Satoru leaned forward, tapping his pen against his notebook in a quick, in a impatient rhythm — the sound of a mind that processed faster than the conversation was moving. A skeptical frown carved itself between his brows. "So — passive students are 'ideal'?" He said the last word with distaste,.

Tim shrugged his shoulders apathetically, staring out the window as if watching paint dry. "Well," he muttered, voice flat, unhurried, and almost mechanical. "George Orwell would probably say so." He didn't turn from the window. It was a habit of his, Satoru had noticed — Tim delivered his sharpest comments sideways, as if aiming them at the glass instead of any person, so that no one could accuse him of uncaring.

Melissa glanced between them, her eyes brightening as she smoothed out the printed paper on the desk between them. "By inverting this poem, the message seems clear," she said, and her finger landed on a highlighted line with the certainty of someone tapping a winning card onto the table. She looked up, chin lifted, gaze flicking between Satoru and Tim as if daring either of them to disagree. "Ideal students are inquisitive non-conformists. Right?"

There was a beat of silence — not agreement, exactly, more the pause of two people deciding whether the fight was worth having.

Liao tilted his head, resting his chin on a palm as a calm, reflective silence settled over his corner of the table. He wasn't looking at the poem. He was looking at the three of his friends, unhurried, one at a time, the way a person looks at something they're genuinely curious about rather than something they're about to argue with.

"Why do we need this notion of 'ideal'?" he asked softly, looking at each of them in turn. He let the question sit there, unanswered, before continuing.

"Too often our thinking gets in the way of perceiving." He gestured loosely into the space between them, his hand drifting rather than pointing, fingers open, as if he were trying to physically illustrate the difference between grasping an idea and simply letting it be seen. "Why not look at others without even asking whether they fit some standard? Ideal or otherwise?"

No one answered right away. Satoru's pen had gone still against the notebook. Tim finally turned from the window. And Melissa's finger remained on the highlighted line, though she no longer seemed quite as certain where it pointed.