Silent Proximity
820 Words
The next morning Lucian walked into Block C study hall with Marcus and Dara, listening to Marcus complain about the terrible porridge at breakfast. "It had lumps", Marcus was saying. "Big ones. Like small rocks hiding in white paste".
But Lucian was not listening, he was looking at the back corner.
She was already there. Same seat. Same straight pencil beside her notebook. Same worn textbook open flat on the table. Her braids were slightly different today. One was looser than the other, like she had done it quickly in the dark without a mirror.
Lucian changed direction and walked to the back corner.
Marcus stopped talking mid-sentence. "Where are you going?"
"I'll find you later," Lucian said.
"But we should always sit toge..."
"Later, Marcus."
He heard Dara make a small surprised sound behind him. He heard Marcus whisper something that was probably rude but he did not turn around to find out.
He pulled out the chair beside the girl and sat down.
She did not look up. She did not react at all. She just kept reading like he was not there, her finger moving slowly under each line of text.
He opened his own book.
They sat in silence. Around them the study hall filled with noise, chairs scraping, bags dropping, people laughing. But their little corner stayed quiet. It felt almost separate from the rest of the room. Like a different place entirely.
Lucian tried to read.
He read the same paragraph four times and could not tell anyone what it said.
He was too aware of the space between them. Not just the physical space — the few inches of air between his arm and hers. Something else. Something he could not name or explain. A kind of pressure in his chest, soft but constant, like a sound too low to hear but loud enough to feel. He pressed his finger to the page and forced himself to concentrate.
Pack governance begins with a clear line of authority, the textbook said. Without structure, a pack collapses from within.
He read that line there times. Then he gave up and look sideways.
She was completely focused. Her eyes moved steadily across the page. Her lips pressed together slightly when she reached something difficult, like she was chewing on the words before swallowing them. Her notebook had writing in it already, neat, small, organised into sections with underlines and question marks in the margins.
She had woken up early to study before studying.
Lucian looked back at his own book. His own page was completely empty. He had not written a single word in forty minutes. He felt, for the first time in a long time, genuinely embarrassed.
When the bell finally rang, he stood and picked up his bag, then she looked up.
Her eyes were dark brown. Steady and careful. The kind of eyes that paid attention to everything and forgot nothing.
"You sat here again," she said. Her voice was quiet and even, like she was simply making an observation rather than asking a question.
"Yes," he said.
She looked at him for a moment. Not with hostility. Not with excitement either. Just with that same careful steadiness.
"Why?"
Lucian opened his mouth to talk but nothing came out.
He genuinely did not have an answer. He could not say because something in my chest pulls toward you like a rope. He could not say because I looked at this room and my feet just walked here without asking me first. He could not say any of the true things. So he said nothing.
The girl's expression did not change, but something in her eyes shifted. Tiny. Almost invisible. Like a door that was open by just one c***k, and then wasn't. She looked back down at her notebook.
Lucian picked up his bag properly and walked toward the door. His face felt warm. His chest felt strange.
At the doorway he stopped and turned around without fully meaning to.
She was still sitting there, writing in her notebook, completely unbothered. But her pen had stopped moving. She was staring at the page without reading it.
Lucian turned back around and walked into the corridor.
Marcus appeared from nowhere and grabbed his arm. "Okay what is happening with you? Who is that girl? Why do you keep..."
"Stop," Lucian said.
"Lucian..."
"I said stop it, Marcus."
Marcus went quiet.
But later that evening, when Lucian was lying on his bed staring at the ceiling of his dormitory room, his father's letter sitting unopened on the desk beside him, he heard a knock at his door.
It was Dara.
Her expression was serious. More serious than usual.
"Someone filed a report with administration today," she said quietly. "About you."
Lucian sat up slowly. "What kind of report?"
Dara looked at him carefully before she answered.
"The kind that gets sent home to your father."
- Writer
