Room 123 had rules.
Nobody had written them down. Nobody had agreed on them, either. They accumulated the way most things in that room accumulated — after somebody did something stupid enough that the rest of us decided, without a vote, that it should never happen again.
There were three.
Don't let Ginkō explain the paperwork.
Knock before entering.
Don't ask Riku what he's thinking.
The second one had never once been followed, which I had always assumed was the point of it.
By the third week of the semester, we'd added a fourth.
◇◇◇
It started on a Saturday, as these things did, with Daichi.
"I found a place."
Nobody looked up. That was standard procedure. Daichi found places approximately once a fortnight, and the correct response was to let the sentence die unattended.
"A good place," he added.
That got our attention, which I think was the mistake.
Ryota was lying on the floor with his phone held above his face, which he did for hours at a time despite having dropped it on himself at least twice that I'd witnessed. Haruto was working through a problem set. Shun had his headphones on. Kaito was explaining, to Ren, why a certain character's decision was actually reasonable if you considered the political situation.
Ren had been listening for several minutes, which was his real talent. He let people finish.
"So the character isn't stupid."
"Exactly."
"He's just making a terrible decision for complicated reasons."
"Now you're getting it."
"That's still a terrible decision."
Kaito lowered his hand.
"You're not getting it."
I looked at Daichi.
"How expensive?"
"It's reasonable."
Nobody moved. In Room 123 that silence was a formal procedure, roughly equivalent to a court requesting evidence.
Daichi named the price.
Ryota sat up so fast his phone landed on his chest.
"FOR PASTA?"
"It's handmade."
"DO THEY MAKE THE WHEAT THEMSELVES?"
Shun removed one headphone, assessed the volume of the room, and put it back on without asking a single question. I'd always admired that about him.
This was usually where it ended. Daichi would make his case, we'd refuse, and the conversation would move on. We'd done it eleven times. It had the comfortable shape of a thing that didn't require thinking about.
Then Haruto closed his problem set.
"Let's just go."
The room stopped.
"...What?"
"We've said no eleven times. He's going to keep doing this until one of us checks."
Riku considered it from the floor.
"That's actually reasonable."
"It is not reasonable," Ryota said. "It's surrender."
Daichi was already standing, which told me he'd been waiting for this since October.
◇◇◇
We went that evening.
The restaurant was two stations away, down a side street, behind a wooden door that didn't look like a door.
Daichi held it open for everyone as though he'd built the place himself.
The menu had no pictures. Ryota described this as a warning sign and spent several minutes developing the theory that restaurants without pictures were hiding something.
Twenty minutes later, nobody was talking.
I've thought about that silence a few times since. Nine people who argued about everything — genuinely everything, including once whether a window counted as furniture — and the thing that finally shut us all up was decent food.
Ren put his fork down first.
"...Okay."
"Don't say it," said Riku, still eating.
"It's good."
Daichi didn't react. He didn't gloat, didn't grin, didn't say a word. He simply continued eating with the calm of a man who had waited a very long time to be correct about something.
That was worse than gloating. I'd have preferred gloating.
"This changes nothing," Ryota said.
"I haven't spoken."
"You're thinking loudly."
Shun, who had contributed roughly four words all evening, looked up from his plate.
"It's good."
"SHUN."
"I'm on the food's side."
The bill came, and it was exactly as bad as advertised. We paid it, splitting the total nine ways with the grim efficiency of people who had done this before, and walked back to the station in the cold.
Daichi waited until we were halfway there.
"So."
"No," said four people at once.
He let it go.
For about three days.
◇◇◇
By Tuesday it had become unbearable.
The problem was that he'd stopped arguing. He didn't defend himself anymore, didn't bring up the restaurant, didn't ask for an apology. He just said things like that's fine, if you like ordinary food, and went back to his laptop.
Ryota nearly threw a textbook at him.
"You got ONE correct recommendation."
"Mm."
"YOU'RE DOING THE VOICE."
"What voice?"
"THE VOICE."
Riku raised a hand without looking up from his phone.
"New rule. Daichi chooses once per semester, and then never mentions it."
Haruto nodded slowly.
"That's fair."
"IT'S NOT FAIR. HE WON."
"That's why there's a limit."
Daichi considered this, then went back to his laptop.
"I'll make it count."
◇◇◇
On Wednesday, Saki messaged me during a gap between lectures.
are you free friday
after class, probably
we could finally get something to eat
we could
that's a very enthusiastic answer
i'm enthusiastic internally
prove it
I started typing a reply.
Then Haruto called from across the room, and I went over to look at his notebook, and by the time I came back I'd forgotten what I was going to send.
My phone vibrated again.
friday, then?
yeah. after class
okay
◇◇◇
She messaged again that evening, while I was waiting for Ryota to finish a game.
did you survive the week
barely
that's what you said last time
last time was different
how
i had more hope
She sent a laughing emoji, and I sat there looking at it for a while, which I would not have described as doing anything in particular.
"Interesting," Riku said over my shoulder.
I locked my phone.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You said interesting."
"I did."
He went back to his seat and didn't elaborate, which was the whole technique. There was a rule about this. The rule existed because asking him never worked.
Across the room, Ryota surfaced.
"What's happening?"
"Nothing," Riku said.
Then he picked up his phone and started scrolling, slowly, with the air of a man looking for a specific photograph.
"Hey, Itsuki. Do you think I still have that picture?"
The room went quiet for exactly one second.
Then Ryota's phone slipped out of his hand.
"THE ID CARD."
"There was no ID card."
"IT WAS ON HIS DESK. IN WHITE LETTERS. I RAN DOWN THE CORRIDOR, ITSUKI. I CALLED OFF A SEARCH PARTY."
Haruto looked up from his problem set with the mild interest of a man encountering a crime scene on his way somewhere else.
"What picture?"
"His student ID," Ryota said. "MISSING. Last seen leaving with a guy from high school."
Haruto thought about this.
"Was it a guy from high school?"
I didn't answer, which was a worse answer than any of the ones available to me.
Riku smiled. It was the kind of smile that made me regret ever becoming friends with him. He hadn't looked at that photo in months. He'd simply kept it somewhere, waiting for a room with enough people in it.
"Don't," I said.
"I haven't said anything."
"You're thinking it."
"Am I?"
I adjusted my glasses, which I was aware of doing approximately half a second too late.
Riku noticed. He always noticed. He didn't say anything about it, and that was somehow the part that bothered me for the rest of the evening.
Kaito had abandoned his television theory entirely.
"Wait. Is this about Saki?"
"No," I said.
"Yes," Riku said, at the same time.
I threw a cushion at him. He caught it, which made everyone laugh harder, and the room was unusable for the next ten minutes.
I went to bed mildly irritated and spent about four minutes composing a devastating response to something he'd said two hours earlier, which I then did not send, because he was asleep three feet away and because it wasn't actually devastating.
◇◇◇
On Thursday, the door opened hard enough to hit the wall.
I was at my desk with headphones on, halfway through a recorded lecture.
"ITSUKI."
"Knock."
"I live next door."
"That's not what the rule says."
He came in anyway and sat on my bed, which was also not what the rule said.
"Haruto says the deadline moved."
I took the headphones off.
"Moved to when?"
"Friday."
I looked at the lecture still playing on my screen, roughly a third of the way through, and did some arithmetic I didn't enjoy.
Behind him, Haruto appeared in the doorway.
He knocked. Twice. Deliberately. While maintaining eye contact with Ryota.
Then he walked in.
"...You're doing that on purpose."
"I'm following the rules."
"NOBODY FOLLOWS THE RULES."
"That's why I'm doing it."
Riku knocked on the doorframe as he passed in the corridor without entering at all, and Ryota put his face in his hands.
◇◇◇
By Friday morning half the class was trying to finish before lunch.
Saki sent me a message just before our first lecture.
still alive?
technically
celebration postponed?
I looked at the code on my laptop. Two test cases were failing and I had no idea why either of them was failing.
probably
okay
There was no complaint. No disappointment that I could read in the message.
Just okay.
I have wondered since whether she minded. At the time I didn't wonder about it at all, which is the honest answer. We had an assignment due in four hours.
We sat together through the lecture, worked on it during the break, and submitted with eleven minutes to spare.
Afterwards she stretched her arms above her head.
"That was horrible."
"You did most of it."
"That doesn't make it less horrible."
"We should celebrate surviving the assignment."
She looked at me.
"Isn't that what we were supposed to celebrate last week?"
"Different achievement."
"How many celebrations do you think we need?"
"At least three."
"Fine," she said. "We'll see."
Someone called her from across the corridor. She turned to answer, and that was the end of it.
We went our separate ways. I had a lecture at four.
◇◇◇
That evening Room 123 was loud enough to make studying impossible. Ryota had found a new game. Kaito was explaining a plot twist nobody had asked about. Daichi was looking at a menu and pretending he wasn't.
Riku was by the window, scrolling through something on his phone.
I opened my messages.
Saki hadn't sent anything else.
That wasn't unusual. We'd spoken for most of the day. There was no reason for there to be anything, and I was aware of this while I checked, and again when I put the phone face down and went back to my notes, and once more about twenty minutes later when I turned it over to see whether the screen had lit up without me noticing.
Across the room, Riku glanced at me.
This time he didn't say anything.
◇◇◇
There were four rules in Room 123 by then.
Don't let Ginkō explain the paperwork.
Knock before entering, which nobody did except to irritate somebody who didn't.
Don't ask Riku what he's thinking.
And Daichi chooses once per semester, and then never mentions it.
Nobody had written them down. We'd have argued about the wording.
But I kept checking my phone.
I kept looking for her when I walked into a lecture hall.
And when the seat beside her was empty, I sat in it.
Nobody had written those rules down either.