The courtyard looked smaller without the chaos.
No shouting. No footsteps pounding over concrete. No bodies colliding, scraping, falling. Just a wide, open space that remembered things the school pretended to forget.
The janitors had scrubbed away the blood. The broken glass was swept up. The scorch marks from a thrown cigarette, the dust from shattered benches—gone.
But the cracks in the pavement remained.
Akira walked through the middle of it alone, hands in his pockets, hood down. Morning light washed the place in soft gold, too bright for how heavy the air felt. His boots scuffed the same ground where days before he'd stood shoulder-to-shoulder with three people who weren't quite strangers anymore.
Everyone had watched them fight.
Now everyone was waiting for them to fall apart.
Everyone saw us fight, he thought, eyes tracking a faint line in the concrete. Now they're watching to see if we break next.
He stopped near one of the benches—its wooden slats split down the middle, one side taped up where somebody had tried to hold it together.
A piece of dirty gray tape still clung to the pavement nearby, torn at the edge. The same tape the nurse had used to mark where Vincent fell, where someone's head hit.
Akira crouched down, peeled it up slowly. The adhesive pulled back with a tired little rip.
He rolled the tape between his fingers once, then slipped it into his pocket like a habit he didn't want to admit he had.
We won, he thought.
The word tasted wrong.
But it didn't feel like it.
A bird landed on the rusted railing, chirped once, then flew off again, like even it didn't want to linger here.
Akira straightened, turned his back on the courtyard, and headed inside.
The silence followed him.
They'd finally put all four of them in the same room.
Class 2-B buzzed before homeroom—loose chatter, zipped bags, desks scraping—but the noise dipped whenever anyone realized who else was in the room.
Akira sat near the front, notebook open, pen tapping in a slow rhythm. The window beside him showed the faint reflection of the courtyard where he'd just been. He wrote nothing for a while, just stared at the blank page until lines started forming—engine shapes, rough maps of gear teeth, arrows showing pressure flow.
Behind him, Kenji lounged sideways in his chair, his blazer practically falling off one shoulder, foot tapping against a desk leg.
"Feels weird, right?" he whispered, leaning toward Nikki without looking directly at her.
She slouched in her seat next to him, boots hooked on the bar of her desk, gum popping between her teeth.
"Like what?" she asked quietly.
Kenji jerked his chin toward the rest of the class.
"Like they're all waiting for us to throw a chair through the board or something."
Nikki glanced around.
It was subtle, but he was right.
Eyes flicked to them, then away. Conversations dipped when they moved. A girl in the front row had shifted her chair just a little further forward, like one extra foot of distance would keep her safe if something exploded.
Nikki let out a soft, humorless laugh. "They're not waiting for a show," she murmured. "They're scared."
Kenji grinned. "What, scared of me? I'm charming."
"People love monsters," Nikki said, twirling her pen. "Until they realize the monster's real."
He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. The grin faded, just a little.
In the back of the room, Vincent sat half-turned toward the window, desk pushed out of the straight row just enough to bother the teacher's sense of order, but not enough to earn a comment. His tie was loose, blazer button undone. One long leg stretched out into the aisle.
He wasn't listening to the lesson.
He wasn't looking at Akira, or Kenji, or Nikki.
He was looking past the window glass, past the schoolyard, at something no one else could see—the invisible lines between people, the way rumors flowed like currents, the little shifts in posture that told him who was about to move and who was about to fold.
Up front, the teacher droned on about midterm projects. Something about vocational tracks, grades, expectations. Words like "future" and "responsibility" floated in the air like dust.
Akira wrote a single word in the margin of his notebook.
Torque.
He pressed the pen hard enough to almost tear the page.
The bell finally rang.
Desks screeched. Chairs slammed back. Half the class was already at the door before the teacher finished his last sentence.
Nobody came near their row.
Backpacks shifted. Shoes hurried. The room emptied like someone had pulled a drain.
Only four of them remained.
Vincent stood first.
"We're not friends," he said quietly, eyes on his bag strap, not on them. "We just fought the same enemy."
It wasn't cruel. It wasn't even bitter.
It was just… brutally honest.
He slung his bag over one shoulder and walked out without waiting for a response.
Akira watched him go, jaw tightening slightly.
He's not wrong, he thought. We're not a team. Not yet.
Kenji blew out a breath.
"Well," he muttered, "at least he didn't call us coworkers."
Nikki smirked faintly, but her eyes followed Vincent to the doorway, something thoughtful behind the mischief.
Akira closed his notebook, stood, and headed out.
No one stepped in his path.
They didn't have to.
They were already giving him space.
Golden hour made the sign look softer than it really was.
"Ashworks Garage" was half-faded red paint on a corrugated sheet of metal bolted above the shop's entrance. It looked like it belonged to someone older, someone who'd lived here long enough to rust with the building.
Inside, Akira stood bent over the bare frame of an old bike, sweat drying on his neck, shirt sticking to his back. The engine sat open, guts exposed. He'd been at it for hours—tightening, adjusting, dismantling, assembling again.
The radio on the shelf crackled with a local DJ's voice.
"—tension on Yokosaki Island's rising again. Word is, there's a new group running the halls at the vocational high—"
Akira wiped his wrist across his face and turned the volume down until the voice was just noise without shape.
He stared at the engine.
He'd done everything right.
Fuel lines checked. Spark plugs cleaned. Battery charged. Carburetor adjusted twice.
Still, when he turned the key earlier, the engine had coughed, sputtered, and gone dead.
Hands that build don't break, his grandfather had told him once.
Looking at the stubborn machine, Akira wasn't sure if that was true, or just something you said to keep someone from giving up.
Some things, he thought, are built wrong from the start.
A shadow stretched across the garage floor.
"Didn't think you were the grease-under-the-nails type," a voice said.
He glanced up.
Nikki leaned in the doorway, headphones around her neck, hair still damp from a shower or rain—he couldn't tell. One hand in her pocket, the other spinning her phone.
He turned back to the bike.
"Didn't think you were the type to show up uninvited," he said.
She grinned, stepping inside. "Guess we're both full of surprises."
She circled the bike once, boots echoing lightly on the concrete, then stopped near him.
"That thing even run?" she asked.
"Not yet," Akira said. "But it will."
She tilted her head. "You sound sure."
"Everything runs," he said, eyes on the engine, "when you figure out what's broken."
Nikki watched him for a moment, the way his jaw set, the way his hands moved—controlled, steady, like he was forcing himself not to punch the metal.
"You talking about the bike," she asked softly, "or us?"
Silence fell between them, thick but not hostile.
Akira didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
The way his fingers tightened around the wrench said enough.
Kenji walked alone.
The backstreets of Yokosaki buzzed quietly with vending machines and neon flicker. The sky above was navy-blue, city lights bleeding into the clouds.
A cigarette sat behind his ear, unlit. He toyed with it every few seconds, rolling it along his fingers like it might calm him down.
Two first-years in half-worn uniforms stood near the corner, pretending they hadn't been waiting for him. When he got close, they straightened like soldiers.
"Hey, uh—Kenji, right?" one of them said.
Kenji raised a brow. "Depends who's asking."
The kid swallowed. "We, uh… we were wondering if you had a crew. 'Cause if you do, we'd—"
"A crew?" Kenji snorted. "You mean those idiots from the courtyard?"
They hesitated. "Yeah, but, like… you guys run stuff now, right? We wanna be on your side."
Kenji laughed, a sound that started high and dropped flat.
"My side?" he said, walking past them. "You don't even know what that means."
They watched him go, unsure if they'd just been rejected or saved.
Kenji shoved his hands into his pockets.
People keep trying to name what we are, he thought. Crew. Gang. Kings. Monsters.
They don't get it. We're not anything yet.
He stopped under a flickering streetlight.
It buzzed weakly, casting yellow halos that stuttered on and off. Every few seconds it looked like the world was there, then gone, then back again.
Unstable.
Like everything they'd built in the last few weeks.
Kenji tilted his head up, stared into the light until it blurred, then kept walking.
Vincent's apartment felt like a hotel room no one had officially checked into.
Everything was clean. Too clean. Table wiped down, floor swept, chairs exactly where they were meant to be. No posters. No clutter. Just a bookshelf of textbooks, a couch, and a dining table pressed against the wall.
His father sat at the table now, glasses perched low on his nose as he read from a thick stack of paperwork.
"You're behind again," he said without looking up. "Your midterm projections dropped."
Vincent stood across from him, hands at his sides, face unreadable.
"Fights at school. Teachers calling home," his father continued. "You want to throw your life away?"
His mother set a plate of food in front of him gently, eyes never meeting his. Then she retreated to the kitchen, quiet as a shadow.
"Answer me," his father snapped, finally raising his eyes.
Vincent met his stare.
"I didn't ask," Vincent said calmly, "to live by your rules."
For a second, the whole apartment froze.
His father's jaw clenched.
"Go to your room," he said, voice clipped. "We'll talk about this later."
"No," Vincent said. Not loud. Not aggressive. Just final. "We won't."
He turned and walked down the short hallway to his room, shutting the door hard enough that the frame rattled.
Inside, his room was bare: a mattress on the floor, a small dresser, boxing gloves hanging from a hook, a cracked mirror nailed crooked to the wall.
He walked up to the mirror and stared at himself.
Same eyes. Same mouth. Same face that felt like somebody else's when other people tried to shape it.
Control, he thought. That's all I've ever wanted. To pick my own path. My own fights. My own people.
But every time I fight… it slips.
He drew his fist back, then drove it into the wall beside the mirror. The sound was dull, the drywall giving way just enough to crater around his knuckles.
Pain flared in his hand. Skin split. Blood beaded slowly along the ragged line.
He didn't flinch.
Just stared at the new mark he'd made in a house that never let him leave one.
The rooftop of Yokosaki High was made for kids who needed to breathe.
The fence rattled softly in the wind. The city lights beyond the edge glowed like another sky turned upside down.
Akira pushed open the door first.
He hadn't meant to come here. His feet just… climbed. Up the stairs, past the floor where his class was, past the floor where he'd had his first fight in this building. Up and up, until there was nowhere else to go.
He stepped out into the cool night air and stopped.
Kenji was already there, sprawled on the concrete near the fence, arms folded behind his head, staring at the sky like it had personally offended him.
"Seriously?" Kenji said without looking up. "This rooftop ain't big enough for your brooding and mine."
The door rattled again.
Nikki squeezed through, hair tied back in a loose knot, hoodie unzipped.
She blinked. "Oh, so this is a party now?"
"Great," Kenji muttered. "We're starting a club. 'People Avoiding Their Issues by Going Vertical.'"
The door squeaked open a third time.
Vincent stepped out, hands in his pockets.
He paused when he saw them—Akira by the fence, Kenji on the ground, Nikki near the door—and for a heartbeat, it looked like he might just turn around and leave.
He didn't.
"Wow," Nikki said, crossing her arms. "All of us. Here. At once. Universe must be bored."
They stood there in the same silence the courtyard had held before the first punch flew. Only this wasn't anticipation.
This was… recognition.
They were all running from something.
Kenji sat up, legs crossed, grin crooked but real.
"Guess we're all running from something," he said.
Vincent's gaze drifted off the roof edge, down to the dark outlines of the blocks below.
"Maybe," he said quietly. "But you can't outrun what's already inside you."
Nikki glanced at Akira.
"So what's next, 'leader'?" she asked, putting just enough sarcasm on the word to make it safe, but not enough to hide that she was actually asking. "We beat the courtyard kings. Now what?"
Akira didn't answer right away.
He rested his arms on the top of the fence, fingers curling around cold metal, eyes scanning the patchwork of lights across Yokosaki—rival schools, backstreets, the faint glow from the docks, the cheap apartments where kids like them stacked their lives and tried not to drown.
Everyone's waiting, he thought. Teachers. Delinquents. Old ghosts from the mainland.
He took a slow breath.
"We keep moving," he said finally.
Kenji snorted. "That's not a plan, that's cardio."
Akira gave him the smallest flicker of a smirk.
"When it comes again," he said, "we fight together."
The word hung in the air.
Together.
Vincent turned his head slightly, eyes cutting toward Akira.
He didn't respond.
Didn't agree.
Didn't disagree.
But he didn't walk away.
And somehow, that meant more than any loud declaration.
The wind pushed across the rooftop, carrying the smell of the ocean, the city, the oil and rust from Akira's shop, the faint sweetness from some bakery still open too late.
They stood there in that quiet, heavy space—four kids who hadn't asked for crowns, who hadn't asked for fear or titles or the weight of someone else's expectations—and let the night settle around them.
Below, Yokosaki whispered.
Above, the sky pretended to be calm.
Inside each of them, something restless refused to sleep.
The calm never meant safety.
It just meant the next storm hadn't hit yet.