“Oh...”
—Damn. This is bad. Really bad. I yield.
“.........”
The first period was “Basics of IS Theory,” and when it ended, we had a break. However, the weird atmosphere in the classroom made it hard to do anything. The IS Academy had regular classes right off the bat so they could drill IS knowledge into us until we almost passed out. Need an orientation? “Look at the map,” they said.
I wasn’t sure if there even was a resolution to my situation. Again, everyone was a girl, and it wasn’t just my class. The whole school was like that. And since the news that I was the only man who could pilot an IS went around the world, there wasn’t a single person in there who didn’t know about me. Outside, the hallway was packed with second- and third-year students. Nobody really talked to me, though. Perhaps they were too used to being only around girls?
The girls in my class were the same. They all wanted me to talk to them, and were afraid their friends would talk to me. By the way, this was the only IS Academy in the world. There were a lot of other schools that had classes to prepare their students for it, though. And everyone in them was female. The girls clearly weren’t used to seeing a man, and besides, men were in a bad state in the world, anyway.
It was soon going to be 10 years after the IS was unveiled to the world. That was when everything changed. All the other war machines were just hunks of steel to an IS. It toppled the established military balance. Since a Japanese citizen had invented it, the Japanese then had a monopoly on IS technology. Foreign nations, in their fear, made the IS Usage Treaty, also called the Alaska Pact. This meant the release of all IS information, formed a supranational body for research and training, and outlawed military usage. So, now the number of IS pilots of a country represented how much military power it had, in cases of emergency self-defense and so on. And the pilots were all girls... So all the countries immediately started giving girls preferential treatment.
The concept that “girls = powerful” had spread and conquered the world. Now, after 10 years, women held all the power over men. If a man appeared to challenge that, well, that would make them curious, wouldn’t it?
So there we were. I looked over at the girl next to me, and she blushed and looked away. I could tell she still wanted me to talk to her. When you think about it, they were all looking up to my sister Orimura Chifuyu, so that made it harder to talk to me as well.
—Someone save me from this...
I remember an old friend of mine, Gotanda. He’d said he was super jealous of me, but I couldn’t see why. If he could’ve taken my place, that’d have been perfect.
“Can I have a word with you?”
“Hm?”
Someone was talking to me. Had she won the knockout tournament among the girls regarding who got to talk to me? No, there was sudden unrest in the class. One of the girls had decided to make a move on her own.
“Houki?”
“.........”
My childhood friend from six years back was standing in front of me; Shinonono Houki. I used to take lessons at her family’s dojo. She wore a ponytail like she always had. The ponytail was long, going below the shoulder, and she’d bound it with a white ribbon. Probably white because her father was a priest— they ran both a dojo and a shrine.
She was of average height for a girl, but because of years of training with a sword, she seemed taller than she was. She always looked like she was in a bad mood, but that was genetic, or so I was told. I figured chances weren’t all that low that she hated me, though. Like, I wasn’t imagining it that she glared at me when I called her by her first name. Houki always looked kind of like a sword herself in my mind, but the years since I’d seen her had only made her sharper and harder, it seemed.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Can we talk in the hallway?”
I guess she didn’t want to talk in the classroom. Nonetheless, I was glad to get a chance to escape. Bless childhood friends.
—Cold, my ass. Whoever said that should apologize. Guess that was me.
“Get going.”
“R-Right...”
Houki strode away into the hallway. The girls there opened a path for her, like Moses parting the sea. We were out in the hallway, but at about four meters in every direction were more girls. They were all listening to us. I could feel it. It was no different than talking in the classroom, if you asked me.
“So, by the way...”
“Yeah?”
I remembered something, and talked first. Houki hadn’t talked to me after dragging me out into the hallway. Pretty wild.
“I heard you won the national kendo tournament last year. Congrats.”
“.........”
Houki turned red after I said that. Was she upset? Why the hell would she be? I was complimenting her.
“H-How do you know that?”
“I read it in the papers...”
“Why are you looking at the papers?!”
What was Houki talking about? I didn’t get it. Let me read the damn papers. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention it, but she always talked a bit like a man, or a samurai.
“Oh, also.”
“Y-Yes?!”
“.........”
“No, never mind...”
Houki looked uncomfortable now. Maybe she was trying to glare less? At the same time she looked worked up, though. She was weird.
“It’s been a while. Six years, right? But I knew it was you right away, Houki.”
“Really...”
“You’ve got your hair the same.”
I touched my own hair as an example. Houki touched her long ponytail.
“I-I’m surprised you remember.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t forget my childhood friend.”
“.........”
Whoops. Glaring at me again. What did I do now?
Ding-dong. Break had ended.
The bell rang to signal the beginning of the second period. The cordon of girls around me and Houki disintegrated. It looked like little spiders scattering into every which direction. IS pilots were so swift in how they moved.
“Let’s head back.”
“I-I know we have to.”
Houki averted her eyes and walked away at the same brisk pace.
My childhood friend had no intention of waiting for me, it seemed. Six years change people, don’t they? As if. She’d always been like that. Stubbornness, daily training, steady progress... Those words suited Houki better than most boys, and had all the way since elementary school. Personally, I’d love it if she could be a bit more spontaneous, but...
“.........”
She glared at me again. Maybe she read my mind? Houki had always been very attuned to when people were insulting her. But I wasn’t even insulting her. That was just the story I went along with in my head.
Bam!
“Sit down, Orimura.”
“Thank you for your guidance... Ms. Orimura...”
20,000 brain cells were lost before lunch.