“Hmm. Unfazed by the sexy teacher act, are you?” she asked. “You’re not like most high school students. Why not act a little more flustered? Come on, you can see up my skirt. Aren’t you interested in my cleavage?”

“I don’t care about that stuff,” he said. “Answer my question.”

“The rules are as I said before,” she told him. “If you win, you can leave. That means that if you lose, you can’t leave, and you’ll remain trapped here until I grow tired of it. If you want to get out quickly, you’d better work for it. Now, the game has already begun. Feel free to ask questions that will see through my lie. I will lie once, and only once. A skillful interrogation might earn you useful information.”

“What happened to Ms. Nodayama?” Yuichi demanded. He was angry. He wasn’t especially close to his teacher, but he still liked Hanako and her irresponsible, do-whatever attitude.

Makina looked dismissive. “You make it sound like I did something to her. But it’s just as they told you: she’s not feeling well.”

“Yeah, right! You’re telling me she just happened to get sick, and you just happened to arrive?” Annoyed by Makina’s level tone, Yuichi started raising his voice.

“To claim it was total coincidence would be a lie,” she said. “I wanted to be a teacher at this school, so I got my teacher’s license. But I needed an opening, as well, which meant that someone would need to take time off. There was no particular reason why I chose Ms. Nodayama... if I’d known you would get this angry, maybe I should have picked a different teacher?”

“If you made her sick, cure her right now.” Yuichi’s voice was ice cold. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this angry.

“But I told you before,” she said. “I have only two abilities: ‘Sealed Room Game’ and ‘Inviolable Domain.’ I don’t have the power to make someone sick, or to cure them.”

“What did you do?” he demanded.

“Good question.” She smiled. “First, I’ll explain what happened to Ms. Nodayama. To put it in so many words, she was dumped by her childhood friend of twenty years. Surprised? Despite how she looks, she was quite the earnest young maiden in love. But their engagement was broken off just before the wedding. It was traumatizing. She literally cannot eat. But her condition isn’t that bad. Even if she won’t eat, the hospital will keep her nourished, and the pain of the heartbreak will ease in time.”

If that was true, Yuichi felt a bit relieved. He didn’t know about the pain of heartbreak, but at least it wasn’t something permanent.

“Of course, I’m the one who stole her childhood friend,” Makina added.

Yuichi rose to his feet.

“Now, don’t get angry,” she reproved him. “I’m free to love whomever I wish, aren’t I? What gives you the right to complain about that?”

Yuichi grudgingly sat back down. He could sense something malicious in her roundabout way of speaking, but if it was just an affair, it was hard to argue about it.

Once he had calmed down, Makina started speaking again. “But I must say, Yuichi Sakaki... you aren’t much like I’d heard. You’re sticking your neck in quite aggressively. When I came to this school, Ende... she’s a bit like our manager, more or less... told me to avoid you, if possible.”

“What do you mean, ‘not what you heard’?” Yuichi asked.

“I was told you were the... you know, ‘average looks and personality yet still gets all the girls,’ ‘remains indecisive despite women throwing themselves at him, but gives in just enough so that none of them hate him,’ ‘suffers from intermittent deafness to miss crucial lines spoken by others,’ ‘participates in a club as an excuse to hang out with his friends,’ ‘refrains from interfering in an incident until it’s just in the nick of time/sometimes a bit too late,’ ‘constantly says “yare yare”’ type.”

“What, a protagonist?!” he snapped. Her teasing tone was successfully needling him.

“Go on, ask me anything,” she said confidently. “If you don’t, I’ll go into detail about how I ensnared Ms. Nodayama’s fiancé.”

“I don’t want to hear about that crap,” he said. “What did you come to the school for?”

“That’s a secret,” Makina quipped.

“You said I could ask anything.”

“I never said I had to answer.”

“You freaking—”

“Well, if I must say something about it, I’d say it’s your fault.”

“Huh?” The unexpected answer gave Yuichi pause. He and Makina had only just met. How could there possibly be a connection between them?

“Do you remember the attack on your life during the first half of summer vacation?” Makina asked.

“You’ll have to be more specific...” Yuichi tried thinking back to all the times he’d been attacked during summer vacation, but none of them stood out as remarkable.

Makina stared at him in shock. “How many times have you been attacked?”

“It’s not my fault!” he cried.

“The truck that crashed into the cafe,” she clarified. “Do you remember that?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Are you the one who arranged that?”

“Yes. He was one of my more powerful pawns, and now he’s ruined, thanks to you. I’ve been forced to abandon my Plan A. Getting a job at this school is part of the groundwork for Plan B.”

“I guess you’re not gonna tell me what your plan is?” he asked.

“No, so don’t bother asking about it again. Ask me something else. If you ask something I want to answer, I’ll be more than happy to oblige!” Makina added, as if to placate him.

“I heard you guys were ageless and immortal. Is that true?” Yuichi asked. He had been told that Outers, freed from the destiny that all things must die, were effectively undying.

“Close, but not quite,” she said. “It’s not impossible for us to die. What it comes down to is that if there’s any chance for us to stay alive, we always will. In situations where there’s no choice but to die, we die, and methods have been formulated to drive us into such situations. Yes, it might be more accurate to say that Outers are extremely lucky.”

“You think you can explain non-aging with luck?” he asked skeptically.

“The exact mechanism behind aging hasn’t actually been discovered, so I can’t say for certain. But if living beings are programmed to age, then perhaps a flaw in that program could develop, due to luck. Under the programming theory, the telomeres at the end of chromosomes are viewed as counters for how many times the cells divide. So perhaps they just happen to not shorten.”

“Are you sure you want to tell me all of this?” he asked. What she was saying meant it wasn’t impossible for him to kill her. This could be useful information in dealing with Outers.

“It would be easy enough to find out with a little investigation,” she said nonchalantly. “I see no reason to hide it.”

Yuichi listened cautiously to Makina’s words. He was treating this as a battle, paying close attention to her every gesture and action. In battle, Yuichi could easily identify a feint. Her gaze, her tone, her smell, her pigment, her heart rate, her muscle tension — he could combine them all in making his judgment. So far, she hadn’t lied.

“I intend to remain a teacher here for a while,” she went on. “If you have any questions about that, let’s clear them up right away to resolve any potential awkwardness between us.”

“Why do you want to be a teacher here?” he asked. “I heard that Outers altered stories from the outside.” Of course, he knew that “from the outside” didn’t refer to some other plane of existence, just that Outers liked to manipulate destiny from on high, like gods. But at the moment, Makina was trying to get directly involved with Seishin High School.

“It’s up to the individual,” she said. “I like to watch things unfold from a front-row seat, in real time. There’s another who simply likes to read about things in a book after they’re over. We all have different tastes.”

“Don’t you want to kill me because I know about you?” he asked. Yuichi, knowing as he did about the existence of Outers, could pose a threat to Makina.

“Hey, now,” she said. “Just who do you think I am? Who would do something like that, after coming all the way here to be your teacher?”

“The worst kind of garbage person, which is what I heard you are,” he retorted.

“Hmm. I won’t deny that... but do you think I’m a villain? That there’s nothing I won’t do to achieve my goals?”

“Am I wrong?”

“It’s true that I’ll do anything to achieve my goals, but my goal isn’t what you’re thinking,” she said. “We’re not trying to conquer the world, exterminate humanity, or force our views on anybody. Generally speaking, we’re just killing time. There’s no particular meaning behind anything we do, we’re just trying to have fun. That’s why we obsess so much over procedure. It would be easy to kill you right now, but I’m not omnipotent. Your corpse would be left behind as evidence, and I’d have to deal with getting rid of it. It would throw my planning off track, and defeat all the hard work I’ve put in to make sure I came to this school.”

“So what?” he asked. “I doubt you have anything good planned for the school.”

“I won’t deny that that’s the case,” she said carelessly. “But it has nothing to do with you. There are many things you watch passively, without interference, despite being able to perceive them with Soul Reader. Think of me as the same way.”

Soul Reader. The term gave Yuichi pause. Only a few people knew about that; Makina, who had only just met him, shouldn’t be one of them.

“I know, more or less, what you’ve been doing,” she said. “It’s there in all the books. When I decided to come to this school, I made it my business to read them.”

He wondered what she meant by “it’s there in all the books.”

“There’s an Outer who has that ability,” she added.

“What the heck are you—”

“If you were willing to befriend ‘Serial Killer,’ you can look the other way for me, can’t you?” she asked.

“Huh?” The words hit him like a physical blow. He never would have thought she’d know about Natsuki, too.

“...She’s... not killing people right now.” It was hard to argue with her, but Yuichi managed to strain those words out.

“You really think that quibbling constitutes an argument?” she asked. “Ah, but enough about ‘Serial Killer.’ Let’s not talk about the past. What about ‘Adult Datesim Protagonist,’ then? He’s a nasty piece of work. He likes to steal other people’s girlfriends, even raping them if it’s necessary. You’re going to let that slide? And that ‘Witch’ is really something, too. She’ll do anything to get what she wants. She’s got her venomous fangs in quite a few people, as well.”

Makina seemed to know more about these people than the mere labels Soul Reader provided him.

“I couldn’t possibly know about all of that!” Yuichi shouted.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” she said calmly. “If I don’t tell you what I plan to do, there’s no need for you to do anything about it. Think of it as something happening worlds away.”

Yuichi had always played the nihilist, telling himself that one person couldn’t save the entire world. At the same time, he couldn’t just accept what she was saying, going along with the idea that it was none of his business. He was starting to think that maybe his philosophy was wrong.

“Now, Yuichi Sakaki,” she said. “Have you forgotten that we’re playing a game? I’ve already told you one lie. Which is it? If you’re not sure, I’ll give you a hint—”

“‘I’ve already told you one lie.’ That’s the lie,” Yuichi answered immediately.

“...Wait a minute. I said ‘already.’ You don’t think the lie happened during our conversation?”

“The thirty minutes since you explained the rules aren’t up yet,” he said. “You’re still on the clock.”

“Most people would logically assume the answer was part of the conversation.”

“Yeah, so?” he asked. “My instincts tell me you hadn’t told a single lie before then.”

Part of that came from his continuous observation of her, but it was more a gut feeling on his part.

“It’s a boring way to end it... but ah, well. You win.” Makina waved him away, seeming genuinely annoyed.

“You’re saying I can go?” he asked.

“That’s right. I doubt that our conversation has resolved all your questions, but I’d appreciate it if you would not stick your nose in where it isn’t wanted. I intend to be a proper teacher, so I’d appreciate it if you’d treat me that way.”

“...Understood, Miss Shikitani.” Further conversation was pointless. Yuichi stood up and headed for the door.

“Oh, one more thing.”

He had just opened the door when Makina called him back.

“Do you know why Ms. Nodayama’s dye job is so poorly done?” she asked.

Yuichi turned back around. Makina gave him a thin smile..

“Because... she can’t be bothered, right?” he asked. Hanako’s hair was brown overall, but black at the roots. Quite a bit of time must have passed since she’d first dyed it.

“If she didn’t want to be bothered with it, why would she dye it in the first place?” Makina asked.

Yuichi had wondered the same thing at first, but eventually, he had decided she must have done it on a whim of some kind, and he hadn’t given it any further thought.

“Here’s what I think,” Makina said. “They say it’s not good to dye your hair while you’re pregnant. There’s an old wives tale that the dye soaks in through the skin and harms the growing fetus. It’s not true, of course, but you can’t stop people from believing in it. It’s a natural motherly instinct to want to eliminate anything that might cause even the slightest harm to the baby.”

Yuichi couldn’t figure out what she was getting at.

“Of course, this is mere supposition,” she said. “I have no evidence to suggest that Ms. Nodayama was pregnant. But if I were to follow my supposition to its natural conclusion, the father is likely her childhood friend. Then, with their marriage approaching, he suddenly canceled the engagement and ran off with another woman. Can you imagine the heartbreak that would cause? Such a traumatic amount of stress, enough to make her stop eating... what effect might that have on the pregnancy? My thoughts go first to the restriction of blood flow. Stress causes the capillaries to dilate, which would prevent the flow of nutrition to the fetus. It also increases prolactin, which reduces the functioning of the ovaries and reduces the progestogen hormone required to maintain the pregnancy, too. In such a situation, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the fetus were affected, would it?”

“You—!” Yuichi was enraged. If what Makina was intimating was true, it was unforgivable.

“And then they would take measures to stop it, wouldn’t they?” she asked. “Don’t be so annoyed. I’m just teasing you a bit. I’m frustrated at how easily I lost the game.”

“Didn’t you say you didn’t want me to get involved?!” he snapped. If she wanted to reach a truce with him, there was no reason for her to have said all that.

“That’s true,” she said. “I suppose I just wanted to see the look on your face.”

“What?”

“There are things I can endure for the sake of my goal, but I will sometimes act just to satisfy immediate curiosity, despite it being of no rational benefit to me,” she explained. “Now, this time, our conversation really is over. You can be off for now.”

Yuichi glared at Makina, then jerked opened the door and flew out of the student guidance room. But just as he was about to run off, he detected somebody else nearby.

“Yu, what’s wrong? You’re looking like you feel like you did when you were poor!” Mutsuko cried.

“I was never poor!” Yuichi snapped back.

Mutsuko and Aiko were right outside of the door, waiting.

Yuichi closed the door to the guidance room. He had a nagging feeling that he shouldn’t let Mutsuko and Makina meet.

“What are you doing here anyway, Sis?” he asked. She had said they were having a club meeting that day, so Yuichi would have expected her to be in the club room already.

“I-I just heard you’d been taken to a student guidance room, okay?” she cried. “I was just worried you’d done something awful, that’s all!”

“You’re just saying that to sound tsundere,” he said flatly. “Don’t try new things. It doesn’t suit you.”

“So? Are you really okay?” Mutsuko leaned in, peering into his face with genuine concern. His expression must have really been something.

“Yeah, really, I’m fine. The minute I saw you, everything went stale again.”

“What the heck?!” Her concern shifted immediately into huffing anger.

“Sakaki, what on earth happened?” Aiko looked worried, too. She must not have known what to make of him bolting out of a door like that.

“I’ll explain later,” he said. “Setting that aside, do you know if Ms. Nodayama’s in the hospital?”

“Hmm, I dunno. I could ask my dad, if you want...” Aiko pulled out her cell phone and called.

Hanako had been admitted to Noro General Hospital, so they could find out her condition immediately.

As it turned out, she had been admitted for malnutrition, but she wasn’t pregnant.

Chapter 2: No One Cared About the Absent Club Members

In the survival club room on the second floor of the old school building, Yuichi sulkily rested his chin in his hands. He wasn’t in the mood for club, but he had been literally dragged there by Mutsuko.

“Okay! Time to get started on our second term!” Mutsuko declared proudly while standing in her usual spot in front of the whiteboard.

“I’ve been thinking... What’s with this club? What does any of this have to do with survival?” Yuichi asked with a barbed tone. His conversation with Makina was still gnawing at him.

“Sakaki, you’re just asking that now?!” Aiko, sitting beside him, stared at him in shock.

“Personally, I don’t really care what the club does,” another club member said coolly.

“Then why did you join it?!” Yuichi exclaimed.

That statement, even more blunt than Yuichi’s, had come from Natsuki Takeuchi, who was sitting across the table from them.

The serial killer, “Love Interest II.” A beautiful girl with short hair and cold eyes. They’d bonded a bit during summer training camp, but he still didn’t have any idea what she was thinking, most of the time. He had a hard time knowing how to interact with her, too.

“Your sister invited me,” Natsuki said lightly. “And you were here. Those are my reasons, more or less.”

“The survival club is the survival club,” Mutsuko declared. “Natural disasters, post-apocalyptic futures, alien invasions. We’re learning how to defend against all of that stuff!”

“Yeah, I know that,” Yuichi said. “But what do we actually do?”

They had talked about tips for what you would do if you ended up in an isekai, and about the psychology of killing people. But Yuichi couldn’t help but feel that that stuff didn’t have much to do with survival.

“You’ve got a bee in your bonnet today, huh, Yu? Are you reaching that rebellious age, or something?” Mutsuko asked. “Hey, Orihara! We’re a real survival club, aren’t we?”

“Ah?” the other girl responded absent-mindedly to Mutsuko’s question.

She was Kanako Orihara, the club’s vice president. She was sitting beside Natsuki, diagonally across from Yuichi. She was a striking girl with wavy, chestnut hair, and as mild a personality as her appearance implied. She seemed confused by Mutsuko’s question, as if her mind had been somewhere else.

Above her head was the label “Isekai Writer.” Previously it had been “Isekai Fanatic,” but the label was so similar that Yuichi didn’t think about it too deeply.

“I was saying, we’re a real survival club, right?” Mutsuko asked.

“...That’s right. But Hisaka doesn’t come at all anymore. Maybe there really is a problem...” Kanako said, after thinking back carefully.

“Who is Hisaka?” Aiko looked up in surprise at the mention of the name.

“One of the club’s members!” Mutsuko declared. “Stopped coming right after we started up, though. I guess they thought it was a survival game club? Came in the full equipment and seemed really hyped up about it, too!”

“That’s a reasonable mistake to make, isn’t it?” Yuichi had a feeling that more people knew about survival games than about survival itself.

“Maybe they got mad ’cause I said, ‘Shooting airsoft guns isn’t useful in survival!’ But don’t worry! I’ve been thinking about things a little more flexibly of late! Rather than just extreme situations, I’ve been thinking, maybe we should just think about how to deal with guns, or something. If people know they get to handle real guns, I’m sure they’ll come!”

“Where are we going to get guns?” Yuichi asked flatly.

“My house.” Natsuki raised her hand, looking quite triumphant about it.

“Don’t look smug! That’s a crime!” Yuichi exclaimed. He remembered how Natsuki had shot at him the first time they’d fought.

“No problem! Both guns and bullets are easy to make!” Mutsuko announced, also failing to understand that they were discussing a felony.

“That’s right, I heard you could make them with 3D printing.” Yuichi remembered seeing that on the news.

“Those aren’t any good,” Mutsuko said dismissively. “They fall apart after just a few shots, and they’re not dependable at all! It’s easy to make real guns with stuff we’ve got around the house!”

“What exactly do we have around our house?” Yuichi asked, startled. He couldn’t remember seeing or hearing about anything like that. “Oh, yeah, and there are two missing club members, right? One is Hisaka. Who’s the other?”

Yuichi hadn’t thought about it much before, but since they’d brought the subject up, he decided he might as well ask.

“Iyn Ryuoh,” Mutsuko said. “What a piece of work! Wore mismatched contact lenses, eyepatches, arm bandages, and dressed all in black with a cape. Is that what they call ‘middle school syndrome’? Kept repeating all these endless original ‘magic’ chants...” Mutsuko groaned.

“That member probably joined the club because they thought they’d found a kindred spirit!” Yuichi cried. “You should have hung out! The poor thing...”

Admittedly, that wasn’t the sort of “middle school syndrome” that Mutsuko had much interest in. She did like to wear ostentatiously “cool” clothing, but practicality was the most important thing to her.

“No way! If the magic was real, then maybe...” Mutsuko murmured, apparently unwilling to be moved on the subject.

As they chatted back and forth, they heard a knock on the door. Yuichi stood up and went to answer it. They rarely got visitors there, but for some reason, everyone had seemed to be in silent agreement that Yuichi should be the one to get the door.

“Um, is Ms. Orihara here?!” There were two girls at the door, students of their school. They were calling her “Ms.”, and carrying books, so it was immediately obvious to Yuichi what they were there for.

“Orihara, looks like you’ve got some fans,” Yuichi said.

“Oh? What is it?” Kanako walked up to the door as Yuichi went back to his seat.

The girls held out their books, and Kanako politely began signing.

Kanako had very recently had her debut as a student author. She had been publishing chapters of a story on the internet, which had been found by an editor and published.

Her novel, My Demon Lord Is Too Cute to Kill and Now the World is in Danger!, had gone on sale at the end of August. She had gotten permission from the school to do it, and wasn’t especially trying to hide it. As a result, many people at school had learned of Kanako’s literary debut.

I guess she became “Isekai Writer” because she got published... Yuichi mused. She was a proper author now, with her book being published and sold in stores. Maybe that had had an influence on her label.

“It’s a little embarrassing, signing autographs...” Kanako murmured.

“Thank you so much!” the girls cried.

The two girls ran off, and Kanako returned bashfully to her seat.

“Is it getting good reviews?” Yuichi asked offhandedly, then immediately regretted it. It might be a rude question to ask the author herself.

“It seems the people at school are reading it... um, but people aren’t talking about it very much online...” she murmured.

“I was thinking of getting around to reading it,” Yuichi said, trying to change the subject as he kicked himself internally.

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” Kanako responded apologetically.

“No, I’ll read it.”

Mutsuko and Aiko had been reading it, and they’d been throwing out a lot of words during club, like “Twelve Hell Kings” and “Colossus.” He’d found it slightly intriguing, and had wanted to read it for a while, but hadn’t yet found the chance.

“Well, time to get down to business! Today’s theme is this!” Mutsuko wrote “Surviving in the Isekai Glowsphere!” on the whiteboard.

“More isekai stuff, huh?” Yuichi sighed. “And what the hell is a Glowsphere?”

“What else? It’s the alternate world from Orihara’s novel, My Demon Lord Is Too Cute to Kill and Now the World is in Danger!”

“Did you come up with that just now, because her fans dropped in?” he asked. It was a bit simplistic, but that was Mutsuko for you.

“What’s wrong with that?” she demanded. “We have a high school light novel author, the great Ms. Orihara, here with us right now! We should take advantage of a chance to talk to the creator directly! Go ahead, Ms. Orihara! Come on down!”

Mutsuko got around behind Kanako and pulled her upright, then dragged her up to the whiteboard. While Kanako stood there like a deer in headlights, Mutsuko took Kanako’s former seat.

“Isn’t her novel fiction? What’s the point of coming up with survival strategies for that?” Natsuki pointed out coldly.

Yuichi sort of knew what she was getting at. It was one thing to talk about isekais in the abstract, but discussing survival in a known fictional world felt like a farce.

“Well, I believe that Glowsphere exists,” Kanako said, timidly but firmly.

“Uh, is it okay to think about it like that?” Yuichi asked, feeling a little concerned about Kanako. Or was that what it was felt like, when you were a writer?

“I saw it when I was a child, and I still dream about it,” she explained. “So it’s not completely fictional...”

“A dream, huh? Then we’ll proceed from the idea that you saw it in a dream! So, what’s your story about, Orihara?” Yuichi asked, forcefully dragging the conversation forward.

“Um, put simply, the male hero falls in love with the female Demon Lord, and he’s forced to choose between her and the world. The protagonist is the Hero of Scales, Astoria Kruger, and the Demon Lord is Lasagna von Jusphoria. The fundamental question of the story is whether they’ll get together or not.”

“That much I could more or less make out from the title,” he said. “So, how is the world in danger?”

“Sakaki! You can’t ask that!” Aiko exclaimed.

“Why not? It’s the natural question to ask, isn’t it?” he asked.

Aiko seemed strangely angry about the question he had asked offhandedly.

“Sorry, but that’s still a secret,” Kanako said. “What matters is that at the end of the story, it has to be one or the other. Will he kill the Demon Lord and save the world, or destroy the world to save the Demon Lord? There can be no ending where he saves the world and lives in it with her.”

“That’s heavier than I was expecting,” he mused. The title had made it sound like a comedy.

“But let’s leave the plot stuff aside!” Mutsuko declared. “The question is, what would you do if you were sent to that world? First, you’d have to pick a faction!”

“Then I’ll explain in brief about that,” Kanako said. “Glowsphere contains two main forces that are waging war. One is the faction of the Demon Lord described in the title. The other is the Hero Army. Humans come from several different countries, but the Hero Army is a united force, so it’s okay to think of the humans as a single faction. The people have crossed borders to join forces against the Demon Lord’s threat.”

Yuichi felt relieved that there were only two factions to remember. If there were warring human groups on top of everything, there would be no way he’d be able to keep it straight.

“The Demon Lord is invading human territory,” Kanako went on. “The Demon Lord Army is very powerful, too powerful for normal people to stand against. Within it are the Demon Lord’s lieutenants, the Twelve Hell Kings. Her army is a three-tiered system, with the Demon Lord standing at the head, and below her the Twelve Hell Kings, who lead an army of fiends. The Demon Lord’s true power is still unknown, and the fiends are foot soldiers, so the Twelve Hell Kings are the foundation of the Demon Lord Army.

“The Twelve Hell Kings have sworn fealty to the Demon Lord, but they’re far from a monolith; they all have different ideas about things. Broadly speaking, there are three factions among them. The absolute obedience faction is Chance Meeting Meredith, Battle Dust Sevrine, and Decisive Judgment Glenda. The neutral faction is Blue Sky Rochefort, Brutal Gertrude, and Lamenting Alexandra. The idealist faction is Raging Geshtenks, Mediator Christophes, and Southern Lights Sylvester. The absolute obedience faction acts in complete accordance with what the Demon Lord says. The neutral faction acts in the Demon Lord’s best interest and sometimes offers counsel. The idealist faction wants Lasagna to be held to a higher standard as Demon Lord.”

A lengthy explanation. Kanako had always been long-winded, but Yuichi couldn’t understand even half of it this time.

“Excuse me, you said there were twelve Hell Kings. That was only nine,” Natsuki pointed out, raising her hand.

“I can’t believe you picked that out...” Yuichi was impressed. He’d been so lost, he hadn’t even tried counting names.

“I’m sorry, but the last three are connected to the Demon Lord’s secret, so I can’t tell you who they are just yet,” Kanako explained. “Next, the Hero Army. Heroes are people who one day suddenly acquired a supernatural power. When you awaken as a hero, a symbol appears on the back of your hand. That symbol reveals your power. For instance, the protagonist, Astoria, has the scales mark. His power lets him weigh two options and identify which one is better. Other examples include the flower mark, which indicates control of plants; the mountain mark, which lets you makes yourself heavier; the cat mark, which gives you great agility; and so on.

“The Hero Army are humanity’s trump card against the Demon Lord Army, but the protagonist Astoria is considered to be the weakest and most cowardly hero in the whole army. Once every one hundred days, the Demon Lord Army rests, leaving only the bare minimum of forces behind. The heroes want to use this as an opportunity to attack and take out one of the Twelve Hell Kings, or possibly the Demon Lord herself. This is all prelude to the story. Now, I’ll list the main heroes of the hero army. First, the Flower Circle Hero, Flammy...”

She went on and on talking about the heroes from her story, and Yuichi barely remembered any of it.

Club came to an end while they were still in the morning hours, and Yuichi headed to the roof.

“You are late!” a voice exclaimed.

The minute he got there, he found Yuri was waiting for him. Her pose was imperious, her complicated hairstyle blowing in the wind. Her hands were on her hips, and she was staring straight at Yuichi.

“Sorry, but ‘after class’ was pretty vague, time-wise,” he said. He had remembered the promise, but Makina’s little game, and Mutsuko’s dragging him to the club meeting against his will, had delayed him.

“If I tell you to come, of course, I mean immediately!” She had all the haughtiness one would expect from a born heiress.

“So, what did you want?” he asked. “To pick up where we left off?”

Yuri had attacked Yuichi during their summer camp, but Mutsuko had interrupted them, and she had run off.

“First things first,” she said. “Who is that?”

“Ahaha. Hello there...” Aiko, who had come along, answered awkwardly.

“I am aware of who you are, Noro! I meant the other one! The one clinging to Yuichi Sakaki!”

“You’re using my full name?” Yuichi asked. His reaction had been to the least noteworthy part of what she’d said, but he understood why Yuri was so surprised. It was because Kanako was clinging to Yuichi’s arm, pressing her substantial breasts against it. “This is Kanako Orihara. She’s in my club. She had a book published recently. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

“I have heard rumors of it. So?” Yuri asked, urging him to continue. Apparently, the name was not what she’d wanted to hear.

“I said I was going to the roof, and she asked if I would take her with me,” he said. “But she’s afraid of heights, apparently, so...”

She hadn’t said why she’d wanted to come to the roof despite being afraid of heights. As a result, Yuichi was just as baffled as Yuri.

“...This is ridiculous!” In an instant, Yuri unleashed a torrent of pent-up emotion. “Yuichi Sakaki! When I called you here, it should have been clear that I intended to ask you out! Yet you bring a woman along! And one who is ostentatiously hanging off of you, at that! What exactly are you trying to tell me?!”

“How was I supposed to know you wanted to ask me out?!” he shouted.

“If she’s afraid of heights, she could cling to Noro! Why must she cling to you, Yuichi Sakaki?!” Yuri exclaimed.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t, um, mean to get in the way... but it has to be Sakaki the Younger, or I might be in trouble if I fall...” Kanako said hesitantly in response to Yuri’s outpouring of rage.

“You can’t fall; there’s a fence! And you’re acting as if he could even do something to help you if you did!” Yuri cried.

“Oh, well... I think maybe he could,” Aiko interrupted, having had some experience with that herself.

“This is none of your business, so would you kindly shut your mouth?!” Yuri snapped.

“Um, right.” Yuri’s glare forced Aiko back into dejected silence.

“Now, what is wrong with you? If you’re so afraid you can barely stand upright, you just shouldn’t be here!” Yuri continued, addressing Kanako again.

Kanako’s knees had been knocking the entire time they had been on the roof. Yuichi hadn’t realized she would be this frightened, but now that they were there, it was hard to ask her to lay off.

“Well... Well, fine. To complain about the situation would be beneath my dignity,” Yuri eventually said, breathlessly, perhaps realizing she wasn’t getting anywhere.

“I feel like you’ve had plenty of complaints already, but okay. Seriously, what do you want?” Yuichi asked.

She had mentioned something about asking him out, but just to be safe, he’d decided to make sure.

“I want you to date me!” she screamed.

“Sorry, I can’t.”

It might have seemed like an overly flip response, but Yuichi had actually given it quite a bit of consideration in that split-second. Maybe the polite thing to do would have been to offer a more roundabout refusal, or to make more of a show of thinking about it. But it seemed to him that it would be more rude to try to buy time, or add more words for their own sake, when the answer was so obvious. Thus, he came right out with it.

“Why not?” she asked. If it had been an earnest confession of her feelings, she might have been hurt. But Yuri was just being stubborn.

“I hardly know you, and I don’t want to accept an offer just because you asked,” he said. “What about you, anyway? You barely know me, too.”

“Wh-What else can I do? I have my anthromorph instincts! After the display that you showed me...”

“Display? Did she... see you naked?!” Aiko gasped.

“No! And how dare you propose something so outrageous?!” Yuri shouted.

She’d been referring to him killing The Head of All. To an anthromorph, that meant he was now the strongest among them; the leader of the pack. Their instincts would be to follow the leader. In other words, to anthromorphs, Yuichi was now on par with The Head.

“Hang on. So those anthromorph women were, um...” Aiko asked haltingly, as if she had just come upon an upsetting realization.

“Yes. All the female anthromorphs there would have been in Yuichi Sakaki’s thrall,” Yuri said. “Of course, I believe most of them died in the disaster, but... anyway! You don’t particularly dislike me, then? If you don’t really know me, then you cannot dislike me! Very well. You shall get to know me henceforth! And at such time as you do, I will ask you out again!”

“You’re awfully determined... honestly, after everything you did, it’s more surprising that you think I don’t hate you...” Yuichi said. She had seemed to be plotting a lot of awful things. Still, Yuichi was willing to put that behind him.

“Hey, should we really be talking about the anthromorph stuff? Orihara’s right here,” Aiko said, approaching and speaking in a low voice.

“What’s the big deal?” Yuichi said. “She always zones out when we talk about that stuff, and—”

Crash!

Yuichi was interrupted by a sudden loud noise that rang out over the roof.

He turned towards the source of the sound, and Yuri turned to look, as well.

There was Western-style armor on the ground. It was dull, without luster, and squashed completely flat. If there was a person inside, they must have been badly deformed by the fall.

“Huh?” Yuichi and Aiko both asked in surprise, while Yuri and Kanako just stared dumbly at it.

It was so sudden, their brains couldn’t quite process what had happened, at first.

It took them some time just to reason out that — judging from the sound and the state it was in — it must have come from the sky, and quite high up in it, at that.

Yuichi looked up. The sky was blue and clear, without a single cloud. He couldn’t see any sign of where it might have come from.

“17th century heavy cavalry plate mail...” Kanako murmured. “The development of firearms would begin rendering armor obsolete, causing them to make it lighter and lighter. This was the last period during which heavy armor was used. Lancer cavalry was getting phased out, too, so there’s no lance rest.”

“Orihara?” Yuichi asked, concerned.

Kanako was looking straight at the armor as she explained it. She was usually the type to try to escape from reality, but this time, she seemed surprisingly composed.

“Yuichi Sakaki! What is the meaning of this? Is it your doing? Is it some kind of game you’re playing in order to give me the brush-off?” Yuri shouted.

“Why would I go to all this trouble?!” he exclaimed.

“Is... Is there someone... inside?” Aiko asked, fearfully.

“No, I don’t think so,” Yuichi said. “If there were, we would see blood.”

Just as they were vacillating over the idea of getting closer to check, Aiko and Kanako turned their eyes silently towards the sky above.

“Laputa?” Aiko breathed in shock.

“No, what fell was armor, not a girl...” Yuichi said.

“Huh?” Aiko looked at Yuichi, confused.

Yuichi looked up at the sky again. There was definitely nothing there.

“There is something floating there, though...” Aiko, though, seemed to see something in the sky.

“No, I don’t see anything... Konishi, do you see anything in the sky?” Yuichi asked.

“Nothing in particular.” Yuri also began craning her neck to look up, but it appeared she didn’t see anything.

“What is it?” Yuichi couldn’t see anything, either, but that was no reason for him not to believe Aiko. After all, there were strange things out there that only Yuichi could see; he wouldn’t be surprised if there were things visible to others that were not visible to him.

“Straight above... It looks like an upside-down castle. I couldn’t say how big. There’s something like... a dragon? Flying around it...” Aiko spoke haltingly, as if she didn’t quite believe what she was saying herself.

“Zalegrande Castle...” Kanako looked up at the sky and whispered, as if in a trance.

“If we’re not being attacked, and there’s just something weird going on, then I’m not entirely sure how to deal with it...” Yuichi said while looking at the crumpled armor. The armor made no show of attacking; there was no sign of anything alive inside of it. There didn’t seem to be any parts below the knee, and there were lots of gaps in it, so if someone had been wearing it, that would have been immediately obvious.

“I sure hope we’re not being attacked...” Aiko murmured, dumbfounded, from his side.

Yuri strode up next to them, wearing her anger openly. “I have never been treated in such a fashion! For my once-in-a-lifetime love confession to be defused in such a ridiculous manner... it’s extremely upsetting!”

“Orihara... do you know something about this?” She had been murmuring something about it before, so Yuichi decided to ask.

“Ah?” Kanako, who had been clinging to him ever since they got to the roof, now fixed her eyes on him. “Well, let me see... this model was from the age where armor-makers were making their last gasps against the progress of firearms. It was a fruitless task, but they made the armor thicker and even tempered it to try to make it resistant to bullets. The total weight is over 30 kg, and they generally wore it on horseback—”

Her stock of knowledge didn’t seem like it would be exhausted for a while, and Yuichi was about to cut her off, when something else came falling.

This time, it happened right before Yuichi’s eyes. It had definitely fallen from the sky.

It looked like another part of the armor — a silver plate that struck the roof hard, bounced, and landed next to the armor already there.

He looked up and saw a few other pieces falling. They appeared to have come from much higher up, so it was hard to know when exactly they had appeared. The next thing he knew, they were there, and that was that.

Planks and clumps of metal of different shapes and sizes bounced off the roof and gathered near the original suit of armor.

“What is it?” he asked Kanako, who seemed like she might know about this, too.

“It’s horse armor,” she said. “In the 16th century, they began experimenting with using steel plates to protect horses, too. But it turned out that having to carry armor, as well as a fully-armored knight, was too much for any less than the sturdiest horses to handle. It also slowed them down, which made it hard to use it effectively.”

“...I thought I’d try and ask, but that’s not very useful in the current situation...” Yuichi commented. Metal plates were falling from the sky. Knowing that they were horse armor wasn’t really helping.

Yuichi waited a little bit, but saw no sign of anything else falling.

“What do you think we should do?” Aiko asked, completely at a loss. “You think we can just leave it? I mean, it can’t have anything to do with us, right?”

“Yeah, I guess it’s none of our business, huh?” Yuichi said.

A mysterious incident had taken place right before their eyes, so it felt like maybe they should do something. But it probably was none of Yuichi’s business right now.

“I am not amused, and I’m going home right now!” Yuri declared. “Yuichi Sakaki! I’ll visit you another time, so be ready when I do!”

Yuri left the roof ahead of the others. Yuichi really did feel like he was being challenged to a duel.

“We should go, too. We can get something to eat on the way,” Yuichi said. He’d suddenly remembered he hadn’t had lunch yet.

It was late at night. Yuichi was in Mutsuko’s room, conferring with her about what had happened earlier that day.

There was a reason he always had these discussions with her late at night: Mutsuko was always busy with something. She often left her door open, but even if she was in her room, if she was concentrating on something, it was forbidden to interrupt her. When she was getting ready for bed was the main time she usually seemed to be free.

The middle of the night was also most convenient for Yuichi, who tended to spend his free time training when there wasn’t something else going on.

Tonight, as usual, Mutsuko was sitting across the low table from Yuichi. She was dressed in a monk’s work outfit. And for some reason, this time, Yoriko was kneeling next to him, dressed in a negligee.

“The fact that you two are always skulking around here in the middle of the night is very suspicious!” Yoriko complained.

“Yori, don’t you have school tomorrow?” he asked. “You should get to bed.”

“You both have school, too!” she protested.

“Well, yeah, but...” Yuichi scratched his head. He’d had a feeling that that logic wasn’t going to convince her, but he couldn’t help wanting his dear little sister to have enough sleep at night.

“I’ll try to keep it brief, then,” he said. “Remember how I went up to the roof earlier today? Well, some armor fell onto it.”

It felt a bit odd when he said it out loud, but he was just describing what he’d seen.

“Huh?” Yoriko asked.

“Armor?! Like the Shu’urushi-nuri Murasaki-ito Sugake-odoshi Gomaido Gusoku Nanban Kasashiki?!” In contrast to Yoriko’s confusion, Mutsuko was immediately energized.

“Yeah, Yori’s reaction is the normal one. And what was that?!” Yuichi shot back. He had no idea what she was talking about.

“Why don’t you know about it?!” Mutsuko cried. “It’s the Shu’urushi-nuri Murasaki-ito Sugake-odoshi Gomaido Gusoku Nanban Kasashiki! The personal armor of Keiji Maeda!”

“Is that some kind of incantation or something?” he asked.

As usual, just hearing the term again hadn’t helped, so he decided to focus on the broad details. The point was, she was asking if it was Japanese-style armor.

“Orihara said it was like European armor from the 17th century,” he asserted. “Heavy armor, she said, I think. It did look pretty thick, too. And it came with horse armor. We waited to see if anything else would fall, but that was the last of it.”

“If Orihara said it, she’s probably right,” Mutsuko said. “Did you take a picture?”

“Oops.” The fact that he had forgotten to do something so simple suggested that, despite his plays at level-headedness, the incident had actually left him very flustered. “I wonder what happened to it, though. The teachers were probably making their rounds, so...”

Yuichi couldn’t imagine what the teachers would do upon finding a suit of armor on the roof.

“They’d probably assume it was a fake, right? Like a cosplay,” Yoriko said. “So they’d take it in to the lost and found.”

Despite Yuichi’s assumptions that Yoriko would be disgusted by the bizarre conversation, she seemed surprisingly serious in engaging with it.

“You believe this bizarre story?” he asked.

“I believe everything you say, Big Brother. Besides, this is nothing compared to all the strange things that happened during our vacation.”

“A falling suit of armor is nothing?” Yuichi didn’t want her getting used to this sort of thing. He renewed his vow not to let Yoriko get caught up in any more strange business.

“You think it’ll still be there tomorrow? I wish I’d gone with you today!” Mutsuko cried.

“That’s right, you decided not to come to the roof with us,” Yuichi said. “What were you doing?”

“I heard there was a sale on kamas, so I went to buy one! It was such a steal!” she exclaimed.

“A kama? You mean like a sickle-and-chain?” Yuichi’s first assumption was that it was a weapon. That was the only thing he could imagine her going off to buy so gleefully.

“I mean a pot,” she said. “For boiling things! You know the Narikama ritual? I was thinking of using it for that!”

“I’ll ask about that later,” Yuichi said. For now, let’s talk about the armor.” He stopped his eager sister. If he let things get off track, he had a feeling they’d never get back to the original subject.

“Armor... Armor is the smallest locked room there is! And a mysterious falling death onto the roof! When you think about it, it’s like a real mystery story!” Mutsuko seemed to be getting excited by her own idea.

“Just to make sure you know, there was no one inside the armor, okay?” he asked peevishly. If a person had died in the armor, he wouldn’t be talking about this so calmly.

“Right, then I bet someone’s trying a new magic trick! If not, then it’s a fafrotskies phenomenon!” Mutsuko declared with her hand on her chin.

Yuichi blinked at the unfamiliar word. “What the hell is that, exactly?”

“Fafrotskies,” she said. “An abbreviation of FAlls FROm The SKIES. It refers to phenomena where things fall from the skies that you wouldn’t expect to fall. You mostly hear it with regards to fish, but there’ve also been reports of chunks of meat, building materials, pieces of metal, feces, blood, and lots of other things falling from the skies all over the world. This is the first I’ve heard of it happening with armor, though! Possible causes include tornadoes, things dropped by birds, and things falling out of airplanes. By the way, the person who coined the term fafrotskies is cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson! He also thought up the name OOPArts! Doesn’t he just have the best naming sense?!”

“I see he’s patient zero for middle school syndrome,” Yuichi said. “But I think we’d notice if there was a tornado, and I didn’t see anything flying over...”

He found himself trailing off. He hadn’t seen anything in the sky, but Aiko had.

“What’s wrong?” Mutsuko asked.

“Well, it’s just, Noro said she saw something floating in the sky. I couldn’t see it, myself, but she said there was an upside-down castle, with a dragon flying around it. If there really was a castle, it probably fell from there, right?”

“I wonder why couldn’t you see it,” Mutsuko mused. “Was Noro the only one who could?”

“Konishi was with me, and she said she couldn’t see it either,” Yuichi said. “I don’t know about Orihara.”

Kanako had looked up at the sky and muttered something, but he couldn’t remember what it had been.

“So some people see it and some people don’t... I’ll just have to go look for myself!” Mutsuko seemed excited by the promise of this curious phenomenon. “If I can’t see it, I’ll talk with Noro and see if I can get her to offer up some details!”

“Aren’t you bored, listening to us talk about this weird stuff?” he asked, turning to Yoriko. She had been very quiet for a while, so he’d thought she might be bored. But in fact, she was snoozing quietly, head drooped. “You’re asleep?!”

“Well, let’s adjourn for now. We can figure out the rest after we get to school tomorrow,” said Mutsuko.

Maybe she was right. Maybe they didn’t have enough information to go on at the moment.

“Yori, we’ve got to go back to our room,” Yuichi said to Yoriko, but she showed no signs of waking up. Yuichi sighed and lifted her up in his arms instead, to carry her out of Mutsuko’s room.

“Hey... you’re really awake, right?” he realized.

“You could tell?” Yoriko stuck out her tongue and smiled, realizing she was busted.

“The grinning made it pretty obvious.” As Yuichi carried her back, he wondered what she found so funny.