Silent Screams: Shadows at the Back of the Classroom

At the back of the classroom of Class 3, Grade 11, one seat is always empty. They say that anyone who sits there will “disappear” within three months. They don’t transfer schools or drop out. It’s as if they were pencil marks erased by a rubber, until even the traces of their existence grow hazy.

Lin Yan is a new transfer student, quiet and reserved, and always wears a cotton glove on his left hand, washed so pale it’s nearly white. On his first day in the seat his homeroom teacher calls “forbidden,” he finds a cloth doll with a broken leg in his desk drawer. Its eyes have been daubed in red ink, giving it a sinister look, as if it’s staring straight at him.