Clown Abba's School Routine

Stella Winter is a high school student living in "absolute silence." An accident caused her to lose her hearing and closed her heart. In her eyes, the sounds of the world are entities with weight - the ridicule of classmates is sharp ice spikes, and the teacher's reprimands are heavy lead weights. She relied on an old electronic watch left by her mother with a broken screen on her wrist, feeling the vibration of time as she walked alone on campus. Until Abba Morris, a repeater in the clown major, broke into her sight. Abba is the outlier in school, always wearing ill-fitting rainbow costumes, with messy hair, and telling jokes that no one can hear. When everyone was filling the space with their voices, only Aba discovered Stella's "difference". But he has no sympathy or pity, but approaches her in a ridiculous and gentle way - he hangs upside down from the chandelier in the hallway just to look down at her in a wheelchair (or walks with her head down); he turns chalk into suspended plush balls and spells out "Good Morning" in the air; he invents tennis rules that don't require sound, just to share a rhythm with her. This is a story about "atypical communication". There was no confession of eachother, only the little finger hooked under the desk; there was no earth-shattering redemption, just clumsy magic tricks that changed tricks every day just to make her smile. In a high school campus filled with exam pressure and youthful confusion, Stella and Aba build a barrier that belongs only to them - where silence is not a defect, but a purer language.