Chapter 3: A Fateful Encounter

Kiryuu and I hit it off so rapidly and spectacularly that within three minutes of our meeting I was convinced we’d been soul mates in a previous life. We quickly decided to find a better place to have a nice, long chat, and we ended up making our way to a nearby chain restaurant.

The place turned out to be bustling. It was packed full of students and families, but Kiryuu and I eventually found a table way in the back of the smoking section, where we took a seat and called a waiter over to place our orders.

I kept it simple, asking for a single cup of black coffee...which, honestly, I didn’t have a taste for at all. I couldn’t tell the difference between a good cup of coffee and a terrible one to save my life, but cool dudes drink it black, and that’s what really mattered.

Kiryuu, on the other hand, must have been starving. He ordered a rice omelet, a hamburger steak, spaghetti carbonara, and a chocolate parfait to top it all off.

“Nice, isn’t it?” he said, looking out across the restaurant after he’d polished off his food. His gaze had a calm, almost melancholic quality as he observed the other customers going about their business. There were young, innocent couples out on after-school dates (May they drop dead, I appended internally), children who made their kiddie meals look like the most delicious feasts in the world, and mothers who were trying to keep said children from making a mess.

“Depraved as this reality may be, so many of its people still find a way to smile and be happy,” mused Kiryuu. “It’s times like these that make me think there might be some meaning to keeping this world around after all.”

Most people would probably have been thinking, “What the hell is this lunatic talking about?” by that point, but not me. I got him. I understood him on a profound level, and I immediately jumped aboard the train of thought he was conducting.

“A precious moment of unspoiled, everyday life,” I murmured, “so far from the chaos and madness of the battlefield, it might slip from my mind and vanish into oblivion... Yeah. This is nice.”

“Oblivion... Now there’s a thought. I can only imagine how happy I’d be if I could just forget it all. But...that’s not possible for me. The bloodstained chains of tragedy and hatred are bound too tightly around me. They’ll weigh upon me for eternity, never releasing me from their grip. I still remember the faces of everyone I’ve lost... Each and every one of them is as vivid in my mind as the day I met them.”

“First... You mean you still...?” I stopped there, taking care not to establish what I meant by “still.” Didn’t want to get in the way of his backstory. (Incidentally, we’d taken to calling each other “First” and “Guiltia.”)

“Curse this damnable power of mine!” he spat, his tone heavy with sorrow, his face haggard and grief-stricken. “What good has it ever done for me?”

Apparently, Kiryuu had a perfect eidetic memory—or at least, that’s what he’d claimed a minute earlier. It’s one of those powers you see all the time in manga: the ability to remember absolutely everything you experience in perfect, photographic detail. At first glance, you’d think it’d be useful, but the truth of the matter is quite the opposite. The ability to forget is a form of salvation for humans like us, and I couldn’t imagine anything more hellish than having to remember each and every painful detail from your past until the day you die.

Now, he had said, “Let’s hit up that one restaurant! Y’know, umm...whatever it’s called. Ahh, man, it’s on the tip of my tongue!” just a short while beforehand, but I decided not to bring that up in the moment. You know how these things go—it’s hella cool to be born with a power you didn’t want that brings you nothing but grief.

Suddenly, the sorrow vanished from Kiryuu’s face. “Bwa ha ha!” he cackled, smiling ecstatically. “Okay, level with me, Andou—is ‘Jurai’ seriously your real name? That’s badass, man!”

The moment he called me “Andou,” I realized that we were flipping off the chuuni switch. Kiryuu was like me. Deep down, he realized that all the things he said and did were nothing more than an elaborate scenario of his own invention. In short, he was not, in fact, actually crazy. He knew there was a time and place for his antics, and he could swap in and out of that mindset when the need arose.

I never liked admitting it, but when all was said and done, Andou “Peaceful Wisteria” Jurai was the real me. I poured so much time and energy into developing the alternate reality in my mind that it almost felt like I’d actually mix it up with the real world every once in a while, but that had yet to happen. Except the part where I got a for-real superpower. Mwa ha ha.

“Thank you,” I replied, dropping into a more polite tone. “I think your surname’s crazy cool too, though!”

“Yeah, I guess. I’m fond of my surname, but I’ve never been super sold on ‘Hajime.’”

“Oh, really? I think it’s pretty nice, personally! Reminds me of Saitou Hajime, the Shinsengumi captain.”

“You’ve got a point. Saitou Hajime was pretty damn awesome.”

“I always liked him even better than Kenshin, actually.”

“Dude, same! Like, Gatotsu Zeroshiki was the coolest shit!”

It’s probably obvious by now, but we were talking about the Saitou Hajime from Rurouni Kenshin, not the real-life historical figure. This is elementary-grade nerd knowledge!

“Speaking of the Gatotsu techniques,” he continued, “y’know how kids would always try to imitate them with a stick or an umbrella or whatever but hold it in their right hand? That always used to piss me off so much! Like, if you don’t know the real Saitou Hajime was left-handed and that his techniques in the manga were based on that fact, you don’t deserve to play Gatotsu!”

“Oh my god, yes, that annoyed me so much! I totally get you! People who talk themselves up without actually doing the reading are the worst! Like all those girls who go on and on about how cute Chopper is when they don’t even friggin’ read One Piece!”

“I know, right? Man, I can’t tell you how much those chicks piss me off!”

We had the most incredible rapport with each other, right out of the gate. Holy crap, just talking with this guy’s so much fun!

“I really like how you took the ‘one’ from ‘Hajime’ and made it into ‘First’ instead, though!” I said, sliding back to the original topic. “Throwing ‘Lucifer’ in with it was downright inspired too! ‘Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First’—now that’s a true name!”

“C’mon, don’t flatter me. Your true name’s just as good, y’know? All the titles in your Bloody Bible were really solid too.”

Oh...right. He found the Bloody Bible, and I guess he must’ve paged through it. I was pretty embarrassed by that thought, but I was also pretty happy about the compliment.

“The power to return things to the way they were meant to be—Route of Origin. You were playing off the homophone there, right? Like, how when you say it out loud you can’t tell for sure if it’s ‘Route of Origin’ or ‘Root of Origin’? That’s good shit, man.”

Wait, he figured that out on his own?! Oh. My. God! I’m so friggin’ happy about this! I could never bring myself to tell everyone about that part ’cause it always felt too awkward! It’d have been like explaining the punchline of my own joke.

While I was screaming internally, Kiryuu kept talking. “That wasn’t the only good one either. The stygian flames of Purgatory: Dark and Dark! I love how you doubled up on the darks like that—it really sells the vibe.”

Yes! Exactly! It wouldn’t work if you didn’t say it twice! Ahh, holy crap, I love this man! Marry me!

“Lemme guess—you’re the sort of person who likes your names short and snappy, right?” asked Kiryuu.

“If I had to pick one way or the other, then yeah,” I replied. “I like to keep them within, like, three or four words tops. If it needs more than that, I’ll just add it in as flavor text before I say the actual name part.”

“I’m a long name person, myself. And I’m talking long—like, practically-a-sentence long.”

“Oh, yeah. Those’re pretty cool too.” To each their own, I guess.

“Oh, sorry—phone call,” said Kiryuu, pulling out a cell phone. His attitude shifted visibly as he answered it. Suddenly, he looked all business. “Leatia? Yeah, it’s me.”

Okay, nope, that’s definitely not a real name! Here we go! I immediately assumed that he was doing the “pretend to get a phone call and fake a super intriguing conversation with lots of vague foreshadowing” thing. Even if I was proven right, though, I had no intention of cutting him off.

“What? Oh, come on—that’s your job, not mine. Tell the War Management Committee to clean up their own mess!”

Not saying anything.

“I know that a mysterious organization called F’s trying to dismantle the system behind the War itself. So, what, you’re gonna pause the whole War, gather everyone up and murder their asses? What a load of BS.”

The way he phrased that was conspicuously expository, but still, not saying anything.

“Right, I get it. I’ll do it. I was planning on crushing ’em before long regardless. I’ll make them understand who really rules over this War.”

Still not saying anything.

“‘Powers akin to those of the gods themselves’? I don’t give a damn. God or not, anyone who decides to stand in my way’s getting sent to the deepest pits of The Heavens’ Hell.”

That last bit definitely sounded like it was supposed to be a catchphrase, but not saying anything.

Kiryuu hung up his phone, then looked back over at me. “Sorry about that. It was my boss from my part-time job.”

I almost shouted “Like hell it was!” at the top of my lungs, but I barely held it in. I know how to mind my manners. I was also struck by how fun the whole fake phone call bit looked and made a mental note to give it a try sometime soon myself.

“What were we talking about?” asked Kiryuu. “Oh, right—chuuni names.”

“Ah... Right.”

Hearing that from him put a damper on my raised spirits. Chuuni... The derogatory ring of the word somehow sucked the fun right out of the conversation. It proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Kiryuu was aware of and open about the fact that he was a chuuni. And being a chuuni was cool, sure...but the word itself still carried an element of contempt to it that I just couldn’t help but hear.

“Hey, what’s with the scowl?” asked Kiryuu, noting my shift in attitude.

“It’s nothing, really... Umm, question, though. Do you think that people like you and me count as chuunis?”

“Huh? Oooh,” he murmured, smiling gently. His expression carried a depth of understanding to it that made all of the doubts and worries that had been building up within me melt away in an instant. “When you put it that way, yeah, I get it. ‘Chuuni’ sure does sound like some sorta slur. It’s not the sorta thing you’re supposed to call yourself, and it’s not a label you’d be happy to have slapped on you.”

It was like he’d seen right through me. He leaned forward as he carried on. “Hey, ever heard of Don Quixote?”

“Umm... You mean the chain of discount department stores?”

“That’s Don Quijote.”

“So then, from the Seven Warlords in One Piece...?”

“That’s Donquixote Doflamingo. I’m talking about the book his character was inspired by.” Kiryuu didn’t look put off in the slightest by my confusion, and he launched into a detailed explanation.

According to him, Don Quixote is a twelfth-century novel that was written by a Spaniard named Miguel de Cervantes. It stars a low-ranking nobleman who reads way too many Arthurian tales of chivalric romance and eventually declares himself a legendary knight-errant. He takes on the incredibly ostentatious name Don Quixote de la Mancha, gets himself a decrepit old horse named Rocinante and a squire named Sancho Panza, and sallies forth into the world with them on a quest to right all wrongs.

Held captive by his own wild delusions, Don Quixote declares a countryside girl to be the princess he adores (unbeknownst to her) and jousts with windmills, convinced that they’re giants. In short, it’s a story of the wild and eccentric behavior he displays over and over throughout his journey.

Oh, huh, I thought. I had no idea. I’d done my fair share of reading into Greek mythology, biblical writings, psychological texts, and the like, but I’d never dug especially deeply into that sort of literature. And honestly, by “reading into” I mean “browsing Wikipedia articles and smirking at the cool bits.” Less reading, more skimming.

In any case, one thing in particular stood out to me about Don Quixote’s story. No matter how I looked at it—

“Dude had a nasty case of chuunibyou, right?”

Kiryuu said it for me, and I nodded in agreement. Don Quixote fit the symptoms to a T. He convinced himself that he was special, gave himself a “true name,” and fell deeper and deeper into a fictional scenario that he himself had devised. If that wasn’t chuunibyou, then what else could you call it?

“Back when it first came out, Don Quixote was thought of as a comedy. People would laugh at the protagonist’s stupid, cringey antics, and they didn’t read any deeper into it than that. However, over the course of the ages, society’s perspective on the book has shifted.” Kiryuu spoke smoothly and eloquently, and I found myself listening along without so much as considering interjecting. It was like some sort of invisible gravitational force was pulling my attention toward him.

“Dostoevsky—y’know, the Crime and Punishment guy—had a lot to say about Don Quixote. ‘Here the great poet and heart-reader discerned one of the deepest and most mysterious traits of the human spirit,’ he said of one passage, and called the novel on the whole ‘the grandest and saddest book conceived by the genius of man.’ So, yeah, you could say he was a fan.”

“He was a fan of a book...with a chuuni protagonist?” I mumbled, almost in a daze. One of the deepest and most mysterious traits of the human spirit? The grandest and saddest book conceived by man?

“The word ‘chuunibyou’ only got thought up recently, but the condition itself’s been around since the time of Don Quixote—no, most likely since even earlier than that. By my best guess, the general concept of being a chuuni has existed since the dawn of man and the birth of society. It just took us ages to stick a name on it.”

Kiryuu pushed up his rounded sunglasses with his middle finger again. In the instant he adjusted them, I caught a glimpse of his right eye—his Evil Eye. It almost looked like it was glimmering with an eerie light.

“Hey, Andou. What does the word ‘chuuni’ mean to you?” he asked, catching me off guard. The question came so abruptly I was almost speechless, but I somehow managed to work up the presence of mind to reply.

“To me, I think it means...not lying to myself.” I gave him the answer I’d come up with the other day. It wasn’t easy to overcome my shyness and spit out my real, honest opinion, but I got there in the end. I had a feeling that I had to be honest with him in particular.

“Good answer. Kinda abstract, though,” said Kiryuu, cracking another smile. Not just a smile, actually—a smirk. The expression he was making practically defined the word. “There are a ton of different ways to be a chuuni, but they all spring up from the same source. It starts with self-denial. You can’t stand either yourself or the world you live in, so you start dreaming up a fabricated alternative. Within that very self-denial, though, lies an intense craving for self-affirmation.”

I was silent, listening with bated breath.

“You want to become somebody else, but to the same degree, you also want to be acknowledged as the current you. You want to flourish in some other world, but to the same degree, you want to be admired in the world you live in now. That conflict between self-denial and the desire for self-approval is the fundamental root of chuunibyou.”

“An unresolvable contradiction...” I whispered.

“An Endless Paradox.”

I gulped. What sort of coincidence was that? What sort of destiny was that?

“Most people can’t handle that contradiction. They give up on it faster than you’d believe. They ‘grow up,’ conform to society, and live out their lives just going with the flow. They shift from thinking they’re awesome because they’re not like everyone else to thinking they’re awesome because they’re just like everyone else.”

Kiryuu paused for a moment to sigh. There was a wistfulness about his expression that, combined with his slender figure, gave him the look of a goddess lamenting the foolishness of mankind. Beyond that wistfulness, though, a quiet fury blazed.

“‘Grow up,’ ‘grow up,’ they say... They repeat it over and over again, like a flock of dumbass parrots. And of course, when they say ‘grow up,’ what they mean is ‘behave exactly the way society and the strangers around you want you to.’ The majority of humans believe that’s a virtue—or rather, they want to believe it is.”

“Do you think growing up is a bad thing?” I asked.

“Nah, that’s not it. It’s just that being a chuuni and being an adult are mutually exclusive. Being a chuuni’s supposed to be the exclusive privilege of children, but every once in a while, you get adults like me who can’t grow up. We’ll carry that contradiction with us all the way till the day we die—case studies in chuunibyou until the bitter end.”

“You know,” I muttered, “when you put it that way, it sounds sort of like how superpowers work in all those supernatural battle stories. Everyone has the potential to unleash their powers, but only a select chosen few actually ever manage it.”

“Good comparison. Gets the gist across nicely.” Kiryuu gave a satisfied nod as he pulled a packet of cigarettes out from his pocket. He stuck one in his mouth, then he flicked open a showily decorated and super-stylish Zippo, lighting his cigarette in one fluid motion. Dang, the way you light those things is cool. Bet he spent ages practicing that in his room.

“You could very well say that the history of humanity is the history of chuunibyou,” Kiryuu explained. “Edison, who disputed the idea that one plus one must equal two. Copernicus, who denounced the geocentric model of the solar system. The Wright brothers, who never for a moment doubted that someday they would soar through the skies. Einstein, who thought to question the function of light itself. You get where I’m going with this? The people who turn the world on its head are always those who refuse to give up believing that not being like everyone else makes them awesome: the chuunis!”

I wasn’t totally sold on the whole diagnosing actual historical figures with chuunibyou thing, but I did more or less understand where he was coming from. It’s common knowledge that the people who end up getting acknowledged by society as geniuses tend to be more than a little abnormal.

“The power of chuunibyou makes the world go round,” concluded Kiryuu with a final smirk. It was the smile of a villain looking down upon the world he owned, and yet there was something about it that struck me as ephemeral as well. I think the best way to describe it would be “a super chuuni way to smile that was cool as hell.”

Just then, a voice rang out. “Huh? Is that you, Andou?” I turned toward the entrance, where a very familiar girl was standing.

“Tomoyo? What’re you doing here?” I asked as she walked over to me. Ah, whoops, forgot to call her by her title! Meh, whatever, that bit was getting old anyway.

“I’m just here to study. I like to hang out in this restaurant while I work.”

“Where’s everyone else?”

“They all went home already. We decided to take advantage of you being gone for once to hang out around the station for a while, but we already wrapped that up.”

“Why’re you making it sound like you guys like it better when I’m not around?!”

“That’s...not exactly...”

“Why’re you hesitating?! Stop it! Am I getting ostracized?! Is that what’s happening here?!” As I continued to panic, she silently broke eye contact. “Say something! This is getting way too real!”

“H-Hey, let’s all hang out together some other time!”

“That’s definitely the sort of ‘some other time’ that actually means ‘literally never’! It’s the soft-no ‘some other time’ that Japanese people are internationally famous for! Do you realize how much trouble foreign visitors who don’t know how to interpret that go through on a daily basis?!”

“Oh, by the way, Andou!” piped up Tomoyo, transparently trying to change the subject. I was pretty sure she’d been kidding about the whole excluding me thing, but that sort of joke was always sorta panic-inducing regardless, and I wished she’d lay off them a little. “Did you end up finding your Vivre?”

“Don’t call it my Vivre, and yeah. He picked it up for me,” I explained, gesturing at Kiryuu. Tomoyo glanced over at him, then let out a bewildered gasp and froze solid, her eyes wide open. Her bag fell to the floor.

“Bwa ha ha!” bellowed Kiryuu. “It’s been a while, Endless Paradox!”

For a moment, I was stunned by his words. What? Why would he know Tomoyo’s—

“Hajime...? Andou, why are you with my brother?”

Her voice was so quiet I could barely hear her, which stood in sharp contrast to mine as I shouted “Wh-What?! He’s your brother?!” The revelation was so abrupt I couldn’t hide my astonishment. Kiryuu and Tomoyo were both totally ignoring me at that point, though; they’d branched off into their own conversation.

“Wrong!” snapped Kiryuu. “That’s Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First to you.”

“Oh, not another one of your weird names...” sighed Tomoyo.

“Bwa ha ha! I’d say it’s still lacking in chuuni power compared to the true name you thought up in middle school, Miss Eternal Paradox!”

“M-Middle school was ages ago. Don’t bring it up!”

That answered one question: apparently, Eternal Paradox was a title that Tomoyo had come up with back in middle school after all. I’d already gotten a pretty clear impression that she was one of us back then, so I wasn’t super surprised. Girl must’ve really gone out of her way to reinvent herself when she got into high school.

“St-St-Stop grinning at me like that!” shouted Tomoyo, wheeling around to glare at me for just a brief moment before returning her gaze to Kiryuu. He was clearly the more pressing issue, so she didn’t have the time to bother with me for long. She paused for a second, then spoke again in a slightly calmer tone. “When did you get back into town, Hajime? And what the heck did you do to your hair...?”

“Oh, this...?” said Kiryuu, brushing his hand through his silver locks. “It turned this color in an instant after I watched my most trusted of comrades get slain before my very eyes. The despair I felt for the world and the rage I felt toward myself were so overwhelming, they left a permanent mark upon my form...”

“Not permanent enough to keep your roots from being the same color as ever, apparently. And what’s with the red eye?”

“You mean you don’t remember? This was once the right eye of that very same comrade...”

“I guess today’s a right-eye day, then? Looks like you’re still swapping the colored contact from one side to another on a daily basis since it messes with your vision if you leave it in for too long.”

“Oh, I see how it is—they must’ve gotten to you before I could and planted all these weird ideas in your head!”

“Who are ‘they’ supposed to be? For crying out loud...” Kiryuu had turned the chuuni dial back up to eleven, much to Tomoyo’s exasperation. You could definitely tell that they were pretty close from the way they talked to each other. “Hey, Hajime, would you please just give up and come home already?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Everybody’s worried about you! Dad’s not even mad anymore.”

“I said no!” snapped Kiryuu. He’d been smirking and laughing the whole time since I met him, so this was my first time seeing him act openly angry. “When you get home, give dad a message from me: ‘I’m counting on you to send money for my living expenses again this month.’”

Tomoyo was speechless, and I couldn’t blame her. Like, seriously, that’s not the sort of line you can deliver in a pissed-off tone! You built up this whole dramatic, imposing aura, but what you actually said in the end was sorta pathetic! I was starting to see his whole “people telling you to grow up” speech in a new, significantly less appealing light.

“If you’re gonna run away from home, the least you could do is earn your own money,” said Tomoyo. She sighed deeply, profoundly embarrassed to be related to the man before us.

“Well, it seems we’ve been interrupted, Guiltia. We’ll have to table our talk of impossible dreams for today.” Kiryuu stubbed out his cigarette in a nearby ashtray as he stood up. “And just when we were about to renew the ties that have bound us together since our previous lives... What a shame.”

“We’ll meet again, First,” I replied. “Assuming, that is, that the fates truly have chosen you!”

“Bwa ha ha!”

“Mwa ha ha!”

“What sort of weird-ass understanding have you two freaks reached?!” Hey, don’t wince at us like that! And don’t call us freaks, come on!

As Kiryuu passed by Tomoyo on his way to the exit, he gave her a quick pat on the shoulder. It was a casual, seemingly natural gesture that Tomoyo accepted without a hint of distaste. Weirdly enough, that was the moment above all else that made me appreciate that the two of them really were family.

“Oh, right. Andou!” Kiryuu turned around and called me by my normal name. Chuuni mode: off. “I got to hear plenty of your chuuni names, but come to think of it, I never returned the favor. Figured I’d share one to make up for it, y’know?”

“Huh? Oh, no, it’s fine! You really don’t have to.”

“C’mon, not like it’s a big bother for me. I’m telling you one whether you want it or not!” At that point, I realized that he just wanted to show one of his names off. He slid his sunglasses down just far enough to glance over their frames, revealing his eyes—one jet-black, one a deep crimson, and both locked right onto me.

“Madness made manifest. A crescendo of calamity. The ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, powerful enough to crush even the heavens and the fools who rule them: Lucifer’s Strike. Such is the name of the malevolent power I wield, and such is the name of the power that will turn this world upon its head.”

My heart was pounding so hard, I could practically hear the thump, thump of its beat. A strange, unfamiliar sensation—almost like fear or terror, but at the same time, almost joyous—was welling up from the deepest depths of my being. It felt like I had touched something truly and genuinely unknown. This wasn’t a question of being cool or uncool. I could feel something in him, something real, that existed in a totally separate dimension from those boundaries.

“Dark and Dark. Someday, the wheels of fate will bring the two of us together once more. I await that inevitability with bated breath.” With those final, ominous words, Kiryuu departed from the restaurant. People like us just love saying ominous stuff like that pretty much whenever we get an excuse to, though, so I didn’t pay it much mind.

Tomoyo, on the other hand, let out another long, pained sigh and slumped down into the seat that Kiryuu had been occupying until a moment before.

“So that guy’s your brother, huh...?” I asked, still barely able to believe it.

“Unfortunately,” replied Tomoyo.

“He’s...how to put it...sorta hard to pin down, isn’t he? I couldn’t even begin to tell what he was thinking.” Not that that was a bad thing. I actually appreciated it, if anything. But the thing about not being able to tell what he was thinking was that I also had no idea how much of what he’d said was serious, and how much was just him messing around.

He had an overwhelming, all-encompassing presence, yet at the same time, he was formless and hard to grasp. He was like fog—a deep, thick fog that you couldn’t shake off, no matter how hard you try.

“Yeah, I guess,” replied Tomoyo. “Hajime’s always been like that.”

“I’m gonna guess your exceptional sense of aesthetics is thanks to him, right?”

She glanced away, blushing slightly. Actually, she said something about having an older brother who’s really into manga and influenced her, didn’t she? This explains everything. With an older brother who’s that intense, you’d end up learning all about his hobbies, whether you wanted to or not.

Suddenly, I realized something unusual. “Wait a second. Your surname’s Kanzaki, right...? He said his was Kiryuu.”

“It is, yeah. We’re half-siblings. Different mothers.” Ohh, he’s her half brother! I thought they looked nothing alike, but I never considered that possibility. “Same dad, of course. Kiryuu is Hajime’s mom’s surname. We’ve lived together for most of our lives, but he never stopped using her name.”

“Huuuh. Sounds complicated.”

“Do you wanna hear about it?”

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Nah.”

“I’m good, then.”

“Cool.”

Tomoyo’s gaze dropped to the ashtray on our table. She stared at the butt of Kiryuu’s cigarette for a moment before slowly beginning to open up about him, her tone drenched with a longing for days gone past.

“Hajime’s always been an incredible person. He’s smart, he’s good-looking, and he excelled both academically and athletically in school. He’d always end up ranking first or second in the national practice exams. He joined the literary club in high school, but he was in track and field in middle school and went all the way to the national tournament. I’m talking, like, Kudou Shinichi- or Yagami Light-level incredible.”

“Holy crap!” That would mean he’d easily exceeded the level necessary to qualify as an Ultimate Student.

“About a year ago, though, he told us out of the blue that ‘there’s something wrong with this world’ and just...left. He dropped out of college and ran away from home.”

“Holy crap!” It sounded cool for a second, but that’s just dumb! It’s so dumb, it’s not even funny! “I think I get it now, though. You decided to join the literary club because your missing brother used to belong to it, and you thought you might find some sort of hint about his whereabouts there, right?”

“Nah, nothing that cliché. I just joined the literary club ’cause I felt like it. It’s not like he totally broke off contact with us, anyway.” Tomoyo scratched her head, glancing away awkwardly. She’d been acting a little awkward for most of the conversation, actually.

I guess she was probably embarrassed about having one of her friends meet her family, and fair enough. I don’t think anyone wants to have that side of their life exposed like that. I sure as hell didn’t want to introduce my sister to everyone.

“Oh, right, I almost forgot. Didn’t Hajime call you Dark and Dark at the end there, Andou?”

“Oh, yeah, he did. He looked through the Bloody Bible when he found it.”

“Huh...?”

“Whoa, why’re you going all pale?! It was fine! He actually really liked it!”

“Oh, I get it... He would like something like that. Anyway, that’s not the important part—please tell me you didn’t let him know about our powers?” The look she shot me was pointed enough to draw blood.

“’Course I didn’t! Give me some credit.” I did wonder for just a moment about what would happen if I told him, but that wasn’t nearly enough of a reason for me to actually spill the beans. We’d all decided as a group not to tell anyone outside the five of us about our powers.

“Oh? Well, good,” she replied, satisfied.

“He really is an incredible guy, though,” I repeated. I didn’t mean that sarcastically either. I was genuinely impressed. He wasn’t like anyone else I’d ever met before, and ‘incredible’ was the only word I could think of that did him justice. Maybe he was just a perfectly ordinary person who happened to be super cringey, but weirdly enough, that wouldn’t even bother me. “Oh, and by the way...”

I glanced at the little container the waiter put our receipt in. It came out to 3,640 yen in total, of which my coffee accounted for three hundred.

“He sure did casually stick me with the bill.”

“I am so...so sorry.”