The sky that morning was anemic, a pale wash that seemed to have forgotten the campus's frantic preoccupation with the future.
Andini navigated the gates with her usual practiced invisibility. She offered the security guard a clipped nod—a reflex rather than a greeting—and dissolved into the current of students moving in a shared, sightless orbit.
To them, others were merely peripheral blurring; human wallpaper to be acknowledged only when utility demanded it.
The Faculty of Letters stood in a state of dignified decay, its skin of paint curling away in parched strips. It reminded her of an old man burdened by a lifetime of unasked stories. Its bricks held the stale echoes of ancient sonnets, while the souls within were busy bartering for modern validation.
In Lecture Hall 3B, Andini staked her claim in the final row. It wasn't a retreat into the shadows, but a vantage point—a way to witness the theater of the classroom without being cast in the play.
She squared her bag beneath the desk with a quiet precision. Her shoulder-length hair fell like a dark curtain, a deliberate partition between her inner sanctum and the world. Tucking a stray lock behind her ear, she revealed skin so pale it bordered on translucent—the mark of someone who spent too much time in the company of shadows and too little in the sun.
At five-foot-five, she was tall enough to command a view of the room, yet she chose to keep her gaze anchored low.
She opened a volume of Sapardi Djoko Damono, read half a page of his sparse, aching verse, and promptly snapped it shut. The words were too honest, too raw to be consumed in a room so thick with performance.
She found herself listening more than reading. The room was a cacophony of voices, yet none of them held an invitation for her.
Then, the door groaned open.
A girl entered, navigating a wheelchair toward the front—the dead zone that everyone else avoided. Her movements were measured and cautious, as if the linoleum floor were a surface of thin ice. Her knuckles were white where they gripped a canvas tote, its fabric faded by time.
Andini looked up. The girl's face was a study in stillness—too still. It was the expression of someone who had long ago learned to starve their expectations of a reaction.
An invisible perimeter formed around her—not a wall of stone, but a void created by the collective decision to look away.
Eyes flickered toward her and darted back just as quickly. There were thin, brittle smiles and the low hum of conspiratorial whispers. The voices were hushed, but they carried the sharp clarity of glass breaking for anyone who cared to listen.
"Even getting through the door is a production."
"Performance art for sympathy, clearly."
Andini closed her book, her fingertips lingering on the cover. A strange, discordant vibration hummed in her chest—the sensation of a mirror struck softly, a hairline fracture spiderwebbing outward.
She didn't look at the source of the whispers, but she knew the frequency. She had sat among those cadences before—different days, different masks, but the same weight. It was the tone that rendered a person's very existence a question mark.
The professor entered, a man of tired angles and a crumpled batik jacket.
Attendance was barked out; assignments were flung like afterthoughts. Not a single glance strayed to the front-left corner. The girl was there, physically undeniable, yet systematically erased by the room's attention.
Andini lowered her head.
A slow discomfort began to colonize her lungs, like fine dust. She didn't know this girl; she didn't even know her name. But she recognized the anatomy of being left alone in the center of a crowd while the world proceeded with its mundane business.
The lecture dissolved without ceremony. Chairs scraped, bags were hoisted, and the static of conversation resumed.
Andini drifted out with the tide.
In the hallway, she caught sight of the girl attempting to negotiate an uneven threshold. A wheel snagged for a heartbeat before jerking free.
No one paused. No one offered a hand. Neither did Andini.
She diverted to the campus library—her sanctuary of regulated silence. Here, among the towering stacks and the scent of vanillin and decaying paper, she felt the pressure in her chest ease.
She stood before the poetry section, her fingers tracing the spines without intent, until a slim volume caught her eye: Words That Never Finished.
She opened it to a random page. A single line arrested her: Some wounds do not require a cure; they only ask for company.
Andini closed the book with a soft thud. The sentence took root in her mind, stubborn and unyielding.
Unbidden, the image of the girl in the wheelchair flickered back—her stoic expression, the white-knuckled grip on her tote bag.
The sky had bruised into a deep twilight by the time Andini emerged. The campus had begun to hollow out. In the distance, she saw the girl sitting solitary in the back parking lot, waiting.
Andini slowed her pace, then came to a full stop. She didn't move closer. She simply watched from the periphery.
She was paralyzed by her own inertia. Spontaneity was a language she didn't speak. For as long as she could remember, silence had been her only armor.
***
The following morning, Hall 3B was a hive of noise.
Andini took her usual post.
Minutes later, the girl in the wheelchair arrived, pushed by a woman who seemed swallowed by her own hurry. The chair gave a thin, metallic protest as it stopped in the same spot as the day before.
Andini opened her book. A hollow gesture; she wasn't reading.
A male student sauntered past. With a performative chuckle, he clipped the side of the wheelchair as he went by. Her bag slid to the floor, spilling its contents across the tiles.
"Oops. My bad," he said, his smile a jagged thing that offered no real apology.
A ripple of stifled laughter followed.
The girl looked down, her hands trembling slightly as she reached for her books.
No one protested. No one broke the silence of the bystanders.
Andini closed her book. She was on her feet before her conscious mind could veto the impulse. Her steps were quiet, but they held a sudden, heavy gravity.
She knelt, retrieving a copy of Literature and Social Trauma from the floor, and held it out to the girl.
She didn't offer a platitude. Instead, she turned her gaze toward the student who had struck the chair. Her voice was flat, devoid of heat, yet it cut through the room's ambient noise.
"Being human is a faculty some of you clearly failed to enroll in," she said.
The room went cold. The professor stepped in at that exact moment, his arrival a blunt instrument that severed the tension. Everyone retreated to their seats, donning the mask of the diligent student.
Andini returned to her desk. Her heart was a frantic bird against her ribs.
She stared at her book, but the pages were a blur of meaningless ink. From the corner of her eye, she saw the girl in the wheelchair turn slightly.
Their gazes met for a fractured second.
Then, the lecture began.
But for Andini, the world had shifted on its axis.
It wasn't a tectonic rupture. It was something subtler—the first audible crack in a lifetime of staying silent.