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[hr][right][color=gray]April 8th, yesterday’s future.[/color][/right][hr]The air in the school was charged by lunch, Kanna could feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. God damn was this good. 

She sat at her desk grinning like an idiot, too absorbed in the paper to touch her sandwich. It was beautiful, absolutely pristine—she’d owe Umeko and Shoichi sweets for the killer formatting. There’d been some brief tentativeness over publishing a story like this in their first issue of the year; one editor had called it a hit-piece, but Kanna was firm that it wasn’t gossip and in the end, she liked to think her article and the evidence were compelling enough to put it to print. 

And wow, the effect had been incredible, and that made sense. Intrigue! Peril! [i]Blood![/i] Highschool kids loved blood and they ate up danger like they’d been starved for months. And in a way they had been starved—of entertainment. Utsubyo wasn’t nearly as boring as it led people to believe, but all of its interesting bits were buried and convoluted and, frankly, it was much harder to sell her peers on scandals in a local orchard than it was to get them buzzing over a bully, even if the Pic-Land was up to some [i]actual[/i] shit. Totsuka might be middle-sized fish, but Utsubyo was a small pond, even if it was deeper than other, bigger ponds. 

Her mood was dampened a bit though, when she saw Ms. Touga enter the room looking like she’d just been left out in the rain. Immediately she snatched up Shiori and the Ogre, and Kanna felt a little pang of guilt. Well, half a pang. She didn’t care much about Totsuka, but Shiori wasn’t a bad person—depending on who you asked, and right now Kanna was asking herself. Sure she was a little rough, more than a little rude, and occasionally she would beat people up, but the story hadn’t been about [i]her[/i] doing any of that. The whole point of blurring her in the pictures had been to avoid getting her in trouble, which wouldn’t count for shit if she just up and confessed to a teacher. 

[color=92278f][i]Damn, should have cropped the stupid picture instead,[/i][/color] she thought, but didn’t really mean it. Cutting Shiori out would have ruined the balance. God, why’d she have to have red hair? No, that looked good too. Really, it was just an unwinnable situation and her hands were tied. 

Sort of. 

Kanna tore a chunk of paper from her notebook and scribbled onto it: [i]NO EVIDENCE, PLAY DUMB.[/i] This was true; Kanna had blurred and barred the photos herself. The originals were still on her own, personal flashdrive, and she didn’t see any reason they needed to be anywhere else. It felt a [i]bit[/i] wrong, but she could square herself with that. She had a strict rule—she didn’t lie about her work, but omitting things wasn’t the same as lying about them. 

She took up her sandwich and got up from her seat, making her way to Shiori’s. In her mind, just dropping off her note would have been a bit too obvious, so she decided she needed a cover. And, wouldn’t you know it, there behind Shiori’s desk was just such a cover. 

Kanna briefly set her sandwich down on Shiori’s desk, and as she did, she subtly slid her note onto the clutter of books and other delinquent miscellanea—cigs, switchblades, a leather jacket or something, Kanna didn’t know, she didn’t look closely. Then she took the seat, spun it around, and sat down facing the desk behind her.

[color=92278f]“Heeeeey, Sakaguchi~!”[/color] she chimed, taking up her sandwich again. Akari ate like a tiger mauling some idiot who had fallen into her enclosure, but Kanna was already committed. This was dangerous work after all, sometimes you dealt with tigers, sometimes you got eaten. The French had a saying for it, but she didn’t speak French. 

[color=92278f]“How’re you doin’? How’s things? Been a minute, just figured we could chat, y’know? Heard about your brother—awful shit. How’s he holding up?”[/color]