When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace: Volume 2 E-Book

Kota Nozomi

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

Seitenzahl: 337

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace: Volume 2

Leseprobe

Chapter 1: Awakening——Aborted

I have a childhood friend. His name is Andou Jurai, but I’ve called him Juu for as long as I can remember. We live right next to each other, and our parents have always been on good terms, so we’ve been close ever since we were little kids.

We went to the same kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and even high school, purely by chance! Juu likes to say that we’re “stuck with each other”...which is rich coming from a guy who’s always going on about “fate” this and “destiny” that. Why couldn’t he say that our friendship was destined too? Not that it really matters to me or anything...

Speaking of Juu, he’s always loved playing make-believe. He couldn’t get enough of those “riders” and “rangers” on TV, and I used to pretend to transform into superheroes with him all the time. Every time whatever show that was airing introduced a new transformation pose or a new special attack, Juu would have it mastered within the day, and he’d show it off to me the first chance he got.

I always loved those little performances of his...though actually, that’s not quite right. Honestly, I didn’t care about “riders” or “rangers” or any of that stuff at all. What I loved was watching Juu enjoy himself to his heart’s content.

As we grew older, though, Juu started maturing in a really strange direction. For example, one time in sixth grade, he came up to me and said, in the most serious tone possible, “Hey, Hatoko. Have you ever considered the possibility that the world we live in is all just a long, elaborate dream playing out deep within my subconscious? Can you prove that it isn’t? You can’t, right?”

Frankly, all I could think was, “How on earth does he say stuff like that with a straight face?”

Then there was one time in our first year of middle school. “Why do you think people die, Hatoko? I’ll tell you: it’s because somewhere, deep down, they believe they’re going to die someday. Thus, it stands to reason that the opposite is also true: if one truly believes with every fiber of their being that they’ll never die...”

All I could think was, “Why does he look so satisfied with himself?”

Then there was something he told me in our third year of middle school—the pièce de résistance of Juu-isms. It happened right after I’d called him Juu, just like I always did.

“You really need to stop calling me that, Hatoko. We’re in our last year of middle school, you know? Isn’t it about time to give that tired old nickname a rest?” he said, his voice cold and indifferent.

It was a bit of a shock, honestly, but it was also pretty easy for me to accept. Juu was a boy, after all. He was probably just embarrassed about a girl calling him by a friendly, cutesy nickname.

“Yeah...okay,” I replied, doing my best to keep my disappointment from showing on my face. “What should I call you, then?”

Juu grinned—maybe the biggest and brightest grin I’d ever seen from him. “From now on, call me Guiltia Sin Jurai!”

Not even joking.

All I could think was, “Oh, god, he’s actually serious.”

To make a long story short: my childhood friend Juu is a really strange person.

☆

“Oh...it’s you, Andou. Hey, do you know why I asked you to come talk with me?”

One day after school, I found myself in the staff room speaking with my conspicuously irritated English teacher, Miss Satomi.

“Actually, no.”

“You don’t, huh...? Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t,” she replied offhandedly before failing to stifle a big, long yawn.

Aside from being my English teacher, Satomi Shiharu was also my homeroom teacher and the faculty advisor for the literary club. As such, I had a pretty close working relationship with her. She looked well put together on a superficial level—she seemed to be in decent shape, and she had a nice enough face—but she suffered from a critical lack of motivation and projected a constant not-my-problem sort of aura, which made it hard to describe her as attractive on the whole.

The sleep mask that she kept more or less constantly strapped around her head, just in case she got the chance for a power-nap, certainly didn’t help either. She had a ton of them, all with different designs. Today’s happened to have writing on it, which read “Sleep Well, Grow Well.” Where does she even buy those things?

“So, I wanted to talk with you about...yeah. You know. About...that. Uhh...what was it again?”

“Don’t ask me!” She’s as groggy as ever...

Miss Satomi was actually the aunt of Himeki Chifuyu, an elementary schooler who came by the literary club to hang out almost every day. If they had one thing in common, it was their mutual tendency to fall asleep at the drop of a hat. Their exhaustion meter was always turned up to eleven. It made me wonder if it was genetic or something. Could their whole family be like that?

“Ah, right, that’s it!” she said, finally remembering why she’d called me to the staff room. “It’s about the test you took the other day.”

“You mean the English test? Why, was there a problem?”

“A problem? Of course there was! There were a bunch of them, even—it wouldn’t be a test if there weren’t!”

“Not that sort of problem! I’m asking if there was a problem with any of my answers!”

“Ohhh, okay. Yeah, that makes more sense. Anyway, yeah, you could say there was a problem, in a manner of speaking,” she said, pulling my answer sheet out of a folder and laying it down on her desk.

What could the issue be? I wondered. We’d taken the test just recently, and I was actually pretty confident that I’d done well on it, so I couldn’t imagine what merited a personal callout like this.

“Let’s start here,” said Miss Satomi, pointing at one of the questions. It was a translation problem; we were given an English sentence, and I was supposed to translate it into Japanese. The English sentence read:

•Tom wakes up at six every morning.

And I translated it as:

Tom Awakens at six every morning.

Hmm. Nope, don’t see a problem here.

“‘Awakens’? Seriously...? And why did you capitalize it? Is it supposed to be some sort of proper noun? Just what on earth happens to Tom at six a.m. every morning?”

“Search me. You’d have to ask Tom.”

“Right... We’ll come back to that. Next is this problem,” said Miss Satomi, pointing at a different spot on my test.

•She continued crying in the dark room.

She continued lamenting in the stygian chamber.

“What sort of high schooler just casually uses the word ‘lamenting’ like that? Heck, I had to think for a hot minute before I could remember what ‘stygian’ meant! That’s the sort of word you usually only see in old gothic horror novels!”

“Ha ha, thanks!”

“That wasn’t a compliment. I was criticizing you, actually.” She sighed listlessly. “I have so many other examples, it’s hardly even worth trying to list them all. You put ‘cachinnate’ instead of ‘laugh,’ ‘forfend’ instead of ‘protect,’ ‘expeditious’ instead of ‘fast,’ ‘circumscribe’ instead of ‘circle,’ ‘relinquish’ instead of ‘drop,’ ‘absolve’ instead of ‘forgive,’ ‘befouled’ instead of ‘dirty’... Hey, Andou?”

Miss Satomi looked up at me. She didn’t sound accusatory so much as just plain curious. “Why do you go so far out of your way to use weird, rare words?” she asked.

I chuckled internally. Really now? What an utterly silly question. “Because they’re just sorta, I dunno...neat, I guess. Right?”

It’s the same reason I dropped a “stygian” into Dark and Dark’s preamble. I couldn’t think of a better way to explain it than calling them just plain neat, but that didn’t change the fact that they are most certainly that thing. Complicated words: cool. Weird, archaic words that nobody else ever uses: hella cool.

Miss Satomi sighed once again. “Yup, that’s the Andou I know—totally incomprehensible. Speaking of which, you know that all those nonsense words you use make it really hard to understand what you’re actually trying to say, right? Not that I care that much, really,” she clarified, giving me a look that made it very clear I was a certifiable problem child in her eyes. “The fact that you actually get decent grades in spite of it all is pretty obnoxious, though.”

That’s right. I, Andou Jurai, the second-year high schooler, got grades that put me in the upper-middle tiers of my class’s rankings. I was actually pretty diligent about studying in my free time.

“I’d love to mark all the questions you decided to screw around on as wrong, but I have to admit, they’re technically close enough to correct that I can’t really justify it...”

Mwa ha ha! That’s right! I’ve mastered the nuances that let me get away with this stuff! Take “sneer,” for instance. You can’t swap that out for “smile” when it’s a happy, friendly sort of expression. No, a sneer has to be scornful, disdainful!

“Ughhh...” Miss Satomi spent a moment longer glaring at my test, then she let out a big yawn. “Oh, whatever. I’m too sleepy to bother anymore. Bringing you back into polite society’s a lost cause—or at the very least, I’ve lost all motivation to make it happen. I’ll leave rehabilitating you up to Takanashi.”

Let the record show that I didn’t think I was in any need of rehabilitation in the first place. From a purely objective perspective, I’d actually call myself a pretty diligent student! My grades were just fine, and my attendance record was totally unblemished: not so much as a single tardy on the books. I’ll grant you that every once in a while I had a little bit of trouble on the impulse control front, but that aside, I was just an average high schooler who’d been chosen by the fates for a higher purpose.

Anyway, Miss Satomi seemed to have decided she was done with me and pulled her sleep mask down over her eyes. That was her way of saying that it was naptime and I could go on my way, so I quietly turned around to oblige her. Or at least, that was the plan until the staff room’s door slid open before I managed to get there.

“Oh, hey, Andou. What’re you doing here?” asked an excessively handsome young man as he stepped inside. He had the sort of face that was better described as beautiful rather than studly, and his slender, delicate figure gave him an overall air of elegant refinement. His hair was also longer than most boys kept theirs, tied back in a ponytail.

“Oh. Sagami,” I bluntly replied. His full name was Sagami Shizumu, and he was...well, not a friend of mine, that’s for darn sure. More of an acquaintance, really. Or rather, just a guy I happened to have been stuck in the same class with for two years running. We tended to eat lunch in our classroom together, but that was pretty much where our relationship began and ended.

Sagami walked over to me and gave me the sort of look that would make his admirers swoon. “What do you mean, ‘Sagami’? How many times have I told you to stop treating me like a stranger and call me Sagamin, already?”

“Not happening! If I call you by a nickname, people are gonna start thinking we’re friends or something.”

“Is that how it is? What a shame.”

“And besides, you’re the one who never shows me the reverence and awe I deserve! How many times have I told you to call me Guiltia Sin Jurai?”

“Absolutely not. If I call you by your true name, people are going to start thinking I’m a lunatic,” he quipped harshly. “But anyway, what are you doing here, Andou?”

I gave Sagami a quick rundown on what had landed me in the staff room, and he blithely replied that he wasn’t surprised. He sure didn’t seem to care much for somebody who’d gone out of his way to ask about it, but I already knew he was that sort of person and didn’t pay it much mind.

“Your turn,” I said after I’d finished explaining. “What’re you here for?”

“Me? I’m just here to pick up the love of my life, that’s all.” With that, he strolled over to Miss Satomi (who was out like a light at that point) and shook her by the shoulder.

“Mnhgh...whaddya want? Oh...Sagami?”

“Yes, it’s me, and I’d appreciate it if you’d return my lover now.”

“Oooh, right... Totally forgot about that.” She slowly, stiffly heaved herself to her feet, plodded over to a corner of the staff room, and then plodded her way right back again carrying Sagami’s lover...by which I mean his Nintendo 3DS. “Here. Hope this taught you a lesson about playing video games in class.”

“Excuse me, but I wasn’t playing anything. I was fostering a beautiful, budding relationship!” proclaimed Sagami, his brilliant smile contrasting with how hopelessly gross his proclamation actually was.

Sagami’s looks were so off the charts it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call him a living personification of beauty itself, but that just served to cover up his true identity. He was a nerd, and even worse, he was one of those nerds: the sort of nerd that falls hopelessly in love with 2D girls; the kind of nerd who calls anime characters his “waifus” and video game characters his “lovers.”

That thought process reminded me of something. “Hey, speaking of lovers, didn’t you tell me you were dating a first-year girl just a little while back?”

“Oh yeah, her. That’s old news. She dumped me, as usual.”

“Already? It didn’t even last a week this time?!”

“Just awful, right? And she was the one who asked me out in the first place!”

“Let me guess: you decided to stop to buy some scantily clad anime girl figure while you were walking home with her, right?”

“Wrong. I was buying an eroge this time. Then she shouted something about how I wasn’t the person she thought I was and dumped me on the spot.”

“That’s the same thing, moron!”

Thanks to his peerless looks, Sagami was stupidly popular with the opposite sex. He got asked out often enough to get more than a little on my nerves, and what was even more irritating was the fact that he said yes every single time.

The problem, though, was that even when he was in a relationship, he made absolutely no effort whatsoever to adjust his lifestyle to suit his partner. Nobody would ever imagine him as the sort of person who indulged in hyper-nerdy hobbies judging by his looks alone, and when his girlfriends would find out about said hobbies (more or less instantly, thanks to his behavior), they would dump him soon after

The rumor that the quality of Sagami Shizumu’s looks and his personality had a perfectly inverse relationship with each other had spread far and wide among the second- and third-year girls at that point, and the flood of prospective girlfriends had finally started to die down. The moment a new school year and a new class of first-years had arrived, though, history began repeating itself. God, I can’t stand this guy. Sure would be nice if he got hit by a truck or something.

“Give it to me straight, Sagami. What side are you on? 2D or 3D? Which one are you really into?”

“Both of them, but if I absolutely had to choose, I suppose I’d have to pick 2D girls. 3D ones are just a close second. They’re nice and all, but they’re also a pain in way too many ways.”

What an absolute waste of a pretty face. If he had any sense of decency, he’d raise his hands in the air, shout “People of Earth! Let me give you my hottie energy!” and pull a reverse Spirit Bomb, sacrificing himself for the sake of men all around the world.

“I see you two are still a couple peas in a pod,” muttered Miss Satomi as she watched our exchange. “Guess problem students of a feather flock together, or something to that tune. Look, Andou, Sagami—I’m not saying that having geeky hobbies is a bad thing! I’m just saying you should learn to tone it down a little, that’s all.”

The two of us did a synchronized double take. We’d been just about ready to leave, but there was no way we were letting a comment like that go unchallenged.

Not that I was mad about getting called a geek, to be clear! I was perfectly aware that the word was pretty much made to describe people like me, and I was way too forgiving of a person to snap over something that petty. Getting lumped in with Sagami, though? Now that was unforgivable!

“Please,” I replied, “give me a break, Miss Satomi! I’m nothing like that moé-swilling, waifu-wrangling creeper! He’s one of those losers who picks anime to watch based on which voice actresses are in them!”

“That’s right! We’re nothing alike! I refuse to even consider the idea that I have anything in common with that chuuni nutjob. He’s the sort of cringelord who dreams up self-insert OCs for every new anime he gets into, and I’ll thank you for not putting me on his level.”

Sparks flew as we spent a couple seconds glaring daggers at each other. Neither of us was willing to budge an inch, even if said sparks lit the room aflame around us.

“Well, you only ever watch those stupid, boring harem anime!” I snapped. “What’s so fun about seeing some random guy flirt around with a bunch of girls? There’s literally no substance to those shows at all!”

“No substance? What on earth are you talking about? When it comes to shows like that, flirting around with girls is the substance, and I happen to enjoy them!”

“Oh, and while I’m at it, how about you stop buying all the Blu-rays for the smuttier ones? I know for a fact you only get them ’cause you’re hoping that all the steam and light rays covering up the boobs got edited out! If you wanna see nipples that badly, just buy actual hentai like a normal person!”

“You just don’t get it! Nipples in a work of popular media have a very particular appeal that nipples in pornography could never hope to achieve.”

“Hmph!”

“And besides, who are you to talk, Andou? The shows you watch are all so ridiculously convoluted that trying to understand them on a first viewing is a total lost cause. Unless, of course, you track down their official websites and memorize a technical manual’s worth of jargon and diagrams in advance—because that’s a totally normal thing to do, right?”

“Hah! They’re good because they’re convoluted! Highly developed, finely tuned worldbuilding is all about seeing how all those tiny, intricate details fit together!”

“At the very least, they could stop using made-up words for all their technical terms. You don’t get all the exposition on them when the story’s adapted to anime, so it ends up sounding like a load of hot nonsense.”

“Why do you think the official sites have lists of all the terminology in the first place?! Or, you know, you could just read the original work!”

“You’re impossible, really. This is exactly why I can’t stand chuunis like you.”

“Yeah, well it’s better than being an obnoxious moé freak!”

“You’d best watch yourself, Andou, or I’ll Pretty your Cure!”

“As if, Sagami! Just wait till you witness the true depths of the sins of Guiltia. They’ll make your head spin!”

“Uh, guys?” said Miss Satomi, irritably cutting into our little spat. “I’m barely keeping up with all this, but if you think each others’ favorite anime are boring, why don’t you just not watch them?”

Sagami and I fell silent. She had spoken the most taboo of phrases: “If it’s bad, then just don’t watch it.”

You just don’t say stuff like that! Any good anime viewer knows that when you find a show you’re not really into, you’re supposed to watch each episode like clockwork, from start to finish, griping and flaming it all the way, just so that you can be all, “Oh, that show? Yeah, it totally sucks, I don’t even know why I’m still watching it!”

It’s the same with serialized comics! Even if you go on and on about how bad the magazine’s been lately and how you basically don’t even read it anymore, you’ve still gotta keep buying it week after week! That’s what makes us good readers! It’s an identity thing!

“Anyway, if you’re gonna fight, do it outside. I’m going back to sleep,” said Miss Satomi, shooing us out of the staff room.

“Miss Satomi certainly is a waste of a pretty face, isn’t she?” commented Sagami as we filed into the hallway. There wasn’t a trace of remorse in his tone, and he’d clearly learned nothing from her mini-lecture.

“Right?” I agreed, exactly as flippant as he was. “She’d be so much more charming if she acted like the teachers who show up in light novels all the time. Like, imagine if she were always worrying about her prospects for marriage or something!”

“Teachers are way out of my strike zone, so I really couldn’t care less. Any girl who’s past the age of twenty’s an old hag in my book—excluding nonhuman waifus, of course.”

Suddenly, I felt a very firm pressure on my shoulder. Somebody had grabbed on to both Sagami and me. I slowly, carefully turned around to find Miss Sagami directly behind us, her ever-slothful expression now laced with an unmistakable dose of pure, unrestrained malice.

“Here’s another lesson for you two: if you’re gonna bad-mouth someone, make sure to do it behind their back.”

And so, we were dragged right back into the staff room...

In the end, I got off easier than Sagami this time around. Miss Satomi clearly had a lot more lecture left in her for him at the point she decided to let me go. Apparently, his “any girl who’s past the age of twenty’s a hag, excluding nonhuman waifus” declaration—which, incidentally, was a clear sign that he’d totally lost the ability to distinguish reality from fiction—had earned him her wrath. The fact that she was closing in on thirty might’ve had something to do with it.

As I strolled out into the hallway, I ran into another familiar face.

“Oh, if it isn’t Andou!” said Sayumi, the president of the literary club I belonged to. “You were in the staff room? I was wondering where you’d gone off to.”

“Hey, Sayumi,” I replied. “What’re you doing here? Oh, wait, I know! Were you searching for me?”

“No, I just have something to discuss with Miss Satomi. Try not to assume that everyone’s actions revolve around you.”

“I’ll, uh, keep that in mind.”

You’ll note that she didn’t say something along the lines of “Don’t get the wrong idea!” Those sorts of phrases had become so intrinsically associated with the tsundere archetype lately that you couldn’t really use them for their actual original purposes lest you cause a hilarious misunderstanding. Leave it to Sayumi to find a way around that problem—the line she’d just dropped on me was a perfect substitution that left absolutely no room for doubt regarding her intent! She wasn’t about to let me misunderstand her in the slightest.

“Anyway,” I continued, “you should probably save talking with her for another time. She’s busy chewing out Sagami right now.”

“Oh, Sagami, huh...? Yes, I understand.” Sagami was well-known, in the worst possible sense of the phrase, so I wasn’t shocked that Sayumi had heard of him. “I have to say, I’m impressed by how well you get along with him. It feels like the two of you are always together.”

“Nah, not really. It’d be awkward to be the only ones eating lunch alone, so we sort of just end up sitting together. That’s really all there is between us.”

“Oh? I do believe that was a very ‘tsundere’ sort of response, wasn’t it?”

“Please, do not call it that!”

I didn’t despise the guy or anything, but when everyone around me refused to shut up about how well the two of us got along, it made me reflexively want to deny it. We just sort of ended up together, and that’s really all there was to it. You could say that we were on the same wavelength, but our tastes were critically incompatible.

“I do have to say, though, the two of you certainly look like you’re good friends.”

“We’re not, seriously! That guy’s a total creeper, no two ways about it. Like, when we go to karaoke together, he sings nothing but anime and Vocaloid songs!”

“In other words, you’re good friends.”

“And when we went to go see a movie the other day, I ended up losing at rock paper scissors and he forced me to watch friggin’ Precure, of all things! I wanted to see the latest Kamen Rider movie! I mean, it ended up being pretty good in the end, but still.”

“In other words, you’re very good friends.”

Okay, she might have a point. From an outside perspective, we probably do look like we get along super well. Weird, that.

“I guess, like...he just comes on so strong, and I can’t handle it. I’d rather be friends with someone who’s got less of a stand-out personality, you know? Somebody I can count on to put me in the spotlight—like, the role the protagonist’s best friend always ends up playing in light novels!”

“‘The protagonist’s best friend’?”

Allow me to explain! The protagonist’s best friend is a stock character that appears with impressive frequency in light novels. To put it simply, their job is to be the protagonist’s ultimate supporter, devoting their very bodies and souls to the thankless task of ensuring the plot develops as planned.

Typically, they’ll be cheerful, sociable, and astonishingly well-informed. When the protagonist turns out to be inexplicably clueless about their school’s social circles, it’s the best friend’s job to painstakingly evaluate the heroines and pass along each and every rumor about them that comes the best friend’s way.

In spite of the vital role they play in the plot, however, it’s a best friend’s tragic fate to fade into the background and barely interact with the story at all when it hits its endgame. They never overstep their boundaries, never let themselves obstruct the protagonist’s or heroines’ plot arcs, and remain supporting characters to the bitter end.

Such is the lot of the protagonist’s best friend! I consider them to be one of the three pillars of light novels, along with awakenings and crane games.

“Oh, I think I understand now. In other words, both of you are excessively assertive when it comes to your preferences, and you end up clashing as a result.”

“That’s right!”

“That’s almost tragic. Really, don’t be like that! You have precious few male friends, and you need to treasure those relationships!”

Sayumi almost sounded like a real role model for a moment there, but then I noticed the quiet, almost inaudible chuckle she let out and the sort of unnerving smile on her face. I was struck with a terrible premonition. She wouldn’t have gone out of her way to specify male friends if she wasn’t thinking along the lines I suspected she was.

“Umm...Sayumi? Just for the record, there is absolutely nothing romantic going on between me and Sagami. Like, zip, zero, not in the slightest! Please don’t turn us into some sort of fujoshi fantasy fodder, okay?”

I knew exactly how much of a BL fanatic Sayumi was, and I decided to nip that potential problem in the bud before it had the chance to bite me. I tried to keep my request casual and friendly, but Sayumi’s smile vanished from her face in the blink of an eye.

“Andou,” she said in an overwhelmingly serious tone of voice, “I’m extremely disappointed that you would look down on fujoshi so openly.”

“You...what?”

“The idea that when a fujoshi sees two men getting along she’ll inevitably start fantasizing about them being a couple is an incredibly played-out and downright rude stereotype. I believe you owe us an apology,” she said with a (frankly terrifying) glare. She seemed genuinely angry. “I understand where your misapprehension is coming from. It’s become more and more common recently for male-targeted media to feature fujoshi characters who can’t restrain themselves from going to extremes for their interests. They, however, are characters written specifically to appeal to that male audience, and they are nothing like real-life fujoshi.”

“Nothing like them? Not at all...?”

“As such, it’s extremely upsetting when people assume that we’re prone to the same sort of behavior as those characters. Surely you understand, Andou? If somebody implied that all nerds are overweight, flannel-clad man-children who wear silly bandannas and constantly carry around backpacks full of anime posters, you’d be upset too, wouldn’t you?”

“I would, yeah.” I was starting to understand what she was trying to say, more or less.

My idea of a typical fujoshi was an image that had been fed to me by media that wasn’t written by or for fujoshi themselves. I had absolutely no interest in BL, and as a natural consequence of that fact, I didn’t have many opportunities to get to know what real fujoshi are actually like. I only got exposed to the fictional ones and the major outliers who went so far beyond the pale with their hobby that they ended up getting posted about on the internet.

In short, Sayumi was asking me not to automatically lump her in with those eccentric outliers purely on the basis of her being a fujoshi. It was just like how I hated the idea of getting lumped into the same category as Sagami.

“I get it, Sayumi. You’re saying that people who learn about fujoshi from fujoshi characters in anime are making the same mistake as people who learn about sex by watching porn!”

“That’s...a rather apt comparison, yes, but I would highly recommend against bringing up porn apropos of nothing when you’re speaking with a woman.” She gave me a cold, unblinking stare for a moment, then she let out a weary sigh. “People have a hard time picking out the distinguishing details of things they have no interest in, so it might be inevitable that everyone has some form of prejudice or another. Still, though, I’d hoped that at least you would understand me, Andou.”

“Sayumi...you’re right, and I’m sorry.” She was smiling, but in an almost tragic sort of way that tugged at my heartstrings like nothing else. I found myself apologizing before I even knew it. Jeez, I can’t believe I said something that mean without even thinking about it.

“All that said,” Sayumi continued, “you were actually right. I absolutely was envisioning you and Sagami in the throes of passion, and I happened to let a chuckle slip out of pure carelessness.”

“Oh, come on!” That whole friggin’ ramble was just a lead-in?! That was way too long to set up a stupid joke! I was actually completely sincere about that apology too!

“Oh, to be clear, I did mean everything I said. I wouldn’t fantasize about just anyone. I restrict my delusions solely to the very few ships I’ve analyzed in scrupulous detail and have determined to be too good to not drool over.”

“That makes this so much worse, holy crap! What, you’re saying that me and Sagami make the best ship ever, or something?!”

“Frankly, I can’t get enough of it.”

“Frankly, what the hell?! And no, wait a second...you were listening when I explained that Sagami and I aren’t super close or anything, right? Like, we may be more than just acquaintances, but we’re definitely not even close to being friends.”

“I’m afraid you just don’t understand, Andou. From a fujoshi’s perspective, a pair of boys who are constantly quarreling and snapping at each other is a thousand times more shippable than a pair that’s excessively all over each other.”

“H-Huh, really? Is that how it works?”

“Quite! If anything, the best ships are between two characters who hate each other, at least a little. When they’re prone to breaking out in fights the moment they make eye contact, but deep in their hearts, the flames of love smolder...that is the sort of ship it’s most fun to fantasize about.”

The conversation was veering into dangerously deep waters, and I had a feeling it was time to bring it to a close before I found myself drowning. I decided to try to change the subject, hoping it would send the message that fujoshi talk time was at an end.

“Anyway, wanna head to the club room, Sayumi?”

“Yes, we probably should. Everyone except you was already there when I left, and I imagine they’re getting tired of waiting for us.”

Under normal circumstances, there wouldn’t be anything to wait for. Our literary club made a point of never bothering with typical club activities, so if somebody showed up late, it usually wouldn’t be an inconvenience for the rest of the members at all. That particular day, however, was different: it was the chosen day for our monthly superpower checkup.

An innumerable quantity of jet-black spears materialized in the air, blotting out the blue sky above. They rained down upon the ashen landscape, filling every inch of it with terrifyingly sharp blades.

This transparently lethal attack was but one of World Create’s many combat applications. Specifically, it was the second form of the twenty-fourth verse of the Book of Assault: Spear Tempest!

The countless spears, birthed by the power of Genesis, perforated the ground with a piercing, clamorous crash. Said ground, incidentally—and for that matter, the entire arena—was a Field that had been created by way of that very same power. Littered with spears, the battlefield had been transformed into a metallic forest in the blink of an eye.

In the center of that forest, a single, circular clearing remained entirely untouched. A girl stood at the very center of that circle, smiling brightly and chuckling fearlessly. Not a single spear had so much as grazed her—she was completely unharmed. Indeed, she was the spitting image of Alexander the Great, one of humanity’s oldest and grandest of heroes, who is said to have once walked through a volley of arrows and emerged on the other side completely unscathed.

How did she escape from all but certain doom? By means of one of Over Element’s Sylpheed Mode techniques: Fairy Dance! By cloaking herself in a barrier of wind, she’d rendered herself utterly impervious to attack! Insubstantial though air may be, a strong enough gale can brush aside even the strongest of blows!

It hadn’t even taken all that much in the way of force. Her mastery over the air around her allowed her to alter the trajectories of any incoming spears just enough to deflect them. To an observer like me, it almost seemed as though the spears themselves had steered around her of their own volition.

“I was actually planning on burning them all up at first! But then I noticed they looked like they’d be hard to burn, so I changed up my plan a bit!” declared the wind-cloaked girl, Kushikawa Hatoko. She smiled proudly as she explained her decision to the foe across the arena from her, Himeki Chifuyu.

“You burned up all the weapons I threw at you last time, so I thought I’d use metal spears instead so it wouldn’t work this time...” In contrast to Hatoko’s smile, Chifuyu looked a little upset. She must’ve been disappointed that the attack she’d thought so hard about had been countered so easily, and she sullenly kicked her legs in the air from atop the magnificent, almost throne-like chair she’d conjured up for herself.

That was Chifuyu’s fighting style, incidentally. She would make an elegant, luxurious chair, sit down, and not budge so much as an inch for the rest of the battle. It was an incredibly cheeky—not to mention lazy—way of doing battle, but she had the sheer ability to let her get away with it.

“Hiyah!” shouted Hatoko, gently waving her hand in the air and stirring up an enormous whirlwind around her. The raging gale swept the spears away, casting them off into the distance and clearing the battlefield in one fell swoop. Her gaze met Chifuyu’s once more.

“Okay, Chifuyu, here goes!” said Hatoko, taking a moment to stretch and catch her breath.

“C’mon,” replied Chifuyu, beckoning her foe forward with a finger.

Mere moments later, World Create and Over Element clashed together in a cacophony of violence!

“No way...Hatoko’s not seriously planning on using that, is she? Not Over Element’s Ifrit Mode Technique: Raging—ah, wait! I-It couldn’t be! Not World Create’s ninth verse from the Book of Aegis, the form of—wait, what on earth?! Hatoko’s using her Geyser of—oh, but no, Chifuyu countered it with her trump card: the first form of the first verse of the Book of Respite, Wakeless Woodland—no, it couldn’t be!”

“Your commentary’s not keeping up with the fight at all!” jabbed Tomoyo, who’d been sitting beside me since the beginning.

I slammed my fist onto the table in an overblown show of frustration. “Well, it’s not my fault their fight’s moving so friggin’ fast! It doesn’t matter how quickly I talk; I’ll never be able to keep up with that!”

“Then just give up, please. Battle manga-style exposition just doesn’t work in real life.”

“Ha! As if I’d ever surrender! If I don’t explain their fight, Hatoko and Chifuyu’s attack names will remain an eternal mystery!”

“Just for the record, if you’d made those names at least a little bit less ridiculously long, you might’ve stood more of a chance of keeping up with your commentary.”

I couldn’t argue with that one. But, like, come on! Once you start thinking up attack names, it’s really hard to stop! Who doesn’t want to have a borderline limitless number of attacks with really long names to pull out at a moment’s notice? Super long attack names: hella cool!

“You’ve got a point, though, Tomoyo. It’s probably a good idea to avoid using attacks with long names when you’re fighting a real battle. It leaves you wide open, and there’s a very real danger that the attack will end up finishing before you’re even done saying its name!”

“Okay, even assuming that superpowered battles did actually happen in real life, nobody would bother shouting out the names of their attacks in the first place.”

Oh. Yeah, that’s fair. The whole calling your attacks thing really only happens in manga, anime and light novels. Not even Kamen Riders bother shouting attack names much, and even when they do, it doesn’t really get much attention. Like, Kiva had this ridiculously cool super-kick called the Darkness Moon Break, but barely anybody even knows about it these days!

Then again, asking why fictional characters bother calling out their attack names each and every time is one of those nitpicks that you’re supposed to sorta just let slide. It goes hand in hand with not questioning why the villains always go out of their way to explain exactly how their abilities work to the hero.

“And besides,” continued Tomoyo, “it’s not like we ever actually have any reason to fight in the first place. We don’t need attacks, much less attack names! Hatoko and Chifuyu are just playing around right now.”

“What?! This isn’t a game! It’s a simulation! By taking part in mock battles so intense they’re almost indistinguishable from the real thing, we’re honing our instincts and preparing for the day our skills are put to the test!”

“Yeah, sure. And what comic did you steal that line from?”

“Listen up, Tomoyo. I assure you, I’m being completely, one hundred percent serious when I say that settling on names for your attacks and special moves in advance is incredibly important.”

“Oh, really? Lemme guess: you’re about to tell me something hilariously superficial, like how it’s important because if you don’t have them picked out beforehand, you won’t be able to sell the scene when you get your moment in the spotlight. Right?”

“Nay! It’s important because if you don’t, you’ll give the devs a really hard time when your story gets turned into a video game.”

“Why are you planning for that?!”

“A fighting game’s the best option if you want it to sell well, and you can’t make a fighting game if you don’t have any special moves! Gintama did a whole self-parody bit about it, remember?”

“And you’re citing Gintama?!”

“So, I’ve been thinking it’s about time I take up this wooden sword with ‘Lake Toya’ written on it and learn a special move of my own.”

“Who are you, Gin?!”

“Or maybe a special move that uses this naturally white and curly hair of mine.”

“Yep, that’s Gin, all right! Why are you committing this hard to doing a Gintama joke?!”

“’Cause Gintama uses so much reference humor itself, I figure there’s no way I’d get in trouble for parodying it.”

“Quit plotting to make your jokes consequence-free!”