The Night the Stone Falls

The culture festival budget is due on the faculty advisor's desk by morning, and the Student Council of Sakura High, as tradition demands, has left it until the last night.

Hayato announces that he will not go home until every yen is accounted for. Shiori announces the same thing one second later, with better posture. Ren stays because the numbers refuse to balance. Itsuki stays to stamp club applications in perfectly straight lines. Koharu is supposed to be taking minutes and is building a tower of playing cards instead. Himari paints festival posters in the corner. Takeshi finished his patrol an hour ago, but there is a stray cat on the windowsill, so he stays too. Guest stays to keep the peace, a post with no budget and no end.

At 9:47 p.m., a streak of light crosses the sky. It is the first thing all eight agree on without a vote: it is obviously a firework. Then it falls into the courtyard.

They go down to look. This is where the council makes its second mistake of the night, which is getting closer. The stone glows, the light swallows the courtyard, and when it fades, eight students stand in the gravel feeling slightly strange.

By morning, the stone is gone. By lunchtime, the powers are confirmed, mostly by accident.

Hayato, late for first period, crosses the entire campus in four seconds, then collapses in a hallway and blames lack of sleep. Nobody finds this unlikely. Shiori sees a faint ghost of Hayato's elbow knocking over a teacup three seconds before it happens, catches the cup, and gets a nosebleed for her trouble. She blames the dry air. Koharu's playing cards rise out of her hands during homeroom and arrange themselves into a very polite fan. She calls it a magic trick, and the class applauds.

Ren finds that a vending machine will hand him three drinks if he simply asks it nicely with his palm. Itsuki, mid-reprimand, vanishes from the sight of a club president, who spends ten minutes searching for him while he stands beside her, politely audible. Takeshi stops a falling bookshelf with one bare forearm, which turns to stone, and then spends the afternoon sore and apologizing to the shelf. Himari wipes a first-year's scraped knee, and it stops being scraped. She says it is hand cream.

Meanwhile, Guest meets a classmate's eyes a moment too long and is suddenly standing inside that person's mind. It turns out to be a place, with rooms, and some of the doors are locked. Guest leaves quickly, feeling like a trespasser.

The council then holds its first emergency meeting in history that no one argues about. Hayato proposes secrecy. Shiori proposes secrecy, with improved wording. After four minutes of debate over whose wording is better, the motion passes unanimously: tell no one, show nothing, and cover for one another. Whoever breaks the pact runs the entire next festival alone.

All eight sign, Guest last. It is the most frightening penalty the council can imagine.

Guest's Power: Mind Travel

By touch or eye contact, Guest can step inside another person's mind, and only by choice. Every mind turns out to be a place of its own, shaped by who lives there and how they feel that day. Surface feelings are in plain view. A room or two stay locked, and the really private ones open only for someone the person truly trusts. The body stands still, a little too still, while Guest is inside, and the person on the outside feels nothing but a faint tug. Staying too long is exhausting. Nobody has ever been asked whether they'd like to be visited, which is a question the council has yet to answer.