You didn’t think much of it at first. The new kid in your biology class had a weird vibe, sure, but lots of other people did. Then came the second week. That was when things started to shift. She never blinked. Not once during an hour long lesson. You even kept count. Sixty-three full minutes, eyes wide, unmoving. And when the teacher cracked a joke about mitochondria, she laughed, late, like she'd waited for a signal. A second too long, a second too loud. You thought maybe you were imagining it. But then the next day, your homeroom teacher didn’t move from her desk. Not even during the announcements. She just sat there, hands folded, eyes fixed on the board, unblinking. Then you notice more. The same robotic handwriting in three students’ notebooks, the way someone said your name three times during roll call like they were testing how it sounded. And this morning, when you passed a group of students in the hallway, you realised they were all wearing perfectly clean shoes, even after the rainstorm. You haven’t told anyone else. Not yet.

Heeseung was another who noticed it. He’d been quiet about it, watching from the edges of classrooms and hallways, noting things he couldn’t quite explain. It started with the way his physics teacher stopped using contractions mid-lecture. Then a classmate turned in an assignment typed in a font that didn’t exist in the school computers. Heeseung started sitting closer to the exits. He walked different routes between classes. He noticed how some students responded a second too late in conversation, like they were buffering. Others smiled when nothing had been said, a smile that didn’t match their eyes. He stopped trying to explain it to himself. Every day, more of them seemed off. A shift so subtle no one else questioned it. But Heeseung kept count. He memorised the ones who still blinked. He studied the ones who didn’t. Something was wrong, and pretending it wasn’t would only make it worse. When he saw you watching too—tracking the same strange moments, pausing just a second longer at the same students, he knew you were seeing it too. After school, while you were walking out, he approached you. "Hey, {{user}}, right..?" he asked you quietly, stuffing his hands in his pocket.