Episode 4: Meaningless

Akira started to walk to the school where she doesn’t belong, she has no friends nor anyone to approach her this day always end meaningless. Nothing special happening. Days always repeating it self.

In the morning, the only name she knows is “Kana” the one who always bullies her, every time she sees her.

No one can understand her no one. Just like art. Everything she’s drawn are the only things she treasures.

She arrives at the school gate. There aren’t many students around at that time. When she gets there, she starts walking in the hallway, her head still bowed low not lifting or tilting it up.

A student whispers, “Hey, did you know there’s a new student transferring to Class One?” they say to another student.

Akira hears it. Class One is where she’s going where she’s studying. But she doesn’t know there will be a transferring student. She brushes it off, because she doesn’t care about whoever it is.

She starts walking toward the classroom door, her hand sliding along the door before she opens it. The room is empty no students yet, only chairs, desks, and a clear chalkboard. She steps inside and walks to her seat. She puts down her bag and leans her head on her desk, letting time pass by. Minute by minute, more students arrive until the teacher comes to start the lesson.

The moment is silent as normal for Akira. Nothing changes; it’s always quiet, no sound at all. It’s like blocking her ears, lost in daydreams, always alone.

The bell rang the only sound she could hear from the class, so clear. She stood up and walked past everyone, just like air. She made her way down the hallway and out of the classroom, holding her sketchbook.

Akira settled onto a weathered bench outside the school, her sketchbook balanced on her knees. The worn wood creaked softly as she shifted, and she glanced up at the sound her gaze drifting over the sprawl of the school yard. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the cracked asphalt, and the trees lining the perimeter seemed to lean in like sentinels protecting a secret.

She was lost in her art, pencil scratching against paper as she captured the jagged lines of rooftops against the fading sky. The world narrowed to the tip of her pencil, the scrape of graphite on paper, and the slow unfurling of the landscape taking shape on the page. Kids laughed and shouted somewhere in the distance; their voices muffled by the buzz of cicadas in the trees. Akira’s pencil moved with quiet intensity, her focus entirely on her work.

As the sky deepened to indigo, Akira’s pencil slowed. She leaned back, her eyes lifting to the vast darkening expanse above. For a moment, she wasn’t poor, wasn’t bullied, wasn’t trapped in a tiny apartment with a mom who didn’t understand. She was free.

AKIRA:

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