Chương 16: The Universal Language

In contrast to the earlier jumbles of incoherent sound Kurisu had endured all morning, Room 104 sat in an unnatural silence for a space occupied by thirty freshmen. While the girls maintained true whispers and texted beneath their desks, the boys sat transfixed, their eyes locked on the front of the class. On her tiptoes, Ms. Addison reached the uppermost corner of the whiteboard and began writing out an equation.

Kenji sat with his chin resting in his palm, staring blankly past the variables as he spoke out the side of his mouth.

"Dude," Kenji whispered without looking away.

"She's like... a movie star. Look at her." At the adjacent desk, Kurisu tracked the numbers as she wrote them." Sanjutsu," he murmured, retrieving a mechanical pencil.

"Yeah, sure, math," Kenji whispered back, his eyes glazed over.

"That's totally what I was referring to. But seriously, how is she a math teacher? She should be in a magazine or something." When Ms. Addison turned back to the class, three boys in the front row snapped into their seats, obvious in their attempt to cover their slouching.

"Okay," she said, her voice melodic.

"Who can tell me the value of X in this sequence? It's day one of high school, so this should be a relatively easy refresher." With the room held in silence, no one actually looked at the numbers. Kenji let out a long sigh.

"She could tell me X is a potato and I'd believe her." Despite missing the phonetic nuances of the woman's English, Kurisu studied the symbols, understanding that logic remained a universal constant whether in the keeps of his home or a Colorado suburb. A three, a seven, a variable. The calculation itself remained the same. After scribbling the answer in his notebook, Kurisu circled the answer before glancing across the aisle. Kenji stared with a slack jaw, his internal muscle going loose.

As that kuso static from the boy's wasted energy prickled across his skin, Kurisu frowned. Reaching out, he rapped the eraser against Kenji's temple.

"Ow!" Kenji barked, rubbing the side of his head as he glared at Kurisu.

"What's your problem?" The sudden noise broke the trance, drawing the attention of the entire class. Ms. Addison blinked, her lips pursing.

"Is everything okay back there, gentlemen?" His face turning a vivid crimson, Kenji sank low in his chair.

"Fine. Everything's fine. Just... a bug."" Jūgo," Kurisu called out, before catching the language slip." Suman, fifteen," he corrected. Ms. Addison blinked at the board, then looked back to the far corner.

"I... beg your pardon?" she asked. Assuming she simply needed him to repeat the answer, Kurisu pointed his pencil at the whiteboard with a flat gaze.

"X," he stated.

"Fifteen." She paused, her eyes darting across the equation.

"That's... actually correct," she admitted, her smile returning.

"Very good. Your name was?" Kurisu looked up from his notebook.

"Nodaichi."

"Oh, right, my ESL student." She nodded.

"Well, Mr. Nodaichi, that was very quick. Maybe you can come up and show the class how you got that?" Waving her hand, she motioned him toward the board. Kurisu looked at Kenji, then back to the teacher.

"No." A collective gasp rippled through the front row. Her smile faltered for a fraction of a second before she smoothed it over with an airy laugh.

"That's fine. We'll work on participation later." As she turned back and began scripting the next problem, Kenji leaned across the aisle with wide eyes.

"You just told her 'no'," he whispered.

"You have a death wish? Also... how did you do that? You don't even speak English." Tapping the side of his head, Kurisu answered in his halting English." Sanjutsu. Numbers... same." Glancing at Kenji's chest, Kurisu noted the boy's Ki was in check. The shock of the pencil strike had broken the boy out of his stupor over the instructor, reminding him to clench his Tanden closed. Kurisu looked at Kenji, miming a striking motion. Kenji flinched, guarding his temple as he looked down at his empty notebook.

"You're a demon," Kenji muttered. As they stepped into the locker room, Kurisu turned up his nose at the harsh musk of aerosol deodorants. Unlike the bathhouses he was used to, the boys here huddled in corners or faced the lockers, hiding themselves as they changed. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. At his assigned metal cabinet, Kurisu shed his street clothes and folded them before depositing the garments inside. Kenji froze, his eyes widening.

"Dude... what the hell happened to your back? Did you fall into a wood chipper?" Glancing over his shoulder, Kurisu noted the jagged scars crisscrossing his flesh, a permanent reminder of Grahk's cruelty and a history he had no intention of sharing with a boy he had met only hours ago, pulling the t-shirt over his head.

"Let us be off," he commanded. Inside the weight room, they navigated the iron racks and rubber mats. Coach Whalen blew a whistle, the thick muscles of his neck appearing wider than his skull.

"Jesus," Kenji whispered.

"How many steroids did he do? Look at the size of his neck. Can he even have kids anymore?"

"Alright, listen up!" the coach bellowed.

"Day one, I want to see where you're at. Partner up, find a rack, and find your five-rep max on the bench press. Don't be a hero; use a spotter!" The class divided into pairs, scrambling toward the stations. The largest boys, who still stood a full head shorter than Kurisu, claimed the central power racks, slamming plates onto the bars to mark their territory. At the main rack, a boy wore a shirt with the sleeves torn off to reveal his biceps.

Drifting toward a solitary bench in the far corner, Kenji rolled his eyes as Kurisu began walking straight into the heart of the room. As Kurisu neared the adjacent machine, Kenji grabbed his arm.

"Oh no," he muttered.

"Don't do it. That's Brad. He was the star linebacker at Campus. Trust me, you do not want that PR. Just follow my lead and act like you can't lift." Pulling free of the grip, Kurisu continued his course.

"Ugh," Kenji groaned. Laying down on the bench, Brad grunted as he pumped out the five prescribed reps before racking the 135-pound load with a clang. With his chest puffed out, Brad sat up and scanned the room. Kurisu studied the movement and the weight with a calculating eye. So this is the warrior standard, is it, the test of strength for this community. Kurisu stepped up to the empty rack next to Brad's, picking up a 45-pound plate by the rim with one hand to slot it onto the sleeve.

Brad blinked, nudging his spotter.

"Check out the foreigner." After he loaded the second side, Kurisu lay down on the bench, compressing the padding completely, as he flattened it under his higher density. With the bar held in the relaxed grip of Tenouchi used for a katana, he anticipated some resistance, yet the push proved utterly trivial. Exploding upward from his palms, the barbell jumped three inches into the air before falling back into his loose grip, a motion resembling a man bench-pressing a hollow broomstick.

Silence fell over the racks as Brad's jaw dropped. When he sat up, Kurisu looked at the bar in confusion. Turning his gaze toward Brad, Kurisu watched the boy's face shift into a mottled red as his nostrils flared.

"Okay," Brad sneered, standing up.

"Funny guy. You think that's light?" With two 25-pound plates slapped onto his bar for a total of 185 pounds, Brad lay back down. Hovering close, the spotter watched Brad strain as the boy's face turned purple with effort, his arms trembling as he pushed out the fifth rep before racking the bar with a gasp and glaring at Kurisu.

"Your turn, Smallville." Kurisu tilted his head, processing the unfamiliar word. Unsure if the term designated a territory, an insult, or a military rank, he finally dismissed the confusing sounds to focus on the challenge. He would match the boy's standard. Adding the required plates to his own bar, Kurisu reached the benchmark. Ten paces away by the dumbbell rack, Kenji covered his eyes with his hand.

"Absolute train wreck," the boy muttered. On the bench, Kurisu set a mental intention to push the bar looking like he was struggling at least a little. With a single push, the bar rose in a straight line. Sitting up without being winded by the fifth rep, Kurisu looked to Brad, waiting for the next benchmark. Brad stood up, throwing his towel on the floor.

"Are you kidding me? You're lifting it like it's fake! Put some real weight on there if you're so tough." Grabbing two more 45s, Brad loaded his bar to 225 pounds while the spotter shifted his weight nervously.

"Uh, Brad? That's your one-rep max. You sure?"

"Shut up," Brad hissed. Once under the bar, he un-racked the weight, only for gravity to pull it down far too fast as the steel collapsed onto his chest.

"Help! Help!" Brad squeaked. As the spotter grabbed the bar, the two boys struggled together, heaving the weight back up into the hooks. Sitting up to rub his bruised chest, Brad channeled his humiliation into a glare at Kurisu.

"Do it. I bet you can't even move it." At his own bar, Kurisu slid the second 45 onto the sleeve to reach 225 pounds. As he lay back on the bench, a shadow fell over his face. Kenji stood above him, typing furiously into his cracked phone before holding the speaker directly against Kurisu's ear at a low volume.

"You are doing it wrong. You look like a robot," the digital voice whispered.

"Normal people shake. Normal people struggle." Typing another message, Kenji offered a final warning before backing away with his arms crossed.

"If you lift this like a feather, you will be exposed. You should have listened to me." Processing the new information, Kurisu considered how he needed to simulate a struggle to deceive them. Gripping the bar and pushing, he attempted to force a tremor into his elbows as the bar rose, reaching the top of the rep to simulate the grunt of effort he had observed from Brad. The resulting sound emerged flat and monotone, like a phonetic approximation of a scream read aloud from a dictionary.

After racking the weight with a clang, he sat up to face Brad.

"Difficult," Kurisu stated, his face blank. Brad stared at the 225 pounds, then up to Kurisu's dry forehead, before shaking his head.

"You're a freak," he muttered, grabbing his water bottle before retreating to the other side of the weight room. Turning toward Kenji, Kurisu found the boy also shaking his head.

"Worst acting I've ever seen... Ever."