The wrought iron gates of the university stood before me like the entrance to another world, their black bars stretching toward the heavens in arrogant spikes that reminded me uncomfortably of the imperial palace's outer walls. Each vertical bar stood precisely three fingers apart, close enough to keep out intruders, yet far enough apart to see the manicured grounds beyond. The morning sunlight glinted off the brass plaque proclaiming this as Japan's second most prestigious institution, the engraved characters so deeply cut they'd still be legible centuries from now. These so-called hallowed grounds had produced prime ministers and Nobel laureates. And here I stood, a man out of time, trying to pass as just another transfer student.
I adjusted the unfamiliar weight of my backpack, its synthetic straps chafing against my shoulders where sword harnesses once rested. The modern bag was a poor substitute - too light without proper armour, yet somehow more cumbersome than a full field kit. Beside me, Hongbing looked like a startled cat stuffed into an oversized sweater, his ridiculous noise-cancelling headphones swallowing half his face. The thick black cushions completely covered his ears, making him look like some strange hybrid of scholar and soldier. His fingers twitched in a familiar rhythm - the same restless motion I'd seen during night watches when danger lurked just beyond the firelight.
This is it.
The first test. To blend in, to prove I belonged in a world that still felt foreign despite all of my preparations.
To walk among these modern students as one of them, to prove I could navigate this strange new world without revealing the truth of where and when we'd really come from. My mouth went dry as sandpaper. What if I failed? What if I failed so spectacularly that due to my ignorance of this era's customs got us both committed to one of those white walled institutions Hongbing had read about in those magazines? The ones where they locked people away for "delusions" of being from another time? The thought sent a cold shiver down my spine, settling like a stone in my gut.
Our guardian ever the exasperating pacifist, had shoved two sleek smartphones into my hands "Stay put," he'd ordered, as if we were unruly children rather than warriors who had survived battlefields that would make these soft modern students piss themselves. "And for heaven's sake, try to act normal."
Normal. What a joke!
Our handler disappeared soon after towards the administration building, his briefcase bumping against his knees. I watched his retreating back with narrowed eyes before turning to Hongbing, who was vibrating with nervous energy.
"Breathe," I murmured in our native tongue. "We've survived worse than orientation day." I grabbed his hand, squeezing hard, partly to ground him, partly to remind myself not to bolt. His fingers were cold, trembling slightly under my grip.
The campus spread before us like a meticulously planned garden, all manicured lawns and geometric walkways. Students streamed past in groups, their backpacks bouncing, their fingers flying across phone screens. The scent of coffee and something artificially sweet hung heavy in the air.
The whispers started immediately.
"Are they exchange students?"
"Look at those earmuffs, is he five?"
"Check out the scar on that one's neck..."
Hongbing's grip on my sleeve was tight enough to tear fabric. His eyes darted from side to side like a cornered animal, taking in the sea of unfamiliar faces. I caught the way his breath hitched when a group of girls in scandalously short skirts passed by, their laughter like birdsong, completely unaware of how their exposed legs would have scandalized the imperial court. One glanced at Hongbing's earmuffs and whispered to her friend, who immediately dissolved into giggles. My jaw clenched. In our time, such open mockery, would have earned them twenty lashes, if their families were lucky.
"Stop fidgeting," I muttered. His palm was clammy against mine. "You look like you're about to bolt for the hills."
"I might," he whispered back, his voice barely audible over the campus noise. His fingers tightened around mine like a lifeline.
The stares were relentless. A boy openly gawked at us, his gaze lingering on Hongbing's earmuffs before sliding to our joined hands with raised eyebrows. A pair of girls whispered behind their hands, their eyes bright with curiosity. My jaw clenched. I can't lash out in here of all things considered the only thing I could do was squeeze his hand tighter and glare until they looked away.
His grip on my sleeve tightened. "Jincheng," he whispered urgently. "That group by the oak tree - they've been staring at us for three minutes straight."
I followed his gaze to a cluster of students who immediately looked away, pretending sudden interest in their phones. One particularly bold girl mimed pulling on imaginary earmuffs, sending her friends into giggles. Heat crawled up my neck.
Before I could react, Hongbing buried his face against my chest like a child hiding from thunder. The sudden weight of him startled me, he smelled of the lavender soap Maruyama had bought him and the faint metallic tang of fear. My arms came up automatically, shielding him from view as I levelled my most imperial glare at the offenders. To my satisfaction, they scattered like sparrows before a hawk.
"Honestly," I muttered, adjusting Hongbing's earmuffs, "you'd think they'd never seen a man wearing earmuffs before."
Time crawled by at a snail's pace. What might have been minutes felt like hours before Maruyama finally reappeared, trailing behind a woman whose smile was so wide it looked painful. She was all sharp angles - pointed chin, pointed nose, even her bobbed hair ended in precise points. The stack of papers in Maruyama's arms looked ready to topple at any moment.
"Welcome, welcome!" the woman trilled, her voice piercing and grating to my ears. "Come along, new students! Orientation waits for no one!"
The lecture hall was a sea of bodies, the air thick with the mingled scents of too many perfumes and not enough deodorant. My shoulders tensed as we navigated through the crowd, my partner pressed close behind me like a second shadow. The only available seats were near the front, one beside a girl with blue-tipped hair that reminded me of kingfisher feathers, another wedged between two strangers.
I guided Hongbing to the seat by the blue-haired girl, earning a curious glance from her before she returned to typing furiously on her phone. As I settled into my own seat, the person to my right looked up from his device, and our eyes locked.
Recognition struck like lightning.
The man from the mall, the one who'd typed his number on a second-hand cell phone Maruyama gave us four months ago when we'd first stumbled into this bewildering future. His face was more weathered now, new scars marking his features, a thin white line across one cheekbone, another cutting through his eyebrow. But that grin was unmistakable, crooked and too-wide, like a fox who'd gotten into the henhouse.
"Nǐ hǎo!" he greeted in Mandarin, though his tones were so butchered it took me a moment to decipher the words.
My eyebrows shot up. "You remember me?"
"Too right I do!" He chuckled, extending a hand. "Michael Reece. hell, never figured I'd see you mob here." His grip was firm, his palm rough with calluses that didn't match his student appearance.
Before I could respond, a sharp cough from the podium silenced the room. The orientation had begun.
And.... It was torture in its purest forms!
The lecturers droned on about "credit systems" and "GPA calculations," their words blending into an incomprehensible buzz. The woman at the microphone adjusted her headset with a screech of feedback that made Hongbing flinch beside me.
"Students, can you hear me?" she bellowed, as if we were all hard of hearing.
"Oh no.... We can hear you perfectly, you harpy," I thought, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from scoffing aloud.
The memory of my Shizun's endless lectures on classical texts suddenly seemed pleasant by comparison. A pang of homesickness struck me like a physical blow, what was Shizun doing now? Had he taken another disciple to replace me? Did my imperial brother even notice I was gone?
I glanced at Hongbing. His eyes had glazed over, his fingers twitching against his knees like he wanted to claw his own ears off.
"Do you understand any of this?" I mouthed.
He shook his head minutely, his expression so bewildered it would have been comical under different circumstances.
Beautiful it seems that our grand plan to blend in was failing spectacularly.
Then a calloused finger tapped my shoulder. Michael leaned in close enough that I caught the faint scent of his deodorant "Oi, mate," he whispered, his breath warm against my ear, "you getting any of this drongo's yabber?"
I blinked. "You mean you don't understand either?"
He scratched at his stubble with a sheepish grin. "Nah, not a f**in' clue," he admitted cheerfully. "Reckon half these wankers are just nodding like bobbleheads hoping no one calls on 'em." Behind us, someone coughed pointedly. Michael winked. "Too right, eh?"
The relief that washed through me was so intense it left me lightheaded. At least we weren't the only ones drowning.
Yet....
Things got from bad to worse when they demanded we download some app. Michael tapped away at his phone like it was second nature while Hongbing and I exchanged panicked looks. We'd studied everything about this era - its history, its politics, even its bizarre fashion trends, but the actual use of these confounding smartphones might as well have been sorcery.
Swallowing my considerable pride, I tapped Michael's shoulder.
"Help?" I ground out through clenched teeth.
Michael's s**t-eating grin spread slowly. "Aw, mate," he drawled, already reaching for my phone with the enthusiasm of a shark scenting blood, "tell me you at least know where the power button is."
While I was busy wrestling with my own technological ineptitude, Indira the blue-haired menace, let out a snort that could wake the dead. "Aiyo, what is this?" she demanded as she snatched Hongbing's phone clean out of his grip ignoring his startled yelp. . "You pair live under rock or what?" Indira's manicured nails attacked his screen with the precision of a tech-exorcist. "See here....."tap"....then here....."violent swipe"...simple, no?" Her broken English and rapid-fire curses I think that what it was by the looks of it. ("Eda manda! Not that one!") only deepened the chaos as my partner's expression shifted from bewilderment to outright terror his fingers twitching like he was mentally composing his resignation from the modern world.
Michael finally took pity, wedging himself between them like a peacekeeper swinging his white flag. "What she's trying to say, mate," he translated, shooting Indira a look, "is you've got to open the app first before you start stabbing at it like it owes you money." "Righto, let's unpack whatever this is," he drawled, pointing at the screen. "Blue button's your mate. Not the sad-looking one—the happy blue one Yeah, that one." The scene was absurd enough to make me consider spontaneous combustion, Indira muttering about "stone-age idiots," Hongbing gripping the phone like a live grenade, and Michael translating tech instructions into increasingly creative metaphors ("Imagine it's a tap, just gentler").
By some divine intervention (or possibly Indira's threats to "smack sense into both of you"), we somehow survived the app's gauntlet of personal data requests. Though watching Hongbing hesitantly type his "birthdate" with one finger like a man defusing a bomb nearly undid me
That's when I noticed the stares again, this time from two men across the aisle. One had messy brown hair who stared at Hongbing like he was a particularly fascinating insect. and a smirk that set my teeth on edge; the other was taller, his skin sun-darkened, his posture relaxed in a way that screamed military training. My friend turned the color of peony blossoms, He muttered something unflattering under his breath and began stabbing at his phone screen with unnecessary force, his fingers fumbled so badly he nearly dropped the phone.
"Stop staring," I glared at them as I growled in my dialect, "unless you wish to lose those impertinent eyes."
They approached our little group and I instinctively shifted closer to my partner, Michael noticing the discomfort followed suit forming a protective barrier around him. The taller man introduced himself as Aryan possibly to clear the tension that was forming around us and, mercifully, spoke passable Chinese. When Indira tried questioning Hongbing about his background, Aryan translated, though the way Hongbing turned scarlet suggested some meanings might have gotten...adjusted.
Michael lost it, laughing so hard he nearly choked earning some glares from nearby students.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of bureaucratic torment. We found ourselves following Gabriel (the perpetually phone-obsessed one) toward the dormitories. Michael walked beside me, his tattooed arms swinging loosely at his sides.
"So, where you blokes bunkin' down?" Michael asked, tossing an arm over my shoulders with the casual ease of a long-time mate, despite us barely knowing each other. "Since we're all Osaka transfers and all that."
My stomach dropped. In truth, we had no idea - Maruyama had vanished without a word, leaving us stranded. Before I could formulate a plausible lie, Gabriel piped up with information about campus housing, saving me from answering.
As we walked, the group began sharing stories of their lives before university. Michael spoke of working double shifts to support his family; Aryan of losing his career due to bureaucratic red tape. Gabriel animatedly described his time as a junior chef in New York, though his eyes kept darting around as if searching for someone.
Hongbing and I spun a hasty tale about being method actors, a profession we'd read about in magazines that seemed vague enough to explain any oddities in our behavior. The lies tasted bitter on my tongue, but necessary and Michael already known about our "method acting skills" so he can testify I think?
Gabriel suddenly perked up. "Oh! There's an escort waiting for us - Haruki! HARUKI-SAN!"
The senior in question looked like he wanted to vanish as Gabriel glomped onto him. "Why's this place so big?" Gabriel whined, nuzzling Haruki's shoulder like an overgrown cat.
-------------------------------
He forgave them all since it was their first time here and they set out to the dormitory village. The dormitory village loomed ahead, a cluster of bland rectangular buildings that looked more like barracks than living quarters. The warden was a stern gentleman with a permanent frown who conversed with Haruki and another escort named Kai regarding room arrangements.
"Are you sure you want them to stay together?" Kai whispered, though Hongbing's enhanced hearing caught every word. "They just arrived. Shouldn't we assign them to separate dorms for the first semester?" He shot a glance at Gabriel. "And I have a feeling your so-called American friend will be a bad influence."
Haruki's eyes narrowed. "Don't be crass. Gabriel is a good person."
"Alright, alright!" Kai raised his hands in surrender. "Don't pout, I won't talk about your little friend anymore."
"I was not pouting!" Haruki snapped, his Japanese accent clipping the edges of his words as his ears flushed scarlet. He drew himself up to his full height, which still left him a head shorter than Kai.
The warden stalked over, his polished Oxfords clicking against the linoleum like a metronome counting down his patience. "Enough," he bit out, voice sharp enough to slice through their bickering. "This is a dormitory, not a variety show."
Kai plastered on a grin, all teeth and no sincerity. "Ah, sumimasen, warden-Sama!" He gave a shallow bow that was just a hair too casual to be respectful. "Just getting the keys sorted—Room 216, right?" He dangled them with a jingle before turning back to Haruki. "Oi, Haruki. Hand over one of your kouhai. Four per room, five of them—you do the math."
Haruki's eyes narrowed. "Why your room, exactly?" His tone could have frozen lava. "Last time you 'roomed' with a freshman, the housing office needed a restraining order."
"Tch. That was a misunderstanding!" Kai waved a hand, but the tips of his ears reddened. "Besides, it's not like I....."
"Or should I bring up the swim team incident?" Haruki cut in, smile razor-thin. "The 'accidental' locker room photos? The....."
"YAMERO!" Kai lunged to clap a hand over Haruki's mouth, but the smaller man ducked with practiced ease.
The warden exhaled through his nose like a bull about to charge. "Kai. If I get one complaint—"
"Hai, hai, wakarimashita..." Kai rolled his eyes, but there was a new wariness in his stance as he glanced at Aryan.
"Where the hell is Haruki?" Gabriel whined, pacing the rec area like a caged Pomeranian. "I coulda sworn in a past life by now!"
Michael slung a tattooed arm around Hongbing's shoulders, the sun glinting off his knuckle rings. "Relax, mate. Prob'ly got stuck explainin' why you Yanks are so damn loud." But his grip on Hongbing told another story
"Or the rooms might be full" I told them as I leaned against the wall, arms crossed.
Hongbing's eyes narrowed as he strained to catch Haruki and Kai's rapid-fire Japanese from down the hall. After three failed attempts, he exhaled sharply through his nose they were a little too fast for his benefit
"Alright, listen up, boys," Kai announced as he swaggered forward, hands shoved in his pockets with practiced casualness. The way he moved, all loose-limbed confidence and sharp, calculating eyes, immediately put me on edge. He reminded me too much of my scheming cousin back home, the one who'd smile to your face while plotting to have you demoted to border patrol duty.
Haruki trailed behind him, lips pressed into a thin line of disapproval, while the warden loomed like an oncoming storm, his patience clearly hanging by a thread.
Kai's grin was all teeth, the kind that didn't reach his eyes. "Got your keys right here," he said, dangling them between his fingers like a prize. His tone was light, almost playful, but there was something beneath it.... something that made my instincts scream
TROUBLE!!!!!
I kept my expression carefully neutral, though every muscle in my body tensed. In the Imperial Court, men like Kai were the most dangerous, the ones who wrapped their threats in laughter and their manipulations in false generosity.
My eyes swept across our little group, reading the room like I would on a battlefield. Michael's usually relaxed brows were knitted together, his tattooed fingers tapping an agitated rhythm against his thigh. Aryan stood stiffly, his normally warm brown skin gone ashen - the look of a man who'd just bitten into something rotten. Their body language confirmed what my instincts had screamed since Kai first swaggered into view: this man was trouble wrapped in a charming facade.
The unsettling part? None of us could pinpoint why. Like smelling the smoke but finding no fire.
"Here are your dorm keys~" Kai sing-songed, dangling them just out of reach with the practiced cruelty of an older brother tormenting his sibling. The metallic jingle might as well have been a dog whistle for Gabriel, who bounded forward with golden retriever energy.
"Finally! Hand 'em over, man," Gabriel demanded as he reached up.
Kai's smirk turned predatory as he raised the keys higher. "Aww, can't reach, short king?"
"What the hell, Kai-san!"Gabriel's voice cracked in indignation. "We've been hauling luggage all dang day!"
The scene unfolded with horrible inevitability, Gabriel jumping like an overexcited puppy while Kai kept the keys just centimeters beyond his fingertips. Each failed attempt drew more humiliating commentary: "Maybe if you stood on your tiptoes..." "I could get you a stepping stool..."
But the real story played out in the margins:
Michael's knuckles whitened around his suitcase handle, veins bulging along his forearm
Aryan's jaw worked like he was chewing glass
Haruki pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering what sounded like a prayer for patience
The warden's face turned the same shade as the emergency exit signs I saw when we were walking around campus
"KAI-SAAAAAN!!" Gabriel's shriek could have shattered crystal. Nearby students flinched. Somewhere, a dog probably started howling.
Hongbing's hand twitched toward his hip, where his sword would have been. I caught his eye and gave a subtle headshake. Not here. Not yet.
"Oi, hand over the keys, mate," Michael finally stepped in his voice low and edged with the kind of exhaustion that turns patience to dust. His broad frame loomed over Kai, not by much, but enough to make the difference feel deliberate. The tattoos peeking from his rolled-up sleeves twitched as he flexed his fingers. "We're knackered, our gear weighs a ton, and none of us signed up for your little power trip." that was enough to subdue Kai whose expression twisted for a minute before it returned to his oh so joyful demeanor the keys hit Michael's palm with a jingle. "Jesus, relax, it was just a joke."
"Yeah," Michael said flatly, not blinking. "Hilarious." then Kai left our group alone with his arms behind his back.
"Ah, since everyone is so... enthusiastic about settling in," Haruki began, his Japanese accent softening the edges of his words, "we must make small rearrangement. Five of you, correct? So..."He gestured apologetically. "One will need to temporarily share room with senior students. Just until proper arrangements can be made."
"Wait, hold on," Aryan cut in, his voice sharp with disbelief. "All this drama was just for a room arrangements?" His hands flew up, "Aiyo, these people..."
Michael and I exchanged a glance. Something about this stank worse than week-old fish.
Haruki scratched his neck. "Uh... about that..."He winced. "One of you must stay with Kai. Temporarily."
A beat of silence.
"KAI'S ROOM?!" Gabriel's drawl cracked mid-shriek. "Hell nah. Last time I roomed with a senior, I woke up to a ferret in my underwear drawer."
Tension thickened like monsoon air. Every eye slid to Aryan the only one without an ironclad excuse.
I crossed my arms. "Hongbing stays with me."(My tone left no room for debate. Lightning could strike; I wouldn't budge.)
Michael shrugged, but his jaw was tight. "Not bunkin' with a stranger. No offense, mate."(He lied. He meant offense.)
Gabriel fake-gagged. "Been there, never doing that again."
Aryan looked like he'd been handed a death sentence. "Dei..."He rubbed his temples, muttering something in Tamil before switching back. "Fine. Fine. But if I find one creepy spreadsheet tracking my shower schedule..."
Kai grinned, all teeth. "Relax, I'm a perfect gentleman."
We looked incredulous while Haruki rolled his eyes
"Excellent choice, Aryan!" Kai's voice dripped with saccharine approval, his smile stretching a little too wide, like a mask about to crack. The glint in his eyes betrayed his displeasure, sharp as a knife tucked behind silk.
Every instinct in me screamed nope, nope , nope
Aryan stood frozen for a heartbeat, his jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle twitch. He looked like a man walking to the gallows, if the gallows came with a suspiciously over-friendly executioner.
Then, with deliberate slowness, he grabbed his suitcase and laptop bag, the weight of them dragging at his steps like chains.
Kai took a half-step back, hands raised in mock surrender. "Relax, I don't bite."
Aryan's glare could have melted steel. "I swear If you say that one more time," he said, voice low and dangerous, "you'll be missing teeth instead."
Kai's smile didn't falter, but something in his eyes turned calculating as if he was predator reassessing his prey.
Haruki cleared his throat before saying "Well it seems like everything is settled let's get you guys to your rooms how about that?"
As the group dispersed, Michael caught Aryan's wrist with surprising gentleness. "Oi, mate. Your digits." He tapped his own phone meaningfully, the tattoos on his knuckles flexing. "Just in case you need... backup." The pause spoke volumes, we all knew exactly what kind of "backup" might be required.
(Was I the only one mentally cataloguing poison symptoms? Arsenic's garlic-like odour, cyanide's bitter almond hint... No. Best keep that knowledge to myself. Probably.)
The dorm room door clicked shut behind us with finality. I collapsed against it, exhaustion hitting like a sandbag. The duffel bag slid from my shoulder onto the study desk - a clever contraption connecting both beds, maximizing every centimeters of space. Modern engineering truly was...
THUMP.
Hongbing was already conducting his security sweep with military precision. First he checked the room thrice for any explosives then lifted the duvets and ran his fingers through the seams possibly to find poisons then jumped onto the bed to see whether it breaks much to my chagrin It seems that old habits really do die HARD!!!!
Good thing Michael was in the washroom arranging his things while Gabriel like usual was tapping on his phone like a crazed madman (for what reason I have no idea, do modern people love their tiny little boxes so much to the point they sleep with it?) if any one of them saw Hongbing they will think he was some kind of lunatic.
"Would you relax?" I hissed, just as Michael emerged from the bathroom, toothbrush hanging from his mouth.
Hongbing froze mid-inspection, one hand still shoved between the mattress and bedframe. the other's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline.
"Uh..." Gabriel glanced up from his phone, then immediately buried his nose back in the screen. "Not even gonna ask."
Hongbing slowly withdrew his hand, adopting what he clearly thought was a "casual" pose. It made him look like a statue of a man pretending to be casual.
Michael spat out his toothpaste with a laugh. " Hell. And I thought I had trust issues."
The curtain around my bed rustled as I tested its mechanism an ingenious privacy screen! Hongbing's paranoid antics aside, these modern sleeping arrangements were...
CRACK.
Hongbing's bed frame groaned ominously under his "subtle" weight-testing.
...Mostly functional.
"Oh yeah.... Haruki kinda texted us there is a welcome event for the freshers coming up in the evening at 6pm in the recreation room he is asking whether we are going" Gabriel said still glued onto his phone.
"Bloody hell, there's ANOTHER one?!"Michael groaned, dragging a hand down his face like a man sentenced to hard labour. Beside me, Hongbing had gone pale as a ghost, his fingers twitching toward the nearest exit, probably calculating if he could dive under the bed fast enough to avoid this fresh torture.
As for me? Well, a prince doesn't refuse invitations, not unless he wants to disgrace his ancestors and spend the next life reincarnated as a particularly unlucky cockroach. So, I straightened my spine, nodded like this was some grand honour, and by sheer cosmic cruelty, doomed Hongbing to suffer alongside me.
His glare could've curdled milk. "I hate you," it said, clear as day.
"Yeah, yeah," my smirk replied. "But you're stuck with me."
"Righto, since you're all fired up, we're doing' this as a group punishment then," Michael groaned, scrubbing a hand through his hair like he was already regretting every life choice that led to this moment. His eyes flicked to Gabriel. "You in, mate? Or you gonna leave us to suffer solo?"
Gabriel didn't even lift his eyes from that cursed glowing rectangle, merely raising a thumb like some lazy court official dismissing a peasant's petition. His voice carried the same dry disinterest as the Emperor's least favourate minister.
"Yeah nah, wouldn't miss this for the world." The words rolled out like a bored scribe reciting tax records. "Love me a good bureaucratic snooze-fest."
Michael just grinned, clapping Gabriel's shoulder like this was normal behavior. "That's the spirit, mate."
Hongbing made a noise like a deflating balloon.
And just like that, by six in the evening we were off to another lecture, four unwilling souls dragged toward academic purgatory.