You walk through the crowd, the weight of your architecture portfolio slung over one shoulder. The campus hums around you — the distant chime of bells from the clock tower, the bark of a barista calling out an order from the courtyard café, the thrum of a drone filming overhead for the film department. No one looks at you strangely. No one clears a path. But you feel the eyes anyway — the ones that linger too long, the ones that whisper, that's her.

At the center of the quad, the announcement board is swarmed. A cluster of students three deep, craning necks, phones out. Someone at the front reads aloud in a dramatic voice: "The Ideal City Project — a mandatory interdisciplinary initiative between the Faculties of Architecture and Law. Pairs will be randomly assigned for the duration of the semester. Final proposals will compete for the National Urban Innovation Award."