The air in Seiryu High School was thick. It wasn't the humidity of the late summer clinging to the city, but a heavy, metallic smog of unseen violence and unspoken rules. It smelled of old floor wax, cheap disinfectant, and the faint, coppery tang of dried blood that no amount of scrubbing could ever truly erase from the linoleum.
In classroom 2-B, this atmosphere was a predator's territory. The students were not scholars; they were sharks and jackals, divided into rigid cliques of hunters and the hunted. Every desk was a rock in a churning river, and you either had the strength to hold your ground or you were swept away.
Into this river, a new stone was being dropped.
"—and this is our new transfer student, Tanaka Kenji. Please, uh… make him feel welcome." The teacher, a man named Mr. Ito with thinning hair and a perpetual tremor in his hands, finished his introduction with the speed of a man trying to outrun a tiger. His eyes darted nervously towards the back of the room, where the apex predators sat.
Kenji Tanaka bowed, a perfectly polite ninety-degree angle that was jarringly out of place. "It is a pleasure to meet you all. I hope to learn much."
A ripple of snickers went through the class.
He was the picture of non-threatening. Average height, maybe a little on the lean side, with a uniform that was clean but looked a size too big for his frame. His black hair was an untamed mess that fell over his eyes, hiding his expression. He looked like a stray puppy that had wandered into a wolf den.
"Fresh meat," a voice growled from the back. It belonged to Takeda, a hulking student with a shaved head and a prominent scar that sliced through his left eyebrow. He and his two cronies lounged in their seats, radiating an aura of brutish ownership over the classroom.
Kenji's eyes, a placid and unremarkable shade of brown, scanned the room. His grandfather's voice echoed in his mind, a constant presence from a lifetime of isolated training in the deep mountains.
"Kenji, society is a different kind of forest. The beasts walk on two legs and their claws are hidden. Learn the patterns. Identify the predators. Find the safe ground."
Kenji observed. The students were clustered away from Takeda's group. Their postures were tense, their gazes averted. Fear was a scent, and this room reeked of it. The teacher was a weak alpha, a figurehead who held no real power. The true leaders were the ones in the back. This was the pattern.
"The only empty seat is… there," Mr. Ito stammered, pointing to a desk by the window. It was next to a girl who seemed to be trying to make herself invisible.
Kenji navigated the rows of desks with a quiet, efficient grace that went unnoticed. He moved like a stream flowing around rocks, his footsteps almost silent. He sat down, placing his worn bag beside him. The chair didn't even scrape the floor.
He turned his head slightly to the girl next to him. She had long, silky black hair tied in a simple ponytail, and her face was turned resolutely towards the window. Even so, he could see the tension in her jaw. She was a small herbivore, frozen in place, hoping the carnivores wouldn't notice her.
The lesson began, but no one was learning. The air remained taut, a string pulled to its breaking point, waiting for a single touch to snap.
Kenji, for his part, tried to focus. He pulled out a notebook and a single, well-worn pencil. He'd never been in a real school before. Everything was new. The smell of chalk, the drone of the teacher's voice, the sheer number of people in one place. It was… loud. Not in sound, but in presence.
A few minutes into the lesson, the girl beside him shifted to get a book from her bag. Her elbow nudged her pencil case, and a single, freshly sharpened pencil rolled off her desk, landing silently on the floor between them.
She flinched as if struck. Her eyes widened in panic as she glanced towards Takeda's corner. She dared not make a sound, dared not draw attention by leaning down to get it. She chose to lose the pencil rather than risk the notice of the sharks.
Kenji observed this. It was an illogical reaction. She had dropped her property. The logical course of action was to retrieve it. Her fear was a tangible thing, a wall that prevented her from a simple action.
He remembered another of his grandfather's rules.
"Rule #34: An act of kindness, no matter how small, is a seed. It is your duty to plant them, even in barren soil."
Without a second thought, Kenji bent down, his movement fluid and economical. He picked up the pencil and placed it gently on her desk. He didn't look at her, instead focusing back on the blackboard as if nothing had happened.
The girl stared at the pencil, then at the back of Kenji's head. Her name was Yui Amano, and in her two years at Seiryu High, no one had ever shown her such a simple, public kindness. It was a gesture so normal it was an act of rebellion here. A quiet "thank you" escaped her lips, barely a whisper.
Kenji gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. A debt of gratitude was paid. The transaction was complete.
But the transaction had been witnessed.
The scraping of a chair from the back of the room shattered the fragile peace. Every student froze. Mr. Ito stopped mid-sentence, his chalk hovering over the board.
Takeda stood up, a cruel, predatory grin spreading across his face. He cracked his thick knuckles, the sound like popping firecrackers in the dead silence.
"Oi, teach," he said, his voice a low rumble. "I think it's time we properly welcome the new guy."
Mr. Ito paled. "Now, Takeda, perhaps after class…"
"I said now."
The teacher shrank back against the blackboard, effectively surrendering the room. Takeda and his two cronies swaggered down the aisle, their heavy footsteps thudding with intent. They didn't stop at Kenji's desk. They stopped at Yui's.
Takeda loomed over her, casting a large shadow that swallowed her whole. "Amano. You know the rules. No interacting with the new meat until we've vetted them." He then turned his sneering gaze to Kenji. "And you. New guy. In Seiryu, there's a transfer tax. You pay it with your money, or you pay it with your bones. Since you were so kind to little Yui, we'll start with her."
Before anyone could react, Takeda's hand shot out and grabbed Yui's wrist.
She let out a small, terrified gasp, her eyes welling with tears.
Kenji, who had been watching this exchange with a look of mild confusion, suddenly went still. His head, which had been tilted slightly, straightened. The messy bangs shifted, and for the first time, his eyes were fully visible.
The placid brown was gone. In its place was a flat, cold emptiness. It was the unnerving calm of a deep, frozen lake. The air around his desk seemed to drop several degrees.
His grandfather's voice, which was usually a calm instruction, now echoed in his head with the force of a commandment carved in stone.
Rule #7: The hand that harms the innocent in your presence is a debt that must be collected immediately. The payment is pain.
"Tax?" Kenji's voice was quiet, yet it cut through the tension like a razor. "I was not informed of this civic duty." His tone was genuinely curious, as if he were trying to understand a complex social ritual. This utter lack of fear was more jarring than any defiance.
Takeda laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "You're a funny one. Let me explain it in terms you'll understand." He tightened his grip on Yui's wrist, making her whimper. "This is our property. You don't touch it. You don't talk to it. Now, you're going to pay up."
Kenji's eyes moved from Takeda's face down to the thick, meaty hand wrapped around Yui's slender wrist. He saw the white of her knuckles, the red marks forming on her skin. He saw her trembling.
The world seemed to slow down. The dust motes dancing in the sunbeams from the window hung suspended in the air. The terrified, silent gasps of the other students became a distant hum.
Kenji stood up. His movement wasn't fast, but it was seamless, like water rising. There was no wasted energy, no hesitation.
"Let. Go."
It wasn't a request. It was a statement of fact. A command that expected absolute obedience.
Takeda's grin widened. The idiot was actually trying to play hero. "Or what, twig? You'll stop me?"
He made a fatal mistake. He turned his full attention to Kenji, his arrogance blinding him.
In the space between one heartbeat and the next, Kenji's hand moved. It wasn't a punch. It wasn't a chop. It was a simple, straight-line motion. His fingers, which looked long and ordinary, closed around Takeda's wrist, right over the wrist bone.
Takeda felt nothing at first. Just a light touch. He sneered, ready to throw the new kid across the room. "Is that all you—?"
Then the pressure came.
It wasn't human. It was the cold, unyielding pressure of a hydraulic press. Takeda's sneer froze on his face. He tried to pull his hand back, putting all the force of his 200-pound frame into the motion.
It didn't move. Not a millimeter. It was like trying to pull his hand out of a block of granite it had been fused to.
Panic, an emotion Takeda usually inspired but rarely felt, flared in his chest. He looked at Kenji's face. The boy's expression hadn't changed. It was still empty, still analytical. He was looking at Takeda's wrist with the detached curiosity of a biologist dissecting a frog.
"I said," Kenji repeated, his voice dropping to a near-whisper that was somehow the loudest thing in the room, "let go."
Takeda's survival instincts screamed. He tried to open his hand, to release Yui, but his fingers were locked in place by the sheer shock running up his arm.
Kenji's grip tightened by a fraction.
And then, a sound ripped through the suffocating silence of Classroom 2-B.
It was not the wet crunch of a break. It was a sharp, dense, sickeningly loud noise. The sound of something thick and hard being snapped cleanly in two.
CRACK!