Tousaka-sensei's Lecture Corner #13 (Patreon)

The TLC section for the upcoming chapter. Yes, this is usually finished before the rest of the chapter.

CONTINUE?

[YES/NO]

Tousaka-sensei’s Lecture Corner #13

“So tragic,” Ilya said tearfully. “A love story for the ages. A young boy met a girl and became her protector, and as he stayed with her and became a great warrior, they slowly fell in love. There were great trials, and it wasn’t always easy. Sometimes, they didn’t communicate their problems properly, and sometimes, jealousy festered in their hearts. But finally, they were together, and they vowed to be married.”

Ilya sniffled and stubbornly ignored the tears dripping down her cheeks.

“And on the day of their wedding, they were torn apart!” she cried. “A vile fiend attacked them on the happiest day of their lives and killed the girl with heartless cruelty! Even after he slew the dastardly villain and held his beloved in his arms, he could only share one last kiss with her as they pledged their eternal love, even beyond death!”

A sniffle came from somewhere off the screen.

“And so the boy, now a man,” Ilya continued, voice quivering, “cast aside everything else for the sole sake of finding a way back to her. Even if he had to betray everyone and everything else, even if the cost was the lives of all his friends and family, it would all be worth it if he could just bring her back to him and hold her in his arms again.”

“He made a promise to the World,” Rin picked up quietly, hiding her eyes behind her hand. Her lips shook with each word. “He’d give up everything he was, in exchange for the power to bring her back. With that wish in his heart, he was called forth across the void into the service of the Mind of God.”

“She equipped him with a fine sword and a cloak to hide his identity,” said Ilya. “In exchange for his service, she would make his wish come true, because in this world, the girl he loved still lived.”

“And in the face of that, nothing else mattered,” said Rin. “Any atrocity was permitted. The world itself could burn, and all those he might have called friends in his own life were the same as chattel. As long as his wish was granted, he would stain his hands red and damn himself for the sake of seeing her again.”

“But someone else had taken my place,” a voice rasped.

Rin and Ilya jumped and let out a squeaky sound. There, sitting in the corner, hood down and face revealed, was Hiraga Saito. 

“A stranger had taken what should have been mine,” said Hiraga Saito. “When I went to see her that day on the way to Albion, someone else was there where I should have been. If only he hadn’t been there, if only she had recognized me, seen my face and known that my love for her had brought me to her…”

“Uh, r-right,” said Ilya. She turned to Rin and whispered. “I don’t think he’s all there, if you know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t think he is,” said Rin. She shook her head and scowled. “No, forget about that! Did you know we’d be having a guest on the show today?!”

“I guess I was afraid,” said Saito, almost to himself. He didn’t even seem to hear them. “I didn’t know… If she saw my face and didn’t recognize me, I think my heart would have broken all over again. I can’t live without her. I can’t keep going if I can’t have her in my life.”

“No,” said Ilya. “No one sent me a memo or anything like that.”

“Do you think the author dropped this in as a surprise?”

“What do I look like, a psychic? How should I know?”

“You seem to be on pretty good terms with him…”

Ilya grimaced. “Okay, first off, I know you didn’t mean that to sound the way it did —”

Rin made a disgusted sound. “Ilya, you pervert!”

“Second off, you’re the one who gets all the special treatment! Anyone else would’ve been fired after taking a break that long!”

“Everything’s all wrong, and I don’t know what to do,” said Saito. “Nothing’s making sense. It’s all different from how I remember it being. She’s different. Was it something I did? Was it something I didn’t do? If I’d gone to her from the beginning, would things be back to normal, now?”

“Th-that’s not…! No, to begin with, isn’t that beside the point?”

Rin pointed at Saito. “The point is, what the hell do we do about him?”

Ilya looked like she wanted to keep going with the argument, then swallowed her retort, gave a helpless sigh, and shrugged. “I dunno. Let him keep going? He’s basically doing our job for us, today.”

“I know I did a few things she wouldn’t like, but she’d understand, wouldn’t she? It was all to get back to her. Isn’t that all that matters? Ah, maybe she’d hit me a few times, but in the end, wouldn’t she hold me close and kiss me, the way she used to?”

Rin goggled for a moment or two, then turned back to Ilya. “That was their canon relationship? Violent abuse, followed by a make-up make-out, then more violent abuse?”

“Eh.” Ilya shrugged again. “I guess it depends upon your perspective. You’d know more than I do, but isn’t girl-on-guy violence played up for comedy in Japan? It seems like a pretty popular thing in some of the manga I’ve read.”

“Ugh.” Rin ran her hand over her face. “The horrible thing is, I can’t really deny it. For some reason, it creeps up in a lot of mediums, in Japan. Even the original FSN had Fujimura-sensei’s antics. It really seems like pandering to the lowest common denominator, though…”

Ilya made a funny sound in the back of her throat. “Weren’t we just lamenting how terribly sad his story is?”

“It was sad, alright,” Rin said dryly. “Sad that they had over seventeen volumes to get over themselves and have a healthy relationship, but by the time the original author died, they were still basically at square one.”

“That’s not really totally relevant, though,” Ilya mused. “After all, the ending for this particular guy was closer to that of the last anime than the light novels, wasn’t it?”

Rin snorted. “Weren’t you paying attention? That story could’ve been any version of Hiraga Saito, it was so generic.”

“I guess so — wait.”

Ilya looked over to the corner and pointed. “Where did he go!?”

Rin looked, too, but he was gone. “Eh? But he was right there! How did he disappear without anyone seeing him?”

“I don’t think he was ever here in the first place,” said Ilya. “It was just a strange dream we all had. Yeah.”

“You mean a hallucination.”

“Could be. Did you eat any strange mushrooms recently?”

“Mushrooms?”

“And frogs.” Ilya nodded sagely. “Did you meet one that told you that you were on the stairway to heaven?”

“What are you even referencing?!?”

From nowhere, Ilya pulled out a pair of green goggles and put them on. “Beee-bop!” she chirped with a grin. “Be-bop!”

“Ugh.” Rin pinched the bridge of her nose. “Now we’re just getting silly. This is so off topic I don’t even…”

“Rin-Rin?” Ilya asked, leaning forward. “What’s wrong, Rin-Rin?”

WHACK

“Ow!”

With a crash, Ilya fell to the ground, goggles askew. Rin let her traced newspaper fade into nothing.

“Right,” she said. “I’m gonna end this, here, before Shirou shows up in a futuristic three-piece suit or…or…I dunno, a bald Kiritsugu with a metallic right arm? Worse, before Fou shows up as a Welsh Corgi…”

Tousaka-sensei’s Lecture Corner #13: End