When the pebble rolled past the chalk line, Kiyo had already called it wrong twice.
Yamashiro Takuma did not immediately make him step aside. He simply picked up the pebble and placed it back in his palm. It was small, with a bit of white along one edge, like something casually picked from the gravel pile in the corner of the playground. Yet today, it had brought the whole classroom to a standstill.
"Again," the teacher said.
Kiyo stared at his hand. "This time, I'll definitely wait until it stops."
Morita Yu stood beside him. "You said that the first two times too."
"The first two were warm-ups."
The pebble rolled out a third time. It first bumped against the edge of a wooden strip, bounced lightly, then slid forward alongside the chalk line. Kiyo opened his mouth, forcing the sound back down his throat. The pebble slowed, seemingly about to stop, and he finally could not hold back. "Inside the line!"
The pebble scraped forward another half inch and stopped outside the chalk line.
The classroom fell silent for a moment.
Morita Yu murmured, "That was a thorough warm-up."
Kiyo clutched his head.
Che stood midway through the line, looking at that half-inch gap beyond the chalk line. His palm still remembered the warmth left by last night's wooden stick. Sosuke had said that not every time did you have to chase the standard; sometimes, you had to be half a beat slower than it. Applied to this pebble, those words suddenly became very concrete.
A pebble nearly stopping did not mean it had stopped.
Yamashiro Takuma had them report the landing point one by one. The rules were simple: the pebble rolled across the tabletop, and only after it had come completely to rest could they say inside