Chance Encounter in the Hallway

Friday afternoon, sunlight filtered through the clouds into scattered flecks that fell across the school building's corridor.

Orikasa Yuu carried a book borrowed from the library as he made his unhurried way back to the dorms. Instead of taking his usual cherry blossom path through the courtyard, he took a quieter corridor—one with fewer people and less than a fifteen percent chance of running into classmates.

An Energy-Saving Ideology practitioner's daily routine: choose fixed routes at fixed times, move at a fixed pace, and minimize intersections with other people's paths.

Class C's classroom was on the right side of the corridor. Orikasa Yuu's footsteps paused almost imperceptibly when he was still five meters from the door.

Class C's door was slightly ajar. Dull impacts came from within, along with muffled whimpering, like someone had a hand over their mouth.

"...I told you, didn't I? Class C belongs to me. Disobedient trash should stay on the ground where they belong."

A low voice seeped through the crack in the door, hard and cold as metal.

Orikasa Yuu neither turned his head nor slowed his pace. He did not even blink. Through the gap, his peripheral vision caught the scene inside: a long-haired boy with an earring had his knee pressed into another student's stomach. The latter was doubled over, face deathly pale. Several students stood around them with their heads lowered. No one dared look up.

Ryuuen Kakeru.

Class C's tyrant was using violence to rewrite the class order.

Orikasa Yuu continued forward. He had already calculated it: three meters from Class C's door, two meters, one meter—

"Hey."

The sound of the door being pushed open echoed through the corridor. Orikasa Yuu stopped and turned around.

Ryuuen Kakeru stood in Class C's doorway, one hand in his pocket and the other hanging at his side, with traces on his knuckles that had not been wiped clean. His earring glinted coldly beneath the corridor lights, and his gaze scraped over like a blade.

"Class D?" Ryuuen Kakeru tilted his head, the corner of his mouth pulling into a curve devoid of warmth. "How much did you hear?"

"I didn't hear anything." Orikasa Yuu's voice was flat, as though he were answering a question about the weather.

Ryuuen Kakeru stared at him for two seconds, then strode over. His steps were heavy, each one seeming to measure the distance to his prey. He stopped one step away from Orikasa Yuu and leaned forward slightly.

"Really?" Ryuuen Kakeru lowered his voice, thick with a sticky sense of danger. "Your expression says otherwise. You saw it, didn't you? You saw me 'educating' that disobedient piece of trash."

Orikasa Yuu did not retreat.

His gaze passed over Ryuuen Kakeru's shoulder to the corner of the corridor ceiling. The surveillance camera there, whose red indicator should have been flashing, was covered by a piece of black cloth. It was not the only one. All three cameras along the corridor had been disabled.

Premeditated violence. Planned rule. And a space temporarily free from surveillance.

"The cameras have been covered." Orikasa Yuu spoke without a hint of fluctuation in his tone. "But covering them leaves clearer traces than the cameras themselves. School security patrols the building once every two hours. Seventy-three minutes have passed since the last patrol."

Ryuuen Kakeru's pupils contracted slightly.

He straightened and looked Orikasa Yuu up and down. He was not looking at an ordinary student. He was reassessing the value and threat level of an object.

"...You know quite a lot for someone from Class D."

"I just observe more carefully."

Ryuuen Kakeru suddenly laughed. He raised his hand as if to pat Orikasa Yuu on the shoulder—but the instant his palm descended, Orikasa Yuu's shoulder slid half an inch back and to the side with the smallest, most precise movement.

The hand struck nothing but air.

Ryuuen Kakeru's hand froze in midair.

The corridor was terrifyingly quiet. The two lackeys behind Ryuuen Kakeru—Ishizaki Daichi and Komiya Yago—exchanged a glance. They had not even seen clearly what had just happened.

Ryuuen Kakeru slowly withdrew his hand and returned it to his pocket. His gaze had changed, shifting from scrutiny into something deeper, more intrigued.

"Interesting." He licked his lips. "What's your name?"

"Orikasa Yuu."

"Orikasa..." Ryuuen Kakeru repeated it as if savoring the sound. "I'll remember you. You're not worthless trash like Ike Kanji, and you're not a brainless beast like Sudou Ken. You're... something else."

He stepped aside and gave up the corridor, making an exaggerated gesture as though taking a bow onstage.

"Get lost. I'm not interested in touching you today."

Orikasa Yuu neither thanked him nor made any threats. He did not even look at Ryuuen Kakeru again. He turned and continued down the corridor, his pace exactly the same as before, steady as though nothing had happened.

Article Six of the Energy-Saving Ideology: when faced with uncontrollable violence, using an information gap in place of a difference in force was the lowest-energy method of escape.

He gave Ryuuen Kakeru a mental label: high-energy-consumption individual. Threat level: high. Recommended contact frequency: zero.

By the time Orikasa Yuu returned to the dormitory area, the setting sun had dyed the sky orange-red.

He stopped at the vending machine downstairs and took out his phone to scan the selection. Eliminate those with too much sugar. Prioritize low-calorie drinks containing caffeine. He pressed the button for black coffee. The machine clunked, and a can rolled down.

He bent to retrieve the coffee. As he straightened, his peripheral vision caught a figure hurrying over from the far end of the stone path.

Horikita Suzune.

She walked quickly, her back perfectly straight like a spear planted in the wind. Unlike usual, her face held no expression—not her usual aloofness, but a more complete indifference, as if everything around her were nonexistent. Her eyes looked straight ahead. She neither lowered her head nor avoided anyone, and her gaze did not linger on a single person.

It was the prideful arrogance of someone saying, "I don't need any of you, so none of you are worth noticing."

She passed two meters from Orikasa Yuu's side without turning her head or slowing down. Not even her eyelashes trembled. It was as if Orikasa Yuu beside the vending machine, the cherry trees by the road, and the entire campus at dusk were nothing but irrelevant scenery in her field of vision.

Orikasa Yuu did not speak, nod, or make any gesture of greeting. He simply stood there quietly and watched her swipe her card to enter the dormitory lobby, the elevator doors closing behind her.

There had been no interaction, no conversation, not even a meeting of eyes.

But Orikasa Yuu noticed the details: her chin was slightly raised, her lips pressed into a straight line, and the fingers holding her phone were not clenched hard enough to turn white. They simply hung naturally at her side. That was not the rigidity of an emotional breakdown, but something more fundamental.

A nearly cruel calm that came from completely removing "socializing" from the options in her life.

Orikasa Yuu pulled open the coffee tab and took a sip. It was bitter, without any sweetness at all.

He updated his internal data: Horikita Suzune. Social mode: actively severed. Status: not abnormal, but an extreme form of normalcy. Conclusion: maintain the current state. No need to adjust the distance.

Energy-Saving Ideology supplement: another person's prideful isolation was their own choice. Do not judge it, do not exploit it, do not approach it.

He finished the last sip of coffee and tossed the empty can into the trash. Just as he was about to head for the dormitory building, a sickeningly sweet voice came from behind him.

"Ah, Orikasa!"

Kushida Kikyo jogged up to him, her short hair swaying lightly with her movements and her flawless sunny smile on display. But Orikasa Yuu noticed that the corners of her eyes were slightly red, and the curve of her smile was 0.5 degrees stiffer than usual—that was a crack left behind by the betting pool incident two days ago, merely concealed beneath thicker foundation.

"Great, I finally ran into you!" Kushida Kikyo stopped in front of him and clasped her hands together. "I've been wanting to find you. There are still a few people missing from Class D's group chat, and I wanted to add you. It'll make it easier to pass along any announcements later. Is that okay?"

Orikasa Yuu looked at the chat group QR code on the phone screen she held out.

Refusing meant inventing an excuse, enduring her questions, and risking being marked as "unsociable."

Accepting meant entering a social space with extremely high information noise, but it would at least preserve a minimal information channel within the class.

Of two evils, choose the lesser.

"Okay." He took out his phone and scanned the code.

"Great! Welcome, welcome!" Kushida Kikyo's smile brightened again, as if that 0.5-degree stiffness had never existed. "Oh, right, let's exchange contact information too. That way, I can contact you directly if anything comes up."

Orikasa Yuu was silent for a second before pulling up his personal QR code.

"Beep."

[Kushida Kikyo has added you as a friend.]

"All done!" Kushida Kikyo waved her phone with a sweet smile. "Then I won't disturb you anymore. Bye-bye!"

She turned and ran off, her back as light as a bee that had just finished gathering nectar.

Orikasa Yuu looked at the two new icons on his phone screen—[Class D Group Chat (23 members)] and [Kushida Kikyo]—and sighed inwardly.

(The setting follows the anime, where each class has twenty-five students.)

Social connections: +2.

Energy consumption: slightly over the limit, but controllable.

He slipped his phone into his pocket and entered the dormitory lobby.

The amount of information he had gathered today had exceeded the limit.