The Apparition was acting… cautious. That was Kageyama's first, unnerving thought.
It was one of those rare mornings where he'd woken before his alarm, his sleep having been deep and strangely untroubled by the usual nightmares of paperwork and screaming flora. He refused to examine why. Instead, he'd decided to walk to school, trading the bus's cramped anxiety for the mild torture of extra cardio.
That's when he saw it.
Normally, fully manifested Apparitions existed just behind the world's curtain, visible only within dimensional folds or to those who could actively push their perception beyond the mundane. Kageyama, by virtue of a spirit energy pool that was 'adequate' (as his evaluator had put it, in a tone that suggested 'barely'), had the dubious gift of this permanent, low-grade filter. He saw the world with its spiritual stains on.
This one was a stain with a PhD.
It was impossibly tall, a gaunt silhouette that seemed to scrape against the low-hanging morning clouds. Its body was a construct of dark, rotting timber, like a telephone pole reclaimed by a cursed forest. It was so tall that its face was a blurry smear of shadow, except for two points that occasionally flashed a sullen, electric white; its eyes, if you could call them that.
Class 2. Lower end, but definitely Class 2, Kageyama assessed, his pace not faltering. A 'Wailing Timber'. Nasty temper, usually.
What was strange was its behavior. It had noticed him the moment he saw it. But instead of lunging, or wailing, or doing any of the things its file suggested, it… shied away. It slid behind the bulk of a convenience store, then peered out from an alley further down. It was maintaining a precise, paranoid distance. It wasn't stalking him; it seemed to be avoiding him, while keeping him in sight. Like he was a dangerous variable in its own chaotic equation.
"Hey. Do you see that?"
The question left his lips before he could register who he was talking to. He hadn't even said hello. Aoi Rin had fallen into step beside him, her arrival silent and predictable.
She looked up, likely ready with a morning observation or a calculated tease, but the unusual flatness in his voice gave her pause. She followed his gaze. Her breath hitched, just slightly.
"Yeah," she said, her voice hushed. "I can."
Figures. Her latent awareness, now consciously acknowledged, had clearly kicked into high gear. She probably passed the perception threshold in her sleep.
"Is that… normal?" she asked, her analytical tone fighting a undercurrent of awe.
"Nothing is normal. I'm more worried it'll accidentally step on someone's soul. The spatial distortion around its feet must be a nightmare."
"Ooh." Her eyes were wide, not with fear, but with a voracious curiosity. "Should we… engage?"
"I could. But I haven't been dispatched. Unauthorized engagement with a Class 2 is a great way to get a pay deduction that includes my future grandchildren's income."
"But the potential collateral damage, the lives at risk!"
"Relax. There are other agents in the area, remember? Boring, rule-following agents who actually get the fun alerts." He said it with a bitterness that tasted like last night's cheap soda.
Suddenly, the air cracked.
Not a sound heard by normal ears. It was a spiritual discharge, a thunderclap of condensed energy that vibrated in their molars. A bolt of pure, golden lightning, visible only to their attuned sight, speared down from a perfectly clear patch of sky.
It struck the crown of the Wailing Timber.
The towering figure didn't have time to scream. It froze, every splinter and knot outlined in blinding gold for a nanosecond, before it imploded into a shower of sawdust and fading, melancholic light. The entire spectacle, from strike to dissolution, took less than two seconds.
Kageyama didn't feel relief. He felt a profound, soul-deep weariness. He brought a hand to his face.
"Oh, please. Not him."
"Him?" Aoi's head swiveled between the dissipating sawdust and Kageyama's pained expression. "Another agent? Do you know him, Kageyama-kun?"
"Yeah, yeah, I know him. And I'm not thrilled about it. Seems he got the dispatch. Lucky him." He started to turn, wanting to put as much distance between himself and the scene as possible. "I really hope I don't have to actually talk to him."
"Why not? Is he unpleasant?"
"Yes."
"Really? Is he… inefficient?"
"He's the opposite of inefficient. That's the problem."
"As bad as your dispatcher?"
Kageyama stopped. He looked at her with the grimace of a man tasting something rotten. "What if I told you they're spiritually siblings? Two halves of the same annoying cosmic joke?"
Aoi's eyes lit up with understanding. "Ah. I comprehend the issue now."
"Do you?" a new, lilting voice cut in, right behind them.
Kageyama stiffened. He hadn't heard a footstep.
He turned slowly.
There, leaning against the school gatepost as if he'd been there for hours, was him.
Slightly taller than Kyuusei, with carelessly stylish black hair that brushed his shoulders, tipped in gold - Kageyama knew it was cheap dye but could never prove it - and eyes the color of polished brass. He wore their school's uniform, but on him, it looked like a costume, worn with an actor's casual confidence.
How did he get here so fast? The question was useless. He already knew the answer. Show-off.
"Wow, KK," the newcomer drawled, a wide, impish grin spreading across his face, completely shattering any illusion of coolness. "Didn't know you had it in you to ask a girl out on a morning stroll. Eheheh!"
And there it was. The transformation from enigmatic agent to grating goblin was instant and complete. This was why Kageyama considered him the male, field-operational version of HER. The discovery, months ago, that the two were actually best friends who shared a single brain cell dedicated to tormenting him, had been a low point in his career.
"Ishigami Ken," Kageyama said flatly, the name a sigh of profound resignation.
"The one and only! Ahahaha!" Ishigami's laugh was a series of sharp, cheerful barks. "Miss me?"
"Like a toothache. Why are you wearing my school uniform? Is this a new, elaborate form of mockery?"
"This?" Ishigami plucked at the blue fabric. "Nah, nothing so petty. I just got a transfer order. To this school. This general area. New assignment, new cover!" He winked, the gold in his eyes seeming to sparkle with malicious glee.
A cold dread settled in Kageyama's stomach. He didn't need to check his phone. He could feel it in his bones, in the very fabric of the universe that hated him.
This wasn't a coincidence.
This was HER's revenge for the ghosting. A living, breathing, grinning punishment, delivered right to his doorstep. And judging by the way Ishigami's golden eyes were now sliding over to Aoi with undisguised interest, the punishment came with a brand new set of complications.
Aoi, for her part, was staring at Ishigami with the focused intensity of an astronomer who'd just discovered a violently unstable new star. Her notebook was already half-out of her bag.
Kageyama closed his eyes. The brief peace of the morning was gone, shattered by golden lightning and an even more blindingly annoying smile.
The day had only just begun, and he was already exhausted.
"Did... she put you up to this?" Kageyama hissed, his voice low as they passed through the school gates. The morning crowds parted around the unusual trio without understanding why. "Or something along those lines? Hell, is she even authorized to orchestrate transfers?"
Ishigami Ken scratched his chin, the picture of casual absurdity. "Uuuuh, I think yes? The order came through the usual channels, just... flagged as priority. Had her fingerprints all over it. Metaphorically. And literally, she might have forged the digital ones."
"Did you even bother to verify it??"
"Not really," Ishigami admitted with a breezy shrug. "Seemed like fun! And I haven't gotten any angry messages from the suits yet, so..." He grinned, a flash of white in his golden-brushed facade. "I think it's legit! Welcome to your new, improved, and way more interesting school life, KK!"
Kageyama stared straight ahead, his soul feeling thin and stretched. "May every god, old and new, strike me down right now. Cleanly. Please."
As if in direct response to his plea, or perhaps just the universe's impeccable sense of comic timing, there was a sudden, sharp crack of splitting wood from above.
A heavy wooden school bench, the old-fashioned kind that could double as a boat in a flood, plummeted from a third-story window. It didn't whistle; it thudded through the air, spinning slightly, and struck the paved path with a concrete-shaking CRASH just three inches from Kageyama's left foot. Splinters and chalk dust exploded outward, peppering his trousers.
He didn't jump. He didn't yelp. He didn't even look up.
He simply took a half-step to the right to avoid a bouncing chunk of wood, and let out a long, weary sigh that held the weight of a thousand such "accidents."
"I hate this school," he commented, his voice utterly flat, as if remarking on a slightly annoying poster.
Aoi, who had instinctively ducked into a textbook-defensive crouch, slowly straightened up, her eyes wide. Her analytical brain was already trying to calculate the trajectory, the force, the odds of it being a true accident versus a targeted spiritual nudge.
Ishigami, meanwhile, was beaming. "See? It's already more exciting here! Someone up there likes you, KK! Maybe it's a secret admirer!" He waggled his eyebrows.
Kageyama finally glanced at the wreckage, then up at the now-empty window. No face peered down. No shouts of apology. Just a faint, lingering wisp of something that smelled like ozone and petty malice.
"Let's just go to class," he muttered, stepping over the debris as if it were a crack in the sidewalk. "Before the building itself decides to eat us."
As they walked away, Aoi cast one last look at the shattered bench, then at Kageyama's impassive back, then at Ishigami's delighted grin.
She quickened her step to keep up, the first bell ringing in the distance. It wasn't even first period, and the data was already overwhelming. She couldn't wait to see what the rest of the day would log.
Timeskip to the Classroom of Doom
The fragile hope that had carried Kageyama to his desk was evaporating faster than a puddle in hell.
He was the kind of guy who didn't believe in praying. Crossing fingers, knocking on wood, wishing on stars, it was all just structured delusion for people who hadn't yet accepted that the universe was a chaotic, uncaring machine that occasionally spat benches at your head. But today, he had hoped. A raw, desperate, embarrassingly optimistic hope that the glittering, chaotic grenade known as Ishigami Ken had been assigned to literally any other classroom in the entire school.
He knew it was wasted. He knew it. In the end, the suits in the shadowy bureaucracy always won. Organizations skilled at hiding entire worlds were, by necessity, experts at moving pieces on a board. And he was a piece. And Ken was a piece someone had deliberately picked up and was now hovering over his square with a malicious grin.
He rested his forehead on the cool surface of his desk, trying to mentally prepare for the impact.
"What's wrong, Kageyama-kun?"
Aoi's voice, soft and laced with that particular curiosity she reserved for his moments of peak distress, came from behind him. He didn't lift his head.
"You know that feeling," he mumbled into the woodgrain, "where you know you are absolutely, cosmically doomed, and there's not a single thing you can do about it except sit very still and try to accept your fate with a sort of… graceful nihilism?"
He could practically hear the tilt of her head. "The Stoic's acceptance of deterministic inevitability? The acknowledgment that some variables are beyond your control parameters, and resistance only increases emotional entropy?"
He lifted his head just enough to shoot a half-dead glance over his shoulder. "Yeah. That. But with more screaming internally."
She gave a single, understanding nod. "Ah. The pragmatic despair model. I'm familiar with the theory." A faint, almost sympathetic smile touched her lips. "Is the doom variable the one with the gold-tipped hair?"
Before he could answer, to confirm, to curse, to weep, the classroom door slid open with far more force than necessary.
Watanabe-sensei entered, followed by a presence that seemed to suck all the mundane boredom out of the room and replace it with a vibrant, terrifying potential for chaos.
Ishigami Ken stood at the front, the school uniform looking even more like a costume under the fluorescent lights. His golden eyes swept the room, lingering for a fraction of a second too long on Kageyama's despair-slumped form and Aoi's attentive one, before crinkling into a smile that was all friendly mischief.
"Class, we have a transfer student starting today. This is Ishigami Ken. Please make him feel welcome."
Ishigami offered a wave that was somehow both cool and dorky. "Heya! Just transferred into the area. Looking forward to contributing to class dynamics! I hope we can all be good friends!" His gaze landed squarely on Kageyama.
Kageyama didn't groan aloud. He just let his head fall back onto his desk with a soft, final thunk.
The graceful nihilism wasn't coming. All he had was a deep, profound sense of being personally victimized by the universe's worst matchmaker.
From behind him, he heard the soft, precise click of Aoi Rin's pen.
Why does she have to write anything down? Kageyama lamented silently into the wood grain of his desk. Every click of her pen was like a tiny nail in the coffin of his peaceful, anonymous school life. She was building a case study in real-time, and he was the doomed subject.
"Are there any empty seats our dear newcomer can use?" Watanabe-sensei asked, scanning the room with a look that suggested he already knew the answer and found it mildly disappointing.
Kageyama allowed himself a sliver of hope. He took a mental inventory. Front row, near the window? Taken. Back corner, by the heater? Occupied by a sleeping third-year. The only vacant chair was...
Yes.
It was at the very front of the room, perilously close to the teacher's desk and the door, the seat reserved for the most tragically punctual or the most strategically absent. It was miles away from Kageyama's middle-row bastion of mediocre obscurity.
A wave of grim, profound relief washed over him. The universe, for once, had denied the obvious trope. There would be no whispering, no note-passing, no under-the-desk spiritual probes from the gilded goblin. There would be a blessed, beautiful buffer zone of several entire desks and at least two very normal, non-attuned students.
Ishigami Ken's brilliant smile didn't falter, but his golden eyes dimmed a fraction, shifting into a look of pure, performative tragedy. He placed a hand over his heart, as if struck by an arrow of profound social misfortune.
"Ah… the sentinel's post," he said, his voice dripping with faux-resignation. "To guard the threshold of learning… alone. A cruel fate for one who yearns for the warm camaraderie of the middle rows." His gaze swept longingly toward Kageyama, who pointedly stared at a random stain on the ceiling.
"Just take the seat, Ishigami," Watanabe-sensei sighed, already exhausted by the performance.
"As you command, sensei," Ishigami replied, gliding to the empty desk with the grace of a sentenced prince approaching the guillotine. He sat, arranged his textbooks with unnecessary precision, and then slumped forward, the very picture of isolation.
Kageyama finally lifted his head fully. The tactical victory was sweet. For the next 50 minutes, the chaos would be contained to the front. He could almost relax.
From behind him, he heard the familiar, dreaded click-click of Aoi's pen.
'Note', she wrote, her expression one of clinical fascination.
'Subject I demonstrates a high capacity for theatrical social signaling. His desired proximity to Subject K is clearly established. The forced distance appears to be interpreted as a punitive measure, suggesting he views their connection as a default state. Sociodynamic implications: concerning.'
She then added, glancing between the dramatically slouched Ishigami and Kageyama's rigid, relieved back: 'The empty seat variable, while logistically favorable for Subject K's stress levels, may have increased Subject I's motivation for disruptive, long-range interaction. Probability of aerial note-passing or targeted spiritual 'pranks' before lunch: 78%.'
Kageyama, unaware of the damning statistical forecast, allowed himself a small, cautious breath. It was a temporary reprieve. But in his world, temporary was all you could ever hope for.
At the front of the room, Ishigami Ken, looking bored, began quietly doodling what appeared to be a very detailed, anatomically correct cartoon of a certain scowling classmate being chased by a bench. He was, after all, a professional. He could be patient. And creative.
"Psst. Kageyama."
Kageyama twitched. Aoi's whisper was like a needle of pure, focused sound aimed at his ear.
"Huh?" he grunted, not turning.
"Beware of certain flying notes." He could hear the smile in her voice. When he finally glanced back, she'd deployed the full arsenal: the head tilt, the conspiratorial wink, the slight shift of her side ponytail, all calculated for maximum charm and disarming sincerity. It was a warning wrapped in a performance.
"I guess...?" he mumbled, turning back around, more confused than alerted.
Let it be said: Aoi Rin was an excellent forecaster.
He had just faced forward again when a small, tightly folded paper triangle shot across the room with the velocity and precision of a shuriken. It didn't flutter. It zipped, cutting through the drowsy classroom air to strike him directly in the center of the forehead with a sharp, stinging pat.
"Ouch!" He barely suppressed the hiss, his hand flying to the spot. He whipped his head around, a glare of pure venom ready for Ishigami Ken.
Ken was the picture of scholarly devotion. He leaned forward, chin resting on his hand, eyes fixed on Watanabe-sensei with rapt attention. Only the faint, trembling quiver at the very corners of his mouth, a smile fighting for its life against the muscles of faux-seriousness, gave him away.
Kageyama fumed silently. He snatched the offending paper missile from his lap and unfolded it with angry, stiff fingers under the cover of his desk.
The note was tiny, the folds complex and origami-like. He smoothed it out.
In neat, surprisingly elegant handwriting, it read:
'Yo. This class is boring.'
…That was it.
No spiritual haiku. No cryptic threat. No elaborate doodle. Just a five-word statement of blatantly obvious fact. The sheer, anticlimactic pointlessness of the attack was an insult in itself. He'd been assaulted with stationary for this?
Kageyama's eye twitched. The graceful nihilism was gone, burned away by the pure, petty fury of being disturbed for no reason. He grabbed his own pen, flipped the note over, and scrawled a single, furious response:
'Then sleep like a normal person.'
He refolded it not into a triangle, but into a crude, dense paper brick. He didn't have Ken's supernatural pitching skills, but he had rage and a decent arm. As Watanabe-sensei turned to write on the board, Kageyama lobbed it.
It wasn't a graceful shot. It was a ballistic mortar shell of resentment. It sailed over two rows of unsuspecting heads and struck Ken square on the back of his neatly groomed, gold-tipped head with a solid thump.
Ken didn't startle. He just slowly reached back, picked up the paper brick, and unfolded it. He read the response. His shoulders began to shake silently. He didn't turn, but raised one hand, giving a slow, solemn thumbs-up of approval without breaking his attentive pose facing the board.
Aoi meanwhile was of course logging the entire exchange.
At the front of the room, Ken, still facing the chalkboard, began quietly folding a new note. This one, Kageyama could see from the intricate moves, was being shaped into a paper airplane of sinister aerodynamic design.
Kageyama slumped in his seat. The reprieve was over. The war had begun. And the only winner, he knew, would be the girl behind him, diligently documenting every pathetic, paper-cut volley.
Bonus Scene: Aftermath
Kageyama's Room.
Kageyama Kyuusei sat on the edge of his bed, pressing his fingertips gingerly against the faint, warm red spot in the center of his forehead. It had been a target all day. Paper planes, rubber bands (spiritually-enhanced for precision, he was sure), even a single, mysteriously-guided gummy bear. The spot was a testament to relentless, low-grade harassment.
Damn you, Ishigami, he thought, the words a tired mantra in his mind. You chaotic, gilded cockroach.
Ishigami's Temporary Apartment.
Ishigami Ken sprawled on a new, barely-unpacked sofa, rubbing the back of his own head with a wince. That paper brick had hurt. It was the beautiful, genuine anger behind it that made it worthwhile. A grin spread across his face as he replayed the memory of Kageyama's furious scribble.
Man, making him angry is so fun, he mused, his golden eyes sparkling with anticipatory glee. He's so much more expressive when he's annoyed. Tomorrow, I'll use a heavier paper.
Aoi Rin's Desk.
Aoi Rin carefully smoothed the pages of her notebook, now gloriously filled with fresh data. Charts, timestamps, projectile trajectory diagrams, and psychological profiles filled the margins. The "Paper War" had been a goldmine of inter-agent dynamics.
She read her final entry of the day.
'Conclusion: Communication is antagonistic but codified. Hostility serves as a bonding ritual. Efficiency of silent, disruptive interaction is remarkably high. Both subjects are...'
She paused, then wrote the conclusion with a neat, definitive stroke.
'...operational dumbasses.'
She closed the notebook, a small, satisfied sigh escaping her. It was the most productive first day of a transfer she could possibly have imagined.
In three different locations, three very different thoughts echoed in unison, a perfect, triangular harmony of aggravation, amusement, and analysis.
They are both dumbasses.
They are both dumbasses.
They are both dumbasses.
One was furious. One was delighted. One was clinically pleased.
The new status quo, it seemed, was already perfectly understood by all parties involved.