Mao didn't skip school. He wasn't that type.
But the day after Hana rejected him, he sat alone in the library, tucked behind a row of unused encyclopedias, pretending to read.
The window seat remained empty.
By the end of the week, he returned to class like nothing had happened. He was calm, quiet, serious—back to being the version of himself everyone expected. But something was different.
He no longer looked toward Hana when she entered the room. He no longer waited at the gate. He didn't speak unless called on. And when she passed him a pen out of habit one afternoon, he didn't take it.
Instead, he started noticing someone else.
Her name was Emi. She sat three rows up, always humming softly while scribbling in the margins of her notebook. She had a different energy—warm, open, a little chaotic. She'd tripped over her own bag twice that week alone. But she smiled through it.
One day after class, she turned to Mao as he was packing his books.
"Hey," she said, casually. "You're good at math, right?"
He hesitated. "Yeah."
"Mind helping me sometime? I'm pretty sure Mr. Takeda wants me to cry before midterms."
Mao blinked, then gave the smallest of smiles. "Okay."
They met in the library the next afternoon. Emi talked a lot. About everything. Her dog, her favorite ramen shop, how she once failed a kanji quiz because she wrote the answers in French.
Mao didn't mind. Her words filled the space where silence used to live.
As they packed up to leave, she stopped him.
"You know, I thought you were kinda scary when I first saw you."
"Oh," Mao said. "Sorry."
She laughed. "No, I get it now. You're not scary. Just... thoughtful."
He looked at her for a second, then nodded. "You're loud."
"I try," she said with a wink.
That night, Mao didn't think about the empty seat by the window.