Jihan didn’t move.
He sat on the cold floor by Jishan’s door, back against the wall, eyes empty and unblinking — almost lifeless.
His fingers rested loosely on the ground beside him, as if even lifting his hand was too heavy. His breath ca slow—shallow—barely noticeable.
The others watched him for a mont.
None of them dared to speak.
None of them knew how.
Because the grief hanging over Jihan wasn’t sothing any of them could touch.
So eventually—quietly—the six of them left him there.
They moved down the dim hallway, past cracked plaster and the small windows where morning light finally began to pierce the gloom.
Their footsteps echoed—
tap... tap... tap...
slow, uneven, trembling steps.
And soon... they reached the Headmaster’s Hall.
The huge double doors stood tall before them. Gold patterns ran across the fra, sunlight spilling from the stained windows above. The hall inside looked almost beautiful, almost peaceful—like nothing terrible had ever happened here.
But the mont the six entered—
The calm shattered.
“Sir!” they cried out, voices overlapping, shaking.
Tears rolled down Shahin’s cheeks.
His words burst out in panic.
“J–Jishan is missing... Last night we were—”
His voice cracked. He choked mid-sentence, unable to continue.
“Shhh.”
The headmaster raised his hand gently, his expression unnervingly calm.
“Quiet yourselves first. Speak slowly.”
The six of them froze... wiped their tears... tried to breathe.
Shahin swallowed hard, his voice low this ti.
“Jishan is missing, sir. Last night we decided we’d guard his door. But... suddenly there was a strange sll... and we all collapsed. When we woke up... in the morning... Jishan was gone.”
There was a long pause.
The headmaster exhaled softly.
Then, expression unchanged, he said—
“He is dead.”
“What...?”
All six of them stiffened, eyes wide.
“He was very sick,” the headmaster continued calmly.
“We took him to the hospital. But he died while receiving treatnt.”
His voice held no sorrow.
No shock.
No urgency.
Just... cold, familiar calm.
Of course... of course he’d say that.
Every ti soone vanished...
he repeated the sa lines.
“He was sick.”
“He died in the hospital.”
“He was adopted by a family.”
Excuses.
Always excuses.
Rihan clenched his fists.
Alok shook in anger.
Ishan gritted his teeth so hard his jaw trembled.
They argued.
They demanded answers.
Their voices grew louder—shaking, desperate, furious.
But the headmaster only sat there, unmoved.
Unbothered.
Repeating the sa calm, rehearsed fabrications.
Until finally...
They ran out of words.
And all that remained—
was the sound of their quiet sobbing...
echoing through the grand, empty hall.
***
Night returned slowly... heavy like grief.
All six sat beside Jihan at the entrance of the empty room. The hallway light humd—
buzzz... flicker... buzzz...
Their dinner plates lay on the floor, untouched. Food growing cold. No one lifted a spoon.
Ti crawled.
Then footsteps approached softly.
tap... tap... tap...
A woman in her thirties, Rufia Jahan, knelt beside them. Her eyes were tired but warm. She pulled young Soraya into her arms, gently brushing her back.
In this orphanage... she was the only one who truly cared for us.
For every child here... she was like our real mother.
“Why aren’t you eating?” she asked quietly.
No one responded. Only the weak buzzing of the hallway light answered.
She already knew the reason.
But still... she asked.
How could we eat at a ti like this?
“Now you’re ignoring ?” Rufia said, trying to sound playful, but her voice wavered with pain. “If you don’t eat... you won’t even have the strength to walk.”
Alok exhaled shakily, eyes red.
“How can we eat, m? At this rate... this orphanage is going to be empty soon...”
Silence. Heavy. Drowning.
Then Rufia whispered, almost too softly—
“You all know who is doing this... don’t you?”
Her words struck them like thunder.
—THUMP.
Their hearts jolted inside their chests.
Yeah... deep down, we all knew.
It was him.
The headmaster.
But we were hopeless.
We couldn’t fight back.
So we pretended...
we pretended we knew nothing.
The hallway humd.
buzzz...
The plates stayed full.
No one touched the food.
And the room behind them stayed empty.
Forever.
Jihan slowly lifted his gaze toward Rufia.
His lips trembled before words escaped him.
“I... don’t want to overlook it anymore, ma’am.”
His voice cracked. “How can we? I can’t handle it anymore. If there’s anything we can do, anything at all—just tell . I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.”
Yeah... he couldn’t hold back anymore.
Up until now, he kept forcing his pain down,
pretending he could endure it.
But when it ca to Jishan...
his control shattered.
Rufia watched him in silence.
The hallway light humd quietly overhead.
Buzzz... flicker... buzzz.
Her eyes looked tired—too tired for soone who had hope left.
Then... she finally spoke.
“If anything could be done,” she whispered softly,
“I would have done it long ago.”
Her hands loosened around Soraya’s small shoulders.
She gently set Soraya on the floor beside them and stood up—slowly, as though the weight of years hung from her body.
“I will try sothing,” she said.
“So that tomorrow night... you’ll all be able to leave this place.”
The six of them lifted their heads at once.
Rufia’s voice dropped, almost like a secret carried by the dim hallway:
“So eat your food. You’ll need strength to escape.”
Sifan, eyes wide, stamred faintly,
“T-Then... what about you, m?”
Rufia looked at them with a tired smile.
A smile soft... but already accepting sothing they couldn’t yet understand.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered.
“I’ll be fine.”
Her steps echoed down the hallway.
Tap... tap... tap...
No one spoke.
The sound of her footsteps faded—
...tap...
...tap...
—and silence swallowed the corridor again.
For a long mont, they just stared at their food.
Then one by one, without a single word...
They began to eat.
Slowly.
Quietly.
As if chewing sorrow.
And the night passed the sa way—
Silent. Heavy.
Like sothing was waiting.
***
Morning arrived quietly.
Too quietly.
A pale strip of sunlight crawled through the hallway windows, touching the cold floor where we had spent the night. One by one, we stirred, blinking away the heaviness from our eyes.
But sothing felt wrong.
Very wrong.
Jihan wasn’t there with us.
Rihan stood first.
Then Shahin.
Then .
None of us needed to say it.
We all ran toward the Headmaster’s Hall.
Our footsteps thundered across the wooden floor—
THUD—THUD—THUD—THUD—
The long hallway stretched endlessly before us, the stained-glass windows casting trembling colors across our racing shadows.
Shahin’s voice broke first:
“Sir—!!”
He shoved the door open—
BANG!!
And then...
We froze.
Every breath in our lungs
stopped.
Blood.
Everywhere.
The carpet — once red — was soaked a darker shade, thick and wet. The tallic stench hit us instantly, sharp enough to sting our noses.
On the floor—
The headmaster’s body lay twisted unnaturally, eyes wide in permanent terror.
Beside him, the two n who always accompanied him... were motionless. Limbs slack. Throats cut open. Pools of blood spreading beneath them like blackened shadows.
And sitting in the middle of that horror—
was Jihan.
His clothes, his arms, his face— streaked and splattered with crimson.
His hands drenched up to the wrist.
A single knife dangled loosely from his fingers.
Drip...
Drip...
Blood slid from the blade and hit the floor in slow, sticky drops.
We couldn’t speak.
We couldn’t breathe.
And then...
Jihan slowly... very slowly... turned his head toward us.
His hair fell over one eye, but the other glead unnaturally bright—too calm, too quiet.
A smile tugged at his lips.
Not warm.
Not gentle.
A smile that sent a chill racing up our spines.
A smile of a boy whose heart had finally broken.
A smile that didn’t belong on a child.
And he whispered—
Calm.
Soft.
Terrifying.
“...Oh. You all ca.”
His gaze drifted to the bodies beside him...
and then back to us.
Still smiling.
“Don’t worry, guys.”
His fingers tightened around the knife.
Blood dripped faster.
“From now on...”
A pause.
A slow exhale.
A smile that cut deeper than any blade.
“...no one will disappear again.”
The words echoed across the hall—
cold, final, irreversible.
That day...
Jihan didn’t just lose his childhood.
He lost everything.
And that was the mont...
...our fate changed forever.
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