“Nice work. You are also a really creative student.”

She took a glance at my drawing, the corner of her mouth lifting with practiced ease.

“Thanks...”

The office felt chilly; the smell of disinfectant lingered at the tip of my nose.

She walked toward the old steel cabinet half-buried under the mounds of textbooks that piled up to the ceiling. It was burdened with all the load, almost eaten up by rust.

Rushhhh.

Stacks and stacks of white and yellowing papers poured out of the cabinet, flooding through the gate to escape.

“Oh! For god’s sake!”

She then muttered something unclear, crouched down, and started sweeping together with impatient hands.

Getting closer, stretching to collect, I felt the drumbeat inside myself approaching, knocking, roaring.

They were all House-Tree-Person test drawings, the tool that our school used to “assess” our mental state. Paper after paper—edges softened, corners chewed down by years of being shoved back into the dark, unread but ‘filed’.

2011, 2008, 2017......

Those jumbled lines with their fleeting names and repeatedly worn textures climbed incessantly onto my retina.

                                                                         ***

I heard them talking, those hushed discussions.

“Did you hear the news that she tried to take her own life?”

“Yeah. But I also heard she wasn’t successful.”

“Hilarious.”

The curtains were closed in the classroom, only a hair-thin line of light slipping through the crack. Under the lamp, no one saw it.

“Where did she go?”

“Perhaps her parents took her home or… to an asylum?”

I put down my pen and turned around to look at the desk at the very back of the line. The surface was spotless, as if no one had ever used it. Any remnants of our peers had been wiped away clean, disinfected for the next student.

A flat tap sounded at the door, smothering the chaos instantly.

“Class, please keep silent. We are doing an assessment today. You will all receive a blank sheet of paper, on which you will draw a picture that must include three elements: a house, a tree, and one person. Color pens are recommended, but well, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have any.”

The teacher fiddled with the curly hair on her shoulder, carelessly passing down the papers to each student in the front row, the sound of folding papers echoing around the walls, the class clenching with annoyed sighs.

“What’s the purpose of this? It’s genuinely just wasting time,” someone complained.

“I said, silence.” Her eyebrows twisted together, but then again, smoothed out rapidly.

The atmosphere solidified until the tension between pencils and papers was the only thing left.

House, tree, person. The words echoed in my mind like they came from a thousand miles away. What about them? 

My pencil pressed into the paper with full force, bumped, slipped, engraved into the surface.

Crushing, with a dull and crisp sound, the tip broke and sank inward, graphite particles scattering like meteorites with trailing tails.

What’s wrong with me? Hold it. Hold it with your hand!

I snatched another pencil from my bag before moving on to draw the person standing at the edge of the paper.

Dragged, turned, paused, stretched—the head!

Leaped, rubbed, forced—the body!

Dived, carved—the legs!

Snap. Again.

It cracked, booming in my eardrum, exploding in the classroom, casting a gaze!

I didn’t look at that pair of eyes like stagnant water.

I took out the last pencil. But the barrel had already begun to slip.

Be more careful this time, less… strength.

Going with the lines, spinning with the texture.

One circle, and two…

Then, I hesitated.

My hand trembled above the page.

Until the brittle tick, the dull particles again fleeting from the tip, drifting like ash from the circles. Heads turned around… those stares ice-cold enough to make me tremble, yet somehow searing—burning into me with a sharp, blistering sting.

I stared at the incomplete person.

With no hands.

No ears.

No mouth.

No voice.

Nothing that suggested an existence.

Except—

Two small, unfinished circles.

Eyes.

Wide, blank, empty, never blinking.

They were the only part I managed to complete, as if that tiny person had been born merely to watch—to witness everything happening, to say nothing, to do nothing, to be nothing but a pair of staring, helpless pupils pressed against the edge of a world that refused to see them back.

                                                                          ***

“Hey. Are you still here?”

“Hmm, yes...yes. Sorry.”

She finally succeeded at shoving those bruised drawings into the dark. With a screeching sound, the cabinet door slammed shut again, but the sound seemed to linger in the air.

“Alright, all set. Don’t think too much about it. Just prepare for finals.”

She patted the cabinet casually, as if trying to soothe something.

Nodding my head, I turned around to leave the office. But just as I stepped away, I thought I saw something—a limp corner of a paper inching out from the cabinet’s seam. I attempted to squeeze it back, but I hesitated.

In that single second of hesitation, the ending settled between us.