𝓌𝓇ℴ𝓃ℊ ℯ𝓃𝒹 ℴ𝒻 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝒿ℴ𝓀ℯ

    

    

      

———

———————————————————

                                      𝐈. 𝔠𝔩𝔞𝔰𝔰 𝔠𝔩𝔬𝔴𝔫

         —————

             words                               528

                                     ———————————

#PranksterWeekend

i almost did a sad one

about denki but when

i sat and thought about

it i think nejire’s dejection

of her making jokes to fit

in made more sense!

art credit . . . ikumiart on X

———————————————————

———

♱

———

———————————————————

           No one had ever told Nejire Hado that laughter could be sharp, that it could carve through a person like salt-laced wind against a cliffside, eroding something soft and secret underneath. She had believed in laughter the way children believe in the tides—that it was always meant to pull you forward, carry you somewhere warm. She thought if she could weave herself into it, tangle in its currents, then perhaps she wouldn’t feel so apart. She would finally be able to fit in and make friends.

           And so, she became the tide itself, rolling, crashing, ceaseless.

           She danced when no music played. She spoke in spirals, in riddles that led nowhere, her words a kaleidoscope of bright, meaningless color. She laughed before punchlines, after them, sometimes without them at all. When the teacher turned away, she mimicked their stiff posture to the delight of a few scattered chuckles. When the lesson stretched long, she hummed against its edges, tapping her fingers against the desk, against her own ribs, a rhythm to remind herself she was here, she was here, she was here.

           For a time, they laughed with her.

           Then, the moment. The shift. The silent crumbling of something she had built too carelessly.

           A math lesson, numbers blurring into meaningless shapes. She whispered to Miura—the girl beside her, the girl who had smiled before, the girl who had been kind. A joke, another, a third, stacking on top of each other like a house of cards swaying in the breath of something inevitable. Miura did not laugh. Instead, she turned, slow, deliberate, eyes cool as river stones.

           “Do you ever stop?”

           A quiet thing, a simple thing, and yet it struck Nejire like a wave against rock—relentless, eroding.

           Silence followed. The class, the teacher, the walls—they had all swallowed her whole and left nothing behind.

           Nejire sat still, the laughter still curled in her mouth, unfinished, unwanted. And it felt rotten like guilt.

           She spent the rest of the lesson counting the cracks in her desk, the smudges of graphite where a previous student had pressed too hard. She did not speak. She did not tap. She did not hum.

           The bell rang, and the world moved on without her.

           And later, much later, she walked home with the sky unraveling in deep indigo above her, the air thick with the smell of distant rain. It felt too quiet. It felt honest.

           That night, she did not dream of laughter.

           She dreamed of the ocean. The way it stretched, unbroken, needing no applause to continue being vast, being full. The way it consumed sound, carried it far beyond where hands could reach, where voices could touch. The way it was enough simply to exist, to be blue and endless and whole.

           The next day, she did not dance. She did not hum. She let the tide recede, let herself become something smaller, something quieter.

           No one noticed. And for the first time, neither did she. If it was too much of a bother for her to own the aspect of friends—she would do the grandest act of friendship one could commit. The act of leaving them alone.