Under The Veil of Night

Tommy changed his position slightly. His body ached from the numerous paint bullets that Shiro gave him. Thankfully, Jason had a meeting today or he wouldn’t be able to return back to civilization.

"You wouldn’t want to know," Tommy sighed.

Alice looked towards Tommy with concern. "Do you need a doctor? The infirmary doctor changed for two weeks, but I heard that the replacement is also good enough."

"There’s no need," Tommy wouldn’t be able to explain himself if that doctor saw numerous red marks on his body. It was better if he kept them all a secret.

"Eh? The doctor changed?" Misae asked in surprise.

"Yes, I hear that the previous doctor wants to visit his family, so there’s a new doctor today."

Misae sighed. "And here I’m hoping to have a glance of his face again."

Alice and Tommy: "..."

Shiro did have a scholarly and handsome face. This was one of the reasons why numerous high school students tried to come here. Tommy had to suffer from hearing countless confessions to this doctor when he was sleeping here, so he didn’t really like hearing about that doctor having another fan.

Tommy glanced towards Alice. "Did you come to see the doctor too?"

"No, I came to see you," Alice smiled brightly.

Seeing the bright smile on Alice’s beautiful face, Tommy smiled unconsciously. Alice was indeed a beauty as she looked extremely similar to a doll. He truly wanted to hug her and enjoy her soft skin in his embrace...

Wait, what was he thinking?

Tommy immediately averted his gaze. It seemed he had bad resistance to beautiful ladies. He needed to be more careful now as he didn’t want to get attracted to ladies.

Still, he was feeling rather confused about this feeling. After all, he never had a good impression of women because of his experience with his mother. Kanae was the only exception and he tolerated her friends because of Kanae.

"Don’t you need to go back to the class?" Tommy asked.

Alice glanced towards Misae. "She has a detention class, so she’s not willing to go back."

"I’ll still attend the usual class!" Misae exclaimed. She got slightly lower than the passing grade during the midterm, so she could not avoid the detention class.

Tommy nodded his head in understanding. Because he stayed at that doctor’s place, he had to listen to that man muttering about medicine every day. This allowed him to passively better understand biology concepts and get a high score. That score from biology allowed him to reach the passing grade even though his scores from the other lessons were incredibly poor.

"Good luck, I want to sleep here," Tommy pulled the blanket over his head again.

Alice nodded her head in concern. "If you need help, you can call us. We’re your friends too."

"I will."

The two girls left the infirmary as they returned back to their class. Tommy resumed his sleep, but only until the afternoon because Jason called him back to resume the training.

...

Jason’s Private Training Villa

Kanae and Shiro took turns in their shooting training. They were incredibly tired by the time they saw the other two return. Seeing their states, Tommy was glad that he managed to skip training.

"Tommy, this time I’ll practice shooting," Jason picked up the paint gun.

Tommy smiled wryly. "Please be lenient on me."

He had to run all over the place just to evade Jason’s attack. On the other hand, Kanae resumed her run with Shiro following after her. No matter how unwilling he was, he had to follow after Kanae.

"Kanae, starting tomorrow, we’ll practice with four guns," Jason informed her at night.

Kanae nearly choked on her food when she heard that. "You’re going to participate in the shooting too?"

"Yup, and this time, we can move around the area, so you have to be prepared."

"I’ll do my best."

Jason looked towards Tommy. "As for you, you have to train your stamina first, so during our training with Kanae, you’re going to run on the treadmill. After that, you learn shooting from Shiro."

"I understand."

...

Seventh day of the training

"Can you be gentler? It’s painful," Kanae complained when Shiro treated her wounds. Because she had to face four guns, she had to pay more attention to the surroundings. She was not used to dealing with two fabulous sharpshooters, which made her body suffer very badly.

Shiro shrugged. "If you keep on yelling like that, the others might have a different idea."

"What are you talking about?"

"..." he forgot that she was a complete kid.

Shiro straightened his body. "Nothing, you should just bear with the medicine for now. It’s still going to be very painful."

"I can feel it."

Outside the room, Jason was holding onto Tommy’s arm tightly. This brat was angry at the conversation he heard coming from Kanae’s room, so he wanted to teach that doctor a lesson he would never forget.

"He’s only treating her, brat."

....

Tenth day of the training

Tommy lay on the ground as he watched Kanae still busy evading the bullets from Shiro and Jason. She no longer got hit as much as before and she could evade them quite well. Although she still occasionally got hit when the two of them carried out a cooperative attack, her improvement was simply too amazing.

"Tommy, starting tomorrow you’re going to shoot at Kanae too."

"What?" Kanae nearly failed to evade a bullet when she heard Jason’s instruction.

"You’re adapting very well, Captain, so the training intensity has to be increased."

On the other hand, Jason also started to evade two guns at once from Shiro, but Tommy still only trained with one gun because he only managed to escape half of the bullets. As for Shiro, in terms of bullet dodging, he already started to reach the same level as Tommy.

...

Fourteenth day of the training

"Finally, you two can evade shooting of my level," Jason nodded his head in satisfaction when he noticed that Shiro and Tommy could evade all his shots.

Shiro laughed. "Of course, your lousy shooting won’t be able to hit me now."

"Kanae, would you like shooting that big mouth with me?"

"Wait, don’t!"

Over the course of time, Kanae shooting ability was already on par with Jason’s. At times, she was able to overcome him, but usually, it was Jason who managed to beat her.

Shiro leaned on the wall as he grinned. "Tomorrow is my last day training here. Do you want to have live action training in the woods?"

He only asked for two weeks off, so he had to start working again the day after tomorrow. Thankfully, two weeks were enough for him to train his body to reach quite a high level and his shooting speed had increased rapidly.

"That’s a good idea. The worst will be the one to pay for our next meal," Jason agreed.

Tommy looked towards Jason in indignation. "You’re saying that, but you just want me to treat you all, right?"

Even without trying, he already knew that he was the poorest one in this group.

Kanae smiled. "Let’s just try it. Sometimes, the result can be different with our training."

"Sure, I’m completely ready."

The four of them looked towards each other as flames of ambition lit up in their eyes. They could not wait for the contest tomorrow.