Chapter 2: The Girl Who Watched from Between Worlds
She arrived on a cloudy morning.
No one really noticed her at first — just another transfer student. Late admission. Quiet girl. Sat at the back. Wore the same uniform, carried the same books. But there was something different about her. Something strange… something soft.
Her eyes looked too old for her age. Not tired — but like they'd seen too much.
She smiled gently at everyone, but never too wide. Spoke kindly, but never too much. She walked like someone who had all the time in the world — yet something about her felt… borrowed.
The teachers introduced her briefly, and she bowed slightly. No one asked where she came from. No one knew. And she didn't say.
But she noticed him on the very first day.
He was the only one who didn't look up when she entered. His eyes were stuck outside the window, chasing a sky that no one else cared to see. He looked like a boy trapped in a place his soul didn't belong to. A boy who had stopped asking questions because the answers never felt real.
And for some reason… her heart paused.
She had seen a lot of faces. Heard a lot of stories. But there was something about his silence that felt louder than all the noise in the school.
She started observing him.
Every day, she'd watch him from the back row — how he walked into class with tired steps, sat down quietly, never made eye contact with anyone. He barely touched his books, but always stared at the sky whenever he could — during breaks, after lunch, even in class.
She wondered, "Why is he so alone?"
She began asking around.
"Hey, who's that boy?"
"Oh, him? He doesn't talk."
"He's been here for a year but no one really knows him."
"He's weird. Just ignore him."
But she couldn't.
Something in her wouldn't let her.
Maybe it was because she understood pain too well.
Maybe it was because... she wasn't really alive either.
She didn't know exactly when she had died. Or if she even had. Her last memory was lying in a hospital bed, wires in her veins, nurses whispering things she couldn't hear. Pain was constant. But then it faded… and all that was left was light. And after the light — this place. This school. This life again… but different.
She didn't know how she was here — walking, breathing, watching — but she was.
It didn't matter. All that mattered now was him.
Because she could see it — he was not just silent. He was breaking.
She started sitting near him. Left him notes on his desk. Just simple things.
"The sky's really blue today."
"Do you like birds?"
"Your handwriting's nice."
He never replied.
But she didn't stop.
Because she wasn't trying to talk to him.
She was trying to reach him.
Trying to save whatever little piece of him was still holding on.
She started telling jokes in class, just loud enough for him to hear. She brought extra snacks and left one beside him without a word. She asked the teacher questions she knew he'd know the answer to — hoping he'd speak up. Hoping he'd remember that he could.
She watched him slowly start to look at her — not fully, not directly — but he noticed her now.
One day, after school, she caught him staring at a paper airplane she had made.
And for the first time… he smiled. Just a little. But enough.
She knew then: "He wants to fly."
She didn't know his full story.
But she knew that look in his eyes. She had worn it too, once.
She made a decision that day.
"I'll take him on a ride. I'll make him feel the sky again. Even if just once. Even if it's the last thing I do."
Because time was slipping for her.
She could feel it — her body weakening, her breaths getting heavier, the world around her blurring like fog on glass.
But she didn't care.
If she could help him remember how to dream again…
If she could remind him what it felt like to live…
Then maybe, just maybe, her time here had meaning.