The cafeteria was louder than usual.
Dan noticed it the second he stepped inside, the sound of voices bouncing off the low ceiling in a way that made it hard to focus on any single conversation. Plates clattered somewhere near the serving line, chairs scraped across the floor, and the soda machine in the corner made a constant humming noise that blended into everything else.
He almost turned around.
Not because he didn't want to eat, but because noise like this made it harder to think, and thinking was the only thing that had felt steady lately.
"Too late," Koa said behind him. "You're already here."
Dan glanced back. "I wasn't leaving."
"You stopped walking."
"I was deciding where to sit."
"Sure you were."
They grabbed food without talking much, the usual routine of trays and plastic cups and whatever the cafeteria had decided counted as lunch that day. Dan barely noticed what he picked. His mind was still somewhere between the forum, the classroom, and the hallway where Dr. Matthew had told him he was becoming the wrong kind of smart.
He hated how accurate that felt.
They found a table near the windows, far enough from the center of the room that the noise dropped to something manageable. Koa sat down first, stretching his legs out under the table.
"You look like you got assigned extra homework by life," he said.
Dan set his tray down and sat across from him.
"I'm fine."
"You keep saying that."
"I am."
"You went to the meeting, got roasted by your professor, and now you look like you're about to write a manifesto."
Dan almost smiled, but it faded quickly.
"He didn't roast me."
Koa raised an eyebrow. "He called you the wrong kind of smart."
"He said it was a diagnosis."
"That's worse."
Dan picked up his fork, then set it back down without taking a bite.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Koa watched him for a few seconds, then leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on the table.
"Alright," he said. "Serious question."
Dan looked up.
"Why do you care so much about this stuff?"
The question hit harder than it should have.
Dan frowned slightly. "What stuff."
"All of it," Koa said, gesturing vaguely with his hand. "The office, the meetings, the rules, the system, whatever you wanna call it. Every time something goes wrong around here, you look like it personally offended you."
Dan looked down at the table.
"I don't know."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
Koa shook his head. "No, it's not. You don't get that worked up about something for no reason."
Dan stared at the condensation on the side of his cup, watching a drop of water slide slowly down the plastic.
He could say it didn't matter.
He could say it was just annoying.
He could say he liked politics class and leave it at that.
All of those would be easier.
None of them would be true.
He exhaled slowly.
"…When things don't work the way they're supposed to," he said, "it bothers me."
Koa waited.
"That's it?"
Dan hesitated, then shook his head.
"No."
Koa leaned back slightly, like he knew something real was finally coming.
Dan kept his eyes on the table.
"When I was younger," he said quietly, "my dad used to talk about this stuff a lot."
"Politics?"
"Yeah."
Koa smirked. "That explains a lot already."
Dan ignored that.
"He didn't talk about it like everyone else does," he continued. "Not like it was a joke, or a game, or something dirty. He talked about it like it was… work."
Koa tilted his head. "Work?"
"Like responsibility," Dan said. "Like somebody had to do it right or everything got worse for everyone else."
The noise in the cafeteria faded into the background as he spoke, the memory coming back clearer than he expected.
"He used to say the people in charge don't get to pretend they don't matter," Dan said. "If something goes wrong, it's on them whether they meant for it to happen or not."
Koa watched him carefully now, no jokes, no smirk.
"So you decided that was gonna be you or something?"
Dan let out a short breath.
"I didn't decide anything."
"Then why do you act like every broken rule on this campus is your personal problem?"
Dan didn't answer right away.
Because it feels like someone should care.
The thought came before he could stop it.
He said it out loud before he could talk himself out of it.
"…Because somebody should."
Koa blinked once.
"That's it?"
Dan nodded slightly.
"Yeah."
Koa leaned back in his chair, looking at him like he was trying to figure something out.
"You know most people don't think like that, right?"
"I know."
"Most people see the line at the office and go 'that sucks' and then go home."
"I know."
"You see the line and start analyzing the entire structure of the school."
Dan gave a faint, tired smile.
"I don't do it on purpose."
Koa shook his head slowly.
"You're weird, man."
"I know."
There was a pause.
Then Koa said, "So what, you trying to become like… student body president or something?"
Dan snorted quietly. "No."
"Then what."
Dan hesitated.
He hadn't meant to say anything else.
He really hadn't.
The words sat there anyway, the same ones he always pushed away when they got too close to the surface.
It sounds stupid.
He could hear himself thinking it even now.
Stupid in daylight.Stupid out loud.Stupid in a cafeteria full of people who didn't care.
He looked down at his hands.
"…When I was a kid," he said slowly, "I used to think about being mayor."
Koa stared at him.
"Mayor?"
Dan nodded, still not looking up.
"Of where?"
"…Here."
Koa blinked again.
"You mean Saipan?"
Dan shrugged slightly, suddenly very aware of how ridiculous it sounded.
"It was just a kid thing," he said quickly. "My dad used to say local government mattered the most, because that's where people actually feel it. So I just… thought about it, I guess."
Koa kept staring at him for another second, then leaned back in his chair and let out a quiet laugh.
Not a mean laugh.
More like surprise.
"Man," he said, shaking his head. "You don't do anything halfway, do you?"
Dan felt his face get warm.
"I told you it was stupid."
"No, it's not stupid," Koa said. "It's just… big."
Dan didn't answer.
Koa tapped his fingers on the table, thinking.
"You know what's funny?" he said.
"What."
"You actually act like someone who would do that."
Dan frowned. "Do what."
"Be in charge of something," Koa said. "You're always watching everything like it's your job to make sure it makes sense."
Dan shook his head. "I can't even talk in a meeting without sounding like a textbook."
"Yeah," Koa said. "Right now."
Dan looked up.
Koa shrugged.
"You think people are just born knowing how to do that?" he said. "That guy at the meeting? He probably sucked the first time too."
Dan thought about the forum, the board, the way the room had followed that student without even realizing it.
"…Maybe," he said.
Koa picked up his drink.
"If you really wanna be that guy someday," he said, "you probably gotta keep going to those meetings you hate."
Dan stared at him.
"You make it sound simple."
"It's not simple," Koa said. "It's just obvious."
Dan looked back down at the table.
Mayor.
He hadn't said the word out loud in years.
It felt different now.
Heavier.
Less like a dream.
More like something far away that would take a long time to reach, even if he ever got close.
Koa stood, grabbing his tray.
"You got poli sci again today?"
"Yeah."
"Tell your professor you're planning to run the island one day. See what he says."
Dan almost laughed.
"I'm not telling him that."
"You should. He'd probably just say it's a diagnosis."
Dan shook his head, standing up.
They walked toward the tray return together, the noise of the cafeteria swelling around them again.
As they stepped outside, the air felt cooler than it had before, the late afternoon sun already starting to soften.
Dan paused for a second at the top of the steps, looking out across the campus.
Students walking.People talking.The same buildings.The same problems.The same system that never quite worked the way it should.
Somebody should fix it.
The thought came the same way it always did.
This time, it didn't feel like a complaint.
It felt like a direction.
He adjusted the strap of his bag and started toward the political science building.
He still didn't know how to lead.
He still didn't know how to make people listen.
But for the first time, the idea of learning how didn't feel impossible.
Just far away.
And far away was better than nowhere.
...