Daily Life
“Room 202, Room 203. This should be it.”
The room I’d been assigned sat close to the lobby. It wasn’t tucked away in some remote corner, and they’d put me right next to Julia’s, so I figured the location was a solid choice.
“Right next door!”
“Shall we take a look inside?”
I’d already gotten a rough sense of the layout, but this was the first time I was seeing the room that would actually be mine. Stepping through the door revealed a space that looked about thirty-three square meters—spacious for a dorm room.
“It’s big, isn’t it?”
Of course it couldn’t compare to where I’d lived before, but considering it was a dormitory, the facilities were impressively good. On top of that, it was a single room—not a four-person or even a two-person setup—which, with my memories of a past life, left me more than satisfied.
“There’s a booklet over here!”
On the desk set against one wall stood a guidebook upright, along with a single card of unknown purpose. I flipped open the guide first and found illustrations paired with instructions on how to use everything.
“Hmm… looks like this card lets you access most of the facilities here…”
Apparently the card handled both entry to Asclepius Dormitory and use of its amenities.
“And… what’s this? A maglev train?”
“Seems like we can ride it to get to Sirius Academy.”
To be honest, Asclepius Dormitory sat fairly far out on the floating island compared to the main school buildings. That had its perks—windows cut into the island’s side let you look out over the exterior—but it also meant longer trips to and from class than most students faced.
So this is how they solved that.
The floating island was large enough that some form of transport was necessary even within its bounds. Among those options, the maglev train was the fastest way to loop the entire island, and it apparently stopped right here at Asclepius Dormitory.
“With this, distance shouldn’t be much of a problem.”
As long as I didn’t oversleep and miss the train, I’d never have to worry about being late.
“Anything else…”
After cramming the miscellaneous facility rules and precautions into my head, we stood up.
“Shall we go grab some lunch?”
“Yeah! Sounds good!”
We hadn’t eaten a thing since setting foot on the floating island, and hunger was starting to bite. Once we finished lunch, I could spend the remaining days studying or focusing on development work for Laplace and Darwin.
With that, Julia and I left the room. The cafeteria lay toward the lobby, so we were passing Room 201 when its door suddenly swung open.
“Whoa!”
Julia couldn’t dodge in time and smacked her head straight into the door.
“W-what the…”
“Uh, uh?”
“Ugh… who… wait? That face looks familiar…?”
The person who emerged was the regressor Yeona. The unusual part was that she wasn’t in her male disguise this time.
“I’ve seen that face somewhere… who is it?”
Julia clearly wasn’t placing her. The overall build was similar to when Yeona had been dressed as a man, but the change in gender was throwing her off.
Then recognition seemed to click. Julia clapped her hands and blurted out,
“Ah! You’re that! That! The little sister of the guy who suddenly barged into the fight and stabbed me with a sword, right?!”
“…Uh…”
“I knew it! Do you happen to have your older brother’s phone number? I’ve got a personal reason I need it!”
As she spoke, Julia’s eyes flicked toward the Glock 17 nestled in her holster.
I should probably stop this…
Under normal circumstances it might have been an attempt to get a guy’s number and chat him up. Right now it looked a lot more like she was trying to get contact info so she could assassinate him.
“Wha—!”
“I’m confiscating the pistol. Don’t even think about using it for a while.”
“Hey, why?! The instructors already collected all the ammo—there’s nothing in it!”
“I just have a bad feeling about it.”
Anyway, I’d known she was somewhere in the dorm, but I hadn’t expected the room right next door. I offered Yeona a light smile.
“We ran into each other briefly after getting off the ship, but this is the first time since then, isn’t it? Mind if we grab a meal together?”
A month had passed. In that time, the entrance exam had given Yeona and me plenty of chances to interact. Living in neighboring rooms helped, and Yeona had been drowning in guilt over using her assassin techniques; helping her work through that had naturally drawn us closer. She still seemed to keep a little distance from me for reasons I didn’t fully understand—maybe something from a past I didn’t know about. I could only trust that time would sort it out.
Iris, on the other hand, I hadn’t seen nearly as often. In fact, the stories Iris passed along while I was in Lucifer’s identity were more detailed than anything I’d learned meeting her in this body. Part of it was that she’d been assigned to Astraea Dormitory, a fair distance from here; the rest was that she almost never left her room. Years of back-alley living had left her with a shut-in streak so strong I could count her outings on one hand. Even after three years of helping her adjust to society after we first met, she’d never had peers she could treat as equals, and that only made it worse.
She’s probably afraid of facing someone she could actually meet as an equal.
Leading the students during the practical exam had been possible only because she’d seen them as people to protect, not as equals to socialize with. A difference in perception, you could say. Iris was full of altruism, consideration, and a strong sense of responsibility—but her social skills lagged far behind. That was something she’d have to fix gradually by interacting with the other students. Mixing the information Iris had given me as Lucifer with what I’d observed myself produced a fairly reliable approach. In the end, time would take care of everything.
I woke up, finished getting ready first thing, and opened my door. Fresh air from outside brushed past me. The humidity was neither too high nor too low—pretty decent weather for the first day of the term. While Laplace fed me the day’s schedule and weather summary, I arrived at Julia’s door and found it still firmly shut.
She couldn’t still be asleep… could she?
“Julia, wake up.”
“….”
“Julia, you’re not still sleeping, are you?”
“….”
“Julia. Today’s orientation day.”
“…Mmm… wanna sleep more…”
“…Laplace. Open the door.”
[Understood, Master.]
The moment Laplace, who had already secured facility access rights, unlocked Julia’s door, I pushed it open and stepped inside. There she was, still in her sleep clothes, dead to the world.
“Hey.”
“Mmm…”
“Get up.”
“Nooo… Julia wants to sleep more…”
“….”
Drastic measures were required.
—Laplace.
[Taking measures.]
Laplace immediately connected to the motor installed beneath Julia’s bed.
I prepared this for exactly this kind of situation.
I’d spent the past month developing all sorts of gadgets, but not everything I made was strictly practical. This bed, for instance, came equipped with specialized wake-up features.
“Start it.”
BEEEEEEP—!
BEEEEEEP—!
The alarm clock on the nightstand roared to life, blasting a staggering 110-decibel shriek in every direction. Julia had a long history of simply shutting off alarms and going right back to sleep, so this one was linked to the bed’s weight sensors—it wouldn’t stop until she actually got up.
“Ugh… so loud… turn it off…”
After a brief moment of agony, Julia activated her unique ability, creating a vacuum around herself that completely blocked out the sound.
“….”
What a waste of talent. An absolute, colossal waste of talent. If the founding headmaster of Sirius Academy could see this, he’d be weeping in his grave. A school established to nurture gifted students, and here one of them was using her unique ability just to stay in bed longer.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
VRRRRR—!
The motor under the bed spun up and began shaking the mattress violently from side to side.
“A-aaaah… save me…!”
Unable to withstand the equivalent of a magnitude-7 earthquake, Julia tumbled off the mattress onto the floor. I thought that had finally done it…
…until she simply fell asleep right there on the ground.
“….”
I admit defeat. Engineering has lost. Machines truly cannot conquer the human will to sleep.
“…Just wake up whenever and come out. I’ll head over first.”
“Mmm…”
After all that, she ought to get up on her own eventually… right? Surely she wouldn’t set the absurd record of being late on the very first day.