3.1-Painters on loose

I woke up at exactly 6:30 in the morning, and the alarm I set off was pretty handy when waking me up.

I proceeded to dress up for my second day of school, made some toast with eggs that I bought from the store yesterday. It tasted pretty good, I gotta say.

I grabbed my bag full of fresh textbooks and including my map.

What is this map, really? It's too complicated. The school map is different for each, but how different? Is there a certain limit to the differences? What are the limits? Are there no limits at all?

Leaving the dorm, I found Tachino on his way to school.

"Oh, hey Kian! Have you heard the news?"

"Huh?"

"Guess you haven't. It was in the mailbox this morning."

"What was it about?"

"Well, you see...It's not good news, but we have a test."

What? A test?

"What kind of a test is it?"

"Dunno, the letter just told us to go to the grass field."

"Ah, I see."

What kind of test are we going to take now? The answer to this was solved, but unexpectedly later on.

"What the hell...?"

We arrived to the grass field. It was easy to find since it was unnecessarily enormous. About 2 football fields? or maybe 2 and a half.

We got closer to the field, finding ourselves a...battle field in front of our eyes.

No, I mean literally.

Some of my classmates were yet to arrive, and some were here, all in a crowd. I saw 3 other crowds hurdling each other, around the battlefield.

The battlefield I referred to looked like a training ground. There were obstacles and walls placed, bags of heavy flour onto the side, a huge storage room in the middle of the field. There were three separate tents on each side of the field. Each tent had guns, probably ones without bullets, vests, and...bags of paintballs.

Ah, is this what K-Senpai warned me about?

Everyone seemed to gather after about 5 minutes.

"Hey, hey, hey, what's going on over here?"

"Why are there..guns? are we gonna kill each other or what?"

"I thought this was supposed to be a test! Not some, bullet shooting camp."

"Yes, technically, it is a test."

Ms. Serah entered the field with a microphone on her right hand. She had her hair tied up, wearing military clothes.

"Class of A-3, gather up in that tent."

"Tch, what a waste of time." One student remarked as he walked towards the tent. He seemed annoyed by Ms. Serah instructing us.

I started walking towards the tent alone. I lost sight of Tachino, I'm sure he's somewhere around, no need to bother.

"You're alone?"

Kasuna spoke to me. She was the one to speak, but I decided to talk with her a bit since she's most likely to have a logical explanation of this situation.

"Yes, I am, and you too."

"..."

"Do you know what kind of test would it be?"

"I'm not sure of that, actually. I thought it might've been a paintball game. For example, we use paintballs in the space of laser games."

"That's what I thought, too. But what could this be evaluating of?"

"Physical, mental, and how much you can withstand the guns."

I had an understanding of what she was talking about. But why would the school want t to evaluate that?

"...Evaluating people by how much fears they can handle might matter for the Trions. Composure is the key, after all." Kasuna spoke more to me today, I...should be happy, I guess.

We reached the tent, while some people were still behind us.

"Alright, let's have you guys know some things first. This is a test, yes. An evaluation at the beginning of the year. However, other than the written tests on the papers you wrote is not what we're doing today. Your physical state, mental state, and how well you use a particular situation will be evaluated here. Before we get started, one of the admins ish here to watch over this test. His name is-"

"-Andddd, stop right there! I'd like to take all the spotlight!♥"

"...This is why I wanted to suggest another admin in here."

"Oooh, what lovely faces you have♥ I've seen some of you guys before, right?♥" He glared at me for a second with...perverted eyes.

I guessed that it was K-Senpai. I was right.

"Hey, by the way...Kian, you lied didn't you?♥"

"About my name? I apologize."

"Don't worry about it, teehee♥"

K-Senpai went close up to me and whispered into my ears.

"Besides, you knew that I wasn't a student here, that's why you lied, did you?♥"

"..."

"ANYWAYS♥ Let me, K-S-EN-PA-I♥ tell you all about the rules of this test. Be careful, I'm very strict♥"

"No, I shall explain, K."

"Whattt? No fair, hmph!"

Ms. Serah, who was about to burst out of annoyance, shut down K-Senpai's mouth and started to talk to us without any delay.

"Ehem, as you guys noticed, we will be on the battleground today for our first assessment. You shoot the opponents with the paintballs given onto the black vest we would all equip, and they're out. Don't worry about having to reload, come back to your team's assigned tent and we will reload them within seconds. You are not allowed to take off your vests and hide them. You are not allowed to shoot more than at most 3 people; you have to wait for about 3 minutes after you can shoot. The vests are connected with Bluetooth to all the guns, so when it is hit with a paintball, the gun will be notified as taking out one person. The vest that got hit will notify the owner's gun as "out," which would stop the person who got out from shooting. The same goes for students who shot 3 people. The gun will not fire until after 3 minutes have passed. If it's confusing then please raise your hands."

A complete silence welled across the tent.

"How would you pick the teams? How many and who are in the teams? Would we be against of other classes?"

Kasuna poured in her questions to Ms. Serah as she looked to her direction.

"The teams will be-"

"The teams oh ho! you know, we were going to do it class verses class, but figured that it's too many people! So we decided to team each class into teams of two, and the tents will be your class's tent♥Of course it's the same for the other classes! No exceptions!♥"

"So you mean, Mr. K-"

"Ah uh Kasuna-chan♥ Call me K-Senpai, would you?♥"

"K-k-senp-ai.."

Kasuna was very, no, extremely embarrassed after wording the phrase.

"Wow, you both had the same reaction! How lovely♥"

"A-anyways, K-senpai, you mean that although we are in the same class, we would be considered as enemies and that we would meet each other when we reload our guns with paintballs?"

"Ah hah, you catch up pretty quickly, don't you, Kasuna-chan!♥ Yes, so if you guys meet when reloading your guns, what would you do? Oh no!♥ That's for you to decide."

K-senpai was oddly...testing us. He told us rules, but didn't answer questions that came up later such as "what if..." "what would you do if..."

He may have wanted to see us thinking strategies for those.

"K, please let me introduce the...teams...shall we?"

Ms. Serah's voice was about to rage with anger towards K-senpai as he quickly moved out of the lion full of anger.

"Good luck guys, We'll be watching you♥"

"Yes, please do not come back from where you're going."

We should all take Ms. Serah to her therapist someday.

"Anyhow, here are your teams I shall announce. Flin and Celia, Tachino, and Bauman..."

I hope I don't get any uncooperative teammate-

"Kasuna and Kian, Grace and Ichia..."

That's not a cooperative teammate Ms. Serah.