Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 3 - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Chuunversion

“Chuunibyou isn’t a sickness—it’s a way of life.”

Now, what sort of absolute mess of a man would ever possibly choose to live a life centered around a philosophy like that?

That’s a rhetorical question, of course. The answer is obvious: it could only be my ever-unhinged iconoclast of an older brother, Kiryuu Hajime. Or as he’d prefer to be called, Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First.

Hajime wasn’t your everyday chuuni. No, he was a chuuni with convictions. That actually makes it sort of hard to come up with specific examples of his various chuuni episodes—there are just way too many to choose from. If I had to pick just one to represent the lot of them, though, something he once told me comes to mind.

“I believe that most individuals’ very first brush with a chuuni-adjacent impulse occurs when they first learn the meaning and origins of their own name,” he explained.

This happened about three years ago, when I was in middle school. Hajime, by logical extension, was a high schooler. We were in his room at the time—I’d wandered in to borrow a volume of manga from him, and I was sprawled out on his bed reading when he started monologuing apropos of absolutely nothing, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“What hopes and wishes for your future was your name intended to convey? For what purpose were you born? Taking an interest in your own roots and origins is an inevitability of human nature...however, there’s no guarantee that the answer you find will satisfy those expectations. ‘You’re our second son, so we put the character for second into your name.’ ‘We named you after a character from a manga.’ ‘We ran out of time and picked a name on impulse.’ I think most people are dissatisfied by their name’s origins on some level.”

This sort of sermon was more or less business as usual for Hajime. Proselytizing his chuuni manifesto was a full-time occupation for him. I’ve spent a decent bit of time reflecting on my childhood, and at some point along the way, I started thinking of those moments as his chuunversion sessions. Rolling with that terminology, you could say I was subjected to intensive chuunversion pretty much all throughout middle school.

“The moment you realize that your name’s nothing special—that it has no deeper meaning, no connection to some grand destiny—you have two options. You can give in and admit to yourself that mundanity really is all the world has to offer. Or, you can deny it. You can reject the worthless reality that faces you down and strive to uncover the real truth behind it all. The choice you make in that moment determines the course of the rest of your life.”

Hajime paused to give me a look. His sunglasses, their circular lenses small enough that I always wanted to ask if they really had any effect on his vision at all, slid down the bridge of his nose just far enough to give me a glimpse of his eyes. His eyes were heterochromatic, one crimson and one jet black (thanks to his colored contacts). He wore an eyepatch pretty often back when he was in middle school, but I guess his sense of style shifted when he got into high school because he stopped wearing it altogether. The round sunglasses were his current signature accessory.

“So, then—what’s the origin of your name, Endless Paradox?” he asked, turning his monologue into a conversation.

“‘Tomo,’ as in the golden light of dawn, piercing through the dark of night and dispelling the gloom within which a life, a ‘yo,’ is imprisoned. Thusly: Tomoyo. Such is the origin of my name,” I replied.

Actually, no. No, I didn’t. I didn’t reply at all. I said nothing of the sort. I have no clue who miss says-the-word-“thusly”-in-a-casual-sentence over there is, but she’s definitely not me! I deny everything!

“And what of yours, O brother of mine?”

Gee, who could this cringey-ass little girl who calls her sibling ‘O brother of mine’ possibly be?! I just! don’t! know! Gaaaaaaaaaaaah, for the love of god, somebody please kill me! Or better yet, go back in time and kill past-me!

“Bwa ha ha!” Hajime cackled, intensely amused by my suicidal-impulse-inducingly excruciating answer. “The layers of meaning packed within my true name are not so easily shared. No, not even with my very own sister! Instead, I shall share with you the origins of my Earthly appellation, a poor substitute though it may be. ‘Kiryuu Hajime’ is the name given to me by the woman who birthed me into this realm...Kiryuu Rei. From Rei, ‘zero,’ rises Hajime, ‘one.’ That’s what she told me when I was a child.”

Kiryuu Rei. Hajime’s mother, a woman with whom I shared no relation. I’d only met her once, myself. My memory of her face was stored away deep within my heart—a single image in my mind’s most old and decrepit photo album. I remember her looking kind, yet at the same time, somehow frail. Fleeting.

“It’s rare for you to speak of your motherly sire, O brother of mine.”

Please, I’m begging you, just shut up, O me of my memories! Stop forcing yourself to use complicated words! You’re not even good at it! This is supposed to be a serious bit, so let the conversation be the focus here!

“It feels like a slipshod name in some ways, but there’s a sense of pessimism to it as well that I don’t mind,” Hajime continued. “I wouldn’t call it a bad origin for a name...but it’s not enough. It’s not even close to chuuni enough to quench my thirst,” he concluded, then let loose with his distinctive, barking laugh.

Looking back on it now, I see the whole conversation in a new light. Now that I’ve graduated from middle school, now that I’ve left my chuuni days behind me, I can tell. Hajime was at all times, under all circumstances, self-aware regarding his chuunibyou.

He knew that the world would label his ideas and actions as ‘cringe.’ He acknowledged that fact and accepted it. He was perfectly aware that society would deny him, scorn him, and reject him—yet still, he chose to fight back, to oppose society and walk his own path to the bitter end.

At this point, though, I have to ask myself a pretty basic question: does self-aware chuunibyou still count as chuunibyou at all? Isn’t a lack of self-awareness a fundamental element of what makes somebody a chuuni? Chuunibyou’s a constant, self-perpetuating loop of mistaking cringe for cool and digging yourself deeper and deeper into your own misapprehension. The moment you realize what’s happening—the moment you perceive your own cringiness—you can never go back. You’re not a chuuni anymore, and it’s time to move on.

That’s how it went for me, anyway, but I think it applies overall. As you grow older, you reach the understanding that you’re not cool at all. That you’re just a plain old chuuni. This world forces you to realize it, bearing down on you with the power and inevitability of an oncoming avalanche.

All that said, even now that I’ve gained self-awareness, I still love chuuni-riffic novels and stuff like that. I just draw a much clearer line between them and the rest of my life, unlike how I was back in middle school. I came to realize that all of that stuff really was just my thing, not everybody else’s, and that changed everything.

But Hajime and Andou are different.

They’re self-aware of their chuuni nature. They acknowledge that they’re cringey. But when confronted with those truths, when asked why they don’t change, they strike back. “Why would I?” they ask. “Who’s to say I’m in the wrong? Maybe this mess of a world that derides me as cringe is the one with the wrong idea!”

Maybe, deep down, on some level, they actually enjoy being judged. Maybe that sense of persecution, the sense that the whole world is against them, makes them feel superior to the world at large, not inferior. They’re the living, breathing personifications of the idea that not being like everyone else makes you cool.

Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe their chuuni levels are just so high that they can’t move on even after they’ve achieved self-awareness.

Kiryuu Hajime. Andou Jurai. The beastly reserves of chuuni potential that slumber within those two men will forever prevent them from moving on and embracing mundanity.

“Wait, Kiryuu said the same thing? For real? That’s so cool!” said Andou. He smiled at me from across the table, but there was a trace of envy in his gaze. “I’ve only met him once, but man, I really like that guy. Mwa ha ha—surely, in another time, in another era, the two of us conquered many a bloodsoaked battlefield as brothers in arms!”

I didn’t reply. Every once in a while, when he got like this, I felt a strange and inexplicable sense of fear.

Hey, Andou. All those ridiculous chuuni declarations you make all the time—you are just messing around, right? You act like a moron on purpose because that’s how our relationship works and you want to keep it that way, right? Or maybe you’ve got more of an ordinary case of chuunibyou going on and you think saying stuff like that makes you cool? Or maybe...just maybe, even now, you still really, seriously believe from the bottom of your heart that you’re a special, exceptional person?

I didn’t want him to catch on to my anxiety, so I took great care to make sure my voice came out as naturally as possible as I replied. “Don’t you go turning out like Hajime, okay?” I said, doing my best to make it sound sarcastic.

Somewhere along the way, Hajime had crossed a line. I could tell. I didn’t know how, exactly, but he’d transgressed in a way he could never come back from. Andou, however, was still teetering upon the precipice, caught between his love for his commonplace everyday life and his yearning for true supernatural battles.

“Mwa ha ha,” Andou laughed. I’d always been struck by how similar his laugh was to Hajime’s bwa-ha-ha. “As of now, he and I walk different paths. Someday, though, the laws of causality will bring our courses together once more. That will be the moment it all begins—and the moment it all comes to an end,” he declared, smiling triumphantly as he delivered one of his usual edgy mini-tirades.

Normally, this is the part where I’d call him a chuuni-boy and nitpick his act into oblivion, but that strange sense of unease was still hanging heavily over me, and I couldn’t bring myself to respond at all.

Soon after, my mille-feuille arrived. It was as sweet as could be.

It was about one in the afternoon when we left the café. That seemed a little early for us to pack up and go home, so Andou and I ended up wandering over to a bookstore in the station building. It was the biggest chain bookstore to have a branch in our region, and before I knew it, we’d spent a full three hours browsing.

“Oof, jeez... Yeah, my back and legs are really starting to feel all this walking around,” said Andou, stretching as we left the store. “This was fun, though.”

“Yeah,” I agreed after a brief pause.

In complete honesty, it had been fun. Like, really fun. I hadn’t been looking for any books in particular, and I didn’t find anything I felt the need to grab on impulse, but just browsing the shelves and chatting about the books we saw was the best activity a bookworm like me could ask for. This is probably something that only fellow bookworms can understand, but something about bookstores just lures me right into them, even when I have no intention of actually buying anything.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that Andou and I had really similar taste in books. We got so hyped up talking about them that the hours just flew by. Oh, god, what’s wrong with me? Why is just walking around a bookstore with him so stupidly fun?

“I pretty much always come here on my own,” said Andou. “Hatoko’s not really much of a reader, so if I bring her along, she ends up deciding to leave if I take too long browsing.”

“Yeah, same,” I agreed. “I’m trying not to let my friends from school figure out that I’m into manga and light novels and stuff, so I can’t exactly take them along.”

“Oh, right. I almost forgot you’re a closet nerd.”

I frowned. “Think you could stop calling me that, thanks?”

“Huh? Wait, am I wrong?”

“I mean, no, but still...” I just don’t like it when you sum up the issue in a quick and easy phrase like that.

A little over a year beforehand, I moved on from both middle school and my chuuni ways and made a fresh, clean start of things in high school. Everyone in my class thought of me as a perfectly normal girl, and none of them had any idea about my nerdy interests. So...yeah. I was a closet nerd. He couldn’t have picked a better term to describe me with.

“I guess...that’s why you’re the only person I don’t have to keep up the pretense around. You’re the only one I can be my real self with,” I said, barely even registering the words that spilled from my mouth. “You even figured out that I want to be an author and that I used to be a chuuni.”

“That’s not true, is it? Like, everyone else in the club knows all that stuff too.”

“You’re the only one who’d spend three hours in a bookstore with me, though, aren’t you?”

“Ha ha ha! You might be right about that one.”

Standing around while we talked seemed silly, so we made our way over to a nearby pedestrian area and sat down on a bench to rest our legs.

“Want something to drink?” I asked. “My treat, since you covered for me earlier and all.”

“Oh? Sure, thanks. Umm...”

“You can just ask for something sweet, you know?” I jabbed.

Andou grimaced, then practically whispered, “Okay, then. Strawberry milk.”

I walked over to a nearby vending machine, bought two strawberry milks, then wandered back. Andou thanked me as I passed him his drink and sat down again. As I sipped mine, though, I ended up watching him out of the corner of my eye and started feeling sort of restless. The awkward fact that the two of us had gone out together today was finally starting to sink in.

“H-Hey, Andou?” I said without thinking. I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye, so I ended up staring at my drink as I spoke instead. “So, umm...I don’t have anyone else I could ask to come along with me, so you’re basically the only option... I mean, see, a book I want is going on sale the fifteenth of this month...”

I paused for a moment, taking a breath and trying to convince my heart to stop pounding, then went for it. “S-So, do you want to come along with—”

“Oh, huh—that you over there, Jurai?”

Suddenly, out of the blue, a voice cut into our conversation, cutting me off entirely. I looked up, shocked, only to find a remarkably attractive girl standing nearby.

She looked like she was about our age, or maybe a little older, and was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with a long, dark green skirt and a big, fluffy hat that looked like it was made from some sort of fur. Her overall look was pretty similar to a rustic sort of style that had been in fashion lately, though I wasn’t familiar enough with the style to say for sure if her outfit quite counted. It was also pretty dark in terms of its overall color palette, but her expression and tone of voice were shockingly bright and cheery in comparison.

“Knew it! It is you, Jurai! It’s really been a tick, hasn’t it? Sure didn’t expect to cross trails with you here. What’re you up to?”

She walked right up to us, looking squarely at Andou as she rattled off a string of questions. Her dialect immediately struck me, but I couldn’t pin down where it was actually from. Her tone was bright, but flat and featureless, without any of the inflection that I was used to, and her pronunciation was subtly different from how most people spoke around here as well.

“Tamaki...” muttered Andou, his eyes wide. He looked shocked to see her, so I assumed that he and this rustically dressed mystery girl—Tamaki, I guess—must have known each other. “It’s been a while, yeah.”

“Yup, long time, no talk! And drop me, if you haven’t sprung up since the last time I saw you. Think you were a little shrimpier than me last time, right? Talk about a growth spurt!”

Andou hesitated for a moment. “When did you move back?” he finally asked.

“I didn’t,” she replied. “I just went to roost with my grammy and gramps for a span.”

“Ah... Makes sense,” said Andou with a nod. “I can tell you’ve been away a while. Your accent’s gotten pretty wild.”

“Huh? No joking? Well, that’s mighty embarrassing! Can’t full glean it me-wise. Is it really that over?”

“Pretty bad, yeah.”

“Ah ha ha ha! Well, we can just pin it as one of my charming little quirks.”

Tamaki’s cheerful smile stood in contrast to Andou’s unusually stiff expression. His tone of voice sounded a little strained as well. He must have noticed that I was watching him, because at that point, he changed the subject to introduce us.

“So, umm...this is Tamaki. We knew each other back in eighth grade.”

In the eighth grade? That’s a weirdly specific time frame, isn’t it? Not “in middle school,” but just in the eighth grade?

“And this is Tomoyo,” he continued, looking back to Tamaki. “She’s a friend from my club at school.”

“Oh, a club bud? Good to meet you, Tomoyo,” said Tamaki with a perfectly carefree smile.

“Y-Yeah, same,” I replied, shooting up from the bench to accept her handshake.

“Always nice, making new pals!” she said, then paused. “Hmm? Don’t you know your skirt’s a tad too short for your fit, Tomoyo? A girl like you shouldn’t be ambling around with that much skin sticking out!”

Distinct intonation aside, she sounded like a nosy old woman giving me the third degree about my clothing choices. Considering her long sleeves and skirt, I had to assume she wasn’t a fan of revealing outfits on the whole.

“Ah!” Tamaki suddenly exclaimed. “Wait a tick—did you get yourself all gussied up for a date with Jurai?”

“Huh? Wha—n-no way! That’s not it at all! I-It isn’t, right, Andou?!” I shouted, spinning around to face him.

“R-Right. It’s not, I know,” replied Andou. I was really flustered, but he sounded almost absentminded.

Something felt weird about the way he was reacting. At the very least, it wasn’t the sort of attitude I’d expect from a guy who’d just been reunited with an old friend he hadn’t seen in ages. He seemed almost scared, somehow. Like he’d run into a person he would’ve rather avoided, or seen something he never wanted to witness. Like he’d been confronted head-on by a dark spot in his history.

“Oh,” said Tamaki, “I’d better be trotting off soon. My grammy and gramps’re waiting for me! I’m supposed to be hauling back dinner makings, see?” she explained, holding up a cloth shopping bag she was carrying. “Though they’ll be the ones cooking it, of course! They’ve been stuffing me up tight since I popped in, I’m telling you. It’s been rough—what’re they trying to do, pudge me up?”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” said Andou. “You’ve always been crazy slim, after all. And even if you did gain a bit of weight, it, uhh...wouldn’t catch a drip.”

“Wouldn’t catch a drip, huh? Well, that’s a relief. And hee hee, look at you, Jurai! You actually remember the words I taught you!”

“Just a few of them, though. ‘Wouldn’t catch a drip’ means, like, ‘wouldn’t matter’ or ‘wouldn’t make a difference,’ right?”

“Yup! That’s right, all right!” Tamaki confirmed with a satisfied grin. “But really, time for me to move. Later, Jurai! Give Hatoko a shout for me. And see you around too, Tomoyo!”

With a final wave, Tamaki went on her way. The moment she turned her back, I heard Andou let out a quiet sigh. As best as I could tell, it was a sigh of relief—like he’d finally let out all the tension that had been building up in him throughout the whole exchange.

Then, suddenly, that distinct intonation of hers rang out once more. “Don’t get all tied up with me, Jurai. You’ll hurt my feelings,” said Tamaki, turning to face us once more. “I’m not all that chafed anymore. Not with you or with Shizumu.”

Beside me, Andou gasped. Tamaki was wearing the same cheerful smile as ever, but Andou’s expression had frozen solid. He’d broken out into such a cold sweat, I could see it dripping down his face.

“But you know,” Tamaki continued, “once you wreck things up, they never go back to how they used to be. That’s just how it goes. Be around.”

With that final, unfamiliar parting phrase, Tamaki departed for good.

“Hey, Andou...? Are you okay?” I asked nervously. He was just sitting there, head hung and shoulders slumped, a look of sorrow tinting his expression.

“Hmm...?” he mumbled after a moment. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine... She’s got one heck of an accent, right? I guess that’s the Fukushima dialect.”

“Oh, Fukushima? Huh. I never knew that’s how people talk over there.”

“Not exactly the most appealing dialect for a girl to speak, is it?”

“That’s...a question of taste, probably.” Though personally, yeah. Definitely doesn’t appeal to me, at least. Heck, with how fast she talked and how little inflection she put into it, I could barely even understand half of what she was saying.

“Her grandparents are from Fukushima, I guess. Tamaki was raised speaking standard Japanese, apparently, but whenever she goes over to her grandparents’ place, their dialect influences hers before you know it.” At that point, Andou stopped talking. His gaze fell back down to the ground. “Tamaki’s always been really easily influenced on the whole, actually,” he muttered in an incredibly subdued tone.

“Hey, Andou? Who is she, really? What sort of relationship do you have with her?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself. I was beyond curious about this mystery girl who called Andou by his first name like it was nothing.

Andou hesitated again. It didn’t really seem like he wanted to talk about it, but eventually, he began to slowly explain. “Tamaki is Sagami’s ex-girlfriend.”

“Sagami? Like, the one at our school?”

“Yeah, him. They went to the same middle school, and they were already dating by the time I got to know them. Some circumstances brought us all together, and the four of us—ah, Hatoko was around too—ended up hanging out a lot...we were friends, basically. When we were in the eighth grade, that is.”

Part of that wasn’t news to me, at least. Hatoko had vaguely mentioned that Sagami and Andou met in the eighth grade before. During the one period of his life that Andou would look back on and cringe at.

“But...you said she was his ex?” I asked.

“They broke up. Sagami dumped her,” Andou explained bluntly. I was curious about why he’d do something like that, but I wasn’t nosy enough to come out and ask...only for Andou to let an absolutely outrageous answer slip out, totally unprompted. “Bunch of stuff about her being a guy and all.”

“Huh? Wait...huh? Huuuh?! A-A guy?!”

“Oh!” Andou clapped a hand across his mouth. “Sorry, my bad. Forget I said that, okay? She’s not really a guy or anything.”

Nooope, not happening! You think I could just forget that? No way, no how! Wh-What the heck is that supposed to mean? Tamaki, a guy? But she was so cute! I didn’t think that style was in fashion for guys too!

“Anyway, the point is, a bunch of stuff happened, and Sagami and Tamaki broke up. We sort of drifted apart after that, and we haven’t talked in ages,” said Andou, wrapping up his explanation without providing any further details.

It was way too brief of a summary for me to get a clear picture of things. I would’ve really liked to at least clarify whether Tamaki was a girl, or a femboy, or what, but I was reluctant to pry any deeper than I already had. Somehow, I got the impression that their circumstances were complicated and more than a little heavy. Andou would never have looked at Tamaki the way he did otherwise. He looked like a terrified herbivore staring down one of its natural predators.

“All right, let’s head out,” said Andou, reverting back to his usual tone and standing up. I followed his example.

Andou, a man who seemed dedicated to denying his future self even a single day he could look back on without cringing, had something in his past that even he admitted he’d be better off not thinking about. What on earth had happened? And, just maybe...could it be that the time frame he, Sagami, and Tamaki were friends overlapped with the time the two of us first met?

That’s right. When we were in the eighth grade, Andou and I met once. He didn’t seem to remember it, but I did, clear as day. And back then, he came across as an almost completely different person...

☆

I said my goodbyes to Tomoyo and arrived home right around five in the afternoon. The front door was locked, so apparently, I was the first one back. Fortunately, we kept a spare key hidden in our mailbox, so I was able to make it inside without a hitch.

Jeez, what a way to end the day. Tomoyo and I were having such a good time, and I just had to go and run into the last person I wanted to see, right at the finish line.

A moment later, though, I shook my head. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see her—that made me sound like I was the victim. The truth was that I was ashamed to see her. I thought we’d never meet again, and I definitely didn’t expect to run into her on the street out of nowhere. The Goddess of Fate, it seemed, was a nihilist with a sick sense of humor.

I paused for a moment, then shook my head again. Come on, snap out of it! Don’t go letting this depress you. Just take your mind off your reunion with Tamaki. If you really boil it down, all that happened was you met an old acquaintance and it was kind of awkward!

And now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to get hyped! Oh? You want to know what the point of getting hyped is when nobody else is even around? Mwa ha ha—oh, you simpleminded fool! You’re gonna get hyped precisely because nobody else is around! There isn’t a boy in the nation who doesn’t understand what I’m getting at, here! Being home alone is living the no-roommates dream! Of course you’d get hyped for it!

“Oh, crap—get down!” I shouted, kicking my shoes off at light speed and diving headfirst into my house. I hit the floor rolling, somersaulting all the way to the bottom of the stairs before springing to my feet, pressing my back to the wall and concealing myself in a blind spot!

“Phew! That was too close... I almost, err...almost...anyway, way too close!”

Nice! I’m on the ball today—execution: flawless! If terrorists ever take over my house, I’ll be able to deal with them in no time at all! My anti-home-invader techniques would put the Home Alone kid to shame!

“Wooooooaaahhhggg,” I screamed unintelligibly, for lack of anything better to do with myself. “Gggmmmnnnaaabbbbbboobs!”

I rounded off the scream by shouting “boobs.” Again, for no particular reason. I was just enjoying the excitement of shouting something you’re usually not supposed to say at all at the top of your lungs.

With that out of the way, I started humming a happy little song and stripped down to my underwear! Normally, my sister would literally kick my ass if I wandered around the house in my boxers, but on that day, it was all moumantai! I twirled my clothes up into a ball, turned to face our laundry room, and landed a crosscourt three-point shot into the washing machine. The gods help those who help themselves, and that’s how I knew that shot wouldn’t miss!

My humming gradually transitioned into meaningless, half-muttered lyrics as I climbed the stairs, snapping my fingers to the beat. I was feeling pretty groovy, and it seemed like the perfect moment to break out in a song of my own creation!

“Wings of aaash, rending the starless skyyy! Bloodred stains, your remains, vanish niiigh!”

Oh yeah. I’m a straight-up songwriter. I stayed up all night the day I bought Infinity Maria to compose—ah, wait, I mean, the song was born of pure inspiration, and popped into my head fully formed! In any case, I sure wrote the whole song without so much as laying a finger on the actual guitar at any point in the process.

“Deep, deep, in the ocean deeepths, your crooked smile, the tears you weeept, were you angel-blessed, or devil-seeent?! Hey!”

And, into the rap verse!

“Yo yo, kick it up, it’s showtime! Get your ticket and get in line! Wipe those tears up, baby, don’t cry—you know your love’s already mine! Cryin’ out to the skies, oh my god! Days spent tellin’ lies, fakin’ hard! Wanna touch your heart, that all right? C’mon baby, then hold me tight!”

And with those ultra-hot and not at all forced rhymes laid down, time to drop into MC mode!

“You listening, people?! Perk your ears and get a load of my hot tunes! C’mon, outta your shells and onto the floor! It took a miracle to bring us together today, so get out there and show your thanks! Let! Me! Hear! You! Yell, people! We’re taking common sense and normal reality and kicking ’em to the curb!”

And now that our super hot lead vocalist’s riled them up, it’s finally time for the hook!

“Wind’s melody blowing through the niiight—through the niiight (Background vocalist chiming in to harmonize)! Pain and longing cast up on hiiigh—to the skyyy (This time, an interjection)! Moon cuts through the cloudy sky, can you see it shining high, through the teardrops in your eyes?! Raging flames of tragic dawn, sweep the skies till night’s dark’s gone, day’s haze shimmers in the air, I look around but you’re! Not! Theeere!”

Okay, time to close it out! One last line, fragile and fleeting, but filled with all the hunger and desire of man!

“Oh... Death of me, destiny... Ooooooh (In a falsetto)!”

My body had only just reached the top of the staircase, but my soul was on cloud nine. Wooo, yes! Ecstasy, baby! My own original tune, Death of Me, Destiny (or D2, as my fans would surely call it) was the song I’d play to close out each and every one of my shows...if I, y’know, had any of those.

But seriously, though, I think I might actually have a sorta crazy talent for songwriting! Maybe I should try having a Vocaloid sing it and make it into a real song or something! Then it’ll get a novelization, and an anime adaptation, and I’ll make a friggin’ killing in royalties!

“All right, that’s enough singing for now! What’s next...? Oh, right! I have that late-night movie I set to record ’cause its title sounded super dirty! I’ll watch that!”

Man, having your home to yourself is the best! It’s a small world, but it’s my small world, and that makes it feel like a limitless paradise! I opened up the door to my room in the highest of spirits!

Chifuyu was waiting inside.

Specifically, she was sitting on my bed with her arms wrapped around her knees, as expressionless as ever. Her glassy eyes were fixed upon me. An extremely important question immediately struck me, and surprisingly, it wasn’t “Why is Chifuyu in my room?” but rather “Aren’t the walls in this house, like, super thin?” My sister, after all, started banging on them whenever I made even the slightest bit of noise.

I stood there for a moment, frozen solid, until Chifuyu finally spoke up in a mystified tone of voice.

“You record late-night movies because their titles sound dirty?”

Welp. Time to seriously consider the merits of suicide.