Usually, divorce.

"Sohhy fwor veing wate!" Henry burst open the classroom door with a slice of white bread in his mouth.

"You're in luck, the teacher still hasn't arrived!" Riku informed his friend.

"Oh c'mon!" Henry spat out the slice. "The one time I remember to bring the bread! This is the only reason I bought it!"

"I will gladly eat it if you don't want it."

"You will eat the bread I spat on the ground?"

"Food is food."

"You must have really strong antibodies." He did not consider his friend's request seriously and just sat at his desk.

"Why is the teacher late?"

"Who knows? Maybe some bullies went to pick a fight with him but instead of fighting back or running he decided to deal with them in a more convoluted way and is now in the process of living through important life experiences with them."

"That is oddly specific, but I somehow doubt it. ...Since we're on the subject, what is the teacher's name? I missed it yesterday."

"I actually don't know. I usually just call him the teacher."

Opening just at the right time to stop a conversation that was going nowhere, a young adult woman entered the class.

"Alright everyone, sit down. The teacher has gotten a cold and won't be coming. I'm here in his place for today. Call me Tosou Yuuzai-sensei."

"The teacher has a cold? But it hasn't rained in weeks." Henry referenced a cliché.

He analyzed her look and attitude... but we are going to skip over his way to describe her in order to keep things civil.

The new teacher started with the roll call, using it also as a way to learn the students' names. But halfway through the second dozen names, she suddenly came to a halt. She had to do a double take, then her eyes widened and her eyebrows curved, then she took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes, put the glasses back, and got closer to the book, then she decided to take her glasses off again and wipe them with her shirt, put them back on again and squinted very hard at the page, then she picked up the book and slowly began to rotate it to the side together with her head. Then, after some seconds of silence, she finally said,

"I have no idea how to read this."

"Rohou Hikujitou!" Cried out a very embarrassed Rohou Hikujitou. "It says Rohou Hikujitou!"

"Really?!" The teacher answered incredulously, "I have never seen any of these kanjis before! I'm going to have to write this down or I'll forget. I'm going to skip the rest of the students since I'll only be here for today."

"And you only realized after calling two thirds of the class?!" Said the only person in the class who had the courage/audacity to speak to a teacher with such a tone, Henry.

"Let's just start the lesson. Now, I want to properly understand at what point you are with your studies, so let me begin with some questions. To begin with, can anyone tell me... what is the subject you're supposed to learn right now?"

The class mumbled for a second, unsure whether Tosou-sensei was being serious or not.

"Physics." Someone said.

"Physics! That is right. Of course. As you know, physics is the study of what is real, the science of matter! When a ball rolls down an incline, for example, that’s physics!"

Henry was as confused as the rest of the class, when Chiharu poked him in the arm.

“Mademoiselle?” He quickly replied.

“Don’t call me that.” She whispered. “Tell the teacher that we don’t need an explanation from the beginning!”

“Why me?”

“Can’t you see everyone wants you to?”

The rest of the class was mostly looking at the teacher, not paying any attention to Henry.

“...Hey,” He turned back to her, “Since you like so much to act as the ambassador, why don’t you tell her that?”

“Me?! I can’t do that!”

“And why should I?”

“You’re the most naïve— I mean! The most...... courageous?”

“I’m definitely not doing it now.”

“C’mon! If you do that, I promise that the next time I punch you I’ll hold back a little!”

“Is that your idea of paying back a favor?! Why don’t you let me choose what I get?" Henry smiled. "…Stop making a disgusted face!”

Chiharu’s face was indeed disgusted.

“You there!” The teacher had caught them bickering, "What's your name?" She pointed at Henry.

"...Henry Tailer." He stood up.

“Well then, Henry," She said with the best English pronunciation she could manage, "If you want to talk so much, why don’t you tell me the solution to this equation?”

Henry looked at the empty blackboard.

“…You weren’t talking about any equation…”

“I know, but I've always wanted to say that.” And to be fair, the teacher was definitely happy with herself.

“U-um actually, Tosou-sensei, we were saying that we maybe shouldn’t restart the subject from the beginning, but continue from where we left off with the teacher…”

“I know that!” Tosou-sensei said after a second of silence, “I mean, this isn’t your first lesson, right? …Right?”

“R-right!”

“Exactly! I simply thought that a bit of reviewing was in place. But if you’re so eager to continue, I guess we could skip ahead. Well then, what were you studying last time?”

Henry’s eyes widened. He had made a small miscalculation in his impulsive action he didn't calculate. He should have known that if he asked the teacher to teach a different argument, the teacher would ask about it. But as a matter of fact, he had no idea of what topic they were studying.

He slowly turned his eyes towards Chiharu, trying not to be noticed by the teacher but carrying the dread of the world in his face.

“Archimedes principle!” She whispered.

“Alchemy Pineapple!” He repeated.

“Not even close…” Chiharu said with her palm pressed upon her face.

The teacher looked at Henry with a pensive face.

“Alchemy pineapple… Alchemy pineapple… You there, with the weird name!”

“M-me??” Rohou stood up.

“What is alchemy pineapple?”

“Uh?! I- …Uhm… M-maybe it’s when you draw an alchemical symbol using pineapple juice? Haha…”

“Archimedes principle!” Chiharu cried out, unable to bear the situation any longer. “That is what Henry meant to say.”

“I did think the pineapple part sounded weird.” Admitted Tosou-sensei. “Can anyone tell me what the Archimedes principle is, then?”

“It’s a principle that describes the buoyant force,” surprisingly, at least for Henry, Hajime raised her hand and answered the question.

"Oh, is that what it is?"

“But we didn’t really go in depth in the last lesson, since we just started it…”

“Of course! Let me just… explain it to you…” Tosou-sensei sneakily pulled out her phone and researched the topic.

The lesson continued as the teacher(?) repeated what she read on her phone and copied drawings and equations from other people’s lessons she found online. In the moments she struggled most to understand, she stopped hiding her phone entirely.

Quickly, but never quickly enough, the lesson ended.

“That is the bell, meaning I have to go! Bye!” Tosou-sensei dashed out of the door. You could even hear her footsteps echo softer and softer through the hallway as she ran. The class was left in disbelief. To further their confusion, the teacher, their real homeroom teacher, entered the classroom.

“Alright, I’m here. I hope you didn’t make a ruckus in the past hour.” He said with his calm yet stern voice.

“Teacher? We thought you had a cold!” Henry told him.

"No? There was a sudden meeting with the principal that I had to attend. Who told you I was sick?"

"Tosou-sensei, the substitute."

"Substitute? We don't have any substitute. You should have had an hour of independent study...”

No one knew who Tosou-sensei was, or where she was. After some minutes of confusion and a small delay caused by the police's interrogations, lessons continued as normal, and the students safely reached the end of the day.

Henry rushed to Gimei as soon as the bell rang, not wanting to lose her for the umpteenth time.

"I'm here! Ready to go?"

Gimei answered by putting both of her hands on Henry's mouth.

"Shh! Don't you remember what the PI in PIAD stands for? Probably Illegal! You need to be more careful or else we'll be in trouble."

Henry thought that Gimei putting her hands on his face in the middle of the classroom would make them stand out a lot more, but he decided to nod and hope she'd put them away.

"We can't be seen going there. Let's pretend we're going home, then we will enter from the tunnel that we used to leave yesterday." Gimei whispered, keeping her hands on Henry’s mouth.

Fearing she forgot, Henry pointed at them. Noticing she forgot, she moved her hands.

"I thought the hole in the schoolyard was the entrance." Henry whispered back.

Rohou, who was gathering his things in the seat next to them, was concerned by the things he heard. But he remembered that the little time he had spent with those two people, he spent suffering, and so he decided to ignore them and leave.

"I used it as the entrance because it was more fun but," Gimei continued, "Seeing you fall into it yesterday made me realize that we could use that to recruit new members. We should make more."

"You want to lay pitfall traps that lead to the club around the school to coerce the poor students that fall in them into joining the club?"

"If that doesn't scream adventure, I don't know what does!"

"I should tell you as the unprompted and self-proclaimed advisor for your club: that is a bad idea."

"C'mon! Doesn't the idea of pretending to leave the school to then come back in secret sound exciting?"

"Sure, but the idea of someone breaking a bone because of our holes is putting me off a little bit."

"Hmm... What you're saying is that we should put pillows at the end of the tunnels?"

"Uhm, maybe we can figure something out."

"That sounds like the kind of thing we should be discussing in the grotto! I'll go first, reach me in ten minutes."

Gimei said, running away before Henry could say anything.

"Don't worry," Riku approached him, "I'm sure that one day you'll learn how not to make the girls run away from you."

"She didn't run away from me! She's going to... Well, I can't tell you, but I didn't scare her away!"

"If that's what you need to hear then it's fine."

"I don't need to stay here and let you berate me. I have a club I need to go to."

"You managed to find a club?"

"Yes, and I'll have you know it's a super-secret, esteemed club that you cannot enter or know about and— Stop looking at me like that!"

Riku looked at Henry with the face of someone who knew they were being lied to, and they were smug about it.

"I'm leaving!"

…

Henry was wearing a garbage bag over his body and a pair of latex gloves on his hands, when he finally reached the end of the tunnel. Both the bag and the gloves had gotten torn apart soon after he entered the hole, effectively making the crawl harder without any benefit whatsoever.

"Ouch!" Henry said as he reached the grotto and bumped his head on the heater of the kotatsu. "Reminder for tomorrow: bring better equipment."

"You're finally here!" Gimei exclaimed while moving the table to the side to let Henry out, "What took you so long?"

"You see, the entrance hole is in the middle of a field, surrounded by grass, and there was no one to tell me how to find it. You understand why I ended up being late, right?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know your sense of direction was that bad."

"I..." Henry couldn't find the strength to explain how his sense of direction wasn't the problem. But as he pulled himself out of the hole and pushed the kotatsu back into place, he had an idea.

"Hey, since my sense of direction is so bad, why don't we exchange numbers? That way, the next time I can't find the hole," don't laugh "I can just call you on the phone!"

Henry thought this to be logical, and not at all just an excuse to get a girl's number. Unfortunately for him, the person he was speaking to didn't really follow standard logic. Gimei smiled, then she took one of the candles from the candlesticks that lit the cave and held it over her head.

"...What does that mean?"

"I've got an idea!"

"Oh, yeah, right."

"Don't move! I'll be back!"

Gimei jumped up the hole on the ceiling and scaled her way out of the grotto. Henry watched in awe, realizing he would never manage to do something like that. He sat on the pillow next to the kotatsu and waited. He first waited five minutes, then, since Gimei was still out, he decided to wait ten more minutes. After that, he was still alone. But he was hopeful, and so he waited just three more minutes. Gimei hadn't returned by then, so he had to wait another five minutes. But she was still gone. With his hopes crushed, he decided to now wait for twenty minutes.

Half an hour after she had left, Gimei finally returned, landing feet first from the entrance/pitfall trap.

"Finally!" Cried out Henry, "I was about to start waiting for forty five minutes!"

"I'm not going to try to understand what that means and just say that your patience will be rewarded! It's time to prove that you're worthy of joining the PIAD!"

"I thought I was already in..."

"I kicked you out just now so that you can do something to join!"

"Oh, like some sort of initiation rite?"

"That's the spirit! We're calling it that from now on!"

Gimei handed him a piece of pink paper.

"You wanted my number, right? Well, you better find it! A phone number is made up of ten numbers; what you have there is the first, plus a hint on where to find the next! They are hidden all over the school and you have until the end of club activities to find them all!"

Henry looked at her in disbelief. He considered whether it was worth it to go through all that trouble just to get her number and quickly realized that no, it wasn't. But he would feel bad to let her down after she spent all that time preparing this treasure hunt, so he agreed.

"It is an adventure club, I guess. I can't just ask other people for your number, can I?"

"I'm pretty sure the other people in the class still see you as a stalker."

"Ugh, you're right. I guess this story isn't as episodic as I thought."

Henry looked at the pink sheet of paper. It had a big 8 penned in with a black marker.

"...Where is the hint?"

"Something weird happened today, right?"

"You'll need to be more specific than that."

"C'mon! This morning, with the teacher!"

"Oh, you mean Tosou-sensei? If that was even her real name... Weird things happen every day in this school, I thought that was normal honestly."

"The point is that I was a little inspired by what she did."

"Oh no..."

"Find the one that doesn't belong." She smiled. "That's the hint!"

Henry thought about it for a second, which caused his face to twist in pain.

"How am I supposed to find the one who doesn't belong in a school that has chiropractor and fire-eating clubs?!"

"Just go and explore!" Gimei pushed the kotatsu to reveal the exit hole. "All of the numbers are inside of the school perimeter, so you'll find them sooner or later. Now go! You don't have time to waste!"

POSTFACE

- WORDS OF THE DEVIL

"The teacher has a cold? But it hasn't rained in weeks." Henry referenced a cliché: Henry here is referring to the fact that the Japanese rain contains a potent virus that attacks any unlucky person to come in direct contact with it. In fact, if the right amount of rain manages to fall on your unprotected head it will curse you with a bad case of the common cold. The best way to get rid of this virus is to make an anime girl feed you hot soup while lying in bed.

Number: In ye olde times, people had a ten digit number tied to their personal phone, or what was once known as a “landline”. In now forgotten times, people had to memorize the so-called “telephone number” of the person they wanted to call, “dial it” on a numerical pad designed specifically for the occasion, and actually use their voice to speak to them in real time. Very different from nowadays, where all you need to call someone is to vagueblog about them on social media.

Henry Tailer: Have you noticed that if you take the first part of Henry and the first part of Tailer and put them together you get Hentai? I did not do that on purpose.