Back home, she first cleaned up the microwave curry container and empty cup-noodle cup left on the coffee table from the night before, then tossed them into the trash.
Next, she tore open the packaging on a box of frozen fried rice she had just bought, shoved it into the microwave, and set it for three minutes.
“Ding.”
She brought the steaming fried rice to the table and scooped up a bite with a plastic spoon while dumping the whole stack of club flyers she had collected at school onto the coffee table, spreading them out in a fan.
The words spoken by the boy who had helped her pick up the flyers in the hallway that afternoon resurfaced in her mind.
—Then why keep looking for clubs where you can use your phone?
—Because it can’t interfere with the evenings.
—Then why not find one that ends at five?
“…He had a point.”
Biting down on her spoon, she recalled what had happened while visiting several club booths that afternoon.
By the end of every conversation, the upperclassmen’s expressions had looked more and more like they were staring at a troublesome person.
—I guess I was too blunt again.
“…Whatever. Everyone seems to have a problem with getting out of school on time.”
She muttered to herself and refocused her attention on the flyers spread across the coffee table.
Her requirements for a club were simple: no skill required, no physical exertion, absolutely no club activities running late, and most importantly—it had to let her leave school at exactly five in the afternoon so she could hurry home and participate in all the game’s evening events.
She started with the sports flyers.
Badminton Club, Basketball Club, Volleyball Club.
Activity hours: after school until six thirty, often with additional voluntary practice.
“…Six thirty is too late. Eliminated.”
Next came the science clubs.
Science Experiment Club.
Activity hours: after school until five thirty, with members frequently required to stay and clean up afterward.
“Five thirty, plus cleanup. Eliminated.”
Then her eyes landed on the Computer Club and Literary Club flyers.
She picked up the Computer Club flyer. It read:
—Activity hours: after school until five.
—Activities: basic programming, free computer use, and no unnecessary lingering.
“No unnecessary lingering?”
She raised an eyebrow. The wording struck a chord with her. More importantly, everyone in the Computer Club sat in front of their own screens, so there was no need to socialize or spend time in the sun.
“Computer Club ends at five.”
Her eyes lit up for a moment before she turned the flyer over.
—“In-club competitions and project presentations every Friday.”
“Eliminated.”
She set the Computer Club flyer aside, then picked up the Literary Club flyer.
It read:
—Activity hours: after school until five.
—Activities: free reading, creative exchanges, and quiet self-study.
She stared at the four words “creative exchanges” for several seconds.
“Exchanges… They probably don’t happen every time.”
She decided to pretend that part didn’t exist.
Looking at the few lines, she began imagining the scene: a quiet classroom, everyone reading or writing their own things, nobody chatting, nobody running around, and nobody demanding teamwork.
At least based on the information currently available, this was the least troublesome option she could find.
She glanced at the two flyers on the table again, then casually switched the game screen back to her phone.
The wasteland base on the screen was running smoothly. She skillfully sent out a gathering party, checked that she had enough resources to build another structure, and only then withdrew her gaze with satisfaction.
“…Then this one it is.”
It was just a matter of choosing the least troublesome pit to fall into, anyway.
That night, exactly at ten o’clock.
The in-game Bear Trap Hunt event began right on schedule.
The alliance channel was instantly flooded with messages. Rally points kept popping up, while the alliance leader shouted orders in Discord and the alliance channel and frantically tagged the rookies who had sent the wrong heroes.
Sitting at her computer desk, she ate the fried rice left over from earlier with a plastic spoon. Her laptop displayed a wasteland strategy site, while her phone sat beside the keyboard, her fingers mechanically switching between screens.
“The hero joining the rally is…”
“Don’t use the wrong one…”
Muttering under her breath, she clicked to join the rally.
After a frantic round of rallying, switching heroes, and rallying again, the event finally ended smoothly as everyone worked together to bring the bear down.
Just as she was about to shut down the game and take a shower, the alliance leader suddenly posted an announcement in the alliance channel that every member needed to pay attention to:
—“Before you log off, remember to activate your shields!”
—“Also, leave all the generous resource rewards you got from killing the bear in your mail. Don’t claim them!”
—“Do not put everything in your warehouse, or the enemy alliance will scout you, send their whole army over, and loot all your resources. By then, it’ll be too late to cry!”
She looked at the string of warnings in red and silently nodded.
The first rule of wasteland survival: don’t flaunt your wealth.
She activated her shield and confirmed that the bear points and resource rewards were safely sitting in the unclaimed section of her mailbox. Only then did she log out and go to bed.
There were no parents nagging her here, and no one cared what time she went to sleep. Dinner might always be microwave food, but at least every inch of land in this wasteland was under her control.
The next morning.
During morning study period, sunlight spilled across the wooden desktops.
At the front of the classroom, the homeroom teacher had his back to the class and was laboriously writing a long string of mathematical formulas on the blackboard with chalk.
Below, she sat hunched slightly in her seat, pressing her phone firmly beneath her textbook.
One hand pretended to hold a pen and copy notes into her notebook, while the other was hidden below the desk, skillfully tapping the screen.
—The base’s resource-gathering party had just returned.
—Send out the next one immediately.
—Building upgrade countdown.
—Tap the acceleration item.
This was a silent battle of life and death.
She had to split her attention between watching every movement the teacher made at the front of the room and blindly managing all kinds of resources in the mobile game.
“…For the next problem, let’s have a student solve it.”
The teacher’s voice rang out without warning.
Her heart jolted. Her nerves instantly tightened to their limit. She shoved her elbow forward and precisely pushed the phone deep into her desk, then raised her head and straightened her back, staring brightly at the blackboard and perfectly putting on the serious expression of someone saying, “Teacher, I completely understand.”
Thank goodness, the unlucky student called on this time was from the group next to hers.
She secretly let out a sigh of relief, then slipped her hand back into the desk the moment the teacher turned back to the blackboard.
By noon, it was lunchtime.
The lively atmosphere returned to the classroom.
Several classmates gathered around, chattering about the latest gossip and new items at the school store.
“Hey, did you actually watch that trending Japanese drama yesterday?”
One of her classmates leaned over while biting into a fried chicken nugget from her lunchbox.
“…Huh? Nope.”
She answered halfheartedly while hiding her left hand beneath the desk and typing a reply with her thumb to a private message from an alliance officer: “Got it. Shield is still active.”
“Why are you looking at your phone all day? Is there a vault inside it?” her classmate teased.
“Pretty much.”
She lied without batting an eye and tapped the building acceleration button.
“For real…” The classmate rolled her eyes and was about to keep asking, but she smoothly changed the subject. “By the way, where are you guys going for clubs this afternoon?”
The subject change worked. Everyone around her immediately started chattering about clubs, completely unaware that she had just finished killing two waves of monsters under the desk.
After barely surviving the dull afternoon classes, the dismissal bell finally rang.
Following the conclusion she had reached after a rigorous evaluation at the coffee table the previous night, she didn’t linger in the hallway. Instead, she took her club application and headed straight for her destination.
—The Literary Club classroom.
The moment she pushed open the door, a faint paper smell drifted toward her.
She stood in the doorway and looked around.
Quiet, no physical activity, ending promptly at five, and not much socializing.
At least based on the information currently available, this was the least troublesome option she could find.
She had just started to relax when, behind the desk at the back of the classroom, a serious-looking upperclasswoman wearing black-rimmed glasses set down the pen in her hand.
“A new member?”
The upperclasswoman pushed up her glasses, her sharp gaze sweeping over the freshly completed application in her hands.
“…Yes,” she answered hesitantly.
“I’m the president of the Literary Club.” The upperclasswoman stood and pointed decisively at the thick stack of papers on the desk. “According to club regulations, the first step in joining is to submit a short story or personal essay as a writing sample. You can officially join only after it passes review.”
The hand holding her application froze in midair.
She rapidly reorganized the information she had just gathered in her mind.
Leave school at five.
No exercise.
No sun.
Quiet.
She could sit down.
—But she had to write a story.
She was silent for several seconds.
“…The flyer didn’t say anything about this, did it?”
“The flyer was only a recruitment summary.”
She stared at the thick stack of manuscript paper on the desk and quickly ran through several options.
If she quit now, she would have to find another club, look through the flyers again, and deal with more upperclassmen.
Too much trouble.
“…I understand.”
She took the blank manuscript paper and pen from the club president, found an empty seat by the window, and sat down.
The tip of the pen touched the paper.
To her, writing wasn’t something that required deep emotion or ornate language. It was simply a necessary procedure on the road to her goal of leaving school on time.
Three minutes later.
She carried the finished paper back to the desk with a blank expression and pushed it across.
The club president looked down. Written on the paper was:
> “The sun is red, and the sky is blue.” >
An eerie silence filled the classroom.
The club president looked up and stared at her in silence.
“What?” she asked.
“How long did it take you to write this?”
She glanced at the clock on the wall.
“About three minutes.”
The club president was silent for even longer.
“…You know this is an entrance writing sample, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are there only these two sentences?”
She answered as if it were obvious:
“Because I thought I had already made everything clear.”
The club president lowered her head and read the paper again.
She suddenly added, “And there aren’t any typos.”
Club President: “…”
The club president stared at the paper, rubbed her temples, and tried to reorganize her thoughts.
“This isn’t writing.”
“It isn’t?”
“It’s an itemized inventory of the things you saw.”
“The sun is red. The sky is blue. Were you about to write, ‘The table is brown’ next?”
“The table is brown.”
“I wasn’t telling you to continue!”
The club president took a deep breath. Looking at this clear-eyed freshman whose only thought was leaving at five, she felt for the first time that she had encountered some kind of incomprehensible genius.
“Writing requires emotion, atmosphere, observation, and ideas, not something that reads like a property inventory.” The club president helplessly pointed at the contents of the paper.
She blinked, her tone utterly sincere.
“But the flyer didn’t say those were required conditions.”
Club President: “…”
What on earth was going on inside this girl’s head?
“The Literary Club doesn’t require everyone to be a genius, but at the very least…” The club president handed the paper back. “This can’t count as an acceptable entrance piece.”
She looked at the returned paper, her brow furrowing slightly.
She had to rewrite it?
That wasn’t part of her original schedule.
Finding another club would mean looking through the flyers again, asking more upperclassmen, and comparing activity hours all over again.
Writing a story…
“…That should be faster.”
She glanced at the sun beginning to slope west outside the window, took a deep breath, and decisively picked up her pen again.
I see.
This option had hidden costs too.