Somehow…I survived.
Not the day — not exactly.
I survived the exposure.
The ritual humiliation of day one had passed.
But something darker had settled in its place.
She — the teacher — pointed to the last bench.
Not a gesture of arrangement. A sentence.
A flick of her wrist, and I was exiled —To the back row.
The farthest edge.
And that's where he sat.
He didn't look at me when I approached.
Didn't acknowledge me.
Just stared forward.
Still. Not like someone calm.
Like something… turned off.
At first, I thought he was asleep.
But the air told a different story.
Thick. Rotten.
Vibrating with something that didn't belong.
When I really looked —I froze.
His hands moved under the desk.
Not quickly.
Not nervously.
With the mechanical ease of repetition.
He was doing something unspeakable.
And he didn't care that I saw.
He turned.
Blank eyes met mine.
"You do this too, right?"
Casual.
Like asking for a pen.
Like this was normal.
And something in me cracked —Not from shock.
Not from fear.
But from something heavier.
Realization.
This wasn't new.
This wasn't rare.
This was part of the air here.
He finished.
Calmly.
As if he'd just sharpened a pencil.
Then, he passed something forward.
The girl in front took it.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't even blink.
Just tucked it into her skirt pocket.
As if it were a note.
A secret.
A gift.
A threat.
I sat frozen.
My mind is buzzing like a dead signal.
This was my first real lesson.
Not of math.
Not of grammar.
But of decay.
The quiet kind.
The kind that smiles in hallways.
The kind that leaves no bruises,
But never leaves you.
The bell rang.
And that was that.
No one said anything.
No one saw anything.
Because maybe…no one wanted to.
Outside, the sunlight felt fake.
My father waited by the gate.
Smiling.
A hopeful smile.
A believing smile.
He took my bag.
Strapped it to the cycle.
I climbed on.
Cargo.
Returning from a battlefield no one believed in.
The road home was long.
Or maybe not.
Time moves strangely when your body returns, but your self doesn't.
At home, my parents asked:
"So, how was school?"
They were smiling.
Expectant.
They wanted reassurance.
They wanted to believe they had done something right.
But how could I tell them?
That innocence had a body count.
And mine was the first to fall?
They wouldn't understand.
Couldn't.
They came from a world where monsters wore claws —not collars and schoolbags.
So I smiled.
I lied.
"It was good."
"Nothing bad happened."
They smiled wider.
Comforted.
And I smiled back.
But that night, when the walls breathed,
and the silence dripped like water through cracks—
I stared at the ceiling,
waiting for it to blink first.
And that's when I knew:
This wasn't a memory.
This was an infection.
The second face had taken root.
A smiling face.
A survivor's face.
The face that says:
"I'm okay."
When nothing beneath it is whole.
And if you wear that smile long enough...You forget the mask is hiding something.
Until one day, it's all there is.