Chapter 4 – Echoes Between the Lines

The art room became my shelter — not from the world, but from who I was in it.

It didn't echo with noise like the hallways did.It echoed with breath. With stillness. With the scratching of pencil on paper that felt louder than a scream.

I kept going there after school, not because I believed I was good…But because it was the only place I didn't feel like a shadow.

And somehow, she was always there too.

Kaiya didn't ask why I came.She just slid into the seat across from me day after day, sketching her quiet storms while I struggled to translate the chaos in my chest onto a page.

She once leaned over and looked at a jagged sketch I was about to tear out."You think too much," she said.Her voice wasn't soft. It was clear — like a still lake. "Draw what you feel. Not what you think you're allowed to show."

I didn't answer.But for the first time, I stopped trying to fix the lines.

The next day, she passed me a folded paper.One word was scribbled inside:"Empty."

I didn't look at her. I just grabbed a pencil and started drawing.A broken staircase twisting upward into a storm — steps cracked, pieces missing, leading nowhere clear.

I didn't explain it.

I didn't need to.

When I finally looked up, she was staring at it.Quietly. Intently.

"You're more than what they see, Kai."And the way she said it made me believe that maybe… maybe I could be.

But reality didn't wait.

I failed my math test.

At home, the silence hit harder than any insult.

"You can't draw your way into a future," my father said, not looking up from his phone.

And I wanted to scream:Then what do I have? What am I supposed to do if this is all I can be?

But I didn't.

I just went back to the sketchpad and added another crack in the staircase.

Kaiya noticed.

"You're close to breaking this thing," she said.

"Maybe I'm supposed to," I muttered, barely audible.

She looked up, serious this time."No. You're supposed to climb it."

I stared at her.Her voice didn't just touch the drawing.It touched the part of me I kept buried.

A week later, I saw my drawing pinned to the wall in the school gallery.The one with the boy submerged halfway in water, arm stretched toward the light above.

I froze.

"You didn't—" I started.

"I did," she said. "It deserved to be seen."

And it was.Students stopped. They looked. They asked.Some called it 'raw'.Some said 'haunting'.

For the first time…They saw me.

And it wasn't because I tried to be seen.It was because I let something real show.

Kaiya smiled as we stood beside it.

"You don't have to scream to be heard, Kai. Sometimes, all it takes… is honesty."

That night, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling.

I wasn't fixed. I wasn't special.But I was something.

And that was enough to keep climbing.

End of Chapter 4