At the end of the lesson, while the others were gathering bags and notebooks, Ethan passed by him and left a folded sheet of paper on his desk without saying anything.

Daniel opened it later in the toilet.

It said only one sentence.

You don’t have to talk. But you are not invisible.

Nothing else.

Daniel stared at the paper for a long time. Then he crushed it, put it in his pocket, took it back out, smoothed it as much as he could, and finally kept it.