Note that the base Success Threshold is calculated by taking the average of Silas's and Matsuoka's "Sociability." In order for an action to PASS, it must roll, AT MOST, the exact number of the success threshold. Anything above that number will constitute a FAIL.
Yes, it's a weird system, and I apologize for that… but my use of the words "Success threshold" backed me into a corner.
Oh, and don't worry, there aren't consequences for getting low rolls just yet. Not really. Technically.
[] [TALK] Matsuoka Yumika (Raise relationship level? More acquaintances? Success threshold very slightly affected by CHAR stat)
Success Threshold: 70 (Base) -20 (Loner) -10 (Low CHAR) -5 (Former NEET) +10 (Big Sister Interference) = 45
DICE ROLL: 49
RESULT: FAIL PASS (See Character Sheet)
Silas slipped the notes under his binder, and sighed deeply.
Yumika seemed to have mostly forgotten about him; a couple more students had arrived since he had sat down, and she was engaged in a very lively conversation with the lot of them. He wanted to approach her, but he felt like it would be weird just inserting himself into that group for no reason.
Silas mulled it over in his head. The more he thought about it, the less and less of a good idea it seemed… but then again, Yumika didn't seem like the type of person who'd be mean if he messed something up. Right?
Screw it. I'll just talk to her and damn the consequences, he thought. This'll be just like that time I successfully created that alliance with the Holy Empire of Trislei in Akataiyo IV; just establish relations and keep sending them gifts of small amounts of money, and they'll be bound to send an alliance invitation in no time. Now if only I had a couple of daughters I could marry to one of her sons… Wait, what?
Disregarding the last part of that thought process, Silas abruptly rose from his chair, pushing the seat behind him back a few inches in the process. He was bubbling with COURAGE. He was filled with DETERMINATION. Nothing would stop him now.
Each step felt like it was weighed down by iron. Each breath he took felt as though fire was passing through his lungs. But he pushed onwards, to victory! To friendship!
He stopped before the table where Matsuoka and some of her friends were talking. It dawned on him just how tall he was; his figure cast a dark shadow on Matsuoka's face. A few people turned towards him, mostly in confusion. Who's this guy? He heard them mutter. New kid? I've never seen him before.
He opened his mouth to speak, and…
Shit, he thought. Shit, shit, shit.
What was he going to say again…?
"U-Um…"
Matsuoka was facing him now, frowning and raising her eyebrows. Everyone else was facing him, too, suspiciously. Desperately, Silas looked towards a nearby computer screen, begging for some assistance. It read the following words:
SELF-INTRODUCTION!!
Oh, right!
"SELF-INTRODUCTION!!" He shouted loudly, banging his fists onto a table.
The whole room went quiet. Outside the open window, a bus loudly shut its doors and busied itself along the road.
And then the class erupted into laughter.
"Haha! What did he do that for?! Did he just -"
"Are you a foreign exchange student? Or is this some sort of self-inflicted drama?"
"Gawds, that didn't sound awkward at all… Nice going, champ!"
On the computer screen, three ellipses formed, and and the image of a facepalming blue-haired anime girl appeared above the text.
"Omigod, what?! HAHAAHAAA! WOHAAHAAAHAAAA! Sheesh, man!"
It was Matsuoka's laugh that hurt the most. Defeated, Silas started to slink back towards the safety of his seat. But to his surprise, he felt a hand grabbing on to his arm. "Oh, no, no, no, mister! You're getting back here, right now!"
"B-But I - "
"Everyone!" Matsuoka shouted to the group, but the noise clearly reverberated throughout the classroom, too. "This is Yamigawa Silas. Call him Yamigawa-kun, kay? He's doing his self-introduction, as you've just heard."
"W-What?! Wait, but I -" Silas stared longingly at his seat.
"START!" Matsuoka pointed at Silas's chest. Silas gulped.
"U-Um…"
"I said: START!" Matsuoka poked him slightly.
"Okay… h-hello! Good morning! My name is Yamigawa Silas. I am seventeen years old. I am a junior at Yamaha High School. I am half Mihokujin and half Ozzetche. I live alone. My birthday is November 7th. I… um… I like anime and tacos. Nice to meet you all!" Silas bowed, his face practically burning. This isn't how this is supposed to happen!
"Hey, good job!" Matsuoka said. She reached up and patted Silas on the back.
"Yeah, good job, new kid!" another one of her friends followed her example.
Silas felt like they were mocking him, but Matsuoka's eyes betrayed no malice. In fact, she winked. Wait, what?
"Want a seat, Yamigawa-kun?" Matsuoka pulled a seat from an empty desk. "Don't worry about Shinohara-san! She'll probably be late, as usual."
"Uh… sure…" Silas said, glancing repeatedly at all the faces looking at him. At him. And smiling. This was surreal. He took his seat, and suddenly he was faced with a million different conversations at once as the classroom returned to its natural state.
"Soooo… what a way to introduce yourself, amirite?" Matsuoka laughed. "Yamigawa-kun, this is Class Rep Kirino Maeda-chan! Say hi, Kirino!"
"Err… hi?" Silas mumbled.
"Hi," the girl's face was an enigma behind the thick glasses she wore. "I hope you didn't do that on purpose. I don't like showboats."
"I swear!" Silas panicked. "I didn't - "
"Kirino!" Matsuoka shook her head, waving a finger in front of the class rep's face. "That's no way to talk to a shy boy! So mean!"
"I have a name…"
"Oh, er, that's no way to talk to Yamigawa-kun! So mean!"
"...thanks…"
"Oh, also! Also!" Matsuoka pulled on the arm of another person near her. "This is Chihiro Hanamura! I call him Chii-kun! Say hi, Chii-kun!"
Hanamura nodded his head. He was smirking, still trying to recover from that great laugh Silas just gave him. "Nice to meet you, Silas! It's fine if I call you Silas, right?"
It wasn't. "...sure."
"Great! I'm sure we'll be great friends!"
"Yay…?" Silas felt more and more disturbed the longer he talked with this boy. How could he possibly manage to look so happy?! What kind of smile was that?!
"There's a couple more I want to introduce you, Um, um… where's Allen-kun?"
Just then, across the room, the debate Silas had noticed earlier between the Ambernian and the other student finally seemed to be boiling over into an outright shouting match. Surprisingly, the foreign boy, Allen, was speaking perfect Mihokugo now.
"How dare you sully the Mihokujin history? Our's is a story of struggle! Of sacrifice!" the Mihokujin boy shouted.
"I have the right to make my opinions heard, Godammit!" the foreign boy, the one named Allen, yelled back. "Mihoku has had an easy history. The entire foundation of the Union of Sovereign Ambernian Republics has been an upwards crawl, from start to finish!"
"You would defend that claim to the death, foreigner?"
"I would drag my opinion to Hell and back!"
"Ohhh boy, this looks like it's gonna get ugly. Be right... back…?" the class representative started to move towards the pair, but stopped.
The Mihokujin boy reached behind Allen… and pulled him into a fierce hug. "Then by the Gods, I have a brother!"
And Allen responded with that same enthusiasm. "Heelll yeah! That was awesome! You should join Debate Club with me!"
"Perhaps I should! Then, perhaps, you'll finally be convinced of the true way."
"Fat chance, skinny-eyes!"
Maeda blinked, apparently trying to rationalize the scene that was unfolding before her. "...nevermind."
"Oh ho-ho-ho, someone's getting a romance arc in my new fanfic…" the boy named Hanamura muttered. Silas pretended not to hear him.
He looked between Matsuoka, Maeda, and Hanamura. The sudden commotion had finally brought the attention away from him, and he was cooling down. That was… hard. Talking so much at once. But still… he did it. And he felt like he was a little more familiar with the class now, even if much of his interactions with them were humor at his expense. Better than nothing, right?
Maeda Kirino: +1 Relationship
Maeda is now Acquaintances with Silas.
Hanamura Chihiro: +1 Relationship
Hanamura is now Acquaintances with Silas.
Matsuoka Yumika: +2 Relationship.
Unfortunately, shortly after that strange affair, their sensei finally showed up. Along with the rest of the class, Silas returned to his seat quickly, but for a brief moment he saw Matsuoka turn back at him, point at her lips with both of her index fingers, and mouthed some words. Silas couldn't read them, but soon thereafter he heard the small bzzt, bzzt of Big Sister sending him a text. He checked the message.
"Smile; you did good."
Silas nodded, and, consciously, he felt his features turn into a little smile. Yumik - err, Matsuoka seemed nice.
Their sensei looked disapprovingly at his rather rowdy class before tapping the electronic whiteboard with his stylus. "Now, now, I know summer hasn't quite ended for some of you, but it absolutely has ended for the rest of us. Maeda-san!"
"Hai!" Maeda rose.
"Front of the classroom, please."
"Of course!" Maeda marched, with military precision, to her sensei's side. "Rise!"
INT Check: 5 - 3
Good Success
The class rose. Silas was just a millisecond behind them.
"Bow!"
The class bowed. Silas bowed, too.
"Good morning!"
"Good morning!" It was a cacophony of a response.
"Sit!"
...And the class sat. Phew. If Silas hadn't been thinking, he probably would have forgotten about that particular part of the morning routine.
"Hello, everyone! It's nice to see you all here today. I hope we'll have a wonderful time together in Yamaha's Class 4-1." Maeda sounded calm and composed, but then, as if remembering something funny, she broke into a smile. "Of course, we have a couple of new students here. We'll all miss Sakamaki-chan and Hauptmann-kun. So, naturally, we'll have to start by…"
A few students were looking at him. Maeda, too, strangely. Why were they looking at him? He didn't do anything wrong.
Wait.
Oh no.
Oh no.
Noooo.
"...doing our… heheh… excuse me. Our self-introductions."
OH FOR FU -----
<('_'<) <( '_' )> (>'_')>
Approximately thirty minutes of torture later
<('_'<) <( '_' )> (>'_')>
Well, that could have gone better, but it certainly could have gone worse. At the very least, Silas could say that he knew some of the names of some of his fellow classmates now… great…
Character Sheet Updated
First and second bells went by without much of anything to note. Silas quickly realized that he was leagues ahead of the rest of the class in terms of knowing the material; in fact, more than a few times some of his neighbors would ask for a little help. Unfortunately, he was terrible at explaining the concepts to them, and more than once they came out of his attempted help more confused than before. It didn't help that Big Sister's advice usually boiled down things like "Tell them that the rate of change can be found using the formula m = (f(x+h) - f(x))/(x+h-x)." Sure, he knew what that meant, but that didn't mean he could articulate it without some sort of context! He was going to have to fix that…
Positive effects due to high INT will have half their effect so long as CHAR remains =< 1
...And then P.E. happened. Silas wasn't particularly fat… but he was still very, very weak. And he learned that today.
"Yamigawa-kun, move faster! The entire class has lapped you already!"
"I'm trying - hah - Toyotomi-sensei!" Silas gasped for air. "IT's - hah - hard!"
Something was going to have to be done about this… if he wasn't at least at the lowest common denominator, he'd be the laughing stock of the class. Again.
New Goal: Have at least 1 PHYS by the end of three weeks or Silas will lose -1 CHAR
Lunch, third and fourth blocks sped by, and, faster than he'd expected, Silas was on the bullet train headed home. The city streets flitted past the window, a mess of billboards and apartment blocks and malls.
Silas let out a long, long sigh. He'd been holding it in since the beginning of school; it felt good to finally let it out. Home was but a few stops away, and Silas felt…
Satisfied.
To be perfectly honest, Silas had expected a lot worse. A lot worse. But he found that he was looking forward to tomorrow with a sense of excitement, rather than dread.
It was fun.
Serendipitously, at that exact moment, music from the bullet train's speakers went to the chorus of a particular song which included the lines "I told you so" repeated over and over and over again.
What will Silas's actions be for the rest of the week?
Choose two [Talk] Actions, and two [Extra] actions.
Note: [TALK] actions with characters have a high chance of making acquaintances out of those characters' friends. Choose wisely!
Another Note: WAIT UNTIL THE CHARACTER SHEET IS UPDATED TILL YOU VOTE, PLZ, THANX FAM
[] [TALK] Matsuoka Yumika (She seems nice)
[] [TALK] Hanamura Chihiro (He seems… interesting)
[] [TALK] Maeda Kirino (She seems… uh…)
[] [TALK] Allen Furai (He seems… openminded)
[] [TALK] Taro Yamaguchi (He seems… patriotic)
[] [EXTRA] Study (SKL +0.5)
[] [EXTRA] (Special) Otaku stuff!
-[] Grand Strategy games! (INT +0.25)
-[] Anime, music, "culture!" (CRE +0.25)
-[] Forum scrolling! (CHAR +0.1)
[] [EXTRA] (Special) Big Sister downloaded an exercise plan onto Silas's phone. This should help… (75% chance +1 PHYS)
[] [EXTRA] Exercise… yay? (+0.25 PHYS)
[] [EXTRA] Walk around the city (May encounter events, random, ???)
