The Remains of Summer
"Mori Summer."
It wasn't a name Nibutani had ever dreamed to hear again, and ironically, only a couple years ago, she tried to convince everyone to call her that, her "true name." She remembered writing it in the margin of her notebook for the first time. The rest of the class obediently—no, robotically—sat and responded to the teacher. Nibutani Shinka was not another drone in this realm. She could see battles, monsters, and magic through the window, and she, unlike the normal kids around her, was a part of it.
Now, she was one of the normal kids, looking upon the delusions of chuunibyou, chagrined.
When her fever broke, Nibutani removed the bracelets from her wrists first, depositing them in a box marked "Donation." She bought the colorful beads in the heat of her delusions and strung them in complex patterns while babbling spells for "strength" and "protection." Later, she made scribbles on the larger beads with a permanent marker to create magic runes. These ostentatious bracelets were the source of her magic, until they lay powerless at the bottom of a cardboard box.
Atop the bracelets, Nibutani flung a tartan blanket. She considered keeping it—no one would know that it used to be her cloak—but she promised herself to be resolute.
And it took every ounce of her strength to delete her blog. She thought her disgust at her old ways would make it easy to press the link to cancel her account, but Mori Summer—after investing so much time and gathering so many followers—resisted Nibutani Shinka.
"Don't be ridiculous," Nibutani chided herself. "You have to."
Silencing her classmates' mocking laughter was worth more than who she was.
On the first day she returned home from her new high school, she sat alone in her bedroom. Magic used to spark between these walls, but now the room felt empty. Her school uniform hung on the wall where she used to display tapestries, and her bookshelf held reference books about real topics, like the Salem Witch Trials and sea otters, instead of colorfully bound volumes of manga and tomes of magic spells.
Nibutani sighed and set her bag on the desk, unloading its contents. She brought home the title of class representative today, but it didn't make her room feel any less empty. There was nothing magical about popularity.
She caught herself lingering on anime when she flipped through television stations. As soon as she noticed, she quickly flipped the channel and pretended like she cared about the stock market prices.
"You look so cute in those clothes," her mother commented after dinner. "They look much better than that rag you used to wear."
Nibutani bit her lip before telling her mother thank you. The yellow jumper and white skirt looked foreign in the mirror and weren't as comfortable as her tartan blanket.
When she slipped away after supper, she overheard her father say, "See? It was just a phase."
Nibutani gnawed her lip again.
She was one of the popular girls now. She and her new friends spoke of boys and shopping. While Nibutani wanted to like these girls, she couldn't help but think they were the same boring people who sat in her class the year before.
"Why are you in that worthless club with those weird kids?" one girl asked her. "Do you still have chuunibyou too?" It was a joke, but Nibutani flinched.
"N-no," she stammered in response. "It's just that—as class rep, I feel it's my duty to set them on the right path and make them proper members of society." She regained her composure in midst of a lie.
"Really? You're so cool," fawned the other girls over a sheepish Nibutani.
No longer Mori Summer, "Nibutani Shinka" felt like another role she was playing.
"Don't be such a child," admonished Nibutani, inwardly smiling at Dekomori's antics.
"F-fake Mori Summer—" croaked the young girl.
"Fake? Geez, at least let me take credit for my shame."
Nibutani looked around the clubroom at the faces of her fellow members. Though strange, these people knew who Nibutani was, and they accepted her anyway. In this room with an outlandish magic circle on the floor, Nibutani Shinka could once again feel the magic that she thought had abandoned her.