The serenity that comes with reading outdoors quickly passed.

Oh, the weather was lovely, birds chirped, there was a calm zephyr drifting along basically the entire period, and everything was doing its merry best to not die and make babies. However, I had absolutely no shade and the sun was reflecting on my phone even when it was faced away so it was rather difficult to read. Ruined the entire experience if I’ll be honest. After fifteen minutes I set the phone down and begrudgingly enjoyed the experience of just sitting in the springtime as others suffered in my stead.

I should get an actual book.

In other news, that was about the length of time it took for everyone to finish their mile, joyous day. The few envious glowers I received, mostly from The Gal and the few other athletically impaired, were met with a saccharine smile and wave. However, for some reason, none of them appreciated my cheery encouragement.

They were given a breather before moving on to the next exercise inflicted upon them by their amazonian taskmistress. Pushups, situps, squats, mountain climbers, basic exercises, all of which made the class progressively winded, despite the vivacious and optimistic encouragement, read yelling, from Ms. Nanjo.

She seemed to genuinely enjoy her work, the entire time she was doing the exercises along with the class, smiling, counting, and giving tips. I’m pretty sure that was what quelled most complaints. That, and that the people who would complain were left too gasping for breath to speak.

Otaku, despite his ineptitude in athleticism, also seemed to genuinely enjoy the class. I believe that Ms. Nanjo both noticed and completely misinterpreted the reason why. The encouragement directed at him had this prideful tone that he was working so hard.

Oh, Ms. Nanjo, you sweet summer child. Bless your heart.

Then again, she’s wearing something pretty similar to her students, and the sheen of sweat that has soaked into it is distinctly conforming to every nook and cranny of her abs, so she could just be an exhibitionist.

Man, universe, you really go all in when you want to show off, don’t you? Far be it from me to kink-shame existence itself.

The last portion of the class was dedicated to cool-down stretches.

I think I’ll try and convince the teacher to let us play sports, like dodgeball and such, instead of an exercise routine. I’ll have to look up benefits and studies for that later, if I turn out to really care. I probably will, because fucking God, I do not want to go through that slog every day.

I probably will; if I’m going to get tired and sweaty I want to have fun doing it. Ahah!

During the cooldown Ms. Nanjo gave some tips for the future to many of my classmates, though when she came up against Silver’s implacable stare she faltered, and just gave something that amounted to ‘pace yourself.’ Valiant attempt Ms. Nanjo, valiant attempt.

The tune of the class change bell rang out and the class gave the barest semblance of a goodbye before trudging away from the field as quickly as possible, with more glares being shot my way for good measure. If I didn’t know any better I’d say they didn’t enjoy the class.

“So! How you guys feelin’? Energized and ready to take on the rest of the day? I know I am!” I ask my two new friends as I drift in beside them on the stairway. Otaku is still breathing heavily, and Shirohime is, as always, unflappable in bearing. Strangely though they didn’t smell or have a sheen of sweat on them like Mrs. Nanjo. Well, I don’t know if she smelled, but given that she was still glistening from here, I’d say so.

How the hell is she refracting enough to cause lens flares?

“Shut up, bastard.” Otaku replies hoarsely “The moment was great, but my lungs taste like blood from running so much.” Are you sure that isn’t because you inhaled your nose bleed?

Shirohime, however, blandly declared “My muscles are trembling. I am barely able to stand.” which caused both Otaku and myself to look at her in bemusement.

“Are… you trying to be... humorous?” I sought clarification. Could this be a misinterpretation of my earlier advice? “I mean you didn’t exactly look like you were working hard enough to do that. I like that sort of contradiction humor, but it's hard to tell with you.”

She slowly shook her head. “I ran and worked as hard as I could.”

“You don’t even look like you’re breathing!” Otaku yelled. “You didn’t look like you were trying, either! What the hell?”

I agree, dude, what the fuck?

“I am not very athletically inclined.” She declared.

“I mean, I’m not either.” I replied, “but if I work myself to the point where I'm about to fall down I usually don’t look like I'm going for a stroll. Quite the opposite, I'd be on the ground panting my ass off.” I pause to consider, “Then again, I don’t think I’d ever work that hard in the first place.”

“But are you ok?” Otaku asked, “Do you need to hang on to us or something?” How considerate! An honorable lecher?

“I will be fine.” she replied quickly “I only need to sit down for a long time.”

“Yeah, but until then we’re going to be concerned,” I tell her.

“Ok.” she nods, accepting the compromise.

I didn’t expect Otaku to be as concerned as he is, he looks worried, and while I do suspect his motives aren’t entirely pure, a good deed is still a good deed.

I hope this characterization stays, dude, you deserve to be more than comic relief. Well, comic relief isn’t bad, but the type you seem to be is rather close to creepy. But don’t worry, I’ll put a stop to that shit whenever I can. I swear upon my mother’s milk… I probably don’t want to be using that phrase here… I swear upon my whistling ability that you will never be Kya Hentai’d in my presence. When you don’t deserve it. If I can prevent it.

You gotta put in those qualifiers, if you don’t you’re lying. And I suspect that sort of karma has a way of getting around. I’m still going to try to not let him get hit though, optical lechery does not deserve physical battery.

If I say I'll do something I will, if I don’t forget, but if I’m reminded I will do them.

This is why people lie, telling the whole truth is complicated. So is talking to yourself.

The campus is rather interesting, in that it’s stupidly huge. Not in the ‘it’s really big way,’ more in the ‘why is it this big?’ way. Like, there’s enough woodland to obscure the other buildings on campus. So why do they have so much land? Japan has a problem with space, doesn’t it?

Looking at the trees, they’re rather fuzzy, aren’t they? Well, not when I focus on them, but when I intentionally focus elsewhere they look… painted? Like the foliage isn’t there, just blotches, no distinct outline. People always have this sharp crisp almost defining line around them. The Veil? But people don’t look all anime anymore, I’ve noticed, it’s back to slightly drawn people for the most part, but the trees almost blend together.

Is it because it’s the background? Is it some trick of perception, something I’m noticing only now? Is it something that always happened in my vision and I only think it’s because of my transmigration? Has my sense of vision changed because of the concussion or was it like this before?

I don’t remember how woods looked out of the corner of my eye in my universe. What else will I forget? I mean, if I don’t remember my universe well right now my memories will eventually become corrupted by time. It’s inevitable, without refreshers people even forget their family’s faces.

I’m not going to see my family again.

I’m not going to remember their faces soon, I'm going to forget what my father looked like, what my mother looked like, sister, grandmother, uncle. I’m gone, they’ll never see me again, I’m adrift in a stolen body surrounded by people I'm lying to in a foreign culture I’m going to be seen through I've stolen a family who’d never love me and have to rely on to-“Akio-kun?”- no one will care about me everything I do is fake anyway I’m manipulating everyone so I when the- ”Hey, Akio-kun”-y find out.

“Hey!” a shove jostles me physically, and metaphorically, out of my spiral. “Are you ok? You’re breathing really ha- are you crying?” I bite back the tears that had been pooling in the corner of my eyes and forcibly slow my breath. Fuck. Who was speaking?

“Sorry, what?” I ask, focusing on the person next to me. Otaku was a bit shorter than me with short blue-black hair dressed in a white and blue school uniform. Large brown eyes behind a pair of square black-rimmed glasses. Large eyes? Normal-sized? I don’t know the standards here. I- focus. He looks concerned.

“Are you ok? Suddenly, you were breathing heavy and it looked teary just now, is something wrong?”

He is concerned! How nice, “Nope, not anymore! Thanks for the save, dude, that could’ve been embarrassing, nothing to worry about though. Were y’all talking about anything?” they need not be concerned with me, seeing as, you know, we just met today. Who the hell dumps emotional problems like mine on someone the day they meet? Certainly not me, except in the strangest of circumstances.

“Are you sure?” Otaku reiterates. “What was wrong?”

“A minor existential crisis, nothing more. Something you don’t know me nearly well enough to share in. That’s for friends who’ve known me at least a couple of weeks, or have recently saved me from a band of wandering murderhobos. As an acquaintance slash buddy whose only interaction with me has been to discuss T&A, you’ve got neither of those credentials.”

“What about me?” Silver inquires deadly. As in her voice, not her intent. It was still very smooth for someone who was apparently dying inside from exercise.

“A mild friend.” a soft ‘mild?’ is murmured in response, "Anyone I've defended from bullying is my friend." moving on, we’re past the woods now, and can see the building.

“You know, the faux European style of our school buildings really grates on me. The filigree around the windows combined with the exposed woodwork and then the flat roof just… disturbs my architectural sense.” I voice my discomfort, partially in an effort of distraction.

But also because I want to complain, I'm efficient like that. I’m fairly certain the filigree isn’t actual gold, but if it is, I'm sure it isn’t required for the building’s structural integrity.

Not that I’d stoop to such petty larceny, I’d point it out to someone else and watch as they fail. Though, this is a rich kid’s school, I don't think they’d stoop to it either. A shame, my petty fantasies of manipulative villainy have been dashed before I even started.

“W-What?” both of them stutter in sync. Not, like, physically. Verbal stuttering. Just uncannily in time, but Otaku actually goes up a note or two. “Are you an architect?”

“What? No.” I refute incredulously, “It’s just an obvious mismatch of historical designs, it was like someone was told to make a building look European but they never researched the source material, so used some half-remembered documentary footage as a benchmark.” I explain and pull out my phone to type in European architectural styles to the search bar. “You see the building’s non-elaborate exposed woodwork is south German, most common in Bavaria, and that doesn’t work with the flat roof. If it was fancy woodwork it’d be Tudor, see? The filigree is for fancy royal palaces and government buildings, and doesn’t work with the surrounding concrete. It needs a more dignified stone like marble to look… not garish.” I show them my phone, swiping through the various examples of buildings while Otaku looks distinctly nonplussed.

Silver, unflappable as always, asked “Why does this matter to you?”

A fair question, and one I receive often enough, “Because it slightly bothers me and I want to share my distress.” It also lets me control the conversation so you don’t question me. Well, about earlier, you’re obviously questioning me now. Why am I making needless qualifications to myself? Shut up, me.

Otaku replies, unhelpfully, “Well it just looks like a prissy rich building to me, I don't know why they didn’t make a traditional Japanese style high school, but that’s Catholics for you I guess.” That's a strange but acceptable stereotype for Catholicism. Really I’m more annoyed at anime’s lack of concern for accurate European building styles, but I'll admit cultural bias there.

Not out loud that’d blow my cover.

“Ah! Catholics.” I’m reminded, “Do either of you know who Jesus Christ is?”

My hopes soar as both pause to consider the question and Otaku lights up, “Is that that rapper guy? Yiiji? I’ve heard he’s big in America.” Only to be burst into feathers by birdshot. I swear I felt something pierce my heart. and the thing is, he's not wrong, if I've correctly guessed who Yiiji is,

“No, I believe he meant someone different.” Silver turned to me for confirmation. I could only pleadingly nod. “Is he an animal?” What? I shake my head confusedly. “Is he a person?” A nod. Is she? “Is he alive?” a shake.

“No!” I shout, drawing a bit of attention, but I don't care. “I’m not playing Twenty fucking Questions so you can figure out who Jesus is. He is literally the seminal figure of Christianity! The entire fucking religion based around him that we’re going to a school based around. Everybody here should know him! We should literally be having classes on him! Instead it’s just normal high school!”

Otaku looks at me bemused “aren’t we going to a Catholic school? We have a nun.” My spirit has left my body, I’m legitimately tempted to proselytize for a religion not my own because of you. “And why should we be having classes about some man we’ve never heard of? He can’t be that important.”

“Your nun is invalid.” I mumble rubbing my face. I’m just going to go hide in a hole. “When’s lunch?” I sigh.

“After next period, which is English.” Silver answered helpfully. To which Otaku groans, muttering his dislike for either the subject or the teacher, can’t tell which. Probably the subject, as both of my acquaintances had gone a bit blue...

“Oh good, I can turn off my brain. I'm going to take a nap, please don’t bother me until I can eat. If you do I’ll use my chopsticks to drain your sinuses.” I say as we open the classroom door, where, standing near the desk, is the teacher. Surprisingly, he’s an old Japanese man, not doddering or hunched, but well worn, as suggested by the wrinkles on his face and the old boxy glasses. He has short, thick, white hair that sticks out from his head, but it isn’t wild. It just grows up. At least he adds variety.

There’s something amusing about an old man being used as a token minority. Irony is a wonderful thing. Many things are ironic, like accidentally announcing that you would sleep through a class with your brain off in front of the teacher. Well, no that’s coincidence, not irony. Irony requires, well, something like waking up your teacher while announcing you’d be sleeping in their class. Which I didn’t do. So I’ve only coincidentally fucked up, instead of the ironically fucking up, which I much prefer, though I do, of course, dislike both.

Yamamoto-sensei, as I'd learn he’s called shortly, just snorted, nodded and said “do well on the tests. Don’t hurt others.” and left it at that, and all the tension drained out of me.

New favorite teacher! In fact, I’d nominate him teacher of the year just with that short exchange. Teacher of the decade if he can joke around or is entertaining.

To be fair I’m probably not going to actually be taking a nap, sleeping at desks has always been an uncomfortable prospect for me even before I had the misfortune of having my elbows audition for the blue man group. I’m actually a lot less bony than I was in my previous body, which isn’t a very hard thing to do all told, but it’d still be uncomfortable.

There’s a reason they tell you not to run in the halls. So they, or you, but mostly they, don’t get hurt. And by hurt, I mean sued. I’m sure you know who they are.

I mostly glided through English class, being the least participatory of all the students. Well, aside from The Gal, but I believe that’s to be expected of all the classes at this point. I’ve droned out her prattling. Or maybe I’m being unnecessarily judgemental; I'll just not think about her.

The most important thing I learned is that if someone is speaking English it’s not run through The Translation. Important because it is fucking weird to hear English be explained in perfect American accented English then hear it switch to Japanese accented, slightly broken English. And to hear my classmates butcher my mother tongue.

A single tear rolls down my cheek in grief. Metaphorically. Though I may need a dentist’s visit soon if I have to deal with this every day.

Don’t get me started on the textbooks, if I look at them anymore I will be apoplectic. Even worse than stereotypically bad, but luckily Mr. Yamamoto said they’re useless, another point for Best Teacher, so I only had a momentary glance before I decided that I'd rather not be angry as well as in pain.

I’ll admit, I’m a bit of an English stan, I’ve no problem with bad grammar when speaking, excepting a few pet peeves, but English as a whole is the most interesting language for me. In all of its permutations.

Writing, though, requires correct spelling and word choice, proper homophone usage, and clear sentences for me to not just say ‘alright, I’m not enjoying this’ and drop it.

You know, playing around with the weird muscle in my head that turns off the translation for my voice and writing, I’ve discovered there’s nothing for my hearing. Or at least none I can discern. So I, literally, am unable to perceive Japanese in any form other than writing, and I can’t understand that, except for the vague feeling of my lips moving wrong. And the small phrases like ‘ kya hentai’ and ‘b-b-baka,’ maybe because I already know what those mean through cultural exposure. Or it could just be anime.

Fucking anime.

Yeah, let’s go with the former, that makes sense. No need to translate what I already know, and translating those into English in those circumstances would just plain sound strange, even if I would be the only one to think that.

The sound of thirty scraping desks coming together dispels my musing. I look at Silver and make a questioning noise. When she looked at me expectantly I reiterated more verbosely, “what’s going on?”

To which she explained “we’ve been given the last fifteen minutes,” it’s been 35 minutes already? “To independently study.”

“Which means we split into our cliques and socialize. Yay.” I say jovially. “So that means I have, like, an hour and fifteen to just get to know my neighbors.”

“Yes.” she agrees.

“Alrighty,” I look over to Otaku and see he’s sitting by himself… actually studying it seems. I turn back to Silver. “Could you go over there and get him, I don’t know his name.”

She blinks, “How do you not know his name?”

“I’m the first person in roll call, he’s the last. I’ll assume because of geography his name starts with a z, but I still don’t know it. I’m not going to just call out and say, ‘hey pervert otaku, c'mere.’”

She nods, “That is a rude, if accurate, descriptor. Why can you not go get him?”

“I’m an invalid, oh my poor legs.” I deadpan, cradling my arms. She stares back at me before rising up and walking over and getting him. He looks mildly surprised to be fetched. Don’t worry dude, you’re a friend. Not a close one, but you’re in my orbit now, and none escape from a protagonist’s harem, cough, social circle.

I mean, I’ve met, what, three possible romantic interests, and one of those already asked me out on a date. Well, that was sorta my fault, but whatever. I can be appreciative of the male physique, but it’s more of a ‘wow, he’s handsome,’ instead of a, well, sexual thing.

God damn it, why am I being so horny?

Fucking anime and/or hormones!

Otaku and Silver amble back over to my area, otaku looking a bit disappointed.

“You don’t know my name?” Damnit Silver, I can’t blame you but you weren’t supposed to tell him.

“You can always fix that!” I tell him in an upbeat tone. He looks at me sort of dejected, and sighs.

“My name’s Obi Taro.” Wait, that’s nowhere near the end of the alphabet. We might not be organized that way, now that i think about it. Oh well.

“Well, alrighty then. San or kun?”

“What?”

“Do you prefer Obi-san or Obi-kun. I could just fall back to referring to you as otaku in my head, but, you know, that seems rude. Especially now that I actually know your name.”

Silver interjects, saying, “You call me Silver. You never asked for my preferred address.”

“Well, for one Silver isn’t nearly as derogatory as otaku,” I remember it being a bad thing to call people anyway, “and second, your hair is really pretty, don’t discount it. So, anyways, san or kun?”

“Uh, kun I guess.”

“I would like san, please.”

“Alrighty then, let’s get on with studying English for the next fifteen minutes or so. Anything you guys need help with, I’m pretty much only fluent in English, seeing as it’s the only thing I can hear, so ask away.” that, of course, got me strange looks.

“What do you mean? You're speaking Japanese right now.” Obi says skeptically.

“I don’t begrudge you your skepticism, good sir, however you’ll notice I speak very strangely! Most of that is because my English speaking patterns do not line up with Japanese and whatever’s translating for me is fucking stupid. Also, apparently, I overuse the progressive form and I know I say fuck a lot, so you can’t say you didn’t hear any hints.” I can practically see the dots appearing in the background as they stare at me.

The reason I'm being so open about this is because the typical protagonist would try to hide his special circumstances. What are they gonna do, call ICE on me? I literally have a birth certificate, and I practically guarantee them an A in English.

Ok, I'm leaning a bit on plot armor.

“So you can speak English.” Silver said.

“Yep.”

“Fluently.” She leans toward me, a faint miasma fogging up behind her. Oh, dear.

“I mean, only being able to hear it sorta implies that, yeah.”

She took a desk, turned it around to in front of me, staring me dead in the eye, and said, “You’re giving me an A.”

That… was my goal, but I feel intimidated and that this backfired somewhat. So much for plot armor.