'When was it that I first began to actually notice it?'
…No.
That's not right.
I actually do remember it.
I remember it clearly enough that trying not to think about it feels more unnatural than remembering it.
I remember that day. It was just like any other loud day.
As always, I was reading a manga.
I don't remember which one it was, though. That part always goes missing. When I try to think about the cover, it gets blurry. Maybe that means it wasn't important.
What I do remember is how I held it.
Both elbows pulled in close, like I was hugging it a little. I tilted the book just enough so I couldn't see the classroom unless I really tried. If I held it like that, the noise felt farther away.
It was kind of like a wall. Not a big one. Just a small one I could carry with me.
As long as I stayed behind it, nobody really bothered me. But I could still hear so many voices from behind that wall.
Lots of voices laughing. Chairs scraping. Someone dropping a pencil case and everyone giggling like it was the funniest thing in the world. The sounds kept coming, mixing together into one long noise that never really stopped.
I could hear someone calling out answers they didn't know. Someone else laughing too loud. Someone arguing about whose fault something was. It all piled up on the other side of my little wall.
Then a different sound slipped through.
"Hikigaya-kun."
It came from behind the Book.
"Hey! There, Hikigaya-kun."
The voice was closer than the others, but it wasn't louder like the rest of the voices around me.
I didn't look up. The manga was at a good part. Something funny was happening. I remember thinking that if I looked away now, I'd lose the feeling, so I didn't want to.
"Are you even listening to me, Hikigaya-kun?"
"Mm." I let out a small sound without really thinking about it.
I didn't know why I did that. It just came out, like when you answer someone even though you don't really want to talk.
But the wall didn't move.
"Hikigaya-kun," she said, her voice soft like she was talking to a wounded animal. "Why don't you join the others? Everyone's having fun."
I turned the page. The paper made that nice, dry sound.
"Why, Sensei?" I said, still looking at the pictures. "I am already having fun with this. Why would I need to go join them?"
"Because it's not good to be always alone, Hikigaya-kun,"
As she whispered that, she crouched down beside my desk. I could tell she was close because the air changed a little.
I still couldn't see her, though. The book was in the way. But I could smell her perfume, although I didn't remember what kind it was. Just that it was there.
Her eyes moved over me. I could feel it, even without looking. Then her gaze went lower.
And then—
Suddenly, she let out a tiny, choked scream and gasped, one hand flying to her mouth. I felt her freeze beside me.
"What happened, Sensei?" I asked. I didn't move. My thumb was already hooked under the corner of the next page, ready to keep going.
Her voice trembled when she answered.
"H-Hikigaya… don't move," she whispered. "Can you… can you look down?"
"Do I have to? I'm at the best part and it's so fun..."
But then I felt a sensation moving on my leg that made me curious, and looked down.
There was a snake curled around my left leg. Thin, black, glossy. Its head rested on my ankle like it was taking a nap. Its tongue flicked once, lazily, tasting the air.
"Don't move," she whispered, voice shaking. "Don't move at all."
I didn't understand why she sounded so scared. It wasn't biting me. It wasn't squeezing. It was just sitting there, same as me and honestly, I still couldn't bring myself to look at her, because the book was really fun, and I kind of just wanted to keep reading and let it leave on its own.
She stood up fast. "Everyone stay calm! There's a snake—!"
The room exploded all at once, chairs scraping back, someone screaming, someone else laughing nervously like they thought it was a joke, while the teacher ran to the door yelling for the janitor, the principal, anyone at all.
I turned another page.
The snake shifted, sliding a little higher up my calf. Cool scales brushed my skin. I could feel every tiny ridge.
Voices crashed into the wall all at once. From the other side.
"He's not even moving! Is he crazy?!"
"He's gonna get bit!"
Then the teacher came running back. I could tell because I heard her footsteps, and her shadow fell over the desk again. This time it was bigger.
She had a broom or something like that. I heard it whoosh. She brushed at the snake right away, quick and hard, like she was swatting a bug.
The snake slid off fast, dropped to the floor, and disappeared under the desks. Gone in a second.
The room got quiet and the teacher stared at me. But I didn't because interesting part was right there. If I stopped now, it wouldn't feel the same later.
"Hikigaya-kun—!" she said, almost breathless. "Are you okay?"
"Mm," I said again.
But then she looked down again. I could feel her eyes on my leg, like she couldn't believe it. She gasped, her hand going to her mouth.
"…What is wrong with you, Kid?" she blurted out, voice shaking. "Are you seriously still reading?"
That was when I finally stopped and looked down at my leg, again.
There were two tiny red dots on my ankle. Barely bleeding.
"Oh," I said. Then, after thinking about it for a second, "Ouch."
That seemed to make things worse.
After that, they took me to the infirmary. Although I don't remember if I immediately put the book down or sometime later. Maybe I finished the page first. Or maybe the teacher took it away. That part kind of blurry too.
Later, in the infirmary, they cleaned the bite. Non-poisonous, they said. Just a garden snake. Nothing to worry about.
I sat on the tall bed, swinging my legs. The nurse had put a small bandage over the two dots. She didn't say much, but she kept looking at me out of the corner of her eye, the same way people look at a weird bug they found in their house.
A little later, someone she called me out again.
"Hey Kid, your parents are here."
I slid off the bed and walked to the door. It was half-open. I could hear them talking in the hallway.
"—absolutely no reaction, Mr. and Mrs. Hikigaya," the teacher was saying. Her voice was lower now, but it had that sharp edge again.
"It's not just the snake. He doesn't have friends. He doesn't try. He just… exists in his own world. To see a child sit through something like that without a single cry for help… it's not normal."
There was a pause. I could hear my mother say something quietly, but I couldn't tell what.
"I don't want to alarm you," the teacher said, "but taken together, it might indicate something psychological. I think it would be best if you had him see a psychologist. Just to be safe."
Something felt tight in my chest. Not painful. Just… tight.
The door opened.
My mom smiled when she saw me. My dad put his hand on my shoulder. The teacher asked if I was feeling alright. I nodded.Then we were walking again, out of the building, into the normal afternoon.
On the way home, I watched the ground while we walked.
"…Mom? Dad?" I asked after a bit.
"What is it, Hachiman?" my mom said.
"Is there something wrong with me?"
The words came out small. Smaller than I wanted. Like they'd been waiting in my throat for a long time. Both of them immediately stopped walking as they heard that.
"No, Hachiman," my mom said quickly. Too quickly. "There's nothing wrong with you. Not at all."
I kicked a loose stone. It skittered across the asphalt and disappeared into the grass.
"But then…" I hesitated, the words sticking together. "Why does everyone always say I'm different? Why do they say I'm not normal?"
They looked at each other for a moment, hesitantly like they were checking the same answer without saying it out loud.
"Well," my mom said slowly, choosing her words, "that's because you're a very special child."
"Special?" I asked.
My dad nodded. "And special people... well they are just different from others."
I thought about that for a moment and couldn't help but murmur.
"…I'm a very special child?"
I kept repeating it in my head, like I was checking how it sounded, even though I didn't really get it.
------0------
Hachiman didn't really remember deciding to leave.
Now, don't get him wrong. That didn't mean he hadn't wanted to. In fact, he'd been waiting for a moment like this to get out, so that he could—
BOOM.
The blast hit so suddenly he barely registered the sound before he was already covering his ears.
"BUT NOT LIKE THIS, DAMN IT!"
One moment he was squeezed into the shelter with everyone else, listening to the hum of the lights and feeling the cramped heat of a hundred nervous people—
BOOM.
"COME ON… GIVE ME A BREAK ALREADY!"
—The next moment he was outside, his lungs burning and his steps slamming hard against the ground as he found himself running in the middle of the battlefield.
'Idiot,' he thought, struggling to catch his breath. 'Absolute idiot. Nincompoop, Hachiman.'
There was no logic to this. Running into a war zone because he couldn't stand sitting still was the definition of a bad move. The city was a mess. Missiles streaked across the sky, leaving white trails before hitting something in the distance. Every explosion felt like a Nightmare against his ears. Windows were shattering everywhere, and car alarms were going off like crazy.
He ran past a bus leaking steam and a tank backing up over the broken road. Soldiers were shouting into their radios, but their voices were drowned out by the noise. The ground shook again, nearly tripping him, but he didn't stop, even though his throat was starting to taste like dust and concrete.
"Why am I doing this?" he wheezed. "Man… by now everyone probably knows I'm gone. Hiratsuka-sensei's definitely going to kill me with that annihilating second bullet of hers."
Another blast went off somewhere to his right. A second later the ground jumped under his feet, knocking him off balance before the sound even reached him and throwing him forward onto his hands, scraping his palms raw against the gravel.
He groaned, pushing himself up. "Ugh… priorities. I should probably focus on staying alive here first. Still… this is definitely worse than Hiratsuka-sensei's annihilating second bullet."
In the distance, a building groaned before collapsing into a cloud of smoke. Aircraft like the YAGR-3B and UN heavy fighter VTOLs were already pulling away in the opposite direction.
Then came the explosion no... Not another explosion. But something that felt far heavier.
The ground convulsed beneath him in a single, unified shudder. The force hit from below, throwing him off his feet like a toy kicked aside. His shoulder struck first, then his hip, then the side of his head. Everything went gray for a moment and for a moment, he couldn't hear other than sharp ringing.
He lay there, waiting for the world to stop spinning. The chaos and the gunfire seemed to drift away into a heavy silence. That silence was much scarier than the noise.
Hachiman pushed himself up. His head was spinning and his heart was racing. When he finally looked up, he realized the landscape had changed.
"Is… that—
There it was, standing in the middle of the city, taller than most of the skyscrapers in Tokyo-3. It didn't look like a machine, but it didn't look like a living thing either. It was shaped like a human, with two arms and two legs, but everything about it was wrong.
If he had to describe it, nothing fit better than the words giant nightmare.
Its face was pale and mask-like, elongated into a beak instead of a mouth. There were no eyes, only hollow shapes that suggested sight without actually seeing. It wasn't evenblinking or breathing. It just stood there, motionless, a faint glow pulsing from the core in the center of its chest, and the rest of its body was even worse. It was covered in pale, dark layers that looked like armor but didn't resemble metal or skin. Its proportions were just close enough to human to make his skin crawl.
Suddenly the sky above was it filled with movement. Jets and VTOLs circled from every direction, diving in low and unleashing waves of missiles all at once. The explosions swallowed it almost instantly, fire blooming outward again and again until the entire shape disappeared inside smoke and flashing light.
Hachiman threw an arm over his eyes, flinching against the heat and the brightness. The blasts kept coming, one after another, loud enough to rattle through his ribs.
For a second, he didn't move. Then slowly, he lowered his arm and lifted his head again. "Did they... did they get it?" he murmured hoarsely.
He wanted to believe they had. That was an insane amount of firepower. No living thing and honestly, no machine eithershould have been able to walk away from that. He waited for the smoke to clear, half-expecting to see a pile of a charred corpse.
But then, the white mask emerged from the gray clouds.
It wasn't just alive it was completely untouched. There wasn't a single scratch on the bone-white surface. That thing began to move again. Those impossibly long arms swayed near its knees, and the moment he took a single, heavy step forward. Each step crushed the row of abandoned cars beneath its feet like they were nothing more than dry leaves.
The giant's shadow stretched across the street and fell over him, turning everything suddenly colder.
"Is… is that what an A…angel is?" he muttered, taking a step back before he consciously realized he was moving.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, slowly, a strange feeling crept over him, and he had the sudden, uneasy thought that it was looking straight at him, even though its head was only angled in his direction.
He took another step back without meaning to, suddenly aware of how small he was. Nothing compared to this thing. For a moment he just stood there, breathing hard. Then he forced himself to take a slow breath and steadied his legs.
That thing still hadn't moved.
Then, he stopped and took a long, deep breath, forcing the cold air into his lungs until the shaking in his hands died down. He looked up, staring directly into the dark, empty slits of the beaked mask.
And he took a deliberate step forward. Then another. He didn't just stand there; he threw his arms out wide in a slow, dramatic gesture, looking like a lone actor on a destroyed stage. His expression went cold, his eyes narrowing into that sharp, dead-fish stare he was famous for.
"You hideous alien, you who seek the destruction of mankind… you would do well to begin counting what little time remains to you."
The wind picked up, whipping his hair across his face, but he did not blink. He kept his eyes fixed on the mask.
"From this moment onward, your time is at an end. Very soon, you shall be slain by none other than… mee."
And for some reason, hearing his own voice like that stirred something old and uncomfortable in the back of his mind.
------0------
'When was it that I caught myself thinking about it again?'
…No.
That's not right either.
It wasn't something I thought about. It was something I heard that started it.
Purikyua Henshin! Purikyua~! Purikyua~! Purikyua~! Kirakira~n
Just like that day, there was a book in my hands again. I don't remember what it was this time either. Somehow, there was always a book in my hands.
Purikyua Henshin! Purikyua~! Purikyua~! Purikyua~! Kirakira~n
I was on the couch, legs folded under me, manga balanced on my knees. Bright colors flashed from the TV around the edges of the pages.
I wasn't really watching.
The pictures kept changing behind the book, bright colorsflashing around the edges of the page. Someone on the TV shouted the name of an attack. There were sparkles. Probably hearts too.
"Onii-chan."
The voice came from my right.
"Onii-chaaan."
"…Mm what is it Komachi?" I said, eyes still on the manga.
Komachi was sitting closer to the TV, almost pressed up against it. She turned around and looked at me like she'd been waiting for that sound to come out of my mouth.
"Onii-chan, are you gonna do it too?" she asked, her voice vibrating with the same energy as the TV.
I blinked in confusion. "…What?"
She pointed at the screen. "Like them. Are you gonna save the people from the big, bad, evil things?"
I glanced up this time. Just for a second. The girls on the TV were spinning in place, light wrapping around them, ribbons and colors flying everywhere.
"What are you even saying? I'm just reading." I said, lowering my eyes back to the page.
She scooted closer, knees bumping into mine.
"No!" She scrambled up, pointing a finger at my chest. "Mom and Dad said it! I heard them. They said Onii-chan is a very special child and special people always get powers, right? They go woosh-hoosh and save everyone. You're special too, so you're gonna save them, right?"
Special.
There was that word again. It had followed me home from the classroom, followed me away from the snake, and now it was sitting on the couch between us.
I remembered the boys in my class running across the field, laughing when someone scored. The way everyone crowded around them. The way their names were shouted.
No one ever shouted mine, even when I scored better.
They always ran to the same kid. Maybe that was what special meant. The person everyone runs to.
"Special people… they really do that?" I muttered, looking down at my hands.
"But someone like me… someone who doesn't even play with others… can I really save anyone?"
"Of course! Of course!" Komachi said, her voice full of that absolute, certainty "I believe in you! If it's Onii-chan, you can do anything in the whole world! You're weird sometimes, and you're quiet, but Komachi really, really believes in you!"
She reached out and grabbed my sleeve, shaking it with that absolute, terrifying sincerity that only a younger sister can have.
Slowly, I let the book drop all the way to my lap. I turned my head to look at her, but my vision was already fractured. It felt like the heat from the classroom snake bite had finally reached my face.
My eyes were stinging. I felt something hot and wet track down my cheek, dripping onto the collar of my shirt.
Komachi's smile slowly vanished and her eyes went wide, reflecting the flickering colors of the TV.
"Onii-chan?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "Why are you crying? Did I say something bad?"
"…Am I crying?"
The words came out strange. Like I was asking her, not myself. I lifted a hand and touched my face. My fingers came back wet.
I stared at them for a second, like they belonged to someone else.
"…That's weird," I muttered.
I didn't feel hurt. Nothing bad had happened. The TV was still loud. The heroes were still winning. Komachi was right there in front of me.
So why—
No.
I knew why.
It wasn't sudden neither was it confusing. It was something very simple, in a way that made my chest hurt. For just one moment, I wanted to be the person she believed I was.
Not the quiet one. Not the weird one. Not the kid who sat behind books.
The one she believed in.
"…I was just thinking," I said, wiping at my face with my sleeve. My voice didn't come out the way I wanted it to. "If I really was special…"
The word felt heavy in my mouth. My throat tightened before I could stop it.
"…then I shouldn't mess it up… right?"
I didn't know what being special meant.
I didn't know what you were supposed to do with it. If it was something you had, or something you became. If it was a gift, or just another thing people decided about you.
But if it was real—
If someone really believed it—
Then I thought maybe I should try to find out.
------0------
The silence that followed Hachiman's declaration was absolute. He stood there, arm still outstretched, finger pointed at the towering nightmare.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then something above him shifted suddenly.
As Hachiman raised his head a little more, he saw two long, bone-like lances suddenly slid out from the Angel's forearms, the rear ends extending past its elbows with a sickening hydraulic hiss.
In the next instant they snapped forward, stretching hundreds of meters in a blur and bursting through the centers of its palms. A harsh pinkish-purple glow flared along their length.
VROOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
Several heavy VTOLs didn't even have time to react. They were destroyed instantly. Another split apart midair. Burning wreckage spiraled through the smoke as the formation collapsed around it.
For half a second, Hachiman just stood there.
Then his brain caught up.
'Oh.'
'Right.'
'Run.'
He instantly turned on his heel and bolted away.
'WHYYYYYYYY?!' The scream stayed inside his head, but it was loud enough to drown out the sirens.
'What was I thinking? "Slain by none other than me"? Who says that?! Why did I say it like that?!'
He was sprinting past the same overturned bus, his lungs screaming for air. Every time his feet hit the pavement, the memory of his own voice echoed back at him, making his face burn hotter than the fires around him. It was pure, unadulterated chuunibyou. He was sure he had buried that part of himself deep in the dirt back in middle school.
"Damn you, Zaimokuza!" He cursed under his breath, dodging a piece of falling concrete. "This is your fault! You and your 'The Sword master Shogun.' nonsense infected meagain! I've been hanging around you too much!"
The ground buckled as the creature took another step. He didn't stop running. He couldn't. All he knew was that he had to get somewhere that wasn't an active battlefield.
Preferably somewhere underground.
Preferably somewhere with reinforced concrete thicker than his future.
Okay. Think.
Think.
The Geofront had multiple access points. Hidden elevators. Camouflaged service gates. Emergency shafts disguised as infrastructure. He'd studied them enough times that the diagrams had started showing up in his nightmares.
He forced the mental map into place while sprinting. 'Outer ring… service corridors… maintenance access…'
Right. Closest entry point should be—
Another explosion boomed somewhere behind him. The shockwave rippled through the pavement, nearly pitching him forward again.
—somewhere directly under the giant walking apocalypse.
Of course it was.
Hachiman looked back over his shoulder. The giant was still there, moving slowly. It was just too big. Its pale legs moved through the smoke, and that blank white mask looked down at the city like it was checking on a broken toy.
"Great," he panted. "This is just great."
He pushed himself to run faster. He really needed a ride a bike, a car, or even a shopping cart. Anything would be better than relying on his own tired legs.
Then he heard a deep, heavy rumbling coming from the road ahead. It was the sound of big engines. Hachiman slowed down a little to see what was coming.
A long line of UN military vehicles was driving toward him. They were massive, but they were heading away from the battlefield, not toward it. There were only a few tanks and long-range artillery units among them. Most of the convoy was made up of heavy armoured vehicles and Humvees, with even a fire brigade truck tucked in between.
They moved quickly but steadily, engines growling as they rolled over broken pavement. Hachiman stared at it for half a second. Instead of feeling relieved at the sight of them, his survival instincts kicked in.
"Oh… no. No, they're coming this way," he muttered. "I'm gonna get caught."
He looked around quickly. The street was too open. There wasn't much cover, and whatever cover there was looked too damaged to get close to safely. Broken walls leaned at strange angles, glass littered the ground, and loose debris shifted with every distant blast. Getting near any of it felt like asking to be crushed.
The convoy was getting closer. A nervous feeling crept over him, and he turned again, scanning harder until he saw it. A large roadside garbage dumpster sat a little ahead near the curb, dented and dirty but still standing.
For a split second, he considered just ducking behind it but the street was too open, and from another angle he'd be completely exposed.
Without another thought, he ran straight for it. He reached it in seconds, grabbed the lid, forced it open, and climbed inside without thinking. One of the trash bags slipped out onto the road as he dropped in, and he pulled the lid shut just as the rumble outside grew louder.
"Right," he muttered under his breath. "I've sat through enough 'what to do if captured' seminars to know one universal truth."
Another tank rolled past outside, its treads crushing loose asphalt like dry crackers.
"You do not want the UN to catch you." He rested his forehead lightly against the inside wall. "The paperwork alone would kill me."
For a few seconds the convoy kept moving, the rumble outside gradually slowing until it finally came to a stop.
The sudden quiet made his stomach drop. Inside the dumpster, he couldn't see anything. The air was stale and smelled faintly sour. He stayed still for a moment, listening, then slowly leaned closer and pressed his ear against the metal wall, trying to hear what was happening outside.
Outside, a door slammed shut somewhere along the convoy. Several voices overlapped at once, too muffled at first to make out clearly. Then one of them moved closer to the dumpster.
"—swear I saw someone sprint across the intersection back there,"
Another voice answered, doubtful. "You sure? Visibility's shit with all the smoke. Could've been debris blowing around. Or a shadow."
A third voice spoke up, more hesitant. "Maybe he's right. I thought I saw someone earlier too… around the time that thing started taking out the aircraft. But I'm not sure."
Then the first voice again, louder this time, probably stepping out farther into the street. "…Hello? If someone's here, come out."
Then a speaker clicked on with a sharp pop.
"Attention any civilians in the area," the amplified voice called out, echoing down the empty road. "This is UN Rescue Team Delta-9. We are not hostile. Repeat: we are not hostile. If you are injured, trapped, or in need of evacuation, come out slowly or call out for help. We are here to help. Medical support is standing by. You will not be harmed. I repeat: come out if you can hear this."
He pressed himself flatter against the metal wall, hands curled tight against his knees, forcing even his breathing to stay shallow.
Rescue.
The word lingered in his mind longer than it should have. For a moment, he found himself starting to consider it.
But something about it felt off. If he stepped out now… what would happen?
After all, this was maybe his last chance to back out of all this and go back to safety.
------0------
'When did it start sounding completely different?'
…No.
Different isn't the right word. In a way, it wasn't completelydifferent… just not the same anymore.
I remember the first time the feeling settled in. Especially that day.
Yeah, that day. I mean, how could I not remember that day?
That was the day I understood something I'd never really questioned before, why my grandmother only ever read stories to Komachi.
Whenever she came from Kyoto to visit us, nights always ended the same way. After everything quieted down, Komachi would crawl into the futon beside her and a story would begin.
I never sat with them. I stayed in the hallway… sometimes even a closet, pretending I just happened to be there. When I walked in, the story stopped. When I didn't, it continued.
So I stayed hidden.
I still couldn't hear the stories properly most of the time. The wood of the door or the clothes in the closet muffled the words into a low hum.
And honestly? From the bits I did catch, those stories were incredibly childish. Boring, even. They were nothing like the stories in the Mangas or books I spent my days devouring. They were just some weird tales for little kids.
Yet I really wanted to hear them. Those stories.
It was a strange contradiction. I'd dismiss the "once upon a time" parts in my head, but I kept pressing my ear against the wall until it went numb, trying to catch a few more words.
But why, though? Why did I still want to hear it?
It's because, as far as I could remember… her voice. Yeah, her voice. It had always been really pleasant and distinctive. It always felt like it had a certain sense of connection to something I had no idea about. And for some reason, I felt like I had heard it before, too long before I could even remember what "remembering" even meant.
I didn't know why. But I just knew I liked hearing it.
That's what drew me out of my room that night, same as always. I pressed myself close to the door and listened, just like usual. She was telling some story about two special monkeys, or something like that. I stayed there, a shadow against the wood, waiting for the next sentence.
Then she paused. Maybe the book closed with a soft snap. The story was probably over, and Komachi had probably fallen asleep by then.
I froze in the shadows, waiting for her to get up, turn off the light, leave.
But she didn't.
"How long do you plan on lurking there, Boy?" My heart slammed in my chest. How did she know? I hadn't made a sound. The floor hadn't creaked. I'd been careful, like always.
Then, slowly, her gaze shifted toward the door, toward the thin gap I was looking through. Those sharp eyes found me immediately, even in the dark. The kind that missed nothing. But there was no warmth in them. Just a flat, assessing stare, like I was something she had expected but wasn't thrilled about.
Slowly, I slid the door open and stepped inside. The lamp's dim light outlined her figure where she sat, while Komachi was already a small lump under the blankets, fast asleep.
"I wasn't lurking," I muttered, looking at the floor. "I was just... listening."
"You spend a lot of time watching from the dark," she said. Her voice didn't have the warmth it had for the story. It was flat. "It's not a normal way for a child to be. You're like a bug that's afraid of the light."
The word not normal stung. It was the same word the teacher and others used too, but unlike before, it was starting to affect me, and I felt a defensive heat begin to rise to my face.
"I'm not a bug, or abnormal or anything like that" I said, my voice shaking just a bit. "It's just... Mom and Dad say I'm a special child and the teacher said so too. That's why I'm different."
She let out a faint, humorless breath, turning the word over in her mind.
"Heh… special child… is that what your parents call you now?"
She looked at me then. Her eyes weren't like a grandmother's eyes. They were cold and clear. She didn't look at me like I was her grandson; she looked at me like I was a debt that hadn't been collected yet.
"I suppose, if you think about it, you kind of are," she said.
"Is that why... you don't read to me?" I asked. My voice felt like it was stuck in my throat. "Because I'm special or something like that?"
"No," she said. "I read to Komachi-chan because she is a normal child. She belongs to the world of people. But you... you aren't like her. You aren't normal at all."
"Then… how can I be like them?" I asked, looking at my hands, bothered in a way I hadn't been before. "How do I earn the stories?"
"You don't just get them," she said. "Someone like you, who was born the way you are, has to earn the right to be treated like the rest. You can't just exist and expect the world to be kind to you. You were born this way, and that is why, unlike others, you have to earn the right to live and belong in this world."
The words didn't make sense to me.
"I… I don't understand," I mumbled, fingers twisting the hem of my shirt. "Born what way? Earn what? I don't… I don't get any of it."
They sounded important, but they didn't connect to anything I could understand.
"You will," she said in flat tone. "When the time comes. You'll understand."
"Then how?" I asked, my voice cracking. "How do I earn the right? What do I have to do to... to be like the rest of them?"
"By doing what you were born for," she said, her eyes locking onto mine with a calm, quiet intensity. "By fulfilling your purpose. Only once you've done that will you finally earn the right to live in the world just like everyone else."
"So… does that mean in the future I'll need to do something? Is that why I'm special?"
"Yes," she said. "You must."
She reached into a wooden box next to her and pulled out a monkey plushie.
"Till then," she said, extending it toward me. "You can spend your time with this. It is yours, after all."
I reached out and took it. The monkey's arms were long and limp, dangling as I pulled it toward me. Up close, a number— 4 —was stitched into its belly, and its fur felt scratchy against my palms.
I didn't say anything. It was more like I couldn't think of anything I was supposed to say.
So, I just turned around and walked back into the dark hallway. I just held the monkey close to my shirt. The number 4 felt hard against my chest, like a little stone I was carrying.
Back in my room, I sat down on the bed and placed the monkey beside me. For a moment, I thought about putting it near the door. Then I moved it closer instead.
I lay down facing it. The room stayed silent, and it didn't really comfort me, but it felt easier to just lie there with something instead of nothing. Until I understood what I was supposed to do… this was probably what I was allowed to have.
So I rested my hand lightly against the rough fur and closed my eyes. The monkey felt scratchy against my arm.
I wondered what I should call it. Maybe Four? Because of the number on its tummy.
Shi.
But the moment I thought it, something in my chest squeezed tight. "Shi" also meant death and misfortune. Even I knew that much. Saying it out loud felt like calling bad luck on purpose and I…I didn't want that.
This monkey is not something bad. I don't want it to feel like that.
I thought about numbers again. I thought about how we counted things in school. One, two, three... four. Hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu, yotsu.
Yotsu.
That was another way to say it. A softer way. Just… four. The plain counting word. It didn't sound so bad when I thought about it.
My eyes started to feel really heavy. I moved my hand one last time, my thumb brushing against the rough stitches of the four on its belly.
"Yeah... Yotsu. That sounds good."
------0------
"Last call. If anyone's still here, come out now. We're leaving."
Inside the dark, stale space, he clenched his fist so hard his knuckles were starting to turn white. For a second, the logic of a normal person started to take over. 'Just go,' he thought. 'Stand up, push the lid open and go with them.'
But even as the thought crossed his mind, he remained completely still and didn't make a single effort to move or speak.
"Come on Sergeant. No one's here."
"Yeah. We don't have time to waste. We need to reach thatshelter." Another answered, already moving away.
"Right. Mount up!"
The heavy engines roared back to life. The ground began to vibrate again, a deep, rhythmic thrumming that slowly started to move away. He listened to the sound of the tires and treads fading into the distance until the only thing left was the crackle of distant fires and the wind.
Hachiman stayed still a few seconds longer, listening just in case. Only then did he finally loosen his shoulders and let out a quiet breath.
"…Guess there's no backing out now, huh," he muttered under his breath.
He pushed the lid open just an inch, enough to see the empty, smoke-filled street. The convoy was gone. He was alone in this part of the city, right in the middle of the destruction.
Hachiman climbed out, his legs a little stiff, and looked toward the giant shadow of the monster in the distance as it suddenly jumped across to the other side of the block. Then a few moments later, his eyes moved toward the road that led to the shelters.
For a few seconds he didn't move. The street felt strangely open now, too quiet after all the noise. Smoke drifted low across the broken pavement, carrying the smell of burning metal and dust. Somewhere far off, something collapsed with a dull, hollow crash.
He glanced once toward the road that led to the shelters, then looked away. A moment later, he looked back toward where the monster had disappeared, the empty space between the buildings still trembling faintly.
There wasn't much left to think about. After all, he had to do what only he could do. If he didn't… then what difference would there be between him and anyone else?
"…Yeah. Right."
The road ahead was still chaos distant explosions rolling through the air, VTOL Aircrafts circling overhead, smoke drifting across the skyline where the Angel continued its slow advance toward the Geofront.
"Great."
He brushed the dust off his pants and looked down the road again.
"To get to the Geofront from the outer ring, I have to cross half of Tokyo-3…"
Another explosion rattled the streetlights.
"…during an Angel attack…"
He looked down at his legs.
"…on foot."
Hachiman sighed again, longer this time. "Yeah. No way I'm cruising through this safely."
Going straight through the center would definitely be faster. According to all the evacuation maps, the central district had the widest roads and the most direct paths down into the Geofront.
Of course, that also happened to be the exact spot where the military was currently firing every missile they owned at a giant nightmare.
He looked toward the middle of the city. He saw pillars of smoke and heard the constant wail of sirens while planes scrambled away as fast as they could.
"Yeah," he muttered to himself. "Hard pass on that."
The outer ring curved around Tokyo-3 like a belt. Longer distance. Worse terrain. But since the fighting was concentrated closer to the Angel's path.
Which meant, theoretically—
"Less chance of being vaporized."
The theory sounded good enough.
Hachiman rubbed the dust off his hands, stepped back onto the cracked road, and adjusted the strap of his bag and started running again, following the outer ring toward the Geofront.
He took the longer route, figuring the odds were probably a little better.
The street here looked like the city had simply… stopped existing. Cars sat half-parked with their doors hanging open, some still idling until the engines finally coughed themselves dead. A delivery truck leaned crooked against a traffic barrier, and two bicycles lay tangled together in the gutter like they had tried to escape and failed halfway through.
Evacuation must have happened fast, especially in this block, too fast for anyone to care about property.
Hachiman slowed a little as he passed the abandoned vehicles, scanning them automatically.
"Okay," he muttered between breaths. "Statistically speaking, someone must have panicked enough to leave the keys inside."
First car.
Locked.
Second car.
Locked.
Third—
Also locked.
"Of course," he sighed. "Humanity can face extinction but still remembers basic anti-theft precautions."
He kicked another loose pebble aside and kept moving, still scanning as he ran. That was when he saw it. A sleek black Kawasaki leaned against a concrete pillar, completely untouched. It looked like the kind of machine a protagonist would jump on just before the climax of an action movie.
Hachiman slowed immediately and walked over, trying not to look too hopeful.
"…No way."
He reached for the handlebars, feeling the cool grip. He looked for the ignition. Empty. He checked the little compartment on the side. Empty. He even checked the ground around it, hoping the owner had dropped the keys during the evacuation.
But instead he found just a pair of abandoned sunglasses and a crumpled receipt for ramen.
"Ugh… Seriously?" he said, kicking the tire. "For once, just once, could my luck not be absolute garbage? Is a single set of keys too much to ask for?"
He stared at the motorcycle a second longer, then sighed and bent down anyway. If nothing else, he wasn't about to leave empty-handed. He picked up the sunglasses and turned them over once in his fingers.
"…Well, you're coming with me." He slipped them on.
He spent the next ten minutes checking every vehicle he passed. He looked under sun visors, inside glove boxes, and even scanned the pavement nearby. Nothing. It turned out people in Tokyo-3 were surprisingly responsible with their car keys, even during a full evacuation.
Finally, tucked behind a fallen vending machine, he found it. The finest, most legendary mode of transportation a guy like him could ask for.
A bicycle.
He looked at it for a long moment. It was a bright silver mama-chari — the kind of bike old ladies used to buy groceries.
"You've got to be kidding me," he muttered, rubbing his face. "This is it? This is my epic getaway vehicle?"
He had spent years pedaling to school, so he knew his way around a bike, but he wasn't exactly looking for a cardio workout in the middle of a war zone. While the military was using billion-yen machines and high-tech missiles, Hikigaya Hachiman was going to navigate the apocalypse at ten miles per hour on a bike with a squeaky chain.
He could already see the legend: The boy who outran disaster… provided there weren't too many uphill climbs.
"Well, not even a decent scooter," he sighed, grabbing the handlebars and wheeling it out onto the road. "…Yeah. Fine. It is what it is. Also Sorry to whoever it belongs to for Stea—no, borrowing it. I'll bring it back if I survive."
He paused for a second, then added under his breath, "Hopefully the cameras around here aren't working. I really don't want to deal with a theft case after all this."
He swung a leg over the seat and started pedaling, pushing as hard as he could manage. For the first stretch, it wasn't too bad. The tires held steady, the chain only squeaked a little, and the empty road gave him just enough space to build speed.
Then an explosion landed somewhere beyond the skyline.
A second later the shockwave reached him, rippling through the asphalt beneath the tires. The front wheel bounced violently, nearly throwing him sideways before he managed to steady himself.
"…Seriously?" He slowed instinctively, looking ahead. The military had clearly stopped holding back now. Even this far from the actual fighting, the impact was still strong enough to rattle the streetlights.
Then, beneath the distant thunder of explosions, he heard something else a steady mechanical rumble that didn't fade.
Engines.
He lifted his head and squinted through the haze. Far down the outer ring, partially obscured by drifting smoke, another Military convoy must be moving along the road in his direction, its armored shapes barely visible between shifting gray clouds.
"…Great," he muttered. He slowed slightly as he thought it through. Staying on the road meant losing time, and sooner or later he would run straight into them. Either way, he wouldn't reach the Geofront fast enough.
His gaze shifted to the roadside again. Beyond the shoulder, the land sloped downward into a dense stretch of trees. The terrain looked rough and tangled with roots and loose soil, thick enough to make crossing it difficult. But if he managed to push through, he could cut straight across and come out on the other side, where the road reconnected farther ahead toward the Geofront. Unlike the short hills he had passed earlier, that stretch of road lay flatter, running across open ground instead of climbing upward.
He studied the slope for another moment, weighing it quietly. As long as the bicycle survived the rough ground, he could make it.
It wasn't a good option. It was simply the faster one.
Before he could second-guess himself, he turned the handlebars and rolled off the pavement, letting the bicycle carry him down into the trees.
The transition was immediate and violent. The moment the thin tires hit the dead leaves and tangled roots, the old grandma bicycle began rattling so hard he thought his teeth might shake loose, and the sunglasses he'd just scavenged kept sliding down his nose.
He wasn't so much riding a bike anymore as he was falling down a hill while desperately trying to keep his balance.
"Uhh… Bad idea! This was a statistically significant bad idea!" he wheezed, his voice jumping with every bump.
Branches whipped against his borrowed sunglasses, and the front basket groaned as it slammed over a thick tree root. He stood up on the pedals, leaning his weight as far back as he could to keep the bike from flipping forward. Every time he hit a dip in the dirt, the little silver bell gave a pathetic, accidental ting, as if the bike itself was crying for help.
As the slope steepened, the bicycle picked up terrifying speed. The brakes, designed for casual trips to the supermarket, began to emit a high-pitched squeal that sounded like a dying bird.
Hachiman tightened his grip on the handlebars and leaned back farther, arms shaking as he fought to keep the front wheel steady. The ground blurred beneath him, roots and loose stones flashing past too quickly to avoid. He focused on staying upright, forcing himself not to think about what would happen if he lost control now.
Then, without meaning to, he glanced back over his shoulder for a moment. As he did, his gaze dropped slightly by chance, and something near the wheel lock of the back tire caught his eye.
"Wait… is that…?"
Tangled against the metal frame was—
Before he could make sense of what he'd seen, the moment of distraction was enough.
The front tire clipped something hidden under the leaves, twisting sharply to the side. The bicycle lurched violently, and before he could correct it, the balance went completely.
"—ah!"
He pitched sideways. The world tilted hard as the bike slid out beneath him and the slope pulled him down with it. Instinctively, he threw out a hand and caught a thick exposed root one hand while snagging the bike's luggage rack with the other.
The sudden stop wrenched through his shoulders, nearly tearing him loose. His fingers tightened instinctively around the root as the force dragged his body downward for another half step before everything finally stopped.
"Ugh... dammit..."
The bicycle hung awkwardly beside him, tilted across the slope, its back wheel spinning uselessly in the air. For a moment he just stayed there, half-collapsed against the dirt, breathing hard while the ache spread through his arm and ribs.
He loosened his grip slowly and shifted onto his side, wincing as the ground pressed into his shoulder. Dry leaves clung to his clothes, and something small rolled against his palm something he must have grabbed during the fall without realizing it.
He frowned faintly and opened his hand, staring at it for a second as he caught his breath.
"…What is with this coincidence at a time like this…?"
Resting in his palm was a small monkey keychain that looked eerily familiar.
Just as he was just about to think—
Without warning, the sky turned white.
For a split second, as he looked up, it felt like the sun had appeared directly in front of him and somewhere inside the rushing silence, he thought he heard a whisper:
'Yattsu.'
Then the world detonated.
------0------
'When did I stop questioning it… and start believing it?'
Honestly, I don't remember the exact moment.
It wasn't that I suddenly woke up and decided to believe. It was more like I just ran out of reasons to say it wasn't true.It's hard to put into words. I don't have a clear date, but I have this memory that sits right on the edge of my head.
I think… it might have started when I started hearing a Voice—
'Yattsu…'
Yeah, a Voice.
'Yattsu… Yattsu…'
But who was it calling to?
'Yattsu…'
Again!
Wait... that's my voice isn't? It sounded exactly like the way I talk.
'Yattsu…'
Was I talking in my sleep? Was I dreaming that I was awake and calling this?
'Yattsu…'
No. This voice wasn't coming from my mouth. It was coming from somewhere else.
But where? And if it wasn't me… then why did it sounds like me?
I searched for the source, my head turning back and forth through the dark, trying to find where the sound was coming from.
Then my heart jumped as I looked beside me.
And there it was. The same monkey plushie was standing there, calling that name again and again.
'Yattsu…'
Wait, what? Why was he standing like that?
He wasn't lying down on the table where I'd left him. He was balanced on those two thin, floppy legs, staring straight at me. And then his arm moved—he was actually waving. It was a stiff, jerky motion, back and forth, like someone was pulling invisible strings.
'Yattsu…'
I froze. My brain felt like it was spinning. Are you calling me? Why do you sound like me?! The question was screaming in my head, but my throat was too tight to say anything.
I felt this desperate, shaky urge to grab him. I had to know if he was real, or if my hand would just go right through him like he was made of smoke. I lunged forward, reaching for that fuzzy, waving arm. Still half-asleep and completely disoriented, I forgot where the bed ended.
Thump.
I fell off the bed and hit the floor hard.
My eyes snapped open. The pain in my shoulder was sharp and hot, and the room was suddenly way too bright. I rubbed my eyes, the sting in my shoulder making my vision a little blurry.
For a second, I just sat there on the cold floor, trying to figure out if I was still in the dream or if the floor was the dream. My head was spinning—I could still hear that voice, my voice, echoing in my ears.
A few moments later, the door slid open with a sharp rattle.
"Onii-chan?"
The door slid open, and the first thing I saw was Komachi entering the room. She was in her pajamas, rubbing her eyes and looking at me like I was a complete weirdo.
"Onii-chan? What happened? I heard a loud noise. Did you fall off the bed?"
"I... I saw it," I muttered. I couldn't even think of a lie. My heart was still trying to jump out of my chest. I pointed a shaky finger toward the table.
"Yotsu, that monkey. He was standing up, Komachi. Right there. He was waving and... he was saying something."
Komachi blinked, her eyes following my finger to the table. I looked, too.
The monkey was just... there. He was laid out on the same spot I'd left him, his long arms draped uselessly over the edge. He wasn't standing or waving doing anything like that.
"Ehh? How can that happen, Onii-chan?" she asked.
She walked over and gave me this totally innocent look the kind of look that makes you feel like the only crazy person in the room. She looked back at the plushie and then back at me, tilting her head.
"See? He's right here, just the way you left him," she said, her voice small and sleepy. "He's just a toy, Onii-chan. He can't stand up."
She reached out and patted his head, then turned back to me with a sleepy shrug.
"You must've been half-asleep and dreaming, Onii-chan. Get up already. You're going to be late for school."
I didn't say anything. I couldn't. I just watched her close the door, leaving me in the quiet again. She was a normal kid, so she saw a normal toy. But as I climbed back into bed, I kept staring at Yotsu in the dark.
It was just a dream, right? I mean It had to be. Plushies don't move. They don't talk like this.
But the word "special" drifted through my head anyway. And this time, it didn't feel like confusion or uncertainty. It felt like something else, something I couldn't name at that moment.
That feeling didn't disappear the next morning or maybe it had already been there.
The classroom was loud again. I had a book once again in front of my face.
And then I heard it.
'Yattsu…'
It was that same voice. My voice, but coming from just a few inches away.
'Yattsu… Yattsu…'
I slowly lowered the book, my heart doing that weird, shaky skip again. I half-expected to see the teacher or a classmate playing a trick on me.
But there he was.
Yotsu wasn't inside my backpack. He was standing right on top of my desk with his long, thin legs. He was staring at me with those unblinking eyes, and his arm was moving that same stiff, jerky wave.
I froze. My mouth went dry. How? How did he get out of the bag? And why was he standing in the middle of a crowded room like it was the most normal thing in the world?
"Who..." I whispered, as I peeked around the edge of my book to make sure no one was looking. "Who is Yattsu? Why do you keep saying that?"
The monkey didn't hesitate. He lifted a fuzzy, limp arm and pointed his paw straight at my chest. 'Yattsu,' the voice said.
'Yattsu,' the voice said.
Then he turned the paw toward himself. "Me… Yotsu."
I blinked, staring at the monkey's paw still pointed at me. The classroom noise felt far away, like it was happening in another room. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my ears.
"…Yattsu?" I repeated under my breath. "That's… that's me?"
The monkey didn't move his arm. He just kept pointing, those button eyes staring blank and steady. The voice came again, small and soft, like an echo of my own.
'Yattsu… yes. You.'
I sat there, frozen. My mind started turning it over, slow at first, like trying to remember a word I knew but couldn't grab. Yotsu. That was what I called him. Because of the number on his belly. Four. Yotsu was just another way to say four, the plain counting way.
And Yattsu… I thought about numbers again. The way we counted in class. One, two, three… four. Hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu… yotsu.
Five, six, seven… eight. Itsutsu, muttsu, nanatsu… yattsu.
Yattsu. Eight.
And my name… Hachiman. Hachi. That meant eight.
He was calling me. Calling my name the same way I called his. The number inside him. The number in me.
"…You're calling me?" I whispered, leaning closer. "Like how I named you Yotsu?"
The monkey's arm lowered slowly, like it was tired. The voice whispered one more time. 'Yattsu… Buddy.'
"...Buddy?" I echoed. The word felt strange in my mouth. "Me? Really?"
The monkey's head tilted slightly. It was a tiny movement, almost clumsy, like the stuffing inside shifted. Then it gave a slow, uneven nod.
My chest tightened when I saw it. Not the sharp, suffocating tightness from before. Not the kind that made it hard to breathe. This one was different. It was warmer. Like when Komachi grabbed my sleeve and said she believed in me. Like something had been placed in my hands without me asking for it.
I leaned in closer, my book forgotten beside me.
"…Are you real?" I asked, my fingers hovering near his fur, afraid to touch and make it stop.
The voice came soft again, an echo in my head. The monkey's head tilted slightly, those button eyes fixed on me like they were seeing right through the doubt in my head.
'Yattsu… special… yes. But… real? Dream? Same thing sometimes…'
I blinked hard, my breath catching. "What do you mean? Are you… are you really here then, or am I just—"
"Oii Kid!"
The sharp voice cut through the quiet like a slap.
"Hey wake up!"
I jerked awake in an instant classroom was loud, just like always. My cheek was pressed against the open manga, a little drool smudged on the page. The teacher was standing at the front, arms crossed, looking at me with that mix of annoyance and concern.
"Are you with us, Hikigaya-kun?" she asked, her voice carrying over the sudden hush. "Or do you need to take a trip to the infirmary for your nap?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't. I just stared at the empty space on my desk where, a second ago, a monkey had been standing. There was nothing there now.
A few kids snickered. I heard muttering from the seats around me.
"…Weird. He was muttering in his sleep again."
"…Yeah, creepy. Talking to himself like that."
"…What a loner."
I ignored them. My face felt hot, but I didn't look up. I just reached for my bag under the desk and slowly unzipped it to check. Yotsu was right there, unmoved, tucked into the side pocket where I'd left him that morning.
"…Sorry, Sensei," I mumbled. "Won't happen again."
She nodded once, and turned back to the board. The class moved on. I stared at the desk for a long moment, the echo of that soft voice still whispering in the back of my head.
'Real? Dream? Same thing sometimes…'
I didn't know. But a small part of me didn't care anymore. That was when I stopped questioning it all… The feeling from this morning was still there, only now it wasn't so unclear. It was something closer to recognition.
This was just the beginning of something I had never thought would happen. I started to see Yotsu again and again, in the same way. Sometimes in my room. Sometimes in places he shouldn't be.
Sometimes I heard him say 'Yattsu… special… yes.'
At first, I thought he meant it the way adults did. The way that really meant different. But Yotsu didn't say it like that.
'Special means… different rule,' he whispered once.
I tried telling Komachi once again after that. She blinked at me for a moment and then laughed, saying I shouldn't watch TV so late at night.
I tried telling Mom too, but she only pressed her palm gently to my forehead and asked if I was feeling stressed about school. When I told Dad, he suggested I join a club and talk to more people. They all told me I'd be fine, that everyone feels lonely sometimes, that it was just another ordinary phase that would pass if I be more like others.
But Grandma had already told me something different. She had said I didn't belong in the world of people. That I had to earn the right to live in it.
And if that was true, then maybe it made sense that the only one who stayed beside me was something that didn't entirely belong to that world either.
After a while, I stopped trying to explain it to anyone else. I just talked to Yotsu instead.
At first, it felt stupid. Talking to a plushie like that, someone who wouldn't even talk back. But I had already tried talking to everyone else. So, one night, in one of my weird dreams, I asked him anyway.
"…Am I really special?"
The room stayed quiet.
Then—
'Yattsu… special… yes.' He said it again just like before.
I stared at the ceiling for a moment, then let out a small breath.
"…I am special, aren't I?" I asked, almost like I was agreeing with him instead of questioning it.
'Yotsu… happy, Yattsu see Yattsu special.'
The way he said it made me feel relieved. Relieved that there was a reason behind all this. It wasn't just that I was weird or wrong. It was because I was special. The word didn't sting like it did when adults said it. Coming from Yotsu, it felt like a secret we shared, something that made the alone parts feel less alone.
"…But what does it even mean?" I whispered after a bit. "Just being me makes me special?"
'Yep,' he said, simple as that. 'Yotsu don't know all. But… special mean… Yattsu get Yotsu.'
I blinked in the dark. "That's it?"
His paw tapped his chest lightly, that stiff little motion.'Normal kids… don't get this.'
'Only Yattsu get Yotsu.'
It sounded right when he said it. It made the "not belonging" part feel like a secret club instead of a problem. Like having Yotsu was the good side of being different. Something no one else had.
And that might be the moment I started to believe I was special. After that, it didn't feel strange anymore when he showed up.
One time during recess, I tried to join a game. I didn't say anything wrong, and I didn't push or interrupt anyone. Maybe I stood a little too close, or maybe I didn't react at the right time. I can't really remember the exact reason anymore. All I remember is that someone laughed, someone else made a face, and then the word slipped out so easily it almost sounded harmless.
"Hikigerma."
I didn't know exactly what it meant, but I knew it wasn't good. At first nothing really changed or maybe it did and I just didn't notice. The next day a few people stood a little farther away.
By the end of the week, nobody stood close unless they had to. Someone said that if they touched me, their eyes would turn dull too, like a dead fish and before I knew it, everyone had started playing along with it, this game or whatever it was.
I didn't tell anyone at home. What was there to say? They'd just tell me to try harder, to be more like the others. But I wasn't like them. I knew that now.
The strange part was that it hadn't bothered me this much before. Being alone used to feel normal, almost comfortable. I had my books to read, and I really did enjoy reading by myself. It was enough. But after that, something about it shifted. I couldn't tell when exactly. It just stopped feeling like something I chose for myself.
And somehow, instead of questioning it, I started believing it even more. Maybe this was proof. Maybe this was what being special was supposed to feel like.
"Don't go near the slide! You'll get the Hikigerma and your eyes will turn into dead fish!"
"No way! I've activated my ultimate barrier! Haa! Nothing gets through it. Not even Hikigerma."
"Really? Hey, teach me too. I wanna repel Hikigerma with my ultimate shield."
They were laughing when they said it. Running around like it was just another game.
I tried to tell myself it didn't matter. That it was stupid. That it wasn't even a real word. But still, I…I didn't like the "Hikigerma" name. I didn't like that they said my eyes looked like dead fish. I felt like crying, but I knew I wasn't supposed to.
Normal kids cried. Special kids... I didn't know what we were supposed to do.
Then, Yotsu's voice came back. So maybe I was dreaming or maybe this was just what happened when I got too quiet.
'Yattsu… sad when they say weird?'
I nodded, not looking up. "Yeah… it hurts."
'Yattsu… happy when little sister believes?'
I thought about Komachi. She still liked me. "Yeah," I whispered. "She believes me."
'That special too,' Yotsu said. His voice was soft, right in my ear. 'Yattsu see things others not see. Yattsu think things others not think. That not wrong.'
He tapped my hand with his fuzzy paw. 'Hide the candy in Mr. Monkey. Hide your secrets in Mr. Monkey.'
I reached into my pocket and found a crumpled piece of paper from a chocolate I'd eaten alone at lunch. I tucked it into the little gap in his side. It felt like giving him the "hurt" part of my day to keep for me.
I held up four fingers. Yotsu moved his arm in that stiff, jerky way—like a puppet on a string and pressed his paw against my hand. A high-four. Then we bumped fists.
"Yotsu and Yattsu," I said softly. "Four and eight."
When other kids ran ahead together and I stayed behind, the voice filled the empty space. When birthday invitations never found my house, being with Yotsu sanded down the sharp edges of the sting. When group work slowly turned into paired work and then, somehow, into me doing it alone, the voice sat next to me and made it easier to get through.
Yotsu never promised me that I'd be happy. He never said the kids would stop calling me names. That would've been suspicious.
It promised me coherence. He made the world make sense by proving I was different.
If I was different, then maybe there was a reason for it.
After a while, that thought started settling somewhere in the back of my mind. Like someday, somewhere, there might be something only someone like me was meant to do.
And eventually, I stopped trying to question it. If that was what being special meant, then that was what I was.
------0------
The shockwave hit a second later.
"Fuck… did they just use another N2 mine? Holy hell—"
The blast slammed into the Angel far away like a god striking the anvil of the earth with a hammer. Even from this distance, the shockwave arrived as a physical wall of heat and pressure.
Hachiman didn't wait to see the rising mushroom cloud. He staggered forward instinctively, scrambling a few steps across the slope until he found a patch of flatter ground where he could stand without slipping. He dropped low at once, ducking his head and clamping his hands over his ears as he pressed himself behind the thick trunk of a nearby tree, bracing for the rest of it.
The air roared past him as the pressure pressed against his back and chest until it finally began to fade. Slowly, cautiously, he lifted his head.
For a moment he hoped that had been enough. Far across the city, through drifting smoke and haze, the giant still stood.From this distance he couldn't make out the damage clearly, but it didn't look like enough.
The Angel turned its attention upward, and one by one the aircraft circling above it began to disappear in flashes of distant light and smoke.
Then the creature turned.
Its "head" tilted toward the outer ring, facing the roads he had just been crossing. The empty eye sockets flared with a terrifying, concentrated light.
VROOOOM—
Two long-range energy beams lanced outward from its eyes, striking somewhere deep in the forested stretch near the middle section of the outer ring, where the heavy artillery and missile launchers had been firing.
The impact didn't just explode it erupted into massive, pink-tinted crosses of light that tore upward into the sky.
The secondary shockwave was even more violent than the first, hitting much closer this time. The entire hillside shuddered and Hachiman was thrown flat against the dirt, the air punched out of his lungs as his ears began to ring with a high-pitched, agonizing whine.
"Dammit... not again..."
He looked up just in time to see the bicycle, which he'd abandoned at the edge of the slope in his rush to take cover, begin to slide. The vibration from the cross-shaped blast had turned the loose soil beneath it almost liquid.
"Wait! No!"
Hachiman lunged for it, his fingers brushing the cold metal of the luggage rack, but the ground gave way. He watched in slow-motion as his "legendary" mode of transportation tumbled down the remainder of the slope. It bounced once, twice, and then slammed into a jagged rock at the bottom with a sickening crunch.
The pedal snapped off, spinning into the undergrowth, and the handlebars twisted into a useless, mangled wreck. Hachiman slumped back against the dirt, staring at the ruins of the bike.
"You have got to be kidding me! Are you serious right now?!"Frustration flared before he could stop himself. He slammed his foot into the ground, and the loose soil immediately gave way beneath him.
"—ah!"
The slope shifted under his weight, sliding just enough to knock him forward. He dropped face-first into the dirt, catching himself too late as a fresh layer of loose soil spilled down over his back and shoulders.
He coughed, spitting grit as he lay there for a second, chest heaving.
"…Not now… not like this…" His fingers curled weakly into the dirt.
"I can't stop… damn it… I have to see this to the end. I have to get there. I have to get to the Geofront."
For a moment he stayed still, breathing hard. Then he let out a long, resigned sigh, the fight draining out of his shoulders.
"…Guess I'll have to find another way." He pushed himself up slowly, brushing the dirt from his sleeves. "And if I can't… I'll run."
He glanced once more down the slope at the wrecked bicycle, then turned away.
"…Come on. Nothing's going to change lying here."
------0------
Hachiman climbed back onto the main road of the outer ring, coughing the last of the dust out of his lungs. He looked back at the slope for a second, offering a silent apology to the ruined bicycle, then turned his attention to the path ahead.
The road was wider here and completely empty, with no civilians left and no soldiers in sight. In the distance, steady columns of smoke rose into the sky where the beams and the N2 blast had struck.
He looked left and then right, weighing his options. Trying to reach the Geofront on foot was technically possible, but it felt about as realistic as trying to dig a tunnel with a spoon. Both options had the same miserable survival odds.
Then, he heard a sound.
It was an engine, but it didn't sound like the heavy, grinding roar of a tank or the loud diesel cough of the military trucks he had seen earlier. This sound was smoother and much higher. It sounded fast.
A blue sports car, badly banged up along the sides, came around the bend at speed, loud and completely out of place in the middle of a war zone.
Hachiman stood there for a moment, watching it approach.
"...Wait," he muttered, squinting. "I think I've seen that car before."
The car didn't slow down as it bounced over the cracks in the asphalt. As it shot toward him, he finally got a clear look at the person behind the wheel.
"Oh. Of course, yes."
A sudden spark of hope finally hit him and without thinkingstepped out onto the edge of the road, raising both arms and waving them frantically.
"Hey! Hey there, Captain Katsuragi!" he shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Over here! It's me, the underpaid minor known as Hikigaya Hachiman! Please, stop the car!"
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Author's Note:
Hey everyone, Chapter 3 is finally done. We hope you enjoyed this one. It turned out longer than we expected and took quite a while to finish. Originally, it was even bigger, but we decided to split it here for now. Because of that, the next chapter might not take as long to update, though we are saying might since there is still a lot left to write.
The next chapter will focus on the final confrontation between Hachiman and Sachiel, so we hope you will look forward to it. That's all for now. Thanks a lot for reading and sticking with the story so far. We will keep working on the upcoming chapters and try to get them out as soon as we can.
As always, feel free to leave your thoughts below. We really hearing from you all.
Stay tuned for more.
—Raijinmaru_K2 & CacciaFulmini