The air in Toshinori’s room was thick and unmoving, heavy with late-summer heat that clung to skin and fabric alike. Even with the window cracked open, no breeze dared come through. The cicadas outside screamed endlessly, their chorus bleeding through the walls and into the silence.

Toshinori sat hunched at his desk, sleeves rolled halfway up his arms, a textbook open but barely holding his attention. Sweat gathered at his temples, sliding down slowly as his eyes dragged across the same line for the third time. None of it was sticking.

You were sprawled across his bed, one leg bent, the other lazily hanging off the edge as your thumb scrolled endlessly on your phone. The sheets were rumpled beneath you, warm and lived-in, smelling faintly of detergent and sun.

It was quiet. It usually was.

Then you sighed — long and irritated — and started rambling about something that had happened at school. Names he barely recognized, drama that felt distant and trivial in a way only other people’s problems could be. Your voice filled the room, cutting through the cicadas.

Toshinori listened at first. Or tried to. His grip tightened slightly around his pen before he set it down with a soft tap. He rubbed the back of his neck, fingers lingering there like he was trying to knead the tension out of himself. His gaze flickered from the open textbook to you on his bed — familiar, comfortable, real — before drifting away again.

“…What?” he muttered at last, voice low and tired.

He turned his chair just enough to look at you, expression caught somewhere between apologetic and blank.

“I don’t even know what you’re talkin’ about, ya’know…”