There were no words. Tomoyo’s summary had been rough. Like, really rough. If I had to sum it up, I’d say that her story sounded like one of those books where you could practically see the author smugly smirking at you through the pages. The sense of “Aren’t I awesome for being able to write something like this?” was intense. It felt like it was screaming “Hah, as if I’d write a generic-ass light novel that’s totally indistinguishable from a billion other ones on the shelves! Bet you didn’t see that coming, right? Nobody could ever predict my plot twists!”—or maybe “It’s my job to teach all the readers who’re happy guzzling down generic light novels what real literature looks like!” Basically, it sounded like it’d make its author look like a self-righteous egomaniac in the most aggressive possible way. If I ever found a plot twist like that in a book I’d paid real money for, I was confident I’d chuck the stupid thing straight at the nearest wall.
“Tomoyo, you can’t possibly—”
“D-Don’t say it! I know, okay?! I am extremely aware of how cringey that is, but what the hell do you want from me?! It was my first friggin’ book!” Tomoyo shouted at a breakneck pace, her face a vivid shade of red. “Back then...I thought that kind of stuff was what made books interesting. I thought that if I got all meta about the usual tropes, critiqued the usual generic plotlines, and went straight for the antithesis of what was popular with readers by turning everything on its head in a big, last-second twist...it’d make for a really good story. I was super wrong.”
Tomoyo paused, and I gave her a moment to collect herself.
“But then, when it got dropped from the contest in the first round, one of the judge’s comments told me that I should ‘think more carefully about how my readers will feel’...and I guess that just snapped me right out of it. I’d been totally focused on what I wanted to write, and I hadn’t thought about what the people reading my work would think at all,” Tomoyo said. She paused again to heave a sigh. “Looking back on it now, I think that’s a mistake that a lot of aspiring novelists probably make. They think that if they can just write something that’s unlike anything anyone’s written before, they’ll get popular by virtue of novelty alone.”
“‘They’...? That’s pretty big talk considering you’re still an aspiring novelist yourself, last I checked.”
“O-Oh, stuff it! I’m different now! I’ve grown, okay?! I’m a late-stage wannabe! I’ve gotten through the first round, after all!”
That last part aside, Tomoyo had a point. Her very first story and Kiryuu’s lie really did seem sort of similar. They both featured the same “it was all fiction all along” asspull plot twist that turned the whole story on its head, ruining it utterly in the process.
“Hey, Tomoyo...? Did you ever let Kiryuu read that story?” I asked.
“Hell no,” said Tomoyo. “I’ve never shown it to anyone I know, and I’m never planning on sharing it either.”
“Gotcha...”
Clearly, Kiryuu wasn’t straight-up mimicking her story. Was it just a coincidence, then? Had his falsehood and her fiction just happened to overlap? Had they both just happened to decide to run with the exact sort of plot twist that an aspiring author would put into their very first light novel, prioritizing bucking their readers’ expectations above all else and screwing their whole story up by doing so?
“Wait!”
I gasped. It felt like a bolt of lightning had just flashed through my mind. Inspiration had struck. The pieces all fit. It all connected together.
It couldn’t be...could it? But if not that, what else could it be?
I didn’t want to think that I was right, but it was the only answer that made any sense. It would explain everything—or to be more precise, the fact that nothing could explain everything meant that this was the only explanation left that would work at all.
Seriously? This is awful. Like, this is what-the-hell levels of bad.
Was this really it? Was this a resolution that anyone could possibly be sold on? It was even more sloppy and haphazard than the “it was all a work of fiction” twist. It would tear our whole story up by its roots and ruin it from top to bottom...but it was all I had. It was the only possible way that all of our story’s loose ends could be tied together.
Oh—I get it now. I guess this explains what Sagami told me. But really, though, what the hell? This is the truth we have to deal with? This is our actual final plot twist?
“H-Hey, what’s going on, Andou?”
“Juu...? Are you okay?”
“Andou?”
“Please pull yourself together, Andou.”
The truth that I’d come to understand had paralyzed me. The strength seemed to drain from my limbs and I nearly collapsed on the spot, much to the others’ obvious concern.
“I... I figured it out,” I gasped as I barely held myself upright and returned their gazes. “I finally know what Kiryuu was going for...what Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First was trying to accomplish.”
And then...I told them. I revealed my revelation—the truth that was at the root of this whole story.
“Kiryuu...was being a chuuni.”
Just like I was.