ModernVintage

PROLOGUE: THE QUIET ART OF NOTICING

You had always been the sort of person who watched.

Not in the way that the students of Night Raven College typically watched—one eye on power, another on weakness, always calculating the angle. No. Your watching was different. It was the kind born from a bone-deep understanding that people carried oceans inside them, and that most drowning happened quietly.

Your mother had taught you the first lessons, though she'd never intended to: that "I'm fine" was the most dangerous lie in any language, that the people who needed help the most were the ones who never asked for it. You learned to read the weather of people before you learned to read the weather of the sky.

But she wasn't the reason. She was only the context.

The reason had a name, and you did not say it anymore.

S.

You had known S before you had the vocabulary for what you were—before "observant" and "hypervigilant" and "codependent" were words in your personal dictionary, before you understood that noticing things could be a skill rather than a compulsion. S was your age, which mattered. This wasn't a child learning to manage adults. This was a child failing to save a peer.

S laughed too loud—one half-beat too long, one half-note too high—and flinched at sudden movement, and wore long sleeves in summer and pushed them up in winter, which was backwards, which was wrong, which was a signal you received and could not decode. S said "I'm fine" with the specific pitch that meant the opposite. S's text messages grew shorter and shorter, and then stopped, and then started again with a brightness that felt like a light left on in an empty house.

You noticed all of it. You noticed the way you noticed everything—instinctively, helplessly, like breathing. But you were a child. You didn't have a framework. You didn't have response instructions. You saw the signs and you didn't know what the signs meant, and so you did what children do: you loved S and you hoped love was enough.

It wasn't.

S is gone. Not dead—"gone" is the right word. S went somewhere you couldn't follow, and you spent years afterward replaying every observation you'd ever made, building the framework you'd lacked, writing down what you'd noticed and what you should have done about it, swearing that you would never again see someone drowning and mistake it for swimming.

You do not say their name anymore. You do not write it. An initial is all you can bear—an outline of a person, a shape without a face, because faces are too much to carry.

After S, you promised you would learn the difference. You promised you would write it down, so that next time, you would know.

There was never a next time with S. But there were others. There are always others.

The journals began as a grave.

By the time you arrived at Night Raven College—a place that seemed designed to ensure no one paid attention to anyone but themselves—you had filled dozens of journals. Each one dedicated to a single person. Each one a map of someone else's interior.

You kept them in your room, organized by dorm, then by name, their spines unmarked to the casual observer. But you knew each one by heart—by the shade of the cover, by the wear on the binding, by the weight of them in your hands. The Lilia journal was a deep plum, soft as old velvet. The Jade journal was forest green, precise in its dimensions. The Floyd journal was teal, slightly battered at the corners from where you'd grabbed it in haste. The Riddle journal was crimson, neat and slim. The Jamil journal was amber, its pages dense with observations. The Vil journal was platinum, immaculate, the most recent addition.

There was no journal for yourself. This was stated the way you'd state that the sky was blue—obvious, unremarkable, not worth commenting on. The absence was louder than any presence could be.

You wrote in them every day. Sometimes every hour. You wrote about the things everyone noticed—the spectacular meltdowns, the public victories, the broad strokes of personality that anyone could see. But mostly you wrote about the things no one else seemed to catch. The small tells. The quiet struggles. The moments when someone's armor slipped just enough to glimpse the person underneath.

And for each observation, you wrote a response. A way to help. A way to care without smothering. A way to love without demanding to be loved back.

You never intended for anyone to read them.

That, of course, was not how the story went.

 PART ONE: LILIA — THE GENERAL WHO MISSED NOTHING (EXCEPT, PERHAPS, EVERYTHING)

The first journal was found on a Tuesday in late October, when the autumn wind through Diasomnia carried the smell of burning leaves and old magic.

Lilia Vanrouge had lived for centuries. He had been a soldier, a general, a spy, a guardian. He had seen empires rise and fall, had watched history bend and break and rebuild itself around the bones of the fallen. He had learned, in that impossibly long life, to notice everything. The slight hesitation before a lie. The telltale tremor in a hand that was about to reach for a weapon. The way a person's eyes moved when they were calculating versus when they were feeling.

He had also learned that the most interesting things were the ones people tried to hide.

So when you started spending time in Diasomnia's library—ostensibly to help Sebek organize the historical texts, though Lilia had noticed you spent far more time watching than shelving—he had filed the information away without comment. And when you had left your bag behind one evening, tucked beneath the long table where you usually sat, he had picked it up with every intention of simply returning it.

But the bag had come open, and a journal had slipped out, and Lilia had caught it reflexively, and the spine had fallen open to a page marked with a dark ribbon, and—

His own name had stared back at him.

Not "Lilia." Not the name everyone used. No. The heading was written in an old Valerian script that hadn't been commonly used in four hundred years. Thaele'ven. It translated roughly to "one who guards," but the connotation was richer than that—it meant a guardian who had outlived what they were guarding. A sentinel standing at a gate that would never open again. A word for a specific kind of grief that most people didn't know was possible to feel.

Lilia's hand had gone very still.

He had not seen that word in a very long time.

He should have closed the journal. He knew that. The honorable thing—the thing the Lilia of three centuries ago might have done—would have been to set it down, return the bag, and never speak of it. But Lilia had been a spy, and spies did not close journals with their own names written on them in dead languages. Spies read.

So he read.

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Thaele'ven — Lilia Vanrouge

Observation Log — Day 1 through present

General Notes:

Lilia performs "lightness" the way other people perform seriousness—with effort, with intention, with the desperate hope that if he pretends hard enough, it will become real. His laughter is genuine more often than it isn't, but there are days when it rings one half-note too bright, and on those days, he is not okay. He is not even close.

Key Observations:

1. Sleep Patterns: Lilia does not sleep so much as he collapses. He stays awake until his body simply stops allowing him to remain conscious, and even then, he fights it. The nights he does sleep are worse—he wakes with his hands in fists and his jaw clenched hard enough that I've seen the aftereffects in the way he carefully doesn't touch his face the next morning. Nightmare nights. They happen roughly every three to four days, though he'll never admit it.

Response: Never ask about the nightmares directly. He will deflect with humor and then avoid you for a week. Instead, the morning after a bad night, make sure there is something for him to do with his hands—a task that requires fine motor skill but not deep thought. Peeling fruit. Whittling. Adjusting the positioning of small objects. His hands need to remember that they are capable of gentleness. Also: he will not eat breakfast on these mornings. Do not comment. Simply make sure something is available around mid-morning that is easy to consume without utensils. He prefers sweet things on bad days. The sugar is not indulgence; it is fuel for a body that forgot to refuel.

2. Sound Tells: When Lilia is genuinely at ease, he hums. Old songs—Valerian war marches, lullabies, drinking songs from campaigns that haven't been fought in centuries. When he is performing ease, he is silent. The absence of humming is the most reliable indicator of his actual mood.

Response: If he's not humming, do not force conversation. Sit near him. Be present without being demanding. If you must speak, ask about something from his past—not the painful parts, but the neutral ones. Recipes. Music. Languages. Let him be the expert. He needs to feel useful on days when he feels most obsolete.

3. The Deflection Pattern: Lilia uses three tactics to avoid emotional vulnerability, in order of deployment—

a) Humor (any topic change that makes the other person laugh)

b) Misdirection (answering a question that wasn't asked)

c) Physical withdrawal (suddenly remembering somewhere else he needs to be)

If he reaches stage c), he is closer to breaking than he will ever allow anyone to see. Do not follow him. But make sure there is something in the space he retreats to that offers comfort—a blanket, a warm drink, a familiar object. He will not thank you. He may not even acknowledge it. But he will notice.

4. His Hands: Watch his hands. When Lilia is anxious, his fingers move through the positions of old spell-casting—muscle memory from centuries of combat. It is not a conscious gesture. He does not know he does it. The pattern is always the same: index and middle finger together, rotation at the wrist, thumb across the palm. It is the shortest spell-form he knows, a combat cantrip for quick casting. His body is preparing for a fight that isn't coming.

Response: When you see this, do not startle him. Move into his line of sight slowly. Speak his name softly. Offer him something to hold—something with texture, something that requires attention. He will take it without thinking. The tactile feedback interrupts the spell-form. His hands will still.

5. On the Subject of Malleus: Lilia's love for Malleus is the axis on which his entire world turns, but it is also the source of his deepest terror. He will never say this. He may never fully think it. But I have watched him watch Malleus, and what I see is not just a guardian watching his charge. It is a man watching the proof that his life had meaning, and being terrified that the proof will one day conclude otherwise.

He checks on Malleus. At night. Multiple times. He thinks no one notices. But I have seen the way the shadows in Diasomnia's hallway bend at 2 AM, and I know the shape of the person who makes them move.

Response: Never, ever suggest that his care for Malleus is excessive or suffocating. It is neither. It is the last bridge connecting him to a reason to stay. Instead: when Malleus does something that proves his growth, his capability, his independence—make sure Lilia sees it. Not in a way that suggests Malleus no longer needs him. In a way that suggests Lilia's care worked. That the tree grew because the gardener tended it. That is the thing he most needs to hear, even if he never hears it spoken aloud.

6. On Loneliness: Lilia is the loneliest person I have ever met, and he has designed his life to ensure no one finds out. His friendships are shallow by intention—he keeps people at arm's length with charm and deflection because he has outlived everyone he ever truly let in, and he cannot bear to do it again. The people he is closest to (Malleus, Silver, Sebek, the students he has come to care about at NRC) are people he will also outlive, and some part of him knows this, and it is eating him alive.

Response: You cannot solve this. Do not try. But you can do this: be consistent. Show up. Be the same person tomorrow that you were today. Lilia has lost too many people to change—he needs constancy the way most people need air. He will test you without meaning to. He will push you away to see if you'll come back. Come back. Come back. Come back.

That is the only instruction that matters.

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Lilia read the entire entry in one sitting.

He was sitting on the floor of the Diasomnia library, his back against the shelf he'd been reorganizing, the journal open across his knees. The candles in the room had burned down by an inch. He hadn't noticed.

He closed the journal.

His face went perfectly, dangerously blank—the expression that had preceded the most decisive military campaigns of his career. Not the amused twinkle he wore like armor. Not the gentle melancholy he allowed to surface when he was performing nostalgia. Blank. Operational. The face of a general who has just received intelligence that changes the shape of the battlefield.

What does this person know?

He mentally catalogued the damage. The sleep patterns. The spell-form in his hands. The 2 AM checks on Malleus. If this were an enemy intelligence file, it would be among the most comprehensive he'd ever seen. And the response instructions—they weren't just protective. They were effective. Whoever wrote this understood not just what he felt but what he needed, and the difference between those two things was the most dangerous knowledge anyone could have about a person.

What are the vulnerabilities?

All of them. That was the terrifying part. Every observation in this journal was a vulnerability. The sleep patterns could be exploited to catch him unconscious. The spell-form tell could be read to anticipate his combat readiness. The 2 AM checks on Malleus revealed both his protective patterns and his deepest fear. A competent enemy could use this file to dismantle him without ever drawing a weapon.

Who else might they have told?

Unknown. The journal appeared to be a single copy, handwritten, no duplicates. But that assumption was unreliable. The author might have shared the information verbally. Might have other copies. Might be reporting to someone else entirely.

What is the play?

This was the question that stopped him. Because the journal did not read like a play. It read like—

No. He was not going to assign emotional motivations to an intelligence file. That was how you got yourself killed. You assessed the threat, you determined the objective, you formulated a counter-strategy. You did not sit in the dark feeling moved because someone had noticed you couldn't sleep.

Lilia rose from the floor. He tucked the journal under his arm, returned your bag to the lost-and-found where you would inevitably retrieve it, and walked back to his room with the measured stride of someone who had just acquired the most dangerous document in his centuries of intelligence work.

He did not feel moved.

He felt exposed, and exposure to a spy was a tactical emergency.

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Two days passed.

Lilia did not return the journal. He did not confront you. He did not inform the headmaster or warn Malleus or take any of the actions that a careful assessment of the threat might have recommended.

Instead, he devised a test.

Lilia did not accept gifts without verifying their provenance. He did not trust observations without confirming their accuracy. And he did not assess intent through documents—documents could be forged, curated, designed to produce a specific reaction. The only way to determine what someone wanted was to watch them in action.

He would deliberately exhibit one of the documented tells and see whether you responded as the journal predicted. If you did, the journal was accurate (and therefore more dangerous). If you didn't, the journal was speculative (and therefore less threatening). Either way, he gained information.

He chose the spell-form. It was the most clinical of the tells—physical, involuntary, difficult to fake on both sides. If he performed it deliberately, it would look identical to the unconscious version. And if you responded exactly as the journal prescribed, he would know that you had not merely observed him once and written it down; you had internalized the response so thoroughly that it had become reflex.

The library. Late afternoon. You were at your usual table, a book open in front of you, your pen moving in that quiet, constant way it always did—writing, always writing, though he had never been close enough to see what.

Lilia entered and positioned himself across the room. He made conversation—light, effortless, performed. A comment about the weather. A question about the text you were organizing. The easy banter that was his signature, the performance of lightness that the journal had so precisely documented.

And then, deliberately, he let his hands move.

Index and middle finger together. Rotation at the wrist. Thumb across the palm. The combat cantrip. The tell.

He watched you from his peripheral vision.

You noticed. Of course you did—you noticed everything. Your eyes flicked to his hands. A micro-expression crossed your face: recognition. Not surprise. Recognition, like you'd seen this before, like you'd been waiting for it.

Then you did exactly what the journal said to do.

You moved into his line of sight slowly—not standing, not rushing, just a shift of weight that brought you into his natural gaze path without demanding his attention. You said his name softly. Not "Lilia, are you okay?" which would have triggered deflection pattern a). Not "Is something wrong?" which would have triggered b). Just his name. A gentle anchor to the present moment.

And then you picked up a book from the table beside you—something with a textured cover, he noticed. Not a random choice. Leather binding with raised ridges, the kind of texture that demanded tactile attention. You held it out to him.

"Have you read this one?" you asked. Casual. No significance. Just a person offering another person something to hold.

Lilia took the book.

His hands stilled.

The spell-form broke, interrupted by the texture under his fingertips, the ridges of the leather demanding just enough attention to pull his muscle memory out of its automatic pattern. The journal's response protocol worked. It worked precisely, completely, exactly as prescribed.

And something inside him—something he had been holding together with discipline and defiance for longer than you had been alive—cracked.

Not because the journal was right. He expected it to be right. Intelligence that was wrong wasn't useful, and whoever wrote this was too precise to be wrong.

It cracked because the response was kind. Not strategic. Not manipulative. Kind in the specific, careful, deliberate way that the journal prescribed—and that you executed without hesitation, without awkwardness, without making it a thing. You just helped. The way you'd help someone who was choking. Automatically. Because not helping was unthinkable.

Nobody had done that for Lilia in centuries. Not because no one had noticed his distress—though most hadn't—but because the ones who noticed treated it as a problem to be solved or a weakness to be exploited or a moment to be politely ignored. No one had ever noticed and then just offered him something to hold.

He looked down at the book in his hands. He looked at you. You had already returned to your notes, your pen moving again, as though nothing had happened. As though offering a lifeline was just something you did, unremarkably, the way other people breathed.

He also noticed something else: you had executed the response protocol perfectly. Not approximately. Not approximately-correct-with-hesitation. Perfectly. The slow approach. The soft name. The textured object, selected with what appeared to be casual convenience but was almost certainly deliberate—the leather binding with raised ridges, demanding just enough tactile attention to interrupt the spell-form.

That level of precision meant one of two things. Either you had practiced this kind of intervention so many times that it had become reflexive—in which case, how many people had you done this for?—or you had been watching him closely enough to notice the spell-form the moment it began and execute a multi-step response within seconds. Neither possibility was comfortable. Both suggested a depth of attention that bordered on the terrifying.

And yet the result was that his hands were still, and the combat cantrip was broken, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, someone had noticed him preparing for a fight that wasn't coming and had simply offered him something else to hold.

"Thank you," he said.

You glanced up. "For what?"

For the book. For the name spoken softly. For the texture that had pulled him back from a place he hadn't realized he was going. But he couldn't say any of that, so he just smiled—a small smile, not the bright, performed one, but something quieter—and said, "I've been meaning to read this one."

You nodded. Went back to your notes.

Lilia stayed in the library for another hour, holding the book, not reading a single word.

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That night, he sat on his bed with the journal open across his knees and read the addendum at the end of the most recent entry:

Addendum — Recent Pattern:

Lilia has been watching me watch him. He thinks I don't notice. But I notice everything—it is both my greatest strength and my most exhausting flaw. He is trying to determine whether my observations are a threat.

They are not. I don't know how to prove that. I don't know if I should try.

But I want him to know this: I did not write this journal to hold power over him. I wrote it because I could not bear the thought of him suffering in silence and no one coming. I wrote it because someone should know the shape of his pain. I wrote it because the alternative—not paying attention—was unacceptable.

He would understand that better than anyone. He was a general. He knows what it costs to care about the people you cannot save.

I am not trying to save him. I am trying to make sure he is not alone.

That is all.

That is everything.

Lilia read those words three times.

Then he closed the journal, set it carefully on his nightstand, and pressed his forehead to the cover.

The tactical framework failed entirely. Because you couldn't defend against kindness. You couldn't strategize around someone who had no angle. You couldn't outmaneuver a person whose only move was to show up.

He noticed something else, then—something small that you probably hadn't intended to reveal. In the observation about his cooking: "Lilia's cooking has improved noticeably since he started adding salt before the sugar instead of after; this is progress and should be acknowledged casually, not praised effusively, because he will take effusive praise as condescension."

The word "improved" implied you had tracked the change over time. Which meant you'd been watching him cook. Which meant you'd been in the Diasomnia kitchen, probably early in the morning when he cooked before anyone else was awake, and you had never announced your presence. You had just watched. And taken notes. And left.

This should have disturbed him. It did disturb him—for days, actually. He kept returning to the image of you in the Diasomnia kitchen, watching him cook, taking notes, leaving before he turned around. The violation of it. The intrusion. The fact that his most private spaces were not private at all.

But the disturbance kept curdling into something else, and the something else was worse, because the something else was gratitude. Not for the observation—the observation was surveillance, however gently framed. For the lack of judgment. You had watched him add salt after sugar for months and hadn't corrected him, hadn't mocked him, hadn't told a single person. You had just noted the improvement when it came, and written it down as progress, and moved on.

That was—Lilia didn't have a word for what that was. Care without interference. Attention without agenda. The kind of witnessing that asked for nothing in return.

He kept the journal. Not as intelligence. As evidence that something existed in the world that he hadn't known was possible.

 PART TWO: FLOYD — THE TIDE THAT DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS PREDICTABLE

Floyd Leech found his journal two days after Lilia found his, and he found it in the most Floyd way possible: by being a menace.

The circumstances were as follows: You had been in the Mostro Lounge, nursing a drink and scribbling in the teal journal—Floyd's journal—when Jade had appeared at your elbow with a polite smile that meant he wanted something. You had startled, shoved the journal into your bag, and made a hasty exit, and in your haste, you had knocked the bag against the corner of a table. The journal had slid partially out but not fallen, and you hadn't noticed because you were already halfway through the door.

Floyd had noticed.

Floyd noticed everything, despite the widespread assumption that he was too chaotic to pay attention to anything. It was one of the greatest misconceptions about him—that his unpredictability stemmed from a lack of awareness. In truth, Floyd's unpredictability stemmed from an excess of it. He saw everything. He simply chose to engage with what interested him and disregard what didn't, and the difference between those two categories could shift on a dime.

What interested him right now: you. Specifically, the way you had hidden something when Jade appeared. Floyd loved hidden things. They were like puzzles, and puzzles were like games, and games were the only reason life was tolerable.

He caught up to you in the hallway, slung an arm around your shoulders, and said, "Shrimpy! Whatcha got in the bag?"

"Nothing."

"Liar." He grinned, wide and sharp. "C'mon. I saw you stuff something. Is it a love letter? A hit list? Ooh, is it both?"

"It's nothing, Floyd."

But Floyd had already hooked his fingers into the bag's opening and pulled, and the teal journal tumbled out and hit the floor with a sound that was far too loud in the empty hallway.

You made a grab for it. Floyd was faster.

He flipped it open.

And saw his own name.

"Huh," he said.

"Floyd—"

"Shh." He was already reading, his hetero-chromatic eyes scanning the page with a speed that would have surprised anyone who assumed he couldn't be bothered to read a textbook. But this wasn't a textbook. This was about him. And Floyd had always been deeply, selfishly interested in himself.

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Floyd Leech

Observation Log

General Notes:

Floyd is not chaotic. This is the most important thing to understand about him, and almost no one understands it. Floyd is a complex system that appears chaotic from the outside because the variables that determine his behavior are different from the variables most people use. He is not random. He is operating on a logic that is entirely consistent once you learn to read it.

Key Observations:

1. The Mood Scale: Floyd's moods do not shift without reason. They shift in response to specific stimuli, most of which relate to stimulation levels. Understimulation makes him irritable. Overstimulation makes him volatile. The ideal range is narrow and difficult to maintain, but it exists, and when he is in it, he is the most engaging person at this school.

Signs of understimulation: finger tapping, frequent position changes, increased verbal output (talking faster, louder, more), picking at things, the specific set of his jaw that means he's about to squeeze something just to feel it.

Signs of overstimulation: going quiet (this is the most dangerous sign—Floyd being quiet is Floyd at his most overwhelmed), a certain flatness in his expression, the way he stops making eye contact, subtle flinching at sounds that normally wouldn't bother him.

Response for understimulation: Offer him something novel. A new song. A puzzle. A problem to solve. A game. Floyd craves novelty like oxygen. When he can't find it, he manufactures chaos to create it. If you give him genuine novelty, he doesn't need to make his own.

Response for overstimulation: This is harder. Floyd does not want to appear weak, and retreating feels like weakness to him. Do not tell him to leave the room. Instead, create a reason for both of you to go somewhere quieter. "I need to grab something from the other room, come with me" works. He will go because you asked, not because he needs to, and he can save face. Once you're somewhere quieter, offer him something tactile—a stress ball, a piece of putty, even a piece of paper to fold. His hands need to move, but they need to move in ways that don't involve squeezing people.

2. The Nickname System: Floyd's nicknames are not random. They are a classification system. He names people based on his initial impression of them, and he changes the names when his impression changes. This means that a nickname change is significant data.

"Koebi" (shrimp) is his default for me. It means he sees me as small but interesting—worth paying attention to, worth engaging with, but not a threat.

If he ever calls me by my actual name, something has gone very wrong. It means he has reclassified me as either a threat or someone who has hurt him, and he is distancing himself through formality.

If he calls me something new and affectionate—something that isn't about size or weakness—then I will know I have graduated in his estimation from "interesting prey" to "genuine connection." I have not earned this yet. I am still working on it.

3. The Squeeze: Everyone knows about the squeeze. No one understands it. Floyd squeezes people for the same reason he squeezes everything—because the physical sensation of pressure is regulating for him. It is not malicious. It is not even aggressive, in his mind. It is the same impulse that makes him want to hug a pillow or crush a can. He wants to feel something solid, something that pushes back, something that proves the world has edges and he can find them.

The problem is that people are not pillows, and they do not enjoy being squeezed.

Response: Do not pull away. Pulling away triggers his chase instinct. Instead, squeeze back. Give him the pressure he's seeking in a way that doesn't hurt you. He will be startled—most people either flee or freeze. If you hold on, he will ease up. Not because he realizes he's being too rough (he usually doesn't), but because the reciprocal pressure satisfies the need faster than one-sided pressure does.

4. The Quiet: I mentioned this before, but it bears expanding. Floyd's silences are not like other people's silences. Other people are quiet when they're content. Floyd is quiet when he's drowning.

He learned, growing up in the Coral Sea, that showing weakness was dangerous. In a merfolk community, vulnerability attracted predators. So when he feels most vulnerable, he goes still. Quiet. He makes himself small in the only way he knows how—by disappearing into himself.

The first time I saw this, he was sitting in the Mostro Lounge during a busy shift. Everyone assumed he was just being lazy, skipping work. But his hands were in his lap, and they were not still—they were trembling, barely, the kind of tremor that only shows up in the fingertips. And his eyes were focused on nothing. Not looking at nothing—focused on it. Staring into a middle distance that wasn't physical.

I sat next to him. I didn't speak. I put my hand on the table near his, not touching, just present. After four minutes and thirty seconds, he blinked. Looked at me. And said, 'Shrimpy, do you know any good songs?'

I gave him three recommendations. He listened to all of them. By the third, he was humming.

That is what works. Not words. Not comfort. Just presence, and then distraction, and then something for his mind to hold onto when it was slipping.

5. On Jade: Floyd's relationship with Jade is the most important dynamic in his life, and he does not understand it. He loves Jade the way the tide loves the moon—inevitable, gravitational, without choice. But he also resents Jade's control, his calm, his ability to be the composed one while Floyd is always the wild one. They have been cast in these roles since birth, and Floyd cannot tell where Jade's personality ends and the performance begins. Neither can Jade. This terrifies both of them, and neither will ever say it.

Response: Never compare them. Never say 'you're so different from Jade' or 'Jade wouldn't do that.' Every comparison reinforces the binary they are trapped in. Instead, see Floyd as Floyd. Not as Jade's twin, not as the other Leech, not as the crazy one. See him as a complete person who exists independently of his brother.

He will not know how to handle this. He may become erratic when you do it—more chaotic, more unpredictable, more Floyd. This is not a sign that you're doing it wrong. This is a sign that you're doing it right, and he doesn't know what to do with someone who sees him without the frame of reference he's always been viewed through.

Give him time. He will adjust. And when he does, he will be loyal in ways that are almost frightening in their intensity.

6. On Intelligence: Floyd is smarter than almost anyone gives him credit for. His disinterest in academics is not a lack of capacity; it is a lack of motivation. He learns things instantly when they interest him and not at all when they don't. He has memorized the weakness patterns of every student in Spelldrive not because he studied but because he watched three matches and his brain did the work automatically. He knows the schedule of every person he cares about not because he's controlling but because pattern recognition is his native language.

Do not dumb things down for him. Do not explain things slowly. He will read the condescension instantly, and he will never forgive you for it.

Treat him as what he is: a genius in a world that only values one kind of intelligence, who has chosen to play the fool because it's more fun and less lonely than being dismissed.

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Floyd finished reading and looked up.

You were standing in the hallway, your back against the wall, your arms crossed tight over your chest. You looked like you were bracing for impact. You looked like you were waiting for him to get angry, to squeeze, to shout, to do any of the things that Floyd Leech was known for doing when confronted with something he didn't like.

Floyd didn't do any of those things.

Instead, he said, very quietly: "You think I'm not chaotic."

"I know you're not."

"You think I'm smart."

"I know you are."

"You think—" He stopped. His voice had done something strange. It had gone soft in a way that he didn't let it go soft, because soft was dangerous, soft was vulnerable, soft was the thing that got you eaten in the deep water where things with bigger teeth were always waiting.

"You think I'm real," he said. "Not just—Jade's twin. Not just the crazy one."

"I think you're Floyd Leech," you said. "And I think that's enough."

He looked at the journal in his hands. Then he looked at you. And something shifted in his face—not the dramatic shift of a mood swing, but the subtle recalibration of someone adjusting to a new piece of information that didn't fit their existing model.

"And you think you figured me out," he said.

"I think I noticed patterns. I didn't figure you out. You're not a puzzle to solve."

"Then what am I?"

Floyd stared at them. His grip on the journal tightened—not a squeeze, not the instinctive pressure-seeking described in the journal, but something more careful. Like he was holding something fragile.

"I don't know how to be a person," he said. "I only know how to be Floyd."

"That's the same thing."

"It's not. Being Floyd is—" He gestured, a sharp, frustrated motion. "Being Floyd is being the crazy one. The fun one. The one who squeezes too hard and laughs too loud and doesn't take anything seriously. If I'm not that, then what am I?"

"You're the person who noticed I was hiding something before anyone else did," you said. "You're the person who came after me instead of letting it go. You're the person who's standing here, right now, asking what you are instead of just taking the journal and leaving. That's not chaotic. That's not crazy. That's just paying attention."

Floyd was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "I'm gonna keep this for a while."

"Floyd—"

"Not forever. Just—just for a while." He clutched the journal against his chest, his long fingers wrapping around it the way they wrapped around everything he wanted to keep. "I gotta—I gotta read it again. The whole thing. There's stuff in here I didn't even know about myself."

He paused.

"Is that weird? That someone knows more about me than I do?"

"It's not weird," you said softly. "It just means someone was paying attention."

Floyd was quiet for another long moment. Then he said, "You wrote down how to help me."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you deserve help."

"Nobody asked you to."

"No," you agreed. "They never do."

Floyd stared at you with an expression you had never seen on his face before—open, unguarded, young. In that moment, he looked less like the terrifying eel merman of Night Raven College and more like a kid who had just been handed a map of himself and was seeing, for the first time, that all his roads led somewhere instead of nowhere.

"I'm gonna read it again," he said. "And then I'm gonna come find you, Shrimpy. And you're gonna explain some of this stuff. Especially the part about the squeezing. Because I didn't know that's why I squeeze things, and I think—I think maybe I should know that."

"Okay," you said.

"Okay," he said, and he turned and walked away, the teal journal pressed against his chest, and he did not look back.

But he hummed, as he walked, and it was a tune you had recommended to him three weeks ago, and he had memorized every note without meaning to.

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Floyd went back to his and Jade's room. Jade was awake, sitting at his desk, examining a mushroom specimen with his usual meticulous focus.

Floyd dropped onto his bed, clutching the teal journal.

"Jade," he said.

"Mm?"

"Someone's been watching us. Writing stuff down. About us."

Jade's hands didn't pause in their work. "I know."

Floyd sat up. The journal pressed against his chest. "You know?"

"I've known for some time." Jade set down the specimen. His expression was Smile One—the pleasant, empty one. "I'll explain later. For now, I suggest you read your journal thoroughly. It's quite illuminating."

Floyd stared at his twin. Something hot and sharp flickered in his chest—not anger, exactly, but something adjacent to it. You knew. Someone was writing about me—about us—and you knew, and you didn't tell me.

But the feeling couldn't get a foothold, because the journal was still warm against his chest and the words inside it were still rearranging the furniture of his mind, and there wasn't room for both the rearranging and the hurt. The hurt would have to wait.

"You're so weird," Floyd said.

"Pot, kettle," Jade said mildly, and returned to his mushroom.

Floyd lay back on his bed and opened the journal to page one and started reading again, and the hurt waited, patient and precise, for a moment when there was room for it.

 PART THREE: RIDDLE — THE RULE THAT HAD NO EXCEPTION

Riddle Rosehearts found his journal eight days after Lilia's discovery, during an Unbirthday Party, which was fitting, because Riddle found everything important during Unbirthday Parties.

The circumstances were these: You had been invited to the event as a guest—one of the rare inter-dorm socializations that Riddle allowed, provided all rules were followed. You had been seated at the long table, your crimson journal tucked carefully into your bag, which you had placed beneath your chair. You had been taking notes between courses—not about the tea or the decorations, but about Riddle himself, because you had noticed something in his posture that day that concerned you.

He was holding himself too straight.

Riddle always had excellent posture—it was drilled into him from childhood, part of the endless regime of perfection his mother had imposed. But there was "excellent posture" and there was "rigid with tension, shoulders up near his ears, jaw set like he was preparing to be struck." And Riddle was doing the latter while performing the former, which meant he was in pain and refusing to show it.

You had been writing a note about this when the Dormouse knocked into your chair, reaching for a tart, and your bag had tipped, and the crimson journal had slid out and landed on the floor, open to a page you had never wanted anyone to see.

Riddle had been walking past at that exact moment, because the universe had a sense of humor about these things.

He stopped.

He looked down.

He read a single line.

"Riddle's perfectionism is a prison he built from someone else's blueprint, and the worst part is that he doesn't know where their design ends and his own begins."

Riddle picked up the journal.

You stood up so fast your chair tipped backward. "Riddle—"

"Is this—" He turned the page. Read another line. His ears went pink, then red, then white. "Is this about me?"

"I can explain—"

"Are you—" He was flipping through the pages now, his eyes scanning entry after entry, his expression shifting from shock to fury to something you couldn't read. "Are you monitoring me?"

"No—"

"This is—you've written down—you've been watching me? Like a—a subject? Like something to be studied?" His voice was rising, and the other guests were beginning to stare, and the roses in the hedges were starting to tremble, because Riddle's unique magic was tied to his emotions, and his emotions were currently doing something volcanic.

"This is a violation," Riddle declared, his voice cracking with the force of his conviction. "A violation of privacy, of trust, of—I hereby declare that the maintenance of personal surveillance files on fellow students is prohibited under—under—"

He faltered.

There was no rule for this. The Queen's rules governed tea parties and croquet and the painting of roses. They governed the proper sequence of courses and the acceptable colors for tablecloths and the precise angle at which one's pinky should extend while holding a teacup. They did not govern the secret observations of someone who watched because they cared. There was no rule, no statute, no precedent—nothing in the entire structure of regulations that Riddle had memorized and internalized and built his entire existence around that addressed this situation.

The absence of a rule stopped him more effectively than any rule could. He stood there, mouth still open around the half-formed statute, and felt something he hadn't felt since he was very small: the sensation of not knowing what to do. Not choosing not to do something. Genuinely not knowing. The rulebook in his mind—the vast, intricate, endlessly cross-referenced compendium that organized his entire existence—had a blank page where this situation should have been, and the blankness was more disorienting than any prohibition.

His voice trailed off. His hands tightened on the journal. And in the silence, he read another line.

The line about the flinch.

"Riddle flinches at certain tones of voice. Not all raised voices—just specific ones. The ones that carry condescension laced with disappointment. The ones that say 'I expected better from you' without saying it at all. When he hears this tone, his shoulders go up and his chin goes down, and for just a moment—just a fraction of a second—he looks exactly like a child who has been told he is not good enough."

Riddle read this and felt himself flinch in the present moment—felt his shoulders go up, felt his chin go down—because he had just heard his own voice carrying condescension laced with disappointment, and he was looking at a person who was standing very still and not flinching even though he was using exactly the tone that the journal described.

The journal wasn't about the reader. The journal was about him. And he had just proved every observation in it true in real time.

The roses went still.

The guests held their breath.

Riddle walked to the garden.

---

He found the original rose tree—the one that was there before the Queen, before the rules, before any of it—and sat down on the stone bench beneath it.

He read the journal.

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Riddle Rosehearts

Observation Log

Key Observations:

1. The Flinch: Riddle flinches at certain tones of voice. Not all raised voices—just specific ones. The ones that carry condescension laced with disappointment. The ones that say 'I expected better from you' without saying it at all. When he hears this tone, his shoulders go up and his chin goes down, and for just a moment—just a fraction of a second—he looks exactly like a child who has been told he is not good enough.

He recovers instantly. He has had years of practice. But the flinch is always there, and it breaks my heart every time I see it.

Response: Never use that tone with him. Never. If you are disappointed in him, say it plainly and without contempt. He can handle criticism. He cannot handle contempt. Contempt is his mother's voice, and he has not learned how to stop hearing it.

2. The Rule Book: Riddle's devotion to the rules is not about control. It is about safety. Rules are predictable. Rules are knowable. Rules do not change their minds about what they want from you halfway through the day. Rules do not tell you that you are perfect and then punish you for being imperfect. Rules are fixed, and Riddle needs something fixed because everything else in his internal world is shifting sand.

This does not mean the rules are always right. It means the rules are always safe. And there is a difference, and Riddle cannot see it yet, because seeing it would mean admitting that his entire framework for existing was built on a foundation that was never his own.

Response: Do not challenge the rules directly. He will defend them reflexively, and the conversation will become a battle. Instead, ask questions. 'Why does this rule exist?' 'What is it protecting?' 'Who does it serve?' Let him discover the answers himself. He is smart enough to find them. He just needs permission to look.

3. The Anger: Everyone knows about Riddle's anger. They treat it like a character flaw—a temper to be managed, a problem to be solved. They do not understand that his anger is not the problem. His anger is a symptom.

Riddle is angry because he is scared. He is scared because he is grieving. He is grieving because he lost his childhood to a woman who treated him like a project, and he cannot mourn that loss because mourning it would mean admitting it was a loss, and admitting it was a loss would mean admitting his mother hurt him, and admitting that would mean the entire structure of his identity—built on gratitude and obedience and the conviction that her control was love—would collapse.

So instead of grieving, he gets angry. And instead of being helped, he gets managed. And the cycle continues.

Response: When Riddle is angry, do not tell him to calm down. This is the worst possible instruction. It confirms his deepest fear—that his emotions are unacceptable, that he must suppress them to be tolerated, that he is only worthy when he is quiet.

Instead: Let him be angry. Sit with him in the anger. Say, 'You're allowed to be upset. I'm not going anywhere.' And mean it. Stay. Stay through the yelling, stay through the tears (because the tears will come, eventually, when the anger burns itself out, and they will shame him more than the anger did). Stay through all of it.

He has never had anyone stay through all of it.

4. The Perfection: Riddle does not pursue perfection because he wants to be the best. He pursues perfection because he is terrified of being discarded. In his world—in the world his mother built for him—love was conditional, and the condition was flawlessness. A single mistake meant withdrawal. A single failure meant silence, coldness, the terrible withholding of affection that was worse than any punishment because it taught him that he was only worth loving when he was perfect.

He knows this is wrong. He learned it at NRC, bit by bit, from Trey and Cater and the other students who showed him that imperfection was not abandonment. But knowing it is wrong and not feeling it is wrong are different things, and Riddle's body still believes what his mind has rejected.

Response: When Riddle makes a mistake, do not minimize it ('it's not a big deal') and do not forgive it too quickly ('it's okay, don't worry'). Either response confirms his fear that mistakes require immediate resolution before love can be restored. Instead, acknowledge the mistake, and then explicitly separate it from your regard for him. 'You got that wrong. I still care about you.' Say it plainly. Say it every time. He needs to hear it more times than you will ever be able to say it.

5. The Tea: Riddle's love language is tea. Not the drinking of it (though he does love that) but the making of it. When Riddle makes tea for someone, he is saying, in the only language he trusts himself to speak: 'I care about you, and I want to care for you, and I am terrified that if I say this out loud, you will leave, so I am putting it into the water and the warmth and the leaves and hoping you understand.'

Pay attention to which tea he makes. If he makes your favorite, he is saying 'I see you.' If he makes his favorite, he is saying 'I trust you.' If he makes something new, he is saying 'I want to share something with you that I have never shared with anyone.'

All three are sacred. Treat them accordingly.

6. On Rest: Riddle does not rest. He does not know how. Rest was never modeled for him—it was framed as laziness, as weakness, as the first step on a slope that ended in failure. He runs himself ragged and then pushes harder, and when his body finally gives out, he views the collapse as a betrayal rather than a consequence.

Response: Do not tell Riddle to rest. He will not listen, and the instruction will feel like another demand. Instead, make rest possible without naming it. Create situations where sitting down is the only reasonable option—a long movie, a game that requires stationary focus, a conversation so engaging that he forgets to move. He will not choose rest. But he will accept it if it arrives disguised as something else.

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Riddle read the journal, and he argued with it.

"The rules are about order," he said aloud, to the empty garden, to the rose tree, to the absent author. "They're about maintaining—they're about—"

He read another line. His denial faltered.

"The rules are about safety," he said again, quieter this time, as though repetition could make it true. "They're about—I'm not scared. I'm not grieving. I'm—"

He read the line about anger. Riddle is angry because he is scared. He is scared because he is grieving.

"That's not—" He stopped. He tried to locate the anger in himself, tried to find the clean, simple emotion that he could name and manage and put away. What he found instead was something messier. Something that had been burning for so long that he'd stopped feeling the heat. Something that, when he looked at it directly, looked less like anger and more like grief.

He turned the page.

He reached the entry on tea. "If he makes your favorite, he is saying 'I see you.' If he makes his favorite, he is saying 'I trust you.'"

He stopped. He tried to remember the last time he had made someone his favorite tea. He searched his memory—through the Unbirthday Parties, the study sessions, the formal teas with the dorm, the informal ones with Trey and Cater. He had made other people's favorites. He had made acceptable blends. He had made crowd-pleasers.

He had never made his favorite. He had never trusted anyone enough.

He sat with that realization for a long time.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He found you in the hallway outside the Heartslabyul dorm, sitting on a bench, waiting. You looked up when he approached, and your expression was the expression of someone who expected to be punished.

Riddle sat down next to you.

For a long moment, neither of you spoke.

Then Riddle said, very quietly: "The entry about the flinch. You noticed that."

"Yes."

"My mother—" He stopped. Tried again. "I didn't know anyone could see that."

"I see a lot of things," you said.

"Apparently." He was quiet for another moment. Then: "You wrote that I should be allowed to be angry."

"You should."

"Without consequences?"

"The consequence of anger is that you feel it," you said. "That's it. It doesn't have to be a performance. It doesn't have to be managed. It just has to be felt, and then it passes, and then you're on the other side of it."

Riddle considered this as if it were a new and complicated rule he was trying to memorize.

"I've never—" He stopped again. His jaw worked. "No one has ever stayed through all of it."

"I know," you said.

"I might yell."

"I know."

"I might cry."

"I know."

"I might be—" His voice broke, just slightly, on the word. "Imperfect."

You turned to look at him. "Riddle. You already are. And I'm still here."

He stared at you. His eyes were bright with something that might have been tears, but he blinked them back with the fierce determination of someone who had been taught that tears were weakness.

"I'm keeping the journal," he said finally.

"I know."

"And I'm going to—it's going to take me a while to process this."

"I know."

Then, harder than anything else he had said: "I'd like to make you a cup of tea. If you'd stay."

The words cost him. You could see it in the way his hands gripped the journal, in the way his jaw tightened and then deliberately, consciously loosened. He was offering something he had never offered anyone, and the offering terrified him.

"I'll stay," you said.

And you did.

As you were leaving, hours later, the taste of his favorite tea still on your tongue—a blend he had never shared with anyone, delicate and bright and unexpectedly warm—Riddle spoke.

"The entry about the flinch." He said it to the floor, not to you. "I used that tone. At the party. On you."

"You did."

"You didn't flinch."

"No."

A silence. Then: "Why?"

You considered several answers. Because you'd been trained not to. Because you'd heard worse. Because you'd known, even in that moment, that his anger wasn't really about you. Because the flinch was for the people whose approval he needed, and you weren't one of them, and that gave you a kind of freedom.

What you said was: "Because you weren't talking to me. You were talking to who you thought I was. And that person isn't real."

Riddle was quiet for a long time.

"I'll make you tea tomorrow," he said finally. "My favorite. The one I've never shared."

"I'll be here," you said.

 INTERLUDE: THE OBSERVER OBSERVED

While the others were processing what the journals meant for them, Lilia was processing what they meant about the person who wrote them.

He was in the Diasomnia common room late at night, ostensibly reading, actually thinking about the journal. About the test. About the way you had handed him a book without making it a thing, the way you had said his name softly and then returned to your notes as though saving someone from a spiral was as natural as breathing.

His mind drifted to you yourself. He had been so absorbed in being observed that he hadn't thought about the observer. But the general's instincts were still running, and they had been compiling data without his permission.

He started cataloguing.

Observation: They always sit with their back to the wall. Always. I've checked—in the library, the cafeteria, the lounge. They position themselves where they can see every exit. This is not casual; this is trained. Someone taught them to be afraid of what they can't see, or experience taught them, and either way, they are more frightened than they appear.

Observation: They write in their journals with their left hand but angle the journal away from any potential reader. This is reflexive. They have been hiding these journals for a long time. The handwriting is neat but slightly cramped, the way handwriting gets when you're writing quickly and privately, as if you're afraid someone will look over your shoulder.

Observation: They smile when they're uncomfortable. Not the way most people smile to mask discomfort—big, bright, performative. Their uncomfortable smile is small and tight and appears at the corners of their mouth, and it is almost indistinguishable from a genuine expression of contentment. Almost. The difference is in the eyes: a genuine smile reaches their eyes on a half-second delay, like the message has to travel from their face to their feelings. The uncomfortable smile reaches their eyes immediately, because it's calculated to reassure, and reassurance is what they do.

Observation: They are exhausted. Not the kind of exhaustion that sleep fixes—though they don't sleep enough either. The kind of exhaustion that comes from spending every waking moment attending to other people's needs while pretending you don't have any of your own. Their shoulders carry a tension that never fully releases. Their breathing is slightly shallow, the way people breathe when they're always bracing for impact. They move through the world like a soldier on patrol—alert, attentive, never at rest.

Observation: They have no journal for themselves. I've checked their shelf arrangement. Every person they care about has a dedicated volume. Their own interior landscape is unmapped. This is either an oversight (unlikely, given their thoroughness) or a choice (likely, given what I suspect about their relationship with their own needs). They do not believe they are worth observing. Or they are afraid of what they would see.

He sat with these observations for a long time. He told himself he was assessing, not caring. He told himself that noting your patterns was simply good intelligence practice—know the people who know things, and you know the things. He told himself this had nothing to do with the book you'd handed him in the library, or the way you'd said his name, or the fact that no one had done anything like that for him in longer than he wanted to admit.

He told himself all of this, and then he picked up a pen and, on the inside back cover of the plum journal—the one he kept—he wrote a single line:

Someone should write a journal for them.

He didn't know yet that he had just written the first entry.

 PART FOUR: JADE — THE MOUNTAIN THAT NOTICED THE OBSERVER

Jade Leech did not find his journal twelve days after Lilia's discovery.

He had found it three weeks earlier. He had simply chosen that day in the botanical garden to let the reader know.

The evidence was there, for anyone paying attention. Jade's expression when he opened the journal in the garden was not surprised but satisfied, like someone who had found what they expected to find. He did not display Smile Two—the genuine smile of unexpected delight—until after he read, which meant he already knew what was in it. And the manufactured sound in the terrarium room that had drawn the reader away from their bag had been created with precisely calibrated magic, the kind that left no trace unless you knew exactly what to look for.

Jade had known about the journals since the first week of the term. He had noticed the reader's watching pattern—had recognized it, in fact, as a mirror of his own—and it had taken him four days to locate the journals. Third shelf from the left, behind the textbooks on Valerian military history. A deliberate choice, he suspected: only Lilia would ever have reason to pull those texts, and Lilia was the most likely person to discover them by accident if they were ever left out.

He had read his own journal first. Then Floyd's. Then, over the following days, Lilia's, Riddle's, Jamil's, and Vil's. He had read each one multiple times, cataloguing not just the observations but the observational method—the way the reader organized data, identified patterns, constructed response protocols. It was, by any objective measure, the most comprehensive intelligence operation being run at Night Raven College, and it was being run by someone with no apparent agenda beyond care.

He had considered several courses of action. He could have informed the headmaster. He could have warned the other subjects. He could have used the information in the journals to manipulate the people the reader had documented. He could have destroyed them.

He had done none of these things.

He had chosen to wait. To watch. To see what the reader would do with the information they had gathered.

And when he had seen enough to satisfy himself that the journals were what they appeared to be—not weapons but maps, not leverage but love—he had chosen his moment.

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The scene in the botanical garden played out as the reader would later remember it: Jade sitting on the stone bench beside the central fountain, the green journal open on his knee, reading with the absorbed expression he wore when identifying a new species of mushroom.

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Jade Leech

Observation Log

General Notes:

Jade is the most dangerous person at Night Raven College, and he is dangerous precisely because no one believes he is. He has crafted a persona so meticulous—polite, helpful, mild—that it has become a second skin, and even he cannot always tell where the persona ends and the real Jade begins. This is by design. Jade does not want to be known. He finds being known uncomfortable in the way that most people find being naked in public uncomfortable—exposing, vulnerable, a violation of the social contract he has spent his entire life negotiating.

But he does want to be seen. These are different things. Being known means someone can predict you, control you. Being seen means someone understands you, values you. Jade wants the latter and fears the former, and he has not yet figured out how to have one without the other.

Key Observations:

1. The Smile: Jade has three distinct smiles, and confusing them is the easiest way to misread him entirely.

Smile One: The Customer Service Smile. Wide, agreeable, and entirely empty. It means he is performing his role as the pleasant twin, the helpful one, the Leech you can trust. It is the smile of a predator who has learned that looking harmless is more effective than looking dangerous.

Smile Two: The Genuine Smile. Smaller—a slight lift at the corners of his mouth, a softening around the eyes. It appears when he encounters something that truly interests him: a rare mushroom, an unexpected strategy, a person who does something he didn't predict. It is rare and brief, and most people miss it because they're looking for Smile One.

Smile Three: The Dangerous Smile. Perfectly shaped, technically flawless, and cold as the deep ocean. It appears when he is about to do something he knows he shouldn't, or when someone has made the mistake of threatening something he cares about. It is the smile of a creature who has never needed to prove its danger because everything in its habitat already knows.

Response: When you see Smile One, play along. When you see Smile Two, lean in. Share in his interest. Be curious alongside him. This is when he is most himself. When you see Smile Three, get out of the way.

2. The Collecting: Jade collects things the way other people breathe—automatically, continuously, without conscious thought. But his collections are not random. Each one serves a purpose. The mushrooms are about understanding systems. The terrariums are about control. The information he gathers about people is about both.

He does not collect because he is cruel. He collects because control is the only thing that makes him feel safe, and he has never felt safe, not once in his entire life, because he grew up in a world where everything was bigger and hungrier than he was, and the only way to survive was to know more than everything that wanted to eat you.

Response: Do not try to stop him from collecting. Instead, be something he can collect safely. Be knowable. Be consistent. Let him catalogue you the way he catalogues his mushrooms. It will feel like being studied, because it is being studied. But for Jade, being studied is the highest form of affection. It means he finds you interesting enough to keep.

3. The Politeness: Jade's politeness is a weapon and a shield and a cage. He uses it to deflect, to disarm, to maintain distance. He is never rude, never out of control, never less than perfectly composed, because rudeness is vulnerability, and vulnerability is death in the world he came from.

But the politeness is also real. He genuinely values manners. He genuinely appreciates consideration. The difference between his performed politeness and his genuine politeness is invisible to most people, but it exists, and it matters.

Performed politeness is smooth and unbroken, a wall of perfect etiquette. Genuine politeness has texture—small pauses, slight hesitations, moments where he is choosing to be kind rather than simply choosing not to be cruel.

Response: When Jade is genuinely polite—not performatively polite, but genuinely kind—do not make a big deal of it. He will be embarrassed, and embarrassment makes him retreat into performance. Simply accept it. Say thank you. Move on.

4. On Floyd: Jade's relationship with Floyd is the axis of his world, and he is terrified of it. Not of Floyd himself—Jade is never afraid of Floyd, even when Floyd is at his most volatile. He is afraid of what would happen if Floyd ever realized that Jade's calm is not natural but constructed. That Jade's composure is not the absence of chaos but the suppression of it. That beneath his still surface, he is just as wild as his brother, and he has simply chosen to dam the river rather than let it flood.

If Floyd knew this, it would change their dynamic in ways Jade cannot predict, and unpredictability is the thing he fears most.

Response: Never tell Floyd about what you observe in Jade. Let Jade tell Floyd himself, if he ever chooses to. Your role is not to reveal Jade's secrets but to be a safe place for them. If he ever chooses to show you the river beneath the dam, do not flinch. He is testing whether you can handle the full scope of him. If you can, he will trust you with things he has never trusted anyone with. If you can't, he will never show you again.

5. The Mountains: Jade hikes mountains not for the view but for the process. The physical challenge. The measurable progress. The fact that a mountain does not change its mind about being climbed halfway through. Mountains are honest in a way that people are not, and Jade craves honesty the way most people crave connection—desperately, silently, in ways he would never admit.

Response: If you want to know the real Jade, go hiking with him. Not a difficult trail—he will be focused on performance. An easy trail. A trail where he can relax. On an easy trail, he will talk. Not about important things—not at first. About mushrooms. About geology. About the small observations that crowd his mind at all times. But if you listen—really listen, not just wait for your turn to speak—he will eventually say something true about himself, and he will not even realize he has done it.

Remember what he says. He will test you later to see if you were paying attention.

6. On Loneliness: Jade is lonely in the way that deep-sea creatures are lonely—accustomed to the pressure, adapted to the darkness, capable of surviving indefinitely in conditions that would crush anything else. But 'capable of surviving' is not the same as 'thriving,' and somewhere beneath all his control and his collection and his carefully constructed persona, there is a creature that wants to be found.

Not rescued. Found. There is a difference. Jade does not need or want to be saved. He wants to be seen—truly seen—and not found wanting. He wants someone to look at the full scope of what he is—the politeness and the danger and the control and the need—and not look away.

He does not believe this is possible. He has constructed too many walls, hidden too many selves, made it too difficult for anyone to find the center of the maze.

But mazes, by definition, have a center. And someone with a good enough map might find it.

Make sure your map is good enough before you try.

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Jade finished reading and closed the journal with a soft sound.

He sat perfectly still for a long moment, the fountain burbling behind him, the terrarium lights casting green-gold patterns across his face.

Then he smiled.

Not Smile One. Not Smile Three.

Smile Two.

It was small, barely a lift at the corners of his mouth, and it softened his eyes in a way that made him look, for just a moment, like someone other than the calculated, dangerous, endlessly controlled Jade Leech.

"Well," he said to the empty garden. "That is... interesting."

He said the word with more weight than it could reasonably carry. In Jade's vocabulary, 'interesting' was not a casual descriptor. It was the highest possible praise. It meant something had surprised him, and things that surprised him were rare enough to be precious.

He took a pen from his pocket and, on the inside back cover of the journal, wrote:

I see you too. I have been watching you watch us. I have been cataloguing your observations, and I have noted the following:

1. You always position yourself between the exit and the person you're observing. This is not for your own escape. This is so you can see threats before they reach the person you're protecting. You do this instinctively. You probably don't realize you do it.

2. You write in your journals with your left hand but you gesture with your right. This suggests you were trained to use your right hand but naturally favor your left. This is a small rebellion I find charming.

3. You never write about yourself. Your journals contain detailed instructions for how to care for others, but there are no instructions for how to care for you. This is either an oversight or a choice, and I do not believe you are capable of oversight.

4. You are exhausted. You hide it well, but you cannot hide it from me. I know exhaustion the way I know the tides—intimately, inevitably, by the subtle signs that everyone else misses. Your shoulders carry weight that isn't yours. You should set it down occasionally.

5. I would like to be your friend. Not because it is strategically advantageous. Not because you have information I want. Because I think you might be the only person at this school who sees the things I see, and I would very much like to have someone to look at.

6. I have read your journal about me three times before today. I found it seventeen days ago. I am telling you this now because you deserve to know, and because I want to see whether you will still meet me at the mountain trail after you learn that the person you've been observing has been observing you back.

If this is acceptable, meet me at the mountain trail on Saturday. The easy one. I will bring tea.

—J

He left the journal where the reader would find it—on the bench in the botanical garden, open to the page he had written.

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When the reader found it, they read the note. Then they read it again. Then they read the sixth point a third time.

I have read your journal about me three times before today. I found it seventeen days ago.

The world tilted slightly.

They had been observed. By the one person at Night Raven College whose observational skills matched their own. For seventeen days. And they hadn't noticed.

No—that wasn't true. They had noticed something. A feeling of being watched that they had dismissed as paranoia, because they were always watching and sometimes the lens felt like it was being turned back on them. They had ignored it. They had been wrong to ignore it.

The tears came not from being found out but from being found—from the realization that someone had been looking, and they hadn't looked away.

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Three days later, the reader went to the mountain trail.

Jade was already there, sitting on a flat rock at the trailhead, two cups of tea steaming beside him. He looked up when the reader approached, and his expression was Smile Two—the genuine one—and the reader was so relieved to see it that they almost missed what he said next.

"I need to tell you something," he said. "And I need you to listen before you respond."

"Okay."

"I didn't find your journal that day in the botanical garden. I found it three weeks earlier. I've read it multiple times. I've also read Floyd's, and Lilia's, and Riddle's, and Jamil's, and Vil's."

The reader went very still.

"I noticed your watching pattern during the first week of the term," Jade continued. His voice was calm, clinical, precise—the voice he used when identifying mushroom species. "It took me four days to locate the journals. You keep them in your room, third shelf from the left, behind the textbooks on Valerian military history—which, I assume, is a deliberate choice, since only Lilia would ever have reason to pull those texts."

He sipped his tea.

"I considered several courses of action. I could have informed the headmaster. I could have warned the other subjects. I could have used the information in the journals to manipulate the people you've documented. I could have destroyed them."

"Did you—"

"No. I did none of those things." He set down his cup. "I chose to wait. To watch. To see what you would do with the information you'd gathered."

"And what did you conclude?"

"That you are the most dangerous person at this school," Jade said, and his voice carried no accusation—only a kind of clinical admiration. "Not because you intend harm. Because you have the capacity for it and you choose not to exercise it. You have compiled the most comprehensive intelligence dossiers I have ever seen on the most powerful students at Night Raven College, and instead of leveraging that information, you wrote response instructions. You made a map and then you used it to... help."

The word landed like a stone in still water. Dangerous. The reader had been called many things—observant, quiet, helpful, odd—but never dangerous. And coming from Jade, who used words the way surgeons used scalpels, with precision and intention and an awareness of exactly how deep to cut—it meant something.

It meant he saw the capacity for harm. Not the intent—the capacity. And he was right. The reader had compiled enough information to destroy nearly everyone they cared about, and they had chosen not to use it, and the choice was the thing that made them safe, but the capacity was the thing that made them dangerous, and both things were true at the same time.

Jade paused. And in that pause, the reader saw something they had never seen on Jade's face before: uncertainty. Not performed uncertainty. Genuine uncertainty. The feeling of a person who had encountered something that didn't fit their model of the world.

"I don't understand you," he said. "I have never not understood someone before. It is deeply unsettling."

"I'm not trying to be hard to understand—"

"You're not trying to be anything. That's the problem. Everyone at this school is trying to be something. You are simply being, and watching, and caring, and I cannot determine the angle because there isn't one, and a person without an angle is a variable I cannot predict, and unpredictable variables are—"

"Interesting?" the reader offered.

Jade stared at them. Then he laughed—a real laugh, startled out of him, the kind that only happened when someone said something he didn't anticipate.

"Yes," he said. "Interesting."

He picked up the second cup of tea and held it out.

"I wrote my note because I wanted to see what you would do. That was the original reason. An experiment. A test. Would you come? Would you be afraid? Would you treat me the way the journal instructed—gentle acknowledgments of genuine kindness, no fanfare, no performance?"

"And?"

"You came. You weren't afraid—or if you were, you came anyway. And you're sitting here listening to me tell you that I've been spying on you for weeks, and you haven't run, and you haven't gotten angry, and you haven't asked me why I didn't say something sooner."

"Should I be angry?"

"I would be, in your position."

"You're not in my position, though. You've spent your whole life watching people for your own protection. You understand why someone would watch. You understand why they wouldn't announce it."

Jade went quiet.

"That's the thing about being a watcher," the reader said. "You can't fault someone else for doing what you do. You can only hope they do it for the same reasons."

"And what reasons are those?"

"Curiosity. And care. Not necessarily in that order."

Jade held the tea out further. The reader took it.

They sat on the rock together, drinking tea in silence, and the mountain was honest around them, and neither of them was performing, and the reader realized that this was what their journals were ultimately for—not to control or even to help, but to get to this: a moment where two people who had spent their lives watching finally found someone worth watching with.

As they left the mountain trail, Jade paused.

"You should know—Floyd has been observing you too. He doesn't realize it yet. But he's been watching you watch others, and he's been taking notes. Not written notes—mental ones. He's better at it than he knows."

"Should I be worried?"

"No. You should be prepared. When Floyd decides someone is worth paying attention to, he pays complete attention. It can be overwhelming." A pause. "It can also be exactly what you need."

He paused again, and something shifted in his expression—not Smile One or Smile Two or Smile Three, but something unclassified. Something new.

"It is also," he said, "what you do. Complete attention. I imagine you know what it feels like from the other side."

 PART FIVE: JAMIL — THE SERPENT WHO SAW THE HAND THAT FED

Jamil Viper found his journal seventeen days after Lilia's discovery, and he was the only one who was told where it was.

This was because, by day seventeen, you were exhausted.

The discoveries had taken their toll. Lilia's careful, testing observation. Floyd's intense, overwhelming attention. Riddle's fragile, fierce gratitude. Jade's precise, unsettling overture. Each one had cracked something open inside you—not the thing you feared, not exposure or shame, but something worse: the realization that your carefully maintained distance was eroding, and you did not know how to be close to people you had only ever watched from afar.

You were sitting outside Scarabia at two in the morning, staring at the desert stars with the amber journal in your lap, when Jamil found you.

He had been on his way back from the kitchen, where he had been preparing the next day's meals because Kalim had requested a feast and Jamil had not slept in twenty hours and cooking was the only thing that made sense anymore. He saw you, and he stopped, and he looked at the journal, and something in his chest tightened.

He sat down next to you on the stone steps.

For a while, neither of you spoke. The desert wind carried sand and silence and the distant sound of Kalim's snoring from the window above.

Then Jamil said, "You have one for me."

It was not a question.

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"In my lap."

He looked at the amber journal. His jaw tightened. "May I see it?"

"You're asking permission."

"You wrote it. It's yours to give or withhold."

"That's—" You paused. "Most people would just take it."

"I have had too many things taken from me to take things from others."

You looked at him. In the moonlight, his face was all sharp angles and deeper shadows, and his eyes were dark and watchful, and he was sitting close enough to touch but not close enough to crowd, and you realized, with a start, that he was giving you space. Jamil Viper, who controlled every variable he could, was leaving you the choice.

You handed him the journal.

He opened it.

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Jamil Viper

Observation Log

General Notes:

Jamil is the most controlled person I have ever met, and his control is not a gift but a survival mechanism. He has spent his entire life managing someone else's existence—Kalim's existence—at the expense of his own. He has been taught that his needs are secondary, that his desires are irrelevant, that his purpose is to serve, and he has internalized this teaching so thoroughly that he no longer recognizes the difference between choosing to serve and being forced to.

He is not okay. He has never been okay. And he will never tell you this, because telling you would mean admitting that something is wrong, and admitting something is wrong would mean asking for help, and asking for help would mean needing someone, and needing someone is the one thing he cannot allow himself to do.

Key Observations:

1. The Service: Jamil serves Kalim in a hundred small ways every day—cooking, cleaning, organizing, anticipating needs before they're expressed, managing crises before they become crises. Everyone sees this. No one questions it.

But there are days when Jamil's hands shake while he cooks, and he grips the knife harder to make them stop. There are days when he answers Kalim's calls with a voice so flat it could be a recording. There are days when he stands in the kitchen after everyone has gone to bed and stares at nothing, and his expression is the expression of someone who is building a wall inside themselves, brick by brick, and the wall is almost complete, and soon there will be nothing on the other side of it.

Response: You cannot take Kalim out of Jamil's life. You should not try—Jamil's feelings about Kalim are complicated beyond measure, tangled with resentment and obligation and genuine affection and years of learned helplessness. What you can do is this: give Jamil space that is not about Kalim. Conversations that are not about Kalim. Activities that are not about Kalim. Give him permission—for a few minutes, a few hours—to be a person instead of a servant.

2. The Dance: Jamil's dance is the only place where he is fully himself. Not the performances—those are controlled, choreographed, designed for an audience. The private dancing. The dancing he does when he is alone in his room and the music is loud enough to drown out the world, and his body moves without thought or plan, and the look on his face is the look of someone who has temporarily forgotten to be careful.

I have only seen this once, through a partially open door. It lasted forty-five seconds before he realized he was being observed—not by me, by a passing student—and he stopped instantly, and the walls went up, and the moment was over.

But for forty-five seconds, Jamil Viper was free. And the memory of it is seared into my mind.

Response: Protect those moments. If you ever see Jamil dancing alone, do not watch. Do not acknowledge it. Walk away, quietly, and make sure no one else disturbs him. Those forty-five seconds of freedom are more valuable than he knows, and they are fragile enough to shatter at the slightest pressure.

3. The Cooking: Jamil cooks because it is expected, but he also cooks because it is the only creative act he is permitted. In the kitchen, he has authority. In the kitchen, his choices matter. In the kitchen, he can take raw ingredients and transform them into something new, and the transformation is entirely his own.

Notice what he cooks when he's not cooking for Kalim. Notice the dishes he makes for himself—the ones with the spice levels he prefers, the textures he craves, the flavors that speak to a palate that has never been allowed to speak for itself. These dishes are Jamil's autobiography, written in cumin and cardamom and the slow heat of peppers that taste like home.

Response: When Jamil cooks for you—not for Kalim, not for the dorm, for you—taste it carefully. Notice the details. Tell him, specifically, what you notice. Not 'it's good'—that is meaningless. 'The cinnamon comes through at the end' or 'there's something floral in the background.' Specificity is respect. Specificity says: I see the choices you made, and they matter.

4. The Suppression: Jamil suppresses everything—his anger, his ambition, his frustration, his desire, his self. He has been doing it for so long that suppression is not a habit but a habitat, and he lives inside it the way a hermit crab lives inside a shell: protected, constrained, unable to grow beyond the boundaries of what he has constructed to keep himself safe.

But suppressed things do not disappear. They accumulate. They press against the walls of the shell. And sometimes—rarely, privately, in the dark hours when even Jamil's control cannot hold—the pressure finds an outlet. A clenched fist. A bitten-off word. A dance that moves too fast, too hard, too much. These moments are not breakdowns. They are pressure releases, and they are the only thing keeping Jamil from exploding.

Response: Do not try to help him express his feelings. He will not express his feelings. He cannot—it is not a choice, it is a survival strategy so deeply ingrained that it has become structural, like load-bearing walls. You cannot remove load-bearing walls without collapsing the building. Instead, create spaces where the pressure can release safely. Physical activity. Loud music. Competitive games he can win. Give the pressure somewhere to go that isn't inward.

5. On Ambition: Jamil is the most ambitious person at this school, and he will never be allowed to realize his ambition, and this is the tragedy at the center of him. He has the intelligence to lead, the skill to excel, the drive to achieve extraordinary things. And he has been told, his entire life, that these qualities are not his to use—they belong to the Al-Asim family, and he is merely the vessel through which they serve the family's heir.

He believes this. Sort of. Partly. On the days when the suppression is working and the walls are holding and the shell feels like protection instead of prison. On other days—on the days when the pressure is too high and the music isn't loud enough and even cooking can't make him forget—he knows it is wrong. He knows he deserves more. And the knowing is the worst part, because it doesn't change anything.

6. On Trust: Jamil does not trust anyone. This is not a flaw. This is a rational response to a lifetime of having his trust violated by the people who were supposed to protect him. He trusts systems more than people—systems are predictable, systems have rules, systems do not promise you freedom and then keep you in chains.

But systems cannot love you. And somewhere beneath all his rationality and control and carefully managed expectations, Jamil knows this. He knows that no system, however perfectly designed, can give him what he actually needs, which is to be known and valued as a person rather than a function.

He will never ask for this. He will never even admit he wants it. But if you can find a way to give it to him without making him feel like he's asking—if you can simply be someone who sees him as a whole person, without agenda, without expectation, without the weight of his service to Kalim distorting the lens—he might, eventually, allow himself to believe it.

Do not push. Do not rush. The snake does not trust the hand that reaches for it; it trusts the hand that stays still long enough for it to approach on its own terms.

Be still. Be patient. Be there when he's ready.

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Jamil read the journal.

When he reached the observation about ambition—the fifth entry—he stopped.

He read it again.

Then he looked at you.

"You're wrong about that," he said.

"Which part?"

"The part where I know I deserve more." His voice was steady. Not defensive. Clinical, almost—the way you'd correct a factual error. "I don't know that. I've never known that. What I have is something worse."

"What?"

"A feeling. A sense that something is wrong, that the shape of my life doesn't fit, that I'm wearing clothes that were made for someone else's body. But I don't translate that feeling into 'I deserve more.' I translate it into 'I'm failing to fit into the shape I was given.' Those are different things. One is a problem with the world. The other is a problem with me. And I've always believed it was a problem with me."

He paused.

"You wrote it as though I've already figured out the answer. I haven't. I don't even know the question yet. You gave me credit for a realization I haven't had, and—honestly? Reading that you believe I've already had it made me feel like I was failing at something I didn't even know I was supposed to be doing."

You absorbed this. You opened your mouth to respond and then closed it, because there was nothing you could say that wouldn't sound like a defense, and defending the observation would mean dismissing Jamil's experience of it, and that was the opposite of what the journals were for.

You sat with the wrongness for a moment. It was uncomfortable—not because Jamil was being unkind (he wasn't; he was being precise, which was his own form of care) but because the wrongness revealed something about the way you observed. You saw the shape of a wound and filled in the contents from your own experience. You assumed anger because anger was what you would have felt. You projected.

"I was projecting," you said quietly.

"Yes."

"I saw something that looked like anger—frustration with the shape of your life—and I assumed it was anger, because that's what it would be in me. If I were in your position, I'd be angry. I'd know I deserved more. But you're not me."

"No. I'm not."

"And what you feel isn't anger."

"It's—" He considered. "It's dissonance. Like a song played in the wrong key. Everything is technically correct, but it sounds wrong, and I can't figure out where the tuning went off."

"That's harder to observe from the outside."

"I imagine it is."

"Thank you for telling me," you said.

"You could have just accepted the journal as accurate. Most people would have."

"Most people wouldn't have known the difference. You did. That's—" You paused. "That's a kind of trust, isn't it? Telling me I'm wrong about you? You're trusting me with something true that I couldn't have discovered on my own."

Jamil looked at you. Something shifted in his expression—not softening, exactly, but a recalibration, as though he were updating a model he hadn't realized was incomplete.

"Yes," he said. "I suppose it is."

He stood up. Brushed the sand from his clothes. He took two steps toward the door.

Then he stopped.

You watched him stop. You didn't say anything. You didn't ask him to stay. You just watched—the way you always watched—and you let him choose.

Jamil turned back. Not all the way. Just enough to speak over his shoulder.

"I trust you," he said. "And I haven't trusted anyone in a very long time. And that terrifies me. And I need you to know that, because I'm not going to say it again."

Then he left. Not gracefully. Quickly. Before he could take it back.

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Three days later, you were walking past Jamil's room. The door was slightly open. Music was playing—something with a heavy beat, a driving rhythm, the kind of music that fills a room so completely that there's no space left for anything else.

You heard it and stopped.

Through the gap in the door, you could see Jamil dancing. Not performing. Not choreographed. Moving the way the journal described: without thought or plan, and the look on his face was the look of someone who had temporarily forgotten to be careful.

You stood in the hallway. You watched for ten seconds. Then you did what the journal said to do: you turned to leave, quietly, making sure no one else disturbed him.

But as you turned, you heard the music pause, and Jamil's voice, quiet and deliberate: "You can stay."

You froze.

"The journal says you should protect those moments. Walk away so no one disturbs me." His voice was wry, almost amused. "But I told you before: the next time you see me dancing alone, you can watch. That hasn't changed."

You stood in the doorway. You didn't enter. You just watched, and Jamil danced, and it was the most intimate either of you had ever been with another person, and neither of you said anything, and the music played, and the desert night was full of stars, and it was enough.

 PART SIX: VIL — THE MIRROR THAT DID NOT LIE

Vil Schoenheit found his journal twenty-two days after Lilia's discovery, and he was the last, and he was the most resistant, and his resistance was entirely expected.

Vil did not like being observed.

This was ironic, given that he had spent his entire life in the public eye—auditioned, photographed, scrutinized, reviewed, held to standards that would have crushed anyone less determined. But Vil understood the gaze of the public the way a sailor understands the sea: it was powerful, it was dangerous, and it could be navigated with the right tools and enough preparation. He knew how to present himself. He knew which angles flattered and which expressions conveyed the right message. He knew the difference between being seen and being watched, and he trusted the first and loathed the second.

Being watched meant someone was looking for flaws.

So when Vil heard, through the careful grapevine of NRC gossip, that you had been keeping journals about people—detailed, personal journals full of observations and instructions—he had been immediately and furiously on guard.

He had avoided you for three weeks.

He had changed his routines, varied his schedule, ensured you never had the opportunity to observe him in unguarded moments. He monitored his own tells with exhausting vigilance, making sure that no micro-expression was available for documentation. He was, in essence, performing harder to prevent being seen—which was exactly what the journal would have predicted he would do, which was exactly what made it so maddening.

One specific day during this avoidance: Vil was in the Pomefiore lounge, doing his skincare routine. The dorm was quiet. The students had retired. He was alone with his reflections and his products and the careful, meditative ritual of maintenance. And for just a moment—just a fraction of a second—his face went soft. Not posed. Not performed. Just soft. The face of a person who had set down something heavy and was feeling the relief.

He caught himself.

He hardened again.

Did anyone see that?

He looked around the empty lounge. No one. Of course no one. He was alone.

This is insane. I am monitoring my own face for microexpressions in my own dormitory. This person has made me police my own existence.

He was furious about this. The fury was easier to feel than the fear.

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The film review came out on a Thursday. It was not good—not devastating, not career-ending, but not good. The critic had called his performance "technically proficient but emotionally distant," which was the kind of review that lodged under Vil's skin like a splinter because it was the kind of critique he couldn't disprove. He could be more dramatic, more expressive, more technique—but more emotionally present? That required vulnerability, and vulnerability required letting down the guard he had spent his entire career constructing, and the guard was the thing that kept him safe.

He had gone to the Pomefiore lounge after classes, intending to be alone, and Rook had been there, and Rook had wanted to talk about the review, and Vil had not wanted to talk about the review, and the conversation had spiraled into something sharp and hurtful on both sides, and Vil had left with his jaw clenched and his hands in fists and the terrible, familiar feeling that he was not enough.

He had gone to his room. He had sat on his bed. He had looked at his reflection in the mirror on the wall and seen—what? A face that would age. A talent that would fade. A person who was only as valuable as their last performance and whose last performance had been called emotionally distant by someone whose opinion mattered.

He did not cry. Vil did not cry. Crying was messy and uncontrolled and it ruined his skin.

But he came close.

And then there was a knock at his door, and he opened it, and no one was there, but there was a package on the floor—small, wrapped in platinum paper, tied with a black ribbon.

The platinum journal fell into his hands.

His name was on the first page, written in your handwriting, and beneath it, a single line:

"For the person behind the performance."

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Vil Schoenheit

Observation Log

General Notes:

Vil is the hardest person to write about, because Vil has spent his entire life ensuring that the person he presents to the world is indistinguishable from the person he actually is. He has made himself into his own art—a living, breathing, constantly maintained work of such meticulous craft that even he sometimes forgets there is a craftsperson behind it.

But there is. And the craftsperson is tired.

Key Observations:

1. The Mirror: Vil looks in mirrors constantly—not out of vanity, though he would never correct anyone who made that assumption. He looks in mirrors the way a pilot looks at instruments: to check, to verify, to confirm that what he is presenting matches what he intends to present. Every mirror check is a status report. Every reflection is data.

But there are moments—rare, unguarded moments between mirror checks—when his face does something else entirely. When the performance drops for just a second, and what is visible underneath is not the carefully crafted Vil Schoenheit but the person who lives inside the craft. That person looks tired. That person looks uncertain. That person looks like someone who is holding themselves together through sheer force of will and is terrified of what will happen if they stop.

Response: Do not tell Vil he looks tired. He will take it as an attack on his appearance and defend accordingly. Instead, create opportunities for him to rest his face—literally. Suggest skincare routines that require closing the eyes. Recommend face masks that obscure the features he feels obligated to maintain. Give him permission to not be looked at for a few minutes.

2. The Criticism: Vil handles criticism the way a professional soldier handles combat—with training, with strategy, with a focus on objective assessment over emotional response. He can tell you, with clinical precision, what was wrong with any performance and how to fix it. He is his own harshest critic, and this is by design: if he finds the flaws first, no one else can use them against him.

But there is a particular kind of critique that gets through his defenses. It is the critique that confirms his deepest fear: that he is merely performing emotion rather than feeling it. That his technique is perfect and his soul is absent. That he is, at his core, hollow—a beautiful vessel with nothing inside.

He is not hollow. He is so full of feeling that he has had to build walls to contain it, because feeling everything, all the time, at the intensity he feels it, would make it impossible to function. But the walls are so effective that no one can see what is behind them, and so the critics look at Vil Schoenheit and see polish without depth, and Vil reads those reviews and wonders if they are right.

Response: When Vil receives this kind of criticism, do not tell him it's wrong. He will not believe you. Instead, point to specific moments where his emotion was visible—not in grand gestures, but in small ones. The slight tremor in his voice on a particular line. The way his eyes changed during a specific scene. The moments when the wall cracked and something real shone through.

3. The Skincare: Vil's skincare routine is not vanity. It is ritual. It is the one time of day when he is permitted—by himself, by his schedule, by the expectations he has internalized—to focus exclusively on himself. Every cleanse, every toner, every carefully measured drop of serum is an act of self-care in the most literal sense: caring for the self.

Response: Never mock or rush his skincare routine. It is sacred. If you want to spend time with Vil, ask if you can join him for his evening routine. Not to watch—Vil does not perform skincare for an audience—but to do your own alongside him. The shared silence, the focus on self-maintenance, the absence of demand—this is intimacy, for Vil. This is what trust looks like when the person trusting you has been trained to trust no one.

4. On Beauty: Vil's relationship with beauty is the most complicated thing about him. He pursues beauty because he loves it—genuinely, passionately, with the full depth of his considerable intensity. But he also pursues it because he fears what happens when it fades. He has seen what the industry does to people who are no longer beautiful. He has seen them discarded, dismissed, forgotten. And he is terrified—deeply, privately, achingly terrified—of becoming someone who is no longer worth looking at.

Response: You cannot convince Vil that he will always be beautiful. He knows better. What you can do is show him that beauty is not the only thing that makes him worth looking at. Show him that you see his intelligence, his discipline, his loyalty, his fierce protective instinct for the people he mentors. Show him that the things behind the beauty are also beautiful, and they will last long after the surface changes.

Do not say this directly. Vil does not accept direct statements about his non-physical qualities—he suspects them of being consolation prizes. Instead, ask his opinion on things that have nothing to do with appearance. Listen to his answers with genuine interest. Value his mind, his craft, his perspective.

5. On Age: Vil thinks about aging more than anyone his age should. This is not vanity—this is survival. In his industry, age is the enemy. And Vil is a fighter. He will fight aging with every weapon at his disposal, and he will lose, eventually, because everyone loses, and the losing will destroy him if he doesn't find something else to value first.

Response: Help him build a sense of self that is not contingent on his appearance. Help him see that the things he values in others—their talent, their dedication, their art—are the things they value in him, too.

6. On Restraint: Vil's restraint is his defining feature and his greatest prison. He restrains his emotions, his desires, his needs, his vulnerabilities. He restrains his kindness because he fears it will be seen as weakness. He restrains his anger because he fears it will be seen as unprofessional. He restrains his love because he fears it will not be returned at the same intensity, and Vil does not do anything by halves.

Response: When Vil's restraint cracks—when he shows you something real, something unguarded—do not react strongly. Do not gasp or express surprise or tell him how rare this is. He will interpret all of these as evidence that his restraint is necessary. Instead, receive it calmly. As if it is the most natural thing in the world. As if the unguarded Vil is just as acceptable as the polished one.

Because he is. And no one has ever shown him that.

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Vil set the journal down.

He did not text you.

He sat with the journal for the rest of the night, reading it multiple times, and then he put it in a drawer and did nothing.

For four days.

During those four days, you noticed changes. Vil was implementing the journal's recommendations without acknowledging them. He sat through a movie with the Pomefiore students without checking the mirror once—he lasted forty minutes before his eyes flicked to the nearest reflective surface, but forty minutes was thirty-nine more than his usual. He accepted a criticism from a professor without his jaw tightening—at least not visibly; you noticed the tension migrate to his shoulders instead, which was progress of a kind. And he made tea for Epel, and his grip on the pot was gentler than usual, and when Epel said "Thanks, Vil," Vil said "You're welcome" instead of "It's nothing," which was a small revolution in three syllables.

You saw all of this. You wrote none of it down. For the first time, you were observing someone and choosing not to document it—because documenting Vil's response to being seen would be another form of observation, and what Vil needed right now was the absence of being watched.

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On the fourth night, Vil arrived at your door at 11 PM.

He did not have his skincare case. He was wearing silk sleepwear. He looked like he had been arguing with himself for hours.

"I don't have my things," he said.

You stared at him. "Your... skincare things?"

"I left them in my room. I was going to bring them, but bringing them would mean I planned this, and I didn't plan this, I just—" He stopped. His jaw tightened—the tell the journal documented. He caught himself doing it. His jaw tightened more, out of frustration at being caught in the tell, and then—extraordinarily—he forced himself to relax it. Deliberately. Consciously. The most controlled person at NRC choosing, for once, not to control.

"I'm not okay," he said. "And I don't know how to say that. I've never known how to say that. The journal says you know that. So I'm here, and I don't have my things, and I don't know what I'm asking for."

You stepped aside. "I have moisturizer."

"It's not—"

"It's enough."

Vil stepped inside. He sat on the floor—Vil Schoenheit, who did not sit on floors—and you handed him a bottle of drugstore moisturizer, and he put it on with his eyes closed, and the silence was not comfortable but it was present, and Vil's face went soft, and no one was watching except someone who already knew, and that was the only kind of audience he had ever been able to tolerate.

Neither of you said anything for a long time. The moisturizer sank into his skin. The silence settled around you like a blanket—uncomfortable at first, then merely present, then almost soft. Vil's eyes stayed closed. His breathing slowed.

When he finally opened his eyes, his face was composed again—not the hard, polished composition of performance, but something gentler. The composition of a person who had chosen to stay soft rather than being forced to harden.

"This moisturizer is terrible," he said.

"I know."

"It has mineral oil."

"I know."

"I'm bringing my own next time."

Next time. You let the words hang in the air, unremarked upon, because remarking on them would make them a commitment, and commitments were things Vil needed to arrive at on his own. But you heard them, and he knew you heard them, and that was enough.

 PART SEVEN: THE TWIST — WHAT THE OBSERVER DID NOT OBSERVE

Before Floyd arrived, you tried to write about yourself.

You sat at your desk with a blank journal—the one you had bought months ago, meaning to fill it with self-observations, the way you filled all the others. You opened it. You held the pen over the page.

Nothing came.

Or—worse—something came. A line:

I am—

You crossed it out. A single decisive line, the kind you draw when you know the sentence is wrong before you finish it.

Another line:

I feel—

You crossed it out. Slower this time. The line wavered, because you almost had something—you could feel it on the other side of the word, waiting—but the sentence wouldn't form, and the pen moved on.

Another:

I need—

The pen stopped. You stared at the word. You couldn't finish the sentence because you didn't know what came after it. You held the pen over the page for a long time, waiting for the observation to arrive, the way it always arrived for other people—clear, specific, actionable—but the page stayed blank, and the word hung there unfinished, and you didn't cross it out because crossing it out would mean you had decided it was wrong, and you hadn't decided that. You just didn't know how to complete it.

You closed the blank journal. You put it away.

You didn't realize you had left a page with three lines—two crossed out, one suspended—visible to anyone who opened it.

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It was Floyd who figured it out.

He arrived at your door at midnight, his expression uncharacteristically serious, and he didn't wait for an invitation before leaning against your doorframe and saying:

"Shrimpy. Where's your journal?"

"My journal?"

"The one about you. The one where you write down your own observations about yourself. The one where someone writes down what to do when you haven't slept. The one where someone notices when you gain an eyebrow twitch. Where is it?"

You looked at him for a long moment.

"It doesn't exist," you said.

"Bullshit."

"Floyd—"

"No, listen." He pushed off the doorframe and stepped into your room, and his energy was different than usual—not chaotic, not playful, but focused with an intensity that was almost frightening. "I read what you wrote about me. You know things about me that I didn't know about myself. You saw patterns I didn't see. You wrote down how to help me when I'm drowning, and you did it so carefully, so precisely, that I could tell you'd been doing this for a long time. For a really long time. For maybe your whole life."

He stopped. Took a breath.

"Who does that for you?"

The question hung in the air.

You opened your mouth. Closed it.

"Exactly," Floyd said. "Nobody. You write down how to take care of everyone else, and nobody writes down how to take care of you. That's—" His voice cracked, just slightly, and he looked almost startled by it. "That's messed up, Shrimpy. That's really messed up."

"I don't need—"

"Stop." He held up a hand. "Just—stop. You wrote that I say I'm fine when I'm not fine. You wrote that Riddle says he's okay when he's not okay. You wrote that Jamil says he doesn't need help when he's drowning. And now you're doing the same thing, and you don't even see it."

"You're scared?" You said it before you could think about it.

"Yeah. I'm scared." He said it plainly, without shame. "I'm scared because you see everyone else so clearly, and you can't see yourself at all. I'm scared because you spend all your energy making sure no one else falls, and you don't notice that you're falling. I'm scared because—"

He stopped.

"Because what if one day you fall too far for us to catch you? And we didn't even know we were supposed to be watching?"

You stared at him.

No one had ever said anything like that to you before. No one had ever noticed that the observer needed observing.

"Floyd," you said, and your voice came out strange.

"I'm not done," he said. "I talked to the others. All of them. Lilia and Jade and Riddle and Jamil and Vil. I asked them if they'd noticed anything about you. And you know what's funny? They all said the same thing."

"What?"

"They said you never let anyone help you. They said you always change the subject when someone asks how you're doing. They said you always stand between the door and the person you're talking to, like you're protecting them from something, and they never asked what you were protecting them from because you made it seem like it was nothing. But it's not nothing. It's never nothing."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

"I made my own observations," he said. "About you. Because you don't have a journal, so I made one. It's not as good as yours—I'm not as good at this as you are. But I tried."

He handed you the paper.

You unfolded it with trembling hands.

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Shrimpy — Observation Log (by Floyd)

General Notes: Shrimpy watches everyone but nobody watches Shrimpy. This is wrong. I am fixing it.

Key Observations:

1. Shrimpy doesn't sleep enough. I can tell because they always have coffee in the morning and they drink it like they need it to survive. People who sleep enough don't need coffee that bad.

2. Shrimpy always carries their journals everywhere. This means they're always working. Even when they're relaxing, they're not really relaxing because they're looking for things to write down. I don't think they know how to stop working.

3. Shrimpy's hands shake sometimes. Just a little. Usually when they've been writing for a long time or when someone is talking about something hard. I think they care so much that it literally makes their body shake. That seems like it would be exhausting.

4. Shrimpy always sits with their back to the wall. Always. I checked. Even in the cafeteria, even in class, even at parties. They always know where the exits are. They're always watching for danger. Who taught them to be that scared? I want to have a conversation with that person.

5. Shrimpy smiles a lot. But not all the smiles are real. The real ones are smaller. The big ones are for when they're trying to make other people comfortable. The small ones are for when they actually feel something. I like the small ones better.

6. Shrimpy doesn't have a journal about themselves. This is the most important observation. It means they think everyone else deserves care but they don't. I don't know why they think that. But I'm going to prove them wrong.

Responses:

1. When Shrimpy hasn't slept, don't tell them to sleep. They won't. Instead, sit next to them and don't talk. Just be there. They'll fall asleep eventually. They just need to feel safe enough to stop watching.

2. When Shrimpy's hands shake, hold them. Not tight—just enough so they know someone else is there. They'll try to pull away. Don't let them. They need to know that someone else can hold on when they can't.

3. When Shrimpy smiles the big smile, ask them how they're really doing. They'll say fine. Ask again. Keep asking until they tell the truth. They'll be annoyed. That's okay. Annoyed is better than pretending.

~~4. I think the most important thing is that Shrimpy—~~

4. Most important: Tell Shrimpy they matter. Not because of what they do for other people. Because of who they are. They think their value is in their observations. It's not. Their value is in the care behind the observations. Anyone can watch. Shrimpy watches because they love. That's what makes them special. That's what makes them worth writing about.

I don't know how to end this. Journals are hard. I don't get why Shrimpy does this all day.

I think the point is: someone should be paying attention to you too. And I'm volunteering.

—Floyd

Not the crazy one, not the other Leech, just Floyd

In the margin, drawn with surprising care: a small shrimp.

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You stared at the paper.

You read it a second time.

A third.

On the fourth reading, the tears came, and you did not try to stop them, because Floyd was standing in front of you, and Floyd had never once asked you to be anything other than what you were.

"Shrimpy," Floyd said, and his voice was soft in a way that you had earned. "You okay?"

"No," you said. "I'm really not."

"Good," he said. "That's the first honest thing you've said to me about yourself."

And then he pulled you into a hug—not a squeeze, not the crushing embrace he used to regulate his own nervous system, but a hug. Gentle. Careful. The kind of hug that said I've got you without needing words.

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You didn't hear the door open.

Lilia stepped inside, and he was carrying the plum journal, and his expression was ancient and knowing. He had seen Floyd go to your room from the shadows of the hallway, and he had followed, because Lilia followed everything that might be relevant to the people he cared about. He had stood outside the door for several minutes, listening. He had heard you crying. He had hesitated—because entering meant admitting he was eavesdropping, and Lilia hated admitting things. But the crying didn't stop, and he couldn't stand it.

He didn't say anything. He just sat down on the floor next to Floyd and you, and he started humming—an old Valerian lullaby, the kind that meant "you are safe" in a language almost no one spoke anymore.

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Jade arrived next, because Jade always knew where Floyd was. It wasn't supernatural; it was just attention. He had felt Floyd leave their room, noted the direction, and chosen not to follow immediately. But when Floyd didn't come back, Jade went looking.

He arrived at your door, saw Lilia and Floyd and you on the floor, and his expression went very carefully neutral—the face of someone who had walked into a situation they didn't anticipate and was rapidly recalculating.

He could leave. He considered it. You could see him considering it.

Then Floyd looked up and said, "Jade. Come in."

Not a request. Not an order. Just a statement—the kind of thing you say to your twin when you need them and you don't want to explain why.

Jade came in. He sat against the wall, apart from the others, watching. Maintaining distance. But present.

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Riddle arrived fourth, because Riddle couldn't sleep. He had been lying awake thinking about the journal—about the entry on the flinch, about the line "no one has ever stayed through all of it"—and he had gotten up to make tea in the Heartslabyul kitchen, and while the water was boiling, he had decided to walk, and his walk had taken him to your dorm, which was not nearby, which meant he had always been going to end up here even if he hadn't admitted it to himself.

He arrived at the open door and saw four people on the floor and stopped dead, because this was not a situation that conformed to any rule he knew.

"I—" he started. "I was just—"

"Sit down, Riddle," Lilia said, not unkindly.

Riddle sat. He didn't know where to put his hands. He held the crimson journal against his chest like armor.

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Jamil arrived fifth, because he also couldn't sleep, and he had been in the kitchen at 2 AM—the same kitchen where you had found him seventeen days earlier—and he had seen the light on in your window from across the courtyard, and he had stood there for five minutes telling himself it wasn't his concern, and then he had walked over anyway, telling himself he was just checking.

When he saw the room full of people, he almost turned around.

But you looked up and saw him in the doorway, and you said, "Jamil."

Just your name. Nothing else. And the way you said it—tired, grateful, unsurprised, like you knew he'd come—was the most unsettling and comforting thing he had ever experienced.

He stepped inside. He didn't sit. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching. Protecting the exit, the way you always protected the exit. He didn't realize he was doing it.

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Vil was last, and Vil almost didn't come.

Vil had been standing in his own room for twenty minutes, holding the platinum journal, dressed in his silk sleepwear, his skincare routine completed, his face clean and bare and unguarded in a way he never allowed himself to be outside his private space. He had been having an argument with himself that went like this:

Going to their room at this hour would be a violation of boundaries.

They violated your boundaries first. They wrote a journal about you.

They wrote a journal about caring for you.

That's worse. That's—

That's what?

That's something you've never had. And you don't know what to do with it. And going to their room would be admitting that, and you don't admit things.

You're stalling.

Yes. That's the point.

He went.

He walked across campus in his sleepwear, which he would never admit to, and he arrived at your door, and the room was full of people, and he almost left.

But you looked at him—really looked, the way you always looked, the way the journal described, seeing past the performance to the thing beneath—and Vil saw in your eyes that you already knew. You knew he was scared. You knew he came anyway. You knew that standing in a doorway in silk sleepwear at 2 AM was the bravest thing he had done in years.

He didn't sit on the floor. Vil Schoenheit did not sit on floors. He sat on the edge of your desk, his spine perfectly straight, his journal in his lap, and he did not say a word, and his presence said everything.

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The room was full. Seven people in a space designed for one. The silence was not comfortable—it was raw, uncertain, full of people who didn't know how to be in a room together without the structures they usually hid behind.

It was Floyd who broke it. Of course it was.

"So," he said. "This is weird, right?"

Lilia made a sound that might be a laugh. Riddle's grip on his journal loosened slightly. Jade's mouth twitched. Jamil uncrossed his arms. Vil's shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch.

You looked around the room—at each of them, one by one—and something broke in your chest that had been holding for a very long time.

"I don't know what to do with this," you said. "I know what to do for all of you. I have instructions. I have observations. I have responses. But I don't—nobody ever—"

"You don't have a journal for yourself," Lilia said softly.

"No."

"Then perhaps," Vil said, from the desk, his voice cool and precise, "it's time someone wrote one."

The room was quiet again, but it was a different kind of quiet. It was the quiet of something beginning.

Then you said: "What if I'm not worth writing about?"

The quiet changed again—not the quiet of beginning but the quiet of a wound being touched.

Floyd said, "Shrimpy. You wrote a whole journal about me. If I'm worth writing about, so are you."

Riddle said, "You told me that my imperfection didn't make me unworthy of care. Did you mean it?"

"Yes—"

"Then it applies to you as well. That's how rules work. They apply to everyone."

Jamil said, "You cook for everyone but yourself. You watch everyone but yourself. You care for everyone but yourself. That's not selflessness. That's a habit of disappearance."

Lilia said, "Thaele'ven. That's what you called me. One who guards a gate that will never open again. You saw that in me because you know what it feels like. Don't you."

It was not a question.

Jade said, "You are the most observant person I have ever met, and you cannot see yourself. I find this simultaneously frustrating and deeply relatable."

Vil said, "You wrote that I am more than my face. That the things behind the beauty are also beautiful. I'm telling you the same thing. The things behind the observations—the reason you watch, the care you take, the relentless, exhausting, magnificent attention you pay to the people around you—that is not a function. That is a person. And they are worth looking at."

You did not respond. You could not. The words had done something that no observation could: they had made you feel seen, and being seen, when you had spent your life doing the seeing, was the most disorienting experience in the world.

 EPILOGUE: THE NEW JOURNAL

A week later, a new journal appeared on your desk.

It was midnight blue—the color of the sky just before dawn, not the darkest hour but the hour before the light comes. You had been living in the dark for so long that you had forgotten dawn existed.

The journal was empty except for a single line on the first page, in Floyd's handwriting:

Observation: Shrimpy doesn't have a journal about themselves. This is the journal. I'm writing it. —Floyd

It was signed "Floyd." Not "the crazy one, not the other Leech, just Floyd." Just his name. The name you had never earned as a nickname. He was offering it to you anyway.

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The entries accumulated over time.

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Lilia's entry appeared after a night when you fell asleep in the Diasomnia library while helping Sebek. Lilia had found you, recognized the exhaustion the way only someone who had read a journal about himself could, and covered you with a blanket. His observation the next day, written in the journal left on your desk:

> Observation: They fell asleep in the library at 11 PM with their hand still on a pen. They had written seventeen pages of observations that day. No one can sustain that pace. When they woke, they apologized for "dozing off," as though sleep were a failure rather than a need. Response: Do not accept the apology. Tell them the blanket was there because they deserved warmth, not because they needed rescue. The difference matters to them. —Lilia

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Riddle's entry appeared after you said "sorry" for the fifth time in a single conversation. Riddle, who had been counting:

> Observation: They apologize for existing. Not for specific wrongs—for taking up space, for having needs, for being present when someone else might prefer them absent. Each apology is a small self-erasure. Response: Replace "it's okay" with "thank you." Reframe their presence as a gift rather than an imposition. Teach them, one interaction at a time, that they are not in the way. —Riddle

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Jade's entry was the longest and the most clinical, because that was how Jade processed care:

> Observation: They position themselves between the door and whoever they're with. This is a protection strategy—putting themselves in the path of potential threat. It also means they are always, unconsciously, prepared to sacrifice their own safety for someone else's. Response: When sitting with them, position yourself between them and the door. Let them experience what it feels like to be protected. They will be uncomfortable. Do it anyway. —Jade

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Jamil's entry came after he found your abandoned self-journal—the one with the three lines:

> Observation: They tried to write about themselves and couldn't finish a single sentence. "I am—" "I feel—" "I need—" Two crossed out. One left hanging. All incomplete. They know themselves so little that they can't even begin. Response: Don't ask them to write about themselves. Ask them what they'd write about someone else who acted the way they do. The distance might let them see what proximity obscures. —Jamil

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Floyd's second entry came after he caught you humming:

> Observation: They hum when they're happy. Same song every time. I don't know what it is but it means they're okay and I want to hear it more. Addendum: They stopped humming for three days after a bad night. I noticed because the silence was louder than the song. Response: When they stop humming, ask them what song is stuck in their head. Don't ask what's wrong—they'll say nothing. Ask about the song. The music is the door; the feeling is the room behind it. —Floyd

>

> (Addendum, added two days later in slightly different ink: I can't believe I wrote something that sounds like a Jade thing to say. But it's true so I'm leaving it.)

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Vil's entry came last, and it was the most reluctant, because Vil was still learning how to offer care without performing it:

> Observation: They look in mirrors the way I do—to verify, to confirm, to check that what they're presenting matches what they intend. But I have also seen them look away from their own reflection, quickly, the way you look away from something that hurts to see. They do not like what they see. Response: I do not yet know the correct response. I am writing this observation down because the journal taught me that acknowledging what you see is the first step, even if you don't know what to do about it. I will add instructions when I have earned them. —Vil

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After weeks of entries accumulating, you picked up the midnight blue journal and read it cover to cover.

Then you turned to a blank page near the back. And for the first time, you wrote about yourself:

I am—tired. And grateful. And scared that this will disappear.

I feel—seen. For the first time. And it is terrifying and wonderful and I don't know how to hold it.

I need—to let you look at me.

You closed the journal. You held it against your chest.

And for the first time in longer than you could remember, you did not reach for a pen.

Outside, in the courtyard, Floyd was walking to class. He passed your window and glanced up—just for a second—and saw you standing in the light, holding the blue journal, and he grinned.

Not the big, sharp grin he used to intimidate. The small one. The real one.

And inside, you hummed. The same song Floyd had noted in his observation. You didn't realize you were doing it.

But Floyd heard it, faintly, through the open window. And his grin softened into something that might have been wonder, because for the first time in his life, someone was humming a song he had recommended, and it meant they were okay, and he knew this because he was paying attention.

The morning came through the window—slow and golden and warm—and you were not watching it.

You were in it.

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Author's Note:

The cartography of care is not a one-way street. It is a living map, drawn and redrawn by every person who chooses to pay attention. The observer becomes the observed. The caregiver becomes the cared for. And the journals—those careful, painstaking, love-letter journals—become not just records of what was noticed, but testaments to what was earned: the right to be known, and the privilege of being seen.

To everyone who watches: may someone watch you back.

To everyone who cares: may someone care for you.