When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace: Volume 10 E-Book

Kota Nozomi

• Herausgeber: J-Novel Club
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 322

Beschreibung

Nothing lasts forever—especially not in high school. Seasons change, events come and go, and torches are passed as time marches ever onward. For all their godlike powers, not even the literary club is exempt from the transience of the academic year...and so the time has come for their beloved president, third-year student Takanashi Sayumi, to step down from her position and name a successor to carry on her legacy...but not before she and her clubmates squeeze in another swimsuit episode first! There’s always room in the schedule for zany shenanigans, and this time around, the gang will be joined by the newly retired ex-president of the student council, Kudou Mirei, in a cameo appearance!

Leseprobe

Prologue

“Oh! Hello there, Takanashi. Your production of Romeo and Juliet was wonderfully staged, if I say so myself! I really did quite enjoy it.”

It was the first day of the cultural festival, and I was in the music room. We’d just closed the curtains on our momentous first showing of the literary club’s play, and I was interacting with visitors and keeping the magazines we’d put on display properly arranged when a handsome young man with an amiable smile approached me. I couldn’t help but notice he was holding a marker, and I had to wonder what exactly he’d been using it for.

“And you know,” the young man continued, “it feels like it’s been a pretty long time since the two of us have talked face-to-face like this! I think the last time was back at the water park during summer vacation? You know, I ended up in a pretty big fix after you and Andou went home! It turned out that the shuttle bus you caught was actually the last one, so I was stranded at the park. I had to call in an acquaintance’s older brother to come pick me— Hey, w-wait! Takanashi? I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t ignore me!”

I had no interest in talking with—or, in fact, even looking at—this particular young man, so I disregarded him entirely and once again focused on sorting the magazines.

My, what a mess our visitors have made. It’s nice to see people giving our work a chance, but I do wish they’d put the magazines back in their proper place after they finish reading.

“Heeey, Takanashi!”

I heard a noise of some kind behind me, but I paid it no mind.

“Total silent treatment, huh? That kinda hurts. I may be rotten to the core, but I’m still a pretty sensitive guy when it comes down to it, you know?”

Pay it no mind.

“Yup, rotten to the core. So rotten that my personality comes out on the other side of the fermentation process with a remarkable and distinctive flavor you can’t get any other way.”

Do not, under any circumstances, take the bait.

“Hmm. Looks like I’ve caught you in a bad mood. Let me guess: it’s almost that time of the month?”

Do not punch him.

“If you keep ignoring me much longer, I’m going to write ‘I talk shit to keep this hole free’ on a piece of paper and stick it on your as— Gwahaugh!”

Oops! My mistake. I had intended to keep ignoring him, but his train of thought had proceeded in such an obscene direction that I’d ended up reflexively driving my fist into his gut. I suppose he’d tripped the fail-safe on my vulgarity meter. The boy I was dealing with was, as ever, exceptionally capable of coming up with the least funny dirty jokes I’d ever heard. He was truly a profoundly unpleasant lowlife.

“Oof, ouch... Don’t you think a no-warning gut punch is a little beyond the pale, Takanashi? Then again, if you understood what I was getting at with that joke, I guess you really are as mature as you look—you’ve been doing a lot of adult reading, haven’t you?”

“I do not look ‘mature’!”

“I really wish that weren’t the only part you’d reacted to,” Sagami said with a shake of his head.

I, meanwhile, heaved a sigh and finally turned to face him. After a reaction like that, inadvertent though it was, I could hardly keep ignoring him any longer—no matter how disinterested I was in actually speaking with him.

“What do you want, Sagami?” I asked.

Sagami Shizumu was a boy one year younger than me. He was notable for his long hair, which he tended to keep tied back in a ponytail, and also for not being Andou’s friend, but rather, his acquaintance.

“Oh, nothing in particular,” said Sagami. “I just saw you and figured I might as well say hello, that’s all.”

“Is that so? In that case, allow me to excuse myself,” I replied.

“How cold! You really are in a bad mood today, aren’t you? Did something unpleasant happen?” asked Sagami.

“Anyone would find themself in a bad mood when someone they don’t even want to look at strolls up and starts talking with them like they’re the best of friends,” I shot back.

“Ha ha ha! Talk about harsh!”

“I believe you were sitting with a girl from another school during the play,” I noted. “Where is she now?”

“Oh, her? She already went home. She came all the way to our festival because it happens to be my birthday today...and then she dumped me just a minute ago,” Sagami said indifferently.

I had assumed that he was in a relationship with the girl he’d been sitting with, but I hadn’t imagined that said relationship had already been relegated to the realm of past tense.

“Apparently, I was looking at Chifuyu and Kuki like I was ‘some sort of deviant nutjob,’ or something along those lines. She dumped me like a sack of bricks the second the play ended. Wasn’t that terrible of her? And she was the one who’d asked me out in the first place!”

I didn’t even know Sagami’s ex’s name, but I still felt a deep, deep sense of compassion for the poor girl. I could only hope that she would learn from her mistakes and grow into a woman who didn’t pick her partners by virtue of their looks alone.

“Anyway, I think everyone knows that Chifuyu’s dangerously adorable at this point, but she was even more charming than ever today, if you ask me! It was like you could see the womanhood beginning to blossom from her innocent little body—there’s nothing like it, honestly. But you can’t go overlooking Kuki either! I’d heard that Chifuyu has a friend her age, but I never imagined that said friend would be that top-tier as well! She’s cute as a button, for one thing, and the way she lets her psycho side slip out every— I mean, the way she makes it clear just how much she cares for her best friend every once in a while’s just perfection! I wish I could just scoop them both up and take them right home with—”

“What are you playing at, Sagami?” I asked, cutting him off. I simply couldn’t stand to listen to that revolting nightmare of a boy wax poetic about the charms of a couple of elementary schoolers for a second longer. I glanced around, made sure that no members of the literary club or visitors to our display were watching, then dragged him off into a more secluded corner.

“I was under the impression that I’d cut ties with you entirely,” I hissed.

Up until just recently, Sagami and I had been collaborators...or perhaps “partners in crime” would be the more apt expression. I had succumbed to my most selfish and base desires, accepting a helping hand offered by the worst possible partner imaginable.

“I’m well aware! You stabbed me in the back and twisted the knife, after all. The point was very clearly made,” said Sagami, his expression almost infuriatingly cheerful. It was as if he bore no grudge on account of my betrayal whatsoever. “That’s exactly why I came here as a perfectly ordinary reader, not your collaborator. I struck up a conversation out of pure curiosity. After all—you looked rather depressed, and I wanted to know why.”

“Again, that would be because you—”

“You were brooding even before I approached you. Of course, I can more or less imagine why on my own,” Sagami said with a patronizingly knowing air. “You’re upset because the cover art this time around isn’t of you and Andou, aren’t you?”

I blinked.

“I can practically hear your heart’s anguished wails! ‘Why is this the one time the cover’s featured characters were chosen by grade level? Wasn’t the whole premise of the second set of covers to have each heroine share the stage with Andou in order? And wait a second, who the hell were the girl in the nurse outfit and the kid with the game console on the last—’”

“What on earth are you talking about, Sagami?”

Sagami’s perspective on reality was, clearly, as outlandishly skewed and incomprehensible as ever. I, for one, would have deeply appreciated if he’d get over his habit of pretending to peer into people’s minds and making up absurd falsehoods about what he saw there.

“Anyway, all kidding aside,” said Sagami, casually waving off a joke that, by my measure, could not be set aside that easily. The majority of his jokes fell into that difficult-to-dismiss category, in fact, to the extent that it was something of a problem. It seemed to me that he was always saying things that pushed certain boundaries to their absolute breaking point. “You looked upset because of the play you just put on, didn’t you? The boy you long for had his first kiss stolen away by another girl—and an elementary schooler, at that! Who wouldn’t come out of an experience like that a little distressed?”

“...I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t bother playing dumb. I couldn’t see what happened from the audience seats...but you had a perfect perspective to pick out every little detail, didn’t you? And considering how you were tripping over yourself all throughout the narration after the kiss scene, it wasn’t hard to put the pieces together. I know exactly what happened up on the stage just a moment ago.”

I sank into silence. Clearly...I had been careless. My lack of composure had exposed the truth of our play’s kiss scene to the worst possible observer.

I had indeed had a clear view of our lead actors’ faces from my position as narrator, and as a result, I had witnessed the moment when their lips had touched. The psychological shock that I’d felt in that moment was immense. I had been tremendously, humiliatingly shaken...but at this particular moment, that was of secondary concern to me.

“Do you...really think it was his first, then?” I asked.

“Huh?” grunted Sagami.

“I mean to say...do you, um...think that was Andou’s...f-first...”

“Oh, I see now. That sort of thing really is important when you’re a maiden in love, huh?” said Sagami. I waited silently, and a moment later, he continued. “I don’t have any concrete evidence, but I think that was most likely his first kiss, yeah. He’s certainly never told me anything that’d make me think otherwise.”

“I...see,” I replied.

“You just kept dragging your feet, and Chifuyu stole it right away from you.”

“I was not—” I began, but I couldn’t bring myself to finish the thought. The truth was, after all, that some part of me really did feel exactly as Sagami claimed. I had dragged my feet, and something I’d wanted had been snatched from me as a result. I couldn’t deny it.

“In the end,” said Sagami, “you couldn’t become the main heroine. Actually...you didn’t even try.”

The main heroine, he said. Did he mean that I hadn’t become the star of the play? Or, rather...

“You’re in your last year of high school, and this is your very last cultural festival. You had so many chances to use those facts to your advantage and become the main heroine this time around...but you didn’t. You fought fair to the bitter end, dedicating yourself to maintaining an even playing field and struggling to claim the main heroine position legitimately. And, surprise surprise, all that those efforts earned you was the experience of having Chifuyu, of all the people, end up one step ahead of you.”

I didn’t say a word.

“Andou hurt Chifuyu’s feelings by not playing fair, sure...but don’t you think you were being a little too fair, Takanashi? You’re always holding back, always playing the leader and mediator. That sort of behavior earns you an A+ as a club president, but you’re getting a failing grade as a maiden in love.”

“What are you getting at?” I asked.

“Exactly what I’m saying! Like I told you a moment ago, I’m not your collaborator anymore. I’m not even really thinking about any of this—I’m just spouting my impressions without a care in the world for what you do with them. Think of it as the conditioned reflex of a single inconsequential reader,” Sagami said before turning a bitingly insincere smile upon me. “Frankly, I can barely even stand to watch you like this. You take on all the responsibility of your position as club president, seeing it through without ever using that position to your advantage in the slightest. For someone who can seemingly do anything and everything to the point of perfection, it seems you’re astonishingly inept when it comes to your own personal affairs.”

“That’s...true, yes,” I weakly admitted for lack of a compelling counterargument. “I’m well aware of the areas in which my personality is holding me back. That being said, I have no intention to change the way I live my life. I have accepted the fact that this is simply who I am.”

Some might call me honest to a fault for thinking that way, and some may call me downright naive, but whatever the case, I had no intention of using my position as club president to further my romantic ambitions. I believed that bringing one’s private life into one’s business affairs was indefensible, and I applied that standard to myself more so than anyone else.

I wanted to play fair. I wanted to be the perfect club president—a club president worthy of praise. And to Andou in particular, I wanted to fill that role right up until the very end.

“However—this year’s cultural festival marks the conclusion of all that,” I said, standing tall as I looked Sagami straight in the eye. “This will be the final cultural festival of my high school career...and also the final activity that I will officiate as the president of the literary club.”

I had allowed myself to settle into my position perhaps a little too comfortably, but the fact of the matter was that fall had already arrived. The period during which it was reasonable for a third-year like me to serve as a club’s president had long since come to a close.

“It’s high time for me to choose a successor and retire from the club,” I said.

Then, I would no longer be the president. I would no longer be subject to the duties and responsibilities of the position—I would be nothing more than a woman, plain and simple. No longer would the differences in age and standing between me and my peers provide me with any advantage or disadvantage. I would be free to live true to my emotions, pursuing that which I desired without reservation.

“Sagami,” I said, “ever since I cut ties with you, I have thought long and hard about my situation, and I finally came to a decision. After I step down from my position as club president, I will take action.”

I clenched my fists, speaking as clearly as I could manage, taking great care not to let my voice waver.

“Once the next president of our club has been decided...I will tell Andou how I feel about him.”

Chapter 1: Tropocalypse Now

Two weeks had come and gone since the cultural festival had wrapped up. At first, we’d been planning on putting together one of our usual literary magazines for the event and calling it a day, but then one thing had led to another, and we’d somehow wound up staging a full-blown play instead. All sorts of mishaps and hijinks had followed, needless to say, but in the end, we’d somehow managed to pull through it and wrap the festival up on a successful note.

Now, to be fair, I’m not saying it’d been a huge success. We hadn’t even come close to winning the award that the festival’s organizational committee gave out to the event’s best display or anything like that. Still, to the five of us, the production had become another irreplaceable memory. I knew that I sure as hell wasn’t going to forget playing the leading role in Romeo and Juliet—excuse me, Lolio and Juliet anytime soon. I mean...I’d had my first kiss stolen during a showing, so of course I wouldn’t.

...So, moving right along! The atmosphere at our school had quickly shifted from “entirely consumed by the cultural festival” to that very particular sort of wistfulness that always set in after a big event came to a close. Two weeks later, that sense had faded away as well, and things slowly returned to normal. Meanwhile, the rapidly escalating number of leaves dancing through the air signaled to us that fall was settling in in earnest.

The brutal summer heat had vanished away so rapidly you could hardly believe it had ever been a thing to begin with, moving us right along into a season of bitingly chilly mornings and evenings. I would never be like Hatoko, who wore a cardigan over her uniform all year round, but it was getting cold enough that I was starting to consider taking a leaf out of her book and throwing another layer over my uniform’s jacket. I’d decided at one point that this was the year I’d finally convince my parents to let me buy a black trench coat, by the way, and I took an honest stab at it too, but then my sister barged into the negotiations with guns blazing, shot the idea right the hell down, and declared that I’d have to wear the gray peacoat that I’d bought the year before again instead.

Damnations!How long do I have to wait before I’ll be allowed to pick out my own clothing? When do I get to abandon subtlety and walk around with silver chains wrapped around my arms like a real ancient Egyptian pharaoh...?

“Well, anyway, the point is that it’s fall! Yup—it sure is fall, all right,” I reaffirmed to myself as I gazed out at the landscape before me...that landscape being an ocean.

This wasn’t just any ocean either. This was one of those beachfronts with the sort of super clear, faintly green water that you can see right through—that is, the sort found basically nowhere in Japan. The sand beneath my feet was almost stunningly smooth to the touch as well. I’d never actually been to New Caledonia, of course, but this was more or less how I’d always visualized the beaches there would look. The sun shone bright and brilliant in the blue sky overhead, and the air was exactly as hot as you’d expect. It was the sort of tropical atmosphere that Japanese people are trying to evoke when they talk about going on vacation to a southern island, and there I was, sitting smack-dab in the middle of it all, clad only in a swimsuit and a light hoodie.

“It’s fall...but it sure as heck doesn’t feel like it, huh?” I muttered with a strained smile as I leaned back against the also extremely tropical palm tree that stood behind me.

Needless to say, I hadn’t been whisked away on a sudden trip to an actual southern isle. This was very much Japan—more specifically, the literary club’s room. World Create, the power of genesis, was capable of bringing a perfect recreation of a tropical resort into being wherever the user wanted, and that’s exactly what’d happened.

“Oh, wow, this is great! Talk about a pretty ocean,” a voice rang out next to me. I looked over to see Tomoyo, who had gone off with the other girls to change into their swimsuits in a sorta cabin-like building that’d been set up nearby. Apparently, they’d finally finished.

“I’ve only ever seen water like this on TV before,” she continued. “And we’re the only ones here, so it’s like the whole place is our own private beach! Gotta love World Create, huh?”

“No kidding,” I agreed.

When it came to enabling fun and games, World Create was second to none among the powers that we had awakened to. Through it, we could travel to all sorts of locales from all around the world without ever leaving the comfort of our club room. Blowing off the flow of the seasons to have a mid-fall beach day was child’s play with it on our side. I mean, honestly, who could have seen this coming? Summer vacation had come to a close, the cultural festival had wrapped up, and now we were jumping directly into another beach episode, of all things!

“Now that I think about it, why’d we bring our swimsuits with us in the first place?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it have been way easier to just whip those up with World Create too?”

Everything in the space we occupied had been brought into being by World Create, but for some reason, the girls had unanimously insisted that we bring our own swimsuits from home. I’d already shut mine up deep in my closet after summer break had ended, so I’d had to go through the trouble of digging it right out again as a result.

“Y-Yeah, well,” Tomoyo mumbled, slightly red in the face. “W-We didn’t want it to turn out like the time we all tried cosplaying, that’s all.”

“Oooh,” I said with a nod.

No further explanation was needed. I’d almost forgotten that back when we’d all ended up cosplaying—I mean, deciding on our combat forms together—there had been a bit of an incident, shall we say. Let’s just say it turned out that when Chifuyu made clothes with her power, she could also erase them at will.

World Create was as convenient as a power could possibly get, but the flip side of that was that it was also pretty unstable when push came to shove, and accidentally vanishing everyone’s clothes was a mistake that did not bear repeating, especially from the girls’ perspective. I was pretty certain that Chifuyu had learned from her mistake, to be fair, and I didn’t expect that we’d go through a repeat of that disaster regardless, but there was no harm in taking a few extra precautions to ensure it, I guess.

“And I guess the fact that we’re talking about swimsuits in particular just makes it worse,” I continued. “If something happened and they ended up disappearing...I mean, there’s just no recovering from that.”

“Right?” said Tomoyo. “Though, really...there were a few other reasons why I wanted to bring in my own swimsuit today too.”

“Like what?”

“Y-You know! I mean, like...I didn’t end up getting to go to the pool at all this summer, right? We’d had plans for it, but then we got rained out.”

“Oh, right,” I said with a nod.

“I’d bought a new swimsuit and all, so I was kinda disappointed I never got to actually wear it. I figured this would be a good chance to show it off.”

“Wait,” I said, “you mean you went out and bought a new swimsuit just because you had plans to go to the pool with me?”

“Well, yeah... B-But for the record, I didn’t buy it for you!” Tomoyo snapped. “I just wanted a new one, that’s all! And I know I said I wanted to show it off, but I didn’t mean to you in specific! I meant, like...like showing it off to the world in general, or something...”

“Y-Yeah, okay, I get it,” I said, flinching away from the sheer force of her motor-mouthed string of excuses. Meanwhile, I took a closer look at the swimsuit in question: a red bikini. It wasn’t super revealing, as far as bikinis went, and it suited her slender build really nicely.

“Q-Quit staring at me like that,” muttered Tomoyo.

“I’m not staring,” I replied. “I was just looking, that’s all.”

“H-Hmph! Well, fine—in that case, why not tell me what you think already?”

“Sure, I guess. It looks good on you.”

“...”

“What? Oh, come on, you literally asked me for my impression! What’re you getting embarrassed for? You’re gonna make me blush at this rate!”

“Sh-Shut up! What do you want from me?! I’m not used to this crap, okay! I’m not like you, Mister ‘I Already Went to the Pool with Hatoko, Chifuyu, and Sayumi’!”

“Why’re you lashing out at me now? Jeez,” I grumbled. Technically, I went to the ocean with Hatoko, not the pool...but anyway, I guess Tomoyo took not getting to go a lot more personally than I expected.“About that swimsuit, though,” I said as a thought struck me.

“Huh...? Wh-What?” said Tomoyo. “Is something weird about it?”

“Nah, not weird. It just really feels like I’ve seen it somewhere before,” I said as I took another, closer look—though not so close it’d get me slapped with a sexual harassment accusation—to try and jog my memory.

Hmm. Yeah, I’m definitely getting some sorta déjà vu from that swimsuit. A red bikini... Actually, not just the bikini—it’s specifically the sight of Tomoyo wearing a bikini that seems so darn familiar...

“Ah, got it!” I exclaimed. “It looks just like the bikini armor you wore that one time!”

“...”

“Man, that kinda takes me back! You remember that whole thing, right? You shot yourself in the foot with your own suggestion when we all cosplayed together and ended up wearing a set of red bikini armor! If you put a couple pauldrons on that swimsuit, it’d look just like it!”

“...”

“Oh, I know! Why don’t we take this chance to modify the swimsuit a little and make it into another set of— Wha?!”

The next thing I knew, I’d been taken captive. Specifically, my arms had been wrapped behind me around the palm tree I’d been leaning against, and my wrists had been tied together. As best as I could tell, the hoodie I’d been wearing just seconds ago had been used to bind them up in lieu of handcuffs—and bind them pretty darn tightly, by the way, meaning I couldn’t move an inch.

“Huh? Wha? Huh?” I grunted. I’d been apprehended in the blink of an eye, so quickly it was like time had literally leaped from point A to point B without bothering to go over the process between the two. Which, of course, it had, and the only person who could pull that off was the sovereign ruler of time herself. “Wh-What’s the big idea, Tomoyo?!”

“Hmph!” Tomoyo very pointedly and irritably snorted, then strolled away, leaving me bound to the tree.

“H-Hey, Tomoyo, wait up! Tomoyo?! I seriously can’t move over here!” I shouted. I tried to squirm my way to freedom, but it just wasn’t happening.

“Honestly... What on earth are you doing this time, Andou?” sighed another familiar voice. I looked up to find Sayumi, our very own club president, gazing down at me with a look of pity in her eyes. “I never could have imagined that this would be among your fetishes,” she added.

“It is not! I’m not tied up right now because I wanna be, trust me!”

“How strange,” said Sayumi. “I seem to recall you admitting that you’d always wanted to try on a straitjacket back when we’d all cosplayed together?”

She’s bringing that up now? Really?! “I mean, I said that, yeah...but this isn’t the same thing at all! It’s not that I want to be tied up—I want to be sealed away! Specifically on account of the monstrous, inhuman powers that dwell within me!”

“I have no idea what you hope to gain by telling me about this,” Sayumi said, then she let out a quick sigh before speaking on. “In any case, I think you could have easily predicted that a remark as indelicate as the one you just made would put Tomoyo in a sour mood,” she scolded me. Apparently, she was aware that Tomoyo was the culprit behind my current predicament.

“What indelicate remark...?” I asked.

“You told her that her new swimsuit looked just like a set of bikini armor. That was a horrible thing to say, no matter how you look at it, and all the more so when you consider that to Tomoyo—and, for that matter, to me—the cosplay incident is one best left forgotten in its entirety.”

“Huh? But wait, didn’t you two get pretty into the whole cosplay thing in the end? I remember you striking poses after Chifuyu suggested that we all take a picture together and everything...”

“That was an anime-original moment.”

Oooh, right. Guess it was—we didn’t really take many pictures in the original book. We’d talked about it, but Tomoyo and Sayumi shut it down before it could actually go anywhere, I think.

“This was Tomoyo’s first time wearing her swimsuit, and she seemed very happy to have the opportunity. Then you came along,” Sayumi said with a glare.

I was starting to feel awfully ashamed of myself. Apparently, I’d accidentally said something pretty darn terrible. I decided to apologize whenever I got the chance.

“Speaking of swimsuits, that’s not the one that you wore back in summer vacation, is it?” I asked.

This time, Sayumi was wearing a black swimsuit with a really mature vibe—the sort that you could imagine some foreign celebrity wearing to a beach. It wasn’t quite a one-piece, but it wasn’t quite a bikini either. I’m not really sure how to put it into words, honestly—it was sorta like if you took a one-piece then cut out a bunch of bits and pieces from it. It was less revealing than a bikini, in any case, but it somehow managed to feel weirdly sexy in a way that bikinis didn’t.

“Yeah, that’s right! Didn’t you wear a white bikini back when we— Whoa, Sayumi?!” I yelped. Just as I was starting to remember our trip to the pool, Sayumi had crumpled to the sand. She was down on her hands and knees, and I could practically see the gloomy storm clouds descending upon her. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d actually sunk straight into the ground. “Wh-What’s wrong, Sayumi...? You look like you’d finally decided to sink some real money into your favorite gacha game only for it to announce that it was shutting down the very next day!”

“I-I’m fine, thank you,” Sayumi said as she staggered to her feet. She wore the expression of a woman whose heart and soul had been shattered to pieces. “No need to worry. Just an old wound opening back up ever so slightly...”

“An old wound? What are you talking about? Was there something about that white bikini that I didn’t—”

“Augh!”

“Sayumiii?!”

It was like someone had just socked her straight in the solar plexus. Sayumi didn’t so much double over as quadruple over—like, you’d think she was trying to touch her toes the way she lurched.

“A-Andou,” said Sayumi, “I think everyone has one or two memories that they would very much prefer not to be dragged back into the light of day...”

“Right.”

“Therefore...I would like to ask you to never bring that bikini up again. For that matter, I’d prefer if you would scrub that entire incident from your memory, effective immediately.”

“...Riiight.”

I couldn’t explain why, but clearly, Sayumi considered that bikini to be a topic that must not be broached—a full-on taboo, if you will. But seriously though, why? It looked like a totally ordinary swimsuit to me. I guess she was acting kinda weirdly sketchy the whole time she was wearing it, in retrospect.

“The truth is that I had actually intended to wear this swimsuit to the pool, initially,” Sayumi explained. “Unfortunately, however, mistakes were made, and I wound up wearing the white swimsuit instead, and ultimately summer came to a close before I had the chance to wear this one at all. I’m glad an opportunity has arisen for me to correct that mistake.”

I nodded with newfound understanding. It looked like Sayumi had just as many swimsuit-related regrets as Tomoyo did.

“Huh? Whatcha doing, Juu?”

A new voice, this one cheerful and casual, caught my attention. I turned to see Hatoko strolling toward us. She was wearing the same swimsuit she’d worn when our families had gone to the beach together, though she’d ditched the sunglasses and flower this time around, it seemed.

“Why’re you all tied up?” asked Hatoko as she walked up to me.

“That’s kind of a long story. Forget that, though—what’s going on with you?” I asked as I looked up at Hatoko’s face, then turned my attention a few inches to her side, where Chifuyu had her chin resting on Hatoko’s shoulder. Apparently, Hatoko had carried her over on her back.

“Oh, you mean Chifuyu? I guess she’s not feeling super great right now,” Hatoko explained as she gently set Chifuyu down on the beach. Chifuyu clearly wasn’t up to standing at the moment, and she slumped prone on the sand like a withered piece of half-dried seaweed.

“Wh-What’s wrong, Chifuyu?” I asked.

“Andou... I don’t think I’m gonna make it...” Chifuyu weakly droned without budging an inch.

She was never the most energetic conversationalist, but she sounded even less spirited than usual now. Even Squirrely, who she was clutching in her arms, looked a little droopy. Chifuyu was wearing a school swimsuit, by the way, which, I mean... On the one hand, it was a perfectly appropriate choice of swimwear for an elementary schooler, but on the other hand, something about it just felt faintly wrong to me. Weird, that.

“You’re not gonna make it...?” I repeated. “Why, do you feel sick? Did you get sunstroke? Actually, no, it can’t be that. The suns that World Create makes are an ultra convenient model that don’t generate any harmful UV radiation at all, so it’s gotta be something else.”

“I’m not sick. I just...feel...bad...”

“Oh, wait...is it because of, y’know, that?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Chifuyu grunted. “It’s that.”

I’d sort of seen this coming, and apparently I was right after all—a certain aspect of today’s outing had Chifuyu feeling thoroughly drained.

That’s when, just a few feet away from us, space itself seemed to suddenly distort. It was a plainly supernatural phenomenon that would make an ordinary person collapse on the spot out of sheer shock...but we, of course, had awakened to our own supernatural powers and were totally used to it. It was just a Gate—that is, a shortcut through space brought into being by World Create.

Chifuyu used Gates to get around on a regular basis. In fact, that was how she usually made her way to the literary club’s room after school. The first time she’d made one, right after our powers had awakened, I’d been all “Wh-What the heck is that?! What’s going on inside of it?! Are you seriously telling me that the power of genesis can make friggin’ warp gates?!” and stuff. It had thrown me for a serious loop, but nowadays, I was completely desensitized to them...at least, under normal circumstances. This Gate was pretty different from the ones I was familiar with—or, really, it was the person who’d passed through the gate that I wasn’t used to. She was, after all, obviously not Chifuyu.

“Hmm—I didn’t know this power was capable of this sort of thing. That must come in handy,” said the Gate’s user—a girl wearing a fairly modest one-piece swimsuit—as she stepped onto the beach. She vanished the Gate away, then took a moment to let out an admiring coo as she looked out over the stunningly clear sky and the perfectly translucent seascape before her. “This is incredible! The ocean and the beach look exactly like I imagined them—actually, they’re even more amazing than I was picturing! I never realized that, uh... What was it called? World Create? Anyway, I never knew it gave you this much freedom to make things. What a power, honestly!”

Indeed. The person who had created the beach we were standing upon and the tropical scenery surrounding us was not, in fact, Chifuyu. Someone else had brought it into being—someone who had stolen World Create away and who had, seemingly, mastered it in an instant.

“All right, everyone! Let’s enjoy today, and our powers, for all they’re worth!” the girl—Kudou—exclaimed with a truly elated smile.

So, yeah. That’s about the size of it. Today, the literary club would be hanging out with the newly retired and now significantly less busy former president of the student council, Kudou Mirei.

Half a year ago, we’d awakened to supernatural powers...is the line I’ve been using for a good long while now, but at this point, saying that it’d happened “half a year ago” is starting to really strain credulity. To be technical about it, we’d awakened to our powers in September of last year...and right now, it’s October. In other words, it’d actually been over a year since our awakenings occurred.

But, I mean, it’s not like our momentous one-year superpower anniversary was marked by any change in particular. Our powers hadn’t disappeared, and we hadn’t suddenly awakened to any new ones either. It’d been more of a “Oh, hey, it’s been a year since we got our powers!” “Oh huh, you’re right,” sort of deal, at most.

In any case, I suppose that from now on, I should put it like this: a year ago, we’d awakened to supernatural powers. But of course, that phrasing leaves out one very important factor—or rather, one very important person. Another student at our school who was not a member of the literary club had awakened to her own power at a completely different time than the rest of us.

“Mwa ha ha... I see that Grateful Robber is as terribly potent a power as ever, Kudou. I really am grateful we aren’t enemies,” I said, praising her from on high metaphorically as I literally stood up, freshly freed from the tree I’d been tied to. She really did deserve the praise too, considering how quickly and completely she’d mastered World Create’s many uses.

Kudou Mirei was a third-year student in the same class as Sayumi, and she was also the former president of our school’s student council, a position she’d held until very recently. Her power, which she’d awakened to in the spring of this year, was truly fearsome: the ability to rob others of their powers!

“Potent? Do you really think so? I’ve always thought of it as being pretty useless, honestly, considering I literally can’t use it on its own,” Kudou replied.

“What are you talking about?! Don’t you have any