As soon as the afternoon class began, Teacher Mizuno pushed over half a page of paper.
It was not a fresh sheet for each person. They simply turned their morning notebooks to a blank page and were told to write down the first small thing they remembered from today in that half page. Half a page, no filling it up. Write too much, and it would be returned. Write too little, and they would be reminded. To Kiyo, the requirement sounded like someone had set his two least favorite things right on the desk.
"Only one thing?" he asked.
"Write one thing first," Teacher Mizuno said. "We can talk about the rest after."
"What if I have three things?"
"Then choose the smallest one."
Kiyo wore a deeply pained expression. "I might not even know how to write the smallest one."
"Then write the first thing that comes to mind."
"But the first things I think of are usually a mess."
Teacher Mizuno looked at him. "Then pick the least messy thing from the mess."
Kiyo lowered his head, as if those words had pinned him down. He opened his notebook and stared at the blank space for a long while before slowly setting his pen to the page. Che sat beside him and could see Kiyo's pen tip pause again and again, as if every stroke was asking whether it would be wrong.
Che's half page was just as blank.
A lot had happened that morning: names, notes, desktops, lunch, pencil stubs. He could pick any one of them to write about. But when he actually had to choose the smallest thing, he did not know where to begin. The one small thing from that morning that felt most worth writing might have been Naruto picking up that short