Yu awoke the next morning with the memory of a strange dream in his mind; wandering aimlessly through a foggy red night with a sword at his side, voices garbled in his head. There was another part too, where he was sitting in an aimless galaxy in an open-aired carriage, discussing philosophy. He shook his head. Dreams rarely made sense. He had to get ready for school and so he did so, putting on the uniform assigned to him; a black kimono top and grey hakama and haori, a matching cap on his head.

"What's with the cap..." He mused, thinking it looked too much like something a little boy would wear. He recalled in the city, the boys would wear caps and the girls ribbons. Would these girls wear ribbons too?

And there would be girls too, he was informed Yasogami High was co-ed unlike his previous school which just had boys. What would it be like to study alongside girls? Would they be timid and slow with their work or would they be unruly and disruptive? Would they be kind to others or aloof? Mixing girls with boys for education seemed odd, but he supposed he wouldn't know until he got there, so he took his schoolbag and headed down the stairs, seeing the house was empty. His uncle must've had work early while Nanako was at school. He had the time to spare so he made himself some riceballs and ate them, careful not to spill the sticky, salty rice on his new uniform, then headed out.

Above all, he hoped he could make some friends, even if it was for such a short time period.

He took a step outside and gasped, feeling cold raindrops hit his head. The pattering of droplets on the street reached his ears as he stepped back inside. Did his uncle have an umbrella? If not he'd just have to run through the streets with his bag over his head, hoping it wouldn't completely soak through-there was one! A simple white one right by the door, almost as if it were waiting for him. Did Nanako leave it for him before she left? He hoped he'd have dinner with them that night, he wanted to know more about his cousin.

School came first though, so he opened the umbrella and began walking, hoping he'd see some other uniformed kids his age walking so he could just follow the path they were taking. Due to the rain and morning hour, few adults were out, but he did catch snippets of their conversations; something about an affair and the woman involved in it trying to hide out. He could tell by their tones they disapproved of the whole thing. The rain pattered nicely on his umbrella as he finally spotted some students his age hurrying along and talking. He turned right and walked past a riverbank, splashing in the small puddles along the way.

"W-Whoa, look out!" A panicked voice reached him so Yu very quickly stepped aside to see an orange blur speed past on a bike, crashing into the tall fence blocking off a garbage pile. "That hurts!" The boy jumped off his bike and clutched his leg, wincing. "I think I slammed the pedals down too hard..."

Yu stared at the totaled bike, then at the owner, who wore the same grey uniform as him, still trembling in pain. Another day, he would've offered some support, but today was his first day and he couldn't risk being late, so he slowly walked away, hoping the boy would recover on his own.

He soon saw the high-school perched on top of a hill, a pretty European style with several stories in white and grey and an iron fence and gate. Yasogami High, his new school for the next year. He took a deep breath and walked in, closing his umbrella and trying to keep the droplets from dripping on the floor. Inside, it was warm and roomy, with the scent of wood and spring rain. A quick glance showed him the boys wore grey or brown uniforms while the girls wore more colorful kimono and hakama more suited to their tastes, a matching ribbon in their hair. One dressed entirely in pink rushed past him, her boots clacking loudly on the floor. Her legs moved smoothly underneath the fabric and he didn't think he'd ever get used to the sight.

"Excuse me, is this for second-years?" He asked a random boy standing outside a classroom, who pointed up the stairs.

"They're up there,"

"Thank you." He bowed and headed up the stairs, running over to the first classroom he saw. He peeked inside and saw several students inside, but no teacher yet. He hung back, knowing he needed his proper introduction first. The students inside talked amongst themselves, lamenting how they got stuck with a bad teacher. Some of the boys were looking out the windows while the girls kept to themselves, reading near the back of the class.

"Why are you standin' there?" A gruff voice spat out, making Yu's eyes widen. The owner was a short bent-over man with big teeth, staring at him. Even his suit was a bright blue and mismatched. He had the pockmark scars of a smallpox survivor.

"I'm a new student." Yu tried to bow, but the man scoffed.

"Got told I was gettin' one of those, now I gotta introduce you and everythin'. Waste of my time," He walked into the room and slammed his hand down hard on the books on his desk, making the others silence and head to their seats. "Thinkin' you can goof off just because it's spring? You got another thing coming! My fingers are itchin' to give you all more hits from the book!"

Several students winced or rubbed their heads.

"Here's a new student. From the big city yet he moved to this crapsack of a backwards town. Might even have himself a child bride. Go sit somewhere, I don't care."

Yu instantly thought his teacher was rude and short-tempered but swallowed down those thoughts and bowed.

"Nice to meet everyone, I am Narukami Yu." He spotted a set of lockers in the back of the class and quickly put his umbrella and bag over there, sitting in the first empty seat he saw next to a girl in brown hakama and a greenish-yellow kimono top with a thin green ribbon on the top of her head.

"Bad luck, you got Morooka-sensei!" She whispered to him. "Good thing it's only for a year, huh?"

Yu just nodded and started listening, knowing there'd be plenty of time later to socialize with his new classmates.

Once classes were over, his deskmate offered him an energetic smile and bow he returned. "Nice to meet you! I'm Satonaka Chie! From the big city, huh? Just like Hanamura,"

Yu just nodded.

"Want to walk with me? We could even stop by the Amagi Inn and see Yukiko-chan! Sadly she doesn't go here, I wish she did. It'd make our classes with the moron king more bearable." She sighed.

"What school does she go to?" He was glad the rain stopped sometime that morning.

"She doesn't. The town keeps knocking on her door begging her to attend but her parents decline. It's this whole thing."

"Oh," What was one supposed to say to that?

"Excuse me!" A woman in a yellow flowery kimono bowed as she entered the classroom. "There's a mandatory staff meeting! Something's happened. Nobody is to leave the premises!" She gasped. Morooka-sensei grumbled.

"You heard her, nobody leaves here!" The two left and the class came to life, abuzz with noise. The girls scooted the wooden desks together to whisper in their own groups while the boys ran over to the window.

"I think something did happen! There're police down there!" One boy gasped in amazement.

"How do you know?" Another asked, trying to lean in to see.

"Their brown suits!"

"How can you see that, they blend in so well with the fog," A third grumbled. "Everytime it rains we have to deal with it,"

"Guess we're stuck here." Chie sighed.

"Satonaka-san!" The boy who crashed his bike earlier strode over to the two of them, a brown haori and short boots on his figure. He had something behind his back. "Thank you for letting me borrow your technique book! It was super helpful and stuff, I learned a lot!" He thrust a black book into her hands. "Okay, bye!"

"Hold it!" She held out her hand as she opened it up to a random page, flipping through it. There were detailed instructions and several drawings demonstrating various material arts and exercise techniques. The more she flipped, the more he noticed some of the pages were ripped, which made her gasp. "H-How...what?! How'd you manage to rip so many pages in this?! What were you doing to it?!"

"I-I can explain!" He held up his hands.

"Save it!" She brought her leg up and kicked him hard in the crotch, making Yu wince as he fell down. "That was not cheap to get and you ruined it!" She sighed and herded Yu away to the chalkboard. "Seriously...last time I let him borrow anything of mine."

The female staff from earlier poked her head back in. "We have determined it'd be safe for you to go home if you walk in pairs or groups. It turns out there was a...disturbance." She swallowed.

"Did someone die?!" One of the boys asked. "We saw police!"

"Just go home..." She shook her head and left. Chie and Yu took that as their sign to leave, so Yu gathered up his things and followed after her.

The rain left a light fog and grey sky behind, but Yu was just glad he didn't have to worry about his things getting wet.

"So, that guy," He tried to make some conversation with her.

"What about him?"

"Is there anything I should know?"

Chie was about to answer him before a boy dressed entirely in black walked up, wringing his hands. "H-Hey...you know Yuki, don't you? I-I hear she's out looking for a husband. G-Give her this, will you?" He held out a wrinkled photo, either ignoring or not noticing how Chie was trembling.

"She's not interested!" She snapped, smacking the picture away.

"F-Fine!" The boy ran off while some other students whistled.

"Another rejection...she's pretty but picky!"

"She even rejected me!" The student from earlier wheeled his brown bike over. "I sent her some pictures and my information last year but she never got back."

Chie just rolled her eyes as he biked off. "Off to the inn we go!"

Yu walked through the town with her, trying to take in everything he couldn't the previous night. Younger kids played at the street corners while older teenagers gossiped or looked into shop windows. Carriages, rickshaws, and horses shared the road while most pedestrians rushed past them, dodging every split-second. Some even had bikes, though not many. He could smell barbeque meat and fish being grilled, heard the sizzle of a fire from one of the restaurants that had their door open. Bigger brick buildings crowded the ends of some streets, pouring smoke into the air from their doorways with the slaps of cards on tables. It was a small town, yet he still caught some strings of languages he didn't recognize, spoken by the Westerners with the light hair and eyes. Every man he saw wore suits, but almost every woman wore kimono or a hakama uniform.

"Why'd you move here again? It's a pretty random town to just move to," He heard Chie addressing him so he blinked himself out of his daze. They had stopped in front of a news board with all sorts of photos and clippings on it.

"You know those exchanges where they send some of our citizens overseas to study?" Yu asked, and Chie nodded. "My parents got picked to study advanced sciences at a university in England. They tried their hardest to allow me to join them, but there were no programs for male students so they sent me here to live with my uncle,"

"Ah," Chie just nodded. "There's not much here, but I like it anyway. I think our specialty is pottery?"

The two kept walking until they reached a more residential area where a large inn with two big doors right in front was. Sitting outside with some paints and paper spread out in front of her was a girl in a blue kimono patterned with red butterflies, moving slowly to keep her long sleeves close to her body and away from the paint. Chie's whole face lit up and she ran over to her. "Yukiko-chan!"

"Good afternoon," The two girls bowed to each other. "Who is this? How was school?"

"Same as usual, I got stuck with the worst teacher in the whole building!" She sighed. "This is Narukami Yu-kun! He just started today! He's new here!"

"Nice to meet you," Yu bowed, feeling awkward suddenly. Yukiko bowed back.

"This is the famed Amagi Yukiko! Her inn is most likely the most famous building in town. She's going to own it one day and everyone visits just to see its famed beauty! Even the Westerners here love it!" Chie smiled. "And you think the future owner is just as pretty, don't you?"

Yu looked fully at Yukiko then, taking in her traditional beauty of shiny black hair and dark brown eyes, skin pale and white. He then shrugged. "She's pretty,"

Yukiko blushed and paused in her artwork, the brown about to drip out onto the paper.

"The boys here are obsessed with her and keep asking for her hand in marriage! She won't consider any of them though" Chie sat on the steps of the inn, making Yukiko's face turn more red.

"T-That's not true..."

"Oh! Did you try the trick yet? The rumor I told you about a few days ago?" Despite her tone still being cheerful, Chie lowered it and leaned in closer.

"What rumor?" Yukiko gently added some brown to her painting of a tree.

"The one where if you take your picture in the middle of the night, it doesn't come out right! I heard last night some boys were freaking out over it, saying that editor was their soulmate or something like that! Sounds like fun, right?"

"We don't have a camera here. Customers who want that service look elsewhere."

"Why not?! There's lots of photo studios around here! It'd be so easy!" Chie pouted. "Don't you wish to see the future...or your soulmate?"

Yu wasn't sure what else to add to the conversation, so he stepped over to Yukiko too. "Want to take a break from painting and show me around? I don't know where much is yet."

Yukiko nodded slowly. "If I'm with you two...it should be alright." She started to put her paints up and Yu looked around, seeing mostly farmland. Where they were earlier must've been the shopping district. The inn had a red roof and even from the front it looked huge. Yukiko stood up and smiled politely. "Where shall we go?"

"We were walking home from school, so now you can join us! We'll get to see the new boy's house!" Chie said, and Yukiko joined them as they walked through the residential district, the girls walking slowly side-by-side. They talked about random things while Yu took in the sights, surprised that even neighborhoods looked so different out here compared to the city. The houses were built very close to each other from wood, and many had fences going around the back, with several having outhouses visible from the side. The roads were dirt and above him were telegraph wires and street lanterns lit through oil, also hanging above them. The traffic slowed down noticeably too, with just some people walking and one or two bicycles.

"And then-" Chie suddenly cut herself off. "What happened over there?" She pointed over to a small group of people composed of housewives in kimono and brown-suited officers standing around and talking, their voices low. Yu shook himself out of his daze and hurried over, wanting to hear what they were saying.

"What a ghastly sight!" A woman in peach gasped. "Think of how that poor girl must've felt."

"Just hanging off the wire too," Another woman in ivory sighed.

"Hey! You three need to leave!" Dojima walked over, dressed just as spiffy as the others. "This is a crime scene, it's not for children to wander through! I expected better from you, Yu."

"You know him?" Chie asked in surprise, and Yu nodded.

"This is my uncle."

"Take another way home." He tried to usher them away.

"So, someone was murdered!" He gasped. "They said as much at school. But will the police be able to handle it? They've never dealt with murders before, just theft."

"Rest assured, these are some of the best men on the force. They were trained for this, there's nothing they can't solve."

A younger man pushed past Dojima in a panic, running to a random section of the street and vomiting loudly; he gagged and it splattered into the dirt. Yukiko cringed.

"Adachi! You're going to get in trouble if you keep messing around!" Dojima scolded.

"S-Sorry..." He winced before he went for another round.

"Clean yourself up before we start talking to people. And you three need to get out of here, understand?" He stared sternly at the trio, making them nod solemnly.

"Guess we should go...see you in school tomorrow, okay?" Chie still smiled at Yu brightly and the two bowed before the girls turned around to head back to the inn. Yu took the opposite direction, taking some quick mental notes about the various locations. The way to school was beside the river, there was a Chinese restaurant in the shopping district...and speaking of the shopping district, just a ways away was a giant open-air market with colorful posters everywhere and tables. He got close enough to see it was named Junes and customers buzzed around everywhere, having bags or arms full of goods.

Junes. A cute, if weird, name. Dojima would likely send him there if they needed ingredients.

Not having anything else to do, he began his walk home.

Nanako was kneeled at the table when he arrived that evening, trying to puzzle over her booklet again. She looked up when he entered, pouting.

"Need help?" He started making some tea for them, lighting the fire in the small oven and putting the pot over it.

"No...I think I get it..." She still pouted as she turned the page. "They're harder than I thought,"

"You'll get them." He looked around the house but didn't see anything super interesting aside from childish girl things that indicated a little girl lived there.

"Daddy will come home late...so can you please read the newspaper to me?" Nanako spoke up after several minutes, gesturing to the folded sheets on the table. "He says it helps me with my reading."

Yu raised an eyebrow at that, thinking most news were not for the ears of children, but who was he to argue? He poured their tea and kneeled on the table's other side, clearing his throat.

"'The dead body of a young Mrs. Yamano Mayumi, aged twenty-seven, was discovered this morning hanging from a telegraph wire. She's an editor for the town's magazine and due to the state of her body, authorities are unsure what exactly happened. They're sure to have their hands full with solving the town's first murder case, if that's what this truly is and not just some mishap.'"

"That's scary...Daddy is going to be busy, isn't he?" Nanako shivered. "Oh, are there pictures? I want to see!"

There were no pictures for the woman or anything related to the case, but there was a handmade colored pamphlet for Junes that fell out of one of the pages, making Nanako perk up.

"Junes! They have everything there! They like to say they are the future of shopping!"

The pamphlet showed a smiling teenage girl in a blue and orange kimono holding a basket of vegetables, text over her head exclaiming what Nanako just said. Maybe he should pay them a visit sometime.

"Is that everything?" She asked, eyeing the rest of the papers spread out. Yu shrugged.

"Mostly just updates about current events...nothing as interesting as murder...or Junes," He gave her a smile she giggled at.

"Then I'll go back to my quiz book!"

"Good idea," He resorted the papers and took some sips of his warm tea.

His first official day in the town had somehow gone smoothly despite that one small bump. He already couldn't wait to get properly settled in.

-Hakama are pleated pants worn over a kimono or just with the top half of one. Haori are kimono jackets, and both are traditionally worn as menswear through Japanese history. In comparison to kimono, they're often in dark or dull colors. However hakama when worn by women tend to be dyed brighter colors to match their kimono.

-Yukiko not going to school is in reference to the reality hundreds of girls and even a few boys from traditional families faced. The government issued a new mandate in 1872 that stated everyone was entitled to education and needed to go regardless of gender or social class, citing the abysmal literacy rates women in particular had. However, some people didn't trust the new schools and kept their kids home, ignoring the government's visits to send their kids. However, some did send them on field trips to get a taste of 'outside education'. More traditional families said they could teach their kids whatever they needed at home, and others thought the co-ed system was immoral, which helped lead to the rise of all-girls' schools that are common in Japan nowadays. On that note, co-ed schools were still getting started, segregated gender schools were still the preferred norm, hence Yu's prior school being only for males.

-With the education mandate came the rise of hakama uniforms, originally worn just by boys but girls wore them too as an easy choice to walk and run in. There was much opposition to this, saying it made women 'sit, act, and urinate like men' and was one of the reasons behind the hair-cutting ban, as many female students cut or bobbed their hair in response to their new freedom. By the 1880's, the uniform was banned for women in the city but was still used in the countryside until they too got rid of them in the 1890's. The hakama uniform wouldn't make an explosive comeback until the Taisho era, or the 1910's-1920's, where nowadays they're seen as a symbol of the era.

-The police were modeled after the European model, more specifically Germany's, but most were ill-equipped to deal with murder. In the early decades of the Meiji era there were suddenly several murder cases, mostly of jealous lovers, and the police had to learn on the job so to speak. Even police detectives were an extremely new concept for Japan at the time, the first ones being brought in in the 1880's.