Urusei Yatsura: If Route - The Braid and the Other Girl - An After-School "What If" World and a Blown-Away School Building

BZZZAT! A pale blue flash streaked down the hallway. At the same moment, the acrid smell of scorched school uniform stung his nose. "Darling, you wait right there—cha!" Her emerald-green hair bristling, her golden eyes blazing like lightning, the Oni girl Lum flew through the air in hot pursuit. From both sides of her small head, two adorable horns hovered just shy of the ceiling. Clad in her usual tiger-stripe bikini, she was sprinting full-tilt through Tomobiki High School after classes. "Like hell I'm gonna wait, idiot!" Shouting, Moroboshi Ataru slid around a corner in the hallway in his socks. His heart was pounding. In the empty after-school building, the sound of their footfalls echoed unnaturally loud. The whole thing had started with the usual pattern. He'd only tried to sneak a little peek into the girls' locker room, but Lum's Oni sensor—she called it her Horn Sensor—had detected him in a flash, and a storm of lightning had come flying his way. Her horns... were they incredibly convenient or a total nuisance? He dashed past the Class 2-4 classroom and bounded up the stairs three at a time. He was out of breath, a stitch burning in his side. But if he stopped, that was it—a hundred million volts of love's whip awaited him. (*Dammit, somewhere I can hide...*) As he ran down the second-floor hallway, Ataru yanked open classroom doors one after another. The first-year classroom, Class 2-1, 2-2, 2-3. All of them were already empty. It was club activity time after school; everyone was probably out on the field or in the gym. *Bzz-bzz-bzzzt!* The sound of air crackling right behind his back. Lum was closing the distance. (*Crap crap crap!*) As a last resort, Ataru dove through the door of an empty classroom at the end of the hall. He quickly slid the door shut and pressed his back against it. Holding his breath, he listened for signs of her in the corridor. "...Darling, where'd you go—cha?" Lum's voice faded into the distance. Apparently, she'd headed toward the stairs. Ataru let out a huge sigh of relief. "...Phew, saved." He muttered that, and finally took a look around the classroom. An empty classroom where no one was supposed to be. The desks and chairs had all been moved out; it should have been completely bare. And yet. By the window, there was a single person. Bathed in the setting sun from behind, her long black hair shone translucent orange. Her hair, held back with just a casual clip, swayed gently at the nape of her neck. Resting on her lap over her uniform skirt was a B5 sketchpad, and she was running her pen across it with incredible focus. "...Shinobu?" When Ataru involuntarily called her name, Miyake Shinobu's shoulders jolted. Her large black eyes flew wide open, and her mouth flapped wordlessly. "A-At... Wh-what are you doing here?!" Shinobu went deathly pale and frantically tried to close the notebook. She hunched over the desk to hide it. Her flustered state was so unlike the usual Shinobu that it was actually funny. Shinobu was the popular madonna of their class. Kind to everyone, with a cute smile, a little airheaded at times, but fundamentally composed. For her to panic like this—she had to be drawing something seriously bad. Ataru's hopeless curiosity reared its head with a vengeance. "Whatcha drawing there, Shinobu-chan? Something naughty~?" He approached with a smirk, and Shinobu clutched the notebook to her chest and backed away. Her face turned redder by the second. "I-it's not! It's nothing dirty!" "Oh yeah? Then show me. We're friends, right?" "N-no! Absolutely not!" Shinobu desperately tried to protect the notebook. But Ataru, in a spirit of mischief, reached out for it. He tried to snatch it away, but Shinobu held on tight and wouldn't let go. A tug-of-war ensued. The desk rattled, and an eraser fell to the floor. "Hey, let go!" "No! Never!" Seizing the split-second opening, Ataru snatched the notebook. It slipped from Shinobu's hands, and the pages fluttered open in the breeze. Inside the room, only the orange of the setting sun streamed in quietly. "...Huh?" Ataru's movements stopped dead. What leaped into his eyes was a rough, amateurish manga draft. Loose lines drawn in pencil. But the panels were properly laid out, and action lines were included. It was clearly a work drawn not for anyone else to see, but for herself alone. And the protagonist drawn there was— A goofy-faced boy in a rumpled school uniform. His hair was a mess, and a crumpled tissue poked out of his pocket. No matter how you looked at it, the model was— "...Is this me?" Shinobu hung her head. She was red to the very tips of her ears. Her shoulders trembled faintly. As he followed the panels, words died in Ataru's throat. In the world of the manga, Lum had never appeared. No alien game of tag had ever happened, and Ataru had stayed by Shinobu's side the whole time. The two of them walking through the fountain plaza in Tomobiki Park, sitting on a bench, Ataru making a funny face to make her laugh, Shinobu laughing and lightly tapping Ataru on the shoulder— There was a classroom scene too. The two of them secretly passing notes during class, making plans to walk home together after school. A trivial, yet blissfully happy everyday life, spun out in the thin lines of a pencil. In the final panel, the two of them stood side by side under the cherry blossoms, seen from behind. Shinobu was gently pinching the hem of Ataru's uniform. (*So this is Shinobu's...*) Ataru felt his throat go completely dry. So that was it. A world-line where Lum never appeared. The "what-if" world Shinobu had always dreamed of, the one that could never come true. Ataru was at a loss for words. He had no idea what he was supposed to say. "Sorry"? "Thank you"? None of it felt right. Silence flowed between them. The trembling of Shinobu's shoulders gradually grew stronger. "...You saw it." The voice she muttered was less anger, and more something welling up from a much deeper place. "You saw it, didn't you, Ataru." When she lifted her face, tears had pooled in Shinobu's eyes. At the same time, a fire burned deep within them. Shame, anger, and a mess of other emotions she couldn't even name—all of it was on the verge of exploding inside her. —You know, Shinobu possesses superhuman strength. When she gets truly angry, desks, chairs, walls—everything gets pulverized. "You... stupid Ataruuuuuuuuu!" Shinobu's fist slammed into Ataru's chest. In that instant. The world blew away. *KABOOOOOOOM!* Ataru's body smashed through the wall of the empty classroom, burst through the wall of the next classroom, punched through yet another wall— And shattering the outer wall of the school building, he was hurled out into the evening sky. "Uwaaaaaaaaah!" He traced an arc from the second floor and slammed back-first into the ground of the schoolyard. A dull *thud* echoed, and searing pain shot through his back. Fragments of the wall rained down around him. (*Ow ow ow...*) Buried in the rubble, Ataru gazed up blankly at the sky. The sunset was painfully beautiful, and somehow that made it sting even more. The two of them under the cherry blossoms, drawn in that notebook. The normal, everyday life Shinobu had dreamed of. "...Did I really make a face like that?" The Ataru in the manga had been smiling, looking incredibly happy. Could he make a face like that now? Everything had changed after Lum came. Every day was chaos—getting chased, getting zapped with lightning—but that was his everyday life now. Before he knew it, a distance had grown between him and Shinobu. His own indecisiveness had been hurting her. But still— (*If you ask me whether I can deny living with Lum...*) He couldn't imagine a life without her around anymore. She was shameless, said whatever she wanted without reservation, and zapped him with lightning at the drop of a hat—but even so, a part of him found it fun. (*In the end, I'm still sitting on the fence. I really am the worst.*) A worthless freeloader, by his own admission and everyone else's. The fact that he hadn't been able to properly consider Shinobu's feelings was pathetic, and he couldn't help it. Faced with a question too heavy to bear, Ataru quietly shut a lid over it in his heart. He couldn't come up with an answer right now. Just then, he heard the sound of wind whistling from overhead. From the sky, her emerald-green hair streaming behind her, Lum descended. Landing in the schoolyard, she peered worriedly at Ataru, buried in the rubble. But in the next instant— Lum's horns twitched. "...Darling? Let me ask you something—cha." Her tone dropped a notch. Her golden eyes narrowed, and static electricity began to crackle all over her body. "Wh-what is it, Lum-chan? Your gentle eyes just suddenly got terrifying." "Did something happen between you and Shinobu—cha?" The Oni's sixth sense—her Horn Sensor—had keenly picked up on the subtle atmosphere that had flowed between Ataru and Shinobu. Lum's horns began to glow like light bulbs. This was a danger signal Ataru knew all too well. "N-nothing happened!" Crawling out of the rubble, Ataru waved his hands frantically. "It was just, y'know, a little spat! Shinobu was drawing a manga, I looked at it and laughed, she got mad, and this is the result! There, end of story!" "...Manga?" Lum looked dubious. But faced with Ataru's desperate bluff, she fell silent for the time being. —She wasn't convinced, though. The glow of her horns didn't fade. "...Hmph. Whatever—cha. Anyway, Darling." Lum pressed her right hand flat against Ataru's back. He could feel through his skin that her palm was charged with about thirty percent more voltage than usual. "If you're hiding something, you'd better be prepared for later—cha?" *BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!* "GYAAAAAAAH! I told you! I told you nothing happened—!" Ataru's dying scream and the smell of burnt fabric drifted across the schoolyard. Meanwhile. In the empty classroom with the hole in the wall, Shinobu stood alone. Her arms hung limply at her sides as she looked down at the schoolyard outside the window. She had seen everything—Lum descending, and then zapping Ataru with her electricity. Shinobu's right hand unconsciously gripped her own desk. The sound of wood groaning and creaking. Her long, pale fingers sank into the edge of the desk. "...Idiot." The small murmur melted into the sunset and vanished. *Creak... crack... crunch—* As if it were her parents' mortal enemy, the desk was crushed in her superhuman grip. Splinters of wood pattered to the floor. Reflected in Shinobu's large black eyes were Ataru, lying charred and collapsed in the schoolyard, and Lum, fuming angrily beside him. Lum crouched down right next to Ataru and started saying something to him. (*...My dream. You, of all people, were the last person I wanted to see it.*) Shinobu remembered the notebook, which must have been crumpled. What kind of face had Ataru made in that instant? A surprised face. But also a face that seemed to be thinking about something, on a deeper level. (*If it weren't for that manga, I could have kept on forgetting.*) The normal days before Lum came. Those days when she and Ataru had joked around and laughed together. She'd been trying to pretend none of it had ever happened, to move forward. A single manga had made her remember everything. Shinobu clenched her fist. The fragments of the crushed desk bit into her palm, painful. But right now, that pain felt just right. "...I have to settle this. Properly." Her small resolution echoed in the empty classroom. The Tomobiki High School building had lost a few more walls today, but by tomorrow they'd be properly fixed. This was why the Board of Education's repair budget was eight times the norm. Tomobiki Town—this little town tucked in a corner of Tokyo was a slightly unusual place where aliens and youkai were everyday occurrences. High schoolers like Ataru, Lum, and Shinobu spent today, just like any other day, fretting over love in the midst of chaos, fighting, breaking walls, an

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Name: Urusei Yatsura: If Route - The Braid and the Other Girl
Author: Novelia

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