Chapter II: The Battle for Class Rep!
Chapter II: The Battle for Class Rep!
“Hey...”
“.........”
“Hey, are you still angry at me?”
“I’m not angry,” said Houki, curtly.
“You look angry to me.”
“I always look like this.”
It was the second day of school, eight in the morning. We were eating in the cafeteria for the first years, and girls surrounded me in all directions. It scared me that even all the employees were women, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. I was eating breakfast together with Houki in the interest of maintaining positive relations with my roommate, but we hadn’t been able to talk properly since the day before. I had a Japanese breakfast, incidentally; there was rice, natto, sliced salmon, miso soup, and also some vegetables as a side dish. I was basically eating tax money, and it was pretty good. Bless the power of the state.
Houki was eating the same. Japanese people ate rice for breakfast, period. Not that bread was bad, but... salmon was just too good to pass up. It had a faint but pleasant trace of salt, and the rice was soft and warm. Sheer excellence! Generic electric rice cookers had nothing on this.
“Houki, this is really good.”
“.........”
She was ignoring me. Still, she took a bite of the salmon, as if to acknowledge agreement.
I’d always lived together with my sister Chifuyu, so it wasn’t like living alone with a girl made me a raving lunatic. I’d washed Chifuyu’s clothes for a long time, in fact, so I wasn’t going to freak out over some panties. That was only my side of the story, though. My childhood friend across the table was probably not seeing things quite like that. Maybe she hated how seeing her panties wasn’t a big deal for me? I had no idea what was going through her mind.
“I told you that I’m not angry.”
She brought that up herself, though. She hardly ever looked at me, and if our eyes met by accident, she’d look away. Well, if that wasn’t being angry at me, then there was still hope for global peace.
“Hey, he’s the boy they’re all talking about.”
“And he’s the brother of Chifuyu as well!”
“Whoa, both brother and sister are IS pilots? Do you think he’s good, too?”
Everything was just as it had been the day before. The girls around me were keeping their distance, but clearly paid attention only to me, barely containing their interest. It was irritating. If this had been a fishing operation, it would’ve been a great catch. Pretty dumb metaphor if you ask me, but hey—
“So, Houki...”
“D-Don’t use my name.”
“Shinonono?”
“.........”
I tried calling her by her last name, but that didn’t seem to make her happy, either. Houki still didn’t like her name, apparently. Well, there was a bit of a story behind that.
“O-Orimura, may we sit here?”
“Hm?”
I looked over and saw three girls, carrying breakfast trays and awaiting my answer.
“Yeah, sure.”
The girl who had asked me sighed with relief and the others struck a victorious pose. I heard murmurs among the crowd around us.
“Oh, no... I should have talked to him...”
“It’s... It’s just the second day... There’s no rush. Don’t worry...”
“I heard they saw a girl on top of him yesterday.”
“What?!”
Oh, yeah. The day before, 8 girls in first year, 15 in second year, and 21 in third year had come to introduce themselves. I had a tough time just remembering their names. If any of them had come up to me afterward and asked me if I remembered her name, chances would have been about 50-50. What more could you have expected?
It was first thing in the morning today, and I had to remember another three. This group of girls had, apparently, already made a deal with respect to who got to sit where, and they took up their positions very smoothly. It was a table for six. Houki and I were sitting by the window. They took three more. One was left, and I wanted it to stay empty.
“Wow, you can eat so much in the morning, Orimura.”
“Yeah, boys can eat so much...”
“I don’t eat a lot for dinner, so I eat more in the morning,” I replied.
That was actually the truth. I had experimented for a number of years, but ultimately this turned out to be the best for me. Well... I was just imitating Chifuyu, if anything.
“Are you girls okay eating so little in the morning?”
The three girls who joined us all had different meals, but largely shared the same things: a slice of bread, a glass of juice, and a side dish... A small side dish at that.
“W-We’ll be...”
“Um... Fine?”
How fuel-efficient. Maybe that was the reason only girls could pilot the IS?
“We eat a lot of sweets...”
—You’ll get fat doing that.
It probably wasn’t healthy. People had to take care of their body during their teenage years. I once read that you start to age faster as early as 22.
“Orimura, I’m going ahead.”
“Hm? Oh. See you later.”
Houki finished her food and left. All Houki had eaten was Japanese-style food from the buffet; the food of ancient Japan, just like a real samurai. She was the image of the ideal woman in the middle ages. Or maybe not, I dunno.
I hadn’t expected my roommate to be Houki. I suppose it was definitely better than living with a girl I didn’t know. Houki and I had known each other as kids; back in elementary school, Chifuyu had taken me to kendo, and I was in the same class with Houki until we were 10. Her parents often invited us for dinner since ours weren’t around anymore. We were pretty poor, so that helped a lot. It wasn’t like Houki and I were always friends, though. At first, we didn’t get along at all, but as we practiced kendo together, we warmed to each other. I think, anyway— It was all kind of vague to me now. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t remember as well? Whatever. The past is the past, after all. There’s no time like the present.
“Orimura, do you get along with Shinonono?”
“I-I heard you share a room?”
“Oh, yeah. We’re childhood friends.”
That itself didn’t really mean much to me, but it caused a stir around me. A faint “What?!” could be heard off in the distance.
“S-So, uh...”
Ah, the girl next to me named... Tanimoto? Yeah, she was trying to ask me something, but a loud clap rang out in the cafeteria.
“How long are you going to stay here and eat? Finish your food efficiently. If you’re late for class, I’ll make you run ten laps.”
My sister Chifuyu had appeared. Everyone in the cafeteria went back to eating their food.
A lap around the IS campus was five kilometers long. Having to run all of it was no joke. I finished my food as fast as possible as well.
Chifuyu was also the dorm mother, apparently. I really wanted to know whether she even slept. As her brother it worried me, but she was probably fine. If there was anyone capable of dealing with prolonged fatigue, it was her.
—Meanwhile, I can’t even concentrate on all this IS stuff, even with a night’s rest.
My battle with Cecilia was next week. I had to be able to pilot the IS with some degree of proficiency by then.
—It’ll work out, I’m sure.
In the end, it did not.
Second period had ended and I was already groggy; it was only downhill from there. I’d studied the vocabulary, somewhat, and I was doing okay, but a lot of things just didn’t make sense on a fundamental level. It was like a math question you just couldn’t solve, the sort you need to know some formula for, but you don’t remember it.
“I... What?”
In a way, this confused me even more. When I’d first touched the IS, it felt very natural, like I’d known it for many years. But when I read the textbooks, things made so little sense to me that I began to doubt that I had ever managed to move the unit in the first place. I crossed my arms and stared down at the book. It seemed to stare back as classes continued around me, during which Ms. Yamada steadily taught us, the students, the basics of the IS.
“So, since the IS was designed with outer space in mind, the pilot is completely enveloped by an energy barrier. The IS also supports the life functions of the body and stabilizes it at all times; this includes pulse, blood pressure, breathing, sweating, and endorphin production.”
“Ms. Yamada, is that really okay? It sounds like it’s messing with my body and I don’t want that...” asked one of my classmates, looking a little disturbed.
I could definitely see how that sense of unity I’d felt when I connected to the IS might freak someone out.
“You’re thinking about it too much. Let’s see... You’re all wearing a bra, right? It supports your body and has no negative effect to it. Of course, if you don’t buy a bra that fits you, it doesn’t work, but...”
Her eyes and mine met. Ms. Yamada fell silent for a moment. Some seconds passed, and then she turned red.
“I... Uh... Well... O-Orimura, you probably don’t wear one, so this may not make much sense to you... Haha... Hahaha...”
Ms. Yamada tried to laugh it off, but the atmosphere in the classroom became weird and tense. I saw girls crossing their arms as if to shield their breasts; they seemed a lot more perturbed than I was. I felt the same as I had with Houki the day before— I wasn’t going to make a fuss over girl’s underwear. It was their behavior that made me uneasy... That contradiction of both wanting me to look at their breasts and not wanting it. This uncomfortable silence lasted for what felt like 10 or 20 minutes.
“Hmm... Ms. Yamada! Please continue the lesson,” remarked Chifuyu.
“O-Okay!”
A loud, audible cough dispelled the awkwardness. Egged on by Chifuyu, Ms. Yamada looked back at the textbook and returned to the topic.
“A-Another important aspect is that the IS has something like a mind of its own and t-tries to talk to, um... I mean... Understand you and... Err... Reference your past piloting experiences to try and better adapt to you.”
—All right, so training wasn’t going to be for nothing.
“The point is that both of you are trying to understand each other, and by doing that you can bring out your full potential. The IS is not a tool, but a partner.”
Every single girl raised her hand.
“Teach, does that mean it’s like a boyfriend for us?”
“U-Um... Yes, I suppose so... I’ve never had one, so I don’t know...”
I suspect that she referred to the “not having a boyfriend” bit. Ms. Yamada was looking away, red-faced. The girls in the class cast her a scornful glance and began to talk about men.
—Truly, this is the essence of an all girls school.
Air-sugar content: 10%. It wasn’t just my class, the whole school felt saccharine. No, it didn’t just feel like it, there was a sweet air. The entire school carried the sweet fragrance particular to girls. The day before had already been enough for me, and the second was beginning to make me sick.
“Mmm...”
“Wh-What is it, Ms. Yamada?”
“O-Oh... N-Nothing. Don’t mind me.”
Ms. Yamada gestured and tried to dodge the question. I could have sworn that she’d been staring at me, but then again, everyone was almost always staring at me.
Ding-dong.
“Ah, yes. In the next period we will cover the basics of aerial movement in an IS.”
At the IS Academy, the homeroom teacher taught all classes except for physical education and special subjects. It made me appreciate the hard work of my old teachers more, who had to go back and forth between classes in the breaks.
“Hey, hey, Orimura!”
“Over here! I’ve got a question!”
“Got time over lunch? Time after school? Time tonight?”
The times of observing me from a distance were, apparently, over. As soon as Ms. Yamada and Chifuyu had left the classroom, about half the girls ran over to me. I could have sworn I heard some exclaim that “a British lady would not be the last one.”
“Don’t ask me all at once...”
I wasn’t sure what to do. I was going to continue, but then I saw the girl holding a numbered ticket, and it had cost her money too. I was being raffled away or something.
“.........”
Houki, my childhood friend, was standing to the side and watching the spectacle. She looked angry, as always, but I decided that didn’t mean much. Life is a learning experience.
—All right, what now?
I was going to ask Houki to teach me something about the IS, but at this rate I’d have to ask her tonight. I barely had time to think that much before the looks of the girls around me began to sting; they wanted answers.
“How is Chifuyu at home?!”
“Um... The place is a big mess because of h—”
Bam!
“Break’s over. Back to your seats.”
When had she come up behind me, and what was with that timing? Was she trying to keep me from leaking personal info? Anyway, I wanted to warn my sister Chifuyu that if she kept hitting me she’d be pigeonholed as the comically violent side character— couldn’t imagine anybody’d want that.
“By the way, Orimura, it will take some time until your IS unit is ready.”
“Huh?”
“We have no spare units, so you’ll have to wait a little. The academy will provide one exclusively to you.”
“......?!”
I was left speechless as the classroom erupted into talking.
“A-An exclusive unit?! To a first-year? So soon already?!”
“That’s only possible with government support...”
“Oh, wow... I’m so jealous... I want my own unit too...”
I didn’t understand. Why were they so jealous? I gave my sister Chifuyu a blank look. She sighed and whispered something to me.
“Textbook, page six. Read that.”
“U-Um... ‘At present, IS technology is being shared with a diverse range of countries and companies, but the manufacturing technique of its core has not been disclosed. There are 467 IS units in the world. All their cores were created by Dr. Shinonono, and their function is a complete mystery— only the doctor is able to manufacture them. However, the doctor refuses to make more than a certain number of cores. These are then distributed to countries, corporations, and organizations to be used in research, development, and training. Transferring cores to others is in violation of article seven of the Alaska Pact and forbidden under all circumstances,’” I recited.
“There you have it; normally, you need to be affiliated with a country’s government or a corporation to have your own IS unit. You’re a special case, so you’ll get your own unit for data collection. Got it?”
“S-Sorta...”
Let’s go over that again:
1.) There were only 467 IS units in the world.
2.) Only Dr. Shinonono can make them, but she’s not making them anymore.
3.) I’m getting special treatment. As a test case, though.
Something like that. It made perfect sense to me. Speaking of IS, Dr. Shinonono was...
“Um, Teach. Is Shinonono Houki related to Dr. Shinonono?” asked one of the girls to Chifuyu.
Well, Shinonono was a rare name; it wasn’t going to be a secret forever.
Shinonono Tabane: a prodigy of the modern age, and sole developer of the IS. She’d been in the same class as Chifuyu, and was also Houki’s sister. I’d met her a number of times before, myself— she was a genius through and through.
“Yes. Shinonono is her sister.”
—Hey, Teach... Maybe keep personal info to yourself!
Besides, Tabane was wanted based on supranational law. She hadn’t committed a crime exactly, but nations and organizations were uneasy that the sole person who understood the complete IS system had vanished. I doubt she cared about that, though. I still remembered how she looked like she was about to “eat” someone; truly, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Meanwhile, my sister Chifuyu was just a straight up wolf. Wow, I was impressed with myself. What a perfect metaphor.
“Whoa! Th-That’s amazing! Two people in our class have famous relatives!”
“Hey, what’s Dr. Shinonono like? She’s a genius, right?”
“Are you a genius too, Shinonono? Teach me about the IS!”
Class had already begun, but girls were beginning to gather around Houki. It was looking pretty amusing. Obviously, nobody was going to help her.
—Hmm, speaking of which, has Houki ever used an IS?
I’d never seen her pilot one, and it wasn’t like Houki and Tabane got al—
“She’s got nothing to do with me!” Houki yelled.
I blinked, my reverie aborted. I glanced at Houki; the girls around her were just as shocked and confused.
“I’m sorry about that... But I’m not her. I can’t teach you anything.”
Houki turned her head back to the window and looked outside. The girls looked a little shell-shocked and returned to their seats. Has Houki always hated Tabane? I couldn’t recall a time I had ever seen them together, and I was pretty sure the conversation had always ended abruptly when we’d talked about her.
“All right. Time for your lesson. Ms. Yamada, you’re up.”
“O-Okay!”
Ms. Yamada seemed concerned with Houki as well, but she was a professional, and class was starting.
—Guess I’ll ask Houki later...
I opened my textbook.
“I’m relieved. I hoped you would not try to fight me in a training unit.”
—Fascinating, Cecilia.
During the break she had come over to talk to me, hands on her hips. She really liked that pose, not that I cared.
“Well, this has made it a little better, but it still isn’t fair.”
“Why?”
“Oh, you ignorant sheep. All right, I shall teach the rabble: I, Cecilia Alcott, am Britain’s National Cadet. I have, at present already, my own unit!”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you making fun of me?!”
“Nah, I know it’s amazing. I just have no sense of scale for how amazing it actually is.”
“That’s exactly what making fun of me is!”
Slam! She banged her hands on my table, causing my notes to slide off.
“Ahem— To reiterate our lesson just now: There are 467 IS units in the world. The few people who have their own units are the elite of the elite among the six billion humans alive.”
“R-Really...”
“Yes.”
“We have six billion people in the world?”
“That isn’t the important part!”
Bam! This stupid girl slammed again, causing my textbook to fall off now.
“Enough! Stop making fun of me!”
“But I’m not.”
“Then why is your voice so unimpressed?”
—Goodness. Why, indeed?
“What do you think, Houki?”
She gave me a sharp look. It took her 0.8 seconds to communicate to me that she wanted nothing to do with it.
“Speaking of which, you are Dr. Shinonono’s sister, right?”
Houki stared at Cecilia, who had switched the brunt of her attack to her.
“What if I am?”
—Don’t be too hostile, Houki.
Her stare was so menacing that Cecilia couldn’t help but flinch back. Houki would make for a great gangster, honestly.
“U-Um... I want you to remember that it is I, Cecilia Alcott, who is the most capable of being the class representative!”
She threw her hair over her shoulder, turned around gracefully, and left. Her gestures always seemed very impressive. Maybe she had modeled for a while?
“Houki.”
“.........”
“Shinonono, let’s go eat lunch.”
It was important to cheer up your friends. Houki was looking kind of weird since what had happened earlier, and I couldn’t overlook that.
“Anybody else want to come with us?”
I cast my bait out into the sea.
“Me, me, me!”
“I’ll come! Hold on!”
“I made a lunch box, but I’ll come, too!”
Plenty of fish bit. I wanted us to get along in the class. Houki probably felt the same way.
“I’m fine,” said Houki, offhandedly.
“Come on, don’t be like that. Let’s go have some lunch, shall we?”
“H-Hey. I said I’m not going... Don’t link arms with me!”
Hahaha. She was as predictable as always. Houki was the type of person you had to force into doing something they’d already wanted to do.
“What, you don’t want to walk? Want me to carry you?”
“Wh...!”
Houki turned red. Excellent! Now she was going to come with us whether she wanted to or not.
“L-Let go!”
“Once we’re at the cafeteria, I will.”
“L-Let go now! Nnah!”
Houki squirmed, and suddenly my arm was turned at the elbow. There was a sharp pain, and the next moment I was lying sprawled out on the floor.
“.........”
Ouch! There was a concentrated pain in my back, and the girls around us were staring in shock.
“You’ve gotten a lot better.”
“Hmph. I’d say you’ve gotten weaker— I only learned this on the side.”
She was probably the only girl in all of Japan who learned advanced martial arts “on the side.”
“U-Um...”
“We should...”
“I-I think I’ll stay here and eat...”
The girls I had gathered around us were dispersing like spider babies.
—Stay here, morons. I brought you along for Houki’s sake in the first place.
“.........”
I said goodbye to the floor and patted the dust off my clothes. Houki was turned the other way, as if to tell me that it wasn’t her fault.
“Houki.”
“D-Don’t use my first name. I told you this b—”
“Let’s go eat lunch.”
I took her by the hand and dragged her to the cafeteria.
“H-Hey! Stop this!”
“Just shut up and come with me.”
“Ngh...”
Houki didn’t talk back again, and followed me instead. I wish she’d done that from the beginning. Good grief.
We arrived in the cafeteria. It was super congested, but we managed to find a place where we could eat.
“Houki, you’ll eat anything, right? It doesn’t matter what’s on the table?”
“D-Don’t talk about me like a dog or a cat. I like some things more.”
“Hmm, I bought us two of today’s special from the ticket machine. That’s okay, right? Look, it’s grilled salmon.”
“Are you listening to me?!”
“Nope. Do you know how hard I worked to make that possible earlier? And you ruined it all. What if you can’t make friends now? Don’t you want friends in high school?”
“I-I’m fine... I didn’t ask you to do that!”
“I’m not saying you did—”
“Ah, excuse me. I’ll have two daily specials, please,” I told the lunch lady. “And I just turn these in here, right?”
I awkwardly handed the plastic chips in at the counter with my free hand, as my other was preoccupied with holding Houki down to keep her from running away. Her evasion stat was at least as high as a Cactuar’s.
“Listen, usually I wouldn’t do this even if someone asked me to. I’m doing this because of you, Houki.”
“What do you mean...”
“That’s obvious, right? Your family took care of us and we went to school together. We were friends. Let me do this for you.”
“.........”
Houki frowned and looked at the ceiling. She’d become a bit rebellious after moving with her family. Actually, she’d always been like that; Houki kind of drifted away from others when you didn’t pull her along.
“U-Um... Thank y—”
“Here ya go! Two daily specials,” proclaimed the lunch lady.
“Thanks. Whoa, this looks really good!” I replied.
“It’s not just good, it’s great!” roared the lunch lady, a smile across her face.
“Houki, do you see an empty table?”
“.........”
“Houki?”
I looked at her since she didn’t answer. She looked even angrier than usual.
“Over there.”
She shrugged off my hand, took her meal, and walked away. Why was she so angry again? I followed Houki and we sat down at a table.
“By the way...”
“Yes?”
Houki was eating her soup as she answered. I was attending to my salmon.
“Can you teach me something about the IS? I’m afraid I might lose next week at this rate.”
“It’s your own fault for agreeing to that ridiculous challenge, you idiot.”
—I guess that was true, but come on...
“Please, I’m begging you,” I implored, making a prayer gesture with chopsticks still in hand.
A man couldn’t back down from what he said he’d do. And if he said he was going to win, then win he would.
“.........”
Silence. She was ignoring me, and eating spinach cooked in soy sauce. How fearsome!
“Hey, Houki, I—”
“Hey, are you the one they’re all talking about?” asked a girl from nearby.
I looked at her. Based on the color of her ribbon, she looked to be about two grades higher: first year was blue, second yellow, third red. Her hair was kind of curly and easy to remember. She looked very likable, a bit like a squirrel. The contrast with my reticent childhood friend was startling, and I wasn’t too happy about that. I figured that two years didn’t just make you look more mature.
—See, Houki? That’s the kind of sociability you need.
“Yeah, probably.”
With effortless, natural movements she came and sat down next to me, and continued the conversation.
“Are you really going to battle a National Cadet?”
“Something like that.”
Man, rumors sure spread fast. If there were two things girls loved, it was gossip and bargain sales.
“You’re still new to all of this, right? How much seat time do you even have in an IS?”
“Uhh... Probably about twenty minutes.”
“That’s nowhere near enough. Seat time is really important, you know? And your opponent is a National Cadet? She probably has three hundred hours or more in one.”
I had no idea what kind of piloting time was good or bad, so that meant nothing to me. Either way, it was clear that I was going to lose to Cecilia if I didn’t do something.
“Say, want me to teach you about the IS? Hmm?”
She was edging ever closer to me, yet I still didn’t know her name. Wow. What a nice person. Definitely a lot better than a certain childhood friend of mine. Or, as the saying goes: When one door is shut, you enter through the window.
“Sure, I’ll gl—”
I wanted to say that I would gladly accept, but I was interrupted.
“We’re fine. I will teach him.”
Houki was still eating, but apparently talking again. And, apparently, she was going to teach me about the IS now.
“Aren’t you a first year, too? I would say I’m more experienced than you.”
“My sister is Shinonono Tabane,” said Houki, reluctantly.
She was determined to teach me, it seemed.
“Shinonono... What?!”
The other girl was completely dumbfounded. Well, the sister of the woman who invented the IS was sitting in front of her. Couldn’t blame her.
“As you can see, we will be fine.”
“I-I see... That’s too bad...”
Nothing less of a world-class genius’s... sister. Most people backed down at the mere mention of her name. The very nice older girl left, somewhat disappointed. Her gesture was very much appreciated, though.
“What?”
“Uh... Are you really going to teach me?”
“That’s what I said.”
Things would have gone more smoothly if she’d said that right off the bat. Either way, I had someone who was going to teach me how to pilot an IS. All that’s left to do is get to it.
“Today, after school.”
“Eh?”
“Come to the kendo hall. I’ll check whether your skills have dulled.”
“Hey, I thought we were learning about—”
“I will check your skills.”
“Fine...”
Why were all the girls I knew so stubborn? Perhaps that was the kind of star I’d been born under. Goodness gracious.
◇
“What’s with this?”
“I’m... not too sure myself.”
We were at the kendo hall together after school. There were a ton of spectators and Houki was understandably upset. We had barely fought for 10 minutes, and I had lost by a landslide.
Houki removed her helmet and glared at me.
“Why are you so weak?!”
“I was studying for the entrance exams.”
“Which club were you in in middle school?”
“The ‘Go Home’ club, where you go straight home after school. Won every tournament for three years.”
Actually, I was working a job to help our finances.
“I will correct this...”
“You’ll what?”
“I will train you! This is a more basic problem than the IS! We will train for three hours every evening!”
“Uh. That sounds like a bit much... I mean, what about the IS?”
“Like I said, this is a way more basic problem.”
Man, she was so angry at me. I had no idea what to say.
“This is sad. You lost to a girl at kendo... Are you not disappointed, Ichika?! This isn’t even about the IS yet, and look how you are!”
“I dunno, I guess I didn’t cut the best figure, huh?”
“‘Cut the best figure?’ You’re not in a position to worry about that! Or do you, uh... Do you enjoy being surrounded by all these girls?”
Snap. Enough was enough! There were limits, and Houki had finally gone too far.
“As if! They treat me like some rare animal! And this stupid school is even making me live together with a girl! I dunno what I did to—”
“A-Are you saying you have a problem with me being your roommate?!”
Bam! I barely managed to block her bamboo sword with mine.
—Step off, you idiot!
We weren’t wearing our kendo helmets anymore. The danger levels were real.
“C-Calm down, Houki. I don’t want to die yet, and I’m sure you don’t want to be a murderer, either. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, right?”
Houki was pressuring me with both arms while I was blocking her with only one. My right hand was trembling from fending her off, while my left pressed the helmet into my chest.
“Houki, please. I’ll buy you dinner, okay?”
“Hmph... Weakling.”
Houki dropped her stance, cast me a scornful look, and disappeared towards the changing room. I was relieved to have survived again. I felt like my life was a roller coaster.
—Good God...
Houki had gotten really strong. When we were young, I’d always won pretty easily. My hand was beginning to sting where Houki’s sword had struck; it was going to swell up.
“Did you see Orimura?”
“He’s pretty weak, huh?”
“Can he really control an IS?”
I could hear the disappointed mumbling among the spectators.
—Damn it...
There was nothing more pitiful than a man losing to a woman. But most of all, I was mad at myself— in the state I was in, I wasn’t going to be protecting anybody, let alone winning. I was feeling a kind of shock and disappointment that I rarely felt.
“Guess I’ll have to train again.”
When you’re at the absolute bottom of your abilities, there’s nowhere else to go but up, and I was as low as you could possibly get right now.
—All right, let’s do this. I refuse to lose.
◇
—Maybe I went a little too far?
I couldn’t shake these thoughts from my mind. My childhood friend, reunited with me after six years. When I looked at him, a part seemed to be the same as when he was a child, and another had grown up with age. It had made my heart beat so fast.
—N-No, what I said was fine. He let himself go. Clearly he hasn’t held a sword in over a year, otherwise he wouldn’t have lost to me so easily.
“.........”
Ichika had been really strong six years ago, and he was always just so cool.
—I-I mean, well... He l-looked cool doing it...
Ichika had matured a lot since then. As a kid he was rather bratty, but now he seemed a lot more... manly. Still, he let himself go. He should be ashamed of himself for losing so easily! Geez. The mere thought of that battle was upsetting.
What happened to him? He was super into kendo before. Had he just abandoned it? That’s not what a real man does! It’s said that if you stop practicing for three days, you lose a week of training— that described Ichika perfectly. It wasn’t just bad technique; his execution and situational awareness had deteriorated. Getting that back was going to take time. After all, they came as a result of many hours of training. Difficult to gain, easy to lose.
—But he also...
I pulled the towel off my hair and touched it. My hair was so long now that it almost reached my waist even when it was tied up. I was amazed that he had still recognized me.
—Six years...
We’d been only nine, then. Our bodies and our faces had changed and grown, but I was quite sure he had recognized me even before we had introduced ourselves.
“Hehe...”
Somehow, that made me very happy. I was only able to recognize Ichika because I saw his name in the news together with a picture; without it, I honestly wouldn’t have been able to tell it was him. He’d become so masculine!
—In fact, you could say he’s looking... handsome, now.
I almost dropped my teacup in disbelief when I first saw him on the news. Ichika said that he read about me winning the national kendo tournament in the newspaper, but there probably wasn’t a picture there. Still, he’d said he recognized me immediately. That made me happy, too.
—It’s a good thing I didn’t change my hairstyle...
I had kept it all this time with hopes that, someday, he would see me and recognize it.
—But it feels so awkward now, though, compared to when we were kids. At our age, boy and girls would start to...
“Hah...?!”
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but my reflection seemed a lot more bright-eyed than normal, almost like a different person.
“.........”
It didn’t make sense. I was the same as always, but not. Whatever. Now was not the time to worry about such things, when there were more important problems at hand. Time was of the essence.
—I-I’ll have to train him starting tomorrow after school. I need him to be at least average in skill.
Anything else would have been a disgrace. Truly unacceptable! I crossed my arms and nodded at my reflection.
—Besides... With this, Ichika and I would be alone together and...
“No! Th-That’s not what this is about!”
Right. There was absolutely no ulterior motive, none whatsoever. I’m pure. I’m only lamenting the lack of skill of a fellow student. And because he’s my fellow student, I need to look after him. Nothing weird about it at all!
“This is legitimate! LE-GI-TI-MATE!”
It was now the next Monday: the day of my battle with Cecilia had arrived.
“Hey, Houki.”
“Yeah, Ichika?”
After a week of living together, Houki and I had gone back to using each other’s first names. Perhaps the six years we hadn’t seen each other didn’t matter all that much? Things were good.
“Aren’t we forgetting something?”
“I don’t think so. Must be your imagination.”
No. One problem definitely remained.
“What happened to teaching me about the IS?”
“.........”
“Don’t... Ignore... Me... Now...”
A week had passed in which Houki had practiced kendo very diligently with me. The problem was that we hadn’t done anything else.
“Th-There was nothing we could do. Your IS unit hadn’t arrived yet.”
“I guess so— No! You could have at least taught me basic knowledge or something!”
“.........”
“I said... Don’t... Ignore... Me...”
Right. Apparently something had gone wrong with my unit and it hadn’t arrived yet. Yes, it still hadn’t arrived. What was keeping them?
“.........”
“.........”
Houki and I were silent.
“O-Orimura! Orimura! Orimura!”
She didn’t have to call me three times. Ms. Yamada was running over to us at the third arena, pit A. She always looked like she was about to sprawl out onto the ground with her unsteady running. It made me actively nervous. But this time, she was even less steady on her feet.
“Ms. Yamada, please calm down. Take a deep breath.”
“Y-Yes... Nnahhh... Nnahhh...”
“And now stop.”
“Mmn—”
I said that on a whim. Ms. Yamada stopped breathing. Her face was beginning to get red from lack of oxygen. She really didn’t understand when people were messing with her.
“.........”
“Pfwah! Do I have to hold my breath longer?”
Nah, I just forgot to tell her to stop.
“Don’t mess with your teachers, you moron.”
Bam!
I felt like something blew out my brains again. The pain wasn’t a big deal, maybe as much as the fizz of a soft drink, but the damage to my brain cells was no joke. Nothing less from Japan’s representative!
“Chifuyu...”
Wham!
“I told you, it’s Ms. Orimura. When are you going to learn? If you won’t learn, then die.”
I was hoping someone heard that. No teacher should talk like that. That right there was the reason she didn’t have a boyfriend, despite her good looks.
“Hmph. I could get married in a week if I didn’t have to take care of my idiotic little brother.”
Was she telepathic or something? I was no match for Chifuyu, in more ways than one.
“A-A-Anyway! It came! Your IS unit is here!”
—It’s here?
“Suit up, Orimura. We don’t have the arena forever, so I want you out on the field immediately.”
—Excuse me?
“Show me that real men can overcome obstacles as trivial as this, Ichika.”
—Wait a sec.
“Uh... Um... Err...”
“Go on already!”
Ms. Yamada, Chifuyu, and Houki were all egging me on. The women around me were all like that, among other things.
With a sharp metallic sound, the storage bay of the pit opened. The blast doors released diagonally, and as they drew apart, the area beyond slowly came into view: it was... white. Stark white, as far as the eye could see. The IS unit was so unadorned that it was almost blinding. And it stood there, armor plates open, waiting for a pilot.
“This is...”
“Yes! This is your personal IS unit, Byakushiki!”
My IS. It was an inorganic robot, and yet it seemed to be waiting for me. Waiting... forever... for... this... moment... Waiting... for... so... long...
“Hurry up! Get in the damn robot. We don’t have all day, you can format it and do the fitting in battle. If not, you lose. Got it?”
Urged on, I touched the pure, white IS.
“Huh?”
I didn’t receive the kind of electric shock I felt when I had touched the test IS unit. I only melted into it. Understood it; what it was, what it could do. I understood.
“Give yourself to it... Yeah. Like that. Like you’re sitting. The system will determine the best fit.”
I did as my sister said and leaned into my IS, Byakushiki. It caught me and enveloped my body in armor. There was a sizzling sound as air was expelled, and then I felt as though the unit had always been a part of me. I was connected to Byakushiki... It felt as though it had been made only for me, and me alone. I perceived the world around me more clearly, like the resolution was raised. All the sensors of the unit interfaced straight into my field of view, and I understood intuitively what they meant.
“Oh...”
[ENEMY UNIT DETECTED. PILOT: CECILIA ALCOTT. IS NAME: BLUE TEARS. COMBAT SPECIALIZATION: MID-RANGE FIRE. SPECIAL EQUIPMENT DETECTED.]
“It looks like the IS hypersensors are working properly. Do you feel all right, Ichika?”
Chifuyu looked to me like always, but I detected slight tremors in her voice. She was worried about me.
“I’m fine, Chifuyu. I can do this.”
“I see.”
She was relieved. The change in her voice was so faint that I wouldn’t have picked it up without the IS hypersensors.
—I probably would have. She used my first name for once.
I turned my attention to Houki. I didn’t have to look directly at her, though. Everything around me was visible through the IS.
“.........”
She looked like she wanted to say something, but didn’t quite know what it was. Under normal circumstances, insight at this level would be impossible.
“Houki.”
“Y-Yes?”
“I’ll be back.”
“O-Okay. Make sure you win.”
I nodded and went towards the gate to the pit. Byakushiki obeyed even the softest of my movements, and I drifted towards the gate.
Sssssss.
My thoughts were clear, but in the back of my mind Byakushiki was processing a vast amount of information. I could feel it trying to determine the optimal fitting for my body, and also initialize the formatting. With every passing second the armor layers changed and shifted—it rewrote its own software, and rearranged the hardware. The meters were displaying orders of a magnitude that I’d never seen before. Sadly, I didn’t have time to pay attention to background processes. The gate was going to open in 2.05718422 seconds, and the real battle would begin.
“Oh, you haven’t tried to run away, I see,” Cecilia cooed.
She had her arms on her hips again. It looked pretty good. That was none of my concern, though. That wasn’t what the hypersensors relayed to me.
Her light blue unit was named Blue Tears. It had four visually striking armored fins on the back. As a unit, it looked noble, similar to a royal knight. She carried a unique gun, more than two meters in length: a 67-caliber laser rifle called a Starlight Mk. III. Originally the IS were designed with outer space in mind, so levitation was part of its design. And due to the levitation, using large, unwieldy weapons wasn’t uncommon.
The arena had a diameter of 200 meters. The unit estimated that a shot would hit me 0.4 seconds after firing. The bell signaling the beginning of the battle had already rung. She could have fired at any moment.
“I will give you one last chance.”
She had one hand on her hip, the other pointed at me. The gun was in her left and still pointed at the ground.
“Last chance for what?”
“This battle has a foregone conclusion. If you don’t want to be crawling in the dirt by the end, I will let you off easy if you apologize!” she said, with the widest smile across her face.
[WARNING: ENEMY IS PILOT WEAPON-SAFETY DISENGAGED. LEFT-EYE LOCK-ON DETECTED.]
I could instantly process the information the IS was giving me, but so much of it flooded in at once that it was still almost overwhelming.
“Don’t act like there’s even a choice!”
“Is that so? Such a shame. Well, then—”
[WARNING: ENEMY IS PILOT FIRE-MODE ENGAGED. TRIGGER PULL AND ENERGY CHARGE DETECTED.]
“Goodbye!”
Wa—shiiing!
The sound of her shot pierced through the air. Immediately after, a bright flash raced squarely towards me.
“WHOA!”
Byakushiki’s auto-guard had, apparently, protected me. I’d been able to avoid a full hit, but the shot had blasted off a part of my left shoulder armor that was still in the process of recalculation. The delayed sonic boom slammed my left arm aside, and the IS unit transmitted a flash of pain to me as feedback. The IS’ automatic altitude control system pulled so many G-forces that it made my head spin, but they also kept me from blacking out. The constant jostling was stomach turning.
[BARRIER PENETRATED: 46 POINTS. SHIELD ENERGY REMAINING: 521. DAMAGE TO FRAME: MINIMAL.]
—Shit, I’m not keeping up with Byakushiki.
Generally, IS battles were over once the shield energy of one side had been drained to zero. However, if an attack penetrated the shield barrier, it could still damage the frame. That was unrelated to the remaining shield charge, but physical damage to the frame usually affected combat in some way.
By the way, all IS units were equipped with an “Absolute Defense” system that prevented the pilot from dying. Even taking extreme amounts of damage was only going to drain the shield, or so the textbook said; I wasn’t sure whether or not that was true. My shoulder armor had been blown off because the IS had decided that it wasn’t essential to my survival, and so the Absolute Defense system wasn’t activated.
“Now dance! Dance to the waltz of me, Cecilia Alcott, and Blue Tears!”
Another shot, and another, and another. They fell down on me like rain. All shots were the work of precision aiming, and simply holding on would only last for so long. Byakushiki bombarded me with sirens, alerting me to the fact that my shield was being whittled away.
“Don’t I have some kind of weapon?!” I yelled.
Byakushiki immediately displayed a list of my equipment to me.
—A list? No, there’s...
“There’s only one thing?”
All it showed was a “Close-Combat Blade.”
—Goddamn. Are you serious?
“Whatever, I’ll take it!”
Figuring that was better than fighting empty-handed, I called for the “Close-Combat Blade” to appear. [REAL NAME NOT SET.]
T—ching!
“Fighting a mid-range unit like mine with close-combat weapons is the height of foolishness!”
Cecilia attacked immediately. I was able to dodge her fire, but closing the 27 meter gap between us was a whole different story. I may as well have been on the other side of the planet. But—
“I have to try...!”
I couldn’t afford to pull back. The battle had begun.
“27 minutes. I’m amazed you held on. That’s impressive in and of itself.”
“Th... Thanks...”
My shield was down to 67, and the frame had taken considerable of damage. I could still fight and use my sword, but just barely.
“You’re the first one who’s managed to hold on for such a long time in their initial encounter with my ‘Blue Tears.’”
Cecilia patted the four autonomous weapons floating around her, like someone would pat a dog bringing back a Frisbee. The four fins on her back could separate and fire a short range BT laser, and were also apparently the source of the name “Blue Tears.”
More precisely, the floating guns were called “Blue Tears,” and so the IS frame carrying them into battle had assumed that name as well. Cecilia had talked a lot about it during the previous 27 minutes, even when nobody was listening (thanks for the lecture!).
“Well, let the curtain rise on the finale!” Cecilia jeered, thrusting out her right arm.
The “Blue Tears,” or “bits” as I called them, immediately spread out and surrounded me, having received their order.
“Ngh...!”
The bits above and below me started to glow and fired their lasers. At the same time, Cecilia fired her rifle at me, and I dodged or blocked the shots, just barely. That was the way it’d been going for a while now.
“I will shoot your left leg off!”
—No! I’d already lost my armor there, one more shot would trigger the Absolute Defense system.
The energy usage would have consumed all my shield charge, which meant that I would lose. All right, it was time for desperate measures.
“HAAAAAAAAAH!”
With a loud roar and a sharp flash, I took the IS unit to the limit and slammed into Cecilia head on. The impact threw off her aim and caused the final shot to miss.
“Wha— Nice moves, but you’re struggling in vain!”
Cecilia pulled back and thrust out her left hand. The bits floating around immediately began to fly at me.
—I see, so that’s how they work.
I flew through the barrage of lasers and swung at one of them. My sword cut through the heavy metal; a feeling of resistance transmitted to my hand. Blue lightning arched over the cut, and after a moment, the bit exploded: One down.
“What?!”
I swung my sword downwards at a shocked Cecilia.
“Tch...!”
Cecilia dodged backwards away from my blow, and thrust out her arm again. Bits No. 2 and No. 3 came flying at me.
“These weapons of yours don’t move unless you issue orders every single time! And what’s more...”
I predicted the movements of the bits and hacked the thruster off of bit No. 2.
“While you’re giving orders, you can’t attack! It requires all your focus to control them, isn’t that right?!”
“......!”
Cecilia’s eyes trembled. Bullseye!
Two bits were left. I could predict their movements. They always positioned themselves in such a way that my reactions would be delayed. The IS and its wide-area visual feed were flawless. However, I was still a human, and I couldn’t process things outside of my physical field of view as intuitively. It took me a few milliseconds more to understand the information the IS fed directly into my brain. Cecilia was banking on that.
On the other hand, that meant I could force them into specific locations. The logic was simple: abuse the fact that they would move according to my own movements. With that in mind I would be a step ahead, instead of behind.
—I can do this. I just gotta focus.
I clenched my right hand around the hilt of my sword; my time spent practicing with Houki was rushing back into me. Focus was both the art and the basis of sword fighting. My ability as a fighter may have dulled, but wasn’t gone just yet. I felt like the movements of my IS were becoming lighter, faster. I would have expected my unit to lose maneuverability due to frame damage, but the responsiveness was actually much better than it had been earlier.
—I just need to find a way to close the distance, and it’s all over.
Cecilia’s unit was, as she’d self-described, a mid-range one. Her large rifle wasn’t going to be very useful in close-combat, and at a glance, it didn’t seem like she had any more suitable equipment at her disposal. Perhaps all her close-combat equipment was on standby, but she’d still have to spend time getting it out. The path to victory was laid bare.
◇
“Wow... Orimura is really good...” Yamada Maya sighed, as she looked at monitors down in the pit.
Ichika was far better than one would expect of someone who was only using an IS for the second time. In contrast, Chifuyu was looking at the monitors with a foul mood.
“That moron. He’s getting cocky.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s been clenching his left fist. He always does that right before he makes a dumb mistake.”
“Hehehe... Siblings know each other so well. You pick up even on the little things.”
Maya was saying this as much to herself as to Chifuyu, but it took her aback.
“W-Well, uh... He’s kind of my brother...”
“Oh, are you turning pink? You’re turning pink!”
“.........”
Krrrkk. Chifuyu took her into a stranglehold.
“Ouuuchh...”
“I hate being made fun of.”
“O-Okay! Okay! I got it! Please let g— Ahhh!”
Houki paid Maya no heed and simply watched the monitors. Her expression was very stern.
“.........”
She didn’t put her hands together and pray or anything like that. She wasn’t that kind of person. That, in a way, was the reason why her expression was so complex.
“Ichika...”
Houki bit her lip just as the battle was at a turning point.
◇
—I got her now!
I closed the distance to Cecilia and destroyed bit No. 3. Then, with the anti-gravity system of the IS, I made a roundhouse kick for bit No. 4. Cecilia wasn’t going to be able to aim her gun at me in time. I was sure I could get a hit in on her.
“Got you,” Cecilia smiled.
—Shit!
All my instincts were screaming. Immediately I tried to get some distance between us, but it was too late.
Whirrr!
The skirt-shaped armor plates retracted from Cecilia’s waist, and two objects moved from underneath.
“I’m sorry, but there are six ‘Blue Tears!’”
I wasn’t going to be able to dodge them. They weren’t like the bits that fired lasers. These were missiles.
KA-BOOM! I was enveloped in the red and white flames of the explosion.
◇
“Ichika!” Houki yelled, at the monitor.
Chifuyu and Maya had also forgotten their fight and were looking at the fire and smoke on the monitors.
“Hmph.”
When the smoke cleared, Chifuyu snorted. Still, she looked relieved.
“Guess the unit saved that idiot.”
The last clouds of smoke drifting across the screen were cleared away. And at the center of the screen stood the unit in pure white— its true form revealed.
◇
[FORMATTING AND FITTING COMPLETE. PLEASE PRESS TO CONFIRM.]
—Wh-What?
Data streamed into my consciousness. A window appeared in front of my eyes; at the center of it was a button that simply said “Confirm.” I pressed it, not really understanding what it would do, and another flood of data went into my brain. Or, more strictly speaking, rearranged it for me. I understood it intuitively, and the changes were immediate.
Shiiiiiing.
There was a noise of metallic high-frequency. It sounded gentle, almost soothing. In the space of an instant, the IS that enveloped me— no, the IS that was me— dissolved into particles of light and reformed itself.
“This is...”
When it had taken shape again, the armor plates glimmered faintly. All the damage I had sustained was gone. And more so, the IS now looked a lot more advanced and refined.
“N-No way! Was that the First Shift? D-Did you really fight me on default settings?!”
The window earlier had told me that formatting and fitting were complete. So, that was what that meant. With that, the unit was finally, truly, mine. I looked at the IS again. All the rough industrial finish had disappeared, replaced by clean surfaces and sharp lines that reminded me of medieval armor.
What had changed the most was my weapon.
My close-combat blade now had a name: Yukihira Nigata.
Its shape reminded me of a katana, but it was more strongly curved, and had a thicker blade. There was a shallow fuller in the back through which light pulsated like a human breath; it looked strikingly mechanical, in a way. Any onlooker would know exactly that it was custom-made for an IS.
—Yukihira...
That had been the name of my sister’s sword for her own IS, and now I wielded that name as my own. Yukihira Nigata.
—Is this an upgraded version of my sister’s weapon? Oh, man. Everything keeps reminding me of her.
“I have the best sister in the world!”
That had been the case 3 years before that, 6 years before that, and probably all 15 as well. My sister was the best. Still, I didn’t want her to support me forever. It was time I took a stand.
“I’m going to take care of my family now.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“And to start with, I’m going to make sure Chifuyu’s name is well-remembered!”
I was the brother of the former national representative. If I messed up, it was going to reflect poorly on her. She’d always looked amazing at whatever she’d done. I had to make sure that survived. My resolve was set.
“It’s kinda funny, isn’t it?”
“What on Earth have you been talking about? Argh, let’s just end this now!”
Cecilia sent the missile pods she’d revealed towards me. They spread out to surround me again. Their speed was much faster than the laser bits, but not fast enough.
—I can see them!
I clenched my right fist. I could feel the weight of Yukihira, and hear the sound of its mechanisms. I knew how to use it. I’d seen my sister use it countless times, even though she hadn’t wanted me to. Her movements were seared into my memory.
Bzzzm!
A horizontal slash. The bit was split clean in two, swept aside by my IS, and exploded behind me. Before the blast wave reached me, I was already speeding away towards Cecilia. The unit’s acceleration and sensor resolution was orders of magnitude better than before. It was far easier to control as well.
“RAAAAHH!”
I could feel that the energy density in my hand had increased. Glowing particles coated Yukihira like a sheath, its power now measures higher than before.
—I can do this!
I swung the sword upwards in a decisive slash, aimed directly at Cecilia’s abdomen.
But before the sword connected, a buzzer rang out.
“Battle over. Winner: Cecilia Alcott.”
—Huh?
“What...?”
I wasn’t sure what had happened. Cecilia was directly in front of me, her mouth was open. She was just as confused as I.
The same went for the audience in the third arena, for Houki, and for Ms. Yamada in the control room. The only one who wasn’t surprised was Chifuyu.
The battle ended. And I had lost.
◇
“Nice speech earlier. All that talk, and you still end up like this? You’re an enormous idiot.”
The battle was over. My sister upgraded me from idiot to enormous idiot, not a promotion I was happy about. Not like my sister would ever have demoted me on the idiocy scale.
“That happened because you used your weapon without knowing what it does. Now you know how that turns out. Starting tomorrow, you need to train properly. Pilot your IS when you have time. Got it?”
“Okay...”
All I could muster was a nod. It was pretty sad to lose after such a dramatic speech.
“Now then, the IS unit is on standby, but we can give it to you anytime you request it. Still, rules are rules, so you will have to read this. Here.”
Slam!
It seemed to generate its own gravitational field. The book’s cover said “IS Rulebook,” but it would have put a telephone directory to shame. It was incredibly fat, and the pages were flimsy and thin.
“That is all for today. Go home and rest.”
There was no softness in her command. I really hoped she’d learn that the stick is meaningless without a carrot. Besides, was there any reason for me to try and take care of her?
“Let’s go.”
Oh, there she was. The second victim of clinical love deficiency. Her name was Houki, my childhood friend.
We walked in the direction of the dorms; the fatigue had started to set in.
“.........”
“Wh-What?”
We were walking side by side and Houki had been looking at me for a while, like I was some kind of rare monster.
“Loser.”
—Ugh. Give me a break, Houki.
She was like some priest resurrecting adventurers with 1 HP at the cost of a fortune, and sending them into the dungeon without equipment. Don’t they say that humans are the real demons? Well, you could say I knew a demon myself.
You know that thing they do in chapters where shit hits the fan: Your old enemy comes back as your ally, your old ally turns out to be the evil mastermind, and the fate of the world rests on your shoulders.
—No... F-F...
“FIND SOMEONE ELSE!”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
I said it out loud because it was so important, but if I’d known that Houki would glare at me, I wouldn’t have. All the really important things in life can’t be seen— some dead writer said that.
“Today, April 9th, Houki has glared at me, so let this day henceforth be known as ‘Houki Day.’”
“Are you ridiculing me right now?”
“Nooope.”
“That sounded sarcastic.”
“Nooope. See, sounds normal. They always say it like that in South America.”
“Hmph...”
Houki drew her bamboo sword. What, practicing out on campus grounds? How diligent. Rest is also important if you want to train, Houki. Just jumping around all the time doesn’t do much good.
Bam!
“Hey! What was that for?!”
“There was a moron who needed to be smacked.”
She said that like someone would say “It was raining, so I used an umbrella.” Violence was creeping into our daily life. Where was the government when you needed it?
“Are you, like, the slasher in town? Our next tyrant?”
“Want another strike?”
“No, I’m sorry. I’ll shut up.”
Houki nodded and put away her bamboo sword. She was scarier than Mount Doom. Then again, I guess Mount Doom itself wasn’t very scary.
“.........”
“.........”
Houki and I walked in silence for a while. It wasn’t like we had nothing to talk about, but I was still angry at myself for having lost and couldn’t bring myself to talk to her.
In times like these, I just wanted to take a bath. At some point I’d told Gotanda that lying in a bathtub is super chill and lets you forget everything, but he told me that was something only old men do. The guy had no goddamn taste for the finer things in life.
—Ah, but the girl next to me is basically the embodiment of the finer things in life...
Houki would probably understand what I meant. If you told foreigners that she was a time-traveler from the Edo period, 6 out of 10 would believe it. —Source: Personal Investigations
“Ichika.”
“Hm? Yeah?”
Whoa, she struck up a conversation first. Was this the fabled telepathy? It was coming in handy. Much better than a cell phone for sure, and there was no monthly charge. Truly amazing.
“Um, are you... upset you lost?”
“Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I be upset?”
“O-Okay... All right...”
What was she talking about? That it was all right that I lost? Wow, she was a cruel girl.
“S-Starting tomorrow... Yeah. We’ll have to practice with the IS.”
Houki continued, and looked strangely distant. Maybe not distant, but fidgety.
“So, are you going to teach me how to pilot it? Properly?”
“I-I’m not going to force you. Maybe you should ask your sister instead.”
“No, I don’t want Chifuyu to teach me. Besides, that’d look like favoritism, wouldn’t it?”
“Y-You could also ask one of the third year girls to teach you. Experience is important.”
For someone who’d been dodging this exact topic earlier, Houki was sure debating it a lot now. And why was she glancing over at me all the time, like she was expecting something of me?
“Okay, if you don’t want to do it then I can ask someo—”
“I-I’m not saying I don’t want to!” Houki exclaimed.
Apparently she realized how aggressive she was being, and changed her posture.
“I-I, um... Ahem. Do you want me to teach you, Ichika?”
“Yeah, I do.”
It would definitely be better than some other girl teaching me. I also figured she knew a lot about the IS since she was Tabane’s sister.
“O-Okay... I see. I see. All right. Hehe. Fine, then.”
Houki looked quite happy suddenly.
—Was it something I said...?
She was so happy, she was running her fingers through her long ponytail.
“All right. Then I will teach you. As an exception.”
She emphasized that last part. Well, I was thankful of it regardless. If I lost to a girl again, that would have killed my pride as man, though it was already half dead from the previous battle anyway. I’d be a zombie in no time.
“Okay. Make sure you have time after school tomorrow. Got it?”
“Right.”
I wasn’t going to join a club anyway because there were no guys in them, so that was fine with me. I’d embarrassed my sister Chifuyu: that made me more upset than anything. I had to become stronger.
“By the way, Houki.”
“Hm? Yeah?”
Oh, she was in a good mood. I decided to just throw the question I’d been wanting to ask at her straight away.
“Did you have to go to the bathroom, or something, earlier?”
Bam! The bamboo sword had struck right between my eyes.
◇
Fssshh.
The showerhead spread warm water across her body; droplets broke on her skin and slid slowly down her frame.
Cecilia had always been proud of the elegant beauty in which her body’s well-balanced proportions were arrayed. Her legs were long, seductive and well-shaped; easily able to compete with models, and more beautiful than most of them.
Her breasts were somewhat modest compared to those of other white girls her age, but since they also emphasized the curves of her body more, she could accept them. On the other hand, compared to a Japanese girl’s, her breasts were quite large.
The water ran down her chest as she stood still, lost in thought.
—That battle...
She still didn’t know why Ichika’s shield energy suddenly had hit zero. Who knows what would have happened if that final attack had connected? Cecilia was always confident in her ability and wanted to improve her skills, but the uncertainty over what had transpired made her very unhappy.
—I won, but...
She didn’t understand it. There was no enjoyment to be had.
—Orimura... Ichika...
She thought back on that man... The flames of determination in his eyes. An unwillingness to desist, the burning desire to succeed. Cecilia was suddenly reminded of her father, as a stark contrast.
—My father was always waiting for my mother to tell him what to do...
He had married into an important family, and must have felt vastly inferior to her mother. From the time she was very small, Cecilia had been looking at her father, determined not to marry a weak man like him. And after the IS was invented, her father had become even more servile and slavish. This had begun to frustrate her mother, and she developed a habit of refusing to talk to him.
“.........”
Her mother had been a strong woman. One who had found success in society, even before women had begun to completely dominate men, and had her own company. She had been strict and austere. Cecilia had always looked up to her as an ideal.
Yes— in the past. Her parents were no longer. They had died in an accident three years prior.
At that time, they had been living apart already. Cecilia didn’t know why they were together on that day. There had been numerous conspiracy theories around their deaths, but they didn’t match up to the circumstances: a train had vaulted off the tracks. It was a huge tragedy, and more than a hundred had been killed or injured. And just like that, her parents had disappeared. Time had passed quickly afterward.
Her parents had left her a very large inheritance. She had spent a lot of time learning how she could protect it from the vultures. As part of her efforts, she had received an A+ on the IS aptitude test. The government had offered extensive privileges to entice her to keep her nationality, and she had accepted immediately. It had been the easiest way for her to protect her inheritance. She had been picked as the first-generation test pilot of the third-generation IS, Blue Tears. To gather combat experience and test data, she had come to Japan.
And here... She had met him, Orimura Ichika. That strong man she had dreamed of.
“Orimura Ichika...”
She tried saying it. She could feel her chest tightening. Her heart pounded as she ran her fingers over her beautiful lips, which droplets of water rested upon. Her lips seemed to want to be touched, and it excited her.
“.........”
It was a sweet, warm feeling, full of happiness and longing. Her curiosity was piqued. What was that torrent of emotion that filled her chest the moment she paid attention to it? She wanted to know more: what this was, and what it would lead to. She wanted to know more... About Ichika.
“.........”
She ran the water in the shower for a while longer.
◇
The next morning there was a short homeroom again. The impossible had happened.
“Well then, the representative for Class 1-A will be Orimura Ichika. Ah, it’s good we got this sorted out.” Ms. Yamada went on, happily.
The girls in the class also seemed very happy. I was the only one who made a gloomy face. The only damn one.
“Teach, I got a question.”
I raised my hand. That was the proper way to do it. The fundamental way.
“Yes, Orimura?”
“I lost the battle yesterday, yet now I’m class rep anyway. What gives?”
“Well...”
“I pulled out of the race!”
Cecilia had stood up and put her hands on her hips. It looked good, and— Okay, anyway. Why had she pulled out? And she looked kinda psyched about it, which didn’t really make sense to me. She’d been so angry until then, and now she looked positively happy? It was strange.
“Well, you did lose the battle, but that was really never in question. After all, your opponent was I, Cecilia Alcott! Nothing else could be expected.”
I had no words to say to that. I lost, after all.
“You see, I’m regretting that I was so childishly angry.”
—You what?
“I have decided to let you be the representative... Ichika. Combat experience trains an IS pilot like nothing else. It seems to me you need this experience more than I do.”
What a mixed blessing this was.
—Did she just use my first name? Nah, can’t be.
“You really get it, Cecilia!” someone cheered.
“Exactly! We’ve got the only man in the world who can pilot. We have to support him!”
“We’ll learn a lot of great things, and we can sell the info to the other classes. Orimura is the gift that keeps on giving!”
—Hey, I don’t remember agreeing to becoming a commodity.
“Alas!”
Cecilia cleared her throat and put a hand on her chin. This was a different pose from before. I wondered what it meant? It probably meant something, but I wasn’t sure what.
“As you can see, I am a superior, elegant, beautiful— nay, perfect human being. If I teach you the ways of the IS, then surely success is just around the corn—”
Wham!
Houki slammed her hand on the table and stood up.
“Sadly, the position of Ichika’s teacher is filled. He asked me to do it himself.”
There was a strange amount of emphasis on the word “me.” Houki glared with a rare level of hostility towards Cecilia.
—You’re going to freak her out if you look at her like that...
A week ago Cecilia would have pulled back from the engagement, but not now. She answered Houki’s gaze in kind. If anything, she looked a little prideful.
“Oh, aren’t you the C-ranked Shinonono-girl? Is there anything you have to say to an A-rank like me?”
“Th-The rank doesn’t matter! He asked me! I-Ichika said that it has to be me!”
That was a lie.
“Wait, you’re Rank C, Houki?”
“The rank doesn’t matter!”
She got really mad. I was Rank B, apparently. However, the rank was based on the training unit, and Chifuyu had told me not to pay it too much heed.
“Sit down, you idiots.”
Chifuyu walked over to Cecilia and Houki and hit them both on the head. Of course Japan’s former representative, and the first world champion, wasn’t afraid of anything. Both of them sat down, saddened.
—You could say, satened. Hahaha.
Wham!
“Wipe that grin off your face, you idiot.”
She was hitting us with the attendance record, by the way. I’m sure my sister Chifuyu didn’t know it, but the binding of the record was quite hard. If my sister didn’t, I certainly did.
“Your ranks are worth nothing. The way I see it, you’re all green behind the ears. Like chicks inside the eggs; trying to break through, but still putting on airs.”
I could see Cecilia wanted to say something back to Chifuyu, but she didn’t.
“I told you all the National Cadets need to study just like everyone else. People say that teenagers have to be allowed their immature fights, but I’m the one in charge here, and I won’t have that nonsense.”
I never knew that Chifuyu was such a strict person at work. It surprised me. I’d only ever known her as the person who grumbled over too much salt in the soup. Now that I was living in the dorms, how was my sister getting by?
—I should visit her this weekend.
Was the place even occupied? Was she doing her laundry properly? I was always in charge of doing it for her. If only she would at least put her underwear into the laundry bags herself— they always ended up damaged when they found their way into the main laundry, and that would usually upset Chifuyu.
—At least do that much, Ms. Respectable Member of Society.
Wham!
“You were thinking about something rude, weren’t you?”
“I-I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh.”
Wham! Bam!
“I’m sorry!”
“Good.”
Virtuous citizens, subjected to endless abuse. What a cruel world we lived in.
“The class representative is Orimura Ichika. I believe there are no objections?”
The entire class yelled excitedly in agreement. The needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few; I just wished it would take my side for once.