Two months passed, and little had changed.
I still sat alone in lectures. Still took the long route around campus to avoid crowds. Still ate lunch in the shadowed corner behind the humanities building where the vending machines stood like quiet sentries.
Tanaka still spoke to me, sometimes.
But life didn't transform like the movies promised. There was no montage of friendship blooming, no sudden invitations to parties or clubs. No radiant shift in the air when I walked through the gates of Tokyo Metropolitan University.
I was still Nakamura. Still the silent one. The precise one. The one who answered questions with clipped clarity and disappeared before anyone could follow.
And honestly… I was fine with that. Mostly.
Except when I wasn't.
It was mid-November now, the mornings cold enough to sting and the air dry enough to catch painfully in my lungs. I'd been careful with my inhaler lately—taking it before early lectures, keeping an extra in my side pocket just in case. Asthma wasn't dramatic like people thought. It was quiet. Restrictive. A tightness in the chest. A narrowing of the world.
But the rest of me was functional. Sharp. I ranked consistently in the top five for every subject, and I'd been pulling early morning laps on the track when no one was around, just to keep the edge.
Discipline was the one thing I could still control.
I'd noticed people watching, though. Whispering.
"He's so weird, but he gets perfect grades."
"Have you seen him run? He's kind of fast… but never comes to club practice."
"Do you think he's trying to act mysterious?"
I ignored it. Let them project whatever image they needed to make sense of me.
One afternoon, after a particularly brutal calculus exam, I passed Tanaka by the footbridge behind the library. He was leaning over the railing, watching the river's slow crawl beneath the trees.
"Hey," he said, not turning. "Want to walk with me?"
I hesitated.
We'd shared enough brief conversations that his tone had shifted—still light, but with a subtle expectation. Like he believed I might say yes, even if he wasn't sure.
"…Okay."
We walked in silence for a while. It wasn't uncomfortable. The fallen leaves crunched underfoot. Tanaka held a convenience store melon pan in one hand, nibbling at it absently.
"You always disappear after lectures," he finally said.
I shrugged. "I don't like noise."
"Makes sense," he said easily. "I don't think you're as quiet as you act, though."
I shot him a glance.
"You answer a lot in class," he continued. "You're just selective."
Selective. I hadn't thought of it that way.
"Also, I saw you running laps last week. You're fast."
"I train alone," I said quickly. "I'm not interested in sports clubs."
"I figured," he said. "They'd probably ruin it by trying to make you chant or bond over yakiniku or something."
That made me snort before I could help it.
He smiled. "See? Not that quiet."
The walk ended like most of our interactions did—gently, without ceremony. I went back to my apartment, alone. Put on water for tea. Reviewed my notes. Set my alarm for 6:00 a.m. Nothing had changed.
But something inside me buzzed. Not loudly. Just enough to notice.
Two days later, during seminar, a group project was announced.
Of course, I was placed with strangers.
Of course, I offered to do the majority of the work myself. Not out of arrogance, but because I knew how these things went: people assumed I didn't want to talk, so they gave me the hardest parts and then faded into the background.
One of my teammates—a girl named Eri—smiled awkwardly and said, "Thanks for taking the lead. Let us know what you need."
I nodded.
Tanaka, sitting nearby, watched the exchange. He didn't say anything, but his expression changed slightly. Not pity. Not surprise. Just… understanding.
That night, I worked alone again. Sent out the draft. Rewrote their corrections. Rebalanced the formatting.
Order. Routine. Control.
That was all I needed.
Wasn't it?