When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace: Volume 7 [Parts 1 to 4] by Kota Nozomi

Author:Kota Nozomi
Language: eng
Format: epub

Question 2: Name the following animal.

—This species is the largest type of bony fish in the world. They lack scales, and their skin is covered in a layer of mucus that makes them vulnerable to a wide variety of parasites. These fish are unusually clumsy swimmers, and they are known to be quite difficult to raise in aquariums thanks to their tendency to crash into the tank’s wall and die of blunt trauma.

“What sort of stupid fish is that? They kill themselves by running into walls? That’s just plain sad...”

Andou was muttering nonsense to himself again, and meanwhile, Chii was still in full concentration mode, applying her one-to-two-times-the-average concentration ability to scribble down an answer to the question: “ocean sunfish.”

“And the answer is...the ocean sunfish!” said the announcer. Chii had nailed it once again.

“Great work, Chii!” I shouted.

“Woohoo,” said Chii, giving me another high five.

“Seriously?” said Andou. “Sunfish really lead that tragic of an existence...?”

“That’s right, Andou,” I said with a solemn nod. “Ocean sunfish walk a terribly perilous path in life.” Well, it’s more like they swim one than walk it, really. And I guess they’d follow a current instead of a path.

In any case, I began to explain to Andou the tragic truth of the sunfish’s way of life. “You see...

•Even though they can only swim at a speed of about two kilometers an hour, they evolved to have fins that are so small and useless that they still can’t change course well, so they frequently run into rocks...and die.

•Sometimes when they sunbathe on the ocean’s surface, they accidentally wash up onto the shore...and die.

•Sometimes during their sunbathing, they get attacked by birds...and die.

•Sometimes they eat crabs or shrimp, whose shells can perforate their innards...and die.

•They’re terrible at swimming, but they also can’t breathe unless they swim, so sometimes they can’t find a way to keep moving...and die.

•They like to jump out from the water to try to shake parasites off their bodies, but they’re not very impact resistant, so sometimes they’ll slam against the surface too hard...and die.

•They’re basically just vulnerable to physical and mental stress on a fundamental level, so more often than not, they sort of just give up...and die.”

“Okay, that’s gotta be too much random death!” Andou screamed, his words laced with a tragic despair. And he was right. Sunfish, very simply, die way too often. They live short, tragic lives...and die.

“You’re kidding, right?” he pleaded with exasperation. “Is that seriously how sunfish work? That’s not living on hard mode—it’s living on Sunfish Must Die mode! Their name’s so bright and sunny, but deep down, each and every one of them bears a terrible fate... How are they not extinct, seriously?”

“Sunfish females lay lots and lots of eggs,” I explained. “That’s how they’ve avoided being wiped out, I think. They’re said to lay the most eggs out of any vertebrate, actually—they can lay up to three hundred million of them at once!”

“Three hundred million?! Holy crap!”

“But only a very, very small number of those eggs hatch and live to see adulthood.

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