I was seated by myself on a bench.
“Aaaaaaahggghghhh!! My hoooooodiiiieeeee!!”
That haunted house was pretty frightening at first, but the second half wasn’t that bad at all.
Yep. Just a plain old amusement-park attraction. Nothing too rough.
After we escaped, Momo and Kido went off by themselves to round up the rest of our gang, promising to contact me later on.
The two other males in our group were one thing, but considering Marie probably didn’t have her own phone, I figured they’d need a fair amount of time.
“Aaaaaaaaahhhhh!! I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Please, let me go!!”
In the end, the private time I had lusted after so badly was nothing but an illusion.
That’s what I get for trying to spread my wings a little…This is just pitiful.
“Ngh…Oh, man, I don’t feel too good…Urk…urggh…”
“—Aaagghh!! Stop it! Stop playing that back!!”
My patience finally met its match. After I shouted at my phone, a blue-haired, twin-ponytailed girl appeared on-screen, flailing her legs in the air as she rolled around on the floor laughing.
“Ooooh, my stomach hurts…! Aw, I’m really sorry, master. But, I mean, you’ve been giving me all this hilarious material today, so…Bah hah hah hah!!”
“I’m not your ‘material,’ Ene! Ughh…If I knew you were here with me, I would’ve sealed up my mouth with duct tape…”
“Yeeaaaggghhhh!! Aaaaaarrrgghh!! You scared me!! What the hell?! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!!…Oh, man, I don’t feel too good…”
Here I was, already cast forlornly against the rocks of despair, and meanwhile Ene was cracking herself up building a soundboard of my greatest screams to play around with.
She had been inside my phone ever since I was speaking with Kano and Seto on that bench earlier. She had taken advantage of this to record audio and video of every lowlight of the day, and now it was the latest plaything she was addicted to.
“Oh, man, I can hardly breathe any longer…Whew! Anyway, master! Did you have fun today?”
The question was innocent enough, the smile as her head occupied the entire screen happy enough, but I couldn’t sense a trace of goodwill on her face.
“…Yeah…thanks to you, it was the worst day of my life. Thanks a bunch.”
I had grown used to this treatment. I fully understood that flying into a rage would do nothing to improve my lot in life.
But I still gripped the handset with so much force, I’m surprised I didn’t crack the display.
“Oh, no, no need to thank me! Besides…I haven’t had a chance to play around at all today! We still got a lot of spots to visit, you know!”
“Huhh?! Come on, you have to be tired out by now, right?! Let’s just go home…”
“Nothing doing! I haven’t even had the slightest iota of fun! You promised that you’d be together with me, master. Don’t think that I’ve forgotten that!”
Ene puffed up her face, the same way she always did when attempting to threaten me.
I’ve been through this pattern before. She gets all mad, I say whatever comes to mind to try to deal with it, and I wind up paying for it big-time later on.
One time, a while ago, she invited me to play this online game with her.
My intention was to ignore her request from start to finish, but immediately afterward, I found my computer infested with viruses of every possible kind. She agreed to root them out, as long as I agreed to play with her…and pay for whatever extra in-game items she felt like she needed.
…Contemplating all the crap I always have to deal with after every decision, it’d probably be smarter to make sure she doesn’t get angry at me in the first place.
But, man, what a pain in the…
“…If you don’t take me around the park with you, I’ll show your folder of innermost secrets to your sister…”
“All righty! I am pumped to have some fun!! What should we tackle first, huh? Anything without a lot of G-forces is A-OK with me!”
Well, time to see this through to the end. I stood up off the bench and looked at Ene. She looked eminently satisfied, gloating in the wake of her latest victory.
It was a fact, though, that I hadn’t yet really enjoyed my first planned outing in years, either.
Having to share it with her pained me, but hey, we were in an amusement park.
I didn’t really mind checking out some of the attractions a bit longer.
“Aw, that’s great to hear, master! What should we start with…? Oh! How about that thing? The one where you sit on a chair and blast away at aliens! You’re really good at shooters and stuff, right, master?”
“Uh? How do you know that? Have we ever played a shooter together?”
“Oh, no? Guess not. Well, like it matters. I know everything about you, master! Let’s just get going already, okay?”
Ene whipped out a finger to navigate for me.
“All right…Whatever. You’re the boss. Just try not to cause a scene, okay…?”
“You got it!”
Ene was all smiles as she answered.
She was utterly self-centered,
completely wicked,
and absolutely impossible to get a grasp of.
Something about the observation made a memory from the past reach the tip of my tongue, but I trundled it away before giving it any more thought.
Right now, my mind was already fully occupied trying to deal with this girl and her high-maintenance ego.
—How much fun can we have before sunset?
I held my mobile phone like a compass and started walking in the direction Ene pointed.
AFTERWORD
“Too Terrible to Look At”
Hello. Jin speaking.
Did you enjoy Kagerou Daze 2: A Headphone Actor?
This novel was written in the middle of summer, with the temperature outside never going below the upper eighties—not unlike the story setting I was writing about. Of course, I had the AC set to seventy-three degrees and gorged myself on pizza throughout the project, but the point remains.
I apologize for leeching off everyone at the office in the meantime.
Which reminds me. In the afterword to my previous novel, Kagerou Daze: In a Daze, I wrote something along the lines of “If this winds up being a flop, I’ll have to write a school romance/comedy next!” Luckily, thanks to all of you, the response I received for that book exceeded all expectations. Thanks! *smile*
As a result, the manifesto above is not the reason why this volume wound up being a bit school romance/comedy-ish.
The real reason is simply that I have grown starved for affection. Rest assured about that, please!
This volume, much like the last, was written in the midst of a busy schedule of music composing and live concerts. But it was no big deal…as long as you consider a breakneck, death-march schedule that made me feel like I was about to froth at the mouth no big deal.
No, no, it really wasn’t hard at all, you know? It’s true.
Just thinking about starting work on Volume 3 gets me so excited, it makes me want to release everything I’ve eaten today right into the toilet!
My HP gauge, which has gradually been falling over time, recently went from yellow to red and flashing.
I’m writing this Volume 2 afterword right after finishing the novel, amidst what I could only call a hazy sense of consciousness. I’m afraid I’m going to mess up and write something dirty without even realizing it. It makes me, and my big, luscious double Ds that just won’t quit, terribly frightened.
Though I really don’t have to worry. I’m sure my editor (Ikebo) will clean up and de-curse everything before it reaches the readers’ hands, after all. I know he will. Yep.
(* Editor’s note: This afterword is being published as-is per author request.)
Speaking of dirty jokes, the way I kept writing “chin chin” (the name of a rose variety, not the name of a certain body part) in
the last volume’s afterword nowadays makes me cringe every time my mom out in the country (age fifty-two) calls me up and says, “I’m telling everyone I know that my son’s written a novel, all right? So keep up the good work!”
And yet, when my sister (age eighteen) told me, “You’ve be surprised how many of my friends are reading it!” I was instead filled with an alarming sense of excitement.
Hey, sister’s friends, are you reading this? Yeah, I’m that girl’s brother! *grin*
My sister also tells me I resemble Shintaro, the novel character, a lot.
I can’t say I agree with her, and to be frank I consider Shintaro to be a pretty gross and distasteful character overall, so I was less than thrilled with this assessment. But then I took another perspective.
Maybe, just maybe, I could take advantage of this.
If I had Shintaro get friendly with some women in the novel, maybe that’d help me get a little more lovin’ attention from the ladies around me in real life. No, it has to! I’m sure! Maybe!
I mean, remember how Shintaro busted up his PC in Volume 1? My computer just crashed and burned, too, giving me some kind of indecipherable error as it did. You have to admit it—there’s some kind of deep, intertwined connection going on here.
Thus, Shintaro has more than a little bit of fun in this volume. So there you go. I’ll be expecting someone to send me amusement-park tickets in the mail before long. I can’t wait!
Along similar lines, I’ve been sitting every day at my PC, pants down, wondering if today’s the day when a cute girl will appear on-screen, start talking to me, and never go away for me, too. But there’s no sign of her yet, weirdly. Why? It honestly baffles me.
The other day, though, I stumbled upon an ad for an adult site that, no matter how many times I closed it, kept on popping up anyway.
This isn’t exactly how I imagined things would unfold, but I’ve been keeping my mental state stable lately by talking to this ad on a daily basis. Thanks, God.
Well, it’s just about time to say my good-byes again for now.
I received gracious support from all kinds of wonderful people as I wrote this volume. Thanks very much for that.
Also, thanks in advance to my readers for their continued support, of course!
Let’s meet up in the afterword to Volume 3, all right? See you—’till then!
Jin (Shizen no Teki-P)
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Copyright
KAGEROU DAZE, Volume 2
Jin (Shizen no Teki-P)
Translation by Kevin Gifford
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Kagerou Daze II -a headphone actor-
©2012–2014 KAGEROU PROJECT/ 1st PLACE
Edited by BOOKWALKER Co., Ltd.
Cover art by SIDU
First published in Japan in 2012 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION ENTERBRAIN.
English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through TUTTLE-MORI AGENCY, INC., Tokyo
English translation © 2015 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First Yen On edition: September 2015
ISBN 978-0-316-38469-8
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A Headphone Actor Page 14
