Chapter 2: Multiple Names Are Obligatory

Hey there.

My name is Guiltia Sin Jurai, though in this world I’m known as Andou Jurai. I’m just your average, everyday highschooler—or so it seems, but that persona is merely a front! In truth, beneath that veil of mundanity lies a bearer of fantastical superpowers!

Within me lurks the forbidden blaze: Dark and Dark. Its corrupted sable flames have the power to slay even the gods themselves! You shouldn’t even need to hear my name to know that my power and I are absolutely awash with sin—such is the nature of my very existence.

I’m just a walking bastion of sin, day in and day out. I mean, damn.

On that particular day, I made my way to the club room after classes ended with a spring in my step. Why, you ask? It’s simple: I’d spent the last lesson of the day workshopping the Malediction of Unleashing, and I was pretty darn happy with what I’d come up with! I’d remedied the “too much chaos” problem that Tomoyo had identified in its previous rendition, and I was prepared to call this new rendition the incantation’s ultimate incarnation.

All that was left was to hurry along to the club room and give it a test run! I’d take up a stance in front of the huge mirror we kept in there and cloak myself with Dark and Dark’s stygian conflagration! It was posing time!

I practically skipped my way down the stairs to the first floor, where our club room was situated. However, as I reached the door, I heard somebody’s voice coming from inside. It seemed I wasn’t the first arrival.

I peeked through the window of our room’s sliding door. There she was—the sovereign of eternity, Closed Clock, also known as Kanzaki Tomoyo. She was alone in the room, standing before the mirror.

“Heh heh heh...” she laughed, a dauntless grin upon her face. What on earth is she doing?

“All right, then. If you’re so desperate to fight me, then I, Kanzaki Tomoyo, will be your opponent! I should warn you, though. My power, Closed Clock, grants me absolute authority over the underlying principles of this world itself! Do you really think your petty little power stands a chance against mine?”

She flicked her hair over her shoulder with a snap, not that it was any longer than her shoulders to begin with. It almost seemed like she was acting as if her hair was long enough to touch the floor. Her eyes blazed with a level-headed contempt for her “opponent,” and her smile had quickly shifted into a scornful sneer.

“Clack!” she shouted out loud. I had a feeling I knew what she was going for; most likely, that was the sound her imaginary high heels made as she stomped the floor. “Regret your foolishness all you like, but it’s too late to turn back now! Let you be trapped betwixt the hands of time and wander forever the realm of eternity!”

Tomoyo—yes, Kanzaki Tomoyo—stood alone in the club room, posing it up and having the time of her life.

I’d love to know what sort of face I was making as I watched this spectacle unfold—or, at least, that’s what I would say if it weren’t for the fact that I could see my reflection in the glass. Honestly, I looked ecstatic.

I flung open the door. Tomoyo jumped, then she slowly turned around to face me, moving so stiffly and jerkily she looked like she was doing the robot.

“A-A-A-Andou...” The color briefly drained from her face, then returned in force as a massive blush. Her mouth kept flapping open and shut, but it took her a minute to actually make any sound. “W-W-W-Were you watching?”

I paused for a moment, searching for the perfect phrase to express all the thoughts that were running through my head at once—and then I found it.

“Nice one, chuuni-girl!”

“Gyaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!”

The very next moment, Tomoyo was gone. I figured she’d used her power to flee the room, but was proven wrong a second later when I noticed her curled up in a fetal position in a corner, clutching at her head.

“Just kill me, please...” Tomoyo muttered. She was now sitting at the table, her face buried in her hands.

“There, there,” I said, giving her a comforting pat on the back. I knew how to behave like a gentleman in circumstances like these. “But man, I can’t believe you, Tomoyo! After all those complaints, you really did like the name I gave your ability after all! Guess all that moaning and groaning was just you being a huge tsundere?”

“D-Don’t get carried away, jerk!” she shouted, scowling at me as tears built up in the corners of her eyes. Normally, her glare scared the crap out of me, but I didn’t find it intimidating at all this time. For that matter, I couldn’t stop myself from smirking, no matter how hard I tried.

“‘Don’t get carried away’? Oh, please. Remind me, which one of us was holed up in our club room posing in front of the mirror just a minute ago?”

“I...! Urgh... D-Don’t act like you don’t do the exact same thing all the time...”

“Yup, I sure do. I mean, of course I do! It’s hella cool! I don’t consider it embarrassing in the slightest. But remind me, who is it who’s always telling me how my most wonderful of ceremonies is such a ‘chuuni’ thing to do?”

“Ugh... S-Sure, laugh it up, why don’t you?”

“Now, hold on a moment—I’m not laughing at you at all! On the contrary, I’m practically aquiver with joy! I’ve finally found myself a like-minded comrade!”

“We are not like-minded!” She bent over and groaned incoherently, but I still couldn’t stop smirking.

“Hmm? Well then, whyever were you posing like that? I thought you hated all that ‘chuuni nonsense’?”

She was still trembling with mortification, but eventually, Tomoyo managed to start explaining herself in short, stammered fragments. “Yeah, I hate that chuuni crap. I despise it! All those stupid names and ridiculous plotlines you come up with are seriously as cringey as it gets... B-But, every once in a while—like, seriously rarely—I might think...they’re just a little...cool.”

“Oho, is that so?”

“E-Especially Closed Clock. It’s...a pretty decent name. It may be English for no good reason, but it’s got a nice ring to it, and it fits my ability well. Especially when you add ‘sovereign of eternity’ before it—that’s a little cool... J-Just a little, though!”

“Mwa ha ha... Mwaaa ha ha ha ha haaa!” I couldn’t hold in my laughter any longer. Holy crap, this is the best! She said my names are good! She actually complimented them!

The best kind of compliment you can give me is complimenting my naming sense. Getting a compliment about my appearance or personality would be nothing in comparison. I was so happy, I could hardly bear it. C’mon, Tomoyo, if you can be this nice, you should’ve done it ages ago! And it looks like you’ve taken a liking to the catchphrase I came up with for you too!

“D-Don’t get me wrong, okay?! It really is just every once in a while! It barely ever happens! I’m saying that ninety-nine percent of the stuff you come up with’s garbage, but that last one percent’s just a little bit better than the rest of the bunch!”

“Mwa ha ha! No need to put on a front, Tomoyo. What do you say the two of us descend into the depths of chaotic darkness together?”

“Aaargh, no! Seriously, cut it out with that crap! And get it through your head that slapping ‘chaos’ onto something doesn’t automatically make it cooler!”

“Oh, there you go again! Say what you will, but the truth is that deep down inside, you think it’s cool.”

“Gaaahhhhhh! You! Little!”

My taunting had finally gotten the better of her. Tomoyo shot up from her chair and shot me a look that could kill. “Get up!” she shouted. “We’re settling this, here and now! And just so you know, your petty little superpower doesn’t stand a chance against mine!”

“Oh no, please, spare me! Closed Clock grants you absolute authority over the underlying principles of this world itself—I could never hold a candle against you! Oh, I’m so scared!”

“Agh! It’s... Ugh! Aaauuuggghhhhhh!” Tomoyo, who had only stood up just a second ago, fell face-first onto the table.

I’d done it! Absolute victory was mine! I knew all the classic chuuni weak points. As Shinomori Aoshi would put it: “I know your swordsmanship all too well—after all, it is my own.”

For a chuuni who makes the sort of speech I’d caught her in the middle of, what hurts more than being ignored, more than being told off, more than being scorned, is being laughed at. That’s more painful than anything, and I could feel her anguish clearly.

“Hmph! It seems I didn’t even need Dark and Dark to finish off the likes of you,” I boasted. It wasn’t every day that I could feel like I’d actually won against one of our club’s other members, so I had to take the opportunity to revel in my victory while I could. “True power, you see, grows in potency when you refrain from using it frivolously, just as the true essence of iaido can be seen only when your blade rests within its scabbard.”

“I’ve never met anyone who uses their power more frivolously than you do...” muttered Tomoyo. And, I mean, yeah, fair.

I was in the habit of rejoicing in Dark and Dark’s pitch-black glow three times a day, like clockwork. I couldn’t fall asleep without manifesting its tenebrous flames at least once before bed. I was as frivolous with it as I could possibly be. My black flames were just about as devalued as Super Saiyans were toward the end of Dragon Ball’s serialization.

“True power remains as potent as ever no matter how haphazardly you use it—if anything, such use only makes it stronger! Indeed, it’s just like how a long-standing unagi restaurant’s special sauce grows deeper and deeper in flavor as time marches by!”

“That was an awful metaphor.” Yeah. Gotta agree with that one too.

Moving along, though, I was seriously shocked. Tomoyo, of all people, was a secret chuuni! She’d dropped a hint or two here and there in the past, but I never imagined she was that deep into it. The simulation she’d been running had some serious oomph to it too! Enough so that I’d totally forgotten everything I’d been thinking of just a minute—

“Gaaahhh?!” Crap! I’ve totally forgotten how my super fancy rework of the Malediction of Unleashing went! “Dang it, Tomoyo, what’s wrong with you?! You made me forget my brand new Malediction!”

“That’s not my fault, and I don’t give a crap anyway!”

“Gaaah... C’mon, how’d it go...? All I can remember is that I somehow managed to cut it down to two chaoses in total...”

“Two’s still too much chaos.”

“Man, I should’ve written it down! Inspiration struck me like a bolt of lightning, but alas, lightning never strikes twice, and I may never recall that momentary stroke of brilliance...” I fell into an unfathomably deep depression.

Damnations! I can’t let this end here! I desperately scoured my memories, trying to put myself back in the moment when inspiration had taken me.

Umm, okay—I was super bored in class, so I decided to kill some time by reading my electronic dictionary’s definition of “Apocalypse.” So, that was great, and I ended up grinning, but then the girl who sits next to me snickered, and I got all paranoid and thought, “Oh, crap, she’s laughing at me!” Then I totally failed to learn from experience and looked up “Genesis” next...

“Hey, Tomoyo, could you let me use your computer for a sec?” I figured that if I looked up “Genesis” again, it might set off a chain of association that could help me remember the Malediction. I reached for her laptop, which had been sitting open on the table since I’d arrived.

“N-Noooooo!”

“Gaaah!” I screamed as Tomoyo slammed the laptop shut right on my fingers. I had a sudden and intense empathy for animals that get caught in bear traps. “Ouch, jeez... What the heck was that for?”

“What do you mean what was it for?! You’re the one who was about to snoop around in my computer without permission!”

“Huh? But we all borrow your computer all the time!”

“Yeah, after I say it’s okay! Which it is, now. Go ahead,” she said, spinning the laptop around to face me. The screen displayed her perfectly blank desktop with its perfectly unassuming background—a picture of a lake.

“What, have to close all your porn tabs first?”

“Don’t lump me in with you, jackass!”

Hmm. What is she hiding, then? I was pretty curious, but it wouldn’t exactly be polite to try to probe into her secrets. Besides, at the moment, the Malediction took priority.

“Now then, my good friend Google—let us voyage forth on a journey to uncover my lost memories!”

“Less talking, more typing!”

With the power of Google on my side, I somehow managed to remember the Malediction of Unleashing well enough to piece it back together. The rest of the literary club’s members happened to arrive right around the time I was finishing up. Hatoko, Chifuyu, and Sayumi all filed in to join me and Tomoyo.

“Thanks for the computer time, Tomoyo.”

“Sure. So, did you remember it?”

“Yeah! Though, I mean, ‘remember’ might not be quite the right word. It’s more like, y’know...like it struck me, or came to me in a revelation.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Oh, and I ended up coming up with another title while I was thinking it through, so it all worked out in the end.”

“You really need to stop making up titles for yourself. Like, please, just stop. It’s painful to watch,” said Tomoyo, who had turned slightly pale the second I said the word “title.” I ignored her and pulled a black notebook out from my bag. A deep dark, jet-black notebook.

“Oh god, it’s the cringe compilation!”

“No it’s not! It’s the Bloody Bible!”

The Bloody Bible: a forbidden tome within which the ultimate truth of the world itself is laid bare!

“Andou...” began Tomoyo, “please, just this once, take my advice: take that book and burn it, now. If you don’t, you’re going to end up looking back on it someday and passing out from sheer horror.”

She wasn’t taking a jab at me that time; it felt more like a serious and genuine warning. I ignored her anyway, though, and started inscribing the new and improved Malediction of Unleashing into the Bloody Bible, along with the new title I’d thought up. I’ve gone and done it again! Yet another sinful name to add to my collection.

“Ah, Juu, wasn’t I with you when you bought that notebook?” piped up Hatoko, sliding into the conversation. “That takes me back! It was about a year ago, right? We searched through five shops in a row before we found just the right one for you! You kept asking each and every worker we found if they had any black notebooks in stock.”

As Hatoko enthusiastically recounted her story, I could feel Tomoyo’s gaze growing colder and colder as she stared at me.

“What? No way! What’re you saying, Hatoko? I found this, y’know, like, Death Note style! It just fell at my feet out of nowhere one day.”

“Then you colored all the white lines on the cover red, and then you colored the part where you’re supposed to write your name black only to write your name over that with a white-out pen in the end! You’ve always been really crafty like that.”

“No, that’s not... Ah, fine, I give up.”

Tomoyo was looking at me like she’d look at a pile of human waste, and I was too busy shrinking away from her to argue.

I looked down at the Bloody Bible once more. The red lines running through its black cover shone like a blood-red moon in the middle of the night sky—they were seriously cool as hell. I’d also written “Bloody Bible” in warped, distorted letters in the place where you’re supposed to write a school subject. (In English, of course. Honestly, I worked pretty hard on making it look just right.)

I’d also written my true name, Guiltia Sin Jurai, just below. I’d wanted to do all of the writing on the cover in the same foreign language, but I’d invented the name “Guiltia” myself and couldn’t for the life of me figure out how it would be spelled in English. In the end, I was forced to give in and write that part out phonetically in Japanese characters.

As I was gazing at the Bloody Bible, Chifuyu walked over to me. “Andou,” she said in a reproachful tone, “you shouldn’t play around with your notebooks.”

“You have it all wrong, Chifuyu! This isn’t a notebook; it’s the Bloody Bible!”

She just stared at me.

“Right, okay, I’m sorry. I was playing around with my notebook. I won’t do it again, so please, forgive me!”

“Very good.” She nodded with satisfaction as I admitted defeat. The pressure of her innocent stare was just too much for me. Damnations! I’ve always been powerless in the face of a sound argument presented in a straightforward manner!

“Hmm? Hey, Andou, about this part,” said Tomoyo, pointing at the part of the notebook where I’d written Bloody Bible in English. It looked ridiculously stylish, so I could imagine why it’d grab her attention.

“You spelled ‘Bible’ wrong.”

“I...what?”

“Bible’s spelled B-I-B-L-E. You spelled it V-I-V-R-E.”

I glanced nervously at the lettering, and oh god, she was right. There it was, Bloody Vivre, written in nice, big, easily readable letters.

Huh? Wait. Huh?

A chaotic storm of thoughts rampaged through my head. I was in such a panic I totally forgot to tease Tomoyo for knowing how “Bible” was spelled and insinuate that it meant she was a secret chuuni.

But no, wait a second! “S-S-Sayumi!” I shouted, rounding on our club president and storming up to her. “I-I asked you how to spell ‘Bible’ in English that one time, right?! And you told me it was spelled V-I-V-R-E, didn’t you?!”

“Pfft!” After just a few seconds of questioning, she caved, letting out a half-suppressed laugh. Apparently, she couldn’t hold in her mirth any longer; her shoulders were quivering, and she refused to look me in the eye.

“I-I’m so sorry! He he he! I m-must have accidentally taught you...the wrong... Pff, ha ha ha ha!” She was outright cracking up at that point, enjoying every second of it. I could tell just from watching her back shudder.

All right, that settles it—she definitely taught me the wrong spelling on purpose! She’s probably been laughing it up internally every single time I pulled out my notebook! What an absolute sadist!

“Andou,” said Tomoyo, “this says ‘Vivre.’ Bloody Vivre. Like the name of the shopping center, y’know? Why on earth would a shopping mall get covered in blood?”

“Ah, now that you mention it, didn’t you get that notebook from a stationery store in the Vivre by the station, Juu? This almost feels like fate!” added Hatoko.

Between Hatoko’s carefree banter and Tomoyo’s ridicule, I was driven to the ground, falling prone on my face.

How could you, Sayumi? How could you...? There was no hope for recovery—if I tried to scribble out the “Vivre” part with a black marker, it’d definitely end up looking super weird. What the hell’s a “Bloody Vivre” supposed to be...?

I fell into a deep depression for a while, but since nobody bothered to try to cheer me up, I eventually perked back up on my own. Not like it really matters that much—I can just say that in the world I’m originally from, they spell it “Vivre” instead of “Bible.” The JoJo in Part Five got to be called GioGio instead just because it was set in Italy, so there’s precedent for this sorta thing!

All that said...why is it that nobody in this club ever tries to comfort me when I’m depressed? Have they figured out that I always bounce back perfectly well on my own if you just leave me alone for a while? I decided to stop thinking about it and returned to my seat to flip through the Bloody Bible.

A little while later, a topic for a new conversation occurred to me. “By the way, everyone—what’re all of your titles?”

The overall mood of the room shifted suddenly and dramatically. “Andou,” began Sayumi (who had finally managed to stop laughing) in a sort of chiding tone, “I don’t appreciate the way your question implies that it’s a given that we would all have ‘titles.’”

“Wait, what?! You can’t mean—you don’t?!”

“As it so happens, most people don’t.”

“Huh... I guess that must mean I’m a truly unique and extraordinary individual after all.”

“You could certainly say that. To begin with, is a title really something you’re supposed to think up for yourself?”

Sayumi was absolutely right, and I knew it. I didn’t have any hope of arguing against that point, so I turned to the others and changed the topic.

“All right, let’s have a show of hands. Who here has a title for themselves?”

Nobody raised their hands. Yeah, sorta saw that coming...

“Okay then, who here doesn’t understand what I mean by ‘title’?”

That time, precisely one person raised her hand, that person being Chifuyu.

“Huh? You know what it means, Hatoko?” I asked. That was sort of a surprise. I’d been under the impression that Hatoko was totally out of the loop when it came to this stuff.

“I do,” she replied. “Titles are like nicknames, right?”

Hmm. That’s not exactly wrong, but I feel like there’s a bit of a difference in nuance. I was having a hard time figuring out how to reply, but Sayumi jumped in to do it for me.

“If I had to give an example of a title most people would be familiar with, I’d pick something from the world of sports. Take the volleyball team ‘the Oriental Witches,’ or how Kazuhiro Sasaki was called ‘Daimajin’ by his fans. Teams and athletes are assigned titles surprisingly often.”

“Manga use stuff like ‘the Witch,’ or ‘the Ice Queen,’ or ‘the God of Death’ all the time,” added Tomoyo. “Those three are such cliches at this point that you can use them without getting accused of ripping them off from anything specific. Especially ‘the Witch of X’—I seriously can’t count how many variations on that structure I’ve seen.”

Their explanations were nice and straightforward, and Hatoko clapped her hands in understanding. “Oh, I get it! Like ‘the Comedy Craftsmen of the Heisei Era,’ or ‘the Wizards of Words,’ right?”

Those examples were two of her favorite comedy duos. You wouldn’t think it, but Hatoko was really into comedians on the whole. She watched a super long-running comedy show called Shoten on a weekly basis, and she actually cried when the M-1 Grand Prix comedy competition went off the air.

“All right, sounds like we’re all on the same page! In that case, let’s use today to think up titles for ourselves!” I suggested, proposing an excellent idea with impeccable timing.

“No.”

“Absolutely not.”

“No way.”

“Booo.”

A storm of complaints blew in, but I was prepared to weather it! I reached into my pocket and pulled out a single coin—and not one of your everyday hundred-yen coins or arcade tokens either. It was a coin from some foreign country with the face of some ancient emperor printed on it. Why not a Japanese coin? ’Cause foreign coins are cooler, obviously!

“Come on, now—have you all forgotten the literary club’s time-tested rule? When a disagreement arises, we let the coin decide!”

Everyone gave me a “we’ve never had a rule like that” sort of look, but I ignored them and gave the coin a mighty flip! It traced a parabola through the air like a graph charting y=−1x² until I caught it again and slapped it onto the back of my left hand. I’d spent hours practicing that move at home, and it had finally paid off!

I very slowly pulled away my right hand, revealing the Goddess of Fate’s judgment to all and sundry.

“Tails.”

The tails side of the coin had what looked like some sort of ancient temple printed on it. It was unmistakably tails; everyone came over to look and agreed. Tails for sure. Then, all at once, the four of them looked at me and spoke in unison.

“So?”

So...? Oh. Crap.

I forgot to call it! What should I do?! Oh jeez, I can tell they’re pitying me from the looks on their faces! Help me, O Goddess of Fate!

As a drop of cold sweat slowly traced its way down my back, Tomoyo jumped in and said, “Y’know what, forget about the coin,” brushing the whole incident off. I seriously love the way she always manages to be considerate when it really counts. “Aren’t you supposed to earn titles naturally? Like, the people around you start calling you them, and if they stick, they become a title. You’re not supposed to think them up yourself.”

I mean, she wasn’t wrong when it came to the actual fictional worlds where titles get used. In reality, though, all those titles were thought up by the author, usually at great length. I decided against contributing that bit of insight to the conversation, though.

“And, like, we already have our power names,” she continued. “Can’t those just work as our titles? Y’know, like ‘Accelerator’ or ‘Railgun.’”

“I mean, sure, that works. But wouldn’t you rather have a bunch of titles?”

“No. Look, it’s not that I have something against titles on a basic level. I just don’t wanna think them up for myself.”

“C’mon, why’re you being so stubborn about this, Tomoyo? Am I touching a nerve from a dark spot in your past?”

“O-Of course you aren’t, jackass!”

I was just kidding, but Tomoyo really freaked out in response. I figured that meant she really had spent a good bit of time thinking up titles for herself at some point in the past. She’s definitely a former chuuni, no doubt about it.

“Now, now, Tomoyo, no need to fret. If you don’t want to think up your own title, then I’ll come up with the perfect one for you!”

“Don’t! What kind of guy gives a girl a title?! That’d be the most messed-up present ever!”

“Huh? Wait, you wouldn’t be happy if someone gave you a title?”

“There isn’t a single girl on this planet who would be!”

For real? But when the protagonist of that basketball comedy light novel I read the other day gave girls titles as presents, they were over the moon for it... Anyway, talking to Tomoyo seemed like a dead end, so I decided to shift over and attempt to persuade a certain elementary schooler who was busy spacing out instead.

“Hey, Chifuyu.”

“What?”

“Wanna try thinking up some titles?”

“Is that fun?”

“Super fun!”

“Okay then.”

Persuasion complete. I could feel the other members rolling their eyes at me, but I was cool with that. In our club, Chifuyu had the absolute last word over everyone else—in other words, as long as I could get her on my side, I didn’t have to worry about the others at all.

And so, we all began a new club activity: thinking up our titles!

While the others moaned, groaned, and begrudgingly opened up their notebooks, I went over to the whiteboard and prepared to formally raise the curtain on my lecture, which I’d decided to call “Titles, Pseudonyms, and Aliases: Multiple Names for the Absolute Beginner.” I began my lesson, trying as best as I could to affect the tone of some esteemed professor.

“Now then! There are a number of patterns that can be used to create a title. Let’s start with a basic example—among the many varieties of title, some can be split neatly into two segments. In my world, we refer to these as the ‘agent’ and the ‘modifier.’”

“What world would that be?” jabbed Tomoyo, but I ignored her and started scribbling out a series of words on the whiteboard.

“Witch” “God of Death” “Queen” “King” “Ruler” “Scion” “Mage” “Jester”

“As you can see, these are some examples of more commonly found agents. As for modifiers...”

“Crimson” “Dark” “Stygian” “Golden” “Forbidden” “of Chaos” “of Strife” “Forgotten” “Destined” “Splendorous”

“Something along these lines, essentially. As you can see, modifiers trend quite heavily toward words that evoke colors! Now then, let’s try putting it all together—we’ll select an agent, then we’ll apply a modifier to it!”

I proceeded to write “The Dark King” on the whiteboard.

“Yes, that should do nicely. Wonderful, isn’t it? It simply exudes an air of corruption, of solitude! If this were the name of a member of a team of villains, you could say with absolute certainty that he would be the last one to take the stage!”

“I’d say it exudes the stench of chuuni garbage,” groaned Tomoyo.

Nope, ignoring that. C’mon, Tomoyo, I’m having a moment here.

“‘The Dark King’ would be a perfectly functional title as is, but I believe it could be improved upon with just a little modification! Think of it like cooking: it only takes a little bit of effort to add some seasoning, and that extra effort can deepen the flavor of your dish like nothing else! Now then. Hatoko?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Wonderful response! I can tell that you’re ready to give us a demonstration. Please step up to the whiteboard and give this title your own special twist.”

“Umm... ‘My own twist’? What do you mean, Professor Juu?”

“Oh, it’s very simple—just think up a way to rephrase this title in your own words, then write it out! Give it that extra dash of spice!”

Hatoko spent a moment pondering her options, then took up her marker and wrote “King of Darkness” on the whiteboard.

“Finished! Look, look—how’s that, Juu? You love names like this, right?”

I let out a long, exaggerated sigh. “Alas! I’m disappointed in you, Hatoko.”

“Whoa, you went back to talking all dramatically!”

“I’m just that disappointed! Tell me, Hatoko—what exactly have you learned over the past seventeen years of your life?”

“I’ve studied all sorts of things, really,” said Hatoko, pursing her lips in a dissatisfied frown.

I shook my head. Really, now. She doesn’t understand a thing. I erased her “King of Darkness” and wrote my own title in its place: “Lord of Thanatos”

“This is the correct answer, and it also happens to be one of my own innumerable titles.” “King” struck me as a little childish, so I went with “Lord” instead. “Dark,” meanwhile, was swapped out for “Thanatos,” the Greek god of death. Implying, but not outright stating, the darkness theme is what really pulled it together.

God damn that’s cool. Seriously, “Thanatos” sounds cool as hell.

Hatoko moaned with despair. “Tomoyooo,” she cried, “I don’t understand anything at all anymore...”

“There, there, it’s okay. You’re not the one in the wrong here,” Tomoyo assured her.

I decided to let the two of them go flirt in a corner or whatever and returned to my lecture, once again assuming my pseudo-professor persona.

“Returning to agents for a moment, using your actual name can be a valid technique as well. Take, for instance, a man named Tanaka. He could use his own name as the agent and ‘Gale’ as the modifier to make ‘Tanaka of the Gales.’”

Though, actually...on second thought, “Tanaka” sorta spoils the effect of the whole thing. It’s not even slightly cool. For that matter, Japanese names might not work super well for this in general...

“But, well, of course, this technique works best with a name that already sounds a little exotic! ‘Raoul of the Gales,’ for instance, or ‘Leo the Incandescent.’ Some famous examples of this format would be ‘Straw Hat Luffy’ and ‘White Chase Smoker.’ Now then, Chifuyu?”

“What?”

“Tell me: can you think of any examples of this sort of title you’ve seen out in the real world?”

“Arrietty the Borrower.”

“Not quite there yet.”

“Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.”

“Right, okay. Let’s take a step away from Studio Ghibli, shall we?”

“Kiyomori of the Taira.”

“Right, for the record, not everything that fits the ‘agent’ plus ‘modifier’ pattern works properly. ‘Taira’ was Kiyomori’s family name, not a title.”

“Andou the Dummy.”

“All right, yes, that’s the best one so—hey! Who’re you calling a dummy?!”

“Titles are complicated,” muttered Chifuyu. We’d wrapped up that bit nicely with a concluding joke, so I decided to get things back on track.

“When all’s said and done, you don’t have to fixate too much on the agent/modifier structure! It’s just that, in the end—a structure, a framework to help you along your way. You can get by just fine ignoring it entirely. For instance, here’s an example that I just came up with off the cuff.” I wrote “King of the Lions” on the whiteboard.

“Ah, yes, now this is a title!” I fall a little more in love with my own naming sense each passing day.

I’d thought up that title just a little while beforehand. It had all the implicit savagery of a wild jungle beast, but at the same time, that sinister tone was held in check by the inescapable association with a certain famous musical.

“This is another option: subtly invoke the name of a timeless masterpiece to elevate your own title! Consider, for instance, the Stands in JoJo and how often their names are pulled from foreign media.”

“Hey,” whined Hatoko, “if ‘King of Darkness’ is bad, then why’s ‘King of the Lions’ okay? They’re both kings, aren’t they?”

“There’s a certain sense for these things. You just have to have a feel for it.”

“Hmph! I don’t get it at all!” she grumbled. I couldn’t blame her—it really was a matter of a name just feeling right or wrong, and that’s not exactly the easiest thing to explain convincingly. “King of Darkness” definitely felt wrong, in any case.

Anyway, I was getting pretty tired of the professor act and was just about out of stuff to talk about, so I decided to move into the wrap-up phase of the lesson. “All right, everyone. I’ve explained a lot today, but when all is said and done, what’s most important are your own feelings. There are no hard and fast rules for titles and aliases! Shed your restraints and fly free!”

I drew my lecture to the sort of conclusion you’d expect from an obnoxiously self-satisfied art teacher. I could tell that the others were thinking something along the lines of “If there are no hard and fast rules, then what was the point of that whole lesson?” from the looks in their eyes. Honestly, that last part was just me making crap up for the sake of a nice wrap-up.

I gave everyone some time to write down a few ideas, then I started walking around to see what they’d all come up with. First up was Hatoko.

“Heh heh, I’m pretty proud of these!” She grinned as she started reading out the titles she’d written down. “One: ‘Hatoko the Red.’”

“By the book much?!” She’d somehow found a way to do the exact opposite of putting my lecture into practical use!

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it? You said that colors make for good modifiers, right?”

“That doesn’t mean you can just slap a color on your name and call it a day! ‘Hatoko the Red’ makes no sense!”

“Well, ‘Lord of Thanatos’ doesn’t make sense either!”

“Ugh...” I couldn’t argue with that. To be totally honest, it’s pretty common for titles to prioritize “being cool” over “making sense” and end up pretty meaningless as a result. Tons of stories end up falling into that trap. Yeah, hot take, I know.

“Anyway, number one’s vetoed. Next!”

“Two: ‘Hatoko the Blue.’”

“That’s the same friggin’ thing!”

“Whaaat? But the first ten titles I came up with are all color-based!”

“Why?! What are you, a pack of colored pencils?!”

“Hmm... I don’t think that comeback landed very well, Juu.”

“You’ve got pretty high standards when it comes to comedy, don’t you?”

“Ah, that’s it! I just had a great idea! I’m sure you’ll like this one!”

“Okay, let’s hear it.”

“Eleven: ‘Hatoko the Bright Red.’”

“That’s still the same friggin’ thing! This isn’t a comedy sketch; you don’t have to follow the rule of threes!”

“Wait, what? Did I do it three times...? Oh, no, I’m so embarrassed!”

“You sound pretty happy about it to me.” I guess she was pleased about having used a comedic repetition technique entirely by accident. Sheesh. “For crying out loud—how many times are you planning on making the same mistake? What are you, the history of humanity?!”

“Oooh, now that was a good comeback!”

“Wait, for real?”

“Yeah, yeah! A little touch of dark humor works wonders!”

Mwa ha ha! Apparently, I’ve leveled up my comeback skill over the course of this conversation. Having a moment of personal growth mid-battle’s hella cool of me. “You’d better keep training, Hatoko, or I’ll be leaving your comebacks in the dust in no time!”

“Yeah! Okay, next is eleven: ‘Hatoko of the Heisei Era’!”

“Yeah, I get it, cause that’s when you were born. Rejected.”

“Twelve: ‘Hatoko of the Showa Era.’”

“Changing the era doesn’t help. Rejected.”

“Thirteen: ‘Delayed Comeback Hatoko.’”

“What, like, the comedy thing where you play along with the joke for a second before you shut it down? No way you could pull that off.”

“Whaaat, that’s not true! Of course I can—yeah, right! As if I could!”

“Wait, you just pulled it off by saying you can’t pull it off?! What kinda paradox is that?!”

“He he he! See, I did it! That settles it. My title’s ‘Delayed Comeback Hatoko’!” The overpowering innocence of her smile was too much for me, and I couldn’t bring myself to argue against it. Hmm. That’ll do, I guess. She likes it, and that’s what really matters.

Hatoko’s title was settled for the moment, so I moved on to my next student: Sayumi.

“I can’t say I’m especially confident about mine,” she declared as I approached. You’d almost think she was being modest if it weren’t for the aura of intense self-assurance she was exuding at the same time.

“One: ‘Sleet White.’”

“Oh, not bad!” A slight twist on Snow White—I’d expect no less from Sayumi. She always made it seem like she could do anything, so of course she’d produce a textbook example of a solid title.

“I also thought the classic name would work in and of itself, without alteration, so I have number two: ‘Snow White.’”

“Ooh, nice! Sometimes keeping it simple really is the way to go.”

“My third might be somewhat played out, but three: ‘Maiden of Iron.’”

“Yeah, it’s kinda cliché, but I wouldn’t rule it out.” “Iron Maiden” had been used all over the place, but by switching around the word order she not only gave it more of an original feel, but also de-emphasized the torture connotations and brought the prim and proper feel of the word “maiden” into the forefront. Very nice.

“Four: ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ Though I suppose this one would fit Chifuyu more than it does me.”

“Yeah, that one suits her a bit more.”

“Five: ‘Songstress of Strife.’”

“That’s great too! Honestly, I can’t complain about any of those. I knew I could count on you to come up with some good titles!”

“Well, thank you kindly.”

“You might even have the same sorta naming style I do!”

“Andou? I appreciate that you intended that to be a compliment, but coming from you, it’s hard not to hear it as an insult—a grave one, at that. Grave enough that you could be brought up on slander charges,” she said, casually slandering me.

She really did seem omni-talented. She had a billion interests, was a certifiable genius, and no matter how unreasonable a task you demanded of her, she’d always find a way to go above and beyond in accomplishing it. If I absolutely had to find something to nitpick, though...

“Princess names, ‘maiden,’ ‘songstress’—all of your titles are really girly, aren’t they?”

“Huh...?” Sayumi’s expression suddenly grew stiff.

“I mean, I sorta had this image of you being really mature, so I thought you’d pick something with ‘witch’ or ‘queen’ in it. I was just a little surprised you went for the cute side of the spectrum instead.”

“Th-The cute side...?”

“Are you actually really into princesses and stuff like that? I guess that’d mean you have a childish side to you after all!”

“Hiyah!”

With a sudden shout, Sayumi shot forward, grabbed my arm, and twisted it into a lock with a single polished movement.

“Gyaaahhh!”

“Please quiet down. It’s not that bad—I just dislocated it.”

“I think that’s pretty bad, actually! You can’t just pop arms in and out of their sockets in real life! Gaaahhh! Oh god, my shouldeeer!”

“Your shoulder is fine. I fixed it with Route of Origin an instant after I dislocated it. The pain should have only lasted a moment.”

“Huh...? Oh, hey, you’re right.” I swung my arm around a bit, and it didn’t hurt at all. It felt great, actually.

She could attack me and heal me a mere moment later, inflicting all the pain she wanted without leaving any actual injuries... Route of Origin was truly a power to be feared. Also, she was scarily good at using it. When’d you figure that trick out, Sayumi?

“Really now. You brought that upon yourself by getting too big for your boots and talking down to an upperclassman,” said Sayumi, sounding a little sullen. I wasn’t actually trying to talk down to her at all, for what it’s worth. “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep in mind that we don’t have to play along with this farce of yours. We’re only doing so out of the goodness of our hearts.”

“Right... Sorry. So, umm, which title are you going with?”

“I don’t even care anymore,” she said, refusing to look me in the eye. Apparently, I’d spoiled her mood, though I couldn’t begin to imagine how.

It would’ve felt like a waste to not pick a name after all that, though, so I decided to be persistent. “Come on, please, just pick one! I don’t even care what it is!”

“In that case, I’ll go with ‘Cutie Sayumi the Adorable Angel.’”

So, yeah. She wasn’t even trying anymore.

Considering how deeply offended she was acting, I decided that further negotiations with Sayumi were off the table and moved on to my next student: Chifuyu.

“I did my best!” she exclaimed as she passed me her notebook. I took a look at her first title: “Strawberry the Orange.”

“That’s, umm...yeah.” Hoo boy. What can I say about this? The only word that comes to mind is “surreal”! It looks more like a typo than a title!

“Andou? How is it?”

“Umm, it’s... Errr... I mean, it’s good, I guess? Does it, like, have some hidden meaning?”

“You said our feelings are what’s important, so I wrote about the things I like.”

“Oh. And you like strawberries and oranges.”

“Yeah.”

“Right... Hmm. This is a little bit off. How to put it...?”

“You said we should fly free, Andou.”

“That... That I did...”

“But this is bad? It’s wrong?”

She stared at me, her gaze pure and unblemished, and I couldn’t spit it out. I just couldn’t. Crap. After all that talk about following your feelings, I can’t criticize her for this!

With no better options available, I resorted to praise. “No, it’s fine. It’s great! You’re a genius!”

That definitely cheered her up, and Chifuyu moved on to her next title idea: “Strawberry Daifuku the Orange and Orange.”

“Why’d you put two oranges in?!”

“I wanted to do it like your Dark and Dark.”

Gaaah! Again, I can’t argue with that! She totally had the wrong idea, though. There’s a really deep, lore-rich reason why Dark and Dark needs two darks, I swear!

“‘The Ruler of Eating Lots of Strawberry Daifuku.’”

“Right. Great. Thanks for listening so carefully to my lecture.”

“‘The Orange Hero.’”

“You might’ve been onto something if you’d gone with ‘The Green Hero,’ at least.” Considering she was a little kid, it’s only natural she’d be a green hero, after all. “Hey, Chifuyu, did you think up any titles that don’t involve fruit?”

“Yeah,” said Chifuyu, pointing a ways down the page and out of the fruit zone. “‘Mom the Dad.’”

“Sounds like a pretty complicated family, huh?”

“I love my mom and my dad, so I put them both in.”

“That’s great, and I’m glad to hear it! Having a loving family’s just the best! Nothing better!”

“‘Old Mom the Mean.’”

“‘Old’? As in she’s old, or... What happened between you and your mom?!”

“‘Dad the Suspiciously Late Coming Home.’”

“He’s probably not doing anything bad! He’s just really busy at work! I bet they’re making him do overtime!”

“‘Dad’s Coworker the Homewrecker.’”

“I’m sure they’re just friends! Believe in your dad, Chifuyu! And, look, that’s enough of the family relationships series, okay? Let’s move on to the next topic.”

“‘Honey the Bear.’”

“Right... It’s cute, so that works.”

“‘Mister Panda the Monochromatic.’”

“The second part sounds super cool, at least!”

“‘Flightlessly Winged the Penguin.’”

“And this time the first half’s the cool part!”

“Oh, and then there’s—”

“I get it, I get it. That’s enough of the animal series.” I heaved a sigh. I’d sort of seen this coming; Chifuyu didn’t understand what a title was on a fundamental level.

Not that there was any reason why she would understand it. She was an elementary schooler, after all. A certain level of emotional maturity is necessary to fully appreciate the exquisite harmony of text, subtext, and pure aesthetic that goes into these things. That’s right—you have to be at least as emotionally mature as I am!

“Thanks for putting so much thought into this, Chifuyu. Think you can wrap it up by picking the title you like the best?”

“Hmm...” Chifuyu crossed her arms and pondered her options, kicking her legs in the air and causing Squirrely’s tail to sort of wag in the process. A minute later, she pointed at one of the names in her notebook and declared “This one.”

“Sweet and Sour Pineapple”

For a moment, I was speechless. It was far and away the most surreal title yet. It was so out there, it almost circled all the way around and had a nice ring to it. I was starting to think that Chifuyu might’ve been way ahead of her time.

“That one? You’re really sure about that?”

“I love the pineapple chunks in sweet and sour pork.”

“Okaaay...?”

“So my mom always makes me sweet and sour pork with just pineapple in it.”

That wouldn’t even count as sweet and sour pork anymore! And besides, the whole point of putting the pineapple in is that it has enzymes in it that break down the pork and make it more tender! Your mom’s putting the cart way before the horse!

“From now on, you should call me Sweet and Sour Pineapple,” Chifuyu declared triumphantly. As usual, I couldn’t follow her train of thought in the slightest.

That more or less settled Chifuyu’s title for the time being, so I moved on to the next person. So far, the exercise had been going even less well than I’d imagined it would. They just weren’t, well, I dunno... I guess their chuuni power levels were lacking, on the whole. Their titles were all missing that vital element of soul that pulls it all together. I realize that it’s wrong to assume that everyone has the same standards and desires that I do, but still...

Deeply conflicted, I arrived at the literary club’s final frontier. “If you’re gonna make us do this, you could at least hurry it up,” grunted Tomoyo, thrusting out her notebook as I walked up to her.

“The Witch of Antimony Who Smirks in the Face of Twilight: Endless Paradox”

I was dumbstruck.

“I-I didn’t put that much thought into it or anything!” she quickly clarified. “I just took bits of advice from your lecture and used them to come up with the most chuuni thing I could think of, since I figured that was what you wanted!”

Sorry, still speechless.

“A-And I didn’t write it cause I wanted to! This definitely isn’t a title I came up with a long time ago, or anything!”

“Tomoyo.”

“Wh-What?”

“You win.”

“Win what?!”

“I have nothing left to teach you. All the secrets of the art are at your beck and call.”

“I don’t want them!”

“Master...”

“Don’t call me that! And why do you look so jealous?! It’s weird!”

“Master...”

“Don’t italicize it!”

“Never forget though, Tomoyo: the path of the chuuni is never-ending! Never fall into the trap of complacency! Never let yourself believe you’ve reached the peak of your craft!”

“I was never walking that path to begin with! Which role are you even trying to play anyway? My master or my student?”

“Your comrade in arms!”

“I’m not your comrade in anything!”

“Wh-What?! Her chuuni power level—it’s over nine thousaaand!”

“Put away the imaginary scouter!”

“I can’t see the limit of her chuuni level! If I used Hakoware on her, how long would it take for her to go bankrupt?!”

“You’re saying my chuuni level’s Menthuthuyoupi-tier?!”

For the first time in my life, I, Guiltia Sin Jurai, was shaken to the core of my being. I was experiencing true dread, absolute despair...and all I could do was weep hopelessly in the face of her awesome might.

“Oh god, don’t cry! Quit it with the teeth-chattering! Who do you think I am, Frieza?!” As usual, Tomoyo was quick with a snappy and topical comeback.

Seriously, though, all joking aside, “The Witch of Antimony Who Smirks in the Face of Twilight: Endless Paradox” kicked ass. I was especially impressed by her choice to go with “smirks” instead of the more played-out “smiles.” “Twilight” instead of something like “dark of night” was an inspired choice I could get behind, as well. And above all else, “Antimony.”

Seriously, “antimony”! Bad. Ass.

“And so, allow me to announce the winner of the literary club’s very first title contest! First place: Closed Clock: Kanzaki Tomoyo, with the title ‘The Witch of Antimony Who Smirks in the Face of Twilight: Endless Paradox’!”

“Since when was this a contest?!” protested Tomoyo.

“Let’s give her a round of applause, everyone!” A smattering of cheers and polite applause ensued.

“You people are going along with it?!” cried Tomoyo incredulously at the other members.

I was actually sorta shocked they played along too, but after a moment’s thought, I realized it made sense. Hatoko loved to jump in on the action when everyone was getting excited about something, Sayumi loved teasing people, and Chifuyu...didn’t understand what was going on and was just going with the flow, most likely.

As long as we’re screwing around, I decided, I might as well pull out all the stops and screw around at full power! “Being the victor of our contest, Kanzaki Tomoyo has earned herself the privilege of being called by her title for a full week, starting tomorrow!”

“I think when you say ‘privilege,’ you mean ‘punishment’!”

“Now then, Miss Endless Paradox, would you care to share a comment on your achievement today?”

“I thought you said starting tomorrow! And a comment...? Not particularly, no.”

“The judges were particularly enthusiastic about the use of the word ‘antimony’ in your title’s preamble! You scored an awful lot of points with that word!”

“What judges? You picked the winner unilaterally.”

“Antimony... What a wonderful word! It resonates with my very soul! Please, tell us—what hidden volumes of meaning are packed into that one simple little word?”

“No, I mean... I d-didn’t really mean it to be that deep or anything, and I don’t know if I could, like, define it... I just thought it sounded s-sorta cool, so...”

“Miss Endless Paradox, do you mean to say that you used a word you don’t actually understand in your own title’s preamble?”

Tomoyo hesitated for a moment, then she finally spit out a reluctant “Yeah.”

“Oooh? Hmmm. I see!”

“Yeah, laugh it up, jerkwad! If you’ve got something to say, then say it to my face!”

“Thank you for your most enlightening comments, Miss Endless Paradox! Let’s have one more round of applause for our victor, everyone!”

“Hurray!” cheered the other members.

“Again, why are you people going along with this?!” screamed Tomoyo. “Am I the only one who thinks this is weird?!”

“All right, everyone, all together now!” I declared. “Endless! Endless!”

“Endless! Endless!” cheered the others.

“What kind of messed up chant is that?!” wailed Tomoyo.

“Paradox! Paradox!”

“Paradox! Paradox!”

“Antimony! Antimony!”

“Antimony! Antimony!”

“Antimony! Antimony!”

“Antimony! Antimony!”

“Why’re you still stuck on Antimony?!”

“Antimony! Antimony!”

“Antimony! Antimony!”

“Please, stop! Just stooop!”

And so, the curtain fell on our club’s first title contest. All I can say is, well...y’know. Another good day today. Nice and fulfilling. Yup.

The time for club activities came to a close, and five schoolchildren strode through the twilight-stained streets.

The Lord of Thanatos (one title of many).

Delayed Comeback Hatoko.

Cutie Sayumi the Adorable Angel.

Sweet and Sour Pineapple.

And Endless Paradox.

Sooo, yeah, this was a complete and utter failure. There’s only so much surrealism I can take before I have to call the whole thing a wash. Everyone already has the transcendentally awesome power names I came up with for them, so maybe it’d be best to go in the “power names = titles” direction after all.

“Hey, Endless Paradox,” I said, turning to Tomoyo.

No reply.

“Heeey, don’t ignore me, Endless Paradox!”

Silence.

“I know you can hear me, Endless Paradox!”

“Quit calling me that!” Tomoyo rounded on me and roared with fiery fury. “I swear to god, Andou, try teasing me one more time and I will flip!”

“What’re you talking about?! I’m not teasing you! I seriously think you’ve got an incredible knack for names!” I meant it too. That was a genuine attempt at a compliment on my part.

I wouldn’t have been calling her Endless Paradox in the first place if I didn’t think it was an awesome title! Making fun of that would be madness! Though I do have to admit that I personally preferred my titles to be more on the short and snappy side of the spectrum. The full version of her title dragged on a bit long in my book, but that was just a matter of taste.

“I’d rather you were making fun of me if that’s the alternative...” she grumbled, looking more than a little conflicted.

“Cheer up, Endless Paradox,” said Cutie Sayumi the Adorable Angel, who had stepped over to comfort her.

“Not you too, Sayumi...” moaned Tomoyo.

“Trust me, I understand. Thanks to Andou’s meddling, you’ve ended up being called by the most excruciatingly chuuni title imaginable. I really do...sympathize... Pfff. Ha ha ha!”

“Liar! You’re eating this up!” Tomoyo buried her face in her hands. “Please...just forget all about that title, okay?”

“Mwa ha ha! I’m afraid that won’t be possible. I’ve already inscribed your true name in the Bloody Bible! That which is writ within its unholiest of pages can never be erased—wait, huh?” I reached into my bag to pull out the Bloody Bible only to recoil in shock. “I-It’s gone?!”

The Bloody Bible was missing! I’d lost the sacred text that laid bare all of the world’s deepest secrets!

“What do you mean?” asked Tomoyo. “What’s gone?”

“Tomoyo...” I whimpered. “This is terrible! The Bloody Bible’s gone missing!”

“You lost your Bloody Vivre?”

“Don’t call it that!” Seriously, what am I supposed to do if that name starts to stick? “Curses! Have they finally made their first move?! The situation is dire... That tome contains myriad secret and forbidden arts that must never fall into the wrong hands...”

“Put a sock in it, chuuni-boy. Though, now that you mention it...” Tomoyo stopped to think for a second. “Didn’t you accidentally dump all your crap out of your bag when we were leaving the club room earlier?”

Oh, yeah. I did, actually. I had to pick up all my stuff in a hurry and run to catch up with everyone. That clears things up! I must’ve dropped it then, and that means—

“That means it’s lying on the floor outside the club room?!”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Oooh, crap!” If it was outside the room, then who knew who might stumble across it? Having one of my trusted friends see it would be one thing, but having some total rando pick it up was a totally different matter. Just thinking about it made my blood run cold. “I’m gonna go search for it! You guys should head home without me!”

I dashed back toward the school without waiting for a reply. Run! No, fly! I have to hurry up and find the Bloody Bible before somebody else finds it first!

☆

Andou sprinted off to search for his edgelord encyclopedia, so the four of us were left to walk home without him. I considered waiting for him for a minute, but he did say we should head home without him, so I figured I might as well.

“Juu really is a scatterbrain, isn’t he, Tomoyo?” commented Hatoko, who was walking next to me. She was smiling, but in the sort of way that people smile when they don’t know what to make of somebody else’s issues. “Oh, whoops! I was supposed to call you by your title! What was it again...?”

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Andou’s the only one who cares about all that stuff, and he’ll have forgotten about it by tomorrow regardless.” He’d better forget about it by tomorrow, anyway.

“Ha ha, he sure will!” chuckled Hatoko, her smile a lot more genuine than it had been a moment before.

To be totally honest, I could never figure out the relationship those two had with each other. I got that they’d known each other for ages, and I could tell that they both understood each other on a pretty deep level, but at the same time, it felt like there was this serious sense of distance between them. Sometimes it felt like Hatoko was acting like Andou’s mother or older sister, yet there were also times when she seemed more like his daughter or younger sister. Whatever they had going on, I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

The one thing I could say for certain was that Hatoko didn’t understand Andou’s hyper-chuuni sense of aesthetics in the slightest. She was completely illiterate in that field; I don’t know how else I could put it. Let me give an example: imagine trying to explain what it means to be a “chuuni” to your mom. Totally out of the question, right? She just wouldn’t get it, and no matter how much you try to explain it to that sort of person, they’ll never figure it out.

Being a chuuni is a special privilege reserved for a select few who were chosen—or perhaps a select few who weren’t chosen. Not just anyone can understand the true value of that right.

Wait...hold on a second. I’m thinking like a total chuuni right now, aren’t I? Arrrgh, Andou’s infected me, I swear...

“Titles, huh...?” muttered Hatoko under her breath.

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing, really. All that talk about titles just brought back some memories.” Hatoko hesitated for a moment, then continued. “The truth is, I was actually bullied a little back in grade school.”

“Huh?” I grunted, caught off guard by the sudden shift to a pretty gloomy subject. I froze, and Sayumi and Chifuyu stopped and turned around to look at her as well. A sudden tension fell over our group.

Hatoko quickly picked up on the strained atmosphere. “Ah, but it wasn’t a big deal at all, really!” she stammered, waving her hands in the air as she rushed to correct herself. “Yeah, actually, I don’t even really know if it makes sense to call it ‘bullying’ at all!”

She paused for a moment, smiling in an oddly regretful sort of way, then continued. “When I was an elementary schooler, the other kids used to call me ‘Yakitori.’ My surname’s Kushikawa, right? Well, someone said that sounded like the word for chicken skin yakitori, and to make matters worse the ‘hato’ in Hatoko means dove—another bird. Everyone thought the nickname made total sense, and it stuck.”

“Yakitori,” huh? It wasn’t exactly an insult, or at least not a super direct one, but it still didn’t sound like the sort of nickname your typical elementary school girl would be happy about receiving.

“All the kids who called me Yakitori were my friends, though. They meant it in a nice way, so I couldn’t bring myself to tell them to stop... I wouldn’t mind it at all if something like that happened these days, but back then it really bothered me.”

Childish innocence has a way of crossing the line into cruelty sometimes. I doubted that the kid who came up with the nickname meant anything bad by it either. They might’ve even meant it as a term of endearment. But just because you don’t mean anything bad doesn’t mean that your actions can’t hurt people. Getting called Yakitori by all her friends must’ve been really stressful for little Hatoko. I sure as hell wouldn’t want a nickname like that.

“And you know who saved me in the end? It was Juu,” she said, her eyes faintly sparkling. “He went right up to them and said, ‘You’re not giving her a lame title like that on my watch!’ Then he came up with a new nickname for me all on his own.”

Wait. Waaait a second. Don’t get me wrong, I can absolutely see him doing that, but how exactly did that “save” you from anything? And are you telling me he’s been that way since elementary school?! The guy had eighth-grader syndrome before he even made it to the eighth grade?!

“Umm, I think the nickname he gave me back then was...ah, it was ‘Flaming Phoenix’!”

Of course he’d say it in English, and of course he’d jump to “phoenix” just because she’s named after a bird—not that I don’t get where he was coming from with that part. It has a decent ring to it for something an elementary schooler thought up too. Nice and simple.

“Then all the other kids said that if they had to call me by a stupid nickname like that, they’d rather just call me Hatoko like normal. From then on, nobody called me Yakitori ever again!” Hatoko beamed as she wrapped up her story, but I couldn’t help but slide a question in.

“Hatoko...? Please don’t tell me you think that Andou knew it would end up that way and had the whole thing planned out from the beginning.”

Hatoko burst out in laughter. “No, of course not! Juu was really sad about what they said about his name. He was depressed for a pretty long time after that.”

Yeah, I can totally see that.

“I think Juu was just doing what he wanted to do and not thinking about what came next. Doesn’t that sound just like him?”

I bet she’s right. That’s exactly what the Andou I know would do. Sayumi and Chifuyu apparently shared the opinion and were both nodding in agreement.

“But even if it wasn’t on purpose, I still think of it as him saving me,” concluded Hatoko.

“I suppose I can see that,” replied Sayumi in a somewhat solemn tone. “Andou may be an utterly irredeemable idiot, but he can be surprisingly reliable as well.”

Sayumi raised her hands before her, slowly clasping them together in front of her chest. “Take my power, Route of Origin. The power to return things to the way they’re meant to be. The instant I obtained it, my mind jumped to a single question: could I use it to bring the dead back to life?”

I figured that most people would probably ask that same question. Whenever a manga character has that sort of restorative power, that’s the very first thing you have to establish about them: can they revive the dead or not?

“But thanks to Andou, I was, well...” Sayumi paused. “I was saved from those worries.”

We’d held meetings to discuss our powers time and time again since half a year ago, and at the very first of those meetings, Andou spoke up about the matter before anything else.

Listen to me, Sayumi.

Please—no matter what happens, never try to bring a dead person back to life.

No trying to bring back animals either.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you can. Please, don’t even think about trying.

He sounded so serious about the request, it was almost scary.

“I now understand very well why he said that,” continued Sayumi, her voice wavering in a way that was really unusual for her. “The power to bring back the dead shouldn’t exist. If I were to try it, and if it actually were to work, I’m not confident that my mind could withstand the pressure.”

Real life isn’t like Dragon Ball. If you were to bring the dead back to life, you couldn’t just shout “Hurray!” and move on. If Sayumi really did have the power of resurrection... Just thinking about the implications was terrifying.

“He said something to me too,” said Chifuyu, suddenly jumping into the conversation. “Andou said that I should never ever try to make life.”

I remembered that. He’d given Chifuyu the same sort of speech he’d given Sayumi.

Chifuyu. You can make anything you want—it’s fine.

Except for one thing: You can’t make people. You can’t make anything that’s alive.

Never. I want you to promise me you won’t, okay? That’s all I ask of you.

Andou—one of the biggest chuuni dumbasses I’ve ever met—actually said all that stuff. When our powers appeared out of nowhere and we were all in a state of near-panic, he was the only one who’d kept calm. Half a year ago, the person most prepared to take action out of all of us was the one who’d run through “simulations” of those precise circumstances time after time: Andou Jurai.

“I’d completely lost my composure at the time,” said Sayumi. “I appreciate how dangerous trying to bring somebody back to life would be now, but back when my power first awakened, it’s hard to say how I would have reacted if I’d been put in that sort of situation. I think it’s entirely plausible I would have made a terrible mistake, but Andou warned me against it before I had the chance.”

Chifuyu nodded enthusiastically. She was in the same boat. For all we knew, if Andou hadn’t been around to advise her, she might have tried to make a person or an animal without considering the consequences.

“Juu thought really, really hard about all of our powers,” said Hatoko.

“He certainly did,” agreed Sayumi. “I suspect he’s thought more about them than even we have. He’s thought through every aspect of them, helped us test them, wildly fantasized about them on some occasions, carefully estimated their consequences on others, and even granted us wonderful names for them. Tacky names that only a chuuni could ever think up, but wonderful names nonetheless.”

I understood what they were trying to say. We were all terrified. We’d had almost godlike powers forced on us out of nowhere, and that scared us beyond belief. Andou, however, wasn’t scared. Even though his own power was hilariously worthless, and even though he wouldn’t last five seconds in the unlikely event we decided to attack him, he wasn’t scared of us at all. He took on every issue that confronted us with total seriousness, and he called our horrifying, outlandishly lethal powers “cool.”

Come to think of it, he said something when he gave our powers their ridiculously edgy names.

Mwa ha ha! The rite is complete, and now, half of your powers belong to me!

In granting them names, you see, I’ve bound them to myself! Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!

In other words...he promised to bear half the weight that our powers imposed upon us.

“Heh.” I couldn’t help but chuckle and roll my eyes. We were giving Andou way too much credit, and it was starting to grate on my nerves. “You’re all overthinking it. He’s just been doing whatever he feels like this whole time, right? He’s been on a delusional chuuni rampage, and I’m positive he hasn’t been thinking about all this that deeply.”

Hatoko and Sayumi laughed along with me. “Yes, quite,” said Sayumi. “Everything that he’s come up with has played into the preposterous little scenario he’s built up around himself.”

“He did say he had lots of titles even before we thought up ours today. Juu’s really something!”

Just then, Chifuyu trotted over and tugged on my skirt.

“What’s up?” I asked, glancing down at her.

“I lied earlier,” she replied.

“Earlier? Like, when?”

“When we were talking about ‘chuuni.’”

Oh, right, the what-does-it-mean conversation.

“I was embarrassed, so I lied,” she said, her voice muffled as she buried her face in my jacket. Apparently, that embarrassment was still lingering. “The truth is...I think Andou’s really, really cool.”

A silence fell over the group. None of us tried to argue against her compliment. We couldn’t argue against it.

“Andou’s really, really chuuni.”

“You’re right—Juu really is.”

“I can’t deny it.”

“A chuuni-boy to the bitter end.”

☆

“Achoo!”

Alone in an abandoned corridor after school, I sneezed with all my might.

“Wait a minute—what’s this? Could it be that I’m under ultra-long-distance arcane attack by the spirit world’s legendary Magical Marksman?” That was close! If I hadn’t bent over thanks to my sneeze just then, I’d have a hole where my head used to be!

Anyway, I really hope nobody’s found my cringe compil—I mean, the Bloody Bible. If somebody else actually read that thing...yeah, I think death would be the only option.

Not to say that I was embarrassed about anything in the book, of course! Not in the least! The Bloody Bible was my pride and joy, and everything written within it represented the hidden truth of this world. But, I mean...you know how it is, right? You can’t just go leaking the hidden truth of the world to some random passerby, can you?

The point is that I absolutely could not afford to let anyone see the thing! I sped toward the literary club’s room on the double...then stopped in my tracks.

“Huh...?” I muttered. A tall, lanky man was standing in front of our club room. His hair was colored pure silver, and he was dressed in a mostly black outfit that was as loud as it was stylish. His look was seriously coordinated, overall—he wouldn’t have appeared out of place in a visual kei band. He was wearing a pair of round-lensed sunglasses, and in his hand he held a black notebook.

“Wait—gaaauuuggghhhhhh!” I shrieked like a banshee and sprinted up to him. Oh god, oh crap, he found it! This obviously super cool dude saw my Bloody Bible!

“Ah, ah, ah, ah!” I stammered, unable to spit out anything better than a weird little series of incoherent grunts. In spite of that scream a moment before, I was actually pretty shy when it came to talking with people I didn’t know.

“Hey. This yours?” the man asked in a deep voice that was pretty easy on the ears. He was awfully handsome, looking at him up close.

Augggh! Of all the people to find it, why’d it have to be a hunk like this dude?

“Y-Yes!” I replied. “It’s, uhh, mine!”

“This notebook’s called the Bloody Bible, huh?”

I paused, but I couldn’t deny it. “Y-Yeah.”

“So I guess that’d make this name on the cover yours? ‘Guiltia Sin Jurai’?”

I paused for way longer, but still to no avail. “Yeah,” I finally admitted, doing my best to bear the wave of shame that was crashing down on me. Damn it! It’s mine, yes. That’s the undeniable truth, and there’s absolutely nothing embarrassing whatsoever about that fact...but gaaahhhhhhh! Just kill me now!

While I was busy letting my own self-consciousness drive me to the brink of madness, the man grinned, held out the Bloody Bible, and blew my mind with a single phrase.

“You’ve got a knack for names, kid.”

“Wha...?”

“‘Guiltia’ is immediately evocative of ‘guilty,’ and ‘Sin’ doubles down on the theme. But beyond the literal meaning, ‘Sin’ also brings to mind the Japanese word ‘shin,’ associating the name with divinity. It gives an overall impression of a wicked beast that’s committed sins that could never be atoned for—hell, it reeks of it! And on top of that, the structure of ‘Guiltia’ brings arcadia and utopia to mind. In short, a paradise awash in sin. And the accursed lightning of ‘Jurai’ on top of all that...? It gives me goosebumps.”

I accepted the notebook, my jaw just about flat on the floor. I’d been so convinced he was about to tease me mercilessly I was practically shivering, and it hadn’t crossed my mind for so much as a second that he’d praise me, of all things! And he hadn’t just praised me—he’d understood me!

“The Bloody Bible, eh? What a coincidence! I happen to have something quite similar,” he said, pulling an inky-black notebook out from somewhere inside his jacket. In lieu of writing, his book’s cover featured only an upside-down cross. “I call mine the Reverse Crux Record.”

“Th-The Reverse Crux Record... ‘Record of the Inverted Cross’... A corruption of the Christian cruciform, and a symbol of rebellion against God...” It was such an overpoweringly awesome name, I was stunned. Hoooly crap. The Reverse Crux Record. That is cool. As. Hell!

The man grinned. He seemed pleased by the specificity of my reply. “My name is Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First, though in this world I’ve taken on the alias Kiryuu Hajime.”

A true name and an alias! I could feel my heart pounding. A sense of clamorous excitement was building up deep inside of me. “Heldkaiser...a portmanteau of ‘Hell’ and ‘Kaiser’: the ruler of Hell. But that’s not all—the ‘d’ brings one’s mind to the word ‘held,’ past tense, implying that you’ve long since driven the very Abyss itself to ruin. Then ‘Luci-First’ evokes Lucifer, implying your status as a fallen angel... Every last detail of your name symbolizes rebellion against God! It’s so cool, I can feel my hair standing on end!”

I just knew he’d found some creative characters to write the true-name version of ‘Kiryuu’ with as well. No way was this a man who’d cop out on the little details!

“Bwa ha ha!” Kiryuu burst out in laughter that sounded remarkably similar to my own trademark mwa ha ha. “I like you, kid!” he declared, grinning delightedly.

At that point, I took another, closer look at his face. I could just barely make out the eyes behind his slightly askew sunglasses. His left eye was unremarkably colored, but his right eye was a deep, vivid shade of crimson. Does he have heterochromia? No, that’s gotta be a colored contact lens.

“Hmm? Oh,” he muttered, noticing that I was staring. He made a big show of pushing his sunglasses back into place with his middle finger. “My bad. You’re lucky—you were mere moments away from falling under the dominating influence of my Evil Eye.”

“Y-Your Evil Eye...”

“I wasn’t born with this right eye of mine. It bears a terrifying, taboo power that I inherited from a comrade who fell in battle, which is why I have yet to gain full control over it. I can’t stop it from running rampant on occasion, which is why I wear these sunglasses—they help keep it in check.”

An Evil Eye! It was so cool, it shook me to my very soul! I was pretty sure I saw him go out of his way to bump the sunglasses out of position when he was passing me my notebook a minute ago, but I decided to ignore that. Much cooler that way.

“An Evil Eye, you say? I see—you bear a fearsome burden indeed... Agh!” Suddenly, I clutched my right arm. “Gaaahhhhhh!”

“Hey, what’s wrong?! Are you okay?!” asked Kiryuu, shocked by my sudden display. Not that there was anything actually shocking going on whatsoever, but in his eyes, a terrifying spectacle was playing out before him. “Your right arm... It can’t be?!”

He stopped there, letting me fill in what exactly it “couldn’t be” with whatever I felt like. Man, is this guy considerate or what? He totally gets it! “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it...” I mumbled through labored breaths. “This happens all the time. It’s been a little unruly as of late—I’ll be sure to discipline it thoroughly when I have the chance.”

“You can’t be past your teens, yet you’ve already let one of those use your right arm as its vessel...? Just what sort of hell have you lived through?”

“Heh heh heh... The same sort as you, I’m sure. Don’t you think?”

“Hah! You’ve got that right!”

“Mwa ha ha...”

“Bwa ha ha...”

Kiryuu and I stood there, laughing together for absolutely no reason—nay! There was a reason, all right! A profound one that only the two of us could understand!

“Bwa ha ha! To think stopping by the old literary club would end with me stumbling across a talent like yours! It’s quite the thing, eh, Guiltia Sin Jurai?”

“I can sense the hand of destiny guiding us together, Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First!”

We stood there facing each other, and I swear it was like looking in a mirror. We were identical, two sides of the same coin, yet at the same time profoundly different. Our existences perfectly contrasted each other’s, yet we were like twins. Our beings were entirely contradictory—destined to travel parallel to each other for eternity, never crossing paths.

That was our first contact. On that day, our conflict—a great war that would engulf the very universe itself—began.

“Wait...” I said as part of his speech suddenly hit me. “Did you say the literary club? Do you need something from us?”

“Yeah, sorta. I’m an alum, see. Got canned from my part-time job last night, so I had some spare time and figured I might as well swing by for a visit.”

Huh, weird. Feels like the hand of destiny just up and vanished.