Editing City Series:Volume7 Layer 8 (section)

===Record 85: Like Always===
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'''10/09/1998

'''22:48

We had been called to the Chancellor’s Officers living room even though the athletic festival started tomorrow.

I was standing in front of the room’s entrance in the modified bomb shelter when I saw an idiot among the white and red colors. I stared at him.

“What are you doing here, Professor?”

He pushed up his glasses to stare back at me.

“Oh, and who might you be? That is a very unfortunate shape for a face, I must say.”

I went ahead and punched him.

“Ow ow ow. You sure are a violent child. Why do you throw hands at the drop of a hat?”

“In order to cure your memory disorder, obviously. You see, there’s this new treatment where I punch you straight in the head at a rate of three times a second. The effectiveness differs between people, but it apparently works for around 70% of people.”

“I am going to ignore that. No objections? Then let’s gather up these ashes on the floor.”

I looked down to see white ashes piled up on the concrete floor. I tilted my head.

“What’s all this?”

“Ashes.”

“I can tell.”

“Interesting. You could tell what it was and asked anyway, yet you show no shame. Is there any way of fixing that brain of yours?”

I strayed from my usual methods and put him in a headlock. He tapped out after 3 seconds.

“Fine. I will explain. You know the tissue paper flowers used for opening ceremonies and the like? I made a large quantity of those, but carrying that back out would have been so inconvenient. So I burned them.”

“And that’s where these ashes came from?”

“Yes. They have been oxidized, but if I scatter them around, the oxygen will dissolve into the air and the original flowers will return. If I scatter them from the rooftop, I can carpet bomb the plebes below with colorful flowers.”

“Huh, so even you can do useful things sometimes.”

“Ho ho? Have you never heard of doing one good deed a day? I follow the church of the one good deed. And after that one good deed, do whatever you want for the rest of the day.”

I quickly checked the clock to make sure it wasn’t tomorrow yet. Having his one good deed done that early in the day would be dangerous in the extreme.

It was still shortly before 11 at night, so I breathed a sigh of relief just as Lady walked out of the living room carrying a carboard box full of paper flowers.

“Okay, I have more for you to burn.”

“I see.” The Professor pulled a lighter from his pocket. “That’s 6 boxes today. A good pace. Who made all of them anyway?”

“Hm? There’s a lot of stuff in here.”

I listened to their conversation and the term “6 boxes” caught my attention. Before I could figure out why, you walked in from the direction of the school building.

“Excuse me. Did you see a pile of programs for the athletic festival around here? They’re for the students in the school buildings.”

“Eh?” said Lady just before Snowy stepped out from the living room.

“Come to think of it, I left the Officers’ photo album and a nap room blanket in here, but they have disappeared.”

“Huh?” you said just before Sensei approached from the direction of the school building.

“Um, uh, did I leave a pile of ungraded tests around here? I was thinking of grading them outside for a change of pace.”

Snowy gave her a “why would you do that?” look just before a red Caddy stopped in front of us and the Boss hopped out.

“Oh, no! I left my secret porn stash hidden in the trash when I was cleaning up the living room!”

Sensei scolded him, but the rest of us were looking at the ashes at our feet.

Then our gazes gathered on the Professor standing in the middle of those ashes and staring up into the sky.

“I said one good deed a day. Not six.”

'''Author Comment:

I remember Lady’s “okay, I have more for you to burn” originally being “burn everything in here” while towing in a bicycle trailer. I was right to change my mind about that.