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angevonYu underlined the last sentence in his notebook, not because it was important, but because there wasn't much else to do while waiting for their Composition teacher, Ms. Toriumi, to switch in. Haruka was busy fussing with Natsumi's hair, Taishi had put on his headphones, and Tomochika-san was... Tomochika-san.
Time passed and the teacher didn't show up. The volume level in the classroom steadily increased as more and more students began to talk until Yu was sure the teacher next door would come in and lecture them.
In fact, the classroom's front door did open, but it was a teacher unfamiliar to him: an unshaven man with black hair, thick-rimmed glasses, and a pencil over his ear. He wore a loose white lab coat over a yellow shirt that depicted hands in prayer. He shuffled in rather casually in sandals.
Haruka groaned. "Not Mr. Edogawa..."
"Since Ms. Toriumi seems to have taken a French leave, you can put your Composition books away," the strange substitute teacher announced. "Today you're going to learn a Tibetan creation myth. Pha Trelgen Changchup Sempa. Hmm? Was that hard for you to say? I'll say it again. Pha Trelgen Changchup Sempa... The Tibetan monkey-father."
"God, I can't stand that guy," Haruka said after Mr. Edogawa's class ended. "He's sooo boring, and he believes in all this hokey mumbo jumbo... Yu-kun, what are you writing...? Wait, you took notes!?"
Yu looked up at her, still hunched over his desk with pen in hand. "It was... interesting." He was trying to remember where he'd seen that teacher before. Hadn't he done a strangely-relevant special lecture on that Yasogami field trip? About Izanagi and Izanami...
"Who cares what some people on some mountain somewhere think about where people come from? Besides, Ms. Toriumi is definitely not gonna quiz us on that."
"I thought it was interesting, too," Tomochika-san commented. "Besides, we might be tested on it anyway."
Haruka's mouth opened wide. "Whoa, Tomo! You talked! In front of Yu-kun! Did you... Did you listen to me?"
Yu nodded. "We're friends now."
Tomochika-san rolled her eyes, but she didn't protest.
"Good," said Haruka. "Now you can have lunch with Yu-kun and invite him to your book club."
Tomochika-san passed a hand over her eyes. "Haruka, please. I thought you were the one with a crush on him. Please don't project onto me."
"I have a boyfriend," Haruka announced. "Sorry, Sou-kun!"
"I'm glad for you," Yu said with honesty and veiled relief.
Haruka grabbed Taishi's collar and dragged him forcefully towards her. The boy gagged as the collar choked him. "It's Taishi!" she declared.
Taishi pulled himself away and panted before shouting, "What is wrong with you, woman!? There's no way I'd go out with you!"
Haruka stuck her tongue out at him and turned back to Yu. "I was just kidding. He's actually in class 3-C. We're going out to the Sweet Shop at Iwatodai tomorrow. He's got cram school today."
Yu glanced at Tomochika-san with amusement—and found that although the girl had a book open, she was watching the conversation. He smiled to himself. She really did pay attention to her surroundings. Maybe she wasn't quite as unsociable as she pretended to be.
Ms. Toriumi didn't show up to school the next day, nor the day after, and rumors began to fly—she'd run off to elope with someone—she quit her job—she'd won the lottery...
"Mr. Edogawa! What happened to our Composition teacher?" Natsumi asked.
"It seems she grew tired of this world," Mr. Edogawa said. He readjusted his glasses on his nose.
The class as a whole gasped. "She—she's dead!?" Haruka wailed.
Mr. Edogawa scratched his neck. "Not quite. Seems that Apathy Syndrome might be making a comeback, eeheehee. But don't you worry. I'll teach you some charms today to keep it away! It's all in the mind, anyway, of which I'm an expert."
"Apathy Syndrome...?" Tomochika-san muttered from the seat behind Yu. And she wasn't the only one who seemed surprised; several other students were shifting in their seats and making noise. Taishi had put his hands over his head, and Haruka was clutching herself as if she was cold.
Yu glanced at Tomochika-san uneasily. "What is that?"
Mr. Edogawa heard him. "Ah, our transfer student doesn't know about Apathy Syndrome? Hmm, hmm! You mustn't be from around here. Perhaps for today's lecture we'll talk about death cults and Apathy Syndrome and the end of the world."
Almost the entire class protested, several students even taking to their feet. They were far more vocal than Yu had ever seen them. "Please no!"
"Sensitive subjects, I see!" Edogawa said with a faint smile. "You can't forget the past. Ah, but, Narukami-kun, you'll have to ask one of your fellow classmates later. Today we'll talk instead about shamanism in South America. Is something far from home more palatable today? Good, good."
"So... What is Apathy Syndrome?"
"Ugh, I knew you were going to ask!" Haruka sounded quite unhappy. "Yu-kun..."
"It was a big problem a few years ago," Tomochika-san said. She didn't sound happy or unhappy. Neutral. Just her normal self.
"Yeah... You know what?" Haruka said. "I'm gonna leave this one to Tomo! She probably knows what causes it. She probably invented the cure herself! Yeah! See you tomorrow, Yu-kun!"
She was gone in an instant, and Yu blinked at her absence. "She didn't want to talk about it, did she?" he commented.
Now Tomochika-san looked unhappy. "It's harder for some people than others. Today, Apathy Syndrome serves as either the punchline to jokes made in poor taste, or as a bitter memory that people want to forget ever happened. Tatsumi Port Island's dark secret, although not really a secret."
"Will you tell me?" Yu asked.
Tomochika-san spoke slowly and seemed to be choosing her words with care. "As far as we know, it was a mental condition. Imagine a hikikomori, but worse. A person so withdrawn that he no longer talks or eats or moves—like they've suddenly gone into a coma. It was a mystery illness. It would hit people randomly, with no rhyme or reason, and it was rather widespread around this area, oh, about three years ago. Then it suddenly went away, and most of the people who had it got better."
Yu frowned. He had heard the term 'Apathy Syndrome' used before, now that she mentioned it, but never in any context to make him take notice until now. "How widespread are we talking? What caused it? What ended it?"
"At its height, I'd say half of the city had it. I heard there were cases all over the country, too, but it was most prevalent here. Everyone knew someone with it... No one knows what caused it, so it was rather frightening. If Ms. Toriumi really has it... It's troubling. The news never really talked about a cure... I remember the end of it was sudden, so it wasn't like the doctors had invented a cure and people had to go to the doctor to get the medicine. It was just there one day, gone the next, as if it had never been."
"That's strange," Yu said.
"Isn't it?" Tomochika-san sighed. "It was a bad time to live around here... You'd see them all over the street, just lying there or standing there, completely unresponsive to everyone and everything. Very creepy. I think a lot of people died because of it... if they didn't have any friends or family to find them and take care of them, they'd literally starve to death... And rumors went around that it was contagious, so some people stayed away from anyone who had it, or anyone who simply knew someone with it. It led to some bullying in school. I remember that..." She scowled, and Yu wondered if she had a personal anecdote to share.
"And... the death cult that Mr. Edogawa mentioned?"
Her mouth quirked. "Yeah... I don't remember too much about it, but with Apathy Syndrome so rampant, some people thought it was signaling the end of the world. It was... It was a very strange time to live here."
"Did you know anyone with it?"
"Everyone knows someone who had it. It's not polite to ask, Narukami-san."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know."
Tomochika-san shrugged. She hadn't been offended. "Well, the important thing is that it's supposed to be over. Apathy Syndrome has been gone for years now. I hope Mr. Edogawa was just being sensationalist. None of us want a repeat of that..."
Three years ago. Everything kept going back to it. That's when Mitsuru-san and her team had scaled Tartarus and defeated the Dark Hour. Apathy Syndrome had been at its height then... He couldn't imagine a city as big as Tatsumi Port Island filled with lifeless people...
Yu called Yosuke that evening.
"Dude, you never call me..." Yosuke said. "What's up, partner?"
Yu wasted no time. "Yosuke, do you remember how after the P-1 Grand Prix we started looking up the Kirijo Group and found something about a Moonlight Bridge? Did you ever make any progress?"
"Oh, crap. Uhh, hang on." Yosuke seemed to be rummaging around his desk. Yu heard a few thumps and papers being reshuffled around. "Nah, partner, there wasn't much to find about that bridge. It's a pretty popular landmark, you know—but I can cut you a deal on a tour group. That's really all I could find on the Internet."
Yu grunted. He'd probably have better luck asking the locals about that, or maybe checking out the public library's records after a session with Amada-kun. "Can you start looking something else up for me? Look into anything strange that happened around Tatsumi Port Island in 2009. Three years ago."
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