It’s a delusion. A fantasy. Something that could only exist in the realm of fiction.

  It’s a story that gets told over and over again. A lie you’ve been fed since the day you were born. Of course you would start to believe it.

  But do you know why there are so many stories about love?

  It’s because they want to convince themselves it exists.

  It’s because they want to convince others that it exists.

  It’s pathetic.

  They’re like a religious cult trying to spread their doctrine.

  Despicable.

  Continuing to believe this lie that you can ever truly connect with someone else will bring you nothing but pain.

  And don’t you forget it.

  8 - Dramatic Exit

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yeah...I won’t forget again.”

  Reina removed the box cutter pressed against my throat and sat up.

  “Good. That’s all I wanted.”

  “Really?”

  She smiled.

  “Yeah. With that, my life is complete. ‘The End.’”

  She raised the box cutter and slit her own throat with one quick slash. For just a moment, time seemed to stand still. A thin red line was drawn across her neck, no thicker than a piece of thread.

  And then, her hot blood splashed all over my face, her body falling loosely like a puppet with its strings cut.

  ...

  What?

  ...

  ...

  What?

  I think she lost consciousness immediately. With that single stroke, her mission was complete. The will that was holding her to this earth had no reason to wait and see the aftermath. She was certain in her victory.

  As soon as I had regained my senses, I had put a hand on her neck to try and slow the bleeding and called an ambulance.

  After calling the ambulance, I used my free hand to dig a handkerchief out of my schoolbag to better stifle the flow.

  But it quickly grew soaked with blood and I could still feel its awful warmth through the cloth.

  Don’t look at it.

  At least I still had one clean hand...

  Don’t think about it.

  I was really bad with this kind of thing.

  I once read a grotesque erotic manga where a cow girl got eaten alive by a dragon. There was one page that I remember vividly; I didn’t read anything past that point. I wish I could forget, but I couldn’t.

  It was the same for everything else. My memory was actually bad, but I remembered the really important things. I’m sorry to Shinoyama that she wasn’t important to me back then. I probably was to her. I’m really sorry I didn’t remember.

  But for everything else, I still remembered—I just tried to not think about them. I shut down any train of thought that started heading in their direction.

  But I remembered.

  What happened with Ayaka.

  My wish.

  Nozawa Saya.

  Izumi...

  To be honest, Izumi terrified me more than Shinoyama. I didn’t know what happened to Shinoyama to make her like that, but clearly she went through something—she wouldn’t go through such lengths to get revenge otherwise.

  But Izumi...

  Izumi’s evil was much more banal. And that terrified me. That anyone could just be like that and you would never know. That someone who seemed so nice and empathetic could just flip like that. That they could actually be a demon. How could I trust anyone after that?

  Not even Haruhi. Not even my own girlfriend.

  Shinoyama was right. Haruhi didn’t love me. She couldn’t. She didn’t even know me. She said she loved me, and I’m sure she thought she did, but it wasn’t real love. It was fake.

  But that was fine. I could just take advantage of that fake love for a little while and then we would part ways. That was how our relationship was meant to be.

  ...

  Why couldn’t I just be satisfied with that?

  ...

  But it couldn’t be anything more than that. I couldn’t trust her. I couldn’t be honest with her. No matter how much it seemed like it would be fine. No matter how much she said she loved me. Even if she said I could trust her, I couldn’t. Even if I thought I could, I couldn’t. I knew that. I would never forget that.

  I thought I could trust Izumi too. She said that I could trust her. That I could tell her anything. And I believed her. Like an idiot, I believed her.

  I don’t want to think anymore...

  9 - Magic

  And then there was the matter of my wish. Love may not be real, but magic is.

  “Nozomi.”

  “Nozomi, Mayoi, Kanae. I respond to many names—feel free to call me whichever you want.”

  Her voice entered my ears as sound waves, but it simultaneously rang out inside of my mind.

  Yeah, she’s been watching from the sidelines the entire time.

  “Of course, I wouldn’t want to miss this. So, why did you call for me?”

  You just read my mind, didn’t you? Why do you even need to ask?

  “I can’t read every single one of your thoughts—I’m not omniscient. Your deepest, most protected thoughts still remain a mystery to me. The things you don’t want anyone else to know you unconsciously hide.”

  Is that so...

  “For example, how did Ayaka’s kiss make you feel?”

  Huh? Ayaka’s kiss?

  It was so sudden and tasted like alcohol and was gross and it sucked and...and yet...

  She cackled.

  “And yet! And yet! You’re too funny! I don’t even need to hear the rest.”

  I’m sorry for being too funny...

  “But, that’s how it is. It’s kind of bothersome sometimes, not being able to see everyone’s true thoughts and feelings, but trying to divine them is part of what makes you all so fun to watch.”

  Thanks? I guess?

  “Taking an impartial third-person perspective is much less interesting, if I do say so myself. I like to view the story through the eyes of the characters—flawed perspectives and all.”

  Umm, I’m not a character in a story...

  “You’re a character in your own story, are you not?”

  Ah, she was talking metaphorically, like Chiaki.

  “You’re a major character in Fuyuko’s, Haruhi’s, Chiaki’s, Shinoyama’s, Yuriko’s, Shuusuke’s, Ayaka’s, and Shinji’s stories, as well.”

  Shinji’s? We talked like three times. The day we met, the day after, and he talked to me later after Fuyuko turned him down—it was so insignificant to me, I had almost forgotten about it entirely.

  “Pardon me, I may have spoiled something. Please forget I said anything.”

  ...

  “That said, it’s quite annoying being in your head all the time. It’s so hard to tell what’s happening because you pay so little attention to what’s going on around you. And you make too many references—your internal monologue is completely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t consumed all of the same media as you. I’ve been getting tired of it, lately.”

  Well, I have to live with it.

  “Wait, how can you be in my head if you’re right here?”

  I nodded my head towards the person I was speaking to.

  “If I don’t appear physically before people like this, they tend to confuse me for their own thoughts. How else would you interpret a disembodied voice in your head?”

  I blinked and her form disappeared.

  You really love your little sister, romantically and sexually.

  I didn’t think that! That wasn’t me! Get out of my head!

  I blinked and she reappeared in front of me.

  “That’s how it is, so I try to avoid it. I’m here to watch, you know? I wouldn’t want to influence you too much. But even I can’t resist throwing in a retort here or there. I wouldn’t want to leave your setup hanging after all.”

  “Is that how it is...but how can you be inside my head and physically here at the same time?”

  She cocked her head.

  I blinked and multiple copies of her appeared, all making different poses.

  “““““Is it that strange to be in multiple places at once?”””””

  “For a human, yeah?”

  I blinked and things returned to normal.

  “That’s fair. A human’s head would probably explode trying to comprehend what my experience is like—do you want to know?”

  I would prefer it if my head didn’t explode—I think that was an experience I could live without.

  “Enough of the games, there’s something I want to know.”

  “You have to be more specific than that—there’s many things you want to know.”

  About the effects of my wish. How does it work, specifically?

  “It spreads through physical contact.”

  That’s it?

  “The degree of accumulation is determined by multiple factors: blood relation, magical resistance, magical capacity, frequency of contact, etc.”

  Frequency of physical contact...

  Degree of accumulation?

  “The strength of the effect, essentially. For example, your little sister is closely related to you by blood and has extremely high magical resistance, so the effect is negligible.”

  That’s good to hear.

  “And here I thought you might be disappointed.”

  Of course not!

  “You can rest assured, her love for you is 100% real. She really is amazing, you know? She has both an extremely high magical resistance and impressive magical capacity—an unusual combination.”

  That’s my little sister for you—she’s an unusual girl.

  “It should be impossible for me to appear before her, but her desire is so strong that it cancels out. She is quite exceptional.”

  You’ve appeared before her before?

  “The world doesn’t revolve around you, you know? There are plenty of other stories all happening simultaneously.”

  I know that...

  I looked down.

  There was so much blood.

  I shouldn’t have done that.

  I started to feel queasy.

  Why did she do that? Why did she do any of this? I could never know. Even if she told me, I still wouldn’t be able to know. I wouldn’t be able to know how she felt. Why she felt as strongly as she did.

  The tragic thing is, this was all pointless. None of this could have happened and things would still have been the same. Her goal was never to kill me, anyway. She just wanted to teach me a lesson. I already knew it, though, so it really was pointless.

  “It’s a shame she never even tried to know you. And that you never really tried to know her. I think you would have gotten along very well—you have so much in common.”

  Yeah...

  “She had an idea of you in her head that didn’t match up with reality—same as back then. She thought she had learned. She thought she had grown. She thought she had changed who she was. But she was still making the same mistake she had always been making.”

  You can’t change who you are that easily...

  “Isn’t that funny? The beginning and the end of her story were the same.”

  I don’t think that’s funny. That’s tragic!

  “Can’t it be both a tragedy and a comedy?”

  I guess...

  “Isn’t this kind of character analysis fun? Really digging into what made them tick. Trying to figure out their motivations, their thoughts, their feelings. Shinoyama was definitely one of my favorite characters in your story, though they are all fun.”

  I would prefer it if you wouldn’t keep referring to her in the past tense.

  “You know as well as I do that she’s no longer here.”

  I knew. I realized before I had even called the ambulance. Even if her body survived, she had already fulfilled her role. She got what she wanted—there was nothing left for her to do. Her body was an empty husk with no one to reside in it.

  Her body...?

  ...

  “Hmm...?”

  ...

  “Hmm...”

  ...

  “Oh, that’s interesting. I never considered this development. So that’s what you’re into? Necrophilia?”

  You know that’s not what I’m thinking about...

  “Do I? It makes perfect sense to me. I saw how you reacted when you tried to have sex with Ayaka. If you can’t do it with a girl who’s alive, then what other option do you have?”

  That’s a false dichotomy—I could just not have sex.

  “True, that possibility slipped my mind. Would you be satisfied with that, though?”

  It shouldn’t ‘slip your mind’! Haruhi is asexual; you should know that’s an option!

  “She did tell you that, didn’t she?”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t mind me. Sometimes I forget what information you already know. It can be hard to keep track of it all.”

  Whatever. The point is, it’s not that.

  “Then what is it? If you don’t want people to misunderstand, then you have to use your words. Otherwise, they’ll use the information they have to come to whatever conclusion they want.”

  How does that even fit with the information? I was literally thinking about how I got traumatized by a grotesque erotic manga not that long ago and you somehow think necrophilia is a logical conclusion to come to?! I could never do that even if I wanted to!

  “I feel like you’re trying to steer the conversation away from the question I asked again by responding to a different part of what I said. You have to remember I’ve been watching you. I know what tactics you use to avoid answering difficult questions.”

  She got me.

  “So, I’ll ask again. What is it that you’re thinking about?”

  ...

  A body without a soul.

  A soul without a body.

  ...

  She laughed.

  “Maybe you two really were destined for each other. What a delightful twist of fate. If that’s what you want, all you have to do is say it. As long as a story is not over, things can change. The Past changes to fit the Present and then it’s like things were always that way.”

  “I...”

  My phone dinged.

  I used my clean hand to pull my phone out of my pocket. It was a text from Fuyuko.

  ‘Onii-chan, you better not forget my White Day present like you did my birthday present! It has to be extra special to make up for that!’

  “I don’t know what you’re insinuating. I don’t want anything, I just thought we made an interesting pair.”

  I blinked, and her physical form disappeared.

  If you say so...

  I sighed.

  She was bothersome, but at least it served as a distraction from the current situation. Talking to her was weird, though. It felt like everything she said you already knew. Extra details filled in the gaps of your brain so that you perfectly understood what she was saying. Sometimes, she didn’t even have to say anything at all.

  Sorry for being weird...

  ...

  Who didn’t have to say what at all...?

  When was the ambulance going to get here...?

  I don’t need to shake anything up. I already had a plan. I just need to stick to the plan. Like Haruhi, I just needed to hold out a little longer. I just needed to make it to university. After a year or two of being apart, Fuyuko will get over her childish obsession with me. She’ll have a loving relationship with her girlfriend. And she won’t need me anymore.

  Just stick to the plan.

  10 - Dummy

  As for Haruhi, I thought it would be for the best if we broke up. It would have been immoral of me to continue our relationship when her emotions were being influenced by my wish. It was going to be hard for her, but it would be better to rip off the bandage now while she still had a support network.

  She had her mother. Fuyuko would gladly spend time with her. Yuriko could join them. She and Chiaki became acquainted with each other recently. And Shuusuke was out a girlfriend, so they could both go to the amusement park together to forget their troubles. It didn’t have to be me—she had plenty of other people to rely on now. There was nothing special about me. She could touch anyone.

  *****

  He wouldn’t talk to me. I don’t know specifically what happened—because he wouldn’t tell me—but it seemed messed up. The only thing he would say to me was that he didn’t want me to touch him. I didn’t know if that was because of what happened or not—he wouldn’t tell me.

  But I wanted to hold him. If I were feeling bad, I would want him to hold me. But we’re different, so we want different things. I wanted to respect his wishes, but I felt like there was nothing I could do for him.

  I thought he just needed some time. We didn’t have much of it, but after a while, surely he would get over it. Then we could make those memories we’d promised to.

  But then, he said we should break up. That it would be better for the both of us. That it wasn’t my fault. He said a bunch of other dumb stuff too.

  What do you mean ‘you don’t know me’?

  What do you mean ‘you don’t actually love me’?

  What do you mean ‘what you feel for me isn’t actually real’?

  You dummy. You’re such a dummy.

  If I don’t love you, then what is this feeling? I know it’s real.

  ‘If you know yourself, you can tell me who you are.’

  ‘If I trust what you say, then I can know you.’

  ‘And if I know you, I can love you.’

  ‘See? It’s not impossible.’

  ‘You just have to be honest.’

  ‘You just have to reach out.’

  ‘If you reach out your hand, I can grab it.’

  ‘We can be connected.’

  ‘You don’t have to be alone.’

  ‘You just have to tell me what you want.’

  ‘That’s the kind of relationship we’ve always had, isn’t it?’

  ‘You can trust me.’

  ‘You can tell me anything.’

  But he wouldn’t tell me.

  I thought we loved each other? I thought we felt the same? So why couldn’t he trust me? Were our feelings really so different? Had they always been that different? Did he only agree to go out with me because I pressured him into it?