The hallway felt different now. Not because it had changed, but because Lian had.
He walked slower, not out of caution, but out of something closer to intention. Every person he passed—every slouched body at a locker, every half-shouted joke, every teacher's sigh—held more weight than before. They were no longer flashes of fur, wing, and fang. They were people. Moving. Morphing. Made of layers.
He opened the notebook Mr. Arman had given him again that morning. The first page still read:
"Sometimes I mistake the web for the person."
Now he added:
"Today I will look, not name."
First, he watched Jamie.
She laughed too loudly when someone made a corny joke. She always touched the shoulder of the person she was speaking to, like grounding herself in the room. Her backpack was heavier than it needed to be—always filled with snacks, extra pens, Band-Aids, phone chargers. A mobile supply station for people who never asked.
Lian wrote:
Jamie: Carries others like it's instinct. Says she's fine, even when she's cracking. Not a monkey. Not a dog. Something quieter. A crane? No—maybe something that watches. An owl?
The image flickered faintly behind her as she turned a corner. Not fully formed. Just a suggestion.
Not a definition.
During lunch, he sat farther from the main tables, watching quietly. Mr. Douglas, the math teacher, usually gave off stern hawk energy—eyes sharp, posture tense, voice clipped. But today Lian noticed the tremor in his hands as he typed. The way he turned his coffee cup in slow, absent circles. The way he glanced toward the door like he was waiting for someone who never arrived.
Mr. Douglas: Bear? No. Snake? No. Something else. Something… frayed. A moth? Always flying toward something that burns.
The animals came less quickly now. He resisted the urge to stamp a shape before he listened to the silence between moments.
In the afternoon, he passed Serena—someone he had once seen as a peacock, full of flash and sound. But today she sat on the bench outside the counselor's office, eyes rimmed red, makeup smudged.
He sat next to her without speaking.
After a long moment, she whispered, "I heard about what happened."
Lian nodded. He didn't ask how she knew. News moved faster than truth.
"I know what it's like," she said. "To think someone's safe and find out they're not."
He looked over. For a second, he saw no animal. Just her. Tired. Real.
Then, flickering like a shadow behind her: a rabbit. Not the skittish kind. The burrowed, trembling kind. Still alive. Still here.
"Do people ever stop changing?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I hope not."
That night, he returned to the back room of the library. The journals greeted him like old friends. He sat at the desk and reopened the thick notebook.
He flipped to a blank page.
Wrote:
The animals are tools. Not truth. Lenses, not limits.
Then:
I used to think people revealed themselves. Now I wonder if I reveal them. Or if we both make something new together.
He drew a figure at the center of the page. Not a boy. Not himself. Just a shape, holding out a mirror. The animals around it were blurred. Melting into each other.
A wolf with feathers. A snake with hooves. A rabbit with sharp, shining eyes.
He smiled.
When he finally left the room, the library had emptied. Mr. Arman was still there, reading something old and yellowed.
Lian paused at the counter. "They're all changing," he said. "I think… maybe I am too."
Mr. Arman looked up. His animal flickered again—bear, yes. But also something smaller. Something wounded.
"You've stopped chasing the shape," he said. "Now you're listening for the heartbeat."
Lian nodded.
"I think I'm ready," he said.
Mr. Arman raised an eyebrow. "For what?"
Lian's voice was quiet, but sure.
"To forgive."
And for the first time in a long while, he left the library without the weight of needing to see everything.
Some truths, he realized, were still forming.
And maybe that was okay.