The Bus

On this day in April, the cherry blossoms were falling at an unprecedented speed.

They didn't drift down from the branches one or two at a time; instead, entire clusters of petals were swept up by the wind, slamming against the bus's wide glass windows like a pink rainstorm. The petals lingered on the glass for less than half a second before being snatched away by a more violent gust, vanishing into the void behind the road.

Kanzaki Toru leaned against the window in the back row of the bus, his eyes half-open as he watched the increasingly unfamiliar scenery outside.

The high-rises had disappeared after a certain point. Then came the convenience stores, residential areas, and small parks. Finally, even the occasional small shop vanished entirely, leaving only endless green security fencing on both sides of the road, and in the distance, a faint, grey-white wall looming into view.

That was Advanced Nurturing High School.

The only high school in the country operated directly by the government. It was a completely closed environment, entirely cut off from the outside world. The facilities on campus were said to be incredibly luxurious, allegedly even including commercial amenities, and over ninety-nine percent of graduates went on to their desired universities or companies.

It sounded like paradise.

Kanzaki Toru let out a soft, cynical scoff.

That kind of talk might fool a middle schooler, but it wouldn't work on him. In this world, anything that was packaged too perfectly was guaranteed to hide an equivalent price tag. This was an ironclad rule he had distilled from countless personal experiences over his sixteen years of life.

There was no sound inside the bus.

The students, all wearing identical brand-new uniforms, sat quietly in their seats. Some were looking at their phones, some had their eyes closed, pretending to sleep, and others, like him, were staring blankly out the window. No one was talking, no one was introducing themselves, and no one showed any excitement about the "brand-new school life" that was about to begin.

This wasn't normal.

Kanzaki Toru tilted his head slightly, scanning the interior of the bus.

He could feel a subtle, tense atmosphere. It was a feeling he knew well—the silence of mutual appraisal and testing that occurred when a group of strangers was suddenly thrown into an unfamiliar environment.

But beyond that, there was something else.

Some students' hands were trembling, others were clutching their bags too tightly to their chests, and a few were frequently glancing toward the wall that was drawing ever closer outside.

What were they afraid of?

The thought flashed through his mind, but Kanzaki Toru didn't dwell on it. Since he had been assigned to Class D, it meant that by the school's standards, his abilities were at the very bottom. A bottom-tier piece of trash didn't need to overthink complex problems.

Just coast through three years, get the diploma, and be done with it.

He was about to look away when his gaze stopped midway.

It stopped at the seat in front of him.

That girl had been there since he boarded.

A white sun hat, red thick-rimmed glasses. Shoulder-length black hair hung down on both sides, obscuring her face. Her frame was thin and small, her bones so delicate they looked like they would shatter under a firm grip. She wore the school's uniform, layered with a simple, plain-colored cardigan.

Her posture hadn't changed since she got on the bus.

Head down, shoulders hunched, hands tightly clasped on her lap. Her knuckles were white from the pressure, and her nails were digging into her palms.

She didn't look like she was riding a bus.

She looked like she was enduring something.

That posture—the way she tried to shrink herself into the smallest possible space, attempting to vanish from everyone's sight—Kanzaki Toru had seen it before.

He had seen it in children who were being bullied, in those who possessed an instinctive fear of crowds.

The question was, why would someone so clearly unsuited for communal life come to this fully enclosed boarding school?

Kanzaki Toru didn't stare for long and turned his gaze back to the window.

He wasn't someone overflowing with a sense of justice. Whatever secrets others had were their own business. He just wanted to finish these three years in peace—

"Hey, you girl with the hat over there."

The voice came from the middle of the bus.

Kanzaki Toru's brow twitched, but he didn't turn his head.

The speaker was a boy with light brown hair. He wasn't tall, but his shoulders were broad, giving off a frivolous and aggressive vibe. He had turned around from his seat in the row ahead and was looking this way with an unbridled gaze.

To be precise, he was looking at the girl in front of Kanzaki Toru.

"You're in Class D too, right? Based on your uniform."

The boy said with a grin, his tone carrying a sense of familiarity that made one feel uncomfortable.

"I'm Yoshida. We're going to be classmates, so what's your name?"

The girl in the front row didn't answer.

She didn't even lift her head.

She simply pulled the brim of her hat lower and hunched her shoulders even tighter.

A few other students on the bus glanced over. Some wore expressions of discomfort, others quickly looked away, but no one spoke.

"Hey, hey—"

Seeing that she was ignoring him, the smile on the boy named Yoshida faded slightly. He stood up, walked two steps down the aisle, and stopped beside the girl's seat.

"I'm talking to you. It's not very nice to ignore people like that, is it?"

As he spoke, he leaned over and reached out a hand, intending to lift the girl's face from beneath the brim of her hat.

The girl's body stiffened violently.

Kanzaki Toru saw her hands. The pair resting on her lap were trembling uncontrollably. Her nails dug into her palms, nearly drawing blood.

Her lips were moving, but no sound came out.

It wasn't that she didn't want to speak.

It was that she couldn't.

That reaction—Kanzaki Toru knew what it was called.

He sighed.

Forget it. Consider it accumulating some merit on his first day.

"Hey."

His voice wasn't loud, but it was clear enough in the quiet carriage.

Yoshida's hand froze in mid-air. He blinked for a second, only then realizing the person speaking was the guy in the back row who had been staring out the window the whole time. He straightened his back, turned his head, and fixed his gaze on Kanzaki Toru.

"Huh? Who are you?"

Kanzaki Toru didn't stand up, nor did he change his lazy posture leaning against the seat back. He simply turned his face away from the window and looked at Yoshida with those eyes that seemed to lack any motivation.

"Can't you tell she doesn't want to talk to you?"

His tone was flat, as if stating an objective fact.

"She's been sitting here the whole trip, and she hasn't looked up once, hasn't made a single sound. Isn't that obvious enough?"

Yoshida's expression darkened.

"Is it any of your business? What does it matter to you if I talk to her?"

"It doesn't," Kanzaki Toru admitted readily. "I just think you're pretty oblivious."

When he said this, there was no hint of provocation on his face; on the contrary, he was unnaturally calm. There was no anger, no tension, none of the emotions an ordinary person would show when caught in such a minor conflict.

There was only a faint, almost indifferent impatience.

It was as if everything happening before him carried so little weight that it wasn't worth mentioning.

The corner of Yoshida's mouth twitched.

He took a step forward, stood beside Kanzaki Toru's seat, and glared down at the tall, thin guy.

"I'm telling you, kid, are you looking for—"

He stopped halfway through his sentence.

Because Kanzaki Toru was looking at him.

Those eyes weren't fierce, nor could they be called sharp. On the contrary, there was almost no excess emotion in them. No fear, no hostility, no excitement from trying to bluff.

He was just calmly, composedly, looking at him.

Like he was watching something whose outcome he already knew.

That look—

For some reason, a subtle sense of discomfort crawled up Yoshida's spine. He couldn't put his finger on what it was, but he instinctively felt that the calm of the guy in front of him was more unsettling than any roar.

"What?"

Yoshida's tone softened slightly, but he maintained his stance.

Kanzaki Toru looked at him for two seconds, then shifted his gaze away.

"Nothing."

He finished speaking and stood up.

Yoshida subconsciously took half a step back.

Kanzaki Toru ignored him. He squeezed through the gap between the seats and Yoshida, walked over to the girl in the front row who hadn't looked up once, leaned down, and spoke in a voice much softer than before.

"Are you okay?"

The girl's shoulders trembled slightly.

After several seconds, she finally shook her head, ever so slightly. The movement was so small it was almost invisible, but she had indeed shaken it.

"That's good."

Kanzaki Toru straightened up, sat back in his seat, and turned his head to look out the window again.

Yoshida stood where he was, his expression sour. He opened his mouth to say something, but in the end, he said nothing, snorted, and sullenly returned to his own seat.

The carriage fell silent once more.

Petals outside the window continued to pelt the glass, making faint, crisp sounds. The wall in the distance grew closer, and the surface of it was now clearly visible—gray reinforced concrete, a cold texture, and the barbed wire on top reflecting a chilling glint in the sunlight.

Kanzaki Toru watched the wall, but his thoughts didn't stop there.

He was thinking about the girl's trembling fingers and that barely perceptible shake of her head.

It wasn't that she couldn't speak.

It was that, at certain times, she couldn't get the words out.

What would that level of social anxiety be ground into in this fully enclosed school?

No, what did it have to do with him?

He closed his eyes and pushed the question out of his mind.

The bus continued to move forward. The tall school gate finally appeared in his field of vision, slowly opening to both sides like a giant mouth waiting to swallow all the students whole.