I took a place in a forgotten building. An academic institution, they said. But no one remembered who had studied there last. The higher floors had long since been abandoned to dust and disuse—until we arrived. The room they gave us smelled of paper, silence, and secrets best left undisturbed.
From the first moment, I knew something was off. A presence in the far corner of the classroom. Not a teacher. Not a student. Just there. Watching. Observing. Taking notes not with ink, but with cold calculation.
She never introduced herself. She didn’t need to.
The others said she was part of a program—something about training observers or researchers in education. That might have been true. But the way she watched us… it wasn’t curiosity. It was assessment. Judgement. Dissection.
She never spoke aloud in front of the group. Only whispers. Always to one person at a time. But more often than not, only one student heard them.
The girl sat near the window. She spoke with clarity and cadence, but after each sentence came the whisper, always the same:
«I don’t understand what she’s saying.» “对不起，我听不懂。”
At first, no one questioned it. Why would they? It was said so softly, so sweetly. As if the listener simply lacked the ability to follow.
But what she claimed not to understand were words like «duìwǒ láishuō.» “对我来说，锻炼身体很重要。”
Two syllables.
Common. Obvious.
Impossible to misinterpret.
And yet the Listener said she did not understand. Not once, not twice—every single time.
The girl began to hesitate. She faltered during her responses.
The others looked away. The instructor said nothing. Not a word. As if silence could wash his hands of what he knew was happening.
Despite a nagging doubt, the girl held her composure. Her notes were meticulous, her instinct sharp. But still, she began to fade. Confidence eroded. Fluency cracked.
That whisper—so soft, so deliberate—was louder than any scream.
A storm was brewing in the distance.
And then one day, just before the final evaluations, it happened.
The Listener turned to her. Alone. Quietly. No witnesses.
“You don’t speak clearly,” she said. “No one understands you.”
The girl didn’t reply. There was no point. She could have screamed the words from the rooftops—still, that whisper would echo louder.
That evening, the room grew colder. The lights dimmed. The Listener sat alone, scribbling. But the walls seemed to lean in, just slightly. The ceiling creaked. A shadow gathered under her chair.
And she began to come undone.
Her outline softened. Her ink ran. Her eyes—once bright with judgment—turned hollow. She tried to speak again:
«I… I can’t…» “我听不…。”
But no one was listening.
She vanished before the next class.
No one spoke of her again. Her chair was empty. The instructor never mentioned her.
There were signs that a solution was in the offing.
Perhaps she had been part of the storm.
Perhaps the building had decided.
More often than not, certain worries are groundless.
But some are not.
Some are whispers that destroy.
Some are masks worn by envy, dressed as silence.
The girl passed her oral in the end. But not without wounds.
Invisible wounds.
The kind caused not by failure, but by someone else’s need to silence success.
In institutions like these, not all ghosts come from the past.
Some arrive with notebooks.
Some smile politely.
Some simply say:
«I don’t understand her.» “对不起，我听不懂。”
And disappear.
@Yolanda Muriel 
yolandamuriel.com 