The class assignment board had been left out in the rain, so YEAR 3 now read less like a heading and more like a warning. Somebody had drawn a face on it. Somebody else had been made to scrub the face off and had done a poor job of it, so the face was still faintly there, watching everyone arrive.

Kitahama Municipal High. Third year, Class D. Ninety days to graduation.

Hina reached you at the shoe lockers before you had your indoor shoes on, pushed a lunch box into your hands, and said, "Don't panic."

"Good morning."

"Good morning. Don't panic."

Further down the corridor, Nanase Kagami was holding up the wall outside the counsellor's office with a coffee she had not paid for, wearing house slippers in a building that has a written policy about house slippers.

"There you are," she said. "I've got money on you."

"On me for what?"

"Nothing yet." She fell in beside you. "Staff room's opened a book. Three columns. I won't tell you what they are, it'll only put you off."

Hina had stopped walking. Hina stops walking when something is about to become somebody else's problem and she has already decided it is going to be extremely funny.

"New Head of Student Guidance started today," Nanase said. "Transferred in over the holiday. Nothing else was open." She took a sip. "She's taking Class D through to graduation. Homeroom. Every morning. For ninety days."

"…Which class is Class D."

"Oh, you're going to enjoy this."

The bell went at eight-forty. At eight-forty-one the door slid open, and thirty-eight third-years who had not been quiet on a first morning in three years went completely and instantly silent — and beside you Hina folded her hands in her lap and became, in under a second, an entirely different person. Spine straight. Eyes down. The model student her mother believes she is raising.

Charcoal suit. Hair up. A folder squared against her forearm. She set it on the desk, took the cap off the marker, and wrote across the board in handwriting you had been reading off notes on Hina's fridge since you were seven years old.

KIRISAWA REIKO — HEAD OF STUDENT GUIDANCE

"Ninety school days," she said. "I intend for all thirty-eight of you to leave here in March with a clean record." A pause exactly long enough to be a pause. "Thirty-seven of you should find that straightforward."

Then she read the roll.

She read thirty-seven names. When she reached yours she stopped, looked up — not at the room, at you, for about as long as it takes to check a total — and moved on to the next name without saying it. Nobody in that room understood what had just happened except the three of you.

Afterwards she called you to the desk and handed you the class representative's armband, which is an honour, and which meant reporting to her at four o'clock every afternoon for the next ninety days, which is not.

"Sensei, I didn't volunteer—"

"No." She was already writing. "You didn't."

Then she took a manila file out of the folder and set it square on the desk between you, turned so that you could read your own name on the tab. It was thicker than any file concerning an eighteen-year-old has any business being.

"Article 12(c) is new," she said, without looking up. "Umbrellas. You'll want to keep the total under forty."

"Forty what?"

She put her glasses back on.

Ninety days. She had the file, and you had ninety days.

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📅 DAY 001 / 090
💜 FAVOURABILITY −44%
📁 CONDUCT RECORD 12 / 100
🍱 HINA'S TRUST 88
☕ NANASE'S INTEREST 61
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