Boogiepop - Volume 5 - Overdrive The King of Distortion

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I sat in that chair, gazing at the red sky, listening to the music. Just as it
seemed to be reaching its peak, it abruptly ended.

The girl who’d woken me up, Niitoki Kei, had picked that piece. She
had good taste, I guess. It was certainly a piece designed to wake an audience
up.

“But maaan…” I said, still in a bit of a daze.

Niitoki didn’t seem to know who I was, but I knew her. Nagi
mentioned her a lot. She’d said, “She’s way better than me. Someone you can
really rely on.”

I’d been saved by a girl like that again. I couldn’t win.

Shiro was back to normal, thanks to her. He was still out like a light,
lying on his side, grumbling in his sleep.

“Well done, sir,” I thought. “Enjoy your hard-earned rest.”

I couldn’t bring myself to be mad at him.

“Still…”

I looked down through the window.

The doors had opened, and people were streaming in and out. It was
chaos. I’m sure folks would start pouring into this control room soon.

What did any of it mean, in the end?

Would this all be boiled down to headlines like “Teratsuki Kyoichiro’s
Final Mad Crime: A Product of Extreme Wealth and Loneliness”? There
wasn’t one word of truth to that, but perhaps that was what the mastermind
behind all of this intended. There were things about him that couldn’t be
dismissed so easily, but perhaps it was better that they were.

“But it’s just so unsatisfying!”

I sank deeper in my chair.

I glanced at my watch, wondering what time it was. It was broken. I
must have smashed it on something.

“Tch…”

I looked around for another clock, then remembered that my phone had

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one.
I took it out of my pocket, and it was off. Whoops, I thought, and then

realized why. I’d almost certainly turned it off to force me to solve this on my
own.

I turned it back on.
Instantly a call came through. What? I thought, and answered.
“Habara here,” I said.
But a voice cut me off.
“Kentaro! What the hell are you doing?”
Nagi’s voice.
“Oh, Nagi? What is it?”
“What do you think? I’ve been calling all day! All kinds of shit’s
happening at the Moon Temple, and you said you’d be there!”
“Oh…I get it.”
“Are you okay?!”
“Uh, yeah, more or less.”
“Something happened there?”
“Yeah…but it’s over now. Everything’s taken care of.”
“Did you do it?”
“No, well…Niitoki-san bailed me out.”
“Kei did? How?”
She sounded confused. I wasn’t really sure to how to explain all this,
though.
“Don’t worry about it, it’s all over. I’ll explain later. No need for you
to come, not anymore.”
“You’re sure? If you say it’s okay, then I guess it is.”
“Who knows if you can take my word for it, ha ha ha ha!”
Nagi sighed loudly at my self-deprecating laugh.
“I was worried, you know. You could stand to take things more

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seriously, Kentaro!”
“Oh, I do.”
I was tickled pink she was worried about me, but…I didn’t let her

know that.
“Kei’s safe, too?”
“Yeah…she left already. Oh, right, Nagi…”
“What?”
“Um, well…”
I felt like that voice was whispering in my ear.

“Why can’t you just tell her?”

“Um…”
“What?”
“Um, well, you see…”
“See what?”
“Um…how’s Masaki doing?”
I sounded so dumb. “Hunh?” Nagi said. “You were just here the other
day and ate dinner with him!”
“Oh…oh, right! Ah ha ha ha!”
I let out a hollow laugh.
We exchanged a few more words about where to meet up next, and
then hung up.
I felt even more dazed than I had before.
I let out a long, listless sigh.
“I just can’t say it… it just isn’t that easy!”
Maybe I should have gone for the cheap joke? “It’s Valentine’s Day,
remember? Got any chocolate for me?” Hmm, not bad…

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I looked over at Shiro, where he lay.
“I get it! I do. But it just isn’t that easy, man.”
Shiro’s body remained fast asleep, but his eyes alone popped open,
with no light in them. He grinned at me. “I know,” he said.
I sighed again.
“Yeah…” I nodded.
Outside the window, the sunset was almost over. Any moment now,
the last light would be gone.

Heartbreaker II, closed.

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul

Led Zeppelin, “Stairway to Heaven”

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Afterword—When The World Ends

(Dramatic title, but there’s no deep meaning to it.)

Not to jump right into it, but have you ever gotten so worked up you
lost your cool and then totally had it blow up in your face? I have. So many
times…both when I was really happy and when I was absolutely furious. The
checks on both emotions fail, and the results are…often not worth
mentioning. The result is usually me being deeply embarrassed, and looking
around for a hole to hide in. But when that happens, I find myself thinking
something crazy—“Oh, if only the world would just end right now!” But
man, no matter how pathetic I am, that’s no excuse for bringing the world
down with me. In hindsight, that’s perfectly clear, but at the time, I always
mean it, and I think that’s pretty bad.

But will the world actually end? I had my doubts, but if you look into it
a little, you can easily find the answer. If that surprises you, well, you learned
something today. Humans have been around for tens of thousands of years,
and the world has ended a number of times already. More accurately, we’ve
overcome what was believed to be the end of the world a number of times,
but for the people involved at the time, their world certainly did end. Like,
this even happened in Japan! The world of the “Unbroken Imperial Line”
ended. (If you don’t get what that means, ask someone else.) Even this guy
named Bradbury wrote a short story about a Native American boy scared by
the sight of men with white skin arriving on boats, and called it “Perhaps We
Are Going Away.” (If you don’t know it, ask your nearest old-school sci-fi
fanboy.)

“That’s not the end of the world! That’s just the end of a country or a
culture!” you say, being clever. But when we say ‘the world’ don’t we mean
‘the part of it we live in’? And if that’s overturned, then isn’t that the same as
the world ending? “But things start up again,” you think, but doesn’t that just
show that when the world ends, we get a do-over? The real meaning of
“History repeats itself” is “What happens happens, no use fussing.” I mean, if

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we couldn’t try again, then every time in history a world ended, it would have
ended for good, and then what would be the point of putting in all the work to
make a world in the first place? You didn’t think of the world as the set in a
monster movie, just there to get stomped to bits, did you?

An end comes to all things. We can’t stop it. The trick to it is to figure
out what to do next, and to do that in a world that’s busy ending. But since
we don’t live in a world where a monster will conveniently come along to
destroy it for us, we have to be the ones who end things, who destroy things.
So if you ever mess up so bad you want to destroy the world you live in out
of sheer embarrassment, that’s where you have to start. We’ve got a long
road ahead of us, hunh?

(Don’t you ever get discouraged, writing stuff like this?)
(…quite frequently, yes.)
(………w-well, cool, I guess?)

BGM “Come With Me” by Puff Daddy (featuring Jimmy Page)

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About the Author

Born in 1968, Kouhei Kadono grew up uncertain about his direction in
life. He spent a considerable portion of his early years frittering away his
youth before somehow ending up writing novels.

In 1997, Kadono-sensei’s first Boogiepop novel, Boogiepop and
Others, took First Place in the Media Works’ Dengeki Game Novel Contest.
Early the following year, the novel was released to widespread acclaim and
ignited the Japanese “light novel” (young adult) trend. Since that time,
Kadono-sensei has written thirteen Boogiepop novels and several related
works such as the Beat’s Discipline short story collection and the two
Boogiepop manga series entitled Boogiepop Doesn’t Laugh and Boogiepop
Dual. In its entirety, the Boogiepop series has seen over two million copies in
print and spawned a live action movie and a hit anime series.

In addition to the Boogiepop universe, Kadono-sensei’s body of
literary work includes a wide array of fantasy and mystery novels such as the
Jiken, Soul Drop, Limited World and Night Watch series.

About the Illustrator

Born in 1970, a native of Osaka, Kouji Ogata spent his early twenties
struggling to get enough credits to graduate from Osaka Design School. In
late 1996, Ogata-sensei was commissioned by Media Works to illustrate the
first Boogiepop novel, Boogiepop and Others.

At the time, Ogata-sensei was simply a rising star with a distinctive,
eye-catching art style, but he was gradually able to further hone his artistic
skills with each subsequent work. His watercolor-style paneling seen in the
two-volume Boogiepop Doesn’t Laugh manga series was a particularly high
point of his early career.

In addition to providing illustrations for novels and manga, Ogata-
sensei has been involved with supplying character designs for anime
productions including Boogiepop Phantom, Spirit, and Gin-iro no kami no
Agito.

In his free time, he enjoys motorcycles, tennis, and remote-controlled
models.

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