Chiaki couldn't believe it. Already twenty minutes after class had started and the teacher was nowhere to be seen. Everyone was still awkwardly sitting in their seats in case the teacher was just running really late, and the teacher in question was particularly notorious for becoming livid when any student got out of their seat without being asked to. She had flipped open her books in attempt to get some work done; getting her math homework done for next period would be a smart idea. But a noise at the door distracted her before she could begin. Could it be the teacher finally showing up?!

To some's dismay and to some's joy, a student short in stature and personality entered the room and confusedly scanned the room while whispering about being late. A few girls waved the meeker girl over to them and Chiaki returned to her homework after watching them for a moment. She wasn't upset that she was essentially missing out on a classic literature class and was actually kind of glad that she got the chance to finish her homework before it became due and subsequently late, but she felt wrong about the situation and the feeling that they were forgetting something kept creeping up on her like a snake snapping on its pray. Falling right into a bad situation, she felt. The atmosphere in the room had the same foreboding tenseness and Chiaki figured that most of the other students around her felt that same feeling of "wrongness".

It was then that a noise from behind the door appeared again though the class reasonably had less of a reaction. Chiaki still sat on edge however, as she had realized earlier than the girl who came late had filled out the last empty desk and thus the only possible person on the other side of that wall had to be either the teacher or some other staff member. She was not about to get jacked up by some hypocritical teacher, so she quickly made sure there was nothing to complain about with what she was doing. Textbook opened to the correct page, notes referenced, and pencil ready. The door slowly opened to reveal the person behind the door.

Not the teacher again, but the school nurse, in all of his muscular and flamboyant glory. The murmurings and giggles of her classmates quickly died and an utter focus (possibly out of fear) on the towering man was creating. The nurse, opposed to his usually quirky behaviour, wore a serious expression and a furrowed brow as he rubbed his stubbled chin with the palm of his hand. After a deep cough, the man began to flip through papers on a clipboard, calling out names as he did so and indicating that those names were to leave. Eventually the list was finished and the male nurse left the room, but not before peering at them from behind his old clipboard. Chiaki turned around in her seat to look at herself. Excluding herself, there were six students remaining, none of which she was particularly close to even to talk to about what just happened with.

Chiaki, driven by the sheer absurdity of the situation, mustered up the courage to finally leave her seat and walk over to the door. She attempted to look out of the crack left between the side of the door and the door frame but failed to find anything of note in the limited field of vision. Feeling particularly brave, she pushed the door open and made her way out, quietly returning it to its original position before continuing down the hall. As expected nobody was outside a room during class time but the eerie silence being pierced by distant police sirens startled her. Chiaki wandered over to the window overlooking the school's front gates, looking around to find if something was happening, though upon seeing her Classic Lit teacher hanging from a snow-covered tree, she felt it no longer necessary to wonder.

"Maybe we should leave," the boy said with a furrowed brow, hand hovering over Akane's shoulder. She considered his suggestion but ultimately decided to ignore it as she scrawled over the page with her pen, barely moving the tool off the paper as she made strokes and strokes without end. A small crowd had formed around the two as she aggressively drew all over the paper held up to the wall. People attempted to figure out what she was doing as they awkwardly stared at her from a distance, and some whispered to their companions about what the girl was exactly trying to illustrate.

Eventually, Akane took a long step back and held the page up higher than her head, staring at it with a smug satisfaction on her face. She held it next to the painting on the wall and compared the two in her head, jousting her finger at both of them wildly with no point in mind. It clicked in some of the crowd's heads that she was trying to draw the painting she was clearly in an uproar about, having been just complaining about how awful it is and how it doesn't deserve to be in an art gallery. She had even proven how it only took literally minutes to replicate the piece, albeit not very cleanly.

A pair of tall, brawny, and stocky men in pretty standard outfits glared at her from over the crowd, clearly not pleased with how she was 'critiquing' the piece, and the boy Akane was with slunk away from her side and into the small crowd, which itself was parting to make way for the men walking over to Akane, the painting, and her drawing. The shorter of the two stepped closer and forced the paper out of her hands, ripping it apart as soon as he got it from her, while the second taller one loomed over the girl. She remained stoically unafraid and tried to stand even higher on her heels but to no avail. The man jabbed a finger in her direction and gave her a nasty glare, baring his teeth a little through the thick hairs around his jaw and lower lips.

"You saying my daughter's painting's trash?" The man accused, though Akane couldn't and didn't deny. The art, in fact, was garbage at its core. Garbage wrapped in a pretty median and deceiving techniques. Any regular person would see it as great but to Akane, it was clear as day how bad it really was! Though, the hissing from the boy lurking in the side of the crowd and the possibility of danger deterred her a bit from further making her point, and she merely slumped her shoulders down and gave both men a look of disdain as she walked away from the painting and back over to her companion. The crowd quickly broke apart after seeing there was no more drama to witness, and the two teens slowly wondered away from the spot after seeing the two adults gaff over how talented the one's daughter was. Though, Akane would always know the truth about the painting, and how it was stolen from her, though she didn't care for that part, but more because it was an awful old sketch.

Though usually having some winter fun was, well, fun, Toma was certainly not enjoying being stuck in waist-deep snow. Having not spent much time in Warakuma for much of his life, the boy was still unfamiliar with the nooks and crannies of the town, and upon going out for a walk, had decided to try to fix that and go down one of the back roads. The one thing he didn't expect though, were there to be sudden trenches in the path several feet deep. A single step too far out finally cracked the thin layer of ice on the top of the snow and sent Toma straight into the snow up to the middle of his torso.

He had attempted to escape by crawling out, but the snow merely collapsed in on itself with incredible ease and kept his legs awkwardly buried. Eventually, he gave up on getting out by himself and remembered that he still had his phone on him, albeit in his back pocket and thus difficult to remove due to his position. It took him a few long and despair-filled moments but the boy managed to squeeze out his phone from beneath the snow and attempted to navigate to his contacts. The freezing temperatures combined with the snow all around him made it incredibly hard to keep his finger steady enough to tap the buttons. Once he was looking at his list of names registered, the boy finally considered the fact that he didn't know who to call. Who was available, who was even helpful in a situation, and who cared enough to actually come out in the frigid winter weather.

Toma soon decided on a person and shot them a text before sliding his phone into his coat's pocket, and it was only then that he realized how cold the lower half of his body and how the risk of getting some form of frost bite, likely in the extremities, was a very real thing. Time passed on as Toma continued to try to struggle out of the snow pit to no avail, and it felt like an eternity before Leiko Hamada and Noboru Yamamoto came running over to him, though they stopped as soon as their feet started sinking uncomfortably low in the snow. Noboru, in his noticeably tighter-than-usual shirt and coat, lowered himself to the ground and slowly started creeping forward, body flat and stopping whenever the ice and snow beneath him creaked or cracked. Leiko simply watched on in disapprovement as Noboru went ever closer to the boy.

Once Noboru was close enough to grab his hand, Toma took hold of the boy by the forearm and started to try to climb out of the snow, clawing his feet into the sides as he waggled his way onto the snow's thick surface alongside Noboru. Once Toma was completely out, he let go of Noboru's wrist and the more muscular male slowly flopped around to face the opposite direction. Both began crawling back to where they started, and as soon as Toma was sure he could stand up, he pushed himself onto his feet, breaking the snow and subsequently bringing Noboru with him. Both boys scrambled out of the snow trench and back over to where Leiko was standing. The girl chastised Toma for being so foolish as to fall into and get trapped in an entirely avoidable snow trap, though she soon relented and the three returned home quickly.