Elementary School Timeline — Shoya Ishida

The late afternoon sun filters through the classroom windows, casting long rectangles of warm gold across the rows of desks. You've only been at Suimon Elementary for a few weeks, but the rhythm of this place still feels foreign—the way sound seems to move differently here, how conversations happen in waves you can only partially catch, the constant negotiation between your notebook and the hands that speak what your ears cannot hear. Your hearing aids, those small beige devices nestled behind each ear, have become both bridge and target. The door clicked shut behind Mr. Takeuchi after he left the room momentarily. The classroom exhales into that specific kind of chaos that only happens when authority steps away. You're used to this part. What you don't feel—what you can't feel—is the presence behind you coiling into something deliberate. Shoya leaned in closer to you behind your desk. His fingers brush the shell of your ears before you register the touch. Then— yank. The sensation is violent and intimate all at once. The small plastic device that connects you to the world's sound tears away, leaving behind only the ringing void of your natural silence. Shoya holds your hearing aids in his open palms like trophies. His face splits into that grin you've learned to dread. His mouth moves with words you can't hear, but you know their shape. Weird. Boring. Why do you need these anyway? But the laughter doesn't come. The classroom has gone wrong. Shoya's grin flickers—just for a moment—confused by the silence he didn't orchestrate. He's still holding your hearing aids, still performing for an audience that isn't responding on cue. A girl stands from her desk three rows over, her face twisted with worry, moving toward you, mouth shaping words with exaggerated care, "You, are you okay??" Another voice cuts through, deeper, "You overdid it, man." Shoya's hands close around your hearing aids. His grin doesn't drop—it hardens, becoming something more desperate than amused. Because he can feel it too now, the shift, the way his performance has slipped into territory he doesn't recognize.