The morning air carried a new, persistent weight. 

The crisp, biting edges of spring had finally softened into a humid stickiness that clung to the skin, signaling the inevitable approach of summer. The greenery outside the windows had turned a deep, heavy emerald, pulsating under a sun that was starting to lose its morning mercy.

Inside the school, the atmosphere had shifted to match the rising mercury. The heavy navy blazers that had been a staple of the hallways were gone, discarded by almost everyone in favor of a lighter silhouette.

Nagi had finally ditched his usual sweater, showing up in the standard white school shirt and blue tie. Without the extra layers, the uniform felt stark and a bit too bright, making him feel slightly more exposed to the light reflecting off the classroom walls.

He wasn't the only one feeling the heat. 

Kaori was already in the classroom, her blazer nowhere to be seen.

 In just her white blouse, she looked as composed as ever, her posture straight as she organized her materials, though the slight dampness of the air seemed to make the classroom feel smaller than usual.

Nagi moved through the aisles, the hum of the overhead fans providing a low, mechanical drone that did little to actually cool the air. He reached his desk and pulled out the chair, the metal legs scraping quietly against the floor. He sat down beside the window, leaning his head back as the glass, already warm to the touch, radiated the mounting heat of the morning.

“Good morning, Asahina-kun.” The familiar voice rang out beside his desk.

"Morning, Mizuhara-san," Nagi murmured, his voice trailing off as he watched a distant soccer ball arc across the field.

Kaori looked a little less like the perfect student and more like someone just trying to survive the humidity.

"It’s gross out," she said, dropping the formal tone for a second as she tugged at the collar of her white blouse. "The forecast said it would be bad, but the air in here feels like a sauna. I think the fans are just moving the heat around at this point."

Nagi felt the warm glass through his shirt, the heat radiating against his shoulder. 

The temperature was impossible to ignore.

"Yeah," he agreed, shifting his weight. "It’s the kind of weather where you move once and regret it for the rest of the day."

Kaori let out a small, huffed breath that was almost a laugh. "Exactly. I was surprised to see you without the sweater, though. I thought you’d suffer through it just to stay in character."

Nagi leaned his head back against the wall, squinting. "I’m not that dedicated to the bit. Sweating to death isn't part of the plan."

"Fair enough," she said, leaning toward his desk, trying to catch whatever non-existent breeze might be coming through the window. "If it stays like this, the cooking club is going to be a nightmare this afternoon. Standing over a stove in this?"

"We might have to stick to salads," Nagi muttered.

"Or ice cream," Kaori added, her eyes brightening just a little at the thought. "Actually, that might be the first sensible thing we’ve planned all week."

Nagi looked at her, seeing the way the heat had put a slight flush on her cheeks. The usual intensity in her eyes was still there, but it was dampened by the lethargy of the morning.

"I'll hold you to that," he said.

The brief moment of shared lethargy was shattered by a sound that was rapidly becoming the soundtrack to Nagi’s misfortune: the frantic, rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack of shoes hitting the linoleum at a dead sprint.

"NAAAAGIIII! MIZUHARA-CHAAAAAN!"

Hayato didn't just enter the room; he practically drifted around the doorframe, his momentum carrying him toward their desks like a runaway freight train. 

If the rest of the class was wilting like unwatered plants, Hayato was a weed thriving on pure nuclear radiation.

He skidded to a halt beside Nagi’s desk, and the immediate vicinity became roughly five degrees hotter. He had ditched his blazer, but his white shirt was already clinging to his back in damp patches, and a thin sheen of perspiration made his forehead glisten under the fluorescent lights. He looked like he’d just run a marathon through a rainforest, yet his grin was wide enough to be exhausting.

"You guys look like you’re at a funeral!" Hayato crowed, leaning over Nagi’s desk and invading his personal space with a localized cloud of heat and citrus body spray. "It’s summer! The sun is out! The blood is pumping!"

Nagi leaned as far back against the window as physics would allow. "Hayato. You’re literally dripping."

"It’s called 'glistening,' Nagi! It’s the glow of youth!" Hayato wiped his brow with the back of his hand, flicking a stray drop of sweat onto the floor with zero shame. He turned his high-voltage energy toward Kaori. "Mizuhara-chan! Tell him! Tell him the heat is just a mindset!"

Kaori stared at Hayato, her gaze lingering on the damp collar of his shirt with an expression of profound clinical distaste. 

She adjusted her chair, moving a strategic few inches away from the radius of his excitement.

"My mindset is currently focused on the fact that you’re radiating enough thermal energy to cook an egg, Koga-kun," she said, her voice dry. "And please don't 'glisten' on Asahina-kun’s desk. Some of us have to live here."

"So cold!" Hayato laughed, undeterred, grabbing a stray notebook from Nagi’s desk to use as a makeshift fan. "Anyway, forget the heat! Did you guys hear? The notice went up on the board! Midterms are in two weeks!"

The word hit the air like a lead weight. Nagi’s eyes, which had been half-closed in a sleepy haze, suddenly sharpened.

"Midterms?" Nagi repeated, the peaceful summer dream was officially dead.

"Two weeks," Hayato confirmed, finally sagging against the desk behind him, though his legs were still bouncing. "The sanctuary of flour and sugar is about to get invaded by the sanctuary of textbooks and tears!"

Nagi's eyes snapped open fully for the first time all morning.

"Two weeks…" His voice came out slightly higher than usual, losing that carefully maintained flatness by just enough to be noticeable. 

He sat up straighter in his chair, the lazy chin-in-hand posture abandoned entirely. His gaze darted to the window, then to the board, then back to Hayato, as if the information needed to be cross-referenced before it could be accepted as real.

"...This early?"

Hayato nodded with the grave solemnity of a man delivering a terminal diagnosis.

Another beat passed. Nagi's jaw tightened. Something flickered behind his eyes, a quiet, controlled unraveling, the specific expression of someone doing rapid mental calculations and not liking any of the results.

"...I haven't even bought all my textbooks yet."

The classroom might as well have stopped rotating.

Hayato's notebook fan dropped from his hand and hit the floor with a flat, anticlimactic slap. His mouth hung open, his eyes wide and glassy, the kind of expression that belongs on a man who has just watched something beautiful burst into flames. 

His legs, which had been bouncing nonstop since he walked in, went completely, unnaturally still.

"Nagi," he whispered, his voice cracking at the edges. "Tell me you're joking."

Nagi said nothing.

Which was, apparently, all the confirmation Hayato needed. He grabbed the sides of his own head with both hands, his fingers disappearing into his golden hair as a long, tortured groan escaped him.

Kaori had gone very quiet.

She had turned towards him slowly, the way you turn when you're not entirely sure you want to confirm what you just heard. 

Her pen was still poised over her notebook, frozen mid-stroke, a small ink dot bleeding into the paper where it had stopped moving. 

She looked at Nagi's desk, methodical and searching, as if the textbooks might materialize if she looked hard enough. Then she looked at his face.

Her expression, usually so composed, had slipped into something genuinely wide-eyed. Not horrified. Not judging. Just the pure, unfiltered shock of someone encountering a variable so far outside their expected range that their brain needed an extra second to load it.

"Asahina-kun," she said, her voice softer than usual, stripped of its teasing edge for just a moment. "Midterms count for thirty percent of your semester grade."

Nagi's eye twitched, just barely.

"...I'm aware of that now," he said quietly. 

The heavy silence hanging over the three of them was finally broken by the sharp, rhythmic clack of heels in the corridor. A moment later, the sliding door rattled open, and their homeroom teacher stepped inside. She didn't look particularly bothered by the heat; she looked like someone who had a lot of paperwork to get through and very little patience for the humidity.

She dropped a thick stack of handouts onto her podium with a resonant thud that made Hayato jump and Nagi wince.

"Settle down," she directed, her eyes scanning the room as students scrambled to their seats. She picked up a piece of chalk and wrote a single date in the upper corner of the blackboard, underlining it with a harsh, screeching stroke. "As some of you—the ones who actually look at the bulletin boards—already know, midterms are in exactly two weeks."

A collective, low-pitched groan rippled through the classroom, but the teacher raised a hand to cut it off instantly. Her expression shifted from professional indifference to something significantly more ominous.

"Save your breath for studying," she said, her voice dropping into a stern register. "I’m going to make this very clear. The administration is being particularly strict this year. Anyone who receives a failing grade in even a single subject will be required to attend supplementary classes."

She paused for effect, letting the weight of the statement sink in as the overhead fans hummed mockingly.

"Those classes will run every single day, through the entirety of the summer break. No exceptions. No excuses. If you want to enjoy your vacation, I suggest you start making up for the time you've spent staring out the window."

Behind Nagi, Hayato looked like he was about to faint. 

"The whole summer..." Hayato mouthed silently, “But the new Dinosaur Ball X movie…”

Kaori didn't look at Hayato. 

Her gaze was fixed firmly on the teacher, her pen finally moving again as she began to transcribe the exam schedule with a ferocity that suggested she was already planning her counter-attack. But Nagi stayed still, his eyes locked on the date on the board.

The low-profile existence he had worked so hard to maintain was suddenly standing on the edge of a very steep cliff. One failed workbook, one missing textbook, and his quiet summer would be replaced by the fluorescent lights of a remedial classroom.

"Open your texts to page eighty-four," the teacher commanded. "We have a lot of ground to cover."