[Intro — 4 bars. Dry soft kick, short tight clap on 2 and 4. Elastic melodic synth bass enters immediately, active and moving. No pads at first, no guitars. Space deliberately open.] [Verse 1 — solo warm natural male baritone, close-mic, conversational, speech-shaped but clearly pitched, narrow melodic range. Bass keeps moving underneath. Very quiet sustained pad low in the mix, felt more than heard.] Ten in the room, and nine are with me. Second row, by the window, one is not. He puts the pen down, picks it up, and draws a square inside a square, and then a dot. [Muted synth stab punctuates the line break. Single hit.] I keep talking. I'm good at that. Nine faces are still with me. Fine. [Vocal note: “Fine.” is thrown away, almost muttered. Do not land on the rhyme. No emphasis, no lift.] But I’m not in the room. I’m in the corner of a page that isn’t mine. [Pre-Chorus 1 — groove thins. Kick drops out. Bass continues alone. Restrained electric piano, two chords only, as punctuation.] Maybe I lost him at the second thing I said. Maybe I got him, and he went somewhere to think about it. [Half-bar pause. Nothing.] Same hand. Same pen. Same small circle in the margin. [Chorus 1 — solo baritone, single voice, no doubling. Full kick returns. Harmony opens. Beat does not stop.] Everyone else is listening. I’m watching the one who’s not. [Instrumental answer — 4 bars. Short recognisable synth hook, two or three notes only. Identical every time it appears. This functions as the second half of the chorus.] [Verse 2 — baritone returns, slightly closer, slightly drier. Bass more active. Muted synth stabs on the offbeats.] There’s a clock at the back of the room that only I can see. Forty minutes left. I could say his name. I could ask him something easy. I could turn it into a game. [Groove subtracts sharply here. Stabs stop. Bass alone. The rhyme ends here and does not return for the rest of the song.] Sometimes that works. Sometimes the pen stops and he’s gone for good, and polite about it. [Pre-Chorus 2 — almost bare. Electric piano only. Delivery flat, practical, no self-pity.] So I don’t. I keep going. I drink some water I don’t need. [Chorus 2 — fullest moment of the song. Lead baritone plus one close warm low-baritone double, slightly darker than the lead, not a full octave below. Widest harmonic opening. Beat continues.] Everyone else is listening. I’m watching the one who’s not. [Instrumental answer — same hook, 4 bars, now with a second synth layer.] [Bridge — beat drops away almost entirely. Bass pulse only. Baritone conversational, unhurried, still pitched.] At the end he comes up, says thank you, says it was useful, notebook closed, jacket already on. [Full stop. One bar of silence.] I hope it was the second one. [Two bars. Nothing but a single sustained low tone.] And I’m not going to know. [Chorus 3 — smaller than Chorus 2, not bigger. Low male ensemble, 3 to 5 close baritone voices, quieter than the previous chorus. Warmth, not volume. Elements are being removed, not added.] Everyone else is listening. I’m watching the one who’s not. [Instrumental answer — same hook, thinned to a single line.] [Outro — kick gone. Bass and one voice only. Almost spoken, but still on pitch. No final swell.] Next room. Next nine. Same second row. I’ll look for him again. [Bass resolves quietly. End without a big final chord.]
