Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 5 - Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Kiryuu Hajime—Tome the Fifth of the Twenty-First Year

Your world bores me.

—Excerpt from the Reverse Crux Record

I was so caught off guard that I honestly didn’t even know what to act surprised about first, but if I had to pick out a single point about my first encounter with Sagami Shizumu that had shocked me above all else, it would have been the fact that he’d called himself the Thirteenth Wing of Fallen Black.

Thirteen. That was a number that carried some real weight. I mean, not for most people—most people would probably say something along the lines of “Thirteen? So what?”—but when we’re talking about the number thirteen in relation to an organization created by Kiryuu Hajime himself, it’s a completely different matter. Worlds different. After all—thirteen is a chuuni’s absolute favorite number! It has even more condensed chuuni potential than zero!

There are all sorts of factors that give it that significance. It’s considered an inauspicious or cursed number in many western countries, to start. It’s also just one higher than twelve, a number that’s considered incredibly important for base-sixty numerical systems; Judas was supposedly the thirteenth guest at the last supper; etcetera etcetera. Long story short, thirteen—the unlucky number—is the most chuuni number out there, without question.

And Hajime just gave it up to this guy?! Calling yourself the Thirteenth of the Twelve Wings of Fallen Black was just such a quintessentially chuuni thing to do, it was an incredible shock to learn that Hajime hadn’t claimed the position for himself. Does that mean that this pretty boy’s just that important from Hajime’s perspective?

“Kiryuu and I are, well...I guess most people would call us childhood friends,” said Sagami. “Of course, a same-sex childhood friend’s worth less than garbage in my book. His mother helped me out way back whenever, anyway.”

By that point, it was pretty clear to me that he was an acquaintance of Hajime’s, so I figured I should probably treat him as a guest and offer some hospitality. I brought out some drinks and snacks to serve to him, then sat down on the couch and briefly introduced myself.

“Umm,” said Sagami when I was finished. “I’m incredibly sorry to ask a woman like yourself a question like this, but if you wouldn’t mind, would you perhaps tell me how old you are? I mean, it’s always easier to talk with someone when you know their age, right? I’m sixteen, by the way, turning seventeen later this year.”

He certainly took care to ask the question politely, at least. I hadn’t planned on hiding or lying about my age to begin with, so I didn’t even hesitate before answering. “I’m twenty-two right now,” I said.

“What, a hag? Screw that.”

“Uh?”

“Oh, nothing! Twenty-two, you said? I thought you seemed awfully adultlike! It’s enough to make a youngster like me a little nervous!”

W-Weird...I could’ve sworn he said something incredibly rude for a second there.

I had some pretty serious doubts, but Sagami moved the conversation along before I could voice them. “Kiryuu’s gotten me up to speed on the Spirit War and the powers and all that, by the way, but I’m not actually a Player myself,” he said.

“Huh?” I blinked. “Wait, but didn’t you call yourself by a power name a second ago? What was that, then?”

“Oh! That was Kiryuu’s doing. He came up with a name for a power I haven’t even awakened to, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer,” said Sagami. “I’m not participating in the War at all. Oh, but I have met Leatia once! Though really, it was more like Kiryuu forced me to meet her.”

“Oh, is that so?” I replied.

“She hasn’t shown up even once for me since then, though. Girl’s got a real stubborn streak. I wonder...did shouting ‘Hell yeah, monster girl time!’ in her face offend her or something? That might explain it.”

“Oh. Is that so,” I replied, somehow even less enthusiastically than before. Hajime had told me way back whenever about how somebody he knew had gotten super hyped about meeting Leatia, and it seemed I’d finally learned who that somebody was.

“Speaking of which, Leatia can make herself invisible whenever she wants, right?” asked Sagami.

“Right,” I said. “Well, I think it’d be more technically accurate to say that she can make herself visible whenever she wants.”

“In other words, it’s not out of the question that she’s here at this very moment and we just can’t see her.”

“Well, I mean...I guess I can’t rule it out?”

“In other words, it’s not out of the question that she’s here, invisible, right in front of me, in the nude.”

“Technically, no, but I have no clue why she’d be wandering around naked.”

At that point, Sagami closed his eyes, held his hands out before him, and started flexing his fingers as if he were squeezing something. “I’m groping Leatia’s tits. I’m groping Leatia’s tits. I’m groping Leatia’s tits,” he quietly chanted to himself. It was kind of remarkable—I’d never seen somebody look that serious about something that creepy. He had the same sort of intensity and presence as an ascetic monk meditating under a freezing-cold waterfall.

Yikes. Okay, how do I handle this? The kid was really grossing me out, and I was at a bit of a loss for how to deal with the little creeper.

“Oh, my apologies. I lost control of myself for a moment,” said Sagami, quickly trying to smooth things over. He must’ve noticed how repulsed I was by his behavior.

“So...” I said, “what are you here for, Sagami?”

“Circumstances required me to pay this place a visit,” he explained. “Kiryuu told me that I should never, ever come here, but I just had to... I couldn’t stop myself.”

“‘Circumstances’...?” I repeated. Circumstances important enough that someone like him—the secret Thirteenth Wing—was forced to reveal himself? Just what on earth—

“A little bird told me that a middle school girl had an accident on the floor here. I could not pass that up.”

“...”

Oh god. Yeah. No. This kid’s a genuine freak. He was young, hot, and looked like he’d probably be a real hit with the girls his age...but personalitywise, he was far past saving.

“O-Oooh? And just who told you a thing like that? Whoever they are, they’ve been making up some really weird lies,” I said, doing my best to keep my composure. I did my damnedest to deny everything, mostly for the sake of Fan’s dignity. Akutagawa had repaired the wall that Hajime had damaged, by the way—well, more like he’d remade it—and I’d helped Fan clean the floor. If I just keep the act up, then this passing pervert will give up and go home none the wiser...or so I thought.

“Oh, no need to put on a front for your friend’s sake,” said Sagami. “I’ve actually already accomplished my objective here anyway.”

“Huh?”

“The very first thing I noticed when I stepped into this room was the smell of disinfectant, and the second I smelled that, I recategorized that story from ‘rumor’ to ‘proven fact’ in my mental filing system. It was very easy to guess that someone had tried to deodorize the room to cover up a certain someone’s incontinence, and the rest was simplicity itself: I just had to find the place in the room where the disinfectant’s smell was strongest. That would be the place where it was directly applied—in other words, the place where the ‘accident’ happened.”

Wow! Hearing him break this down so calmly and rationally is so viscerally disgusting, I can barely even stand it! There is nothing about him that isn’t repulsive!

I was cringing away from Sagami so violently, I almost wound up behind the couch I was sitting on. For just a moment, I wondered what he’d done when he’d found the spot in question, but I very quickly resolved myself to never, ever ask. Nothing good could come out of knowing the answer. If he told me he’d pulled a “this is the taste of someone who’s lying” on it, I was absolutely confident I’d find myself sprinting out of the building in no time flat without even having bothered to put my shoes on first. I just hope Fan makes it out of this all right. If she ever learns about any of this, she might actually contemplate suicide!

“Well, anyway, that’s what I was here for,” said Sagami. “What about you, though, Miss Saitou? What brings you here?”

“I...just came by to drop that off,” I said, gesturing toward the bag with the board game in it, which I’d set on the couch beside me.

Sagami gave it a somewhat mystified glance. “Do the members of this organization have a thing for that sort of game?” he asked.

“Ah, umm. There’s an explanation here, but it’s kind of complicated... Where to even start...?” I muttered. Sagami wasn’t a Player, so I had a feeling that it might be for the best to not tell him anything about F. I decided to keep my explanation to the broad strokes of the situation and explained that Hajime had gone off to fight someone purported to be the strongest participant in the War.

“Hmm,” said Sagami when I finished. “Single-player, huh? I see how it is. Turning something like that into a challenge run and restricting his playstyle’s just like Kiryuu. Personally, if I’m going to restrict anything, I’d rather ropes and a bed were involved, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is that he said all that to you, and then you went out and bought a copy of Monopoly, just like he asked you to...”

Sagami paused for a moment and took a long, hard look at me, his gaze cold and analytical.

“It sort of feels like you’re completely obedient to him, aren’t you?”

Now it was my turn to hesitate. “Huh?”

“I could say that you’re a good caretaker, or that you’re very agreeable, I suppose. That would make it sound better, sure...but the truth of the matter is that all you’ve been doing is kissing his ass. Don’t you think?”

“K-Kissing his ass?!”

I’d shot halfway to my feet before I knew it, and I just barely managed to slam on the brakes and sit back down again. Calm down! Calm down! If you let your emotions run wild here, you’ll make it look like he hit you where it hurts! The more you deny it, the worse it’ll look for you!

“Saitou Hitomi,” Sagami said thoughtfully. “I remember you now. Kiryuu’s brought you up a few times before. You’ve been with him since high school, right?”

“That’s right,” I cautiously answered. Learning that Hajime had been talking about me was a little worrying. Knowing him, he probably griped about how worthless I was, or whined about how I nagged him so much it was like I was his mom, or something.

“He says it a lot, actually: ‘Hitomi’s the best girl I could ask for.’”

I let out a strangled gasp. It felt like my head had been replaced with a boiling kettle. My cheeks were aflame. No way! No way! That’s how Hajime talks about me when I’m not around?! He usually treats me like an afterthought in person, so I figured he’d probably talk crap about me behind my back! “The best girl he could ask for”...? Heh. Heh heh heh heh heh.

“Well, I can tell that you’re pleased as punch about that,” said Sagami with a slight but noticeable wince.

Whoops! Now I had him treating me like I was some sort of freak. I quickly stiffened up my facial muscles and brought my expression back under control...or I tried to, anyway, but I just couldn’t help but grin. I mean, come on—“the best girl he could ask for”? Heh heh heh!

“‘A good girl.’ Most people would think that’s a compliment, but I wonder—what does Kiryuu really mean when he says it?” said Sagami with a sarcastic smile as he watched me fail to control myself. “This is just my personal opinion, of course...but the way I see it, when people say that sort of thing about someone, they usually mean that someone’s a doormat.”

“A doormat?” I repeated, caught by surprise once again.

“Why does everyone love good people? The answer’s simple: because having a good person around is convenient. The kinder and more broad-minded a person is, the less likely they are to ignore someone in need, and the more likely they are to go along with any request without protest. People like that are fantastic to have around—after all, you can walk all over them. That’s why good people are considered so valuable and why we lavish them with praise. The more we do that, the more good people there’ll be around us, and the more we can take advantage of them.”

“That...seems like a really cynical way of looking at things,” I said. At the same time, it occurred to me that Hajime had told me something quite similar.

He’d gone on a rant about how when people gripe and moan about how you have to grow up, what they mean by it is that you have to turn yourself into a convenient little pawn of society. The world at large doesn’t want you to think about your place in it, let alone your place in the wider universe. It doesn’t want you to ask questions like “What is my purpose?” or “Why is it wrong to kill people?” No, the world at large just wants you to grow up and work yourself to the bone for the sake of society—to turn yourself into a convenient stepping-stone for total strangers. That, according to Hajime, was why society valued “growing up” so highly. Because it made it easier to walk all over you.

Of course, in my mind, that was the sort of perspective on society that only a hardcore chuuni edgelord could ever assert with a straight face. All I could think while he gave me that whole spiel was, Stop making excuses for yourself and go get a job!

“It may be cynical,” said Sagami, “but you can’t deny that it’s true, can you?”

“So, what—that’s where you’ve been going with all this?” I said as the indignation I was feeling started to creep its way into my tone. “This whole time, you were just building up to calling me Hajime’s doormat?”

“Can’t deny it,” Sagami readily admitted. “I’d prefer if you didn’t misunderstand me, though: I’m not trying to bad-mouth you! I’m actually worried about you, if anything. Let me ask you something, Hitomi: could you, being Kiryuu Hajime’s doormat of a good girl, bring yourself to turn against him?”

“What’s that supposed to mean...?”

“Are you familiar with the term ‘iconoclast’?” Sagami said, carrying on calmly with no regard for how shaken I was. “Let’s start with the ‘Messiah complex’—that’s a pretty famous one. It refers to the compulsive desire to be a messiah, a savior. It describes people who simply can’t stand to not help others.”

I’d heard the phrase before. From what I’d understood, when people said someone has a messiah complex, they usually just meant that they’re obsessed with helping other people. That might sound like a good thing at a glance, but when it went so far that they started structuring their own self-worth around the desire to help people, it could turn into a form of weakness in its own right.

“The iconoclast is more or less the opposite,” Sagami continued. “That term refers to people who just can’t help but rebel against the world at large. They live to challenge the established order and to blaspheme the sacred cows. Nothing makes them happier than finding something that society considers a given and tearing it apart with cutting criticism. People like that find their meaning in baring their fangs at the world, and they can’t find it in any other way.”

The way he described the concept of an iconoclast, I could only think of it as the high end of chuunibyou—a chuuni’s final and most refined form; the ultimate destination for those not chosen by the world we live in, and the place where those who have nowhere to go eventually find themselves.

At that point, Sagami paused to smile faintly at me.

“And you’re saying that’s what Hajime is?” I eventually asked.

“That’s right,” said Sagami. “That’s how I read him, in any case. I’m quite certain...that he was not chosen by this world. Thus, he was afflicted with the pathological need to become a chosen one—and of course, that’s what makes him so much fun to watch,” he added with a chuckle. “And so Kiryuu Hajime—or rather, Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First—does not desire a meek, obedient pawn as his subordinate. Needless to say, he doesn’t desire a doormat either. He desires conflict after conflict, rebellion after rebellion... Essentially, all he wants is a place and a partner that will let him indulge his wildest chuuni fantasies.”

I thought back to a few hours beforehand, when I’d spoken with Hajime in my car. To how it had felt like I wasn’t even there for him—like he was looking at someone else the whole time.

“All that said, of course, I frankly couldn’t possibly give less of a crap about your and his love lives. I’ve got absolutely no interest in a rom-com starring a bunch of twenty-somethings,” Sagami sighed. He drained the rest of the drink I’d served him, set his cup down on the table, and stood up. “Thanks for the warm welcome. I’ll be on my way now.”

“W-Wait!” I shouted, jumping up from the couch as he walked briskly away. “I-I know this might be a really blunt question, but...h-h-how do I l-look to you?” I asked, only to ask myself what the hell I was doing a second later. The question had come to mind so naturally, though, that I just couldn’t stop it from slipping out.

A doormat, he’d called me. It was frustrating to hear everything I’d done up to now described in those terms, and it was even more frustrating that I couldn’t bring myself to argue against it. My self-confidence had been ground to pieces, and all sorts of doubts about myself and my womanhood were beginning to weigh heavily upon me.

“Err...what do you mean by that?” asked Sagami.

“I mean h-how do I look, as a woman? A-Am I cute? Or pretty? I just want your personal opinion, that’s all.”

I know this will make me sound conceited, but I’d always thought I was decent-looking. I’d put a lot of effort into maintaining my figure as well. I had a pretty huge chip on my shoulder about my eye, sure, but if you turned a blind eye to that one little problem (for the record, I regretted that joke the second it came to mind), I honestly thought that I had a lot going for me.

“Let me think,” said Sagami. “You said you were twenty-two years old, didn’t you?”

“R-Right,” I replied. It’s fine. Twenty-two’s still plenty young, and besides, people always tell me I look young for my age! I get carded every single time I try to buy myself a drink!

“Hmm. Well, this is nothing more than my own subjective opinion...but the way I see it...”

I gulped, waiting for Sagami to finish his thought. Finally, he put on an awkward smile and put his viewpoint out there, plain as could be.

“...you’re disqualified.”

“...”

I heard something snap inside of me.

“Disqualified, disgusting, and dispiriting. The three D’s. Hah! Good one, me.”

“.........”

His impression of me, pure and undiluted, cut me down like an executioner’s axe. In that moment, every ounce of pride and confidence I’d had in myself was torn up by the root and chucked into an incinerator.

A few hours later, the remaining members of Fallen Black all gathered in our hideout. “The remaining members,” of course, meaning everyone except for Kiryuu Hajime and Sagami Shizumu. The First through Fifth wings were all together, while the Zeroth and Thirteenth were absent.

“Okay, Tomi, what’s the deal? Why’d we all have to get together out of nowhere like this?” Aki asked in a listless drone as she fiddled with her smartphone. “I thought we were basically out of the picture at this point? The Committee didn’t take me seriously, and Ryuu never listens, I swear... Ugggh, I’ve totally lost my drive after all this crap.”

“K-Kiryuu went off to battle F on his own, didn’t he...?” said Fan, still wearing her nurse’s outfit and sitting next to Aki. “Leatia told us all about it. Why does he never, ever try to cooperate with us?”

“Look, Hitomi, I’m gonna put this out on the table in advance: if you’re about to ask us to go save his ass, the answer’s no,” said Toki. He was sitting on the couch, his feet propped up on the table before him in a display of truly appalling manners. “If he wants to launch a suicide strike on ’em, then I say let him. And if he gets himself killed, well, that’s his own damn fault. I’m not about to play along with each and every lunatic scheme that pops into that nutjob’s head.”

“Agreed,” said Akutagawa, who was off in a corner, eyes glued to a handheld game console. “I guess if Kiryuu loses, that means it’s over for Fallen Black and the Spirit War on the whole. Not like anyone can beat System,” he droned, sounding for all the world like he couldn’t have cared less. He wasn’t interested in the Spirit War, or in Hajime, or in any of this, for that matter.

“You did have something to say to us, though, right?” said Toki. “Think you could hurry it up?”

“Yeah, seconded! What’s this all about, Tomi?” added Aki.

“Right. Sure, I’ll tell you,” I said, answering their urging with a nod. First, though, I strode over to the corner where Akutagawa was standing, headphones placed firmly over his ears as always. “Hey, Akutagawa? This is really important, so do you think you could take your headphones off while we talk?”

“Huh?” grunted Akutagawa, giving me a look.

“Take them off,” I repeated.

Akutagawa sighed. “I’ve said this a million times...I have the volume turned down, so I can hear you just fine,” he mumbled in an exasperated, condescending tone. “Besides, it’s not like whether or not I’m wearing headphones is going to change the course of the conversation. What does it even matter? Me wearing headphones isn’t going to cause us any problems, is it?”

“I don’t care,” I said. “Just take them off. It’s common courtesy.”

“Common courtesy, huh?” huffed Akutagawa. “What makes it common, anyway? Far as I can tell, everyone has their own definition of ‘common courtesy,’ and they’re all different,” he began. He was obviously starting off on another one of his awful, nitpicky rambles, but no. Not this time. I reached over, grabbed his headphones, yanked them off his head, and hurled them across the room. Their cable popped out of his console, whipping through the air behind them.

Akutagawa gaped at me. “Huh? What do you think you’re—”

“I said take off the fucking headphones!”

I screamed with everything I had. I could feel all the limiters inside me vanish—my compulsion to maintain my human relationships, my own nonconfrontational personality, my instinct to go with the flow and not rock the boat—all of them, gone.

“I am sick to goddamn death of your stupid, quibbling, nitpicky shit, Akutagawa! When somebody’s talking to you, you take off your headphones! It’s common etiquette, so have some manners already! Spare just one thought for how the people you’re talking to feel!”

Akutagawa looked absolutely gobsmacked—and not just him. Everyone in the room was looking at me with pure, deer-in-the-headlights astonishment all over their faces. My sudden transformation must’ve caught them off guard, but I sure didn’t give a damn! I wasn’t even close to finished venting all my rage yet!

“Whoa, Tomi...what’s wrong? What’re you flipping out for?” Aki timidly asked.

I rounded on her next. “And you—have some goddamn respect for once!” I roared. “Who the hell taught you that you could say whatever the hell you want to just anyone, any time?! What, you think you can just get away with being rude because it’s your thing, or something?! You’re supposed to be polite when you talk to your elders! Japan has a goddamn hierarchical society, girl!”

“Eep! J-Jeez, my ba—”

“Polite!”

“I-I’m sorry!”

I wasn’t done yet, though. I moved on to my next target: Fan. “And you! Nurse Piss!”

“N-Nurse Piss?!” Fan squealed.

“You... You...” I paused. “You’re basically fine, actually.”

“Basically fine?! You’re just giving me a super mean nickname and moving on for no reason?!”

Honestly, I couldn’t really think of anything I wanted Fan to improve about her behavior. And yes, calling her “Nurse Piss” had put her on the verge of tears, but I was way too furious to feel the slightest hint of guilt about that in the moment. My anger was roiling within me like a sea of magma.

“Aggh, I can’t take this anymore! Each and every one of you people piss me off so damn much!” I shouted. I had snapped. It was just like the time in high school when I’d treated a certain dumbass to a jumping knee to the solar plexus: one moment I was fine, and the next, I’d completely lost it. My blood was running terrifyingly cold—a burning cold, like I was packed up in a box full of dry ice.

But y’know what?! I think anyone would snap if they had to put up with all the nonsense I’d been dealing with! Hajime was always feeding me his cryptic bullshit! Our team was full of pedantic brats who all looked down on me, all the time! The group itself was barely holding together and never got along! The organization we were up against was so hilariously, unfairly overpowered they might as well have been invincible! And above all else, Kiryuu friggin’ Hajime was always feeding me his cryptic bullshit!

Nothing had gone right for me recently! Why did I have to make like a petty corporation’s middle manager and rack my mind solving all these problems on my own?! And to top it all off, what the hell was that stupid little Sagami Shizumu freak’s problem?! “Disqualified”?! What does that even mean?! He can take all three of his D’s and shove them right up his ass!

“Every last goddamn one of you...stop looking down on me!”

“H-Hey, what’s wrong with you, Hitomi? This isn’t like you at all,” said Toki.

“Shut your trap!” I snapped. “‘Not like’ me? Well, what the hell is like me?! Is it like me to just stand there and smile while a bunch of brats condescend to me?! And don’t think you’re getting off easy here, Toki Shuugo! You piss me off just as much as the rest of them!”

“H-Huh? What did I ever do to you?”

“Remember what you said the other day?! That I’m the only one here who listens, and that the girls just shout all the time, Kiryuu spouts gibberish, and Akutagawa might as well be mute?”

“I mean, yeah, I said that...but how’s that a problem?”

“Why aren’t I one of the girls?!”

Toki looked dumbfounded, but his confusion wasn’t nearly enough to stop me. That really bothered me, you know?! It’s been bothering me this whole time! I’ve been holding a grudge this whole time!

“I belong in the ‘girls’ category too! I’m only twenty-two, and anyway, girls are girls no matter how old they are!” I bellowed with all my heart and soul.

Everyone else was just...frozen. An almost unbearable tension and pressure dominated the bar as I panted for breath.

“All members of Fallen Black—listen up!” I shouted. I didn’t care a whit about the tension in the air! “We have a new objective: we’re going to go out and crush F!”

That declaration certainly shook things up. Instantly, the other members began to stir restlessly.

“Wha... H-Hold up a sec—ah, I mean, please wait a moment, Tomi...err, Miss Tomi,” said Aki. “You mean you want us to help Ryuu out after all?”

“Hell no!” I shouted. “That dumbass can get bent! We’re taking F down before Kiryuu Hajime can get his hands on them! If he wants to do this single-player like a poser, that means he doesn’t get to complain when we do everything before he gets the chance! Plus—and this is the most important part of all...”

Hajime’s orders had been bluntly specific: don’t do anything. But who gives a crap! If you’re gonna run off and do whatever the hell you want, then so am I!

“...doesn’t he just piss you off?! Kiryuu Hajime, a certifiable chuuni edgelord, thinks we’re not worth his time! And even if you’re not pissed at him, well, I am! You’d better believe I’m pissed! He thinks this whole organization’s just a big game of make-believe! He’s never thought about anyone other than himself, from start to finish! You could interview every deadbeat boss in the world, and you wouldn’t find one as bad at their job as he is!”

I slammed my fist into the wall in a fit of pure rage. A dull thud rang out, but I barely even felt the pain. A heat was building up in the corners of my eyes. The emotions surging through me were so powerful they had me completely under their control, from head to toe, overriding my better judgment. For all their power, though, the feeling that had taken hold of me was so complicated and conflicting that I couldn’t even tell where it was all coming from. Was I happy, or sad? Jealous, or indignant? Or maybe it was simpler than that—maybe I was just plain old in love.

One thing was for sure, though: I was purely and uncontrollably pissed at Kiryuu Hajime. I’m pissed! I’m so, so, so pissed! Why?! Why, why, why?!

Why does that stupid man never, ever pay attention to me?!

“It’s time for a revolution! I’m not gonna rebel—I’m gonna revolt! As for you people, you can just shut up and do as I say! We’re giving that cryptic-ass chuuni son of a bitch a taste of cold hard reality! We’re gonna make him look like the clown that he is!”

Fine. I get it now. I’ll never get him to look my way if I keep playing the doormat. Kiryuu Hajime will never give me the time of day that way. He considers his enemies to be a higher priority than his allies, and he doesn’t even try to hide it. He only thinks about who he’ll fight against, not who’ll fight by his side.

So fine! Let him be that way! I just have to become his enemy myself! I’ll force my way into the stupid little dreamland he lives in and make him see me for the girl I am! I’ll carve the name Saitou Hitomi into the deepest reaches of his soul—so deep he’ll never forget about me ever again! I’ll make such an impression on him he won’t be able to tear his eyes away from me!

“On your feet, people! It’s time for Fallen Black to spread its wings!”

All right, Kiryuu Hajime—no, Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First. As of tonight, the jet-black wings that you assembled will be carrying me into battle! I’ll tear that fallen angel’s wings right off you, shred you into mincemeat, and send you straight to the deepest pits of the Heavens’ Hell!

“Fight by my side! Stab that dumbass in the back and follow my orders instead! We’ll beat F and System before you know it, and then when Kiryuu Hajime shows up, we’ll tell him the show’s already over and he didn’t get a part! And then we’ll laugh our asses off at him!”

It was no surprise that everyone seemed hesitant when their organization’s second-in-command had proposed an unambiguous betrayal of their leader. Past that, though, the similarities between each member’s reaction faded. They looked scared, shaken, worried, full of doubts—each of them was handling the situation in their own ways. Clearly, all of them had very different feelings about my proposal.

“This is bullshit,” a voice finally rang out, cutting through the silence. Toki finally took his feet off the table and shot me a dangerously pointed glare. “What do we have to gain by one-upping that guy other than a cheap thrill? That’s how toddlers get revenge. It’s totally pointless.”

Toki’s gaze was as sharp as a knife’s edge, and for a second, I flinched backward. In terms of pure combat potential, he was the second-most powerful member of our organization. When Hajime said that Toki was the last person he wanted to fight, he hadn’t just been kidding around. If this were any other day, I probably would’ve jumped halfway out of my skin and broken eye contact...but not today. Today, I gritted my teeth and stared back at him unblinkingly—a piercing, one-eyed stare.

Toki snorted derisively, stood up from the couch, and walked over to me, one hand tucked away in his pocket. “But, y’know, he’s also such a pain in the ass, I’d take a toddler’s revenge over nothing. Nothing wrong with a cheap thrill or two every now and then,” he said, mouth curling into a cocky grin. “You’re a hell of a lot more cut out to give orders than that dipshit’ll ever be, Hitomi.”

“Tell me about it,” said Aki as she hopped off her seat. “Ryuu’s been going way too far lately! And, like, he doesn’t have to treat us like trash, right? Dude spends all his time running away from the real world—he doesn’t even have a job anymore! Giving him a taste of reality sounds good to me!”

“I-I’d like to get back at Kiryuu too,” Fan added. “I’m just as fed up with him as all of you are! Actually, at this point, all of the me’s inside me are shouting about how we need to teach him a lesson.”

The final remaining member, Akutagawa, let out a sigh of resignation. “Right, okay, I see the way the wind’s blowing. And now that it’s come to this...I mean, whatever, I guess... I might as well side with you for now, Hitomi.”

Zigzag Jigsaw: a power of laceration and assassination. Head Hunting: a power that analyzes powers. Sex Eclipse: a power of fragmented identities. Dead Space: a power that puts the spaces between to work. Four powers—four Players—four Wings had come together to follow my command.

“Thank you, everyone,” I said, my resolve growing stronger still. “It’s time for a betrayal!”

You see things like this every once in a while if you look back throughout history—doormats like me getting fed up and double-crossing the people who walk all over them for deeply personal reasons. The fallen angel who’d once raised a rebellion against God was about to have a rebellion of his own on his hands.

My name is Saitou Hitomi. I’m twenty-two years old. A fourth year in college. My Blood type’s A. My sign’s Aries. I’m the First Wing of Fallen Black: the organization’s second-in-command and most senior flunkie. I’m the wielder of Eternal Wink, a power of visual violation. My first love is Kiryuu Hajime. And...

“...I’m gonna give that asshole the evil eye of a lifetime!”