We Don't Talk About Sayap Tujuh - By Cassandra Wijesuria

Written By: Cassandra Wijesuria

Category: Short Story

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Cassandra Wijesuria presents a compelling short story titled "We Don't Talk About Sayap Tujuh" as part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. This intriguing narrative unfolds within the confines of the Queen Anne Institute, where protagonist Nadia Baharuddin encounters the mysterious Sayap Tujuh. The story delves into themes of choice and consequence, offering readers a thought-provoking exploration of how small decisions can ripple through one's life and those around them.

About the Work

"We Don't Talk About Sayap Tujuh" is a richly woven tale that combines elements of mystery and the supernatural with the everyday challenges of adolescence. The story is set against the backdrop of a boarding school, capturing the anxiety and desires of a young girl seeking control over her life. Through vivid imagery and a keen sense of atmosphere, Wijesuria invites readers to ponder the balance between ambition and integrity, as well as the unforeseen costs of altering one's path.

We Don't Talk About Sayap Tujuh

Original Submission by Cassandra Wijesuria

WE DON’T TALK ABOUT SAYAP TUJUH

(5,913 words)

On her first night at Queen Anne Institute, Nadia Baharuddin woke to the sound of a click in the lock.

Nadia frowned. She thought it was a remnant of her disrupted dreams; perhaps the long drive from Johor to Kampar was catching up to her.

Then, she heard the sound of a door opening with a groaning creak.

The sound echoed through the corridors.

Nadia threw off the threadbare covers, annoyed at her interrupted sleep.

She paused and looked around her still-unfamiliar room. Her roommate, Parvathi, one of the Institute’s Murid Cermerlang, was fast asleep on her Maths papers, her uncapped highlighter smudging a stroke of pink on her nose.

Their room was lit by a hopeless-looking lightbulb, showing the wall above their desks with the written rules of Queen Anne Institute.

The hostel rules were typed in Malay and English, though the last part added in parentheses was clearly handwritten by Parvathi:

No visitors after hours

No food and drink allowed in rooms

No phones after lights out

Curfew: 11 pm except for emergencies and prayers

No entry into Sayap Tujuh (We DON’T talk about Sayap Tujuh)

Nadia checked her phone. 12.01pm. Barely half an hour since she’d tried to sleep. Much of her first day had been a blur.

Yesterday she’d moved in, so she did not attend the full day of classes. Instead, her ayah had been hauling boxes up the stairs for her, disappointment bruising his weathered face. Her mother had tried to “soften” the situation with advice.

“You need to abide by the rules, Nadia.” Her mother had said in that tone that suggested no further arguments would be entertained.

Nadia, for the most part, always followed the rules. The good girl. The unremarkable one. But the problem with her was that the things she always wanted to say never had a way of connecting with her brain.

“You can be better behaved here,” Mak continued speaking, completely missing the inner turmoil of her only child’s emotions.

It should have raised her hackles. But all Nadia offered was a supplicant OK Mak. OK Ayah.

Nadia's performative obedience slipped away the minute she slipped her feet into her fluffy Baby Shark slippers – fluffy to keep her warm, silent across the hall.

The corridor that Nadia slipped through unnoticed was silent. The strips of light that shone over the corridor showed dust motes dancing lazily. If memory served Nadia correctly, the dormitory walls were painted a faint, nauseating green.

***

During her rushed orientation earlier in the day, her new roommate, Parvathi, had shown her around the place. They’d started with the classrooms, and now they were pacing the dormitories. The photographs presented a passage through time. In the 40s, it had been a boys’ school but by the 60s, that changed and eventually included girls.

By 1977, it became a fully girls’ school.

One photograph of the first batch of girl prefects in 1977 showed a Eurasian-Chinese girl standing out, but Nadia did not recognize her from anywhere.

Other photographs showcased the various clubs and societies that Queen Anne Institute had to offer: Debate clubs in both English and Malay, tennis, and swimming, among others.

Nadia loved Debates, both in English and Malay. Her parents, not liking that she was becoming “too western” in her thinking, never showed up for her English debates, and only came if she qualified for the finals in Bahasa Malaysia. A small sense of defiance had come over her, seeing her chance of starting anew.

“What are you into, Nadia?”

“I love debates.”

“Oh, they’re going to open up some new spaces for those who wish to join soon. You should sign up.” Parvathi said excitedly.

Parvathi took a breath, as though steeling herself to deliver bad news, as she stood at Sayap Tujuh – an abandoned-looking dormitory wing at the end of their 3rd-floor corridor.

The words DILARANG MASUK – DO NOT ENTER in bold red font screamed at her on the door.

“So… I know we say ‘we don’t talk about Sayap Tujuh,’ but…it is your first day here, and as your roommate, no choice lah,” she said uneasily. “Plus, it’s on the same floor as our rooms, so we need to be extra careful.”

Nadia nodded obediently.

“It’s been shut since the 50s, but no one specifies which year. Some say there was a fire, some electrical wiring got fried, and someone died here. The story keeps changing faster than some TikTok FYP,” Parvathi whispered furtively, directed at the offending wing.

“Whatever the case,” Parvathi continued in that hushed tone as though she were explaining something titillating, “They locked it. I heard they tried to do some exorcism, but the Catholic priest, bomoh and the Chinese witchdoctor ran off with the money.”

“That sounds like a bad joke.”

“20 years for an exorcism and a punchline that never came,” Parvathi whispered.

Parvathi and Nadia turned away from Sayap Tujuh, and suddenly, Parvathi stopped in her tracks, remembering something:

“Fair warning: seniors might try to lure you to Sayap Tujuh. Keep far away from them. One senior from the cheerleading team tried to prank a newbie. The senior lost her eyesight the next day.”

***

Parvathi’s warning came back to Nadia as she stood at the threshold of Sayap Tujuh. The door was supposed to have been locked, yet it was open, as though they were anticipating a covert meeting with a stranger who had vital information.

There was a strong smell, which triggered Nadia’s memory like ketupat that went sour mixed with wet moss and powdered chalk. On instinct, Nadia had turned around, thinking her grandmother, herself a teacher, might have been in this room, making her traditional ketupat. But Nadia was alone.

Nadia looked up at the warning again, the words DILARANG MASUK – DO NOT ENTER seemed imprinted into her mind.

Nadia was an anxious person by nature. She set four different alarms to wake every morning. She wrote all her to-do lists so she would not forget a thing. A spilled drop of ink on her clothes meant a reprimand in some way.

No matter what she did right, her parents still saw her as the one who messed up. They never saw how efficient she was with all her homework. How capable she always was to everyone around her.

And what did it get her? Being sent away from her friends, her teachers, and everything she knew from Johor to the middle of Kampar.

Nadia was tired of being the good girl. She pushed the door open.

When the door closed behind her, there was a sense of finality.

The floor seemed to have the vintage patterns Nadia had seen in old mosques, but they did not fit the current aesthetic. Nadia reasoned that while the architecture changed with the times, Sayap Tujuh had remained as it was.

The place certainly didn’t have the charred, blackened look of a fire. It wasn’t clean by Nadia’s standards, but not filthy either.

The air seemed to have that preserved effect – as if the last of the students’ vibes were still sealed within the place but never quite left.

Nadia realised with a jolt that she was not alone.

At the end of the corridor was a young girl her age sitting primly on a table. Judging by her uniform, she seemed to be an artifact from the 70s, but with an outdated badge design. Yet her uniform: pale pink blouse and dark grey skirt fluttering below the knee, along with her pressed maroon tie, indicated that once, she had been a senior prefect.

Nadia recognized her, the prefect from the photographs.

The prefect’s hair was neatly combed and styled with plaits, thick black hair unusual for a Eurasian. She looked solid enough, though Nadia suspected she could easily float back into her photograph.

The prefect cocked a brow in acknowledgement, “You’re new.” It wasn’t unkind, but it wasn’t welcoming either.

Nadia’s “yes” was meant to sound sure, but it came out as a rat's squeak more than anything. Ashamed, she cleared her throat, trying to get a foothold on the situation, “Who…”

“Once...” said the prefect. Her voice seemed to be a polished mix of British mannerisms and a lilt of Chinese-Malaysian underneath. “I was someone once.”

Silence followed, which was broken by the prefect, “You’re here for something, aren’t you?”

Nadia flinched, “Y…Yeah… What is this place…?”

The prefect answered, “Sayap Tujuh…is a place where you change things.”

Nadia has a thousand questions from that statement alone. “What kind of things?”

The prefect cocked her head, “Well, you’ve only just arrived. Perhaps there’s been little things…little annoyances you’d like to change about your first day, yes?”

“How did you know…?”

The prefect scoffed, “Even walls have ears.”

For someone who harbored anxiety, Nadia was the kind who needed her day to go… well. As well as it can get, because life is not made to be perfect.

Nadia’s first day today had been dismal. A prefect had admonished her about the length of her uniform skirt by a mere centimeter. Then suddenly, her phone rang shrilly because her mother had wanted the password on some banking app, and the same prefect snatched the phone out of her hands and coldly said no phone calls were to be tolerated during school hours. Nadia had not heard back from her mother.

Then came the Milo incident.

Someone jostled Nadia during lunch, and as a result, the Milo sloshed in her cup and spilled down her front. Students pointed, laughing at her, despite Parvathi managing to help. In the process, Nadia made another friend, Xiao Mei, who shooed the nosy ones away so they could help Nadia get cleaned up.

The prefect nodded sagely as though understanding the little frustrations, “You seem to be the type who has to get things right.” It wasn’t a question.

“Well,” said the prefect, clapping her hands once to get Nadia’s attention, “Let’s cut to the chase. Everyone who comes here always wants to fix something. Small things, big things…”

“I just want a re-do,” Nadia blurted out.

The prefect quirked another eyebrow, then cocked her head into a dorm room labelled QA7-3. “OK. Head into that room. And don’t step on the chalk pieces.”

“What?”

The prefect gestured to the floor: a faint line marked the threshold, a ghostly white that seemed to have been scrubbed out, but the faint line was still there.

“Step on the line,” the prefect instructed.

Nadia put her foot on the chalk line, adjusting herself just so, as though trying to let someone measure her shoe.

Nadia looked around the dorm room nervously; nothing seemed to be happening.

The dorm room appeared just like any other – wooden desks, measly-looking beds, small blackboards above the desks for students to write something, and chalk. The windows were the old-fashioned folding windows. Faded posters hung on the walls in a mix of English and Malay, the colours long faded.

There was a clock above that had stopped at six past five.

“First, you need to decide what it is that you want to change. The thing that you regret most about today,” the prefect clasped her hands behind her back and walked around Nadia like a guru disiplin, exuding calm authority better than any teacher Nadia had ever seen.

“Ensure that your mind and your body want the same thing. Do not allow yourself to be distracted. Both have to be aligned for your request to work.”

Nadia thought back to the Milo incident. Sure, she had made a new friend in the form of Xiao Mei, but it was the humiliation behind it.

“I want the cup steady in my hand,” Nadia said out loud.

The prefect looked at her, “The Milo? You are staking a change over how the Milo spilled down your blouse?” she asked incredulously.

“I don’t want to be humiliated.” Nadia pressed, and the slight anguish behind the tone made the prefect soften.

The clock on the wall ticked, suddenly brought to life by Nadia’s hidden anguish. The room seemed to have a rumble, like something forgotten out of her earliest memories of her father laughing in simpler times.

The hand of the clock moved backwards by three seconds. The last and first thing Nadia heard was the sound of rain.

Nadia woke up back to the first day again. She adjusted her skirt according to the correct length. Her phone was on silent mode, and she could answer her mother during break. And more importantly, the cup of Milo was steady in her hand. No humiliation, and best of all, Nadia still got to befriend Xiao Mei in between classes.

That night, when the old lock clicked, Nadia slid her feet into slippers and walked to the end of the corridor.

The prefect from before was there, looking through the glass windows as though she was watching something mildly amusing behind the glass. The prefect acknowledged Nadia with a nod, but said nothing else.

“Who are you?”

The prefect considered. “Back in 1977, I was known as Anabel Sinclair-Lim. Depending on the person, people like me change. You see me as Anabel Sinclair. I was one of the first batch of female prefects from 1977. To someone else, I would be a different person from another era.”

“But why do you change?”

“To fit the person seeking changes here. Everyone is different. I don’t respond well to people who use it too much to get ahead.”

“Are you some kind of guide?”

Anabel looked around her before comically pointing at herself, “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Nadia did not know whether to laugh or be exasperated.

Seeing the change in Nadia, Anabel gave her a bitter smile, “Look, now you know this place, we have rules. Don’t come here unless really necessary. But if you do, stay on the lines. Decide what you want.”

Anabel turned and looked at Nadia, “But the most important: We do not – ” Anabel said with a heavy emphasis on the word do not: “We do not talk about Sayap Tujuh. Not to your roommate. Not to your teachers. Not to anyone else.”

“Can I make a wish for someone else? Say if a friend needed high scores or something…”

“Think of this place as a bank. The chalk represents the loan. If you ask for something, the chalk takes something else. Think of the chalk like holding a balance, like financial records.”

“Even for small corrections like the Milo?”

“Correct. You win some, you lose some.”

***

That should have been the end of it, but when Nadia wanted to fix a pop quiz answer, she knew exactly where to go.

Initially, she attempted to ignore the mistake. But between that gnawing feeling of getting a simple question wrong, the anxiety that followed, all eyes on her after making that slip, and the Sejarah teacher who mocked her, Nadia could not let this go.

Nadia had attempted to go to Sayap Tujuh during her two-hour break, but the wing was crowded with students passing by in hushed whispers, like examining a museum artifact they had been told not to touch. The girls’ voices returned to normal pitch when they were out of range, as if the wing itself would eavesdrop on them.

When Anabel Sinclair-Lim saw her again, she wordlessly directed her to QA7-3.

“You are too anxious,” Anabel said bluntly as though she was judging a friend’s bad outfit. “Your body and your mind need to be aligned in thought. If you think one thing but say another, the wing misinterprets your change, and it becomes something else entirely,”

“What happened to those who did that?”

“That’s neither here nor there,” Anabel answered.

Nadia never liked it when her questions needed answers. It was as if she were missing the punchline to an elaborate joke.

Still, Nadia needed help, so she asked, “You mentioned before that you win some, you lose some. What exactly is the ‘lose some’?”

“You decide with the body and mind. The tongue represents the body. The brain represents your mind. When you make your decision, it takes a piece of something.”

“What does it take?”

“It depends. Sometimes, from the person requesting the change. Sometimes, from someone on campus.” Anabel said matter-of-factly.

“Why is this place taking things?”

“Everything takes things, Nadia. Plants take in carbon dioxide to survive. Newborns take milk from their mothers to live. Think of your parents. They took you away from everything you know and isolated you here.”

Nadia breathed heavily. They took away her voice and any autonomy she might have had as a person, a long time ago.

But here, in Sayap Tujuh, the place no one talks about, was where she could have some control over something.

With that, Nadia defiantly put her foot on the chalk line, this time more self-assured about what she was doing. She decided on the quiz.

When she opened her eyes, the clock ticked three times backward and the world around her disappeared.

The world returned to the exact moment of the quiz. When the Sejarah teacher asked her the same question, Nadia answered with perfect clarity about the Japanese Occupation landing in Malaya.

But this time, a slight feeling of unease crept up on her.

During lunchtime, she sat with Parvathi and Xiao Mei. A tall, athletic girl with a swimmer’s build, Xiao Mei’s body was muscular from years of swim training. However, for all her gangly limbs and build, Xiao Mei had an easygoing personality and could get along with everyone, from the newbie like Nadia to the 80-year-old Physics teacher.

The change was subtle, but because of Nadia’s feeling of unease, she picked it up quickly.

Xiao Mei was left-handed, and as a result, she needed books and stationery just so that she would not be smudging her books and papers with ink. Xiao Mei usually had neat penmanship, but today, the words were a little crooked.

“Eh, you’re trying out some new handwriting ah?” Nadia asked to mask her unease.

“No lah. I’m trying out this new pen, but somehow what I’m trying to write in my head isn’t translating to my hand.”

Xiao Mei had been trying to write the word laksa, as part of a list of foods she and Parvathi were supposed to introduce to Nadia in Ipoh. Instead, she wrote Laksamana, referring to one of the key figures in the Malacca Sultanate.

Parvathi took one look at the word and burst out laughing, but it was more of a laugh between friends. “What lah Mei. You thinking of food or Sejarah ah? We’re already talking about Japanese Occupation, and you’re still dreaming of Malacca?”

“Dunno. Maybe I’m missing home.” Xiao Mei stretched her arms above her head. She frowned as she looked at the word, like willing her brain to make sense of what happened.

“Maybe you didn’t sleep well last night,” Nadia offered. “You did have swim practice, right? Maybe you got back late.”

Xiao Mei frowned again as she wrote the word laksa, perhaps with a little more force, trying to will her hand to behave and write in the way she was used to, and to will her mind to think about food, not Malaccan history. But even with the adjusted handwriting, something felt hollow.

“Haih. Dunno lah. My brain feels empty somehow.”

Nadia swallowed her guilt.

***

Nadia did not go into Sayap Tujuh for two days. Xiao Mei’s handwriting returned to normal. Nadia’s mind eased.

It should have been the end of her rendezvous with Sayap Tujuh.

That resolve broke all of three weeks later, when the results of the English Debate came through. Nadia was not on the list.

Disappointment, anger, and frustration mounted within, filling her shoes the way floodwaters used to rise way too fast back at her old home in Johor. The old fear of what she wanted to say in her mind had not made it to her mouth and as a result, her slot fell through.

“Don’t worry about the list too much lah,” Parvathi said sympathetically. But for someone like Nadia, who pushed herself to be perfect, who had wanted this for herself, did not see the sympathy, but rather saw that her friend had not just her placement in the Mathletes Society, but was now the Treasurer.

“You’re still new,” Xiao Mei added. “Give yourself some time. I think you were stressed out because you just moved in, kan?”

That night, Nadia made her way to Sayap Tujuh, and once again to QA7-3.

Anabel walked around Nadia, inspecting her as if she were an interesting piece of cargo. “It’s been three weeks, and here you’re asking for something big. Why don’t you try again in the next semester?”

“This is what I need. I don’t want to wait for months to know if I’m good enough. I know I’m good.”

“Do you honestly think you’re the first one to do something like this?”

Nadia opened her mouth indignantly, but Anabel was faster.

“Here’s the thing. You already asked for the quiz to be altered, right? Do you remember what it did with Xiao Mei?”

Nadia’s heart sank: The handwriting. The change from laksa to laksamana.

Anabel continued, “For now, Xiao Mei could easily pass it off as a slip of the mind. But what you’re asking for is bigger now. People have already seen the list. If you go back and alter that list to include your name, it’s not just something that you can excuse as a coincidence.”

“Why? What do I pay for this time?”

“Who knows? When you get greedy for something that you didn’t earn, then Sayap Tujuh matches that greed.”

“How do I make that payment?” Nadia insisted.

Anabel sighed and said, “The chalk makes it easy. It just borrows from people who have credit.”

“I assume you’re not talking about cash.”

“Correct. The chalk takes from those who can afford to lose. Specifically, potential. Potential is the credit. But the chalk only understands balances.”

Nadia’s breath turned shaky but determined.

The building had that same rumbling laugh, but this time it seemed less comforting.

In the morning, the list had her name on it, as if this was natural. Parvathi hugged her. Xiao Mei whooped so loudly that their Sejarah teacher told Xiao Mei to pipe down, but the girls giggled it off. The English teacher, Puan Diana, an advisor to the English Debate club, looked slightly surprised but said nothing.

***

The first indication Nadia got that something was wrong was seeing Parvathi’s reddened eyes, cradling her phone to her ear, trying to drown out her mother’s voice.

“Please, Amma, this has never happened before…” Parvathi whispered, half-tearful, bracing for any consequences about to befall her.

Maths was to Parvathi what Debate was to Nadia. The fact that the former had failed her Maths quiz for the first time in her life was unthinkable.

“I know I studied everything.” Parvathi said after that harrowing phone call, “I checked everything with Puan Nazirah – even she was shocked that I could get it all wrong. She said maybe I have burnout. As if!” She snapped, but seeing Nadia’s ashen face, she mistook the expression for hurt masked as an attempt to comfort. “I’m not mad at you, Nadia, really. But I…” she broke into a sob.

The only consolation Nadia could give was in the form of a hug.

That night Nadia went to Sayap Tujuh and found Anabel staring at the old framed photograph of the female prefects back in 1977.

“It took from Parvathi, didn’t it?” her voice shaking.

Anabel said nothing, staring hard at the photographs. Then she spoke:

“Do you truly know the story of why this wing was sealed?” she said softly, as though trying to coax a mischievous child that she ate the last cookie.

Nadia bit her lip, wondering where Anabel was going with this.

“Everyone wants miserable stories to have such neat little ends. Almost like tying up a pretty Christmas present, no? They sealed it because they did not want the balance sheet to be seen by people who were not on it.”

“On what?” Nadia asked, dazed. Her mind was sluggish, like trying to wade through a heavy lesson after a hearty lunch.

Anabel turned to face her, “This wing made legends, but it also brought about the downfall of so many others who didn’t deserve it. There were students, genuinely good ones, who worked hard for what they wanted. Then you had the lazy, entitled ones who couldn’t be bothered, because daddy has the money to burn.”

“And those who used the wing?”

“It turned good students into diamonds so flawless they scratched glass when they walked.”

Anabel looked towards an unmarked dorm room, which had no numbering, something Nadia had not noticed before. “People like to be grateful for miracles. But we never ask ourselves how it came to be in the first place.”

“I didn’t ask for a miracle,” Nadia protested, “I asked to change small things, I got that. Now I have control over what I need, and I needed that place on the list.”

Anabel turned towards Nadia. There was a steeliness in her eyes, and Nadia immediately understood why Anabel Sinclair-Lim had been a Head Prefect in her heyday.

“Without Sayap Tujuh, you could have led your life normally, been a good friend, a good student. Nothing spectacular, but you would have done well leading an honest life, one where you don’t lie to yourself,” Anabel said.

“But by making those changes you wanted without thinking about how your actions might have consequences for anyone else, you took a piece of credit, a piece of potential that was not yours to have. You are not a miracle. You are a coward.”

***

Nadia began having weird dreams when she stopped visiting Sayap Tujuh.

She dreamt that instead of Xiao Mei performing the perfect backstroke, she was bobbing around in the water and comically flapping her wings like a baby hen

“I forgot how to swim!” she would laugh.

She dreamt of Parvathi crying in the library, a faceless shadow of a man that seemed to circle and feed on Parvathi’s despair as she pleaded, “Appa, I’m trying, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

In some dreams, more disjointed than those of her friends, Nadia dreamt of the chalk and of numbers: 0.2 confidence, 0.3, and names Parvathi, Xiao Mei, floating at her like chalky ghosts.

When she saw her friends during classes in the day, Nadia went into Concerned Friend Mode, saying the right things sometimes but mostly keeping quiet, guilt gnawing inside her.

In the meantime, Nadia kept herself busy in her Debate Society, quickly becoming a rising star among them. Teachers knew her name as Nadia Baharuddin, not simply “budak transfer.”

But as she was excelling, Parvathi and Xiao Mei were falling apart.

Parvathi, who could once calculate quadratic formulas on the tip of her tongue, now stared blankly at their teacher, worrying Puan Nazirah, the Maths teacher, so much that she sent Parvathi to the sick bay, thinking Parvathi might be suffering burnout.

Xiao’s Mei’s handwriting wasn’t the only thing that went from bad to worse. Her back strokes were as haphazard as her writing.

Still, Nadia had hoped that if she didn’t visit the wing, things would resolve themselves.

Sports Week at Queen Anne Institute told a different story.

The swimming event was about to start, but just as the gun went off to mark the start, Xiao Mei fainted.

Puan Nazirah, the Maths teacher, who was also in charge of the Red Crescent Society, immediately called for calm and control, and the officers stepped up as though rehearsed, and took Xiao Mei away on a stretcher.

Parvathi, who had been blank until Xiao Mei’s collapse, went immediately pale and tried to move along with Nadia to see Xiao Mei at the Sick Bay.

Xiao Mai opened her eyes and looked at Nadia with a puzzled expression mixed with politeness.

“Do I… know you?” she asked

“It’s...it’s me, Mei…” Nadia said, her voice quivering. She reached for Xiao Mei’s hand, but though Xiao Mei let her, she did not grip back, staring confusedly at the hand attempting to right some wrong. Parvathi, however, looked ashen.

The nurse fussed around as she tucked the blanket around Xiao Mei. She spoke comfortingly to the girl, “Your mother is coming up soon, don’t worry. But you’ll need to stay for the night for observation, ya?”

Turning to the two girls, the nurse shooed them out of the room, saying Xiao Mei needed rest and assured them the doctor would come.

Both girls nodded mutely, but they did not return to the sports greenery.

A light seemed to have gone off in Parvathi’s head. She turned to Nadia, fingers digging into the latter’s arm, “You know something,” she hissed. “You smell of ketupat and chalk powder. You tell me you’re in the library, but I can see it’s a lie. Where. Are. You. Going?”

Nadia nervously wet her lips as she whispered, “Sayap Tujuh.”

Parvathi dropped her hand away from Nadia, completely ashen.

“The first night, the lock sound woke me up. I went to see what it was, and I found Sayap Tujuh. I’ve… been trying to fix things. About myself.”

Parvathi rubbed her face with her hand. Her face seemed rearranged with shadow and anger, “Tell me I’m dreaming. Tell me this is a lie.”

“I went in to fix small things. Like the way I hold my Milo. Or correct myself on a quiz. I swear, I didn’t expect the wing to take from you.”

“What else did you ask for? The wing doesn’t just take small things.”

Nadia drew a breath. “I asked to join the debate team.”

Parvathi stared ashen at her. “You knew. You saw what happened to me and my Maths problems. You saw Xiao Mei floundering with her swimming. So that’s why we’ve been going haywire.” Her breathing got hard. “I warned you! I warned you about Sayap Tujuh! What have you done to us?” Parvathi whispered, in near tears.

“You told me ‘we don’t talk about Sayap Tujuh!’” Nadia snapped, guilt rising, “What could I have said to you? To Mei? To anyone?”

Immediately regretting her tone, Nadia reached out again, but Parvathi stepped back, the fight gone out of her completely. “Was it worth it, Nadia?” the latter asked quietly, “Getting into debate? Was it worth it to watch me lose my mind over something I love?”

***

That night, the lock clicked and Nadia went to Sayap Tujuh for the last time. She found Anabel in front of an unnumbered door.

“I want to end it,” she said.

Anabel looked relieved but tired at the same time. She directed her to the unnumbered dorm.

“Reconcile the ledger. Balance everything out.”

“How?”

“Use the chalk.” Anabel said, “Write a line that balances.”

The smell of wet moss and chalk hit her like guilt, as though she was finally facing the consequences of her actions.

This room was different than the others. It was empty, save for a single blackboard. There were faint scribbles in white, from the chalk that people had used in the past, likely to pay off their debts. There were names and dates, and numbers. Nadia stared. It was the numbers she’d seen floating in her dreams

Bahasa Debate team 2002: brilliance, 2.4

Chemistry top score, 1999: composure, 0.6

Sports day, 1985: courage, 0.2

In the corner, an eraser lay turned on its side. On the edge of the blackboard, where a teacher would have put her chalk in the old days, there remained a broken piece of chalk, left as though the teacher would come back to it at any moment.

“How do I balance the numbers?” Nadia asked, her mouth dry.

Anabel stood in the doorway as though there was a chain around her ankle, “You took something from your friends the moment you came to this wing and asked for change. You wanted to be in the English Debate, but you took away Parvathi’s gift in Maths. It’s gone on for two weeks, so you write 0.2. You asked the wing to give you bits of confidence with the Sejarah quiz and the Milo cup, but it’s taken parts of Xiao Mei’s mind and her ability to swim. You pay her back another 0.4, since her experience has gone on for longer.”

“Once I make that payment, what happens?”

“Sayap Tujuh will be satisfied. Your friends will be restored.”

“And me?”

Anabel looked straight at her, “The chalk will accept whatever currency you offer. Courage, height, talent. If you offer your talent, it will take your talent. If you offer your memory, it will take your memory. If you offer your future, it will take from your future.”

Nadia stepped to the blackboard. Her hand did not shake, knowing what this ledger would cost her.

She picked up the broken chalk and pressed on it. There was a faint squeak, as though surprised it was coming alive again after so long, but a few seconds more and it got shrill, like nails on a chalkboard.

To Parvathi, she wrote, I owe her 0.2 for her gift at Maths.

To Xiao Mei, she wrote, hand shaking a little less, I owe her 0.4 for her mind, her confidence.

Let their gifts and talents be restored.

I name myself the debtor. Nadia Baharuddin.

When she finished, Nadia placed the chalk on the holder. It rolled a little and stopped as if catching its breath.

“Decide what you will pay with,” Anabel said.

Nadia thought of her mother’s voice on that drop-off day, and of her father carrying her boxes but not speaking. She thought of Parvathi’s betrayed face, of Xiao Mei unconscious.

She looked at her hand. The hand that wrote neat notes and held cups steady. It had measured salt for cooking with her mother, or weaving ketupat. It had always been …capable.

The idea of her hand not being capable frightened her. But the idea of her friends suffering further frightened her more.

“My future,” she said, and her voice did not tremble. “I pay with my future.”

“Nadia,” Anabel said, not quite a warning.

Nadia wrote with the chalk: I give the school my future. I will work hard on my own terms.

“You can leave now,” Anabel said quietly.

As Nadia stood in the doorway, ready to leave for the last time, she turned to Anabel, “Will I ever see you again?”

“I belong to this wing, Nadia. Others will come, and I will take different forms depending on the person.”

Nadia raised her hand, either in farewell or something else, she could not be sure.

“Good luck…with everything, Nadia.” Anabel whispered.

Nadia nodded weakly and left. She never turned around as Sayap Tujuh seemed to sigh as she left. The lock turned with a soft click of the key.

Tomorrow, Parvathi and Xiao Mei would wake up back to their normal selves. Parvathi would remember the quadratic formula as easily as singing Rasa Sayang. Xiao Mei would begin swimming again like her old self, breaking new records tomorrow.

But for now, Nadia collapsed back into bed. The smell of chalk and sour ketupat dissipated as she breathed deeply into her pillow.

THE END

We Don’t Talk About Sayap Tujuh/

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a prestigious platform celebrating the creative voices of writers worldwide. It offers participants the opportunity to share their unique stories and perspectives, fostering a global community of literary talent. This competition aims to inspire and encourage writers to explore the depths of their imagination and craft compelling narratives that resonate with audiences across the globe.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to Cassandra Wijesuria for her captivating submission, "We Don't Talk About Sayap Tujuh," to the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Through her story, she has eloquently captured the complexity of human desires and the impact of our choices. We look forward to seeing more of her work and wish her continued success in her writing journey.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.