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Chapter 3 - Chapter3: Alone

Chapter 3 — Alone

Shin stood there, alone. He simply stood, motionless for a moment, then took a tray and went to sit at a table by himself. He immediately understood why that table was empty: nobody wanted to eat isolated from the others, sitting in the shadow of everyone else.

So he sat there. Around him came the constant, buzzing noise of classmates and children from other classes, the murmur and laughter and the many little conversations that filled the cafeteria. Even the people he had helped to connect were not alone; each of them had at least one companion. And even that—having at least one companion—was itself unusual: most groups were made up of five people, because everyone tended to socialize with everyone else. Walls of groups formed, and in those walls the bricks of friendship were cemented together by something everyone took for granted: the bonds each member contributed. For Shin, it felt like he was the mortar that linked those bricks.

But in a wall, people do not care about mortar once the wall is finished. During construction, mortar matters; afterwards, what people see is the surface, the facade. The mortar doesn't show. Shin had understood that truth very young. He could see how people valued the visible, the external; they never considered the invisible things that had held everything together while it was being built. He had understood it, and so he savored the meal that had been put in front of him.

The meal surprised him: it tasted good. Not merely edible, but good—pleasant in ways that made each bite worth taking time over. Each mouthful was savored. Each chew seemed to him the prelude to a small explosion of flavor that arrived and settled on the palate, then dissolved into an aftertaste that lingered and made him think of other things. The texture of the bread, the way the filling folded against his tongue, the little contrasts of soft and crunchy—he noticed every detail. By concentrating on the meal, by focusing on the simple ritual of eating, he could for a moment forget the isolation that lived inside him.

He ate slowly, deliberately. He ate with the kind of attention that turns ordinary food into something almost ceremonial. In the corner of the cafeteria he sat quiet and alone, and despite the echoing din of voices that rolled off the tables and the clatter of trays and cutlery, the corner felt calm to him. It was a small island of quiet in an ocean of noise.

When the meal was finished, he cleared his tray and stepped outside into the schoolyard. He had finished first—inevitable, since there had been no conversation to distract him while he ate. Conversation delays others; silence speeds him up. He walked until he found a large tree whose name he didn't know, and took refuge there. He laid himself down in the grass, back against the tree trunk, and let himself feel the mixture of the late-summer warmth and the refreshing coolness cast by the shade. A light breeze wandered through the branches, moving the leaves and sending tiny shafts of shifting light across his face.

That union of warmth and coolness felt harmonized inside him, as if the weather itself conspired to make his chest feel settled. It was the kind of small, perfect balance that tastes like contentment. In that instant, contentment and calm were indistinguishable. He felt that nothing could disturb him; he felt sheltered.

And so he did only one thing: he relaxed, and he let his imagination go.

He imagined everything. Dozens of images, scenarios, possibilities came and went inside his head at a rate so rapid it was almost dizzying. A thousand little possibilities paraded by in his mind: how to escape from here, whether to stay, what he might do next, how to prolong this moment of peace, how to find more such moments. Every little option seemed to branch into other options. He imagined doors opening, roads not yet taken, small inventions of pleasure—simple things like where to sit tomorrow at lunch, or more elaborate fantasies of vanishing and reappearing somewhere else. Nothing stayed still; everything shifted, recombined, multiplied.

These thoughts did not weigh on him. Each idea arrived and then left as speedily as it had come, like beads sliding off a string. He did not fatigue from the influx; he welcomed the constant turnover. When one idea dissolved, another immediately took its place. It was a procession of glimpses rather than a single long story. He imagined the weather, the precise comfort of his position under the branches, the taste of the sandwich he had just eaten, the rhythm of his chewing and the tiny, lingering aftertastes. He imagined the texture of the grass against his cheek and the exact temperature of the shade. He even considered the sequence of thoughts themselves—the way one recollection sparked another, how memory branched into imagination and back again.

He imagined so many things that he no longer remembered what he had been thinking just a second before. But that forgetfulness did not bother him at all; on the contrary, by the time he realized he had forgotten, a new thought had already arrived to replace the old. Time, within his mind, flowed in a way that was both endless and fleeting. It was as if he had been living hours within a single heartbeat, stretching and compressing experience until the measure of minutes meant nothing.

He did not know how long he remained there. He had no idea when classes would resume, whether other pupils had already finished their meals, whether anyone had been watching him lying under the tree. He did not know anything at all—except the single fact that he did not want to open his eyes. His eyelids were not heavy with sleep; the sun did not press down on him; he lay comfortably in shade. Instead, his eyelids simply refused to obey his will. He wanted to keep them closed and that reflex of resistance felt absolute. For him, in that pocket of shade, time seemed not to exist at all.

He felt the warmth even under the tree, mixed with the cooling hint of wind and the shelter of branches above him. It was perfect. He did not want to think about anything else—and, in truth, he couldn't think of anything else. The world compressed to this single, immeasurable moment.

Then, unexpectedly, he opened his eyes and realized the yard was empty. A small, prickling worry rose in him: had no one come to tell him that class had resumed? Where had they all gone? He sat up and looked toward the cafeteria. From there he saw the truth: the tables still held pupils as if no time had passed since he had settled in the shade. It was perplexing. Time had felt both infinitely long and simultaneously vanishingly short.

This contradiction unsettled him. He considered, with the kind of curiosity that usually belonged to someone who loved patterns and puzzles, the human mind's ability to twist the feeling of time. How strange, how fascinating, and how a little terrifying—to have one's internal clock so detach itself from the external one. A shiver passed along his spine when he thought of time as a concept, an abstract flow that compresses or stretches depending on the situation. Then he closed his eyes again and tried to make his mind blank, to return to the small, clean emptiness he had enjoyed.

After a while, perhaps minutes, perhaps less, he heard footsteps. Groups of students—some of those he had helped earlier—were passing nearby. He could recognize their rhythms, the cadence of their laughter, the particular way they walked together. But when that reality brushed his awareness, he lay back down; the quiet void inside his head re-formed as if by habit. He let the world live without him for a few more breaths.

He could hear everyone around him ignoring his presence. They spoke of ordinary things: their parents and small family matters, the trivial details of a life that went on even at school. Some students were still introducing themselves to each other, because it was the first day and they were forming impressions and alliances. The same recurring thought returned to him again and again: he had built those little chains of acquaintances so that no one would be alone on the first day, so that no one would feel abandoned. He had been the one to tie threads between people to prevent isolation.

And he had done it for others. He, who disliked doing things that did not directly benefit himself, had made an effort on this first school day. He had wanted to connect, to be able to tell his mother he had made friends—or at least that he had eased someone into a group. One of those things was true, the other was not. He had been willing to try, but his attempt had resulted only in helping others; he had sacrificed his chance to form his own link. He had given his energy to the social structure of others and had nothing left for himself.

In the end, he had helped; he had made it easier for others to belong; and yet, as the bell rang and the day moved on, he found himself alone.

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