alpindale/light-novels · Datasets at Hugging Face

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“Am I wrong? The way you do things is cowardly and rotten─but most of all, you’re a cute girl. Which is way better than being a rotten guy like me, and yet you’re throwing away your future… Is that why─the one person you didn’t want to be hated by was Aikawa? Because she’s a woman? Aikawa was the one person you didn’t want to think of you as a ‘murderer.’ You didn’t care about anyone besides her…and if this was going to be the end, I guess you wanted to end it by her side? Sentimentalism, romanticism, or plain old heroism…whichever one it was, it’s a far cry from my beloved stoicism. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed. By you.”
“What do you─what do you know about it!” Now Hime-chan really was crying. This was no lie, those were real tears. And she didn’t try to hide them as she yelled at me. Like she was accusing me, in a voice so loud I thought her throat was going to tear itself apart. “Don’t talk like you understand how I feel! What do you know about the feelings of someone who’s gotten used to killing!”
“If nothing else I know that you’re a weepy little girl. In the end you’re just scared, like everybody else. You’re frightened because you don’t know whether Aikawa will accept you or not. You’re suspicious of the fact that Aikawa trusts you. Which is why you’re testing her trust like this.”
I understood her feelings as if they were my own.
I understood them as I understand my own.
I understood them as my own.
“‘What’ll I do if Jun Aikawa hates me’─and ‘even if she doesn’t hate me,’ ‘if I amount to so little that I’m not worth hating even though I’ve done all this’─”
“Hahaha…”
All emotion suddenly, rapidly departed from Hime-chan’s face─positive and negative, life and death, all gone. She made a complete about-face, a turn to the dark side─becoming totally expressionless.
“Thank you so much, Master.”
These obviously empty words of gratitude came lightly to her lips.
“I got to have a nice dream there before the end.”
And, like the conductor of an orchestra.
“So that’s how it is…” I said. “Guess it is, at that.”
No good, huh?
Of course not, how could someone like me, someone who can’t even look after himself, look after someone else’s needs? Total failure. Was this the true non-action?
I’d shown her a nice dream─
But if the reality was shit, then it didn’t mean a thing.
A non-factoring non-action.
“Oh, right. I still don’t know your name.”
“…”
I waffled once more, right at the end. Despite the fact that, seconds before, I’d been trying to save this girl…now I was thinking about destroying her. I couldn’t decide: should I give this girl, who was teetering on the precipice, that final push over the edge? If I could destroy her, then I probably should.
It would probably feel good.
To obliterate this lovely young lady.
“Since it’s come to this, I can’t calls you Master anymore… I’ll do you the honor of calling you by your name. So please tell it to me.”
Tell you my name. Tell you my full name. You want me to snap every last one of your little zigzagging strings?
“Well…”
But I didn’t do that.
It didn’t seem necessary anymore.
“Guess I bought enough time for a costume change.”
“What’s that? Is that…your name?” asked Hime-chan, ingenuously.
Ahhh─so good-natured.
Everyone is just so good-natured.
Almost makes me feel like I’m the villain.
“Just talking to myself, Hime-chan… Don’t worry about it. And you said it yourself.”
“Huh?” Hime-chan squinted one eye in confusion. “See, the thing is, Hime-chan was asking you your name─”
“I said it too, and so did Shiogi─but you were the one who said it first, Hime-chan. Jun Aikawa is soft on her friends.”
“…?”
“It’s true that I left the Director’s office of my own accord…but she’s the one who brought me here to Hang ’Em High in the first place. So don’t you think it’d be kind of a lonely ending─if she didn’t come to my rescue?”
“…!”
Hime-chan whirled around.
And there before her eyes─
Vermillion as the flames of a carmine conflagration.
Crimson as spilt blood, the scarlet of hell itself.
The contractor was simply there.
A cynical smirk playing across her face.

(2) chapter number given is likely out of range: 0
Chapter: 28

Suspension 1

(2) chapter number given is likely out of range: 0
Chapter: 29

Suspension 1
0
The bullied one is the cause,
And the bully is effective.
1
What does the word “strength” really mean? If, like the standard for happiness and unhappiness, strength and weakness can only be evaluated relatively, then rejecting everything outside of oneself would be defined as strength, while accepting everything prior to oneself would be defined as weakness. Or maybe not, but in making any kind of judgment, one requires both a unit of measurement and a standard by which to measure.
Does it simply refer to bodily strength? Or an outsized presence? Does it mean physical solidity, or does it indicate mental obduracy? Simply because someone is always overbearing and cocky doesn’t mean they’re the strongest. Handling everything flawlessly, excelling at any and all skills, that alone isn’t enough to put you on top of the heap. Even mastering a single ability just makes you a genius, it doesn’t mean you can have whatever you want, or eradicate everything you don’t. Neither invincibility nor peerlessness alone constitutes a definition of “strongest.” And words like honor and glory are in fact its antonyms. So how can you possibly determine that someone is the strongest? If you take this line of thinking to its logical conclusion, you’ll end up at a more or less self-contradictory argument.
But if I were to present this train of reasoning to her, I’m sure she’d flash her usual nihilistic smile and say─
“I’m the strongest, and because I’m the strongest I don’t need a reason.”
“Thing is…”
Aikawa slowly spread her arms, showing off her bright-red outfit, and looked at me and Hime-chan. That cynical smile was still plastered on her face.
“I couldn’t bear to wear anything but this for the climax. Black just wouldn’t have worked for the big finish. Ugh, I hadda go all the way back to the Cobra, and it ate up a lot more time than I expected. Sorry I’m late, Iitan.”
Hime-chan was shaking uncontrollably. Her whole body was heaving. As if she couldn’t wrap her mind around it: Why is Aikawa there, or rather, Why isn’t Aikawa here, with me?
“It doesn’t makes a difference… Buying time with his silver tongue is the nonsense user’s favorite trick, after all, isn’t it, Ms. Aikawa?”
“I’ve told you not to call me by my last name… Only my ‘enemies’ do that. So─” Aikawa’s smile didn’t slip as she fixed her gaze on Hime-chan. “Which’re you gonna call me?”
“Ah, uh─”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, anyway?”
“Ah…”
“I asked you what the hell you’re doing. Well?”
“Then─”
Still trembling.
“Then this is the end? Just like that?”
Shaking like a leaf.
“Why─”
Her quavering voice filled with all the emotion she could muster.
“─am I such a screw-up?” she shouted in a heartbreaking voice so small that it seemed like it might vanish altogether. “Where did I go wrong? Huh?” she asked, not of Aikawa, but of me. “I thought so hard about it… I considered it from every angle, and I was sure it’d go smoothly. Did Hime-chan─do something wrong?”
“…Hime-chan.”
“Seriously, am I really this much of a screw-up?”
“The hell’s that got to do with it?” Aikawa cut in. “Remember what I said about getting ‘caught in your own web’─you’ve been overthinking this to death, you and Iitan both. Not to mention that little lady lying on the ground there. Man, this hallway is drenched in blood. Dammit─don’t you assholes have anything better to do? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re both under the impression that everything can be explained logically, aren’cha?” Aikawa scratched her head in frustration, like she was genuinely baffled. Then, heaving a sigh so long that it seemed to last for an eternity and for an instant, she started yelling, “Logic is nothing more than one plus one equals two. And theory just means zero plus zero equals zero. If you wanna see some neat, clean logic, go read a first-grade math textbook or something. Relying on that kind of infantile shit, clinging to it, bowing down to it─are you really both such drooling idiots?!”
She wasn’t smiling anymore─she was pissed.
Insanely pissed. Violently furious.
“I’m such a screw-up, this is the end… Listen to you, shamelessly mewling like a whipped dog! Makes me red in the face just listening to you! You think I need to be any redder, you idiot?! Huh?? You think as long as you survive, that counts as a job well done? As long as no one finds out the truth, it’s a full success? You think you get to decide when it starts and ends? Bullshit! You moron, this idiotic farce could never have succeeded! You wanna hop on the bandwagon with all these traumatized little brats and their boo-hoo-hooing? I’ll give you something to cry about!”
“W-Wah…”
Weeping profusely, Hime-chan retreated a step, as if blown back by the force of Aikawa’s words. The unpleasant sensation of those “lines” being wrapped around my body was gone. No time to worry about holding me captive in the face of Jun Aikawa─and keeping a hostage would only be counterproductive against her anyway. Hime-chan probably knew this all too well. Which is exactly why she’d wanted to keep Aikawa on her side.
Or─maybe that wasn’t why?
That was part of it, but Hime-chan was simply…
“This ain’t funny─I’m not the slightest bit amused! If you’re going to make an enemy of me, at least give me a little chuckle! Everyone averts their eyes from what they should really be doing, squandering every little thing they’ve got, making excuses, lying, sidestepping─creeping around like servile little worms! Shape up! It couldn’t be simpler, just don’t slack off! Why can’t you guys get it together?! Straighten out already!”
That’s just it…
That’s the one thing we can’t do.
Both Hime-chan, and me.
But now Aikawa had gotten up a head of steam, and she couldn’t keep her anger in check.
“Puff out your chest, stand up straight, take pride in yourself, roar at your enemies, don’t hang your head! Never back down, never give up, and don’t think you can just end it whenever you want! You feeling all sympathetic, you little shits?! Don’t cozy up to each other, don’t get attached, it’s gross, what’re you, animals?! Don’t involve someone else in your own narcissism, you wanna worry, go ahead and worry, but don’t come crying to me, you think I can help you with your weird issues?! Look at you, licking each other’s wounds. There’s no place for compromise here! Don’t dismiss it out of hand, and don’t find some abstruse reason to accept it! Forget about everything else and just worry about your own decisions!”
“Shut up!” shouted Hime-chan, clutching her stomach─and glaring back at Aikawa.
The tears were gone. Nowhere to be found. Her eyes were no longer those of a teenage girl─they were zigzag eyes, slashed to pieces somewhere inside, rotten to the core.
It had all been an act.

“Am I wrong? The way you do things is cowardly and rotten─but most of all, you’re a cute girl. Which is way better than being a rotten guy like me, and yet you’re throwing away your future… Is that why─the one person you didn’t want to be hated by was Aikawa? Because she’s a woman? Aikawa was the one person you didn’t want to think of you as a ‘murderer.’ You didn’t care about anyone besides her…and if this was going to be the end, I guess you wanted to end it by her side? Sentimentalism, romanticism, or plain old heroism…whichever one it was, it’s a far cry from my beloved stoicism. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed. By you.”

“What do you─what do you know about it!” Now Hime-chan really was crying. This was no lie, those were real tears. And she didn’t try to hide them as she yelled at me. Like she was accusing me, in a voice so loud I thought her throat was going to tear itself apart. “Don’t talk like you understand how I feel! What do you know about the feelings of someone who’s gotten used to killing!”

“If nothing else I know that you’re a weepy little girl. In the end you’re just scared, like everybody else. You’re frightened because you don’t know whether Aikawa will accept you or not. You’re suspicious of the fact that Aikawa trusts you. Which is why you’re testing her trust like this.”

I understood her feelings as if they were my own.

I understood them as I understand my own.

I understood them as my own.

“‘What’ll I do if Jun Aikawa hates me’─and ‘even if she doesn’t hate me,’ ‘if I amount to so little that I’m not worth hating even though I’ve done all this’─”

“Hahaha…”

All emotion suddenly, rapidly departed from Hime-chan’s face─positive and negative, life and death, all gone. She made a complete about-face, a turn to the dark side─becoming totally expressionless.

“Thank you so much, Master.”

These obviously empty words of gratitude came lightly to her lips.

“I got to have a nice dream there before the end.”

And, like the conductor of an orchestra.

“So that’s how it is…” I said. “Guess it is, at that.”

No good, huh?

Of course not, how could someone like me, someone who can’t even look after himself, look after someone else’s needs? Total failure. Was this the true non-action?

I’d shown her a nice dream─

But if the reality was shit, then it didn’t mean a thing.

A non-factoring non-action.

“Oh, right. I still don’t know your name.”

“…”

I waffled once more, right at the end. Despite the fact that, seconds before, I’d been trying to save this girl…now I was thinking about destroying her. I couldn’t decide: should I give this girl, who was teetering on the precipice, that final push over the edge? If I could destroy her, then I probably should.

It would probably feel good.

To obliterate this lovely young lady.

“Since it’s come to this, I can’t calls you Master anymore… I’ll do you the honor of calling you by your name. So please tell it to me.”

Tell you my name. Tell you my full name. You want me to snap every last one of your little zigzagging strings?

“Well…”

But I didn’t do that.

It didn’t seem necessary anymore.

“Guess I bought enough time for a costume change.”

“What’s that? Is that…your name?” asked Hime-chan, ingenuously.

Ahhh─so good-natured.

Everyone is just so good-natured.

Almost makes me feel like I’m the villain.

“Just talking to myself, Hime-chan… Don’t worry about it. And you said it yourself.”

“Huh?” Hime-chan squinted one eye in confusion. “See, the thing is, Hime-chan was asking you your name─”

“I said it too, and so did Shiogi─but you were the one who said it first, Hime-chan. Jun Aikawa is soft on her friends.”

“…?”

“It’s true that I left the Director’s office of my own accord…but she’s the one who brought me here to Hang ’Em High in the first place. So don’t you think it’d be kind of a lonely ending─if she didn’t come to my rescue?”

“…!”

Hime-chan whirled around.

And there before her eyes─

Vermillion as the flames of a carmine conflagration.

Crimson as spilt blood, the scarlet of hell itself.

The contractor was simply there.

A cynical smirk playing across her face.

(2) chapter number given is likely out of range: 0

Chapter: 28

Suspension 1

(2) chapter number given is likely out of range: 0

Chapter: 29

Suspension 1

0

The bullied one is the cause,

And the bully is effective.

1

What does the word “strength” really mean? If, like the standard for happiness and unhappiness, strength and weakness can only be evaluated relatively, then rejecting everything outside of oneself would be defined as strength, while accepting everything prior to oneself would be defined as weakness. Or maybe not, but in making any kind of judgment, one requires both a unit of measurement and a standard by which to measure.

Does it simply refer to bodily strength? Or an outsized presence? Does it mean physical solidity, or does it indicate mental obduracy? Simply because someone is always overbearing and cocky doesn’t mean they’re the strongest. Handling everything flawlessly, excelling at any and all skills, that alone isn’t enough to put you on top of the heap. Even mastering a single ability just makes you a genius, it doesn’t mean you can have whatever you want, or eradicate everything you don’t. Neither invincibility nor peerlessness alone constitutes a definition of “strongest.” And words like honor and glory are in fact its antonyms. So how can you possibly determine that someone is the strongest? If you take this line of thinking to its logical conclusion, you’ll end up at a more or less self-contradictory argument.

But if I were to present this train of reasoning to her, I’m sure she’d flash her usual nihilistic smile and say─

“I’m the strongest, and because I’m the strongest I don’t need a reason.”

“Thing is…”

Aikawa slowly spread her arms, showing off her bright-red outfit, and looked at me and Hime-chan. That cynical smile was still plastered on her face.

“I couldn’t bear to wear anything but this for the climax. Black just wouldn’t have worked for the big finish. Ugh, I hadda go all the way back to the Cobra, and it ate up a lot more time than I expected. Sorry I’m late, Iitan.”

Hime-chan was shaking uncontrollably. Her whole body was heaving. As if she couldn’t wrap her mind around it: Why is Aikawa there, or rather, Why isn’t Aikawa here, with me?

“It doesn’t makes a difference… Buying time with his silver tongue is the nonsense user’s favorite trick, after all, isn’t it, Ms. Aikawa?”

“I’ve told you not to call me by my last name… Only my ‘enemies’ do that. So─” Aikawa’s smile didn’t slip as she fixed her gaze on Hime-chan. “Which’re you gonna call me?”

“Ah, uh─”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, anyway?”

“Ah…”

“I asked you what the hell you’re doing. Well?”

“Then─”

Still trembling.

“Then this is the end? Just like that?”

Shaking like a leaf.

“Why─”

Her quavering voice filled with all the emotion she could muster.

“─am I such a screw-up?” she shouted in a heartbreaking voice so small that it seemed like it might vanish altogether. “Where did I go wrong? Huh?” she asked, not of Aikawa, but of me. “I thought so hard about it… I considered it from every angle, and I was sure it’d go smoothly. Did Hime-chan─do something wrong?”

“…Hime-chan.”

“Seriously, am I really this much of a screw-up?”

“The hell’s that got to do with it?” Aikawa cut in. “Remember what I said about getting ‘caught in your own web’─you’ve been overthinking this to death, you and Iitan both. Not to mention that little lady lying on the ground there. Man, this hallway is drenched in blood. Dammit─don’t you assholes have anything better to do? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re both under the impression that everything can be explained logically, aren’cha?” Aikawa scratched her head in frustration, like she was genuinely baffled. Then, heaving a sigh so long that it seemed to last for an eternity and for an instant, she started yelling, “Logic is nothing more than one plus one equals two. And theory just means zero plus zero equals zero. If you wanna see some neat, clean logic, go read a first-grade math textbook or something. Relying on that kind of infantile shit, clinging to it, bowing down to it─are you really both such drooling idiots?!”

She wasn’t smiling anymore─she was pissed.

Insanely pissed. Violently furious.

“I’m such a screw-up, this is the end… Listen to you, shamelessly mewling like a whipped dog! Makes me red in the face just listening to you! You think I need to be any redder, you idiot?! Huh?? You think as long as you survive, that counts as a job well done? As long as no one finds out the truth, it’s a full success? You think you get to decide when it starts and ends? Bullshit! You moron, this idiotic farce could never have succeeded! You wanna hop on the bandwagon with all these traumatized little brats and their boo-hoo-hooing? I’ll give you something to cry about!”

“W-Wah…”

Weeping profusely, Hime-chan retreated a step, as if blown back by the force of Aikawa’s words. The unpleasant sensation of those “lines” being wrapped around my body was gone. No time to worry about holding me captive in the face of Jun Aikawa─and keeping a hostage would only be counterproductive against her anyway. Hime-chan probably knew this all too well. Which is exactly why she’d wanted to keep Aikawa on her side.

Or─maybe that wasn’t why?

That was part of it, but Hime-chan was simply…

“This ain’t funny─I’m not the slightest bit amused! If you’re going to make an enemy of me, at least give me a little chuckle! Everyone averts their eyes from what they should really be doing, squandering every little thing they’ve got, making excuses, lying, sidestepping─creeping around like servile little worms! Shape up! It couldn’t be simpler, just don’t slack off! Why can’t you guys get it together?! Straighten out already!”

That’s just it…

That’s the one thing we can’t do.

Both Hime-chan, and me.

But now Aikawa had gotten up a head of steam, and she couldn’t keep her anger in check.

“Puff out your chest, stand up straight, take pride in yourself, roar at your enemies, don’t hang your head! Never back down, never give up, and don’t think you can just end it whenever you want! You feeling all sympathetic, you little shits?! Don’t cozy up to each other, don’t get attached, it’s gross, what’re you, animals?! Don’t involve someone else in your own narcissism, you wanna worry, go ahead and worry, but don’t come crying to me, you think I can help you with your weird issues?! Look at you, licking each other’s wounds. There’s no place for compromise here! Don’t dismiss it out of hand, and don’t find some abstruse reason to accept it! Forget about everything else and just worry about your own decisions!”

“Shut up!” shouted Hime-chan, clutching her stomach─and glaring back at Aikawa.

The tears were gone. Nowhere to be found. Her eyes were no longer those of a teenage girl─they were zigzag eyes, slashed to pieces somewhere inside, rotten to the core.

It had all been an act.