He was not in a proper living environment like an apartment. Nor did it seem like a business space like a family restaurant or convenience store. However, he recognized it. It was not any kind of special area.
Yes.
“Is this the university?”
He wondered why he was back there. However, the desire to get out of there was much stronger. It was similar to how someone in a burning house desired to escape to some safe place more than wracking their brains and trying to figure out what had caused the fire.
Did that mean being there was dangerous?
Anzai decided to put that question off until he had left too, and he tried to stand up.
As he did, he heard a metallic clanking noise.
It was the sound of a chain moving.
Something like a wristwatch was attached to his left wrist. He touched it in the dim light and realized it was similar to a handcuff. However, the chain was quite long. It was about a meter long, and it led to…
For some reason, Aisu was lying on the floor just like Anzai and she was wearing a ridiculously skimpy V-shaped swimsuit that left most of her skin bare.
“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………What?”
He was pretty sure it was called a slingshot swimsuit. The V-shaped swimsuit made of a pink synthetic material was the kind of thing only allowed in the isolated world of pinup magazines, so seeing it up close brought on an urge to laugh more than it seemed sexy.
However, that was no time to be laughing.
In fact, even smiling would be a bad thing in his position.
They were one on one in that extreme situation. All sorts of misunderstandings were certain to occur. If the other three girls from the day before had been there too, he might have suffered fewer misunderstandings. However, the other three did not appear to be around.
“But…”
(What the hell happened? How did I end up in the perfect environment to end up on the receiving end of the world’s lamest false accusations!?)
Even if he put great efforts into resolving the situation, he doubted it would be worthy of a Hollywood movie and he had a feeling he would only find an extremely dissatisfying conclusion if he did manage to get to the bottom of it all. Anzai instinctually tried to move away from Aisu, but the fact that their wrists were connected by that chain caused this to be his downfall.
Anzai’s movements pulled on Aisu’s wrist which provided a stimulus to Aisu’s consciousness.
“Uuh…”
She said the same thing as she woke up as he had.
For instant – just an instant – Anzai seriously considered performing a karate chop to the side of her neck in an attempt to put her back to sleep, but he managed to stop himself.
And then the gates of hell opened wide.
At first, Aisu frowned in confusion and looked around. Then, she realized something was off about how she was dressed. When she had grasped the gist of the situation, her entire face grew beet red.
“Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!? So it wasn’t a dreeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!?”
“Eh!? So you woke up before me and passed out again from the shoc-…gbvheh!?”
After having resisted the karate chop, Anzai received a full force blow. (Aisu -> Equip -> E. Fallen Alarm Clock)
As he gained the extremely rare experience of passing out from a blow to the face, Anzai began to seriously question his earlier decision.
Part 5
Now, a question.
“It seems this is a classroom at the university. I’ve only taken general education courses, so I’ve never been in a room this small. Also, it is 8 AM. The teachers should be here already. Some of the hastier students might be here too. The upperclassmen who spent the night here writing their thesis are definitely here. However, the main rush of students arriving should be between 8:30 and 9:00. In other words, we have only half an hour left.”
“…So if we do not find a change of clothes in that time, I will be forced to provide a fanservice scene to the entire university while handcuffed to you?”
“It will of course be a major problem if you leave the building dressed like that. That is why we must find the important item ‘Cotton Clothes’ somewhere in the building.”
“It seems to me there are some clothes right here. You are wearing some, right? At least let me borrow your shirt!! It does not matter if a guy is topless. You will just look like you are in a kung fu movie!!”
“There is one problem with that, Miss Aisu.”
“Hm? Huh? The buttons of your shirt are glued shut with instant glue!?”
“My pants and belt are too. I only just realized it. It seems whoever set this up is intent on having a spy action thriller featuring a girl in a skimpy swimsuit running around the school building.”
“I will never forgive whoever did this!! I cannot believe this!! I know, I can wrap the curtain around me…Ahh!? I just tugged lightly on this thick curtain and it started falling apart!!”
Anzai guessed it had either been corroded with some kind of chemical or switched out with an easily tear-able material while they slept.
Whoever had set it up had been quite thorough, but what meaning was there in doing it all?
In fact, who had done it?
“Th-there is nothing else I can cover myself with!”
“There’s some kind of memo card over there. It might have been left by some professor.”
“Let’s see… ‘If what I am seeing is reality, then I require people who can be called Ab. Busters. I have gathered too much of it to oppose it. That is why I need new people to act as Ab. Busters and…’ Argh, I don’t care! This is tiny!! I can’t hide anything with this tiny memo card! My palm is bigger than this!!”
In her anger, Aisu ripped the memo card to shreds and threw away the pieces.
(Should she really have done that? I don’t really get what’s going on here, but I feel like that was essential information needed as a prologue to whatever is going on here…)
“But where are we supposed to find a change of clothes? Do you have any ideas?”
Unlike middle school or high school, one did not have a “home classroom” in universities, so there was no custom of leaving your personal items anywhere. That changed somewhat for those in specific seminars or graduate students who were constantly going to and from a specific laboratory, but Anzai was taking almost nothing but general education courses, so he was unfamiliar with those near personal spaces.
Aisu wrapped her arms around herself to hide her body, but Anzai had a feeling that it actually made various places stick out more.
She let out a low moan and said, “…Ugh. If we made it to the club activities building, we might find some tracks suits or uniforms.”
“Are you in a club?”
“Yes, the West Francia-Style Dueling Revival Club.”
Anzai was not quite sure what a club like that would actually do, but he swore in his heart not to make any more jokes that could make her want to harm him. He just hoped it was actually a cultural club.
“But the club activities building is a fair distance away from this building.”
“Also, the keys to the club rooms are kept in the teachers’ office, so the teachers would see us…”
“Then we need another option.”
“But there is nowhere else that people leave personal things.”
“Then what about somewhere with clothes that aren’t personally owned? …Hmm, like the cafeteria maybe?”
“?”
“I’m guessing it’s for health reasons, but the cooks all wear track suits and aprons, right? The best outfit is hats and clothes of thin synthetic materials like the people working at a semiconductor fabrication plant, but the customers probably don’t want the cooks looking like they are covered in chemicals.”
“Meaning?”
“Those are not privately
owned. Most likely, several sets are left in the kitchen.”
“Yes!! Well done!!”
“Gyaahhhh!? Just because you’re overcome with joy is no reason to come over and embrace me dressed like that!”
Aisu came back to her senses and delivered a completely unfair slap. They then began to head out.
…But first, Anzai asked a question just to be sure.
“What about your friends from yesterday? Harumi and the other two. Can’t you contact them and have them bring by a change of clothes?”
“No. Not at all. If they found out I was wandering around the school dressed like this, the world would crumble violently.”
And so, the spy action thriller began with (someone with no relation to Anzai’s) life hanging in the balance. He headed out while dragging along Aisu, the demon king who had arrived in the 21st century.
The chain was relatively long, so Anzai would go ahead to make sure it was safe and then Aisu would follow him with her body balled up.
At a corner of the hallway, Anzai caught a glimpse of long white hair. It appeared a girl of about 12 had turned in their direction, but she did not seem to notice them.
(…Isn’t this a university?)
It was a slightly absurd sight, but he had no time to pay it any heed. What mattered was that no one else was there. The girl from before had disappeared. It seemed safe to head down the chilly morning hallway.
“…It looks fine.”
“Let’s just get this stupid emergency situation over with.”
“But you should probably stay crouched down as you walk. If you stand up, someone could spot you through the hallway windows.”
Anzai and Aisu resisted the urge to shout and run at full speed, and instead moved slowly and silently through the hallway. Naturally, Anzai’s heart was pounding, too. If Aisu screwed up and began crying in this situation, he had a feeling his life would be ruined regardless of the proper context of the situation.
“What floor are we on?”
“From what I can see out the windows, it looks like the third floor. I can tell by how high up from the ground we are.”
“The cafeteria is on the first floor.”
“This is easier to hide along than a hallway that heads straight there. It does raise the risk of suddenly running into someone, but…wait. Shh!”
“Gyaaaaahhhh!? Footsteps are headed this way!!”
As they approached the stairway, they heard footsteps from below. Anzai and Aisu realized they would be spotted, so they frantically changed their plan and headed upstairs. With just their heads sticking out from the landing, they observed the situation.
“(They are going to stop at the third floor, right!? If they keep heading up, we will be spotted! Maybe we should set up a ‘wet floor’ sign!)”
“(And what kind of adventure are you planning to take on the way to get that sign!? What we need to do is check above! If someone starts coming down, we’ll have nowhere to run!)”
The two meaninglessly waved their hands around as they argued, but luckily the owner of the footsteps stopped at the third floor. From what they could see of the person’s back, it appeared to be Professor Shinagawa, a stubborn madame who was the subject of a dubious rumor that she would no longer give any credits to girls who wore heavy makeup.
“I-if she had spotted us, we would have been dead.”
“…I think I might have seriously been buried under a campus cherry tree.”
However, they had no choice but to head on now that their path forward was open.
Anzai and Aisu headed down to the first floor from the landing between the third and fourth floors.
On the way, Anzai suddenly asked, “So who do you think set this up?”
“Well, I cannot think of much that connects us. In fact, we had never met until yesterday.”
“So…” Anzai knew the idea had several flaws, but he voiced it nevertheless. “It was Harumi, Hotaru, or Kozue?”
“No,” readily denied Aisu. It was not that she had any actual evidence of that. “No matter how they may seem, they do know what lines not to cross. With something this extreme, we can rule them out. This isn’t something a best friend of the type elementary schoolers dream of would do.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. If it does turn out to be them, I will stab them.”
That outrageous statement was said without hesitation.
It scared Anzai how girls would occasionally go on the offensive in such crazy ways. Regardless of how deep the wound actually was, they never let anything go like it was a fishing hook stabbed into them. Anzai legitimately could not tell if she had been joking or not.
“But do we have any connection other than them?” he asked.
“Well…” Aisu trailed off before she could continue.
At first, Anzai thought it was because they had safely made it down to the first floor, but she was acting oddly.
As Anzai poked his head out from the stairway area to check on the hallway, Aisu spoke to him from behind in her ridiculous swimsuit.
“Um, I just realized something.”
“What?”
“…The cafeteria is all the way on the other end of the building. That means we have to pass through the entrance area in the center of the building.”
“…”
It was 8:10.
Not much time was left until the 8:30 rush.
“S-so should we head back up to the second floor, head across the building, and then head back down using the stairway on the other side?”
“I’d like to, but…wait, wait! I hear footsteps approaching from up the stairs!!”
Like they were building a pyramid of playing cards, their frantically put together plan was sent crumbling down from a large shock. With their hand forced by the situation, they headed out into the hallway without being sure it was safe.
And once they had headed forward, they had no choice but to keep on in that direction.
Hesitation would only raise the risk of failure.
“I think that professor from the survey is the most suspicious!” said Aisu as she moved along while crouched down.
“Why?”
“That survey is the only connection between us besides Harumi, Kozue, and Hotaru.”
“But why us? There were a bunch of participants.”
It was possible there were other pairs sneaking along in other parts of the university, but Anzai decided to ignore the possibility as they had no proof of it.
With her arms wrapped around her own body, Aisu looked around and said, “Do you remember what we learned yesterday? Our results on the survey were an exact match. We were probably the only two for that to happen to.”
“Do you have any evidence of that?”
“It is a simple issue of mathematics. What do you think the odds of getting an exact match on an ordering of 24 short films is?”
“Eh? Um, uh….? I-I can do math with a calculator, I swear!!”
“You can use a calculator if you want , but just do the calculations!!” Aisu’s face reddened further, this time from something other than embarrassment. “The answer is about 10 to the 23rd power x 1/6. The denominator is something beyond trillion and quadrillion, so I do not know what to call it, but it is an extremely small chance.”
“…I-I didn’t realize it was such an amazing thing.”
“Of course, the odds are not 0, so it is possible there is a third person, but…well…that would practically be a miracle. Just two is amazing enough.”
Hearing that, Anzai did start to feel like the result of the survey was more important than the fact that he had spoken with the other girls.
Then again, it was possible the odds of meeting a specific person were lower than ordering 24 short films in the same way.
“…We have made it to the red zone minefield.”
“You seem calmer. Have your senses numbed over?”
They were at the entrance area. At the current time, this was the area th
ey had the greatest chance of running across someone else in.
Some universities were different, but this one still used the indoor slippers system. In other words, the entrance had shoe lockers lined up. It was likely to ensure the expensive research equipment and old books were not ruined by dirt. Taking off your shoes before entering the specific rooms seemed more popular, but the professors here seemed worried that any dirt in the building could get in under the doors.
However, students went to different buildings depending on where their class was, so no one had their own locker. You put your shoes in an arbitrary locker and then put on a pair of communal slippers.
Just as before, Anzai went ahead and poked his head out to see if it was safe to proceed.
“I don’t see anyone…”
The next thing he knew, Aisu shoved him violently from behind. He was forced out into the area between rows of lockers.
He realized what was going on before he could complain.
He heard some girls talking in the space beyond the next row of lockers.
“Harumi, you’re here early.”
“I changed my bank account, so I have to tell the people in the office to change where they withdraw my tuition from. All this procedural stuff is so annoying. Why are you here, Hotaru-san?”
“No real reason. That main road is usually a lot more crowded, but there was hardly any traffic today.”
The personal boss characters who they could least let find out had appeared.
Because there was only a row of lockers between them, the actual distance between them was about 60 cm.
Just to make sure, Anzai asked, “…What happens if they find out?”
“The world will be destroyed.”
She was sticking with that.
The problem was that there was nothing proactive they could do about it. They could only pray that Harumi and Hotaru would leave.
And of course, the world was not so kind as to give them that complete safety.
In the next instant, Anzai’s cell phone started ringing out of nowhere.
Their silent hiding was all for naught. Also, Aisu panicked and screamed.
“Vaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
But once he regained some calm, Anzai realized Harumi and Hotaru had no way of knowing what his ringtone sounded like, so there was no real problem with them hearing it. The real problem was…
A Simple Survey - Volume 01 - A Simple Survey Page 19
