The rhythm of school had settled back into its familiar cadence. Year 5 at SJI was relentless, the pace unforgiving, each lesson building on the last, each assignment a test of endurance and precision. Joel immersed himself in it, finding a fragile sense of control in the repetition of numbers, formulas, and essays. The accident that had once consumed him lingered faintly, like an echo in a distant corridor, present but not suffocating.
And yet, a restlessness had begun to stir beneath the surface—a quiet awareness that something in him remained unsettled, unfulfilled, even as he moved through each day with discipline and precision.
Morning Routine and Observations
That morning, he arrived at school early, as always, backpack slung neatly over one shoulder. The courtyard was still, warm with the early sunlight spilling across the concrete in long, shifting pools. A few leaves stirred in the breeze, their shadows flickering like slow, measured heartbeats. Everything smelt faintly of grass and dust, familiar and grounding, as if the campus itself were offering him a fragile sense of normalcy.
Joel moved along the paths with automatic greetings, nods, and polite smiles. Faces passed, familiar and anonymous all at once—friends, classmates, teachers—none of them seemed to notice the shadow that clung to him like a second skin. Everything seemed ordinary—but his eyes, trained to scan for schedules, classrooms, and patterns, lingered unconsciously on Idris.
Idris sat on a bench near the steps, notebook open across his knees. He didn't look up and didn't acknowledge the passing crowd. His posture was serene, almost statuesque: back straight, shoulders relaxed, head lowered in quiet concentration. There was an ease to him that Joel both envied and mistrusted. It wasn't arrogance or distraction—it was focus, discipline, a kind of calm that seemed impervious to the chaos of the day.
For a brief second, Joel remembered the quiet corner of the Bible Study room, Idris kneeling in prayer in isolation. The memory was sharp, a contrast to the blurry residue of his own restless mornings. He had watched then, fascinated and slightly envious. The steadiness of Idris's devotion, the way he seemed fully anchored to some inner compass, had intrigued him then—and it did so now. Even from a distance, Joel felt the pull of that calm discipline, a steadiness he could neither replicate nor entirely comprehend.
He shook himself, forcing his gaze forward, but the image lingered like a shadow at the edge of his thoughts. Each step felt heavier, though nothing had changed in the courtyard's light or the soft hum of activity beginning to stir. The contrast was sharp: the world moved in measured, predictable rhythms, while he carried the echo of the past and the weight of what he could not undo.
Even as he rounded the corner toward his classroom, the memory of Idris remained, a quiet marker of something he longed for: composure, presence, a kind of inner steadiness that might anchor him against the gnawing guilt and uncertainty still pressing against his chest.
Joel lowered his shoulders and continued walking, backpack swinging lightly, each step deliberate, each breath measured. The courtyard, the sun, the ordinary bustle of school life—it existed around him, but he existed elsewhere, caught in the tension between memory, responsibility, and a desire to find a balance he had yet to grasp.
Bible Study
The Bible Study session began promptly at 1:30 p.m., as usual. The upper-year students trickled in slowly, shuffling books and whispering in low tones, settling into their seats with a quiet precision that felt almost ritualistic. The faint hum of the projector mingled with the scratch of pens on paper, creating a subdued rhythm that should have been comforting.
Mr. Clarke stood at the front, gesturing toward the verses projected on the screen: John 14, a passage about peace and the promise of guidance. Joel followed along meticulously, reciting the words silently in his mind, noting the cross-references, the carefully highlighted notes he had made over the past months. The words were familiar, predictable, safe—a map he knew by heart.
Yet the calm they were supposed to inspire eluded him entirely. His gaze flicked repeatedly to Idris, kneeling in the corner of the room. Each movement Idris made seemed deliberate, measured, imbued with an inner certainty that Joel could not access. The boy folded his mat with care, fingers precise, then sank gracefully into a kneeling position, eyes lowered, back straight. Joel could almost feel the quiet discipline emanating from him, a kind of serenity that he had longed for but could never sustain.
When the session ended, most students left immediately, laughing softly, discussing homework, or hurrying to the next class. Joel lingered, flipping through his notes with absent-minded precision, aware of the echoing emptiness around him. Idris, too, had stayed behind, quietly reviewing his reflections, moving like a shadow across the polished floor. He returned to the back of the room, kneeling once more on his mat, head bowed, hands resting gently on his knees, as if the world outside could no longer reach him.
Joel watched from his desk, curiosity mingled with caution. He wondered what it would feel like to surrender in that way—whether stillness could truly calm the relentless churn of thoughts in his head. For a brief, hesitant moment, he closed his eyes and rested his hands flat on the desk, attempting to imitate Idris: deliberate breaths, centering, grounding.
But the calm did not come.
Instead, his mind fractured, scattering across an endless loop of formulas, schoolwork, and the persistent echo of guilt he could not shake. Memories of Hidayah flashed unbidden, the sound of the ball striking her chest, the helplessness frozen in his eyes. Every breath he took felt shallow, as though he were trying to inhale serenity that refused to exist. The stillness mocked him, reminding him that discipline and routine alone could no longer suffice, that experience and repetition had no power over the weight lodged deep inside his chest.
He opened his eyes slowly, staring at the empty space where Idris knelt. There was an elegance to the quiet that seemed almost unreachable, a form of strength Joel could understand with his intellect but could not translate into his body or mind. He wanted to reach for it, to grasp even a fraction of that composure, but the gap between observation and experience felt infinite, and he felt his restlessness thrum like a pulse in his chest.
The room smelt faintly of books, polished wood, and lingering incense from a previous session, but Joel barely noticed. All he felt was the tension of unspent emotion, the weight of inaction, and the persistent reminder that guilt, unlike prayer, did not come with instructions on how to release it.
Quiet Experimentation
That afternoon, Joel returned to his room at home and settled by the window, the familiar desk and shelves fading into the background as he let the view draw him in. The sky was softening, fading from bright blue to a muted orange, streaked with hints of purple as the sun dipped toward the horizon. The hum of the city beneath mingled with the faint rustle of leaves outside, a gentle, almost meditative accompaniment to his thoughts.
He placed a notebook on his lap, closed his eyes, and attempted, once more, to carve a space of stillness for himself. Breathe. Slowly. In, out. The rhythm should have been grounding, but each inhalation seemed jagged, interrupted. The memories rose unbidden, uninvited: the concrete, the ball, Hidayah arching backward, the dull, final thud. The helplessness of that instant clung to him like a second skin, impossible to peel away.
Even the comforting sounds of his parents moving through the house—the low hum of conversation in the kitchen, the soft clink of dishes, the occasional distant laugh—could not reach him. Their presence should have offered relief, warmth, reassurance, but he felt distant from it, as though observing through glass. Their concern was real, their kindness palpable, yet it collided with the weight of his own internal echo and ricocheted back, unanswered.
Frustrated, Joel opened his eyes and picked up the notebook. This time, he didn't write equations, formulas, or calculations. Instead, he scrawled words, letting thought flow without constraint: observations, reflections, questions. Each sentence felt like a small attempt to chart an inner territory he didn't fully understand.
Why does it feel so… hollow?
Why does Idris seem aligned with something I cannot reach?
What am I missing in myself?
The questions were simple, even clinical, yet they stirred a deep restlessness in him, a subtle vibration of need and awareness that no study session, no schedule, no repetition could extinguish. The notebook filled with fragments of thought—sentences begun and abandoned, words circled, lines underlined in frustration.
Joel paused, pencil hovering over the paper. He felt the ache in his chest, not sharp like the impact, but dull and insistent. It was less pain and more weight: the weight of responsibility, of guilt, of awareness that some things could not be fixed by routine or obedience. Even Idris's quiet composure, so alluring, so complete, only underscored his own instability.
The sky outside darkened imperceptibly, the orange deepening into rose, then softening into violet. Shadows stretched across his room. Joel traced them with his eyes, then set the pencil down and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. His breathing slowed, tentative, not from meditation, but from fatigue—mental, emotional, accumulated.
And yet, in that quiet tension, there was a faint spark of clarity. He didn't have to fix everything, not all at once. But he had to see, to question, to acknowledge what gnawed at him, and perhaps—eventually—to act.
For now, he remained by the window, notebook open, city humming below, a witness to his own unease, trying again to find stillness, even as the questions lingered like the last light of day: persistent, unresolved, demanding attention.
Another Observation at School
The next morning, Joel found himself arriving early again. The hallways were nearly empty, save for the occasional janitor passing with a cart, the soft click of polished shoes echoing faintly against the tile. Light filtered through the high windows, brushing the classroom desks with a pale glow. Idris was already there, quietly unpacking his books, methodical, deliberate, each movement measured. And then, almost imperceptibly, he knelt on his prayer mat, eyes lowered, hands folded, as though he were entirely absorbed in some private world.
Joel paused at the doorway, hesitant, studying him. The discipline in the boy's posture—the alignment of spine, the placement of hands, the serenity that radiated from him—struck Joel with a force he could not name. No scripture reading, no Mass, no repetition of familiar words in a familiar voice had ever impressed upon him the same sense of order and presence. Here, in this quiet act, there was something entirely tangible: a steadiness that was both simple and profound.
He eased himself into a seat, pretending to read, his notebook open but untouched. His eyes kept flicking back to Idris, noting the precision of each movement, the calm intentionality that governed even the smallest gesture. Joel's fingers itched for a pen, an urge to record, to translate the sensation into words before it slipped away. Something was there, beyond formulas and the tidy logic of schoolwork—something structured, rhythmic, alive. Something he had glimpsed but never truly understood. There is a structure here, a rhythm beyond formulas, beyond study, beyond repetition. Something real, and I don't know what it is.
He turned his attention back to his textbooks, to chemical structures, algebraic formulas, the neat rows of numbers and symbols. The words on the page blurred after a few lines, the formulas failing to anchor his mind. A quiet tension lingered in the room, persistent, undeniable—a tug at the edges of consciousness he could not dismiss. It was neither anxiety nor fear; it was awareness, an uneasy recognition of what he lacked.
Joel shifted in his seat, careful not to disturb the balance of his own body, mirroring—without admitting it—the poise of Idris. He tried to focus on the periodic table, on the equations, but each thought ricocheted back to that quiet stillness. How could someone move through the world with such deliberate calm? How could he center himself so completely while Joel's own mind remained a restless tide, pulled by memory and guilt?
He exhaled slowly, letting the tension settle into a dull ache at the back of his neck. He didn't understand it—couldn't quite put a name to it—but he felt compelled to watch, to observe, to learn, even if learning remained impossible to define.
The class began, a soft murmur of voices filling the room, but Joel's awareness remained tethered to the quiet figure kneeling at the back. It was in that observation, in the simple act of witnessing, that he sensed the faintest possibility of something he had been seeking for weeks: a calm he might one day approach, if only he could unravel the discipline and presence that Idris carried so effortlessly.
Evening Reflections
At home that evening, Joel's parents called him down for dinner. The clatter of utensils and the faint aroma of simmering curry filled the kitchen, ordinary and grounding in their familiarity. Conversation was measured, warm—his mother asked about his Bible Study session; his father offered a quiet reminder to stay on schedule for revision. Joel answered politely, nodding, speaking in short, careful sentences, revealing only what was safe, what could be contained. Inside, the stirrings of unease, of guilt, of restlessness, remained unspoken, coiled quietly beneath the surface.
After clearing his plate and excusing himself, Joel returned to his room. Darkness had settled over the city, punctuated by the soft shimmer of streetlights and the occasional honk of traffic far below. The world outside seemed alive, moving efficiently forward, while his own thoughts remained stubbornly still, circling, insistent.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, notebook in hand, and attempted once more to summon calm. Breathing deliberately, closing his eyes, he tried to observe his thoughts without chasing them, to let them exist without judgment. Each breath was a small anchor, each exhale a quiet effort at release.
But the questions persisted. They were subtle, persistent, insistent. Why did the motions he had always relied on—Mass, prayers, routines—no longer reach him? Why did Idris's serene, disciplined movements spark something unfamiliar inside him, a pull he could neither define nor resist? Could he ever feel anchored in that way, fully present, unburdened by memory or guilt?
Joel turned his gaze to the notebook, pencil poised but idle. Words seemed inadequate, yet the act of attempting to write them, to capture the unease, brought a faint relief. He jotted scattered thoughts, fragments of reflection: Presence. Observation. Discipline. Calm. Why does it feel like something I can see but not touch?
He closed the notebook after a while, leaning back against the wall, letting the hardwood floor press against him, grounding him in the physical world even as his mind wandered. No answers presented themselves, and that was acceptable for now. The curiosity itself was enough—the quiet unrest, the subtle awareness, the small recognition that he was noticing and questioning—was enough.
The ceiling fan above cast slow, rhythmic shadows across the walls, slicing the room with gentle patterns of light and dark. Joel traced the movement with his eyes, following it as though it mirrored the ebb and flow of his own thoughts. And as he lay down, allowing his body to sink into the mattress, he acknowledged a simple, fragile truth: he was observing, questioning, searching.
Perhaps, he realized, this was the beginning of something larger. Not a solution, not immediate clarity, but a journey beyond equations, beyond repetition, beyond ritual. A journey that demanded attention to the self, to others, to the quiet currents of life that had so far escaped him.
For the first time in weeks, Joel felt it: a faint stir of anticipation, a subtle awareness that something was possible. Not relief. Not absolution. Not even understanding yet. But the possibility of seeing clearly, of feeling present in a way he had not known before. And that, he decided, would have to be enough—for tonight, and perhaps for many nights to come.