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Nobody really ever checked the school security cameras. They were there as a formality more than anything else, a deterrent and something to point to if parents came around to complain, a wall decoration at best. Nobody really ever checked the school security cameras, which gave people around the school a certain sense of security; nobody really ever checked the school security cameras, which meant that you could do whatever you wanted in front of them without getting in trouble; nobody really ever checked the school security cameras, which meant that anyone who gained access to them had a weapon in their hands that nobody ever expected.
“Oooh, look at this, Momo!” said Tsukumo Ryo, a trust fund brat with absolutely no connections to the high school at all. “This kid’s totally getting bullied! Isn’t it funny? Look at their faces !”
“Ryo, where did you even get that video?” said Sunohara Momose, who technically had a paying full-time job that he was supposed to be working at. But Ryo’s parents owned the company that owned the branch store that Momo was working at, which meant that it was really okay to slack off when Ryo was around, and anyway, he was always so interesting— in the best and worst ways.
“The high school in town! They don’t guard their security tapes at all, isn’t that nice?”
Momo glanced down at Ryo’s phone screen. It showed an ordinary school hallway with an ordinary student huddled against the wall, sobbing his eyes out.
“Is that…legal?”
“Who cares? We should post this online! I think it would be better than any reality TV show, don’t you, Momo?”
“Ah ha ha…I think the students might dislike it a bit, though…” said Momo. “And it’s not really all that clear, is it?”
“Nope, but if it goes viral somebody will doxx them sooner or later, and then we could find out who everyone on the tapes is! Doesn’t that sound fun?”
“Why not just look at the school’s enrollment records?” said Momo. “If you can get their security tapes, I’m sure you could find out who’s in what class and everything. That’s a lot easier than hoping this goes viral and the kids in it get doxxed.”
“They’re old tapes, Momo!” said Ryo. “Didn’t you notice? They’re from ten years ago, at least. It’s way too boring to go through that many records. And there aren’t exactly dates on the tapes.”
“Really?” Momo looked closer. “Oh, yeah, you’re right. The timestamp on the bottom doesn’t include the year. That’s crazy!”
“Isn’t it?” Ryo grinned. “So of course there’s only one way to find out who they are.”
“Yeah, let’s doxx them ourselves!” Momo chirped. He grinned back at Ryo over the store counter, his eyes sparkling. “Why take the easy way out and post them online? That’s like letting strangers have half the fun, isn’t it?”
Ryo leaned forward. “You’re so right, Momo,” he said. He leaned forward over the counter, as if he’d expected or at least hoped for this answer. “I have around four hundred hours of video footage at least saved onto here, and back at my place I have…”
His voice descended into a whisper; Momo leaned forward, enraptured.
“Woah, Ryo, that’s so cool!” he said. “It’s really impressive how you got so many videotapes so quickly.” Students were changing classes on the video now; the crying student was nowhere to be seen, which was a little bit of a relief and a little bit of a worry, because Momo had definitely seen that student somewhere before and Ryo definitely knew more about these security tapes than he let on, but Ryo liked it when Momo played dumb, he liked it so much that he believed the act, and Momo always gave the boys what they liked. It was his greatest talent. It was the number one thing people kept him around for. So he leaned over the counter and batted his eyelashes and pretended not to have noticed how very much the student in the video had resembled a friend of his, one of his coworkers here at the store. It was fine. It probably wasn’t him, and if it was, it didn’t matter as long as it didn’t go up on the internet, and if it was, it didn’t matter as long as Momo didn’t mention it to him. This was fine. This was fun. And as long as Momo and Ryo continued to have fun together, everything would remain fine, perfectly fine, now and for always.