Hi.
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The town of Kuoh, in Japan, is a relatively quiet place. Compared to the cities and tourist locations surrounding it like Akihabara, Tokyo, and Kyoto, all of which have many attractions and bustling streets, the only claim to fame the sedate town has is a relatively well renowned– if somewhat odd– school.
Truly, the school is the only thing about the town that distinguishes it from any other small town in the mind of the average Japanese citizen. Most of the well distinguished schools the world over tend to only be known as places of excellence in a technical field or three, places where prospective students seek scholarships and apply for in the hopes of jump starting a career in specific high-skill, high-demand, high-pay fields where only the most talented can successfully enter, such as Law, Technology and the Sciences, or the Arts. Many of these places have highly prominent sports teams as well, almost as prominent as their primary fields of education, if not moreso.
Kuoh's most prestigious school– simply named Kuoh Academy– is distinct from these other high end institutions in many ways.
Firstly, for most of its existence up until just a couple years ago, it had been an all-girls school, a dying breed even in the traditionally role-oriented culture of Japan. It only became co-ed recently enough that even though it is not its first or even second year as such, the student demographics are still heavily in favor of girls as of the final tally of new and current students to start the year.
Secondly, it may not offer an education more comprehensive and accredited in any specific fields like an Ivy League style school, or have an exceptionally renowned sports team of its own on a national level, however it is widely accepted as the best of Japan's "all-rounder" institutions, fit to prep a student well beyond the average for the majority of future roles and positions in society.
The last reason for Kuoh Academy's claim to fame, and the one that most people consider to be its most stand-out quality, is that it is not just a college. Kuoh Academy is a so-called "escalator" school; simultaneously a primary school, a high school, and a college, all in one. They are separated into divisions, each having their own section of the new main building for the sake of easily and efficiently sorting incoming and outgoing transfers, however any student accepted into the primary, middle, or high school division are already 'students of Kuoh Academy' and do not need to re-apply when entering the next division up.
All this is to say, Kuoh Town is a quiet and relaxed place with not much other than a single school distinguishing it from anywhere else.
You would be forgiven for thinking otherwise if you were the bird resting on the bedroom window sill of a two story corner apartment in the residential area of town.
"Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT! I overslept! SHIIIIT!" Said bird was startled into flight at the sudden commotion and noise.
Moments prior, a boy had been lightly snoring away on his bed with his limbs splayed out every which way and a rumpled fuzzy orange blanket barely covering any of his pajama clad form, nothing but images of mutant textbooks and sentient school stationary haunting his dreams. Draped over his stomach was an open Japanese history textbook, and lying scattered next to his right hand was a small pile of note cards. Across from the foot of his bed, there was a medium sized poster of the periodic table of elements taped on the wall above a worn wooden dresser, and next to them was a much taller poster of a one to one scale diagram showing the front and back of the human muscular system.
On the side of the bed not against the window there was a nightstand, on top of which was a brand new smartphone, two empty cups of instant ramen, and a mechanical alarm clock.
Dreaming of nightmarish scenes any academic slacker would be mentally scarred by, the boy was startled awake by seemingly nothing. Shooting straight up with a gasp and launching the school supplies across the floor, he tumbled out of his bed entangled by the blanket. After a few seconds of struggling to escape the blanket, he achieved his goal and reached up to swipe his phone off of the bedside table and check the time.
After a few more seconds– this time of screaming curses loud enough to give an unlucky pigeon PTSD– he rushed around his room shedding his pajamas and nightcap, and grabbed a change of clothes from his dresser drawers and deodorant from atop it, before practically sprinting out of his room entirely unaware of the grave trauma he'd inflicted on a hapless bystander. He ran through the bathroom door directly across the hallway from his room and went through a massively abridged version of his morning routine, skipping the morning exercise, shower, and teeth-brushing for just swiping a deodorant stick under his arms and swishing around some mouthwash while he threw on his hastily grabbed clothes.
Now wearing a burnt-orange t-shirt and dark slacks, he spit the mouthwash into the sink and jumped out of the bathroom, skidding lightly on his socks. He almost began to run down the short hallway to the stairs before realizing he was missing a piece of his uniform. "Crap! I'm so gonna be late!" he wailed as he darted back into his room to grab a collared white button-up shirt from a hanger in his closet.
He immediately resumed his mad dash into the hallway and towards the stairs, flipping the button-up around and slipping his arms through as he ran. In just a couple seconds he reached the top of the staircase, and instead of going down it normally or even skipping steps, he simply continued forward at the same speed and all but jumped straight down to the mid way platform. Landing at an angle and on one foot, he kicked off the floor in the same motion, propelling himself almost one hundred and eighty degrees in the other direction down the second portion of stairs.
He slowed for a moment upon landing, having almost stumbled from the action this time in trying to adjust his momentum to run towards his front door.
"Tch." Having reached the front door and pausing to grab his school bag and blazer from the coat rack while shimmying his feet into his sneakers, the annoyance at the stumble broke through the single-minded rush to not be late, and made his brows furrow slightly.
'Gotta be more careful, it wouldn't be good to go and twist my ankle or something because of falling back into old habits.'
Shaking his head to get back into a good headspace, he opened his front door and stepped outside onto the apartment complex's private sidewalk while swinging his blazer behind him and tying the sleeves around his waist. He then gently kicked his door closed behind him and started forward into a light run in the same motion. One of his neighbors, a stay-at-home mother of two, called out a good morning greeting to him while watering the plants in front of her door. He didn't stop to chat like he normally might, but he did wave back and return the greeting before continuing towards the main road.
His apartment complex was a bit outside of the norm from others, having its own private grounds with pathways, multiple different courtyards, and gardens all creating little community spaces between the multiple interconnected apartment buildings. The apartments themselves went for a more "tall" rather than "wide" approach, each having at least two floors at a reduced-size floor plan, and some having three or even four floors.
Supposedly the owner of the complex had it designed this way to be more attractive of a choice for long term leasing family units and couples. By keeping the rental price competitive with smaller and less aesthetically pleasing apartments, missing out on the short term higher profits from charging higher prices for single floor apartments would be offset by long term profits from having very little tenant turnover and consistently full apartments making payments. Or something like that.
Really, he just thought that the owner was feeling lonely in his middle age as a past-their-prime, balding, single man. It wasn't exactly a hidden secret that the friendly older gentleman who lived here and seemingly knew everyone happened to be the owner. It wasn't exactly posted on a signboard somewhere either, but he did a bit of digging before he moved in here so it wasn't exactly all that hard to get a name from publicly available info and match it to a face.
That, and the fact that the old man was hilariously bad at being subtle about it when they first met.
'Seriously, offering a homeless teen that you just met a place to live for practically free, because you "happen to know the owner" and "just want to be a good samaritan", is all but outright saying you make the decisions and money isn't an issue.' If he hadn't done his research, he would have thought that it was some super shady cult thing or the guy had some twisted ulterior motive.
The old man was genuinely a great guy though, and seemed to just want to be part of a nice community, so he was going to keep quiet about the whole thing with the other residents. Having the people you talk to daily trying to butter up to and change their actions around you constantly would probably get really tiring and disheartening really quickly. It would be the very least he could do to start repaying the man for his generosity.
Reaching the street entrance gate and the iron bar door beside it, he pushed open the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk before doing a quick stretch, twisting at the waist both ways. After feeling a satisfying crack, he leaned forward in the direction of the academy and shot off in a sprint.
'I still have a chance if I go full tilt! I'll be cutting it close, but being late on the first day of classes would be embarrassing as hell after all the work I put into catching up.' he thought with a wide grin beginning to split his face, 'Man, I'm getting fired up!'
By the time he arrived at the front gate to the school, there were no students in sight and only a single security guard making his rounds around the campus, on the pathway towards what he believed to be the assembly hall building. Running past the fountain on his way to the school's entrance, he spared a friendly wave in the guards direction before slowing down on the approach to the door. He dropped his speed from a sustained sprint, to a run, to a jog, to just slow enough that he could swing open the door without slamming into it and immediately drop back into a light jog to reach his shoe locker. After changing out his sneakers for his indoor shoes in record time, he continued his jog through the hallway
Sprinting through the halls like a maniac would surely make a worse first impression on any teachers than being a minute or two late on the first day, right?
It's not like he was almost exhausted and wanted to slow down to catch his breath or anything like that, he definitely only wanted to make a good impression on the faculty and follow school rules about running in the halls, for sure.
That's blatantly not true, by the way.
"Haaah… haah… damn…" he began muttering between pants, "Maybe sprinting at… nearly max speed… for almost ten minutes… was a bad idea…"
Settling his bag into the crook of his elbow, he untied his blazer sleeves from his waist, grabbed it by the lapels, and swung it up to hang off of his shoulders without putting his arms through the sleeves.
He slowed to a walk upon seeing his homeroom's sign at the far end of the current hallway, 1-B. Since he hadn't heard any bells ringing while in the halls, he decided to pull out his phone from his pants pocket and check the time.
"Man, these things are seriously convenient when they work," he breathed out, 8:32 a.m. showing on the lock screen. Seeing as he had a couple minutes before homeroom started and it was just a few dozen meters further, he decided to lean against the hallway wall to catch his breath some more and fiddle around with his phone. He made sure to bend forward slightly at the waist and keep his back straight. From what he had read in a sports training research paper, apparently this position made it easier on the diaphragm when breathing and brought your heart rate down faster than staying upright, while being upright kept your heart rate higher. Essentially, bending over to catch your breath is better for recovery while standing upright is useful for sustaining aerobic exercise.
He had only his phone for two days now, having gotten it for himself as a reward for his hard work at getting accepted in the academy, so he was still learning the ins and outs of how it worked. While messing with it and looking around the various menus, he did something by accident that brought up a list of what he assumed were those app things he had opened before. Seeing the one labeled 'Alarm Clock', he was reminded of this morning's mishap and decided to investigate what went wrong. He hadn't set his normal alarm clock the night before, figuring he could use his phone's alarm instead.
A single glance at the screen was enough to make his eye twitch. He groaned and locked his phone before sliding it into his pocket.
"'When they work' my ass! I'm just an idiot who accidentally set it for PM…" he sighed and rubbed the back of his head.
Seeing as there was only about a minute left before homeroom began and his breathing was back to normal, he decided to begin the walk the rest of the way to the classroom. After turning to take a step he began to hear another few pairs of footsteps from back the way he came. Shifting his head to glance over his shoulder showed him a group of teachers walking down the hall in his direction while chatting lightly, with a couple breaking away from the group every time they passed classroom doors.
'Guess that's my signal to get a move on.'
He faced forward again and began walking towards 1-B. A handful of moments later, he reached the large wooden doors and opened one of them, pushing it inwards. Stepping into the classroom, he ignored the chatter going on as he closed the door behind him and scanned the room for an open seat, spotting one near the back middle of the room. As he began walking towards it, he idly noted with some surprise the sheer ratio of female to male classmates he had. It was one thing to know intellectually that the school was only recently opened up for co-ed attendance, but to see it with his own eyes was just a little bit jarring. The last time he had been in a school setting, boys had outnumbered girls two to one. Yet in this classroom of twenty-something students, there were only five students other than him wearing the male uniform, and one of them was very much a chick with a rack like that!
'Jeeze, what is Japan feeding these girls? Aren't they supposed to be like fifteen or something?!'
Although to be fair, not all the girls had such… mature proportions. Sitting down, the girl in the seat next to him looked to have had most of her puberty taken and divvied up between the other girls. With her short, thin stature and miniscule chest, she almost looked more like she should be in the middle school division. It was only the lack of remaining baby fat on her features and the noticeable muscle tone in her limbs that clued him in to the fact that the puberty bat probably just struck out when it was her turn to pitch. Heh.
'She's still pretty cute though, she's got that going for her at least.'
With snow white shoulder length hair and a blank expression on her face, he could see plenty of guys and girls appreciating her doll-like appearance, especially with the almost childish black cat pin decorating her white locks. Whether or not they would admit to being attracted to her might be a different story in a couple years though, depending on if she was just a late bloomer or if she was all done growing. She was in that sort of size range that most straight teen boys would be attracted to, but would raise some eyebrows if they were explicitly open with that attraction in their later teen years.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts. He may be a bit of a pervert, but thinking that deeply about a new classmate's looks when he hadn't even spoken a word to her yet was just weird. He blamed the male role models he had growing up for that.
Luckily he had something new to direct his attention towards when the door opened and the homeroom teacher– a young-ish adult woman with glasses and brown hair done up in a partial ponytail– walked in and addressed the room.
"Good morning class. My name is Arata Misaki, and I will be your homeroom teacher for the next three years, so please feel free to come to me with your troubles if you need any assistance." She was smiling brightly as she spoke. "You can call me either Miss Arata or Arata-sensei. Just 'Sensei' or 'Teacher' is fine as well, whichever is your preference. I am also the supervisor of the English Literature club, so if you are struggling with English class assignments, I'm able to help you there too."
After a couple more announcements, she began to do the roll call. In an unusual but somehow unsurprising turn of events, she called names in alphabetical order according to the English transliterations of their names, so instead of being called on early on, he would end up being one of the last in the class to respond. He did his best to discreetly observe the people in front of and to the sides of himself as their names were called, trying to attach the names to each person in his head. He wasn't amazing at remembering names and faces all that well, but he was pretty good at noticing and recognizing other features like posture, hair, and body shape, so he was fairly confident that it wouldn't take him much more than a day to get a good read on most of his classmates' personalities.
About three quarters of the way through the class roster, a name came up that had him suppressing a sympathetic cringe of embarrassment.
"Toujou Koneko?" Arata-sensei called.
'Uwahhh, someone actually named their kid 'Kitten'...' He sweatdropped and glanced to the side, already making a guess as to who it belonged to. That cat themed hair pin was unique enough that he'd guess it's the only one of its kind in the school.
"Present." Much like her blank facial expression, the short girl answered in a soft monotone while lightly raising her hand.
Weirdly enough, there was a small chorus of quiet sighs of content coming from a suspicious amount of students. Covertly looking around in confusion, he noticed there were a handful of female students gazing at Koneko with bright and dopey smiles on their faces.
"Ah- ahem. Ueda Mitsuri?" Arata-sensei was cupping one of her cheeks in a palm, trying to hide the embarrassed blush growing on her face.
'Even you, Miss Arata?! Is this an anime?! What's with that over the top reaction to a student's looks?'
"Hai haaai…" The girl in the boys uniform answered in a lazy tone, leaning back in her chair with her head tilted back and a bored expression on her face.
'Ah, I guess a tomboy like that wouldn't pay attention to that sort of stuff.'
He grinned at the Mitsuri girl's countenance. She was a woman after his own heart, seeming to be a fellow delinquent. Alas, he had strayed from his roots in The Way of Skipping, trying to become a (somewhat) model student out of respect for the old man who gave him such a great head start on building his new life.
The teacher finished recovering her composure and moved on to the next name on the list, making it his turn to respond.
"Uzumaki Naruto?"
With whisker-like birthmarks on his cheeks and a grin that squinted his eyes, he looked positively vulpine to the class.
-^^,,––,,~