I stepped through the mirror.
Not like walking into another room—
More like slipping out of my skin.
The hallway was colder here. Not winter-cold. Not even death-cold.
It was the kind of cold that made emotions brittle.
The kind that broke your voice mid-sentence and made your memories cough blood.
At the far end was a door.
It pulsed, as if it had lungs.
Above it, the words were carved—not written, carved—into the concrete:
"Classroom 0: Emotional Dissection Unit"
I didn't knock. You don't knock on trauma.
You just enter and pray it doesn't notice.
The moment I stepped in, the lights buzzed violently. A white so sharp it cut.
Rows of desks were arranged like surgical beds.
Straps dangled from each side.
No chairs.
No teacher.
Just me.
And them.
Around the room, the walls were covered in charts—not of anatomy, but of breakdowns.
Breakdowns categorized like diseases.
Anxiety – Type A: Internal Collapse Without External Trigger
Depression – Type C: Long-Term Emotional Seepage
Narcissism – Type F: Ego as Infection
Each chart had a signature: "Dr. Bellum, Lead Psycho-Curator."
The board at the front came to life.
A video began to play.
Me. Age six.
Sitting alone in the school cafeteria, picking at food, smiling because someone told me "strong boys don't cry."
Then another clip.
Me. Age nine.
Getting praised for hiding how tired I was. Getting rewarded for swallowing pain.
The screen faded to black.
Then a question appeared in bold white font:
"At what age were you taught that suffering in silence is a virtue?"
I didn't answer.
I couldn't.
Instead, the walls began to close in.
The straps on the desks lifted on their own—reaching out like hands.
Like they were hungry to pin me down.
I backed into the corner, but there are no corners in a mind this twisted.
Only loops.
Only echoes.
A second question flashed:
"How many times did you laugh so people wouldn't ask if you were okay?"
I laughed then.
The kind of laugh that tastes like blood.
Because the answer was "every day."
Because if you admit you're not okay in a world built on masks… you become the disease.
Then the teacher finally arrived.
Or rather, her shadow did.
She had no face. Just a silhouette in a lab coat, dragging a chalkboard behind her like a corpse.
On it was written:
"Today's Lesson: You Are Not Fine.
You Have Never Been Fine.
And That's Okay—We Just Need To Burn That Lie Out Of You."
She pointed at me.
And the straps tightened.
I couldn't move.
She pulled out a scalpel.
Not for flesh.
For thought.
She carved into the air in front of me, and a piece of my mind spilled out:
A memory of me, hiding in the bathroom during a family event, because being around "happy people" made me feel like I was rotting.
She whispered in my ear:
"This is where the infection started."
Then she left.
No words.
No end.
The classroom lights shut off.
The straps vanished.
But the scars didn't.
As I stepped out of the classroom, a new name tag slid down my uniform:
SUBJECT: 0001-A
"Emotional Stability: Bleeding Out"
The Seventh Bell rang.
My ears rang with it.
And this time—
I smiled.
Because now I knew:
They weren't trying to destroy me.
They were trying to show me who had been doing it all along
I wandered out of that room with a limp in my soul.
The hallway had changed.
It wasn't a corridor anymore—it was a hospital wing, except all the beds were empty, and the IVs dripped black ink into the floor.
On the wall, posters screamed in cheerful fonts:
"Mental Health Awareness Week!"
"Talk to someone you trust!"
"You matter!"
But someone had scribbled across them in red marker:
"Then why do I still feel disposable?"
I kept walking.
At the end of the hallway was a vending machine, old and rusted. Instead of snacks, it sold emotions.
Each button had a label:
Joy — SOLD OUTHope — SOLD OUTTrust — OUT OF STOCKAnxiety — 1 CreditSelf-Hatred — Free Sample
I didn't press anything.
I didn't have to.
The machine coughed out a mirror shard anyway.
The moment I touched it, another memory was pulled from me.
This time:
I was twelve.
I had just lost something—I don't even remember what—and someone said, "You'll get over it. Everyone does."
And I remember nodding.
Smiling.
Pretending like pain is something that expires if you ignore it long enough.
But now, in this school, in this academy of internal autopsies, I was learning the truth:
Pain doesn't die. It just learns to walk without limping.
The shard pulsed in my hand.
And a message formed across its surface:
"Your next class has already begun."
I turned the corner.
A sign above the next room read:
CLASSROOM 7: SUPPRESSED TRAUMA STUDIES
The door opened on its own.
Inside:
Silence.
Just rows of students with faces blurred out—each staring forward, completely still.
In front of them stood a man.
No, not a man—an absence shaped like one.
No face. No eyes. Just a tie that reached the floor and a cane made of bone.
He didn't speak.
Instead, a blackboard behind him lit up with one line of chalk:
"List all the things you were told not to talk about."
One by one, the students stood.
Each one said a single word.
"Molestation."
"Father."
"Panic."
"Hospital."
"Suicide."
"Me."
And when they spoke, a part of their body turned hollow.
Like saying the truth cost them something.
And they paid willingly.
When it was my turn, I stood.
I didn't say anything.
I just looked at the cane the teacher held.
I remembered it.
It was the same kind my grandfather used to beat the silence into my father.
And the same silence my father gifted to me.
So I said:
"Everything."
And my throat turned to smoke.
I couldn't speak for the rest of the class.
And no one offered help.
Because here, silence was the final test.
And I had failed it by trying to be heard.
Class ended.
The students disappeared.
The teacher melted into his tie.
And the only thing left on the blackboard was:
"Grief isn't something you overcome. It's something you drag behind you like a suitcase full of knives."
As I left the classroom, I didn't get a new tag.
This time, I got a prescription:
"Keep pretending. It's the only thing you're good at."
Outside, the hallway was darker.
Longer.
And for the first time—I heard someone else screaming.
Which meant only one thing:
I wasn't the only one still bleeding.
I didn't want to continue.
But this school doesn't ask for consent.
It demands exposure.
And if you hesitate—
It digs it out of you anyway.
I found myself in the locker room.
Except there were no lockers.
Just mirrors.
Dozens. Hundreds.
Each one shaped like a memory.
And they didn't show reflections.
They showed versions of me—every age, every mask.
One laughing too loud.
One staring blankly at a phone screen for hours.
One rehearsing fake stories to sound more "relatable."
One scratching his own skin under the sleeves just to feel something sharp.
And in the very center—
One version of me, sitting cross-legged on the floor, whispering something over and over:
"You have to be normal. You have to be normal. You have to be normal…"
I knelt beside him.
Asked, "Why?"
He looked up with hollow sockets and said:
"Because if they know the truth, they'll leave."
Then he vanished.
And so did the mirrors.
Leaving me alone with a chalk message burnt into the floor:
"Healing is not linear. But collapse is instant."
Somewhere far above, the school bell rang.
The Eighth Bell.
I hadn't even noticed the Seventh pass.
Time here didn't move forward.
It spiraled.
I wandered out into the central atrium.
The floor tiles were shaped like Rorschach blots.
Each step a test.
Each path a diagnosis.
In the middle stood a statue—taller than anything else in the academy.
It was a child, made of cracked marble,
Holding its own brain in its hands like a gift no one ever wanted.
On the plaque below it:
"In Memory of the Ones Who Felt Too Much and Were Told That Was Wrong."
And suddenly—
I didn't feel like a student anymore.
I felt like a relic.
Another piece of broken mind put on display,
for a school that collects pain like trophies.
As I left the atrium, I caught a glimpse of a teacher watching from the balcony.
She had no eyes—just scribbled-out sockets.
But she nodded.
And whispered so softly, it reached straight into my spine:
"Good. You're unraveling just right."