He blinked, slowly, the way one might waking from a dream they hadn't realized they were dreaming. The room buzzed faintly around him, filled with laughter and cheerful voices, but they felt muffled now—distant, like echoes from a time he could no longer reach. He hadn't been paying attention. He had simply followed along, moved when they moved, laughed when they laughed, mimicked their rhythm like he always had, quietly and without thought. It had always worked before. But something had shifted. Something subtle, like a loose thread finally tugged free. And now, without warning, it all began to unravel.
The air in the classroom grew thick, heavy with a pressure he couldn't name, and Taejun felt it pressing against his chest like invisible hands. The weight of the room was no longer something he could drift beneath. It pushed down on him now, slowly, insistently. He rose from his seat with a kind of hesitant reluctance, his legs sluggish as though he were walking through water, or through a dream that was just beginning to turn strange. The laughter was still there, but it had changed—tilted at a different angle, lighter on the surface but heavier underneath. It was no longer a melody he could follow. It was something else. Something watching.
He moved toward the front of the classroom, each step deliberate and slow, as if crossing a threshold he hadn't known existed before. It wasn't just that they were watching—he had always known, on some level, that he was different, that he was apart—but this was the first time their eyes truly landed on him. Really saw him. Every gaze prickled against his skin like a dozen invisible pinches, not cruel, not necessarily unkind, but sharp enough to make him aware of his own shape, his own silence. The familiar emptiness that had always wrapped around him like a coat now felt smaller, compressed. The quiet space he once hid within had shrunk. The walls had inched closer, the corners of the room curling inward like folded paper.
He reached the front of the room, and the giggles trailed off, melting into a silence that felt deeper than before, as though the air itself were holding its breath. The laughter didn't seem to be about the game anymore. There was something else beneath it—curiosity, maybe. Or something colder. He couldn't be sure. But whatever it was, it tightened around his chest and made it difficult to breathe.
"Good job, everyone!" Ms. Jang's voice broke through the stillness, cheerful and bright as a bell. She clapped her hands, a gesture meant to shake off the tension. "Now, let's get back to our seats and start our first lesson!"
Chairs scraped softly against the floor as the children returned to their desks, their voices low, their giggles fading to murmurs. Some of them glanced at Taejun as they passed, fleeting and uncertain, like they were unsure whether they were supposed to be looking. He stood there for a moment longer, suspended in that space between being seen and being forgotten, unsure which he preferred. Eventually, he turned and walked back to his desk. His steps were slower now, quieter, the sound of his shoes muffled against the polished floor. The room hadn't changed, but it felt different—tilted, unfamiliar, like he had woken up inside something that had been pretending to be real all along.
He sat down quietly, folding himself back into the shell of stillness he always carried, but it didn't fit quite right anymore. The air around him didn't feel like his own. The warmth, the noise, the shuffle of childhood around him—it closed in now, filled the space he used to keep empty. And though it was suffocating in a way, he didn't try to escape it. Not yet.
The room came alive again with small hands shuffling notebooks, pencils tapping against desks, and children whispering eagerly as they adjusted their uniforms and leaned toward the next thing. Taejun was the last to settle. There was no hurry. His body moved slowly, like a record playing half-speed. Something in the air had thickened, and every motion felt stretched and heavy.
When he finally reached his desk, he eased himself down as though afraid the chair might vanish beneath him. He didn't glance at the others. He didn't need to. The hum of the classroom surrounded him, cheerful and busy, but he remained still—silent as a photograph—his eyes fixed on the smooth grain of his desk, where a sheet of untouched paper waited for him like a question he didn't want to answer.
Ms. Jang turned to the blackboard and picked up a piece of chalk, the soft scrape of it breaking the stillness. The children's voices hushed in a slow ripple as their attention turned to her. She smiled, bright and reassuring, and the room tilted back into something resembling normal.
"Let's start with something simple today," she said warmly. "Let's practice writing our names! I'll go first."
She wrote carefully in large, clean letters: Ms. Jang. Then she turned to face them, her eyes scanning the rows with encouragement.
"Now it's your turn. Write your names, just like I did. Take your time."
The rustle of notebooks and the scratch of pencils soon filled the air. Children leaned over their desks, brows furrowed in concentration or grinning with pride as they traced the letters they knew by heart. There was something comforting about the sound, like rain tapping gently on a roof—repetitive, familiar, safe.
Taejun's pencil hovered over his page, unmoving. His name was already there, small and neat, written earlier with the kind of detached routine that felt like brushing one's teeth or tying a shoe. But now it felt different. Now it felt like a question mark. The paper didn't seem to need anything more from him, and he didn't feel like giving it. He stared at the space just above the first line, letting his thoughts drift until the room blurred around him.
Ms. Jang appeared beside him, crouching down so quietly he hadn't noticed until her voice met his ear.
"Taejun," she said gently, tilting her head. "Would you like some help?"
There was a softness to her voice, a careful warmth that hinted at more than just her usual cheer. Maybe she saw something in his silence that others didn't. Something flickering just below the surface. He met her gaze for a brief second—his eyes wide, distant, unreadable—and shook his head. A small movement. Enough. He didn't need help. Or maybe he did, but not the kind she could offer.
She hesitated for a moment longer, then nodded and stood, returning to the other children with her usual brightness, though a thin line of worry lingered behind her smile. Taejun watched her go, then turned back to his paper. He curled his fingers around the pencil again, but there was no urgency in the gesture. The paper remained blank. The silence around him was no longer empty—it was heavy, purposeful, waiting.
The lesson moved on. Ms. Jang turned back to the board and lifted her voice again, cheerful and melodic. "Now, let's practice counting together!"
Her voice led the rhythm: "One, two, three…"
The class answered in unison, their voices weaving together in a soft, happy wave. Taejun didn't speak. He listened, letting the numbers wash over him like distant music. They were just sounds, separate from meaning, disconnected from the room. When Ms. Jang prompted them to count backward, the children's voices grew louder, joyful in the challenge. Ten, nine, eight, seven... But still, he said nothing. His lips remained still, but the numbers echoed quietly in his mind, as if some small part of him was following even if the rest refused.
He pressed his hand to the desk, feeling the coolness of the wood beneath his skin. The pencil was still there, untouched. Around him, the class buzzed like a hive of sound and color, but he remained unmoved, still at the center of it all.
"Great job, everyone!" Ms. Jang beamed, clapping her hands. "You're all doing so well! Now… let's do something fun. Let's draw!"
She retrieved a small leather-bound book from her desk—its cover worn with age, soft at the edges, the kind of book that looked like it had been loved. The children leaned forward with curiosity, eyes wide. Ms. Jang opened it with deliberate care, and as she read, her voice took on a storytelling lilt, bright and entrancing. The words curled through the air like smoke, each sentence painting pictures in the children's minds even though they couldn't see the pages. Only her voice guided them.
Taejun listened without really hearing. His gaze drifted to the window. The world outside swayed gently—trees dancing, clouds inching by. He wanted to be out there, beneath the sky, somewhere real. Somewhere far.
When the story ended, the book closed with a soft thump, and Ms. Jang smiled once more. "Draw whatever you liked best! A character, a moment, even something of your own. Just let your imagination take over."
Paper rustled. Crayons clicked across the desks. Excitement bloomed again. The room swelled with life.
Taejun remained still.
His crayon hovered, then paused. His eyes scanned the room. Laughter, color, movement—each child alive in their own small world of creation. But Taejun's paper stayed blank, the silence inside him louder than ever. His hand trembled faintly, but no image came. He couldn't find the colors. Couldn't find the urge.
So he just sat. And watched. And waited.
The children surged toward the crayon boxes like a flock of sparrows loosed from a cage, tiny hands eagerly reaching, little fingers fumbling over the jumble of waxy colors.
Excited voices filled the classroom with a warm, fluttering noise— high-pitched giggles, breathless calls for favorite shades, and the occasional triumphant cheer when someone found the exact hue they were looking for.
The air buzzed with a vibrant, childlike energy, alive with the shuffle of feet, the rustle of paper, and the cheerful clatter of crayons spilling onto desks.
Some sat cross-legged on their chairs, tongues sticking out in concentration, as they drew sprawling forests filled with laughing animals or skies heavy with impossible, tumbling stars.
Others leaned across their desks to show off scribbled superheroes or lopsided castles, the joy of creation lighting up their young faces with something bright and unfiltered, something too raw and beautiful to name.
Taejun sat perfectly still.
While the others dived into their drawings with the reckless freedom only children possess, he remained rooted in his chair, unmoving, his hands folded quietly in his lap.
The sheet of paper before him was untouched, stark and white, its emptiness almost accusing.
It didn't feel like a canvas.
It felt like a wall. A wall he had no strength or reason to scale.
The story they'd just heard, the characters and animals and imagined places that had delighted the others, barely brushed against him.
They passed by like wind through a window cracked open, whispering sounds that stirred nothing inside.
The urge to draw simply wasn't there— no image came, no feeling pushed its way forward.
Just a hollow sort of stillness, as though even the desire had forgotten how to find him.
Ms. Jang, warm and familiar in her long floral cardigan, moved with practiced grace between the desks, offering gentle guidance and small words of encouragement.
Her smile was the kind that always reached her eyes, soft and unhurried.
When she knelt beside Taejun's desk, her voice lowered into a tone that felt more like a whisper of spring than a teacher's instruction.
"Taejun," she said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, "would you like to draw something from the story? Maybe something you remember that made you feel happy?"
He met her gaze for just a moment— his eyes dark, unreadable, like twin windows into a room with the lights turned off— and gave the faintest shake of his head.
That was all. No words. No explanation.
Just a quiet refusal, wrapped in something too old for a child to carry.
Ms. Jang didn't push. She didn't sigh or shift awkwardly or try to coax him further.
Instead, she offered him a small, knowing smile, the kind that said she had seen children retreat behind walls before, and that it was okay.
She rose and moved on, her voice lifting once more in encouragement to a nearby student who was trying to draw a tiger but kept making it look like a dog.
Her laughter, low and musical, rippled through the room like warmth from a sunbeam, unnoticed by most but somehow striking against the hush that still clung to Taejun.
The room was a garden of color and sound, blooming with life around him, and yet he felt like a statue in the center of it, untouched, unmoving.
And yet, somewhere in that distance, somewhere at the very edge of his mind, something faint and small stirred.
A flicker, like the smell of rain on dry earth or the ghost of a lullaby he used to know.
A memory, maybe, or the outline of one, but it vanished before it could take shape, swallowed by the ambient tide of the classroom.
The other children drew with abandon, swapping colors, bending close to share their masterpieces, laughing when their animals ended up with too many legs or when their princesses came out looking like lumpy potatoes.
Their joy echoed around Taejun like a song he couldn't hear the melody to.
He watched it all, detached, as if through a thick pane of glass.
His page stayed empty. No lions or castles. No stars. Just white.
Ms. Jang circled back to him eventually.
She crouched beside his desk again, her expression tender, her voice low enough to carve a quiet space between them.
"You don't have to draw if you don't want to," she said, as if speaking to the very edges of his silence.
"But if you ever feel like it… even just a little… I'm always here to help you." She didn't linger, didn't wait for an answer.
She simply placed a gentle hand on the edge of his desk— a light touch, barely there— and then turned to help another student who was struggling with drawing a tree.
He sat, staring at the paper, listening to the cheerful chaos around him.
The scratch of a crayon on paper. The rustling of shirtsleeves.
The warm, steady murmur of Ms. Jang's voice drifted through the room like sunlight falling across a floor.
His fingers twitched once, just slightly, but not out of intention.
It was more like a muscle remembering something it had long forgotten, like the echo of movement, the ghost of feeling.
"Do you like stories, Taejun?" Ms. Jang had asked him earlier, her voice gentle, full of something warm and far away. "Maybe you can draw your favorite part. Or any animal you like?"
He didn't answer then. He still didn't, but he remembered the way she said it, like it mattered to her. Like it could matter to him.
The colors in the crayon box looked so bright under the overhead lights.
Reds like apples. Blues like deep skies. Greens like summer grass.
All of them are sitting right there. Right within reach.
Yet they might as well have been on the moon.
Minutes passed. The children's drawings formed a mosaic of color and joy across the room.
Tales told in squiggles and smudges. Fantasies brought to life with bold strokes and laughing eyes.
Ms. Jang eventually made her way around with a folder, carefully collecting the artwork one by one.
She stopped again at Taejun's desk. He hadn't moved.
She didn't say much this time. Just looked at him, the same way she had earlier— not with expectation, but with a kind of quiet affirmation.
Her eyes held something soft.
A message he couldn't quite put into words, but could almost feel, like she was telling him: I see you. Even if you don't draw, even if you don't speak, I still see you.
"That's okay, Taejun," she said, voice as calm and warm as a childhood blanket pulled up to your chin.
"You don't have to draw today. There's always tomorrow. And I'll be right here when you're ready."
She didn't wait for a response.
She simply smiled again— gently, with no demands— and moved on, her footsteps soft, her presence a fading comfort.
Taejun didn't smile.
He didn't move, but something inside him loosened.
Just a little. Just enough to feel the tiniest sense of space around the weight he carried.
And in that space, for the first time in what felt like forever, he didn't feel completely invisible.
Not quite part of the world, but not lost from it either.