My name is Tenshouin Yurika, and in other people’s eyes I’m a young lady of means.
My father is the president of the Tenshouin Conglomerate, a conglomerate with no small amount of influence in Japanese society.
So my life has reeked of money since I was little.
To sum it up with a phrase from the internet, there’s one line that really moved me when I heard it: filthy rich beyond all human decency.
By rights, a conglomerate—that rotten product of backroom collusion and scheming—should rarely run into a situation like “bankruptcy.” After all, a conglomerate isn’t like those ordinary companies.
Unless every company and bank under its name hits a cash-flow crisis at the same time, or it’s struck by some external force like a terrorist attack, a typical conglomerate can stand without falling for a very long time.
Some have existed since the Meiji Restoration—though they might not have been called conglomerates back then, they were at least the prototype of one.
And yet, all sorts of things in this world are just that unexpected.
Maybe you’d think that even if a conglomerate were to go bankrupt, it should at least roll slowly downhill for a while before it finally collapsed.
But this lousy existence we call the world insists on doing the exact opposite of what you’d expect.
And very unfortunately—for reasons I still don’t understand—I’m the one the world set its sights on and decided to mess with.
“Yurika…”
The one on the phone with me right now is my dad, that middle-aged man who normally comes across as deadly serious.
But the voice coming through the phone now was full of anxiety and helplessness, with none of that confident feeling from before.
“I’ve got some bad news for you… The Tenshouin Conglomerate has gone bankrupt.”
“…”
When I got this call from Dad, I was lying on the little bed in my dorm playing with my phone.
So after hearing him say that, the first thing I did was pull the phone away from my ear and glance at the time widget—June 3rd, Saturday, clear skies, 30.71 degrees Celsius.
A full two-plus months had passed since April Fools’ on the 1st, and the next April Fools’ was still nearly ten whole months away.
Personally, I didn’t think this was a suitable moment for jokes.
So I put the phone back to my ear and calmly said,
“Today is June 3rd.”
“I know. But I’m not joking with you.”
Dad has lived with me a long time, after all, so naturally he knows how I talk.
The moment he heard me state the date, he could roughly grasp what I was getting at.
Anyone else, even if they could understand, would probably need to freeze for a moment before it clicked.
“The Tenshouin Conglomerate really has gone bankrupt.”
I hung up without a word, then sat up, opened the laptop on my nightstand, quickly connected to the outside network, and pulled up Yahoo’s homepage.
In an instant, a headline leapt into view: [The Story Behind the Tenshouin Conglomerate’s Sudden Bankruptcy].
Though I’d braced myself mentally to some degree, the headline still made my heart give an involuntary lurch, and my brow furrowed slightly.
I’ve always been someone who doesn’t let emotion show on my face, but news that could affect the rest of my life still shifted my expression a little.
The Tenshouin Conglomerate had gone bankrupt—which meant my future tuition and living expenses were both now in question.
I’d picked up some management knowledge from Dad since I was young, but compared to the man himself, it amounted to barely scratching the surface.
So Dad definitely hadn’t called to have me turn the tide or anything—in fact, I don’t have that ability.
The purpose of this call, then, should be to discuss the matter of tuition and living expenses with me.
If it were just a matter of trimming my allowance, given Dad’s personality he wouldn’t go out of his way to call and bother me; he’d just text me a heads-up next time he deposited money.
So this call must have been to tell me my allowance had completely fallen through—and, given Dad’s ever-doting nature, he’d probably already thought up a way out for me.
All of the above flashed through my mind in a single instant.
Then I picked up the phone and called Dad back, and the moment it connected, I couldn’t be bothered waiting for him to speak—I just asked directly,
“What should I do?”
“It’s great having a clever daughter. No need for all the chatter.”
There was a note of emotion in Dad’s tone, but I still caught a trace of weariness in it, which left me silent for a moment.
“It’s not exactly honorable, but, Yurika—the only way you can earn your living expenses now is through women.”
“…Women?”
Sharp as my mind usually is, this time I felt something like a system crash.
It had always been me leaving other people unable to follow what I said—this time, at last, someone had said something I couldn’t follow.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means—go live off women, Yurika!”
Dad’s voice was still as magnetic as ever, but as those words rang out, his towering image instantly crumbled to pieces in my heart.
“With your looks and charm, living off women will be absolutely no problem!”
“…Generally speaking, shouldn’t you be telling me to find a wealthy husband and get him to keep me?”
Though I have zero interest in those males whose brains are wired for nothing but ♂mating, Dad’s words still left me helpless.
Without much thought, I said it almost reflexively.
“I’d love to say that too, but, Yurika…”
Dad pondered for a moment, then delivered a line that was, for me, an instant kill,
“Compared to your appeal with women… you seem completely incapable of attracting any sexual interest from men.”
Critical hit!
I, Tenshouin Yurika, despaired utterly over this body of mine—which, despite being female, draws members of the same sex far more than the opposite!
Academy City is a metropolis occupying a third of the western portion of Tokyo, home to a population of 2.3 million, of which over 80 percent (1.8 million) are students.
It possesses the most cutting-edge technology in the world, and the schools gathered there span every type from kindergarten to university.
Rather than a city, it’s better described as one enormous school.
Occupying a third of Tokyo’s area, Academy City is surrounded by a wall like the Great Wall of China, with entry and exit strictly controlled.
Because, under the guise of memorization and mnemonic techniques, all manner of human experimentation is openly carried out here, with brain development written into the students’ curriculum.
And through Academy City’s unique brain development—that is, after working through their so-called “curriculum,” the Power Curriculum Program—the students all acquire something called an ability.
A thoroughly inconceivable existence.
And I, Tenshouin Yurika, happen, very inconveniently, to live in this Academy City surrounded by all kinds of technological products.
The school I attend is Tokiwadai Middle School, one of Academy City’s famed Five Great Schools.
As for abilities—under Academy City’s vast population base, all sorts of different abilities are naturally born.
By range and power they’re divided into Level 0 (Powerless), Level 1 (Low-Level), Level 2 (Irregular), Level 3 (Strong-Level), Level 4 (Great-Level), Level 5 (Superpower), and Level 6 (Absolute Ability).
Of course, Level 6—Absolute Ability—exists only as a theoretical possibility; no one has ever successfully evolved into one.
And in Academy City, physical examinations are conducted at fixed intervals to re-measure everyone, yet six in ten students are Level 0, while there are only seven Level 5 espers in all of Academy City—two of whom attend Tokiwadai.
My own ability is merely Level 3 Telekinesis.
Its rank only counts as rock-bottom within Tokiwadai, and the ability type itself is nothing remarkable.
Looking at it purely from an ability standpoint, it seems I can’t be counted as any noteworthy figure in this Academy City.
And yet, very inconveniently, at Tokiwadai—this all-girls middle school—I’ve instead become the object of countless girls’ adoration, thanks to my pretty face and cold personality… with no fewer pursuers than those two Level 5s, which has given me quite the headache.
Yuri or whatever—it’s honestly baffling.