Sasaki and Peeps - Volume 8 - Chapter 5.0

<Off-Campus Class, Part One>

The next day, the school’s teachers and students boarded a bus together and set off from Karuizawa. Our destination was a ski resort in the Nagano area, where we’d be holding ski classes for three days and two nights. This was the so-called “off-campus class.” All the first-years were required to participate, and every faculty member in charge of a first-year class had to attend as a chaperone for the students.

Ms. Futarishizuka was with us as well—in fact, so were Captain Mason and Miss Inukai. While they weren’t in charge of any classes, they were asked to come along and assist. I suspected the captain had convinced the principal to let them. If anything happened at the resort, a rank-A psychic would be quite an asset.

Unfortunately, Miss Hoshizaki had to stay behind. I doubted even Captain Mason and the principal could think of a good reason to take a custodian along. Our senior had been very frustrated when the topic came up during dinner.

Our bus was now moving down the highway.

“Ski class! I can’t wait! Mr. Sasaki, let’s ski together!” said Captain Mason in his cartoonish foreign accent.

“Actually,” I said, “I’m not that great at skiing…”

“Mr. Sasaki, if you’re worried about it, I can help you,” offered Miss Inukai.

“No, I couldn’t ask you to do all that. I don’t want to be a bother.”

“So not only can you not drive a car, but you can’t ski or snowboard, either?” Ms. Futarishizuka asked.

“I’m sure most busy office workers are in the same boat as me,” I pointed out.

“Doesn’t it make you sad to say that?”

“It’s no bother at all,” said Miss Inukai.

The teachers were all in the front row of the bus; we’d pulled out the spare seat so everyone could fit. We were lined up in the following order: Miss Inukai, Ms. Mochizuki, myself, Ms. Futarishizuka, and Captain Mason. Personally, I thought the small-statured Ms. Futarishizuka should take the spare seat, but she grabbed one of the regular spots with lightning speed, leaving me in the spare.

“Be careful,” Ms. Mochizuki warned us. “You’re getting a little too excited in front of the students.”

“My apologies,” I said.

“I am sorry!” exclaimed the captain. “I have never been to a Japanese ski slope, so I got a little carried away!”

Naturally, Class 1-A was in the bus with us, including my neighbor, Type Twelve, and Magical Blue. They sat in a cluster toward the back, also using a spare seat. My neighbor sat by the window, with Type Twelve next to her and Magical Blue in the spare. Many of the most popular kids in class were nearby.

“Twelve, you said you’ve never been skiing, right?”

“For real? Hey, I could totally teach you!”

“There’s gonna be instructors there, you know.”

“The teacher said that if you take the beginner class, you won’t get to ski at all the first day.”

“I would be glad to place myself in your care. I welcome everyone’s goodwill.”

“Huh. You sound pretty optimistic.”

“You look so cool and collected, but you get really worked up about stuff like this, huh?”

“That’s kind of cute!”

“We’ve never had a girl like you around before.”

“Speaking of, Kurosu is a pretty rare character herself, isn’t she?”

Type Twelve was being showered with attention, mainly by the boys. As she’d previously declared, she was now hard at work getting everyone in class to simp for her. My neighbor, on the other hand, seemed more friendly with the girls.

“Kurosu, do you know how to ski?”

“I bet when you’re rich, you can go skiing every day, even if you live in Tokyo.”

“Yeah. Like you can rent out the whole ski slope.”

“Or even have your own private ski resort!”

“A whole private resort? That sounds wild.”

“No, I’m not very good at physical activity…,” said my neighbor.

“That makes you seem even more like a princess.”

“Like a sheltered noble girl or something.”

“She’s into reading, remember? I knew she’d be the indoor type!”

“Hey, quit that. You’re just trying to find an in with her since you can’t ski, either.”

“Come on! Skiing is scary!”

With her designated interpreter—Type Twelve—busy prioritizing her own emotional cravings, Magical Blue seemed a little left out. She never tried to use Magical Communication, either. She simply smiled vaguely, looking a little frustrated.

“The other transfer student seems lonely. Should we leave her be?”

Abaddon was also on the bus. He was by my neighbor, floating horizontally up near the roof. He looked slightly cramped up there, which I found oddly adorable. The way he never left his partner’s side combined with his youthful appearance made him seem like quite a good-natured little boy. I was a little jealous. If only Peeps could be with me all the time…

“Also, a few of the girls are looking at the youngest daughter very harshly.”

Naturally, the other students couldn’t perceive Abaddon. My neighbor threw him a glance every so often but never responded to any of his remarks. While I felt bad for Magical Blue, I pretended not to notice. Some teacher I am.

After about fifteen more minutes on the bus, my personal phone started buzzing. I checked the screen—it was a message from Type Twelve, sent to the family group chat. Unlike the rest of us, the mechanical life-form didn’t need to pick up her phone to use it; she could directly access the data on the server. She must have sent the message without ever looking away from the boys lavishing attention on her.

The problem was the message’s contents: She’d detected a convoy of vehicles pursuing our bus.

I flinched in shock. Without thinking, I looked behind us. However, all the other vehicles on the highway looked normal, and I couldn’t discern which ones were part of the convoy in question. I’d have to watch them for some time to have any hope of picking them out.

Type Twelve had informed us earlier that she’d launched a terminal from the UFO and had it follow our bus from the air. That terminal had probably detected the convoy and notified her.

“We have a message from the youngest daughter,” said Ms. Futarishizuka.

“What should we do about it?” I wondered aloud.

In the meantime, we received a follow-up—Type Twelve believed it would be best if our pursuers were eliminated immediately. As I was struggling to think of a response, I remembered the person sitting on the other side of Ms. Futarishizuka.

“Mr. Robert, if I may…”

“If you’re speaking of what’s happening outside, please leave it to us! We already have eyes on them!” said Captain Mason, still in his cheerful assistant teacher persona.

“What? Oh, all right, then.”

At some point, he’d put an earphone into his right ear. I’d assumed as much, but it seemed they had another squad accompanying us.

The bus sped up slightly as it traveled down the highway. The driver was probably one of their people, too.

A moment later, we heard a loud boom from behind. I turned to check and, through the window, saw a semi in the passing lane crash into the side of a vehicle trailing the bus. The target was a regular old compact car.

“Huh?! What the heck was that sound?!”

“It came from outside.”

“Hey! That big truck just got into an accident!”

“Oh my god! It crashed into a car!”

“Hey! Look behind us! There’s been an accident!”

“Are you serious?! On the highway?! Are they gonna be all right?!”

“Oh wow. They just slammed into the guardrail…”

The compact car swerved and crashed into the side of the road. The semi slowly decelerated, then turned, blocking off every lane to prevent any more cars from coming after us. Our bus, having evaded its pursuers, gallantly sped away from the scene.

Once he was sure the danger had passed, Captain Mason called out to the children. “Everything is okay! Please do not worry, students!”

The compact car was probably one of the vehicles in the convoy, which would make the semi driver someone with the captain. The latter made it through with a few scrapes and dents, but the former smashed into the wall and was totaled. I found his brutal judgment call rather terrifying.

“So that’s why Class 1-A’s bus was the last to leave, huh?”

“Yes, it was to keep injuries to a minimum in case of an emergency.”

As Ms. Futarishizuka and Miss Inukai said, there were no other buses behind us. The school had made up some excuse to have them leave in reverse alphabetical order. I hadn’t thought much about it until now. Professionals were really something.

An idea occurred to me then. If we were already being targeted on the way there, what would happen during the off-campus class? I was growing increasingly concerned.

The bus’s occupants gawked and chattered about the highway accident for only a few minutes. After that, the bus continued along its scheduled route, and shortly before noon, we arrived at our destination—a ski resort in the Hakuba area, or, to be more precise, a nearby hotel.

I had to admit, our lodgings were absolutely gorgeous. As the students disembarked, they all looked up at the hotel and began talking.

“This place looks super expensive.”

“Are we really gonna stay here?”

“The upperclassmen said they stayed in a run-down inn.”

“I wouldn’t call this an inn. It’s a fancy hotel!”

“They showed me pictures from last year. It was really shabby.”

“Did they change locations?”

We’d be staying the following two nights at a resort hotel located conveniently right next to the ski slopes. We could even see them from our rooms. The building’s distinctly Scandinavian design, with its red triangular roof, looked incredible against the huge piles of snow, all under a clear blue sky.

This hotel seems pricey even for a major school field trip. I can’t imagine they’ve set enough aside to stay here during the off-campus class.

As we got off the bus and I took in the view, I was compelled to ask my colleague a question. “Did you arrange this, Ms. Futarishizuka?”

“No, I had nothing to do with it.”

The two of us gazed at the hotel’s exterior from the parking lot.

Miss Inukai quickly explained. “My superior said this was Mr. Robert’s doing.”

“Is this a foreign-owned hotel, then?” I asked.

“If you’ve got the power, you can do anything,” said Ms. Futarishizuka.

The subject of our conversation soon approached. The captain guessed the topic and joined right in.

“A lot of snow fell the other day,” he said, “so we were able to use this resort!”

“Don’t tell me you rented the whole thing out,” I said.

“The facilities aren’t open for the season yet, so we’re the only patrons!”

“Ah,” said Ms. Futarishizuka. “This way, we won’t trouble anyone else, and it’ll make things easier for us as well.”

“That said,” added Miss Inukai, “we have people already inside, disguised as patrons.”

She was right—I could see people all around the hotel and ski resort. There were even a few people right in front of us who looked like customers heading through the entrance. I was impressed at how quickly they’d pulled everything together. A lot of money and manpower must be going toward winning over Type Twelve.

The students had no way of knowing that, of course.

“Hey, teach! C’mon, tell us what to do next!”

“The head teacher for our grade said we were supposed to stay with our classes, right?”

“Class B is already putting their stuff in their rooms!”

“I wanna hurry up and start skiing.”

“Can I look around the hotel first?”

Urged onward by Class 1-A, we headed for the hotel reception area. From there, we did things exactly as we’d announced on the bus.

Once everyone was done putting their things in their rooms, it would be time to rent skis and gear. Then they’d change in the locker rooms, head to the ski resort, and split into groups based on difficulty. After that, the instructors would introduce themselves and start ski classes right away.

That was the plan for the students anyway. The teachers chaperoning them all had their own missions to carry out. Some would be taking pictures while the students skied, and others would be with the instructors, watching over them. Whatever we were doing, all of us teachers needed to be able to move around freely on the slopes while wearing skis.

Naturally, all this was beyond the capabilities of a certain new teacher with zero ski skills. Instead, I ended up joining a group of small children in one corner of the resort and practicing by myself. I couldn’t possibly take lessons with the students. I’d heard rumors that some teachers even paid for their own ski lessons ahead of time, just for this outing.

“You can ride a horse, but you can’t ski?” said Ms. Futarishizuka. “It’s bizarre.”

“It’s a dangerous sport,” I insisted. “Why would I risk life and limb to do this voluntarily? You’re supposed to barrel down the slope at automobile speeds without even wearing a helmet. Isn’t that a little ridiculous? Far more dangerous than riding a motorcycle, in my opinion.”

“I mean, I guess around ten people do die every year.”

“Right? I’m not surprised.”

Ms. Futarishizuka continued to make snarky comments as I tried desperately to keep my skis in a V shape. My legs were trembling something fierce. I could have used a flight spell to pretend I was skiing, but I didn’t want to use otherworld magic anywhere Captain Mason and Ensign Inukai could see. Anyone who knew what they were looking at would surely notice something was up.

“Just leave your students to me and your assistant,” Ms. Futarishizuka said. “You can stay here quaking in your boots.”

“Sorry. Thank you.”

Naturally, the task of watching my students had to fall to the others. I felt terrible for being such an unreliable teacher.

As expected, Ms. Futarishizuka started skiing downhill with the practiced motions of a veteran. Apparently, she enjoyed this just as much as anime, video games, motorcycles, cars, and amateur radio.

As soon as she left, a female student from Class 1-A approached me. It wasn’t my neighbor—this was someone I only knew by name and face. If memory served, she was called Suzuki, and she was number nine on the class roster.

If you arranged the class from shortest to tallest, she’d be in the front row. She was very fashionable and never forgot her lipstick. Compared to my neighbor, whose lips cracked when it got cold out, Suzuki was much more concerned with her appearance.

The most striking thing about her was her high pigtails. This was a difficult style to pull off—I regularly saw posts on the internet about people being bullied in middle school for wearing pigtails. Suzuki must have been fearless since she wore her hair rabbit-style all the time. Just the other day, the head teacher for her grade had warned her about rolling up the waist of her skirt to shorten it, too.

“Mr. Sasaki,” she called out. “What are you doing here?”

“As you can see, I have almost no skiing experience,” I admitted.

“They didn’t have ski classes when you were a kid?”

“Other schools had them, but mine didn’t.”

She deftly maneuvered her skis and came up right in front of me. She seemed fairly experienced—impressive for someone so young. Maybe people who went to schools in snowier parts of the country acquired the skill naturally.

But then she made an unexpected proposition. “All right, Mr. Sasaki. Then I’ll teach you!”

As soon as I heard this, I knew. Honey trap, part two.

“No, I’ll be fine on my own,” I said. “Go have fun with your friends.”

“Don’t be like that. Come on. You won’t be able to ski at all at the rate you’re going.”

“Hey, wa—”

The girl stuck her poles into the snow at her feet before taking my hands in hers. Then she started tugging, causing us both to slide across the snow together. She glanced behind her as she went, guiding me forward as she moved backward. We were going very slowly, but the fact that she was a child filled me with dread. I wanted to bat her hands away and flee. But if I did that, I was sure to tumble over.

“P-please stop,” I said. “It’s dangerous to go backward like that.”

“Uh-uh, Mr. Sasaki. If you want to stop, you have to make a V with your skis.”

I did as she said and desperately got my skis into a V shape. But when I did, I felt the tips catch on something. A moment later, without realizing what had happened, I began to fall.

“Ah…!”

I was falling forward—straight toward the girl instructing me. As I reached out my arms on instinct, they moved toward my student’s body.

I couldn’t allow myself to touch her.

Immediately, I used flight magic to take control of my fall. After letting go of my poles, I swerved my hand to the side, plunging my arm into the snow. It looked like I was slamming her against a wall, but instead, we were on the ground. By putting my hand next to her head, I barely managed to avoid touching her.

“I…I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll move right away.”

I rolled onto my side, frantically trying to put some distance between us. While I wanted to get up as soon as I could, it was difficult with the skis attached to my feet. After some trial and error, I finally just took the skis off my boots and stood.

“Mr. Sasaki, you used the wrong edge of your skis, and they got caught. That’s really dangerous, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was frightened. Are you hurt? Can you stand?”

I’ve embarrassed myself again. The girl didn’t seem to mind at all, however. She smiled at me as she lay on the snow.

“Hey, Mr. Sasaki, don’t mind me. Take a look over there,” she said, raising one arm and pointing to the side.

“I see your ski poles stuck in the snow,” I said.

“Yeah. You did it. You skied for real!”

“……”

“I think you got about ten meters or so,” she added with an ear-to-ear smile.

Was all this calculated? Women are terrifying. I was impressed with her skills, and she was a minor. No wonder women of the right age wouldn’t give a loser like me the time of day. I’d been using the wrong edge of my skis my entire life. It made me appreciate how friendly Ms. Futarishizuka was with me.

“Mr. Sasaki,” said Suzuki, “do you know the rumor about off-campus class?”

“Rumor? Is there a bad rumor circulating among the students?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s like an urban legend passed down at school.”

“Ah, I’m sorry. I only just started working there, so I don’t know it.”

“Supposedly, if you confess your love to someone you like on the last day of class, your love will bear fruit.”

I reached a hand down to her, and she took it and pulled herself to her feet. She made it look so easy, despite her footwear. I could tell she was an experienced skier.

“The boys in our class are all champing at the bit to ask Twelve out.”

“Ah. I see.”

That could be a bit of a problem. But it wasn’t something I could do anything about in my position. That was what Type Twelve herself wanted. Other people’s opinions didn’t matter. It was the whole reason she was so eager to attend my neighbor’s school. And as her teacher, I could already see her working to get her male classmates simping for her. In fact, she was starting to alienate the girls. She’d only just transferred in, too. She had some real talent for this.

“She’s your daughter, right, Mr. Sasaki?” said Suzuki.

“We’re not blood-related, but yes, that’s what our family register says.”

“Wow. I guess there really are kids like the ones you see in TV shows and manga.”

“I think it’s pretty unusual, actually.”

We both brushed the snow off our gear. I glanced at her to see how she was doing, but I didn’t see her holding onto any body parts like she was in pain. That alone came as a great relief. If she’d somehow gotten hurt, I wouldn’t know what to say to her parents.

“Hey, Mr. Sasaki?”

“Yes?”

“I think I kind of like you, too.”

“……”

I was pretty sure I knew what was happening. Ms. Mochizuki had struck out, so they were changing tactics, doing whatever it took.

“Do you hate kids like me?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, Suzuki, but I can’t see you that way.”

“Wow. That took a lot of courage to say, and you shot me down so fast. Don’t you think that was kind of mean?”

“I want to respect your feelings, so I decided to be clear with my response.”

“That’s a matter of perspective, you know.”

“One of my coworkers says that a lot.”

“Can’t you at least get a little flustered?”

“I would only get flustered if I was actually interested.”

“…You must have a pretty lonely life, Mr. Sasaki.”

“I can’t deny that.”

Was Suzuki the spy assisting Little Mika? I’d have to report this to the boss tonight and have him look into her actions over the past few days.