Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 5 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Kiryuu Hajime—The Fifteenth Year

Precious few humans truly long for happiness.

Nay, the bulk of humanity wishes only to escape from misfortune.

—Excerpt from the Reverse Crux Record

Let’s turn the page back to six years earlier.

Ever since I was a little girl, I had always detested eye patch characters. They come up all the time in anime and manga—characters who either wear an eye patch or keep one of their eyes hidden for whatever reason, I mean—and they’d always annoyed me to no end.

Actually, it’d probably be more accurate to say that I hated the sort of people who liked characters like that. I could deal with the characters themselves, but the people who got all worked up whenever one of them showed up in a story just pissed me off like you wouldn’t believe. They’d be all “eye patches are so hot” or “eye patches are so cool,” and the moment those words came out of their mouths, I’d develop an instant and personal distaste for them.

And people who wore eye patches like some sort of cosplay prop? They could just drop dead as far as I was concerned. Like, what the actual hell? Why don’t you assholes try going blind in one eye for real—see how you like it then! I can’t tell you how many times I found myself thinking along those lines.

Why did I have such an intense opinion when it came to eye patches? Honestly, the explanation’s incredibly simple: it was because I myself was one-eyed.

When I was little, I got really sick and ended up losing vision in my right eye. I’ve been getting along with just my left eye ever since then. My eyesight on that side is perfectly good, thankfully, and only having one functional eye isn’t enough to cause me any real problems in my day-to-day life. Or, at least, it doesn’t cause me any problems in terms of my ability to see. In terms of my appearance, however, it’s caused me quite a fair share of grief.

My sightless eye is, frankly, a horror to look at. The illness that did it in left it looking like a dull, off-white orb, in the least pleasant way possible. Even after I got into high school, I still couldn’t bear to stand before a mirror, open both eyes, and look myself in the face. To put it plainly, my eye was just, well...revolting. That’s why I made a point of wearing my hair down and letting it drape over my right eye. I also kept that eye constantly closed, just in case somebody accidentally caught a peek. I first became consciously aware of how other people saw me and my eye around the time I started middle school, and I’d kept that habit up ever since.

At first, I’d tried making a routine of wearing an eye patch. I gave that up pretty quickly, though, on account of the fact that eye patches have a way of drawing people’s attention. Whether at school or in town, I’d always catch people whispering as they walked past me. They’d wonder if I had a sty, or they’d talk about how they’d always wanted to try wearing an eye patch...or they’d talk about how I was a total chuuni. And then they’d laugh.

Every time it happened, I felt a boiling rage deep within me. Thanks to some people who thought that an eye patch would be the perfect prop for their stupid games, people who actually needed to wear them got ridiculed! I’ll get even someday! I swear I won’t let this stand!

“Not that there’s anything I can actually do to get even,” I would tell myself. “This is just my own stupid bias making me lash out, and I know it.” Forcing myself to calm down and put it into words like that would always help, at least a little, and I’d let out a sigh.

The entrance ceremony and our first homeroom had ended, meaning that my first day in high school had come to a close. I immediately set out for the first floor, where I’d find the literary club’s room. I didn’t have any big, complicated reason for joining that club in particular; I just liked novels, that was all. I’d been reading a lot of Akutagawa Ryunosuke at the time—my personal favorite of his was The Nose.

There was just one factor that gave me pause. When I went to turn in my club application to the literary club’s advisor, Miss Satomi, she said something I couldn’t quite explain: “Oh...are you one of his friends?” I had no idea what she was talking about, so I just shook my head, and she followed it up by saying, “You’re not? Okay, then. Hmm... Meh, it’ll be fine. Sometimes you just gotta take what youth dishes out to you.” Then she nodded and took my application without any further comment.

And so, it was with a mixture of anxiety and anticipation that I pulled open the door to the literary club’s room. “Excuse me!” I called out as I stepped inside and bowed politely. “My name is Saitou Hitomi, and I’m a first-year student in class one!”

Okay, time for the hard part. I knew from experience that it would be for the best to cut to the chase and explain about my eye right away. I looked up, ready to do just that...and I was struck speechless.

Within the literary club’s room was a single student—a boy. He was sitting on the table, and he gave me a languid glance as I stared at him in horror. It was him, of all the people: Kiryuu Hajime, a boy from my class. Specifically, the boy who sat just one seat ahead of me, and the boy who’d delivered the most excruciatingly cringey self-introduction I’d ever seen! His presence in the room alone was more than enough to astonish me, but it got worse: at that very moment, Kiryuu was wearing an eye patch. He’d had both eyes open just fine back in the classroom, but now he felt the need to block one of them off.

To make matters even worse, this wasn’t one of those square eye patches that they give out at hospitals. His was made from what looked like black leather, and it had some kind of design sewn around its edges with silver thread, plus a weird mark right in the middle of it. It was tied around his head with some sort of belt instead of a string, and was clearly meant to look super stylish on the whole. It was obviously not an eye patch that was intended for medical use, and I knew what that meant all too well.

“Oh hey, welcome. You here to join the club?” asked Kiryuu with an amiable smile. He’d always looked so sullen in class that I was a little shocked to see him wearing such a friendly and welcoming grin. While I was frozen stiff with shock, he stood up and walked over to me...

“Ah! Ugh...aaahhh!”

...then, suddenly, he stopped and clapped a hand to his eye patch.

“C-Curses...! Not now, of all times!” spat Kiryuu, his face twisted into a pained grimace and his teeth gritted. “Agh, damn it all...cease this throbbing! Now is not the time!”

I just stared at him, my expression blank.

“R-Run away,” he whispered in a hoarse, agonized voice. “Run as fast and far as you can, now! Ugh...”

It was a pretty intense order to give someone, that’s for sure, but I couldn’t help but notice the way he kept glancing over at me as he said it, watching for my reactions. Yeah, this is just...ugh. Ugggh. He’s a case study. It couldn’t be anything else.

“My evil eye! The seal! Aaaagh!”

Oh, wonderful, he’s going with the evil eye story now. As I gazed down at Kiryuu, watching him groan and writhe for all he was worth, I found myself feeling oddly calm and cold, like my blood had turned to ice. No, colder than that—dry ice. The sort of cold that’s so extreme it wraps around and feels burning hot instead.

“The pain... Ahh, gaaah...”

Finally, he seemed to lose patience with me and my complete refusal to react to him. He stopped writhing, lowered his hand from his “evil eye,” and stood up. He wasn’t totally finished with the act, though, and he immediately started huffing and puffing like he’d just run a marathon.

“Hah, hah...phew. My bad,” he gasped. “Looks like the seal is getting weaker. I’ll have to talk him into making me a new eye patch soon.”

I did not reply. Kiryuu hesitated for just a second, then continued.

“Guess you’ve seen me at my worst now,” he said, his forced smile laced with pathos. It was the sort of reaction that you’d expect from a tragic hero who’d let the cursed power he’d tried to keep hidden run wild...and frankly, I had to concur. I suspected I had just seen him at his worst, though not necessarily in the way he meant it. “My name is Kiryuu Heldkai— Ah, no. I shouldn’t be using that name on this side. You can go ahead and call me Kiryuu Hajime.”

“...”

“What’s wrong? Too scared to speak? Well, I’ve done it now... I didn’t mean to frighten you, I promise.”

“...”

He was obnoxious. Profoundly, infuriatingly obnoxious. Each and every word that came out of that man’s mouth managed to rub me in just the wrong way and leave me fuming. If my sensitive subjects were a minefield, then he was tap-dancing his way across it.

“Hmm? Why’re you hiding your eye? Paying homage to Kitaro, the yokai? Or maybe to Sanji?” asked Kiryuu, stepping closer and leaning in to take a closer look at my bangs. It took him a second to notice that I had my eye closed, but when he finally did, he gasped. “No...don’t tell me you have an ev—”

He never got to finish that sentence. For all I knew, he might’ve been trying to say that I have an evanescent charm or an evocative smile. I’d never find out, in any case, because the second I concluded that he was about to say “evil eye,” I kneed him. And I don’t mean lightly—I mean I grabbed him by the shoulders and drove my knee right up into his gut with all the force I could muster. I drove that knee home with so much momentum that my other leg actually cleared the ground for a second, so I guess it was more of a jumping knee strike than anything else.

“Gwahaugh!” Kiryuu gasped, then fell to his knees, clutching at his solar plexus. His groans had a note of realism to them now that they’d been lacking a moment before, and he was twitching sporadically.

I, meanwhile, just looked down at him. It was almost astonishing how calm I felt, though the small part of me that could look at things objectively was aware that I’d snapped. And I mean completely snapped, for the first time in my life. Apparently, I’m the sort of person who shifts into a calm state of mind when I completely flip my lid.

“Y-You little...” moaned Kiryuu. Apparently, my once-in-a-lifetime jumping knee strike had landed a critical hit on him and rendered him incapable of even standing up. He was looking at me, though—glaring, really, with an incredible amount of malice packed into his expression. I felt a chill race down my spine, but in my current state, I couldn’t have cared less.

I had snapped. I felt like I could go Super Saiyan right then and there. I took up an imposing stance, looked down at him one last time, and shouted, “Drop dead!” Then I spun around and left the room, slamming the door so hard behind me you’d think I was trying to break it.

“You...seriously? You want to quit your club? Aren’t you still in your trial period with it, anyway?”

The very next morning, I got to school, marched right on over to the staff room, and demanded that Miss Satomi remove me from the literary club’s roster. She sounded more than a little irritated about it, but I was resolved.

“Am I? Okay, then I won’t drop out—I’ll just cancel my admission. Please pretend that I never turned in my application at all,” I replied, taking great care to stay calm and composed.

Miss Satomi frowned, then sank into thought. “Well, see, the thing is, I already turned that in to the vice principal. Man, this is gonna be a pain,” she groaned. I was starting to realize just how lazy she was. When I’d arrived at the staff room, she’d been fast asleep at her desk, wearing an eye mask with “REM” printed on it. I figured that my waking her up had probably put her in a bad mood.

“Why didn’t you warn me, Miss Satomi?” I asked. “You could’ve told me that he’s the literary club’s only member right now!”

I’d done a bit of digging since my encounter with Kiryuu, and I’d learned that at the end of the last school year, all of the literary club’s members had quit the club together. It hadn’t been a very active club to begin with, from the sound of it, and when all the third-years graduated, the remaining members had taken the opportunity to go their separate ways as well. Normally, a club in that sort of position would’ve been suspended or taken off the books outright, but Kiryuu’s decision to join had granted it a lease on life.

Miss Satomi, incidentally, had apparently been forced into the position of club advisor by her superiors. That might’ve explained why she was pursing her lips at me in a pouty sort of way. “Well, you didn’t ask!” she said. “I figured you were joining the club because you knew he was in it.”

“No, I was not!” I snapped, letting my tone escalate a bit further than I probably should’ve. But, I mean...just, come on! She was saying that I’d joined because he was in the club, which made it sound...like I was... “Y-You’re making it sound like I have a thing for him or something!”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I figured.”

“I do not!”

“Okay, okay, settle down. I don’t think that joining a club for that sort of reason’s necessarily a bad thing! Think of all the girls who join soccer clubs as managers—every one of ’em’s just looking for a date when all’s said and done, right?”

“Some of them just like soccer!” Probably. Regardless, we were going off topic. I paused for a second, then spoke up again. “So, what sort of student is that weir—is Kiryuu?” I asked.

“Hmm,” Miss Satomi muttered. She looked a little conflicted. “Kinda hard to put it into words, honestly. I mean, he’s not a normal student, that’s for sure.”

“He said that his hobby was ‘people watching,’ remember? I don’t think there are that many guys out there who could manage to be as cringey as him.”

“Yeah, I gotta agree with you on that one,” Miss Satomi sighed. “All the cringe aside, though, he’s not actually an idiot. His grades were great in middle school, and he’s athletic too. Oh, did you know? Apparently, Kiryuu made it all the way to nationals for the high jump back in middle school.”

“Oh, huh.” I thought that was pretty amazing, honestly, but I didn’t think much more of it than that. I’d always been an indoorsy sort of person, so I didn’t really care much about that sort of stuff.

“I guess he placed third or fourth or something, but in a certain sense, he ended up becoming even more famous than the guy who won,” Miss Satomi explained. I was confused at first. “See, some magazine or something decided to interview him, and they asked him why he’d chosen the high jump as his event. He answered ‘Because the heavens are there.’”

“...”

“Then he went out of his way to explain that ‘heavens’ could refer to both the sky and the afterlife, for whatever reason, and said something like ‘When I take flight, I am driven by my longing to return to that holy embrace’ and ‘My heart sings the instant I break free from the chains of gravity that bind me to this planet.’ He just kept going too—one-liner after one-liner.”

“...”

“Apparently, he actually ended up earning a nickname after all that. A few of the people who were there started calling him ‘Prince Fancypants.’”

I think that was less a nickname and more them making fun of him, actually. It was clearer than ever that I’d been reading him right this whole time. He really was one of the people I despised above all others: a chuuni.

“Why would someone like him join the literary club?” I asked. “Wouldn’t he have been better off doing track and field again?”

“Beats me,” said Miss Satomi. “I only know about all of this from rumors—I haven’t actually talked with him very much at all yet. The rumors did say that when somebody asked him why he’d quit track and field, he said that he was ‘sick of getting called Prince Fancypants.’”

It seemed, then, that he had a surprisingly sensitive side. That meant that he wasn’t looking for laughs with his whole persona—he genuinely believed that it was cool. That, ironically, made the Prince Fancypants title feel like it fit him better than ever.

“Not sure why he joined the literary club,” continued Miss Satomi. “I just know that it caused me an awful lot of grief. Way to dump more work into my lap, kid! The club was gonna get suspended until he just had to go and show up,” she groaned, leaning as far back into her chair as it would let her and staring up at the ceiling. Then she looked back down at me and sat up, just a little. “I’ve got a question for you now, Saitou. Did something happen yesterday?”

“Not really,” I replied, breaking eye contact. I didn’t want to think about what had happened, if at all possible.

“I’m asking ’cause when I went out to patrol around the school, I found him on the ground, clutching at his gut.”

“O-Oh, really? H-Huh, weird,” I said, doing my damnedest to keep my voice from cracking and largely failing. I could just tell I looked as shifty as could be.

“I tried to ask him what had happened, but he just kept moaning something about his ‘Eight Trigrams Seal’ and wouldn’t explain anything to me.”

Meaning that he’d kept quiet about what I’d done to him. I couldn’t say for sure whether he was trying to keep me from getting in trouble or was just too embarrassed to admit that he’d been taken out by a bookworm like me, though.

“I guess he was still in pain this morning, though—he called in to say that he was stopping by the hospital before coming to school.”

“...”

N-No way, right? I didn’t mean to hit him that hard... Okay, no, I did. I put my everything into that knee. Suddenly, I was feeling both regretful and more than a little guilty. Wh-Wh-What should I do...? Stuff like this isn’t funny when people end up with lasting injuries because of it! Am I going to get suspended for this...?

In spite of all those doubts, one thing remained as true as ever: I still couldn’t stand him. I couldn’t let him off the hook for what he’d done—for who he was.

“I’m not gonna ask what happened,” Miss Satomi said, letting out a sigh as droplets of cold sweat rolled down my back. “But anyway, like I said, you’re still in the trial period for now. Can’t you just put off deciding if you want to quit for a little while longer?”

I didn’t reply, so Miss Satomi continued. “Just one week, okay? If a week passes and you still want to quit, come back to me and I’ll see what I can do.”

After all that, I couldn’t talk my way out of her proposal. I knew that my decision wasn’t going to change, though, whether I waited a week or a year. Just thinking about being in a club with that guy was enough to trigger my gag reflex.

Of course, the fact that I’d injured him meant that I probably wasn’t in any position to be saying that sort of stuff. Maybe I should’ve been putting together a get-well gift basket and delivering it to his door as a gesture of remorse. Or maybe it would turn out that his parents were bigwigs in the PTA, and I’d get chased out of the school entirely. O-Or maybe his parents are part of the yakuza or a gang or something, a-a-and I’ll get forced to star in some sort of illicit, underground porno...

And so, I spent the first half of the day’s worth of classes trembling in fear as my delusions spiraled further and further into the realm of the outlandishly implausible. Then, partway through our fourth period math class, the classroom door clattered open, and Kiryuu Hajime himself stepped inside. Normally, when students were late to class, they’d sheepishly slink in through the door at the back of the classroom, but not him. No, he strode in through the front door like he owned the place.

Our teacher certainly wasn’t a fan of his outrageous attitude and scowled at him, but they made no effort in particular to reprimand him. “No need to explain—I’ve already been informed. Hurry up and sit down,” our teacher curtly spat.

Kiryuu, however, ignored those orders. He ignored our teacher entirely, in fact, instead looking out over the classroom. He had a surly frown on his face, glaring at us like the king of a nation contemptuously judging his subjects, making no effort to disguise the fact that he was looking down on us. Finally, his pointed gaze fell upon me and stopped. I felt my heart skip a beat...and for the record, it wasn’t in the falling-in-love sort of way. I was just startled, that’s all.

The moment our eyes met, Kiryuu made a beeline across the classroom and stopped right in front of me. “We need to talk,” he said, grabbing me by the arm.

“Wh-What?” I stammered.

“Look, just come with me,” said Kiryuu, ignoring my state of complete and utter confusion and dragging me along after him. He pulled me right out of the classroom, making not even the slightest pretense at subtlety. It was like he was laughing in the dumbfounded faces of our teacher and classmates. I really, really hate that this thought even crossed my mind, but I have to admit—it felt ever so slightly like he was a valiant prince and I was the princess he’d set his heart upon carrying off with him.

By the time I’d recovered from my confusion, Kiryuu had brought me all the way up to the rooftop. It seemed that the area had been deliberately opened up to the student body—it was full of carefully maintained flowerbeds and conspicuously handmade benches.

“Wh-Wh-What are you planning?!” I asked, putting on a bold front. I knew that the second I showed any sign of weakness it was over for me, so I did my best to sound as fearless as I could manage, but my voice definitely broke into a falsetto halfway through anyway. “I-If you’re coming to me to g-get even, then I think you’re marking up the... I mean, you’re barking up the wrong tree!”

Yeah, okay...I was definitely in a total panic. I was acting like one of those boss characters who gets less and less intimidating the longer they spend talking. Kiryuu, however, just leaned up against the fence that encircled the rooftop and crossed his arms without saying a word. In fact, he hadn’t said anything since he’d dragged me out of the room.

C-Come on, say something! Anything! This silence is way scarier than the alternative! What on earth is he going to do to me? Is he gonna beat the hell out of me? O-Or...no way...i-is he going to take advantage of me somehow? Here, of all places? Th-They call that ‘exhibitionism’ or something, right...?

Kiryuu stayed silent, and in lieu of a response, he unfolded his arms. That slightest of movements was enough to make me jump with surprise, trembling as I reflexively took up some sort of off-brand Chinese kenpo stance. My knees quaked as he stepped up toward me, then gestured at his midsection.

“So, I went by the hospital today,” Kiryuu said.

“S-So what?! D-Don’t you feel pathetic, getting sent to the hospital by a girl?!”

“They took an X-ray. I’ve got two fractured ribs.”

“...”

“I’m wearing a brace and I’m on painkillers, so I’m fine now, but I was in so much pain last night that I couldn’t sleep a wink.”

“I am so, so, sorry!” I shouted, bowing down at the speed of sound. I’d been dead set on not apologizing to him under any circumstances. I’d sworn an oath to myself not to do it, no matter what, but that resolve crumbled away in an instant. We were way past the point where I could write this off as a joke. I’d broken his bones! He was straight-up injured! This was a cut-and-dried case of assault! “I-I apologize, really... I didn’t mean to hurt you... J-Just don’t make me do any dirty videos, please,” I begged. My mind was leaping to so many different places at once, I didn’t even know what I was saying anymore.

“Bwa ha ha... Bwaaa ha ha ha!”

It happened just like that. Kiryuu, who a second earlier had looked so pained as he clutched at his wounded torso, suddenly couldn’t take it any longer and burst out into laughter.

“Aha ha ha ha ha! Ahh, okay, my bad, seriously. That was all just a joke,” he managed to admit between laughing fits.

“Huh? A...joke?” I repeated, staring at him in stunned astonishment. Kiryuu flipped up his shirt, exposing his completely braceless and bandage-less abdomen. The only thing worth mentioning beneath it were his finely toned abs. “S-So, wait...you were just making all of that up?!”

“Of course I was,” said Kiryuu. “A jumping knee of that level could never put me down.”

“...”

“My Hierro Skin is the hardest of all the Espadas!”

“...?”

I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but it didn’t really matter anyway. I could tell that I was getting made fun of, and I could feel my face heating up as the rage overtook me. “Y-You tricked me, you jerk!” I shouted.

“Bwa ha ha! Let this be a lesson—maybe you’ll make it a little harder next time!” Kiryuu said with an insufferably smug gin.

“Argggh!” I was so humiliated that it felt like the shame was boiling my brain away. What is this asshole’s problem?! Agh, I am so, so pissed! “B-Big talk from the weakling I took out with a single knee!” I snapped. Making fun of him felt like the best that I could do to take my revenge.

Kiryuu, however, just arched an eyebrow. “Huh? Get real, girl. That didn’t work on me at all! Seriously, didn’t even feel it!”

“You’re a filthy liar! I heard that noise you made—you nearly lost your lunch!”

“I am not, and I did not!”

“Weakling! Small fry! You’re a puny little wimp of a man!”

“Why, you little...! I’m gonna tattle on you to our teacher!”

“Ugh!”

That would be a problem for me. It was the worst-case scenario, really. Looking at the situation from a rational perspective, it was plain to see that I had been the aggressor, and that said aggression was totally one-sided. The best-case scenario was that I’d have to write a lengthy letter of apology, and the worst-case scenario ended with me getting suspended. Dammit! What kind of high schooler hides behind his teacher’s authority?! And where does he get off putting on such an intimidating act, then making the pettiest threat possible?!

I clenched my teeth, unable to come up with any sort of retort, and Kiryuu let out a snort. “While we’re at it,” he said, “the part about me going to the hospital was a lie too.”

“Huh? But Miss Satomi said—”

“Yeah, I just wanted an excuse to come in late today. I made it up. Your knee really didn’t do squat to me,” he added, emphasizing it so specifically that I had to assume he was just playing tough. I was starting to suspect that he was a really sore loser.

“So, then, what were you doing this morning?” I asked.

Kiryuu’s mouth twisted into a mocking smirk. “I was looking into you, Saitou Hitomi.”

Looking into...me? What?

“That eye of yours,” he said, gesturing at the eye I kept hidden. The eye I kept shut tight. “You’re blind in it, right?”

I didn’t reply. I wasn’t surprised, per se. All of my middle school classmates knew that I was blind in my right eye, and he wouldn’t have had to do much asking around to figure out that much. I was impressed by his initiative for doing all that digging in the space between yesterday and today, though.

“Yeah, that’s right. I can’t see with that eye. I can basically tell if it’s light or dark out, but as far as actual eyesight goes, it’s totally useless,” I said in a rather blasé tone. “Ah—don’t start getting all sympathetic or anything, please. It doesn’t have any real impact on my day-to-day life, and I lost vision in the eye almost a decade ago. I barely even notice it anymore,” I added.

I was genuinely sort of shocked by how flat and emotionless my voice was coming out, and I wasn’t done yet. “The Kitaro hair’s to help me hide the eye,” I explained. “Keeping one eye closed all the time tends to weird people out, after all. I would hide it with an eye patch...”

I stopped abruptly midsentence to glare at him. It was a one-eyed glare, but a very pointed one nonetheless.

“...if it weren’t for the fact that wearing one would make people think I was some sort of chuuni,” I concluded.

Kiryuu didn’t say a word, and I carried on in spite of my better judgment. “Hey, here’s a question—do chuunis like you ever even consider the possibility that you’re being nuisances? ‘Eye patches are so cool,’ ‘only having one eye’s so awesome’... Don’t you ever feel at least a hint of shame?”

I paused to let him reply, but he didn’t, so away I went again. “Oh, I’m not fishing for an apology or anything, so don’t even bother! Actually, I’d get mad if you did try to apologize! I hate eye patch characters. I hate people who think eye patch characters are cool. And you know what? That means I hate people like you. I despise them!” I spat, clenching my fists. A chaotic mess of emotions was roiling deep within my heart.

Throughout all that, Kiryuu hadn’t said a word. He was just standing there listening quietly. Finally, after one more pause, he spoke. “So...you know you’ve totally got the wrong idea about this, right?” he said in a terribly uninterested tone. “You can’t see in one eye, and I’m wearing an eye patch. What, exactly, do those two things have to do with each other?”

“Huh?”

“Nothing, right? They’re totally unrelated, yet here you are, coming at me swinging. You know how full of yourself that makes you look, right?” said Kiryuu. His gaze was almost frightfully frigid. “Look at it this way—if a police drama does an episode themed around terrorism, is that unfair to all the people out there who’ve died in terror attacks? Are TV programs about people taking on eating challenges unfair to all the starving people in famine-stricken developing countries? Is putting a pyrokinetic character into a supernatural battle story insensitive toward people who’ve lost family members in house fires? Are mystery shows where somebody dies in episode after episode after episode disrespectful toward the sanctity of life itself? Are all military geeks just a bunch of ignorant morons who make light of the horrors of war? No way, right?”

Kiryuu let out a sigh. “If you start getting offended by each and every little thing like that, there’ll be no end to it. And if something as minor as a character who wears an eye patch is enough to set you off, well, I don’t know what to tell you,” he added. He just didn’t let up on me. His words were as cold as a blade of ice, one that kept piercing my heart again and again. “Saitou Hitomi—everything you just said was nothing more than you lashing out at me over unjustified resentment.”

I gasped, and Kiryuu shrugged. “It’s your prerogative to hate what you hate. But on the same note, it’s everyone else’s prerogative to like what they like. Just keep in mind that the world’s gonna keep on turning regardless of how overinflated your persecution complex gets.”

His words carved their way across my heart, one by one, inch by inch. The way he spoke made it seem like he could see right through me, and he drove his point home with cold, merciless precision. “You realize,” he said, “that nobody’s under any obligation to play along with your complex, right?”

I bit my lip and dropped my gaze to the floor. I couldn’t argue against that. Everything that Kiryuu Hajime had said to me...was right. It was so soundly reasoned, I couldn’t even begin to argue against it. And I knew. I knew that I was just lashing out. I knew it wasn’t anyone’s fault that I was blind in my right eye, and that meant that there was no reason for anyone to play along with my obsession. I had no right to criticize people who thought that eye-patch-wearing characters were cool. Kiryuu was right on the money—I was the one who was being petty by raising such a fuss over something so ultimately insignificant.

On the other hand, though...what’s so bad about lashing out? What’s so bad about resenting the hell out of someone who goes out of his way to seal off an eye that could otherwise see perfectly well?! I was biting down on my lip so hard, I’d almost drawn blood. I was so, so very frustrated, I was on the verge of tears. My blind eye could still cry, at least—for all its worthlessness, at times like these, it always made sure to assert itself.

“Hmm—looks like it’s not completely useless after all,” said Kiryuu as I desperately tried to hold it all in. He reached out toward my face, brushing my bangs aside and then wiping away the tear that was pooling in the corner of my right eye. He made it look so darn natural that for a moment, I didn’t even realize what he’d done. The second it did register, though, I slapped his hand away as fast as I could.

“Wh-What’s your problem?!” I shouted. Kiryuu just flashed a faint smile at me. “Wh...What do you mean, it’s not useless...? You think an eye’s doing its job just because it can cry?”

“I never said that. I’m saying that the way you keep one eye constantly closed is part of what gives you your charm,” replied Kiryuu. He didn’t sound like he was teasing me or mocking me either. His tone was perfectly up-front and natural. “It’s like you’re always winking,” he continued. “It’s cute.”

“Whaugh?!” I gasped. This time, I was positive that my face would catch fire. Pillars of flame were spouting from my eyes.

Wha... Wh-Wh-Wha... What the hell does he think he’s saying?!

“Everything I’ve told you today has been logical. I haven’t been wrong about a single thing,” Kiryuu said, paying no heed to how I was freaking out right in front of him. “But the thing is, there’s always a chance that saying the right thing can still hurt people. People’s instincts and emotions don’t always line up with logic and reason. Take, for instance, the people who claim that violence in manga and video games promotes crime in the real world. People really think that, right? Well, I think that theory’s as dumb as it gets. Like, those people need to stop mixing up fiction and reality, right? If anything, I feel worried about the poor works of fiction that end up getting singled out as the favorite of some criminal! But,” he continued, “it’s not really that cut-and-dried, is it?”

“What...?”

“Imagine that somebody really important to you gets murdered, and the murderer turns out to have been really into some violent splatterfest of a video game. It’d be totally understandable for you to lash out against violent games on the whole in response, right?”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but Kiryuu wasn’t done yet anyway. “People can’t suppress their emotions with reason alone. The things that piss you off piss you off, even if you know you’re in the wrong for it. You know what I mean, right?” he asked once more.

I still couldn’t bring myself to react, though, much less affirm him. I couldn’t keep up with the incredible about-face that he’d just performed. A minute ago, his expression had been as cold and severe as a block of ice, but now he beamed at me with all the warmth of the sun itself. His smile was so gentle, it felt like he could wrap up the whole earth in its kind embrace.

“The fact that you were lashing out baselessly doesn’t change the fact that I hurt you. The world isn’t going to play along with your complex...so I’ll do it in the world’s stead. And so, I’ll do this,” Kiryuu said, then reached into his pocket, pulled something out, and threw it over to me. I just barely managed to catch it, then I looked down into my hand to find the eye patch that Kiryuu had been messing around with yesterday. A stylish black leather eye patch.

Then, a moment later, my good eye widened with astonishment. This day had thrown surprise after surprise at me, but this managed to shock me above all else. Kiryuu...had bowed down to me. It was a deep bow—a bow of utmost sincerity. “I’m sorry I put you through a bad experience,” he said, his apology lacking so much as a hint of insincerity.

I was dumbfounded, and I could only gape at him. I’d only met him the day before, so I barely knew who he was at all yet, but I’d still already gotten it in my head that he was the sort of person who would never, ever bow down to anyone. Or really, I’d been arrogant enough to assume that he was that sort of person. And so, when faced with his wholehearted gesture of apology, I was left at a complete loss.

Eventually, Kiryuu straightened back up again and looked down at the eye patch in my hand. “I’ll never wear an eye patch for kicks again. I hope you’ll find it in you to forgive me,” he said. He sounded almost heartbroken, and he looked like he was about to cry. He was acting like a proud warrior who’d been forced to give up his beloved blade.

Okay, but seriously, though. Do you really like messing around with eye patches that much? Why do you look like you’ve just had your heart torn in half? I could only conclude that in his mind, banning himself from ever playing around with an eye patch again was an almost unimaginably weighty punishment. He was imposing it upon himself in an effort to atone for what he’d done to me. It was complete nonsense.

“Pff... Heh heh, aha ha ha ha!”

Before I knew it, I was cracking up. It was all just so stupid, I couldn’t help myself. Where once I’d lashed out at anyone and everyone who dared to put on an eye patch for fun, where once I’d practically had an allergic reaction to all that chuunibyou stuff, now I couldn’t bring myself to care. The boy before me was just so funny, nothing else felt like it mattered.

In Kiryuu’s mind, wearing an eye patch or only having one eye were just cool character traits, plain and simple. He’d never intended to make fun of anyone at all—he was exclusively wearing an eye patch in pursuit of his own aesthetic of coolness. He wasn’t even really messing around in the end. He was completely sincere about his posing. And yet, in spite of that, he’d felt so sorry about what he’d done that he admitted that he was only doing it for kicks.

One thing was clear: he wasn’t a bad person. I clenched my fist around his eye patch, then spoke in as condescending of a tone as I could possibly muster.

“Well, fine, then. I suppose I’ll forgive you.”

A week passed by, the trial period for my club membership came to a close, and I once again made my way to the staff room.

“Hmm,” said Miss Satomi, her tone as lackadaisical as ever. “So, this means I can put you down as an official member of the literary club, right?” she asked.

“Right,” I agreed.

“Gotcha, gotcha. Good to hear it,” Miss Satomi said. “’Kay, next up, I’m gonna need you two to decide who’s going to be the president. I have to put it on the books, even if it’s just a formality.”

“Understood,” I replied. “Though to be honest, I’m already pretty sure Hajime’s going to end up taking the job.”

“Hajime, huh...?” said Miss Satomi, raising an eyebrow at me. “You two’re getting along pretty well now, aren’t you? What happened to all that nasty tension you guys had brewing a week ago?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Things are still as tense as ever. Hajime just hates being called by his given name, so I decided to make a point of using it.”

“You know, I have as hard a time understanding you as I do Kiryuu,” Miss Satomi sighed. “But if things are still so tense, then why’d you decide to stay in the club with him?” She asked, though she didn’t really sound particularly interested in hearing the answer.

“I just found a new hobby, that’s all,” I replied, trying to put on a sarcastic tone.

“A hobby?”

“People watching. Cringey, I know, but it’s given me the urge to stick around and spend a little longer watching the weirdest man I’ve ever met.”

“Hah! Well, isn’t that just perfect,” Miss Satomi said, then pulled her eye mask back down.

And so, Hajime and I kicked off our careers as the literary club’s only two members. As for our club’s actual activities, well, we didn’t have any. Every day, we’d show up to read or make small talk or whatever. Whenever the cultural festival would roll around, we’d put out a little magazine, I guess, but that’s about it. He got pretty upset about me calling him Hajime at first, but before long, he’d gotten used to it and had started calling me Hitomi in exchange.

As for his eye patch ban, he kept it up throughout all three years of high school. It seemed that he just couldn’t give up on his evil eye act, though, and he ended up wearing these tiny little round sunglasses and a red colored contact instead. Speaking of which, there was one thing that bothered me for a very long time until I finally worked up the nerve to ask.

“Hey, Hajime,” I said. “Why did you want me to stay in the club with you, anyway?” In other words: why didn’t he just leave me be? “It’s not like you wanted me to join at first or anything, right? Me joining was just a coincidence, so why didn’t you just let me go off and quit? You didn’t have to go to the trouble of apologizing—you could’ve just ignored me.”

If he’d just ignored me and my baggage, he would’ve had the whole room to himself. And if he’d really wanted more members for whatever reason, he could’ve recruited ones who’d be less of a pain in his side.

“Bwa ha ha!” Hajime laughed in response. “I know what you’re fishing for. You want me to say something like ‘I needed you in my club, no matter what,’ right?”

“N-No, I don’t!” I shouted.

“Bwa ha ha ha ha!” he cackled as I turned beet red. “Listen up, Hitomi: life is like a novel that you can only read once.”

“Like...what?”

“And since I can only read it once, I don’t want to skip over a single page. It’d be absurd to skim through your own life! You never know what might be foreshadowing for some big twist down the line. After all, my life’s definitely going to be an interesting story, and I plan on enjoying it to the fullest.”

Once again, I found myself speechless.

“For all I know,” he continued, “meeting you may have been foreshadowing for something too, don’t you think? And if it was, I have my hopes set on it being for something good. Who can say what sort of role you’ll play in the story of my life?”

He kept going on in that general vein for quite a while. In short, once you stripped away all the fancy-shmancy excess of how he said it, his explanation more or less boiled down to “YOLO.” He just expressed it in the most obnoxiously roundabout way possible. I didn’t know whether I should call him a fatalist, a romanticist, or just a plain old chuuni.

In any case, I spent three years with that physical manifestation of chuunibyou itself. At first, I was just sticking around out of idle curiosity, but before I knew it, I was more or less always by his side. He made me cringe, and wince, and I could barely even bear to look at him sometimes, but for some strange reason, I also wanted to keep watching him forever. I never wanted people to lump me in with him, so I didn’t want to be seen walking around with him, yet somehow, I wanted to walk with him anyway.

Hajime would always smile, like he was enjoying every second of his life, but every once in a while, an ominous look so cold it’d give me chills would come across his face. That, however, just made me more intrigued, more taken with him than ever. And as we lived on as club mates, as I was thinking about him and all his mysteries time after time after time, before I knew it...I had fallen for him.

Hajime was, and continues to be, my first love.