The hallway was noisy.Not the kind of noise that comes from voices — but the kind that hums under your skin when you're trying to hold yourself together.
I walked past the notice board, my eyes fixed ahead, pretending not to see the big red X next to my name in the test result sheet.
Another failure.Another reason for my parents to shake their heads in disappointment.
I didn't even wait to reach home this time.I turned toward the back field, where no one really went after school, and let myself drop onto the grass.
"Why can't I just be normal?"The thought came out like a whisper. The kind you hope no one hears — not even yourself.
Kaiya found me there, somehow.
She sat down without saying anything, her presence grounding me more than any word ever could.
"Didn't go well?" she asked gently, after a while.
I shook my head. "It's like my brain shuts down every time I try."
She didn't offer fake encouragement. That's not who she was.
Instead, she said, "Maybe you're trying to fight the noise with silence. What if you let the noise in — just enough to listen?"
I frowned. "What does that even mean?"
"It means you don't have to ignore your fears. You can use them."She pulled out a pair of old earphones from her pocket. "Come with me."
We walked to the empty music room — the one next to the auditorium.She connected her phone, and the room filled with low, deep beats. Nothing fancy. Just rhythm. Pulse. Heart.
"Sit," she said.
I sat.
"Close your eyes."
I did.
And for the first time, I didn't try to run from the buzzing in my head.I let it drown in the beat.Let it dissolve.
Thoughts slowed. My shoulders relaxed.
"What do you see?" she asked.
I told her:A wave crashing in slow motion.A staircase made of sound.A lightbulb flickering inside a storm.
She just smiled. "Then draw that tomorrow. Feel it first. Then create."
That night, I studied again.Not to pass. Not to prove.Just… to understand.
I still didn't get all the answers.
But I didn't shut the book either.
For once, I didn't quit halfway.
At school the next day, someone had scribbled over my old drawing in the gallery. A black X marked through the boy submerged in water.
It stung more than I thought it would.
But before I could say a word, Kaiya stood in front of it, pulled a red pen from her bag, and wrote above the X:
"He's not drowning.He's rising."
People stopped. Read. Looked again.
And for a moment — the kind that sits in your chest forever — I felt seen again.
Growth doesn't always look like success.Sometimes, it looks like failure… redefined.
And somewhere beneath the static,I started to hear my own voice again.
End of Chapter 5