Chapter 12

  “Before Five”

  The dream was the building.

  Not the version he knew. Not twelve years of knowing exactly which boards held and which didn’t, exactly where to step, exactly how the morning light came through the gap in the wall. The other version. The one from before all of that.

  The room was the same. The cardboard on the floor. The cracked ceiling.

  But he was very small in it.

  And there was a door.

  And then there wasn’t — just the silence after. The specific weight of it. The particur density of something that had closed and wasn’t coming back.

  He woke at three forty-two.

  Lay there. Ceiling above him. The east window dark, the city doing its quiet orange version of itself outside.

  He sat up.

  ? — He didn’t decide to go to the corridor.

  His feet did. They usually did — the honest version of things always arrived there first. He was standing outside his room before he’d chosen to be. In the corridor before he’d chosen that either.

  Kaishi’s door. Two steps away.

  He stood there in the dark.

  He didn’t know what his feet had been thinking. Couldn’t have expined the logic of a body that woke from a dream about being very small and brought him here. To this door. At three forty-two in the morning.

  He tried the handle.

  Not locked.

  The room was warm. Kaishi asleep, face turned slightly away, breathing even. The cross neckce on the windowsill. The particur stillness of somewhere that had been slept in long enough to carry a person’s habits.

  Ghost stood in the doorway for a moment.

  Then he went inside.

  Crossed the room quietly. Sat down on the floor beside the bed. Back against the mattress, knees up, jacket on because he’d put it on without thinking.

  The dream was still there. The door. The silence after. Still sitting in his chest the way it always sat.

  But the weight of it was different here.

  Same weight. Different distribution. Like carrying something heavy and finding a wall to lean against. Still carrying it. Just not entirely alone with it.

  He closed his eyes.

  ? — He didn’t hear Kaishi wake.

  Just felt it — the quality of the breathing above him shifting. Deep to surface. The particur stillness of someone whose eyes had opened and were reading the room.

  Ghost kept still. Eyes closed.

  Nothing happened.

  No movement. No words. Just Kaishi awake somewhere above him and the room quiet around them both.

  From above him — he couldn’t see it, he would never see it — something happened to Kaishi’s face.

  The small smile. Just for a second. Not surprised. Not quite delighted. Something quieter than both of those.

  Of course. Of course you’re here.

  Then it was gone.

  Kaishi y back.

  Looked at the ceiling.

  Said nothing.

  They stayed like that — Ghost on the floor, Kaishi above him, the orange city light coming through at its specific angle — until the dark outside went slowly grey.

  ? — Ghost woke to pale morning light and Kaishi already sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed, looking at his phone.

  He looked up when Ghost moved.

  Ghost looked at him.

  Neither of them said anything.

  That was the entirety of it. Ghost on the floor, Kaishi on the bed, the morning between them, everything that had happened sitting in the room like furniture that had always been there.

  Ghost stood. Rolled his right shoulder once. Picked up his jacket.

  At the door he stopped.

  Hand on the frame. Didn’t turn around. Just — one second. The specific pause of something acknowledged without being named.

  Then he walked out.

  ? — He went to school without eating.

  Noticed it halfway there. The familiar hollow of it, old habit sliding back into pce the way old habits did when something had been too close and the body needed something it already knew.

  He noticed it.

  Didn’t fix it.

  Just walked.

  Past the convenience store. Past the broken pipe on the corner. Through the part of the city that sat between District 3 and District 0 like something that hadn’t decided which it belonged to.

  The school gates were open. Earlier than the teachers again.

  He found his seat. Nearest the door.

  Sat in the empty cssroom and looked at the board and didn’t think about the dream and thought about it anyway and let it be there without letting it be everything.