Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 6 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Andou Jurai’s Eighth-Grade Summer—Pet Shop of Horrors

“Sure is a scorcher, huh, Hatoko?”

“It really is, Juu.”

It was an oppressively hot Sunday in mid August...and y’know, why do we say “oppressively” hot, anyway? Not that the specific word choice really matters, I guess. The real point I’m trying to get at is that it was so unbearably hot you could work up a sweat just by taking a couple steps outside. Hatoko and I were walking through a quiet residential street, and I had a leash in my hand, the other end of which was attached to the collar of Hatoko’s family’s dachshund. It was a tiny little creature with brown and black fur, and though it was trotting along in front of us, its steps seemed a little heavier than usual.

“Bah seems a little out of it, doesn’t he? Do you think it’s the heat?” Hatoko asked. Bah, of course, was the name of her dog. Well, technically, his name was Bahamut, the God-Dragon of Ruin. It probably goes without saying that I was the one who’d named him.

A long time ago (well, really, just a year ago relative to this point in time), the two of us found a puppy that someone had abandoned. We knew that one of us would have to take him in, and after consulting our families, it was eventually decided that Hatoko’s household would host the pup. I received his naming rights as a sort of compensation for not getting to keep him, and after a lengthy period of consideration, I’d granted him a truly sublime true name: Bahamut, the God-Dragon of Ruin. In spite of the fact that he was, y’know, a dachshund. Not exactly the most draconic of breeds. What was wrong with me back then, seriously...?

“Mwa ha ha... How many times must I tell you, Hatoko? His name isn’t Bah! It’s Bahamut, the God-Dragon of Ruin! Although he’s taken the form of a puppy while he awaits the return of his powers, he is nonetheless— Gah!”

It must’ve been the heat. It was melting my brain, I swear, and in my delirium, I reflexively returned to my past self for a moment, pulling out all the chuuni stops and behaving like a total poser. We used to go through this whole little routine every time Hatoko called her dog “Bah,” so I’d leaped into the usual pattern without a second thought. When was the last time I belted out a full-on “mwa ha ha,” anyway? Feels like it was months ago.

“Ah, umm,” I stammered. My words caught in my throat, and I trailed off, unable to finish my thought. A few seconds of excruciatingly awkward silence passed by.

“You’ve changed, Juu,” Hatoko finally muttered. I couldn’t read the look on her face at all, but I could tell that it was taking effort on her part to keep that neutral expression up. Hatoko was usually one of the most naturally expressive people I knew, so seeing her make a face like that was a rarity. “You’ve stopped laughing in your usual weird way, and you’ve stopped talking like a weirdo too...”

I didn’t know what to say. Another moment of silence came and went.

“You’re still a scatterbrain, though.”

“Hey.”

“But, really—you’ve changed,” Hatoko repeated, turning away from me. It was like she didn’t want me looking at her face while she said it.

“I grew up,” I replied, unable to keep a hint of inexplicable bitterness from slipping into my tone. Growing up was supposed to be a good thing, so why would I be bitter about it? “Well, anyway,” I said, trying to cut that subject short and move the conversation along, “I kinda get the feeling the heat’s not the only reason Bahamut’s not feeling great.”

“What else would it be?” asked Hatoko.

“I mean, you know where we’re going right now.”

“Ah...right, that makes sense,” said Hatoko with an awkward smile.

Our objective that day wasn’t to take her dog out for a walk. We were taking him to the vet at her parents’ request. He wasn’t sick or hurt, to be clear. No, he had to go to the vet because... I mean... Well. He had to...how to say this...? He had to lose a certain function of his male anatomy. Bluntly, we were going to get him neutered.

I glanced down at Bahamut. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I couldn’t help but think he was looking a little dejected as he plodded along before me. I didn’t know how much he could understand human language, but even if he couldn’t grasp the meaning of our words at all, I suspected that his ever-keen bestial instincts might’ve tipped him off to the fact that he was about to be emasculated.

Yeah, that’s a pretty freaky thought, all right. I mean...they just cut them off, right?! I knew that there were plenty of merits to having those removed, and an awful lot of pet owners chose to go through with the surgery these days...but speaking as a fellow biological male, I had some mixed feelings about the whole proposal. It wasn’t even really about the whole losing reproductive function thing—no, it was more about the idea of having a scalpel anywhere near that particular region. That scared the hell out of me.

In spite of the summer heat, I could practically feel the chilly touch of metal between my legs as Hatoko and I escorted Bahamut onward.

Shortly after exiting the residential district, we herded Bahamut into the pet carrier we’d brought with us and hopped onto a bus that would take us to the station. Our usual vet’s office was just a short distance away from there. The plan was to head straight to the vet, but as we got off the bus and prepared to set off, a voice rang out from behind us.

“Huh? Oh, hey, if it isn’t Hatoko and Jurai.”

I turned around to find an anime geek standing behind us.

Right, okay, I know—that doesn’t really explain anything. I just couldn’t describe him in any other way. “Anime geek” was the first and only first impression that came to mind. He had on a plaid shirt tucked neatly into a pair of jeans, and he was wearing a perfectly generic pair of entirely unfashionable off-brand sneakers. On his back was a big backpack with several rolled-up posters sticking out of it, and he was carrying a paper bag plastered with an illustration from some anime or another. To top it all off, he had a bandana tied around his forehead—a particularly perplexing detail considering how friggin’ hot it was.

If you polled a hundred people on what they thought anime geeks looked like and made a composite image out of their answers, you’d get this guy, without question. The one surprising point was his face, which was almost shockingly handsome. The sheer contrast between his looks and his outfit was whiplash-inducing, but more so than that, I was struck by the fact that this beautiful fashion disaster of a man looked strikingly familiar.

“...Is that you, Sagamin?” I asked.

“Sure is,” said Sagami. “What’s your deal? Why the bug-eyed stare?”

“I mean, this is kind of a lot to take in... Seriously, what are you doing?” I asked.

“Heading home from Summer Comiket with my spoils of war,” said Sagami, holding up the bag in his hand for me to see. I caught a glimpse of a bunch of thin booklets within, and I knew perfectly well what sort of content books of that size and shape usually contained.

Comiket—short for Comic Market—was the world’s largest doujinshi sales gathering, and the summer version thereof was also the single biggest event of the summer for geeks of Sagami’s ilk. I was a little interested as well, but I’d never actually bothered going, personally. It’s not that I didn’t want to give the event a look—it was just, well, kind of intimidating. I was still in the shallow end of the pool as far as geeky interests went, and I was a little afraid that if someone like me went to an event like that, I’d be really obviously out of place. I guess that explains it though. I’d totally forgotten Comiket was happening today.

“This was the first day, so I stuck to the corporate booths and went home early,” said Sagami. “You can’t last all three days if you push yourself too hard and burn out on day one. As far as I’m concerned, the real Comiket’s going to happen over the next two days.”

“That’s great and all, but, I mean...what the heck are you wearing?” I asked. “Are you cosplaying a stereotypical geek or what?”

“Huh? What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” asked Sagami. “These are just my normal everyday clothes.”

“You wear that crap casually?!” I never knew. Who’d have thought that Sagami’s taste in clothes is just that bad? “Why a plaid shirt though?!”

“I thought it’d be generally inoffensive.”

“And the shoes? Where did you even get those?”

“I just picked out something that’d be easy to walk around in.”

I winced. “And why’re your backpack’s straps so tight?”

“Wearing it this way makes it feel lighter, obviously.”

I stared at Sagami. Sagami stared back. Seconds passed.

“And the bandana...?”

“It’s the height of fashion.”

No good. He’s hopeless. This man fundamentally does not understand fashion. I didn’t really have the right to criticize him, considering that my older sister picked out all of my clothes, but I still knew truly tacky taste in clothing when I saw it. Actually...it’s more like he has no taste in clothing at all. Like he’s just not interested. I’d always thought that Sagami wore his school uniform in a rakishly disheveled state for the sake of fashion, but I was starting to suspect he only wore it that way because it was more comfortable. Maybe he had only been keeping his hair styled like live-action Kenshin’s because cutting it was too much of a pain to bother with too. The fact that he somehow managed to pull it off anyway was just a bit of pretty boy privilege.

“So, what are you two up to?” asked Sagami. “I’m guessing that dog belongs to one of you?”

“He’s my family’s, and his name is Bah!” said Hatoko. “We’re taking him to the vet.”

“Your family’s? I see now... Why the vet though? Is he sick?”

“Ah, umm, well... No, but...we’re getting him neutered,” Hatoko hesitantly explained with a slight blush.

Sagami cocked his head. “‘Neutered’?” he repeated, as if he wasn’t familiar with the term. “What’s that? Is it something you have to go to a vet for?”

“Yeah, it’s, umm... Well, neutering’s when they...umm...do some stuff to make sure your pet can’t have kids anymore...”

“What stuff? Be specific!”

“Huh? Umm— Hmm. That’s, well... Wh-When you have boy pets, you, umm... Oh, how should I put this? I’ve heard you have to t-take off their you-know-whats...”

“Huh? No, I don’t know. What do you have to take off?”

“Th-Their, umm... Oh, you know! You...You do, right? Their, you know, those. Like, those!”

“Come on, Hatoko, help me out! What’s about to happen to that dog? What’s the vet going to take away from it? Come on!”

“I-I’m trying to say, umm... Ugggh...”

“Come on, come on, come on, Hatokooo! Just tell me, pleeease? Give it to me straight! Speak up, and if at all possible, throw some pantomime in to help me really get the idea! What are they about to take away from that dog? Oh, I know. You can point at my body to help me understand! Right? Come on, come oooo—”

“Oh my god, drop dead!” I shouted as I sent Sagami flying with a mighty kick. I’m talking, like, a full-on Veau Shot trajectory! “I know you’re playing dumb, you jerk! Quit picking on Hatoko!”

“Waaah!” Hatoko sobbed. “Juuu...”

“It’s okay, Hatoko! There, there—the bad man can’t hurt you anymore!”

“Ugh,” Hatoko sniffed. “He almost forced me to say ‘penis’...”

“You, uh...kinda just said it.”

“Huh?! F-F-Forget I said that! Forget it, please! Aahhh!”

Strictly speaking, they’ll be taking his balls, not his penis. Probably not the time to nitpick though. As Hatoko started bawling, I rounded on Sagami and shot him a baleful glare.

“Oh, you two—I was just kidding around, you know?” said Sagami as he picked himself off the ground and dusted himself off. He had the same flippant smile on as ever, and he showed absolutely no signs of remorse. “Of course, Jurai is right—I knew what neutering meant the whole time. It’s a surgical procedure where you slice open an animal’s scrotum and extract its testicles, right?”

“Of course you knew,” I grumbled.

“It’s within my area of expertise,” Sagami explained totally nonchalantly. “Oh, that’s right! Speaking of testicles, Tamaki caught a cold.”

“Why would that remind you of her?!” Seriously, of all the word associations! What sort of freakish pattern of thought would make your girlfriend’s name pop into your mind thanks to a word like that?! I’d love to take a look into that guy’s mind someday— Actually, no, scratch that. I never, ever want to get even a glimpse into his thought processes. But I digress. “A cold? In the middle of summer?”

“Yup. We were actually planning on going to Comiket together, but she ended up having to sit the trip out. Not much you can do about that sort of sickness, so I’ll be on my own for this event,” Sagami said, then heaved a sigh. “And she would’ve been the perfect little peon for the next two days. It’s such a shame, honestly.”

“Why’re you going to a comic event when your girlfriend’s sick? Shouldn’t you be going to visit her right now?” I asked.

“What? No way! I’d rather not get infected, thank you very much,” said Sagami with a grimace.

“Seriously, dude...?”

“For the record, Tamaki specifically told me that I didn’t need to bother coming by for a visit. And besides, having somebody show up at your place when you’re feeling sick always ends up being more of an annoyance than a help, doesn’t it?”

“I dunno,” I muttered. It was kind of a tricky question. I’d always find myself wanting company whenever I was sick, but when somebody actually did arrive to pay me a visit, it would usually turn out to be more of a pain than anything else.

“Here’s a fun fact while we’re on the subject: when you have a cold or the flu and end up with a fever, it’s recommended that you take measures to keep your testicles nice and cool. They’re sensitive to heat, see, and in the worst case, you could boil them so badly you won’t be able to have kids even if you don’t bother neutering yourself!”

“Can we please stop talking about testicles already?!”

Considering it was the weekend, I wasn’t really surprised to find the vet’s office fairly crowded when we arrived. Somebody turned up to give Bahamut his initial examination pretty soon, though, and Hatoko carried him into another room deeper in the office. Sagami and I, meanwhile, were left to loiter around in the waiting room and endure the distinctly animalistic scent that dominated the place.

“Wait a minute—why did you even follow us in here, Sagamin?” I asked.

“Meh. Nothing better to do,” said Sagami as he leaned back in the seat next to me.

I wasn’t really unhappy about him coming with us, per se. I just wished he’d taken a moment to go home and get changed first. I could’ve handled his geek-chic fashion on its own, but the paper bag and its anime illustration were kind of a lot. It wasn’t technically R-rated in its subject matter, and I counted myself very slightly lucky in that sense, but it sure did depict some anime girl getting tangled up in a mess of tentacles, of all things. The important bits were all blocked from view, but it was still distinctly and undeniably smutty.

“It’s strange, isn’t it? This place is so crowded, but for some reason, nobody’s moving into our personal space,” said Sagami. “I could get used to having this much breathing room! Maybe the forces of karma are smiling down upon me?”

“Maybe you should try looking in a mirror,” I sighed. Thanks to the moron beside me, everyone else in the vet’s office was giving me disapproving looks as well. Really painful ones too, which was only natural considering that there were quite a few women in the office at the time. Sagami was completely unperturbed, but I just couldn’t take it anymore and grabbed a nearby magazine to hide behind.

As I flipped through the magazine—which I honestly wasn’t even interested in to begin with—Sagami looked over my shoulder and spoke up. “Oh, I’ve heard about that! It’s been all over the news lately,” he said, pointing at an article titled “Popular Idol Caught in Love Affair!”

It was a big enough scandal that even I’d heard about it. The idol in question had cultivated a pure, innocent image, and she’d risen to such heights of popularity that she was known across the nation. Then she got photographed checking into a hotel with some guy, and her fans immediately went into conniptions.

“Yeah, I’ve heard some people are making a really big deal out of it,” I replied. “I’ve heard some of them are, like, breaking all their CDs of hers and stuff.”

“Yup,” said Sagami with a nod. “I snapped all of mine right in half and posted pictures of them online. I burned every last one of my magazines and photobooks too. Purification by fire, you know?”

“Wait, you’re one of those people?!” I shouted. The idol in question had done a decent bit of anime voice work, and I’d known that Sagami was a pretty dedicated fan of hers, but I never imagined that he’d be the sort of fan who’d completely lose his crap over something like this.

“It’s just unbelievable, isn’t it? Like, who does she think she is?” said Sagami. “And here I was, giving her my support because I thought she was a pure and virginal maiden! I’ve never felt so betrayed. Just thinking I invested so much time and money into used goods like her makes me want to lose my lunch!”

“Okay, you’re really overreacting,” I said as I cringed harder than I’d ever cringed before. His obsession with virginity was skeeving me out in a major way. “Who cares if she falls in love or whatever? Isn’t that her right? Judging by all the reports, she hasn’t even been sleeping around or anything—it looks like she’s in a real, dedicated relationship with the guy. Wouldn’t a real fan want their idol to have a decent love life?”

Sagami let out a long, exaggerated sigh at my attempt to make him see reason. He seemed really exasperated and gave me a frigid stare. “Yes, people say things like that a lot, don’t they?” he grumbled. “‘A real fan would want their idol to be happy,’ they say. ‘If this is enough to make you hate her, then you were never a real fan to begin with,’ they say. They get all self-righteous, even though they have no idea what they’re even talking about.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Let me turn this back around on you, Jurai: what is a ‘real fan’ in the first place?”

I hesitated, unsure of how to reply.

“Is overlooking the secret love affairs of an idol you support how fans should behave?” Sagami asked. “What about if they start smoking behind the scenes, or drinking, even if they’re a minor? What if they secretly go out to mixers with dudes, neglect their practice, start sucking at singing and dancing, and secretly get plastic surgery to hide the fact that they’re losing their youthful good looks? Would a real fan overlook all that and keep loving them anyway? Does a real fan have to keep loving their favorite idol no matter what she does?”

“That’s not what I—”

“Of course not. That would be absurd. If a real fan comes to despise their idol, they come out and say it,” Sagami insisted. He was starting to get really worked up and had clearly moved into one of his usual sermons. “Keeping up your passion for an idol no matter what happens is just laughable. That’s not being a fan—that’s being brainwashed. What’s natural is to like what you like and hate what you hate. That’s all there is to it. Right?”

Sagami gave me a look, and when I didn’t reply, he carried on. “And not just for idols—this applies to just about everything. If a magazine you follow starts to lose your interest, you can just stop buying it whenever you want. If an anime you’re following gets boring, you can just drop it. It’s perfectly all right to avoid a manga or light novel because you don’t like the art style. As consumers, it’s our right to choose what we do and do not consume. We have the right to hate what we hate. Take food, for instance—there’s nothing wrong with deciding you don’t like a dish after trying a single bite and avoiding it from that point onward. There’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to force yourself to eat something you don’t like, and if your tastes change, you should just accept it. These are indulgences we’re talking about, so why not just enjoy the things you like, to the exclusion of all else?”

“Okay, then,” I said, then took a deep breath. I felt the need to strike back somehow. It wasn’t like I felt attacked and was trying to get back at him or anything like that—I just sort of felt aggravated by how he was going on and on about his little theory and wanted to say something in response. “That means that if someone decides they hate you for being who you are, it’s totally okay for them to do so?”

“Yup. That’s right,” said Sagami without a hint of hesitation. My retort hadn’t shaken his resolve in the least. “And if they did, I’d hate them right back in response. We’d find mutual hatred for each other, and that would be the end of it. See? Wasn’t that easy?”

“Easy...? I guess, in a really nasty sort of way.”

“Of course, that’s never actually the end of it. That’s what makes this world of ours such a pain to live in. It’s just full of people who can’t tolerate the idea that there are people out there who don’t hate the same things they do. Vice versa as well, of course—there are tons of people who get ridiculously worked up over the idea that some people hate the things they like.”

That was it. That’s when Sagami said it.

“When all is said and done, what people desire above all else is to have others identify with their feelings.”

Bahamut’s blood tests and whatnot turned out all normal, so they ended up carrying out the surgery that day, as planned.

“They said it’ll take about two or three hours, so we should come back and pick him up in the evening,” Hatoko reported, so we decided to go find somewhere to kill time while we waited. Apparently, they’d offered to allow us to watch the operation, but Hatoko couldn’t stand the sight of blood, and Sagami and I, well...didn’t really want to watch those getting removed. I offered a silent prayer of encouragement to Bahamut, and then we left the vet’s office together.

“The vet also said that there’s a festival happening today at a shopping mall just nearby! They said it might be fun to hang out there while we wait,” Hatoko mentioned. For lack of any other objective, we decided to go check the event out.

The shopping mall in question took about ten minutes to walk to. The festival was set up in the massive mall’s parking lot, and a huge crowd was milling about the stalls. I could already smell the delectable aromas of the festival food they were selling, and they had one of those big trampolines you tend to see at festivals like these set up as well—the sort contained inside a huge inflatable dinosaur or Pikachu or whatever. Like, the sorta bouncy castle-adjacent things that little kids love.

“Yikes. This is a lot more crowded than I’d figured,” I said.

“Ha ha ha! Come on, Jurai. I know plenty of battle-hardened veterans who would laugh their heads off at you for saying this is a big crowd.”

“Shut up! Comiket’s not a good frame of reference!”

“Ah, look, look!” shouted Hatoko. “They have candied apples! I love those!”

“That’s true, Hatoko, but look—don’t those sausages over there look delicious too?” said Sagami. “And look over there. Chocolate bananas! And uncut sushi rolls as well! I’ll pay for whichever of them you want, as long as you eat it in front of me.”

“How about recommending something that isn’t long, dark, and phallic, you freak?!” I snapped.

“You’ll pay for it?! Really?!”

“No, Hatoko! Don’t get excited about this, and don’t eat anything he recommends to you! Trust me!”

“Aww, why not?”

“Because!”

I frantically guarded Hatoko from the efforts of Sagami Shizumu, the avatar of sexual harassment, as we walked through the crowd and soaked up that distinctive festival atmosphere. Pretty much every word out of Sagami’s mouth was some sort of vulgar joke, all of which flew right over Hatoko’s head, leaving me to leap in and shut down her innocent responses before Sagami could steer them in a bad direction.

“Ah, look, Juu!” Hatoko said at one point. “There’s a shooting gallery!”

“Oh, huh, you’re right,” I replied.

“And ooh, look at that stuffed dolphin! It’s so cute!”

“Want me to win it for you?”

“Huh? You’d do that?”

“Yeah, sure. Leave it to me! There’s a trick to these, see...”

“Please, Jurai. Stop,” said Sagami. “I’m getting an incredible sense of déjà vu right now. I see the punch line coming a mile away, and I’d rather not see it come to fruition. I never want to witness a tragedy like I did that day at the arcade ever again...”

So, yeah, every once in a while, Sagami would jump in to play the straight man as well. It’s not like we were constantly putting on a silly little three-man comedy routine, of course.

“Ugh!”

“What’s wrong, Sagami? Why do you look so horrified?”

“Because, Hatoko, something terrible’s just happened to me. Look at this—the popsicle I just bought had a winning stick, so I get another one for free.”

“Oh, wow! That’s amazing! It’s your lucky day!”

“Yeah, she’s right—that’s lucky, not terrible! What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that I just wasted a stroke of luck on something incredibly petty! I’d rather save up my luck and use it on something really great, all at once.”

“Well, that’s a twisted way of thinking about all this.”

“I dunno—I think I might sort of understand what he means!”

As you can see, we spent plenty of time chatting about truly pointless nonsense as well—the sort of empty small talk we’d all inevitably have forgotten about by the next day. At the very least, that went to show how close to us Sagami had become: close enough that just being together meant the conversation would keep flowing, naturally and uninterrupted.

At the end of the day, the festival was only on the sort of scale you could expect from a shopping mall’s parking lot. An hour or two of wandering around was enough to see and do everything we felt like seeing and doing. The event felt a little lacking, all together, but we did manage to kill time while Bahamut had his surgery, so I suppose it had served its purpose.

“Come to think of it, there’s going to be another festival at a nearby shrine sometime soon!” said Hatoko as we headed back for the vet’s office.

“Oh right, yeah. I forgot about that,” I said. That one was going to be a proper, full-blown summer festival too, not a miniature approximation of one. There’d be stalls, a Bon dance, taiko drumming, and fireworks. The whole town was putting its all into making the event as big of a deal as they could manage.

“I know! Let’s all go together!” proposed Hatoko, clenching her fists before her excitedly. “Tamaki can come too if she’s over her cold by then!”

Sagami, for some reason, just stared blankly at her.

“What’s wrong? Hellooo? Earth to Sagamin?” I said.

“Oh... Nothing’s wrong. I was just thinking that this was a new experience for me, that’s all,” said Sagami with a faint smile. “Girls have always been all over me, you know? They’ve always invited me places, and plenty of them have asked me to go on festival dates.”

“Are you trying to brag?” I grumbled.

“No, just telling the truth,” said Sagami. “That’s why, well... I have plenty of experience going out with girls, but I actually have almost no experience going out with friends. Hence why this feels, well, kind of fresh to me. I’ve never gone to a festival in a group like this before.”

I fell silent. That was kind of a hard revelation to react to, honestly. What would it be like to be a hit with girls but have no friends? I couldn’t tell if he was bragging or bemoaning his fortunes. Of course, him not having friends was, well...not super surprising, honestly. He had more than his fair share of personality defects, after all.

“Thanks for inviting me, Hatoko,” said Sagami. “I’ll pass the invitation along to Tamaki. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”

“Oh, you don’t have to thank me! The more the merrier, right?” said Hatoko with a grin. “We’ll all have to study for our entrance exams next summer, so this summer’s our last chance to spend lots of time hanging out with our friends! If we don’t make the most of it, we’ll end up regretting missing the chance, so let’s go for it!”

Her words were so purely genuine and earnest, I was almost embarrassed just listening to them. Saying stuff like that and actually meaning it was what made Hatoko, well, Hatoko. I found myself smiling as I watched her skip along ahead of me.

“Friends, huh...?” Sagami quietly muttered. “I suppose that means we’re already friends in her mind.”

“She’s the sort of person who can make friends with anyone,” I said.

“And that’s what makes her so different from the two of us, eh?”

“Speak for yourself! I’m nowhere near as far gone as you.”

“I guess we have been friends for a while now, haven’t we, Jurai?”

I sighed and scratched my head. This topic was putting me in a weird state of mind—sort of a cross between awkwardness and shyness. “You only just noticed? I mean, you’ve been having me call you a cutesy nickname like Sagamin for how long?”

“Well, I never thought I wanted a guy friend,” said Sagami. “I mean, you know what I’m like. I’m the sort of person who loses interest in eroge the moment they introduce a best friend character.”

“I couldn’t care less.”

“Oh, unless the best friend’s a femboy! That’s a completely different scenario. Those characters deserve to be fully voice-acted, no exception! Same deal for girls who’re forced to cross-dress because of some weird family drama.”

“Okay, seriously, I do not care! Why are we still talking about this?!”

“But you know...” said Sagami. “It turns out having friends isn’t really that bad after all.” Then he flashed a big, dashing smile at me, the effect of which was only slightly diminished by his stupid bandana.

☆

“The four of us spent a ton of time together that summer,” I explained after I finished telling Sayumi the story of our hellishly hot pet care adventure. “Hatoko and Tamaki were both pretty proactive, and they ended up making a ton of plans for us. We really did go to that festival in the end, for one thing.”

The four of us went all out. We wore our yukata and everything. Hatoko and Tamaki both looked ridiculously good in that sort of outfit, though if I had to pick who’d pulled it off better, I’d probably have to hand it to Tamaki. Yukata are generally suited to people with slender builds, and while Tamaki definitely fell into that category, Hatoko was...well. She had a little too much volume in the chest area to pull off a yukata in the traditional sense, you could say.

“What else did we do...? Oh, we went out on a sort of ghost hunt at one point! There were a bunch of rumors floating around that the park I met Sagami and Tamaki at was haunted by a silver-haired specter, so we went to check it out in the middle of the night. We didn’t find anything in the end, though. Actually, Tamaki and Sagami spent the whole time flirting, and that was pretty much the end of it.”

We did plenty of other things that weren’t distinctly summery as well. We went out to karaoke, and we played video games together at home. Somebody brought up going to the pool once, but Tamaki shot that plan down. Apparently, she was too embarrassed to be seen in a swimsuit.

“I can certainly tell that the four of you got along very well,” said Sayumi. “That’s rather remarkable, considering two of said four were in a relationship. I would think that would make things awkward for the rest of you.”

“If we were friends before they’d started dating, I could see that, but they’d been together since before I’d met them. I think that helped,” I replied.

It was sort of like how it’s hard to imagine a time when your parents weren’t married, I guess. I’d never known the two of them outside of the context of their relationship, so in my mind, that was just how they were. Sagami and Tamaki dating was the standard state of things. What a terrible misapprehension I was stuck under.

“We did a bunch of other stuff that summer...but, well, that was all just fun and games, so I’ll skip over it,” I said. The next stage of my story that mattered took place in the autumn that followed. “Things are gonna get a little messy after this point, so I’m just gonna tell you everything, all at once.”

This is where the part of my story that I’d never really wanted to talk about begins. The fall of my second year in middle school was where the dark stain that fell over my history began to spread.