Henry rushed to Gimei as soon as the bell rang, not wanting to lose her for the umpteenth time.

"I'm here! Ready to go?"

Gimei answered by putting both of her hands on Henry's mouth.

"Shh! Don't you remember what the PI in PIAD stands for? Probably Illegal! You need to be more careful or else we'll be in trouble."

Henry thought that Gimei putting her hands on his face in the middle of the classroom would make them stand out a lot more, but he decided to nod and hope she'd put them away.

"We can't be seen going there. Let's pretend we're going home, then we will enter from the tunnel that we used to leave yesterday." Gimei whispered, keeping her hands on Henry’s mouth.

Fearing she forgot, Henry pointed at them. Noticing she forgot, she moved her hands.

"I thought the hole in the schoolyard was the entrance." Henry whispered back.

Rohou, who was gathering his things in the seat next to them, was concerned by the things he heard. But he remembered that the little time he had spent with those two people, he spent suffering, and so he decided to ignore them and leave.

"I used it as the entrance because it was more fun but," Gimei continued, "Seeing you fall into it yesterday made me realize that we could use that to recruit new members. We should make more."

"You want to lay pitfall traps that lead to the club around the school to coerce the poor students that fall in them into joining the club?"

"If that doesn't scream adventure, I don't know what does!"

"I should tell you as the unprompted and self-proclaimed advisor for your club: that is a bad idea."

"C'mon! Doesn't the idea of pretending to leave the school to then come back in secret sound exciting?"

"Sure, but the idea of someone breaking a bone because of our holes is putting me off a little bit."

"Hmm... What you're saying is that we should put pillows at the end of the tunnels?"

"Uhm, maybe we can figure something out."

"That sounds like the kind of thing we should be discussing in the grotto! I'll go first, reach me in ten minutes."

Gimei said, running away before Henry could say anything.

"Don't worry," Riku approached him, "I'm sure that one day you'll learn how not to make the girls run away from you."

"She didn't run away from me! She's going to... Well, I can't tell you, but I didn't scare her away!"

"If that's what you need to hear then it's fine."

"I don't need to stay here and let you berate me. I have a club I need to go to."

"You managed to find a club?"

"Yes, and I'll have you know it's a super-secret, esteemed club that you cannot enter or know about and— Stop looking at me like that!"

Riku looked at Henry with the face of someone who knew they were being lied to, and they were smug about it.

"I'm leaving!"

…

Henry was wearing a garbage bag over his body and a pair of latex gloves on his hands, when he finally reached the end of the tunnel. Both the bag and the gloves had gotten torn apart soon after he entered the hole, effectively making the crawl harder without any benefit whatsoever.

"Ouch!" Henry said as he reached the grotto and bumped his head on the heater of the kotatsu. "Reminder for tomorrow: bring better equipment."

"You're finally here!" Gimei exclaimed while moving the table to the side to let Henry out, "What took you so long?"

"You see, the entrance hole is in the middle of a field, surrounded by grass, and there was no one to tell me how to find it. You understand why I ended up being late, right?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know your sense of direction was that bad."

"I..." Henry couldn't find the strength to explain how his sense of direction wasn't the problem. But as he pulled himself out of the hole and pushed the kotatsu back into place, he had an idea.

"Hey, since my sense of direction is so bad, why don't we exchange numbers? That way, the next time I can't find the hole," don't laugh "I can just call you on the phone!"

Henry thought this to be logical, and not at all just an excuse to get a girl's number. Unfortunately for him, the person he was speaking to didn't really follow standard logic. Gimei smiled, then she took one of the candles from the candlesticks that lit the cave and held it over her head.

"...What does that mean?"

"I've got an idea!"

"Oh, yeah, right."

"Don't move! I'll be back!"

Gimei jumped up the hole on the ceiling and scaled her way out of the grotto. Henry watched in awe, realizing he would never manage to do something like that. He sat on the pillow next to the kotatsu and waited. He first waited five minutes, then, since Gimei was still out, he decided to wait ten more minutes. After that, he was still alone. But he was hopeful, and so he waited just three more minutes. Gimei hadn't returned by then, so he had to wait another five minutes. But she was still gone. With his hopes crushed, he decided to now wait for twenty minutes.

Half an hour after she had left, Gimei finally returned, landing feet first from the entrance/pitfall trap.

"Finally!" Cried out Henry, "I was about to start waiting for forty five minutes!"

"I'm not going to try to understand what that means and just say that your patience will be rewarded! It's time to prove that you're worthy of joining the PIAD!"

"I thought I was already in..."

"I kicked you out just now so that you can do something to join!"

"Oh, like some sort of initiation rite?"

"That's the spirit! We're calling it that from now on!"

Gimei handed him a piece of pink paper.

"You wanted my number, right? Well, you better find it! A phone number is made up of ten numbers; what you have there is the first, plus a hint on where to find the next! They are hidden all over the school and you have until the end of club activities to find them all!"

Henry looked at her in disbelief. He considered whether it was worth it to go through all that trouble just to get her number and quickly realized that no, it wasn't. But he would feel bad to let her down after she spent all that time preparing this treasure hunt, so he agreed.

"It is an adventure club, I guess. I can't just ask other people for your number, can I?"

"I'm pretty sure the other people in the class still see you as a stalker."

"Ugh, you're right. I guess this story isn't as episodic as I thought."

Henry looked at the pink sheet of paper. It had a big 8 penned in with a black marker.

"...Where is the hint?"

"Something weird happened today, right?"

"You'll need to be more specific than that."

"C'mon! This morning, with the teacher!"

"Oh, you mean Tosou-sensei? If that was even her real name... Weird things happen every day in this school, I thought that was normal honestly."

"The point is that I was a little inspired by what she did."

"Oh no..."

"Find the one that doesn't belong." She smiled. "That's the hint!"

Henry thought about it for a second, which caused his face to twist in pain.

"How am I supposed to find the one who doesn't belong in a school that has chiropractor and fire-eating clubs?!"

"Just go and explore!" Gimei pushed the kotatsu to reveal the exit hole. "All of the numbers are inside of the school perimeter, so you'll find them sooner or later. Now go! You don't have time to waste!"

POSTFACE

- WORDS OF THE DEVIL

"The teacher has a cold? But it hasn't rained in weeks." Henry referenced a cliché: Henry here is referring to the fact that the Japanese rain contains a potent virus that attacks any unlucky person to come in direct contact with it. In fact, if the right amount of rain manages to fall on your unprotected head it will curse you with a bad case of the common cold. The best way to get rid of this virus is to make an anime girl feed you hot soup while lying in bed.

Number: In ye olde times, people had a ten digit number tied to their personal phone, or what was once known as a “landline”. In now forgotten times, people had to memorize the so-called “telephone number” of the person they wanted to call, “dial it” on a numerical pad designed specifically for the occasion, and actually use their voice to speak to them in real time. Very different from nowadays, where all you need to call someone is to vagueblog about them on social media.

Henry Tailer: Have you noticed that if you take the first part of Henry and the first part of Tailer and put them together you get Hentai? I did not do that on purpose.