Preparations - Rouvil Civil War (Part 1)

A sudden emergency summon of all top nine classes, namely Class 1 and its Upper and Lower divisions, Class 2 and 3, with its Upper and Lower divisions as well, to the Academy was sent an entire day after the attack, which by that point was already household news. 
Though it was received as just an announcement by the school's teachers, I thought it was clearly not the case. Why bother summoning the students? And why only the top nine classes and not the other twenty-one classes? 

But everything made sense when I arrived at the Academy. Shizuko was accompanying me, as Vula was quite busy doing something, which Shizuko had left her to do her work too. There were huge crowds of people, both students and what looked like to be their parents waiting for the people on stage to finish setting it up. 
I waited among other people in my class, but I quickly broke away once I saw Jerik and his siblings. 

"Jerik! There you are." I said to him, as I walked casually towards them. 

"Oh! Void, what a surprise." he replied.

"Hello, Void."

"Heya, Void." Kerui said.

"Hello Ging and Kerui. You guys are here too?" I asked. 

"Yeah. I'm in Upper Class 3, so I was summoned here too." 

"I'm in Lower Class 3, and from what I've seen so far, I had just barely made it." Kerui explained. 

"Yeah. Apparently, the message is sent to all students that are in the top nine classes," I replied. "So no Upper Class 4, only Lower Class 3 and above." 

Kerui was taken aback in shock, trying to process what I just had said, as I giggled at her serious reaction. 
"Oh well, I was very close to not even being here at all. I should try to get to Class 2 by next year."

"Yeah, good luck on that, goal, Kerui." Ging and Jerik mocked her. 

Kerui responded by giving them both a side eye and dismissed them from her thoughts. 
"Anyway, Void, what class are you in right now? You haven't told us still." she asked. 

"Hm? I haven't?" I replied. "I'm in Class 1 if you're wondering." 

All three of their jaws dropped. 
"I apologise that I'm treating and talking to you in such an inappropriate manner, Sir Void." Jerik suddenly said. 

"Sir Void? No, no, It's fine. I don't mind. Keep talking to me like before." 

"If you say so... Void." 

"Yeah, that's it. Anyway, why are you guys so shocked? It's not even the highest class." I asked them. 

"No, no, no! You don't get it! The gap between Upper Class 2 and Lower Class 1 is like day and night!" Ging explained in a worried tone. 

"Yeah, yeah! Exactly! Even our oldest brother, Jerik is only in Class 2, and he says he is on the lower end of the class!" Kerui further explained. 

"Is that... so?" I managed to say. 

They all nodded their heads together in reply. I saw Shizuko in the corner of my eye, looking for someone, probably me, so I called her over. 
"Over here!" I yelled. She noticed me and approached us. 

"There you are. I spent quite a bit of my time searching for you after I noticed you had disappeared." she complained.

"Sorry about that. Here, let me introduce you to Jerik, the eldest son, Ging, the middle child, and Kerui, the youngest child," I introduced. "They are in Class 2, Upper 3, and Lower 3 respectfully."  

"Oh. Well, I am Shizuko Sukan, First Lieutenant of the 3rd Blae Division. It's nice to meet you all," she said, with a little curtsy. 

An even bigger wave of shock seemed to blast the sibling trio with cold sweat and anxiety. Being the eldest, Jerik quickly recovered and replied, "It's a pleasure of mine too, Miss Sukan." 

"No need to call me by my last name. Shizuko's fine." 

"Yeah. She's pretty outgoing, so you guys can be yourself with her," I added. "And say, did you get promoted?" 

"Promoted? Ahh, uhh, yeah, I did." she replied. 

"Congrats. Why didn't you tell us though?" I asked. 

"Oh, I just forgot about it. You suddenly get a lot more training and work once you get promoted to First Lieutenant." 

"Say..." interrupted Kerui.

"Yeah? What's up?" Shizuko immediately replied. With her eyes glimmering, Kerui snatched Shizuko's hands and held them near her chest in awe.

"Teach me your ways, Miss Shizuko!" she begged. "Please!"  

Stunned by her reaction, Shizuko only managed to say 'okay', all while Kerui quite literally breathed down her neck, which made her quite uncomfortable. 

"You're not going to stop her?" I asked Jerik. 

"Nah, let her be. I'll go apologise to Miss Shizuko about her behaviour, but right now, I think it's better to just let her be." he answered. Ging also answered by shaking his head, which led me to do nothing about it.

Kerui held the position for quite a while—around two minutes in fact, which was only broken when Shizuko asked Kerui to let go of her. 

"I'm extremely sorry about that, Miss Shizuko!" she said as she was bowing repeatedly in panic. 

"No, no it's fine. We can get into the details later, since..." she glances at the stage, which by now had most of the teachers and staff sitting or standing neatly, overlooking the entire audience. "It seems the event is about to start. You should pay attention." she says to Kerui. 

"Roger that!" Kerui replied with much higher energy than before. 

We talked a bit more after that about different subjects to kill time before the announcement actually started, it started as soon as we finished talking about some random topic brought up by Shizuko, so that was quite the coincidence. 

"Mic test, 1, 2, 3, there we go," we heard from the speaker. A rather beautiful man, tall with snow-white hair up to his neck, and crystal light blue eyes, almost the same shade of blue as Charlin's eyes, but the man was relatively thin for his height and proportions. "Right, let's finish this up quickly. Hello everyone!" he said. "I am Brigadier General Eli, commander of the 4th brigade, of the 2nd division stationed near our border with the Rouvil Union. Now, why, may some of you students of the Academy be wondering why someone like myself would be here? Well, I'll tell you." a small grin appeared on his face. "By the orders of our great Emperor, all of you shall experience real combat for the first time. In other words, be ready to be deployed to the Rouvil Union to stop our enemy, Kilovos from completely destroying our ally. Of course, all of you have a right to refuse, but this is a time when you can gain valuable combat experience and get promotions, which come with huge rewards. That's all really. Leave if you are not interested or value your life, but for those who are interested, please meet me in that building over there." he said, pointing to a fairly large open-sided building with papers, chairs, tables and three other personnel, waiting for the students. 

Immediately, murmurs broke out between students and their parents or to their friends and classmates, which quickly broke into a sea of voices. 
"So? What do you want to do?" I asked the sibling trio. 

"Hmm. I didn't expect this to happen." Kerui replied. 

"Same." added Ging. 

"Well, I'm probably going to sign up anyway." 

"No, you're not, Kerui," Jerik harshly responded. "Unless it's going to be a rear job, like watching how actual soldiers fight, then you are not allowed to sign up. Do not try and complain about it. I'm not going to lose another person close to me. That also applies to you, Ging." 

"Stingy." they both responded to Jerik. 

"Well, you know the family's conditions when you joined the Academy." 

"Fine..." 

"Oh right, I never asked you guys about your reason for joining the Academy in the first place." 

"It was money." Kerui casually replied. 

"Seriously..?" 

"Yup. The Academy actually pays quite well. Around 13 million Ampru a month." 

"The Academy pays you?!" I also shouted that aloud. It was shocking. 

"Of course it does." 

"But... shouldn't it be the other way round..?" 

"Well, yes and no," Jerik answered. "Except for the Blae Military Academy, every other school or educational facility works like what you said. So I can't really blame you for not knowing." 

"So that's why I randomly found that much money in my account (set up by Heodia) the other day. Well, thanks for explaining. I made up my mind in the meantime, I'm signing up." 

"Well, if Void is signing up, then so am I!" Kerui said. 

Jerik sighed. "It seems like my words have no effect on what you do, so fine, I allow you to sign up. And since you're going, I'm also going then." 

"Oh? Really?" I replied. 

"Yeah. Gotta take care of this cheeky little sister after all." 

I laughed. 

Along with Kerui, Jerik and I, Ging also said he would sign up, and I also saw many classmates signing up—well, almost everybody was signing up. Shizuko disappeared somewhere, that didn't matter too much. 
Despite the line being so long, we only waited a couple of minutes before we were near the front. Turns out, they were just handing sheets out via paper or digitally, then we must fill out the sheet and return it sometime within a day. And finally, then, we'll be able to join. Although I have my doubts about this war between the Entanian Alliance and the United Western Council, I really don't want to join this conflict, but to have a chance to finally meet the top officials of the Sagen Republic is one of my goals. And to reach that goal, sacrifices would need to be made.