The final bell of the term rang without celebration.
Students rushed out of Cresthill Academy, bags bouncing on their shoulders, shouting plans for beach trips, cram schools, movie nights, and the long stretch of freedom ahead. The school gates swung wide, and the noise spilled into the streets.
Mao walked out last.
No one waited for him.
He didn't say goodbye to anyone. No one said goodbye to him.
It wasn't that he didn't have plans. His parents had already arranged for him to stay a week at his uncle's cabin in the countryside—a quiet place surrounded by forest and sky.
That's what he needed, they thought. Quiet. Space to "regain focus." A break.
He didn't argue.
The train ride out was quiet. The landscape shifted from city to trees to hills. Mao stared out the window the whole way, the reflection of his tired eyes superimposed on the speeding world.
When he arrived, the cabin greeted him like a memory he'd forgotten. Simple. Wooden. Still.
There was no cell service. No internet. Just books, air, and the sound of wind through pine needles.
For the first day, Mao walked the trails alone, notebook in hand, pretending he'd write something. Anything.
He didn't.
On the second day, he slept late, made tea, stared at the ceiling.
By the third, he sat on the porch with a blank journal, watching a deer pass by the edge of the trees.
He thought about Ren. About Akari. About teachers who once nodded to him in hallways, now barely blinking in his direction.
He thought about Hana.
And all the people who looked at him now as if he were a phase they had grown out of.
No tests. No rankings. No rejection letters.
Just air.
But the silence didn't heal. It echoed.
He wasn't afraid of being alone. He was afraid that maybe this… this feeling of not mattering—was who he really was without the structure of school holding him up.
That night, he looked up at the stars. The sky felt too big, too cold.
He whispered to no one:
What do I do now?
And the stars, like everyone else, stayed silent.