01011: The first Lunch

“This here are the school buildings. The canteen is in this side building here. There is the sports hall and field. The swimming pool however is a bit further away, over there. Oh, and this is the entertainment center and our small Konbini. Everything not that big, but enough to keep yourself afloat.” Arano-senpai swiped through the campus map on her Ineigaikan app to show me the locations of everything.

She was sitting right in front of me, the empty dishes of her lunch on the tray in front of her and presented me her phone. Under fierce protest from her side, I had invited her to lunch – to make up for her efforts of showing me the island. Now we just sat inside the school’s canteen. It was very crowded, and we had luck that another group had just left a desk right in front of us. The others from the White Hood Club were also with us. Izumida-san and Fujinami-kun sat right next to us and Yabuki-senpai next to them. I had been quite surprised by how laid back he actually was. On our way to the canteen, we used the opportunity to introduce us properly. His full name was Ouzen Yabuki, and his long hair had also turned from the bright white to a yellowish blonde. I just suspected this change to be caused by the light situation in front of the monitor he had been sitting at during the Kibansentou. But who knows … maybe there were also other forces at play.

“You have to show him the cinema,” he suggested in a bright and joyful tone that somehow made the background behind him light up in a light shade of pink.

“You guys have a cinema?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes, in the entertainment center! It is the cutest little cinema you’ve ever seen. They also have a karaoke bar and a bowling lane.”

Arano-senpai smiled at me. “It’s all just really small though, but at least something. We can go there as well if you like.”

Fujinami-kun elbowed her into the side mockingly, while scraping the last bits of his dessert from the bowl. “I’ve never seen you being so considerate for one of your Kouhai’s, Arano-san.” His eyebrows flinched up and down while he gave her a wide smirk.

She grew red around the cheeks. “I’m just making up for the lunch he bought me. Also, this is all just because you had to schedule the Kibansentou with the Black Flags just today and thought it was necessary to make a huge mess in the common room. So don’t you take any false conclusions out of this!”

He gestured his hands as if he didn’t know what she was talking about. “All these external factors were completely beyond my control. I am just noting the facts and …”

A strong, death bringing aura formed around her body while she clenched a tight fist with a bright smile. “Would you really like to tread the path of pain?”

“Uh …,” he backed away.

That was when I noticed a soft pulling at my sleeve. I looked at Izumida-san, who was sitting right next to me. “Isato Kanaoka-kun,” she said. “May I call you by your first name?”

For a second, I was a bit surprised by her straightforwardness. I guess this had been the first words she directed towards me. “Uh … sure,” I replied. “You all can call me by my first name if you like.”

The group nodded. “Then call us by our first names as well.” Fujinami-kun smiled. He would then be Naoki-senpai from now on! Actually, everyone from this group was my senpai, since they all were from the upper years. I haven’t gotten to know much of the people from my year and the ones I got to know had been put under arrest.

“M-me as well.” All eyes went to Arano-senpai. She looked around a bit coy.

“Rukami-senpai then.” I smiled.

She returned the smile. “And Isato-kun.”

“Hold on a second,” Naoki-senpai said and made a timeout gesture. “I admit that my remarks from just now were a bit mockery, but this …”

He kind of had a point. All of them talked to her with her last name even though they knew one another much longer than me. But now she offered me the first name right away? I noticed how I grew warm around the cheeks as the implications rushed through my mind. Rukami-senpai showed the very same reaction and waved frantically with her hands. “No! It’s not like you think. I just … when we got to know each other in the first year, I got ill in the very first week. Do you remember? When I returned, all of you were already on a first name basis and I always missed the right opportunity to ask if you …” She clenched her hands.

Was it even possible for a being so pure to exist?

The group exchanged a few gazes. “Oh … we always thought that you’d be uncomfortable with your dormmates talking to you with your first name,” Naoki-senpai pointed out. “Does that mean, you want …”

“Yes!” Rukami-senpai nodded heavily.

All of us laughed a bit until once again silence fell over the table. I noticed a pulling at my sleeve once again and looked to my right.

“Isato-kun … Do you like Rukami-chan?” she asked and made the whole group flinch at the openness of her question.

“Uh … not in the sense y’all are assuming.” I looked up at Rukami-senpai. “She is nice and pretty and all, but I would be thankful if you’d stop to set us up all the time. She is clearly not comfortable with that, and I find it inconvenient as well.”

“Hmmm …” Airii-chan slowly nodded without a change in her expression. “So, you like someone else.”

I backed away a bit and just wanted to relativize her assumption when a voice behind me spoke up.

“If that isn’t our dearest Fujinami!”

I turned around and found a buff looking guy standing there with a full tray in his hands. His darker blonde hair was a bit messy, but I was certain that he would hit home with a lot of girls with that. Behind him stood a younger looking guy wit dark, black hair. He was more on the lean side and evaded my view as soon as I looked at him. The girl on the other side didn’t even bother to gaze up at us even once. Instead, she looked at the floor the opposite direction as if she was fighting to admit our existence. She was pretty though, with hair even longer than Rukami-senpai’s in several shades of blonde.

“Nakayama-senpai! Such a great pleasure, seeing you here!” Naoki-senpai replied.

“What happened back there with you wimps? We couldn’t even access your router after your miserable defeat.” Nakayama-senpai gave him a superior grin.

“Oh, it’s great that you’re looking out for us, but it was nothing too serious. The power grid just didn’t like the few servers we had been wiring up.”

Nakayama-senpai let out a loud, resounding laugh. “Sounds totally like you to defend yourself against DPB through distributing the incoming packets onto multiple machines. But maybe you should think about buying a proper DDoS protection for your server.” He laughed again. “Oh, I just forgot. Your club points are too low to even buy yourself club spots. Such a pity. But don’t worry. There wouldn’t anyone be stupid enough to enter your losers club anyways.”

His gaze wandered towards me. “Who’s this little punk there?”

“I-,” I just began, but Nakayama-senpai cut me off.

“Ah … I don’t care actually.” He reached into his pocket and threw a small card into the air above me. “Join our club and we won’t have a problem. And now. Goodbye suckers!” Then he was off, and the guy and girl trotted behind him without dignifying us a look.

I had my trouble catching the small card he had thrown at me, but actually made it with a few hectic grabs into the air. Rukami-senpai had her hands clenched into fists, while looking down.

“Hey, everything is alright.” Naoki-senpai gently stroked her back to calm her down.

“Nothing is alright! Those guys are just … the worst.”

I looked down at the business card. Join the Black Flag Club! With their logo. On the back was a QR-Code.

“That was Akihiro Nakayama-kun,” Ouzen-senpai explained to me with his calm voice and a bright smile still on his lips. “He is the president of the Black Flag Club.”

“And the other guys?” I looked after them, how they took a seat at a table in the crowds and disappeared there.

“The other guy was Takaya Hidaka. He’s the number one in the Black Flags elite task force they themselves call the Buccaneer Seven. The blonde girl was Kayami Nakayama, Nakayama-kun’s little sister. She is also part of the Buccaneer Seven. But probably only because her brother is president of the club. She is not the very brightest herself.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. She is the most unpredictable one of them,” Naoki-senpai explained in a darker tone. “You can certainly stretch things a bit, but the other club members wouldn’t respect her the way they do if she would be as clueless as she always acts.”

I gazed back at them. Her bright blonde strands occasionally peaked through the crowds of the cafeteria. I guess that was one of the quirks of this school. The student ranking itself was published just with the handles and they were a secret. You never knew how skilled other students actually were. You could just guess from how they performed in class or when you talked to them – things that could actually be manipulated easily.

“And what was he talking about with this club points?” I asked.

“Every club at Ineigaikan receives ten club points for each student participating in the club. Our club for example received 30 club points at the beginning of each term, since we have Naoki-kun, Airii-chan and me as club members,” Ouzen-senpai explained. “We have to economize with that, because everything at this school costs club points. A data center, a club room, even spaces for new club members.” That was, why they used our dorm’s common room for their club activities!

“Hold up … that means if you don’t have enough points and therefore spaces, I could not join your club even if I wanted to?”

All my four senpais nodded in unison. I huffed dryly and looked at the card in my hand.

“Please don’t join them,” Airii-senpai said and looked at me with her big hazel-colored eyes.

“Like hell I would support such stuck-up idiots.” I smiled at her. “Just tell me where I have to sign for you guys.”

“Sadly … it’s not that easy,” Naoki-senpai said. “We are obligated by school rules to provide a practical entrance test that you have to pass. But I don’t think it will be a problem for you. The only hurdle might be a few other applicants. Since we lost this Kibansentou today, we only have enough club points for one additional spot. In case there are any other applicants, you must perform better than them.”

He laid a small card onto my tray. I took it and looked closer at it. ‘Café Broadcast, 5 – 8 pm’ and the date of today. Naoki-senpai smiled. “You surely got this.”

“As sad as it sounds, but I hardly doubt that there will be other applicants but you.” Rukami-senpai sighed lightly. We had already dispersed after lunch. The guys from the club headed back to our dorm, where they tidied up the rest. Rukami-senpai and I were on our way to the Konbini of the island. It would be the place, where I could also get my school uniform.

We walked through one of the parks of the campus. It had a little, square fountain on it. Water flew across the cubic stone structure in it’s center. Almost all benches of the park were occupied and overall, it was crowded enough to make it seem like all the students at this school were out to enjoy the sunny spring weather. A lot of them recognized Rukami-senpai and greeted her on our way. I however received only a few envious and even more death-glaring looks. It reminded me a bit of my shopping tours with Tokiko … just with the difference that Rukami-senpai and I did not look similar enough to be taken as siblings. She did not recognize or plainly ignored the looks. For me however, being with the pretty student council president was a little … distressing.

“R-Rukami-senpai … can you maybe explain to me why the White Hood Club is so despised by everyone?” I asked.

“I guess there are several different reasons. Many people coming to this school are not yet very firm in their affiliation to one faction. Going with the flow is easier, you know? And this flow is clearly pointing towards the black end of the spectrum. More than half of the student body is part of the Black Flags. They have whole different possibilities. At the first days of the new school year, they make shifts at the black boards and entrances and try to bring the new students to join their club. Everyone who looks a bit closer at the White Hood posting is warned or threatened.”

“But is that really intended by the school?” I asked.

“The school just intends to bring out the best hackers in the world and a side effect of this turns out to be that black hats seem to be a more natural fit for that objective.”

I shook my head. “But can’t you change anything about that? I mean you are the student council president. You are a representative of the student body. For all students, even when they are white hats. Can’t you demand equal conditions for them?”

Rukami-senpai sighed deeply. “I’m not the only representative of the student body. Ineigaikan places a much bigger relevance on its clubs for any decisions. Successful clubs – those with higher club points – receive more voting rights than others. The student council has only a say of 10 % in the end. The rest is up to the clubs and since the Black Flags are by far the most successful, they have the highest voting right. I could never bring a decision like that through the general meeting.”

I gave her a bitter smile. “Plus, you would probably fall in their favor when suggesting something like that. They might even vote you out of your position in the student council.”

She waved my concerns off. “I’ve been with the White Hoods ever since I came to the school. Airii-chan was the first person I got to know at the boat that brought us to the island. We got the same dorm, became friends and yeah … What I want to say is: If there had been a problem with my affiliation to the White Hoods, then I wouldn’t have been elected in the first place. I guess it’s just more like Ineigaikan is a school with more than 80 % males and I am just a somewhat attractive girl underneath them.”

A group of five guys passed us by. Their heads were locked straight at her and they greeted her with the nicest smiles.

“Arano-sama have a great day!”

“Great seeing you.”

“Such a nice weather, isn’t it?”

However, their expressions changed as soon as they were out of her sight. Now they were locked at me and if looks could kill I’d be such a dead man.

“Why is this leech talking with our princess?”

“Who does he think he is?”

“Die! Die! Die!”

I turned back at her. Yeah … ‘somewhat’ pretty was a bit far from the truth. “You also forgot conscientious,” I added.

She huffed. “Don’t act as if you know me already.”

“Oh, I was actually really certain about that one as soon as you silenced me back in the Ramen restaurant in Yokohama.”

She evaded my look. “Sorry about that … it must’ve been very intrusive.”

“Don’t worry. It freaked me out a bit back then, but now I can just laugh about it.”

A few seconds of silence. “Th-thanks for the compliment then,” she uttered.

In the distance – through a few trees – I already saw what looked a bit like a Konbini. Not many people were inside. I was not intending to take much more of her time after we were done with that. I also needed to prepare my new school laptop for the entrance test of the club and empty my suitcase. Above all that I also wanted to call at home. Quite a few things for the rest of the day but at least I would not get bored.