Nagisa I

Wearily, I looked up the mountain I had to climb to go to class. Stone stairs, overgrown and crumbling, would lead me to the old campus of Kunugigaoka High School, where I was to spend the rest of the year. I, along with my new classmates, would be ostracized from and by the main campus back down in the city, scorned by those with the intelligence and ambition to keep ahead of the pack. Such was the punishment of those who'd failed to meet the standards of our illustrious school, shunned to a place of no return.

After all, there was a reason that Class E had been nicknamed the "End Class".

I forced myself to smile. Despite what they said, this wasn't going to be the end for me. People had crawled out of Class E before and I knew that I had what it took to do so. I may not have had any real friends to speak of in Class E, but that wouldn't-

"Yo, Shiota-san."

I blinked, snapping myself from my thoughts, and turned to see the thick and wide face of a thug pressed way too close to me.

Still, it was a face I knew, so I wasn't too surprised. Besides, I'd heard the big guy coming a mile away.

"Hello, Gouda-san," I greeted the hulking boy in front of me with a smile. Gouda looked more like an adult bodybuilder than a teenager, with his towering physique and prematurely-aged face that would fit better on a yakuza member. But despite appearances and habits (his constant invasion of personal space being one of them), he was probably the kindest person I had ever met. "And please, didn't I tell you to call me by my first name?"

"Did you?" Gouda wondered, tapping a finger to his ridiculously thick lips and leaning back. I was thankful for that; whatever he had for breakfast, its smell was heavy in his breath. "Sorry about that, I must've forgotten…"

"It's okay," I offered. "I know it's kind of a weird request, but I'd really prefer it if people called me Nagisa."

After all, it would save plenty of confusion down the road if Mom and Dad ever got back together…

"I'll remember, then," Gouda assured me, nodding seriously.

"And I'll have to remind you to remember," sighed a softer voice from his side. I almost hadn't noticed the other boy next to Gouda, which I liked to think was forgivable, considering the latter's sheer size. "And hello, Nagisa."

"Good morning, Sunakawa-san," I said. Sunakawa was, put bluntly, every girl's dream of an ideal man. With good looks straight from a boy band and an aloof attitude that made him appear mysterious, it was difficult to find a single girl on campus that didn't have a crush on him. I would've been jealous of him, like every other guy, if I thought girls might even look at me that way if he wasn't around. Not many girls wanted to ask out a guy that looked almost exactly like one of them, after all.

"So you ended up in Class E, too, Shi- Er, I mean, Nagisa?" Gouda asked conversationally as the three of us began climbing up the stairs. I would've been perfectly content to spend the walk in silence, since I wasn't nearly as close to those two as they were with each other, but oh well. It was no difference to me.

"Why else would he be here?" Sunakawa sighed again. He seemed to do that a lot.

"Heh, yeah, I did," I admitted, laughing nervously and scratching the back of my head. My ponytail shifted as my fingers brushed against it. Masking my annoyance at how long my hair had gotten, I continued. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm sorry to see you guys here with me, too."

"Don't worry about it," Gouda easily dismissed, waving a meaty hand. "I kinda expected to be here this year, honestly. My grades were never really the best. Kinda surprised that Suna ended up here, though. He always was good about studying."

Sunakawa yawned and turned his gaze to the woods around us. "Just how it happened, I guess," he murmured.

Something about his tone…

"But still, I'm not worried!" Gouda suddenly boasted, pumping a fist against his chest and proudly staring up the mountain. "Being put in Class E can't be as bad as they say it is. I'm sure the three of us will come out on top in no time! Right, Suna, Nagisa?" He gave a big thumbs-up at the both of us, grinning.

Even though it was hard for me to share his optimism, I knew it'd be a bit awkward for me to refuse him. So I simply smiled again and said "Sure!"

But as Gouda and Sunakway resumed talking about whatever they were before they'd ran into me, I nervously looked up the stairs. A few other students were walking ahead of us, the nearest being a pair of girls chatting with each other. I think the pink-haired one with twin pigtails was… Kaname was her last name, but what was her first? Madoka? Yeah, that sounded right. The other one, with shoulder-length black hair and glasses, I didn't recognize.

I looked past them, past the top of the mountain, all the way up to the sky, and saw it. Somehow, it was still visible that morning. The moon, broken into a permanent crescent. Something had destroyed over seventy percent of the moon's mass two months ago, in an event that still no one had any idea of what really happened.

Despite the sheer impossibility that loomed in the sky, the world kept turning. Nothing really changed down here.

I looked back down, my eyes only on the next step in front of me. For me, at least, it was hard to keep your head up while you were in the End Class.

Hachiman I

It was fitting, really. Because of my own stupidity, I'd be missing out on the first day of class and spending it in the hospital.

Not that I minded, of course. I got to be all alone with nothing but books and the Internet to keep me company, so there really was nothing to complain about. Besides, school was a jail, and no school was quite like Kunugigaoka High in that regard. You could say it passed as a jail with flying colors, but calling it such would likely only encourage the dark overlord that oversaw it all. No, best not to give the man any more credit.

I was only delaying the inevitable, I knew. I, along with twenty-something other misfits and dunces, had been exiled to the very fringes of Asano's little fiefdom to the oh so lovingly titled "End Class". Perhaps the "Borderlands" or "a leper's colony" would have been more fitting, but I wasn't around for that meeting so they were woefully without my suggestions. Either way, it was probably just as well that I was already in Class E to begin with. A trip to the hospital was no excuse for poor grades at Kunugigaoka, so in all likelihood I would've been dumped there within a week.

I glanced at my leg and entertained the idea of moving it before crumbling it into a mental paper ball and tossing into the garbage bin. The sooner I healed, the sooner I could get back home. The sooner I could get back home, the sooner Komachi didn't have to come home to an empty house. After that…

Well, my prison sentence would truly begin, wouldn't it?

I was rudely interrupted from my self-pity by a knock on my door. What say you, Raven? Nevermore?

"Come in," I shot back dully. My wit would likely be wasted on the nurses here, anyway. Also, my voice had cracked. Hopefully they hadn't noticed. The shame of a young man my age whose voice still cracked would be utterly unbearable for my family.

I did my best to hide my surprise when, instead of the portly nurse who usually cared for me, a tall man in an impeccable suit strolled in, all broad shoulders and militaristic aura. Oi, did the car that hit me belong to some mysterious, clandestine organization that now had to permanently silence me for some arbitrary reason? Perhaps I'd be told that the accident had triggered some previously dormant power within me and I was now to join an elite squad of similarly-enhanced teenagers with attitude?

Oh, he's speaking.

"Hikigaya, was it?" he asked crisply. Damn, he was even wearing sunglasses indoors, too. His Men in Black reading was off the charts.

"Y-Yes," I replied.

He nodded and handed me a folder. "Your teacher asked that I deliver this to you and wishes for a speedy recovery," was all he said before coolly walking out.

Damn you, Kunugigaoka! Can't a man lick his wounds in peace?! At least wait before sending your secret police after me!

At least, that was my first thought, until I actually looked at the folder on my lap. It certainly didn't look like it had come from Kunugigaoka at all.

"SENSEI'S GUIDE TO HEALING A BROKEN LEG (WITH BONUS ILLUSTRATIONS AND CONTENT!)"

That was the title.

What.

I flipped it open to find it was exactly as advertised. The "illustrations", though, if they could be called that, were just a bunch of smiley faces and… were those tentacles? Come to think of it, whoever wrote this seemed to insert the word "tentacle" whenever possible in the instructions. Was my new teacher secretly a pervert or something?

When I finally hit the "bonus content", which was actually homework for the next week, I knew that they must have had some sick joy out of kicking students while they were down.

Definitely a pervert.