บท 29: Chapter 29
On the way back to my apartment I stopped off for dinner at another food challenge place. This time I only had to eat 4 pounds of curry and rice. Doing so got me a punch card another 4 completed attempts and I would eat free for a month. After gorging myself I made my way back to my apartment to sleep it off.
I woke up early to clean myself up and make myself as presentable as possible. Then jogged back to the office. I met Kawaguchi on the fifth floor where she had already brought down all of the outfits. There were seven other competitors we were assembled into a large conference room with a staging area upfront with the judges and other competitors watching in an audience area. Unlike what I had expected the other competitors were all going to present with mannequins. Causing Kawaguchi to stare at me.
"I knew presenting on mannequins wasn't a bad idea"
"I told you using a model would either make you stand out or it would make you even with your other competitors. You didn't know for sure what presentation strategy they were going to use. They can't prepare a different presentation now, but you can. Do you want to go back to mannequin presentation and match your competitors or do you want to be unique and stand out?
" You're right this is a great idea. Doing the same thing as everyone else won't win me any points let's do this."
I sat around backstage while the others gave their pitch. Going over their designs and the reasons behind the choices. It was all very clinical and boring. Then I heard Kawaguchi and knew I was up.
"Ladies and Gentlemen as this is an expansion into unknown territory I felt that it best to perform this product showcase in a manner fitting with the new market norm. So in the spirit of our new fashion line, I will present my clothing designs in a runway show."
Then the music turned on and I knew it was my signal. It was kind of nerve-racking slowly purposefully walking down the stage. Striking a pose at the end walking back and then speed changing to the next outfit. It was hard to tell if they were enjoying it or if Kawaguchi and I massively miss read the situation. A few minutes of walking, posing, and changing later and I was done. Judging by the clapping I think it went pretty well. I stayed backstage for the rest of the showcases, but once they were over I went up to the sixth floor to wait in the office.
An hour later Kawaguchi burst into her office and gave me a big hug.
"I got the job. They loved it. They said I really understood what it meant to be transitioning to a new market with different requirements."
"Well, no one can say I haven't had a good idea or two."
"No they can't, and as a manager of a new department, I'm given a certain amount of lee-way with hiring new employees. I think what this department really needs is a part-model/assistant."
"Well, I guess we know for sure I wasn't acting altruistically."
We then spent the rest of the afternoon going over new hire paperwork. I'd be expected to work 15-20 hours a week the majority of which will be as Kawaguchi's assistant, but any modeling jobs for the new line of clothes will take priority. I was making a generous 1,600 yen an hour way more then I should be making as a 14 year, but more than enough to pay for my rent, food, and surplus. That also doesn't take into consideration bonuses dependent on department performance and more specific modeling tasks. I didn't get to keep the prototypes as they were now pre-production examples. I would spend the next ten months acting mostly as her assistant helping set up distribution and manufacturing and acting as a sounding board for ideas. I did do some model work for pictures in advertisements and magazines. Showing off out new Line called "Super for You" supportive and tough enough for heroes, but made for you.
Now gainfully employed and not homeless I had time to spend studying for the entrance exam. For the academic aspects, I went to the library and checked out a series of books to read and work through. One of my first paychecks went to buy a laptop so that I could work on free online courses and take practice tests. I also downloaded some games, had to blow off some 'steam' somehow. Academically preparing went smoothly. Learning about support items went pretty poorly. The things I wanted to use were either too simple or too complex. Like I wanted a sword, knife, smoke and flash pellets and grenades. All of those things exist already and anything I make would be up against hundreds of years of refinement. On the more complex side, I wanted to make elemental bullets for a gun to counteract villains with element-based quirks. Incendiary, cryo, or stun. Which are all outside of my ability besides they would cost too much and building up my essentials will be where most of my money will go.
My physical training also hit a bit of a roadblock. Dojos and Gyms made to handle quirks are fucking expensive. Despite not having a quirk, regular gyms and dojos wouldn't be able to handle me. Which means I can't learn any new martial arts, can't practice the martial arts I know, and can't fully exercise. I can exercise, but pushing myself to my max is hard. I jog at close to 60 mph and sprint somewhere around 120mph. I can also run for a really long time all this makes it hard to find a good place to push my self running. As for strength, I need something that weighs close to 750 lbs but that I can also use to target multiple muscle groups. This kind of extreme weight range makes it impractical to use makeshift weights. I thought about looking for a heavy appliance at the beach, but all the appliances are like half the weight of what would be helpful.
It wasn't all bad news though as I found several other helpful ways to train. Without weights, I pushed my self physically with underwater exercise. Lots of swimming even when it was cold as my giant's blood kept me warm. The water adapted to my strength that meant no matter how hard I could push I would feel resistance. Not great for strength building but kept me in shape and let me get used to exerting different amounts of force. While swimming I also spotted Midoriya. I usually started earlier than him though so we only ever spotted each other in crossing.
Beyond physical training, I needed to train my senses. My heightened sight, smell, touch, and hearing. I also need to practice with my danger sense. For my regular senses, I practiced with sense deprivation singling out a certain person in a crowd then tracking them missing a sense. As for my danger sense, we'll I had to be in danger. I found an old pitching machine at my apartment complex and set it up to randomly fire a ball at me. I then closed my eyes and put in earplugs. If I didn't dodge the ball would smash into my back. I started the pitches slow and slowly got faster until I was dodging 100 mph fastballs. Then I set the pitching machine to alternate targets. Some pitches would hit me and some would set off a booby trap that would drop a bowling ball on me. It trained me to sense different sources of danger at the same time. Unfortunately, that took most of my time. I could have pushed a bit further but I had already maxed out the pitching speed of the old machine and I didn't want to buy a second machine to really up my training.
The final aspect of my training saw me training with some of my future support items. Not my final support items just something similar. I expect some of my support items to be gun-based and a lot to be based around throwing weapons. So I bought a set of throwing knives and had Kawaguchi make me a practice pistol. The practice pistol proved to be unnecessary as I almost immediately had perfect aim with it except from significant distance. Throwing knives were much harder, but I can confidently say that if the target is stationary I could probably hit it.
And just like that the 10 months I had leading up to the exam were gone. While I was a bit disappointed with my progress I knew I would pass. I just wish I hadn't been so limited by resources.
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