The transit bus hummed as it glided across the pristine asphalt of the Tokyo metropolitan area.
Outside, the scenery shifted from the familiar, slightly worn charm of Karakura Town to the sleek, intimidating glass-and-steel architecture of a district that felt like it belonged ten years in the future.
Inside the bus, the atmosphere was stiflingly quiet.
Most of the passengers were teenagers wearing brand-new uniforms, their faces a mix of anxiety, pride, and stiff anticipation.
At the very back of the bus, however, sat a trio that didn't quite fit the mold of the "elite student."
Kurosaki Ichigo sat slumped in his seat, his distinctive shock of messy orange hair drawing side-eyes from the more "proper" students at the front.
He looked less like a scholar and more like a delinquent who had been dragged to a church against his will.
To his left was Arisawa Tatsuki, her arms crossed and her gaze sharp, playing the role of a silent bodyguard.
To his right, Inoue Orihime stared out the window, her eyes wide with wonder, humming a soft, nonsensical tune.
Ichigo let out a long, heavy sigh that seemed to rattle his entire frame. Just a month ago, his plan was simple: attend Karakura High with everyone else, keep his head down, and deal with the occasional ghost.
But life—and his temper—had other plans.
During the entrance interview at Karakura, a group of local thugs had decided to harass a younger student right outside the gates.
Ichigo, being Ichigo, hadn't hesitated.
He had left the interview, cracked a few skulls, and returned with a bruised knuckle and a dusty blazer.
The admissions board, unimpressed by his "vigilante justice," had handed him a swift rejection.
His father, Isshin, had surprisingly not been angry. Instead, with a rare, serious expression, he had handed Ichigo an application for the Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School.
"If you're going to be a magnet for trouble, Ichigo, go somewhere where they'll actually teach you how to use that thick skull for more than just a battering ram," Isshin had said, before promptly returning to his usual antics of trying to drop-kick his son through the living room wall.
As for Tatsuki and Orihime, well Tatsuki decided to go with him to keep him out of trouble, while Orihime decided to join in on the fun, and also to not rely on her relatives for her education.
Ichigo leaned forward, his voice a low whisper that barely carried over the engine's drone. "Hey... do you guys actually buy this? Any of it?"
Tatsuki turned her head slightly. "Buy what? The fact that your hair is even more distracting in this lighting?"
"I'm serious," Ichigo grunted, ignoring the jab. "Look at the pamphlet again. One-hundred percent employment and university admission rates. They pay for everything. Tuition, dorms, even a monthly allowance for food and clothes. It's funded by the government, sure, but since when is the government that generous? It smells like a scam."
Tatsuki uncrossed her arms, her expression softening into one of pragmatism. "I looked into it, Ichigo. It's been around for a few years now. It's a closed system—once you're in, you're in. No contact with the outside world until graduation. It's shady as hell, I'll give you that, but the results are real. The people who graduate from here become the elite. Politicians, CEOs, world-class athletes... it's a factory for the 'upper crust' of society."
"...Still sounds shady. I don't know why you decided to apply here, didn't Karakura High also offer you scholarship?"
She looked at him pointedly. "I'm only here because someone needs to make sure you don't pick a fight with a teacher on day one and end up homeless in Tokyo."
"I didn't ask you to follow me," Ichigo muttered, though his eyes betrayed a hint of gratitude.
On Ichigo's other side, Orihime finally pulled her gaze away from the passing skyscrapers.
She had been quiet, but her mind had been drifting through its own unique brand of logic.
Although she may not look like it, Orihime is recognised as one of the smartest student in their grade, with her academic ranking always within the top three.
"Maybe it's like a garden!" she chirped, her voice slightly too loud for the quiet bus, causing a boy with glasses in the front row to shush them.
She smiled embarrassingly as she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "The school is the gardener. They only want the flowers that bloom perfectly, right?"
Ichigo blinked. "What do you mean, Inoue?"
"Well," she said, tapping her chin. "If you want a garden that is one-hundred percent beautiful, you have two choices. You can work really, really hard to make every single flower grow... or you can just pull out the ugly ones and throw them away as soon as they look a little wilted."
She looked at them both with a bright, innocent smile that didn't quite match the weight of her words. "What if the 'guaranteed success' is only for the people who survive? What if the ones who fail just... disappear from the records? That would make the numbers look perfect, wouldn't it?"
The interior of the bus went cold.
Ichigo and Tatsuki exchanged a long, meaningful look. It was the classic "Inoue Logic"—it sounded like a fairy tale, but it held a sharp, jagged edge of truth.
"The 'Survival of the Fittest' High School," Ichigo whispered. "Expulsion as a way to maintain the statistics."
"It fits the government's MO," Tatsuki added grimly. "They don't want to fund losers. They're investing in 'human assets.' If an asset doesn't provide a return, they liquidate it."
Ichigo leaned back, his eyes narrowing as he watched the gates of the school come into view.
He felt a sudden, familiar prickle at the back of his neck. It wasn't the feeling of a spirit—it was the feeling of being watched by something much more terrestrial, but no less predatory.
'Free tuition. Guaranteed future. Total isolation. I came here because I didn't have a choice, but looking at these other kids... some of them look like they'd step over a corpse to get an 'A'. If this place is a meritocracy, it's going to be a bloodbath.'
The bus slowed to a crawl and finally hissed to a stop at the main entrance.
The doors folded open, letting in a gust of wind that carried the scent of salt from the nearby ocean and the sterile smell of new construction.
"Well," Ichigo said, standing up and grabbing his bag. "No turning back now. If they try to 'weed' us out, they're going to find out some weeds are harder to pull than others."
Tatsuki stood up next to him, cracking her knuckles. "I'd like to see them try."
Orihime hopped out of her seat, her optimism seemingly restored. "I hope the cafeteria has bread! Do you think they have leeks here, Ichigo-kun?"
Ichigo sighed, the tension breaking just a little. "Probably, Inoue. Let's just... try to stay under the radar for at least the first hour."
As the three of them stepped off the bus and onto the campus of the Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School, they were met with the sight of hundreds of other students.
Among them stood a boy with a bored, inscrutable expression and a girl with long black hair who looked like she was radiating a "leave me alone" aura.
The game was beginning, and the trio from
Karakura had no idea that their "points" were about to become more important than their lives.