Yukinoshita Yukino wondered if she was having some sort of episode.
Why was she suddenly cleaning her own clubroom? She'd even gotten her school uniform dirty, which meant she'd have to wash it again when she got home.
"Phew, that's better. This looks much more comfortable now."
Raiden Mei wiped the sweat from her face with a tissue and asked with a smile, "Is this a new clubroom? It doesn't look like it's been cleaned much."
Yukinoshita Yukino nodded numbly. "Actually, I just got here not too long ago. I'm hoping to recruit some people who think like I do."
"Right, I still don't know what this club is all about."
Yukinoshita Yukino didn't answer Raiden Mei's question. Instead, she asked, "Shouldn't we introduce ourselves?"
It was only then that Raiden Mei realized she didn't even know the other girl's name.
After a simple introduction, the two began a normal conversation.
"So, what does the Service Club actually do?"
"Get your mind out of the gutter. This is to fulfill my ideals!" Yukinoshita Yukino explained her whole philosophy, which shocked Raiden Mei.
As a fellow young lady of a prominent family, Raiden Mei had never had such a sense of purpose. She couldn't help but feel a sense of admiration. "Why did you suddenly get this idea?" she asked.
"Because I'm cute, I was ostracized and bullied by my classmates since I was little..." Yukinoshita Yukino hadn't even finished her sentence.
Raiden Mei asked in surprise, "You were bullied too? What a coincidence!"
"..."
The two young ladies stared at each other, a shared concern for the educational environment of the Far East filling the air.
"It was because of my classmates' jealousy. And I'm not very good at making friends and tend to be quite direct, so I was ostracized and bullied. What about you?"
See? Once they found common ground, Yukinoshita Yukino even lowered some of her guard and let go of her personal space bubble.
"It was because my father was wrongly imprisoned. The people who used to suck up to me started targeting me instead. But it's okay now. My father... was rescued not long after," Raiden Mei said, a hint of wistfulness in her voice as she recalled the past.
"Oh? Director Raiden is your father?!" Although Yukinoshita Yukino had known St. Freya was full of hidden talents, who would have thought that a housekeeping girl who helped others clean their clubrooms for fun would be the precious daughter of Raiden Ryoma?
Raiden Mei didn't have the slightest air of a young lady about her now. It was clear she had been through a lot of "education."
"Yes, that's why I wanted to come to the Valkyrie school to study," Raiden Mei confessed, openly admitting to pulling strings.
Yukinoshita Yukino didn't know she was a natural Stigmata wielder. She pondered for a moment before asking, "Want to join my club? I can't find anyone right now anyway. If it takes too long and I don't have enough members, the clubroom will be taken away."
"Huh? Is that okay? But where do you plan to start? Even if you're helping people, you need... a starting point, right?" Raiden Mei felt that this club was like a jack-of-all-trades service, and taking on requests would take forever to get off the ground.
To her surprise, Yukinoshita Yukino was prepared. She nodded. "I do. I actually know a place where there will be a lot of requests."
Raiden Mei hadn't expected the girl to actually have a plan. "Where?" she asked quickly.
"Well..." Yukinoshita Yukino frowned, thinking. "It's kind of like a mental hospital, and also kind of like a psychological adjustment center. There are a lot of students there who are addicted to the first stage of the Stigma Battlesuit. My idea is to find some people there and see who can help whom get through that first stage."
'That place... sounds vaguely familiar.'
Raiden Mei felt like she had heard of a place like that at home, but she couldn't remember if it was from a chat with Kiana or Bronya.
Academy City did have a hospital dedicated to students' mental health, a medical organization specifically for dealing with Stigma Battlesuit-related issues. It was affiliated with the Schicksal Environmental Protection Association.
Raiden Mei thought for a moment and asked, "What's the name of that place?"
Yukinoshita Yukino hesitated for two seconds before saying, "The Heaven-Defying Treatment Center, Mental Recovery Department."
Mei broke into a cold sweat. She forced a laugh. "Haha, that's... that's certainly heaven-defying. What kind of person came up with a name like that?"
"You can't say that. I think the person behind it has a spirit of defying fate and refusing to believe in this flawed society. Logically speaking, isn't every successful medical treatment an act of defying heaven?"
Yukinoshita Yukino actually quite liked the name. She thought it had much more character than the names of ordinary hospitals.
'Don't say any more, please don't say any more...'
Raiden Mei's toes were curling with embarrassment. Of course, she knew exactly where that name came from. She was even one of the witnesses. To have someone praise something so embarrassing so enthusiastically, and not know how to explain it, was incredibly painful for her.
Mei quickly steered the conversation back on track. "Let's not talk about the hospital. Why do you think there will be enough requests there? I remember there are a lot of people addicted to avoiding the Stigma Battlesuit there, right? And there are plenty of doctors who could more easily bring them back."
Yukinoshita Yukino sneered. "What doctors? I think they're just a bunch of unqualified psych-teachers who got thrown over there. The one or two useful physicians are constantly being transferred around, and they basically just ignore the students addicted to avoidance. I almost developed problems myself from being treated there. If my teacher hadn't taken care of me for a long time, I probably wouldn't have made it through on my own."
'I was wrong. I shouldn't have brought this up...'
Raiden Mei grew even more embarrassed. The head of that hospital was probably either Kiana or Bronya.
'I need to ask them what's going on when I get back. What on earth are they doing?!'
Yukino continued, "Most of the doctors there only care about the effects of the Stigma Battlesuit and how to reduce those effects to an acceptable level. They're less like doctors and more like social psychology researchers."
Yukinoshita Yukino clearly had deep personal experience. She had obviously been beaten down by society in the first stage.
Raiden Mei shrank back, a wave of guilt washing over her.
Especially since her father was one of the directors of Academy City, any problems in this place were more or less linked to the name "Raiden."
Yukinoshita Yukino spoke very seriously. "Miss Raiden Mei, have you heard any of the urban legends of Academy City?"
"Urban legends? Like the Slit-Mouthed Woman or Kisaragi Station?" Raiden Mei didn't understand why the topic had suddenly shifted to urban legends, but she had indeed heard some of Academy City's.
It was just that these legends weren't as outrageous as the people in her own home, so she had gradually lost interest.
Yukinoshita Yukino said with great seriousness, "Legend has it that the Board Chairman has a group of members under her called the 'My Little Ponies.' They are all female elites in their respective fields. And among them, one manages these safety and security matters. I heard that the Heaven-Defying Treatment Center is a social psychology research department under Anti-Entropy, a pressure-release valve for social psychology research. This is all gossip spread by the young ladies here at St. Freya. Don't you think Academy City is a bit dangerous?"
Yukino saw that Raiden Mei's expression had changed.
Raiden Mei's entire face had frozen. She couldn't for the life of her figure out how this rumor had started.
'Why? Why have so many things been twisted like this?'
'How come I've never heard of such a powerful organization?'