The First-Year canteen buzzed with its usual noon energy.
The aroma of hot food rose in waves. Students chatted over clattering trays. The hum of voices blended into a lively chorus.
Yet beneath that ordinary noise, an invisible current ran through the crowd.
Dozens of gazes—subtle, fleeting, yet focused—were fixed on the same person.
Sakamoto.
He carried a tray holding the simplest, cheapest set meal the canteen offered: white rice, stir-fried seasonal vegetables, and miso soup.
That choice, plain to the point of austerity, stood out strangely when held by a Class A student wrapped in quiet elegance.
Sakamoto scanned the bustling dining area with serene composure, searching for an empty seat. His posture was dignified, steps steady, as though he were carrying not a budget lunch but a refined tea service.
In a far corner, Horikita Suzune ate alone.
Her posture was straight as ever, shoulders squared, her cool gaze locked on her tray. She maintained her usual isolation behind an icy barrier thicker than the crowd around her.
Class D's current state frustrated her.
Undisciplined classmates, no ambition, no unity—nothing like the standard set by the student council president, her brother. The gap suffocated her.
Then she caught sight of Sakamoto.
Her brows knit briefly.
A Class A student eating… that?
After his strange umbrella-stand seat on the bus and the elegant absurdity at the convenience store, this only deepened the mystery. His behavior was odd—undeniably odd—yet carried a sense of intention, of unshakable self-possession.
Someone like him… someone in the same class as her brother… surely didn't make choices without reason.
Horikita's grip tightened around her chopsticks for a moment before she looked away, though her mind lingered stubbornly where her eyes would not.
Not far from her, Ryuuen Kakeru stabbed irritably at a piece of fried chicken.
Two days into school, he had already diagnosed Class C for what it was: a chaotic pack of weaklings.
No discipline.
No direction.
No leader except him.
His cold eyes drifted over the canteen, finally landing on Sakamoto.
That guy from yesterday—the one who stopped outside Class C's window and stared in with a clinical, almost contemptuous kind of scrutiny. Ryuuen still felt the irritation prickling under his skin.
Class A.
Of course.
Sakamoto approached an empty seat diagonally behind him, tray balanced effortlessly in both hands.
Ryuuen smirked.
Perfect.
He leaned back in his chair, pretending to stretch, while his right hand slid behind him. His fingertips curled around the inner front leg of the chair Sakamoto was about to sit on.
Let's see how cool you look with your back on the floor.
The moment Sakamoto lowered his tray, Ryuuen's pulse quickened. He waited.
Waited…
Just as Sakamoto's hips reached the point of no return—
At an optimal viewing angle, Nagumo Miyabi leisurely observed the entire sequence. His sharp eyes missed no details: Sakamoto's frugal meal, Ryuuen's hooked finger, the malice flickering in his expression.
A quiet laugh escaped him. He took a sip of water.
"Oh? The little wolf shows its teeth early. He must really hate that air of his."
Nagumo made no move to intervene. Quite the opposite—his curiosity sharpened.
He wanted to see it.
Would the elegant facade crack?
Would Sakamoto hit the floor like anyone else?
Or… would something else emerge?
Sakamoto placed his tray down.
He turned.
Began to lower himself.
And—
Ryuuen pulled.
"—Swish!"
The chair screeched violently against the floor, dragged back half a foot in an instant.
Under normal circumstances, the outcome was inevitable:
A loss of balance.
A spectacular fall.
A crash, spilled miso soup, and a wave of laughter.
Everyone watched, breath held—
Right at the brink of disaster.
*However—*
Time froze.
Sakamoto's body—still several centimeters above the empty space where his chair should have been—halted mid-descent.
He didn't fall.
He didn't flinch.
Not even a ripple of surprise crossed his face.
His thigh muscles tightened like precision-tuned springs, his knees folding into a perfectly calculated angle, while his ankles anchored to the floor with astonishing stability. In a single flash, his center of gravity was caught, corrected, and locked in place.
He remained suspended in the exact posture of "about to sit," his back straight as a bamboo stalk, his hands resting naturally at his sides. Behind the lenses of his black-rimmed glasses, his gaze stayed calm—so calm it felt as though he had merely paused a mundane motion, not just dodged a brush with humiliation.
The cafeteria erupted into absolute silence.
Chopsticks froze in mid-air.
Mouths hung open.
Half-formed laughs died in throats.
Dozens of disbelieving gazes converged on the lone figure poised impossibly in mid-air, as if he were sitting on an invisible throne.
*Buzz—*
The hush shattered.
"Holy crap—!!"
"He stopped himself?!"
"Sitting in mid-air?! That's real?!"
"No way—this has to be CGI!"
"D-Did gravity just take the day off?!"
Gasps and frantic whispers surged like a shockwave across the hall.
Horikita Suzune's usually cool expression cracked—her eyes widening as she sharply inhaled.
She had noticed Ryuuen's trick a heartbeat earlier, her fingers tightening on her chopsticks, breath nearly forming a warning. But before the words could escape, the sight before her stole them away completely.
Her pulse spiked.
Embarrassment? No.
It was something deeper—an involuntary, visceral stir of awe.
He resolved it… like this?
What kind of instantaneous judgment and bodily control had that required?
Her grip whitened, and her gaze toward Sakamoto shimmered with shock, admiration, and something she couldn't name.
Ryuuen, meanwhile, was frozen mid-smirk—emotion draining from his face.
Then anger—boiling, humiliated fury—rushed in to fill the void.
He stared at Sakamoto as if witnessing a nightmare: the boy he had tried to embarrass now sitting serenely in thin air, his own failed prank reflected in every pair of mocking eyes around them.
The chair he had pulled away now felt like a guillotine he had dropped on himself.
Nagumo Miyabi's hand stopped mid-lift, water glass suspended. His amusement transformed in an instant—first to disbelief, then to a kind of elated excitement.
His lips parted.
A soft, awed murmur escaped:
"…Brilliant."
And then his composure cracked.
"Absolutely brilliant!"
This wasn't an evasion.
It was a counterattack—a cool, devastating reversal that turned a malicious trap into a stage.
Grace under pressure. Superhuman balance. A serenity that made disaster look like choreography.
Nagumo leaned forward, his eyes kindling with fierce interest.
"Haha… magnificent…"
At the center of all the uproar, Sakamoto himself remained untouched by the storm. His suspended posture held with unreal stability, as though invisible threads supported him.
Seconds passed.
Then, as naturally as breathing, he lowered himself. His body descended smoothly until he was seated—squarely, elegantly—on the very same chair Ryuuen had pulled away, as if it had never moved at all.
He adjusted his tray with unhurried precision.
Picked up his chopsticks.
Lifted a bite of stir-fried vegetables.
And ate.
Calmly. Peacefully. Completely unbothered.
It was the cafeteria, not Sakamoto, that seemed frozen now. Only the soft, rhythmic sound of his chewing broke the stunned silence.
The chair—former instrument of humiliation—now stood as a silent, mocking witness to the failed ambush.
Ryuuen could only stand there, face drained of color, as if shackled to a pillar of his own disgrace