The living room was nothing special. Actually, most parts of this house closely resembled my abode. Only this house was five times bigger than mine. It had rooms that were left empty with no use. At first, I thought those could be used for entertaining guests, but not one person had come here to stay for the night. Well, not to my knowledge.
Minutes after, Saki abruptly turned around. "I'm done! Let's go before it's too late."
"Sure," I replied as I was walking out to the hallway to pick up my package. We slithered our way out of the maze and headed to the office, which was about one kilometer north.
There was not much going on outside as the black cloak had dawned on the sky. A few dimples of light scattered across the atmosphere like glitter. The coruscating light shone through the windows of many households, thus creating gleaming dots everywhere.
The road was devoid of vehicles. Only the sounds of old people chattering outside and leaves whispering. The wind picked up its speed, which was a nuisance since my hair was quite long; it kept poking my eyes and blocking my sight. I thought I should start using wax to prevent my hair from going berserk.
Hopefully, the school had these, or else I would have to buy one quickly. But I wanted to place my trust in them, that they had everything students needed to live long-term there.
We were halfway there, and Saki started humming melodies; one arm swinging freely while the other holding onto the package tightly. If you saw her from afar, you would mistakenly recognize her as an energetic child doing silly actions.
"Careful. You're going to drop the package if you keep skipping."
She sluggishly returned to walking normally. "Alright," she said with a depressing tone. After mere seconds, she was back to humming melodies and murmuring lyrics.
"Hiryu-kun, do you intend to bring anything to the school?" Saki suddenly asked a question to spark a conversation.
"Some clothes to wear for the first few days and some memorabilia for decoration. As for the rest, I'll leave that to the school."
"That's a great idea! I totally forgot about those. I was gonna go without anything except a backpack and some women's hygiene products."
"Can't we get those for free? They're essential to girls. I doubt the school won't give a stock of them."
Essential products such as toilet paper, water, or women's products must be given for free periodically. If not, the school would fail to fulfill the promise of providing its students with basic needs. These should be the top priorities, including health, hygiene, and many more factors.
"I've been wondering about that too. Should I remove them to clear space? It's not like I need them urgently this week. What do you think?"
"Honestly, I prefer to pack as light as possible."
"I'll listen to you then. Thank you, Hiryu-kun!"
"Hold on. You could bring them as singles instead of one big packet, right?"
"Yeah, I could. But it would be hard to maintain its original form. It will get crushed by external force from the backpack, after all."
Sanitary napkins usually came in medium-sized packs that contained individual packets. Generally, packets that were tightly packed into a box would greatly reduce damage from external force. Separated, it would be quite frail and easy to reshape. However, would it decrease the effectiveness of the products? That I didn't know of.
"If it's usable after impact, you should bring some as a precaution."
"Yeah. It won't affect much. Just a little bit crumply if the impact is hard enough."
"Then bring some and put them in a smaller compartment. It's not going to cram your backpack or weigh it down."
"Okay!" she smiled and started mumbling song lyrics again.
Ten minutes later, we reached the post office. It was about 10:15 PM so employees were scarce. The place seemed so vacant that it looked like it had come out of a horror game. I saw some teenagers that were roughly my age using the DSPs. They might be students of HRA who lived close by.
As far as I knew, not a lot of teenagers were living in my neighborhood. If there were some, I was certain that they wouldn't attend the same school as me. So I thought they lived in a different neighborhood.
Anyway, we walked to an office counter nearby to complete our registration. Then, they gave us plastic cards to use for the DSPs. It was a one-time use card so you couldn't sneak in the next time you came here.
They accompanied us to the shipping hub where all the actions were happening.
"Wow. This is nothing like I've imagined!" Saki exclaimed.
Honestly, I felt the same way. I initially thought that the hub would look mundane with old machinery. However, it looked like those shipping services from futuristic movies. Concealed and transparent tubes were connected in every corner. Neon lights attached to the tubes, OLED TVs that showed shipping information, holographic interface for user interactions.