Gifted Academy: The Perfect Student

After handing Kanako the work I set for her, I decided to make my way back to my dorm.

*

I took a seat on my bed and stared off into the distance.

Supposedly, there was meant to be a dorm room inspection in a few minutes. My room was quite tidy and there wasn\'t really anything that might\'ve been of concern to the inspectors so I wasn\'t really worried. I decided to read Being and Nothingness while I waited for them to come for the inspection.

A few minutes later, there was a knock on my door.

I opened the door and saw a teacher accompanied by a man I\'d never seen before.

"We\'re here for the room inspection."

"That\'s fine, come in."

They walked inside and began looking around my room.

"You\'re room\'s quite clean," commented the teacher.

They searched around a little bit and suddenly, they grabbed The Tachibana System from my shelf. As soon as he saw the book, the man\'s expression changed.

"Why do you have this?" He asked me.

The teacher seemed confused but didn\'t seem to make a comment.

"It was given to me as a gift."

"By whom?"

"The person who raised me."

The man seemed to understand.

"I\'ll have to confiscate this for various reasons, are you okay with that?"

"I still want it, you know."

"I figured you\'d say that; there aren\'t many ways to negotiate with you but I know you will want this."

He began taking a slip of paper out of his pocket.

"We\'ll return the book at the end of your schooling career, in exchange, I\'ll give you this." He continued.

"What is it?"

"It\'s more valuable to you than the book."

"Are you going to tell me what it is?"

"I\'ll say this, it relates to your mission, I\'m going to say no more than that."

I instantly knew what it was.

"Alright."

After confiscating the book and handing me the slip of paper, he and the teacher left my room without saying another word.

The door closed once again and only I was left in my room.

I was having a rest on my bed when I heard the sound of knocking on my door once again.

Did they come back for something?

As I opened the door, I was greeted by someone who I wasn\'t expecting.

"H-hi... M-mizuhara."

"Oh, hey, Kinoshita."

She was in a little short skirt and wearing a pretty oversized t-shirt—it was quite the casual attire. It was quite late at night so I wasn\'t sure why she was here—I honestly didn\'t even know how she found out where I lived.

"Do you need something from me?" I asked.

"O-oh um... I was wondering... if y-you wanted to play a board game with m-me...?"

Huh.

"Um, isn\'t it a bit late?"

"Don\'t worry, I\'m only a few rooms down from yours..."

Ah, I see, she was also a boarder like me.

"Well, I guess it\'ll be fine, come in then."

She took off her shoes and made her way inside.

"T-thank you..."

She brought a board game with her. The two of us took a seat on the ground beside my bed. Monopoly—it wasn\'t the most interesting game but I guess it\'ll pass some time for me. She opened up the box and began setting everything up.

"Have they already done your room inspection?" She asked.

"Yeah."

After a little while, she finished setting up the board and all of the cards. Each of us picked out a token to use as our character and we started the game. I rolled the two dice and got a total of seven, I moved my token to it. I landed on the chance square.

I took a card off of the chance pile and read it.

You just ran off with a midget—collect $2000 for reality show rights.

What on earth is this.

"What did you get?" She asked.

"Um... collect $2000 dollars...."

"Ah okay!" She handed me $2000 dollars from the bank.

Why were the chance cards like this...

"By the way, I borrowed the Monopoly from the downstairs recreation room, apparently they said that some things might be missing."

I didn\'t really know what to say.

We continued to play the game.

"Ah, it\'s a bit hot here..." Kinoshita said.

All of a sudden, she began taking off her socks. She pulled off her long black socks and placed them on the side beside her, revealing her ivory, fair skin. She looked over at me awkwardly as if she expected something.

"It\'s your turn," I said.

"Ah, oh y-yeah."

She quickly grabbed the dice off of the board and rolled them.

The game seemed to be never-ending. We played for almost two hours and the game didn\'t even appear close to finishing.

"I don\'t think we\'ll be able to finish the game tonight," I said.

"We s-should play until it\'s over, it\'ll be hard to keep track of if we pack it up."

"I guess, don\'t you have to return to your dorm?"

"It\'s fine, I\'ve got a roommate, she\'ll tell the teacher that I\'m asleep."

Come to think of it, I was the only person in the entire dormitory who didn\'t have a roommate.

There was meant to be a final curfew check at 11:30 pm to make sure that everyone was in their own rooms, however, the teachers never actually entered the rooms to properly check.

I decided to just continue to play Monopoly, it wasn\'t too uninteresting and Kinoshita seemed to be pretty into it. It might\'ve been an issue having a girl in a boy\'s room this late at night but I couldn\'t really be bothered thinking about it. I assumed that she\'d leave soon enough when the game finished.

There was a knock on my door.

"Mizuhara, are you inside?"

"Yes."

With that, the teacher left to check on the next room.

I looked over at Kinoshita who was giggling to herself.

The game continued and we kept playing for a decent amount of time. After a while, I looked over at Kinoshita, who appeared to be quite sleepy.

"Are you tired?" I asked.

"Not at all!"

It was a pretty obvious lie, her consciousness seemed to be waning in the last few minutes.

There were pretty long spans of time which went by as her mind seemed to be drifting off to sleep. I usually slept quite late anyways so I wasn\'t really all that tired but it was probably a good time to send her off.

"Kinoshita you should probably go to bed now, you look rather sleepy."

"N-no... I can finish this game."

"We can finish it tomorrow, come find me tomorrow afternoon and we\'ll play the rest of it."

"Are... you sure...?"

It was quite obvious that she was struggling to stay awake.

Finally, she got up and made her way back to her room.