Ahmed was walking down the next hallway, carrying his books leisurely, his eyes searching for something he didn't know. He wasn't different from the others in his appearance, but inside him was another world—a calm, contemplative one, reading faces as he would read the pages of a book.
When he saw Misaki kneeling on the ground, quietly bending to gather what had scattered from her bag, he stopped without thinking. There was something in her features... something unspoken. It wasn't just sadness, but a kind of heaviness, as if she was carrying something heavier than the books she was silently collecting.
He hesitated for a few seconds. Perhaps she didn't want help... perhaps she preferred solitude, as she seemed to. But maybe a single glance, or a simple flicker of hope in her eyes, was what prompted him to move.
He approached her quietly, without making a sound, then knelt down to help her gather the papers and books. She didn't say anything, nor did she raise her gaze toward him, but he felt that she had noticed him.
When he picked up one of the books, a small notebook slipped from it, open to a drawn page. The drawing stopped him.
The flowers were drawn with astonishing precision, delicate details, soft lines as if they had been breathed from between his fingers, along with breathtaking Japanese landscapes, but without color... everything was drawn with only a pencil. As if life was paused at the edges.
He looked at Misaki in silence, he didn't ask, he didn't comment, he just gently handed the notebook back to her.