Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 4 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Convalescence, Preceding Upheaval

Our daily lives of peace and quiet did not last forever. Tranquility is, by its very nature, easily disrupted, and the commonplace is all too quick to unravel. Half a year after the five of us met, as the lingering scent of late summer slowly faded from the air and September set in, a certain incident would grant me a profound and personal appreciation for those facts.

On that day, the members of my literary club were engulfed in a mysterious light and lost consciousness. When we came to, we realized that we’d awakened to supernatural powers. The situation was so dumbfounding, so beyond the pale, that all of us found ourselves at a loss. Yes, even me.

It would take quite some time for us to accept the situation, and even after that point, we spent day after day testing our powers and discussing their implications. One or two weeks after we were thrown into those most exceptional of circumstances, when the fatigue of it all was beginning to wear on us in a physical and emotional sense, I reached a decision.

“I believe that I should use my power to erase all of our abilities,” I declared to the others. Route of Origin, the power I had awakened to, granted me the ability to return anything to the way it was meant to be. “Tomoyo’s Closed Clock. Hatoko’s Over Element. Chifuyu’s World Create. My Route of Origin. And finally, Andou’s black flames. I propose that we make use of my power to do away with all of them.”

Our powers’ names, for what it’s worth, were Andou’s doing. He had insisted that we leave the task of coming up with them to him, and the rest of us had acquiesced without much resistance. I was actually pleased that he’d taken it on, at first—our powers would surely be easier to discuss once they had proper names—but that was before I realized that the names he chose would all be informed by his profoundly, regrettably cringey sense of personal aesthetics. Worse still, he had ended up overthinking his own power—the ability to create black flames that didn’t burn—to such an extent that he still hadn’t managed to settle on a name for it.

But I digress.

Route of Origin was capable of returning anything with a physical form, organic or inorganic, to the way it was meant to be. It followed, then, that it was capable of returning one who had been granted superpowers to their former state as a normal, unpowered individual.

“Man was not meant to wield powers such as these. I believe we should rid ourselves of them and return to our former lives as ordinary students. This is the most assuredly peaceful option available to us, and the one that will serve our best interests the most effectively.”

I firmly believed that we were not meant to have these powers—that humanity on the whole was not meant to have them. Thankfully, when I explained my thoughts to the members of my club, they silently nodded in agreement. It seemed they were convinced.

“I’m glad to see that you understand what’s best for us. In that case, I will—”

“Wait just a second—I object!” cried the one member who hadn’t nodded, raising his hand mere moments before I moved to erase our powers. It was Andou. “I’m against this plan! I don’t think we should erase our powers,” he declared.

“Oh? Why?” I asked.

“I mean, c’mon,” said Andou, his tone as serious as I’d ever heard from him. “It’s not every day you get your hands on crazy cool powers like these, right? Getting rid of them would be a waste.”

I was struck dumb. His reasoning was so profoundly childish, I had no words. My exasperation was so deep that it was impossible to express. In that moment, the disappointment and indignation I felt toward Andou Jurai were simply indescribable.

By no means did I hate Andou. To the contrary, I would have described my feelings for him as considerably favorable on the whole. My first impression of him had been catastrophically terrible, of course, but over the course of the year since that first meeting, we had grown closer through our club activities, and I now considered him a valuable member of our group. He clashed with the rest of us regularly, yes, but I knew that deep down, he was an earnest boy who cared deeply for his friends. When it really mattered, he somehow found it in himself to be quite reliable.

But it seemed I had overestimated him. His case of chuunibyou really was pathological to such an extent there could be no turning back from it, and I couldn’t possibly have been more displeased by the revelation.

And so, from that day forth, the two of us began an extended, heated, and ugly conflict with the fate of our powers at stake.

☆

“A skyscraper? That’s when you drag a girl into an airplane bathroom and have your way with her, right?”

“Not even friggin’ close!”

It was the day after my birthday. School had come and gone in the way it always did, and I was walking through a residential neighborhood with Sagami by my side. We lived in totally different areas, so we ordinarily wouldn’t end up commuting together like this, but the circumstances on this particular day were just a little bit abnormal.

“Oh, huh!” said Sagami after I finished my explanation. “Never even thought about where our word for high-rises came from. Normally, your chuuni trivia’s just obnoxious, but I guess there’s some interesting info mixed in every once in a while too!”

“’Course, I only just learned this one from Sayumi the other day,” I admitted.

“Speaking of whom, what’s going on with her today?” asked Sagami.

“Didn’t I already explain that? She’s stuck at home with a cold.”

Sayumi hadn’t shown up at school that day. She’d called in sick on account of a cold, and it seemed the cause of said illness was her having pushed herself too far to get my birthday game finished in time. Everyone in the literary club except for me had helped out with the development of Puzzle & Tales of Dragon Fantasy, but from what I’d gathered, Sayumi had ended up taking on the vast majority of the work herself. The scripting, the debugging—all of the hard bits, basically—were her contributions.

Tomoyo and Hatoko had filled me in on the details. “Sayumi really put a lot of work into that game,” Tomoyo explained. “I guess she thought it was her responsibility since she was the one who came up with the idea?”

“You should go pay her a visit, Juu,” Hatoko added. “Be sure not to overstay your welcome, though! Oh, and don’t cause any trouble while you’re in her house either. Oh, and don’t forget...” and so on, and so forth.

Point is that, in the end, it was decided that Sayumi’s get-well visit would be my task alone. We figured that a ton of people showing up to her house at once would be a pain to deal with, and, I mean, she had only gotten sick because she’d overworked herself finishing my present. It just wouldn’t have felt right to turn down the task. As for why I was walking with Sagami, nothing especially complicated there—he just happened to live in the same direction as Sayumi’s house. Trust me...

“Ah, right! Hey, Andou, I’ve got a little riddle for you.”

“What?”

“How’s a jelly doughnut like a girl who just got gangbanged?”

I hesitated. “Dunno. How?”

“They’re both red on the inside and white on the outside.”

“Clever! But also horrifying!”

...I never, ever would’ve chosen to bring a sicko who could only speak in dirty jokes like him anywhere even remotely near a girl’s sickbed otherwise!

“But anyway, she worked so hard making a game that she got sick? I have to say, that’s the most Sayumi sort of way I can think of to screw up,” said Sagami.

“Can’t argue with that,” I sighed. “Hey, Sagami? I don’t really know much about all this stuff. How hard is it to make a game?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific. That’s way too broad for me to answer. All I can say is it varies.”

“Yeah, fair enough.” I sighed once more.

“I’m pretty jealous of you, though, Andou! I’ve never gotten that nice of a present before. All the girls I’ve dated gave me watches and accessories and useless crap like that.”

“Since when were watches and accessories useless? What counts as useful in your mind?” I countered.

“Hmm. A fleshlight, I guess?”

“That is not what birthday presents are supposed to be useful for!”

“The real problem, of course, is that if my girlfriend or waifu actually gave me a fleshlight as a present, I wouldn’t be able to say for sure if she was expressing her love for me or expressing how much she hated me. Does she really get the male mentality? Or is she telling me to literally go screw myself?”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that—there definitely aren’t many girls out there who’d give a present like that in the first place, no matter what the reason behind it.”

“‘Oh, honey, you’re home! Would you like to have dinner? Or take a bath? Or would you rather...rub one out?’”

“I’ll pass on a wife like that, thanks,” I said with a grimace.

“‘Monkey! Where have you put my fleshlight?’ ‘I took the liberty of warming it by my breast for you, Lord Nobunaga!’”

“I’ll pass on a Nobunaga and Hideyoshi like that too, thanks.” As a side note, I’ve heard that the whole thing about Nobunaga calling Hideyoshi a monkey is actually a myth. Supposedly, he actually called him a balding rat.

“Oh, come to think of it,” said Sagami with a brilliant smile, carrying on the conversation in spite of the fact that I was obviously fed up with his crap, “I think Tamaki might’ve given me a pretty useful present or two, actually.” He said it so casually you’d think it didn’t mean anything to him at all, but I fell silent in an instant. “Now she was a great girlfriend. She actually got my tastes... Hmm? What’s wrong, Andou? Why so quiet?”

“It’s nothing,” I said after a moment of hesitation.

“Wait, did you forget her? You know, Tamaki! My ex-girlfriend?”

“I remember her, yeah.”

“Oh? Okay, then,” said Sagami.

He really didn’t seem to care at all. He didn’t feel the slightest hint of hesitation about bringing Tamaki up in casual conversation, and I felt more than a little conflicted about it. It seemed that he really didn’t think much of anything at all about what had happened back then. What I considered a dark blotch on my record, Sagami apparently thought of as a funny story and nothing more. He swapped girlfriends like most people swap shirts, and in his mind, Tamaki was exactly the same as all the other girls he’d been with.

No...that wasn’t quite right, actually. In Sagami’s eyes, she wasn’t one of the girls he’d been with—she was one of the heroines he’d been briefly fixated on. I could see now that he’d loved Tamaki in the same way he loved the heroines in his favorite anime. He was completely shameless about it too. He’d admit it without hesitation—hell, he’d probably be proud to admit it. He turned a blind eye to the things that made her imperfect, refused to accept the things that made her ugly, and only saw what he wanted to see. He only loved the parts of her that were beautiful.

“All right, Andou. My place is off that way,” said Sagami. While I’d been brooding, we’d finally arrived at the point where our paths parted.

“I’m only saying this out of obligation, for the record, but do you wanna come visit her too?” I asked. “Feel free to say no. Actually, please say no. You can go ahead and pass me a get-well gift for her, though. Money works.”

“I’ll pass. Wouldn’t want to catch her cold,” Sagami replied with a tone of perfectly blunt indifference. “I’m not really into Sayumi, anyway. Upperclassman characters just aren’t trendy in this day and age.”

“Riiight. Good for you, I guess. I think Sayumi would probably be glad to learn that a person like you didn’t like her, so actually, that works out pretty nicely,” I replied. Of course, in truth, I had reason to believe that Sayumi had taken a certain degree of interest in Sagami...but on the other hand, said interest was exclusively in the BL shipping sense, so that might not’ve really applied.

“Say hi to her for me, or whatever.”

“Yeah, sure.”

☆

After Andou went out to visit Sayumi, Hatoko and I were left alone in the club room. We didn’t have much of anything to do there, but we also didn’t really feel like going home early, and there was still a chance that Chifuyu might show up at some point, so we were basically just hanging out.

“I made us some tea! Here you go, Tomoyo!”

“Oh, thanks.” I accepted the cup from her and blew on it to cool the tea down a little. It wasn’t every day that we had a calm, quiet afternoon at club like this. Normally, things were a lot more chaotic.

“I wonder if Juu’s going to manage the visit on his own?” murmured Hatoko.

“Eh, he’ll be fine. Not like he’s a kid or anything,” I replied. Hatoko had always been a real worrywart, in a certain sense. She only really got that way where Andou was concerned, I guess. Andou returned the favor in his own way—he always seemed to treat her like a kid and tried to look after her. It was like, I dunno...like they were both trying to play the older sibling for each other, or something.

“Oh, I know!” exclaimed Hatoko, clapping her hands. “Hey, Tomoyo! This seems like the perfect opportunity—there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you!”

“Sure, shoot.”

“What is ‘jizz,’ anyway?”

“Aughbfff!” I grunted as I spewed my tea all the way across the table. Again?! We’re seriously dragging out that stupid topic again?!

“I keep asking Juu about it, but he won’t say a peep! He just changes the subject right away, every time!”

No crap he does! If Andou had been eager to answer that question for her, I probably would’ve gone out and slugged him. Then again, though, he was the root of this particular evil, and I really wished he’d do something to put an end to it himself. He sowed these stupid seeds, so it should be his job to reap them! I guess I’m glad the seeds are just figurative...

“Wait, what the hell am I thinking?! No! I am not letting my mind get polluted with this lowbrow bullcrap!”

“T-Tomoyo?! A-A-Are you okay?!”

I ended up clutching at my head and writhing in agony as Hatoko did her best to pacify me. Ugggh, I’ve been tainted! This is all Andou’s fault! I’m giving him the forehead flick of his lifetime tomorrow the second I see him! “I-I’m fine, Hatoko,” I choked out. “Don’t worry about it. Anyway, I don’t really know what ji...what that word means either.”

“Oh, okay,” said Hatoko, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm as she clapped her hands once more. I had a bad feeling about where this was going. “In that case, let’s look it up together!”

Yup, I knew it...

“We can both learn something new today! A new tidbit of wisdom!”

This is one tidbit you’d be better off passing up!

“I bet Mister Google knows what it means!” Hatoko continued, smiling brightly as she stepped closer and reached out for my laptop.

I freaked out, snatched it away from her, and hid it behind my back. “N-No way, nuh-uh! No touchy!” Trust me, Hatoko! The internet might be a spectacular treasure trove of information, but all it takes is a single ill-advised keyword to turn it into Pandora’s box!

“Ah! S-Sorry,” said Hatoko, immediately deflating.

“N-No, I didn’t mean I don’t want you touching my stuff! It’s not, I mean...” Agggh, this is the worst! I didn’t even know what I was trying to accomplish anymore. Clearly, though, I was nearing the limit of my ability to hide that forbidden knowledge.

Actually, thinking about this with Hatoko’s future in mind, wouldn’t it be better if I took the time to explain it to her and clear things up anyway...? If I keep it ambiguous, then there’s a real chance that she’ll ask some random person what it means out of the blue someday. Isn’t it sorta my duty as her friend to make sure she learns what these things are actually all about? B-But...i-it’s not like I’m an expert on all that stuff, myself... I spent a moment deeply conflicted, considering the pros and cons of all my options, before I finally settled on a plan of action.

“H-Hatoko!” I shouted as I opened up my laptop, typed the forbidden word into the search bar, and spun it around to face her. “L-L-Let’s l-look it up together!” I said, surprising even myself with how many times in a row my voice managed to crack.

“Yeah, okay!” agreed Hatoko with a smile as bright as the sun.

And so, together, we lifted the lid of Pandora’s box.

Ten minutes later, a pair of maidens were curled up on the club room’s floor, paralyzed with shame at a society that had clearly developed much too far for its own good. Or perhaps that wasn’t quite right. Perhaps we could no longer be called “maidens”... Thanks to my beloved laptop and its all-too-potent ability to unearth information, we had learned one horrifying new fact after another. We were tainted—tainted by the information society we lived within.

“...”

“...”

“Hey...Tomoyo?”

“Yeah...?”

“I’m so, so sorry.”

“Just forget about it...”

Hatoko had her face buried in her hands. I figured the realization that she’d been shamelessly repeating something that vulgar was too humiliating for her to handle, even if she hadn’t known what it meant at the time. She was a pretty innocent girl, all things considered, and I couldn’t help but feel like I’d somehow corrupted her. I felt just about as guilty as I would’ve if I’d shown uncensored porn to a little girl who still believed that babies came from cabbage patches or a stork or whatever.

“Look, Hatoko. The things we saw today are our little secret. Got it?”

“Y-Yeah! We’ll keep it between us!”

“What’s your little secret?” piped up a youthful voice from somewhere behind us. I glanced over my shoulder, only to find Chifuyu standing right there.

“Gaaahhhhhhhhh!” shrieked Hatoko and I in unison. She’d always had a way of appearing at the most unexpected of moments, but this really took the cake. “Ch-Ch-Ch-Chifuyu?!”

“That’s me. Chifuyu, in the house.”

“Wh-Wh-When did you get here?” I asked.

“Just now,” said Chifuyu. In other words, she’d walked in on us while we were curled up in shame—not during the bit beforehand.

I let out a sigh of relief. Oh, thank god. She didn’t catch us looking at the most obscene crap or reading the most horrifyingly vulgar—

“What’s this?” asked Chifuyu, who had just glanced over at the desk where my laptop was sitting, still open and...

Oh.

“Why’s that lady all covered in yogu—”

“This is not for kids!”

Hatoko and I shrieked in unison and slammed my laptop shut with superhuman speed. C-Crap... I left my computer as exposed as the woman in the picture was! I retreated to a corner of the room at mach speed with my laptop in tow! Then I closed all those tabs, images and text alike! And I cleared my history and cookies! Delete! Delete! Delete! Delete! Delete it all like Mikami Teru deleting people!

Luckily, Chifuyu didn’t decide to pry any deeper into the matter. She lost interest in my computer in general, actually, and started glancing around the room instead. “Where’re Andou and Sayumi?” she asked.

“Oh, well,” Hatoko began, then gave a quick explanation about what had happened before Chifuyu arrived.

“She has a cold? I’ll go visit her too, then,” said Chifuyu after the explanation was over.

“You don’t have to,” replied Hatoko. “Juu’s on the way there already, and it’s better not to send too many people to visit someone who’s sick.”

“Oh. Okay...” Chifuyu said, then sank into thought. “Then I’ll fold origami cranes. I’ll make a thousand of them.”

“Oooh, that’s a great idea!” said Hatoko. “The old thousand cranes plan! We can wish for Sayumi to get well soon!”

“I’ll get paper,” Chifuyu said, then made a Gate in the air and warped off to who knows where without missing a beat.

I figured she’d probably gone home to grab origami paper. I also figured that World Create would’ve let her manifest a thousand cranes in the blink of an eye just as easily, but Chifuyu didn’t show any inclination to go that route. My best guess was that she realized on some intuitive level that making them wouldn’t have any meaning if it didn’t take any effort on her part. It felt like she had a surprisingly firm grasp on reality, considering she never seemed to be thinking about it at all—as if all that time she seemed to spend spacing out was just the flip side to her ability to see through to the core of things.

The moment Chifuyu left, Hatoko let out a long, tired sigh. “Th-That was close, Tomoyo.”

“You said it,” I groaned, walking back to the table with my newly purified laptop in hand. “No way could we ever let Chifuyu get an eyeful of this world’s profane underbelly.”

“No kidding,” said Hatoko with a nod. Then she cocked her head. “Hey, Tomoyo? Just to be sure, ‘profane’ basically means ‘dirty,’ right?”

Oh, right. I’d tossed that word out pretty nonchalantly, but on second thought, most people didn’t go around dropping the word “profane” into casual conversation. Using needlessly fancy vocabulary like that was, well...let’s just say it was something I decided I should work on. “Yeah, that’s right. Sorry, I probably could’ve said that in a less stupid way,” I replied.

“No, it’s fine! I just thought that it was the sort of word that Juu uses all the time. He’s always talking about his dark, profane power, and stuff!”

Yup. He sure does. Chuunis just love words like that, and just love using them when they could say something way simpler instead.

“And you know,” Hatoko continued, “there’s something I’ve just never understood. Why does Juu always say bad things about his power?”

“Huh? When does he ever do that?” I asked, confused.

“Like when he calls it profane, or accursed! He says stuff like that all the time, right? I know that Juu loves his power, so it’s always confused me that he talks so badly about it. Isn’t it strange? It’s like he’s contradicting himself.”

“Oh, that. Right—the thing is, it’s not really contradictory in his weird little world. Chuunibyou has a way of making people think that evil, forbidden powers are cool, not awful,” I explained.

Sealed powers, forbidden powers, powers that caused some calamity or another way back whenever—chuunis tend to be drawn to that stuff like moths to a flame. They envy fictional characters who get to wield terrible powers that the world at large considers taboo. Even I used to get like that... Yes, used to! I’m not like that anymore! Not even a little. Nope.

Anyway, Andou clearly loved his own Dark and Dark to pieces, but he probably also thought that treating it like it was some awful, evil power that the masses despised would make it way cooler. He would do his best to act like it was some terribly dangerous force, but he was just so enamored with it that his true feelings always seemed to bubble up to the surface. In the end, he would wind up acting in such a weirdly inconsistent way that it wasn’t totally clear what he was going for, just like Hatoko said.

“Hmm, okay!” said Hatoko with an impressed nod. “You’re amazing, Tomoyo! You really do understand everything about Juu!”

“I-I definitely wouldn’t call that amazing,” I replied. That sort of praise always made me feel a certain sense of shame, especially about that topic. The fact that I could understand that moron’s thought processes and behaviors excruciatingly well almost made it seem like the two of us were in the same boat...

And while I was writhing in humiliated agony, Hatoko muttered to herself.

“It’s not fair.”

She said it so quietly, I could barely hear her. Just a few words, under her breath.

“Huh...?”

“Oh, didn’t we already have some origami paper left over in the club room, Tomoyo?”

“Uh... Y-Yeah, probably. I remember using it for something a while back, so it’s probably still around here somewhere.”

Hatoko stood up to search, and I reflexively stood up as well to help.

What the heck was that...?

☆

Sayumi lived in a big, fancy-looking Japanese-style house in a quiet residential district. A nameplate was attached to a huge, imposing gateway at the front of the property, with “Takanashi” written on it. I half expected to find a Japanese-style garden complete with a koi pond and one of those little bamboo things that fills with water and makes a clacking sound inside...and unsurprisingly, I found nothing of the sort, but the yard was impressively large, at least.

“Why is it always quiet residential neighborhoods, anyway? When was the last time you heard someone talk about a loud and rowdy residential neighborhood?” I muttered to myself, pondering the most utterly banal questions imaginable as I stepped through the gate, plastic shopping bag in hand. A stone path led up to the front door, where I found a combination doorbell and intercom, which I rang. Before long, I heard footsteps approaching from inside.

“I’ll be right with you,” said a very familiar voice. A moment later, the door slid open. “Yes? How can I help—”

The girl who had arrived to greet me took one look at my face and froze, her eyes widening with shock. She was wearing a surprisingly cute set of pink pajamas, with one of those Japanese-style coats that look sort of like haori over top. Her long black hair was so mussed up that I could tell she’d been in bed just recently, and she had a pair of black-rimmed glasses on as well. Generally speaking, she looked like she’d been having a pretty relaxed day and was dressed for the occasion.

My first thought was “Wait, who?” Then I wondered if Sayumi had an unemployed older sister who she’d never mentioned to us. On closer inspection, though, I finally realized that she was indeed the very girl I’d come here to meet. “Uh...Sayumi?”

“A-Andou...!”

“Hi,” I said with a polite nod. Internally, though, I was still sorta stunned.

In a certain sense, the pajama look was pretty striking on her! Sayumi was the sort of person who always made sure her uniform didn’t have so much as a single wrinkle. One might even say she was a role model for the whole student body when it came to her appearance, so perfect were her grooming habits. Seeing someone like that in pajamas, a big, oversized jacket, and a pair of unfashionable glasses was, like...just one heck of a contrast, I guess.

“Y-You look like you’re feeling okay! Glad to see it,” I said. “M-Man...I’m kinda surprised! Guess you really dress down when you’re at home, huh, Sayu—”

Wham! Before I could even finish my sentence, Sayumi slammed the door shut in my face.

“U-Uhh...? Sayumi?” I called out, a little taken aback.

“I’m not Sayumi,” a slightly panicked voice rang out from inside after a brief pause.

“You’re not... Oh, come on, you can’t expect me to believe—”

“I am not Sayumi,” said Sayumi. It seemed she was putting her foot down about this.

Hmm. I guess she might be embarrassed about me seeing her dressed down like that? It is the polar opposite of how she usually presents herself. “Okay, so if you’re not Sayumi, who are you?” I asked.

“I’m Sayumi’s twin sister, umm...Maiya,” Sayumi lied. It wasn’t even a little bit convincing. I’d heard that she had a sister, but said sister was four years younger than her—not exactly a twin, to say the least.

All right, what’s my move here? I didn’t buy the twin story for a second, of course, but calling out her blatant lie wouldn’t accomplish anything other than damaging her sense of pride. All right! I’ll prioritize her self-respect and play along with the lie, then!

“Oh, okay! Nice to meet you, then. My name’s Andou,” I said. “Sayumi and I see a lot of each other at school.”

“Oh, yes, Andou. My sister’s told me all about you,” said Sayumi.

“Oh? What sorta stuff has she said?”

“According to her, you’re a truly exceptional idiot.”

“...”

Okay, now I’m getting kinda peeved. I go out of my way to play along, and this is what I get for it? Just then, Mephisto, my inner demon, poked his head out from my subconscious to whisper, “Wait a minute—this is the perfect chance to get her back for messing with you day in and day out!” into my ear.

Mwa ha ha! Oh, I do like the sound of that! Sometimes succumbing to your inner demon’s silver tongue can be nice for a change of pace. “So hey, Maiya, I actually came to pay Sayumi a get-well visit! Where is she right now?”

“My sister is...a-asleep in her room, at the moment.”

“Oh, okay. Mind showing me the way, then?”

“She’s...terribly feverish, and has been crying out in her sleep. I’m afraid she’s in no condition to receive visitors. If you have something important to say to her, I’d be happy to deliver the message in your place.”

“In that case, I have a couple things for you to give her! Mind coming out for a minute so I can pass them to you?”

Sayumi paused again. “I wouldn’t want to infect you with her cold, so I should refrain. You can set down whatever you brought for her, and I’ll collect it after you’re gone.”

Mnh...should’ve known she wouldn’t make it that easy! Sayumi’s mind and mouth were clearly both sharp as a tack, sick or not. Carrying on this silly little back-and-forth bluff fest felt like it’d be a waste of time, so I decided to jump right to the crux of the matter.

“So, yeah. You’re totally Sayumi.”

“I am not. I’m her sister, Maiya.”

“Okay, but you sound literally exactly like her.”

“N-No, I don’t,” said Sayumi in a hysterically high-pitched falsetto.

I think you overshot the mark a bit there! Her voice was so high-pitched, I could barely even imagine it coming from a girl as mature as she usually is. Heck, it might’ve been even shriller and cuter than Chifuyu’s voice!

“Look, you can put on a forced voice all you want, but it’s still really obvious that—”

“I’m not forcing this voice! I’ve sounded like this since the day I was born!” said Sayumi, her voice audibly cracking under the strain.

“And anyway, even if your voice sounds different, you’re still talking exactly like you always do,” I sighed.

“I-I, like, don’t talk like Sayumi at all, duuuh!”

Duuuh?!

“Everyone, like, tells me that me and my sister are totes nothing like each other! I can’t believe you’d say that! That’s, like, uh...cray-cray rude!”

“Cray-cray”?! Oh, jeez, where do we go from here? Sayumi’s grasp of modern slang is so off-base, it hurts! I was lost for words, but then I heard a pained moan from behind the door, and a moment later, it clattered open. A pajama and glasses-clad Sayumi stood behind it, her shoulders slumped dejectedly.

“Andou...I’d prefer if you didn’t tease me quite so mercilessly.”

“I feel like most of that was self-inflicted,” I began, then decided to drop it. “So, you are Sayumi, right?”

“Yes, I most certainly am,” Sayumi sighed with a quick nod. Strangely enough, the gesture struck me as cute in a way I rarely saw from her.

Sayumi let me into her house, and we climbed up to her room on the second floor together. As for her room itself, it was, well...normal, I guess? It was a Japanese-style room, without any unnecessary ornamentation whatsoever. There was a desk, a bookshelf, and not much of anything else. Not even so much as a single scrap of trash on her tatami flooring. It was clean and well kept, to be sure, but it didn’t exactly feel super lived in.

“I’ll fetch us some refreshments,” said Sayumi as we stepped inside.

“N-Nah, you don’t have to! I mean, you’re sick! You should be resting!” I quickly replied. She was all ready to show me the utmost of hospitality, and I couldn’t let her go to the trouble.

From what I could tell, she was home alone at the moment. It stood to reason that her father, a policeman, would be out at work, and she explained that her sister had just gone out to buy something a moment before. As for her mother...I’d heard that she and Sayumi’s father had gotten divorced when Sayumi was young. The huge house she lived in now had been passed down through her father’s family.

“Anyway,” I said, “you look like you’re doing better than I expected!”

“I am, yes,” said Sayumi. “I went to the hospital in the morning, then I spent the rest of the day in bed. That seems to have done the trick, and I believe I’ll be able to attend school tomorrow. I appreciate the concern.”

I hesitated for a moment. “About that...sorry. It sorta feels like it’s my fault you got sick.”

“There’s no need for you to apologize, Andou. If anyone is at fault for my illness, it’s me and my lack of self-discipline.”

“But, I—”

“—bear no responsibility for my decisions. I brought this upon myself,” Sayumi insisted. “More to the point, seeing you act so apologetic puts me in an uncomfortable position. Please, don’t let it bother you.”

“Well...all right.”

Sayumi smiled gently at me from across the table. She was kneeling on the ground, her posture perfect, and she didn’t look sickly at all. From what I could tell, she wasn’t trying to spare my feelings—she really did seem to feel more or less all better.

A moment later, though, she glanced awkwardly away from me. “I-I’d prefer if you didn’t stare at me like that,” Sayumi bashfully muttered.

“S-Sorry! I never really get to see you like this, so it sorta just happened,” I explained. “It’s like, ‘Wow, so this is what Sayumi’s like when she’s at home,’ y’know? I sorta always assumed you’d wear Japanese clothes around the house, or a martial arts uniform, or whatever. I’m a little surprised.”

“Just what sort of person do you think I am?” Sayumi sighed.

“Plus, your pajamas are pretty, I dunno, cutesy, I guess?”

“N-No, these aren’t mine!” shouted Sayumi. This time, she wasn’t even pretending not to panic. “These are my sister’s! My pajamas were sweaty, so I had to wash them... I didn’t have another pair, so my only choice was to borrow hers... I prefer more simple nightwear, myself...”

“Oh, there you go, putting on a front again!”

“Believe me.”

She had such an incredibly intense look in her eyes that I found myself nodding and shouting, “Right, I believe you!” without skipping a beat. Hey, cut me some slack! She’s scary!

“The same is true of the glasses,” Sayumi continued. “I, um, only wear them around the house, I suppose. I didn’t spare any thought to appearances when I chose their design, so...I’d prefer not to be seen wearing them...”

It seemed Sayumi was one of those people who made a point of only wearing glasses when she was at home. “Y’know, I’ve never seen you in glasses before, but, well...they really suit you, Sayumi,” I noted. Something about it has, like...a sorta gap moé appeal, I guess? I didn’t have a thing for glasses or anything, but in Sayumi’s case, they gave her an intellectual vibe that matched her look really nicely.

“Spare me the flattery,” Sayumi snapped.

I really wasn’t flattering her, though! “Oh, right! I brought a buncha stuff for you,” I said. “Y’know, get-well presents and all.”

“Get-well presents...? You’re being overdramatic about this,” Sayumi sighed, but I was already reaching into my bag.

“You gotta eat fruit when you have a cold, right? So I was planning on getting you some oranges or apples, but then the nearest supermarket didn’t have any in stock, so I picked this up instead,” I said, setting the fruit I’d bought for Sayumi down on the table—a single plump, black avocado.

“...”

“Huh? Something wrong, Sayumi? I dunno what that face is supposed to mean.”

“Andou? What is this black...thing?”

“It’s an avocado! They call them natural butter, y’know?”

“Actual butter is already natural. You mean ‘nature’s butter.’”

“Anyway, I read that they’ve been really popular with girls lately!”

“That’s...valid, I’ll admit, but regardless, the fact that you thought a fruit this rich and savory would be appropriate to feed to a sick person makes me seriously question your sense of reason.”

Okay, so the avocado was a miss. Too bad. “I got you this too! I thought, hey, it’s important to keep your throat in good shape when you’re sick, right?” I produced the next item from my bag, a package of cough-drop-flavored potato chips.

“Please, just buy normal cough drops next time.”

“I thought plain ol’ cough drops would just lack a certain fun factor, y’know?”

“You need to learn to prioritize the flavor factor over the fun factor. This has to be a practical joke on the manufacturer’s part! Why would you buy this?”

“Oh, right! I bought some ice cream too.”

“That, at least, I’ll give you credit for. Having a cold always gives me the strangest urge to eat ice cream.”

“Yeah, it was great.”

“You ate it yourself?! What about mine?!”

“Huh? There isn’t any.”

“Why not?! Why would you eat all of it on your own?!”

“Wait, back up. I kinda shifted topics there. I was just telling you about a thing I bought for myself on the way here, that’s all.”

“That...was an incredibly misleading segue.”

“So anyway, the type I bought was one of those ones where sometimes there’s a little mark on the stick that means you win another one for free, right? And guess what? I won! That’s, like, as rare as seeing a shooting star, so I made a wish on it for you to feel better soon!”

“He he he! Well, thank you oh so very much!” said Sayumi with an extremely insincere smile.

“What else...? Oh, right, I got you this too!” The object in question being a bottle of avocado juice.

“Why are you so dead set on forcing avocados down my throat?” asked Sayumi.

“Well, I heard that they’ve been really popular with girls—”

“I heard that excuse the first time you used it, yes.”

I sighed. “That one’s no good either, huh? I had a feeling you’d have a really refined palate, considering your upbringing and all, and I was a little worried they wouldn’t have anything interesting enough to satisfy you. I ran myself ragged trying to find something that’d really surprise you, but it looks like my bad feeling was right in the end...”

“Andou. Please. Try to appreciate the fact that if your goal was to please me, you have strayed far from that objective.”

I guess my get-well visit was kind of a bust on the whole, then? What a terrible shame. Apparently, my effort to appeal to her by way of novelty had been misguided.

Then, suddenly, I heard a bright and cheerful voice shout “I’m hooome!” from the entryway. The thudding of footsteps dashing up the staircase followed, and soon, the door clicked open. “Hey, Sayu! I picked up your Pocari! You wanted the powdered kind, right?” said a lively-looking girl as she stepped into the room.

Her hair was fairly short—just long enough to skim her shoulders—and her eyes were big and vibrant. Her face still had a touch of youthfulness to its features, but it looked like she was wearing just a little makeup that gave her a certain mature vibe as well. Her clothing, meanwhile, was a sailor uniform that I assumed came from some nearby middle school.

“I got you some ice cream too! It’s in the freezer—” Suddenly, the girl’s eyes met mine and she froze in place.

The silence felt really awkward, so I decided to greet her with a casual “H-Hey, sorry to intrude.” The girl, however, ignored me entirely, took a deep breath, then shouted at the top of her lungs.

“S-S-Sayu brought a guy hooome!”

“M-Maiya! What on earth are you saying?!” snapped Sayumi.

“Wowee, Sayu! I might’ve been underestimating you!” said this new girl—Maiya, it seemed. “Guess high schoolers really do know how to get stuff done!”

“You’re misinterpreting this. Listen to me for just a—”

“Ah! Wait, am I third-wheeling you guys right now? Ha ha ha, whoops! My bad! I’ll be downstairs, so take your time and don’t mind me! I’ll turn the TV up nice and loud too, so I won’t hear anything, no matter what you guys do up here!”

“Maiya!” snapped Sayumi, her face flushing red as she put on one of the most intimidating scowls I’d ever seen from her. Maiya just shrugged and stuck out her tongue while Sayumi sighed. “Why must you be so incessantly childish? Was it really necessary to embarrass the both of us in front of my guest?”

“Oh, quit acting like you’re my mom!” said Maiya. “You’d better be careful, Sayu. Keep scowling like that, and you’ll get more wrinkles and look even older than ever, you know?”

“I will not get wrinkles, and I do not look old!” shouted Sayumi. Somehow, she looked even more upset than ever. Like, seriously, the face she was making was downright horrifying. At around that time, however, she seemed to remember that I’d been watching their exchange and turned to me. “I’m terribly sorry about this, Andou,” Sayumi said with a quick, apologetic bow. “It’s inexcusable for my family to be this rude to you.”

“Nah, it’s fine! Doesn’t bother me at all,” I replied. “So, I’m guessing she’s your sister?”

“Yes, that’s correct. As you’ve surmised, this is Takanashi Maiya, my handful of a little sister.”

“C’mon, Sayu, don’t call me a handful! You’re supposed to call me your darling little sister, right?” said Maiya with a cute little smile.

Wow, so this is Sayumi’s little sister? She’s...how to put it...absolutely nothing like Sayumi at all, huh? Sayumi had always felt like the living embodiment of the sort of womanly strength and modesty that was so highly prized by traditional Japanese standards, while Maiya, in contrast, felt just about as “modern teen” as a girl could be.

“Nice to meetcha! My name’s Takanashi Maiya, and I’m fourteen! Who’re you? Do you go to school with Sayu?” asked Maiya. I assumed she’d figured that out from the uniform I was wearing.

“This boy’s name is Andou Jurai,” explained Sayumi, beating me to the punch before I could answer. “He’s an underclassman in the literary club, and he came to visit me on behalf of all our clubmates today.”

“Ooh, that makes sense! Thanks for coming, Andou!” said Maiya.

“Y-Yeah, no problem,” I replied.

“Oh!” said Maiya, as if she’d just remembered something. “Hey, would you mind giving me your contact info?”

She comes on pretty strong right off the bat, doesn’t she? She was so friendly and cheerful, it almost seemed excessive. I’d never been very good at dealing with super cutesy, hyper enthusiastic kids like her. It’s not that I disliked that sort of person, to be clear—it’s just that I didn’t know how I was supposed to interact with them.

In any case, I did exchange contact info with her in the end. The moment we finished, she hopped up to her feet, said “Oh, right! Wait here just a minute!” and charged out of Sayumi’s room, only to return moments later with a big book in her hands. “Ta-da! Lookie lookie, it’s Sayu’s middle school yearbook! You can’t go over to your girlfriend’s house without snooping through her yearbook, right?!”

“Please don’t bring out my belongings without my permission, Maiya,” sighed Sayumi. “And more to the point, Andou and I are not dating.”

“Not dating yet?”

“Not dating in perpetuity,” Sayumi declared decisively. Which kinda stung, not gonna lie.

“Ooh? Methinks the lady doth protest too much!” said Maiya.

Sayumi just sighed and rested her head in her hand. “Maiya. Please, go to your room and leave us alone.”

“You wanna be alone with Andou, huh?”

“Fine. If that’s how you’re determined to read it, then go right ahead. Just do it somewhere else,” said Sayumi. “Talking with you makes me feel like my cold is going to relapse.”

“Okaaay,” droned Maiya. “All right, I’m off, Andou! Feel free to linger!” And with that, she was gone. She’d come in like a storm and departed just as quickly.

“So, that’s your sister, huh?” I asked once she was gone.

“Ashamed as I am to admit it, yes,” replied Sayumi with a shake of her head.

“You two really don’t take after each other much, huh?”

“Yes, I’m told that quite often...”

It wasn’t every day that I got to see Sayumi look that worn out. I had to wonder if Maiya was her perfect superhuman of a sister’s one and only natural enemy. As astonishingly capable as Sayumi was, it seemed that not even she could stand up to the unstoppable force that was her family’s youngest child.

“She isn’t a bad person by any means, but she can be ever so slightly uninhibited and impolite,” said Sayumi, glancing over at a framed photo on the other side of the room. The picture was of an elderly old woman with an expression so stern, she gave off a sort of scary impression. “I sometimes have to wonder what my grandmother would think about having a girl like her as a granddaughter, if she were still alive.”

“Your grandmother...?” I muttered. “Oh, right—she’s the one who trained you to be cross-dominant, wasn’t she?”

“I’m...deeply distressed that that’s how you’ve wound up remembering her, but yes, that’s correct,” said Sayumi before letting out a quick sigh. There was a sort of faraway look in her eyes. “She was a stern, fastidious woman who held others to the same strict standards she held for herself. I can’t even begin to guess how many times she scolded me for one thing or another.”

“You got scolded, Sayumi? I can’t even imagine that.”

Sayumi chuckled. “‘Become a person who is worthy of praise.’ She would tell me that over and over again.”

“A person worthy of praise...” I repeated. If I’d been asked who the most praiseworthy person I knew was, I would’ve most likely said Sayumi’s name without sparing the question a second thought. Her actions were irreproachable, and her integrity was unquestionable. She was remarkable across the board, really. She could be ever so slightly mean-spirited sometimes, sure, but all things considered, she was as praiseworthy as a person could get.

“I’m sure your grandmother’s watching over you from heaven, and I’m sure she’s proud of you. It looks to me like you turned out exactly the way she’d want her granddaughter to become,” I said.

I honestly believed what I was saying, and I didn’t mean to make a big thing out of it, but to my surprise, a shadow fell over Sayumi’s face. “I’d like to think you’re right about that,” she said with an ever so slightly pained smile.

At that point, I reached for the yearbook that Maiya had left in the room. “Mind if I take a look at this?” I asked.

“Feel free,” said Sayumi, “but I doubt you’ll find anything especially entertaining in it.”

I slid the yearbook out from the rather stately case it came in and laid it down. Sayumi and I chatted idly as I flipped through it and enjoyed the chance to see some older pictures of her.

“You really haven’t changed at all since then, have you?” I noted.

“I suppose not,” said Sayumi. “My height and weight have both barely changed since I was a middle schooler.”

“It’s weird, though. You still look older some— Uh, I mean, never mind.”

Just then, my gaze fell on a particular picture. It was of a student council gathering, from what I could tell, featuring a few students and their faculty advisor. In the very center stood Sayumi, a pleasant but stern smile on her face.

“You were on the student council in middle school, Sayumi?” I asked.

“I was, yes,” she replied.

That was a bit of a surprise, but more than that, it just made sense somehow. Being on the student council felt right for her. I’d even heard that Kudou asked Sayumi for help with her student council president duties every once in a while these days.

“Yeah, that makes sense. You seem like you’d make a great student council president. Oh, right! Speaking of,” I began. I’d always wondered something about Sayumi, deep down, and this seemed like the right moment to go ahead and ask.

“Why didn’t you join the student council in high school?”

Instantly, Sayumi’s expression shifted. It took on an almost imperceptibly grim shade, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly, and a moment later, she looked away without saying a word. Seconds passed in excruciating silence.

“U-Umm, Sayumi...?”

“My apologies, Andou. I believe it’s about time for you to leave, if you’d be so kind.”

“Huh...?”

“I took some medicine just a moment ago, and it’s starting to make me a little sleepy. I’d like to lie down.”

“Oh... R-Right, got it. Okay, then.”

She’d done her best to soften the blow, but she’d made it very clear that she had no intention of answering my question. I left her room so quickly it felt like I was running away—or maybe it was more like she was driving me out and barring the door behind me. Then I climbed down the stairs, said a quick goodbye to Maiya—who was sprawled out on the floor watching TV—and left the Takanashi household behind me.