“You’re getting older, Hajime, and so am I. Andou and the others are too. We’ll all be adults someday, and somewhere else out in the world, some other kid will come down with their own case of chuunibyou. I don’t know if I’m making any sense here, but, well...if that’s how the world works, then I don’t really have a problem with it. Why not leave it at that?”
“Do you seriously think that’s an option for me, after everything I’ve done?” Kiryuu asked with a pained, bitter scowl. “I ran wild. I pulled everyone and everything around me into my whims. I wanted to wrap all of humanity up in a massive War under my direction. Do you really think I can just leave my story unfinished, dropping it on the spot to go off and be a normal adult...?”
“I mean...I don’t know what all you’ve done that you’d feel responsible for, but in terms of your options, I don’t see why leaving the story unfinished wouldn’t be on the table. It’s not like finishing it would free you from all that responsibility anyway. Nobody’s gonna praise you for wrapping up a story that you started purely for your own self-satisfaction, you know?” Tomoyo said with a frigid glare.
O-Oof! Harsh!
“Personally, I think you should go around and apologize to every single person you pulled into your stupid little game...but considering most of them don’t even remember it at this point, probably better not to stir that pot again. I’d say you’re better off just feeling guilty about it for the rest of your life.”
Once again, Kiryuu didn’t say a word.
“Going back to the part about leaving your story unfinished...speaking as an aspiring author myself, I don’t like the idea of any story getting dropped partway through, but there’s not much else to do at this point. It’s not like you’re slacking off on your writing, or got bored, or whatever. You thought it through as hard as you possibly could and worked yourself to the bone to come up with a good ending...but you just couldn’t do it. You couldn’t come up with the right twist, couldn’t put out the next installment, and couldn’t write your final volume. And at that point...what else can you do? It’s a lost cause. What else can you do?” Tomoyo repeated under her breath.
So, so many stories have ended without ever reaching completion. So many stories have ended on unsatisfying, incomprehensible notes. So many have been canceled or quietly abandoned...and Kiryuu Hajime’s first story was about to become one of them. He’d written himself into a corner, and he was about to set down his pen for good without even bothering to put down a final period. A lack of ending would be the ending. A lack of a final twist would be the final twist. That would be how this story concluded.
“What else is there to say...?” Tomoyo pondered. “I mean, there’s a bunch of other stuff I could comment on, but I’m starting to get pretty tired here... So, uh, basically...” She seemed to hesitate for a moment, then held a hand out to Kiryuu. “Let’s go home, Hajime,” Tomoyo said with a slightly bashful look on her face. “Mom and dad are worried about you.”
“Tomoyo...” said Kiryuu.
“If you can’t decide what you want to do next, then just take some time back at our place to think it through. Of course, whether you decide to get a job or go back to college, you’re gonna have to let your hair get black again one way or another.”
“Yeah...guess I will,” Kiryuu agreed. He let out a slight sigh, then took the hand that Tomoyo offered him. “Let’s head home for now, then.”
The look on Kiryuu’s face as he stood up was so calm and placid, it almost felt like he’d just been released from the clutches of a spirit that had possessed him. He looked like he’d accepted everything the world had thrown at him—like he’d compromised, given up, and grown up.
“But, hey...Andou? If this doesn’t work out...”
Suddenly, the words Sagami had spoken to me sprang to the forefront of my mind.
“If this doesn’t work out...”
“I want you to save Kiryuu for me.”
“Please. You’re the only one who can do it.”
That’s right. Sagami had asked me to save Kiryuu—not to defeat him or stop him, but save him. Maybe he’d already figured out, at least to some degree, what Kiryuu was going through. Maybe he’d been dimly aware of the mental anguish that had driven Kiryuu into a corner. Maybe he’d realized how, in his role as a reader, he had tormented the author of the story he was following. I certainly didn’t think Sagami had figured everything out, but it was easy to believe that he’d at least had a hunch, deep down. He and Kiryuu had been friends since they were kids, supposedly, so they probably had all sorts of shared history that I wasn’t aware of.
I looked over at Kiryuu once more. He was smiling, but not the crazed, menacing grin of madness I was used to. Now he was smiling like a calm, good-natured young man. I could tell that he’d accepted it all—he’d embraced the transience of chuunibyou and given up on maintaining his own case forever. He’d come to understand that there’s value to be found in things that only last an instant, and also that lasting an instant is exactly what gives them the power to last an eternity. He’d been freed from the bonds of chuunibyou, and he would go on to set forth into adulthood. He’d go home to the family that was waiting for him, spend some time getting himself together, and then find a place for himself in the grown-up world.
A few years from now, Kiryuu would be the sort of perfectly normal adult who could look back on this moment and admit—with no small amount of embarrassment—that he used to be the cringiest person you could ever meet. That, however, by no means meant that this moment would vanish. It would never come again, but it would stay with him forevermore.
This was right. Surely, this was for the best. This had to have been the sort of ending that Sagami had wanted me to help Kiryuu find. That’s exactly why I had brought Tomoyo along with me for this confrontation. I’d brought her because I’d thought that only she—a member of Kiryuu’s family—had what it took to save him.
One way or another, this was case closed. Everything had ended as well as it could, and with that done, our story was ready to come to its equivalent of an ending as well...
“No.”
...but then, just when it’d seemed that everything had wrapped up, a voice rang out—my voice.
“No...this can’t possibly be right, Kiryuu. Why are you acting like it’s all over? You think you can stroll off into the sunset and become an adult, just like that?”
I knew that I was ruining the mood of our big grand finale, but I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t bear to watch Kiryuu embrace a life of ordinary mediocrity. I’d accepted this ending on an intellectual level, but still, I just couldn’t.
Something was driving me. My heart, maybe, or my instincts. Or maybe...it was the chuuni power within me.
“H-Hey, come on, Andou...what are you talking about?” said Tomoyo. “Are you trying to make us have this whole conversation all over again? I finally got Hajime to try to shape himself up, for crying out loud...”
“Yeah, I know. And don’t worry—I’m not planning on rehashing all of that again,” I replied.
I knew that chuunibyou was something you had to get over. I knew that adulthood was inevitable. There was one thing, however, that I couldn’t accept, no matter how hard I tried.
“Why are you giving up on your story? Why would you abandon it unfinished?”
He’s the one who kicked this tale off. He caused the Fifth Spirit War—so why’s he trying to leave it in a state of eternal limbo?
“Let’s finish it, Kiryuu... You’ve already started the story, so let’s make sure that your readers can experience it all the way to the end. Isn’t that an author’s responsibility?”
“Wh-What do you want from him, Andou?” Tomoyo interjected once more. “It’s not like Hajime wants to drop it either, you know? You get that he doesn’t like the idea of putting his story on ice, right? Sometimes creatives can think and think and just never manage to carry on their story. Even stories written by pros get abandoned without endings all the time! So...there’s nothing he can do. It’s a lost—”
“It is not a lost cause!”
I was no author. I didn’t understand the pain that went into making up a totally new story. For all I knew, every work that’d ended unfinished had done so on account of completely unavoidable circumstances. For all I knew, the world was full of stories that had truly been lost causes...but that wasn’t enough for me.
“Just because there are tons of unfinished stories out there doesn’t mean it’s fine for you to leave your story unfinished too!”
I knew that I was out of line. I was a selfish, arrogant reader, making demands of an author whose suffering I couldn’t begin to understand. But still—how could I stop myself? If there was nothing that could be done about an author’s inability to write a continuation of their story, then there was nothing that could be done about their readers’ desire to keep reading it as well.