"This is our forest-school camp?"
After a bus ride, the students of AN High School arrived at what was called a "Forest School."
It looked legitimately set up – a school building in a rural wooded area where people rarely came. The few weeds in the vicinity grew as high as one's waist.
The exterior of the school building also seemed fairly old and moss-covered, just sitting out here. If they arrived late at night, it would definitely be a bit spooky.
Still, the campus was sizable. Besides the main schoolhouse, there were two dormitories out back. Behind the dorms were two more structures: a cafeteria, and a large communal bathhouse. Even hosting the entire AN student body, it wouldn't be cramped.
Maybe because of being so far in the countryside, the clean air perked up all the half-asleep kids getting off the buses, clearing their heads and lungs. And the earthy, grassy aroma of the wild added a subtle uplift to their moods.
While gathering outside, Yukio spotted two school employees from the last bus unloading a pair of mini-printers. Presumably for printing Day 8's written exam. Which made one realize how remote and under-resourced this place was – they had to haul in printers from the school.
They split the male and female students apart: Sakagami and Mashima took the boys; Hoshinomiya and Chabashira took the girls. The older grades did likewise.
Yukio's group was led by Sakagami to the left dorm. The first-years would stay on floors one and two; upperclassmen used the higher floors. They had eight-person rooms, with four bunk beds each. Compared to their single dorm rooms back on campus, the difference was huge.
No one complained, though. However rough it was, it beat sleeping in tents on an uninhabited island.
Sakagami glanced at his watch. "We're about on schedule. Ryuen, you come with me. The rest of you figure out your own sleeping arrangements. You're big kids. Just handle it.
"Also, today's a special case – once the bell rings, it's lunchtime, then this afternoon we start endurance training. Starting tomorrow, there'll be a pre-breakfast meditation and a morning class session. Don't be late, or your grades will suffer."
With that, he took Ryuen and left. Yukio told everyone to tidy up. At least they had mops and cloths, and dusting wasn't too hard.
As for the sleeping arrangements, because the dorm was quite large, they didn't need to stick two classes' leftover students together in the same room. Yukio ended up in a room with Ishizaki and three others, five people total.
After cleaning, the small group plopped down in one of the rooms to chat, making Yukio feel a faint sense of déjà vu from his past life's college dorm days. There, after lights-out, the guys would talk about everything under the sun, from big-picture world issues to weird video picks, acting like they each understood the world better than anyone.
Soon after, the bell rang like Sakagami had said. The students from both dorms headed to the cafeteria, where there was no ID card scanning, no menu choices. Everyone got one small fish, two vegetable side dishes, a bowl of rice, and a bowl of soup. You could get more rice, but that was it – no second helpings of anything else.
Looking at the meal, Ishizaki frowned. "Hey, Aniki…this is kinda rough, no?"
In truth, from the day they'd enrolled, Yukio's class rarely lacked for class points after the first month. Granted, to save up for future class battles, they never went too crazy with personal spending. But at least for meals, no one scrimped. They would often go wild on meat at the school cafeteria, skip most veggies, and hit up tea shops after school…life was good.
Now, forced to have a meager, simple diet every meal, they found it hard to accept.
Yukio, perplexed, asked, "You guys are fine with the dorm conditions, but you're making a fuss over the food?"
Ishizaki blinked. "The dorm? It's all right, I guess."
At that moment, Shiina and Ibuki appeared with their trays. Since Christmas, after calling each other by name, they'd become much closer. Ibuki said nothing, setting her tray down and immediately digging in, presumably so she'd digest sooner and be less burdened for the afternoon's training.
Shiina offered Yukio a small smile, then explained. "Boys and girls see things differently. When we arrived at our dorm, a bunch of girls – some upperclassmen, too – were complaining about the rooms. But hardly anyone was griping about the food."
Reflecting on it, Yukio realized the logic. As long as a dorm wasn't gross, guys generally didn't stress about lodging but were pickier about food.
This little moment passed quickly, though. Guys would talk big, but then devour their plates like no big deal – Ishizaki, ironically, was eating more eagerly than anyone.
After an hour of rest back at the dorm, a second announcement summoned them outside again. Sakagami reappeared to lead them further out. The forest school had no real campus walls. Once you moved beyond a certain radius of the dorm buildings, you were basically in the wild.
All twelve classes now formed a dense throng, but each teacher led their group about fifty meters from the next. Finally, Sakagami casually waved at the wilderness. "All right, start running."
Dead silence fell over the class. Ishizaki asked, "Running… for what?"
"Running," Sakagami said with an almost teasing grin, "as in, go run."
This forced a wry comment out of Yukio: "Wow, Sage-like advice from the teacher… so we're basically just running aimlessly to build stamina?"
"Not aimlessly," Sakagami clarified. Then he explained what the final Day 8 event required: "We'll do a men's and women's relay based on class size. Each boy runs one kilometer, each girl zero-point-eight.
"That direction's where we'll be training. Excluding Ryuen, we have 21 boys and 18 girls. You'll find black detectors every one kilometer, white ones every 0.8. Basically, you'll do a few out-and-back routes on uneven terrain. You can decide who runs which stretch. That's it."
"Seriously?!" The students groaned. One thousand meters each for the boys, eight hundred for the girls, might not be so bad in normal conditions, but this was rough terrain. The ground wasn't flat like a track, it was natural forest floor – muddy, bumpy, with frequent dips that could trip you. Stretching that out over so many runners sounded brutal.
Sakagami waved them off. Likely he had to go deal with Ryuen as well, plus each of the other teachers was doing the same for their class. Before leaving, he turned back.
"Oh, and don't bother with sabotage. Even if you break other classes' sensors, we'll fix them before the real event. It's pointless. Save your energy and train properly."