STD Positive

Once Yukimura had left my room, I’d spent the rest of 17th April holed up under my sheets in contemplation.

Wasn’t this what I’d fantasized about since middle school?

Every Japanese boy dreams of the day their fate intertwines with a beautiful senpai... No, not really—ethnicity is irrelevant when it comes to something so universally hot. I’ll make a blanket statement right now (without the ‘at the risk of making a...’ disclaimer nonsense) and say this: Every teenage boy daydreams of the ‘high school senior’ fantasy. Yes, they are doing it at this very moment.

But I never expected it to be so trivial. I thought moments like those were supposed to be unforgettable.

Something that makes you go, this is it. Not, this is it? 

Like sperm released into tissue paper.

This is the vagina?

This is my life’s purpose?

That strange feeling also described my initial experience at Kitazawa High. Based on what shounen manga and light novels had told me, an elite government school that ranks their classes from A to F and places all their students on scholarship always has a caveat to it—but to be honest, Kitazawa just felt like a school. Albeit with state-of-the-art facilities and a luxurious dorm on top of that—still, the rigid education style thus far felt so painfully Japanese, it didn’t feel different. It just felt like an elevated normal.

There was no forcing students to fight with each other in all-out brawls, there was no forced participation in weird Among Us variants packaged as ‘special assessments’, and regrettably, there was no all-powerful Student Council headed by a mysterious 3rd year pulling all the strings. There was only a cracked high school (in the tamest interpretation of ‘cracked’ possible) with a boatload of government funds and a mission statement to get the highest acceptance rate in the country for top Japanese universities.

So, 18th April begins with me being disappointed at everything. At losing almost every ‘first’ imaginable to my assigned tutor—a neurotic raven-haired author—as well as my growing disillusionment with the ‘new elite government high school’ for not having any deeper layers.

Though you might’ve realised by now I tend to jump to conclusions very quickly.

***

“Rise.”

“Bow.”

“Good morning, Sensei!”

“Good morning. Please be seated.”

At the risk of making a blanket statement, every school in Japan begins homeroom like this. Kitazawa High was no different—or perhaps it was precisely because it was the government’s lovechild that they insisted on making it uber generic.

It’d only been ten days since I became a high schooler, but interpersonal drama aside, my experience at Kitazawa had been rather mundane. Even if the classrooms had a spaceship feel and lessons were effectively paperless—it all just felt like a distraction from the generically generic school system. 

Homeroom, lessons, club, sleep, repeat.

“How boring,” I muttered to myself.

…Or so I’d say if I were insane—but no one actually does that unless they have delusions of being a protagonist or are possessed by the ‘3rd person limited POV’ bug.

I’m neither of those things.

Instead, I thought about the other scholarship offers I’d received, and then began to regret that I chose Kitazawa. Have I mentioned how generic the place feels yet? But as that wistful thinking crossed my mind…

“There is an important announcement for today.”

…the same creator who thought cock rockets were funny must’ve listened in and felt bad—because Mishima-sensei decided to say something that turned out to be a genre switch extended from fate herself.

“On behalf of the school, I’d like to apologise for the rollout of the Student Transformation and Development System being delayed. It’s fundamental to the Kitazawa experience—and as I’ve been saying at the start of every homeroom, every day that passes without it working is a mere ‘trial run’. A lite version of what the school actually stands for.”

That wasn’t the shocker.

Mishima always rambled about how unique the school was on the daily—but since he was an old fogey twenty times the age of the school (it’d only existed for four years at that point) I never took his senile rants at face value.

I mean, would you really take something called the ‘STD System’ seriously?

And from an involuntarily bald old dude who only wears checkered shirts? Who is friendlier to the female students?

“BUT,” he suddenly declared in English, which made me think of something else, “I am pleased to say that the STD System for the first years has been successfully implemented as of today. Please take out your school tablets, open the STD System app, and play around with its features for the rest of homeroom. We’ll talk more about it during World History later.” Satisfied with his speech, Mishima sat down and began to do whatever.

I thought it was rather mediocre, but there was a bunch of excited murmuring from the other students in response. There’d been a lot of mystery surrounding the app, after all.

The Kitazawa tablet was loaded with a ton of programs spanning from note-taking software to brain games. You couldn’t add or delete apps, though you could do that for files like PDFs and video lectures—and thus there was a directory that stated the size of everything on the device in case you were running low on storage.

The STD System was a fat 170GB.

It also crashed on start-up without fail.

Whatever its intended function, it was shrouded in mist for the first-years—student mentors weren’t allowed to say anything, though that could have easily been a lie of convenience by Yukimura, and Mishima despite all his geriatric hyping wouldn’t give an explanation as to what it was. Not even a vague hint. At some point I concluded he suffered from dementia and forgot.

Regardless—I took out my tablet and did as I was told.

[Welcome to the STD System.]

That’s what it said on my screen.

Now at that point I was prepared for the app to return an error message and forcefully close. It would’ve been truly fitting for an ‘STD experience’.

[STD POSITIVE: Class 1-F, Mizuhara Kohei.]

Who comes up with this shit? More importantly...

“It actually works,” I muttered to myself.

I was equal parts surprised, and also equal parts yearning for attention from a certain classmate—so I really said that out loud.

“Arara? Mizuhara-kun, you’re so lucky. Mine’s still loading.”

The reply came from a generic looking girl with a generic sounding voice.

Sakura Emi.

According to a second-hand source (which I consulted sometime in May, so I didn’t know this yet), her hobbies included exercising, watching TV dramas, shopping and going for club activities. Incidentally, I also found out Watanabe was collating an encyclopedia on all the pretty girls at school around the beginning of May. Make what you will of this information.

Now.

I know I’ve been dissing Kitazawa for being ‘generic’, and my hate for ‘projectable’ characters is well-documented—but before you dub me a hypocrite I’d like to point out vanilla exists for a reason.

Every man needs to eat. And if the other flavours available are another guy, some experimental form of wasabi disguised as matcha and Yukimura, is craving vanilla really a sin? I mean this in the context of friendship, of course. I’m not some romantic idiot.

Obviously.

“I guess. A-are you excited, Sakura-san?” I asked.

I don’t know why I was so nervous. Maybe I had a soft spot for ponytails or something.

It ended up not mattering because she responded to my crap question with a smile—the type that makes you want to break into one yourself out of sheer sweetness.

“I would say so. Mishima-sensei has been talking about it a lot, hasn’t he? And I feel like school has been slightly underwhelming so far, so I’m hoping this will change things. What do you think?”

“Oh. I… er…”

“Ahaha,” she giggled. “Don’t be shy. I’m interested in what you have to say, Mizuhara-kun.”

A tall order, but I tried my best nonetheless.

“W-well, I guess I’m inclined to agree with you. Though I think—”

“Emi-chan!”

“Sakura-chan!”

“Check this out! Check this out!”

Before I could say anything of substance, Sakura got swarmed by a crowd of 1-F students—one that included both girls and guys. Everyone loved her.

But to be fair, who wouldn’t? She was the type of person who would greet you in the hallway regardless of how flimsy your acquaintanceship was. In that sense, she was just like Mari—though Mari always seemed to have an ulterior motive for everything. I never got that same feeling from Sakura.

She felt like a truly nice person.

Well.

Not like it matters what a stranger thinks.

While she was busy being popular, I turned my attention back to my tablet.

On display was my student-ID, the suspicious-as-ever title ‘STD System’ in a sleek English font, as well as five options.

[Individual Profile, Level Rankings, Class Rankings, Student Search, Settings, Guide.]

No, I didn’t mean to say six—it’s really five, since who actually looks at tutorials?

In any case, I hit ‘Level Rankings’ almost instantly.

I was then prompted to choose between the first, second, and third-year cohorts—though sadly, the latter two options were greyed out. I say ‘sadly’, since my intention had been to check out where Yukimura stacked up.

Then again, casing out Watanabe and Sakura had also been on my agenda, so it wasn’t like I lost all interest in the STD System. And so it was with a weird excitement I hit the ‘First Year’ option.

“Uh…”

I was expecting something like a ranking of our entrance test results and other academic-related tidbits. Instead, I was greeted by another menu with yet another set of options to choose from—

Except this time, the list was completely mental. 

Something ripped straight out from China's Social Credit Score playbook. Yes, there were the two obvious ones that could easily be ranked and made sense to be included—but there were four more that felt intentionally vague.

Not to mention, the last option just felt dangerous as hell.

[Academics, Athletics, Mental, Interpersonal, Creative, Aesthetics, Combat.]