Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 5 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Kiryuu Hajime—Tome the Second of the Twentieth Year

Woe be upon the feckless masses, complacent as they are in their ignorance.

—Excerpt from the Reverse Crux Record

“We need to talk, Hajime!”

It was Monday afternoon, and about a month had passed since that rainy night Hajime had shown up at my house without warning. I’d just arrived back from my morning lecture, and I had been greeted by a sight that got under my skin so badly, I finally couldn’t bear it anymore and shouted with all my might. I turned to face the bum of a man who was sprawled out on his futon, ready to really give it to him this time!

“I’ve told you a thousand times that your instant ramen cups go in the kitchen trash can, not the one in the room! They’ll stink up the place if you throw them out there!”

“...”

“And if you’re not even watching the TV, then turn it off! And shut off the power strip! And don’t keep the lights on during the middle of the day either! Just open the stupid curtains if you want it to be brighter in here!”

“...”

“Gah! Why’s there an empty can here?! Arrrgh—please, when you’re finished drinking your coffee, throw the can out! Don’t just leave it lying on the table!”

“...”

“And you didn’t wash the dishes either! We talked about this last week, didn’t we?! We decided that I’d do the cooking and you would do the dishes in exchange! If you weren’t going to wash them, you could’ve at least filled the sink to soak them!”

“...”

“And that’s not even the half of—”

“Oh, quit yelling,” Hajime grumbled in an incredibly irritated tone as he flipped over onto his back. He’d been sleeping facedown, and he blinked blearily as he looked up at me, scratched his head, then yawned.

“My yelling is not the problem here!” I snapped, glaring at him. It wasn’t very effective, though, and Hajime just sleepily rubbed his eyes in lieu of a response. Somebody sure has made himself at home here!

A month ago, Hajime had asked if he could “crash at my place,” and I’d given him the okay without protest. Little did I know that doing so would lead to him acting like he owned the place, and in no time flat! My guest futon had turned into his personal bedroll! And to top it all off, he’d quit college and wasn’t working—not even part-time! He was a dropout bum, no two ways about it. He’d spend all day lazing about in my apartment, go out to play around outside when the whim struck him, eat the food I made, and stick around seemingly indefinitely without even bothering to chip in for my water and electricity bills.

“You’re just a leech at this point, you know that?!”

“Just shut up already,” Hajime grumbled as he sat up and returned my glare with a slightly sleepier one of his own. It was a little scary, but I was just as ticked off as he was, and I was determined to hold my ground. “Quit bitching about every last little thing, seriously... You’re not my mom, you know?”

“Then stop making me act like I am and take care of yourself for once!”

“I swear, this is exactly the problem with type-A women.”

I-Is he seriously dragging my blood type into this?! He knows I’m really sensitive about all that fortune telling compatibility stuff! Especially the part where he has type-B blood, which supposedly means our compatibility’s awful!

“Anyway, whatever to all that crap. Did you buy this week’s Jump, Hitomi?” asked Hajime dismissively.

“Yes, I did!” I shouted, then hurled the plastic bag I was carrying at him with all my strength. Hajime caught it like it was nothing and pulled out the magazine within.

“And the fifty-yen stamp for sending the survey in?”

“It’s in the bag!” I snapped. I had to admit it: I was such a doormat, it was almost enough to bring me to tears.

“Sweet, thanks. Love ya, Hitomi,” Hajime said offhandedly.

Gah! I felt my heart skip a beat in spite of myself. His words almost pierced my heart straight through, but I just barely managed to hold those feelings back. Don’t give in! I told myself. If you let him charm you now, you’ll never break free of this status quo! I’d come prepared to finally seize the reins in our unbalanced roommate relationship, and I was running through all sorts of plans that would let me do so...when suddenly, Hajime stopped flipping the pages of his magazine and pulled out his phone.

“What is it, Leatia?” he said.

I sighed. Here we go again. Hajime had been on a real pretend-phone-call kick this past month. It was an idiosyncrasy of his particular brand of chuunibyou that he’d apparently picked up at some point after we’d graduated high school. What sort of name is Leatia, anyway? Who’s that supposed to be?

Hajime spent a couple of minutes spouting cryptic gibberish into his phone, then ended the fake call and stood up. All traces of sleepiness had vanished from his expression—now, a subtle but distinct glint of focus dwelled in his eyes as a gleeful grin spread across his face. He pulled his chuuni-riffic trench coat out from my closet, threw it on with an unnecessary flourishy snap, put in his red contact lens, slid on his tiny sunglasses, then looked over at me to say “I’ll be right back” before striding right past me toward the door.

“Wha— Hey!” I shouted. “We’re not finished talking here! And where are you even going, anyway?”

“To War.” He flung open the door and walked away, as calm and composed as ever. I, on the other hand, was left alone in the room, with nobody left upon which to vent that righteous fury I’d worked myself up into.

Half a year passed by, over the course of which I’d failed to make any changes to the status quo. That’s not to say that there weren’t any positive developments, to be fair—Hajime had made no effort to improve his lifestyle, but he did tag in to handle the chores and cooking when I was too depressed to bother or when I got sick. That felt pretty nice, honestly. His family had also started sending him an allowance (Get a job, you bum!), so he didn’t have to sponge off my finances either. Except for my food expenses and utility bills, I mean—he still wasn’t chipping in for those.

The one really unusual element to his lifestyle, though, was how he’d occasionally vanish without warning. Sometimes he’d be back in just three or four hours, and sometimes he’d be out of the house for days on end—three days straight was the current record. I’d ask him what he was doing when he’d leave on those little excursions, but he’d always give me some nonsensical excuse like “heading out to war.” Not once had he told me the truth.

It wouldn’t be much longer before the truth revealed itself, though: all his talk of war this, war that really wasn’t cryptic gibberish after all. It was, in fact, the complete and unvarnished truth. The day I discovered what he’d really been up to is a day I’ll never forget—the day I left behind the world of the commonplace and set foot in the world of supernatural battles.

It all began when Hajime finally came back home after an unprecedented weeklong absence. I rushed to the door when I heard him knock, taking a moment to compose myself and make sure it wouldn’t be obvious how excited I was before I opened it...only to see him standing outside, covered in wounds. His clothes were torn to shreds and had bloodstains all over them. His favorite chuuni-riffic trench coat was in pieces. The patches of bare skin I could make out were sporting cuts and bruises, and a seemingly fresh gash on his forehead was still leaking blood, leaving half of his face painted a vibrant shade of crimson.

“Wh-What happened to you?! Were you in a fight?!” I shrieked, then realized a moment later that no, an ordinary fight would never have left him in that state. He looked like he’d just barely emerged from an extended battle to the death.

Hajime didn’t say anything. He just gave me a vacant look, then collapsed on the spot a second later.

“Wh-What the— Whoa!” I shouted as I just barely managed to catch him before he hit the floor. “A-Are you okay, Hajime?! Seriously, what happened?!”

“Hi...tomi...” Hajime rasped. He was completely limp in my arms, and his breath came in short, shallow bursts.

“Hajime, you’re...really heavy, actually!” For such a slender guy, Hajime was actually quite muscular, and between that and his height, he wasn’t exactly a light load to bear. I, meanwhile, was as much of an unathletic, indoorsy sort of girl as I could possibly be. Just keeping him upright was taking all of my strength, and judging by the way I felt myself sinking downward, I was fighting a losing battle. “Ugggh,” I groaned. “No good... Can’t...keep this up...”

I mustered up every ounce of strength I had to offer, but that wasn’t very many ounces, so I hit my limit before I knew it. Hajime and I tumbled to the floor together—or rather, we started to. The next thing I knew, though, something unbelievable happened. All of a sudden, Hajime grew lighter. And not just a little bit lighter—he was so light, it was downright inconceivable. He must’ve weighed over sixty kilos a second ago, but suddenly, all of that pressure vanished into thin air. I could’ve held him up one-handed, no exaggeration. Heck, I probably could’ve carried him one-handed! It was almost like gravity had totally ceased to apply to him!

“Wh-Wha...? How?” I stammered.

“Bwa ha ha... I went and ate the Float-Float Fruit...” Hajime said, his voice feeble and pained. He’d lost his own personal gravity, and it seemed he was dedicated to lowering the gravity of the situation while he was at it. “You can carry me now, right...? Just...take me to the bed, please. Don’t call an ambulance. Just get me some bandages, or band-aids, or whatever...”

“W-Wait a second! I have no clue what’s happening! Explain yourself! What’s going on?!” I shouted. The panic was really starting to get to me, and I couldn’t help but raise my voice.

“Don’t worry. I’ll tell you everything,” Hajime said, cutting through my bewilderment to reassure me. “Oh, and find me something to eat, thanks. I’m dying of hunger here,” he added, which honestly sort of deflated the drama of the whole situation.

The Fifth Spirit War: an all-out battle royale in which individuals known as Players fought for supremacy using supernatural powers they’d been granted. The losers would have all knowledge of the War wiped from their memories and be returned to their daily lives. The victors, meanwhile, would move on to their next battle, again and again, until only a select few remained.

“So, yeah, that’s pretty much the gist of it. Any questions?”

It was early morning the next day. Hajime had just finished explaining everything he’d been going through, and he let out a quick sigh. He was sitting on my bed, his arms and abdomen wrapped in bandages, and he had gauze plastered over his cheek. He looked like he was in real bad shape overall, but it turned out that his injuries weren’t as deep as they’d appeared at a glance, and his complexion seemed healthy enough. It seemed it wasn’t the injuries that had made him collapse the night before after all—rather, it was a combination of hunger and sleep deprivation that had done him in. After stuffing his face and getting a full night’s sleep, he was fit as a fiddle again.

“Umm,” I began, then sank into thought. “Any questions”? Are you kidding me? I have so many questions I don’t even know where to start! “Okay, so let me see if I have this straight—when you got lighter last night, it’s because you manipulated gravity with...uhh, L-Lucifer—”

“The ironclad hammer of a fallen angel, ready to crush the heavens and the fools who rule them: Lucifer’s Strike,” repeated Hajime, tapping on the notebook he’d spread out on the table, which he’d written the name of his power into. It felt like he was telling me to make sure to memorize both the name and its lengthy preamble. That notebook, incidentally, was the very same one he’d scrawled all his chuuni delusions into back in high school—or as he called it, the Reverse Crux Record.

He couldn’t have made it a little shorter? How am I supposed to remember that? I mean, I know this sort of thing’s right up his aesthetic alley, but still! “Right. Look, can we just skip all the iron hammer stuff and call it ‘LS’ for short?” I asked.

“Moron. It’s an ironclad hammer.”

He called me a moron! Wow! Also, do you really think I care what the hammer’s like?

In any case, this whole LS thing was a lot to take in. It seemed Hajime really did have a genuine supernatural power dwelling within him. All this stuff about wars, spirits, powers, and everything was just so alien to me you’d think I wouldn’t believe it at all, but experiencing his power firsthand the night before had done a lot to boost my level of credulity when it came to this stuff. Once you’ve witnessed something like that firsthand, you can’t not believe in it.

Of course, that wasn’t the only reason why I believed him. I glanced off to the side at the other big reason, who was currently casually floating in the air, posed as if she were sitting cross-legged on the ground.

“What? Got a problem?” the floating—and apparently belligerent—girl asked as she noticed my gaze. A pair of wings sprouted from her back, and I could only describe her outfit as “a lot.”

“N-Nope, not me! No problem at all, Leatia!” I replied, waving my hands in a frantic show of nonaggression.

Leatia, it seemed, wasn’t human at all. She was a sort of being called a spirit that lived in a totally different world than ours, conveniently known as the Spirit Realm. It was the sort of explanation I’d normally laugh off without a second thought, but when the story was accompanied by an actual spirit right before my eyes, it became a lot harder to dismiss. I mean, she was floating and all, so, yeah. She’d appeared and disappeared out of nowhere right before my eyes too.

“So, uhh, Leatia? I’m guessing that normal people can’t see you, right?” I asked.

“Basically, yeah,” confirmed Leatia. “That’s something I have control over, though, so if I wanted to, I could let them see me just as easily. That’s why you can see me right now.”

“That makes sense,” I said with a nod. “So, uhh, when Hajime’s been talking on the phone lately, that was...?”

“Yeah, that was me. We use radio waves when we have to get in contact with humans. It’d look weird if someone just started talking to themself out of nowhere, but it’s totally normal if they do it with a phone in their hand, right?”

“Right... You’ve really thought all this through, huh?”

“I didn’t think all these rules up. The War Management Committee figured them out,” Leatia said a little curtly. She was a pretty brusque person in general, but as I talked with her more, I came to realize that she was surprisingly nice beneath it all. She explained everything in a way that made logical sense, and she answered all of my questions.

“I’m surprised you’re not surprised by all this, Hitomi,” Hajime said, giving me a quizzical look.

“I mean, I’m as surprised as anyone would be,” I replied. “But, well...I guess I’m so surprised that nothing can surprise me anymore.”

“The last guy I showed her to was all, ‘Hell yeah, monster girl time!’ and got super hyped up.”

Hate to say it, but I’ll never react to anything like that. “So, Hajime...did you come home all beat up last night because you lost a battle in that ‘war’?”

“I didn’t lose,” Hajime snapped. “I won, and by a landslide!”

“Can’t believe you have the guts to say that after how close you came to getting your ass beat.”

“Shut the hell up, Leatia,” Hajime growled. I wasn’t exactly sure what to believe, but in any case, it seemed safe to conclude that he had not, in fact, lost. A second later, though, it hit me that of course he hadn’t—the fact that he still had his power was proof enough of that.

Broadly speaking, it seemed that there were two conditions that could lead to you getting knocked out of the War:

• Getting killed by another Player.

• Having your Spirit Handler declare that you’ve been taken out of action.

In either case, the player who got knocked out would lose both their power and their memories of everything related to the War. The part about people getting killed was pretty freaky, as far as I was concerned, but since all of the people who died in a Spirit War came right back a moment later, it didn’t quite feel like “killed” was even necessarily the right word to use. Does a duel to the death count as a duel to the death if its participants know they won’t actually die? It seemed a little ambiguous in my mind.

“Did you seriously just tell me to shut up?” asked Leatia, arching an eyebrow. “You’d better watch your mouth, Hajime. You know I can disqualify you from this War whenever I feel like it, right?”

“Try it, then! If you wanna accomplish nothing and get yourself kicked off your precious Committee while you’re at it, that is,” said Hajime with a smirk.

“Oh, you little piece of—”

“‘Disqualify’ him?” I repeated, cocking my head. That was a piece of jargon I hadn’t been exposed to yet.

“Spirit handlers are given the authority to disqualify their Players,” Leatia explained. “Basically, it means that if we decide one of our Players isn’t fit to fight in the War for whatever reason, we can force them out of it unilaterally.”

“Okay...but what does being ‘fit to fight in the War’ actually mean, specifically?” I asked.

“Imagine if a player decided to use their power to slaughter a bunch of uninvolved bystanders, or if they tried to reveal the existence of the Spirit War to the world at large. The rule’s there to let us deal with people like that.”

“Oh, I get it,” I said with a nod.

“’Course, in the end, that’s all under the jurisdiction of the War Management Committee,” Leatia continued. “If the Committee tells you that you can’t disqualify a Player, then you’re shit out of luck, and if they tell you that you have to disqualify a player, then you can’t say no.”

The War Management Committee was the organization that Leatia belonged to. It was responsible for managing the Spirit War (bet you never could have guessed that one). The organization comprised both spirits like Leatia, who were tasked with field work, as well as spirits who stayed back at their headquarters and essentially did office work. Field spirits were each assigned to watch over a number of Players, keep track of the war, work out scheduling issues, and recruit new Players to participate in the battles.

“Hey, Leatia? Can I ask a stupid question?” I said. “Why’re you making people fight like this, anyway?”

I didn’t mean it as an accusation, honestly, but it definitely came out sort of sounding like one. Spirits, by all appearances, seemed to be beings of a higher order than humanity. I couldn’t say that with total confidence, but from everything that I’d heard about them so far, it was certainly the impression I’d gotten. Why would they make lower life-forms like us fight each other? What could they possibly be gaining from this?

“Well, that’s—” began Leatia.

“To gamble on it,” said Hajime, cutting her off. “The Spirit War’s just a big show, and we’re the performers.”

“A...show?” I repeated, astonished by what I was hearing.

“The spirits watch all of our battles, and not for oversight purposes or anything like that. No, they watch us fight because they enjoy it, and while they’re appreciating their little show, they like to bet on who’ll come out on top. It wouldn’t make for much of a spectacle if we were fighting empty-handed, though, and that’s where the powers come into play. They give us the flashiest weapons they can come up with—after all, a supernatural battle trumps an ordinary battle any day,” Hajime concluded with a cynical smirk.

So, this whole battle royale’s just a show? That was a pretty difficult truth to swallow. I couldn’t quite describe exactly how I felt about it, but I was definitely feeling something hazy and unpleasant when I considered the implications.

“You spirits are into some pretty messed up shit, y’know that?” said Hajime. “What gives you the right to treat humans like your playthings, huh?”

“‘Huh’ yourself, jackass,” snapped Leatia. “And I don’t wanna hear a human get all high and mighty about us being messed up! You people did the same thing just a little while back, didn’t you? In the Colosseum, or whatever?”

The Colosseum, if memory served, was a massive, circular arena in Rome. Back in ancient times, slaves called gladiators would fight to the death for the entertainment of the masses there, and the masses ate it up. It was pure bloodsport, and when she put it that way, I had to admit that she had a point—the Spirit War’s system was sort of similar to that. The one tiny little problem, of course, was her assertion that ancient Rome was “just a little while back.” I had to wonder if Leatia was actually a lot older than she looked. It would make sense for humans and spirits to have different life spans, right? She seemed younger than me at a glance, of course, so if it was a question of life spans, they’d have to be wildly different.

“Bwa ha ha!” cackled Hajime. “You’ve got a point there! Humans are just as messed up as you people, no question about it!” His grin was as cynical as ever, with a ferocious edge to it as well. If he felt any sort of shame or any sense of inferiority from being made a show of, he certainly didn’t make it easy to tell. If anything, he seemed proud to be the spirits’ spectacle.

“And Players put up with being put on show, fighting each other to the death in spite of it all, just because of the reward at the end?” I asked.

“That’s right,” said Hajime. “They do it to be one of the Final Eight and to get their wishes granted.”

I gulped. As the Spirit War dragged on, the number of remaining Players would inevitably shrink. When that number reached eight Players in total, then those eight would be granted a reward: the right to make one wish, any wish, come true. All it took was surviving an all-out battle royale with close to a thousand superpowered participants. The eight who did—the Final Eight—would receive the blessing of the spirits.

“’Course, there’s no telling what’ll really happen when the field narrows to eight Players until you get there yourself. Do they have one final tournament to decide who’s really the strongest after their wishes get granted, or does the War just end then and there? Solving that mystery’s part of the fun—right, Leatia?” asked Hajime.

“Right,” confirmed Leatia. “My lips are sealed on that one. If you wanna find out what happens then, you’ll just have to survive till the end.” In other words, the Players wouldn’t even know what it was that awaited them at the War’s end until they got there. Finding out was supposed to be part of their motivation.

“So...are you fighting because you have a wish you want granted? Or are you fighting because you want to see what happens when the War ends for yourself?” I asked without really thinking about what I was saying.

A second later, though, I realized how pointless of a question it was. Just as I presumed he would, Hajime shrugged and gave me the most flippant response possible. “What, you think I’d just tell you that?”

“Yeah, figures,” I sighed. It wasn’t hard to predict. I knew him well enough to see it coming a mile away.

Hajime had always been willing to talk your ear off about the most pointless stuff, but the second you asked him about something that was actually important, he wouldn’t even give you the time of day. That was doubly true when it came to his private life and personal thoughts—the walls he put up around them were incredibly high. I’d spent three years with Hajime back in high school, and even after all that time, he hadn’t shown me so much as a peek into his inner world. It made me feel a little like he was pushing me away, honestly—but on the other hand, the more he shut me out, the more I wanted to find some way to get a glimpse into his mind.

“Anyway,” said Hajime, standing up from his bed and throwing his arms wide open, “over the course of this past year, I have labored under my formerly lost true name, Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First, with the power of Lucifer’s Strike at my side, to bring the ironclad hammer of judgment down upon those feckless sinners who know not the consequences of intruding upon my domain!”

Hajime looked like he was off in another world entirely as he recited a spiel that was both laden with excessively long proper nouns and so absurdly full of twisted, nonsensical metaphors that, frankly, I had no idea what he was even talking about. In any case, it seemed he was set on doing his best and fighting to the end. Okay, Hajime, I get the picture. You can stop now.

“Yes—I am he who aspires to be called Ancient Lucifer by those who fear me!” he eventually concluded.

Oh, great, another proper noun... Wait, what? “Hold on—you...aspire to be called that? So people don’t actually say it? You just want them to?”

“Right. It’s a title I aspire to be given,” said Hajime without a trace of irony.

How? How can he bring himself to look so serious when he says stuff like that? My thought process had ground to a complete halt, but Hajime was still talking, each preposterous statement as earnest as the last.

“I was hoping that everyone would call me by my true name, Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First, but, well...I kept saying it over and over, but nobody was ever able to remember the whole thing.”

Well, yeah! Your true name’s way too long, that’s why! It took me ages to memorize it, myself.

“Every time I told someone my name, they’d be all, ‘Huh? What was that?’ and I’d have to say it again, and I just got sick of it. Like, what’s wrong with you people, huh? You all have a case of thickheaded protagonist syndrome, or what?” Hajime griped.

I hate to say it, but you really brought this one upon yourself! Can’t sympathize at all, honestly.

“And no matter how many battles I fought in, nobody ever came up with a title to give me themselves...”

Well, yeah, of course they didn’t. This isn’t a manga, Hajime! He was clearly seriously troubled by all this, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care.

Hajime let out a sigh, then crouched down before me. It felt like his gaze was piercing right through me as he looked me in the eye. “And that’s why I need allies, Hitomi,” he said.

“Wait...what?” I asked. “And that’s why” would usually imply some sort of logical lead-in to the idea, but if he’d provided one, I definitely hadn’t picked up on it.

“I need someone—someone who can stand off to the side as I battle and say things like ‘I’d expect nothing less from the man they call Ancient Lucifer!’ Someone to be shocked by my exploits!”

“And you want me to do that?!”

The fact that he’d chosen to share all this behind-the-scenes info with me had already led me to assume he was going to ask me to do something for him...but I never, ever would have imagined that that something was working to spread the title he’d thought up throughout the Playerbase for him. He really did have a way of always exceeding my expectations in the weirdest way possible.

“Bwa ha ha! Well, that’s the most important reason why I want you on my side, but it’s not the only one,” he explained, which was nice and all, except for the “most important reason” part. That was obnoxious. “I’ve just gotten sick of running single-player, that’s all,” Hajime continued, his tone so weighty and serious you’d think he was proposing to me. “Be one of my wings, Hitomi.”

To make a long story short, I accepted Hajime’s pseudo-proposal without a second thought. They say love makes you dumb, and frankly, they’re right. I’ve never been capable of refusing to do whatever Hajime asks me to. All that being said, in the case of this particular favor, I’m not about to blame him for it. Even if he hadn’t asked me to help him, I was fully prepared to offer to help myself. I was ready to offer to fight by his side.

I don’t think I really appreciated how dangerous and horrific the world he was living in really was at that point in time. Still, though, I knew that I wanted to be by his side. Kiryuu was like the mist, so ephemeral you could never touch him no matter how close to him you got, and I wanted to do whatever I could to at least lay a finger on him.

The days flashed by like you wouldn’t believe after I became a Player. Before I knew it, six months had come and gone. The power I’d awakened to, Eternal Wink (do I even need to say that Hajime named it?), ended up being very obviously unsuitable for combat, so I wound up becoming Hajime’s dedicated supporter. Or, at least, that’s what we called me, anyway—Hajime pretty much always went out into battle alone, so for a supporter, I was doing an awfully small amount of actual supporting. When all was said and done, I mostly, erm...did my best to spread his title around, honestly.

I seriously almost keeled over dead from the sheer shame of it the first time I said “I’d expect nothing less from the man they call Ancient Lucifer” out loud. The person Hajime was fighting at the time gave me this look of complete befuddlement. It was a “What the hell is that lunatic talking about?” look if I’d ever seen one. But, of course, Hajime would compliment me if I said it right...so, yeah, I ended up going pretty all-in on the whole thing. Thanks to that, I’d grown used to saying his title enough that I didn’t even feel embarrassed anymore...which was horrifying in its own right.

That wasn’t the only thing that had changed, though. As we fought and fought, our little group gained a few more members. Some of them approached us, and Hajime went out of his way to recruit others. And so, our team was formed: the twelve wings of deepest darkness, Fallen Black. Again, it goes without saying that Hajime was responsible for its name—it was just dripping with his whole aesthetic. As for why it was “the twelve wings” when there weren’t even twelve of us, well, that’s best explained in Hajime’s own words:

“Lucifer, lord of the fallen angels, was once one of the greatest and mightiest of the Seraphim. He served as their leader, and such was the extent of his power that God granted him twelve wings, while the rest of His heavenly host made do with but six. And yet, for all his power, when he raised the flag of rebellion against God, he was cast out of the heavenly realm. Truly, his tale of conquest is a tragic one...”

...apparently. I hadn’t asked, by the way, but that didn’t stop Hajime from enthusiastically explaining it to me, and somehow the story had stuck in my mind. In any case, I, Saitou Hitomi, was the First Wing of Fallen Black. I’d thought that it made way more sense for Hajime to be the First Wing, since he was the one who’d made the team up in the first place and all, but when I asked about it, he just said, “I’m the Zeroth Wing, obviously,” and that was that.

Right. Yeah. Don’t know how I forgot. Hajime’s always loved the number zero. He loved plot twists about organizations having a secret zeroth member, or there being a hidden team number zero, or whatever. And actually, it might not’ve made sense to count him as one of his own wings in the first place.

If Hajime was the organization’s head, then we were its limbs. If he was the tree, we were the branches. And if he was a fallen angel...then we were his wings. That was how we, Fallen Black, were meant to be.