The world had become quieter.
Not because the noise had stopped....if anything, it had grown worse....but because Matteo had stopped listening.
The first morning back at college, the air was thick with something unspoken, something waiting to be torn apart. He walked through the corridors, shoulders squared, eyes ahead. But the stares still pressed against him like iron-hot needles. Some watched with amusement, waiting for the next act of his humiliation. Others sneered, bitter that he was still standing.
Lina and Seraina, ever persistent, cornered him outside his classroom, holding up their phones. The screen flickered with the video that once shattered him, the distorted sound of his own suffering playing on loop.
"Don't ignore us, Matteo," Seraina's voice curled with mockery. "It doesn't suit you."
"Should we play this in the auditorium?" Lina added, her lips twisted in a smirk. "Maybe then you'll finally listen."
Matteo met their gaze for half a second. Then, he walked past them as if they were air.
Their smirks twitched. The satisfaction they once drew from his pain was gone. He didn't flinch. He didn't plead. He didn't care.
And that terrified them.
They tried again and again, their words growing sharper, their patience thinner. But Matteo never responded.
And then the cruelty turned violent.
Noemie and Annelise changed their approach. They didn't want silence; they wanted a reaction. And they knew exactly where to cut deep.
"Must be nice," Noemie sneered one afternoon as Matteo walked past. "No deadweights to hold you back."
"Do you visit their graves?" Annelise chimed in, tilting her head with mock concern. "Or do you just forget they ever existed?"
Matteo stopped.
For a moment, just a fraction of a second, the world blurred. The weight of their words pressed down on him, carving into his ribs.
He saw his mother's smile. He heard his father's voice. He remembered warmth. He remembered love.
Then he remembered loss.
A hollow sound rang in his ears.
Anger coiled in his chest like a serpent, tightening, waiting to strike. His nails dug into his palms. The old him....the Matteo who cared, who hurt, who bled for the world...would have lashed out, would have let his rage consume him.
But that Matteo was gone.
He turned and ran.
Laughter followed him. The hunt had begun.
They chased him through the halls, their footsteps echoing against the walls, their taunts sharp and gleeful.
"Look at him run!"
"Like a little rat!"
He reached the restroom, heart hammering. Slipping inside, he barely had time to brace himself before they followed.
Water splashed. Bottles uncapped. The sharp scent of detergent mixed with the sting of raw egg. They wanted him on his knees. They wanted him humiliated.
While they were busy doing that,
Matteo stood on the sink, gripping the top of the wall as he hoisted himself up. With a swift movement, he climbed over and slipped into the next washroom.
Outside, John and his friends were too busy throwing things inside that they didn't notice his escape.
By the time they realized he was gone, fury rippled through them like a tidal wave.
They stormed out, their anger boiling over.
And then...
Eliane.
She stood in their path, arms crossed, eyes burning with something unreadable.
"Enough."
Her voice wasn't loud, but it didn't need to be. It cut through the chaos, sharp and final.
The hallway stilled.
"You will not touch Matteo again," she said, her voice low, unwavering. "This is over."
A silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating.
Lina opened her mouth, but something in Eliane's expression stopped her. There was no room for argument. No ground left to stand on. One by one, they stepped back, their bravado withering into nothing.
The principal watched from a distance, something strange stirring in his chest.
She had changed.
The cold, distant professor who once taught from behind a wall of indifference now stood with an air of quiet warmth.
Matteo has started attending the extra classes.
Every day, Matteo sat in the back, absorbing knowledge in silence. He was no longer the boy who flinched at whispers or curled under the weight of taunts. He was simply a student, moving through each day like a ghost with a purpose.
Whenever anger surged, he left before it swallowed him whole.
Find a quiet place. Count backward.
Control.
Days blurred into weeks. The month crawled forward, slow but steady.
And then, finally, exams arrived.
Matteo wrote with a steady hand, his mind sharper than ever. When the results came, he passed with a score he never imagined. It was proof. Proof that he had endured.
He gathered his things, preparing to leave, when a voice almost stopped him.
But it never came.
Eliane stood by the window, fingers curling and uncurling as if grasping for something invisible.
She wanted to call him. Wanted to say something.
But the words never left her lips.
And Matteo walked away.