I woke up alone.
These empty walls feel suffocating. The moment my eyes open, my body already aches—not from any physical strain, but from something heavier. A tiredness I can't sleep off. The weight is the same every day.
My mother is still asleep, in her room, door closed.
It's 4 a.m. I get up quietly and begin to prepare for school.
There's barely anything left in the kitchen, so I settle for what I can: rice from last night, reheated without much thought. I pack it into a lunchbox. There's no meat, no vegetables. Just starch and silence.
Empty beer bottles sit on the counter, some still with ash in them.
I don't clean them. Not today.
By 6 a.m., I leave the house.
It's not too early. I often go this time, maybe earlier—so I can arrive before the others, sit in an empty room without their noise.
Before the laughter. Before they start looking at me like I'm something that crawled in from the gutter.
The streets are damp. The gutters haven't been cleaned, and the air smells faintly of rust and rainwater. Tricycles rattle past. A vendor is already yelling about taho.
I keep walking. Head down. Bag pressed tight to my back. I don't want to make eye contact with anyone—not the neighbors sweeping leaves, not the boys outside, laughing like they never run out of things to mock.
A few houses still have their lights on. I see mothers cooking. I wonder if their daughters woke up to the smell of garlic and eggs, if someone brushed their hair for them this morning.
No one brushed mine.
I didn't even look in the mirror.
I'm just tired of trying.
No one notices when I do, and they notice too much when I don't.
The school gate is open.
The guard barely glances at me, too busy scrolling through his phone.
I walk past the courtyard, toward our building, the classrooms still dark.
For a moment, I let myself enjoy the silence. The hallway smells like chalk and varnish. It's the only time the school feels safe—before the others arrive.
I slip into the classroom, take my seat near the window. The chair rocks when I move, always one leg shorter than the rest. I rest my arms on the desk and close my eyes for just a second.
Just one.
The door creaks open.
Voices spill in—loud, careless, full of their usual cruelty.
Laughter.
Footsteps.
Idle gossip.
"Hey," someone says. "Did you see her hair?"
I keep my eyes down. I already know where this is going.
"Looks like she brushed it with a broom."
Their laughter cuts through the air like glass.
"She probably lives in some slum. Do they even have mirrors there?"
Another giggle. "Nah, just rusty cans and broken glass."
I pretend to write something in my notebook. My hand trembles.
Don't cry.
Don't cry.
Don't give them the satisfaction.
One of them passes my desk and tugs a strand of my hair between her fingers.
"Wow. So fluffy," she says with mock sweetness. "Mind if I sweep the classroom floor with you later?"
More laughter. Even louder this time.
I want to disappear.
Melt through the tiles.
Fade like chalk left out in the rain.
But I don't.
I sit still.
Because that's what I do.
I endure.
When the lunch bell rang, the classroom emptied like a tide pulling back.
Chairs scraped. Bags zipped. Laughter echoed down the hallway.
Everyone rushed to the cafeteria—groups forming, chattering, chasing after each other like they belonged.
I stayed behind.
There was no point in going. I'd just end up sitting alone again.
Worse, maybe someone would notice and laugh.
So I stayed.
Sat quietly at my desk.
Opened my lunchbox. Cold rice. A little soy sauce. That was all.
I chewed slowly, each bite a little heavier than the last. The silence felt warm in the way only absence can feel warm—like a blanket no one wants.
Then something shifted.
The light changed.
A flicker. A shimmer. A breeze that wasn't there before.
And just like that—she appeared.
The fairy.
Small, glowing like dusk caught in glass, her wings humming softly like a lullaby I didn't remember learning.
She hovered above my desk, radiant and strange.
I froze.
"What are you doing?" I whispered, panic curling in my chest.
"What if someone sees you?"
She tilted her head, amused.
"No one can," she said gently. Her voice sounded like wind through wind chimes. "Not unless I want them to."
I looked toward the hallway, heart pounding.
"But—why now?" I asked, barely breathing.
She landed lightly on the edge of my lunchbox, looking at me with eyes too old for her size.
"Because you're alone," she said. "And that's when the truth usually comes."
She sat cross-legged on the plastic edge of my lunchbox, her wings folding behind her like silk.
The glow around her dimmed, softened—so that if anyone walked in, they might mistake her for a glint of sunlight or a trick of the eye.
I stared.
Not just at her, but at what she was holding.
A small thing.
It looked like a charm. No bigger than a coin, flat and dull, shaped like a teardrop but pulsing faintly from the center—as if it had a heartbeat.
She held it out in both hands, as if it weighed more than it should.
"What… is that?" I whispered.
"A key," she said simply.
I blinked. "A key to what?"
"To what you were," she answered. "And what you could become again."
I didn't understand.
None of it made sense.
I was just a tired girl in a cheap uniform, with hair like a broom and a lunch made of nothing.
"What if I don't want it?" I asked. "What if I don't believe you?"
She smiled—not cruelly, not kindly either. Like someone who already knew the end of the story.
"You don't have to believe in magic for it to find you," she said. "But once it does, it waits only so long."
The charm hovered toward me.
Warm. Strange. Like touching a memory I never had.
"Take it," the fairy whispered, "if you want to change everything."
The bell rang again.
She vanished in the blink of an eye—light folding into nothing, as if she had never been there at all.
But the charm remained. Cold now, no longer pulsing.
I slipped it into my pocket without thinking.
Science class.
The room smelled like alcohol wipes and old markers. The fluorescent lights above buzzed faintly, making everything feel harsher than it was.
"Let's begin with a prayer," the teacher said, entering briskly with a folder under one arm.
She scanned the room once, then pointed directly at me.
"You," she said. "Lead the class."
My stomach dropped.
I stood slowly, feeling every eye turn in my direction.
The charm in my pocket felt heavier than before.
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
"Louder," the teacher snapped.
I tried.
"D-dear... L—L..."
The words stumbled. Fell apart. My throat closed.
Something inside me caved in.
The silence stretched too long.
"What is wrong with you?" the teacher barked. "You can't even say a prayer?"
Laughter broke from the class. Not all at once—just a few at first.
Then more.
Snickering. Whispers. Mocked versions of my stuttered words.
Someone coughed out my name and laughed like it was a punchline.
I wanted to disappear.
Melt into the floor.
Turn to dust and scatter beneath their shoes.
"Sit down," the teacher finally said, disgusted. "Someone else—Ylla, you lead."
A girl from the front row stood and began praying with perfect diction, a practiced cadence. The room settled.
I sat.
Small. Shrinking.
The chair felt too big for me now.
My hands curled in my lap. I didn't dare wipe my eyes.
And all the while, the charm in my pocket stayed quiet.
Heavy.
Waiting.
After school.
I walked home alone.
The streets were the same. The cracked pavement. The tangle of wires above. Children playing barefoot in the dust, vendors packing up, dogs sleeping under rusted tricycles.
Everything was the same—except me.
It was strange.
To be this small again, in this old, too-thin body. But with a mind that had already lived too much.
I saw things sharper now. The tiredness in people's faces. The way the paint peeled from the walls. The way my shoes hurt more than I remembered.
Everything I used to ignore—I felt now.
Pain, clearer than it ever was.
When I got home, the house was dark again.
My mother wasn't there. Or maybe she was, asleep behind a locked door.
I didn't check.
I sat on the floor by the kitchen table and pulled the charm from my pocket.
Nothing.
Just a dull, teardrop-shaped thing. No glow. No pulse. No promise.
It felt like I had made it up.
Like the fairy was just some dream that clung to me after a long, lonely nap.
I sighed. My fingers traced its edges.
"I knew it," I whispered. "Nothing's changed."
Then it moved.
The charm warmed in my palm, soft and sudden, like the breath of something alive.
I gasped.
It shifted, folding in on itself—like light bending, metal softening—and when I opened my hand again, the charm was gone.
In its place: a pen.
Slim. Black. Unmarked.
Not even a logo.
But it hummed faintly in my hand, as if it knew something I didn't.
I stared at it.
And for the first time that day, I wasn't sure if I should be afraid.