The morning of midterms arrived with a heat that felt personal. 

The sun was already high, baking the asphalt as Nagi and Hayato trudged toward the school gates. Usually, the two of them would be arguing about the latest anime season, but today, the air between them was thick with the frantic, low-frequency hum of linguistic desperation.

Both were clutching their English textbooks like holy relics.

Hayato was holding his book inches from his nose, his lips moving in a continuous, panicked stream of consciousness. "Past perfect... had eaten, had gone... If I had studied, I would have passed... No, wait, is that the third conditional? Is the third conditional for regrets?! Because I have many!" He stumbled slightly over a crack in the sidewalk, his eyes never leaving the grammar charts.

Nagi walked beside him, his expression deceptively calm. 

Outwardly, he looked like he was just enjoying a morning stroll, his square black glasses perched firmly on his nose. 

Internally, however, his brain was a high-speed translation engine. Subject-verb agreement. Relative clauses. 'Whom' is for the object, 'who' is for the subject... He turned a page, his thumb marking a section on irregular phrasal verbs, cross-referencing his mental notes with the text.

A few paces behind them, Kaori and Saki followed at a more dignified speed.

Kaori watched the back of Nagi’s head—specifically the way his glasses caught the morning light—with a mixture of pride and lingering nerves. She was carrying her bag with military posture, though her eyes kept drifting to the boys' staggering forms. 

Saki, meanwhile, looked entirely unfazed. She had her hands in her pockets, her short black hair swaying slightly with each step, watching Hayato’s near-trips with a look of dry entertainment.

"They look like they’re trying to summon a foreign spirit," Saki remarked quietly, her black eyes glinting behind her lenses.

"They’re focused," Kaori corrected, though she couldn't help but smile at the sight of Hayato nearly walking into a street lamp while muttering about prepositions. "Two weeks ago, they couldn't tell a noun from a verb. Now, they’re actually worried about their syntax."

She quickened her pace, coming up behind them. "Eyes up, you two. If you trip and get a concussion now, all that vocabulary leaks out before the exam starts."

Hayato jumped, nearly dropping his book. "Mizuhara-chan! I just realized! What if the listening portion has a UK accent?! I only prepared for the US! It’s a tactical disaster!"

"It’s the same language, Koga-kun! Don't let the vowels scare you," Kaori said, stepping up between them with an encouraging, if slightly exasperated, roll of her eyes. 

She reached out and placed a steadying hand on the center of Hayato’s back, guiding him through the gate as he hovered dangerously close to a face-plant.

"But the 'r' sounds, Mizuhara-chan! The missing 'r' sounds!" Hayato wailed, though he straightened up under her touch.

Saki caught up to the group just as they reached the massive stone pillars of the school gates. She let out a soft hum, looking up at the clock tower. "Thirty minutes until the first paper. If you guys haven't memorized the irregular verbs by now, no amount of panicked walking is going to save you."

The quartet moved through the halls of the school, the usual morning chaos dampened by the heavy, pre-exam tension. They entered their classroom together—the same room where two weeks of stress had started—and began the silent ritual of finding their desks.

Kaori took her seat, her bag hitting the hook with a determined thud. Nagi sat in his seat beside her, looking out the window once.

"This is it," Kaori said, turning in her chair to look at the three of them. Her voice dropped to a softer, more genuine tone as she met Nagi's eyes. "Don't overthink it. You’ve both worked harder than half the people in this room. Just read the questions carefully."

Nagi adjusted his glasses, meeting her gaze. He gave her a small, confident nod.

The teacher entered the room, a thick stack of papers tucked under one arm. The sound of shuffling feet stopped instantly. Hayato let out one final, shaky breath, Saki adjusted her glasses with clinical precision, and Nagi gripped his pen.

The atmosphere in the room solidified into a heavy, suffocating silence as Ms. Ichinose paced down the aisles. The only sound was the rhythmic thwack of paper hitting wood as she dealt the exams like a high-stakes poker hand.

"Clear your desks of everything except your pens, pencils, and erasers," she commanded, her voice cutting through the humid air. "No talking. No glancing at your neighbor’s work. If I see your eyes wander, your paper will be collected immediately, and you can explain your summer plans to the principal."

She lingered for a fraction of a second near Nagi’s desk, her gaze flicking to his black-rimmed glasses, perhaps surprised by his sudden transition into a model student, before moving on to Hayato.

"You have fifty minutes," Ms. Ichinose announced, returning to the front of the room. She tapped the face of the wall clock. "The listening portion will begin in exactly ten minutes. You may begin the written sections now. Good luck."

As if a starter pistol had fired, the room erupted into a symphony of rustling paper and clicking mechanical pencils.

Nagi flipped his paper over. His heart gave a singular, heavy thud against his ribs before he forced himself into the "zone." He looked at the first section: Sentence Transformation.

1. I didn't see the movie. I regret it now. (Use 'Wish')

Nagi’s pen didn't hesitate. I wish I had seen the movie. He felt a strange surge of adrenaline. 

The two weeks of Kaori’s relentless drilling—the blue highlighters, the citrus-scented lectures, and the late-afternoon library grinds—flashed through his mind as data points. The questions weren't just words anymore; they were puzzles he had the key to.

Beside him, he could hear the frantic scratching of Kaori’s pen, her pace legendary as always. Behind him, Hayato let out a tiny, muffled whimper of realization, hopefully a good one.

Nagi adjusted his glasses, his eyes narrowing as he hit the reading comprehension passage.

The scratching of graphite against paper became the heartbeat of the week.

The mornings followed a sharp, repetitive rhythm: the tense, silent walk to the school gates, the exchange of heavy-lidded glances in the hallway, and the frantic final review of notes before the classroom doors were shut.

Inside the room, time moved in erratic bursts. There were moments of absolute stillness, where the only sound was the hum of the air conditioner and the rhythmic ticking of the wall clock. Then, the silence would be broken by a flurry of movement—the synchronized turning of pages, the frantic clicking of mechanical pencils, and the occasional, heavy sigh of a student hitting a wall.

Nagi sat in his row, the black frames of his glasses perched firmly on his nose, his hand moving in a steady, methodical crawl. Beside him, Kaori was a constant, blurring presence of focus, her pen darting across her desk with clinical precision. Behind them, Hayato swung between states of intense, tongue-out concentration and slumped, dramatic exhaustion, while Saki remained an unmovable anchor of calm, her expression never wavering.

Lunch breaks were spent in a state of collective catatonia. The four of them hovered over cafeteria tables, trading half-eaten snacks for fragments of grammar rules and historical dates, their voices low and raspy from lack of use.

As the days bled together, the initial panic settled into a grim, shared resilience. By the final afternoon, the fatigue was etched into their faces—ink stains on their fingers, dark circles under their eyes, and a slight, weary slouch in their posture.

When the final bell eventually rang, it felt like a physical weight lifting off the room. Nagi laid his pen down, his fingers stiff and trembling slightly. He took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He stood up, slung his bag over his shoulder, and headed towards the door.

Hayato yawned and followed suit.

The weight of the last three weeks was gone, replaced by a hollow, airy lightness that only comes when the work is finally, truly finished.

Hayato was the first to fully "reanimate." 

He stretched his arms high above his head, his joints letting out a series of cracks that sounded like bubble wrap being stomped on. "Oh, man... my brain feels like it’s been through a blender," he groaned, though a familiar, mischievous glint was already returning to his eyes. He lunged forward, throwing an arm around Nagi’s shoulders.

"Hey, Nagi! Since we’ve officially survived the Great Inquisition, how about a victory lap? Convenience store. Jumbo ice cream bars. My treat, well, half of it."

Nagi opened his mouth to reply, his mind already drifting toward a mint-chocolate cone and a nap that lasted for forty-eight hours, but the air was suddenly cut by two voices in perfect, chilling unison.

"We’re in."

Kaori and Saki didn't even slow down as they marched past the boys. They moved with the synchronized grace of a duo that had spent way too much time studying together.

Kaori glanced over her shoulder, her hair swinging with a sharp, rhythmic bounce. "You're paying, Koga-kun? That’s the most intelligent thing you’ve said all week. I want the expensive seasonal peach parfait."

"And I want the matcha sandwich," Saki added dryly, her glasses glinting as she adjusted them. "Consider it a ‘tutor tax’ for the sheer amount of gray hair I’ve developed watching you struggle with basic algebra."

Hayato froze, his arm still draped over Nagi as he watched the girls disappear down the hallway toward the lockers. He blinked once, then twice, before cupping his hands around his mouth to yell after them.

"Hey! No one invited you two!" he teased, his voice echoing off the linoleum. "This is a ‘boys-only’ post-war recovery mission! Since when did you two start sharing a brain, anyway?"

Nagi just sighed, a small, tired smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he adjusted his bag. "Give it up, Hayato. You know we’re just the support staff in this group."

"Yeah, well," Hayato grumbled, though he was already walking faster to catch up. "If they think they're getting the premium parfaits without at least letting me complain about the listening section one more time, they’ve got another thing coming!"

The sun felt slightly less oppressive now that the mental burden of the exams had lifted, but the air remained thick and still. Hayato was in full "post-test" mode, bouncing on the balls of his feet and recounting every "trick question" he thought he’d outsmarted, while Nagi walked a half-step behind him, his hands in his pockets and his glasses tucked safely back in their case.

Behind them, Kaori and Saki were engaged in a low-volume debate about the English essay prompt, their footsteps clicking rhythmically on the pavement. The dynamic was easy, a rare moment of peace after two weeks of absolute academic warfare.

"I’m telling you, Nagi, if I got that bonus question right, I’m retired," Hayato proclaimed, gesturing broadly toward the sky. "I’m going to spend the rest of the summer on a beach, eating nothing but—"

He stopped mid-sentence as they rounded the final corner leading to the convenience store’s parking lot.

Nagi’s internal alarm didn't just go off; it screamed.

Leaning against a row of motorbikes near the entrance was a group of five or six older guys. They wore baggy tracksuits and expressions of practiced boredom that sharpened into something much uglier the moment they saw who was approaching. 

Nagi recognized the one in the center immediately; the jagged scar near his eyebrow was a permanent souvenir from the night Nagi had been forced to stop being "average" in a dark alleyway three months ago.

‘These guys, again?’ He thought, already annoyed.

The leader pushed himself off the bike, spitting a wad of gum onto the asphalt. He didn't say a word, but the sudden, cold shift in his eyes made it clear that the ice cream was about to be the least of the group's worries.

Hayato raised an eyebrow. 

Behind them, the clicking of shoes ceased abruptly as Kaori and Saki reached the corner, their conversation dying in their throats.

The four of them stood in a tense line, the silence of the street suddenly feeling a lot less like peace and a lot more like a trap. 

“Well, well. If it isn’t Asahina.”

The voice was like grit on a smooth road. 

Nagi’s steps slowed, his hand clenching into a fist. He glanced back at the two girls, his eyes locking with Kaori’s confused and concerned face. Her hand gripping his sleeve, quietly asking what was going to happen.

‘Not now, not with them here.’ 

 Beside him, Hayato’s stride didn't break immediately, but the vibrant, golden energy he’d been radiating just seconds ago flickered and died. His grin faded into a hard, flat line.

“Hey,” Hayato muttered under his breath, his voice dropping an octave as he instinctively rolled his shoulders, a subtle shift into a defensive stance. His eyes remained locked on the group by the motorbikes, his gaze sharp and questioning. “…These guys friends of yours?”

The leader cracked his knuckles and pointed at his scar. “Remember this, Asahina?”