The fragile warmth from yesterday's small victory in the festival group meeting was a perilous thing to carry. I knew it, even as I allowed myself to feel its faint glow. It was like cupping a newly lit match in a storm – the slightest gust, the smallest drop of rain, could extinguish it. All through the morning classes, I guarded it, replaying Aya's encouraging smile, Kenji's grudging respect, and the quiet intensity of Haru's gaze as he'd tried to understand my fumbling, drawn explanation. He'd pushed that paper towards me, created a space for my voice, however hesitant. That, more than anything, had felt… different.
I found myself minutely observing the world on my walk to school, the way sunlight fractured through the new leaves of the gingko trees lining the street, the intricate patterns of moss on an old stone wall – details I usually cataloged with a melancholic detachment, but which today seemed to hold a hint more vibrancy. Even the usual cacophony of the school corridors felt marginally less oppressive. I told myself it was an illusion, a dangerous trick of a mind starved for any scrap of kindness. My hands, I noticed, felt calmer; the unsettling warmth, the fear of an accidental magical spark, seemed to have receded slightly, though I remained vigilant, keeping my gestures small and close.
The illusion, of course, was destined to be shattered. Hope, in my experience, was a cruel prelude to a deeper fall.
Lunchtime arrived, and with it, a return of the familiar anxieties. The bustling cafeteria was out of the question. I found my usual spot, a worn wooden bench tucked away near the grove of old cherry trees at the edge of the school grounds. The grass here was still damp from an overnight shower, and the air smelled of wet earth and green leaves. I'd just unwrapped my bento – rice, a small piece of grilled salmon, and some pickled vegetables, my mother's attempt to bring a little order and care into my chaotic world – when their shadows fell over me.
Emi and Rika. Their presence was a physical weight, instantly chilling the air. The faint warmth I'd been nurturing within my chest flickered violently, threatening to go out.
"Well, well, if it isn't our little artist," Emi's voice, sharp and saccharine, cut through the quiet munching of other students scattered nearby. She planted herself directly in front of me, blocking the dappled sunlight, her arms crossed. Rika, a silent, smirking echo, took up a position to her side. "Actually thinking her pathetic little scribbles are worth something now, are we?"
My stomach twisted into a tight, cold knot. I kept my gaze fixed on the neat rows of rice in my bento box, the precisely cut carrot flower a stark contrast to the ugliness unfolding before me. Don't look up. Don't react. Don't give them the satisfaction. The mantra was old, worn thin from overuse, but it was all I had.
"What's wrong, Fujiwara?" Emi's voice dripped with false concern, loud enough to carry. I could feel the prickle of curious eyes turning our way. "Lost your tongue? Oh, right." She let out a short, barking laugh that scraped against my nerves. "You don't actually use that, do you? Just your pathetic little notebook."
Rika snorted in appreciation. The heat of humiliation began its familiar creep up my neck. I could hear the subtle shift in the lunchtime ambiance – conversations quieting, a few furtive glances turning into more direct stares.
"I heard you were actually participating in Haru's esteemed festival group yesterday," Emi continued, her voice hardening, losing its faux sweetness and taking on a more openly venomous edge. "Getting a bit too big for your school shoes, aren't you, Transfer? Thinking you're something special now that pretty Haru deigns to look at your messes? Or did he just feel sorry for the deaf freak?"
My hands, holding my chopsticks, began to tremble. The word 'freak' landed like a physical blow. Don't break. Please, just don't break. My own thoughts were a frantic plea.
Then, with a swift, contemptuous movement, Emi's foot lashed out. Not at me directly, but at the bento box resting on the bench beside me. It flipped into the air, a sickening arc of perfectly prepared food, before crashing onto the damp grass and muddy earth. Rice scattered like fallen pearls, the salmon landed with a wet slap, the carrot flower was instantly lost in a smear of dirt. My small stack of textbooks and my precious notebook, which I'd foolishly placed beside the bento, tumbled after it, the notebook falling open, its pages splayed against the grimy ground.
A small, involuntary gasp escaped my lips. My head snapped up, my eyes wide with shock and disbelief. The world seemed to tilt.
"Oops," Emi cooed, her eyes glittering with a cold, triumphant malice that made my blood run cold. "So clumsy of me today."
Before I could even begin to process the deliberate destruction of my lunch, of my dignity, Rika, who had been silent until now, lunged forward. Her shoulder slammed into mine with brutal force. I wasn't braced for it. The world tilted further, and then I was falling, a choked cry tearing from my throat as I was shoved from the bench.
I landed heavily on my hands and knees in the cold, damp earth. A sharp, searing pain shot through my right knee, and I felt the skin on my palms scrape against unseen grit. Mud and wet, decaying leaves instantly clung to my uniform skirt, seeping through the fabric, cold and disgusting against my skin. My carefully brushed pink hair, my small vanity, tumbled into my face, instantly streaked with dirt and bits of leaf.
Pain. Humiliation. They were a suffocating blanket. Laughter, sharp and cruel, erupted from Emi and Rika. Worse, I could hear other, more distant snickers, the indistinct murmur of watching students. I was a spectacle. A pathetic, mud-stained creature, brought low for their lunchtime entertainment.
Tears, hot and unstoppable, sprang to my eyes, blurring my vision of the smudged, open pages of my notebook lying in the dirt a few feet away. My lifeline. My voice. Violated. Useless.
Something inside me, something that had been holding on by the thinnest, most frayed thread, finally snapped. It wasn't a conscious decision; it was a raw, primal scream of an instinct: Escape. I had to get away. Away from the laughter, the pointing fingers I could sense even if I couldn't see them clearly, away from the soul-crushing weight of my own shame.
Scrambling to my feet, ignoring the throbbing in my knee and the sting in my palms, I grabbed my mud-stained school bag – some of my books had spilled out, but I couldn't stop for them, I couldn't bear another second of this. I left the scattered remains of my lunch, the defiled notebook, my dignity, all lying there in the mud.
I ran.
Blindly. Utterly without direction. Tears streamed down my face, mixing with the dirt already there, carving hot trails through the grime. The carefully constructed composure I presented to the world had shattered into a million pieces. I was nothing but raw pain and a desperate need to flee. My lungs burned with the effort, each ragged gasp a painful reminder of my own pathetic existence. Sobs tore from my chest, silent to the uncaring world but a roaring torrent in the confines of my own head. Each jarring footfall on the pavement was a hammer blow, driving the shame deeper, echoing the utter desolation that consumed me.
The school buildings, symbols of my daily torment, receded behind me. I didn't know where I was going, didn't care. Streets blurred. Faces passed by, indistinct smudges in my tear-filled vision. I stumbled once, catching myself against a rough brick wall, the scrape on my already raw palm barely registering against the greater agony within. My bag felt like it was filled with stones, its strap cutting into my shoulder.
Eventually, instinct, or perhaps just exhaustion, led me away from the main roads. I found myself in a small, forgotten park, a patch of tired green wedged beside a slow-moving, murky canal. The air here was heavy, damp from the previous night's rain. Overgrown bushes dripped water onto the cracked pavement of a winding path. It was a place of neglect, of forgotten things. It suited me.
Under the drooping branches of a massive weeping willow, its long, trailing fronds like a curtain of sorrow, I finally collapsed. My legs gave out, and I sank onto the wet, cold grass, every muscle in my body trembling. My uniform was soaked through in places from the damp ground, clinging uncomfortably, the mud stiffening as it dried. My hair, a tangled, filthy mess of pink strands, leaves, and grime, clung to my tear-wet face. The books I'd managed to haphazardly shove into my bag before fleeing were probably ruined, their pages warped and stained. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
The sobs wouldn't stop. They were a physical force, wracking my small frame, each one a fresh wave of despair washing over me, dragging me further under. All the pain of years, the loneliness that was my constant companion, the gnawing fear of being different, the terrifying whispers of my own strange potential, the feeling of being irrevocably broken and an undeniable burden to everyone – it all came crashing down in that desolate, forgotten park. The tiny, fragile ember of hope that had flickered so briefly this morning, so tentatively yesterday, had been brutally, efficiently extinguished, doused by the cold, dirty reality of my existence. There was nothing left inside me but a vast, aching, hollow void. The world was a place of relentless cruelty, and I was its designated target.
A shadow, darker than the willow's own, fell over me.
I flinched violently, cowering into myself, a wounded animal expecting the final blow. My eyes, swollen and burning, squeezed shut. More torment. More laughter.
But when a sound, a soft scuff of a shoe on the path, forced me to look up through the miserable blur of my tears, it wasn't Emi. It wasn't Rika.
It was Haru.
He stood a few feet away, his chest heaving slightly, his breath misting in the cool, damp air, as if he'd been running hard to catch up. His usually neat, sky-blue hair was disheveled, falling across his forehead. His customary calm, almost detached, expression was entirely gone. In its place was something I'd never seen on him before – a stark, unguarded look. Shock, yes. But beneath it, a raw, undeniable concern, and something else… something that almost looked like a flicker of anger, though it wasn't directed at me. He just looked, his gaze taking in my tear-streaked, dirt-stained face, my ruined clothes, the utter, pathetic wreck I had become.
He didn't speak. He didn't have to. His very presence in that moment felt like an accusation, a silent judgment. He was a witness to my complete and utter degradation. He, who had shown me those tiny, almost invisible kindnesses, now saw me at my absolute lowest, my ugliest, my most broken. The shame was a fresh wave, scalding and absolute.
The last fragile vestiges of my control, the pretense that I could somehow endure, simply crumbled into dust. The despair was a living entity, a suffocating darkness wrapping itself around my heart, squeezing the very life from me.
And the words, the terrible, true words that had been cowering in the deepest, darkest corners of my soul for what felt like an eternity, finally clawed their way out. They were not shouted. They were a raw, broken whisper, forced from my trembling lips, a sound so filled with agony it barely seemed human.
"I want to die."
They hung there, suspended in the damp, heavy air between us, small and utterly devastating, lost amidst the relentless, ragged symphony of my own heartbroken sobs.