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ArabicAnime Crossover: Eating Evil in a Daily World — Chapter 24
Chapter 24: The Science Girl Who Studies Quantum Mechanics
Miko Yotsuya stood off to the side, blinking in quiet disbelief.
Listening to Rio Futaba’s tone… the matter of joining the club was actually negotiable?
The sheer absurdity of the situation left Miko momentarily speechless. At the same time, a sudden realization clicked into place in her mind.
When Yozora first registered the club name, she had thought it was just him being eccentric. If it were simply called the Supernatural Investigation Club, it would perfectly fit their actual purpose. After all, both she and Yozora possessed Yin-Yang Eyes and dealt with ghosts and evil spirits on a daily basis.
But why tack on the words Quantum Mechanics out of thin air?
Looking at the bespectacled girl sitting across from them, the trap was obvious. He had weaponized the club name from the very beginning, specifically to bait Rio Futaba into walking through their door.
The more Miko thought about it, the deeper the rabbit hole seemed to go. She simply shook her head and pushed the thought away.
“Benefits? Naturally.”
Facing Futaba’s inquiry, Yozora reached into his pocket. A metallic clink broke the silence as he slid a solitary key across the desk.
“This is…?”
“The key to the clubroom,” Yozora said, meeting the guarded gaze behind Futaba’s lenses with a calm smile. “Aside from when we need to consult you, Miko and I rarely linger here. Agree to join, provide us with assistance within your limits, and this room is yours. Redecorate it. Sleep in it. Do whatever you want. It is entirely your personal sanctuary.”
The offer was a precision strike on Futaba’s greatest vulnerability.
She was an outlier, a girl quietly suffocated by the school’s social atmosphere. She had come here today chasing a faint hope of finding a fellow science enthusiast because of the club’s name. That hope was clearly dead.
But securing a private room? That was an incredible consolation prize.
For an outcast isolated by the student body, class time was easy. It was the unstructured freedom of breaks and lunch hours that felt like torture. During those free periods, Futaba felt like a fish laid bare on a cutting board, exposed to the judging eyes of the crowd, struggling desperately for breath.
An isolated oasis away from those stares was an irresistible lure.
Still, Futaba did not immediately cave. She pushed up her glasses, sat down opposite Yozora, and kept her tone perfectly flat.
“And what exactly does this so-called assistance entail?”
“It is a bit complicated to explain verbally. It might be simpler if you just read it yourself.”
Yozora reached into his jacket and pulled out a white notebook. It was identical in make to the one he had shown Miko previously, just a different color. He handed it across the table.
“Eh, this is!?”
Miko’s breath hitched, her expression cracking. ‘Could this be his diary?!’
If a normal person had their diary read, it would just be a bit embarrassing. But Yozora did not write diaries. That notebook was clearly his exorcism manual. Handing a record of gruesome, terrifying evil spirits to a normal girl like Futaba was a recipe for disaster.
“It does not matter,” Yozora said, his voice steady.
He was not foolish enough to hand an unfiltered log of supernatural horrors to a civilian. Setting aside whether Futaba could even process the existence of ghosts, he needed her for her objective, rational analysis. A bystander sees the board clearly, while the players are blinded by the game.
To ensure she remained an untainted analyst, Yozora had heavily edited the contents. He had altered every description regarding evil spirits, his own abilities, and the Gates scattered across Kyoto.
Futaba flipped through the pages. Minutes ticked by in heavy silence. Finally, she looked up, her expression caught somewhere between pity and deep awkwardness.
“You… wouldn’t happen to be… a chuunibyou, would you?”
It was not the world-shattering horror Miko had feared. It was the pure shock of second-hand embarrassment.
Yozora had scrubbed the real terminology, replacing it with adolescent delusions. Evil spirits were now recorded as Envoys of the Demon King lurking in the shadows to destroy the human realm. The supernatural Gates were labeled as Supply Points for the Demon King’s Envoys, structures that enhanced their dark power and warped reality.
The underlying data was identical, preserving the tactical variables Futaba needed to analyze. But the stench of eighth-grade syndrome rolling off the pages was suffocating. A hardcore chuunibyou girl would have treated the notebook as a sacred grimoire.
“What chuunibyou? Watch your tongue.”
Yozora stood up abruptly. He lowered his chin, his dark eyes narrowing as if staring into an invisible abyss. His jacket seemed to flutter without any wind.
“I am the Chosen One,” he declared, his voice dropping an octave into a gravelly, dramatic register. “The solitary beacon of hope selected by the heavens to save this crumbling world. My potential is untethered!”
Futaba stared at him in deadpan silence.
‘Yep. Terminal chuunibyou.’
Still, if playing along with his delusions earned her a private sanctuary… it was a highly profitable trade. And, though she would take the secret to her grave, the complex world-building in the notebook was actually quite interesting.
“Sigh. Fine. Let me outline the initial conclusions I have drawn from this,” Futaba said, shifting gears. “First…”
“Hold that thought.”
Yozora raised a hand, cutting her off. He turned to Miko with a pleasant smile.
“Miko-san, be a dear and go buy me a bottle of cola.”
“Pepsi?” Miko asked.
“Do not be disgusting.”
“Room temperature?”
“Are you actively trying to be disgusting?”
Miko smirked, a spark of triumph in her chest. She had finally managed to crack his impenetrable armor. Satisfied with her minor victory, she nodded and left the room. She knew he was intentionally sending her away, but she did not mind. Their weird dynamic was beyond her understanding anyway.
The door clicked shut. Yozora looked back at Futaba, his theatrical aura vanishing instantly.
“Continue.”
“Alright.” Futaba gave a slight nod, her demeanor shifting into sharp focus. “Assuming everything in this notebook operates on a consistent logic, the most critical objective at this stage…”
She tapped a manicured fingernail against the open page.
“…is ensuring that the speed at which the two protagonists destroy the Demon King’s Supply Points matches or exceeds the regeneration speed of those Supply Points.”
She pushed her glasses up again, the lenses catching the overhead light.
“Otherwise, it inevitably leads to a fatal cascade. In gaming terms, a BAD END.”