CHAPTER 3

Fans of anime will know the trope

Pike trudged up the stairs of his dorm building. Between normal classes and a brief encounter with manifestations of chaos (particularly the latter, as it quite literally drained his energy), he was exhausted. And there was still a slight whirl roving around his head from when his luminescent state broke. His feet dragged a bit as he reached the top of the stairs and opened the door to exit the stairwell.

As he entered the hallway, a blond male student raced past him, nearly knocking him over. Pike was quick enough to stumble back against the wall to avoid being barreled into.

What was that about? He adjusted the messenger bag around his shoulder and turned to be along his way.

And he got hit square in the face by a flying roll of toilet paper.

“Get back here!” A girl with long, flowing pink hair sprinted past him. She may have been dressed to wind down for the day, but she was in hot pursuit of the blond.

The fugitive was Ryan Belmont. He had transferred to HRU just earlier that day. After he had finished enrolling as a student at the registrar’s office, he spent the rest of the afternoon moving into his dorm room.

It was when he decided he needed a quick bathroom break that he had a bout of lucky misfortune. Upon opening the door to the single-occupancy hall bathroom, he found himself face to face with the beautiful and occasionally ill-mannered Erika Bast—who was in the middle of dressing. She had only just finished putting on her undergarments when the door suddenly opened, shocking both her and the perpetrator into an awkward moment of staring at each other.

This kind of situation was a trope that involved a single male protagonist amidst what would progressively become a veritable sea of attractive young woman. Moreover, each of these women would find themselves in love with him for various reasons (anime aficionados like Pike knew the gist). The typical consequence of this walk-in scenario was for the young woman to fly into a rage against the protagonist and seek justice with her own hands for such insolent behavior.

Which was exactly what was happening now.

Ryan hurried around a corner. “Why didn’t you lock the door?!”

Erika raced after him. “The door doesn’t have a lock, you dingus! Don’t you know you’re supposed to knock on a closed bathroom door?!”

“What?!” What kind of bathroom door didn’t have a lock?!

He sprinted down the full length of the hallway, a few students throwing themselves against the safety of the wall to avoid being an unfortunate tripwire. There was only a large window at the end of this hall though. He would be cornered.

But while Ryan was new to the ways of luminescence, he knew that going luminescent would give him the ability to pass through solid objects. As he approached the end of the hall, his eyes glowed yellow. His body lit up like an incandescent bulb. From his perspective, all color drained from the world, and the lines that defined reality became vague and blurred like an incomplete sketch.

Ryan leaped through the closed window, phasing through it like a ghost. He hit the ground of the small field next to the building, somersaulting to a stop and looking back up from where he made his escape.

Erika leaped through the window in the very same manner he did, her form glowing in a similarly radiant yellow aura. Her normally lavender eyes were now yellow as well, leering at her target like a bull glaring at a matador.

“Not good…” Ryan muttered.

His pursuer landed gracefully on the ground, and then righted herself into a stand. One foot in front of the other—a gesture of challenge. Ryan mimicked her stance, feeling an imminent fight.

“It was an honest mistake!”

She grinned maliciously. “Oh, I’m sure.”

Erika Bast. Second-year student at Halo Ridge University. Status: Halo Tour-approved Star. She was currently the seventh seed of the Tour’s Leaderboard. (In other words, she was a force to be reckoned with.)

She started to raise a hand into the air, a ball starting to form above her palm from her luminescent energy. “But just in case it wasn’t, I’ll make sure I knock some common decency into that thick skull of yours right now—”

Suddenly, someone behind her snatched her wrist and yanked it downwards. The glowing ball in her hand vanished. Alarmed and provoked, Erika snapped her head around to look over her shoulder, shooting a glare at whomever was interfering with her revenge.

Her expression immediately dropped from irritable to shocked, and she let the luminescent aura that encompassed her fade away.

“Luminescence is meant to be used against chaos, Ms. Bast. The only time it may be used against someone else is if that person is a Tour coach, or during a duel in one of the designated areas. Right now, I see neither.”

As the world’s color and definition returned to normal, Erika saw in full detail the woman who was lecturing her while having hold on her wrist. A woman with fair skin, dark hair with flecks of gray, and (after the purple glow in her eyes disappeared) the same emerald green eyes as that insufferable Mindie TC. Dressed in an office blazer over a simple black shirt, the singular lamplight that shined over the field made her look all the more intimidating as she finished phasing out of her own state of luminescence.

Chiaki Tachibana-Callahan. Chair of the Luminescence Department. Status: the top-ranked Superstar in the entire world. (Not only was she the most respected woman in the field of luminescence; she was also the proud mother of two up-and-coming luminescent daughters.)

“As someone who is currently on the Leaderboard, you should know better. I’ll have to tell Coach Nor I’m citing you for improper use of luminescence.”

Erika quickly broke loose from her grip and faced her directly, hands up in defense. “Coach TC! I’m very sorry, ma’am!”

Then she threw a finger towards Ryan, pointing at him with all due accusation. “It’s just that this cretin doesn’t know proper bathroom door etiquette!”

Ryan flinched in bewilderment.

Chiaki just looked confused. “Bathroom door etiquette…?”

=-=-=

“Welp. That’s all done.”

Jan the old campus custodian straightened himself up, stretching his back with a slight crack and peering down at the bathroom door to admire his handiwork. The door now had a brand-new lock on it.

“I don’t quite understand why this door never had a lock to begin with.” It really was a mystery that would never be solved.

Chiaki clapped her hands together in a gesture of gracious appreciation. “Thanks for your help, Jan. Have a good evening.”

Jan tossed his screwdriver back into the toolbox and shut the lid. He hefted the box a bit as he lifted it off the floor and started to shuffle down the hall. As he made his exit, he threw a small and casual salute over his shoulder. “You too, Chiaki.”

There was a long pause as Chiaki, Ryan, and Erika all watched Jan disappear around the corner of the hall. While Ryan stood there with a fair amount of confusion on his face, Erika fidgeted nervously, chancing a few quick glances at Chiaki while her back was turned.

“Now then.”

It was when Chiaki said that transitionary phrase that Ryan suddenly felt the air around them stop. A shiver crept up his spine, and he suddenly felt subject to a threat he knew he couldn’t deal with.

Chiaki turned to them. She was smiling. And Ryan never knew such a smile could make him feel so terrified. It was as if he were helplessly watching a storm as it loomed over him.

“Any other disputes?”

The two quarreling students immediately shook their heads in a panic, hands waving defensively. “No, ma’am!”

“Good.”

And just like that, the anticipated storm vanished. Chiaki’s smile didn’t change, but there was an abrupt shift in the feeling it gave off. She turned and also gave a casual wave over her shoulder as she started to walk off.

“You kids have a good evening as well.”

Ryan and Erika watched as the distance grew between them and the imposing Tour coach. Once she was several feet away, each of them heaved a deep sigh of relief that they weren’t subjected to anything worse than that.

As Chiaki approached the door to the stairwell, she chanced a peek into an open dorm room. She stopped when she realized who was inside.

Pike was seated at his desk. He was in writing mode tonight. The events that he had experienced today were perfect inspirational points to get his pen going. Minding his own business in the art building when a Shade showed up, Mindie seizing a chance to show off…

And then his thoughts drifted to what he walked into as he came back here to the dorm. The scene he witnessed of a pink-haired girl chasing a guy who had walked in on her in a state of unreadiness was too reminiscent of some anime shows not to write down—

“Ohhh, Pikkun! Hisashiburi! (Pike! It’s been a while!)”

He snapped out of his train of thought and jerked his head to face his open door. “Hey, Mrs. TC. How are you?”

Chiaki leaned casually against the doorframe, a little pout on her lips as she put on an act of someone, well, not quite her age. Though in all things fair, she could probably still pass as a woman only a handful of years out of university—maybe slightly older than her own daughter Ciara. Some people’s white hair started to sprout a few years into their first job, right? As he thought about it, Pike idly inferred that chances were high that Mindie would continue to look like a student well after she graduated as well. The women in the TC family had enviable genes, indeed.

Though as a second-generation resident of the West, Chiaki had a tendency to play fast and loose with her Eastern heritage. Pike recalled seeing a shrine room in the TC household, but it was a friend—not a family member—who occupied that space. It must have been a pretty close family friend.

“We haven’t seen you at the house in a while. Hasn’t Midori-chan invited you over lately?” It was typical for her to use her mother tongue’s suffixes like -kun and ­-chan affectionately with the ones she felt comfortable addressing.

She was also the only one who preferred to call Mindie by her given name Midori. Which was just as well, since she was the one who gave her that name. The nickname Mindie started when she was a toddler learning to speak. Her husband had found it cute, and it stuck well with everyone else too. And while she mostly couldn’t care less more than a decade later, a part of Chiaki still harbored some resistance on the grounds that such a nickname stuck from a time when her younger daughter couldn’t pronounce her actual name correctly.

Pike swiveled in his seat to face her more directly. “Mindie? Well sure, but we aren’t in high school anymore. It’d be kind of rude for me to impose as much as I used to.”

“You’ve never imposed!” She laughed and threw her arms up in a grand and welcoming gesture. “And since your parents moved away this year, there’s even more reason for you to visit!”

Pike showed an appreciative grin. “Maybe sometime soon, then.”

Chiaki winked coyly. “I’m looking forward to it. On that note, I’m late for dinner at home. Ja ne~! (Until next time~!)”

Most people knew Chiaki as a widely feared and respected figure in the field of luminescence, professional and a little intense. Pike knew her as a warm and well-meaning woman who, in many little ways, expressed how much it meant to her that he was part of her younger daughter’s life. He welcomed small assurances like these.

As Chiaki disappeared from his doorway, Pike glanced at a photo he had stuck to the side of his closet with sticky tack, just below his calendar. It was the day of high school graduation. He was still in his graduation robes, and Mindie had an elbow around his neck as she proudly showed her orange-and-purple HRU sports jacket (it was Ciara’s; she just borrowed it) to the camera lens.

It made him smile.

He shut his notebook and stretched a bit, leaning back over the backrest of his chair. “I should probably get some dinner too.”