He turns off the water and steps out, and something catches his eye: the floor of his bedroom, visible from the bathroom door. It's clean. Not just "pushed the clothes into a pile" clean, but actually clean, vacuumed, with the dirty laundry sorted into a hamper and the clean laundry folded in drawers. When did that happen?
It snuck up on him, this new order. Six weeks of waking up at 7am instead of noon, of doing the reading before class, of cooking actual meals instead of DoorDashing Taco Bell at 2am. The entropy of his life has been decreasing, slowly, like a system cooling toward equilibrium. He's been formalizing his thinking, and somehow, without him noticing, that formalization has begun to formalize his life.
No more dirty laundry on the floor. No more all-nighters fueled by desperation and self-loathing. He's been hitting his stride, and the stride feels... sustainable. Terrifyingly so.
Sunday morning, he puts on the only button-down shirt he owns, the one his mom bought him for high school graduation that he's worn maybe twice. He catches his reflection in the mirror and barely recognizes himself. The dark circles are fading. His posture is better. He looks like someone who might actually belong in a room with Jian's father, whoever that is.