Late-Night Call

That night, Kanzaki Toru was in his dorm room organizing the archive photos brought back from the old school building when his terminal rang.

It wasn't a message notification, but a call request. The name displayed on the screen made his fingers pause—Sakura Airi. She had never called him on her own initiative. Not even once.

He pressed the answer button and leaned back in his chair. "Sakura?"

There was silence on the other end for a few seconds. It wasn't a signal issue; she was organizing her thoughts. He was familiar with the length of this silence. He didn't rush her, simply setting down the archive photos he had been sorting to focus his full attention on the call.

"...Kanzaki-kun, are you still awake?"

"I am. I'm looking over some documents." He used his usual relaxed tone, devoid of any unnecessary concern, and made no attempt to pretend he didn't know why she was calling at this hour.

Another silence followed. Then her voice came through, softer than usual but without the stuttering, like someone lighting a lamp word by word in a very dark place.

"Today in the classroom... I let you see a bad side of me."

"Do you think that was a bad side?"

"...Isn't it? I lost control in front of others again. When the group leader asked me to speak, Manabe kept kicking my chair. As each group took turns, when it was my turn, no one responded."

She wasn't crying. Her voice was steady, slow and steady.

"If you think breaking down in front of people is a poor performance, then everyone is 'not good enough' at something. Sudo is still throwing chairs over the incident with Ishizaki, and Horikita has pulled two all-nighters investigating Ryuen. You didn't run away or hide today; you simply released the pressure."

Sakura was silent for a long time. So long that he thought the call had dropped. Then she said, "...Mori-san poured me some water. Karuizawa-san left a can of red bean soup. She didn't ask anything, just placed the soup on the corner of the table. Neither of them pressed me on why I was crying."

"Do you wish they had?"

"...I don't know. But the way they didn't ask made me feel at ease."

Kanzaki Toru didn't interject. There was no need for guidance at a time like this; she was simply trying to process the fact that she had been treated with kindness.

"When I put my head on the desk today, it wasn't because I was afraid of Manabe. Manabe sent another message this afternoon, saying I was dragging the whole group down, lowering our grades, and asking why I didn't just drop out if I couldn't do anything. But when I put my head down, I wasn't thinking about her words."

She paused for a moment, as if confirming whether she wanted to say it out loud.

"...The moment Mori-san put down the water cup, I suddenly wanted to tell her everything that had happened over the last three days. But after she put the cup down, she immediately stepped back. She was probably afraid of making me uncomfortable. Yet, in that instant, I actually wanted to speak."

So, it wasn't hostility that brought her to tears, but the panic of someone accustomed to fear suddenly being treated with gentleness.

"You can tell Karuizawa," Kanzaki Toru said. "You don't have to say it all at once. You can say one sentence today, another tomorrow. Karuizawa isn't the type of person who needs a complete statement from you to respond. She used to think you were avoiding her, but later she started using the 'leaving a candy' method to show you that private interaction doesn't require a price. If you're willing, you can give her a signal now."

"...Send a message?"

"No need for a message. Next time in the classroom, accept her red bean soup and say 'thank you' to her. You don't need to say anything else. Those two words are enough."

Sakura was quiet for a few seconds. "...Not 'please help me,' and not 'I'm sorry,' but 'thank you'."

"Correct. When you say thank you, you are expressing that you have already accepted what the other person did. You don't owe her a price; you are simply accepting her."

A faint sound of breathing came from the other end of the line, and then she said, "...I'll try."

Kanzaki Toru's phone vibrated to indicate another incoming call—it was Horikita Suzune. At this hour, unless she had critical intelligence she needed to synchronize immediately, Horikita wouldn't interrupt while he was on the line with Sakura. He waited until Sakura finished saying, "Kanzaki-kun, thank you for answering," before hanging up, though he didn't initiate the disconnect. Then, he picked up Horikita's line.

"Ryuen has submitted an application to the student council for an unusually large point transfer, and the remarks point directly to the chain of evidence for collecting old rules," Horikita's voice came through the receiver, crisp and efficient, with the sound of keyboard typing in the background. "The inter-class group task ends in a week. If he makes a move now, he intends to be the first to obtain the exclusive raw data that supports an excellent rating. If he succeeds, his command over Class C will be even more—"

"What was the result of your conversation with Sakagami-sensei?"

Horikita paused. "Sakagami-sensei said that the old cooperation model was written into the rules under extremely idealized premises. Some of the students in charge of implementing it turned cooperation into information extortion, eventually leading to multiple students applying for long-term psychological therapy. The failure of that project prompted the school to shift completely to a confrontational model. And the school has never allowed any student to access the relevant archives—once accessed, it signifies the activation of certain clauses within the rules that have not yet been reactivated."

"Don't block the points Ryuen is transferring; let him move them."

"Reason?"

"The harder he sprints, the easier it will be for him to reveal his hand on the last page of the old rules," Kanzaki Toru said. "He has already exposed the upper limit of his understanding of the old rules. That limit itself will become a reference point for our next step."

"You certainly calculate things well," Horikita's voice was cold and clear. "While I don't approve of you never consulting me in advance, this direction isn't bad." She cut the call.

The next day after school, the afternoon light moved slowly across the bookshelves. Kanzaki Toru placed a small paper packet at the library's return window; inside were the mints he had brought back from the old school building last time. He had taken only one from the entire bag, and the rest were wrapped in the paper. Shiina Hiyori looked up at him.

"Sakura called for a long time last night. I will mark all the recording timestamps she accumulated today. You don't need to flip through the documents now, but have everything ready—when the time comes, every piece of evidence must be precisely aligned with the valid clauses of the rules."

Shiina took the packet and tucked the candies into the small iron box on the left side of her drawer. Inside the box was half a box of identical candies—the companions to the one he had returned earlier. She didn't count them, simply placing the new packet on top.

"Do you really need me to go to the faculty office to submit these documents?" she asked softly.

"Not yet. Wait for a piece of corroborating evidence that can fully correspond to all the elements."

"But you are already preparing it."

"You taught me." Kanzaki Toru turned his head as he left, his voice dropping lower. "When you see someone bearing some invisible pressure, don't rush to pull them out; set the ladder first. You're right—I can't block everything for her. But at least I can pave the road to her feet."

Shiina watched him quietly, her light brown eyes reflecting the afternoon window light just as they always had. "Wash your bento box clean, and bring some unsweetened black tea tomorrow. I only have candy here."

That bag of mints had been taken from the top shelf of the convenience store below the dorms. He hadn't bought tea, but he realized he would have to make up for it sooner or later—along with the "unsweetened black tea" in Shiina's words.