Emi sat quietly on the cold wrought-iron bench, the pool of yellow light from the overhead lampost acting as her only sanctuary against the encroaching darkness.
She tilted her head back, her blank, dull eyes reflecting the brilliant, uncaring glow of the full moon.
The night was eerily still, the kind of silence that usually preceded a storm, but for Emi, this silence was an old, intimate friend.
This was the place. The site of her greatest humiliation, the anchor of her deepest shame, and the graveyard of her childhood innocence.
Communication had always been a labyrinth Emi couldn't navigate. While other children traded secrets and laughter, Emi traded stutters and frozen silences.
Her face, naturally stoic, often betrayed her; whenever she tried to force a smile or a greeting, it came out as a twitch or a grimace, leading her peers to believe she was mocking them or looking down on them.
