Stuff that's like an Epilogue but more like an Addition but more like a Bolt

Stuff that's like an Epilogue but more like an Addition but more like a Bolt is the 145th and final chapter of the Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai light novel series. It is chapter twenty-four of volume eleven.

Summary

 * Chapter transcript by u/BlackHandScans

Let me tell you upfront that this is an illusion. I suddenly realized that we were all on a small southern island. Although the word "small southern island" can mean many things, the image that most often appears in people's minds is that of the tropics, coconuts, straw-skirt dancing and the like, that kind of midsummer paradise, which was just what this was. We in the "Neighbor's Club" are currently enjoying this kind of paradise. I was sunbathing, sitting in a sunchair the beach. Maria, who was wearing a white school-swimsuit, and Kobato, who was wearing an incredibly revealing low-waist bikini, were peacefully building a sandcastle. 'Aniki, do you want a glass of juice?' I looked to my side for the person who spoke to me, and saw Yukimura, who was dressed in a skirt and a cute two-piece swimsuit, holding a glass decorated with a fruit containing tropical juice, smiling kindly at me. 'Sure, thanks.' I took the glass offered to me by Yukimura and drank. The mix of rich and mellow sweetness and fresh taste made it truly delicious. Not far away from me, a girl wearing glasses with a glass of juice in her hand was reading a book. The name of the girl was Shiguma Rika. Her hair was gathered in a ponytail and she was wearing a one-piece swimsuit. For some unknown reason, she was also wearing a white lab coat on top of this. She was reading a Unicorn Gundam x EVA first edition doujinshi. I looked away towards the sea, where two girls were happily playing in the water. 'Ahaha, take that~❤' 'Iyaaa! It's so cooold~❤' The beautiful girl wearing a brightly colored imprinted bikini, with blonde hair and blue-eyes and sporting a beautiful body was Kashiwazaki Sena. The raven-haired girl playing together with her was Mikazuki Yozora. The words "sexy", "cute" or "moe" were completely inappropriate for describing the black-andwhite striped swimsuit covering Yozora from her calves to her neck. The smiles and wild laughter of the two beautiful girls was downright picturesque. Just watching it from the sidelines made my heart beat faster. ...even if there were some weird parts, our current situation was definitely the so-called realfulfilment38. Such a lot of real-fulfilment. An immensely beautiful real-fulfilment.

'...Ahaha... real-fulfilment is so amazing... I'm so happy, hahaha... everyone in the club is getting along so well... ahahahaha....' However, like I said in the beginning, this is an illusion. '-pai! Kodaka-senpai, wake up... hey!' BZZ-BZZ-BZZT!!! '!!?' My body jerked as if hit by lightning, and my wandering consciousness was immediately brought back into reality. By the way, when I said "my body jerked as if hit by lightning,'' I wasn't making an analogy. It was definitely a real electrical shock. The culprit who used a taser to bring me back to reality was sitting next to me. Now that I think back, it was always her: Shiguma Rika, who'd bring the easily perplexed, worrying, prone-to-escaping and easily misled me back to reality. 'Ah-ah-ah... why would only you alone be allowed to witness such wonderful illusions at your own leisure, hm? That's just too sneaky of you, Kodaka-senpai.' Rika's face bore a slightly insane but stiff smile, her voice icy. She painstakingly emphasized the word "senpai", as if she wanted to inscribe it deep within her heart, likely because this was the last time we would be in a senpai-kouhai relationship inside the same school. '...I saw such a happy illusion...' I said, looking into the distance. 'What kind of illusion?' 'Yozora was playing with Sena, and it seemed like they were getting along.' 'That's a truly unscientific scene.' 'Did you really have to go that far to dismiss it...' But what Rika said was right. There was no way those two would be happily playing together. Meanwhile, in the real world... 'You're almost done for, aren't you? I advise you to surrender while you still can, Meat...' The raven-haired girl, Mikazuki Yozora, had bloodshot eyes. 'Ah-ah-ah... isn't it you who should be giving up? Seeing as you're already out of breath.' The blonde-haired girl, Kashiwazaki Sena, had eyes just as bloodshot as Yozora's, but wore a smile brimming with insanity. The two of them simultaneously thrust their chopsticks in the hotpot sitting between them, pulling out black "somethings" and simultaneously putting them in their mouths. 'Urgh...!' 'Ueeh...!'

Both of them involuntarily made croaking noises. It seemed as if both them totally won the grand prize. 'Ho-ho-ho-ho-hoooot!' Yozora clutched her throat in pain. 'Uuu... uuuurgh... it's sweet... but not too sweet... it's sticking to the inside of my mouth... it feels like my throat is slowly rotting... it's so disgusting...' Sena's eyes were rolling backwards, tears streaming. ...the place we were in had turned into hell on earth. Before this activity started, this had still been a neat and tidy western-style room. The seven members of the Neighbor's club had gathered around the table in the center of the room. On the table had been placed a large pot, the contents of which were completely black. It was currently bubbling with a blub-blub-like sound. Rika was sitting to my right, and to my left was Maria and Kobato were passed out. '...Oniichan... Oniichan... a demon, there's a demon that wants to come out...' 'Get out of the way, Anchan. I can't kill that jerk like this...' The two of them were both seemingly having nightmares, mumbling in their sleep with pained expressions. Rika was sitting next to Yozora. Kobato and Maria were sitting next to Sena. Flanked by Sena and Yozora was a kouhai wearing a maid-uniform: Kusunoki Yukimura. Yukimura was silent, robotically moving the chopsticks clutched in her hand from the pot to her mouth over and over again.

She was just going through the motions however, as her chopsticks had not been picking anything up for a while. Yukimura's eyes were blank, just like those of a dead person's. '...Yukimura... even you're a goner, huh...' I mumbled to myself, with a sorrowful expression. 'Hey, Kodaka, you should eat too...' 'Hahaha... hurry up and eat! This competition is just getting started...' Yozora and Sena said excitedly. 'Uuuh...' I reached out towards the steaming hotpot with my chopsticks, feeling like I was about to start crying. The pot was giving off a surprisingly bad smell, both sweet and rotten and sour, a stench that gave a prickling sensation on the skin, making people's eyes and noses itch and hurt. In short, it really made people feel weird. '...um, are we sure this hotpot isn't poisonous?' 'It shouldn't be, Kodaka-senpai... Rika's poison detection device can flawlessly detect any poisons. It should be flawless, probably...' Rika didn't have much confidence. What we were up to? We were having a dark hotpot. It had all started a few days earlier. Given the gloomy mood of our graduation, we wanted to do something special as the neighbors club after the conclusion of the graduation ceremony, an activity that everyone could merrily take part in. As we were discussing what to do, Sena was playing a dating game with a "Friends having a hotpot party"-scenario. When Yozora saw this, she mumbled: '...eating hotpot together really feels like friendship, that would be great.' Me and Sena agreed. Yozora then said: 'In order to avoid messing up when we eat hotpot together with friends, why don't we first do a club rehearsal of eating hotpot?' ...a rehearsal for when we have made friends. Yozora was intentionally using a phrasing I hadn't heard in a long time, a phrasing that had long since lost it's original meaning. It signified that this was the final activity organized by the Neighbors Club. Coming back to the main topic, the phrase "eating hotpot together with everyone" honestly was really attractive, so much so that me and the others who were present all voiced approval. University students really gave off a feeling of eating hotpot together from dawn to dusk in dorm room, and in the capacity of someone who would be a university student next month, I wanted to experience this feeling in advance. As we were discussing what sort of hotpot to make, Sena said: 'I want to make a dark hotpot'. It seemed that other games also scenarios with good friends making hotpot together. A scene of everyone shrieking and eating hotpot seemed really blissful. As we listened, we couldn't help but feel 'that seems like so much fun'. Besides, a dark hotpot had a kind of special feeling of some that only close friends could do, so it felt especially suited to the Neighbors Club. That is what I thought. After deciding to make a dark hotpot, I was, as the only one in the Neighbors Club who could cook, put in charge of making the soup.

During the weekend, I started making the black soup for the dark hotpot. The reason for dark hotpot being called dark hotpot is that you turn off all the lights in the room before adding your ingredients. It was not necessarily that the soup itself needed to be black, however I misunderstood this part. In short, I used cuttlefish juice and black sesame seeds as the base, succeeding in making a delicious, slightly spicy and rich in seafood-flavor "Black Soup". On Monday, the day of the graduation ceremony, I got help from Rika in bringing a pot for the soup. We turned off the lights of the club room, tossed in all the ingredients we had brought at the same time and finally got the dark hotpot party started. ...which brings us to the present. My painstakingly made black soup had started emitting an indescribably bad odor, and although it's color was still black, it had turned into a suspiciously swamp-looking different kind of substance. Obviously, it was forbidden to put in inedible things, as well as poisonous substances, so why was it that I had been hallucinating just now... Before putting everything in the hotpot, everyone had been really happy, but as the pleasant smell of seafood had started turning into a foul stench, the smiles disappeared from everyone's faces without a trace. When everyone was picking things out of the hotpot, the mood got even worse. Maria and Kobato, the two juniors, held out for ten minutes before falling in battle. Yozora and Sena, on the other hand... 'This is all because you wanted to do sick things like having a dark hotpot...!' 'Wasn't it actually you who said you wanted to do it!?' 'The bigger problem here is that you brought salty pickled herring!' 'Herring doesn't taste bad though! Not compared to your mango and strawberry daifuku mochi!'40 ...and like that they kept passing on the blame. They had unwittingly instituted the inexplicable rule of "last man standing wins". By now, even Yukimura was gone. Fortunately, I had thus far managed to only pick out relatively normal foodstuffs like meatballs and konjac (which I had brought myself), so I had managed to survive until now, but the disgustingly sweet smell that had just now permeated the club room had caused me to cross over into paradise. Rika, with her idiotic sense of taste, was still alive, but her eyes had already glazed over, so I'm not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing... Me and Rika simultaneously thrust our chopsticks into the hotpot, picking out two pitch-black "somethings", and reluctantly put them in our mouths. ...the taste of the soup was extremely disgusting, but the foodstuffs weren’t bad... it was just... just a bit... just what was it? Judging from the texture of it in my mouth... cauliflower? It looked like Rika had gotten something fearsome. '...based on Rika's memory, the closest thing to the taste of this object is... disinfectant.' Having uttered this sentence, Rika stopped moving. '...even you...?' Dark hotpot is, as expected, something that truly intimate friends can happily and harmoniously make together. For people so far removed from “happy and harmonious" such as ourselves, it's best to not even touch on that topic.

Not only that, but our club members are among the top of the line when it comes to skills for mischief. What they brought was nothing but marshmallows, fruits, snacks and other ingredients carefully selected with the intent of causing various effects. Just why did I think "this seems like fun" back then... I felt a lot of regret. 'Well then, for the next round...' 'I know...' Yozora and Sena were glaring at each other, cold sweat seeping down their bodies, both wearing frightening grins. Helplessly pressured, I also picked up my chopsticks, and the three of us together thrust our chopsticks into the hotpot to pick out it's contents. The two of them simultaneously put the things in their mouths and swallowed- '....oh... ooh... oooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegh!' 'Whoa!?' Sena vomited! Witnessing this at close range, Yozora for an instant broke into a prideful grin, but in the next second, her complexion instantly turned pale and- '...Uu... uooo...' She vomited as well. And with that, their eyes rolled back in their heads and they lost consciousness. 'Whoa! Hey, are you two really okay!?' ...No answer. ...Urgh... even the vomit is black... disgusting... Even I felt like I would soon vomit, so I quickly threw open the windows and breathed in the fresh outside air. 'Breath in... breath out... breath in... breath out...' After having focused on just breathing, and in order to clean up various things, I left the club room to get some cleaning rags. What do I do about this... those two even threw up on the rug... I walked out into the corridor, and absentmindedly raised my head to look at the plaque on the door. 'Counselling room 4.' Up until it had turned into hell, a room strewn with corpses, this had been the clubroom of the Neighbors Club. The Neighbors Club. The goal of our activities were to "make friends". The contents of our activities include all kinds of things. It's perhaps better to say that they simply lack in consistency. Sometimes we would just find ways to pass the time ourselves, while at other times we simply chatted, played video games, created games, wrote novels, drew manga, practiced instruments, acted, tried making jokes, practiced conversing with strangers or made dark hotpot. We met in this place, both laughing and crying, sometimes quarreling with each other and sometimes helping each other, with some of us feigning ignorance, some falling in love and some becoming heart-broken. We had done it all here. The future would certainly have various events in store for us, we might encounter many other people, make friends with some of them, fall in love with some of them, perhaps even create families with some of them. But I felt that, no matter how much time passed, I will never forget the time we had all spent here. Together we had spent close to two years of our unfortunate youth. If you were to create a headline for these days of our lives, I thought, then how about "I have few friends"? I have few friends. They are few indeed, but they are still there. For outside observers, it must seem sad, a youth just as pitch-black and muddled as the dark hotpot. But if you ask us, this period of time had been extremely valuable, a time that would glitter inside our hearts for the rest of our lives. This was no illusion, it was definitely imprinted in there: An outline that reads: "Forever in our hearts (regrettably)."