Final examinations ended days ago. Two weeks have passed.

Walking across the central plaza, I pass the many curious glances that have now turned quiet. I keep looking straight ahead, not even trying to pretend that I’m not avoiding their rude scrutiny.

The clouds are slow today and the sky is a greyish blue. Rain is coming.

Whispers have ceased. They are no longer audible. I wonder if I’ve grown attached to discrimination or am I merely missing the days when everything was simpler, complicated, but simpler.

My sneakers are wearing out, the cloth sides thinned and the shoe laces a dull grey. But the new pair Mom bought me, I never wear them.

The sheltered walkway looks the same as before, only the scenery lacks a clearer sky and an accompanying laughter. I slow down my steps, gazing across the rows of lights, recalling how they lit up to form a guiding line when we were walking on this same route that evening.

My steps are purposefully slothful. They harbor a false hope, a false hope that if they moved slow enough, that person would be able to catch me.

I push open the gate and it swings with a creak. I took the time to glance back.

Nobody.

“Zelo!”

There’s nobody there.

“Zelo.”

I turn back when a hand touches my back and the disappointment and misery is unable to be hidden as I look into her eyes.

I choose to avoid.

Silently, I open the car door by myself and sit in, hugging my bag to my front as I close the door. Staring at the tree beside the school gate, I pretend she’s not standing outside the car, looking down through the window at my stoic face. She gives up and gets in.

“Zelo-ah, why don’t you sit in the front?”

The clouds are shifting. The dark clouds are chasing the blue skies away.

She sighs softly and the car starts moving. The school gate gets smaller and smaller until I found no purpose to stare at it anymore. She turns on the radio to drown out the stifling silence.

I hold onto the car door, clutching tight at the handle, watching my knuckles turn white.

I want to open the door and jump out, escape. Right now. This instant.

“Zelo-ah, how’s school today?”

She starts a conversation with the same old line I always hear, the same old line I’ll always answer even if it’ll be the same every time, but this time, she knows as well, that there would be no response.

I sink down further into the seat, hugging my bag closer while I stare at the moving edifices outside. They move so quickly, like how a roll of film would go. But everything is silent.

So silent.

The day after I confessed everything to my mother, she took everything away from me.

She confiscated my phone, took away my laptop and we both know it was a way to stop me from communicating with Yongguk Hyung.

She appears at the school gate immediately after school ends, waiting for me and I have to come to her on time. If I don’t, she said she would stop letting me go to school. I am to stay away from Yongguk Hyung, avoid him in school and utter no words about him.

So I keep my mouth shut.

I look at Mr Choi in a different way now. Every time I see him, I get reminded of how he meddled with his student’s affairs by taking it upon his own de