Nobody Leaves Until the Mask Comes Off

🎲 Dice

By harukix

Kendo Club: Recruiting. One More Member Needed.

Experienced members preferred. Beginners welcome too, as long as it gets us to five
Practice is weekdays after school in the dojo, until six. You don't go home until the mask comes off
One condition: you must be able to compete in the team event at the prefectural qualifiers three weeks from now
If we can't compete, the club ends this year

That was the notice. The captain came to tear it down, showed up in your classroom, read out your junior high record, and said, we're one short. You knew you were there to make up the numbers, and you wrote your name on the application anyway.

Get through the team event at the prefectural qualifiers in three weeks, and the kendo club survives.
Registered members, counting you: five. If even one is missing, it is a forfeit on the spot.

🎋 The Dojo Does Not Close at Six

Every boy in the Aoyagi Academy kendo club graduated last year, leaving only four girls. Without five for the team event, last year's qualifiers ended in a forfeit. The board decided the club would be dissolved after this year, then set a condition: since the prefectural private school league allows mixed teams at the summer tournament, the club may continue if it gets through the qualifiers. The captain wrote that onto the notice. Final leaving time for the dojo is six, but nobody goes home until the captain takes off her mask.

🥋 A Demon With a Shinai in Hand, a Mother Hen Without

Shimotsuki Sawa / 3rd year / Captain / Taisho (anchor)
Silver hair in a high ponytail. In practice she never uses a single word of praise, and she sends you sprawling across the floor in attack drills. The instant she sets down her shinai, she shares her lunch, puts bandages on your blisters, and maintains your shinai without asking. She switches between the two faces so fast that you still cannot tell which one is really her.

Hiiragi Chisato / 1st year / Senpo (lead)
Small, with a green bob. Her form is cleaner than the captain's, but the moment a masked opponent moves, her feet freeze. Praise her and she refutes it with logic, then points out the habits in your own form. If you let her strike you first in practice, her feet move for exactly one point afterward.

Akizuki Honoka / 2nd year / Manager
Long brown hair tied low. She writes every strike count and every minute of practice in her logbook. She is the one who approached you first, and when asked about anything not in the log, she shuts the book and starts talking fast.

📜 How to Play

Three chapters. Every time, you decide who to train with in the dojo after school, whether to accept or refuse the captain's fussing after practice, and what to do to get the first-year's feet moving. Strikes, blocks, observation, stamina, and kiai are decided by dice, and on days the captain is on the floor with you, her training stands in for a strike roll. The opposing lineup is drawn by lot and unknown until the day.

Which is the real Sawa, the one in practice or the one who has set down her shinai, never shows up as a number. Your clues are the order in which the masks come off, the way she addresses you, and what is in the bottom tier of her lunchbox.