"I can hide. If she doesn't find me…"
"Stop," he interrupted you with a strong rebuttal. "I know what you're thinking, and before you do anything stupid, listen to a word of advice from your best friend. Just give up and give in. This girl will find you sooner or later."
"Well," you offered. "It's not like I'm planning to play hide-and-seek with her for a long time. She'll probably get tired after a week or so. Besides, didn't you say I don't have much of a presence in the first place? Given some time, she will forget about me entirely."
"Idiot," your friend flicked your forehead with an annoyed expression on his face. "It's not about you, but about what you did to her. Kurokami never had someone refuse to play along with her. You're literally the first one to do that. What do you know about toreadors?"
"Toreadors?" you asked, rubbing your hurting forehead. "That's the thing they do in Spain, right? Some brightly-dressed guys wave their red capes before a bull's face."
"Correct. For a long time, there existed a false belief that the bulls were enraged by the red color of those capes, but the real reason they got provoked was because of the movements of the cape. Do you understand my analogy?"
"Not really."
"Kurokami is like a bull. The one who opposed her isn't as important as the fact that someone opposed her in the first place. All she cares about is her pride," Kazuya sighed. "You two are much more similar than you think."
Pride? There's no way that girl would care about something as insignificant as pride. Only normal humans can suffer from something minor like pride. To her kind, the way they thought the world worked was the way the world worked in reality.
If someone like her said that the world rotated because of them, they didn't do so out of misguided pride. This was simply the way their brains worked.
Hirame wouldn't go after me because her pride was hurt, but because she couldn't understand me. On some level, she was frightened since her perfect picture of how all things worked was shattered. Sadly, I was only a bug in the system – an exception.
The only person that disliked Kurokami Hirame was me, and even then, I didn't hate her personally.
You thought that with honest conviction in your words. Those thoughts plagued your mind because you understood that you were unfair to that girl. Even if your mind was a bit on the rotten side, your heart was not.
So, you did hide from her through the whole day, which was an impressive accomplishment. For an ordinary person to evade an abnormal, such a thing would be impossible under normal circumstance. You could even call that a genuine miracle, if the circumstances were normal.
If I hide in that trashcan, she won't find me.
If I climb that tree, she won't notice me.
If I stop breathing, she won't sense my presence.
Such a clever trick. The way you used a brand new style to make a fool out of that girl was certainly most impressive. If I understood it completely, all you needed to do was to create a specific condition to solidify a desired result. To paraphrase:
If I do so, so will happen, right?
Impressive. Very impressive, girl. Please, accept my sincerest congratulations for inventing something so outrageously disgusting! Wait, I got things all mixed up. Let me try again.
Please, accept my sincerest congratulations for inventing something so disgustingly outrageous! After all, it's not that easy to surprise someone who is 3,402,193,822,311 years old. Wait, isn't that 3,402,193,822,338 years now?
Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate.
In my entire life, I never hated someone as much as that strange girl before me.
I've spent the whole day dodging that girl while trying to keep my secret weapon a secret, only for her to find out about it like nobody's business. What is she doing in a random classroom I choose to hide in?
Who is she, in the first place? If she's one of that girl's buddies, I'm finished. Never mind calling her boss, she'll tell her everything my trump card. Sure, I can use all sorts of cheap tricks, but knowing that girl, she'll probably shrug them all off without a care in the world.
Also, the girl before me… How does she know what I'm thinking? Am I that much of a shallow person that a random nobody knows what's happening inside my head? Is that the statement she's trying to make here?
"I'm making no statements here," the girl says with a laidback smile on her face. "Also, don't call me a random nobody, okay? Honestly, when the old and beloved character get the short end of the stick simply to make place for those hothead upstarts, it's simply the worst."
Hate. Hate. Hate. I hate her so much.
"Stop reading my mind! Are you one of those monsters, too?"
There is no other way to explain it.
"Monsters?" she asks me. "Nothing of the sort."
Until now, she was sitting on the teacher's desk, but once she leaps from it, I notice words written on her indoor shoes. It says… Ajimu?
Well, never minding that…
If I could touch her…
"[] Hit yourself in the face with your right hand.
[] Hit yourself in the face with your left hand."
The hell?! Instantly, my hand moves like a snake and hits me in the face. All without any input from me. It hurts, and my vision starts to swim. Normally, people hold back a bit when they try to hit someone, but this time, the force behind that punch was far more than I apply normally.
Why did that happen?!
"My, my. I see it's working without a hitch!" the crazy girl laughs. "Do you like it? This skill I used on you, I mean. Not sure what to call it, but who cares?"
She comes closer. "Normally, you wouldn't be much of a challenge for Kurokami. You see, the way you're now, there was no way you could take someone as protagonist-like as her. Sure, that fancy style you had would've been quite a challenge, but nothing more. From the start, you were a one-note antagonist to establish the main character. Not even a full-blown villain or an unlikely ally."
Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate.
"But I wanted to try something new this time," she whispers into my ear. "So I asked my old friend to create an entirely new skill for someone like you. Now…"
Slowly, her lips move to mine. But then, she stops… Her laughter creates echoes in the empty classroom.
"Joking. You already have it. A present from me," she smiles at me, but for some reason, I don't like the look in her eyes. "Didn't you try to attack me right now? As far as I know, even someone like can get affected by a style…"
"Hmm, what should you do?" she asks mockingly.
[] Prostate yourself before Anshin'in-san and beg for forgiveness.
[] Ask for mercy on all fours like a good dog.
[] Grovel at her feet.
[] Do nothing.