“Bullied… I only wish.”
I didn’t know what that meant. In fact, I even got the impression Hime-chan was being evasive. It was almost as if…she was trying to look out for me, like, you’re better off not knowing.
“There’s…something strange about this school. I already knew it was special…but it’s more than that. Hime-chan. Think you can give me a proper explanation?”
“Well, to put it simply, it’s a high school.”
Too simple.
“But, let me ask you, Master. How much…do you ‘already know’ abouts this school?”
“Aikawa asked me that too.”
I told her exactly what I’d told Aikawa. Hime-chan listened and nodded saying, “Is that all?” just like Aikawa had. Apart from the cloud that crossed her face, that is.
“Okay, Master, do you know anyone…or does anyone you know know anyone, or no, it doesn’t matter if you know them, but have you ever heard of a single person passing the entrance exam for this school?”
“Hm? Um…no─I guess I haven’t.”
“Pardon me for interrupting before you can says, ‘That’s just a coincidence’─but then, do you know of any alumnae─that is, do you know a single person who’s graduated from this academy?”
“That’s─uhhhh…uh?”
Weird. I couldn’t think of a single person. No─that couldn’t be true.
Sumiyuri Academy makes up a massive portion of the recommendation quota for famous colleges not only in Japan but around the world, it’s a super-elite preparatory school, so naturally there should be tons of Sumiyuri alumnae among the prominent people in various fields.
Should be─and yet, I couldn’t think of a single one? Was that─could that really be a coincidence?
“Now do you see?” asked Hime-chan. “No one matriculates and no one graduates─that kind of high school isn’t a normal high school, is it?”
“But Sumiyuri is─”
“Huh?” Hime-chan looked genuinely surprised, but she quickly recovered herself. “Oh right, Sumiyuri─that’s the name of this school, isn’t it. I’d forgetten. Now that you mention it, the ‘teachers’ do call it that─that’s not what Hime-chan and the other ‘students’ calls this place, though.”
“Then…what do you call it?”
“‘Hang ’Em High’…”
I was struck dumb by the extreme masochism of that moniker.
A school.
A locked-room, closed-shop organization that maintains a level of secrecy and insularity it would be no stretch to call fastidious. Impossible to guess from the outside what might be going on inside. And once you append the modifiers “preparatory” and “for the princess set,” it becomes that much more untouchable. In other words, it’s no easy thing to shine a light on its internal activities, no matter what they might be─was that the deal?
What─the hell had Aikawa asked me to do?
I had the creeping feeling that I’d gotten dragged into an outrageous, outlandish situation. Seemed like I’d stepped knee deep in shit again without even realizing it.
“Uhhh.” Groaning a little, Hime-chan whipped up the tip of her finger, then snapped it back to its original position. The motion seemed to be a habit of hers. “We’re screwed, isn’t we. Hime-chan should’ve known better. I assumed Ms. Jun must’ve told you at least that much─”
There seemed to have been a crossed wire in the information relay. But it was nothing to blame Hime-chan for. No one would expect the person who came to break them out─and it did clearly seem to be a breakout─to be a rank amateur like myself. To insist they should have would be ridiculous.
“But why didn’t Aikawa tell me any of this… Without knowing it, how could I complete my mission?”
Yeah, Jun Aikawa was the one to blame.
Ms. Negligence bore full responsibility.
“Hmm. But I don’t think Ms. Jun thought it would be such a big job. Hime-chan kind of blew it on the way to the rendezvous point, so they’re a lot hotter on my trail than Ms. Jun was expected. And now they’ve discovered that I gaved them the slip and hid. We can’t stay in this classroom forever, either.”
“Can you get in touch with Aikawa? You must’ve contacted her to set up the meeting, at least.”
“When I got in touched her before they weren’t after me yet. So I just used the phone in the dorm.”
“Oh…”
It wasn’t that she wanted to escape the academy because they were after her; they were after her because she was trying to escape the academy─was that it? But that would mean this place was like a prison. Or maybe forget about the like part.
“I see what we’re up against…” I didn’t, I still didn’t understand the situation at all. What I grasped was that this was no ordinary school─that it was an abnormal place, neither preparatory school nor princess factory. “Abnormal… It’s certainly starting to seem that way.”
But if that was the case─then we were in my wheelhouse. Things had definitely not panned out the way I’d expected, but whether or not this was a sinking ship, it was the ship we were on, for sure.
“I guess we have no choice,” Hime-chan said. “Let’s keep hiding in here for now while we come up with a plan. This calls for a careful considerations. There’s nothing to worry about. If Hime-chan and Master can’t get ourselves outs of here, I’m sure Ms. Jun will come and save us. She’s soft on her friends, after all, she’d never abandon us.”
“Did you say, keep hiding?” I asked with my back to her, having gotten down from the desk and walked over towards the window. “That’s ass backwards─hiding would be a bad idea precisely because we’ve been found out. They already know we’re in this building. We have to take immediate countermeasures.”
I opened the window wide. Then, picking up a desk, I brought it over and threw it out. Having fled there blindly I didn’t know what floor we were on, but it definitely seemed to be pretty high up, and it took a few seconds before I heard the sound of the desk smashing on the ground below. Unconcerned, I took the chair that had gone with the desk, as well as the desk behind it, and threw them both out the window as well.
“Wh-What are you doing?!” Hime-chan launched herself at me and clung to my waist. “That’s super ridiculously conspicuous! It’s like you’re begging them to come get us!”
“I just turned nineteen this past March─” I stopped after the sixth desk and broke Hime-chan’s meaninglessly light hold on me. “And all I’ve thought about for those nineteen years was how to outsmart people. How do I get away from other people? All I’ve thought about has been how to escape. I don’t know what the deal with this place is─but no ‘place’ is gonna keep me from getting away.”
There was still no one in the vicinity of the pile of smashed chairs and desks on the ground far below us. But it was unthinkable that no one had noticed that much noise─and of course the ones looking for Hime-chan must’ve heard it. In which case they would naturally have to search the classrooms on a direct trajectory from the pile of debris. Which would include this classroom, but a lot of other classrooms as well. Lead them on a merry chase along the path we’d taken here by intentionally leaving footprints everywhere we went─too much evidence, a vast array of clues; that was more or less my strategy.
“Now, it’s dangerous here, so let’s go.”
“Okay. But Hime-chan almost never comes to this parts of the school─so I don’t really know which ways to go.”
“That’s fine, my map─” I felt around in my pocket. “…is gone.” Not only that, the photo of Hime-chan was gone too. Only my fake student ID was still there in the breast pocket of my uniform. I must’ve dropped the rest somewhere during the chase. What the hell. After all that big talk, I stumbled at the starting line. “Well, we came up, so if we go down we should be able to get out of the building. And if we can get out of the building, I’m sure we can figure something out from there.”
“That’s a pretty half-baked plan.” Hime-chan sounded incredulous. “But you’re more optimistical than I expected, Master. I’m surprised.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I mumbled vaguely. I’m not an optimistic person, of course. An optimistic person wouldn’t spend nineteen years thinking up ways to fool people. If possible, I, too, would’ve liked to sit tight and silently wait for Aikawa to come and save us.
But─I couldn’t help thinking about it. About Hime-chan’s gloomy face when she referred to Sumiyuri Academy as Hang ’Em High. I didn’t know where I’d gone wrong, but I’d somehow ended up wanting to make sure that look never crossed her face again. It wasn’t about repaying Aikawa or anything, I just felt like it was my personal obligation to do something for her, if I could.
I’d probably ended up conflating them. Ichihime Yukariki─and Blue, back when she was known as a savant.
So this wasn’t even a desire to protect Hime-chan. It was just self-satisfaction─no, it might as well have been autotoxemia.
What an unbearable level of nonsense.
At that point I didn’t yet grasp the enormity of the situation, I had no inkling of the scale of the storm I was putting myself at the center of, I was a babe in the woods who didn’t know his ass from his elbow, so there was definitely a certain recklessness to my folly. Still and all, I didn’t think I would regret it, which is a rare occurrence for a relentlessly retrospective nonsense user like me.
I really didn’t think so.
Despite the fact that I’ve never once in my life done something and not lived to regret it.