The first-period bell sang its clean, too-chipper "welcome back," and half the class answered with synchronized groans. Suki drummed a pencil against his desk like a drummer boy summoning courage; Ryuzí stilled it with two fingers without looking up.
The PA popped once, and the principal's voice drifted through the ceiling: warm, formal, faintly conspiratorial. "Good morning, everyone. To celebrate the new term and encourage collaboration, we're launching a Team Performance Challenge. Each homeroom will form groups. You'll present on the theme 'Our Future, Our Voice'. Projects are scored out of 100 on creativity, clarity, and teamwork. Score 80 or higher and your group qualifies for a special reward. The top-scoring class wins an outdoor retreat weekend at Mt. Midori Lodge. We expect your best. Ganbatte."
The PA clicked off. A beat. Then Suki shot straight up in his chair like he'd been plugged into a socket.
"Outdoor trip?!" he whispered at a volume that was not a whisper. "Matching hoodies. Campfire confessions. Ghost stories—"
"Mosquito bites," Ryuzí said calmly, "and you setting something on fire."
Suki slapped a hand over his heart. "Slander. I would never."
"You lit a toaster pastry last month," Aoi said, not looking up from her planner.
"That was science," Suki protested.
Kenji spun his chair around. "Count me in for ghost stories. And for confiscating lighters from certain offenders."
The door slid open and homeroom sensei slipped in, exactly on the final chirp of the bell, expression halfway between amusement and resignation. "You heard the big boss," he said, tossing a stack of rubric sheets onto the front table. "Groups of six. You'll have three weeks. Presentations on the last Friday of the month. Rubrics are here. Please don't form teams designed to destroy my sanity."
A rustle, the soft chaos of chairs and whispers. Suki's hand found the sleeve of Ryuzí's blazer before Ryuzí could blink.
"Mine," Suki announced.
"That's not how grouping works," Ryuzí said, but he didn't move his arm.
Aoi slid her pencil behind her ear. "I'll anchor this circus."
Kenji kicked off from his desk and coasted over on chair wheels like a kid at an arcade. "Obviously I'm in. I bring charm, jokes, and access to a discount on poster board."
Miyako looked up from her meticulous notes, like a deer mid-step. Suki beamed at her. "Shimizu-san. Join us?"
She hesitated, just a breath. Then she nodded. "If you'll have me."
Suki clapped once, delighted. "We will."
On the edge of their gravity, Haruto had already begun the slow escape of introverts everywhere: gather books, turn quietly, exit before anyone—
"Haruto," Aoi said, and her voice made a period out of his name.
He paused. Looked back over his shoulder.
"We need a good set designer," she added, tone mild, eyes not. "And someone who can make slides that don't give me migraines."
He adjusted his glasses, buying time. "There are… other people who are better at—"
Aoi only opened her palm and waited, as if patience itself were a folded invitation. Haruto's shoulders softened a degree.
"Okay," he said.
Their teacher surveyed the six forming like a weather system and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Minori, Takeda, Suki, Aoi, Shimizu, Kisaragi…" He sighed with theatrical doom. "God help your team."
The class laughed. Suki took a bow.
Rubrics distributed, the room settled into the thunderless noise of planning. Sensei wrote the theme on the board in tidy characters—Our Future, Our Voice—and underlined it twice.
"All right," Aoi said, once they'd pushed their desks into a rough hexagon. "We need a concept, a division of labor, a timeline, and a backup plan for when Suki sets something on fire."
"I will sue for defamation," Suki said.
"You can't," Kenji said. "It's true."
Suki placed a hand on his desk like a star accepting an award. "Proposal: a live performance! A dramatic piece depicting the journey of youth. There will be music, dance, interpretive scarf choreography—"
"No," Aoi said.
Kenji raised a hand. "What about a skit? Something funny but with a moral. We can make fun of ourselves, then pivot to sincere."
"That has potential," Aoi conceded. "But we need substance. The rubric asks for research and clear takeaways."
"Data," Miyako said quietly, lifting her eyes just enough to catch the circle. "We could integrate statistics about exam stress, future anxiety… and how community helps. Then frame it with a personal narrative."
Suki gasped. "A hybrid!"
Haruto, who'd begun doodling boxes and arrows in the margins of his notebook, cleared his throat. "I can design visuals. Backdrops for the skit, transitions for the data slides. Maybe… a hand-drawn animation for the opening?"
Aoi turned to Ryuzí, pencil poised. "Logistics?"
He leaned back, arms folded, eyes flickering between them like he'd been assigned to keep the train from derailing. "I'll handle scheduling, prop lists, stage layout, and—" he flicked Suki's pencil again "—quality control."
Suki clutched his chest. "Boyfriend tax?"
"Non-refundable," Aoi said without looking at him, already making columns. "Okay. Theme: Dreams and Second Chances. Structure: Cold open with short animation, skit about a student group stumbling through plans, data interlude with key points, then a final scene tying it together. Deliverable: 10–12 minutes."
Kenji pointed his chopstick like a baton. "Title: 'The Future Has Our Names On It'."
Suki slapped the desk. "Sold!"
"Draft scripts by Friday," Aoi continued. "Artwork and assets drafted by next Tuesday. Rehearsals twice a week after school. We'll use the art room."
Miyako lifted a hand, hesitant. "I can—write lines. Dialogue."
"Perfect." Kenji grinned at her, all sunlight. "You can write my character as devastatingly handsome."
"I'll write you as late to rehearsal," she said, dry for the first time, and Kenji's eyes lit like she'd invented a new color.
Haruto looked down at his notebook and drew the outline of a stage, tiny feet marks showing where people could stand without blocking sightlines. Aoi watched the way his pencil moved: precise, gentle. She wrote Haruto: floor plan + panels + intro animation. She underlined it once, exactly as if she'd stamped a seal.
Suki leaned into Ryuzí's space and whispered, "We're going to Mt. Midori. Hold my hand when we cross the rope bridge."
"There is no rope bridge," Ryuzí said.
"Then find one," Suki said, determined. "I require peril to demonstrate my bravery."
"You require supervision," Ryuzí said, and Suki glowed like he'd been complimented.
—
They met after school in the art room, because nothing made sense and everything did in a room that smelled of paper, charcoal, and the faint metallic whisper of sink taps. Dusty sunlight slanted across the long tables; a lazy ceiling fan turned like a sigh.
"Team," Suki declared, slapping down a bag of snacks like a general slamming a map. "Fuel."
Aoi confiscated the powdered sugar donut holes. "You may have one per good idea."
Kenji cracked open his phone voice recorder. "I'm tracking sound bites. Foley for transitions. Also, if Suki says something legally incriminating, we'll fix it in post."
Miyako had already claimed a corner by the window with a notebook and three pens in monochrome alignment. She flipped to a clean page and wrote Act I: Chaos at the top.
Haruto set up at the far table near the whiteboard, quietly laying out pencils in a gradient: 2H, HB, 2B, 4B. His sketchbook opened to a fresh spread and the whisper of graphite began, soft as a secret.
Ryuzí prowled the cabinets, returning with tape, a utility knife (which he took from Suki immediately), and two rolls of butcher paper. "Nobody bleed," he said to the room.
"I'll write," Aoi said, marching a marker across the board. "Beat Outline. Cold open: Haruto's animation—maybe a paper airplane flying through scenes of school life? Lands in our classroom. Kenji catches it, opens it: a question about the future."
Kenji leaned in, already performing. "He reads: 'What do we want?' Suki yells, 'Matching hoodies!'"
"No," Aoi said, deadpan.
"'To be happy'?" Miyako offered, pen tapping once. "But no one knows what that looks like. That's the point."
Suki put a hand over his mouth like he might absorb that line through osmosis. "Oof. That line slaps."
"Don't say slap," Aoi said.
"Smacks?" Suki tried.
"Avoid violence," she said, and kept writing.
Haruto carried his sketchbook over, shyly turning it so the others could see. A clean pencil storyboard: four panels—the paper airplane lifting off; soaring over the courtyard; ducking past lockers and clubs; gliding into their classroom window.
"Nice," Kenji said, sincere. "It's like the school is a little world and we're a tiny weather pattern about to cause trouble."
Haruto glanced at Aoi, as if to check her face before he allowed himself to be proud. She didn't smile. She just said, "Good. Keep going."
Suki zipped across the room like a bouncy ball. "Props! We need a cardboard window frame to fake the intro, cue sound of wind, maybe glitter confetti?"
"No glitter," Ryuzí said.
"Biodegradable glitter," Suki bargained.
"Still no," Ryuzí said.
Miyako looked up from her script. "I can do voice-over for the data segment. Calm tone, short sentences."
Kenji pointed at her like he'd struck gold. "You have a 'trust me, I read the manual' voice."
She blinked. "Is that… a compliment?"
"Yes," he said, suddenly sheepish. "A good one."
Aoi clapped once. "Rehearsal block: skit scene one. Suki, Kenji front; Miyako narrates two lines; Ryuzí enters with the grounding speech about realistic pacing; Haruto cues a drawn backdrop of a calendar behind them."
Suki moved to his mark, nearly dragging his chair into a paint easel. Ryuzí caught it with a hand, slid it out of the danger zone, and leveled a look. Suki, unabashed, mouthed thank you and, for no reason other than gravity, reached up and swiped a thumb over Ryuzí's cheek.
"Paint," he murmured.
Ryuzí reached up, startled. "Where—" His fingers came away with a faint blue smear.
"My hero," Suki said, and before anyone could weaponize commentary, leaned in and kissed the spot he'd just wiped. It was quick, a touch and retreat, but the room appeared to tilt one degree warmer.
Aoi didn't turn. "Focus."
Kenji stage-whispered, "They're unstoppable."
"Terrifying," Miyako murmured, but the tip of her mouth curved.
They ran the scene. It was rough around the edges, lines dropped and found, cues missed and recovered with frantic improvisation that, to everyone's surprise, sort of worked. Kenji ad-libbed a line about the future arriving without a manual; Suki declared he would write a manual and Aoi deadpanned that step one was stop declaring things. Miyako's voice-over slid between them like a ribbon tying a gift shut. Haruto tested his first transition: a hand-drawn calendar flipping pages beneath a wash of watercolor sky; the room made a small collective oh.
They worked until the clock above the sink clicked into its last hour of light. Snacks dwindled. Energy smoothed. The rhythm settled: Aoi the metronome, Suki the melody, Kenji the drum fill that made everyone laugh, Miyako the clear note that cut through noise, Haruto the harmony underneath, Ryuzí the tempo that kept them together.
Sometime near the end, Kenji drifted to Miyako's table on the flimsiest pretext of "line consult." He bent too close, realized, and bent less close, which was somehow more obvious.
"What if your narrator line here…" He pointed, careful not to touch the page. "What if it said, 'We don't need to know the end to start walking'?"
Miyako traced the sentence with her eyes. "I like that."
He tried not to look as happy as he felt. Failed.
Across the room, Aoi hovered beside Haruto's shoulder, watching a skyline bloom beneath his pencil—rooftops and telephone wires, a laundry line, a cat on a wall because Haruto always put a cat somewhere.
"Don't hide," she said softly, not sure why she'd said it aloud.
He blinked. "Hide?"
"In the corners," Aoi said. "Your drawings like corners."
Haruto's mouth tugged into a small smile. "Corners have… shade."
"So does here," she said, gesturing at the table they shared. "We'll make it."
He ducked his head, the smile not going away this time. "Okay."
At some point, Suki managed to spin with a prop dowel and knock a paper cup off the table. Ryuzí caught it without looking; Suki blinked, betrayed by physics. "How did you—"
"I live with you," Ryuzí said.
"Romance," Suki sighed again, happily doomed.
When the caretaker flicked the hall lights once—a gentle warning—their outlines were already scrawled clear across the whiteboard: beats, cues, props. A calendar of rehearsal dates lived below Aoi's stern handwriting. Haruto pinned the first three storyboard sheets with blue tape. Miyako tucked her draft pages in a folder with a crisp edge.
Suki stretched until his back popped, hair falling over his eyes. "We'll get that eighty," he declared to the dusty ceiling fan. "And if we win, I'm claiming the top bunk at the lodge."
"As if I'd let you sleep above me," Ryuzí muttered, stacking chairs because chaos should leave rooms nicer than it found them.
Aoi collected markers. "You're going to burn the cabin down before the second day."
Kenji slung his bag over one shoulder, grin easy and bright. "Then at least it'll be memorable."
Miyako closed the lid of the snack box and held it out toward Ryuzí without comment. He took it. Their eyes met for the briefest beat—gratitude, acknowledgment, something quiet—and then moved on.
Haruto lingered to pull one strip of tape off the wall, careful not to tear the paper. Aoi flicked off the sinks, checked the windows, and then, uncharacteristically, paused in the doorway to look back.
Six desks, pushed into a messy island. A whiteboard crowded with arrows. A paper calendar that would probably get coffee-stained and taped back together. The beginning of something, sketched in pencil and laughter.
Outside, the hallway hummed its twilight hum. Shoes squeaked. Someone far away practiced a trumpet. The art room door closed with a soft click, and the echo carried their voices down the corridor like a promise.
They had three weeks, a mountain they could reach if they built the steps together, and the not-so-small matter of learning how to say our out loud.
The future did not hand them a manual.
They were writing one anyway.