He woke to the vibration.
His phone was vibrating beneath his pillow, once, then again, like something knocking. He reached under it and felt around. By the time he found the phone, the screen was already lit. The notification panel wouldn't scroll all the way down.
He didn't look right away.
First, he glanced at the window. The curtains were pulled tight—thick, dark blackout curtains—but a strip of light still leaked through the gap between the edge and the wall. He didn't know whether it was daytime or evening. He hadn't fallen asleep last night. He'd lain there until dawn, then somehow drifted off at some point.
The room was very dark. He hadn't touched anything on the desk in several days. Textbooks, notebooks, a thermos with half a drink left in it. He didn't know how many days the water had been sitting there, and he didn't want to open it to find out. His uniform jacket hung over the chair beside the desk, the collar slightly wrinkled. He'd tossed it over the chair when he got home yesterday and hadn't touched it since.
He sat up and leaned against the headboard. The light from the phone screen fell across his face.
He opened the notification panel.
Messages from a group chat. A group he'd already been kicked out of, but someone had screenshotted the messages and sent them to him. Not out of kindness. It was the kind of thing people sent with a you should see what they're saying about you attitude. He knew the person who sent it. They used to sit next to each other, and he'd borrowed that person's calculator before. He didn't know whether they thought he deserved to know or simply thought it was funny.
He opened the screenshots.
“He seriously thought nobody knew? I'm dead.”
“I heard even the teacher thinks he took it.”
“How does someone like that still have the nerve to come to school?”
“He got caught stealing and still pretends he's innocent. What a thick-skinned freak.”
He looked at them one by one.
He hadn't stolen it.
It was a flash drive. It belonged to one of his classmates. It contained the materials for the final report. His classmate said they'd left it in a desk drawer in the classroom, and when they came back after recess, it was gone. Someone said they'd seen him standing near that classmate's seat during recess.
He had been standing there. He'd gone to borrow an eraser. His classmate wasn't there, so he left.
But “he was standing there” became “he went through the drawer.” Then “he went through the drawer” became “he took the flash drive.” Then “he took the flash drive” became a fact. Every retelling added something, like a snowball gathering snow. By the time it reached him, it no longer had its original shape.
He'd explained himself. To that classmate, to the people nearby, to the teacher. He said he'd only gone to borrow an eraser. No one believed him. His classmate said, “Then why didn't you wait until I came back?” The people nearby said, “And you believe anything he says?” The teacher said, “If it really wasn't you, then where did it go?”
He couldn't answer. He didn't know where it had gone. He only knew he hadn't taken it.
Later, the flash drive was found in a trash can in another classroom. Maybe that classmate had lost it themselves. Maybe someone else had taken it and thrown it away. No one investigated. It didn't matter anymore. What mattered was that “he steals things” had already become a fact everyone knew. The flash drive had been found, but no one apologized. Because “he was always kind of weird anyway.” Because he had never talked to people much. Because he was the kind of person people suspected.
Then someone posted about it online.
It wasn't someone from his class. It was someone from the class next door. A person whose name he didn't even know posted on the school's anonymous message board under the title “There's a Thief at Our School.” The post was detailed enough to say which row he sat in. It didn't include his name, but anyone who knew him could tell who it was.
He read the comments beneath the post three times.
The first time, he was looking for someone to defend him. He read from beginning to end, one comment at a time. There was no one. Not a single person said, “Maybe it wasn't him,” or, “Wait, do we even know what really happened?” Not one.
The second time, he counted how many people were insulting him. He stopped when he reached forty-seven. Forty-seven people. He didn't know how many of them knew him and how many had simply read the post and decided he was guilty. Maybe most of them didn't know him at all. They'd just seen someone they could attack, so they attacked him.
The third time, he started taking screenshots.
He didn't know why. Maybe he felt that if he didn't save them, no one would know those words had ever existed. Maybe the words felt too unreal, and he needed proof that this had really happened. Maybe he simply didn't know what else he could do. Explaining himself was useless. Staying silent was useless. At least taking screenshots was an action. At least his fingers were moving.
He took screenshots one after another. His finger slid across the screen, screenshot, slide, screenshot. A mechanical motion. His expression didn't change.
“People like him need to be taught a lesson.”
“Is his family poor or something? Is that why he steals?”
“I'm dead. Better put your stuff away when you see him from now on.”
“Does anyone know him? What does he look like?”
“I know who it is. The quiet one.”
“Quiet people are the scariest. They do bad things in secret.”
“I heard his parents are divorced. That explains it.”
He read the last one twice.
His parents really were divorced. It had happened last year. He lived with his father. But he hadn't told anyone about it. He didn't know who had let it slip. Maybe a teacher had mentioned it while talking to another teacher, and a student had overheard. Maybe someone's parent had said it in the parents' group chat. Maybe his father had mentioned it somewhere. He didn't know. He only knew that everyone knew now. And they were using it to explain why he had “stolen things.”
His parents were divorced, so he stole things. He read that logic twice and still couldn't understand it. But all forty-seven people seemed to think it made perfect sense.
He set the phone on the bed. The screen went dark. The room returned to complete darkness.
He stared at the ceiling.
There was nothing on it. He used to have glow-in-the-dark star stickers up there, stuck on when he was little, with his mother. She'd stood on a chair while he handed them to her. She'd placed them one by one, arranging them in the shape of the Big Dipper. They hadn't brought them along when they moved. The ceiling now was white, but in the darkness it looked gray. There were no shapes at all.
He wanted to tell someone.
He went through the possibilities.
His mother had moved away and lived in another city. She called once a month to ask how his schoolwork was going and whether he was eating well. He always said he was fine. When she called last month, he was looking at those comments. He switched to the call and said, “Everything's fine,” then switched back and kept reading after they hung up. He didn't know how to tell her, “Everyone at school thinks I'm a thief.” She would worry, but she wouldn't come back. She had a new life now.
His father was in the living room. Maybe he was watching TV. Maybe he was already asleep. He could go out and talk to him. But he didn't know how his father would react. His father wasn't good at handling things like this. The last time he'd told his father that someone at school wasn't being nice to him, his father had gone quiet for a moment, then said, “Then just ignore them.” He didn't know how to explain that ignoring them was useless, because they didn't need him to pay attention to them. They only needed him to exist. As long as he existed, they had someone to attack.
His teacher. He'd already talked to his teacher. The teacher had said, “It's something between classmates. Try talking it out yourselves.” He didn't know how to “talk it out” with forty-seven anonymous people. He didn't even know who they were.
He picked up his phone, then set it down. Picked it up, then set it down again.
Finally, he shoved it back beneath his pillow.
He didn't want to look anymore. But he knew he would look again tomorrow. And the day after that. He couldn't control the urge to look, any more than he could stop himself from touching a scabbed-over wound. He knew it would hurt, but not touching it was worse, because then he wouldn't know whether the wound was still there.
He lay back down and turned to face the wall.
The wall was white. There was nothing on it.
He closed his eyes. The words were still in his head. “Thief.” “Needs to be taught a lesson.” “That explains it.” They wouldn't disappear just because he closed his eyes. They would stay there, like words carved into the wall. He could turn off his phone, but those words were no longer inside the phone. They were inside his head.
He remembered being at school that day.
When he walked through the school gates that morning, his head was down. He walked with his head down all the time now. He hadn't used to. He used to look ahead as he walked, at the trees, the sky, the cats along the road. Now he only looked at the floor. Because if he looked up, he would see other people's eyes. There was something in those eyes. Not hatred. Something lighter—a look that said, “Oh, it's him.” As if he were something already defined, something no one needed to get to know again.
People laughed when they saw him in the hallway. They weren't laughing at him. They saw him, then turned to laugh with the person beside them. He couldn't hear that kind of laughter, but he could see the shape of their mouths. He pretended not to notice. He walked quickly with his head down, his backpack straps biting into his shoulders, pulled so tight that they hurt. He didn't loosen them. The pain gave him something else to think about.
Several people suddenly fell silent when he entered the classroom. That silence was worse than the laughter. Laughter was at least a sound. Silence was a hole. He walked through that hole, sat down at his desk, set his backpack on top, unzipped it, and took out his textbook. Every movement was slow, because he didn't know what he was supposed to do after that. He couldn't look at his phone. He couldn't talk to anyone. He couldn't space out—if he did, people would say, “What kind of bad thing is he thinking about?” All he could do was pretend to read.
At lunchtime, he ate his boxed lunch alone in the classroom. Everyone else had gone outside. The only sounds in the room were his and the electric fan's. The fan turned slowly and couldn't reach his desk. He stopped halfway through the meal. His father had cooked the food that morning: a fried egg with leftover greens from the day before. His father's cooking wasn't very good. The egg was overcooked, its edges burnt. He used to tell his father, “You cooked the egg too long.” He didn't anymore. He closed the lid and left the lunch box at the corner of his desk. It was still there in the afternoon. The rice had gone cold, and he didn't open it again.
He left school faster than anyone else. He didn't want to walk the same roads as anybody. He took a longer route home, cutting through a park and going around an alley, adding fifteen minutes to the trip. Children were playing in the park. People were walking their dogs. Elderly people sat on benches reading newspapers. He passed them, and no one looked at him. No one here knew him. Here, he was just someone passing by. He walked very slowly. He didn't want to go home. Once he got there, he would have to return to that room, that phone, those comments.
There was a vending machine at the park's exit. He stood there looking at it for a while. He had change in his pocket, but he didn't buy anything. He didn't know why. Maybe he felt he didn't deserve a can of soda. Maybe he simply didn't want to make any decision. He stood there for about a minute, then kept walking.
When he got home, his father wasn't there. A hundred dollars and a note sat on the table: “Buy your own dinner.” The note had been torn off a larger sheet, its edges uneven. The handwriting was hurried; he could tell his father had scribbled it before leaving.
He didn't go out to buy anything. He didn't want to leave the house. He took a carton of milk left over from yesterday out of the refrigerator and drank a few swallows. It was cold and tasted faintly like it was about to expire. He put it back, returned to his room, and closed the door. The sound was soft, but in the quiet house it seemed loud.
Now he lay in bed, listening to the sounds outside.
The television in the living room was on. His father was home. Some variety show was playing, with people laughing loudly. The canned laughter came in waves through the hallway.
He listened to it.
He waited.
He didn't know what he was waiting for. Maybe he was waiting for his father to knock on the door and ask how his day had been. Maybe he was waiting for a call, for his mother to suddenly say, “I heard what happened. I'll be back tomorrow.” Maybe he was waiting for a message from someone saying, “I know you didn't do it.”
He waited a long time.
The television grew quieter. His father had probably gone to bed. The hallway light went out, and the glow beneath the door disappeared.
The entire room was dark.
No one came to knock. No one called. No one sent a message.
He pulled the blanket up to his chin. His phone was beneath the pillow. He could feel its hard outline pressing against the back of his head. It wasn't vibrating anymore. Those people had gone to sleep too. Tomorrow they would wake up and go on with their lives. Maybe they would keep insulting him. Maybe they would forget about this and find someone else to attack. But he would remember. He would remember every single one.
He closed his eyes.
There was nothing in the darkness. No glow-in-the-dark stars. No light beneath the door. No one standing outside it.
He didn't know how he was supposed to go to school tomorrow.
But he knew he would go anyway. Because if he didn't, they would say, “He got scared because he's guilty.” If he went, they would laugh at him. If he didn't, they would laugh at him too. Going and not going were both wrong. But at least if he went, he could tell himself he hadn't run away.
He turned over to face the ceiling.
There was nothing on the ceiling.
He kept his eyes open in the darkness for a very, very long time.