Something floated down softly from above. Ayato caught it mostly out of reflex.
Gleaming brightly in the morning sunlight of early summer, it had looked for a moment like a pure white feather—but once it was in his hand, he could see it was just an ordinary handkerchief.
Judging from the cute yet clumsily stitched flower embroidery, it was probably not store-bought, but handmade. It did not feel very new, and with a closer look, he could see where it had been mended.
He could practically feel the affection its owner had for it. This handkerchief couldn’t possibly have been discarded on purpose.
“Did it get caught in the wind…?” he wondered. But from where? As he turned to look around for the answer, he let out a self-deprecating laugh.
Ayato himself had just come to this city—to Seidoukan Academy. He had arrived a little earlier than planned and decided to take a stroll around campus to kill time. But the grounds were so vast that now he had no idea where he was. He wasn’t exactly lost, since he had simply followed the promenade. Still, there was little hope of a newcomer like himself finding the handkerchief’s owner.
“Oh, well. I guess I’ll just take it to the office later.”
He was about to meet the student council president anyway, so he could just hand it over then. With that thought, Ayato neatly folded the handkerchief and placed it in his pocket.
It was still early but a nice time to be outside. The promenade wound through lush trees full of the cheerful chirping of birds.
Surrounded by such natural beauty, it was hard to imagine that he was on an artificial island. But this was Asterisk, after all—the world-renowned Academic City. They must pay close attention even to environmental aesthetics, he thought.
Just then, Ayato noticed a voice with a hint of dismay that carried from beyond the very trees he was admiring. It rang out like a bell, no less lovely than the birdsong, but conveyed a vividly forceful will.
“…Argh! Of all the times, why—why now!?”
But as he listened more closely, he heard a litany of foul language that could scarcely be described as lovely.
Searching for the speaker, he looked up to see a single wide-open window. It belonged to a room in a neatly kept building with classical architecture, just beyond the promenade.
“I have to chase it down before it flies away any farther!”
He could hear obvious panic in the voice descending from beyond the fluttering curtains.
“So that’s it.” Ayato glanced down at his pocket and then back up again toward the room. He wasn’t the keenest of observers, but even for him, this particular situation was easy to grasp.
“The fourth floor… Well, there are some footholds, so it shouldn’t be too hard.”
Between the promenade and the building was a steel fence about six feet tall. Ayato leaped effortlessly atop it, without so much as a jogging start. He then took hold of a nearby tree branch and smoothly climbed up. Such maneuvers would be unthinkable for a normal human being. But for one of the Genestella, it was nothing at all.
“Here goes…!” His destination was even higher than the treetops, but with one more jump, he reached the windowsill from a conveniently located branch. Curling his body like a cat, he landed on his feet almost soundlessly.
“Um, sorry for barging in this way. But did you happen to drop a handkerchief…?”
From Ayato’s perspective, all he did was to take the simplest course of action. The person he’d overheard seemed to be in a hurry, so he thought it would be best to return the handkerchief as quickly as possible.
He acted out of kindness, pure and simple. There was no doubt about that.
However, if one were to find fault with what he did—and there were indeed some glaring faults—two issues would immediately come to mind.
The first was that this building happened to be the girls’ dormitory of the Seidoukan Academy High School.
The second was that the girl to whom this room belonged was, at this very moment, in the middle of getting dressed.
“Huh…?”
“Wha…?”
Ayato and the girl, who was just stepping into her skirt, stared at each other with matching blank looks.
The girl was about the same age as Ayato—sixteen or seventeen. Azure eyes, as pale as a sprouting bud. A sleek, shapely nose and skin like fresh snow. Her hair, flowing down to her waist, was a brilliant red hue, not dark enough to describe as crimson but too vivid to be pink. Pressed to put a name to the color, he would have to call it rose.
As a matter of fact, the girl was remarkably well put together. Ayato was not the only person who would have been captivated at the first sight of her.
At that moment, the girl happened to be half naked. Her uniform blouse was unbuttoned, revealing her underthings, and she was bent over in a way that exposed the shape of her breasts to full view.
Her curves there were rather modest, but her body was unmistakably feminine, with a waist so slender it looked fragile. Her healthy, supple legs were trim all the way down to her toes, and a glimpse of adorable white panties peeked from between her dazzling thighs. Her awkward state of dishabille made the sight far more enticing than if she had been simply naked.
For a while, the two did not move, as if frozen stiff. Considering that the girl was on one leg the whole time, she must have been blessed with an extraordinary sense of balance.
The scene looked exactly as if time had stopped. Of course, this was not the case.
Ayato was the first to come to his senses.
“S-sorry! Um, uh— I really didn’t mean to—at all—!” He tried to explain himself, but the words just wouldn’t come out right. He tried to cover his eyes, but between his fingers, he could still see her alluring figure.
“Wh-wh-wha—!?” The girl, too, seemed to finally comprehend the situation. Her face flushed bright red and her mouth moved without quite forming words.
Humiliation? Anger? Both? Whatever she might be feeling, Ayato was steeling himself for either a shriek or an outpouring of invective. Instead, hurrying to cover herself, the girl drew a deep breath and glared at him hard, even as tears welled up in the corners of her eyes.