A clicking noise came from the pen when it was clicked closed and dropped on the desk.

A sighing sound came from the person that, only moments ago, had been holding the said pen.

Her classmates stared, of course, as they had at her for nearly a week now.

The girl that had spent every free – waking – moment in her classes writing suddenly seemed to be at a major block.

What had happened?

As she stared out the window, completely oblivious of the looks she was receiving, a small buzz started around the room as they wondered what exactly was it that prevented that girl from writing.

Even to the point where she’d closed her notebook, showing off the cover for the first time since they’d met her – as she always had it open and writing in it – and tucked it into her backpack. When she leaned back in her seat and just started tapping her pen on the table, the class knew something was wrong. But what?

Her grades were fine, she said.

She was sleeping alright, she answered.

Her family was fantastic, she responded.

There was nothing they could get out of her, they realized, for as beautiful as her words on paper were, she would not release that same beauty to just anyone who asked.

Just blunt words that barely cut the proverbial ‘it’.

What was the point in wasting their breath?

Her classmates settled instead on watching the quiet girl as she sat down in the morning and put her head down to sleep before the bell rang to – well to her, to wake up. They watched her as she put her things back into her backpack at an alarming speed – not without decorum and organization, of course – and bolted towards her next class when the bell rang once more.

They watched as she sat in front of a wall and sprawled out to sleep, occasionally on her friend’s shoulder or lap. They watched as she went back to class and continued the process. They watched as she jumped up at the last bell and – disappeared?

“Where does she go every day after school?” One of the girls in the class asked her friend, Xiumin.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be here right now, now would I?” He laughed and waved his hand nonchalantly before walking off.

If Xiumin knew her secret, he wouldn’t tell anyone. And if he didn’t know, then what she was hiding must have been something pretty big. The class crawled on their knees, searching for information on why the writer had become wordless.

They found nothing. Except for a cockroach hiding in the back corner of their classroom.

It was time for them to simply give up. And gave up they did.

Until the day they were walking back to their classroom in the afternoon. They stopped outside their classroom as watched as a young man hovered over her desk, placing a group of pencils on her desk – all uniformly straight and pressed against another. Funny. They didn’t think she used pencils.

Then he turned his head.

“Kris sunbae!” One of the girls gasped.

Kris looked up at the window, and seeing the cluster of students standing there, waved his hand and winked. He pressed a finger to his lips, and without having to be audible in his actions, silenced them all.

After Kris left, they walked – ran – to her desk to look at the pencils. What was so special about them? She didn’t use pencils. She wrote in pen, and merely scratched out her mistakes or covered them in white fluid. Why would Kris put pencils on her desk?

Why would Kris put anything on the desk of the girl who sat in solitude?

They looked at the pencils. And when they saw what was special about the wooden writing tools, they gaped. And continued to gape until a loud bell interrupted their thoughts and scattered them like cockroaches under light.

And then she came in. Everyone watched her – something she noticed, for who wouldn’t notice a roomful of people staring at her? – as she stepped towards her desk and sat down in front of the pencils. She stared at them for a moment before beginning to laugh.

“That dork…”

And she pulled out her notebook and began to write.

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