Chapter 4: Kiryuu Hajime—Tome the Second of the Twenty-First Year
Q: What gets filthier and filthier the more you use it?
A: The heart of man.
—Excerpt from the Reverse Crux Record
“Hitomi. Hey, Hitomi!”
“Wha?! Huh?! Wh-What?”
“C’mon, eye on the prize, Hitomi! Are you even listening?”
“I, uhh...sorry.”
“Keep it together, sheesh! Were you having a flashback, or what?” snapped Hajime from the rather extravagant sofa he was seated on. His gaze bored into me from behind his slightly askew tiny round sunglasses.
I tried to pull myself out from my recollections and back into the present moment, and I looked around at my surroundings. We were in an old, run-down building just a little ways away from the local station and its surrounding shopping district—specifically, in a stylishly decorated dart bar located between the fourth and fifth floors. Yes, between the floors: the bar was occupying a space that had been brought into being by Akutagawa’s supernatural power. This was Fallen Black’s secret hideaway, and anyone who wasn’t a member of our team couldn’t enter.
Our whole team was assembled in the bar that day.
The First Wing: Eternal Wink—Saitou Hitomi.
The Second Wing: Dead Space—Akutagawa Yanagi.
The Third Wing: Head Hunting—Natsu Aki.
The Fourth Wing: Zigzag Jigsaw—Toki Shuugo.
The Fifth Wing: Sex Eclipse—Yusano Fantasia.
The Zeroth Wing: Lucifer’s Strike—Kiryuu Hajime.
That was Fallen Black’s current roster—a total of six members.
“C’mon, Ryuu, you don’t have to shout at her! Tomi’s gotta be exhausted, right? She drove all the way out just to pick you up last night and all,” Aki grumbled from her seat over at the counter before draining her drink in a single gulp. “Ahhh, now that’s the stuff! Hey, Fanfan, gimme another orange juice!” she shouted, then slid the glass across the countertop. It glided across the bar’s slick surface, and, in the absence of anyone to stop it, continued to glide until it slammed right into the small mountain of empty glasses that had been accumulating in the corner. A thunderous crash rang out as the glasses toppled like bowling pins, smashing to pieces on the ground below.
“Aaaagh!” shrieked Aki. “Fanfan! What’re you doing?! You’re supposed to catch the glass when people do that!”
“I-I caaan’t! There’s no way I could react that fast! You have to warn me sooner!” wailed Fan, who was standing on the other side of the counter with a bottle of soda in each hand. “I-I-I didn’t have a free hand to catch it with! And besides, why did you even have to slide it like that?! Just ask next time, please!”
“You just don’t get it, girl! You gotta slide your glass when you’re at a bar! Gotta get that fwoosh, y’know?!”
“You’re acting like a child!”
“Oh, no you didn’t! I am not letting a middle schooler call me a child!”
The two girls, one dressed in a school uniform and the other in a pink nurse’s outfit, quickly descended into a screaming match. At the ripe old age of twenty-two, all I could think as I watched the teens fight it out was, Ahh, to be young again.
Natsu Aki was a student at Sakuragawa Girls’ Academy, a school that was somewhat famous in the area for being full of well-to-do young ladies, one of whom was Aki. She kept her hair tied up in braids and wore black-rimmed glasses that made her look as trim and tidy as could be, but her fashion sense was just a front she put on to fit in at school. In truth, her personality was closer to a rowdy, fun-loving wild child than the calm and innocent vibe her look put out.
Yusano Fantasia, meanwhile—or Fan, as I called her—went to an ordinary public middle school. She was a kind and pleasant girl, but it sort of felt like she wasn’t always all there, in a sense. I guess you could say she was just sort of off sometimes. For instance, she constantly wore her eye-catchingly bright pink nurse’s outfit because “pink is cute,” as she’d put it. I guess you could say her fashion sense sort of symbolized her slightly out-there nature.
“Quit screeching, for god’s sake! This ain’t a goddamn kindergarten!” a harsh voice snapped from the other side of the bar. I looked over to find that Toki was sweeping up the fragments of glass that had scattered across the floor. “If you’re gonna break shit, then clean it up before you start arguing about whose fault it is! I swear to god,” he grumbled, his brow furrowed with frustration. For all his complaining, though, his cleanup was proceeding at a rapid and remarkably efficient pace. The whole mess was out of the picture in no time at all.
Toki Shuugo could always be found dressed in his trademark tank top and old, distressed jeans. His ever-bare shoulders were covered with elaborate, intimidating, flame-shaped tattoos, and his whole look just screamed “wild, violent street punk.” His constant glare and foul mouth didn’t do that impression any favors either, but for all the things that made him intimidating, all it took was a single conversation to realize that he was actually a perfectly nice boy when all was said and done. It wasn’t a fluke that he’d gone to clean up the shattered glass before anyone else. Behind his rough appearance lurked a remarkably conscientious personality.
“And you can’t keep spacing out like this, Hitomi!” Toki snapped, rounding onto me next. “You’re the only damn member of this whole crew that actually listens when people talk! The girls just shout all the time, Kiryuu spouts gibberish, and Akutagawa—”
Fwsh! Halfway through his sentence, Toki pulled a jackknife out of his pocket and threw it with an obviously practiced hand. What little shonen manga I’d read had been due to Hajime’s influence, and the only association I’d had with the word “jackknife” was Prince of Tennis, but after meeting Toki, I’d learned that the term originally referred to a type of large folding pocket knife. The blade of Toki’s jackknife, however, was so horribly worn and jagged that it could barely move at all anymore. Its blade was a zigzag, practically serrated, worn down to the point that it looked like it might fall to pieces. It was a misshapen jackknife that would never fold again.
“...might as well be mute for how little the damn kid talks,” Toki concluded as his knife thudded into a dartboard’s bull’s-eye. The darts that were already embedded in the board were shaken loose by the impact and clattered to the floor.
Akutagawa, who’d been playing darts alone off in the corner and had been remaining totally disengaged from the conversation, froze in place, a dart still raised and at the ready. “Who are you calling mute?” he mumbled in a dull and gloomy voice as he turned to face us. He kept a pair of headphones constantly covering his ears, but it seemed they didn’t muffle the world around him enough to block out our voices.
“Communication is overrated,” said Akutagawa. “As long as you can get the bare minimum you need to stay alive, what does it matter if you don’t communicate? Why bother giving people you can’t stand the time of day? If being able to communicate well means reading the room and laughing along with the morons around you, then I’d rather be mute.”
“Huh? Whazzat? I can’t hear you, speak up! And look me in the eye when you talk to me, dammit!” said Toki.
“Ugh... What a drag,” Akutagawa practically whispered as he hung his head. Then he walked over to the dart board, pulled Toki’s knife out, and tossed it back to him with an underhanded throw. Passing a knife like that to someone was beyond dangerous, but Toki caught it like it was nothing between two of his fingers. “Talking with a punk like you would be a waste of my time,” Akutagawa grumbled as he returned to his game of darts. He said it just barely loud enough for us to hear it, but his scorn still came through quite clearly.
Akutagawa Yanagi was, well...a bit of a problem child, I guess. He never took those headphones off, and he always had his phone or an iPad on hand to play games on. Personalitywise, he was the quintessential mouthy little brat. If you told him that it’s rude to wear headphones while someone’s talking to you, he’d say that he had the volume down low and could hear you perfectly well, so it was fine. If you told him that you were talking about something important and he should spit out his gum and listen, he’d tell you that it had been scientifically proven that chewing gum helps boost your ability to concentrate. He was cheeky, impertinent, and had an uncanny way of making you want to just deck him the longer you spent talking with him.
“Akutagawa,” growled Toki, “if you’ve got a problem with me, then say it to my face! I can’t stand that sorta backbiting bullshit!”
“Whatever,” grunted Akutagawa.
“I keep telling you, Fanfan, that nurse’s outfit is wack!”
“Wh-What I wear is my business, isn’t it?!”
On one side of the bar we had Toki and Akutagawa, and on the other, Aki and Fan. The men and the ladies of Fallen Black alike were engaged in a pair of slowly escalating arguments, and the bar was getting rowdier and rowdier. And then, just as it felt like the situation was about to spiral out of control...
“Oh, shut up, people.”
...a low, heavy voice rang out, resonating with incredible gravity, like it’d echoed up from the pits of Hell itself.
“Silence your bleating, you accursed little lambs. Having small fries like you kicking up a fuss around me is liable to make me look as petty as you are, you know?” said Hajime as he looked over the rest of us, his mouth twisting into a ghastly smirk. One eye blazed crimson while the other was a solid jet black, but both held a captivating twinkle of authority that left us all rooted in place. “You don’t wanna get written out of this story thanks to one of my whims, do you? Then do yourselves a favor and shut the hell up.”
His words, blunt and ruthless, washed over everyone present. He hadn’t raised his voice, but still, his tone shook us all to the core. One warning from their boss was all it took for everyone to cease their squabbling and freeze in place...or rather, you’d think that’s all it would’ve taken.
“Excuse me? Who died and made you king, Ryuu?”
“If you want to act like you’re all high and mighty, please give back the thousand yen you borrowed from me first!”
“You got no one to blame for this ’cept yourself, anyway. We don’t listen to you ’cause you always go on and on about stupid shit that makes no sense.”
“How did an idiot like him end up as our boss, anyway...?”
But no, every one of them responded with immediate, unconcealed grumbles of dissatisfaction. Hajime, you’ve completely lost face with your crew! You went all out on threatening to murder them if they didn’t shut up, and they’re totally ignoring you! Your dignity as our boss is in shambles!
Hajime just sat there, silent, that dauntless grin still plastered across his face. Actually, it looked like it was frozen on his face. As best as I could tell, he hadn’t anticipated that nobody would get freaked out by his attempt at intimidation and was frantically reassessing the situation on the spot.
I couldn’t stand to watch him like that any longer, so I jumped in to defuse the situation. “C-Come on, everyone, let’s not turn this into a big fight or anything! It was all my fault for not paying attention in the first place, right?! Sorry, guys!” I desperately apologized.
Toki turned to look at me. “This ain’t something you have to be sorry for, Hitomi,” he grunted.
“Right!” shouted Aki. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Tomi!”
“I-I’m sorry too! I shouldn’t have been so loud,” Fan meekly apologized.
Even our resident brat himself, Akutagawa, got in on the action and muttered “Sorry” with a very cursory nod.
How am I this popular with the team?! When I was the one asking, everyone shifted into obedient mode at the drop of a hat. It seemed that I, the First Wing of Fallen Black, had become its most universally respected member without even realizing it. I was in charge of all the busywork like getting in touch with people and managing everybody’s schedules, so I suppose it made a certain amount of sense that they’d have a degree of faith in me.
Hajime struck the perfect balance between selfishness and incomprehensibility to make himself the worst possible candidate to head up an organization like ours. He’d done basically nothing to live up to the responsibilities you’d think the boss would hold, following his whims while I gradually fell into the position of his number two, or his advisor, or whatever. I’d had a lot of chances to develop a dialogue with everyone on the team as a result, but up until that moment, I hadn’t realized how overwhelming their approval of me was when compared to our actual leader.
“U-Umm, okay, so...why don’t you start from the top, Hajime? What were you trying to tell us all?” I asked.
“Huh? I mean...nah, whatever,” said Hajime. “Not like anyone’s going to listen to me, regardless...”
And now he’s sulking. Gah, why does this man have to be such a pain sometimes?! “That’s not true at all!” I insisted. “I love listening to you talk, Hajime! In fact, you’re the only person I’d bother listening to if I could get away with it! Everything you say is always so interesting, and so cool to boot!”
“Heh... Bwa ha ha!” laughed Hajime, suddenly wearing a triumphant smirk. Buttering him up had always been incredibly easy—you basically just had to call him cool, and the rest would sort itself out. “Then listen carefully, Hitomi!” said Hajime, who then turned to face the rest of our members. “You people better listen up too—this is gonna be plot relevant.”
Looks like we’re finally moving this meeting along, then.
“Leatia got in touch with me earlier,” said Hajime. “Seems they’ve finally tracked down F’s secret base.”
F was an organization that was largely made up of Rogue Players. They didn’t call themselves F, as far as I knew—the War Management Committee had come up with the name as a matter of convenience. I guess the idea was that since Rogue Players operated free from the Committee’s influence, the letter F was as appropriate of a name for them as any.
Under normal circumstances, each Player had a Spirit Handler who managed their participation in the war. Hajime and I were both managed by Leatia, for instance, and all of the other members of Fallen Black had their own spirit handlers as well. Generally, the Committee tried to keep each spirit assigned to three or four people.
If I were to try to describe the whole system with a simple metaphor, I’d say that Players were like manga creators, Spirit Handlers were like their editors, and the War Management Committee was like the publishing company the editors worked for...or something to that effect. Just like manga creators have contracts with the publishing houses that print their work, we Players were monitored by the Committee and registered with them as active participants in the War.
All that being said, a strangely large number of Players had been cropping up recently who weren’t registered with the Committee. Those were the Rogue Players, and if everything had been working as intended, they wouldn’t have existed in the first place.
“’Course, they have cropped up every once in a while in previous wars, apparently,” said Hajime. “When the spirits get sloppy, Rogues start showing up here and there.”
“But the number of them we’ve been dealing with lately feels like a little more than just ‘here and there,’” I noted.
“Riiight?” Aki listlessly drawled. “Remember those dudes Toks and Fanfan whacked the other day? Turned out they were Rogues. And the one you took out yesterday was one too, right, Ryuu?”
Aki, incidentally, had a personal policy of always calling people by nicknames. She also made a habit of never speaking in a polite tone to anyone, no matter who they were. It didn’t bother me, or anything, but I’d always been one of those serious-to-a-fault sort of girls who just couldn’t pull an attitude like that off, so I was maybe a little jealous of how effortlessly uninhibited she could be.
“According to Leatia, it’s painfully obvious that there’s a spirit wrapped up in this whole mess somehow,” said Hajime. “Some spirits don’t like how the War Management Committee handles things—hell, they don’t like how the whole War’s set up in general. Those spirits are putting together some sorta evil master plan to carry out here in the human world...or at least, that’s what the Committee thinks, anyway.”
I guess that means the spirits aren’t a totally united front, then. It hadn’t really occurred to me that them all being fellow spirits didn’t necessarily mean they’d all get along, but in retrospect, it was pretty obvious. Humans and spirits both had the capacity for individuality, and that meant that if you got a group of either of them together, there was just no way that group would end up monolithic in its opinions. We were the perfect example, actually—Fallen Black was an absolute mess of an organization that constantly felt like it was falling apart at the seams.
“So? What’re these F people after?” asked Toki with a slight grin. “The Committee said it was an evil master plan, but that’s just evil as far as they see it, right? Like, what if F was out to stop the whole damn War? I’d say that’d make ’em more humane than the Committee folks, eh?”
I felt myself twitch with surprise. The whole premise of the Spirit War was to give humans supernatural powers and make them fight to the death. If F was out to stop that—if they thought that using humans as participants in a sick game show for spirits to gamble on was unacceptable—then wouldn’t that make them the good ones? Wouldn’t that mean they were out to protect us humans?
While I was shaken by my newfound perspective on F, though, Hajime simply sneered. “Bwa ha ha! Come on, Toki, if you’re gonna tell a joke, you should at least try to make it funny! This War’s the best toy I could ever ask for, and if those little shits think they can take it away from me, they might as well already be dead!” he declared. His smile expressed a silent but almost joyous will to take on anyone who dared to challenge him.
Nobody could ever say something like that unless they were truly enjoying these battles of ours from the bottom of their heart.
“Of course,” Hajime continued, “This is all just guesswork. Nobody really knows for sure what F’s after. According to Leatia, the details are ‘still under investigation’ and we should ‘sit tight and not cause trouble’ for now.”
“Marilino said pretty much the same thing,” said Toki.
“So did Shedrim,” added Fan. Those were the names of their respective Spirit Handlers, by the way.
“What’s our plan, Kiryuu?” asked Akutagawa in a dull, gloomy tone. He’d been silent up until then, and it sort of felt like he was telling us to hurry up and get to the point already. Akutagawa, it seemed, wasn’t a fan of meandering meetings. Kids these days just don’t know how to be patient.
Hajime closed his eyes and spent a few seconds in thought. “Supernatural battle playbook, rule three: never assume your foe will be nice enough to explain how their power works to you,” he finally said. “So, yeah—how about we go on a little journey and scout out the enemy?”
Ugh, I knew it. Leatia clearly didn’t understand what made Hajime tick. If you told him to sit tight and not cause trouble, there was a one hundred percent chance that he would go out and raise hell. Nothing pleased Hajime more than rebelling against something, and what that something was didn’t really seem to matter much to him. He was a chuuni man-child who went out of his way to avoid growing up—of course he wouldn’t just “sit tight.” The other members seemed as unsurprised by his declaration as I was, by the way. We all knew that our boss was prone to pulling this sort of stunt.
“Let’s get out there and see what there is to see! We’ll determine if those fools are worthy enough for me, Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First, to pass judgment upon them!” Hajime said as he stood up and turned with just the right sort of snap to send his coat flapping through the air. He insisted on making his coat do that every single time he took any sort of action, and it always kicked up a cloud of dust in the room, so I really wished he’d cut it out—not that I’d have ever said that out loud.
“Now then—if we’re scouting out the enemy, that means it’s your time to shine,” Hajime continued, turning toward one of our members in particular: Head Hunting, aka Natsu Aki.
“Hah!” Aki laughed. Her eyes were sparkling with excitement behind her black-rimmed glasses as she twisted her braids around her fingers. “Yeah, figured you’d say that. This is where I can really show my stuff...though it’s also the only time I get to do jack squat.”
Aki’s power, Head Hunting, was incredibly specialized. It was, put simply, the power to analyze other people’s powers.
“All right,” said Aki, “I’m in! Time to get out there and earn my keep!”
Our scouting team ended up comprising Hajime, Aki, and me, making three members in total. I was in the driver’s seat, literally—we were heading for the enemy’s base using my car for transport.
Hajime and I were the only members of Fallen Black who weren’t in our teens, and I was the only one who owned a car. Toki used to be the second-in-command of an old-fashioned motorcycle gang called Cruise and had one of those huge, ridiculous motorcycles that he rode around all the time, but according to him, he had a personal policy against letting women ride on the thing, and he didn’t let guys ride double with him because he didn’t want to get that up close and personal with a dude. In short, he wouldn’t let anyone ride it at all. The guy had some pretty obnoxious personal policies, honestly.
Hajime, meanwhile, didn’t even have a driver’s license. His primary means of transport was an old, rickety, single-gear bicycle that he referred to as “the Plaintive Dame Dolor.” With the only other members who were old enough to drive out of the picture, I was left to essentially serve as Fallen Black’s dedicated chauffeur. As a side note, people with only one functional eye are allowed to get driver’s licenses in Japan. As long as your remaining one has good enough eyesight to pass the vision tests, they won’t give you a hard time about it.
“Agh!” Aki gagged, then succumbed to a coughing fit. “Ryuu! Come on, don’t smoke in the car! You’re stinking the whole place up! This thing’s tiny enough as it is!” she yelled. She was in the back seat, while Hajime was right in front of her, puffing on a cigarette he’d just lit up.
“Yeah? Well, tell it to Hitomi. She’s the one who decided to buy a clown car,” said Hajime.
Well, I happen to like this car, you jerks! Do you have any idea how long I wanted my own car for? I took out a loan for it and everything!
“This thing is way too small, yeah,” said Aki, doubling down on ridiculing my innocent vehicle. “Hey, Tomi, want one of our cars? The garage back home’s full of ’em.”
“N-No thanks, I’m good,” I quickly replied. Aki’s family was stupendously wealthy, and she definitely had a bit of that rich-girl attitude when it came to problem-solving sometimes. From a common sense perspective, of course, you couldn’t just give someone a car for free.
“But anyway, why’re you still smoking at all, Ryuu?” Aki continued. “Smoking’s not even in fashion in this day and age!”
“Hah!” scoffed Hajime. “I wouldn’t expect a child like you to understand the toxic charms of these bad boys,” he said, waving his cigarette in the air.
“No, I don’t! And ‘toxic charms,’ dude? Seriously?” Aki countered, then sighed. “You are such a waste of a pretty face, I swear. And the way you just have to flick out that stupid Zippo every time you light up’s such a turnoff. You think so too, right, Tomi?”
“R-Right,” I said after a moment’s pause. Did I secretly think that Hajime looked really cool when he was smoking? Yes. Did I think the way he flicked his Zippo open whenever he pulled it out was incredibly sexy? Yes. Could I bring myself to admit any of that to Aki? Not on your life.
“Hmph!” Hajime sullenly snorted, then tapped the ash from his cigarette into my car’s ashtray. I didn’t smoke, so said ashtray was pretty much exclusively reserved for Hajime’s use. As was the passenger’s seat, for that matter, much as I wished he could be the one driving me around instead.
“Anyway, how much longer ’til we’re there, Tomi?” asked Aki. “What was the place called again? The Yuzuhara food processing plant?”
“Right, and we’re almost there. About five more minutes,” I said as I flicked on my turn signal and slowed way down, taking extra care to check for oncoming traffic before I took a left turn at a four-way intersection. The plant in question was located on the outskirts of town, and it was where F had supposedly decided to set up shop. Ostensibly, the plant produced a variety of food products that were sent out to the local convenience stores and supermarkets. “Hey, Hajime?” I said a moment later. “We’re just scouting out the place this time, right?”
“Right. I already said that, didn’t I?” Hajime grunted.
“So, this isn’t going to get messy or anything, right?” I asked—or maybe “begged” would be the right word, in this case.
“Bwa ha ha!” Hajime cackled. “That depends on what sorta attitude they decide to take with us. If F’s full of dipshits who think they can get away with ruining my mood, I’ll send them straight to the Heavens’—”
“Ah, look! I see it, right over there!” shouted Aki as she leaned forward, sticking her head between the front seats and pointing ahead of us. Hajime, whose catchphrase she’d interrupted, just scowled. These things happen, Hajime—don’t let it get to you.
A little ways down the road, in the direction Aki was pointing, loomed the large factory we’d come all this way to check out.
The Yuzuhara food processing plant looked surprisingly well maintained, at least from the outside. It was a several-story building with clean white walls and a long, slender smokestack that looked like it was made to pierce right through the clouds. A variety of trucks, forklifts, and heavy machinery were parked around the facility, as well.
The idea was that we’d start our scouting mission out by taking a nice, long look around the facility’s exterior from a safe distance, but it wasn’t long before Hajime got bored and decided that we should make our way into the complex instead. Before I knew it, I found myself driving my car toward what looked like a gateway that led into the plant grounds.
“H-Hey, Hajime? Is this really a good idea?!” I asked.
“Is what a good idea?” Hajime asked back.
“This is the enemy’s base, isn’t it? Is it really a good idea to just march right in through the front door?”
“Hmm.” Hajime paused for a moment. “Meh, we’ll make it work. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”
Could he even get any more careless? As I passed through the gateway and slowly drove deeper into the complex, I soon noticed somebody up ahead of us. Two somebodies, in fact—men dressed like security guards and standing in the road, blocking our way. I slammed on the brakes, bringing us to a sudden stop, and gulped. There we were, in the hideout of a mysterious organization with unclear motives, about to make first contact with their members on their turf for the first time!
“Natsu,” Hajime prompted, lowering his voice to a near whisper. I glanced over to find him smiling calmly. He seemed totally relaxed, which put him in stark contrast to me and my rapidly fraying nerves.
Aki leaned into the front of the car again and took a look at the men in front of us, squinting slightly as she activated her power. “Nope,” she said a moment later. “Those two’re ordinary humans. Neither of them are Players.” Her power, Head Hunting, told her what other people’s powers did at a glance, which naturally also meant that it let her know whether or not they had powers at all.
“So then they’re ordinary civilians who have no idea what’s going on here?” I wondered out loud. “Ah, or maybe F has non-Players working for them as well?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. If they’re not Players, then we can deal with them easily enough. Right, Hitomi?” said Hajime, shooting me a glance. I nodded, then I slowly drove my car up and stopped in front of the guards.
“Hey, sorry,” said one of the men as I rolled my window down. “This place is off-limits. Gonna have to ask you to leave now.”
The man’s tone was pretty casual for a guard, and now that I could get a closer look at the two of them, I noticed that neither man looked like the professional sort. Their brightly colored hair and slack, poorly fitting uniforms only reinforced that impression. They looked like they were probably around my age, and it was easy to infer that they were a couple college kids who’d taken on part-time jobs to earn some quick and easy pocket money.
“Sorry about this,” I said, putting on the best ingratiating smile I could manage. “I was trying to find a good spot to make a U-turn, and I sort of just ended up driving all the way in... So, umm, what sort of factory is this?” I casually added.
“Yeah, uhh...sorry,” said the guard. “We’re just part-timers here, so no clue, honestly.”
Thought so. It seemed my first impression of them had been spot on.
“Bwa ha ha! Then quit wasting our time and clear the road, you nameless grunts! Better run while you can—this place is about to turn into a battlefield,” said Hajime in the most condescending tone he could possibly muster as he stepped out of the car. The guards looked stunned, and for a moment they just stood there, totally stiff. The complete confidence with which Hajime had delivered a line like that coupled with his eccentric outfit seemed to have left them thoroughly befuddled.
“What?” one of the guards finally spat. “Wh-Who’re you?”
“Dude, look at his eye—it’s red,” said the other. Their expressions quickly shifted to suspicion, with a distinct trace of fear mixed in.
Hajime, however, kept up his usual grin. “A dry wind blows today. On days like these...this right eye of mine starts to ache,” he said, spreading his fingers like he was demonstrating the left hand rule and covering half of his face in some sort of hilariously edgy pose. I’m sure he thought that line made him sound cool, but when I really thought about what he’d actually said, it basically just made it sound like he had a bad case of dry eye. “Have you fools ever heard of the Evil Eye?” Hajime asked, still maintaining that same pose and totally ignoring the guards’ obvious astonishment.
I, of course, had heard more about evil eyes than I’d ever wanted to. Some sources described them as a type of magic that placed a curse on whoever the user glared at, and some described them and their effects in much more esoteric terms. Every corner of the world seemed to have its own evil eye legend, and there were as many names for the concept as there were conflicting descriptions of how they worked. Supposedly, they all traced back to European folklore, if you looked back far enough, and one theory proposed that the origin of the concept could be found in old-school European witchcraft.
So, yeah—Hajime’s right eye was an Evil Eye, granted to him by a powerful witch...or at least that’s the explanation he provided, anyway. He also claimed that since it wasn’t his, he had a hard time controlling it by nature, and also that he could only unleash a third of its true potential as a result. And yes, to be absolutely clear, none of this was even remotely true.
“No clue what I’m talking about, eh?” said Hajime. “In that case, you’d better savor every second of this. Savor this eye of calamity, and bear witness to the iridescent nightmare trapped within!”
At that point, Hajime shot me the quickest of glances, making eye contact through the windshield. That was his way of signaling me to activate my power. I raised my hand, covering up my right eye—the eye that couldn’t see to begin with. Covering up that eye didn’t impair my vision at all, and I didn’t really have to do it either. I’d just somehow gotten in the habit of doing so whenever I used my power, for no particular reason.
“Now...” said Hajime. “Look into my eye!”
At that exact moment, I unleashed my power: Eternal Wink. And barely an instant later, the guards’ eyes lost their focus. Blank looks came over their faces, and they just stood there, bolt upright, vacant, and motionless. My power had worked just as it was supposed to.
“All right, part-timers—better go earn those paychecks,” said Hajime, giving the two of them a friendly pat on the shoulders.
“Okay,” the guards droned, nodding listlessly. They looked completely dead to the world.
“Let’s go,” said Hajime as he climbed back into the passenger’s seat. I drove right past the guards, and this time they didn’t even try to stop me. About a minute from now, they’d forget everything that had just happened and go back to manning their posts, completely unaware that we’d ever been there.
“The power of the Evil Eye is mighty indeed,” said Hajime. “Yes, mighty enough to give even I, its wielder, chills.”
“Yeah, uhh, that’s not your power, Ryuu. It’s Tomi’s, remember?” jabbed Aki, cutting through Hajime’s self-congratulatory monologue with ease.
She was right, of course. My power was responsible for manipulating the guards and for their memory loss, even if Kiryuu’s eye had done the deed. Eternal Wink was what had enabled him to do so: it let me grant others the power of the Evil Eye. I could give it to anyone within my own line of sight. As for why we called it “giving people an Evil Eye,” well, I had Hajime to thank for that—of course he was the one who’d come up with the terminology.
What could the Evil Eyes I gave people actually do? They were pretty versatile, really. They could show people elaborate illusions, put them to sleep for brief periods of time, and slightly tamper with their memories, among other things. Their effects were never that tremendously severe in scale, but they were pretty handy in a wide variety of circumstances. The power also had plenty of limitations, of course, but when up against a non-Player, basically none of them applied, making it almost impossible to beat. I couldn’t give myself an Evil Eye, incidentally—I could only give it to someone else within my field of vision, and that someone could only use it on anyone who made eye contact with them.
I have to admit: as far as powers went, mine was unnecessarily convoluted for sure. It was what I’d awakened to, though, so my only real choice was to accept it and make the best of the situation. “The malevolent eye that rules over the Evil Eyes: Eternal Wink” was what Hajime called it...or something along those lines, anyway. While I never quite figured out what distinguished a “malevolent eye” from an Evil Eye in his internal fantasy world, keeping track of how his delusions and the real world related to each other really wasn’t my responsibility. The point of all this is that I could use my own eye to grant Evil Eyes to other people, and that’s really all that mattered to me.
I drove deeper and deeper into the factory grounds, eventually arriving at a parking lot. There weren’t many ordinary cars like mine parked there, but there were quite a few trucks of varying sizes. “What next, Hajime? Should we stop here and go in on foot?” I asked.
“Yeah, I guess,” Hajime said, then stopped to stretch and let out a massive yawn. “On second thought, I’m getting bored. Let’s just go home.”
“Now?! After we’ve come this far?!” I shouted. I never would’ve dreamed that was what he’d propose, and I was caught completely unprepared. What is he even talking about?!
“I used my Evil Eye already, and I can only do that once a day. No real point digging any deeper now,” Hajime explained.
“That’s not how it works!” I wailed. “You just made that up! You can use my Evil Eye as many times as you want! It’s my power, I know all about its limitations!” Ahh, dang it, what am I supposed to do now?! This is so completely out of left field! Why would Hajime’s mood have to swing toward boredom now?! I bet that all he really wanted was to do some posing and use my Evil Eye, and now that he’s done that, he’s satisfied and doesn’t care about the rest anymore!
“This right eye of mine isn’t mine by right,” said Hajime. “There’s no telling when I could lose control over its powers. I can use it once a day, and if I break that limit—if I overextend—my world will be plunged into eternal darkness.”
“Then get plunging, already!” Gaah, screw this, seriously! Why do chuunis have to be so obsessed with their powers coming with limitations and risks and stuff?! Why does that make it cooler for them?! They’re always all “I can only use it for this many minutes a day,” or “this many times a day,” or it only works on their right hand, or on one eye! Or using it drains their life force, or eats away at their existence, or plunges them into darkness!
“Wait, like, for real? You wanna go home now? No way, right?” said Aki. “You brought me all the way out here, so shouldn’t I at least scope out their boss’s power or something?”
I couldn’t have agreed more. I hadn’t been all that enthusiastic about this scouting mission to begin with, but after having come all this way, I wanted to accomplish something before we left. I didn’t want this whole excursion to turn out to be a waste of time and energy!
“Whatever! Let’s just go,” said Hajime. “Oh, that’s right—I almost forgot I have a shift tonight. Gotta go home and get some shut-eye before I go to work.”
About half a year earlier, Hajime had found a job as a night shift clerk at a convenience store. Why had he gotten a job after spending so very long bumming it up? Simple: to pay back a debt he owed me. On the day I set foot into the world of supernatural battles—the day Hajime had shown up at my doorstep bloodied and battered from a battle with some unidentified foe—his beloved coat and sunglasses had both been damaged beyond the point of repair. He’d needed to replace them, of course, and he’d ended up borrowing money from me in order to do so. And not just a little money either—both of them, it seemed, were way fancier than they looked and cost a ton.
“Wait, you’re still working, Ryuu?” Aki asked disbelievingly. “Seriously, I gotta say: working at a convenience store? Not the right job for you at all.”
“I completely agree,” I said. “Saying he sticks out like a sore thumb at work would be an understatement.” I’d taken Aki and Fan along to make fun of—erm, to visit him at work once, and the striped shirt they had him wearing as a uniform suited him so poorly, it was kind of incredible.
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking it’s about time I call it quits. I’ve paid back most of what I owe Hitomi anyway, and my manager keeps nagging me to dye my hair black,” said Hajime, adding “And that’s after I told him that this silver hair’s a sign of the sins I’ve committed and the punishment that was inflicted upon me...” under his breath a moment later in a truly grief-stricken tone of voice.
Once, long ago, Hajime had gone through some grand, heroic struggle that left him so traumatized, his hair had lost its color in a flash, leaving it the strikingly bright silver color it was today...according to him. In truth, of course, I helped him dye his hair on a regular basis. Getting your hair that shade requires you to totally bleach it first, and bleaching your hair to the point that it turns flat white takes a lot more effort than making it light brown or blonde. It’s easy to screw up, and even if you do manage to pull it off, it leaves your hair scratchy and brittle. It was a long, painful process of trial and error, but recently, I’d finally figured out a technique to get him perfectly silver hair every time. Chuunibyou’s really more trouble than it’s worth!
“Wait!” I shouted, snapping back to reality. “This isn’t the time to be sitting around and chatting! What’re we gonna do? Are we seriously just turning around and going home?”
I couldn’t keep idling in the parking lot forever, that was for sure. Speaking as the designated driver, I wanted to figure out if I was shutting my car off or turning around and leaving as soon as possible.
“Bwa ha ha! Do we keep scouting, or turn back here? We’ll let fate decide—it’s time to flip a co—” Hajime began, but then stopped halfway through his sentence as his expression shifted ever so slightly. For just a moment, that flippant grin of his vanished and his eyes widened. And, in that same moment, Hajime reached out toward me. He moved like a master swordsman drawing his blade and striking down his foe in the same fluid motion, laying his hand on my thigh and pressing down hard. I could feel the warmth of his palm on the skin of my leg—he’d reached down just past the end of my skirt.
What.
N-No, seriously, what? Is...Is he groping me?! Here?! Now?! N-No way...why?! Has he been into thighs this whole time? Does Hajime have an absolute territory fetish?! N-No, stop it—ah, I mean, i-it’s not that I’m not a little okay with this...gaaah, but not while Aki’s watching!
In the span of a split second, an explosion of wild fantasies consumed my brain. Meanwhile, Hajime pushed down on my thigh. Pushing on someone’s thigh, by extension, means moving the rest of their leg, and when you do that to someone who’s sitting in the driver’s seat with their foot on the gas, the results are pretty predictable. Pedal-to-the-metal predictable.
My car’s engine roared as we rocketed forward. Aki and I shrieked as the inertia of that sudden and violent acceleration threw all of us back in our seats. She’d been leaning forward when Hajime hit the gas, and she hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, so she ended up slamming rear-first into the back seat.
“Agh, ouch... What the crap, guys?!” Aki shouted.
“Y-Yeah, what was that for, Hajime?! A-And move your hand already!” I yelled in turn.
We didn’t spend all that long chewing him out in the end though. A second later, we were interrupted by an incredibly loud, roaring crash from behind us. It was a dull, heavy noise, like something really big had just been smashed to pieces, or crushed, maybe. I reflexively glanced at the rearview mirror, and the sight that greeted me made my jaw drop: a semitruck was sticking up out of the ground. It looked like it had driven straight down from the sky and collided with the pavement front first—directly into the spot where I’d been idling my car just a second ago.
“I’m taking the wheel!” Hajime shouted. I was so distracted by the disaster behind us that I’d barely even noticed the hint of panic in his voice as he reached over, grabbing the steering wheel with his left hand and wrenching it to the right.
I finally managed to return my focus to our front, just in time to see the truck that was barreling directly toward us. Hajime had acted just in time, though, and the instant before it plowed into my car, we swerved abruptly to the right. Once again, the law of inertia sent me tumbling to the left, where I—of course—slammed right into Hajime. Specifically, I found my face buried in his chest.
“Wh-Wh-Whaaa?!”
“Stay still!” shouted Hajime.
“O-Okaaay,” I droned. His voice had a certain something to it when he got serious, and hearing that at point-blank range was a little more than I could take at the moment. The sheer shame of it all ended up occupying most of my attention, though I did spare just a little bit of thought to feel bad for Aki, who was shrieking her lungs out as she got tossed from one side of the back seat to the other.
“Back with us, Hitomi?” said Hajime. “The rest is up to you. Just keep driving, as fast as this thing’ll go!”
“Wha—huh?!”
Hajime lifted his hand from my thigh, let go of the wheel, and shifted back into his seat. I frantically grabbed the wheel in his stead and put my attention back on the road, right around the same time that Aki started raising hell behind us.
“Ow, ow, ow! That hurt, dammit! What the hell’s going on?!” she wailed.
“Bwa ha ha! Isn’t it obvious? We’re under attack!” said Hajime, grinning as he spun around to look over at the factory’s entrance. I spared a glance as well, and I saw a man standing there, one hand raised in our direction. His face had a certain refined look to it, and he was wearing a clean, well-kept suit. His hair was carefully arranged—definitely waxed—and he had a pair of glasses on that gave him an intellectual sort of look.
“We sure are right on the enemy’s doorstep,” said Hajime. “Slipped my mind for a minute there!”
I didn’t know what to say to that. He was right, obviously, but he was also the one who’d suggested we march right up to the enemy’s secret base and the one who’d let his guard down when we actually went through with it!
“This works out, though,” Hajime continued. “This factory was the right place after all—Leatia’s info was on the money. Most likely, that four-eyes over there’s a Rogue Player associated with F.”
“I-Is this really the moment for—gah!” I screamed, slamming on the brakes as another truck suddenly sped right in front of us across the path I’d been driving in. I knew we’d be sitting ducks if I stayed in one place, so I slammed the accelerator again a moment later, shooting us forward once more. “If he’s a Rogue Player, then we won’t be able to use my Evil Eye on him, right?”
“Right. I already used it once today, after all. It’s a one-a-day power, and if I break that taboo, I’d—”
“Not the time, Hajime!” I wasn’t even close to composed enough to play along with his chuuni crap right now.
The Evil Eyes I could give people had the power to exert a subtle degree of control over the minds of whoever made eye contact with their users. It was a useful power, for sure, but it had an awful lot of limitations to make up for that. The best way I could put it was that if whoever you tried to use it on was wary of you, it wouldn’t end up working properly on them. That’s all it took—the slightest distrust, and they’d block out your influence over them, just like that. There wasn’t a hard-and-fast rule that they couldn’t be used on other Players, but if the person in question saw the Evil Eye’s bearer as their enemy, it was basically hopeless.
My power was a fiddly one, no question about it. I’d found a number of ways to make use of it anyway, to be fair...but this was clearly not my time to shine. “A-Aki!” I shouted.
“No worries—I already got a look at him,” Aki replied.
All right! If Aki had managed to look at him, then the odds were sure to tip in our favor. After all, that was all she needed to use Head Hunting and scope out his power.
“He’s a Player, all right,” said Aki. “His power’s—”
“Magnetism, right?” said Hajime, suddenly cutting her off and stealing her line. Aki and I gaped at him. “None of the trucks that’ve been driving at us have had anyone in them,” Hajime explained. “Mister Glasses over there’s been manipulating them, most likely. My first guess would’ve been that he had some sorta telekinesis, but his attacks have been too repetitive for that to make sense. If he were telekinetic, he’d be throwing all sorts of crap at us, not just trucks—those logs over there, chunks of concrete, you name it. Plus, the trucks’ve been kicking up plenty of dust, but the way that some of it’s moving isn’t natural. That’s iron sand in the air, for sure. All the iron sand on the ground’s getting picked up by the magnetic fields he’s making. A power like that could move trucks around no problem—it all checks out.”
“Y-Yeah, you got it,” said Aki. “His power lets him manipulate the force of magnetism—but that’s not all! He has another trick up his sleeve!” She sounded a little uneasy, like she was desperate not to let her one big chance to be useful get stolen away from her.
One of the biggest advantages to Aki’s power was that it let her perceive aspects of her opponent’s powers that they hadn’t even used yet. If they had a trick up their sleeve, or a trump card, or a special move, or a final form, she could render all that secrecy meaningless. Everything there was to know about their powers was hers to peruse—that was what made Head Hunting so remarkably useful.
“His trump card’s—”
“A rail gun, a coil gun, or a solenoid quench gun, right?” said Hajime, stealing her line once again.
Aki’s jaw dropped once more, and she flapped her lips silently for a couple seconds before managing to speak up again. “H-His trump card’s a coil gun...b-but, how did you know?”
“Bwa ha ha! People with electric or magnetic powers always have some sort of EML trick up their sleeves—that’s electromagnetic launcher, by the way. Rail guns, which drive a projectile through the air by taking advantage of the left-hand rule to apply a Lorentz force to it. Coil guns, which use the linear motor principle to propel a projectile by way of magnetic repulsion. Solenoid quench guns, which use the corkscrew rule to launch projectiles using solenoid coils. There’s plenty of other EML systems too—thermal guns are pretty well known, but those need a ton of electrical input, so you couldn’t pull them off with just magnetism.”
I was simultaneously impressed and exasperated beyond belief. When it came to supernatural battles and supernatural battles alone, Hajime displayed truly incredible powers of insight and reasoning, pulling from genuinely astonishing stores of obscure knowledge. He’d go on and on about the situation, the enemy, their weapons, their skills, all in the most intense jargon he could apply to them. For a lifelong chuuni who spent every day fantasizing and internally simulating the most out-there battles they could possibly come up with, that sort of theorizing was apparently a piece of cake. Magnetism, meanwhile, was as played out as a power could get. Hajime had almost certainly beaten foes with that sort of power hundreds of times before...in his imagination, anyway.
“Ugggh,” groaned Aki. “Ryuu, you giant jerkwad! Thief! Cheater!” she wailed, kicking the back of his seat.
Hey, cut that out! This is my car!
“Quit flailing around, Natsu,” said Hajime. “Just hurry up and do your job. You still haven’t shown what your power’s truly capable of!”
“Huh?”
“What’s his power’s name?”
“...”
Aki made the most conflicted expression I’d ever seen on her. Strictly speaking, Head Hunting let her learn about her opponent’s powers by sorting through their memories. As such, if a Player decided to name their power for whatever reason, she’d be able to pick up on that as well. It was like a tiny piece of worthless info thrown in as a bonus alongside the actually valuable information her power gave her...but in Hajime’s eyes, that useless scrap was the very essence of Head Hunting’s capabilities.
“He hasn’t named it,” Aki finally said in a profoundly disinterested tone. “He and his allies just call it ‘magnetism.’”
We’d never actually encountered an enemy with a properly named power so far. Some of them had “names,” like “fire” or “water manipulation,” but those were really just flavorless descriptions, not proper name-names. Not one of our opponents so far had given their power a flashy name like the ones Hajime had given ours.
“Sheesh... Yet another fool of a foe who doesn’t understand the true meaning of a supernatural battle?” sighed Hajime, his voice laced with disappointment. “Surely there has to be one somewhere out there—a proud and honorable warrior who fights by the same creed that I do,” he mumbled, gazing out into the distance and apparently imagining this still-unknown warrior he’d yet to cross paths with. Personally, if he’d asked me whether or not someone like that was really out there waiting for him, I’d have responded with an unambiguous “Of course there friggin’ isn’t!”
“Huh? W-Wait a second,” I said. I’d been frantically dodging trucks the whole time we’d been carrying out our little strategy meeting (if you could even call it that—it seemed more like aimless chitchat to me), but suddenly, something weird happened. My car...stopped. I still had the accelerator pressed down as far as it would go, but I’d gradually slowed down until we were finally at a standstill.
Huh? What’s going on? I didn’t hit anything, and I haven’t let up on the gas! I hear the engine running, the tires are spinning...but we’re not moving! Why?
“Oh. I get it. Yeah, that’d do it,” said Hajime with a satisfied nod. “If he can move a truck, then of course he can move a minicar like this.”
I gasped. Suddenly, I knew exactly what was happening. It didn’t matter how much the tires spun—they’d never take us anywhere if they were spinning in the air, which they were, because the whole car was floating! He’d magnetically captured my car in the same way he’d been tossing the trucks around!
“O-Oh god, we’re floating! We’re floating, Hajime!” I yelled.
“The question is, will he smash us into the ground, or will he send another truck to grind us into paste while we’re stopped?”
“Why the hell are you so calm, Ryuu?! Stop analyzing this and do something!” shrieked Aki. “Aaagh, too high! Way too high!”
The interior of my car had descended into pure pandemonium, and a second later, I felt us jolt to the side. I knew in an instant that I was about to die, and I reflexively squeezed my eye shut, saying a brief, all-but-silent prayer.
“Bwa ha ha! Come on now, Hitomi! You’re my right hand, aren’t you? What’s the loyal wing of a fallen angel who rebelled against God doing praying to Him for salvation?”
To make a long story short, I did not die. Nothing happened at all, in fact. After around five seconds with my eye shut tight, something did finally jolt the car, but it was a gentle sort of jolt, not at all like the violent crash of a truck obliterating us. No, it was the sensation of my car touching back down, and when I opened my eyes, I found us once again on the ground, over in a corner of the parking lot. We’d been pretty much in its center when we’d lifted off, so we’d clearly traveled quite the distance.
“If you’ve got time to pray to God, use it to lavish me with praise instead,” said Hajime with an arrogant smirk. It only took me a moment to realize what had happened.
Oh, of course! Nothing says magnetism’s the only force that can act on my car—gravity can move it around just as well!
“I get it—you used your power, right? Nice one, Ryuu! You’re the man!” shouted Aki.
Lucifer’s Strike: the power to desecrate the force of gravity itself. Magnetism had lifted my car up, and gravity had pulled it right back down again.
“All right,” said Hajime. “We’ve gotten the car chase out of the way, so I think it’s time for some hand-to-hand combat.” He stepped out from my car, turning his gaze toward the entrance to the factory. There stood the man in glasses, looking back at Hajime with a dissatisfied frown.
“Hmm? Hey, now that I can get a good look at him, isn’t that guy actually pretty hot?” noted Aki. She wasn’t wrong—he was definitely on the handsome side. The suit and the glasses worked well together and made him look like the sort of man who could hold down a steady job.
“Hah! We’ll see how hot he is after I’ve beaten his face into a bloody pulp!” barked Hajime before setting off across the parking lot, his trench coat flapping dramatically behind him.
Why would his coat do that when there wasn’t any wind to speak of? Because...ugh...Hajime was using his power to make it happen. He made a point of constantly applying just a little gravity to his coat in just the right way to make it trail stylishly through the air at all times. It was quite possibly the worst use of a god-tier power I could conceive of.
“A black coat and round sunglasses... I presume that would make you Kiryuu Hajime?” said the man with glasses as Hajime drew closer to him. He spoke in a calm, polite tone of voice. “I’ve heard rumors about you. They say people are calling you Ancient Lucifer.”
“Yeah, I guess they are,” said Hajime.
“I guess they are,” my rear! You were the one who made us do all that “stealth marketing” to spread it around, and you know it!
“So, tell me. What’s F getting up to in that factory?” asked Hajime, gesturing at the building behind the man.
The man pushed up his glasses with a finger and faintly smiled. “Do you really think I’m going to answer that?”
“Bwa ha ha! Fair enough—that makes this nice and easy. Let’s get this battle started, then!” said Hajime, his mouth curving into a bloodthirsty grin—the ghastly smile of a god of carnage. “Your face is gonna have ‘QUALITY’ written all over it when I’m done with you!”
The battle lasted about five minutes, all told. It was a forgone conclusion, really. Gravity and magnetism were simply on completely different levels of the supernatural power spectrum. Weighed against the ability to exert your will over anything and everything with mass, the ability to manipulate metal was petty and insignificant. Being able to accelerate your movements by making the ground repel your body magnetically would never let you keep up with someone who could invert heaven and earth whenever he so chose. Even the man’s so-called trump card, the coil gun, might as well have been a squirt gun in the face of an all-consuming black hole. The difference in their powers’ capabilities was as overwhelming as Kiryuu Hajime’s victory—or so I’d thought.
“Just so you know, it didn’t end like this because your power was weaker than mine,” said Hajime, spitting in the face of the theory I’d only just formulated. He was standing atop a truck in the center of the parking lot. That truck was atop another truck, beneath which lay another—a tower of trucks that looked almost like some sort of modern art installation. Hajime stood up at the very top of that tower...or maybe I should say that he reigned over the parking lot from its pinnacle.
His opponent dangled by his neck in Hajime’s firm, one-handed grip. The bespectacled man didn’t seem like he was fully conscious and just hung there, not resisting at all anymore. Hajime had made good on his promise—the man’s formerly handsome face looked like a misshapen animation error after how many times Hajime had bludgeoned it.
Speaking of animation, you see scenes where someone holds their opponent up in the air one-handed like that quite a lot in anime. That’s much harder to do in real life than they make it look, though. Holding all the body weight of a fully grown man up in the air with one arm would take a ridiculous amount of strength...unless you were Hajime, in which case you could let gravity do the heavy lifting and manage the pose with ease. Kiryuu Hajime: a man who’d spare no effort when it came to using his superpower to make himself look cool.
“No,” said Hajime, “you couldn’t match me...because you never gave your power a name.”
The bespectacled man said nothing. I couldn’t say for sure if he was unconscious or just speechless. Yeah, I can relate. What on earth is Hajime talking about, and why did he pick now to bring it up?
“You wouldn’t think highly of a parent who didn’t bother naming their kid, would you?” Hajime continued. “No, you’re damn right you wouldn’t! And a power is to those who take part in supernatural battles as a katana is to the samurai who wields it: it is their very soul itself! Players like you who bear no love for their power shall never be smiled upon by the goddess of victory!”
Hajime looked up at his foe as he spoke, his speech passionate—downright fervent—for no good reason I could identify. “In short, there’s just one reason you lost,” he said, his black and crimson eyes fixed upon the brutalized face of his foe. There wasn’t so much as an inkling of respect in that gaze of his—only derision. The way he looked at the man was a manifestation of the purest of contempt, the fiercest of rage, and the most tragic desolation.
“You just weren’t chuuni enough.”
Hajime spat the words, full of scorn, disdain, resentment, and derision...as well as an ever so slight trace of irritation—of dejection. Then he lowered his arm for just a moment, only to hurl the man upward a second later. He soared into the air, unnaturally high thanks to Hajime’s gravitational influence, until finally, the natural laws of physics took hold and he plummeted down once more. He didn’t make it all the way to the ground, though, as partway through his descent, Kiryuu Hajime rose to meet him—and pierced his hand directly through the man’s chest in a movement too fast for the eye to follow.
“Let ye be branded by the mark of depravity: Sinner’s Sanction ⪧!”
A crimson flower bloomed from the man’s back. Hajime’s arm had struck like a bolt of lightning, penetrating his heart with pinpoint precision.
Sinner’s Sanction ⪧: piercing like the brightest light; piercing like the sharpest spear. Hajime usually used his power over gravity to form a surface, to crush and bludgeon. For this move, however, he wielded it to create a single point. He condensed all the energy his power could output into a single directional force, resulting in a lance strong enough to penetrate even the mightiest of shields with ease.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Hajime withdrew his arm from his foe’s chest. It had been instant death for the man, of course—no one could live after having their heart run through. That being said, this was the Spirit War, and he would be back before we knew it, his memories and power gone forever.
“Bwa ha ha,” the victor cackled from atop his tower of trucks. He looked down upon the broken, fallen corpse of his erstwhile opponent...and he sneered. His right arm—the arm with which he’d dealt the killing blow—was covered with gore, and blood speckled his face and clothes. His formerly monochromatic image was now tainted with a slick, sickening shade of scarlet. Hajime raised his bloodstained hand to his mouth, stuck out his tongue...but then stopped just an instant before he went through with licking it, glancing down at me and Aki.
“Supernatural battle playbook, rule thirty: don’t actually drink the blood of your enemies.”
“Yeah. Good rule,” I said with a nod. That’d be just plain unhygienic...though of course, that didn’t stop plenty of characters in media from going through with it anyway.
Things got a little out of hand after that.
Thanks to Hajime’s full-fledged supernatural battle out in the parking lot, our cover was blown wide open. A flood of enemies stormed out of the factory, and we were forced to beat a hasty retreat. Frankly, we weren’t the right group to overcome numbers like those—Aki and I weren’t fighters, and not even Hajime would’ve been able to protect us while also carrying on the fight himself (though I knew for a fact that he’d never admit it).
Our flight had been a literal one: we’d temporarily abandoned my car, joined hands with Hajime, and taken to the air to make a gravity-defying escape. Holding our hands was all that Hajime had to do to bring us along by way of his power, thankfully, and before I knew it, we’d reached the very center of the compound. Our enemies had done a good job of blocking off one exit after another, leaving us with no choice but to flee deeper and deeper in until we were about as deep as we could get.
“Well, we were right about one thing,” said Aki. “This place is lousy with Rogue players. Every one of the guys chasing us had powers.”
The center of the compound happened to be where its tallest building was located, and the three of us were currently on that very structure. Not on top of it, to be clear, but rather on one of its walls. Hajime had shifted the vector of gravity in a localized vicinity around us, allowing us to sit on the wall as if it were the ground. It felt very, very weird, but I knew I’d just have to put up with that for now. I was exhausted from all that running away...or really, I couldn’t keep up physically or mentally with all the physics-bending we’d done over the course of our escape, and so we were pausing for a moment in the best blind spot we could find to take a rest. I couldn’t even handle most thrill rides, so gravity-inversion-enabled flight was pretty rough on me in all sorts of ways.
“Three fire-types, two wind-types, one who’s got some sorta telekinesis thing going on, one water-type, one that uses shadows somehow...a couple rare ones too—one who manipulates the weather, and one who manipulates probability,” said Aki, listing off all the powers she’d managed to scope out so far. If we could at least get a grasp of what sort of abilities the organization was working with, then this scouting mission wouldn’t feel like a total waste of effort.
“Hmph,” snorted Hajime. “Not exactly inspiring, huh? Feels like the sort of powers a bunch of grunts would have. These guys have some real expendable-underling energy going,” he grumbled, sounding completely uninterested in them or their abilities. He let out a long, listless sigh. “I had high hopes for the magnetism guy, but was that ever a letdown...ugh. Is there no one here tough enough to quench my thirst for battle?”
Hajime’s lapse into one of his usual hyperdramatic chuuni speeches sparked a thought in my mind. The way he’d said that F had been a letdown had grabbed my attention, specifically. When Hajime had beaten the man with glasses, he’d definitely looked a little dissatisfied with the encounter. I was sure that he’d been disappointed by how his enemy hadn’t been that tough after all and how he hadn’t had the chance to pull out all the stops and make full use of his own power...but maybe I was wrong? Maybe he wasn’t just looking for a chance to show off, but rather for something more specific in his foes? If so, what could that something be?
“How’re you doing, Hitomi?” Hajime asked, breaking me out of the stupor I’d sunk into.
“Huh...? Ah, right—I’m feeling a lot better,” I said. “Sorry for forcing you guys to take a break.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Hajime. “You’re gonna have to put up with a bit more of this, though. Once the crowd in the parking lot thins out, we’ll grab the car and make a break for it.”
“Right!”
For all intents and purposes, our scouting mission had been called off the second the enemy had discovered us. I wasn’t totally sure yet if the whole mission had worked out as a net positive for us, but we hadn’t lost anything in particular by coming out here, so I figured I’d count it as good enough all around. I placed a hand on the wall beneath me to push myself to my feet, then flinched back as I realized that I was about to push down hard on a window. Yikes, that was close! I would’ve been in huge trouble if it broke beneath me! I just can’t get used to having gravity shifted by ninety degrees...
“Wait...huh?” Glancing at the window I’d almost just pushed against, it hit me that I could catch a glimpse into the building’s interior through it. All the other windows I’d seen so far had had their curtains drawn, but this one’s had been left open just a crack.
The inside of the building was, in a word, vast. It seemed the place had been built without much in the way of interior walls, so it was pretty much just one big chamber that stretched on and on, horizontally and vertically. I guess it sort of looked like a school gym, actually. A couple dozen people were inside, hustling about here and there as they worked on something, though I couldn’t quite tell what.
What really caught my eye was a glass tube in the center of the chamber. It seemed to be filled with some sort of green liquid, and everything in the room was set up around it. Pipes and meters were hooked up to the tube here and there, and a few monitors nearby had graphs and data tables displayed on them. Inside the tube, floating in the green fluid, was some sort of black-and-white mass. The white parts looked like fabric, maybe, and the black parts were...a ton of seaweed? I shook my head and took a closer look. No, not seaweed...hair?
I drew in a sharp, gasping breath. It was a girl. A girl was floating inside the tube. Her hair had to be several meters long, and it swayed gently in whatever sort of liquid she was suspended in. She was quite small, and only a couple scraps of dingy white fabric were covering her petite body. She wasn’t moving so much as a muscle; her eyes were closed, so it almost looked like she was asleep.
“H-Hajime, Aki! C-Come look at this!” I frantically whispered. The two of them walked over to me and peeked into the window.
“The hell...?” muttered Hajime. “Are they waterboarding an innocent little girl? Did I miss something, or was F always an association of sadistic pedos?”
“Stop joking about this!” I snapped. “Seriously...is she okay? She’s... She’s not dead, right?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Hajime. “Can’t exactly see well enough to tell from here.”
“Do you think F might’ve kidnapped her? If so, then we have to save—”
“That’s not it!” said Aki, her voice trembling as she cut me off. I looked over to find her face pallid and her eyes wide. A bead of cold sweat dripped down her cheek. “That’s not some ordinary little girl they kidnapped—not by a long shot! She’s... That girl’s...” Aki flinched back, lost her balance, and fell to the wall with a thud.
“Wh-What’s wrong? Are you okay?” I asked.
“Head Hunting,” said Hajime, calling Aki by her power’s name. “How does that girl appear in your eyes?”
Based on what Aki had told us, appraising the abilities of Players she looked at had become a matter of reflex for her. When dealing with any sort of situation that involved the Spirit War, she’d essentially set her power to activate by default. Knowing all that, it was easy to guess what had happened: Head Hunting had shown Aki something about that girl the moment she’d looked at her. What could she have seen, though? Aki looked like she was cowering away from a monster of unfathomable form and ferocity—what could she possibly have witnessed to cause her to make a face like that?
It took a moment, but Aki finally began to speak, slowly and gingerly. “That girl’s power...is called System. Or at least, that’s what the people in F call it. They say that it’s capable of interfering with the system that governs the world itself, so they just call it System for short,” she explained. “But...what the hell? How is that not cheating? There’s no way anyone could beat her... No, that’s not even right. It’s not even a question of winning or losing—she’s in a whole different dimension from us... How can a Player like her be allowed to exist? It’s like she was made for the specific purpose of winning,” Aki muttered bitterly. There was a note of frustration in her words.
Eventually, Aki looked up at me and Hajime. “Nobody can beat that girl. It’s not possible,” she spat. “She’s the ultimate Player. Her power—System—is something that nobody could ever stand a chance against.”
The ultimate Player. And this was coming from Aki, a girl who’d seen the inside details on countless powers. Hajime had apparently given Head Hunting its name on account of the fact that it enabled Aki to peer into the deepest reaches of her opponents’ heads, analyzing everything about their powers that could be found in their minds. In terms of information, she had the higher ground over anyone and everyone by default, but I’d never seen her act this frightened before. What she’d seen—what she’d learned—was so impactful, it had her entire body trembling.
“Her power...” Aki began. Then she gulped, and, lips quivering, told us everything she’d unearthed about the girl’s power in exacting detail. “Her power’s just one giant asspull.”
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