Hidan no Aria:Volume11 Chapter2

2nd Ammo - Sports Festival -La Lissa-

Kaname had experienced two failures recently. Arcanum Duo, and the Lumberjack. It seemed that these experiences had 'cured' her, so to speak. She realised that she was worthless as a weapon, and losing in the duel broke her self-confidence. She seemed to living a normal middle-school life. The middle-school she's going to is far from normal, though. I started to see less and less of the scientific swords she was so proud of. Well, that's a good thing. Aria, who starts firing over who gets to use the remote, or Riko, who sets up landmines for fun, were the ones in the wrong. Kaname should live like a normal person. That was my conviction. She was at an age where she could still turn her life around.

I also felt like Kaname's attitude towards me had changed dramatically. It sort of seemed like she had started keeping a little bit of distance from me, appropriate to the brother-sister relationship she insisted we were in. She stopped clinging to me the way Riko did at least, which was a huge relief. But still, she was a total kid, and very attached to me. From time to time I would catch her doing some incomprehensible things, like staring at me from hiding. That was the kind of thing that I'd see in Jeanne's shoujo manga, plotlines like: "I've fallen in love, but my crush is my brother so I can't express it." There were a lot of things like this that made it hard for me to stay home, but it was better than when she used to threaten to stab me thirty times because I was hanging out with other girls. I supposed that I could bear it.

...I was careless.

When Kaname wasn't around, I decided to make reverse teru teru bouzu (normal ones, except heads pointing down,) to pray for rain. While I was busy with this, I received a strange call.

"Greetings, master."

"I told you stop calling me that." That was how my conversation with Fuuma started.

"Your little sister has been getting a lot of attention from the other freshmen girls." She reported to me.

"That's a good thing. That's what normal girls are supposed to do." She always was popular, unlike me. Kaname, the wolf in sheep's clothing.

"And recently, there is a group of girls that she is very close to."

"And what's wrong with that? Who are they?" I had lost interest in the stupid topic, so I reached out to grab my magic marker so I could continue drawing faces onto my reverse teru teru bouzu.

"Mamiya Akari." I froze.

"...Aria's amica?"

"Indeed." I had a bad feeling about this. I had investigated Mamiya, and found that she was a sort of rising star among the freshmen. The details were classified, which spoke of the level of operations she had taken part in. Mamiya had been E-rank before becoming Aria's amica, despite being rejected by another S-rank. 'There's no way that I'd be connected with any E-rank Butei, let alone you.' She had pressed on despite such shocking words. I asked Fuuma what Kaname was doing hanging around with Mamiya.

"The details are unclear. However, they seem to be colluding to prevent you from approaching Kanzaki-senpai."

Preventing me from approaching Aria? How considerate of them.

If we never saw each other, I wouldn't have to be chased around by her M1911s. Jeez, it's like I'm dragged into a bullfight when I'm with her. If you just imagine her hair clips as horns, then...yeah, seems pretty accurate to me.

"Keep an eye on them just in case. Report anything out of the ordinary to me."

"As you wish." I shook my head, sinking back into the sofa. Maybe I was leaving too much of this freshmen business in Fuuma's hands, but...ah, fuck it. I'm busy...well, not really, but it's about time I learned to delegate.

Not like I can split my attention to so many things.

I already had a massive task on my hands. Tomorrow, La Lissathe sports festival would be held at Butei High. It would be a day straight from hell.

Please...let it rain tomorrow.

Finishing up my reverse teru teru bouzus, I hung them on the curtain rail.

It was a beautiful sunday morning, not a cloud in the sky. The entire Butei High student body was assembled at the first school grounds. We were gathered for the annual sports festival. There were no practices for this events, seeing as the student population were mostly busy with investigations/operations. A rehearsal was held at 5AM in the morning, as we were herded together at gunpoint by the teachers. And well, this is it. The real thing. Damn, I'm sleepy. I'm going to fall asleep standing up.

"We, the participants, in accordance with the Butei Charter, swear to compete to the end!"

The preppy freshman, Takachiho Urara took the participant's oath. She probably didn't mean a word of it. The student body split themselves into the red team and white team, preparing for the competitions. None of us were carrying anything. Not knives, not grenades, not pistols, sniper rifles, or machine guns. We had all disarmed. This was absolutely an impossible sight to find in Butei High. The school rules did say: "It is your duty to carry arms, whether guns or blades."

The tamaire competition was about to start. Once, when Ranbyou had just been rejected at a marriage interview, we played a slightly different version. Students would pair up, and shoot into the net. The first person in the pair to make it into the net was free to shoot their opponent. Thankfully, we weren't playing that versionWe were just playing the standard version, throwing balls into a net that was three metres high. Why would we play such a peaceful game? Well...

"Wow~, what healthy and strong looking students these are."

"Ah, the weather's amazing. This is a great opportunity to work up a healthy sweat." The Tokyo Education Committee's vice-chairman and head instructor were here to observe...or rather, monitor us. That was probably because of the last sports festival, where all the events were absolute torture, like a barefoot hoplitodromos. It was more like a fight festival than a sports festival. We had a record number of injuries. Our student body, being largely insane, had an amazing time, but the governor of Tokyo somehow heard rumours of what went down, and he went ballistic. La Lissa was now monitored closely. The Masters had said that Butei High was at risk of being shut down if the event went badly.

"You will be playing the part of happy and innocent high school students during the 'first phase' of the sports festival. Anybody who discharges a weapon will receive the highest punishment." That was their instruction. The 'highest punishment' was pretty much a torture session, so we set our minds on tamaire, fake smiles plastered to our faces.

"Hahaha! You'll never get them in!" At the very least, Hiraga-san, from the Amdo division, was smiling innocently, making us all feel better. I'm glad that she was on my team, she seemed to be having fun. She was the one to go to when requesting weapon modifications, but seeing how clumsy her tiny hands were now, it made me hesitate about going to her again. By the way, we were free to wear whatever sports attire we wanted. Hiraga-san was wearing shorts, and she looked like a kindergartner free to wander around at recess. This competition totally suited her.

"...Hah!" Jeanne threw the ball, her form as graceful and perfect as ever. Her silver hair shone in the sunlight. She was really pretty, so even her fake smile was on the level of a Hollywood actress' smile. That said, she was wearing a pair of anachronistic and scandalous bloomers. They looked almost like panties. All in all, she looked dumb...but very tempting.

The seniors were also playing tamaire with us. They were a little bit frightening. 3rd year Butei often take clients from the government. Often their missions are very long, and they are sent overseas on 'exchange programs' to conduct operations abroad. As such, I've hardly ever met with any of them, but...

They all have such overpowering presences...

All of them have one or two things about them, if not three, that stand out. Seems like they'd be pretty difficult to get along with. They were way better than the freshmen or sophmores at pretending to be normal, but there's just a different air about them. Maybe they can hide it from normal people, but another Butei would be able to tell immediately. In any case, seniors wouldn't show their unbridled strength to their juniors. They wouldn't just randomly show each other their powers as well. They were used to hiding their claws. As the number of requests that involve combat increase, Butei often butt heads as business competitors. They hide their techniques, killing moves, and abilities from even their closest friends. As a result, they were even more scary than the yakuza even if they looked like normal high school students. You could say it was because they were starting to exude the aura of a professional.

If you survive through Butei High, you're a slave as a freshman, a demon as a sophomore, and Satan himself as a senior, huh. It makes sense. Satan doesn't meddle in things like lesser demons do, after all.

Ah, didn't think I would sweat so much just from playing tamaire. Maybe it doesn't count. It's more of a cold sweat from the chills running down my spine.

After the tamaire competition, the sports festival program was thrown out the window. Several 'individual competitions' were being held, spread out across the school grounds. This was because there were a lack of teachers to oversee the students, as a large amount of them were busy entertaining the VIPs from the Education Committee. I couldn't be bothered to enter one of the individual competitions, so I decided to be one of the scorekeepers. When I went to the Masters' tent to get scoresheets, I saw Ranbyou and Tsuduri's...'other' side. Instead of their normal laughter 'Gyahaha,' they were like 'Hohoho,' serving tea and jelly to the committee members. It was absolutely terrifying. They were just normal, pretty teachers. The difference was like night and day. These were the two who had somehow managed to procure a barrel of alcohol, before getting drunk and going ballistic. They managed to wreck a section of the island's artifical quay from the inside on their path of meaningless destruction, causing the entire island to lean to the south 0.08 degrees. I should totally rat them out...

After the incident, they filled up some ballast tanks to restore the island's original gradient, but they would definitely be on the chopping block if word got out. Although if I was the one to spill the beans, I would actually be decapitated. The two-metre zanbato that Ranbyou always carries around would be well-suited to the task.

Regardless of your strengths or weaknesses, you had to partake in the individual competitions as appointed by the Masters. As a result, you had no idea who would take part in which competition during the latter part of the first phase. I started biking towards the obstacle course competition.

"Ow! Owww!" Shirayuki was there, also in old-fashioned bloomers. I saw her trip over the high jump bar and hit her head on the vaulting horse. She hadn't even reached the halfway point even though the other competitors had already reached the end. That was probably because she kept getting stuck on every obstacle. Shirayuki was just about crying at this point.

"Go, Shirayuki-san!" "You're doing great! Yeah, that's the spot!" "Higher, jump higher!" The boys were cheering her on, though. I wonder why? It didn't feel like they were making fun of her, they seemed to be genuinely supporting her.

"A-Ahn, um...my leg's getting stuck...huh?..." Shirayuki was attempting the net crawl (literally crawling under a net,) and of course, she was just getting more and more tangled. I noticed that she was wearing the volleyball team's uniform. That made sense, since she was the captain.

Is our volleyball team really fit to compete...?

In my eyes, this was one of the seven mysteries of Butei High.