The Comprehension

Lia Haruwadu. Not the most desirable girl one would want to be with. Sure, she can look sexy from the distance, but once you’ve entered her discomfort space, you will want to shove your palm in her mouth. Her overdone make-up and overdue bleached hair will creep you out. It’s her style, but once you’re past that, there’s the next part of her.

Lia is as obnoxious as her own looks, so it’s more than just judging a book by its covered. It’s like the pages are soaked in multi-color printer ink. Quick to do whatever she feels privileged, yet quick to argue if someone interferes. She rarely has any shame in what she does, so insults are nothing but fuel to her.

It could be pointless to explain all of this, considering she is leaving junior high. She is setting off to high school. The stage where kids start to learn who they want to be, or continue to be an asshole. It is quite obvious of what sort of path Lia wants to take. However, Lia actually begins her horrible high school life on her own accord.

“Tonight’s story. A high school that runs an assassin game to divide its entire student body into a classist society. At Fordiyurta Academy, students in lower ranks are forced to do physical extra curriculars, and constant bullying. Here’s what the students have to say about it.”

“This school is fucking horrible!”

“Ew, get your shitty hands off of me. Oh, ahem! The school director was infiltrated by the police, and here’s what they say went down.”

“We went into the room, but he had ten lawyers prepared with him, and he even said he was going to sue the police force itself. He did give us a student contract though and all the school rules. Surprisingly, none of them don’t break any forced torture laws, and are giving the students the education. And please, rewind the tape and look at the morse code in my e-”

“And since the police don’t know shit about an investigation, I am here with the director himself. What do you have to say about this?”

“I ain’t going to jail, bitch!”

Young Lia glues her eyes to the TV screen, listening to every word of what is happening on national news for the first time in her life.

“Why the hell is nobody applying to this school? I’m not going to be a normie, and signing up to that high school.”

“You’re not going to that shitty school.” Lia’s mom rang out of nowhere up until this very moment. “Besides, you need the grades to get in, dumbass.”

“No one gives a shit about grades at a school where you can be an assassin.”

“Well don’t complain to me next year when you get a rejection letter.”

Several months later.

“I can’t believe that stupid assassin school would accept such horrible grades.”

“Yes, you’ve been saying this every day since I got the letter a few weeks ago.”

“Well, my brain has started to atrophy since the day I got it.”

“I’ve got my luggage ready to go, I’ll call you whenever I get there.”

In Lia’s language, that equates to almost 3 days. It is quite obvious that Lia doesn’t have the best relation with her mother. Lia’s home life is just to be expected from what you know so far. Constant fighting over problems usually caused by Lia herself. Lia’s mother is prudent for giving the best for her daughter, but is disappointed with the results almost all the time.

With her mother out of the way, Lia is now able to start her brand new life as a high school student. Lia may be the same bitch as she was throughout middle school, but now is the time for a new leaf. New friends, finding her purpose, new hobbies, and most important to Lia, the assassination game. In other words, still be the same bitch, but with a couple of connections. No more sappy new school talk, as Lia takes her first step on the campus of Fordiyurta Academy.

“I’ve been training these past months. I’ve been watching these-“

“Shut your exposition up!” Yells another new student, on a similar path as Lia.

“…So I watched these videos on how to do parkour and sniper and shit. I don’t have a sniper rifle, so I figured I use a slingshot. Mom wasn’t too happy when I shot her in the face, and the shots were cans of cat food. It’s the closest thing to paintballs”

“People actually talk to themselves like they’re the protagonist?” Says a student, who is clearly an unimportant character in the story.

9AM. An auditorium is bustling with a crowd of students, until they pipe down to hear what they’ve been waiting to hear. It’s not exactly what the opening speech was going to be, but here’s how it goes:

“So here are the rules. You guys can read 12 point Arial, right? To the students in the back, you’re kind of screwed if you can’t read it.”

The audience waits patiently for a mere 3 minutes to get to the part they want to hear.

“It’s time to talk about the assassin game. It’s all on the back of your handed out papers. It’s in 8pt Calibri. We gotta save the trees.”

The rules are as follows (in simplest terms):

The assassin game is where everyone is an assassin with an assigned target, while another assassin targets you. It is huge circle of students going after one after another.

Everyone must report to the assassination department to be given a photo and name their target. Everyone is given a paintball gun and a paintbrush. Each color is unique to each student, and the color is associated to its owner through computer scanning.

Each student will have a number of merits. The more targets someone shoots, the more merits they will earn at the end of the assassination period.

An assassination period lasts 72 hours. When the period is over, everyone is back in the game, and all targets are reassigned to everyone. Anyone not out after the period will receive their allotted points based on how many victims they killed.

However, if they get shot, they will lose all of those points, and the point you potentially hold will go to your assassin instead. The amount of merits you lose will be half of the amount you would have won.

When you lose all your merits, or reach a negative amount, you will be sent in a physical labor camp. This camp is meant to train students to be a better assassin. At the same time, it is not fun, and exhausts the students’ energy to do other things. This should be blatant enough to let you know DO NOT REACH THIS LOW IN MERITS!

After the assassin gets their target, they must report to the assassin department to report the kill to make it legit. It will be confirmed when the victim comes as well. The victims cannot remove the paint unless a special formula is used to clean it.

Although an assassin needs to report their kill eventually, as long as they know their next target, they can continue going after the next one. As mentioned, everyone will have one target, and targets goes around like a circle. Therefore, when an assassin kills their target, they can kill the target of their target. They are allowed to view the victim card of the target they killed for information. However, in the end, all assassins must report to the assassin department if they want to have their kills counted to receive merits.

With everything out of the way, Lia was more than eager to do some action. Lia hardly cared about what was even happening during the opening ceremony. That was, until a man walked up on the stage wearing a dark blue suit. Without going into further details, Lia sees nothing but a rich and powerful figure up on the stage. However, the mood of the auditorium shifted as the man began the conclusion of the ceremony.

“I don’t know how you got news of this academy. I can see it in all of your eyes though. You want to begin a brand new life. You’ve seen high school life in media. None of that is enough for you all. I want you all you have the greatest school life that any student in Japan… no… in the whole world could have. Without wasting any more time, this ceremony is dismissed.”

“Thank you very much, director.”

“I SAID THE CEREMONY IS DISMISSED, YOU CAN ALL GO NOW, JEEZ!”

The informal and almost unprepared speech left everyone speechless at first. However, the ground began to squeak. Voices erupted everywhere. It was time. Lia stretched, and marched a path through the crowd.

“Out of the way! No thank you until I get to my destination.”

Lia left the auditorium, and through the hallways, until she made it to the assassination department. Throughout the journey, Lia couldn’t help but struggle.

“Why the hell aren’t you guys moving?”

“I’m literally moving as fast as possible, but these slow asses won’t get out of my way”

“Would you all stop shoving?”

“I thought you wanted it to hurry up? Make up your fucking mind!”

Throughout the journey, Lia heard bickering from everyone. Things began to finally calm down when the sea of students formed a queue into the assassination department. When Lia’s time come, she nabbed her weapons and victim identification. Now, it was time, for real this time. Or, that’s what Lia thought.

Stepping outside of the department, it was like a different world. Images of students looking at their weapons and identity cards. Then, the room filled with discussion. It wasn’t clueless questioning. The words of confidence became more coherent to Lia. No, it was more than coherent. It was like daggers to her. Strategy this, tactic that, training this, and hiding places that. Buzzwords were flying everywhere, filling the hallway like mustard gas. Lia’s heart raced, and her eyes darted everywhere. Lia has finally comprehended.

“Oh shit. You mean, I wasn’t the only one who tried so hard to prepare for this game?”