The snap of the falling branch landed like a period on the stunned silence that followed Sakamoto's intervention—an intervention so precise it felt less like reaction and more like prophecy.
The air itself seemed to freeze.
Kamuro Masumi stared, wide-eyed, at the suddenly revealed Sakayanagi. A flush of hot embarrassment washed over her—she had just confessed everything, and the very subject of her confession had been listening? The humiliation was acute. But it was quickly burned away by a surge of defiant righteousness. She was not the conspirator. She had nothing to hide. Her back straightened, and she met Sakayanagi's gaze not with guilt, but with a hard, unyielding challenge.
For Sakayanagi Arisu, the moment was a vortex of shattering composure. The ghost of Sakamoto's stabilizing grip still tingled on her arm—a sensation both rescuing and violating. She had been yanked back from the precipice of utter, graceless collapse. To be so vulnerable, so seen in her moment of failure, was a profound violation of her very identity. And the one who had witnessed it was the person she had been plotting against.
Worse was the chilling implication: he had known she was there. He had likely known the entire time. He had calculated her path, the unstable branch, and her potential fall with terrifying foresight. The depth of his awareness was a cold needle down her spine.
She drew a slow, controlled breath, pulling the fragments of her dignity around her like a tattered cloak. Her grip tightened on the cane that had betrayed her. "Thank you, Sakamoto-kun," she said, forcing her voice into a flat, steady line. "That was my own carelessness." The slight bow she offered was mechanically graceful, a ghost of her usual poise.
Her eyes then shifted to Kamuro. "Kamuro-san. What a… coincidence."
"Yes," Kamuro replied, her tone brittle. "Very 'coincidental,' Sakayanagi-san."
Their gazes locked—one cool and fractured, the other heated and accusing—in a silent, electric standoff.
"Thank you for the information, Kamuro-san."
Sakamoto's voice cut through the tension, neutral and undisturbed, as if commenting on the weather. He seemed utterly indifferent to the silent war between the two girls.
"It is late," he continued, his gaze sweeping over them with impersonal courtesy. "Unless there is further urgent business, it would be prudent for everyone to return to their dormitories."
He offered a slight nod, the gesture clearly meant as a dismissal of the entire fraught episode—the confession, the shadowing, the near-fall. All of it was, to him, just incidental noise.
"Wait, Sakamoto-kun!"
Kamuro's voice stopped him. The weight of her secret was gone, replaced by a reckless, forward momentum. Emboldened by her confession and Sakayanagi's exposed position, a strange courage propelled her.
"Can we… exchange contact information?" she asked, her voice firmer than she expected. "So if something else comes up, I can reach you directly."
It was a practical request, but beneath it thrummed the unspoken desire to close the distance he maintained so effortlessly.
Sakamoto turned. He considered her for a brief moment, then gave a simple, decisive nod. "Yes."
He retrieved his phone from his pocket, unlocked it, and handed it to her without ceremony—an act of startling frankness.
Kamuro took it, her own fingers moving quickly. As she input her number, her eyes instinctively scanned his contacts. The list was starkly minimalist. And at the very top, one name immediately seared itself into her vision:
Shiina Hiyori.
She knew that name. The silver-haired girl from Class C. The one in the café who watched him with such quiet intensity.
She was his first contact? A girl from another class? The priority of it felt wrong, a disruption in the order she was trying to establish.
A cold knot of suspicion and competitive alertness tightened in her chest. But her face remained carefully neutral as she finished and handed the phone back.
"All done," she said, aiming for nonchalance.
At the very least, she was now second.
The matter of Shiina Hiyori could wait. It was a question to be unraveled slowly, carefully.
"Thank you," Kamuro said, the words releasing a quiet sigh of relief. A monumental weight had been lifted. Without a glance at the silent Sakayanagi, she offered Sakamoto a quick, "I'll be going now," before turning and striding away, her steps brisk and purposeful until she vanished around the dormitory corner.
The scene was now stripped down to its two remaining players. The evening air grew still, charged with unspoken calculations.
Sakayanagi Arisu remained motionless, the faint breeze stirring strands of her silver hair. Her eyes, complex and shifting, followed Kamuro's departure before finally settling on Sakamoto's impassive figure. A decision crystallized within her.
"Sakamoto-kun." Her voice had shed some of its usual melodic condescension, adopting a more measured, testing tone. "If it is not an imposition… might we also exchange contact information?"
The request was a probe. Given the evening's revelations—her conspiracy exposed, her clumsy surveillance laid bare—would he refuse? His response would be a telling gauge of his true stance.
Once again, Sakamoto defied her expectations. He simply stopped, looked at her, and gave a calm, unhesitating nod. "Yes."
The same disarming directness. He retrieved his phone, unlocked it, and offered it to her with the same unguarded frankness he had shown Kamuro.
Sakayanagi was momentarily nonplussed. Her carefully laid psychological trap met not with resistance, but with a blank, accepting wall. This ease, this lack of discernible suspicion toward someone who had just been implicated in a plot against him, was profoundly disconcerting. Instead of feeling victorious, a sliver of unwelcome, irrational guilt pricked at her conscience.
Composing herself, she took the device. Her movements were elegant as she input her number, her eyes swiftly inventorying his contact list—as concise and orderly as a ledger. At the top: Shiina Hiyori. Then, Kamuro Masumi, freshly added.
Shiina Hiyori. The name triggered a rapid mental cross-reference. Not Class A. An outsider. What was her connection to Sakamoto? The question inserted itself into the already crowded puzzle of her mind.
"Thank you," she said, returning the phone, her voice perfectly level.
"Then, I shall take my leave."
With a slight, formal bow, Sakayanagi turned, the steady tap of her cane marking her retreat toward the dormitory. She did not look back.
Sakamoto watched her go, then pocketed his phone as if storing away a trivial receipt. He turned and walked into the gathering dusk, his figure dissolving into the shadows as if the entire tense, revelatory encounter had been nothing more than a minor errand.
Back in the sanctuary of her room, Sakayanagi leaned against the closed door, the cool wood a solid reality against her back. She exhaled, a long, slow breath that carried the day's accumulated tension. Strands of silver hair clung to her damp temples.
She retrieved her phone, the screen illuminating her pale face. Sakamoto's number—a direct line to the enigma—now existed in her contacts. The flood of information from the day—Kamuro's defiant confession, Ryūen' malicious duplicity, Sakamoto's preternatural calm—needed to be processed, cataloged, and countered.
But one datum stood apart, glowing with silent significance: Shiina Hiyori.
Her thumb hovered over Sakamoto's chat interface. Some dialogues, she reasoned, were better initiated in the neutral, buffer zone of text. A first move in a new, more direct game.
Her fingers began to type, each tap precise and deliberate:
[Sakamoto-kun. Regarding today's developments, are you available to converse?]