The Quite Ones

The first week back was no different.

The halls buzzed with laughter, group projects, and whispers about upcoming mock exams. Mao kept his head down, his bag heavier from notebooks filled with half-finished stories he still hadn't shown anyone.

But something had changed—he had changed.

He started to speak in class. Not loudly, not constantly, but with purpose. When a teacher asked about a passage in literature, Mao raised his hand. When a debate about ethics broke out in social studies, he didn't back down. He chose his words carefully—and they landed.

People listened.

Some even noticed.

By the second week, a classmate named Yuto approached him after a particularly sharp analysis he gave in history.

"You read Kant?" Yuto asked, adjusting his glasses. "You should sit with us at lunch. We're putting together a philosophy circle."

Mao blinked. "We have one?"

"No. We're starting it."

That lunch, Mao met the rest of the group.

Yuto: precise, logical, with a soft spot for philosophical paradoxes.

Kenji: loud in writing, quiet in speech—he wrote essays that left teachers speechless.

Aya: a math prodigy who doodled algorithms in her margins and could dismantle complex theories like puzzles.

Mika: thoughtful, curious, and secretly funny—she noticed things others didn't.

Sora: a quiet reader who spoke in short, brilliant bursts, often quoting poetry at unexpected moments.

They weren't popular.

They weren't loud.

But they were sharp. Focused. Underrated.

And they didn't treat Mao like a broken version of someone they used to admire. They treated him like someone they were just beginning to understand.

In their circle, he was asked—not watched. He was heard—not judged.

One afternoon, as they argued the ethics of truth versus peace in fiction, Aya suddenly turned to him.

"You think better than you speak," she said. "But when you do speak, it's sharp. You've been hiding that?"

Mao gave a rare half-smile. "I didn't think anyone wanted to hear it."

Sora looked up from her notebook. "Maybe you just hadn't met the right listeners."

For the first time in months, Mao felt something loosen in his chest.

Not relief. Not victory.

Connection.

He was no longer alone. Not fully.

Not anymore.