The setting of the story, "Skin-deep", requires some explaining, in particular with the notion of the schooling system and some laws that differ in the world created in the story from the real world.

This story is set in Japan and follows the school system where the year begins in April and continues through to March. Another is that students wear school uniforms—these have been kept consistent. All else follows the British system—or rather the school system that is known in the country we reside in. The way that the school runs in the story differs from high schools in Japan. For example, where students stay in the same room while teachers come to the class for the duration of the day for subjects other than those that require special facilities, here students move to classrooms. Another is the peer support system within the system: looking through a few Japanese schools, they appear to not have a peer support system where the seniors help familiarise the new students to the school. The atmosphere of the high school most likely differ too.

Shifting away from the daily life of high school in Japan to the laws of Japan: one further difference is the legal drinking age. In Japan, the legal drinking age is 20. This is not the case in the story as the story sees the legal drinking age as 18 instead of the Japanese legal drinking age of 20.

These are the noticeable differences. Tthere most probably are others that we may have not picked up. So, instead of trying to point them all out, we will conclude in saying that the world in the story recognises somewhatt the Japanese way of life, but in no way an exact mirror of it. As much as we have attempted to keep the story close to reality, the story will no doubt contain a lot of differences from the real world.