The story we started

Oops, I have no idea what to say.

Suddenly I found that there was an extremely weird atmosphere between the two of us who had nothing to say to each other. The more excited we were before, the more awkward it was now.

Especially Hikigaya Hachiman, his face turned a little green when he thought about his reactions and tone that were completely different from his usual ones when he knew that his sister would die in the future.

He now wished he could be like that night in junior high school when he misunderstood a classmate talking to him and responded presumptuously, creating an awkward atmosphere. He wrapped himself in the quilt and rolled around in bed all night, screaming in agony.

What on earth was I doing before?

The villain in Hikigaya Hachiman's heart was roaring and rolling wildly on the floor, twitching like a caterpillar.

"???"

"??!?"

While the two were still standing there awkwardly facing each other, two slender arms respectively circled the necks of Mokuza and Hikigaya, and pulled them forward with force.

The two people's wide-eyed faces were rapidly approaching each other's sight. If Hikigaya hadn't quickly put his hand on Zaimokuza's face as a buffer, the person they would have kissed for the first time in their lives would probably have become their best friend.

"Hey~ Are you two finally back to normal?"

Just as Zaimokuza, whose breathing was blocked by a hand covering his face, was struggling with a "wuwuwu" sound, and Hikigaya Hachiman was still in shock, a sinister voice sounded beside the two of them.

Zaimokuza and Hikigaya stopped moving immediately upon hearing the sound, their necks clicking and turning to the side like rusty turntables.

Shizuka Hiratsuka looked at the two people who turned around with a gentle smile, but her upper face, which was narrowed into a crescent shape, was covered with a haze, and a twisted black air rose from behind and surrounded the two people with stiff expressions.

"Uh, Hiratsuka-sensei?"

“…Gudong~!”

Zaimokuza, feeling uneasy, spoke with a wry smile, while Hikigaya, whose intuition was sharper than his, swallowed hard, and sensing that something was not going well, he quietly moved his feet and prepared to run away. When Zaimokuza saw this, he also began to follow suit and took a small step back.

But who is Hiratsuka Shizuka? She had seen through what the two boys were thinking, and she used her arms to pull the two men into her chest, which was much wider than Yukinoshita Yukino's, and held their necks tightly.

"Well--!?"

"Now that you have all returned to normal, it's time to settle the debt just now~"

The two were almost suffocated by Hiratsuka Shizuka's arms, which were as strong as a brown bear's even though she was a woman. When her face turned red, she lowered her head between the two of them, smiling as she glanced back and forth at their frightened faces, her eyes as kind as an old grandmother's as she looked at the younger generation.

"!"

The next moment, Hiratsuka Shizuka's kind eyes suddenly turned as ferocious as a tiger, and the gentle smile on her face turned into an extremely hideous grin. The style of the painting changed from the Virgin Mary to the evil demon Rakshasa in a second.

"You two brats are so brave!"

"One of you dared to push the teacher down, and the other dared to destroy school property in front of the teacher as if nothing had happened. Are you planning to rebel?!"

"It was understandable just now, so I sympathized with you and didn't settle the score with you. Now everyone, be prepared! If I don't peel off a layer of skin from you two, I will call you teacher!!!"

"I was wrong! Mr. Hiratsuka, please forgive me--wuwuwu!!!"

“Komachi—Goooo!!!”

Amid Hiratsuka Shizuka's roar and the increased strength of her hands, Hikigaya and Zaimokuza, whose arms were stuck at the neck, were lifted up several centimeters with one hand. Their eyes rolled back and their four feet were suspended several centimeters off the ground. They flapped their arms like salted fish on the shore, and half of their heads were almost buried in Hiratsuka Shizuka's arms.

"Hiratsuka-sensei, Koki and Zaimokuza are already foaming at the mouth!"

"That was the milk I drank last night! Don't speak for them, Yuigahama! These two guys are very tough! Especially Zaimokuza, this guy wouldn't die even if he was thrown from a thirty-story building. Now he's just suffocated, it's okay!"

"But that was after they put on the belt! Now their physiques are just like ordinary people! Eh!? Xiaoqi's neck is tilted at a weird angle!!!"

……

"Sure enough, this is the daily routine of the Service Club."

Yukinoshita Yukino stood aside and smiled as she watched Hiratsuka Shizuka, whose face was turning red and who kept shrinking the range of her arms, as well as Hikigaya and Zaimokuza, who were foaming at the mouth and with their limbs drooping in her arms, and Yuigahama Yui, who was flustered and looked panicked in front of the three of them, and spoke softly.

"...Then your daily life in the service department is really horrible. I feel like nine lives wouldn't be enough for most people."

Miura Yumiko, who was standing nearby, looked at the obviously accustomed expression on Yukinoshita Yukino's face, then turned to look at the two boys in Hiratsuka Shizuka's arms, from whom two suspicious human-shaped white mists were already coming out of their mouths, and said with a twitching eye.

"It's okay. Idiots have strong vitality, especially for the top idiots like Hibiki-san and Zaimokuza-san."

"I believe that even if they really die one day, they will be able to come back to life simply by their own willpower."

Facing Miura Yumiko, who usually did not get along with her, Yukinoshita Yukino was patient this time. She lifted her hair behind her ear with one hand and explained. It was obvious that she was in a very good mood.

"I think the kind of people you're talking about, Yukinoshita, can no longer be considered human beings. They are terrifying evil spirits that have come back to life through obsession! Are they Kayako or Sadako? "

Yumiko Miura covered her forehead, feeling a severe headache and at the same time began to doubt her life.

She felt that her common sense began to collapse after she met these weirdos in the Service Club, because except for her Yui, no one in them could be considered normal, and each one was more outrageous than the other. Were they sure that they were not seriously ill patients who escaped from a mental hospital due to the doctor's negligence?

In response to her complaints, Yukinoshita Yukino smiled and said nothing.

Her eyes flickered as she watched Shizuka Hiratsuka and Yuigahama Yui, who had finally realized something was wrong and were performing chest compressions on the unconscious Zaimokuza and Hikigaya.

Among them, Yuigahama Yui blushed as she looked at Hikigaya's mouth, which was emitting white mist. Her eyeballs rolled around like mosquito coils, and it was unknown what she was thinking. Steam was almost coming out of her head, blending into the golden atmosphere around her.

…Wait, golden vibes?

"!?"

"What, what's going on!? What is this thing?"

Just when Yukinoshita Yukino realized something was wrong and opened her eyes wide, Miura Yumiko's panicked voice sounded from beside her.

She quickly turned her head, and the incredible phenomenon was reflected in her navy blue eyes, dyeing her contracted pupils golden.

Countless golden light particles emerged from the air and gathered in front of everyone from all directions. The dazzling golden light was so bright that it was impossible to open one's eyes.

"Wow! I'm really possessed today! What's this strange phenomenon?"

Shizuka Hiratsuka, who was looking at two students who had accidentally fainted and was struggling over whether to sacrifice her chastity for artificial respiration, was also dazzled by the golden light shining in front of her. She had to cover her sore eyes with her arms and complained helplessly.

The same commotion and screams could be heard outside the health room and even in Sobu High School.

"What the hell is this!? Before it was that ghost video, and now there's this strange light! At least let me finish downloading the resource I got with great difficulty! This is Aragaki's wife's out-of-print resource!"

"I have amblyopia! My titanium dog eyes! I'm going blind! I'm really going blind!!!"

"Wang! Wang Wang Wang!"

"Mmmmm!!!?"

In fact, it is not just this school. Countless people around the world, even domestic pets, have the same light gathering in front of them. The blazing golden light even temporarily suppresses the glaring sun hanging high in the sky.

Even many blind people who were born blind or became blind accidentally felt a golden light shining before their eyes. The blind people who had never experienced anything other than darkness were panicked and felt curious and afraid of the whole new world.

As for those who became blind later in life, when they saw the light before their eyes that they thought they would never see again after falling into darkness, they all cried for joy. Some even knelt down on the spot, shouting "God bless you!" in a fanatical and pious manner, and then kowtowed continuously.

"Well……"

I don't know how long it took, but the light that left a golden afterimage on the retina even if you covered your eyes with your arms gradually faded.

“Ugh—what is this!?”

Hayato Hayama put down his arms that were covering his eyes, and when he opened his tightly closed eyes, what he saw made him open his eyes wide suddenly with an expression of shock.

——A golden light curtain formed by condensed light was suspended in front of him.

He clearly saw his own expression of disbelief reflected on the light screen in front of him. It was clearly a product composed of countless light particles, but it exhibited properties like a mirror.

Not only Hayato Hayama, but everyone in the health room had the same light screen floating in front of them, without exception.

They all looked at this new thing with different expressions, and some even reached out to touch it.

"What is going on? What is..."

Zaimokuza watched in astonishment as his hand passed through the light curtain in front of him. The places that were touched twisted and dissipated like smoke, and then returned to their original state the moment his palm passed through. He could hardly find the words to describe it all.

"It turns out that the disappearance of the previous video was not the end, on the contrary, it was just the beginning."

Hikigaya Hachiman, who had also woken up, stared at the light curtain floating in front of him with a frown. He deliberately twisted his upper body, and the light curtain shifted to his "front" as the perspective changed, which made him smack his lips.

"This is terrible. Looks like I'll have to wait until very late to pick up Komachi from school—!?"

Before he could finish his words, Hikigaya swallowed back what he was about to say when he saw something strange happening on the screen in front of him, and narrowed his eyes.

On the mirror-like surface of the light curtain, a name familiar to everyone slowly emerged.

--"story".

"...I knew that what happened before was not over. After all, we just said that we were going to start the second chapter of this "story". How could it end like this?"

Seeing the name on the light curtain that had appeared in the mobile phone video before, Hikigaya Hachiman confirmed his idea that this light curtain and the previous video were indeed things of the same nature.

"Eh? That means—"

Zaimokuza also reacted, his expression gradually becoming one of surprise and uneasiness, and he obviously thought of this as well.

"Will I still be able to see the future 'me' and what will happen to Mr. Kosaka?!"

Just as Zaimokuza finished his excited words, a line of bright red characters appeared on the screen.

[——Before the story begins, do you know the person called "Don Quixote"? ]

"Don Quixote? Isn't that the name of the protagonist of Don Quixote, a work by the famous Spanish writer Cervantes?"

Yukinoshita Yukino, the most knowledgeable person present, immediately remembered who this person was, frowned slightly, and gave the answer.

The second after she gave the answer, the font on the screen changed again.

[Don Quixote's original name was Guisanno, and he was just an ordinary country gentleman. However, because he loved chivalric literature, he compared himself to a knight and called himself "Don Quixote."]

Don Quixote recruited a peasant as his "squire", chose a horse as his "mount", left his own world without a care in the world, and stubbornly embarked on the "path of chivalry" that did not belong to him, starting a journey that would have no meaning.

[His most famous feat was charging towards a huge windmill.]

[——Why did he do this? ]

"Huh? What's going on? Why is this light screen different from the previous video? Could it be that it is not playing videos from the future, but has turned into answering questions? Are the questions asked literary questions???"

Yumiko Miura scratched her blonde hair and said in surprise.

[——In addition to the author's answer to this question, each reader has his or her own answer. ]

【When different readers come up with their own answers through secondary creation, a new "story" begins.】

[The second chapter of the "story"——]

【"Hero" opens here. 】

"As expected! This light screen is about what happened in the previous video, or the experience of the future "me" and Mr. Kousaka fighting against Gurongi together!"

After seeing the word "hero" that appeared in the previous video, Zaimokuza immediately became excited.

He had not seen enough stories about the future, and he also wanted to know the cause of his parents' death through the video. However, the sudden disappearance of the previous video made Zaimokuza feel very regretful.

Now that he could finally continue watching, Zaimokuza immediately became very focused, not wanting to miss any changes in the next frame of the light screen.

The same goes for Hikigaya Hachiman, because he also wants to know what the cause of his sister's death will be in the future, and whether there is any way to avoid it? His eyes are also particularly focused and serious.

Under the gaze of the crowd, a new image slowly emerged on the screen.

【Tokyo City, Tokyo Bay. 】

【07:18 a.m】

【Click.】

[A foot wearing a black leather shoe stepped on the stones on the river beach and then stopped moving.]

【“…”】

[The man in the black windbreaker silently looked at the water flowing slowly in the river in front of him. His eyes, hidden by his slightly longer hair, were a little dull, with a hint of nostalgia in them.]

[Crash--]

[The sea breeze blowing in from afar along the river made the corners of his windbreaker flutter in the wind, along with his black bangs covering his eyes.]

[The man could be described as "covered in wounds". Apart from his right hand which was covered in a plaster and hung on his chest, the exposed skin was almost all wrapped in white medical bandages. His face and forehead were also covered in bandages, almost wrapping his entire face like a mummy. There were also traces of blood seeping through the white bandages, staining them red.]

[He stared at the river in front of him, his eyes dull and lifeless, like a bush in the backlight.]

"It's him???"

Everyone who had seen the previous video immediately recognized who this man was and began to discuss him, wondering why he had become like this.

Especially those dull and lifeless eyes, which made it impossible for anyone who had seen his previous performance in the video to associate these eyes with this man, just like it was impossible for someone to confuse a human with a monkey.

"How is this going!?"

Kyosuke Kousaka, who had been staying in the health room since the previous video ended and had not had time to think of a way to get rid of the harassment of curious classmates at school, saw this man and an expression of shock that was difficult to conceal appeared on his face.

This man with eyes full of decadence and loneliness was all too familiar to him.