The announcement had hit everyone differently.

  Kazama spent the remainder of the school day turning the four components over in his head like puzzle pieces, testing angles, measuring distances between his current condition and what each test would demand of him. Swimming. Running. Strength. Obstacle course. He ran the math quietly, the same way he always did, with the kind of clinical detachment that helped him avoid panicking about outcomes he could not fully control.

  My ribs are still complaining every time I take a deep breath. Swimming is going to be a problem. Running is not going to be much better. Strength testing, even worse, Kazama thought while staring into emptiness.

  But the obstacle course. That is different. That is chaos with structure, and chaos with structure is something I know how to navigate.

  He sat on the bench outside the gymnasium after the last bell, staring at nothing in particular, when Kurogane dropped down beside him with enough force to make the bench creak in protest.

  "Obstacle course," Kurogane said, by way of greeting.

  "Obstacle course," Kazama simply repeated.

  "I am going to destroy everyone in the swimming test." Kurogane declared while grinning and placing his hand on his chest.

  "Probably," Kazama said with a slight smile on his face. He meant it. Kurogane moved through water like something born to it, all power and momentum, zero wasted movement. There was no realistic scenario in which he did not top the swimming rankings.

  "And the running." Kurogane declared once again.

  "Also probably." Kazama agreed with him on this point too. Kurogane was the best striker in their prefecture due to this very reason. Burst of pace and the ability to maintain it along with really good finishing of course.

  Kurogane turned to look at him. "You are supposed to argue with me. Tell me I am being arrogant."

  "You are being accurate," Kazama said while folding his arms. "There is a difference. Arrogant is when the assessment is wrong. This is your domain. The obstacle course is probably the only thing you are unsure about. And that is why you greeted me with that."

  Kurogane stared at him for a moment, then laughed. "You are a weird guy, Kazama. But you are not wrong".

  "I know," Kazama replied.

  Haruto appeared from around the corner, a gym bag slung over one shoulder. He had a habit of arriving mid-thought, as if the conversation had already been happening somewhere in his head and he was just catching the rest of them up.

  "The strength test is going to come down to technique," Haruto announced, sitting down on Kazama's other side. "The principal said as much. Technique over raw power."

  "Technique gets corrected over time. I would say it's more about experience here," Kurogane said while staring at his own biceps and flexing them.

  "Those biceps are sure going to pay off here," Haruto said, without any real smugness. It was simply a statement of fact, delivered the way Haruto delivered most things: straightforwardly.

  Kazama listened to them go back and forth, adding a word here and there, mostly letting the rhythm of their planning wash over him. It was familiar. Comfortable, in the way that things which had not had time to become comfortable somehow still managed to feel that way.

  He thought about the obstacle course again. Free-for-all. Mass event. Everyone was competing simultaneously.

  His gaze drifted across the courtyard to where Takemi, Sakura and Kana had gathered near the entrance of the main building.

  Takemi was speaking quietly. She had her notebook out, which did not surprise Kazama at all.

  "The swimming test has two components," she was saying to Kana and Sakura, her pen moving in short, efficient strokes. "Sprint and endurance. They are testing different things. Do not exhaust yourself in the sprint if your strength is in distance."

  "What if your strength is in neither?" Sakura asked with a sad and defeated face.

  "Then you pace conservatively on both and protect your score," Takemi said, without hesitation. "A middling score on swimming is survivable. Burning yourself out on the first test and performing badly on everything after it is not."

  Kana nodded slowly, her expression thoughtful. "And the obstacle course?"

  "The obstacle course is the wild card," Takemi replied while drawing on the notebook. "Everyone active at once means chaos. Chaos means opportunity but only if you are calm enough to see it while everyone else is reacting. The people who fall apart in the obstacle course are not usually the weakest physically. They are the ones who get overwhelmed and start making reactive decisions instead of deliberate ones."

  “Wow you are well prepared for someone who already has a slot”, Sakura said while dangling her legs and looking at Takemi. She had a wide telling smile.

  “Oh yes. Now that you pointed it out. Why did you go and do this much research, Takemi? You are already in for the next round aren't you ? After the written exams?” Kana added while placing a hand on Takemi’s shoulder.

  Takemi shrugged off Kana’s hand and pouted. “You guys always tease me. I did all this research for us and you are both just being…..mean…. Hmph”. She turned her face the other way.

  “Come on, we are just playing with you. You are our goddess, Takemi!” Kana said, waving both of her hands in front of her in a quick calming motion, moving them back and forth as if trying to smooth the situation over.

  Kazama observed this and had a small smile. He looked around and saw Kurogane and Haruto were arm wrestling.

  What the fuck? They were talking about the tests only a moment ago and now they are arm wrestling? These idiots. Or maybe I got lost in my thoughts and couldn't notice the passage of time, Kazama thought as he questioned his own thinking. A rare occurrence.

  ************************************************************************************************************************

  The next morning, Kurogane left the house at 7:12 AM.

  He had a specific routine and he stuck to it: protein-heavy breakfast, a fifteen-minute walk to school to warm his muscles up, arrival at the lockers by 7:40 to have enough time before homeroom began. It was the kind of routine that sounded rigid until you understood that he had built it piece by piece over years, testing what worked and discarding what did not. The ritual was not about superstition. It was about consistency and consistency was what he trusted above almost everything else.

  The morning was cool and overcast. He walked with his hands in his jacket pockets, his gym bag over one shoulder, his mind already half-running simulations of the swimming test the next day.

  He was about three blocks from school when he noticed a woman.

  She was walking maybe ten meters ahead of him. Dark jacket. Hair pulled back. She walked quickly but not urgently. Kurogane paid her no particular attention at first.

  Then the second block passed and she was still ahead of him.

  Then the third.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Kurogane frowned slightly. They had been going in the same direction for quite some time now. Every corner he took, she took. Every turn, every straightaway, every slight deviation in the path. She mirrored it. Not obviously. Not in a way that would look strange to anyone watching from the outside.

  But Kurogane had grown up in a city and had developed a fairly reliable sense of when a coincidence had lasted long enough to stop being one.

  Okay. So she is going the same way as me. That is fine. Lots of people go the same way. This is a city. Streets are shared. That is literally the whole point of streets, Kurogane thought while rubbing his chin.

  Another corner. She took it.

  That is four corners. Four. In a row. The exact same four corners I take every single morning. Which is apparently information I have now shared with a complete stranger, Kurogane started suspecting.

  Okay. Options. Turn around, take the long route maybe? That adds fifteen minutes. I have optimized this walk down to the minute. Why???

  Slow down. Let her get further ahead. Except what if she slows down too. Then we are just two people crawling down the street at the speed of someone who has forgotten how legs work and that is worse.

  I should speed up in that case. Except then either she is following me, or I am following her, and in both cases the suspicious one is going to be me because I am a high school boy who already got into trouble a few weeks back with those bullies.

  I have a swimming test tomorrow. I do not have time for whatever this is.

  I run. End of debate. Twenty meters of distance. She becomes someone who was briefly going in my direction and is now no longer my problem. Simple. Clean. Done. Over.

  Problem identified. Solution generated. Moving on. Sometimes I am smarter than Kazama. Though he would disagree.

  Then he simply ran past her.

  Not fast enough to be alarming. Just enough to put real distance between them. He moved at a light jog, hit the corner ahead, slowed back to a walk once he was twenty meters clear.

  He felt the particular satisfaction of a problem resolved without drama.

  The blow came from behind so fast he did not have time to do anything except catch himself on his hands against the pavement. Something heavy and precise hit him between the shoulder blades which was not a punch, more like a controlled takedown, the kind designed to bring someone down without making noise. His gym bag swung off his shoulder. His knees hit the ground.

  Before he could turn around, the woman had an arm around his neck from behind, using his own momentary disorientation to keep him off-balance. She was not large. That was the infuriating part. She was using leverage with an efficiency that suggested someone who had spent considerable time learning exactly how to control someone much larger than herself. Kurogane was now flat on the ground with the woman laying on top of him with a bear hug.

  "What the fuck…" Kurogane was startled.

  "Do not make this difficult," she said, very calmly.

  "Are you serious right now…" He tried to get a hand under her arm and found the grip adjusted immediately, tightening just enough to remind him that she knew what she was doing. "What is wrong with you? I am going to be late for school!"

  "I know," she said with a grin.

  “But why? I mean if you were thinking about kidnapping a high schooler, you would go for a kid with a smaller frame, but what the hell… You got me bamboozled here…” Kurogane said while gasping and struggling to break free from the woman’s hold.

  Should I use my powers? The bracelet only dampens them inside school. But… The last time I used them outside school, I got into trouble. Calm down Kurogane. You are the best striker in all of Japan. No in the whole world. I have tossed large defenders on the ground with my strength and speed. Who is this woman compared to that? Kurogane thought as he mustered strength in him.

  "Do not resist. This is for your own good," she said.

  Kurogane powered through and got up with the help of his legs alone. He then proceeded to break the hold from the woman. It was strong but he knew he could break free if he powered through this as well.

  Just 10 more seconds. And this shit would be over, Kurogane thought as he got one arm free,

  By this point, they had acquired an audience.

  A small cluster of people had stopped on the opposite side of the street. Two older women with shopping bags. A salary man who had paused mid-step, looking confused about whether to intervene. A teenager with a bicycle who was openly staring.

  Kurogane felt the arm shift and then she was suddenly standing beside him, her grip released, one hand pressed to her mouth, her eyes wide.

  "He grabbed me," she said, loudly, in the direction of the gathering crowd. Her voice cracked just slightly, perfectly pitched to carry the right amount of distress without tipping into melodrama. She even started gasping out of nowhere. "I was just walking and he came up from behind…."

  Kurogane stared at her.

  "That is," he said carefully, "the most impressive lie I have ever witnessed. And I say that with complete sincerity and absolutely no admiration whatsoever."

  The salary man had already taken his phone out. The two older women were murmuring to each other. The teenager on the bicycle looked genuinely uncertain about what he had just watched.

  "She attacked me," Kurogane said to the crowd, knowing as he said it that the optics were not in his favor. He was a head taller than her. "I was running to school and she took me down from behind. I have no idea who she is."

  Nobody looked particularly convinced.

  "This high school boy," one of the older women said, shaking her head slowly.

  "What is wrong with the youth today," the other one agreed.

  “It must be this boy. Just look at him. His shirt is not tucked in. He is like a delinquent” another one said.

  "That is because she….. Incredible," Kurogane said, to no one in particular.

  "Kurogane." A voice came from behind Kurogane and the woman.

  He turned to the voice.

  Tachibana Takemi was standing at the edge of the growing scene, her school bag over one shoulder. Her eyes moved from Kurogane to the woman to the crowd and back to Kurogane. A beat passed.

  She walked forward and positioned herself beside him. "Good morning," she said to the crowd, in a pleasant, composed voice that somehow managed to immediately lower the ambient tension by several degrees. "I apologize for the commotion. This is my classmate. We are running late for school. Is there anything that needs to be addressed here?"

  The salary man looked slightly uncertain now. The older women had lost some of their momentum.

  Takemi glanced at the woman. She frowned a bit and felt a sinister aura from the woman.

  "We really are very late," Takemi said to Kurogane, with significant emphasis on the last word.

  "Right," Kurogane said quickly, understanding what Takemi was hinting at and letting out a nervous smile. "Yes. Very very Late."

  They left without any further explanation. The crowd looked at them leaving at one moment and looked away the other. The woman made a sour face at first.

  “I guess it's time for plan B”, the woman said under her breath with a grin.

  Takemi walked quickly and Kurogane matched her pace, his gym bag back over one shoulder, his neck still aching slightly from the arm that had been around it five minutes ago.

  "Thank you," he said, after half a block.

  "Do not thank me yet," Takemi replied, not looking at him. "I can't believe this is the second time I am saving a boy from my classroom before school."

  “Wait this has happened before? Who was it?” Kurogane asked with a confused tone while scratching his head.

  “No, it was nothing. What about you? What happened to you back there?” Takemi asked, quickly turning the question on Kurogane.

  “I don't know. I was going through my usual route. You know the one we used to take when we were kids for our middle school. But this time there was this woman who for some reason was ahead of me for like 4 corners. I even altered a bit but still she was ahead of me so I decided to run past her so that it does not seem like I was following her or anything. But then….” Kurogane described the events by telling everything that happened before Takemi arrived there. His tone grew sadder and lower with each sentence he finished.

  “But then?” Takemi asked with curiosity and while directly looking at Kurogane. She was feeling bad for her childhood friend as he was telling his side of things.

  “Just after I got past her. That woman covered the distance between us like some ninja like…. I didn't hear any footsteps. And then she jumped on my back and pinned me to the ground. It was as if an anaconda had grabbed me. Her grip was really tight. I barely managed to get free from her. But I don't know if it was me or it was her who loosened the grip, but as soon as I got free, she started shouting and crying for help. Believe me Takemi…. She played it like I was some kind of molester or I don't know how else to word this… My brain has stopped working…” Kurogane described the rest of the events. He let off all the steam that was built up in his mind and his chest. He felt lighter but the fear still lingered. His hands were trembling.

  Takemi noticed this and placed her hand on his shoulder.

  “I have known you since childhood. I know you would never do such a thing. I believe you. If there is anything else, let me know. We will figure it out together.” Takemi said with a firm and understanding tone.

  “Thanks Takemi. I don't know what would have happened if you were not there. I don't think I would have survived." Kurogane said with a trembling tone and while scratching the back of his head.

  “Anytime. And I don't think it was any coincidence. That woman knew your path and she knew you would go past her. She was well prepared.” Takemi stated while placing her hand on her chin.

  Kurogane didn't say anything but looked at her with his eyes wide open. He didn't know why this was happening to him. He didn't know how to deal with this.

  They reached the school gates. Kurogane hesitated assuming that the woman might go to his school to complain but Takemi placed her hand on his shoulder showing that he wasn't alone in this.