#getting dumped

Part 1: Floyd Notices

Floyd came back from basketball practice in a decent mood for once—which meant he'd only threatened to squeeze two people instead of his usual four—and pushed open the door to the room he shared with his brother to find Jade sitting at his desk in the dark.

Not unusual. Jade did that sometimes. Sat in the dark and did mysterious things with his terrariums or his mushroom logs or whatever other creepy hobbies he was cultivating that week. Floyd had long ago stopped asking.

What was unusual was that the terrarium light was off. The mushroom logs were untouched. The desk lamp was off. Jade was simply sitting in the chair with his hands folded on the desk, looking at his phone.

The phone was face-down. The screen was dark. Jade was not touching it. He was just looking at it.

"Oya," Floyd said, dropping his bag on the floor. "Lights are off."

"Yes," Jade said.

Floyd waited for more. More did not come. He kicked off his shoes and flopped onto his bed, bouncing twice. The springs creaked. Jade didn't move.

"You're being weird."

"I'm not aware of having changed my behavior in any way."

"Yeah, that's the weird part. You always know when you're being weird. You just don't care. But right now you don't even know." Floyd rolled onto his side and propped his head on his hand. "What's up with the phone?"

"Nothing."

"You've been sitting here staring at it for how long?"

"I wasn't staring. I was simply resting my eyes in its general direction."

"For how long?"

A pause. "I lost track."

Floyd stared at him. Jade's face was arranged in its usual configuration: the pleasant half-smile, the slightly lowered eyelids, the general air of someone who knew a secret you didn't. It was a face Floyd had seen every day of his life and could read better than anyone alive, because Floyd was the only person alive who knew that Jade's "I know a secret" face and Jade's "I am currently dying inside" face looked exactly the same.

Floyd sat up slowly.

"Did something happen?"

"Nothing of consequence."

"Jade."

The smile didn't waver. "Floyd."

"Who dumped who?"

The silence that followed was very specific. It was the silence of a man who had been prepared for many possible questions but not that one, and was now rapidly recalculating.

"I don't believe that's any of your—"

"It was them, wasn't it. Shrimpy dumped you."

The smile widened by approximately one millimeter. In Jade's emotional vocabulary, that was a full-body flinch.

"I wasn't aware you knew we were seeing each other," Jade said mildly.

"I didn't. But you just confirmed it, so." Floyd flopped back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. "How long?"

"Three months."

"Three months and you didn't tell me?"

"I wasn't aware I was required to report my personal affairs to you."

"You tell me everything. You told me when that octopus in the lounge looked at you wrong. You told me when you found a mushroom you'd never seen before at that mountain. You tell me when Azul sneezes too loud. Three months, Jade?"

Jade's hands were still folded on the desk. Still perfectly still. Floyd could see his brother's knuckles from across the room, and they were white.

"It seemed prudent to keep it private."

"Because you knew it'd end like this?"

The smile didn't change. But something behind it shifted, like a curtain moving in a room where the window shouldn't be open.

"I had no way of predicting the outcome."

"Yeah, okay." Floyd grabbed his pillow and hugged it to his chest. "So you're just gonna sit here in the dark staring at your phone forever. That's the plan."

"I'm going to go to bed shortly."

"Jade."

"Mm?"

"You're being embarrassing."

The smile held. It always held.

"I'm fine, Floyd," Jade said, and his voice was as pleasant and as empty as a room with the furniture removed.

"Sure." Floyd rolled over and faced the wall. "Hey, Jade?"

"Yes?"

"The screen's been off the whole time. You know that, right?"

A pause. Then, very quietly: "Fufu. Of course I knew that."

Floyd closed his eyes and listened to his brother not move for a very long time.

Part 2: The Terrariums

The first-year from Heartslabyul whose name Jade couldn't be bothered to remember had gotten lost. This was not difficult to achieve in Octavinelle, which was built into a network of underwater-themed corridors that all looked vaguely the same and seemed to rearrange themselves when you weren't paying attention. The first-year had been looking for the Mostro Lounge delivery entrance and had taken a wrong turn somewhere near the mirror hall and was now standing in a part of the dormitory he was fairly certain students weren't supposed to be in.

The door was open. Just a crack. Through it came a soft blue-green glow and the smell of damp earth and something faintly sweet, like rotting flowers.

The first-year should have kept walking.

He didn't. The glow was pretty and the smell was weirdly compelling and he was already lost anyway, so he pushed the door open and looked inside.

The room was full of terrariums. They lined the walls on shelves that went from floor to ceiling—dozens of them, maybe hundreds, each one a sealed glass container with its own tiny world inside. Some were lush and green, dense with moss and ferns and miniature plants that the first-year couldn't identify. Some were sparse, with just a single mushroom growing in bare soil. Some had small pools of water with tiny insects moving in them. Some had what looked like entire ecosystems—plants, decomposers, fungi—all balanced in a delicate loop.

Beautiful. Clearly the work of someone with an obsessive amount of knowledge and an unsettling amount of patience.

They were also, the first-year realized as he looked more closely, wrong.

Not all of them. Most were fine—healthy, thriving, expertly maintained. But there was a section on the middle shelf, maybe seven or eight terrariums grouped together, that made the first-year's stomach feel uneasy without any clear reason.

One contained a single mushroom. Pale and slender, growing alone in a landscape of otherwise empty soil. No moss, no other plants, no companion organisms. Just the mushroom, reaching toward the small grow-light above it.

Another had been clearly rearranged recently. The soil was disturbed, still dark and damp where it had been turned over. In the center, two small mushrooms had been growing side by side—the stumps were still visible, pale and severed—but one of them had been removed. Just gone. Leaving a gap in the soil like a missing tooth.

A third had no living things in it at all. Just a small, carefully arranged landscape of stones and moss, with a tiny figure placed in the exact center. The figure was maybe an inch tall, made of clay, roughly human-shaped but featureless. No face. No details. Just the suggestion of a person sitting alone on a tiny hill of moss, surrounded by nothing.

The first-year stared at it. He wasn't sure why. It was just a clay figure. Just a terrarium. But something about the arrangement—the precision of it, the emptiness around the figure, the way the grow-light hit it so the figure cast a long shadow across the moss—made him feel like he was looking at something private.

"Can I help you?"

The voice came from behind him and the first-year's heart nearly exploded. He spun around. Jade Leech was standing in the doorway, smiling.

The smile was perfect. Polite. The kind that made you feel warmly invited to leave and never come back.

"I—I got lost," the first-year stammered. "I was looking for the lounge delivery entrance, I didn't mean to—"

"That's quite alright." Jade stepped into the room. "These are simply a hobby of mine. Terrarium cultivation. It requires a great deal of patience and very little else." He gestured at the shelves. "Each one is a closed ecosystem. Self-sustaining. Quite beautiful, don't you think?"

"They're really cool," the first-year said weakly.

"Mm." Jade's eyes moved to the middle shelf—the section with the single mushroom and the missing tooth and the clay figure—and something passed across his face. Fast. So fast the first-year almost missed it. A tightening around the eyes. A brief stillness in the smile. Then it was gone.

"I'll show you to the delivery entrance," Jade said. "It's easy to get turned around down here."

The first-year followed. As they walked, Jade chatted about the architecture of Octavinelle and the interesting properties of deep-sea bioluminescence, and the first-year nodded and made appropriate sounds and tried very hard to forget the clay figure sitting alone on its hill of moss in the blue-green glow.

He didn't.

Part 3: Azul's Ledger

Azul Ashengrotto did not tolerate inefficiency. This was not a personality flaw; it was a business philosophy. Mostro Lounge operated on margins that would make a Savanaclaw student weep, and those margins were maintained through ruthless attention to detail—every ingredient costed, every labor hour tracked, every contract reviewed with the precision of a surgeon examining an X-ray.

So when the numbers started sliding, Azul noticed.

Small at first. A 2% dip in revenue from the lunch service on Tuesdays. A handful of loyalty program discounts that hadn't been authorized. A catering order for the Botanical Club priced 15% below standard, with no justification in the contract notes.

Azul pulled the records. Cross-referenced. Created a spreadsheet. The pattern emerged within forty minutes, and when it did, he sat back in his chair and stared at the wall for a full thirty seconds.

Every single discrepancy traced to the same source: Jade.

Not in an obvious way. Jade hadn't gone rogue. He hadn't been funneling money or offering illegal kickbacks. What he'd been doing was far more insidious: he'd been granting unspoken favors to anyone who mentioned Yuu in his presence.

A first-year from Heartslabyul had come in to place a takeout order and mentioned, casually, that Yuu had helped them with their homework that week. Jade had applied a "new customer" discount that the first-year had never received before. A student from Scarabia had remarked that they sat next to Yuu in Alchemy and found the class difficult. Jade had thrown in a complimentary dessert. A Pomefiore student had been overheard saying that Yuu looked tired lately. Jade had personally delivered their order to their table and included a note—which Azul found in the receipt records—that read, "Do take care of yourself. It would be a shame for illness to disrupt your studies. — J.L."

Hand-delivered. On Mostro Lounge stationery. Jade Leech did not hand-deliver notes. Jade Leech did not write personal messages to customers. Jade Leech did not care whether Pomefiore students caught colds.

Azul closed the spreadsheet and opened a new one. He titled it: JADE — SITUATION. He stared at the blank cells, then deleted the title, because if anyone ever saw that spreadsheet he would have to drown himself in the Octavinelle fountain.

He found Jade in the kitchen, inspecting a delivery of fresh sea grapes.

"Jade."

"Yes?"

"The Haruta catering order. The Botanical Club one."

"What about it?"

"You priced it 15% below standard."

"Did I? How careless of me." Jade picked up a sea grape and examined it. "I must have miskeyed the figure."

"You've miskeyed fourteen figures in the past three weeks. All downward. All for customers who mentioned Yuu."

Jade set the sea grape down. His smile didn't change. "That seems like a lot of miskeyings."

"It is. It's also costing us money."

"I'm sure the goodwill generated will—"

"Jade." Azul leaned forward. "I am not asking as your housewarden. What are you doing?"

"I'm not sure I understand the question."

"You are using Mostro Lounge to reward people for proximity to Yuu. You are building a network of informants disguised as customer loyalty, and you are doing it badly, and it is costing us actual money, and I need you to stop."

Jade picked up another sea grape. Looked at it. Set it down.

"I'll be more careful with the pricing."

"That's not what I asked."

"I know." The smile widened, just slightly. "But it's the only answer I have for you. Fufu."

Azul stared at him for a long time. Jade stared back, pleasant as a painting, empty as a jar.

"Fine." Azul went back to his office and added three more lines to the spreadsheet he had definitely not deleted.

Part 4: A Pattern Recognition Exercise

The thing about Jade Leech was that you never noticed him until you noticed him, and then you couldn't stop.

This was a realization that approximately fourteen students across four dormitories came to independently over the course of a single week, none of them communicating with each other, all of them arriving at the same conclusion from different angles and all of them choosing not to talk about it. Talking about Jade Leech felt like inviting something into your life that you couldn't uninvite.

Deuce Spade noticed first, or at least most explicitly. Wednesday afternoon, library, studying for a Magical Theory exam. He looked up and saw Jade Leech sitting three tables away, reading a book. Not remarkable—Jade used the library. What was remarkable was that Yuu was sitting four tables away, also studying, and Jade had not been there when Deuce sat down forty-five minutes ago, and the library was half-empty, and there were dozens of empty tables that were not three tables away from Yuu.

Deuce looked back at his textbook. Looked up. Jade had turned a page. Had not looked in Yuu's direction even once. Just there. Reading. At the table closest to Yuu that wasn't at Yuu's table.

Deuce moved to a different section. Glanced back. Jade was still there.

Ruggie Bucchi noticed on Thursday. Walking from the cafeteria to the dormitory through the main corridor. Jade Leech was walking in the same direction about twenty feet ahead. Also not remarkable. Then Yuu came out of a side corridor, joined the main path about fifteen feet ahead of Jade, and continued walking. Jade did not speed up. Did not slow down. Did not acknowledge Yuu's presence. He simply maintained his distance—close enough to see, far enough to not be seen seeing—and walked.

Ruggie, who had survival instincts honed by years of living in a house with six siblings and no food security, felt a chill. Nothing to do with the drafty corridor.

Epel Felmier noticed on Friday. Courtyard bench, eating an apple. Jade walked past. Walked past again four minutes later. And again six minutes after that. Each time, the path took him past the bench where Yuu was sitting with Grim, which was also the bench closest to Epel. Each time, Jade's eyes were fixed on the middle distance, expression placid, pace unhurried, as if simply taking a stroll. On the fourth pass, Epel said "Hey, Jade, you lost or something?" and Jade smiled and said, "Not at all. The fresh air is pleasant today, isn't it?" and did not walk past again.

Jack Howl noticed on Saturday. Evening run. He passed Yuu walking back from the library. Twenty seconds later, he passed Jade Leech running in the opposite direction. This would have been unremarkable if Jade Leech had ever, in the entire time Jack had known him, gone for an evening run. Jade's exercise of choice was mountain climbing on weekends and swimming in the pool. He did not jog around campus at 7 PM on a Saturday in the direction that happened to be opposite Yuu's walking route.

Jack didn't say anything. Nobody said anything. But by the end of the week, a quiet, collective understanding had settled over the student body like a low-grade fever:

Jade Leech was everywhere Yuu was, and he was doing a terrible job of pretending he wasn't.

Part 5: Jamil Viper's Professional Assessment

Jamil Viper did not like Octavinelle. Not a prejudice—a professional assessment. The humidity made his hair frizz. The lighting was unflattering. The aesthetic was "underwater ruin," which Jamil considered redundant. Ruins were already underwater metaphorically.

But the Scarabia delegation had been invited to a planning meeting for some inter-dorm event that Kalim had enthusiastically agreed to without consulting Jamil, and so here Jamil was, standing in the Mostro Lounge kitchen at 3 PM on a Sunday, explaining dietary restrictions to a very patient octopus mer who kept nodding without actually listening.

Jade appeared at approximately 3:14 PM.

He did not announce himself. He simply materialized at the kitchen entrance—silently, pleasantly, like a cat that had decided you were interesting enough to observe. Carrying a clipboard, which was unusual. Smiling, which was not.

"Jamil. How wonderful to see you. I trust the preparations for the event are proceeding smoothly?"

"They are," Jamil said, not looking up from the ingredient list. "Kalim's excited about the live music component."

"Ah, yes. Kalim does enjoy music." Jade leaned against the doorframe. "And how is Yuu? I understand they've been helping with the event coordination."

Jamil's pen stopped moving.

He did not look up. Did not react. He was Jamil Viper, and his entire life was built on the principle of never reacting to the thing that was designed to make you react. He simply noted the question, filed it in the mental dossier he kept on every person in this school who was dangerous or interesting or both, and continued reviewing the ingredient list.

"They're fine. Busy."

"Mm. Busy is good. Keeps the mind occupied." Jade's voice was pleasant. Conversational. Casual. Jamil had heard Jade use this voice before, usually right before Jade said something that made everyone in the room feel like the temperature had dropped.

The kitchen was large, well-lit, full of staff going about their business. None of them were paying attention. Jamil was aware, with the hyper-vigilance of a person trained from birth to read rooms, that Jade had positioned himself so that his line of sight to the main dining area was unobstructed. The main dining area where, Jamil knew because he had checked, Yuu was currently sitting with Grim and two first-years from Heartslabyul, eating a late lunch.

"They seemed tired last time I saw them," Jade continued. "Have they been sleeping adequately? The Ramshackle heating can be unreliable. It would be a shame if poor sleep quality were to affect their academic performance."

"They're fine, Jade."

"Of course. I'm simply asking as a concerned—" A pause. One beat too long. "—as a concerned member of the student body. We should all look out for one another. Fufu."

Jamil looked up then. Jade was smiling with that perfect, porcelain expression, and behind it Jamil could see something he recognized. The look of a person performing normalcy with the same intensity that Jamil performed obedience—meticulously, relentlessly, and at great personal cost.

The difference was that Jamil was good at it and Jade was not. Not right now. Right now, Jade's performance had the faintest crack in it, visible only if you knew where to look, and Jamil knew where to look because Jamil always knew where to look.

Jade's eyes kept drifting to the dining area. Not obviously—never obviously—but in the micro-pauses between sentences, in the moments when he blinked, in the way his attention seemed to briefly detach from his own words and float across the room like a boat slipping its mooring.

"Is there something specific you needed?" Jamil asked.

"No. Nothing at all." Jade straightened, clipboard in hand, smile intact. "I simply wanted to ensure everything was satisfactory. Do give Kalim my regards."

He left. Jamil watched him go and noted that Jade did not walk through the dining area. He walked around it, using the service corridor, which was longer and less direct but kept him out of Yuu's line of sight.

Jamil finished the ingredient review, thanked the octopus mer, and walked back to Scarabia through the main courtyard, where he found Kalim bouncing on his heels with excitement about the event.

"Hey, Kalim."

"Yeah?"

"Stay away from Octavinelle for a while."

"Why?"

"Just do it."

Jamil didn't explain. You couldn't explain a thing like that to Kalim without Kalim feeling bad for Jade and trying to help, and Kalim helping would mean Kalim talking to Jade, and Kalim talking to Jade would mean Jade knowing that Jamil had noticed, and Jamil had no interest in being on Jade Leech's radar any more than he already was.

Some things you just handled quietly.

Part 6: Brothers

Floyd was lying on his bed, tossing a basketball in the air and catching it, watching it rise and fall against the ceiling. Jade was at his desk, doing something with a small brush and one of his terrariums, his back to Floyd, movements precise and unhurried.

Floyd hadn't brought up the breakup in three days. He'd been waiting. Not patiently—Floyd didn't do patience—but strategically. Jade was like one of those deep-sea creatures: if you poked it, it'd retreat into a crevice and you'd never see it again. You had to wait for it to come out on its own.

The conditions, in this case, were normalcy. Floyd had been aggressively normal for three days. Complained about basketball practice. Stole Jade's shampoo. Left his socks on the floor. Normal Floyd things. And Jade had responded in kind—dry comments, mild exasperation, the usual eel-twin dynamic.

But Floyd had been watching.

Jade was checking his phone more often. Not using it—checking it. Picking it up, glancing at the screen, setting it down. Every fifteen to twenty minutes.

Jade was spending more time in the terrarium room. Not doing anything productive. Just sitting in there with the door closed.

Jade had stopped humming. This was the one that told Floyd everything. Jade hummed when he was content—a quiet, tuneless thing, barely audible, a sound you had to be in the same room to notice. Floyd had been hearing it every day for fourteen years.

And now it was gone.

"You're not humming," Floyd said.

The brush paused. Resumed.

"I wasn't aware I hummed at all."

"You do. All the time."

"How fascinating. I'll have to monitor myself more closely."

Floyd caught the basketball and held it. "Jade."

"Mm."

"You miss them."

The brush paused. Didn't resume.

"Don't be ridiculous."

"You kept the ticket stub. From the mountain festival. I saw it in your desk."

A beat of silence. "You went through my desk."

"It was sticking out. You put it under the pencil tray but it was too long." Floyd sat up. "It's from the festival. The one you went to with Shrimpy two months ago. You kept it."

Jade set the brush down. Turned around in his chair. Face arranged in that familiar pleasant configuration. Floyd looked at it and felt something—not anger, not sadness, some uncomfortable hybrid of the two. Like watching a building that should have collapsed by now still standing out of pure spite.

"It's simply a memento. There's no harm in keeping a memento of a pleasant outing."

"You have forty-three terrariums in that room and seven of them are about them."

Jade's smile didn't change. His eyes did. They went flat and still.

"I don't know what you're referring to."

"The one with the single mushroom. The one with the missing one. The one with the little clay guy sitting by himself." Floyd ticked them off on his fingers. "I'm not stupid, Jade."

"I would never suggest you were stupid."

"You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"The thing where you answer the question you wish I'd asked instead of the one I actually asked." Floyd leaned forward. "You're yearning, Jade. You're sitting in the dark staring at a dead phone and growing metaphorical mushrooms about your ex and checking your screen every twenty minutes hoping they texted you. You're yearning."

The word hung there. Jade's smile held, but Floyd could see the effort it was costing him—the set of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands had folded themselves on the desk again.

"I'm not familiar with that word in this context."

"Sure you aren't."

"Floyd. I appreciate your concern. Truly. But I'm perfectly fine. Yuu and I simply weren't compatible. These things happen. I've moved on."

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Then you won't mind if I throw away the ticket stub."

Silence.

Jade's smile remained. His eyes remained flat. His hands remained folded. Everything about him remained exactly the same, and that was the problem, because everything about him was the same the way a frozen lake is the same as a liquid one—identical in composition, fundamentally different in nature.

"Please don't touch my things," Jade said. His voice was pleasant. And pleasant. And pleasant. But beneath it, Floyd heard something he had never heard before. A note that didn't belong. Like a string on an instrument that had been tightened past its limit and was one turn from snapping, and you could only hear it if you'd spent fourteen years learning the sound that instrument made when it was in tune.

Floyd looked at his brother for a long time. Then he lay back down and started tossing the basketball again.

"Okay. Whatever you say."

Part 7: The Committee Meeting

Thursday. The Inter-Dorm Hospitality Committee met biweekly in the conference room adjacent to the faculty offices—bland fluorescent lighting, a long table, uncomfortable chairs, a whiteboard that someone had written "BUDGET" on and then never erased. The committee existed because Crowley kept mandating inter-dorm collaboration initiatives and then refused to fund them, so the actual work fell to a rotating cast of students who had either volunteered under false pretenses or been conscripted by their housewardens.

Jade Leech was on the committee. This was not a surprise. Jade volunteered for things the way a spider volunteers to be near flies—naturally, seamlessly, and with an understanding of the food chain that everyone acknowledged but no one could prove. He sat at the table with his notebook open, his pen poised, his smile in place.

Yuu was also on the committee. This was a surprise—they'd been nominated by Crewel, who had a talent for assigning responsibilities to people who had already exceeded their capacity—and they'd accepted because saying no to Crewel was like trying to argue with weather. They sat four chairs down from Jade, on the opposite side of the table, and had not looked at him since entering the room.

Twenty minutes in. Discussing table arrangements for the upcoming collaborative fair. Azul was presenting a cost-analysis of rental options. Jade was taking notes. Everything was fine.

Then Ace Trappola opened his mouth.

"Hey, so, random question." Ace leaned back in his chair with the particular sprawl of someone who was bored and dangerous. "Is it true that Jade and Yuu used to date?"

Something shifted. Not a freeze—rooms in Twisted Wonderland didn't freeze, too much magical residue, too many unstable personalities. But a change in air pressure. A collective holding of breath.

Deuce, sitting next to Ace, went rigid. His hand shot out and grabbed Ace's arm. "Ace, don't—"

"What? It's not a secret. People talk. I'm just asking."

"It's not an appropriate question for this meeting," Azul said, his voice smooth and controlled in the way that meant he was experiencing acute internal distress. "We're discussing table arrangements."

"Yeah, but table arrangements are boring, and I'm curious." Ace looked at Jade with the bright, reckless curiosity of someone who had never once calculated the consequences of anything. "Like, you two are on the same committee now. That's gotta be weird, right? Dating someone and then having to sit across from them and talk about folding chairs?"

The pen in Jade's hand did not stop moving.

This was the thing that Floyd would have noticed. The pen continued its smooth, even strokes across the notebook paper, writing words related to table arrangements, maintaining perfect penmanship. Not a hitch. Not a waver. Not a single stroke heavier or lighter or faster or slower than the ones before it. The pen moved like it was being operated by a machine, and Jade Leech was not a machine, which meant the amount of control required to produce that particular lack of reaction was staggering.

Jade looked up. Smiled.

"I'm not sure I understand what you're hoping to learn, Ace." His voice was warm, amused, faintly puzzled. "Yuu and I are perfectly capable of maintaining a professional working relationship. I'm not certain why you'd find that remarkable."

"I didn't say it was remarkable. I said it was weird."

"Then I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree on the definition of weirdness." Jade tilted his head slightly—a gesture that, on anyone else, would have been dismissive, but on Jade read as thoughtful, almost playful. "Though I do find it interesting that you've spent so much time thinking about my personal life. Should I be flattered?"

Ace blinked. He didn't realize he'd been parried until the blade was already past him. "I wasn't—I wasn't thinking about it. People just talk."

"People do tend to do that. Fufu. I wouldn't worry too much about it. Rumors are like mushrooms—they grow in the dark and shrivel in the light. Now, Azul, you were saying about the rental costs?"

Azul, who had been watching this exchange with the expression of a man watching a tightrope walker in a windstorm, resumed speaking. The meeting continued. Ace sulked for approximately thirty seconds before getting distracted by something else, because Ace had the attention span of a goldfish with ADHD.

But the people in the room who were paying attention—Deuce, Azul, Jamil, and a Pomefiore third-year who was taking very meticulous notes for Vil—had all seen the same thing: Jade Leech had just been publicly confronted with the fact of his breakup, and he had not reacted. Not at all.

This was not normal. Normal people flinched. Normal people got quiet or loud or awkward or at least had the decency to look uncomfortable. Jade had done none of these things. He had deflected with the surgical precision of a practiced manipulator, so smoothly that the moment had already begun to feel like it hadn't happened.

Deuce looked at Yuu. Yuu was staring at the table arrangements on the whiteboard with an intensity that suggested they were trying to memorize them. Their hands were flat on the table. Their fingers were pressed down just hard enough that the tendons in the back of their hand were visible.

Yuu had seen it too. Yuu knew what it cost Jade to sit four chairs away and smile and say "professional working relationship" like the words didn't taste like broken glass.

Nobody said anything for the rest of the meeting.

Jade was the last to leave. He closed his notebook, capped his pen, and stood, movements fluid and controlled. He walked out of the room and down the corridor and into the nearest bathroom, where he stood at the sink with the water running and both hands braced on the porcelain edge and stared at the drain.

Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

Then he turned off the water. Straightened his collar. Smiled. Went to class.

Part 8: Service With a Smile

Yuu came to Mostro Lounge on a Tuesday evening with Grim and two first-years whose names Jade had already catalogued. This was not unusual. Yuu came to the Lounge roughly twice a week, usually with companions, always sitting at the same table near the back—the one by the decorative coral arrangement that provided a partial screen from the main floor. Jade had memorized their ordering patterns in the first week of their relationship and had never un-memorized them.

Iced tea. No lemon. Extra ice. Grim ordered the tuna carpaccio appetizer and the shrimp pasta, which was always too large a portion for him, and Yuu always ended up finishing the last third. The first-years ordered the daily special and a shared dessert.

Jade took the order himself. This was not standard protocol—the Lounge had a full service staff—but Jade had rearranged the floor assignments that afternoon with justifications so flimsy that even Azul had raised an eyebrow. Jade had smiled and Azul had sighed and the schedule had been changed.

He served the drinks first. Iced tea for Yuu—no lemon, extra ice, the glass chilled, the straw positioned at a precise angle that Yuu preferred without having ever explicitly stated it. Water for the others. He set the glasses down with quiet precision, and he did not look at Yuu, and he did not not look at Yuu, and the distance between those two things was razor-thin.

"How are you this evening?" Jade asked. The question was directed at the table in general but landed approximately six inches to Yuu's left. Close enough to be heard. Far enough to be deniable.

"Good," Yuu said. "Thanks."

"Wonderful."

Jade retreated. Brought the appetizers. Brought the main courses. Refilled Yuu's iced tea without being asked, materializing at the table's edge like a very well-dressed ghost, replacing the glass so smoothly that Yuu didn't notice it had been touched until they reached for it and found it cold and full again.

Grim noticed. Grim noticed everything where food was concerned.

"You keep refillin' their glass," Grim said, pointing a claw at Yuu's iced tea. "You ain't refillin' mine."

"My apologies. I'll correct that immediately."

He refilled Grim's water. Efficiently, correctly, without any of the careful choreography he'd applied to Yuu's glass. The difference was invisible unless you were looking for it. Grim was looking for it.

Then it happened.

Yuu reached for their iced tea at the same moment Jade was setting down the dessert menu, and Yuu's fingers brushed the back of Jade's hand.

Nothing. A brush. A fraction of a second of skin contact that could have happened to anyone in any restaurant in the world.

Jade went still.

Every muscle in his body, every micro-expression on his face, every tiny adjustment of posture that a person makes unconsciously every second simply stopped. For one second, maybe two, Jade Leech became a statue with a smile painted on it.

Then the moment passed and he was moving again, setting down the dessert menu, murmuring something about the chocolate cake being particularly good today, withdrawing from the table with the same fluid grace he always had.

The first-years didn't notice. Grim noticed but didn't understand what he was noticing. Yuu noticed and said nothing, their hand still resting near the glass, eyes fixed on the menu without reading it.

Jade went to the kitchen. He stood in the walk-in cooler for four minutes, which the kitchen staff later reported was unusual because Jade never used the walk-in cooler. When he came out, his face was exactly as it had been before.

Part 9: Floyd's Intervention

Floyd did not do subtlety.

This wasn't a personal failing, it was a design choice. Subtlety was for people who weren't strong enough to pick things up and move them directly. Floyd was strong enough. Had always been strong enough. So when three more weeks passed and Jade continued to not-hum and not-sleep and not-talk-about-it and continued to refill the glasses of people who weren't even customers and continued to exist in the same spaces as Yuu with the eerie consistency of a surveillance camera, Floyd decided that subtlety had had its chance and blown it.

He showed up at Ramshackle on a Sunday afternoon.

Ramshackle was quiet on Sundays. Most of the students who lived there were either in the library or pretending to be in the library while actually napping. Yuu was on the porch, mending a tear in Grim's blanket with a sewing kit that looked like it had been purchased at a dollar store and then further damaged by time.

Floyd didn't knock. Walked up the porch steps with his hands in his pockets, gait loose and unhurried. The gait Floyd used when he wanted to look casual and was, in fact, feeling anything but.

"Hey, Shrimpy."

Yuu looked up. Their eyes did a quick scan of the porch behind Floyd, checking for accomplices. Finding none: "Floyd."

"Can I sit?"

"It's a free porch."

Floyd sat on the step below Yuu's chair, looking up at them, which was unusual because Floyd almost never positioned himself below anyone. He sprawled, though—knees apart, elbows resting on the step behind him.

For a while, neither of them said anything. Grim was asleep inside. The Ramshackle grounds were doing their usual thing—overgrown, slightly haunted, quietly decaying in a way that was almost picturesque if you squinted. A crow landed on the gate and then left.

"You know about Jade, right?" Floyd said.

Yuu's hands didn't stop moving. The needle went in, came out, went in again. "Know what about Jade?"

"About the thing."

"What thing."

Floyd looked up at the sky. Pale, washed-out blue, the kind that couldn't commit to being either cloudy or clear. "See, that's the thing. You know, and I know you know, and you know I know you know, but we're both gonna sit here and pretend like we don't, and nothing's gonna happen, and Jade's gonna keep being a weirdo in the dark, and we're all just gonna—what, watch? For how long?"

The needle paused. Just for a second.

"Floyd." Yuu's voice was careful. "I broke up with him. That was my choice. I'm not going to—"

"I'm not asking you to get back together with him." Floyd rolled his head to the side and looked at Yuu directly. His eyes were sharp under the lazy sprawl—sharp the way they always were when Floyd stopped pretending to be simple. "I'm asking you to do something, because right now you're doing nothing, and nothing is worse."

"Nothing is fine. Nothing is what happens after a breakup. You move on."

"Has he moved on?"

A pause. The needle resumed. "That's not my responsibility."

"Nah. It's not." Floyd picked at a splinter on the porch step. "But here's the thing, Shrimpy. I know my brother. I've known him my whole life. And I'm telling you right now, with one hundred percent certainty, that Jade Leech does not know how to move on. He doesn't have the software. He's got software for remembering things, and software for categorizing things, and software for hiding things, but he does not have software for letting go of things. It's not in there. Was never installed."

Yuu set the blanket down in their lap. Looked at Floyd, and for a moment the careful expression slipped, and what was underneath was tired. Not angry-tired or sad-tired. Just tired. Bone-deep. The exhaustion of someone who had been carrying something heavy for a long time and had not set it down.

"I know," Yuu said quietly.

"Then—"

"I know, Floyd. I see it. I see the library tables and the refilled glasses and the questions he asks Grim. I see it and I don't know what to do about it, because the alternative to what I did wasn't staying together—it was staying together until one of us broke, and it was going to be me."

Floyd was quiet for a long time.

"Okay," he said finally. He looked back at the sky. "Okay. I just wanted to hear you say it."

"Say what?"

"That you knew." Floyd stood up. Brushed off his pants. His face had rearranged itself back into the careless, loose-limbed mask he usually wore—the one that made people forget that Floyd Leech was, in his own way, as observant as his brother. "Because Jade thinks you don't know. That's the part that's killing him, I think. Not that you left. That you left and you don't even see him."

He walked down the porch steps. At the gate, he stopped. Didn't turn around.

"For what it's worth, the mountain thing was real. He wouldn't have taken just anyone there. He doesn't take anyone anywhere. You know that."

He left.

Yuu sat on the porch with the torn blanket in their lap and the sewing kit beside them. The crow came back to the gate and watched them with its head tilted, the way crows do.

Yuu did not move for a very long time.

Part 10: The Lounge, Again

Friday evening. The Mostro Lounge was doing its usual Friday thing—moderately busy, ambient music, the particular hum of a well-run operation clicking through its paces. Jade was working the floor. Normal. Jade was working the floor with an intensity that was not normal.

Azul noticed first. He was in the main dining area, reviewing a menu proof at a corner table, when he became aware of Jade moving through the space with a velocity and precision that bordered on choreographic. Jade was taking orders. Delivering drinks. Resolving a minor dispute between two tables over a shared appetizer. All simultaneously, or nearly so, weaving between customers and staff with a fluidity that was almost inhuman. And he was doing it fast.

Not rushed. Never rushed. But there was a speed to his movements that Azul had never seen before—a compressed efficiency, like watching someone run a complex algorithm in real time. Every step purposeful. Every gesture minimal. No wasted motion. No idle pause. No moment where Jade simply stood and let the room exist around him.

He was filling every second with activity so completely that there was no space left for thinking.

Azul set down the menu proof. Watched Jade clear a table, reset it, and take a new order in ninety seconds, all while maintaining a pleasant expression and making appropriate small talk. The performance was flawless. It was also, Azul realized with a sinking sensation, the most distressed he had ever seen Jade Leech behave.

Because Jade was good at many things, but the one thing he was best at was not showing things. And right now he was showing something by not showing it so hard that the not-showing had become a kind of showing. Like watching someone hold their breath—not the holding itself, but the effort of it. The way their chest tightened and their jaw set and their whole body organized itself around the single imperative of don't exhale.

Azul looked at the table where Yuu usually sat.

Yuu was not there. Tonight was apparently a Yuu-not-at-the-Lounge night, which meant Jade had no target for his carefully calibrated proximity, which meant all that energy had nowhere to go, which meant he was currently doing the work of three servers at a speed that would have made the kitchen staff nervous if they'd had time to notice.

They didn't, because Jade was everywhere. He refilled a water glass for a Savanaclaw student who hadn't asked. Wiped down a table that was already clean. Reorganized the silverware station with the focus of a surgeon. Intercepted a delivery at the kitchen door, checked it against the order form, signed off on it, and filed the paperwork in under two minutes—a task that usually took the receiving staff ten.

One of the octopus mers poked her head out of the kitchen and looked at Azul with an expression that said is he okay? Azul shook his head very slightly. Don't ask.

Three hours. Jade worked like this for three hours. Relentless, seamless, impossible competence, and at the end of it the Lounge was in better shape than Azul had ever seen it—tables turned faster, customer satisfaction higher, not a single error in any order—and Jade's smile had not wavered once.

When the last customer left and the doors were closed and the staff began closing procedures, Jade stopped moving.

He was standing in the middle of the dining floor. Chairs were up on the tables around him. Lights dimmed to their post-service setting. Ambient music off. He was holding a rag in one hand and a spray bottle in the other, and he was not using either of them. Just standing there, in the middle of the empty room, smiling at nothing.

Azul approached carefully. Not because Jade was dangerous—though he was—but because there was something about the stillness that felt like approaching an animal that might bolt.

"Jade."

"Yes, Azul?"

"You can stop now."

Jade blinked. The smile held. "Stop what?"

Azul looked at him. Jade looked back. The empty dining room stretched around them, chairs on tables like a forest of stilts, the blue-green light from the bar casting long shadows across the floor.

"Working. The Lounge is closed."

"Ah. Of course." Jade looked down at the rag in his hand as if surprised to find it there. "I got a bit carried away, it seems. Fufu."

He set the rag and spray bottle on the nearest table. Straightened his collar. Smiled.

"Goodnight, Azul."

Walked to the door. Gait smooth, unhurried, perfectly normal. Opened the door. Stepped through. Closed it behind him.

Azul stood in the empty dining room and listened to Jade's footsteps recede down the corridor—steady, even, controlled—and thought about what it meant that a person could fill every second of three hours with activity and still not fill the thing that was empty inside them.

He went back to his office. Added a line to the spreadsheet: Friday shift. Worked 3 hrs at unsustainable pace. Stopped moving when room emptied. Smiled through all of it.

Stared at the ceiling for a while. Opened the laptop. Added: He is not fine.

Closed it.

Part 11: Azul Opens the Wrong Drawer

Azul was not snooping. This was an important distinction. Snooping implied curiosity, and Azul was not curious about Jade's personal affairs. Azul was concerned, and concern justified a certain level of due diligence that snooping did not.

The due diligence in question: retrieving a signed contract from Jade's desk while Jade was in class. The contract needed to be filed and Azul had already asked Jade for it twice, and Jade had said "of course, I'll have it to you by this evening" both times and had not produced it either time. This was itself a red flag because Jade never forgot paperwork. Jade was the kind of person who filed things before you'd finished asking for them.

The contract was not in the top drawer. Not in the second drawer. Azul opened the third drawer—the one Jade always kept locked—and found that it was unlocked. Second red flag. The third drawer was always locked. Azul had never seen it open in three years of sharing a dormitory.

Inside, between stacks of neatly organized papers that were not the contract, Azul found a small wooden box.

He should have closed the drawer. He knew he should have closed the drawer. But the box was there, and it was unsealed, and Azul had already crossed the line of "not snooping" several paragraphs ago, and at this point he was committed.

Inside the box:

A ticket stub from the Mountain Village Autumn Festival, slightly creased, for two seats in the pavilion section.

A pressed flower—small, purple, unremarkable except that it had been pressed with care, flattened between two sheets of wax paper and sealed in a tiny plastic sleeve. Azul recognized the species: it grew along the higher trails of the mountain near the village, the one Jade had talked about with unusual enthusiasm last autumn, before Azul had known there was a "last autumn" to contextualize.

A cloth napkin from Mostro Lounge, folded into a neat square, with handwriting on it in blue ink. Yuu's handwriting, recognizable from the guest log. It said: "Jade — thanks for the tea. You were right about the mountain, it was worth the climb. — Y." Casual, the kind of note you'd write without thinking. Azul could see a small water stain on one corner, as if someone had spilled something on it and then carefully, meticulously dried it.

A small, smooth stone, about the size of a large coin. Dark grey with a single white band running through it—a type of quartz common in riverbeds but uncommon in the specific shade of white this one had, which suggested it had been selected rather than simply picked up. No note attached. Just a stone. Clearly important.

A button.

This was the item that made Azul stop breathing for a moment.

Small, white, standard-issue—the kind that came on the Night Raven College uniform blazer. But it was not from an Octavinelle uniform. Octavinelle buttons had a small etching of a seashell on the back. This one was blank on both sides, which meant it was from one of the other dormitories, and given the context of everything else in the box, Azul did not have to be a genius to figure out which one.

It had been sewn back on at some point. The thread was different from the original—slightly thicker, a shade off—and the stitching was neat but not professional, the kind of repair you'd do yourself with a basic sewing kit rather than taking it to a tailor. Yuu had mentioned once, in passing, that they were bad at sewing but too broke to afford a tailor. Jade had offered to have it taken care of. Yuu had said no, they'd manage.

And here was the button. Not the fixed button on the blazer—the original. The one that had fallen off. The one that Yuu would have picked up and pocketed and probably forgotten about entirely. Except Jade had apparently picked it up. Or asked for it. Or found it and kept it, which was somehow worse, because it meant he'd been holding onto a piece of Yuu's life that Yuu hadn't even known was missing.

Azul put the button back. Put the stone back. Put the napkin back. Put the flower back. Put the ticket stub back. Closed the box. Closed the drawer. Sat down at Jade's desk and put his head in his hands and stayed there for a very long time.

When Jade returned from class, Azul was sitting at his own desk across the room, doing paperwork. Did not look up.

"Ah, Azul. I have that contract for you."

"Thank you."

Azul took the contract. Their fingers did not touch. Jade's smile was in place. Everything was normal. Everything was fine.

That night, Azul lay in bed and thought about the button. About a person keeping a lost button in a box in a drawer. About what that meant. About Jade's smile, which had not changed in six weeks, not once, not even for a second.

The most disturbing thing wasn't that Jade was hurting. It was that he was hurting with such perfect, controlled discipline that no one would ever know unless they opened the wrong drawer.

Azul added a line to the spreadsheet: Button. Blank back. Repaired stitching. Not his. Stone. Pressed flower. Napkin. Ticket stub. A whole person, reduced to objects that don't know they're being kept.

He closed the laptop and stared at the ceiling.

He was going to need a bigger spreadsheet.

Part 12: The Knowing

The information arrived in pieces, scattered across different people and different moments, like a jigsaw puzzle being assembled by people who didn't know they were working on the same puzzle.

Grim was the accidental catalyst. Eating lunch with Yuu in the courtyard, complaining about the seafood options in the cafeteria, when he said: "Y'know, your eel ex gave me extra shrimp at the Lounge yesterday. Like, a whole extra plate. And he kept askin' me stuff about you. Like, 'Is Yuu eating well?' and 'Has Yuu been sleeping enough?' Who asks that? Who asks a cat that?"

Yuu set down their fork. "He asked you about my sleep?"

"And your appetite. And if you'd been sick lately. And if you seemed sad. It was weird, y'know? Like he was checkin' up on you through me." Grim ripped into a piece of fish. "I told him you were fine. He seemed relieved. It was super weird."

Yuu didn't respond for a long time.

Deuce mentioned it two days later, walking to class: "Oh, hey, I keep seeing Jade in the library. Like, every time you're there, he's there too. Is that a coincidence? It's probably a coincidence, right? Jade's always in the library anyway."

Ace, who'd overheard Jack saying something to Ruggie at lunch: "Apparently Jade's been going on evening runs? Jade? Running? The same Jade who once said 'running is what you do when something is chasing you and you haven't decided whether to eat it yet'?"

Epel, directly to Yuu: "He was walking past your bench like four times in a row last Friday. I asked him if he was lost and he said he was enjoying the fresh air. There is no fresh air in that courtyard. It's enclosed by buildings on three sides."

Jamil, who said nothing to Yuu but said to Kalim, very firmly, "Do not, under any circumstances, tell Jade that Yuu is going to be at the inter-dorm event this weekend," which of course meant Kalim immediately told Jade because Kalim didn't understand subtlety, and Jade said "how interesting" and showed up at the event and stood near the refreshment table for the entire duration without speaking to Yuu once, and Yuu knew this because three different people reported it with varying degrees of concern.

Then the Pomefiore third-year from the committee meeting—a quiet girl named Verna who was not known for gossiping but who was known for being ruthlessly observant—cornered Yuu after an Alchemy class and said, very quietly: "The way he held that pen during the meeting. When Ace asked. The way he didn't stop. That wasn't composure. That was effort. I've seen Vil work that hard to keep his face still, and Vil only does it when he's about to do something he'll regret. You should know that."

The pieces assembled slowly. Each piece on its own was nothing—a coincidence, a quirk, a weird interaction that could be explained away. But together, they formed something Yuu couldn't unsee:

Jade Leech had not moved on.

He was tracking Yuu's schedule through proxy questions. Positioning himself in their vicinity with surgical precision. Rewarding anyone who spent time with them. Keeping their handwriting and their lost button and their pressed flower and their found stone in a box in his desk. Filling every second with relentless, unsustainable activity so that he wouldn't have to exist in the quiet where the missing thing lived. Maintaining a perfect, unbroken smile through all of it.

He thought nobody could tell.

Everyone could tell.

And then there was the other thing—the thing Floyd had said on the porch, sitting in Yuu's chest like a stone in a shoe for three days:

He thinks you don't know. That's the part that's killing him. Not that you left. That you left and you don't even see him.

Yuu sat on their bed in Ramshackle that night. Stared at the wall. Thought about the iced tea that kept getting refilled without being asked. The brush of fingers on a hand that had gone completely still for two full seconds. The pleasant, pleasant, pleasant voice asking how they were doing as if the question didn't cost anything. The pen that didn't stop. The button that had fallen off a blazer and been kept by someone who had no right to keep it but couldn't stop himself.

They did not text Jade. Jade did not text them. The phone stayed dark on both ends, and somewhere in Octavinelle, a boy sat in a room full of glass worlds and looked at a single mushroom growing alone in the dirt and waited for a notification that would not come.

Part 13: The Glass

It was very late. Later than Jade usually stayed up—his meticulously maintained sleep schedule had been slipping lately, the edges fraying in small ways that he catalogued and ignored with equal precision. The dormitory was quiet. Floyd was asleep across the room, breathing slow and even, the particular kind of unconsciousness that only Floyd achieved. Complete. Unguarded.

Jade was sitting on the edge of his bed in the dark.

The terrarium room was down the hall, door closed, grow-lights off. He'd spent two hours in there tonight, as he had every night for six weeks, doing nothing. Just sitting. Just looking at the glass containers and the tiny worlds inside them and the things they represented, which he would never name out loud because naming them would make them real, and making them real would mean admitting that he, Jade Leech, who had never admitted to anything in his life, was something as common and undignified as sad.

He reached into the pocket of his pajama pants and pulled out the napkin.

He'd stopped pretending to himself that he didn't carry it. Twenty-three days now—transferred from the old pants to the new ones each morning with the same quiet, methodical precision he applied to everything. The wax paper sleeve was soft at the edges from the warmth of his body, worn almost translucent where it creased. The blue ink was fading. "Thanks for the tea. You were right about the mountain, it was worth the climb."

He unfolded it. Looked at it. The handwriting was casual, slightly messy, the way people's handwriting was when they weren't thinking about it. Yuu hadn't been thinking about it when they wrote this. A throwaway gesture. A polite note. The kind of thing you wrote on a napkin and forgot about five minutes later.

Jade had not forgotten about it for a single second.

He folded it again. The creases were getting worn. Eventually the paper would split along one of them, and he would have to decide what to do with a torn napkin that meant everything to him and nothing to the person who'd written it, and he would handle that decision with the same composure he handled everything.

Which was to say he would not handle it at all. He would simply continue. That was what he did. He simply continued.

He put the napkin back in his pocket. Lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling and listened to Floyd breathe and thought about the button in the box in the drawer and the stone and the flower and the ticket stub and the single mushroom in the terrarium and the clay figure on its hill of moss and the way Yuu's fingers had brushed his hand and the two seconds of stillness that had followed.

He thought about Floyd on the Ramshackle porch saying he thinks you don't know, and he understood, with the cold, clear precision that was both his greatest gift and his most reliable curse, that Floyd had been right, and that the rightness of it changed nothing.

Because the worst part—the part Jade could not say, would not say, had built an entire architecture of silence around—was not that Yuu had left. People left. Relationships ended. These were facts of life, and Jade had always considered himself adequately prepared for facts. The worst part was that Jade had seen himself clearly from the very beginning. He had known, on the first date, that he was too much. Too watchful. Too controlled. Too interested. Too present in a way that made people uncomfortable without being able to explain why. He had known that his love, if he let it show, would look like surveillance. He had known this and had chosen to let it show anyway, because Yuu had looked at him once—once, in the mountains, with the fog coming in and the light going grey—and had said "you're kind of intense, you know that?" and smiled.

And Jade had mistaken a smile for permission.

He knew he was being obvious. He could feel it in the way people looked at him now—a flicker in their eyes that hadn't been there before. Pity. Discomfort. The secondhand embarrassment of watching someone fail at hiding something that everyone could see. Floyd knew. Azul knew. The committee knew. Half the school knew, probably. Jade could feel their awareness like a low hum in the background of every interaction, and the knowledge that they knew—and that he knew they knew—changed nothing, because the alternative to being pathetic in public was being pathetic in private, and he'd already tried that and it was worse. The terrarium room at 2 AM was not a refuge. It was a confession booth with no priest.

The smile was the problem. It had always been the problem. The tool he used to interact with the world. And now the mask was the only thing holding him together, and he couldn't take it off because he didn't know how—because he'd been wearing it for so long that the face beneath had started to atrophy, and if he took it off now, what would be left? Just the yearning. Ugly and obvious and small. Smaller than the tall, watchful shadow he cast across every room he entered. Smaller than that little clay figure sitting alone on its hill of moss in the blue-green glow, waiting for nothing.

Tomorrow he would wake up and put on his uniform and comb his hair and smile, and he would go to class and work at the Lounge and maintain his terrariums and check his phone and be wherever Yuu was, and Floyd would watch him with that uncomfortable expression, and Azul would update his spreadsheet, and the first-years would whisper, and Yuu would sit at their table by the coral arrangement and order iced tea with no lemon and extra ice, and Jade would refill it without being asked, and the glass would be cold and full and his hand would not touch theirs, and the smile would hold, and hold, and hold.

It would hold because it had to. Because the alternative was to let it crack, and if it cracked, even a little, Jade knew it wouldn't stop at a crack. It would shatter. And behind it would be nothing but a boy keeping a lost button in a box in a drawer in the dark, and that boy would not know how to exist without the smile, because the smile was all he had ever been, and the things underneath it—the wanting, the keeping, the growing of single mushrooms in empty soil—were not things he knew how to carry where anyone could see them.

The ceiling stared back at him, blank and dark and offering nothing.

He did not sleep for a long time.

When he finally did, he dreamed of a mountain. A real one, impossibly tall, with a path that wound upward through fog and disappeared. He climbed it. The climb was worth it. He knew this because someone had told him so, once, on a napkin, in blue ink, in a handwriting that was messy and casual and didn't mean anything at all.

He reached the top.