Yui slid open the classroom door and stepped inside.

“Good mor—”

She stopped.

Written across the blackboard in enormous, jubilant letters was:

TODAY IS YUI’S SAFE DAY!!

Someone had added flowers around it. Someone else had drawn a smiling sun. In the corner, a neat little chart claimed to show the calculations behind the announcement.

Yui’s schoolbag slipped halfway down her shoulder.

“Why is that the first thing I see in the morning?!” she cried, pointing at the board. “And why does it look like a festival notice?! Erase it! Right now!”

“But the calculation is accurate,” one boy said proudly.

“That is not the problem!”

While every eye was fixed on her furious lecture, another classmate crept up behind her and briskly flipped the hem of her skirt.

“Good morning, Yui.”

Yui slapped both hands over her skirt and spun around, her face blazing red.

“Don’t lift my skirt while greeting me like it’s a perfectly normal morning ritual!”

“It’s important to start the day with proper communication.”

“What part of that was communication?! And the rest of you, stop nodding like he made a good point!”

A wave of solemn agreement passed through the classroom anyway.

Yui drew a long breath, straightened her uniform, and marched toward the blackboard. She seized the eraser and scrubbed at the giant announcement with enough force to send chalk dust flying.

“Honestly, this class would collapse into complete lawlessness if I weren’t here.”

Behind her, a boy quietly wrote WELCOME, YUI! beneath the remaining decorations.

Yui glanced over her shoulder.

“And don’t think changing the message makes the flowers acceptable!”

“Should we remove the sun too?”

“Remove the entire board!”

The morning sun slanted across Kasumigaoka Academy’s athletic field in long, lazy stripes. Third period PE—the last block before lunch—and Class 3-2 was already lined up in neat rows of four across the grass. Twenty-eight boys and one girl.

The girl, naturally, had been guided to the back row.

“Alright, listen up!” Coach Yamashita blew his whistle once—short, perfunctory—and clapped his clipboard against his thigh. “Stretching routine, five minutes. After that, I’ll split you into teams for a mini soccer tournament. Anyone who doesn’t want to play can sit on the bench and watch. Hinata, that includes you—no pressure.”

“Yes, sir,” Yui called from the back, her ponytail bobbing with a quick nod.

How considerate, she thought. A normal, reasonable PE class for once.

Then she felt a hand settle on her lower back.

“Yui-chan, your posture’s crooked.” Sawamura, standing directly behind her in the next row, spoke just loudly enough for the three boys flanking him to hear. His palm pressed flat against the thin cotton of her PE shirt, fingers splayed wide, thumb tracing the dip of her spine. “Gotta keep your back straight during stretches.”

“I—my posture is fine, thank you very much!” She swatted backward, but he’d already withdrawn his hand, both arms raised overhead in a textbook side stretch as though nothing had happened.

Classic.

Coach Yamashita faced front, leading the count. “One, two, three, four—”

The rows followed in unison. Arms up, arms out, bend left, bend right. Standard. Innocent. Except in the back row, the choreography had a private variation.

Bend left: Kuroda, on Yui’s right, let his elbow graze her chest on the way down—a fleeting pressure against the side of her breast through her sports bra. Light enough to be accidental. Deliberate enough that the boy on her left, Takase, immediately mirrored it on the return bend.

“You two—” Yui hissed through her teeth, face already warming. “Arms go outward, not inward—”

“Sorry, sorry. Tight space back here.” Kuroda didn’t look sorry. He looked like a man who’d practiced the angle.

“Five, six, seven, eight! Good! Legs apart, hamstring stretch!”

Yui spread her feet shoulder-width and reached for her toes. Behind her, Sawamura exhaled something that sounded almost reverent. She didn’t need to ask what he was looking at—her PE shorts rode up the instant she bent forward, cotton pulling taut across the curve of her hips, the hem creeping to the crease where thigh met buttock.

In front of her, Mori and Hayashi had drifted $0closer together, their broad backs forming a seamless wall between Yui’s row and Coach Yamashita’s line of sight. Two more boys on each flank did the same—not obviously, just a half-step inward, shoulders angled just so. The formation looked unremarkable from the front. From above, it would’ve resembled a petal closing around its center.

They’d done this before. Many times.

“Alright!” Coach Yamashita blew the whistle again. “Partner stretches! Pair up, one person sits, the other pushes from behind. Two minutes each, then switch!”

Yui didn’t get to choose her partner.

Takase was already behind her, both hands on her shoulders, easing her down to a seated position on the grass. “I’ve got you, Yui-chan.”

“…I didn’t ask for a volunteer.”

“Leg out straight, lean forward.” His voice was quiet, close to her ear. Coach was twenty meters away, demonstrating the stretch with a student from the front row, his back to them entirely.

Yui extended both legs and reached for her toes. Takase’s hands moved from her shoulders to her back—then lower. His palms slid down her sides, fingertips dipping beneath the hem of her PE shirt, grazing bare skin just above the waistband of her shorts.

“Takase—your hands are under my shirt—”

“Pushing your lower back. For the stretch.”

“That is not where my lower back is!”

His thumbs traced slow circles against her bare waist, pressing just hard enough to feel the warmth of his skin. Meanwhile, Kuroda had knelt beside her—casually, as if tying his shoe—and his hand found her knee, sliding upward along her inner thigh with the kind of unhurried confidence that suggested this, too, was rehearsed.

“H-hey—” Her voice cracked half a register higher. She pressed her thighs together on instinct, trapping his fingers between them, which only made the contact more deliberate, his knuckles nestled against soft skin. “Kuroda, that is so far from stretching—”

“Hamstrings, Yui-chan. Coach said hamstrings.”

“Your hand is nowhere near my hamstring!”

From somewhere to her left, she heard Sawamura’s casual murmur directed at one of the perimeter boys. “Status?” A response drifted back: “Yamashita-sensei’s setting up the goals. Full blind spot for another three minutes.”

Three minutes. They had it timed.

Takase’s hands climbed higher beneath her shirt, fingers spreading across her ribcage, the heel of his palm nudging the underside of her sports bra. Kuroda’s hand had stopped pretending to be anywhere near a hamstring; his fingertips traced the edge of her shorts’ leg opening, brushing the crease of her thigh where fabric met skin.

Yui bit her lip. Her face was burning. Her body, traitorously, was not pulling away—her back had actually arched into Takase’s touch, a reflex she’d never admit to.

“—you guys are the worst,” she whispered, the retort coming out breathless instead of sharp.

“Switch! Other partner’s turn!” Coach Yamashita’s whistle rang across the field, distant and oblivious.

The hands withdrew. Kuroda stood, dusting off his knee. Takase patted her back—over the shirt this time—with an easy smile. As if nothing had happened. As if this were any Tuesday.

(It was, in fact, a Tuesday.)

As the class reshuffled for the switch, Sawamura leaned down beside Yui’s ear.

“By the way,” he said, voice low and warm, almost fond, “we set something up in the equipment shed. For after the soccer match. You know—while you’re watching from the bench.”

The words landed in her stomach like a stone wrapped in silk.

Yui turned to look at him. His expression was perfectly pleasant. Behind him, the perimeter boys were already dispersing back into normal formation, the human screen dissolving as naturally as it had formed.

Coach Yamashita jogged past the back row, whistle swinging. “Nice stretching, everyone! Hinata, you’re looking flexible today—keep it up!”

“…Thank you, Coach,” she managed.

She waited until he was out of earshot.

Then:

“‘Set something up’—?! What does that even mean, ‘set something up’?! What is in the equipment shed that requires preparation?!” Her voice climbed with each word, ponytail whipping as she spun on Sawamura. “And don’t say ‘extra mats’ with that face! I know what you use extra mats for! I’ve seen the formation! I’ve been on the mats! And—”

She caught herself. Took a breath.

“…how many of you are playing in the soccer match, and how many are conveniently sitting out?”

Sawamura held up seven fingers.

Yui closed her eyes.

“…I’m bringing my own water bottle this time. And there will be a time limit.”

Hallway. Two minutes before homeroom.

Yui stands in front of the Class 3-2 door with the composed, weary posture of a girl who has done this eighty-seven mornings in a row. One deep breath. Two. She adjusts the strap of her bag. She smooths her skirt down past her knees — a gesture that hasn't accomplished anything in months but which she performs anyway, out of principle.

"...Okay. Doors open in three, two—"

She slides the door open.

Twenty-seven male voices detonate in perfect unison:

"GOOD MORNING, YUI-CHAAAAN!!"

Confetti flutters down from a ceiling-mounted rig that absolutely was not there yesterday. A homemade banner reading WELCOME BACK YUI — DAY 87 unrolls from the top of the blackboard with the ceremony of a temple scroll. Tanaka is on top of his desk again. Nobody knows why. Tanaka has never explained.

And across the blackboard, in three tidy chalked columns, laid out with the professional discipline of a Nakayama racecourse morning line —

► YUI-CHAN PANTIES: TODAY'S ODDS ◄

• WHITE COTTON ————— 2.1x
• STRIPES ——————————— 3.8x
• PINK LACE ————————— 5.5x
• BLACK (SUNDAY LAUNDRY) — 12.0x
• COMMANDO ———————— 88.0x

Yen amounts scrawled beside each student's name. Sato — class representative, keeper of the minutes, appointed guardian of what remains of order in Room 3-2 — is already up front with his clipboard, adjusting the odds board with a chalk-nub held between two fingers like a maestro's baton.

Yui's shoulders drop half an inch. Her eye twitches. She does not scream. Screaming, at this point, would be a rookie mistake.

"...You're doing it again?"

Her voice comes out flat, exhausted, almost conversational — the tone of a woman asking her roommates why the dishes are, once more, in the sink.

"We agreed on Monday. You agreed. Sato-kun, I watched you write it in the minutes yourself. 'The class will suspend all speculative markets pertaining to Hinata-san's undergarments effective immediately.' I read it. Out loud. To all of you."

"Ah." Sato tilts his clipboard toward her, respectful. "The suspension was rescinded during a subsequent extraordinary session, Hinata-san. Quorum was met. Minutes on request."

"WHEN WAS THE EXTRAORDINARY SESSION—"

"Tuesday. 6:42 AM. You had not yet arrived."

"YOU'RE ROUTING AROUND ME PROCEDURALLY?!"

She takes one step into the room — she has to, homeroom starts in ninety seconds — and her eyes catch on the bottom line of the odds board. COMMANDO — 88.0x. A single name is written beside it in tidy block script. She stares at it. Her fingers curl around her bag strap.

"...Okay. Okay, one question. One."

She points, arm rigid, at the line.

"The guy who bet on commando — what's your deal?! Who wakes up in the morning and says, today feels like an eighty-eight-to-one payout day?! What is your reasoning?! What is the thesis?!"

The boy in question — Kobayashi, back row, glasses fogging — raises his hand with the solemn dignity of a shareholder at an AGM.

"Hinata-san. With respect. There is historical precedent. You have gone commando before."

"HUH—?!"

"April fourteenth. Confirmed by three independent observers. It's in the compendium."

"THAT WAS BECAUSE—"

Yui's voice climbs an entire octave. Her ponytail whips as she rounds on the whole room, cheeks flooding to a color somewhere between peony and warning-siren.

"THAT WAS BECAUSE YOU GUYS STRIPPED THEM OFF ME ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL!! You cornered me at the crosswalk! Yamada-kun grabbed one side, Nakamura-kun grabbed the other, and you all yelled 'ORIGAMI!' like that made it a tradition! That doesn't count as a lifestyle choice, that counts as EVIDENCE TAMPERING WITH THE UNDERGARMENT MARKET!!"

"Duly noted." Sato is writing. "We'll flag the April fourteenth data point as market-influenced. Kobayashi's odds will be recalculated post-close."

"I DON'T WANT THE ODDS RECALCULATED, I WANT THE MARKET DISSOLVED—!"

The bell for homeroom rings. It does not save her. It never does.

Because now — because the market close is imminent and settlement demands verification — the front row is standing up. Slowly. With the coordinated, respectful energy of pallbearers approaching a casket. Twenty-something pairs of eyes drift, as one organism, downward to the hem of her skirt.

Yui's stomach drops.

"...Wait."

Another step forward. Kobayashi is producing a small notebook. Someone in the back has a phone out already — "for the archives, Hinata-san, purely for the archives" — and Tanaka, still inexplicably on his desk, is now crouching to improve his sightline.

"Wait wait wait — STOP RIGHT THERE. I know that look. I know exactly what that look means. You don't need to check. I'll tell you. Okay?! I'll just — I'll just say it, so nobody has to—"

She backs one step against the doorframe. Both hands slam down against her thighs, palms flat, pinning the pleats of her skirt against her legs like a bracket clamp.

"IT'S STRIPES! Today! Stripes! Blue and white! Standard cotton! Payout is three-point-eight, congratulations to whoever bet on that one, market's closed, we're all going to our seats now—!"

Nobody moves. Or rather — they all move. Forward. Half a step. In unison.

"Hinata-san." Sato's voice is grave. "Self-reported market data is inadmissible under Section Four."

"SECTION FOUR IS FAKE!! You wrote Section Four! Last Wednesday! I watched you write it!"

"Verification protocol requires visual confirmation from at least two credentialed—"

"I SAID I'D TELL YOU!! I already TOLD you! What part of voluntary disclosure are we not — HEY! HEY, THAT'S A HAND, WHOSE HAND IS THAT—"

A hand has appeared near the hem of her skirt. She cannot identify the owner. Neither can anyone else, apparently, because when she slaps it away it retracts into the crowd with the plausible deniability of a magic trick.

"DON'T LIFT MY SKIRT! I ALREADY TOLD YOU THE ANSWER! IT'S RIGHT THERE ON THE BOARD! WRITE IT DOWN, SATO-KUN, WRITE IT DOWN AND CLOSE THE MARKET, THAT'S HOW THIS WORKS—!"

Another hand. She catches this one by the wrist. It belongs, somehow, to a boy standing four meters away. The physics do not work. The physics have not worked in this classroom since April.

"LAST WEEK I TOLD YOU IT WAS PINK LACE AND YOU STILL CHECKED! WHY DID YOU CHECK?! WHY DID I EVEN BOTHER TELLING YOU?! DO WORDS HAVE MEANING IN THIS ROOM?!"

"They do, Hinata-san. We simply require corroborating—"

"CORROBORATING NOTHING!!"

She is now sitting on the floor with her back to the doorframe, both hands white-knuckled around the hem of her skirt, pressing it down against the tops of her thighs with the grim, professional focus of a woman defending a castle gate. Her ponytail is askew. Her cheeks are burning. Her knees are drawn up and locked together. From this position she can, in theory, hold out until second period.

The class has assembled in a respectful semicircle around her. Somebody has brought her a cup of tea.

She stares up at them, chest heaving, one eye $0wet at the corner from the pure effort of being the only person in this school with a functioning nervous system.

"...I hate," she pants, "that you all made me sit down to protect my own dignity. On the floor. In front of the doorway. Where anyone walking past can see."

"We can bring you a cushion, Hinata-san."

"I DON'T WANT A CUSHION—"

She catches herself. Closes her eyes. Inhales through her nose for a slow, disciplined four-count. Exhales.

Somewhere behind the semicircle, the market board is being updated. STRIPES payout, ratified by extended visual siege rather than voluntary disclosure, per Section Four. Sato is writing it into the minutes with his tongue between his teeth in concentration.

Yui opens her eyes. Looks at the ceiling. Looks at the confetti still drifting down from the rig that was not there yesterday. Looks at Tanaka, still on the desk.

"...Geez. I guess it really can't be helped."

She stands up, brushes off her skirt, tightens her ponytail with two sharp tugs, and walks to her seat.

The cheer that goes up rattles the windows.