Episode 1: Don’t Bring That Kind of Manga to School!

Even though September is nearly over, summer seems intent on overstaying its welcome.

The after-school discipline committee room.
The discipline room, as everyone calls it.
The battered old air conditioner groaning away on the wall does nothing but stir the lukewarm air — utterly useless.
My blouse is plastered to my back with sweat, and I’m in a foul mood.
I fanned at my neatly buttoned collar, tamping down my irritation.

“Yamami-senpai, aren’t you heading home yet?”
“I just want to finish checking the logbook. Go on ahead.”
“Oh, right… In that case, I’ll be off!”
“Good work today, Sasaki-san.”

The sliding door shut with a thud.
The light patter of my junior’s retreating footsteps faded away, and the room was left with nothing but the grinding whir of the useless air conditioner.

I ran my pen across the activity log, the motion as habitual as breathing.

Entry by: Year 2, Class F — Yamami Maya.
Stiff, upright characters, fitting neatly within their box.
Just like me.

“If Yamami-san is discipline chair, I know we’re in good hands.”
“Yamami Maya, or as I like to say — Yamami-mama.”

The teachers’ expectations and the students’ whispers behind my back.
One character changed in my name, and suddenly I have this dreary, matronly nickname. I find myself almost impressed by the creativity.

The more seriously I do my job, the more the people around me see me as either a “convenient honour student” or a “nagging mum.” Nobody ever looks at the real me.

…How stupid.

It’s not like I wear my armband because I want to play the mum.
Uphold discipline. Wrong is wrong.
That’s how I’ve breathed my whole life — I don’t know any other way.

Hey. How long are you going to keep being “good girl” Maya?

A small, bitter voice inside me muttered.

“…It’s hot.”

The words dissolved into the air, heard by no one.

◇◆◇◆◇

“I need to get this done.”

I traced my heavy pen down the list of violations spread out on the desk.

“This week’s infractions were, let me see…”

Sloppy uniforms, eating outside school, impure relations with the opposite sex.
…Impure relations with the opposite sex — what does that even mean specifically?
Holding hands? Or, like, kissing?
Besides, policing students’ private lives outside school is a stretch, even for me.

The heat must be getting to me. Surprisingly defeatist thoughts were grazing the edges of my mind.

And then there was the manga sitting at my elbow.

“So, this one — bringing in items unrelated to academic activities.”

The face of a certain classmate floated into my mind.

It’s always her.
It really is.

Every single time, that girl…

◇◆◇◆◇

My thoughts drift back to this morning’s corridor.
Ten minutes before homeroom, in the sluggish bustle of the hallway, I was keeping my usual watchful eye.

“Hey, no running in the corridors.”
“Sorry, Mama-san~”

I gave a passing male student a light reprimand and kept walking.
Pointing out any disorder I spotted had become as natural to me as breathing.

Another peaceful day was getting underway.
…It would be, if not for her.

“Ughhh, so not feeling this today~”

An exaggeratedly loud yawn drifted toward me from further down the hall.
With it came a sickly-sweet musk scent that seemed to repaint the morning air.

My brow twitched instinctively.
Walking into my line of sight was the living symbol of our school’s disciplinary failures — Asahina Hiyori.

Pale, ash-grey hair with washed-out pigment.
Her skirt hemmed as high as it could go, her necktie hanging loose and careless.
The moment her eyes met mine, she grimaced, her expression screaming: ugh, not this again.

“Oh great. …Surveillance from Yamami-mama, first thing in the morning?”
“…Good morning, Asahina-san. I can hear you, you know — that counts as talking behind my back.”

A greeting disguised as a reprimand.
But she showed not a flicker of remorse, making a show of swishing her skirt right in front of me.

“It’s not talking behind your back if I’m saying it to your face. Also, aren’t you staring at me a bit much for this early in the morning? Do you like me that much?”
“…Excuse me. If you would just follow the school rules, I wouldn’t have anything to say to you.”
“Huh? If I become a good girl, you’d have nothing to do. You should be thanking me, honestly.”

That breezy attitude of hers sent a throb of pain through my temple.
Around us, other students were whispering — “ugh, they’re at it again” and “those two are seriously like oil and water.”

A textbook case of mutual antagonism.
To her, I was nothing more than a “nagging mum” to tease for fun.

“…Anyway. Fix that slovenly necktie. And can you do something about that perfume? The smell is really quite…”
“It’s musk, actually. …It smells good, right? It’s got my pheromones in it.”

As she said it, Asahina closed the distance between us by one step.
The musk scent bloomed, suddenly denser.

“Hey. If my necktie bothers you that much, why don’t you fix it for me, Mama~?”
“…You’re too close! Do it yourself!”
“Geez, so cold. …Come on, let’s go, everyone.”

Asahina hoisted her bag back onto her shoulder with pointed roughness, as if to spite me.
And at that moment, unable to bear the force of it, a single book slipped from the opening and fell.

Thud.
A flat, defenceless sound that froze the hallway air for just a moment.

“Oh.”
“…Hey. You dropped something.”

I picked it up without thinking, and the instant I looked at the cover, my heart shrank like it had been doused with ice water.

On it was an illustration of a serious-looking dark-haired girl pinning a gyaru-type girl down.
Heat-filled eyes. Bare skin, fingers tangled together.
The title — well, I didn’t even need to read it.

Even someone as clueless about these things as me could tell immediately.

This was, without any doubt, a naughty manga about girls. With girls.

“Oh wow, Hiyori, that’s actually kind of unhinged! That’s the real stuff!”

Her friends’ hooting voices.
My fingertips trembled.
The image of those tangled fingers had burned itself onto my retinas, and it was stirring something in my chest in a way I couldn’t quite account for.

“Ah. Caught.”
“…W-what is this. Bringing something like this to school…”

My voice cracked.
And then, softly, the sweet musk perfume tickled my nostrils more richly than before.

Without my noticing, Asahina had leaned in to peer at my face.
Her eyes were narrowed with cat-like, mean-spirited delight, like a predator who’d just spotted its prey.

“Hmm? …Hey, Yamami. Don’t tell me you’re actually interested in something like this?”
“Wha—!?”
“Your face is way too red.”

As if she’d hit a nerve — heat shot to the tips of my ears instantly.

“I-it’s not that! It’s just so extreme…”
“Oh yeah? Sure, I’ll let you have that one.”

I couldn’t bear the smirk in Asahina’s gaze any longer, and I shoved the manga under my clipboard.

“C-consider this confiscated! Write a reflection and bring it to the discipline room tomorrow after school!”
“Confiscated? …Fine.”

Hiyori suddenly closed in, dropping her voice into a pointed near-whisper right at my ear.

“You’re planning to use that book alone later, aren’t you?”
“I absolutely am NOT!!”

Asahina fluttered her hand lazily as she drifted off toward her classroom, looking bored to her very core.

◇◆◇◆◇

The lingering sweetness of that musk, clinging to the inside of my nose, dissolved into the unpleasant humid heat, and my awareness drifted back to the present.

The discipline room, lit by the evening sun, had become, at some point, a poorly made sauna with a nasty trapped heat to it.

On the desk in front of me: the manga I’d confiscated earlier.
Its cover, blazing garish pink, was pulling my gaze toward it.

I forced my eyes away.

I can’t look at it.
Part of me wants to just feed it straight into the shredder and be done with it.

And yet.

“…It’s not like I’m going to read it.”

I said it aloud, but that face wouldn’t leave my head.
“You’re planning to use that book alone later, aren’t you?”

…Don’t make me laugh.
I would never do something like that.
I would never. Definitely not.

Sweat prickled across my skin.
My underwear was sticking to me, uncomfortable in the worst way.
I could hear my own breathing, getting slowly faster.

…I wonder what this manga is actually about.
The kind of thing that even Asahina — that Asahina — would bother carrying to school.

Stop it, Yamami Maya.
I am the discipline committee chair.
Someone in my position, whose job is to uphold the rules…

But there’s nobody here right now.
In this room, there is only me, and this book.

…Well. I mean.
If I don’t verify the contents, I can’t give her appropriate guidance about exactly how harmful this is.

Right. This is purely a matter of scrutiny.
A necessary and unavoidable duty, for the sake of getting Asahina back on the right track.

Having made my excuses to no one in particular, I let my rigid back curve, just slightly.

Just the table of contents.
Just one page.

No — just the introduction. A quick check of the opening, nothing more.

My throat clicked as I swallowed.

The smooth, glossy feel of the cover against my damp fingertips.
Inanimate, yet somehow indecently tactile — another unpleasant bead of sweat.

As though opening a door I was not supposed to open, I slowly turned the cover over.