1. Start of the Year
Welp, it's April 15th, 2014, and I'm pretty sure I'm being bitch-smacked with deja-vu. I thought my saga was over at Bullworth. Picture it: "Jimmy Hopkins, aged 15, conquers a school from nothing and lives happily ever after.". Unfortunately, when you have a mother that collects divorces and new husbands like Pokémon cards, your life is bound to be uprooted eventually.
I'll give you a little exposition. So, the 2013 academic school year, I graduated from Bullworth Academy's freshman class with seemingly everything set for me. My mom would come home with a new rich hubby that would finally make my life comfortable. I could be forgiven for thinking my mom would settle down after her 50th marriage: he was old, had money, and hell, even took her on a cruise trip free of charge from New Orleans to Tel Aviv and back again. But alas, it was for naught.
Around June or something like that, my mom told me that her and her husband were getting a divorce. Apparently he was just interested in her body (gee, I wonder who saw that coming?) and not her as a person, which lead to her getting pretty disgruntled about the whole thing they had together. Out of the divorce, she got a pretty penny indeed, and we settled in a new house a few streets down from his chateau.
Like two months later, she then told me that she was seeing another man. She was a little giddy when she told me she was not from America; when I asked where, she told me he was from Japan. Now, granted, my expectations for him were low. I had only been exposed to Japan in general via history class at Bullworth and whatever anime Pete was watching on the communal TV in the dorms.
Imagine my shock when, in September, she told me that we would be moving to Japan. The cycle repeats itself, I guess. So, on October 1st 2013, I loaded up onto a plane to Buraza, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. The flight was...okay, I guess. Granted, my perception of it is skewed by the fact that my mom and her new hubby were in first class, while I was in economy. But hey, you win some, you lose some.
After touching down, I rode a train for the first time, which is of note I suppose. Once in Buraza, me and mom moved into his townhouse near the outskirts of town. My birthday came and went - my 16th, on November 17th. All I got out of it was a cake (it was a bomb ass cake, I'll give credit for that), a dirtbike (beats walking and peddeling) and an equivalent of "English for Dummies" but for the Japanese language.
I took to learning it at an okay pace. Foreign languages aren't my thing, especially since I've been speaking Bostonese my entire life. Not to mention learning to write it - three letter systems. Three. And people complain that English is complicated? At least you only have one script to deal with!
I suppose I should tell you the old bastard his name by now, so here it is: Ken Kuroki. And it pains me to say that his name is actually fairly catchy. It beats James Cooper Hopkins, or at least so I feel. Ken told me that I'd be enrolled in Akademi High School. It sounded like no big deal to me; besides the lazy naming (c'mon, Akademi, Academy. They could have tried harder than that) making me chuckle a bit. He then informed me that it was a big deal in Japan. Essentially Harvard or Yale as a high school, and that most of the people that attended it were either geniuses that got full ride scholarships, trust fund babies who could pay the tuition, or the children of the guys who ran the place.
Just my type. I beat the Preppies at Bullworth, so I got no qualms of knocking down a few rich kids down a peg.
Apparently, the school year in Japan starts in April. Akademi's starts on April 15th. So, from December on (when he told me), I had exactly 4 months to learn Japanese to become at least marginally fluent, and to prepare for a whole new rogue's gallery of jocks, weird kids, nerds and preppies to deal with.
And that's where we are now. As I said earlier, it's April 15th, 2014, and me, 16-year-old Jimmy Hopkins, is dumped at a rich kid's private school so his mom can go mess around with her new rich husband. Second verse, same as the first.
I'm lounging in the passenger's seat - my mom called the sick card today - while Ken drives down the road towards the school gates.
"Buruwāsu o sotsugyō shitanara, kono gakkō ni taeru koto ga dekimasu." He tells me.If you got through Bullworth, you can handle this school. And yeah, I suppose he's right.
"Maybe." I respond. To that, he gives me a little 'tsk, tsk, tsk'.
"Your Japanese, boy. You have to speak it more. It's seen as polite here to take the effort to try." He responds. I suppose he has a good point.
"Watashi ga sō shite iru ma, chie okure no yō ni kikoerudeshou ka?"And sound like a retard while I'm at it? Just my way of dealing with things. At least he's not a stuck-up bastard like mom's last husband. He just chuckles a bit.
"The girls will find that endearing." He responds with a smile, and stops as we pull up to the front gate. I nod in thanks to him giving me a ride as I exit his car.
I look up at the open front gate, and the pathway up to the school itself. It's pristine. Cherry blossom leaves litter the pathway up to the entrance of the main building. Everything seems clean and looked after. Probably a quarter of the school's budget is making sure rich kids don't wrinkle their noses at the sight of the thing.
It's better than Bullworth, but then again, that's not too difficult a bar to surpass.
(From hereon, dialogue spoken in Japanese will be rendered in italics in English)
I walk through the front gates. It's about 7:30 in the morning, so I'm one of the first students to enter the campus. I go down the path, a formal-looking lady with a serious disposition walks out of the front doors. She looks around for a brief second, then notices me coming up.
She clears her throat to get my attention.
"You must be the Hopkins boy?" She both states and asks, looking at me.
"Yep." I respond, stopping to talk to her.
"Right...the headmaster wanted me to introduce you to the school. Welcome to Akademi High School, James." There's a bit of a monotone way to her voice. Sorta like when you're told to do something and only do what's required of you so you don't get yelled at.
"And you are...?" I ask. "Genka Kunahito." She responds. "...so, uh...is it a 'ms.' situation, or?" I further ask. "Kunahito-sensei." She then answers.
"Thanks." I scratch the back of my head a little awkwardly.
"...I appreciate you trying to speak the language, but really, it's fine if you speak English. Most want an avenue to practice it with a native speaker, anyway." She then says. To that, I nod. Thank the Lord, as I'm pretty sure I was speaking like a five year old having a stroke.
"I'll take what I can get, so..." I say as I shrug. She nods to that, and looks back into the school's little 'lobby' area immediately in front of the front doors.
"Would you like a tour, or do you think you can get yourself situated on your own?" She asks me.
"I can handle myself." I respond. She then points over to the little bloc of lockers.
"Your locker number is 115. Here's the key...and your uniform should be in there - there's a key to your dorm room in there as well so you can go change." She informs, handing me the key for my locker.
"Thanks." I respond. I've been saying that a lot.
She nods and walks off, and I go over to my locker. I unlock it and open it. The uniform for me is neatly folded; I take it. As I shut the locker door, some girl I didn't even see show up appears next to my locker. She's in some kind of white-and-red uniform; has a real relaxed, cocky look about her with a head of platinum blonde hair.
"You must be the new kid." She remarks.
"What's it to you?" I ask in response. Admittedly, I get a little defensive. Probably because I get jumped at every new school I go too.
"Relax, big guy." She sleazily says, patting my shoulder in a form of mocking reassurance. I shoo her hand away.
"Do you have anything of substance to say, or are you just here to piss me off?" I ask her, cutting to the chase.
"Okay, mister tough guy. Relax." She says, getting off of leaning on the lockers and standing up straight.
"Who even are you?" I start to sound more frustrated with her incessant...whatever she's doing.
"Shiromi." She responds, getting a cheeky smile on her face all of a sudden. "It's Jimmy, right?" She then asks me. Probably overheard the teacher, or read my file. I dunno and don't care.
"Yep." I answer. "So like I said before, you got anything of substance to say, or what?" That question gets her to snicker a little bit.
"I'm just trying to show you to your dorm room." She then explains. To be fair, I have no idea where the hell that place is.
"...okay." I say. She turns around and beckons me to follow. "Right this way." She says.
And with that, I start following her. Admittedly, I was taking a gander a little bit. We take a left and walk down a hallway for what feels like forever. She starts making small talk.
"You're not the first American I've met, but you do speak a little weirdly. Where are you from?" She asks me, turning her gaze aside for a little bit as a way of looking at me as she speaks.
"Boston." I answer. She has a single laugh, like a 'hah'. Sort of like a chopped-up chuckle.
"That's a mark on my bingo card." She remarks.
We walk for a little bit more, and we exit the building, going across a little pavillion before coming across a multi-storied building with the word 'boys dormatory' in kanji written atop the front doors.
"Don't keep me waiting, m'kay?" She asks.
"I'll now have you waiting for at least an hour." I retort.
"...oh, don't be coy. My time as a student council member isvery valuable." She says, emphasizing 'very' in a bit of a sarcastic way.
"Valuable indeed." I remark, as I move past her and walk into the boys dorms. I get my dorm key out of my pocket, reading the number on it. Room 20. So I take a left and walk up the steps, finding a door with the number '20' on it. My room. I unlock it and enter, shutting the door behind me and locking it again.
I set my uniform down as I take a look around. A pretty well-kept room if I say so myself. A bit less roomy than my dorm at Bullworth, but as I said before, you win some and lose some.
So begins a new saga, amirite?
Some notes:
Bully probably takes place in the 2006-2007 academic school year; I made it to be around the 2012-2013 academic school year so Jimmy is enrolled in Akademi for the 2014-2015 academic school year, which is around when YanSim first released. Also, Chalex, Akademi is a high school. Several audio logs from characters (like the headmaster) specifically state it to be one. Your flimsy retconning of Akademi being some kind of high school LARP college is ridiculous.
Later,
Lizdo-Writing