Room 4A was Ethan's first entry, and when he walked in, the first sensation that struck him was that of the air changing-around there-cold and reminiscent of a draft creeping for warmth beneath an old door-but even heavier-than walking into a memory not quite his own.
The strange thing was that the classroom felt almost untouched in time. Desks were arranged as though with an uncanny precision, dust only clinging to the corners, the chalkboard was clean, with sunlight filtering in from those high narrow windows to make the room seem golden, beautifully wrong.
Then he saw her.
In the far back corner, by the window where the light poured strongest, sat a girl with long black hair framing her pale face like ink in milk. She wore the school uniform, though slightly faded, the hem of her skirt just a little more frayed than the others. Her eyes were glued to the outside — not the casual kind of looking, but seeing something far beyond the actual view rendered by the window.
The girl was invisible; nobody acknowledged her.
As Ethan passed two grueling rows and did not sit next to the wall but three seats away from it, he was trying to remember if he had been told to.
The students had all filed in, and from then on, there was an uneasy silence. Blank expressions twisted each of the pupils staring ahead, as if waiting to get on with a script; no phones, no whispering. Just an eerie sound of silence.
Then the teacher, a hard woman with dark hair, pulled tightly into a bun that seemed the end of the world, entered and wrote her name on the board: Ms. Langford.
"Welcome, Mr. West. Please take your seat." The words were spoken, not looking at him from the board.
Young shy boy cringed and sat.
The lesson dwelt with local history and Harrington's establishment, but Ethan could not keep still. The girl at the window, however, had not moved in many hours. Not once. Not even to blink. Every few minutes, he stole glances at her, curious and unsettled.
Ethan left Room 4A quickly at lunchtime. He had to get air, noise, life.
He found Liam in the cafeteria, sitting alone.
"Hey, Liam, right? From this morning?"
Liam slowly nodded. "You were in 4A. You shouldn't have."
Ethan blinked. "Why not? That's my homeroom."
"Not a homeroom. A trap."
The words fell like a bucket of ice water onto his head. Liam's voice had become strange, he didn't sound very loud or terrifying; however, it was quieter but full of certainty. It said, "The rumor is that every once in a while, there's a new victim thrown into 4A- that is usually the whole class; once in a while; it is typically just one person, but it always starts with the notice of her".
So, Ethan had to frown. "The girl near the window?"
Liam's expression darkened. "Irene. Don't talk to her. Don't sit near her. Just ignore her, if you can."
"Why? Who is she?"
Liam opened his mouth-and then stopped, staring over Ethan's shoulder. When Ethan turned, there was no one there.
"Look," Liam whispers, suddenly pale. "You seem decent. But transfer out. Fast. Before the room starts to even remember you."
Ethan lets out a nervous giggle. "What exactly does that even mean?"
But Liam was already on his feet, collecting his tray with shaking hands. "Just… observe the photos in the hallway. If you begin to be pulled out from them… it's already too late."
Beyond the dark curtain of night, Ethan could not find slumber. Up on his bed, a pair of staring eyes projected onto the ceiling images that replayed Room 4A scenes together with images of Irene's stillness in conjuring his mind, disgusted with the idea of questioning whether she was even real. She never blinked. She never moved. The other students did not regard her.
Was it some kind of prank? A secret society? A sort of campus urban legend?
He set out to find out for himself.
He came in earlier the next day. The door to Building C was propped open, which was odd since it was supposedly condemned. He stepped inside and strode down the echoing hallway toward Room 4A. It was locked.
He shoved it open.
Empty.
Empty of desks, empty of chalkboards; a dark, dusty room with cracked-tile floors and windows smeared with the dust of time. The classroom was gone.
Ethan stepped back, bewildered. He checked the hallway — yes, this was definitely the same door. He had entered through it yesterday. There was no doubt there.
Footfalls reverberated behind him.
He turned.
It was Irene.
Standing in her own corridor, clad in uniform, she had an unreadable expression on her face.
"You came back," she said.
Her voice floated; it was like paper sliding across stone.
Ethan was breathless: "You... you were real..."
You saw the classroom," she interrupted him. "That means it saw you too."
Ethan drew close: "What is it? Where is this place?"
Irene looked beyond him into the vacant room. "It is not always there. Only when it wants to be."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Her gaze returned to him. There was something in her eyes that Ethan could not name—neither sadness nor fear, but a kind of haunted acceptance.
"They called us the Vanishing Class. Fifteen years ago. We died here. But not all at once."
Ethan swallowed hard. "That's impossible. You're here."
She smiled a little. "So are you. For now."
Then she turned and walked into the fading dark of the hallway.
Ethan tried to follow-but the moment he took his first step out of the doorway she was gone.
Only an echo of her footfalls remained-and a chill that settled deep within his bones.
He stood there for several minutes looking down the hall, hoping to catch a glimpse of her-the slightest sign or sound-a ghostly whisper or shadow. There was none. Silence-filled, heavy, and still-present in an odd manner against the backdrop of the school.
He turned and entered Room 4A, now barren and decrepit. The door creaked shut behind him with a sigh, as if exhaling old breath. Dust danced in a single shaft of light, the only movement in the room.
Ethan took out his phone to click a picture, hoping to prove it to himself. But the moment he turned on the camera, the image on the screen was static, blinking gray fuzz. And then, just for a second, the image of the classroom-not as it looked now but clean, filled with desks and students sitting silently.
His heart was racing. He blinked. The screen went dark.
He fled from the room, the chill still lingering on his skin.
Later that day, inside the school library, Ethan started digging. He got out archived yearbooks, dusty ones with glued-together pages that smelled of mildew.
He flipped the pages to the class of 2010: Harrington High.
There, on page seventy-two, was a class photo captioned with "Class 4A."
And there she was.
Irene. The same girl. Same pale face. Same long hair. Only...she was smiling in the pic. Smiling in a way Ethan had never seen before. Standing with other students who looked eerily familiar, like the ones in Room 4A now.
Below that photo ran a simple caption:
"In Memoriam: Class 4A. Gone too soon."
Ethan traced the words with a finger. Cold, like the ink had yet to dry.
He gazed around the library, suddenly feeling nervous. Alone.
A sound of far-off chalk tapping came from somewhere nearby. He checked around. Nothing.
A memory that ended with a closing of the yearbook and a racing heart.
If they disappeared, how could he possibly have seen it?
And why had no one mentioned it?
The silence was no longer a comfort; it pressed in on him like a living thing.
Turning to someone else had become a thing of urgency; someone else who stayed here longer. Someone who could possibly remember.
Ethan stood outside the guidance office as the afternoon rolled on. Mr. Denning, the counselor, glanced up with mild surprise.
"Mr. West? Everything alright?"
Ethan stammered two words before feeling very much like a fool. "Could I ask you a strange question? It's about 4A?"
Denning cautiously put on his public, inquiring voice. "What's that?"
"Was there a class that- disappeared in 2010?"
Denning's gaze was suddenly attracted elsewhere. It was like it was pulled to notice the painting of the old school building that hung against the wall. "That's just an old story, Ethan. Some tragic fire. A lot of myths sprung up after that."
"But they were real people, right? Irene Mayfield was real."
Denning lowered his voice slightly. "You might want to focus on your studies. These things... they have a way of consuming students who dwell on them."
That night, Ethan could not eat. He could not sleep. He kept going over and over in his mind everything pertaining to Irene-from what she had said to that image on his phone and to the photo in the yearbook.
"They died. But not all at once."
The implications horrified him. What if they had all been taken? One by one. What if the class had not died in an instant… but rather had been erased, student by student?
And what if the cycle had begun again — with him?
He didn't know the protocol for fighting this. He didn't even know what to call it.
But he did know one thing.
There was no turning back now.
Not with the utter silence of Room 4A listening in.
And a chill settling deep into his bones.