The two girls stood at the edge of Nagi’s desk, their presence a sudden, sharp intrusion into the quiet radius he had tried to maintain. Up close, the silver piping of their navy blazers caught the morning light, shimmering with the prestige of Kasumigaoka High.

Nagi didn't move his chin from his palm immediately. He felt the soft wool of his skin-colored sweater—a comfortable, muted contrast to the sea of structured navy around him—against his knuckles.

"Excuse me," the bright-eyed girl started, her voice a polished lilt. "We were just talking, and we realized we didn't get your name during the roll call. I'm Sato, and this is Miura."

Nagi slowly shifted his gaze from the window. His bangs brushed against his lashes as he turned his head, his expression as blank and unreadable as the chalkboard at the front of the room.

And so it begins, he thought. The inevitable tax of being perceived. I should have worn a mask. Or a cardboard box.

"Asahina," he said. His voice was level, carrying the bare minimum amount of energy required to be considered polite. "Asahina Nagi."

"Asahina-kun," Miura repeated, testing the syllables with a small, approving nod. "That’s a nice name. It sounds... peaceful. Are you from around here? You don't really have the 'city' vibe most people have on the first day."

Nagi blinked once.

'What does a 'city vibe' even mean? Am I supposed to be vibrating at a specific frequency? I’m from Yokohama. I live with a man who thinks tea and kata are the only two things a human needs to survive.'

"I’m from Yokohama," he replied simply.

"Oh! So are we," Sato chimed in, leaning slightly closer. The scent of a fruity, expensive shampoo wafted over. "Which middle school? We were at the private academy near the station."

Nagi felt the weight of the question. At a school like this, your middle school was your pedigree. It was the first chapter of your social resume.

"Public," he said.

The briefest flicker of surprise crossed Sato’s face before being smoothed over by her practiced social grace. "Public? Wow, you must have worked really hard to get into Kasumigaoka then. The entrance exams were brutal this year."

'Actually, I’m here because I can throw people twice my size across a room,' Nagi thought, his gaze drifting momentarily back toward the window. 'But telling you that would lead to 'Show us a move!' or 'Can you break this desk?' and I’d rather be a head of lettuce than the class bodyguard.'

"I did what I had to," he said out loud, which was technically the truth.

Beside him, he was acutely aware of Kaori. 

She hadn't joined the conversation yet, but she had shifted in her seat, her long lavender-brown hair swaying like a silken curtain. She was watching the exchange with a quiet, observant tilt of her head, the kind of look someone gives a puzzle they’ve already partially solved.

"So, Asahina-kun," Miura asked, her tone shifting to something more curious. "Since the clubs haven't started yet... what do you do for fun? You were staring at the trees so intensely, we thought maybe you were in the Art Club."

Photography, actually, Nagi’s mind supplied. And cooking. And trying to convince the neighborhood calico that I am not a threat to its sovereignty.

"Nothing special," he answered, his fingers tracing a small, invisible pattern on the wood of his desk. "I mostly just... walk around."

"Walk around?" Sato laughed, a bright, melodic sound that seemed to draw even more attention to their corner of the room. "That sounds so mysterious! Don't you think so, Mizuhara-san?"

She was pulling Kaori into the circle. The social gravity of the room doubled in an instant.

Nagi felt a bead of sweat threaten to form at his temple. He adjusted the cuff of his sweater, wishing he could disappear into the knit.

Kaori didn't answer immediately. She let a beat of silence pass, a small, unhurried pause that forced everyone to wait for her. Then, she looked at Nagi, her eyes bright with a proactive, gentle mischief.

"I don't know," Kaori said, her voice warm and smooth. "I think Asahina-kun is just the type of person who doesn't like to waste words. Right, Asahina-kun?"

Nagi met her gaze for a fraction of a second too long.

"...Something like that," he muttered, looking away. 

Sato and Miura exchanged a look, the kind of silent communication that happens between friends when they’ve encountered something they haven't quite categorized yet. Nagi’s brief, muttered response hadn't given them much to work with, but Kaori’s intervention had effectively signaled that the "interrogation" had reached its natural conclusion.

"Well," Sato said, smoothing the front of her blazer with a hum of polite finality. "We’ll leave you to your aerodynamics and tree-watching for now, Asahina-kun. But you should really think about which club you’re joining. Everyone expects a lot from us first years."

"Right," Miura added, offering a small, lingering wave toward Kaori. "See you later, Mizuhara-san! Let’s definitely do lunch together sometime soon."

With the practiced elegance of those who owned the room, the two girls turned and drifted away. Their departure felt like the receding of a high tide, leaving a strange, ringing quiet in the small space between Nagi and Kaori’s desks.

Nagi let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He didn't slouch—his grandfather’s training made that physically difficult—but he felt his internal tension settle into the soft knit of his sweater.

'A certain future,' he thought, recalling the school motto. 'If that future involves being cornered by people who want to know my 'middle school pedigree' every ten minutes, I might need to reconsider my life choices.'

He reached out and adjusted the corner of a textbook he hadn't even opened yet, his fingers lingering on the cold cover. He was acutely aware that the "threat" wasn't entirely gone. The girls had left, but the person who had actually sparked the shift in the air was still sitting less than a meter away.

Kaori hadn't turned back to her own group immediately.

Instead, she remained angled slightly toward him, her hand still resting on the edge of her desk. The movement of the other girls hadn't seemed to ruffle her at all; she looked as composed as the lavender-brown strands of hair that now lay perfectly still against her shoulder.

Nagi didn't look at her. He kept his eyes on his desk, focusing on a small, faint scratch in the wood.

"You're welcome," she said.

The voice was quiet, aimed specifically at the space between them. It lacked the performative brightness she had used with Sato and Miura. This was something else. Something simpler.

Nagi’s hand paused on his book.

"...For what?"

"For the 'save,'" she replied, and he could practically hear the small, knowing smile in her tone. "You looked like you were about three seconds away from trying to climb out that window."

Nagi felt the heat rise to his ears, a traitorous blush he couldn't suppress. He finally risked a sideways glance. She was looking at him directly now, her chin tilted up, watching him with an expression that was part curiosity and part genuine amusement.

"I wasn't going to jump," Nagi muttered, his sarcasm acting as his only shield. "The drop is too high for a first-day exit. I would have waited for the bell."

Kaori let out that faint, airy sound again, the one that wasn't quite a laugh but felt just as dangerous to his composure.

"I see," she said softly. "A strategist. I'll have to remember that."

She finally turned back to the front, the movement of her hair catching a stray beam of light as she did. Nagi was left alone with his thoughts once more, the scent of spring still drifting through the open window, though it felt a little heavier now than it had before.

He went back to his chin-in-hand pose, looking at the cherry blossoms. But for the first time that morning, his attention wasn't on the patterns of the wind.

It was in the silence. It was different now, not empty, but filled with the weight of someone who had actually seen him. 

But the silence didn't last.

It was shattered by a sudden, violent jolt that sent Nagi’s elbow skidding across the wood of his desk. The screech of the desk's metal legs against the floor was loud enough to make several students in the immediate vicinity jump, and Nagi’s head snapped up just in time to see a blur of navy and messy blonde hair stumbling into his personal space.

"Whoa—! Easy there, gravity, we’re on the same team!"

The boy who had nearly tackled Nagi's desk managed to catch his balance at the last second, gripping the edge of the wood to steady himself. He was wearing the Kasumigaoka blazer, but it was wide open, revealing a wrinkled shirt and a tie that had been loosened to a precarious degree.

He didn't look apologetic. He looked like he had just arrived at a party that hadn't started yet.

"My bad, my bad!" the boy chirped, flashing a grin that was far too bright for a Monday morning. He had a face built for mischief, eyes that darted around with restless energy, and a voice that seemed to lack a volume knob. "The floor is surprisingly slippery today. Or maybe my shoes are just too fast for my legs. I'm Hayato. Koga Hayato."

Nagi stared at him, his expression flat, though his heart was still doing a frantic rhythm against his ribs from the sudden jump-scare.

‘Is there a magnetic field around my desk that I’m unaware of?’ Nagi wondered. ‘First, the social elite, then the class sweetheart, and now a human hurricane. I just wanted to look at a tree.’

"I'm Asahina," Nagi said, his voice dropping an octave in a desperate attempt to ground the conversation.

"Asahina! Nice, nice," Hayato said, slapping a hand down on Nagi’s desk with enough force to make his pens rattle. He didn't seem to notice Nagi's stoic aura, or if he did, he viewed it as a personal challenge. "You're the guy in the sweater, right? Bold move. Everyone else is out here looking like they're headed to a board meeting, and you're looking like you’re ready for a nap at a cat café. I respect the vibe, man. Truly."

Nagi blinked, his dry responses momentarily silenced by the sheer speed of Hayato's delivery.

‘A nap at a cat café? That’s... oddly specific. And accurate.’

"It’s just a sweater," Nagi muttered, pulling his textbook slightly closer as a defensive measure.

"It’s a statement!" Hayato countered, leaning in closer. "It says: 'I am comfortable, and you are all stiff.' Anyway, you see that girl who was just here? Sato? She was part of the tennis club elite in middle school. You've already been marked as an 'Interesting Person of Interest,' my friend. Better buckle up."

‘Friend?’ 

Hayato leaned back, laughing at his own joke, and accidentally bumped into the corner of the desk again. He didn't seem to have a sense of personal space, or perhaps he just assumed the entire world was his living room.

From the corner of his eye, Nagi saw Kaori tilt her head back just a fraction. She wasn't looking directly at them, but the slight curve of her lips suggested she was enjoying the spectacle of Nagi being "attacked" by someone even more proactive than herself.

"Anyway, Asahina," Hayato said, pointing two finger-guns at him with terrifying enthusiasm. "We’re neighbors now. If you need someone to explain why the cafeteria mystery meat is a bad idea, I’m your guy. See ya at lunch!"

Without waiting for a response, Hayato spun on his heel and bounded toward a group of boys in the back, nearly tripping over a stray bag on the way.

Nagi sat there for a long moment, the air still vibrating from Hayato’s departure. He slowly lowered his head back into his hand, his bangs shielding his eyes.

‘Too much energy, he thought, his mind feeling exhausted despite the day barely having begun. Too many people. I should have stayed in the dojo. At least there, when someone lunges at me, I'm allowed to throw them.’