In the Lull of Waiting

The next morning, Kanzaki Toru opened his eyes before the alarm went off.

His single dorm room was small but well-equipped. It had a bed, a desk, a wardrobe, an air conditioner, and a small east-facing window. Morning light seeped through a gap in the curtains, casting a thin strip of brightness across the ceiling. He lay there for a few seconds, then sat up and picked up the terminal from his bedside table.

The screen lit up. Personal Points: 100,000. Class Points: 1,000. No change.

He put down the terminal and started getting ready. As cold water splashed against his face, last night's thoughts resurfaced. Their homeroom teacher, Chabashira, had left at least a few questions unanswered in yesterday's explanation. How did Class Points increase or decrease? How many Class Points did the other classes have? She had said, "The detailed rules will be explained gradually in future Special Exams." In other words, this school had a system of rules that wasn't made public, and students had to figure it out for themselves.

Throwing a group of people who didn't know the rules into a closed environment and making them figure out the boundaries on their own—that in itself was interesting.

He changed into his uniform and opened his door. A few students were already moving through the corridor, most of them from Class D, their expressions varied. Some looked excited, some were still groggy and yawning, and some, like him, showed little emotion. No one went out of their way to greet him, which suited him just fine.

Outside the dorm, the April morning was still a little chilly. Dew clung to the lawn, sparkling in the sunlight. In the distance, a few students were out jogging at an easy pace, as if enjoying the morning air. Everything was quiet and orderly, like a postcard scene carefully arranged for effect.

Kanzaki Toru zipped his uniform up to his chin and headed toward the Academic Building with his head down.

About half the class had arrived already. The familiar seat in the back by the window was empty. He sat down and hung his bag from the side of his desk. In the corner at the front of the room, against the wall, Sakura Airi was already there. Her head was bowed over an open book, but she wasn't looking at it. She was staring at her terminal instead, her fingers gliding slowly over the screen as if she were checking something again and again.

Kanzaki didn't call out to her. He leaned back in his chair and glanced around at the others.

The light-brown-haired boy from yesterday's bus, Yoshida, was sitting in the middle of the classroom, chatting animatedly with a few people around him. His voice was loud, and when he laughed, the whole room could hear him. Beside Yoshida sat a red-haired boy who seemed much the same sort; the two of them appeared to have just started getting along yesterday. Farther forward sat a boy with glasses, thin as a reed, his head bent over a seemingly difficult reference book. He wasn't joining in Yoshida's conversation at all.

A black-haired boy sat near the door, quietly leafing through some documents by himself. He had regular features and a relaxed posture, giving him an unremarkable air. Unless you watched closely, you might overlook him entirely. Kanzaki's gaze lingered on him for a second. This person was a little like him—they were both deliberately keeping a low profile.

A chair scraped near the front of the room. Sakura Airi stood up and headed for the door with her head down. She was probably going to the restroom. As she passed Kanzaki's seat, her steps faltered for a moment, but she didn't stop or say anything. She kept her head down and walked out.

Kanzaki didn't move. He noticed something else instead: Yoshida's gaze followed Sakura's retreating figure until she disappeared through the doorway. Then Yoshida turned and said something to the red-haired boy beside him. They both laughed. The laughter wasn't loud, but something about their smiles made Kanzaki uncomfortable.

He turned his gaze to the window and didn't look any further.

At eight thirty in the morning, Chabashira walked into the classroom. Without a word of greeting or the slightest change in expression, she began taking attendance. Afterward, she gave some routine information about the class schedule in a flat tone, as if reading from an instruction manual. Then she left.

She didn't mention anything about the Special Exam.

But Kanzaki noticed one thing: before leaving, Chabashira swept her gaze around the class. She didn't look like she was watching students so much as observing how an experimental apparatus was running.

The morning classes began. The teachers lectured at the front while the students reacted in different ways. Some took notes attentively, some slept with their heads on their desks, some played on their phones, and some quietly chatted with their neighbors. Not one teacher tried to stop them.

Kanzaki maintained a state somewhere between paying attention and daydreaming. Every so often, he wrote a few words in his notebook, but most of the time he simply sat in silence. He was observing: the teachers at the podium, the students around him, and the subtle distances taking shape in the classroom.

After the first class ended, Yoshida's table became the class's temporary social hub. A few boys gathered there to chat, their conversation ranging from games to girls. They were loud enough for the whole classroom to hear.

"Hey, did you hear? There's karaoke and even a movie theater on campus!" Yoshida said excitedly. "Want to go together this weekend?"

"Yeah, let's go! We've got Points, so we might as well use them," the red-haired boy chimed in.

"But we only get a hundred thousand Points a month. What happens when we run out?"

"We'll get more next month. Besides, didn't they say Class A has 940 Class Points, while our Class D has 1,000? They're about the same! No need to stress."

Kanzaki's pen paused at that. Class A had 940, and Class D had 1,000. At first glance, they did seem about the same. But if Class Points determined how many Personal Points each student received, then they weren't close at all. Class A's Class Points should be far higher than Class D's. Why were they lower instead?

Those numbers didn't add up.

Unless Class A had lost some of its high score because of a rule. And Class D's 1,000 Points were only a starting point—something that could go down.

He kept the thought to himself and didn't discuss it with anyone.

During lunch break, Kanzaki didn't head to the cafeteria right away. He slowly packed up his things at his desk. One by one, the students left the classroom, but Sakura Airi stayed seated. The book from that morning was still open in front of her, but the lunch box beside her remained unopened.

"Not going to eat?"

He asked casually from the aisle, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

Sakura raised her head slightly. Her eyes beneath the brim of her cap looked even more uneasy than yesterday. "...I'm not hungry."

Kanzaki looked at her for two seconds, but didn't call her out.

"The cafeteria's lunch sets are pretty good. Set A is four hundred Points. If you don't like crowds, the convenience store sells bread too."

Sakura's fingers twitched, but she didn't say anything.

Kanzaki didn't say more. He turned and walked out of the classroom. He'd said enough. If she didn't want to go, not even ten oxen could drag her there. And if she did want to go, the hard part wasn't the price of lunch. It was making it the two hundred meters from the classroom to the cafeteria while facing all the people she might encounter along the way.

He ate lunch by himself in the cafeteria. On his way back to the classroom, he stopped at the convenience store and bought two bottles of water. He drank one and left the other on Sakura Airi's empty desk. It wasn't that he was going out of his way to look after her; he'd just happened to have an extra. If she really went all day without drinking or eating anything, she might get hypoglycemic, which wouldn't do Class D any good.

The afternoon classes were just as lax as the morning ones. The history teacher talked about the Warring States period. A third of the class listened, a third played on their phones, and the remaining third had simply fallen asleep at their desks. Kanzaki listened to the lesson, twirling his pen as he thought about something else.

If Class Points could change at this school, then the way they changed had to be hidden in some kind of rule. Chabashira had said that the Special Exams would gradually reveal the rules, but there hadn't been any announcement about a Special Exam yet. That meant this seemingly peaceful period might actually be the crucial stage for gathering information. If they missed it, then when the real exams came, the first people to be eliminated would be those without any information.

He needed information. And besides official school announcements, there was another source: the upperclassmen.

Sakura had noticed the way those second-year students had looked at them outside the store yesterday, too. They hadn't simply been looking at the new students; they'd been sizing them up. That meant there might be an information gap between year groups at this school. There was a good chance the upperclassmen knew the rules. But they wouldn't tell anyone for free. He'd have to pay them in Personal Points—or trade something else.

After school, the classroom settled back into the casual chatter led by Yoshida. Some students made plans to go to karaoke, others to the movie theater, and still others to the arcade. Kanzaki packed his things and was about to leave when he saw Sakura Airi stand up at the front of the room. She put the bottle of water into her bag—she must have noticed it. Then she kept her head down and hurried out through the back door.

Kanzaki followed at a distance. He wasn't tailing her; they were simply going the same way. On the path from the Academic Building to the dorms, he saw Sakura up ahead, walking just a little faster than she had yesterday after school. She still kept her head down and stayed close to the roadside, but at least she wasn't completely frozen like she had been on the bus.

At the fork by the dorms, Sakura hesitated, then turned around. She spotted Kanzaki not far behind her. He couldn't make out her expression beneath the brim of her cap, but she gave him a small nod before hurrying into the girls' dormitory.

Kanzaki stayed where he was and watched her go inside. Then he turned around. Instead of heading straight back to the boys' dorm, he took a detour to the convenience store from the night before.

The convenience store was busier in the evening than it had been during the day. He picked up a bottle of tea and, while waiting in line at the register, noticed a faded notice posted beside the counter. It explained the rules for spending Points in the store. Below that, in small print, was a line that read, "An insufficient Point balance before the end-of-semester settlement date may result in restrictions on related services." The date was from last year, and the edges of the paper had started to fray.

"End-of-semester settlement date." That phrase hadn't appeared in the enrollment briefing. But it had appeared on a notice from last year.

Kanzaki paid, unscrewed the cap, and slowly drank his tea as he headed back. The sky had darkened, and the streetlights had come on. He could hear students laughing and music playing in the distance. It all still looked like an ordinary evening on campus.

But his thoughts wouldn't stop.

The end-of-semester settlement date. The fluctuations in Class Points. The upperclassmen's assessing gazes. The anomaly of Class A having fewer Class Points than Class D...

These fragments were scattered in different places and seemed to have nothing to do with one another at first glance.

But pieced together, they pointed to the same conclusion: the school had a hidden evaluation system. Students' behavior was scored, and those scores affected their class's Class Points. In the end, Class Points determined everyone's resources for survival. No one would write the rules out clearly and hand them to every new student. They had to piece them together, test them, and learn through their mistakes. And making mistakes would very likely come at a cost.

He pushed open the dormitory's front door and entered the brightly lit lobby. A screen in the elevator was showing campus news. It mentioned that "all classes have performed well this month, and no major fluctuations in Class Points have occurred." That brief sentence proved that Class Points changing over time was normal.

Back in his room, Kanzaki sat on the edge of his bed and opened his terminal. He searched through every official notice the school had sent out, but found nothing about a "Special Exam." In other words, most of Class D—including Yoshida and his group—probably hadn't even realized the rules existed. They still thought of this place as a resort where they could enjoy themselves as much as they liked.

The people who had truly realized that something was wrong had probably already started taking action.

He thought of Horikita Suzune, the girl who had slammed her hand on the desk and made everyone quiet down during yesterday's homeroom. She had reacted much faster than the others. Then there was the black-haired boy by the door, who was deliberately keeping a low profile. And Sakura Airi: she might be afraid of socializing, but she wasn't unobservant. Yesterday, she'd immediately noticed the three upperclassmen scrutinizing them outside the store.

Class D wasn't full of fools. The smart ones were just keeping quiet.

Kanzaki put his terminal on the bedside table and turned off the light.

In the dark, he lay with his eyes open, looking at the sliver of light seeping through the gap in the curtains onto the ceiling. This school was surrounded by high walls. More than a thousand students were confined here for three years. Everyone had a hundred thousand Points, but they had to discover the meaning and use of those Points for themselves. Classes that performed well earned more Points, while those that performed poorly lost them. But what did "performance" mean? Who judged it? And what standards did they use?

Sooner or later, someone would reveal the answers to everyone.

But until then, he needed to keep a low profile, gather information, and find allies he could trust.

He closed his eyes.

Starting tomorrow, he would pay close attention in class. Whether or not the teachers talked about the rules, every word they said might be a clue.

And Sakura Airi—the girl in the white cap—might be more useful than he imagined if she could overcome even a little of her fear. But first, she had to make it past the first round of eliminations.