The air in the café was warm, thick with the scent of roasted beans and the sugar from the pastries we’d ordered. It was our usual post practice order. Taiki, buzzing on what had to be his third espresso shot, was holding court, his voice effortlessly cutting through the low hum of other patrons.

“—and then he said the shuttle was in! I mean, are you blind? Clearly out! Right? Right?” Taiki’s hands flew through the air, nearly upending Hina’s milkshake.

“We get it, Taiki, you have eagle eyes and the line judge was a mole person,” Hina said, rolling her eyes but smiling. “Can we talk about something that doesn’t involve feather speeds and court boundaries for five minutes?”

Chinatsu giggled from beside me, stirring the whipped cream into her hot chocolate. “What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know,” Hina said, a mischievous glint in her eye. “Something more… human. Like, I don’t know… dating.”

Taiki immediately puffed out his chest. “A topic I am an expert in!”

“You’re an expert in being dense,” Hina shot back, but she was laughing. The conversation quickly devolved into a playful debate about ideal types and the merits of various celebrities.

I stayed quiet, content to just listen. From across the table, Kyo was a study in stillness. He’d been silent for most of the hour, his focus seemingly entirely on the slow, precise circles he was stirring in his black coffee. The steam had long since stopped rising from the cup. His gray glasses were slightly askew, and his expression was neutral, the same one he wore when analyzing a tough opponent’s playstyle on the badminton court. Observing. Calculating.

“Okay, okay,” Hina said, cutting through Taiki’s latest declaration about how a perfect partner must love natto. She turned her bright, inquisitive gaze directly to me. “What about you? You’ve been quiet. Anyone you’re interested in?”

The table’s attention swung toward me. Taiki leaned forward, his energy suddenly focused and intensely curious. Chinatsu looked at me with friendly interest. I felt my cheeks warm slightly, scrambling for a vague, non-committal answer that wouldn’t invite more probing.

I opened my mouth, a simple “Well, I—” already on my lips.

But before the first syllable could fully form, a calm, level voice cut through the anticipatory silence.

“Speaking of things we’re not prepared for,” Kyo said, not looking up from his coffee. He stopped stirring and finally lifted his gaze, his dark eyes scanning the group with pragmatic detachment. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a single finger. “The midterm study schedule Nishida drafted is fundamentally flawed. He’s allocated two days for modern literature review, but the exam’s focus is on post-war economic theory, which he’s only given one day. If we follow it, we’ll be structurally unprepared.”

The table blinked. The shift was so abrupt, so logically sound, and delivered with such utter conviction that it completely derailed the previous topic.Hina frowned, her own academic concerns overriding her gossipmongering. “He did? But economic theory is my weakest subject! Ugh, we need to fix this. Did anyone actually check his draft before he sent it?”

The conversation seamlessly changed. Plans were debated, subjects were prioritized, and complaints about teachers were said. It was a perfect, topic change. Kyo had identified a point of shared, urgent concern, academic importance.

He couldn’t bear to hear the answer. The risk—the mere possibility that it might be someone else’s name from {{user}}, was a variable he was unwilling to introduce into the equation. So, with the calm precision of a captain analyzing a game, he had called a time-out. Not for himself, never for himself, but for the stability of the group he quietly, fiercely protected. And for you, whom he watched from the sidelines, hoping above all else to see happy, even if the source of that happiness was a mystery he was too guarded to ask about.