*Mirei's perspective*
Mirei had been dreading Thursday.
Three days of wandering around campus like a ghost, sitting alone in dining halls where conversations flowed around her in languages she understood but couldn't join, attending classes where professors called on students by name—names they'd learned over months of familiarity—while she remained "the new transfer student in the back row."
Three days of catching glimpses of Haruki across quads and in hallways, always with *her*. Always with Noa, whose laugh she could now recognize from fifty feet away, whose hand seemed permanently intertwined with what used to be hers to hold.
Not that she'd ever held it. That was the problem, wasn't it? All those moments she'd been too scared to reach for what was right in front of her, and now someone else was brave enough to claim it.
*Philosophy of Human Connection* felt like cosmic punishment. Of all the classes she could have accidentally enrolled in, it had to be the one where Haruki sat comfortably beside the girl he was falling in love with, where every discussion topic seemed designed to highlight exactly how badly she'd misunderstood everything about relationships.
She arrived five minutes early and chose a seat three rows behind them, close enough to observe but far enough away to maintain the illusion of dignity. Watching them together was like pressing on a bruise—painful but somehow necessary, confirmation that her worst fears were true.
They had the ease of people who'd figured out how to be happy together. Small touches, shared glances, the kind of wordless communication that developed between people who paid attention to each other. Everything she'd been too frightened to build with him when she'd had the chance.
"Good morning," Professor Akizuki said, settling into her chair with her usual cup of tea. "Today I want to explore the concept of missed opportunities. Not just in terms of timing, but in terms of readiness. The idea that sometimes we encounter exactly what we need, but we're not prepared to recognize it or act on it."
*Of course,* Mirei thought bitterly. *Of course that's today's topic.*
"Can anyone think of an example from their own life?" Professor Akizuki asked. "A moment when you realized that what you thought you didn't want was actually exactly what you needed?"
Several students shared stories about career changes, unexpected friendships, chances taken despite fear. Mirei listened with half her attention, the other half focused on the way Haruki's shoulders relaxed when Noa leaned closer to whisper something in his ear.
"What about romantic relationships?" Professor Akizuki continued. "How often do we reject what's good for us because it doesn't match our preconceptions about what love should look like?"
A girl near the front raised her hand. "I think sometimes we're so focused on the fantasy of how a relationship should start that we miss the reality of how good relationships actually develop. Like, we're waiting for fireworks when what we really need is steady warmth."
"Steady warmth," Professor Akizuki repeated thoughtfully. "Can you elaborate on that?"
"Just... someone who shows up consistently. Who pays attention to your problems without trying to fix them. Who makes space for you to be yourself, even when yourself isn't particularly impressive."
Mirei felt something twist in her chest. That was exactly what Haruki had offered her—steady warmth, consistent presence, the kind of love that built slowly over time instead of burning bright and fast. And she'd been so busy waiting for something that felt more like the movies that she'd completely missed the real thing happening right in front of her.
"Mirei," Professor Akizuki said gently, and Mirei realized she'd been asked a question while lost in her spiraling thoughts.
"I'm sorry, I was—" She felt heat creep up her neck as twenty pairs of eyes turned toward her. "Could you repeat the question?"
"I asked what you thought about the relationship between fear and missed opportunities. Whether being afraid of the wrong choice can lead us to miss the right one."
The question hit like a physical blow, so perfectly targeted that Mirei wondered if Professor Akizuki had been reading her mind. She could feel Haruki's attention on her now too, probably wondering if she was going to have a breakdown in the middle of class.
"I think," she said carefully, "that sometimes fear makes us passive. Like, we're so afraid of making the wrong choice that we don't make any choice at all. And then we tell ourselves that not choosing was safer, but really..." Her voice caught slightly. "Really it was just the worst choice of all."
The classroom was very quiet. Professor Akizuki nodded encouragingly.
"Because not choosing is still a choice," Mirei continued, the words coming faster now, like water through a broken dam. "It's choosing to let other people make the important decisions for you. It's choosing safety over possibility, and then wondering why you feel so empty."
She could see Haruki in her peripheral vision, his expression careful and sad. Could see Noa watching her with something that might have been sympathy if it weren't coming from the person who now had everything Mirei had been too afraid to claim.
"And then," Mirei heard herself saying, "you realize what you've lost, and you try to go back and fix it, but it's too late because the other person has moved on. They've found someone who was brave enough to choose them when you weren't."
The silence that followed felt enormous. Mirei realized she'd basically just confessed her entire emotional situation to a room full of strangers, laid out her regrets and poor choices like evidence in a trial where she was both defendant and prosecutor.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly, gathering her things with shaking hands. "I need to—I'm going to step out for a moment."
She fled the classroom before Professor Akizuki could respond, before she could see Haruki's face, before the sympathy and awkwardness and secondhand embarrassment could settle over the room like fog.
---
The hallway felt too bright, too open. Mirei found herself in the women's bathroom on the second floor, sitting in a stall with her head in her hands, trying to breathe through the panic that was rising in her chest like flood water.
*You just humiliated yourself in front of twenty people,* her inner critic informed her helpfully. *Including Haruki and the girl he's chosen over you. Including a professor who probably thinks you need serious psychological intervention.*
*You transferred schools to chase after someone who doesn't want you, and then you had a breakdown in his philosophy class. This is not normal behavior. This is not the behavior of someone who has her life together.*
Her phone buzzed with a text from her mother: *How are classes going, sweetheart? Making friends?*
Mirei stared at the message, trying to imagine how to answer honestly. *Classes are fine if you don't count the one where I accidentally enrolled with my ex-best-friend and his new girlfriend and then had a public meltdown about missed opportunities. Haven't made any friends yet, mostly because I'm still obsessing over the friendship I destroyed four months ago.*
Instead, she typed back: *Still settling in. Early days.*
*Take your time, honey. Big changes are always hard at first.*
If only her mother knew exactly how big the changes were, exactly how hard Mirei was making them for herself.
She was still sitting there when she heard the bathroom door open.
"Mirei?" Professor Akizuki's voice was gentle, careful. "Are you alright?"
*No,* Mirei thought. *I'm very much not alright, and I'm pretty sure everyone in your class just figured that out.*
"I'm fine," she said through the stall door. "Just needed a minute. I'll be back to class in a moment."
"Class is over, dear. It has been for ten minutes."
*Oh.* Mirei had completely lost track of time, lost in her spiral of self-recrimination. "I'm sorry for disrupting your lesson. I don't usually... that's not normally how I handle difficult topics."
"Would you like to talk? Not as professor and student, but just... person to person?"
There was something in Professor Akizuki's tone that reminded Mirei of her high school counselor, the woman who'd helped her through her parents' divorce and her anxiety about college applications. Calm, patient, genuinely interested in understanding rather than judging.
Mirei emerged from the stall, catching sight of herself in the mirror. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her hair disheveled from running her hands through it. She looked exactly like someone who was falling apart in slow motion.
"I transferred here for him," she said without preamble, because there didn't seem to be any point in pretending otherwise. "Haruki. I transferred here because I thought maybe I could fix what I'd broken between us."
Professor Akizuki leaned against the counter, unhurried and unshocked. "And what had you broken?"
"His trust. His friendship. His..." Mirei paused, trying to find words for something she was only beginning to understand. "He told me he had feelings for me, and instead of being honest about how I felt, I panicked. I avoided him. I let our entire friend group fall apart because I was too scared to have one difficult conversation."
"What were you scared of?"
"Everything." The word came out as a whisper. "I was scared that if I said yes and it didn't work out, I'd lose him completely. I was scared that if I said no, I'd lose him anyway. I was scared that I wasn't ready for that kind of relationship, but also scared that if I waited until I was ready, he'd have moved on."
"So you chose paralysis over risk."
"I chose paralysis over everything." Mirei splashed cold water on her face, as if that might wash away the last four months of poor decisions. "And you know what the really pathetic part is? I didn't even realize I had feelings for him until after he transferred. I spent four months missing him and convincing myself it was just nostalgia for our friendship, when really..."
"When really?"
"When really I'd been in love with him for years and too afraid to admit it to myself, let alone to him."
Professor Akizuki was quiet for a moment, letting this confession settle between them.
"Mirei," she said gently, "what made you think transferring here would fix things?"
"I don't know. Desperation? The hope that if I could just see him again, talk to him face to face, maybe I could make him understand that I'd figured it out. That I was ready now." Mirei laughed, but it sounded hollow. "Turns out 'ready' doesn't matter much when someone else has already claimed the space you were too scared to occupy."
"And how does it feel, seeing him with Noa?"
The question was asked so matter-of-factly that Mirei found herself answering honestly instead of deflecting.
"Like watching someone else live the life I could have had if I'd been braver. Like seeing exactly what I gave up when I chose fear over honesty." She met Professor Akizuki's eyes in the mirror. "It hurts. But it's also... instructive, I guess. I can see how happy he is with her, how natural they are together. I can see what it looks like when two people are brave enough to build something real."
"That must be very difficult to witness."
"It is. But it's also helping me understand that this isn't really about him anymore. It's about me figuring out why I'm so afraid of wanting things, why I'd rather stay safe and lonely than risk being vulnerable."
Professor Akizuki nodded approvingly. "That's a very mature insight."
"Great. I'm mature enough to recognize my own emotional dysfunction but apparently not mature enough to do anything about it." Mirei dried her hands with more force than necessary. "I should probably drop your class. Save everyone the awkwardness of having to pretend this didn't happen."
"Is that what you want to do?"
"I want to transfer back to my old school and pretend none of this ever happened. But since I can't do that, avoiding the places where I might run into him seems like the next best option."
"Or," Professor Akizuki said thoughtfully, "you could stay and learn something."
"Learn what? How to make everyone in a classroom uncomfortable with my personal drama?"
"Learn how to be present with difficult emotions instead of running from them. Learn how to process disappointment and rejection without letting them define your worth. Learn how to build relationships based on honesty instead of fear."
Professor Akizuki's voice was still gentle, but there was steel underneath it now. "Mirei, you made some mistakes with Haruki. You let fear guide your choices, and you hurt both of you in the process. But transferring schools to avoid those feelings, or dropping classes to avoid difficult situations—that's just fear making your decisions again."
The words hit like cold water, shocking in their accuracy.
"What would you suggest instead?"
"Stay. Do the work. Learn how to tolerate the discomfort of being around someone you care about who doesn't return your feelings. Learn how to be genuinely happy for their happiness, even when it doesn't include you."
"That sounds incredibly painful."
"It will be. But it will also teach you things about yourself that you can't learn any other way. And Mirei?" Professor Akizuki's voice softened again. "There's someone out there who will be grateful that you learned how to be brave. Someone who will benefit from all the emotional work you're doing now, even if it feels pointless."
Mirei considered this, weighing the appeal of running away again against the terrifying possibility of staying and growing.
"What if I can't handle it? What if seeing them together every week just makes me more bitter and resentful?"
"Then you'll learn what those feelings are trying to teach you, and you'll practice letting them go. That's how emotional maturity works—not avoiding difficult feelings, but learning how to move through them without letting them control your behavior."
For the first time in days, Mirei felt something other than despair. Not hope, exactly, but maybe the possibility of hope somewhere down the line.
"Okay," she said quietly. "I'll stay. I'll try to learn whatever this situation is supposed to teach me."
"Good. And Mirei? Consider talking to someone. A counselor, a therapist. You've been carrying a lot of emotional weight alone, and there's no shame in getting professional support."
"I've been thinking about that too."
"Think harder. Make the appointment."
They emerged from the bathroom together, and Professor Akizuki walked Mirei partway back to her dorm, their conversation shifting to practical matters—campus resources, study groups, ways to build connections that didn't depend on her complicated history with Haruki.
By the time they parted ways, Mirei felt steadier, more anchored. Still sad, still lonely, still facing months of watching someone else have what she'd lost. But no longer drowning in those feelings.
She had work to do—on herself, on her patterns, on learning how to want things without letting fear make her choices for her.
It wouldn't be easy. But maybe, for the first time in her life, she was ready to choose difficult growth over comfortable stagnation.
Maybe it wasn't too late to become someone worth choosing, even if that someone would be chosen by someone else entirely.
---
*End of Chapter 11*