Ichihime Yukariki─Hime-chan─had apparently been hiding under the teacher’s desk.
“That’s not much of a hiding place… If someone opened the door and went left, you’d be in full view.”
“Precisely. That’s precisely why no one would thinks to look there. Even you went for the ‘obvious’ choice of the locker first, Master. Now do you see?”
“…”
“What’s wrong, Master?”
“Nothing.”
After our opening skirmish was over, we introduced ourselves, at which point Hime-chan insisted in a loud voice, “Call Hime-chan ‘Hime-chan’!” Well, a name is just a signifier anyway, so I acquiesced, but the problem was with what Hime-chan wanted to call me.
Master.
This wasn’t even anachronistic. It was just that “If you’re a friend of Ms. Jun’s, then to Hime-chan you’re something like a master!” What this meant was strikingly unclear to me. And since she said, “something like,” it didn’t feel remotely respectful. In fact, I felt like she was making fun of me.
“So, that’s how I ended up coming to get you out of here… I was told you’d provide the details.”
“Hmmm. That’s a toughie…” Hime-chan folded her arms and acted very much like she was deep in thought. “We don’t have much times, plus Hime-chan’s no good at explanations. First thing firsts, shouldn’t we get out of here?”
“…Uh huh.” Her response left something to be desired (or maybe it would be more accurate to say her brain left something to be desired), so I wasn’t exactly satisfied, but maybe Hime-chan was right. We couldn’t leave Aikawa waiting around outside forever. “You’ll need your student ID to get out through the front gate, do you have it with you?”
“I does.”
In which case she could’ve just escaped on her own. I turned this doubt over in my mind once more. But I got the sense there’d be no point in asking Hime-chan about it. As far as I could determine from the five minutes of conversation we’d had thus far, I couldn’t expect a straight answer out of her. My first impression of Hime-chan was basically of “a girl who speaks bad Japanese.”
“Okay then… Shall we?”
“Comiiing!” Hime-chan circled around behind me like a puppy. Given previous events, this put me on my guard, but this time I didn’t feel anything poking me in the back. “Let’s vamoooose!”
Shaking my head at her misplaced cheerfulness and enthusiasm, I exited the Year 2, Class A homeroom. “Keep quiet so we don’t draw attention to ourselves,” I cautioned Hime-chan, then took off down the hall. All I had to do now was retrace my steps, easy breezy. I couldn’t imagine what if any obstacles could be lying in wait for us, and it seemed like my duties would be discharged all too soon. I was thrilled it’d been so easy, but I started to feel bad for Aikawa. Like, was this really sufficient to constitute payback for everything I owed her?
“By the way, Hime-chan, how do you know Aikawa?”
“Ahhh!” She shrieked without any regard for our situation and pointed her finger at me. “Don’t do that, Master! If you calls Ms. Jun by her last name she’ll be angry!”
“So what… No, I mean, it’s fine. She’s not even here. Anyway, what’s your relationship with Jun?”
“Let’s seeee. She came to my rescues, back when that photograph you have was taken. That was five years ago now. Boy, that really takes me back.” Once again disregarding the circumstances, Hime-chan closed her eyes and gave herself over to nostalgic reminiscence. “So I guess she’s like my benefactor. Teeheehee, Hime-chan is even ready to die at Ms. Jun’s command. Though of course that’s proof of my faith that Ms. Jun would never do that, and it definitely doesn’t mean I want to die. But what about you, Master, what’s your relationship with Ms. Jun?”
“Friends, just friends. We’re just good friends.”
Repeating it three times only served to make it sound less convincing, and with a “Hmm?” Hime-chan cocked her head ever so slightly. But that tepidly truthful answer was all I had on hand. Me and Aikawa’s relationship─I’d never given it any serious thought. We’d met more or less by chance, and she’d gotten me to help her with her work, messed around with me, bullied me a bit for good measure, and that was about it.
But never mind repaying her debt of gratitude to Aikawa, Hime-chan was compounding it, so I was confounded. Dammit, why couldn’t she just take a page out of my book?
As we were about to descend the stairwell, two students came up it. A pair of girls. Uh oh, better be careful. Time to wrap up the conversation and casually walk on by without catching their eye─
“THERE SHE IS!” yelled one of the girls, instantly scattering all of my thinking to the four winds. Her finger pointed right through me at Hime-chan, where she stood behind my back. Before I could turn and say anything to her, Hime-chan grabbed my left arm and headed up the stairs instead. Dragging me along behind her─being dragged along by a tiny high school girl is a seriously uncool look, but I didn’t have time to worry about that at the moment. She was yanking me forward, and, still clueless as to what was going on, I began racing up the stairs after her, almost as if we were fleeing from those two students.
As if we were fleeing─which is to say, we were. The two girls were chasing after us, pounding along behind us at an astonishing speed. I didn’t know why Hime-chan had run from them, nor what their rationale for chasing us was, but at this rate they were bound to catch up to us sooner or later.
─There she is!
That made it sound like they’d been looking for Hime-chan. This job of Aikawa’s was a “search and rescue” but─was this somehow connected? No, no time to worry about that. Right now we were on the lam. The most important thing when you’re running away is to keep ahead of your pursuers, it’s as simple as that. And Hime-chan, who was leading the way, was not what you would call fleet of foot. By which I mean she was slow. Really fucking slow. Which makes sense, seeing as her stride was no more than half the length of the average person’s.
“Sorry ’bout this.” I sped up and pulled alongside Hime-chan, then put my arm around her waist and pulled her up into my arms.
“Kwaah!”
Hime-chan let out a strange shriek, but I didn’t pay it any mind. She was just as light─lighter─than she looked. This much of a burden wouldn’t even constitute a handicap─in fact, letting this burden run ahead of me would be a much greater one. I continued accelerating, and succeeded at shaking off the two girls who were after us. Or rather, they didn’t seem to have a particularly strong desire to chase us, and at some point during my blind sprint through the school, I realized there was no longer anyone behind us.
“I think we cans stop now,” Hime-chan said, still suspended at my side, so I stopped running and set her down. I looked around but didn’t recognize where we were. Which was perhaps only natural, after all that racing around. Seemed like I was going to have to consult the map of this school I supposedly attended after all, there was no helping it.
“Phew.” I’d gone on that mad dash without any warm-up, and my heart was beating so hard it made my ribcage shake. I wasn’t tired, but I needed to rest. “Though sitting down in the hallway seems like a bad idea. Let’s try that classroom.”
“Okay,” Hime-chan nodded obediently. “Still, you’re a lot stronger than you look, Master.”
“Nah, not really. You’re just light, Hime-chan.” I sat down on the teacher’s desk. “So, what was…that? Hime-chan, are you by any chance on the lam?”
“I am, yes.” Another obedient little nod, for crying out loud. “Didn’t you knew that? Right now Hime-chan is on the school’s most wanted list. That’s why I need your helps?”
She had the tone of someone explaining some self-evident logic to a child, but I wasn’t listening. Well, now those girls’ reaction made sense. If they’d “found” someone who was on the wanted list, it was only natural.
Did the fact that she wasn’t being confined simply mean that she wasn’t being confined “yet”? Then Hime-chan hadn’t been hiding under the desk as a malicious prank to scare me. Had the students I passed on my way to Year 2, Class A also been searching for her? It sure hadn’t seemed like it, but…interesting. So that’s why she needed me to rescue her. At present, it was impossible for Hime-chan to escape the academy on her own.
“What the hell… You’ve gotta tell me that kind of thing up front. If you had, I might’ve been able to come up with some kind of plan… As it is, we just waltzed right up to them and gave ourselves away.”
“But you seemed so confident about getting Hime-chan out of here, Master, I assumed you must’ve had some kinds of secret plan up your sleeves.”
“…” Was this my fault? Well, in some overarching sense maybe it was. “Forget about that. Listen, Hime-chan, did you do something bad? The most wanted list, being on the lam─it sounds pretty serious.”
“Uhhh,” groaned Hime-chan. “It isn’t really. Though it might seems like it to them. I don’t know.”
“Are you maybe being bullied?”
No matter what novel angle you might try to observe her from, Hime-chan didn’t seem like the type to get bullied, but you can’t judge a book by its cover. At this kind of princess prep school, who knows, I thought, but that was just prejudice talking.