The ceiling was bright.
Too bright for how my body felt. I rolled over, grabbed my phone, and checked the time.
7:43 AM.
Pulling up the schedule the first class was at 1:10 PM.
I stared at that for a second then let the phone drop onto my chest.
"I'm going back to sleep."
Shifting positions I closed my eyes and pulled the blanket up.
Laying there for about four minutes but nothing happened.
I opened my eyes.
Right.
I'd forgotten. I'd always been like this, ever since I was a kid. Once I was up I was up.
Didn't matter how tired I was, didn't matter if I had nowhere to be.
Trying to sleep again after waking up just gave me a headache.
I sat up, rubbed my face, and looked at the room.
The morning light was shoving through the window above the desk.
Checking my point balance: 3 points.
I pulled up the campus map and found the nearest dining hall, about a ten minute walk.
I got dressed with the same clothes, grabbing my phone on the way out.
The dining hall was much bigger than I expected and louder than I wanted.
Even at this hour there were already students spread across the long tables, some in uniform, some not.
The smell of fried rice hit me before I was fully through the door.
Standing at the entrance I checked the menu board on the wall to the right.
Everything had a point cost listed next to it:
Fried Rice: 1 point.
Rice and miso: 1 point.
Tamagoyaki: 1 point.
Toast: 1 point.
Full breakfast set: 3 points.
I looked at my balance, then at the full breakfast set.
I ordered the fried rice.
Finding a booth near the window I set my tray down, and started eating.
The fried rice was decent. Well at least it was better than any other place I've been to.
The hall filled gradually, as more voices layered over each other.
"Yo."
I looked up.
A guy had appeared across the table from me.
His tray was already down and halfway into his seat like he'd been sitting there for minutes.
He was slightly out of breath as his hair did not entirely cooperate with whatever direction it was supposed to be going.
He grinned like something funny had just happened that only he knew about.
"You mind?" He gestured at the seat he was already sitting in.
"You're already sitting."
"Yeah but like, do you mind?"
I looked at him for a second. "No."
"Cool." He picked up his chopsticks and started eating immediately, looking around the hall with curiosity.
His eyes moved the way a kid does in a new place. "Big isn't it." blurting out.
"The dining hall?"
"The whole thing." He gestured vaguely at the ceiling, or maybe the campus, it was hard to tell.
"I walked past a department store on the way here. A department store. In a school."
"There's a skate park too." I said.
He pointed at me. "See that's insane to me. That's genuinely insane." He didn't sound upset about it. If anything he sounded delighted.
I went back to eating.
He ate as fast as someone who had somewhere to be.
Between bites he looked around the hall, at the ceiling, at the menu board, at the other tables.
"First year?" He asked.
"Yeah."
"Me too." He shared without hesitation.
I waited for him to say what class but he didn't.
He just kept on eating occasionally nodding to himself at something only he found noteworthy.
I studied him for a second without making it obvious.
"What's your name?" I said.
He looked at me and grinned. "Riku."
He didn't ask for mine as he stacked his tray neatly, and stood up.
"See you around."
He walked out of the dining hall at a half-jogging pace disappearing back into the crowd.
I sat with the last of my fried rice and looked at the empty seat across from me.
"Riku huh? I'll make sure to remember it."
***
The path between Block C and the main building curved around a small courtyard.
Hands in pockets, smelling the fresh green grass, there was still about three hours before first class.
A soft plastic clatter sound of a bottle hitting pavement. I looked down just in time to sidestep as a soda bottle spun past my foot. I reached down and caught it before it made it another meter.
Straightening up, a pink haired girl was already speed walking toward me with one hand outstretched and the other clutching a bag that was one zipper short of spilling everything it had.
"Oh my god I'm so sorry, I'm so so sorry, it just slipped and I tried to catch it but my bag shifted and I-" She stopped, panting before taking the bottle from my hand, bowing slightly. "Thank you. Really. I'm sorry."
"It's fine."
"No it almost hit you, I'm really sorry-"
"It didn't hit me."
"But it could have." She looked genuinely distressed about the possibility of something that hadn't happened.
I looked at her for a second. "You okay?"
That seemed to catch her off guard as she blinked, then nodded quickly. "Yes, yes I'm fine, thank you for asking, sorry for making you stop-"
"You didn't make me stop."
Pausing, she seemed to run out of things to apologize for.
She stood there for a moment looking slightly uncertain before locking onto my eyes.
Something shifted in her expression. Not quite recognition but the kind of look where a face is familiar but the context isn't loading.
"Wait… aren't you." She stopped causing her eyebrows to come together slightly. "Sorry, I feel like I know you from somewhere but I'm not sure where, that probably sounds weird, I'm sorry-"
"Haji." I said.
"Haji." She repeated it. "I'm Sena. I'm a first year, sorry, that's probably obvious, I don't know why I said that-"
"Different class?"
She nodded. "Class 3. You?"
"Class 5."
"Oh." She looked at me again with that same almost-recognition, still not landing anywhere.
"Maybe orientation? There were so many people there I felt like I saw everyone and no one at the same time, does that make sense? Sorry, I'm rambling."
"It's fine."
She hugged the soda bottle to her chest and shifted her bag strap up her shoulder. "Well. Thank you again. Really. Sorry again for the whole," she gestured vaguely at the ground where the bottle had been rolling.
"It was a bottle."
"Still." She gave a small apologetic smile, turned, and started walking in the direction she'd come from.
Three steps later she turned back around.
"Sorry, one more thing, which way is Block A from here? I've been going in circles for like ten minutes and I'm too embarrassed to keep asking people."
I pulled up the map before pointing left.
"Left at the courtyard, straight after the skate park."
Her eyes went wide. "There's a skate park?!"
"Yeah."
"In a school?"
"I know."
"Right." She stared in the direction I'd pointed for a second, then turned back with that same small apologetic smile. "Thank you. Sorry for bothering you. Have a good day."
She walked off, slightly faster than before as her bag shifted with every step.
Putting my hands back in my pockets I kept walking looking for anything interesting.
The classroom was in the same room as yesterday.
I walked in, found a spot, and sat down.
Around me people were already talking, some quietly, and some not even a single word.
The energy was different from yesterday though. Like everyone had slept on the same questions and woken up with different conclusions.
Kaede was already there with his arms crossed. You could just tell he hadn't forgotten about the crates.
Nemui walked in without announcing himself, with the same rumpled look.
Now that I imagine it, it feels like he's always awake longer than he wanted to be.
He moved to the front, setting nothing down, and without saying a word to anyone pulled up the two leaderboards on the board behind him.
The room went quiet immediately as we all saw the class rankings first:
1st Class 2 2,547
2nd Class 4 1,731
3rd Class 3 1,502
4th Class 5 1,002
5th Class 1 998
Nobody spoke for a second.
How are we second to the bottom? It must've been the pointless fighting yesterday.
Then the individual board loaded beside it.
Updated scores as the whole scoreboard had flipped.
I found my name without looking for it.
Still near the bottom; The number had moved slightly up but not in a way that changed anything.
Nemui stood in front of both boards and then at them with a bored expression.
Turning to face the class he said nothing for a moment.
Then, still looking out at the room with those half-closed eyes, he spoke.
"Word of advice." His voice was the same unhurried drawl. "Breaking school property or equipment without a reason will almost always result in a deduction of points."
He wasn't looking at the class when he said it.
He looked at Kaede with a steady, patient look that made the entire room shiver.
Kaede held it for about two seconds before his eyes moved sideways to the wall.
Nemui yawned, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth, and pulled the chair from behind the desk.
Sat down and folded his arms on the surface settling in.
"Sensei." Hina's hand went up. "Do we have any tests this class?"
Nemui's head was already down toward his forearms as he raised one hand from under his chin and lazily gave a thumbs down.
Within seconds of his head touching his arms his breathing had slowed.
The room sat in that for a moment before someone let out a breath and the murmuring gradually increased.
I leaned back in my chair and looked at the two boards still displayed on the wall.
Second to bottom; 1002 points.
I tapped my finger once on the desk and drifted out the window.
Behind me, two voices picked up just above a murmur.
"You think the crate time thing actually counted for something?"
"Has to. Why else would he time it."
"But he said results when they're ready. That could mean anything."
"It means they already have the results. They're just deciding when to tell us."
A pause.
"You think placement mattered? Like where exactly you put the crate past the line?"
"...I didn't think about that."
"Because if it did, Haruto's one is way off center compared to everyone else's."
A longer pause than before.
"You think that was on purpose?"
No answer.
I kept my eyes on the window.
Then a single heavy impact that rattled the wall beside the door.
Not from inside the room but from the hallway.
Nemui didn't move as everyone else did.
Chairs shifted and a few people stood as someone tried the door.
"It's locked."
"What?"
"Both sides of the hallways." They looked out the window on the door. "Locked."
From the other side of the wall came muffled sounds and voices, as they heard another softer thud.
Surprisingly, the door on the far wall, the one that was close to the adjacent classroom, opened.
A student leaned through as their eyes moved across the room quickly.
"You locked too?"
"Yeah." Kiritsu was already on his feet.
"Same on our end. Hall's completely sealed. We got everyone looking for a way out through the hallway."
Kiritsu looked at Nemui.
"Let's go." Kiritsu said.
The hallway between the two classrooms was narrow and already crowded by the time our class filed through.
The other class was already there, but they were small in numbers.
Ten students were pressed against the far wall, watching our twenty five filter in.
I counted them without meaning to.
Ten.
Then I counted ours.
Twenty five.
I looked around the classroom once more.
Atamai's not here either for the second day in a row.
Both groups stared at each other.
The tension was palpable as two groups of people who don't know each other but have already been told, in one way or another, that everyone else is the enemy.
A long black haired guy near the front of the other class let his eyes move across our group slowly.
He had a lean build and a relaxed posture, carrying an expression that said it all.
"Yeah… he's not normal." I mumbled, narrowing my eyes on him.
His eyes settled on our group letting out a cold smile before spat on the floor between us.
"So this is the rumored class 5."
Kiritsu's eyebrows pulled together. He stepped forward, not aggressively, just enough to make clear he was the one responding.
"What class are you? And how do you know ours."
The guy looked at him for a second like the question mildly interested him.
"That's not really what matters right now." He glanced at the sealed doors on both ends of the hallway.
"What matters is figuring out how we get out of here."
"You didn't answer the question."
"No." He agreed pleasantly. "I didn't."
Kiritsu held his gaze for a second then let it move to the ten students standing behind him. "You're missing a few people. What happened to the rest of them?"
Something shifted in the hallway as a few of the nine other students glanced at each other briefly.
The guy shrugged completely unbothered.
"We were just taking out the trash." His smile didn't change.
Kiritsu stared at him for a moment.
Yeah… definitely not normal.
I looked at the ten of them again.
They weren't tense or rattled by the locked doors, or the confrontation, or the fact that they were outnumbered more than two to one.
Ten people. Either they didn't understand the situation… or they understood it too well. I stroked my chin.
A sound came from above.
A low mechanical hiss as everyone looked up at the same time.
White air pushed out from the vents in the ceiling.
Thin at first, then thicker, curling downward in slow rolling streams.
"Ahh shit." Haruto said.
Nobody moved for half a second before everybody scrambled at once.
Rank Name Points
1 Atamai Mienai 92
2 Tsuyosa Hitoride 78
3 Kiritsu Ishigaki 74
4 Hina Suzuki 71
5 Haruto Hashimoto 68
6 Yuka Moriyama 63
7 Mio Kadowaki 61
8 Keita Okamoto 58
9 Lucien Moreau 55
10 Higuma Yujin 52
11 Sora Aoyama 49
12 Nikolai Petrov 44
13 Ayumi Nakahara 41
14 Leif Sørensen 38
15 Shun Kitagawa 31
16 Kael Renshaw 29
17 Taichi Morimoto 27
18 Emi Kuroda 25
19 Haji Akarime 23
20 Fumiko Watanabe 21
21 Tatsuya Kobayashi 18
22 Anya Valenti 16
23 Isolde Ferreira 13
24 Kaede Inoue 13
25 Kenta Ogawa 8
26 Yui Matsumoto 1