Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 9 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Toki Shuugo

If your fangs have chipped, pull them.

If your claws have dulled, shed them.

For a disgraced and damaged blade that’s lost its place

Will cut nothing—not even itself.

—Excerpt from the Reverse Crux Record

The text Saitou Hitomi had sent was incredibly gentle in tone and content. She’d gone out of her way to not come across like she was blaming its recipient for not having contacted her in days, and she’d focused solely on her concern for his safety. It was a text that made it very clear how kindhearted a woman she was.

Toki Shuugo, however, clicked his tongue with irritation as he read the message, then shoved his phone back into his pocket without bothering to reply. He scowled, lowered his helmet’s visor, and pulled his motorcycle back onto the road from the shoulder where he’d momentarily come to a stop.

The hell’s she want from me? Shuugo thought as he raced along precisely at the speed limit, weaving cleanly between the cars ahead of him. The smooth, consistent movement of his motorcycle stood in sharp contrast to the disordered mess of his thoughts. His mind was sluggish and stagnant—and above all else, he was just plain pissed off.

Son of a bitch!

Shuugo was annoyed. He was really annoyed. He didn’t understand what it was he was so annoyed about, but that just annoyed him more than ever. All he knew was when it had started: upon Habikino Hatsuhiko’s recent invitation. Ever since then, a distinct sense of inexplicable discomfort had lingered within his gut.

Shuugo had immediately and unambiguously shot the offer down. He had nothing to feel guilty about and no reason to hesitate to reply to Hitomi’s message. He could have simply reported his victory to her and waited for further orders from Kiryuu Hajime, just like always—

Ah, okay. I get it now. That’s what I’m so pissed off about, Shuugo thought, his expression twisting into a grimace behind his visor. Why the hell am I acting like it’s totally natural for me to be pals with those people?!

“Unless there’s some reason you’re obligated to follow Kiryuu Hajime’s orders?”

Shuugo hadn’t had an answer to Habikino Hatsuhiko’s question. Why was he following Kiryuu’s orders? Why had he become his underling? What chain of events had led to him becoming a “wing of a fallen angel,” of all the stupidly cryptic nonsense? Kiryuu gave orders like it was only natural, and Shuugo followed them as if it were a matter of course. There was a clear and present pecking order to their relationship. One was the boss, and one was the follower—the hierarchy was plain to see.

Over the course of the Fifth Spirit War, Shuugo had taken on and laid low a multitude of Players. In terms of pure kill count, he might well have been Fallen Black’s top achiever. That being said, Shuugo had never had a clear motivation to fight in the War. He had no wish he hoped to fulfill, and he didn’t feel any sense of duty or obligation toward Kiryuu or any of his other teammates. He simply received his orders and carried them out without protest. It was almost like...

“It’s like you’re some sorta mercenary, y’know?” the tall man sitting on the parking lot curb said matter-of-factly as he looked Shuugo straight in the eye. He had the air of a calm, mild-mannered individual, judging by his features, and his black biker jacket and stiffly spiked hair did surprisingly little to diminish that image. Nothing about him gave the impression that he was gruff or wild. It might’ve been the look in his eyes. His gaze gave a gentle, almost docile impression.

The atmosphere in the parking lot was downright boisterous. Raucous, youthful laughter and the clamorous din of running engines rang out freely with complete disregard for the fact that it was the middle of the night. The parking lot in question belonged to a twenty-four-hour convenience store set up beside a highway. Most customers arrived in cars, so the parking lot was much larger than most convenience stores’ to accommodate them—but on that night in particular, the entire lot had been occupied by a single group, their flashily modified motorcycles lined up in a row.

The group’s members were a bunch of young, vulgar thugs. You could tell at a glance that they were the sort of troublemakers who’d never amount to anything, and as a result, anyone who wasn’t part of their gang didn’t dare to approach the store. Every once in a while a car would pull up close enough for its driver to see the state of things in the lot, only to pull a U-turn and speed off just as quickly as it had arrived.

“You tryin’ to pick a fight, Yousuke?” Shuugo asked with a glare.

“Ha ha! Nah, I’m not making fun of you or anything. Guess I’m not exactly complimenting you either though,” the man in the biker jacket, Kurumaya Yousuke, replied with a flippant laugh before pulling out a pack of cigarettes and slotting one into his mouth. “I forget—you don’t smoke, do you, Shuugo?”

“Nah. Still a minor,” Shuugo replied.

“Not every day you hear that from the second-in-command of a gang. You’re one conscientious guy when it comes to stuff like that, huh?” Yousuke said as he lit his cigarette up with a cheap disposable lighter.

Yousuke’s gang, Cruise, was made up of a couple dozen motorcycle-loving juvenile delinquents. They would blaze down the highways, feud over territory with the other local gangs, and didn’t shy away from violence and crime when the moment called for it. From the perspective of society at large, they were very much the bad guys, and Shuugo served as their second-in-command.

“Anyway, what was I saying...? Ah, right, I was talking about how it feels like you’re some sorta mercenary,” Yousuke said, not sounding particularly serious about the theory. In spite of his flashy appearance, he came across as an oddly calm man—subdued, even. No one would be likely to pick him out as the gang’s leader when the rest of their rowdy band of ruffians were present, that was for sure. “I mean, I’m not trying to make a big thing out of it or anything, but, like... Okay, y’know how we just kicked the living hell outta the Underdogs? At this point, there aren’t any other gangs out there that could pick a fight with us and get away with it, right?”

“Right,” said Shuugo.

“Well, when all’s said and done? You’re the one who did most of the work taking the Underdogs out. You charged in right outta the gate, and you threw them off their game so much that the rest of us could sweep in and mop up. You’re the one who took out their boss too.”

“Quit kissing my ass, okay?”

“Hey, Shuugo,” Yousuke said, throwing an abrupt swerve into the flow of the conversation. “Why did you go out and fight all those guys?”

Shuugo blinked. “Huh? What’re you talking about? I did it ’cause you told me to, no shit! And you’re the one who said I should lead the charge, for that—”

“Right. That’s what I’m talking about.”

Shuugo fell silent.

“I told you to do it, yeah. I was acting as Cruise’s head honcho and gave you an order. I’d call it a pretty crazy and reckless order, actually, but I had faith that you’d be able to pull it off. The thing is, though,” Yousuke said, pausing to take a drag on his cigarette and breathe out a cloud of white smoke, “it’s not like you have faith in me, do you?”

“...”

“You didn’t even consider it, did you? You just shut up and followed my orders. That’s not having faith in someone—that’s giving up on thinking, period.”

Shuugo didn’t say a word. Or, really, he couldn’t say a word.

“The rest of our boys all have some sorta motivation to fight, y’know? Some of them can’t stand the other guys, some of them want revenge, some of them love a good brawl, and some of them just like how it hypes up our team. But not you, Shuugo. You’re the only one who went out into that battle totally hollow.”

“Hollow...?”

“Ahh, nah, that’s going a little too far. It’s not quite that you’re a mindless puppet or whatever. You’d probably run away if your life was at risk, my orders be damned, and you’d bite back if I told you to do something impossible. You’ve just got no initiative, that’s all—and that’s what makes you a mercenary,” said Yousuke, giving Shuugo an uncomfortably earnest look. “In terms of toughness, you’re probably the best of us. I bet not even I could go toe to toe with you...and yet, I’m the boss anyway.”

Of course you are, Shuugo muttered internally. Kurumaya Yousuke had built Cruise up from nothing. All of its members, Shuugo included, had gathered up under his command out of admiration for him. They were men who’d never fit in with their families, at their schools, or in society in general, and Yousuke had given them a place where they felt like they belonged.

“And if I ever decide to retire from the team—just hypothetically, y’know—I probably wouldn’t make you the next leader,” Yousuke continued. “Even if the others wanted you to take over, I wouldn’t let it happen.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be how it works? If the leader quits, the second-in-command takes over,” Shuugo fired back. He wasn’t actually interested in the position, but being told he wouldn’t be getting it to his face made him want to object on an instinctual level.

“No matter how strong he is, a mercenary can never be king,” said Yousuke. It didn’t quite make sense to Shuugo, but nevertheless, it struck home with him on a very deep level. “Ha ha ha! ’Course, this team’s gonna have to get a lot bigger if I wanna talk about naming a successor without sounding dumb as hell,” Yousuke said with a laugh a moment later.

Around that time, the rest of the crew started to gather up around him.

“What’re you two talking about? And why the hell’re you acting like such downers?” asked one of the bikers.

“Right? Live it up a little, come on! We finally took out those Underdog assholes—it’s time to celebrate!” shouted another.

“Oh, and hey, Yousuke, can you come take a look at this? I snagged one of their carburetors, and it’s not working out like I figured...”

“Hey! Dammit, Mitsuru, whose bike’re you experimenting on this time?!”

The party was in full swing again, and this time, Yousuke was at its center. It was now very clear that he stood at the top of Cruise’s pecking order in both name and substance. There was something about him—some strange appeal that drew people to his side, something that Shuugo lacked entirely.

A mercenary. Shuugo didn’t like it, but he had to admit that the word suited him to a T. He waited for orders, then carried them out to the letter. He’d never felt reluctant to live that way either. If anything, it granted him a sense of fulfillment. If he wanted to sound cool, he’d have said he was the quintessential professional, doing the jobs he was given and nothing else, but he knew that there wasn’t really anything cool about the way he lived at all.

The truth was that Shuugo just wasn’t thinking—about anything. The world sorta just pissed him off, society vaguely got under his skin, and all that ambiguous and sourceless irritation made him all too willing to go on a rampage on command. Yousuke had said that he’d given up on thinking, and when all was said and done, Shuugo couldn’t argue against that.

“Hey, Shuugo?” Yousuke whispered, as if he was slipping the word through a crack in the wall of laughter and celebration that surrounded them. “If you wanna be a mercenary, then that’s fine. You do you. The problem’s that you don’t know that’s what you’re doing. Doesn’t it feel pathetic to just go with the flow and follow orders for no real reason?”

Shuugo didn’t reply, and Yousuke shrugged. “Meh, I mean, you might as well just keep following my orders like always for now, I guess. Just try to start using your head a bit more. You get me? You’re my second-in-command, and that means that part of your job’s to punch me the hell out if I start to lose my way, y’know?”

“Peh!” Shuugo spat. “Better watch yourself, then. You never know when I might stab you in the back.”

“Ha ha ha! Oh, I’ll be careful, all right!” Yousuke chuckled, then he stood up and made his way into the crowd.

As Shuugo watched him go, a thought occurred to him. Yousuke’s...different, he thought. He’s not like all the rest of the stupid assholes I’ve met.

At the same time, Shuugo realized that Yousuke had something that he didn’t. Maybe, just maybe, something would change if he stuck with Yousuke. Maybe this team could change something for him. Maybe he’d be able to find that something he’d always been missing.

“Uhh, excuse me?”

That’s when it happened. Suddenly, a single man called out to Yousuke’s band of lawless troublemakers.

“So, sorry, but, uh...do you think you guys could keep it down a little, please? You’re, you know...sort of getting in the way of our business, I guess...? The other customers can’t come in with you all partying out here,” said the man. His blue-striped shirt identified him as one of the convenience store’s employees in an instant. “I mean, if you ask me, not getting customers is a perk, but my manager’s being a real pain in the ass about it,” he added half-heartedly.

“Huh? Who the hell’re you supposed to be?” grunted one of Cruise’s bikers. In no time at all, he and his fellow delinquents had circled up around the convenience store clerk.

“You think you’re some pretty hot shit, huh?”

“You know we’re paying customers, right? See, look at all the crap we bought from you! This the sorta store that drives away its clientele?”

“You get the picture, right? How ’bout you hustle back into your little store and restock some shelves, Mister Part-Timer?”

The bikers sneered and jeered at the unfortunate young man. None of them were listening to a word he said.

“Oh, for the... Come on, people, the guy’s just doing his job! Give the poor man a break,” Yousuke sighed, stepping toward the rapidly brewing conflict. Reining in his followers when they went overboard was part of his job as their leader, and he probably intended to reprimand them. It happened all the time, and Shuugo watched with an air of detached nonchalance.

Until a chill shot down his spine.

Shuugo’s gaze had met the convenience store clerk’s. He’d looked into the young man’s eyes, one black, and the other—the right one—a deep, unnatural shade of crimson. The mismatched color of his eyes was beyond bizarre.

“Ahh...whatever. Screw it,” the clerk sighed listlessly. “I’m sick of this crap. It just isn’t in character for me at all.”

It was like a switch had been flipped, changing his presence in an instant. His unobtrusive demeanor vanished into thin air, replaced with a haughty, overblown persona. It was such a dramatic shift that, for a moment, the delinquents surrounding the man stiffened up...and he laughed at them, sweeping a hand through his silver hair.

“Bwa ha ha!” the man cackled. It was a dry, peculiar sort of laugh—not to mention unnatural and outlandish, given how he went out of his way to carefully pronounce its every syllable. “So, all I have to do is drive these fools off, and I get an extra fifty yen an hour? My manager might be an insufferable nag, but I have to admit, this is a pretty fun idea!”

“Wh-What the hell’re you laughing at, asshole?!” one of the delinquents shouted. It seemed the man’s insolent attitude had touched a nerve, and the young biker reached out to grab him by the lapels.

“Oh, I’d let go if I were you,” said the man. “This coat’s got anticorporeal and antimagical defensive enhancements worked into its design. Touching it for long’s bad news for an ordinary human.”

“Huh?! You’re wearing a convenience store uniform, dipshit!”

“Ah. Right. Sorry, lemme take that back,” the man said after glancing down at the striped shirt he was wearing. Judging by his profoundly regretful grimace, he’d made some sort of terrible mistake.

“What’re you even talking about, dumbass?!” the delinquent roared. He let go of the clerk’s shirt, clenched a fist, and sent it flying toward his victim’s face...but the instant before the punch landed, the delinquent let out a wheezing gasp and crumpled to the asphalt.

He hadn’t stumbled—that much was obvious. It was nowhere near that gentle of a fall. It was like an enormous, invisible hammer had fallen upon him from overhead, flattening him to the ground in a single, crashing blow.

“Bwa ha ha... So, tell me: how’s it feel to kiss asphalt?” the man mocked as he watched the young delinquent moan with pain. Then he unbuttoned his convenience-store uniform, sweeping it off his shoulders to reveal the purple T-shirt beneath.

“Mitsuru! Are you okay?!”

“The hell did you do to him, asshole?!”

In an instant, Cruise’s members boxed the man in. They were openly wary of him now, not to mention enraged and bewildered. The man, however, remained totally composed in the face of their glares and spread his arms in an exaggerated pose.

“Come at me, tough guys! I’ll teach you that we’re operating on totally different levels— Ah, nah, scratch that,” he said with a quick shake of his head. “I’ll teach you that we’re operating in totally different genres!”

What...the hell?

Shuugo couldn’t believe his eyes. The scene playing out before him was just too absurd, too inconceivable for him to accept, and it left him frozen stock-still.

“Y’know, I actually like reading a delinquent manga or two every once in a while! Everyone loves a good bromance, and all those twisted values and out-there codes of honor that only people who live on the wrong side of society could ever understand? Good shit, right there! But y’know...there’s one thing I think whenever I read one of those,” the man said, speaking clearly and loudly to nobody in particular. “No matter how cool, how strong, how outright crazy and badass the characters in those manga are...”

The man flung his arms wide open, turning his gaze to the night sky.

“...they’d never cut it in the world of a supernatural battle story.”

It was a scene that the word “carnage” did remarkably decent justice to. Dozens of delinquents lay sprawled out on the asphalt, moaning in pain and unable to stand. They’d been annihilated. They’d rushed a single man en masse, and he had turned the tables on them, wiping them out till only one remained.

Who... Who the hell is that guy?!

Even Cruise’s leader, Yousuke, had been laid low in a single blow. Out of their whole crew, the only member who remained standing was Shuugo, and he’d escaped harm through sheer dumb luck. It had just so happened that the curb he’d been sitting on had placed him farther away from the man than everyone else. He’d been seconds late to the brawl as a result...and those seconds were all it had taken for the rest of Cruise to be decimated. In an instant, the place where Toki Shuugo had felt he belonged had crumbled before his eyes.

“What the fuck...did you just do...?” Shuugo asked, his voice trembling as he focused his attention upon the man before him. The man was slender—a twig, really—and didn’t look like he’d be a capable fighter at all, in terms of pure strength.

Appearances, however, couldn’t have been more deceiving, and the man had proved himself tough enough to take out several dozen battle-hardened ruffians. Shuugo hadn’t been close enough to have any clue how he’d pulled it off. One second the fight was beginning, and the next, everyone except for him was on the ground. Not only was their foe unharmed, he hadn’t even broken a sweat. Whatever had happened could only be described as supernatural.

“Guess that just leaves...one guy, huh? You’re last, shoulder-tattoo,” the silver-haired man said as he looked over toward Shuugo. “What’s your move? If you wanna run, that’s cool with me, but if you wanna make like your buddies and dance the hard luck waltz, then be my guest.”

Shuugo’s gaze shifted from the man and his sneering smile to the rest of Cruise’s members laid out on the ground, Yousuke among them. The leader had gone down just as easily as his men had, and he was just as firmly incapacitated. The man Shuugo had followed—the man he’d decided to stick with—had been curb-stomped like any other schmuck in a matter of seconds.

“What? Can’t throw a punch without your boss giving the order first?”

Shuugo took in a sharp breath. There was no telling why the man had picked that taunt in particular, but whatever the reason, it’d sent Shuugo’s emotions into a seething boil.

“Like hell, asshole!” Shuugo shouted, his hand dropping reflexively to his back pocket. He pulled out his jackknife, flicking it open in a flash and holding it at the ready. It was a sharp, keenly honed knife, and the light glinted off its carefully maintained body.

That knife was Shuugo’s favorite weapon, but in all practicality, he carried it for self-defense purposes and rarely ever used it in actual combat. Shuugo had no compunctions against getting violent when the need arose, but he also had enough common sense to not come out stabbing in a street fight. He was a brawler, not a killer. Now, however, he was bringing it out without hesitation. A deep, instinctual fear drove him to pull out all the stops—even the potentially lethal ones.

“You’re dead!”

A flash of light streaked through the air. Shuugo shot forward at a near superhuman speed, closing in on his target and stabbing in the same motion. It was the fastest, most direct line of attack he could have chosen—and it didn’t work.

“Wha—” Shuugo gasped, his eyes widening with shock. Before he’d even realized what was happening, the man he was trying to stab had leaped into the air...and landed on the blade of his knife.

“You’re pretty fast! Decent aim too. Too emotional, though. Getting that worked up makes your attacks stupid easy to read,” the man lectured from atop Shuugo’s knife. His arrogant tone probably would’ve pissed Shuugo off to no end if it weren’t for the fact that he was so stunned and bewildered, he didn’t even hear what the man had to say.

What...? No, this doesn’t make sense. This shit doesn’t happen in real life!

Moves like that came up all the time in manga. A fighter would take a swing, only for their foe to effortlessly dodge the attack and land on their opponent’s weapon. The goal, typically, was to show off how incredibly fast the dodger was, but anyone with an ounce of sense could tell you that the fighter who was apparently strong enough to not even notice that a human’s worth of weight had suddenly been added to their weapon was the really impressive one. In any case, it was one of those classic manga techniques that had absolutely no real-world application under any circumstances.

But he’s...not heavy at all?

Shuugo was in exactly that sort of situation—holding a human up one-handed—and he felt nothing. His knife didn’t feel any heavier than it ever did. It was as if the man had discarded his body weight entirely.

“Lucifer’s Strike.”

“Huh?”

“Such is the name of the profane power I call my own.”

“Power...?”

“You should feel honored to fall victim to this technique. Your very body will become a warning—a sign to inform all and sundry of my dominance!” the man said, heedless of the fact that Shuugo hadn’t understood a single word that had come out of his mouth.

The man leaped off the knife’s blade, soaring gently through the air before touching down without a sound and stepping toward Shuugo once more. The man’s hands had never left his pockets throughout that whole display, yet something about his approach gave off an intense, intimidating pressure. Shuugo’s legs felt like they’d been nailed to the ground. He couldn’t move an inch.

Son of a bitch! Shuugo shouted internally, his grip tightening around his knife’s handle.

“Oh? That’s a good look in your eyes,” said the man. “You haven’t given up yet, have you? Pretty impressive.”

“Like hell I’d let this end before I give you what you’ve got coming!” Shuugo spat back.

“I see I’ve found another hopeless fool who lives under the misapprehension that he has a chance of standing up against my power... Heh! It’s tragic, really.”

The silver-haired man stepped closer. The distance between the two fighters shrank. Then, as the man finally pulled his hands from his pockets...

“S-Stop, please...”

A faint, strained voice rang out through the space between the two, and the silver-haired man stopped in his tracks.

“Yousuke,” Shuugo whispered. And, indeed, that voice belonged to Cruise’s leader. He still couldn’t stand, it seemed, but he had dragged himself across the ground, slowly and painfully making his way to the man’s feet.

“You win. I’m sorry,” Yousuke said. He pushed himself up to his hands and knees, just enough to press his head to the ground once more in a deep, supplicating bow of apology.

“Hey! The hell’re you doing, Yousuke?! Why would you bow down to this asshole?!” Shuugo bellowed.

Yousuke didn’t so much as budge. “I’m begging you,” he said. “Stop hurting my friends, please!”

“What the fuck?!” Shuugo shouted, desperate to bring an end to his boss’s stubborn effort to apologize. “Stand up, god dammit! Are you really gonna let him look down on you like this?! Fight, Yousuke! Fight! We’re... We’re better than this...”

“Man... Yeah, I’m not feeling this anymore,” the silver-haired man said with a deep sigh. “C’mon, man, quit groveling. You’re making me look like the bad guy here. Give me a break, honestly—none of this would’ve happened if you people hadn’t decided to whoop it up in a public parking lot and kill all our business, y’know?” he said, scratching his head and already sounding like he was bored with the whole encounter. “Guess I did it again, huh? I came out here to protect the store’s peace, knock some bad guys’ heads in, and get myself a raise, but I just had to go and get carried away... Might’ve been kinda immature to go all out on a buncha unpowered scrubs.”

“Say wha—”

“Don’t even try it, shoulder-tattoo. You don’t stand a chance against me.”

Shuugo choked on his words, and the man continued.

“In my world, punks and thugs like you get treated like dirt. They exist to be all ‘What the hell’re you lookin’ at, asshole?!’ or ‘Hey, hot stuff, how ’bout I show you a good time?’ or whatever, then they get slaughtered by the main character and never turn up again. It’s a role for losers,” he rambled incoherently as he picked up his discarded convenience store uniform, patted the dust off it, and pulled it on again. “Anyway, try to learn a thing or two from this, ladies and gentlepunks. Do yourselves a favor and never kick up a fuss in our parking lot again. If you’re gonna be a problem, do it in our rival store’s lot. It’s about three hundred meters down thataway or so. Like, seriously, go nuts.”

With those apathetic parting words, the man stepped back into the convenience store. He’d been so sloppy, so purely half-hearted with his lecture, it was plain to see that he didn’t give the slightest hint of a crap about Shuugo or his teammates. Shuugo was left standing there, unable to do anything but clench his fist around his still-drawn knife.

And so, the biker gang Cruise had been completely annihilated on the whim of a single convenience store clerk. Some time afterward, a spirit named Marilino who’d witnessed the supernatural battle that had gone down that night contacted Shuugo, revealing to him both the existence of the Spirit War and the identity of Kiryuu Hajime. Shuugo accepted the invitation that the spirit extended to him, and thus he set foot into the world that Kiryuu had cryptically alluded to.

One might think that Shuugo was driven by a desire to take revenge on Kiryuu...but that wasn’t the case. Kiryuu’s reputation had been beginning to grow, and Marilino had apparently chosen to act as Shuugo’s Spirit Handler specifically because the biker seemed likely to pick a fight with—and maybe even take down—the now infamous Player, but in the end, that plan had failed spectacularly.

Shuugo felt no drive to avenge his old gang, nor did he resent Kiryuu for its destruction. The moment he’d witnessed Kurumaya Yousuke, the man he’d respected above all others, suffer a humiliating defeat and beg the man who’d beaten him for mercy, something inside him that he couldn’t put a name to had broken with a violent, almost audible snap. For the briefest of moments, it had felt like he’d found something to fill the void within him, but now it was back, and emptier than ever.

When Shuugo and Kiryuu eventually reunited in the world of supernatural battles, Shuugo found himself lacking any sense of duty or desire for revenge to drive him to fight the man. Kiryuu soon invited Shuugo to join his team, and Shuugo let himself be swept along. Before he knew it, he was fighting under Kiryuu Hajime’s command. The only thing that had changed was the man whose orders he carried out.

Really, though... I have no idea what the hell that moron was thinking.

Why had Kiryuu decided to recruit Shuugo? It seemed plausible that he hadn’t had a real reason to begin with, though if he had, it was almost certainly a steaming pile of chuuni bullshit. Knowing what a lost cause Kiryuu was made that easy to predict.

To hell with that guy, though. No point trying to figure out what he’s thinking. The real question right now is: what the hell am I thinking?

Shuugo had accepted the invitations he’d been offered, obeyed the orders he’d been given, and gone with the flow no matter where it took him. He might have looked free and unfettered to a casual observer, but the truth was quite the opposite. His own will had never played a factor in anything he’d done. He was always carrying out the will of someone else, fighting their fights like a true mercenary. There was no telling what he, himself, was thinking—assuming he was even thinking anything at all.

“Agh, whatever! Who gives a damn?!”

Shuugo brought his motorcycle to a stop and pulled off his helmet. His eyes flashed with a dangerous glint as he glared at the building he’d come to pay a visit.

“I’m through with thinking about all that stupid crap. If I find someone I can’t stand, I’ll beat the hell out of them. That’s all that matters.”

He had arrived at a seaside factory—the very same factory where he’d crushed Hanamura Haruto a few days beforehand, and the same factory where he’d encountered Hearts’s boss, Habikino Hatsuhiko.

“This place is the only lead I’ve got. Dammit—should’ve asked them where their hideout was before I said no,” Shuugo grumbled as he stepped into the factory grounds. He didn’t get far.

“BOMB Voyage! ♪”

At the exact moment a cheerful feminine voice rang out, a small explosion burst into being directly in front of Shuugo’s face. He flinched back with a grunt of shock as crimson sparks flew around him and a blast of intensely hot wind rushed past. He’d managed to cover his face with his arms and leap backward on reflex, but the blast’s shock wave was still intense.

“Ah-haa!” The excessively cheerful voice rang out again, this time a laugh with a sluggish drawl. Shuugo managed to push through the pain and looked up to find a gaudily dressed girl standing before him.

“Bingo, bingo, that’s a bingooo! Guess the perp really does come back to the scene of the crime, or whatevs!” the girl said as she practically hopped her way toward him. “You’re, uhh, Toki Shuugo, right? Kiryuu Hajime’s flunkie? The knife dude?”

“And who the hell’re you supposed to be?” Shuugo growled.

“Oh, me? I’m one of Hearts’s head honchos! Name’s Hachisuka Happa!”

“You? Hearts put some random brat in charge?”

“Huh? Try looking in a mirror before you start calling people brats, ’kay? And anyway, I’m, like, suuuper tough! You saw that big ol’ boom just now, right? That was just a li’l ol’ hello explosion, so I dialed it way down! If I’d actually tried, you’d be a charcoal smear right about now!” Happa said, punctuating her claim with a derisive cackle. “So anyway, whaddya want? Having second thoughts about Hatsuhiko’s offer? Ha ha ha—after you already turned him down? Talk about lame!”

“Not even close, dipshit,” Shuugo said as he drew his chipped, jagged, entirely unfoldable jackknife. “I’m here to take you and the rest of Hearts down.”

In an instant, all traces of amusement vanished from Happa’s expression. “Hmph. I get it now. You’re here on Kiryuu Hajime’s orders, aren’t you?”

“Hell no. That asshole has nothing to do with this. I just got pissed off and decided to crush you, that’s all.”

Shuugo wasn’t operating under anyone’s orders this time. He’d acted of his own free will.

“I’m no goddamn merc.”

“Uhh, duh? Your name’s Shuugo, not Mark. I, like, totally knew that already.”

Shuugo winced. “Shoulda known better than to waste time talking to a dumbass.”

“Say what?! Think you can look down on me ’cause I dropped out after middle school?! Think again, shit-for-brains!”

Happa raised her arms before her, and Shuugo brandished his knife. As sparks flew and crimson flames raged, the curtain opened on the Spirit War’s next battle.

At the same moment that BOMB Voyage and Zigzag Jigsaw’s clash was beginning in all of its flashy and overblown glory, another wing of Fallen Black was fighting his own battle in an entirely different location. His was a solitary affair, carried out in a cramped room, and it wasn’t going well for him. In sharp contrast to the extravagant conflict playing out in the seaside factory, the battle between Two Tool to Too True and Dead Space was almost disappointingly lacking in spectacle.

The loud whirring of a smartphone’s vibration resounded. A text had arrived from Saitou Hitomi, but the phone’s owner was in no condition to check it, much less actually read the message. It was the middle of the day, but he had all of his curtains drawn, leaving his apartment in a gloomy partial darkness.

“Ugh... Agggh...”

The groaning of the phone’s owner quickly drowned out the sound of its vibration.

“Gah... Hah, hah, hah, ugh... Mngghaaahhh!”

That owner, a young boy, clutched his head and writhed upon his bed. He was drenched with cold sweat, his face was deathly pale, and he had dark, pronounced bags under his eyes. His name was Akutagawa Yanagi.

Yanagi reached for the headphones by his bedside, put them on, queued up a track, and cranked the volume to an outrageously high level. An explosive blast of music pierced his eardrums.

“Ahah hah hah hah hah! Nooope, nope nope nope nope! That’s not gonna work! You can’t drown out my voice that easily!”

The voice was right. Not even turning up the volume to eardrum-bursting levels did anything to blot it out. No amount of external noise could ever overwhelm a sound that was coming from inside his own mind.

“You knew that already, though, right? How could you ever drown out the voice of your own heart?”

Shut...up... Yanagi silently repeated, over and over. The voice in his head felt like it was pounding on the inside of his skull. Just shut the hell up already...

“Hah hah hah hah hah! You’re looking pretty tuckered out, O master of mine! No surprise there, eh? Three days without sleep will do that to a guy! Not like you’ve had a real meal in days either!”

And whose fault...is that...?

“Yours. I’m you, after all.”

...

A vague image began to arise in Yanagi’s mind—or rather, from the depths of his heart. It seemed humanoid at a glance, and when he focused a little harder, Yanagi could tell that it was his own silhouette. It was some other Akutagawa Yanagi, wearing a smile that the real Yanagi would never display, and it laughed derisively at him.

“Or, really, if I’m gonna be exact about it,” said the voice of the other Yanagi in his mind, “I’m your sense of guilt!”