It had been three weeks since Mr. Arman gave Lian the key to the hidden room, and in that time, Lian's journal had grown thick with sketches and observations. He had started cataloging classmates like butterflies—each a creature pinned to a page, labeled and categorized.
He was getting good at it.
Too good, maybe.
At lunch, he'd glance at someone and write them off in seconds. Monkey. Turtle. Dog. Snake. The images came easier now, faster—like flipping through a mental deck of cards.
Jamie had noticed.
"You're doing that thing again," she said, chewing the end of her pen as they sat under the tree near the science wing.
"What thing?"
"That look. Like you already know what someone is before they open their mouth."
"I kinda do," Lian said. "It's not judging. It's... decoding."
Jamie raised an eyebrow. "You sure about that?"
Lian didn't answer. He was too busy watching Cameron across the quad. Cameron, who had laughed a little too loudly at a joke Lian hadn't heard. Who leaned back in his chair like he owned the ground under it.
Fox, Lian thought. Sly. Charming. Probably fake.
That night, he sketched Cameron in his journal with a brushy tail and a sly smile. Underneath, he wrote:
Cameron: Fox. Watch your back.
A few days later, they were paired up in bio.
Cameron was unusually quiet at first. Focused. Careful. His notes were better than Lian expected, and he explained something about enzymes that actually made sense.
"You're not what I thought," Lian blurted before he could stop himself.
Cameron blinked. "Okay…"
"I mean—I just didn't think you were… into this stuff."
"What, school?" Cameron smirked. "Yeah, shocker. I actually care about not failing."
Lian tried to smile, but it felt crooked.
They kept working. By the end of the period, Cameron had made him laugh twice, and Lian had forgotten to be suspicious.
The next day, Jamie was waiting by his locker.
"Guess who asked me to hang out this weekend," she said, eyes twinkling.
Lian blinked. "Who?"
"Cameron."
Something twisted in his stomach. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. He's funny. Kind of sweet when he's not being loud." She nudged him. "I thought you said he was a fox."
"I… I did," Lian said, confused. "But maybe he's—"
"Not an animal?" she offered.
Lian didn't answer.
That night, he stared at his sketch of Cameron.
The fox eyes seemed wrong now. Lazy. Shallow. The whole drawing felt like a bad guess. Like he'd seen only one mask and assumed it was a face.
He flipped to a new page.
Cameron: ???Kind eyes. Careful hands. Maybe just… human.
Then he added:
Maybe I was the fox.
At school, he kept second-guessing.
Mrs. Ogawa, the strict math teacher he'd always seen as a hawk—sharp-eyed, impatient—paused to help him after class and gently walked him through a mistake in his equation. No sighs. No eye rolls.
And for a second, he saw her differently. Not as a hawk.
But as someone who had once struggled too.
Maybe a goose. Protective. Loyal. Often misunderstood.
The lines between the animals were starting to blur.
And that scared him.
Because if his lens was wrong—how many others had he misread?
He returned to the secret room after school, hoping for clarity. The journals didn't answer him, but one phrase kept repeating across several entries:
"Animal forms are impressions, not identities."
"What you see is a shadow, not a truth."
"The moment you believe you know someone is the moment you stop learning who they are."
He left the room feeling smaller.
But also freer.
He didn't tear out any pages from his journal.
But he did start adding notes. Questions. Doubts. Space for people to change.
And for the first time, he flipped to the page labeled "Mom."
Next to the tired but patient panda he'd drawn months ago, he wrote:
Also: lioness. Brave. Hiding pain.
Then:
I think I'm starting to see her. Not just her shape. Her story.