In Debt

(Shin's PoV)

—

The summons came over the classroom speaker during fourth period.

"Ishikawa Shin, third year, please report to the staff room. Right now."

The whole class turned to look at me at once. Thirty heads, with the specific silence of a room that had spent the entire lunch break trading versions of a story and was now watching the main character get called to the principal's floor.

Somebody near the window whispered something, while somebody else laughed and then stopped.

I pretended not to care, but I couldn't stop my anxiety.

After taking a deep breath, I stood and walked out under it all, and I went down to the staff room with my collar suddenly too tight and my hands cold, thinking about what to say.

My only choice was to say the truth, because if they called me there, some kind of punishment was already decided.

I'd take whatever they gave me, because I'd done it. I'd put a student on the ground in front of witnesses, and the fact that he'd deserved it wasn't a thing I could say out loud without dragging Kurone into a faculty room, which I would not do.

When I arrived, Takaneda-sensei was waiting for me by his desk with tired eyes, a coffee that had gone cold at his elbow, and a single sheet of paper in front of him that he wasn't looking at.

"Sit, Ishikawa."

I sat.

"I'll keep this short, because I've had a long enough afternoon and I suspect you have too." He folded his hands. "There's a story going around the school today. You've heard it. By now it has you throwing Yamada across the entire athletics field and standing over him like something out of a film."

I said nothing.

"I want you to know that I didn't believe a word of it," Takaneda said. "Not from the first version, not from the ninth. And I want you to know why, because it matters." He looked at me directly. "Three years, Ishikawa. Three years you've been in my care, and you have not caused this school one single problem, and when a boy with a record like that is suddenly at the center of a story like this one, an experienced teacher does not reach for the story. He reaches for the boy he actually knows."

Something in my chest twisted, and I couldn't have named the shape of it. I didn't expect Takaneda-sensei to have a sort of... empathy?

"So here's where we are," he went on. "Yamada came to this office at the start of lunch. On his own, before any of the noise started." He glanced at the sheet in front of him, then back at me. "He told us the two of you were running a judo exercise on the field, and he said he pushed you into it, with a throw that went harder than intended. He said that it was his fault, and he was quite insistent that no blame land on you."

The room went very quiet in my ears.

"With his statement and your record, this is closed," Takaneda said. "I called you in to confirm the version and to be able to tell the faculty room I did, so this dies before last period. That's all this is." He picked up his cold coffee, grimaced at it, put it back down. "So. A throw drill got a little out of hand. Yes?"

He was giving me the line. He was holding it out across the desk, already tied off, and all I had to do was take it.

"...Yes, sensei," I said. "A throw drill."

"Good. I knew that it couldn't be anything bad." He nodded, and there was real warmth in it, real relief, a teacher glad to have been right about someone. "Now go back to class, Ishikawa. And for what it's worth, don't let some dumb voices distract you from your job for the festival."

"Yes, sensei. Thank you." My voice was completely... hollow.

I stood, bowed, and then walked out.

And in the corridor, out of sight of the staff room door, I stopped, put my back against the wall, and understood exactly what had just been done to me.

Kenji hadn't protected me. He'd bought me.

He had come to that office before the story even started spreading, and he had spent his own reputation to cover me.

A throw drill, his fault, his idea. He had lain down under my anger on that field and then, before the dust settled, walked into the staff room and lain down again, taking the blame in front of the faculty so that not one mark would touch my record.

'I promise I won't get you suspended.' He'd said it on the grass, flat and smiling, and I'd heard it as a taunt. It hadn't been a taunt. It had been an appointment he intended to keep.

And now I was clean. Spotless. Three years without a problem, still intact, guaranteed by the one person on this earth I wanted to owe nothing to.

That was the whole trick. He turned everyone he touched into someone who was in debt with him, and he'd just done it to me.

I couldn't march into the staff room and demand my own suspension. I couldn't undo a kindness. He'd trapped me inside gratitude I never asked for and would choke on for weeks.

It wasn't protection. It was a leash, handed to me disguised as freedom, and I could feel its weight already.

I stood in that corridor and felt deeply humiliated.

Then I pushed off the wall and went back to class, because there was nowhere else to go.

I kept staring at my own feet while walking, thinking about nothing in particular.

Fifth period didn't happen, as far as I was concerned. I sat in it.

The teacher's voice moved through the room like weather passing a window, and my notebook stayed open to a blank page. 

'I just want this day to be over as soon as possible...' I thought.

Then, between fifth and sixth period, I went to refill my water bottle, and that was when I saw her.

Kurone was in the corridor by the science rooms, and she was not walking well.

She had one hand flat against the wall and the other pressed to her stomach, and she was moving in the small, careful, listing steps of someone whose body has stopped fully cooperating: pale, her forehead damp, and her breath coming shallow.

She was heading for the infirmary, and she was not making good progress.

I don't remember deciding to move. I was just there, at her side, my hand under her arm.

"Whoa — hey. I've got you." I said, trying to sustain her.

She flinched at the contact, and then her eyes found my face.  Something in her whole body let go, a breath she'd apparently been holding for an hour going out of her all at once.

"...Shin," she whispered, relieved.

"Don't talk, Kurone. Lean on me. Infirmary's right there." That's all I said.

Then, she leaned, and she weighed almost nothing. She looked particularly fragile.

She kept one hand fisted in the fabric of my sleeve and let me take the rest of her weight, and we managed to walk six steps down the corridor together before a voice stopped us.

"Ishikawa-kun."

That was Tanaka-sensei,  the deputy principal.

She took in the scene in one practiced glance: Kurone's color, the hand on her stomach, and my arm under hers.

"I'll take her from here," she said, already moving to Kurone's other side. "Go on back to class. We'll get her looked at and call her family to come pick her up."

"She was heading for the infirmary," I said. "She's not steady."

"I can see that. I've got her. Thank you, Ishikawa-kun — back to class, please." She said, her voice clearly worried.

I eased Kurone toward the teacher's supporting arm, and let go.

Or tried to.

Because her hand stayed fisted in my sleeve for a second longer than the handoff needed.

Her fingers holding on, her eyes coming up to mine with something in them that had nothing to do with the pain in her stomach and everything to do with not wanting to watch me walk away.

Then she made herself release it, one finger at a time, and let Tanaka-sensei take her weight instead.

"T-Thank you, Shin-kun..." she whispered. 

I nodded, because I didn't trust anything I might say, and then I went back to class with that grip still ghosting on my sleeve and my nerves wound one notch tighter than they'd already been.

Sixth period, at least, had the mercy of being the last one.

Daiki dropped into the seat beside me the moment the teacher's back was turned, in the way only Daiki could — like a large friendly dog that had been holding a question all afternoon.

"So," he murmured. "You're the school legend now. You know that, right? I've heard four completely different stories, and in one of them you had a chair, ready to commit the worst sin of your life."

"There was no chair." I sighed.

"I know there was no chair; I'm just telling you what I've heard." He then studied my face, and whatever he saw there took some of the grin out of him. "You okay, man? For real. You look like a ghost."

"Everything's fine," I said. It came out flat.

"Uh-huh." He clearly didn't believe it, and he decided not to push it, without any particular reason.

Instead, he leaned back and offered the only medicine he had. "Hey. Tell you what. Let's hit the arcade tomorrow. You, me, that rhythm game you're weirdly good at, some fried garbage from the counter. Get your head out of all this. What do you say? Invite Takanashi if you want."

"...I'll let you know later," I said.

"That's a no dressed up as a maybe, but I'll allow it." He clapped my shoulder once and slid back to his own desk as the teacher turned around.

And then the lesson ran out, the way the last lesson always does, faster than any lesson has a right to when there's a countdown under it — and the final bell rang.

I didn't move at first. I waited as the classroom emptied around me.

I heard chairs scraping, bags zipping, and the corridor filling with the roar of a school being released, while I sat there with my nerves stretched to breaking and my eyes on nothing, waiting for the one thing I was actually waiting for.

It came exactly at 3:41.

"AKANE:Going down right now to the gates, Shin. Don't worry, the phone is in my hand. You'll see it. P.S. I Love You; don't be anxious, please.♥"

My heart softened as I saw that little "I Love You".

And then, I stood up and walked out of my class.

I moved fast and low through the departing crowd, down the stairs, out a side door instead of the main one, cutting along the edge of the courtyard where the hedge threw a long afternoon shadow.

I kept walking until I finally saw them.

Down at the far end of the grounds, near the front gates, two figures were already moving — Akane's dark silhouette and, a few steps ahead of her, the taller shape of Kenji, walking her out through the gate and along the wall, away from the thinning crowd of students, toward somewhere quieter.

She had her phone in her hand, as she told me, down at her side, screen out, exactly the way I'd asked.

Then, without making anyone notice me, I followed them...

—

Author's Note: I wrote a side story in an alternate universe where Akane doesn't exist and Shin is dating Hoshiko. It's pretty wholesome. Gonna publish it when this narrative arc will be over :))