The platform was colder than I expected.
I'd left home before sunrise, and the sky had only just started turning grey by the time I reached the station.
A few students stood scattered along the platform with suitcases. Most of them looked half asleep.
I set my bag down and checked my phone.
Saki was already on the train, a few stops ahead of mine. She'd messaged me because she knew where I would board.
Saki
where are you
second car
i think
Itsuki
you think?
there are numbers on the floor
i'm standing on one of them
I laughed out loud, then looked around to see if anyone had noticed.
stay there
By the time I boarded, I found her three cars down.
She was standing exactly on one of the numbered markings where the train's doors would stop, hands in her coat pockets, scarf pulled up to her chin.
"You said second car."
"I said I thought."
"This is the fifth."
"Then the numbers are wrong."
I shook my head.
She smiled like she'd won something.
The train pulled away from the station.
We found two seats near the window.
For a while, neither of us said anything.
It wasn't awkward.
It was the kind of quiet that happens when you've been messaging someone for three weeks and suddenly have to use your voice again.
"You cut your hair," she said finally.
"A little."
"Your mother?"
"My father. He said I looked like someone who had given up."
She laughed into her scarf.
"Did you?"
"Give up?"
"Look like it."
"Probably."
Outside, the fields gave way to buildings.
She pulled out her phone, then put it away again.
"It's weird," she said.
"What?"
"Three weeks isn't long."
"No."
"But it felt long."
I looked at the window.
"Yeah."
She didn't say anything else about it.
Neither did I.
◇◇◇
Seishin looked exactly the same.
That was the first thing I noticed when we came out of the station: nothing had changed at all, and somehow that was the surprising part.
The same convenience store near the east gate.
The same crooked sign for the bicycle parking.
The same bare trees along the walking path, still bare.
"It's smaller than I remembered," Saki said.
"The campus?"
"Everything."
We walked up from the station together.
Students were arriving in waves, dragging suitcases over the uneven pavement, calling out to people they hadn't seen since December.
Somebody shouted a name behind us. Somebody else shouted back.
"We said we'd walk," Saki said.
"We did."
"This counts."
"This is just walking to the dorm."
"It counts," she said again, firmly, and I decided not to argue.
Near the main building, she stopped.
"Your glasses."
"What about them?"
She looked at them for a second longer than necessary.
"Nothing."
"You picked them."
"I know."
"You said I'd understand eventually."
"And?"
"I still don't."
She started walking again.
"Then they're working."
◇◇◇
I heard Room 123 before I reached it.
The door was open. Somebody was arguing. Somebody else was laughing in a way that suggested he'd already lost.
I stopped in the corridor for a second.
Then I walked in.
"—and that's exactly my point," Kaito was saying, standing in the middle of the room with a textbook he clearly wasn't reading. "You can't judge a decision by the outcome. You judge it by the information available at the time."
Ryota was lying on the floor.
"It's a show."
"It's a system."
"You've been saying this since October."
"Because nobody has refuted it."
Riku, sitting on the windowsill, raised a hand without looking up.
"I refuted it in November."
"You said 'shut up.'"
"That's a refutation."
Ryota noticed me first.
"ITSUKI."
He sat up so fast he knocked over a water bottle.
"You're alive."
"I messaged you four hours ago."
"That could've been anyone."
Haruto was at the desk, already unpacking a textbook, which was somehow both impressive and deeply unsettling.
"He's been like this since seven," he said without turning around.
"How long have you been here?"
"Six."
"Why?"
"First train."
"Why the first train?"
Haruto closed the book.
"I've accepted my fate."
"The semester hasn't started."
"That's when acceptance is most useful."
Ginkō arrived twenty minutes later and immediately claimed somebody had moved his desk.
Nobody had moved his desk.
He maintained this position for the rest of the evening.
◇◇◇
By seven, there were nine of us in a room meant for four.
Shun was on the floor with his back against the bed frame, laptop open, headphones on one ear. The transfer window had apparently done something unforgivable over the break and he intended to explain it to anyone who made eye contact.
Ren had arrived with an idea.
"It's about a man who returns to his hometown—"
"No," said Ryota.
"—and discovers that everyone remembers a version of him that never existed."
A pause.
Riku looked up.
"...That's not bad."
"Thank you."
"That's suspicious. Usually they're bad."
"I've been working on it."
"For three weeks?"
"For three weeks."
Ryota squinted.
"What's it called?"
"I haven't decided."
"Then it's not real."
Daichi, who had been quiet for a remarkable eleven minutes, chose that moment to speak.
"We should go out."
Everyone stopped.
"No," said five people simultaneously.
"I haven't said where."
"That's the problem," Haruto said.
"There's a place near the north exit—"
"How much?"
"Why is that always the first question?"
"Because of October," said Riku.
"October was an investment."
"October was four thousand yen for a bowl of soup."
"It was consommé."
"It was soup."
I laughed so hard I had to put my can down.
We ended up at the conbini.
All nine of us, standing outside in the cold with hot drinks and whatever we'd grabbed from the shelves, arguing about the semester timetable and whose professor was worse.
Daichi complained the entire time.
Nobody listened.
It was perfect.
◇◇◇
My phone vibrated while I was walking back.
Saki
did you survive?
Itsuki
barely
daichi tried to take us somewhere expensive
Saki
again?
Itsuki
again
Saki
i'm not even surprised anymore
Itsuki
we went to the conbini instead
Saki
that's the correct outcome
I smiled at the screen.
Itsuki
you settled in?
Saki
mostly
my roommate brought back three bags of sweets from her hometown
there is nowhere to put them
Itsuki
that's a good problem
Saki
it is NOT a problem
i was complaining incorrectly
I stopped walking so I could type properly.
Itsuki
we still owe ourselves a celebration
for passing
Three dots.
Then—
Saki
we do
when?
I looked up.
The dorm windows were lit all the way down the block. Somewhere above me, someone was shouting about a charger.
Itsuki
no idea
soon
Saki
okay 😊
I put the phone in my pocket and climbed the stairs.
◇◇◇
The room was a disaster by the time I got back.
Ryota had fallen asleep sitting up with his coat still on. Kaito was explaining his theory again, to nobody. Ginkō was still mildly aggrieved about the desk.
I stood in the doorway for a second.
Three weeks earlier, this room had been so quiet I could hear the snack wrapper by the window.
Now I couldn't hear myself think.
I set my bag down.
Ryota opened one eye.
"You're back."
"I've been back for six hours."
"Mm."
He closed it again.
"Good," he said.
Then he went back to sleep.
◇◇◇
Classes started the next morning.
The timetable was worse than last term, the lecture halls were just as cold, and by the second day it already felt as though we'd never left.
That's the part I think about now.
Not the train, or the conbini, or the argument about soup.
Just how quickly it all became ordinary again.
We stopped noticing the doorway. We stopped counting who was in the room.
Nobody counts those things.
You only find out the number afterward.