|| On Hand [Off the Record] ||

|| First Bus Ride: 2/10 ||

Tsujihara Sakae

If Ayanokōji is the white room's masterpiece, then the only suitable description for Tsujihara is black sheep.

To his knowledge, she had been an experiment of sorts. His father wanted to test the age range of starter white room kids and she had been the oldest new student at 10 years old. She had a full decade of world influence outside suffocating white walls and his father wanted to test if his institution was solid enough to overhaul her worldview with their own values.

It had started as a success, but Ayanokōji was pretty sure Tsujihara was just a special case. From her looks alone – brown skin, ginger hair, blue, blue eyes, and standing several centimeters taller than him – he could deduce she was mixed, if not foreign, and she looked well taken care of, unlike the other kids when they first got here.

And then there was her performance.

Tsujihara's placement test scores in math and science far exceeded her grade level and she came in already three languages along. Her athletic ability went untested, and no strength or conditioning training was given to her before she was given a martial arts instructor – and she kept up with ease, already in better shape than most adults.

She was an anomaly to the other kids, he could tell. And her natural genius and quick learning habits favored that description, but there was something else about her prodding at him.

His father was lenient with her.

That's not to say she was bad. Tsujihara never stepped a foot out of line, but curiosity and reactions were much harder habits to break, and anyone else would've suffered for those minor infractions. Not her though. She was never criticized either. Just told. And it only ever took one time. Tsujihara never made the same mistake twice. Ever. She respected authority formally at all times and her obedience was natural, probably stemming from a long time trusting adults.

He deduced she was a military kid. Or some variant of it at least. And his father definitely had plans for her with how nice he was acting, but Ayanokōji wouldn't figure those out for a good while.

The experiment was scheduled to last a year, and for that year Tsujihara would learn and grow in the white room. Academically, she and Ayanokōji were evenly matched, cognitively they were close on paper, but completely different in practice -- strategically he beat her every time, but she was unnaturally good at seeing through plans. When asked to report where she failed, she could always confidently state her earliest mistake, no matter how minor it was.

For that reason, his father has never punished her for losing to him, but he told her that she was not allowed to lose to anyone else.

But that only applied to chess or group work. Ayanokōji isn't stupid. If the white room were life or death, he might put up a good fight, but he has no delusions about who's dying. 

Though it'd probably be her last resort. Tsujihara was a kind soul at heart. She never did more than necessary to take down her opponent and his father couldn't reprimand her for it, so he set her up instead.

It was a simulation with no holds barred.

Tsujihara wasn't so much better than him, that she could take him down painlessly, so his father used him to hand out the punishment.

He used a blow to his head to fake a knockout.

When Tsujihara came to check on him, Ayanokōji stabbed and twisted a jagged piece of scrap metal in her lower stomach that had been on his person for almost the whole fight.

From her less than shocked expression, she definitely saw through it, like she always did, and yet she tried to help him anyway. Not just tried but did. She pulled him to his feet and then collapsed, curling in on herself and trembling from the pain, but making not a sound.