Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 3 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Bakunovel.

What is it about unusual words and superfluous vocab that sets my heart aflutter so?

Take my go-to descriptor for Dark and Dark: the stygian flames of purgatory. Throwing a fancy word like “stygian” into play when you’re talking about a superpower’s basically a given, right? You don’t have to stop there, though—you can slip that sort of word into everyday conversation as well and make your life exponentially cooler as a result!

Let’s start with some basic options:

• Real = Corporeal

• Proud = Vainglorious

• Stopped = Quiescent

• Visual = Ocular

Etcetera, etcetera. But that sort of substitution really is basic, isn’t it? They’re just synonyms, after all! Anyone can understand what you’re getting at if they have a half-decent vocabulary. That’s why a master of the craft can’t be satisfied with that sort of simple option. No, we use almost completely unrelated words for our substitutions!

Some practical examples:

• To run = To fly

• To open = To unleash

• A sign = A fell wind

• Hell = Sinner’s Paradise

• “I’ll kill you!” = “I’ll grant you the greatest mercy this world has to offer!”

Etcetera, etcetera. It’s just so cool. Using phrasings so obtuse that your word processor flags them as grammatical errors: hella cool.

“Oh, yeah, I get where you’re coming from on this one. I guess even you have a decent idea every once in a while,” said Sagami, nodding in agreement. I’d taken the brief break period between classes to extol the virtues of deliberately elaborate vocabulary, and he’d actually agreed with me for once.

“Oh? It’s not every day that we see eye to eye, Sagami Shizumu!” I exclaimed.

Sagami was a pretty boy who I wasn’t friends with, but our relationship was something close enough that you couldn’t tell the difference even if you squinted. I always liked to say that we were on the same wavelength but had irreconcilably different tastes. Could it be, though, that I’d finally managed to pound an appreciation for the things I loved into his thick skull?

“Some phrasings really do have a certain something to them that the more basic versions just don’t capture, don’t they? Like ‘shooting rope’ or ‘blowing a load.’”

Sagami gave me one of his trademark hottie smiles. I gaped at him in deathly silence.

“Can’t forget ‘sowing your seed’ or ‘descending into depravity’ either,” he carried on. “Ah, but ‘gangbang’ is an exception. I’m really not into stories with more than one guy getting in on the action. I’ll pass on sticking it into a hole some other guy was just using, thank you very much!”

“...”

“Hmm? What’s wrong, Andou? Why the sour face?”

“It’s nothing,” I sighed, then attempted to change the topic. “By the way, y’know how some people get all pedantic about how it doesn’t make sense that the bad guys in shonen manga explain their powers to the heroes? I think that’s a pretty lousy nitpick, myself.”

“Hmm.”

“When you proclaim your power’s function for all to hear, you’re demonstrating to the world that you have the utmost of pride and confidence in your ability, and you’re showing your opponent the respect they deserve! It’s like how generals in the Sengoku era would shout out all their achievements before they charged into battle. Keeping how your power works secret and taking your enemy down without them ever finding out what’s happening’s just, I dunno... It doesn’t even count as a supernatural battle, as far as I’m concerned.”

“I know what you mean. Sometimes having characters explain what’s going on can be a critical tool to build up a story’s action.”

“Oh, you do get where I’m coming from! Nice!”

“People nitpick eroge about that stuff all the time too. Like, they go on and on about how nobody actually says stuff like ‘I can feel you twitching inside me!’ and ‘Ahh, your hot white sticky stuff’s all over me!’ like they do in the sex scenes in those games. They always whine about how the writers should stop putting lines like that in, but they just don’t get it! It’s hot because nobody would ever say something like that in real life! Don’t you think?”

“...”

“It makes you think, like, ‘Oh, wow, she’s so uncontrollably horny it’s reduced her to saying stuff like that?!’ It really helps bring the energy level up. Right, Andou?”

“...Sure.” Then I changed the topic again. “So, uhh, backing up a minute. About the whole ‘descending into depravity’ thing: personally, I prefer using ‘plummeting’ for that concept. It’s got a certain something to it that ‘descending’ just doesn’t capture. Like, it carries a sense of despair—a sense of sinking into the depths of darkness from whence there can be no return!”

“Yeah, you’ve got a point there. After all, if you’re gonna talk a girl into plumbing the depths of depravity with you, better to make her plummet all the way down into a pleasure so intense she’ll never return to her former self,” Sagami answered with another of those truly exceptional smiles.

“Okay, that’s it! I’m done!” I shouted, leaping up out of my chair. I couldn’t hold my indignation back for even a second longer. “Why, why do you have to steer the conversation back in that direction each and every friggin’ time?! Why must you keep shoehorning your pervert crap into my aesthetic musings?!”

“Excuse me? Considering that you’ve been steering the conversation toward your chuuni nonsense at every opportunity, I don’t think you have a leg to stand on,” Sagami snorted derisively.

I clicked my tongue with irritation and sighed. “I can’t believe I was stupid enough to feel like I could relate to you for even a second.”

“Hah! I counter that claim with Mirror Force!”

“Mwa ha ha, too easy! Reveal face-down card: Remove Trap!”

“Too bad, Andou. Remove Trap isn’t a Quick-Play spell card, so you can’t use it to counter a Trap Card.”

“Oh, shut up! It works in the manga—Marik and Yugi do it all the time!”

“Hey, Andou?” said Sagami, abruptly cutting off the flow of the conversation. He spoke in a low, slow tone, almost as if he was trying to send me a warning. “We’re never going to see eye to eye.”

He stared at me, and I returned the gesture, fixing my gaze on his piercingly clear eyes. “Yeah. We won’t,” I spat, then flopped back down into my chair.

Every once in a while, Sagami made one of those weird, unspeakably ominous expressions. This wasn’t exactly anything new, though every time he did it, I had to think of how weird it was to see a guy as good-looking as him making a face like that. It was like he was glaring through me—like he was carefully observing my every motion through his strained, unnatural expression, which was paradoxically as detached as it was invasive.

“By the way, I’ve been curious about something ever since this morning,” said Sagami, once again dropping back into his usual, casual tone and glancing out the classroom’s door. “Don’t you think Tomoyo’s acting strangely today?”

“Tomoyo is? Really?”

“Yeah. I noticed her standing around by the entryway this morning, and she was glaring at her cell phone with, like...a really serious look on her face, as best as I could tell.”

“She was probably just reading a text or something, right?”

“Nah. She wasn’t reading—I could tell. Her eyes weren’t moving at all. Plus, she only looked for a moment before she put the phone away again.”

Sagami went on to explain that she’d pulled her phone from her pocket, glanced at its screen, then put it away again just as quickly. Not just once, though—she went through the same process less than a minute later, and again soon after.

“So that got me curious, and I decided to go take a look into class 3’s room during a break between classes. And wouldn’t you know it, she was still at it with her phone.”

“Checking her phone over and over, huh? That would mean... Hmm.”

“She’s probably checking to see if she has any new messages. That’s my best guess, anyway.”

Hmm. That would explain it, I guess. It begs the question of who she’s waiting for a message from, though. And eagerly waiting, at that.

“I’d rather not even consider this, but you don’t think...she has a boyfriend, does she...?” asked Sagami, the color draining from his face.

“Wait, why are you going pale over this?”

“What are you, stupid?! Don’t you even care that Tomoyo’s in danger of becoming used goods?!”

“Quit shouting at me, and quit looking so serious while you do it! And why the hell can’t you see girls as anything other than sex objects?! You barely even know Tomoyo!”

“What can I say? I like her, so of course I care,” Sagami said nonchalantly.

My jaw just about hit the floor. “Seriously?”

“Oh, sorry. That was a pretty misleading way of putting it. I don’t mean I’m in love with her or anything like that.”

“O-Oh, okay, I get it. You mean you like her as, like, a person?”

“No, I like her as a sex object.”

“Oh my god, you are actual gutter scum, I swear!”

“Excuse me, rude! Let the record show I don’t intend to do anything to her at all. Well, not in the real world, anyway. I’ll mess her up real good in my mind.”

“I’m starting to feel bad for calling you gutter scum, actually. Feels like I’m giving scum a bad name.”

“That doesn’t just apply to Tomoyo, by the way. I consider any good-looking girl around her teens to be a valid target for my sexual desires. I don’t even know how many times I’ve whacked it to all the other literary club members.”

“Stop lusting after my clubmates, you freak!”

“Huh? You’re saying you haven’t, Andou?”

“Wha?! I, ah, gah!” I stammered, more tongue-tied than I’d ever been before. “Anyway, back to the point! We were talking about Tomoyo acting weird, right?”

“Right... We were, yeah. That was the main topic.”

How did we drift so far off the point in such a weird direction, anyway? Rhetorical question; of course, it was Sagami’s fault. Can’t he just transfer schools, already? Preferably to a boys’ school in a totally different world populated exclusively by beast people.

Not that it even mattered, really. I didn’t need him to tell me that Tomoyo had been acting strangely.

After lunch that same day, I made my way toward the vending machine by the school store to buy a can of black coffee. I’d been making a habit of showing off the fact that I only drank my coffee black ever since I started high school, and it was practically part of my daily routine by that point. I figured it was probably getting close to the right time for my efforts to start bearing fruit. Surely at least half of the girls in my class were thinking something along the lines of “Andou only ever drinks his coffee black, doesn’t he? He’s so mature and mysterious!”

Mwa ha ha! Yes, indeed: real men drink their coffee black! The likes of MAX Coffee shall never disgrace my refined palate!

“Man, though,” I muttered as I took a sip, “black coffee sure is gross.” The flavor profile just didn’t suit me on a fundamental level. I mean, come on, it’s so bitter!

Hatoko always told me that if I thought it was so nasty, I should stop drinking it, but that’s just not how it works. I wanted to be a black coffee drinker! And, more importantly, I wanted everyone to know I was a black coffee drinker!

“Guess this is just one of those trials that real men have to endure... Mwa ha ha! I am not wont to turn down a challenge! I’ll keep drinking that sinful elixir, stained with the jet-black hue of the apocalypse itself, to the bitter end!”

My determination renewed, I strode down the hallway with overflowing confidence, only to catch sight of Tomoyo as she walked out of her classroom. She hadn’t noticed me, though, and didn’t even glance in my direction as she sped off on her way.

I couldn’t see her well enough to be absolutely certain, but I could’ve sworn she was fiddling with her phone in her pocket as she left. Technically speaking, using your cell phone on school grounds was against the rules, by the way, but basically none of the students paid attention to that regulation, and the teachers weren’t particularly uptight about it as long as we weren’t using them during our lessons. It was essentially a rule in name only.

As Tomoyo turned a corner, I caught a glimpse of her face. That brief look was enough for me to tell that she was deep in thought about something. Brooding, even. I hesitated for just a moment, then found myself following along after her before I knew it.

What if Sagami was right and she really is waiting for her boyfriend to contact her? What would I do then...? I mean, it’s not like whether or not Tomoyo’s dating someone is any of my business... But then, why do I feel so weirdly uneasy...?

Wait, what am I thinking? How could Tomoyo of all people possibly get a boyfriend?! Who’d want to date a girl who’s a great listener, and super considerate, and complains all the time but somehow ends up being surprisingly sociable in spite of all the grousing, and acts all calm and cool but is secretly super cute when she smiles, and...huh? Wait a second... I can’t think of anything bad to say about her! Could it be that Tomoyo’s actually an incredibly nice girl, through and through?!

As I was being struck by a sudden and shocking revelation, Tomoyo opened the emergency exit and stepped out onto the fire escape. I pulled myself together, then snuck out after her.

The early summer breeze gently brushed my skin as I stepped outside. Tomoyo was just a little ways away down the staircase, already fiddling with her cell phone. I stuck to the shadows by the wall and spent a moment quietly observing her. Her expression was incredibly serious as she stared at her phone’s screen. She looked desperate, or cornered—like she was at her wit’s end, maybe. Then, after about three minutes of silent staring, Tomoyo suddenly started yelling.

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Oh my god, yesss!” she shouted. She usually made a concentrated effort to play it cool, and it was really rare to see her act this openly happy about something.

Tomoyo grinned gleefully, literally jumping with joy. Everything about how she was acting made it clear that she was ecstatic, and I had a lot of questions. I hesitated for a moment longer, then resolved myself to just go ahead and ask.

“Hey!” I called out to her.

“Hyeeek?!” Tomoyo shrieked, jumping again in a totally different sort of way, “Wha... A-An, A-A-Andou, wh-what’re you...?”

“That’s some major stuttering you’ve got going on, there. Anyway, I, uh... I noticed you staring a hole in your phone earlier, so I thought something might’ve happened and decided to follow you.”

“S-So, you were watching the whole time?”

I nodded. Tomoyo spun about to face away from me, then shrieked in a piercingly shrill falsetto. “Aaagh, come on! Stupid, stupid, stupid! Freak! Stalker!”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” I sighed. “What were you so excited about, anyway?”

I didn’t really think she’d answer me, but at that point, it wasn’t like asking could make things any worse than they already were. Considering how mad she was about my admittedly stalkerish behavior, I figured the odds were very high she’d be too stubborn to tell me anything...

“Huh...? Umm, r-right, yeah. If you’re that curious, I guess I could tell you.”

...but lo and behold, her rage faded away almost instantly. She was even going to tell me what the deal was, astonishingly enough. Actually, it sort of seems like she really, really wants to talk about it?

“Oh, but first—do you know my pen name, Andou?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I do.”

Tomoyo was an aspiring writer, and she’d already picked out a pen name for herself. I’d happened to steal a glance at her idea notebook at one point in the past, and had inadvertently learned her chosen pseudonym in the process: Yugami Hizumi.

“Now that you mention it, I’ve been meaning to say something about that for a while now.”

“What?”

“Tomoyo, your pen name’s stupid cool!”

Instantly, her face flushed scarlet. My praise must’ve touched an embarrassment nerve.

“Huh? N-No way! I mean...really?”

“Yeah, really! It’s as good as a pen name could get! ‘Yugami’ and ‘Hizumi’ are cool names in and of themselves, but they’re also both words for ‘distortion,’ right? You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”

“Right, exactly!” said Tomoyo, suddenly shifting from bashfulness to excitement. She switched right back again a second later, though. Must’ve been embarrassed about raising her voice. “I-I’m surprised you caught onto that.”

“Are you kidding? I noticed right away!”

The Japanese language has a number of words for “distortion,” with slight differences in nuance, and among them, “yugami,” “hizumi,” and “ibitsu” are all written using the same base character. It’s one of those magical characters that’s cool no matter how context dictates you read it! Even better, if you break it down into its component radicals, you can turn it into the word for “injustice,” which makes it, like, a thousand times more cool!

The best part, though, was that Tomoyo didn’t actually use that character itself in her pen name at all! No, it was made up of totally different characters that were pronounced the same way!

“‘Yugami’: a playful god. ‘Hizumi’: clearest crimson. The ‘distortion’ nuance lingers in the background, implied but never stated... Holy crap, is that ever a pen name! Seriously, it sends shivers down my spine!”

“H-Hey, stop it, okay...? D-D-Don’t compliment me like that, it’s weird! B-But, umm, th-thanks,” mumbled Tomoyo. She was squatting down, covering her face with her hands, and I could tell her embarrassment was approaching critical mass.

I, however, wasn’t even close to done complimenting her! Yugami Hizumi, seriously! I could’ve spent at least another hour straight explaining what made the name so special! A name like that doesn’t even need context—it’s just that good! Once again, Tomoyo had proven herself to have an incredible knack for that sort of thing.

“W-Well, anyway, all I needed to know was whether or not you remembered the name. Look at this next,” said Tomoyo after she finally shook off her shame. She held out her phone, and I took a look. For some reason, a long list of names was displayed on the screen.

“What’s this?”

“The first-round judging results for a light novel writing competition. They just got announced today.”

Hmm. In other words, these are all pen names? I was vaguely familiar with that sort of contest, and knew that they tended to be split up into at least three or so rounds of judging. Clearing the first round meant you’d broken through the first barrier on the road to becoming an author, more or less.

“Out of 534 applicants in total, 127 passed the first round, huh? They pruned the list down to just about a fifth of its original size, then,” I observed.

“Right,” confirmed Tomoyo. “That varies a bit from publisher to publisher, though. This publisher just happens to always shoot for a second round that’s about a fifth of the size of the first one.”

A one in five chance of making it through didn’t sound that terribly difficult, but on the other hand, when I thought about the four hundred and something people who’d been dropped in the first round, it struck me as sort of incredible. I skimmed through the list of pen names, appreciating the wide variety of monikers people had chosen for themselves. Some of them were so mundane I figured they weren’t pen names at all, while some were outlandishly cool, and others were straight-up memes.

Then, suddenly, my eyes landed upon one pen name that caught my attention above all the others: Yugami Hizumi.

“Huh...? Wait—huuuh? Your pen name’s on here...?”

But, that would mean... I looked up at Tomoyo, and she gave me a timid nod.

“Y-You passed?”

“Yeah. Just the first round, though,” she clarified. She was doing her best to sound dispassionate about it, but a grin was quickly breaking through her poker face.

“Th-That’s amazing... I mean, like, that’s amazing! Holy crap, Tomoyo! Amazing!” I stammered. This had all come from so far out of left field for me that I ended up completely tongue tied. I just kept saying “amazing” over and over, which wasn’t exactly the most erudite way of expressing how impressed I was.

“I-It’s not amazing or anything,” said Tomoyo. “I still have a long, long way to go from here. There’s the second and third rounds of judging, for one thing, and only ten people out of the whole batch actually win anything in the end.”

She was really doing her best to play her achievement down, but she couldn’t disguise how happy she was. Her tone of voice was noticeably higher than usual. I couldn’t blame her either. She’d told me once that she’d entered these competitions twice before and had been dropped in the first round both times, so this was her first time actually making it through to round two. The little happy dance she’d done before realizing I was here suddenly made a lot more sense.

“So, that’s why you looked so intense when you checked your phone this morning? You were waiting for the results?”

“Yeah...but wait, did I really look that intense?”

“It was an ‘I’m neck-deep in debt and have to flee the country in the middle of the night’ sort of look, I’d say,” I replied in complete earnestness.

Tomoyo hung her head awkwardly, then explained that she hadn’t actually been waiting for a message. In truth, she’d been repeatedly refreshing the contest website. The publisher had announced that the first round’s results would be going out today, but they’d never actually specified what time they’d be posted.

I noted that she could’ve just waited until she went home and checked the results then at her leisure, and she retorted that she just had to know as soon as possible. And so, she ended up checking the site every time she had the slightest opportunity. Must just be one of those aspiring author things.

“Hmm... Wait a second,” I said as a certain name sprung to mind. It was a name I wouldn’t forget any time soon: Amaterasu Yamato. “T-Tomoyo...? Just out of curiosity, what did you name the main character of the story you passed the first round with?”

I couldn’t prevent a slight note of fear from coming through in my question, and Tomoyo cocked her head in confusion. “Takemikazuchi Zakuro. Why?”

Silence descended. It’s so weird. I really like Tomoyo, and I feel like we’re really on the same page when it comes to our sense of aesthetics most of the time, but the way she names her characters is such a wild and extreme exception to that rule. They’re so extravagantly cool, they end up sounding lame. So stylish they fall out of style before her pen leaves the paper.

“Anyway,” I said, changing the subject, “this is great! We’ve gotta celebrate somehow!”

“Wha— No, stop it! I can’t celebrate passing the first round! That’d be humiliating!” shouted Tomoyo, waving her hands in the air. “Don’t tell any of the other literary club people either, okay? Bragging about something this minor would just make me look ridiculous!”

Hmm. I mean...I guess she has a point. I didn’t completely agree with her, but it did feel like celebrating now would be jumping the gun a little. It’d be like throwing a party after you passed some standardized test but before you actually got accepted into a college.

“Okay, well...let me treat you to a meal or something, at the very least,” I offered after a moment’s thought.

“Y-You don’t have to do that! It’s fine, really.”

“Don’t be like that! This is a big deal, and I wanna congratulate you. Plus, I did sorta go all stalker on you and expose something you were trying to keep secret, so I figure I should probably do something to apologize.”

Tomoyo paused. “Oh...? Well, if you’re that set on it, then I guess I’ll take you up on that.”

“Anything in particular you want me to treat you to?”

“Umm...ah! How about a mille-feuille from Mild?”

Mild was the name of a local café right by the station closest to our school. I’d never been there myself, but from everything I’d heard, their cakes and coffee were pretty darn decent.

“Okay, sounds good to me! Wanna go today?”

“Ah, no, today won’t work,” replied Tomoyo. “They only serve their mille-feuille at lunchtime.”

“Oh, got it... In that case, how ’bout Saturday?”

“Sounds good. I’ll check in with the others and see if that works for them. We’re inviting Chifuyu too, right?”

“What? No, no, wait a second! Why’re you planning on bringing everyone else along? Aren’t you keeping this whole passing the first round thing a secret?”

“Ah, right!” Tomoyo hesitated. “So, uhh...what should we do, then?”

“What else?” I replied. “The two of us can just go on our own, duh.”

☆

“...He’s late,” I muttered, just barely loud enough to hear myself.

It was Saturday, and I was in a convenience store by the station we’d decided to meet up at, my face half-buried in that week’s copy of Jump. The familiar sense of indignation at being forced to wait around for someone who wasn’t as punctual as me was beginning to bud within my chest.

We’d arranged to meet up at eleven in the morning, and at present it was eleven o’clock, right on the dot. That meant that Andou wasn’t really late yet, honestly, but I’d already been waiting for him for close to an hour. Standing around for that long makes you want to grumble at whoever you’re waiting for, whether or not it’s reasonable of you.

Since I was so excited—I mean, since I didn’t want to be late...I’d left home a bit early and arrived at our meeting place way earlier than I should’ve. Yeah, I didn’t want to be late. That was the only reason, really.

And, well, that’s how I ended up standing around and reading a manga magazine that I’d already bought days beforehand, and unsurprisingly, I was getting pretty bored with it. I even ended up reading all the way through the advertisements at the end of the magazine and learning all sorts of stuff about crap I couldn’t have cared less about, like how much those boobie mouse pads cost. More than you’d expect, apparently.

I returned the magazine to the shelf, then paused to take a quick look at my outfit. I’d chosen to wear a slightly shorter skirt than I’d usually go for, and I was sort of starting to regret the decision.

Th-This is fine, right? I don’t look weird in this outfit, do I? It doesn’t make me look like I’m trying too hard, does it? I mean...it’s not like this is a d-date, or anything... Andou just insisted on celebrating, so I had no choice but to show up... It being just the two of us just sort of happened, that’s all! And guys and girls going out together platonically isn’t weird at all, in this day and age!

Ahh, crap! I could feel myself starting to sweat, so I scooted over to stand directly in line with the store’s air conditioner. That’s when a thought struck me—I’d agonized over my own clothes for quite some time, but what would Andou be wearing? What sort of casual clothes would a guy like him pick out?

I pondered the question for a moment...and a chill ran down my spine. I’d never seen him wear anything other than his school uniform, but it was hard to picture someone with as deep-seated a case of chuunibyou as him picking out anything even remotely decent.

What would I do if he showed up and was all bandages and fingerless gloves all over the place? Or if his clothes had a bunch of loud, pointless chains all over them, or if he showed up wearing some weirdly traditional getup complete with wooden sandals? How do you react when the person you’re meeting arrives looking like an especially avant-garde Stand User?

“Hey, Tomoyo! I guess I’m a little late, huh? Sorry ’bout that.”

A boy’s voice—a very familiar one—rang out behind me, and two conflicting emotions rushed through my mind. On the one hand, there was happiness: He’s finally shown up. On the other hand, there was apprehension: Oh god, what could he be wearing?

“See, I would’ve been on time, but on the way here they launched a sneak...ah, I mean, I didn’t say anything! I overslept, that’s all!”

“Spare me the belabored-superhero-who-secretly-fights-the-forces-of-evil act, thanks,” I countered, as always, then whispered a silent, internal prayer as I turned around. Please, please, let him be wearing something only moderately chuuni! I’ll consider myself lucky if he’s just wearing all black!

When I finally got a look at his clothes, though, I was stunned. I couldn’t believe my eyes, even, and had to rub them and take another long look before I was convinced I wasn’t seeing things.

A summery, light-colored polo shirt. Pants rolled up to three-quarter length, and a casual pair of sneakers. A few accessories, but not too many, and nothing tasteless by any stretch of the imagination.

I was speechless. He... He... He looks normal! He looks so normal, I can hardly believe it! Heck, he actually...looks a little cool, even...

“H-Hey, Tomoyo? What’s with the inspection you’re giving me?” asked Andou. “Something weird about my clothes?”

“I’m surprised that they’re not weird, actually,” I replied.

Seriously? Is this how he dresses on his days off? This is practically the polar opposite of chuuni fashion!

“I was terrified you were going to show up in some ridiculous edgelord ensemble,” I explained. Who could’ve possibly imagined he’d be dressed normally, and fashionably, at that?

“Ah...well, y’know, the thing is,” Andou began, scratching his head awkwardly, “my family sorta banned me from buying my own clothes.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, so my sister picks out all my stuff for me. It’s really embarrassing, honestly! What kind of high schooler wears clothes his family picks out?”

I was already aware that Andou had an older sister, so that part wasn’t news to me, at least. I guess that means she’s the one who coordinated his whole outfit today? She’s got a pretty good eye for fashion, in that case. She must’ve taken his looks, the recent trends, and even the season into consideration when she put it together, and I have to admit, it turned out really nicely.

“But, wait—you’re banned from buying clothes...? What the hell did you do to make that a thing?”

“Who knows? Your guess is as good as mine. It sucks too—I’d rather go for something more dark, stylish, and fashion-conscious.”

“Hmm. And what would that look like?”

“Well, to start with, it’d have some chains—”

“Right, okay, I get the picture.” My utmost gratitude to the Andou household. This man should never ever be allowed to buy his own clothes.

“Oh, I know a good example!” Andou continued. “Y’know how Kiryuu dresses? That’s pretty much my fashion ideal!”

“That’s the sort of style you can only pull off if you’re already naturally hot,” I sighed. My brother was the sort of moron who’d wear a black trench coat in the height of summer. He’d always had a pretty eccentric fashion sense, but since he actually managed to pull it off somehow, nobody ever called him out on it.

“Come to think of it, this is actually my first time seeing you dressed casually too,” noted Andou.

I twitched, then stiffened up. S-S-So, what’s he gonna say? I look normal, right? Nothing’s out of place, right? I made a desperate effort to keep my inner turmoil from showing on my face as I waited for him to give me his impressions. Finally, after what seemed like an age, he spoke up again.

“Okay! Should we get going?”

I stared at him. Really? Nothing? You’re just gonna drop the “Oh, I’ve never seen you in casual clothes before” line and leave it at that? If you’re gonna bring it up at all, shouldn’t you, I dunno, say literally anything about how I look, dammit?! Like how it’s weird seeing me dressed this way, but feels kinda fresh?! Or how I look c-cute?!

“Hey, what’s the hold up, Tomoyo? Let’s get going!”

“Fine!” I huffed, then walked right past him without sparing him so much as a glance.

Mild was a café with a reputation for its pleasant, relaxed atmosphere. Its decor was themed around a cream-colored palette, and the whole place gave an impression that I could only describe as, well, mild. I’d been here several times before, but apparently, this would be Andou’s first visit.

“Hey, Tomoyo?”

“Yeah?”

“How many times do you have to visit a café before you can start ordering ‘the usual’?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

We sat across from each other at a table near the back of the store, bantering idiotically as we perused the menu. I already knew what I’d be ordering, of course, so I was just waiting for Andou to pick something.

“Hey, Tomoyo, take a look at this,” he said, pointing to a portion of the menu that read “Couples’ Discount! Order two cake sets for 200 yen off! Today only!”

“Let’s go for it,” Andou casually continued. “We could probably pass ourselves off as a couple, right?”

I let out a squeak and felt my face flush. “A-Are you kidding me?! No way in hell would I ever—”

“Shh! The whole café’s gonna hear you! And c’mon, what’s the big deal? We just have to pretend!”

“N-No way!” I repeated, a little more emphatically than I meant to. I couldn’t stop myself from getting a bit worked up. Pretending to be a couple with Andou? No way I’d want to do that! Or, I mean, I wouldn’t want to pretend about that sort of thing in general, I guess...

“Hmm...gotcha,” said Andou. “If you really don’t want to, that’s fine. This is your celebration, after all.”

He backed down without putting up a fight at all, and I instantly started feeling guilty. That’s right—the whole reason we’re here today is because he wanted to congratulate me. I’m the one getting treated, so I guess that might’ve been sort of selfish of me.

“F-Fine,” I said after a short pause.

“Huh?”

“I said it’s fine! We can pretend to be a c-couple...”

“Oh, great!”

“But we’re just pretending, okay?! It’s an act!”

“Yeah, I know, I know.”

Okay...this is pretty obnoxious. How can he be so calm and composed about doing something like this? It feels like I’m the only one reading into stuff, and it’s making me look like a moron.

I pushed the call button on the table, our waiter soon arrived, and we placed our orders. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stop myself from blushing again as Andou explained that we wanted to use the couple’s discount.

“Oh god, bitter! How is straight espresso this bitter?!” exclaimed Andou with a disgusted scowl. Our drinks had arrived first, and it only took him a single sip to reach a conclusion about his.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Properly made espresso’s just like that.”

The real stuff’s made with specialized tools that put the coffee grounds under high pressure and extract all the flavor from it in a really brief period of time, which makes it way stronger than any drip coffee you could ever order.

“And you ordered a doppio, of all things,” I sighed. Doppio means “double” in Italian, and a doppio espresso’s brewed using twice the amount of coffee grounds as an ordinary one. In other words, they’re incredibly bitter.

“W-Well, yeah, of course I did! It has twice the beans, but it’s barely any more expensive! I figured ordering one of those would be more economical,” explained Andou.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Plus, the word ‘doppio’ brings JoJo Part 5 to mind, so I just couldn’t resist.”

“That’s...okay, yeah, that’s actually fair.” I couldn’t argue with that one. JoJo was my first association with the word too. “Anyway, here. Put some milk and sugar in that thing.”

“N-No, but, I drink my coffee black!”

“Sure you do, chuuni-boy.” I rolled my eyes and ignored Andou’s protest as I dumped plenty of milk and sugar into his coffee. It ended up turning it into a sort of janky caffe latte, but I knew for a fact that it would suit his tastes better than what he’d ordered. He had quite the sweet tooth, after all.

You’re not even supposed to drink espresso black in the first place, really! Like, it’s not like you can’t if you really want to, but apparently, the authentic Italian way of drinking it involves putting a bunch of sugar in. I’ve heard that almost nobody drinks it black over there. The Italian style of coffee that Gyro made in Part 6 involved putting a bunch of sugar in too.

“F-For your information, I could’ve drunk it just fine the way I ordered it!” groused Andou as he took his coffee cup back. “Man, why’d you have to butt in and ruin my...dang, this is good! It’s so much better sweet!”

Dealing with terminal chuunis is such a pain sometimes, I swear.

“Maybe I should’ve just bitten the bullet and ordered a drink I actually like for once?” Andou mumbled to himself. “But, I dunno—‘caffe latte’ and ‘caramel macchiato’ just don’t deliver when it comes to chuuni power. You really can’t beat ‘espresso doppio’ by that standard...”

He was clearly stuck in an extended psychological conflict between his taste in drinks and his taste in media. Andou was a terminal chuuni if I’d ever seen one, and one of the particularly obnoxious types, at that. That said, though...‘chuuni power’?

“You’ve changed, haven’t you?” I observed. “You used to react so violently to the word ‘chuuni’ it was like you were allergic to it or something, but you’ve been saying it yourself all over the place lately.” It almost felt like he’d reached an understanding with the fact that he himself was a chuuni.

Andou’s eyes widened ever so slightly, but only for a moment. “Yeah, I guess,” he admitted with a chuckle. “I think I’ve said this before, but I really don’t like the word when it’s used as a pejorative. Like, what’s a good example... Okay, take the word ‘voluptuous,’ for instance.”

“Voluptuous? Where are you going with this?”

“I couldn’t think of a better example! Just hear me out, okay? So, ‘voluptuous’ isn’t a bad word, right? It’s a word that people use to describe girls’ figures in a positive way, right? But if you walked up to a girl and called her ‘voluptuous’ out of nowhere, it wouldn’t sound like a compliment. Hell, it’d be the opposite, if anything.”

He wasn’t wrong about that, anyway. I don’t think there’s a woman out there who’d be happy if you called her “voluptuous” apropos of nothing.

“So, the same word can be a compliment or an insult, depending on how you use it and who you use it on. Well, I think chuuni’s the same way—or, really, I think it’s fine to treat it the same way,” Andou continued with a smile. “People say I’m a chuuni, and, well...they’re probably right. But that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. The world might use chuuni as a pejorative or an insult, but I use it as a compliment! After all, being a chuuni’s the coolest thing ever!”

The look that he gave me was packed full of the purest of sincerity. His gaze was innocent, without the slightest hint of maliciousness, but also somewhat precarious—as if there was a hint of instability to wherever he was coming from with all this.

I, meanwhile, was at a loss for words. The similarities were just too striking. I couldn’t help but see a link between Andou and the man who shared half of my genes.

“That’s almost exactly the same thing Hajime told me once.”