Page 87 of Pandion

Once he was done with his usual speech and the questions died down, he turned to one of the students who’d been taking notes for him to ask what the whispers were about. The student’s face twisted into a frown.

“Oh, that. It’s nothing worth mentioning.” She slipped out a nervous laugh.

“I’d like to know.”

“Really, it’s nothing. A ludicrous rumour going around. A joke someone thought was funny.”

“Now I’m even more curious.” Harumine tried to ease her nerves with a smile. She seemed to respond favourably.

“Well, someone from B-house reported seeing a tall, handsome ghost walking around campus in the middle of the night.”

“Oh?”

“The ghost was reported to be carrying a lifeless body in his arms. They said the body resembled you, senpai.” She blushed as she recounted the story. “Obviously it couldn’t possibly be you, but since you showed up today and you match the description, some of the third and fourth year students got excited thinking it confirms the story.”

“A ghost? Haha…” Harumine’s forced laugh was so obviously fake it was painful to know it had come out of his mouth.

Another student, this time a young man, joined the conversation.

“I was at C-house yesterday and we had a chat with Harumine-senpai’s new link. Some were saying the ghost must have been senpai’s link, and I can attest he was tall, but handsome? No offence, but he seemed average at best to me. Don’t get me wrong, we had a great conversation. He seems like an interesting fellow, but a handsome ghost, strong enough to carry Senpai? No, definitely not.” This statement, while a welcome addition to thwart the rumour, somehow didn’t sit right with Harumine. Average at best? Not strong enough? Kagesawa had pulled Harumine up from a dead hang to save his life!

“I thought he was gorgeous, though,” another female student piped in. The two young women had a moment of camaraderie sharing their opinions and giggling about it, and Harumine was about to nod along when he abruptly realised what he was about to do.

“Ah, anyway, I can assure you I was not carried by a ghost in the middle of the night.” He wasn’t entirely sure if Kagesawa had indeed carried him all the way from the lab to the dorm, but it was technically not a lie. Kagesawa was perfectly alive, a human being and not a ghost.

“Yes, it does seem like a silly rumour. I guess since Senpai is practically a celebrity, it’s feeding people’s imaginations.”

A celebrity? Since when? His only merit was that he’d been a diligent student.

“It’s crazy to think the legendary Harumine-senpai is suddenly here to help us. I was in despair this morning, but now I feel like there’s hope I can go home safely sometime soon.”

Legendary? Holy hell, that was even worse…! What were these expectations, this pressure? These people were expecting him to solve their problems. How could he guarantee any of it would work out? There were a lot of them stranded here, and he wasjust a normal person. Kagesawa was the one currently doing all the heavy lifting.How’s it going? Does it look like it’s going to work?How long will it take?

I’m going to set this up so that all of the donations are direct transfers between individuals. We’ll bypass having to set up an NPO, at least for the time being. I’ve got Yajima working on the donations and marketing. I’m currently working on an app that allows the user to anonymously pay for a person’s train ticket for them. People can submit their preferred ticket information; the system will assign spaced out departure slots, make reservations and allow others to pay for the tickets.

Kagesawa seemed well on top of it. He’d been listening to the feedback Harumine had been passing on to him, made adjustments and sustained his motivation for hours. Harumine could tell this had involved several cups of coffee from the jitters he was experiencing, but not nearly as many as he’d expected and braced himself for.

“Are you headed to D-house next?” The note-taking student handed Harumine the notes she’d written.

“Yes.”

“All right, there’s probably fewer people heading home from there, but they may be interested in food and supplies.”

“Oh?”

“The students housed at D are primarily from the research department. All they’re interested in is the pursuit of data and finishing their passion projects. A lot of them will stay for as long as the school will have them.”

That made sense. Harumine had also bumped into a few students with nowhere else to go, so hopefully the school would stay open and provide safe space for them for as long as they needed to sort things out. He relayed this information to Kagesawa and headed to the next house.

I recruited Nimura-kun and a couple of his friends from yesterday to help out with the coding. He’s working on a system that allows you to pay for orders of food and supplies to be delivered to undisclosed addresses. The sensitive data will of course be protected to ensure everyone’s safety, but we are going to be as open about the mechanics of it as possible.

Kagesawa was working at a student BCI that Nimura had arranged for him. He’d requested for a keyboard and an extra screen to have a similar setup to what he was used to having at home. Some of the other students were watching him work, a bit too curious, forgetting that they’d each been assigned a task they were supposed to be doing.

Yajima will distribute it to the other schools when it’s done and we’ve shown it’s operational. If there’s time, we’ll make an installer and offer it to anyone who needs it if there’s demand for it.Once he was done reporting to Satoru, Kagesawa emptied his coffee cup and got back to work.

This thing needed to be stable, smooth-running and have no significant security vulnerabilities. With such a tight schedule, there was bound to be something wrong with it, but he was determined to make sure it was not going to be anything major.Can you check my code for me?he instructed the organism.

For what?

---