The uneasy feeling from earlier stuck with me even after I turned my eyes away from the window. I tried to shake it off, telling myself it was nothing more than my imagination, but somehow that moment clung to the back of my mind, making the classroom chatter sound distant and hollow.
When the bell rang, I packed up my things and walked out with the rest of the class. The hallway was loud as always—students talking, laughing, running past each other with no sense of space. I blended into the crowd, moving at the same pace, but my thoughts weren't with them. I kept replaying that glimpse from the courtyard, wondering if anyone else had noticed, though deep down I already knew they hadn't.
At the shoe lockers, I bent down to switch shoes. For some reason, the narrow row felt colder than usual. I shut my locker door firmly, and the sound of the metal clang seemed too sharp against the noise of the hallway. A couple of kids glanced over for a second before continuing with their conversations, but the way their shadows shifted against the wall behind them caught my eye. I didn't stare long, just enough to feel a small twist in my stomach before I forced myself to look away.
The courtyard outside was filled with the usual morning chaos. Someone shouted to their friends across the yard, another student nearly dropped their bag while running, and the security guard stood near the gate, watching with a blank expression like he'd seen it all before. Everything was painfully normal, yet as I walked across, I felt strangely out of place, like I was the only one who hadn't gotten the script for the day.
When I finally reached the classroom again, I sat down and tried to focus on the lessons. The teacher's voice filled the room, steady and clear, but my eyes kept drifting back to the sunlight spilling in through the windows. The light stretched long shadows across the desks and floor, neat and ordinary, but I couldn't stop myself from glancing at them again and again, half-expecting one of them to slip out of sync.
By the time lunch came around, I was exhausted, not from studying but from forcing myself to ignore the strange tension gnawing at me. I laughed when my classmates laughed, answered when they asked me things, and ate my food like always, but the thought of shadows clinging too close or moving a little too late sat at the edge of my mind, refusing to leave.
It was just one morning, just a normal day like any other. But no matter how many times I told myself that, the quiet unease never went away.