The corridor had settled into that strange, post-storm quiet. The kind that follows shouting and the scrape of shoes but keeps the air taut, like the noise might come surging back if anyone breathed too loud.
A ring of second-years from D-Class lingered where the confrontation had been. Horikita stood with her arms folded and her expression level, Kushida smiled with precise warmth, and at the center of their loose gravity was the boy I'd only seen in dossiers and grainy security stills. Calm posture. Hands at his sides. Eyes that didn't wander, didn't flare. They just took things in and filed them somewhere I couldn't see.
I stepped out of the thinning crowd.
"Nice to meet you, Ayanokōji Kiyotaka...."
A few heads turned. Not a lot. Just enough to register the moment.
He didn't answer right away. He continued to study me, not rudely—like he was checking that what I'd said matched the shape of the person in front of him.
"I'd greet you back," he said, voice even, "but it seems you already know my name."
"Hard not to," I said. "You make an impression without trying."
Horikita's eyes narrowed by a millimeter, measuring tone and intent. Kushida's smile brightened, as if she'd found a thread of conversation to catch.
I let a small pause sit between us, then glanced down the corridor where the commotion had boiled over minutes earlier. The memory of it still clung to the walls: a rough hand at a collar, bodies shifting to block, the low rumble of anger rushing to the throat. Hōsen had been a storm in a human shape—impulsive, loud, pleased to be seen. Now he was somewhere else, tethered by an angry teacher's voice and whatever leverage the school used to keep storms from ripping doors off their hinges.
"That was Quite the commotion," I said.
"Yeah," Ayanokōji replied. No flourish. No extra breath. Just agreement.
"That guy doesn't seem like the reasonable type," I went on, casual.
He tilted his head a fraction. "He seemed... impulsive."
"Impulsive's one word." I let a corner of my mouth tilt. "Colorful's another."
I could feel the assessment in the space between us—not hostile, not friendly. The kind of attention you give a new puzzle piece when you're not sure which corner it belongs to.
Horikita shifted, stepping half a pace nearer to Ayanokōji without making a show of it. "It's unusual for first-years to approach upperclassmen so directly," she said.
"I guess I'm not the usual type," I said, easy.
"Mm." She didn't smile, but the line of her mouth softened a fraction. Noted and filed.
Kushida slid into the gap like warm light. "You seem nice, Yagami-kun," she said. "Confident, too."
"You think so?" I shrugged, palm open. "Maybe I just talk too much."
She laughed softly—polite, practiced. Charming without committing.
My phone buzzed once in my pocket. I didn't check it. I already knew who would have texted and what it would say. Later.
I let my gaze return to Ayanokōji. He wasn't pushing the conversation anywhere. He wasn't ending it either. He stood in that neutral place where almost nothing sticks to you. Up close, the impression sharpened: nothing flashy at all. Neutral polish. A surface that didn't catch light unless you went looking for it.
"Yagami Takuya," I said, giving the introduction he hadn't asked for. "First-year. Class B."
He nodded. "Ayanokōji Kiyotaka. Second-year, D."
"D," I repeated mildly, as if it were a color. "Interesting."
Did he intentionally get himself into that class? D was bottom of the barrel, not fitting for the boy in front of him.
Horikita's eyes flicked to me again, quick and precise. I let the word hang there, plain, unweighted.
"You were here for the whole thing?" I asked.
"Most of it," he said.
"What did I miss?"
He held my gaze for a breath, then gave a small shrug. "You saw enough."
Which was his way of saying I knew what mattered—or I wouldn't get more out of him by fishing in public. Fair.
Behind them, a couple of D-Class boys were still gassing each other up in low voices about stepping in, not backing down. Sudo's name bounced around once, twice, then vanished when Horikita's eyes cut past them. The second-year teacher who had shouted Hōsen down had left a ripple of silence in his wake that hadn't entirely smoothed.
"Is everyone okay?" I asked, glancing toward the knot of first-years near the stairwell.
Kushida followed my line of sight. "We managed," she said quickly. "No one was hurt."
"That's good." I nodded like a well-meaning stranger with no other agenda. "First week and all."
Another small silence. The kind that either ends a talk or turns it.
"You were at Ichinose-senpai's meet-up earlier, right?" I said, like I was surfacing a neutral topic. "I thought I saw you leave."
Horikita's attention sharpened. Kushida tilted her head, curious again. Ayanokōji didn't adjust his posture, but his focus changed—subtle, not nothing.
"Gym's not really my place," he said.
"Even with free points on the first month?" I asked, teasing the air more than the boy.
"Points don't last," he answered.
There it was: a shared suspicion, unspoken but real—the sense that the generous monthly stipend was bait strung over a trap. He hadn't said it. He didn't have to.
"True," I said softly. "I've been getting that impression."
I let my eyes slide to Horikita. She was watching like someone who had learned, very quickly, that information is a currency. I gave her the smallest nod of respect. Not obsequious. Just enough to say: I see it.
"Anyway," I said, stepping half a pace back as if to break the circle I'd joined, "didn't mean to interrupt. I figured it was polite to introduce myself."
"Polite," Horikita repeated, not derisive, just tasting the word.
Kushida clasped her hands. "It's nice! We don't get many B-Class first-years dropping by to say hello."
"I like to know the neighborhood," I said.
"Neighborhood?" Ayanokōji asked.
"People," I said. "Who's who. Who I should avoid. Who I shouldn't." I smiled a little. "Who makes an impression without trying."
Kushida's eyes recycled a spark of interest. Horikita's chin lifted a hair. Ayanokōji remained what he was—steady center, plain frame, something you walk past a hundred times before realizing the wall you leaned on was load-bearing.
Students started drifting, peeling off in pairs toward clubs, dorms, evening plans. The stack of voices thinned. The fluorescent lights in the corridor hummed.
I caught Ayanokōji's gaze again and let the moment lengthen. Not a challenge. Not deference. Just acknowledgment. A tiny adjustment on a rifle scope.
"I'll see you around, Ayanokōji.." I said.
"I'm sure you will," he said, mild enough to be nothing, pointed enough to be something. His stare was still neutral and unreadable
Horikita said nothing, but her eyes tracked me like a note to revisit later. Kushida waved with a cheerful little tilt of her fingers, already filing my face into whatever gallery she kept behind that pleasant, dangerous smile.
I took a step back. Didn't turn. Let the distance be deliberate, measured in careful inches.
"By the way," I added, like an afterthought, "if any of you need anything from a first-year—info, introductions, errands—feel free to ask. I'm good at moving around."
Kushida's smile sharpened by half a degree. "That's very kind."
Horikita's gaze flicked to Ayanokōji, then back to me. "We manage our own affairs," she said. The words should have closed a door. The tone left it ajar.
"Good policy," I said. "See you."
I turned and took three quiet steps into the corridor, giving them the exit cue. Their conversation re-knit behind me in low threads. I could have kept walking. I didn't.
I pivoted back just enough to meet his eyes one more time.
He was already looking.
No surprise, no irritation. Just attention. A line pulled taut between two points on a map neither of us had drawn.
For a breath, the noise of the building fell away—the echo of gym shoes, the rattle of lockers, the muffled call from a club room around the corner. There was only the clean, winter-bright sensation of facing an equal across a very long table.
I let my face return to its default: open, relaxed, a little amused.
He didn't change anything at all.
I find myself nodding —half a beat deeper than politeness—and broke the line.
Footsteps. Light. The flicker of a vending machine at the far end of the hall.
So that's him, I thought as I walked. Calm. Precise. Unreadable.
I could work with that.
—
I let the door close behind me and wait for the click, the little metal sound that says I'm alone. The dorm room is exactly the way I left it this morning: bed made with corners so sharp they could cut skin, desk bare except for the school-issued tablet and a pen I never use, curtains drawn just enough to admit a polite strip of evening. No smell. No mess. No life.
It looks like a photograph of a room, not a room.
For a second I don't move. I just stand there with my hand still on the knob, feeling the hollow in my palm where the handle was, listening to the building's heart—pipes, vents, the distant elevator chime. The silence is too clean. It reminds me of the White Room in the way a mirror reminds you of a camera.
"It's like the White Room never ended," I tell the air. "They just gave it curtains."
I set my bag down. The zipper's rasp sounds too loud, like I'm scratching a record. Shoes off, lined up. Jacket on the chair, aligned with the seat's edge. I do it on autopilot because muscle memory outlives most kinds of pain. I sit on the bed without disturbing the blanket. The mattress has the compliance of an obedient child—yielding just enough, never too much.
Today spools back through me in images that feel printed on transparency film: a crowded hall, the echo slap of a shout, Hōsen's hands around a girl's throat, Ryūen sitting down hard with more surprise than anger in his eyes, Horikita's gaze cutting to calculate, Sudo ready to swing at the first excuse he could convince himself was justice. A pile-up of tempers and histories I don't know yet, and then, at the end of all that noise, the quiet that matters.
Him.
Ayanokōji Kiyotaka.
I had seen Ayanokōji when I was younger... a long time ago in the whiteroom through glass.
I didn't expect to see him so early. I thought I'd map the currents first, build a web, make a plan. Instead, the crowd opened and there he was, the eye of a storm that pretends not to be a storm. Calm. Present. Empty, people would say. But emptiness is wrong. He isn't hollow. He's careful.
He looked at me—really looked—and I did what I've trained myself to do: nothing. A polite tilt of the mouth. Eyes that register, then move on. My pulse kept steady because beating faster never saved anyone.
He's what they always wanted me to be. What they tried to print into my bones.
And he escaped.
I rub my thumb over my fingertips, a nervous habit I hate catching in the act. My skin still remembers the heat of the hallway, the smell of bodies and floor polish, the feel of his gaze landing and lifting. There was no fear in it. No arrogance, either. Just a steady acknowledgement: I see you. Are you a problem?
Maybe.
I stand and go to the mini-fridge. When I pop the door, the bulb throws a small circle of domestic light that makes me laugh under my breath. Inside, I have water, one apple, and a tub of vanilla ice cream I bought on the way back because the display case had a little frost on the rim and for some reason that felt like permission.
I peel the lid and tug a spoon from the drawer. The first bite is too cold; it stings the back of my tongue, crawls up to the soft space behind my eyes. I keep it there because I want to feel something uncomplicated.
"They never let us have stuff like this," I say to the plastic spoon. "Too inefficient."
The sweetness is almost obscene. I take another bite anyway and lean my hip against the desk. My reflection in the tablet's black glass looks like a boy trying to look like a boy. The White Room taught me not to trust reflections. They always leave out the important parts.
Ichika flickers through my head like a bad habit. The ride over this morning, her humming, how she pressed her forehead to the window to fog it and, for a second, traced a heart she wiped away before it finished. She's my "partner" for this mission if you believe in the assignments they write down. In reality, she belongs to Ayanokōji in the way a planet belongs to a star. Devoted. It's not an act, and that makes it more dangerous than if it were.
I don't resent her for it. I don't even blame her. I just don't understand it. To worship the man who cracked the system that made you—that's either the purest kind of faith or the last stage of a disease.
She could have warned him. Maybe she did. That look he gave me—prepared, not curious. It wouldn't surprise me. She moves like a shadow not because she's sneaky, but because she refuses to be seen unless it's by him.
Part of me envies her certainty. I don't have a god. I barely have a map.
I set the ice cream down and pick up the tablet. The screen wakes with a polite vibration. Notifications pile up in the corner: welcome messages, orientation summaries, the OAA app flashing my tidy set of letters and numbers—B overall, a nice solid 73, the kind of profile designed not to start conversations. Academics ninety-three, adaptation seventy-four, physical fifty-one..... social contribution seventy-seven. Balanced enough to be forgettable.
Then the message I've been avoiding like it might bite: a simple subject line that handles its own gravity.
PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: EXPEL AYANOKŌJI KIYOTAKA.
The text below is only a paragraph. It reads like a grocery list with one item on it. No flourish, no justification. They never bother explaining why. The White Room taught us explanations are for people who believe they have choices.
Expel him.
What they mean is: send him back.
Back into the bright white mouth that eats children and calls it education. Back to the Director. Back to the experiments that don't stop when you cry because crying is rearranged as a failure of ventilation.
My stomach turns and I can't tell if it's from the sugar or the thought. I set the tablet face-down and the room is quiet again except for the small, rude hum of the mini-fridge.
I sit on the edge of the bed and press the heels of my hands into my eyes until I see fireworks. The White Room taught me that all pain can be repurposed. It didn't teach me what to do when the pain is not mine alone.
He got out.
He's here, in a place that pretends to be a school and may actually be a machine, but it's a machine that allows breath and sun and the possibility of pretending. He walks under trees. He buys things without filling out a form first. He looks at people without calculating whether their presence will be subtracted from his calories.
And I'm supposed to hand him back.
"Expel him...?" The words arrive in a whisper that doesn't sound like me.
What if I didn't?
It's a small question. It lands like a spark. The room doesn't change, but something in me shifts a fraction to one side, like a door that has always stuck finally giving at the hinge.
I stand, because sitting feels like agreeing. I cross to the window and pull the curtain two fingers wider. Outside, campus is a geometry of light—path lamps, lit windows, the thin neon of the convenience store near the gate. Students move in pairs and triplets that pass like fish under water you can't hear. Somewhere, a laugh gets loose and fades. It smells faintly like cut grass.
He escaped. That's the truth that keeps repeating, a line my mind can't stop tracing. He escaped and he's trying to be small so he can stay free. It's a good plan. Small things don't get shot at first. But small things still get stepped on when the herd turns.
They built me to stop him. To prove the fifth generation could do what the fourth. To validate budgets and egos and a father's obsession. Sometimes I imagine the Director holding me up to the light like a coin, checking the stamping for flaws.
They made me well. I don't break where they expect.
Another spoon of ice cream. I hold it on my tongue until it melts to sweet milk. I feel ridiculous. I also feel guilty for some reason . I keep eating.
The tablet's black screen shows me again: a boy, uniform crisp, hair not quite complying with the comb, a thin tie between a throat and a future. I put a thumb on the glass and drag it away, like I can wipe the image down to the person underneath.
I should buy a laptop. It's a mundane, stupid thought that feels like oxygen. I've never had supervised internet that didn't feel like a guard standing behind me. The school allows devices. "For productivity," the guidebook says. Even a monitored system is better than a sealed one. Maybe tomorrow I'll go to the electronics shop and buy the cheapest thing that looks like freedom. Learn what it feels like to open a browser without asking permission.
"Maybe tomorrow," I say, and it sounds like a promise I can keep.
I think of Ichika again, and it stings in a different way. Her devotion makes me feel lonelier than hatred did. She's right next to me and a universe away. She will choose him, always. I won't force her to choose anything else. I'm not the Director. I'm not my fear.
The tablet buzzes with a new message. I don't flip it over. I don't need to read more commands until I decide which ones I'm still capable of obeying.
The White Room told us the world needs saving and we were the tools. It forgot to ask what the world wanted. It forgot to check if the tools might want to be human first.
I rest my forehead against the cool glass of the window and speak to the campus lights like they're listening.
"You escaped," I tell him. "Let's see if I can, too."
The room stays quiet. The spoon clinks the inside of the tub. I scrape the last of the vanilla from the bottom and throw the lid in the trash. I wash the spoon in water so hot it makes my fingers raw, then set it to dry on a paper towel, handle aligned with the counter's edge.
I turn off the tablet. The black glass gives me my face one more time and then it gives me nothing. That feels like mercy.
I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling. Somewhere in the next building, someone is playing a guitar badly and earnestly. The sound makes the air less sterile. I close my eyes and count breaths not because it calms me, but because it reminds me I can.
Tomorrow I'll buy the laptop. Tomorrow I'll map the rest of the herd. Tomorrow I'll see if Ichika looked him in the eye and told him a truth that has my name on it. Tomorrow I'll decide which orders survive the night.
For now, I do the one soft, stupid thing they never trained out of me: I let myself feel the sweetness lingering on my tongue, and the relief of a plan that doesn't end with a cage.