Break time eventually rolled around. Hisao had been planning to make a move on Hanako but found himself ambushed by the Student Council: he watched despairingly as Hanako vacated the classroom faster than a skittish squirrel.

"Since you're new here, we members of the Student Council have decided to take it upon ourselves to welcome you to Yamaku Academy and answer any questions that you might have! Wahaha!"

Ignoring Misha's use of her catchphrase laugh as a punctuation mark, Hisao asked "Is there somewhere we can get lunch?"

"Of course! Walk this way."

Hisao watched Misha take bounding steps towards the door. He decided, on mature reflection, not to walk in quite that way for fear of throwing a hip. Shizune was waiting for them, her entire demeanour as they made their way down to the cafeteria suggesting that she regarded Hisao as little more than a necessary duty. Once they were all sat down, Hisao played his gambit.

"So, you know my name. I hope I'm not being too forward in asking for yours."

"Oh, gosh! I'm sorry Hisao, I was so excited about showing you around that I forgot to introduce us! I'm Misha, this is Shizune. I don't think she'll mind if you call her Shicchan though – I do it all the time," Misha added in a spirit of conspiratorial fun. Hisao hadn't the faintest grasp of sign language but could still tell very easily by the gestures that Shizune was making that yes she did mind Hisao calling her that. "We are also," Misha added grandly, "the Student Council of Yamaku Academy! If you want to get anything done around here, you talk to us." Shizune nodded sagely in agreement with Misha's hands.

"Really? So how does one go about becoming a member of the Student Council?"

Misha dropped her fork, her mouth open. Shizune signed a quick question, obviously not having understood. Misha translated what Hisao had just said. Shizune's jaw also dropped. When she recovered a second later her signing was fast and furious.

"Are you seriously thinking of joining the Council?" asked Misha, her question just as urgent as Shizune's vigorous signing would suggest.

"Well sure," said Hisao, apparently casually. "Someone around here has to be in charge, right? It seems to me like a lot of people don't appreciate the lengths to which certain people have to go to get things done."

"Wow, you sound like Shicchan," said Misha, her reaction halfway between surprise and amusement. Shizune's reaction, however, was a lot less ambiguous. "Oh – Shizune wants me to tell you that she would be delighted to accept you as a Council member." Shizune paused to straighten her glasses, which Hisao took to be the deaf equivalent of clearing one's throat. "On a probationary basis, of course, until we better... what's that word? Spell it. Ascer-what? Okay: until we make sure that you're right for the job."

"Sounds good to me," Hisao replied. "By the way, since you're showing me around, perhaps you could point me to the library on our way back to class?"

"Of course! Anything for my junior Council member! Wahaha!"


Hisao was feeling very pleased with himself for the rest of that day, and for most of the next morning too: it seemed that he'd read Shizune very well, even though she was the one who was supposed to be analysing him. Still, there was the issue of how to get at the other girls while Shizune and Misha were around: not only did they like to keep tabs on him but their personalities were anathema to Hanako who would take every possible opportunity to slip from the room. Indeed, on the second day Hanako wasn't even there. Hisao hoped he hadn't scared her off by joining forces with the Council.

However, the solution to Hisao's quandary soon presented itself – in the form of Misha, no less, who ambushed him at break much as she had the previous day. "Hicchan! It's okay if I call you that, isn't it?" Hisao opened his mouth to say that he'd prefer it if she didn't, but the conversational bulldozer that was Misha couldn't be stopped by such weak resistance. "We, the senior members of the Student Council, need you to do something for us! As you should be aware, you've joined us just before the school festival and we will require your aid in setting up the stalls. Here's a list of the things we need you to get for us. A list?" This last was directed at Shizune, who longsufferingly handed a scrap of paper to Misha. "Oh, right! Here you go, Hicchan."

He took a look at the items. "Wood boards and paint? Do you guys have a Design Technology department here?"

"I don't think so. Do we?" Shizune stared at Misha in a way that needed no translation. "No, no we don't. So where should he get it from? Oh, right! Yes, Sir Hicchan, you shall valiantly venture forth unto the Room that is Called Art and there procure for us these items! Make it so! Wahahaha!" The look on Shizune's face at Misha's display mirrored the thoughts in Hisao's head, but that is where they stayed.

"Right. And where do you want me to move these items?"

"Uh." Signing happened. "Please be so kind as to deposit them in the Student Council room. Shicchan and I have some other business to attend to just now, but we'll join you in the art room shortly and help you move them- wait, we have to help? What's the point of having a big burly man around if we delicate girls then have to help out with the heavy lifting?" Shizune gave Hisao a tired look and a sideways nod which translated universally as 'You get going – dealing with this one could take all day.' He gratefully took the hint and left.

Hisao soon found the art room. He couldn't hear any activity within and so assumed that it was fine to enter – and then he saw her, sat on a counter by the window, a loaded fork halfway to her mouth. Being held between her toes. While Hisao's immediate attention was captured by that, his hindbrain noticed that she was wearing a boy's uniform, the sleeves of which were tied just below the shoulder.

The two of them paused, forming a strange tableau in the afternoon light that filtered through the slightly dusty windows.

"You can talk, you know," said the redhead. "I won't eat you." She then proceeded to eat whatever was on her fork, presumably in lieu of Hisao.

"Yes, right. Sorry." Hisao didn't know what he was apologising for, but it seemed the right thing to do. "Um, I've been sent here to get some supplies."

"You're new here, aren't you?" the girl asked through half a mouthful of food.

"Yeeees...?"

"Thought so. You don't have the Mark on you yet."

Hisao blinked in alarm. Was this some demonic thing that Akira hadn't told him about? "Mark? What mark?"

Rin swallowed lethargically. "Mine. I like to mark the people that I collect. Like this." She drew a small circle in the air with her fork, a little symbol inside that and then thrust the fork forward as though pushing the mark onto Hisao. "Of course, there's only any point in me collecting you if I can figure out what's wrong with you."

"Yamaku accepts people without disabilities, you know," Hisao reminded her. Rin appeared not to notice, scanning him with intense eyes.

"...Eeyup. I know what it is. The problem is in your chest."

Hisao blinked. "What?"

"The pattern on that sweatervest is horrible," said Rin lackadaisically, devouring another forkful. "Your fashion sense is clearly crippled beyond all repair."

Hisao looked down: he'd left a few too many buttons at the top of his shirt undone. Well, it had been a hot day. But something didn't match up.

"You said 'in your chest', not on it," Hisao pointed out.

"Yesterday I said 'in the table' when I meant on it," said Rin, making an odd movement that Hisao later worked out was a shrug. "Considering that time and space are relative to the observer, what does position mean in relation to an object that cannot see? To our knowledge, anyway. Do you think that tables can see?"

"Have you tried asking one?" Hisao quipped, knowing a fruitless avenue of conversation when he saw one.

"I have, as it happens," Rin rambled on airily, Hisao's withering sarcasm pinging off the armour of Rin's obliviousness. "I asked a table that very question just the other day. It didn't answer me, though. Or at least, it didn't answer me in a way that I could understand. Do you think perhaps tables are on a higher level of existence and that their extrusions into this reality appear to us as inanimate simply because we're incapable of viewing objects in four or more dimensions?"

"Look, could I please bring this back to the issue of the supplies?" asked Hisao, despairing at ever leaving this room with his sanity intact. "I need some wood and paint for Student Council business."

"Down the back there," said Rin, gesturing with her fork. Offering up a silent thank-you to whatever gods were listening, Hisao went to organise the supplies into piles that Shizune and Misha could easily carry. He stalled the process as long as possible hoping that the Council would arrive and save him from any further discussions with the unnecessarily long-winded girl still partaking of her lunch on the other end of the room: thankfully, they did just that.

"Wahaha!" Shizune would never need a trumpet herald with Misha in her vanguard. "We have arrived! How's it going, Hicchan?"

"It seems everything we need is right here,"said Hisao. "Say, who is that girl?"

"Hm? Oh, that's Rin," said Misha, looking back over her shoulder to see. What Shizune made up for in powers of observation, Misha lacked. "She's a bit... weird. I don't think she has a mental disorder – at least, nothing diagnosable, or else Yamaku wouldn't have taken her. She's helping out in the school festival too: painting a big wall mural, wouldn't you know it."

"Good place for a mural," said Hisao dryly. Despite her deafness, Shizune clearly heard the loud 'whoosh' of the joke going over Misha's head.

"What? Anyway, you take the heaviest and we refined young ladies shall take whatever our delicate constitutions may allow."

Shizune immediately went for the biggest paint pots and hefted them at Hisao as if daring him to do better. Hisao got the distinct feeling that these two were definitely going to put him through his paces over the next few days.

"My other name's Tezuka, by the way," said Rin casually, as if to the air as Hisao was leaving.

"Oh! Sorry, I would've asked you, but... you're kind of difficult to talk to."

Rin nodded, as though this was par for the course. "I get that a lot. Not everyone says it as straightforwardly as that, though. I have a habit for being blunt too. Perhaps we'll get along. Who can say?"

Hisao shrugged his heap of wood. "The gods themselves?"

"Certain ones of them, maybe. We'll see. Goodbye for now, Hisao."