The morning after the note arrived, Elara and Corrine moved through the school like ghosts, their faces carefully composed into expressions of docile normalcy. In the dining hall, they smiled faintly at classmates, nodded at teachers, and ate their breakfast with mechanical precision.
Elara's fork scraped against her plate, the sound blending with the hum of chatter, but her eyes darted to the corners of the room, where maintenance workers lingered. Corrine sipped her tea, her knuckles white around the cup, as she scanned the faces of other students, searching for signs of fear or suspicion that matched their own.
In their first class, history, Elara sat at her desk, pretending to take notes as the teacher explained different terms. Her pen scratched meaningless loops on the page while her thoughts raced. Who had slipped the note under their door? Was it the hostel mistress, or someone else watching them?
