Introduction

Murata is small even for a 7th grader, and standing before his seniors in the fencing club, Miuchi and Yabushita, he appears a sling-less David facing two Goliaths. But as Mr. Yamagata (Murata's homeroom teacher and coach of the fencing club) and Mrs. Kawaguchi (the chair of the 9th-grade teachers) look on, a tear forms and runs down Yabushita's face. With great effort he apologizes for taking Murata's money. After Yabushita finishes, Miuchi – the captain of the fencing club – acknowledges that he should have returned the $300 that older boys in the club had taken from Murata over the past six months. Miuchi declares:

While the teachers know that Murata offered most of the money to the older boys – and that he stole the cash from his parents' cafe – at this point, they treat the incident as the sole responsibility of the senior boys in the club. In one-on-one interviews with Yabushita and Miuchi, Mrs. Kawaguchi has relentlessly pounded home the point that because they are seniors (senpai) it was their duty to set a positive example and ensure that other members of the club did not break club rules. This formal apology, then, has been orchestrated more for their benefit than for Murata's.