When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace: Volume 1 E-Book

Kota Nozomi

• Herausgeber: J-Novel Club
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 326

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace: Volume 1

Leseprobe

Chapter 1: Long Story Short, We Got Superpowers

“Ugh... Graaauuugggggghhhhhhhhh!”

Deep in the stygian depths of a sealed abyss, alone and desolate, I clutched at my right arm. I held it close—I held it back.

“Aaargh! Ugaaahhhhhh!”

I howled like a feral beast. It was all I could do—my arm was resisting me, struggling for supremacy, and my only recourse was to desperately cling to it to keep it from running wild. My left hand’s nails bit deeply into the skin of my right wrist.

My Power had gone berserk, intent on trampling over its host’s will—my will—and escaping from the enchainment of my body. I had to hold it back! No matter what!

“St-Stop,” I spat through clenched teeth. “I won’t let you, gods dammit!”

But try as I might to suppress them, the dark, seething emotions within me surged ever stronger, threatening to drown me in their ebon waters. A voice rang out from the depths of my being. Destroy, it commanded. Destroy it all!

The impulse was overpowering! It was maddening! It threatened to obscure the very core of my being! My sense of self was being overwritten. My own Power...was devouring me. My Power—that raging flame of judgment, that purgatorial inferno that reduced even the gods themselves to the pettiest of kindling...

That blackest of blazes known as Dark and Dark!

“Graaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!”

“Would you please quiet down?”

Suddenly, the lights came on, illuminating the literary club’s room. The timeworn lockers and the relatively unworn table that had just been replaced the year before were lit up in all their mundane glory. Massive metal shelves lined the walls, packed tightly with books that generations of upperclassmen had left (or abandoned, rather) for their successors to deal with.

“I could hear you guys from outside the room! What the heck are you doing in—wait, it’s just you, Andou?”

“St-Stay back, Kanzaki Tomoyo—nay, Closed Clock!”

“Did you really just say ‘nay’...? And stop calling me that!”

“Hurry! Flee! Go now, while I’m still...me!”

Tomoyo stared blankly at me as I crouched on the ground, clawing at my arm. She was cringing about as hard as it’s possible to cringe at someone.

I clicked my tongue. “Okay, okay,” I muttered as I stood up. She’d really killed the mood. I scratched my head (with my right arm, which wasn’t really throbbing at all) and met her contemptuous gaze.

Her name was Kanzaki Tomoyo. Her hair came down to her shoulders, just barely brushing up against her uniform’s lapel, and she’d probably be considered quite the looker under normal circumstances. Her sharp glare and irritably pursed lips sort of spoiled the effect, though; at a glance, they made her look like a bit of a hard-ass.

Truth be told, she really was a bit of a hard-ass, or at the very least, you could say she was remarkably stubborn. She was a member of the literary club, just like me.

“Man, Tomoyo, do you have to be such a party pooper? Give me a break!”

“Excuse me? Don’t try to make this about me. You’re obviously the weird one here—what kinda freak locks himself up in a dark room to...what were you doing, anyway?”

“I was merely enduring the throbbing, excruciating pain of suppressing my dark side as it awakened within my right arm!”

“Of course you were. You could’ve just said you were playing make-believe like always.”

“It’s not make-believe! It’s a simulation! What’re you planning on doing when your arm throbs with irrepressible power and you’re forced to fight your inner self someday, huh?!”

“I won’t, ’cause it’s not gonna happen! Come on, get real. I seriously don’t understand how you can keep up all that chuuni BS day after day without getting sick of it.” Tomoyo casually brushed aside my zealous argument as she took a seat at the table. It felt like she was being a little more brusque with me than she really needed to be, but that wasn’t anything new. She took any opportunity she could find to call me out on my “chuuni” side, and the way she described it left no room for doubt that she meant it as an insult.

Fortunately, I was far too tolerant of a person to snap back at that level of insult! Besides, I knew perfectly well that someday, when they appeared out of nowhere and attacked her, my dark side would finally get its chance to shine! Mwa ha ha!

“It’s unbelievable, really,” I whined. “How could the bearer of a surname like Kanzaki not appreciate my worldview?”

“What? Where do you get off making fun of people’s names like that? Stuff it!”

“I wasn’t making fun of it! I’m actually really jealous!”

“That’s just as bad!”

But seriously, though—“Kanzaki”? Cool doesn’t even begin to describe it! The characters it’s written with literally mean “cape of the gods,” for crying out loud! The gods! Having “god” in your name basically means you’ve won life’s lottery by default! “Kanzaki” easily qualified for a spot on my internal top five family names list, no question about it.

On the flip side, my family name was...Andou. “Peaceful wisteria,” basically. Hmph. Well, whatever. It’s not like that was my true name, regardless.

“I used to like my name, before you started harping on it,” sighed Tomoyo. It was starting to feel awkward being the only one who was standing up, so I sat down in the folding chair across from hers.

“Anyway, Andou,” she said, resting her chin in her hand and giving me a slightly more serious look than usual, “if you don’t give your weird, cringy ‘simulations’ a rest, you’re gonna end up in a boy-who-cried-wolf situation before you know it. You’d be screwed if something nasty actually did awaken in you and none of us took it seriously, right? You have to think about these things—they’re part of the world we live in now, after all.”

“Hmph... I’m well aware. Therein lies the purpose of the simulation!”

Tomoyo sighed again. “You’re impossible, I swear,” she muttered, her shoulders slumping with exasperation.

In spite of our differences, I understood what she was trying to say all too well. We who really had awakened to extraordinary powers could no longer call ourselves ordinary people.

It had all started a half year earlier.

Our literary club’s room was suddenly engulfed in a mysterious flood of light, and the five of us who were inside it at the time lost consciousness. We woke up some time later to find that we had acquired supernatural abilities. That was the day that my own power, Dark and Dark, awakened.

It happened so abruptly that there was no way we could cope with it, and we all fell into a complete and utter panic. I mean, can you blame us? We’d obtained supernatural powers out of absolutely nowhere, for seemingly no reason whatsoever! Nobody could explain how or why we’d been granted our powers, and that fact hadn’t changed in the six months since. Had some god or paranormal entity chosen us to receive them? Or had they always lain dormant within us and just happened to awaken at that particular moment? Who knows!

No matter what the reason might’ve been, there was just one thing that I could say for sure: I was really, honestly, happy. I’d finally taken my first step into the world of the extraordinary I’d always longed to live in.

Was I confused? Yes. Was I scared? Also yes. But the joy I felt in that moment surpassed both those feelings by a mile.

Woo-hoo! Hell yeah! We’ve got superpowers; how friggin’ cool is that?! I’d spent my whole life dreaming and fantasizing about the day I’d finally realize my own supernatural potential, and it finally, finally happened! Is there a guy out there who wouldn’t get super hyped in a situation like that? I think not!

And thus, we departed from the world of the everyday, setting forth into an extraordinary new reality of wild, mind-bending, superpowered battles—

“Not,” interjected Tomoyo as she slurped a cup of tea.

“I know, right...?” I grumbled, taking a sip from my own cup and then heaving a deep sigh of profound disappointment.

So, yeah. Honestly? We awakened to supernatural powers...and that’s it. Absolutely nothing else happened. Not a single friggin’ thing, seriously.

Some of us had been really freaked out at first, terrified by the implications of our powers and the thought of what might happen when the other shoe finally dropped. After about a month or so, though, that fear turned into more of an awkward “So, uh, I guess that’s it? Huh...” sort of feeling.

The months kept passing by, each as uneventful as the last, bringing us to our current state. We could only conclude that the awakening of our powers was, in fact, all that was going to happen. There wasn’t another shoe. Thus, we returned to our excruciatingly ordinary everyday lives.

“Come ooon,” I groaned. “Something’s gotta happen! Anything!”

“Would you please give up already? Getting your hopes up for something that’s out of the question doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s been half a year—if anything were going to happen, it would’ve by now.”

“I think not! I’m sure that any day now, a hundred magical children will be dispatched from another world to this one to fight for the right to become the king of their mystical realm!”

“Sure, and my name’s Zatch. Not happening.”

“Okay then, maybe other people all across the world have awakened to the same sort of powers that we have, and we’ll be inexplicably drawn together to take part in bizarre battles!”

“This isn’t JoJo either. Nope.”

I paused. “Is it just me, or do you know an awful lot about nerd stuff, Tomoyo?” She had a surprising aptitude for keeping up with my references, even when they were relatively deep cuts.

“Don’t call me a nerd! My brother’s really into all those battle manga, and I just end up reading the stuff he leaves lying around the house. That’s all.”

Hmm. She denied it every time I tried to call her out on her nerd-like qualities, but I was positiveI was onto something. Actually, come to think of it, wouldn’t the fact that she knew the word “chuuni” in the first place make her a nerd by default?

Right around that point in the conversation, I ran out of tea. I stood up and walked over to the corner of the room where we kept our kettle.

“Get me a refill while you’re at it, Andou,” called out Tomoyo.

“Huh?” I turned around to face her—and accidentally brushed the tea caddy with my hand in the process, knocking a container of green tea off the table. Even worse, its lid was open! An epic catastrophe was playing out in front of my eyes! Agh, crap! We just bought that stuff three days ago!

“Oh, for crying out loud. Keep it together, would you?”

It happened in the blink of an eye. Faster, even. The next moment—very literally the next possible instant—Tomoyo, who had been seated in a chair across the room, was standing in front of me, holding the container I’d knocked over. I hadn’t seen her move at all. It was like watching a stop-motion movie with a really, really low frame rate.

“So you used it,” I declared. “You’ve exercised your power—the power to reign supreme over eternity itself: Closed Clock!”

Closed Clock was Kanzaki Tomoyo’s supernatural ability—the ability to bend the passage of time to her will. She couldn’t quite turn back the clock, apparently, but she could accelerate time, slow it down, or even bring it to a dead stop as she pleased.

Best as I could tell, she’d paused time the moment she saw the container of pricey tea topple from the table, walked over to it, and caught it midair. I guess the easiest way to explain the power is that it’s like a combination of The World and Clock Up.

“Yes, okay, I used it,” she admitted as I brewed a fresh batch of tea and sat back down. “But would you please cool it with the cringey power names?”

I was the one who’d named all of the literary club members’ superpowers. They were all like, “Names? Why would we give our powers names?” at first, but I wasn’t about to let it slide that easily! I came up with the most wonderful titles imaginable for all their abilities—it was a generous present from me to them.

I swear, though, not a single one of them understood how these things work! They didn’t get how vitally important having a name for your power is in a supernatural battle. Then again, the fact that I was the one to name their powers did give me something like a fifty percent stake in them, so I didn’t mind going to the trouble.

“You could’ve at least made them easier to understand,” she continued. “Like, why do they all have to be in English? Maybe if you’d picked names that made sense, you wouldn’t need to spend a whole sentence expositing about them every time you bring them up.”

“Bah! If you don’t like it, why not come up with a name of your own? I’ll approve of the change—if, that is, you really can think up something better than mine!”

“Since when do I need your approval to change my power’s name?”

“And besides,” I carried on, ignoring her, “everyone else seems totally happy with my names! You’re gonna spoil our group dynamic by being such a stick in the mud!”

“Or maybe they’re not happy with your names, but coming up with one for their own power would’ve been excruciatingly embarrassing, so they had to suck it up and make do with your chuuni nonsense.”

That’s Tomoyo, the chronic tsundere for you. Girl just can’t admit that, deep down, she really likes my names.

“By the way,” I told her, “your catchphrase is ‘Let you be trapped betwixt the hands of time and wander forever the realm of eternity!’”

“I don’t want a catchphrase!”

“Oh ho? I see now—you’re trying to say that you don’t care about your power. What you really want is to see mine, right?”

“Wrong! That’s not what I said at all! You just want to show yours off!”

“Mwa ha ha—very well, then. It’s clear you can’t be dissuaded, so I shall let you behold my power: the sable blaze, Dark and Dark!”

Going with “behold” rather than “see” was important, by the way. You gotta be particular about those little details.

I stood, taking great care to exude the relaxed, regal aura of confidence that only a true ruler can pull off. Tomoyo looked incredibly fed up, but I paid her no mind. I extended my right hand, grasped the shackle that sealed its power with my left—and removed it.

“Hold on,” interrupted Tomoyo. “For one thing, that’s just a fingerless glove you wrote ‘Seal’ on, and for another, you weren’t even wearing it a second ago, were you? You totally just pulled it out of your pocket and put it on before you started posing, didn’t you?”

“I am he who conquers chaos! A chaotic sea of darkness slumbers within my body, and the hellish flames of chaos are birthed from the murk! Let them devour my flesh, feast upon my soul, and manifest in this chaotic mortal realm!”

“Too long! And way too much chaos!”

“Dark and—wait, for real? Too many chaoses? You think so?”

“You seriously stopped there?! You were one word away! If you have to put on this stupid act, at least finish it!” Tomoyo leaned forward as she picked my act to pieces, and I slumped dejectedly back into my chair. Man... I guess I should probably put a two-chaos limit on the Malediction of Unleashing after all...

“You’re weirdly sensitive about stuff like this, y’know?” continued Tomoyo.

“I’d rather you say I’m dedicated to constant self-improvement.”

“I might have, if it weren’t for the fact that you’re pouring all that effort into improving the wrong things entirely,” she replied with a heavy sigh. “You know, I’ve gotta say, your ability is pretty much a materialization of your deepest wishes.”

“Heh! I can’t deny it.” Tomoyo probably meant that as an insult, but I laughed in the face of her sarcasm, nodded dramatically, extended my right hand, and activated my power.

Dark and Dark: the power to call forth a burst of jet-black fire from my right hand. Its flame spread out from my palm, flaring and flickering in a perpetual dance that would never coalesce into a single shape. It bore an air of sanctity, yet at the same time it carried a tinge of corruption, coming together in a strange, self-contradictory aura... Or, at least, that’s how I saw it, anyway. It was a blaze of purest black that could burn through even the darkness itself.

And come on—how cool is that?! Black flames are hella cool, and I’m hella cool for making them.

“Dark and Dark,” said Tomoyo, “the power to produce black fire from your body—period. That’s all it does. A totally useless ability.”

There I was, basking in the awesomeness of my power, and she just had to go and throw a pitcher of ice water on my fun. She was right, though. It really didn’t do anything other than make black flames. They weren’t even especially hot, thus making their effective attack power close to zero.

They were closer to an illusion than actual fire, really. Couldn’t even burn a sheet of newspaper. Y’know how hot your forehead gets when you think you might have a fever, but aren’t quite sure? They were about that hot, specifically.

In reality, fire supposedly gets closer and closer to pure white in color the hotter it gets. It’s different in manga and anime, though. There, black flames are usually a step above—the ultimate fire, as hot as it gets. Dark and Dark, however, had less firepower than a single matchstick.

So, yeah, she had a point. It really was a useless ability, but I didn’t let that get to me. I mean, come on—it was so cool!

“Wait... Ahh! Crap! I activated my ability without reciting the Malediction of Unleashing first!”

“Nobody cares! It’s fine!”

“No, it isn’t! If I fail to incant the Malediction of Unleashing before using my power, I’ll, umm...I’ll... Right, I’ll be erased from this plane of existence!”

“You obviously just made that up!”

Damnations! It’s not like me to blunder this badly.I’m not supposed to be able to use Dark and Dark unless I recite the Malediction. Hmm... We’ll just say that didn’t happen, I think. Doesn’t count; moving on!

“Y’know, Tomoyo, you don’t have to always sit on the sidelines and pick holes in my setup. Why not try getting in on the action a little like the others do?”

“Not happening. And what do you mean, ‘like the others do’? None of them play along with your chuuni crap either.”

“Yeah they do! Everyone except you’s pretty into it.”

“Oh, are they? Okay then—how about we put that to the test?” She shot me a defiant glare.

There was only one way I could respond to that sort of provocation. “You’re on,” I said with a smirk.

And so, the experiment was a go! Tomoyo hid near the door, and I went on standby in the center of the room. When one of the other members arrived at the club room, Tomoyo would shoot me a signal, and I’d initiate the same “right arm throbs with pain as my dark side awakens and tries to assert control over me” simulation I was running through earlier. The goal was to see how each of the other members would react.

I assumed that the remaining three members had all been delayed by their own various circumstances, but considering the time, they’d probably be showing up at any moment. Just as I’d expected, a few minutes after we’d taken up our positions, Tomoyo looked over at me and mouthed the words “someone’s coming!” I started clutching at my right arm and wailing in pain, just like before, and a moment later the door burst open.

“Hellooo!” called out Hatoko. “Sorry, I had cleaning duty today and it took way longer than—Juu?!”

Hatoko’s expression shifted from a full-faced smile to a look of shock and horror in an instant. She rushed over to me in a panic. “Wh-Wh-What’s wrong, Juu? Are you okay? Does your stomach hurt? Is it your appendix?! Do you have appendicitis?!”

“St-Stay back, H-Hatoko—nay, Over Element!”

“‘Over’...? N-No, you were right the first time. I’m Hatoko—”

“Ugh, aaaugh! My right aaarm!”

“Your right arm?! Does it have appendicitis?!”

“N-No, it doesn’t... Just because it’s called appendicitis...doesn’t mean you can have it in your appendages! Ugaahhh!”

“Stay with me, Juu! Don’t worry, I’ll call an ambulance right away!”

“No, don’t! This’ll actually turn into a serious problem if you—I mean, it’s pointless! This isn’t a problem the Japanese health-care system can solve...”

“So, umm, do you need treatment overseas? Like, an organ transplant? Do you need someone to donate you a new, healthy appendix?”

“An appendix transplant won’t do me any good... Arrghhh... It burns... My body, it’s aflame! Not ‘on fire,’ ‘aflame’! It’s important, trust me...”

“You’re burning up?! All right, just wait! I know what to do!”

Hatoko raised her arms up high, and a jet of water bubbled up midair, manifesting into an orb that floated above her head. She had pulled the ambient moisture out of the air itself, and she could manipulate it freely. Such was Kushikawa Hatoko’s power: Over Element!

“No, Hatoko, wait—” I stammered in vain, dropping my act just a little too late.

“Here goooes!” she shouted, bringing the watery orb crashing down onto my head.

“Guhbluhblurbublegh!” I gargled, kicking and writhing ineffectually in my aqueous prison. Augh, there’s water up my nose!

“All right, that’s enough.”

It happened in the blink of an eye. The next thing I knew, Tomoyo had dragged me out of the orb, saving me from a doubtlessly terrible fate. She must have stopped time, so really, it took less time than a blink of an eye—she’d rescued me in a literal instant.

“T-Tomoyooo!” I blubbered. “Thank you! I was so scared... I thought I was gonna drown...”

“Don’t go full wimp at the drop of a hat!” shouted Tomoyo. “And agh, you’re totally soaked, so get away from me! Hatoko, hurry up and dry this moron off! And get rid of all that water while you’re at it!”

Hatoko got right to it, blinking the orb of water out of existence and drying off my hair and clothes just as quickly. Her power allowed her to return the water she’d conjured to the atmosphere once more. Once that was done, we explained the situation to her.

“Oh, is that all?” She sighed with relief. “Juu was just playing make-believe again? I was so shocked!”

“It wasn’t make-believe! It was a simulation!”

“A ‘simulation’...? So, make-believe,” she said with a casual nod. Apparently, the nuance that distinguished the two terms escaped her.

Kushikawa Hatoko was a girl who always seemed to have a gentle look in her eyes and a pleasant smile on her face. That perpetual grin brightened up every room she stepped foot in, and it was a key component of her overall image.

Hatoko was both a member of the literary club and a friend of mine since way back when we were kids. We lived in the same neighborhood, so we ended up going to the same schools ever since elementary school as a result. It was one of those friendships that develops naturally over time, whether you like it or not.

I had actually ended up joining the literary club on Hatoko’s invitation. Our school mandated that all students join a club, and since athletic clubs were totally out of the question for me, I’d already been planning on joining something a bit more relaxed. I’d ended up accepting her invitation without sparing it a second thought.

“Hatoko,” I scolded her, “Over Element is a brutally powerful ability that’s way too much for you to handle! I’ve told you not to use it without my express permission, haven’t I?”

“Oh, right. I guess you did! I’d completely forgotten.”

“Hmph! Well, as long as you understand. Just take care from now on.”

“Okay, I will! I won’t use, umm... What was it again?”

“Over Element! And don’t even dream of forgetting it!”

“All right! I won’t forget it, even in my dreams!” I hadn’t actually meant that literally, but she seemed to get the point, so I figured it would probably work out.

Kushikawa Hatoko, the bearer of Over Element, had the power to freely manipulate the five elements of earth, water, fire, wind, and light. Drawing the ambient moisture out of the air like she had moments earlier was really only the tip of the iceberg when it came to her full capabilities. The brutal strength of the earth, the surging torrents of the waterfalls, the crimson flames of hell, the savage winds of the fiercest maelstroms, and the sacred light of the heavens above all lay within her grasp.

And, well...honestly? Five elements might be sorta overdoing it. Like, that’s basically cheating, isn’t it? Think about how that must feel for a guy who can only make black fire. It’s like the sort of ability an elementary schooler would make up to brag about how they had invented the ultimate, unbeatable superpower.

Seriously, give me a slice of that power pie! The worst part’s that the fire she can make has way higher power than mine in every aspect...

“Hey, Andou,” interjected Tomoyo, “I know you think she’s stealing your thunder, but that doesn’t give you the right to ban Hatoko from using her power! Cut it out.”

“D-Don’t be ridiculous! She’s not stealing my thunder, and it wouldn’t bother me even if she were!”

“Yeah, don’t kid yourself, Andou. Your power is basically just a third-rate copy of hers,” Tomoyo quipped sarcastically. “Fire that doesn’t burn, and that’s the end of it.”

“Now that you mention it, I wonder why Juu’s power is so weak,” added Hatoko. She meant it innocently, but it still shattered my heart to pieces.

Damnations! I’ll show you! I’ll show all of you! One day, when we’re in dire straits and all hope seems lost, my true power’s gonna awaken and blow all of your minds!

Incidentally, when Hatoko says “Juu,” she’s talking about me. It comes from my given name, Jurai, which is just about as cool as a name could possibly get, as far as I’m concerned. I always tell everyone to call me by my given name since it rules so hard, but nobody ever seems to take me up on it.

“Say, Tomoyo,” I said. “Don’t you think it’s about time you started calling me by my given name?”

“No way,” she replied. “I mean, it’s kind of a pain to pronounce. Andou works just fine.”

That’s pretty much how it always went. Anyway, point is, Hatoko always called me “Juu,” and she wasn’t showing any signs of stopping any time soon. I was sort of at a loss with her.

“Anyway,” said Tomoyo, “‘Jurai’ is a pretty unique name, isn’t it? Is there some sorta story behind it?”

“Mwa ha ha—an excellent question! If you’re so desperate to know, then I suppose I shall have to enlighten you. Take care you don’t regret this decision, though. None have learned the origins of my true name and lived to see another—”

“Oh, I think I know this one,” cut in Hatoko. “Juu was originally scheduled to be born in June, and his parents were going to name him after the month! He ended up being born a little later than expected, though, so they had to change his name at the last minute.”

“Oh, I get it. ‘Jurai’ sounds like ‘July.’”

“It means ‘a long life to come’ too—I think it’s a lovely name! I’m sure it’ll bring him lots of good fortune.”

I just stood there in silence. Curse you and your meddling, Hatoko! You ruined my chance to exposit about my true name: Guiltia Sin Jurai!

Now, the “Jurai” in “Guiltia Sin Jurai” might sound identical to my first name, but I took care to write it with the characters for “cursed lightning” instead of all that longevity stuff. It might strike you as odd that the bearer of the ebon flame Dark and Dark would have a name associated with lightning, but actually, the pitch-black fires of the Demon Realm have been abhorred by the masses as cursed lightning since time immemorial, so it all checks out.

“Guiltia” is derived from the word “guilty,” of course. While “Sin” has a similar association on the surface, it also ties in to “shin,” a term denoting divinity in Japanese, making it a cool play on words! In short, I was burdened with not one, but two inborn sins from the moment I was named!

Yeah... I’m sinful as hell, and that’s hella cool. Oh, would that I could grasp atonement with these cursed hands of mine, or whatever.

“So, when all’s said and done, Andou was given a sort of idiosyncratic name, took it to mean he’s been ‘chosen’ or something, and ended up becoming the disaster chuuni he is now as a result,” said Tomoyo, looking at me with something almost resembling pity in her eyes. That not-quite-pity was as cold as a raging blizzard, though, so I found myself naturally averting my gaze.

“Oh, that’s right!” said Hatoko, suddenly changing the topic. “Weren’t you going to keep playing make-believe like you were when I got here?”

I glanced back over at Tomoyo, and our eyes met. She had an incredibly exasperated “Are you satisfied yet?” look on her face, but I wasn’t convinced.

Hmm. I mean, we’ve already come this far. Might as well give the other two a try while we’re at it.

Tomoyo and Hatoko hid by the door, and I went on standby in the center of the room. Another member of our club arrived just a few minutes later, but unlike the rest of us, she didn’t use the door. No, she appeared out of thin air, traveling into the room through a space of her own creation, which was business as usual as far as she was concerned.

A somewhat dainty little girl stepped out from the rippling, distorted hole in reality. Her frame was so small and her facial features were so picturesque that she almost looked like one of those super-detailed European dolls. She was holding her favorite stuffed squirrel toy in her arms.

“Ugh, aaaugh!” I bellowed, writhing as I clutched at my right arm once again.

“What’s wrong, Andou?” said the little girl, Chifuyu, a trace of confusion coloring her otherwise apathetic expression.

“St-Stay back! Away with you! Not a step closer, Chifuyu!”

“Okay,” she replied with a disinterested nod before walking away from me and taking a seat in her chair. She always used the same chair because she was fond of its cushion.

“Ugraaahhhhhh! No, get away! Don’t come any closer! Don’t worry about me—just go!”

“I said okay.”

“You definitely, definitely shouldn’t come any closer!”

“I heard you the first time,” she droned, indifferent to the bitter end.

No, no, hold up a second—that’s not how this is supposed to go, is it?

“Arrgggh... Could it be that even as I tell you to stay away, deep down, I secretly want you to come help me...?” I muttered the second part just loud enough for Chifuyu to hear it, and she cocked her head.

“I mean, look,” I continued, “whenever the protagonist is about to get consumed by the power of darkness like this, they always shout, ‘no, get away!’ at their friends to make sure they don’t get dragged in and hurt. But their friends always come to their aid in the end anyway! It’s a given! If their friends actually took that advice and stayed away, even a protagonist would freak out! Ugraaahhhhhh!”

“This is complicated. I don’t really understand.”

“It’s a front, okay? Like, saying ‘stay away’ in this sort of situation is the same as when a slapstick comedian tells someone, ‘whatever you do, don’t push me!’ They actually want you to do whatever it is they’re telling you not to do! But a protagonist can’t just go saying, ‘please, help me!’ so they have to put on an act, auggghhhhhh!”

“Andou...did you hit your head on something?”

“My head’s not the problem, it’s my arm that’s—”

“Okay, we’re done here!” said Tomoyo, clapping listlessly to signal the end of the experiment as she and Hatoko stepped out from their hiding place. She walked over and spoke to Chifuyu in a much gentler tone than the one she always used with me. “Sorry for making you play along with Andou’s stupidity, Chifuyu.”

“It’s okay,” replied Chifuyu. “Andou always acts crazy. I don’t mind.”

“You’re such a good girl, Chifuyu! Tolerating Andou’s little games is really impressive!” said Hatoko as she patted Chifuyu’s head. Chifuyu cracked the barest hint of a smile, though I had to look really closely to see it—she must’ve been pleased by the praise.

Unlike the rest of us, Himeki Chifuyu wasn’t actually a student at our school. She was a fourth grader who went to a nearby elementary school. She also happened to be the niece of Miss Satomi, the literary club’s faculty advisor, and she had been in the habit of coming by to hang out in our room every once in a while.

Half a year earlier, that habit led to her happening to be in the room on the day that our superpowers awakened, and she had been empowered right along with the rest of us. She’d started showing up more and more frequently after that, and before long she was coming by to hang out in the literary club’s room practically every day. Her school wasn’t that close to ours, but thanks to her power, World Create, it might as well have been right next door for all the difference it made to her.

“Tomoyo, Hatoko, I’m sleepy. Let me go. I’m gonna nap,” said Chifuyu, shaking off the other girls and walking over to one of the corners of the room. Chifuyu spent an awful lot of time napping for a kid her age—maybe because she was still growing?

She held out a hand, and a truly extravagant canopy bed appeared in front of her from out of nowhere. It was as luxurious as a bed could get—it had all the frills and sequins a princess could ask for, plus a small mountain of stuffed animals on top. Chifuyu climbed onto the bed and lay down, the stuffed squirrel she’d been holding since she’d arrived still clutched in her arms. (Its name was “Squirrely,” incidentally. She had a way with names that I didn’t understand at all.) Then she fell asleep, her face as still and serene as that of an angel.

Chifuyu’s World Create ability could well be described as the power of genesis itself. If she could imagine it, she could bring it into reality—space, matter, anything at all. The midair distortion she appeared through earlier was something like a warp gate—the ability to create and manipulate space at will allowed her to teleport from place to place in an instant.

Broadly speaking, her power had no limits—she could make anything and everything. She could even make things she’d never seen. Apparently, she could evoke the memory of the world itself and bring objects into being regardless of her own knowledge.

And, like...seriously? “The memory of the world itself”? What does that even mean? I could never wrap my head around it, but clearly there was some sort of intuition involved that only Chifuyu herself could understand.

“Do you get the point yet, Andou?” asked Tomoyo, her tone laden with confidence. “None of us are going to play along with your little games.” The joy of victory was already written all over her face, and I clenched my teeth.

Curses! I’ve come this far, I can’t back down now! “It’s not over yet, Tomoyo! We still have one member left—I’ll stake it all on Route of Origin!”

Once again, the other three members hid in a corner of the room (Chifuyu was still asleep, so we just left her where she was). Meanwhile, I stood in the center of the room and took a few slow, deep breaths.

Feel it. Feel the ambient mana that permeates the atmosphere, or the spiritual presence of the room, or its aura, or its ki, or whatever.

This simulation wouldn’t be like the last three. This time, we’d had Chifuyu use her ability to completely soundproof the room for us. I’d been making a racket the previous times, to be sure, but I had been holding back in my own sort of way. I’m not completely oblivious; I know that not being a nuisance is important sometimes. After all, I’m one of the chosen ones: one of those who can tell when and where to go all out!

However! Thanks to the soundproofing we’d had Chifuyu set up before she went to sleep, I had nothing to fear anymore! No matter how ridiculously loud I got, there was no danger of the racket leaking out into the rest of the school. In other words, no matter how badly my right arm throbbed this time, it wouldn’t cause any issues!

“Mwa ha ha! I’m just itching to get started—or, perhaps throbbing to get started?” I’d worked myself up into such a fit of excitement that I was dropping clever witticisms left and right. Tomoyo and Hatoko were glancing at me and whispering to each other off in the corner, but I paid them no mind. Letting them get to me would be letting them win.

A moment later, Tomoyo—who’d totally lost interest at this point—gave a listless wave to signal that my quarry was approaching. The time had finally come to pour my whole heart and soul into a death-wail to end all death-wails!

“UGRAAAAAAHHHHHH!”

“Shut up!”

No sooner had the door opened than a girl rushed inside and grabbed my throbbing right arm. I didn’t even have time to shout, “No, don’t! You can’t imagine the horrors that await you if you touch this arm of mine!” before she’d taken me down with a perfectly executed shoulder throw.

“Unbelievable! What on earth are you thinking, Andou?!” shouted the girl. “Why would you scream bloody murder out of nowhere?! Please