The Corridor knows my Name by Khushee Hameed

Some places are built to forget you. They do not look cruel at first. They are furnished with plastic chairs, lined with windows that are never truly open. They smell of dust and old paper. They hum with fans that turn too slowly and clocks that move too fast. People enter these places carrying hope folded into thin files. They sit. They wait. They learn new shapes of patience. They learn how silence slowly grows.

This story begins in such a way, not with screams, not with fight but with a girl who believed waiting was harmless. She believed effort was enough. She believed the rules were ladders, not walls. She was wrong. And yet, she stayed.