Most likely, Kiryuu had seen his future in the same manner I had. Only he knew exactly what’d been in his vision, but much like I’d experienced, it had been burned into his mind against his will in a single instant...and after he’d glimpsed that fate, the very next thing he’d chosen to do was grind Sagami into the dirt. He’d used his fastest, most effective attack to take Sagami out without so much as a hint of enjoyment or showmanship. It was like he was rejecting the future he’d seen with every ounce of his willpower.
“Bwa ha ha!”
Suddenly, Kiryuu let out his dry, distinctive laugh. He’d finally broken his extended silence, putting on one of his typical sneers.
“If—and I do mean if—you were right, and the vision you showed me made me flip out and rush our battle to a premature conclusion...” Kiryuu said in an almost performatively calm and collected tone.
“...then what about it? So what?”
“...”
“...”
...
Future Sagami, Present Sagami, and I were all struck dumb.
M-My god. He’s rolling with it! He’s acting like we’re the weird ones here!
“Heh heh heh heh!” Kiryuu chuckled. “Fine, then. I’ll admit it—you’ve outdone yourself, Shizumu. I never thought you’d outmaneuver me quite like this. Innocent Onlooker... Now that’s a power that’s nasty enough to suit you. This is the first time I’ve ever seen something that sickening,” he spat, the smile vanishing from his face.
What was it? Just what on earth had he seen? What kind of future had he witnessed? What would a future that drove Kiryuu Hajime to use the word “sickening” possibly look like?
“You honor me, Kiryuu. Honestly, you really do...but I’m afraid that this is my limit. Sheesh—this extension of mine sure did end up being a short one. Was I struggling in vain or what?” Present Sagami said with a deep sigh, a sense of resignation creeping into his voice. “With me in the running, there are nine Players left in the War—one too many to trigger the Final Eight. The second I die, though, we’ll be back to eight again...and the Fifth Spirit War will move on to its next stage.”
“That’s right—not that it’ll have anything to do with you by then,” said Kiryuu.
“It’s a shame... I would’ve loved to see your story’s conclusion. Speaking as a reader, not getting to do so is something I deeply regret.”
“You’ve got no one to blame but yourself for that. If you’d stuck to reading like you always have—if you hadn’t overstepped your bounds and tried to meddle with the story—I would’ve let you witness it all the way to the end.”
“I know, right? Ugh. This really was a terrible call,” said Present Sagami.
Then, for just an instant—the slightest of moments—he glanced in my direction. He’d kept his gaze focused so firmly on Kiryuu this whole time that the way he turned it to me felt downright unnatural. He was sending me a message. Specifically, he was telling me to hurry up and run.
“I think you’ve already figured this out, Andou, but the whole point of me dragging out this conversation and getting Kiryuu riled up for no good reason was to give you a chance to make a break for it. I was trying to get him to focus on me as much as possible—just enough to give you an opening, hopefully.”
Yeah, I figured that out, all right. The sight of Present Sagami blabbing away in spite of how beaten and broken his body was had been more than enough to tip me off. The problem, however...was that I couldn’t take so much as a single step.
I’d thought about running away, and I’d thought about trying to somehow save Sagami, but I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. I might have been subjected to one incomprehensibly stunning and surreal development after another in rapid succession...but the psychological shock of it all surprisingly wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I was literally, physically fixed in place.
“You stay right there, Guiltia,” said Kiryuu. He didn’t make it sound like an order—if anything, he sounded concerned about my safety.
Regardless, I couldn’t do anything but comply. I felt heavy. My whole body did—so heavy that I couldn’t take so much as a single step, nor could I even move my mouth precisely enough to form words. It felt like an intense weight had been placed upon every single cell in my body. It wasn’t unendurable—if I put my everything into resisting it, I could just barely stay upright—but I could tell that if I lost focus for so much as a second or shifted my center of gravity in an attempt to flee, I would crumple.
I felt like my body had been turned into a precariously balanced Jenga tower. If I shifted my weight the slightest bit in any direction, the collapse would begin. It goes without saying that this was Kiryuu’s work. He could have twisted me into a corkscrew at any moment if he’d wanted to, but instead, he’d delicately applied just the right amount of gravitational force on me to hold me in place.
“Just sit tight over there. I’ll have plenty of time to play with you once I’ve sent this uninvited reader packing and led the War in its ascension to new, unseen heights,” Kiryuu said with a wicked smile. A fiery joy blazed within his mismatched eyes.
I felt a chill run down my spine. Even if his gravitational control hadn’t had me bound in place, his piercing stare alone felt like it would have petrified me.
“So, for now, go ahead and watch. Witness the end of a truly shameless reader.”
Kiryuu turned to face Sagami once more. He slowly raised a hand aloft, his gaze brimming with bloodlust as he looked down upon the boy who’d stepped beyond the bounds of readership. “Every reader has the right to judge and critique the stories they consume. They’re free to praise and to deride—free to read and to drop whatever stories they like...but when a story doesn’t develop in the way that they wanted it to, going straight to the author and demanding the story be changed is beyond the pale. You think the author’s gonna be all ‘The readers didn’t like what I wrote, so I decided to redo it’? That shit only flies in the amateur web novel world.”
And so, Kiryuu Hajime cast judgment. He brought the ironclad hammer of justice down upon the meddling fool of a self-proclaimed reader who’d chosen far too late to take a step into the story.
“Lament your sins in the depths of Hell—Road to Abaddon.”