Yukinoshita's Correction Method

"Sorry, sorry. I'm just used to teasing my little brother, so I couldn't help myself for a second." Komachi Hikigaya pressed her palms together. "Please forgive me!"

"Little brother?" Dong Yunshan remembered what Yui Yuigahama had said about chuunibyou. "The one who regularly writes up action reports and submits them, builds the strongest robot out of clothespins to save the world, makes self-defense weapons out of rubber bands and aluminum foil, and role-plays with his dad's coat and his mom's faux-fur scarf... that little brother?"

"That's right. There were once seven gods in this world: the three pillars belonging to the God of Creation, the Sage Emperor [Gran], the War Goddess [Meshika], and the Heart's Guardian [Hatia]; the three pillars belonging to the God of Destruction, the Foolish King [Otu], the Lost Cathedral [Logue], and the Doubt God [Doubt-Demon Lailai]; and the Eternally Indebted God [Nameless God]. They made the world repeatedly go through prosperity and decline, and right now it's in its seventh cycle. To stop the world from heading toward destruction again, the world is searching everywhere for the reincarnations of those seven gods. Among them, the most important one, whose power remains unknown, the Eternally Indebted God [Nameless God], is none other than my adorable little brother..." Komachi Hikigaya smoothly rattled off a long string of words, then sighed. "I really was troubled for a while—but lately, he's stopped writing his divine-realm diary and organization reports. It's just that his Never Forgive List keeps getting longer."

"Everyone probably goes through a phase like that." Dong Yunshan thought back. "There was a period where I'd come up with movies before bed too, and I'd fall asleep while thinking about them."

"Exactly, it's not a big deal to begin with." Komachi Hikigaya spread her hands helplessly. "Not long ago, he was clearly still explaining the setting to me in detail and asking me to seal his right hand when his power went out of control, but then not long after that, he couldn't accept it himself anymore. All I have to do is mention it, and he'll clutch his head, roll around on the floor, and let out a sharp shriek."

"He just couldn't find a crack in the ground." The image was too vivid, and Dong Yunshan couldn't hide his smile. "If he could, he'd have crawled into it ages ago."

"This is his punishment!" Komachi Hikigaya angrily waved her little fists. "Who told him to force me to memorize all those settings all day? I finally managed to memorize them, and then he refused to acknowledge them!"

"Middle school is just that kind of age. The more you tell him not to do something, the more he wants to do it." Dong Yunshan's gaze grew distant. "The more he's ignored, the more he wants to prove he exists. But if he's treated seriously, he gets embarrassed instead."

"That's way too accurate." Komachi Hikigaya nodded hard. "That's exactly what he's like right now."

"Once he grows up, it'll be a different feeling." Dong Yunshan brought two fingers together and lightly tapped his temple. "When he becomes a mature adult, his shameful childhood memories will grow blurry, and when he thinks back on them again, all that will be left is the feeling of being moved that his big sister took him seriously."

"I'm his big sister, after all. If I don't memorize the setting for him, who else will?" Komachi Hikigaya gave a soft snort and proudly raised her chin. "That line just now scored really high on the Komachi scale!"

"If you had punctured his fantasy from the very beginning," Yukino Yukinoshita suddenly said, her voice terrifyingly cold, even lower in temperature than usual, "there wouldn't be any later troubles."

"Then I'd have a new kind of trouble." Komachi Hikigaya smiled. "Compared to the disappointment after his fantasies were shattered, I still prefer how embarrassed he is now."

Dong Yunshan snapped his fingers. "That line just now scored really high on the Komachi scale~"

Komachi Hikigaya gave him a look that said, "You get me." "Great minds think alike!"

Yukino Yukinoshita's lips moved, as though she wanted to say something, but in the end, she said nothing.

Her pink lips pressed tightly together.

"I'm back!" Yui Yuigahama pulled the door open and walked in. "Komachi, this is your SPORTOP."

"Thank you!" Komachi Hikigaya happily took the drink. "This rebellious spirit that openly challenges the sugar-free, low-calorie trend is the best!"

"I don't really get it, though." Yui Yuigahama handed the strawberry yogurt to Yukino Yukinoshita. "Yukinon, this is yours. Mine's the same too."

"Ah... Mm." Yukino Yukinoshita seemed to abruptly come back to herself. "Thank you."

"Your chilled cola." Yui Yuigahama handed the cold can of cola to Dong Yunshan. "Can you teach me the Great Transfer now?"

"Hold on." Dong Yunshan took the cola, popped the tab, and drank a big mouthful. "This is the Great Transfer. Did you learn it?"

"Huh?" Yui Yuigahama was baffled. "Didn't you say you could get your hands on anything you wanted?"

"Yeah. I wanted to drink chilled cola." Dong Yunshan took another sip and shook the can. "Am I not drinking it now?"

"Ah! Liar!" Yui Yuigahama angrily thumped him. "Your Great Transfer is just tricking people into buying you drinks?"

"To be precise, it uses the teaching of the Great Transfer as bait to make those interested in it satisfy your demands." Yukino Yukinoshita stuck in her straw. "And now, you've already learned it."

P.S. Thanks to [Book Guest 1588577] for the tip!

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Volume Two: Club Activities: Faces Imagined

"Yukinon~" Yui Yuigahama pouted unhappily. "You must have figured it out ages ago, right!"

"Even if I reminded you now, you'd still get fooled in the future." Yukino Yukinoshita took a sip of strawberry yogurt. "To avoid being fooled later, you still needed to experience it once yourself and understand it on your own."

Yui Yuigahama angrily stuck her tongue out at Dong Yunshan. "It's not like I'm going to run into that many bored people."

"I told you, I only learned a tiny bit of the surface." Dong Yunshan raised one eyebrow. "As for advanced usage techniques... you deposit your money with me, and I give you ten percent interest every month. Introduce one person, and I'll add one percent for you. Introduce ten people, and you get twenty percent interest every month. You break even in five months, double your money in ten, and the more you deposit, the more you earn."

"That sounds amazing... did you think I'd say that?" Yui Yuigahama stomped in anger. "I'm not going to believe you!"

"If you don't believe it, plenty of people will." Dong Yunshan set the half-finished cola aside. "We've gone off topic. Komachi, tell us about the Film Research Club."

"The Film Research Club is a club that studies movies, and after studying them for long enough, they wanted to shoot a short film themselves. It's also to see off an upperclassman." Komachi Hikigaya rummaged through her schoolbag and took out several sheets of paper. "The story we're preparing to film is based on the puzzle game Blue Demon. These are the concept posters we designed."

"Waaah!" Yui Yuigahama cried out after only one glance. "So... so scary!"

The first poster showed four people, three men and one woman, all with different expressions. Behind the four of them was an enormous face, bluish and nearly dark blue.

Its eyes were frighteningly large, the pupils taking up almost the entire eye sockets, with only a little white left at the corners, creating a terrifying strangeness.

Its blue-green body was extremely disproportionate compared to its huge head, like some sort of monster a child had made out of modeling clay.

Clearly, this was the so-called [Blue Demon].

Yukino Yukinoshita pressed her lips together. "It's all fake."

"This Blue Demon." Dong Yunshan had some impression of it. "I remember it tells the story of four students visiting an abandoned Western-style mansion in the suburbs that's said to be haunted by monsters, then encountering the Blue Demon and struggling to escape."

Although it was an RPG Maker game, its sound design, atmosphere, and grasp of horror psychology were no worse than other survival horror games.

Even many years later, plenty of people still revisited it with great interest.

The second poster was a little more subtle. The image likewise had three men and one woman, walking together toward a Western-style mansion surrounded by dense forest.

But the color of the forest shadows had been adjusted to nearly dark cyan, and through the clever distribution of branches and bushes, the outline of the Blue Demon was secretly traced out.

Because of that, the four people walking toward the mansion looked as though they were walking into the Blue Demon's mouth of their own accord.

Yukino Yukinoshita only glanced at it before setting it down.

The third poster...

"So cute!" Yui Yuigahama looked at the chibi characters and the Blue Demon in the drawing. "Komachi drew this, right?"

"I can't draw, so this is the best I could do." Komachi Hikigaya puffed out her pink cheeks slightly. "As long as it has Hojo and Sasaki, that's enough—Hojo is the club president, and also the director of this short film. Sasaki is the prop master, and he's really good at drawing too. The first one was drawn by him—I'm the scriptwriter, okay? I'm the one who adapted the story!"

"And?" Yukino Yukinoshita pushed the poster aside. "What do you mean by haunted?"

"It happened a couple of days ago. Tanaka, who's in charge of filming and editing, felt like they didn't have enough footage, so he went back to school to shoot a little more." Komachi Hikigaya took out a handheld console. "As for what happened after that, you'll understand once you watch this—this belongs to my brother. It looks clearer on here."

Komachi Hikigaya opened a video file on it and adjusted the progress bar. "Starting from here."

The three of them leaned in and looked at the screen. The footage was a little shaky. It was near dusk, and the person holding the camera was pointing the lens at another somewhat gloomy-looking boy.

"The one filming is Tanaka," Komachi Hikigaya explained. "This boy is Sasaki, the one I mentioned just now."

["I hadn't even gotten to know her yet, so how did you two suddenly break up? She even came over to help before."] Tanaka, the cameraman, muttered, ["Did you do something to wrong her?"]

["Stop filming."] The gloomy Sasaki pushed the lens away. ["You've been following me this whole time just to film me looking devastated? Sorry to disappoint you."]

["I'm just worried you'll do something stupid on your own... Huh?"] As the lens was pushed aside and swung around, it seemed to catch something. Tanaka let out a puzzled sound and turned the camera back along the path it had just taken. ["What... is that?"]

On the screen, a round object, bluish-green and close to blue, could be seen floating outside the special building.

As the camera zoomed in, the bluish-green sphere swayed, then rose between the branches, revealing a twisted face that looked over with an eerie smile.

The image shook violently, and Sasaki's voice was tinged with urgency: ["What are you standing there for?! Run!"]

In the chaos, some button seemed to have been pressed, and the recording came to an abrupt stop.

Dong Yunshan felt his clothes tighten. He looked down and saw Yukino Yukinoshita's small hand clutching the hem of his shirt.

He hadn't expected Yukino Yukinoshita to be this scared. Look at Yui Yuigahama, on the other hand... Oh, she'd already covered her eyes.

"The way they panicked was seen by some other students, and that's how the rumor that the Film Research Club was haunted spread." Komachi Hikigaya sighed. "Nothing happened after that, but Tanaka was scared stiff. He's the only one who can do the green-screen effects at the end of the film, so progress came to a halt."

"Is... is it over already?" Yui Yuigahama still hadn't lowered her hands. "It should be over, right?"

"It's over," Dong Yunshan replied. "No need to be scared."

"There is absolutely no need to be afraid." Yukino Yukinoshita silently released the hand that had been clutching Dong Yunshan's shirt. "This is facial pareidolia."

"Facial..." Yui Yuigahama moved her hands away from her face, revealing her confused big eyes. "What-dolia?"

"No matter what something is, as long as it has three points, people will see it as a human face. This phenomenon of seeing faces on inanimate objects is known as facial pareidolia." Yukino Yukinoshita kept a straight face and explained in an utterly serious tone. "That bluish-green sphere from just now was the same phenomenon. That wasn't a human face. We merely misjudged it as one."

"This illusion is, in essence, the embodiment of the will to survive." Yukino Yukinoshita took a soft breath. "When our human ancestors ran through the wilderness, they needed to accurately detect the faces of humans or beasts and quickly distinguish the expressions of their own kind, in order to determine whether the environment was safe or threatening, and prepare to attack or retreat, thereby gaining a greater chance of survival. From an evolutionary perspective, the benefits of rapidly detecting faces in one's surroundings far outweighed the cost of mistakenly identifying objects as faces—so this ability has been well preserved to this day."

Speaking in a long string like that was a huge physical drain for Yukino Yukinoshita.

So when she was preparing to say a lot, she would make a slight motion of inhaling.

Because of that, when she paused briefly, Dong Yunshan did not cut in, but waited for her to continue.

"But..." Yui Yuigahama had been a little slow to cover her eyes earlier and had vaguely seen a bit of the footage. "But that face looked a lot like the Blue Demon."

"The fusiform face area in the brain, which is related to facial recognition, can rapidly integrate visual stimuli and requires only 130 milliseconds to detect facial features in an image—even faster than conscious awareness can form." Yukino Yukinoshita spoke quickly as well. "The drawback of having such a hypersensitive facial recognition system lies precisely here. A large number of neurons are waiting to identify a face, and when there is no real face present, these neurons can be activated by approximate information, producing misidentifications that consciousness cannot control."

Without waiting for Yui Yuigahama to ask further, Yukino Yukinoshita continued.

"The facial recognition patterns that evolved in natural environments are also further influenced by social and cultural environments." Yukino Yukinoshita picked up the poster she had pushed aside earlier. "When facial pareidolia occurs, people usually match the shapes they see with mental templates of faces they are already familiar with—for instance, the ones we just saw. This poster makes use of that kind of misjudgment."

Yukino Yukinoshita was referring to the poster drawn by Hojo, the president of the Film Research Club.

Hojo had used color adjustments on the shadows of the forest to discreetly outline the Blue Demon's facial contours.

At first glance, it looked like four people walking into a Western-style building deep in a dense forest, but after looking at it for a while longer, one would identify the Blue Demon's face amid the chaotic shadows, seeing the terrifying image of the four people walking into the Blue Demon's mouth.

Since they had just looked at the Blue Demon posters, when they then saw a bluish-green spherical object, it was easy to mistake the shadows on it for the Blue Demon's face.

"I thought it was just something you'd see wrong at first glance. I didn't realize there were so many profound reasons behind it." Komachi Hikigaya adjusted the progress bar and paused the image at that instant. "I watched it carefully so many times. It should just be blue cloth wrapped around something, but everyone saw it wrong, so I was almost starting to doubt my own judgment."

"Trust yourself." Yukino Yukinoshita was breathing slightly. "Your judgment is correct."

"Then this matter becomes something hanging outside the window of the Film Research Club's activity room, not a haunting." Dong Yunshan was puzzled. "Isn't that already solved?"

"Tanaka is famously timid. If we just tell him it was an object, he won't believe it." Komachi Hikigaya pointed out the key issue. "We have to let him know what that object was, why it appeared there, and who put it there. Only then can he pull himself together."

"So why would someone this scared take part in making something like this?" Yui Yuigahama couldn't understand. "Shouldn't he avoid it?"

"When it comes to editing, filming, and post-production, Tanaka is the best. And..." Komachi Hikigaya hesitated for a moment. "He's the type who's scared but likes it anyway. The theme for this shoot was his idea too. You can understand that kind of mindset, right? It's like being addicted to masochism."

Yukino Yukinoshita and Yui Yuigahama nodded, their gazes turning in the same direction.

"Why are you both looking at me?" Dong Yunshan looked innocent. "My hobbies are perfectly normal."

Komachi Hikigaya pointed at the pole in the activity room. "So that isn't for you to use?"

"It is for me to use..." Dong Yunshan realized what she meant at once. "Not the kind of use you're thinking of."

Yukino Yukinoshita lifted her chin, like Ash telling Pikachu to use Thunderbolt. "Go, Dong Yun."

"..." For the sake of proving his innocence, Dong Yunshan had no choice but to skillfully perform the flag-grabbing move once. "This is how it's used."

"Someone can actually do that?" Komachi Hikigaya clapped along enthusiastically. "That's amazing!"

"To avoid unnecessary misunderstandings," Yukino Yukinoshita said, the corners of her mouth curving slightly, "the next time a client comes in, I would ask that Dong Yunshan perform that first."

"The Service Club's benefits just increased!" Yui Yuigahama's eyes lit up. "We get drinks, and a show too."

"What am I, a must-see attraction for the Service Club?" Dong Yunshan picked up his cola and took another sip. "There's absolutely no need for that suggestion. Zaimokuza wasn't even curious about this before."

"Zaimokuza probably treated it as a sacred pillar that holds up heaven and earth," Yui Yuigahama guessed. "You might as well let him see it once."

"After seeing it, he'd think it was a trial for a hero," Komachi Hikigaya said weakly. "Chuunibyou, you know. I get it."

"Let's talk about the vic... haunted... blue item instead." Dong Yunshan pointed at Komachi Hikigaya's handheld console. "Can we go find Tanaka and Sasaki and ask them in detail about what happened at the time?"

"Tanaka's not doing too well, so we'd better not bother him. Besides, he recorded everything he saw, and he gave me all the footage. I saved it all in here, so we can just watch the video." Komachi Hikigaya looked troubled. "As for Sasaki, he just got dumped and he's in a bad mood, plus he got badly frightened... He hasn't been coming to club activities recently."

"Can we go take a look at the Film Research Club?" Yukino Yukinoshita asked. "There may be some clues."

"No problem. Shall we go now?"

"Let's watch the footage first." Yukino Yukinoshita pointed at the handheld console. "Let's see what happened before."

"Then I'll start from the beginning~" Komachi Hikigaya dragged the progress bar back to the start.

The first thing that appeared was the school's front gate. It was already somewhat late, and a few students could be seen here and there.

Tanaka filmed an empty spot for quite a while, constantly adjusting the angle and composition.

Immediately afterward, someone called Tanaka's name.

Tanaka turned toward the voice, and the camera followed.

A red-haired girl carrying a plastic bag entered the frame.

"This is Miki, another member of the Film Research Club," Komachi Hikigaya explained. "She's also one of the actors in this shoot."

"Her hair color is so pretty," Yui Yuigahama exclaimed. "Where did she get it dyed?"