The first few weeks were awkward. Not terrible, just intensely, consistently awkward. Every single morning felt like hitting a reset button on my social anxiety.

For two years, I had walked into classrooms where I knew almost everyone. I could predict who would complain about the syllabus, who would sleep in the front row, and who would let me copy their notes. Now, every seat was occupied by a stranger. Names were constantly being exchanged around me like trading cards, and cliques were forming with terrifying speed.

Meanwhile, Jason, Sam, and I stayed together in our fortress in the back row. We didn’t explicitly plan a strategy to isolate ourselves; it just happened naturally. People usually sat with whoever they already knew, and we only knew each other.

“Are we actually going to make new friends this semester?” Sam asked one afternoon, balancing a cheap plastic pen on his upper lip while the professor wrote on the whiteboard.

“No,” I answered immediately.

“Good,” Sam grinned, the pen dropping onto his desk.

Jason let out a long, disappointed sigh, adjusting his glasses. “You two aren’t even trying to integrate. We have to group up for projects next month.”

“Trying sounds incredibly exhausting, Jase,” Sam countered, leaning back.

“It is exhausting,” I agreed. If I try to introduce myself, I’ll just stutter or overexplain why we’re a year behind. No thanks.

Jason shook his head. That only made Sam laugh—a low chuckle that almost got us spotted by the professor. Some things never changed.

We attended classes. We skipped classes. We argued about returning to classes, and then we repeated the whole process the next day.

Most days followed the exact same chaotic routine. If Jason suggested attending a dull lecture for the attendance points, Sam and I would spend twenty minutes arguing against it. If Sam suggested skipping to go to the local tea stall, Jason would bring up our academic records, and we’d argue about that instead. In the end, we just did whatever felt right that morning.

Slowly, the new students stopped seeing us as weird anomalies from a senior batch. The suffocating questions finally disappeared. At first, everyone during lab sessions wanted to know why we were here repeating a year. After a few weeks, the novelty wore off and nobody cared.

Which was incredibly nice, because answering the exact same script over and over had been draining my mental battery.

“What happened to you guys?” a random guy had asked me on week one.

“Took a gap year,” I had replied, keeping my eyes fixed on my notebook.

“Oh.”

Every single conversation ended exactly the same way. Eventually, people stopped asking entirely, and I was deeply grateful for the silence.

One afternoon, during a particularly chaotic data structures practical session, I noticed something. It wasn’t strange enough to actually matter, but it was just distinct enough for my overthinking brain to latch onto.

The girl from the first day—Ava—was sitting a few lab benches away.

I recognized her immediately. Not because I had been actively thinking about her or anything. I hadn’t. At least, I keep telling myself I haven’t. Still, I knew exactly who she was the second she walked through the door.

She was deep in discussion with her lab partner, trying to debug a stubborn piece of code. That’s when I noticed a tiny, specific habit she had whenever she was stressed or working hard.

She had a small, silver multi-colored pen. Whenever she got stuck on a line of code, she wouldn’t click it. Instead, she would rapidly twirl it through her fingers—a smooth, metallic blur against her skin—before using the tip of the pen to lightly tap the side of her temple, as if physically knocking the answer out of her brain. It was a completely unconscious, rhythmic habit.

Three times in five minutes.

Apparently, that was enough for my brain to notice. I realized, my eyes tracking the silver flash of the pen. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it.

A few seconds later, her screen flashed green—the code had finally compiled successfully. The stress vanished from her face, and she let out a quiet laugh, giving her partner a small, triumphant high-five.

It was the same effortless smile from the first day. The same calm expression. For a brief, stupid moment, I found myself watching the way the harsh lab lights caught the silver pen in her hand.

“Ethan! Bring your lab journal up for checking!” the professor shouted from the front desk, his voice echoing off the concrete walls.

My heart leaped into my throat. Crap. How long had I been watching?

I immediately looked away, grabbing my rough notebook with trembling hands. I walked up to the front, got my signature, and forcefully tried to push the moment out of my head.

And for a while, I forgot about it again. Or at least, I tried to.

Days bled into weeks. Major assignments arrived in massive, overwhelming waves. Practical files multiplied on my desk at home, waiting to be written. Our attendance sheets became a looming problem we’d have to solve later. Life continued its relentless forward march.

Through it all, the girl remained exactly what she had been from the very beginning of the semester: a stranger. Someone in a different orbit. Nothing more.

She’s just a classmate. Knowing her name doesn’t mean I know her.

At least, that was the logical lie I kept telling myself to keep from feeling foolish. But the strange part—the part I couldn’t explain—was that every morning, before I even realized I was doing it, my eyes searched for that silver pen by the window.

And every day, they found it a little faster.