The title is in your heart.

Some days had passed, and school life was regular. I will let you decide what regular means in this context. 

Henry felt bad that he couldn't go to the arcade with Riku like he had promised, and they made up for it by going on another day. They had a regular time, ate regular food, and explored regular deep sea trenches.

It was now a Sunday. Henry had just finished lunch, which also served as breakfast since he woke up at 1 PM. Not having other people to bother, and not wanting to even think about doing his homework, he was doing what he always did when he was bored: wasting three consecutive hours on his phone while spread out on the bed.

A monotonous voice escaped the device.

"And now for a list of recent news flashes from the United States of America: Famous politician of the moment publicly says outrageous things, faces no consequences; RichMan#725 gets a private jet stolen and lost, blames the homeless; CEO of multi billion company drinks blood of children, starts a trend; Lastly, local town hero receives award for forfeiting his salary in exchange of doubling his work hours. Now we move on to a one hour special about the life of some random influencer—"

The voice is abruptly cut off.

"Still no news about mom. I wonder when she's going to act…"

He then decided to turn to social media. Grave mistake. It hadn’t even been ten minutes since he opened Tweexstagrikgrokdditineblr™, the social media everyone used, that he was already discussing politics with strangers.

"The Shoushounennen anime adaptation sucked! What are you on about?!" The words appeared as a comment to a post praising the cartoon, right underneath Henry’s generic anime girl profile picture and his username: @pantyconouisiur.

"The manga is clearly superior. The anime skips over a ton of stuff and changes core elements of the series. But most importantly, the manga shows nipples! Also, the different art style just sucks. Take a look at this!"

Henry posted two images:

The first was a panel from the manga. It depicted a black-haired teenage boy in the middle of a punch. Lightnings of energy came out of his hands and a speech bubble had him screaming something half in English half in German;

The second image was a screenshot from the anime. It depicted a black-haired teenage boy in the middle of a punch. Lightnings of energy came out of his hands and the subtitles had him screaming something half in English half in German. Now in color.

"They're the same picture." The original poster answered him.

"You're blind, and a disgrace to the anime community." Answered Henry.

"The web novel is always better." Answered @nottheauthor, not part of the conversation.

Having nothing better to do, Henry was genuinely angry. He was trying to think of a way to make fun of the other person, when he realized something.

"Wait, what am I thinking? I don't need to do this. I have a friend now!"

He rapidly closed Tweexstagrikgrokdditineblr™ and called Riku, who answered the call after a minute. Henry could clearly hear three or four voices in the background, which sounded like a group of girls playing around and laughing.

"H-hello? Riku? It's me, Henry."

"Stop it! Hello Henry." Riku finally answered.

"Am I... Interrupting something?"

"What? Oh, no, no. That's just my family being noisy. Wait, I'll go to my room so we can have some peace."

The feminine voices in the background booed as Riku left the room.

"Are those voices your siblings?" Henry asked, a bit concerned but also very jealous.

"They're not really siblings..."

"What? Are they stepsiblings?" Henry grew more jealous, sadly.

"Sure, let's go with that."

"Wait what do you mean"

"Alright, I'm in my room. What did you want to tell me?"

"Right! Do you know Shoushounennen?"

"Can't say I do."

"Ok. It's a shoujo manga series where the world has—"

"Wait a second. It's a shoujo?"

"Of course."

"Why is it called Shoushounennen then?"

"It's sarcasm. The point is! They made an anime adaptation of the manga, and it is nothing like the original! They even omitted a bath scene!"

"As I said, I don't know the series, but it's not unusual for an adaptation to change some things. If you think about it, it would be impossible to have the series be the same in an animated media as it is in a still, drawn media. The intrinsic divergence that comes with the different format forces the authors to change the story, you could say to adapt it, so that it can work and be fun even when the media that represents it is changed. I'm not saying that such a change is always good, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing either. A lot of the times you gain more than you lose. All the things that are present in one media and not in the other, which are what make the two media different, can improve the experience. Sure, the anime might be different from the original, but now you have the animation, colors, sounds, music. I think you are being a bit too harsh on the adaptation."

"...What."

"Anyway, since you called me, would you mind helping me with something?"

"Yeah, I don't mind."

“Thanks. I’ll explain what it is in person. Let’s meet in that famous Akihabara Street.”

“See you in twenty minutes.”

Thankfully, they had chosen a precise spot to meet, or it would have been hardly possible to find each other between the tempestuous sea of people flooding the sidewalk. Exactly thirty-eight minutes and forty-six seconds after the call, Henry found Riku waiting for him, right underneath the sign that read that famous Akihabara Street street.

Riku was out of his school uniform, instead wearing whatever the current standards of male fashion consider a trendy outfit.

Henry, on the other hand, was still wearing the uniform's pants but had decided to show off both his fashion sense and personality by wearing an anime t-shirt.

“Sorry I’m a bit late, I got distracted looking at all the anime and game advertisements on the buildings.”

“It’s ok. …Is that Shoushounennen?” Riku pointed at the low-resolution anime poster illegally printed on Henry’s shirt.

“No, no,” Henry laughed, “This is Shoushoujojjo. It’s a spin-off.”

“And I’m guessing that’s a shounen?”

“Psychological horror.”

“Bold move from the authors.”

“I’m excited! This is my first time hanging out with a real person! So, what are we doing? I’m down with anything except going into a forest.”

“I just need to grab something that is being kept in an abandoned building.”

“Actually, I’m fine with the forest.”

“There is no forest. Don’t worry, a handler is looking over it.”

“A handler?! You have a handler?! Wait, are you the rich guy of the class?”

“No, why would I be rich?”

“You have a handler! Who’s paying for that?”

“I don’t think anyone pays him.”

“He is your handler… for free? Also, why can’t he just bring you the something?”

“He can’t leave.”

“Why?”

“I’m not too sure, something about energy and bounds? Anyway, you’re worrying too much. We just need to grab an item from an abandoned building, how could anything go wrong?”

“You know you shouldn’t say things like that.”

They hopped on a bus, which Riku paid for since Henry didn’t have any money with him or at home. The moment he sat, Henry started acting weirdly surprised.

“Wow, Japanese buses smell so… fartless.”

“I can’t smell anything.”

“Exactly!” Henry closed his eyes and sucked up the normal air with his nose.

Riku was a bit weirded out by his behavior, together with all the other passengers who could hear him snorting. But he thought it was an American thing, and let it go.

“Why don’t you tell me about this something we’re picking up?” Henry said, only after he was satisfied with the amount of normal bus air he had inhaled, “I’m tired of calling it a something.”

“It’s a hakutaku.”

“Hakutaku matata?”

“What? No, it’s a youkai that looks like a white ox. It has three eyes for each of its three faces.”

“Ah, so is it like a small statue, or a toy…”

“It's its skull.”

Henry felt it crawling up his spine. A strong sentiment that was a mix of “why me” and “not this again”. It hadn’t even been a week since he had been inside a flesh room.

“I’m sorry, we are going to an abandoned building to gather the skull of a mythological creature?”

“Yeah.” He said with nonchalance.

“Don’t you “Yeah. He said with nonchalance” me! This isn’t something normal people do!”

“ I wouldn’t know. I don’t know any normal people.”

“Of course it is— wait you don’t think I’m normal?”

“I just told you; I don’t know.”

“Whatever! This… skull. The handler has it?”

“Yes. Don’t worry, he’s a reliable one. I’m sure glad he’s on our side.”

“There’s another side?! What life do you live?!” Henry was screaming at this point.

“A classic high school life? I don’t feel like you have any right to talk here. The other day you came to school in your gym clothes because, and I quote, your uniform was burnt by lava.”

“I… touché. Thank you for being the only one that believed me.”

“I didn’t know if it was normal or not.”

Henry threw away the last hope to keep his lazy weekend and spent the rest of the bus trip thinking up ways to psychologically prepare for the oncoming task. At the end of the trip, he had gained anxiety.

“We’re here.” Riku made him stop hyperventilating and get off the bus.

It was incredibly easy to see the building in the distance, because of two main reasons: Firstly, the building was incredibly tall, and while Henry wasn’t able count the number of floors from the outside, he figured there were at least ten; Secondly, it was the only building in a mile radius, surrounded by sparse plains and bushy mounds, with a soft rumble that hinted at a distant stream of water; Thirdly, thanks to its decay, many of its windows were shattered, part of the outer wall was missing, and a killing spree, of crows, had set up a network of nests on most free spots, meaning that only a freak wouldn’t consider it weird; Fourthly, I very clearly lied about the number of reasons; Fifthly, nothing, I just thought it would make sense to avoid ending it at four since we’re in a Japanese context, and I already explained in the second chapter how that’s seen as unlucky.

“I don’t even have to ask whether that’s the building we have to enter, do I? And I don’t mean because it’s the only one here. Honestly, my bad for expecting anything else from the container of a mythological creature’s skull.”

“It looks like a standard abandoned building to me.” Riku gave the punchline for the joke I set up in the third reason.

As they walked closer, it was evident to see that the building was surrounded by a series of signs and fences to stop intruders from entering.

“Riku, are we doing something illegal?”

“Why would we?”

“Can you not read the signs that say intruders are illegal?”

“Yeah, but we’re not intruders.”

“Ok then.”

“Oh, I thought you were going to ask me why?”

“I figured being too gullible to know you’re breaking the law is less incriminating than knowing you’re breaking the law and still do it, so I’m just going to blindly trust your judgment.”

After legally climbing the fence and legally trespassing the no trespassing signs, they had gotten to the entrance of the building. Not the real entrance, since that had collapsed a long time before, but a wide, bite-shaped hole on the side of the building.

“On second thought, can we do this another day? Maybe on a day when I’m not available?”

“It has to be today.”

“Why today?”

“There is going to be a new moon tonight. Ah, we won’t need to stay until night, don’t worry. We just need the planets aligned.”

“You know, at first I thought I could ignore the fantasy/mythological/horror context, but now I’m starting to think it’s a cult thing, and I’m not on board with that.”

“I get you. Anyway, let’s go inside.”

“Wait! Before we enter... Is the handler… human?”

“What else would he be?”

“A monster, a spirit, an alien, a ghost, a kaiju, a robot, a vampire, a humanoid dragon, a zombie, a cyborg, my mom, a demon, a hollow, do I need to keep going?”

“You believe in those things?”

“I’m pretty sure I met at least three of those just the other day. Counting Chiharu as a kaiju, of course.”

“It’s a regular human man.”

“And by regular you mean…”

Riku decided it would be a waste of time to entertain him any further and walked inside.

As it turned out, the building was like a bad christmas gift hastily wrapped with whatever was within reach and given to you by a relative you haven’t seen in ages. It might’ve looked bad on the outside, but it was even worse on the inside.

The walls and every other vertical surface was damp and moldy, while everything else was covered in dust. Populating the floor like casts in Pompeii was a huge amount of trash, which in this case consisted of pieces of furniture, cloth from unknown sources, piles of glass remains, piles of wall remains, piles of organic remains which won’t be described for the reader’s sake, and other such fantastical items. The building was “abandoned”, but that didn’t mean no one visited it. As proof of a community of some kind making the rounds, there was a lot of graffiti spread around, portraying indecipherable drawings of upside-down pentagrams.

“This place doesn’t just give me the creeps, it gives me the horrids, the eeries, and the awfulies as well! Why is this skull of yours here?!”

“I’m not too sure. My parents left it in this building when I was just a newborn.”

“...I have many questions, but thankfully I can summarize them all into one: What?!”

“It’s an heirloom.”

“That doesn’t answer any question! It creates more!” Henry’s voice echoed in the empty halls, which scared him very much, so he lowered it.

“Ughhh, let’s just get this over with. Where is the haku-something skull?”

“It’s on the roof.”

“No it ain’t! I’m not going on the stairs! What if they break and we fall to our doom? Or the next floors! What if the pavement collapses and we fall to our doom? Or the roof! What if we lose our balance and fall to our doom?”

“Are you afraid of heights by any chance?”

“No, I’m clearly afraid of doom!” No copyright intended.

“Hmm. We could try to see if the elevator still works?”

“That would be significantly worse!”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Blow up the foundations with explosives to make the building collapse and bring the roof to us!”

“Sure. You’ve got bombs?”

“Obviously I do not.”

“Your plan has a big problem then.”

“I also don’t think the skull would survive the collapse… Or us. Thinking about it, my plan is a lot less safe than just using the stairs. Wait, you said the skull was brought here when you were a newborn, that’s loads ago! Who’s to say they didn’t bring the skull away when the building became abandoned?”

“No, the building was already abandoned when my parents brought the skull. Also, did you already forget about the handler? I know he has the skull, he’s been protecting it all these years.”

“Fine! I’ll go through another stupid adventure, that is stupid dangerous, and stupid scary, for a stupid skull, and a stupid—”

Henry kept on finding other things to call stupid, but he also followed Riku to a worn out staircase. The climb began.

POSTFACE

- MORE LIKE GROSS-ARY

Shounen: It means "boy" in Japanese, and in a twist of originality, it's the label used to describe media targeted towards boys.

Shoujo: It means "girl" in Japanese. Now kids, can we use what we have learned from the previous entry to guess what kind of media this label represents? (Send your answers by telling your parents to mail a letter to our post office!) (Editor’s Note: We don't have a post office.)