alpindale/light-novels · Datasets at Hugging Face

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Shiogi in particular was my type.
“You’re soft on your enemies, aren’t you, Master. That’s what they call skyping with the enemy.”
“Somebody put me out of my misery,” I shook my head. “But no matter what you say, Shiogi, Tamamo, Yuma, they’re all human same as us.”
“They’re all human different from us.”
For once, Hime-chan sounded less than optimistic. With that gloomy expression of hers, naturally.
I looked her over again. This all started because Hime-chan wanted to quit this academy, because she wanted to run away from it─but there was no possible way they would go to all this trouble to stop her over something like a little “non-disclosure agreement.”
She’d called herself a washout, and I believed her, and Aikawa hadn’t contradicted her─but upon consideration, was it really possible that Ichihime Yukariki could be “a nobody washout” if she was friends with the world’s strongest?
This was total conjecture, but perhaps there was another reason why they were attempting so tenaciously to prevent her from escaping. For instance, maybe she had some kind of special abilities or mutant powers, which was why the Director didn’t want to let her go…
Maybe she was a “Dark Knife” like Tamamo Saijo, or a “Spider” like Yuma Shisei. But as far as I could tell from what I’d seen of her in battle thus far, she didn’t possess any direct combat skills whatsoever─if she did, she wouldn’t have been captured so easily by the tactician’s cordon. Then again, neither did she excel in strategy and tactics like Shiogi Hagihara. To put it bluntly, Hime-chan’s behavior, coming after me included, could be summed up by the words “rash and impulsive.”
It somehow didn’t add up. It was like trying to do a Rubik’s cube with seven colors. When a jigsaw puzzle has too many pieces, it makes it impossible to finish. Too much evidence, an overabundance of clues.
If Hime-chan did hold some significance for this thoroughly unrealistic school, then it wasn’t for her skill or intelligence─but maybe for some other secret psychic art she possessed. Something that could indeed compare with the “Tactics Expert,” the “Dark Knife,” and with “Zigzag the Spider.”
“Hm.”
Well, how about we fail to rejoin Aikawa and end up in dire straits when our escape route is blocked by Shiogi Hagihara, or Yuma Shisei, or Tamamo Saijo─how about a grand finale where at the last possible second, Ichihime Yukariki saves us by unveiling the secret ability she’s been hiding this whole time?
“Hime-chan’s been an ESPer all along!”
“Wh-Whuuut?! Totally unexpected! We’re saved!”
“But I can’t fully control my power…oh no, Master!”
“What’s happening?! My right hand is Hannibal?! My shoelaces are radiating a green aura?!”
…
Fine, I’ll never be a novelist.
An introvert who doesn’t even have any imagination─is there any reason to go on living?
And now back to our regularly scheduled story. Ahem. At any rate, Aikawa was likely still hiding something from me. And probably Hime-chan was too. Which was fine, that’s to be expected. I live with all kinds of secrets myself, and I won’t tell them to anyone no matter what. Secrets are only secrets because we keep them secret. All we can ask is for secrets to stay secrets and lies to stay lies─I guess?
If possible, I wanted to remain an outsider till the end. That was the one wish I had no desire to abandon.
As we were crossing some kind of courtyard, I tripped over something. I was scared shitless that it was a trap, on account of what Hime-chan had been saying, but nothing happened. Apparently I’d just tripped over a stray soccer ball or something that someone had forgotten to put away.
“Gimme a─”
As I went to pick up the ball, my thoughts caught up to my actions. Sumiyuri Academy─Hang ’Em High, by no means a normal school. Would there really be something as banal as a “stray soccer ball” lying around?
I looked down at the ball. It was Tamamo Saijo’s severed head.

(2) chapter number given is likely out of range: 0
Chapter: 24

Suspension 1
2
There amid the gloaming it lay: her head, with that choppy haircut, had been chopped off.
However twisted and insane I may be, there was no way I could stay calm. The hand I’d picked it up with reflexively let go, and I just stood there, unable to think. I was in utter consternation. Driven to complete distraction. I simply could not comprehend the situation. I stood there in a state of total misapprehension. I couldn’t even reprehend myself for my reaction. It, which of course made me think of Noa Origami’s severed head hanging from the ceiling of the Director’s office, had no expression. Tamamo looked like she was asleep, except that from her neck down there was nothing─
“Look out!”
Hime-chan saved me. She hurled herself at my waist as hard as she could to knock me out of the way, and while ordinarily this would’ve had no effect, Hime-chan being only about half my size, at present there was nobody home, my spirit had left my body, and she easily knocked me to the ground in a repeat of her tackle a few hours earlier.
And a split second later. A crossbow bolt whizzed through the spot where I’d just been standing and pierced the ground with an audible thud.
I took in the situation in an instant, my body temperature below the freezing point. I rolled sideways, holding tight to Hime-chan who was still clutching me about the waist. I was aware of more shafts striking the ground behind me─zhk zhk zhk─as I rolled. If I kept rolling in a uniform motion like that, however, the attacker would be able to anticipate our path and get a bead on us─I needed to mount a counterattack.
Where had the first bolt come from─over there? Judging by their trajectories thus far, I could make a rough guess. Even if our unseen assailant was moving as he or she fired, I could do some anticipating of my own. As I rolled, I picked up a good-sized rock, and changed direction. I watched as the next crossbow bolt struck the ground a little farther off target than the previous ones, then got to my feet and hurled the rock at the point where I estimated the archer to be firing from. With this, the attack ceased.
At length─a single girl materialized out of the surrounding darkness. That long black hair and slender physique, which I couldn’t help but be fascinated by─and that black sailor outfit.
“I guess this thing really isn’t much good if you’re not proficient with it…” Muttering this, she cast the crossbow aside. She must’ve run out of ammo with that last shot. “It is I, Shiogi Hagihara. So we meet again.”
“─An unexpected pleasure.”
I stood in the line of fire, placing myself between Shiogi and Hime-chan. Ambushed again? It seemed Tamamo’s call had gone through after all. She’d seemed slow on the uptake, but maybe she’d been a good team player.
But what did it mean that a piece of that selfsame Tamamo was lying on the ground out here?
“I’m pleased to’ve taken you unawares, but I’d hoped for a more successful surprise attack. My stratagem doesn’t seem to be going according to plan─and that rarely if ever happens. Who are you, really?”
That last question was directed at me, but─that was my line. What the hell is this place? Three short hours ago I’d come upon the dismembered body and suspended head of the Director, and now I was stumbling over the severed head of a teenage girl. And, in between those two events, my life had been imperiled multiple times.
A warzone.
The word that had occurred to me the first time I faced off against Shiogi floated through my mind once more. Tamamo had tried to kill me, so it’s not like there was any love lost between the two of us, nor friendship, nor sympathy─but looking at her head, severed as if someone had simply said, Time’s running out, so let’s end this…
“Does it─mean something that this is here?”
“It’s meaningless to wonder about what it means. I always select the best, most suitable strategy, that’s all. Then again…” And here Shiogi shook her head in consternation, and it didn’t seem like an act. Her head, which at present was still attached to her body. “Thanks to the appearance of Overkill Red, the majority of the students are quaking in their boots, and as a result they’re useless to me─so the best, most suitable strategy was off the table. But the second best, perfectly adequate strategy seems to have worked, so all’s well that ends well.”
She was talking like it was a done deal.
It was checkmate, no question. The checkmate after the masterstroke. Not a single crossbow bolt had found its mark, but through that attack she’d confirmed that Jun Aikawa wasn’t hiding nearby. Shiogi had probably only half intended to actually hit us in the first place─and if it was just me and Hime-chan, the tactics expert could easily take us with nothing but her bare hands.
“Hide-and-seek time is over─”
We were cornered…
There was nothing we could do…we were utterly defeated. We’d been unable to slip through Shiogi’s iron cordon.
A battle of wits─but I felt okay about losing this way.
If this was how it ended, that wasn’t so bad.
Keeping Hime-chan safe was always going to be beyond me. That was Jun Aikawa’s role, after all. What a shame, Mr. Nonsense User.
“Now then.”
Well, I would at least try and do a good job of begging for my life.
That much at least─was well within my capabilities.
I took a step forward, and so did Shiogi─at which point Hime-chan inserted herself between us.
Spreading her arms wide, she formed a tiny wall in front of me. It was a truly tiny, fragile wall─but I understood full well what she intended by it.
“Uh, uh uh uh─”
Hime-chan was shaking like a leaf, but she didn’t move from that spot. She stayed, to protect me.
“…”
Seeing this, Shiogi stopped. Then she let out an exasperated sigh and said, “Please give up this pointless resistance, Yukariki. I don’t recall teaching you to fight losing battles. Even you can comprehend that right now, here in this place, you have no hope of staying my hand, can’t you?”
“I,” Hime-chan answered Shiogi in a quivering but resolute voice, “won’t know unless I try.”
“The idea that you wouldn’t know that unless you try it─is pretty foolish.”
“Uh huh. And, that’s fine,” Hime-chan said. “Better to be stupid like me than clever like you.”
Ah.
I’d.
Been such an idiot.
Ichihime Yukariki─was friends with Jun Aikawa.
But why would that mean she had to have special abilities, or mutant powers?
Why would she need that kind of qualification?
She had wept out of concern for me.
She had frantically restrained me.
She had come after me.
She had saved my life.
And─she had smiled at me.
She was no washout.
Hime-chan.
You’re─a magnificent human being.
Fit to stand shoulder to shoulder with the world’s strongest.
“Goddammit─what a riot.”
In which case, fine.
I’ll keep on pretending we’re friends a little longer.
I feel good, really good. Really, really good.
Right now─I feel incredibly good.
So good that if I let my mask slip, I might laugh out loud.
“Hime-chan…you can get back on your own, right?” I whispered. “You followed me on your own, so you can get back to that room on your own, right?”
“Master? Whats are you saying?”
She looked genuinely confused.
Guess I was going to have to spell it out.
“I’m saying─get out of here and leave this to me.”
If ever there was a time to divide our forces, it was now. This was not selfishness or cowardice on my part─it was strategy. You don’t mind, do you, Shiogi? If as a tactician you’re okay with that happening to Tamamo─then I’ll also shed the role of the nonsense user.
From here on out it’s not a battle of wits.
It’s a fight to the death.
I’ll kill you, tear you apart, line you up, put you back together─and hang you out to dry.

Shiogi in particular was my type.

“You’re soft on your enemies, aren’t you, Master. That’s what they call skyping with the enemy.”

“Somebody put me out of my misery,” I shook my head. “But no matter what you say, Shiogi, Tamamo, Yuma, they’re all human same as us.”

“They’re all human different from us.”

For once, Hime-chan sounded less than optimistic. With that gloomy expression of hers, naturally.

I looked her over again. This all started because Hime-chan wanted to quit this academy, because she wanted to run away from it─but there was no possible way they would go to all this trouble to stop her over something like a little “non-disclosure agreement.”

She’d called herself a washout, and I believed her, and Aikawa hadn’t contradicted her─but upon consideration, was it really possible that Ichihime Yukariki could be “a nobody washout” if she was friends with the world’s strongest?

This was total conjecture, but perhaps there was another reason why they were attempting so tenaciously to prevent her from escaping. For instance, maybe she had some kind of special abilities or mutant powers, which was why the Director didn’t want to let her go…

Maybe she was a “Dark Knife” like Tamamo Saijo, or a “Spider” like Yuma Shisei. But as far as I could tell from what I’d seen of her in battle thus far, she didn’t possess any direct combat skills whatsoever─if she did, she wouldn’t have been captured so easily by the tactician’s cordon. Then again, neither did she excel in strategy and tactics like Shiogi Hagihara. To put it bluntly, Hime-chan’s behavior, coming after me included, could be summed up by the words “rash and impulsive.”

It somehow didn’t add up. It was like trying to do a Rubik’s cube with seven colors. When a jigsaw puzzle has too many pieces, it makes it impossible to finish. Too much evidence, an overabundance of clues.

If Hime-chan did hold some significance for this thoroughly unrealistic school, then it wasn’t for her skill or intelligence─but maybe for some other secret psychic art she possessed. Something that could indeed compare with the “Tactics Expert,” the “Dark Knife,” and with “Zigzag the Spider.”

“Hm.”

Well, how about we fail to rejoin Aikawa and end up in dire straits when our escape route is blocked by Shiogi Hagihara, or Yuma Shisei, or Tamamo Saijo─how about a grand finale where at the last possible second, Ichihime Yukariki saves us by unveiling the secret ability she’s been hiding this whole time?

“Hime-chan’s been an ESPer all along!”

“Wh-Whuuut?! Totally unexpected! We’re saved!”

“But I can’t fully control my power…oh no, Master!”

“What’s happening?! My right hand is Hannibal?! My shoelaces are radiating a green aura?!”

…

Fine, I’ll never be a novelist.

An introvert who doesn’t even have any imagination─is there any reason to go on living?

And now back to our regularly scheduled story. Ahem. At any rate, Aikawa was likely still hiding something from me. And probably Hime-chan was too. Which was fine, that’s to be expected. I live with all kinds of secrets myself, and I won’t tell them to anyone no matter what. Secrets are only secrets because we keep them secret. All we can ask is for secrets to stay secrets and lies to stay lies─I guess?

If possible, I wanted to remain an outsider till the end. That was the one wish I had no desire to abandon.

As we were crossing some kind of courtyard, I tripped over something. I was scared shitless that it was a trap, on account of what Hime-chan had been saying, but nothing happened. Apparently I’d just tripped over a stray soccer ball or something that someone had forgotten to put away.

“Gimme a─”

As I went to pick up the ball, my thoughts caught up to my actions. Sumiyuri Academy─Hang ’Em High, by no means a normal school. Would there really be something as banal as a “stray soccer ball” lying around?

I looked down at the ball. It was Tamamo Saijo’s severed head.

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

Chapter: 24

Suspension 1

2

There amid the gloaming it lay: her head, with that choppy haircut, had been chopped off.

However twisted and insane I may be, there was no way I could stay calm. The hand I’d picked it up with reflexively let go, and I just stood there, unable to think. I was in utter consternation. Driven to complete distraction. I simply could not comprehend the situation. I stood there in a state of total misapprehension. I couldn’t even reprehend myself for my reaction. It, which of course made me think of Noa Origami’s severed head hanging from the ceiling of the Director’s office, had no expression. Tamamo looked like she was asleep, except that from her neck down there was nothing─

“Look out!”

Hime-chan saved me. She hurled herself at my waist as hard as she could to knock me out of the way, and while ordinarily this would’ve had no effect, Hime-chan being only about half my size, at present there was nobody home, my spirit had left my body, and she easily knocked me to the ground in a repeat of her tackle a few hours earlier.

And a split second later. A crossbow bolt whizzed through the spot where I’d just been standing and pierced the ground with an audible thud.

I took in the situation in an instant, my body temperature below the freezing point. I rolled sideways, holding tight to Hime-chan who was still clutching me about the waist. I was aware of more shafts striking the ground behind me─zhk zhk zhk─as I rolled. If I kept rolling in a uniform motion like that, however, the attacker would be able to anticipate our path and get a bead on us─I needed to mount a counterattack.

Where had the first bolt come from─over there? Judging by their trajectories thus far, I could make a rough guess. Even if our unseen assailant was moving as he or she fired, I could do some anticipating of my own. As I rolled, I picked up a good-sized rock, and changed direction. I watched as the next crossbow bolt struck the ground a little farther off target than the previous ones, then got to my feet and hurled the rock at the point where I estimated the archer to be firing from. With this, the attack ceased.

At length─a single girl materialized out of the surrounding darkness. That long black hair and slender physique, which I couldn’t help but be fascinated by─and that black sailor outfit.

“I guess this thing really isn’t much good if you’re not proficient with it…” Muttering this, she cast the crossbow aside. She must’ve run out of ammo with that last shot. “It is I, Shiogi Hagihara. So we meet again.”

“─An unexpected pleasure.”

I stood in the line of fire, placing myself between Shiogi and Hime-chan. Ambushed again? It seemed Tamamo’s call had gone through after all. She’d seemed slow on the uptake, but maybe she’d been a good team player.

But what did it mean that a piece of that selfsame Tamamo was lying on the ground out here?

“I’m pleased to’ve taken you unawares, but I’d hoped for a more successful surprise attack. My stratagem doesn’t seem to be going according to plan─and that rarely if ever happens. Who are you, really?”

That last question was directed at me, but─that was my line. What the hell is this place? Three short hours ago I’d come upon the dismembered body and suspended head of the Director, and now I was stumbling over the severed head of a teenage girl. And, in between those two events, my life had been imperiled multiple times.

A warzone.

The word that had occurred to me the first time I faced off against Shiogi floated through my mind once more. Tamamo had tried to kill me, so it’s not like there was any love lost between the two of us, nor friendship, nor sympathy─but looking at her head, severed as if someone had simply said, Time’s running out, so let’s end this…

“Does it─mean something that this is here?”

“It’s meaningless to wonder about what it means. I always select the best, most suitable strategy, that’s all. Then again…” And here Shiogi shook her head in consternation, and it didn’t seem like an act. Her head, which at present was still attached to her body. “Thanks to the appearance of Overkill Red, the majority of the students are quaking in their boots, and as a result they’re useless to me─so the best, most suitable strategy was off the table. But the second best, perfectly adequate strategy seems to have worked, so all’s well that ends well.”

She was talking like it was a done deal.

It was checkmate, no question. The checkmate after the masterstroke. Not a single crossbow bolt had found its mark, but through that attack she’d confirmed that Jun Aikawa wasn’t hiding nearby. Shiogi had probably only half intended to actually hit us in the first place─and if it was just me and Hime-chan, the tactics expert could easily take us with nothing but her bare hands.

“Hide-and-seek time is over─”

We were cornered…

There was nothing we could do…we were utterly defeated. We’d been unable to slip through Shiogi’s iron cordon.

A battle of wits─but I felt okay about losing this way.

If this was how it ended, that wasn’t so bad.

Keeping Hime-chan safe was always going to be beyond me. That was Jun Aikawa’s role, after all. What a shame, Mr. Nonsense User.

“Now then.”

Well, I would at least try and do a good job of begging for my life.

That much at least─was well within my capabilities.

I took a step forward, and so did Shiogi─at which point Hime-chan inserted herself between us.

Spreading her arms wide, she formed a tiny wall in front of me. It was a truly tiny, fragile wall─but I understood full well what she intended by it.

“Uh, uh uh uh─”

Hime-chan was shaking like a leaf, but she didn’t move from that spot. She stayed, to protect me.

“…”

Seeing this, Shiogi stopped. Then she let out an exasperated sigh and said, “Please give up this pointless resistance, Yukariki. I don’t recall teaching you to fight losing battles. Even you can comprehend that right now, here in this place, you have no hope of staying my hand, can’t you?”

“I,” Hime-chan answered Shiogi in a quivering but resolute voice, “won’t know unless I try.”

“The idea that you wouldn’t know that unless you try it─is pretty foolish.”

“Uh huh. And, that’s fine,” Hime-chan said. “Better to be stupid like me than clever like you.”

Ah.

I’d.

Been such an idiot.

Ichihime Yukariki─was friends with Jun Aikawa.

But why would that mean she had to have special abilities, or mutant powers?

Why would she need that kind of qualification?

She had wept out of concern for me.

She had frantically restrained me.

She had come after me.

She had saved my life.

And─she had smiled at me.

She was no washout.

Hime-chan.

You’re─a magnificent human being.

Fit to stand shoulder to shoulder with the world’s strongest.

“Goddammit─what a riot.”

In which case, fine.

I’ll keep on pretending we’re friends a little longer.

I feel good, really good. Really, really good.

Right now─I feel incredibly good.

So good that if I let my mask slip, I might laugh out loud.

“Hime-chan…you can get back on your own, right?” I whispered. “You followed me on your own, so you can get back to that room on your own, right?”

“Master? Whats are you saying?”

She looked genuinely confused.

Guess I was going to have to spell it out.

“I’m saying─get out of here and leave this to me.”

If ever there was a time to divide our forces, it was now. This was not selfishness or cowardice on my part─it was strategy. You don’t mind, do you, Shiogi? If as a tactician you’re okay with that happening to Tamamo─then I’ll also shed the role of the nonsense user.

From here on out it’s not a battle of wits.

It’s a fight to the death.

I’ll kill you, tear you apart, line you up, put you back together─and hang you out to dry.