Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 7 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2 ★ July and the Emblem of Peace Go to the Ocean with Their Families

“You know, I hate meta!”

Hatoko dropped that bombshell of a declaration out of absolutely nowhere. I couldn’t say what it was that made it such a bombshell in my mind, but for some reason, it felt like she was really playing with fire with that one.

I’d been sitting in the back seat of the car we were riding in, idly enjoying the scenery as we sped by it, but now I turned to stare at her. “Wh-Where did that come from?” I asked.

“Huh?” said Hatoko. “Nowhere, really? I was just making small talk, that’s all.”

Hatoko, please, some subjects just aren’t safe for small talk! I don’t really get why this one’s not safe, but, I mean...it just isn’t, okay? Setting that whole deal aside, I was struck by the fact that Hatoko had actually used the word “hate.” It was really rare for her to be that definitive about disliking something.

“Anyway,” I said, “are you even sure you’re using that word right? ‘Meta’ isn’t just a wacky sound effect you see in battle manga sometimes, y’know?”

“Yeah, I know!” said Hatoko. “It’s when a story starts talking about its own genre and stuff like that, right?”

Hmm. I mean, yeah, I guess that’s basically right. I couldn’t actually say that I understood all of the word’s nuances either, so I would’ve been sorta put on the spot if she’d asked me to explain it to her in perfect detail.

Meta: a prefix dating back to ancient Greece, meaning something to the tune of “extremely” or “the most.” These days, though, it’s most often used in the context of the term “metafiction.” Metafiction refers to works of media that are self-referential in regard to their medium or genre—a novel referring to the fact that it’s a novel, a manga that it’s a manga, a mystery that it’s a mystery, a fantasy that it’s a fantasy—or that feature characters who break the fourth wall, talking about things they couldn’t possibly know regarding the real, nonfictional world. Basically, it refers to fiction that acknowledges the fact that it’s fiction within its own fictional context.

Of course, when I try to put it into words like that, it stops making sense to me, even, so let’s go with some examples instead! Imagine if the protagonist of a manga ends up catching a really unlucky break, and shouts something to the tune of “Why is this happening to me?! Aren’t I supposed to be the protagonist?!” Or, alternatively, imagine a character in a mystery novel who expounds at length about the mystery genre, talking about its rules, storytelling theories, aesthetics, and history. Or a game character who says “You won’t be able to save past this point!” or “Press the A button,” speaking directly to the player.

Some famous lines like that that actually made it into print include “I’ll wrap this up in a two-page spread!” “I win! Part Three is over!” and “Wow, Nobita, you never sound that cool in our normal-length chapters!” Oh, and this last one’s purely subjective on my part, but in my book, “Krillin, think about it! You’ve got no nose!” is a crazy high-level example of meta humor. In short: if there’s a line between fiction and reality that’s generally best left uncrossed, or even impossible to cross by all reasonable standards, then metafiction refers to works that toe that line as precariously as they can possibly manage.

“Okay, but why do you hate meta stuff?” I asked. “And where are you even seeing it in the first place? Manga? Novels?”

“Hmm. Comedy, I guess,” said Hatoko.

“Comedy?” I repeated. “Is meta humor even, like, a thing for the comedy groups you watch?”

“Huh? Well, not really, but...hmm. I was just watching a comedy program on TV the other day, and I sort of found myself thinking, ‘Boy, a lot of comedy groups sure are going for meta jokes more often these days, huh?’ Maybe I was wrong, though?”

Hatoko seemed just as bewildered as I was, and neither of us knew what to say next. At the very least, the fact that this was about comedy made her use of the word “hate” feel a little less shocking to me. Hatoko really liked comedy—in particular, a style of comedy called “manzai” performed by two-man groups, though she also watched plenty of variety comedy shows—and she could be, well...a bit of a snob about it, honestly.

She was usually really lax when it came to judging stuff harshly on the whole. When she watched a new TV show or tried a new food, her typical reaction would be “That’s so cool,” or “It was interesting,” or “I liked it,” or “It was delicious!” Basically, she refused to express any opinion that wasn’t positive. Comedy, however, was different. Her opinions on that subject could get downright harsh.

“Okay, can we start by having you explain what you’re talking about a little more specifically?” I asked.

“Umm, okay,” said Hatoko. “So...I mostly mean comedians who’ll pause their skits or bits partway through and comment on their act as part of the act, I guess? Like, when they say stuff like ‘I’ve been performing for such-and-such years, and I’m still doing this bit,’ or ‘I hope you like this one, ’cause my career’s riding on it!’”

“Ooh... Yeah, I guess I have seen people toss in jokes like that before.”

In a sense, I could see how that sort of material would count as the comedy equivalent of meta humor. Whether you’re performing solo stand-up or a comedic dialogue, the act is supposed to be the act. Pulling in the circumstances surrounding the act or your own personal life did feel like it could be called meta, by a certain standard.

“I think of a comedian’s material as their work in the same way a comic or novel’s an author’s work, basically,” said Hatoko. “And when people start poking holes in their own work like that, it just feels, I don’t know...a little off?”

“Okay, but that’s not really a fair comparison, is it?” I said. “Like, manga and anime and stuff are fiction! That’s pretty different from comedy material, right? Isn’t turning your personal life into something worth laughing about what comedy’s all about for some people?”

“Yeah, that’s true, of course,” Hatoko admitted. “I suppose this is really just me not having the taste for that sort of joke. I like my comedy to be more traditional with its material.”

“Huuuh. Well, I guess meta humor’s always kind of divisive, no matter what media it’s in.”

If normal humor’s a fastball, then meta humor’s a curveball. If normal humor’s orthodox, then meta humor’s heresy.

“But, I mean...it sorta feels like any time a piece of media tries something really new or unusual, it ends up counting as meta,” I continued. “It comes across as you critiquing the genre your work falls into, or at least referencing it.”

Take, for instance, what we now call postmodern literature. From what I’d heard, when the movement was born, it served as a sort of antithesis to modern literature, and works that fell under its umbrella tended to be very metafictional in nature, but now it’s considered a genre in and of itself. And in the light novel world, you can take Slayers as a good example. That series is a landmark work in the medium’s history, and it’s considered an establishing piece of orthodox light novel fantasy these days. Back when it was first published, though, Slayers departed dramatically from the established fantasy conventions of the era and was popularly considered to be a work of meta fantasy.

“I guess that when people start making metafictional works in a genre, it’s proof that the genre’s become really well established?” I said. “Orthodox plotlines, tropes... Until all of them are established enough for us to acknowledge them as clichés, there’s no real point in getting meta about them.”

“Ahh, yeah, that makes sense,” said Hatoko. “After all, pair comedy has all sorts of standard patterns that seem pretty set by now! It makes sense that trying to do something new would end up leading to a meta sort of direction.”

“And when that sort of meta content gets popular, it starts to gradually shift from meta to mainstream...and then it’s only a matter of time before somebody shows up and decides to get meta about the meta. That’s how trends and movements get rolling, and how literature develops on the whole.”

Take recent mysteries, suspense stories, and police dramas. Lately, it feels like stories in those genres that don’t include some sort of meta element are actually rarer than the alternative. Almost all of them make some sort of reference to some past work. Aspiring detectives who want to be just like Sherlock Holmes and police officers who grew up watching cop dramas are tropes in their own right, at this point.

“You said that you like it when comedy’s more traditional, but that’s kind of a fuzzy word to use here, isn’t it? What’s traditional now probably wasn’t thought of as traditional in the past, and there’s no telling how long into the future it’ll be thought of that way either.”

Some people like to claim that widespread tropes are only widespread because they’re especially good, but in my book, that’s a little too broad of a generalization. What’s traditional, what’s a trope, and what’s a cliché are all things that flow and change with the ages, shifting at a breakneck pace with the whims of storytelling fashion.

“I see what you mean,” said Hatoko, sounding a little impressed. “Yeah, I get it now! It starts with a trend, then meta stuff springs up, then that meta becomes a trend to the point that new meta uses it to be meta!”

“Then it’s only a matter of time before that meta gets meta’d too, and then more meta—”

“If you dorks say the word ‘meta’ one more time, I swear to god!”

A very irritated shout rang out from the driver’s seat. My sister had been steering away in silence throughout our whole exchange, and she had chosen that moment to finally jump into the conversation.

“I literally have all of our lives in my hands up here, and you just go on and on about meta this, meta that, meta meta meta... Seriously, who the hell even cares? I’m gonna go meta on your ass if you don’t clam up, Jurai!”

“Wait, me?! Like, me, specifically?! That’s not fair, Machi! Hatoko’s the one who brought it up in the first place!”

“Y-Yeah, he’s right!” chimed in Hatoko. “If you meta him, you have to meta me too!”

“Wha...? Cut it out, Hatoko! It makes me look like a huge jerk when you say it!”

“Ah... Come on, Juu, I expected better from you! That was the perfect chance for you to jump in with a ‘No, do it to me,’ and then I could’ve gone ‘Well, you heard the man!’”

“Wait, you were setting up a gag?! Crap, sorry! I didn’t read that one right at all! Here, let’s run through it one more time, from the top!”

“We can’t do that! Repeating jokes is standard practice in comedy, but redoing them’s out of the question!”

“You’re so strict about this stuff, I swear!” Seriously, who appointed her the reigning judge of comedy? I’m a total amateur, Hatoko, so cut me some slack! “And come on, Machi, you’re seriously calling us out on being noisy here?” I added, venting a bit of my irritation on our driver in the form of some constructive criticism. “First you were all, ‘I can’t concentrate when you’re kicking up a racket,’ so we kept quiet, then you were all, ‘It’s too quiet! This is making me antsy, talk about something!’ And now you’re telling us to shut up again? Make up your mind, please!”

“Yeah, no, shut up. You gotta keep flexible about these things, okay? It’s good to keep that brain of yours nice and limber, you know?”

“Man...you’re stressing so badly it has you acting that corny? If driving’s that hard on you, you should’ve just asked someone else to handle it.”

“Like I would, dumbass! I’ll never get good at this if I don’t practice! It’s freaking me the hell out, but I’m doing my best, okay?!”

My sister was facing one of the classic conflicts of an inexperienced driver. She’d taken lessons at a driving school back during spring, and she’d finally managed to get her license just recently. At the end of all that practice, she’d finally decided to volunteer to be our driver today...but she wasn’t at all used to highway driving yet, and it seemed the pressure was really getting to her. Her face was pallid, and a river of sweat was running down her brow. Wasn’t exactly reassuring from a passenger’s perspective, let me tell you.

“Just don’t crash, okay?” I said.

“Then don’t jinx me, you little jerk!” Machi snapped back at me.

“And maybe speed up just a bit, while you’re at it?”

Machi winced. “Don’t ask the impossible,” she grumbled in a very rare display of frailty. I was glad she wasn’t the sort of person who’d flip out and turn into a maniac the second they got behind the wheel, sure...but man, were we ever moving at a snail’s pace.

“Ah. There goes another one,” I commented as yet another car sped up to pass us. They must’ve finally lost patience with Machi’s pace, and I’d lost count of how many cars before them had pulled the same maneuver.

“My mom says everyone else is already at the hotel,” said Hatoko as she glanced at her phone. Our parents and Hatoko’s family had driven in a separate car, and it seemed they’d beaten us to our destination by quite a solid margin. We’d left at the same time, so they must’ve been going at a way faster pace than Machi was.

“How much longer till we get there, Machi?” I asked.

“Don’t ask me! I’ve only got eyes for the road right now.”

“Okay...I’ll admit that sounded kinda cool, but make sure to check your mirrors and stuff too, all right?”

While I was making a mental note to keep an eye out behind us and to our sides on my sister’s behalf, Hatoko piped up again.

“Aaah, I see it! Juu, Machi, look!” she shouted happily. “The sea! I can see the sea!”

I looked out the window again, and sure enough, the seemingly endless parade of lush, green mountains had given way to the refreshing blue of the ocean and the sky above it.

“All right, we made it! It’s the sea, Hatoko!”

“It really is, Juu! The sea!”

We saw it every single year, but somehow, that first glance still got us riled up each and every time. I felt particularly obligated to enjoy that endless blue expanse on Machi’s behalf this year, since she sure as heck wouldn’t be turning to look any time soon.

This was an annual custom for the Andou and Kushikawa families. Every summer, we’d get together and drive out for a trip to the beach, and though it sort of felt like we’d stumbled coming out of the gate thanks to our driver this year, our destination was finally in sight.

☆

Our families got together to go to the beach every summer vacation, but this year, I, Kushikawa Hatoko, went into the trip with more determination burning away in my heart than ever before. I had a goal: to do everything I could to entice Juu! I’d force him to look at me as a girl, not just as a friend!

“But...this is gonna be sooo embarrassing,” I moaned, cradling my head in my hands as I rolled around on the floor of the room we were staying in. We’d booked rooms in a traditional Japanese inn, and right now, I was the only one inside mine. I was staying with my parents, who had already gone out and about, and the Andous had a separate room for themselves.

Machi did drive us all the way to the inn in the end, though we’d arrived about a half hour after our parents had. Our parents had all gone out to visit a spa that had heated stone beds to lay on and that offered therapeutic massages, and in the meantime, Juu, Machi, and I were going to play around on the beach. We’d been planning on heading out right away to make up for lost time...but I was still stuck in my room, paralyzed by indecision.

I sighed. “Bamboo floor mats always feel so nice and cool in the summer... Wait, no! This isn’t the time for that! I have to hurry! I can’t make Juu and Machi wait any longer for me!” However much I tried to make myself rush, though, I just couldn’t break through my hesitation.

Juu and I were childhood friends. We’d been together for pretty much our whole lives, and it almost felt like we were siblings sometimes! Neither of us precisely felt like the older sibling, though. I was born in spring, which meant my birthday came a few months before his, but Juu had already had his birthday this year as well, making both of us seventeen, and you know what they say about seventeen-year-olds! That’s the age when guys and gals, well... They, umm, you know... They start getting interested in, ahem, well...stuff!

But, in the end...that sort of stuff was still really embarrassing to me, across the board. I hadn’t even considered any of it up until really recently, and I was totally clueless about how to go about any of it. But! But but but, I couldn’t hem and haw about it any longer! After all, right before summer vacation started, I’d had that conversation with Tomoyo...

I fell still. That’s right. The chips are already down, and I’m the one who put them there.

“True happiness...is to be chosen.”

“Everybody wants to be the chosen one.”

I wasn’t sure who’d said those words to me. Maybe I’d just dreamed them up myself. One way or another, though, they still lingered on deep within my heart. They’d settled in like a layer of sediment, and nothing I did could dislodge them.

I wanted Juu to choose me. The thought that he might not choose me scared me more than anything.

“I-I know! I’ll go over everything one last time!” I said to myself, then rushed over to my travel bag, turned it out on the ground, and pulled out a magazine I’d brought with me, along with the little booklet that had come with it. That booklet’s title: ♥ A How-to Guide to Beachside Summer Romance ♥.

I let out a little whimper. The title was just so...so direct! Just looking at it was making me blush like crazy! I’d never bought a magazine marketed toward trendy high school girls before, so I’d been nervous as all get out when I went to buy it. I’d felt so ashamed, in fact, that I’d sandwiched it between two cookbooks to bring it up to the register, which honestly struck me as kind of funny in retrospect. The cookbooks hadn’t been the right size at all, so it had turned out less like a sandwich and more like an overstuffed taco.

Anyway, I’d read the booklet over and over already, but now I cracked its heavily annotated, sticky-note-laden pages one more time for one final review session. There, below a drawing of a boy and a girl chasing each other along a beach, were a series of incredibly informative instructions.

Follow these five rules to steal the heart of the man of your dreams this summer!

1.    Never let that smile slip!

2.    Body contact’s your best friend!

3.    Be happy, be healthy, and be just a little sexy!

4.    No man can resist a cute girl’s puppy dog eyes!

5.    Give him a chance to make his move by acting defenseless!

“Hmm, hmm, hmm... All right!” I said as I shut the manual and shot to my feet. With its instructions to guide me, there was no way this could go wrong! All I had to do was follow its advice to the letter, and Juu would be complimenting me on how womanly I’d become before I knew it!

☆

“Jurai... I’m done for... Wait for me on the other side...”

“Wait, you mean ‘I’ll wait for you on the other side,’ right? You have it backward! You’re making it sound like I’m the one who’s dying here!”

My sister was down for the count. We’d made our way to the beachside and found it packed to the brim with visitors here to enjoy their summer. I’d set up the big beach parasol and plastic sheet we’d brought with us from home, and the second I was finished, Machi had sprawled out in the shade. Best as I could tell, the mental exhaustion that had built up over the course of the drive had finally done her in. It had been quite the drive, to be fair, most of it along winding mountain roads, so I couldn’t really blame her. A trip like that seemed like it’d be rough on someone who still hadn’t taken the “student driver” sticker off her car yet.

“You could’ve lain down in our room, y’know,” I commented.

“Nah, screw that,” said Machi. “Like hell I’m gonna come all the way out to the beach and not even wear my swimsuit! Anyway, I’m gonna nap now, so you go ahead and pile some sand up on me. Make it a big ol’ mound.”

Machi stretched out on the sheet, all ready to play around in the sand while simultaneously taking a snooze. It sounded like a huge pain to me, but being the little brother in the equation, I had no right to veto her suggestion and obediently got down onto my knees to start moving sand around. Eh, this works, I guess. There’s plenty of ways for me to have my own sort of sandy fun, even while I’m doing her bidding! Witness my personal style of sand arts!

“Oh, right. No shouting any of Gaara’s or Crocodile’s special moves while you work, Jurai. That’d get old real fast.”

“Ugh!”

She just stole away all the fun of playing around on a beach in an instant! I’d been planning on cleansing the grudge that had built up within me by shouting “Sand Burial!” while I piled sand on top of her, but that was out the window now. I had to admit, I was a little impressed by how well she’d seen through my thought process.

Curses! What other sand users are there, anyway...? Iggy’s a dog, so he’s out, and Sandman didn’t actually have anything to do with sand at all in the end! I guess Kite Eishirou threw sand in his opponent’s face that one time, but he’s still just a tennis player, even if they did call him The Hit man.

I could think of plenty of characters with power over earth, or characters who used earth magic, but personally speaking, I’d always drawn a clear conceptual line between earth users and sand users. Like, sand obviously falls within the category of earth, I’ll admit...but, I mean, it’s like how Pokémon has Ground, Rock, and Steel as different types, you know? They feel like they should basically all be in the same category, sure, but there’s something that makes them different. Sand’s, like...it flows, I guess, in a way I’ve always been kinda into. There’s a smoothness to a sand user’s powerset that an earth user’s just couldn’t compare to. Not to mention the dryness—that just can’t be beat!

When you look at the four basic elements—earth, wind, fire, and water—earth has a kinda tough, stocky image, and it’s subtly lacking in stylishness as a result. I sorta figure that might be why bit villains in sword and sorcery stories tend to use earth magic so often. On a personal level, I gotta say that I’ve never been a huge fan of the earth-element image either. If I had to rank them, my list would go fire, water, wind, and then earth—but only if ice gets lumped in with water! If they’re counted separately, then water and wind would trade places. Fire’s got first place locked down, though.

So, yeah—earth gets a pretty meh score as far as elements go, in my mind, but sand users are special. They’re an exception among exceptions—a mutation—a singularity! Sand users: hella cool!

“Man, though...Hatoko sure is late, huh?” I grumbled as I piled sand on my sister’s upper body, paying absolutely no attention to her bikini because seriously, what kind of weirdo would get worked up like that over his sister?

“Yeah, true enough,” said Machi. “Guess she might be having some trouble getting changed or something.”

“Huh?” I grunted. “What’s that supposed to mean? Did she pick out a swimsuit that’s really hard to put on, or something?”

“Nah, I’m not talking about the clothes! I mean, like, in a mental sense,” Machi said, leaving me more confused than ever. “See, we got a little girls’ talk in earlier today... Long story short, she’s got a lot on her mind in her own special sorta way.”

“Sorry, ‘girls’ talk’? You’re not exactly a girl anymore, are you? Like, c’mon, you’ll be twenty next year.”

“Say what?” Machi growled. Suddenly, a palpable aura of imminent murder began to emanate from under the mound of sand I’d piled atop her. “You little punk... You’ve just made an enemy of every woman who’s ever had a girls’ night out past the age of nineteen. You get that, right?”

“S-Sorry! I was just kidding! You’ll be a girl till the day you die! Seventeen for life, I’m telling you! You’ll pass as seventeen even when you’re pushing thirty-seven, at least!” I shouted, then started frantically piling up a proper sand dune—scratch that, a pyramid’s worth of sand on her in a desperate attempt to quell the rage of Hurricane Machi. Quick! Seal her away! Apply the Evil Sealing Method! Let this raging demon be lulled back to slumber!

The two of us spent a while messing around in the sand like we were a solid decade younger than we really were, until finally...

“Sorry I’m so laaate!”

...Hatoko arrived on the scene.

“You sure took your time! What was the holdup? Did you find a wild hippo that needed you to rub it down with olive oil, or—” I began, all ready to show off the zoological fun fact I’d picked up the other day, only to be struck speechless before I could finish the thought.

Our beach trips were an annual tradition, so naturally, I’d seen Hatoko in a swimsuit every year since I was a kid. I hadn’t exactly taken notes, but generally speaking, I remembered her having usually gone for swimsuits that I’d describe as cutesy if I were being nice, and kinda childish if I were being judgmental. She didn’t go quite as far to that extreme as Kuki and Chifuyu had at the water park the other day, but she tended to gravitate toward one-piece swimsuits with floral or polka-dot patterns and stuff like that.

Today, though, the image Hatoko struck was the polar opposite of childlike. She was wearing a bikini, and a pretty revealing one at that. Its coloration was still rather cutesy, sure, but its design was pretty darn stylish, and it managed to roll that cuteness into a larger package that incorporated a hefty dose of mature sexiness as well.

“Hatoko,” I muttered as I gaped at her. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. A sexy swimsuit was the last thing I would’ve ever imagined her wearing, but somehow, it didn’t look wrong on her in the slightest. Far from it—she was actually killing the look! The pair of big, bulky sunglasses she had pushed up onto her forehead and the hibiscus flower in her hair provided the perfect accent for the outfit as well. “You, uhh...got a new swimsuit, huh?” I said.

“Y-Yeah,” Hatoko bashfully replied. “I just bought it earlier this year. So, umm...d-does it look weird on me? I’ve never worn anything like this before,” she asked.

“Err... Yeah, it looks great,” I replied. “You look like a model right off the pages of some high school fashion magazine.”

“O-Oh, come on! You’re just buttering me up now, jeez!”

“Or, really...I guess it’d be more accurate to say that you look like you found a model in some high school fashion magazine and bought the exact same outfit she was wearing.”

“Wh-What?! How’d you know?!” Hatoko yelped. She looked downright shocked, but I mean...come on, seriously. It was just way too coordinated. It looked like an outfit a pro would put together! The sunglasses and flower combo in particular was a dead giveaway.

I had to admit, though, that the origin of her outfit did nothing to change the fact that she was pulling it off perfectly. You’d never know it from the comfy, mild-mannered vibe she usually gave off, but Hatoko, well...she actually had an astonishingly nice figure, I guess. She was packing some major concealed weaponry, if you would. Being the guy I was, I couldn’t help the fact that seeing her in a getup like that made me a little, well...flustered, I guess? Or nervous? Some carnal instincts were flaring, you could say. Point is, I was pretty embarrassed, which isn’t exactly why I picked my next words, but it might’ve had some influence, at least.

“You’ve gotten pretty womanly lately, huh?” I said, doing my best to make it come off as a benign comment from an older brother, or something to that effect.

“I...huh?” said Hatoko with a wide-eyed look of shock. Her sunglasses tipped off her forehead and landed on her nose. “I-I’m womanly...? Me? Really?”

“Huh? U-Uh, I mean, yeah.”

“So then...you see me as a girl, Juu...?”

“Huh? Uhh, duh? What else would I see you as? When have you ever been anything other than a girl?”

Hatoko seemed bewildered, though why she’d be feeling that way was totally beyond me. She looked like she wanted to say something but couldn’t put it into words.

“I...I,” Hatoko stammered.

“You...?”

“I’m done alreadyyyyyy?!” Hatoko suddenly screamed to the high heavens. “Whyyyyyy?! Wh-What am I supposed to do now...? I’ve barely even started, and I already hit my goal, just like that!”

I blinked. “Uhh... I don’t really get it, but isn’t hitting your goal without even trying a good thing? Like, that sounds like a happy accident at worst.”

“I know... I know, but still... Ugggh, ahhh,” Hatoko moaned as she clutched at her head. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said she was suffering from a sudden case of heartburn. “Wh-What now? What now?! I didn’t plan for this at all... Oh, what am I supposed to do...?” Hatoko muttered to herself as she spun around to face away from me. It looked like she’d started flipping through some sort of little booklet.

“Whatcha reading?” I asked.

“Wha?! Umm, th-this is just...it’s nothing!” Hatoko shouted as she spun around once more and hid the booklet behind her back, then scooted over to the sheet Machi was sleeping on and stashed it away in her bag. “Anyway,” she continued, “let’s get out there and hit the beach, Juu! Time for some fun in the sun! Wooo!”

Hatoko jogged off toward the beach, pulling me along by the hand. She was in a weirdly hyper mood, and I just went along with it.

“Huh...? Hey, where’re you two going? Wait a sec! It’s gonna look weird if I’m just lying here, buried in sand alone... Wait, huh...? I-I can’t move! No, seriously, I’m stuck! Dammit, Jurai, just how tightly did you pack this stuff?! And wait, when’d you draw this lame-ass magic circle around me?! Hey! Get me outta here! No, seriously... S-S-Someone, heeelp!”

I thought I might’ve heard some sort of incoherent shouting coming from behind me, and it might’ve sounded an awful lot like Machi’s voice, but I decided to ignore it.

Hatoko’s weirdly hyper mood, it turned out, was here to stay. I couldn’t tell if she was really hyped up for nothing in particular, if she was trying to mess with me and the joke just wasn’t landing, or what, but the point is, I just couldn’t get a grasp on what was up with her from start to finish. For convenience’s sake, allow me to provide some examples of her incomprehensible antics in a handy-dandy numbered list:

Example number 1: Cramping Hatoko.

“Aaauuugh!”

“Wh-What’s wrong, Hatoko?!”

We’d been playing around by the water, having a blast, when suddenly Hatoko collapsed to the ground, writhing in agony!

“M-My cheeeks,” she moaned. “My cheeks!”

“Wh-What? What’s wrong with your cheeks?”

“Th-They cramped up...”

“Your cheeks cramped?”

“Ahh, it hurts so muuuch,” Hatoko wailed as she clutched her cheeks. If she was trying to do Pinoko’s oh-my-goodness pose, she was nailing it.

“Jeez, are you okay...? I guess you have been grinning like a moron all day, come to think of it. That’s probably what did you in, right?”

“P-Probably...”

“Why have you been grinning like that, anyway? Have you lost all emotions other than your sense of inner peace, or something?”

“I-I, umm... I’m just trying not to let my smile slip,” Hatoko sorta reluctantly muttered. I had to wonder: didn’t she basically do that all the time without even trying?

Example number 2: Charging Hatoko.

“Hiyaaah!” Hatoko shouted as she charged straight at me without warning.

“Wh-Whoa!”

“Eeeek!” Hatoko shrieked as I, of course, dodged out of the way, sending her sailing past me and crashing into the beach face-first. “Ugggh... Th-That was so mean, Juu! Blech, I got sand in my mouth! Peh, peh!”

“How am I the mean one here? What was that?”

“I-I was just trying to get some body contact in...”

“Body contact? That was more like a full-body tackle, if you ask me! I thought you were trying to hit me with a tetsuzanko for a hot second,” I grumbled, then helped Hatoko to her feet. The impact from her dive into the sand had caused a bit of a wardrobe malfunction with her bikini top, but I’ll just go ahead and leave out the details of that bit.

Example number 3: Posing Hatoko.

“...”

“...”

“So...Hatoko?” I said, breaking several seconds of drawn-out silence. “Why’re you looking over your shoulder at me while you nibble your thumbnail?”

“W-Well, what do you think? Does this make me look sexy...?”

“Seriously? Maybe it would’ve, like, a couple decades ago, but that’s way out of style now! You don’t even see sexy poses like that in smutty swimsuit magazines these days!”

“...”

“What? Why’d you freeze up?”

“Umm... So, I guess...that means you read that sort of magazine, huh, Juu...?”

“N-N-No, I don’t! They just put sections for that sorta stuff in manga magazines sometimes, that’s all!”

Is it just me? Am I the only one who feels more embarrassed about people thinking I buy smutty swimsuit magazines than people thinking I buy outright porn?

Example number 4: Eye-rolling Hatoko.

“Hey, Juu? I could really go for some shaved ice right about now,” Hatoko said in an almost saccharinely pleading voice around lunchtime.

“Yeah, good idea. I could go for some too, now that you— Whooooooaugh?!” I shrieked as I turned around to face her, on account of the fact that for who the hell knows what reason, Hatoko had her eyes rolled all the way back into her head! “H-Holy crap, what’s wrong, Hatoko?! Did you pass out on your feet?! Or, what, is that supposed to be Nishikawa Akihiro’s signature pose?!”

“What? No, I just...umm, well, I was t-trying to do puppy dog eyes...”

“Puppy dog eyes?! Nooope nope nope, that is way off! Not even close!”

“N-No waaay... But I thought that ‘puppy dog eyes’ just meant rolling your eyes up! Like...schlorp, done! You know?”

“Okay, first off, ‘schlorp’ is not the right sound effect for that! And second, ugh, that’s seriously creepy!”

“Creepy?! C-Come ooon, I can’t believe you’d even say that...”

“I’m just telling the truth! Agh, don’t cry with your eyes rolled back, that makes it so much worse!”

Needless to say, we imposed a strict ban on Hatoko doing puppy dog eyes from that point forward.

Example number 5: Submitting Hatoko.

“Ahh... I’m so full! I think I might’ve eaten too much!” Hatoko said as she lay down on the plastic sheet we’d spread out.

We’d just finished polishing off the yakisoba, curry, and shaved ice that we’d bought from a beachside restaurant. Hatoko was a big fan of the yakisoba from that particular place, and she’d stuffed her face with it every year, but for some inexplicable reason, she didn’t even have a single bite this time. I asked her why, and she just muttered something about seaweed flakes in her teeth. I didn’t get it at all.

“Careful, Hatoko! They say you’ll turn into a cow if you nap right after eating, you know?”

“No way turning into a cow’s that easy,” Hatoko countered.

“They say you’ll get a nasty case of acid reflux if you nap right after eating, you know?”

“That’s...a little scary, actually, but I’ll take the risk.”

This is weird. I was usually the one who’d flop down to nap after lunch, and Hatoko was the one who’d scold me for it, but today our roles had been reversed. I thought it was suspicious, and as I idly watched her stretch out on the sheet, she made a move that just confused me more than ever: she raised her arms up perpendicular to her chest, bent her wrists like a cat’s paws, and pulled her knees up toward her chest as well.

Isn’t that, like, that pose? The one that dogs and cats do to express total submission? Like, because showing their stomach like that proves that they’re harmless or something?

“Hatoko? What’re you doing?” I asked, more than a little dubious about this new development. “Is there some nasty enemy around you’re surrendering to that I’m not seeing, or what?”

“W-Well, what do you think? I bet I look super defenseless right now, don’t I?” Hatoko asked, looking a little proud of herself.

“Well, I mean...yeah, but, like... Wait, are you using Bahamut as your reference point for this?”

“That’s right! Bah does this cute little pose all the time!”

“You mean Bahamut. Bahamut, the God-Dragon of Ruin.”

All questions of formal titles aside, that was a name that really took me back. I haven’t seen Bahamut in way too long, come to think of it. Hope he figures out how to take on his full dragon form soon! Then I could class-change to dragoon!

“H-Hey, Juu?” said Hatoko. Her limbs were starting to tremble pretty badly. I guess that pose must’ve been tough to hold. “I’m totally defenseless now, you know?”

“Uh, yeah. I can see that.”

“My guard’s totally down, right in front of you!”

“Okaaay... So, what, are you telling me I should attack you, or something? Are you asking me to bust out a special move on your stomach?!”

“No way! That’d hurt!”

“No kidding!” So what the heck are you telling me to do?! Part of me thought that I might as well take the chance to tickle her stomach, but me being a guy and her being a girl, I figured that would probably be skirting dangerously close to sexual harassment territory. Regardless, I didn’t have the time to take that thought process any further.

“Juuuraaaiiiiii!” A voice growled from behind me, in much the same tone a certain Kamen Rider might say “Aaamaaazooon!” before transforming.

A chill shot down my spine, and an intense, all-consuming dread made me cower back in fear. I knew only one person who could emit a monstrous, soul-searing aura of death like that.

“You little punk,” Machi growled, emerging onto the scene like a murderous demon-god stepping onto the battlefield. “You must have some guts to leave me stranded under a ton of sand, huh?!”

Impossible! How could she have broken through the seal?!

“So, would you rather I bury your corpse on the beach, or sink it in the sea?” Machi continued. It looked like getting abandoned under a pile of sand for hours on end had really set her off.

I had a pretty good grasp on her moods, and I could tell that this was one of the ones where no apology, no matter how sincere, would convince her to cut me a break. That meant there was only one option left. Time to show her what I can do! I’ve just learned the perfect—nay, ultimate skill for this situation! A skill that surpasses even the mightiest of apologies!

“Total submission pooose!”

“Ugh, gross!”

“Aaaaaaugh!”

My sister delivered a single powerful blow to my exposed and defenseless abdomen, and I was down for the count. Even I had to admit that, yeah, seeing a high school boy do that pose would be pretty gross.

So, yeah, I think you get the point. Hatoko spent pretty much the whole day acting super weird. If someone had asked me how she’d been weird, I would’ve been hard-pressed to put it into words, but in any case, the way she was behaving now was plainly different from how she’d behaved when we’d gone to the beach every other year up until now. Plus, her weird behavior showed no sign of stopping.

“Tee hee hee! Catch me if you caaan!” Hatoko said as she ran along the beachside path, her tittering laugh coming across as some sort of half-baked attempt at a well-bred noble lady’s affect.

It was pretty clear that she wanted to play tag, and I begrudgingly decided to humor her and chased after her. Hatoko was running at a pretty rapid clip, so I set my pace at a dash as well. There was just one problem.

“Hah... Haaah... Haaah...”

I was tired. Like, seriously, running on a beach is so friggin’ tiring! It felt like my feet were getting caught up in the sand with each and every step, which made running the way I usually would impossible. It was like I was expending several times as much energy as it took to run on solid ground. I vaguely remembered seeing characters in sports manga talk about running or working out on the beach like it was some sort of super secret training method, and yeah, now that I was experiencing it for myself, I could definitely see it producing some real gains. A single game of tag on the beach, and it already felt like my legs were getting pushed to the next level! My reward: unbearable soreness the day after, probably.

“G-Got youuu!” I gasped as I slapped a hand onto Hatoko’s shoulder, ten minutes of nonstop, all-out running later. And that’s how you make casual body contact, by the way!

Hatoko was panting almost as heavily as I was. “Y-Yeah, you got me,” she admitted before gasping, then breaking down in a coughing fit.

“How...are you so...fast?” I asked, then coughed, gasped, and started coughing again.

“Huh? Wh-What...?” Hatoko said, then went right back to panting for air.

“I just—” I began, then started hacking up a lung again before I could even get my third word out. Neither of us were even remotely capable of communicating through our desperate attempts to breathe. Seriously, who goes that all out playing tag?

“Haaah... Nope, I’m out,” I said. “I gotta sit down for a minute and catch my breath...”

“Y-Yeah... Good idea,” said Hatoko. “I’m feeling really hot all of a sudden...”

The two of us more or less crumpled to our backsides. There wasn’t another person around to be seen. It seemed our eternal game of tag had taken us far away from the section of the beach where swimming was permitted. Big, rugged boulders stuck out from the beach here and there, and there were a bunch of tetrapod blocks just a little ways further along. The beach had been really noisy back by the swimming area, but that tumult had completely vanished, and now only the sound of the waves was left to serenade us...well, okay, the sound of the waves and both of our desperate, heaving attempts to, y’know, breathe. Wasn’t exactly the most picturesque scene, I’ll admit.

“So hey, Hatoko,” I said after I finally caught my breath. “What was the point of all this, anyway? Is today leg day for you or something?”

“U-Umm, well... I’m not really sure either, at this point. Heh heh,” Hatoko muttered with an awkward smile. Her motives were, in short, literally impossible to decipher.

For a moment, the two of us sank into silence.

“Hey, Juu?” Hatoko eventually said. She sounded almost determined—like she’d resolved herself for something. “Have I... Have I really gotten more womanly?”

“Huh?”

“Y-You know, like you said earlier!”

“Oh! Yeah... Well, I mean...I said it for a reason, right? So, yeah. I’d say you have, compared to how you used to be.”

“Okay, then...”

“Yeah.”

“So, umm... I think you’ve gotten manlier too, Juu. I mean...compared to how you used to be.”

“Oh? Well, thanks, I guess.”

Something about all of this felt, well...strange. Normally, being with Hatoko felt as comfortable and natural as could be, but this just felt weird, and awkward. I couldn’t calm down, no matter how hard I tried. The conversation’s flow was ungraspable, and the distance between us unfathomable.

“Hey, Juu...? Do you have a crush on anyone?” Hatoko asked out of absolutely nowhere. I was already feeling uneasy, and the question was so unlike her I felt even less comfortable than ever now.

“Wh-Whoa, talk about a Gáe Bulg from the blue,” I said in a panic. I was not prepared for love talk! It felt like high schoolers gossiping about love and romance was sort of supposed to be a fact of life, but as far as I could remember, Hatoko and I had never had a real, proper conversation about any of that sort of stuff before. It’s not like I’d been avoiding it, or anything...

“...”

...Okay, no. Maybe I had been avoiding it. Maybe both of us had, unconsciously. Maybe we’d been trying as hard as we could to not have this conversation, dodging it over and over.

My mind drifted back to Sagami Shizumu and Futaba Tamaki. We’d had a kinda scattered relationship between the four of us—not a square or a triangle, but a less defined sort of association. Those two had seemed to make the most perfect, happy couple to Hatoko and me, and yet their relationship had ended in the most catastrophic of breakdowns—a tragic, disastrous implosion that had also been preordained since its very beginning.

“Nope, sure don’t,” I said. “I just, like...I dunno. I don’t really get stuff like that yet.”

I didn’t really think I’d been traumatized or anything like that. I just didn’t want to think about things in terms of romance. Back when I was in the eighth grade—when I’d given up my eighth-grade syndrome—I’d wound up looking up to a couple that, in truth, had never been much of a couple at all. The very first concrete example of romance I’d ever been involved with had looked perfect from the outside, but the moment I’d taken a peek under the surface, I’d found nothing but calamity within.

The world I’d idolized had turned out to be a cheap facade made of papier-mâché, and as a result, I’d found myself resenting the part of me that had ever aspired to have the sort of relationship I’d thought they had. I found the idea that I’d ever thought “I wish I could find a girlfriend like Sagami did,” or “I hope I fall for someone as hard as Tamaki has” downright comical...and I found all of it just plain futile.

“Okay,” Hatoko quietly said, her head slightly hung. She’d inched her way across a line that the two of us had left undisturbed for the entirety of our relationship, and I couldn’t tell from her expression alone whether or not she’d done so intentionally.

“What about you? Do you have a thing for anyone?” I casually asked, then flinched back as I realized how close to me Hatoko had drawn.

We’d been sitting a solid half meter or so away from each other, but before I knew it, the gap had narrowed to ten centimeters or so—and to top it off, she was still getting closer, slowly but surely crawling toward me on all fours, her pose doing a very good job of emphasizing her bust. It also made her look like a carnivore about to leap upon its prey, which made no sense! It was Hatoko! She was named after a bird!

“Juu,” said Hatoko. Our faces were incredibly close now, and I reeled back reflexively, but Hatoko just drew even closer in return, making the action moot. “You know what? I, well...” she said, her voice carrying a very suggestive sort of tone that felt like it was tickling my ear. Hatoko’s voice was normally calm and gentle, but this tone couldn’t have been further from the ordinary. This was the voice of a girl—of a woman.

“Hatoko...? W-Wait a second! Why’re you g-getting so close?” I asked, turning my head away from her without even realizing it. My eyes, however, remained glued to her face. Whether I liked it or not, my gaze was irresistibly drawn to the childhood friend who was suddenly stirring up an excess of conflicting feelings within me.

Her cheeks were red, and each breath that passed through her lips felt like it carried a flirtatious weight to it. Her faintly clouded eyes were locked onto my face, and after all those failed attempts, she’d finally managed to use them for a proper puppy dog stare. We were completely alone. Alone together, on the beach, with only the sound of the waves in the background...and I was bewildered. The whole situation had thrown my mind into a state of chaos.

“Juu...”

“H-Hatoko? Wh-Whoa,” I said as she finally leaned in far enough to push me over onto the sand. Her hands were on my shoulders, pinning me to the beach. It’s not like she was strong enough to hold me down, really, but for some reason, I couldn’t resist her.

I was face-up, and for a moment, the brilliant, piercingly blue summer sky dominated my vision, but before I knew it, Hatoko loomed large and blotted it out. My field of view became occupied entirely by the unduly sensual face of the girl above me, her expression carrying a sense of longing that made me feel something deep within me as well.

“Hatoko...”

“Juu, I... I...”

Hatoko’s gaze was fixed on me...or so I thought. A second later, though, her focus slipped off me, then started drifting all over the place. Almost spinning in circles, really, like a dizzy dragonfly.

“I...kinda feel...really, really dizzy...”

With that, Hatoko collapsed on top of me. I’m talking her entire body weight falling onto my chest all at once, by the way, causing me to let out a frog-like grunt of pain. Her skin was pressing right into mine, her abundant bosom squishing against my—wait, no, this is not the time to be describing this crap!

“Hatoko?! Hey, Hatoko?!”

☆

...I got heatstroke.

It goes without saying how I ended up that way: our beachside game of tag—which I’d suggested—was to blame. I’d been running away from Juu as fast as I could under the blazing hot sun, on the poor footing of a sandy beach, so of course it had done me in.

Looking back on it, I couldn’t even remember why I’d decided to take running away from him so seriously. Did I think him catching me would mean the game was over...? But, wait— Huh? Would the game being over even have been a bad thing? Why is it such a thing for couples to play tag on the beach in the first place, anyway? What’s the goal? What signals that the game’s over? Hmm... I don’t get this at all.

I sighed deeply as I sat on the shore, looking out over the evening waves. The beach had been jam-packed with people in the afternoon, but now that night had fallen, barely anyone was around anymore. There tended to be a bunch of people playing with fireworks here at night in the past, but enough of them had failed to dispose of their trash properly that the beach had banned fireworks altogether last year.

I glanced up into the sky and was dazzled by the spread of stars above me. I picked out the Summer Triangle, made up of Deneb, Altair, and Vega. Then I found Scorpius, and right above it was...

Umm...wait, which was that one again? Ophi-something or other, I think?

“Was it...Ophisaurus?”

“It’s Ophiuchus.”

Just like that, without warning, a voice cut in and interrupted my muttered musing.

“The constellation Ophiuchus, made in the image of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. Asclepius was the son of Apollo, the god of the sun, and was known for being a prodigious practitioner of the healing arts. Too prodigious, in fact, for in his pursuit of his art, he became capable of even bringing the dead back to life—and in so doing, trod into the realm of unspeakable taboo. Resurrecting the dead, you see, brought the wrath of Hades, the god of the underworld, upon him. Hades sought counsel with Zeus, the king of all gods, who in turn struck down Asclepius with a bolt of lightning, ending his life. Indeed...the story of Asclepius is the story of talent so great it turned to tragedy. If he had only been born with the talents of a common man, he would have likely been spared the lightning’s judgment. Mankind is wont to bemoan our lack of talent, but the tale of Asclepius begs the question: could not an excess of talent prove just as miserable?”

His speech ended with a raised tone, as if he were asking a question. As if I would ever have an answer for something like that. “Juu,” I said.

“Hey,” said Juu as he sat down beside me. “You doing okay? I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Thought you’d be in your room at first, but nope.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. I’d drunk plenty of water and rested up over the course of the afternoon, and ended up feeling better before I knew it. I still felt a little sluggish, but not enough to cause me any real trouble. “And oh, that’s right. That one’s Ophiuchus!”

“Yup. Ophiuchus. Not Serpentarius.”

“And, umm...what was his name? Asper—no, Aspil...Pil...Pickle Pistacious?”

“What sorta cursed mixture of salty and savory did that name come from?! It’s Asclepius! Apollo’s son, Asclepius! A tragic god bequeathed with talent so extraordinary it led him into the realm of taboo!”

“The realm of tabouli? That sounds like a tasty place to visit!”

“Taboo, not tabouli! Asclepius never ventured into the realm of salad!”

Juu was almost too knowledgeable when it came to constellations. Or really, I guess it’d be better to say that he was knowledgeable when it came to Greek mythology, which just happened to be the background the constellations were drawn from. He’d never been interested in astrology or fortune-telling at all.

“Man, though, Ophiuchus really is one of the greats,” Juu said absentmindedly. “Gives me chills every time. The fact that it uses the snake as a symbol of immortality and rebirth is cool enough on its own, but then there’s also the fact that whether or not it gets counted determines whether there are twelve or thirteen constellations in the zodiac, which makes it feel super important too! Ophiuchus: hella cool!”

“You think? I like your constellation, Juu,” I said. It might’ve sounded like I was trying to butter him up, but really, I was just being honest. “The crab’s—”

“Don’t call it the crab!” Juu snapped. He really shouted it! I mean, super loudly!

Th-That’s right... I’d totally forgotten that Juu was really, reeeally sensitive about his own star sign.

“For crying out loud, the crab? Seriously...? All the other zodiac signs get cool stuff like a lion or a scorpion, so why’d I have to get a friggin’ crab of all things...?” Juu muttered as he clenched his fists with frustration.

His birthday, by the way, worked out to the sign of the crab whether you were using the twelve-sign system or the thirteen-sign system. He was a crab among crabs. The King Crab.

“And to make matters worse, the Greek myth it’s modeled after is super lame! Y’know how Hercules fought the hydra? Well, the sign of the crab...is based off a crab that Hercules stepped on during the battle. Like, come on! There’s bit characters, and then there’s this crap! He could’ve at least had the decency to stab the stupid thing!”

“Well, I like crabs! They’re delicious!” I said.

“No, you don’t get it... That’s just not the point! I like eating crabs too, but, like...your zodiac animal plays a role in determining your very destiny, and I got a friggin’ arthropod! Heck, pretty much all the mythological crabs all across the world kinda suck! Saint Seiya treated its crab like crap, and the one in Kamen Rider Ryuki wasn’t exactly great either... Oh, but I guess we did get a pretty awesome crab character in Terra Formars recently...”

Personally, I didn’t understand what would make somebody’s zodiac sign feel cool or not. The most I’d thought about them was thinking that Virgo was kind of cute when I learned some people call it “the maiden.” I’m sure Tomoyo would understand what he was talking about in an instant, if she were here—

“...”

Oh. There I go again. Once again, I’d caught myself asking “But what if it were Tomoyo instead of me?” It was only recently that I’d figured out what was going on with that. I’d finally realized the identity of that strange, ambiguous sense of unease deep within me.

It was jealousy. That’s what I was feeling.

“Hey, Juu?” I said, trying to draw his attention away from the constellation he was still fixated on. “You know, I...did something pretty mean to Tomoyo the other day.”

“I have a crush on Juu.”

Not even I understood why I’d felt the need to go and say that. It was like I’d been making a show of it, or rubbing her face in it, or offering it as a declaration of war. Maybe it was because I felt jealous, or envious—or because I sensed an oncoming crisis.

“Do you have a crush on anyone?”

The one thing I knew for sure was that I’d hurt Tomoyo’s feelings. She hadn’t answered my awful, intentionally mean question, and had just run out from the club room. I hadn’t exchanged so much as a word with her since.

Why did I have to do that? What did I even want Tomoyo to say to me?

“You did something mean to Tomoyo...? You?” Juu said disbelievingly. “Sure didn’t have that on the list of things I expected to hear today. Whatever happened, are you sure you’re not just overthinking it?”

“No...I’m not,” I said with a shake of my head. I wasn’t overthinking it, and I wasn’t making a mountain out of a molehill. I’d been perfectly aware of how mean I was being even as I’d asked the question, after all.

“What did you do? Like, specifically?” asked Juu. I clammed up, and a moment later, he awkwardly added, “I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool too...”

“A chosen one,” I finally said. “I wanted to be a chosen one.”

Even I was a little put off by how abrupt of a segue that had been. Juu, unsurprisingly, arched an eyebrow and cocked his head in confusion. A second later, though, his eyes lit up with understanding.

“Ah, don’t tell me,” he said. “Does all that advice you were following from your How-to Guide to Beachside Summer Romance or whatever have something to do with being a chosen one too?”

“Yeah...I mean, sort of? They’re a little related, at— Wait, whaaaaaaaaat?!” I shrieked. My eyes went so wide they became more white than iris. “H-H-H-How?! How do you know about that, Juu?!”

“Ah...sorry,” Juu said. “Y’know how I said I checked to see if you were in your room? It was lying out on the table.”

Ack! Come to think of it...I really did forget to put it away, didn’t I? Machi had brought my belongings back to the hotel for me after I’d collapsed, and all that lying around while I was recovering had gotten a little boring, so I’d dug the magazine and the guidebook out of my bag to read... S-So, he really saw it...? O-Oh, jeez, just kill me now!

“U-Ugggh,” I groaned. “I-I can’t believe you, Juu... You big jerkface...”

“H-Hey, I said I was sorry, okay?” said Juu. He really did look remorseful. “But, well...I guess that explains why you were acting so weird today,” he added. “When you say you wanted to be a chosen one, do you mean, like, you want to be popular? Is that it? You just wanted to see what it would be like to get some attention from guys?”

“U-Umm... That’s not quite right, but not quite wrong either... But, well, okay. Yeah, I guess I did. I guess I might’ve wanted to see what it felt like to be popular, a little,” I replied in vague agreement, unable to find the right words to deny it.

Juu, it seemed, thought that I’d been reading that manual because I wanted to be popular in general. The truth, though, was that I’d only wanted to be popular with him—to be chosen by him. He hadn’t figured that out yet, which was just as relieving as it was disappointing.

“Hey, Juu? Can you really become a chosen one if you just try hard enough?” I asked. “That’s not how it works, is it? Sometimes you try and try, but in the end, you don’t get chosen anyway, and that’s that, right?”

That’s exactly what makes being chosen such a special, joyous thing. Behind every chosen one stands a crowd of people who weren’t chosen.

“Maybe it’s all set in stone from the beginning,” I said. “Maybe whether or not you get chosen isn’t something you can change at all...”

Maybe it’s like how everyone has different strengths and weaknesses that they’re just born with. Like how I don’t have any “chuuni power,” whatever that means, but Tomoyo has more than enough to spare.

“And anyway, doesn’t deciding that you want to be a chosen one rule you out to begin with? A real chosen one would never think something like that, would they...?”

“I’m, uh...not sure I’m really getting the point here,” said Juu, who definitely looked a little frazzled by everything I’d just dumped on him. “But, okay—when you say ‘chosen one,’ can I take that to mean, like, ‘someone who gets all sorts of stuff handed to them like they’re the main character of a story’? Like, a person who must’ve done something crazy good in a past life and is born with capabilities that put them on a pedestal compared to normal humans? Someone who you can only think must’ve been chosen by destiny itself?”

That wasn’t totally wrong, at least, so I nodded in agreement.

“Gotcha. In that case, yeah, I think you’re mostly right about all that stuff. I think everyone wants to be a chosen one at some point. I sure do—like, believe me, I really do—but, well...if you’re not chosen, then you’re not chosen, and that’s that.”

Juu paused for a moment, and I silently digested his words.

“But that doesn’t mean that wanting to be chosen’s a bad thing. I don’t think that at all,” he added with a tone of frank confidence that made me look back up at him with a start. “You remember that conversation we had on the drive out, right? About metafiction?”

“Y-Yeah,” I said. “Umm... You mean about how when a genre gets popular enough, more and more people start doing meta things to shake up its usual formulas, right?”

“Right—and when those meta things get popular enough, they end up getting rolled into the formula as well,” Juu said with a nod. “Like... Oh, what’s an example you’d get right away... Okay, I bet you’ve seen characters in shoujo manga say stuff like ‘I want to fall in love like the main character of a shoujo manga,’ right?”

I paused to think, and I realized that I had seen that. It felt like I’d seen it pretty often, actually.

“Well, when you really think about it, isn’t that just about the most meta-riffic motivation a character could possibly have? The protagonist of a shoujo manga wants to be the protagonist of a shoujo manga—I mean, come on! But these days, barely anyone would pick that out as being meta at all. After all, it’s pretty hard to find a girl these days who doesn’t read shoujo manga, at least a little. That’s why having a shoujo protagonist who aspires to be like a shoujo protagonist isn’t that shocking at all anymore. It’s just another trope, another cliché. Nobody would make a big deal out of it. In other words, it’s part of the formula.”

Once more, I found myself mulling over his words.

“I can think of a ton of other examples too,” Juu casually added. “Shonen protagonists who want to be like shonen protagonists are a thing as well, to start. Not to mention characters in police dramas who want to be like the main character in a police drama, or main characters in mystery novels who became detectives because they themselves were huge mystery nerds. Then there are heroes in stories who look up to legendary heroes within their stories, or superheroes who grew up wanting to be like the superheroes they saw on TV.”

Juu paused for a moment to look me in the eye.

“Do you see what I’m getting at, Hatoko? Protagonists who want to be protagonists used to be meta, sure. It was a way of poking fun at the clichéd protagonists who defined the established formula of the time, and it was a way of taking an unorthodox approach to storytelling. Before we knew it, though, that unorthodox approach became mainstream. In this day and age, a hero who wants to be a hero is an established archetype capable of winning over legions of fans.”

I returned his gaze, speechless.

“And that means that the desire to be like those protagonists—to be a chosen one—has merit. I think it’s an awesome desire to have, personally! Even if you can’t ever become a real hero, the desire to be one alone is special enough that it’s become a valid and accepted part of the standard storytelling formula.”

I wasn’t sure how to reply. If I’m being totally honest...I didn’t really understand what he was saying. All these theories about writing and media were just a little beyond me. What I did understand, though, was the core of what he was trying to tell me: that there was nothing wrong whatsoever with my desire to be a chosen one.

“And what that means, Hatoko, is that there’s nothing wrong with putting in the work to get popular like you tried to do today. I mean, the fact that you want to be popular in the first place is kinda proof positive that you aren’t popular right now, sure, but in my book, it’s also the first step toward popularity!”

So...it seemed he’d gotten the wrong idea about what I was after in a really upsetting sort of way, and part of me wanted to start screaming and hollering about how it wasn’t like that, honestly...but I could tell that he was trying his absolute hardest to cheer me up. He was just being so earnest and considerate that instead, I found myself chuckling.

I leaned over and tilted my head, just enough to rest it on his shoulder. I was a little shocked by my own boldness, actually—it just happened before I knew what I was doing.

“Wh-What?” said Juu.

“Hmm,” I said. “Just practicing! To help me get popular, you know?”

“Huh?”

“So, how was it? Did I make your heart skip a beat? Do I have this casual contact thing figured out?”

“H-How should I know?” Juu mumbled bashfully as he looked away from me.

It was pretty cute, but then again, I was as embarrassed as he was...actually, way more embarrassed than he was, probably. I felt so awkward that part of me wanted to just stand up and shout, but at the same time, it felt sorta nice as well. It felt like I’d finally let out a long, deep breath I’d been holding—like a terrible, all-encompassing weight had been lifted from me and my heart had been set at ease.

The chosen one. I’d been clinging to those words, even though I had no memory of who’d said them to me in the first place, bound by the idea that I had to be chosen, no matter what. Now, though, it was as if those bindings had been gently lifted from me. This whole time, I’d forgotten something incredibly important. Whether or not Juu chose me—whether or not I was chosen—was important too, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t the most important question at hand. It wasn’t the start of all this.

Why had I wanted to be chosen? Because I was in love with Juu. That was it. That was where it all began. That was the most important fact. I loved him, so I wanted him to choose me. That was the one thing I should’ve kept sight of, no matter what. My desire to be the chosen one wasn’t misplaced, but at the same time, I had a more important feeling that I had to confront first. I couldn’t spend all my time fussing over the result—I had to give the feelings that led me to want to be chosen their proper due. And if I did...

“...Jurai.”

“Pbbb!” went Juu, choking on nothing. “H-Hatoko? Wh-What the heck? Why the sudden full name...?”

“Hee hee hee! Just had the urge to say it for fun!” I replied.

“M-Man. I don’t think you’ve called me that in years! Or, actually, was this the first time? You always called me Juu back in kindergarten, no matter how many times I told you to stop...”

“Jurai!”

“Aaagh, stop! God, that feels so wrong! I can’t deal with this!”

“Okay—then can I keep calling you Juu from now on, instead?” I asked.

“Knock yourself out,” Juu grumbled.

“Yaaay! It’s official, then! Juu, Juu!”

“Mwa ha ha... You and your silly little appellations will shake them off my true trail, so I shall tolerate your antics for the time being. I would easily pay such a price to mask the truth: that the sovereign lord of Hades, Guiltia Sin Jurai, is none other than my true—”

“Juu, Juu, Juu, Juu!”

“Hey! Are you even listening?!”

I think Juu was shouting about something, but I didn’t pay him any mind and just kept singing out my pet name for him over and over. I’d say it as many times as I possibly could, until my throat grew sore and my voice hoarse.