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

Chapter 3: Andou Jurai’s Eighth-Grade Spring, Part 2—Arcade of Ruin

Ever since our simultaneously intense and incomprehensible first meeting, Sagami, Tamaki, and I sort of just ended up hanging out with each other. The three of us—four, on days when Hatoko didn’t have any soft tennis club activities—found ourselves meeting up on a regular basis.

As my trouble with Aragaki’s group probably hinted, my various cringey antics at school had resulted in me being pretty socially isolated. I wasn’t being completely ostracized or anything—people would still tell me when we were having class in a different room than usual and pair up with me in gym—but I didn’t have any classmates who’d hang out with me after school or on holidays, Hatoko aside.

Sagami was in a similar boat, it seemed. I had to assume his personality was the source of his isolation, and while he attracted quite a lot of attention from girls on account of his looks, the guys would barely give him the time of day. That’s probably why the two of us found ourselves naturally drawn to each other: we were comrades in loneliness, come together to lick each other’s social wounds.

Sagami was what most people would call an enormous geek, and his knowledge of that general field of interest bordered on encyclopedic. He was neck-deep in all sorts of subcultures, and he knew everything about all manner of things I’d never even heard of. That’s not to say I had no interest, of course—on the contrary, I’d always been into subculture stuff as well, and he taught me all sorts of things. He introduced me to all sorts of brand new worlds.

“Wait, what the heck does ‘doujin’ mean?” I’d ask.

“To put it simply, it refers to works of media—manga, games, novels, and the like—that were made by nonprofessionals. Quite a lot of them are fan-made works based on already popular, established pieces of fiction. There are some pretty good ones out there, and since lots of them are sold online these days, they’re pretty easy to get ahold of!”

“Wait, they sell fan-made stuff? Is that, like, legal? Wouldn’t that violate copyrights or something?”

“That’s...a question best left unaddressed. Yup.”

Or...

“Who is this singer? Doesn’t her voice sound kinda weird?”

“That would be because the singer’s a Vocaloid. The vocals are all computer-generated. I know it sounds a little off at first, but trust me, once you get used to it, you’ll be hooked.”

Or...

“Wait, seriously?! The Stands in JoJo are named after western music?!”

“Mostly band names and song names, yeah. A lot of stuff other than the stands too. Like, Zeppeli’s named after Led Zeppelin, and Esidisi’s named after AC/DC.”

Or...

“Whaaat?! Those two manga are by the same author?! But they’re in the same magazine!”

“That’s not all. This manga was made by the same author as this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one!”

Or...

“Bwuh?! H-Holy crap, dude! Put that away! Middle schoolers aren’t supposed to have those! That’s totally rated eighteen plus!”

“Ha ha ha! You’re such a kid, Jurai!”

Or...

“A ‘gender bender’...? Huh! I didn’t know that stories where guys turn into girls were, like, a whole genre. I dunno—I’m not a big fan, honestly.”

“Some people are into this sort of thing.”

Or...

“A p-pregnancy fetish...? Okay, no, I do not get this one. Who goes around fetishizing the miracle of life...?”

“Some people are into this sort of thing.”

Or—

“‘F-Futanari’...? Hermaphrodites...? Huuuh? So, like, girls with—huh? Wha? I-I don’t get this at all... Seriously, this is freaking me out! I mean, l-like...why?”

“Some people are into this sort of thing.”

...It’s very possible I would’ve been better off not visiting some of those worlds he’d introduced me to. In any case, our shared interests gave us a lot of conversational common ground, and we grew closer at a rapid pace. I found myself irresistibly drawn to Sagami and all those new worlds he was capable of teaching me about.

“So, Jurai...you’re a geek, aren’t you?”

The weather report that day had been spot on: it had started raining around noon, and it was still coming down by the time school let out, so I held the umbrella my mom had forced me to carry that morning overhead as I headed for our meeting place. My destination was a covered bus stop just in front of Onaga Second Middle School, aka Onahole Middle School. It seemed I’d shown up just after the bus had left, and I’d found Sagami sitting there alone. That was when I’d returned a volume of manga I’d borrowed from him and he’d asked me that question.

“Huh?” I grunted. “I mean, I guess I can’t exactly deny it. Don’t think I wanna hear that from you, though.”

“Oh, no, don’t get me wrong—I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” said Sagami.

The word “geek” kinda fell into a fuzzy gray area. It wasn’t totally clear if it was pejorative or not. It definitely used to be, way back whenever, but these days, it seemed to have come into a broader, more benign sort of use. Some modern geeks even seemed to consider the term a sort of status symbol.

“The thing is, you gave up all of your chuuni habits, right? I would’ve expected you to wash your hands of all your geeky hobbies while you were at it, but, well, you didn’t. Plus, most of the series you’re really into are chuuni as all get-out.”

He was right about that. My taste in media hadn’t really changed from my chuuni days at all. I was still reading the same sorts of books now that I had been back before I swore off that sort of behavior. I guess the fact that I’d stopped pretending that I was somehow special didn’t mean I’d developed a distaste for that kind of fiction on the whole.

“Actually,” Sagami continued, “why did you quit with all that chuuni stuff, anyway? Why the sudden urge to grow up?”

“You’re making it sound like that’s a bad thing. I thought we were supposed to grow up,” I countered.

“I’m not so sure about that. Adults who still behave like children are a problem, to be sure, but I’d say that children who’re weirdly fixated on acting like adults are an issue in their own right. A kid’s job is to be a kid, after all,” said Sagami, doing his best to talk circles around me.

I let out an irritated snort. “It’s not like I had some big reason or like something huge happened to change my mind, okay? It just...sorta hit me all at once how all that stuff only happens in fiction and isn’t anything more than that. I realized how all of it was contrived by business interests, every aspect concocted specifically to convince consumers like me to buy it. I don’t even know when it was that I realized all that...and, well, I just sorta decided I was done with it all.”

Even I was shocked by how haphazard my explanation was. The feelings I’d been grappling with were fuzzy and unclear, and I just couldn’t seem to find the right words to express them with.

“I see now,” said Sagami with a knowing nod. I hadn’t thought that my story was compelling enough to convince anyone of anything, but apparently, that wasn’t the case. “I think I know what you’re trying to say. It’s one of those things where you start to feel like every piece of media just exudes an aura of ‘Yeah, we know you morons eat this trash right up,’ isn’t it?”

“I dunno if that’s exactly what I’m getting at...”

“Personally speaking, I got over that ages ago. We’re talking about people’s jobs, after all—it’s a given that not everything they create will be made purely out of passion.”

As I paused for a moment to consider his words, Sagami carried on. “Take voice actors, for instance. Plenty of them end up accepting roles in eroge they have absolutely no interest in solely for the purpose of giving their careers a boost. Then they end up shouting stuff like ‘Mnaaahhhhhh, yesss! Your dick milk’s spurting all over meee! Ahaaauuuggghhh!’ or whatever, all the while internally lamenting the fact that this really wasn’t what they’d gotten into the voice acting industry to do—”

“Dude! You can’t just shout stuff like that in public, holy crap!”

“Point is, you just have to draw a line between the work and its creators and enjoy it in spite of all that. At the end of the day, it’s all just fiction,” said Sagami. I fell silent once more, and he continued. “Frankly, Jurai, I think you’re probably just being fastidious.”

“Fastidious?”

“I think you love fiction a lot more than you give yourself credit for. Manga, anime, light novels, movies, TV dramas...you’re profoundly drawn to them and the made-up worlds they portray, and you love them from the bottom of your heart. Despite that, you can’t remember the moment you realized their commercial nature, so you fell into despair—but not at the commercialism itself. Rather, you got upset at yourself because recognizing the presence of commercial interests in fiction hadn’t bothered you in the first place.”

He really did know how to make it sound like he had all the answers. Despair at my own lack of despair. It sounded preposterous on a surface level—like he was just playing around with words and semantics—but for some reason, I found myself thinking that he might not’ve actually been all that far from the truth.

Maybe I really had wanted to feel a more intense sort of despair. To indulge in it. To wallow in it. Maybe I wished that the moment I’d found out that Kamen Riders and Ultramen were played by a bunch of random old men in suits, I’d thrown myself to the ground, cried a river of tears, and let out a throat-searing wail of purest lamentation. Instead, I’d missed my chance for all those theatrics, and I’d let the revelation just drift on past me without comment.

“You know, normal people don’t think about this sort of stuff at all,” said Sagami. “They breeze through their lives, accepting things as they come without paying them much mind. Not you though. It’s like— Oh, what’s a good example... Like if you discovered that your significant other was cheating on you, realized that you weren’t actually all that upset about it, and found yourself thinking ‘Huh? Wait, was I ever actually in love with her to begin with? When did I fall for her, anyway?’”

“That’s a pretty mature example, huh?” I commented. Doesn’t really make very much sense either.

“The point is that you’re fastidious. Fastidious, and sincerely so. You’ve realized that you’ve been betrayed by your lover—betrayed by fiction—and that you weren’t particularly hurt by the betrayal. Thus, you’ve decided that you don’t have the right to indulge in fiction like you used to. Don’t you think?”

“You’re reading way too deeply into this,” I sighed. On the other hand, I did have to admit that the intense feelings I’d had for all that chuuni stuff had faded as of late. That intoxicating sense of brain-tingling elation had just vanished into nothingness. For all I’d loved them, now I was bored of them. Reality had dawned upon me, waking me from those childish dreams. The wellspring of chuuni potential within me had run dry.

“That’s how I read your situation, anyway,” said Sagami, bringing his analysis to a close. He almost made it sound like I was a character in some story, being subjected to his outside analysis. He was standing right next to me, but he felt like he was looking on from far off in the distance.

It wasn’t long before Tamaki arrived, and Hatoko got into contact with me soon after as well. Her club activities had been canceled on account of the rain, so the four of us ended up spending the day together. It wasn’t exactly the best hang-out weather we could’ve asked for, unfortunately, and in the end, we decided to make our way to the big arcade by the local train station. Of course, we probably would’ve ended up there even if it wasn’t raining.

We arrived at the arcade to find it packed with other students who’d decided to drop in on the way home from school. Sagami suggested that we start things off by all playing a round of Idolmaster, and after the rest of us summarily shot that proposal down, we ended up wandering over to the crane games. That’s when disaster struck.

“Ah! Ah, ah, aaaaaaugh!” I wailed, my face practically pressed up against the machine’s glass case. The stuffed animal I’d been going for had slipped right out of the claw’s grasp, plopping down into the same position it’d started in. “Okay, come on, this is not funny anymore! I had such a good hold on it this time, I’m sure of it! Did they loosen the claw’s grip strength or something? Is the stupid thing even trying?!”

“I wouldn’t shake the machine like that if I were you, Jurai. The staff’s going to chew you out,” said Sagami as I pounded on the case in a half-crazed frenzy.

“Shizumu’s got it right, Jurai. Shouldn’t you just let it go? Folks never end up actually snagging the prize when they get into that sort of headspace, no matter how much money they chuck at it,” added Tamaki with an icy stare.

Hatoko, meanwhile, was standing off to the side with a look of intense concern on her face. “Oh, Juu,” she murmured.

It had all started out so innocently. I’d just casually decided to play a crane game, and at first, I was having a blast. The fun in that sort of game comes from the fact that even if you totally screw up and send the claw off in a wildly useless direction, your friends can tease you about how much you suck and you can be all “Oh yeah, then why don’t you give it a try!” or whatever. To make things even better, I’d actually happened to graze the prize I was going for in just the right way to put it in a really good position on my first attempt!

I thought I’d get it super easily with just one more try, so I slotted in another coin. I messed up the timing on that attempt, but I figured “Eh, it’ll just take one more shot” and put in another coin. And another. And another. And another. Before I knew it, I was a thousand yen deep, and nobody was laughing anymore. At the one thousand five hundred yen mark, everyone’s expressions turned grim—and when I finally hit two thousand yen, we’d all broken out in a cold sweat.

“I’m gonna go get some more change,” I said. “You guys stay here and make sure nobody else snatches it while I’m gone.”

“P-Please, Juu! You have to stop!” Hatoko begged as I plodded my way toward the change machine like some sort of mournful arcade specter. She looked like she was on the verge of tears.

“D-Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll get that stuffed bear on the next try—just watch!”

“I’m sorry,” said Hatoko. “I’m so sorry... I never should’ve said I wanted it...”

“Don’t apologize... Please, Hatoko, just don’t... You’re breaking my heart over here...”

At first, the idea was to win the stuffed animal and give it to Hatoko as a present. After coming this far, though, I had a vendetta. This was my fight now.

“Hey, Juu? Can I be honest? I didn’t really want it that much in the first place. I’m actually more interested in the sweets in that machine over there than I am in the teddy...”

“Don’t say that... Just... Don’t talk to me at all,” I groaned. My spirit was on the verge of shattering to pieces, but still, I forced myself to walk over to the change machine, replenish my ammo reserves—that is, my stock of hundred-yen coins—then step forward onto the battlefield once more.

“You should just call over one of the staff people, Jurai. If you spend enough money without winning a prize, they’ll move it somewhere where you’ll be able to get it really easily. That’s standard policy in arcades like this,” said Sagami. Even he, the living embodiment of sleaze and savagery, was acting nice for once. I could only imagine how desperate I must’ve looked to prompt that sort of attitude from a guy like him.

“Don’t,” I snapped. “I can’t ask for help after coming this far! That’d be like admitting I lost!”

“Lost what, exactly?” asked Sagami.

“The battle of wills!”

“Oh, how very cool of you.”

“Look...I’ve only spent two thousand yen, okay? That’s totally fine, no issues! If you bought one of those in a store, it’d easily cost three thousand yen or so, right? I’m still coming out ahead!”

“Oof! That’s the mindset of a man who’s about to blow all his pocket money on a crane game, no question about it.”

“If I stop now, all the money I’ve already put into this will have been a waste... I can’t give up before I get something for my trouble...”

“And that’s the mindset of a man who’s about to lose his shirt at a pachinko parlor.”

“And I mean, just compare this to buying a video game or whatever! Those cost, like, five thousand yen a piece, and we buy them all the time without making a big thing out of it!”

“That would be the mindset of a man who sinks outrageous sums of money into a gacha game.”

“Maybe I should approach the situation from another angle... Maybe I should pretend to let it have my money!”

“And that would be the mindset of George Joestar.”

I forced my trembling hand forward and dropped five hundred-yen coins into the machine’s slot. One try cost two hundred yen, but by paying five hundred all at once, you could get three attempts in total. In terms of total expenditure, it was a given that spending more initially would be more cost-effective in the long run...and while part of me realized the fact that I was thinking along those lines was proof positive that I’d fallen into the designer of the game’s trap, I didn’t let myself dwell on it.

I stacked up my remaining coins off to the side of the buttons—like the pros do—and once again began operating the crane. I’d gotten two thousand yen’s worth of coins, just to be on the extra, extra safe side, and the resulting tower was pretty darn high. I mean, it was only three or four centimeters tall or so, really, but to me, it looked like an impregnable citadel—no, a truly monolithic tower that stretched to the heavens above!

“My Tower of Babel stands peerless, and no foe is mighty enough to bring down its walls,” I muttered under my breath.

“Hey, Jurai? Was that supposed to be foreshadowing?” asked Sagami. “You do know that the Tower of Babel collapsed before they could build it tall enough to reach the heavens, right?”

To make a long story short: myth became reality. It wasn’t even a long story to begin with, actually. My Tower of Babel was brought down before I even knew what was happening. A long, uncomfortable silence fell. Nobody could bring themselves to say a word. We’d finally reached the point where even poking fun at me felt inappropriate.

“...MNGGGHHHAAAAAAUGH!!!”

“Juu?!”

“WHY?! WHYYYYYYYYY?! GRAAAAAAHHHAAAUGH!!!”

“O-Oh, no... Juu’s putting on a performance worthy of Tatsuya Fujiwara!”

“Graaaaaahhhhhh! I will be the god of a new wooooooooorld!”

“Don’t you go prattling like Yagami Light!” said Tamaki.

“He’s gone on a binge! Jurai’s binged his way through four thousand yen! Jurai’s filled with regret!”

“And don’t take Kaiji as your role model for showing regret either,” added Sagami.

“In this world, the weak are the sustenance of the strong. The strong live. The weak die...”

“Don’t philosophize like Shishio Makoto either. Jurai...how long are you planning on dragging out these Tatsuya Fujiwara jokes?”

“Phew! I feel better,” I said. Wailing and crying my heart out had actually been pretty refreshing in the end. Yeah, okay—bawling it out without paying any attention to who’s watching really might be surprisingly nice at times like these. Source: Esidisi. “And now that I’m calm, I think it’s time for me to rethink this whole deal,” I continued.

Everyone’s expressions grew visibly less tense as I cracked a smile at them. “Y-Yeah, good idea!” said Hatoko. “Let’s all just calm down! When you really think about it, there’s no good reason to go that far just for a—”

“Now that I can think this through with a clear head, I’ve realized it’s time for me to change my approach entirely! I shouldn’t be trying to lift the stuffed animal up—I can use the tip of the claw to push it into the hole instead!”

Hatoko’s smile vanished in an instant, while Tamaki stepped over, patted her on the shoulder, and shook her head. I, on the other hand, barely spared the two of them a backward glance as I went off to stock up on more ammunition.

And, finally...

“I... I... I goooooot iiiiiiiiit!”

Luckily enough—I mean, assuming you could consider any aspect of this debacle lucky—about a thousand yen later, I’d finally managed to secure my prize.

“G-Good for you, Jurai.”

“Peachy. Yup, just pure peachy.”

“I, umm... C-Congratulations, Juu!”

Their words may have been celebratory, but the look in their eyes was less than enthusiastic, and their expressions were stiff and forced. The pity and compassion they felt for me was absolutely palpable, and as I raised my spoils of war far up above me, I suddenly snapped back to my senses. The burning fervor I’d been consumed by vanished away at the speed of light, leaving behind one simple question: What the hell am I doing? Five thousand yen. Five thousand yen! All of this month’s allowance and the leftover cash from last month, gone in a flash! I’d been bewitched by the siren call of the crane game. Truly, crane games were not to be trifled with. I see it now—that flimsy claw is shaped like something designed to take lives...

“It’s all yours, Hatoko,” I said, shoving the stuffed bear into her hands as my spirits fell at a precipitous rate.

“H-Huh? N-No, that’s okay!” said Hatoko. “I can’t just take something this valuable!”

“It’s not really valuable,” I sighed. “It just ended up being a bit more of an investment than I was counting on.”

“B-But...”

“Hatoko...please. Just take it. I don’t even want it. If you don’t want it either...this’ll have been a waste in all sorts of ways...”

Hatoko still looked hesitant, but my teary-eyed plea finally broke through her resolve. “O-Okay, I’ll gratefully accept your gift!” she said, holding out her hands in the sort of posture with which you might accept a trophy or a certificate in a formal ceremony. I handed over the stuffed bear. “Thank you, Juu! I’ll treasure it forever!”

“Right... Could you, y’know, not make it sound like quite that big of a deal? You’re kinda pouring salt on the wound, here...”

“Of course it’s a big deal! It cost five thousand yen, you know? Five thousand yen!”

I just couldn’t bring myself to reply to that. Innocence really is a terrifying thing. In any case, now that I’d snagged myself the item I was after, there wasn’t any reason for me to hang around by the crane games any longer. I wanted to get away from them as quickly as possible, actually.

“Hmm? Hey, Jurai, take a peek at this!” Tamaki called out as I made tracks. “See? That squirrel stuffie looks like it’s just about to topple over too!”

Tamaki was pointing at a stuffed squirrel in the same machine. It was caught on the rim of the chute, dangling precariously in the air. My last attempt to grab the bear must’ve dislodged it as well.

“Why not snag that while you’re at it?” suggested Tamaki. “You put down five thousand yen, so you might as well make it a twofer, right? I’ll bet you could take it in one go!”

She had a point. The squirrel’s tail was just barely keeping it in place, and the odds were good that just skimming it with the claw would be enough to make it drop. Still, though...

“No!”

...I was done. I wouldn’t be getting caught in that trap again. I knew exactly how this would go: the squirrel might’ve looked like I could get it with ease, but by the time I’d realize it was actually downright impossible, I would’ve already sunk too much money into it to be able to bring myself to stop. I wasn’t about to make the exact same mistake all over again! Mark my words, crane games! I’ve learned my lesson!

We went on to play air hockey, a shooting game, the taiko game, and a bunch of other assorted arcade activities as we did a pass through the facility. At around the time most of us were just about ready to go home, Sagami announced that he wanted to play a round of a certain game known for its massive popularity among elementary school girls, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. The rest of us ended up loitering around while we waited for him to finish.

“I seriously can’t believe that guy sometimes,” I grumbled.

“Oh, what’s the harm? Just look how much fun he’s having!” said Hatoko.

“Okay, but you do know that’s a game for little girls, right?”

“Sagami’s a purehearted boy, that’s all!”

Wrong. Dead wrong! Part of me wanted to correct Hatoko, but when I glanced over at the carefree smile on her face, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I would’ve felt like a nitpicking jerk. The three of us—Hatoko, Tamaki, and I—were relaxing on a couch that was set up in a far corner of the arcade. I could make out Sagami across the complex, nonchalantly blending into a line that was otherwise entirely made up of little girls, and I watched him as I drained the café au lait I’d bought with my last remaining hundred-yen coin.

“Ah—sorry, I have to go visit the ladies’ room! Here, I can throw your trash out on the way,” said Hatoko. She stood up, gathered up all of our empty cans, and headed off toward the restrooms.

“Hatoko’s such a charmer, isn’t she?” said Tamaki, who was sitting next to me. She watched Hatoko walk away, her gaze lingering until Hatoko vanished into the maze of arcade machines. “You two’ve been friends for a solid age, right? I’m jealous. I’ve spent all my life pinging from school to school, so I’ve never had anyone like that.”

“You’ve had a lot of transfers, huh? For your parents’ jobs or something?” I asked.

“Well, something like that. Oh, take a gander—it’s finally Shizumu’s turn!”

I glanced over to find that Sagami had taken a seat in front of the gaudily colored arcade cabinet. The beaming smile he wore as he watched those digital girls dance on the screen was no less loving and caring than those you’d see on parents as they watched their kids compete in a school field day. It probably would’ve been really creepy if he hadn’t been so handsome, honestly.

“Hey, Tamaki. I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while...what do you like about Sagami, anyway?”

“His looks.”

“...”

“Ha ha ha! I’m joking, jeez! Don’t go taking me for real!” Tamaki cackled. “I do like his looks, for sure, but that’s not all I like about him.”

“I mean, the guy’s got a pretty face, I’ll admit that...but he’s also, well, you know,” I muttered. I was talking about her boyfriend and all, so I felt a certain obligation to be a little indirect with my criticism. The thing is, though, that not only was he a geek, he was the precise sort of geek that girls wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Like, no matter how hot you are, I wouldn’t think you’d have an easy time keeping a girlfriend if you’re the sort of person who would abandon her and your other friends to go get super engrossed in a game for grade schoolers.

“Doesn’t fuss me. I like that about Shizumu,” said Tamaki with an enchantingly cheerful smile. “It all started back when I got into middle school and wound up staying here in this town with my grammy and gramps...”

“Your ‘grammy and gramps’?” I repeated. Sounds like a couple characters straight out of a children’s picture book—like Guri and Gura, or whatever.

“Oh! I mean my grandmother and grandfather. The three of us live together, and their Fugusuma accent’s awful sharp. Ended up talking just like them! You’d be whacked at how fast they talk too,” said Tamaki with a shrug.

It seemed, then, that she’d picked up her peculiar style of speech from the people she lived with. I’d heard about people absorbing accents and stuff like that from the people around them before, so it wasn’t hard to believe. Living with two people who speak in a dialect would probably make it hard not to start picking up their mannerisms. Also, huh—I guess “Fukushima” is pronounced “Fugusuma” when you’re speaking in a Fukushima accent? That’s kinda funny.

“So, I couldn’t really stop my accent from peeking out at school, right? And whenever it did, I’d get all red to the gills, so I tried not to do much of any prattling at all...but then I let my accent slip out in class, and Shizumu heard it.”

And what, according to Tamaki, were Sagami’s first words upon hearing her talk like that? “Girls with accents are moé as hell.”

“Yeah, that sounds like him, all right,” I sighed.

“So then Shizumu started going on and on, asking me to talk more.”

“Hmm—I’m starting to get the picture, I think. So that’s how your relationship got started?”

“Sure is. I didn’t fall for him just from that, though! That happened a bit later. He had me say all kinds of stuff, and the more we talked, the more I took a shine to him. I mean, you get him—Shizumu never lies, right?”

“He doesn’t?”

“Nope. He does what he wants to do, and he shrugs off what he doesn’t. He’s upfront and honest! If an anime he wants to catch is coming on, he’ll amble on home even if we’re in the thick of a date, and if he’s stuck to a game, he’ll pass on all my texts and phone calls.”

“That, uhh...kinda makes him sound like he’s just really inconsiderate, honestly.”

“Better than him being a liar, though. Much better,” said Tamaki. “Consideration’s a heavy burden emotionally. Being considerate’s tiring. If he put off the things he wanted to do to keep me company, I’d just feel bad. I love Shizumu because he doesn’t fuss about holding back on the things he likes.”

I paused for a moment to let her words sink in. In my experience, most middle schoolers were so oversensitive when it came to their love lives that you’d think they were allergic to romance on the whole. Plenty of them were so afraid of getting teased by their peers that they’d even keep the fact they were seeing somebody a secret. Not Tamaki though. She was perfectly willing to talk about her feelings without so much as a hint of shame. Actually, she seemed proud to declare her love for the world to hear. It would’ve been easy to assume she was just bragging, but that’s not how it came across to me. Instead, she took my breath away. I found myself hoping that if I ever fell in love with someone, I could be as upfront about my feelings as her.

“Hmm...?” I grunted as a snippet of some other conversation happened to catch my attention. The arcade was constantly, clamorously loud, of course, and there was always someone chatting within earshot, but the contents of this particular exchange were especially significant to me for a distinct reason.

“Talk about your lucky day, huh? It only took one try!”

“Yeah.”

“Guess we owe it to that kid who kept feeding coins into the thing like a moron.”

“Yeah. It was thanks to him.”

“You’d better take good care of that squirrel, okay? I spent a whole two hundred yen out of my precious paycheck winning it for you, after all!”

“Yeah.”

Their voices gradually faded away into the distance as the exchange went on. One of them sounded like an older woman who had a rather lackadaisical tone, while the other sounded like a little girl who was still young enough that her words had a childish hesitation to them.

In any case, I sprang to my feet and sprinted across the arcade, making for one machine in particular.

“It’s gone! It’s friggin’ gone!”

“Whoa! What’s got you in such a panic, Jurai?” asked Sagami, who must’ve just finished up with his game. He walked over to me as I pressed my face up against the crane game’s glass case.

“That stuffed animal from before—it’s gone... The squirrel that was just barely hanging on after I got the bear...”

“Oh, that? Yeah, someone else just won it.”

“What?!”

“Must’ve been a mother and her kid...or a couple sisters, maybe? Anyway, an older lady who looked like she needed a nap and a little girl who was as cute as a doll won the thing. Only took one try too.”

“O-O-One try...? It only took them one try...?”

“It was just the cutest thing, honestly. The little one couldn’t reach the buttons, so her sister or whatever had to hold her up while she— Uhh, Jurai? You kind of look like you’re about to start crying tears of blood over there.”

“You little... If you were watching all that, then why didn’t you stop them?! You could’ve at least called me over!”

“Huh? I thought you didn’t want it?”

“I mean, I didn’t...but still!” I didn’t collect stuffed animals, and by all rights, somebody else winning the squirrel didn’t cause me any issues whatsoever. Still, though...why does it feel so much like somebody’s snatched an achievement out from under my nose?

“Come on, cheer up. Just think of it as you giving a cute little girl a present!” said Sagami. “Anyway, I’ll be just a bit longer—I’m gonna hit up the Vocaloid game.”

“Oh no you don’t!” I said, grabbing Sagami by the shoulder. He wasn’t gonna get away with spouting generic encouragement and slipping away again on my watch! “You’re going off to play some game on your own again? Take a hint, dude! Find something we can all do together!”

“Oh, no need to worry about that,” said Sagami as he glanced over toward the couch. Hatoko had arrived back from the restroom at some point, and she was chatting away with Tamaki. “Hey, Tamaki, Hatoko! There’s another game I want to play, so wait up for just a little longer, okay?” Sagami shouted.

“You gotcha!” Tamaki called back. “We’ll just be over here, prattling about girl stuff!”

“Yup!” agreed Hatoko. “Take your time, Sagami, and don’t worry about us, Juu! Have fun!”

“See?” said Sagami with an insufferable smirk.

How and why does this guy get away with so much when girls are involved? Stop indulging the clueless jerk, please! The fact that they said they were talking about “girl stuff” made it pretty hard for me to rejoin the couch crew, so I ended up wandering off with Sagami instead. He clearly knew exactly where he was going, leading us to a particular arcade cabinet. He pulled out and scanned an ID card made specifically for the game in question, fed a coin into the cabinet, and started navigating the game’s menu with a practiced hand.

“Y’know, just because Tamaki lets you get away with all this crap doesn’t mean you should be doing it,” I grumbled as Sagami slapped away at the game’s buttons, hitting them in time with the music. “She’s your girlfriend, you know? Maybe try treating her like she matters to you.”

“I’d rather stay the way I am, thanks,” Sagami replied without missing a beat—in a very literal sense.

Dang, he’s good. Can’t believe he’s carrying on a conversation and playing a game like this at the same time. Of all the pointlessly impressive talents.

“Before I started going out with Tamaki, she told me that I shouldn’t worry too much about her, and that it’d just bother her if I tried to be too considerate,” Sagami continued. “I took her word for it, and so I do what I want to without worrying about what she thinks of it. Call it my way of showing how much I trust her.”

“Better than him being a liar though. Much better.”

Perhaps, I realized, it wasn’t my place to stick my nose into their relationship and question how they did things. They had a peculiar sort of faith in each other, and I wasn’t sure if anyone other than the two of them could ever really understand it.

“But, well, seeing as you and Hatoko are with us today, I’ll call it at just one game,” said Sagami, who, true to his word, stepped away from the arcade cabinet after he’d used up his first credit. “Can’t let myself get too sucked into a game, like a certain someone.”

“Hmph,” I grunted, unable to fight back against his sarcasm. When he put it that way, the fact that I’d just gotten incredibly worked up and had fed a stupid amount of money into a crane game did sort of disqualify me from accusing him of not being able to take a hint.

“Ah, right! I just remembered a favor I want to have you do for me,” said Sagami.

“What?” I asked.

“I want you to call me a nickname from now on. ‘Sagamin,’ specifically.”

“Huh? No way. Why should I have to call you a cutesy little nickname like that?”

“There’s a very good reason, I assure you,” said Sagami with an incredibly serious look on his face. “So, first, we have you start calling me Sagamin, right?”

“Right.”

“You do it in front of Tamaki, even, and she starts thinking ‘I wish I had a nickname for him,’ and ‘I wish he’d call me a nickname,’ and stuff. Sounds plausible, right?”

“Right, right.”

“And then I’ll be all ‘Well, we are dating, so why don’t we call you by a nickname that’s sort of like mine? We’ll take your name and add a bit to it, just like Sagamin.”

“Right, right, right.”

“Now then, Jurai, riddle me this: what happens when you add an ‘n’ sound to Tamaki’s name?”

Uhh. Tamaki plus an n? So, Tamakin? Wait, but that—

“That means balls, dude!”

“Bingo,” Sagami said with a spirited thumbs up. “As long as we make it seem natural and play it cool, I’m pretty sure we can trick her into saying it without even realizing it’s just another word for ’nads. Then, when it does finally hit her, you just know she’ll blush like crazy. That’s the part I wanna see.”

“Holy crap, you’re a sicko!”

I was so far past repulsed I didn’t even know what to think anymore. What kind of freak would come up with a plan like that? He’s like some sort of demon, carefully crafting a plot to tempt her into a terrible folly! Seriously, who goes that far to trick their girlfriend into saying a dirty word? Actually, wait—maybe her being his girlfriend makes it less bad, from a certain perspective? I mean, it’d definitely be worse to do something like that to a stranger... Huh.

“So, Jurai? Are you on board? Come on—Operation Make Tamaki Say Balls is in need of your support.”

“Ask me again after you’ve come up with a better operation name.”

“Hmm. Okay, then—Operation Tricky Tamaki Testicle Trap is in need of your support.”

“Oh my god, that’s so much worse!”

“Just so you know, I have no intention of taking no for an answer,” said Sagami with a perfectly charming smile—a smile so angelically amiable, it was downright devilish. “And if you try to say no, I suppose I’ll just have to tell Hatoko all about that game I loaned you the other day.”

“Ugh!” I grunted. It was such a perfectly simple yet perfectly effective form of blackmail, I felt a shiver run down my spine. He does not shy away from fighting dirty!

“Ha ha ha!” Sagami chuckled. “I wonder what Hatoko would say if she knew you’ve been playing one of those games? Maybe she’d blush and be all, ‘Juu, you pervert! I hate you!’? Or maybe she’d just go ‘Ugh’ and stare at you like you’re a repulsive insect?”

“O-Oh, you little jerk... You do know that threat’s a double-edged sword, right? Just try it—I’ll squeal on you to Tamaki before you know it!”

“Fine by me. I play eroge with my girlfriend’s knowledge and consent.”

Oh, Tamaki... Could you be any more understanding of a girlfriend? That sword had sure looked double bladed, but no, only one of its edges was sharp after all. Guess I’m dealing with a scissor blade or something.

“As it so happens, we played that very same game I loaned you toge—”

“Okay, I get it! Point made! I’ll do it—just stop talking! I’ll call you Sagamin! Are you happy now?!” I practically wailed.

Sagami, of course, just smiled at me. “Yup! That’ll do just fine. Let’s get started now, in fact. Go ahead and say it!”

I grimaced. “Sagamin.”

“Hmm? What was that?”

“Sagamin!” I shouted. Sagami gave me a satisfied nod as I gritted my teeth against the shame. Dammit, this sucks! Whatever this feeling is, I think it’s gonna make me barf... It was like the strangest, most potent blend of humiliation and repulsion, and it was already starting to build up deep within my gut. I mean, calling him by a nickname? It’s almost like—almost like we’re friends or something!

“Okay! Let’s get a move on, Jurai. The girls are waiting for us,” said Sagami.

I shook my head, and did what had to be done. “Yeah. Let’s go, Sagamin.”

From that day forward, I consistently referred to Sagami with the friendly and familiar nickname Sagamin. That being said, Tamaki never actually took to mimicking the nickname or asking for her own, no matter how much I used it. I had to assume that calling him by his given name, Shizumu, felt special in its own sort of way—she was his girlfriend, after all. Operation Tricky Tamaki Testicle Trap ended in conclusive failure...but the nickname stuck, and the fact that we used to act like we were friends was the one truth that wound up being written into the history books.

☆

“Wait a moment...was the girl who won the stuffed squirrel...?” Sayumi muttered after I’d finished recounting the tale of the Arcade of Ruin to her. Her question trailed off, though, and she never finished it.

“Was she what?” I asked.

“No...it’s nothing. It’s not my place to bring it up, in any case,” said Sayumi with a shake of her head. I had no clue what she was getting at, but she seemed satisfied, at least. “In any case...I certainly never expected that Sagami’s preferred nickname could have such a vulgar intent behind it.”

Apparently, Sagami still made a habit of asking people to call him Sagamin to this day. I couldn’t even begin to guess why—Tamaki wasn’t around anymore, and I’d stopped calling him that ages ago. Knowing him, though, there was probably some sort of logic behind the choice.

“By the way—what are your thoughts on how Tamaki seems so far?” I asked. “What do you think about the sort of girlfriend she decided to be?”

“An interesting question,” said Sayumi. “I suppose I would say that she strikes me as having a tendency to go to extremes, but otherwise as being very capable of keeping a healthy distance between herself and others. She seems open-minded enough to accept her partner’s hobbies as well, which is a very important trait for the sake of a long-lasting relationship or marriage.”

“Yeah... Right? That’s what I thought too,” I said. “She really was an incredible girlfriend. She did her best to be one.” And yet...

If I’d been able to meet with Tamaki at that precise moment, I had something I would’ve wanted to say to her. I’d been too shocked to say it when I’d bumped into her the other day, but if I had the opportunity to do it over again, I’d try to slow down and really explain my thoughts to her. “Consideration’s a heavy burden emotionally. Being considerate’s tiring.” If that was how she’d thought, then I felt the need to teach her something that I’d learned in my ethics class—the same lesson I’d taught Kuki, about how sometimes lies and secrets are important for preserving our relationships.

Xunzi believed that human nature is evil. A lot of people misunderstand that belief though. When he referred to “evil,” he wasn’t talking about violence, or theft, or any of that sort of stuff. When he referred to evil, he was referring to humankind’s weakness. He believed that at our core, we humans are too weak to resist being dominated by our own desires, and that whatever good deeds we may do are nothing but hypocrisy on our part.

Good deeds are inherently hypocritical. We are born evil, so we wish to be good. In short, good deeds are falsehoods. They’re lies. I wanted to tell Tamaki—the girl who’d fallen for a man who would never lie, whether to himself or to the world—that sometimes, a lie or two here and there wasn’t such a bad thing after all.