"Can you hear me? Hello? Are you still conscious?"

"...yes. What's going on here?"

"We don't have much time here. For your sake, you should answer my questions honestly. I'm Sae Niijama, a prosecutor who's been working on your case for a long time now. Your testimony could prove to be extremely valuable to a number of concerning problems the police have been facing for the past months. We've also met before, correct?"

"Oh, right. You were that lady who tried to..."

"Well, it seems you're coherent, at least. Now, I want you to tell me everything, from the very beginning. Be clear and concise."

"I don't think you'd believe it if I told you everything."

"What I choose to believe is not up for you to decide. Now, talk."

"Very well. It all started on..."

April 9th was, by most accounts, a normal Saturday in Tokyo. The trains rolled and the crowds buzzed as people went about their daily metropolitan lives. For me, it wasn't the kind of day you'd expect from a normal high school student. Most people at that age didn't move away from their parents to a stranger's house as a result of gaining a criminal record from a chance nocturnal encounter. At that point, I thought I had owned up to the fact that my life wasn't going to be normal. Even so, thinking about it still stung.

At the time, I had just arrived in Nakano station from Nagoya. The plan I had for the day was simple: ride the Tokyo metro to Yongen-Jaya, meet up with the man who would be lodging me in the city for the year, store my bags away, and buy a yearlong commuter pass for the subway before getting some sleep to make up for having caught the train at 5 in the morning. That left me with around twenty minutes or so to get on the red line from Nakano station, if worst came to worst and the city was as packed as I'd imagined it to be. I quickly grabbed my things and rushed out of the car.

In hindsight, it really was remarkable how different my imagined worse case scenario was from the one I actually encountered.

The path to the red line wasn't too bad. I had looked up where and how to pay my fares in advance. The station was crowded, sure, but not enough to screw up my schedule. The real problem occurred when I got off to transfer to the orange line and was greeted by the wailing of sirens. Gingerly stepping out of the train, I dragged my stuff up some stairs and ran into a line of policeman standing in front of the passageway leading to the orange line. Behind them, I could spot a couple of loaded stretchers being attended to by what looked to be paramedics.

"Move along," one of the policemen said, gesturing at the crowd that had formed from the most recent arrivals to the station.

Not fully processing the scene at hand, I blearily grabbed my stuff and heading in the direction they were directing us, which turned out to be outside the station. A bunch of emergency vehicles had piled around the entrance in every open spot on the that was available. Another pair of emergency workers guided us across the street, into a bigger crowd that was standing around and taking pictures.

"Did you hear? There was an accident," someone was saying.

"The news said one of the trains derailed here..."

"How bad do you think other people were hurt?"

"I heard they shut the whole orange line down..."

When my mind pieced together the details of what had happened, I groaned and held my face in my hands. Already, my plans were completely messed up. Either I would end up being several hours late to Yongen-Jaya by being forced to walk all the way from Kanda station, or I could pay a ton of money for a taxi to get there on time and hope that my parents would be able and willing to send me more money by Sunday so I could afford the commuter pass. Neither option was especially appealing, as I was hoping to make the best impression I could on my new guardian, but money still struck me as being the bigger issue. So I took out my phone, looked at a map of the city, and headed down a road that seemed to be the quickest way to my destination.

Despite the accident at the subway, the rest of Tokyo hardly seemed to mind the disturbance. The streets were packed with all kinds of people, especially younger ones who looked to be enjoying the spring weather. It wasn't a sentiment I shared, as I had picked out a heavier outfit to deal with waiting for the train in the morning under the expectation that I wouldn't be doing anything physically exerting today. Now I was beginning to sweat as the midday sun continued to beat down on my neck while I hauled my luggage around. A year ago, I might have complained about my awful luck, but ever since the incident with the drunk man, I was determined to keep focusing on the things I could change.

Unfortunately, it didn't take too long before the map I had on my phone stopped lining up with the streets I was passing by. After backtracking and double checking that I was getting the wrong information, I decided to try using a dedicated navigation app instead of looking at the map I had simply downloaded from the internet. As I swiped around, an app I hadn't seen before on my phone caught my eye. Pressing it brought up an image of a swirling, ominous red eye. Thinking it was rather pointless, I glanced up, and noticed that the entire world had ground to a halt, with pedestrians and traffic alike frozen in place.

"What? That can't be right," I muttered to myself.

It wasn't. I rubbed my eyes and saw the world had returned to its normal, busy self. I shrugged and assumed that the sight had just been a minor hallucination resulting from my lack of sleep.

In the end, it took me two and a half hours to get to Yongen-Jaya on foot. It was a minor ordeal that left my feet and ears sore from the seemingly endless expanses of concrete and screeching vehicles of the city. I was convinced that there must have been a shorter route I could have taken if I had been more familiar with the location, as the path I ended up using involved too much winding through narrow streets and labyrinthine alleys for my tastes. Wiping sweat off my brow, I glanced around the tightly packed maze of two story apartments and shops I would be calling home for the rest of my high school career. Visually speaking, it seemed like a fine enough place to live in, but I had been hearing nasty rumors about it and the surrounding parts of Tokyo. There were reports of various drug related crimes, robberies, and scams being on the rise, particularly in Shibuya. I resolved again to keep my head down and to stay out of trouble as much as possible.

The man I was looking for in Yongen-Jaya was Mr Sakura. My parents vaguely knew him through a mutual acquaintance of some sort, although I wasn't too familiar with the details. Being as late as I was, I wasn't surprised when he wasn't in when I rang the doorbell to his house. Thinking that he had decided to go out somewhere, I resigned myself to waiting outside for him to get back, when a passing deliveryman happened to rescue me.

"You wouldn't happen to be looking for Mr. Sakura, would you?" the man said, carrying a heavy looking parcel down the road.

I quickly turned to face him. "Uh, yes, I am. Sir."

"Well, normally he isn't in at these hours. You'd have more luck checking the cafe he runs. It's called Leblanc, it's right in the neighborhood around here."

"Thanks."

The Leblanc cafe was a small, dim place nestled in between a local clothes store and a featureless brick apartment. The strong smell of coffee caught my attention as I walked inside the restaurant. A little TV in the top corner of the room showed a flat faced reporter droning on about a local road accident in between intermittent bouts of fuzz. The restaurant was split evenly down the middle between a bar with a few chairs, a cash register, and an old landline phone, while the other half was mostly taken up by four tables that were all empty. An older looking man with a pink shirt and apron was busying himself in a newspaper, before he noticed me and got a disappointed look on his face.

"Are you Akira, then?" the man asked. "You're several hours late, you know. I had to open the shop up late because of you."

"I'm sorry, Mister..."

"Sojiro Sakura."

"I would have gotten here earlier, but there was a subway accident," I continued. "One of the trains got derailed and they had to shut the orange line down. I had to walk the rest of the way here."

"Did that happen? Hmph. Someone really ought to be paying more attention to stuff like that."

Mr Sakura stood up and folded his newspaper on the counter. "First, let's get a few things straight. I'm already well aware of the situation that brought you here. This is your last chance to prove that you're willing to be a productive member of society, and for the sake of your parents and myself, you really shouldn't screw it up. I'm doing a lot for you by letting you stay here, got that?"

"Of course, sir."

"In return, I'm absolutely expecting you not to betray my trust. I want nothing but model student behavior from you. Two steps out of line, or if I get a whiff of anything criminal from you, and you're done for. Got it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Mmm-hmm. Come upstairs, and I'll show you where you're staying."

Sakura led me up a flight of stairs at the end of the cafe to a dusty attic filled with various boxes, bags, cans, and pieces of furniture. From the amount of cobwebs that spiders had laid out on the ceiling and on the many scattered items in the room, I could tell that the place wasn't used very often.

"This is where you'll be sleeping," Sakura said. "I can give you sheets for your bed, but you'll be responsible for cleaning the place up. I'm sure you can handle that, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"We'll be heading to Shujin tomorrow to introduce you to the staff there. You know how lucky you are that they accepted you, despite your sentence, correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"Hmph. What a waste of a Sunday... well, get to work. I'll be down in the cafe for now. You stay up here for now. I don't want you bothering any of the customers. Understood?"

"Yes, sir. But..."

"But what?"

"I need to pick up a commuter pass, for the subway. So I can get to school."

"I can take you there tomorrow after we go to your school. But for now, I'm busy." Sakura took one last look at me and the attic before turning around and walking down the stairs.

I took a deep breath as I set down my bags and took in the place I would be spending the next year in. One one hand, I felt relieved that things had gone well enough to meet my expectations. I didn't screw things up completely by being late, and I would be going to Shujin. I still had a future. Still, the reception Sakura had given me couldn't help but feel like having cold water splashed in my face. Did he really have to go and stick me in the crummy old attic, just like that? Without even bothering to clear it out first...?

I ran my hands through my hair to calm myself down. I was in no position to be making such demands; I was a teenager with a criminal record, after all. I had no right to be so imposing. The attic would be more than enough. I could make it work. With a fair bit of spring cleaning, it would look just fine. I had to do it, anyway. I would go crazy if I spent too long cooped up in such a messy place. I never could stand messes. The general disorganized atmosphere of the place was already making my fingers twitch.

So, clean I did. After the hardships involved in coming here, it was nice to have a simple task to focus on. I got so carried away with it that I hardly noticed the sun setting behind the one pair of windows the attic had. I didn't have enough time to get the whole attic up to my standards by evening, but I had at least managed to get most of the dust off the floor and group most of the related junk together.

I paused and turned around as I heard Mr Sakura coming up the stairs again.

"You really spent the rest of the day cleaning, huh?" Sakura said. "Interesting."

"Uh..."

"We'll be leaving early in the morning tomorrow to head to your school. You should get some rest. I'll be locking up the store now, okay?"

"Yes, sir."

I stood still for a little while as Mr Sakura left, before relenting and getting ready to sleep. There wasn't much else for me to do there, anyway. No classes to study for, no friends to meet up with. I did send a brief message to my parents, informing them that I had arrived safely and set things up with Mr Sakura. Then there was little else to do but wait for the time I lost in the morning to catch up with me...

Sunday proved itself to be similarly frustrating in some regards. First, there was the matter of meeting with Shujin Academy's principal and filling out some paperwork. The school itself was a three story block of concrete crammed in between several other nondescript, industrial looking buildings. Just getting there from Yongen-Jaya took several different route transfers on the metro. Shujin had a reputation for spending lavish amounts of money on trivialities like school trips and sporting events, while letting its actual academics suffer. It was hardly the first choice a normal person might make when looking for a school in the Tokyo area, but for someone like me, it was gold. A second chance. A place to start anew.

The principal of the school turned out to be a rather corpulent and egg shaped man, who went over my forms with his beady eyes while glancing to a cabinet filled with trophies to his side every few seconds.

"Well," the principal said. "Everything does seem to be order." He started tapping a pen against his desk. "You know we have every right to expel you immediately if you are to cause any problems here, correct?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Good, good. Ms Kawakami will be your homeroom teacher. We'll have the class schedules posted in the main hall tomorrow. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. Here's your student ID. Now if you could just sign here..."

Things got worse when me and Sakura left to get my commuter pass, as we quickly hit a nasty patch of traffic. Soon we were barely moving one car's length forward along the road per minute.

"Dammit," Sakura muttered. "I bet it's because of that subway accident. Spooked a bunch of people into driving for the next few days. Now I'm going to be late again for opening the cafe."

I hung my head in shame. "I'm sorry, sir."

"Well, let's just not make a habit out of this."

It took us the entire afternoon to get to the station selling year long passes, whereupon I discovered that the price they had listen on their website had been incorrect, and was forced to cover the rest with nearly all of the money my parents had sent me with for a potential emergency. I still saw it was a better option then asking Mr Sakura or my parents for more money, though. I was already causing them both enough trouble as it was. Getting a part time job somewhere in the city would also have been a huge help, but I doubted I could find anyone willing to hire a teen with a criminal record and without a completed high school education.

Another ride through gridlocked Tokyo brought us back to Yongen-Jaya, where I unceremoniously sat down in the attic while Sakura busied himself with the restaurant. I could have spent more time cleaning, but couldn't find the effort needed for it, so I instead decided to browse some random websites on my phone to pass the time. My mind wasn't really on what I was reading, however. I couldn't keep my focus from drifting to Shujin. Of how I had screwed up before.

I won't let you guys down again. This time, I'll be a good student. I'll keep my head down and make you proud of me. I'll get better grades. I won't cause any trouble. I'll...

It was a long while before an uneasy sleep overtook me, in that old and spacious attic.