The classroom buzzed with the low murmur of early morning chatter - pages flipping, chairs scraping, someone's half-hearted cough echoing near the back. But it all felt like background noise to me. Distant. Fuzzy. Like I was hearing it from underwater.
I sat slumped over my desk, my notebook open in front of me, though I couldn't recall writing a single word. My eyes tracked the page without really seeing it. The same line about Kant or Rousseau or whoever blurred over and over, but none of it landed. My head felt full but empty. Like there was a fog I couldn't claw my way through.
Last night hadn't ended with sleep. It ended with me lying awake, staring at the ceiling, listening to my own heartbeat rattle in my chest like a warning.
From a few rows away, I noticed Sae looking at me. Not just a glance. She studied me like she was trying to solve a puzzle I didn't remember agreeing to be. She leaned over and whispered something to Tanaka, who looked up quickly.
I dropped my gaze before I could see what kind of expression he wore.
Footsteps. Then Tanaka slid into the seat beside me, his voice quiet, careful.
"You okay? You look like you didn't sleep."
I shrugged. My voice felt thick, unused. "Just tired."
Sae joined us a moment later, arms crossed, her presence sharp but never cruel.
"More than tired, I think," she said. "What's going on?"
I hated how my throat tightened when she asked. I wanted to brush it off, to lie better. But something inside me caved. Just a little.
"Stuff from home," I muttered.
It wasn't untrue. But it was only the surface.
Neither of them pushed. And somehow that made it worse. The silence they offered was filled with more care than any question could be.
Professor Yamane's voice started in the background, dry and slow, like always. I forced myself to lift my pen. Scribble something. Fake productivity. The letters I wrote barely formed into legible words.
Tanaka leaned in slightly. "If you ever wanna talk... I'm here."
I glanced at him. Not long. Just enough to catch the flicker of sincerity in his eyes before I looked away.
"It's complicated," I said.
"Sometimes it helps just to say it out loud," Sae offered. "You don't have to carry everything by yourself."
I swallowed hard. That lump was back. The one that always caught just before I said anything real.
"I don't want to drag anyone down."
"Not dragging," Sae said firmly. "We're friends. That's what friends do."
Friends.
It felt like a foreign word in my mouth, even when someone else said it.
Tanaka gave me a soft smile. "Yeah. We've all got our battles."
The bell finally rang. Most students moved with purpose, eager to shed the weight of philosophy class. I moved slower. Sae and Tanaka waited for me by the door.
When I stood, something loosened inside me - barely, but enough to make my voice work again.
"Thanks," I said, quieter than I meant to.
Tanaka nodded. "Anytime."
Sae gave me that same small smile I'd started to recognize - not polite, not pitying. Real. "You're not alone."
We walked out into the hallway, the afternoon sun painting the corridor in warm streaks of gold and shadow. They stayed beside me, one on each side, and I realized for the first time in a while -
I didn't feel entirely hollow.
Sae glanced sideways at me as we walked. "You don't have to explain anything. But... the way you looked earlier - it wasn't just exhaustion."
I sighed, my breath catching. "It's my parents. Something happened. I don't know what to think."
Tanaka nodded slowly. "Family stuff's never easy. But you don't have to deal with it on your own."
I laughed quietly. It came out dry, like sandpaper. "I'm used to handling things on my own."
"That's the thing," Sae said, her voice gentle but solid. "You don't have to anymore."
And for reasons I couldn't explain, I followed them.
We ended up at a café near campus - small, tucked away from the usual student haunts. Inside, it was warm and smelled like cinnamon and coffee beans. We ordered. Sae got a hot chocolate. Tanaka and I both went for black coffee, though I barely tasted mine.
We sat in a booth by the window, and the conversation drifted slowly from school to books to... us.
I talked more than I expected. About the pressure. The silence at home. The way everything I did was never enough but also too much. I didn't say everything. But I said more than I'd said to anyone in years.
Sae told us about the quiet war she fought with her parents - expectations versus dreams. Tanaka admitted he wasn't sure if university was a path he wanted or one that just looked good on paper.
We were three people sitting in a café, sharing invisible weight like passing cups across the table.
When I stepped out into the cool evening air, something had shifted.
Hope, maybe.
Not the naive kind. But the kind that whispered maybe I didn't have to keep building walls just to survive.
Maybe strength isn't about standing alone -it's about knowing when to let someone in.