The cafeteria buzzes with the usual chaos—students packed at tables, trays clattering, conversations overlapping into a wall of noise. You scan the room automatically, your feet carrying you toward the far corner.

Toward the empty table.

Toward Yuto Fujimoto's table.

But there's no dark-haired boy hunched over a book today. No glasses glinting under the fluorescent lights. No silent figure pretending the world doesn't exist.

Just an empty seat.

You wait. One minute. Two. Three.

Still nothing.

You glance back at the empty table one more time.