Beat It, Master! – Part 01

A winter day well into mid-January. I was alone in my room, sprawled on the floor, setting up a plastic model.

My classmate, Orito, had suggested I try it to pass the time.

At first, I couldn’t see the point of assembling figures just to display them. But once I started fussing over the cityscape and the poses, the hours slipped away.

I was figuring out where to place a model from Full Metal Panic! in a miniature Hong Kong I’d built.

All right, this works. After agonizing over the arrangement, I finally decided on a placement and snapped a picture of Hong Kong City with my digital camera.

So cool. The mechs from Full Metal Panic! really were awesome.

“Hey, Ayumu? I wanna borrow some manga.”

A girl interrupted my immersion. She had shoulder-length brown hair, wore a camisole and shorts, and was barely 145 centimeters tall. The