And he wondered to himself: "There's always been something fascinating about diagonal lines to me. In trigonometry, the hypotenuse was the most direct route. It was longer than either side, yet somehow the shortest path that mattered. He liked that contradiction. It suggested that the most important line wasn’t always the one drawn vertically or horizontally, but through an angle no one questioned until they were forced to calculate it."

Tugging on those itching collars of those poorly fitted uniform, he gazed longingly around him, hoping to catch a glance of any smile of his classmates. He felt like a beggar, craving for any warmth in the cold. Alas, everyone is staring down on their books and tablets.

"Maybe I'll have more luck with the diagonals."

But the more his eyes wandered around, the more his chest tightened. He was not used to feel anything beyond the superficial and it hurts. He does not want to feel but yet he does. It was inconvenience. Suddenly, efficiency felt crude.

It was a mistake gazing towards the diagonal.

He pulled himself back but only in posture. The rest of him spilled forward trying to reach out beyond the dark. A flicker of guilt followed, just the small, private guilt of wanting something without permission, and of enjoying the wanting more than he had any right to.

One could only hope that he does not take the wrong path by traveling the long way.