Part 1
When you look at the sky, thoughts tend to arrive uninvited.
How high it is. How endless — that stretch of blue above, as though the world beneath it is nothing more than a small point pressed under something far larger than any human understanding can hold. The ocean is the same. Seventy-one percent of the earth's surface, dark and deep, keeping secrets that even the full reach of human technology hasn't been brave enough to touch.
Makoto Yuki was the kind of person who, given everything he had experienced in ways that likely exceeded any reasonable definition of the word normal, simply let thoughts like that arrive. No schedule. No destination. His mind could land anywhere — on something romantic, something absurd, something serious, something pointless, or something that meant nothing at all.
Today, it landed on people.
And from people, it drifted to life.
Ah. A classic. If left alone, that particular line of thinking always ended up in the same place — memento mori, and then this, and then that, and then something he didn't need to spell out anymore.
But not today.
He wasn't in the mood for melancholy. So — forget existentialism. Let's talk about the pleasant things in life.
If someone asked him — honestly, after two months of living it — what it felt like to attend Advanced Nurturing High School, Makoto would probably answer with an analogy.
ANHS was like sailing a stretch of water that, in a certain work of fiction, was called the Grand Line.
An ocean full of monsters and storms, where only those strong enough — or lucky enough — ever reached the other end. Some students sailed just to survive, watching the horizon with constant anxiety, hoping the waves wouldn't swallow them before they saw the next month. Others chose to enjoy the journey — savoring every moment of freedom on deck, letting the wind carry them wherever it wanted. And then there were the rest: the loudest voices, the hardest rowers, chasing something they called the ultimate treasure.
Graduation from Class A. The One Piece promised at the end of this three-year voyage.
The midterm was just one of the storms along that route. Not spectacular. Not personal. But violent enough to sweep an unprepared crew straight to the bottom without leaving a trace.
Today, that storm had passed.
And the large announcement board in the main corridor had become a crowded port.
Hundreds of students pressed together, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the numbers displayed there with expressions that ranged from relief to disbelief — sometimes all three at once, in proportions that couldn't easily be described.
Class Point Results — Post Midterm:
Class A: 1,004 CP Class B: 805 CP Class C: 550 CP Class D: 87 CP
The story the numbers told was clear enough. Ichinose's crew had dominated the midterm averages. Nearly every student had passed, and the overall scores came in higher than most had anticipated. For Class B, it was confirmation that the weeks of late tutoring sessions, individual feedback sheets, and quiet pressure from someone who never admitted he cared — none of it had gone to waste.
Inside the corridor, the atmosphere was alive.
Outside the building, it was a little different.
Two weeks had passed since Makoto first met Kiryuuin Fuuka.
Two weeks that were, in hindsight, fairly eventful for a friendship that began at a vending machine and ended with someone losing the use of their left eye for several days. Makoto didn't regret it. But he acknowledged that those two weeks had introduced one new variable into his life that he hadn't fully managed to categorize yet.
That variable was currently sprinting toward him from across the school grounds.
No words. No warning. No visible trace of guilt anywhere on her face.
Makoto crossed both arms in front of his chest. The full force of the drop kick landed, was absorbed, and came to nothing — without any particular effort on his part.
And in the fraction of a second where the distance between them collapsed to nearly zero, a thought surfaced somewhere in the back of his mind. Not because he'd gone looking for it. More because his brain, apparently, still functioned like that of a teenage boy even under circumstances like these.
If it had been just a few centimeters more...
There might have been something down there. Something... youthful? Lucky sukebe?
The thought came and went as quickly as it had arrived. He hadn't actually seen anything. Just an uninvited geometric hypothesis, passing through and disappearing like a notification he'd immediately dismissed.
Fuuka landed.
And followed it immediately with a straight punch toward his face.
Makoto tilted his head. The wind from her fist passed the side of his ear.
Several students who had been enjoying their lunch break outside came to a stop. One still had a sandwich halfway to their mouth. Another had simply forgotten to keep chewing. Their collective expression was roughly the same — somewhere between confused and genuinely uncertain whether what they were seeing was real.
Understandable.
Getting drop kicked by a beautiful girl during lunch, then absorbing it with both arms without shifting a single step, was not something that fell under the category of normal school scenery at any institution.
But for Makoto, what was more worth noting at this particular moment was a simple conclusion he had just confirmed firsthand.
Kiryuuin Fuuka was far more feral than he had imagined.
"Tyrant Eye," Makoto said, flat. "What are you doing?"
Fuuka stopped. One eyebrow rose.
"Oi." Her voice was sharp — not the uncontrolled kind of sharp, but the kind that had been stored carefully for some time and had now found its outlet. "Could you stop calling me that? Do you think I don't know what it means?"
Makoto blinked a few times.
"Two weeks, Yuki." Fuuka continued. "Two weeks."
"..."
"...I see." Makoto gave a slow nod. "So you found out."
He'd expected as much. Sooner or later Fuuka would look it up, and the internet had never been good at keeping things quiet. She would have found that "Tyrant Eye" was a chuunibyou-styled title — something that sounded cool on the surface, but was fundamentally a low-grade insult he'd been slipping in every time they crossed paths.
That was before accounting for his habit of striking a brief pose and chanting in complete seriousness — "Hazero genjitsu, hajikero shinapusu, banisshumento disu—" — before greeting her as though nothing unusual had occurred.
Two weeks of small, patient sins. Apparently, the accumulated interest was a drop kick.
Perhaps that was fair.
"But Kiryuuin-senpai," Makoto asked, in a tone far too calm for the current situation, "isn't a drop kick a little overkill?"
"Oh, be quiet." Fuuka stepped forward again. "My eye healed. The patch has been gone for weeks. And you still call me Tyrant Eye every single time." A pause. "It seems I've been too lenient with you."
Makoto sidestepped the next strike. And the one after that.
This continued — until a voice cut through everything.
"Stop."
Fuuka halted immediately.
Tachibana Akane stood a few steps away, a stack of documents in hand, wearing an expression that sat precisely between professional exhaustion and deep personal disbelief.
"Both of you," she said, quiet but clear. "Could you not behave in a way that reflects the standards of this school?"
No one answered immediately.
"Ah, Tachibana-senpai." Fuuka turned around. Her pleasant smile returned without transition, without pause — like someone changing a television channel. "You've misunderstood. This is simply a friendly exchange between a senior and her junior. No one was harmed here — isn't that right, Yuki?"
"Eh? That's not true at all," Makoto said flatly.
One second later, Fuuka's foot came down directly on the back of his.
"...That hurt."
Tachibana looked at the two of them for a long moment. She had stepped in because, from a distance, it looked like a physical altercation that needed immediate intervention. But now that she was standing here, she realized her concern was misplaced. This wasn't a fight — at least, not the kind that required a disciplinary report.
Kiryuuin Fuuka was someone who usually kept everyone at a distance with her bored, sharp attitude. And Makoto Yuki was the quiet freshman who seemed to exist in his own world. But seeing them now, that image was gone. They didn't look mysterious or particularly cool. They just looked like two students bickering over something stupid, acting as immature as any other teenager.
It was surprisingly — and almost annoyingly — ordinary. Tachibana exhaled — the kind of sigh you give when you realize you've wasted your energy being worried over nothing. If they were just going to act like kids, then she had better things to do.
Part 2
Six days before the midterm.
The library at lunch always had a different quality of air compared to the rest of the school.
Cooler. Quieter. Like a room that had collectively decided to resist the rhythm of whatever noise was happening beyond its walls.
Makoto and Hiyori had claimed their usual spot — the corner table in the back, the one half-hidden by the curved shelf of classic literature. Two books open, two people reading. Occasionally one of them said something, the other responded, and then both returned to their pages as though the exchange had never happened.
It wasn't uncomfortable silence. It was the specific quiet of two people who had found the same frequency and saw no reason to fill every gap with sound.
Makoto turned a page.
Stopped.
He glanced sideways.
Hiyori was reading — or at least, her eyes were pointed at the page. But this was the third time in the past twenty minutes that she had exhaled with a weight that went well beyond reflex. There were long pauses between the movements of her eyes. The book in her hands was doing its best, but it wasn't quite working as a hiding place.
Makoto closed his book quietly.
"What's wrong?"
Hiyori looked up. For a moment she seemed about to say nothing — but she stopped herself, perhaps because she'd learned by now that Makoto didn't ask things without a reason.
"...The midterm," she said finally, her voice low. "I was asked to help make sure the students in Class C can pass. An unofficial responsibility."
Makoto nodded once, waiting.
"The material itself isn't the problem," Hiyori continued. Her fingers rested on the edge of her page — not turning it, just resting there. "Class C isn't... easy to approach. Some of them won't sit still. Some arrive late and leave earlier. Some have already decided from the very beginning that making an effort simply isn't worth their time." She paused. "I've tried being patient. But patience alone doesn't feel like enough."
The room held its silence for a moment.
Makoto didn't answer right away. He reached into his bag, unzipped the front pocket, and pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper. He set it on the table in front of her.
"Take it."
Hiyori looked at the paper. "...This?"
"Use it if you think you need to. Throw it away if you don't." Makoto leaned back in his chair. "But I think it'll help."
[Two days prior.]
Makoto looked at the paper Fuuka had just placed on the table in front of him — with the expression of someone who had been handed an object without sufficient context.
"This?" he said. "Last year's midterm exam?"
"Exactly." Fuuka sat across from him, legs crossed, in the tone of someone explaining something she considered self-evident. "This school has a pattern. Every midterm period, the questions never stray too far from the previous year. Sometimes they're identical. Sometimes they just swap the numbers." She tapped the edge of the paper once. "It's not some grand secret. More of a loophole that nobody's bothered to close because nobody cares enough to close it. Some second-years already know the routine."
Makoto glanced at the paper, then back at her. "Why are you giving this to me?"
Fuuka shrugged — a gesture too casual for something that was, when considered properly, worth quite a bit. "I owe you one. You kept me company that day, even if it ended with me losing an eye for a week." A pause. "A promise is a promise. That's a principle."
"And you're not using it yourself?"
"The midterm isn't a problem for me." Fuuka looked briefly at the ceiling. "Some people would probably think about selling it to the first-years. Weigh the risks, calculate the return, all of that." She lowered her gaze back to Makoto, her expression flat. "But I'm not interested. Whatever you do with it is your business."
[Back to present]
Hiyori was still looking at the folded paper sitting in front of her.
She opened it carefully. Her eyes moved across the printed lines of questions — and after a few seconds, she glanced up.
"Yuki-kun," she said quietly. "Are you sure this is alright? You're essentially helping Class C indirectly."
Makoto picked his book back up. "I'm helping you. Not Class C." He found the page he'd left off on. "What you do with it isn't my concern."
Hiyori held his gaze for a moment.
There was something in the way he said it — not cold, not indifferent — that felt like precisely the opposite. Like someone who had already made a decision long before the question was asked, and simply didn't feel the need to explain beyond what was necessary.
She folded the paper back carefully and slid it between the pages of her book.
"Thank you," Hiyori said.
"Mm."
They returned to their reading. The library settled back into its particular quality of quiet — cool and still, unbothered by whatever was happening outside its walls.
Through the tall windows, the May sky stretched out — blue and, as always, without end.
Part 3
Four days before the midterm.
The classroom was quiet in the specific way it got during these sessions — not empty, but contained. Every desk occupied, every head down. The scratch of pencils against paper, the occasional sound of an eraser, the low hum of the fluorescent lights. Thirty-nine students working through a timed problem set with the focused urgency of people who had been reminded, repeatedly and in no uncertain terms, what was at stake.
Makoto stood at the front — or rather, leaned against the podium with his arms crossed and his eyes making a slow, unhurried pass across the room. He wasn't reading from anything. He didn't need to. He was just watching them the way he always did during the silent portions of these sessions — with the quiet, assessing patience of someone waiting to see what a situation would become on its own.
A minute passed.
Then another.
"How serious are you all about reaching Class A?"
The pencils stopped.
It wasn't a loud question. He hadn't raised his voice or shifted his posture. He'd said it the same way he might note that it was going to rain — a casual observation offered to no one in particular, landing in the middle of the room without warning.
Thirty-nine heads turned toward him.
Kanzaki was the first to speak. "Yuki. What do you mean by that? It should be obvious that we're—"
"I understand completely, Kanzaki." Makoto's voice was even. Not dismissive — just precise. "But that's different from what I'm asking. You and Ichinose-san — and maybe a few others — I can say with reasonable confidence that reaching Class A is something you genuinely want. A hundred percent." He paused, letting his gaze drift across the room. "But I'm asking collectively."
The silence that followed was different from the working silence from before. This one had weight.
No one answered. Some looked at their notebooks. Some looked at the person beside them. Some just looked at Makoto with expressions that fell somewhere between uncertain and genuinely unsure whether the question was meant for them at all.
Makoto exhaled — not quite a sigh, but close.
"I hope you all know what you're doing." He looked at the ceiling briefly, then back at them. "The midterm is the midterm. In this school a failing grade isn't just a bad mark — it's a one-way door. That's not what I'm talking about." He straightened slightly against the podium. "I'm talking about self-awareness. Hypothetically — assume you fail. Not now, maybe. But somewhere down the line. What do you do? Is there a backup? A second plan? Or are you putting everything on this school because you're genuinely that optimistic?"
A few people shifted in their seats.
"And say it all works. Class A, three years from now. Can you hold that position? Do you feel like you belong there?" He tilted his head slightly. "Some people end up somewhere beyond their range and it breaks them. That's not a criticism — it's just something that happens." He shrugged. "High school is simultaneously too long and too short. At minimum, it's worth thinking about."
The room sat with that for a moment.
From the second row, a student with glasses — Hamaguchi Tetsuya — slowly raised his hand. "Um... Yuki-kun. In the end, what are you actually trying to say?"
Makoto reached up and scratched behind his ear, taking a moment to arrange his words.
"We're sailing an ocean," he said finally. "Trying to reach a treasure called Class A. The One Piece of this school, if you want to put it that way." He paused. "It's difficult to explain beyond that. But you understand what I mean, don't you?"
Thirty-nine students stared at him with a collective expression that could only be described as a deadpan.
What does that mean.
Ichinose raised her hand. "Yuki-kun... you really have no interest in the One Piece — I mean, in graduating Class A?"
"That's correct," Makoto said. "I thought I'd made that fairly clear by now."
Ichinose considered this. Then, carefully, she borrowed his own framing. "Then — in the ocean we're all sailing — what is it that you're actually looking for?"
Makoto was quiet for a moment.
He turned his head toward the window. The afternoon light came in at a low angle, cutting across the floor in long pale lines.
"I'm looking for something," he said. "It's called Vinland. And I'm certain it exists somewhere."
He said it with the same tone he used for everything else. Calm. Unhurried. Completely sincere.
A beat of silence.
Then, across the classroom, almost in unison — a quiet collective sweatdrop.
Vinland.
Where exactly is that.
Can he not say anything straightforwardly for once in his life.
Makoto turned back from the window. He reached into his bag and pulled out a thick stack of papers, setting them on the podium with a flat, decisive sound that cut through the murmuring.
The room quieted.
"What if I told you," Makoto said, "that this is the question paper for the upcoming midterm?"
The classroom went still.
Then, slowly, it started to ripple. Glances exchanged across desks. Someone mouthed seriously? Ichinose and Kanzaki both looked up sharply — and for once, neither of them looked like they had an immediate response ready.
Makoto waited.
"Those of you who aren't confident — come up and take one sheet. I'll guarantee your midterm is safe."
Nobody moved.
The offer sat there, completely uncontested. A few people looked at the stack. A few looked at each other. A few looked at Makoto with expressions that suggested they were running some kind of internal calculation and hadn't reached a conclusion yet.
Makoto watched them.
"Go ahead," he said. "Take one."
Still nothing.
He waited a full two minutes. The clock on the wall moved. No one stood up.
Ichinose finally spoke, her voice careful. "Yuki-kun... is this some kind of test?"
"No." Makoto shook his head. "If you're thinking this is a character evaluation — you're wrong. I'm not trying to catch anyone at anything." He looked at them evenly. "I just want you to look at yourselves honestly. That's all."
Ichinose nodded slowly.
Another stretch of silence. No one moved toward the podium.
And then — so small that it almost didn't register — the corner of Makoto's mouth shifted.
"I'm joking," he said. "It's just review material."
Several people blinked.
"But —" his voice stayed level, "— the fact that none of you came forward? That's proof you're confident going into this midterm. Which means there's nothing to worry about." He picked up the stack and fanned it out across the front desk. "Take one."
The sound that moved through the classroom was somewhere between a groan and a laugh — the specific exhale of people who had been holding their breath without realizing it. Someone muttered what was that about. Someone else dropped their forehead onto their desk.
The papers began moving — handed from desk to desk, front to back, until every student had one.
Makoto watched them settle. Pencils coming back out. Pages turning. The familiar rhythm of the room reassembling itself.
He let it run for a moment. Then he straightened up from the podium.
"This is the last session."
The room didn't stop entirely, but it slowed. A few heads lifted.
"From here, I think you can manage on your own." His voice carried its usual flatness — no ceremony, no dramatic pause. "Whether you keep studying together or go at it individually is up to you. Either way, I've done what I can."
He turned toward Ichinose, who was already looking at him.
"Is that alright?"
Ichinose held his gaze for a moment. Then she nodded — small, genuine. "Yeah. Thank you, Yuki-kun."
Makoto gave a short nod in return.
He picked up the marker from the podium tray and turned to the whiteboard. The room had gone quiet again — not the focused quiet of people working, but the attentive quiet of people watching someone do something without knowing what it would turn out to be.
The marker moved in clean, deliberate strokes.
Know why you are sailing. Not just where.
He set the marker down and looked at what he'd written for exactly one second. Then he turned back to the class.
"Whether that's useful or not — that's for you to decide."
He didn't wait for a response. He walked back to his desk, picked up his bag, and slung it over one shoulder.
"See you."
He left.
The door slid shut behind him with a quiet, mechanical click — and for a moment, thirty-nine students sat in the kind of silence that follows something they hadn't fully processed yet, staring at the words still on the whiteboard.
Know why you are sailing. Not just where.
Part 4
The announcement board in the main corridor had not moved, but the crowd around it had thinned considerably by now. Most students had already seen what they needed to see and carried their reactions elsewhere — relief to the cafeteria, disappointment to the dormitories, and everything in between to wherever people went when they needed a moment alone with a number.
Two students remained.
Katsuragi stood with his arms folded, studying the class point breakdown with the expression of someone reviewing a report that had come back slightly worse than projected.
"It was naive," he said, "to think the midterm would create meaningful separation."
His eyes moved across the board. Class B up. Class C up. Even Class D had managed to claw back something from the floor. The gap between Class A and the rest had not widened — if anything, the distance felt smaller than it should have.
"Class B's average dominated the cohort rankings. The margin between all four classes is narrower than it was before the midterm." He exhaled through his nose. "We gained points, but so did everyone else. In net terms, nothing has changed."
Beside him, Sakayanagi Arisu said nothing.
She stood with both hands resting on the handle of her cane, eyes half-closed, her expression carrying the particular quality of someone who had already considered everything being said and found none of it interesting enough to engage with.
"Boring," she said.
Katsuragi glanced at her briefly, then returned to the board without comment.
Sakayanagi's gaze drifted — away from the class point totals and down to the individual ranking sheet posted alongside it. The cohort rankings. Every student, sorted by aggregate midterm score.
She read the first two lines.
Rank 1 — Yuki Makoto — 500/500
Rank 2 — Sakayanagi Arisu — 488/500
She looked at the numbers for a moment without expression.
The midterm had a loophole — she had known about it for some time. Last year's exam paper circulated quietly among certain second-years, and this year it had presumably found its way into first-year hands through whatever chain of transactions these things typically moved through. She hadn't been interested in using it. Her attention this term was directed elsewhere, and the midterm had never been a concern that required that kind of preparation.
Besides — even with last year's paper, the coverage was incomplete. Sixty, perhaps seventy percent of the questions that appeared on this year's exam. The school had a habit of inserting problems that had no business being on a standard midterm — questions calibrated not to test knowledge but to find the ceiling of whoever was sitting in the room.
A perfect score, under those conditions, was not simply a matter of preparation.
It meant that whoever sat in that chair had encountered every question, including the ones designed to be unanswerable, and answered them anyway.
Sakayanagi closed her eyes.
Then she opened them.
"Masumi-san," she said, turning from the board. "Let's go."
Kamuro Masumi looked up from her phone with the unhurried expression of someone who had been waiting for exactly this and had found a reasonable way to pass the time in the interim. She fell into step without a word.
Sakayanagi moved at her own pace, the quiet tap of her cane marking the rhythm of her steps against the corridor floor. Around them, the last of the crowd was dispersing — students peeling away in twos and threes, the board already fading into background noise behind them.
She was nearly at the corridor's end when something outside the window caught her attention.
She stopped.
Through the glass, the school grounds were visible in the flat afternoon light. And there, at a distance that was nonetheless entirely legible — Makoto Yuki, currently folded into what appeared to be a cobra twist administered by a second-year she recognized as Fuuka kiryuin. He was tapping her arm with the persistent patience of someone who had accepted that the signal would be ignored but felt it was worth continuing anyway. Fuuka, for her part, appeared to be conducting a separate conversation with Tachibana Akane, who stood nearby with a stack of documents and an expression that suggested she had made peace with the situation and was simply waiting for it to end.
Sakayanagi watched for a moment.
Then, very quietly, she smiled — the small, private kind that wasn't meant for anyone else.
"Sakayanagi?" Kamuro had stopped a few steps ahead, watching her.
"It's nothing." Sakayanagi turned from the window and resumed walking. The tap of her cane fell back into its quiet rhythm.
Five hundred out of five hundred.
And yet.
She didn't finish the thought. She didn't need to. It would keep — tucked away in the back of her mind alongside the other things she had filed under interesting and left to sit until the right moment arrived.
The corridor stretched ahead of them, quiet and unhurried.
Sakayanagi walked on.
End of chapter 13
There's no omake, but if you're wondering what happened on the first day Fuka wore her eyepatch...It drew a lot of attention from her classmates, who were genuinely worried. The commotion was so loud it even turned into a school-wide rumor that the bruise on her eye was the result of a fight. Even Kiriyama had a shocked expression on his face, as if screaming 'Are you serious?'Despite all that, Fuka had no interest in sharing or telling anyone anything.
So, what actually happened to her remained a complete mystery.Nagumo came to Class B with Asahina to see Kiryuin Fuka, just to confirm whether it was true or just fake news.Unlike Asahina, who showed genuine concern and worry for Fuka, Nagumo found the sight of Fuka wearing an eyepatch somehow amusing. Instead of showing any sympathy, he actually burst out laughing.Ultimately, it led to a verbal spat between the two.After Nagumo returned to his class, no one in Class 2-B dared to disturb Fuka again.