About a year had passed since we’d fought our final battle. It was the decisive clash between me and Kiryuu—the ultimate showdown between Guiltia Sin Jurai and Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First. That battle was truly the culmination of everything that had happened in our story up to that point...and it was a climax that defied description, no matter how hard I tried.
Words could not do it justice. Prose could never depict it. It was such an outlandishly over-the-top battle that your only choice would be to describe it in a brief, vague summary form, or otherwise to cut the scene entirely and only discuss it in retrospect. It was a battle the likes of which had never been seen before and would likely never be seen again. The chances of another conflict even remotely living up to it were simply nonexistent.
Seriously, though, what a fight! Looking back now that it was all over, it almost felt like the whole thing—my battle with Kiryuu, the Spirit War’s existence on the whole, the fact that we had ever possessed absurdly potent supernatural powers, all of it—had been a dream.
Anyway, that was all over now, and another year had come and gone. All sorts of stuff had happened during that year...and over the course of it, I’d started going out with a certain girl.
“She sure is late...” I muttered to myself. It was the afternoon of a day in our summer vacation, and I was waiting at the bus stop where we were supposed to meet, staring at my watch and heaving the occasional sigh.
I was a third-year in high school now, and I was making the most of the very last summer vacation of my secondary education. Well, making as much of it as I could, anyway—studying for my entrance exams and going to cram school didn’t leave me with all that much free time to spare. My day-to-day life was steeped in academics, but today, I was taking a break to go out with the very first girlfriend I’d ever had.
It would also, in fact, be our very first date. As such, I’d dressed way more stylishly than I normally would (in an outfit that my older sister had chosen for me, needless to say) and arrived at our meeting place thirty minutes ahead of time...only to wait around for forty minutes without any sign of my date showing up. I’d tried texting her a few times, and so far, all of those messages were still marked as unread.
“Late to our first date, really...? What the heck is she doing? The bus is due any minute now. I hope she’s not in trouble or anything...”
I didn’t have to worry for much longer. Just a short while later, I spotted a girl walking along the street in the distance. She was making her way toward me, her pace slow and leisurely. She wasn’t making any effort to hurry up at all, from what I could tell. In fact, she was walking in such a calm and composed manner that you’d never think she was running late looking at her. This was, to be fair, pretty much par for the course for her.
Even after noticing me, my girlfriend didn’t pick up her pace at all. All I could do was shrug and run over to her instead, calling out her name as I approached.
“Hey, Chifuyu!”
Chifuyu was wearing a sort of cutesy dress and a big, broad-brimmed hat. She was also toting a large backpack, and she was clasping her ever-present stuffed animal, Squirrely, in her arms.
“Mnh. Andou. Morning,” Chifuyu said as she noticed me. If she knew she was late, she certainly wasn’t letting it show.
“Morning, Chifuyu. You’re late, you know?” I replied. “And you weren’t picking up your phone at all! I was worried something might’ve happened to you...”
Chifuyu pulled her smartphone from her pocket, and a very slight look of shock came across her face as she checked its screen. Apparently, she hadn’t noticed that I’d been trying to contact her. She had a habit of putting her phone into silent mode so it wouldn’t wake her up while she was napping, and this time, it had come back to bite her.
“Sorry, Andou,” Chifuyu said, her gaze dropping to the ground. “I got ambushed and ended up late.”
“A-Ambushed?! By who?! Or what?!”
“By the sandman.”
“Ahh... Okay, I get the picture. Nothing you could do about that,” I conceded as my shoulders slumped with dejection. It was just so classically Chifuyu, there was nothing else I could say.
“What’s wrong, Andou?” Chifuyu asked.
“Nothing, really—just a little deflated, that’s all. I feel like a moron for getting all excited and showing up a half hour early,” I explained.
“You were excited?”
“Ah... Umm, well...”
“Excited for our first date?”
“That’s, uh... That’s not it, exactly...”
“It isn’t?”
“I... I mean... Oh, for the— Fine, yes! Yes, that’s right, I was! I was stupid worked up over it, okay?! I was so excited and nervous that I barely slept a wink last night!” I shouted, abandoning all pretense and just laying it out for her to see.
“Oh,” Chifuyu said with a slight blush and a satisfied smile. “You’re cute, Andou.”
“Bwaugh?!”
Agggh—a fifth-grader just called me cute. What even is this emotion I’m feeling? It’s like the weirdest mix of embarrassment, irritation, and excitement all at once...
While I was busy writhing in the clutches of an emotion totally unknown to me, the bus trundled its way along the road toward us.
“Andou, the bus is here,” Chifuyu said as she took my hand. It was a bit embarrassing, but I returned her grasp, and the two of us ran back to the bus stop together.
“Andou?” said Chifuyu. “I didn’t sleep much last night either.”
“Huh...?”
“I was too excited for today,” she explained with a smile that was downright enchanting. It was a preposterously adorable, dangerously charming expression indeed. I was, without question, the luckiest man in the world to be with such a pure and charming partner.
It was the summer of my third year in high school...and I had begun a relationship with Himeki Chifuyu.
We’d chosen a local water park as the destination for our date—the same one we’d been to almost exactly a year prior during last year’s summer vacation. We’d had Kuki with us that time, of course, which made this the first time that Chifuyu and I were here as just the two of us.
“Oh man! This kinda takes me back,” I muttered as I glanced around the lobby. We were lined up at the ticket booth, waiting to pay for entry. “Remember how we came here last year with Kuki? Actually, speaking of Kuki, how’s she been lately?” I asked.
“Normal,” replied Chifuyu.
“Gotcha. Nothing beats normal, I guess. Oh... By the way, did she say anything about our date today?”
“Umm... She said it was ‘out of the question’ and that ‘going to the pool alone with him would be totally shameless.’”
“Yeaaah...figures.”
That wasn’t much of a surprise, considering how violently opposed she’d been to our relationship back when we’d first told her we were dating. She seemed to have reached a sort of quiet acceptance of it recently, but it only took the slightest prompting for her to start meddling and dictating restrictions for us all over again.
“So, what did you say to her?” I asked.
“I asked if she was trying to force me to stop being her friend, and she changed her mind right away.”
“Should’ve guessed...”
That was just a straight-up threat, huh? I was suddenly feeling a lot of sympathy for Kuki. She could be a bit of an overprotective helicopter friend, sure, but ultimately, Chifuyu held absolute authority in their relationship. The balance of power was precariously one-sided.
“Was it really a good idea to force the issue like that? For all we know, she might be watching us from somewhere right now,” I said.
“It’s fine,” Chifuyu insisted. “I said that if she follows us, I’m through with her.”
“You’re sure giving her plenty of chances to end your friendship, huh...?”
What are you, a grade schooler? Oh, wait. Right. You literally are.
“Hmph... Andou,” Chifuyu said with a sulky pout, “no talking about other girls when you’re with me.”
“Huh...? O-Oh, sorry. Not even Kuki, though?”
“No.”
“O-Okay, then. I’ll cut it out.”
“Mnh. Good,” Chifuyu said. Her pout shifted to a satisfied smile.
Man. It sorta felt like we’d been this way consistently ever since we started going out. It was like she held the reins in our relationship—or, more bluntly, like she had me completely whipped. The fact that I, a high school boy, had had the initiative thoroughly seized from me by a grade school girl struck me as pretty darn sad...but on the other hand, I could also look at it in a more positive light by saying I was like a heroic knight having the selfish princess he was sworn to protect leading him around by the nose. Actually, wait, I like that a lot. It sounds so much cooler that way.
Anyway, while I was preoccupied by all that nonsense, we reached the front of the line. I bought a pair of tickets from the woman at the counter—one at the price for high schoolers and the other at the price for elementary schoolers.
“Okay, then. Here’s your ticket, and here’s the ticket for your little sister,” the receptionist—who seemed like she was very thorough about her work—said as she handed our tickets over.
Chifuyu’s expression suddenly darkened. “No, I’m not,” she huffed.
I had just...just the worst feeling about where this was going.
“I’m not Andou’s sister,” Chifuyu repeated.
“O-Oh, is that so?” the receptionist awkwardly replied. “Are you a more distant relative, then, or...?”
“I’m his girlfriend,” said Chifuyu. She stood tall and proud as she straight-up declared it, and oh boy, did that ever make the receptionist look uncomfortable. I, meanwhile, could feel a waterfall’s worth of cold sweat pouring down my back. “Andou and I are dating.”
“Uh...”
“We’re in love.”
“...”
“We’ve even kiss—”
“Ahhh, my sister! She’s my sister! You were right, we’re totally siblings! Sorry about that, she’s been going through a real precocious phase lately! Okay thanks bye!”