The classroom was too quiet.
Not in the peaceful, comforting way—no. It was the stillness before a storm. The type of silence that sharpened every whisper, every snicker from the back rows.
Lin Xiao gripped her pen harder.
Behind her, she could hear Wu Xue laughing softly with a group of girls. Zhao Jian was seated diagonally across, tapping his pen idly, eyes occasionally drifting toward her with a smirk that made her skin crawl.
The teacher's voice faded into the background.
Her gaze snapped toward the blackboard, but the letters blurred.
Red.
A sudden image: her schoolbag overturned, books torn, her uniform soaked and stinking of toilet water.
"Trash like you doesn't belong here."
"Daughter of a maid. How pathetic."
Their voices from her past life echoed over the present.
She blinked—and suddenly, she wasn't in the classroom anymore.
---
Then
A teenage Lin Xiao, younger, frailer, was pinned against the wall of the stairwell. A boy from Class A held her wrists tightly, his breath sour with arrogance.
"Apologize for breathing," he sneered.
His friends laughed.
And down the hallway, her half sister watched from behind a window.
Watched.
Smiling.
That same woman who locked the kitchen door so Lin Xiao couldn't eat unless the family was done. Who switched their schoolwork, claiming her wasn't good enough. Who whispered in her father's ear about how "moody" she was becoming.
Her father never looked her in the eye again.
---
Now
Lin Xiao stood suddenly.
Her chair scraped violently, and a few students startled.
"Lin Xiao?" the teacher called.
But her body was already moving—out the door, down the hallway, away.
She didn't know where she was going.
She only knew she had to breathe.
---
She burst into the empty music room and slammed the door behind her.
She gasped like she'd been underwater.
The keys of the abandoned piano glimmered beneath a veil of dust.
Her hands shook violently.
The memory—no, the weight—of that life had followed her here. Her stepmother's lipstick-stained coffee mugs. The bruises she hid under long sleeves. The way her father barely remembered her birthday. The schoolmate who pushed her down the stairs and said it was an accident.
Her stomach turned.
She dropped to her knees, pressing her forehead against the cold tile floor.
"I'm not there anymore," she whispered. "I'm not. I'm not."
But her mind wouldn't listen.
Her trauma was an old wound cracked open again. Bleeding into her bones.
---
Minutes passed before she got back up.
When she looked at her reflection in the glass panel of the piano lid, she didn't recognize the girl staring back.
And that was good.
The old Lin Xiao died once.
This version would burn the world before letting it break her again.
---
Later That Day
She was on the roof, knees drawn to her chest, trying to ground herself when a shadow loomed beside her.
"Should've figured I'd find you up here."
It was Li Wei her childhood friend.
Lin Xiao turned her head slowly.
She wanted to pretend everything was fine. She wanted to smirk, make a snide remark. But the words wouldn't come.
"You saw," she said hoarsely.
He nodded. "I did."
He didn't ask questions. Didn't pry.
Instead, he sat beside her, silence stretching like a bridge between them.
"I used to come here," she murmured. "In my pa——. It was the only place I could hear myself think."
She hadn't meant to say it. But it slipped free.
Li Wei's voice was gentle. "You don't have to explain anything."
She hesitated. Then, in a voice so quiet she almost didn't hear herself, she said, "They hurt me. My classmates. My family. Every day I'd wake up praying to disappear."
His hands clenched.
"And now?" he asked.
She looked toward the setting sun. "Now I wake up thinking about how to make them remember me forever."
---
That Evening
In the courtyard, cherry blossoms drifted through the wind like soft blades. Lin Xiao walked slowly, her head clearer, but her soul heavier.
From behind the statue of the old founder, a girl stepped out.
Qiao Rui.
Zhang Jian's ex-girlfriend.
"Funny," she said, arms crossed. "You think just because you're talking to Li Wei now, you're suddenly someone?"
Lin Xiao sighed.
"I don't care who you think I am," she replied. "But if you're hoping I'll fall apart like before, you'll be disappointed."
Qiao Rui scoffed—but something in her expression faltered.
"You think you're better than everyone now?" she snapped.
"No," Lin Xiao said, her voice cool and final. "I just stopped letting people bury me alive."
Qiao Rui stared at her.
Something flickered in her eyes. A crack in the hostility.
Then she turned and stormed away.
But Lin Xiao had seen it.
Beneath the cruelty—loneliness.
She stored that away. Another piece on the board.
---
That Night
She stood in the dark outside her father's study, hearing him laugh behind the door with his wife and Wu Jun.
Not once had he asked how her day was.
How her life was.
Not then. Not now.
Her hand curled around the edge of the door frame, nails biting into wood.
One day, she promised herself, he would see her.
And it would be too late to love her then.