The morning after the Shiritsu demolition, Kaminari High was buzzing. The usual quiet of the hallways had been replaced by a frantic energy as students huddled over phones, rewatching the blurry, handheld footage of the "Mountain" performing a Euro-step that looked like a glitch in reality.
But in Room 2-B, the atmosphere was much heavier. Specifically, around the back-corner desk.
Akami Kazu was slumped so low in his chair he was practically horizontal. His black silk durag—his "recovery mode" color—was pulled nearly over his eyes. On his desk sat a single, lonely carton of strawberry milk and a calculator.
"Akami! You're a viral sensation!" Teru yelled, sliding into the classroom and slamming a phone down on Akami's desk. "The 'Avalanche Dunk' already has fifty thousand views! They're calling you the 'God of the Buffet' in the comments!"
Akami didn't look at the screen. He didn't even blink. He just tapped a button on his calculator.
"50,000 views... and not a single one provides a gram of protein," Akami rumbled, his voice a sleepy, tectonic vibration. "I am currently operating on a massive biological debt, Teru-kun. My muscle fibers are screaming for a high-density carbohydrate intervention."
"Coach is looking for you," Teru continued, ignoring the food talk. "The principal wants to give you an award for 'Sports Excellence' during the morning assembly."
Akami finally sat up, his amber eyes narrowing. "An assembly? That involves standing. For at least twenty minutes. On a Monday. After a 2,850-calorie burn."
He picked up his strawberry milk, staring at the nutritional label with profound disappointment.
"Tell the principal... that excellence is currently in hibernation. If he wants me to stand on a stage, the reward needs to be a voucher for the cafeteria's premium katsu-sando. Otherwise, I am a stationary object until lunch."
The sliding door opened, and Mio walked in.
She wasn't carrying her basketball clipboard; she was carrying a stack of thick, terrifying-looking textbooks.
She walked straight to Akami's desk and dropped the stack. THUD.
"Congratulations on the win, Akami-kun," Mio said with a sweet, dangerous smile. "But I checked your mid-term progress. If you don't pass the Math Exam on Friday, you're academically ineligible for the International, which means you can't eat those delicious food."
The strawberry milk carton crinkled in Akami's hand.
"Ineligible?" Akami whispered, the word sounding like a death sentence. "But... the International are being held in the North District. They have that bakery that makes the three-layered melon pan. The one with the salted butter core."
"Then you better start studying," Mio said, tapping the top book. "Because if you fail, the only thing you'll be eating on Friday is rocks in the library."
Akami stared at the Math textbook. He looked at the long list of Calculus. Then, he slowly pulled his "Food Map" out of his pocket and laid it next to the book.
"Calculus," Akami muttered, his voice dropping into that cold, gravelly register.
"They lack a consistent structure. They're inefficient. They're the 'Kaito' of the linguistic world."
He adjusted his durag, his amber eyes suddenly sharpening with a familiar, predatory focus.
"Fine. If Math is the gatekeeper to the melon pan... then I will dismantle this exam. Teru, get your notebook. We're going to perform a high-intensity study session. But if I burn more than 400 calories on grammar, you're buying me a second milk."
Teru grinned, pulling up a chair. "The God of the Buffet vs. The Math Exam. This might be a tougher match than Shiritsu."
Akami opened the book. "No," he rumbled. "Math is just another strategy. And I'm still very, very hungry."
The "Math Exam" had arrived, and with it, the final barrier between Akami Kazu and the legendary three-layered melon pan of the North District.
Akami sat at his desk, perfectly still. On his desk, three mechanical pencils were lined up like surgical instruments.
"You look like you're about to fight a bear," Teru whispered from the next row, sweating profusely. "It's just Calculus, Akami. Deep breaths."
"Calculus is not a bear, Teru-kun," Akami rumbled, his voice a low, ominous frequency.
"It is a zone defense. It tries to confuse you with shifting variables and hidden limits. But every zone has a gap."
The sliding door creaked open. The proctor, a thin man with glasses that caught the light like cold steel, placed a stack of exams on the front desk with a heavy thwack.
"You have sixty minutes," the proctor announced. "Begin."
The Blitz : 0-22 Minutes
As the rest of the class was still writing their names, a sound like a high-speed printing press erupted from the back corner.
Scritch-scritch-scritch-thump.
Akami wasn't pondering. He wasn't second-guessing. He was executing. To Akami, a derivative wasn't an abstract concept; it was a fast break. He saw the functions and instinctively moved to cut them off.
Problem 1 through 10 : Done in four minutes.
He didn't even use the scratch paper. He treated the multiple-choice section like a warm-up layup drill, his pencil moving in a blur of carbon and black silk.
By the fifteen-minute mark, the silence of the room was broken by a loud flip as Akami turned to the final page—the dreaded "Section C" that usually took students forty minutes alone.
Problem 15 :
Akami's pupils dilated. A cone. Like a waffle cone. Filled with premium vanilla bean gelato. He didn't just solve; he dismantled it.
He calculated the rate of change with the same cold, predatory focus he used to predict a bounce-pass trajectory.
At the twenty-two minute mark, while Teru was still hyperventilating over a basic limit on page two, Akami stood up.
The sound of his chair scraping back was like a gunshot. The proctor looked up, startled.
"Kazu-kun? You have nearly forty minutes remaining. If you leave now, you cannot return."
Akami didn't speak. He simply walked to the front, placed his exam face-down on the desk with a heavy, final thud, and turned toward the door.
"The variables have been neutralized," Akami muttered, his voice a sleepy vibration. "I am going to the nurse's office to enter a low-power state until lunch."
The Results: Monday Morning
The hallway outside Room 2-B was crowded, but a natural clearing formed around the bulletin board as Akami approached. He looked exhausted, his durag pulled low, his hand clutching a lukewarm strawberry milk.
Mio was already there, staring at the posted grades. She didn't say a word. She just pointed at the top of the list.
RANK 1: AKAMI KAZU – 100/100
A heavy silence fell over the hallway. Even the proctor, who was standing nearby, looked baffled.
"He didn't just pass," Mio whispered, her voice a mix of awe and genuine concern. "The department head checked it three times. Not a single misplaced decimal. No erased marks. It was... mathematically violent."
"I told you," Akami rumbled, the corner of his mouth twitching in a rare, ghostly smirk. "The math was sound. Every variable was a defender, and I simply drove to the rim."
The following Friday, the Kaminari High team bus was a pressurized cabin of nerves and sweat. They were headed North for the International Regionals, and the air was thick with the scent of expensive sneaker rubber and Teru's anxious rambling.
At the very back, occupying what was technically one and a half seats, Akami Kazu was a mountain of stillness. He was wearing his "Travel Mode" durag—a deep, tactical navy—and holding his Food Map like it was the blueprints to a high-security vault.
As the bus crossed the bridge into the North District, Akami's amber eyes snapped open. The sleepy vibration of his voice cut through the team's chatter.
"Captain," Akami rumbled, leaning forward so his shadow completely eclipsed the seat in front of him.
"What is it, Akami?" the captain asked, not looking back from his game film. "Visualizing the opponent's center?"
"I am visualizing a crust," Akami muttered, his gaze fixed on the window. "A crust with the structural integrity of a diamond and the buttery yield of a summer cloud. We have just entered the five-kilometer radius of the Hokkaido Heart Bakery."
He stood up, his head nearly brushing the ceiling of the bus. He didn't wait for permission. He moved down the aisle with the silent, heavy grace of a glacier, coming to a halt directly behind the driver's seat.
"Driver-san," Akami said, his voice dropping into that cold, gravelly register that usually made point guards drop the ball. "I require a brief tactical intermission. If this vehicle does not deviate two blocks East to the corner of 4th and Maple, I cannot guarantee the biological stability of your star power forward for the remainder of the journey."
"I... I have a strict schedule!" the driver stammered, looking in the rearview mirror and seeing nothing but Akami's intense, unblinking stare.
"A schedule is a variable," Akami replied, leaning in. "But a three-layered melon pan with a salted butter core is a constant. Please. My muscle fibers are beginning to cannibalize themselves."
Five minutes later, the bus was idling illegally in front of a small, wood-paneled shop. The entire team watched through the windows as
Akami emerged from the bakery.
He didn't walk; he floated. In his arms, he cradled a warm, grease-stained paper bag with the reverence usually reserved for a championship trophy. The scent drifted through the bus vents—sweet, yeast-heavy, and violently buttery.
Akami sat back down, the bag resting on his lap. He didn't eat it immediately. He closed his eyes, inhaling the steam.
"You actually made him stop," Mio said, walking back to his seat, her clipboard tucked under her arm. "You do realize if we're late for check-in, Coach will make you run suicides until you see God?"
Akami slowly opened the bag, revealing the golden, criss-crossed crust of the melon pan. It glowed in the afternoon sun.
"Mio-san," Akami rumbled, breaking off a piece with clinical precision. The sound of the crust snapping was like music. "I have already seen God. He lives in a 180°C oven in the North District."
He popped the piece into his mouth. His expression didn't change, but a visible ripple of relaxation traveled through his massive frame. The "Mountain" was no longer in recovery mode; he was fully fueled.
"The math is complete," Akami muttered, his voice regaining its tectonic power. "Tell the North District teams to prepare their interior defense. I've had my carbohydrates. Now... I'm looking for a main course."
...
To Be Continued.