Haruma-2

Honestly, what was her problem?

I was on my way home, taking the path I had just traversed that morning. The evening sun was as high in the sky as it had been in the morning, and the flow of the crowd had changed direction as well. I had a feeling I had returned to a mirror image of where I had been before, which meant that the feeling I had from this morning had come back to haunt me as well.

Honestly. What was her problem?

She was someone you wouldn’t even put in the same category as those strange, irrational and cruel-hearted a.s.sholes who are utterly lacking in common sense and any shred of decency. She was a G.o.dd.a.m.ned heretic, a loan shark, and a feminine black-hearted beauty. Somehow, I ended up praising her halfway through, s.h.i.t…

To be fair, she did have a nice face. Her face alone would have merited her some degree of praise. I’m willing to openly compliment her solely on the basis of her appearance. On that note, her sweet voice and polite yet evasive words were an added bonus. The subtle scent of her perfume and organic shampoo were on the mark as well, so I gave her extra points there. Her figure was, well, the less said about her chest the better, but since her body had nice proportions overall, those long legs and slim waist of hers were a plus. All her fine-tuned details—the way she wore her uniform, her pretty hands, her almost total lack of makeup, her smooth skin—scored well in my book.

But even if she did have those good qualities, they couldn’t cover her fatal flaw: she had the traits, thoughts, principles and sensibilities of a psychopathic outlaw in a picaresque novel.

She was a G.o.ddess on the outside and a death G.o.d on the inside. The gap was without a doubt a cause for disillusionment. If only I had been born as gra.s.s or a tree, I would never have to feel this way… My faith in the “Looks count for everything” creed was being shaken to the core…

Such disgruntled thoughts went through my head as I pa.s.sed through the ticket barrier and trudged towards home.

In the evenings, there’s an endless flow of people coming and going in town: students hurrying home, housewives returning with their shopping, noisy university students on their way out for a drink. They all walked around like molecules colliding into each other.

The sun painted the towering buildings dark red like melting iron, and the moon was charred brown. There was something uncertain about the air these days, and one often saw irregular colour spots in the sunset glow.

“Harumaaa.”

Someone shoved me from behind as I was looking up at the sky. When I turned around, Amane-chan was waving madly. It seemed we had ended up on the exact same train.

I slowed down my walking pace slightly to match Amane-chan. “You’re coming home early.”

“There’s a place I want to stop by,” said Amane-chan, showing me a clear file folder she had tucked in her arms. Looked like some kind of pamphlets. Words like health resort, villa and Hakone danced before my eyes (1). I wondered if she was planning to go on yet another trip with her friends.

Amane-chan had a squeaky clean personality on the outside, so she had quite a lot of friends. For the same reason, she was the type who made a lot of enemies… Even in the staffroom, she probably had quite a mix of both…

“Oh, right. Sorry, I used your name without asking.”

As soon as I thought about the staffroom, I remembered how last week I had let slip Amane-chan’s name in front of Kuriu-sensei. Back then, I wasn’t able to explain myself to Kuriu-sensei, no thanks to Chigusa. Amane-chan was probably puzzled when Kuriu-sensei mentioned a lost item to her.

Or so I thought, but Amane-chan was the one who was puzzled at this very moment.

“Huh? What?”

“Uh, you didn’t hear from Kuriu-sensei?” I asked.

Amane-chan’s expression clouded over slightly and her mood changed swiftly. “Ahh. I’m not really that close to her. I guess you could say we don’t click. She says she doesn’t have a boyfriend, but she never comes to mixers or anything…”

That was probably because Amane-chan went to too many of them… Oh, and if it was acceptable to dislike someone because they didn’t come to mixers, then the dark side of girl’s society had to be worse than I imagined… Shucks! Why can’t we all get along and be nice to each other?

As those thoughts went through my head, Amane-chan stared straight at me and made disgruntled noises. I returned her gloomy gaze with a glare of my own, which prompted Amane-chan to hit her hand against her palm.

“Ahh. So that’s why you’ve been so down lately. What, did you get rejected by Kuriu-san?”

“Huh?”

The h.e.l.l are you spouting? Stupid Amane, I intoned, channeling as much contempt and scorn as humanly possible in the vein of T-san, who was born in a temple (2).

This caused Amane-chan to nod a few times. “I was wrong, huh… Well, no surprise. Her type’s pretty different from mine. She doesn’t seem to be your type, Haruma.”

“Oh, so now you’re agreeing with me… Wait, it’s weird how you’re a.s.suming that you’re my type, Amane-chan,” I said.

Amane-chan’s feet ground to a halt. When I looked over my shoulder, wondering what the heck she had stopped for, Amane-chan was smiling awkwardly and waving her hand as if to say, Oh please. “I mean, you’ve been a siscon for ages.”

“Huh? What are you saying? You have it completely wrong…”

Still, it was normal of my sister to act so full of herself. I walked on ahead, pretty much ignoring her completely save for the occasional disgusted reply. In response, Amane-chan quickened her pace in order to catch up to me.

“I mean, you know. You always compare other girls to me.”

“In a bad way.”

“That’s what makes you a siscon… I know you don’t dislike girls who look down on you.”

“The h.e.l.l? I like the Perfect Girl Evolution types—”

My words were interrupted when she started stroking my head violently. “Yes, you do. You’re just not aware of it. I know you’d be overjoyed if I treated you like that.”

“Um, what? Could you please stop twisting everything to suit your interpretation?”

Sure, I might have come across that way in Amane-chan’s subjective point of view, but of course, that was not so from my perspective.

In this world, there is no such thing as subjectivity and objectivity, only subjectivity and subjectivity. The opposite of subjectivity was not objectivity but another person’s subjectivity. Since there’s no such thing as objectivity, you could have as many types of units as you liked and you still wouldn’t be able to measure anything in a fixed amount. You can only ever make a judgement of faith.

Furthermore, the world isn’t just made of subjective viewpoints in themselves; the clash of subjective viewpoints is what makes the world. If that were lost, the world would definitely implode.

That’s why my world would implode just from agreeing with Amane-chan’s point of view!

Flinging off the hand that she had been using to pet my head, I swerved off the path.

“Haruma, where are you going? Let’s go home together.”

“I’ve got something to do first. You go on ahead.”

“Aww… Okay then, how about we go together?”

“No way, I don’t need you tagging along. Also, you’re just being a brocon,” I said over my shoulder as I shooed Amane-chan with my hand, an action which prompted her to make a sour face.

Actually, I didn’t have any things to do.

It’s just that the thought of being recognised as a siscon by my actual sister and going home with her filled me with a terrible shame, so all I wanted to do was wander the world aimlessly.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTES

(1) Hakone is a mountainous town known for its hot spring resorts. Incidentally, Sagara Sou and Watari Wataru said they started writing Qualidea of Sc.u.m and a Gold Coin after taking a trip to Hakone together.

(2) “T-san, who was born in a temple” is a 2ch meme. The pseudo-horror stories parody the conventions of creepypastas. While the stories begin with all the usual occult tropes, the character of T-san (who was born in a temple) usually cuts through all the c.r.a.p by saying, “The h.e.l.l are you spouting?” and solves the problem immediately.