Haruki woke to the sound of Noa's alarm going off at 6:30 AM—a gentle chime that filtered through the wall like a whispered secret. He lay still for a moment, listening to the soft sounds of her morning routine: footsteps padding across the floor, the creak of a desk chair, the rustle of pages turning.
*She's an early riser,* he noted, filing the observation away with all the other small details he was unconsciously collecting about his next-door neighbor.
His own alarm wasn't set until seven, but sleep felt impossible now. Instead, he found himself lying in the pre-dawn darkness, acutely aware of her presence just beyond the thin wall. It should have felt intrusive, this accidental intimacy of shared morning sounds. Instead, it felt oddly comforting—like having company without the pressure of conversation.
When his alarm finally went off, he could hear that she was already gone. The silence from her room felt different now that he knew what her presence sounded like—emptier, more pointed. Like a held breath waiting to be released.
---
Professor Akizuki's classroom felt different on Thursday morning. The same plants lined the windowsills, the same mismatched chairs formed their loose circle, but the energy was more focused somehow, as if the students had spent the intervening days thinking about the space between their words and their meanings.
Haruki arrived five minutes early and found his usual seat near the back, close enough to hear clearly but far enough away to observe without feeling exposed. He pulled out his notebook—the same one where he'd written all those too-honest words after the storm—and tried not to think about whether Noa would show up.
She walked in just as Professor Akizuki was closing the classroom door, her hair still slightly damp from what must have been a rushed shower. Their eyes met briefly as she scanned for an open seat, and something passed between them—not quite acknowledgment, not quite avoidance, but something more complicated than either.
The only empty chair was directly across from him.
Noa hesitated for just a moment, then claimed the seat with the same quiet confidence she brought to everything else. She didn't look at him again as she unpacked her things, but Haruki could sense her awareness of him like a low hum in the air between them.
"Good morning," Professor Akizuki said, settling into her chair with a cup of tea that steamed gently in the morning light. "I'm curious—how did everyone find the assignment? What did you notice about the words you don't say?"
The classroom fell into the particular kind of silence that comes when a group of people are all trying to decide whether they're brave enough to speak first. Outside, campus was coming alive with the sounds of another ordinary Thursday—footsteps on pavement, bicycle bells, the distant hum of early morning traffic.
"I noticed," said a girl near the front, "that I say 'I'm fine' a lot when I'm actually not fine at all."
Professor Akizuki nodded encouragingly. "And what do you think you're protecting when you say that?"
"Other people's comfort, maybe? Like, if I tell them I'm struggling, then they have to deal with my problems too."
"So you're choosing their comfort over your own honesty."
"I guess so. Yeah."
A student in the middle row raised his hand tentatively. "I realized I never tell my parents when I'm proud of something I've accomplished. Like, I'll share my problems, but not my successes."
"Why do you think that is?"
"Because..." He paused, considering. "Because problems feel safe to share? Like, if I tell them I'm struggling, they'll want to help. But if I tell them I'm doing well, they might expect me to keep doing well all the time."
Professor Akizuki leaned forward slightly, the way she did when someone was approaching something important. "So success feels more vulnerable than failure?"
"Yeah. Exactly."
Haruki found himself thinking about his conversation with Noa in the library, about the things he'd told her that he hadn't planned to say. About how sharing his failure—the ruined friendship, the painful transfer—had felt safer than admitting that maybe, possibly, he was starting to hope for something new.
"What about you, Haruki?" Professor Akizuki's voice cut gently through his thoughts. "What did you notice?"
He felt the attention of the room shift to him, and his first instinct was to deflect with something safe and generic. *I noticed that I say 'maybe later' when I mean 'probably never.'* Something true but not too true.
Instead, he found himself looking across the circle at Noa, who was watching him with those sharp eyes that seemed to see every deflection before he made it.
"I noticed," he said slowly, "that I'm more afraid of being understood than I am of being misunderstood."
The words surprised him as soon as he said them, but they felt true in a way that made his chest tight.
Professor Akizuki tilted her head. "Can you elaborate on that?"
"When people misunderstand me, I can tell myself it's their fault. They didn't listen carefully enough, or they made assumptions, or whatever." Haruki's hands were fidgeting with his pen, but he forced himself to continue. "But if someone really understands me and then decides they don't want me around... that's not about miscommunication. That's about who I actually am."
The classroom was very quiet now. Even the sounds from outside seemed muffled, as if the world had leaned in to listen.
"So silence becomes a form of protection," Professor Akizuki observed.
"Yeah. You can't be rejected for who you are if nobody knows who you are."
"And how's that working for you?"
Haruki laughed, but it came out hollow. "Terribly. But it feels safer than the alternative."
---
Professor Akizuki let the silence settle for a moment before speaking again. "Noa, you've been quiet today. Any observations to share?"
Haruki watched as Noa's composure wavered almost imperceptibly—a slight tightening around her eyes, a pause just long enough to notice.
"I noticed that I ask a lot of questions but don't answer very many," she said finally.
"Meaning?"
"Meaning it's easier to make other people vulnerable than to be vulnerable yourself." Noa's gaze flicked briefly to Haruki, then back to Professor Akizuki. "I can learn about someone, understand them, even help them—but all from a safe distance. Like being a therapist who never has to be a patient."
"What are you afraid of revealing?"
Noa was quiet for so long that Haruki thought she might not answer. When she finally spoke, her voice was carefully controlled.
"That I'm not as self-sufficient as I pretend to be. That underneath all the analysis and observation and keeping people at arm's length, I'm just..." She paused, searching for words. "I'm just someone who wants to be chosen. But I'm terrified that if people really knew me, they'd choose someone else instead."
The honesty of it hit Haruki like a physical blow. Here was Noa—sharp, confident, seemingly untouchable Noa—admitting to the same fear that had driven him to transfer schools and build walls around himself.
"So you choose them first," Professor Akizuki said gently. "You decide they're not worth the risk before they can decide the same about you."
"Something like that."
Professor Akizuki nodded slowly, then looked around the circle. "What's interesting is how many of you are describing the same fear in different words. The fear of being truly seen and found wanting. Of having your worth measured against who you really are instead of who you pretend to be."
She stood up and moved to the whiteboard, where she wrote in her careful script: *The paradox of connection: We have to risk being known in order to be loved, but being known always carries the possibility of being rejected.*
"Your assignment for next week," she said, turning back to face them, "is to practice being seen. Not all at once—that would be overwhelming for anyone. But in small ways. Answer a question honestly instead of deflecting. Share something real instead of something safe. Notice how it feels to be truly present in a conversation instead of performing a version of yourself."
Students began gathering their things as the class period wound down, but the energy in the room remained thoughtful, introspective. Haruki packed his notebook slowly, hyperaware of Noa doing the same across the circle.
They ended up walking out of the building together, though neither had explicitly suggested it. The morning had warmed considerably, and campus was fully alive now—students hurrying between classes, professors walking with coffee and armloads of papers, the groundskeeping crew tending to flower beds that were just beginning to show signs of spring.
"That was intense," Noa said as they reached the main walkway.
"Yeah." Haruki adjusted his bag strap, unsure how to navigate this new territory. "What you said in there—about wanting to be chosen—"
"Was probably too honest for a classroom setting," Noa interrupted, but without her usual sharpness.
"No, I was going to say it was brave."
She glanced at him sideways. "Brave or stupid?"
"Can't it be both?"
That earned him a small smile—the real one, not the careful version she wore for protection. "Apparently everything can be both with you."
They'd reached another fork in the walkway. Noa had mentioned something about spending mornings in the psychology lab; Haruki's next class was in the opposite direction.
"Noa?" he said as she started to turn away.
"Yeah?"
"What you said about being afraid that people would choose someone else—you know that's not a reflection of your worth, right? Sometimes people just... aren't ready. Or they're scared. Or they're too caught up in their own stuff to see what's right in front of them."
Noa studied his face for a long moment. "Are we still talking about me, or are we talking about your friend from your previous school?"
"Maybe both."
"Maybe," she agreed. Then, more quietly: "Haruki? What you said about being afraid of being understood—I understand that. More than you probably realize."
"Is that why you keep your distance? Because understanding someone means they might understand you back?"
"Probably." She shifted her weight, looking suddenly younger than her twenty years. "But I'm starting to think that keeping my distance from you might be impossible anyway. You're a little hard to ignore when you live three feet away from me."
Haruki felt something warm settle in his chest. "Good to know I'm making an impression."
"You're making something," Noa said, already walking toward the psychology building. "I'm just not sure what yet."
---
Haruki's next class—Modern Japanese Literature with the predictable Professor Tanaka—passed in a blur of discussion about emotional subtext and unspoken yearning in Soseki's work. Ironic, considering the conversation he'd just had about the very same things in real life.
When class ended, he found himself walking back toward the library, drawn by habit and the need for a quiet place to process everything that had happened in the last hour. But as he climbed the stairs to the third floor, he realized he wasn't sure whether to claim the window table or leave it empty.
*You can have the window table on Tuesdays. I'll take Thursdays.*
It was Thursday. Noa's day. But she was in the lab, and the table sat empty, catching the late morning light that streamed through rain-washed windows.
Haruki stood there for a moment, caught between claiming space that wasn't his and walking away from the place where he'd started to feel comfortable being honest.
Finally, he chose a different table—close enough to see the quad, far enough away to respect the boundary they'd established. He opened his notebook to a fresh page and began writing.
*Professor Akizuki asked us to practice being seen. I think I'm starting to understand why that's terrifying—not because people might reject who we really are, but because we might discover that who we really are is someone worth choosing.*
*Noa said she's afraid people would choose someone else. I want to tell her that some of us are still figuring out how to make choices at all. That some of us are so used to running away from connection that we've forgotten how to stay and fight for it.*
*I want to tell her that understanding her doesn't make me want to choose someone else. It makes me want to understand her more.*
He paused, pen hovering over the page, then added:
*Maybe that's what scares me most of all.*
Across the library, students moved quietly through their afternoon routines, lost in books and laptops and the comfortable rhythm of academic life. Normal people doing normal things, probably not wrestling with the paradox of connection or the terror of being truly seen.
Haruki envied them their apparent simplicity. But as he sat there writing his truth in careful characters, he realized he wouldn't trade places with any of them.
For the first time in months, he was interested in his own story again.
And maybe—just maybe—he was starting to believe it might have a different ending than he'd expected.
---
*End of Chapter 4*