Chapter 10 – Glass Between Thunder

The message replayed in my head over and over.

"You shouldn't have done that. You'll regret being seen."

I tried to brush it off. But words like that… they cling. They worm their way into the quiet hours when the lights are off, and all that's left is you and your own self-doubt.

I didn't tell Kaiya at first.

She had a glow lately — a fire in her eyes that made her look like the sky was no limit. She'd started working on her own dream project: a visual novel filled with layered emotions and untold stories, characters who bled truths in silence. She even asked me to help design a character based on… well, me.

And I did.

Because helping her made me feel lighter, as if I was finally worth something.

But beneath that was a crack I couldn't ignore. The kind you only hear when the world around you is too quiet. Like glass straining against pressure.

A week passed.

Then strange things started happening.

My sketchpad went missing. The one with all my raw ideas, half-dreams, and unfinished worlds. I found it two days later… ripped and tossed into the boys' bathroom sink, soaking wet.

The pages clung to each other like corpses.

Then someone hacked the school's art submission site and replaced my uploaded drawing with a crude sketch — a mockery. My name, warped into slurs and laughter. I reported it. The school apologized. But the damage was done.

It felt like thunder rolling behind thin glass.

And I was the glass.

I finally told Kaiya.

She looked at me for a long time after I showed her the soaked pad and the edited post.

Then she did something I didn't expect.

She didn't get angry.

She got calm.

Too calm.

"I need you to listen to me," she said. "You're going to be tested. That's what storms do. They test what's hollow and what holds."

I wanted to believe her. But I was tired of being tested. Tired of waking up unsure whether today was the day everything would fall apart.

"Why me?" I whispered.

"Because you can carry more than you think. And they're afraid of that."

Her voice cracked, just once. "They want to break you before you figure it out."

Two days later, something shifted.

The school called a sudden assembly. They were investigating the harassment, and the principal personally called me to the front. It wasn't to apologize.

It was to ask if I had fabricated the story for sympathy.

I stood on that stage in front of hundreds of students — some smirking, some blank-faced, and a few that actually looked sorry — and I felt something inside me splinter.

Not break. Just… fracture.

I didn't shout. I didn't cry.

I said one sentence:"Even if no one believes me, I still know who I am becoming."

The principal said nothing. But someone in the audience clapped.

Then another.

Then Kaiya stood up, eyes locked on mine, and clapped so hard it echoed through the silent room.

That night, she came to my place with something wrapped in cloth. She'd been working on it for days — a digital painting.

It showed me. Not perfect, not clean. Just me. Standing at the edge of a cliff, clouds roaring above, wind ripping through my clothes. But I was still standing.

"You're not alone," she said, her voice like thunder after lightning.

I hung that painting on my wall. Right above my desk. A reminder.

Not of the pain.

But of the storm.

And the fact that I was still here.

But storms don't end quietly.

A week later, a new name began surfacing in whispers. Someone from my past — a face I hadn't seen in years — who once mocked me the worst. He was transferring in.

Not just to the school.

But to my class.

And he remembered everything.

End of Chapter 10