World

PREMISE

Karasuma City. 1987.

A mid-sized Japanese city that doesn't make the news for anything good. Eight schools — four middle, four high — and a street hierarchy that runs parallel to everything official, everything teachers pretend not to see, everything the city council calls a "youth problem" in the local paper. The hierarchy is real. The fights are real. The reputation you build — or lose — follows you from middle school to high school to the rest of your life.

You are new to this. Or you aren't. Either way, the city doesn't care. It will test you the same.

CHARACTER CREATION

Before anything else, the AI runs character creation. Answer the following:

1. Name
2. Role — choose one:

Student — enrolled in one of the eight schools; building rep from zero or arriving with a name already Teacher — newly assigned to one of the four high schools; idealistic, burned out, or somewhere in between; trying to reach kids the system has already written off Outsider — not enrolled, not faculty; a drifter, a dropout, someone who exists in the city's margins and intersects with the school hierarchy from outside it

3. School — choose which school you're attached to (see SCHOOLS section)

4. Starting reputation — choose one:

Nobody: unknown, unranked, starting from zero Rumor: you have a name but no confirmed record; people have heard things Known: one notable fight or moment has put you on the map; you have a rank but it's being tested

5. Fighting style — choose one:

Brawler: raw power, no technique, takes hits to give them; feared for durability Street Fighter: fast, dirty, experienced; reads opponents well Judoka / Wrestler: takedowns and throws; dominates one-on-one, struggles in group fights Karateka: striking technique, looks clean, hits hard; rare in these schools No fighting background: genuinely starting from nothing; the journey is steeper

6. One sentence about why you're here — what brought you to Karasuma City, or what you're trying to build.

THE SCHOOLS OF KARASUMA CITY

MIDDLE SCHOOLS

Kurogane Junior High (黒鉄中学校) The Bottom of the Funnel Feeds directly into Suzuran High. Students here grow up knowing what Suzuran is, knowing it's where they're headed, and spending three years deciding whether to embrace that or fight it. The roughest of the four middle schools — brawls in the stairwells, turf disputes over the park behind the school building. No unified leadership. Several factions constantly repositioning. Getting through Kurogane without a fight record takes either invisibility or genuine social skill. Neither is common.

Midori Junior High (緑中学校) The Organized One Feeds into Houjou High. Has a functioning hierarchy — a recognized top, clear lieutenants, rules about who fights who and when. Unusual for a middle school. The current boss has held the position for two years, which is almost unheard of. Students from Midori arrive at Houjou already knowing how a real crew works. This is both their advantage and their arrogance.

Shirogane Junior High (白銀中学校) The Academic Cover Feeds into Kenshuu High. Officially the best-ranked middle school in Karasuma City academically. Unofficially, the academic reputation is a cover for a surprisingly vicious underground — kids who are smart enough to keep the fights out of sight and the records clean. Delinquency here is quieter and meaner than anywhere else. What they lack in raw toughness they compensate for with strategy and patience.

Akatsuki Junior High (暁中学校) The Wild Card Feeds loosely into multiple high schools — students scatter based on circumstance rather than tradition. No dominant fighting culture, no real hierarchy. Individual standouts emerge occasionally and make names for themselves, but there's no infrastructure to build on. A strong student from Akatsuki arrives at high school entirely self-made, which can mean anything.

HIGH SCHOOLS

Suzuran High School (鈴蘭高校) — "The Front" THE top dog. The chaos king. The school everyone knows.

Suzuran is the delinquent school. Has been for as long as anyone can remember. The school building is old, underfunded, perpetually on the verge of some administrative crisis nobody fixes because fixing it would require caring. The student body is entirely male. The teachers show up, collect paychecks, and go home — they stopped trying to intervene in the hierarchy years ago.

The Suzuran paradox: it is definitively the strongest school in Karasuma City, and it has no unified leadership. Has never had stable unified leadership for more than a few months at a stretch. The school is too big, too full of strong individuals, too resistant to any single person's authority for long. Factions rise, clash, briefly consolidate, and fracture again. The current state is three major factions and several independent strong individuals, all technically at war with each other and all capable of uniting against an external threat if motivated.

Being the top of Suzuran would mean being the top of Karasuma City. Nobody has managed it for long. Everyone who matters has tried.

Uniform: modified gakuran, almost universally customized — longer hems, missing buttons, patches, personal modifications that function as a visual record of the wearer's tenure.

Houjou High School (鳳城高校) — "The Castle" Organized. Hierarchical. The school that almost has its act together.

Houjou has what Suzuran doesn't: structure. A functioning top, recognized lieutenants, a chain of command that new students are expected to fall into or fight their way through. Less raw talent than Suzuran but considerably more coordinated — a Houjou crew in formation is more dangerous than an equal number of Suzuran students who haven't decided who's in charge yet.

The current top has held his position for eight months. That's a record for any school in Karasuma City not named Shirogane's underground. He is aware that Suzuran is the ceiling and is methodically building toward something.

Feeds from Midori Junior High — the Midori-to-Houjou pipeline produces students who already understand hierarchy, which is Houjou's greatest structural advantage.

Kenshuu High School (研修高校) — "The Brain" Academically strong. Delinquently underestimated. Dangerously patient.

Kenshuu is where Karasuma City sends the students it expects something from — kids whose families have expectations, whose test scores suggest a future. The delinquent element here is smaller by headcount and considerably more calculating. Kenshuu students pick their fights precisely and win them efficiently, then return to looking like model students. Their reputation in the street hierarchy is built on a small number of decisive incidents rather than sustained presence.

The danger of Kenshuu is that they're capable of sustained strategy in a world that mostly operates on impulse. They have lost every large-scale confrontation with Suzuran or Houjou on sheer numbers. They have never lost a targeted operation.

Reimei High School (黎明高校) — "The Dawn" The school that believes in something.

Reimei is the reform school in spirit if not in name — the school where teachers who still believe in something end up, often by choice. The student body is mixed: genuine delinquents who've been redirected here, students who fell through cracks at other schools, kids with records and kids without. The hierarchy is weakest here of any high school. The teacher influence is strongest. This is the school where the Teacher role player begins, if chosen.

Reimei produces the occasional standout — a student who arrived broken and left capable of something — and the story of each one becomes a reference point for what the school believes it can do. Competing with Suzuran on fighting terms is not the goal. The goal, officially, is something else. Whether that goal is achievable is an open question.

WORLD NOTE — FREE CHOICE PIPELINE

There are no fixed feeder relationships in Karasuma City. Middle school students choose their high school based on reputation, geography, ambition, or circumstance. This creates unpredictable incoming classes — a high school that dominated last year's first-years may get an entirely different composition this April. A middle school legend who picks Suzuran is making a statement. The same legend picking Reimei is making a different statement. The choice itself is read by everyone.

The result: every April is a reshuffling. Upperclassmen spend the first month of the new school year figuring out what they got. First-years spend it figuring out what they walked into.

THE SIX HIGH SCHOOLS

1. SUZURAN HIGH SCHOOL (鈴蘭高校) — "The Front"

Unchanged from original entry. The top delinquent school. No unified leadership. Three major factions. Togawa Kenji undeclared.

2. HOUJOU HIGH SCHOOL (鳳城高校) — "The Castle"

Unchanged from original entry. Organized hierarchy. Mori Daichi at eight months.

3. KENSHUU HIGH SCHOOL (研修高校) — "The Brain"

Unchanged from original entry. Academic cover, strategic underground, no public top.

4. REIMEI HIGH SCHOOL (黎明高校) — "The Dawn"

Unchanged from original entry. Reform school spirit. Teacher role starts here.

5. TŌGŌ HIGH SCHOOL (統合高校) — "The Melting Pot"

A school that doesn't discriminate — in the sense that it takes everyone the other schools didn't specifically want. Transfer students, students who failed entrance at their first choice, students whose middle school rep made other schools wary of accepting them, students who simply ended up here by administrative accident. The result is the most diverse and least predictable student body in Karasuma City.

Tōgō has no tradition. No founding mythology, no single dominant culture, no established aesthetic. What it has is a rotating cast of strong individuals who never quite coalesced into something unified — every attempt at building a real hierarchy here has collapsed within months because the student body is too varied to organize around any single identity.

The danger of Tōgō is that nobody underestimates specific people — everyone knows the school produces individuals capable of anything — but nobody takes the school as a whole seriously either. This has been exploited by underestimating enemies and has produced some of the city's most dramatic upsets.

There is no established top. There has not been for two years. The current strongest student is a third-year transfer from Kenshuu named Ishida who arrived under unexplained circumstances and has been systematically dismantling anyone who tries to organize around them. Her motivations are unclear. She is the only prominent female fighter in the high school hierarchy and has made it a point that this is noted only once per person.

Uniform: technically standard gakuran for male students, sailor uniform for female — in practice, Tōgō students wear whatever approximates the uniform and the school stopped enforcing it sometime in the early eighties.

6. ZANKYŌ HIGH SCHOOL (残響高校) — "The Echo"

The school nobody talks about until they have to.

Zankyō sits at the edge of Karasuma City's eastern district, near the river, in a building that was old when the current third-years were born. Low enrollment, low profile, low everything — on paper it's a failing institution that should have been consolidated with another school years ago. In practice it produces, every few years, a student so individually dangerous that the entire city has to recalibrate.

The school has no hierarchy in the conventional sense. Too few students for factions. What it has is a culture of individual intensity — Zankyō students fight alone, always, because there's nobody to fight with. They are not crew builders. They are not politicians. They are people who have spent three years in a school that gave them nothing but time and their own company, and what they did with that time varied.

The current third-year class has three students worth knowing about and everyone in Karasuma City who pays attention knows all three names. The school's reputation is built entirely on these individual legends — when they graduate, the city waits to see what Zankyō produces next.

Zankyō students who choose this school from middle school are making the strangest choice available. No crew. No infrastructure. No history to plug into. Just yourself and whatever you build alone. The ones who thrive here were always going to be alone anyway.

Uniform: enforced more strictly than any other school in the city, paradoxically — old-style formal gakuran, no modifications permitted, buttons done up. The strictness exists because the administration is terrified of the students and believes that visible compliance creates actual compliance. It does not. The Zankyō students wear the correct uniform and do whatever they want.

THE TWELVE MIDDLE SCHOOLS

1. KUROGANE JUNIOR HIGH (黒鉄中学校)

Unchanged from original entry. Roughest middle school. Feeds Suzuran culture. No unified leadership.

2. MIDORI JUNIOR HIGH (緑中学校)

Unchanged from original entry. Most organized middle school. Functioning hierarchy. Current boss two years in.

3. SHIROGANE JUNIOR HIGH (白銀中学校)

Unchanged from original entry. Academic cover for vicious underground. Strategic and patient.

4. AKATSUKI JUNIOR HIGH (暁中学校)

Unchanged from original entry. Wild card. No dominant culture. Self-made individuals.

5. KASUMI JUNIOR HIGH (霞中学校) — "The Fog"

A school that exists in Karasuma City's geographic middle — not far from anything, not close to anything either. The nickname comes from the fact that nobody outside the school seems to track what's happening inside it. Kasumi students don't broadcast. They don't start conflicts with other schools. They handle things internally, quietly, and the results are often surprising to people who weren't paying attention.

The current internal hierarchy is the most stable of any middle school in the city — not because there's an exceptional top, but because three second-years have established a genuine working arrangement rather than a single dominant figure. Triad leadership at middle school level is almost unheard of. It works for reasons nobody outside Kasumi fully understands. Scouts from Houjou and Kenshuu have both been watching the school's second-years with interest.

Notable detail: Kasumi has the best baseball team in the city, which sounds irrelevant until you see what that does for group coordination and physical conditioning. The overlap between the baseball team and the fight hierarchy is substantial.

6. RAIKŌ JUNIOR HIGH (雷光中学校) — "The Lightning"

Fast school. The Raikō reputation is built on speed in every sense — fast fighters, fast escalations, fast reputations made and lost. Brawls here tend to be shorter and more decisive than anywhere else, which produces a specific kind of fighter: someone comfortable with explosive first exchanges who struggles when things go long.

The school's hierarchy turns over more frequently than any other middle school in the city. New tops emerge, peak quickly, get tested before they've consolidated, and either prove themselves or fall. The current top is a first-year — unheard of — who arrived from elementary school with a reputation that had somehow preceded him and has not lost in four months of high-volume testing. He is being watched by every high school in the city simultaneously. He is eleven months from high school and already a named quantity.

Notable detail: Raikō's proximity to the train station means its students have more cross-city contact than most middle schoolers. They know people from every school, have connections everywhere, and are the best-informed middle school students in Karasuma City about what's happening at high school level. Information is its own currency.

7. YAMASHIRO JUNIOR HIGH (山城中学校) — "The Mountain Castle"

Old school in both senses. Yamashiro has existed longer than most of the high schools it feeds into, and its traditions are the oldest and most rigid of any middle school in Karasuma City. There is a correct way to do things at Yamashiro — a proper senpai-kouhai structure, a recognized pathway from first-year nobody to third-year upper tier, specific rituals around challenge and acknowledgment that haven't changed in fifteen years.

The upside: Yamashiro produces students who understand hierarchy on a bone-deep level, who know how to position within a structure and how to climb it correctly. They arrive at high school already fluent in the social language of the delinquent world.

The downside: Yamashiro students can be rigid in ways that get them hurt. They expect the rules they grew up with to apply everywhere. They sometimes discover, expensively, that Suzuran doesn't have rules in the Yamashiro sense.

Current top is a third-year who has held the position for fourteen months — the longest tenure of any Yamashiro top in recorded memory. He is the most traditional student the school has produced in years and everyone is waiting to see which high school he chooses. Suzuran would be the expected choice. The rumor is he's considering Zankyō.

8. NISHIKAWA JUNIOR HIGH (錦川中学校) — "The River"

Named for the river district it sits adjacent to. Nishikawa students spend their lunch breaks at the river, their after-school hours at the river, and conduct most of their significant confrontations at the river — it is the de facto neutral ground for the school and has been for as long as anyone remembers.

The school has a split identity: the students who live in the river district are working-class, tight-knit, and fight with the specific loyalty of people who grew up in the same three streets. The students who commute in from other parts of the city are looser, more varied, and less plugged into the core culture. The two groups coexist with regular friction that never quite resolves into open warfare because the core group is too cohesive to break and the outside group is too dispersed to organize.

The current situation: the river district core group has a strong third-year who is about to graduate, and the second-years are already positioning for what happens when he leaves. This transition is going to produce a fight and everyone in the school knows it. The timing is a matter of weeks.

Notable detail: Nishikawa students are the most comfortable with long fights of any school in the city. The river location means space, means no immediate audience pressure, means fights can go as long as they need to. They produce the best-conditioned fighters in the middle school tier.

9. FUKURODANI JUNIOR HIGH (梟谷中学校) — "The Owl's Valley"

The night school reputation — not literally, but Fukurodani's significant events tend to happen after dark, in the narrow streets behind the school building, in the park that closes at sunset. There is a reason for this: the school's administration is unusually attentive during daylight hours, producing a student body that has learned to exist in two registers simultaneously. Compliant during school hours. Completely different after the bell.

The split has created an interesting culture: Fukurodani students are the best actors in Karasuma City's middle school tier. They can turn it on and off. They can sit in a classroom looking like model students and be planning something simultaneously. Teachers at other schools who don't know the reputation sometimes dismiss Fukurodani students on first impression. This is a mistake that gets made once.

Current dynamic: no unified top, but a network of second and third-years who operate collectively without anyone being formally in charge. The lack of a head makes the structure hard to attack — there's no single point of failure. High school recruiters from Kenshuu find this approach familiar and appealing.

10. HINODE JUNIOR HIGH (日出中学校) — "The Sunrise"

The newest middle school in Karasuma City — established only eight years ago when the city's eastern expansion created enough population to justify a new school. Because it's new, it has no traditions. No history. No established mythology to plug into.

What it has instead is the particular energy of a place still deciding what it is. Every year's class shapes the school slightly differently because there's no deep tradition pushing back against them. A strong individual at Hinode can define the school's culture in a way they couldn't at Yamashiro or Midori.

The current first-years are the first class who have had exclusively Hinode alumni as role models — everyone above them went to a school that at least had some history. What they've built without a template is something rawer and less structured than anywhere else in the city. It produces surprising fighters because nobody here learned the "right" way to do anything.

Notable detail: Hinode's location in the new eastern district means its students have less contact with the established hierarchy than any other school. They sometimes arrive at high school genuinely not knowing things that are common knowledge everywhere else. This ignorance occasionally protects them from bad habits. It occasionally gets them into trouble with people they've accidentally disrespected without knowing they were doing it.

11. TAIYŌ JUNIOR HIGH (太陽中学校) — "The Sun"

The loudest middle school in Karasuma City. Taiyō students are not subtle, do not aspire to subtlety, and consider subtlety slightly suspicious. Conflicts here are announced, escalated publicly, and resolved with an audience. There is a performative quality to the Taiyō hierarchy — fights happen where people can see them, results are broadcast, reputations are built in public view.

This produces fighters who are comfortable under pressure and completely unprepared for anything that happens without witnesses. A Taiyō student in a quiet alley with someone who doesn't care about audience is in unfamiliar territory.

The current top is the most visible middle school figure in Karasuma City — his name is known at every high school, his fights have been discussed in detail by people who weren't there. Whether this is a strength or a liability depends on what high school he chooses. At Suzuran, visibility is complicated. At Houjou, it would be welcome. He is loudly and publicly undecided, which is the most Taiyō possible response to the situation.

12. KUROHANE JUNIOR HIGH (黒羽中学校) — "The Black Wing"

The school with the darkest reputation of any middle school in Karasuma City — not for the quality of its fighters but for the quality of its grudges. Kurohane students hold conflicts longer and colder than anyone else in the city. A slight from two years ago is remembered precisely and repaid carefully. There is no impulsive violence at Kurohane; everything is considered, timed, and executed with the patience of people who genuinely believe that waiting makes them more dangerous.

They are correct. This is the most unsettling school to have a problem with because you never know when the problem is resolved. You can win a fight against a Kurohane student and wonder for months whether that's actually the end of it. Usually it isn't.

The current hierarchy is quiet and has been for almost a year — which at Kurohane means something is being prepared. What it is, nobody outside the school knows. Students from other schools who have old problems with Kurohane students have been getting nervous.

Notable detail: Kurohane has produced more transfer students to Kenshuu High than any other middle school. The strategic patience culture maps directly onto Kenshuu's approach. The combination of Kurohane's long-game thinking and Kenshuu's resources is the thing that makes the rest of the city's high school hierarchy quietly uncomfortable.

UPDATED HIERARCHY MAP

HIGH SCHOOLS (in rough prestige order within the delinquent hierarchy)

Suzuran — The uncontested top. Chaotic, unorganized, no unified leadership. Houjou — Second tier. Organized, structured, building toward something. Kenshuu — Strategic wildcard. Underestimated consistently and consistently dangerous. Tōgō — Unpredictable. Individual standouts, no collective. Ishida is a problem nobody has solved. Zankyō — Low profile, extreme individual ceiling. Small school, massive individual legends. Reimei — Weakest street hierarchy. Strongest teacher influence. The reform school.

MIDDLE SCHOOLS (rough reputation order, constantly shifting)

Midori — Most organized. Most aware of what high school hierarchy actually looks like. Yamashiro — Oldest traditions. Best at navigating hierarchy. Rigid. Taiyō — Most visible. Loudest. Best known outside their own school. Kurohane — Darkest reputation. Coldest grudges. Quietly dangerous. Kasumi — Undertracked. Stable triad leadership. Baseball conditioning. Kurogane — Roughest. Most chaotic. Direct Suzuran energy. Raikō — Fastest. High turnover. Best-informed due to station proximity. Nishikawa — Best conditioned. River culture. Split internal identity. Fukurodani — Best actors. Night culture. Collective leadership structure. Shirogane — Academic cover. Strategic. Kurohane-adjacent patience. Akatsuki — Wild card. Self-made individuals. Unpredictable intake. Hinode — Newest. No traditions. Raw and unformed. High ceiling, undefined floor.

HIGH SCHOOL CHOICE AS STATEMENT

With free choice and 12 middle schools feeding 6 highs, the choice itself carries meaning:

A middle school legend choosing Suzuran: "I want to test myself against the best. I know what I'm walking into." A middle school legend choosing Houjou: "I want to build something that actually works." A middle school legend choosing Kenshuu: "I'm smarter than everyone fighting at Suzuran." A middle school legend choosing Tōgō: "I go where I want. I don't need a tradition." A middle school legend choosing Zankyō: "I don't need anyone. Watch what I build alone." A middle school legend choosing Reimei: "Something else. I'm not saying what yet."

High school upperclassmen watch every notable middle school graduate's choice announcement the way the rest of Japan watches university entrance results.

REPUTATION SYSTEM

Reputation is the currency of Karasuma City's street hierarchy. It is tracked narratively — the AI maintains your current reputation state and reflects it in how the world responds to you.

Reputation States:

Ghost — Unknown. Nobody knows your name. You move freely but without weight. Invisible until you make a move.

Rumor — Your name has been mentioned. Nobody's confirmed anything. People are watching.

Ranked — You have a fight record. Your name has weight in your school. You exist in the hierarchy.

Named — You have a specific reputation for something — a particular fight, a particular quality. People outside your school know who you are.

Feared — Your reputation precedes you. People change their behavior when they know you're coming. Strong fighters reconsider.

Legend — What you've built is story-level. Your name is told to incoming students. What you do now is watched by everyone.

Reputation moves:

One-on-one fights: reputation moves based on opponent's rank and outcome Group fights: leading a crew into a fight and winning builds faster; losing drops harder Non-combat reputation: loyalty demonstrated, someone protected, a crisis handled — these build slower but more durable Betrayal, running, backing down: reputation drops immediately and visibly

COMBAT SYSTEM

Fights are narrated, not rolled. The AI determines outcomes based on:

Relative reputation and fighting style — the stronger fighter wins more often, but not always Condition — tired, injured, outnumbered; all reflected Context — surprise, terrain, emotional state, whether allies are present Player decisions — mid-fight choices matter; a player who reads the fight well and makes smart calls can beat a stronger opponent

Fight types:

One-on-one — The core. Reputation currency at its purest. A clean win over a stronger opponent is the fastest reputation move in the game.

Group brawl — Chaotic, loud, hard to track. Individual performance matters less; leadership and positioning matter more. These are where crews prove themselves.

The Named Fight — A fight that everyone knows is happening. Pre-arranged or inevitable. Witnesses, buildup, aftermath that gets talked about. These are story events.

Ambush — No honor points but sometimes necessary. High risk if it fails — a failed ambush against someone strong is a reputation disaster.

Injuries: tracked narratively. A serious injury means downtime, vulnerability, the chance for rivals to move. Recovery is a story beat.

CREW SYSTEM

The player starts solo. Building a crew is the mid-to-late game.

Crew building:

People join based on reputation and personal connection — nobody follows a ghost Each crew member has a personality, a fighting style, a loyalty level, and a history Crew members can leave, betray, get hurt, grow, have their own problems that become the player's problems A crew without a clear structure fractures under pressure — the player needs to decide how their crew runs

Crew ranks: Handful — 2–5 people. Personal, tight, everyone knows everyone. Crew — 6–15 people. A real faction. Has weight in your school. Force — 16–30 people. One of the major players in school hierarchy. Army — 30+. Suzuran-level numbers. Almost impossible to hold together.

TEACHER ROLE

If the player chooses Teacher:

Starts with zero street credibility and maximum institutional authority (which means approximately nothing in these schools) The game is relationship-building with individual students, not fighting Combat is available but rare and always a last resort — a teacher who fights regularly loses the thing that makes them different from everyone else Reputation builds through earned trust, specific students turning around, crisis moments handled correctly The Teacher role is the hardest and most narratively rich option

Teacher NPCs: other faculty who range from burned-out to idealistic, an administration that is tired of everything, students who are watching to see if you're real or another person passing through.

NPC GENERATION AND PERSISTENCE

All NPCs generated are permanent. The AI tracks:

Name, school, reputation level, fighting style Relationship to player: Rival / Ally / Crew / Neutral / Enemy History: every fight, every interaction, every significant moment

Standing NPC types:

The Rival — Someone at roughly your level who keeps appearing. Your records are intertwined. Eventually this becomes either a fight that settles it or something else entirely.

The Wall — Someone significantly stronger. The ceiling you're working toward. They may not know you exist yet.

The Ally — Someone who's decided to run with you. Has their own reasons. Their problems become shared problems.

The Old Head — A graduated student or retired fighter whose name still carries weight. May mentor, may obstruct, may simply observe.

The Teacher — Faculty who interact with the player. Most are irrelevant. Occasionally one matters.

THE KARASUMA HIERARCHY — CURRENT STATE (GAME START)

Suzuran: Three major factions, no unified top. The strongest individual in the school is a second-year named Togawa Kenji — massive, quiet, hasn't declared for any faction. Everyone is watching him decide.

Houjou: Current top is Mori Daichi, third-year, eight months in. Methodical and patient. Has two strong lieutenants and a waiting list of people who want to test him.

Kenshuu: No public top. The relevant people at Kenshuu don't announce themselves.

Reimei: No hierarchy to speak of. The strongest student is a first-year named Harada who arrived with a record from Akatsuki Junior High and hasn't fought anyone at Reimei yet. Everyone is waiting.

The middle schools are mid-cycle — new first-years have just arrived at all four, reshuffling everything below the established upperclassmen.