Cardfight!! Vanguard: Generations Volume 2 [Zyriot War]

Chapter 2: The Brewing Storm

With the midterms over, the 1st Years had the rest of May easy. With only about a week left until June, which meant we'd get our monthly allotment of private points, and the summer holiday on the horizon, it seemed like everyone was excited about the upcoming month.

Personally, I was just glad I had managed to get through May without burning through all my remaining private points. I found that my new favourite way to commute to school was by train, since it was fast and efficient. However, each trip by itself cost 1500 points, so I purchased a monthly subscription that let me use the railway with a membership card.

As usual, I went to the railway station, bought my ticket for the ride with my card, and went to the adjacent cafe to buy breakfast, which was usually some baked French good. I would then eat the food while waiting for the train among my fellow Drachma Red students. From my class, I noticed that the popular students like Sakigamiya and Matsushita took the train. Not Yukina, though.

I sometimes dread on how much I spent on that membership card. It costed a hefty 9000 points... but doing the math, this should theoretically be worth it. 9000 points is equivalent to six trips. In a month, I would make at least sixty trips (two per day to go around the island and get back home), so I was actually getting ten times my money's worth. The school is sneaky about these things. They're not flashily advertised, so you have to go around hunting for these deals.

Ever since using the trains though, I've always seen one boy in particular without fail. Sure, there are other students who take the train as regularly as me, but not as religiously as this guy. Not to mention, I saw him before one time, back in April, when I took the train to the Stark White sector of the island. Back then, I had no idea which class he was from, but I learnt he was from D Class, the class above mine.

The school I attend, GEN Academy, has a peculiar system. It runs on meritocracy, and ranks students based on their abilities, putting them into classes relative to their skill. The classes are battling each other to reach A Class, which is the only class that graduates with benefits provided by the school. In order to climb up the ranks, the classes must increase their class points, or Cl, and surpass the other classes in ranking.

I was put into the worst class, E Class, due a failure in my entrance exam. It should've been easy - all I had to do was win a cardfight - but instead, I lost and was sent all the way to the bottom. In our first month, E Class lost all of our class points, making things difficult for us from the start, as A Class had 950 class points.

When the train arrived, I boarded it. In addition to the battle royal-style of fighting between classes, GEN Academy promoted E Class as the class where all failures would be sent to, with the additional threat that any students ended up in this class would be more likely to be expelled than their peers. They were serious about this, as my classmate, Yukimura, was nearly expelled for his violent behaviour.

That's why the trains were also separated by class. While the front carriage was exclusively for A Class student usage, all the carriages in between could be used by any class, except E Class. All E Class students had to board the carriage at the back, resulting in a cramped and uncomfortable experience. Outside of school hours though, the students could go to whichever carriage they wanted.

As usual, the E Class carriage was packed. It wasn't loud - a lot of the students on the train tended to fall asleep - but it was claustrophobic to be sitting in such a cramped space. Right now, I was trapped between two upperclassmen. Granted, they were both girls, but still, it's terrifying.

Unless you had friends besides you, you had nothing to do on the train, except play on your phone, read a book, or gaze outside the window. Honestly though, I prefer it this way. The serenity of the ride and the soothing bumps are what makes me enjoy it, bar the cramped carriage. It's a moment of peace and calm, which is rare to experience when you're attending a cutthroat school like this one.