VOLUME 5

Epilogue – It’s Aikawa Ayumu’s CD Debut. What’s the Name of his Song?

Epilogue: Part 1

So to sum up, the results of our little adventure tonight were… we found out Chris is ticklish and likes to visit places that middle-aged men like to go.

… So what?

You could fill an entire novel with how much stuff had happened today, but the results were pretty anticlimactic, weren’t they?

Well, no. Saras had fallen in love, and Haruna had made a Megalo friend.

Those were pretty important results too, weren’t they?

But, ugh…

I really still had no idea how to beat Chris.

Wait. Maybe there was something. There was still a way to beat him.

I see… she had stolen all the magical energy from Haruna, so maybe we just had to do the same thing and steal the magical energy from Chris.

I guess to do that, we’d have to ask Haruna to make one more of those magical energy suction devices…

“I can’t make something like that anymore.”

“Why not?! You’re a genius, right?!”

“I live my life like a flash of light. Well, let me just ask you something then. Say you’re feeling really good today and you can draw the Mona Lisa perfectly. Do you think you could do the same thing tomorrow? It’s kinda like that.”

“… When you put it like that… I guess it’s impossible.”

Yeah. I guess… there wasn’t even a point in trying then.

What should we do?

How could we get Haruna’s magical energy back?

Wait… now that I remember it…

“Hey, Yuu. You were the one who sucked up Haruna’s magical energy to begin with, right?”

Nod.

Yuu gave us a nod, a slightly guilty look in her eyes. Well then…

“Can’t you just do that again? This time, you can s.n.a.t.c.h the magical energy from Chris, not from Haruna.”

The emotion I felt back then was laughter.

“Okay then! We just have to make the gloomy necromancer laugh!”

Like that, we began a question-and-answer tournament.

Haruna, Sera, and I sat there looking at Yuu nervously, each holding our own sketchbooks.

Tap tap. Yuu tapped the table twice.

We had our first question.

What has Steven Seagal been really obsessed with lately?

That was hard.

“Got it!” Haruna-san answered. Let’s take a look at what she came up with and try to go from there.

Finding a small autumn. (1)

That was a pretty narrow time window!

I had no idea whether her answer was funny or not, but this was a contest to make Yuu laugh. Had that answer hit the mark?

That was not bad.

So close!

“Okay.” Now it was time for the very intelligent Sera’s response.

Hijacking cars.

There’s another word for that you know! We call it “carjacking!”

That was also not bad.

Oh? It seemed that Yuu’s sense of humor was pretty lenient. Well then, in that case, I’ll just…

“Got it.” I raised my hand.

UNO.

How was that? Think about him with that grim face of his, putting down a card and shouting “UNO!”

No response at all!

“Got it got it got it!” Haruna’s turn.

All-back hairstyles.

That wasn’t something recent at all!

I love that.

I wanted her to say that to me! I wanted Yuu to tell me she loved me!

“Alright.” Sera was next.

Telemarketers from FLET’s Hikari. (2)

I could already see him threatening them!

Love that.

Dammit! I’ll do better this time!

Tap tap. Yuu tapped the table.

… Dammit. Looks like the topic was going to change.

It’s Aikawa Ayumu’s CD debut. What’s the name of his song?

Now the topic was me?! Ugh, because of that, it was going to be tough for me to answer this one…

“Got it!” Haruna raised her hand energetically.

Your Checkbook, Your Signature, and Me.

That smelled like a con from a mile away!

That was close.

“Here I go.” Sera didn’t raise her hand but gave her answer.

I’ve Been Hitting Bunker Shots Since Birth.

Was I born in a desert?!

That was okay.

Okay, now was my chance…

“Okay. Umm…”

I was going to bet everything on this response!

I’ll Become Like Figure 1.

Love that.

Alllriiiiiiiighttttt!!!

Like that, we played a few rounds, but Yuu had been training by watching variety shows each day, so we couldn’t get her to laugh.

“I guess we really can’t beat Chris.”

I muttered that, but Yuu tapped the table twice.

I saw one memo had been placed on the table.

And this was written on that memo:

I know of somebody.

“Someone who can beat Chris? Not Dai-sensei?”

Yuu nodded, and wrote another memo.

If Chris is the strongest masou shoujo, then she is the strongest person in the Underworld. Before we had the Megalo system, she repelled the masou shoujo invasion by herself.

Ahh… wait, she was that strong?! There was someone like that?!

She is called the S-cla.s.s Megalo in Virie.

“Eh, S-cla.s.s?! That legendary…”

Ah, right, Haruna was pretty knowledgeable about Megalo rankings, right?

“Is that really that amazing?”

“It’s not only amazing! We need multiple masou shoujo to be able to take down an AAA-cla.s.s Megalo. So she’s even stronger… you could say that even multiple masou shoujo couldn’t beat her.”

“That is pretty amazing. Could we make contact with this person?”

Yuu gave me a firm nod.

If we go through Anderson, we should be able to meet her.

I see. I guess Anderson-kun was acting like a pipeline between this world and the Underworld.

“Well, let’s head for h.e.l.lscythe-dono’s world tomorrow then.”

I agreed with Sera’s idea, but Yuu shook her head.

She is in this world.

“What did you say? Well, that’s convenient. Why is she here?”

She is making doujins.h.i.+ in this world.

………… She was an otaku? The S-cla.s.s Megalo, the strongest person in the Underworld, was an otaku? Yuu had said “she,” so I imagined she was like Yuu, but… eh? Seriously?

It was almost New Year’s Eve.

I could hear the footsteps of Winter Comiket coming closer and closer.

–

“Yuu, by the way. Why did you go to the mixer anyways?”

I wanted to make sure no strange bugs latched onto you.

END EPILOGUE.

END VOLUME 5.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTES

(1) Reference to a j.a.panese song/nursery rhyme by Hachirou Sato.

(2) Cable internet company.