The only problem with community service was the timing sometimes. My work site could be far away, so if community service was in the morning, I had to run across the whole village to get to class on time.

Luckily, I was fast. I made it on time most of the time. The few times I couldn't, I didn't feel too bad. There were always other late-comers. Yuuka was the worst. She was late at least once a week, usually huffing at the door. Riku was another offender, but no one blamed Riku. He lived the farthest away. Not only that, he had to drop off lunch and check up on his grandmother every morning. Yuuka was just lazy and would oversleep her alarm.

Unlike at the Academy, normal school was lenient on time. The most we got was a headshake, so I wasn't worried when I was late again.

It was Sunday, which meant domestic arts. We had been told that we were getting a special lecturer this time, some famous matchmaker named Lady Mamefusa. The lesson would be on manners.

It was exciting news. I was A++ in manners. My dad taught me all my please and thank yous. Finally a domestic arts lesson I could do well on!

Yuuka and I met at the door at the same time.

"Morning!" I greeted.

Yuuka collapsed, making a noise. She straightened and searched her bag. "Shoot, I forgot my apron!"

"No worries, Yuuka. We're doing manners today, remember?"

"Oh yeah!" Yuuka looked relieved. "With Lady Edamame, right?"

"Mamefusa."

"Right," she said, sweat-dropping.

"After you," I said gentlemanly, holding open the door.

She bowed. "Why, thank you, miss!"

I bowed back. "You're very welcome, miss!"

Our giggles stopped when we stepped in. The room was too quiet. There was a person in front. She frowned when she saw us. She had to be Lady Mamefusa.

"You're late," she said.

Yuuka and I stiffened. Heads down, we went to the back of the class and quietly seated.

"As I was saying, social deportment..." Lady Mamefusa said, "is the most essential attribute a young woman is judged upon in the marital marketplace. At least, for any young woman of class."

"Not…" She plucked the handheld mirror from a student in front. "... physical appearance."

"Not…" She confiscated the note between two girls. "... flirtatious sweet talk."

"Not…" She shut Setsu's book. "... misplaced conceptions of flagrant self-importance."

Lady Mamefusa circled back front. "If your goal is to be a spinster, you are welcome to leave."

No one did.

Lady Mamefusa gave a dry smile. "Then let's begin."

Social deportment, as our teacher described it, meant following certain rules.

Rule number one. Hygiene. Hygiene meant one bath a day. Three hair cleanses a week. Fresh undergarments daily. Clipped nails and groomed brows.

Rule number two. No cosmetics or ornamentations. Cosmetics included dyes, powders, nail polish, lotions, and fragrances. Ornamentations included jewelry, piercings, lace, and frills.

"Wait, why can't we have lotions? What if we have dry skin?"

Lady Mamefusa gave a thin smile.

"Then you are a girl with unhealthy skin. A cheap gift in a pretty furoshiki is still a cheap gift. If you want to swindle your husband into thinking he has made a better bargain than he has, by all means."

The student shrunk.

"You want to increase your valuation, then drink water. Put less garbage into your body. Turn off the television and sleep."

Rule number three. No magazines, no comics, no television, no novels.

The make-up rule was bad, but rule three made half the class cringe. Setsu was shaking.

"They are filthy, perverse, brain-rotting garbage. All that romance nonsense in particular. You did not receive an education to read the squabbles of other women. If you must read, inform yourself with journals in cooking, health, and childcare."

Setsu went from shaking to fuming. Worried, Ayame put a hand over Setsu's to make sure she didn't do something bad.

Rule number four. Posture. No slouching. No arm crossing. No leg spreading. No duck feet. No buck knees. Every movement should be done with energy, purpose, and grace.

Starting with rule number four, the lesson got painful. With her fan, Lady Mamefusa hit us wherever we went wrong. The head, the elbow, the back. We had to sit down and stand up over and over until she was satisfied.

"This is disgraceful," she said, hitting each girl in the back. "Straighten up. Straighten up."

She hit Dai, Setsu, and even Tamaki. She got to me and paused.

I smiled.

"Too straight," she said, whacking me too.

Oh come on!

Rule number five. No bad habits. No smoking, no drinking. But also no nail biting, no hair twirling, no leg shaking, no lip chewing, no pencil tapping.

Rule number six. Eloquence. Pronounce every syllable. Control speed, volume, and tone. Accents were unacceptable. Proper ladies spoke softly and deliberately, or not at all.

We spent hours just repeating syllables.

"... ta… na… no… no… oh dammit!"

Lady Mamefusa narrowed her eyes at me. I clapped my hands over my mouth.

"This shouldn't need to be said, but no cursing," she told the class.

I winced.

The rules went on. There were over two hundred of them. We covered twelve. By the end of the class, if we didn't hate Lady Mamefusa, we hated ourselves.

As we walked out, we were each given a grade.

Lady Mamefusa told us to be thankful that we were young and had time to improve. As girls, we were lucky. Boys were born into their positions, but girls could rise or fall depending on who we marry. And who we marry, a part of that was decided based on our choices and behaviors.

I unfolded my paper. 'Class D: Merchant.'

Dai got the same.

"Hey, high-five!"

We slapped hands.

Tamaki had gotten Class C: Scholar. Ayame had the highest out of us with Class B: Artisan.

Setsu had gotten Class E: Undesirable. It was the lowest grade. Setsu had refused to cooperate after Lady Mamefusa made fun of her books. Setsu ripped her paper apart. To be doubly disobedient, she took out her books from her backpack and held them in her arms. Head high, she stomped out.

We followed. As we did, we heard another group behind us.

"Oh my god, you got Class A?!"

"Of course I did."

And of course, that group had to be Blue Hair and her friends. Both Tamaki and I scowled.

"Unlike certain other people, I am destined to marry a shinobi."

"Genin," Tamaki mumbled.

"What was that, ugly?"

Oh no. Tamaki wasn't walking away.

"Everyone knows Class A is low-rung genin," Tamaki said aloud, lowering her eyelids. "But I guess some people will give anything to scrape the bottom of the barrel."

Oh no.

Before we knew it, Tamaki and Blue Hair were at each other.

"Singleton!"

"Parasite!"

"Leftovers!"

"Enjoy life as a spinster!"

"I'll read all about it in your book!"

"What is a spinster?" I whispered to Ayame. I kept hearing this word.

"It's someone who never gets married," Ayame whispered back.

"Oh. Oh!" I knew people like that.

Dai nodded seriously. "They have no husband so they never bother with chores. They just bum around the house, living with their parents and lots of cats."

I snapped my head. "Cats?! I want to be a spinster!" I said, pointing to myself. Getting to bum around the house with my dad didn't sound bad at all.

Well, getting married still sounded nice.

But cats! Lots of cats!

Maybe I could get both.

At dinner, I told my dad about school. Mostly I tried to convince him that we needed a cat. The answer was no. As a compromise, my dad and I promised to meet and greet all the village cats that we saw.

I told my dad about Lady Mamefusa too. I tried to remember all the rules she taught us, but there were so many. Out of the ones I did remember, though, my dad agreed with. Drink water. Eat food. Sleep lots.

When I showed him my paper, he looked very amused.

"Sorry it's not an A. I accidentally said a bad word, and I think Lady Mamefusa didn't like that," I said, biting my spoon. I added the puppy dog eyes just in case.

My dad shook his head. "Oh, don't you worry about that, sweetie!" he said, getting up. Smiling, he walked to the trash can and threw the paper inside.

I was taken aback. "Daddy?"

He sat back down at the table and leaned forward. "Honey, as you get older, you might hear more and more about something known as a class system. Do you know what that is?"

I shook my head.

My dad looked relieved. Patiently, he explained it was a made-up way of looking at people. Because there are so many people in the world, we like to group them based on things like jobs, money, and reputation. The class system was easy to understand, so many people use it when thinking about things.

But thinking that way wasn't necessarily always useful.

As an example of a different grouping, he drew a horizontal line and a vertical line. On the left were the people you liked, and on the right were the people you didn't. In the bottom were the people you could help, and at the top were the people you couldn't.

This was another made-up way of looking at people, but looking at things this way, you could see that you wanted to fit as many people to the left and bottom as you could.

He said I was free to come up with my own groupings too! It all depended on what I wanted to accomplish at the end of the day.

"Daddy, you teach way better than Lady Mamefusa," I said. "She's scary and not good at all."

"Now, now, don't be harsh on her, honey. She's not a trained teacher. Your school depends on volunteers and donations. The school doesn't pay her to come, but she took time out of her busy day to come anyway, so that you may have some lessons you may otherwise not have gotten."

I deflated.

He was right.

After dinner, I did my homework. It was another round of math nightmare. My dad got excited though, because I was finally doing stuff that he understood. All the new, squiggly things were the beginnings of something called calculus. It was his favorite subject!

We sat side by side at the table, working through every problem. He felt good at being able to help me with my homework again.

Thanks to him, I finished way earlier than usual.

I threw my arms up. "Yay! Done!"

"You know, sweetie, I just got an idea, now tell me if it's any good."

"What, daddy?"

He adjusted his glasses. "Well, all that talk of helping people got me thinking... What if I volunteered at your school? They send us all these letters asking for help, and I'm obviously not a teacher, but I can help out in other ways. Not every day, of course, but a little bit here and there…"

"What about your work?"

"I think I can figure something out."

"Then I think you should," I said, nodding.

My dad looked happy with the idea.

The classroom door slammed open the next morning. It was Yuuka, huffing.

Seeing her, the entire class clapped.

"Wow, you're early!" Mimi said.

"Wait, what?" Yuuka looked at the clock. "Dammit, my mom reset my clock again!" She blinked at us. "What's going on?"

The entire class was sitting in a circle, giving each other morning massages. Setsu and Ayame had started the trend a while back, but it caught on. Yuuka was never early enough to have been a part of it.

"Come in," I said, scooting to make room.

Yuuka sat in front of me. Soon, she was sighing happily.

"Harder! Harder!" she encouraged.

"Wow, you're so stiff," I said, doing stronger shoulder chops.

"Ugh, Lady Edamane wants to know why we slouch? Blame that stupid civics doorstopper! I swear it's like ten kilograms."

"Oh, stop complaining, Yuuka. At least you don't walk from District 18," Masae said behind me. "You're like thirty minutes away."

"Thirty-eight," Yuuka corrected.

I sweat-dropped, letting them bicker. As they did, though, my dad's diagram from last night popped into my head.

"... no, District 34 is definitely farther than 36. I've walked to where Yousuke lives, and it's like an hour and a half, at least." Yuuka turned. "Hey Ayae, something up?"

Catching myself, I resumed my chopping. "I think I have an idea!"

"What is it?"

"So the books are heavy for everyone?" I said, double checking.

It was.

"Oh my god, and it's only going to get worse once exams come around," Yuuka groaned. "They're going to assign us that Recitals 8 book again, I just know it."

"I'd take Recitals 8 over 7," Mimi said. "The vocabulary in 7 is awful- eep!"

Mimi jolted when Yuuka massaged her harder, an evil glint in her eyes. "Don't you dare complain, Mimi, Miss Straight As!"

"Poor Riku though," Masae said. "He really does need his own bike."

"Or no books!" I said.

Masae leaned in. "Eh? What do you mean?"

"Well, what if we put our textbooks inside summoning scrolls?"

The whole circle looked at me. Masae went wide-eyed.

"Ha!" Yuuka said, the only one unfazed. "You're forgetting we're not ninjas, Ayae."

On the other side of the circle, Tamaki recovered first. She understood where I was going.

"You don't need to be a ninja to use a summoning scroll," Tamaki said.

Heads turned in her direction, confused. We realized most students didn't know. Tamaki gave the whole latent versus active explanation. She did a better job explaining it than I did.

People looked to Ayame for confirmation. Ayame looked to Setsu.

"She's right," Setsu said, nodding. "As long as you have someone set it up for you, you don't need to know ninjutsu."

"But ninja tools aren't allowed in school," Masae said, her hands leaving my back.

"And besides, don't you need a license to buy them?" asked Reina. "We can't just go into a store and ask for one."

More questions popped up. But everyone was curious. To them, a summoning scroll was a shinobi weapon. You used them for fighting. It never occurred to them that the scrolls could be used to carry everyday stuff like clothes or books.

But my clan used them for everyday stuff all the time. It was super convenient.

I thought of Itachi's scroll and all the years it'd been with me. A warm bubbly feeling hit my stomach.

I decided! Everyone around me was pitching in to help the community, even my dad. It inspired me to do something good too. The summoning scroll would be how I'd help.

It would be what I'd share with everyone.