Fun fact: I don't know any English onomatopeiae.

-

"H-how... huff... How many laps does this make?"

"Huh, I believe... e-eight?"

"Ugh."

Gunnison felt he had been groaning way too much lately. He probably groaned during his brief coma too. It had become something of a habit for him. Perhaps the punishment wasn't as bad as he first thought it was. The girl running along with him was cute, and at least as physically inept as him.

"So... what's your name?" Gunnison tried to strike up conversation while suppressing his rough breath so as to not look like a weakling. This act was pointless since he had already splendidly demonstrated his physical inability just minutes before, but the boy didn't take notice of it.

"With twenty two more laps around the field ahead of ourselves, wasting breath in worthless questions is a foolish idea."

Gunnison chuckled at the girl's ignorant and long winded comment.

"Aah, but you're wrong. Entertaining conversations while running or doing other such stamina based physical activities helps with regulating your pace and breath."

Gunnison used some random fact he read online to keep the convo running, but it was very true: although his legs still felt like cheap jello, his breathing was steadier and he was no longer on the verge of 'rejecting' the other night's cup noodles.

"Where did you obtain that information?"

"Wikipedia." Gunnison answered the question honestly. 

"It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life..." He increased his pace while humming a tune.

There was something he found strange. They started running approximately thirty, so why was he not dead yet? When he had ran with his neighbor Sven just two days before, he had to hitch a ride on the giant's shoulders by the twenty minute mark. (AN: He got off shortly before arriving at the Square, FYI)

But he was feeling pretty okay right now. Sure, he couldn't feel anything below his waist anymore, and he sure wasn't enjoying it, but Gunnison could still go on.

'Oh well' Gunnison thought. Just one of the many things that didn't make sense in the world. Racking your head over all of them would be a waste of time.

"I am called Una." The unexpected answer interrupted Gunnison's musings and drove his attention towards his new acquaintance. Taking a second look, her appearance wasn't just 'cute', it was absolutely ravishing.

If asked to describe 'Una' with a single word, then Gunnison would reply with 'white'. Never mind her smooth skin and lips, pale enough to rival Gunnison's, even her newly cut short and glossy hair was snow colored. The military uniform, too, seemed influenced by the pearly tone: the dark grey pants and black tank top were bleached by the ivory light her body appeared to emit.

Poems could be composed about that neat face that didn't betray a single emotion, yet the beads of sweat rolling down her fair cheeks showed the fatigue she tried to conceal and added a touch of mortality to those quasi-divine looks. 

"Ah. That's a pretty short and easy to remember name, huh. Just like mine." Gunnison chuckled, interrupting his hum.

"What name do you possess?" 

"Gunnison Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade." He answered with a deadpan expression while looking straight forward. Thirteen laps. He could still go on.

The silence continued for a few tens of seconds. Not wanting the mood to turn awkward, Gunnison turned his head towards Una while brooding over some conversation starters he read and memorized from a self help book. Una was gazing at him strangely.

"Gunnison Kiss-Shot of the Heart-Under-Blade family. Hmm, I never knew such a clan existed. A branch of a noble family of sorts, perhaps?" The beauty mumbled in a barely audible voice, looking like she was trying to recall something.

Gunnison did an auditory double take.

"Are... are you shitting me?"

"My, what manners. But regrettably enough, I am completely serious. No matter how hard I try, a familia bearing the name of 'Heart-Under-Blade' doesn't come to my mind." Una said, frowning.

Gunnison was shocked. He didn’t expect that the girl would take him seriously.

It was an inside joke for New Intraeans to come up with winded names and act like a stuck up noble, and Gunnison regularly introduced himself to strangers like that to tease them. A few of his friends went as far as signing papers with those made up aliases. However, it was so widely spread that almost everyone in the City knew about it and not many played along.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

 Gunnison's alias came from the name of a character from a TV show he watched with Zatch. He was quite fond of it, even using it as a nickname in some online forums. 

But this girl didn't understand. She didn’t get the joke. Even if she lived in the Center, there should be a limit to obliviousness.

"That was a joke. A joke." Gunnison said as he tried to conceal a mocking smile.

Una's brooding eyes instantly turned into dots.

"Uh?" Hearing Una's unladylike reaction, Gunnison wasn't able to hold it in anymore as he burst into a loud laughter. He hadn't cracked up like that in months, and Una's reddening face amplified the effect.

Unable to control himself, Gunnison stopped running and held his belly to prevent the noodles from escaping the clutches of his oesophagus. 

"Oh my god, 'the Heart-Under-Blade noble family', is this bitch serious!"

Gunnison fell to the ground while mimicking the girl's way of speaking. Una was looking straight at him, unaware of the fact that her extreme reactions just fanned the flames and made Gunnison laugh even harder, thus causing an unending chain reaction. 

"How rude!" Una exclaimed loudly, drawing the attention of the currently training squadron and, unfortunately, Sergeant Baum’s.. 

"You fucking human sized hormone bundles! Twenty more laps!" The short man lost his composure and began screaming with a red face.

Every trace of laughter instantly vanished from Gunnison's face. He cursed under his breath as he brushed the dust from the training field off of his pants, but otherwise took no other action to oppose the pocket sized officer, savvy of the fact that rebelling would just net him more reasons to be punished. Una seemed to be aware of this as well, because she too started running without uttering a word.

*

After having completed the fifty laps, Baum had Gunnison and Una make up for the basic training exercises they skipped because of the punishment. It was rather embarrassing to be doing sit ups and squats in the middle of an empty field, surrounded by other newly appointed soldiers having lunch. Gunnison thought that they had to be bored out of their minds to be paying attention to a pair of sweaty losers who managed to get on their instructor’s nerves on the very first day of military training.

In the end, the muttering crowd slowly dispersed, and the duo was again alone with Sgt. Baum, who thought it suitable to reinforce their training regimen for no reason in particular with stretching and joint exercises, which were half as fatiguing as the others, but four times as painful. The short man wore a wide smirk on his moronic face, as if harassing random recruits was the apex of entertainment. Having learned his lesson, Gunnison kept his mouth shut. If he obeyed, the other party would eventually get bored of his lack of reaction and find new targets to annoy.. He had plenty of experience with this kind of people.

Still, they were late for lunch, and had to eat food leftovers inside a depressingly empty mess hall, with the only company of each other; they passed the time by complaining about their aching muscles and the bad food quality. Gunnison was also able to half prove his previous theory about the Shock's after effects: Una confirmed that she only woke up that morning and suffered from muscle pains for the duration of Baum's briefing. That wasn't definite proof as he would need a few more samples to be certain that the after effects weren't simply coincidental, but Gunnison was nonetheless happy of having found a comrade in physical weakness.

After finishing lunch, Gunnison walked out if the mess hall  and headed towards the Barracks' built in Intraean Military Academy. 

The Academy, or IMA, was a large grey building which gave off the impression of a normal high school complex mixed with the lager of Auschwitz. It was rather depressing and Gunnison felt no motivation towards returning to school, but he had to go: according to Baum, underaged recruits would continue their compulsory education as usual and soldier-students would be severely punished if they failed to attend it. Gunnison couldn’t exactly complain though: IMA was a very prestigious and expensive boarding school sporting the best lecturers one could find in Europe, and he would be able to attend it for free thanks to the City’s new policies about their children soldiers’ education. Talk about a stroke of luck.

-

Does anyone play FFXIV Heavensward? I wrote this chapter just so I could ask.