Infinite Stratos, Volume 1, page 4
—Wait a minute. Something’s off here.
“What?”
Gulp. She was staring at me.
—Sorry, nothing weird here at all!
Houki sat down on the bed.
“.........”
She frowned at me and tied her wet hair into a ponytail. She looked like herself again now. In terms of looks, at least.
“Are you really my roommate?”
“Y-Yeah. Looks like it.”
She was staring at me again. I wouldn’t have been surprised if her look could cut bamboo. Slash, slash.
“What’s the meaning of this?”
“Huh?”
“I said, what’s the meaning of this?! Girls and boys don’t share a bedroom past seven! It’s common knowledge!”
In the middle ages, sure. Then again, I also thought that 15-year-olds of the opposite sex shouldn’t be living together... Let alone sharing a room.
“D-D-Di...”
“Dee?”
“Did you request this? Being in my room?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
I always seemed to pick the dangerous option. I didn’t think I had, though. My response had disappointed her, otherwise the wooden sword wouldn’t have come flying at me.
“C-Careful!”
Close. Too close. I barely managed to catch the sword in-between my hands, which really hurt, because it was made of wood. The impact wasn’t going to kill me, though.
“Ridiculous? Ridiculous?! Blasphemy.”
Whoa, she looked really scary. Terrifying, even. Maybe “childhood friend” was actually the codename of some kind of assassin in a secretive organization? Houki was still putting pressure on the sword caught between my hands; the situation was real bad. It wasn’t a real sword, so it wouldn’t actually cut me, but it could still knock me out well enough. Perhaps it might even break my skull? Probably not.
“.........”
No, I take that back. I looked at the demon in front of me and knew that, even with a wooden sword, she could split me in two. Houki leaned down more and more, which increased the pressure to her sword until it collapsed, and she was suddenly on top of me.
“Whoa, Shinonono... So daring...”
“Don’t beat us to the punch...”
“We could share Orimura.”
Share? Share what? At least five girls were peeking in through the open door, but there were probably more out in the hallway.
“Wh-Wha...”
Houki jumped away from me immediately. Bless the lifesavers.
“Oh? Are you done already?”
“That was looking real steamy.”
Wow. High school girls these days were looking at the scene of an attempted murder thinking it “looked steamy.” I had to remember that. I resolved to send a text to Gotanda about it later.
“......!”
Houki chased the girls away without saying anything and locked the door. I suspected the scene of an attempted murder was going to lose the “attempted” part. She had to keep people from interfering, but what about her alibi? Wait. Maybe I was just too dumb to understand her master plan? She might have a really good one. Horrible. This was how people got killed. The world had gone to the dogs.
“Ichika...”
“Yes?”
I was free of all earthly attachments. My soul was free. Free like a bird.
“Why are you looking like that?”
“Hm?”
I wasn’t making any particular face.
“Whatever. We need to talk about this situation.”
Oh, she was debating how best to dispose of me.
—Listen, Houki. It doesn’t end with killing someone. There’s still a lot to be done afterwards. A corpse is 50 kilograms or more of protein and fat, not to mention the five-plus liters of blood. And let’s not forget about the bones. Bones begin to rot at an alarming speed. Everyone forgets that, right? But it’s pretty tough. It takes way too long to dispose of the bones individually after you’ve dismembered someone. That’s where the fridge comes in. In the fridge you...
“Are you listening, Ichika?”
“Wh-What? I’m not listening!”
“Who admits to that, you idiot?” Houki sighed.
Did I make a mistake again? I felt really guilty. Everything was so uncomfortable. Still, a man doesn’t run away.
“S-Sorry. Can you repeat that?”
I bowed in apology. It was the law of the world. Even if you weren’t sorry, if the other person was angry, you needed to apologize. That usually fixed it.
“L-Like I was saying. We need rules if we’re going to live here. Um... L-Lines that can’t be crossed, all right?” Houki mumbled, practically inaudible.
Why did she look so uncomfortable, anyway? Her cheeks were so pink. Was she sick?
“F-First we need to talk about the shower time. I need the shower from seven to eight. You can have it from eight to nine.”
“Eh? But I want it first.”
“A-Are you telling me to stay sweaty for an hour after my club?”
“Club? Your kendo club?”
“Y-Yes.”
“Don’t they have showers there?”
“I-I need my own shower or it freaks me out!”
—Well, fine. I guess any sane person prefers their own bathroom over the school’s.
“Wait a minute. We don’t have our own toilet, do we?”
“We don’t, but there are two on each floor at the ends of the hallways.”
“Is there... a toilet for the men?”
I had a vague suspicion. Like, the IS Academy have always had only girls in attendance, so why would they have needed toilets for men?
“.........”
“Erm, uh... So what do I do now?”
“H-How should I know?! Ask the teachers!”
“So then if push comes to shove, do I have to use the girls’ toilet?”
I felt her murderous stare, and pulled back. Houki reached for the wooden sword again and pointed it at my throat. I knew then and there that demons walked among us.
“Y-You developed some perverted tastes while we were apart! I’m disappointed!”
“What? Why, Houki?!”
“Because you want to go into the girls’ toilet! I should punish you here and now!”
“Like hell you will!”
I saw a bamboo sword among the luggage sitting in a corner; it was probably Houki’s, sticking out of her traveling bag.
—People always tell you to put it into a case, Houki...
It was probably going to break if I used it to block a wooden sword, but it was better than nothing to sit out her rage. I grabbed the bamboo sword and pulled it out of her bag.
—It got stuck on something. Let’s yank it.
Zzzmm.
“Nooo!”
I pulled the bamboo sword all the way out and went into a defensive stance, facing Houki.
“Huh?”
Houki’s mouth was twitching without moving or speaking. She looked as if she had seen a ghost.
“Huh? What is that?”
There was something hanging off the bamboo sword. It looked kind of like two triangles connected at the corners.
“G-Give that back!”
She snatched it away. The wooden sword now laid abandoned on the bed. Even more things were stuck to the bamboo sword, and Houki snatched that away as well, and hid it.
“.........”
She was glaring at me with her face beet red. Probably a cold. Oh! I connected the dots. I knew what I’d seen now. Yes, indeed...
“Houki.”
“Wh-What?”
Houki was using both her hands to shield those things from view, unable to attack. She was at a wary distance from me. I looked at her hands and saw white, pink, and light blue between her fingers.
“Oh, so you’re wearing a bra now.”
“Nnnngh!!”
Bam!
My head rang with pain.
Chapter II: The Battle for Class Rep!
“Hey...”
“.........”
“Hey, are you still angry at me?”
“I’m not angry,” said Houki, curtly.
“You look angry to me.”
“I always look like this.”
It was the second day of school, eight in the morning. We were eating in the cafeteria for the first years, and girls surrounded me in all directions. It scared me that even all the employees were women, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. I was eating breakfast together with Houki in the interest of maintaining positive relations with my roommate, but we hadn’t been able to talk properly since the day before. I had a Japanese breakfast, incidentally; there was rice, natto, sliced salmon, miso soup, and also some vegetables as a side dish. I was basically eating tax money, and it was pretty good. Bless the power of the state.
Houki was eating the same. Japanese people ate rice for breakfast, period. Not that bread was bad, but... salmon was just too good to pass up. It had a faint but pleasant trace of salt, and the rice was soft and warm. Sheer excellence! Generic electric rice cookers had nothing on this.
“Houki, this is really good.”
“.........”
She was ignoring me. Still, she took a bite of the salmon, as if to acknowledge agreement.
I’d always lived together with my sister Chifuyu, so it wasn’t like living alone with a girl made me a raving lunatic. I’d washed Chifuyu’s clothes for a long time, in fact, so I wasn’t going to freak out over some panties. That was only my side of the story, though. My childhood friend across the table was probably not seeing things quite like that. Maybe she hated how seeing her panties wasn’t a big deal for me? I had no idea what was going through her mind.
“I told you that I’m not angry.”
She brought that up herself, though. She hardly ever looked at me, and if our eyes met by accident, she’d look away. Well, if that wasn’t being angry at me, then there was still hope for global peace.
“Hey, he’s the boy they’re all talking about.”
“And he’s the brother of Chifuyu as well!”
“Whoa, both brother and sister are IS pilots? Do you think he’s good, too?”
Everything was just as it had been the day before. The girls around me were keeping their distance, but clearly paid attention only to me, barely containing their interest. It was irritating. If this had been a fishing operation, it would’ve been a great catch. Pretty dumb metaphor if you ask me, but hey—
“So, Houki...”
“D-Don’t use my name.”
“Shinonono?”
“.........”
I tried calling her by her last name, but that didn’t seem to make her happy, either. Houki still didn’t like her name, apparently. Well, there was a bit of a story behind that.
“O-Orimura, may we sit here?”
“Hm?”
I looked over and saw three girls, carrying breakfast trays and awaiting my answer.
“Yeah, sure.”
The girl who had asked me sighed with relief and the others struck a victorious pose. I heard murmurs among the crowd around us.
“Oh, no... I should have talked to him...”
“It’s... It’s just the second day... There’s no rush. Don’t worry...”
“I heard they saw a girl on top of him yesterday.”
“What?!”
Oh, yeah. The day before, 8 girls in first year, 15 in second year, and 21 in third year had come to introduce themselves. I had a tough time just remembering their names. If any of them had come up to me afterward and asked me if I remembered her name, chances would have been about 50-50. What more could you have expected?
It was first thing in the morning today, and I had to remember another three. This group of girls had, apparently, already made a deal with respect to who got to sit where, and they took up their positions very smoothly. It was a table for six. Houki and I were sitting by the window. They took three more. One was left, and I wanted it to stay empty.
“Wow, you can eat so much in the morning, Orimura.”
“Yeah, boys can eat so much...”
“I don’t eat a lot for dinner, so I eat more in the morning,” I replied.
That was actually the truth. I had experimented for a number of years, but ultimately this turned out to be the best for me. Well... I was just imitating Chifuyu, if anything.
“Are you girls okay eating so little in the morning?”
The three girls who joined us all had different meals, but largely shared the same things: a slice of bread, a glass of juice, and a side dish... A small side dish at that.
“W-We’ll be...”
“Um... Fine?”
How fuel-efficient. Maybe that was the reason only girls could pilot the IS?
“We eat a lot of sweets...”
—You’ll get fat doing that.
It probably wasn’t healthy. People had to take care of their body during their teenage years. I once read that you start to age faster as early as 22.
“Orimura, I’m going ahead.”
“Hm? Oh. See you later.”
Houki finished her food and left. All Houki had eaten was Japanese-style food from the buffet; the food of ancient Japan, just like a real samurai. She was the image of the ideal woman in the middle ages. Or maybe not, I dunno.
I hadn’t expected my roommate to be Houki. I suppose it was definitely better than living with a girl I didn’t know. Houki and I had known each other as kids; back in elementary school, Chifuyu had taken me to kendo, and I was in the same class with Houki until we were 10. Her parents often invited us for dinner since ours weren’t around anymore. We were pretty poor, so that helped a lot. It wasn’t like Houki and I were always friends, though. At first, we didn’t get along at all, but as we practiced kendo together, we warmed to each other. I think, anyway— It was all kind of vague to me now. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t remember as well? Whatever. The past is the past, after all. There’s no time like the present.
“Orimura, do you get along with Shinonono?”
“I-I heard you share a room?”
“Oh, yeah. We’re childhood friends.”
That itself didn’t really mean much to me, but it caused a stir around me. A faint “What?!” could be heard off in the distance.
“S-So, uh...”
Ah, the girl next to me named... Tanimoto? Yeah, she was trying to ask me something, but a loud clap rang out in the cafeteria.
“How long are you going to stay here and eat? Finish your food efficiently. If you’re late for class, I’ll make you run ten laps.”
My sister Chifuyu had appeared. Everyone in the cafeteria went back to eating their food.
A lap around the IS campus was five kilometers long. Having to run all of it was no joke. I finished my food as fast as possible as well.
Chifuyu was also the dorm mother, apparently. I really wanted to know whether she even slept. As her brother it worried me, but she was probably fine. If there was anyone capable of dealing with prolonged fatigue, it was her.
—Meanwhile, I can’t even concentrate on all this IS stuff, even with a night’s rest.
My battle with Cecilia was next week. I had to be able to pilot the IS with some degree of proficiency by then.
—It’ll work out, I’m sure.
In the end, it did not.
Second period had ended and I was already groggy; it was only downhill from there. I’d studied the vocabulary, somewhat, and I was doing okay, but a lot of things just didn’t make sense on a fundamental level. It was like a math question you just couldn’t solve, the sort you need to know some formula for, but you don’t remember it.
“I... What?”
In a way, this confused me even more. When I’d first touched the IS, it felt very natural, like I’d known it for many years. But when I read the textbooks, things made so little sense to me that I began to doubt that I had ever managed to move the unit in the first place. I crossed my arms and stared down at the book. It seemed to stare back as classes continued around me, during which Ms. Yamada steadily taught us, the students, the basics of the IS.
“So, since the IS was designed with outer space in mind, the pilot is completely enveloped by an energy barrier. The IS also supports the life functions of the body and stabilizes it at all times; this includes pulse, blood pressure, breathing, sweating, and endorphin production.”
“Ms. Yamada, is that really okay? It sounds like it’s messing with my body and I don’t want that...” asked one of my classmates, looking a little disturbed.
I could definitely see how that sense of unity I’d felt when I connected to the IS might freak someone out.
“You’re thinking about it too much. Let’s see... You’re all wearing a bra, right? It supports your body and has no negative effect to it. Of course, if you don’t buy a bra that fits you, it doesn’t work, but...”
Her eyes and mine met. Ms. Yamada fell silent for a moment. Some seconds passed, and then she turned red.
“I... Uh... Well... O-Orimura, you probably don’t wear one, so this may not make much sense to you... Haha... Hahaha...”
Ms. Yamada tried to laugh it off, but the atmosphere in the classroom became weird and tense. I saw girls crossing their arms as if to shield their breasts; they seemed a lot more perturbed than I was. I felt the same as I had with Houki the day before— I wasn’t going to make a fuss over girl’s underwear. It was their behavior that made me uneasy... That contradiction of both wanting me to look at their breasts and not wanting it. This uncomfortable silence lasted for what felt like 10 or 20 minutes.
“Hmm... Ms. Yamada! Please continue the lesson,” remarked Chifuyu.
“O-Okay!”
A loud, audible cough dispelled the awkwardness. Egged on by Chifuyu, Ms. Yamada looked back at the textbook and returned to the topic.
“A-Another important aspect is that the IS has something like a mind of its own and t-tries to talk to, um... I mean... Understand you and... Err... Reference your past piloting experiences to try and better adapt to you.”
—All right, so training wasn’t going to be for nothing.
“The point is that both of you are trying to understand each other, and by doing that you can bring out your full potential. The IS is not a tool, but a partner.”
