Sure! He's down for that.

What brings him to Shimamoto High? Is he making friends? What's his favorite subject? What's different here compared to his old school?

"I grew up a bit sheltered, and my father thought that changing schools might broaden my horizons, especially an immersion school like this where I get to meet both people whose first language isn't Japanese and people who are more seriously interested in learning English."

"Yeah, I think I'm making friends! It's just day one, so there's a lot of people I haven't met yet, but I like the people I've met and would love to be their friend."

"My favourite subject... can I say none of them?" He laughs. "I'm not a very studious kind of person, but I guess I like reading, even the kind of stuff they give us in literature. It's fun."

"So many things! I think the immersion thing is the biggest one, though, I'm having to really brush up on my English skills to keep up, I'm not good at all."

They can show him how they turn this information into an article and format it for the paper!

Yeah! That's very cool. He thinks that, unless he sees something that sparkles a lot in another club, he might be joining this one. 

(It helps that the editor-in-chief is really cute.)

The next morning Haru goes to school as usual and also as usual picks his way very carefully across the ice, taking twenty times longer than anyone else to get from point A to point B instead of his indoor 1.5x standard.

When he finally arrives at his destination building, there's a group of three girls huddled together by the entrance and being substantially less quiet than they think they are.

"...group."

    "No way? You're joking?"

"You can Google it, it's the same guy—"

Well, he's going to continue to take a really long time till he gets to the really well sanded and salted part of the sidewalk so he will probably have time to hear a few more words.

        "This is a kid."

"It's the same face! Add, like, five years to him. And, look, he said his name was Iwasaki."

    "It's not a super rare name..." That one notices Haru approaching and pulls her friends with her somewhere more secluded while trying to pretend it wasn't because of Haru.

Yeah-huh. Step. Step. Okay there's a nice crunchy section, he gets both feet on there and goes up the front steps at a nearly normal speed.

There's another group on the way to his first class, this time all boys, from whom Haru can catch the "Iwasaki" name again, but this particular group is substantially better at keeping quiet than the girls from earlier. However, the boy sitting behind him in his first class is being a lot less careful than that, talking to the boy next to him while two other kids aren't trying very hard to pretend they're not eavesdropping.

"Is it true?"

    "Is what true?"

"The new guy, what's his face, is he Iwasaki Iemasa's kid?"

    "How should I know?"

"Isn't it, like, your job to know these things?"

    "If it is I'm not being paid enough for it."

"Come onnnnnnnnnnnnnn."

    "Well, his name is Iwasaki, and he is male, and of the right age bracket, and he looks similar to some old pictures of Iwasaki-san's kid..."

"Come onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn."

    Sigh. "And I haven't heard this at all, I am making this up entirely right as I speak, so I am completely lying to you when I say that there are rumours that Iwasaki-san's kid got expelled from his old school last week..."

"Expelled? Why?"

    "If I were to invent a reason completely at random with no connection to reality, I'd say that there might've been something about Iwasaki-san paying a lot of money so that no one would know the answer to that question."

        One of the people who was definitely not eavesdropping scoffs and says, "Come on, that's the lamest—"

    "And since this is all lies, I will continue to tell you things that aren't true and that actually I didn't tell you at all, like that there's some... other... rumours... about him."

"Why should we pay you money when you're teasing us like that?"

    He grins and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Well, I'm not in the business of being sued for defamation, so those are all the lies I'm going to tell you this morning."

"Come onnnnnnnnn—"

    "Teacher's here," he adds, nodding in the direction of the front of the classroom.

Wow, okay. ...who the fuck is Iwasaski Iemasa, anyway, he'll look that up on his phone between classes.

Chairman and CEO of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. Extremely fucking rich guy, really old school and traditional, the kind of guy people write fiction about. His many-times great-grandfather was Iwasaki Yatarō, the guy who founded the Mitsubishi zaibatsu in the late 1800s, and his family's male line held the group until it was dissolved by the Allies.

Fancy that.

Oh well. The guy's son, if this is even him and also if it isn't, is: a teenager at Haru's school. Who sits behind him in his next class.

Regardless of the truth of those rumours, it seems like their mere existence has already turned Iwasaki into a local celebrity. On his way to their next class, Haru will be able to spot him in the hallway near the door, in what you could call a "friend group" if there wasn't a whole entire vibe there, as if he were surrounded even though he isn't.

When he spots Haru, though, he lifts a hand in a wave and grins.

Haru is not exactly experienced in maneuvering within a knot of teenagers who are, in his second language, doing some manner of vibe at each other, to accomplish any social end he might conceivably have had. Yutaka gets an acknowledging quick smile and then Haru's getting through the door into his chair.

A few minutes after that, but still before the teacher arrives, Iwasaki slips into the room and takes his seat behind Haru. "Morning, Suwan-san."

"Hello. It sounds like somebody Googled your surname and got very excited."

"It does sound like that, yeah! Speaking of, is 'Suwan' meant to be the pronounceable-by-Japanese-speakers version of 'Swan'?"

"Yeah, that side of the family assimilated enough to have an English name. Here we're spelling it like kugui though."

"That's pretty! You should tell Japanese people to learn to say your name right, 'Swan' is prettier than 'Suwan'."

"I don't really care enough to make demands on random strangers' time."

He really feels like there should be a response here that he could come up with that'd be charming and flirty and cool but he can't come up with one quickly enough. "I suppose some of us do have to be normal about things so that the rest of us can get away with not doing that."

"Sure. I'm creating slack in the system so you can be abnormal about something. Enjoy."

He rests his head on his elbow. "I will."