It surfaced, as it often did, during something small.
A campus event — a senior showcase Haruka had agreed to participate in, a panel discussion about student leadership that several professors had specifically requested her for, citing her "exemplary composure and presence" as a model for incoming students.
She'd sat through it with practiced grace, answering questions about discipline and confidence and the particular pressures of standing out, and had walked away from it feeling, as she often did after these events, like she'd performed a version of herself rather than actually been present as herself.
She mentioned this to Kaito that evening, almost in passing, the kind of comment she might once have kept entirely to herself.
