Chapter One

Ayanokoji POV

    Honami-sama and I were sitting on a bus heading towards the high school we would attend. I was thinking back to that day, that I found freedom. There was a fire that covered the white walls that I called home.

    I was sitting in my bedroom, I searched for an escape, but there was none to be found. I was sure I would die there and I thought. ‘Would it really be that bad to die? What am I living for?’

    Though my death was interrupted by an old man running into my room, he put a wet cloth over my mouth and ran me out of the building. He had to guide me so I wouldn’t get lost in unfamiliar areas and towards the escape route.

    We got out, and I looked back at the building, as I did this there was an explosion. I don't remember much after that, there was ringing, my eyes filled with dust, the ground shook, as did my bones.

    When I woke up my head was in the old man’s lap, I hadn’t gotten a good look at his face yet, but I discovered that it was a man I knew very well.

“Matsuo, is that you?”

“Yes, it is me, Kiyotaka-sama”

    My body ached, my vision blurry, my ears rang, though, this was a matter of life and death. I squinted my vision and saw a parking lot, though all of the cars there were covered in fire, and that roads were blocked. I heard of a helicopter at this facility, but after searching for it I discovered the blast threw it off the roof of the facility, and it was broken beyond repair.

“Come, Matsuo, we should leave in search of a safer place, we never know if there could be future explosions.”

“Unfortunately, I will not be going anywhere”

    After hearing this I looked back at Matsuo, the blast had sent a chunk of metal flying in our direction, and it hit him in the abdomen. I looked down at myself to see if I was injured at all and found a long cut across my torso aswell.

“You will have to leave me behind, and save yourself. I don’t know how many, but lots of kids like you managed to escape aswell. I have directed everyone to go to the southeast and you should go aswell. There is a tourist town there, you should be able to find safety if you just go in that direction”

“Thank you, Matsuo”

    I saw his strength fade, it was obvious he was on the brink of death but kept himself alive just so he could tell me this.

“Matsuo, before I go, I need to ask you this. What is the meaning of life? Why should I keep fighting for myself? Why did I ever struggle for my own sake?”

“... I can’t answer that… everyone is different… if you want to live a meaningful life you must find that answer yourself… I was a special operative and fought in many different wars alongside the Americans, I lived very long solely for the sake of killing the enemy I was being paid to fight, and when I left the army I had to ask the same question you did… that was when your father found me and gave me a reason to live, that reason being so I can take care of you and provide for my son… In the world you are entering you must find someone to live for, and if you do that you can survive anything”

    The smile he had while he breathed his last breathes was interrupted by myself returning to reality. When I awoke I found that the seat which was once occupied by Honami-sama, but now has an elderly woman sitting in it, did I miss something? I soon found myself lost in my thoughts once again after having such a thought-provoking dream.

    Will I someday have that smile Matsuo had? Is Honami-sama the one I will live for? Lao Tzu said “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage” if that is the case then am I not the most defective man on this planet? I still do not know when I find the answers, but whenever I ask these questions, something in my mind tells me I will find the answer if I just stay by Honami-sama’s side.

    I chose to search for the love that Matsuo told me of by following the path he led, will a life of servitude lead me to feel love for the mistress I serve? That is the question I am trying to answer by conducting this experiment.

    We arrived at our stop and Honami-sama and I said goodbye to the old lady and left. We went to an entrance ceremony and when arrived I found 4 people who looked like our teachers that were holding up signs, each one had a letter on them representing the class they want by them.

    The entrance ceremony was very boring, to the point where I almost fell asleep… again. Though as a butler of the Ichinose family I must remain dignified. With this in mind, I was only half asleep during the ceremony.

    After that, we went to our classrooms, my seat was at the front of the room by the window, and to my right was Honami-sama. We are in Class 1-D and we were probably the first people who arrived at the room, though that is natural because we came immediately and disregarded the 1-hour break we had.

    (A/N: I made some changes to the classes, so here we go: Class D now has Shibata and two other random B class students, while Class B has Horikita, Matsushita, and Kushida… this is mainly because she would be pretty useless in this class for what I’m going for, plus the overall academic ability and physical will go up, this will be visible when class points are given)

    After about 45 minutes everyone came into the classroom, the person behind me was a blond-haired handsome guy. He suggested that we introduce ourselves and went first, his name is Hirata Yosuke, he likes soccer and spending time with friends. The next one to introduce themself was Honami-sama.

“My name is Ichinose Honami, I like spending time with friends and I’m looking forward to becoming friends with all of you.”

    After this, the attention went on me, if this was the me from 6 months ago I would have failed this introduction, however, in the past six months Honami-sama has forced me into countless social events I would have typically avoided, it is now that I will show the results of my training.

“Ummmm… My name is Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, my hobbies are cooking and cleaning. I work as a butler and came to school with Honami-sama… I look forward to working with you all”

    I bowed my head and tried to give a good impression, I think it worked out ok. Though the boys were glaring at me, I don’t exactly know why.

    I sat down and everything continued like normal, however, we were cut off by the Sensei walking into the classroom. We were given our student ID cards and our phones, we have also been distributed our private points which serves as our money we will live off of. Each student is given 100,000 private points with each one-point being worth one yen.

    Our classmates got really loud and excited after hearing this, of course, that would be natural, it is totally unreasonable to give first-year high school students an allowance of 100,000 yen. We were informed of various forms of entertainment and activities that can be found on campus, everything we need in order to enjoy our high school experience can be found on this campus.

    She announced that tomorrow would be an assembly in the gymnasium where we would be introduced to clubs at this school, the participation would be optional and there are no requirements for club participation in this school.

    After this introduction to the school and its rules, we were given the rest of the day to do the necessary shopping and prepare our rooms. Honami-sama and I went to a convenience store and bought dinner. While we were there we ran into Hirata who was also getting dinner quickly.

    After Honami-sama called out to him we began chatting, while those two discussed stuff like junior high school and what they think of the class I looked around the store, I never really stopped at a convenience store before, I always went to the local shopping center for buying ingredients for dinner.

    While I was indulging my curiosity I found something strange, there were free items for people who ran out of points, this on top of the 100,000 points we got each month showed a level of indulgence you would not expect from an elitist high school.

    A second interesting event happened at this store, shouting began just outside of the doors between one of our classmates and some senior students.

“You are in D Class aren’t you?”

“Yeah! So what!”

“I knew it, come on guys there is no need to involve yourself with a defect.”

“Don't run away!”

“You guys will face hell soon anyways”

    Hirata went outside and tried to prevent our red-haired classmate from going after them. He eventually calmed down and went away, I just watched this from the sidelines while I bought my cup of noodles and put hot water into it.

“Hirata-kun”

“What is it Ichinose-san?”

“What do you think that was about? He acted like Class D was inferior, and he said something about facing hell soon”

“I’m not sure, however, we should probably keep our guard up, and we need to make sure we look after our classmates.”

    It seems Honami-sama hasn’t noticed all of the hints fall into place yet, though I’m sure she will see it soon. Though even if she notices what is up, there is nothing we can do about it now, we just need to observe and not let our guard down.

    After having my dinner, Honami-sama, Hirata, and I went back to the dorms. After checking out what the dorm was like and dropping off all of the school supplies we were given I decided to head out and buy all of the necessary supplies that a butler must have. Hirata came with me because he also needed to do shopping and wanted to go with a friend.

    I first bought some comfortable clothes to wear while I’m in my room, then I bought an apron and oven mitts. Hirata did the same thing I did except he bought some casual clothes along with that. Then we went to a store that sold cooking supplies, apparently, Hirata also liked to make his own meals, while we shopped we mainly conversed about our recipes, favorite meals, and stuff we baked. After hearing that I baked my own bread instead of using store-bought he got super impressed, though it isn’t that big of a deal, home-baked bread is tastier and cheaper than store-bought, after hearing my explanation we set up a day where I would teach him the art of bread making.

    Next, we got ingredients, I planned out the next week’s meal and got enough for two people. I spent about ten thousand private points, however that should be the biggest shopping trip I do in a while.

    We went back to the dorm together and I went to Honami-sama’s room, she had some friends she made at the mall over, but she invited me in nevertheless. I confused the girls in there for a second, but then they remembered I’m Honami-sama’s butler and just ignored me.

    I set up all of the cooking utensils in her kitchen and decided to start with my baking. I began baking the bread right away and then started on the cookies, I made chocolate chip and M&M cookies that Honami-sama really enjoyed when I made them in the past.

    While I was mixing the ingredients Honami-sama came into the kitchen and asked for me to make hot cocoa, I did and brought the five cups out and set them on the table in front of them. I then asked if they needed anything else and one of the girls questioned what I was baking.

“I'm making cookies, it will be a few hours until they are ready, but would you all like any when they are done?”

“Sure, thank you!”

    It took a couple of hours, but the cookies came out pretty good. After letting them cool down I took them to Honami-sama and her friends. After setting the bowl of cookies out in front of them I stood by just in case they needed anything.

“So, Ichinose-san, if you have such an awesome butler does that mean you are rich or something?”

“No, in fact, my family was really poor” she gave a cute chuckle after this.

“So, then why does he do so much work for nothing? Wait… is he a simp or something?”

“No, I’m not sure why, but apparently the reason is personal, and I probably like him a lot more than he likes me” after saying this her face went bright red and she hid her face from me

    Her friends left at 9 and I cleaned up her apartment afterward, I left back to my room at 10 and while I was heading back I got a text from Hirata, we decided to head to school together tomorrow.

    I laid back on my bead and thought quite a bit. Right now I am worried about what would happen if the white room activities are exposed. The forest fire that occurred brought a lot of attention to that facility, and while the government officials who knew about it are being kept in check for now, there are a lot of investigative journalists who are prying really deep into the matter.

    Without my father in the picture, I have no doubt that within a few months the existence of the White Room will come to light, and when it does, the name of Ayanokoji will be associated with mass murder and human experimentation. I have transferred most of the assets he left me behind to offshore accounts and I am being unilaterally protected by the best lawyer in the country, though that won’t protect me from the prying eyes of the media and the scorn of my students. If people found out the Ichinose’s took me in they may be targeted aswell.

    But if my pawns on the outside keep doing their jobs as I instructed them to, everything will turn out fine in the end. I just have to deal with the problems that occur within this school, and I will have to deal with Honami-sama.

    I don’t yet feel the love that Matsuo described, though something I am feeling is a sense of duty, to give her strength, to protect her, and to keep doing my job as a butler. If this sense of duty turns into love then that is fine, if it stays the way it is then that is fine aswell.

    She has more empathy, kindness, and beauty than anyone else on the planet, she has everything I don’t have. We are both defective, however, I can turn her from a defective product to something great enough to change the world. And I will do anything to create that change because it is my duty… as a butler.

    Howdy Howdy peeps, it’s Nate. Thanks for all the support I got on the previous chapter and thank you for reading this one. Would you like to see the whole school learn about the White Room or just Honami and why? Thanks again for reading, I gotta go now because I’m procrastinating on a Spanish project, Hasta Luego! (P.S: I got the idea for this story from Hayate the Combat Butler, you don’t need to watch that anime for this story, but it’s pretty good so I would recommend checking it out)