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When Nanami made her first steps onto the grounds of Ohtori, she looked around and thought that the school is too large for its borders. She walked through the campus as the sound of the gate closing behind her reverberated in the air. She saw that the grounds sprawled in all directions. They were larger than any school she had heard of; they stood on hills like an ancient city, rolling uphill and downhill like a growth of moss. And yet the vast space wasn’t enough to contain the whole of Ohtori. Nanami looked upwards, and she saw how tall the buildings grew, how they cut into the sky with their roofs and spires. How thin they looked from the ground, how odd the angles were. It was as if the school knew it already stretched its limits and could not grow wider and, left with no other recourse, grew taller instead.
Nanami climbed up a long, steep flight of stairs and entered one of the buildings. She didn’t know what it was, or what was inside. All the buildings were grand and promised to house things of importance. After crossing the threshold, she looked around and saw the school did not just grow upward. It grew on the inside, as well. The corridors ran without end around small deserted courtyards. The arcades, straight out of a photo of some foreign building she saw in a travel guide once, spiralled upon themselves like a labyrinth. She watched people walk around, saw them enter rooms and come out of different rooms, on the other side of a courtyard, on a different floor.
A few days later, when Nanami had to walk to class for the first time, she found herself touching the wall with her right hand. She knew she couldn’t get lost as long as the cold stone was under her fingers.
During her first days, she often looked at the sky, hoping to maybe memorise a few landmarks. It seemed that no matter where she went and what she saw, there was one tower that always loomed over the roofs.
It took Nanami a few weeks to familiarize herself with the most useful routes around the grounds. Some of them were more straightforward than she would have guessed. She had learned that there were many buildings in Ohtori that served no purpose. She passed these hollow skeletons every day and tried her best to ignore them like she saw the other students and faculty members do. She didn’t know anyone who acknowledged them.
Her brother had his own routes, she had found out. She couldn’t always follow them. Touga’s routes around Ohtori were longer and he made more twists and turns. When Nanami walked beside him and behind him, she thought, in a deep and small part of her mind, that they were walking aimlessly. That they ran circles around the grounds. She didn’t complain, though; she was happy to be with her brother. Her older brother. It was obvious, to her, that a younger sister would never truly and fully understand her older brother.
Touga told her to stop paying attention to the tower, so she did. It seemed sensible. If she couldn’t escape it, why waste energy paying attention to it?
After a few months have passed, Nanami stopped following Touga’s routes. Doing so took up too much time, and when she finally arrived, she was always tired. She could never understand the way he took, and she never felt she could ask him where they were going.
On her own, she started getting lost again. She blamed herself for that. She knew that the map of Ohtori inside her head didn’t align with the one Touga followed, and she knew that she was younger, and he was smarter. It made sense for her maps and routes to be wrong. It made sense for corridors to lead her to empty rooms, for elevators to take her to empty balconies. The school was punishing her, Nanami thought. It ridiculed her for trying to do things on her own. Nanami started following other people’s routes instead.
One day, she had business with Juri and ended up walking with her for a while. Like Touga, Juri did not talk to her. Unlike Touga, Juri slowed her steps to make it easier for Nanami to walk with her. When they parted, Nanami thought about their route. At home, she sat down at her desk and drew it out on a sheet of graph paper. Juri’s route, she found, started much like Touga’s, but it was shorter and much simpler. The only detour was around an old, dried-out fountain surrounded by statues of lions. Nanami thought about Juri’s route for a long time.
In that time, she kept her head low so she wouldn’t get lost. She didn’t notice that one day the tall tower disappeared from the skyline.
A year later, Touga was gone. Nanami would never follow him around Ohtori again. It didn’t matter, though. She had already grown familiar with the buildings and the stones that made them. She knew the trees and bushes that lined the paths, she had memorised the order in which the sun fell on courtyards during the day. She knew how the waves of students moved, where and when she could be alone, where and when she could hide.
She didn’t remember the paths she had carved for herself in the first few weeks immediately. It was a slow and tiring process, like every step she made was a step on an endless staircase. It took time. Ohtori considered her request to be invited like a judge. Eventually, it relented, and opened itself to Nanami like the petals of a rose. After that, Nanami was happier - her paths were short and quick, efficient. She could get so much more done in the time she had gained. It felt like the time was endless.
Neither Touga nor their parents allowed her to forget what her brother was doing after Ohtori. Best university in the country. A clear path to a successful career. A life anyone would envy, an example she should follow. Nanami listened to them in silence, thinking of where following in her brother’s footsteps had gotten her before. It was time for her to make decisions and she didn’t want anyone to cloud her judgement. The only person who knew what was best for her was herself. Everyone always forgot that.
Nanami didn’t make many close friends. There were very few people she would miss after graduating. That suited her fine. She was going somewhere far away, where no one from Ohtori would find her. She was going somewhere new, somewhere with untrodden paths.
When Nanami took her final step over the borders of Ohtori, she looked behind her, and the buildings were very small.