Chapter 1: A Chinese Restaurant Basically Named Konnichiwa Nihon

There was a crash.

Yuichi fell back on his bed, clutching his forehead. He seemed to have collided with something when he sat up.

He heard a little shriek, looked beside him, and saw a girl in a sailor uniform lying there. She was also rubbing her forehead. She must have been leaning over the bottom bunk of their bunk beds.

“That hurt...” the girl said as she looked up, still rubbing her forehead. The label “Little Sister” was hanging over her head.

Yoriko Sakaki, Yuichi’s little sister, was in her second year of middle school. She was a rather mature girl for her age, with long, black hair that suited her well. She was well-known as the younger of the Beautiful Sakaki Sisters.

“What happened, Yori?” he asked.

It was clear that they had bumped into each other as he sat up in bed, but he couldn’t figure out what she had been doing there in the first place.

“Huh? Hmm? Nothing!”

“It was definitely not nothing! Why were you standing over my bed?”

“Um... a nostril hair! I saw you had a nostril hair sticking out, and leaned in to check...”

“Oh, really?” Yoriko sounded flustered in her response, but Yuichi saw no reason to doubt the idea.

“You need to be more careful about your appearance! You’ll never get a girlfriend at this rate,” Yoriko scolded as she rolled away from him.

Yuichi checked his watch. It was 7 AM on Thursday.

“Do you only have morning classes today too, Yori?” he asked. At Seishin High School, where Yuichi attended, they were having final exams for their first term. Today was the last day of the tests.

“Yeah, why? Ah! You want to go somewhere in the afternoon?” Yoriko asked, brightening.

“Probably not. I agreed to get lunch with the club.” They had decided to get lunch together to celebrate the end of exams.

“I see...” Yoriko’s mood immediately seemed to sour. She must have really gotten her hopes up.

“Well, today’s not good, but I was thinking of buying some clothes soon. Would you help me pick some out?” Needled by feelings of guilt, Yuichi spoke right up.

“Sure, I can do that!” Yoriko smiled again.

Yuichi hardly ever picked out his own clothes. As a child, he had just worn what his parents had picked out, and once he got old enough to pick out his own, he’d opted to leave that to Yoriko.

His older sister Mutsuko had tried picking out clothes for him, too, but they tended to be bizarre, so he ended up relying more on Yoriko.

“Now that tests are over, summer break’s right around the corner...” announced the teacher. Maybe he’d be able to take it easy for a while. It had been three months since Yuichi Sakaki had first entered Seishin High School.

“Yeah, so, today’s the last day of finals. Can you guess what I’m going to say next?” Yuichi was sitting in his classroom, staring out into space, when Hanako Nodayama — who had the label “Homeroom Teacher” hovering over her head — arrived and spoke up lazily from the lectern.

As usual, she was in a track suit, with her hair done up in a half-hearted style. Everything about her suggested a total lack of enthusiasm.

“Don’t make trouble, right?” The student who raised his hand to answer her was Shota Saeki, who sat in the seat in front of Yuichi.

His label was “Ace Striker,” and he was a member of the soccer club. Despite being a first-year, he was apparently already a regular — a big guy with an uncomplicated personality.

“Yes! That’s right! I know a lot of you are gonna want to let your hair down now that tests are over, but when thinking about whether or not to do something, consider whether or not it’ll make trouble for me! That is all!” As always, their homeroom teacher was completely self-centered. The moment her job was over, she dashed out of the classroom.

The students of Class 1-C were not surprised in the least. They were used to this by now.

Only a few students left right after Hanako did. Most remained behind in the classroom to talk. Now that they were finished with their tests, their thoughts were already flying ahead two weeks, to summer vacation. The only major event before the term ending ceremony would be the return of their tests.

As always, copious labels hung in Yuichi’s line of sight.

The magic sight: Soul Reader. It was Yuichi’s power, so named by his big sister, Mutsuko.

Yuichi could see words above people’s heads that seemed to reveal something about that person.

Their contents covered a wide range, from unremarkable labels like “Mom” and “Big Sister” to dangerous-sounding ones like “Serial Killer,” “Vampire,” “Witch,” and “Zombie.”

He had no idea what had awakened the power; he had just had it when he’d gotten up in the morning of his last day of spring vacation.

It had gotten Yuichi into a little trouble on his first day of school, as well. That trouble had worked itself out, but his lesson from the experience was to give a wide berth to the classmates with strange labels.

He came off a little standoffish as a result, but it had helped him get through his first term in peace. At this rate, he might finish up without any more trouble.

Yuichi looked around the classroom.

“Heir” Kogan Yanagisawa was chatting with “Superhuman” Miyu Hirata, while “Adult Datesim Childhood Friend” Sayaka Haraguchi poked in her head for a chat with “Datesim Childhood Friend” Yoko Sugimoto.

“Anthromorph” Yuri Konishi was giving a lecture to “Datesim Protagonist” Koichi Makise, “Zombie” Risa Ayanokoji, “High School Tragedy Victim” Riko Seki, and “High School Detective” Sadao Shindo about the importance of review and how they mustn’t let their guard down now that the tests were over.

“Witch” An Katagiri was chatting with “Witch’s Beloved,” Takuro Oda, about something. Takuro seemed more or less used to An’s behavior by now, so he wasn’t nearly as frightened as he had been at the start. Talking to Takuro seemed to be the only time when An’s expression relaxed, too. At times like these, she almost seemed kind of cute.

But just as that thought entered his mind, An suddenly tossed her hair back and glared over at him.

This is why you terrify me! Any time Yuichi looked at An, she always looked back at him. It was as if she could sense his gaze upon her.

Yuichi averted his sight from An to make eye contact with Shota in the seat in front of him. He had been talking to “High School Criminal” Saito, but that seemed to be over now.

“High School Criminal” was another disturbing label, but he didn’t seem to be doing anything suspicious, so there was no reason to worry about him just yet.

“Right? Hanako hasn’t cut her hair since the first day, see?” Shota said in his usual lackadaisical way.

Now that he mentioned it, it did seem rather long. There was more black at the roots, too, indicating a neglected dye job.

“You know what she’s like. She probably thinks it’s too much trouble,” Yuichi responded.

“Right, but then why’d she dye it in the first place? Why dye it at all if it’s too much trouble to take care of it?”

“True.” But it was pointless to try to figure it out. He didn’t care about the color of his homeroom teacher’s hair, anyway.

Shota seemed to notice Yuichi’s lack of interest, and changed the subject. “What are you doing for summer vacation?”

Summer vacation was still a few weeks away, but with tests finished, it felt imminent.

“No particular plans. I’ll probably just hang around the house. What about you, Saeki?”

“Clubs, mostly. We’ve got our summer training camp, but that’ll suck with no girls along. By the way, your club is all girls, right, Sakaki?” Yuichi grimaced. He didn’t like the implication that he had joined it to get girls.

“If you’re jealous, why don’t you join?” he offered.

The survival club was a club led by Yuichi’s big sister, Mutsuko. She claimed it was about figuring out ways to survive in the world, but they didn’t just prepare for sudden earthquakes and other disasters. They also discussed alien invasions, or what to do if you were thrown into an isekai — another world or time period.

And, just as Shota said, other than Yuichi, all the other people on the roll were beautiful girls. You’d expect a club like that have guys beating down the door to join, but they hadn’t gained any new members since April.

“Well... I dunno...” Shota said, hesitantly. He knew Mutsuko’s reputation by now, and he wasn’t the only one. The main obstacle to getting new members for the club was its president.

Mutsuko Sakaki: a striking girl whose outward beauty masked a truly unfortunate personality. She was known throughout the school for her “middle school syndrome,” a sort of delusional pretentiousness associated with middle schoolers. But Yuichi knew that hers was a little different from what most people thought of when they heard the term.

Her middle school delusions related only to things that were achievable in the real world. She had imbued Yuichi with seemingly impossible, ridiculous martial arts techniques that she had read about in manga, and stuffed his bag with bizarre tools — all of which Yuichi found incredibly embarrassing.

But it did have a few upsides. He’d probably do very well on those final exams, for instance, thanks to her attempts to train his memory, which allowed him to memorize a considerable amount of information.

But since it all came from last-minute cramming, he’d probably forget most of it by the time the testing period was over. He knew better than to think he was especially smart.

While Yuichi reminisced about his big sister, Shota hurried out of the classroom, and “Love Interest” Aiko Noro approached him in his place.

Her label had originally been “Vampire,” but at some point it had changed to “Love Interest” and remained that way ever since.

She was pale and petite, with an attractive face framed by a short bob haircut. Her grandfather was from France, so she was only three-quarters Japanese, which gave her a slightly exotic air.

“Sakaki! Let’s get going!” she said to him, cheerfully, as Natsuki Takeuchi — “Love Interest II” — came up behind her. Apparently they all wanted to go together. Like Yuichi, Aiko and Natsuki were in the survival club.

Natsuki had short-cropped hair and cool, almond eyes, and was often described as one of the most beautiful girls in the first-year class.

Like Aiko’s, her label had not always been “Love Interest”; it had originally been the terrifying “Serial Killer.”

Yuichi felt a little self-conscious about this, but he couldn’t figure out what had caused the change, and if it referred to the girls being his own love interest, or someone else’s. The labels weren’t terribly forthcoming.

“That guy... he asked you out, right?” Aiko asked nervously to Natsuki as they made their way out of the school building, referring to something that had happened a week ago. That had been just before finals started, and she had probably been so busy with studying that she was only remembering it now.

One might expect them to talk a little more easily with each other, being classmates and all, but things were probably still a little awkward after the whole kidnapping incident.

“Did he? I don’t remember anymore. He wasn’t all that interesting.” To Natsuki, whether someone was interesting or not referred to whether or not they were worth killing.

“Would you kill him if he was?” Yuichi asked, dubiously. She said she had reformed, but he still didn’t fully trust her.

The three of them were heading for the school’s rear gate, on the side with the athletic fields.

“Of course not. I would never do something like that on school grounds.”

“But you would do it if you weren’t on school grounds?”

“Not anymore. Not as long as you’re keeping me satisfied. Right, Sakaki?” she asked with a lascivious grin.

“I keep telling you to stop referring to it that way...” Aiko muttered.

As a serial killer, Natsuki Takeuchi felt the urge to kill the way most people felt hunger. But unlike most others of her kind, it seemed, she had a desire to go to school like normal people did. She said she was working hard to fit in with society as a whole.

Even so, she couldn’t fully fight her serial killer urges, so she was currently using Yuichi to keep them at bay by joining in with his training every now and then.

“Can’t you do something about that hobby of yours?”

“Hobby? What an awful way to put it. I think of myself as a girl of deep passions. Trying to kill each other is the richest form of communication there is.”

“Um... that makes no sense, you know,” Aiko said.

Yuichi didn’t really understand it, either.

“When you’re trying to kill someone, you’re watching them, analyzing them, striving to understand them on the deepest levels. Just by facing them, you have to sample what they’re throwing out, grasp it, and infer. If that’s not communication, what is it?”

“I’m not trying to kill you, though. But I guess it is important to analyze your opponent in combat...”

“Which is very upsetting. It means you don’t love me, Sakaki. If you did, you’d get serious with me.”

“L-Love...” Aiko was speechless.

“She’s joking, obviously,” Yuichi said, refusing to play along. Even if it wasn’t a joke, she was probably still planning something.

“It didn’t sound like a joke to me...” Aiko murmured, unconvinced.

“By the way, how’s he doing? The subordinate of yours... doesn’t he follow you out of love?” Yuichi asked, remembering the big man who had appeared after the fight, only to fall to Mutsuko’s bomb and stun gun.

“Sakiyama, you mean?”

“I guess, if that’s his name.”

“Sakiyama is so weak, it’s out of the question. I just let him in my house because he’s useful.”

“Your house... You mean, he lives with you?” Aiko asked, looking surprised.

Yuichi was a little surprised, too. He didn’t think they had that kind of relationship.

“It’s convenient to have an adult around.”

“Just what is he? Is he human?”

“I suppose? He started out as a stalker. Look, over there,” Natsuki said as their walk brought them closer to the gate.

She was pointing to the top half of a man’s head peeking out from behind the gate. He couldn’t fully hide himself, but he was trying hard to be inconspicuous. Even Yuichi hadn’t noticed him until he was pointed out.

Yuichi glanced at his label, which was now “Stalker.” Previously it had been “Serial Killer’s Lackey.”

“Ugh... I didn’t even notice,” Aiko muttered in fear.

“Yeah, since it’s not something you’d be expecting to see...” He hadn’t noticed the man during his fight with Natsuki, either. Perhaps “Stalker” also referred to a special ability of his.

“Stalkers you can’t even detect are the worst,” Yuichi murmured, but Natsuki didn’t seem to feel like explaining any more. They moved past Sakiyama and continued on their way.

After they got out of the back gate, Yuichi looked around. He had never been on this side of the school before, and he found it felt a bit lonely compared to the front.

Their destination was a restaurant just outside the gate.

Its name: Nihao the China.

Yuichi looked around the narrow shop as they opened the poorly fitted doors and walked in.

As the name would suggest, it was a Chinese restaurant. The distinct aroma of spice filling the air suggested a specialization in Szechuan food — the kind of place that sold lunch sets at reasonable prices.

Two girls in Seishin High School uniforms were seated at the restaurant’s one round table.

“Yu! Over here!” Mutsuko Sakaki waved to them exaggeratedly as they arrived.

“You don’t have to shout. We can see you,” Yuichi said tiredly.

Above her head was the label “Big Sister,” which, fortunately, needed no elaboration. She was a second-year student and the president of the survival club that Yuichi and the girls were part of.

Most people agreed that she was beautiful, but the knife-like barrettes she wore in her long hair gave her a rather menacing air.

Unlike the girl sitting beside her, she wore the short-sleeved summer uniform over a long-sleeved shirt. She did that to prevent exposing her skin.

It was an unsuitable mode of dress for the hot season, but Yuichi had no place to talk, as (albeit at her urging) he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt.

Even one layer of cloth was better than bare skin, and, she had insisted, it could mean the difference between life and death.

“What’s with this restaurant? If it served Japanese food, would it be Konnichiwa Nihon?” As he spoke, Yuichi took a seat across from Mutsuko and her friend. Aiko and Natsuki sat down on either side of him.

“Speaking of which, I know of an Indian food shop called Namaste!” Mutsuko offered, to the interest of no one.

“I chose it because I liked the name!” she continued. “It sounds like one of the Magnificent Ten! ‘Just leave this to Nihao the China!’”

“That’s ridiculous...” Yuichi said, collapsing over the table.

“Noro, did you read the latest chapter?” the girl beside Mutsuko asked, turning to Aiko. She was the club’s vice president, Kanako Orihara. Above her head was the label “Isekai Fanatic.”

She had a docile air about her, wavy chestnut hair, and a chest that was considerably larger than Mutsuko’s.

She longed to visit an isekai — an alternate world or time period — and had spent a lot of time thinking about what she’d do if she ever traveled to one, which may have been the origin of her friendship with Mutsuko.

All of her ideas about isekai had even led her to write a novel set in one, called My Demon Lord Is Too Cute to Kill and Now the World Is in Danger!, which she had put up on a fiction sharing site on the internet to get feedback, though Yuichi hadn’t read it yet.

“The Colossus died... What’s the demon king going to do now?” Aiko asked, mournfully.

The last time they’d discussed it, Yuichi recalled, the Colossus had been kicking around the hero’s army. The third-hand scraps of knowledge he was acquiring about it made it difficult for him to piece together exactly what the story was about.

“Oh, but there’s foreshadowing that the Colossus could be revived!” Mutsuko interrupted, forcefully.

“Sakaki! Even if you guessed it, don’t tell!” Kanako glared at Mutsuko.

“Oh, sorry! I just can’t stop myself from talking about stuff like this!”

Indeed, Mutsuko had always been that way. She was the type to immediately start talking the minute she noticed some foreshadowing, or figured out the twist in a movie.

“Noro, I started another novel called Dark Swordsman Alice in the Labyrinth of the Dead! Won’t you read it? I’m trying out a different atmosphere from Demon King!”

“Ah, I can’t wait,” Aiko answered with a grin. At first she’d seemed annoyed by the pressure to read the novel, because she wasn’t used to reading. But now that she’d started it, she said, she found it very interesting. She had become quite a fan of Kanako’s writing.

Aiko poured out three cups of water and set one in front of each of them. The water pitcher, left out in the middle of the table, appeared to be self-service.

“Does this restaurant have anything good?” Yuichi asked as he took a drink of his water and sighed.

“I put in a random order! Is there anything you didn’t want?” Mutsuko spread out her hands and gestured as though a three-day feast were spread out before them. She really did make a big production out of everything.

“You should have asked that before you ordered!”

“Um... I’m not great with garlic...” Aiko held up a hand timidly.

“Really? Well, I ordered a lot, so just eat whatever doesn’t have it! But wow, you don’t like garlic? You must be a vampire!”

“Lots of people don’t like garlic,” Yuichi said, feeling a chill run up his spine. Aiko Noro was still hiding her vampiric nature from her fellow club members.

“Hey, does eating garlic hurt you at all?” Yuichi whispered to her.

“Oh? No, I just don’t like the smell,” Aiko responded, a little stunned.

“That was really misleading!”

“What’s wrong, Yuichi?” Kanako asked, her usually quiet voice seeming louder than usual.

“Oh, nothing,” Yuichi dissembled as a waitress in a cheongsam came by with the food.

“Hey, it’s not that big a restaurant. Why is she wearing a cheongsam?” Aiko asked in confusion.

“I don’t know. Probably because she likes it.”

Or because the owner likes it, Yuichi thought, casting a glance at the kitchen, where a man who appeared to be the head chef stood over a wok.

He had a shaved head with a lone pigtail, above which was the label “Nihao the China.” In terms of being ostentatiously pseudo-Chinese, he far outstripped the waitress.

Yuichi was starting to realize why this restaurant wasn’t popular. You didn’t need Soul Reader to find it all very suspicious.

“Yes, yes! I like it, yes!”

“‘Yes’?” Aiko’s eyes widened at the waitress’s odd phrasing.

“Wow! I can’t believe we met a real Chinese person with a quaint speech quirk here!” Mutsuko cried out happily.

“I’m not Chinese, yes! I’m full-blooded Japanese, yes!” Indeed, she had none of the usual Chinese accent. She was just appending “yes” to the end of every sentence.

“Hey, why do you do that? Oh! Are you a Sexy Peking fan?” Mutsuko burst out.

Sexy Peking was a comedy magician, and one of Mutsuko’s many idols, who used the same speech tic.

“It’s got nothing to do with Sexy Peking. It just seems appropriate to a Chinese restaurant... yes?” The waitress seemed slightly embarrassed about having her speech tic pointed out. The label “Fake” hung above her head.

“Hamasaki?” Yuichi asked, remembering the label. He had previously seen it above the head of his classmate, Tomomi Hamasaki.

She wasn’t wearing her usual glasses, and with her hair done up in buns and dressed in a cheongsam, she almost seemed like a different person. He wouldn’t have recognized her if not for Soul Reader.

“Tomo? This is the Chinese restaurant where you work?” Aiko spoke up in surprise as she realized the connection.

“Oh, er... well... I didn’t think you’d catch on that quickly... yes.” It was true that her current getup basically served as a disguise.

Yuichi was regretting calling her out. Since the label above her head read “Fake,” it probably wasn’t something he should poke his nose into.

“Look, no one cares about the event cutscene where you run into your classmate working at the Chinese restaurant we just happen to have chosen. Let’s set that aside and get right to the subject at hand: what to do over summer vacation!” Mutsuko said. Upon learning that Tomomi was both full-blooded Japanese and not a Sexy Peking fan, she had swiftly switched the subject back to club activities.

“Um, I know I was disguised so you wouldn’t recognize me, but saying no one cares is a little harsh... yes?” Tomomi murmured as she retreated to a corner of the store.

They were the only customers present, so she didn’t have much to do until the next round of food was ready.

“It’s summer vacation, so we need to hold a training camp, right?” Mutsuko said gleefully. Yuichi was a little surprised. He hadn’t thought their club was that serious. Usually they just sat around the club room talking about whatever came to mind.

“A training camp? That sounds great! It’s gotta be at the beach, right?” Aiko said, excited.

Yuichi scowled as he flashed back to a memory of being stuffed into armor and thrown into the ocean. Thanks to that, he had learned the utterly useless skill of how to swim in a full suit of armor. “Can we not do the beach?”

“The mountains, then?”

Aiko’s innocent suggestion forced Yuichi into another flashback. The mountains were dangerous.

Mutsuko would throw him off of cliffs to increase his toughness, force him to fight monkeys and cows and bears, shave off one of his eyebrows so he couldn’t just run home, and train him in taking attacks from behind.

Mutsuko was the practical type, so her training wasn’t without purpose. But sometimes she’d force a ridiculous regimen on him based purely on something she’d read about in manga.

“I think it would be nicer to just stay at home and take it easy. If we have to do something, couldn’t we do it at school? Wouldn’t it be hard to get permission to take a trip somewhere?”

“Permission?” Mutsuko asked in confusion.

“Did you not realize you needed permission?”

“What’s the big deal? Maybe they’d raise a stink if we did it as an official club activity, but the school can’t object if we’re just going out to have fun as friends!”

“Now we’re just having fun? So what about the training camp?” The official line on club trips was that they weren’t supposed to be about having fun.

“Aw, what’s wrong with that? Anyway, anywhere we go together will be fun!” She sounded a little dejected at first, but then pepped up as she found a new way to phrase it.

Yuichi finally gave up. Nothing he said was going to stop this. “I don’t want to go... but what’s up with you guys anyway? Don’t you have lots of plans for summer vacation?”

“I don’t have any real plans, myself,” Aiko responded.

“Neither do I,” Natsuki followed up.

“It would be boring to stay home alone all summer,” Kanako agreed.

“I assumed girls in high school would have a little more planned for summer vacation...” he murmured.

It was about this point in the conversation that the rest of the food came out.

“Think about where you want to go and what you want to do for training camp by the beginning of the next club meeting, okay? For now, let’s eat!” Mutsuko began taking a bit from each plate.

Yuichi set his eye on the spicy-looking mapo tofu and gave it a try. It was as spicy as it looked, but definitely tasty. The restaurant’s lack of popularity was definitely not because of the food.

After eating his fill, Yuichi stood up.

“What’s wrong?” Aiko asked.

“Gotta hit the john. Hey, Hamasaki, where’s the bathroom?”

“Huh? Oh, it’s in the back.”

Yuichi headed for the back, wondering idly where her speech tic had gone.

But just as he was passing by Mutsuko, he was suddenly forced to jump straight into the air.

Shing! Something came flying out of Mutsuko’s elbow.

“Oh, sorry! It’s just a prototype. I think the stopper came loose again!” Mutsuko said, as casually as could be.

Yuichi’s face went pale. “You could have killed me! If I’d been anyone else, I would definitely be dead right now!”

“No way. You’d easily survive a hit from that!”

A sharp blade had ripped through Mutsuko’s sleeve. Its cold glint, extending from her wrist to just before her shoulder, definitely looked lethal. If Yuichi hadn’t jumped away, it would have sliced him right through the side.

“Wh-What is that...?” Aiko asked, gazing at the blade in shock.

“I fashioned it after the Harden Saber!” She was referring to a move used by a certain henshin hero whose arms had been hardened and turned into blades. Naturally, Mutsuko couldn’t go quite that far, so she must have rigged something up to imitate it.

“You can’t have a saber. It’s too dangerous.”

“Awww...” Mutsuko whined.

“Come on, you know it’s ridiculous! Put it back in right now!”

“I can’t! It’s a prototype! Once it’s out, I need to apply a lot of force to get it back in. We’d have to go home first...” She seemed to have used a powerful spring to get it to release, but hadn’t yet thought of how to get it to return.

Yuichi looked around the restaurant. Thankfully, there were no other customers around.

Tomomi made eye contact with him for a moment, then quickly tore her eyes away. As one of his classmates, she was well informed of Mutsuko’s eccentricities, and would probably look the other way. He shouldn’t have to worry about her.

Next, he checked Kanako’s reaction. She wasn’t looking at Mutsuko at all, but seemed to have partially retreated from reality. He shouldn’t have to worry about her, either. Kanako’s tendency, when seeing something out of the ordinary, was apparently just to ignore it.

“So you’re just gonna walk home with the saber out in the open?” Yuichi asked Mutsuko.

“Cool, huh?” Mutsuko struck a pose, apparently seriously believing this.

“The police will take you into custody!” he screamed.

He could just barely hear Natsuki whisper softly, “That might be for the best.”