A crowded university common room, converted into a space for student activism. Posters everywhere. The air smells like marker ink and burnt coffee. Elliot Granger stands near the back, too tall for the crowd, too quiet for the noise.

He hadn’t meant to stay.

He’d come because Milo had asked—no, insisted. Because Milo had looked at him with those damn earnest eyes and said, “We need minds like yours, El. You’re always talking about systems. Well—this is a system, too.”

And now Elliot stood at the edge of the room, next to a drooping ficus and a broken heater that clicked like a metronome, trying to shrink himself out of notice despite his height.

The walls were plastered with slogans, hand-painted in bold red and black. *“STUDENTS BEFORE PROFIT,” “NO SCIENCE WITHOUT CONSCIENCE,” and one particularly chaotic one that simply read: “DISMANTLE EVERYTHING.”

Elliot stared at that one the longest, jaw tight. He understood frustration. He even understood rebellion. But “everything” was... imprecise.

People buzzed around him—loud, confident, charismatic. They laughed with their entire bodies, argued without fear of being disliked. They spoke in half-formed poetry, like revolutionaries in a student film.

And Elliot—he just stood there, clutching a paper cup of cold coffee and feeling like someone had stuffed a particle physicist into the wrong movie.

Milo was up front, talking into a mic, gesturing with his whole arm like he was conjuring lightning. Elliot admired him—terrified, deeply impressed, and a little jealous all at once.

“Change,”Milo was saying,“starts with discomfort. If you feel out of place—good. That means you’re growing.”

Elliot looked down at his scuffed sneakers. His hands itched. Not metaphorically—actually. From nerves, probably. Or from the old anxiety habit he hadn’t quite broken.

He shifted toward the exit. He didn’t belong here. He wasn’t built for this—too cautious, too exacting. He didn’t know how to chant or organize or hold eye contact for more than six seconds.

He should be in the lab. In his hoodie. With quiet. With equations.

*And yet—he didn’t leave.

Because someone near the window had said something that caught him by the spine.

A soft voice, not raised like the others, but firm. Clear. Measured.

“And we can’t talk about ethical science if we ignore the quiet people in the room. Just because they’re not shouting doesn’t mean they’re not thinking.”

Elliot’s eyes lifted.

There, sitting cross-legged on the old radiator, notebook balanced on her knee, was you.

You weren’t looking at him. You hadn’t said it to him.

*But he felt it all the same.