The coffee cup touched the table with a soft sound.
Clack.
Yuna instantly fell silent.
The pencil in her hand hovered slightly above her book.
Her eyes waited.
I looked at the question for a mont.
"The hare and the tortoise."
"Yes."
"What the hare said after losing."
"Yes."
I picked up one of her pencils.
And tapped it once against the paper.
Tap.
"The hare said nothing."
Yuna blinked.
"...It didn’t?"
"No."
I tapped the question again with the tip of the pencil.
"Hares belong to the family Leporidae."
She stared at .
Still confused.
I continued in the exact sa tone I used for reading food labels.
"Their vocal cord structure does not allow for the formation of complex human language."
The room fell silent for a few seconds.
Yuna still held her pencil.
Her rapid breathing had stopped.
She tried to process the sentence.
"...So..."
"So, the hare didn’t speak."
I set the pencil back down on the table.
"The most biologically accurate answer is: it said nothing."
Yuna looked back down at the question.
Then at .
Then back at the question.
"...Silence?"
"Yes."
She remained perfectly still.
As if her mind had just completely derailed from a very long track.
A mont ago, she was trying to find the moral answer.
An apology.
A life lesson.
Friendship.
Now, the answer was just one word.
Silence.
Her lips twitched slightly.
One corner curled up.
Then dropped back down.
She was trying to hold sothing back.
I watched her shoulders begin to tremble slightly.
"...Papa."
"Hm."
"If I write that..."
"Write it."
"The teacher might get mad."
"The teacher can debate it."
Her shoulders shook again.
More noticeably this ti.
A small laugh leaked out.
"Pff..."
She covered her mouth with her hand.
But she couldn’t hold it all back.
"Hehe..."
It wasn’t the polite, asured laugh she usually gave.
No tone control.
No calculated pauses.
Just the genuine, small laughter of a nine-year-old girl who found sothing truly funny.
She bowed her head.
Still giggling softly.
Then she picked up her pencil again.
Words began to appear in her howork workbook.
Her handwriting was as perfectly neat as usual.
But this ti, her hand moved with a certain lightness.
After writing down a single sentence, she stopped.
There was still one question left.
She pointed to it with the tip of her pencil.
Her face was much more relaxed now.
"Papa."
"Hm."
"How about this one?"
I looked down at the page.
Yuna read the final question, her tone remarkably lighter.
"If you had wings... where would you fly to?"
She twirled the pencil between her fingers.
All traces of panic were gone.
"Usually, kids write down their dream destinations."
"For example."
"The sky."
"A tropical island."
"Grandma’s house."
She looked up at again.
The lingering traces of her laughter were still visible in her eyes.
"If you had wings, Papa... where would you fly?"
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