'Pee Note'

[Kitty Angel]

The human whose name is written in this ledger shall void their bladder.

I know this isn't the most original idea; but I ended up rewatching the Death Note anime out of boredom, and thought that I've seen this concept done three times that I can think of, but never seen it done well. I didn't want to distract myself from ongoing projects, so quickly hammered out my rough ideas of which parts to change, and asked Gemini to write it. The result was so bad that I felt like I had to rewrite most of it. So… it probably took more time than writing it myself, but I hope there's at least some continuity to the writing (like, not changing character descriptions every time they enter the room, and not starting every scene with an infodump explaining why future twists will be surprising).

 

Would be interested to see if anyone wants to see more of this; I've written a chunk of chapter 2.

 

Chapter 1 - Cleaner

The human whose name is written in this ledger shall void their bladder.
本台帳に記名された者は、排尿するものとする。

The sky over the Daikon Private Academy was the color of a bruised plum. The air was hot and humid, the last vestiges of summer outstaying their welcome long after beach weather had departed. The school buildings were grey concrete, but contrived to imitate the colour of the bruised-plum sky, as if they could escape monochrome dreariness. The walls and courtyards were a little cleaner than other schools in surrounding areas, but it would have been hard to tell visually that this particular establishment was the pride of its district.

The ceiling fan in Classroom 3-A rotated with a rhythmic, agonizing click in counterpoint to the overwrought ramblings of Mr Tagaki’s teaching. To the thirty students sitting in rows of polished oak desks, it was background noise. To one boy, light-ginger bangs less than a millimetre longer than regulation and his head resting on the window as he stared out, it was a countdown.

“And you will see,” Takagi droned, tapping a piece of chalk against a complex diagram, “that whichever number you choose, it will return to one. Some may take longer than others, but it will be so. Maybe I should ask you to try it. These two rules, “n divided by two” or “3n plus 1”, seem like they should lead in opposite directions. But generations of mathematicians have worked on identifying whether there exists…”

The boy by the window wasn’t listening as that voice continued to drone on in the background. He didn’t care about addition and division, like he didn’t care about most of the things the teachers at this school saw fit to drone on about. It was all too simple, like the endless repetition of multiplication tables that he could produce from his head if he wanted to but saw no use for in the real world. He already knew everything he needed to know, so he continued to let his body rest in class while his mind explored the world around him. Today, for example, his gaze was focused on a point between the monochrome buildings and sickly sky where a group of birds were unusually energetic. Maybe they were fighting, but some instinct told him that there were more important things to watch today.

A sky blue speck detached itself from the heavens and descended towards the tree in the centre of the East courtyard. It shouldn’t have been particularly notable, except that the sky was anything but blue today, and a single microscopic particle of the colour seemed somehow out of place. He might have thought it just a phosphene; one of those stray specks that dances behind your eyes when you are overly tired. Or perhaps a tiny bubble in the arteries crossing his retina, visible for just a moment. But neither of those would have bounced off the ginkgo branches and made the leaves shake as it tumbled to the ground. Whatever it was, it was real. And the boy didn’t know what it was, which made it very much out of the ordinary.

“Right?” a single sharp word cut into his consciousness. He shifted slightly and leaned his head on his palm, then let his gaze drift past the “Diligence” and “Skill through Effort” signs etched on either side of the chalkboard and focused on the teacher. Of course the man was looking straight at him, almost daring him to decide he was too busy to answer today.

The rest of the class turned slowly towards him as well. They were probably all waiting for him to make a mistake, or for the lessons to reach a level where he couldn’t coast by on intuition.

“Sir?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Two rules, Right,” the teacher said, tapping the board again as he enunciated Right’s name with a pressed voice that was clearly trying very hard not to become a growl of frustration. “You would know what we are discussing if you were paying attention to my lesson, rather than to the crows. How long do you expect it would take you, picking a number at random, before you found one from which this sequence forms a loop?”

The class wouldn’t get their moment of schadenfreude today. Not when the answer was so clear.

“I wouldn’t try, Sir,” Right said casually, and then turned his eyes back to the tree in the yard before he gave a more complete explanation. “No such numbers can exist. The constants in your expression, being three and two in this case, form a coprime set. Those digits correspond to a mapping of a logarithmic grid onto a discrete projection of the Julia set, as per Erdos’s least famous theorem, where the numbers in each such sequence represent the unit distance to the grid cell whose point density is closest to the exponent of the discriminant of the series. If the Syracuse function has any nontrivial solutions, which we know it does in any 3-adic fractal symmetry, then a looping sequence would necessarily correspond to a line traversing the Julia set which neither intersects nor is parallel to any points with degenerate gradient vectors. And that would obviously be absurd.”

The classroom fell into silence for a moment. Right suspected that at least half of his classmates wouldn’t even understand his solution, let alone be able to guess whether it was correct. Maybe there was a simpler solution he had overlooked, because this one seemed a little beyond the level of a high school mathematics class. But Right knew that it was correct; it had just been so obvious when he looked at the problem.

Mr Takagi stared at the chalkboard, his mouth slightly open as he compared Right’s answer to the textbook solution that must surely have been at the forefront of his mind when he asked the question. Eventually, he conceded defeat.

“I… see,” he stammered, adjusting his glasses. “Yes. Quite. As I expected, you are always Right.”

His chuckle didn’t have any humour in it. Right guessed that the teacher was just trying to fill the time, pass another boring lesson while he struggled to impress algebra into minds either too dull or too uninterested to master even such basic logical deductions.

Right didn't care about the praise. He was too familiar with the joke by now to give it any attention, and his gaze was focused on one spot at the base of that tree. Where a mysterious speck had landed, which couldn’t have been an optical illusion. The one thing he didn’t know in his immediate surroundings, and thus a cause for interest. He was impatient now, waiting for the bell to ring so that he could satisfy his curiosity and know the truth. He didn’t need to rush; he knew exactly where it had landed among the shrubs, and he doubted that anyone else would be heading out to retrieve the mystery object before him. He was sure he would be able to find it, but once his curiosity had hooked onto something he knew that it would be all he thought about until lunch time. Right wanted so badly to find an answer, and as long as Takagi kept droning on about simple algebraic sequences, he would have to wait before he could get any answer.

* * *

Somewhere else, where the weather was different but no less oppressive. There was no sky here; anyone looking up would instead see an arched marble ceiling miles above, and stretching to infinity in every direction. Nobody marvelled at the scale of the construction because there were stranger things to be seen; besides which, nobody ever looked up here.

The air was filled with steam, although the water temperature was kept at a constant thirty-seven point four degrees Celsius. The whole place smelled of lavender, talcum powder, and soap, although a slight draught might occasionally carry through a faint hint of roasting chicken; a scent which nobody had ever been able to discern the origin of. Any ground was hidden by a sea of bubbles, from soft foam no more substantial than the mist up to floating, iridescent bubbles as large as a man’s head.

Thousands of stone pillars rose from the sea of foam, topped with oversized porcelain basins that overflowed with foam of their own as they were disturbed, pouring back to the unseen pool below with a roar that rose and fell like a distant heartbeat. Between the basins, uncountable figures moved through the bubbles and steam. Each one was occupied on their own tasks; all of them busy and no two about the same task. This place worked like a well-oiled machine, with none of the inhabitants ever being in another’s way or needing to ask about the status of their work. Any patterns in the movement would have been too complex to perceive, giving the impression of a million ants moving according to some inscrutable pattern, always industrious and every individual where they needed to be.

Except that these were much larger than ants. Some of them towered over the outsized basins, while others had to jump in order to reach, or walked across the shoulders of their brethren, always assuming someone would be there when needed. They were distorted caricatures of a humanoid form, no two alike, and some were even stranger. One figure looked like nothing more than a towering mass of white linen, stretched over bones that looked like featureless ceramic rods where they emerged from sleeves, and made a rhythmic click-clack sound as the creature moved. Another had a head like a crudely carved rocking horse, fused into what could have been a crown or something else entirely.

One lanky, shadow-thin figure was perched on the edge of a fountain. It had a smile across its face, frozen in place, and eyes like vacant discs. The blush on its cheeks was clearly painted on, the slightest hint of bright colour in a place where even the light was dominated by pastel blues and greens reflecting off the bubbles that drifted overhead. Its limbs were like sticks wrapped in liquid grey leather, flowing from place to place rather than moving according to the dictates of physics. When it deigned to move, in any case. Right now, unlike its fellows, it stared up towards the distant roof without any attempt at activity. It wasn’t dead, or even idle, but managed to convey a sense of restless contemplation. It gave the impression that it was stationary right now only because it was waiting to be needed; a delay which none of the others seemed to need.

“You’re not working,” the folded-linen monstrosity whispered, in a voice that dripped with the hiss of steam and creak of disapproval.

“No,” the tall figure answered, and turned its head to deliver the same constant smile as always. “I dropped my ledger. I’m waiting for a replacement.”

“We can help you look?” another suggested, pausing for a moment in its own tasks. “It’s below the bath foam, right? Not in the void, or the… the Great Sink? You wouldn’t be that careless would you, Nuk?”

“Oh, no. I’d never be that careless. I wouldn’t let my ledger be damaged. But it’s not in the bath now.”

“Then where?” another indistinct figure, bloated and barely humanoid, turned towards them instead of walking past. After so many centuries of monotonous work, it was only natural that a break from the routine got the attention of everyone nearby.

“The human world,” Nuk answered, and turned his attention back to a mound of bubbles atop a nearby basin. And then, sensing that some explanation was necessary, he added: “I was bored.”

“You’ve ordered a new one, haven’t you?” linen-folds said, the creak of worry edging into its voice. “The Matriarch won’t be happy.”

“Yeah, well,” Nuk answered, and gave a complex shrug which seemed to involve his shoulders somehow passing through each other. “Mommy’s never really been happy with me, has she? But I guess I should go.”

“Go?” the question was asked by everyone at once.

“Yeah. If a human found it and I wasn’t watching, that would be such a waste. I do hope I can meet someone… interesting.”

The others were speechless as Nuk climbed up onto the fountain and then executed a dive towards the foam below. He never hit the surface, but instead grew farther away, vanishing into the distance second by second. And when he reached the limits of immortal sight, he became a smudge of soot floating in the lavender-scented air, and vanished.

The others watched the empty space for a moment, a little tension joining a faint hint of chicken in the air between them, but none knew what to say. They stood there for a short while, and then each grotesque figure turned away to continue with their own work. They were needed, after all.

* * *

The rooftop of the East Wing was the only place where the air felt thin enough to breathe. School life was hectic, with so many people asking for help or seeking to socialise. Right had a lot of friends, but if there were more than a couple of them in one place, it would take a large fraction of his intellectual capacity to balance their differing desires and personalities against each other, just so he knew what to say so that they would do as he wanted. Right now, with a new curiosity on his mind, he didn’t need that kind of distraction.

Up here on the roof there were some planters filled with greenery, a staircase, and a low concrete bench. The view was stunning, but Right could see that any time. He walked over to the bench and opened his bag. His lunch today had been prepared for him by Hitomi Narutaki; whose current investment in the tropes of romance anime showed in the ways she chose to express her interest. He set the bento box on the bench beside him, and lifted off the lid with one precise motion. He could identify grilled salmon, tamagoyaki, and pickled ginger, and he already looked forward to tasting it. But right now, he knew that he would first have to give his attention to the mysterious object that appeared to have fallen from the sky.

He took it out, a notebook looking to a cursory glance very much like the cheap but hard-wearing ones that many schools provided for note taking. A coarse paper cover, in a colour he had initially thought to be sky blue but which might, on closer inspection, turn out to be be closer to periwinkle. He wasn’t an artist, so didn’t know the precise names of every shade, but he doubted that the distinction would be worth thinking about in any case.

The book clearly wasn’t a school notebook, because there was a printed title on the cover, as well as space to enter dates and some kind of serial number in the corner. Oddly, he recognised the number as being in sanskrit numerals, and clearly printed on by some automated system after the book’s manufacture, but that wasn’t the most interesting thing.

The line of text across the cover described it as a ledger; which would explain the serial number, perhaps. He could imagine many situations in accounting where it would be advantageous to know if one book had been removed from a series, particularly in the case of an audit. With consecutive numbers in a batch, it would be just a little harder to change records illicitly.

What kind of ledger, he couldn’t quite make out. The printed title had been obliterated by a spiderweb of silver lines, as if this book were a pane of glass in the process of shattering. The lines at the centre clearly spelled out ‘pee note’, over the top of most of the printed label. And as unusual as the title was, it didn’t quite make the cut as the strangest detail about this object. Right’s lunch sat beside him, untouched as he ran his fingers gently over the notebook’s cover, confirming what he had thought he felt. The cover looked like ordinary paper; wood pulp or cotton, perhaps. But it yielded differently under his fingertips, and gripped his skin slightly. Rubber, perhaps, or some kind of vellum. He couldn’t be sure. And as he lifted it to the light, checking whether the texture he felt was visible, he realised that some of the blue pigments might have a trace of iridescence, like the whole thing was wrapped in a soap bubble. That would explain why it was so hard to accurately judge its colour.

But now, that was all he could make out from the front and back covers. He set it in his lap, and flipped open the cover to read what was inside. He half expected just pages of blank space, perhaps ruled into columns, but he found that there was text to be read. On the very first page, laid out in silver ink on black paper so thin as to be almost transparent, were listed a set of what appeared to be rules; in the same spiderweb handwriting as the cover.

• 1. The human whose name is written in this note shall void their bladder.

Right stared at the words, and a dry, humorless huff escaped his nose.

“A prank,” he muttered to himself, immediately disappointed. “Quite high quality, someone clearly put a lot of effort into this joke. So why does the punchline need to be something so absurd?”

He was closing the book again, contemplating whether to repeat the actions of whichever joker had first cast it from the rooftop, or to take it to the recycling collection point outside the gym once he had eaten. But his decision was interrupted as the echo of words demanded his attention, drifting up from the tiny, echoey space where banks of lockers were wedged into an alcove between the foot of the stairs and an entryway that was only used by delinquents in search of …a place to smoke during inclement weather.

“She always takes the shortcut behind the gym before fifth period,” a gravelly voice muttered, tinged with a strange sense of anticipation. Right recognised the voice as Ishida, who he shared a history class with and whose report card was a graveyard of red ink. Nothing he was so excited about could possibly be good.

“And then what? We just… block her in?” another voice asked.

“It’s her own fault,” this sneering tone was Sato, who always looked down on anyone who wasn’t a star player on the football team. He was the kind of boy who was used to getting his own way, and could explode into a volcano of pure fury if anyone didn’t– “She should have shown me some respect.”

“You don’t say no to the captain,” Isida reiterated. “So we teach her a lesson. Sato first, then we get what’s left.”

Right’s hand clenched into a fist. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing; this sounded like more than just bullying, and he knew that he had to stop it. But he wasn’t dumb enough to think his fists would be any help against this little crowd; if they were Sato’s generals, there would be two more whose voices he hadn’t heard yet, and all his charismatic speech techniques would be no use if they weren’t willing to let him get a word in. Unless he could think of another strategy first, it would be a no-win situation. And calling for a teacher would only help if he could find one close enough.

“We should take her phone first,” one of the others spoke up. “Make sure she understands some things shouldn’t be shared.”

Right realised that his tightening fist was creasing the notebook in his hand, and again noticed the strange texture of the cover that clung to his skin. Of course he didn’t believe in magic. But after someone had gone to so much effort, it would be a shame not to at least try it. He wanted to give the prankster some credit for their creativity, and the ‘always Right’ part of his brain was reluctant to dismiss any hypothesis without the slightest attempt to prove or disprove. That was just the scientific method. And, of course, there was nothing else he could be doing right now. If he ran downstairs he would draw their ire himself; and if he waited they would be gone before he could reach the staff room. Writing a name in a weird notebook had almost no chance of success, but still infinitesimally better than zero.

He yanked a mechanical pencil from his pocket and quickly pressed the button. In the stillness of the rooftop, he could imagine it sounding something like a secret agent clicking off his gun’s safety catch in the better class of spy movies. Then his hand came down, writing without any care for his normal neatness.

SATO KAZUO

Well, he’d tested it. But the chatter from the thugs at the bottom of the stairwell didn’t change. It was clear the notebook was a prank, and he wasn’t surprised because he’d never suspected anything else. But he also heard a click of the outside door opening, and knew that Sato and his generals were on the move. The girl they were talking about, whoever it was, must have come into view outside.

Right didn’t stop to think. He didn’t need to. He wasn’t sure how long it would be before they were far enough from the door that they couldn’t hear his footsteps on the stairs, but he didn’t care. Right’s father had raised him with a strong sense of justice, and he couldn’t let this happen. His mind raced through the probabilities, but he knew that he couldn’t have just let this happen. He left his lunch on the bench now, with his bag and the strange notebook beside it, as he bounded down the first flight of stairs and headed for the science labs. There was a chance that Mr Kondo would be there, setting up for the afternoon’s practical classes, and even the faintest chance was better than nothing in a case like this.

He didn’t pay any attention to the wind disturbing his expertly-prepared salmon, or a momentary hint of lavender and astringent soap in the air as a page fluttered back and forth.

* * *

The walk home felt longer than usual. The air was thick with the kind of static that precedes a storm, but the only thunder Right heard was the constant, low-level chatter of his schoolmates. By the time he reached his front gate, the humiliation of Kazuo had already been processed, memed, and dissected by half the student body.

Kondo hadn’t been in the lab today, but Right had hurried to search for teachers in the reading nook in the north courtyard, where an old willow tree provided a little shelter from the noise of the crowds. It was a space used more often by teachers than students, but Right had known before he got there that he was already too late. By then, he’d barely had time to stammer out something about a disturbance behind the gym, and then rushed back to the rooftop to collect his bags. He’d rammed the notebook back into his bag and then bolted his lunch, not expecting to hear anything more about the day’s events however it had turned out. But the classroom had been buzzing with the first fragments of gossip before he even arrived.

Sato Kazuo had threatened a girl, they said. A freshman, in the wind orchestra, and socially awkward enough that she didn’t know who to trust. Sato had stepped out flanked by his generals, ordered her not to move, and then pissed himself. Apparently the absurdity of the situation had been stronger than the loyalty of his second in command, and sato had been carried to the nurse’s office by four boys who were still itching for a chance to punish him for their second-hand humiliation.

Right couldn’t believe it; but there was no way it could be a coincidence. Could there? He couldn’t work out the odds against the event without measuring how frequently a bully had his name written in a notebook and didn’t wet himself. But suddenly the existence of a mystical pee note somehow seemed the more likely option. He wanted to look at it again, and to read the rest of the rules, but by the time he had any reason to believe the Pee Note actually mattered, he’d been trapped in classes and hadn’t had the opportunity to read anything without someone peering over his shoulder. Now, finally, he was home and he could set about a scientific study of what he had found.

The front door of the house clicked shut with a soft, expensive thud.

“I’m home!” he called, his voice automatically modulating to the polite, dutiful tone his parents expected.

“You’re home early,” his mother’s voice replied from the living room. “Did you not stop to chat with Ryouga at the convenience store? I was just about to start on some tea if you want some, and I have those almond chips you like.”

“I have a lot of prep for the mock exams, Mother,” Right said, his voice a perfect mask of studious dedication. For once, the neutrality actually took effort to maintain. “I’ll take the tea, but I should get straight to work.”

“Always so diligent,” she sighed, a note of pure, uncomplicated pride in her voice.

Once inside his room, Right didn't even turn on the main light. He sat at his desk with the blue notebook resting on the dark wood like a piece of fallen sky. He felt a strange reluctance to touch it again. It was just too absurd, or too strange. Maybe it would be better to actually focus on his studies now, in case his mother came in with the promised refreshments.

But the mental image of Sato filled his mind. Among the school’s most feared bullies, a boy who prided himself on physical dominance, crumpling into a state of whimpering, wet disgrace. It was so easy to imagine from all the descriptions he had heard, and he knew enough statistical theory to be confident that the null hypothesis was even more of a long shot. The timing was too precise, Sato’s accident had probably occurred when Right was hitting the first turn on his rush to find Mr Kondo. And even if his family came in… well, the iridescent cover of the book would look so much more suspicious than the normal paper of the inner pages.

He opened the cover, and his finger drifted back to the list of rules.The first, he already knew. But when he got to the second, he thought that he would have been extremely impressed if any prankster thought out their jokes so thoroughly.

• 2. The individual writing the name must have the person's face in their mind as they write the name, in order to avoid affecting others with the same name.
• 3. The timing of this release should be written within 40 seconds of the name. If it is not, the human's bladder will release as soon as that 40 seconds has elapsed.

Right felt the air leave his lungs. Forty seconds. He hadn't written a time. He had simply written the name and walked away. And from every version of the story he had heard, it was easy to believe that exactly forty seconds had passed.

“It’s not a prank,” he whispered to himself, the LED glow of his monitors reflecting in his eyes. “It’s a mechanism.”

He sat in his ergonomic chair, his mind racing through the implications. If he could do this to Sato, he could do it to anyone. He could dismantle the social standing of every corrupt student, every abusive teacher, every cruel class president or hall monitor who hid behind a mask of dignity.

But a single incident at his own school was a statistical anomaly. Two would be a pattern. Three would be a trail which any competent detective could start to pick apart. Right didn’t think that anyone on the Daikon Student Council was smart enough to work out what was happening, even if he filled every page of this notebook with names. But he also knew that it wasn’t a smart move to underestimate your rivals. There was always a chance that some new student would rise up from the mass, someone who couldn’t be outwitted without expending a modicum of effort.

His train of thought paused a little more than he would have intended at that stop, when a soft tap on the door heralded the arrival of his little sister bringing up a cup of hot tea and a small bowl of snacks. She was always so deferential, and didn’t want to outstay her welcome, so Right wasn’t worried that she might pry into his business. But still, she gave him a little cause for frustration.

“Can you help me with my homework, Right? We’re starting calculus, and I just can’t get my head around it.” And then without a breath, she changed the topic completely. “Oh, and Mum says we’re having chicken nuggets for dinner. Naomi next door bought too many, and it’s better they don’t go to waste.” She must have seen Right’s face falter slightly, because she quickly bowed and left him alone again. Right simply did his best to put the thought of processed meat pieces to the back of his mind, and pulled out the notebook so that his gaze could rest on the page of rules while he decided how best to confirm that they were accurate. While he thought, his eyes skimmed over the next of the rules.

• 5. If the time is written, the nature and volume of the release and the events which led to it may be written within the next 4 minutes and 19 seconds.

He told himself that he was a scientist, and that knowing the truth was the most important thing. Punishing someone who deserved it was nothing more than a side benefit, no matter how good it felt to be on the right side of history.

He turned to his computer, fingers dancing across the keyboard, and pulled up ‘Frontline Confessions,’ a social media aggregator for school rivalries in their district. He scrolled past the local news until he found a video posted an hour ago. It showed a group of boys from Wakame Prefectural Academy, who apparently called themselves the “Iron Dogs”, harassing a delivery driver. The video showed the lead dog lifting a scooter over his head, trying to pretend it took no effort at all, before tossing it down an embankment onto a light rail line. It could have been only look that prevented this turning into a more serious incident when a train arrived, but the Iron Dogs supporters were all cheering it on like it was the height of humour.

Right read some of the responses, and quickly determined that the boy responsible for this particular attack had been named Ryota. Arrogant. Loud. Untouchable by the Wakame staff because his father sat on the district school board.

Right picked up his pencil, clicked the mechanism once, and then hesitated. There was no scientific reason it wouldn’t work, but it just didn’t feel right. Degradation should be permanent. He returned the pencil to its normal home in his pocket, and instead lifted a silver fountain pen which had been his reward for placing first in the national aptitude examinations for mathematics two years ago. Now it felt right. This was the tool for a genius correcting the world. He closed his eyes, bringing Ryota’s sneering face from the video into sharp focus. He felt the weight of the pen, the way the ink flowed onto the thin paper.

RYOTA MORI

Then he hesitated. Amongst the other comments, he saw a slight trend. Ryota commonly used his position on the school crossing patrol to ensure that elementary students felt they owed him something, or were afraid of him, before they were even at the same school. It made his popularity and respect among the student body unassailable. And Right decided that to get the best value out of this experiment, he needed to confirm the function of the other parts of the rules. His pen descended to the paper again, beside Ryota’s name.

8:12 tomorrow morning. Wets himself in surprise during the school crossing patrol, after a moment of inattention results in him almost stepping out in front of the principal’s car.

He wasn’t sure that would work. It was an experiment. And when, after refreshing the Frontline Confessions for ten minutes, he saw no further mention of Ryota Mori, he knew there were two possibilities. Either the first experiment had been a fluke after all, or he would have another result to collate when he checked for new posts on the site tomorrow. In either case, there was nothing he should do to change matters right now. So he could focus on his homework, without any temptation or distraction.

* * *

The room was silent, save for the low hum of Right’s computer. Two high resolution monitors cast a dim glow across the bedroom. The spot where their light intersected, perfectly centred on his desk, was the only well-lit spot in the room.

He set the plate down there. It was covered by a plastic lid to keep the heat from escaping, but he could guess what was underneath. His dinners were more varied when he ate with his family, but they didn’t insist he come down when he had a lot of homework to do; especially when his father was working late again. He looked at the shadows cast by the tiny dome, and then reached out to turn his desk lamp on.

“Thank you,” he said, and then looked properly at Reina’s face. She seemed a little nervous, and he knew that she wasn’t just here to bring his food up. She wanted to talk to him as well; and being there for his precious little sister was one of the most important things to Right. “Do you want to sit down?”

Reina perched on the corner of the bed, still anxious. Her hands shifted position, each clasping he other and changing places every few seconds, but it didn’t seem to bring her any comfort.

“What are you working on?” she asked.

“Calculus of modular forms,” he answered quickly. “Pet topic of one of the lecturers I hope to study with at university. If I can learn a little more, I stand a better chance of getting the placement I want.” He paused there. He didn’t want to comment on how thin this was stretching his time; devoting hours to extracurricular studies as well as his homework and all the other tasks that he had to find an opportunity for. There were other things to focus on right now. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” she shook her head rapidly, but he thought he saw the slightest trace of moisture around her eyes. And then he was sure it was serious. He had decided long ago that he would never forgive anyone who made Reina cry, and even a single tear was enough to get his protective instincts up. “No, everything’s fine. Everything’s normal.”

Right lifted the lid off his dinner for a moment, and then set it back down. She was eager to tell him, he knew that. Otherwise, she would have dropped off the food and gone back to get Mum’s help. So all he had to do was wait, and a few seconds later the dam burst.

“It’s not like you can control who you love, right? You can’t make someone care. But Orihime tried so hard to impress him, and she did everything right. And then she was in the bathroom crying all afternoon. It isn’t that he said ‘no’, it’s just the way he did it. Like he was holding it off until it would hurt the most. Like he didn’t even try to let her down gently, he just laughed and sneered, and told all his friends. I hate guys like that, I wish they could be on the other end of that attitude for once. Someone needs to take them down a peg or ten.”

Right nodded slowly. He knew Reina’s friends from the orchestra club, but he didn’t know any of the details of their relationships and connections. But he was sure that for Reina to be so agitated on behalf of her friend, someone had really crossed a line.

He listened as his sister poured out her feelings, and did his best to provide a shoulder to cry on. It was all he could do right now, and he was sure that it was the most morally responsible way to meet her needs. But at the same time, there was a part of him itching to do more. As she said, it was normal for boys to be thoughtless and insensitive with the feelings of people who cared about them. And he wasn’t sure whether the best way to deal with that would be to punish one individual, or work to change the system. But he didn’t need to think about it yet. First and foremost, he needed to be there to listen, and to take in every detail while Reina sobbed out the story.

Orihime was one of the stars of the band; a genius who was as adept with pan pipes as with the bassoon she had inherited from her grandfather, and a girl who might one day become a cultural treasure. Tetsuo Tendou, on the other hand, was an entitled rich kid who thought he was important just because he was on the school’s tennis team. Right could picture his face easily, and thought that even without a specific incident, Tetsuo’s general lack of respect for those around him was a good sign that he needed to have some of the confidence knocked out of him before he could actually learn to be a good person.

“I’m sorry,” Reina mumbled eventually, once all the story was told. “It’s not a big deal, it’s kind of normal. But I just wish…”

“People need to be better,” he said. “And don’t worry about it. People like that eventually… find themselves in a situation they can’t talk their way out of.”

“Really? I think he’s got everything he wants. The world is treating him like a hero, even the teachers act like he’s a big shot sometimes.”

“Yeah. But people who only think of themselves always end up in a situation they’re not ready for eventually. He’ll get what’s coming to him. I promise.

“I wish I could believe that,” Reina sighed, standing up. “If there was something you could do to make him realise… well… Anyway, thanks for the help. And enjoy your dinner."

As soon as the door clicked shut behind her, the atmosphere in the room shifted. No longer a place of comfort, but of tension and negotiation. Right turned to the corner behind the door, where the shadows seemed just a little too deep, and waited.

“You can see me, boy?” a rough voice jangled like  a xylophone in a trash compactor. “Most people wouldn’t notice until I step forward.”

“Why don’t you do that, then. So I can see you properly. You’re an omugami, right?

“My name’s Nuk. And yes. You know about omugami?”

“Nuk?” Right answered, and then nodded. “And you can call me Right. I’ve heard of omugami before. Pee fairies. Like I've heard of tooth fairies, the easter bunny, and verruca gnomes. I never suspected any of those would be real. But that notebook clearly exists, and someone had to have dropped it. Your existence in some form was therefore an inevitability, and your appearance a mere data point, defining the form you take from all the different shapes you could be imagined in. So, are you here to take your Pee Note back, or to claim my soul because I dared touch it?”

“You’ve done more than touch,” Nuk said, and then laughed in a carillion of discordant beats. “You would have the ability to see me while holding the Nursery Ledger. But to perceive me once you put it down, I know that you must have written a name in it. Probably not just one, if I’m any judge of character.”

Finally, he stepped forward out of the shadows. His legs and arms looked like nothing more than cylinders of liquid leather, flowing from one position to the next. His face was a perfect circle, bearing a permanent porcelain smile; All in all, the omugami looked more like a child’s drawing than an actual creature subject to physics. It was hard to judge his size; he looked close to nine feet tall, but there was no way such a large creature would have been able to stand in Right’s room with only the slightest stoop. It was as if he wasn’t even subject to the laws of human geometry; a shape pasted into the room without any consideration of whether he could fit. And Right found himself wondering whether that face was a disc, or a genuine circle. A two-dimensional visage, looking the same from every angle, wouldn’t have been the strangest thing he’d seen today.

“Pleased to meet you, Nuk,” he said. And then he reached under his desk and quickly produced a baby-blue notebook. He set it on his desk, and carefully licked his fingers before opening the cover. “I take it that means that Rei– my sister wouldn’t have seen you, even if I’d drawn attention to your presence while she was still in the room.”

“That is correct. I likely couldn’t even touch her. And there’s no need to keep her name secret. We omugami always know the–”

Nuk’s voice suddenly stopped as Right turned to the third page of the notebook, which was a lot more organised than the chaotically scrawled names on the first.

The pages were divided into columns by faint blue lines, the kind of thing that would be common in any accounting book. There were no column headers. But it seemed that Right had already decided on a structure. On the left hand page there were six columns total, and they were being used in three sets of two. The first cell of each pair contained a name, and the second a time. In some places, where a time had not been needed, six names were packed between the page edge and the fold on each line.

The right page, on the other hand, had been devoted to more precise experiments. The first column was given over to a name, the second to a time, and then the whole width of the page was filled out with however much text was necessary to describe the circumstances of that person’s accident. Nuk glanced across forty names, in studiously neat handwriting. And then the child’s drawing of a man inhaled sharply through teeth that he didn’t in fact possess.

“So. What’s the price?” Right asked. “I assume there is one. You must have something to gain by sharing this note with a human.”

“Oh, there’s a price,” Nuk answered, and the strange laugh repeated. “Once you started using the Nursery Ledger, if you stop or run out of pages you won’t be able to void your own bladder anymore. You’ll be entirely dependent on me writing your name in my own ledger to control when you can get any relief. A normal function entirely under the control of another, just like the babies we’re supposed to tend to. Didn’t you think to ask about the price before you wrote so many names?”

“There are a lot of people who need some lessons in dignity, Nuk. People who think themselves above everyone else and need teaching otherwise. Bullies and petty tyrants. So much filth that needs cleaning up, so that we can have a school governed by dignity and mutual respect.”

“You sound almost like a preacher. To so many of the omugami now, writing names in the Ledger is a chore. Doing our job, allowing infants to relieve themselves until they have the control to do it for themselves. But you’ve turned it into both a game and a weapon.”

“Not a weapon, Nuk. A filter. Finding those people who don’t deserve to be a part of society and removing them from the flow.”

“So that’s your motivation to have filled multiple pages in a single week?”

“Partly,” Right admitted. “You see, Nuk, there’s very little in this world that can challenge me. I wanted to understand something new. It’s true that I wanted to help the innocents who have been bullied. But also because we’ve got something in common that I never expected.” This time, it was the human boy’s turn to laugh before he clarified: “I was bored too.”

“I’m glad you were the one to find it. Most people would write two or three names and then stop. I think you might be…” he stopped, and seemed to sniff the air, with a nose that was no more than a dot drawn in the centre of his face. “Do I smell chicken nuggets?”

“Convenient dinner when I’m working in my room,” Right said with a shrug, lifting the lid off his plate. “Mum’s been cooking them more often lately, just for the convenience when my dad is working late. Would you like some?”

“Thank you! Thank you so much, Right! Chicken is the only smell which can pass through the seeing bubbles we use to observe the human world, you see. I’ve been craving an actual taste of the stuff for so long. And now I’m certain that you are the best human who could have formed a bond with my note. Thank you so much!”

* * *

Daikon Private Academy didn’t have anything so common as a student council. Instead they had the Holy Student Council, which was on a different level entirely. Their council chambers were a pillared chamber which could have been some kind of chapel, right in the centre of the oldest school buildings. Whatever furnishings it might have had back in the days this building was a seminary college were long gone now, replaced by a ring of polished wood desks with brass fittings, arranged in supplication to the higher thrones used by the council members themselves.

The occupants of those thrones, four members sitting to each side of president Hana Natsuki, didn’t see themselves as a mere interface to allow the student body to communicate their concerns to the staff; but as an organisation ordained with some divine mandate to enforce the purity and honesty of all the students beneath them. They had the authority to give detentions or even to remove students from class in extreme circumstances, and it wasn’t exactly clear whether their power was greater or lesser than that wielded by the School Board. Competition for council seats was fierce, as they all knew that their roles could be contested by any honors student from a sufficiently affluent family who could maintain a perfect disciplinary record and earn the president’s approval. They were the lords who ruled over the student body, and took great care to make sure that all students lived up to their standards. But in a rare deviation from the norm, the council members were watched today by several attendees who didn’t bow down in fear or awe.

To either side of the room were representatives from the District Student Councils, a loose union of six schools with overlapping catchment areas. All of them were respectful, all of them were the right kind of people, but they weren’t students at Daikon and so were not entirely under the authority of the council. And it would have required a very unusual situation for so many visitors to be invited to a meeting. Gatherings of the District Student Council, with one representative from each academy, were not unheard of. But some unspoken impulse had told all of the people present today that this was a serious matter which would best be conducted in the imposing surroundings of Daikon Academy.

“The students are calling her ‘Tinkles’,” Bryce said, eyes darting down to a report he surely knew from memory. “It’s on most of the student discords, and making the rounds on Frontline Confessions as well. We’re not sure where the nickname first came from, but it seems to be accepted now that there is someone behind this stain on our reputation.”

The president adjusted her glasses, and the light from high gothic windows reflected from the heavily varnished wood frames to cast honey-coloured streaks of light across the room. But before she needed to say anything, Pettigrew stood on the other side of her.

“Not just our reputations,” he answered. “There are stains on the floors as well. Thankfully not the valuable carpets yet, but the janitors are starting to talk. They want to know what we are doing to resolve this situation. Is it some kind of literal plague?”

“We have already ruled out disease,” and older man answered here. He stepped forward from the shadow of one of the pillars in the corner, a complete breach of the normal protocol. But he wasn’t entirely submissive towards the whims of the council, as he wasn’t a student here. Chief Administrator Arisato was a member of the school board, as well as being here today as a representative of the District Discipline Committee and Civic Council. He wore glasses like many of the council members, but his were less a statement of fashion and identity, more a necessity after many years of poring over every available record in pursuit of the right answer. His hair shaded to grey at his temples now, but he had the respect of someone who had been a member of the Holy Student Council nearly three decades before.

“We ruled out environmental toxins as well, of course. Twelve of the victims so far have gone through complete medical examinations at the hospital, and the best doctors in the arrondissement have assured me that there was absolutely no medical reason for their loss of bladder control.”

“It simply must be a matter of discipline,” Natsuki finally spoke, and everyone else was immediately silent. There was no space for whispered conversations at the back of the room during the president’s speech, and even Arisato remained silent. “We are aware of the general response on the Frontline website boards, and understand it to be a good representation of the opinions of the students. The victims of this strange phenomenon are often high-class individuals who have our backing, but the general sentiment amongst the student body is that it was something they deserved. That this imaginary ‘Tinkles’ figure is meting out some judgement on those who have abused their position.”

This time, Bryce raised a hand and waited for a nod, to ensure that the president had finished before he spoke: “Justice is administered by the Holy Student Council, your honour. Not by an unknown outsider with some mysterious drug or weapon. We should treat this as an attempt to supplant our authority, and ensure that this ‘Tinkles’ is subject to appropriate discipline. Assuming that it isn’t one of us…?”

The occupants of the other thrones stared with an expression of studied disdain, or shook their heads o make the point clear.

“Other schools have been targeted just as much,” a voice from the edge of the room called out. Chiharu Miku, president of the student council at North Central High School; for once travelling without a secretary to carry her bag and take notes, out of respect for Daikon’s rules while she was on the grounds. “Almost exactly the same number of cases, that we know of. We need a special group to deal with this, we can’t just leave it to Daikon’s prefects.”

“Our prefects will investigate the cases on our grounds, or involving our students,” Hana answered without hesitation. “You are, of course, entitled to investigate within your own schools. For the purposes of coordinating a district-wide effort, we shall require a weekly report of all cases, investigations, and suspects to be delivered to this Holy Student Council, from each of the six schools.”

She didn’t expect any argument, but she certainly didn’t expect the request to be greeted by laughter from the back of the room. Her gaze turned like a lighthouse, with students bowing their heads as if they feared being tainted by association, until she found a tall boy with blond hair, with his red uniform jacket practically hanging off his shoulders and hair spiked up high enough to block the view of those behind him. Even Seibu Regional High wouldn’t appoint a punk like that to their student council, but he was nevertheless here as their representative. Yochii Hiruma, better known as an athlete than a politician, and apparently he didn’t know the rules of this hallowed chamber.

“You act like you’re in charge, Miss President,” Hiruma said. “I’m sorry, but the schools in this district don’t answer to each other. We’ll share our discoveries, but only if you do the same.”

The whole room went silent, tension feeling like it might explode at any moment. But the one who broke it was Administrator Kamehama, a young woman with ash-blond hair. Although she was a representative of the city council, and had the authority to regulate all student council policies district-wide, she glanced towards Arisato for approval before saying anything now. His remit was discipline, which made him the one with the most relevant experience in this case.

“If I may…” she said. “The District Educational Board feels that this investigation should be led by an impartial body, without ties to any single school. But we also have received an offer from a certain individual you may have heard of, who may be willing to act as an impartial member to lead a team of inquiry with representatives from all six schools.”

She stepped forward and set a laptop down on the table in front of the Holy Student Council, where supplicants would normally present their offerings and the accused show their evidence. Half the class could probably guess already who they would be speaking to.

There was one student who always spoke through a computer screen, and whose real identity wasn’t known to anyone in the district. He was a genius, that much was beyond dispute. He would help with homework, or suggest solutions to complex interpersonal debates. He had appeared on Frontline Confessions and other district social media platforms to help all students with problems which interested him, regardless of which school they attended, and all attempts to discern his identity had always failed. Arisato had even wondered, at one point, whether the mysterious genius could be his own son. But still, the mystery remained. And if there was any consensus in the whispers that filled the room, it was that everyone kind of trusted this anonymous figure. And maybe, amongst the crowds, there was general agreement that it might be possible for one enigmatic figure to challenge another.

The screen glowed into life, pure white. And after a second, a more technically-minded assistant of the Holy Student Council stepped forward and connected a cable to the laptop, so that the same image could appear on the big screen behind the thrones.

Conversation in the background rose a little and then fell away again, everyone holding their breath as they waited to see what the genius would say. Finally, a single letter appeared in the centre of the screen; bold and black, in a distinctive typeface designed to be easily readable for dyslexic and neurodiverse students. Maybe it was redundant, as nobody would have trouble reading a single letter at that size, but it was the image everyone recognised as the profile picture and calling card of the mysterious genius.

‘P’

The room was silent for now, as the Holy Student Council waited for this new advisor to say his piece. But now everyone knew that the genius was on the case. The letter that could stand for Prefect, for Perfection, or for Problem Solver. Nobody knew who he was, but they were all sure that he would be able to help. And when an echoing voice started to come from the speakers, the same message would be echoed on social media to ensure that the entire student body knew that P was on the case now.

This might not be a solution, yet. It was a declaration of war. And nobody could doubt that the situation was about to change.