Intermission — Those Who Aren’t Mob Characters
【Protagonist】
My name is Watagaya Touji. On the day I was born, unseasonable snow fell, and because I was the second son, I was named Touji. I hate to say it myself, but I’m an extremely ordinary high school student.
However, the environment surrounding me is far from ordinary. I’ve had no parents since birth, living with just my older brother and grandfather—three of us total. When I entered middle school, my brother disappeared, and from then on, I lived with just my grandfather.
It wasn’t a particularly wealthy life, but my grandfather raised me without letting me want for anything, even though we weren’t related by blood. I’m also grateful that he taught me the Watagaya-style martial arts and gave me the power to fight.
A change came to my life living under such a grandfather around the summer of my third year of middle school. The trigger was that I started frequently having strange dreams.
–The dream always begins with despair.
Snow falls relentlessly, and despite the freezing environment that should make me shiver with cold, I’m so dominated by sadness that I don’t even notice. My body is in tatters, blood covering my entire body, but even that doesn’t matter right now. All my consciousness is directed at the girl I’m holding in both arms.
[–No, you can’t! If you lose consciousness like this, you’ll–!]
[……It’s okay. I’ve… come this far… so…]
[Don’t give up!! I’ll definitely save you! I still haven’t returned anything to –!!]
[No, that’s… not true. I’ve already received so many things from you. The one precious person in the world who can touch me. So I’m… satisfied. Until now… really, thank y–]
[–?! –!! –!!!]
I desperately shout the girl’s name at the top of my lungs, but the girl’s body temperature is mercilessly stolen away, and finally she stops moving–
That’s when I always wake up. When I opened my eyes, I was always crying.
The year after that was very hectic. My eye color would change when my emotions ran high, my childhood friend was nearly attacked by a monstrous being, I awakened to supernatural powers. Among all that, I’ll never forget that day when my entire life up to that point changed.
[Watagaya Touji, you possess a special power]
The woman who suddenly appeared told me this. She appeared to be in her late twenties, wore glasses, and gave off a sharp, composed impression. Her purpose was to get me to enroll in a high school where Supernatural Powers exist—commonly known as the National power Development High School.
Normally, I would have dismissed this as some kind of bad religious solicitation and ignored it, but since I had just awakened to my Supernatural Powers at that time, I was able to accept it immediately.
And for the six months from then until enrollment, the woman who came to recruit me—who was actually a teacher at the power high school and would become my homeroom teacher (her name is Tachibana Misaki)—taught me how to use my Supernatural Powers.
However, her teaching method was unbelievably spartan, so harsh that it made my grandfather’s training seem cute. I was worked to the bone every training session, with shouting coming at me constantly.
[How long are you going to lie there? Stand up immediately] [Don’t lose focus there! Do you want to die?!] [Wrong! Focus your consciousness more toward the center of your body!] [Don’t get cocky. Your power is still like that of an infant who’s just learned to stand]
Looking back on it, I don’t remember her saying a single kind word to me, but I fully understood that she was seriously thinking about me and training me. Very occasionally, I also felt a gaze of something like pity.
However, Tachibana-san never talked about herself at all, including the fact that she was a teacher, so I don’t know what intentions she had.
In any case, after saying goodbye to my childhood friend and grandfather, I enrolled in the power academy with a certain amount of power, but things didn’t go smoothly from the start.
The first thing I struggled with was that there were people who called someone like me from an ordinary household an [outsider], throwing discriminatory remarks at me. For me, who didn’t know a single person from middle school and had jumped into an unknown world where my common sense didn’t apply, that environment was quite painful.
I also recorded the lowest rank of F in the power examination, couldn’t fit in with the class, and those dreams still continued. Just when I was about to break, I was saved by one friend.
Watagaya Yukiharu—the only other outsider in the class like me. Though written with different kanji, we shared the same surname pronunciation, and being fellow outsiders, we quickly became friends.
Unfamiliar common sense, unfamiliar environment, unfamiliar Supernatural Powers. In my crushing daily life, only when I was talking with Yukiharu could I rest easy. We’d complain to each other, talk about silly things, go eat ramen together. It might sound like an exaggeration, but it’s no overstatement to say that I’m who I am today thanks to Yukiharu.
[What’s with this “outsider” stuff? People who make fun of you like that are always the ones who aren’t worth much—that’s how it goes. Don’t worry about it. They’re the type to flip their attitude right away if anything happens] [You got F-rank?… Ah, that pattern. It’ll be fine. Touji definitely has some kind of talent or power. Definitely] [The Golden Drill— I mean, uh, um… that young lady got angry with you, so give her a present, even if it’s cheap. She’ll be happy just with the fact that she got something from Touji, regardless of the price]
Whenever I was troubled or depressed, he’d listen to me talk and give me advice each time. Yukiharu’s advice was always spot-on, and if I followed it, things always worked out, and his words of encouragement always supported me.
Thanks to that, now a year later, I’ve made many friends, been specially recognized as A-rank, and though I’ve been caught up in several dangerous incidents, I’ve managed to overcome them safely. It’s an unthinkable change from when I enrolled.
That’s why I’m so grateful to Yukiharu, and I even respect him.
If there’s one dissatisfaction in these fulfilling days, it’s that Yukiharu and I have become somewhat distant recently. Neither of us has explicitly distanced ourselves, but distance has naturally formed.
Incidentally, it’s not just with me that there’s distance—it’s the same with all our classmates without exception. I almost never see Yukiharu talking to anyone in the classroom, and whenever lunch break comes, he always goes somewhere. To be honest, Yukiharu looks isolated.
I’ve invited him several times to eat lunch with the group I’m usually with, but he always declines.
If there’s something troubling him or something he’s struggling with, this time I want to be the one to help. Thinking that, I told Yukiharu face-to-face, [If there’s anything I can do, please tell me!] However—
[Huh? No, there isn’t?]
He said that with a genuinely puzzled face. I remember being depressed for a while after that, thinking I wasn’t capable enough to solve Yukiharu’s problems.
But still, my ideal high school life can only be fulfilled with Yukiharu there too. Even if it’s not possible right now, I hope that someday we can all laugh together—Yukiharu included, along with Akane, Saki, Char, Kyouka, and Kigiri.
That’s why today too, I send Yukiharu a message.
[Let’s go eat ramen or something]
Less than a minute after sending the message, I got a reply saying [Not going].
“Well, if it was just with Touji I’d totally go eat with him. But at least one member of the harem squad will definitely tag along, so that’s why I don’t want to.”
The boy muttered as he closed the app on his smartphone.
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【Best Friend】
“Yo, Touji. As usual, you’ve got flowers in both hands—no, a whole flower field around you. I’m jealous. I’d like to go to school getting along nicely with girls too.”
At the school gate, a brown-haired boy—Yagawa Sousuke—cheerfully called out to Touji who was on his way to school with several female students, and joined their group as is.
“Don’t tease me, Sousuke.”
“Hahaha, my bad, my bad.”
For him to join Touji’s group at the school gate and their joking exchange as a greeting had already become part of their daily routine. From an outsider’s perspective, they would just look like good friends.
However, Yagawa Sousuke’s good relationship with Touji and the others has a certain purpose. Even his position as a student at the academy is just his public face. His hidden face is—a spy sent from the power organization [Korouen], which schemes to obtain the power of the Arahitogami.
The orders Sousuke received from the organization, with such a hidden face, were to monitor the Arahitogami [Watagaya Touji] and encourage the awakening of his power. In other words, his building of a good relationship with Touji and the others is merely a means to carry out the organization’s orders. Trading jokes and laughing, fighting enemies back-to-back together, sending appropriate advice when Touji faces difficulties—
Yes, it’s all for the mission, and there are no personal feelings involved—or so it should have been.
The Korouen facility where he spent much of his life. It was a living hell that created humans loyal to the organization. At first, there were many children the same age as Sousuke. But now, most of them had retired, and only enough to count on one hand remained, including him. Training that bordered on serious injury every day, missions that risked death if you failed.
Compared to those days, Sousuke’s current life was far too peaceful. Like an ordinary student, attending classes, chatting with friends, receiving training with thorough safety management. Even the occasional incidents involving Touji were nothing compared to his missions until now.
Before he knew it, he found himself genuinely enjoying school life with Touji and the others from the bottom of his heart, and there were moments when he even forgot about the mission—
“Sousuke?”
“?!”
Sousuke’s absent-minded consciousness was awakened by Touji’s voice. Touji, holding a lunch box in his hand, peered curiously at Sousuke’s face as he remained seated at his desk.
Only then did he realize that class had already ended and it was now lunch break.
“What’s wrong? Aren’t you eating lunch?”
“Ah… sorry, go ahead and eat first.”
“Eh?”
Ignoring Touji’s confused voice, Sousuke left the classroom as if fleeing.
The place Sousuke headed to was the rooftop. After confirming no one was around, he roughly grabbed the chain-link fence installed to prevent falls.
“Shit! What the hell am I doing…”
For those who knew him, it was an unusually emotional outburst. It was proof that Sousuke’s loyalty to the organization was wavering that much.
“No, don’t waver… Hesitation invites death. You’ve seen that happen countless times…!”
Sousuke told himself this over and over. He closed his eyes once, exhaled deeply, and the moment he opened them again, he swept away all hesitation.
“Sorry, Touji… I will someday become your enemy.”
Even if it was temporary, he was the first person he thought he could open his heart to. Surely that’s what the world calls a best friend. With renewed resolve and determination to oppose such a best friend, Sousuke left that place.
While hoping somewhere in his heart that day would come much later.
“He’s definitely going to betray the organization and switch sides someday.”
The boy sitting on the rooftop bench, who had watched the whole thing, muttered as he brought the bread he bought from the school store to his mouth.
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