Infinite Stratos, Volume 1, page 3
“Hm... Pretty sure I beat the teacher, too.”
“You what?”
I really had. Well, she’d come barging in, I’d dodged her, and she had knocked herself out flying into a wall. Nothing more. Still, what I’d said was apparently a shock for Cecilia. Her eyes opened in shock.
“I-I was told that I was the only one...”
“The only girl, right? There is a slight distinction.”
Gotcha!
I could swear I heard something... weird. It sounded like icicles fracturing.
“S-So... I’m not the only one?”
“Beats me.”
“You? You beat a teacher?!”
“Apparently, anyway.”
“Apparently?! What does that mean?!” she protested.
“Hey, calm down. All right?”
“H-How am I supposed to calm d—”
Ding-dong.
The beginning of third period interrupted our discussion. It was a blessing, frankly.
“I shall return! Don’t run away from me! Got it?”
—No...
But I didn’t say that out loud because I didn’t want her to be mad at me.
“I will explain the different aspects of the equipment you’ll be using in training now.”
Unlike the first and second period, my sister Chifuyu led the class instead of Ms. Yamada. But Ms. Yamada was still around carrying a notebook, it seemed.
“Oh, but first we need to select a representative for the class league match the week after next,” Chifuyu said, offhandedly.
—Class league match? Representative?
“The class representative is just that. They won’t just participate in the league match, but also on the student council, as well as committee meetings. They’re the class president. The class league match determines the various levels in competence between the different classes. Right now there won’t be much difference, but competition engenders improvement. It’s only going to take place once, then the ranking is fixed.”
The girls began to talk among themselves. I had no idea what was going on, and just sat there. I figured we were talking, ostensibly, about electing a class rep. It was probably kind of a pain in the butt. Bless the one who ended up with this chore.
“Well then, I suggest Orimura.”
—Hm? Did my class have more than one Orimura? How funny.
“Yeah, I agree.”
—Wow. I don’t care who turns into the class rep, as long as it isn’t me.
“Then the first candidate will be Orimura Ichika. Any others? No self-recommendation.”
—Oh, wow. There was apparently another dude called Orimura Ichika.
“M-Me?!”
I stood up. Everyone stared. I knew without turning around that everyone was looking at me, hoping I would solve all their troubles.
“Orimura, sit down. You’re disturbing class. Any others? If not, then we don’t even have to vote on this.”
“H-Hold on! I’m not going to do—”
“No self-recommendation. If they recommend you, you can’t refuse it. Get ready to do your job.”
“N-No, I—”
I was trying to argue against this development when I was cut off by a shrill voice.
“Please wait! I cannot agree to this!”
Cecilia had slammed her table and stood up. Bless my popularity. Getting along with people was important.
“What is this farce of an election? Do you want to disgrace this class by having a male representative? I, Cecilia Alcott, will not abide this humiliation for an entire year!”
—Yes, tell them how wrong they are about... Huh?
“If ability is what counts for class representative, then I should be the natural choice. I will not accept this Far Eastern monkey as my representative just because he’s a rarity. I came to this island nation to study the IS and train, not to participate in a circus sham!”
Wow, I wasn’t even human anymore. And besides, wasn’t Britain an island as well? It wasn’t that different from Japan.
“The most able fighter should be the class representative, and that is clearly me!”
Her rage did not subside; if anything, she was getting more and more worked up. I didn’t want to be the rep, but this was starting to piss me off.
“Besides, having to live in this pre-modern country is already seriously offensive to me, and—”
—The hell?
“And what are you so proud of in Britain? You’ve had the world’s worst food for years,” I blurted out.
“Wha—”
More like that slipped out. I looked back, hesitantly, and saw Cecilia red with rage. Wow. I’d done it.
“Y-You! How dare you insult my motherland!”
Oh, well. It was too late to take prisoners. No use crying over spilt milk. The rock was rolling down the hill.
“I challenge you to a duel!”
Cecilia slammed her hand on the table. I wondered if she would throw a gauntlet at me? She wasn’t wearing one. I think doing that was Italian, anyway.
“Fine. You’re on. That beats all this talking, for sure.”
“Just so you know, if you lose on purpose, I will make you my maid... No, my slave.”
“Oh, you’ll see. I’m not going to go easy on you.”
“All right. Perfect. This will be your chance to witness the abilities of the British National Cadet, Cecilia Alcott!”
I’d gone with the flow and now I had to battle her, apparently. As a man, I didn’t think it was quite right for me to use all my strength against a girl, though.
“What kind of handicap do you think is okay?” I asked.
“Oh, are you already begging?”
“No, I just want to know how much of a handicap you want.”
Suddenly, the entire class started laughing.
“O-Orimura, are you serious?”
“Men aren’t stronger than women anymore. That was ages ago.”
“Orimura, maybe you can use an IS, but you’re living in the past.”
They were all laughing. Well, I guess they were right; men were way weaker than women. Physical strength was useless. Maybe not all girls could pilot an IS, but the only ones with the potential for it were girls. Men couldn’t pilot them on principle. If a war erupted on gender lines, then the male military wouldn’t last three days. Maybe not even three hours. The IS outclassed all forms of conventional weaponry.
“Okay, no handicap then.”
“Yes, yes. Of course. If anything, why, it should be I who gives you a handicap. Fufu. A man, stronger than a woman? Japanese men have a sense of humor!” she responded smugly; her rage had all but evaporated.
“Hey, Orimura. It’s not too late. You can still ask Cecilia to give you a handicap,” said a friendly girl from behind me.
However, I could see she was suppressing a smile. She was messing with me, which furthered my annoyance.
“No, I suggested this. I don’t need a handicap.”
“You’re not taking a National Cadet seriously enough... Or maybe you don’t know.”
“.........”
Well, I’d never seen an IS battle in person. All I’d seen was some old footage from when my sister Chifuyu had fought.
“Looks like we have a conclusion. The battle will be next Monday. Third arena, after school. Orimura, Alcott: make your preparations until then. We will begin the lesson now.”
Chifuyu clapped her hands once to end the discussion.
I said nothing and sat down. I wasn’t sure what to feel about the situation. I could master the basics in a week, so it wouldn’t be all that hard, anyway. It moved right away during the entrance exam. It wasn’t rocket science. On the other hand, if this worked out, I was the class rep. I really didn’t want that, but that’s how the cards were laid. Can’t squirt the milk back up the udder.
—Okay, I should listen to the class.
I opened the textbook in front of me.
◇
“Ugh...”
I had basically collapsed over my desk after school.
“I-I don’t get it... Why is there so much dumb stuff...?”
The first problem was all the lingo. You had to have a dictionary in order to keep up, but there was no IS dictionary, so I hadn’t kept up all day. Speaking of which, the general situation with the girls didn’t change after school. They came over, even from other classes, and talked among themselves in hushed voices.
—Gimme a break already...
It’d been hell during lunch break already. The whole crowd of girls had followed me to the cafeteria, like the procession of some king, and in the cafeteria nobody had sat next to me, of course— I was like Gulliver. I was like some strange animal the Japanese had never seen. I once heard that axolotls were popular as exotic animals from overseas once, but I had no idea what they looked like, for example.
“Oh, Orimura. You’re still in the classroom. Good.”
“Huh?”
I looked up and saw my vice homeroom teacher, Ms. Yamada, with a textbook in hand. Not that it matters, but she really looked so small. In reality, she was probably of average height.
“Um... We have a room for you in the dorms now,” she said, while handing me a piece of paper with my room number on it and a key.
All students of the IS Academy lived in the dorms. It was more out of obligation than anything else. Supposedly, the reason for it was to be quick in response to protect the future IS pilots. I mean, the national defense was on the line. Other countries were probably trying to recruit students away from the academy, too. Actually, I knew that they were, all the time.
“I thought I didn’t have one yet? They told me I’d be commuting from home for a week.”
“Well, things have changed. We’ve made certain arrangements with the room allocations to make this possible.” Then she leaned close to my ear and said, “Orimura, did the government tell you that?”
The government was, of course, the Japanese government. After all, I was the only male IS pilot; they wanted to keep me safe and under surveillance or something. At one point, my name was all over the news. The media, ambassadors, and eventually even genetic research institutes, all showed up on my doorstep wanting to research me, or something. As if I would have agreed to this under normal circumstances.
“After all the chaos, they wanted to put you in to the dorm as fast as possible. In a month or so you will have your own room, but for the time being, you will have to share one.”
“Um, Ms. Yamada... You’re breathing into my ear.”
Why was she still whispering, anyway? Everyone in the classroom was giving us curious looks.
“Oh, I... Um... I didn’t do that on purpose!”
“I know that, but... Anyway, since I won’t be going home again, can I leave early and gather my belongings so I can move?”
“Oh, that won’t be—”
“I took care of it. Thank me later,” Chifuyu butted in.
“Darth Vader’s Theme” was thundering through my head when she appeared. Sometimes, “Terminator’s Theme” played instead.
“Th-Thank you so much...” I muttered.
“I only got you the bare necessities for life: a change of clothes and your phone charger.”
Wow, that was the barest of the bare. I mean, that was necessary for life, but man, people could use a bit of luxury, too.
“It says on the paper when you can go there. Dinner is from six to seven in the first year cafeteria. Every room has a shower, but we have a large bath as well. The different grades have different times for the bath... But, you can’t use it for the time being, Orimura.”
“Why not? Who doesn’t like a good bath?” I inquired.
“Are you stupid? Or do you want to bathe together with girls your age?”
“Oh...”
Right. Everyone else was a girl.
“Y-You want to go into the bath with girls?! N-No! You can’t!” cried Ms. Yamada.
“I-I’m not saying I want to...”
Who knows what they’d do to me? It wasn’t a good idea either way, ethically speaking.
“What? You’re not interested in girls? Th-That’s not good either...”
—Man, this woman never really listens to people, does she?
While Ms. Yamada and I were engaged in this game of telephone, the girls out in the corridor started whispering and spreading rumors.
“Maybe Orimura only likes men?”
“That... Might be nice too.”
“Find out which people he knew in middle school! I want all his friends by the day after tomorrow!”
—Why is this happening?
“Um, we have a meeting now, so... You have to go to the dorms afterwards, Orimura. Don’t loaf around on the way.”
It was, like, 50 meters to the dorms. There was no way to loaf around somewhere. I mean, there were club rooms, the IS arena, IS maintenance facilities, development facilities and other buildings on campus, but that had nothing to do with me yet. Eventually I’d have to check it all out, but I just wanted to get some rest, and to be free of the girls looking at me all the time.
“Hmm...”
Chifuyu looked after Ms. Yamada as she left the room and followed her.
What a day. There was still a lot of talking in the classroom, but I decided that enough was enough and went to find my dorm room. Anything was better than staying there.
“Hmm... Should be here. Room 1025.”
I checked the room number again and used the key. It was unlocked.
Ka-chick.
The first thing I saw was a large bed. Two of them, actually. They looked pretty comfortable, certainly much better than some hotels. I could feel the softness just from looking at it. It was way better than anything I was used to— bless the tax money. I put my belongings down and jumped onto the bed; it was really soft. A great bed, down-filled.
“Is someone there?”
I heard a voice from another room. I figured there was a door between us. The voice was kind of unclear. I remembered that they’d told me there was a shower.
“Oh, you must be living here now, too. Let’s get along together, shall we?”
A bad feeling suddenly crept up my spine.
“Sorry that I’m looking like this. I was in the shower. I’m Shinonono......... Houki......”
Out of the shower room came my childhood friend Houki, with whom I was just barely reunited. She had been using the shower, directly adjacent from the beds, and she was coming out of it. Houki apparently thought that her roommate would be a girl, so she was only wearing a single bath towel. Oh... And no ponytail.
The size of the white towel was quite small, and I could see most of her beautiful thighs. Drops of water were still running down her legs, which proved her usage of the shower. Her skin was clear and white. Even with the towel on I could tell that her slender upper body was well-trained, but not in a bad way; the training only emphasized her feminine lines. Her hand was pressing the towel into her respectable breasts. The last time I had seen her body was during swimming in fourth grade. Of course that had left no impression. Houki definitely had bigger breasts than she let on in her uniform. All that went through my mind in 0.3 seconds.
“.........”
She stared at me in puzzlement. I stared back in puzzlement. The great battle of the puzzled; only one of us was going to win.
“I-I-Ichika?”
“H-Hey...” I nodded, as Houki became very pink.
I couldn’t blame her; she’d come out of the shower to find a man in her room. I wasn’t sure what to do either.
“Wha...?! D-Don’t look at me!”
“I-I’m sorry!”
I looked away immediately. At a glance, I could see that Houki was pressing the towel into herself, desperately trying to hide or protect her body. This accentuated the size of her breasts, and my heart began to beat faster.
“Wh-Wh-Why are you here?” Houki stuttered, uncomfortably.
“They put me into this room, too.”
Then, everything happened in an instant. Lightning speed. She was as fast as you’d expect the national kendo champion to be. Houki grabbed a wooden sword from the wall and raised it above her head to strike. She quickly closed the distance between us.
—I’m gonna die!
“Whoa!”
I jumped down from the bed and ran for the door. Zoom. I made it outside the door by the skin of my teeth. I slammed the door shut with my back and felt the reassuring protection of it.
“I’m saf—”
Wham!
The tip of the wooden sword pierced the door and protruded out slightly. And it was a wooden door at that; piercing it with a wooden sword was just incredible.
Zzzp.
The tip of the wooden sword retreated back into the room. She’d given up, apparently.
Bam!
“Hey, are you trying to kill me?! If I miss a dodge once, I’m dead meat!”
The tip was at the spot where my head had been mere moments before.
“What’s going on?”
“Oh, it’s Orimura.”
“Ah, that must be your room, Orimura! Nice intel!”
Girls emerged from the rooms around me. All of them were wearing fluffy, pajama-like casual wear that was absolutely not designed to be seen by men. Some of them were only wearing long sweaters with neither a skirt nor pants underneath. A white triangle could be seen peeking out from underneath. Others were wearing a thin shirt with nothing else. Scantily clad girls were in all directions.
—Do girls really take off their underwear at every opportunity?
That seemed a little risky to me.
“Hey, Houki! Houki! Let me in! Come on! This is an emergency. I’ll apologize, okay? Please, please just let me in...” I said, prostrated on the floor in front of the door.
—Open the door, o my savior.
“.........”
There was only silence inside. At least the sword tip disappeared. I prayed there wouldn’t be a third stab attempt.
Dadum.
There was a long pause. Perhaps two or three minutes long, but it felt like an hour or more.
Creeeak.
“Come in.”
“O-Okay...”
Houki had opened the door in her kendo clothes. This must have been what she could put on the fastest. The belt was tied carelessly. She must have been in a hurry. Either way, I went inside.
