The three of them — Shirase Kobuchizawa, Shiraishi Yuzuki, and Tamaki Mari — rushed to the communications room and pulled up the base's shared inbox. A single unread email sat at the very top of the list.
"To Miyake Hinata, from Habu Third High School... the entire track and field team?"
"So Hinata was on the track team?"
"Shirase — maybe we really shouldn't open someone else's mail without asking." Shiraishi Yuzuki voiced her concern quietly, her expression uneasy. She was still reluctant about something like this, afraid of what it might do to the friendships between them.
Shirase Kobuchizawa hesitated for a moment — then set her jaw. "We have to. You saw how Hinata reacted back there. That was not how someone acts when they run into a friend."
With that, she steadied her trembling right hand, squeezed her eyes shut, and clicked the left mouse button. The email opened. The very first line made all three of them go still.
[Miyake-san suddenly quit the track and field club — and suddenly dropped out of school. We haven't been able to reach you since.]
Shirase's middle finger hadn't even touched the scroll wheel yet when the door opened behind them. Miyake Hinata had tracked them down.
"Shirase? What are you three doing in here — how's the test broadcast going? Wait, what are you looking at?"
She noticed the way they were staring at her. Her sharp eyes caught the subject line of the email on the screen. In one stride she crossed the room and shoved Shirase aside, her expression darkening.
"That's my email. Did you read it?"
Tamaki Mari flinched at the fury on Miyake Hinata's face and tried to explain in a small voice, "B-because the way you were acting scared us — we were worried — so we came here because Jhin told us to..."
"Jhin? How would he know anything about..."
The answer was answer enough. Miyake Hinata didn't stop to think about it further. She didn't spare another glance at the opened email. She turned and walked straight out of the communications room.
"Hey — Hinata! Where are you going?"
"She's not going to go after Jhin, is she?"
"We have to follow her!"
Jhin was sitting in the main hall in perfect tranquility, sipping a freshly brewed cup of coffee. From somewhere down the corridor, the rapid, furious sound of footsteps approached — the kind of footsteps that radiate anger with every impact. Miyake Hinata came storming in. Without a word, she grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet.
"Jhin. Get changed and come outside with me. I need to talk to you."
The fire in her chest was close to eruption — but she held onto just enough reason not to grab him by the collar in the middle of the base and start screaming at him about minding his own business in front of everyone. She chose instead to drag him outside, away from the others, to have it out.
She found a secluded corner at the edge of the base and stopped. The look in her eyes landed on Jhin like something thrown hard — hot with anger, but when she spoke, her voice carried the eerie calm of a volcano in the seconds before it splits open.
"You told Shirase and the others about me. Were you feeling sorry for me?!"
"I don't pity you," Jhin said flatly, a short, contemptuous sound escaping him. "I just couldn't stand watching those people get away with what they did." The disdain in his words was unmistakable — aimed squarely at the three girls who called themselves Miyake Hinata's friends.
His words dredged up images in Miyake Hinata's mind that she had no desire to revisit. Her fist clenched white-knuckled — then relaxed. Then clenched again. The cycle repeated. A silence stretched between them. They stood face to face, neither speaking.
From any reasonable perspective, what he did wasn't wrong at all. I can't take this out on him.
It took her a moment to bring herself back under control. When she did, her expression was complicated. She looked at Jhin and said one quiet word.
"Thank you."
Then she turned and walked away, her steps heavy and slow.
"Alright, you three," Jhin said, raising his voice toward a nearby snowdrift. "You've been listening long enough. This is your window — go talk to Miyake-san. Ask her what happened."
Three heads of hair — two black, one brown — rose from behind the snowdrift. Shiraishi Yuzuki only had time to bow a quick thank-you in Jhin's direction before Tamaki Mari grabbed her wrist and took off running, pulling her along in the direction Miyake Hinata had gone.
Jhin watched them go. Then he turned toward the base wall a short distance away.
"Megumi. You can come out too."
"Your instincts are as sharp as ever," said Kato Megumi, stepping out from the shadow of the wall at her own unhurried pace. "Everyone else finds it so easy to overlook me." She had been sent to keep an eye on the situation by the other girls.
"Hard to do my job of fixing your 'scarce presence' problem without that much," Jhin said. "They sent you out to gather intel?"
"Mm. Mission accomplished. I'm heading back to report."
"Then tell them — make sure everyone comes out for the New Year's Eve broadcast to cheer Miyake-san on."
Kato Megumi regarded him with something quiet in her expression. "You're really kind, you know."
While Jhin was receiving that small, understated compliment from Kato Megumi, Tamaki Mari and the others had followed Miyake Hinata all the way back to her room — and there, at last, they heard the story she had been carrying since high school.
The three girls who had appeared during the test broadcast were Miyake Hinata's former teammates from the track and field club. As the third-year seniors approached graduation, the club's coach had announced a selection process: the strongest athlete in each event would earn the right to represent the club at an upcoming competition.
At the time, Miyake Hinata was competing against one of those graduating seniors for the single available spot. She had gone to her friends and asked them honestly — should she hold back, let the senior have it, give her the chance to fulfill a dream she'd worked toward for years? Her friends had all told her the same thing: don't hold back. Give everything you have. Fight the senior with everything you've got — that way, even if the senior loses, she'll have no regrets.
So Miyake Hinata had listened. She had poured everything into that selection trial and won it. She had turned around, flushed with excitement, ready to share the moment with her friends —
And found every face behind her wearing the same expression: disbelief, revulsion, contempt. Not a single person was clapping for her.
Afterward, she had overheard those same three friends when the senior confronted them, voice sharp with accusation. They had folded without hesitation. Every single fault had been pushed onto Miyake Hinata's shoulders alone.
"W-we already told Miyake what you said — we did tell her."
"It's not like we knew she had absolutely no sense of how things work."
"Th-that's right, we told her again and again, but she just wouldn't give up her spot."
In that moment, Miyake Hinata had simply stopped caring about any of it. The two-faced betrayal hit her like a physical blow. She withdrew from the track and field club. And then, when those three turned on her — spreading rumors about her to escape any further blame from the senior — the atmosphere became something she could no longer breathe in. So she dropped out of school entirely.
"That's — what is that?! That was their fault, every single bit of it!" Shirase Kobuchizawa's fist was clenched. She had already made up her mind.
"People like that have the nerve to call themselves friends?"
"Yeah."
"..."
"Yeah... and honestly, I still think the inland base restoration work is too soon for Shirase. She's not ready for that yet."
"Probably... after all, that's where Takako went missing."
In the records room, Gin Toudou and Kanae Maekawa sat together — sifting through data, mapping out work schedules for the days ahead. Both of them were hesitating over the same question: whether to proceed with the inland base reconstruction plan at all.
That place was Shirase Kobuchizawa's wound. It was everyone on the Antarctic expedition team's wound.
"The New Year's Eve broadcast — are you going to be there in person to watch them?"
"I will be."
____
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