The morning wore its usual mask of routine, but Andini could feel a subtle, sickening shift in the atmospheric pressure.
Inside Hall 3B, the ambient noise was a familiar static—the scrape of chairs, the thud of backpacks, the brief flare of laughter. Yet, beneath it, a new, insidious current flowed. Certain voices were modulated, hushed not out of respect, but out of a collective desire to keep their cruelty contained.
Andini claimed her newly adopted seat. Fani was already there, her head bowed over an open textbook, her eyes scanning lines she clearly wasn't reading.
When Andini offered a quiet nod of greeting, Fani returned a paper-thin smile. Her eyes, however, betrayed a profound, hollow exhaustion—the look of someone who had spent the night wrestling with phantoms, or perhaps had spent too long holding a collapsing ceiling at bay.
"Are you alright?" Andini asked, her voice pitched low.
Fani offered a single, unconvincing nod.
In the front rows, a cluster of students leaned in, their heads conspiratorially close. Every so often, a gaze would dart toward Fani, sharp and calculating, before snapping back—the reflex of a sniper afraid of being caught in the crosshairs.
Andini forced her eyes forward. She had witnessed this theater of microaggressions too many times to react impulsively.
The lecture washed over the room, but Andini's anchor had slipped. A stray piece of dialogue from the hallway days prior kept ricocheting through her skull—a voice she recognized but wished to forget: "It's a shame, really. But does the entire world have to bend backward to accommodate one person?"
The sentence hadn't been aimed at anyone in particular, yet it was fired at close enough range to draw blood.
When the bell finally signaled the end of the hour, Fani packed her tote with frantic, erratic movements.
"I'm heading out," she announced, the words clipped.
"I'll walk with you," Andini countered, already shouldering her bag.
"Don't," Fani replied, her voice brittle. "Please. I just need to be nowhere for a while."
The wheelchair glided away, the metallic hum of its wheels leaving in its wake a distance that felt lightyears vaster than the day before.
Andini stood frozen for a few seconds longer, trying to diagnose the cold terror blooming in her chest. It was the creeping realization that the fragile sanctuary they had built was being breached by an invisible, corrosive rot.
In the main corridor, the bulletin boards were a chaotic mosaic of faded flyers. But among the curling edges of forgotten events, a newly stapled poster demanded attention with clinical precision.
An Inclusive Campus: Beyond the Slogan. Beneath the bold typography was the rigidly empathetic smile of the Student Executive Board—known locally as BEM—President, Nisa Rahmadani.
Andini read the text slowly.
The prose was a sterile masterpiece of institutional buzzwords—empathy, safe spaces, integration. She couldn't explain the sudden wave of nausea it provoked. It read exactly like a meticulously drafted apology letter written by someone entirely devoid of guilt.
"The new president is really something else," a student murmured, pausing beside Andini.
"She actually seems to care."
"Yeah," another agreed. "She knows how to sell it, too."
Andini pivoted and walked away before the hollow praise could metastasize in her mind.
By late afternoon, the library was draped in a dusty, golden quiet.
Fani sat isolated in their usual corner. The book in her lap lay open, but her fingers were locked perfectly still. Andini approached with measured steps.
"I've been looking for you everywhere," Andini said softly.
Fani turned her head. Her skin was ashen. "I'm exhausted, Andini. Not of you. Just... of the friction. Of everything."
Andini pulled out the chair opposite her. "Tell me what happened."
Fani let the silence stretch, gathering the debris of her thoughts.
"Someone pulled me aside earlier," Fani began, her voice devoid of inflection. "They told me... they told me I was turning everything into a logistical nightmare. That because of my condition..." She faltered.
The words fell from her lips without heat, yet the impact was devastating.
"Who said that to you?" Andini demanded, a rare, sharp edge entering her tone.
Fani shook her head slowly. "The name doesn't matter. What matters is... I finally understand it. I understand why everyone chooses to look right through me. It's so much easier than dealing with the wreckage."
A heavy, suffocating silence filled the space between them.
Andini's chest tight with a sudden, violent urge to speak of systemic cruelty, of righteous anger, of tearing down the performative posters in the hall. But all she could manage was a desperate, grounding truth: "You are not a burden. None of this is your fault."
Fani bowed her head. The hair tie holding her dark hair had loosened, allowing a curtain of strands to fall forward, shielding her flushing face.
The dimples were gone, erased by the rigid, agonizing set of her jaw as she swallowed down a sob.
Her hands gripped the push-rims of her wheelchair with such sudden, desperate force that her knuckles turned a bruised, bloodless white.
Andini watched those trembling hands, and for the first time in her life, she realized that poetry was a pathetic, blunt instrument when faced with the sheer, jagged reality of another human being's breaking point.
***
That night, in the sterile quiet of her bedroom, Andini opened her laptop. She typed a single sentence into a blank document, stared at the glowing letters, and held down the backspace key until the screen was white again.
Finally, she typed: If you have ever been made to feel utterly alone by a world that insists on your invisibility—you are not a ghost.
She paused, reading the words over and over, her fingers trembling against the trackpad. Then, she closed the laptop without saving.
She knew the tremors were starting. They weren't deafening roars, but the small, persistent fractures of voices that had been silenced for far too long.
Whether she was ready or not, Andini understood one absolute truth: her sanctuary of silence had become a prison.
She could no longer remain a mute witness, not if it meant watching Fani fall back into the dark.