1.31 – Bother

What a fucking Dejá-vu.

For someone who rarely ever visited the hospital back in his previous life, he seemed to have spent a lot of his time here, right in that white-walled room. Thankfully, his wounds weren’t that difficult to heal this time around, and he needed to stay here only for a day. That meant that he skipped out on yet another Thursday, but on Friday he was back in the academy once again.

The last few days have been strange, to say the least.

Alicia, for her part, decided not to talk to Nathan at all ever since he came back home on Thursday evening. He might have as well been a ghost for all the attention she had given him. The reason wasn’t clear to him yet, but he had some ideas about why that was so.

It was either that she was angry at him or she blamed herself because of what had happened with her older brother. As Nathan was beginning to understand her more, he leaned towards the latter option a bit more.

There was little he could do to let her know that it wasn’t her fault, not much except saying so at least. Whenever he tried, she just simply walked out of the room, not letting him finish the sentence. He would get through her walls eventually. He only needed some more time.

And while he kind of expected to get some money for fighting the superhero that was so far beyond his own powers, the system didn’t seem to treat that scuffle as anything noteworthy. No money received, no notification, absolute nothing.

Well, it fit, kind of. He did get his ass handed to him anyway. If there was one positive that he could deduce from the whole situation, it was that it made Nathan a bit more respectful towards how powerful people could be in this superhero setting.

Arthur was a student from class 3-S; that meant that he managed to prove that he fit there to the professors for six semesters in a row. Well, five, actually. He would probably go straight into A or S class in the SHRA agency the moment that this year ended for him, and that meant he was possibly as strong as Vermillion Strike already, or maybe even more so.

That made the fragmented relationships in Alicia’s family stand out a bit more, become a bit clearer. Alicia was in the F class, barely counting as a superhuman, and her older sibling was at the very opposite of the spectrum. The struggle there was easy to see, and apparently her brother didn’t want her to be in the academy at all. Nathan seriously wanted to talk to her about this, but alas, she gave him no opportunity to.

And so he spent his time on his other project. The app was almost ready to be rolled out. He needed to talk to Vermillion Strike first. He wanted to be sure that this was on the legal side of things and that it was fine to recruit some of the students from Ako Academy. That was his goal after all.

The full-time heroes would probably enroll as well, at least some of them, but they got way more money out of just doing nothing most of the time. From all that he had heard, the organization paid well. The students, those that functioned on their parents’ money or worked part-time jobs to afford groceries, could possibly be interested.

Those that were in the second or third year had already passed their first tournament, and that meant they received their very first hero license. It was only provisional and didn’t allow them to do everything that the super normal superheroes could. They couldn’t go into the various buildings of the organization, and they couldn’t request support from the local authorities, but if they saw some small-time crime, they could intervene. Unless the small-time crime was related to one of the various gangs of Japan, in which case they had to call for support, but there would be special buttons in the app exactly for situations like that.

And that was all that Nathan needed.

It was also all that most of the business owners around the city would need.

The app was ready now, and he prepared to go to the Ako Academy. Although it was Saturday, Vermillion Strike would hopefully be there, and if not, then Nathan planned to ask some of the other heroes surrounding the building how to get to her.

Yukiko. Not Vermillion Strike, not even Yukiko-Sensei or Yukiko-san. It still made his head spin. He hasn’t seen any outstanding parts of Japanese culture either, although he spent most of his time in the academy or at Alicia’s home. It made the whole setting feel more… game-like, as if some parts were never just fully thought through. That meant it didn’t feel real in places, yet it felt real enough in others.

The fact that she told him to call her by her first name further reinforced that fact. Thinking about it, Aiko and Minato referred to themselves by their first name as well, but maybe it was to protect their families by not giving out their last names? Definitely a thing to ponder.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He got dressed, picking out some of the clothes that he bought last week, and he threw his laptop into his bag. The sooner he got this out of the way, the better, and he seriously wanted to start making some money. It was really restrictive to only have a few abilities.

The others were born with their abilities and never got the chance to change them, but they were usually more powerful. After his fight with Arthur, Nathan seriously wanted to get to the higher levels of what the system allowed. He didn’t plan on keeping being weak forever.

The wall in front of him simply motivated him further.

He went out of the room, taking the stairs by three as he went towards the exit, but then he noticed Alicia once again on the couch. She was watching something on the TV, but she was glancing out of the window, clearly not paying attention.

He stopped. Should he talk to her? She bolted whenever he tried so far, but maybe this time around it would be different. They couldn’t just keep ignoring each other for the years to come, or at least months to come, until he found his own place.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. He could do this.

“Hey Alicia. Can we talk, please?” Nathan stepped into the living room, and she glanced at him. Her expression was neutral, but he could see her flinch as if thinking of running once again.

“I don’t feel like talking, Nathan.”

“You haven’t felt like talking for the last few days.” He refused her attempt at shooing him off, and he sat down next to her.

She shifted slightly.

“Listen, what is it? Why can’t we talk like normal?”

“There’s no reason, Nathan. I just haven’t felt like talking. If anything, the last few weeks have been an anomaly. Does that satisfy you?”