章 4: Chapter 3
Kunugigaoka Junior High and High School was running smoothly, much to Gakushuu's continued surprise.
His father's name was big in the education industry (and also business, but he couldn't completely justify knowing that without divulging his own secret activities there).
There were many nuances that his father had to actively fix as the school years went on, and there were some that Gakushuu actively intervened for and gave up a few rights to do so, including some special clubs that didn't take part in any competition (which was rare) but allowed all students, without exception, to take part in.
There were also regulations that were wholely unique to Kunugigaoka, including class E, a tutoring system for students in other classes from students in class A of the same year, extra curricular activities that were run almost uniquely by the students, and a student council that enforced the will of the Principal.
There were all kinds of clubs that got created, most that got disbanded almost as soon as they were formed when they didn't follow all the rules of "special clubs" and some that barely had enough students to continue on.
There were no regulations about how many clubs someone could be a part of, but no one was allowed to just be a ghost member to fill in numbers.
It was overall, a quite fulfilling academic school. Specially for overachievers like he was turning out to be.
Unfortunately, instead of the freedom he had enjoyed, his future Junior High school life would be a less restricted version of his home life, where he would be a slightly more important pawn in his father's game.
It was frustrating. But slowly, just like always, he would need to change it. He didn't completely understand his father's obsession with class E or Ikeda, in fact, but he was determined to live his own life, and not just create an offshoot of his father's.
He was under his father's eyes here, but that also meant there were ways to break or make his educational policy depending on how Gakushuu played his role.
Of course, none of that really mattered because he had already signed away his freedom just to create his very own club- a self defense club, on top of that.
His father had gotten kind of quiet and then allowed Gakushuu to continue on with his plans. It went without saying, but in exchange, he was going to play the overachiever- the principal's son- role better than in previous schools.
He was already exhausted at just the thought.
The first action he took that involved Kunugigaoka was confronting his father about his club- aka giving up his freedom- but his second was a lot more discrete.
He went to visit the old campus.
He had shifted around his lessons for some free time, turned off his phone (the GPS was annoying to deal with) and then made his way to the old campus when the school for out for summer.
The first thing he noticed was the disrepair.
His father had always made sure it was cleaned up before . He vaguely remembered summer days he spent being carried around by students who made excuses to skip out, while everyone else toiled under his father's instructions to clean up the field.
He stood on a wooden bridge covered partially under moss and he closed his eyes. The sun was bright overhead and he had the rest of the day to himself.
It was hot, he thought to himself.
He remembered the soft cushion of an underdeveloped chest behind him. A cheerful girl carried the toddler him.
There was an ice box, and the taste of cold then orange in his mouth. He got sneaked in shaved ice from her. From everyone, he corrected himself, remembering the multitude of fingers and hands poking and prodding him.
He remembered crying once because one of them had dropped him to catch a slipping ice cream once. He smiled to himself, remembering his father sitting the whole class down for a lecture on childcare after that.
He opened his eyes, brushed his fingers against the wood and went on his way.
There were odd memories that he was remembering, the more he walked and lingered along the old campus.
Hadn't there been a basketball court somewhere here too? He remembered watching his father play with many of his students. He pushed the thought aside for the moment.
He saw wild flowers growing on the sides of the well walked path, and a slightly overgrown path that made him hesitate.
He was already here so might as well explore, right?
He walked into the forest.
There were critters and birds that chirped and flew away at his presence, and he had to carefully walk over a few poisonous flowers (why did they have poisonous plants in the grounds??) but it was surprisingly a peaceful walk.
He played by himself and spotted a few rare beetles and at one point, felt completely lost, but kept going anyway. He wasn't sure where the path was leading, but he had time and he wanted to put in the effort too.
He didn't doubt his father had the whole area memorized, no matter how decrepit he left it.
In a way, he felt melancholic. He found Ikeda's existence bittersweet. He could also say that he disliked him and it wouldn't be wrong, but it wouldn't exactly be right either.
He envied Ikeda.
His father's affection were not easy to hold. And the dead couldn't change.
His father would always remember Ikeda as his beloved student, and not as someone who could have been an adult- a teacher, or maybe an athlete- as he had apparently wanted to be.
No, his father's memories of Ikeda wouldn't grow or evolve. They would always just remain the same, and so would his affections.
He didn't know how that felt.
He had died once, but that only meant he had left people behind.
What did loss mean?
How did it feel to know that there was someone in your memories who didn't exist anymore in the world?
The thoughts felt heavy, but, he thought, his life would still go on. Even if his mother died, his paths wouldn't stop. Maybe if his father-
No.
Anyway.
The path was rough, like no one had stepped foot on it, in ages, but it also had its own charm. His clothes had already become slightly dirty. Mimi, their housekeeper, (name: Midorima Miyakashi) would need to be told to keep it quiet from his father.
He walked for a while, before he heard the sound of rushing water. He paused, surprised.
He racked his brain for memories but came up empty. He had never been to a stream of any kind in the old campus before.
He reached the soft streaming of water and his gait slowed with surprise. It was…pretty.
He had been to natural waterfalls and even done river rafting once, but there was something really soothing about the gurgling of water as it rushed over the rocks and formed natural pools.
He looked at his clothes and gave a mental "fuck it".
He was going to lose his freedom anyway, he might as well take his chances to have fun when he could.
He threw off his shoes and socks, rolled up his jeans as high as it could go, and took off his shirt even. Then he stepped into the water.
The rocks were slippery and he felt half a dozen times, but after a while he just found himself sitting quietly in the midst of the stream, a hand dipping into the rush of water and listening to the regular sounds.
It was a peaceful afternoon.
He woke up hours later, with a squirrel perched up on his head.
That wasn't the end of course, but he didn't want to end up lost in the forest after dark so he had to find a trail back to the building.
He was slightly sunburnt, but that was okay. He made his way back to the old campus building faster than he had reached the stream and almost had a moment of heart attack when he stumbled across the basketball court instead.
He had clearly gone in the wrong direction somewhere. He laughed at himself for a moment before looking through the court.
It was in a state of intense disrepair. Not only had no one visited the place, his father hadn't even cleaned it up a bit. He scowled to himself before taking a running start and jumping. He took a few seconds to hang on and swing from the hoops.
It creaked from his weight but held.
Surprisingly, it was still usable.
He dropped, landing with a slight squelch on his shoes. He wrinkled his nose at the sound then focused on the abandoned court.
It was too bad he didn't have a basketball, but he promised to keep one in the campus building. It was a shame to let it be completely forgotten.
He caught sight of a scratched out metal and carefully patted it clean.
The paint was peeling and the metal rusting but he could read a few characters.
" Asano-sensei the invincible was here "
Or so he assumed.
It actually read something like:
"... no sen….invincible….. here"
There were random hearts around the words and a few more characters which he assumed was meant to denote their names.
He lightly brushed his fingers against the words, smiling to himself. His father had been quite popular with his students, it seemed.
Well, he was a young father. Aside from the disgusted feeling he got at the thought of thinking of his own father similarly, he wouldn't have been surprised to have a crush on a dedicated teacher who was multitalented and was a loving father to boot.
…. or not.
No way. The thought just automatically made him think of his father and ugh, he shuddered to himself.
Yeah, he wouldn't. Just the thought grossed him out completely.
But he could still see the appeal. He didn't like the thought of being a father, but it was flattering to have people like and admire him. Not to mention, he would probably grow up to look pretty similar to the man himself.
He liked the thought of aging that well.
He looked around a little better, before getting on the trail to the actual building this time.
Then he hesitated.
He felt like there was a memory right out of reach.
He looked around the area. The decapitated basketball court, the rusty hoops, the metal support with scratched out words.
Then he took a random path instead of going back to the building. It wasn't far, but there was an enclosed area, and then as if it was in a seat of honor, there was a tree with scratched out words on it.
It was deeply grooved in.
Ikeda + Mori + Nakai
And then above that-
Gakuhou Asano
There were knife marks around it, grooving them in deeper than it had been originally.
But there was something about the knife marks though.
He traced the marks with his fingers, and he remembered his father disappearing for a week straight after Ikeda's death.
Something about the marks spelled grief to him.
He let it be.
A part of him almost wanted to scratch out the names or pluck out the bark and destroy the lines of grief. But-
Maybe it was sentimental of him. But he couldn't destroy them.
Maybe it was the innocent way all the names were scratched out the first time. Spelling out the joy of youth and something that seemed to talk to him about loving life.
Or maybe it was the way, he could see fragments of bark shattered over the "Gakuhou Asano".
He stood for a few more moments, looking at the words, before he turned around and left.
It didn't feel like something he should see.
He felt like there was a phantom of his father collapsed in front of the tree, fingers cut on by the bark where he attempted to scratch his own name off.
He breathed out the feeling before continuing on.
The old building was simultaneously worse and better than he expected. It looked well used and worn down, and there were signs of semi regular cleaning. It looked like it had been given a certain amount if maintainance.
But there was also something old about the whole place. Something that screamed almost deliberate about the ruin. Like the fragments of new and old were contrasting against each other and creating something almost…ugly.
He looked around the outside, scuff marks he remembered making were cleared out, there were faint marks still there, but most of it had been very obviously replaced or cleaned out.
Instead of the careless ruin of the rest of the place, the building was the same, but also not.
He sighed.
It wasn't unexpected, but he wished his father was a little better about dealing with his issues.
He would send his father to therapy, but he was actually worried his therapist would be cross examined and have their own self confidence stripped away.
He should make an AI therapist, he thought to himself. There was no way his father could make an AI cry…right?
He found it funny how his faith in his father's superhuman ability seems to have only grown with age. To be fair, his father regularly functioned on an average of 2 hours of sleep.
He was glad to be able to sleep the 5 hours he got, even if on some days even that seemed too much, to both him and his father.
But well, he was quite firm with his own mental health, unlike his father. He would sleep the minimum amount he needed, though exceptions could be made when needed.
He would need those exceptions soon in Kunugigaoka, he suspected.
His father has been okay- for a certain amount of okay- with his marks in other schools (he regularly scored in the range of 95 to 100) but he suspected his father would want him to actually put his full effort in the academics instead of getting by with just his regular studying and worksheets.
As in, all nighters.
Ugh.
Well, his father had given him a lot of power in return. His own club for himself? He might need to bring over students on his own, but both he and his father were well aware that it wasn't actually an issue.
So his father had actually even up on a fraction of a fraction of his power to Gakushuu. Which was pretty much mind blowing. He wasn't even aware his father had that much faith in his abilities.
What kind of supernatural feat was he expecting, he wondered yet again. Because he surely was.
His father was many things, but careless? Never.
But either way, he was planning to do things his own way. He was reasonably certain he wouldn't be killed and buried by his own father, so he was more or less free to follow his own will on the details.
He sighed.
The old campus, class E's classroom, wasn't terrible . But things could definitely be better.
Plus, he hadn't actually met any of class E students in any of the years. He wondered if they would hate him for being the principal's son.
Probably, he winced. Then he sighed again.
Even then, he wanted to do something for this place that was half a graveyard.
He made a list of things in his head and smiled. He hadn't even started school yet and he was already planning on renovating a hill and taking over at least half the school.
He needed to leave some for the rest of the years till he aged up at least, or high school might end up more boring than Junior High.
Oh well.
He couldn't exactly go half baked.
Might as well go in full throttle.
His school started uneventfully, no well, there were plenty of events actually.
He went to a sports scrimmage from his school and won, went to a math scholastic and won, went to a spell bee and won, and well-
You get the idea.
He took part in so many events, Ren had to call off attending half of the events so his step mother could take him to an international trip.
He wasn't jealous. Much.
Unfortunately, his father was still a superhuman and sensed his slight jealousy (loneliness) in a wrong way. So, he got sent off to some international trivia event where he finally got some more time to sit down and take a breath.
He made a friend, Alejandro, there. He was quirky, had a terrible sense of humor and always had a smile like he dropped a bug in Asano's bag.
He deadpanned while talking about his father's death and Asano hadn't even been sure if it was actually a murder mystery or if the criminal had been caught, right up until his father dropped by to take him back home.
He was too flabbergasted to even feel offended at being duped.
Ren had to listen to his rants from a country away, while his step mother seemed intent on throwing Ren into a bad lifestyle.
So of course he felt obligated to drop by and steal Ren away.
(Well, he didn't leave the airport and Ren came to meet him there and leave on his own two feet, but whatever.)
In the end, he unsurprisingly missed his cue and ended up skipping the main event. He won prizes for everything else, but that still didn't spare him from his father's scolding and the stripped Ren privileges.
It turned out okay though.
Finally he entered Kunugigaoka Junior High with the highest marks in its history (not that that was hard, considering its history was certainly short) and then spent the rest of the week sneaking away documents about the students in his year at random.
Most of the students were, so to say, spoilt brats. A lot of them had a lot of real life problems, but they mostly spent time trying to get over it using superficial ways.
Of course, it wasn't a surprise. Kids were kids after all. They just blindly repeated what they saw.
For that reason, he believed his father's methods would actually be quite helpful in instilling a sense of discipline, hierarchy and also, a sense of understanding.
It's okay because when you overcome problems, you grow, after all. He would be mouth feeding that to as many students as he could.
It would depend on how many people swallowed it.
But that didn't mean he wouldn't try his best.
He didn't suffer through his father just to not even use any of it. He might not have been dedicated to flipping the board, but when he got invited into it, he was going to make damn sure he messed it up good.
There were things even he couldn't stand, after all.
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