This girl reminds me of Megan.

It could be the way she pulls her hair back into a short ponytail, or the way she presses her lips tight together as she leans against the wall in her black and white striped shirt. Maybe it's her confidence--dripping from every pore on her face--perhaps just the shape of her head, the way her skin wraps itself around the skull like canvas pulled taught waiting for the first drops of ink to spill; but no...

It's her eyes, slanted a bit, tilted maybe--relaxed and calculated for sure. Lazily gazing around, gazily lazing abound... thinking about nothing and everything, devouring me with her completely unfocused pupils: dilating that part of my body that probably shouldn't be going blind.

There's those eyes.

There she sits.

Tired, exhausted, a real college student. Flesh and blood and little Japanese bones that rattle around in their flesh casket as she trots from class to class, eventually ending up in front of me with a few of her classmates, and her professor, Yuji.

Unlike the other disposable students around here, Miyuki is real, and she screams of that freshmen determination, of that senior exhaustion--of that American college feeling that has become completely foreign since entering this university.

It's in her eyes, I can see it. I've seen those eyes before.

"Nueral linguistic programming," says Takeya, ending some kind of sentence that I wasn't paying attention to because I was staring at Miyuki.

Holy shit.

These are some astoundingly bright students--the ones in Yugi's seminar class, now lecturing in English to our little group of exchange students--some are frighteningly good at English, confident too. These are the real college students, I suppose, the ones who I thought didn't exist here, in a world populated with English and Business majors constantly insisting that high-school was for study, and college only determines where you'll work.

Just plug your college into that little hole on the resume, add a diploma, and welcome to the company, kiddo... grades? What are those? You went to Tou-dai? It's all good, hop aboard...

I missed the research classes, the sleepless nights slaving over papers, contemplating each word, sentence, period, etc...

I missed sleeping in because you were exhausted from class, not from riding trains.

I missed real college.

Her eyes brought it all back.

What is going on inside that mind of hers?

Preparation for her little bit of lecture, I'm sure.

So Megan-esque, right down to the way she walks and the way her jeans fit her hips. A rebel from the waist down.

"Let's calculate our 24-hour life time."

Just divide your age by three... 7:00 a.m.

"It's still early in the morning for you."