People looked at him differently now.
Not all of them—just enough.
Whispers followed Lian in the hall like smoke. They weren't loud, but they didn't have to be. A glance. A pause. A sudden change of topic when he walked past.
Even Jamie didn't sit with him anymore. She gave him a stiff nod from across the quad but nothing else. No texts. No jokes. No warmth.
He hadn't told anyone about the poem showcase either. It got accepted. Ms. Devon had still sent the email.
But now even that felt poisoned.
In class, Lian tried to focus. The teacher's voice droned on, but his notebook was open to a fresh page. No equations. Just sketches.
He drew Kai again.
Not as a spider this time. But as a shadow holding puppet strings.
No face.
Just teeth.
Lian's pencil tore the paper a little when he shaded too hard.
At lunch, he wandered the edges of the school. Ended up near the dumpsters, where the air smelled of old milk and wilted lettuce.
He sat on a curb and opened his bestiary again.
The page that once held "Jamie – tiger/moth?" now just said (unknown).
Everything felt unstable. Slippery.
He had thought seeing people's animals made things simpler. Safer.
But now it just felt like another lie he told himself to feel in control.
"Lost something?" a voice asked from behind.
Lian looked up. Mr. Arman again, holding a steaming paper cup.
"Maybe," Lian said.
The librarian handed him the cup. "Peppermint tea. Helps with confusion."
Lian stared at it. Then sipped.
Warmth curled in his chest.
They sat side by side on the concrete, neither talking for a while.
"I thought I had this power," Lian finally said. "To see people for what they are."
Mr. Arman nodded slowly. "You saw animals?"
Lian didn't answer. He didn't have to.
"I used to see colors," the librarian said after a moment. "Auras, I guess. Back when I was about your age."
Lian looked at him, startled.
"They weren't real. Or maybe they were. But I stopped trusting them when I realized how often I got it wrong."
Lian stared at his hands. "What do you do when the thing that made you feel safe… stops working?"
Mr. Arman gave him a long look. "You start over. With the scary stuff. The gray areas. The people who don't fit boxes."
Lian didn't say anything. But he flipped to a blank page in his bestiary. Wrote one word:
Gray.
That night, his father knocked on his door.
It was late. Lian had been pretending to sleep.
His father didn't open the door, just spoke through it.
"I don't know what's going on. But I heard about school. If you want to talk... I'm here."
Lian didn't answer.
But his hand slid toward his pencil and drew—not an animal, not a monster.
Just a hand, hovering, reaching across a door.