Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 2 - Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Fallen——Angel

I quickly reached the conclusion that Kiryuu, the man who I’d happened to meet, had probably been born somewhere outside of Japan. That would explain his unusually long name—“Kiryuu Hajime” was probably a name he’d taken in an effort to naturalize himself to his new, foreign environment. I’m pretty good at figuring these things out when I put my mind to it! I also hadn’t managed to memorize the long version of his name at all, so I decided to just call him Kiryuu for the moment.

“Does that eyepatch you’re wearing have something to do with what you’re worried about?” I asked on a whim.

“Yeah...” replied Kiryuu, followed by a nod and a weary sigh. “Forbidden powers are forbidden for a reason; I overused one, and the burden it placed on my body gradually built up over time. It’s not so bad, as things stand, but if things continue in this direction, this eye of mine may very well be sealed away from the blessings of light...forever.”

“Oh, I see! You mean you have eye strain.”

“E-Eye strain...? No—well, I mean, that’s not...exactly wrong, I suppose...?”

“I know just the thing for eye strain! It helps if you lay a cold, damp washcloth over your eyes, swap it out with a hot one, and keep swapping them every couple of minutes. It improves the circulation in the tiny little blood vessels in your eyes!”

I had just the right piece of information for the situation ready in my bag of useful trivia, but Kiryuu still looked a little skeptical. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. I wondered what it could be for a moment, but a quick glance answered that question easily enough: the words “Suzuki Ophthalmology” printed at the top made it pretty clear it was a receipt from a local clinic.

“Gah! N-No, it’s not what you think! This isn’t mine, I got it from a friend!” shouted Kiryuu as he noticed the direction of my gaze. He quickly shoved the receipt back into his pocket.

“Is your eye in bad enough shape that you had to go to the hospital?” I asked, a little more concerned now.

“N-No... Modern medicine could hardly provide solace to this accursed... Ah, I mean... Oh, to hell with it. Yeah, that’s right. I screwed up big time. I guess leaving it in for three days was pushing my luck...” he mumbled, then paused again to heave another sigh. “Lemme ask you a hypothetical: if your doctor told you that your eyes just aren’t suited for contacts and that you should stop wearing them—especially considering your eyes aren’t actually bad, and you’re just using color contacts for the sake of fashion—what would you do?”

I cocked my head. “I’d stop wearing them, I guess.”

“Yeah...figures.” Kiryuu’s shoulders slumped with disappointment. “But c’mon, though... The crimson eye’s part of my identity! I’ve wished I had heterochromia for so long, you have no idea... But if even my doctor’s telling me to stop, maybe I’ve got no choice... Makes my eye swell up and hurt like hell, anyway...”

Kiryuu looked like he really was feeling extremely troubled. I still hadn’t totally figured out what exactly he was troubled about, but I had managed to piece together the impression that it was something surprisingly petty.

“You think that’s a pretty petty thing to be all worked up about, don’t you?” said Kiryuu, shooting me a sharp glare. I gulped.

“N-No, not at all! I was actually thinking about how serious and profound a problem it must be!” I stammered, shaking my head frantically.

“Doesn’t matter to me if you do,” said Kiryuu with an apathetic shrug. “That’s just how humans are. As far as we’re concerned, someone else’s problem will never be more than just that: someone else’s problem. If it’s not your issue, it’s always gonna look petty, and if it is your issue, it’s always gonna feel like the most important thing in the world. The weird thing, though, is that in spite of that, people always have a way of butting into each others’ troubles and making them their own.”

Umm...what? Where is this coming from?

Kiryuu ignored the vacant look on my face and kept talking, apparently more to himself than to me. “People fear ostracism above all else. But that doesn’t mean that they’re all right with just blending in with the crowd either. They have a driving impulse to be different; to be special, even as they wish to fit in with everyone around them. That contradiction lingers and festers in the backs of their unconscious minds, and they remain blissfully unaware of it as they live out their sad little social-animal lives. That...is human nature.”

“Umm.” I hadn’t understood what he was trying to say to begin with, but I was really lost now. My confusion must’ve shown on my face, because Kiryuu glanced over at me and cleared his throat.

“In short,” he said, “people desire to be unique—to be the one and only—but they also have a tendency to forget that fact and fall under the misapprehension that everyone else is just like them. And thus, discord is born. The vast majority of interpersonal problems in modern society arise from that social friction.”

Friction. Everything else that he’d said had gone totally over my head, but that one word really resonated with me. Is that friction what I’ve been feeling this whole time?

“They just don’t get it. Nobody does!” declared Kiryuu. “Humans are all different—every individual is a unique organism! It’s just so stupid how they try to lump everyone together under one big umbrella called ‘humanity’!”

I was still just listening along silently, but suddenly, he spun to face me. The gaze of his single uncovered jet-black eye met mine. “Now then, little lady—are you the sort of person who finds it relieving to hear that your problems are so banal and petty, they’re hardly worth concerning yourself over? Or are you the sort of person who’d be shocked by the revelation? Regardless, I’m about to make all of your worries vanish like dust in the wind.”

And then he did just that.

☆

“Hello? That you, Andou? Why’re you calling this late?”

“Has Hatoko shown up at your place, Tomoyo?”

“Hatoko? Huh? No, she hasn’t... Why, what’s up?”

“Got it. Sorry to bother you.”

“H-Hey, wait a second! Seriously, what’s going on?! Did something happen?!”

“Hatoko’s missing, that’s all.”

“She’s what?! The hell do you mean, ‘that’s all’?! And what do you mean, miss—”

I hung up. The odds of Hatoko being at Tomoyo’s house had been virtually nonexistent to begin with. Tomoyo lived far enough away that she would’ve had to have taken a train to get there, and I knew for a fact that Hatoko didn’t have her wallet with her since she’d left it—and the bag she kept it in—behind when she ran out of my place. She didn’t have any means of reaching Tomoyo’s, even if she’d wanted to.

Well, except walking, that is. It wasn’t totally impossible that she’d decided to go all the way there on foot, which is why I gave Tomoyo a call, but apparently, it hadn’t been worth the effort. I’d contacted Sayumi and Chifuyu as well, but I’d had no luck with them either. I’d gone on to run through pretty much the whole list of friends that Hatoko seemed likely to rely on at a time like this, but nobody I contacted provided even a single lead.

“Guess I’m at a standstill...”

As I leaned against a nearby utility pole, a wave of exhaustion washed over me. I slowly slid down it, crouching down on the asphalt. My complete and utter lack of regular exercise was suddenly coming back to haunt me.

“Yeah, okay, I get it... If I wanna save the world, I probably should’ve spent less time thinking up names for my attacks and more time, like, running and doing push-ups and crap.” Hindsight’s always 20/20, isn’t it?

I was starting to think that my only reasonable option would be to go home and wait for her to get in touch with me. For all I knew, I just had to give her another hour and she’d show up again at my place on her own. Some of Hatoko’s friends had told me just that when I called them up. They all talked about how “It’s fine, Hatoko’s not a kid” and “It’s only been three hours since she ‘went missing,’ right? It doesn’t count as going missing until a little more time than that’s gone by.” Some of them were definitely snickering at me, much as they tried to hide it.

I couldn’t afford to be that optimistic, though. I had a bad feeling. Her whole screamlike speech still echoed in my mind without cease. The more time passed by, the deeper my heart sank into dread. I was afraid that if I didn’t do something, Hatoko would just vanish away, never to return. That sense of impatience and ever-looming crisis, and not to mention my own sense of duty, pushed me back to my feet.

“If I’m at a standstill...then I guess I just have to start moving again.”

I set off at a run.

Run! Nay, fly!

Fly, Melos!

“Ugaaaugh...”

After who knows how long spent sprinting wildly around town, I finally burned the last drops of my energy reserves and executed an extravagantly comedic faceplant. My one consolation was that I’d had the good fortune to eat it on a dirt path that ran alongside the riverbank rather than on cold, hard pavement. I didn’t have to worry about getting pasted by a passing car, for one thing, not to mention that it was a lot less painful that way. I still tore up my jacket and pants, though, and I skinned up my palms and knees pretty badly.

“Dammit... Can’t even stand up again,” I growled. I’d pushed myself way past my limits, and my HP gauge was sitting at a perfectly round 0%. “Where the hell is she...?”

If I’ve searched this hard for this long and still haven’t found a single trace of her, then that means... For a second, the absolute worst-case scenario flashed through my mind. No! Calm down. Just calm down, and stay that way. You’re spiraling—stop overthinking this.

She could’ve fallen asleep somewhere, or she could’ve bumped into a friend. For all I knew, she was happily chatting it up with them at that very moment. And yet, somehow...somehow, I couldn’t quell the tumult unsettling my heart.

“Oh... I get it now,” I mumbled to myself. After spending a few minutes lying on my back and thinking about that mysterious sense of unease, I finally sussed out its source: this was a first for me. It was the first time I’d ever found myself without Hatoko at my side. That’s what had thrown me into such a panic.

I wasn’t usually around her twenty four hours a day, of course—childhood friends or not, we weren’t that extreme, and I think that goes without saying—but I had been convinced up until that moment that no matter what happened, Hatoko would always be my ally. I thought she’d always be like family to me. And so, in the face of complete, unilateral rejection, I found myself terrified that maybe she’d never come back to my side again.

“...Gotta get moving.” I mustered up the nonexistent reserves of power I’d kept stashed away and forced myself to stand. I’d be right back on the ground the instant I lost focus, but still, I stepped forward...

“Andou!”

...only to be stopped again by a very familiar voice. I looked up, rubbed my eyes, and found Tomoyo and Sayumi running towards me.

“You guys... What’re you doing here?”

“We’re here because we got worried after that phone call! No duh!” shouted Tomoyo.

Actually, what I meant was “How’d you know I was here, in this place in specific,” but... Oooh, I get it. It took me a moment, but then it hit me that I was right on the shortest route from my house to Tomoyo’s. Anyway, I wasn’t sure whether coming to find me was Tomoyo’s idea or Sayumi’s, but I already had a pretty good idea why they were here.

“You guys came ’cause you’re worried about Hatoko, right?”

“Not just her,” replied Sayumi. “We were also worried about you. Really, just look at you,” she grumbled indignantly as she laid a hand on my shoulder. Thanks to Route of Origin, that was all it took to restore me and my clothes to their former, undamaged state. “Chifuyu won’t be coming, by the way. We could hardly drag an elementary schooler out into the streets at this time of night, no matter the circumstances.”

“Hey, you okay, Andou...?” asked Tomoyo with no small amount of worry to her tone.

“Yeah,” I replied with a nod. I wasn’t even remotely okay, in truth, but I at least tried to act the part. “Shouldn’t have left Fenrir behind—that was a major blunder. If only he were here, I wouldn’t have burned myself out that badly.”

“Uhh...‘Fenrir’?” Tomoyo asked, raising an eyebrow.

“My most reliable means of travel, and my predestined partner! In this world, I believe his kind are known as ‘bicycles,’ or something to that effect.”

“Of course you named your bike... That’s so baby’s-first-chuuni-stunt, I don’t even feel like digging into it.”

I was honestly really grateful that the two of them had shown up. I needed all the help I could get. “Okay,” I said, ready to start delegating as I walked off. “I’ll search over that way. The two of you should—”

And then I fell over. My injuries had all been totally healed, but my stamina? Not so much, apparently.

“Oof, jeez... Are you sure you’re okay, Andou? You’re, uhh...really not looking great,” Tomoyo nervously observed.

“Lay off... I’m fine,” I grumbled, forcing myself to my feet and preparing to set off again.

“W-Wait a second!” shouted Tomoyo, grabbing me by the shoulder. It wasn’t exactly hard for her to hold me back. “Seriously, what’s going on? We have no clue why Hatoko disappeared, or why you’re freaking out like this! Explain yourself, already!”

She looked me right in the eye, her gaze so earnest it was almost painful. I could tell I wasn’t getting out of this, which meant I wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. I sat—or collapsed, really—back down onto the ground.

“Y’know, sometimes a person with good intentions but no clue can do a lot more damage than someone who intentionally goes out of their way to do harm...” I mumbled. If I were putting it nicely, I’d say that I was talking to myself, but really, it was more of a bitter complaint to the world at large, fueled by despair and self-loathing.

“There’s nothing worse than a guy who thinks he’s doing the right thing for the people around him, when really, he’s just doing whatever the hell he wants to,” I carried on. “It’s like people who offer to sing a duet with the one person in the karaoke booth who really just doesn’t want to sing at all, or people who offer to help you with your homework even though you didn’t ask, just because they want to show off how smart they are. Or parents and relatives who go on long-winded speeches about their kids, thinking that it’ll somehow make them look good...” I was so ashamed of myself, so utterly disgraced, that all I could do was stare at the ground. “Or...like people who try to force their hobbies onto their friends...”

Sayumi and Tomoyo listened quietly as I continued to explain myself.

“I used to recommend stuff that I liked to Hatoko, like, all the time. Manga, light novels, that sort of stuff. And I didn’t just recommend them either—I’d tell her all about my theories, my headcanons, the powers and titles I’d thought up... You name it, I probably talked her ear off about it. It was a nasty case of chuunibyou at work,” I added, for once deliberately using the term as the pejorative it was. “I thought they were all the coolest things in the world, and I wanted her to think they were cool too. I wanted her to be able to enjoy them in the same way I did. Really...that’s all I wanted...”

There wasn’t so much as a scrap of ill will motivating my actions. I had nothing but good intentions, but unfortunately, well-intentioned mistakes are the hardest ones to deal with.

“I wonder if I’ve been bothering Hatoko this whole time. Has she been pushing herself for my sake, even though deep down inside, she thought I was annoying...?” My eyes felt hot and damp. It was taking everything I had to keep myself from crying, and I looked even further away from Tomoyo and Sayumi, just to make sure they wouldn’t notice if I ended up losing that battle. “I thought she could just brush off anything I said, like it was nothing...but I was wrong.”

Her scream still resounded in my mind, again and again. Her tirade had been peppered with all sorts of special words and terms that I’d taught her over the years.

“She’s been working so hard to try and see eye to eye with me...harder than I ever realized. And what did I ever do for her?”

We were like a shirt that had been buttoned up the wrong way—talking past each other for as long as we’d known each other—and I never even noticed. Years upon years had passed by without me ever realizing the fundamental flaw in our relationship, much less making any effort to correct it.

“Has being with me...been painful for Hatoko, this whole time...?”

“Oh, shut up, you stupid little wuss!”

Tomoyo slapped me in the face, hard. She didn’t use Closed Clock this time. It was a perfectly ordinary slap, without any extra power or supernatural assistance behind it, but in spite of that, it felt almost absurdly heavy as it landed on my cheek. You don’t put that sort of force behind a slap unless you really mean it—or at the very least, you don’t use it for the sake of our usual slapstick violence.

I was already sitting down, and Tomoyo’s blow knocked me flat on my back. My cheek stung like hell, and I was so shocked that I couldn’t even react. She’d slapped the tears right out of my eyes.

“Quit moaning and groaning already! It’s pathetic!” shouted Tomoyo, laying into me verbally as I lay sprawled out before her. “You think being around you’s painful for Hatoko?! As friggin’ if!”

That finally shocked me out of my stupor. I looked up, and found Tomoyo glaring daggers down at me.

“When has Hatoko ever not looked like she’s having fun?! Have you seen the way she smiles when she’s around you?! You two get along so well, it makes me sick! There’s no way in hell I believe she’s been faking it this whole time!”

“The thing you two have going grosses me the hell out.”

Sagami had made it very clear how he saw Hatoko and I, but there Tomoyo was, telling me that the way she saw us couldn’t have been any more different. I had no way of knowing which one of them was correct. It was even possible that neither of them were entirely wrong. But as to which of them I wanted to believe—which of their words I wanted to cling to like my life depended on them...well, that goes without saying, doesn’t it?

“Hatoko’s important to you, isn’t she?! You care for her enough to run yourself into a broken-down mess, don’t you?! Then try believing in her, dammit! Hatoko doesn’t hate you! She never would!” Tomoyo ranted on and on, lecturing me with the intensity of a raging inferno. The words she spat were brutally harsh, and yet at the same time profoundly kind. “You don’t get to decide how Hatoko feels! Don’t go getting all depressed over a stupid guess, you coward! I never wanna see you sniffling and waffling like a stupid little sad sack ever again!”

And then Tomoyo crouched down in front of me. She raised a fist and brought it to my chest—this time as a tap, not a full-on punch—and grinned mischievously.

“So pull yourself together! You’re Guiltia Sin Jurai, aren’t you?”

“...Mwa ha ha!”

I laughed. All I could do was laugh—nay, cachinnate—with all the might I could muster! Tomoyo had picked the most encouraging line she could’ve possibly come up with. There was nary a phrase in this world that could have lifted my spirits more!

“Hmph. And who, pray tell, was sniffling? Surely you aren’t implying that I, he who is scorned and despised far and wide as Category Error: The Man No Longer Human, would ever betray so much of a hint of human emotion?”

I placed my hands on my knees and pushed myself upright, unleashing another fearless mwa-ha-ha as I rose. My gaze met Tomoyo’s, and just as she grinned...

“You’ll have to excuse me for raining on your parade.”

...my legs buckled. Sayumi, who’d circled around behind me at some point when I wasn’t paying attention, had taken me out at the knees. In my stamina-starved state, a dignified fall was out of the question, and I face-planted right back onto the ground. Again. Oh, come on, I just managed to pick myself up, in more ways than one! Just how many times am I gonna have to fall over tonight?!

“We have yet to resolve any of the problems we currently face,” said Sayumi. “To begin with, we still have no information whatsoever regarding Hatoko’s whereabouts. If you searched for her long enough to put you in that state, Andou, then even with Tomoyo and I helping, a blind manhunt is highly unlikely to bear fruit.”

“Right... Do you think we should contact the police, then?” suggested Tomoyo.

Sayumi shook her head. “No, I don’t imagine they would take us seriously. A high school girl going missing would certainly merit their involvement after a matter of days, perhaps, but it hasn’t even been five hours since Hatoko vanished.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense...”

“Staying patient and waiting would be our best move. However...” Sayumi paused to look down at her feet, where I was still doing my damnedest to stand up again. “Considering that a member of our team seems incapable of restraining himself, I believe that is out of the question.”

“You’re damn right it is,” I agreed, finally succeeding in forcing myself upright again.

“I respect your dedication,” said Sayumi, “and I assure you, I want to find Hatoko as quickly as possible as well. That said, I don’t believe that searching blindly will get us anywhere...”

The conversation trailed off as Sayumi and Tomoyo both frowned, falling deep into thought. I fell alongside them, racking my mind with a newfound sense of clarity. What should we do? Think. Think!

“If only one of us had ended up with clairvoyance as their power, or something...” grumbled Tomoyo.

“I’m afraid that wishful thinking won’t accomplish anything,” Sayumi quietly replied.

She was right, unfortunately. None of the powers we possessed were suitable for finding a missing person. Godlike in their respective fields though they were, not one of them was capable of something so simple as finding a single—Wait!

I gasped. Powers. Our powers? “Mwa ha ha...mwaaa ha ha ha ha haaa!”

I burst into laughter. The other two were gaping in astonishment at me, but I just couldn’t help myself. If this wasn’t laugh-worthy, then nothing was.

“Mwa ha ha ha ha! To think I overlooked such an extraordinarily obvious solution!”

Of course we have a means! Not some master plan or an ace up our sleeves, though. No, the best method available to us is exceedingly simple. A perfectly run of the mill, utterly hackneyed plot development that’s precisely suited to our needs! No need to go off the script or showcase our originality here. The answer is simple: we just embrace cliché!

“Uhh, Andou...?”

“What is it, Andou?”

As Tomoyo and Sayumi stared at me in confusion...I held my right hand aloft.

☆

“I’ll keep this simple: the true identity of what has you so worried right now, little lady, is just plain old guilt,” Kiryuu said with an air of casual nonchalance after listening to my whole story. He was such a good listener—or rather, he was so good at dragging my true feelings out of me—that I ended up sharing a surprising amount. Before I knew it, I’d told him pretty much everything.

I’d only spent about ten minutes or so explaining the whole situation, but from how he was talking, you’d think he’d seen through to the very core of my being after just that brief period of time. It made me feel a little uncomfortable...or at least sort of flustered, anyway.

“You think I feel guilty?”

“That’s right. You’d think you’d be worried about how you can never keep up with your childhood friend’s bizarre stories and inexplicable actions, or how obnoxious it is that he keeps shoving his hobbies onto you, or how the little dumbass never seems to think about your feelings...but that’s not really the problem, is it?”

I paused to think about it, but Kiryuu threw out another question just a moment later. “You don’t actually want this friend of yours to change, do you?”

“I mean... I...”

He was right. Juu was a completely incomprehensible boy, to the point that he could be seriously annoying sometimes. But so what? I was almost astonished to realize that, really, I didn’t want him to change at all. The opposite, even. Deep down, I wanted him to stay just the same as he’d always been.

“No, the truth is that you’re just ashamed of the fact that you can’t understand him. You feel bad about not being able to sympathize with him. You’re a real goody two-shoes, y’know that? Pretty rare to find someone with as pure a spirit of self-sacrifice as you have these days, Kushikawa Hatoko.”

It felt like something had finally clicked inside me. Suddenly, it all made sense. I got a little sick of him sometimes, sure, and I was sort of jealous of how everyone else seemed to grasp what chuuni meant so easily, but none of those were the real issue. The primary cause for how I was feeling...

I sorta figured you wouldn’t understand... Meh, that’s just how it goes.

...was the sad, resigned smile that Juu had given me as he’d said those words. It’d been weighing on me ever since that day, and with it came an ever-building sense of guilt. That put the way I’d flipped out at him earlier into a sharp new context: I was probably just venting my frustrations, like a child who hates studying throwing a tantrum about school being useless when they can’t solve a problem.

“You can never put yourself completely in the shoes of another person, and other people can never put themselves into your shoes, either. Everyone worries about this sorta stuff sometimes. That’s just life. And in that sense, little lady, the big worry you’re grappling with right now’s as basic as it can get,” said Kiryuu, giving me a glance that made it feel like he was appraising my reaction. He probably was, really, to try to judge whether I’d been relieved or shocked to hear that I was as average as could be.

Honestly, I was feeling both at the same time. On the one hand, I was glad to hear that my problems were perfectly normal, but on the other hand, I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t something more dramatic than that. Suddenly, I saw everything he’d said about people wanting to be different, even as they wanted to fit in with everyone around them, in a whole new light. Is that what I was feeling?

“There’s all sorts of ways to handle this sort of problem,” he continued, “but in this case, the solution’s incredibly easy.”

“It’s easy?” I repeated in astonishment.

“The thing you don’t understand about him is his chuunibyou, right? Well, that makes this simple: you don’t have to understand,” said Kiryuu, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

It wasn’t, though. What on earth does that mean? I thought, cocking my head.

“You don’t have to understand,” he repeated, “and you don’t have to feel guilty for not understanding. You can just keep acting the same way you always have and not spare any of this a second thought.”

“B-But that would mean—”

“That it’s only a matter of time before he decides he doesn’t need you anymore?” said Kiryuu, cutting me off and completing my thought. I gulped, and he grinned. “Sheesh—first I thought you were the shameless type, then I thought you were surprisingly sensitive and idealistic, and now I think you’re surprisingly realistic. Anyway, though, riddle me this: what’s so bad about not understanding something in the first place?”

“I-It’s, uhh... I mean, it sort of just feels like understanding is better than not understanding, in general.”

“You sure about that? For all you know, that sorta logic might not apply when it comes to chuunibyou,” said Kiryuu. He was really good at dodging past the point and keeping his answers ambiguous until he’d built them up to his satisfaction. “See, the thing is, chuunibyou is an exceptionally intricate and delicate concept. It’s built on so many complex, interweaving factors that it’s just about impossible to grasp the totality of it all in anything more than a vague, superficial sorta sense. Considering that, it’s a given that there’d be plenty of people out there who can’t even begin to understand it—people like you.”

I wasn’t totally following, but what I did understand was enough to make me hang my head with shame. Until, that is, he continued.

“But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

“It...isn’t?”

“Your typical case study in chuunibyou wants other people to understand them. They’re all ‘Accept and acknowledge my magnificence, you ignorant plebeians!’, y’know? But at the same time, and to the same extent, they don’t want to be understood.”

They want people to understand them...but they don’t want to be understood? What? Isn’t that sort of a huge contradiction?

“I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right—it’s a contradiction. And a nasty one, at that. A contradiction with no possible resolution.”

“A contradiction without resolution...?”

“An Endless Paradox.”

Kiryuu smiled again, and I couldn’t help but feel that his expression carried some profound hidden meaning to it. An Endless Paradox... I had the feeling I’d heard those words somewhere before, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“Chuunibyou patients—those who believe that not being like everyone else makes them awesome—can’t let themselves be understood that easily. If the bulk of the populace can accept you, then that means you don’t even count as a chuuni anymore. And so, even as you long for understanding, you don’t want to be understood at all. There’s a unique sense of solitude, of pathos that comes with being disavowed by the world, and for the right sort of person under the right circumstances, that very pathos can morph into a euphoria that can’t be beat.”

“And that,” continued Kiryuu, in the sort of tone adults use to admonish children, “is why people like you—people who can’t understand chuuni, no matter how hard they try—are an absolutely vital presence in the life of someone like your childhood friend. He wouldn’t be able to live true to himself without you, a friend who tries her hardest to understand him but fails at every turn. There’s no way in hell he’d ever decide he doesn’t need you anymore.”

For a moment, we fell into silence. Then Kiryuu spoke up again. “So, tell me, little lady: what would you say true happiness is?”

“Uh, umm...” I stammered. The shift in topic was so sudden and jarring, I found myself floundering.

“You’d better not disappoint me with some lame-ass answer like ‘money’ or whatever,” he added.

I decided to give the question some serious thought. Hmm. Maybe eating delicious food? Or hanging out with your closest friends? Judging by Kiryuu’s attitude about the question, though, I had a feeling that he’d be upset if I gave him such pedestrian answers. He had just spent the past several minutes waxing philosophical at me (or at least, I think that was all some sort of philosophy). I was starting to feel ambitious, so I decided to give him an equally philosophical response.

“I think it’s love,” I replied, only to be overcome by a wave of intense shame the second the words left my mouth. Oh, jeez, of all the ridiculously girly answers I could’ve given!

Kiryuu, however, didn’t poke fun at me for it. He didn’t even laugh. Instead, he gave me a serious nod. “Not a bad answer. Romantic love, fraternal love, neighborly love, homosexual love, platonic love, self-love... If you roll all of those up into one single, all-encompassing ‘love,’ then I think you’re onto something. That’s about as close as it gets to a universal form of happiness.”

I really wasn’t thinking about it anywhere near that profoundly, but okay, I guess.

“I think you’re going a little too far with it, though,” he asserted. “It’s too all-encompassing. The real answer’s a lot more simple than that: true happiness...is to be chosen.”

“To be...chosen?”

“In other words, to be needed by someone else. To have someone tell you that it has to be you; that nobody else will do. To know, to feel, that your existence is of vital importance to the world you live in. To be chosen is the greatest form of happiness that a human could ask for. In short,” said Kiryuu, his one visible eye narrowing as he smiled gently, “everybody wants to be the chosen one.”

I mulled over his words once again. I wasn’t sure whether or not what he was saying was true. I couldn’t prove it one way or another, and I didn’t want to either. Regardless of the truth of his words, though, I was convinced of one thing. I finally understood.

All I ever wanted was for Juu to choose me. This whole time, I’ve just been afraid that he wouldn’t.

“Anyway, that’s enough chatting for now,” said Kiryuu, calling an abrupt end to the conversation as he stood up and brushed the dirt from the back of his pants. He looked off down the riverside path and waved. Glancing in that direction, I could see a small group of people walking toward us. His friends, I assumed. “Thanks, little lady. Nothing like a good talk to kill some time.”

“N-No problem. I mean, actually, no, thank you!” I scrambled to my feet and gave him a quick bow of appreciation. “I, umm, well... I’m not really sure how to put this, but this has been a really helpful conversation for me.”

“Bwa ha ha! Don’t worry about it. Like I said, I was just killing time—or more accurately, buying time, I suppose? Not that it really makes a difference.”

And then...just like that...

He sneered.

A chill ran down my spine. Juu had lectured me over and over about the difference between a smile and a sneer, and all of a sudden, I finally understood exactly what he’d been trying to get at. I knew, without question, that the look on Kiryuu’s face could only possibly be a sneer. I wasn’t any closer to understanding the chuuni mindset, though, so I still didn’t see the appeal of the expression at all. Kiryuu sneered at me rapturously, but I didn’t think he looked cool. Nothing of the sort.

No, he looked terrifying.

And barely a moment later, I crumpled to the ground. It felt like a massive, invisible hammer had just swung down from the heavens and landed directly on my head.

“H-Huh? What the...?” I ended up on my hands and knees, barely keeping myself from collapsing prone on the grass. It was almost like I was kneeling down before him. I felt heavy—unnaturally heavy.

Something’s wrong. Is it all the running I did? Did it take this long for the exhaustion to catch up with me? Wh-Why do I feel so heavy...?

“Oh? Something wrong, little lady? Looks like you’ve got quite the weight on your shoulders,” said Kiryuu, peering down into my eyes. “Bwa ha ha! Don’t you worry. I’ll be sending you to the Heavens’ Hell soon enough.”

There’s that sneer again. It was an eerie, ominous expression that made the kindly smile he’d worn up till just a moment ago feel like an outright lie. Just looking at it was enough to send my heart into a state of turmoil. My head felt as heavy and unwieldy as a dumbbell, but I finally managed to lift it, only to see Kiryuu holding a hand up to his eyepatch.

“This right eye of mine has been sealed away. I’ll be living the eyepatch life for a while—doctor’s orders.” His smile grew wider, and the danger that lurked behind it deeper, as he spoke. “But I never said my Evil Eye had to be red, now, did I?”

What is he talking about? And who is he talking to?

“Now then, little lady—look into my eye.” I couldn’t help but obey his command, and the instant I did, his gaze seized hold of me. It was dark, pitch black, like an endless tunnel stretching on and on before me.

I groaned, but then, suddenly, the weight vanished. My body had gone from feeling as heavy as lead to feeling as light as a feather in the blink of an eye. And yet, for some reason, I still couldn’t stand back up. My mind was hazy, and dizziness was quickly overwhelming me. Before I even knew what was happening, I was face-down in the grass.

Huuuh? What’s going on? Why am I so...sleepy...?

“You’re late, people!” said Kiryuu from somewhere up above me. I could tell that a group was gathering around me, and dim as my consciousness was, I just barely managed to listen in as their conversation unfolded.

“The oath of inevitable decapitation: Head Hunting, aka Natsu Aki.”

“Huuuh? You really in any place to say that? We’re only late ’cause we had to pick up your eye medicine, ’cause you told us to, ’Ryuu! You got any idea how far away the nearest drugstore is? It took friggin’ forever!” said a girl with black-rimmed glasses and braided hair long enough to almost touch the ground.

“The seeker in realms unsought: Dead Space, aka Akutagawa Yanagi.”

“Huh? Uh, sure,” said a small-statured boy wearing headphones and playing a portable game console.

“The Evil Eye under lock and key: Eternal Wink, aka Saitou Hitomi.”

“Umm, Hajime? Do you really think you should be rattling off all of our power names like that? The apron girl isn’t going to be joining us or anything, is she?” said a suit-clad woman who was keeping one of her eyes conspicuously squeezed shut.

“The toothed blade of sinful misalignment: Zigzag Jigsaw, aka Toki Shuugo.”

“Just let him do his thing, Hitomi. Kiryuu’s the sorta hopeless chuuni nutjob that gets off on listing the power names he thought up whenever he has an excuse,” said a young man in a tank top. He held a worn-down knife in his mouth, its blade so nicked and dented it didn’t look like it had much of an actual blade left to speak of.

“The lunar goddess who ravishes the solar deities: Sex Eclipse, aka Yusano Fantasia.”

“P-Please, I’m begging you, stop calling me that name! Did you have to put s-s-sex in it? Ugh, I’m so ashamed...” moaned a blonde-haired woman who wore a tracksuit jacket over a bright pink nurse’s uniform.

“The endlessly altered Decalogue: White Rulebook, aka Tanaka Umeko.”

The last member of the group—a little girl dressed in an all-black outfit that matched her hair—didn’t say so much as a word.

“Hmm...? Hey, Hitomi. Where’s Lost Regalia?”

“Hinoemata left to go home and watch a TV show. I said that you wouldn’t be happy about it, but you can imagine how well that worked... Sorry. I’m not doing a very good job supervising everyone, I know.”

“Bwa ha ha! Don’t worry about it—I’m not gonna pin that one on you. Better to let Lost Regalia fly free for now, all things considered. Anyway, I’ll leave cleaning up here to you.”

“Got it. Would you please carry the apron girl for us, Umeko?”

The black-haried girl gave a silent, expressionless nod...and with that, the world faded away into darkness.