A ray of treacherous sunlight peeked through the windows of the library as a bell rung from a near distance, signaling the start of school hours. I hurriedly stood up and paused for a moment, inhaling the scent of old books and mahogany.
In front of me was a table filled to the brim with reading materials
and sitting behind it was Annabel and her two bodyguards, Ai and Mai.
Ai and Mai took their time to introduce themselves last night. It
turns out they were twins and like Annabel and C, they die at the same time.
Ai and Mai explained a lot to me… Starting from the reasons why
neutrals existed and why they didn’t quite like section 12.
It turns out that neutrals were people who didn’t want to join a
section because siding would be too hard for them. Neutrals exist voluntarily,
so they’ll only stand their grounds until their leader leaves or if they
suddenly choose to join a section. The first neutral entered Doomsday High a
few years after the said school came to existence.
Like other freshmen, he had to run the course to a desired section. He
got first place that year, but unfortunately, he didn’t like the looks of
anyone, so he walked into the school without a word. Sections attacked him,
fearing that some freshmen would follow his example… and follow they did.
When he graduated, he eventually took over the whole school and became
the Principal. His name is Rey. His surname is unknown. And if there’s
something anyone should know about him… It’s the fact that he’s Ace’s ancestor…
and he’s still inarguably young and alive.
As for why they hate Section 12, this probably started around the time
my parents were studying here. The sudden siege in the library and the wiping
out of all neutrals during the siege seemed to get to them a lot.
Back then, Section 12 was brutal and fierce. Students broke all the
rules just to get to the top students list. They broke into the Principal’s
office and forced him to give the library to them. At first, the principal
refused and a few members started disappearing into ashes, however, 12 didn’t
back down. They won the Principal over with their guts and the disqualification
process stopped right away. The library siege followed.
Annabel stirred in her sleep. She seemed to be more peaceful than ever.
“It’s Thursday, 8 in the
morning,” Mai said from behind me as she shoved a book into a shelf. “In
thirty minutes, you have a class in Biology with Leonard-sensei,
Ken-chan…”
“Looks like you know my schedule better than I do,” I said. “Don’t
neutrals have a schedule to follow too?”
It was then I realized that I didn’t even know my schedule. Usually,
students have to select the subjects they would be studying the whole year
round but not in this school. During yesterday's conversation with Ai and my, I had
found that the students of Doomsday High are sorted out and shoved into their
respective classrooms.
“Yes. Ours is more
complex than those who belong to a section,” Ai replied in Mai’s stead. She was sitting on top of the same bookshelf while swinging her
legs to and fro. The grin on her face told me that she was enjoying the view.
“Unlike students who have a schedule assigned by the school three days to a week after they choose a section, we plot our own
schedules so that we don’t get into fights. We want to have a really peaceful
high school life. It’s our everyday goal. Unfortunately, we can’t escape from
sudden attacks,” Ace suddenly stated, appearing right beside Ai. There must’ve
been a ladder behind the shelf they were sitting on.
“You seem to be confident. When you and the
twins walk down the school hallways, what do you do when other sections
suddenly attack you?”
“Simple. We run,” Ace said with a playful smirk. “We’re fast runners.
Some sections prefer to trade information with us and sometimes it gets a
little dirty. I don’t want to get done in or disqualified especially now that
I’m about to graduate and leave this wretched place."
“The thought of you leaving is very appealing,” Annabel said as she
rose from her chair. “Your very presence irritates me.”
“Oh! You’re awake,” Ace smirked again. “Just when I thought you would
never wake up!”
“You moron,” Annabel hissed.
“And you!” She pointed and glared at me. “Go to your classroom, you imbecile!”
“But—But two unknown sections might be fighting outside and I don’t
even have a weapon,” I explained to her.
She pressed a palm to her forehead. “I almost forgot. You ran out of
ammo yesterday. Darn.”
Annabel’s gaze swept across the library. “Does Mai have her Gatling
gun?”
“No. I believe not,” Ace said.
“You liar,” Annabel hissed.
“What are you going to do with a Gatling gun? You can’t fight. You’ve
been suspended,” Alexandroff informed her, matter-of-factly.
“I can’t fight. But he can,” she said, pointing at me.
“I don’t know how to use a Gatling gun,” I said in an indefinite
protest.
“I’ll teach you. It’s gonna be a little noisy though… You can use the
bookshelves as your target,” she said.
“That’s not nice of you, Annabel. I thought you’d be more refined,” Ace
mocked. “Using my poor shelves as slaves. Guess you’re still as ill-mannered as always.”
“Wanna die?” Annabel asked, looking up at him.
“You can’t kill me,” he retorted, smugly.
It was then the doors to the library erupted open and two unknown
students marched into the room disdainfully. They scowled at me like I had just
murdered their parents.
One of them was a redheaded girl with piercing ruby eyes. She spoke
with a thick, Italian accent. “Shame to see Section 12 wipe out a whole section
without their trump card.”
The other one was a stocky blonde whose voice boomed across the room
as he spoke. “Looks like Section 6 underestimated you guys. But now that we’re
here…”
“You two are from Section 5,” Ace said, familiarizing their faces.
“The freshmen who came last at the first exam.”
“We came last because we were late,” The redhead said. “If we had come
early, we could have fed this guy to the blades.”
“You two finished the course in no less than ten seconds,” Ace said,
fascinated. “You even came out unscathed.”
“We were trained,” The blonde said. “Fourteen years of training is
more than enough to keep us alive in this school. However… there seems to be a
slight… problem.”
“There’s a bug we need to fix,” the redhead said, walking closer to
me. The smile on her face stated that she appreciated the fact I was standing
before her. “It’s you, Takanashi.”
I walked out of her way and stood right beside Annabel.
“Miss Rezef,” The redhead said. “I believe you’re having a rough time.
How does it feel to be suspended again?”
Annabel was letting her temper get to her again and she marched
fumingly towards the redhead. Ai and Mai grabbed her and pacified her before
she could do something stupid.
“That’s enough taunting,”
another voice said. This one was feminine and dangerously familiar… It sounded
like…
“Bernie?” I whispered, looking at the lady who was just walking into
the library.
Confused by the sudden turn of events, I started, “Bernie. What--“
Annabel spanked me on the back of my head. “You idiot!” She whispered
to me. “She’s not Bernie. She’s—“
“I see that you ruffians from Section 12 have been taking care of my
filthy little sister,” the girl said.
I looked at her right in the eyes. I could swear she was Bernie. She
had the same face… same hair… same voice… The only thing different was the
dark, unfriendly aura she was carrying.
Bernie had something that made anyone comfortable whenever she was
around. This girl didn’t have that characteristic.
“My name’s Olivia,” The girl said. “I’m Bernie’s twin sister.”
“Evil twin sister,” Annabel corrected rather incredulously
Olivia rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
“Finally. Should we give the guy a beating before killing him? Or
should we drag him outside now?” The blonde said.
Dragging me outside probably meant that they could kill me there.
“Still as impatient as ever, Apollo,” Olivia’s stare fluttered across the
ceiling before she looked at me. “Drag him outside. Now.”
Annabel pulled me behind, “Run, you idiot! Avoid them!”
I quickly took to my heels and ran. I looked ahead while keeping my
ears trained to the footsteps behind me at first. It took a moment before the
annoying sound vanished. I was hopeful that I had lost them, but I couldn’t keep my hopes up. They were probably
thinking of ways to catch me. The only strategy I have now is to run away from
them.
Only when I was lost in the endless array of bookshelves did I realize
how huge this library was. It was almost like a labyrinth of some sorts… It was even bigger than the library Section
12 had seized.
Left. Right. Right. Left. Another left. I was in a huge maze and there
was no way out of it.
“Libera, I’ve seen him!” I looked up and much to my surprise, Apollo
was running on top of the bookshelf to my right. I made a left turn just as the
aisle ended just to see what he would do.
He was jumping from shelf to shelf. It almost made him seem very inhuman.
He was like a flying buzzard waiting to be swatted, and as badly as I wanted to
smash, slice or shoot him, I had no weapons on me and killing was prohibited in
this library.
It took me some time before I found my way back to where Annabel and
the others was and I was so filled with the thought of escaping Apollo and
Libera that I didn’t realize what was beyond the entrance of the library.
I ran out of the area and stopped posthaste. In front of me were
students of Section 5, all bent on killing me. They immediately started loading
their guns. I closed my eyes, only to have them open due to the roar of a
chainsaw and the repetitive banging of a Gatling gun.
I needn’t look back because Ai was right by my side. She was holding a
chainsaw and its blade was carving ugly holes on the floor.
“Belle-chan couldn’t help you so we decided to do her a favor and take
her place!” Ai told me with a reassuring smile.
“We really, really, really idolize Belle-chan,” Mai said, huddling over
to cover me from behind. “So we copied her weapons.”
The next few seconds were blurry, with only the sounds of Ai’s
chainsaw and Mai’s Gatling gun filling my ears to the point where it hurts. My
head started pounding, but I couldn’t go anywhere considering the fact that I
was surrounded, with absolutely no weapon on me, and only two girls guarding
me. I have to admit, I felt incredibly weak.
That was when they came racing towards me.
Jeck had hacked through the crowd with his newly-repaired axe and Dave
was right behind him, shocking people with his electro-gloves. Following them
was Rena who was wielding a spear of some sorts, and she was moving in fast.
She was trying to grab something from the inside of her blazer, hence making
her more unaware of the growing number of attackers who were now encompassing
her.
She stopped on her tracks and I managed to hear her yell one word
before she was completely blocked by her assailants.
“Catch!”
Precision. It was the one thing that helped me see the two objects she
had thrown towards me. They were pistols – one was colored a luminous silver
while the other was a lucid black.
I hurriedly caught the both of them with my own two hands and examined
them as fast as I could. The hole where the bullet would go through wasn’t
shaped normally for both guns. Thin hollow rectangles took the place of the
usual hole where the bullets would go through. It pretty much explained why the
head of both pistols were considerably wider. The magazine which was supposed
to contain the bullets was also evidently bigger.
Knowing that asking questions wasn’t a good thing to do given the
current time and situation, I began shooting.
Then the questions started flooding my head.
“What… are these?” I asked myself.
I had known that regular bullets wouldn’t be able to come out of the
pistols, but it still surprised me to see blades coming out of them.
A tan guy with dreadlocks suddenly came to my side and lit a grenade.
“Nice weapon you’ve got there buddy,” He said. “Blades instead of
bullets. How convenient.”
He threw a grenade to the farthest part of the crowd and pulled me
away before the gunpowder took effect.
“The name’s Ruben. I’m a neutral,” he said. “Ace said you needed some
help. Unfortunately, that’s the last of the grenades we have. I’ll be going
now. See you.”
The grenade exploded. The blast
could have caused a few walls to fall apart or may have even created a hole in
the floor to say the least, but the insurmountable amount of bodies that laid
where the grenade landed told me that the whole place was holding itself
together so strongly that it was almost miraculous.
Then I began making up for the lost time by shooting anyone I saw as a
threat. Section 5’s numbers started deteriorating significantly and I knew that
we were going to win.
I looked into the smoke caused by a grenade and noticed a figure
coming out of it. Without really thinking, I pointed one of my guns at the
smoke and pulled the trigger.
Indeed, there was someone lurking in the smoke, and when the area had
cleared and Section 5’s number had decreased dramatically, with only a few
members fighting off Section 12, I quickly neared the body and stared at the
person I had just… killed.
Yes, their likeness was remarkable indeed. I didn’t know if I had just
killed Bernie or Olivia but considering they were twins then I might have
killed them both.
Bernie/Olivia’s corpse laid there with her eyes open. A circular blade
was buried firmly into her forehead. For
a moment, I had thought about disqualification, then someone tapped me on the
shoulder, ultimately interrupting me.
I looked around to see a familiar, friendly smile.
“Next time, be a little more gentle. Dying hurts,” Bernie said. Since
Olivia was her twin, she couldn’t get away unscathed. She had a wound on her
forehead – the exact same place I had shot Olivia, but it wasn’t deep enough to
kill her.
“You’re a strong pair,” I told her.
“I know,” Bernie said. “Now it’s off to classes for all of us.”
***
Run. If you’re a student of Doomsday High, it’s the only thing you
could think of once you’re heading to class. And it’s not because you’re going
to be late.
If a horde of killers was trailing behind you, would you even have the
time to think? Well maybe yes, if you were the really calm and composed type.
But calm and composed weren’t a part of my traits.
Room 302 is a lab located on the 3rd floor. The rooms are
really messed up in Doomsday High. I could see the reason why students get lost
so easily.
Rena had a map and a time table with her, but surprisingly, I had
none. Perhaps it was also inside the envelope containing the registration form.
Perhaps I had thrown it out of the window along with that envelope out of
impatience.
How stupid of me.
We clambered a staircase which was believed to be a shortcut to the
third floor. Since it was still undoubtedly going to be a long trip, some
students took advantage of the time and began killing each other off.
I was told by Rena not to look back, but nobody could help it if they’re
curious. I took quick glances to see what was happening from behind.
Someone was lying on one of the steps and he was missing his head. A
girl tumbled right beside him with a Swiss knife pressed deep into her chest.
When we reached the third floor, the killings continued. I had to
shoot down two students who were already loading their guns.
Rena made a quick left and I followed suit. In no less than a second,
room 302 was right in front of us. When we got inside, our teacher, Professor
Leonard, was already dissecting a frog out of unambiguous boredom.
He peered at the entrance to the lab from behind his thick eyeglasses.
His hair, already a shimmering silver, whitened all of a sudden as if he wasn’t
expecting a bunch of bloody, battered students to enter the room out of the
blue.
“Oh. You’re all here,” he stated in a low voice. “I thought none of
you were going to come.”
“Sorry we’re late, Sir Leonard,” Rena spoke for the whole class first.
“We were a little… preoccupied.”
“I understand,” Sir
Leonard said before beckoning everyone to take their seats.
***
Running again. I believe that’s how it’s going to be each day in
Doomsday High. I and Rena had to run from Biology class to History, which was
located on Room 402 on the same floor.
Our History teacher, Miss Gradenko, was young… Or at least, she looked
young. She told the class that she was only twenty seven, though I don’t know
if she meant it in mortal or immortal terms.
She explained that the teachers in Doomsday High were hired as
mortals, and like the students, they were transformed into immortals because
they had physical contact with the Unknown.
She also explained that all the teachers were given the task to turn
their students into great leaders so that they’d lead a successful life on
Earth. After all, if you’re successful, mortals would hate it if you die. Not
unless you’re a chipmunk-sounding pop star who hasn’t undergone puberty at 15.
Still, I hate the idea of being spoiled and rich. If immortality and
wealth is what you want and all you have to do is to die a million times for
it, then be my guest.
After a very long introduction to Unknown history, she went on with
the lesson.
She droned on and on about how the Unknown came to be and how it
wasn’t meant to exist in the first place. The Unknown is a place that was meant
to balance the equilibrium of the entire universe, but humans were not allowed
to have contact with.
The first human who entered the Unknown was killed by a grim reaper.
Grim reapers have the power to take away immortality, but they couldn’t do it
if you could fight them.
Immortals could damage grim reapers physically partially because they
are already gifted with the ability to surpass death. Of course, death still
has ways of catching them by surprise (like disqualification) so they have to
be careful and keep a watchful eye on themselves and their surroundings.
History class was short since Miss Gradenko dismissed us early, but we
chose to leave the classroom last. Some of the students decided to seat back
and wait as well. Most of them were staring daggers at me but I didn’t care.
When the students lost their
patience and stalked out of the room, I and Rena took our cue and
ushered ourselves out of the classroom. Rena and I had to run to a pre-training course
meeting at the main library. And we couldn’t get there without a fight.
We had a run-in with a three of our classmates (all were probably from
Section 11). We had to knock them out just to be fair. However, I can’t expect
no one to go after them in our stead. They might already be dead a few minutes
after we left them lying on the ground.
Our journey to the main library was more silent than ever. Rena
probably hasn’t recovered from yesterday’s incident. To top it off, Sarah and
J.R were nowhere in sight. They were supposed to be our classmates in History.
“Where are they?” I asked, half-rhetorically.
“Who?” Rena inquired. Even if she was clearly not in the mood to talk,
I was grateful that I managed to make her speak.
“Sarah and J.R?” I questioned.
Rena’s gaze was fixated ahead as she answered, “They got done in
earlier. They’re probably back in the dorm but who knows? They might still be
in the clinic.”
I followed her gaze. “I see…”
Silence.
“Look, I’m sorry about yesterday. It’s just that… I wasn’t thinking
when I said those things to you. You could just forget about it,” Rena said.
“I don’t know if I should... you know… Forget,” I told her.
When we got to the library, it was empty. Rena and I had to roam
around in search for a familiar presence, but there was nobody inside it. We
were the only two souls entangled in another series of shelves.
I sighed as we stood by the entrance, waiting for the rest to come.
“Maybe they got caught up in a killing spree,” Rena said.
“Maybe they went back to the dorm,” I told her.
“They can’t do that,” Rena objected. “They always hold meetings here.
It’s much more convenient. Besides, clambering all the way back to the dorm
sounds like a death sentence. You know how long the staircases to the
underground are!”
“Okay, okay. Calm down,” I said, rolling my eyes exasperatedly. “We’ll
give them 10 minutes. If they don’t show up, they’re definitely back in the
dorm.”
“What will they be doing there?” She asked me.
“Probably talking to Annabel,” I said.
“If they wanted to talk to her, they could do that here. Annabel knows
a lot of secret passages to the library,” she informed me.
I breathed a sigh. She was right. I could faintly recall someone telling me something similar on the first day... Or was it the second?
I was about to respond when the doors to the library were forced open
and our History teacher, Miss Gradenko, moved into the room in one-fluid
motion.
“Oh, you’re both here. I sort
of… lost my way,” Miss Gradenko explained with a smile.
Teachers couldn’t be killed, so they could walk around the school with
ease.
“What are you here for, Miss Gradenko?” Rena asked with extreme
politeness.
“I was looking for the other library,” she said.
She probably meant the annex… where the neutrals are lurking.
“It’s on the first floor,” I told her.
“It’s that far?” She asked with a disappointed sigh. She definitely
didn’t want to climb down staircases, most especially spiral ones.
“If you ever get injured on your way there, the clinic’s on the second
floor,” Rena informed her. “The students could take you there. They won’t
really harm you anyway unless a stray bullet finds you.”
Miss Gradenko sighed again. “I guess there’s no helping it. See you in
class tomorrow, kids.”
And with that she was off.
Speaking of injuries, I looked down at the prosthetic that had
replaced my left foot. I had completely forgotten about it.
“Don’t prosthetics take years of getting used to?” I asked,
half-rhetorically. It was true anyway. Our neighbor’s daughter got caught in an
accident which took away her lower left limbs and she hasn’t even learnt to
walk until now.
It was weird for me to be walking normally.
“The nurse said that the prosthetic she used on you was one of the
more advanced type,” She said. “It looked pretty normal to me but then you got
the hang of it in no time and that was more than enough to convince me that
what the nurse said was true. I guess it’s the type that prevents a person from
taking walking lessons and lets anyone go straight for the kill. It’s really
convenient in your part.”
I stayed silent.
“Maybe the nurse understood that you’d be all giddy about the killing
spree. Guess every student here is the same,” she said. “Wake up-Eat-kill-
study-kill- study-kill-eat- study- sleep.”
“That’s not far from the usual wake up-survive- sleep kind of thing,”
I told her.
“It is…” She said. “If everything here was normal, nobody here would
be programmed to kill. Killing is a very different term from surviving,
Ken.”
“You have to kill to survive,” I told her, matter-of-factly.
She sighed, defiantly. “You have a point.”
“I wonder,” I started. “Why was I sent to this school in the first
place? Everyone here wants to be in the lead. I only want to be on the very
back of things… You know… while actors perform onstage, I’ll be the one
preparing the props. I wasn’t born to be successful. I was born to be a coward.
Heck, I didn’t even have any friends in middle school.
“When I got here, I wasn’t prepared for anything. I didn’t think ‘Hey,
Ken! It’s a new school! It’s your chance to be a new person!’ Instead, I
thought, ‘My parents sent me here. They’re such douches.’”
Rena laughed even if I hadn’t meant what I said as a joke.
“Then I realized Doomsday High is different. Way different. I mean
look at it. I’m in Junior High and I’m already being trained to conduct
massacres. What’s the use?”
“You need to avoid getting killed by death angels after you graduate,”
Rena pointed out.
“I know that… but… what else? Aside from death angels, what else?
Nothing, right?” I said. “I mean, come on. Some of us are bound to become death
angels even if the school is highly against it.
We’d eventually grow tired of picking on only one thing at a time. It
would be like playing a computer game and you’ll be stuck on the same level.
It’s sickening.”
Rena breathed heavily. “You know, my mother… She was irresponsible… She let the death
angels have my father, and then she re-married a mortal. It’s the main reason
why I have a Japanese surname. Not that I’m against it. Mr. Yamasaki is a good
guy… In fact, I wish he was my real father. I just don’t have the guts to call
him ‘dad’ yet….
“He wanted me to go to a normal school… Grow up like any kid… Get
married, grow old… Then die, like any mortal,” She sighed. “I wanted that too… But
I often had nightmares about what my mother did to my father, and overtime I got
scared of death itself that I decided to turn down the future Mr. Yamasaki had
prepared for me. I had never seen him so broken.
“Since mother had contact with the Unknown, she was the one who
brought me to this school. Before I left my home, Mr. Yamasaki was crying.
Seeing him like that tore me apart.
“Now that I can’t fear death, I solemnly swear to myself that when I
leave this school, I’ll become incredibly successful… So that he’ll know that
while I was making my decision, I was also thinking of him as my father.” Rena
finished her story with a depressed sigh.
“That’s pretty unselfish of you,” I told her.
“No. It’s selfish. Mr. Yamasaki had done everything he could to make
my life as perfect as possible. The only thing I could have done in exchange
for it was to live normally and avoid putting myself at risk,” she said. “Being
in this school is hurting him. He knows that I could die a thousand times here.
That I would suffer a lot of pain here. He is very much aware of that, Ken. And
unlike us who can’t fear death once we’ve entered Doomsday High, he alone would
experience the trauma I should be feeling now. “
I stayed quiet. She had just summarized her whole life story.
Surprisingly, I wanted to hear more.
Then the doors opened again and in came our history teacher, breathing
erratically.
“M-Maybe I…” She started, panting. “Maybe I could… get some reference
materials… from here.”
***
“So tell us,
Professor,” I began, giving her a look of curiosity. “What’s your research
about?”
“Oh nothing… Well at least, nothing of the usual,” she told me,
glancing back with a smile as she navigated through the nearest aisles with me
and Rena trailing right behind her just for the heck of it. She continued, “I’m
one of the… newer faculty of this school… I guess I should know more about its
history.”
“I see… So you have a vast knowledge of Unknown history,” Rena paused
for a moment. “But you have only little knowledge of this school.”
“Yes,” The professor glanced back again with an acknowledging smile. “I’ve
been studying about the Unknown during most of my mortal life. But I never
believed it to be real. I guess it was just out of plain, immeasurable
curiosity. I never expected to be involved in it.”
“So now you want information about this school,” I said in
realization.
“Precisely,” the teacher nodded. “I want to know how it came to be. I
want to learn about its past. About the grim reapers that want to annihilate
its very existence. I want to know more.”
Rena gasped. “Teacher, believe me when I say that if you know about
the grim reapers, you know a lot about this school.”
“Oh but that’s the only thing I know about it, darling,” the teacher
opposed. “I couldn’t help but get information from that young lad at the main
library. What was his name again… Andy… Alex…”
“Ace,” I told her.
“Oh yes… Ace,” she said. “Such a talented boy. His two subordinates are my students and
they discovered my research papers while they were cleaning up the classroom.
Those two just love to clean up messes.”
Probably Ai and Mai.
The teacher rambled on while looking for a book related to her subject
matter. “They told me that if I needed more answers. I could ask Ace some
questions. It would come at a cost though. Luckily, the very same day, some
Section 3 students were talking non-stop in my classroom and I decided to
eavesdrop on their conversation a little bit. I gave him every detail of what I
heard.”
Oh… He’ll love that, alright.
“Wait a minute. Section 3?” I queried. I could feel my own eyes
widening. “What were they talking about?”
Miss Gradenko sighed. She definitely didn’t want to talk about the same
thing twice. “It was about the training course today. They said something about
a trump card and the fact that it’s going to be their Section versus twe—“ Miss
Gradenko stopped. “You two are from Section 12. How many are you in your
section?”
“Somewhere between 20 and 30,” said. “Why?”
“According to them, today’s training course is a massive one,” Miss
Gradenko said, looking at me in the eyes. “It’s Section 3 versus Section 12 in
an all-out brawl.”
I choked at her words.
Maybe they’re gonna select members from the section to participate in
the course. That’s got to be it. Unfortunately, events in this school are
pretty unpredictable. It might be one of 12 versus all of 3.
“Rena! Ken!” A familiar voice
called out from someone, somewhere near the entrance of the library. Ace…? What’s
he doing here?
“Rena-tan~! Ken-chan~!” Two, simultaneous, squeaky ones followed. It’s
got to be Ai and Mai. Hands down.
“Hey idiot!! Show yourself! We’ve got about 40 minutes to the training
course! Our section’s gonna die if you don’t show up.”
Annabel? Well you can’t easily identify her voice since it changes
with her emotions.
“Kennyyyyyyy!!! Where are you????!!!!!!”
Roni. No doubt about it.
“Maybe I could—“ Patty started, but she was cut off by a simultaneous
“No!” .
Seriously, what the hell was she planning?
“Ken! Rena! Where the heck are you guys?” Another voice called out.
“That’s C, isn’t it?” Rena asked me. It was then I realized that she
had been asking me questions while I was trying to identify the voices calling
out to the both of us.
I sighed. “Let’s go.” I looked at Miss Gradenko. “Good luck with your
research, ma’am.”
