School was the same as ever the next day. The regular classes were easy as hell, but I paid attention anyway. I was not about to fall behind. I suffered through the Japanese class even though I wasn’t learning a damn thing. I was essentially a placeholder in my seat next to the rich blond kid from 3B. After one attempt to engage me in conversation, he was smart enough not to try again.

Back in our regular classroom I did my best to ignore Nakatomi, even though he kept up his irritating behaviors at our shared desk. He dreamed up new ones, too. For instance, he decided kicking the legs of my chair would be fun. At random intervals. Startled the hell out of me the first time. After that I set my teeth and pretended not to notice.

Surprisingly, I spent a fair amount of brain power on my schoolwork—that damned honor roll still got to me. And unsurprisingly, I avoided connecting with anyone else in the class.

The day went by in a monotonous blur. All too soon it was time for the dreaded tutoring session. The other students filed out of the room, chattering as they changed into their street shoes, eager to get out of the building. As was I.

Too bad.

I thought we’d have the run of 3B after school, but apparently it was used by the boy scouts or some equally socially redeeming organization we’d learned about in ethics class. Ohara walked me and Nakatomi down the hall to what surely must have been the janitor’s closet at some point.

A shelf full of leftover school supplies. One narrow window, mostly obscured by a layer of dust. A discarded chalkboard leaned against the wall, no doubt removed from one of the classrooms when they upgraded to whiteboards. There was barely enough room for two desks, but at least they were blessedly separate from one another so I’d have a little more personal space. That was the only selling point.

Ohara flicked the lights on, but they seemed not to have any effect on the drab little room. “Tutoring will continue until you are current with the class. Please check in with me before you leave to update me on your progress.”

And then she left me with Nakatomi while she went to have a smoke, or carried on a tawdry affair with the math teacher in the staff lounge, or graded crap in her office. Whatever. All that mattered was that she got to leave, and I was stuck with Nakatomi for the next few hours.

I couldn’t believe I had to spend more time in close quarters with him. Not that I relished the thought of working with any of my other classmates, but he was bottom of the list. No one else purposely antagonized me—it just came naturally to them—but I got the feeling that Nakatomi really worked hard at it, figuring out new ways to get to me.

“I don’t want to be here either.” Those were among the first words Nakatomi had spoken directly to me in all the time we had been in school together.

“What makes you think I’m unhappy with our situation?” I could taste the sarcasm dripping from my voice.

Nakatomi said nothing, but handed me a stack of notecards. He jabbed a finger at my textbook.

“Copy all the hiragana. One per card.”

“Yeah? What are you going to do while I’m at my little art project?”

Nakatomi shrugged "Whatever the hell I want. Hiragana, gaijin.”

I snorted. I knew calling me gaijin was supposed to be some big insult, but I didn’t much care what he called me. “Sure thing, Jun.”

The way he stiffened, I knew he did care what I called him. Shortened first name, no honorific. Yeah, that really got to him.

Jun took out a manga and thumbed through it while I was at my task, which for some reason really pissed me off. Of course, whatever he did would likely have pissed me off.

It took me a ridiculously long time to copy all forty-six characters. It was painstaking work. Ka, Ki, Ku, Ke, Ko. Sa, Shi, Su, Se… So. Damn. Boring. It also made my hand hurt like hell for some reason. I wasn’t used to the contortions required for this foreign script. It was almost as bad as learning new guitar chords.

When I was finally finished, Jun looked through my cards. “You used the wrong stroke order here. Here too.” He tore up the flashcards one by one until only half of them remained.

“What the hell? First of all—stroke order matters? Secondly, how could you tell?”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s easy. At a glance. Redo these. And pay attention to the arrows this time, gaijin.”

I had worked hard on those poorly done cards. I was not looking forward to redoing at least twenty of them. Japanese was apparently out to kill me, or at the very least maim me. Writing it hurt my hand. Speaking it hurt my mouth. And listening to it—at least if I was trying to make sense of it—hurt my brain.

“Why are you here?” I asked strictly as a diversionary tactic.

“Ohara. And my father.” Jun squinted at me. “I’m in your same boat.”

“No. I mean why are you at this school?”

Jun’s expression didn’t change. “Do you feel I don’t belong?”

I snorted. “I know you don’t belong. But I don’t know why. I’m vaguely curious as to how you wound up with us instead of over on the Japanese campus at least.”

I didn’t believe any of the rumors I’d heard so far—most of which included breaking one or more laws—but there must have been some reason for his outcast status. Some reason he had left his last school partway through his senior year. Some reason he belonged with us more than he did with them.

Jun rolled a piece of paper into a very narrow cylinder, which he then wound into a coiled spring. “Isn’t there some American idiom about the pot calling the pan black?”

“Kettle.”

“Whatever.” He started rolling another piece of paper.

I laughed. “Do you feel I don’t belong here? Well, I fit in as well here as I did back home.”

Jun threw both paper coils across the room, where they bounced off the blackboard and landed beside the recycling bin. “And what’s your excuse for that?”

“I don’t give a shit.”

Jun laughed without humor. “Maybe that’s my excuse too.”

Maybe. But something in his tone made me think there was a lot more to his story. That I had no interest in whatsoever.