By the third day, the rhythm of Forest Sunlight High School had started to feel… less alien. The hallways were still crowded, the chatter still overwhelming, but Arthur no longer felt like an invisible ghost drifting through a foreign world. He had learned the shortest routes between classrooms, where the vending machines were, and which teachers were likely to smile when he nervously bowed.
It was during third period that he noticed her.
The Head of Class, a girl named Miyu Takahashi, was already known for her kindness and organization. She moved through the room with ease, helping classmates with questions, handing out papers with a warm smile, and somehow noticing Arthur sitting quietly near the window.
"Arthur," she said softly as she leaned over his desk, pointing at a confusing line in the textbook. "This part here — do you understand it?"
Arthur shook his head slightly. "Not really…"
She chuckled lightly. "It's okay. Take your time. You'll get it."
Her eyes were gentle, and her presence… warm. For a moment, his chest felt tight, a fluttering he hadn't felt in a long time. Is this… love? he wondered, the thought surprising him. Three days. Three days of school. How could he feel like this already?
He quickly pushed the thought away. Miyu was perfect, and he… he was just Arthur. He had no right to these feelings. Not after Haruka, and not after years of silence and loneliness. So he smiled politely, thanked her, and buried the fluttering warmth deep inside, unsure whether it was love, or simply the first spark of connection he had felt in years.
During lunch, Haruka met him near the school gates, as usual.
"You look… brighter today," she teased, nudging him lightly. "Finally getting used to things?"
Arthur shrugged, trying to hide his lingering embarrassment from Miyu. "A little."
They sat on a quiet bench beneath a ginkgo tree, sharing homemade sandwiches and talking quietly. Haruka laughed at little things — a word he mispronounced, a story she exaggerated from class — and he found himself laughing too, the sound foreign on his own lips but somehow freeing.
"You know this word?" Haruka asked, pointing to a phrase in his notebook.
Arthur shook his head.
"'頑張る' — ganbaru. It means to do your best, even when things are hard. You should try it sometime," she said, smiling.
He wrote it down, savoring the word. Ganbaru. Somehow, it felt like more than a phrase. It felt like a small push, a hand holding him steady in a world that had been too heavy.
The afternoon passed in a blur of classes, homework explanations, and Haruka's quiet giggles beside him. And yet, in the corner of his mind, something tugged at him — fleeting and strange, like a shadow just beyond his vision. A faint prickling along his skin, the sense of awareness that there was more than the school, the rain, the laughter. Something waiting.
Arthur ignored it. Or at least, he tried.
That night, back in his small apartment, he reviewed his notes and practiced Japanese words with Haruka over a call. She laughed at his accent, he teased her about exaggerating pronunciation, and for the first time in a long while, Arthur felt… normal. Warm. Almost happy.
And yet, before he drifted off to sleep, he couldn't shake the faint whisper of that feeling from earlier in the day — the one that made his skin tingle, his heart rate tick slightly faster, as if reality itself had shifted for just a moment.
He didn't understand it. He didn't try.
But somewhere, buried in that quiet, uneventful day, a spark had been lit.
A spark that, in three days' time, would awaken something he could neither see nor control.