Irium

"Irium!?" Danny exclaims.

"Yes! It is I, the protagonist-kun." I say while puffing my chest with pride. "Behold this moment, my dear friend for you may not see it ever in …"

"Yeah, stop trying to rip-off Okabe Rintarou." He says with a disappointed expression.

Now that he has actually said it though, doesn"t ripping off from a character who rips off from other characters sound pretty d.a.m.n stupid? Hey, I am not stupid. The guy who was ripping off from Okabe was stupid, whoever he was. Who was he? I don"t know him.

"Why the heck did you come back?" Danny, all of sudden, as if only now realizing that I have come back, yells that at me. And as if me trying to act like a not-so-mad-mad-scientist wasn"t already enough, even more people start looking at us, to whom, we just look like two guys yelling on each other in the middle of the road.

"Why did I come back?" I repeat his question with a smirk, "Of course, it was to make the third choice that I just told both of you about happen."

"Hah!" Aknin sighs as she hears our bickering, "Seems like your friend wasn"t as much of an a.s.shole as you made him out to be."

"Wait! I was made out to be an a.s.shole?" I say with an expression akin to that of an anime character when they realize that their underwear is missing and they are already in the middle of the queue for the routinely body check at the school. Actually, that probably only happens to n.o.bita. And if it happens to someone else too, I have no interest in finding out.

"I was made to believe that you"d run away with the Angel leaving him behind to slow me down as much as he can." Aknin says with a frown as she moves away from Danny. I turn to Danny to ask for clarification on that and he says,

"Well, that is what I"d expect a smart guy like you to do. That was the best strategy after all." He pretty much yells that at me and I think I have started to hear some people abusing us in the background for shouting in the middle of the road. Well, the author is too lazy to write all of the words they are saying so let"s just leave it at that.

"Hah! The thing is Danny," I say as I calmly close my eyes and put a hand on my waist, and then continue in a frank tone, "If the best plan you can think of is the plan I choose to follow, I won"t be smart anymore, I"d be at your level."

"Eh?" he finds himself at a loss for words as he hears that and Aknin, who has been pretty uninterested in the conversation, says plainly, "If you want for a remark like that to be the last line of your life, then so be it. Who am I to argue?"

"Yare! Yare!" I say in an exasperated voice. "Who told you I am going to die?"

I say as I calmly start walking towards Danny. She, for the first time as she sees my confident demeanor, steps back in cautiousness. I, on the other hand, continue to calmly walk over to Danny and hold his arm to give him support to stand and say to the Demoness, "The only one who is going to die here is you."

I didn"t expect it to be this easy, but I have made the Demoness face the road, which also means that she is showing her back to the road. In other words, she is willingly making herself vulnerable to any projectile-like attacks from the back, exactly the result I needed to achieve for the tables to turn.

*****

If I were to think about what was told to me before the man named Irium left, I wouldn"t be able to concentrate. In simple words, I don"t love him. And I find there to be no reason for him to have fallen for me either, aside from my looks. But then again, Irium of all people doesn"t look to be someone who would give much value to how a person"s looks (aside from comparing them to anime characters for the sake of lolz). He did, however, say that he was playing a tsundere and that he was playing it perfectly. If that was really true and he really is in love with me, how am I supposed to respond?

These were the thoughts that had cramped my mind when I tried to think about it all and I know that it will happen again. So, I decided to not think about them and just focus on my job, which is to release the Frost Requiem on the Demoness when I am confident enough in every way to make my shot.

Quite unexpectedly, I get that opportunity right off the bat and the Demoness starts facing the direction that makes it easy for me to shoot directly at her back.

I can"t help but wonder how that man was able to do something like this. I can"t help but wonder how a human like him even had the guts to face her again. Even if I try to not think about these things, I can"t help but do so.

Well, so be it. I will keep that inside my mind as I shoot. And I shoot.

*****

"How did that happen!?" Danny asks as he sees the destruction in front of him, where once a Demoness used to stand.

"She said it"s a power called Frost Requiem." I reply but,

"I get that. It"s probably her special ability. But how was she able to aim it so precisely?" he clarifies his question for me and as he does, I sigh and reply,

"It"s because she doesn"t want to accidentally, even for the sake of taking out a Demoness who is a threat to her life, cause harm to the man who said "I love you" to her." I tell him so. As I stare at the sky, I reply in a voice that only I can truly understand, "It"s because of a lie I told, a lie about loving her."

*****