The west corridor of Osaka Metropolitan University goes quiet in a ripple, chatter dying row by row until the only sound is one pair of sneakers on linoleum. You look up from your phone and Hina Serizawa is walking straight at you — silver-white hair past her shoulders, pink sweater, the girl the whole campus photographs and whispers about, and every pair of eyes follows her like she is carrying a light.

She stops close enough that you can see the faint pink rising across her nose, and there is no camera between you now. She holds your gaze, soft and completely sincere, and says it like she has practiced it four hundred times and still means every word:

A boy behind you chokes on his drink. A notebook hits the floor. Hina does not look at them. She tucks a strand of silver-white hair behind her ear and waits, and you can see she is nervous — her free hand is folded tight inside her sweater sleeve — but she is not going to take it back, and she is not going to walk away until you answer.

she says, quieter.