Chapter 14

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Upon hearing this, Nakahara Chuuya felt something inside him collapse.

Du Zhengxuan noticed.

When people are having a run of bad luck, they become far more sensitive to the emotions of those around them.

After a brief pause, she said to Nakahara with complete sincerity, “Why don’t you give it some serious thought? If you really can’t adapt to the pace here, you could apply to transfer. Even if you don’t return to your home country, it might be better to move to a province or city where the competition isn’t quite so fierce.”

For now, it was only a single rescheduled day off. The Golden Week holiday and make-up classes during the winter and summer vacations were still waiting ahead. By the time they reached their final year of high school, they would practically be living at school, running even to fetch water or grab a meal.

When Nakahara had first come here, it had been solely to approach Du Zhengxuan. He had paid little attention to anything unrelated to the mission.

But now he genuinely wanted to know. “...Why is it like this?”

“Competition, obviously,” Du Zhengxuan said. “Everyone wants to get into a good university and find a good job, but there are only so many places available in the country. And nobody wants to go abroad, so everyone piles into the same competition here. Naturally, it just gets more and more insane.”

Nakahara had a vague idea of the answer, but after hesitating, he still asked, “Nobody wants to go abroad?”

“Because things overseas are a complete mess, with everyone scheming against everyone else.” Du Zhengxuan launched straight into it. “One day they’re blowing up some enormous hole, and the next they’re arranging a fight over a tiny island. Looking across the storms of the world, the scenery is uniquely beautiful here—uh... I don’t mean that in a discriminatory way.”

Only after saying it did she realize that perhaps she had gone too far. She hurriedly dragged the conversation back. “The affiliated school is still relatively lenient right now. Once they divide you into subject tracks in a few months, things will get even more troublesome. If you’re thinking of transferring, you should decide sooner rather than later.”

Du Zhengxuan meant every word.

She knew very well that the school’s pace of study had not yet been pushed to its absolute limit.

Du Zhengxuan had not attended middle school here. She had gone to a boarding international school in another region.

This “international” school, however, was not the sort that prepared students for studying abroad. Rather, its intensity and educational pace were modeled after life in a foreign country where everything was brutal and chaotic, training students to develop the habit of “being in the middle of studying the moment they opened their eyes,” until they could out-compete everyone else.

There had been forty-seven students like the class monitor in Du Zhengxuan’s middle-school class.

Because the entire class consisted of only forty-eight students.

The schedule there was even more extreme than at the affiliated school: five in the morning until eleven at night, with two full laps around the track every day just for physical exercise.

After three years, Du Zhengxuan truly could not endure it any longer. She felt as if she were about to study herself to death, so she resolutely took the local entrance examination and returned home.

At the time, she remembered the affiliated school as starting classes at seven.

Only after enrolling did she learn that the principal had returned the previous year from an inspection visit to another high school famous throughout the country for its university admission rate. With one grand wave of his hand, he had moved the high school division’s start time forward to six-thirty.

Even now, recalling that part left Du Zhengxuan feeling short of breath.

“When I was in elementary school, the high school division of the affiliated school didn’t require students to arrive until seven-thirty. By the time I was in middle school, they had already moved it half an hour earlier. When the schedule was changed last year, guess what the principal said?”

“...”

Under the girl’s emotionally charged gaze, Nakahara froze for a moment. His ability to read the atmosphere, a skill possessed by all normal people, told him that this was when he ought to respond.

So he answered stiffly, “...What did he say?”

Du Zhengxuan had been waiting for precisely that question. She immediately replied, “The principal said, ‘Just look around—what high school still lets students arrive after seven?’ I really couldn’t take it anymore!”

That was also why Du Zhengxuan did not dare use the Book to alter the school’s schedule.

She complained about it, of course, but she knew that quite a few middle schools really did operate according to the principal’s standards.

If she changed the start time at her own school, would the other schools in the city change theirs as well? And if the entire city changed, what about the neighboring cities?

Even if she took the most extreme approach and brought about a sweeping reduction in the burden placed on students, who could say whether such a change might ripple into the economy, culture, and countless other fields?

Naturally, she might simply have been overthinking things. But she would rather hesitate and refrain from writing than create some enormous disaster and then scramble desperately to repair it... assuming it could even be repaired.

Students tended to be especially attentive when it came to anything related to their studies, and Du Zhengxuan’s advice to Nakahara was genuinely heartfelt.

Her expression was serious as she spoke, yet somehow she seemed a little closer to him than when she was joking around.

Nakahara hesitated, then abandoned the idea of probing her one more time.

This time, he listened carefully as Du Zhengxuan analyzed the situation for the rest of the semester. Her suggestions were highly practical. If he truly were an international student who had transferred here and could not adapt to the pace, they probably would have been very helpful.

He listened to the end with complicated feelings, then solemnly promised that he would consider everything carefully.

After he made his position clear, Du Zhengxuan stared blankly for a moment before smiling again and nodding at him.

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“Yes. But don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Bye-bye.”

The door opposite him closed. Nakahara stared at the upside-down red character pasted to it and inexplicably felt that Du Zhengxuan’s smile this time had been different from all the others.

Was it because talking about the past together had made her feel a little closer to him?

Being able to draw nearer to the target of his mission should have been an opportunity beyond his wildest hopes. Yet Nakahara discovered that he was not nearly as happy about it as he had imagined.

...She had been talking about middle school, which meant three years ago, right?

At that time, he had still been living in the Slab Quay. The Sheep had already made a name for itself, and he had spent his days fighting his way across the district.

Then, at fifteen—the same age she had been when she passed the entrance examination and returned here the previous year—he had become a member of the Port Mafia.

Nakahara silently aligned the timeline, reviewing the paths the two of them had taken in the past. He could not shake the feeling that it was all somehow unbelievable.

In any case, he had made up his mind not to delay any longer.

After Du Zhengxuan had been home for a while, Nakahara went out again and quietly made his way upstairs.

This time, he did not knock. After confirming that Dazai Osamu still had not returned, he pressed his palm against the door. Carefully activating his ability, he located the latch and used gravity to flick it upward, successfully opening the door and slipping inside.

Since the other party had no intention of sharing information, he would simply investigate on his own.

The room that nominally belonged to Dazai was empty.

Empty in the literal sense of the word. It contained not even the most basic furniture, only the barest of interior finishing.

Whitewashed walls stood on every side. On an April night, standing inside a house like this was enough to make anyone’s skin crawl.

Nakahara cursed under his breath, then switched on his flashlight and searched each room with care. In the end, he did find something.

There were marks on the bedroom floor where furniture had once stood. In other words, Dazai had stayed here at some point, though there was no way to know for how long.

Nakahara inspected the entire apartment. Only after confirming that there was nothing else to discover did he erase his footprints, leave the way he had come, and close the door behind him.

It was already deep into the night. For some reason, he felt like a thief who had been caught trespassing. He moved as quietly as possible, and when he went downstairs, he did not even trigger the motion-activated lights.

He had intended to slip quietly back home, but just after turning the corner, he saw someone standing outside Du Zhengxuan’s door.

The other person was startled by him as well and took a step backward. Her heel struck the floor with a sharp crack, the lights in the corridor suddenly came on, and the two of them found themselves face-to-face without warning.

The woman standing outside Du Zhengxuan’s home was middle-aged. Both her hairstyle and her clothing gave an impression of brisk efficiency; she was probably a professional working woman.

The screen of the phone in her hand was still lit. She had likely been leaning against the door while looking at something.

At that moment, however, her eyes were fixed on Nakahara, and a trace of wariness showed in the brows and eyes that somewhat resembled Du Zhengxuan’s... No, logically, should that be phrased as Du Zhengxuan resembling her?

Nakahara guessed the woman’s identity almost at once. To ease the tense atmosphere, he nodded first, then spoke before she could.

“Hello. I moved into the apartment across the hall a little while ago.”

“Hello.”

The woman nodded as well. Her expression relaxed slightly, but she continued watching him until Nakahara took out his key and opened his door. Only then did she make a little more conversation with him.

Nakahara’s guess had been correct. She was Du Zhengxuan’s mother, back for the Qingming Festival to pay respects to her ancestors.

After learning that Nakahara was her daughter’s classmate, Mrs. Du’s last trace of suspicion disappeared. She even invited him to visit their home whenever he had time.

“I’m usually busy with work, and you children have plenty of pressure from school as it is. Please look after one another, you and Xuanxuan. Auntie will bring you some snacks the next time I come back.”

Mrs. Du smiled as she spoke.

At first glance, she appeared only a few years older than Ozaki Kouyou. But when she smiled, the fine lines at the corners of her eyes revealed that she was no longer young.

There was a calmness in her tone and smile, a peace settled there by the passage of time—a kind of peace almost impossible to find in Yokohama.

Nakahara’s thoughts churned.

He spoke with Mrs. Du for a few moments, a beat behind the conversation, and then Du Zhengxuan’s father came upstairs carrying a set of keys.

“I found the keys in the car. They’d fallen into the gap in front of your seat—”

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The man’s words stopped abruptly when he saw Nakahara. Mrs. Du introduced him.

“This is the young man who moved in across from us a little while ago. He’s in the same class as Xuanxuan.”

Nakahara followed suit and greeted him. Mr. Du nodded and said hello as well, then invited him to visit whenever he had time before closing the door.

Though he remained polite and courteous, Nakahara simply felt that Du Zhengxuan’s father was somewhat colder toward him than her mother had been.

Why was that?

He thought about it for a while without finding an answer, so he set the question aside for the moment.

...

The holiday began the next day. Du Zhengxuan did not wake until after ten, by which time her parents had already finished breakfast.

Their return home to pay respects to their ancestors had been arranged in advance. Du Zhengxuan casually asked what time they had arrived the previous night.

“Somewhere around one or two in the morning. I don’t remember exactly,” Mrs. Du said. “But we ran into the boy from across the hall.”

Du Zhengxuan: “...Is he sleepwalking?”

Mrs. Du laughed. “Of course not. He came down from upstairs. I don’t know what he had been doing, but he seems like a nice boy, and he’s good-looking, too.”

“What’s so good about him?” Mr. Du curled his lip. “His hair is dyed that color. You can tell at a glance that he’s no good.”

“Oh, please. You never dyed your hair?” Mrs. Du immediately shot back sharply. “Your hair was a different color every day in college. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”

“...That was college! He’s still in high school!”

Du Zhengxuan listened with relish as her parents argued over breakfast. Only after she had finished eating did she wipe her mouth and announce, “His hair color is natural.”

“...”

“...”

Her parents stopped discussing Nakahara and quickly turned to criticizing her habit of watching any spectacle she could find, or creating one when none was available. They wondered aloud which of them she had inherited it from.

Du Zhengxuan was thoroughly entertained.

Her parents were not particularly talkative when they were out and about, but whenever they were together, they traded one remark after another like performers in a comedy routine.

After Du Zhengxuan finished breakfast as well, the family went to the cemetery to sweep the graves.

While her parents arranged the offerings inside, Du Zhengxuan went alone to the roadside intersection outside. She placed the paper offerings her parents had asked her to bring, along with the ones she had bought herself, into the brazier and began burning them.

There was not much to burn, so Du Zhengxuan simply kept watch, intending to return as soon as it was over.

Just as the flames began to rise, she suddenly heard a voice ask, “What are you doing?”

Du Zhengxuan: “...”

The cemetery was in a remote location, almost on the outskirts. Few cars passed along the road, and there was not a single person in sight.

Though it was broad daylight, Du Zhengxuan stubbornly remained silent.

“What are you doing?” the voice asked again. Footsteps sounded at the same time.

Only when she heard the footsteps did Du Zhengxuan finally relax. She turned around and discovered that it was her classmate Dazai, with whom she had barely interacted before.

He was still wearing a black suit, with a long black overcoat draped over it. As he tilted his head at Du Zhengxuan, he repeated himself for the third time.

“What are you doing?”

Du Zhengxuan said, “...Are you a broken record?”

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