Chapter 4

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Wheeze—huff…! I–I finally found you, Aniki!

Huh—Yuuta-kun! Yoohoo~ ♪ How’d you know I was here? Do you have ESP?

Why would I have ESP?!

I heard it from Sakuma-senpai. He got hit by beans, so he’s part of the staff now.

Oh, so he was done in… He sacrificed himself to let me escape, huh. Rest in peace, Sakuma-senpai.

He’s not dead, you know. Technically. He did take a lot of damage, though, so he’s resting in the nurse’s office now.

So it’s weird how he knew where you were.

Mm~… Maybe Sora-kun got hit and switched sides too?

We were running around together until just a little bit ago~ So he’d know where I am.

Pretty much everyone besides us has been eliminated by now, so there was a crapton of people after us…

We did come up with a plan to split off and scatter, but maybe he couldn’t get away?

Sora-kun’s connected to Sakasaki-senpai, and Sakasaki-senpai is one of the Five Oddballs along with Sakuma-senpai.

So my guess is they played a little game of telephone until word got to Sakuma-senpai and he figured out where I was.

It doesn’t really matter—But quit moving around, Aniki! You sound so carefree right now, but like, you’re sitting on top of the fence! That’s supposed to prevent you from falling, you know!

If a strong wind comes by and you lose your balance, you’re gonna fall headfirst onto the ground! What are you even thinking? Can’t you be more careful with yourself?!

Ahaha~ ♪ Are you worried about me, Yuuta-kun? We’re a lot alike, but at the end of the day we’re two separate people, huh.

Even if I get hurt, even if I die, you won’t even feel a scratch, will you?

Even if we’re not the same person, we are brothers. Is it so weird to be worried about my family?! Quit laughing at me—You always, always, always piss me off so much…!

Always? Actually yeah, this has happened before too, huh…

It was during summer, when I did that test of courage in school as a prank.¹

And then you jumped up onto the roof shouting “Aniki~!” with tears in your eyes. Seriously, you’re always acting like a little kid.

Wait, no, not just that. It’s been this way since forever ago.

No matter where I went, you’d always come looking for me, desperately searching all while crying your eyes out.

It’s always been like that, so maybe I just assumed it’d always be like that.

But this time, you’ve been having a bit of trouble finding me, right?

Maybe we’ve been apart for too long… We’ve never acted so separately before, have we Yuuta-kun?

We’ve been living like we’re one person in two bodies this whole time.

But is that a problem? Even if we weren’t one person in two bodies, was it really that bad?

We always outshined everyone else ‘cause we’ve picked up so many skills—we can basically do anything.

Obviously there are people who are better than us. I finally realized that when we came to Yumenosaki.

But as long as we don’t aim for the top, we can still be happy where we are now.

Mom brought us into that kind of forgiving, peaceful world filled with so much happiness.

We’ve been desperately struggling to survive, to protect ourselves from all the evil in the world… And all the skills we’ve learned help us thrive no matter where we are.

Just like a giraffe—they’ve got those long necks so they can eat the leaves so high up in the trees.

They could get the nutrients they needed to survive, and they lived on.

And the ones with shorter necks all died. They went extinct.

Things that can’t adapt to their environment, to the world, go extinct. It’s only the lucky ones who can evolve that get to live in this world.

Umm? What are you talking about? What do giraffes have to do with anything?

…We’re the ones with the short necks in this modern age. We’re different from the normal giraffes.

We’re not like other people: we’re weird and creepy, something that should be long gone. Even Dad told us how disgusting we are, remember?

But we managed to survive, as the only two of our kind. We fed each other, we stayed close by and kept each other warm.

We trained our bodies, learned the skills we needed to get by, and managed to live to this age.

But y’know, it didn’t matter how strong they were. It didn’t matter if they could survive—Those giraffes weren’t giraffes anymore.

They were unnatural, an accident that couldn’t evolve—They were this strange, unfamiliar thing that just so happened to survive.

We can never be normal giraffes, not unless we kill all the other giraffes who’re considered normal.

We’re like mutations, some kinda twisted and deformed thing no one else can understand.

We tried so hard to pretend we were normal, just like everyone else…

But we’re not. In the end, we are different from all the others.

And that’s why we’re always suffering. We can walk the walk, and the whole world can sing our praises…

They’ll congratulate us, say we must be so happy, that they’re so jealous.

Well guess what? I’m not happy at all… I’m hurting, I’m lonely—It’s too much, I can’t take it.

Sora-kun asked me if I was happy. But I can’t lie to him… so I couldn’t say I was.

I’m not happy, not even a little bit.

Why not? Is there something wrong with me after all?

C’mon, tell me Yuuta-kun. Even if no one else in the world could ever understand, I know you can, right?

Because we’re a rare species, the only two of our kind.

…Hinata-kun.

Huh? Uh, y–yep, I’m Hinata-kun~?

Wh–why’d you call me by my name all of a sudden? You scared me there~ You usually call me Aniki, right?

It’s fine. It’s not like we know who’s actually the older one between us. …Um, can I come a little closer? I won’t hit you with beans, I promise.

Huh~… Even on the off-chance you did, I’m far enough away to avoid them.

‘Cause if I survive Setsubun Festival, if I win, I get to stand on that huge stage.

If you take 2wink into consideration, you don’t have any choice but to let me go.

You can’t hit me. But you can figure that much out for yourself, right… Onii-chan?