The final bell finally rang, washing over the classroom and breaking the tension that had been hovering around Saki all afternoon.
Kenji closed his textbook. He was still getting used to the strange disconnect between his mind—which used to view everything through the lens of anime tropes and dating sim logic—and his current reality. Gaining the physical form of Arthur Pendragon had somehow mellowed him out, refining his chaotic inner monologue into something a lot more grounded.
He didn't see the classroom as a 'stage' anymore, just a room full of loud, exhausting teenagers.
He stood up, slinging his bag over his shoulder, and walked over to Saki's desk just as she was zipping up her backpack.
"Hey," Kenji said, his voice relaxed but carrying enough weight to make a few nearby girls stop and stare. "Do you want to walk home together?"
Saki's face flushed pink under the sudden attention, but she nodded quickly, clearly eager to escape the classroom's scrutiny. "O-Okay."
They walked out of the building together, leaving the flow of students behind to stop near the brick wall of the main gate. Kenji leaned against it, crossing his arms comfortably.
Saki stopped a few steps away, looking around nervously. "Um... aren't we leaving?"
"In a second," Kenji said, dropping the polite, transfer-student act now that they were mostly out of earshot. "We're waiting for Subaru. He should be out in a minute."
"Oh," Saki blinked. "Right. He's a second-year."
A moment later, Natsuki Subaru strolled out of the main entrance. He looked completely drained, his tracksuit jacket worn loosely over his uniform and his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He spotted them and jogged over, sighing heavily.
"Man, second-year math here is just as agonizing as it is back home," Subaru complained, stopping in front of them. He looked at Saki and gave a small wave. "Hey. You must be Saki."
Saki immediately stiffened, clutching her bag straps, and bowed perfectly. "Y-Yes. It's nice to meet you, Natsuki-san."
Kenji paused, looking between the two of them. A wry smile tugged at his lips.
"Wait, hold on," Kenji interrupted. "'Natsuki-san'? You didn't use an honorific like that for me at all. Even in the group chat, you dropped the formalities with me almost instantly. What gives?"
Saki flushed, waving her hands defensively. "N-No! It's just... the way you were texting yesterday, you seemed really casual. And then when I actually saw you today..." She gestured vaguely to Kenji's face and bright blonde hair. "You look, um, a little less Japanese compared to him. I thought maybe you were used to things being a bit more Western and informal. Was I wrong?"
Kenji blinked, genuinely impressed. For someone who usually kept her head down, she was incredibly observant. Having the physical specs of a literal knight king definitely made him stand out in a standard Japanese high school setting.
"No, you're right on the money," Kenji chuckled softly, his tone appreciative. "That's actually really thoughtful of you, Saki. Not that I mind either way."
"And just Subaru is fine for me, by the way," Subaru added, rubbing the back of his neck with a reassuring smile. "We're in the same boat now. No need to be stiff."
"Okay... Subaru," Saki tested the name, a tiny, genuine smile breaking through her nerves.
With introductions out of the way, Kenji shifted to practical matters. He sifted through the bizarre, artificial memories the system had shoved into his head before he woke up.
"Hey, Subaru. Checking the implanted memories the system gave us... do you have a family or an actual home here?" Kenji asked.
Subaru shook his head. "No family. I'm completely solo. The system gave me an empty house a few blocks away, fake paperwork, and an allowance in a bank account. You?"
"Same," Kenji nodded, his expression turning serious. "Empty apartment, fully furnished. It seems the system just fabricated the bare minimum for us to exist here without drawing attention."
Saki looked back and forth between them, her small smile vanishing into total confusion. "Wait... implanted memories? Fake paperwork? Empty houses? What are you guys talking about?"
Kenji turned to her. "Saki, we literally just got to this world this morning. In order for us to attend your school and complete the mission to stop this Hayato guy, the system had to hack reality a bit. It gave us fake identities, homes, and school records so we could get close to you."
Saki stared at him, trying to process the sheer scale of it. "The system did all that... just to stop Hayato? Why would an entire multidimensional system need to summon people from other worlds, build fake lives, and assign a mission just for an ordinary bully?"
Subaru frowned, thinking back to the system prompt that had been bugging him all day. "We don't know for sure. But the system lists the threat level as 'Escalating'. Even if he's a regular guy right now, he must be planning something bad."
Saki went completely still. Her eyes widened as the name and the word "escalating" finally connected with the events of her chaotic morning.
"Oh..." Saki swallowed hard, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"Saki?" Kenji asked, tilting his head slightly. "What's wrong?"
"I... I ran into him this morning," Saki confessed, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. "Right by the shoe lockers, before the transfer announcements. He cornered me. He grabbed my arm and wouldn't let go."
Kenji and Subaru instantly tensed. If Hayato was already putting his hands on her...
"Did he hurt you?" Subaru asked, his eyes narrowing dangerously.
"No," Saki said quickly. She looked down at her shoes, looking a bizarre mix of embarrassed and defiant. "Because Terriermon was hiding in my bag. When Hayato wouldn't let go, Terriermon told me what to do... so I kicked him."
Kenji paused, the protective tension leaving his shoulders. "You kicked him?"
"Yeah," Saki muttered, her face turning crimson. "Twice. Right in the... um. The balls."
Silence descended on the main gate.
Kenji stared at her. Subaru stared at her.
"You..." Kenji started, the corners of his mouth twitching as the sheer absurdity of the situation hit him. "You kicked him in the balls. Twice."
"I panicked!" Saki squeaked, hiding her face in her hands. "He wouldn't let go! He dropped to the floor and I just ran away!"
Subaru suddenly barked out a laugh, slapping a hand over his mouth to muffle it. Kenji had a highly amused smile breaking across his face.
Suddenly, the system prompt made absolute, perfect sense. Hayato wasn't some dark, illegal mastermind plotting a deadly conspiracy shown in the manga. He was just an arrogant high school punk whose fragile ego had just been completely, utterly atomized by the quietest girl in school.
No wonder the threat level was 'Escalating'. The guy was probably fuming, nursing his bruised pride—and other things—and looking for petty revenge. it was just a deeply humiliated teenager.
"Well," Kenji said, shaking his head with a quiet chuckle as he adjusted his bag. "I guess we don't have to worry about you being completely defenseless. Come on, Saki."
The three of us left through the school gate together, falling into a loose line on the sidewalk. I put myself on Saki's left without really thinking about it, and Subaru drifted to her right.
The streets were busy in that soft, winding-down way of a late afternoon. Students peeled off toward train stations, shop owners were dragging display racks back inside, and the smell of frying oil from somewhere nearby drifted past every thirty seconds or so. Normal. Completely, aggressively normal.
I noticed Subaru wasn't really talking either. For reasons....
We passed a takoyaki cart. His gaze snagged on it for a second.
Then a bakery with steamed buns stacked in the window.
Then a vending machine with a lit-up row of canned coffee.
He didn't say anything. But he was cataloguing every single one of them.
We turned a corner and a convenience store appeared on the left side, bright and warm and humming, the automatic doors sliding open for someone walking out with a plastic bag.
Subaru stopped walking.
Not abruptly. Just... stopped. Like his legs had made a quiet, private decision without consulting him.
I took two more steps before realizing and looked back.
He was staring through the store window. Just standing there on the sidewalk with students splitting around him like water around a rock, staring at rows of cheap onigiri and instant noodles and canned drinks like he had just encountered something sacred.
Saki looked at me uncertainly.
I looked at Subaru.
His expression wasn't even particularly dramatic. That was the thing. He wasn't performing anything. He just looked like someone who had genuinely, deeply missed something small and ordinary for a very long time and wasn't quite ready to walk past it.
I reached into my pocket without fanfare, peeled off some yen, and held it out to him. "Go."
He looked at the money, then at me. Something moved across his face that he immediately wrestled back down. "I'm paying you back."
"I know."
He took it and went inside.
Saki and I waited by the entrance. She shifted her bag carefully to her other shoulder, making sure the zipper stayed mostly closed. A small, deliberate adjustment.
"He's been through a lot, hasn't he," she said quietly. Not really a question.
"Yeah," I said. "He has."
She didn't push further. I appreciated that about her.
Subaru came back out about two minutes later with a plastic bag that was embarrassingly full. He'd gotten canned coffee, melon bread, two rice balls, a bag of chips, and what looked like a steamed pork bun he was already halfway through eating. He cracked open the coffee while we started walking again, took one long drink, and went completely silent for several seconds.
Then he exhaled like a man who had just put down something very heavy.
I didn't say anything. Neither did Saki.
She pointed out her street when we got close. Modest neighborhood. Low walls, potted plants, laundry lines, the kind of streets that looked the same in every quiet part of every Japanese city. Exactly the kind of place that felt too calm to take seriously as a location in a system mission.
We walked her to the gate.
Saki turned around, both hands holding her bag in front of her, and bowed properly. "Thank you. Both of you. Really."
"Don't mention it," Subaru said, finishing his rice ball.
"Message us if anything feels off," I told her. "Doesn't matter what time."
She nodded, gave us one last small smile, and disappeared through the gate. The lock clicked.
I stood there for a moment listening to her footsteps fade up the path before I turned away.
Subaru fell into step beside me as we headed back. The neighborhood was quiet around us, the sky going that deep bruised orange that meant maybe another twenty minutes of actual light. Our footsteps were the loudest thing on the street.
I'd been turning the mission parameters over in my head since lunch. The system didn't reach across worlds and fabricate entire identities for a week-long deployment over a run-of-the-mill harassment case. Bullies didn't get flagged as escalating threats by multiversal infrastructure. The mechanics of it didn't add up unless Hayato was going to do something that went significantly past shoving someone into lockers.
And today he'd already physically grabbed her. First contact, day one, before he even knew she had anyone watching her back. That wasn't the behavior of someone who backed down when ignored.
I didn't break stride. Didn't look over.
"We're gonna have to kill him, Subaru."
Subaru stopped chewing.
The silence lasted maybe three seconds. Just him, mid-bite, processing.
Then —
"...Damn."
I pressed my lips together hard. The absolute flatness of it. The perfect, unthinking delivery. I felt the laugh punch straight up from my chest and fought it back down with everything I had, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the road ahead.