The morning opens like a clean page: gulls arguing over the athletic field, a bus sighing at the gate, the PA chime pinging a little off-key before homeroom. My window gives me its one-inch squeak and then settles. The sea-smell rides the air in thin threads.
Arina takes her seat with that practiced stillness that stops one tick short of stiff. She lines her pen up parallel to her notebook, then catches my eye for exactly half a second.
"Good morning," she says, and the words are correct without being cold.
"Morning," I answer, locating my elbow like it belongs here.
Karina-sensei glides by and drops a sticky note on our desk as if she's a friendly post office. Lit Circle slot: Thursday, third. In the margin, a doodle of a tiny book with a megaphone.
"Third slot," I say.
Arina taps the sticky note twice—left, right—the same rhythm as her ruler. "We should practice reading aloud," she says.
"We should," I agree, even though my chest does a small unhelpful thing at the word "aloud."
The PA crackles and in the same breath a soccer ball knocks the outside wall, producing a double thud that becomes a rumor up and down the corridor. Hoshinomiya is a city that likes to throw pebbles at the surface just to see the rings.
Between periods, Daichi lopes over, one shoelace untied, grinning like a dog who knows he isn't supposed to be on the couch. "Lit Circle is Thursday," he announces, as if delivering a stable weather report. "You ready to be smart on purpose?"
"Minimum viable smart," I say.
His eyes flick to Arina, then to me. "She's intense," he says with the awe of a guy who respects intensity and also thinks it might grade him.
"She's efficient," I say.
"Same thing, but she says it nicer," he says, and claps my shoulder with athletic subtlety before sprinting back to avoid homeroom's roll call.
First and second period behave. The bell between them spits us into a corridor where the shoe squeaks and chatter are high enough to be music. Yumi materializes near the stairwell like a gentle deity of schedules. Clipboard, calm.
"Thursday third slot," she says, tapping our sticky note without looking. "I'll be there. That isn't meant to be a threat."
"Feels like a benediction," I say.
"Good," she says. "Room B-205 after school for a mic test. The AV club is doing sound. Brace for at least one feedback squeal. It's tradition."
She drifts away like someone on rails. Arina watches her go with a measured exhale, like she respects competence and files it in a clean drawer.
Lunch slides in on a small tide of hungry jokes and shoebox bento boxes. The library breathes fan-hum and paper. Sun squares show dust doing slow gymnastics. Mrs. Kawabe watches the door like a kindly troll.
Arina already has the novel open and the sticky tabs standing at attention. She's added another tool to her arrangement: a metronome app on her phone, set low, sound off, only the flashing light ticking a beat near her notebook.
"Is that for… reading pace?" I ask, sitting.
"It helps," she says. "I tend to hurry when I—" She stops before the word "nervous" can organize itself, and replaces it with "—get to the point."
"That's an admirable vice," I say.
She pretends not to hear. We choose a passage—three paragraphs where a character tries the shape of her name aloud like it's a new room. We mark breaths. We decide who reads what. Our elbows rest in a polite distance, as if space itself is part of the method.
"Let's try it," she says. "Quietly."
We take turns. Her voice on the first sentence is fine—perfect, even. On the second, I can feel the minute tightening below the words, the place where nerves pour a layer of glass over sound. On the third, it's not a crack—it's a pause that feels like a cliff.
She puts a finger to the page. Breath goes shallow.
She whispers to the paper, in Russian, like it's a spell for herself. "Дыши." Dyshi. Breathe.
I keep my eyes on the text so I don't spook the moment. "In on four," I say, softly. "Hold two. Out on four."
She doesn't look up, but the tiniest rise reaches her shoulders. One-two-three-four. Hold. Out on four. The next line comes out smoother. The one after that has a grain of warmth at the edge, like a note sanded into the right shape.
"Good," I say.
She sets the phone's metronome one notch slower, nods, and starts again. This time we make it to the end without a cliff. We sit in the remains of our shared relief for a second, like you sit in the quiet after a temple bell stops vibrating.
A kid at the back sneezes. Someone whispers sorry to a chair. The window creaks because it's old and allowed.
Then the siren goes.
It's not fire. It's a drill they promised would happen "sometime this week," and "sometime" has chosen "exactly right now, mid-breath." The first wail turns the room's air into a tight grid. Arina goes stock-still—the kind that says stillness is a learned response, not ease.
"Drill," Mrs. Kawabe's voice rises, gentle and firm at the same time. "Books down, line up. No rush."
We stand. A ninth-grader near us is already two breaths from panic. Arina's eyes flick there and then away, and the tremor I pretend not to see walks across her fingers.
"It's just practice," I say, as much to the metronome on the table as to the human at my side. "Nothing is on fire."
She nods once, a movement so small it could be mistaken for breath. We file out. The hallway is a river of footsteps and nervous laughter. The siren hits a higher note; the ceiling fluorescents buzz; the bass of a distant drumline threads through like a heartbeat that ignores orders.
We reach the courtyard. The November sun is gentle, the ginkgo leaves mid-yellow. A gull lands on the top of the bike rack like it's supervising. Teachers count, clipboards clicking. Everyone stands around pretending to be nonchalant about standing around.
Arina looks at the school building, not at the siren speaker. In Russian, so quiet it might be for the shadow under her hair, "Я в порядке." Ya v poryadke. I'm okay.
I stand close enough for proximity to pass for coincidence. "We can run Part B after this," I say. "Mics in B-205."
She breathes through her nose like someone who doesn't want to share air with her mouth right now. "Okay," she says, aloud, and the siren decides it's said enough and dies in a sigh of electricity. The school breathes.
Hana bounces toward us in a flock of club badges, braid messier than this morning. "You two survived Emergency Pretend," she says. "Proud."
Reika ghost-appears at her shoulder like she took a shortcut through the staff room walls. She holds an unopened pack of earplugs like a talisman. "I respect the drill for reminding us we are all mortal," she says, deadpan, "except possibly some of us."
Hana elbows her. "No conspiracy podcasts until after exams."
Reika looks at me like she wrote the exam key to the topic of me last night. "Fine. I will instead bully you with art. My zine needs a Lit Circle preview photo. Consent?"
"No," Arina says, immediately.
"Later," Reika counters, without hope. "I'll get you when you're glowing with accomplishment."
"We'll be sweaty with accomplishment," I say.
"Even better," she says, already backing away. "Texture."
Hana waves a mini flag she stole from somewhere. "Text me if you need a pep talk. Or if you want me to sit in the front row and glare lovingly at anyone who sneezes."
"I don't need—" Arina starts.
"—a sneeze-defense squad?" Hana supplies. "Incorrect. Everyone does." She blows us a kiss, whacks Reika with the flag, and they're gone in a stream of other people's noise.
We follow the current back inside. The AV room is all cables and posters about not tripping over cables (everyone trips). It smells like dust with ambition. A gooseneck lamp tries to be helpful at a bad angle. The mic stands look like polite robots.
"Hi, lit kids," says a boy with acne scars and a NASA cap, who introduces himself as Kenji, AV co-head. "We're just going to get a baseline level and make sure this mic doesn't scream like a doomed kettle."
It screams like a doomed kettle. Everyone laughs the way people laugh when the thing you expected to go wrong goes wrong in a friendly way. Kenji fiddles. The kettle calms down.
Karina-sensei leans in the doorway, acting like she just happened to wander by. Yumi stands near the back like an impartial judge of heights and choices. Daichi pokes his head in and thumbs-up me, then remembers he's not in this club and leaves with a sorry, wrong room face.
"Let's hear you," Kenji says.
We step up. The mic smells like pennies and old breath and something citrus that's trying to help. Arina takes position with straight shoulders, papers squared. I take the stand to her left. The room waits with the polite patience of an empty room that knows it's rehearsal and not life.
"Whenever you're ready," Karina says, like the point is not speed but beginning.
We begin.
Arina's first line is clear and correct. She looks at the script, not at people. On the second line, the mic flirts with feedback; she flinches, tiny, sound intact, body not. On the third, a memory I've never seen but can guess sits on her shoulder and leans. Her pause arrives like a dropped stitch.
I angle the stand so it catches the light instead of her face. I shift half a step into her peripheral vision and tap my paper twice—left, right. The sound is nothing. The rhythm is everything.
She pulls a breath. Not a performative one. One human lung worth of air. The line comes out like a line, not an apology to the idea of sound. We make it to the end. My hands are steadier than they feel.
"Again," Karina says, voice gentle with the kind of authority you don't hear unless you've earned it somewhere hard. "And this time, anyone who is breathing with someone else's rhythm will consider returning it."
I glance at Arina. She doesn't glance back, which somehow counts as agreement.
We run it again. The room changes in the small ways that matter: the cough in the corner waits until we hit a comma; the fan quiets because someone cared; Kenji stops fiddling and starts listening.
Then the lamp falls.
Not dramatically. Just a lazy shift at the wrong moment, a clamp that was never tightened, a metal neck that decides to learn gravity at speed. It tips toward Arina's shoulder like a too-friendly bird.
I move. Hand up, fingers under the cool metal neck, forearm taking the weight. It's nothing, really, except the long moment between falling and stopped where you have time to reconsider your priorities. Heat blooms against my skin. The clamp bites my knuckle; a red line appears and then forgets. I slide the lamp back into safety and tighten the knob like it owes us money.
Kenji's ears go pink. "My bad! My bad. I—uh—thought I cranked that."
"Cranked now," I say.
Arina looks at the lamp, then at my hand. Her gaze catches—half a second, not enough to qualify as concern if you're pretending. "You're bleeding," she says. It's not blood. It's nearly blood, and then it isn't.
The line on my knuckle should be messy. It looks like the memory of a scrape. I curl my fingers, wipe nothing on my jeans, and make my mouth do a normal thing. "Aluminum is soft," I say again, stupidly, because apparently that's my brand now.
"It isn't," she says, level, and the simplest sentence in the room becomes a microscope.
Karina watches us both with an unreadable softness. Yumi's pen hovers over a box it doesn't tick. Kenji finds something very important to adjust on a cable that doesn't need adjusting. We run the passage again. It sings better the third time, which is how practice works.
"Acceptable," Yumi says, which is her version of two thumbs up and a gentle confetti cannon. "Third slot will love you. Don't fix anything else. People ruin good work by polishing it in the wrong places."
Karina grins. "You may polish only the places that are actually yours."
"That's a terrible metaphor," I say.
"It's from poetry," she says. "Poets get to be terrible sometimes."
We pack up. Arina stacks her pages with perfect corners. When she reaches for her bag, she flexes her wrist unconsciously and winces for an eighth of a second. Old injury being current for no other reason than nerves.
"Tea?" I ask, before my brain has time to vote. "Vending machine tea? The hallway kind that tastes like hope and aluminum?"
She glances at the door and then at my face and then away. "Ten minutes," she says. "Then I have Student Council errands for Saegusa-san."
"Ten minutes," I promise.
The vending machines at the end of B-wing hum like neon whales. Someone's taped a handwritten sign to one that says "COLD OUT OF ORDER (IT'S A PHILOSOPHY THING)." We procure two hot teas—the green labels that always scald and always taste exactly right after stress—and find the narrow indoor bench by the fire exit where people pretend not to see the view.
A janitor's cart squeaks past. A pair of first-years argue over a stapler like it's destiny. The sliver of outside in the window shows a tenth of sky.
"Thank you," she says, watching steam. It's in Japanese, but the cadence is Russian in my ear, like a translation of herself. Then, under breath to the paper sleeve around her cup, "Спасибо." Spasibo.
I wrap my hands around the can and let the heat work on my bones. "You did all the work," I say.
"I did some," she says. Her thumb moves on the paper sleeve, a small, precise motion. "You… anchor." The word lands like a guess and a test.
"I like scripts," I say. "They're permission to be heard."
That makes her mouth ghost a curve. "You're very good at sounding like a person who belongs in a room."
"I've had a lot of rooms," I say, before I can stop myself. Then I choose not to edit it into a joke. "Some of them were… louder than others."
She looks up at me then, not away. The eye contact has weight without being heavy. It's a look you give someone who made a choice you respect.
"When I was twelve," she says, "I entered a recital. I forgot how to breathe. People were kind until they weren't. I learned to… control what escapes."
"Control is useful," I say. "But sometimes a breath isn't the enemy. It's the ally."
She taps her cup in that left-right rhythm. "You count," she says.
"Four, two, four," I say.
"Four, two, four," she repeats, quietly, like the numbers themselves are a bridge.
We finish the tea. She throws hers away with the efficiency of a person who puts lids on emotions too. We part at the corridor, she left to Yumi's list, me to a place where the sound of my own reactions can be smaller.
On the way down the stairwell, a freshman barrels around the corner too fast, his backpack attempting flight. He collides with my shoulder and bounces like a cartoon. I catch his forearm so his head doesn't meet the concrete. "Whoa," I say, because it's the word people say when physics meets poor planning. "Slow corners."
"Sorry!" he squeaks, in the key of almost tears, and vanishes into the hall like a myth.
My knuckle is smooth. My shoulder feels like it caught a bowling ball and decided it was a pillow. I count to four for no reason. It helps anyway.
Lit Circle comes sooner than things like Lit Circle should. Thursday third slot arrives with a chilly sun and a breeze that brings salt and the morning announcements in its wake. Room 3-C is arranged in a half-circle with desks pulled together like acquaintances at a party. The fluorescent lights do their institutional best. A list of pairs is chalked on the board. We are third. This has been verified by three different clipboards.
Hana slips into the front row and arranges her features into "I will throw hands at anyone who coughs meanly." Reika sits in the back corner where acoustics watch the room, disposable camera ready and unused because consent matters to her in ways she would never brag about. Daichi slumps as far into a side seat as physics will allow, sports bag untidy, grin tidy.
Karina-sensei gives a tiny preamble in a tone that disarms pretense without killing dignity. "Names are not just letters," she says. "They are stories you are called in public." She smiles, not at us; at the idea of people being called gently. "Volkova and Sato."
We stand. I feel the mic that isn't there remembered in my hand. Arina's shoulders do their perfect alignment. Her paper is square. The metronome is off. The beat is in her chest; I can see it.
We read.
I'm not a dramatic reader. I don't do voices. But I can drop my tone into "this matters" without sounding like I want a medal. She is clean and exact. The first sentence lands. The second wants to hurry. The third is the cliff.
I shift a fraction. Tap, tap.
She breathes on four. Holds two. Out on four. The line comes like it wants to be heard, not like it's sneaking past the guard. The room tilts toward us. The fluorescent lights stay boring, which is a gift. Somewhere in the hallway a locker slams. The sound chooses not to intrude.
We finish. I ask the first question, one we wrote to invite rather than trap. "When a name feels heavy, who is holding it with you?" Silence, the good kind. Then a hand. Then two. Voices that aren't ours. A boy says he hated his nickname until his little sister used it and returned it to him softer. A girl says her grandmother's name tastes like cinnamon. Reika hums approval like a cat. Hana's eyes glisten in a way she will deny to her dying day.
Halfway through, the building breathes wrong. The PA coughs. A feedback squeal tries to be born and fails. Arina's fingers tighten on the page. Her eyes find mine for half a second; I give her nothing but the baseline. We proceed.
"Last question," I say. "Who benefits when you rename yourself?"
"Sometimes," Arina says, not reading now, "no one benefits immediately. It's just… a permission you give your future self."
I might fall in love with a sentence if I don't watch it. I put the cap on that thought like it's a pen that will leak.
Karina steps in. "Thank you," she says, and it sounds like an honest thing, not a teacher thing. "Next pair."
We sit. The world returns to its regular programming: kids who fidget and teachers pretending not to notice phones. Yumi appears at the door just long enough to look like a yes, then evaporates for a meeting three floors away. Daichi throws me a thumb and then a wobble-hand "so-so," which is his way of saying "I'm proud and also you messed up nothing and I have no jokes." Hana beams. Reika lifts her camera an inch and lowers it like a prayer.
Class ends in a light tangle of chairs. Hana intercepts us at the door and vibrates at a frequency only dogs and best friends detect. "That was so good. You were like… a metronome and a hug."
Arina blinks. "That's not a category."
"It is now," Hana says. "I invent categories to survive high school."
Reika leans on the doorframe. "Quote of the day: 'permission you give your future self.' The zine thanks you for your service."
"Don't print me," Arina says.
"I won't," Reika says, solemn, then adds, "I will, however, write it on my brain in glitter."
We trickle into the corridor. The air tastes like oncoming rain even though the sky is two shades bluer than reasonable. Arina glances at the windows the way some people glance at mirrors.
"Good work," Karina says, appearing with teacher timing. She touches Arina's elbow lightly, a contact that says sister without saying family. "You were present."
Arina's mouth curves at one corner, like someone checked a box without writing it down. "We were."
Karina turns to me. "Mr. Sato, do not get used to being a human anchor. It's bad for your back."
"My back is… historically robust," I say before I can stop the sentence from being strange.
Her eyes flick to my knuckle and back. She knows exactly the amount of question she is not asking. "Walk her to the gate," she says flatly, then leaves before either of us can decide if we agreed.
We walk.
The hallway door slides open to the courtyard's long rectangle of air. A gust lifts the ginkgo leaves in a small rehearsal for a dance they'll do bigger later. Near the gate, a vendor's cart clinks as someone makes bad nutritional decisions in a wrapper. The harbor noise drops in over the wall like gulls were hired to play atmosphere.
We stop near the shoe lockers under the generous kindness of a strip of roof that pretends to be shelter. People stream past in little lives: a kid balancing three stackable chairs on principle, two girls laughing at something on a phone, a boy practicing a jump shot without a ball because imagination pays better.
"Thank you," Arina says. She says it to the floor, to the air, to me. All three at once. Then, almost inaudible, to the metal edge of the locker: "Ты сделал это… легче." Ty sdelal eto… legche. You made it… easier.
I don't let the knowledge flicker on my face. I let it settle somewhere it can't be seen, like a coin at the bottom of a fountain that isn't for making wishes.
"I liked your answer," I say, because I did. Because it was true and useful.
"About… permission," she says. "I regret it. In case it was foolish."
"It wasn't," I say. "It gave people permission to be honest and not perform."
"Performing is easier," she says, dry.
"Honesty is a different kind of easy," I say.
She watches the slice of sky, and for a second her posture loses a millimeter of armor. It's not collapse; it's temperature change.
"It will rain," she says, as if consulting a contract.
"So says the harbor," I say.
She considers me, considers the clouds. Then she reaches into her bag with a decisive motion and pulls out a neatly folded compact umbrella. Navy, tiny white dots. The kind of order that fits in a life.
"Return it," she says. "Or keep it. Just don't be the person who gets wet and then blames the rain."
"Is that a proverb?" I ask, taking it. Our fingers almost touch; they don't. It feels deliberate again.
"It is a rule," she says.
"Understood."
She looks like she wants to say something unscripted, then elects not to. Her mouth moves around the shape of a sentence and comes away with, "See you tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," I say.
She steps out into the general stream. Hana attaches like a cheerful satellite. Reika pretends to be a journalist and then drops the act to whisper something that makes Arina's mouth do the ghost of a smile. Karina waves from the staff door without looking like she's waving. Yumi texts me a single checkmark emoji, which I decide to interpret as "you didn't embarrass the Council."
Daichi materializes from behind a pillar, punches my arm too lightly to qualify as masculine, and says, "You did good, bro. You looked like you weren't trying. That's a skill."
"It's a lifestyle," I say.
He squints at the umbrella in my bag, smirks without words that get people in trouble, and says, "Don't die," which is his version of "I care."
The sky finally remembers it has a job. Rain arrives in a soft testing phase, then decides to keep the role. The courtyard shimmers. Umbrellas blossom like reasonable flowers.
I open the navy dotted one. It's small, but it does its job with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what they are responsible for and nothing else. I walk to the gate slower than usual, because speed is how you miss details. The city smells new. The gulls complain. The bus hisses. Somewhere deep in the school someone's laughter breaks into two pieces and recombines as something easier.
On the train, the glass reflects a version of me that looks almost like only a seventeen-year-old. This is progress. My knuckle is unmarked. My shoulder is fine. My chest is the part with the bruise that matters; it's an ache that isn't pain.
At home, Aunt Aiko has left curry again and a different sticky note with a doodle of a cloud. I wash dishes. I sit at my desk. I look at our notes with the highlighted breaths and the silly little metronome symbol and the questions that are doors.
I write one more in the margin, for no one: "Who are you when no one is naming you?"
A little later, my phone buzzes.
Hana: i was so proud i almost did a cartwheel (i cannot cartwheel). arina is pretending to be normal about it. do not let her.
Me: noted. will maintain abnormal levels of calm.
Reika: pull-quote of the day is "permission you give your future self." i will not attribute because i am ethical. i will, however, write it on a sticker.
Yumi: ✔️
Daichi: umbrella boi 💅
Karina: Thursday: accomplished. Next: breathe on purpose, not by accident. Also, please don't catch any more lamps with your bones.
I don't answer Karina-sensei because there are some things you can't emoji back at. Instead I open the window my permitted inch and let the rain talk to the city and the city talk back. The harbor is a dark brushstroke. Somewhere, a girl who sometimes speaks to paper in Russian is probably aligning a pen with the legal definition of straight and telling herself something kind in a language that doesn't embarrass her yet.
I fall asleep to rain and the steady click of a metronome somewhere that isn't mine. Numbers in, hold, out. Names that are heavy and names that are light. The breath we loan each other when ours runs out.
Tomorrow can have its words. Tonight gets quiet.
To be continued.