Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 6 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Andou Jurai’s Eighth-Grade Spring—Lovebird Warning in Effect

“Oh. Gotcha...”

I was on my way home after the first day of my second year in middle school, and Hatoko had just given me back a book I’d loaned her over spring break. When she told me that she hadn’t read it in a genuinely remorseful tone, those two words and an awkward smile were my immediate reaction.

Hatoko and I would loan each other books and magazines a lot back in those days. Well, really, she only loaned them to me every once in a while—most of the time, I was the one providing her with reading material. Whenever I got really hooked on a new series, I always wanted to show her how great it was. I wanted to share my enthusiasm with her, and I wanted her to identify with what I was feeling. I poured everything I had into explaining the things I loved to her...but sometimes, it didn’t feel like she really got it. Make that more often than not. Pretty much all the time, actually.

At the end of the day, it seemed that our tastes in media were simply incompatible. I was all about what most people would call chuuni-targeted stories, and no matter how many times I’d tried to make her understand them, I’d never managed to make a breakthrough. Her response to that light novel felt like it had been a long time coming: not only did she not get it, she hadn’t even read it at all.

“I sorta figured you wouldn’t understand... Meh, that’s just how it goes,” I said, doing my best to casually shake it off as I resumed my walk to school. The conversation drifted to a different topic immediately, but even then, I couldn’t quite bring myself to look Hatoko in the eye.

At that moment, I came to two distinct resolutions. They were things I’d decided for myself in advance and that I hadn’t mentioned to anyone else. The first was that if Hatoko didn’t read the book I’d loaned her or she didn’t enjoy it, I would stop lending her books entirely. And the second was that if Hatoko just couldn’t understand me in the end...I would lay my case of chuunibyou to rest.

I’d stop spouting cringey nonsense. I’d give up on thinking up stupid one-liners and signature poses, stop thinking up headcanons, fanfics, and original characters for my favorite manga and anime, stop operating under the assumption that being different made me cool, stop dreaming up totally impossible special moves and totally incoherent titles. Everything that society at large perceived as chuuni—all those things that came to me as naturally as breathing—would henceforth be purged from my day-to-day life, no exceptions.

On that day, I cured myself of my eighth-grade syndrome.

And on that same day, we began our new lives as eighth-graders.

☆

“Huh? Wait...what?”

Up to that point, Sayumi had simply listened silently to my story, but now her eyes widened as she let out an exclamation of shock.

“What’s wrong, Sayumi? This is basically still just the prologue!”

“I’m sorry...you cured yourself of your chuunibyou?” Sayumi asked.

“Yup,” I casually replied.

Sayumi looked more baffled than ever. “I can’t even begin to make sense of this,” she muttered. “How could someone like you—someone who’s still actively wallowing in the most appallingly edgy fantasies conceivable—have gotten over your chuunibyou? You’re nothing less than the living avatar of chuunibyou itself!”

“The avatar of chuunibyou...” I repeated. Y’know, that actually has a kinda nice ring to it. Feels like it could play a mean game of Hyperdimensional Soccer. Of course, I could understand why she was surprised. My year in the eighth grade represented a gap in my personal history. A dark, empty void—a blackened oblivion. Hence, the darkest period in my life.

Looking back, the way I’d behaved during that period made me almost seem like a totally different person. It was almost enough to make me think that some other Andou Jurai had stepped into my shoes and lived my life for a year in my stead. Maybe my dark side really had awakened and taken over back then.

“What on earth happened?” asked Sayumi. “What could have possibly been impactful enough to make you give up your chuunibyou?”

“You have it backward, actually,” I said.

“Backward?”

“Yeah. I gave up on chuunibyou because nothing happened.”

I paused to collect my thoughts, then continued.

“So hey, Sayumi—how long did you believe in Santa Claus for?”

☆

If you were to ask me how long I’d believed in Santa Claus, I wouldn’t be able to give you a decent answer because, frankly, I don’t really remember. Having made it into the eighth grade, it was a given that I didn’t believe in him anymore, but I couldn’t even begin to remember when that shift had taken place. I’m pretty sure that I’d just been another innocent little kid who’d believed in Santa without question back in kindergarten...but of course, this is me we’re talking about. It’s equally plausible that I’d gotten it into my head that denying Santa’s existence would make me hella cool and tried to debate my upperclassmen into submission on the topic.

The point’s moot, though, because I don’t know when it happened. I can’t remember. At some point along the way, I realized that I’d simply naturally come to disbelieve in Santa. It’s not like I’d had some sort of strong conviction regarding his nonexistence, but really, I think the same’s probably true for the majority of people in the world. When it came down to it, people who’ve gone through dramatic revelations—like catching their dad partway through sneakily changing into a Santa outfit—were few and far between.

As you grow up, you simply stop believing in Santa before you know it. It doesn’t have to be accompanied by a huge change in your sense of values, and it isn’t always prompted by some big incident. The way you think about things just sort of drifts over time, without any drama or events to be found. Trauma and miracles aren’t the only things that can bring about paradigm shifts within our worldviews—time is just as effective at changing us, and at some point, that fact started to scare me. I wasn’t scared of changing, to be clear—I was scared of not realizing that I had changed.

I was scared of changing “before I knew it,” or “naturally,” or “unwittingly,” or “as a matter of course.” Gregor Samsa may have woken up one morning to the sudden realization that he’d transformed into a monstrous insect, but in my mind, an obvious, physical metamorphosis like that would be a lot less scary than a transformation you couldn’t see at all.

Here’s a good example: I used to love tokusatsu TV programs, like the whatever-Rangers and Kamen Rider. I’d looked up to the superheroes in those shows, and I’d believed that someday, I’d get to be one as well. I’d run around with a toy version of one of their transformation devices, “training”—playing, really—all day long.

And then I just...grew up. Well, okay, maybe I didn’t grow up that much. I continued to watch tokusatsu shows religiously even after getting into middle school, and I still kept buying those toys on the regular. My parents and my sister hadn’t been making much effort to disguise their disapproval, but I’d never let that stop me from immersing myself in my hobbies. I’d had more and more chances to read manga and watch anime as time went on as well, and I’d found myself particularly drawn to stories with dark, edgy worldviews, projecting myself onto the characters within them and even coming up with my own original scenarios. Until finally, one day, a thought suddenly struck me.

Wait a minute.

When did I realize that Kamen Riders aren’t real?

I thought back on it, and I realized that I couldn’t come up with an answer. Just like I couldn’t recall when I’d lost my belief in Santa, I couldn’t remember when I’d come to an understanding that the heroes in my favorite shows were purely fictional. I hadn’t caught some middle-aged guy unzipping himself from his costume after a superhero stage show up on a department store’s rooftop, and my sister had never given me a self-righteous sermon about how all of that stuff was made up.

Before I knew it—

Naturally—

Unwittingly—

As a matter of course—

I had simply accepted that fiction was just that: fiction.

I knew that the actors who portrayed Kamen Riders were by and large young, up and coming talents whom their agencies were trying to push into the limelight, and I knew that they were swapped out with professional stunt people called suit actors for the scenes when they transformed. I knew that every manga had a creator too. I knew that Araki Hirohiko wasn’t a wielder of Hamon, and I was aware that Kubo Tite and KBTIT were not, in fact, the same person.

I knew that the world of serialized manga was a harsh one where unpopular series were canceled mercilessly, and I knew that the results of reader surveys could seriously influence their stories. I knew that anime were created by animators and directors, and I knew that mascot characters were just people wearing big, bulky costumes. I knew that Luffy and Krillin were voiced by the same person—same for Usopp, L, and Feitan; Toriko and Nube; Gin, Joseph, and Switch; and plenty of others.

I knew all of that. I knew that they were all stories—just stories, and nothing more. I knew it...and I’d accepted it. In my heart, I still aspired to be like all those heroes I looked up to, but in my mind, I knew that absolutely all of them had been invented by a bunch of adults. They were nothing but illusions. Before I knew it, my heart’s and mind’s paths had diverged, and as time passed, the gap between them grew more and more precipitous. The moment I’d noticed that a contradiction like that had sprung forth from my own psyche without me even realizing it, I felt so scared and frustrated I didn’t know what to do about it.

But, of course, there was nothing I could do about it, and that fact felt like it was liable to drive me off the deep end. The moment I made the mistake of taking an objective look at myself—the moment I realized the inherent contradiction of aspiring to be like designedly unreal characters, and the moment I internalized the irreconcilable differences between heroes and business interests—was also when I came to truly understand that I was one of those intolerably cringey chuunis that society looked down upon. And, in noticing that fact, I could remain a chuuni no longer. Looking at myself from an objective perspective was the end. It’d become time to move on. And so, looking for an impetus to take that final step, I’d gone to Hatoko...

“Hey! You falling asleep on me, dickhead?!”

Oh. That sudden burst of verbal abuse brought me back to my senses. I hadn’t been knocked for a loop or anything—I’d just withdrawn into my thoughts in an effort to escape from reality.

“Think you can just ignore me, huh, Andou? Think you’re some sorta badass, huh?!” said one of the five boys who were currently looming over me. The one who was leading the interrogation looked furious, while the remaining four could barely contain their derisive laughter. We were in a public park pretty close to my school, and I’d ended up surrounded by the five of them with my back pressed against the wall of a filthy public restroom.

This was about a week after I’d gotten into the eighth grade and, by extension, about a week since I’d given up my chuuni ways. I wasn’t in a club and typically went straight home as soon as school got out. I walked to school with Hatoko sometimes, but after school, I almost always ended up commuting solo. Hatoko had been putting her all into the soft tennis club, so our schedules just didn’t mesh for that purpose. I was planning on going straight home on that day as well, but just as I was about to get on my bike and go on my way, I was apprehended by Aragaki and his cronies.

“Hey!” shouted the tallest of them—Aragaki himself—as he glared at me, a menacing scowl on his face. He wound up his arm, then slammed his hand into the wall right beside my head. It was a real wall pound, and I have to say that getting that done to you by a tall and pretty built dude is nothing short of terrifying. I found myself shrinking back reflexively.

“H-Hey, come on, Aragaki,” I stammered. “Cut me some slack, okay...?”

“Shut’cher trap, Andou!” he spat. “This is your own fault for being so damn full of yourself, y’know?”

“Seriously, I’ll apologize as many times as you want me to! I’m sorry, honestly!” I desperately begged.

“If saying sorry was good enough to get you off the hook, we wouldn’t need cops!” shouted Aragaki in an astonishingly uncreative attempt at intimidation. I almost cracked up, but I knew for a fact I’d just be adding fuel to the fire if I did and held the impulse back. Unfortunately, the best that I could do was hang my head and try not to look directly at the thugs who were surrounding me. From an outside perspective, this probably would’ve looked like a cut-and-dried case of bullying.

Aragaki Zenya was—pardon my French—a total douchebag. His hair was dyed the sort of flashy color you’d normally never see on an eighth-grader, and he and his cronies whiled away their days smoking and drinking on the regular. The big thing that distinguished them from the delinquents you read about in manga sometimes was the fact that they didn’t make a habit of going out and getting into street fights. They didn’t break the school’s windows or ride around on stolen motorcycles either—they just loitered around, occasionally preying on locals who looked like they’d be easy targets.

It was kind of remarkable how full of himself Aragaki was, considering how petty his actual rule-breaking tended to be. The other thing about Aragaki, of course, was that he was actually pretty handsome and was surprisingly popular with the girls at school as a result. It was pretty exasperating, honestly, and I had to wonder just how on earth douchebags like him managed to attract anyone, much less with such consistency.

Anyway—the point is that Aragaki was a douchebag, and birds of a feather flocked together. He was the leader of their little group, and we’d been in the same class back in our first year of middle school, so I’d ended up getting tangled up with him pretty often. He didn’t try to extort me or do anything really violent to me, to be clear—it was more along the lines of petty harassment—but that didn’t make it any less unpleasant to deal with.

“Anyway, kinda rare for you to apologize, isn’t it, Andou?” said Aragaki with a sneer. “What happened to the dark powers sealed away in your right arm or whatever?”

Aragaki’s four cronies erupted in vicious, mocking laughter, and I forced myself to chuckle along with them in the vain hope it would take a little of the heat off me. The reason I’d ended up their target was incredibly simple: my chuunibyou was to blame. Back in the seventh grade, I’d been a veritable maelstrom of chuuni cringe. I’d pretend my right arm was throbbing with pain, held extended conversations with empty air—I could keep going, but there are just too many examples to bother listing them all. Now that I was self-aware about how excruciatingly embarrassing and cringey all the stuff I’d done back then was, it struck me as obvious that I’d earned the ire of the local douchebags as a result. I wish that were the beginning and the end of the story, but unfortunately, the not-so-old chuuni me’d had other ideas.

“Hey, what’s wrong, Andou? Not gonna give us a ‘mwa ha ha’ today?”

“Isn’t this the part where you’re supposed to strike some lame-ass signature pose? What’d it look like again? Something like this?”

The mockery continued relentlessly, and I knew why. For some mind-boggling reason, back when I was on my chuuni kick, I’d chosen to respond to their douchebaggery by cranking up my chuuni level to eleven. I’d gone all in on the posing, literally and figuratively, out of some misapprehension that I had to portray myself as being some sort of special, unique entity. Needless to say, my actions had made my relationships with Aragaki et al. even worse than ever, and that brings us back to the present moment. I’d cut off every bit of even remotely chuuni-adjacent behavior entirely when I’d gotten into the eighth grade, but that didn’t mean my past had been totally done away with. Real life doesn’t have a convenient reset button.

“Please, just trust me—I’ve turned over a new leaf. Honestly! I’m totally done with all that stuff, so just let me off the hook, okay?” I begged, thinking all the while, Wow, this is pathetic.

By “this,” of course, I meant myself. How sad was it that when faced with a bunch of punks who were only scary because they came in a clique, the best I could do was suck up to them? I was plain old Andou Jurai, a perfectly unremarkable kid without so much as a special trait to his name, not some badass hero who could punch those douchebags into the stratosphere like you see in stories. The only things I knew how to do were act like a subservient little loser or pose it up and let my fantasies carry me through the encounter.

“Say what? You’re sounding mighty full of yourself, eh, Andou?!” raged Aragaki. I couldn’t help but wonder if he even knew any phrases other than “You’re full of yourself” to use in this sort of situation, but needless to say, I kept those doubts strictly to myself. “Just so you know,” he continued, “what we’re doing here? It’s not bullying—we’re just teaching you a little lesson, that’s all. Cringe-ass nerds like you need someone to tell them to take a hint, or who knows how much trouble they’ll cause in the end? That’s all we’re doing—teaching you what’s what!”

It was an incredibly self-centered take, and it was really obvious that its only purpose was to justify his actions. It was, in fact, exactly the sort of thing that a petty bully would say. Still, though, I found myself just a little bit sold on his logic. Getting singled out and harrassed by him and his group was incredibly unpleasant and humiliating, to be sure, but on the other hand, part of me thought that I’d earned that humiliation and just had to accept it. I guess I thought it was a way to remind myself of my past mistakes, or something like that?

If I’m being completely honest, not even I totally understood my thoughts on the matter, but the point is that I’d gone way overboard and had refused to take a hint for so long that it felt like I’d just have to suck it up and take the punishment I’d earned. I couldn’t even disagree when he said I’d been full of myself. I was upset enough with my past self that I thought this treatment was only fair. Seriously, why did I have to do all that stupid pretentious crap all the time? I’m just some random guy—I can’t even handle a single bully! I never should’ve gotten wrapped up with any of that chuunibyou stuff in the first—

“No! That’s wrong!”

Suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, a voice rang out. It sounded like a boy’s voice, and its tone was eloquent and clear. Aragaki, his flunkies, and I all turned to look in the direction it had come from. There, beside one of the park’s play structures, stood a young man—a remarkably attractive one. His build was slender and delicate, and he was on the shorter side of things as well. If he hadn’t been wearing a boy’s uniform, I might’ve mistaken him for a girl at a glance.

“What’s your problem, pal?” said one of Aragaki’s goons.

“Isn’t that the Onahole Second uniform?” said another.

Onaga Second Middle School was one of the other junior highs in our area, and it had been given the exceedingly unfortunate nickname “Onahole Second” by some of the locals. It was the sort of nickname that you’d expect out of a middle school boy, I guess. On a similar note, my school—Jikou Middle School—frequently got called “Jerkoff Middle School” by that sort of crowd.

Anyway, Aragaki’s crew was making a transparent effort to pick a fight with the young man, but he didn’t even look at them. “No! That’s wrong!” he repeated.

“Huh? The hell’s that supposed to mean?!” yelled Aragaki.

“No! That’s wrong!”

“Oh, you’re asking for it, pal!” Aragaki shouted. He must’ve thought the guy was making light of him, so he started stomping over in his direction.

At that point, the young man finally acknowledged our existence. “Huh? Oh...were you talking to me?” he asked, acting as if he’d genuinely failed to notice we were there until that precise moment. “Do you need something?”

“Do I need something?! I need you to explain what the hell your problem is, asshole! You trying to pick a fight or what?!” Aragaki bellowed.

“No, not really. I wasn’t talking to any of you at all. I was just doing some solo Danganronpa role-playing over here, that’s all,” the young man casually explained. Aragaki stared blankly at him, and an oppressive silence fell over the park. The young man, however, seemed entirely unperturbed. “I can take my game over to the corner if I’m interrupting something! Please, don’t let me disturb you. Feel free to carry on with your beatdown, or shakedown, or whatever it is you’re doing, to your heart’s content. This is a public park, after all—everyone has the right to use it!”

With that, he trotted over to a corner of the park. “No, that’s wrong. No! That’s wrong! No! That’s wrong...pu hu hu.”

Back to playing make-believe Danganronpa already, huh?

“No, that’s wrong. No, that’s wrong—objection!”

With a little Ace Attorney thrown in for good measure, I guess.

“No, that’s wrong! Objection! Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case... Legal High! Ba-badum, ba-badum, ba-badum-dum!”

And he’s pulling his background music from the Legal High soundtrack. The guy seemed to be setting his make-believe session in one heck of an entertaining courtroom. In any case, it seemed that he really had just happened to be in the area, and he was totally uninterested in involving himself with us. Unfortunately for him, though, Team Aragaki wasn’t about to let a person like him go unharassed.

“Oh, you little punk... Feeling pretty full of yourself, aren’t you?” Aragaki growled in another less-than-eloquent display of intimidation. Before I knew it, the five of them had surrounded the young man, who just sort of stood there, a look of blank incomprehension on his face.

“Huh?” he said. “Umm...am I in danger?”

“Shut’cher trap!” shouted Aragaki. “The hell’s your deal? You trying to play the big badass here and get in our way or something?”

“Oh, no, absolutely, positively, definitely not in any sense whatsoever!” said the young man. “I have less than zero intention of bothering you people. Oh, I know—why don’t I help you instead? I’ll go keep watch at the park’s entryway, and you can beat the crap out of him while I stand lookout!”

I’m sure you’ve already figured this out by now, but it still seems worth saying: he was clearly not some sort of savior who’d arrived to deliver me from my predicament. In fact, he was actively trying to sell me out to save his own skin. So, yeah—my first impression of him was as terrible as it possibly could’ve been.

“Ah!” shouted the young man. “He’s running away! Look, everyone, that guy’s trying to make a break for it! You have to catch him! Hurry!”

“Crap!” I spat. I’d thought I could take advantage of the confusion to make a quiet exit, but mister pretty boy decided to point at me and raise the alarm as I snuck toward the park’s exit. Was that really necessary, you jerk?! In the blink of an eye, I was once again surrounded by Aragaki and his gang, who herded the pretty boy into the circle along with me.

“What the hell, man?!” I quietly grumbled to him. “I would’ve gotten away if it weren’t for you!” I’d only just met him, but since he was shorter than me and looked like a weakling, I didn’t hesitate to speak in a pretty aggressive tone. Yes, I know that’s kind of pathetic to admit, but that’s just how people work sometimes.

“‘What the hell’ is my line, thank you very much,” said the pretty boy. “How could you dare to sneak away on your own after pulling me into your trouble?” His tone was just as blunt as mine—it seemed that both of us had instantly judged ourselves to be above the other in our extremely localized social pecking order. “Ugh,” he sighed. “Why did I have to get dragged into this mess? I was just waiting for my date to show up, minding my own business, and now this...”

“Waiting for my date to show up”? The second I heard that phrase, the last iota of remorse I’d felt for getting him involved vanished into the aether. On second thought, I’m totally okay with dragging him into my problems. Suffer, mister hot stuff! “Okay, then,” I said. “I have a proposal: why don’t you valiantly sacrifice yourself to give me an opening to escape? Then you can brag to your girlfriend about your heroics whenever she shows up.”

“Ha ha ha, no thank you!” countered the pretty boy. “But now that you mention it, why don’t you sacrifice yourself for me? Then I’ll follow your example by leading a long, leisurely life of fulfillment.”

“That’s not following my example at all!”

“Okay, then I’ll sacrifice myself for you!”

“Stop looking at me like that! I know what you’re going for, and you’re not gonna trick me into volunteering myself! This isn’t a Bugs Bunny sketch!”

“Point of order: I’m not into rescuing guys from stuff like this in the first place. Now, if you were a hot girl on the other hand...”

“What, you’d save me then? You’re a real gentleman, huh?”

“No, I was going to say that I’d hide somewhere nearby and watch them have their way with you.”

“Wow! You’re a gigantic scumbag!”

“I get that a lot.”

“Hey! The hell’re you two pals chatting about, huh?!” snapped Aragaki. As I resisted the urge to clarify that we weren’t chatting and definitely weren’t pals, he turned his attention to the pretty boy. “You’re one of those Onahole Middle School kids, aren’t you? What class’re you in, and what’s your name?”

“Second year, class one, Sagami Shizumu!” the pretty boy—Sagami, apparently—immediately replied. It seemed he was in the same grade as me.

“There’s a third year at your school named Sengoku, y’know? He’s pretty famous around these parts, and I’m a pretty good friend of his,” boasted Aragaki.

Oh, boy, here we go. It’s the most boring move in the blowhard playbook. Kakashi once questioned whether there’s anything duller than listening to someone else brag, but the truth is that, yes, there actually is: listening to someone else brag about someone else. The only thing you accomplish by boasting about having some amazing acquaintance is making the person you’re talking to feel vaguely uncomfortable. It’s like watching a housecat brag about their tiger friend: utterly laughable.

“Oh...wow, that’s amazing. I respect you so much now. I wish I could be like you,” said Sagami, who, sure enough, seemed utterly and completely uninterested. His monotone lip-service didn’t go over so well with Aragaki, of course, who grabbed Sagami by the lapels. “Wh-Whoa! W-Wait a minute! I’m a pacifist! You can’t hit a conscientious objector! No, stop, please, I hate getting hurt! R-Right, I know—you like money, don’t you? I’ll pay up, so just don’t hurt me!” begged Sagami in a disconcertingly unnatural tone.

Now, I’d considered the possibility of buying my way out of the situation as well. I mean, of course the thought had crossed my mind. I’d decided against it, though, because I knew that if I tried that move, it would all be over for me. If you pay up once, you can be sure there’ll be a second time. Plus, I was still getting all of my spending money from my parents. It just wouldn’t have felt right to hand over money that I hadn’t even earned without putting up a fight first. I still had some pride left, and that was the one line that I never wanted to cross. Sagami, on the other hand, leaped straight over it with wild abandon.

“Hey now, cut it out! You’re going to make it look like we’re shaking you down or something,” said Aragaki with a sneer. “But y’know, if you’re volunteering to give us a little donation, hey, I won’t say no! Just remember—you brought this up yourself, got it? There’s no extortion going down here, right?”

Aragaki let go of Sagami’s lapels, and Sagami immediately started to frantically dig about in his pockets.

“Ha ha ha!” cackled Aragaki. “You’re a smart one, but god damn are you pathetic! I bet your girlfriend would be real disappointed if she saw you like this, huh?” It seemed, then, that Aragaki had overheard our whispered exchange.

Surprisingly, though, Sagami just smiled. It was a smile so dashing and natural that it gave me chills. “Disappointed?” he said. “No, I don’t think so. After all, she’s—”

“Heeey, Shizumuuu!”

Before Sagami could finish whatever he was trying to say, an almost unfathomably bright and cheery voice rang out from the park’s entrance. It was a girl’s voice—one so cloyingly sweet, just listening to it felt like it was going to give me heartburn—and lo and behold, when I looked up, I saw a girl standing over on the edge of the park. She was holding one of those drinks that come with a little toy packaged alongside it, and she waved it in front of her as she dashed over toward us.

“Sorry to hold you up! I got a touch sidetracked and lost track of time,” said the girl. She was wearing a long-sleeved sailor uniform, and she had a set of leggings on underneath. She was just a little taller than me, had a slender build, and struck me as a remarkably cute girl all around, though I couldn’t help but note that there was something a little odd about her intonation when she spoke.

“Hey, take a gander at this! It’s the pack-in you’ve been wanting for ages, right, Shizumu? You said you’d looked high and low for it, but I caught this one on sale at that old candy shop behind the school!” she said. Her intonation really was a little peculiar. It was oddly flat, and it was devoid of the sort of inflection I was used to in a way that made it just a little hard to parse what she was saying. I wasn’t sure where the dialect was from offhand, but hearing a girl with such a beautifully clear voice speak in such a perfectly flat tone felt mismatched in a really odd sort of way.

“Tamaki...you made it,” muttered Sagami. That, I assumed, was her name, and this Tamaki was presumably the girlfriend he’d mentioned. Suddenly, I felt a deep sense of pity for the guy. No man would ever want the girl he was into to see him make a pathetic disgrace of himself. Having your girlfriend witness you getting shaken down by a bunch of random douchebags would be as humiliating as it gets.

“Huh...? Wait a tick—what’s going on, Shizumu?” Tamaki asked, stopping in her tracks as she seemed to finally notice me and Aragaki’s group. A look of confusion passed across her face.

“Perfect timing, Tamaki,” said Sagami with a smile—a smile that instantly told me that my feelings of pity had been entirely misdirected. “I was just waiting in the park for you like I promised when these people came up and started picking on me,” he said without so much as the slightest hint of shame...before appending a truly absurd final note. “So, yeah—will you wipe ’em out for me? Thanks!”

Tamaki fell silent. Her gaze dropped to the ground, and a moment later, she started faintly trembling. She clenched her hand around the can she was carrying so tightly, it shivered, and shivered, until finally, with a sharp crack, it yielded under the force of her grip. I was stunned. Hoooly crap, seriously? Wouldn’t it take, like, a stupid amount of pressure to crush a full, unopened can? The liquid that the poor, mutilated can had once contained spattered to the ground. Tamaki chucked its remains away, then looked up at us with murder in her eyes.

“What’re you people doing to my Shizumu?!”

Tamaki sprung into action, sprinting toward us at an incredible speed as she howled with indignant rage. Unfortunately, I can’t really say much in particular about what happened after that point on account of the fact that the very first victim to end up getting wiped out by her ferocious, bestial offensive...was none other than me.

“Wait, what?! But I didn’t do anythiaaaugh?!” was about as far as I got before I wound up screaming incoherently, then eating dirt moments later. I’d been wearing the same uniform as our five assailants, and it seemed Tamaki had pegged me as one of them as a result. From her perspective, I was just another one of the guys who were picking on her boyfriend—and, specifically, I was the one standing the closest to him. Honestly, targeting me first was fair enough on her part.

In any case, the point is that Tamaki’s first punch dealt a critical hit to my midsection, and her power-of-love-enhanced strike knocked me right the heck out.

☆

“I believe ‘chaos’ is the first word that comes to mind,” said Sayumi as I finished up the story of how the three of us first met. She looked deeply skeptical, and frankly, I couldn’t blame her. Even I thought my own story sounded sorta nonsensical. In retrospect, it really was pure chaos, with the proper English pronunciation and everything.

“Learning that you were bullied was surprising enough on its own, but everything past that point was just so patently absurd, that first bout of surprise now feels quaint in comparison.”

“Yeah, Sagami and Tamaki both left a pretty intense first impression, huh? I wouldn’t say that my whole thing was bad enough to count as bullying, though... Like, it really felt more like they were just pestering me. It’s not like they ever did anything really bad to me.”

Of course, some people would probably see what I went through as unambiguous bullying. It was just a matter of perspective, really. Looking back on it, I couldn’t help but think that I was actually going through a pretty rough time back then, but when I was in the moment, I never really felt like I was a victim of bullying at all. I was in the process of giving up on myself in a variety of senses back then, and I’d really believed that everything Aragaki and his crew did to me were things I’d brought upon myself.

“I have to say, though,” Sayumi continued, “Sagami’s girlfriend—Tamaki, you called her—must have been quite confident in herself. Not just anyone would pick a fight with five people single-handedly—or rather, six people, considering she thought you were one of them. I can’t possibly imagine she was a normal girl if that was how she behaved.”

“I dunno if you’re in any place to say that,” I noted. I had a feeling that Sayumi could take on ten big muscular dudes at once without breaking a sweat. “But yeah...physically speaking, Tamaki really was as tough as they come. She wasn’t a martial artist or anything as far as anyone’s ever told me, but she sure did know how to fight. Even more than that, though, she was so crazy about her boyfriend that it really messed with her priorities, I guess. I think she probably would’ve picked a fight with Hanma Yuujirou himself if he’d decided to pick on Sagami.”

“I can tell she was very devoted to him,” said Sayumi.

Devoted to him...yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. Tamaki really was so hopelessly in love with Sagami, it was kind of embarrassing to witness.

“So, then—can I assume that after you were knocked out, Tamaki gave the remaining five people a similar treatment?” asked Sayumi.

“Nope,” I replied. “Apparently, Aragaki and his cronies scattered to the winds after they saw her punch me out. I guess that first punch was so crazy powerful that it scared them away.”

“So, in other words...you were the only one who actually got hurt in the end.”

“Right,” I admitted with a wince. Hmm. Y’know, when she puts it that way, I really did draw the short straw in that encounter. I got punched for literally no reason. “But, I mean, it wasn’t that bad. Aragaki’s crew stopped picking on me after that, for one thing. Kinda made taking a punch feel worth it.”

“Oh, did they? That’s rather, well... I’m surprised they were willing to drop their grudge against you so easily, I suppose.”

“When all’s said and done, I think I was just a handy way of killing time for them,” I replied. “If they’d been, like, hardline delinquents, they might’ve tried to get payback or something, but they weren’t really hot-blooded enough to try something like that.”

Sayumi fell silent, and a few moments passed before another thought struck me. “Ah, but Aragaki is gonna come up again eventually, so try to keep him in mind.”

That being said, it wasn’t like he turned up again to have another go at me or to get revenge or anything like that. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I would’ve preferred if it were something that simple and straightforward. I would’ve been downright lucky if he’d ended up being an actively antagonistic force who’d turn into the final boss of my flashback arc or whatever.

But no. Aragaki Zenya would reenter the story at the most unexpected moment imaginable and in the worst manner imaginable. Actually, no—make that a manner so awful it exceeded all possible imagination.

☆

The fact that Sagami and Tamaki went to the same school raised the question of why they’d bother setting up plans to leave school separately and meet up again in the park. Apparently, it had been Tamaki’s idea—in her mind, there was an appeal to going out of their way to meet up rather than just going home together in the first place. It struck me as a really romantic way of looking at things, and between that and the way she’d rushed headlong into danger for Sagami’s sake, I was rapidly reaching the conclusion that she was a girl who was in love with love itself.

“I’m so, so, so sorry! Honest, it was all just a mixup!” Tamaki said, bowing and apologizing profusely the moment I came to. I found myself lying on a bench—apparently, she’d carried me over there while I was out. I sat up and turned to look at her as she continued to pile on the apologies.

“Are you feeling okay? Doesn’t smart too much? I’m so, so sorry—really belted you good, didn’t I?” She’d looked like a raging monster before, but now she’d shrunken in on herself so much it was almost hard to believe she was the same person. I couldn’t bring myself to stay mad at her.

“I’m okay,” I said. “And, I mean...meh, it’s fine. You sent Aragaki and his pals packing, so it all worked out in the end, more or less.”

“Very true. I’m totally unscathed, so everything worked out for the best,” Sagami cut in with a nod. He was holding the toy that had come with the drink Tamaki had bought for him: a phone strap with a tiny figure of some little girl character on it. The can had been pulverized, but the little bonus toy had apparently gotten through the incident just fine.

“I think you owe me several apologies,” I said as I watched him inspect the little girl in his palm.

“If anyone here is owed an apology, it’s me,” countered Sagami. “I’m the one who got dragged into a majorly obnoxious mess, after all. Why were those goons targeting you, anyway?”

“You really don’t think twice about prying into other people’s business, do you?” I retorted.

“Oh, well, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s perfectly fine with me. I don’t actually care, anyway,” said Sagami with a genuinely disinterested shrug. In a backward sort of way, his apathy actually won me over, so I decided that I might as well open up to him.

“The thing is...I used to have what people call chuunibyou. Up until very recently, actually,” I explained. It almost felt like I was talking about someone else—like my past self was just a character in some story. “I guess I was pretty obnoxious back then, in a lot of ways. The guys you just chased off would’ve said I act really full of myself, which was what got their attention and ended up making me their target. You reap what you sow, basically.”

Sagami looked over at me. Suddenly, there was a faint trace of interest in his eyes. “You’re a middle schooler, right? What grade are you in?”

“Eighth,” I replied. “Same as you.”

“Ah! Ditto for me!” Tamaki piped up. All three of us shared a grade level, then.

“So you’re saying you got rid of your eighth-grade syndrome as soon as you got into eighth grade? You’re a strange one, aren’t you?” commented Sagami.

“I don’t think you have any right to talk,” I jabbed back.

“I’m curious now—what specifically did you do during your chuuni era?” he asked.

“I mean, a bunch of stuff. Like...oh, okay—there was this one time when I thought I’d look super cool if I pretended to doze off in class and waited for the teacher to call on me, then answered their question perfectly, right? So I reviewed all the material for one of my upcoming classes super carefully, then pretended to take a nap during class, even though I wasn’t actually tired, just to set a moment like that up.”

“Well, that’s...certainly an idea,” said Sagami, who looked vaguely horrified. “That sounds closer to catfishing than catnapping.”

Yeah, I can’t argue with that. I had to admit, it was a pretty stupid stunt all around. I’d pulled it in most of my classes too, with the end result being that a majority of my teachers had it out for me. I had a bad feeling about what my academic record from that year must’ve looked like.

“Huh?” said Tamaki. “Hold the phone—didn’t you do something mighty close to that too, Shizumu?”

“Tamaki, please, don’t lump me in with the likes of him!” said Sagami, sounding almost wounded. “All I did was make sure to set up a spare desk beside mine on a daily basis so there’d be a seat free next to me if a beautiful transfer student ever ended up joining our class!”

“Hah, seriously? That’s hilarious,” I said. The seat next to the main character’s just happening to be empty when a transfer student shows up was one of those clichés that you just kind of had to live with in anime and manga—not something you could actually make happen in real life!

“So, hey—what’re you called?” Tamaki asked as she watched me stand up from the bench. The contrast between her cute and tidy image and the thick nature of her dialect was so intense, it was almost shocking.

“What am I called...” I muttered.

“What, can’t give a girl your own name? Wait—no way?! D-Did my punch clobber the memories clean out your noodle?! Oh, yikes, wh-what now...? This is one of those deals, isn’t it? You know—one of those ‘Where am I? Who is Ai?’ sort of things?”

“No, it’s not! I’m fine! I can say my name, that’s not the problem!” And who is Ai, anyway? I took a deep breath, then introduced myself. “My name’s Andou Jurai, and I’m a second-year at Jikou Middle School. That’s your usual ‘Andou,’ and ‘Jurai’ is written with the characters for ‘a long life to come.’”

“‘Jurai’? Huh! That’s an awful cool name, isn’t it?” said Tamaki, seemingly with total earnestness.

She was probably right—my name was pretty cool by most standards. It was pretty uncommon, which made it—and me—stand out from the pack. That was probably why I’d gotten the idea in my head that I was somehow special to begin with. I’d ended up trying to read some sort of deep meaning into my name, writing it with different characters, translating it into English, and iterating it over and over as I searched for a version that was to my liking. And, of course, whenever I’d introduce myself to someone, I’d pick my latest version and present it to them in the grandest display I could muster. But, no. Not today.

“Nah, it’s not really cool at all. My parents just named me that because I was born in July. It sounds sorta like the month’s name, right?” I said, explaining my name’s perfectly mundane origin without hesitation.

“Oh, huh! That’d do it,” said Tamaki with a nod of understanding. “I’m Futaba Tamaki. The Futaba part’s just how you’d figure, and to write Tamaki, you just write the first character in ‘environment’ all on its lonesome. You can just call me Tamaki.”

“And I’m... Actually, I already said my name in front of you, didn’t I?”

“Yeah. Sagami Shizumu, right?”

“Yup. That’s ‘Sagami’ written in the same way as ‘Sagamihara,’ and ‘Shizumu’ written like ‘silent dream.’ You can call me whatever you like—surname, given name, makes no difference to me,” Sagami said, then held out his hand. “Nice meeting you, Jurai.”

“Likewise,” I said, taking his hand and giving it a firm shake.