My sixth-grade year was very similar to my fifth-grade year, only more frantic. Academically, that is. As I had predicted, the teachers spent half their time reviewing old material, half the time introducing new material, and half the time focusing on the school-selection and application-writing process.

Three halves always means trouble. 

Our main problem was that we couldn't put any of these urgent priorities aside to focus on the other two. We had to juggle them all, somehow. 'Frantic'- well. I think for most of my classmates, 'frantic' was an understatement. I was pretty frantic, and I had already chosen my schools well ahead of time. What I hadn't anticipated was the sheer number of 'planning' and 'counseling' sessions that had to be squeezed into my already top-heavy schedule. Meeting with the guidance counselor made sense; meeting with each of my sixth-grade teachers made some sense. Meeting with two of my fifth-grade teachers and three sixth-grade ones that I didn't have made NO sense. I won't swear that the groundskeeper didn't get to one of my meetings; it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he had. 

Then there were the mandatory grade-six assemblies, at which the graduating class sat in the large lecture hall while representatives from various high schools gave us 'brief' descriptions of their requirements and advantages and expectations and facilities and on and on. Brief is in the eye of the beholder, I learned that if nothing else that year. Six presentations at twenty minutes apiece equals far too long, particularly when you already know that you're not going to attend any of those schools. It wasn't all bad, though, since under the guise of taking notes I managed to get a good deal of homework completed. 

I wonder how successful those recruiting speeches were. If my reaction was in any way typical, quite a few students would have come away from each assembly with a list of schools they wouldn't attend if you paid them to. Reverse psychology works in mysterious and inadvertent ways.

Socially, things...well...they didn't get worse. No one had much time to worry about who was weird, or who was loud, or who was looking for mischief (very few were, by that time) or anything else. The gossip didn't exactly grind to a halt, but it did gear down from 'full speed ahead' to 'waddle'. But by the same token, things didn't exactly improve, either, and for the same reason. There just wasn't time.

I did manage to learn a few things about the armor that year, mostly during the summer break after fifth-grade exams, but also during year six's winter break. First, I learned that I didn't have to be in the water to change into the subgear; it worked on land too, which was good to know. Even better, I found that where I made the change didn't affect my ability to breathe when I was underwater. I was fairly sure that would be the case, but the worry had lingered in the back of my mind that perhaps I needed to change in the water to fully activate the armor's abilities. I didn't often make the transformation on land, though- I didn't care to be seen and maybe start up a whole new round of gossip- so I got into the habit of swimming fairly far out, then diving down and making the change under the waves. 

I don't know if it was from fighting a human's natural air-breathing instinct or if it was just the traumatic memory of nearly drowning, but it took several weeks before I was really comfortable breathing underwater. Particularly that first breath after the change; I always had to crush a dose of panic and force myself to inhale. It was worth it, though- more than worth it. The world under the ocean is incredible- so much life, in such colors and variety!- and now I could explore it all, not just scratch the surface. I no longer had to concern myself with equipment, or worry about the pressure, or be wary of the rapture-

Ah. The rapture is when- well- it's more or less like- it's hard to explain, is what it is! All right, if I was doing a thesis, I'd state that rapture is a state of mind that takes over divers once they go below a certain depth. It has to do with the nitrogen that's mixed into the oxygen in the tanks; the greater the pressure of the water, the more strongly the nitrous oxide affects the diver. It's a great deal, so I hear, like getting drunk. And just as people do foolish and dangerous things when drunk, they do similarly foolish and dangerous things when raptured. One of the most well-known stories involves a raptured diver who, at 350 feet, took out his mouthpiece and tried to give it to a fish before he sank forever. Fortunately, it's a lot easier to sober up from the rapture than from alcohol. All you have to do is go to a shallower point. If you've got the clarity of mind to reason that out, that is.

I had not often had the opportunity to experience nitrogen narcosis, as it's now called, but once or twice on a supervised dive, I had felt quite peculiar about halfway through, when we reached our deepest point- about a hundred feet. The memory was enough to make me wary when I dove in the subgear, but one afternoon I found myself deeper than I'd ever been, with no ill effects at all. I wondered about that- mostly in terms of how deep I could go before the armor's protection waned, how to test it, and whether I needed to be concerned, since I (likely) couldn't drown- and it wasn't until I surfaced and took a deep breath that I figured it out. Then I felt like a complete fool. You can't get nitrogen narcosis if you're not breathing nitrogen, now can you?

My problem is that sometimes I worry too much, which prevents me from thinking things through and seeing the very, very obvious.

At any rate, it was good to know that I needn't worry about that anymore, and it was equally good to realize that I wouldn't subject to 'the bends', either. That, too, is nitrogen and pressure-related. Basically, the nitrogen builds up in your body under pressure, and if you go straight back to the surface, it all comes bubbling out in a rush- exactly like if you shake up a bottle of soda and then open it very fast. Imagine that in your internal organs! Quite painful and possibly fatal. So to prevent that, you stop several times on the way up and 'decompress', that is, let the gas ease its way out slowly. It's necessary but time-consuming, and you always have to make sure you've left enough air in your tanks for the trip back up. So knowing I wouldn't have to trouble with that, either, was marvelous. 

I never have solved the question of whether I develop gills or extract oxygen from the water in a different way, but over time it has ceased to bother me. 

Anyway, with one thing and another the time passed very quickly, and before I quite knew what was happening, I was facing the prospect of leaving home for the first time to attend Hanai School in Toyama. Three of the four schools I'd applied to accepted me, but Hanai was the first to respond, so I decided it would be my school of choice. (The fourth one was to shut down that winter for lack of students, which had not been mentioned in their catalog.) My sister was not entirely thrilled at my decision, when I could have gone to Hiroshima instead, but the idea didn't appeal to me. At least, not most of the time- there were a few instances when my nerves started to get the better of me and I rather regretted that I wouldn't be so close to home. But Toyama had more significance, armor-wise, though I didn't tell Sayoko that. 

I was very nervous on the day of my departure, and it wasn't all just because I was going to a strange school. It was because I had to get there first, and the trip from Hagi to Toyama is not easily accomplished. First, Mother took me and my two suitcases to the railway and got me a ticket to Hiroshima. Once there, I had to get off that train and get to the Shinkansen- the so-called Bullet Train- station, which took me up to Tokyo and which involved two separate lines, the Sanyo and the Tokaido. In Tokyo I had to switch lines again to get to Nagano, and once at Nagano I reverted to regular rail and made the last part of the trip to Toyama as the sun was going down. Bullet trains are fast, right enough...once you get on them. Waiting for them to arrive is a slightly different matter, and station-hopping ate up a good deal of time, too. I kept telling myself that next time, I'd just take a plane. 

So it was a terribly long and extraordinarily stressful trip for me, as nervous as I was and with all the switches I had to make. And the further I got from home, the more I missed it and wondered if I was making a big mistake. It didn't occur to me to wish that Mother or Sayoko had come along, though. Well- I'll retract that, I wished they'd been able to, but I knew well enough that it wasn't feasible. It wouldn't do to have Mother to endure such a long trip, only to have to turn around and come right home, to say nothing of the cost of a second ticket. By the same token, my sister needed to stay nearby and keep an eye on things. And it wouldn't have changed the fact that sooner or later, I would've had to say goodbye to them. I don't think I would have liked to make that trip thinking, 'at the end, it's goodbye; in two hours, it's goodbye...' the whole time. Depressing.

Riding the Shinkansen was actually quite fun and I quickly understood why people do this for recreation. I struck up a conversation with some American tourists- or perhaps the other way around- and was very pleased when they complimented me on my English. Americans are unusual people; or at least, that particular group was. They were lively, rather loud, very generous, and frighteningly ignorant of our language and customs. I liked them, but I couldn't believe they'd come to Japan without bothering to learn even the most basic kanji or get advice on their manners. I knew they didn't mean to be offensive, but some of the questions they asked me were exceptionally over-familiar. Like whether or not I had a girlfriend, and, if not, was I gay. On the other hand, they insisted on buying my lunch and several snacks in return for my translation of their tickets and a couple brochures. I was a little sorry to see them go at the Tokyo exchange, but it was a relief to have some peace and quiet again.

The really good part of the day happened on the Toyama rail. I happened to sit down near two other boys of my own age, and on a whim, asked if they knew about the Hanai school. It turned out they were both going to attend there; they had met that afternoon, one coming from Chiba and the other from Kofu, and they were both were very impressed when they heard I'd started in Hagi. I started to feel more confident and less homesick as we talked, and it made the arrival in Toyama much less unnerving- for all of us- than it probably would have been if we'd been alone. It's true we hardly knew each other, but we were all young and anxious, far from home and not quite sure what to do or where to go, and that sort of feeling makes friends of strangers.

As chance would have it, those two new friends ended up as my roommates in the house we were boarding at. It was a funny mix of choice and circumstance: we were some of the last students to arrive- the guide who brought us the two blocks to the school from the train was a little disgusted that he was only escorting us three and four others, and had a bit to say about that- and when we got there, we found that most of the available housing had already been taken. Three places still had room for one student each, another had room for two, and the last option had three. My new friends and I looked at each other and chose the last one. A taxi was summoned to drive us there- it was quite a long ride before we got there, fortunately there was a school-bus stop just three blocks away from our new residence, so that was one less thing to worry about.

The home where we stayed was a large, very old house in one of the older and more residential areas of Toyama, owned by a grandfather and his son. They rented two rooms to students every year and this year they had accepted six students. This meant we were tripled up, I and my comrades from the train in one room, the other three sharing the other room. They really were not very big rooms, and it took some thinking and arranging to get things to where we weren't tripping over each other all the time. For instance, after we'd stepped over and on each other for a few days in our efforts to get into bed, we shifted the futons to the back wall instead of layering them against the side. And we put them fairly close together, so that the outside beds had some workspace between them and the wall. There were no dressers or closets, so we more or less lived out of our suitcases. 

I had the bed in the middle, so I got the floor-space between the doorway and the futons as my workspace. I did have to keep enough space clear to get in and out of the room, and to be able to open and close the door, but I'm a fairly tidy person, so that wasn't too hard. And we did have the option of folding up a futon or two whenever we really needed more room, which is something you can't do with an ordinary bed or mattress. I found myself missing my desk, though; doing homework sprawled over the floor or seated on a partially open futon was definitely new to me. It didn't exactly encourage good posture, and I got a fair few neck-aches that way. 

I rapidly began to understand what my sister meant about a certain lack of privacy, but I don't think even she expected it to be so extreme. It would have helped if there'd been more than one bathroom. Getting a shower took a lot of scheduling, and there was a decided lack of hot water. That didn't bother me so much, but my friends complained and I couldn't blame them. Chilly showers aren't a good idea in the fall and winter.

Meals were a problem, too. The old man and his son never, and I do mean never, used their kitchen to cook. They stored a few cold things in the refrigerator and kept some edible things in the cabinets, but they did not prepare meals. I can't imagine eating cold cereal every morning and dining in a restaurant every evening, but that was what they did (what they did for lunch, I don't know, but it didn't involve their kitchen). And that was something we six tightly-budgeted seventh-graders simply could not afford to do. On the other hand, very few of us had the experience needed to make our own meals. One of us, to be precise.

Me. 

So having gotten permission to use the kitchen, I took things in hand, to the eternal gratitude of my house-mates. I dispatched them to the grocery with lists of what I needed, and I made a rotating cleanup chart so I wouldn't have to deal with that as well. After a while, it settled nicely into pairs: two shopping, two cleaning up, and one in the kitchen with me to assist- and not incidentally, to learn a bit about cooking. It would, I assured them all, come in handy eventually, and no one argued. I enjoyed it, actually. The opportunity to cook things other than seafood was not to be missed, and I found my roommates had some very interesting recipe ideas. Our hosts grew rather interested as well, and began contributing towards the cost of the food in return for places at the table, which I thought was very honorable of them. It was their house; they could have asserted their right to a share of whatever was prepared in it. But I guess they knew that would cause resentment. We were already paying them rent; having them 'mooch', as Rowen says, on the food we bought as well would have stirred up trouble. 

Not that there wasn't some of that anyway. Er- trouble, that is, not mooching.

Thinking about it, that's probably why my roommates went out of their way to avoid getting into conflicts with me. It's not wise to insult or otherwise irritate the cook. But they didn't have any moral qualms about speaking their minds to each other, once the initial adjustment was made. At first, of course, everyone made heroic efforts to be courteous and well-behaved Japanese boys, but four weeks of that saw most of us at the limits of our courtesy and by eight weeks I think I was the only one who consistently remembered what courtesy was. You really can't stick six teenagers into two rooms and not expect some exasperation to result, but it went a good deal beyond exasperation at times, and the farther into the school-term we got, the more frequently it happened. It made for some difficult times. That was when I felt the most homesickness: when one or more of those who I considered friends were snapping or yelling or swearing at each other. I don't know if it's just one of my peculiarities, but I always feel...lonely, when my friends aren't getting along. It's like I lose them both- or all, depending- for a while, since I don't dare side with one against the other.

It never turned to physical violence, but I had to get up and stand between certain people a few times to guarantee that. 

...Hm...

Well, Kento thinks it wasn't so much respect for the cook as the basic fact that it takes at least two to fight. He says they gave me what they got from me- courtesy- and gave each other what they got from each other: insults, complaints and general conflict. And not taking sides probably helped a lot too: I was neutral, so they didn't have any reasons to bear me grudges. There's something to that, but I do think the knowledge that I could seriously mess up their meals if provoked sufficiently played a part, too. 

Anyway. School. 

Hanai was a strange school, not what I had been expecting. I knew it was 'larger' than the high schools in Hagi, but didn't I realize that was because it was grades 1-9. So when I got there, the first day, I was surprised to see 'little kids' all over, and thought for a while that we'd made some kind of mistake. My roommates didn't seem puzzled, though, so I followed them and soon discovered that the elementary kids' classes were on one side of building, the high schoolers on the other. It was a sensible system, if an unusual one, and it made me wonder, later, why they didn't follow the same plan in the cafeteria. There were tables set aside for the younger kids, with lower chairs, but there was only one line for the food...maybe that was so the older kids could help the little ones with their trays. 

Unlike my roommates, I was used to a cafeteria- Hagi Elementary had a small one- so my other main surprise was that Hanai's school-day ended so early. I was of two minds about our early dismissal: one the one side, I thought it was great, but on the other it made me wonder and worry a bit, whether I would learn everything I needed to with classes so short. Or in other words, I thought perhaps I had chosen too 'easy' of a school. A few days-worth of homework reassured me- if you want to call it that- on that score. 

Choosing an after-class sport was easy. I'd already decided not to take tennis anymore. I'd had enough of running after balls and didn't want to do more of it for the older kids. So I checked the list of available activities and clubs and found there were plenty of choices, but after seeing 'swim team' on the list I didn't see anything else. 

How ironic is it that Hanai- in Toyama city- had what Hagi, smack on the coast, didn't?

It wasn't a swim team in the competitive sense of the word; the 'competition' team was limited to ninth-graders, and only the seven best at that. So the seventh and eighth graders contented themselves- ourselves- with training, improving our times and hoping to win one of the seven coveted spots when we got old enough. We also had life-saving lessons (completely redundant, in my case, I'd known all that since I was eight), and twice a week we gave swimming lessons to the elementary kids who wanted to learn.  I had three boys of varying ages and one little first-grade girl assigned to me, and I was pleased with their progress, especially the girl's. The boys would rather have water-fights than learn- reminded me a bit of the trouble-seekers, except that this lot would pay attention when I told them to.  There are advantages to being sempai! 

Another advantage to being sempai- elder- was that the gang of fifth-and-sixth-grade bullies didn't bother me much, even after the incident with Minoro-san- 

-Oh yes. That. 

Well, the man didn't like foreigners, or anyone he suspected to be a foreigner- or possibly he just didn't like kids.  Anyway, he decided I was gaijin because my hair wasn't black and I was a little taller than most of my classmates. On the first day, even before he took attendence, he explained- at length, pacing around the room- his feelings about gaijin. They were stupid, they were lazy, they smelled bad, they were insolent and impudent and couldn't follow simple directions even when they did understand the language. "I won't permit fools in my class," he concluded, stopping beside my desk and glaring down at me. "All of my students will work hard, but some will have to work very hard to keep up, because I do not have time to go slow for stupid foreign students. Do you understand that, boy?"

I understood what he was saying easily enough, but I didn't understand why he would be directing the unkind remark to me. "Yes," I began uncertainly, "but why-" 

"Because gaijin are stupid.  Thank you for the demonstration," he replied sharply, and I tried not to blush as the class laughed. 

"-But why does that have anything to do with me?" I concluded, keeping my voice polite. I can't say if I was more embarrassed or more angry; I was a pretty thorough mix of both, but I wasn't foolish enough to yell at a teacher. "I am not gaijin, so I'm not stupid." 

"You are going to tell me you're Japanese?  With hair like that?" he scoffed, and for a moment I thought he was going to hit me on the head.

"Many people who live near the sea have hair like mine," I explained coldly, pulling away.  "The sea-salt and the sunlight turn it lighter." 

"And your eyes?" the teacher snorted, putting his fists on his hips. 

"I am a descendant of Motonari Mouri," I explained, shrugging. "The green eyes that were his have been seen in many generations- they say it is a sign of favor."  Or maybe it was a sign of suiko, but I wasn't going to talk about that.

"Mouri?" Minoro repeated, his eyebrows lifting. "Silence!" he snapped as several of the students murmured in surprise, and as the room quieted, he turned away and consulted the seating chart....scowled at it, then at me...and started the day's lesson.  He never gave me trouble again- in fact, he ignored me after that, but I could tell he disliked me more than he disliked most of the other students. 

That was another unusual thing about Hanai: no one in Hagi ever paid much attention to the fact that I was descended from a famous warrior and tactician of the Sengoku age, though that may have been where the 'aloof, superior' accusations first originated. I never considered myself special because he was my ancestor; you're born the way you're born and whatever people did five hundred years before you doesn't have a lot to do with what you do now. But apparently I saw it differently than most people in the school, because once word got around, my status went up sort of in spite of myself.  As a result, I wasn't bullied, even though I looked a bit foreign and had gotten on Minoro's bad side. Though that might not have counted much against me anyway. NO ONE liked Minoro-san. 

I liked my English teacher a lot, perhaps partly because Minoro disliked him so much.  He was a genuine foreigner, an English-man from London, and he had very unusual ways of teaching. He was always urging us to use our imaginations and try to be original. It didn't work very well, since that was the exact opposite of what we'd been taught most of our lives, but it certainly was interesting. He was always doing unexpected things, trying to give us an idea of the country as well as the language, and one of his 'cultural experiences' was to give all of us English names. And that was how I became known as Cye, by way of the British name 'Cyrus'. I had no objections; I liked the name and was grateful it wasn't something like Sebastian or Cornelius, the names my two roommates ended up with. (I felt sorry for Sebastian; he got shortened to 'Boo', which made no sense but had kids constantly popping out and yelling 'BOO!' at him from around corners.) It became rather popular, so it wasn't at all long before I was as accustomed to 'Cye' as to 'Shin', in class and out of it. 

It was also in that class that I learned what an English 'shin' was, to the amusement of both teacher and class, if not so much my own. That was another good reason to use my new English name; it helped me avoid body-part jokes. 

I didn't realize at the time that I was being taught British English instead of American English. It does explain, in hindsight, why so much of my spelling and pronunciation changed that year, but at the time I thought I was just having it corrected to the proper, standard use. 

The rest of my classes were pretty standard: sometimes boring, sometimes not. The main thing they had in common was lots of homework. I suppose the teachers figured that since we had an extra hour each evening, we might as well have some homework to fill it with, but I think they overestimated how much 'filling' was needed.

Maybe it was the heavy homework load, or maybe it was my supposedly high status, but I didn't make many friends my first year at Hanai. The other students were pleasant enough, but not familiar. My roommates were usually good company- when no one was arguing- but we weren't close friends, mainly because of all that arguing. In a way, I was almost afraid to become too close to any of those boys. I was waiting too warily for the next fight to start. And while being neutral is all very well for avoiding fights and preventing accusations of playing favorites...well, that's about all it does. 

The elderly man and his middle-aged son who owned the house were also fairly pleasant, most of the time, but we didn't have much contact with them. Besides, it's rare for a teenager to be on equal terms with any adult. The age and formality barriers make it almost impossible to be familiar without seeming impudent- or rude.

I told myself to be patient- making friends takes a while, in Japan- but it wasn't easy. I was often homesick, missing Mother and Sayoko and our (in retrospect) large and comfortable house...and I missed the ocean just about as much as I missed my family. That probably seems like a strange thing to say, since one of the reasons I chose Hanai was because Toyama was on the coast, but what I hadn't taken into account was that Toyama was an industrial port. Hagi was a fishing village and occasional tourist spot. The difference was significant, and often rather disgusting. The level of pollution in the water around Toyama appalled me almost as much as the lack of sea-life distressed me. (The first being greatly responsible for the second, of course.) 

That's not to say that Toyama's sea was entirely a cesspool; there were quite a few commercial resorts outside the city where the water was much cleaner, but I couldn't get out there too often, and even when I did it wasn't the same. Resorts didn't like non-guests trespassing on their beaches, and neither did private home-owners. And I, in my turn, wasn't too enthusiastic about all the boating and other activities that drove the wildlife away and (to a lesser extent) did damage to the plant life. Quite apart from that, though, there was something very depressing about Toyama's seaside resorts. It's hard to put into words. The only people who lived in the resorts were the ones who worked there, the ones who were making a great deal of money renting rooms and providing services. Everyone else was a visitor, and I got the oddest yet most persistant feeling that most of them weren't there to enjoy the ocean. They were there to take advantage of and enjoy the services- all the services they could afford and some they really couldn't. It felt as though 'staying at the beach' was some sort of status symbol to them. 

I wonder how often people go to some exotic or exciting place, not because they plan to enjoy the skiing or the touring or the swimming or whatever, but because they can, because it's the popular thing to do? And I wonder, once they're there, how many of them stop long enough to appreciate their surroundings? I admit, I may be doing many people an injustice by thinking so, but the hotels were so luxurious, and the lists of activities so long, that one couldn't help feeling there was some sort of 'I did more than you did' contest going on. 

Perhaps I was simply jealous because they could enjoy the ocean, yet didn't seem to, while I wanted to enjoy it and couldn't. It's easy to think poorly of people who seem to be taking for granted or undervaluing something that you love very much. 

Ah, I seem to be getting sidetracked. Let's see, the point to all that is that although I wasn't entirely unhappy, I wasn't as happy or content as I had hoped to be. The city was more intimidating than I had expected- and easier to get lost in than I'd imagined!- the ocean proximity wasn't nearly as reassuring as I would have liked, and living in a house with roommates was more of a challenge than anything else. There were good days, of course, as well as bad days, but the discouraging part was how often something unpleasant would happen to mess up an otherwise good or acceptable day.

It all added up to some very deep homesick pangs that I had no one to talk about with. I mentioned it in my letters to Mother and Sayoko, but I didn't tell them just how lonely and depressed I was at times. I didn't want Mother to worry, and I didn't want Sayoko to say I told you so or suggest that I come back home if I couldn't handle it. I was determined to handle it; I had made my decision and I was going to see it through. It was only three years, after all... So I gritted my teeth, filled my head with studying, and told myself it would be better next year. The first year away was bound to be the most difficult, when everything was new and different and intimidating. Next year I would know the city better, be more familiar with the school. Next year I might be in a different room, or at least there might be fewer of us, which would mean more privacy and less arguing. I'd get on better terms- friendlier terms- with the people I already knew, and perhaps begin some friendships with new classmates. 

And I wouldn't have Minoro-san as my teacher anymore: that by itself was a fine thing to look forward to.

But it didn't make it any easier to leave Hagi again when the semester breaks ended.

I probably could have made arrangements to stay in Toyama during the school holidays, but the thought didn't even occur to me. I went home, Winter, Spring and Summer, and as a result I grew very familiar with the complicated train-ride between Hagi and Toyama as the year passed. I also grew far too familiar with the way time will drag when you're looking forward to something and speed past when you're trying to savor it. I joked (half seriously) with Mother that the reason the breaks seemed so short was because the train-ride home actually stole about a week out of it. The return-trip to school never had that experience, of course. 

By the time I returned from the spring break (returned to school for the May-August semester, I mean) I was beginning to feel that my hopes for the next year were not unrealistic. It was still very hard to leave home, but the city had begun to take on a familiar look and it was pleasant to be recognized and greeted when I walked into my classroom. We did have to study very hard in preparation for the year's finals, but that had its own positive side-effect. Just as the students at Hagi hadn't had time to whisper and gossip about me during finals prep, my housemates didn't often have the time or the energy to quarrel with each other during the summer semester. Still, it was extremely hard work, and it was with a tremendous sigh of relief that I received my scores when the exams were over. I'd done quite well, so my heart was very light as I quickly packed up my belongings and prepared to go home once more, assuring myself once again that my second year at Toyama wouldn't be nearly so difficult.

I was right. Righter than I could have imagined.

All right, Kento, it's your turn again...