Prologue - Confession

Shin knew it frustrated his friends that he wouldn't discuss what it was that he liked about Yankumi. But what was the point? Even though he saw the same restlessness in his friends, he knew they wouldn't understand.

After he'd gotten kicked out of his prestigious school and left home, he'd just been drifting. Freed from the constraints of being a perfect student and son, he was unsure about what to do next. Certainly, he knew that he didn't want to go back to his old life, but no new course of action presented itself. Becoming the leader of the second years hadn't even been a conscious decision, just the cumulative result of a few fights and a few pranks that he'd engaged in to kill time.

He'd found himself sleeping a lot. The days had passed by in a fuzzy, cottony, slow sort of way.

When Yankumi had first arrived, he hadn't noticed her as anything other than another teacher to toy with. Someone to crush-but in a distant, impersonal kind of way-out of a general dislike for people who thought they were teachers. Nothing personal.

But she kept on doing interesting things. He was torn between fascination and dismay. He wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to be pulled out of his lethargy. Not by a teacher.

But inevitably, it happened. Things happened around her.

It wasn't so much that she was the focal point of everything (his dad was such a person) as that she was a catalyst. Around her, choices seemed clearer, truth was stranger than fiction. It was as if she was a character out of one of those tales.

He had been drawn in, despite himself. Most people didn't even notice it. They approached her orbit and were thrown into a completely different trajectory. She did things that people just didn't do, and caused others to follow suit, but in a bright, shiny kind of way.

Shin found himself observing her constantly, following her. He couldn't help it. Like staring at an accident or the way your eyes are drawn to a TV as you walk through the room.

Over time, what was first just a small speck of something, a dandelion puff in the wind, began to grow. He realized that this experience, like much of life, was transient. Graduation, that Olympus in the clouds during his days of lethargy now seemed right around the corner. They would go their separate ways.

It wasn't that she didn't care about him, she cared fiercely about all of her students. But the student-teacher relationship wasn't a lasting one. Sure, he'd be able to drop by and reminisce once a year or so. He couldn't even imagine such a life, a future muffled in cotton, slowly slumping into oblivion.

It was galling, that she had that spark, that he didn't. He felt sometimes like he wanted to capture her, take that spark. It was something desirable, all the more so because he wasn't sure what it was.

He knew that she was capable of long-term relationships, thrived on them. He saw it in her interactions with her family. The problem was, entering into that category as well.

So he devised a plan to catch her attention, to make himself special to her. And he told Kyou about it. He probably shouldn't have done that.

Next Chapter: Man Camp

A/N: Updates will be posted weekly. The story is manga-based, although anime or drama discrepancies may pop up.