He didn't ask who. He handed out the worksheets with trembling hands. For the remaining thirty minutes, the class worked in perfect silence. When the bell rang, the students filed out without a word. Leo paused at the door. "Mr. Halbeck tried to rearrange the desks," he said quietly. "He's in the hospital. Something about his reflection moving wrong in a bathroom mirror."
He took attendance. "Maya Chen?" Present. "Leo Torres?" Present. "Samira Jahangir?" A pause. A girl in the third row, wearing a hoodie with a faded NASA logo, raised her hand slowly. "Samira is… she's absent today, Mr. Elias." classroom76x
But Maya Chen was already moving. She walked to the wall switch without asking permission and flicked it down. The room plunged into darkness save for a single rectangle of pale light from the windowless door's bottom gap. In that darkness, Elias heard it: a soft, rhythmic tap-tap-tap , like a fingernail on glass. But there was no glass. Only the steel door. He didn't ask who
Elias handed in his resignation the next morning. But he never forgot the whisper. And sometimes, in the corner of a mirror, or in the frost on a winter window, he thought he saw her—counting vertices. When the bell rang, the students filed out without a word