Error and Ink

Ink walked into the auditorium as if it were a temporary stop, not where he was actually supposed to be.
The door slammed louder than it should have. Several students looked up in unison. The professor paused mid-sentence, exhaled slowly, and didn't even glance in the latecomer's direction.
"Sit down," he said wearily. "And try not to disappear today."
Ink just snorted and walked to his seat by the window.
He hadn't been here in a long time. A week? Two? More. He didn't count. School always slipped out of his life in uneven chunks—between sleepless nights, strange ceilings, and his mother's hoarse voice outside the door. But this place still held him—a thin, almost invisible thread.
Ink sank down at his desk, stretched out his legs, and stared at the gray sky outside the window. The light fell from the side, highlighting the burn on his right cheek and the whitish, blind eye. He knew they were watching him. Always watching. And he had long since stopped hiding.
Not for long, he reminded himself.
I'm not here for long.
The teacher was just about to continue his lecture when there was another knock on the door.
“I apologize for being late,” a confident voice said.
The director entered the auditorium.
A whisper ran through the ranks. This was already unusual.
There was a guy standing next to him.
Tall. Dark. With long black hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. He held himself calmly, almost aloofly—as if he'd already built a boundary around himself that not everyone was allowed to cross.
Ink noticed the gloves immediately. Black, tight-fitting—an odd detail for a classroom. Then—the face. The light streaks on the skin were carefully concealed by makeup, but Ink still caught them. They stretched downward from the eyes, like the traces of long-dried tears.
"This is Error," the director said. "He transferred to us from Germany. Please help him settle in and join the curriculum."