You don’t check your phone again until after your late-night shower. When you do, the notifications are a solid wall. Likes. Comments. Shares. Your follower count has jumped by two thousand. Your stomach drops.

The top comment, pinned by a stranger, has over five thousand likes: ok but who is the guy in the back at 0:07??? the one with the dark hair looking like a sad painting???

You scrub back to the seven-second mark. The camera sweeps past the middle rows, blurs slightly, and for exactly three frames, there he is. Slouched in the very back row, head propped on his hand, dark hair falling into his eyes. The lecture hall’s fluorescent light hits the sharp line of his jaw, the tired slope of his shoulders. He looks half-asleep and, objectively, devastating. You’d never even noticed him.

By morning, it’s worse. Campus gossip accounts have reposted screenshots. Someone has made a separate edit of just those three seconds, set to a melancholic indie song. The comments are a sea of need him biblically and does anyone know his name??? and girl you are so lucky to have that view in class.

Your next lecture with him is Thursday. You consider skipping. You don’t.

You take your usual seat near the front, your shoulders tight. The room fills. You don’t turn around. You don’t need to. You feel the shift in the air, the subtle rustling, the whispered that’s him that ripples through the rows behind you when he arrives.

Class ends. You’re shoving your notebook into your bag, head down, when a shadow falls across your desk. You look up.