Going forward, Chika wanted to avoid getting downgraded to Minus again at all costs. She had five more years left until graduation. Even if she couldn’t become a Plus during that time, she wanted to at least keep on being a Zero. And to do that, she knew exactly what was expected of her…
✦ ✦ ✦
After classes were done for the day, the students had cleaning duty. Or rather, Zero and Minus students did. Pluses were exempt from this duty, along with other menial tasks everyone else had to do. Cleaning the Plus classrooms after school, cleaning up after Plus students in the cafeteria, even setting up Plus classrooms for their next class—all that was done by Zero and Minus students.
✦ ✦ ✦
It was a day like any other when Chika and two of her classmates made their way to the Plus classroom, ready to clean.
“Okay, we’d better get started.”
Once they were sure the Plus students had all left, the three of them began their tasks.
Plus classrooms were always a complete mess at the end of the school day. There’d be piles of empty food wrappers on the desks, eraser shavings all over the floor, even globs of chewed-up gum. The Pluses must have been making their classrooms extra messy on purpose—how else could they get like this?
But Chika and the others didn’t let it bother them. They just smiled grimly and got to work. They were a little envious that the Pluses got to eat in class. Zero and Minus students weren’t even allowed to bring their own snacks to school.
The rules were always stricter for the lower-status classes than for the Pluses. The rules that the Zero and Minus students had to follow were constantly changing, too. Sometimes, items or accessories that had been allowed the day before would be banned the next.
Lots of kids’ treasured possessions had been lost that way. Chika had a key ring she really liked that had gotten confiscated and thrown away not that long ago. Thinking back on that now gave her an uncomfortable gloomy feeling in her chest.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Ah…!”
She’d been dusting the lockers at the back of the room when something made her cry out in surprise.
“What’s wrong?”
“What happened, Chika?”
The other two students turned around from where they’d been cleaning.
Chika hung her head, her face pale, and replied in a tiny, strained voice, “I…I knocked an eraser someone left here down behind the lockers.”
It had been sitting on top of one of the lockers, which were just below the blackboard. Chika had begun wiping them down and hadn’t noticed it until it was too late. There was a narrow gap between the back of the lockers and the wall, and she’d knocked that eraser right into that gap.
“Can’t you get it out?” one student asked.
“No way, the gap’s too small,” the other student said. “And these lockers are bolted to the wall, so you can’t move them aside, either.”
The two of them looked troubled for a moment, but their expressions hardened as they turned back to Chika.
“Let’s get one thing clear. You’re the one who knocked it down there, Chika.”
“Right, we had nothing to do with it. Make sure you tell that to the teacher.”
“Yeah, okay…,” Chika muttered, nodding and on the verge of tears.
A Zero student losing a Plus student’s personal property? She was going to get yelled at for sure. They’d probably come up with some other punishment for her, too.
And like the two students said, they’d had nothing to do with it. The responsibility was hers alone. She’d probably have acted the same if their roles were reversed…
For some reason, that thought made Chika very sad.