A normal high school, XXX Jr. High. With normal students. And an unspoken hierarchy. By all means, I'm probably at the bottom of it all, probably because I don't ever bother to push myself hard with academics, or fix my uniform - though my onee-san does it sometimes. To be honest, I think the only thing I care about is my hair, and how it looks like. Yeah. But anyways, by all means possible, I'm possibly at the very, very bottom of the hirearchy. By all means possible.

My life was just continuing on regularly and normally until one day, numbers of varying amounts suddenly appeared on every students' heads, all different digits. Not one student's digit was similar to another. In other words, all the numbers were unique. Unlike me, a part of a faceless, nameless mass.

Anyways, back to the numbers. When they appeared, students everywhere started making up theories & reasons as to why the numbers started popping up. Everyone seemed to enjoy this, except me. Until one day, a guy said, "What if the numbers represent everyone's charm and popularity? The higher the number, the better you are in those two aspects."

Not surprisingly, his idea caught steam. People started using it to measure each others' charm. Even I, too, got caught up in it. His idea seemed the most reasonable one of all. Why? Because the numbers actually seemed to match the people they stood on. For example...

- Muri Sasaki, the female track runner of our school, got: 80

- Kirito Hijikata, the school's gangster, got: 25

- Arika Nobu, the talkative genius, got: 11

And so on and so forth. (One thing I must tell you about the numbers is that, they can increase or decrease daily by varying amounts - but still everyone's numbers were differing from each other.)

But the person with the highest number, 796, was our class's highest - no, our SCHOOL's highest - Rina Momohiko. She was beautiful in every way, and of course excelled in both academics and athletics. Not only that, but she had good character traits and was the most popular girl in our school. Plus, her number seemed to grow with every. Passing. Day. It was the opposite for me. Mine went lower. And lower from 12... until it became 0, the lowest number anyone in the school could have.

I was sitting in my desk one day, mulling over my poor fortune and why Destiny seemed to favor the others over me... when she came up. Yes, that's right, Rina came up to me and said, "Are you worrying about the numbers?" Startled by this, I looked up and saw her staring down and smiling at me. "A-a bit..." She patted my shoulder and said, "Ah, don't worry about them. They're just numbers. And besides, numbers don't define a person's worth. By the way, do you have someone you love?" I didn't know what to say. The person I liked was here, standing right in front of me. But... I guess I was too scared or nervous to say a thing, so instead I said...

"No."

That was the first lie I ever told in my whole life. And right then and there, my number changed from 0 to 1... and Rina's 800 became 799. She never spoke to me again after that encounter. In fact, she didn't even notice me and continued on with her daily life. And from that day, my number remained 1, and I kept seeing the numbers, bemoaning my own fate about being the school's last.

Until that day.

The day when I was playing soccer in the field close to my house. While shooting goals, I was muttering to myself about my own bad fate when suddenly HE saw me and approached me. He told me about my potential and my skills and how they would improve if I joined this school's soccer team. He, a man with 1000 as his number, invited me to play soccer in a school I'm sure almost everyone has heard before - Hakuren Jr. High. The day I accepted his invitation, the numbers stopped appearing... and my life changed drastically. Who was that man?