The two of us slowly walked into the elevator as Fern leaned toward me a little.

…

I hadn’t actually decided which floor I wanted to go to since I was just trying to bide time as Sumire showed in my room. Fern swiftly tapped the button for the 46^th floor—one of the standard dormitory floors. I guess he was visiting a friend.

That was different from what he just mentioned though.

“I thought you were getting food.”

“Ah, sorry, I’m just going to drop by someone real quick.”

There was a moment of silence.

“So what did you want to talk to me about?”

“Yeah.”

Yeah? Yeah, what exactly.

He began to appear tense. There was a certain strain in he way he was looking around the inside of the elevator.

No eye contact.

After a short pause, he continued.

“I think someone’s trying to kill me.”

“Trying to kill you? Like they’re trying to get you expelled?”

“No, like they’re actually trying to kill me. In real life.”

Either Fern was an avid conspiracy-theorist or he was being targeted outside of the rules of the school.

To be fair, despite the existence of the ‘no violence’ rule, it was still possible to kill someone and simply suffer the consequences of it. Especially with our newly-given abilities, the school would definitely allow a certain amount of freedom regarding their use—it only made sense for their goal, after all.

The school couldn’t stop someone from getting killed anyway.

“…I tried to report it to student administration, but they completely ignored me.”

As expected.

He suddenly grabbed my shoulders.

“What should I do… Akira, someone’s trying to kill me!”

There was a short ring.

The elevator door opened—floor 46.

Leading the way, Fern began to make his way toward one of the rooms.

“What makes you think someone’s trying to kill you?”

“You’ll see in a moment.”

He knocked on the door of one of the rooms. There was the sound of footsteps before the door creaked open. It was a slender-looking boy with long black hair and a very uptight style of wearing his uniform.

The boy looked at me with suspicion.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“It’s my friend… Akira.”

“Why did you bring him.”

“I-I don’t know. I’m just scared. I think we can trust him.”

“You think? Do you care about your own life at all?!”

Fern looked down with his hands on his forehead. I could see the veins sticking out on the edge of his skin, tinting his arm with a dark tone of blue.

“I don’t know! I don’t know, okay? I’m… I just don’t know what to do right now.”

The boy sighed.

“Alright. Bring him in. I guess the more help we can get the better.”

This was interesting enough to pass the time, at least.

…

The three of us sat down on various positions in the boy’s room. I was leaning up against the wall, stretching my legs straight on the ground, the boy was on his bed and Fern was awkwardly sitting in the school-issued seat (that came with the desk).

Surprise Question

Find the integral of sqrt(tan(x)):

Write your answer here: _________________

They gave a much simpler question this time.

Correct!

You were the #192^nd  student to answer that correctly. (7.11s elapsed)

You have been awarded 3,500 points

I looked up at Fern and the boy who hadn’t even looked down at their phones.

“Aren’t you guys going to try the surprise question?”

The boy looked back at me.

“What do you mean? You know how hard they are right? There’s no point in even trying them. It’s probably just some trick from the school to stress us out.”

Huh? That didn’t make any sense.

Regardless, the two of them began the next topic of conversation.

“Ah, Akira, I should probably introduce you to Darren.”

I guess this boy with long black hair is Darren.

“His ability is Psychometry and it lets him find out information about something by touching it,” Fern continued.

Darren took a little ball which looked a bit like a lint ball.

“This was made by someone’s ability and it was found under Fern’s bed.”

I had a quick look at it.

I mean, just from its appearance, there wasn’t anything that suggested that it was out of the ordinary. I guess I should trust the psychometric guy’s judgement for now though. The atmosphere was awkwardly solemn—well, it was certainly awkward for me.

I didn’t exactly want to get involved with whatever this was. I was just bored.

“What exactly is the story behind it?” I asked Darren.

“All I can see is that it’s something that can record information. I think it’s able to map out the room, or maybe detect whether someone’s in it or not. I’m not fully sure.”

If it was just some 360-degree sonar device that was planted under his bed, that wasn’t really evident of murderous intent. If anything, it could’ve just been some other student needlessly gathering information on their apartment-mates. That was to say it was a cam-corder-like device in the first place.

Just taking the context into consideration, no smart person would leave a device like that in the room of someone they wanted to kill.

Darren and Fern were talking about something that I didn’t really care about. Based on the context clues and timing of everything, the more likely explanation was a planned robbery, which is much easier to prevent.

I guess I’ll see how this pans out sooner or later.

It’s been a while, Sumire’s probably done with her shower now.

“Um, I have something to do. So I might go back now.”

The other two looked at me. I could feel a scathing glare toward me from Darren.

“Aren’t you going to stay and help us?”

Um.

“Ah, it’s really important. Er, I’ll be back?”

Fern sighed.

“Don’t worry about it, Akira. Sorry about dragging you into this. Can I ask one thing of you though? Don’t tell anyone.”

Don’t tell anyone?