Chapter 1: The Outcast

The cheap plastic eyepatch itched against Mizuki Kamiya's skin. She adjusted it, frowning at her reflection in the bedroom mirror. The black uniform hung loosely on her thin frame, adorned with unnecessary bandages wrapped around her left arm and right hand—symbolic wounds from battles fought only in her imagination.

"Too simple," she muttered, rummaging through her drawer and extracting a silver necklace with an obsidian pendant. She fastened it around her neck, then stepped back to assess the full effect.

Perfect. The final touch for tomorrow's confession.

Mizuki struck a pose, right hand covering her face before dramatically sweeping outward. "Takashi Miyamoto," she declared to her reflection, voice dropping to what she imagined was a mysterious contralto. "For three years, I have observed you from the shadows, watching as destiny wove its threads around us both. The time has come to reveal that which the cosmos has ordained."

Her phone buzzed against her desk, screen illuminating with a notification. Then another. And another.

Mizuki's theatrical expression faltered. She picked up the phone, thumb hovering hesitantly before unlocking the screen.

The school's social media group was buzzing with activity—all focused on the video someone had posted an hour ago. The thumbnail showed her standing atop a desk in literature class, arm outstretched toward the ceiling.

[KasumiT]: *omg kamiya's at it again* 😂

[YuichiK]: *chunibyo level 1000* 😭🤣

[MakotoS]: *when will she realize nobody cares about her "abysmal flame" lol*🤣

[RinS]: *reminder not to make eye contact or you'll get cursed* 👻☠️

The comments continued, each one a small blade. Mizuki set the phone down, screen against the desk, but couldn't block out the memory of what had happened.

---

"Kamiya, please read the next passage," Mr. Tanaka had said, finger marking the place in his worn copy of "The Setting Sun."

Mizuki had stood, textbook in hand, but instead of reading the assigned text, something else had taken hold. The familiar surge of energy, the need to be something—someone—other than invisible Mizuki Kamiya, third-year high school student, unremarkable in every measurable way.

"The darkness speaks to those with ears to hear," she'd proclaimed, climbing atop her desk as gasps and snickers erupted around her. "Within me burns the Abysmal Flame, ancient power that consumes all falsehoods!"

She'd thrust her bandaged hand skyward, imagining black flames with purple edges dancing from her fingertips. In her mind, her classmates would finally see her true power, finally understand who she really was.

Instead, phones had appeared, recording her performance. Mr. Tanaka's face had flushed red with anger or embarrassment—probably both.

"Get down this instant!" he'd snapped. "This isn't your fantasy role-playing club!"

"You cannot command that which exists beyond your comprehension," Mizuki had replied, before glimpsing Takashi in the back row, face buried in his hands.

The sight had punctured her confidence. She'd climbed down, face burning beneath her eyepatch, and slumped into her seat as laughter rippled through the classroom.

---

Mizuki turned from the mirror, flopping backward onto her bed. Her room—her sanctuary—surrounded her with evidence of her obsessions. Posters of gothic anime characters covered the walls. Shelves displayed figurines of dark lords and demon queens. Dog-eared fantasy novels formed precarious stacks on the floor.

Her phone buzzed again. And again. She pressed a pillow over her face and screamed into it, the sound muffled and pathetic even to her own ears.

When the doorbell rang, she ignored it. Her parents wouldn't be home for hours—another late night at their respective offices. The bell rang again, more insistently. With a sigh, Mizuki dragged herself off the bed and trudged to the door.

Through the peephole, she spotted Hana, her only almost-friend, shifting nervously from foot to foot.

Mizuki opened the door. "What?"

"I brought your homework," Hana said, holding out a folder. "You left school before last period."

"Thanks." Mizuki took the folder without meeting Hana's eyes.

"Are you okay? That video—"

"I'm fine," Mizuki snapped, then softened her tone at Hana's flinch. "Sorry. I'm just tired."

Hana nodded, chewing her lower lip. "They're just immature, you know. It'll blow over."

"Like all the other times?" Mizuki leaned against the doorframe.

"Maybe if you tried to..." Hana trailed off.

"To what? Be normal?" Mizuki's laugh held no humor. "I've tried that. Being invisible is worse than being mocked."

"That's not what I—"

"Thanks for the homework." Mizuki stepped back, hand on the door. "See you tomorrow."

After closing the door, Mizuki pressed her forehead against the cool wood. Hana meant well, but she didn't understand. Nobody did. The Abysmal Flame, the dark powers, the secret destiny—these weren't just delusions. They were armor against a world where Mizuki Kamiya didn't matter.

In her fantasies, she had purpose. Power. Significance.

In reality, she had tomorrow's confession to plan.

---

The following afternoon, Mizuki walked home alone as usual, death metal blasting through her earbuds. She mumbled under her breath, rehearsing variations of her confession speech, occasional phrases audible between music tracks:

"...cosmic convergence of our souls..."

"...flames that have burned across lifetimes..."

"...destined to stand together against the coming darkness..."

She rounded the corner near the convenience store and froze. Across the street, Takashi stood with his friends outside the arcade, laughing at something on Ryota's phone. Sunlight caught in his dark hair, illuminating the red-brown highlights she'd spent countless hours daydreaming about.

Mizuki darted behind a vending machine, heart pounding. This was her chance to observe him—to gather final intelligence before tomorrow's confession. She peered around the edge, studying his movements, the way he threw his head back when he laughed, how he carried himself with effortless confidence.

Three years she'd watched him from afar. Three years of imagining elaborate scenarios where she revealed her true self and he recognized her power, her specialness. In her most treasured fantasy, he would confess that he too harbored secret abilities, that he'd been drawn to her aura despite his apparent indifference.

Takashi suddenly looked up, gaze sweeping the street, and for a breathless moment, Mizuki thought he'd sensed her presence. She jerked back behind the vending machine, pulse thundering in her ears.

"You okay there?" asked a voice.

Mizuki jumped, barely suppressing a yelp. An elderly shopkeeper watched her with raised eyebrows, broom in hand.

"Fine," she muttered, adjusting her eyepatch. "Just... shielding myself from solar radiation."

The old man's expression suggested he'd heard stranger things in this neighborhood. He resumed sweeping, and Mizuki slipped away, face burning beneath her eyepatch.

Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow everything would change. She would finally be seen—truly seen—for who she was. Takashi would recognize what everyone else had missed: that Mizuki Kamiya was extraordinary.

And if he didn't...

Mizuki pushed the thought away, focusing instead on refining her confession speech. The words needed to be perfect. After all, how often did one get to declare their true nature to the object of three years' obsession?

In her mind, black flames danced around her fingertips as she walked, invisible to all but her imagination.

---

Mizuki's room looked like a costume shop had exploded. Discarded clothing littered every surface—too dramatic, too plain, too childish, too ordinary. She stood in the center of the chaos, glaring at her reflection in the full-length mirror attached to her closet door.

"This has to be perfect," she muttered, adjusting the silver necklace with the obsidian pendant. She'd settled on a modified school uniform: regulation skirt and blouse, but with added elements that school administrators would definitely not approve of. The lace glove on her right hand. The silver chains hanging from her belt. The carefully applied dark eyeshadow that made her eyes look deeper, more mysterious.

Her phone alarm chimed—one hour until the end of school. One hour until the moment that would change everything.

Mizuki closed her eyes, centering herself. She'd chosen the perfect location: the courtyard cherry tree where students gathered after classes. Public enough to make a statement, yet with enough space for a proper dramatic declaration.

"Takashi Miyamoto," she rehearsed, gesturing grandly toward her reflection. "Though fate has kept us in adjacent orbits, the cosmic alignment can no longer be denied. For three years, I have contained the Abysmal Flame that burns within my soul, but the connection between us transcends ordinary bonds."

She frowned, adjusting her stance. Too stiff. She tried again, this time sweeping her gloved hand outward in a more fluid motion.

"Our souls have been bound across dimensions, through countless lives. In each one, we stand together against the encroaching darkness. I, Mizuki Kamiya, vessel of the eternal flame, recognize you as my fated partner in this cosmic dance."

Better, but still not quite right. She practiced the movements again, adding a half-turn and dramatic pause.

"The shadows whisper your name in my dreams. The flame responds to your presence. This is not mere infatuation, but a recognition transcending mortal understanding."

Perfect. Mizuki smiled at her reflection, heart racing with anticipation and fear. After today, everything would change. Takashi would finally see her—truly see her—and understand the connection she'd felt all along.

She checked her phone—forty-five minutes remaining. Time to go.

---

The school hallways emptied quickly after the final bell. Mizuki hung back, watching from the second-floor window as students filtered into the courtyard. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she spotted Takashi with his usual group near the cherry tree—exactly where she'd hoped they would be.

She closed her eyes, drawing a deep breath. "I am Mizuki Kamiya, vessel of the Abysmal Flame," she whispered. "I fear nothing."

The lie steadied her. She adjusted her eyepatch, touched the obsidian pendant for luck, and made her way downstairs.

As she pushed through the school's rear doors into the courtyard, conversations faltered. Heads turned. Mizuki kept her chin high, focus locked on Takashi. She moved with deliberate steps, the chains on her belt jingling softly with each movement.

Ryota noticed her approach first, nudging Takashi with an elbow and a smirk. "Dude, the chunibyo girl is coming straight for you."

Takashi looked up from his phone, expression shifting from boredom to wariness. Around them, other students quieted, sensing entertainment in the making.

Mizuki stopped five paces away from Takashi, heart threatening to burst from her chest. His dark eyes met hers, one eyebrow slightly raised. A strand of that perfect hair fell across his forehead, and she nearly lost her nerve at how beautiful he looked in the dappled sunlight filtering through cherry blossoms.

"Takashi Miyamoto," she began, pleased that her voice emerged steady despite her internal trembling. She extended her gloved hand, palm upward, as if offering an invisible flame. "Though fate has kept us in adjacent orbits, the cosmic alignment can no longer be denied."

Someone snickered. From the corner of her eye, Mizuki saw phones being raised to record. She pushed forward, blocking out everything but Takashi's increasingly uncomfortable expression.

"For three years, I have contained the Abysmal Flame that burns within my soul, but the connection between us transcends ordinary bonds." She took a step closer, voice dropping to a theatrical whisper that nonetheless carried across the now-silent courtyard. "Our souls have been bound across dimensions, through countless lives."

"What the hell?" Takashi muttered, but Mizuki was too far into her prepared speech to stop.

"In each one, we stand together against the encroaching darkness." She executed the practiced half-turn, arm sweeping upward toward the sky. "I, Mizuki Kamiya, vessel of the eternal flame, recognize you as my fated partner in this cosmic dance."

The silence that followed felt endless. Mizuki held her pose, heart pounding so violently she thought it might shatter her ribs. This was the moment when Takashi would recognize the truth, when he would step forward and take her outstretched hand, when everything would finally make sense.

Instead, his face contorted, first with disbelief, then with something worse—pity.

"Are you..." Takashi glanced at his friends, who watched with barely contained amusement. "Are you confessing to me?"

Mizuki nodded, arm still extended. "The shadows whisper your name in my dreams. The flame responds to your presence. This is not mere infatuation, but a recognition transcending mortal—"

"Fucking Stop." Takashi's voice cut through her words like a blade. "Just stop, Kamiya."

Around them, the crowd had grown. Dozens of phones were raised now, recording her humiliation in high definition. Mizuki's outstretched arm began to tremble.

"Look," Takashi said, his tone shifting to one that adults used with difficult children. "I don't know what's wrong with you, but this—" he gestured at her outfit, her pose, "—this isn't normal. You need help."

"You don't understand," Mizuki tried again, voice smaller. "The connection between us—"

"There is no connection." Takashi's patience visibly frayed. "We've barely spoken in three years, and when we have, it's been weird shit like this. You live in some fantasy world because reality is too pathetic for you to handle."

Each word struck Mizuki like a physical blow. Her arm finally dropped to her side.

"The only reason people even notice you is to laugh at whatever crazy crap you'll do next," he continued, voice rising. "Did you seriously think I'd want anything to do with someone who can't even live in the real world? Who dresses like... like this?" He gestured at her outfit with obvious distaste.

Laughter rippled through the gathering crowd. Mizuki stood frozen, the carefully constructed speech crumbling to ashes in her mind.

"This is why nobody likes you, Kamiya," Takashi said, delivering the final blow with casual cruelty. "This chunibyo act isn't cute or interesting. It's pathetic it's Stupid."

Mizuki's vision blurred with unshed tears. Through the watery haze, she saw Takashi turn to his friends, shaking his head in disbelief. "Can you believe this shit?" he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "She thought we had some cosmic connection. Like I'd ever be interested in the class freak."

More laughter. More phones capturing every second of her humiliation.

Something broke inside Mizuki then—the last fragile thread holding her fantasies together. Without another word, she turned and ran, tearing through the crowd of jeering students, past the school gates, and into the streets beyond.

Behind her, someone called out mockingly: "Don't let the Abysmal Flame go out, Kamiya!"

Fresh waves of laughter followed her down the street.

---

Mizuki ran until her lungs burned and her legs threatened to buckle. She finally stopped in a small park several blocks from school, collapsing onto a bench, gasping for breath between sobs.

Her phone buzzed continuously in her pocket. She didn't need to look to know what was happening—the video would already be circulating, comments multiplying with each passing minute. Tomorrow, everyone at school would have seen it. The day after, probably half the schools in the district.

Mizuki Kamiya, the chunibyo freak, publicly rejected and humiliated.

She pulled out her phone with trembling fingers. As expected, notifications flooded the screen—social media tags, direct messages, group chat explosions. The top notification was a video link with her name in the title, already showing over a hundred views.

Her thumb hovered over the notification before she forced herself to tap it.

The video was worse than she'd imagined. Shot from an angle that captured both her dramatic gestures and Takashi's increasingly disgusted expression, it showed everything—her rehearsed speech, his cutting rejection, the crowd's laughter. The final frame froze on her face, eyes wide with shock and pain, caption adding insult to injury: *Chunibyo confession FAIL! 😂*

Comments accumulated beneath the video like vultures around a corpse:

[MikaSato]: *OMG DYING someone buy this girl a reality check* 😭🤣

[TakumiH]: *"the shadows whisper your name" I CAN'T EVEN* 💀

[NorthUnder]: *how does she show her face at school after this?* ✌️👐🫣

[RyotaK]: *takashi handled that better than i would've lol* 🤢🤮🤣

The last comment came from Ryota himself—Takashi's best friend—and had the most likes.

Mizuki closed the app with shaking fingers, then turned off the phone entirely. The silence that followed felt like the first breath after nearly drowning.

She sat on the bench until sunset painted the sky in shades of orange and purple. No tears came anymore; she'd exhausted them. Instead, a cold, hollow feeling settled in her chest, expanding until it seemed to consume her from within.

How could she go back to school tomorrow? How could she face any of them again?

The answer was simple: she couldn't.

As darkness fell, Mizuki finally rose from the bench and began the long walk home, each step heavier than the last. The fantasies that had sustained her for so long now seemed childish, delusional. There was no Abysmal Flame. No cosmic connection. No special destiny.

There was only Mizuki Kamiya, seventeen and alone, with nowhere left to hide from the crushing banality of her existence.

She reached her empty apartment and mechanically removed her eyepatch, the lace glove, the silver chains. Standing before her mirror, she stared at the ordinary girl reflected there—no longer a vessel of ancient power, just a teenager with smudged makeup and red-rimmed eyes.

"There is no Abysmal Flame," she whispered to her reflection, voice cracking. "There never was."

Her phone remained off, abandoned on her desk like a small black tombstone marking the death of her last illusions.

Tomorrow, she would have to decide what to do next. Tonight, she could only endure the silence of her empty apartment and the even greater emptiness within.