Lian hadn't drawn an animal in three days.
That was strange.
Usually, the sketches came automatically—unfiltered and urgent. A pair of sharp eyes in a crowded hallway became a hawk. A hunched figure with twitchy hands became a rabbit. But lately, everything felt like static. Like his mind was trying to tune into a channel that had stopped broadcasting.
He sat in the library during lunch, fingers curled around a pencil that refused to move. The page in front of him stayed blank, mocking him with its silence.
Maybe he was just tired.
Maybe something was changing.
"你为什么在这儿?" Why are you here?
He looked up to see Mei, the girl from his math class—the one who never raised her hand but always turned in perfect work. She was holding a book almost as big as her head. Her eyes flicked toward the empty seat across from him.
"I could ask you the same," he replied in English, cautiously.
She shrugged and sat. "I like quiet places. People don't expect you to smile here."
Lian blinked.
She opened her book and didn't speak again.
They shared the table for the next week without saying more than ten words a day.
And yet somehow, that silence felt easier than any conversation with his classmates, his father, even Jamie. It was like Mei understood what silence was for. Not awkwardness. Not distance. Just space to exist.
At night, Lian kept trying to draw. The animals weren't gone exactly—they were just wrong.
He looked at Mr. Hodge, his science teacher, and saw a lizard with sharp, impatient eyes. But then, Mr. Hodge let him retake a failed quiz without making a scene. Gave him a quiet thumbs-up afterward. That didn't feel like a lizard move.
He saw Jamie as a tiger one day, fierce and warm—but the next day, she didn't speak to him. Just handed back his notebook without meeting his eyes. He saw a moth then, brittle and flickering.
Something was off.
So he started a new notebook. A secret bestiary.
November 2nd – Jamie: tiger (sometimes). Also moth? Changing?Mr. Hodge: lizard (but kind of a dog when he smiles). Confusing.Mei: ??
He couldn't see Mei's animal. That unsettled him.
One rainy Tuesday, Lian lingered in the library after school, tracing doodles of wings onto the edge of his math homework.
"Drawing dreams?" a voice asked.
It was the librarian—Mr. Arman. Tall, older, hair graying at the edges like a pencil sketch gone soft. Lian had never really noticed him before.
"I guess," Lian muttered, closing the notebook quickly.
Mr. Arman gave a small smile. "You know, animals in mythology often change shape. Crows turn to humans. Tigers become stars. Sometimes even people forget what they really are."
Lian stared at him.
"You think people can change what they are?" he asked, careful.
"I think what we see in them changes. When we're ready."
Then Mr. Arman turned and walked away like he hadn't just reached into Lian's skull and shaken something loose.
The next day, Lian saw a new student in the hallway.
Tall, confident. Smile like polished glass. Wore a deep red hoodie and earbuds that never left his ears.
Everyone seemed drawn to him.
Lian didn't trust it.
When he passed, Lian saw the faint outline of a spider behind his eyes.
Not the hunched, heavy one he used to draw for his father—but a new kind. Sleek. Elegant. Watching everything.
The spider smiled at him.
Lian looked away.
But the new student—Kai—started showing up everywhere. In gym. At lunch. Even once near the library.
"I like your drawings," Kai said once. "They say more than words ever could."
Lian froze. His sketchbook was in his backpack.
"You've been watching me?" he asked, cold.
Kai tilted his head. "Just reading what you put out."
For days, Lian felt himself slipping into Kai's orbit. The older boy was charismatic, sharp, kind when he wanted to be. Said things that made Lian feel seen. Noticed his silences. Called out his strengths.
But something stayed wrong.
When Lian wrote about Kai in the bestiary, the spider stayed the same. Never changed.
Kai – spider. beautiful. smooth. dangerous.
Still, part of Lian didn't want to believe it. Maybe Kai was different. Maybe the spider didn't mean betrayal this time.
Maybe.
One afternoon, Lian told Kai something he'd never told anyone.
That sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, he imagined being someone else entirely. Someone who didn't speak two languages. Someone who didn't feel stretched thin between worlds. Someone who didn't see people as animals.
Kai listened. Nodded.
Then he said, "Maybe that's because there is another version of you. You just haven't let him out yet."
Lian felt something shift in his chest. A pressure, like a door about to open.
Two days later, Ms. Devon pulled him aside.
"You told someone I changed your grade on purpose?" she asked, confused and hurt.
"What?" Lian blinked. "No. I didn't—"
But someone had. Someone with just enough pieces of his story to twist it.
The rumor spread fast.
Lian sat alone at lunch again.
Even Jamie looked at him like he'd bitten her.
Kai didn't show up that day.
When Lian opened his bestiary that night, he didn't draw the spider.
He drew himself—arms tangled in threads. Looking up at the ceiling, where something unseen waited to drop.