When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace: Volume 5 E-Book

Kota Nozomi

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

Seitenzahl: 355

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace: Volume 5

Leseprobe

Prologue: Kiryuu Hajime—Tome the First of the Twenty-First Year

This world is beautiful.

Thus, I am driven to destroy it.

Ours is a realm devoid of distortion,

and a day will come when I wipe it clean.

—Excerpt from the Reverse Crux Record

Yukawa Touhei stood in the decrepit remains of a long-shuttered bowling alley. It was an old building, and when its owner had failed to find anyone to sell it off to following the business’s closure, they didn’t even bother getting it demolished; they simply left it there to slowly deteriorate. It seemed like the sort of place that the local youth would sneak into for kicks when summer rolled around, but summer it was not, and nobody had any reason to go anywhere near it—all the more so given the witching hour had only just passed.

The building was silent as the grave. Moonlight beamed through the shattered windows, illuminating fragments of glass and empty cans that lay scattered across the floor, as well as cracked pins and ancient balls strewn about the lanes.

“Hmph... What a dump. Damn lights don’t even work,” Yukawa sullenly muttered, kicking a nearby can across the room. He reached into the pocket of the Hawaiian shirt he was wearing, pulled out a handful of rough, irregularly shaped rings, then began sliding them onto his fingers, one by one. They weren’t the sort of rings one wore for fashion’s sake—no, they were the closest approximation to knuckle dusters he could get his hands on, and he knew he’d need them for the battle to come.

“Yeah, we’re supposed to fight somewhere people won’t see us. Rules of the War, yadda yadda—but did we really have to haul all the way out to this craphole? Not like it even matters if we get caught, right? The spirits’ll work something out either way,” Yukawa grumbled belligerently as he glared down lane one toward the back of the building.

There, deep in the darkness, glowed a single speck of orange light. It was the smoldering tip of a cigarette, held in the mouth of the man standing there, tall and alone amid the pins and shards of glass. The cigarette wavered, and a cloud of smoke spilled forth from the man’s mouth as his lips twisted into a mocking grin. “Didn’t want to bother the locals, that’s all,” he said.

“The locals?” repeated Touhei, raising his eyebrow.

“You look like the sort of man who’ll scream like a banshee when he dies. Now, it’d be one thing if you were a cute little lady—that’d be a scream people could tolerate—but nobody wants to hear a guy wail it up, right?”

Yukawa snarled at the provocation, glaring daggers into the darkness as the man grinned back at him. The man was clad in a long, jet-black coat that blended in with his surroundings, while his strikingly brilliant silver hair stood out like a spotlight. He had a pair of round-lensed sunglasses on, slid ever so slightly down the bridge of his nose to reveal the pièce de résistance of his whole ensemble: his bloodred right eye, bright and vivid enough to stand out unsettlingly in the shadows.

“Ancient Lucifer, Kiryuu Hajime,” scoffed Yukawa. “I’ve heard the rumors about you. Heh—that’s one crazy-ass name you’ve got people calling you these days, huh?”

Kiryuu shrugged. “Not like I came up with it. I just kept fighting and fighting, and before I knew it, people’d started calling me that on their own,” he droned disinterestedly, then took a drag on his cigarette. A cloud of smoke trailed from his mouth, dancing through the air and disappearing into the shadows above. A moment passed. “You got that? I didn’t come up with it myself. People started calling me it on their own,” he repeated emphatically for...some reason.

Coulda figured that out on my own, Yukawa thought. What sorta dumbass would come up with a title like that for himself? “That so? Then you’ve got it pretty rough, pal. I’d hate to get saddled with a lame-ass name like that,” he flippantly replied, matching Kiryuu’s insult with one of his own.

In truth, Yukawa didn’t think that Kiryuu’s title was lame. He didn’t think anything of it at all, in fact—he couldn’t have cared less. Kiryuu, however, inhaled sharply at Yukawa’s words, his eyes widening. Kiryuu clenched his teeth, and the front end of his newly bisected cigarette dropped to the ground. Then he spoke once more, sounding ever so slightly like he was forcing himself to stay calm.

“Okay, no, stop. You really shouldn’t say stuff like that. You know that whoever thought the title up probably put a lot of effort into it, right? You shouldn’t crap on someone’s hard work when they did their best. Yeah, that’s a garbage thing to do. And anyway, I actually like it. Ancient Lucifer—it’s got a really nice ring to it. Whoever thought it up has the soul of a poet. Wasn’t me, though,” he quickly clarified for a third time, his cheek twitching conspicuously.

For a moment, Yukawa found himself baffled by Kiryuu’s inexplicable behavior, but he shut that line of thought down as quickly as it had come and instead focused upon the enemy in front of him. Ancient Lucifer—or rather, Kiryuu Hajime—truly was the subject of all sorts of rumors. That said, rumors beget rumors, and there was no telling how much of what was said about Kiryuu was fact and how much was overblown fantasy.

Some said that he was an excessively belligerent man, while others claimed he very rarely fought at all. Some said his temper dangled on a frayed shoestring, and others swore that he was perpetually composed and showed no hint of emotion. There was just no telling which, if any, of the stories were true—that is, with two notable exceptions. First: the fact that Kiryuu had the supernatural power to manipulate gravity. Second: the fact that the community at large had identified him as exceptionally dangerous. Even the organization that Yukawa himself had recently joined was keeping an eye on Kiryuu Hajime, and they were by no means doing so out of goodwill.

The hell am I freaking out about? thought Yukawa as he wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, his mouth curving into a twisted smile. So what, he can manipulate gravity. That’d probably be a real bitch for most folks to deal with, sure. It’s the ultimate power. Too bad for him, though—he picked the wrong opponent this time around!

Yukawa Touhei’s power was more or less a hard counter to Kiryuu Hajime’s gravity manipulation. It was almost stunning how well-suited his ability set was for handling this particular foe—almost enough as to make him wonder if he had been given his power for the specific purpose of taking Kiryuu out. Can’t get cocky, though. My power’s got an edge over his, but if I don’t nail the timing, it’s curtains for me. Underestimating a power like his is a good way to get yourself killed. Yukawa wiped the grin from his face and stood at the ready, focusing intently upon his opponent.

“Bwa ha ha!” Kiryuu laughed. It was a strange way to laugh—dry and distinctive. The uncomfortable tenseness of his expression from a moment before had vanished, replaced by a smile of self-assured confidence. “I don’t know what you’re thinking so hard about right now,” said Kiryuu, “but I can hazard a guess. You’re thinking about how brutally dangerous my power is, right?”

Yukawa twitched with surprise. It was like Kiryuu had peered directly into his innermost thoughts.

Kiryuu grinned mockingly. “Well, you can stop worrying. I’m not planning on using my power today at all.”

“Y-You what?” gasped Yukawa. He really did doubt his own ears for a moment. Surely Kiryuu hadn’t actually just said he wouldn’t use his power?

“What, couldn’t hear me? I’m saying I don’t have to use my power on you. You’re not worth it,” said Kiryuu.

What the hell is wrong with this freak...? He seriously thinks he can take me on without his power? Yukawa was too bewildered to reply.

“Hmm? What, not enough of a handicap for you?” asked Kiryuu after a moment of silence passed by. He crouched down, picked up an old, broken pin, and used its jagged tip to scratch a circle on the floor of the lane. It was centered on him, with a radius of around a meter or so. “I won’t set foot outside this circle,” he continued. “And if you manage to move me out of it somehow, we’ll call that your win. I’ll drop out of the War, then and there.”

“You making fun of me, you son of a bitch?!” Yukawa barked indignantly.

Kiryuu’s smile, however, didn’t budge. “Making fun of you? Not even close! If I were making fun of you, I’d say, hmm...I’d say that I’ll only use my left pinkie finger to kick your ass, on top of everything else. That’s how you make fun of someone.”

“The hell’re you—?”

“Come at me. I’ll make it very clear that we’re on totally different levels,” said Kiryuu in an almost impossibly inflammatory tone. He’d been talking down to Yukawa since the very beginning, and Yukawa was finally nearing the limit of his patience.

“Get the hell off your high horse, you punk-ass bitch!” Yukawa roared, breaking into a sprint and charging directly at Kiryuu.

One could hardly overstate the importance of supernatural powers in the Spirit War, but that being said, they weren’t the one and only factor that determined who came out on top of any given battle. A combatant’s physical strength played a vital role as well, and Yukawa happened to have great confidence in his abilities in hand-to-hand combat. At the very least, he knew that he wouldn’t lose in a brawl against someone like Kiryuu, who looked like he barely had a muscle to speak of. If that skinny little sissy isn’t gonna use his power, then I’ve got this in the bag!

“Say goodbye to your pretty face, asshole!” he shouted as he closed the gap between him and Kiryuu at a remarkable pace. Yukawa was quite the runner, and it barely took him a second to barrel down the bowling lane. But then, just a step before he entered Kiryuu’s circle, he let out a grunt of surprise, his eyes widening with disbelief. He literally couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Kiryuu Hajime...had stepped out of the circle. Yukawa hadn’t done anything to him at all. He’d just walked right on out, abandoning the territory he himself had designated as his.

Wh-What the hell is he doing? Huh? Is he...giving up? Did he just admit defeat before we even started? thought Yukawa, who was as befuddled as he’d ever been. Unfortunately for him, the fight continued carrying on in the meantime.

Yukawa had been running at a full sprint, and it goes without saying that he couldn’t come to a stop in the blink of an eye. He’d been one step away from his opponent, who in turn had taken a single step forward. This, of course, meant that the distance between the two of them was now a flat zero, and before Yukawa could even process what was happening, he was greeted by the sight of Kiryuu’s raised fist—then by the sight of said fist swinging through the air, directly toward him.

His right hand? But he said he wouldn’t use that one! M-Maybe he meant my right? But wait, he said he’d only use one fing—

If this had been an ordinary fistfight, or if Kiryuu really had stayed within his circle, Yukawa could have almost certainly dodged his punch. That one step had changed everything. Yukawa was fighting one step too far ahead, in a physical and temporal sense, and caught off guard as he was, he could do nothing to stop himself from colliding face-first with Kiryuu’s fist.

A dull thud echoed throughout the bowling hall. Landing a solid counter involves using your enemy’s movements against them, and Kiryuu had done so to exceptional effect—the power behind Kiryuu’s punch was supplemented by the momentum from Yukawa’s charge, and together, they’d resulted in a devastating blow.

“Gah, uuuggghhh!” Yukawa wailed, crashing to the floor and curling into a ball. “You, agh, son of a... You left the circle... Your right hand,” he groaned, clutching at his fractured cheek bone and busted molars.

“Bwa ha ha! Bwaaa ha ha ha ha ha!” Kiryuu cackled, sneering derisively at his fallen foe. It was a sneer of utmost enjoyment. “Supernatural battle playbook, rule twenty-one: never believe anything your enemy tells you!”

Yukawa let out a grunt-like growl. His blood boiled, and his mind was racked with conflicting emotions—fury toward the foe who had deceived him, and regret that he’d been stupid enough to fall for it.

“Go to hell...! Screw you, you little shit!” Yukawa bellowed. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you dead!”

“Bwa ha ha! You’ll kill me?” Kiryuu mockingly repeated. “That’s a pretty dangerous word to be throwing around so carelessly! Prosciutto and Aizen would be laughing their asses off if they were here, y’know?”

“Quit spouting bullshit! It’s my turn now, and as soon as I use my power, you’re history! I’ll never lose to you, because my power’s—”

“You don’t get a turn,” said Kiryuu, cutting Yukawa off midsentence. “My turn never ends.”

“What’re you talking—?!” Yukawa yelled, moving to stand, then stiffened up and fell silent. An incredibly potent chill rushed through him, like he’d just had a bucket of ice water dumped over his head. He’d noticed something—something right next to him that shouldn’t have been there, and that had him petrified.

It was a black orb, floating in the air. It was only around the size of a ping-pong ball, but in spite of its size and color, it didn’t blend in with the dimly lit background. No, it stood out, its blackness a shade darker than anything else around it. The word “hole” sprung immediately into Yukawa’s mind. It was a hole that not even light itself could escape from, and thus, a hole blacker than anything else in this world. A hole in space itself—the ultimate hole.

“Supernatural battle playbook, rule fifteen: the battle system isn’t turn-based,” said Kiryuu. “And rule eight: never assume your opponent will hold back their strongest abilities.”

Kiryuu’s downright cheerful words didn’t register for Yukawa. He had already succumbed to despair, and there wasn’t room left in his mind for anything else. No, wait, he thought. I haven’t even done anything yet!

Yukawa crawled on his hands and knees, desperate to escape from the black hole, but it dragged him in mercilessly. And not just him: it dragged in the shards of glass, the empty cans, the remains of Kiryuu’s cigarette—anything with form fell into its shapeless clutches, and even the formless, from the air to the light, was sucked in as well, coming together in one singular point.

“Be consumed,” said Kiryuu. “Pinpoint Abyss.”

And then, in the blink of an eye, it was over. The very instant Kiryuu named his technique, the black hole devoured all, sucking in Yukawa’s flesh, bones, hair, nails—his very being itself plunged into the bottomless depths of oblivion, to be crushed into an infinitely small pinprick of space. “Kiryuu...Hajime—” were his last words. In his final moment, Yukawa didn’t even have the time to scream. He was simply swallowed up by the void...and perished. And so, the battle came to an end.

“Wrong. Not Kiryuu Hajime,” Kiryuu Hajime defiantly declared as he turned his back on the gaping hemisphere that his attack had carved out from the floor. “It’s Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First. That is the name of the man who crushed you...not that you can hear me anymore, I guess.”

“But seriously, though,” Kiryuu mumbled a few minutes later. He was standing in a parking lot just across the street from the abandoned bowling alley he’d had his battle in, watching the building...or more specifically, watching Yukawa Touhei, who had just walked outside, cocked his head in confusion—several times—and then wandered off on his way. “Whether the loser gets horribly maimed or straight-up dies, they get fixed right up, forget everything about the War, and go back to their ordinary lives? The Spirit War’s got some pretty dull rules backing it up.”

Kiryuu was leaning against an old, obviously abandoned car that somebody had apparently dumped in the parking lot, talking to a girl who was floating in the air beside him. “Well, yeah,” said the girl. “The War’s set up to make sure that it doesn’t cause problems for humanity on the whole. That’s, like, its whole baseline principle.”

“Bwa ha ha!” cackled Kiryuu. “That’s rich, considering you’re having us humans dance like puppets for your amusement!”

Kiryuu certainly sounded like he was enjoying himself, but the girl scowled. It’s worth noting, incidentally, that the girl herself was only a girl in a somewhat loose sense of the term. She was, after all, not human. You could tell at a glance—her eyes and hair were colorful in ways that a human’s would never be, and she had a pair of semitranslucent wings sprouting from her back. Her name was Leatia, and she was of a race of beings known as spirits that hailed from an entirely different world.

“You really wrapped that one up quick, though,” Leatia idly commented. “Especially considering you toyed around with the last one for so long that they got to put out a hundred percent—actually, make that a hundred twenty percent—of their full power before you took ’em down.”

Kiryuu frowned and clicked his tongue with irritation. “The dickhead said my title was lame. He had it coming. Anyone who makes fun of my aesthetic gets crushed with my full power, right from the start.”

“Yeesh. Of all the topics to get set off by,” Leatia sighed. “So, what, he said your name sucked, and you just blew him away without even bothering to make a show of it? Poor guy.”

“You know what, though? There’s one positive thing I can take away from this: the title Ancient Lucifer has finally started making the rounds,” said Kiryuu, his scowl melting away into an ebullient grin. “It was worth putting all that effort into spreading it around! Sometimes proselytization really does pay off.”

“You did put a stupid amount of effort into it—emphasis on the stupid. Telling people, ‘Some call me Ancient Lucifer,’ spreading rumors around, having your teammates casually drop the name into conversation...”

“That’s what they call stealth marketing. I hope you’re taking notes.”

“I note that you’re changing the subject, jackass,” sighed Leatia with an irritated click of her tongue. Then she put on a more serious expression and looked Hajime in the eye. “What I’m getting at is that you killed the guy so fast, you couldn’t get any useful information out of him.”

“Hmm. So, in that case...” said Kiryuu, an unmistakable hint of interest creeping into his tone. His eyes shone with the light of curiosity—like the eyes of a child who’d just been given a brand new plaything. “I guess he really was a Rogue Player, huh?”

“Right,” said Leatia. “I got word from my coworkers on the Committee that there’s no record of a Player named Yukawa Touhei ever being part of this War. No Spirit Handler for him either.”

“We’ve been dealing with a lot of these Rogues lately,” noted Kiryuu.

“And we might know why now. We did some more digging, and it’s starting to look like they have some sort of group they’re all part of. More of an organization, really. I’m pretty sure that guy you just wasted was in it. I mean, he was probably just a grunt, but still.”

“An organization?” Kiryuu repeated, raising an eyebrow.

“The War Management Committee’s taken to calling them F, for convenience’s sake. The investigation’s still ongoing, so I can’t give you any specifics yet.”

“F... Hmm.”

Just then, a car pulled into the parking lot. It was a small, white microcar with a sign on its back that indicated it was being operated by a new driver. It pulled up next to Kiryuu and Leatia, and the driver’s side window rolled down a moment later.

“Hajime, Leatia!” said the driver as she leaned out the window. She was a young woman wearing the sort of suit that soon-to-be college graduates favored for job interviews. Her makeup was tasteful and understated, and she gave off a clean and tidy impression overall. Her bangs were parted and fell down across her face, covering up one of her eyes.

“Hitomi,” said Kiryuu. “You came to pick me up? I thought you had to be up early tomorrow.”

“I do, but it’s fine,” said Hitomi. “I was looking for an excuse to go for a drive, honestly. I did just buy this car and all.”

“Bought it used, yeah. And cheap.”

“Keep talking like that and I might change my mind about having space for you!” Hitomi pouted.

“My bad, my bad,” laughed Kiryuu as he climbed into the passenger’s seat. Leatia gave Hitomi a look and a nod, then vanished on the spot to who knows where.

“Guess I’ll just go and pick up Plaintive Dame Dolor tomorrow,” muttered Kiryuu. “Her light’s broken, so I can’t ride her around at night anyway.”

“Look, Hajime,” said Hitomi, “I’m totally okay with being your chauffeur if I have to. I’ll drive you around whenever I have the time, so please, stop riding your creaky old bicycle around when you’re dressed like that.”

“Do my ears deceive me, Hitomi, or did I just hear you belittle my beloved Dame Dolor? You know that the dissonance of her cursed melody has the power to tear the souls of all who hear it to shreds, don’t you?”

“That’s just the sound of its brakes squealing,” Hitomi sighed.

“Plus,” Kiryuu continued, ignoring Hitomi’s point entirely as he leaned back into his seat. He turned toward her and locked his eyes, one black and one crimson, onto hers. “I can’t have you becoming my chauffeur. I don’t want you to be my legs—I want you to be one of my wings. That’s your role, and everyone else’s too. You’re all my wings, and you’re all vitally important for it. Never forget that.”

Hitomi fell into silence, and Kiryuu spoke up once more. “The twelve wings of sable darkness: Fallen Black. You will be indispensable to me if I’m to have any hope of getting by in this Hell on earth I’ve fallen from grace into.”

“Yes, okay, I get it,” said Hitomi with a slightly strained smile as she started her car up. She looked carefully in front of the car, then behind, even though it was the middle of the night and absolutely nobody else was remotely nearby the abandoned parking lot. Finally, she stepped on the gas, sending the car trundling off into the darkness.

This is the story of a self-proclaimed fallen angel—an angel that descended to Earth and lived his life in this mortal coil.

To tell his story, however, one must also tell the story of a woman who played an indispensable role in his life. Her name was Saitou Hitomi, and at the time our tale is set, she was in her fourth year of college, at the height of her job hunt. Once, though, she belonged to the same club as Kiryuu Hajime—the Senkou High literary club—and ever since he’d run out from the Kanzaki household a year beforehand, she had become closer to him than anyone else could claim to be.

Chapter 1: Kiryuu Hajime—Tome the First of the Twentieth Year

I do not love the darkness.

It’s the darkness that loves me to death.

—Excerpt from the Reverse Crux Record

It happened one year earlier.

“I dropped out of college and ran away from home, so lemme crash at your place.”

Those were the first words that Hajime spoke to me after two years of no contact between us whatsoever. After we’d graduated from high school, he’d sort of just gradually fallen out of touch, but now there he was, standing in the doorway to my apartment for reasons I couldn’t even begin to fathom. I, meanwhile, was still standing in the entryway, completely petrified. The silence was broken only by the sound of rain pounding away at the roof overhead.

Umm...what? Does he think his conclusion follows from the premises? H-He wants to stay here?

I paused to take a closer look at Hajime’s face. At his black hair. His black eyes. His tiny little black sunglasses, worn just askew enough to make you wonder if they even helped block the sunlight out at all. His long, black coat that just screamed “look at me, I’m a gigantic edgelord!”

Yeah, he definitely still likes black, doesn’t he? I thought to myself. He’d been that way back when we were in high school as well, but Hajime looked maybe even a shade darker than usual today, probably on account of the fact that he was sopping wet. His hair and clothes were both completely soaked, and he was dripping water all over the place. It was one of the worst sort of rainy days, where the wind was strong enough to send the rain flying right in your face, and he’d apparently been walking around outside without even an umbrella to protect him.

There’s an expression in Japanese to describe a certain shade of black—“the color of a wet crow.” I’m pretty sure it’s usually used in a positive light—to describe how pretty the color of a girl’s hair is, for instance—but the sopping-wet blackness that Hajime had going on felt evocative of the phrase in an altogether different light. He had an eerie, almost demonic sort of aura about him, in spite of the fact that he’d been out in the frigid rain for so long that he was probably in danger of freezing to death on the spot.

“J-Just come inside for now! You can use my shower!” I said, ushering him in. I just couldn’t bear to see him like that and let him into my house without a second thought.

If you were to ask me what sort of person Kiryuu Hajime was, I’d probably say something along the lines of “completely inscrutable.”

I don’t mean to brag—though I know it’s probably going to come across like that anyway—but back in high school, I’m pretty sure I spent more time with Hajime than any of the other girls around us. We were only actually in the same class for our first year, but we spent all three years of high school together in the literary club. But even after all that, he had remained as inscrutable as ever.

It felt like the closer I drew to him, the more he withdrew from me, and that irritated me to no end. It felt a little like Hajime was a dense fog, or a mirage. He was easy enough to pick out from a distance, at least to a certain extent, but the moment you moved closer to him, he’d dissipate before your very eyes. You could never grasp the complete picture of who he was.

None of that’s to say that Hajime was an outcast. The girls at our school were certainly pretty fond of him, and the boys and teachers seemed to like him decently enough as well. He was definitely the sort of person whom the people around him tended to keep a healthy distance away from, though.

“My hobby? People watching. My personal motto? ‘Among the heavens and Earth, I stand unrivaled.’’ My favorite color? The vivid red of freshly cleaved flesh, the instant before blood begins to well from the wound. My favorite deadly sin? Pride. My favorite DIO? The one in Part 6.”

Believe it or not, that’s how he chose to introduce himself during the very first homeroom of our first year, right after we got into high school. So...yeah, it’s not like I couldn’t understand why people kept their distance from him. Everyone was completely dumbfounded at the time, and it was the most weirdly intense atmosphere I’d ever felt in a classroom. But the thing is, nobody laughed at him. He recited the whole spiel with an air of absolute seriousness, and he gave off a strangely powerful sense of pressure that made it clear we weren’t allowed to laugh or ridicule him.

He chose to attend the literary club throughout his high school years—a club that, if he hadn’t joined it, would have been summarily disbanded on account of all of its former members having graduated. And, by what I can only assume was some quirk of fate, I ended up deciding to enroll in the very same club.

While Hajime borrowed my shower, I gathered up his wet clothes and threw them into my washing machine. His coat wasn’t machine-washable, of course, so I patted it down with a towel and hung it up to dry out the rest of the way. I was pretty sure that’s how you’re supposed to deal with that sort of clothing, anyway. Then I paused for a moment.

I guess I just picked up his underwear like it was nothing, huh? I reflected. So that’s what they’re like. They’ve got a hole in the front and everything... “I-I’ll leave a towel on top of the washer!” I called out in a much shriller voice than I’d intended. I could feel my cheeks starting to heat up, and I fled the changing room without waiting for Hajime to reply.

I lived in a two-room apartment that had been built about a decade ago and was intended as student housing. The bathtub and shower were in their own room, connected to a changing room with a washing machine totally separate from the toilet—that last point had been a major priority for me when I was house-hunting. I’d started living on my own right after I got into college, and this apartment had been my home for the two years since.

I didn’t remember ever having told Hajime my address, by the way, but when I brought that up with him later, he explained that he’d memorized it off the New Year’s card I’d sent him the year before. Incidentally, he’d never sent me a card in return. That had really stung at the time—I’d handwritten mine, and I’d drawn little pictures on it and everything—but that was all water under the bridge now. I had different priorities: namely, stepping into my room and doing a hurried cleaning sweep.

I gathered up all the magazines and textbooks and stuff that were lying on my table and stowed them in my school bag. The clothes and underwear I had hanging up to dry got shoved into the closet, after which I grabbed one of those little adhesive cleaning rollers that I kept tucked away in the corner of the room and gave my carpet a frantic once-over.

As I rolled away at the carpet, the mirror I kept on my table caught my attention. It was one of those little ones that you use for putting on makeup—I’d used it for that exact purpose myself that morning, and I’d forgotten to put it away. I saw myself in the mirror. I saw my face, one eye clamped tightly shut.

“Hey, Hitomi!”

“Eeek?!” I shrieked as Hajime’s voice rang out behind me.

“You got a pair of pants I can borrow or something?”

“Huh...?” I grunted, turning around to look at him. “A pair of—wha?!”

And then I was left speechless. There, in full view of my one open eye, stood Hajime, a towel wrapped around his waist—that is to say, he was wearing nothing on his upper body. His skin was slightly flushed, and faint wisps of steam trailed up from his torso. Considering how skinny he was, I was surprised by how muscular he looked—especially his abs, which were beautifully toned.

Oh, wow, just look at the body on this guy—wait, no! “Wh-Wh-Wh-Why’re you half-naked?! Put some clothes on!” I shrieked, without sparing so much as a thought to how much of a nuisance I was being to my neighbors. Oh, god, my face is burning up now! I’m blushing way harder than I did when I picked his underwear up!

“Huh?” grunted Kiryuu. “You’re the one who threw all my clothes in the washer, aren’t you? What am I supposed to wear?”

Oh. When he put it that way, I really had forgotten to prepare an outfit for him to wear in the meantime. I’d been so preoccupied with getting my underwear off the drying line, I hadn’t even considered it. “Th-Then at least wear your coat! It’s hanging up right over there!” I shouted.

“A coat and nothing else? What am I, a flasher?” sighed Hajime. His face was slightly flushed as well, but that was only because he’d just gotten out of the bath. His attitude made it clear that he was as calm as could be, and the fact that I was the only one freaking out about all this was starting to piss me off a little. “Why’re you kicking up a screaming fit over a topless guy, anyway?” Hajime asked. “You know that sort of reaction’s only cute when teens do it, right?”

“Ugggh,” I moaned. “W-Wait just a second. I’ll grab some sweats for you.”

I somehow managed to calm myself down a little as I rifled through my dresser for something that would fit him. Stay cool, stay cool! It’s all right, it’s all right! This is no different than seeing your dad topless, I told myself, only to get so distracted by my inner monologue I accidentally pulled open my underwear drawer. Nope. no good. I’m freaking out. Come on, I just bought those sweats! I think I put them two drawers up, or some—

“Oh, huh. So that’s how girls store their undies? Looks like a box of fancy chocolates or something.”

Then I let out a strangled gasp and chucked my sweats directly in the face of the half-naked man who’d walked over behind me while I wasn’t paying attention.

My sweats were designed for women, of course, but they were also supposedly one-size-fits-all, and they ended up fitting Hajime just fine. The arms and legs were just a little short for him, however, and they ended about halfway down his calves and forearms.

“I spin-dried your clothes and hung them up,” I explained as I handed him a cup of tea I’d just brewed. “They should be dry enough for you to wear by tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” said Hajime as he accepted the cup. “This kinda takes me back. You used to brew us tea basically every day back when we were in the literary club.”

“Not because I wanted to. I just always ended up doing it because you never even considered brewing the tea yourself,” I replied.

“Right, because I wanted to drink your tea,” Hajime said, then took a sip from his cup. “Yup—as good as ever. You’re not rusty at all.”

“Fresh from the teabag,” I sighed. “It would taste the same no matter who brewed it. You know that, right?”

“Bwa ha ha!” Hajime cackled in that same dry, peculiar way he always did.

I reflected for a moment on how little he’d changed since then. It was our first time seeing each other in two years, but the conversation came so naturally that it felt like we’d been hanging out just the day before. It almost felt like I’d been transported right back to my high school days, even. To the time when I was still a teenager. The time before I’d grown up.

“Oh, right,” said Hajime. “Speaking of the literary club, looks like my little sister ended up going to our old high school.”

“Oh, she went to Senkou?”

“Right.”

“Huh. It almost feels like destiny, doesn’t it?” I said. I’d dropped the word “destiny” pretty casually, upon reflection. It’s a girl thing, I think—we just feel the urge to use that word at times like these, without really meaning it in a particularly deep or weighty sort of way.

Or, at least, I didn’t mean it that way. Hajime, on the other hand, nodded gravely. “Yes, that’s right. We and everyone else in this world are trapped within a casket called destiny, made to wallow in its endless cycle,” he said, the corners of his mouth twisting into a mirthless sneer.

Once again, I found myself thinking that he really hadn’t changed at all. Not in his looks, nor in his cringey chuuni mannerisms—he was exactly like he’d been back in high school through and through. Of course, I could’ve guessed that the second I’d seen his trench coat and sunglasses.

“I haven’t asked what club she’s joining,” Hajime continued, “but you never know—maybe she’ll end up in the literary club. She’s not much of an athlete, unlike me.”

“Yeah, makes sense,” I said, stopping myself before I could carry on and tell him that the two of them had always struck me as not being very alike. I didn’t know the details, but I was aware that Hajime and his sister were only half-siblings.

His name was Kiryuu Hajime, but everyone else in the household he lived in had the surname Kanzaki. They were the Kanzaki family, for the most part—Hajime was the odd man out. That included the sister we were discussing, of course. You’d think that would’ve been uncomfortable for him, but he never seemed to consider taking on the Kanzaki name himself. Not sharing a name with the rest of his family had certainly earned him some unappreciated attention over the years, but he stubbornly refused to change his mind. It was like he was rebelling against the world at large—like he was asserting his own individuality.

“Oh, right... She’s probably still pissed at me, actually. You wouldn’t believe how mad she got when I left,” Hajime muttered, scratching his cheek awkwardly.

“Hey...Hajime?” I said. This seemed like as good of a time as any to ask. “Did something happen?”

Hajime didn’t say a word. His gaze fell to the floor, and a thick, heavy silence descended on the room along with it. It felt like time had slowed down to a crawl as that silence stretched on, until finally, he raised his head and looked me in the eye.

“Hitomi,” Hajime said. “If I asked you to let me stay here a while and not question why, what would you say?”

The look in his eyes was absolutely serious and unwavering. He was a man whose gaze carried an unmistakable spark of insight, and having it directed at me so unflinchingly was a little scary, and a little, well...umm, let’s say embarrassing.

“Yeah, okay,” I agreed before I even knew what I was saying. I was honestly sort of exasperated with just how readily I’d given him the okay. I, Saitou Hitomi, turned into a doormat whenever Hajime entered the picture. When all was said and done, it was pretty clear that I was happy to reunite with him. Happy to reunite with him, and happy to see that he was willing to rely on me.

In the end, I wound up sleeping in my bed while Hajime took the couch. He must have been exhausted too, since he was out like a light the moment he lay down to go to sleep.

Couldn’t you be at least a little nervous about sleeping in a girl’s apartment? I sighed. I was starting to feel sillier and sillier for being so nervous about all this, considering that he clearly wasn’t freaking out in the slightest. I definitely wasn’t quite happy with how all of this had turned out, but I still went to the trouble of finding a blanket to drape over him. Then I climbed into bed, pulled the covers over my head, and attempted to will myself to sleep.

All right, bedtime! You’ve got a class first period tomorrow, so you’ll regret it if you don’t sleep now! One sheep, two sheep, three sheep...

“...”

Nope! Not happening! Seriously, how on earth was I supposed to sleep in a situation like that? A guy and a girl sharing a tiny little apartment all alone? You’d have to be crazy to not be nervous about that!

I laid a hand on my chest and felt my heart pounding like a drum. It was very much aflutter. I found myself descending into a delusional fantasy about Hajime sneaking over the moment I fell asleep and pouncing on me, then descended into self-loathing the moment I really registered what it was I was fantasizing about.

“Ugggh,” I moaned, writhing about under my covers. I poked my head out and looked over at the couch where Hajime was sleeping...and sleeping quite soundly, much to my irritation. I almost got up to find a pen and scribble on his face, but I decided against it in the end out of fear of what he’d do in retaliation.

As I gazed at his face, I was once again taken back to our time in high school together. I raised a hand to my closed eye and gently pressed a fingernail into my eyelid, giving it a light scratch. I felt a faint twinge of pain from that eye—the eye that had lost its ability to see.

Then, suddenly, I got up, opened up one of my dresser drawers, and pulled out an accessory case. I opened it up to find a black leather eye patch. It was very obviously not the sort of eye patch that people wore for medical purposes—no, this was an eye patch designed purely for the sake of fashion. It was also a keepsake of the time I’d spent with Hajime. He probably didn’t think much of it at all, honestly, but I’d kept it close at hand for all these years and considered it meaningful for my own reasons.

As I picked up the eye patch, it felt like an old photo album buried deep within my memories had just flopped open on its own initiative. Inside were my memories of my first year in high school—of the time when I had despised Kiryuu Hajime with all my heart and soul.