Mrs. Nurul's words seemed to transform Nazma into a magnet that drew a crowd of students to close in immediately.
The air around Nazma's desk suddenly felt denser, filled with the sound of breathing and the faint scent from her classmates' clothes.
The sound of chair legs scraping against the ceramic floor echoed here and there, creating a noisy symphony that broke the silence of the previous lesson.
Milan and Esa were the first to charge in, placing their books right on the girl's desk.
"Naz, please teach me this micrometer screw part!" Esa cried out with a very thick, pleading tone.
Milan drew closer, then presented his notebook which looked heavily burdened.
In every white corner of the paper, pencil strokes formed overlapping patterns of micrometer screws that filled the margins.
Milan pointed to a sketch of a nonius scale where the lines were drawn with heavy pressure, contrasting with the main scale that looked slightly tilted and repeatedly erased.
Nazma flinched, trying to pull back from the sudden siege that blurred her vision.
One by one, students began to circle her, creating a human barricade that blocked the access of light from the window.
Nazma smiled broadly, a gleam of happiness clearly radiating from her eyes as she attended to the barrage of questions coming all at once.
To her, this siege was not a disturbance, but a piece of the vision she had neatly arranged in her head all this time.
This was the moment she longed for: having a warm circle of friends, being a well-liked figure, while also proving her achievements to the teacher.
The fear of isolation or the shadows of bullying evaporated instantly, replaced by a sense of gratitude because she could finally be a center of affection who was useful to those around her.
Nazma took a long breath, trying to calm her heartbeat before reaching for Milan's pencil, which had a blunt tip.
She began to slide the notebook to the center, right under the remaining spot of light from the gap between her friends' shoulders. Her slender fingers pointed gently to the image of the main scale that Milan had previously erased by force.
"Look at this, Milan. Just think of this line as a definite boundary," Nazma said in a raspy yet soft voice.
She drew a firm straight line, fixing Milan's tilted sketch. Her pencil tip then danced across the paper, creating rows of small vertical lines for the nonius scale with very precise spacing.
"For this nonius scale, you only need to find which one is the most aligned, like looking for the perfect match," she continued while wearing a thin smile.
Esa and Jihan leaned their necks in too, transfixed seeing how Nazma simplified it.
Nazma looked up occasionally, making sure her friends understood, while her hand was busy drawing arrows on important parts in other book—Esa's book.
Not to be left behind, Nazma's seatmate also leaned toward her.
Celline rested her chin on her hands, listening carefully to every string of sentences coming from Nazma's lips.
The close proximity allowed her to see clearly how calm Nazma was as her fingers guided the pencil on the paper. Occasionally she nodded slightly, getting swept away in the rhythm of the explanation that flowed smoothly, as if just realizing that the figure beside her possessed a charm capable of uniting the entire class.
In the midst of that hustle and bustle, Zemiro still sat in his original place, even though his view was now blocked by the backs of the crowding students.
He leaned his back deeper, crossing his arms over his chest with a gaze that grew increasingly cold.
Highly inefficient. The light from the window should fall exactly on the object of observation, rather than being blocked by backs obstructing the line of sight. The incoming visual data becomes incomplete just because of this unproductive noise.