The Communication and Media professor was on his fourth slide and had not changed his tone once.

The projector hummed softly overhead.

Someone two rows behind Kaito kept clicking a pen in uneven bursts.

Near the windows, a girl with dyed brown hair rested her cheek against her hand and stared outside with the expression of somebody waiting for death or lunch, whichever arrived first.

Kaito had written the date at the top of his notebook.

Nothing under it.

Beside him, Daiki leaned sideways across the armrest until his shoulder bumped lightly against Kaito’s.

His uniform shirt was half untucked already and his dark hair looked like he had run a hand through it fifteen times since morning.

"Is this," he whispered, "the whole class."

Kaito looked toward the front again.

The professor continued reading bullet points directly from the projector in the same steady voice he had used since class started.

"Looks like."

Daiki sat back with visible disappointment and tapped his pen twice against the notebook balanced on his knee.

On the screen, a perfume advertisement from 1974 filled the wall.

A man in a suit leaned against a sports car while a woman stretched herself across the hood beside him in a silver dress that looked painted onto her body.

Daiki stared at it for a few seconds.

"That’s a weird angle."

Kaito looked up properly this time.

She was half hanging off the hood with one arm folded underneath herself awkwardly, her back arched so hard it looked actively difficult to maintain.

"...Her spine is going through something."

Daiki snorted loudly enough that two people in front of them glanced back.

The professor did not react.

"That’s the point," Riku said from Kaito’s right.

He sat slightly slouched in his chair with a paperback open across one knee, black hair falling near his eyes and one earbud still in.

He still had not looked directly at the screen once.

"You’re not supposed to think about whether she’s comfortable."

Daiki frowned at the advertisement again.

"I wasn’t."

A pause.

"Now I am."

Riku turned a page calmly.

"The discomfort keeps your attention on the body longer."

Daiki stared at him.

"You say things in the creepiest possible way."

"I’m correct."

"You can be correct less intensely."

The professor clicked to the next slide.

A woman stood in a spotless white kitchen holding a bottle of dish soap against her chest with both hands.

Bright smile. White dress.

Sunlight coming through the window behind her in perfect gold streaks.

Nobody in the room looked convinced by her happiness.

Daiki stared at the slide for a while.

"Nah," he said eventually. "That one’s worse."

Kaito glanced sideways at him.

"Why."

Daiki gestured vaguely toward the projector.

"Because at least the car ad knows it’s horny."

The girl near the windows laughed once into her sleeve before catching herself.

Riku finally glanced up at the screen.

"Domestic aspiration," he said.

Daiki pointed at him immediately.

"Stop saying things like a supervillain."

"It sells identity instead of attraction." Riku looked back down at his book. "Different demographic. Same structure."

Daiki looked back at the projector.

The woman smiled at the dish soap with complete emotional commitment. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Head tilted slightly. Eyes soft.

Fingers wrapped carefully around the bottle like she had just reunited with it after years apart.

He looked disturbed.

"Nobody has ever felt that way about soap."

"Probably not," Kaito said.

Riku turned another page.

"That’s why the image exists."

A quiet pause settled between the three of them.

The pen behind them kept clicking.

Somebody near the back yawned loudly without apology.

Kaito looked at the slide again.

Somebody had adjusted every part of that image carefully. The lighting. The smile. The angle of her shoulders.

Somebody behind the camera had probably kept asking for a brighter expression until the smile stopped belonging to her and started belonging to the advertisement instead.

The professor moved to the next slide without pause.

Same voice.

Same pace.

Same complete absence of human investment.

Daiki lowered his head and wrote something in his notebook.

Kaito glanced sideways.

I am boreddd :(

Underlined twice.

Kaito looked back down at his own notebook.

The date sat alone at the top of the page.

Under it he wrote:

Communication and Media

Then stopped again.

.

The cafeteria was loud and warm after the cold corridor outside.

Heat sat heavy in the air along with the smell of fried food, rice, soup stock, coffee, too many people packed into one room between classes.

Conversations overlapped from every direction.

Chairs scraped against the floor.

Somebody near the drink machines laughed loud enough to turn heads briefly before the room swallowed the sound again.

Kaito joined the queue and picked up a tray.

Rice.

Miso.

Grilled fish.

Pickles.

The usual.

Ahead of him, Daiki had somehow moved three places forward in line without technically breaking any rules visible enough for people to challenge him on.

He stood near the counter already talking to one of the cafeteria workers like they were old friends despite definitely not being old friends.

Nobody seemed particularly bothered by it.

He had a friendly face.

Kaito looked past the crowd toward the window tables.

Ayame was already there.

Her coat hung over the back of her chair and one sleeve nearly touched the floor.

She sat with one leg crossed over the other beneath the table, dark hair clipped loosely behind one ear while she worked through her lunch.

Beside her sat Mei.

Straight-backed.

Quiet.

Her tray was arranged neatly in front of her, chopsticks still inside the paper wrapper while she stared down at the food with the expression of someone mentally preparing for the social obligation of eating around other humans.

Kaito reached the table first.

Daiki arrived immediately after and dropped into the chair beside Ayame with enough force to rattle the cups slightly.

Riku set his tray down at the end seat without making a sound and sat beside him, book already open again before he even fully settled.

Kaito sat across from Mei and started eating.

Ayame checked the time on her phone.

Then set it face down beside her tray.

"Took you long enough."

Daiki pointed past Kaito dramatically.

"There was a poster. I got distracted by it."

Ayame did not look.

"I saw it this morning."

"It had good design."

"It was advertising tutoring services, Daiki."