Camille Yu used to believe that silence was neutral.
That staying out of things wasn't cruelty — it was self-preservation.
That not speaking meant not choosing.
But silence is a choice.
And choices have consequences.
Now, silence is all she hears.
It started with the emails.
Anonymous. No sender. No subject line. No signature.
Just images.
Still frames from security camera footage.
Low-res, slightly distorted, timestamped from a year ago.
One showed a bathroom hallway.
A figure slumped on the floor, knees pulled to chest, sobbing into trembling hands.
Another showed a girl — Camille — standing outside the door.
Frozen.
Listening.
Doing nothing.
Each photo bore the same line overlaid in typewriter font:
"You let her drown."
At first, Camille assumed it was a sick prank.
She deleted them. Blocked the address.
But new ones arrived from different senders, at random hours — 2:13 a.m., 4:44 a.m., 11:11 p.m.
Always the same phrase.
Always the same quiet accusation.
"You let her drown."
Then came the artwork.
Someone had slipped them into her locker.
Sketches. Waterlogged. Ink bleeding like veins.
Dozens of versions of Lyra — some screaming, some floating, some with blank eyes.
One showed Camille in the background, mouth stitched shut, framed in reflection behind a bathroom mirror.
Another showed a girl falling into water, while another figure stood on the shore — arms folded, head turned away.
Camille couldn't breathe.
She tore them up in the girls' bathroom, flushed the pieces down the toilet.
But the next day, more appeared.
Not just in her locker — in her dorm, tucked inside her textbooks, taped to her mirror.
Camille started checking over her shoulder.
In classrooms.
In the dining hall.
In her own home.
She became paranoid.
She asked her mother — the Headmistress — to check the school's security logs.
Nothing.
No footage. No trace.
Her mother dismissed it as stress, then slipped her a pamphlet titled: "Maintaining Mental Resilience Under Academic Pressure."
Camille didn't sleep that night.
The final crack came in Philosophy class.
The teacher put up a quote on the projector:
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing."
Camille froze.
Behind her, a girl coughed.
A few students turned.
One of them — the new girl, Mira — looked at her for a split second too long.
Not judgmental. Not angry.
Just…observing.
Camille's heart pounded.
That night, she received a brown envelope under her dorm door. Inside were:
A printout of her academic record, showing unexplained grade changes.
A screenshot of her mother's email, requesting a ghostwritten essay for Camille's college application.
And, at the very bottom, another drawing.
This time, it was a sketch of Camille's face.
Split down the middle.
One half was polished, smiling, perfectly composed.
The other was melting — warped, weeping, smeared in ink.
Underneath, a single word:
"Accessory."
Camille sat in her room, staring at herself in the mirror.
She thought about that day in the bathroom.
She thought about the look on Lyra's face when she passed her in the art hallway.
How red her eyes were. How her sleeves were wet. How her mouth opened slightly — as if to ask for help.
Camille had kept walking.
Now the silence was screaming.