Someone standing outside

Yuri’s red pen scratched twice across the page. Double underline. She closed the binder halfway, then reopened it to the same page. The topic wasn’t changing.

Yuri hadn't openly praised the idea, but her lack of immediate rejection—and the heavy, double-underlined ink in her binder—was the closest thing to a glowing endorsement she was capable of giving. The next phase was straightforward. They needed primary source data, which meant interviewing the affected people.

To maximize ground coverage before the afternoon rush, they divided into two strike teams.

The division of labor, naturally, had been dictated entirely by Yuri’s ruthless liability management.

Mina had immediately raised her hand, cheerfully requesting to team up with Hugo. Yuri had shut the proposal down in less than a second. According to her strict corporate audit, pairing the group's most easily distracted member with its most actively uncooperative one was a statistical guarantee of zero productivity. They both required heavy supervision.

Shira had smoothly stepped in, offering a serene smile as she volunteered to take Hugo. Yuri’s jaw had tightened, clearly displeased at assigning their heaviest dead weight to their most valuable asset, but she couldn't fault the logic. She had settled for glaring daggers at Hugo for the remainder of the lunch, silently promising severe consequences if he hindered Shira’s progress.

"Shall we get moving?" Shira asked gently, bringing Hugo back to the present as Yuri and Mina disappeared toward the north side of the plaza.

Hugo gave a single, silent nod.

They navigated the crowded weekend pedestrian walkway together. Or, more accurately, Hugo navigated the spatial wake left behind by Shira Umi.

Walking next to the school’s most untouchable, elegant idol was an active hazard to his social invisibility. Shira didn't just walk; she glided. Her soft lavender sleeves and white skirt caught the midday breeze, and she drew the eyes of passing pedestrians with the effortless, passive gravity of a minor celebrity.

Hugo could feel the peripheral stares burning into his jacket. To mitigate the collateral exposure, he adjusted his stride, lagging exactly 1.5 meters behind her left shoulder. It was close enough to legally qualify as traveling together, but far enough to suggest he might just be a random, unrelated pedestrian moving in the same direction.

Shira didn't comment on his strategic distance. She seemed entirely used to the attention, maintaining an even, unhurried pace without a hint of discomfort.

Before long, they arrived at the glass double doors of a large, well-lit bookstore. It was the nexus of the girls' disposable income—their part-time workplace.

Without hesitation, Shira pushed the door open, stepping into the climate-controlled air that smelled sharply of freshly printed paper and floor wax. Hugo slipped in silently behind her.

"Welcome to—" a voice called out from the front counter, abruptly cutting off.

A middle-aged woman wearing a dark green store apron paused. She held a microfiber cloth flat against an empty display table, her eyes widening slightly as she recognized the girl walking down the central aisle.

"Well now, if it isn't Shira," the manager said, a warm, knowing smile settling on her face as she lifted the cloth. "You aren't on the schedule until tomorrow. What brings you in?"

Her gaze then drifted past Shira’s flowing skirt, landing squarely on the boy in the plain jacket standing exactly one point five meters away. 

Her eyes flicked briefly toward Hugo. Then back to Shira.

Shira explained the reason they were there. While Hugo remained silent behind her.

The older woman wiped a nonexistent smudge off the glass case, her gaze sweeping over the sparsely populated aisles of the midday slump. "So, you want to interrogate my floor staff?" she asked, her tone dry but laced with amusement.

"If they are willing?" Shira replied, offering a polite tilt of her head. "Will that be a problem, Manager?"

"Not if you don't make it one," the manager conceded, tossing her microfiber cloth behind the counter. "You can ask them, but if they brush you off, you drop it immediately. And keep it brief. They’re on the clock to shelve inventory, Shira, not to help you with your homework."

"Understood. We will be quick."

The subsequent data collection was a masterclass in unspoken, optimal division of labor. They didn't assign roles verbally; they simply defaulted to their natural states.

“Do evening buses run late enough for closing shifts?” Shira asked.

She approached the stocking clerks and cashiers, easily disarming their retail fatigue with her soft, polite aura. Because it was Shira asking, the staff willingly paused their tasks to answer.

Hugo stood exactly one step behind her, remaining completely invisible with his notepad, silently recording shift times, complaints, and raw data.

By 16:00, they had successfully collected sufficient data from the bookstore and a neighboring pharmacy. The results were undeniable: the problem was a severe, systemic bottleneck for minimum-wage employees.

With their primary objective complete, they began the walk back to the station plaza to rendezvous with Yuri and Mina.

As they navigated the crowded afternoon pavements, the space between them fell into a deep, static quiet. Throughout the entire two-hour deployment, Hugo’s vocal output had remained at absolute zero. He hadn't asked a single interview question, offered a polite greeting to the staff, or made any attempt at small talk between locations.

For Hugo, this was peak efficiency. Why expend the energy to speak when Shira was already producing optimal results? To him, it was perfectly normal. However, to any standard human observer, a high school boy spending two hours alone with a beautiful girl without uttering a single syllable would be a glaring behavioral anomaly.

Shira had been so focused on the interviews that Hugo believed his absolute silence had successfully slipped under her radar.

Or so he thought.

They were standing at the edge of a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change, when the soft ambient noise of traffic suddenly cut off.

“What made you check the evening buses?” Shira asked.

Her voice was as smooth and unhurried as her walking pace. It didn't sound like an idle attempt to fill the silence; it sounded like a genuine, thoughtful inquiry.

Hugo shifted his gaze toward her.

Shira hadn't turned her head. Her hands were tucked neatly into the oversized pockets of her lavender hoodie, and her pale eyes were fixed calmly on the glowing red pedestrian signal across the street, waiting for his answer.

Hugo shifted his gaze forward, staring blankly at the crosswalk stripes.

The factual truth was simple: he wanted to reach home as quickly as possible. Confessing that, however, would violate several unspoken social treaties and likely result in Yuri murdering him. 

He thought for a second.

"You know, I don't regularly take the city buses," Hugo replied, keeping his voice entirely flat. Because I do not leave my house, he added mentally. "I was simply checking the schedule because I am not aware of the usual timings."

He glanced sideways, observing Shira. Shira just kept her eyes on the digital crosswalk timer ticking down from ten.

"We ride those buses every single day," Shira noted quietly, her voice barely carrying over the idling engines of the waiting cars. "Mina, Yuri, and I. We are so accustomed to our routines that we never thought to question how the routes were set up. We just accepted the schedule as a permanent rule."

Hugo remained silent. He didn't understand where she was going with all that. It was just a bus schedule.

The digital timer hit zero. The pedestrian light flipped from a glowing red hand to a green walking figure, accompanied by a sharp, electronic chirp.

Shira didn't walk immediately. She turned her head, her pale eyes locking onto Hugo’s. The polite, untouchable idol smile was absent, replaced by a look of sharp, quiet appraisal.

"When you are standing perfectly in the center of a giant room, it is difficult to see where the walls are," Shira said, her tone smooth but carrying a strange, heavy weight. "I suppose it takes someone standing entirely on the outside to notice when the system is broken."

Before Hugo could process the statement, Shira turned away, her pristine white skirt catching the breeze as she stepped smoothly into the sea of crossing pedestrians.

Hugo stood on the pavement for a fraction of a second longer, the electronic chirping of the crosswalk ringing in his ears.

Someone standing entirely on the outside. Part of him took it as a compliment, but another part wasn’t so sure.

Hugo adjusted his collar. He stepped into the crosswalk three paces behind her.