Page 86 of Pandion

“That’s enough now!” Harumine flung the door open, ready to give Kagesawa a few stern words, but Kagesawa merely snorted and chuckled in his usual relaxed manner.

“Cute…” his voice trailed off, but it was enough to throw Harumine off.

“What?”

Your freshman ID photo. What a tiny little Satoru, awww-uh.His face was begging a firm punch, much too happy to be decent.

“I think we’re done here.” Harumine grabbed him by the arm to pull him along.

“Sure.” Kagesawa smiled.I got what I was here for. Also, I can revisit whenever I feel like it.

“Is something wrong?” Hase-sensei asked, although he was still too preoccupied with the confounding diagnostic test results to actually pay attention.

“He’s going to need a break.”

“Oh? All right, don’t go too far.” The professor continued to stare at his screen.

Harumine took a quick look at what was so fascinating. There was a visual representation of the activation levels during test four, with the whole measured area glowing red.

“I still think it’s got to be a calibration error.” Fujitani-sensei stared at her end of it.

Is it test four they’re looking at?Kagesawa asked and put on his jacket.

Yes.Having done these tests and seen their results many times before, the image was undeniably disturbing.

Don’t worry about it. I was bored, so I responded to the tasks with a stream of research data from next door. They’re doing an interesting study on tendril elasticity looking for growth patterns that promote better tendril health. There’s currently only one student doing all the work in there, so I processed some of the raw feedback for them while I was doing my thing. It was fun.

You have a strange sense of fun.Harumine sighed. “I need breakfast.”

“That might be tricky to arrange. It seems the cafeteria is working with less than half of its usual staff. People have been shuffled around to deal with other concerns.” Kagesawa headed for the door.

“And you know this, how?”

“Someone should probably fire the mail server administrator for gross negligence.” They exited into the corridor with Yajima not far behind, periodically asking Kagesawa either how, when or what. Kagesawa brushed him off to troubleshoot the food issue. “We may have better luck at the konbini, honestly.”

“You’re probably right.”

“After that, I think I’m going to set up a system on the student intranet to distribute some first aid to the students whoare looking to go home and are stuck here. The staff seem busy taking care of the needs of the students who are staying. Helping the leavers leave should ease that load and make it more manageable.”

Chapter 32

Stocked up with a few bags of konbini food, snacks and drinks, Kagesawa, Harumine and Yajima returned to the dorm. Kagesawa started with his share of the project. Yajima, now oddly invested, was charting for opportunities to help finance the endeavour in case Kagesawa’s assets were insufficient.

Instead of wasting time waiting for them to do the bulk of the work, Harumine decided to do some field research on what was needed and how to best provide that to the students. He spent several hours going around the different houses of thedorm, interviewing the students, listening to their concerns and providing some much needed reassurance that help was on the way.

The SEU was the largest, most prestigious empath university in the country, but it was by no means the only one. If the situation was this bad here, it couldn’t have been much better elsewhere. There were thousands of empath students stranded and struggling at schools less equipped to handle the emergency. The finances required to help them all were beyond any one person, but if they could set this up so that it would help distribute donations across the schools to where they were needed, there had to be others willing to help.

Can you implement a donating system? How big a load can the servers handle if we invite a couple more schools into the mix?Harumine continued to brainstorm with Kagesawa, who was coding but more responsive than usual.

Yes, sure. Once this is up and running, it shouldn’t be a problem expanding it as needed. It’ll be good PR for the school, so they should be willing to cooperate. The only issue I can foresee is that the bigger it gets, the more likely we are to run into trouble with permits and legislation, but I’ll see what I can do.

Harumine walked across the yard to another dorm building. The worst of the commotion had died down, but the remaining students had gathered into the common room. They were trying to organise a safe exit for their local friends who needed a discreet way out without being hassled or followed.

Since the treaty had been signed, there were fewer reports of violence on the streets, but the front entrance of the SEU was still a hotspot for the more die-hard protesters, and it would take some pacing to let everyone out through the few backways undetected. With the front entrance blocked, it had been astruggle to bring in the necessary food and supplies for a few days now. Having the backways remain open for use was vital.

When Harumine inserted himself into the conversation for the third time that day, he heard a few hushed comments he couldn’t quite make out—now a familiar occurrence.

He’d always stood out and had a reputation, and it was why the students were showing him—practically an outsider—such respect. However, the strange, curious looks he received now differed from what he was used to.

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