Lian stopped looking.
Stopped trying to see the animals. When someone spoke to him, he focused on the words, not the flickers behind their eyes or the curve of their shadow. He closed that door in his mind. Locked it.
It was safer that way.
At least, that's what he told himself.
In art class, Ms. Lin handed out materials for a new project: mask-making.
"You'll design a mask based on someone you admire," she said. "Real or imagined."
Lian blinked down at the blank paper plate on his desk.
Admire?
He thought of his mother. Then of the spider.
Then of no one.
Around him, kids chattered excitedly, cutting, painting, gluing feathers and buttons. Lian picked up a black marker and began outlining something without thinking.
When he finished, the mask looked like a turtle. Shell-like patterns for eyes. A mouth too tight, like it had swallowed all its words.
After school, Jamie approached him at his locker. It was the first time in days.
"Hey," she said, quietly.
Lian didn't answer.
"I heard you got into the showcase. That's cool."
He nodded once.
Jamie hesitated, then said, "I'm sorry about what happened with Kai. I didn't know."
Lian looked at her, trying not to see anything. Not a tiger. Not a moth. Not even a human.
Just blank space.
She reached into her bag and handed him a folded paper. "This is the flier. I thought maybe... you'd still want to read."
He took it but didn't meet her eyes.
She lingered for a second longer, then left.
He didn't open the flier.
Instead, he threw it in the trash on his way out of school.
It wasn't spite. It was fear.
If he let her back in—what if he got it wrong again?
What if she turned into something else?
What if he did?
That night, his mother came into his room holding an old photo album. The corners were frayed. She sat beside him without asking.
"This was my mother," she said, pointing to a small woman with strong eyes and rough hands. "Everyone feared her. She always wore red. Always had opinions."
"She looks like a dragon," Lian said, surprising himself.
His mother smiled faintly. "She did."
Then, softly, "She hurt me. A lot. But she also saved me."
Lian looked at her.
"How do you hold both?" he asked. "The good and the bad?"
"You don't hold them separately," she said. "You just… carry the truth. All tangled."
Later, Lian opened his sketchbook.
He flipped to Jamie's page.
Under her name, he drew not a moth, not a tiger.
Just a hand—offering something.
And under that, he wrote:
I didn't see her. Not really.
Then, for the first time in a long time, he cried.
Not because someone hurt him.
But because he had hurt someone else.