Chapter 4: Literature——Activities
My body was awash with heat. My heart throbbed in my chest, accelerating my pulse and forcing the blood through my veins in powerful bursts. Wisps of steam rose from my red-tinged skin, wafting through the air in twisting, coiling plumes, almost like billowing clouds of smoke.
That heat was the proof of my development—the proof that all my abilities had just evolved to the next level.
“Gear...Two!”
“Quit playing Luffy and lemme use the bathroom already, doofus!”
“Aaugh?!”
Just as I was crouching down to plant my fist on the floor and imitate a certain legendary pose, I ate a full-force kick from behind. Thanks to the whole posing thing, I was totally unprepared to break my fall; I landed head-first, ringing my Gum-Gum Bell on the floor.
“Gah, whyyy?! I’m supposed to be rubber, so why does it hurt this much?! Our friggin’ floor knows how to use Haki!”
As I clutched at my head and writhed in agony, I heard a voice from behind me. “Sheesh, this is exactly why I keep telling you to let me take the first bath! I don’t wanna have to use your dirty bathwater.”
The ingrate who spoiled my sacred post-bath ritual was none other than my very own sister, Andou Machi. She was a first-year in college, and her decent-ish looks were offset by her certifiably atrocious personality.
“Mwa ha ha... Fear not, oh sister of mine! The cursed taint that stains my mortal form could never be washed away by something so trifling as hot water! Ablutions are powerless against the depths of my sin!”
“Try saying that again when your ass isn’t hanging out in plain view, mister poser.”
“Gah!” I quickly readjusted the towel I’d wrapped around my waist. That was close! Nobody’s looking for a wardrobe malfunction from me, that’s for sure! “Oh, just you wait! I’ll get you back for this someday, I swaaugh?!”
I was about to jump up and really give her what-for, but then she stepped on me. Specifically, on my rear. Let the record show that there are few things more humiliating than lying facedown on the floor and having someone walk all over your backside.
“’Scuse me?” growled Machi. “You say something?”
“I’m sorry, oh beloved sister of mine.”
“That’s more like it.”
My rear end was freed from the crushing weight of oppression. I stood up and fixed my towel again as Machi strolled into the dressing room, slammed the door shut, and locked it. It’s an unspoken rule in the world of nerd media that girls never lock dressing rooms and boys never knock before walking into them, but there wasn’t an unspoken rule out there that my sister wouldn’t trample over.
“Oh, right—Jurai!” Machi called out from the changing room. I was starting to feel that post-bath chill and was about to head up to my room, but I stopped in my tracks. “Mom said she’s got a neighborhood women’s association meeting tomorrow, so she’ll be out for the night.”
“For real? What’re we gonna do for dinner?”
“You mean what’re you gonna do for dinner. Make something.”
“No way! Why don’t you cook? You’re the girl here, supposedly.”
“Society’s moving toward gender equality these days. ‘Girls do all the housework’ is a standard that died out ages ago.”
I’m pretty sure the gender equality endgame isn’t to validate girls who couldn’t do housework to save their lives, but whatever. “You know you’re never gonna learn to cook if you keep this up, right?”
“I can cook! I just don’t cook. If I actually wanted to, I could knock out a meal any time.”
Yup, there’s the stock excuse you always hear from people who can’t cook. I wasn’t exactly a master chef myself, to be fair, so I didn’t really have any right to judge. “Man, what am I supposed to do?” I wondered. “We just ordered out for pizza the other day, and I really don’t wanna end up eating instant ramen for dinner...”
While I was scratching my head, I heard Machi say “Oh, I know!” like she’d just had an idea. “Why don’t you just summon Hatoko?”
“Summon her? Seriously?”
“Hatoko’s such an easy card to use! You don’t even have to Tribute any other monsters to summon her.”
“You could at least call her a Ritual Monster, y’know.”
Hatoko and Machi were on pretty good terms with each other. Hatoko came over to my house to play all the time when we were in elementary school, and my sister ended up joining in with us on a fairly regular basis. Our parents also loved having her around. Really, the Andou and Kushikawa households were as fast of family friends as you could find.
All that said, I hadn’t even considered calling Hatoko in to help until that moment. Surprisingly enough, considering Machi suggested it, it was actually sort of ingenious. Hatoko never gave the impression of being especially well put together at school, but as far as housework was concerned, she was practically a master. Her cooking was top-notch as well.
“I’ll try asking her,” I agreed.
“Cool,” replied Machi. Then she dropped into an ever so slightly more serious tone. “Hatoko’s a really good girl, isn’t she? Wish I had a little sister like her instead of a dumbass like you.”
“I’m with you on that one—I’d take a big sister like her over you any day.” Actually, I’d take pretty much anyone who doesn’t kick people from behind.
“You don’t run into many kids as nice as her these days. Considering she’s put up with your stupid crap for over a decade now, I figure she must be the reincarnation of some saint or something.”
“How many times have you called me stupid in the past minute? Just how big of a moron do you think I am?”
“Either that, or she’s Fabre reborn.”
“Let me guess—you’re insinuating that I’m like the insects he studied, right?”
“I swear, we should be sending that girl monthly child support payments.”
“Okay, we’ve gotta draw the line on you belittling me somewhere.”
“You’d better treat her right,” she said, her voice suddenly quiet and her tone deeply serious. “Got that?”
“Yeah, I got it,” I replied, walking away from the door. I’d been hanging out half-naked for way too long at that point.
“Ah, wait up a sec, Jurai!”
“What?”
“Forgot my towel. Go grab one for me.”
“Get it yourself!”
“C’mon, I’m naked in here!”
“Okay, fine,” I reluctantly agreed. I was as tragically incapable of fighting back against my sister as ever.
“Sure! Okay!”
The next morning, I met up with Hatoko on the way to school and asked if she’d be willing to cook for Machi and me that night. Surprisingly, she agreed without a second thought. I was starting to appreciate why my sister described her as “easy to use.”
“Sorry for asking at the last minute like this,” I said.
“It’s okay! I don’t mind at all,” she replied. If she was upset, then she was doing a really good job of pretending otherwise. In that moment, I was really glad to have her around. “I’m excited, actually! It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve been over to your house!”
“I think the last time was...when we were in the second year of middle school, probably?” I speculated.
“That sounds right. Yeah...that must’ve been the last time.”
Oh, right. That’d mean she hasn’t come over since everything that happened that year went down.
“Machi’s gonna be home, right?” asked Hatoko. “Oh, jeez, I haven’t seen her in ages! I’m starting to feel a little nervous! How’s she been lately?”
“Great. Obnoxiously so.”
“That’s good to hear!”
We chatted casually as we strolled through the neighborhood. The two of us had stopped walking to school during the later years of elementary school. It was just kinda embarassing to be seen walking with a member of the opposite sex, I guess—or really, it was inevitable that we’d be teased relentlessly by half of our class if we got caught.
Ever since we got into high school, though, we’d started walking together again. Basically, nobody got on our case about that sort of stuff anymore, so there was no reason not to. At our age, being the perpetrator of that sort of teasing would probably be more humiliating than being its victim.
“Hey, is there anything in particular you want me to make?” asked Hatoko.
“Nah, anything’s good.”
She frowned. “Hmph! That’s the least helpful answer you could possibly give, you know?”
“Okay, then meat and potato stew, only without the potatoes, carrots, onion, and konjac noodles.”
“At that point, all that’s left is the meat!”
Our classes that day passed by without any noteworthy events whatsoever. As I packed my stuff up after the final homeroom of the day, Miss Satomi called out to me from the front of the class. Her trademark sleep mask was propped up on her forehead—today’s had “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” written on it. Come on, that’s the last thing you should be printing on a sleep mask!
“Takanashi asked me for these, so here, I’ll pass ’em off to you,” she said, handing me a bundle of papers. “Guess she wants to use them for your club meeting today.”
“Sayumi asked for them?” I inspected the bundle and found that it was one big stack of the sort of paper people use to handwrite manuscripts. “Why? What’s the deal with these?”
“Beats me. I didn’t ask.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be our faculty advisor?”
“According to Takanashi, the best way for me to advise you guys is to sit back and do nothing unless she specifically asks me for it. She’s gotta be one of the most independent students I’ve ever had. I like the way she operates.”
“You realize that just means she’s not willing to count on you, right?!” Sayumi was treating Miss Satomi like a sad, ostracized office drone her superiors couldn’t trust enough to give any real work! Not that I couldn’t understand the impulse to leave everything to Sayumi, the certifiable superwoman.
“Oh, right, while I’m at it, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. Chifuyu’s been hanging out with your club an awful lot lately, hasn’t she?”
That struck me as a pretty abrupt question, but on the other hand, she was Chifuyu’s aunt. It’d make sense for her to have a vested interest there. “Yeah, she has,” I replied. “Pretty much every day, actually.”
“Thought so. That’s good, I guess.” Her tone came across as a little more serious than it usually did. I could tell that her niece’s well-being meant a lot to her. At the very least, the attitude she took when talking about her was notably different than how she talked about her students. “Her school’s not exactly close by. She must be working pretty hard to make that happen.”
The truth, of course, was that World Create let her warp between our schools in the blink of an eye. Chifuyu didn’t have to work at all to visit us, much less work hard, but needless to say, Miss Satomi had no clue about any of that stuff.
“She must really like you guys, huh?”
“It’d be nice if you’re right about that.”
“Just one thing, Andou: don’t get too used to this situation. It isn’t ordinary, and you shouldn’t let yourself think it is,” she said, her eyes locked on to mine. If I had to describe her usual gaze, I’d say that it gave a kindly, laid-back sort of impression, but in that moment, it was anything but. There was a sharp and perceptive glint to her eyes.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“I mean that it’s not normal for an elementary schooler to have a bunch of high schoolers as her social circle, that’s all. Later.” Miss Satomi left it at that, yawning as she wandered out of the classroom.
I glanced down at the papers in my hands. She said that Sayumi wanted them for our club activities, and I was pretty sure I could guess what we’d be using them for. We were, after all, the literary club.
And so, as expected, the moment our club meeting began, our resident president proposed an activity. “It’s been quite a long while, so I was thinking that this would be a good day for us to write short stories,” said Sayumi.
Considering the club she presided over, she could hardly have come up with a more appropriate suggestion. “That sounds good to me! Might as well do some actual literary activities every once in a while,” I said, looking around at the other members.
Tomoyo and Hatoko quickly agreed, but Chifuyu seemed a little ambivalent. “I’ve never written one of those,” she muttered.
“Oh, right, that makes sense,” I said with a nod. The last time we’d done any actual writing in our club was the story relay we wrote a while back, and Chifuyu hadn’t participated in that one. “Hmm... Well, it’ll probably be fine anyway. You don’t have to overthink this, Chifuyu. Just have fun with it.”
“That’s right,” agreed Sayumi. “This is just a game, nothing more. We’ll simply think up stories on the fly to pass the time, like indolent nobles in the Heian era.”
“I’ll try it, then,” said Chifuyu with a cheerful nod.
“Okay, so what’re we gonna do, specifically?” I asked, moving the conversation along. “Another story relay?”
“No, not this time. We’ll do another relay sometime when you can’t make it to the meeting. We voted unanimously to exclude you from those in the future, after all.”
“Wait, that wasn’t just a punch line?” They’re actually planning on never letting me participate in a story relay ever again? It’s not like I’m super torn up by the idea of not doing any more of those, but still, that kinda stings...
While I was busy being mildly heartbroken, Tomoyo raised her hand. “Are we at least going to have some sort of guidelines for what we write about? Or a theme, or something?”
“Let’s see...” said Sayumi, resting her chin in her hand as she lapsed into thought for a moment. “How about we write short stories with the theme ‘light novels’ in mind?”
Oh ho? It was certainly an unorthodox theme to choose. Normally, you’d expect a genre, like fantasy or mystery, or a situation, like “a school’s entrance ceremony” or “a field day.” But no—our theme would be “light novels.” I stole a glance at Tomoyo, curious about how she’d react to the suggestion. She looked a little tense. I’d expected her to have somewhat mixed feelings about the theme, and from the look of things, I was right.
“Hatokooo,” said Chifuyu, tugging at Hatoko’s sleeve. “What’s a ‘light novel’?”
Oh, Chifuyu... Of all the people to ask about that, you had to go and pick the one who’s least qualified out of all of us to explain. There’s absolutely no way she’ll be able to come up with an answer for—
“Light novels are books that are written for kids in middle school and high school! Their covers have pictures that look like they came straight out of some anime on them, and they usually have at least a few illustrations inside as well!” explained Hatoko.
I was shocked—she’d nailed it without missing a beat. I mean, the term’s surprisingly hard to pin down perfectly, and there were a few parts of her definition that I took umbrage with, but she’d hit all the main points in an easy to understand way.
“You know about light novels, Hatoko? I’m a little surprised,” said Tomoyo.
“I sure do! Juu used to lend me them sometimes, so I sorta get the gist.”
“Ah, that’d explain it.”
“I used to,” I cut in, emphasizing the past-tense part.
I’d almost forgotten that I used to lend her books all the time. Back then, I’d really wanted somebody else to know about and appreciate the things that I liked. Hatoko, however, never really seemed to get it. After having grown up a little, though, it didn’t really bother me all that much anymore. I’d come to understand that some people just like different things when it comes to literature.
“There’s no need to be concerned about what you write, Chifuyu,” said Sayumi. “Just start writing and see where it goes! I’m certain you’ll enjoy it.”
“Okay,” agreed Chifuyu with a nod. “I’ll try it.”
Thus, the literary club began an all-new activity revolving around the theme of light novels! If we’d given ourselves as much time as we wanted, we’d have probably never finished, so we decided to set a limit of one hour to write our stories in. We’d fill up as many pages of manuscript paper as we possibly could over that period.
Since an hour was such a restrictive time limit, we also decided that it was all right to either write an outline of a story in broad strokes or the opening scenes of a longer story in more detail. Whatever we picked, as soon as the hour was up, we’d have to stop writing and share our results.
“And...that’s time,” said Sayumi as she looked up at the clock an hour later. I immediately set down my pen. “Now then,” she continued, “If anyone would care to go first, go ahead and raise your hand.”
“Me, meee!”
“Me.”
Two members’ hands quickly shot up: Hatoko’s and Chifuyu’s.
“In that case, let’s start with Hatoko,” decided Sayumi.
“All right!” said Hatoko, proudly spreading her manuscript out on the table. “My goal with this story was to make it as realistic as I could!”
We leaned in and began to read.
Cute Lil Ai
Well, the title sure is lame. Not even an interesting sort of lame either. It was a perfectly ordinary, utterly unremarkable sort of lame. Lame enough that it somehow wrapped around and became perfect again. We wouldn’t get anywhere if we started off poking holes in the title, though, so I brushed it off and read on.
To make a short story shorter, Hatoko’s piece was a rom-com starring a boy named Takeru and his childhood friend, Ai.
[Opening pages omitted]
Takeru opened the door to the changing room, but oh no! His childhood friend Ai was changing inside! Takeru got an eyeful of Ai in her undies.
“Kyaaa! Wh-What’re you doing in here?!”
“Oh, jeez! I-It’s not what you think, this was an accident! I didn’t mean to!”
“Shut up, you pervert! Diiie!”
Ai jabbed her fingers into Takeru’s eyes, and he crumpled to the floor in pain.
Oooh, okay, I’m pretty impressed! Never thought Hatoko would put a fanservice scene like this into one of her stories. She really does get how light novels work! Would’ve been nice if she’d put a bit more effort into describing how the heroine looked, but meh, that’s what illustrators are for.
As Takeru writhed, clutching at his eyes, liquid began to dribble out from between his fingers.
Wait. Huh?
That liquid was a mixture of Takeru’s blood and tears. Ai looked down at her own hand to find it stained the same reddish-brown color, and she screamed in horror. Meanwhile, Takeru continued to convulse, a massive amount of blood now pouring out from around his hands.
“I-I’m sorry!” cried Ai. “I didn’t mean to! I just got so mad, I... I-I’ll call for help!”
Ai pulled out her phone and called for an ambulance, her blood-soaked hands staining the phone’s buttons.
Umm.
Takeru was rushed to the emergency room, and thankfully, the operation prevented the worst from happening. His retinas were crushed, however, and they were far too damaged for modern medicine to restore. He was blinded, and his eyesight would never return.
Takeru’s parents took the case to court, and Ai was convicted of assault. Because she was a minor, however, Ai was spared a prison sentence and was released on probation.
The day the trial ended, Ai went to visit Takeru in the hospital. He lay there on the sterile, white bed, a bandage wrapped around his head hiding away his eyes.
“Takeru...I’m so sorry! What can I possibly do to make this right?!”
“It’s okay, Ai.”
“Huh?”
“This is my fault. I never noticed how you felt about me, and God decided to punish me for it.”
“...”
“Hey, Ai? I can’t see anymore, so could you come a little closer? Close enough that I can reach you with my hands?”
“All right...”
Takeru’s eyes may have lost their light...but from that day on, a different sort of brilliance would light up his life instead.
“What the hell did I just read?!”
I lost it. I couldn’t help myself. I mean, holy crap, there were just so many holes worth picking in that story!
“What’s wrong, Juu? Oh, did you think the parts about his operation and the trial were too vague? I don’t know very much about medicine or law, so cut me some slack!”
“It’s not that! Nobody cares if you gloss over those bits!”
Where do I even start? Ai wasn’t even a little bit cute, for one thing! Then there’s the fact that Takeru was way too understanding, and the way Hatoko tried to tie it all together in a super forced heartwarming ending was obnoxious. But no, none of that is even close to the core problem with her story.
“Why the hell would you have him go blind from getting poked in the eyes?!”
“I thought it’d be more realistic that way!”
“Nobody wants that sort of realism in their stories!”
“See, I remembered reading a scene like that in one of the light novels you loaned me way back whenever, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how dangerous it would be if a little kid read a scene like that and decided to imitate it.”
“Little kids don’t read light novels in the first place! Probably.”
“So this is my version of a light novel’s...ani-thesis? Anime-sis?”
“You mean antithesis?”
“Yeah, that!”
I sighed. It seemed there were some things that even Hatoko felt a need to poke holes in. That said, being pedantic about that sort of realism in a work of fiction just struck me as embarrassing. I mean, getting poked in the eyes is pretty low-level as far as casual rom-com violence goes! Think about all the protagonists who get assaulted with wooden swords, or real swords, or even guns when a heroine goes ballistic on them. Or a fork...but I guess that one’s hero-on-heroine violence, so it’s sorta different.
“I believe that female characters subjecting their male counterparts to violence is essentially just a stock storytelling device,” said Sayumi, launching into one of her trademark expository speeches. “It’s not just limited to light novels either. It’s been a prominent technique as far back as City Hunter. To put it simply, that sort of violence is nothing more than a comedic segue—a punch line, if you will. It brings a comedic exchange to a stop and allows the scene to move on smoothly. It’s just slapstick, essentially, so drawing attention to it and questioning it on a logical basis comes across as ever so slightly childish.”
“Oh, I get it now!” said Hatoko with a nod and a satisfied smile. “If it works by slapstick comedy standards, then that sort of thing wouldn’t count as violence at all, so long as the person doing it means well!”
That was a good example on Sayumi’s part. Considering Hatoko’s love of comedy, using it to explain things was a really solid way of helping get the point across to her.
“So, yeah. Sorry, Hatoko, but your story’s rejected,” I declared.
“Aww...wait. What does that mean? What happens if it gets rejected?”
I paused. Huh. That’s actually a good question. Whatever the case, we were pretty much through with discussing her story, and Chifuyu’s was up next.
“I tried to make mine realistic too,” said Chifuyu, glaring at Hatoko. I guess she was a little miffed that they’d accidentally chosen the same theme, and judging by the way Hatoko was glaring right back at her, the feeling was mutual. I could practically see the sparks flying between the two of them.
She’d accidentally put her story in direct competition to Hatoko’s, but considering how Hatoko’s story had turned out, the odds seemed overwhelmingly stacked in Chifuyu’s favor. It sort of felt like going through the whole evaluation process would be beating a dead horse, but we couldn’t not check out Chifuyu’s story. I started by reading its title.
The Best Fantasy Story Ever
Setting the bar a bit high, aren’t you, Chifuyu?! That’s the unshakable confidence of youth for you! Suddenly, it felt like Hatoko might give her a run for her money after all. Or, really, it felt like I was about to witness an absolutely breathtaking race to the bottom of the barrel.
“There’s something that’s always bothered me about manga and anime,” said Chifuyu.
“Oh? And what would that be?” I asked, giving her the perfect setup to explain herself.
Chifuyu stood up tall and proud as she stepped up onto her imaginary soapbox. “Why does everyone always speak the same language, no matter what country they’re from?”
An uncomfortable silence descended upon the club room. One of those awkward atmospheres where the most you can bring yourself to say is “Uhh.”
“It’s really weird. There are a ton of languages in the world, but in manga and anime, everyone always understands each other. It doesn’t make sense. It’s illogical.”
Okay, I mean, it’s not that I don’t get where you’re coming from! You see stories that are set in another world where everyone speaks Japanese but also have English titles for no explicable reason, or stories with characters who aren’t even human but have powers with names in Spanish or Italian, seemingly just because they sound stylish that way. It makes you want to ask what on earth the characters’ first language is supposed to be, anyway? But still, though...this might be an even more embarrassing writing contrivance to call out than the heroines getting violent thing.
“So this is my antithesis for that,” declared Chifuyu, cheerfully dropping a word she definitely heard for the first time about a minute ago and pointing at her manuscript as if to urge us to get reading. I had a bad feeling about where this was going, but I reluctantly gave it a look in spite of myself.
Unyaa 3029 Goweh.
Gigitokinozie, nogmbatakh. Dogiginyaa.
“Sogogoki tsunaku, dodoronowou unyaa?”
“Unyaa. Shigaokayukt guguno.”
“Unyaa...”
“What sort of language is this?!” Is it supposed to be the Gurongi language? Or maybe they’re just mumbling through their lines like the lead actor in Kamen Rider: Blade? Come on, people, we speak Rinto here!
“It’s Unyaaese,” answered Chifuyu. “It’s the national language of the country this story’s set in.”
“U-Unyaaese?”
“I made it up.”
“You came up with a whole constructed language for your story?!”
Chifuyu gave a proud little nod. Okay, I’ll admit that casually inventing your own language is sort of incredible, but it’s also a total waste of effort!
“Okay,” I said after a moment of hesitation, “but you know that we can’t understand what the characters are saying this way, right?”
“But everyone in their country speaks Unyaaese. It would be weird if they didn’t.”
“Right, but—”
“I don’t get why characters in stories that don’t happen in Japan always talk in Japanese. It’s weird, and I don’t like it.”
I didn’t know what to say to that one.
“So if you write a story in a different world, you have to come up with a different language!” declared Chifuyu, her fists clenched and her will ironclad.
She’s not wrong, exactly—having everyone speak Japanese is sort of a cop-out, but still...
“By the way,” Chifuyu continued, “if you translate the scene into Japanese, it says this:”
Year 3029 of the Unyaa Era.
Two men stand before a big castle.
“Man, sure is hot today, isn’t it?”
“No, I wouldn’t say it’s that bad.”
“Oh...”
“What a completely pointless conversation!” Pointless and weirdly surreal to boot! It felt like I’d just gotten a distressingly clear snapshot of what life looked like in Chifuyu-land.
“Oh, Andou, read this part! There’s a really good joke...here...pff, ha ha ha!”
“If it’s funny enough to make the person who wrote it crack up then I’d love to read it, but I’m not exactly fluent in Unyaaese...”
“And this part’s the main character’s catchphrase: ‘Gaojauraunyaa!’ He’s so cool!”
“I can tell that it’s a pretty intense line, at the very least!” Not that I could read it. At all.
“If you translate it into Japanese, it says ‘Graaahhhhhhhhh!’”
“He’s just screaming?! That’s it?!” I looked over Chifuyu’s story one more time, but, unsurprisingly, I still couldn’t parse so much as a word of it. It was all Unyaa to me. I suddenly have a much deeper appreciation for why people in manga always speak Japanese, no matter where the story’s set.
In the end, since nobody could actually read Chifuyu’s story, we judged it impossible to evaluate. Hatoko and Chifuyu’s realism showdown ended in...a draw, I guess? Close enough, anyway.
“Well then,” said Sayumi, “let’s move on to a new story. Would you care to go next, Andou?”
“Mwa ha ha,” I quietly chuckled. “So my time has finally arrived, has it? I suppose there really is no fighting against the fates.” I laid my manuscript, the very embodiment of my soul itself, upon the table for all to see. “As for my story’s theme...I chose ‘Dazai Osamu’!”
A wave of discomfort surged through the room. Everyone except for me looked bewildered, and I was delighted by their confusion.
“Hey, Juu?” said Hatoko. “How can Dazai be a theme for a short story?”
“Mwa ha ha ha! Are you curious? You are, aren’t you?! My powers of expression and creativity are simply too sophisticated for you to follow! I can hardly blame you. I do have a history of thinking up concepts that an ordinary human would find downright unfath—”
“So basically, your story’s an homage to Dazai?” said Tomoyo, cutting me off.
Curses! She read me like a book!
Hatoko, however, cocked her head. She was obviously still confused. “It’s a...fromage?”
“‘Homage,’ not ‘fromage.’” I sighed, then went on to explain the concept in simple terms. I told her that writing an homage to someone means writing a work that’s similar to theirs, going out of your way to emulate qualities of their style. It’s a way of showing your respect for an author, basically.
“Huuuh! So it means you’re ripping them off?”
“Don’t say that, you’re making it sound like it’s a bad thing! Besides, all of Dazai’s copyrights lapsed ages ago, so it doesn’t count as ripping them off regardless.”
I mean, a rip-off’s still a rip-off, no matter when the original was written, but from a legal perspective, I was in the clear. If nobody’s around to sue you, then the law is rendered powerless! That’s how publishing houses can get away with putting out new editions of old famous works like Dazai’s without really owning the rights to them.
Y’know how you sometimes see characters in original fiction who are supposed to be the descendants of other people’s famous characters, like Sherlock Holmes or Arsène Lupin? Well, they only get away with that because of copyrights lapsing, or so I’ve heard. I guess there are a lot of other reasons as well, but I never bothered learning ’em.
“Hey, Andou,” said Chifuyu, “who’s Dazai Osamu?”
I guess Chifuyu’s not up to date on her mid-twentieth century authors. No real surprise there, of course. She was in elementary school. I gave her a quick rundown on the guy—how he was one of Japan’s most famous and well-respected authors, and how he’d written famous works like No Longer Human, Run, Melos! and The Setting Sun.
Chifuyu’s face lit up. “Oh, I know Run, Melos!” she exclaimed, satisfied that she was now on the same page as us.
“Let’s just read it already,” said Tomoyo, who was rapidly running out of patience. “We can’t exactly judge it if we don’t.”
“Heh! You’d best prepare yourselves to be struck dumb with awe!”
“Yeah, yeah, spare us the preamble.”
I laid my manuscript out on the table, and everyone leaned in to read its title.
Fly, Melos!
“Ooof,” Tomoyo cringed. I glanced around at the others and found them recoiling as well.
Right? Right?! I knew it—they’ve been blindsided by the sheer majesty of my talent for titles!
“Well, guess I was struck dumb after all,” said Tomoyo. “You’ve gone so far overboard at this point I almost have to respect it. I can’t believe you could make the title this chuuni-riffic by changing a single word.”
“Right?! I bet Dazai’s weeping tears of joy in his grave right about now!” I boasted.
“More like rolling in his grave.”
“I was really tempted to go with ‘Make Haste, Melos!’ Took me right up until the end to pick between the two, but I decided to go with ‘fly’ since I wanted to liken Melos’s desperate sprint to the blowing of a raging gale!”
“Of all the stupid things to be particular about...” Tomoyo sighed and shook her head.
“All right, time for the next one!” I declared.
“Wait...what? That’s it? Doesn’t ‘Fly, Melos!’ have, like, a story?” asked Tomoyo.
“Well, see, the thing is, you could say that the title’s the whole deal, or that it’s one of those stories where the title gets announced, like, years before the actual book comes out...”
“So you didn’t bother coming up with anything else.”
“This story’s what they call a one-liner!”
“It was one line, that’s for sure!”
I wasn’t finished there, though. I’d prepared another short story to show off to the group!
CATEGORY ERROR: No Longer Human
“You can’t just add a cool prefix and call it a totally different story!”
“Huh? Do you really think the prefix is cool, Tomoyo?”
“Wha—ah, n-no! Not even close!”
Mwa! Ha! Haaa! You’ve done it now, Tomoyo—in your haste to drop a comeback, you accidentally admitted your true feelings! Oh man, this rules! Tomoyo actually complimented me!
“I must admit, I’ve impressed myself with this one. ‘Category Error’ and ‘No Longer Human’ sound so much cooler together than they do in isolation! In fact, I like it so much I think I just might use it as one of my personal titles!”
“How many titles are you going to give yourself before you’re satisfied?!”
“I’m sure Dazai’s absolutely trembling with joy as we speak!”
“More like watching you from the afterlife and muttering, ‘His has been a life of much shame!’”
Huh. Tomoyo’s read an awful lot of Dazai, hasn’t she?
At that point, Sayumi jumped into the conversation. “So, Andou, does CATEGORY ERROR: No Longer Human have an actual story? Or is it just a ‘one-liner’ as well?”
“Perish the thought! You should learn not to underestimate me, Sayumi. I’ve gone to great lengths to plan out the story for this one!” I slapped down a second page of manuscript paper.
“And this would be?”
“A summary of the backstory! You won’t be able to understand the plot without knowing some of the information in here, so you have to read it first.”
Sayumi fell silent, and her expression vanished. Like, seriously, the look on her face was perfectly blank and neutral. Part of me was curious what her deal was, but instead of questioning it, I decided to give my own absolutely stellar worldbuilding document a second read through.
Dramatis Personae:
Protagonist: Category Error (real name unknown until it’s revealed during the climax)
Appearance: Hair as white as snow. Eyes the color of crimson blood. Small in stature and youthful in appearance, but occasionally flashes a smile so cruel and inhumane it could send a chill down anyone’s spine.
Personality: Fundamentally expressionless and emotionless. Treats everyone with the same cold, contemptuous indifference and enjoys solitude. In battle, however, his ruthless side comes to the forefront. He revels in the sight of blood, but at the same time, he despises himself for that joy and considers his own existence to be stained and sullied.
Background: From an early age, the protagonist endured training so harsh and brutal it all but amounted to torture. On his seventh birthday, however, he murdered his own parents, fled his household, and abandoned the name they had given him.
Twisted as it was, his family background granted him combat capabilities that far exceeded those of an ordinary human, and he took pride in his strength. His humanity, however, had vanished, and he lacked so much as a spark of emotion. Thus, the people around him scorned him as a man no longer human: a Category Error.
Powers: The protagonist has two superpowers: Accel Brain and Brain Freeze. Both are some of the strongest mental-type powers in existence. Although people ordinarily only have a single power each, strangely enough, the protagonist can use two. This is due to the existence of his dark side, Midnight: a second personality that awakened over the course of his childhood combat training.
Although the protagonist is unaware of the alternate personality lurking inside him, Midnight’s influence on him has been known to occasionally manifest outwardly. In particular, Midnight’s excessive cruelty and murderous thirst for blood take over whenever the protagonist’s emotions run wild or whenever he’s put into a life or death situation.
Accel Brain: Accelerates the speed of the protagonist’s thought processes to 23.125 times that of an ordinary person.
Brain Freeze: Freezes a portion of the target’s memories, rendering it inaccessible to their active train of thought. For instance, if he were to freeze “using my hands,” the target’s hands would be rendered immobile, and if he were to freeze “knives,” the target would cease to perceive knives on a conceptual level.
Technically speaking, Accel Brain is Midnight’s power, not the protagonist’s. As such, when the protagonist uses it, he’s only able to unlock thirty percent of its full potential.
Catchphrase: “Embrace your suffering and pass on!”
“Urp!” For some reason, Tomoyo brought a hand to her mouth as if she were fighting back a wave of nausea. “Oh god, I feel so bloated... It’s like my stomach’s packed to bursting! It’s like there’s an indescribable sense of discomfort and a strangely intense sense of shame fighting for dominance inside me...”
“A-Are you okay, Tomoyo?” asked Hatoko, who hurried over to pat Tomoyo on the back.
“I’m sorry,” groaned Sayumi, “but I think I need a minute as well...”
“My tummy feels all weird and gross too,” moaned Chifuyu.
“Wh-Wh-What? What’s wrong, everyone?” asked a bewildered Hatoko. She was the only one who wasn’t left slumped over in their seat.
“I guess Hatoko’s lack of chuuni know-how helped her dodge the bullet,” Tomoyo listlessly speculated. “Too bad for Chifuyu—she might’ve gotten off easy too if she hadn’t figured the concept out the other day... Urp!”
“So, the sheer chuuni power of his work was so great, it could indiscriminately damage anyone who so much as understands the concept of ‘chuuni,’ even vaguely...” Sayumi droned.
“Andou, you’re scary...” added Chifuyu. Nobody’s mincing words today, huh?
If I were to rank them by order of damage sustained, it’d go something to the tune of Tomoyo > Sayumi > Chifuyu >>> an impenetrable brick wall >>> Hatoko. I guess the damage they took was directly proportional to their innate chuuni power—whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.
“Hey, c’mon, guys, you didn’t even read all the way to the end!” I protested. “You still haven’t read about the main heroine, who’s known as the Ephemeral Slayer and is the only person in the world to possess Magick Annul, the power to cancel out other people’s powers! Or the sub-heroine who can use Fossa Magna, the power to cleave whole islands in—”
“Stop, please, just stop! You’re gonna give me a heart attack, and not out of excitement!” Tomoyo wailed. “The most repulsive form of chuuni is to force innocent people who don’t know better to read your cringey backstories and to use others merely for your own self-satisfaction!”
“What, so I’m the final boss of JoJo Part Five?!”
“You haven’t even realized that you’re a chuuni...and that makes you the lowest, vilest form of chuuni there could be!”
“Nope, guess I’m the final boss of Part Six now!”
It was pretty rare for Tomoyo to be the one to initiate that sort of absurd, reference-humor laden exchange, but thankfully I was able to slip into her usual role and play out the bit pretty decently. Weird—it’s like we’re perfectly in sync with each other in the stupidest way possible.
“Whatever!” shouted Tomoyo. “That’s more than enough backstories and setting details! Show us your actual story already, Andou!”
“Err...” I awkwardly glanced away.
“Andou?” she repeated, glaring suspiciously at me.
“By the time I finished writing the backstory...I’d already used up the whole hour,” I whispered. Let the record show that I told them I’d gone to great lengths to plan out the story. I never actually said that I’d written any of it. Behold, the magic of semantics!
Tomoyo silently gaped at me. She looked like she really wanted to say something but had found herself at a loss for words. The rules had been to write whatever we could within the time limit, and technically speaking, writing nothing but a backstory didn’t violate those guidelines, so she didn’t actually have any reasonable grounds to criticize me for it.
In any case, with that, my turn came to a close.
“Now then, I believe I will present my story next.” All eyes in the room fell upon Sayumi as she gathered up her manuscript. “As for my theme...I didn’t have anything specific in mind, frankly, but if I had to assign one to my piece in retrospect, I suppose it would be ‘chuunibyou.’”
I wanted to shout “What?!” deep down, but unfortunately, doing so would be functionally equivalent to acknowledging that I myself had a case of chuunibyou, so I had to hold it back and feign indifference. Being a chuuni’s the coolest thing ever, sure, but part of me still didn’t want to admit that I was one. It’s complicated, okay? I’m complicated!
Sayumi let a chuckle slip out and cracked a smile as she glanced over at me. “Now then, allow me to present to you my light novel.”
I, the Demon Lord, am the Servant of a Magical Girl?!
Okay, that’s a light novel all right! I know I probably shouldn’t admit it, but it was an intensely light novel-esque title. The story itself was a boy-meets-girl sort of affair, starring a perfectly normal high schooler protagonist who suddenly meets a beautiful self-proclaimed mage named Eris. It turns out that Eris sought him out because he’s the descendant of a line of demon lords, and she wants to make him into her servant. After plenty of shenanigans, she finally gets hold of some real blackmail material.
[Opening pages omitted]
“That’s right! And if you don’t want your secret spread far and wide, your only choice is to become my servant!”
“Y-Your whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!”
I shouted as loud as I possibly could. I just know I was making a ( ° Д ° ) face. What’s she talking about? Her “servant”? Are those even a thing in this day and age? And even if they are, who says something like that to a guy they just met? This doesn’t make sense! Something must be wrong with my hearing; it’s the only explanation. Right, time to book myself an appointment with an otolaryngologist...as friggin’ if!
“Wh-What do you mean, your servant...?”
“Being a mage’s servant means being their partner! Though, really, the mage is waaay above the servant, position-wise. Long story short, I’m telling you to be my SLAVE!”
“YOUR SLAVE?!”
“And just so you know, you have no right to refuse the offer!” Eris declared, making a (・∀・) face.
Dammit, she’s so cute! I might not mind being a slave if a girl as cute as her is my owner...wait, no! I can’t let her sell me on this that easily! But then again...as long as she knows my secret, I can’t exactly refuse her... Ahh, damnations! All I wanted was to live a perfectly ordinary, unremarkable high school life! Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!
Okay, wow, that’s definitely a light novel! Light novel stories come in all shapes and sizes, of course, and I don’t mean to lump them all together or anything, but Sayumi’s story absolutely exuded the purest essence of light novel writing. It was such a light novel, it was giving me an overpowering sense of déjà vu. It followed the light novel template so by the letter, it might as well have been the template!
If that was Sayumi’s idea of a story that seems somehow light novel-ish, then it was kind of incredible that her concept of light novel-ish was that highly developed. She was as omnitalented as ever. A jack of all trades, master of all.
I looked back to her manuscript. Apparently, the blackmail material that the heroine was holding over the protagonist’s head was his past case of chuunibyou. After she finds out about his cringey history, he’s left with no option other than to do what she says.
Dammit! Why the hell didn’t you get rid of that notebook, past me?! You wouldn’t be having any of these problems if you’d just tossed the stupid thing!
“Hmm? Let’s see here,” muttered Eris as she flipped through the book.
I guess that’s how the heroine learned about his past: by finding the old notebook in which he’d written all his chuuni delusions. Hmm. Something about this story is hitting awfully close to home.
“Actually, first, I’ve gotta ask. Why’d you call it the ‘Bloody Bible,’ anyway?”
“Ugh, gaaahhhhhh!” Good question! What were you thinking, past me?! What the hell is ‘Bloody Bible’ even supposed to mean?! It’s nonsense!
Hmm?
Eris smirked at me. “And the name of your supernatural power is ‘Dark and Dark,’ huh? Oooh, wooow! That’s sooo cool, isn’t it?”
Gyaaah, the shame, it burns! Why in the name of all that’s decent did I feel the need to put two darks in there, anyway?!
“And I see your titles are The Lord of Thanatos, The Knock on Hell’s Door, The Umbral Tempest, Dynamis Energeia, The Solitary Assassin...pff, ha ha ha! You sure have a lot of ’em, don’t you?”
Kill me! Or at least let me kill myself! If I had a Walther handy, I’d put a round through my own skull in an instant! If I had a cyanide pill, I’d swallow it without a second thought! Why did you have to think up titles for yourself like that, past me?! Don’t you realize how excruciatingly cringey it is?!
Waaait a second.
“And your catchphrase is ‘Now, let us begin the end of the beginning’? Uhh...sorry, I don’t get it. What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ha ha haaa, believe me, I wish I knew. “Begin the end of the beginning”? I’m sorry, what?! Who could possibly be a big enough chuuni edgelord to think up a catchphrase like—oh, wait, that’s right.
“It was meeeeeeeee!”
“This is meeeeeeeee!” Miraculously, my lines in and out of the story were almost identical! “What the hell, Sayumi?! This is obviously me, isn’t it?!”
“Oh? And what could you mean by that? I don’t recall ever identifying my protagonist as you! You should be careful—mixing up fiction and reality is a mistake that has ruined many a life in the past!” said Sayumi, her deadpan utterly unshakable.
“B-But, the Bloody Bible’s the name of my notebook, and all those titles were names I came up with! Not to mention Dark and Dark!”
“A series of exceptional coincidences, I’m sure. I hope you realize, Andou, that when you go around accusing anything and everything of being a rip-off at the drop of a hat, you’re only exposing how poorly read you are?”
“Wh-What?!”
“Having a former chuuni as a protagonist and a heroine who uses that fact to drag him into all sorts of misadventures is just about as stock as a premise could get! Frankly, I’m offended that you’d accuse me of ripping you off over something that surface-level.”
“Okay, you have a point there...b-but—”
“More to the point, you take pride in your chuunibyou, don’t you?”
“Pride...? I mean, I definitely take pride in my individuality and refuse to bow to the pressures of society at large, but that’s—”
“In that case, you could hardly be more unlike my protagonist! Why are you so upset about this? The more you rant and rage at us, the more I’m inclined to suspect that deep down, you really are secretly ashamed of your own behavior.”
“G-Grr...” She’d backed me into a corner. I was furious that she’d managed to talk circles around me, but I also couldn’t come up with an argument to refute her point. She had the oratory skills of a practiced attorney, and in the face of her unshakable argument, I found myself wondering if maybe I was in the wrong after all.
And maybe she did have a point—maybe she was right. Even if I was the model for her main character, that didn’t change the fact that fiction is fiction. It wasn’t anything to get worked up about. Or at least, it shouldn’t have been...
Ugggh...
Why did I think any of that crap was cool? I wanted to travel back in time and murder the old me who wasted his life away thinking up stupid titles and edgy power names. I can’t believe I used to spend hours posing and practicing catchphrases in front of a mirror...
To make matters worse, I was so convinced that all of that nonsense was cool, I unabashedly showed it off to my clubmates. God, I can’t believe what a pathetic little cringelord I was...
...but it was just so hard not to see her protagonist as a future version of me, somehow.
N-No, I don’t! I can’t! I take pride in my way of life! No matter how many eons come and go, there shall never be an age in which I forsake that pride and cower in shame at my own doings!
“I’ll never go back on my word! That’s my chuuni way!”
“And what village’s Hokage are you trying to be?” jabbed Tomoyo.
“Even after I turn twenty—even after I turn thirty—I’ll never change! I’ll stay just the same as I am now, all the way to the bitter end!”
“Andou,” said Sayumi after a brief moment of hesitation, “that really isn’t funny.”
Yeah. Fair point. It really isn’t.
Maybe it all started with my name, Andou Jurai. It’s kind of an unusual one, and that might’ve set me off down the wrong track... Just thinking about my so-called true name, Guiltia Sin Jurai, sends a chill down my spine.
“Okay, come on, he has my friggin’ name and everything!”
“Oh, my! What a coincidence.”
“Like hell it is!”
“Well, to be completely honest, I did intend the protagonist being you to be my story’s punch line,” Sayumi casually admitted. Looking a little closer, she had one of those obnoxiously self-satisfied grins plastered across her face.
I was pretty much exhausted at that point, but I read on regardless, only to find that Sayumi had run up against the time limit soon after that point. Her story concluded with the words “Our adventure has only just begun—The End.” Of course, not reaching any sort of even remotely conclusive ending after the first volume is pretty light novel-ish in its own right.
“Guess that just leaves Tomoyo,” I said, turning to look at our last contender.
“Ah, right. Uhh...” stammered Tomoyo, glancing around shiftily. “The thing is...I didn’t actually write one.”
“Huh? Like, you didn’t write anything?”
Tomoyo nodded hesitantly. “I, umm... I guess I just couldn’t come up with anything this time. Ha ha ha!” She turned to Sayumi and gave her an apologetic little bow. “Sorry about this! It was a really fun idea, honestly!”
“Please, don’t worry about it. I only suggested the activity in the first place because I thought it would be enjoyable, not because I wanted to oblige anyone to participate.”
And so, Tomoyo’s turn ended before it could even begin, and with it, our light-novel-themed creative activity came to a close. Sayumi collected the stories we’d all written and stored them away in a file for safekeeping. None of them were exactly masterpieces fit to pass down through the generations, but they were worth keeping around as mementos, at least. Tomoyo’s wasn’t included in the file, of course, on account of it not existing.
As we watched Sayumi stow the manuscripts away, I glanced over at Tomoyo. She looked a little bit depressed, somehow—enough so that I resolved to have a conversation with her when I had the chance.
Hatoko practically skipped over to me the moment our club came to a close. “Heeey, Juu, let’s walk home together!”
She was scheduled to come over to my house that afternoon, so going home together was sort of a given. Or, at least, it would’ve been, if I didn’t have other ideas.
“Sorry, Hatoko, but you should head over to my place before me. My sister oughta be home by now, so the door should be unlocked. And even if it isn’t, the spare’s still hidden in the usual place.”
“Huh? But why?” asked Hatoko, cocking her head. “Let’s walk together!”
“I’ve gotta talk to Tomoyo before I leave, though.”
“With Tomoyo?”
I nodded. I’d already laid the groundwork for our chat by asking her to stay behind after our club finished up.
“Whatcha talking about with her?”
“Nothing important, and it won’t take super long. Somebody has to keep my sister entertained, though, so if you could head over before me, that’d be great.”
“Hmmm. If it won’t take long, why can’t I just wait for you? Oh, or is this a conversation I’m not supposed to hear?”
I’m sure the question was well-intentioned on her part, but I hesitated for a moment, struggling to figure out how I should answer. What do I say? If I tell her I want to be alone with Tomoyo, she might assume I’m going to ask her out, but I’d feel sorta bad about saying that it’s none of her business. A few seconds of pondering later, I found my answer.
“You just wouldn’t understand, that’s all. I’m sure it’d be boring to sit around and listen to us, so heading out early’s for your own good.”
For a moment, Hatoko just stared blankly at me, but her usual smile returned just a second later. “Okay. Got it. I’ll see you when you get home, then!”
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login