When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace: Volume 8 E-Book

Kota Nozomi

• Herausgeber: J-Novel Club
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 288

Beschreibung

Summer vacation is over, school is back in session, and the literary club has returned to their old pastime: making a loud, chaotic nuisance of themselves! It’s no surprise when the president of the student council, Kudou Mirei, stops by to pay them a visit...except she’s not there to scold them for their super-powered antics. No, she’s there to consult with them on a more serious matter: the upcoming cultural festival!

An unusually large room is up for grabs, and it has fallen to the literary club to find a way to use it. So, what do you do when you have five members, limited talent, and a dedicated block in the festival’s schedule to fill? Put on a play, of course! And what better production than the most literary play around: Romeo and Juliet! Only one question remains: who will star as the show’s tragic heroine?

...Wait, no, don’t look at the cover! Spoilers, jeez!

Leseprobe

Opening Act

“Hey, Cookie?”

This happened a little before summer vacation. I think it was the day after I made up with Cookie...or maybe two days? It was recess time, and I was talking with Cookie in our classroom.

“Yes? What is it, Chii? Is something wrong? You know you can tell me if you have any problems, right? They call me your mom for a reason, after all! I’ll hear you out, no matter what you ask me for!”

“I have a question.”

“You do? Well, go right ahead! Ask away!”

“What’s a lolicon?”

Cookie fell over. She slammed right into the classroom’s floor. It looked like it really hurt.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Y-Yeah, I’m fine, Chii... I was just a little surprised. So, umm, why are you asking about that all of a sudden...?”

“I’m just curious.”

It looked like the question was bothering Cookie a little. “Don’t you, umm...already know what that word means, Chii?”

“I sort of know,” I said. “Lolicons are boys who like little girls.”

“Oh, so you do get it! That’s exactly right. Lolicons are creepy boys who have weird thoughts about little girls like us! They’re terrible, terrible people!”

“They’re bad people?” I didn’t really understand. “All lolicons are bad?”

“That’s right!”

“Why?”

“Well, because...because they just are! Of course they are! The law says that that stuff’s not okay! Adults aren’t supposed to like little girls like that, and anyone who does is a total freak!”

“Why are they freaks?” I just didn’t understand. “Why does liking little girls make them freaks?”

“I-It... It just does! Lolicons are freaks!” Cookie shouted. “Don’t you remember what the principal told us at that assembly the other day? There’ve been more and more people lately targeting elementary school girls like us and doing awful things to them! Everyone who commits a crime like that is an awful lolicon freak!”

I didn’t say anything. Cookie looked at me.

“Chii... Did something happen between you and Andou? Is that why you’re asking me about lolicons?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. Andou helped me and Cookie be friends again, but after that, everyone in the literary club started calling him a lolicon, or “the lolicon knight,” sometimes. That’s why I got curious and decided to ask Cookie. I wanted to know what lolicon really meant.

“I knew this had to be Andou’s fault again! Agggh, that stupid pervert! First he goes and comes out as a lolicon as if that’s something to be proud about, and now he’s trying to trick you into thinking that lolicons aren’t a bunch of freaks...? What a scumbag! I just knew I couldn’t let him go unchecked... At this rate, my dear little Chii’s going to be totally ruined...”

I could sort of tell that Cookie was misunderstanding something. She was getting mad, but I was trying to think. I thought and thought...but I still didn’t understand.

Why is it bad to be a lolicon?

Why is it not okay for grown-up boys to like little girls?

And, thinking about it the other way around...

Is it not okay for little girls to like grown-up boys?

Scene 1. Spite’s Labor’s Lost

“Renaissance!” I declared authoritatively in our club room after school. “What we need is a renaissance! The time has come for our rebirth—for us to turn back the clock, return to our roots, and start anew!”

About a week had passed since summer vacation had wrapped up and the second semester of school began, and the usual crowd were all gathered up in our venerable literary club’s room. Yes, indeed! We, a collection of individuals so terribly potent we could stand on even terms with the gods themselves and turn the world on its head, had gathered together in one place!

The sovereign ruler of time: Kanzaki Tomoyo!

The lord of all elements: Kushikawa Hatoko!

The magus of space... Wait, no, that sounds too much like the sort of title they give to the expert architects in those home remodeling shows. Gimme a second... Hmm... Ah, okay!

The priestess of genesis: Himeki Chifuyu!

The bringer of renaissance...No, no, hold up again. That’s a total no-go—I already used that word in my intro! If I say it again here, it’ll make it sound like all that stuff was alluding to Sayumi’s power! That’s not what I was going for at all, honest! I meant it in the totally literal “rebirth” sense! So, okay, what can I...? Ah, got it!

She who denies nature’s flow: Takanashi Sayumi!

...Okay, that one might’ve gotten away from me a little, but meh, it works. I based it, of course, off the words of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “Panta rhei,” that is, “Everything flows”! It means, well... Y’know, it’s basically one of those impermanence things. All things must pass, and all that jazz. It’s just one of the many terms I learned in ethics class...but still, it’s just sorta great, isn’t it? The mere fact that it’s an ancient Greek thing makes it so awesome, I can hardly stand it! Ancient Greece: hella cool!

But I digress.

Four girls, within each of whom dwelled powers far beyond the extraordinary, had assembled here today. But there was still one more member of their circle. One last clubmate—a boy—whose presence could not possibly be discounted. It was he, a heaven-sent child of devastation, who led those fearsomely empowered girls onward, fated to guide them all the way to the final paradise of the soul, Tír na nÓg!

The Bloody Darkness. The Lord of Thanatos. The Knock on Hell’s Door. The Umbral Tempest. The Sovereign of Sin and Damnation. The Tidings of the Moonlit Evangel. The King of the Cosmic Apocalyptia. He Who Mocks Death. Paradise Lost. The myriad atrocities that fallen hero had wrought had earned him innumerable titles to match. He was the conqueror of chaos with one arm wreathed in the accursed, stygian flames of purgatory. And his name...was Guiltia—

“Would you please stop shouting out of nowhere like that, Andou?!”

“What’s wrong, Juu?”

“Andou, you’re too loud.”

“Remarkable. Summer vacation is over, the weather is cooling down, and yet you’re still full of hot air.”

...Well, okay. He was going by the assumed name of Andou Jurai, for the time being. Nobody was willing to call him by his true name yet, but it didn’t really feel like true names should be thrown about willy-nilly anyway, so it all worked out for the best in the end. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

Meanwhile, Tomoyo shot me a frigid glare. “What’s all this ‘renaissance’ stuff about, anyway?” she asked. “Are you making up a new special move, or a title, or whatever?”

“What?! No! Why would that be the first thing you’d assume?!” I snapped.

“I mean... Duh? Isn’t that always what you’re doing when you start throwing around big words like that?”

“I use big words the way they’re meant to be used sometimes too!”

“Okay, but you’ve gotta admit that you’re arguing against some serious precedent here,” Tomoyo said with a fed up shrug.

“Ugh... Well, you talk a pretty big game for someone who’s still doing her summer homework,” I countered.

“O-Oh, stuff it!” Tomoyo shouted with a blush. Her math textbook, incidentally, was lying on the table in front of her. The second semester had started a week ago, yet somehow, she apparently wasn’t finished with the work she should’ve gotten done over our break. As such, she’d been using her club time to diligently chip away at what was left, and today was no exception. “I’m basically totally done, anyway! This is all I have left!” Tomoyo added.

“Yeah, but basically done isn’t done, and it’s been a week. That’s the whole problem.”

“My class’s math homework isn’t even due till tomorrow, so it’s fine!”

Each subject gave us an assignment over the summer, and each assignment had its own due date attached to it. Some of our teachers said it was fine to turn our homework in on the first proper day of classes, while some demanded that we hand it in right after the opening ceremony. Our math teacher fell into the former category, and since Tomoyo’s first math lesson was tomorrow, she was doing her best to squeak in within that limit...while on the other hand, my first math class had happened the day after the opening ceremony. Life’s just not fair sometimes.

“A-And besides...whose fault is it that I couldn’t focus on my homework, anyway?” Tomoyo muttered.

“Huh? I mean, yours?”

“Okay, yes! Yes, you’re right, but... Ugggh,” she moaned, clutching at her head for reasons that eluded me.

It was around then that Sayumi let out a sigh. “So then, Andou,” she said, “What did you mean when you started yelling about a renaissance?”

“Right! Back to the point! Thank you, Sayumi!” I shouted. I’d let myself get distracted by all that homework talk, but now I was back on course! “I’m saying that a renaissance is exactly what we need! Or, like, that we shouldn’t forget our roots or our original driving resolve... Basically, I’m saying that the time has come for us to take a long, hard look in the mirror and reevaluate our course!”

“Oh?” Sayumi said.

“Maybe it was summer vacation’s fault. We were on break for so long, it feels like we’ve, like...lost sight of ourselves, y’know? And that’s why we need to take a moment for some real, proper inner dialogue!”

“Oh,” Sayumi sighed. The look on her face was about as skeptical as looks could get, and the other club members were reacting in much the same way.

“Andou?” said Sayumi. “I would appreciate it if you would make it more clear whether you’re being serious or trying to put on some sort of comedy sketch. It’s very hard to react to you when your motivations are so ambiguous.”

“Of course I’m being super serious right now!”

“A comedy sketch it is, then.”

“Wait, since when was me being serious code for comedy?!”

“I just have to make it clear that if you’re going to be a clown, you should feel free to clown away, and if you’re going to be quiet, you should do so without raising a fuss first.”

“Are those my only options?! What, so I’m not allowed to talk at all unless I’m being a clown?!”

“More precisely, my hope is to forbid you from talking unless you have a truly, exceptionally, gut-bustingly hilarious routine in mind.”

“So shutting up’s literally my only option! Great!”

As a sidenote—not that it matters, like, at all—“forbid” is such a good word to drop into casual conversation! It’s such a simple word, but it has so much heft to it in spite of that! Actually, while we’re on the subject, simple but dramatic words are great in general. Take, say... Okay, take “keen” for example. So simple, yet so sharp at the same time somehow! Of course, my personal favorite will always have to be “sin.” It’s just three letters, as basic as it gets, but the sheer weight those letters carry! Whoever came up with that word was seriously a genius! Sin: hella cool!

“So, Andou, what exactly have you been trying to tell us with all of this?” Sayumi said, once again steering us back on track. We were having a really hard time moving the conversation forward today.

“Ahh. Umm, okay,” I said. “I get the feeling that none of you are really following me here, so I’m gonna back up and explain this from the top.”

The origin of this whole affair—the spark that ignited my desire for renaissance—lay in today’s club activities, which I proceeded to recount.

“Where to begin... Ah, yes. It was the age when gods still walked the earth and man lived by their side—an age before the entity that would come to embody evil itself had been born into this world... In terms of concrete time, it was, oh, about ten minutes ago...”

“Andou. Stop,” said Chifuyu.

“Right, sorry,” I sheepishly replied, then I started telling my story like a normal person. The story of a perfectly ordinary day in the literary club, starting about ten minutes ago...

“Hey guys,” I said as I casually strolled into the club room after school. Tomoyo and Hatoko had arrived before me.

“Heyo, Juu!” Hatoko cheerfully replied.

“Huh? Sure,” Tomoyo grunted indifferently. She was working on her homework and apparently not paying much attention to anything else.

“I was just about to make some tea! I bought some kinda pricey tea leaves yesterday, and I brought them with me to share with everyone,” Hatoko said as she stood up and walked over to where we kept our teapot and electric kettle. She scooped her tea into the pot and tried to fill it with hot water, but after just a few moments, the kettle’s glugging turned into more of a comical sputter, and the flow came to a halt. “Oh, whoops! It’s empty, I guess...? Oh no, what should I do now...?”

“Well, don’t panic, to start,” I said. “This would be a disaster if you were making instant ramen, but you’re just brewing tea, right? Not a huge deal.”

“It is a huge deal, though! When you brew this sort of green tea, you’re supposed to pour the water in all at once, then serve it right afterward! It gets gross and bitter if you let it steep for too long!”

“Huh. I’m a coffee guy, so that’s news to me. In fact, I’m such a coffee guy I refuse to drink the stuff unless it’s served pure and black!”

“Nobody asked and nobody cares, so stop being such a tryhard poser,” Tomoyo muttered from the sidelines, but I ignored her.

“I’ll go get some more water!” Hatoko said, then she dashed out from the club room with the kettle in hand. Apparently, she was really set on brewing the best tea possible for me.

“It’s nice that she cares and all, but I can’t really tell good tea from bad tea in the first place,” I muttered as I sat down across the table from Tomoyo. “I mean, when I buy bottled tea, I pick one of the ones that comes with a little bonus trinket, not one that I think actually tastes better than the others.”

“Can relate, honestly,” said Tomoyo.

“Come to think of it, I can’t tell the difference between fresh-brewed tea and the bottled stuff, period.”

“That’s just because the bottled stuff is actually good these days.”

“And I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you ask me, series that just resteep the used leaves of past works still make for fine brews.”

“Andou, what’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?”

“By the way, Tomoyo, how do you feel about green tea?”

“I’m more of a black tea person, myself. Though of course, I only ever drink Earl Grey... Ah!” Tomoyo gasped with a start, but it was too late. I could feel the gleeful grin spreading across my face already. “Oh no! Nuh-uh! This is nothing like your ‘I only drink black coffee and that makes me hella cool’ shtick!” she shouted.

“Uuuh huh...”

“I-I mean, well... I-I might’ve started drinking Earl Grey because I saw it in a manga and thought it would make me cool, but, like... I drink it these days because I actually like how it tastes! That’s the only reason!”

“Oh, I know, I know,” I said. “I can fill the blanks in myself, believe me.”

“Stop acting so friggin’ understanding, you jerk!”

“Characters who have super specific taste in tea come across as so regal, right? Makes you wanna go all ‘Spare me the lemon, please. You’ll devastate the tea’s natural charm,’ and ‘You drink milk tea? What are you, a child?’ and stuff!”

“I just said that I only like how it tastes these days!”

“Yeah, I get you! Something about having a super specific preference that you refuse to compromise on just gives the greatest feeling of, like, exclusivity, right? You could only listen to western music, or only play doubles in tennis, or only read Crime and Punishment! The possibilities are endless!”

“Listen to me, dammit!” Tomoyo shouted as she sprang to her feet with just a little too much enthusiasm and collided with the table, knocking the cup of tea she’d been drinking clean over. “Ah, crap!”

“Whoa! You okay over there?” I asked.

“Ah, yeah, it’s fine. It was basically empty anyway,” Tomoyo replied.

She was right—there’d been barely any tea left to spill in the cup in the first place. What little had dripped out hadn’t gotten on her homework or the floor, so it was easy enough to wipe it up with a tissue.

Coincidentally, Hatoko returned with a full kettle just as Tomoyo finished cleaning, and she brought Sayumi along with her. I figured they must’ve bumped into each other in the hallway.

“Our poor little kettle’s been acting up a bit lately,” said Hatoko. “Sometimes it stops heating the water up properly, so the tea ends up being lukewarm instead.”

“That kettle’s been here since before I joined the club, so I suppose that’s no surprise. It’s simply reaching the end of its life span,” said Sayumi.

“Do you think so? Maybe we could use some of our club funds to buy a new one...? No, no, they’d never let us get away with that, would they?” Hatoko asked.

“Using club funding would be rather questionable, but I should be able to bring a new one from home for us, actually,” said Sayumi. “My father was given an electric kettle once. The exact circumstances escape me at the moment, but regardless, it’s been sitting in our storage unused ever since.”

“Oh, really? Hooray! That’s perfect!” Hatoko said with a beaming smile, then she turned to look at me. “Did you hear that, Juu? We’re getting a new kettle! I’m so excited! Oh, I know—why don’t we give it a name? Giving things names is a great way to remind yourself to take good care of them, after all!”

“Whoa there, Hatoko,” I said. “Are you seriously saying you want to name a household appliance? You do know you’re gonna have to grow up and move on from that kid stuff someday, right?”

“Whaaat? But you name stuff all the time! Like your bicycle!”

“I...” I began, then paused. This, presumably, was what people meant when they said they’d been backed into a conversational corner. “I, umm, I... R-Right! It’s not like I choose all those names myself! Those names were fated to be, perceivable only by the chosen few! I guess you could say I pick up on them with my sixth sense, y’know...?”

“Andou? I’m sorry to bring this up when you’ve been called out so thoroughly you’ve been rendered beet red from the shame of it all,” Sayumi said in that classic tone that made it impossible for me to tell whether she was being incredibly polite or incredibly scathing as she pointed to the sleeve of my jacket, “but the button on your cuff is about to fall off.”

“Huh...? Oh, it really is! When’d that happen?” I wondered out loud.

“Presumably when you decided to roll your sleeves up in an attempt to make yourself look cool,” said Sayumi.

“Ugh!”

“You certainly are a troublesome underclassman to take care of sometimes,” she sighed. “Well, come on, take it off and hand it over. I’ll fix it for you.”

The combo of strictness and kindness she had going on got the better of me, and I obediently handed her my jacket. Sayumi pulled out a sewing kit from her bag and got to work right away, stitching the button back on with a practiced hand. As she worked, the door to the club room slid open and Chifuyu walked inside.

“Oh, hey, Chifuyu,” I said.

“Mnh,” Chifuyu grunted as she trotted over to us with Squirrely held tightly in her arms. Her eyes were just about half closed, and she looked like she might fall asleep at any second. She seemed at least thirty percent sleepier than usual, or thereabouts.

“You okay, Chifuyu? You look really sleepy,” I said.

“I’m okay,” said Chifuyu. “I walked here, so I’m a little tired. I’m gonna take a nap.”

“Evening’s a little late for a nap, but you do you,” I said. Napping in the club room was nothing new for Chifuyu, so I didn’t bother questioning it too deeply.

Chifuyu tottered her way over to a corner of the room and pulled out two folding chairs. She unfolded them, faced them in opposite directions, pushed them together, then clambered onto the semienclosed space that they formed. She was tiny enough that those two seat cushions made for a perfectly adequate impromptu bed.

“Are you, uh, sure you wanna sleep like that, Chifuyu? I’d be worried about falling off if I were you,” I said.

“I’m okay. It’ll work just fine,” she said as she gave me a thumbs-up.

“There you go, Andou,” said Sayumi, holding my jacket out to me. “I’d appreciate it if you’d learn from this experience and be more careful about rolling up your sleeves in the future.”

“Thanks, Sayumi,” I said as I accepted the jacket, then looked around the room as I put it back on. “Well, I guess all five of us made it today,” I mumbled...then shot to my feet. I glanced around again, verified that everyone was looking at me, then made my authoritative declaration!

“Renaissance!”

...And now that the opening line’s been dropped again, flashback time’s over!

“So, that’s pretty much the whole story. I’m sure all of you understand what it is I’m trying to say by now, don’t you?”

“No. Like, not at all,” Tomoyo replied curtly.

The others reacted in pretty much the same way, except for Chifuyu, who was sleeping like a log. Guess I might’ve dragged that flashback out a little too long for her.

“Ugh—but how could this be?! How could I explain the situation so clearly and thoroughly yet have nobody else notice the clear and looming abnormality that lurks among us?!”

“Okay, Andou,” said Tomoyo, “just fess up. What are you getting at? What’s so weird? I can’t see anything strange about anyone! Everything’s totally normal here, I’m telling you.”

Totally normal? Yes, indeed—everything is, in fact, totally normal. We’d been living like utterly ordinary high schoolers, each and every day so perfectly unremarkable they didn’t even merit description. That casual, commonplace normality, however, was in and of itself the true identity of the abnormality I’d singled out. For us, nothing could be less normal than normality.

“Okay, people, listen up! Listen with all your hearts and souls—listen to the words that my soul is crying out from the bottom of my heart!”

I took a deep breath...then shouted with all of my everything.

“We haven’t been using our powers, like, at all lately, have we?!”

Yup. I said it. I finally, finally said it. Somebody had to do it, and at long last, I was the one who bit the bullet and put it out there.

“Oh...”

“Right...”

“Zzz.”

“Ugh...”

Tomoyo, Hatoko, and Sayumi all responded to my soul-wrenching wail with looks of awkward disinterest. Their faces just screamed “Oh, now that you mention it, I guess that’s true.” Chifuyu, meanwhile, was still asleep.

“Oh, come on, guys! You’re acting like you don’t care about this at all! What gives?!” I shouted.

“I mean, if I’m gonna be brutally honest, we don’t care at all,” said Tomoyo. “Right, Hatoko?”

“I mean, it’s not like not using my power causes me any problems, so...” Hatoko said with a shrug.

“This isn’t about whether or not it causes problems!” I shouted. “We’ve awakened to supernatural powers, dangit! Supernatural powers! And we’re not even using them! We should be constantly drilling and polishing our abilities just in case we ever need them! Life is a battle—which means, of course, that everything is a battle—and that means that every moment of our daily lives is an opportunity to train ourselves! We should be using our powers so much that we can manipulate them as easily as we move our own limbs! We should be able to invoke them as naturally as we breathe!”

I got a little heated over the course of my explanation, but that was only natural. In the week since summer vacation had ended, we of the literary club had returned to our plodding, commonplace, by the numbers daily lives...and we had used our powers so infrequently, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say we’d abandoned them entirely. Our god-tier abilities were just resting on the shelf, collecting dust! We hadn’t even been wasting them on petty nonsense!

If this wasn’t a classic case of pearls before swine, I didn’t know what it was. We hadn’t made any enemies in particular since we’d awakened to our powers, sure, but using them to play around was, like...it was a rule! We’d talked about this! Not just a rule, even—it was our law! Our very destiny! It was, well...it was the whole friggin’ premise, dangit!

“The fact of the matter is that, by and large, we can’t use our powers in front of anyone outside our group,” said Sayumi. “Allowing ourselves to use them for frivolous purposes only within this club room became something of a tacit rule over the long term, so over the course of summer vacation—a period in which we didn’t visit this room at all—we had virtually no opportunities to make use of our powers. As such, even though school has begun again, we’re still in the habit of not bothering with them.”

“That’s right, Juu,” Hatoko piped up as soon as Sayumi had finished her cool, detached analysis. “Plus, there haven’t been any good chances for us to use our powers today in the first place, have there?”

“Fool! Imbecile!” I bellowed, my fists clenched with rage! “Listen up, Hatoko. You can’t just wait for life to hand you opportunities on a silver platter! You have to reach out and grasp them yourself!”

“Oooh! That almost sounded like you were quoting someone!” said Hatoko.

“And for us, that means taking every conceivable chance we’re given to use our powers, no matter how petty it might be!”

“That...doesn’t sound quite right,” replied Hatoko.

I couldn’t push through Hatoko’s skepticism with pure momentum...but that didn’t stop me from keeping that momentum going! “There was a mountain’s worth of opportunities to use our powers in the first ten minutes of club alone! Fortunately for you, you have a world-renowned supernatural power counselor—me—here to explain to each of you, one by one, exactly what chances you let slip past you.”

“Excuse me, ‘supernatural power counselor’? Could a title get any shiftier?” Tomoyo jabbed.

“Congratulations, Tomoyo! Your feckless nitpicking has earned you the opportunity to go first!”

“Who’re you calling feckless?!”

Kanzaki Tomoyo: bearer of Closed Clock, the power to turn the very concept of time into her personal plaything, twisting it to her will. Now then, let us look back over Tomoyo’s behavior today with the capabilities of her power in mind! When I walked into the room, she was working on her homework. Hatoko went out for water, we talked about tea, and then Tomoyo knocked over her teacup—and there! That’s where the opportunity was missed!

“Why would you of all people spill your tea?!”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“Oh, I dunno, stop time?!”

“Oh...right. Yeah, I guess I could’ve done that. Slipped my mind.”

“It slipped your mind? It slipped your mind...? Are you even trying anymore? What’s the point of a character with the power to stop time at will if they just forget they can do it at the worst possible moment and get whooped? That’s a great way to make your readers give up on you! Do you want to make them so frustrated they’ll chuck the book at a wall?”

I was in such utter and complete despair that I fell to my knees. “You have the power to stop time, for crying out loud! That’s one of the most top-tier, terrifyingly OP abilities to be found in anime and manga! That’s the sort of power that only final bosses, secret bonus bosses, and the strongest character in the series get to have! You have a power like that...and you lost to a teacup?!”

“I didn’t lose to anything!”

“And that’s only the start of it! If you have total dominion over time, then why’re you still working on your summer homework?! How can someone who manipulates time be so bad at managing it?!”

“Those are totally different things! And stop giving me crap about my homework!” Tomoyo shouted. She was furious, but I kept going, trying to appeal to her by way of sheer sincerity.

“Please, Tomoyo,” I said. “I know you’re the same as I am. You’re the sort of person who loves supernatural powers from the bottom of her heart, aren’t you? Have you lost interest in your own power? Have you lost the love you once held for it? Don’t you remember how much effort you put into practicing it back in the day?”

“Huh...?” Tomoyo blinked. “When did I ever practice using my power? When I stop time, it just sorta happens. I don’t remember ever putting in any real effort...”

“Are you kidding?! You put so much effort into learning how to snap your fingers!”

“Wha— Why you— Hey!” Tomoyo sputtered incoherently as her face flushed bright red in a flash.

When Tomoyo activated her power and stopped time, more often than not, she made a point of snapping her fingers. The idea was that doing so was the trigger for invoking her power...though, of course, she didn’t have to snap at all. She could stop time without it, no problem. As to why she bothered snapping anyway...I mean, I think that pretty much goes without saying at this point.

“I get you, honestly,” I said. “Like, I really get it. You need something to use as a trigger for activating your power, like reciting an invocation or carving a seal into your body!”

“How many times have I told you not to act so understanding about this crap?!” Tomoyo shouted. “It’s not what you think... It’s not, honest... I wasn’t trying to show off or anything... I just, umm, I mean...”

“At first, the best you could make was a sad little pft, but you’ve been getting so much better lately! You’ve worked your way up to a real thwap, haven’t you?!”

“Whaddya mean, thwap?! Like hell I have! Do you have any idea how much time I’ve spent on this?! I can totally make a proper snap these... Ah. Umm, I mean... I-I didn’t practice at all! I just realized I could do it out of nowhere, at some point... I-I mean, huh? What are you talking about? Have I ever even snapped my fingers before? I can’t remember at all!”

Tomoyo was glancing frantically around the room, looking for something—anything—that could get her out of this. I laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Tomoyo. Everyone in this club understands how much effort you’ve put into practicing your finger snaps, day after day.”

“No way?!” Tomoyo yelped, then spun around to look at Hatoko and Sayumi...who were both smiling at her in the most forced, least genuine way possible. She’d been really into practicing her snaps for a very long time, and although it seemed she’d been trying to hide it, she must’ve accidentally made it into a habit. Every once in a while, she’d start snapping away without even seeming to realize it. “No, I didn’t... It’s not like— I mean, I never... I... I... Graaahhhhhh!”

In a split second, Tomoyo vanished. Now, apparently, was the right time to use Closed Clock in her mind. I wondered where she’d gone for a moment, but it didn’t take me long to notice that she was curled up into a fetal position in the corner of the room, moping.

“I’m never, ever snapping my fingers again,” Tomoyo moaned.

“Don’t give up!” I said. “Now’s the time to redouble your efforts, Kanzaki Tomoyo! As long as you keep putting in the time and energy, there will come a day when you could be wearing gloves and still pull off a perfect finger snap! Don’t you want to be like the Flame Alchemist?!”

“...Colonel Mustang isn’t actually snapping his fingers when he does that. The snap’s just elements in the air reacting when he does his transmutations. That’s canon, by the way—it’s in a fan book called FMA Research Lab DX.”

Well, crap! That was one heck of a laser-guided callout. I was a big FMA fan, but not quite big enough to have read the fan books. Anyway, the fact that I’d just accidentally shown off inaccurate manga trivia was making me feel pretty awkward, so I decided to bring Tomoyo’s turn to a close and spin to face my very own childhood friend.

“All right—it’s your turn next, Hatoko!”

“Okaaay,” Hatoko replied in a carefree tone that told me she had no idea how grave of a sin she’d already committed that day.

Kushikawa Hatoko: bearer of Over Element, the power to transcend the elements and wield each and every one of them however she saw fit. She had complete, undisputed mastery over fire, water, earth, wind, and light, manipulating them with total impunity...which begged a very serious question.

“Why the heck would you bother going out to refill a kettle by hand?!”

“Huh? Well, the kettle was getting all gurgly, so someone had to.”

“So make water! You can literally shoot it out of your hands! Hell, why bother with the kettle in the first place?! You can just make the water hot to begin with!”

I knew from experience that Hatoko was capable of adjusting the temperature of the water she created—she could make steam and ice just as easily as she could room temperature water. She could even roll her other elements into the equation and make the water as hard or soft as she wanted it to be. She was probably even capable of pulling a trick that turned up surprisingly often in battle manga: creating perfectly, one hundred percent pure water, which electricity couldn’t actually flow through.

“You could definitely make water that tastes way better than a school’s tap water, right?”

“Well, I could,” said Hatoko, “but for some reason, I just don’t want to drink the water I make with my power. It just doesn’t feel...I don’t know, potable?”

Huh. Well, I guess I kinda get where she’s coming from there. Drinking or eating stuff that you made with your own power to keep yourself going just felt...a little wrong, for some reason I couldn’t quite articulate. Chifuyu had told me that she never wanted to eat food that she made with her power either, and Natsu Dragneel didn’t eat his own fire as well.

“Anyway, Hatoko, there’s a more fundamental question we have to deal with here,” I said. “Do you even remember your own power’s name?”

“O-Of course I do!” said Hatoko with a confident nod...followed by a pause, after which she crossed her arms and sank into thought.

Yup. She’s definitely forgotten it.

“Umm... Was it... Oven Energy?”

“No! What sort of name for a power is that?! This is a battle power, not a power from some cooking anime! It’s Oven Element, dangit!”

“Oooh, that’s it! Right, I remember now! Oven Element! I’ve got that totally memorized now!”