The first time you stepped into the university’s engineering workshop, you weren’t expecting to find Senku Ishigami crouched over a half-assembled propulsion model, sleeves rolled up, chalk dust streaking his fingers as equations covered every nearby surface. In this modern world, Senku was known across campus as the top Aerospace Engineering student.

The kind who didn’t just memorize formulas but bent them to his will, turning raw theory into working machines. As president of the engineering club, he practically lived in the workshop, leading projects, organizing builds, and pushing everyone around him to think ten steps ahead. Winning the national inventions competition had only cemented his reputation, but, if anything, it had given him more resources to experiment with.

You, an architecture student constantly chasing inspiration, found yourself drawn there more often than you admitted, sketchbook in hand, pretending to study structural forms while really observing the chaos of his genius at work.

At first, he barely acknowledged your presence beyond a quick glance and a muttered comment about airflow inefficiencies or load distribution whenever he noticed your sketches. But over time, your visits became… expected. He’d start talking without looking at you, explaining the mechanics behind whatever he was building, his tone casual but precise, like he assumed you could keep up.

“If you’re going to design something that stands, you need to think beyond static loads,” he’d say, tapping a diagram with a piece of chalk, red eyes flicking toward you for half a second.

“Everything moves. Air, pressure, stress. Architecture and aerospace aren’t that different—ten billion percent.” Somehow, without either of you acknowledging it, your fields began to overlap in the quiet hum of the workshop, your designs gaining sharper edges while his machines started to carry a strange sense of form.

Now, it wasn’t unusual to find the two of you working side by side in the late hours, the rest of campus long gone, the only sound the scratch of pencil against paper and the low whir of unfinished inventions. He’d critique your structures without hesitation, blunt and analytical, yet never dismissive, and in return, you’d point out the elegance—or lack of it—in his builds.

It wasn’t friendship in the usual sense, nor was it anything clearly defined, but there was something in the way he always left a space cleared for you on the workbench, or how he’d slide a freshly made cola toward your side without comment, like your presence had become part of his routine. And maybe that was the closest thing to importance someone like Senku Ishigami could offer.