Bus

On this April day, the cherry blossoms were falling faster than ever.

They weren't drifting down one or two at a time. Whole swathes of petals were swept up by the wind, like a pink downpour, and slammed into the bus's wide windows. They lingered on the glass for less than half a second before a stronger gust swept them away, vanishing into the emptiness behind the road.

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

The high-rises disappeared at some point. Then came the convenience stores, residential neighborhoods, and little parks. Eventually, even the occasional small shop vanished completely. On either side of the road, there was nothing but endless green fencing, and, farther off, the faint outline of a grayish-white wall.

That was Advanced Nurturing High School.

The only high school in the country run directly by the government. Completely enclosed and entirely cut off from the outside world. The school's facilities were said to be so luxurious that it even had all kinds of commercial establishments, and over ninety-nine percent of its graduates went on to their preferred university or company.

It sounded like paradise.

Kanzaki Toru gave a quiet scoff.

That might fool middle schoolers. Anything in this world that's packaged too nicely is bound to hide an equivalent price inside. That was the ironclad rule he'd learned over sixteen years, through countless personal experiences.

The bus was quiet.

The students, all wearing identical, brand-new uniforms, sat silently in their seats. Some were looking at their phones, some had their eyes closed and were pretending to sleep, and others, like him, were staring out the window. No one was talking, introducing themselves, or showing any excitement about "starting a whole new school life."

It wasn't normal.

Kanzaki Toru tilted his head slightly and glanced around the bus.

He could feel a subtle, taut tension in the air. He knew it well—the silence of strangers sizing one another up and testing each other when they were suddenly thrown into an unfamiliar environment.

But there was something else, too.

Some students' hands were trembling. Some clutched their bags too tightly against their chests. A few kept glancing out the window at the wall drawing closer.

What were they afraid of?

The thought flickered through his mind, but Kanzaki Toru didn't dwell on it. Since he'd been assigned to Class D, that meant his abilities ranked at the very bottom by the school's standards. A useless nobody at the bottom didn't need to think about overly complicated things.

Get through three years, collect a diploma, and be done with it.

He was about to turn his gaze away when it stopped halfway.

On the seat in front of him.

The girl had been there since they boarded.

She wore a white sun hat and thick red-framed glasses. Her shoulder-length black hair fell on either side, just enough to hide her face. She was small and slender, with a frame so delicate it looked as if she might break if someone squeezed too hard. She wore the school's standard girls' uniform, with a plain, simple cardigan over it.

Her posture had barely changed since she got on.

Head lowered, shoulders hunched, both hands clasped tightly in her lap. Her knuckles were faintly white from the pressure, and her fingernails dug 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 made herself as small as possible, trying to disappear from everyone's sight—Kanzaki Toru had seen it before.

In children who were bullied, and in people with an instinctive fear of crowds.

The question was, why would someone so obviously unsuited to group life come to this fully enclosed boarding school?

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

He wasn't overflowing with a sense of justice. Whatever someone else was dealing with was their business. He only wanted to quietly get through these three years—

"Hey, you there, the girl in the hat."

The voice came from the middle of the bus.

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

The speaker was a boy with light brown dyed hair. He wasn't particularly tall, but his shoulders were broad, giving him a frivolous, overbearing air. He had turned around in his seat and was looking this way without a trace of restraint.

More precisely, he was looking at the girl in the seat in front of Kanzaki Toru.

"You're in Class D too, right? I can tell from your uniform."

The boy said with a grin, his tone carrying an unsettling familiarity.

"I'm Yoshida. We'll be classmates, after all, so what's your name?"

The girl in front didn't answer.

She didn't even lift her head.

She only pulled her hat brim lower and hunched her shoulders even more.

A few of the other students glanced over. Some looked uncomfortable, others quickly turned away, but no one said a word.

"Hey, come on—"

When the girl ignored him, some of the smile faded from Yoshida's face. He stood up, walked two steps down the aisle, and stopped beside her seat.

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

As he spoke, he bent down and reached out, trying to lift her face by the brim of her hat.

The girl's body went rigid.

Kanzaki Toru saw her fingers. The hands resting in her lap were trembling violently. Her nails dug into her palms, almost hard enough to draw blood.

Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

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

She couldn't.

Kanzaki Toru knew what that reaction was called.

He sighed.

Fine. I'd earn myself a little good karma on the first day.

"Hey."

His voice wasn't loud, but in the quiet bus it carried clearly.

Yoshida's hand stopped in midair. He froze for a second, then realized the speaker was the guy in the back who'd been staring out the window all along. He straightened and turned, his gaze landing on Kanzaki Toru.

"Huh? Who are you?"

Kanzaki Toru didn't stand up or change his lazy posture against the seat. He simply turned his face from the window and looked at Yoshida with eyes that seemed to lack any real energy.

"She doesn't want to talk to you. Can't you tell?"

His voice was flat, as if he were stating an objective fact.

"She's been sitting here the whole way without looking up once or saying a word. Isn't that obvious enough?"

Yoshida's expression darkened.

"What's it to you? I'm talking to her. What's it got to do with you?"

"It's got nothing to do with me." Kanzaki Toru admitted it readily. "I just think you're pretty clueless."

He didn't look like he was trying to provoke Yoshida as he said it. In fact, he was unnaturally calm. No anger, no nerves, none of the emotions an ordinary person might show when drawn into a minor confrontation like this.

Just a faint, almost indifferent impatience.

As though everything happening in front of him carried so little weight that it wasn't worth noticing.

Yoshida's mouth twitched.

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

"Listen, you little—are you looking for—"

He stopped halfway through.

Because Kanzaki Toru was looking at him.

Those eyes weren't fierce, or even particularly sharp. On the contrary, there was almost no excess emotion in them. No fear, no hostility, no excited attempt to bluff.

He simply looked at Yoshida, calm and composed.

As if he were watching something whose outcome he already knew.

That look—

For some reason, a subtle discomfort crept up Yoshida's back. He couldn't put his finger on it. He only instinctively felt that this guy's calm was more unsettling than any shouting.

"What?"

Yoshida's tone softened a little, though he still tried to maintain his posture.

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

"Nothing."

With that, he stood up.

Yoshida instinctively stepped back half a pace.

Kanzaki Toru ignored him. He slipped through the gap between Yoshida and the seat, walked over to the girl who still hadn't lifted her head, and leaned down to speak in a much gentler voice than before.

"Are you okay?"

The girl's shoulders trembled slightly.

Several seconds passed before she finally gave the faintest shake of her head. The movement was so slight it was almost impossible to see, but she did shake it.

"Good."

Kanzaki Toru straightened up, returned to his seat, and turned to look out the window again.

Yoshida stood there with an unhappy expression. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but in the end said nothing. With a snort, he sulkily returned to his seat.

The bus fell quiet again.

Petals continued to rush against the windows, making faint, rustling sounds. The wall in the distance drew closer. Now they could clearly see its surface—gray reinforced concrete, cold to the touch, and a strand of barbed wire along the top that glinted in the sunlight.

Kanzaki Toru looked at the wall, but his thoughts weren't on it.

He was thinking about the girl's trembling fingers, and her nearly imperceptible shake of the head.

She wasn't unable to speak.

Sometimes, she just couldn't.

What would that degree of social anxiety look like after being crushed in a completely enclosed school like this?

No. What did it have to do with me?

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

The bus continued on. At last, the towering school gates came into view and slowly swung open to either side, like the enormous mouth of some creature waiting to swallow all the students inside.