The beginning of April carried a strange kind of peace.

Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School looked almost too perfect beneath the pale morning sky. Clean glass buildings reflected the sunlight. Cherry blossoms drifted lazily across polished stone paths. First-year students moved through the campus with nervous excitement, clutching school bags, whispering about class assignments, private points, dorm rooms, and the promise of a future that seemed almost guaranteed.

None of them truly understood where they had arrived.

This school did not reward innocence. It studied it, measured it, and eventually crushed it beneath exams disguised as games.

Inside the first-year building, Class 1-A was already beginning to form its social shape. Confident students gathered near the windows. Quieter ones chose seats near the back. A few tried to introduce themselves too loudly, desperate to establish their place before someone else defined it for them. The classroom smelled faintly of new books, polished desks, and the nervous ambition of students who believed being placed in Class A meant safety.

It did not.

Near the front, the teacher had not yet arrived. Conversations rose and fell in small waves.

“Class A, huh? Guess we’re already ahead,” one boy said with a grin.

A girl beside him smiled politely, though her eyes had already started judging everyone around her. “That only matters if we stay there.”

At the back of the room, Ichika Amasawa leaned casually against her desk, her chin resting in her palm. Her smile was light, playful, almost harmless. But her eyes moved with the lazy precision of someone counting every weakness in the room.

A few desks away, Takuya Yagami spoke gently with another student, his expression warm and reliable. He looked like the kind of person anyone could trust after a single conversation.

That was exactly what made him dangerous.

The classroom door slid open again.

For a brief moment, several students glanced up.

The newest presence entering Class 1-A did not cause panic. There was no dramatic silence, no sudden pressure that ordinary students could understand. To most of them, it was only another classmate arriving before homeroom began.

But Amasawa’s smile changed by a fraction.

Yagami’s voice paused for half a second before continuing smoothly.

Somewhere beyond this classroom, in the second-year building, Kiyotaka Ayanokōji sat by the window of Class 2-D, appearing as ordinary as ever. Brown hair. Unreadable eyes. A boy who looked like he belonged nowhere important.

The target.

The masterpiece.

The one the White Room had failed to reclaim.

Ayanokōji did not yet look toward the first-year building. He did not need to. The school year had barely begun, and already invisible pieces were being placed across the board.

In Class 2-A, Arisu Sakayanagi tapped her cane once against the floor as she listened to Hashimoto’s idle report about the new first-years. A faint smile touched her lips.

“My,” she murmured softly, “this year may become rather interesting.”

In Class 2-C, Ryūen Kakeru laughed under his breath, already sensing that the new first-years were not as harmless as they pretended to be.

In Class 2-D, Horikita Suzune organized documents with sharp efficiency, unaware that yet another shadow from Ayanokōji’s past had entered the school.

And in Class 1-A, the air remained deceptively calm.

Amasawa tilted her head, her smile brightening as she looked toward the new arrival.

“Hmm? Another late entrance?” she said lightly, her voice sweet enough to pass as teasing. “You’ve got pretty good timing. Homeroom hasn’t started yet.”

Around the room, Class 1-A continued to watch with ordinary curiosity. Some students saw only a new classmate. Others saw a possible ally, rival, or useful connection.

But beneath the surface, something colder had already awakened.

The White Room had sent more than one shadow into this school.