[Seirin Academy – Main Building, Classroom 2-C]
---
The two luminous options still hung in his peripheral vision like subtitle burns, Route One on the left, Route Two on the right, each pulsing faintly whenever his gaze drifted toward it.
Sasaki Fuyumi stared at them from behind the rear door of Classroom 2-C, pulse hammering against his eardrums so loudly he could barely hear the hallway's ambient shuffle of indoor shoes on linoleum. Route One was, without question, the scumbag option—leveraging a secretly recorded video to coerce a girl into a date. The kind of thing a villain would do in the first five minutes of an isekai before getting truck-kun'd into oblivion. He hated it.
But Route Two made his stomach physically lurch. Kneel down and request permission to kiss Sato Ruri's toes. If he actually did that, his reputation wouldn't just die—it would be cremated, scattered, and salted. Sato Ruri would see him as a degenerate for the rest of their natural lives. And his dignity, fragile as it already was after lurking behind a classroom door with his phone out like some kind of stalker, would shatter into pieces too small to ever reassemble.
I'm not doing that. Absolutely not. I'd rather transfer schools.
His gaze drifted left.
Route One brightened, its glow warming like a notification badge demanding to be tapped.
Sasaki Fuyumi inhaled through his nose—caught the stale residue of chalk dust and the faintest trace of someone's melon bread from lunch—and selected it.
The translucent text dissolved and reformed instantly, scrolling upward like a visual novel advancing to its next line.
「Gazing upon the beautiful and captivating Sato Ruri, lust finally overtakes your better judgment. You have decided to become a scumbag and toy with her heart.」
Sasaki Fuyumi's left eye twitched.
That is NOT what I meant. System, stop slandering me!
He wanted to protest aloud, but the words had already faded, replaced by a faint chime—pin—and then nothing. The overlay vanished entirely, leaving him staring at the perfectly ordinary rear doorway of an empty-ish classroom that smelled of dry-erase markers and the lingering sweetness of someone's jasmine tea.
Inside, Sato Ruri was still at it.
She had Egawa Mitsuki's bag open on the desk, both hands buried wrist-deep in its contents, fingers moving with the practiced delicacy of someone defusing a bomb. Her eyes were bright, cheeks flushed with that peculiar excitement Sasaki Fuyumi had already witnessed—the look of a girl indulging a fixation she knew was wrong and enjoying every second of it. She lifted a compact mirror, turned it over, sniffed the casing, then placed it back with surgical precision. A pencil case came next. She unzipped it slowly, peered inside, ran her thumb along the interior lining, and zipped it shut again.
She's thorough, Sasaki Fuyumi thought, a cold bead of sweat sliding down the back of his neck. Terrifyingly thorough.
He didn't linger. He pocketed his phone—screen still warm from the video he'd recorded—and slipped away from the door without a sound, sneakers barely whispering against the hallway tile. He moved quickly, shoulders hunched, cutting through the east stairwell and descending two floors before pushing through the heavy fire door into open air.
---
The track field hit him with a wall of warmth and light.
April sun pressed down on the reddish-brown polyurethane surface, baking the rubber until the smell rose in waves—an acrid, almost medicinal tang that mixed with freshly cut grass from the adjacent soccer pitch. Cicadas hadn't started their summer assault yet, but a few early arrivals buzzed thinly from the row of zelkova trees bordering the field's north side. Somewhere near the long-jump pit, a group of first-years shrieked about something, their voices thin and bright as glass.
Sasaki Fuyumi had barely set foot on the track before the PE teacher's voice cut across the field like a referee's whistle.
"Late arrivals—two laps. You know the drill."
Takeda-sensei stood near the equipment shed with a clipboard tucked under one arm, his tracksuit sleeves rolled to the elbows. He was a stocky man in his forties with a buzzcut that made his head look like a worn tennis ball, and he ran his classes the way a retired sergeant might run a Boy Scout troop: firm, predictable, not cruel. Two laps was the standard tardy penalty. Any more and he'd worry about heatstroke liability.
_Another one. At least this kid doesn't argue._ Takeda noted Sasaki Fuyumi's immediate compliance with a small nod, then turned away, calling out three names—sport-track students who jogged over with the easy compliance of athletes accustomed to being singled out. The rest of the class he dismissed with a wave. "Free activity. Stay on school grounds."
Sasaki Fuyumi settled into a jog along the outer lane, sneakers slapping a steady rhythm against the warm polyurethane. The heat pressed on his shoulders through his white gym shirt, and sweat began prickling along his hairline within the first hundred meters. His breathing fell into a mechanical pattern—in through the nose, out through the mouth—while his thoughts churned underneath.
Route One. I chose Route One.
The video on his phone felt like a lit fuse in his pocket. He was going to have to show it to her. Threaten her with it. Use it to force a date. The word "date" sounded almost quaint against the ugliness of the method, like putting a ribbon on a brick.
But the alternative was kneeling and asking to kiss her feet. So.
He rounded the first curve, calves burning mildly, and was halfway through his second lap when a new set of footsteps joined the track behind him—lighter, quicker, the rubber-sole squeak of a girl's sneakers.
"Sensei, I wasn't feeling well earlier. I'm fine now—I'll do the two laps."
Sato Ruri's voice carried from the field entrance, slightly breathless. Sasaki Fuyumi didn't turn around, but he could hear the PE teacher's gruff reply—"If you can't handle it, stop"—and then the soft pat-pat-pat of her stride settling into rhythm on the inside lane.
He felt her presence like a change in air pressure. She was maybe thirty meters behind him, close enough that if he slowed she'd catch up within a minute. His shoulders tensed involuntarily.
Don't look. Just finish the laps.
Sato Ruri, meanwhile, had already recognized him.
_That's the guy who almost ran into me in the hallway. How is he late? He had plenty of time to get here before me. Did he sneak off somewhere to slack?_
The thought came and went. She didn't care enough to dwell on it. Her legs found their pace—long, even strides that ate up the straightaway—and her attention wandered as she ran, gaze sweeping the field. It caught on a figure sitting alone beneath one of the zelkova trees at the far edge of the grounds: a girl with long, ink-dark hair pooling over her knees, reading something, separated from every cluster of students by at least fifteen meters of empty grass.
A flicker of disdain crossed Sato Ruri's eyes before she looked away.
_Sitting alone as always. Creepy._
She focused forward and pushed through her second lap.
Sasaki Fuyumi finished first. He veered off the track the instant his two laps were done, wiping his forehead with the hem of his shirt as he walked toward the basketball court. A pickup game was already underway—five-on-five, shirts versus skins, sneakers squealing on the faded concrete. He leaned against the chain-link fence, fingers hooked through the diamond gaps, and let the rhythmic thunk-thunk-thunk of the dribbled ball fill his skull while he thought.
Okay. The task. I have to use the video to get Sato Ruri to agree to a date.
He could picture her expression when he confronted her. That bright, warm smile she wore so effortlessly—it would collapse. Replaced by shock, then anger, then fear. The sequence played in his mind like a storyboard, and none of the frames were pleasant.
But I have to do it. Route Two was worse. And at least with a date, I can control myself—just walk around town, grab something to eat, and call it done. It doesn't have to mean anything.
He was rationalizing. He knew he was rationalizing. But the alternative was letting the system label him a pervert, and between "scumbag" and "pervert," he'd take the one that left his kneecaps intact.
Across the field, Sato Ruri had finished her laps and migrated to a shaded patch beneath the covered walkway where a group of girls from their class had set up an impromptu badminton rally—no net, just two pairs of rackets and a shuttlecock arcing lazily back and forth. Sato Ruri joined in with a laugh that carried across the warm air, her ponytail swinging as she lunged for a low return, and the shuttlecock sailed wide, drawing a chorus of playful groans.
She looked radiant. Cheeks pink from exertion, gym shirt slightly untucked on one side, smile wide and unguarded. Several boys on the basketball court had already noticed, their gazes lingering a beat too long before a teammate barked at them to pay attention.
Sasaki Fuyumi watched her from the fence. Sunshine caught the flyaway strands around her temples and turned them the color of warm honey. She looked like the heroine on a light novel cover—bright, approachable, the kind of girl you'd see on a school recruitment poster.
And then he remembered the way her fingers had moved through Egawa Mitsuki's bag. The hungry, private satisfaction in her eyes. The careful, reverent way she'd sniffed that compact mirror.
The image didn't match. It was like watching two transparencies overlaid—one a cheerful slice-of-life keyframe, the other something darker, stranger, pulled from a psychological thriller. The dissonance made his stomach tighten.
I'm really about to blackmail this girl.
---
The chime signaling the end of PE rang across the field, and the class filtered back into the main building in loose, chattering groups. By the time Sasaki Fuyumi dropped into his seat—back row, second from the window—the classroom had filled with the low hum of post-exercise conversation and the papery rustle of notebooks being retrieved from desks. Someone had cracked a window, and a mild cross-breeze carried in the green, loamy smell of the school's garden beds mixed with the distant metallic tang of the vending machines one floor down.
Sasaki Fuyumi's seat gave him a clean sightline to most of the room. Sato Ruri sat in the adjacent row, roughly center, her desk positioned diagonally ahead of his by about four meters. She'd pulled her ponytail loose after PE and her hair hung damp against her neck, a few strands pasted to her flushed cheek. The pinkness hadn't faded yet. It gave her a soft, almost delicate look—dewy, like a character fresh out of a bathhouse scene.
He was watching her when the air beside him shifted.
A curtain of long, dark hair swept past his peripheral vision, and a single strand grazed the tip of his nose as its owner walked by. The scent followed half a second later—cool, faintly floral, something like white tea and freesia, the kind of fragrance that didn't announce itself so much as linger once you noticed it. The two boys at the desk in front of Sasaki Fuyumi, who had been animatedly debating whether Gojo or Sukuna would win in a straight fight, went quiet mid-sentence. One of them shifted in his chair. The other suddenly found his pencil case very interesting.
Egawa Mitsuki passed without a word.
She moved the way she always did—straight-backed, unhurried, expression perfectly blank, radiating an aura that said don't the way a closed door says it. Her hair reached the small of her back, black and glossy as lacquer, swaying with each measured step. She wore the standard uniform skirt and blouse, but something about the way the fabric sat on her narrow frame—crisp, unwrinkled, buttoned to the collar—made it look less like a school uniform and more like armor.
Sasaki Fuyumi tracked her with his eyes. She reached her desk—front-left cluster, window side—and placed one hand on the back of her chair.
She stopped.
It was barely a pause. A half-second hitch in her rhythm, the kind of thing you wouldn't notice unless you were specifically watching for it. Her fingers tightened fractionally on the chair back. Then her head turned—first toward Sato Ruri, a glance so brief it could've been accidental, and then, in the same smooth rotation, toward Sasaki Fuyumi.
Their eyes met.
Egawa Mitsuki's gaze was flat. Not angry, not suspicious—just present, in a way that made the back of Sasaki Fuyumi's neck prickle. Her irises were a shade so dark they looked black in the classroom's fluorescent wash, and her face gave away absolutely nothing.
_These two were the only ones late to PE._
The thought moved behind those still eyes like a fish beneath ice—visible for an instant, then gone.
Sasaki Fuyumi flinched. He dropped his gaze to his desk on reflex, heart kicking once, hard, against his sternum. Did she notice? Did she realize her bag was touched?
When he forced himself to look up again a few seconds later, Egawa Mitsuki was already seated, back straight, pulling a textbook from her bag with the same mechanical precision she did everything. Her expression hadn't changed. No flush of embarrassment. No tension in her jaw. No frantic checking of her bag's contents. She simply opened the textbook to a marked page and began reading, as if nothing in the universe was worth more than three consecutive seconds of her attention.
_She didn't notice._ Sasaki Fuyumi let out a slow, controlled breath. _If she had, there's no way she'd look that calm. Anyone would panic if they realized someone had gone through their stuff—especially someone like her._
He relaxed. Marginally.
Sato Ruri, two rows ahead, was doing the same mental arithmetic and arriving at the same conclusion. She watched Egawa Mitsuki's composed profile from the corner of her eye, saw no crack in the porcelain, and felt the knot in her chest loosen by a single degree.
_She didn't notice. Thank god._
---
The final bell of the day cut through the classroom at 4:15 PM—a sharp, two-tone chime that sent a Pavlovian ripple through every student in the building. Chairs scraped. Bags rustled. The volume in the room tripled in under five seconds.
Sasaki Fuyumi stood, slung his bag over one shoulder, and walked out without looking at anyone. His jaw was set, and his phone pressed hard against his thigh through his trouser pocket, the screen's warmth a constant reminder.
Behind him, Egawa Mitsuki raised her head and watched him leave. Her gaze followed his back until he turned the corner into the hallway, and the ambient warmth in her dark eyes cooled by several degrees.
_Him._
She said nothing. She returned to packing her bag with slow, deliberate movements, each item slotted into its designated place.
---
The boys' restroom on the second floor was empty at this hour—most students stampeded for the gates the moment the bell rang. Sasaki Fuyumi locked himself in the last stall, lowered the toilet lid, and sat down. The overhead fluorescent buzzed with a thin, insectile whine, and the air smelled of industrial lemon cleaner and old plumbing. A dripping faucet outside the stall door counted the seconds. Plik. Plik. Plik.
He stared at his phone. The LINE app was open, the class group chat pinned at the top. Every student in 2-C was in there. Including Sato Ruri.
His thumb hovered over her icon—a small, cheerful photo of her flashing a peace sign at what looked like a summer festival, yukata sleeve bright against the lantern-lit background.
Just do it.
He typed a friend request message. Deleted it. Retyped it. Deleted it again. His reflection stared back at him from the dark phone screen each time it dimmed, and it looked like someone he didn't entirely recognize.
_If I don't do this, the system picks for me. And I've already seen what its other option looks like._
He typed the message a final time, read it once, and pressed send before he could talk himself out of it.
---
Sato Ruri was still at her desk.
The classroom had mostly emptied. Late afternoon light slanted through the windows in long, amber parallelograms, catching dust motes and turning them into slow-motion constellations. The chalkboard still held the ghost of last period's math equations, half-erased. A forgotten water bottle sat on a desk near the front. Somewhere in the hallway, a pair of shoes squeaked toward the stairwell and faded.
She had been covertly watching Egawa Mitsuki pack up, relief blooming quietly in her chest as the dark-haired girl shouldered her bag—seemingly undisturbed—and walked out of the room without a backward glance. The tension drained from Sato Ruri's shoulders like water from a cracked cup.
_Safe. She didn't notice a thing._
Sato Ruri was reaching for her own bag when her phone buzzed once against her thigh. She fished it out with a lazy, one-handed motion, thumb already swiping before her eyes fully focused on the screen.
The LINE notification sat there like a grenade with the pin pulled.
[Friend Request]
Message: "I saw everything that happened at PE."
The blood drained from Sato Ruri's face in a single, visible wave—pink to white in under a second, as if someone had pulled a plug. Her fingers locked around the phone, knuckles blanching. The screen's blue light reflected in her wide eyes, and for three full seconds she didn't breathe.
The request came from the class group. No custom display name. No identifying profile picture—just the default grey silhouette. But the moment she read that sentence, a face surfaced in her memory with the force of a punch: the boy in the hallway. The one who'd almost collided with her. The one who'd been late to PE for no good reason.
_Sasaki Fuyumi._
Her molars pressed together until her jaw ached.
_It could be someone else. It doesn't mean—maybe someone's just messing around—_
She accepted the friend request.
Her thumbs moved fast, striking the screen with a sharpness that was almost violent.
[Sato Ruri]: You're Sasaki Fuyumi, right? What exactly are you trying to say?
The message delivered. The "read" receipt appeared almost immediately.
Then a video file arrived.
Sato Ruri's stomach dropped. She glanced left, then right—the classroom was empty, last stragglers long gone—and tapped play.
The footage was shaky, shot from a low angle through the narrow gap of Classroom 2-C's rear door. But the subject was unmistakable. There she was, center frame, bent over Egawa Mitsuki's open bag with both hands inside it, expression bright with barely contained excitement, lifting items one by one, inspecting them, smelling them, placing them back with the tenderness of a shrine maiden handling sacred relics.
The video was twelve seconds long. It felt like twelve hours.
_He filmed me._
_He was right there at the door the entire time and he filmed me._
Her throat constricted. Heat rushed back into her face—not the pleasant flush of exercise but the searing, full-body burn of exposure. Shame and fury tangled together in her chest until she couldn't tell which was strangling her more.
[Sato Ruri]: What do you want?
She typed it with trembling fingers. The cursor blinked. The "read" receipt appeared.
[Sasaki Fuyumi]: If you don't want anyone else to see this video, come meet me at this address.
A map pin followed. A family restaurant near the west gate—one of those chains with the orange awnings and the perpetually sticky menus, the kind of place that appeared in the background of every other slice-of-life anime but that nobody ever went to on purpose.
Sato Ruri's breath came shallow and fast. She stared at the pin, then at the message above it, then back at the pin.
[Sato Ruri]: My family's expecting me home for dinner. Just tell me what you want.
Delivered. Read.
No reply.
She waited thirty seconds. A minute. Two minutes. She sent another message. Then another.
[Sato Ruri]: Answer me.
[Sato Ruri]: Are you serious right now?
[Sato Ruri]: Sasaki Fuyumi.
[Sato Ruri]: Hello??
Every single one marked as read. Not a single reply.
The silence was worse than any threat he could have typed. It sat on her chest like a stone, heavy and deliberate, and with each unanswered message the weight increased.
"Ruri! Still here? Let's walk home."
A hand landed on her shoulder and she flinched so hard her phone nearly flew from her grip. Her friend—Maki, bag already slung, bento box clinking inside—stood beside her with a puzzled look.
"S-sorry." Sato Ruri forced a smile that sat on her face like a poorly fitted mask. "Go ahead without me. I have to stop somewhere on the way."
"Oh, okay. See you tomorrow then!" Maki waved cheerfully and disappeared through the door, footsteps fading down the corridor until the classroom fell silent again.
Sato Ruri stood. She walked to the window nearest the door and placed both palms flat against the sill, the painted metal cool beneath her clammy fingers. Below, the school courtyard was emptying—clusters of students filtering through the main gate, bikes clicking free of the rack, a teacher's sedan pulling out of the staff lot with a soft crunch of gravel. Beyond the gate, the street stretched westward, lined with vending machines and convenience stores and, somewhere past the second intersection, an orange-awninged family restaurant where a boy she barely knew was waiting for her with a video that could ruin everything.
The breeze through the cracked window carried the smell of warm asphalt and blooming osmanthus from the courtyard planters, sweet and heavy, completely at odds with the cold dread pooling in her stomach.
_He wants me to go to him. That's obviously not a good sign._
She thought about refusing. Just blocking his number, deleting the chat, going home, eating dinner, pretending none of this had ever happened. The courage to do it swelled in her chest for exactly one second—
—and collapsed, deflating like a punctured balloon, because the video existed, and he had it, and "read" receipts don't lie.
Sato Ruri peeled her hands from the windowsill, picked up her bag, and slung it over her shoulder with a motion that felt like surrender. She walked out of the empty classroom, shoes echoing against the linoleum, and turned toward the west stairwell.
---