The Hidden World

Yuki opened his eyes and saw the white wall of the living room in his dorm. Yawning, he grabbed his watch off of the table in front of him and checked the time. It was 7:00.

‘I don’t have class today,’ he remembered sleepily. ‘I can sleep some more.’

He closed his eyes and leaned back into the shoulder of Akira who was still resting beside him. Then as he was about to fall back to sleep, his eyes shot open and he straightened.

‘I have things I need to do,’ he thought.

He got up and went to the bathroom to wash away the sleep from his eyes. Once he finished, he entered the kitchen and began to cook a breakfast for Akira and himself. Then a noise caught his attention and he looked up to see Akira staring at his pan with eyes of anticipation.

‘What is she, a cat?’ Yuki thought to himself. ‘Well, she does have the ears.’

Plating the food, he brought the meal of eggs and what seemed to be bacon to the table and gave one plate to Akira. They dug in and ate in quiet. When they were finished, Yuki brought the dishes back and Akira followed him.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked as he was scrubbing the plates from the breakfast they just had and the dinner he forgot to clean.

“About?” he replied.

“The traitor,” she clarified. “Have you decided?”

Yuki fell quiet and considered his answer. The truth was, he didn’t want to deal with this. At all. It was mainly this Academy’s problem and he felt that they should be ones to fix it. The problem was that Yuki wasn’t confident that the Academy knew that there was a traitor among them.

“I don’t want to, really,” Yuki said out loud. “It seems like a hassle.”

“But?”

“If I don’t do something than this would cause bigger problems in the long run that would affect my time here at the Academy,” Yuki continued. “I’ll have to at least investigate it.”

“And I’ll help you,” Akira said. “Just tell me what you need.”

“First, I’ll need to finish a project of mine,” Yuki said. “That might take a couple of days to complete. And I might to do somethings that aren’t exactly legal.”

“And I’ll help you,” Akira replied brightly.

“These aren’t things you can help me with unless you learn coding in one hour,” Yuki said.

“Wait, coding? So you’re going to be on your laptop the whole time for the next couple days?”

“I’ll stop periodically to eat and to train,” Yuki said. “We will go together at night for our usual routine.”

“No, what I meant was that you won’t have any free time,” Akira complained. “Having leisure time is good for your health.”

“I’ll have enough leisure time after I finish this,” Yuki said, not budging. “And training is important if I am to get strong enough to fight against the Shikaku.”

“Your goal is still them?”

“Of course, I don’t change my goals that quickly,” Yuki replied. "It's just that they aren't the biggest priority right now."

“Then what am I going to do when you’re working?” she asked with a small pout. “I can’t go outside.”

Yuki sighed and went to the table, finishing with his dish cleaning. He picked up his watch and tapped on it for a bit. Then he tossed it to Akira who was behind him.

“There, some games are being downloaded,” he said. “Just play them when you are bored or just watch me as I work.”

Akira fiddled with the watch for a bit before her ears began twitching. She seemed satisfied and flopped down onto the couch, still playing if the screen. Yuki hoped she enjoyed the games. He had to pay for them.

‘Alright, let’s get cracking,’ he thought as he opened the laptop and sat in front of the couch.

What he wanted to do was simple in its idea but incredibly hard in its execution. Using the code he had received from Raphael, Yuki was trying to create his own artificial intelligence. Or rather, trying to improve onto what Raphael already had. This was a project that taking considerably longer than he expected. Just reading and understanding the existing code and spells took Yuki a couple of days to do. Then he had to plan out what it was he wanted included into the new system. And on top of that, he had to prepare new spells or edit the existing ones on scratch paper.

Of course, Yuki was doing all of those things without any urgency. When he had started this project, it was merely for his own entertainment. He thought that it would be quite useful to have an AI assistant with him everywhere he went. But now, he had a real reason to make his system.

Yuki began to type furiously on his laptop. The next step in his project was simultaneously the easiest and the hardest part. His weeks of work previous to today was to create the framework and hammer out the details of what it was he wanted. Now he would be implementing it all.

As he typed, he ran into various errors. This was to be expected and why Yuki expected the whole process to take a couple of days. He was implementing a plan of trial and error. He’ll put in what he wrote on paper and then test to see whether or not it worked. If it did then he would test it along with whatever he had finished already. If something broke then he would have to fix whatever it was that went wrong then do the whole process again.

Yuki didn’t know how long he was on his laptop, tapping away. But when he stopped to take a break, he found Akira sleep on the couch with her head right behind his. He checked the time and found that it was already dinner.

‘Ah, I missed lunch,’ he thought. ‘Not that I’m hungry. It doesn’t seem like Akira was either otherwise she would have called me.’

Yuki got and stretched his sore legs and back. He could feel that he really was sitting for several hours. But it was time spent wisely and he was about halfway through the code portion of his project.

‘I’ll need to finish it up tomorrow then go onto the magic part,’ he thought as he walked toward the kitchen.

He must had made some noise as he heard Akira begin to yawning behind him. The couch creaked and she got up.

“Are we eating now?” she asked sleepily.

“Mhm, I’ll grill some chicken most likely,” Yuki replied. “You can rest on the couch if you want; it’ll only take about ten to twenty minutes.”

Akira nodded but still followed him. She watch him as he cooked and when he was finished she went to sit next to him. Yuki didn’t mind her and ate as normal. She ate beside him.

“We’ll go out to train later tonight,” Yuki said to her as she ate. “I need some exercise after sitting for that long.”

“Hmm?” she said distractedly. “Ah, yes. That’s fine. Should we increase the difficulty?”

“That would be a good idea. I think we can complete level four challenges now,” Yuki answered.

While Akira and him were using the training room, they had discovered another feature that Raphael didn’t mention to them. There were specific challenges in each level that a person could complete and they served as a sort of test for the trainee.

“Yuki,” Akira started.

Yuki stood up and took the dishes.

“Hmm?” he said.

“Ah, nothing,” she mumbled.

Yuki nodded and went to put the dishes in the sink. He’ll clean them when he came back from training. He changed clothes in his bedroom and walked out to meet with Akira. She was already dressed in her training clothes as she always wore them.

“Let’s go,” he said as he walked to the door.

As he put his hand on the handle of the door, he felt something on his shoulder. Yuki looked and saw a hand. Turning his head more, he saw that the hand was connected to Akira. He tilted his head.

“Umm, I just want to say something,” she half mumbled to herself.

“Mhm?” Yuki prompted.

She continued to mumble as her face began to get increasingly red. Yuki watched this with slight amusement.

‘Maybe?’ he thought to himself as he tried to think what it was she wanted.

“This weekend, do you want to go somewhere with me in the city?” he asked her.

Her head shot up and her mouth froze as she processed the words that Yuki had just said. Then she began to shake her head up and down rather violently.

“Okay, then,” Yuki said. “I'll just need to finish things before the weekend.”

He turned and opened the door. As he walked out, he heard a faint whisper come from Akira.

“A date!”