Girls grow faster than boys in their early teens. Yosho was twelve and Airi fifteen. At first glance, they seemed more like older sister and younger brother.
“Let’s go!” Using Yosho’s “date itinerary” as reference (that was the excuse), Airi blazed through like she was checking the items off of a homework assignment.
For Yosho, this “date” had a purpose, and that was to flush out whoever was keeping watch on Yosho and Airi by luring them out under various conceivable conditions. Funaho observed from above, watching an area dozens of kilometers wide for mechanical movements, suspicious people in the crowd, and all kinds of elements to deduce likely suspects. Since he did not know how many they could be, and with the ambiguity of the situation, he had figured it would be impossible to go over the entire itinerary in a single day. He had planned to split it up over a few days. This was the first day…however…
“Let’s see, what’s next… Oh, let’s go over there! Come on!” Airi took Yosho’s hand with excitement in her voice. At this rate, they would complete the itinerary in a single day. There was no chance of sussing anyone out.
“A-Airi-dono, a little more slowly… We don’t need to rush so much.” “Come on, get going. Or we won’t be able to go through this in one day.”
“We don’t have to do this in one day,” Yosho tried to explain but could not contain her momentum.
“Next! Next!” As Airi continued the forced march, Yosho had to wonder if she was doing this on purpose, but her beaming smile was enough to sweep such concerns under the rug. And the more dazzling it was, the more Yosho felt tormented by guilt.
In the end, they completed the route before evening. Airi collapsed, panting and dripping with sweat, on the grass in the park where they had met up that morning. She tried to catch her breath without even bothering to mop her brow.
“Airi-dono, are you all right?” Yosho fanned her with the folding fan he carried.
“Y-Yosho-kun…you look well…” Choking on her words and dragging herself upright, she glared at him with chagrin.
“You should continue to rest…”
“It’s too hot…!” She crawled into the shade. “Fan me!” Airi rolled over again and ordered Yosho with a sharp glance.
“Sure.”
“You think I’m old…don’t you?” Airi mumbled in the dappled light, fanned by Yosho.
“Huh…?”
“I’m three years and four months older than you. I’m sure you think of me as an old lady.” She seemed angry and began to pout.
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you’re thinking it.”
“I’m not,” Yosho said as calmly and gently as he could. He knew people like her would fixate on an idea, and poke at it until they were satisfied. He had no choice but to take her seriously and be patient. “You ran a lot, so it’s only natural.”
“Then what about you? You’re not even out of breath.” “I’ve been trained.”
At those words, all the anger vanished from Airi’s eyes. She stared at him in silence. “You should be at least a resentful little… Wipe that enlightenment off your face. You idiot,” Airi lightly pinched Yosho’s cheek and smiled sadly. She was painfully aware of what kind of world he lived in at the tender age of twelve, and she found his maturity to be pitiable. “Poor Yosho-kun.”
Yosho could not respond and let Airi do as she pleased. He did not consider himself pitiable. He was the Crown Prince of Jurai, after all. It was true that there was a lot of friction surrounding his mother, and he felt he wanted to protect her. Was that pitiable?
Airi watched Yosho ponder all this, leapt up, and out of the blue, bonked him on his head. “For the love of… Just laugh!! Cry!!” She screamed and tickled him all over. “Get angry!! You brat!!” She immediately put him into a Cobra Twist-like submission hold. Her words did not correspond to each action.
The passersby simply watched calmly and said, “Oh, she’s at it again.” “Poor guy. Who’s the new victim?”
“Airi sure is boisterous.”
Yosho heard all these snippets of conversation. To the people who lived here, this kind of thing must be a regular occurrence.
“If you’re twelve, act like it and show some emotion!!” She put him in something like a Boston Crab this time. She was definitely not going easy on him.
“A-Airi-dono. Everyone’s watching… This isn’t proper…” Yosho muttered, wincing in pain. If he flexed just a little, he could bounce her off without hurting her, but he understood vaguely how she was feeling and so kept taking the abuse.
“You could at least complain that it hurts…” Airi puffed out her cheeks in frustration and sat down a little ways away.
“I can’t do that in public.”
“I see… So anyway, why are you doing that?” Airi pointed at Yosho’s legs. He was sitting formally, with his legs under him and back straight.
“In these situations, I would need permission from the eldest present to be at ease.”
Airi bolted upright, straightened the hem of her skirt, and corrected her posture. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m the one with no manners when I’m with you…”
“Huh? What was that? I didn’t hear you, could you repeat that?” “Nothing!”
“Okay…”
“Yeah…” Airi breathed a sigh of relief. Yosho didn’t press further.
The conversation abruptly broke off into an awkward silence. In that silence, the bell tolling five o’clock echoed from the distance. Airi took this opportunity and said with obvious relief, “S-say…shall we have dinner, if you don’t have plans after this?”
“Well, there’s the restaurant we passed.”
“Go to expensive places like that when you want to show off to your actual girlfriend. I know a good place near here.” Airi felt much better after resting and pulled Yosho along in much the same way as before.
“A-Airi-dono, we don’t have to hurry.” The more Yosho pleaded, the more Airi rushed. They ended up running, threading through the throngs of people.
The place Airi took them, a restaurant called Narsis, was on the second floor of a large mall next to the park. It did not look distinctive but more like a garden-variety run-of-the-mill restaurant. But when she brought him to the terrace, Yosho opened his eyes wide at the majestic view.
“Wh-what is this place?!” In front of them was a seven-hundred-meter cliff carved by a giant cylinder about a dozen kilometers wide. Beyond that, the ocean spread before them. Yosho hastily confirmed where they were on the guide map, but such a place was not listed. Only a red square denoting “secret” obliterated the spot. Important research facilities were often not made public. It was optically processed to be camouflaged from above.
“Surprised? Isn’t this an amazing view?” Airi, seeing his shock, was delighted.
“But isn’t this a restricted area?”
“How could there be a mall in a restricted area? That map means ‘don’t tell anyone.’”
“Tell…?”
“Don’t you get it?” She chuckled. “This place is hidden to surprise the people who come here for the first time.” Airi was cheerful, having worked through her earlier dissatisfaction.
“To surprise people? That’s the only reason…?” “Yes, that’s it. It’s just a prank.”
“Isn’t this too elaborate?”
Airi laughed then said with a straight face, “Yosho-kun, that’s exactly the kind of place Galaxy Academy is.” The expression correctly captured the Academy’s true essence. “It’s to surprise people who come to the Academy for the first time. They put in a few places like this, and the students add their own twists. They can have a simple reveal or an ambitious prank…”
According to Airi, this was a crater fifty kilometers wide created by an accident of an experimental device gone awry, and who should have made it, but none other than Professor Washu? It should have been fixed right away, but the students who Washu had been toying with…or rather, was doting on, waged a massive campaign to preserve a rare example of Washu having made a mistake.
“Hmph! This is nothing but a pore,” commented Washu; and with that, this attraction was christened “Washu’s Pore.” This horrible taste in names was characteristic of Academy students.
Looking out the window at the landscape, Airi murmured, “Yosho-kun, the area around the crater is the facilities for the philosophy department.”
“Philosophy?!” It was no small wonder he was surprised. The philosophy department consolidated the wealth of knowledge from all fields, unifying it into one theory, and decided policies based on ethics. The philosophy department was where the greatest minds of Galaxy Academy gathered. “Then this size makes sense.”
“This is only part of it, and the facilities are for a single department member.”
“One person is using this whole place?”
“It’s not a rarity for philosophy, but this is special. It’s a sort of memorial hall, too.”
“A memorial hall?”
“You might’ve heard of Hakubi Washu and Akara Naja, the best of the Academy and legendary philosophers. This is their hall of achievements.”
“I know of Hakubi Washu but not Akara Naja…”
“Naja had more of a supportive role. If you’re interested, I can show you around. That place is like my backyard… Although the philosopher there right now is an old man, and he’ll tell you tales of the good old days over tea for hours.” Airi bore the distinctive smile of one who had experienced this firsthand.