Epilogue

“So, what was that all about in the end?” I asked. “Y’know, the whole thing with Kudou.”

Everyone replied with shrugs, cocked heads, and mumbles of “Who knows?” A day had passed since her attempted raid, and we were all together in the clubroom after school once again. Thinking back on the whole debacle, it struck me that we actually knew next to nothing about her.

Kudou remained steadfast in her retelling of events (obtained through application of a painful arm bar)—“Nooo, stoooooop! I’m sorry! I don’t actually know anything about you people at all! I just got carried away, that’s all! I’m so, so, sorry, so pleeease, stoooooop!”—so apparently it really was the truth of the matter.

She did give some more details, though. From the sound of things, she’d awakened to her supernatural power about a month beforehand. The nature of her power meant that she couldn’t use it at all in isolation, but regardless, the paranormal nature of the whole deal scared the wits out of her, and she’d been living in fear ever since.

Then, a week or so ago, she’d received a text from a mysterious unknown number that read “The members of the literary club have the same sort of supernatural power as you.” She started monitoring us that very same day, and it wasn’t long before she’d discovered that we really were in the same situation as she was. Anyway, one thing led to another, and it all culminated in yesterday’s battle, in which I’d mustered up all my chuuni power and played a starring role.

“I...I was so scaaared!” she bawled. “I got this power out of nowhere, and there was just one of me and five of you! I thought that you’d beat me for sure if I let you have the initiative, so I decided to pick a fight myself! Please, just let me off the hook already! And aaagh, let gooo, my arm’s gonna breeeak!”

She was like an exchange student who decided to playact as a delinquent out of fear they’d get bullied otherwise. So, long story short, I didn’t think she was a bad person at heart. She did give Dark and Dark back to me right away, after all. Seriously, thank goodness. I’ll never let anyone take you away from me ever again, Dark and Dark!

“Well, it’s not like Kudou’s the real problem anyway,” said Tomoyo. “I’m way more worried about whoever sent that text.”

“True enough,” I agreed. Whoever they were, they’d known that we had powers. That had to mean that they were involved in our powers’ awakening somehow.

“I suppose this means that some unknown party really did cause our powers to awaken,” speculated Sayumi in a slightly anxious tone of voice.

Hatoko shot me a pleading sort of look. “Juu...what’s gonna happen to us? Was it really all just a coincidence that nothing’s happened for the past half a year? Is this just the beginning...?”

I didn’t know what to say. We were shockingly ignorant when it came to our powers. We’d spent half a year mulling over them, yet we were still stuck in the blind hypothesis stage.

Kudou wasn’t actually our enemy, in the end, but for all we knew, a real foe could turn up at any moment. It seemed totally possible that we’d unknowingly set foot into a new world that far exceeded the limits of our imaginations, and the fear of our own ignorance weighed heavily upon us. A somber silence fell over the room.

Or, at least, it fell over us high schoolers. “It’ll be okay. I’m not scared of stuff I don’t know about,” said Chifuyu, her usual flat tone totally unaffected by our gloom. “I don’t know about Japanese politics, I don’t know why people are born, and I don’t know what’s past the edge of the universe, but I’m still alive.”

She paused her speech for a moment to struggle with a bag of potato chips that was stubbornly resisting her best efforts to open it. After a few seconds of strained grunting, she exhausted herself and picked up the thought process she’d left dangling.

“The world’s full of stuff we don’t know about. But we all just keep living anyway.”

The high school squad was speechless. H-Holy crap, that was deep...

“We learned about all that in school today,” Chifuyu added. “They said that when you think too much about that stuff, it’s called ‘worrying about nothing.’”

“Worrying about nothing...” I muttered to myself. Maybe she’s right. If the best we can do is guess blindly, then what’s the point of thinking about it at all? We only get one shot at high school, so why should we waste it worrying about a hypothetical enemy that may or may not even exist? Wasting this time instead of enjoying it for a reason like that would be the height of stupidity!

“What happens, happens,” concluded Chifuyu with a confident nod. I was genuinely sorta impressed. Astonished, even, but I wasn’t about to admit that I’d been astonished by a grade schooler, so I decided to respond in my usual way.

“Mwa ha ha! That was a superlative summary of my thoughts on the matter, Himeki Chifuyu—nay, World Create!”

“Tch-tch!” Chifuyu scolded, waving one of her little fingers at me. “I’m not World Create. I want you to call me Sweet and Sour Pineapple.”

“I, uhh...guess you really took a shine to that title, huh?”

“Yeah. I wanna make it my power’s name too.”

“Please, don’t! Anything but that!” I spent an eternity thinking up those names! I themed them perfectly to give us all a sense of team unity!

I somehow managed to persuade Chifuyu to give up on the name change, then turned to address everyone at once. “All right, I think we’ve settled on a plan of action: we’ll keep doing things exactly the same way we’ve been doing them so far. Okay?”

The others nodded in agreement. Not a single objection.

“Mwa ha ha! Don’t worry! You all have nothing to fear! Even should disaster strike, you have me, Guiltia Sin Jurai, here to defend you!”

I busted out the coolest line I could think of, but for some reason, everybody just quietly stared at me for a minute, then heaved a collective sigh. H-Huh...? This isn’t how I pictured this turning out!

“You’ve got a way of sounding cool, at least,” sighed Tomoyo. “Just sounding cool.”

“Being all talk and no action is his most fundamental character trait, after all,” agreed Sayumi.

“Juu really never changes!” added Hatoko.

“Andou, help me open this,” said Chifuyu.

Their reactions were even worse than I’d feared. Chifuyu’s was the worst: she hadn’t even reacted at all, brushing me off entirely to ask for a favor. I dejectedly accepted the bag of potato chips from her, gripped it with both hands, mustered up all my strength, and—Huh?

“Wow, okay. This bag’s putting up a real fight. Hyaaah!” I gave it my best shot once more, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. “Gahhh! Ugh... No dice...”

“Don’t pull a muscle, Andou,” said Tomoyo as she pulled out a pair of scissors. “You’re not a caveman. We have tools for this.”

“N-Nah, I’m good. I’ve come this far, so I wanna see if I can get it open with my own strength.”

“Wooow. Pointless much?”

“If I give up now, I’ll...I’ll lose sight of myself for sure!”

“Please, save lines like that for moments that actually deserve them.”

“Hurry up, Andou.”

“Don’t worry, Chifuyu! I swear I’ll open this bag, come hell or high water! Hrrraaauuuggghhhhhh!” I poured every fiber of my being into tearing the bag asunder, but still, it wouldn’t budge. “Damnations! I will never submit to the likes of you! Uggghhhrrraaaaaahhh!”

My fingers grew numb, and the strength gradually drained from my arms. My whole body was screaming “Stop! Just give up!” while the gazes of my friends were screaming “We don’t really care, but could you at least stop shouting about it?”

But like hell I will! How could I possibly back down after coming this far?! I want to be strong! Strong enough to tear that bag wide open! Limits? I don’t give a damn about those! Just watch! Here and now, I’ll take my limits... and break them!

Thump!

“Wha...? Huh...?” I felt something click deep within me, as if cogs that had been spinning freely up to that moment were suddenly working together in unison. A moment later, black flames erupted from my body of their own volition. I stood in the center of a bonfire of unprecedented proportions.

“Wh-What’re you doing, Andou? Why’d you bring out Dark and Dark...?” asked Tomoyo. She sounded confused, and the others looked just as shocked as she did.

I probably looked shocked too, honestly. Dark and Dark had never manifested itself in that sort of form before. I felt...no, I sensed that I’d stepped across some sort of boundary. This could only mean one thing.

“I’ve...awakened...”

“You...what?”

“I broke my limits and awakened...”

I understood what had happened to me on an intuitive, almost instinctual, level. My strength of will had stoked the obsidian flames that slumbered deep within me, unlocking my supernatural power’s potential and bringing it to its next stage. I’d been preparing myself for this moment since the day after my power first awakened, and spoke the name my power had finally earned.

“Dark and Dark...of the End!”

Everyone present, me included, fell into a stunned silence. The seconds dragged by excruciatingly slowly, until finally, we broke out of the spell and cried out in unison.

“Now, of all times?!”

I’d always operated under the assumption that my power would follow the guiding principles of classic plot developments and awaken anew in a moment of crisis. Apparently, my “moment of crisis” had just turned out to be “not being strong enough to open a bag of chips.” I guess it was a moment of crisis for my dignity, or something? And come on, I didn’t even get the thing open in the end! Throw me a bone here, Dark and Dark!

“Andou...is this supposed to be a joke, or something?” asked Tomoyo.

“Do you seriously think I could awaken for a one-off gag?! Actually...let’s think about this from a different perspective. Doesn’t awakening that easily make me way more useful than a character who can’t awaken without a couple of his friends getting killed off first?”

“It’s certainly an Andou-level awakening, I’ll admit that much.”

“Hold up a second, Sayumi. What’s that supposed to mean? Are you trying to say that awakening at a really weird moment’s on-brand for me, or something?”

“I’m so happy for you, Juu! You finally made the dream you wrote in our elementary school graduation album come true!”

“Oh, yeah. I guess I did write that my dream for the future was ‘to have an awakening,’ now that you mention it.”

“I don’t care about all that. Andou, gimme my chips back.”

“You could try to show at least a little interest in me as a person, Chifuyu...”

I sighed. I’d managed to awaken, which should’ve been a big, special sorta deal, but the whole thing ended up feeling sorta pathetic in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on instead. Last-second awakenings are one of my favorite plot twists, but when it happens at the actual, literal last second—in a moment of everyday peace and quiet worthy of a story’s epilogue—it’s just not the same.

“Anyway, Andou, you awakened! Good for you! But what does that actually mean, specifically?” asked Tomoyo.

“Hmm. Let’s see...” I gave it some thought, and I found that I had a vague, instinctual understanding of how my power had changed. I wouldn’t know the exact details until I gave it a try for myself, though.

Dark and Dark had reached its next stage. And that next stage turned out to be...