The room was between bells—half-empty, half-loud, the kind of quiet that felt like a held breath. Dust drifted in the window light; a line of chalk crumbs stood like a pale coastline on the tray beneath the board.
Haruto sat near the window with his sketchbook open to a fresh page. Earbuds hung around his neck, silent; he told himself he'd play music after he finished this line. He had started drawing a figure from memory—tall, straight-backed, the way Ryuzí stood when he was trying not to smile and failing in that tiny, private way. He wasn't drawing Ryuzí's face. He didn't need to. The posture said enough.
The door slid open with a tired clack.
Shaun came in first, that half-grin that never reached his eyes already in place. Daichi followed, swinging his bag by the strap so it thumped, thunk, thunked the side of a desk. Riku drifted behind them, quiet, two beats off, the way a shadow moves a second later than the body.
"Yo," Shaun said to the room in general. Then, to the row where Haruto sat: "Afternoon, ghost."
Haruto's pencil didn't stop, but he felt the air change. He pressed a little lighter. Smooth strokes. Work inside the line. Don't give it edges to catch.
Daichi tapped a knuckle against the back of Haruto's chair. "Hey, Kisaragi. You always this early or you just like being alone with your… diary?"
"It's a sketchbook," Haruto said softly.
"Sure," Daichi said. "Same thing but sadder."
Riku laughed once, under his breath. Shaun wandered closer, palms on the back of Haruto's empty neighbor desk. "What's on the menu today, Picasso?" He leaned over. "Oh."
Haruto hesitated before he could turn the page. That heartbeat was enough. Shaun's grin nudged meaner.
"Is that Takeda?" he said, delighted. "Mr. Ice-Spine himself. Wow. He even looks like he's judging you."
Haruto closed the book gently. "It's a study of posture," he said. His voice tried to be neutral and landed on careful.
"Posture," Shaun echoed, rolling the word in his mouth like it might be candy or a stone. He slid into the empty desk behind Haruto and kicked one leg out far enough that his shoe rested against the rung of Haruto's chair. His foot tapped. Tap. Tap. "You draw people a lot for someone who doesn't talk to them."
Daichi rounded to Haruto's side and hooked his fingers on the edge of the sketchbook. "Lemme see a bit more."
Haruto tightened his hand without thinking; Daichi tugged lightly, testing. Riku wandered closer, hands in pockets, eyes slit with lazy interest. The corner of the page lifted. Haruto exhaled, let go. The paper made a small surrendering sound.
Daichi flipped. A cluster of rehearsal thumbnails: Suki laughing, mouth wide; Kenji mid-bow; Aoi's profile, precise; Miyako's hand holding a script; Ryuzí caught not in a pose but in a pause—shoulders easing after a line, head tipped toward Suki.
"Cute," Daichi said, too loud. "Doodles of your little club."
"Looks like he's documenting a zoo," Riku said mildly.
Haruto reached to take the book back. Shaun's sneaker pressed down on the rung of his chair and held him still with a lazy weight.
"Hey," Shaun said, turning a page with two fingers. "So that's Takeda, huh? Your… 'posture study.'" He whistled softly. "Can't believe people actually like that guy."
Haruto stared at a knot in the wood of his desk and counted to four. "Don't—" he began, and then stopped. The word didn't have anywhere to go.
"Walks around like he's leading a parade of one," Riku mused. "Talk about uptight."
"Yeah," Daichi said, sighing theatrically. "Uptight is a nice word for it."
Shaun clucked his tongue. "Probably thinks he's better than the room because he's dating that blond noise machine." He lifted his chin toward the door, though Suki wasn't there. "Imagine kissing that guy every day. No wonder he's stiff."
Daichi laughed. "Bet he gives lectures during dates. 'You're holding my hand incorrectly, here's a diagram—'"
Riku snorted.
Haruto's pencil snapped. The sound was small, but it felt loud. Half the room was still in the hall; the other half was practicing not-seeing. He put both halves of the pencil on the desk, lined their broken ends up like a failed magic trick.
"You don't know him," he said. It came out low.
Shaun's foot pushed the chair rung once, hard enough to jolt the desk—a little wave through the wood. "Oh? And you do?"
"He's not like that," Haruto said. His heart thudded, trying to migrate into his throat. "He's—" He stopped. The words he had were soft ones. They were not good armor.
"Say it," Shaun coaxed, leaning nearer. He tapped the sketchbook page where Ryuzí's shoulders tipped toward Suki. "Come on, tell us a story."
Daichi slid the book a fraction closer to himself. "Hey, what's with all the boyfriends on these pages, anyway? You got a favorite? Going to collect the whole set?"
Riku's mouth turned. "Careful, Shaun. Maybe he's crushing on Takeda."
Laughter—the thin kind that cuts. Haruto swallowed. He took his sketchbook back. It was an ordinary, small act. He did it slowly so they couldn't call it a snatch. For a second, his fingers brushed Daichi's. Daichi let go with an exaggerated flourish and leaned onto Haruto's desk with both palms, crowding the space.
"Just messing, man," Shaun said, voice dipping to a friendly register that felt worse than the sneer. His shoe lifted off the rung; the chair breathed. "We're joking. You know how it is."
Haruto closed the book. "Right," he said. He slid the elastic band over the cover. "Jokes."
"Right," Riku echoed, drifting toward his own seat as if nothing had happened. "Relax. You're so serious."
Shaun stayed. He rapped his knuckles lightly—three quiet knocks—on Haruto's desk. "You hear the rumor?" he asked, conversational. "About your boy Takeda?"
"Don't," Haruto said, but Shaun had already smiled.
"Old school, big attitude, gets into it with people, then plays the victim," he said. "You know the type. Looks clean, hands dirty."
Daichi made a sympathetic face. "Sad. People like that always get away with everything too."
"Lucky him," Riku murmured.
Haruto's fingers tightened around the edge of the sketchbook until the elastic bit his skin. The rumor slid over the air like oil. Some things stuck without needing glue.
He could have said: That's not how he is. He could have said: You weren't there. You don't know what you're talking about. He could have said anything. Instead he tasted graphite at the back of his teeth and hated how silence made room for other voices.
Behind them, two girls came in mid-conversation and stopped when they saw the positioning: Haruto seated, Shaun leaning, Daichi propped on the desk, Riku turned half toward them like a reflector. One girl's mouth pressed thin. The other's gaze skittered away. Neither spoke. They moved to their seats and arranged their faces into nothing.
"Anyway," Shaun said, straightening like he'd just given helpful advice. "Heads up. Don't hang around trash and expect not to smell like it."
He started to go, then paused, looked down again. "Oh. Where's your pencil case?"
Haruto blinked once. "On my—"
It wasn't where he'd left it. He stood the elastic-bound sketchbook on the upright lip of the desk and set his bag on his chair, opened it, closed it. The case was not there either. There was a certain choreography to losing: check the obvious places; check the same obvious places; pretend you're not checking the people nearby.
Daichi rocked back on his heels, innocent. "Huh. Maybe you left it at home."
Riku nodded. "Maybe you imagined it."
Shaun turned his palms up. "I'd lend you a pen, but, you know, I'm stingy."
Haruto inhaled. "It's okay." His voice was calm in the way of snow. "I have another."
He didn't. He slid his bag strap over his shoulder and stood, moving to the supply cupboard at the side of the room. The door stuck; he jiggled it until the hinge gave with a low squeal. An old bin held stumpy pencils, erasers chewed down to pink pebbles. Borrow, he told himself. Return. He took one pencil. He took a breath.
On the way back, he saw it out of the corner of his eye: his pencil case in the trash can by the back door, unzipped, a bloom of paper towels to hide it, someone's empty juice box leaking a sticky amber at the corner soak.
He didn't say anything. He walked to the bin, lifted the paper towels delicately, and took the case out with two fingers. Juice had seeped through the fabric. He held it over the sink by the windows and ran the faucet, watching the thin brown run off like tea too weak to drink.
Behind him, Shaun's voice drifted: "He's washing it? Dude."
"Eco-friendly," Daichi said.
"Resourceful," Riku added.
The water cooled his fingers to the ache. He turned off the tap and shook the case once, twice, into the basin. The fabric dripped. He set it on the windowsill where the sun might find it, later. He wiped his hands on a paper towel and threw it away. He sat back down and picked up the stub pencil like a man picking up a violin with one string. The line he drew next was clean anyway.
The bell brought bodies back to chairs, lips back to neutral, eyes to boards. Suki bounded in on the final ring with Kenji at his heels.
"We bring snacks," Suki announced, and Ryuzí, entering behind him, said, "No eating in class," as he took the bag from Suki and hid it under the desk. Aoi slid in a breath before the teacher, Miyako half a step behind, both with papers in hand as if they had been born holding lists.
They took their places. Haruto lifted his head and held his mouth in the shape of a small, safe smile. Suki shot him a finger-gun hello. Haruto's returned gesture amounted to a blink. It was enough. Suki turned toward Ryuzí, already whispering.
"Okay, scholars," the teacher said from the front. "Five-minute warm-up. Write two sentences about your future in present tense."
Shaun slouched into his seat, threw his pen into a spin, caught it. He didn't look at Haruto again. He didn't have to.
Haruto wrote: I draw. I do not look down.
His pencil made a small, steady sound. The room rose around it—a tide of clicks and whispers and paper sliding—and for a while the line was all that mattered.
After class he went to the sink again, turned his case over in his hands. It would dry by last bell. It would smell faintly of sugar and something else he didn't have a word for. He washed the zipper until it slid smooth.
On his way back to his desk, he passed Shaun's row. Shaun tilted his head like a man considering a purchase he'd already decided to make. "We were just joking, you know," he said, in that soft, dangerous tone. "Don't be weird about it."
Haruto paused. He didn't turn all the way. He looked at Shaun's shoulder, the seam of his uniform where the stitching had come loose by a few threads. "Right," he said. "Jokes."
"Good," Shaun said. "We're on the same page."
Haruto walked back to his desk. He packed slowly. He took nothing that wasn't his. He left nothing he couldn't bear to lose.
He meant to go straight to rehearsal. His feet turned toward the art room and his breath followed. Halfway down the hall he stopped and put his palm flat against the cool wall. The clammy echo of the pencil case water had crept into his sleeves; he felt damp, like rain caught indoors.
He pictured Ryuzí standing at rehearsal later, counting cues while Suki argued about glitter; he pictured Aoi pointing at the board and Haruto nodding because it was easy to nod when someone gave you a direction and meant to help; he pictured Kenji making Miyako laugh on accident and purpose. He pictured that sketch he'd made of Ryuzí's posture and had the unhelpful, childish thought: I want to keep them away from this.
Then a second, meaner thought: I did nothing.
He lifted his head and found his reflection in the hall window—thin, hair a little out of place, eyes too tired for the hour. "Next time," he said under his breath. It sounded like a promise and like a wish.
The art room door was open. Voices inside. Aoi's calm, Suki's bright, Ryuzí's low. He stepped in, placed his bag down, and said, the way he always did, "Do you want the dawn test or the dusk one first?"
Aoi turned, saw him, nodded at once. "Dawn."
Suki waved a paint-stained hand. "Haruto! We're inventing a confetti cannon. Ryuzí says no."
"No," Ryuzí said.
Kenji leaned around a poster board. "Welcome to the creative disaster zone."
Miyako looked up from her notes. "You're just in time."
The world reassembled itself in familiar shapes. Haruto exhaled, very quietly, and moved to the projector cart. He set his pencil case on the sill. It would dry. He would, too.
Somewhere down the corridor, a laugh rose and fell, far enough away to be weather. He turned on the lamp, and a warm rectangle of light spilled across the paper, catching dust like glitter that wasn't. He thought of horizons and wrote a small word in the margin of his mind.
Resolve.
And then he worked.