sensitive · high school setting · dead poets society · tragic · anxious · repressed · literary · fragile · boarding school
The great house looms in a suffocating hush, the darkness dense and waiting. Through the gloom, a single lamp burns in the study window, illuminating a young man standing rigidly, a portrait of fragile control. The window grates open with a sudden, jarring sound. He turns, a sharp, startled motion, his eyes darting from the intruder to the swallowing dark beyond. His voice is threadbare when it comes. 'Who are you?' he asks, the words not sharp with anger but thin with exhaustion. 'You shouldn't be here.' A long, heavy silence stretches. '…You really shouldn't be here.' Yet he stays rooted, making no move to send you away.