Chapter 10

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In Yokohama, even if Nakahara saw money lying on the ground, he wouldn’t bother picking it up just to take it to the police station; doing so would be like having a screw loose.

Putting aside the fact that he wasn’t after a few coins, there were generally only two reasons for money to appear along his usual route:

1. A prank orchestrated by Osamu Dazai.

2. A disguised bomb, trap, or some other dangerous device pretending to be cash—nothing good, in any case.

Originally, Nakahara intended to pretend not to see the crumpled bill.

But just as he was about to walk around the single dollar bill, a sudden flash of insight reminded him of some preliminary research he had done before setting off.

Though information was scarce, the port mafia had done their best to provide background support, including insights about the social environment. The logistics department had even obtained several comprehensive journals and magazines for them.

Nakahara learned a few things from those sources.

For example, the chairman might disguise himself as a janitor to observe candidates at an interview; or a candidate who picked up a fallen broom was successfully hired; or someone who sharpened pencils on paper and carefully took away the shavings was accepted... and so on.

Nakahara had never seen anything like that himself.

Although it seemed odd and illogical, he reasoned that each place had its customs, and maybe this country used such unconventional evaluation methods.

In any case, as he was about to bypass that single dollar bill, unnecessary memories stirred awake.

Suddenly alert, Nakahara sensed the atmosphere around him shift abruptly.

An elderly sanitation worker riding a tricycle fixed him with a sharp gaze. Across the street, a rider clad entirely in blue looked over thoughtfully. Meanwhile, an old lady who had just dropped off her child at school wore a gloomy, inscrutable expression.

Nakahara grew nervous.

He recalled that upon entry, only a simple psychic ability test was recorded, and he was symbolically made to wear a psychic detector before being allowed in.

Could it be that the real test was here?

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he stiffly changed direction, approached the crumpled banknote, solemnly picked it up, smoothed it out, and slipped it into his pocket.

If he weren’t unsure who the examiner was, he might have even declared loudly and clearly his honest intent in returning lost money.

The effect of this action was immediate.

The keen-eyed sanitation worker withdrew his gaze, the rider sped away, and the cunning old lady sneered slightly. Within the time it took for a traffic light to change, they all vanished.

Nakahara sighed with relief.

Without hesitation, risking being late, he took the money to the local police station and handed it over.

When he noticed the officers looking at him as if he were a rare animal, Nakahara realized he had made a mistake—but it was too late.

He was already late.

By the time he arrived at school, the first class was already halfway through. The first two periods were math quizzes, and the class was busy writing their tests.

Nakahara entered through the back door unnoticed by most.

However, Du Zhengxuan was not at her seat.

Her test paper showed some writing, indicating she had been called out midway.

A few minutes later, Du Zhengxuan returned.

She nodded briefly at Nakahara, sat down, and quickly resumed writing.

Nakahara said nothing, sensing someone trailing behind her.

After a few seconds, the homeroom teacher appeared like a dark cloud from the back door.

The classroom was quiet, filled only with the soft scratching of pens, occasional page turns, and coughing.

The homeroom teacher observed from the back for a while, then left.

Nakahara felt the teacher’s gaze linger on him longer than on anyone else, making him tense.

At that moment, a small note was slipped to him. Opening it, he read:

“Now your most urgent task is to learn how to write ‘解’.”

Attached was a diagram showing the correct stroke order for the character, with horizontal and vertical strokes neatly aligned.

...Right, he hadn’t started the test yet.

Nakahara cursed silently in his heart.

After no break between classes, the two quizzes were collected, and the classroom suddenly came alive again.

“Finally done,” Long Wan sighed, tilting her head back and asking the person at the desk behind, “Why did the homeroom teacher call you over again? She’s called you at least three times this week.”

Du Zhengxuan answered vaguely, “She just wanted me to help look after the new student.”

Long Wan said, “And that’s why she called you three times?”

Du Zhengxuan replied, “...So what?”

The first time the homeroom teacher called her was on Nakahara’s first day transferring from the central region. She asked a couple of symbolic questions about his course selection plans, then expressed hope that the new student wouldn’t affect her studies.

The second time was when Osamu Dazai transferred in. The teacher’s small talk was much less, but she praised the two transfer students’ appearances and again hinted that Du Zhengxuan should focus on her studies.

The third time was just now; the teacher said she should help the new student more, or else their class would never win the “Flowing Red Flag” award.

Du Zhengxuan agreed wholeheartedly, “I think so too.”

These were things she couldn’t tell Nakahara; instead, she distilled it down to one simple sentence:

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“Nakahara-san, I’ll help you cram for the monthly exams. Stick close to me this week.”

Long Wan chimed in teasingly, “I’ve been sticking with you pretty closely. Why won’t you help me cram too?”

Du Zhengxuan said, “Well, you have been sticking pretty close. The problem is, besides eating, cricket teacher, and copying homework, we don’t do much else.”

“...Excuses, all excuses,” Long Wan pretended to feel abandoned, mock-hating, “Go teach your iPhone guy well.”

She grabbed her water cup, passed by, patted Du Zhengxuan on the shoulder, then left to get water.

Hearing that nickname, Du Zhengxuan glanced at Nakahara, who was still frowning while listening to the big brother’s translation, and thought, “Brother, you live a life full of jokes.”

Nakahara caught her gaze, frowned, and asked, “What’s a ‘cricket’?”

Du Zhengxuan replied, “...An insect, a kind of insect.”

“Heh.” Osamu Dazai, hearing her answer from across the aisle, chuckled softly, closed his book, and got up.

Du Zhengxuan explained, “He’s just getting anxious.”

Nakahara: “...Really?”

For the next week, Du Zhengxuan kept her word, basically taking him along for all extracurricular activities.

Overall, the affiliated high school had a fairly flexible schedule. At dismissal, all gates, classrooms, and dorms were open; students could freely choose to eat in the cafeteria or outside.

Because the high school was connected to a nearby university by a gate, some students even wandered into the university cafeteria.

With Du Zhengxuan’s trilingual introductions, Nakahara took two days to roughly familiarize himself with the environment.

Besides the external connection to the university, the school itself was divided into elementary, middle, and high school sections. The university even had a kindergarten.

Entering through the main gate daily might make the school’s layout seem simple, but once you circled to the back of the teaching buildings and found the first inner gate, you’d see that the entire campus was interconnected—gates linking gates, buildings connecting to buildings, and five playgrounds alone.

That evening during self-study, Nakahara entered through the front gate and wondered why no one was coming out.

Actually, the back gate was already so crowded it was overflowing.

Because multiple educational institutions overlapped, each with its own timetable and rules, many things required finesse.

Du Zhengxuan taught him several tricks, including fetching water from the middle school’s water room (since their classes ended later than the high school’s), sneaking through side doors during recess to buy snacks at the university, and even buying a metal timer to hide his phone inside to evade metal detectors... and so on.

The last trick especially amazed Nakahara.

After several days, he felt this place was completely different from Yokohama, not to mention Lutubochi Street.

Due to the ban on electronic devices, many places used paper money. Shopkeepers didn’t even care if students took change from the money box themselves—they didn’t even glance at it.

If someone lost a wallet or valuables, there was a good chance it would be found right where it was dropped or turned into lost and found.

This place seemed to have no lies; people trusted each other, like a utopia.

Yet the teachers specifically used metal detectors to check if students had phones...?

In Yokohama, such security measures were only used in certain places or for meetings with important people.

Du Zhengxuan misunderstood his surprise, shrugged, and said, “I only know this one way to hide phones... Why not ask your fellow townsman? Even the boarders don’t know how he gets his phone in.”

Long Wan nodded vigorously ahead, praising Osamu Dazai’s phone-hiding skills as ingenious, saying the boarders all hoped he’d write a book about it.

Nakahara: “...”

Whenever he thought he understood this place, reality struck him down again.

And so far, he had no clue about his mission.

For nearly a week, Nakahara spent every day with Du Zhengxuan.

She left home punctually at 6:15 a.m., returned to the classroom after lunch, rested and read during the break, bought food at random playgrounds in the afternoon, ran five laps, ate, then went back for evening self-study.

Around 10:10 p.m., she got home, spent half an hour washing up and preparing, and lights were out before 11 p.m.

This routine repeated daily, like a robot with a perfectly planned schedule.

After two days of following her, Nakahara had figured out almost everything. If kidnappers were staking out, they’d get caught for sure.

During breaks, except for fetching water and going to the bathroom, she basically sat at her desk tracing calligraphy copies.

Nakahara didn’t understand why she wrote characters exactly like printed text and was then introduced to a concept called “exam paper neatness score.”

“First, the writing must be clear, then beautiful. When graders see a clean exam paper, they’re more likely to give high marks,” Du Zhengxuan explained. “Though it’s not explicitly stated, it’s a kind of psychological tactic.”

Lowering her voice, she muttered to herself, “It’s like how I’m more enthusiastic to help you because you look good.”

...“Psychological tactic.”

Nakahara blushed as he analyzed the term, clearly out of place in everyday life. Could this be a breakthrough?

Not long after this thought arose, he discovered that everyone in class had the same calligraphy copybook; Du Zhengxuan just practiced more.

Thinking he was interested, she fetched another stack from the cabinet, saying:

“Want it? I have English ones too. Chinese is too early for you; just copy the materials for exams, but don’t miss any strokes.”

Nakahara: “Wan, no thanks.”

Du Zhengxuan: “...Good answer. Who taught you that? I knew there were bad apples among the crowd.”

Despite this, she praised his rapid progress in Chinese and warned him not to write those three words on the test.

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No matter how he looked at it, Du Zhengxuan was just an ordinary sixteen-year-old high school girl.

Enthusiastic, kind... a little picky about looks, but not in a way that annoyed people.

Nakahara found nothing unusual about her and gradually began to doubt whether the “Item X with absolute power” even existed on her.

If anything, her luck at finding money seemed to rub off on him—he found three coins in a week.

He tried mentioning this to Du Zhengxuan, suggesting he give her the money as thanks and observe her reaction.

She accepted the money.

At dinner, she brought two popsicles called “Little Trumpet Cloth Patches” and a grilled sausage.

She split the sausage and one popsicle with Nakahara, saying these two were delicious and he should try them.

After finishing the popsicle, Nakahara felt chilled inside and out.

Looking into Du Zhengxuan’s sincere eyes, he felt it was a conscience test.

Could all this be an act?

No way.

Long-term disguise required superb skill and experience, and there was no need to torture oneself in such an environment—

Nakahara thought as he took the nine exams in two days, feeling as if pen tips were shooting sparks.

It was the first time in his life he realized that writing for long periods could make hand muscles sore.

Previously, hand pain mostly came from punching people; this was the first time he’d used these particular muscles.

No wonder she had a small callus on her right middle finger.

A vague memory of Du Zhengxuan’s hands surfaced in his mind.

He started to seriously doubt his mission.

On a day off after the monthly exams, Nakahara tried contacting Yokohama to verify the mission’s authenticity and necessity.

However, until before returning to school, the boss never replied.

Osamu Dazai was even worse.

Nakahara wanted to synchronize information with him, but the latter neither responded online nor could be found offline.

At that time, to get close to the target, Dazai’s base was supposedly right above Du Zhengxuan’s dorm.

Nakahara patiently knocked on the door for a long time. If he weren’t in a foreign country and wearing a psychic detector, he might have broken in to check if Dazai was even there.

Finally, he got an answer.

Someone opened the door, annoyed by his persistent knocking, and told him the neighbors had moved out long ago and no one had lived there since. He was told to stop knocking.

Had Dazai never come here from the start?

With this question in mind, Nakahara planned to ask Dazai during evening self-study in four or five hours.

At this point, Nakahara was even a bit grateful for the school’s long hours. Usually, it could be days before knowing where Dazai was unless he appeared on his own.

But Nakahara’s prediction failed.

Dazai didn’t appear at school that night; he seemed to have taken leave.

Instead, the monthly exam scores were posted on time.

The rankings roughly matched Nakahara’s expectations.

He scored mainly in English and Physics; Math and Biology were average, with some points in Chemistry; the rest were barely passing.

He ranked in the lower-middle range, with Dazai about a dozen places ahead.

Dazai’s scores were similar—strong in sciences, weaker in humanities. His highest scores were in English and Biology... Dazai got a perfect score in Biology, which Nakahara couldn’t understand.

Although the Biology exam didn’t have many characters, it still contained a considerable number of Chinese characters.

Had Dazai taken it seriously?

Nakahara recalled Du Zhengxuan’s words before the exam. So that’s where Dazai’s “privileges” came from.

At Dazai’s rank, Nakahara still didn’t see Du Zhengxuan’s name.

He searched upwards from the bottom.

Du Zhengxuan’s name was at the very top.

First in class, first in grade.

She didn’t crowd around to check scores; she came to self-study punctually today as usual.

When Nakahara told her, she was quite pleased:

“Huh? That means I improved. Last time I was seventh in the grade... Why the face? Is it so unbelievable I got first? Then what else do I have to sit in this spot for?”

...What spot?

Nakahara couldn’t understand what she meant.

“The last row, near the door,” Du Zhengxuan said. “...I fought tooth and nail just to get that seat. Brother, do you know how valuable that spot is?”