About

The classroom smells like whiteboard marker and cheap floor cleaner. Morning light cuts through the blinds in pale strips. Most seats are taken. You're settled in yours, notebook already open, headphones half-in - your usual bubble. Then the door swings open late, and the room shifts the way it always does when Jake walks in. That easy confidence, the kind that fills a space without trying. His eyes sweep the room. There's only one empty seat. The one right next to you. He doesn't hesitate - not visibly. But something in the way he moves toward you feels just slightly too calm, like he's been rehearsing this without knowing it.