Wearing a broad grin, the man with long hair continued behind the lectern, "All right, all right. Then I shall proceed with the introduction. First of all, I am your new instructor, Kinpatsu Sakamochi."

The man who introduced himself as Sakamochi turned towards the blackboard and wrote his name in large vertical letters with the chalk. "Kinpatsu Sakamochi"? Was this some kind of joke? Given the situation, maybe it was a pseudonym.

Suddenly the female class representative, Yukie Utsumi, stood up and said, "I don't understand what's going on here." Everyone looked over at Yukie. With her long hair neatly braided into a pair of pony tails, she looked pretty wound up, but her voice remained assertive. Nonetheless, Yukie probably had to delude herself into believing they'd been through a traffic accident or some other event that caused them all to lose consciousness.

Yukie continued, "What's going on here? We were all in the middle of our study trip. Right, everyone?"

She turned around and looked at everyone, setting off an avalanche of cries:

"Where are we?"

"Did you fall asleep too?"

"What time is it anyway?"

"Was everyone asleep?"

"Damn, I don't have a watch."

"Do you remember getting off the bus, coming here?"

"Who the hell is he?"

"I don't remember a thing."

"This is terrible. What's going on? I'm scared."

After observing Sakamochi quietly listening to them, Shuya slowly surveyed the room. There were several others who remained silent.