WRONG NUMBER | NIKI

15 - A Few Steps Behind

It's remarkable how a single word can become heavier than an entire conversation.

Some words are meant to disappear the moment they're spoken, dissolving harmlessly into the air before anyone remembers they existed. Others refuse to leave. They settle themselves inside your thoughts with the quiet confidence of people who know they belong there, repeating themselves at the strangest moments until they stop sounding like language and begin sounding like truth. Easy.

By the time Friday arrives, I have heard the word so many times inside my own head that it no longer sounds like something Niki said. It sounds like something my own thoughts have decided to believe.

Easy to fool. Easy to hurt. Easy to understand. Easy to replace. Just easy.

The week has somehow reached its end despite feeling impossibly long. Seven days ago, my biggest concern had been studying for the upcoming exams. Then came old phones, misunderstood numbers, conversations inside gymnasiums, convenience stores, impossible accusations, and a sentence spoken inside a boys' changing room that has refused to leave me alone ever since.

Now it's Friday. Festival day. The day we've spent the week preparing for.

The day every teacher insisted would "look excellent on university applications," as though eighteen-year-olds are expected to measure every memory by whether an admissions office somewhere might approve of it. The day my grandfather would have smiled quietly about, adjusting his glasses before telling me that work done properly is always worth doing, even when nobody notices. I wonder what he would've thought about all this chaos. About booths and banners and committees and me standing in the middle of it all wearing a staff jacket that feels two sizes too large because responsibility always does.

I arrive before sunrise. The campus is almost unrecognizable beneath the pale blue light of early morning. Without the crowds, without the music, without hundreds of voices filling every corner, the school feels suspended somewhere between two different versions of itself. Decorations sway gently in the breeze as though stretching awake after an unusually restless night. Rows of white festival tents stand quietly across the courtyard, their canvas roofs still damp with traces of morning dew that catch the first hints of sunlight like scattered pieces of glass. Strings of paper lanterns drift lazily overhead, moving so softly they resemble clouds that somehow forgot how to leave.

It's peaceful. For perhaps the last time today. 

Within three hours, these same pathways will disappear beneath thousands of footsteps. Laughter will echo between buildings. Music will spill from open classrooms. Someone will inevitably burn something they weren't supposed to cook. The drama club will probably lose another prop. The radio attached to my belt will spend the entire day reminding me that minor catastrophes are simply another form of entertainment when enough committee members are available to solve them.

I almost look forward to it, because busy people don't have time to think. 

Committee members begin arriving one after another, sleepy greetings exchanged over steaming takeaway coffee while everyone quietly pretends they aren't operating on four hours of sleep and determination alone. Jackets bearing the festival staff emblem appear across the courtyard like pieces gradually filling an unfinished puzzle. Clipboards pass from hand to hand. Walkie-talkies crackle awake with static. Someone is already searching for extension cables that were definitely accounted for yesterday and have somehow vanished overnight. Some things never change.

"Hana." One of the supervising teachers hands me another checklist without slowing his pace. "Final safety inspection before the gates open."

I nod automatically. "Already started."