I caught my reflection in the hallway mirror before leaving that morning.
The boy staring back didn't look like he belonged anywhere.
Black hair, stubborn and uneven, stuck up at the back like it had decided on its own which direction to go. My fringe almost reached my eyes, casting a faint shadow across my face.
My face still had some softness, though hints of sharper lines were beginning to show in my jaw. My eyes, plain, dark, the same as my mother's ,didn't demand attention. They barely held it.
Maria's reflection appeared behind mine.
Her black hair was tied in a loose bun, though strands had escaped to frame her face. Even in a faded shirt and gray sweatpants, she looked composed in a way that made the messy bun seem deliberate.
We shared the same nose, the same eyebrows, even the same slight downturn at the corners of our mouths when we weren't smiling.
She lifted a comb like a verdict.
"Your hair," she said, stepping close.
"It's fine," I muttered.
"It looks like you lost a fight with your pillow," she said, combing through it with small, precise strokes.
I stared at the floor, catching our reflections in the mirror — her fixing what I couldn't be bothered to, her lavender‑scented sleeve brushing my cheek as she pushed my bangs into place.
"There," she said, leaning back. "At least now you look like someone cares."
She tugged my tie straight, gave my shoulder a quick squeeze, and went back to the kitchen.
I left with my hair reluctantly neat, the kind of neatness that wouldn't survive the first hour of school.
The day blurred by, classes, voices, the faint slam of lockers.
By lunch, the cafeteria was too much.
The library was better.
It always was.
The air was cool, carrying the faint scent of dust and old pages.
I took my usual seat in the farthest corner. No one ever sat there, too far from the windows, too close to the shelves no one bothered with.
I set my sketchbook on the table, pencil in hand.
Lines formed without thinking. A shape, too tall, too thin, its claws hooked like they wanted to tear the page apart.
I was shading the hollows of its face when a voice broke the quiet.
"Whoa… what is that? Is it for a game or a manga?"
The pencil slipped, leaving a line I didn't mean.
A shadow fell across the page.
She was standing there, leaning slightly over my table.
Her hair caught the muted library light — ash‑brown, brushing past her shoulders, slightly uneven at the ends. It wasn't styled, but it didn't need to be.
Her eyes — amber, sharp and bright even in the dim light — didn't look away from my drawing.
She was pretty. Too pretty to be standing at my table.
And that made it worse, because pretty people didn't usually come here unless they were looking for something to laugh at.
I felt my hand twitch, instinctively pulling the sketchbook closer, half‑covering the monster.
She didn't leave.
Instead, she leaned in a little, eyes scanning the page like she was trying to see every line.
"Does it… have a name?" she asked, her voice curious instead of cruel.
I hesitated. My throat felt dry.
"…Shadow Fiend," I muttered finally.
The name felt stupid out loud, something a kid would make up, and I almost regretted saying it.
But she didn't laugh.
Instead, her mouth curved into the smallest, most certain smile.
"That's cool," she said, like it wasn't even up for debate.
I blinked.
Cool?
No one had ever called my drawings that before.
Her fingers hovered over the edge of the page, careful not to smudge it. "Did you come up with it?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice yet.
"That's… really cool," she said again, this time softer, like she meant it even more the second time.
I stared at her for a second too long, waiting for the punchline that never came.
Instead, she glanced at the empty chair across from me. "Mind if I sit?"
I minded. But the word didn't make it to my mouth.
She sat anyway, blazer hanging loose on her shoulders, one of her shoelaces half untied.
For a moment, she didn't say anything. Her eyes wandered to the corner of my sketchbook, flipping it just enough to see more pages.
Monsters stared back at her, jagged, scarred, sharp‑toothed things.
My stomach knotted. Any second now, she'd wrinkle her nose, make some joke, and tell the others later how the quiet kid spent lunch drawing nightmares.
But she didn't.
She tapped one drawing, a hulking creature with ribs that jutted out like broken glass.
"This one," she said, her smile crooked, "is creepy… but in a good way."
I almost said thanks, but the word felt foreign in my mouth.
"You draw these all the time?" she asked.
I nodded once.
"They're amazing," she said simply, like there was nothing unusual about saying that to a stranger.
Something about that word stuck. Amazing.
She sat back a little, finally looking up at me instead of the page. "I'm Reya."
The name felt like it belonged.
I swallowed. "…Aki."
She smiled again. "Aki," she repeated, like she was testing how it sounded.
The bell rang a few minutes later.
She closed the sketchbook gently, slid it back toward me like it was fragile.
"See you tomorrow," she said, not a question, not a maybe.
And then she left.
Her ash‑brown hair shifted as she walked away, catching the thin light like it wanted to stay behind.
I stared at the page she'd touched.
Her fingerprint smudged the corner.
The walk home felt different.
The streets were the same, laundry hanging from windows, a dog barking somewhere, a neighbor sweeping leaves into the gutter, but my head was still stuck in the library.
Cool. Amazing.
No one had ever used those words for my drawings before.
I kept thinking of the way she'd looked at the page, like she saw something worth staring at.
By the time I reached our door, my hair had already lost the neatness Maria forced on it.
The house was quiet.
Too quiet.
"Mom?" I called.
"In here," her voice came from the living room, softer than usual.
Maria was on the couch, a towel folded over her forehead, her house shirt wrinkled from lying down.
"You're home early," she said, though it wasn't early.
I set my bag down. "Are you… okay?"
She sat up too quickly, wincing at the movement, but forced a smile. "Just tired. The heat, maybe."
I noticed the small pill bottle on the table beside her. The label was turned away.
"You've been tired a lot," I said before I could stop myself.
Her smile didn't falter, but something in her eyes did.
"Don't worry about me," she said gently. "Go wash up. There's food on the stove."
I wanted to ask more, but I didn't.
She always made it sound like nothing, just a cough, just a little tired, just nothing.
Dinner was quiet.
Maria barely touched her food, pushing rice around her plate before setting her spoon down.
"You didn't eat much," I said.
"Not hungry," she murmured, giving me the same smile she always did when she wanted me to stop asking questions.
Later, when I brought her a glass of water, she asked, "How was school?"
"Fine," I said.
She gave me a look that meant say more.
I hesitated. "…I met someone."
Her eyebrows lifted, the faintest smile creeping across her face.
"A girl?"
I looked away. "Maybe."
Her smile widened, even as she pressed the towel back to her forehead. "A pretty girl noticed you, huh?"
I muttered, "It's not like that," and retreated to my room before she could ask anything else.
I sat on the floor, sketchbook open, pencil in hand.
The monster was still there, unfinished.
I added another line, another shadow, another claw.
But every time I looked at the page, I thought of her voice:
"That's cool."
After a while, I wandered back to the living room.
The TV cast a soft glow across the walls, a late-night variety show filling the quiet with canned laughter. I sank into the couch, but the seat next to me was empty.
Maria had already gone to bed.
Her untouched dinner plate still sat in the sink, the spoon resting across it.
I stared at the towel she'd left on the couch cushion, still damp.
I'd been to the doctor with her enough times to know what she wouldn't say out loud.
They called it chronic heart failure, quiet words for something that was slowly breaking her from the inside.
I thought about the way she brushed it off, the way she smiled when she was too weak to stand for long, the way she tried to fold laundry when she could barely stay awake.
And I thought about my dad.
How he wasn't here. How he hadn't been here in years.
Frustration rose like something bitter in my throat.
I didn't say anything. There was no one to hear it.
The TV laughed for me.
I sat there in the glow of the screen, staring at the towel she'd left behind, wishing someone else was sitting on this couch with us.
I took my sketchbook and drew something, it was not another monster.
But my mother.
Chapter 2 END