I'm down five thousand points by lunch, which means I'm getting the hang of how this place bleeds you.
Information has a sticker price here. You don't phone a friend; you wire a transfer. A rumor about last year's expulsion wave costs three hundred. The truth about it costs eight hundred. Seating charts run two-fifty if you want to know who sits where and why. Anything that hints at strategy adds a zero like it's nothing.
My balance glows back at me: 95,000. The number looks confident. I don't feel poorer; I feel calibrated.
The White Room put a meter on oxygen. This school puts one on knowledge.
A third-year sprawled on the library stairs opens the first door for a thousand points and a yawn. "Monthly points aren't guaranteed," he says without looking up. "They say '100,000' to make you buy snacks and bad decisions. The deposit gets cut if your class tanks—grades, attendance, behavior. And the... special stuff." He waves a hand like he's shooing a fly.
"Special stuff," I repeat.
"Special exams. Events. They call it character-building." He scratches his cheek. "It's a storm generator. If you read weather, you'll be fine."
He waits for me to ask what that means. I don't. I send the transfer; he hums softly, satisfied, and goes back to pretending to sleep.
Two thousand points buy me a closed-mouth answer behind the gym, from a second-year who handles whispers like product. "Expulsion's not a scarecrow," she says. "Midterms take people's heads off if they don't clear the bar. But..." Her voice lowers. "Twenty million points saves anyone. Even idiots. And you can spend the same to hop classes. D to A. Pay to climb."
I let the shape of that sit in my head. Legal mercy or legal ransom, depending on who's telling the story.
"And points are money," she adds, tapping my phone with a lacquered nail. "Stop thinking 'allowance.' Start thinking 'currency.' You take care of your balance, it takes care of you."
I give her an extra hundred for the tone. She smirks like she just upsold me on breathing.
By the time the sun slides to the wrong side of the courtyard trees, I've bought enough clarity to sketch the silhouette of the school: a place that feeds you if your class behaves like a small corporation and drowns you if you don't notice the undertow. The OAA app on my phone confirms how neatly they want us labeled.
Academic: 93. Adaptability: 74. Physical: 51. Social Contribution: 77. Overall: 73 (B).
Letters as cages. Another hierarchy masquerading as guidance. The White Room etched numbers under our skin; this place prints them on glossy paper and calls it support.
Around me, first-years compare profiles with the clumsy glee of people trading baseball cards. "I'm a B in Social—no way!" "You? Bro, you barely say hi to the vending machine." Laughter hits and breaks, hits and breaks. The hallways smell like citrus soda and fresh laminate.
Our homeroom teacher—cool, exact, the kind of person who could fold a rumor into a rubric—wrapped morning announcements in gift paper: a "joint assessment" with second-years starting tomorrow, find a partner or take a hit; a promise of 100,000 monthly points said with the kind of smile you use when you're selling an insurance policy; a reminder to use the OAA "to improve yourself" as if improvement weren't the leash.
Half the class took pictures of the deposit screen like tourists. The other half started shopping. No one asked what happens when the number turns to zero. That's the point. You never ask until your stomach does.
I push out of the room. Koji from Kanagawa—soccer, loud—calls after me to grab lunch sometime. I nod. It's a useful shape to build later.
Five hundred points go to a second-year with librarian glasses for a list of "friendly senpai" who might take a partner spot. Half the names are already claimed, of course. The good ones got here before homeroom ended. The smart ones are waiting to be overpaid by the desperate. I pencil invisible Xs in my head next to both categories.
I angle past the shoe lockers just as two girls, half-whispering on purpose, float a name I've heard three times already today.
"—Ichinose-senpai is holding a welcome thing in the gym," one says, more breath than voice. "Forty, fifty people maybe. She's so nice. Like, scary nice."
"Class B?" her friend asks.
"Yeah. Second-year. She helped a whole row last term when their points tanked. Didn't even tweet about it." They giggle like that's a superpower.
Kindness is a strategy everywhere. The packaging here is just cleaner.
The White Room trained me to clock monsters; kindness takes longer to profile. That makes it more dangerous or more useful, depending on whether you're selling or buying.
I pass a bulletin board tiled with club posters—Kendo, Tea Ceremony, Programming, "Future Leaders," which looks like Debate with better fonts. Every poster promises transformation in thirty words or less. Every hallway has mirrors.
I slow in front of a window and let the glass throw my face back at me. Boy. Neat hair. Red vest sharp enough to pass inspection. Eyes that look a little older than the rest of the picture. OAA says B. The White Room would have labeled me Asset or Liability and clipped the label to my ear. Here they say Potential and ring a bell when you walk.
The first-years/second-years "joint test" starts tomorrow. Partner selection will be panic wrapped in politeness. I could spend the next hour turning a list into a network: find the reliable, the greedy, the lonely. Instead, I find my feet angling toward the gym.
If this place runs on points and posture, I want to see how Class 2-B's star models both.
The courtyard opens into a low curve of steps. The gym doors stand propped with rolled mats, no sign-up sheet taped to the frame, no guard at the threshold. Just the soft echo of organized voices and the slap of shoes on varnish. A cluster of first-years hovers at the edge, pretending to look at something on a phone while checking the crowd inside. I fit my steps to theirs, low profile until I want otherwise.
I'm not nervous. Tension's different. It's electricity under the skin, not weight on the ribs. In the car this morning, Ichika hummed at the window like she could coax patterns out of the city. Now my head hums with systems clicking into place. Rules dressed as gifts. Gifts priced like rules.
A second-year I paid earlier leans against the wall, arms crossed, watching the flow the way lifeguards watch kids wade past the rope. He catches my eye; I blink once. He blinks back. Recognition without debt. We understand each other.
Inside, a voice lifts—a girl's, steady in the way you get when you've practiced being calm in front of rooms. Not the syrupy pep you use to sell smoothies; the patient cadence of someone who knows too many names and keeps learning them anyway.
"...if you're worried about finding a partner, it's okay to say that out loud," she's saying. "This is not a trick. If we can help, we will."
She doesn't even have to be Ichinose for me to know it's her.
I stop half a step shy of the doorway, let my eyes adjust. The space holds four, five dozen people, tops. No microphones. No stage. Second-years in school cardigans and practice smiles cluster like islands around knots of first-years arranged by courage level. No one's selling anything. Which means, of course, that everything's being sold.
I glance down at my phone one more time. 95,000. Paid for clarity, got enough to keep me from tripping on the obvious. Worth it.
I slide the device into my pocket, roll my shoulders once to settle the vest, and lift my chin enough to join the living.
Forty, fifty people. No reservation. Just a door and a choice.
I take it.
__
The gym smells like floor polish and nerves.
I slip through the doors and stop just inside, letting my eyes adjust to the stale, high-ceiling light. Forty, maybe fifty people. Mostly first-years in fresh red uniforms, collars too stiff, shoes squeaking as they pivot from circle to circle. Voices bounce, stack, overlap—laughter that's a little too loud, polite greetings that sound like rehearsed lines.
I take a breath that doesn't quite reach the bottom of my lungs.
On the far side, up near the rafters, a second-year has claimed the metal catwalk like it's a private box. Blonde hair, posture loose but not careless, one leg slung over the other while he watches the room with the lazy focus of a hawk that isn't hungry yet. I mark him and move on. Observation is a currency here. I plan to be rich.
At the center of the floor, there's a gravitational pull with a name: Honami Ichinose.
Even from a distance she doesn't just stand in a circle—she organizes it. People come to her because it's easier than pretending they don't want to. Her smile isn't the knife-sharp kind I grew up dodging; it's warm, bright, shamelessly open. I watch her re-direct three conversations at once, introduce strangers like they're old friends, wave off praise with a laugh that doesn't ring false. Charisma, yes. But calibrated. She isn't simply kind. She's effective.
I start to move her way.
A flicker stops me—something small, nothing, the kind of visual noise that shouldn't register. But it does.
A faint orange tone under the lights. Hair, short and neat, turning away. Red uniform. Hands in pockets. The boy is already leaving, cutting clean lines through a room full of static. He doesn't jostle. He doesn't hurry. The crowd seems to move around him, like water around a stone. I get one clear moment of his back, the slope of his shoulders, the absolute stillness inside his stride, and my chest tightens like a pulled thread.
I blink and he's almost at the door. The girl who falls into step behind him—short black hair, eyes forward, a quiet edge—follows without looking at anyone. They don't speak. The door takes them both in a calm breath and closes with a soft click.
I exhale. The sound gets swallowed by the gym.
Was that-?
"Hello!"
The voice materializes beside me, bright enough to make me turn before I finish slotting my face into place. I find myself looking into the smile from the center of the room. Honami Ichinose stands close enough to read the tiny flecks of light in her irises. Her uniform somehow looks more red than everyone else's, like the color prefers her.
For half a second, I'm annoyed with my own timing. For the other half, impressed with hers.
I give her the kind of grin that tends to lower people's guard. "Didn't expect Class 2-B's star to personally greet newcomers."
She laughs, a small hand wave like she's batting the compliment back where it came from. "Hey, that's not true. I'm just doing what any good senpai should. You looked a little lost."
"Caught," I admit. "New environment. New rules. I think the gym ceiling is judging me."
Her eyes crinkle. "You get used to it. I'm Ichinose. Honami Ichinose."
"Yagami Takuya," I say. "First year, Class B. Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you, Yagami-kun." She tilts her head, taking me in with a quick, efficient sweep—shoes, posture, hands. Not invasive. Practiced. "How's your first day been?"
"Quietly educational."
"That sounds like you learned something painful."
"Painful... expensive," I say, mouth quirking. "I'm still deciding which."
She laughs again. Not the airy kind. The real kind.
I'm aware of how close she stands without making it feel like pressure. I note it the way I note exits, the temperature of a room, the placement of security cameras. She's present in a way that most people only manage when they're alone. I could take up a lot of her time right now. But I didn't come here to become another star in her orbit.
"Is this your event?" I ask, glancing at the growing clusters.
"It's more like a wave I tried to push in a good direction," she says. "Some of the first-years looked overwhelmed. I figured... offer a place to breathe. A few second-years came to help."
My eyes flick to the rafters again; the blonde hasn't moved. "Seems to be working."
"I hope so." She holds my gaze, and for a split second I get the sense she's trying to place me in a category. Friendly? Dangerous? Useful? It isn't hostile. It's logistics.
Behind her shoulder, the gym doors remain closed. The faint orange afterimage in my head refuses to dissolve. Calm gait. Controlled breath. No wasted motion.
No one here walks like that.
I look back at her glowing face
I let my expression soften, as if I'm about to say something earnest because I kind of am. "This might be forward, but... are you an angel?"
Ok that came out worse than I thought it would
Her smile stutters. Color rises in her cheeks; she looks away with a startled little sound. "H-uh? That's... new."
"Bad joke," I say, backing off with both hands raised a fraction. "Sanctified lighting. First-day awe. Sorry."
She laughs, light and a little embarrassed. "You're funny, Yagami-kun."
"Mostly on accident."
A group of first-years to our left calls her name. She glances that way, then back. The calculus in her head adjusts. There's only so much of her to go around.
I decide fast. "I was going to ask you for something reckless like partnering up for the special exam," I say, tone dry enough that it could be a joke, "but you probably have a line out the door already."
Her shoulders lift in a not-quite-apology. "I'm helping a lot of people match. It gets... complicated."
"Right," I say. "Then how about something less reckless?" I take out my phone and flip it in my hand to show I'm not pretending. "Could I get your contact? I'd like to ask for advice when it won't steal you from ten people at once."
For a moment she looks surprised—as if she expected me to push, not step back. Then the surprise turns into something easier. "Sure," she says. "I don't mind helping."
We swap IDs through OAA. Her name lights up on my screen with a clean little chime. It's ridiculous how efficient this place makes networking sound.
"Thanks," I say. "I won't be a stranger."
"Please don't." She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear and angles her body toward the waiting crowd. "And—welcome to ANHS, Yagami-kun. I think you'll do fine here."
"That makes one of us."
She starts to go, then looks over her shoulder. "Oh—and don't spend all your points at once," she says with a conspirator's smile, like we share a secret we don't. "You'll thank me later."
The advice lands like a pebble in a pond. I watch the ripples, hide the smile. "Duly noted."
She's gone two steps later, absorbed into people who are relieved to be seen by someone good at seeing. I watch her greet a shy boy by name—someone she shouldn't reasonably know yet. Efficient, I think again. The kind who lifts everyone because it's easier than stepping over them.
The gym noise swells and recedes in waves. I drift sideways to the wall and let my back touch the cool paint. Now that the immediate brightness has moved on, the fragments of information I've collected settle into shapes.
A second-year who watches without blinking. A leader who leads without pressure. A rule set that hides its teeth behind smiles. And a boy who walks through a room like sound can't quite stick to him.
I rub my thumb along the edge of my phone and feel the tiny burr in the plastic where the factory ate a corner. It's soothing in the dumbest way.
Expel Ayanokōji. That's the line they handed me. The reason written down on paper. I look at the door again and feel the thread tighten in my chest, the one that started tugging the first time a teacher said he did it at three, why can't you at five? and never learned how to let go.
If that was him... he wasn't a storm. He was the eye.
My jaw loosens. I push off the wall, drift a few steps deeper into the gym, and let myself become another shadow moving among a dozen small suns.
I can loop back to Ichinose later. Thank her for the contact. Ask gentle questions that sound like compliments. I can find the blonde watcher's name and whether he's a problem I should solve or a problem I should avoid. I can watch which first-years flock together, who stands alone by choice versus necessity, whose laughter drops two shades when they think no one notices.
And I can follow threads.
There will be time to decide which ones to cut.
For now, I slide my phone into my pocket, feel the cool weight settle against my thigh, and let the noise wrap around me without sinking into my skin. The door stays closed. The orange afterimage doesn't fade.
The game's just starting, I think, and I'm not sure if I'm late to it or exactly on time. And I've already seen my first ghost.
⸻
The corridor is too clean to be honest.
Bleached light hums from the ceiling; the floors are waxed so hard they pretend to be water. My shoes make that soft, careful squeak they teach you in places where you're not supposed to leave evidence. I've been walking long enough to know the rhythm of the school—how chatter swells around certain corners and collapses around rules. Here it collapses.
I keep moving, replaying what I've learned in the last few hours like flashcards I can shuffle with a thumb.
I knew this school was irregular since the beginning,I just didn't know the ins and outs of it yet. While the Director did give me multiple files to inform myself on the people around me he was always cryptic on the systems of ANHS... Perhaps he wanted me to figure it out for myself..?
Not that it was hard to figure it out, but it would have saved him the trouble..
I think back to everything I learned
A hundred thousand points a month. A number that big is never a gift; it's a leash. Classes A through D—labels that feel like collars. Special exams that are less "tests" and more behavioral experiments: social pressure as curriculum, manipulation as homework. Twenty million points to cancel an expulsion, twenty million to buy yourself into any class you want. Even survival is a transaction. It's all the White Room again, just with better windows and vending machines.
And then there's him.
The Fourth Generation. The ghost whose name people don't say but whose curve they trace with every metric. Ayanokōji Kiyotaka. They built me to be an answer to a question he never asked.
A sound punches through my thoughts—a mean, hollow clang that metal makes when it meets the wrong thing. Then a snarl. Voices spike. Instinct pulls me forward before rational thought can put a leash on it.
I round the corner into heat.
Not heat like summer. Heat like a stove somebody forgot to turn off—concentrated, dangerous, pretending to be still. The hallway is half-crowded, widening around a center the way water pulls back from something dropped into it.
I see multiple familiar faces, nearly every single faces file I read twice over. I recognize each and every one.
On the left, Ibuki has one hand at her throat. Red marks climb her skin like fingerprints that didn't want to leave. She's breathing through her teeth, refusing to wince where anyone can see it.
Near the middle, Ryūen rubs his chin and grins up from the floor, like getting knocked down is an in-joke he shares with pain.
Sudō is all bright anger and clenched fists, the kind of boy who would sprint straight into a wall if the wall looked at him wrong. Horikita has two fingers folded into his sleeve, preventing him from proving whatever point he thinks his knuckles can make; her gaze is a blade with the safety off. Kushida is there too, posture soft, voice quieter than everything else and somehow designed to be heard anyway—oil poured into water that refuses to mix.
And in the center of it all, Hōsen.
His chest lifts and falls like he swallowed fire and hasn't decided whether to spit it or die of it. He's built like the threat broke the mold.
Beside him stands Nanase Tsubasa. She isn't holding him back; she's anchoring him with her presence—the way you might keep a dangerous animal calm by standing where it can see you. She looks up at him with a voice I can't hear and a borrowed calm that might as well be a rope.
I catch the edges of what just happened. Ibuki's throat. Ryūen's fall. Sudō's near-swing. It's an aftermath, but the air hasn't realized the fight is over yet.
And then I see him.
I don't know what I expected. A spotlight? A sign? Instead there's a boy leaning against the far wall with his hands in his pockets like he's standing in line at a convenience store. He doesn't posture. He doesn't need the room to know he's there. He's so ordinary he becomes the only thing you can't ignore.
Ayanokōji Kiyotaka.
For a second my breath missteps—nothing anyone could see. The name that built the shape of my childhood is attached to a person who looks like he could be late for math. Which is worse, somehow. Monsters are easy. Mirrors are not.
His eyes move once. They take in everything and give back nothing. The White Room would have promoted an instructor for learning that trick.
I snap my head back towards Hōsen avoiding Kiyotaka's gaze
All of these things I've heard.... Yet... he just looks like an ordinary person. Just like him
That was the masterpiece..? The monster?
He didn't look like a monster..
Caught in my thoughts I don't notice I'm still staring when Hōsen's head snaps toward me. The heat in him decides it wants a new excuse.
"The hell you lookin' at, huh?" He says hotly still angry
He says it like a challenge he hopes I accept. I don't. I let the calm I've practiced for years find my face. When I answer, I let the voice carry just far enough to be heard by everyone who wants it.
"You tell me," "You're the one turning the hallway into a Roman Colosseum."
It isn't loud. It doesn't need to be. A good needle doesn't require pressure to sink in.
His mouth twists. Maybe at the image. Maybe at the fact that anyone would dare to describe him instead of fear him.
Nanase moves faster than his temper. "H-Hōsen-kun," she says, not quite blocking him, not quite pleading. Her eyes flick in calculation over the crowd, over me, back to him. She knows something about him—a lever, a secret, a cost. That knowledge sits between them like a third party in a negotiation.
He takes one step. My weight shifts. Not backwards.
A door at the corridor's end opens—no slam, just the quiet click of authority that knows it doesn't need volume.
"Hōsen!"
The baritone is dry as chalk and twice as final. Shiba Katsunori walks in with his hands folded behind his back, black hair neatly parted, expression ironed flatter than his shirt. He doesn't raise his voice; the hallway does the work for him.
"What," he says, every word measured, "is the meaning of this?"
Silence gathers itself up and stands at attention.
Shiba's eyes move over the scene once—Ibuki's bruised throat, Ryūen's crouch, Sudō's fists, Horikita's grip, the way Nanase's shoulder leans toward Hōsen without touching him. His gaze lands on Hōsen and stays.
"I will not tolerate violence in these halls," he says. No theatrics. No threats dressed up as speeches. Just a fact. "Do you understand me?"
Hōsen bares his teeth. Shiba doesn't blink.
"If you are asking to test the speed of our paperwork," Shiba adds, tone unchanged, "we can accommodate that."
Expulsion. The word lives in the walls here. When Shiba says it, it stops sounding like drama and starts sounding like logistics.
Nanase's hand floats another inch into Hōsen's periphery. Something she knows—whatever that "thing" is—hooks into his anger and tugs it sideways. His shoulders drop a notch. Not submission. Containment.
"Office. Now," Shiba finishes. He doesn't look away until Hōsen moves.
Hōsen turns. The crowd opens. Shiba falls in behind him without hurry, a shadow that the sun itself would have to ask permission to step around.
The heat thins. Conversations start as if everyone suddenly remembered how to be normal.
Class 2-D doesn't leave. They hold their ground—Horikita, Sudō, Kushida, a few others whose stares say they will memorize any new variable that enters their orbit, just in case it matters later.
I take in the edges. Ibuki shakes off concern like rain. Ryūen chuckles like pain is an inside joke. Sudō mutters something that ends in a swear. Horikita's eyes flick toward me once, a quick cut that files my existence into a folder she can name later. Kushida smiles at the air between us, as if to suggest she could be anyone I needed her to be.
And then I look back to where he is.
Ayanokōji hasn't moved. The room bends around the fact of his stillness. He's not pretending not to notice me. He's choosing to see me and wait.
Our eyes meet.
It makes a shape in the air that other people can feel but can't describe. The room is loud, but the sound tilts away from us as if to leave the space clear. He doesn't narrow his gaze. He doesn't raise an eyebrow. He doesn't do anything that would give away the math behind his attention. He simply looks, in that way that makes other people discover they're talking too much.
So you're the original.
You're the curve they compared me to.
You're the reason a dozen white rooms exist—one in brick, one in rules, one under my ribs.
I let my face go smooth the way they trained it to, then ruined it by making sure it matched nothing inside. This isn't hatred. It's not even rivalry yet. It's recognition—the kind you feel when you see a landmark from a map you weren't supposed to have.
Behind me, someone whispers violence can lead to expulsion. Another voice says Hōsen always goes too far. Words clutter the air like leaves. None of them matter.
Ayanokōji blinks once. The blink is not a message. The lack of one is. He has measured me and decided not to file the report yet.
You look plain, I think. But so do certain keys until you learn which ones make doors open.
If he is the question, I am not here to be the answer they wrote for me. I am here to write my own test.
Horikita says something to Sudō that sounds like a leash disguised as advice. Kushida offers Ibuki a gentle concern that earns her a look with edges. Nanase was gone down the hall Were Hōsen went. Life starts moving forward again in that graceless way it always does after danger decides to wait for a better time.
We don't move.
He watches me without staring. I watch him without flinching. The line between observation and confrontation is thin; we stand on it like it's a beam above water.
No lines spoken. No names offered. No posture changed.
Two red blazers under fluorescent light, both pretending to be part of the wallpaper. Two generations of the same project, pretending the other isn't a mirror.
Around us, the hallway empties a little, but not enough to matter. Enough people remain to tell the story later, stripped of the parts that matter, because no one knows how to share a silence without ruining it.
The air feels heavy — not angry, not violent — just dense with the weight of recognition. Ayanokōji's stillness presses on the room until even Horikita seems to sense something unspoken happening between us.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. Then I do.
One step forward. Slow. Deliberate.
His eyes don't widen. Of course they don't. He just watches, the way a hawk might watch a leaf fall — not threatened, but interested enough to measure its trajectory.
I stop a short distance away, the kind that feels too close for strangers and too formal for friends.
"Nice to meet you," I say quietly, my voice cutting through the hum of the hallway.
A pause. The words hang there, heavier than they should.
Then I finish, just as calm — but with something electric beneath the surface.
"Nice to meet you, Ayanokōji Kiyotaka."
His name lands between us like the drop of a coin in a glass of still water — a soft sound that carries farther than anyone expects.
Ayanokōji's gaze lingers, unreadable. Maybe he's wondering who I am. Maybe he already knows.
I hold the stare until I see the faintest shift — the smallest flicker behind his expression. Then, nothing.
The silence resets itself.
Two experiments, face to face.
And for the first time in my life, I'm not the one being observed.