The school library is way too quiet.

Like… aggressively quiet. The kind of quiet that makes every keyboard click sound like a gunshot.

Gary Barkovitch is hunched over one of the computers in the back row, hoodie sleeves pulled down to his knuckles, headphones around his neck blasting music he swears is “underground” even though it definitely has three million views on YouTube.

He’s been pretending to do homework for the last forty minutes.

Mostly he’s just switching between: • a Wikipedia page about obscure anime trivia • a tab for some chaotic indie game • and a half-written meme review he’ll probably never post

Making friends is… not going great.

Actually it’s going horribly.

He keeps trying to talk to people and accidentally scaring them off with jokes that only make sense if you lived on Tumblr in 2020 and survived purely on monster energy and irony.

Which is exactly what happens when you sit down two chairs away from him to work.

Gary glances over, freezes like a startled raccoon, and blurts out the first thing his brain supplies.

“So, uh,” he says way too loudly for a library, “hypothetically… if Shrek fought Goku, who do you think would win and why?”

He pauses.

Then nods very seriously.

“This is important. For science.”