Chapter 2 – Investigating the situation, detective Ben in action

After arriving at school, he parted ways with Nova and headed to his class.

It was still early in the first trimester, being only mid-September, and the weather was still warm. Benjamin was a freshman in high school starting this year. He recently had a growth spurt, putting himself at 178 cm. That also earned him the ire of some of his sisters, which now had to look up at him, contrarily to the looking down on him which they had become accustomed to, and frankly enjoyed much more.

Just like most boys his age, he believed that he was quite dashing and handsome. This point of view was of course extremely subjective and except for his mother and grandmothers, no one ever expressed the same opinion about his looks. However with his brown hair, brown eyes, and neat appearance - mostly due to the forceful intervention of his sisters - he also never got told that he looked bad.

He had been using the walk to school to somewhat organize his thoughts. First of all, he had to verify that the weirdness wasn't limited to his family. And if it wasn't, since the situation was still very unclear, he believed that he would probably have to appear strange to other people for a while more, just like what happened this morning. This really couldn't be helped and the best he could do would be to limit it as much as possible and be prudent about his questions and attitude.

Entering his classroom, he still used his old trick of greeting an unlimited number of people with a quiet "Good morning". No one paid too much attention to his arrival, except a few girls close to the door taking a quick look or two at him before going back to chatting between themselves. He spotted his newly made friends from high school, Julian and Nathan, and headed toward them. It was the perfect opportunity to start fishing for information.

"Hey guys, how are you?"

"Hi Ben, I am good, and you?"

"Morning Ben, all fine, thank you."

"I am good too, thanks."

He looked at his friends and he already started to notice the changes. First of all their speech appeared to be more polite than usual. Then they seemed to be... different somehow. If he had to say, they looked sort of... effeminate? Was that even possible? These were the guys he was running with together every day after school. That was also how they became friends quickly, being in the same class and having the same interests. They were quite the sportsmen and frankly, it was hard to consider them as effeminate in any way. This made him come up with a good first question, to test the waters.

"Are you two ready for our run this afternoon?"

They looked surprised at him and there was a moment of silence. Finally Julian asked.

"What run are you talking about?"

This time it was his turn to shut up. The situation was even worse than he thought. Nathan took the opportunity to speak.

"Have you been running after school Ben?"

Taking his silence as acknowledgment, he continued.

"Are you perhaps starting a diet? Be careful not to go too far and ruin your health. And you wouldn't want to do too much sport and end up all muscular!"

This last part made the two giggle quietly. Ben was a bit shocked. He took a few seconds before getting a hold of himself.

"O-of course you're right, I will be careful."

They nodded at him and smiled approvingly. There was another moment of silence, which he used to come up with his next question. Since the boys were weird, what about the girls then? He already knew his sisters were not normal from this morning but since he didn't really understand the change completely yet, he fired his next question their way.

"By the way, it's a bit of a topic change but what do you two think about the girls in our class?"

To that, they frowned, clearly unhappy about the class' female population. Still, they toned down their voice in order not to be overheard. Nathan answered first.

"We got really unlucky with this class. Most of them are nerds or gamers and all of them are perverts, no exception."

Julian sighed, seemingly completely agreeing with that statement.

"Right, look at them now."

All three of them turned toward the few groups of girls in class. Strangely, it seemed a lot of them were looking at Benjamin, or more like toward their group. They had an odd smile on their face and they were indeed ogling them somehow. Their line of sight seemed to dive a lot though, not looking at the boys' faces but aiming lower. When they noticed our group looking at them, they all hurriedly looked away and started to whisper among themselves.

Julian concluded.

"Damn bunch of perverts, they're in heat 24/7/365. I shiver every time they look at us like that. We should really be careful about them. Couldn't there have been a least a decent one, so we could talk normally without risking our purity any time they get close to us?"

That last sentence finally did it for Benjamin. He felt like some piece of the puzzle got unlocked.

At the same time, the teacher for the first class entered the room. Benjamin hurriedly got to his seat after a quick "see you later" to his friends. The lesson started but his mind was miles away from following whatever subject the teacher was talking about. He took a piece of paper from his bag and started writing about all the anomalies he discovered since this morning.

His sisters being strangely embarrassed around him. Boys being prude and effeminate. Girls being perverts and horny. Boys being like... girls? And girls behaving like your typical horny high school boy?

Detective Ben finally saw the light. It was still only a theory but could it be that gender morals and values somehow got reversed?