Sakuramoria

John Vosmyorkin, a sakumorian by upbringing despite his Refitee roots, breathed heavily as he leaned against the edge of a fence and fixed his unseeing eyes on the sky, trying to collect himself.
- Move it, damn it! - a broad-chested local shoved his shoulder, barely squeezing through the narrow gate behind him.
- What's your problem?! - John jutted out his lower jaw and blustered, more out of reflex than conscious reaction.
- What? - the big man turned toward the peasant and fixed a heavy, pig-eyed stare on him from deep-set sockets.
- Nothing, forget it... - John backed down, turning away.
- Well, alright then! - the big man patted the guy on the cheek and walked off.
Spitting on the ground, John boldly lifted his gaze and met the eyes of a frowning royal soldier staring directly at him. The soldier glanced at John's spit on the fresh school grass.
- S-sorry... My fault... Won't happen again... - John ducked his head, scuffed the spit away with his foot, and scurried past the guard, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.
Apparently, he had ended up... at some kind of festival?.. It was hard to say for sure.

John Vosmyorkin had spent the entire day drinking nothing but cheap booze at the cheapest tavern in Alma, and despite his own notions of his heroic alcohol tolerance, he soon got completely smashed. Feeling like the king of the world, John suddenly decided to pick a fight with a few guys sitting at a far table who, he thought, laughed too loudly. When their bleary, unsteady, uncomprehending gazes lifted and fixed on his degenerate peasant face, he still felt on top of the world. Raising his voice, he unloaded all the grievances that had built up over the last half-hour onto the insolent fellows, then slammed his fist on the table, causing the beer in one of their glasses to splash over the edge and onto his clothes.
Exchanging glances, the strangers scowled and began to rise from the table with hostile intent.
- What's your problem, bitch?.. - one of them hissed drunkenly. - Lost your nerve?.. We'll help you find it, boys?..
At that moment, John realized he had slightly overstepped the acceptable bounds of social behavior, backed up until he bumped into another working man, who kicked him back into the middle.
- Oh, come on... What are you, like, doing... - John babbled, vainly trying to find a sophistic way out of the conflict. His drunk head wasn't much help, but each new second of the unfolding situation, threatening to smoothly devolve into a beating, pushed him to sober up a little.
- Alright, live... I'm not a monster... - John waved his hand and carelessly tried to leave the scene, but was stopped by a claw grabbing him by the scruff of the neck.
- Stooop...
John jerked, the fabric of his peasant shirt tearing loudly, but he managed to free himself from his opponent's grip.
- I mistook you for someone else, guys, forget it!.. - he shouted over his shoulder, quickly moving toward the exit.
On the way, he glanced back and saw the "guys" shoving past the other patrons in the tavern, stubbornly pushing through the crowd after him toward the exit. This gave him a boost: squeezing through bodies, John dashed outside and ran as fast as his legs would carry him—straight ahead.
After covering a couple of blocks this way, he ran out of breath, put his hands on his knees, and glanced over his shoulder purely for show. To his surprise and horror, he spotted a few dozen meters away several silhouettes of huge brutes, shouting to each other, pointing in his direction, and moving at a jog toward him.
- Fuuuck! - John hissed, springing from his spot and continuing his frantic escape.
No matter how hard he tried to lose the pursuit, the trio of pursuers somehow wouldn't fall behind.
After some time, he came to some strange square in front of a fence and a gate bearing weird posters, where people were gradually filing in.
Pushing through visitors, he tried to get through the gate but was stopped by a guard and an attendant.
- Ticket, please.
- W-what?..
- Ticket, please. One hundred reeks - if you haven't purchased it in advance, - the ticket taker eyed the breathless but slightly sobered John with his shirt collar torn askew suspiciously.
- What do you mean, one hundred?.. - John didn't understand why he was suddenly being asked for money in broad daylight (actually, closer to evening), but the familiar sound of footsteps from the alley he had just run out of left no time for thought.
Fumbling through his pockets, the unfortunate peasant pulled out his last one hundred and two reeks in small coins, tried to count them, but his trembling hands dropped them right into the dust.
- What's the matter, hey? - came dissatisfied voices behind him. - There's a line here, you know!
Ignoring these shouts, John scrabbled on the ground, picked up both the reeks and the road dust, and dumped them into the ticket taker's hands:
- O-one hundred! Let me through, please!
The attendant, trying not to show disgust at this act, looked sideways at the handful of change and slowly began counting aloud.
John, shifting from foot to foot and glancing toward the alley from which the rumble of angry, drunken voices was already audible, looked at the ticket taker with despair.
- Ninety-nine... one hundred... - sighing, the employee dumped the reeks into a bag and tore off a ticket for the peasant. - Have a nice evening...

Catching his breath, John wandered around the yard in a daze for a while. Apparently, he had ended up on the grounds of a local school for rich and successful kids, and a celebration was indeed taking place—people were trickling toward a source where a technomagically amplified voice was beckoning.
Clutching his ticket—unfortunately, despite his origins, the peasant couldn't read, and therefore didn't understand what was happening—he followed the stream of people and came out to a podium, around which schoolchildren in uniform and other visitors were crowded, waiting for something.
There, a brisk girl from the staff caught him, thrust into his hands a form with numbers, incomprehensible words, and empty squares, as well as a stub of a pencil.
"You'll need to vote from one to ten for each contestant and then hand in the sheet over there," she chirped so sweetly that John even blushed and felt embarrassed.
- Well... I... - he started to stammer, but she had already walked away.
Apparently, she was handing out these supplies to everyone present. Judging by the look of it, the words on the sheet were names. John couldn't read them, but he could count from one to ten and even a bit further, to his credit. He figured out this puzzle just as the action began on the podium and the contestants started appearing one by one. For a while, John sat with his mouth slightly open, just staring at what was happening in a stupor, but then he snapped out of it and frantically began scribbling.

1. "So this is the new queen they're rumoring about, is it? Didn't expect that... She's lovely, no doubt! A worthy number one!" - the patriotic peasant boldly scrawled a ten.
2. "I wonder, is that a costume or did they actually catch a girl from a tribe? A wild one, can't deny that... But she seems decent enough... Damn, she's looking at me..." - feeling the icy hostility of a gaze sliding over him, John shuddered and marked a crooked seven. After thinking, he crossed it out and added an eight. Thinking better of it, he crossed it out again and put a bold, final six. After all, they weren't exactly on neighborly terms with the eastern savages. "Hope she didn't see that and won't throw an axe at my head."
3. "Another queen? Or not... This one looks more like the king's mistress" - John snickered at his own thoughts and gave a ten. At first, he thought of a nine, simply because the queen is naturally the only one deserving the maximum score, but he couldn't take his eyes off the mistress, so he followed his heart's calling. Besides, a mistress is almost like a wife, right? Then he mentally prayed that he wouldn't be impaled for such insolence after handing in the sheet.
4. Devouring the priestess of Avaritia with his eyes, the commoner struggled for a while with the passions tearing at his soul, then slapped an eight—purely out of spite, as a lesson to the adherents of that school, who bathed in money he himself didn't have. If he were bolder, smarter, and more authoritative, he would have long gathered the men, taken all the money from these upstarts, and distributed it fairly among the needy. And also if the authorities wouldn't do anything to him for it afterward.
5. "Nice bow, good chest, cute face. But it's missing something special" - a crooked seven landed in the square.
6. "She sure knows how to get attention..." - another seven went into the square, for the seriousness of her intent, but the outfit was otherwise a bit plain.
7. In this contestant, John was reminded of a little bitch from his childhood who often mocked him, and whom he always wanted to teach a lesson but couldn't, due to his own inarticulateness and the rule against raising a hand to girls. Then she left Alma—at first little Johnny breathed a sigh of relief, but after a while, he began to feel an emptiness in his heart. Sighing heavily, he puts a nine.
8. "Ah, to go on a picnic like that, with moonshine and sandwiches, and have a girl like that take care of you, and pour you a drink, and let you lie on her lap when the booze goes to your head..." - drifting in dreams of an ideal caring wife, John puts an eight.
9. "Witch I am, oh witch I am, such a hard fate I have..." - muttering lines from a song under his breath, the peasant looks askance with uncertainty and wariness at her extravagant outfit, whose hostility and strangeness overshadows even the positive impression of her high stats, and puts a six.
10. Here, the young man felt a vibe from the contestant similar in nature to what one might expect from an older sister studying at a capital university. After thinking for a while, and deciding that the vibe, while good, didn't compare to the stunning previous contestants, he writes seven.
11. And again, a contestant appeared, slowly scanning each guest with a hostile gaze that made John feel like he was at Dante's Last Judgment. Trying not to breathe, so as not to attract attention, and not to look at her iron fists and ominous weapon, he puts a five.
12. No matter which part of her silhouette John looked at, he kept catching himself doing the same thing—his eyes would go up to her surprised face, then sharply slide down to her massive thighs, disproportionately large compared to her boots. "What's with her... annngh... mnngh... anathomngh..." - his half-drunk head couldn't remember the word, the meaning of which he didn't know, but which he had once heard in a similar context from one of his more in-tel-lec-tu-al buddies. "Maybe those boots are just really tight..." - the guest got stuck on this riddle for a long time; he never found an answer, but automatically put an eight.
13. Here, John couldn't quite figure out what feeling this contestant evoked—a sleepy wife, sister, or daughter met in the hallway in the morning? Each was good in its own way, and although the image lacked some polish, he didn't skimp on a nine.
14. "My grandfather fought the blue bastards!" - clenching his fists and turning crimson, John slid his gaze with hostility over the blue-haired contestant's figure, examining every curve, bend, and hidden nook—to study the enemy better. After thinking for a while, he even gave her an eight—purely to lull her into complacency and nothing more, so she would let her guard down in our country and not expect a blow from the enemy in the future.

After the voting ended, he went to hand in the sheet where he was told.
In front of him in line stood two girls of about the same height but rather different builds.
- You do understand, Levizia Kaladiumovna, that I cannot give any of our dear subjects, even those from other jurisdictions, anything less than the highest score. I might not have voted at all—such ratings won't change the weather anyway—but fine, let it be for order's sake, - said one of them, nodding and smiling at the staff member and handing over her sheet. - By the way, are you familiar with a certain—Laurin Evgeny Stalinovich? One of our leading partners. Let's go exchange greetings.
When it was the guest's turn, he handed over his sheet—to one of the familiar faces, as it turned out, which made him very nervous, and he quickly ran away.
Leaving the school grounds, he sighed, looked at the sky, and thought about his life. He was twenty-two years old, and he couldn't even read—only swing a shovel and a hoe. But here, beyond the fence, an incredible and wondrous world of academy, beauty, polish, glamour, and everything else one could only dream of had opened up to him.
Clenching his fists and teeth, John Vosmyorkin, surprisingly to himself, decided that starting tomorrow he would learn to read, so that he could later enter this academy and reach for those stars with his own hands.
- Hurray! - he shouted, trying to cheer himself up, when suddenly he got a painful smack on the ear and fell to the ground.
- Got you, you son of a bitch... - a familiar drunken voice rasped in his ear.
The rest of the evening did not go very well for John.