From the moment humanity conceived the concept of society, the ideas of groups and division of labor were etched into the deepest layers of their genes.
Men and women, young and old, strong and weak…
The normal functioning of human society is built upon these differences.
Men hunt and protect; women nurture and reconcile.
Adults protect children, bearing danger and responsibility; children secure the future, ensuring inheritance and development…
It could be said that without these differences, without the division of labor born from them, society could not operate.
Can one imagine a society composed entirely of a single gender?
Can one imagine a truly normal society made up only of adults or only of children?
Even if you mix literary flourish with scientific fantasy, you’d have to admit: only by creating a separate entity that mimics the missing party’s function could society function.
But what such creation would produce is nothing more than a mishmash of both traits, a broken, patchwork thing that barely limps along.
Thus, Huaye could not imagine at all the possibility of Kivotos, under a purely scientific worldview, being composed entirely of girls.
She could only stare with wide eyes, somewhat panicked, at the ground growing increasingly distant, and at the girls busily working inside the Sanctum Tower.
“No way, right?… How could that be…? That’s only possible in anime, sci-fi, or the like?”
Could it be that behind Kivotos lies a high-productivity robot control system? Could robots and beastmen be shouldering the responsibilities of adults and men?
As soon as that thought appeared, a strong sense of discomfort and disgust welled up inside her.
Buzhihuo Huaye denied that possibility herself.
“No, no… the city’s political body is made up of students…”
Huaye shook her head vigorously, rejecting that slightly dark possibility, and continued to stare at the magnificent beam of light within the Sanctum Tower.
The second floor arrived.
Startled, as if by the chime of the elevator, she jerked her head around to look at the elevator exit, only then remembering that what she actually needed to do now was find that file and prepare for the questions.
Even if her heart was uneasy, and the world before her was bizarre and unfamiliar, Huaye had to face a more severe reality—
In one hour, she would meet the master of this place, the absolute authority with supreme power who governs the entire region.
She barely suppressed the increasingly chaotic thoughts in her mind, nervously biting her nails as she hurried down the corridor with quick, small steps.
Right now, she just wanted to quickly find the file she needed and resolve today’s pressing problem.
For some reason, this floor had almost no one else.
“The easternmost side… the easternmost side…”
She muttered, lowering her head and gesturing with her hands to retrace the direction she took upon entering the tower.
After thinking for a moment, she turned toward the right corner.
“It should be this way.”
Click, clack—
The sound of her high heels hitting the floor was crisp and anxiety-inducing.
Besides the sound of her own footsteps, she heard nothing.
But it seemed someone was even more anxious than Huaye.
At the corner, Huaye only felt a gust of wind pass by, and then, when she turned her head, a vaguely familiar girl was already hurtling toward her uncontrollably with a panicked expression.
“Eh-eh! Wa… watch out!”
Bam! The collision sent both Huaye and the tall, pale blonde girl tumbling to the ground.
But the girl probably suffered more—
Because the huge stack of documents, as tall as her head, that she had been carrying came crashing down onto her face.
“Ugh, huuuh! He… help me!”
The girl struggled, lying on her back, flailing her arms wildly.
Compared to Huaye’s slight curves, her remarkably full bosom swayed violently with the movement.
Her long, pale blonde curly hair, reaching her knees, was in disarray.
A pair of small black wings sprouting from her waist fluttered in a frantic struggle, and her halo, made of two partially broken concentric rings, trembled nervously.
Huaye, also dizzy from the fall, heard her cry for help and instinctively looked at the girl floundering in a sea of documents, responding without thinking.
“Ayume Iwato? What are you doing here?”
The girl froze.
Huaye froze too.
Then, the girl cried out even more anxiously,
“Gah… Senior Huaye?! Is that Senior Huaye? Senior, help me! I… I can’t handle this…”
Huaye’s halo, a brilliant gold at the top of her head, began to spin slowly.
Memories and impressions of the flailing girl in front of her trickled into her mind.
Ayume Iwato, head of the Mediation Office of the General Student Council.
Apparently, she regarded Huaye, who seemed more capable but was actually the same age, as her senior.
After a flurry of frantic tidying, Buzhihuo Huaye, panting heavily, managed to pull Ayume out from under the pile of documents.
The blue-eyed, blonde girl sat on the ground in a ladylike crouch, looking dazed but still expressing gratitude in a timid yet touched tone,
“Senior Huaye, thank you so much!”
Headache, a relentless headache.
Her halo kept spinning and trembling at the top of her head; memories and impressions continued to seep into her self-perception.
What is this muscle-bound girl even saying?
She was carrying a stack of documents that high and walking briskly down the hall—
Couldn’t she just push them off herself?
Also, wasn’t her office on the fourth floor?
Why did she come to the security office on the second floor?
Was she trying to access security office materials? She should know that Huaye had been forced to take a break by the President for the past two days, and that only her subordinates should be handling work in the security office.
Though internally expressing dissatisfaction with the girl, on the surface, Buzhihuo Huaye still narrowed her eyes and smiled at her.
“Hehe, Ayume, it’s fine. Actually, I should apologize to you—I was in a hurry to get a file and didn’t expect to run into you here.”
Ayume, as if not catching the probing tone in her words, replied weakly,
“It’s… it’s the President who sent me to sort out documents. It seems there’s going to be a big announcement today…”
Sorting documents in her territory?
Then what was her role as the head of the Security Office?
Didn’t the President trust her?
Upon hearing this, Buzhihuo Huaye felt very uncomfortable.
But then she reconsidered:
The Supers must be right, so it must be her own fault—
She had been too lax.
If the meeting was at 11, why couldn’t she arrive at 8, handle two hours of paperwork, and then prepare an hour’s worth of remarks?
Recently, Kivotos had been in an uproar over the anti-land-annexation bill announced by the President at the end of last year.
A few companies had even secretly started bribing and hiring delinquent students, trying to organize armed resistance.
And yet she had managed to take time off recently—
Too lax.
So Huaye spoke in a comforting tone,
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I also received a message from the President, and I was planning to go get the file and prepare myself.”
Upon hearing this, Ayume’s face lit up with happiness.
“Goo… good! Thank you, Senior! Then I’ll take my leave—I still need to hand these documents over to the President.”
She stood up, wobbling slightly, bowed to Huaye, then quickly gathered the documents from the floor, picked up the stack as high as her head again, and hurried away.
Huaye didn’t ask what those documents were about.
As Ayume moved away, the spinning of Huaye’s halo gradually ceased, but the seeped-in memories and impressions still lingered in her mind.
She watched with a complicated expression as Ayume turned a corner and disappeared into the elevator she had just taken.
“Maybe… when I meet the President, some of my memories will come back?…”
Though a bit startled, what she had been thinking about in the elevator was undoubtedly confirmed in one aspect by her first encounter with Ayume Iwato—
The upper echelons of Kivotos were likely all girls like herself.
And that meant that men and adults probably really didn’t exist in Kivotos…
Of course, there was another possibility: Kivotos had rejected any men and adults, expelling or enslaving them all, and then hiding them away so nobody noticed.
But seeing even a high-ranking official like Ayume behaving this way, that was probably not the case.
What kind of person was that President…?
Was she really an old lady pretending to be young?
Or…
…
It took less than three minutes for Huaye to find her destination:
The “Security Office Materials Storage Room.”
Pushing open the door, the entire room was lined with locked combination safes and strongboxes, with only a solitary desk in the center.
A desk lamp was still burning, seemingly left on by someone who had worked through the night and forgotten to turn it off.
Those few “documents” were tucked under the base of the desk lamp.
Huaye walked over, pulled them out, and glanced at them.
One was titled “Certificate of Land Use Rights for Security Office Jurisdiction,” which mainly authorized the use of an unused building on the outskirts of the Sanctum Tower for the Security Office.
It was signed two months ago, with no signatory name—
Instead, a stamp resembling the chest emblem on her uniform.
The other two were staff rosters for the Security Office.
The names felt familiar but she had no recollection of them.
If she met them in person, maybe she’d remember them like she had with Ayume, but right now, that wasn’t likely.
Looking at the last document, Huaye froze, then read its contents aloud word by word in disbelief,
“Public Notice on the Establishment and Appointment of the Security Office Advisor Position…”
The Security Office was getting a new position?!
And an advisor?!
What the hell!?
Huaye read on anxiously,
“Public Notice on the Establishment and Appointment of the Security Office Advisor Position:
“The announcement is as follows: Given that Security Office Director Buzhihuo Huaye is unable to independently bear the work of the Security Office, and has repeatedly violated the regulations of the General Student Council by unauthorisedly working late and staying overnight, considering the Director’s health and the work enthusiasm of Security Office staff, a temporary position of Security Office Advisor is hereby specially established, with the hope of helping the Director overcome the difficulty.”
The appointee has been determined.
“Public announcement to be made in one week.”
The signing date was one week ago.
The stamp on the closing mark was the same as on the other documents:
The seal of the General Student Council.
Huaye was sure that she had never seen this document before, whether in the past or now.
In other words, this document had been signed secretly by the President.
“Ha?!”
A power grab?
No, a check and balance?!