Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 2 - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Childhood——Friends

“What’s so great about stuff being bloody?! I don’t care if you say it in English, it’s still blood! I hate blood! If you’re covered in blood, it doesn’t mean you’re cool, it means you’re hurt! And what’s so cool about madness?! Why would anyone want to be crazy?! I sure don’t! There’s nothing good about it! I don’t understand! And what about sinful, huh?! Why would that be a good thing?! And what, irredeemable sin’s supposed to be even better? If sinful people are cool, then does that mean all the criminals of the world are cool too?! And what’s ‘chaos’ supposed to mean, anyway? Do you actually mean it literally? Then what’s the point, even?! Why does everything always have to be black this and white that? Being in monochrome doesn’t make things cool, it makes them boring! I like colorful stuff! I like pink, and green, and yellow! How’s red any different from crimson? How’s blue any different from azure? This isn’t art class! Just use normal words! What do you mean, darkness?! What’s so special about it? You like it when it’s dark out? You think gloomy days are cool? And why do you have to have a dark side?! There’s no way having one of those would be anything other than awful! You know that having multiple personalities is a mental disorder, right?! Same with savant syndrome—it’s not a superpower, it’s a condition that people struggle with! Why would you want that?! Do you realize how hard it must be to live with?! And why would you want to have homicidal impulses?! You can’t get by without killing people? That’s supposed to be amazing, somehow? Well, it’s not! There’s nothing cool about killing people! Of course there isn’t! If you have to pick between good and evil, why do you always have to go with evil?! That’s not the right choice! Isn’t it obvious?! Why would evil be good? Evil is evil! What’s so cool about your arm throbbing? You like how it feels when you can’t hold your own power back? That doesn’t make you look cool, it makes you look stupid! People who can control themselves are the cool ones! They’re praiseworthy! And what’s so incredible about hiding your true power?! That just means you’re being lazy! Cool people put their all into everything they do! Cool people try! You think having white hair and red eyes is stylish? It’s not! It’s creepy! Only rabbits have eyes like that! Slaughter? Calamity? Devastation? Vicious? Malevolent? Hollow? Terminal? Why do you always go so far out of your way to use all these stupid, scary words?! Are you trying to curse someone, or what?! There are plenty of nice words out there; use those instead! Why do you have to give titles to everyone and everything? Having a ton of nicknames just makes things confusing! Especially when they’re all random English gibberish! How am I supposed to remember those?! And same for true names—what does that even mean?! What does giving yourself a true name actually do for you?! Stop saying requiem when you could just say song! Stop saying taboo when you could just say bad! Stop saying jihad when you could just say war, and stop saying war when you could just say fight! ‘Deathstruction’ isn’t a clever play on words! Nobody cares if ‘slaughter’ is ‘laughter’ with an s! Using ‘awesome’ with its old definition doesn’t make you sound smart! Don’t just read some article about Greek mythology and talk my ear off about it! Same for Norse mythology, and Japanese, and the Bible! You think the names in them are cool? That’s it?! I won’t understand if you can’t actually tell me what any of them mean! What sort of gods are Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi?! What did Zeus and Odin actually do in their stories?! So Lucifer was an archangel before he became a fallen angel—and?! Is the ‘fallen’ part cool? Is that it?! If you’re gonna teach me about this stuff, then actually teach me about it! And I mean the whole picture, not just the weapons that show up in them! There’s nothing fun about hearing about those! I have no idea what Gungnir or Longinus or Excalibur or Durandal or Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi are, and I don’t care! I don’t understand what’s so cool about them at all! And that goes for all the other random terms you use too! You go on and on about original sin, and the ten commandments, and Genesis, and Revelations, and Armageddon, and then you’re all ‘Aren’t their names great?’ What does that mean?! How can you tell if something’s cool from its name?! And then you tell me I ‘just have to get a feel for it’? Well, I can’t! Dumb stuff still looks dumb to me, no matter how many times I see it! And besides, I’ve never been interested in myths and religious texts and stuff in the first place! Even the animals in them are all creepy! Cerberus, Ouroboros, Yamata no Orochi, Fenrir, phoenixes—they’re all just weird! I like normal animals! Cute ones! I like puppies and kittens! Just because you did a little research online about the theory of relativity, or Schrödinger’s cat, or universal gravitation, or whatever doesn’t mean you’re some kind of expert! If you don’t even know what you’re talking about, there’s no way I’m gonna understand your explanation! It’ll just give me a headache! Stop quoting Nietzsche and Goethe at me! I don’t even know who they are, so their quotes don’t mean anything to me! I won’t understand what you’re trying to say at all! Talk to me in your words! Please, for once, just say something I can understand! What is chuuni? What does chuuni mean? I don’t understand! I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand! Juu, I never, ever understand a single word you ever say to me!”

After that long...long, shout...that long scream...Hatoko fled. She ran out of the room, vanishing from my field of vision in an instant.

And I...didn’t move a muscle.

I just stood there, my mouth hanging wide open. I had no idea what had happened. I didn’t know if I should be angry, or sad, or something else entirely. My thoughts were moving so sluggishly, I wished I could use Accel Brain and force them to pick up the pace.

Whatever the hell kind of plot twist that was, I definitely wasn’t laughing about it.

“H-Hatoko...? Hatoko!”

A few seconds later, my thought process finally caught up with reality, and I jumped up from the couch. Chasing after her was the only move I could think of, and it felt like something I had to do. I found her shoes in the entryway, but I’d also heard the door open and shut a moment before, which could only mean...

“She ran out in her slippers? Seriously?!” Was she really that upset? But why...? Was it my fault? Considering everything that had happened, there was absolutely no doubt that I was the cause of the problem. Pathetically enough, though, I couldn’t even begin to understand what exactly I’d done wrong. “Dammit! What the hell set her off...?”

I was upset enough that part of me wanted to just sit down and cry, but before I got the chance, something slammed into the back of my skull with enough force to send me flying into the front door. Head-first, of course. As I tried to clutch the front and back of my head simultaneously in a futile attempt to dull the throbbing pain, I looked down at my feet to see an encyclopedia on the ground. There was only one person who’d assault me with a blunt instrument from behind like that.

“Oh, you little asshole,” growled my sister. “The hell’d you do to Hatoko? She just ran outside, crying!”

My sister’s room was on the second floor, and her window gave her a clear view of the street outside our house. She must’ve heard Hatoko yelling—or her footsteps, or maybe the sound of the door slamming—and watched her run outside. Hatoko was crying? I’d thought I’d seen tears in her eyes as she sprinted out of the kitchen, and it seemed I hadn’t just been imagining them.

“You’d better hope I’m wrong about this,” said my sister, her voice trembling with rage. “You didn’t t-try anything funny with her, did you?”

“Like hell I’d ever do that, moron!” I snapped back.

“Huh? Who’s a moron, punk?!” Before I knew it, she’d grabbed me by the back of the head and was grinding my face into the door. And her grip strength was stupidly strong to boot. I could feel my skull creaking under the pressure. “If anyone here’s a moron, I’d say it’s the guy who just made a girl cry!”

I couldn’t argue with that, and I fell silent. She squeezed me for a moment longer, then suddenly let go.

“Go after her,” my sister snapped in a tone that made it very clear this was not a request. “And don’t bother coming home until you’ve found her! Scumbags who make girls cry aren’t allowed across the Andou threshold!”

“Hah... You know I can’t leave without crossing the threshold, right?” I quipped, opening the door without even bothering to look back at her. Go after Hatoko? I don’t need you to tell me that!

“Oh, right, my phone! I should just call her!”

The obvious finally struck me after I’d already sprinted around checking out all the places where I thought Hatoko might decide to go to, all the places I thought she might reflexively run off to, and all the places I thought she might try hiding in. A solid two hours had passed by fruitlessly since my search began. I finally came to a stop in a back alley that split off from the nearby shopping district, gasping for breath as I cursed myself for forgetting all about the wonders of modern technology.

“This is the first thing I should’ve tried, dammit,” I muttered, but then a thought struck me. Had I just been careless? Or was I, on some subconscious level, trying to show off again? Did I want to make it look like I’d stumbled across her effortlessly, like back in elementary school when I found her hiding by that staircase?

The truth of that incident, of course, was that when I realized that Hatoko wasn’t among the students who’d evacuated into the courtyard, I flew into a panic and charged around checking everywhere I could think of before I finally found her. Did I want to do that again this time? To tell her that figuring out where she’d hide was a piece of cake for me, acting the way I imagined a super cool protagonist of some novel would toward his childhood friend?

And if that was what I was trying to do, then what the hell?! This is no time to be acting cool!

“Son of a bitch,” I spat, then I fished my phone out of my pocket and dialed Hatoko’s number. I wasn’t at all convinced she’d actually pick up, considering the state she was in the last time I’d seen her, but I could at least try giving her a call. It was a gamble, but it was the best I had to go on.

I waited as the phone rang, praying feverishly for her to pick up, and then—a click.

“Hatoko?!”

“Nope. Sorry, no Hatokos here. It’s just little ol’ me,” a boy’s voice said in reply. I’d know that insufferably flippant tone any day of the week.

“Is this...Sagami?”

“Bingo! Sagamin, aka Sagami Shizumu, speaking.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

“Not much. Just walking around, hoping I’ll get lucky and find a little girl who’s also a vampire and needs to ingest my baby batter periodically to stay alive. Why do you ask?”

“...Sorry, but I really don’t have the patience to put up with your stupid sex jokes right now.”

“You do sound like you’re in a real fix. Fair enough, then! I’ll go into serious mode.”

Did I just make Sagami go serious with a single sentence? The panic and impatience I was feeling must’ve really come through in my voice.

“So, why do you have Hatoko’s phone?” I asked. “Is she with you?”

“Nope. I did bump into her a minute ago, though. Like, literally. She was running around in an apron and slippers, and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t looking where she was going at all. Anyway, she dropped her phone, I picked it up for her, and that’s all she wrote.”

In other words, Hatoko was currently without her phone, meaning that I had absolutely no way of contacting her. Gah, damnations! Of all the rotten luck!

“Hey, did something happen, Andou? The whole full-on sprint in slippers thing isn’t exactly what I’d call normal behavior for her.”

I couldn’t answer Sagami’s question. I still wasn’t totally sure what had happened myself. The reasons behind Hatoko’s sudden fury and equally sudden flight were completely opaque to me, so the best I could do was brush him off.

“No clue. She just totally snapped out of nowhere and took off.”

“Ahh, gotcha. Figured it’d be something along those lines,” replied Sagami. In spite of my answer being as vague as it could’ve been, he’d apparently read into it pretty deeply. In fact, it almost sounded like he understood the situation even better than I did.

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?!” I snapped.

“Means just what it sounded like. That’s pretty much exactly what I expected to happen, that’s all. This probably feels like some sorta huge plot twist to you, Andou, but I saw it coming a mile away.”

He saw this situation coming? And a mile away? “That doesn’t make any goddamn sense, Sagami! I’m gonna hang up if you keep messing with me!”

“It doesn’t make any sense, huh? I’d bet that’s exactly how Hatoko felt, don’t you think?” said Sagami. “You and I have known each other for a while, Andou. I’ve seen a lot of you ever since we started high school—well, I guess we met in middle school, technically—but, point is, I’ve been watching you for a solid year or two, and I’ve seen you and Hatoko together plenty of times. I’m gonna be blunt: the thing you two have going grosses me the hell out.”

“It grosses you out?” Hatoko and I do? Or rather, our relationship does?

“Well, yeah. I mean, c’mon—you two are such a bad fit for each other it’s almost hilarious, right? I have literally no idea why you even hang out together.”

I fell silent, and a moment later, Sagami continued. “Y’know how you like to say that we’ve got different tastes, but we’re on the same wavelength? Well, I’m not so sure I agree with that, but if we’re operating under that theory, then I’d say that you and Hatoko don’t share tastes or a wavelength. Why do you guys even like being around each other?”

“Why...?” I mean, we just do! We might not share tastes or a wavelength, but we’re still friends. We’ve been together forever, and we’ve always gotten along just fine.

“I bet you think the two of you get along, but if you do, it’s all thanks to Hatoko. She’s been acting the part so well, you probably never even noticed. But that sort of act doesn’t come free. I bet it’s been pretty darn stressful for her, don’t you think? She’s done an awful lot of worrying about how your personalities clash—I’d put money on it.”

“Wait, wait...what’re you saying, Sagami? What do you mean, she’s been worried and stressed? Hatoko doesn’t get—”

“Whoa there, Andou! Don’t go mixing up fiction and reality on me, here!” said Sagami, sounding sort of exasperated. He was, incidentally, the last person I wanted to hear that particular piece of advice from. “She doesn’t get stressed? Nobody never gets stressed. She’s not one of my beloved waifus. She’s an obnoxious, pain-in-the-ass real-world girl.”

Sagami didn’t seem especially worked up or dismissive about any of this. He was talking in the same dispassionate tone as ever, but in spite of his indifference, his words resonated to a painful degree.

Juu, I never, ever understand a single word you ever say to me!

That incredibly long scream, so long I thought it would go on for eternity, rang out once more in my mind.

“I guess you could say I’ve got a bystander’s perspective of you guys. There are some things you can only see from that sorta outside vantage point. Not so for the other folks in the literary club, though. They’ve probably never thought your whole thing is gross at all. They want to believe that your relationship’s a good thing, and that overpowers any other feelings they might have about it...though they might still feel a little uncomfortable, at least. Anyway, if I had to sum it all up nice and simple: you pushed your chuuni act too far, and you burned out all of Hatoko’s good will. That’s all it boils down to, really.”

“You think...? Is that really what happened?”

“Who can say? Ah, just for the record, all this stuff I’ve been telling you? Totally baseless. I’m not making a theory, or even a guess, really. This is all just my gut reaction.”

It was the most irresponsible thing he could’ve possibly said after a speech like that, but I didn’t get upset with him. I was actually grateful for his apathy, for once. That’s not to say I didn’t get mad at all, though. I was plenty mad—at myself.

“Sagami,” I said, “where’d you bump into Hatoko?”

“’Bout halfway between the school and the station, in front of that one convenience store.”

“Got it. Ah...meh, can’t hurt to ask. Feel like helping me look for her?”

“What? No way. I’m spending the afternoon in the arcade playing the Precure card machines, so that’s not happening.”

Yeah, figured as much. “Well, thanks for everything.”

“Don’t worry ’bout it. That’s what friends are for, right?”

“Yeah, and you’re the best friend a guy could ask for.”

☆

As the sun slowly sank beyond the horizon, I tottered along a riverside path, exhausted from all the running I’d just done. It was only then that I realized my first big mistake: I’d ran out still wearing the pair of slippers I put on when I went into Juu’s house. Their soles were way less thick than my usual outdoor shoes, and my feet were starting to hurt really badly. To make things worse, I’d somehow managed to lose one of them during my mad dash. The remaining slipper was a mess, totally covered in dirt and mud.

“And wait, these are Juu’s family’s slippers! Oh, no, what should I do...? I’ll have to pay them back.”

My second mistake struck me soon after: I was also still wearing my apron. I was more than a little embarrassed about being outside dressed like that, I’ll tell you that much!

“Then again...it is sort of cold out today, so this might work out nicely. The days have been getting longer lately, but it’ll still be dark soon... Actually, wait, what time is it?”

I stuck my hand in my pocket and immediately discovered yet another big screw-up: my phone was gone. I checked all my other pockets, but it was nowhere to be found. I could only assume that I’d dropped it somewhere.

Maybe it was when I ran into Sagami? Oh, speaking of which, I never apologized to him for that! I’ll have to say I’m sorry the next time I see him.

As I stood there in silence, my fourth and final mistake slowly sunk in: the things that I’d gone and said to Juu. I had plenty of feelings about what I’d done, and regret and self-loathing were definitely mixed in there, but if I had to put how I felt into a single, perfectly precise expression, well, it’s like I’d just said: I’d made a mistake.

“I’ve really done it now,” I mumbled to myself. You hear about people letting it all out—really letting someone have it—and then feeling satisfied afterward, but I wasn’t getting any satisfaction at all. All I could think was how deeply I wished I hadn’t said any of it.

I’d cried myself out as well as I could by then, though, and I was finally starting to feel a little more clear-headed. I could think about it from a more detached perspective and ask myself why I’d gone and said a thing like that as if it were someone else’s problem.

“I wonder if it was that business with Kudou-san that set me off?” I speculated. When I witnessed her ask Juu out the other day, my mind had gone completely blank. I realized it was all a misunderstanding a moment later, and that was a relief...but at the same time, I was suddenly scared.

I’d always been with Juu. We’d always, always been together. But that didn’t necessarily mean we’d always stay together. That fact was starting to feel a little more real to me, and it was all thanks to Kudou—or maybe I should say it was all her fault?

“Oh, but that’s not quite right, is it? All that stuff with Chifuyu and Tomoyo was way more of a shock, if anything,” I muttered. Not that anyone was around to hear me. I was just letting my thoughts spill from my mouth.

Juu and I had been together for so long it almost felt like we were family, but I still didn’t really understand him at all. I understood his whole “chuuni” thing even less. No matter how many times it was explained to me, I could never even begin to grasp the concept. Tomoyo and Sayumi understood what chuuni meant, though. Even Chifuyu was starting to understand, from the look of things, though just a little.

I was the only one. I was the only one who couldn’t understand. I’d been with him forever, and he’d explained it to me time and time again, but no matter how long I’d known him—no matter how many explanations he’d given me—I didn’t understand.

“I wonder what Juu and Tomoyo were talking about? Why’d they have to be alone for it?”

They were probably just discussing something I wouldn’t understand, of course. I bet they had a blast, like they always did.

“Huh...? Wait, huh?” I’d been walking along for quite some time, consumed by my worries, but an important question had only just hit me: where was I?

I quickly glanced around, taking stock of my surroundings, but I couldn’t make out so much as a single familiar landmark. Walking along the riverside path had seemed like the natural thing to do, but on taking a closer look, I realized I’d never walked on that particular path before at all. I’d been so lost in my distress as I ran that all of a sudden, I was lost in a much more literal sense. I must have wandered all the way to one of the neighboring towns.

“O-Oh, wow. I’m kind of impressed with myself!” Maybe that wasn’t the time for it, but I couldn’t help but pat myself on the back. I must’ve been running really fast, all things considered! Thinking back on it, Juu did compliment me once on how I’m “so athletic it’s almost a waste,” didn’t he? I think that was a compliment, anyway. Of course, that brought my mind right back to a certain childhood friend of mine.

“Juu...”

I sighed as I was suddenly hit by a wave of loneliness and helplessness. I wanted to go home, but at the same time, I didn’t want to go home at all. I wanted to see him, but I had no idea what sort of attitude I was supposed to take if I actually did. I was an absolute mess of conflicting emotions. Though, actually, realistically speaking, I can’t go home whether I want to or not! I had virtually no memory of the path I’d taken to get here, so retracing my footsteps was out of the question.

“Ugh, I’ve really done it now...” I sighed to myself.

“Ugh, I’ve really done it now...” sighed another voice in perfect harmony with mine.

I bolted upright and turned to find a young man sitting on the embankment just a little ways down the path. He looked like he was probably in his early twenties, and he was slumped over, clutching his head. The evening breeze ruffled the grass around him, but judging by the look on his face, he was too busy brooding over something to even notice. Then, a moment later, he looked right at me.

“Ah, umm, g-good evening,” I said with a quick, polite nod. The man wordlessly returned the gesture. It just felt like the natural thing to do when someone makes eye contact with you, somehow. Though, speaking precisely, we only made partial eye contact, on account of his right eye being covered up by an eyepatch. It was one of those white ones—the medical sort that they give you when you go to the hospital for an eye infection, or something.

“Evening, little lady. Are you a high...schooler?” asked the man. The odd, awkward pause at the end could probably be explained by how strangely I was dressed: a high school uniform, an apron, a single slipper, and socks made for quite the peculiar ensemble. Jeez, yeah. I have to admit, walking around like this really is embarrassing.

“Yes, I am,” I replied.

“Thought so! Man, high school...takes me back,” said the man in a tone laced with deep emotion. “Lately, I’ve been catching myself wishing I could go back to those days. Running around like a dumbass, doing whatever stupid crap I feel like... ’Course, when I really think about it, I had plenty of worries back then too. Just different ones, y’know? Like the ones you’re dealing with right now.”

“Does that mean you’re worried about something?” I asked.

“Yeah, y’know. Life’s nothing but a series of one problem after another, I’m telling you.”

The man gestured at the ground beside him and raised an eyebrow at me, inviting me to sit down. I took him up on his invitation without really thinking about it. I was tired out from all that running and felt like resting my legs, anyway.

“So, what’s your name, little lady?” the man asked nonchalantly.

People love to tell me how friendly I am, but not even I’d give out my name to a man I’d just met, under normal circumstances. At that particular moment, though, I was in a mood I could only describe as something close to hopeless desperation, and all those reservations were the last thing on my mind.

“My name’s Kushikawa Hatoko. That’s Kushikawa, written with the characters for ‘comb’ and ‘river’—not the yakitori sort of kushikawa—and Hatoko, written with the characters for ‘dove’ and ‘child,’” I answered, politely explaining my name down to the characters that made it up. “What’s yours?”

I was only really asking for politeness’s sake, but the man cracked an ecstatic grin the moment the words left my mouth. Then he laughed—a dry, remarkably distinctive laugh. Something like a “bwa ha ha,” if I had to spell it out. He almost looked like he’d been waiting for that moment, and he declared his name with a triumphant smile.

“My name is Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First...though in this world, I’ve taken on the alias Kiryuu Hajime.”

“...”

I guess he must be foreign?