By Wednesday, Naina had a list.
She kept it in the back of her planner and added to it whenever she observed something that belonged there. Each item, taken alone, was small. Together, they were the shape of something she did not yet have a word for.
Day 1: Greeting timing. Too coordinated for a normal class. No one spoke before I arrived — they were waiting.
Day 1: Rohan tried to speak to me alone. Ananya stopped him. How did she know? She was already moving before his mouth opened.
Day 2: Asked about Ms. Rao — where she might have gone, whether any of them had heard from her. Every single answer was a variation of the same: "We don't know, Ms. Sharma. We hope she comes back soon." Different words, same content. Like they'd discussed what to say.
Day 2: Meera Shah. Thin girl, back row. She flinched when I asked about Rao. Just slightly. Then she looked at Ananya. Then she gave the standard answer. I am going to watch Meera.
Day 3: The notebooks. Quality is excellent. But the reflection question about justice: twenty-two out of thirty gave answers directly about the book. The other eight gave answers with a quality I cannot precisely describe. Like they were writing about something closer. One wrote: "Sometimes justice doesn't come at all. Sometimes the only thing you can do is remember that something wrong happened." That was Dev Malhotra. I'm going to watch Dev.
She also had questions that weren't on the list because they were about things beyond the class.
Kavitha Rao's attendance, for instance, was being marked. Every morning when Naina went to sign in at the staffroom register, Kavitha Rao's name had a mark next to it — present, on leave. Standard for an approved personal leave. But the leave had not been formally approved — Naina had checked, and the admin office's leave register had no entry for Kavitha Rao for this month. No formal application. No approval signature. Just the attendance mark, entered by Mr. Iyer every morning at seven AM.
She had also gone to the school's digital system — EduConnect, the platform used for attendance, assignments, internal communications. Kavitha Rao had a profile. The profile was active — last login listed as: Sunday, 8:43 PM.
