That day began rather undignifiedly.
Before morning class, Kiyo kicked over a water bottle.
Water ran from the desk legs into the aisle, soaking several practice sheets and leaving their limp edges stuck to the floor. Kiyo crouched there, wiping with his sleeve as he quietly cursed his own foot. "You're attached to me, so how can you betray me?"
Morita Yu stood beside him, holding books that had stayed dry. "Maybe your foot wants a different owner."
"It isn't qualified."
Che helped pick up the wet papers. The water had blurred the ink, making the writing hard to read. He found the sheet he had pasted in yesterday. The slight curve at its corner was no longer visible, but the small line, "Don't count laughter that never happened as something in your hands," had been stretched by the water, like words that had not fully woken up.
He stared at it for a moment, then suddenly felt like laughing.
Rules looked convincing when written on paper, but a single bottle of water was enough to warp them. People were much the same. When things were quiet, they could explain themselves clearly; once the situation turned chaotic, their hands and feet would dredge up old habits.
After Takuya entered, he did not pursue the matter of the water bottle. He merely told them to spread the wet sheets beside the window to dry. Then he said that today they would practice neither paper nor copper plates, but "interruption."
An interruption meant suddenly stopping when the heat had already begun to recede, then continuing to withdraw it. It could not disperse, could not remain, and could not use that moment of interruption to escape outward again.
After listening, Kiyo's face fell. "Sensei, withdrawing it is hard enough already. Now we have