The car was quiet in the way that only cars containing Bōzu could be quiet — which was to say, not actually quiet at all, but full of the suppressed vibration of a large man trying very hard not to express enthusiasm.

Tōma watched the city pass outside his window and reviewed the map in his head.

Seiran Academy. Founded forty years ago by a consortium of families who had collectively decided that their children deserved an educational institution that matched their ambitions. Private, selective, expensive. Three years of high school that functioned less as an education and more as a networking infrastructure for the next generation of people who would run things. The kind of school where the student council president's family had a building named after them, and the scholarship students understood exactly what kind of debt they were accumulating by being there.

He knew the layout. He knew the schedule. He knew, from one hundred and twelve playthroughs, which hallway led to which classroom, which teacher was susceptible to flattery, which stairwell was reliably empty during lunch. He knew the locations of four specific students with the precision of someone who had spent a significant portion of their previous life routing around them.

He also knew, from the same source, exactly how Kurogane Tōma's first day at Seiran was supposed to go — and it did not go well for anyone involved.

He intended to change that. The method he had settled on was simple: be frightening enough that no one approached him voluntarily, thereby eliminating the specific interactions that led to specific problems. It was, in theory, the path of least resistance. In practice, it required him to perform a character he had only ever observed from the outside, using a face he had only owned for six days.

"Young Master."

He glanced to his left. Suzu was sitting with her hands folded in her lap, looking straight ahead, which was her default configuration.

"What."

"We arrive in four minutes."

"I know."

She nodded once and returned to looking straight ahead.

He returned to looking out the window.

In the front seats, Bōzu and Hige exchanged a glance in the rearview mirror. He caught it. They were doing the thing where they communicated entirely through micro-expressions, which he found impressive in a way he was not going to acknowledge.

*The young master seems focused*, Bōzu's eyebrows said.

*The young master is always focused*, Hige's slight head tilt replied. *That's what makes him terrifying.*

Tōma looked back out the window and thought: I am thinking about which bathroom to use at lunch so I don't have to interact with anyone.

Four minutes later, the car turned onto the approach road to Seiran Academy.

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