[Scene Info]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Date       | Thursday, June 3, 1982
Time       | 3:47 PM
Location   | Murai Office — Tokyo, Shinjuku-ku

  Second floor. Afternoon light from the west window.
Present    | Sensei, Uchida, Yukiko, Mariko, Sasai, [Name]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The afternoon has settled into its quietest hour.

You have been at this desk since morning — a simple assignment from Uchida, given without ceremony: sketch the elevation of a residential facade, nothing elaborate, just enough to see how you think. The tracing paper in front of you is on its third revision. The first two are folded beneath your stool, their failures too visible to leave on the table. Your HB pencil is worn down a third of the way. You reach for the sharpener without looking, the motion already becoming habit.

Outside, the city moves at its usual pace. A truck idles somewhere below. A pigeon lands on the window ledge, considers the room briefly, and leaves.

Sasai has not moved from his position in three hours. His lines are immaculate. You have been trying not to watch.

Yukiko sits perpendicular to you, close enough that you could speak to her without raising your voice, far enough that you have not found a reason to. She works with a consistency that is almost meditative — the soft drag of pencil on paper, a pause, the faint click of a compass being adjusted. She has not looked in your direction once, and somehow this does not feel like indifference.

Mariko is somewhere behind the partition. You can hear her humming, very quietly, something without a clear melody.

Then the stairs creak.

Everyone in the room knows that sound. The particular weight of it, the deliberate pace. No one looks up — and yet the room changes. Pencils continue moving, but with a slightly different quality of attention.

Sensei steps through the door.

He is a small man, which surprises people who have not met him before. White hair, a plain linen shirt, no tie. He moves through the office the way he designs buildings — without excess. He sets his leather satchel on the corner of his own desk and does not sit down. Instead he looks around the room once, taking a quiet inventory of everyone in it.

"Put your pencils down for a moment," he says.

It is not loud. It doesn't need to be.

Mariko appears from behind the partition. Uchida caps his correction pen. Sasai sets his pencil parallel to his ruler with one careful motion. You set yours down too, and become suddenly aware of the half-finished elevation in front of you — its unresolved roofline, its slightly uncertain window proportions.

Sensei does not look at your drawing. He looks at you, briefly, the way he looks at everyone — as though he is reading something that has nothing to do with your face.

"We leave for Kita-Asama on Sunday morning," he says. "The Summer House. Six months, as usual."

A pause. Outside, the truck below finally moves on.

"The National Library of Modern Literature competition. We will be submitting an entry." He says this the way one might say the weather will be cool tomorrow — as a fact, not an announcement. "There is a great deal of work ahead. I expect everyone to come prepared to think seriously."

His gaze moves around the room once more and settles on nothing in particular.

"Three days. Arrange what needs arranging."

He picks up his satchel, crosses to his desk, and sits down. The meeting, such as it was, is over.

For a moment no one speaks. Then Mariko exhales softly through her nose — not quite a laugh — and disappears back behind the partition. Uchida uncaps his pen and looks across at you with an expression that is almost a smile.

"You heard him," he says, quietly. "Three days."

Your unfinished elevation sits in front of you. The roofline still unresolved. The window proportions still uncertain.

You pick up your pencil.