The day was calm, and the sun was still spreading its warmth on the school walls as Ahmed stepped out into the schoolyard, carrying his simple lunch and intending to find a place to escape the crowd, where there was no noise and no eyes staring at him as if he were a stranger. But what awaited him behind the gym building was not tranquility… but a storm.
Loud laughter, annoying voices, mutterings containing enough cruelty to break a heart. He approached with cautious steps, his heart preceding his feet, until the scene became clear to him:
Misaki.
In the middle.
She was like a delicate flower in a field of thorns, surrounded by three shadows of cruelty. Boys older than her, pushing her sometimes, and laughing at her strange features at other times. One of them snatched her bag, and another held her notebook, waving it in the air, mocking the drawings it contained. As for the third, he merely laughed, as if pain was a comedic scene in his cruel eyes.
And Misaki... she didn't scream, she didn't beg; her eyes simply filled with tears, slowly streaming down as if she had grown accustomed to that cruel ritual. She just pressed her hands to her chest, trying to protect what little dignity remained, or perhaps... what remained of herself.
A single moment was enough to ignite something within Ahmed.
He didn't just see Misaki; he saw every feeling of alienation that had accompanied him since his feet first touched this distant land. He saw that familiar isolation, the silence broken only by mockery, and felt as if someone was assaulting what remained of his inner voice.
He advanced without hesitation; his steps this time were not quiet, but firm, pounding the ground as if foretelling a storm.
He approached until he stood among them.
Between Misaki... and them.
With his eyes first, then with his voice.
In a firm voice, Ahmed asked, "What are you doing?"