Chapter 10: First Watch

Yuuji lay flat on his back, staring at the ceiling, wide awake at one in the morning.

"Okay," he told the ceiling. "Simple question. Airi. Usagi. Same face. What am I even supposed to do with that."

The ceiling did not answer, because it was a ceiling.

He rolled onto his side. Tried counting backward from a hundred. Made it to seventy-three before his brain helpfully replayed the exact moment she'd sat up mid-nap and gone from soft and sleepy to sharp and cold in under three seconds.

"Cool. Great. Love that for me," he muttered, and grabbed his phone off the nightstand like it might have an answer waiting for him. It had a game notification and nothing else useful.

He must have actually passed out at some point, because the next thing he knew his alarm was going off and he had somehow lost an argument with his own brain overnight without remembering who won.

He got ready on autopilot and made it to school so early the gate guard gave him a concerned look.

Daiki walked in ten minutes later, took one look at him, and made a face. "Dude. What happened to you."

"Didn't sleep."

"Clearly. You look like a character who's about to get some tragic backstory flashback."

"Please don't."

"Is this an Airi thing."

Yuuji didn't answer right away, which was in itself an answer.

"Yeah, okay, it's an Airi thing." Daiki dropped into his seat, nodding slowly like he was confirming a theory he'd been building for weeks. "This is the part in the story where the male lead realizes he's in too deep and there's no clean way out."

"This isn't a story, Daiki."

"Everything's a story if you frame it right."

"Don't tell anyone anything. About any of it."

"I wasn't gonna-" He paused. "Okay, I was a LITTLE gonna."

Yuuji groaned and dropped his forehead onto the desk. The door slid open a second later, and she walked in, ribbon in her hair, smiling like nothing had happened, like the whole world hadn't quietly rearranged itself overnight.

"Morning, Yuuji-kun."

He lifted his head just enough to see her properly. "Morning."

She stopped by his desk. "You look really tired."

"I am really tired."

"...You okay?"

"Yeah. Just didn't sleep much."

She studied him a beat longer than felt normal, then nodded slowly and headed to her seat without pushing it further, which somehow felt like its own kind of answer.

Daiki leaned over the second she was gone, whispering with way too much enthusiasm for eight in the morning. "She totally clocked something's wrong. That's chapter-two-of-the-romance-arc behavior right there."

"Everyone can tell something's wrong, Daiki, I look like this."

He spent the rest of the morning failing to act normal, which mostly meant knocking his water bottle off his desk twice. The second time, Daiki didn't even look up from his notebook.

"You good?"

"No."

"Cool."

At lunch, Usagi sat down next to him without asking, same as she'd been doing lately.

"You survived the morning," she said, unwrapping her bento.

"Barely."

"Heard about the water bottle. Twice actually."

"It's already all over school?"

"Daiki told, like, four people." She picked at her rice for a second. "You don't have to act normal around me, you know. If you're tired and weirded out, you can just be tired and weirded out."

"...That's oddly nice of you."

"I have my moments." She nudged an egg roll onto his tray without looking at him. "Eat. You look like you'd blow away in a strong wind."

He didn't argue.

Lunch stayed light after that, which he was grateful for. The real trouble started after school.

"We're not buying a fog machine," Hina said.

"Come on, it's not even that expensive," Kenta said, sliding a printout across the table.

"It's two hundred THOUSAND yen more than a haunted house can afford."

"We could cut the fake spiderwebs budget."

"We don't even have a fake spiderwebs budget, you keep bringing your own from home."

"...I could bring more?"

"No."

Yuuji sat off to the side, half following the fog machine debate, mostly watching Usagi's pen tap against the supply list. It had gone dry twice already. She kept shaking it and trying again without complaint.

Rika wandered in with an armful of borrowed decorations, glanced at the list over Usagi's shoulder, and said, mostly to herself, "Wow, you've redone this like three times. Feels like a different person wrote each version."

She meant nothing by it. Nobody else even looked up.

Usagi's pen stopped.

Just for a second. Her smile stayed exactly where it was, but something behind it had gone very still, very fast.

Yuuji caught it immediately, the way you catch a glass tipping before it actually falls.

"Hey," he said, standing up fast enough that his chair scraped the floor. "I need help with the decoration boxes. Storage room. You know where everything is."

Usagi blinked at him. "...Like right now?"

"Right now."

Kenta's head snapped up. "Where are you two going."

"Storage room."

"...Just the two of you?"

"Yes... Kenta."

He was already digging through his bag. "Hang on, hang on, let me get my notebook, this is exactly the kind of thing I need to log-"

"We're getting boxes."

"That's what they ALWAYS say right before something happens." He had the notebook out now, flipping to a blank page. "Estimated time of return? Any potential physical contact I should be aware of? Is this a repeat of the storage closet incident because if so I need details for the archive-"

"HOW DID YOU EVEN KNOW THAT."

"I have sources, Yuuji. I always have sources."

Hina, without looking up from the supply list, reached over and closed his notebook for him. "Let them go."

Kenta stared at the closed notebook like it had personally betrayed him. "This is exactly the kind of cover-up that gets written out of history."

He steered her out into the hallway before anyone could argue further. Hina didn't stop them. When he glanced back, she gave him one small, unreadable nod, like she'd clocked the whole thing in real time and approved.

The hallway door clicked shut behind them. Usagi leaned back against the wall and let out a long breath.

"Thanks," she said. "I don't think I could've kept smiling through much more of that."

"What happened in there?"

"Nothing. It's dumb." She laughed, thin. "Rika made a joke. About the list looking like different people wrote it. She didn't mean anything. But for a second I just, I don't know. Panicked."

"That's not dumb."

"It feels dumb. She doesn't actually know anything."

"Doesn't matter if she knows. It still got to you."

She looked at him, surprised, like she'd expected him to argue her out of the feeling instead of just agreeing with it.

"I really am fine," she added, quieter. "Just needed a second."

"Take your time. The boxes can wait."

That got a small laugh out of her. Real, if tired. Some of the color came back into her face.

"You're gonna keep doing this, huh," she said, glancing sideways at him. "Pulling me out whenever it gets bad."

He shrugged. "Well, somebody's gotta carry the boxes."

She rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling a little when she pushed off the wall and grabbed an actual box off the shelf, so at least Kenta wouldn't have anything real to work with.

"Come on, turtle boy. Before he digs that notebook back out."

"He already has three others. About unrelated stuff."

"That's... genuinely concerning."

"I know."

After the meeting wrapped, Hina caught him by the door.

"That was good," she said. Three words, no follow-up, which from Hina counted as a standing ovation.

"I wasn't sure what I was even doing."

"You noticed. You got her out before it got worse. That's the job."

"Is it always going to be some random comment setting it off?"

"Usually." A pause. "Sometimes it's bigger things. Sometimes she's just tired and it's nothing."

"That's not very reassuring."

"Wasn't trying to be." She turned to leave, then paused halfway through the door. "You did fine, Yuuji."

Then she was gone, leaving him standing there feeling like he'd passed some test with rules nobody had bothered explaining to him beforehand.

He opened his locker on the way out and a sticky note fluttered to the floor. He caught it and recognized the handwriting immediately. Sharper strokes.

Not Usagi. Definitely the other one.

Heard you played hero today. Don't let it go to your head. P.S. Still watching you, raccoon boy.

He read it twice. For the first time, it didn't come with the usual spike of dread. Just tired amusement, and maybe something that felt suspiciously close to something softer.

Yuuji's Mental Diary – Day ???

Job Status: First save complete. Rating unclear, but Hina said "fine," which I've decided to treat as a trophy.
Trigger Identified: One innocent sentence from Rika. She may be onto something. She may also just be normal. Unclear. Concerning either way.
Water Bottles Sacrificed: 2
Daiki Conspiracy Theories Generated: At least 1
Notes: Being someone's early warning system is exhausting. Also, annoyingly, I don't hate it.

Bonus Scene: Airi's Diary Entry (Night)

The lamp clicked on. Airi sat at the desk, arms crossed, glaring at the diary like it had personally wronged her.

Dear Me,

He noticed. Before Hina even said anything, he got you out of there.

I want to be annoyed about it. I'm not, which is worse.

Rika's getting sharper. Watch her.

Also stop being so grateful in here, it's embarrassing to read.

- A

She snapped the diary shut, turned off the lamp, and didn't write anything else.