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

Epilogue: Kiryuu Hajime—Tome the Seventh of the Twenty-First Year

On and on the puppets dance

Heedless of the closing call, they twirl in trance behind the curtain

They cannot see the strings that guide them

They do not know they’re nothing more than soulless marionettes

—Excerpt from the Reverse Crux Record

One day, a few weeks after F’s eradication, Hajime’s right eye was afflicted with a terrible malady.

“Well, crap. I really screwed up this time,” he muttered inconsolably. He was sitting on my bed, head cradled in his hands, and was very obviously deeply depressed. I could just barely make out the white eye patch he was wearing through the cracks between his fingers.

“I told you, didn’t I?” I sighed. “I warned you over and over again that this would happen if you kept sleeping with your colored contact in!”

Hajime, of course, had ignored my warnings each and every time. All I could do was sigh. The primary cause of his malady was the fact that he’d kept a colored contact in for literally days on end. That’s a great way to get all sorts of bacteria in your eye, and surprise surprise, he wound up with an infection in the form of a nasty sty. He’d been pretty good in the past about not keeping the contact in the same eye for too long and washing it on a regular basis, but for some reason, he’d been slacking off lately, and now he was paying the price.

“Well, anyway,” I said, “no more color contacts for you until your eye gets better.”

“Whoa, wait a second,” said Hajime. “Are you telling me to just roll over and die, or what?”

Are you telling me that not playing evil eye for a week or two’s going to be the death of you? “You heard me—contacts are banned, and that’s final!” I said, then tossed the contact case—which I’d confiscated shortly beforehand—over to Umeko, who was standing off in a corner. “Keep hold of those for now, okay, Umeko? And you’re not allowed to give them to Hajime, no matter what he says to you!”

“Very well,” Umeko said with a robotic nod, then stashed the case away in the pocket of her black dress.

Ever since she’d joined up with Fallen Black, Umeko had drifted around from place to place without any real permanent home. One night she’d stay over at my apartment, and the next she’d wind up at Aki’s house. Speaking of Aki, her family was loaded, so she had a ton of old clothes to pass on to Umeko. As a consequence, all of us girls had more or less ended up using her as our own personal dress-up doll. We’d played around with her hair a lot too, eventually settling on the bob cut she was currently sporting.

The girl once known as System had now become White Rulebook. She was still the ultimate, unbeatable Player, though, and that meant that giving Hajime’s contact lens to Umeko would ensure that he wouldn’t be able to get his hands on it easily. Though actually, on second thought, I’m skipping ahead—she wouldn’t really prove herself to be ultimate and unbeatable until a little while after this point.

“Hey, Hajime,” I said. “About Hinoemata...are you really sure it was a good idea to let him join the team?”

“Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?” Hajime countered.

“Nothing, really, I just...I dunno. He feels kind of, how to put it...kind of off to me, I guess.”

Shortly after F’s downfall and Umeko’s recruitment, a series of events had led to yet another Player joining up with Fallen Black. Our newest member was a boy named Hinoemata, who looked like he was in his mid to late teens. He was sociable, good-humored, and generally affable, and our boss had granted his power the name Lost Regalia: the power to render regency null and void. To put it in slightly simpler terms, he possessed the power of regicide—the power to deny kings of all shapes and sizes their rightful dominion. His power also happened to be the only one in the world that could counteract Umeko’s, most likely. He was more or less System’s—or rather, White Rulebook’s—natural enemy.

“Bwa ha ha!” cackled Hajime. “You’re not wrong there. His power really is something totally different. It’s not like it’s particularly strong on its own, but it can take down the ultimate power without a hitch. It’s like how in President, the only card that can beat a joker is the three of spades—otherwise the weakest card in the deck.”

Umeko had been created for the sole purpose of bringing the Spirit War to an end. Thanks to Fallen Black’s falling-out, however—or thanks to our efforts, if you want to put it nicely—the plan failed, and the war would continue after all...but I couldn’t help but wonder how things would’ve happened if we hadn’t gotten involved. It was totally possible that the war might not’ve ended even then, considering that Hinoemata most likely could’ve done what was impossible for everyone else by killing System.

If there was such a thing as a god of war out there somewhere, I’d almost have to suspect that said god had been displeased with the idea of a man-made Player ending the conflict and had sent Hinoemata out to put an end to her. A Player as balance-breaking as her would spoil the whole War, and it only made sense to send an irregular to deal with an irregular.

All that being said, when I said something was off about him, I hadn’t actually been talking about any of that fantastical, high-concept superpower stuff at all.

“I mean, that is pretty weird too, I’ll admit...but I was talking about Hinoemata himself. He sort of scares me,” I said.

Hinoemata was a cute, charming young man. He was cheerful and sociable, and he’d been the one to approach us and ask to join our team. And yet, for some reason, I just couldn’t bring myself to like him. I couldn’t explain why, but for some reason, talking with him made a chill run down my spine, without fail. Everything he said felt shallow and artificial, and looking him in the eye made me feel an overpowering sense of unease and instability.

“Wasn’t Hinoemata the one who set things up for Kudou Mirei to awaken? He didn’t even ask us or anything, and sent her to make contact with Virgin Child on top of it,” I noted. As a direct result, the literary club had ended up engaging in a supernatural battle against the president of their school’s student council. Virgin Child’s isolation from the War at large had begun to break down, ever so slightly. I’d heard that Hajime had even gone out to witness the battle himself.

“Bwa ha ha! That’s fine by me—any organization worth its stuff has at least one guy like him on board,” said Hajime, laughing away my concerns like he always did. Really, I shouldn’t have expected any less from the guy who brushed off my full-on betrayal like it was nothing. He was so open to his subordinates acting on their own initiative, it was kind of a problem. Or maybe it was the other way around—maybe he actively wanted his companions to be the sort of people who wouldn’t hesitate to defy him. Maybe he wanted to work with dangerous people who didn’t have so much as a hint of loyalty, who’d stab him in the back the second they saw an opening.

“Anyway, I don’t care about all that stuff right now. I need to figure out how to deal with my eye before anything else,” Hajime grumbled, his expression turning glum again in an instant. It seemed his sty was weighing so heavily on his mind, he couldn’t think about anything else. I felt like an idiot for worrying about our organization’s future while the boss himself was stuck on his own petty problems.

“This isn’t the sort of thing you can deal with,” I sighed. “You just have to let it heal naturally.”

“Ugggh—I would’ve recruited someone with a healing power if I’d known this was gonna happen!” Hajime grumbled, then flopped over on the bed. A second later, though, he shot right back up again. “That’s it! I just had a great idea!”

“Wh-What?” I asked.

“Virgin Child! I can just have them take care of this! One of them has a recovery power! Route of Origin—the power of ultimate regression! It’s not technically a healing power, but it can still totally heal any injury in the blink of an eye!”

“Oh, huh,” I said. I didn’t know much about any of their powers, myself. “Are you sure you want to do that, though? I thought you were trying to keep them out of the War? Having one of them cure you feels like it’ll make all that a lot messier...”

“And that’s where you come in, Eternal Wink,” said Hajime. “You can just hypnotize her and falsify some memories to cover it all up.”

Oh, so that’s his game. It was probably possible, to be fair—the kids were Players, sure, but as long as they weren’t on guard around us, my power would work on them.

“Here’s the plan,” said Hajime. “Step one: we abduct the target. Step two: we get her to fix my eye. Step three: we use the Evil Eye to mess with her memories. Step four: we put her back where we found her. How’s that? Perfect, right?”

“Not even close. Do you realize how many important details you just skimmed over?” I’d heard some pretty rough plans in my time, but this one had to be up there in the rankings. “Slipshod” didn’t even begin to describe it!

“Eh, it’ll work out,” said Hajime, flippantly dismissing my objection. “Pulling off a kidnapping’ll be a cinch with Akutagawa on our side.”

“I mean, sure, but still...” Hmm. I guess it can’t hurt to give it a shot? I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to go well, but I figured even if we did fail, we didn’t have much to lose, and Hajime at least probably thought he had a lot to gain if things went well. “I guess I should probably get in touch with everyone, but I don’t know what they’ll say about this...” I muttered. “Oh, right—what sort of person is that Route of Whatever girl? Like, what does she look like? Any distinctive features?”

“Ah. I mean, not like I’ve actually met her myself. I’ve only seen her from pretty far off. I think...” Hajime paused, seeming to search his memories. “Yeah, pretty sure she had long hair!”

In spite of my apprehensions, I began setting up the groundwork for Hajime’s plan. Some of our members immediately started griping about how they weren’t interested in getting involved in Hajime’s crap, but I somehow managed to talk them into it, and before I knew it, our kidnapping operation was moving ahead at a breakneck pace. Taking our time would’ve totally defeated the purpose, in this case—the whole point was to get Hajime’s eye healed up as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, however, the whole “moving forward at a breakneck pace” thing ended up causing the most disastrous mistake imaginable.

“What do you mean, we got the wrong one?!”

Twilight was setting in, all of us except for Hinoemata were gathered up by a riverside path, and I was screaming. I took a long, hard look at the long-haired, inexplicably apron-clad girl whom Umeko was carrying on her back. My Evil Eye—or rather, Hajime’s Evil Eye—had sent her off into a deep sleep with ease, and she looked remarkably comfortable. It probably would’ve looked really weird from an outsider’s perspective to see Umeko, who appeared elementary-school-aged at the oldest, carrying a fully grown high schooler on her back, but she was undeniably the strongest of us and had seemed like the right person for the job.

“W-Wait, what are you talking about?! Isn’t this the girl you described?!” I shouted.

“No, she’s not, dumbass!” snapped Hajime. “That one’s Kushikawa Hatoko—her power’s Over Element. I wanted Route of Origin!”

Hajime sounded like he was at a loss. He’d made the sign for me to put her to sleep, and I’d done that without issue, but it had never even crossed my mind that she might be the wrong girl entirely. Apparently, she wasn’t the one with Route of Origin after all.

Seriously...? Th-That can’t be right, can it? I mean, just look at her! She totally seems like the sort of girl who’d have healing powers, doesn’t she? How could someone with an aura so gentle that you feel soothed just standing next to her not have a power along those lines?

“Seriously, Hitomi, what were you thinking?” sighed Hajime.

“Don’t act like this is my fault!” I shouted back. “You said she was a girl with long hair, and that’s what I told everyone else too! And besides, Fan’s the one who—”

“W-W-Wait, I didn’t do anything wrong either!” protested Fan before I could finish. “All you told me was that she was a girl with long hair—I was positive I had the right one! She just looks like the sort of person who’d have healing powers, doesn’t she? And I did everything you said until Akutagawa took over...”

“I waited until the target was isolated, then I led her to this river, just like you told me to,” said Akutagawa. “I’m not responsible for this.”

“Y’know, none of this would’ve happened if Natsu had just done a scouting run in the first place,” grumbled Toki.

“Hey! Gimme a break, Toks!” shouted Aki. “This was totally not my deal, okay?! I had school today! I couldn’t just ditch, and I went to the trouble of convincing Fanfan to handle it instead, didn’t I?!”

At that point, all of us devolved into petty quibbling over who, exactly, was to blame for this debacle. The whole operation had been such a rush job that pretty much everyone had dropped the ball in one way or another. Our boss, meanwhile, grumbled as he watched us argue. “Sheesh. You’re all totally useless, you know that?”

“This is all your fault to begin with!” the rest of us shouted in unison. To be completely accurate, everything about this incident, from its inception to the point where it went off the rails, was Hajime’s doing. Not only did he half-ass our orders, mobilizing the whole organization to help cure his eye infection wasn’t exactly an impressive use of authority. And none of this would’ve happened at all if he hadn’t been playing around with color contacts!

“Screw this bullshit,” grumbled Toki. “I’m just gonna leave, Hitomi. I couldn’t care less what happens to Kiryuu’s eye.”

“Same,” muttered Akutagawa.

“I-I think I’ll go home too,” Fan chimed in, then sighed. “Hinoemata was right—I should’ve left the second I had the chance.”

“Yeah, I’m outta here too,” said Aki. “Oh, right—hey, Ryuu! Here’re the eyedrops you asked for, and the receipt. I’ll bill you for the drops and my delivery fee later!”

And just like that, our members dispersed to the winds. Hajime, Umeko, and I were left behind on the gravel path, lit by the setting sun. Oh, plus Kushikawa Hatoko, who was still sleeping soundly.

“’Kay, think I’ll make tracks too,” said Hajime.

“Oh, no you don’t!” I shouted, grabbing him firmly by the shoulder. “You think you can just walk away, mister biggest-troublemaker-of-them-all?! Clean up your mess! What the heck are we supposed to do with this girl?!”

“Meh. Why not just drop her off on the ground somewhere? She’ll wake up and go home on her own eventually.”

He’s not serious, right? From a common sense perspective, abandoning an unconscious teenage girl outside was so far out of the question, it wasn’t even funny. More to the point, as the theoretical adults in this situation, I felt like we had a responsibility to take care of her, especially considering how much trouble we’d already dragged her into on account of a misunderstanding...though of course, we’d sorta lost the right to act like authority figures at the point where we’d abducted a minor.

“How shall I proceed, Hitomi?” Umeko asked. She sounded totally disinterested in the situation, and while she didn’t seem particularly bothered by the fact that she was still carrying a girl who was bigger than her on her back, I figured she wouldn’t want to keep it up forever. At the very least, I was feeling guilty about it.

“Umm, good question,” I said. “I-I guess we should take her to my place for now. Hajime can make up a story to explain all this when she wakes up.”

“Huh? Why me?” asked Hajime.

“Because this is all your fault! You were chatting with her while you waited for us to arrive, right? Well, do that again and feed her a story to pull us out of this mess!”

“Bah! Fine, fine, have it your way,” Hajime grumbled, giving in at long last.

I glanced up at the sky. The sunset was rapidly fading away, and night was setting in. “It’s getting pretty late, and if we keep her out any longer, it might turn into a huge deal,” I said. “Oh, right... Come to think of it, I told Sagami to steal her phone if he got the chance. Oh, no—now we’re going to have to get that back for her too...”

That part of the plan had been a real just-in-case sort of deal, and now it was coming back to bite me. Our initial plan was to use my Evil Eye to manipulate her into fixing Hajime’s eye, then let her go then and there. Putting her to sleep had been a spur-of-the-moment reaction to realizing that she was the wrong person, and that had just made the whole problem even more complicated as well. We’d screwed up big time, plain and simple, and now we had to figure out what the heck we were supposed to do about it. I’d put quite a lot of effort into putting her to sleep, unfortunately, and she’d probably be out for at least a few more hours.

“Man,” sighed Hajime, “if only one of them would go through a super convenient awakening, gain a brand new power, and steal her back before we even knew what was happening.”

“That would take an actual miracle, and it’s definitely not happening.”

The next day found Hajime sprawled out on my bed, laughing his head off.

“Bwa ha ha! In the end, everything went just as planned!” he declared with an incredibly smug grin.

It happened. A miracle had actually gone and happened.

After everyone went home yesterday, we brought Kushikawa Hatoko back to my apartment and laid her out on my bed to wait for her to wake up. Before that could happen, though, she was suddenly engulfed in light, then vanished before our eyes. Calling it a shock would be an understatement—Hajime and I were both completely flabbergasted. There was nothing even remotely natural about a girl vanishing in a flash of light, so we figured out that it had been the work of somebody’s power more or less immediately.

We brought Aki to scope out the situation the next day, and we ended up concluding that one of the other literary club members’ powers had done the deed. The member in question had awakened to a new ability that was sleeping within her, all for the sake of saving her friend. I was a little jealous of those kids, honestly. Their group was clearly held together by some pretty strong bonds, which put it in sharp contrast to our organization, which was more or less held together with tape and fraying string.

“Oh, right,” said Hajime. “Hey, Hitomi—don’t tell Sagami about any of this, ’kay? Looks like he thinks I had the girl kidnapped for some grand scheme or something, and I’d rather let that misunderstanding stand.”

Now that he mentioned it, it occurred to me that I’d never actually told Sagami anything about the reasoning behind the abduction. Our objective had been incredibly petty and stupid, in truth, but from Sagami’s perspective, it probably looked like an isolated step in some greater master plan. It was a pretty hilarious misapprehension, and I almost had to feel sorry for him, but the fact that I hated his guts made it pretty easy to resist the urge.

“Got it. But, you know...I’ll grant you that it did all turn out well in the end, but this wasn’t even close to going just as planned, was it? You didn’t even get your eye fixed,” I pointed out from the kitchen, where I was busy making dinner.

The trouble that Hajime had caused got resolved by a series of increasingly improbable coincidences, not by any actual effort on our part. That being said, stirring up a huge incident that somehow got resolved with no real harm done in the end was kind of one of Hajime’s things. The fact remained, though, that in this case, the issue that had sparked the whole venture—Hajime’s infected eye—hadn’t been fixed in the slightest.

“I know, right?” Hajime groaned. “Seriously, what am I supposed to do about this?”

“Leave it alone until it gets better,” I replied. “Dinner’s done, by the way.”

I carried our meal out to the table. Umeko was staying at Aki’s house that night, so Hajime and I were eating on our own and I’d only made two portions.

“We’ve got a Japanese-style hamburger with tofu in it, stewed spinach, and miso soup with clams tonight,” I explained as I set the meal out.

“Oh, nice! Looks great,” said Hajime.

We sat down, said our thanks, and dug in. “How is it?” I asked after Hajime had taken a few bites.

“Good,” said Hajime. “Tasty as always.”

“Glad to hear it,” I replied.

“Speaking of food, you’ve been putting an awful lotta effort into your cooking lately, haven’t you, Hitomi?”

“Huh? I-I dunno, I guess? I, umm... I guess I decided to try fighting this battle in a different field, you might say,” I muttered with a forced smile, then added “I figured I’d try taking on chuuni power with girl power” in a whisper.

Hajime blinked. “Huh?”

“Ha ha, don’t worry about it!” I said, cutting off the conversation and pointedly turning my attention back to the food.

It wasn’t long before Hajime once again steered us back to the question of his eye. “For real, though, what am I gonna do?” he asked. “I’m not into the thought of doing another kidnapping to get Route of Origin for real this time...but it’s not like I can come up with any other options offhand...”

“You’re really stuck on this, aren’t you?” I observed. It’s not like I couldn’t sympathize with the desire to cure himself as soon as possible, and I could begrudgingly admit that I understood his desire to get back to playing Evil Eye as quickly as he could too. Still, though, those didn’t feel like big enough reasons to make him this fixated on it. “The doctor said it’d be all better in a week or so, right? Why not just let it heal naturally?”

It wasn’t like he’d go blind in the worst case or anything—this was the sort of infection that would get better with just a little time and rest. It certainly wasn’t something to get all desperate about. Going into battle with an eye out of commission would make most people a little apprehensive, I guess, but Hajime wasn’t most people. He’d been all about running around with an eye patch before he’d met me, after all. I had a feeling he could fight with perfect efficiency, even with one of those on.

“Well, yeah, but...well, y’know,” Hajime said, then trailed off, broke eye contact, and scratched his head awkwardly. That was an exceptionally rare attitude for Hajime to take, and silence fell as he hesitated for a few seconds more, then finally spat it out in an incredibly quiet mumble. “I promised, didn’t I?”

“Huh? Promised what?” I asked.

“Back in high school. Y’know, on the rooftop...?”

The pieces finally clicked together, and I let out a tiny gasp.

“I’ll never wear an eye patch for kicks again.”

The promise he’d made on that day flashed vividly into my mind—the day that Hajime had given me a genuine and earnest apology. The day he’d told me that he would indulge my complex about my eye.

“You remembered...?” I said in shock and disbelief. That had been six years ago. I was positive he’d forgotten all about it. Heck, I’d come close to forgetting about it myself! I’d never even dreamed that he’d still be keeping the promise. The act of making it was all I’d needed, after all—I’d never really expected him to follow through...but had he, really? Had he actually been deliberately keeping his promise this whole time?

“B-But, it’s not like you’re wearing that for kicks, right?” I stammered. “That means you’re not even breaking the promise! It doesn’t count at all!”

“Well, yeah. But I just thought it might leave a bad taste in your mouth anyway, y’know...?” he said, still refusing to look at me. His gaze was usually so piercing it was downright terrifying, but there was absolutely nothing scary about the way he was acting now.

“Oh...but don’t get the wrong idea, okay?” Hajime quickly added. “It’s not like I was worried about you or anything like that! It’s just that when Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First makes a vow, he keeps it! It’s a matter of pride, that’s all,” he rambled in a rapid-fire excuse that went in one ear and out the other for me. My mind and heart were already full to capacity. It felt like my head was about to short-circuit and my heart was about to pop.

Seriously...come on! This man. This man, I swear to god!

“Hajime,” I said, setting down my chopsticks and leaning forward. “Let’s go find a photo booth!”

It was only around eight at night when we arrived at the arcade by the station, and the place was packed, mostly with students. We weaved our way between groups of uniformed youths, eventually reaching the floor with all the photo sticker booths.

“Huh,” said Hajime. “Surprised this place is so crowded.”

“Right?” I agreed. “Ah, there’s an empty booth over there! How’s that one look to you?”

“Couldn’t care less which one we use. What’s the big idea, anyway? Where’s this coming from?” asked Hajime.

“Who cares? This sort of thing’s fun every once in a while! Just go with it,” I replied.

“Just so you know, I’m not paying for this. You want a picture, you get to foot the bill,” said Hajime.

Wooow. What a cheapo. Hajime kept grumbling away, but I pulled him by the hand into a vacant booth, shutting us within its excessively white and well-lit walls. Suddenly I was very aware of how close we were to each other and how private the space was, and I found myself getting a little nervous, though of course, it was far too late to turn back.

“U-Umm... Ah, right! We have to pay first,” I said, pulling out my wallet only to realize that I’d forgotten something important. “Oh, rats—I’m out of hundred yen coins...” It was a classic photo booth slipup. You only realize you don’t have the cash for it after you’ve already stepped inside. “Sorry,” I said. “Give me a minute—I’ll go change some money.”

“Don’t bother,” Hajime grumbled as he dropped four hundred-yen coins into my hand. He’d pulled out his own wallet before I knew it.

“Huh? Y-You don’t mind?” I asked.

“You can pay me back later,” grunted Hajime.

“R-Right,” I said. I didn’t feed the coins into the machine just yet, though—I had some preparations to take care of first. I reached into my bag for a certain item that I’d stealthily brought along with me. “Ta-da!” I said as I pulled it out.

Hajime’s eyes widened. “Seriously...? You still have that thing?”

“Yup,” I replied, dropping my gaze and taking a long, hard look at the accessory in my hand: a black leather eye patch. It had a design sewn into it with silver thread, and it was very obviously not meant for any sort of medical use. It was also an item that Hajime himself had given to me—a memento of our time in high school.

I raised the patch to my right eye, wrapping its belt around my head. The fact that it was designed to be worn over your right eye made the whole thing feel almost like destiny or something. I didn’t know why—and I sort of suspected there was no real reason—but Hajime had a thing about right eyes in particular being fantastical in one way or another. He swapped his colored contact around every once in a while, but on the whole, he kept his right eye red more often than not. Mine was blind, and his was dedicated to pointless posing.

I turned to look at Hajime and smiled. “Well? How do I look in an eye patch? Cool?” I was wearing it for kicks, no two ways about it, and for a moment, Hajime looked shocked. He got over it pretty quickly, though, and smiled back at me.

“You sure do. Cool as hell,” Hajime said with a broad, villainous grin. Wearing an eye patch did nothing to change my field of vision, though, so his smile looked just the same to me as it always did.

“All right, then let’s take some pictures! You get it now, right? Matching eye patches?”

“Bwa ha ha! There’s only two of us, so there’s no excuse for having our character designs be this redundant!”

“Oh, hush,” I said, then dropped the coins into the machine and looked through the frames and backgrounds, quibbling with Hajime all the while. Eventually, I settled on a kind of fancy, vaguely gothic frame, and the two of us belatedly remembered to strike a pose as the machine began to count in a robotic voice. When the countdown ended, the sound of a camera’s shutter rang out.

The question is: did I manage to pull off a cute little wink today?