Epilogue

"Well then, that makes me the winner! Yaaay!"

Applause echoed through the literature club room. Jun and I both let our shoulders slump in defeat, but we clapped along all the same.

Nanaha-senpai threw both hands into the air without a care, a beaming smile on her face.

Today, same as every other day, the novel battle had ended in a clean sweep for Nanaha-senpai.

"Damn! Still one hell of an interesting woman. …The novel, I mean. Whatever, I'll break it down and use it for reference."

"The characters, the setting, the plot, it's all so good there's just no competing with it."

"Both of your novels were so much fun too! Don't worry about winning or losing, let's kill each other again sometime!"

"This creation berserker… Well, I'll take you on again, sure."

"Same here."

Once the novel battle wrapped up, the club members each drifted off to do their own thing. Some got ready to head home, some started reading novels, some started writing. The literature club, same as always.

Chewing over a defeat that was frustrating and yet somehow pleasant, I gathered up my things.

"Off to your daily ritual again today?"

"Yeah. Well then, I'm heading out first."

With only a quick goodbye, I left the clubroom.

Nearly two months had passed since then. Being gone for a whole day had worried Jun, Nanaha-senpai, and my family half to death, and I'd gotten chewed out pretty hard. Nobody but Nanaha-senpai would believe the whole parallel-world story, so I'd papered it over with a vague excuse. That earned me a second scolding, but at any rate my life was back to normal now. Before I knew it we were in the dead middle of summer, final exams were behind me, and all that was left was to wait for summer break.

Even once evening came, the heat wouldn't let up. Under a sunset that had barely softened it, sweat seeping into my summer uniform, I left the school behind.

Ever since that day, I'd taken up a daily routine.

Whether I'd been to the literature club that day or not, I never headed straight home.

I cut through the old town and passed in front of Himurogioka Shrine. On the shrine grounds, where lush green trees rustled their leaves, an old man from the neighborhood had come to pay his respects.

From there I walked on, toward what had once been the forbidden ground.

That tunnel — Himurogioka First Tunnel — looked perfectly ordinary, nothing more. By daylight, even the forest atop it, where the iwakura sat, looked like just another patch of the greenery coloring the town.

More than once I'd wondered whether Tsukino might be somewhere partway through the tunnel, but by now I knew nothing like that would happen anymore.

Once through it, I reached my destination in no time: the park in Higashimachi that I'd visited with Tsukino.

Children who'd waited for evening to blunt the heat were playing on the equipment. Watch out for heatstroke, I thought, as I tipped back the last of the barley tea in my plastic bottle and settled onto a bench.

The bench where Tsukino and I had dreamed up bad ends together had a roof over it, which made the vicious heat at least a little more bearable.

I took out my laptop and got to work on the usual. Even with the anti-overheating measures I'd rigged up, the fan was making a racket, but I decided not to let it bother me.

The daily routine was, of course, bad ends. From that day on I'd kept writing the full-length novel "Youth Killers," the one Tsukino and I had gotten partway through plotting together, and now I was finally closing in on the climax.

After Tsukino was gone, maybe because whatever connection there'd been between the worlds had vanished, the traces she'd ever been here kept fading, one after another.

The moment she went back, Tsukino's room reverted to the storeroom it used to be. The only things left behind were the little odds and ends she'd bought later on, so I keep them in my own room.

Dad and Mom, and Jun and Nanaha-senpai too, had little by little stopped bringing her up. Masumi Tsukino isn't in this world. Everything seemed to be settling back into its natural shape.

In this world, I'm probably the only one who still remembers Tsukino. For now there's no sign of my memories fading, but if I ever did forget, I wouldn't even notice that I'd forgotten. That's what scares me.

"Tsukino's probably thinking the exact same thing."

Just knowing there was someone out there carrying the same fear made the helpless anxiety ease a little.

When I thought back on it later, something about why the two worlds had connected still didn't sit right. If the only factors were a place (the forbidden ground), an act (the ritual), and one specific time of year, then the people living nearby, who pass through that tunnel every single day, ought to be crossing into other worlds left and right.

Maybe there was one more reason. For instance: Tsukino, who had lost so much, had been seeking a world where that loss hadn't happened. And I, one of a scant minority with a bad-end kink, had been searching for someone who would accept it. The similar-but-different feelings of two identical beings overlapped, and bound one world to the other.

It was all just a fantasy, of course.

But even if it is a fantasy, I don't want that connection erased. I won't lose to the fear that it might be severed someday. She's my identical being, hopelessly my type, and our kinks line up too. Whatever it takes, I'm keeping the traces of a Tsukino like that right here.

I love bad ends. I love getting my own heart torn to shreds by a bad end, and I love watching a reader's face twist up, too. I picture the expression Tsukino, at once me and a reader, would wear: rapturous and yet with her heart torn to ribbons, caught in the space between mental pleasure and suffering.

Carving up Tsukino's heart with this novel feeds straight into my own delight, and a work that can do that ought to be able to smash a reader's heart to pieces as well.

"This novel is the proof. The worst possible bad end, made for exactly that. Mine and Tsukino's Ultimate CalamityExtreme Bad End."

I hammered at the keyboard, building up the climactic scene.

The corner of my mouth curled up before I could stop it, and even a little laugh slipped out. I didn't want to scare the children at their innocent play, so I covered my mouth and kept pounding my passion into the keys.

"Youth Killers," the story Tsukino and I had built here together and then polished up, had become a buddy tale of a protagonist and a heroine.

The protagonist, who had endured relentless bullying from his classmates that escalated into outright violence, begins to change after meeting a heroine who won't hesitate to strike back. The revenge the two of them launch against those classmates keeps widening: first into a war with the semi-gang lurking behind them, then against still mightier enemies. A coming-of-age drama in which two people who share the same circumstances open their hearts to each other. The awakening of the protagonist's hidden talent for killing. The vast loss and regret born of a chain of retaliation.

Past that point, the protagonist learns that the heroine had been using him from the very start, and that she'd been pulling the strings behind so much of that loss. She had only ever used him for her own revenge. The heroine showers him with mocking laughter. He takes her life with his own hands. Revenge, hatred, love, all of it had been a lie. Having gained nothing, having lost everything at the very last, the protagonist can only wail and weep, and it all ends.

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. Feeling my lungs fill with air, I finished writing the final line.

When I looked up at the sky, the evening sun had already slipped below the horizon without my noticing. The summer solstice had passed, but the days should still be plenty long. Only now did it strike me just how long I'd been at it, lost in the writing.

I'd be moving into revisions from here, but I was certain I'd written the best bad end I'd ever managed. I couldn't wait to see how Jun, Nanaha-senpai, and the other club members would react. It had to be a bad end that was genuinely entertaining and, on top of that, tore your heart to shreds.

Only, Tsukino would never read this novel.

I'd accepted that long ago. I'll walk through my own world. That was what I'd decided.

And yet, now that I'd finished writing, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. Was the bad end still not enough, or was it something else—

Holding back the sigh that threatened to slip out, I shut down the word processor.

Something on the screen struck me as off.

There was an extra "Youth Killers" file. I had no memory of creating one with "Version 2" tacked onto the name.

Puzzled, I opened it. The page count didn't match the file I'd just finished, and at the very end there was a passage added in red. It was a synopsis, not yet worked up into prose. But it wasn't the ending I had written.

After taking the heroine's life, the protagonist comes across a video she left behind. It was an apology to him, and a farewell. She had carried a sense of guilt toward him the whole time. An affection with no lie in it comes through the video. Once everything was over, she had meant to end her own life. But the protagonist chased after her as she tried to leave, hurled filthy words at her, made her suffer as much as he possibly could, and only then killed her. (*An all-out gore depiction goes here.) He realizes that the mocking laughter and the ugly begging for her life she'd shown at the end had all been an act, so that he wouldn't feel any guilt. Had he known that beforehand, he would never have killed her. And the protagonist has gone and realized it.

As if to pile it on, the news breaks the story: the villains who had gone missing because the protagonist killed them had, in fact, been slated to face justice under the law. He'd thought he was cutting down people beyond the law's reach, but all he'd done was obstruct its judgment. With the villains vanished and impossible to prosecute, some people even fell into despair over it.

Everything the protagonist had chosen produced nothing but misery. What he'd done had been meaningless, too. He could have backed off somewhere along the way, if only he'd wanted to. All he can do is cry and scream.

"Now that's More Hell!"

"A Catastrophe StrikeSudden Strike. But the kind of 'More Hell' that's also an Ultimate CausalityOuroboros the End."

Under the moonlight, black hair swayed quietly. A rose in black and silver glinted faintly.

She lowered herself onto the bench right beside me. Close enough that the hem of her uniform skirt brushed against me.

The eyes that glanced my way were almond-shaped and cold, and yet the delight of a bad end lent them heat. Against her pale skin, her strikingly red lips curved.

What she set down on the table was the old-model laptop she'd carried off with her. Under her white fingers, a shared folder in some cloud app sat open. The Version 2 text was something she'd made by copying "Youth Killers" and adding onto it.

"Tsukino?!"

"That's right. The other Asahi."

I thought she might be an illusion. But Tsukino's smile was there, and her breathing, and even her "More Bad." The only difference was that her uniform had changed to the summer version, a short-sleeved blouse. Thanks to heat that wouldn't fully break even after dark, her black hair carried a faint dampness that made her feel all the more real.

I tried to say something, tried to ask something, but no voice would come. As I sat there like that, she flashed her white teeth at me.

"So, after that. Together with Nanaha-senpai and Jun, I dug a little deeper into the folklore about people being spirited away. And it turned out the times when something like that can happen aren't just once a year. So… I gave it a try."

Tsukino turned her eyes toward where Himurogioka First Tunnel stood. The houses got in the way, so only a sliver of the tunnel itself was visible, but the iwakura was there, sure enough.

"So, you know. I came to see the person I love."

Having said her piece, she dropped her gaze. Her black hair slid down past an ear gone bright red.

Probably… no, definitely, my own face was every bit as red as hers.

"I love you too. I wanted to see you."

Tsukino lifted her face. The distance between us shrank. I felt something unbelievably soft, and hot. We both felt it.

"…This time, make the worst bad end with me. Mine, the one I'll write."

"Yeah. A bad end that tears your heart to shreds."

""More bad! More hell!""

We thrust out our fists and bumped them together a few times.

 

I want to know more about her.

Because she is me.