The Fascist
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Volume 1 Chapter 7 part 2, made a lot of changes.
After a fight like that, I think that there are definitely still some things that need to be changed in order to get the perfect balance of the immediate mood, later implications and character-interaction consistency.
Spoiler:
We reached the stairs leading to the school entrance. I was even sort of grateful to Taniguchi, as the weather had sort of cooled down after my conversation with her. Must be all the hot air she uses talking.
In hot weather like this, even Haruki could only lie exhausted on his desk, looking at the hills in the distance, full of melancholy.
"Kyon, I'm hot!" he whined.
Really? So am I.
"Fan me with your book."
"Instead of fanning someone else, I'd rather fan myself. I don't have enough energy early in the morning to fan you. Besides, since when am I your slave, anyway?"
Since I joined the SOS Brigade?
Haruki, unresponsive, remained laying lazily on the desk, lacking his usual pompous energy.
"What do you think Mitsuuru-kun should wear next?" he asked all of a sudden.
Well, after the Chippendale and the maid outfit would be... Hey, wait a minute, there's going to be another costume!?
"Should it be a catboy? Or maybe I should upgrade him to a butler? Maybe I should have him cosplay as Hard Gay…?"
Images of Ashaina-senpai blushing furiously as his small wriggling body is forced into all sorts of costumes flashed through my mind. He’s just too cute!
Haruki, guessing what I was thinking, scowled at me. "You look stupid," he decided, flipping his hair out of his face.
Hey, weren't you the one bringing up the subject? I guess he’s right, though, so I won’t argue with him -- out loud.
While fanning the neck of his uniform with a textbook, Haruki blurted out, "I'm so bored," his mouth perfectly like a heno-ji. He looked like a character from a manga.
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After school, as always, I headed towards the clubroom. Haruki was on duty this week, so my walk there was free of his depressing atmosphere. As usual, I knocked first and waited for a reply before entering. Immediately a cute maid greeted me with the brightest of smiles, like a sunflower greeting the sun. Ah, I feel so warm!
Nagato sat by the table reading a book, as cold and pure as the first snowfall of the year.
Ugh, what kind of comparisons am I making?
"I'll go and make tea." Putting on his headband, Asahina-senpai went to the side of the rusty table and carefully placed the tea leaves into the teapot.
I sat in the commander's seat, watching Asahina-senpai busying himself, when I suddenly remembered the SD card in my skirt pocket.
Thinking that I’d add the picture to my collection of photos from the other day, I turned on the computer and waited for the hard disk to boot up. Once the screen appeared, I opened up the folder labeled “MITSUURU” and entered my password. As expected, the processing speed was unbelievable on the Computer Club's new model. In an instant, pictures of Asahina-senpai's maid costume images appeared on the screen.
After I made sure Asahina-senpai was busy brewing tea, I plugged the SD card into the slot on the front of the computer and transferred Taniguchi’s picture to the MITSUURU folder.
Looking at the picture of Nagato and me… if that was shown to anyone ignorant of the situation, they’d definitely misunderstand.
It was at that moment that I remembered what the older Asahina-senpai had said to me in the clubroom yesterday. I clicked on one of Asahina-senpai’s photos, and enlarged it again and again.
It was from the time Asahina-senpai was being forced into weird poses by Haruki. His bare chest could be just seen, and there it was, a little black mark. I highlighted that mark and enlarged it further; the image was a bit fuzzy, but sure enough, there was a star-shaped birthmark.
"So that's it." I said to myself
"Did you find something?" Before Asahina-senpai placed the teacup on the desk, I swiftly closed all the image files. By the time Asahina-senpai stood by my side, he’d find nothing on the screen.
"Huh, what's this? What's inside this "MITSUURU" folder?"
Dammit! Why did I have to go and give that folder such a stupid name?
"Why does that folder have my name? What's inside it? Let me see, c'mon! Let me see!"
I jumped out of the commander’s chair. "Aggh, um, what's inside... I wonder? Probably nothing… In fact there’s definitely nothing!"
"Reeaally?" Asahina-senpai cheerfully plopped himself down in the commander’s chair and moved the cursor towards the folder’s icon. [b]Like I’d let that happen! I dived forward, trying to grab the mouse from him, [b]but he pulled away easily and I only ended up reaching over his shoulder.[b]
"Asahina-senpai, can you please just let go?"
"C'mon, just a peek!" Asahina-senpai, who seemed to be [b]enjoying himself[b], continued to fight with me for control of the mouse. I felt the situation was going from bad to worse.
At that moment, a hand reached from behind me and snatched up the mouse.
"What are you two doing?"
We were frozen by a voice colder than absolute zero. Haruki, standing before us, looked down on us as though he had just witnessed his dad assaulting an innocent girl.
How long has he been here?
I slowly got off of Asahina-senpai who, at the moment, was still frozen in shock.
“So, Mitsuuru-kun,” Haruki said quietly. “I see you have managed to become more bold. Good. Congratulations. You’ve leveled up.”
What?
“Now get out of my chair.”
At this command, the stunned Asahina-senpai began to move. He got out of the chair, retreated slowly, and then slowly sat down at the table like an ASIMO robot whose batteries were nearly dead. His pale face looked close to tears.
Haruki made a "humph" noise, and plopped himself down in front of the computer. I managed to breathe a sigh of relief, until…
“Huh? What’s this folder?”
Not again…
“Haruki, wait, that’s…” I tried to stop him, but too late, he clicked on it.
“Password?” Haruki raised a suspicious eyebrow. “Obviously it’s Kyon’s brother’s name, right?”
I feel like such an idiot.
Upon viewing the lewd photos of Asahina-senpai inside, Haruki glanced at me. “I thought these photos were deleted…?”
He continued to scroll down through the photos, eventually getting to the photos of me in the bunny outfit. He gave me an icy smile.
“Heh. I guess this means you enjoyed wearing it? Maybe I should make it a rule that you should wear this in the clubroom from now on?”
“Yeah, sure, why not? Now how about you close that folder so I can—"
Too late, Haruki had seen the final image, the one that Taniguchi had snapped two days ago.
He froze. After a couple seconds, he got up out of the chair and turned towards me. "So, you're interested in serious bookish guys, huh?"
"What are you trying to say?" I responded, my eyes cast to the side.
Haruki plowed on unflinchingly, watching me react. “When was this taken?”
“T-two… two days ago…”
Haruki stared at me for a few seconds. “That was when you started wearing your hair differently. Did he tell you that it looks better on you that way?” He pointed angrily at Nagato, who was finally looking up from his book. “Because that’s—"
“Shut up, you moron!” I shouted suddenly. “Don’t misunderstand!”
This guy doesn’t know all crap that I’ve been through because of him! Of course not, since he’s too busy chasing time travelers and aliens! Well, Haruki, hurry up and realize that you’re pointing at one right now, you giant idiot!
Of course, Haruki couldn’t hear the thoughts going on through my head as much as he would’ve liked to and only looked at the ground. “So that’s how it is, huh….” His head snapped back up to face me, teeth bared. “Listen, you’re forbidden from doing anything like that ever again! This is your chief ordering you! I don’t want you to even so much as talk to him, understand?!”
“Shut up! You can’t tell me what to do!”
“Sure I can, I just—"
“Asshole! Stop acting like you’re special! You’re just an ordinary human being like everyone else, you can’t go making up rules however you feel like!”
<“You get NOTHING!” Lol, Bliss, ever watch Charlie and the Chocolate factory?
Haruki glared at me with wide eyes, biting his lip. Then, slowly, he stepped forward, his hands clenched into fists and without even realizing it, I took a step back. He took another step and this time I cringed, squeezing my eyes shut, waiting for him to strike. He never did. Haruki breezed by me, grabbed his schoolbag, and stormed out of the clubroom, slamming the door behind him.
I might have gone a bit too far myself there, but Haruki who didn’t understand anything, deserved it. Asahina-senpai, staring at the table, avoided looking at me. Nagato simply continued to read his book as if nothing happened.
At that moment, the door opened.
"Did I just see Suzumiya-san run down the hallway?”
Itsuko, who had just arrived, greeted everyone with her smile.
Since no one else was going to answer, I did. “He wasn’t feeling well. He decided to go home.” I said, still a little out of breath.
“Are you sure?” she said. “It looked more like he had just had a fight with somebody.”
“…”
I looked up at Itsuko, whose smile hadn’t wavered, and said finally, "Wanna play Othello?"
"Sure, I haven't played in quite a while." Itsuko, who took my non-sequitur in stride, sat down.
As black and white fought for control of the board, (I never thought that Itsuko, who could turn into a glowing sphere, would be so lousy at board games) Asahina-senpai got up and muttered something about making tea, while Nagato, of course, continued to indulge himself with his book.
I’m confused as to why we’re still here.
That's right, that day we conducted our SOS Brigade activities peacefully. Nothing associated with aliens from a different dimension, time travelers from the future, red giants, or blue glowing spheres happened at that time. No one wanted to do anything special, nor did anyone know what he or she should have been doing. We just allowed ourselves to ride on the flow of time, living our high school life idly. Everything seemed perfectly normal.
Even though I was dissatisfied with such a normal life, I'd always tell myself, "Why think so much? You've got so much time." And then I would once again look forward to the next day.
Even with the fight today, I cheered up a bit. I came aimlessly to this clubroom and watched Asahina-senpai work busily like a maid, Nagato sit like a Buddha statue, Itsuko with her bright smile, and Haruki with his energy and mood swings. All these things gave off an aura of complete normality, yet all these had become part of my surprisingly satisfying high school life. Though I've had the out-of-reality experiences of a classmate trying to murder me and seeing fierce monsters appearing in a grey world, at this moment they seem more like a dream than something that really happened.
I was still angry at Haruki for trying to boss me around, but I did have to thank him for letting me meet such interesting people. Although I can’t really appreciate the other more outrageous things… Putting aside the question of "Why me?” maybe someday there'd be normal humans like me who want to join this club.
But in the end, there’s no predicting him because only one person in the world can control Suzumiya Haruki.
And that someone is Suzumiya Haruki himself.
<Original edit in this part was a little too suggestive, took away a lot of the subtlety >
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