Something warm touched his arm.
"Kaito?.."
He opened his eyes.
The Modern Japanese History classroom was empty.
Late afternoon light came through the windows at a low angle.
The chairs around him were vacant, bags gone, the board at the front half-erased — a timeline of the Meiji era left unfinished mid-sentence.
Hana sat beside him, her hand on his arm, her bright eyes on his face.
"Kaito," she said again, and smiled.
He stared at her.
"...Hana," he said.
He straightened up slowly.
His neck ached.
His brain was catching up in pieces — the classroom, the afternoon light, the fact that he had apparently slept through an entire lecture.
It wasn't hard to understand why.
Shizuka had spent most of the night at his window.
Knocking first, then switching to calling his name in that soft voice that came through glass with no difficulty at all.
When he didn't respond she had changed tactics.
"Kai~~~. Just open the curtains a little. I won't come in. I just want to watch you sleep."
He had put his pillow over his head.
"Kai~~~. I can hear you breathing. I know you're awake."
He had pulled the pillow tighter.
She had eventually gone quiet somewhere around two in the morning. He had lain there for another hour anyway, staring at the ceiling, before his body finally gave up.
By the time Modern Japanese History reached the 1890s he was gone.
"You didn't wake me up," he said.
"You looked tired since this morning." She had her bag on her lap, hands folded over it. "I figured you needed it more than the lecture." She paused. "Also you looked cute sleeping."
He opened his mouth. Nothing useful came out.
"I— that's— I couldn't sleep last night." He looked at the desk. "There was a cat. By my window. Kept meowing. Very loud."
Hana stared at him for a second.
Then she laughed. A real one, shoulders moving.
"That is genuinely the worst."
"It was," he said, nodding seriously.
"I had a neighbor's dog phase for three weeks last year." She shook her head. "I could feel your pain even before you said it."
They gathered their things and filed out into the corridor, joining the last thin stream of students heading toward the exit.
The building emptied quickly at this hour. Their footsteps were loud in the stairwell.
Outside, the campus had gone quiet.
The afternoon light sat low and orange across the courtyard, long shadows stretching from the trees.
The vending machines hummed.
A few students crossed the path ahead of them, heads down, earphones in, already somewhere else. The air had cooled since morning and smelled faintly of cut grass.
They walked toward the gate side by side.
"I noticed you the first day," Hana said.
He glanced at her. "Yeah?"
"I thought you were one of those people who just didn't want to talk to anyone." She tilted her head. "You know. Deliberately alone. The type."
"I'm not," he said. Then, after a moment, "I just. I'm not great at starting things."
"Starting things?"
"Conversations." He adjusted his bag strap. "I never really— I didn't go to a normal school. So I missed a lot of that." He stopped, aware he had said more than he meant to.
"Hm." She didn't push it. She just walked. "You're easy to talk to though."
He looked at her sideways. "I am?"
"Yeah. You actually listen." She shrugged. "Most people are just waiting for their turn."
He didn't know what to do with that so he said nothing.
They passed through the front gate and turned toward the metro station.
The street outside was quieter than the morning, the school kids gone, the commuters not yet out in full force. Just the two of them and a few others moving in the same direction.
"Where do you live?" she asked.
"Minami area. Near Kasuga park."
Her eyes went wide. "Seriously? I'm in Nishi-Minami. Three stops from Kasuga on the Chuo line."
"That's my line," he said.
She grinned. "We're practically neighbors."
They got through the ticket gates and onto the platform just as the train arrived. They found seats together near the door. The train pulled out and the station disappeared behind them.
"So how are you finding the classes?" she asked.
He considered. "Manageable. Psychology is interesting. History puts me to sleep apparently."
She smiled. "Are you keeping up?"
"Mostly. I started late so I missed the first week. Still catching up on a few things."
"You started late?" She glanced at him. "How come?"
"Family problems," he said.
She nodded and didn't push further.
He appreciated that. The train moved through the city, the windows darkening as they dipped underground and brightening again when they surfaced.
Stop after stop.
The carriage thinned out gradually.
"This is me next," she said.
He nodded.
"It was really nice talking to you." She picked up her bag. "You're a very pleasant person, Kaito."
His ears went red. "I— thanks. You too."
The train slowed. The doors opened.
He stood up and held out his hand for a handshake.
She looked at it.
Her chin pulled back slightly, eyebrows lifting a fraction — not bad, just not what she had expected.
He felt it immediately.
Awkward.
His arm went slightly stiff. He couldn't take it back now. He left it there.
She reached out and shook it, firm and warm, and smiled at him full on.
"See you tomorrow," she said.
She stepped off.
The doors closed behind her.
An older man in an office shirt slid into her vacated seat without looking up from his phone.
The train moved.