Chapter 4: Allure of the Dark Dragon

“Heeey, Juu, whatcha doing?”

Hatoko, as casual and carefree as ever, came over to strike up a conversation with me one day after school in the club room.

The five of us had all shown up for club on that particular day. Sayumi was poring through some complex-looking tome she’d dug up from the Used Bookstore of the Divine, Chifuyu was hugging her favorite plushie and zoning out, and Tomoyo was messing around with her laptop, as usual.

Speaking of Tomoyo, she’d been acting sort of strangely ever since the day I met Kiryuu...in the sense that she hadn’t been acting strangely in the slightest. You’d think an encounter like that would’ve had some sort of impact on her, but she was behaving exactly the same as she always did. I had to assume that she and her brother had some sort of mutual understanding going on.

“Not now, Hatoko! I’m trying to concentrate,” I said, shooing off my meddling childhood friend. Unfortunately for me, she was not so easily shooed.

“Oh, c’mon, just tell me!” she whined, playfully pushing my shoulder.

“Gah! Hey, cut that out! You’re gonna make me screw up!”

“Why not just tell me what you’re doing, then?”

“Can’t you tell by looking?”

“I wouldn’t be asking if I could!”

I heaved an exasperated sigh, holding my arms out for her to see as I prepared to explain the obvious. My right sleeve was rolled up, and I was holding a pen in my left hand.

“I’m drawing a dark dragon on my right arm!”

Crash!

I heard the unmistakable sound of shattering tableware. Turning around, I found Tomoyo frozen in place, the remains of her teacup scattered across the ground. “Why...? Why are you always like this...?” she muttered under her breath.

“Pull yourself together, Tomoyo. You’re better than this,” said Sayumi, patting her on the shoulder. At the same time, she casually repaired Tomoyo’s teacup using Route of Origin without missing a beat. “I understand how you feel, but stay calm. I’m sure this is normal behavior on whatever planet Andou’s from.”

“Sayumi... Yeah, you’re right. That dumbbell’s a space alien for sure.”

“Impossible!” I shouted. “How did you know that I’m the crossbreed progeny of an earthling woman and Lig-Nahn, the leader of the Agna, a tribe of intergalactic warrior-nomads?!”

“We were already insulting you. Please don’t use that as a chance to give us even more reason to look down on you,” said Sayumi, cringing conspicuously.

Ugh! I thought I’d made a pretty clever comeback too!

“Why do you chuunis always love pretending to be mixed-race, anyway?” asked Tomoyo. And, I mean, she wasn’t wrong. Being half-something’s a core element to so many great characters! Like half-demon, or half-monster, or half-vampire! I dunno how to put it, but it’s just...just great, somehow!

“It’s because it’s a convenient plot device to drive a narrative forward,” Sayumi answered in my place. “You can have a character face oppression and adversity on account of their heritage and make them angst about not being able to fit in with either race. It’s a free pass to put your character through as much tragedy and trauma as you’d like. It’s an exceptionally easy backstory for an author to work with, all things considered. I’d imagine that’s the primary reason why so many works of fiction make use of it, wouldn’t you say?”

Could your explanation possibly get any more bleak and pragmatic? You might be right, sure, but you’re still not supposed to come out and say stuff like that!

“So, anyway, what do you think you’re doing, Andou?” asked Tomoyo, bringing us back on topic.

“I already told you, didn’t I? I’m drawing a dark dragon on my arm.”

“Not what I meant. I’m asking why you’d do something that bizarre.”

“Because my right arm’s there!”

“Quit acting like your right arm’s Everest! Everyone has one of those, it’s nothing special!”

“Excuse me?! Everyone has a right arm?! Have you already forgotten the tragic tale of Edward Elric and his automail?!”

“Was that really the moment for an FMA reference?! Quit nitpicking!”

“That’s not my only reason either! I’m also doing it because there’s a dark dragon in my heart!”

“No, there isn’t! Literally or metaphorically!”

“Okay, but all jokes aside—I was thinking yesterday, and I realized that there’s no reason why my dark side’s physical manifestation necessarily has to be humanoid.”

“Sorry, but if that was you setting the jokes aside, I’m done with this conversation.”

“Just hear me out! We got our powers half a year ago, right? Well, when we did, the dark side that had always dwelled deep within me fused with Dark and Dark as it awakened! It makes total sense for its manifestation to change from a human to a terrible and wicked dark dragon under those circumstances, right?”

“Hmm... Okay, look. I’ve been shooting down your ideas on reflex this whole time, and I probably shouldn’t have jumped into the conversation by denying everything you said from the word go. Let me take a moment to calm down and seriously think this through.”

Tomoyo fell silent. Several seconds passed by. Her eventual verdict...

“Nope! Makes absolutely no friggin’ sense at all!”

My dark side/dark dragon transformation backstory had been completely shot down. I didn’t expect anything better from her, though—visionaries always have their theories brutally criticized by their peers. It’s the price you have to pay when you’re ahead of the times.

“The point is,” I asserted, trying to bring our little back and forth to a close, “right now, I’m carrying out an extremely important and sensitive ritual to tame my inner dragon! Don’t distract me, okay?”

“Whatever you say, chuuni.” Tomoyo rolled her eyes, and I went back to drafting up my dark dragon. Hmph!

That said, I wasn’t having the easiest time of it. I was, after all, trying to draw on my right arm. Drawing a dark dragon with my left hand would’ve been pretty rough even if I wasn’t trying to draw it on my own body, and to make matters worse, I wasn’t much of an artist to begin with. Honestly, even drawing it with my right hand would’ve been a challenge—using my nondominant hand made it borderline impossible.

Hatoko must’ve noticed that I was struggling, so she tried talking to me again. “Hey, Juu, wouldn’t it be easier to use your right hand and draw it on your left arm?”

“No way! Dark and Dark dwells within my right arm, not the left one!”

“Oh, I get it... So you have to draw the dragon on your right arm.”

“That’s right!”

Hatoko fell silent. It looked like she was thinking deeply about something. Tomoyo and Sayumi, meanwhile, kept their color commentary running.

“Hatoko never calls Andou out on any of his crap, does she?”

“There’s something oddly relaxed about the atmosphere when those two talk. It’s peculiar.”

I decided to ignore them. The dark dragon took priority! Just then, though, Hatoko had an idea.

“Oh, I know! Why don’t I draw it for you?” she offered.

“You? I dunno...” I had a funny feeling this would end poorly, but Hatoko kept insisting until I reluctantly acquiesced. I was using a water-based pen, so even in the worst case scenario, it couldn’t go that horribly wrong.

“You get what I’m going for here, right, Hatoko?” I asked, still a little nervous. “You know what a dark dragon is?”

“Yeah! It’s just a big black dragon, right? Easy peasy!” she declared confidently.

“Are you even good at drawing? I can’t remember ever seeing you do art stuff.”

“I’m not so sure myself, but my friends always say that I’m an artistic genius!”

“And, err, you’re sure they actually mean it?” You’d think that would be an unambiguous compliment, but considering how sarcastic kids our age could be, I wasn’t prepared to take it at face value. Hatoko didn’t let my concern get to her, though; she was already leaning over my arm, happily drawing away.

It wasn’t long at all before she sat up again. “Okay, finished! It’s a masterpiece, if I do say so myself!”

I looked down at my arm to find a long, detailed dragon drawn upon it. Its head—far and away the hardest part of a dragon to draw right—was rendered well enough to easily score a passing grade. There was just one big ol’ deal-breaker of a problem.

“Why’d you draw it in a straight line?!” The dragon stretched directly from the back of my hand to my elbow without a single curve to be seen. It looked like somebody had jammed a ruler down its throat or something. “Dragons are supposed to be, like, all twisty and turny and stuff! It’s not a dragon if it isn’t!”

“Whaaat? But it’d be way harder to draw a twisty dragon, and it’d also mean your dragon has bad posture!”

“Bad...posture...? Who cares? Dragons have naturally bad posture, that’s just how they are!”

“Oh, I didn’t know that! I guess dragons must all be a bunch of slouching hoodlums.”

“Y’know what, sure, let’s go with that. Dragons are hoodlums. The point, Hatoko, is that you should draw it all twisty this time!”

Take two! Hatoko redrew the dragon in a flash.

“Done!”

“Oh, come on, it looks exactly the same as before! Why’d you draw it straight again?!”

“I didn’t! Look closer, it’s super twisty!”

“Did...did you corkscrew it?!” I hadn’t noticed at first since the whole thing was black, but when I looked really closely, I could just barely tell that she’d drawn it to be twisted like a drill bit. Given that it was two-dimensional, though, it looked exactly the same as the first one at a glance.

“I drew it all twisted up like a wrung-out towel!” Hatoko declared.

“Like a towel?! Wouldn’t that be super bad for it?!”

“Honestly? Yup! It’s on the verge of death.”

“The verge of death?!”

“It got twisted so hard, its bodily fluids are squirting out!”

“Is that what this bit’s supposed to be?! I thought it was breathing fire! Why would you do that to the poor dragon?!”

“You’re the one who said to draw it all twisty, Juu.”

“I said twisty, not twisted!”

“Hmm... I don’t know how I’d draw it like that on your arm without going off the edge, though! They’d have to be really tiny little twists to fit.”

“It doesn’t matter if it goes off the edge! You can use my entire arm as the canvas, not just the back part. Wrap it all the way around if you have to!”

“Oh, really? You should’ve said so sooner!” It looked like she had actually thought she had to stick to the back of my arm. That would explain the pencil-straight dragons she’d drawn so far. This time, though, she set about drawing one with no such restriction in mind. “Juu, I need to draw on the other side! Turn your arm over, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, I’m drawing on the top next! Turn it over again.”

“’Kay.”

“And, one more time!”

“Right...no, wait a second. I’ve already spun it all the way around! I’d dislocate it if I went any further!”

“One more time!”

“Wait, wait! My arm can’t spin any farther than that! You’re gonna pop it out in the joint! I am not that good at yoga, and I can’t pull off a Gum-Gum Rifle no matter how many times you twist it around!”

“Stay still! I’m trying to focus!”

“Ow, ooow! Cut it out! I don’t have the soft, supple shoulder joints to throw a moving fastball like the main character of Ace of Diamond!”

Hatoko paused for a moment. “Ah.”

“Wait. ‘Ah,’ what?! That was an ‘Oops, I screwed up’ ah, wasn’t it?! What did you just do?!”

“Oh, huh, I never realized you have a mole here, Juu!”

“So what?! Nobody cares about moles!”

“Of course they do! There’s that whole Jump manga about them. What was it...? Kuroko’s Back Skin Mole?”

“Basketball! Kuroko’s Basketball! Totally different thing!”

“Okay, Juu, one more turn!”

“Gyaaahhh! It’s gonna tear! Something in my shoulder joint’s definitely about to give!”

Crack!

“Aaaugh! It tooore!”

That noise was horrific! Definitely not the sort of noise that human bodies are supposed to make! Of all the stupid ways to ruin your right arm! I deeply regretted the decisions that had led me to that point...but then it hit me that I wasn’t actually in any pain. What, did I wreck the joint so badly that my nerves have totally shut down?

Suddenly, I heard a snorting noise from across the room. Sayumi was doing her best to suppress a fit of giggles. In her hand was a recently broken pair of disposable chopsticks.

“E-Excuse me,” she stammered, “it seems I just so happen to have accidentally broken my chopsticks at just the wrong time... Pff ha ha ha ha!”

“‘Accidentally’ my rear!” That’d explain the snapping noise, but I’m positive she wasn’t eating anything you’d use chopsticks for! Did she seriously go hunting for a pair of them just to screw with me? What a jerk!

While I poked and prodded at my arm, relieved to find it still in one piece, Chifuyu trotted over to me. “What’s up?” I asked.

“I wanna draw too,” she replied.

“Huh? You mean you wanna draw a dark dragon on my arm?”

“Yeah. It looks fun.”

I guess that exchange might’ve been pretty entertaining from an outside perspective, yeah. I was still a little apprehensive, though.

“I appreciate the thought, but we’re not playing games here, y’know?” I explained in as serious of a tone as I could muster. I could tell that the other members were all thinking, “What else would you call it?” from their expressions alone, but I refused to let them throw me off and kept my deadpan firmly in place.

“That’s okay,” replied Chifuyu. “I’m really good at drawing.”

“You are?”

“My teacher says I’m my generation’s Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso.”

“Why do you have Picasso’s full name memorized?! Couldn’t you just say ‘my generation’s Picasso’ and call it good?!” That’s so long, I bet even Picasso himself had a hard time remembering the whole thing! Chifuyu and her teacher are incredible!

“Oh, whoops—I meant ‘my generation’s Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Crispín Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso.’ I forgot the ‘Crispín.’”

“You don’t have to correct yourself! Nobody would’ve even noticed! If that were a line in a book or a manga, most of the readers would’ve skimmed over it!”

“Anyway, I’m drawing a dark dragon.” Chifuyu clenched her little fist in a show of determination. She was chomping at the bit to draw that dragon.

I handed over the pen, and she got to work without the slightest hesitation. Apparently she really was a talented artist—a minute later, she exclaimed, “Done! A dark dragon.”

I took a look at my arm and found a ferocious black-scaled dragon staring back at me. It was shockingly well drawn. Like, seriously, if I had a hat, I’d have taken it off in admiration of her skill. She could make a great illustrator or manga artist someday. There was just one teeny, tiny little problem.

“This is a Western dragon!” Like, a capital-D Dragon! The sorta chubby ones with giant wings! Which has its own appeal, to be fair, but if you’re going to get an arm tattoo, it has to be a more Eastern-style dragon, right? “Umm, Chifuyu...? You did a great job, and this is a really good dark dragon, but I’d really like something less Dragonite, more Dragonair or Dratini, if you can do that.”

Chifuyu gave me a blank stare of incomprehension. “Not ringing any bells? Guess that reference didn’t clear the generation gap. What would make sense to you...? Ah, got it! Y’know the dragon in The NeverEnding Story? I want one like that!”

“Got it.” Chifuyu nodded enthusiastically, then quickly amended her drawing. “Done. The NeverEnding Story dragon.”

“Ooh, yeah, you nailed it! You...really...”

“I got all the details right.”

“Yeah...you sure did. You even drew the kid riding on it.” A kid was perched atop the dragon’s back, drawn with just as much detail as the dragon itself. Right off the posters, seriously. There was absolutely nothing dark or intimidating about it whatsoever.

“So, Chifuyu? Next time, do think you could—”

“I’m done.”

“Huh?”

“I’m bored. You’re boring, Andou.” With that, Chifuyu wandered off again. Ever the free spirit, that girl.

Man. Maaan. This must be how girls feel when they get toyed with and tossed aside as soon as the guy gets what he wants from them. I sat there for a moment, depressed by the tragic emptiness of my own existence, when I suddenly glanced up to find Sayumi looking right at me.

“Don’t suppose you can draw, Sayumi?” I asked, just for good measure.

“To an extent,” she replied. “I’ve been known to doodle every now and again.” She was being as outwardly modest as ever, but I knew her well enough to see through that attitude. If she said she could do something “to an extent,” there was an extremely high chance she was more or less a master in the field. You could never let your guard down around a superhuman like her.

“Okay, then come at me! Dark dragon, right on my arm! Bring it!”

“I have to say, that’s a rather irritating way to ask me for a favor...but fine, have it your way.” Sayumi took up my pen and quickly drew up a dragon on my arm. She obviously knew what she was doing. “Finished. He he—I have to admit, it’s a little embarrassing to have other people look at something I drew.”

The first thing that struck me about her dragon was the sharp glint in its eye. It was the expression of a conqueror, of one who rules over all who oppose them by sheer, brute force. Next up was its slicked-back hair, followed by its well-tailored, pure-white suit—

“Hey! This isn’t a dark dragon—it’s the main character of that one yakuza manga, Hakuryu!”

“Oh, excuse me! I was keeping the dragons that series features on its covers in mind as inspiration, and I must have gotten a little confused. Its title does mean ‘White Dragon,’ after all.”

“You’d have to be more than ‘a little’ confused to make a mistake like that! You did it on purpose, admit it!” Shirakawa Tatsuya, the young crime lord of the Kurosu-gumi yakuza syndicate, was glaring at me from my own arm. Frankly, it was freaky as hell. Also, holy crap can Sayumi ever draw!

“My apologies, Andou,” said Sayumi. “Here, I’ll fix it right away.”

“Great, thanks—hey! I see what you’re doing this time—you’re drawing Hakuryu, the famous actor who’s done a bunch of yakuza movies! And he looks just as scary as the last one did!” What’s with the yakuza theme?! Just let it end—I don’t want a right arm I can’t bring myself to make eye contact with! “Sayumi...at the very least, would you please stop drawing people? I just want a cool dragon. That’s all I ask.”

“A cool dragon? I believe I can do that...he he.” She agreed with a pleasant smile, but that little chuckle at the end gave me a really bad feeling. “Finished! I’ve drawn the coolest dragon I could manage.”

She wasn’t kidding. The dragon she’d drawn on my arm was just about as cool as they could get. Cool enough to set my heart aflutter and my soul ablaze! There wasn’t a man alive who could look at that dragon and not get at least a little hyped up! It was, after all...

“A Red-Eyes Black Dragon!” In terms of appearance, they’re even cooler than the Blue-Eyes, on account of, well, their red eyes! She’d even drawn it doing its signature Inferno Fire Blast!

“Ooh, man... The Red-Eyes Black Dragon: a level seven card with disproportionately low Attack Points and no monster effect on top of it, which gets even less usable after the sacrifice system’s introduced to the game!”

“No need for the exposition,” interjected Sayumi.

“The Red-Eyes Black Dragon: a card that was first seen used by Dinosaur Ryuzaki, but was eventually claimed by Jonouchi and ended up getting treated as his trusted partner for no apparent reason as the manga’s serialization dragged on!”

“Again, the exposition is unnecessary.” I was overcome with emotion, but Sayumi was the very picture of composure. Actually, she might’ve been just a little bit weirded out by how incredibly positive my reaction was, considering she’d definitely meant it as a joke.

But whatever! Let her be weirded out! My right arm’s hella cool now, and that’s what really matters! Granted, the Red-Eyes was more of a Western dragon in form and technically didn’t match up with the one I’d described, but it totally worked anyway, so I wasn’t complaining.

While I was reveling in the awesomeness of my arm, though, Sayumi pulled a few tissues out of a nearby box and silently sneaked up behind me. “Burst Stream of Destruction!” she shouted, rubbing away the ink.

“Noooooo! M-My Red-Eyes had been defeated!” And beaten by a Blue-Eyes, at that! That six-hundred point difference in AP really is insurmountable! “How could you, Sayumi?!”

“My apologies. Seeing you act that happy was so viscerally disturbing that I simply couldn’t restrain myself.”

“Ouch! Just because you talk all formally doesn’t mean you get a blank check to say anything you want, you know?”

“I believe anyone would agree that witnessing someone respond to harassment with joy is hardly pleasant.”

“So, you really were trying to harass me, huh?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I must admit that I miscalculated, though. In retrospect, the name ‘Red-Eyes Black Dragon’ alone is full of the sort of words you chuunis go wild for. I underestimated your capacity for edgy nonsense.”

Sayumi, it would seem, held herself to pretty strict standards when it came to making fun of me. I spent a moment mourning the loss of my short-lived partner, only to notice that Tomoyo was staring at me with pity in her eyes. “What?” I snapped at her.

“Just thinking that nothing cures stupidity, that’s all,” she replied.

“Ohhh? You want to try drawing a dark dragon on my arm? You could’ve just said so!”

“Did you hear a single word I just said?!”

“Didn’t have to—it’s obvious from the way you’ve been staring at me! There’s an unmistakable longing in your eyes!”

“No there isn’t! And before you ask, no, I’m not just faking it ’cause I’m embarrassed!”

“You’ll never improve your skills if you don’t polish them, you know?”

“Why would I bother? Being able to draw dragons is totally useless!”

“It’d be handy for your New Year’s cards in the year of the dragon!”

“Oh, wow, once every twelve years! Amazing!”

This wasn’t working. It was time for a different approach. “Please! You’re the only one left I can rely on here!”

“Why’re you so desperate about this, you absolute wimp?!”

I mean, of course I am! I can’t exactly give up on it after coming this far—that’d mean all my efforts up until now were for nothing!

Tomoyo sighed, then she took up my pen. “All right, fine, I’ll draw it. C’mon, gimme your arm.”

“Tomoyo...I owe you one! No matter how many times I’m reborn, I’ll never forget this debt! I swear I’ll pay you back, even if I have to do it in the afterlife!”

“Do it in this life, please. God, I don’t know why I put up with this crap...” Tomoyo kept muttering complaints as she started drawing her dark dragon. “Hey, you’re going for something like Hiei’s arm in YuYu, right?” she asked, glancing up at me.

“Yeah,” I replied. She’d picked up on my sublime sense of aesthetics with shocking ease—must’ve been because she was a former chuuni herself. I was almost moved by how perfectly she’d understood my intent.

“Okay,” Tomoyo finally said. “It’s done. If you have any complaints, I don’t wanna hear them.”

“Oh, wow...” Tomoyo’s dragon wasn’t all that impressive on a technical level, but out of all the dragons I’d seen that day, it was far and away the closest to the image I’d had in mind. In short: she’d nailed the Hiei look.

“Mwa ha ha...” A malevolent dragon had been born within my right arm. Stained by the dark of night, it twisted around me, binding my very being to its will! I have a dark dragon etched into my arm, and that’s hella cool. “So, you’ve finally revealed your true form, Dark and Dark! How long have you raged within me, threatening to scorch me to ash should I let my guard down? How many times have you burned my hand with your sable flames? Indeed, I’ve been burned by you in more ways than one...heh!”

“Don’t laugh at your own stupid jokes! Seriously, ugh,” groaned Tomoyo.

“Gah—aaaugh! Be still, Dark and Dark! Now is not the time for your atonement!”

“Hey, if you’re gonna do the whole arm-clutching skit again, do it over in the corner. It’s really obnoxious.”

“Now then—with my dark dragon complete, the time has come to bandage it up and seal it away!” I pulled a roll of gauze out from my bag. I’d had a feeling I might have need of it today, so I’d brought it from home just in case. “Tomoyo! Bind my arm for me, will you? It’s really hard to do it myself.”

“Why on earth would I—”

“Ugraaahhh! H-Hurry! I can’t hold it back much longer...”

“Would you please just let your stupid power devour you already?!” In spite of her complaints, Tomoyo reluctantly bandaged up my right arm for me. She was always nice about that stuff when push came to shove. “Hey, I’m guessing you want them to be like Hiei’s curse bindings, right?”

“Yeah, thanks.” She really was quick on the uptake. Saved me a ton of effort. I almost fell for her on the spot.

Tomoyo crouched down in front of the chair I was sitting in and started winding the bandages around my arm. If this were a scene in some supernatural battle epic, it’d probably be one of those emotional moments where the wounded protagonist gets first aid from his kindhearted heroine.

Tragically, though, in my case, it was just the two of us horsing around. Ahh, man, looking at this from a more calm and objective perspective, it’s all pretty stupid. What am I even doing...? Screw it, though—I’ve come too far to back out now!

“You’re pretty good at tying these, by the way,” I said to Tomoyo. You wouldn’t think someone like her would have had many chances to practice.

“I used to do it for Hajime all the time, back in the day,” she explained.

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense. You did say he was on the track team. Oh, or maybe he got in a lot of fights? That’d be sorta surprising!”

“No, he...umm...” Tomoyo hesitated. Whatever she was trying to say, it wasn’t easy for her to spit it out. “Let’s just say the two of you have a lot of the same ideas.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but internally, I was reflecting on the fact that he really was a true kindred spirit. Could anyone deny that bandages are super cool, though? You can wrap them around your arm, or your face, or even use them as an eyepatch like Takasugi in Gintama! They’re cool no matter what you do with them!

“Okay, done,” said Tomoyo.

“Thanks,” I replied. “Now I can get back into the fight!”

“Please do, and make it a suicide mission while you’re at it.”

The way she’d wrapped the bandages made them look sort of skewed and irregular. She hadn’t done a careless job, of course—it was a very deliberate level of untidiness, which made it look even better! So friggin’ cool! The way little bits of bandage are hanging out here and there is just the best! Now then—with my seal complete, it’s time to move on to live combat!

“Make us a Field, Chifuyu!” I shouted, doing my best to stay patient in spite of my excitement.

“What type?” she asked.

“Let’s see... Make it like one of those wastelands that they fought in all the time toward the end of Dragon Ball, when the author couldn’t be bothered to draw towns anymore!”

“I don’t get it.”

“Okay, then just a normal wasteland.”

“Got it.”

“Was the middle step really necessary?!” shouted Tomoyo.

Chifuyu turned to face the windows and held up a hand. The space in front of her started to warp and distort, and a moment later, the club room’s wall had disappeared, replaced with a landscape totally unlike that outside the windows. A massive, desolate wasteland spread out in place of the usual schoolyard.

Chifuyu’s ability, World Create, was so powerful she could even freely generate space itself. She’d willed the isolated wasteland into existence, then she’d designated the club room’s window-side wall as its entrance. The ability to make any setting she could possibly want was a terrifically powerful one, to be sure, but we only ever really used it to make baseball fields, skating rinks, and other places along those lines. Places to play around, basically.

“All right! Hey, Hatoko, c’mere a sec! It’s mock battle time!”

“All riiight!” replied Hatoko. The two of us changed into our outdoor shoes, which we kept in the club room for precisely this purpose, and stepped outside.

The wasteland expanded into the horizon, stretching as far as the eye could see in all directions. The sun was blazing high in the sky overhead, and an arid wind blew every once in a while. The bandages that dangled from my right arm danced in the gales of the plains. Dangling bandages: hella cool.

“Mwa ha ha!” I cackled, leisurely walking out into the open field before turning to face Hatoko. I did my best to engender an atmosphere of war-weary pathos as I launched into my speech. “How long has it been since the two of us met like this...? Ever since we—”

“Here goes! Laser beeeeeeam!”

Before my speech could even get rolling, a laser beam flew right at me. One of the elements Over Element gave Hatoko power over was light, and by hyper-condensing it, she could turn it into a projectile weapon!

I screamed like a banshee and hurled myself off to the side, just barely dodging the death ray. It scorched just a few centimeters past my side, sailing far off into the distance and blasting a mountain in the background to smithereens. If I had to pick a sound effect to describe the resulting noise, I’d probably go with something along the lines of KRA-BWOOOOOOM! H-Hoooly crap...

“What the hell, Hatoko?! You trying to kill me, or what?!”

“Huh? But you said we were having a mock battle!”

“Mock battle! Mock! As in, not actually a real battle! It’s just make-believe!”

“‘Make-believe’?”

“Ah, crap, not what I meant! It’s not make-believe—it’s a simulation! A super high-level simulation, yeah. Think of it in Swords Aren’t Online terms: ‘This might be a game, but nobody here’s playing around!’ You never know when we might really need our powers, so we can’t afford to let ourselves get sloppy!”

Hatoko grunted irritably. “I don’t get this at all!”

“And most importantly,” I said, ignoring her, “You can’t just attack somebody when they’re mid-speech! What the hell?!”

That was the part that had really set me off. The fact that her laser had darn near blasted my head off was a problem, sure, but interrupting my speech? That was a good way to piss me off for sure! C’mon, you can’t just ruin the scene like that!

“Listen up, Hatoko. Your elementary school teachers taught you not to interrupt people when they’re talking, didn’t they?”

“They did, yeah... But aren’t you also not supposed to listen to anything your enemy says when you’re in the middle of a fight?”

She was absolutely right, and I couldn’t think of a counterargument. Crap! Since when was Hatoko this cheeky?

“Fool!” I bellowed, ad-libbing it. “If there weren’t so many people like you in this world, we wouldn’t have to have wars anymore!”

“Wait, really?!”

“Indeed! If everyone just had the strength of character and open-mindedness to lend their ears to their enemy’s words mid-battle, then, uhh, we’d probably have world peace by now or something!”

“I-Is that really how it works...?”

My strategy was to make some big, far-reaching claim, then move the conversation along before she could pry too deeply into it. Experience had proven that to be the best method of coping with Kushikawa Hatoko under these circumstances.

“Listen up, Hatoko. I’ve got a simpler example that should clear this all up for you.”

“Okay.”

“Think about Anpanman. Every episode, Bacteriaman does something to mess up Anpanman’s head, but Uncle Jam bakes him a new one that he uses to save the day! Imagine, though, if Bacteriaman went ahead and messed up that second head too. That’s not allowed, is it?”

“No way!”

“You’d think, ‘Dude, seriously? You can’t just ruin the story like that,’ right?”

“I totally would!”

“And take Mito Komon—imagine if Kakunoshin were to whip out the special stamp case that proves that Komon’s secretly the former vice-shogun, but the villain took one look at it and said, ‘What the hell’s that supposed to be?’ You’re just not allowed to do that, right?”

“You’re not! You can’t put poor Komon on the spot like that!”

“Okay, so things like these? We call them ‘obligatory clichés.’”

“Obligatory clichés!” Hatoko parroted gleefully, her eyes sparkling. I just knew she was thinking about the term in its comedy context.

“You get it now, right? The comedians you love so much have clichés they have to play along with, just like Anpanman and all the supernatural battles he exemplifies.”

“Wait, is Anpanman a supernatural battle series?!”

“Of course it is! What else would it be? Anpanman himself is a battle-homunculus born by way of Uncle Jam’s Stand ability, y’know?”

“Is he?!”

“Why else would Uncle Jam mutter, ‘Bring forth new life, Golden Wind!’ under his breath every time he’s kneading the bread for Anpanman’s new head?”

“I’ve never heard him say that, and I never want to!”

“Anyway, the point is you always have to abide by the clichés!”

“Yeah, okay! I understand now: you can’t attack somebody while they’re talking.”

“And, uhh...maybe don’t make your attacks quite so full-force, okay?” I added in a much quieter tone of voice.

Mine aside, all of the literary club’s powers were god-tier. I didn’t like to admit it, but the truth was that, even if any of them were to only use a tenth of their full potential—actually, make that a hundredth of their full potential—they’d still be overwhelmingly more powerful than me.

Among those godly powers, Hatoko’s Over Element was notable for its sheer firepower. In terms of pure lethality, it was far and away the most potent out of all of them. One had to wonder what sort of messed-up twist of fate led to Hatoko, the club’s most gentle and mild-mannered member, getting the power that could obliterate mountains. We spent ages thinking about possible links between our powers and personalities back when they first awakened, but we never reached any satisfactory answers.

In any case, the time for long-winded theoretical conversation was over. It was simulation time!

“Mwa ha ha! How long has it been since the two of us met like this...?”

“Since yesterday!”

“Ever since we first laid eyes on each other, I had a feeling this day would come...”

“You mean back in kindergarten?”

“The time has finally arrived to prove once and for all what really makes the two of us different!”

“Well, you’re a boy and I’m a girl, for one thing!”

She’s just not gonna shut up and let me have this, is she? Well, whatever. Unleashing the power that dwells within my right arm comes first! I laid a hand on the bandage wrapped around my arm. The Malediction of Unleashing was gonna have to take the day off—I wanted to pour everything I could into making the bandage-removal scene as cool as inhumanly possible! One might say that sort of adaptability was my true power.

“There’s no going back now,” I said with a villainous smirk as I undid the bandages. “I don’t remember how to put these back on.” As the bandages fell away, the physical proof of Dark and Dark’s existence, the sinister dark dragon etched into my arm, was revealed...to have been rubbed most of the way out of existence. It was almost completely illegible.

Oh. Right. I guess we were using a water-based pen that whole time, so if you wrapped a bunch of bandages tightly around it, that would happen.

“Huh? Why’re you retying your bandages, Juu? I thought you said you didn’t remember how!”

“I-It just came back to me!”

“Oh, okay. Good for you!”

“Yup! Man, my memory’s so good, it’s kind of a problem sometimes!” I tried as hard as I could to re-tie the bandages before Hatoko saw the mess beneath them, but it was really hard to pull off with my left hand. The fact that I was in a state of panic didn’t help either, and the more I fiddled with them, the more the dark dragon got wiped away.

Maaan.

Y’know what? I’m done. I don’t even care anymore. The moment’s so dead, it’s not even funny. I plodded my way back into the room, collapsed into my chair and stared blankly up at the ceiling.

“Guess I shouldn’t expect to win the lottery if I never even bother to buy a ticket,” I sighed.

“What the hell were you trying to accomplish with all that?!” shouted Tomoyo, exploding right into my train of thought. She’d been watching my whole back-and-forth with Hatoko from the club room, and she’d apparently been getting more and more irritated by the second. Actually, that irritation might’ve been building up ever since I mentioned that I was drawing a dark dragon.

“Heh—a fair question,” I replied. “What was I trying to accomplish...? Maybe, when all was said and done, what I really wanted was for all of you to come and stop me...”

“Quit acting like a final boss who gets redeemed at the last second!”

“For real, though, sorry... The dark dragon you drew for me...got erased...”

“Don’t get all sincere with me either! And no apologies! I don’t actually care at all!”

“You don’t?! In that case, will you draw me a new one?!”

“Hell no!”

“Figures. Cheapskate.” I slumped back into my chair and groaned. “Guess this wasn’t a total waste of time, though,” I quietly added, glancing down at my bandaged right arm. At the very least, I’d reminded myself of how incredibly cool bandages could be under the right circumstances. From now on, I think I might seal away Dark and Dark with cursecatcher bandages instead of sealing shackles.

“Hey, Tomoyo, what do you think I should go with? Sealing shackles or cursecatcher bandages?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Oh, here we go! The classic ‘whatever you want’! Here’s a hypothetical for you, Tomoyo: imagine you’re out shopping with your boyfriend, and when you ask for his opinion on something, he tells you ‘whatever you want.’ It’d be super obnoxious, right? You really oughta consider stripping that phrase from your vocabulary!”

“Can it, chuuni. And actually, now that I think about it, isn’t all that ink gonna totally ruin those bandages if it rubs off on them?”

“Huh? Gah!” Crap, she’s right! I never actually asked if I could use these before I “borrowed” them from home too! “Oh man, I’m so screwed! My mom’s gonna kill me!”

I rushed back out into the wasteland. “Hatoko!” I shouted. “I need water, quickly! Help me out here!”

“Okaaay!” replied Hatoko, using Over Element to conjure up a burst of water that poured forth from her hands. I quickly washed the bandages, salvaging them before it was too late. The excess water splashed out into the wasteland, quickly soaking into its dessicated ground. It was a good thing we’d already had Chifuyu make the place for us, in retrospect; I would’ve had to run all the way over to the nearest faucet to wash them otherwise.

Once the bandages were all clean again, I carried a chair out from the club room and draped them over it. Considering how arid the place was, I figured they’d be dry in no time. “Witness the glory of Over Element and World Create’s Unison Skill: Laundry Day!”

Yeah, okay... I know I’m the one who came up with it, but that really is sorta lacking as far as Unison Skills go. Talk about a waste of godlike abilities.

“Hey, Andou,” Tomoyo said as I returned to my seat, freshly dried bandages in hand. “You’ve been going on and on about dark dragon this, dark dragon that today, right? Did you figure out how to make Dark and Dark do a form change or something?”

“Huh? What do you mean by that?”

“Y’know, a form change. Like, making it change shape? Can you do that?”

Changing the shape of my flames...? Generally speaking, when I activated Dark and Dark, its flames appeared in the palm of my hand and could only be described as fire-shaped. I didn’t really put any effort into making them look that way. It just felt like the natural shape for fire to take, so I’d never thought about it much.

“Y’know,” I replied, “I’ve never actually tried.”

“You haven’t?” asked Tomoyo, sounding a little surprised. “When you started going on about the dark dragon thing, I was sure that meant you were gonna bring Dark and Dark out and make it dragon-shaped too.”

“Nah, I wasn’t really thinking that far ahead. I just thought that having a dragon tattoo—or even better, a birthmark—on my arm would be super cool.”

“You never bother developing your fantasies past the surface level, do you?”

“F-Fantasies? N-No clue what you’re talking about!” She’d really hit me where it hurt with that one, and my voice cracked as I tried to brush it off.

Altering the form of my flames, though—now that was an idea! It certainly seemed worth trying. Dark and Dark was totally useless for all practical purposes, but maybe the true essence of my power had secretly been its ability to change shapes this whole time!

“Okay, I’ll give it a try!” I declared, holding my right arm aloft and invoking Dark and Dark in its usual form to start. Its black flames immediately burst into being atop my hand.

“What happened to the Malediction of Unleashing?” asked Tomoyo.

“Oh. I-It, uh... I mean, today happens to be the one day of the year when my magical potential waxes full! I can use it without the Malediction today, no problem.”

“There you go, pulling plot beats out of your ass again... And back off before you use it next time! Your fire’s, like, sorta lukewarm in a really half-baked way that’s super obnoxious, somehow.”

“What?! I’ll teach you not to underestimate Dark and Dark’s true firepower! You might think it’s just sorta warm, but if you let your guard down and keep touching it for long enough, you’ll be in for one hell of a rash!”

“Wow, exactly as dangerous as a hot water bottle!”

I sharpened my senses, honing all of them in on manipulating the shape of my hot water bo—I mean, the shape of Dark and Dark. Deep within my mind’s eye, I visualized a dark, malevolent dragon. I willed it to be, packing all my fantasies, delusions, and flights of imagination into its realization!

“Graaauuugggggghhhhhhhhh!” I bellowed, concentrating every ounce of my energy into the palm of my hand, willing the flame that danced atop it to bend to my desires. It...didn’t go super well. I was squeezing out every ounce of power I had to offer, but the most I managed was making the very tip of the flame sorta wiggle around a bit. It went back to normal the second I let my attention lapse too. But would I give up? Never!

“Frrraaahhhaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!” I shouted, invigorating my war cry to hitherto unseen heights. Bringing my strength and subtlety alike to bear, I kept fine-tuning Dark and Dark’s shape, over and over, until finally, its flame began to gradually change form.

“H-Hey, that’s enough, Andou! Give it a rest,” cautioned Tomoyo, but I was not about to be dissuaded.

“G-Gahaaahhhhhhh! D-Don’t try to stop me, Tomoyo! I understand that you fear for my life, but I cannot afford to falter here!”

“No, umm...I meant that you should stop because all that shouting’s getting on my nerves.”

“Mnraaahhhhhhuuuggghhh!”

“Hey, Chifuyu? The moron’s being loud again. Think you could soundproof the room so it doesn’t leak out...? Yeah, okay, perfect. Thanks.”

“Rin-pyo-toh-sha-kai-jin-retsu-zai-zen! Rin-pyo-toh-sha-kai-jin-retsu-zai-zen!”

“Why the ninja hand seals?!”

“Spiral staircase! Rhinoceros beetle! Desolation Row! Fig tart! Rhinoceros beetle! Via Dolorosa! Singularity! Giotto! Angel! Hydrangea! Rhinoceros beetle! Singularity! The secret emperor!”

“And now we’re going full JoJo again?! Why the fourteen phrases you need to get to heaven?!”

Gradually, ever so gradually, the flitting flame that adorned my hand morphed into the shape I desired. In some ways, the very essence of flame is freedom. Flame loathes to maintain a single shape for long, and alters its form incessantly. Perhaps that was why controlling it was proving much harder than I’d anticipated—I was attempting to reign in that very freedom. Still, though, I was starting to get the knack for it.

“Just a little more... Just a little...more...” A long, twisting dragon of flame danced atop my palm, but it wasn’t finished yet. I was just one step away, struggling to bring it to the point of perfection. “Damnations... I’m so close! Just a couple whiskers away from pulling it off...”

“Obsessive much?! Does it really matter if it has whiskers or not?!”

“Of course it does... The whiskers are what make a dragon a dragon... A dragon without whiskers just looks too, I dunno, snake-like... Think about Hiei again—his dragon totally has whiskers when he uses Dragon of the Darkness Flame...”

That said, I was clearly aiming for something higher-level than I actually had the skill to pull off. It was time for a compromise. Even if it didn’t have whiskers, as long as I gave it some horns, nobody would mistake it for a snake.

“All right! Finished!” I shouted triumphantly. A true to life dark dragon had finally manifested above my right hand. It was spectacular! It was ominous! It was sinister enough to make all who saw it tremble with fear! H-Hoooly crap, that’s cool! Dark dragons are so! Friggin’! Cool!

There was just one problem, which Tomoyo was all too eager to point out. “Sure is tiny, huh?” she commented, glancing over at my hand with a sort of doubtful look on her face.

And, well, yeah. As far as dark dragons went, it was definitely on the miniature side. It was easily small enough to fit in my hand, and if I tried hard enough, I probably could’ve shoved it into a gacha capsule. It was as fiendish as it could be in terms of form, but thanks to its size, it came out looking sorta cute. A real palmtop dragon, as it were.

“Think you can make it a bit bigger?” asked Tomoyo.

“N-Nope... This is my limit... Heck, just keeping it in this shape’s pushing me over the brink...” Just a moment later, my concentration slipped; the dragon dispersed, returning my flame to its initial shapeless form. I was totally winded. “Man, that tired me out! Think I just shaved a solid five years or so off my lifespan.”

“Well, I guess you pulled off a form change, at least. Technically. Maybe? Y’know, honestly, I’m not sure if I’d call that ‘pulling it off’ or not.” Tomoyo rested her chin in her hand as she watched me gasp for air and analyzed my debatable success. “Looks like you’ll need to put in a lot more effort before you can shoot dragon- or phoenix-shaped fireballs, or whatever.”

“Effort? What a drag...” The effort I’d already put into shaping my flame had left me in a state of exhaustion. I could only imagine how much training and discipline I’d need to get it to the level I wanted (that being big enough to tower over me). Frankly, it didn’t seem worth the trouble.

Tomoyo saw through my laziness in an instant and scowled. Apparently, I’d touched a nerve. “You’re a disgrace, you know that? I don’t care if you give up on making a dragon, don’t get me wrong, but you could at least find something you can actually be motivated about.”

“You make that sound nice, sure, but don’t you know that hard work’s passé these days?”

“Oh, you have got to be—”

“No, hear me out. I get it! I know exactly how important hard work can be. But still, you’ve gotta admit that it’s out of style! Look at all the protagonists in manga and anime these days. Pretty much none of them ever actually put in any hard work, do they?”

Tomoyo growled with frustration, but it looked like my argument had hit home. She couldn’t find any way to argue against my claim. That was when Sayumi jumped into the conversation.

“You have a point, Andou, at least to some extent,” she said. “In manga, anime, and light novels—the ‘two-dimensional’ subset of fiction, if you will—it’s certainly true that most recent works have strayed away from the idealized portrayals of hard work you used to see.”

“Right? Protagonists these days all get sold as ‘perfectly ordinary high school students,’ but then they always turn out to have been born with some incredible innate superpower, or they get one handed to them out of nowhere one day. They don’t put in a lick of effort!”

It’s a common trope in supernatural battle stories in particular. The protagonist, who up until yesterday hadn’t thrown a punch in his life, ends up in a fight with some villain who’s spent their whole life enduring harsh, backbreaking training...and then the protagonist curb stomps them anyway. All of that pain and effort on the bad guy’s part is nothing in the face of the protagonist’s sheer talent and quick thinking. It’s one of the biggest failures of logic in the supernatural battle template, though it’s also a major part of the genre’s appeal.

“It’s not like there aren’t any stories where the protagonists go through training,” added Tomoyo in a thoughtful tone, “but the actual training sequences get cut down to next to nothing most of the time. You get, like, a montage at best.”

“And that would be because those sequences are boring for the readers, unless the author comes up with an especially interesting training method,” said Sayumi. “It’s much more common for the author to, say, have their main character suddenly use a new powerful technique, then later explain in a brief flashback how hard they worked to learn it. Otokojuku and Prince of Tennis used that method quite often.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Tons of stories just gloss over all the training stuff. The main character’s always just suddenly stronger than the bad guy for no real reason. It’s like they’re not even thinking about all this stuff.”

Surprisingly enough, both Tomoyo and Sayumi actually sided with me in the end. We were all in agreement that effort was out of fashion in the world of fiction.

“Most likely, the stories have changed to match the desires of their readers,” theorized Sayumi. “The desire to be popular with women, to save the world, to have your talents acknowledged by everyone...but to not have to put in any effort to achieve those goals. Fiction sells when it panders to the readers’ desires, and the current readership for that sort of work desires results without effort. That would explain why modern stories tend to hold the idea of hard work in disdain.”

“Speaking as part of the readership for that sort of story, I really want to object to that, but I honestly can’t.” It sort of felt like I was being called a disgrace again in a roundabout way, but everything Sayumi had said was so on-point I couldn’t think of any decent objections. So, that was sorta depressing, and Sayumi must have been able to tell my spirits were sinking.

“Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I didn’t mean to imply that having that sort of desire is a bad thing,” she said, trying to cheer me up. “The desire for results without effort is universal. Everyone feels it, to some extent, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It just so happens that attaining results without putting in effort is next to impossible in the real world, so people work hard in spite of themselves, even when the task at hand is a miserable one.”

She paused for a moment to consider her next words. “I suppose that would be why works of fiction don’t often portray the sort of miserable effort-sink that nobody wants to do in extensive detail. It simply wouldn’t be an entertaining experience, and it would come across as insufferably preachy to boot. Everyone knows why hard work is important without having it rubbed in their face by fiction.”

“Yeah, true enough,” I said, pondering her words. She was right. On some level, everybody understands that it isn’t possible to achieve results without putting in effort. You don’t need somebody to go out of their way to tell you that—it’s obvious.

That does not, however, mean that putting in effort is a matter of course. Nobody likes going through painful experiences, and if you don’t want to do something, it can be pretty hard to convince yourself to do it anyway. Everybody wants to have it easy and take it easy.

“Oh, and of course, there’s also the appeal of being a genius or awakening to sudden power,” added Sayumi. “You can’t get enough of those two, can you, Andou?”

“You bet I can’t!”

Sayumi scowled. “The sheer enthusiasm with which you agreed to that was incredibly irritating. Please don’t.”

Needless to say, I ignored her protests and kept going. “Most protagonists are geniuses in one way or another, right? Even if the story has a part where they put in the work and go through intense training, it always ends with one of the other characters being all, ‘Incredible! It would take a normal person a whole year to master that skill, and they did it in a single month!’ They get to show off their genius side, even when effort’s involved!”

“True,” said Sayumi, agreeing with me again. “Everyone can understand the appeal of being a genius. The appeal of going through an awakening, meanwhile, hardly even bears explaining. It’s self-evident that a character who spends all their time working as hard as they can would be less attractive to the typical reader than a character who suddenly obtains unimaginable power when all hope seems lost. It’s easier on the author, as well. Having your protagonist awaken to incredible power lets you overturn all precedent and foreshadowing in an instant.”

She really didn’t have to add that bit of unfiltered pragmatism at the end, in my book. Sayumi never got tired of smashing my dreams with relentless realism. She was right about one thing, though: awakenings are awesome. They’re easy for creators to work into a story, and consumers eat them right up! Could they possibly get any handier?! No wonder they’re in fashion!

“People, especially young people, are attracted to the idea of accomplishing something without putting in an incredible amount of effort. I imagine it’s rather difficult to understand the appeal that effort itself carries until you’ve reached a certain degree of age and experience,” said Sayumi, summarizing her overall conclusion before taking a long, leisurely sip of tea, as if to say that the conversation was over.

“Remind me again...how old are you, exactly?” I asked, unable to stop myself.

“I’ll be eighteen in the very near future,” she replied with a smile.

“Okay, lemme see if I got all that,” said Tomoyo, looking like she was still putting it all together in her mind. “When people are young, they tend to think of themselves as geniuses, so they like seeing genius characters and plot developments that make them look OP AF. The older they get, though, the more they realize their own limitations and accept the fact that they’re just ordinary people, so they start losing interest in all that stuff.”

That last part sorta hit home for me. When I considered that it was coming from Tomoyo, a girl who had already renounced her chuuni phase, something about it felt tragic in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Part of me thinks that I just might be some sort of special, incredible person. I want to think that. I want to believe it. But deep down, a part of me’s always been afraid that someday, I might come to the realization that I’m just me. A perfectly ordinary person, and nothing more.

Tomoyo looked a little downcast about her conclusion, but Sayumi shook her head. “No. I believe that, ultimately, it’s all a matter of personal taste,” she stated bluntly. Not that I was about to disagree with her, blunt delivery or not.

I sighed deeply and stared vacantly at my right arm. “Maybe I should put a little more effort into changing Dark and Dark’s form after all.”

Tomoyo grinned in the way she always did whenever she was about to make fun of me. “What, haven’t you heard? Hard work’s passé these days!”

“It is, and I learn more by putting stuff into practice than by working hard at it, and I’m the sorta uber-protagonist who goes through sudden awakenings when he’s in dire peril, so honestly, I don’t need to put in any effort at all! But, well...there’s no harm in giving it a try, y’know? Someday, I’ll bring forth the coolest dark dragon you’ve ever seen—the sort of dragon that really would etch its mark into my right arm!”

“Gotta say, you’ve picked the worst possible thing to put in hard work for,” sighed Tomoyo.

“I think it’s quite nice, actually,” said Sayumi in an understanding tone of voice. “I don’t believe in wasted effort. Or rather, from another perspective, every effort is a waste, in a broad sense. Take, for instance, a member of a baseball club who has no interest in going pro but practices with exceptional enthusiasm anyway. Some might say that they’re wasting their effort, but I’m of the opinion that saying so would be rather tactless.”

“Sure, but...it still feels like the stuff Andou puts effort into doesn’t quite fall into the same category...” Tomoyo was floundering, and I was just astonished. It wasn’t every day that Sayumi took my side in this sort of debate, and I was a little happy about it.

“Let me put it this way, Tomoyo,” said Sayumi. “When a child tells you that they want to be Ultraman or a Kamen Rider when they grow up, it’s an adult’s duty to stay quiet and not contradict them.”

“Oh, okay. I get it now.”

Never mind. Turns out she was just treating me like a kid. Hmph! Let them treat me however they want—my own hard work will never betray me! When all is said and done, today is just my first step along the boundlessly long road that stretches ahead of me. I can’t even imagine how many days or months I’ll spend training myself to materialize the dark dragon of my dreams, but as long as I keep piling on the effort, I’ll reach my goal without fail!

“Heeey, Juu!” Hatoko’s voice broke me out of my passionate and resolute internal monologue. She sounded sort of distant—probably still out in the wasteland. I wondered why she hadn’t come back into the club room yet and turned around...only to freeze solid.

“Is this the sorta dragon you want to make?” asked Hatoko from within the coils of a dragon made of pure flame. Her dragon was sinister, but in a way that had a certain air of holiness to it, and it was cool beyond all possible reason.

Yeah, it had whiskers. Yeah, it had horns. And it was easily over a hundred meters long.

The massive crimson dragon wheeled through the air, the very picture of purgatory itself. At the very center of that inferno stood Hatoko, smiling as casually as ever.

“I wanted to make it black like yours, but, well, y’know!” she explained. Over Element couldn’t make black flames. It gave her power over the forces of nature, and black fire doesn’t occur in the natural world. That’s part of what makes Dark and Dark so friggin’ cool, but in that moment, it was also the last thing on my mind.

“Hatoko...” I stammered. “That... What... How...?”

“Dunno! I just gave it a try, and it worked!”

She just gave it a try, and it worked. I worked myself to the brink of exhaustion to make a palmtop dragon, and Hatoko managed to make my ideal dragon in no time at all.

“Here goooes! Dragon attack!” At Hatoko’s command, the crimson dragon jetted off at an incredible speed and crashed into the far-away foothills. I had no clue how hot that thing must’ve been, but at the very least, it was hot enough to melt away an entire mountain. Its heat, firepower, destructive potential, speed, and—most importantly—aesthetics were all absolutely ten out of ten by my standards.

And so, my motivation was pulled out by the roots. Reality had slapped me in the face with a genius that no amount of effort could ever overcome. Maybe this is how Yamcha and Krillin felt when they finally gave up on catching up to Goku...?

“Putting in the effort’s a drag after all,” I mumbled as I sunk as deep into my chair as I could manage. Tomoyo and Sayumi didn’t say a thing, but I could see the pity in their eyes.