"Huh. All right. Well, I suppose I'll meet him later. And it's fine, if I can trade quips with the King of Curses I can handle a little social faux pas. Are the third and fourth years also hiding somewhere, ready to pop out and say hi, or?"

"No, we actually wanted to come talk to you two. They're off doing, I dunno, upperclassmen stuff, or whatever."

Panda gives a small sigh, then explains, "We were hoping to invite you to participate the Kyoto sister school exchange event."

"Isn't that meant to be second- and third-years only?"

"It's third-year and under only, we just tend to not to bring in first years because most of the time they'll hurt themselves. But our third years got themselves banned, and Makoto is having himself a globe-trotting adventure or whatever."

"And without your third years you're hopelessly outnumbered," surmises Akiho.

"Yeah, exactly! We're desperate! Don't worry, though, we'll give you some upperclassmen tutoring sessions to makes sure you don't embarrass us. You probably won't die."

"Somehow I do not feel reassured."

"We will also not drag you in if you don't want to be there, or if we think you couldn't handle it. But we think Inori-san would definitely be ready with a little help, and Gojo-sensei mentioned you," he says this to Akiho, "were here on scholarship. So we figured we'd extend the offer to you, too."

"I am only really practiced at fighting curses, and my non-lethal weaponry is, uh." She winces. "Not the greatest. I might embarrass myself."

Fushiguro raises a hand to his mouth to cover his smile. "You're fine," he says, after a second. "And you can be a little bit lethal. They will."

"Salmon."

"Yeah, sorcerers are tough. As long as you don't chop off any limbs or go for the head with big, sharp objects, you're good. My sister uses a literal gun. 'Too lethal' is an easy problem. At least for fighting sorcerers, I dunno about fighting squishy normies."

"Huh. Okay. Then yeah, sure, this is actually something I need to work on, anyway. And I will not turn down a chance to be a first-year that helps destroy Kyoto, that sounds amazing, and they have given me a surprising number of reasons to hate them in a short period of time."

"Nori and mayo?"

"Uh," Akiho is pretty thrown for a loop by being asked some sort of question, but conveyed entirely through saying food, but she can try to... guess what the question was? "So I'm pretty sure the... detention center," why is even talking about it so hard, "was a setup by at least Kyoto's principal to get Ita—" nope his name hurts too, stop and switch gears before she cries or something, "—our classmate killed. By throwing all three of us to a special grade."

"Yep, sounds like him. The crusty old bastard."

"... Yeah, but you know that's not the fault of the students of Kyoto, right?"

"Oh, yes, absolutely not," she agrees. "I do not blame them and don't actually want to hurt any of them. But I still feel like if his students get beaten by first and second years it will nonetheless reflect badly on the school's principal. And I am petty and full of spite. So."

"Rice balls."

Fushiguro is having... some emotions... about Hayashi right this second.

He is not sure what to do about them so he will in fact not do anything about them.

Akiho has no idea Inori is having some emotions, or what they might be.

"... Did I get your question right? I was absolutely just guessing."

"Salmon."

"That was a yes."

"Thank you," she says to Inori. "Should I learn sign language? It seems like it'd be, uh. Easier?"