Vol 1 Chapter 1 (1/2)

VOLUME 1-1

Chapter 1

“Kujou-san, Kujou-san.”

It was right when school ended for the day.

In the empty entranceway, a girl threw her indoor shoes into the shoe rack and hurriedly chased after someone.

“Want to go home together?”

“No.”

“Come on. Don’t. Say. That~”

The girl called out while jumping down the front steps, but the other person didn’t stop.

“The only one who doesn’t do club activities besides me is you, Kujou-san.”

“So?”

Kujou Orie turned around expressionlessly.

“I decided that I wouldn’t do club activities the moment I entered this school. Shouldn’t you enter some club yourself?”

“Eeeh…?”

The girl’s shoulders drooped in response, causing Kujou-san to develop a twitch on her forehead.

Kujou-san turned on her heels and began walking towards the school gate. The girl in question chased after her, looking like a dog in the process.

“You hung out with me last week, though.”

“I hate how boys gather around when I’m with you even though they have no business with us.”

“Come on, it’s not so bad.”

“I said no.”

“No way~. How mean. We both came here from Otowa Middle School, didn’t we? We’re comrades and friends, right?”

“Friends?”

Kujou-san finally came to a stop beneath the tall and imposing tree that stood beside the school gate.

The discordant musical performance of the school’s bra.s.s band could be heard riding upon the winds.

“In the first place, the two of us haven’t talked much.”

“…We haven’t?”

The way the girl tilted her forehead in puzzlement made Kujou-san’s forehead twitch even more.

“You were in cla.s.ses 1-3, 2-3 and 3-2 during your three years at Otoha. Do you remember which I was in each year?”

“Come on, we were in the same cla.s.s in our last year, right? Before that… Err, sorry, I forgot.”

“We were in the same cla.s.s. For all three years.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously… Wait, you’re really not joking here, are you? Unbelievable.”

Kujou-san despondently placed a hand on her forehead.

“Hinooka-san. You hardly know anything about me, but I understand what kind of person you are very well.”

“Could it be that you hate me?”

“It’s not that I hate you, but—”

Kujou-san put her hands on her hips and sighed.

“—I don’t really like you either. You and I simply don’t suit each other.”

“You really like to put it bluntly, Kujou-san. Heeh~”

The girl responded in admiration.

Perhaps because it was such an unexpected reply, Kujou-san faltered, but then resumed speaking with a severe gaze.

“You chatter all the time, but you never speak of anything real. For me, that kind of thing is—”

“Like wasting time at a book sale for the entirety of your day off?”

“What on earth’s that?”

“A waste of human life.”

“Perhaps so.”

Kujou Orie then departed, leaving the girl standing alone at the school gate.

The tall boys of the Rugby club raised their voices in tandem as they returned from their running session. They all glanced at the girl as they pa.s.sed by. She smiled back at them.

And once she was alone once more, her smile quickly fell.

“I see.”

She lifted up her expensive-looking bag over her shoulder.

“Fine then.”

She went out onto the roadway through the school gate and began walking in the exact opposite direction of her usual route.

There was indeed a station in that direction as well. There was, but the road was tight due to being laid around a cliff ridge, and there weren’t any convenience stores along it, making the route unpopular with students. This evening as well, there was some car traffic, but no pedestrians on the sidewalk at all.

The verdant forest alongside the road had just about reached the point where the trees needed to be trimmed.

Before she had walked even a hundred meters up the gently-sloping hill, Homura started grumbling to herself.

“How dull.”

That’s right.

“Ah, so irritating.”

Hinooka Homura felt dull and listless.

The idea of partic.i.p.ating in a club that would merely tire her out was absurd.

On the other hand, she couldn’t stand the thought of showing the world her lonely figure as she walked home alone. At Seiran High School, the student club partic.i.p.ation rate was nearly 100% despite the lack of compulsion to join one from the school administration. Both the sports clubs and cultural clubs were exceedingly active and vigorous. As expected of the number one university-preparatory high school in the prefecture.

“‘How about getting fruit tarts at a café in Honmachi?’ and there we go.”

She typed out a text message on her cell phone.

Her bag felt heavy as it swayed on her arm.

Is there anyone I can press into coming? she thought while meaninglessly surveying her surroundings. At that moment, a bicycle with a thin wire-like frame and its rider pa.s.sed by.

That’s our school’s male uniform.

The bicycle circled back in a U-turn and then braked right in front of Homura. It was quite a sudden braking maneuver, causing her to be slightly taken aback.

“Hinooka?”

Homura nodded. Without being conscious of it, she returned to holding her bag like a proper lady.

“I’m Touya! From Cla.s.s C. Ah, among the first years, I mean!”

She could tell at a glance. This was her first time talking to this boy.

Her eyes were suddenly drawn towards the handle of his bicycle.

His two arms peeked out from the short sleeves of the summer uniform that people had recently changed into for the season. He had tight muscles that resembled twisted and bundled wires. It didn’t suit his childish-looking face at all. His gla.s.ses also felt unnatural on him somehow.

Jumping off the bike saddle like a vaulting compet.i.tor, the boy once more tried to confirm her name.

“You’re Hinooka Homure from Cla.s.s 1-A, right?”

“It’s Homura, not Homure. Hinooka Homura.”

“Ah, sorry. Homura, huh? What an interesting name.”

The male student looked closely at Homura and nodded as if impressed.

“What?”

“I’ve heard that you’re easy to identify since you’re the cutest girl at school, but it really is true. You looked like someone straight from a movie scene when I saw you walking there.”

“I was just walking normally. Just what kind of scene were you thinking of?”

“Like the scene of a girl after being dumped.”

“……”

He said that without trying to hide his embarra.s.sment. Was this guy courageous or a natural airhead?

It wasn’t rare for her to be called out to like this, and she had often been flattered with even more frivolous words.

It would make things easier for her if she could get him to let her ride his bike the rest of the way home, though.

“…So, Touya-kun. Do you have some business with me?”

“The truth is, I’m here to invite you to my club. I’m in the Exploration Club.”

“The Exploration Club? There’s a club like that?”

“There is. There are only two club members right now, though.”

“Just two? Even counting you?”

Touya nodded.

That explained why a mere first-year boy like him was going around inviting others to join the club.

“You’re part of the go-home club, right, Hinooka?”

“That’s true, but there’s another girl not in any club within my cla.s.s if you’re looking for one.”

“No, it has to be you.”

“Has to be?”

Let alone forceful, his words were pretty much incomprehensible.

He had gone as far as to purposefully chase after her, though, so she understood that he was desperate.

“I have no intention of joining any club, but… can I at least hear your reason for asking me?”

“Our club only has two—”

“Yes, I heard that. Not that, I mean, why me?”

The boy scratched his head with an expression of confusion.

Homura was the one who was baffled here. But, without paying that any mind, Touya came close and placed his hands on her shoulders.

“It’s because you’re a Mage, isn’t that obvious?”

Magic?

…What in the heck is this guy talking about?

“Say that one more time.”

“We want a Mage in our Exploration Club.”

A Mage?

Homura resisted the urge to cradle her head. This conversation seemed right out of a manga, after all. It would have been more realistic if he were inviting her to join the Self-Defense Force.

“You’re talking about some game, right?”

“That’s what you’d normally think. But this isn’t about a game. It’s real.”

“You’re aware that you’re saying something strange, right?”

“Yeah.”

Touya finally lost his serious face and burst out laughing.

“But, you know, the Exploration Club is fun! I think you’ll like it too, Hinooka.”

He slapped her shoulder heartily as he spoke.

On what basis was he saying that?

Homura’s impression that university-preparatory high schools were filled with nothing but eccentrics was further strengthened.

Touya took something out from his rucksack.

“This is our club’s pamphlet. It doesn’t seem like you’ll decide right now, so please read it later.”

As if there’s anything to decide! …Holding herself back from saying that out loud, Homura accepted the extremely thick pamphlet. She supposed that a club of only two people could at least manage to make a full-blown pamphlet like this—

“Please read it and think about it. I’ll come ask you again tomorrow.”

“T-Tomorrow? Hey, wait!”

Touya turned back to face her, after having already returned to his bicycle and hopped back on the saddle.

Homura hesitantly pointed at the bicycle.

“Give me a lift.”

“I’m heading back to school. You can hop on if you’re fine with that.”

Now that Homura looked closely, the bicycle had no luggage rack, and she would have to ride standing up if she got on.

“In the first place, you’re heading home by Oujidou station? That’s unusual. This road is quite rough. I just came back from looking for you in the direction of Higakubo station.”

“I just decided to go home this way on a whim today.”

“Well, that’s fine. See you tomorrow, then.”

“Yes, goodbye.”

Homura despondently watched Touya leave while nimbly riding his bicycle.

After that, she ended up taking the wrong path, and it took her a full fifty minutes to reach the station by foot.

Just as the train home slipped into the station, Homura received the long-awaited reply to her earlier text.

She flipped open her phone while walking to the train platform.

If she were to return to Honmachi station from here to go to the café, she would need to go to the opposite platform up the stairs, but it wouldn’t cost her much time.

But Homura’s expression, which had slackened in expectation, hardened in the face of the reply’s contents.

‘Sorry. I can’t go out and play for a while. I’ll make up for it next time. Really sorry.’

“…Next time…”

She couldn’t even count on her friend from her middle school days, who now went to another school.

No, that’s not it. Maybe I’ve just been abandoned.

When she left the local station’s ticket gate, the usual woman was handing out leaflets there. She wore a light blue summer sweater covered in lint. Homura pa.s.sed by while ignoring her.

After she arrived home, she changed into her house clothes and laid limply on her bed in an attempt to become one with it.

Soon after, there was a knock on her door.

“Homura?”

Even when the door opened, Homura didn’t budge from her prostate position.

“There was a phone call from your boyfriend earlier.”

Homura mumbled something into her pillow, but her words most likely nothing intelligible.

While looking amazed at the sight of this gelatinous life-form, the girl who had entered the room continued speaking.

“He said something about being sorry and wanting to break up? Even though I told him he had the wrong person on the phone, he didn’t listen to me at all.”

The second daughter of the Hinooka family, Homura’s younger sister Tsuyu, was often mistaken for her sister due to their similar voices.

“Rather, why did you tell him our home number? Could you cut that out? I’m always the one who answers the phone here. Hey, are you listening?”

“Hrmm.”

The amorphous older sister turned a small portion of her resigned face towards her younger sister.

As usual, Tsuyu was leaning her gla.s.ses against the door while wearing an annoyed expression.

“I already broke up with that guy.”

“Hmph.”

The younger sister folded her arms and snorted.

“It didn’t look like you two were going out, though. Didn’t you just get him to help you with your studying?”

“Hrmm…”

It was exactly as her sister said.

Once the tumultuous results announcement from the high school entrance exams had pa.s.sed, he had been the one to indirectly bring up the topic of breaking up.

It’d be nice if we went to the same school together. It wasn’t as if she had believed in such a dream-like conclusion, though. She had merely been happy at soaking in the mood of ‘sharing the same goal’.

But, as if due to some mistake, Homura, who had been tutored, was accepted into her target school, while he, the tutor, failed the entrance exams.

Apparently, there were types who were frequently in the top ranks of the mock exams with excellent results, but were weak when it came to the real thing.

“You used someone once again, didn’t you?”

“That’s not—”

“Ah, how sad. Haven’t all the guys who dated you ended up with misfortune?”

“……”

Homura couldn’t deny it.

Thinking back, it had been a relations.h.i.+p tied together only through studying for the test.

She hated being apologized to as if she were the victim and he the wrongdoer, so she had simply ignored his text messages a few times.

Her former boyfriend was well aware of her academic skill level, and understood quite well how ill-suited she was to the studying environment of her current school.

“Are you just going to leave things hanging vaguely again? You need to clearly own up to your own mistake. That guy feels responsible, you know.”

“Shut up already… you regular customer at the behind-the-curtain section at Tsutaya1.”

“What the heck’s that?”

“An inexperienced girl with superficial knowledge.”

The younger sister merely shrugged.

“Dinner will be ready in a bit, so don’t go to sleep and come downstairs.”

“Ugh.”

The younger sister left the room to head downstairs. Homura’s bag tumbled onto the floor.

Speaking of which, she had thrown the pamphlet she’d received in there.

She tried reaching for it while lying face-down, but couldn’t reach it at all.

After a little while, she noisily kicked her legs against the bed, but she immediately remembered the abuse she had placed on them from the long walk home and brought them to a stop.

“Next, Hinooka.”

The next day at school.

The current cla.s.s was Cla.s.sical Literature, or, rather, Modern j.a.panese.

The cla.s.sroom was pretty calm, but Homura could feel the attention of the other students concentrate on her.

Sweat poured down Homura’s hand as she stood up with her textbook in hand.

She rewound her mental recorder and repeated the teacher’s question to herself.

It was about a certain trifling poem.

“Chieko says that there is no sky in Tokyo2.”

“That’s right, that one.”

The female teacher clapped her hand against the rolled-up textbook she held.

“Chieko is mentally ill. Of course there’s a sky in Tokyo. So, just what is Chieko saying here?”

“…She wanted to see the sky above Mount Atatara.”

“This poem’s author is saying that this is the true sky for Chieko. It’s dubious whether Chieko herself was speaking cogently. Now then, why don’t you try thinking of Chieko’s feelings?”

The female teacher lightly sat down at her desk and crossed her legs. Her manners were quite bad.

She wore tight indigo-blue jeans.

“Is Chieko simply a selfish woman? What do you think?”

The author had already given an answer, wasn’t that enough? What was this teacher doing, enquiring them all about it?

“…Chieko has a lot of strong memories about Mount Atatara, so, I think she wanted to see the sky of that mountain again.”

“Hmm. In other words?”

In other words? In other words?

“She wanted to climb Mount Atatara…”

Low laughter trickled out within the cla.s.sroom, making Homura’s ears burn red.

“Perhaps so. Perhaps not. We don’t know the truth of the matter. There’s another poem where Mount Atatara comes up. Let’s try reading that one next—”

The teacher indicated for Homura to sit down with a gesture.

Feeling like she wanted to disappear, Homura sat back down in her chair.

Lunch time.

Homura indirectly questioned the cla.s.smates around her desk.

“The Exploration Club? You joined the Exploration Club, Hinooka-san?”

“Err, no. I was invited to join since I’m not in any club. Do you know anything about it?”

“Hmm… I only know what was written about it in the school guide.”

“Yeah.”

Her cla.s.smates wracked their memories while eating their respective boxed lunches and bread.

“If I remember right, the Exploration Club was formed three years ago.”

“Three years? That’s still pretty new.”

“I haven’t heard many good rumors about it.”

“Oh?”

“It doesn’t give any advantages to preparing for university either.”

“True. The club activities consist of [exploration], after all.”

“My club’s advisor was grumbling about how it has the biggest club budget in the school. Look there.”

One of her cla.s.smates pointed outside the window.

Homura turned around in her seat to look out at the schoolyard.

“The buildings beside the track field there belong to the sports clubs. And there’s a rough-looking building just a little ways beyond that, see there?”

“That building that’s closest to the mountain side? Eh, you don’t mean…”

“That’s right. That huge mansion is solely the Exploration Club’s club building. Compared to that, my clubroom is like a storage closet.”

“Now I kinda want to go inside~”

“No way, no way. The place is obviously secured by Secom3. Their security is quite strict, after all.”

The two-story building, which had an astronomical observation dome on its rooftop, looked a bit like a research facility.

Homura had thought for sure that it was a public facility that opened on weekends or something.

“In the first place, there’s that too, you know? You need certain qualifications to join the Exploration Club. Hinooka-san, do you have the qualifications?”

Homura shook her head, hearing about this matter of qualifications for the first time.

“Touya-kun didn’t say anything about that…”

One of her cla.s.smates widened her eyes and leaned forward with great interest.

“By Touya, you mean Touya Tak.u.mi? He’s from the same middle school as me. Heeh, so he joined the exploration club. That’s unexpected.”

“Why?”

“He was in the kendo club in middle school. He was super strong. He used two-swords-style. He even partic.i.p.ated in the inter-middle school tournaments.”

“T-Two swords?”

It was completely different from Homura’s mental image of kendo.

“He might suit you, Hinooka-san. Well, he’s a bit short, though.”

“Isn’t that fine? How about you try joining the Exploration club, then?”

“Eh…?”

Now that she was being encouraged by those around her, Homura finally felt interested in joining.

But how many times before had she made a mistake in that way?

Homura gave a smile that only reached her face and cut apart a piece of fried chicken with the tips of her chopsticks.

“But something like the Exploration Club really doesn’t suit me. And I don’t have any particular qualifications either…”

“Hmm, that’s true.”

Thus, the topic of the Exploration Club reached a pause and the conversation changed to the subject of a foreign drama.

It was a show that Homura hadn’t heard of before, and it was a political drama at that. She didn’t understand what was amusing about it at all, but she decided to simply laugh along as if she understood. It tired her out.

The heavy gelatinous substance known as boredom and alienation weighed down upon her.

If the cla.s.sroom weren’t a public area, she would have immediately turned into an amorphous life-form and dissolved away starting from the tips of her feet.

“According to rumors, there’s going to be some edict or other…”

“Huh?”

Homura’s shoulders stiffened.

One of her cla.s.smates made an eye signal at her. There was a boy looking around the cla.s.sroom from the entrance.

“…Touya-kun.”

“Yo, Hinooka!”

A voice resounded through the frigid cla.s.sroom.

Pushed out by her lunch friends, Homura stood up from her seat with a long expression.

“Have you thought about your answer to my question yesterday?”

He greeted her like that without paying any regard to her cla.s.smates.

With a perfectly prim face, she pushed him back out into the corridor as quickly as her feet would carry her.

After they changed location to the front of a practically deserted special cla.s.sroom, Touya asked her the same question once again.

“So?”

As he looked at her expectantly with a carefree expression, Homura made a small sigh.

“I’m going to ask a strange question, but…”

“Ah?”

The sky, which peaked through the window on the other side of the hallway, was pure blue and clear, the perfect example of an early summer day.

“Does joining the Exploration Club bring me any merits in regard to my school life?”

“Merits, huh?”

“Err, you know, that kind of thing. Excluding any reason like ‘it’s fun’.”

“Let’s see…”

Touya raised his head and looked up at the ceiling with his arms crossed.

“Hmm, well, since the club activities are definitely quite hard, we do get preferential treatment. I don’t really care about it personally, though.”

“Preferential treatment, like what?”

And then, he said something unbelievable.

“For instance, we don’t get punished for being late or absent the day after we do club activities.”

“Eh?”

The club activities were given priority over lessons?

Was that really all right?

“We also basically don’t have to take any supplementary exams.”

“N-No supplementary exams? Unconditionally?”

“Yeah. When we go all out in our club activities, we don’t have the time for that kind of thing.”

What a shock. That wasn’t just preferential treatment; that was full-blow extraterritorial immunity.

Trembling in astonishment, Homura remembered the warning she’d been given just earlier.

“…But I heard that it doesn’t have any benefits for advancing to university.”

“Huh? What kind of club gives advantages for going to university? Our school mainly consists of sports clubs like track-and-field, rugby or wrestling. For girls, it tends to be volleyball or tennis. Do you want to do wrestling?”

“Why wrestling?”

While calming down her nerves which were easily ignited when faced with this b.u.mpkin-like boy, Homura voiced a question that suddenly occurred to her.

“Did you come to this school on a sports recommendation, Touya-kun?”