Prologue

“Hey, it must be your first day of school too, right?”

Ai turns around to find two slightly older looking boys smiling down at her, each with a bag slung around their shoulders over their messy uniforms. Before they say anything else, she already knows what their intentions are. Sadly, this really isn’t something new.

“...Yeah. And I’m almost late for my opening ceremony, so I really have to hurry,” she says with a forced smile as she quickly turns around to leave.

Ai actually has a good thirty minutes before the ceremony starts and school is only ten minutes away from where she currently is, but considering that the boys’ uniforms are different from hers, they wouldn’t know that.

One of the boys, the same one who spoke earlier, completely ignores Ai’s words and instead moves so that she’s facing him again. “Judging from your uniform, you must be a first year student from East High, right? I understand you’re in a hurry, but our school is nearby, so let’s exchange contacts and be friends! We can definitely hang out sometimes.”

Feeling increasingly annoyed, Ai repeats her point in a harsher tone, “Sorry, like I told you, I need to rush, so-“

However, the older boy is insistent. “Exchanging numbers won’t take long, let’s just do that real quick, okay?”

“I-“

Ai was about to really give the two boys a piece of her mind when she suddenly hears another voice out of the blue. The voice is coming from beside her.

“Hey, didn’t you guys hear that she’s in a hurry?”

Before she can even look at the source of that voice, the person is already standing in front of her, hands wrapped around the pushy student’s wrist tightly. The boy has been shoving his smartphone towards Ai for a while now, so she’s secretly grateful to see this.

Wincing in pain, the boy immediately pulls his wrist out from the grip. “Ouch! Just who the hell do you think you are?!”

From where she’s standing, Ai can only see the back of this person’s body. Judging from their uniform and their haircut, it seems that this person is a male student who goes to the same high school as her. And considering this person’s towering height and confident attitude, it’s very likely that they’re older than her too. So in short; this person must be an upperclassman from her school.

Ai’s suspicions are confirmed as soon as the person speaks again.

“I’m just trying to make sure my underclassman here makes it in time for the ceremony. Who are you?” the upperclassman asks with an intimidating tone.

“Tch. We’re just trying to make friends,” the pushy student scoffs.

Ai can’t see their face, but her upperclassman must be rolling their eyes as they say, “Oh please, guys like you are never the type to just be friends with girls, stop it with the lame excuses.”

It’s very likely that those words hit a nerve because the guy immediately snarls, “Are you trying to mess with me, you bastard?!”

What Ai didn’t expect is that the guy would have such a short fuse that he’d immediately throw a punch at her upperclassman just from hearing those words. What's even more unexpected is that her upperclassman doesn't even try to dodge the punch, despite clearly seeing it coming and having the time to dodge it. Oh god, maybe his reaction time is just slow? Ai thinks to herself.

Before Ai can do anything about it, the punch meets the upperclassman’s lower jaw.

Panicked and worried for them, Ai immediately moves to their side to check on them. “Senpai, are you okay?”

To her surprise, the upperclassman barely has a reaction. They don’t appear to be in any sort of pain or to be caught off guard. It’s almost as if they expected or even wanted it to happen. And just as Ai saw earlier, the punch clearly hit. There’s even a cut on the upperclassman's lower lip.

What also catches Ai’s attention and slightly distracts her from the situation is the fact that her upperclassman has pretty feminine features for ‘a boy’.

When the upperclassman finally moves again, they don’t even answer Ai’s question. Instead, they just smirk and ask, “Was that supposed to hurt?”

There’s a dangerous glint in their eyes as they crack their neck and say, “For the record, you did punch me first, so you can’t blame me for what happens next, okay?”

Then, in a speed that seems way too quick to be human, the upperclassman punches the pushy student and the latter almost falls to the ground from the force of the impact.

His friend who’s been by his side all this time finally speaks for the first time that day. “Dude, are you okay?!”

As he holds his definitely bruised and swollen cheek, the guy stammers, “W-what the fuck was that power? Just who the hell is this guy?!”

“You want more?” the upperclassman asks him in a cheery, almost joking tone. “I got plenty more from where that came from.”

The wide smile on the latter’s face is truly jarring considering the situation they’re in. Ai would even describe it as scary.

Clearly, both of the other students are also frightened by this display, so much so that the guy that was so persistent earlier immediately says, “Fuck this, let’s just go!”

As Ai and the scary upperclassman watch the two boys run off, the upperclassman begins to laugh. To be honest, it just creeps Ai out even more.

“They’re such losers it almost makes me sick,” the upperclassman sneers and pretends to gag. When the two harassers are finally out of their sight, they turn to Ai and ask, “Hey, they didn’t do anything to you, did they?”

Ai knows that the upperclassman probably won’t do anything to her since she did just receive their help, but she’s still scared for her life for some reason. “N-no, but thank you regardless. You really didn’t have to take that punch for me.”

“A punch?” The upperclassman scoffs. “Please, that was barely a slap! Don’t worry about it. That was practically nothing.”

Before Ai can say anything else, a loud voice appears from behind her.

“Miru! Sorry we’re late! This idiot over here wore the wrong uniform, so we had to-“

When Ai turns around to see where the voice is coming from, she sees a male student with grey streaks in his hair. He’s also wearing the same uniform as her and the scary upperclassman. Moreover, he’s followed by another equally flashy male student behind him. It immediately occurs to Ai that these two are probably friends with the scary upperclassman. 

The two students who were just turning around a corner seem to have caught a glimpse of Ai, the upperclassman, plus the upperclassman’s bruised lip and immediately made a connection.

“Oh? What happened here?” the same student who just spoke earlier asks.

Both of them immediately rush over and confirm Ai’s suspicion that they are indeed friends.

The other student, the one with brown highlights in his hair, goes up to the upperclassman and says, “Miru! Did you get into a fight without us? And who’s that? Someone from our school?”

The upperclassman, who Ai now knows is called ‘Miru’, answers all too casually, “Two guys from West High were bothering her, so I decided to interfere. That’s all.”

“West High? They’re really trying to pick up girls from our school while trying to fish for trouble with us? How shameless!”

“Right? I took care of them easily, but if those two guys from earlier have any kind of say at their school, what just happened will probably piss the others off and egg them on even more.”

The guy with the grey highlights ponders the situation for a moment and speaks again, “Ah, who cares. I feel like the guys from West High are barely a threat anyway. They’re all bark no bite. We’ll be able to handle them.”

Miru nods and says with full confidence, “You’re right. If they’re at the same calibre as the two guys just now, I can probably even take all of them alone.”

The guy with brown highlights laughs. “Don’t get too cocky, Miru, they still managed to bruise you, you know?”

“Bruise? This is nothing! It doesn’t even hurt or sting a little bit!”

The three of them continue to converse among themselves, completely ignoring the fact that Ai is still standing there, utterly confused by what just happened and what is currently happening in front of her. The only word that can even come out of her mouth is, “Um…”

Thankfully, it’s enough to catch the three upperclassmen's attention.

The upperclassman who helped her, Miru, looks at her and finally addresses her, “Ah right, sorry. I nearly forgot about you. Go on then, you can get to the opening ceremony.”

Ai doesn’t know what she expected, but she supposes she didn’t expect for it to be over just like this. However, she was just helped by an upperclassman who she doesn’t even know, someone who had zero obligation to save her, so she should really just be grateful for that.

Not knowing what more to say, Ai just nods and bows to express her gratitude towards her senior. “Thank you again for your help, senpai!”

“Like I said, it’s nothing. Now just scram before you’re late,” Miru says almost dismissively, as if she’s shooing Ai away.

Deep down in her heart, Ai finds the upperclassman’s attitude to be rather rude and unseemly, but she knows better than to say anything about it after that display of power. The other two upperclassmen also don’t seem to care much about her existence either, like this is just a normal everyday occurrence for them.

Without wasting any more time, Ai turns around to leave for good, but she’s only a few steps away from the group when she hears, “Miru, shouldn’t you change your uniform though? You’ll get yelled at again.”

There’s a short pause before Ai hears Miru say, “Ah, you’re right. At this rate we’ll have to go directly to school without buying our onigiri. I guess I’ll change now after all.”

Ai then hears Miru sigh, followed by rustling sounds. Although Ai knows that it’s really none of her business what these upperclassmen do, she can’t help but to be curious. Change? Change what exactly? Ai wonders as she glances back, trying not to be too obvious.

From the corner of her eye, Ai sees Miru pulling out a skirt from the bag slung around their shoulder. That alone is enough to confuse Ai, so much so that she’s just full on turning back towards the upperclassmen now. Ai then watches as Miru puts on the skirt over her pants, zips it up, adjusts it, and then pulls the pants down in what appears to be one quick and fluid motion.

Ai should know better than to get herself involved in this any further, but she just can’t help herself when she blurts out, "Y-you’re a girl?"

Miru’s gaze immediately meets hers. "Yeah. Why? You got a problem with that?"

"N-no, not at all," Ai stammers, feeling intimidated just from having that unyielding gaze thrown at her. "It’s just, with the uniform and all, I thought-"

"Oh this?” Miru asks as she holds up the pants. “The girls’ school uniform is inconvenient for fighting, so I sometimes use the boys’ instead."

"A-ah, I see. Sorry for assuming, senpai, I didn't know,” Ai mutters, hoping that it’s still audible from where Miru and her two friends are standing.

"Huh? You can't see that I'm a girl? Do you want to die?" Miru asks, cold eyes piercing right through Ai’s soul.

Alarms begin to ring in Ai’s head and a shiver runs down her spine. She’s fully aware that this upperclassman of hers is super strong and can probably kill her in one blow, so she turns around again, movement robotic and shaky, saying, "Um, I- I better go…"

Ai doesn’t even dare to look back anymore when she hears Miru laugh. Instead, it makes her want to run away even quicker.

"Relax, relax, I was just kidding. It's good that you didn't realize, actually. It’s kind of the point."

“I- I see, I guess I’ll get going then,” Ai replies with a forced light tone, trying to make herself believe that those words were really just a joke.

Even if she might be curious about what Miru means when she says that ‘it’s kind of the point’, Ai isn’t going to risk sticking around any longer and actually angering Miru for real somehow.

As she begins walking away from the group, her walking tempo way quicker than it normally is, Ai can only think to herself; oh my god, what a scary person.