KouhokuGakuen:Chapter1

Chapter One: "The Wall Is Like a Rocky Mountain!"

"I'm sorry."

"I'll be careful from now on."

"Yes, you're exactly right."

"I will uphold the self-awareness that comes with being a middle-school student."

"I'm so very sorry for yelling so loudly."

(This cycle of responses repeated itself twice. Sometimes, it's a never-ending loop of apologies.)

The staff office. Standing before the student guidance counselor, Adachi-sensei, I looked at the floor whilst repeating the above phrases. Being able to speak with the student guidance counselor before her own homeroom teacher; my life is very surreal right now.

Adachi-sensei has a large build and a grim face. Anyone who looked at him would peg him for a gym teacher, but after listening to what he had to say, turns out he teaches math, instead. He sighed.

"Your mother is American, but you can understand Japanese. Therefore, you should be able to understand that shouting so loudly in such a place is unacceptable."

Something clicked in my head as he said this. I looked him straight in the eye.

"My mother is British, not American. Not to mention that the fact that I shouted so loudly has nothing at all to do with her."

Adachi-sensei bowed his head.

"I see. I guess I was wrong for saying so. I'm sorry, I was rude."

Although this felt a bit anticlimactic, I was kind of happy. A teacher who is willing to apologize to his students is admirable.

This teacher will listen to me.

Having made this decision, I said, "The reason I shouted so loudly was because I was shocked that there's no literary club. Is there really no such club?"

"Yeah, apparently it was disbanded a few years ago due to lack of membership."

An "It's over! My middle-school life!" ending song was playing in my head.

Wait, who said I've lost?

"But creating a new club here at school is simple, right? If I get another person and we say 'We want to start this club!' we'll be recognized, right?"

Upon hearing this, Adachi-sensei made a surprised face.

"You've done your research. But that was policy about ten years ago. It's become stricter now."

Opening his desk drawer, Sensei gave me a sheet of paper. On the top was written "Application for the Creation of a New Club."

I glanced at it briefly; the list of members was numbered up to five! I got this terrible premonition.

"I'd suggest reading your student handbook if you want to create a new club."

I returned to the classroom and took out my student handbook. Upon reading it, I was struck in the face by the strictness of reality, and let my head drop onto my desk.

"Main, you okay?"

Aoi was worried about me.

Without raising my head off my desk, I showed Aoi the page in my student handbook.

In a clear voice, Aoi read it aloud.

"'On the establishment of clubs. First, in order to create a new club, the applicant must have no fewer than five hopeful members and a sponsoring teacher. Second, the applicant must complete this process by the end of April. Third, after applying, the new club will be put under review by the student council... Main, can you write the kanji for the phrase 'grim prospects?'"

I shook my head. Usually, I use a computer. If you type out "zentotanan" the computer just does the rest for you.

"What should I do, Blue? With my kind of personal connections, I won't be able to find even three people."

I clutched Aoi, crying as I appealed to her. Aoi calmly opened her arms and crunched the numbers.

"You need five people, right? But since you're already one person, Main, five minus one equals four. You need four, not three."

I pointed at Aoi.

"Blue, you're the second. Five minus two is only three."

At this, Aoi gently (but forcefully) pulled away from me.

"Sorry, Main. I'd love to help, but I'm already set on joining the basketball team."

Aoi is tall, unlike me. She's got more than twenty centimeters on me.

I won't give up!

"It says in the student handbook that you can join both a sports club and a cultural-based club."

But Aoi shook her head.

"I don't want to divide my attention between two clubs."

I see. That's exactly what I expected of Aoi. If I say anything more, it'll just hurt her. But if Aoi won't help, I'd have to gather up four people, huh?

I closed my eyes and calmly processed the situation. The answer came to me almost immediately: impossible!

I'm not good at all with talking to other people. I'm an introvert, and I'm the type to judge people at first glance. I tend to drag someone into my fantasies as soon as I meet them. There's no way that someone like me could get four people together! Yes, I should just be confident and make my declaration of defeat.

"I feel sorry for interrupting you when you seem to be on a train of thought, but why do you want to join the literary club so much, Main?"

Thank you for asking. On that note, begin flashback!

I have several female cousins. Because I'm an only child, they became like my real sisters. They all are alumnis of Kouhoku Academy.

"The literary club is so much fun."

Every time I saw them, one of them would always say this, without fail.

"Sure, the deadlines were rough, and you're up to your neck in submissions and can't write, and sometimes you feel like you want to scream, but when you finish a manuscript, you see the world in a different light."

After staying up all night for a deadline, black circles under her eyes, my cousin said this.

"And when you write a novel, you get to imagine another world. Basically, you become like a god."

"God...?"

"Sure. If it's Main, you'd call it a goddess."

And my cousin smiled. Her hair was messy, and she didn't look too good. But my cousin shone extremely bright to me in that moment.

So cool! I want to be just like my cousin! To me, heroines aren't the transforming magical girls in anime or the rotting idols. The true heroines, the ones worthy of our respect, were the members of the Kouhoku Academy Literary Club.

My other cousins shared with me their love of things like track and field and horoscopes, but the lit club had a sparkle that was on a higher level. When I enter Kouhoku Academy, I'm going to join the lit club. That was what the me of long ago decided, but...

"What a sad story. It's like takoyaki that looks like the outside is piping hot and the inside is super-juicy, but once you put it in your mouth, you find that the octopus wasn't even in the ball in the first place, don't you think so? In addition, it's so hot that you burn your tongue; that kind of feeling." I stuck out my tongue.

"I wanted to say this before, but Main, your examples are rather hard to understand." Aoi grabbed my tongue. "But then again, I'm not like you, Main. I don't read novels very much, and I definitely don't understand the appeal of writing them." With that preface, Aoi continued. "Do you really need to have a lit club in order to write novels? With manga, you'd need assistants and other people to help out, so it's best to join the manga research club because it'd be more convenient. But novels aren't like that, right?"

Yeah, Aoi does have a point. But still...

"Bu you dan undastan. (Blue, you don't understand.)"

Dammit! She's holding my tongue, so it's hard to talk. I retrieved my tongue from Aoi's hand and continued.

"If everyone writes together, it's more fun!"

Aoi waited for the next sentence. A delicate silence hung between us.