Volume 1
My Parallel-World Self and I Spin a New Bad End
The truth is, about two minutes into the run I was out of steam and slowing down, and even that maxed me out, so I took a break at a convenience store. From there I faked it with a mix of walking and speed-walking, and by the time I'd finally settled into some sluggish pace, I'd already arrived at my destination.
I passed through the gate of Himurogioka High, which had just hit after-school hours. I crossed paths with students heading home early, but since I was in uniform, no one gave me a second look.
I was still winded, and my legs were just plain heavy and dull. From all the sweat I'd worked up getting here, my whole body was clammy and gross.
I had the uniform, at least, but I hadn't been carrying my indoor shoes around, so I borrowed a pair of visitor slippers and went in. At any rate, the place I was hurrying to was the clubroom area.
Would he be there? Would we miss each other? Was he even the guy I knew in the first place? Before I had time to dwell on any of that, there he was, in front of the literature club.
Even from behind, in his blazer, you could tell: a tall frame packed with muscle, and spiky brown hair with a wild edge to it. His coarse but cheerful voice suited the look.
The one I'd wanted to see was Hikawa Jun.
Tsukino had lost so much, and had even cut her ties with the literature club. But the club itself hadn't vanished, and Jun hadn't disappeared either. Nanaha-senpai had graduated, but that guy, now a third-year, was still here.
If I could repair the relationship between Tsukino and Jun, she wouldn't be all alone anymore. Whether or not I managed to get back to my original world.
All I knew about this world's Jun was secondhand, through Tsukino's novel. Since the school years had shifted, I didn't even know his class. He might have changed drastically, the way Nanaha-senpai had.
I'd been anxious, but the sight of him strolling along with three girls in tow, like some womanizing host, gave off his usual busted sense of personal space. It put me a little at ease, but was it really business as usual?
"What's up? First time somewhere like this? The go club's room is two doors past the literature club."
"I was really at a loss, thank you so much for going out of your way, senpai!"
One of the girls was an underclassman who'd been looking for a clubroom.
"What, you've got that look like you want the critique-session manuscripts. If that's it, I already sent them to the shared folder, and I left a few printouts in the clubroom too."
"That's our club president for you. Don't overwork yourself, pass some of it our way too."
This one was a literature-club underclassman. I could tell Jun was doing solid work as president.
"That reminds me… yesterday's was super cute. Having appealing characters is a real strength in a light novel. Being able to write a heroine like that is amazing."
"You're overselling it. Give me a proper critique later."
With that parting line, the underclassman went on ahead into the clubroom.
Jun opening his critique sessions with praise hadn't changed either. His feedback was grounded in theory, but it never killed anyone's motivation. Critiques that were just like him.
Several members of other clubs greeted Jun in passing, too. Some even high-fived him. An extrovert, huh. An extrovert.
According to Tsukino he'd lost his rhythm for writing novels, but as club president he was actually doing pretty great.
"So… you need something? You've been staring for a while now. What, you into me?"
He'd caught me watching. Before I could get a word out, Jun strode over. A thick arm slammed into the wall right beside my head, and his face, fangs all but bared, loomed in close.
In other words, a kabe-don.
"Fine by me. I'll take you on. Did you need something from the literature club?"
His face was just too close. That aside, sure enough, this Jun didn't know me either. I could tell he was probing for who I was. This close, he even gave off a host-like scent (in my imagination, anyway).
But I couldn't back down. Even if Jun didn't know me, I'd accomplish what I came for.
"I've got something to talk about, concerning Masumi Tsukino."
After everything that had happened, going back to how things were would be hard. Even so, I wanted him to talk with her like before, like the Jun in my world. I wanted them to be friends and rivals.
"…Who the hell are you?"
Jun pulled back.
I caught my breath. I should have been freed from the kabe-don, but if anything the pressure had grown. The way he glared at me was something I'd never seen. The usual heat was gone; his stare wasn't just probing anymore, it carried outright hostility.
It was true I'd come here on impulse, but I hadn't expected to be treated with this much wariness. Maybe I'd taken it too lightly, figuring it was just Jun I was up against.
Still, I'd at least thought up an excuse.
"I'm Tsukino's… relative."
"I'm her hardcore fan. I've never once heard of her having a relative at this school."
It fell flat. Of course; they went way back.
"No, I just moved here recently."
"I'm the type who remembers faces. No way I'd forget a transfer student's face. And you're not even wearing indoor shoes."
"Ngh," I groaned despite myself.
It was true, Jun was good with faces. He was an extrovert to the core.
Realizing that every word and move I'd made so far had been a blunder brought out a nasty sweat.
"I'll ask you one more time. Who the hell are you?"
His wariness had already turned into clear hostility. He waved away a club member who'd come to see what was going on, and glared at me.
"Wait. I'm… I want you to get in touch with Tsukino again. That's all."
Jun's brow twitched. His lips twisted bitterly.
"You know a lot about us. What are you, huh."
It was starting to feel like nothing I said would work anymore.
"If you were a fan of hers, I could still get it. Students who'd read her books have come to the club before."
Jun shot a glance toward the clubroom.
I remembered the poster I'd seen at the bookstore. I didn't know how far the Mikagami Owari = Masumi Tsukino connection had spread. But with a marketing push like that, I couldn't imagine her personal details staying under wraps in this day and age. And Tsukino herself had talked as if something had happened, social media included. Within a school, for better or worse, that kind of thing was bound to get around.
"Look, me? I'm into Tsukino! No, wait, that came out wrong…!"
Jun waved both hands and shook his head with everything he had. His whole body was in denial.
"You've got it wrong. I do like her, but I mean it differently. I mean like as a friend, not romantic love. For starters, we go back way too far for anything to come of it now. In a romcom she'd be the older-sister slot, the not-a-love-interest one. On top of that, my type is the bright, innocent, carefree younger girl. But the second she notices her feelings for the protagonist, she turns bold, a total little devil. A beastly passion that suddenly breaks loose. Tsukino? No good, by comparison. She's the type who looks older than her actual age, she's got sharp, upturned eyes, and she brings up bad ends at every opportunity without a shred of carefree brightness! So she doesn't graze even the edge of my strike zone. You hear me?! Don't get the wrong idea!"
"Okay. I get it, okay."
He was talking way too fast. Setting aside whether Tsukino was his type, I knew Jun's kink well enough to be sick of it.
"Anyway. Romantic feelings or not, I care about Tsukino. And I can't trust someone who's lied to me."
Jun clenched his fist tight.
"You're at least going to give me an explanation that adds up."
He stepped forward. I'd never clashed with Jun like this, and I'd never imagined that seeing him turn his anger on someone could be this frightening.
Jun's hand reached out. But I couldn't back down. Even if he didn't trust me, even if I got punched, if it became the spark that improved things between him and Tsukino even a little, then I'd have accomplished my goal.
"Please. Talk to Tsukino. That's all I'm asking!"
"Like I said, who the hell are you?! What could you possibly understand about us?!"
I didn't look away from the enraged Jun. I held his gaze and gritted my teeth.
That was when I noticed footsteps behind me.
The figure that cut in between us knocked Jun's hand aside and slipped in close to his chest. There was a dull thud, and Jun staggered backward and dropped to one knee.
Between Jun and me, long black hair whirled in disarray, and black-and-silver accessories glittered. The one who swept that hair back into place with a hand and turned around was, needless to say, Tsukino.
"…Okay, that's overkill."
Clutching his stomach, Jun groaned in a hoarse voice.
"Oh, uh. Sorry."
Tsukino, who'd been standing there looking cool, pressed her hands together at Jun and apologized meekly.
Sneak attack or not, it was a blow strong enough to drop the burly Jun, and even from the sidelines you could tell the strike had gone in clean.
"When I thought it was about to turn into a fight, my karate just… came out."
"I wasn't gonna go that far! That's just common sense! Violence is obviously not okay!"
Aside from how flashy he looked, Jun was decent as always.
No, I'd been taken aback by the sudden karate, but that wasn't the point.
"Tsukino… why are you here?"
The question slipped out of me.
Jun, still holding his stomach, was eyeing her the same way.
"I mean, you popped out with insanely good timing. You were eavesdropping, weren't you."
All the cool of her dashing entrance gone, Tsukino looked away, deeply awkward. Yeah, she'd totally been doing it.
"That's, um, I couldn't help it. When I got here Asahi was already talking, so I missed my chance to come out, kind of thing…"
"Don't tell me you heard all of it."
Tsukino looked away even harder.
"…Sorry. But, more than that,"
Still unable to look at me, she slumped her shoulders.
"Asahi, I'm really sorry about earlier. And… thank you, for doing this for me."
"No, I acted on my own. I thought this was the only thing I could do, but it wasn't going well…"
The fact that my intentions were completely see-through was mortifying, too. I didn't know what more to say. Tsukino and I both fell silent.
"What is going on. You two seriously know each other?"
Getting unsteadily to his feet, Jun grimaced. He was still rubbing his stomach.
"Um, uh. That karate just now… are you okay?"
"I am not okay! That was the most brutal hit I've ever taken. But whatever, that's done. I got heated too. But still,"
Jun cast a sidelong look at me, then at Tsukino.
"What's the deal with you two. And… why'd you come now? You quit the club and stayed away this whole time."
Half of the question was aimed at Tsukino alone.
"Asahi is… my cousin, like he said."
"Don't tell a lie you'll just get caught in! He's never come up in anything you've told me. He's not a student at this school either. At least tell me the truth!"
There was a note of anguish in his raised voice.
Some suspicious stranger shows up meddling in Tsukino's business, and the Tsukino he was finally seeing again tells lies to cover for the guy. No wonder he was hurt.
But what were we supposed to say, and how? For that matter, why had Tsukino come here?
Before I could ask, she opened her mouth as if steeling herself.
"I don't think you'll believe me. But hear me out anyway."
Finally lifting the gaze she'd kept averted, Tsukino spoke quietly. Her almond-shaped eyes were fixed on Jun, straight and without hesitation.
"Asahi is the same existence as me, come from a parallel world. He wandered into this world for some reason, and I want to send him back to his original world. To do that, I need your help, Jun. And if I can, I want to ask Nanaha-senpai too, so…"
"Wait, wait, wait, wait! Quit messing around! We're not brainstorming novel ideas here!"
I didn't miss the "oops" look on Tsukino's face at Jun's voice. I knew exactly what she was thinking now. Her face said, "I thought that would work," and then, "No, that just slipped out on impulse."
I hadn't expected her to blurt out something about parallel worlds either.
"But it's still true. Believe me!"
"Don't ask the impossible! This one's impossible! You over there, talk some sense into her!"
The conversation had been tossed to me, but I was just as shocked.
My eyes met Tsukino's. She was utterly at a loss.
Don't give me that look… I thought, but even so, I could tell that just as I'd wanted to do something for Tsukino, she'd been thinking of me.
In that case, I had to answer her too. Even if it was impossible.
"…I don't think you'll believe me, but I'm the same existence as Tsukino, come from a parallel world—"
"Shut up! Quit saying stuff nobody's gonna believe!"
I'd braced myself to say it, only to get flatly cut off. I got where he was coming from. What annoyed me was the look on Tsukino's face, like she'd wanted me to handle it a bit better. What did she expect her same existence to do, pull out some brilliant solution? In the end, she's me.
Jun pressed a hand to his forehead and shook his head.
"Screwing with me. And yet you both look like you're telling the truth. Like hell I can believe it."
Jun glanced around. At some point, students from other clubs, drawn by our noisy exchange maybe, had started poking their heads out here and there.
Jun put his hand on the literature club's door. It really did have a poster of a beautiful pink-haired girl up, and I was a little moved.
"First, get in here. Making a racket like this is a nuisance to the other clubs."
I followed Jun into the clubroom. The shape of the room and the bookshelves were hardly any different from my world's, but the spot Jun sat down in was where Nanaha-senpai always used to sit.
The other members watched us with puzzled expressions, but noticing Tsukino, they traded greetings. There was no missing the reserved distance on both sides.
Once Jun settled into his chair, he glared at Tsukino and me, still standing with our backs to the door.
"Even if it's a lie, if you're gonna push it that far, then prove it. That you two are the same existence."
"…How?"
"How should I know?! I'm the one who wants to ask!"
"Fair enough." "Fair enough."
"You do realize this isn't somebody else's problem, right?"
Jun scratched his head roughly. Then, noticing he'd wrecked his hairstyle, he fixed it back into place. The other members didn't seem to mind much. They marched to their own beat, and then some.
"…No, wait, there is a way. This is it."
Jun, who'd been fiddling with his hair for a while, seemed to hit on something, and his lips curled into a bold smirk.
"If you're saying you two are the same, then you must think the same things too, right?"
"Not necessarily everything." "Not everything."
"Your voices are totally in sync there. Anyway, this is the literature club. I'll give you a prompt. You over there, try coming up with a story idea. As a hardcore fan of Tsukino's novels, I'll judge whether you're really this 'same existence' thing!"
Still sitting there brazenly, he jerked his chin up: get on with it.
"A school romcom. The protagonist and heroine grow closer after coming to share a certain secret. Give it a shot!"
"I see. Good approach. All right, first off, what kind of bad end do we go with. That's where we start, right."
"Right. Do we prioritize the sheer force of a Catastrophe Strike, or do we put Ultimate Causality at the center and make it an inevitable bad end?"
"That alone isn't enough. Eternal Hell. We have to put the lessons from that novel battle to use. We keep feeding the reader the thrill of tragedy the whole way through, tormenting them without end."
"Of course. But this is a romcom. Let's make the first taste pleasant in itself. What we're aiming for is a death sauce that goes down like cola. A spiciness of 10,000."
"Ideally, you only notice the spiciness afterward. Like some crazy super-spicy curry."
"Wait, wait! Romcom is supposed to mean romance plus comedy!"
"Of course. I'll make sure it's genuinely funny. A laugh-and-fall-in-love bad end."
"We keep up the comedy the whole way through, then land a persuasive bad end where the characters never waver. It looks like this could deliver quite the Catastrophe Strike."
Tsukino and I traded three fist bumps.
""More bad! More hell!""
"Quit hitting it off, would you?! Comedy and bad ends don't mesh! The readers'll be at a total loss, too!"
"No. This one's a manga, but there's a story that kept up a lukewarm tokusatsu-style comedy the whole time, then suddenly turned grim near the end of its serialization."
"I've read that one too. The weird cyborg who seemed like he'd absolutely never die, and the giant creature that had been treated like a mascot, both suddenly killed off, and the girl who'd been a regular the whole time turned out to be a spy the enemy had swapped in, so she gets murdered… That shock came from backing a high-concentration Catastrophe Strike with an Ultimate Causality built on masterful foreshadowing."
"Well, that one's not a bad end, though." "It's not a bad end, though."
"Quit syncing up your voices and talk about the love and the comedy!"
"Of course we'll answer the prompt. My point is, even in a romcom, it's normal for a shocking truth to come to light and things to turn serious in the very final stretch."
"Besides, as far as the rules go, as long as it's a romcom, there's no problem with it ending in a bad end, right."
"Are you the type that latches onto someone's wording and acts like they've won?! What happened to the 'school' part? Do a school romcom!"
"Right. In that case, the classmate girl the protagonist falls for is a man-eating monster."
"I see. So that's the secret they share. Let's make the girl a bit of a klutz. Left to her own devices, her true nature would slip out, so the protagonist does his best to keep it hidden."
"Nice. That's unmistakably a school romcom. At first we handle the hiding-her-nature part with a comedic touch, and when she absolutely has to eat someone, we have her eat some bad guy no one would miss. How about that?"
"In the middle stretch, the situation gradually shifts. People getting eaten where the protagonist can't see. The heroine grows less and less able to hold back her urge to devour people, and before long, catastrophe arrives."
"Thousands of people die! All because of the protagonist's ego, his love for the heroine."
"This is turning into a school-romcom monster-panic! Stop! Stop right there!"
Jun waved both hands wide.
"This is where it gets good."
"We've got the endgame roughly worked out, so now we lay clever foreshadowing to shred the readers' hearts to pieces the moment it lands."
"That's not how it's gonna go! Even with a 'the heroine's secretly a monster' premise, there's no need to drag it into a bad end!"
Jun covered his face and let out a deep sigh. When another member piped up reproachfully, "Why not just let them keep going?" he yelled back, "Shut it!"
Jun let the tension drain out of him and flung his whole body back into the chair he'd been perched on the edge of.
"But still,"
he muttered, and went on.
"That right there is what makes Tsukino an interesting woman. No matter what she does, she drags all of it into a bad end, and it's interesting enough to make you envious. She throws out ideas so lawless they make me feel stupid for seriously working on happy-end developments. I like that about her. Zero romantic feelings, though."
Jun stood and came over. He kabe-don'd me, same as ever.
At point-blank range, close enough that his spiky hair could stab me, he raised one eyebrow, his wild eyes blazing bright, and twisted his lips. The suspicion hadn't vanished.
"I love light novels, but I don't think light-novel stuff actually happens in real life. There's no way I can believe this parallel-world story about you and Tsukino."
Having said his piece, Jun pulled back.
He bared his fangs at Tsukino and me in a broad grin.
"But still. I'll admit that you and Tsukino are close, and that you're alike. And what's more—"
Heading toward the door, he took out his smartphone.
"It was good to see one of Tsukino's fun bad ends again after so long."
Even as he said it, a vein bulged at his temple.
"But seriously! Don't turn every single thing into a bad end! A happy end is absolutely better, quit screwing around! I'll play along and help you out, and I'll call Nanaha-senpai too."
With all that said, Jun looked puzzled.
"Actually, why didn't you just contact Nanaha-senpai yourself, Tsukino?"
"That's, uh,"
Tsukino's eyes wandered.
"I did go to the bookstore where senpai works part-time. But her shift for the day was already over, so she wasn't there. I tried sending a LINE too, but it didn't get marked as read. It's not getting read… I'm being avoided. And calling her directly on top of that is, well… it's awkward."
"You're obviously overthinking it, come on."
Jun gave a wry smile.
"Well, I know Tsukino frets over that kind of thing, we go back a long way. Hang tight a sec."
Jun gave a light wave and left the clubroom behind. His sense of personal space aside, he was a guy who could do it all, same as ever.
The other members laughed as they watched him go. Tsukino and I felt our own faces soften despite ourselves.
The distance between the members and Tsukino seemed to have edged just a little closer to something natural. I hoped so.
In any case, until Jun got back, there was nothing to do. It was a clubroom I knew well, but it wasn't my world's, so I sat down on a chair off in the corner.
Tsukino sat down beside me.
It was hard to meet her eyes. It had slipped my mind during the back-and-forth with Jun, but we'd fought at the park and left things hanging.
I couldn't remember how I usually managed to look at her face. Awkward. The fact that Tsukino wasn't looking my way either meant she found it awkward too. This much I could tell, precisely because we were the same existence.
The two of us kept our faces turned toward the back of the room, but since I didn't know this world's literature-club members, meeting their eyes felt uncomfortable too. Some "same existence as Tsukino" I was. No matter how you sliced it, I was way too suspicious.
There was the sound of cloth rustling. Tsukino's black hair slipped into the edge of my vision.
Glancing sideways, I saw the distance between us had closed just a little. The faint sound of her drawing breath reached me.
"I did overhear earlier, but… why did you try to patch things up between Jun and me?"
She asked without meeting my eyes.
"I always found this literature club fun. Reading in your book how you'd lost it made me realize what I'd had all along, and how much I'd taken it for granted."
I'd get fed up with Jun's happy-end evangelism and his textbook-correct arguments about writing, get utterly thrashed by the creation berserker day in and day out, and yet I couldn't imagine my days without any of it.
"The relationships in your world are broken. But if they're anything like the Jun and Nanaha-senpai I know, they'd regret leaving things that way. Even if going back to how it was is impossible, I figured they'd stay by your side. So I gave it a try, but… it didn't work at all, huh."
If Tsukino hadn't come, who knows how it would have turned out. I couldn't help a wry smile.
But Tsukino shook her head.
"…That's me for you. Somewhere in my heart, I'd thought the same. But I couldn't take that step."
Our shoulders touched. When I glanced her way without thinking, her almond-shaped eyes were looking back at me too.
"Thank you. Asahi."
In the corner of Tsukino's eye, beside that carefree smile, there was the faintest glimmer of something.
"But,"
In a sudden shift, she raised her eyebrows almost theatrically.
"My stance that you have to go back to your original world hasn't changed, though. Even if it's terribly lonely. Even if it hurts about as much as when the worst kind of bad end leaves my heart in shreds."
Tsukino's gaze traveled around the room. The members were each doing their own thing now, reading books or writing novels.
"In your world, there's your literature club, and your family too. Throwing all that away is… yeah, absolutely not. I won't have it."
I couldn't claim to understand what Tsukino was going through. But I could understand why she felt that way.
So I nodded.
"I'll do whatever I can to make it back. And to make that happen, you took the step you'd never been able to take."
Reaching out to Jun and Nanaha-senpai, whom she'd kept her distance from all this time, had surely taken real courage. I knew that for a fact, because it would've been the same for me.
"…Just a little bit, though."
"Our goals were different, yours and mine, and yet we both ended up at the literature club all the same."
"Well, that's us for you."
Tsukino's lips curved into the faintest smile.
"From me too… thank you, Tsukino."
"Then… you're welcome, okay."
Our hands had naturally formed fists. And then, our usual fist bump—
"Sorry to keep you waiting everyone long time no see have you all been having fun?! Are you slaughtering each other with novels?!"
The door flew open with a bang, and a gentle, ominous rapid-fire voice rang through the clubroom.
It was unmistakably Nanaha-senpai.
Her black hair, gathered into a single braid, was unchanged from when I'd seen her at the bookstore this morning. Between running here and rattling all that off, she was out of breath, a single line of sweat trailing down her flushed cheek.
From behind her, Jun poked out a tired face. Never mind me, even Tsukino seemed lost for words at the suddenness of it, but she somehow managed to speak.
"Isn't that awfully fast to get here?"
It couldn't have been that long since Jun stepped out to contact her.
"I was skipping class, so I floored my motorcycle and got here in no time."
Now that she mentioned it, she was decked out in a riding suit with protective padding, a full-face helmet tucked under her arm.
"No, you shouldn't be skipping class."
"That's exactly what I told her, too…"
Outfit aside, senpai looked every bit the sheltered young lady, and she was far livelier than when I'd seen her at the bookstore.