Things didn't explode.
They… unraveled.
After that day, life didn't transform overnight—but I noticed the cracks.
People didn't just stop mocking me; they became careful around me.
They walked slower when passing me.
They laughed more quietly when I was near.
The contempt didn't disappear—it turned inward, like a knife twisting in their own gut.
And I… I felt it.
Not joy. Not justice.
But something close—a warped sense of satisfaction.
I should have felt powerful.
Instead, I felt like something had been emptied out of me…
and I didn't know what.
I became a part of it—the machinery.
Not because I believed in it,
but because it was easier to survive when you moved with the gears instead of being crushed between them.
The school, I realized, was no place for innocence.
Not anymore.
Maybe it never was.
It was a world broken into three.
The elite, who smiled with teeth too sharp.
The quiet ones, drifting like ghosts, afraid to exist too loudly.
And the third group—the darkest layer—
the ones who didn't pretend anymore.
They enjoyed the rot.
But what scared me the most wasn't them.
It was how familiar they began to feel.
I started recognizing their tactics, not with shock… but with understanding.
Their cruelty wasn't random—it was practiced.
Refined.
Wielded like a weapon passed down generation to generation.
Then one day, I was summoned.
There was no warning.
Just a quiet word passed from one shadow to another.
A gesture, a glance.
And I was there—in that room that smelled too clean.
Too sterile.
Too deliberate.
The air felt thick—like wet cotton stuffed into my lungs.
The walls seemed closer than they were.
Even the light buzzing from the bulb above sounded like screaming.
Three boys. One girl. And her.
The queen of the school.
The one everyone called angelic.
But angels, I had learned, can be terrifying too.
She didn't shout.
She didn't raise her hand.
She just spoke.
Softly. Sweetly.
Words dipped in sugar but soaked in venom.
And they obeyed.
They followed her command not out of fear…
but out of worship.
The girl—a student—was trembling.
She kept glancing at me like I might be the one to pull her out.
I remembered my mother once told me—
"If you see someone crying, you help."
I remembered it clearly,
even as the girl trembled.
Even as I did nothing.
But I was frozen.
Not in fear—
in numbness.
My heart didn't race.
My hands didn't shake.
I just stood there, watching the mechanics of humiliation being wound like a music box.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
The room was a stage.
A ritual.
And we were all players pretending we didn't hear the screaming silence underneath.
I should have said something.
I should have stopped it.
Instead, I wore a new face.
The Seventh Face.
It wasn't brave.
It wasn't furious.
It was hollow.
A blank mask.
A silence that stared back so deeply it made them uncomfortable.
So still it made them question if I was human.
I didn't scream.
I didn't fight.
But I looked at them in a way they had never been looked at before—
like they didn't exist.
Like their power meant nothing.
And for a brief, perfect moment—
they blinked.
They faltered.
Their cruelty cracked.
That girl walked out of that room, shaking.
I followed behind her, never saying a word.
Not because I didn't want to.
But because something inside me had stopped working.
Later that night, I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling.
Eyes wide open.
Heartbeat slow.
I tried to feel rage.
Pity.
Even relief.
But there was nothing.
Just… space.
I stared at my reflection for hours.
Not to check if I had changed.
But to wonder… if I had ever been real in the first place.
Then I picked up a pen.
I drew the seventh face that night.
Blank eyes. No mouth.
Just a hollow shell.
It looked back at me like it was waiting to be worn again.
That's when I understood.
I wasn't becoming stronger.
I was becoming emptier.
They didn't win.
I didn't lose.
We just became the same.
[ The Hollow Face
This is the face that doesn't fight or flee—
It absorbs.
It scares people not with violence, but with vacancy.
Because nothing is more terrifying than someone who has lost their last piece of fear… and doesn't even want it back.]