There had been no one there, just now, and now there is, but not in a way where anyone could've noticed. It could well have been that this person had walked there from somewhere, everyone else too distracted to see it happen. That's not what actually went on here, of course, but it's an important part of understanding what did happen that that explanation is one that could have been true.

So now here's this boy. You would be forgiven for thinking otherwise, with the anime schoolgirl outfit, crop top, skirt going almost two-thirds of the way down his thighs and thigh high stockings with a proper zettai ryouiki and all that, the not-quite-shoulder length pink hair, and skin that looks so soft it almost glitters in the sun. And as he appears there and opens his eyes to see where, exactly, he is, he does not have good enough reflexes to avoid the imminent collision.

(Well, he kind of does, except that it's narratively appropriate for him to not, right this second.)

The Dean tumbles. It's fortunate that he wasn't carrying any papers; even his spectacles stay perched on his nose. Still, he's bruised, and at his age his bones can't be happy with him.

"Hellfire!" he grumbles. "Young l-" He pauses and squints. "Young m-" He squints harder, then gives it up as a bad job. "Young individual, you must be more careful where... you..."

A longer pause. A long enough pause that a young individual might be forgiven for wondering what was going on inside his head.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" he exclaims. "Are you alright?"

The Dean retrieves himself from the pavement and brushes himself off in a manner that might be characterized as manic. "Of course, of course! It's no trouble at all, it couldn't have been less your fault - I should ask the same of you, I hope your journey wasn't too stressful? It's been years since we had a Transfer student - I'm being terribly rude. Welcome to the Valentine School, we've been expecting you!"

"—oh, uh, thank you? My journey was alright, but how did you know I was a transfer student?" Does he know the faces of every student by heart or something?

"Well, you're not wearing our uniform, but you're clearly wearing a school uniform, and a Japanese one at that. You could be some kind of cosplayer who snuck onto school grounds, but it would be quite a lot of effort and we do check once a Transfer student is admitted, so you wouldn't stay long. - if you are just a cosplayer, do let me know now so I can have you gently escorted off campus, rather than less gently escorted off campus by police in a few days, they take Transfer fraud quite seriously."

"I am not a cosplayer," he says, nodding. Not in the normal sense of the word, anyway; he is in a strong sense cosplaying Astolfo, but also in another just as strong sense he just is Astolfo, for the moment.

"Good, good. Shall I take you to the office and get you officially admitted, then? It won't take too long but we'll both likely miss the induction ceremony, which will be a terrible shame, I do so love Headmaster Andrews' speeches, but one must make certain sacrifices?" A frankly pleading look.

He can read a room.

"Can't we go to induction ceremony before doing the formalities, since they're just formalities anyway?"

That does not mean he is going to do what the room is telling him to.

A sigh. "It's so nice to see young persons respecting our traditions," he complains as he leads the young person towards the green.

He wonders what genre he's in. And why the heck the Spirit put him in it. He's pretty sure that guy was implying something magical? Maybe the school occasionally gets supernatural visitors? Maybe there'll be werewolves or vampires? Oh the irony might kill him if so.

He follows.

The green contains a small outdoor amphitheater, the center of which contains several official-looking persons, whom the Dean reluctantly joins after seating his duckling among other students. Some of the students are wearing the school's uniform, in purple and gold; others are wearing casual clothes or well-tailored suits. None are wearing seifuku. More than a few confused looks, and some confused ogles, are sent in his direction.

Confused ogles can get the occasional wink and blown kiss.

Most wink and/or kiss recipients blush and look away.

One is so bold as to catch the kiss and put it in his pocket, and wink back.

Oh and he's gorgeous, too. Peter is absolutely into it. He grins at the boy but then turns to watch whatever event is about to happen.

The induction speech is extremely typical. Anyone who has attended an English public school, or a sufficiently pretentious American private school, has heard it. You are the future of blah blah this institution blah we have high expectations but we are confident you will meet them; if we were not, you would not be here. It's not even that long, by the standards of the breed. Maybe half an hour. Then they're let loose to settle into dormitories, and the Dean comes to collect Peter.

"Well, that's accomplished. I assume you don't have anything to move into your room; shall we do that admissions paperwork now? It actually does have some non-formality elements."

"Certainly. I do have some clothes and a laptop but you don't need to worry about them, I'll get them myself later."

"Oh, excellent, that's rare."

The Dean leads him towards one of the more modern buildings.

(Very few people are paying attention to this.)

(Most people are idiots.)

(One person isn't.)

Well, Peter will finger wave with his right hand at gorgeous boy before following the Dean.

Peter is led to an office, with several sub-offices off the main room with the reception desk; the Dean heads for one of these, with the plaque reading Dean Abrams, and sits down behind a desk with a brushed-chrome PC tower hooked up to what looks, to all appearances, like an iMac G3 cathode display. A nearby printer emits a single-page form, which he hands over, still warm. The form bears some resemblance to a normal school application; it wants to know name, age, gender (out of several choices or write-in), educational history ("Note: you will not benefit from falsifying this information. We cannot access your prior records, but you will fail classes you are not qualified for."), and any medical concerns of note. It also requests that he select "optionals" (electives, apparently) from a truly staggering array of them, and priority-list more if his educational history turns out to place him out of a core subject or two.

"Why don't you fill this out, and I'll explain a bit more of the context around Transfers while you do?"

"Sounds good to me. Can I check every gender box?"

"I should warn you, it'll just be entered as a write-in of checked every box. If you still want to even if it doesn't cause exciting data entry problems, feel free."

Yeah he'll do that and then for the write-in he'll write "he/him right now but like don't worry about it".

Now as for the actual classes... wow. Wow. There are, uh. Many. Like lots. Like a fuckton. Does this place even have that many students or is it meant to pacify Transfers or...?

No matter. It seems that he's going to be a ?freshman? so he probably will in fact not be taking the standard curriculum classes but there are some electives optionals that look pretty sexy here. Lots of languages, and he decides he'll take Japanese, why not, he's Astolfo and more generically a weeb, and German if he can because again why not, he likes languages. There's a thing called Design Technology? Which includes home ec but also has other stuff like woodworking and, again, why not.

And oh all the electives he didn't take but wanted to, music and drama and, hell, even creative writing. And history! It's boring generally but he wants to know how this world differs from his.

Maybe this'll be fun.

And the Dean will begin to commit exposition.

"So - we, as a planet, are given to understand that we are relatively unusual, out of all the worlds that can exist. For as long as anyone can recall, we've had... visitors. Sometimes, somewhere else, people die suddenly and accidentally, and they arrive here. Or sometimes they step into a ring of mushrooms, or a door standing on its own in a field, or they step off the edge of the world. However it happens, they arrive somewhere on this planet, near someone or some institution with the resources to help them acclimate to life in our society and help them do what they want or need. They can speak the language most relevant to their needs. And, often, there's some reason they're here - it might just be superstition, or the tendency for out-of-context problems to shake things up, but they do shake things up a good amount of the time.

"Naturally this has had certain effects on our society. The actual timeline seems to be pegged to 'Earth standard', from what we've gathered; we've been lucky enough to dodge a number of alarming-sounding historical atrocities via timely Transfers, but somehow things usually bend approximately back into shape. But we do have a few notable cultural differences. We have more institutions constructed around the concept that they might need to suddenly integrate a visitor from nowhere, for one thing. And, after a few unusual historical atrocities, we have something of a cultural taboo around spreading too widely the knowledge that someone is a Transfer. The first person to meet them knows; the two or five or ten people who need to do the paperwork to get them situated where they need to be know; if they want to marry someday, presumably their spouse knows. Anything too far outside that space, and people begin to get very nervous.

"So I will request your general discretion, and I will smooth the way for you to do so without too much trouble. And if you choose to upset the status quo, it would be difficult for me to actually stop you, but I will request that you do it outside these walls."