Ari stopped trying in increments.
It wasn't a decision he made consciously. There was no moment where he resolved to give up, no quiet promise whispered to himself in the dark. The effort simply drained out of him, leaking away each time trying failed to change anything.
He stopped raising his hand in class. At first, the teacher didn't notice. Then she did—and seemed relieved.
"Good," she said once, nodding approvingly when Ari kept his eyes on his desk. "Let's keep it calm today."
Calm meant quiet. Quiet meant invisible.
Ari learned the exchange quickly.
He stopped apologizing when he was scolded. Apologies had never prevented punishment. They only delayed it, stretched the tension until it snapped anyway. Silence was more efficient.
At home, he answered questions with single words.
"How was school?"
"Okay."
"Are you listening?"
"Yes."
His parents mistook this for improvement.
"See?" his father said one evening. "He's settling down."
Ari stared at the floor, fingers curled into his sleeves. Settling down felt nothing like relief. It felt like something closing over him, sealing tight.
The noise inside him didn't disappear. It dulled, compressing into something heavier, more dangerous. Without effort to vent it outward—through words, through movement—it turned inward instead, coiling beneath his ribs.
At school, classmates stopped reacting to him altogether. Fear softened into indifference. Teachers no longer hovered. Monitors no longer watched him constantly.
Isolation completed itself.
Ari ate alone, sat alone, moved through hallways as if surrounded by an invisible boundary. No one touched him accidentally anymore. No one joked near him. No one asked him questions that might provoke an answer.
This should have felt safer.
Instead, it felt like falling underwater—sound muffled, pressure increasing the deeper he went.
He noticed something unsettling during this period.
When he did nothing—when he withdrew completely—the adults relaxed. Their voices softened. Their shoulders loosened. Peace settled over the room.
He was learning the inverse lesson of Lune's.
Lune had learned that performance earned comfort.
Ari learned that absence earned it.
One evening, his mother watched him from the doorway of his room, uncertainty flickering across her face.
"You've been very… quiet lately," she said.
Ari shrugged.
She waited for more. None came.
"Well," she said finally, forcing a smile, "that's good, right?"
Ari didn't answer.
When she left, the door clicking shut behind her, Ari sat on the edge of his bed and stared at his hands. They shook faintly, energy trapped with nowhere to go.
He no longer tried to be good.
He no longer tried to explain.
He no longer tried to understand what others wanted from him. Trying had been punished. Withdrawal was tolerated.
Inside him, something began to harden—not into control, not into clarity, but into distance. A different kind of detachment than Lune's. Less polished. More defensive.
Ari did not feel empty. He felt packed tight.
And the tighter it became, the more he sensed that something would eventually have to give.