Three Chances

[Year 3, April 01, 14:32]

[Location: Tokyo, 11th District.]

[Mission: Successfully join the police academy by completing the police academy test.]

[Mission details: It is not easy to obtain the qualification to join the police academy, and it is even more difficult to break through the numerous obstacles. Please successfully pass the entrance examination and join the police academy.]

Ichijō Mirai opened his eyes and saw the alley in the sunlight, as well as the system prompt.

His eyes rested on the system alert: Year 3?

[Organization Newcomer] is year zero, [Police Academy Newcomer] is year three, that means...

He lifted the hem of his shirt and saw a brown scar on his white abdomen, a gunshot wound.

It was a gunshot wound, exactly the same as the one he received in the middle of Year 0, but instead of a new wound that would tear if he moved too much, it was an old wound that had been slowly healing for three or four years.

"Same character, different timelines," Ichijō Mirai said, lowering the hem of his coat, "not a multi-protagonist model, but a multi-timeline model."

"The main line is made up of three different parts of the timeline, each influencing the other?"

He scanned the fifth requirement explaining [Police Academy Newcomer] again and frowned.

The fifth request was an obvious hint that a rather important NPC was lamenting the fact that the protagonist was too good to go into the darkness, and should be flourishing in the sunlight.

The problem is, Ichijō Mirai has met only a handful of important NPCs so far, such as Gin and Vodka.

Either way, he didn't feel like regretting being a member of the organization, let alone regretting it at least ten times... wait a minute.

"No," he stared at the prompt, his tone subtle, "As long as it's 'I hope the protagonist is not a member of the organization', it will be considered completed once, right?"

The tone, it was a question, but as he said it, Ichijō Mirai had already come to a definite conclusion.

"Could these completions be due to the two good-tempered code members having the thought, 'Does the organization really have no threshold to accept such an immoral guy?'"

"No."

"I have a good temper and I'm a code member, so I'm not petty and vindictive. I'm also very moral, and I've been certified by Gin as having a 'High Moral Sense'."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh."

This is not a place to stay, and this is not a place to think.

Ichijō Mirai ignored the fifth hint in a human manner, and stepped out of the alley, seeing the entrance to the police academy not far away.

The gates of the police academy were open, revealing a section of open space and a faint target, and a red banner hung over the entrance, simply welcoming the new students and stating: [New Student Orientation Center].

Below the banner is the new student reporting place, reporting place is very simple, only a long table and a few chairs, three or four middle-aged men with a serious expression and dress uniformly or stand or stand around the distribution, should be the police academy instructors.

The most important thing is: there are guns on the table.

There were four or five guns on the table, lined up side by side, crowding a book that looked like a register.

The black guns glistened in the sunlight with an intoxicating sheen.

Ichijō Mirai didn't go over there right away, he watched without moving and saw a newcomer check in.

The newcomer had come running in empty-handed, and was sweating profusely when he stopped at the newcomer's registration desk, gasping for breath and saying something.

Ichijō Mirai thought that the newcomer was out of breath even as he spoke, and decided that the newcomer didn't quite fit the image of a reserve police officer, only to find that the instructors looked the newcomer up and down for a few seconds, and their stern expressions eased.

A seated instructor pushed the register and opened his mouth to say something, and some fragmented voices drifted over, "Signed...ten chances...don't worry..." 

With the instructor's words, the newcomer gradually showed an incredulous expression, as if he had heard something astonishing, and although Ichijō Mirai couldn't hear his voice, he could hallucinate, "Huh?"

Seeing this, the instructor's expression that had been easing back up and his voice got louder, "You're going to be a police officer in the future!"

"Hurry up!"

The rookie hurriedly signed his name, took one of the guns on the table, and walked into the police academy with one of the instructors.

Almost at the same time, one of the instructors with a gun came out of the academy, put the gun back on the table, said something to the other instructors, and the instructors got serious again and waited with bated breath for the next new student to report.

Ichijō Mirai looked around for a moment before stepping out of the blind spot of the instructors and into view.

He walked up to the new student registration desk, "Hello, I'm a new student."

The instructors looked over, Ichijō Mirai looked at them, they looked at Ichijō Mirai, and the more they looked, the more serious their expressions became.

The instructor sitting at the table had sharp eyes, like a wolf, "Hello, new student."

He pushed the register, "Register."

"This year's police academy is different from the previous years, learning from the model of the western military academy, there are a lot of innovations and reforms, the register is one of them, register your name in the police academy on it."

"It's 'your name at the academy'," the instructor emphasized, "it can be anything but your real name, as long as you can call it by name, except that you'll have to wear it for six months."

"Register."

Huh, register for anything? There's no such rule in the Western Military Academy.

Ichijō Mirai took the register and took a cursory look at the names on it: [Shimoizumi Keita], [Morofushi Hiromitsu], [Furuya Rei], [Inoue Yūta], [Matsuda Jinpei] and so on and so forth.

They're all proper human names.

He looked at the instructor, who had a serious face and was not one to joke, and wrote his name in the register: [Ichijō Mirai].

The instructor looked at Ichijō Mirai's entry and coughed heavily at the first word of his name, "Ahem!"

The other instructors who were either observing the street, looking at the interior of the academy from afar, or chatting, all turned their eyes over to the seated instructor, they exchanged glances, their expressions became unanimously serious, and they took their seats.

Ichijō Mirai put on the cap of his pen, took in their unusual reaction, and asked politely, "Is there a problem?"

Instructor Slate: "No."

"My name is Onidzuka Hachizo, I'm one of the instructors in charge of this class of police cadets, you can call me Instructor Onidzuka," he glanced at his colleagues and added gravely, "if you're successful in joining the police academy."

"So here, I'll read you the entrance test for this class of police cadets: fifty-meter shooting training."

"There are several identical guns on the table, you can pick one at random, follow me into the police academy to shoot a 50-meter target, no matter how many rings you hit, as long as you hit it, you can be considered to have passed the test."

"You have three chances."