7. The Weight of Silence

The room was silent. Too silent.

Sylen and I sat at the desk. Sylen sat with her hands folded on the desk. I said nothing. I simply waited.

She didn't look at me. Not a first.

Until…

"I didn't mean to say it like that," she said, finally, her voice barely more than a whisper. "About… who belongs."

I stayed quiet. Let her speak. Let her unravel.

Her fingers curled slightly. "But it's what I believed. I thought, if I just kept control… If I kept everything in order, then nothing would go wrong. No one would get lost. No one would…"

She exhaled sharply and looked down at her lap.

"I thought that's what you wanted…" Her voice caught me off guard.

What did I want?

For a moment, I felt the room colder. Not from her words alone, but from what they implied.

She wasn't speaking to me. Not really. She was speaking to HIM.

The man whose name I now wore. The man whose body I walked in.

The original Alaric.

In her eyes, we were still the same. I couldn't say that I wasn't Alaric anymore.

That name, Alaric Mordane, fit like a coat I had inherited.

I didn't know what he meant to her. But I could see what he'd left behind.

"I didn't…" My mouth slipped away… I wasn't even sure what I wanted to say. That I wasn't him; I was a new person?

But that wouldn't help her. Not now.

Sylen still stared down at her hands. "I thought… if I followed your method, your structure, your rules… maybe I'd finally be enough," she murmured.

Not for the class.

For me. Not exactly, for HIM…

And in that moment, I saw her not as an assistant, not even as a mirror of who I once was, but as someone still trying to be seen. Still trying to be chosen. Especially by HIM… Which, that person had gone, and replaced by me in this body.

What could I do for her? Imitating Alaric for her?

No, he was already gone. And I couldn't play the ghost of a man I'd never known. However, I couldn't tear down what he'd built in her either. Not when it was the only thing holding her together.

She needed…something. Something real.

I finally spoke. "You kept control," softly. "You did everything right."

Sylen's shoulders tensed as she responded to it.

"However, control isn't the same as connection. And perfection doesn't mean belonging."

She didn't respond, yet she was listening.

"You thought that's what I wanted," I continued. "Because that's what I used to want, didn't I?"

Her breath caught, just faintly.

"Let me ask you a question, Sylen!" I paused for a moment. "What is teaching?"

Sylen blinked. Her eyes lifted as she hadn't expected. I asked that.

A beat of silence passed between us. Until.

"Teaching is… structure," she said cautiously. "Discipline. Guidance."

"Structure helps," I agreed. "Discipline matters."

I stood up.

"But is that all?"

She hesitated. Her eyes weren't focused on me; she glared towards everything. "It's…giving students what they need to succeed."

"Succeed… Let's focus on that word…" I walked towards the centre of the classroom. "What do you think the students will be after this classroom?"

My voice echoed faintly in the quiet space.

She didn't answer right away. I let the silence stretch. She needed to feel the question, not just answer it. As a teacher, the biggest achievement was what the student became after the classroom.

Finally, she said, "Prepared. Disciplined. Capable."

I nodded. "That's what we hope. That's what we aim for. Yet…is that what they remember?"

Her brow furrowed.

I turned to face her. "Think back, Sylen. To when you were a student." I pressed gently, "What do you remember the most about this classroom? Was it the structure? The drills? The silence?"

She opened her mouth, then closed it. I saw it, as she was scared or couldn't answer it.

Her voice, when it came, was so thin. "I remember… being afraid. Of falling short. Of disappointing you."

Again. Alaric seemed to make her this way.

"And do you think fear is the same as learning?" I asked.

"But, I wanted to be perfect no matter what happened," she whispered. "That was the only time I felt seen."

I nodded slowly. "I know, everyone wants to be perfect."

I let quiet hang in the room for some moments. "But what happens if you face a student that is already perfect?"

She blinked. "That makes the teaching easy…"

"In your mind, maybe it's easy… However, what do you need to teach to him? The book? He already knew everything about the book…" I paused. "He knew everything, Sylen. He. He. He is a monster. How do you teach him? A perfect entity being?"

She didn't answer. Her lips parted, but no words came out.

I stood at the centre of the classroom and remembered in front of me was Caleb. "You can't teach him facts. He already owns them. You can't threaten him. He's not afraid. You can't make him obey. He sees through you."

Sylen still said nothing.

The silence between us wasn't empty. It became heavy.

I lowered my voice. "So tell me, Sylen. What would you teach someone who already knows the answer?"

Her lips trembled. "I—I don't know."

"My answer was the same as yours… I don't know… I don't know either. Not at first."

I walked slowly towards the centre of all the students's seats. "I thought teaching was about giving knowledge. About control. About the order. And when I met him, Caleb."

Sylen's eyes twitched at the name, just slightly.

"He was already complete. More than complete. Brilliant. Analytical. Powerful." I stopped and looked at her. "However, he was empty, Sylen. Not because he lacked knowledge, but because he had never been open to anyone." I paused, as I was in the centre of all the students's seats. "It was like I was facing myself inside of him. However, it was backward; I was the student, like right here, where I am standing right now. And he was the teacher. He dismissed my class."

Sylen was watching. Not blinking.

"I walked to my room, and I was demoted. Like that, it's easy for him to get me demoted. It meant I wasn't perfect. I am not a perfect teacher…" As those words, not a perfect teacher, left my mouth. I remembered the face of my student, who shot me. It made me become emotional. "I…am not a perfect teacher…"

Sylen's lips parted slightly, as if she wanted to deny it or defend me or him.

"I thought, what was the point of all that structure, all that discipline?" Suddenly, the old classroom of mine was back in my view as I was at the centre of the classroom. "If it only made them hollow? If the best of them turned it into a weapon?"

I looked at Sylen in front. She didn't interrupt. She didn't even move.

"And then I realised something. All my rules. All my ideals…" I kept remembering my students in my classroom. "They weren't made to raise students. They were made to protect myself. To protect a teacher like me who didn't know how to reach people, who was afraid to be wrong."

I looked down at the floor beneath me. The centre of the classroom. The space I once ruled like a fortress.

"I thought I was building foundations," I said, "but I was building walls."

A pause as I remembered the face of my student who shot me. "I…I hurt people."

Sylen's lips parted again. Then closed. She looked down at her hands. "I didn't know you…thought like that," she murmured.

"I didn't either," I said. "Until it's too late…"

"Then what now?" She asked, and her voice wavered. "If the structure wasn't the answer. Then… what do we build with?"

I breathed in slowly.

"Guidance," I said. "Before, you said structure, discipline, and guidance."

Her eyes lifted again. "But isn't that what I was doing all along?"

"You followed rules," I said. "But guidance isn't about being obedient. It's not about getting students to fit a shape we built. It's not about filling their vessels. It's…about walking with them as they find their own."

She lowered her gaze. "I tried to be like you. I really did. I thought if I just stuck to the method, to the expectations, then I'd finally be seen. Finally be enough."

She was in desperation. She still thought I was the Alaric she had always tried to impress. I needed to change that. What mattered wasn't who I had been. It was what I chose to be now. I didn't want her to be like old me, even real Alaric.

"Sylen…" As I was walking towards her. "You don't need to try to be like me or even try to be me." I said, my voice gentle but firm. "The man you were trying to impress…me…was flawed. You don't need to be enough for me. You just need to be the teacher that they need. You need to be the teacher that you needed back when you were a student sitting in a classroom, afraid of falling short."

"But how?" she whispered, her voice fragile. It landed. It was a direct appeal to her own memory, her own pain. "The way… The structure… The rules…it's the only way I know."

"So think outside of it…" I pointed to one of the seats. "Remember again, you were a student in my class… I taught about structure and rules… What did you feel?"

I watched as her eyes followed my gesture to the empty student's seat. Her breath hitched, and for a long moment, she was no longer my assistant but a young girl once again, sitting in silence.

Her gaze dropped back to her own hands. When she finally spoke, her voice was a ghost of what it had been.

"Cold," she whispered. "That's what I felt. The room was always cold. Not the air… but a feeling, like the silence had weight."

She paused, lost in the memory. "I felt…small. Like any mistake. Any questions? That wasn't perfectly formed and would make me a distraction. An inconvenience." Her fingers tightened. "I remember wanting to ask about a specific thing once. I'd practiced it for hours, but it felt…wrong. I tried to open my mouth, but then I looked at you at the front, and the question just died in my throat. I was too afraid of being seen as incompetent. Of failing the expectation."

She finally looked up at me, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. "So I stopped asking. I just worked harder. I memorised everything. I practiced until my hands were numb. I thought if I could just become perfect. If I could give you the exact right answer every single time. Then…then…then I wouldn't have to be afraid anymore. Then I would finally be seen. Be seen. Be seen by you."

I listened to every word without interruption. Finally. Finally. I knew the feeling of my student. Sylen's answer was the answer I wanted to know. In my past, if someone tried to ask a question in my class, there would be the magic words to dismiss it, 'So you didn't follow the lecture of mine.' Now, I thought, those magic words broke every student. They swallowed all their curiosity and their questions.

"Thank you for telling me that," I said. "That took courage."