The Strongest Little Brother’s Commonplace Encounters with the Bizarre?! Read online

  “So... you’re saying I have to keep you nearby, right?” Yuichi asked.

  “That’s right,” she said. “You can’t trust me, but you can’t kill me, either. It’s the only logical answer, isn’t it?”

  She had seen right through him, and she was right. He couldn’t just send her on her way.

  “Never use your abilities again,” he said.

  “Very well,” Makina said with a bright smile. However reluctantly he had come to it, she knew that she was getting what she wanted.

  “You said you could distinguish between good and bad, right?” Yuichi asked. “Then don’t do things that society at large would deem bad.”

  “Understood,” she said. “From now on, I’ll conduct myself as an ordinary high school teacher. But I do run a publishing house. If I hold strictly to your word, that’s a conflict of interest for a civil servant, isn’t it?”

  “I couldn’t care less about that,” said Yuichi. “I think you know that, right?”

  Yuichi had been talking about bad things like torturing people using her role as an Outer. He didn’t care if a civil servant had a side job.

  “Of course,” she said. “But as you know, I’m doing all this to keep you from hating me, so I want to make sure we’re on the same page.”

  “If you have any long-term plans in the works, put a stop to all of them now,” Yuichi ordered. “If you’ve made trouble for anyone in your plans in the past, make it up to them to the best of your ability.”

  “I’ve already halted all my plans, and minimized the damage as best I could,” said Makina. “I swear to put the utmost effort into this in the future, as well.”

  “What will you do about Ms. Nodayama?” Yuichi had heard she’d been released from the hospital and was resting up at home. They said she’d be back at school soon.

  “Good question,” said Makina. “I’m not entirely sure. Should I reunite her with her childhood friend, or should I try to get her to give up on him and focus on the future? I’d like to give her the best possible resolution, personally.”

  Now that she mentioned it, Yuichi wasn’t entirely sure which would be better. “Just keep an eye on her and proceed with caution,” he responded eventually.

  That was the final demand he could think of, for the moment. He didn’t know how much he could trust that she’d do what he said, but all he could do was watch her.

  “By the way... it’s a bit awkward to do all this talking standing up, isn’t it?” Makina asked. “Why don’t we have a seat?”

  Mutsuko, Natsuki, and Aiko had just been standing in the doorway, watching Yuichi and Makina talk. Yuichi, not wanting to continue quarreling forever either, decided to sit back down.

  “I only just got here, and things are already crazy...” Aiko murmured confusedly, as she sat down to his right.

  “It’s not like I know what’s going on, either,” Yuichi muttered.

  Natsuki sat down to Yuichi’s left. On the surface, she seemed unconcerned, but it was always hard to tell what she was thinking inside. Makina had beaten her badly in the earlier incident, after all.

  “The enemies you defeat always seem to come back wanting to be your allies,” the usually expressionless Natsuki said with a sigh. “You may have what it takes to be a Monster Master.”

  “I think I’ll pass!” Yuichi shot back, annoyed.

  “Ibaraki, Takeuchi, Ms. Shikitani... and Konishi, I guess?” Aiko said. “I feel like she counts...”

  “Noro... don’t say that stuff...” Yuichi muttered.

  By that logic, Aiko’s brother, Kyoya Noro, would also fit in there. Yuichi didn’t dislike Kyoya, but he didn’t like thinking about things that way.

  As if intending to be part of the club herself, Makina took a seat next to Kanako, diagonally across from Yuichi.

  Mutsuko set up camp at the whiteboard as usual, and looked at the club members, but didn’t seem like she was going to start the meeting. In that case, Yuichi decided, he’d continue his conversation with Makina.

  “You said you’d help me beat the Outers, right?” he demanded. “Do you know where they are?”

  “I knew, at one time,” Makina said. “Now that I’ve betrayed them... well, I suppose that phrasing is deceptive. Relationships between Outers are flexible, and I wasn’t really working with them to begin with. But they probably already know I’ve joined you, so I wouldn’t expect to find them in the old hideout anymore. I can tell you where that is, though, if you want to know.”

  “It’s worth a look,” he said. “There might be clues. What do you know about the Divine Vessels?” It was a vague question, but Yuichi didn’t know enough to ask a more concrete one. Certainly, Makina seemed to know more about them than Monika and Yuichi.

  “Let me see,” she said. “Divine Vessels can be located through their resonance... and you don’t have a host, do you?”

  “Monika has the two eyes, but she said they were both already in use,” he answered.

  The Divine Vessels could be used only by the host they possessed, and once they had a host, they couldn’t be used by someone else. To make them usable again, you had to kill the host, and neither Monika nor Yuichi was eager to do that.

  “If you give me the left eye, I could have him use it again,” said Makina. “You know, the one you half-killed during summer vacation.”

  “The one I half-killed during summer vacation...” Yuichi thought back, but the description didn’t really narrow things down.

  “We’ve had this exchange before, I believe,” said Makina. “Rather bloodthirsty, aren’t you?”

  “What am I supposed to do? They come after me!” he protested.

  “I mean the one who attacked you in a truck.”

  “Oh! Yeah, you mentioned he was working for you,” Yuichi said.

  She was referring to a hulk of a man with the label “Immortal” whom Yuichi had fought over summer vacation.

  “Who is he, anyway?” Yuichi wondered, perhaps belatedly. Monika had called him a yokai of unknown origin, but that didn’t give him much in the way of details.

  “He’s a dangerous kind of makura-gaeshi, a pillow-turner,” said Makina. “It’s a long story, but... ah, no, never mind. He’s lost the will to live. He’s basically a walking corpse now. I’m not even sure I could have a decent conversation with him.”

  It sounded like a gruesome fate, but Yuichi found it hard to have sympathy for him. That man had murdered innocent people.

  “Well, I have a few clues as to the locations of the Divine Vessels,” said Makina. “Just sit back and relax while I investigate.”

  “Relax? There’s no telling when they’ll resonate next, and we have no way of knowing when they do, right?” Yuichi asked.

  “Don’t worry about that, either,” she said. “They won’t resonate for a while, probably. How to put it... Oh yes, it’s sort of an ‘it never rains but it pours’ situation. Once a resonance starts, it remains in place for a while, but then it will go a long time without starting up again. There are patterns to the resonances, and that’s one of them. I think you should be all right for another month or two.”

  “How can you know that if you don’t know when it’s resonating?” Yuichi asked.

  “Because I’m an Outer. Even if I can’t feel the resonance itself, I can feel when a story is proceeding.”

  It didn’t sound like Makina was lying.

  They couldn’t afford to completely forget about the Evil God and the Divine Vessels, but this was better than being on full alert at all times.

  “Does that mean we’ll have uneventful, ordinary school days for a while?” Yuichi asked hopefully.

  Makina said nothing in response.

  “Hey, you’re scaring me. Are you saying something is gonna happen?”

  “Soul Reader is too much for an ordinary human to handle,” she said. “Seeing things you shouldn’t is going to cause all kinds of trouble for someone who isn’t an Outer. I think you’ve had plenty of experience with that
already, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Yuichi said. “But seeing all that stuff means I can actively work not to get mixed up with weirdos.”

  “An admirable approach, but I think you’ll find that resistance is futile,” she said. “Seeing worldviews with Soul Reader will cause them to mix together around you. The more you see, the more chaotic your life will become. The more time passes, the faster it will accelerate. Your best option would probably be to abandon Soul Reader entirely.”

  “But the only way Monika knew to do that was to ask the Evil God.”

  “I suppose you’ll have to wait until after the Evil God comes back into play, then,” she said. “Until then, you’ll probably get involved in even more strange happenings. I hope you’ll navigate them well enough.”

  Yuichi had already navigated through more than his share of bizarre events. Her warning didn’t sound like it signified anything new.

  But in fact, Makina was right. Yuichi’s situation was quickly about to change.

  Chapter 1: First Week of October: The Light Novel Conference

  The usual members had assembled for the survival club meeting after school.

  The club president, Mutsuko, stood in front of the whiteboard. The vice president, Kanako, and members Yuichi, Aiko, and Natsuki, were sitting at the table set in front of the whiteboard. Their advisor, Makina Shikitani, sat in a chair a little ways away, watching the proceedings.

  Makina’s arrival had thrown the survival club into chaos, but now that things had finally calmed down, Kanako timidly raised her hand. “Um, may I ask a question, Miss Shiki— I mean, President Shikitani?”

  “Yes?” Makina asked. “I assume from the fact that you’re addressing me as ‘President’ that this is publishing business, right?”

  “Yes. Um... I had thought you didn’t need me as a writer anymore. But the other night, my editor contacted me and requested a new novel...” Kanako had only been made a writer because Makina had needed it for her plan. She’d stopped trying to think of plots when she’d assumed she was of no use to Makina anymore.

  “Yes, Hirata did that at my direction,” said Makina. “I had a feeling that you hadn’t written anything. You really put a scare into him, you know?”

  “But you said I had no talent!” Kanako cried. “That you created the company just to make me a writer!”

  “Oh, I did say that you had no talent. It was a lie, though.”

  Makina’s casual dismissal had Kanako at a loss for words. Didn’t she know how much those words had hurt her? They had been the primary reason she had stopped trying to write.

  “Let’s set aside the circumstances under which you became a writer,” Makina said briskly. “If you had no talent, your first volume wouldn’t have sold, but the truth is, it got a good reception — and, rare for light novels nowadays, it had a long tail. In addition, regardless of my reason for setting up the company, I can’t just close it that easily. The livelihoods of my employees are riding on it.”

  Makina appeared to be surprisingly responsible, in some regards.

  “Very well,” Kanako said. “So I just have to write something?” Feelings swirled through Kanako’s mind, but she decided to swallow them all down. Becoming a writer had been her dream, after all.

  “Of course,” said Makina. “I hope you’ll continue to contribute to the profits of my company from now on.”

  “But why can’t I publish a second volume of Demon Lord? You only wanted The Half-Isekai Classroom because of your plan, didn’t you?” Kanako burst out.

  She was sure it was Makina’s scheme that had resulted in the delay of the second volume’s publication. With her plans halted, there should be no issue with publishing the continuation of Demon Lord.

  “No, I still want to delay Demon Lord for a while,” said Makina. “There’s a chance that Glowsphere might try to manifest again, so while it’s probably all right, I’d like to wait and observe for a little while longer. The Half-Isekai Classroom is out for the same reason.”

  Glowsphere was the setting of Kanako’s novel, My Demon Lord Is Too Cute to Kill and Now the World Is in Danger!, and in the recent incident, it had begun to merge with the real world. The Half-Isekai Classroom was off limits because it was part of the same worldview.

  “Oh, no...” Kanako murmured. It was just as she’d feared. She had been hoping that talking directly to the president might change the situation somehow, but it seemed it really was hopeless.

  “Hey, what’s up with Orihara’s power anyway?” Yuichi broke in after listening in on the conversation in silence. “All she did was write a novel and hold a ritual, and it gave her the power to rewrite the world? Isn’t that a little extreme?”

  Indeed, Kanako had wondered about that, too. She had never shown any signs of special abilities before then, and had always assumed she was an ordinary person.

  “I’ll refrain from commenting on that one,” said Makina. “You told me not to use my abilities. That should include the use and sharing of information about people I’ve acquired with those abilities, shouldn’t it?”

  “But you can still tell her not to write Demon Lord?” he asked.

  “You could have reasoned that out from what you already know. Besides, I can’t put the world in danger by turning a blind eye to it. Keeping my silence would count as ‘bad’ by your standards, wouldn’t it?”

  “But you don’t think it’s important for us to know about Orihara’s power?” he asked.

  “I don’t. At the moment, there’s no need for you to know.”

  “Okay.” Yuichi backed off, seeming to trust Makina’s words.

  Kanako also more or less felt like she understood, and so she didn’t ask Makina anything else.

  Still, knowing for sure now that she had to write something, Kanako fell back into stewing over a new plot for a story.

  ✽✽✽✽✽

  “Okay! Today’s club meeting is a women’s self-defense class! At least, that was the original plan...” Mutsuko cut in as the conversation dwindled.

  “When the atmosphere in the room turns awkward, you shout ‘Okay!’ and change the subject. In a way, it’s impressive...” Yuichi muttered.

  The person with whom he’d been locked in a battle to the death not long ago, and the person who had been extremely cruel to Kanako, was now joining them as their advisor, yet Mutsuko didn’t seem to mind at all.

  “Um! About that...” Kanako had fallen silent after Makina had finished speaking, but now she looked up again.

  “What? It’s rare to hear you speak up, Orihara!” Mutsuko exclaimed.

  “There’s something I have wanted to ask you all,” Kanako said. “I’m running out of time to think of a subject for my novel, and I don’t know what to do...”

  “You’re always getting along by the skin of your teeth, Orihara...” Yuichi said. He’d thought so before too, but he had assumed she couldn’t always be this way. “But you’ve got the president of the company over there. Can’t you extend the deadline?”

  Kanako’s book was being published by the company that Makina ran. It seemed to him that she should have some control over that.

  “Hmm,” said Makina. “It’s true that I could extend the deadline. And since you’re irreplaceable, I couldn’t refuse you if you asked. But — and I’m not saying this just to abuse you — it’s for your own good to stick to the current one. The world of light novels moves quickly nowadays. The readers might forget about you if you spend too much time between installments, which can have an impact on sales. So if you want to keep on as a writer, trying to push your way through now is probably the best thing you can do.”

  “But if you’re the president, can’t you give her any advice?” Yuichi asked.

  “I’m management, not editorial. There’s not much that I can say. As president, the most I can say is that I would like you to write something that will sell.” Makina wasn’t much help, it seemed.

  “Then let’s use this meeting to wor
k together to help Orihara!” Mutsuko declared excitedly.

  If she said it, that’s what they would do.

  “But I thought aspiring writers always had lots of ideas,” Yuichi suggested curiously. Kanako had dreamed of becoming a writer, and had apparently written lots of stories before. He wondered why she couldn’t just adapt one of those.

  “Apparently... they’re not cut out to be light novels,” Kanako drooped.

  “That’s right,” Makina said. “To elaborate on that, our company mainly publishes web novels, so we know exactly how likely they are to sell. From what her supervising editor has said, none of the plots she’s submitted so far have seemed likely to sell. I looked through the plots as part of my earlier plan, too, but I don’t know much about what sells.”

  “What about the Demon Lord story? That one didn’t seem like it would sell... ah, though I do like it,” Aiko asked. She was a fan of Kanako’s, and was apparently very much looking forward to the next volume.

  “That one... just happened to gain popularity on the internet fiction site,” said Makina. “That’s why it’s a problem now.”

  My Demon Lord Is Too Cute to Kill and Now the World Is in Danger! seemed to be the only work of hers that had gotten good reviews on the internet.

  “Anyway! It’s not the content that sells a light novel, is it?” Mutsuko declared casually.

  “That’s too out of nowhere!” Yuichi objected.

  “But it’s true! It’s not the content that determines whether the first volume sells or not! The readers only have superficial information to go on!”

  “That’s true, now that you mention it. It’s not as if they read it first, and then buy it,” Aiko said, but Yuichi wasn’t convinced.

  “True... ah, but web novels still sell, and everyone knows what’s in them...” Kanako said awkwardly, apparently being unable to fully agree that the contents didn’t matter at all.

  “What about putting a social game serial code on it?” Mutsuko asked. “You can unlock rare weapons or rare characters! And if you make it so they need more codes to make the weapon or character stronger, a single person might buy dozens of volumes! Oh, and put a meet-and-greet ticket in with them! Free for one handshake with the beautiful high school girl light novel author! If you include a photo of Orihara with the book, the boys will line up around the block! That’s the best way to get them to buy! They’ll buy it in droves! They won’t be able to live without it! Then, if it’s a good story, they’ll buy the later volumes, too!” Mutsuko gushed on, apparently thinking it was a great idea.