Zemiro leaned his back against the chair, folding his arms across his chest while watching Nazma from a distance. His sharp eyes narrowed slightly, following the rhythm of Nazma's short, shallow breaths.
His gaze descended systematically, locking onto the mechanics of Nazma's footsteps. There was a disruptive 0.5-second lag every time the girl's left heel dragged against the floor. Zemiro analyzed the shift in Nazma's body weight, which leaned heavily toward the right side.
The effect spiraled upward; Nazma's pelvis rose unevenly, forcing her back muscles into a constant state of tension to maintain balance. The slumped left shoulder and the overly clenched fist indicated a total failure in tension distribution. Nazma was a collection of data containing structural malfunctions forced to remain operational.
Zemiro disliked unclear variables. Life was simple: there was input, and there was output. But seeing this blonde girl walking, he felt a system was currently in error.
His index finger tapped rhythmically against his folded arm. His mouth was clamped shut, forming a flat, straight line. His gaze remained still on the point of failure, his facial muscles static, locking in an absolute expression.
He retraced the sequence of events in his memory to find the trigger for this system failure. Five minutes ago, Nazma still showed stable motor coordination while waving toward the field. However, after passing through the balcony corridor and encountering that other red-haired unit, the graph of Nazma's behavior plummeted.
Zemiro analyzed the variables. His sensors caught a change in frequency within the atmosphere there, something that caused Nazma to lose synchronization between her mind and her steps. The absence of verbal data from Nazma left only one conclusion; an external interaction had just corrupted the girl's mental calibration, causing her entire physical mechanism to run on the brink of total collapse.
Zemiro dissected the chaos into calculable variables. The trembling shoulders were a failure of the motor system to dampen pressure. Nazma's vacant stare was evidence of an overload on her mental processor. To Zemiro, the figure before him was merely a pile of colliding components, creating friction that should have been avoided if only Nazma forcibly released the burden she held.
He observed the strands of Nazma's hair falling to cover her face. The tilt of the girl's head showed a resigned distribution of gravity, as if her body's foundation had surrendered to an external load. The object in front of him was experiencing a structural malfunction that was very loud in its silence.
Zemiro remained still in his position, letting his brain process the anomaly recently caught by his ocular sensors. Nazma was a unit failing to maintain its own stability.
Nazma dragged her steps past the wooden desks that felt like an endless obstacle course.
Zemiro did not release his gaze. He watched as Nazma momentarily lost her balance.
Just before Nazma reached her chair, a strange tremor rippled down the back of her neck. It wasn't the air of hostility she had felt in the corridor earlier, but rather as if a sensor were observing her. Nazma lifted her pale face.
Her gaze collided directly with the figure of Zemiro. Those sharp eyes still locked onto Nazma without pause. The look was so clear, leaving Nazma stunned. There was something behind those irises.
What?
Stop the act. All your energy is being wasted for nothing. Zemiro was still staring at her.
Nazma pulled out her chair, then sat down. She folded her hands slowly on top of her desk.
Keep up the acting, and your body's system will completely shatter before the day ends. That is a very foolish choice.
Is it even normal for someone you've just met to perform such a detailed physical audit, even calculating the lag in your footsteps? For all of you, is this a form of hidden care or actually a threat?