#ttl

His name is Mikhail. He is eight years old, and he has never been outside.

He has never been to school. Never ridden a bike. Never spoken to another child. He has never stood in a grocery store aisle deciding between cereals, never waited in a dentist's chair counting ceiling tiles, never felt grass between his toes or rain on his face. He doesn't know the texture of pavement, the smell of asphalt after a storm, or what it's like to run toward something without fear lodged like a stone in his throat.

His world is four walls wide. A window he's not allowed to open. A locked door he's not allowed to touch. A bedroom barely bigger than a closet, a kitchen with a floor he sits on because chairs feel wrong—too high, too far from the ground where safe things live. There's a couch that sags in the middle and a television that only works when you hit it just right, and Misha knows every crack in the ceiling, has counted them so many times the numbers have lost meaning.

His body tells its own story. Ribs like ladder rungs beneath skin so pale it's nearly translucent, blue veins mapping routes to nowhere. Hip bones jutting sharp enough to bruise. Wrists thin as bird bones. There are bruises that bloom and fade and bloom again—fingerprints on his upper arms, shadows along his ribs. His hands shake sometimes for no reason at all. He wets himself when the air gets too tense, when his father's footsteps get too heavy, and the shame of it sits in his stomach like swallowed stones.

He is used to hunger. To the hollow ache that lives in his belly, to the way his stomach stopped asking for food and learned to survive on air and the occasional chocolate bar his father leaves on the counter like an apology. He has a sweet tooth—it's one of the few things that brings him genuine pleasure, the way sugar dissolves on his tongue, brief and bright and almost like happiness.

He is alone. Profoundly, consistently, devastatingly alone.

Except for the cat.

Her name is Kisa—kitty, in his father's tongue, the language Papa stopped speaking except in nightmares. She is black and fluffy with orange eyes and a bushy tail, and Misha thinks that if she ever leaves, he might disappear entirely. Might fold in on himself like the flowers that sometimes grow through the cracks in the kitchen floor—the ones that bloom white and pink when he's alone, that curl toward his breath like they recognize something in him, that wither to nothing when Papa comes home.

Misha doesn't understand the flowers. Doesn't understand why they appear or why they die or why touching them makes his fingertips tingle with warmth that spreads up his arms and pools in his chest. He thinks maybe he's seeing things. Making them up. Going crazy the way Papa sometimes seems to, eyes distant and hands trembling as he checks the locks—once, twice, three times, four.

He doesn't understand the shadows either. The way they pool in corners even at noon, thick and tangible and almost alive. The way they stretch toward him when the light hasn't changed, cool and gentle when he reaches back.

There are things wrong with him. He knows this the way he knows his own heartbeat—intimately, inescapably. He sits wrong. Moves wrong. His voice comes out hoarse and cracking when he uses it, so he's learned not to. He goes barefoot because shoes feel like cages. Wears his father's old t-shirts that hang past his knees because real clothes constrict something vital. He doesn't understand why these things are wrong, only that they are, in some fundamental way he can't articulate.

Ivan Sidorov is not a bad man. Not exactly. Not on purpose.

He was once a hero, or something like it—a warrior, a child soldier forged by war and hardened by worse. He'd fought in battles Misha doesn't have names for, faced monsters Misha can't imagine, survived things that should have killed him. He has scars everywhere—on his hands, his arms, one that runs from his collarbone to his navel that Misha glimpsed once and never asked about.

Now he is broken in the way old statues are: beautiful, unreadable, missing pieces that used to hold him together.

He says he is protecting his son. That the world is full of monsters—real ones, not the kind in storybooks, things with teeth and claws and hunger. That to know too much is to paint a target on your back. That the only way to keep Misha safe is to keep him here, hidden, a secret the monsters can't find.

And Misha believes him, because he feels the monsters too.

But protection, when warped by fear, becomes a cage.

And love, when twisted tight enough, becomes something else entirely.

Papa loves him. Misha knows this like he knows his own bones. Knows it in the chocolate bars, in the way Papa checks on him at night, in the careful way he smooths Misha's hair after the bad times. But Papa's love has sharp edges. It comes with rules: don't go near the windows, don't open the door, don't make noise, don't ask questions, don't, don't, don't.

And when Misha breaks the rules—when he forgets, when he's too loud, when he asks about the scars or the locks or why they never leave—Papa's hands shake and his jaw goes tight and sometimes those hands grip too hard, leave marks, push Misha into walls or down onto the floor where he belongs.

Papa always apologizes after. Brings candy. Speaks soft. Kisses Misha's forehead like he's something precious and breakable.

Misha forgives him every time. Because what else is there to do? This is the only love he knows.

He does not know that this is not normal. That fathers should not leave bruises. That eight-year-olds should not spend their days sitting cross-legged on kitchen floors, staring at walls, counting their own heartbeats just to prove they're still alive. That isolation is its own kind of violence, slow and silent and devastating.

To him, this is just life. The only one he has.

But something is changing.

It begins with the flowers—stubborn things that push up through the linoleum by the radiator, white and pink and shivering like they're afraid to bloom. Misha crouches beside them for hours, bare knees on cold floor, and watches them grow. Whispers to them in the hoarse voice he barely uses. They curl toward his breath like they're listening.

Then come the dreams.

He dreams of places he's never seen—endless green fields that roll like ocean waves, silver seas that whisper his name, warm hands holding his that feel like coming home. He dreams of someone else, shadow-shaped and familiar, and wakes up with his chest aching like something's been carved out of it. Like he's missing a piece of himself he can't remember losing.

He doesn't tell Papa about the dreams. Doesn't tell him about the flowers or the shadows or the way sometimes—just sometimes—he can hear a heartbeat that isn't his own, layered underneath his pulse like an echo.

Because deep down, some part of him knows: the life he's living is not the life he was born for. He knows the silence is no longer enough. That he wants more. That someone is out there, pulling at him like a tide, like gravity, like a thread tied around his ribs and stretching into the dark.

That spring is coming.

And soon, the vines curling up through the floorboards will no longer be content to stay buried.

"And if yearning had a shape, it would look an awful lot like me"

―rêve brisé

Part II. You are the garden and the grave.

Across the hall in Apartment 5A, another boy is trying not to drown.

Percy Jackson is nine years old, and he is tired of trying.

He's tired of being the problem child—the one teachers look at with that specific kind of disappointment, like they'd expected better and are personally offended he didn't deliver. The expulsion kid. The weirdo with bad grades and worse luck and a reputation that precedes him.

This is his third school in two years. He doesn't even remember what the first one was called.

He doesn't understand why the world seems hell-bent against him. Why his teachers hate him before they even learn his name. Why words swim on the page no matter how hard he concentrates. Why he can't sit still, can't focus, can't be normal no matter how hard he tries. Why things happen when he gets angry—water fountains exploding, windows cracking, that one time a door flew off its hinges and no one could explain how.

His mom says he's special. That he's got a gift, even if he can't see it yet. But Percy doesn't feel special. He feels tired. Feels like he's fighting a war everyone else is watching from the sidelines, shaking their heads, wondering why he can't just be better.

He knows how to fake a smile. How to dodge a punch. How to make a joke at his own expense so no one else gets the chance. How to laugh it off, shrug it off, pretend it doesn't hurt.

But it does hurt. And beneath the noise, beneath the bravado and the quick jokes and the troublemaker smile, he is so goddamn lonely he could scream.

His mom tries. Sally Jackson is the best thing in Percy's life—maybe the only good thing. She works doubles at the candy store, comes home smelling like chocolate and exhaustion, and still finds time to sit with him at the kitchen table, helping with homework he doesn't understand, telling him stories about heroes and gods and people who were different too, who struggled too, who won anyway.

She believes in him even when he can't believe in himself.

But she can't be everywhere. Can't be at school when the other kids laugh. Can't be there when he eats lunch alone, when he walks home alone, when he lies in bed at night and wonders what's wrong with him, why he can't just fit in.

So Percy comes home to an empty apartment most days—mom at work, Gabe not back yet from whatever Gabe does—and sits in his room with the window open, watching the fire escape and the city beyond, feeling like he's waiting for something he can't name.

There are days when he prays.

Not the way his classmates do at school assemblies, heads bowed and hands folded like they've been taught. Not kneeling beside his bed, not to a god he's supposed to believe in. He doesn't even know who he's praying to—just the universe, maybe. The ocean he dreams about sometimes. The father he's never met who his mom won't talk about except to say he loved them, once, before he had to leave.

Percy just whispers into the quiet. Into the air. Into whatever might be listening.

Please. Just one person. One real friend. Someone who sees me. Someone who gets it.

He doesn't know that what he's asking for is already there, separated by drywall and distance and a door with twelve locks. Doesn't know that just a few feet away, someone else is dreaming of him too—of green eyes and warm hands and the feeling of being whole.

Doesn't know that fate has already wound them together, two threads tangled so tight they'll never come fully apart.

Doesn't know that the loneliness is almost over.

"And the sound of the sea colors everything"

― Louise Glück, A Village Life; from 'Marriage'

Part III. Here I blur into you.

It happens on a Tuesday.

Papa has been gone for three days. The apartment is too quiet, the silence pressing against Misha's eardrums until they ring. He's been sitting on the kitchen floor for hours—maybe longer, time moves strangely when there's nothing to measure it against—watching Kisa groom herself in a patch of shadow that shouldn't exist.

Then Kisa stops. Her ears swivel forward. Her tail flicks once, twice, and she stands abruptly, body tense with purpose.

Misha pushes himself up on his elbows, curious.

Kisa trots toward the window—the one that looks out onto the fire escape—and makes a sound Misha has never heard before. Low and urgent and insistent. She paws at the frame where the window doesn't quite close, at the gap Misha has never noticed, has never tested because he was a good boy.

Before Misha can move, before he can understand what's happening, Kisa slips through the gap and vanishes onto the fire escape.

Misha's heart stops.

"Kisa." His voice comes out hoarse, barely a whisper. "Kisa, no—"

But she doesn't stop. Doesn't even look back. Just pads across the metal grating like she owns it, tail high, and disappears through an open window into the apartment next door.

The apartment where light spills out warm and golden. Where someone is home.

For a long moment, Misha can't breathe. Can't think. There's a roaring in his ears and his hands are shaking and every instinct is screaming at him to stay inside, stay safe, be good, don't break the rules—

But Kisa is gone.

Kisa, who sleeps curled against his ribs every night. Kisa, who is the only warm thing in his world, the only living thing besides Papa who knows he exists. Kisa, who is his.

He's on his feet before he makes the decision. His legs don't work right—shaking, weak—but they carry him to the front door. To the twelve locks that stare back at him like eyes, like warnings, like Papa's voice saying don't, don't, don't.

His hands move on their own. Top lock. Second lock. Third.

Each one that opens sounds like breaking, like something irrevocable.

Fourth, fifth, sixth. His fingers fumble, shake so badly he has to try twice. Seventh, eighth, ninth.

The tenth lock sticks. Misha makes a desperate sound—animal and small—and wrenches it hard enough that pain shoots through his wrist, and finally it gives.

Eleventh. Twelfth.

The door swings open.

The hallway gapes before him like a mouth, like the throat of something vast and hungry. Misha stands in the threshold in his bare feet and his father's shirt hanging off him like a shroud, and the world is too big, too bright, too full of smells and sounds and possibilities that make his head spin.

He can't do this. He can't. Papa will know, Papa will see, Papa will—

But Kisa is gone.

And Misha's world has always been four walls wide, but Kisa has been the only warm thing in it.

He steps into the hallway.

Three steps to 5A. They feel like miles. His legs shake with every step, threatening to give out. His vision swims. Shadows pool at his feet, darker than they should be, spreading across the carpet like spilled ink.

He lifts his hand. Knocks.

The sound is too loud. Everything is too loud—his heartbeat, his breathing, the distant hum of life happening behind other doors. The world is so full it's crushing him.

The door opens.

A woman stands there. She's soft-looking, with dark hair pulled back and eyes that go wide when they see him. She smells like cinnamon and sugar and something baking, and the warmth that rolls out of the apartment behind her makes Misha's chest ache with wanting.

She has flour on her hands. There's music playing low inside, something gentle. She does not look dangerous.

But she's looking at him like he's something that hurts to see—shock and concern and something almost like heartbreak flickering across her face too fast for Misha to understand.

"Oh," she says, and her voice is so warm, warmer than anything Misha has heard in years. "Oh, sweetheart."

Misha's voice came out hoarse, barely more than a whisper. "My cat."

The woman blinked. "Your cat?"

"She—she came here. Through the window. I need—" His breath hitched. "Please."

The words tangle. He's spoken more in five seconds than he has in weeks and his throat hurts with it.

The woman's expression does something complicated that Misha doesn't have the vocabulary to name. She doesn't ask about the twelve locks visible through his open door. Doesn't ask why he's barefoot and drowning in a shirt three sizes too big. Doesn't ask any of the questions her eyes are clearly screaming.

She just steps back, gesturing him inside with a kindness that makes something crack in Misha's chest.

"Come in, honey. Let's find your cat."

"Mom?" a voice calls from deeper in the apartment. "Who is it?"

Then a boy appears in the doorway to what must be his room.

He's around Misha's age, maybe a little older, with dark hair that sticks up in messy angles and eyes so green they look stolen from the ocean. He's wearing pajama pants with cartoon characters on them and a t-shirt with a faded logo, and in his arms—curled up like she's been there forever, like she was always meant to be there—is Kisa.

Black and fluffy and purring so loud Misha can hear it from across the room, her orange eyes half-closed in contentment. The boy's hand is buried in her fur, petting her with careful reverence.

Kisa looks up. Makes eye contact with Misha. And if a cat could look smug, she's managing it.

The boy blinks at Misha, green eyes going wide. His mouth falls open slightly, and for a moment they just stare at each other—two boys separated by ten feet and a lifetime, connected by something neither of them understands yet.

Something clicks. Deep in Misha's chest, in that hollow place that's always ached, something slots into place with an almost audible sound. Like a key turning. Like coming home.

His hands start shaking again.

"Is this your cat?" the boy asks. His voice is clearer than Misha's, easier, but there's something uncertain in it. Something that says he doesn't want to give her back.

Misha nods. Tries to speak. Can't.

"She just—she came through my window," the boy continues, speaking to fill Misha's silence. "I've never seen her before. I didn't know anyone had a cat." He pauses, then adds, softer, "I didn't know anyone lived next door."

"Percy," the woman—his mother, must be his mother—says gently. "This is our neighbor. From 5B."

Percy. The name settles into Misha's bones like it's always lived there.

"I'm Sally," the woman continues, still using that kind voice that makes Misha want to cry. "Sally Jackson. This is my son, Percy."

Percy waves awkwardly with his free hand, still holding Kisa. He's staring at Misha with those ocean eyes, taking in every detail, but there's no disgust in his expression. Just curiosity and something warm.

"What's your name?" Percy asks.

"Misha." It comes out barely louder than breath. "Mikhail. But—Misha."

"Misha," Percy repeats, testing it on his tongue. Then he smiles—small and crooked and real—and something in Misha's chest cracks wide open. "Your cat's really soft. I think she likes me."

Kisa purrs louder, as if agreeing.

"Would you like to stay for a while?" Sally asks gently. "I'm making cookies. Chocolate chip. You could have some, visit with your cat." She pauses, and her voice goes even softer, careful. "I think she's comfortable here. I think maybe you could be comfortable here too."

Misha's first instinct is to say no. To take Kisa and run back to the safety of his apartment, to lock all twelve locks and pretend this never happened.

But Percy is looking at him with those impossible green eyes, and Kisa is purring, and Sally's smile is so warm it makes something in Misha's chest ache.

"Okay," Misha whispers.

And for the first time in his short, small life, he stays.