“…iro, Shiro, Shiro!”

The soft and feminine voice that my ears were always glad to hear, once again called my name. As soon as I heard it, I opened my eyes just to see the penetrating look of two beautiful green eyes. I was captivated by those eyes and I stared at them quietly before realizing what was happening.

“Ah! Good morning Lily” I said while jumping out of the bed.

“Good morning nothing! You’re late! Change yourself and let’s get going! You too Mizumi!”

“Yes!” answered Mizuki who was too freaked out to correct her name.

Lily and Kristian got out of the room and then I pulled the curtain that was between the two beds.

Mizuki and I changed to the P.E uniform, which consisted of a simple white t-shirt, blue shorts and a pair of shoes.

“Are you ready Mizuki?”

“Ah!!! Yes! I think!”

“Let’s get going then!”

I opened the door and saw Kristian and Lily who, in an act of friendship, waited for us to get changed.

“Let’s go guys!” said Kristian while moving his hand.

We ran as fast as we could and miraculously got right in time to the class, which was in the main plaza at the center of the school.

“Ok everyone! Put attention to me!”

Those words suddenly echoed around the place. Around 1000 persons turned their heads to the direction where the powerful voice came from.

What we looked was actually quite interesting: a guy was holding some kind of artifact that made his voice loud and clear.

“This is the first day of class and right now we’re going to explain how the physical education class works!

First of all, I need you to separate yourselves in 5 groups. You’ll get with the professors of your respective floor and they’ll explain you the rest. Fifth floor come with me”

You would expect that 1000 teenagers moving around and trying to accommodate themselves would be a whole mess but curiously, it wasn’t.

“People from this world are incredibly organized” I said in my mind.

Lily, Mizuki, Kristian, me and the whole fifth floor went with the professor that was speaking at the beginning. Three more persons were with him.

“Ok guys, the groups are still too big since 200 persons live in each floor so, we’ll separate you one more time in four groups. The persons that live in the rooms from 500 to 524 will go with Professor Dianne, the ones from 525 to 549 will come with me…”

“We’ll all be together Shiro!” said Lily to me.

“…the ones from 550 to 574 will go with Professor Kreiner and the last ones will go with Professor Holly. Now go with your assigned teachers and you’ll start the class. The ones I mentioned come with me!”

We, again in a very organized way, moved and reunited with our Proffesor.

“Everyone here? Great. Each group has a zone in the forest where we’ll do the class. Follow me and don’t get lost”

All of us got out of the main building (which was incredibly big) and went to the forest that surrounds Galdric.

Suddenly, while walking through the forest, I felt how someone grabbed my shirt from the back. I turned my head to see and realized that it was Mizuki who was doing that.

Before I could say anything she told me “Sorry, I know this is uncomfortable but I’m just a bit shocked about the amount of people in here”. “It makes me feel uneasy” she finally said.

“Such a cliché situation! My heart is pounding so fast right now… I gotta admit that her shyness makes her look very cute” I thought before saying “Do…don’t worry…” in low voice. I don’t even know if she heard me that time.

We kept walking when I saw Lily staring at me. I got ashamed and had to look elsewhere but I noticed she didn’t.

“So… Shiro, why did you wake up so late?”

“Uh? Ahhhh well… I was so excited talking with Mizuki that we forgot about time; you know how it is right?”

“Hmmm, I didn’t know you two got along so well…”

“Yeah…” I said with an uneasy laugh. “It was just a thing that happened yesterday…”

“Hmm I see” she said with a cold voice.

She looked to the floor without saying a word. An awkward silence was taking place until Kristian started talking to Lily. Only to Lily.

“Dammit he’s smart. I gave him a good chance and he was obviously not going to waste it”. I thought that but couldn’t really do anything about it.

We walked for around 5 minutes until we found what seemed to be a race circuit.

“Ok everyone! We reached our assigned training zone! First of all I want to say good morning and introduce myself. My name is Henry Leondre. Now were starting with the class. Because this is the first class, I just want you to run over this circuit so I can see how much stamina you have. Based on that, I’ll make different training plans for each one of you.

I’m gonna proceed on explaining the evaluation system for this test: if you make 20 laps or more, you’re perfect. If you make 15 laps or more, you gotta train a bit. If you make around 10, I’m going to have to put special attention to you. Finally, if don’t even reach 10 laps, don’t bother on coming again”.

After hearing those words the only thing that I could say was “oh crap” and apparently, that was only thing that Mizuki could say too.

“Please come over here and get ready to start” said the professor.

We all moved to the start line, which was very big, got ready to run.

“This is gonna be easy, right Shiro?” said Lily with a tone that emanated confidence.

“Hehe, sure” I nervously answered.

Suddenly the word “start” was heard all through the forest and 50 persons started running like there was no tomorrow.

I ran as fast as I could and got very surprised when I realized that I was keeping the same pace as Lily.

“Wow! I’m running too fast!” I thought.

I got excited by the heat of the moment and then started to run faster. I had so much confidence in myself at that moment that I felt that I was actually going to make it.

“This is incredible! But how is it possible? I’ve never been a sports guy or something similar…”

I was right in thinking that. I never trained or practiced any kind of sport but then, how was I so fast?

“It must be because of all the things that I’ve done since I got here. I ran from a dragon and spent most of the time walking, so that is probably why” I thought.

I was very excited and decided to race with Kristian, who was leading the race. I ran faster and faster each time until I suddenly got near him.

“Wow, I didn’t think you were this fast” he said while giving a surprised smile.

“Well I…I didn’t know either… ah… but here I am”

“Huh… Let’s see for how much you can keep the pace” he confidently said.

We were leading and the race was just getting better and better each time.

One lap… two laps… we kept running until at the third lap something odd happened.

All of a sudden, Kristian seemed farther and farther and then I saw everyone who was behind me, including Lily, moving faster and faster.

“What is this? Why is everyone so fast now?” I thought but I was wrong. It wasn’t that everyone got faster, it was me who got slower.

The exhaustion started to take place and I couldn’t breathe properly.

“Ah…Ah…Ah…”

Suddenly I saw Mizuki, who couldn’t take it anymore, and told her if she was ok.

“Ah… I… not… ok…”

“Dang Mizuki… ah… you look pretty bad…”

“Yes… I… dying…”

“Y…you should rest for a bit… ah…”

“I… you’re… right…”

She lay down on the floor and I left her there. I kept running because I wanted to see how many laps I could do.

I ran as much as I my legs could but unfortunately it wasn’t even close to what I was doing before.

“Oh crap, is this really everything I can do?”

When I was most depressed for not being able to do a lot, the professor told us to stop and to come to him.

“Good job people. Almost everyone is in a perfect condition! Because of being the first day and since you’re all so good, you can do nothing for the rest of the class. Go take a bath, and wait for your next class”

A group “Yes!” sounded almost like a chant and everyone was leaving when…

“The boy and the girl with the black hair and that fatty over there come here now”

Mizuki and I turned around and went with the professor. Also, one person we didn’t notice, went with us.

“Tell me your names”

No one said a word.

“Didn’t you hear? Do I need to tell you twice?”

“Ah! Sorry Sir! My name is Shiro Kurokawa!”

“Mine is Mizuki Aoy…”

“Mizuki what!?”

“MIZUKI AOYAMA SIR!”

“Better. And yours?”

“Yusei Takeyoshi”

“Very weird names you have. Anyway, I need to be honest with you: you suck. How is it possible that none of you could even do 10 laps? What did you do all day? Sleep?”

“…”

“Ah… I don’t like this but this is my job so I’m gonna train you. You’ll vomit blood but you’ll get results and will pair the rest of the class. You’ll come in the morning, receive different training and then in the night, you’ll come again, just the three of you. Sounds right?”

“Yes sir! Thank you!” we all said together.

“Also, you won’t get any rest now. The more we practice, the sooner you’ll be fine. See those two trees over there? There’s about 25 kedrs of distance between them. Go do 10 sprints from one tree to the other and wait 10 seconds between each sprint”

“Ok sir!” He said that and then left, leaving us alone.

I looked to my left and saw this guy that was with us. He had brown hair and eyes of the same color. He was also fat and looked older than Mizuki and me.

“So I if I’m not wrong, you’re name is Takeyoshi Yusei right?”

“Yes. You guys are Japanese too right?”

“Yes”

“Ah… is such a relief to find players apart from me. I was scared actually”

“It’s good for us too. By the way, there’s something I need to ask you. I forgot to tell Mizuki but I guess I’ll tell her now too. Do you know about the secret of this game?”

“Well… I was guessing some things but I wasn’t very sure. Tell me what you have”.

“This is going to be hard to swallow but I’ll be direct. This is not a game”.

“Not a game?” said Mizuki with a worried tone in her voice.

“Hmm… So I wasn’t wrong” said Yusei.

“How are you so sure?” asked Mizuki.

“Don’t you think this is just way too real? When you touch something you feel exactly what you’re supposed to feel and when you get closer, you smell exactly what you’re supposed to smell. Also, the NPCs are just way too real and have a way too deep background to just be NPCs”

“Also, this artifact we have in our ears right now. It has a camera and a mic over here. This isn’t just for the menu, but also to track and spy us” said Yusei.

“Oh wow… This is just too much… Please give a minute”

She went near to some tree, sat, and kept quiet for a while. I understand what she was feeling, and it wasn’t nice at all.

I kept talking to Yusei who had a lot of valuable information.

“So… who do you think sent us here?” I asked.

“Well, before asking “who” we should ask “why”. If we find the objective we can guess who wants us to do that. Because the artifact has a camera and a microphone I have to say that they want information. Just throwing us in this world without knowing anything, they probably want us to learn about this world and as we learn, they’ll do it too”

“Now that I think of it, I believe the government probably is behind this. I don’t want to be one of those guys that are obsessed with conspiracy theories about the government, but if this is another world, can you imagine the value this could have? Resources, cheap workforce, new war technologies using magic. I think is not wrong guessing that the government could do something like this”.

“I believe it too. Also, we should come up with a plan. We need to gather every “player” in the Academia so we can share our knowledge”

“That’s a good idea. We’ll start tomorrow”

The little but interesting conversation got itself interrupted when a very angry professor came to us yelling “why are you not running? Bla bla bla bla…” and different kinds of insults. I thought all teachers were like that but, luckily, it was just him.

After all that mess we finally were able to get a shower and rest for a while until the next classes started. The first class of Light Swordsmanship…

Hey guys! I'm sorry I uploaded so late. I just started college (first year of college actually :D) so I was kind of busy these days. In compensation I'll upload the next wednesday and I'm going to say to you that it's going to be some character development to Mizuki :P

That's everything. Please check the next wednesday ;) Peace!