Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 4 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: An Interview, or Rather, Nihility

I’d called the task I’d set forth for Andou an exam, but really, there wasn’t anything particularly complicated about it. All that I’d asked was that he allow me to interview him.

“Thank you for having me!” Andou called out with admirable enthusiasm as he walked into the club room. He walked briskly over to the chair that I’d set up in the center of the room and took a seat.

“Well, then. Andou?”

“Yes?!”

“Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”

“Right! Wait, whaaat?! B-But why?! I haven’t even said anything yet!”

“Do you recall me saying ‘Please, have a seat’? No, you don’t, because I did not. Yet there you are, sitting down. If this were a job interview, you’d have already disqualified yourself from the position.”

“You’re seriously going that hardcore with this interview?!”

Hmm? How strange. When he puts it that way, I wasn’t planning on putting him through the wringer quite this forcefully.

I’d found myself scolding him and picking on him before I even knew it, and part of me couldn’t help but think that maybe he might be worth keeping around after all...for the sole purpose of messing with him. Something about his face and the way he carried himself piqued my inner sadist.

“For your sake,” I continued, “I’ll overlook this little sitting-down indiscretion. Do try and be more careful from now on though.”

“Right,” Andou sighed.

“Now then, I believe it’s time for us to begin. Although, before we do...” My gaze dropped to Andou’s feet, and I couldn’t help but ask. “You are aware that only one of your pant legs is rolled up, yes? Why?”

The question had been eating away at me from the moment he’d stepped into the room. His right pant leg, and the right leg alone, had been half-heartedly rolled up a short way. It was a truly inexplicable fashion statement.

“Huh...? That’s just, I mean... I was just walking around like normal, and it did that on its own, I guess... F-For the record, I didn’t do it on purpose or anything!”

“It looks ridiculous. Please fix it at once.”

“B-But, that would... I mean, my asymmetry...”

“It’s sloppy and unseemly. Fix it.”

Andou paused, biting his lip, then sighed again. “Right,” he said, quickly rolling down his pant leg.

I’d rather not consider the possibility, but did he perhaps think that wearing it like that looks cool? If so, then I have serious concerns for this boy’s future. No, actually, that’s not quite right. I have serious concerns for his present.

“And with that, let us begin. First...yes, that should do nicely,” I mumbled to myself as I perused his resume...or rather, as I pretended to do so. “I would like you to put on a skit for me. Make it a high-effort one.”

“Bwahuh?!” bellowed Andou in shock.

Yes, the boy really does have the best way of reacting to these things, doesn’t he? How very thrilling.

“H-H-Hold up a second, Takanashi! Where the heck is this coming from?! Isn’t this the part where you, like, ask me why I want to join the club or something?! I memorized a sixteen page answer to that question!”

“I have no intention of conducting such a by-the-book interview. I value adaptability above all else in my club members.”

“Since when were literary clubs so hardcore about that sorta stuff...?” Andou moaned, clutching at his head. Finally, though, he seemed to resolve himself and looked up once more. “All right! One skit, coming up!”

“Oh? You’ll take on the challenge?” That put me at something of a loss. Frankly, I had only asked the question to put him on the spot. I hadn’t considered the possibility that he would actually try to go through with it. If anything, I’d ended up more on the spot than he was.

“I, Andou Jurai, will now perform the transformation poses of every Heisei-era Kamen Rider!”

“...I apologize, Andou. Asking you to do this was a mistake. Please, just stop.”

I finally caved. I’d never expected that I would be the one to admit defeat in the end, but I simply couldn’t take it. He just wouldn’t stop.

“Huh? Already? I’m only on the seventh Ryuki Rider, though!”

I was far from knowledgeable about the subject, but I’d somehow assimilated the trivia that there were over ten Heisei era Kamen Rider series, and it had taken him this long to go through the signature poses from three of them, and not even completely. And, to make matters worse, he was astonishingly good at them.

I’d never seen the real thing, of course, so I had no basis to judge the quality of his imitations, but I could tell that the deftness and cleanness of his movements were clearly abnormal. Just how much time had he squandered practicing transformation poses to polish them up to that standard?

“For the sake of reference, how many ‘Riders’ are there in ‘Ryuki’...?” I asked apprehensively.

“Thirteen.”

I was floored. We’d still been a long, long way from being finished. Admitting defeat, it seemed, had been the right decision. The Kamen Rider franchise had obviously grown by leaps and bounds while I wasn’t paying attention. I’ll have to rent one of them sometime soon.

“Well,” Andou continued, “there are thirteen Riders, but since Odin doesn’t have a human form, he doesn’t actually have a transformation pose. Oh, but there is this rider called Alternative, I guess...though technically, fans argue all the time about whether or not Alternative actually counts as a rider at all—”

“That’s quite enough of that. Thank you very much. You may stop now.”

“Aw, man, seriously...? I was gonna go into my Rider Kick medley after I was done with these too...”

“Why, exactly, are you so enthusiastic about this?”

“Well, y’know, I was pretty embarrassed at first, but once I got started, it actually ended up being pretty fun!” admitted Andou in a rather frivolous tone.

Does he truly have no sense of shame whatsoever? “Well then, on to the next question,” I said, already a little tired. I glanced down at his resume once more...

“Pffft!”

...and simply could not stop myself from bursting out in laughter. It was, I must admit, rather uncouth of me.

☆

“Oh man, this does take me back,” I muttered as I looked over the resume Sayumi had found while cleaning. The other members of our club quickly gathered around us.

“Oh, right, how’d that go down again?” asked Tomoyo. “Didn’t Andou end up being the only one of us who had to go through an interview after he made Sayumi flip out on him?”

“I’d prefer if you’d refrain from characterizing my actions as ‘flipping out,’ Tomoyo,” said Sayumi with a bitter smile. “I was simply mortified to realize that the two of us were part of the same species.”

“That’s kinda way friggin’ worse than flipping out at me, actually?!” I interjected.

“My first thought was the sincere hope that he would cease to be human.”

“Isn’t that kinda worse than, I dunno, just telling me to go die?! Are you telling me to go find a stone mask to put on or something?!”

“But, yes, this does rather take me back as well. I’d completely forgotten that I filed this away along with my more important documents,” Sayumi continued in a thoughtful, almost meditative tone. She placed the resume on the table. “Andou? Would you object to me showing this to everyone?”

The stuff on there was private information, technically, so I guess she felt obligated to ask for permission. I was totally cool with the idea, though, so I gave her a nod and a “Sure, knock yourself out,” without protest.

“I really did end up in a fix back then,” said Sayumi. “The moment I actually read his resume, it was just so terribly, dreadfully funny, so positively hysterical, I completely lost control of myself.”

“Oh, right, I remember that,” I said. “You ended up clutching your sides, stepping out of the room, and never coming back.” She’d done it halfway through the interview too, which meant that despite the verbal thrashing she’d given me, I’d passed the interview by default, for all intents and purposes.

Hmm. That’s weird, though—I took that resume super seriously! Why would it make her laugh? I don’t really get Sayumi’s sense of humor.

Everyone leaned in to read my resume.

• What is one of your hobbies / skills?

People watching.

“Oh my god, of course you’d be one of those people,” Tomoyo groaned as she cringed away from me. The others were all reacting similarly as well.

Huh? Th-That’s weird! When I say “My hobby’s people watching,” people are supposed to be all, like, “This man...he sees the world from a perspective fundamentally different from the average nobody’s!” and stuff!

“Wh-What’s wrong with you, guys?! People watching’s a fine hobby! What’s so bad about people watching?!”

“Please calm down, Andou,” said Sayumi. “You’re right—people watching is nothing to be ashamed of in and of itself. I would go so far as to call it a given that most people engage in the activity on occasion. It’s said that watching others allows one to gain insight into one’s own personality, and I believe that there’s much we can learn by paying close attention to the rest of mankind on the whole.”

“Right?! So—”

“However, it is profoundly embarrassing to assume those facts make people watching a hobby you can be proud about—dare I say arrogant about—pursuing, and proceeding to show that hobby off to the people around you is just about as pathetic as one could get.”

That sure shut me up nicely. Sayumi had won our debate in such a crushing masterstroke; I was left literally speechless and simply sat back as she carried on.

“I could have endured ‘people watching’ easily enough on its own, to be clear, but the moment I read the next line, I very nearly gave myself a hernia trying to hold back my laughter,” Sayumi said, pointing at the next entry on the sheet.

• What’s an area you excel in relative to your peers?

My disinterest in other people.

“That literally directly contradicts your hobby!” snapped Tomoyo.

Oh. Huh. I guess it does. I sure contradicted myself two lines in, didn’t I?

“You people watch as a hobby, but you’re not interested in people? Make up your mind, for crying out loud!” Tomoyo ranted.

“It’s not that I’m not—I mean, like... You know how these things work! It’s that, like, contradictions are a core part of what makes up my inner essence, or something...”

“And then I read the next line, which all but reached into my gut and rubbed salt into my newly herniated abdominal muscles.”

• What’s an area you fall short in relative to your peers?

My lack of emotions.

“Pfff ha ha ha ha haaa!” Tomoyo doubled over in uncontrollable laughter. “Aha ha ha, holy crap, hoooly crap, my sides! Ha ha ha, you, emotionless?! How are you anything even close to emotionless?! You’re the most wildly emotional guy I’ve ever known! Ha ha ha ha ha!”

Before long, Sayumi was chuckling along with her. “He he! He he he, really, he absolutely is... Among all the individuals I’ve ever met, Andou is most certainly one of the most emotionally expressive people I’ve ever known—perhaps even the most! He he he he!”

Tomoyo was laughing so hard she couldn’t even talk anymore, and she was smacking the table with glee. Sayumi, on the other hand, must not have wanted to crack up quite that exuberantly—to be fair, it would have been pretty out of character for her—and had both of her hands pressed to her cheeks, trying desperately to hold it in. She ended up making a pretty ridiculous face as a result, by the way. Meanwhile, I, the source of their mirth, was profoundly, intensely humiliated.

“What’re you laughing at?!” I bellowed.

“Simmer down, Usui!” gasped Tomoyo. “Aha ha ha! No, okay, seriously, I just can’t! I can’t take it! I can’t stop laughing!”

“C-Come on, what’s your problem, you two?! I answered all those questions super seriously, so don’t you think laughing at them’s, I dunno, a bit rude?! I may be a calm and generous type-O, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get angry sometimes!”

“Oh, he can get angry, he says! Look at that—emotions! He’s just full of ’em, I swear! Aha ha ha ha ha!” cackled Tomoyo.

Gaaah, this sucks! This wasn’t how it was supposed to turn out at all! Everyone was supposed to read that line and be all “What drives this mysterious man, and why does he feel so profoundly dangerous? What maddening darkness must lurk within his heart? What happened to him to make him so twisted?!” and stuff! They were supposed to look upon me with gazes brimming with fear and respect!

I was so abjectly humiliated that I ended up completely speechless. A moment later, though, Chifuyu tugged at my jacket.

“You don’t have emotions, Andou?” she asked.

“Oh, Chifuyu... Yeah, that’s right. I don’t. I was born without so much as a trace of human emotion within my heart!” I said, channeling the boundless void of absolute nihility that lurked within my emotionless mind.

Chifuyu cocked her head. “Hey, Andou?” she said, then paused before continuing. “Do you like me?”

“Huh...? I mean, yeah, of course I do! You’re one of my most important friends, Chifuyu.”

“Then you have emotions.”

“Gah! N-No, not like that! I’m totally emotionless, for real! I don’t like you, or anyone, or anything at all! I’m totally uninterested in other people!”

“Oh...”

“Ahh, no, I’m sorry! Don’t get sad! I was lying! I totally love you to pieces, Chifuyu!”

“Then you have emotions.”

“Ugh...”

“You’re a liar, Andou.”

“Ugggh!”

Chifuyu sighed. “You’re always so ridiculous, Andou,” she said with an exasperated shake of her head.

“D-Damnatiooons! Damnations, I say!” I was so absolutely mortified that I fled the scene on the spot. I also didn’t bother to look where I was going, so I ran into somebody after barely three steps’ worth of my all-out sprint.

“Whoa! Be careful, Juu! It’s dangerous to run off without warning like that!” said my ever-reliable childhood friend Hatoko with a smile as she caught me in her arms. “What’s wrong? Your face is all beet red!”

“D-Don’t call me beet red!” I snapped, but I was unable to prevent the truth from spilling forth from my lips a moment later. “Hear me out, Hatoko... Everyone’s making fun of me... Nobody understands me! Nobody appreciates the void of absolute nihility that lurks within me... Nobody can fathom how my derelict heart, insatiable in its—”

“Your ‘Darrell-licked heart’?” repeated Hatoko, cocking her head.

“No! Not Darrell-licked, derelict!” That being, of course, a majorly awesome adjective that means abandoned, empty, and left to decay! Also a word that has nothing to do with any Darrells licking anything, though I’ll admit it does sound a little like that.

“Anyway, though, there’s no way you don’t have emotions, Juu! It’s really easy to tell how you’re feeling all the time! Why, back in elementary school, our teacher even wrote about how expressive you were on your report card!”

“W-Wait, they did?!”

“It’s okay, Juu!” said Hatoko with another of her profoundly kind and gentle smiles. “You don’t have a void inside you at all! You have all the emotions you could ever need!”

“No, umm...Hatoko? You kinda have it backward. I know I was, like, being all dramatic about the emotionless thing, but that didn’t mean I wanted you to deny it! I actually sorta wanted you to agree with me?”

Hatoko, of course, wasn’t able to read into my complex and multifaceted motivations at all and just kept trying to soothe me. She was genuinely concerned for me by the looks of it, but she kept that smile of hers shining away all the while.

“I’ve known you forever, Juu, so you can take my word for it! You’ve always been a kindhearted and compassionate boy!”

Yes—her smile was truly akin to that of the Virgin Mary herself. Kind enough to wipe away every trace of my shame; warm enough to defrost the frigid lump within my chest.

I see.

So this is it.

This thing in the palm of my hand...

...is heart.

“Could you get any more pretentious?!” jabbed Tomoyo, who’d finally managed to suppress her own laughing fit, but I didn’t let her get to me this time! I was far too busy quivering in rapturous joy at the fact that I’d finally, finally come to understand the meaning...of emotion.

“Mwa ha ha... Mwaaa ha ha ha ha ha! I, Guiltia Sin Jurai, am back! Once, I reigned supreme over the brutal wastes of the underworld, working my heinous will over its barbaric denizens! I lived a life of bloodshed, hands stained sanguine by the lifeblood of a thousand thousands of corpses...but the doubts, how they gnawed at me! Cognizant of my sin, I dwelled within a fetid prison built of my own remorse, my own regret, till finally, my heart and emotions alike rotted away into nothingness—but then, I was reborn! I walked this world as Andou Jurai, and as I did, I touched the hearts of those around me...and now, now that I have learned of the human heart, I am indomitable!”

“Abridge your goddamn backstory! And make it less stupidly heavy! How the hell did you think all that up in a split second, anyway?!” shouted Tomoyo.

“Thank you, Hatoko!” I carried on, ignoring her protest. “You’ve done it—you’ve given me the missing piece I needed to revitalize my human heart!”

“Really? Hee hee hee, that’s great!”

“I don’t think anything could take me down now, no matter how mighty the foe! Wait—hmm... Could it be? This presence I’m sensing...is it one of them? And an Elder, at that? Mwa ha ha... How very amusing! They have no idea of the power I’ve obtained. They have no idea that I can use...that skill! The skill that human taught me in an age long past—a skill that only humans can use! Mwaaaa ha ha ha ha ha!”

I was firing on all cylinders, letting my own manic energy sweep me away and carry me right out of the room! I flew down the corridor without sparing a single glance back, making my way to the battlefield that awaited me!

Then, about ten minutes later...

...nobody came chasing after me, so I slunk back to the clubroom on my own to find that they’d all gone back to their cleaning like nothing had ever happened.

Sniff.