Pierre stood next to a desk, wiping it frantically using paper napkins. Words, all in marker, were scribbled all over it.
Die.
Killer.
Monster.
Murderer.
Kill yourself.
He clenched his teeth in anger and continued rubbing the napkins to make it go away. However, the desk wasn't Pierre's. It was the desk of a soft-spoken girl, named Myra, in his class.
Pierre came early to school today because of his Drawing Club but had the day wrong, so he went to the empty class early to do his homework instead. That was when he found the words on her desk. It had many different penmanships; More than one person wrote this.
"She's not a killer," he said under his breath, angrily.
He looked at his watch and saw that it was 7:10. Class will start in fifty minutes, so he had time. He didn't want her to see the words on her desk. He didn't want her to feel like it's her fault her father, the mayor, died in the study of his room with a gunshot through his forehead. It's not.
It wasn't her, Pierre thought.
The door of the classroom opened and Pierre half-thought that it was the teacher, but it wasn't. A girl with long black hair and a tired expression walked slowly in the room.
"Myra..." said Pierre, startled.
She looked at him, then at the desk. Pierre suddenly tried covering it with his body as she started walking towards to him.
"Myra. Don't listen to them. It's not your fault!" Pierre said as she looked down at her desk behind him.
She read the desk and then gave a weak smile to him.
"Thank you," she said, softly. "I'll take it from here."
She gently took the napkin from his hand and started wiping the words off the desk.
"Myra..." Pierre began.
She didn't say anything, so Pierre went to get more napkins. He came back and stood beside her as he tried wiping away the words with her. Myra looked at him in the corner of her eye briefly and continued. A few minutes later, the teacher came in the room, but he didn't say anything when he saw them.
After fifteen minutes, the desk was entirely cleaned off.
"Good as new," Pierre said, grinning.
He threw away all the napkins and came back to her. She was now sitting at her desk looking out the window to the left of her into the courtyard. Her head rested on her hands. Myra didn't look as if she wanted to talk to him. Pierre understood that.
Myra's eyes closed.
He sat in his seat, which was directly to the right of her, took out a piece of paper, and started drawing her face without her knowing. It was nearly a week since the mayor's death. Pierre suddenly realized that Myra came extremely early to school like him, but for what reason? Is it because there were always writings on her desk and she came early to wipe it off?
More people were walking through the front entrance of the school. Then, the school bell rang, and Myra suddenly opened her eyes, awake.
Pierre looked at his complete, pencil-drawn sketch of her on the paper, folded it up neatly, and placed it in his binder.
A few days before, the police concluded that the mayor committed suicide with Myra in the same room. Supposedly, she didn't stop him. She just watched quietly as he shot a bullet through his head.
