actually considered cutting to the chase and naming it Hunter x Hunter.”

“Just straight up plagiarism, huh?”

“Well, yeah, but that series is fair game, right? Hunter takes manga and movie titles, barely changes them, and puts them in as power names all the time.”

“You have a point, but still.”

“The actual reason why I decided against it is that using the same word twice would make it way too close to Dark and Dark.”

“Of course that’s why...”

I went through all sorts of prospective names over the course of my deliberations, and in the end, I settled on Grateful Robber as the best possible contender. Needless to say, I also came up with a name for her power’s eventual re-awakened next stage in advance.

“There’s always been five of us,” I said, “but there’s only one of her. She may not’ve had her power for very long, but she still went through all the pain we did, suffered through all the worries we agonized over...and she did it all on her own. That was her only option.”

Tomoyo fell silent, quietly listening once more.

“Plus, she’s the president of the student council. We may not be enemies now, but she can’t exactly slip away to hang out every day like the rest of us do, right? So, at the very least, I wanted her power’s name to match up with ours. She’s one of us, after all. But, well...” I hung my head again. “Kinda feels like the whole thing backfired, huh?”

“That’s not true,” said Tomoyo, breaking her silence. “Maybe you screwed up, sure. Maybe you decided to do it all in a stupidly roundabout way ’cause you’re a huge poser. But still, I’m sure that the feeling at the root of it all got through to her...or at least, like, ten percent or so of it did.”

It took a moment for the sheer kindness of Tomoyo’s words to sink in for me. I looked over at her, and I found that she’d turned her gaze up and out a nearby window. The gentle smile on her face was lit up by the soft glow of the sunset.

A moment later, she seemed to realize I was staring at her, and she looked my way. Our eyes met, but just for a moment, before we both gave in to the awkwardness of the situation and looked away.

“A-Anyway,” she practically shouted, “take this as an opportunity to learn from experience and tone down the chuuni crap a little! Actually, why not give up on it altogether?!”

“Don’t call it chuuni crap! And hah! Say what you will, but however the world may change, I shall remain as I’ve always been: myself, nothing more and nothing less!”

“Yeah, yeah. Good for you, chuuni-boy.”

“You’d better believe it...Endless Paradox.”

“Qu-Quit calling me that!”

☆

“Eavesdropping is hardly commendable behavior, Miss Kudou.”

As I strained my ears and lurked around the corner from the scene I’d just walked away from, a voice rang out behind me. I stiffened up, then slowly turned around to find my classmate, Takanashi Sayumi, strolling in my direction.

“Of course, I’m hardly one to talk,” she acknowledged with a self-deprecating chuckle.

From the sound of things, she’d seen it all. She’d witnessed Andou apologizing to me, and she’d probably overheard his conversation with Kanzaki as well.

“I hope you’ll find it in yourself to forgive him,” Takanashi said without so much as a hint of preamble. “He means well, and he’s certainly not a bad person. He’s just a little too childish for his own good.”

“I...can tell,” I replied, doing everything I possibly could to feign an air of composure. I was liable to sprint off into the distance screeching like a madwoman if I let my guard down for even a second, so I focused every ounce of my attention on desperately keeping myself in check.

It’s fine. I’m fine. I may be at my limit, but I’m still just barely fine. I haven’t lost all my dignity as a woman...yet.

“If you’re talking about my dar—about Andou, then I’m not mad at him anyway. Really, I’m not mad at all! I’m the one who misunderstood things, so I deserve all the blame. I’m just, well...so embarrassed that I wish I could drop dead here and now, that’s all...”

What on earth am I doing? “Darling” my foot! “Forever love” my ass! Ugh... I’m feeling a sudden urge to hop on the first bus out of town, no matter where it’s going.

At that point, Takanashi spoke up again. “My power’s name is Route of Origin. That’s ‘route’ with an ‘ou,’ for reference. What do you think about that? Somewhat less than cool, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I honestly agreed. “I can’t even tell what it’s supposed to mean.”

“Your power, meanwhile, would seem to have been named Grateful Robber.”

That’s right. Grateful Robber, not Lover. And according to him, it was supposed to mean “a high and mighty thief.”

“What do you think?” asked Takanashi. “It’s your power, so I believe it’s perfectly within your rights to reject that name.”

“No...” I shook my head. Since that obnoxiously ambiguous name had sparked this whole disaster, you’d think I’d never want to see it or hear it again. That might be the normal reaction, honestly. And yet...

“I’ll take the name, and I’ll thank him for giving it to me.” Remarkably enough, I genuinely meant it.

“Will you, now?” said Sayumi with a smile.

“He’s a good guy, isn’t he?” I sighed.

“I’m proud to call myself his senior.”

“Sorry for all the trouble, Miss Takanashi. I bet you were hiding somewhere nearby this whole time, waiting for the right moment to come cheer me up, weren’t you? I appreciate it.”

“Miss Kudou...you’d do well to learn that sometimes, pretending not to notice that sort of gesture is your most considerate option. When you thank someone for something like that, it comes across as sarcastic.”

“You’re a good person too, you know that?” I continued, casually disregarding her advice. “It’s a shame... I really would’ve loved to compete with you for the president’s seat head-to-head.” I’d felt that way for a long time, and I’d been missing chance after chance to tell her so for just as long. In that moment, though, the words slipped out of me with ease. “I couldn’t even feel happy about winning the election in a landslide. Not when you were off the ballot.”

She didn’t have anything to say to that, so I pressed on. “I have to ask, Miss Takanashi. Is the reason why you didn’t put your name forward for the position—”

“It was because I wanted to be the president of the literary club. That was my one and only reason,” replied Takanashi, cutting me off with a perfectly constructed smile. She could hardly have drawn the line in the sand any clearer. Now it was my turn to fall silent, and in the meantime, she somewhat forcibly changed the subject. “All that aside, this certainly was a disaster. As a fellow woman, I really do sympathize from the bottom of my heart.”

“You reap what you sow. I’m resigned to it at this point.”

“Yes, you’ve always been responsible like that.”

“Plus...I wouldn’t say it was a complete disaster.” I walked past Takanashi and down the hallway, moving forward step by step, never pausing to look back.

I’d fallen for Andou Jurai thanks to an absurd sequence of coincidences. I thought—incorrectly—that he was smart and calculating, and that he had sent me a love letter. I’d worked myself up into an ecstatic frenzy, totally unbeknownst to him. But when all was said and done, the part of him that I loved above all else turned out to be real after all.

“Grateful Robber, huh? How about...”

He always did everything he possibly could for his friends...and he said that I was one of them. I was shocked to realize just how much that meant to me.

☆

Later that evening, I got an email from Kudou. Its subject line noted that she’d changed her address.

[grateful_lover@***.ne.jp]

She’d changed it to her interpretation of the name I gave her power, of all things. I quickly opened up the email, only to find a very stiffly phrased message that more or less summed up to “I’m sorry about what happened. I won’t make things weird between us, so please don’t worry about it.” So that was a relief! In a weird sort of way, it felt like I’d been spared from some horrible fate.

The message didn’t end there, though. She also mentioned that she’d taken a liking to the name I gave her power, so she’d decided to keep using it. I felt myself crack a grin. There aren’t all that many things that make me happier than having an idea or title I came up with get complimented. She’d decided to go with the slightly incorrect “lover” version, of course, but I decided to let it slide.

And so, in spite of how badly everything had spiraled out of control, the Kudou incident was more or less settled. It certainly felt like a big, significant event while we were in the thick of it, but looking back after everything was resolved, the whole thing struck me as pretty played out, plot development-wise. The villain from an early arc ends up joining the main characters’ team as the story goes on—that’s some classic supernatural battle stuff there, isn’t it?

“Huh...?” I’d thought that was the end of the message, but then I scrolled past it to find that she’d written a postscript as well. It read:

PS I’m pretty sure you don’t know what the word “grateful” means. You made it sound like you thought it’s derived from “great,” but it actually has nothing to do with that word at all. It’s a totally unrelated adjective that means something closer to “gratitude.” The word you were looking for is just “great.” You don’t have to modify it or anything—slapping a “ful” on the end doesn’t work for every English word.

In short, you messed up your translation. It’s not even remotely accurate, even if you do give some leeway for artistic license. “Grateful Lover” doesn’t mean “high and mighty thief;” it means “someone who always appreciates their romantic partner.” That’s what I thought you were trying to say back when I got your letter.

Your college entrance exams are coming up next year. If I were you, I would focus a little harder on my English studies.

I chucked my cellphone at my bed, fled my house, and dashed through the moonlit streets as fast as my legs could carry me in a distraught frenzy.

God dammit all, this is exactly why I can’t stand smart people!