About half 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 half year had come and gone. For the time being, I found myself walking home from school, side by side with Sagami. It was the last day of our third semester—in other words, the day of our school’s closing ceremony.
“Honestly, I’m impressed all over again just remembering that fight! The final battle between the literary club and Fallen Black really was a clash for the ages. Especially your last duel with Kiryuu—words can’t do its sheer emotional impact justice!”
“Heh heh heh! I mean, I can’t deny it. It was a pretty amazing fight, even by my standards!”
“I really did think your power was gonna stay worthless to the bitter end, but then right at the last second you awakened to its final form, the flame of the end: Grand Finale! And to top it off, it ended up being so ridiculously overpowered that part of me wanted to ask if you’d made it up yourself!”
“I-I mean, that was probably just it reflecting my innermost psyche, right?”
“And who could have ever predicted that you and Kiryuu had history dating all the way back to your past lives? It’s crazy to think that your fates have been intertwined since the very formation of the world! In the end, the Fifth Spirit War turned out to be such a massive-scale conflict that reality itself hung in the balance! You met each other because you were fated to meet, and you fought each other because you were fated to fight—rivals bound from lifetime to lifetime by the chains of fate itself! I gotta say, it really justified all that lead-up in the end. It felt like reading the last light novel in a ten-plus volume series and seeing it perfectly stick the landing!”
“Ha ha ha! I couldn’t have said it better myself!”
“...”
“Wh-What?”
“Oh, nothing,” Sagami said, brushing me off with a smile that told me he had more to say but wasn’t about to share it.
In the aftermath of our nighttime schoolyard meeting...Kiryuu and I had redone the Fifth Spirit War together. We’d taken a story that had stalled out, rewound it as far back as we could, and rewritten it from the ground up. We’d excitedly proposed idea after idea to each other—talking them all through in discussions and debates that grew so heated it sometimes felt like we were moments away from devolving into a full-blown fistfight—then used the Reverse Crux Errata to make them a reality.
And, in the end—with occasional help from Tomoyo—we managed to somehow bring our tale to a close. It might not have been a perfect conclusion, and it might not have wrapped up all the loose ends we’d left dangling, but it was still an ending. It was our ending, for our very own story. Only a very small number of people knew the truth. I hadn’t told Sagami...but I got the sense that he’d managed to suss out the whole thing anyway, somehow. Not that I minded or anything.
Anyway, all that aside...
“It really is over, huh, Andou?” said Sagami.
“It sure is,” I agreed.
It was over. Dark and Dark had departed from my right arm. All I had now was the gradually fading reserves of chuuni power within me.
“The confusing, cryptic mystery that was the Spirit War is over; our seemingly endless yet blink-of-an-eye-short second year in high school has passed; and once spring break’s done, we’ll be third-years,” Sagami continued.
“Yup,” I said with a nod. “Not to mention that Sayumi and Kudou graduated.”
The graduation ceremony had already come and gone. Starting this spring, Sayumi and Kudou would both be college students. From what they’d told me, both of them would be leaving their homes and hometown to live on their own.
Meanwhile, those of us who’d been in the second-year crew would be starting our final years in high school, while Chifuyu and Kuki advanced to the fifth grade. We’d all be moving on into a new era, living in new environments as new versions of ourselves. Our old selves would be left behind, morphing into nostalgic memories for us to look back upon.
“Come to think of it, what’s going on with Kiryuu these days, Sagami?” I asked.
“Hmm? You haven’t been in touch with him?”
“Nah... I haven’t seen him at all. Kinda hard to, after our final battle. It’s just awkward, y’know?”