The evening sun cast long, golden bars of light through the spotless windows of Class 1-A. The final bell's echo had scarcely faded before the classroom's atmosphere cooled into one of purposeful efficiency. Unlike the lingering chaos of Class D, most students here departed with swift, directed strides—toward the library, club activities, or study groups. Their exits were statements of intent.
Amidst this stream of productivity, one figure seemed like a still eddy.
Yamamura Miki sat in a back-row corner, her soft, blue-tinted hair gathered into a neat side ponytail that draped over her shoulder. Her head was bowed, slender fingers absently worrying the corner of an open notebook page, but her gaze periodically flickered toward the window seat. Her presence was ambient noise, quiet and easily overlooked. No one disliked her; she simply existed at the periphery of collective awareness, arriving and leaving in silence, a living part of the classroom's scenery.
This solitude formed a stark, silent counterpoint to Sakamoto's own. His was the imposing isolation of a solitary peak—commanding attention even in stillness. Hers was the vanishing quiet of a shadow, a transparency so complete it bordered on erasure.
Yet, in her heart, Sakamoto was not a distant monument. She remembered with crystalline clarity: a duty day early in the term, assigned to clean the high windows. The stool had wobbled precariously beneath her. She had teetered, a silent gasp trapped in her throat. And then he was there—not with a hand, not with a word, but with an impossibly stylish, incomprehensible flick of his foot against a specific point on the stool's leg. The instability vanished instantly. He hadn't looked at her, hadn't spoken. He had simply corrected a flaw in the world and moved on.
But for her, in that silent, graceful correction, she had been seen. Even if it was only a phantom of her own longing.
Now, she drew a shuddering breath, gathering the scattered fragments of her courage. Her hand clutched a conspicuously rolled sheaf of documents, her knuckles white with the strain. She could hesitate no longer.
She saw Sakamoto rise, his movements a study in fluid economy as he prepared to depart. It was now or never.
Yamamura Miki shot to her feet, the chair scraping a faint protest against the floor, a sound swallowed by the retreating footsteps of her classmates. She half-ran, head down, weaving between desks until she stood directly in Sakamoto's path to the door.
"S-Sakamoto-kun!"
Her voice was a thread, thin and trembling. A violent blush stained her cheeks and crept to the tips of her ears. She bowed so deeply her blue ponytail swung forward, thrusting the now-crumpled papers toward him with both hands, not daring to lift her eyes.
"I-I'm so sorry to bother you! P-please, you have to take this!"
Sakamoto stopped. He looked down, his gaze resting on the nearly-folded girl and the questionable scroll in her grasp. His expression betrayed no irritation, only its usual placid curiosity.
"Yamamura-san," his clear voice stated, her name pronounced without a hint of hesitation. "There is no need for apologies. May I inquire as to what this is?"
Hearing her name spoken so precisely, Yamamura's entire frame gave a minute tremble. Her head jerked up, eyes wide with shock and a surge of inexplicable feeling.
He… remembers my name?
The realization momentarily overrode her anxiety, lending her next words a frantic, hurried clarity.
"Th-this is… last year's second-year midterm exam! The actual papers!"
Sakamoto's gaze sharpened almost imperceptibly.
Yamamura rushed on, trying to order the chaotic memory. "At lunch… in the cafeteria… a second-year senior I didn't know. He said he was from Class A… he just came up and gave this to me…"
Her voice dropped again, colored by the lingering unease of the encounter. "He said… because our class created a miracle, he wanted that miracle to continue. And that the midterm questions are recycled every year, so with this, we could maintain our lead… I… I thought it was very strange, but he was so insistent, and then he just left… I didn't know what to do…"
She held the papers out once more, a silent plea in her eyes. She was a mere conduit, caught in a current she didn't understand, delivering a message to the only person she believed could decipher its meaning.
Her voice dwindled to a near-whisper, tinged with the guilt of someone who had mishandled a sacred trust. "I… I thought something this important definitely shouldn't be left with me… so… I believed the most appropriate course was to entrust it to Sakamoto-kun…"
Her head remained bowed, but her hands, trembling slightly, still proffered the exam scroll with a stubborn determination.
Sakamoto listened in silence, his gaze a calm pendulum swinging between Yamamura's flushed face and the tightly clutched papers.
"I understand. Thank you for your trust, Yamamura-san."
He reached out. His motion was fluid and deliberate, his fingers accepting the papers without brushing against hers, a courtesy that spared her any further fluster. "This information is indeed significant. Your judgment in bringing it to me was correct."
His words, simple and affirming, lifted a crushing weight from Yamamura's chest, replacing it with a fragile, glowing warmth. She nodded, a tiny, jerky motion, her eyes still fixed on the floor.
Sakamoto took the papers but did not immediately inspect them. He lowered his gaze slightly, his mind seemingly processing both the physical document and its implications in parallel.
It was at that precise moment—
Across the corridor, outside the classroom window, a figure passed.
It was a girl with long, straight black hair. Horikita Suzune of Class 1-D. Her gaze, out of habit or perhaps a sharper instinct, swept across the Class A window, seeking a specific silhouette.
Her eyes locked.
Through the pristine glass, the scene was framed with perfect clarity: Sakamoto stood by the window, a sheet of paper now unfolded in his hands, dense with text. Before him stood a blue-haired girl, her face crimson, head bowed in a posture of acute nervousness, hands knotted tightly before her.
But it was the paper that arrested Horikita's attention. The format, the layout—it was unmistakably identical to the exam booklet she had purchased for 10,000 points at noon, the one touted as "last year's actual midterm questions."
Inside the classroom, Sakamoto's head lifted fractionally, as if a subtle shift in the air or a shadow at the periphery of his vision had tugged at his awareness. His gaze shifted from the paper toward the window.
The corridor outside was now empty. The black-haired observer had vanished as silently as she had appeared, leaving behind only the ghost of her scrutiny and a silent, damning connection now drawn between two identical papers and the enigmatic boy who seemed to stand at the center of both.
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