"If you want, I could try teaching you a bit."

  "Really? Thanks!"

  After throwing me onto the ground a few times, Alice offers to teach me some basics. Obviously, I gratefully accept.

  Alice starts expining some of the basics to me- some punches, some kicks, and some stances. Whenever it's my turn to repeat a motion, she meticulously checks my posture. If she spots something wrong, she bluntly points out my mistake. For example, you wouldn't expect a simple straight- punch to go wrong, would you? Well, apparently it can.

  "Raise your left hand a bit."

  "Yes."

  "Twist your wrist a bit more."

  "Yes."

  "Other way."

  "Sorry."

  "Good."

  The main thing I struggled with punches was this "raise your left hand" concept called hikite- apparently used to pull your opponents off bance when you go to throw a punch. Isn't it fun learning new things?

  After working our way through basic punches and kicks, we looked at something called "horse stance".

  "Your feet need to be spaced wider apart."

  "Yes."

  "Wider."

  "Ok."

  "Wider."

  "Really? Even more?"

  "Yes."

  I thought it was called horse stance because it was meant to be like saddling a horse. What sort of horse is this wide?

  "How's this?"

  "Wider."

  ...

  I shuffle my feet even further apart. Alice nods in approval.

  "Good. Now bend your knees more."

  I do as Alice says and bend my knees more.

  "Excellent. Now, hold that pose for ten minutes."

  I as hold this "horse stance" that Alice has taught me, she passes me my water bottle and mimics my stance opposite me.

  Man, have I ever been so gd that people aren't watching me right now? I consider myself a person who doesn't care what other people think of me, but it definitely feels weird to squat in front of the entrance to SIT like this.

  A few minutes of silence pass as Alice stares at me.

  "Is there something wrong?" I ask.

  "No." Alice shakes her head while speaking, "your pose is good."

  If there's something more awkward than squatting in front of SIT by yourself, it would be having another person squat right in front of you and stare at you in silence. In order to break the tension I'm currently feeling, I start asking Alice some questions. Like when did she first start learning martial arts, how frequently she attends lessons, what different types of martial arts are there, et cetera.

  It turns out there's a bunch of different martial arts out there, but most of them are practised as a form of sport rather than self defense.

  When the system arrived, a lot of the old martial arts lost practicality. The ancient techniques were grouped together and are now called historical martial sports. Meanwhile, the experts who wanted to continue learning and developing practical unarmed combat started re-examining the different styles of martial arts, noting down what those combat techniques had in common, and studying the biology that made them work.

  The new practical martial arts wasn't given a fancy name. It just became known as unarmed combat. It still shares a lot of terminology and concepts with the historical martial sports, but it also threw a lot of old concepts out.

  The ten minutes finally pass, and I stand up normally. Looking at the clock in front of the entrance to SIT, it's now 11:15 AM. This means we have about forty-five minutes left before lunch break.

  SIT has a three hour teaching period, followed by a one-and-a-half hour break, followed by another three hour teaching period, from about 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM.

  [The Super Viliny system points out that those times don't add up. 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM is eight hours, while what the host has described is seven and a half hours.]

  I'm aware. those times are just approximations. Sometimes we end early and leave at 3:30 PM, sometimes we stay on up to about 4:10 PM.

  For the st forty five minutes, Alice starts expining the throw she demonstrated to me earlier. She's already showed me it a few times, but I couldn't get the hang of it. So we start going through it step by step.

  "Lets start from the beginning. grab my wrist."

  I do as she says.

  "You see how there's a gap between your thumb and your fingers? if you twist your wrist so that your thumb aligns with that gap, you can loosen their grip."

  "I see."

  "If you apply enough energy, thats usually enough to escape a wrist grab."

  The air makes a whooshing noise, and Alice tears her arm out of my grip.

  "Can I see that again?"

  "Sure."

  I hold Alice's wrist, much more firmly this time. However-

  Whoosh!

  Alice still tears her arm out of my grip.

  "You have to put quite a lot of effort into escaping. Don't pull your wrist away half-heartedly."

  "I see!"

  "You try now."

  I hold out my arm and Alice grabs my wrist. I twist my wrist and try to yank my arm away. To my surprise- nothing happened. I tried several more times, but I couldn't shake Alice's hold on my wrist.

  ...

  "It takes some practise."

  "... I see."

  I eventually manage to release my wrist from Alice's grab. Afterwards, we look at the throwing part of the sequence. The actual throw itself it quite easy. After removing your wrist from your opponent's hand, they're probably a bit off-banced. If so, you just pick 'em up and throw 'em.

  Maybe it's not quite as simple as that, but I'm sure you get the idea.

  However, doesn't it seem a bit strange to throw someone? It seems rather disproportionate to throw someone who just grabbed your wrist.

  I ask Alice about this, as to which she responds: "You don't need to throw them. You could choose to just release yourself from their grab if you want. Or you could choose to try and knock them out. If you know they have bad intentions, I don't think it's necessarily disproportionate."

  "That's true. I guess you can judge the response based on the situation you find yourself in." I think carefully about her response. The world can be a dangerous pce, after all. In some situations, knocking someone out could easily be justified. "But is it really that easy to knock someone out?"

  "If you catch them off guard."

  "May I see?"

  Alice nods.

  "Sure."

  She holds out her wrist for me to grab. I do so, and she slowly moves through a second set of motions, ending with her palm against the side of my jaw.

  "Hitting here hard enough should knock someone out."

  "Really?"

  "Would you like to try?"

  "Sure."

  Caught up in the casuality of her voice, I answer positively. Then I realise that I just signed myself up to get knocked out. Before I can change my mind, Alice gets into position.

  "Ready?"

  Her expressionless gaze emits a pressure which makes the part of me that wants to refuse wither.

  "I'm ready."

  Deciding that it's too te to retract my answer, I grab her wrist and resign to my fate.

  At the moment of impact, my senses blur and the world spins around me. Then the ground flies up to my face and I feel the cold embrace of damp grass. I try speaking, but all I can muster is a weak groan.

  "Mmergh."

  "Are you okay?"

  "Mmmergh!"

  I take a few deep breaths, then try getting up. As I try, I feel something tug at my arm, helping me. After I manage to stand up, Alice passes me some water.

  "Here, water."

  "Thanks."

  I take a few gulps from the bottle passed to me. A short time ter, my vision stops swirling.

  "You did well."

  "Thank you. What did I do well?"

  "Stay conscious."

  Alice moves her fingers to the side of my jaw where she hit me.

  "It's called a pressure point. I don't know the biology behind them, but I do know that they're effective." Alice prods it a bit. "If you apply some pressure, you should feel some level of discomfort. More discomfort than usually felt if that pressure was applied elsewhere nearby. "

  She demonstrates this by prodding me elsewhere on the jaw.

  "Here, this pce is the pressure point. And this pce here isn't. Do you feel the difference?" She asks.

  "I think so, but I'm not entirely sure."

  Before she can expin further, a bell rings, signaling the start of lunch break at SIT.

  "That'll be it for now. We have joint training in the afternoon, so you should eat something and get some rest."

  "Thank you, see you around."

  I think back to what I've been taught today. If there's anything I've learned, it would be...

  Unarmed combat is difficult.

  It's also painful.

  I watch Alice walk away from SIT and disappear behind the gates. I turn in the opposite direction and head to SIT's cafeteria. While walking there, I meet up with Brutus and Misa.

  "Arg! Where were you! You missed out on some really important stuff!"

  I look at Brutus with a raised brow. There's absolutely no way I missed out on something important. First of all, compulsary lessons have been postponed until after harvest. Second of all, Alice said that nothing was happening.

  Seeing my ck of reaction, Brutus sighed as he confessed the truth.

  "Ok. Nothing happened. literally nothing. I just wanted to make you feel like you missed out on something. Still, where were you?"

  So I expin to them what happened this morning.

  The rest of the day at SIT passes swiftly.

  We spent the time after lunchbreak helping Vorsichtiger run tests on his new batch of cypress-bot prototypes. Unlike the free-for-all Vorsichtiger initiated st time, the tests this time were much more controlled.

  On one test, everyone would line up and punch each of the cypress-bots thrice in various locations. The second test was almost identical to this, except the cypress-bots tried to block the trainees' punches. Another test involved trying to push a cypress-bot outside a ring, and another involved throwing and catching balls with cypress bot.

  There were two tests that most trainees were slightly less enthusiastic about, however.

  One was the opposite of the second test, where the trainees had to block three oncoming punches from each cypress-bot.

  The other was the opposite of the first test. In other words, one in which the trainees had to stand still and take three punches from Cypress bot without blocking.

  By the end of it, however, nobody had any major injuries. So we all started preparing to leave for the day, and everyone started boarding the train to go home.

  Oh, Apart from that one guy ciming he had suffered grievous injuries to his face on both tests #5 and #6. He stayed behind a bit longer in one of SIT's infirmaries.

  As I Exit the train from SIT, I see a poster for harvest festival.

  Harvest festival, huh? Thats the reason for these two hectic weeks.

  Well, it wasn't the cause for me specifically; the reason for that lied with a certain glowing beachball. However, for Kyte and the rest of SIT, this was the cause. I think back to two weeks ago, when a w css was interrupted by the intent of a golden-yellow subsystem.

  Actually, I guess the cause for that is actually just another subsystem, isn't it?

  Although the subsystem only acted due to the upcoming harvest festival; that doesn't mean it wasn't that subsystems fault.

  [The Super Viliny System Expresses its interest in the festival.]

  "You're interested in stuff like this?"

  Mmm.

  Beachball makes a humming noise, and I feel like it's nodding.

  There are four big hoidays here, one for each of the seasons. There's Harvest for autumn, Christmas for winter, Resurrection Day for spring, and the summer solstice. Sometimes Harvest is called different things, like Thanksgiving or Halloween. Actually, I think I remember learning in a history lesson years ago that those three were once different holidays, but at some point in time after the system arrived they got grouped up.

  For some reason, despite it being autumn, despite it being cold and windy, despite it often raining, Trigon city has the tradition of holding the harvest festival on the beach.

  Turning around, I survey the beach and the adjacent promenade. In a few days, people will start setting up stalls of different shapes and colours all around.

  "But why are you interested in the festival? Is it really that exciting for a system to see people walk around on the beack at night, while eating pumpkin soup and watching fireworks?"

  [The Super Viliny System is astonished to see the host so unaware. Doesn't the host know festivals like this are always accompanied by movements in the underworld? Malevolent pns and diabolical schemes will surely be put into motion in the shadows as the unsuspecting nation celebrates!]

  I ugh at the system's words, and shake my head. Is it really me thats the naive one here?

  "I think something has an overactive imagination."

  "Hey, mommy, why is that guy talking to himself and ughing like that?"

  Whoops, was I talking aloud there?

  I try and ignore the child currently pointing at me, as well as the family of four on the other side of the station thats giving me strange looks.

  [The Super Villiany System assures the host! There will definitely be all manners of criminal activity during Harvest festival! You could get involved yourself! Maybe you could even or pull off a robbery!]