1.2 – Who the hell asks for phone numbers these days?

Ask for a female classmate’s phone number? What? That made no sense. Of all the things that the quest could have asked for, it asked for a romantic thing like that. Well, it wasn’t romantic in nature, but asking for a classmate’s phone number was basically as good as asking them for a date. Or was it? Nathan wasn’t so sure.

Actually, maybe it was kind of normal and he was just overthinking things again, but he had never done something like that before.

And as much as he hated to admit it, it kind of made sense. The game was a romantic visual novel after all and the quest pushing him towards something of that sort did seem right on point. He still didn’t quite understand what the quest he had three years to complete meant, but the fact that he had three years meant he could figure it out later. 12 hours? Not so much.

He looked at Alicia once again, but immediately decided not to go that way. The girl had a sharp tongue, as he discovered already, and from what he remembered of [My Superhero Life], a sharp tongue was just the beginning of the problems.

If only I could remember what her power was. He felt like he somewhat remembered what the main antagonists of the game had as their powers, but a minor villain that disappeared after the first act? Why would he remember something like that?

Except now he really needed to find out what his own power was. But just before he could think on how exactly he’d go about doing that, a teacher entered the classroom.

She was exactly the type of well known anime classroom teacher that most people would immediately recognize as a stereotype. Hell, she really was a stereotype, but a kind that Nathan quite liked in the game. She walked into the classroom, long black hair swaying behind her, wearing a blazer that hugged her form and glasses that reflected the sunlight in a weird way that showed that there was more going on with them than the eye let on.

This was the chemistry teacher for first years. But her name? Nathan couldn’t remember.

Damn, what is going on? There’s something wrong with my memory. I played that game for hundreds of hours, for God’s sake.

Though, upon thinking on it for a second, he realized that Japanese names were just a bit weird for him to remember and that could have been the root of the problem. They weren’t unmemorable per se, but he simply never cared enough to learn them. His lack of commitment was biting him in his ass now though and so he opened his bag, found a conveniently placed notepad there, and got to writing down the names of those he recognized, which meant exactly two people in this classroom.

Okay, Alicia first, then the teacher. Her name was… He looked on the blackboard and found her name already scribbled there. Tania Gurehi. Wait, that wasn’t really that Japanese at all though? It wasn’t that then. Back to square one.

The teacher was leaning over her desk now, looking at the attendance sheet. Her expression was like stone, completely unreadable. That worked for Nathan well enough. At least it meant that she wasn’t angry. Yet, at least.

“Good, I see that all of you that are supposed to be here are actually on time. That’s a nice change from last year. Congratulations. You can read an attendance sheet, but being a superhero requires more than being able to read.” She scanned the classroom. “Quick, can anyone tell me why chemistry is important for superhero training? You there, with the band-aid on your nose. Also, is that really necessary? If I find out it’s a stylistic choice, I swear I will—”

“I got bitten on the nose, ma’am,” the student that she picked out replied. “And I suppose, because—

“Too slow. Next!” She pointed at a girl with vibrant pink hair.

She perked up, apparently not having listened to the question, which immediately provoked a click of the tongue from the teacher. Nathan could swear he heard the word “pathetic” coming from her, but she was too far away, and it was said in too quiet of a voice to be sure.

“You. Tall man in the back. Yes, I can see you. What’s the answer?”

Oh shit. He knew that if he lost this teacher’s good side, he would never be able to reclaim it. It was one of the most important factors in the game. Maybe not the most important, but missing some heart points early definitely changed a lot in the branching paths of the My Superhero Life videogame. The cogs in his mind whirred to life and he made eye contact as he stood up.

“Chemistry is important because many super villains have chemical powers or powers that can be analyzed by just using some biological processes, ma’am. By learning these, we can know how to approach each superhero fight.”

“Good! It seems like this class isn’t lost after all!” Mrs. Gurehi said and gave Nathan the smallest of smiles, barely visible, yet he knew it was there. “That’s not all, though. Open your notebooks, we’ll go over the basics and what you’ll be learning this semester.”

He sat down before Alicia bumped into his shoulder with her elbow and smirked. “Nerd.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

He thought about rebuking it, but in the end, he just shook his head and continued writing things down into his notebook. He did his best to pay attention to what was going on in the class, but it was clear that this class in particular wasn’t going to focus on delving into topics too deeply. It was the introductory class, after all, the very first they had this semester.

A strange thing that he noticed, though, was that nobody here referred to the others with the Japanese terms—san, chan, sensei—and so on. He understood Japanese as if it was English now, but that didn’t mean that there should be no honorifics at all. It was strange, really, but now thinking about it, there never were honorifics in the English version of the game either. Did some things just not translate?

He never noticed it back when he was playing the game, but now it felt like the location was Japanese only in name and not in truth.

Sighing, he decided that he should really focus on other things. He had enough time to write down all he could remember about [My Superhero Life]. Yet, as he wrote on, he re-discovered he didn’t remember much at all. It wasn’t like his memory was bad, not even back when he was in New York, but it felt as if something was blocking him from accessing the information that should have been there, almost like a wall that sectioned off parts of his memory. He tried so hard to remember, yet the only result was that his head hurt, and in the end it helped nothing at all.