Chapter 1 -- The New Seat

There's a specific kind of silence that happens when you walk into a classroom where nobody knows you yet.

Not a bad silence. Not a good one either. Just the kind where twenty-something pairs of eyes do a quick scan, decide you're not interesting, and go back to whatever they were doing. Rintarou was very familiar with this silence. He tended to land firmly in the "not interesting" category, which was fine by him. Less work.

He stood at the front of Class 2-B, bag over one shoulder, and did what he always did in new situations: looked for the path of least resistance.

A few empty seats. One by the window, but some guy with headphones was already sprawled across both desks like he owned the place. One near the back, but the girls there were mid-conversation and looked dangerous. And one, right in the middle of the room, third row from the front, next to the girl with three heads.

Rintarou looked at the seat.

He looked at the girl.

Huh. Three heads. That explains the extra space.

He walked over and sat down.

He dropped his bag, pulled out his notebook, clicked his pen twice out of habit.

"Hey," he said. "Do you have a sharpener? Mine's dead."

...

The silence stretched.

He looked up.

All three of them were staring at him. The one in the middle had straight black hair and grey eyes and the expression of someone calculating threat levels. The one on the left had pink messy waves and was looking at him like he'd just tracked mud across a clean floor. The one on the right had short white hair and was watching him with the quiet focus of a scientist observing something unexpected in a petri dish.

Rintarou looked at all three of them.

"...The sharpener," he said again.

The pink-haired one inhaled sharply.

"Are you SERIOUS right now--"

"Hana," said the white-haired one. Flat. Calm. Like pressing a button.

Click.

Hana's mouth shut. Her eye twitched. Once. Twice.

The black-haired one in the middle quietly reached into her pencil case and held out a sharpener without a word, eyes fixed on her desk.

"Thanks," Rintarou said. Used it. Handed it back.

That was it.

He turned to his notebook and started copying the schedule from the board. Behind him came the familiar sound of someone leaning waaaay too far forward across a desk.

"Psst. Rintarou."

"What, Kimura."

"Dude." A pause heavy with drama. "You just... sat there."

"Yeah."

"Next to them."

"I noticed."

"Okay but did you notice notice--"

"I needed a seat, Kimura."

Whooooa. Kimura leaned back, impressed. "You're something else, man."

"Go back to your seat."

"I don't have a seat yet."

"Then go find one."

Shuffle shuffle shuffle. Kimura retreated, still making that impressed sound under his breath.

The teacher arrived eight minutes late, coffee in hand, with the energy of someone who'd given up on Mondays years ago. Roll call. Schedule overview. Something about a school festival in November that made half the class groan (ughhh) and the other half whisper excitedly.

Rintarou was copying down homework dates when he heard it. A whisper from across the room, sharp and light, designed to carry just far enough.

"Can you believe they put them here again?"

He didn't look up.

But he registered it.

A few rows over, a girl with highlighted hair and the posture of someone who'd been important since birth leaned toward her friend and said something else. Her friend let out a small giggle. The kind that isn't about anything funny.

Rintarou glanced sideways.

Sora, the one in the middle, had her eyes forward, hands flat on the desk. Completely still. Too still.

Hana had gone quiet in a way that felt like the opposite of quiet. Like a pressure building behind glass.

Yuki was writing in her notebook. Calm. Unbothered.

Or doing a very good impression of it.

Rintarou looked back at his notes.

Not his business. Not yet.

By lunch he had their names from roll call and a rough read of their personalities from five hours of sitting next to them.

Kuroyama Sora: maybe twelve words all morning, none to him. Neat handwriting. Went still whenever someone nearby got loud, like a rabbit that had learned stillness and invisibility were the same thing.

Kuroyama Hana: significantly more than twelve words, zero of them to him. Clearly deliberate. Made a face when someone brought noodles back from the cafeteria that could have curdled milk.

Kuroyama Yuki: notebook out, pen moving, eyes occasionally landing on him for exactly four seconds before moving away. Whatever she was writing, he didn't want to know.

Same last name. Three of them. He thought about the biology of that for approximately five seconds and then decided it wasn't his business.

SLAM.

Kimura dropped his lunch tray across from him with zero warning.

"Okay so." Kimura pointed a chopstick at him. He was a big guy, Kimura. Round face, easy grin, the kind of person who genuinely didn't understand why pointing chopsticks was rude. "You gonna say anything else to them or just sit there until they spontaneously develop feelings for you."

"I'm eating."

"You talked to them once."

"I needed a sharpener."

"That's it?! That's your whole strategy?!"

"I don't have a strategy."

"RINTAROU."

"What do you want me to say, Kimura. 'Hey, wild coincidence you have three heads'?"

"...Okay fair."

Kimura ate a large bite of rice, looking thoughtful. This was the dangerous version of Kimura. The one that thought before speaking. It never ended well.

"You could just," he started.

"No."

"But--"

"No."

"I was going to say introduce yourself--"

"They know my name. Roll call happened."

Sigh. Kimura gave up, which was the correct and natural conclusion to every conversation they had. He was a good friend, Kimura. He just needed frequent redirecting.

Across the cafeteria, the highlighted-hair girl, Jessica, held court at the window table. She was talking and her audience was nodding and every few minutes her eyes drifted toward the far end of the room.

Toward the corner table where three girls ate alone.

Rintarou looked at them. Then at Jessica. Then at his rice.

Not my business, he thought again.

He ate his lunch.

Last period, the teacher assigned permanent seats.

"Mizushima Rintarou, third row, second from the left."

He looked at the chart.

Second from the left.

Right next to: Kuroyama.

He sat down. Bag down. Notebook out.

To his left, three pairs of eyes very pointedly looked everywhere except at him.

"Looks like we're neighbors for real now," he said.

Sora looked at her desk.

Hana looked at the wall. Her jaw did something complicated. Grind grind grind.

Yuki looked at him. Four seconds. Wrote something. Looked away.

"Cool," Rintarou said, and copied the homework from the board.

THUD. Behind him, Kimura's head hit his own desk in some kind of emotional overwhelm.

"Unbelievable," Kimura whispered. "Absolutely unbelievable."

He walked home through streets that smelled like new leaves and vending machine coffee, turning the day over in his head the way he always did. In pieces. No rush.

New school. Okay. Kimura was already there. Convenient. Jessica was going to be a thing. Less convenient.

And three girls who shared one body and one last name and apparently hadn't had a real conversation with someone new in long enough that a borrowed sharpener was a notable event.

Huh.

That's kind of sad.

Half a block later:

I'll bring my own sharpener tomorrow. Just in case.

Completely normal thing to think.

He went home, had dinner, and didn't think about it anymore.

(He thought about it a little more.)