Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ From Beta To Sigma ❯ College ( Chapter 7 )

Summer was a series of studying surges, short weekend trips on my motorcycle to campgrounds where I could look at the stars and unwind all the stress. I went back and forth between the two extremes, finding a balance between the intense effort of learning mathematics properly and applying the theorems to engineering problems. This was not my area of expertise, but I’d decided to do it because I have mechanical aptitude.

To think I might have ended up some kind of writer or language professor, teaching literature and how to write essays like poor Sensei? Yuck. Math was interesting. Learning about what I needed to know to attend the universities, which had similar exams in coming up, worked for me as long as I kept my goals in mind. I wasn’t doing all this work to start a family or chain myself to a mortgage. I was doing this for myself, so I could someday retire on what I’d earned for myself, not fund my ex-wife’s retirement or drug problem. That was for all the other men.

I had the fees ready, and took the exams as scheduled. I passed for several of the engineering universities and found scholarships which would barely cover the tuition and minimal living expenses if I moved away, or I could commute to one of the schools in Tokyo or even the university of Chiba, whose automotive program was less highly rated. Choosing a school was a balance between costs and benefits, and lingering debt in an uncertain economy. There were massive layoffs at Mitsubishi, who had withdrawn international car sales from North America, and this rippled through the entire industry, lowering wages a substantial amount for all related jobs. To think that the market was this tight? The earthquake damage hadn’t been much in Chiba, but rebuilding and the damage to the auto industry was more insidious. There were larger financial issues lingering, and the systemic costs suggested that debt for education would be a terrible idea.

I eventually selected the best fit with Waseda University in Tokyo, and arranged the paperwork for several different scholarships, including ironically, one from the foundation managed by the Yukinoshita family. They actually accepted this, probably as a bribe to keep my mouth shut about their precious daughter’s faint indiscretion, imaginary though it was. I was amused at this, but money was money and my tiny apartment and assigned space for my motorcycle meant I could focus on my education as the sakura bloomed with the new school year.

Classes were hard, as expected. The teachers were serious and standards were high. We’d have to do things perfectly or wash out into the associated technical schools, ending up as mechanics rather than engineers. The school sometimes did engineering projects for professional racing, and developed many parts and had an entire lab devoted to engine tuning. I am taking courses towards that because it is valuable in all branches of automotive engineering, no matter what manufacturer is signing your check. Many of the professors were older, having left or retired from careers at Toyota or one of the car makers. We also had engineers from Kubota and several other tractor makers. Japan was a world leader in small tractors for use in irregular shaped fields, and those exported around the world because big makers like John Deere were more focused on giant and high profit machines with all the bells and whistles, pricing themselves and their equipment out of the reach of small farmers trying to scale up on a budget. It was interesting, all the various tools and digging equipment, and learning the materials sciences behind structural engineering and surface wear rates, and points of failure. I learned about soils for part of that course, finding out that areas with volcanoes suffered from sticky clay that could break equipment, and how to engineer for that. It was fascinating.

Actual cars and ATVs and motorcycles and scooters and the various mini-trucks and farm vehicles were specialized areas of study, but you learn the basic systems first before getting into fine detail. I found this detail was very time consuming and had to limit my camping weekends and road trips more than I liked. It was necessary to complete assignments properly. I was far from a valedictorian here. I was just another engineering student, doing the same difficult tasks as everyone else.

The other students were interesting, sort of. There were very few women, for starters. STEM was dominated by males, because we had both mechanical sympathy and sufficient interest in machines and sciences to apply ourselves. The few women in my first year were mostly married off or washed out for a tech school after the first semester of classes. It was predictable. Women hug the middle of the bell curve of intelligence while males have more outliers for genetic reasons. The Y chromosome was responsible for this variation, and also why females were so picky about choosing a mate, even if they mostly chose sly brutes who used them and left them. The sort of man you find on romance novel covers, basically. Work hard and treat a woman well and she’ll leave you out of contempt, or worse, get impregnated by the brute and claim it is yours so you pay for her infidelity. I did not date in college. I did not date outside of college either. While our university offered many degrees, and there were women attending, I knew that these were women who had already rejected being mothers to children and would regret it later, becoming cat ladies like sensei. The statistics proved it.

By the start of second year the only females left were unapproachable and best left alone, which was fine by me because I don’t want to deal with their issues either. It wasn’t my job. I am a student in engineering at a top university. I am busy.

I was working on homework when there was a knock at my apartment door. Like most of Tokyo, apartments were usually a few stories tall and contained very modest and very small rooms, not great places to live but you could sleep and cook a meal there if you kept it clean enough. I did. I also used headphones to keep down the noise of my neighbors, but the door knocking was loud. I answered the door and found a certain sister there, not my own.

“Haruno-chan. How lovely to see you. What brings you to Tokyo on this grey day?” I asked her. It was threatening to rain again. She grinned at me, manic as usual.

“Yukino-chan would say hi, if she said hi to anyone. I found Mother was about to cut off your scholarship so I’ve come to tell you I have pre-emptively overruled that,” she said, which was not an explanation. The scholarship was around half my rent, so it was substantial.

“Really? Thank you then. And why did Narusei-san wish to cancel my scholarship?” I asked her.

“May I come in? I’d rather not say it out here,” she asked. I stepped back and she removed her shoes and the door shut. It was muggy, and smelled of cleaning products. It was better than the mold I originally found on moving in. Student apartments or salaryman apartments: either did poor maintenance. The drains took even more effort to clear, something the building manager studiously neglected, much like the wheezing A/C/Heater.

“May I offer you some tea?” I asked. She smiled and assented. So different from her sister, even though I knew she was all masks, more than most women. I boiled water with an electric kettle and used one of two better teacups. She wouldn’t be impressed, but that wasn’t the point. I suspect little would impress Haruno. She had seen too much, too early, probably. That leaves emotional scars. We sipped tea quietly while she composed her thoughts at my study table, cleared for our use. I waited.

“You’re so patient. No wonder little Yukino liked you,” she said. I noted the past tense.

“She asked for a romantic getaway weekend before we graduated. I provided a getaway and beautiful natural landscapes. I think she was hoping for something more salacious,” I suggested. I did not need to mince words with Haruno. She knew the truth of her sister.

“She does love her romance novels,” Haruno admitted. “Salacious is a good word.”

I described the trip and where we went, what we did.

“And you slept beside my little sister two nights and didn’t ravish her?” Haruno teased.

“No, I did not ravish her. All those days together and she never hinted she wanted to be ravished. She enjoyed small insults, and big ones, from the very first time I met her. She is not one to express romantic interest, nor am I one to accept subtle offers. Besides it was cold at night, and the campgrounds were crowded. And I’m not easy.” I hmphed.

“Not easy. No, I suppose you are not. Yukino was offered a betrothal with an influential family that’s partnered with our father. It was thought a marriage union would solidify further business dealings. She turned it down. It seems she may still harbor feelings for you.”

“If she does she hasn’t contacted me since graduation. I am very busy with school,” I stated.

“I can see that. This is hardly a love nest,” she commented. My apartment lacked decoration. It was just a place to sleep. I mostly used the school computer labs for design projects, and my laptop was mostly for writing papers and research topics. The real work was done with powerful computers and the CNC labs, where I was learning RPT and design specifications. Actual machining was a specialized job for the tech school rather than engineers themselves. We designed the parts and ran various tests on simulators before turning over these to machine shops to build. Waseda’s outlier schools handled this, and everybody learned.

“Mother wanted to blame you for her stubborn refusal, but the doctors have confirmed she’s untouched, in body at least. I think if you had taken liberties with my sister she’d be over you by now. It is quite troublesome.”

“Is that why you are here, to try yourself and send her some steamy photos to break her heart?” I asked. I was aware of Haruno’s true nature, after all.

“You got me,” she laughed. “Still even if you know this, and I’ve protected your scholarship for now, aren’t you a little bit curious?” she asked.

“There’s a rumor that if you make it to thirty a virgin you become a wizard,” I said with a smile.

“Right, right. Wizards. You haven’t with anyone? Not even Gahama-san? That girl had it bad for you.” She was trying for cute again, which she used expertly tilting her torso so her breasts rolled about, shifting visibly. Haruno had always been a beautiful woman, and she knew it.

“No. She’s a nice girl. I wish her well and hope she finds a nice man who can afford a house. I can barely afford food and gasoline for my bike,” I said.

“Really. Is that so?” she asked. I sighed. I sipped my tea. She sipped her own.

“How have you been, Haruno-san?” I asked her.

“Bored, mostly. I’m a STEM major myself. I graduate next year. I’m considering whether I should take one of the marriage offers or go for graduate school,” she said.

“What are you studying?” I asked her.

“Applied biosciences, with an emphasis in synthetic biology and gene engineering,” she answered.

“Useful. Kind of dangerous though. And I’d read its mostly about failing a lot. Isn’t that kind of annoying?” I asked her.

“Yeah, all the failures are rote by this point, but the rare success can be huge. There’s all sorts of projects for crop research, making hardier plants that can grow in more regions, resistant to more classes of plant diseases, or containing natural bug repellants found in wild strains but lost in domestic ones.”

“That’s quite interesting. Imagine if you could make a coffee plant that can survive snow in Japanese winters and if the cheery around the bean made a decent sweet jam? Wouldn’t that be something,” I suggested.

“You really like your coffee, don’t you?” she said. “I’m partial to it myself. Tea is more my mother and sister’s thing,” she admitted.

“Engineers live for coffee, but I picked up the taste at Soubu. I carry a percolator on my camping trips.”

“What about at home?” she asked.

“I have a Moka pot. Makes a strong cup of coffee. Want some?” I offered. She nodded, a genuine smile finally. I quickly washed and refilled the aluminum assembly, putting it over the smallest burner of my little gas canister stove. Such things were common in Tokyo apartments, and buying new canisters of propane is one of the costs of living. It took around eight minutes before it burbled and released steam to tell us it was done. I poured two small cups of coffee from it. They aren’t huge. Haruno held the cup waiting for the temperature to drop as it heated the cup, finally sipping.

“Good. Very strong. Slightly gritty?”

“There’s no filter, just a sort of screen. Don’t drink the last sip in the cup. It will be like silt at the bottom,” I warned her.

“So you study all day in this little hole of an apartment,” she began.

“Or the labs. Usually the labs,” I corrected. She raised a finger to continue.

“Or the labs, and drink strong coffee, and ride a motorcycle to remote campgrounds and will one day be an automotive engineer of some kind, and little Yukino doesn’t think you’re wild enough?” she confirmed. I nodded.

“Hmm. And she’s not over you, either.”

“I think it takes her a very long time to find positive traits in men for her to gain any interest in them. Real men aren’t like romance novels,” I pointed out.

“I am aware. Any that pretend to be are just trying to get into my panties,” she commented dryly. She sipped at her coffee again.

“I expect a woman with as practiced a mask as you normally wear in public has a thick skin for such behavior,” I suggested carefully.

“Yes, and limited patience. Polite excuses and changes of subject are necessary in those cases. I have a lot of practice.”

“You’ve come all this way. Would you like to see my school?” I offered. She smiled then, a genuine smile without armor or hurt behind it. I grabbed a jacket, and umbrella, and my student ID. We left my building and walked a couple kilometers onto the campus. It started to rain and Haruno cuddled up under my umbrella until we got down to the engineering area.

Engineering was several buildings on the campus. Automotive engineering took the majority, including various outbuildings. These sheds contained shops and test stands and dynos, where parts were installed, tested, adjusted, and eventually destroyed. We had the out-schools build things we designed, and we did practical and destructive testing to see if they matched the predictions and to determine where they failed. Time To First Failure (TTFF) was an important process in engineering. It was fascinating.

One of the many things I’d learned over the last year in the tuning class is that while you can lean a mixture and run a car on it, the mixture produces even more pollution and has a tendency to overheat components like valves and can wreck an engine prematurely. Experiments with engines using direct injection and higher compression could burn gasoline like diesel fuel, getting better economy and a cleaner burn. The engine was heavier and took a more careful design to hold together, but it was a promising technology. I showed this off to Haruno, getting eyed by a few of my classmates. Sometimes guys would bring their girlfriends here to impress them. It rarely worked, but guys did it anyway.

“When did you realize you liked this stuff?” Haruno asked me.

“It was when I blew out my knee bicycling. I had to find another way to get around and I bought a used motorcycle, most of which needed repairs. I ended up learning all about the engine and how things worked and it was way more interesting than literature.”

“I bet Shizuka was devastated her class wasn’t your favorite anymore,” Haruno chuckled.

“I never told her, but I did make valedictorian anyway.”

“Yes, your generic speech. Mine wasn’t much better. You can never hit them with the truth, only allude to it,” she commented. Haruno had been class president and valedictorian. Pushed to succeed.

“Was it tiring having to be the best, or was it something you did because you wanted to?” I asked her.

“I wanted to at first, and then I just couldn’t stop. I didn’t realize what I’d lost until I was in college,” she admitted.

“And now you embrace failure every day?” I asked.

“I suppose so. That’s the nature of genetic research. Why did you become valedictorian?” she asked.

“To spite your sister.” Haruno laughed at that.

“That’s just precious. I’m going to tell her you said that,” she promised. I shrugged.

“Go ahead. She thrived on aggravation. She loved to needle me, every day at club.”

“And you didn’t see that as love?” Haruno suddenly said very seriously.

“I think it was habit. I don’t think Yukino is ready for love, unless she’s changed a lot in the last two years. Some women don’t want to settle down until they’re too old to marry.”

“I’ve met the type,” Haruno admitted.

“Yes, well. It’s not uncommon,” I admitted. “Yukino may figure out what she actually wants from a relationship before it is too late. She’s got years yet.”

“What sort of woman to you want, Hachiman?” Haruno purred. The mask was back. I sighed.

“That’s not something to rush into, Haruno-san. I can’t afford to think about such things until I’ve graduated, and gotten a paying job, and bought a house. Only then will that question matter.”

“And won’t you be too old to marry by then, Hachiman?” Haruno teased. I sighed. She laughed and excused herself.

My scholarship money arrived, as usual.