Chapter Text
The morning after Horikita Manabu’s graduation, ANHS ran like a machine between shifts:
functional, but missing a critical weight in its rhythm.
Banners from last night’s ceremony had already vanished.
Floors gleamed without the faint scuff of heels pacing in deliberation.
Students moved between buildings in tight currents, their conversations reduced to logistics.
This was what the school did best - erase change before anyone could name it.
Meritocracy sold as stability.
Nagumo moved through the upper halls, eyes tracing familiar corners. He had never needed to look for him before. The knowledge of where Manabu would be had been as reliable as the hour. That certainty was now an empty square on the board.
At the Student Council chamber, the door gave no resistance. The air inside was unnaturally even, climate control masking the absence of a human presence. Chairs aligned perfectly. The head seat angled a fraction toward the window: an old habit.
Nagumo’s gaze paused there before he forced it elsewhere.
He set down his bag, opened his inbox.
Budget requests, security reports, alumni correspondence.
Work, not nostalgia.
He ran the numbers without thinking.
Yet every few minutes his eyes returned to the door.
Not in expectation, but in the reflex of someone used to being observed.
The whiteboard still held the remnants of last night’s ceremony.
Not cheer, but efficiency:
A tight agenda of departure speeches, faculty acknowledgments, and succession formalities.
At the bottom, in small, precise handwriting, someone had added:
Council transition to President Nagumo — effective immediately.
No flourish.
No signature.
The kind of statement that existed purely for record-keeping, already stripped of sentiment by morning.
He remembered the way Manabu had stood for the transition address: posture straight, tone unassailable, eyes scanning the room not as a farewell, but as a final audit.
In meritocratic theatre, authenticity was a liability.
Nagumo crossed to the cabinets.
The binders were aligned by year.
Manabu’s term marked by muted grey spines.
He traced the labels with his fingertips, counting them like assets.
When he slid one free, the weight was precise in his hands. Pages of minutes, decisions, and controlled outcomes. Governance reduced to data points - exactly how things should be.
From the window, the quad was already filling with student factions:
Debate club members under the shade of a tree.
Track runners testing each other’s pace.
These were not simply clubs; they were political blocs in training, learning the same truth he had: power didn’t come from the scoreboard, it came from steering the system that decided how the scoreboard worked.
A knock at the door broke the view.
It was Himura.
Second-year chair of the Events Committee, holding a slim folder like it was both a report and an offering.
She stepped in only after he gestured her forward: the etiquette here was to make deference look casual.
Her delivery was precise:
A scheduling conflict for an upcoming inter-school exchange, paired neatly with three viable solutions.
She had anticipated his questions and answered them before he asked, saving him the currency of his time.
He considered her for a moment longer than was necessary before nodding approval.
This was why she’d advanced so quickly - she’d learned to be useful without appearing desperate.
The smart ones understood that in this system, usefulness was a shield and a leash in equal measure.
When she left, the chamber’s stillness returned, heavier for having been briefly disturbed.
He returned to his desk and activated the wall screen.
Council archives, three months old.
Official reason: reviewing procedural rhetoric ahead of the next budget cycle.
Unofficial reason: testing whether the footage carried the same gravity as the memory.
There he was - mid-sentence, blue tie, tone steady enough to carry without force.
Even pixelated, Manabu’s presence disciplined the room.
He paused the frame, and the image held his gaze with the impersonal patience of someone already calculating their next move.
It was a dangerous angle.
It created the illusion he was watching you without needing to look directly.
Nagumo killed the feed, but the afterimage remained in the reflective glass.
He disliked how long it took to fade.
At lunch, he moved through the quad on autopilot.
Students intercepted him with requests for permissions and approvals.
He signed them without breaking stride.
Above, the balcony railing was hot from the sun.
From there, he could see the path between the administrative building and the dorms.
A corridor of traffic at shift change.
For years, this had been one of Manabu’s preferred routes.
Nagumo stayed long enough to note it was still functional.
The thought was useless.
But he kept it locked in the back of his mind regardless.
The early transition into evening brought a slight drop in temperature.
Blossoms from the courtyard trees fell without ceremony.
Back in the chamber, Nagumo drafted a message to the board about ceremonial upgrades.
He almost included a note about oiling the hinges—then deleted it.
The chamber doors had opened silently for Manabu.
They should still be able to do so.
Dusk thinned the last flickers of light across the desk he was sitting at.
He gathered his materials with methodical care, the habit as much about optics as it was efficiency.
Authority was maintained through visible control of space.
A principle that worked just as well in rooms as it did in politics.
He locked the door, stepped into the hall, and descended the main staircase.
Halfway down, a first-year passed him, his stride precise enough to mimic someone else’s.
For a heartbeat, Nagumo’s body registered the pattern.
Only for the illusion to break once the first year's face came into view..
He took the long path back to the dorms, skirting the athletic fields adjacent to campus
Floodlights lit the turf with surgical clarity.
A whistle cut the air - short, corrective.
This school trained its people to move as if choice were theirs, but every step was measured against invisible lines.
Those who thrived here understood the exchange: freedom for influence, individuality for access.
Inside his own room, Nagumo unpacked the council binder he’d carried home without meaning to.
He aligned it with the desk’s edge until it felt intentional.
Organizational habits that while small, would help contribute to the bigger picture.
He showered.
Ate.
Answered messages from minor allies and opportunists within the same breath.
By lights out, it had felt as if the building had sank into its own rhythm of curated quiet.
On his bed, flat on his back, Nagumo studied the ceiling.
Tracing the hairline cracks in the plaster like a map.
Somewhere, he could’ve sworn that he had heard a door close without echo.
In the same way as when the soft latch of the chamber door would click into place whenever Manabu was behind it..
He told himself that the sound was imaginary.
That it didn’t matter.
The year ahead was going to be busy after all.
Busy enough, perhaps, to bury the fact that some absences could alter the very air he breathed.
And if it didn’t…
Then…
Nagumo turned to his side, eyes drifting to sleep, as his mind started to linger on the memory of a voice that could quiet a room without raising its volume.