Chapter 1:

A Prologue Attempting To Explain Myself

The Dreamer's Club at Yūkan Academy


This is the first time in my life that I’ve been on the wrong end of that kind of laughter. The type reserved for the foolish.

Think of when someone makes themselves look stupid, doing something they thought would make them look anything but. You laugh at that guy. And right now? I’m that guy.

What’s making it worse is that every single one of the people laughing at me, is a girl. And most of them are hot. Nice like. The kind of girls you’d dive into the deep end for. Premium cuts of meat.

Girls' opinions are important to me. That’s not true. Girls’ opinions of me are important to me, the rest of what they say could be done without. Given that’s the case, I can’t believe I’ve allowed myself to get in such a position.

So why are they laughing at me? I think that requires some context, lest I make myself seem like I’m the wrong kind of insane.

Let me take you back to this morning, my first in Yūkan Academy.

***

Ok, we’re here, this morning. The ***s were more for clarity than to indicate a change of any note. No time has passed, it’s just instead of narrating current events, I’m now narrating past ones.

But before that, let's go over some events from even further in the past. I’m talking biographical details.

When I was born, they called me Carmelo. I say they but really, my mother didn’t give my father a choice. She was the one giving birth, she was going to choose the name. Besides, I was already getting his surname, and short of calling their son Barbera, it only seemed fair she’d choose the forename.

But Carmelo isn’t my name unless you’re a stranger. By the time this is all over you’ll either be a friend or an enemy of mine but certainly no stranger. You can call me Melo, like everyone worth knowing does. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.

Currently, I am enrolled in my first year at Yūkan Academy, I already mentioned that but it’s worth repeating. As you might imagine, I’m the only Melo at Yūkan.

Average height, average build, averagely attractive too. I am only exceptional in how unexceptional I try to come across in my head.

I am your age and all my class mates are the same age as me. I don’t have any friends anymore, despite this being everyone else’s third week of class, it is my first day.

Now that you’re all caught up with me, let’s work our way towards the inciting incident.

The morning started off poorly. I drew murmurs the moment I stepped into my new class. I thought it was because my name looked weird written in katakana, but I would later be reliably formed that it was because I was white. Yūkan has never had a foreign exchange student before, apparently.

What is Yūkan exactly? You might be asking yourself that. Let's just say it’s an institution for the unnaturally gifted. Every place has to have a cutoff point and Yūkan’s cutoff point is a single iota below me.

Anyway, my being white and writing my name in katakana during my introduction are not the reason I’m being laughed at. My classmates seem nice enough to not laugh at me for that, a lot of them even came up to give me courtesy introductions during breaks.

This morning, I was given a quick rundown of things by my homeroom teacher. You’ll have to forgive me for glossing over the details, I assure you the conversation was very flirtatious, but the most important thing to know for now is that Yūkan has a policy of mandatory club participation.

You see, and perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier, this academy is on a private island, it’s that exclusive. Since there is literally nothing else for the students to do, and because of who the students are, this policy is designed to keep them out of trouble.

I looked through the list of clubs given to me in the teacher’s office. There were plenty of clubs to choose from but there was only one that caught my eye.

The Dreamer’s Club

Ms. Akabane told me they’d submitted their club name in bold to stand out, attract new members. She also told me it wasn’t working, as The Dreamer’s Club was easily the smallest club in the school with only 5 members. Their stated goal was to work on achieving the dreams of its members, which sounds vague enough to sustain itself. I hope.

I consider myself somewhat of a risk-taker. If I wasn’t the kind of person to join the vaguest sounding club in school, I wouldn’t be the type of person to move across continents when presented with a scholarship to a school that doesn’t officially exist. Not that I had much of a choice. Besides the point.

It had been decided in that moment. I would join The Dreamer’s Club.

After the school day was over, I marched straight to their club room and strutted my way inside. Beyond those double doors, were four of the most beautiful faces I had ever seen, looking back at me.

“Ladies, my name is Melo, I’d like to join your club.”

I swear I had made my decision before learning that the club was populated exclusively by beautiful girls in your preferred state of undress, but I extra made my decision when I found out.

“Are you sure?”

An authoritative girl with long, wine coloured hair responded to me with a coolness I wasn’t expecting. Given she was sitting at the only desk in the room, and had that general demeanour about her, I assumed she was the club president. I would turn out to be correct.

“This is a place for dreamers, not voyeurs.”

Her glare told me that this wasn’t the time to tell her I was both.

“Mademoiselle, if nothing else, I am a dreamer.”

“There’s nothing I love more than hearing a boy’s wildest dreams,” she rasped like a starving beast.

I consider myself somewhat of an empath, and I could tell this girl wanted a performance, so I gave her one.

“Well darling, I’ve got a wild one for you…

Running one hand through my hair, and placing the other on my hip, I forced my voice as low as it could go.

“I want to be the first person to walk to the moon.”