I'm Ebina Hikana. Just a fujoshi otaku girl who lives for her rotten delusions in the corner of the classroom.
But I have a secret I can't tell anyone. I've accidentally seen the whole messy, tangled relationship between Hachiman, Yukinoshita, and Yuigahama—the three people who should be the center of the class.
At first it was just observation. Hachiman's eyes full of resignation, Yukinoshita's back that looked so lonely, Yuigahama's smile that she forced to be bright. No one else noticed, bu
After School Black Hole: Ebina Was Watching - The Collapse of the Observer — Each One's Punishment, A Single Resolve
The smell of disinfectant clung to the back of her nose and wouldn't let go.
The waiting room at Chiba City General Hospital remained dim even as evening approached. White fluorescent light shone mercilessly on the green benches and the worn tiles of the floor.
She hid herself in the shadow of a vending machine, watching the scene.
"...Femoral fracture. Two months for a full recovery."
The doctor's dry voice echoed unnaturally loud through the quiet corridor.
Hachiman sat slumped against the wall. The cheek where Miura had hit him was red and swollen, turning blue-black with internal bleeding. And yet, as if he felt no pain at all, he simply stared at the floor.
His hands were trembling, faintly.
Even after the doctor left, Hachiman didn't move. As if he'd taken root there.
"Whenever I'm nearby, someone always gets hurt."
That voice was too small to be a monologue, too heavy to be a murmur. It was the kind of voice that dissolved into the air and vanished.
She pulled her observation notebook from her bag. Her hands were shaking.
*Hachiman has completely shut himself off. It's my fault.*
The handwriting was terribly messy. As if it had copied the inside of her heart directly onto the page.
The day before the entrance ceremony, a year ago. He'd saved Yuigahama's dog and been hit by a car. Back then too, he must have thought of himself as "just someone who got dragged into it."
This accident. Yuigahama had run out because Miura had been berating Hachiman—and the one who'd caused that was her.
Hachiman wasn't wrong. Hachiman wasn't to blame.
But in his head, the equation was already complete: *Because I exist, people get hurt.*
(This is a hell that I created.)
She gripped the notebook tightly.
Hachiman stood up unsteadily. He put a hand on the wall and began walking slowly. His back looked so much smaller than usual.
*I won't go to the Service Club anymore.*
His back was saying it.
After school, the special wing was deathly quiet.
She climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, muffling her footsteps. Her heart was pounding like a warning bell.
The Service Club room—the old AV prep room. How many times had she stood before that door?
This time, it wasn't for her scenario. She just wanted to confirm something.
Voices came from beyond the door.
"...A withdrawal form, is it?"
A low, calm, adult woman's voice. Hiratsuka Shizuka-sensei. The Service Club's advisor and a Japanese language teacher. Always wearing a lab coat, mid-thirties, a little intimidating, but a teacher who cared about her students.
"Yes. Please accept it."
This time, it was Yukinoshita Yukino's voice.
Clear, cold, and yet fragile enough to shatter at any moment—a precarious voice.
She pressed her ear gently against the door.
"Tell me the reason. For you to quit the club on your own, something must have happened."
Hiratsuka-sensei's voice, beneath its usual sternness, was clearly tinged with worry.
Silence fell.
A long, long silence.
"...I..."
Yukino's voice trembled slightly.
"I, both during the accident a year ago and during this accident, did nothing but watch."
Her heart ached as if squeezed tight.
"I couldn't prevent Yuigahama-san from being hurt. Even though I watched Hachiman-kun blaming himself right in front of me, I couldn't do anything. ...Someone like me has no right to help anyone."
Each of her words was like a shard of glass. Beautiful, sharp, and drawing blood at the slightest touch.
Hiratsuka-sensei didn't answer right away.
"...Are you blaming yourself for not being able to help Hachiman and Yuigahama?"
"Yes. And besides, I received a call from Miura-san. 'You're just as guilty,' she said. And she's right. If I weren't a member of the Yukinoshita family, Hachiman-kun might never have been in that accident. If I hadn't created the Service Club, Yuigahama-san would never have—"
Yukino's voice clouded with emotion for the first time.
"—I should just stop being involved with anyone."
She covered her mouth.
(*No. That's wrong, Yukinoshita-san.*)
She screamed it inside her head.
But her feet wouldn't move.
"I'll hold onto the withdrawal form. I can't say you won't change your mind, and I have no intention of accepting it so easily. But for today, that's enough."
Hiratsuka-sensei's voice was matter-of-fact. But in the edges of her words, the clumsy kindness of this teacher showed through.
"...Excuse me."
Beyond the door, the sound of a chair being pulled back.
She hurriedly hid in a blind spot in the corridor.
Slowly, the door opened.
Yukino came out.
Her face was whiter than she'd ever seen. Her long black hair swayed like mourning clothes. All emotion had drained from her profile, leaving only a beautiful doll.
She could do nothing but watch Yukino's retreating figure.
Her footsteps faded into the distance of the corridor.
Silence.
From inside the club room, she thought she faintly heard Hiratsuka-sensei sigh.
She slumped down against the wall beside the door.
A single tear spilled.
Then another.
She tried to stop, but couldn't.
Because of her, Yukinoshita was quitting the Service Club. Hachiman was cursing himself, and Yuigahama was asleep in a hospital bed.
All three of them, scattered apart.
She had broken them.
"...I did all of it."
A voice that couldn't become a voice was swallowed by the corridor.
Two days later, after school.
The air throughout the school was cold enough to pierce her skin.
In front of Yuigahama's hospital room. Classmates who'd come to visit were whispering—quietly, but deliberately loud enough to be heard.
"They say Yuigahama-san still isn't fully conscious."
"It's awful, isn't it? That Hikigaya guy and that Yukinoshita girl cornered her, right?"
"Miura-san said so. That Yui was hurt by those two."
She stood at a bend in the corridor, listening to their voices.
Miura came out of the hospital room. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, yet she held her back straight with determination.
"Everyone, listen. Yui was hurt by Hikigaya and Yukinoshita. Those two, sneaking around in their Service Club, cornered her. Can you all forgive this?"
Miura's voice was like a scream.
Her words came from pure anger and grief. A straightforward passion born of caring for her best friend.
But—precisely because of that, it was terrifying.
That anger had spread through the entire school in just two days. Hachiman was being avoided in the entranceway and the hallways. And Yukino—people were even whispering that she was "the daughter of a murderer's family."
She had leaked it to Miura. Yuigahama's true feelings. Her feelings for Hachiman.
Those words had now transformed into blades.
(*I created this hatred.*)
Something rose from the pit of her stomach. She felt sick.
She put a hand on the wall and took a deep breath.
But she couldn't stop here.
She wasn't allowed to stop.
She shoved the observation notebook she'd been clutching into her bag.
The library was nearly empty after school.
This room, tucked away on the second floor of the special wing, smelled of old paper and wood. The sunset streaming through the windows dyed the spines of the bookshelves orange.
She sat in her usual seat at the very back and opened her notebook.
But she couldn't read the words.
The same scenes spun round and round in her head.
Hachiman's murmur. Yukino's withdrawal. Miura's words.
All of it was her fault.
"...What am I even doing?"
The moment she murmured it, a voice spoke.
"Ebina-san?"
A soft voice, yet clear.
When she looked up, Totsuka Saika was standing there.
He was wearing his tennis club jersey. His forehead glistened slightly with sweat. Small, delicate, with pale skin and large eyes. An androgynous, angelic boy.
The one person Hachiman truly opened his heart to.
"Is it okay if I sit next to you?"
"Eh, ah, yeah. Sure."
Totsuka sat down diagonally across from her. He smiled, looking a little troubled.
"Lately, Hikigaya-kun never smiles at school, and even when I talk to him he's spaced out... I was wondering if something happened."
Totsuka was worried about Hachiman from the bottom of his heart. That purity was painful to her right now.
"...Yeah. A lot has happened."
She tried, somehow, to laugh in her usual way.
"I'm just a fujoshi, so I don't really understand deep stuff, you know~"
Totsuka looked at her face steadily.
"Ebina-san, you're crying."
Huh.
She touched her own cheek. It was wet.
"...Huh? That's weird. Maybe I got something in my eye."
"Ebina-san."
Totsuka was looking straight at her. Those eyes were so beautiful, so kind, that she couldn't lie anymore.
"...Totsuka-kun."
Her voice trembled.
"The truth is... it's all my fault."
She'd said it.
It overflowed. She couldn't stop.
"I tried to make the three of them happy, and I just kept doing unnecessary things. Yui got hurt, Hikki blames himself, Yukinoshita-san is quitting the club... I—I ruined everything."
Tears fell onto the notebook.
In front of Totsuka, she cried with her face a mess. The skin of the observer peeled away with an audible sound.
"Ebina-san."
His voice was quiet and gentle.
"Then I think what matters is what you do from here on."
She looked up.
He wasn't angry. He didn't blame her. He didn't despise her.
He just looked at her and said that.
(*What I do from here on.*)
She looked at her own hands. They were gripping the observation notebook, now soaked with tears.
Right.
It was still too early to end this.
The library after Totsuka left was terribly quiet.
The sun had already set, and the room was beginning to be wrapped in blue darkness.
She opened her notebook.
All of her machinations so far. She would examine every one.
*Phase 1: Using Totsuka Saika as a catalyst to stimulate Hachiman's jealousy.*
Hachiman had certainly been shaken. But that wasn't jealousy so much as a sense of loss from being excluded. He didn't want to monopolize anyone. He'd simply become more deeply convinced that he shouldn't be there.
*Phase 2: Leaking Yuigahama's true feelings to Miura Yumiko, using external pressure to bring Yuigahama's emotions to the surface.*
Miura had run wild beyond her imagination. To protect Yuigahama, she'd cornered Hachiman. And then the accident happened.
Her scenario had been perfect.
But.
(*People's hearts don't move according to a script.*)
She'd learned that the hard way.
She opened the last page of the notebook.
A page still blank.
She picked up her pen.
Her hands were still shaking.
But she would write.
*Plan change. First, tell Yukinoshita Yukino the truth.*
*That she was at the scene of the accident a year ago. That Hachiman doesn't know that fact. And that I've been hiding it all this time—spill everything.*
*Pull Yukinoshita Yukino back to the Service Club.*
*Then tell Hachiman, tell Yuigahama, the truth.*
Her pen raced. The writing grew messier and messier.
*No more sneaking around.*
*No more god, no more observer.*
*I will stand before the three of them as the perpetrator.*
The moment she finished writing the last line, something cold ran down her spine.
Yukinoshita was locked away in deep self-loathing.
The guilt from the accident a year ago. The helplessness from this accident. Her conclusion that she "shouldn't be involved with anyone."
How could she bring her back?
The only trigger was the truth.
In the accident a year ago, Yukinoshita—to put it plainly—wasn't at fault. She'd simply been riding in her family's car. And yet, since that day, she'd been blaming herself endlessly.
The fact that Hachiman didn't know the details of the accident was also an invisible chain binding her guilt.
If so.
She would confront her with the truth.
She closed the notebook.
Her tears had already dried.
Outside the window, it was completely dark.
The library's fluorescent lights hummed faintly, persistently.
She stood up.
The place where Yukinoshita Yukino was likely hiding. An empty classroom in the special wing.
She would go and tell her the tru
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