Dana was transferring to Japan from Europe—her parents wanted her to try education in different countries, so she’d been globetrotting since she’d started school, and it hadn’t changed when she grew up and went to college. She hadn’t seen her parents in person in years—both she and they had video cameras, and they would record “letters” to each other on a videocassette and send the cassette back and forth—they sent one, Dana wrote over it, and sent it back—they’d been using the same tape for as long as Dana had been able to use the recorder.

And now, her sophomore year in college, she was in Japan, her first day at the prestigious Fubarawa School.

The campus was a massive, sprawling affair, something very out of place in Japan—a country with very little area for growth; they built upwards instead of sideways and in multiple buildings. All the buildings were labeled in a variety of languages, and the campus was similar in nature to a European or American college campus—Dorms, classroom buildings, gym, admissions, lecture hall...

But the stories that abounded around the campus from student to student were nothing short of incredulous—the dean was rumored to have escaped from a lunatic asylum, the staff were oblivious to anything odd or out of the ordinary going on, and apparently, there was even a group of students who spent nights fighting crime.

The entire place was something straight out of an anime.

One recurring story was that since the principal had cut back on the budget and bought bulk lunches, he didn’t want an ounce of food wasted. So he’d spent goddess-knows how much money installing atmospheric sensors and cameras and the like into all the garbage cans so that he would know if anyone threw food away, which wasn’t allowed.

Only a quarter of the students were boarding school students; the rest were day students and lived locally. These brought their own lunch, but owing to the institutionalized nature of the school, everyone was given a lunch package at midday, and the things were big enough that no one could finish them. The majority of the students ate what they could and wrapped the remainder, giving the remains to one of the day students for them to take home and throw away there.

Since Dana was in the sophomore class, she was privy to more rumors than most. But since she was also a stranger and a new student, most of the students told her very little.