Yo.
So here's the deal. From now on, you're getting 5 chapters a week. Yes, five. I know, I know, I'm spoiling you already. Don't get used to it.
...Actually, wait. Do get used to it. Because here's where it gets spicy.
If we get enough reviews (good, bad, absolutely unhinged, I don't care) to make my rating visible on WebNovel AND we crack the top 200 in the Power Stone ranking?
I'm bumping it to 10 chapters a week.
Ten. A week. just for you, darlings.
Look, this is my first serious fiction I've messed around before but this one? This one I'm actually trying. Like, genuinely putting effort into. Gross, I know. So if it's trash, at least it's trash I worked hard on. That's gotta count for something right?
So yeah. Reviews. Power Stones. Throw them at me. Roast me. Praise me. Tell me my pacing is weird. Tell me Yaz makes you feel things. Tell me you skipped three paragraphs because I described a ceiling for too long. I want it all.
Also before the music nerds come for my throat: yes, I know I'm writing absolute bullshit when it comes to these songs. I'm using them for the story, not writing a Wikipedia article. The vibes are correct. The facts are... negotiable. Sue me. (Please don't actually sue me I'm broke.)
Anyway. Top 200 Power Stone. First serious fiction. No pressure or anything.
— Feathers
Behind Blue Eyes by Limp Bizkit
____________________________________________________________________________________
The first mask Yaz learns to wear is gratitude.
It is August. The Practice Room holds the heavy air of late summer, thick and still, the kind of air that makes breathing feel like work. Yaz sits at the piano. His fingers rest on the keys, not pressing, just touching. Feeling the smooth ivory. Counting the seconds between each blink of the red light in the corner.
Four seconds. Always four seconds.
He has been back for seven months now. Seven months since he walked through the front entrance of the orphanage instead of sneaking through the service door. Seven months since Thorne sat across from him with that gold watch glinting and those warm, careful eyes and said, You've been missed.
Seven months of being watched more closely than before. Seven months of smaller freedoms. Seven months of learning what the cage looks like from the inside when you have seen it from the outside and know that outside is just another cage with different bars.
And now. Now Yaz is ready to do something different.
What are you thinking?
The Maestro's voice comes from the back of his head, slightly to the right, warm like a hand on his shoulder. The voice has been quieter since the return. More watchful. As if it, too, is learning something new about patience.
I'm thinking about what Thorne wants to hear.
The study begins with observation.
Thorne visits on Tuesdays and Fridays. He arrives at exactly two in the afternoon. Punctual. Precise. The gold watch on his wrist tells the time in a way that suggests time belongs to him, that the seconds and minutes are his to spend however he chooses.
Yaz watches.
He watches the way Thorne's shoulders drop when Yaz plays something Thorne considers "progress." The slight relaxation in the jaw. The exhale that sounds like satisfaction.
He watches the way Thorne's eyes narrow when Yaz asks questions. The subtle tightening around the mouth. The way the warmth in his voice becomes slightly harder, slightly more careful, like water turning to ice in slow motion.
He watches the gold watch. The way Thorne touches it when he is making decisions. The way his thumb runs along the edge of the metal, unconscious, habitual. The watch is old. Inherited. A thing that has measured out deals and contracts and negotiations for generations of men who believed that time was money and money was power.
Data, the Maestro says. You're collecting data.
Yes.
Good. What have you learned?
Yaz presses a C chord. Soft. The notes fill the Practice Room like a question.
I've learned that he wants to believe I've accepted this. He wants to see maturity. Growth. The difficult child becoming the cooperative artist.
And?
And I can give him that. I can give him exactly what he wants to see.
The testing begins in September.
Thorne arrives on a Friday. The air outside is cooling. Yaz can feel the change through the small window high on the wall, the first hint of autumn creeping into the summer's stubborn heat.
"How are we feeling today?" Thorne asks. He settles into his chair, crosses one leg over the other. The gold watch catches the light.
Yaz has practiced this. In front of the small mirror near the vocal microphone, he has practiced the way his face needs to look. Not too eager. Not too grateful. Just. Settled. A boy who has thought about things and come to understand.
"Good," Yaz says. "I've been working on the Chopin études you recommended."
A pause. Thorne's eyebrows rise slightly.
"Have you?"
"Yes. Opus 10, Number 4. The one about technique becoming invisible."
This is deliberate. Yaz has read Thorne's library. Has found the books about music that Thorne keeps in his office, the ones with dog-eared pages and highlighted passages. Thorne has marked that phrase. Technique becoming invisible. It is his philosophy. His brand.
The slight relaxation in Thorne's shoulders. The exhale. Data collected.
"I knew you'd come to appreciate the foundations," Thorne says. "The discipline. It takes maturity to see past the constraints to the freedom they enable."
Freedom. The word lands in Yaz's chest like a stone dropped in still water. Ripples of something that might be anger. Might be bitter laughter. He lets none of it reach his face.
"Thank you for the new strings, by the way," Yaz says. "The guitar sounds better."
Thorne's smile widens. Just a fraction. But Yaz sees it.
He believes it, the Maestro says. There is something complicated in the voice. Pride and worry tangled together. He believes what he's seeing.
Yes.
How does that make you feel?
Yaz does not answer. He is not sure he knows.
The masks multiply.
For Thorne: the grateful prodigy. The child who has come to understand the wisdom of patience. Who practices what is assigned. Who says "thank you" and means it just enough for the word to land without suspicion.
For Mrs. Okonkwo: distance. Not coldness. Something more careful. Polite. Correct. The wall between them is not made of anger anymore. It is made of protection. Yaz cannot afford to let her see what he is becoming. Cannot afford to let guilt or concern make her say something to Thorne that might undo the work.
She notices, of course. When they cross paths in the hallway, her eyes linger on his face, searching for something she used to find there. The boy who needed her. The boy who believed she might save him.
"You seem... better," she says one October morning. Her bracelet clicks. Click, click. The sound of guilt she cannot name.
"I am better," Yaz says. His voice is even. Pleasant. The voice of a child who has made peace with his circumstances. "Thank you for asking."
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Her hand rises toward him, then falls. The gesture of someone who wants to reach across a distance that keeps growing.
Yaz smiles. The smile he has practiced. The one that looks real but costs him nothing.
For the other staff: invisibility. Not the invisibility of before, the kind that came from being overlooked, from being small and forgettable. This is chosen. Cultivated. He moves through the orphanage like a ghost made of cooperation. Present when required. Absent when not. No trouble. No questions. No reason for anyone to look too closely.
For the red light: whatever it expects. When he practices, he practices well. When he speaks, he speaks clearly. The cameras capture a boy who has found his place. Who has stopped fighting. Who has, in Thorne's favorite word, matured.
The red light blinks. Four seconds. Four seconds. Four seconds.
Yaz counts them and wears the mask of a child who does not count at all.
The cost comes in November.
He is practicing late. The other children are sleeping above. The orphanage has that particular quality of silence it gets at night, heavy and pressing, like being at the bottom of something deep.
The Maestro stirs.
You're splitting.
Yaz's fingers pause on the cello strings. He has been playing Bach. The Prelude from the first suite. The piece Elena taught him before she stopped coming, before she became another teacher who asked too few questions and received too much money.
What do you mean?
I mean there are two of you now. The one who wears the masks. And the one underneath. Which one is real?
The question lands somewhere in his chest. Uncomfortable. Like pressing on a bruise.
Both, Yaz thinks. Neither.
That's not an answer.
I know.
He draws the bow across the strings. A long, low note. It fills the Practice Room like a moan. Like something in pain that has not yet learned how to scream.
You're learning to hide, the Maestro says. The voice is gentle now. Concerned. But don't forget what you're hiding. The masks are tools. They're not supposed to become your face.
Yaz lets the note fade. The silence afterward is thick. Full of something he cannot name.
He looks at his reflection in the dark window. A smudged shape. An outline. A boy who might be anyone.
Which face is real?
The question has no answer. Or too many answers. Or an answer he is not ready to know.
The song begins in December.
It starts the way his songs always start. Not with intention but with need. Something pressing up from underneath, demanding to be let out, demanding a shape.
He is sitting with the cello between his knees. The Practice Room is cold. Winter has arrived in earnest now, and the heating system in the basement is old and unreliable, cycling through warmth and chill in patterns Yaz has memorized but never understood.
His fingers find the strings. Not playing. Just touching. Feeling the tension. The potential.
And then, without deciding, he begins.
The melody is quiet. Vulnerable. Rising and falling like breath. Like the rhythm of a heart that is working very hard to keep going even when going is hard.
What is this?
I don't know yet.
The cello speaks what he cannot say out loud. The loneliness of wearing faces that are not his own. The ache of being seen by everyone and known by no one. The strange exhaustion of performance, of being always on, always calculating, always measuring the gap between what he feels and what he shows.
"No one knows what it's like..."
The words arrive with the melody. He does not sing them. He whispers them into the Practice Room's patient air. A truth too heavy for volume.
To be the bad man.
He stops. His hands are trembling. The bow shakes in his grip.
Is that what he is becoming? The bad man? The one who hides. Who calculates. Who wears faces to get what he wants.
No, the Maestro says. That's not what the song is about.
Then what?
It's about being misunderstood. About the sadness people can't see. About the anger underneath the mask that you show the world.
Yaz lets the bow rest against the strings. The cello hums faintly. Waiting.
It's about me, he thinks.
Yes. It's about you.
The song takes shape through winter.
He builds it in pieces, the way you build a wall. Stone by stone. Note by note. Each session adding something new, something truer.
The verses are quiet. Vulnerable. A voice that is almost a whisper, confessing things that cannot be said aloud. The melody rises and falls like waves, gentle, washing over something buried underneath.
No one knows what it's like to feel these feelings...
And then the bridges. The bridges are different.
The bridges explode. Heavy. Aggressive. The cello crying out instead of weeping. The sound of something that has been held too long finally breaking free, tearing through the quiet like lightning through a dark sky.
My dreams they aren't as empty as my conscience seems to be.
Two voices. Two faces. The soft one he hides. The hard one he shows when he needs to survive.
The Maestro watches the construction. Offers guidance. A note here. A transition there. But mostly the Maestro just watches, and in the watching, Yaz feels understood.
This is good, the Maestro says in February. The song is nearly complete. This is you.
Both of me.
Yes. Both of you. The mask and the face underneath. You've put them both in the song.
Yaz plays through the whole piece. Three minutes and forty-seven seconds. He has timed it. He times everything now. Numbers are anchors. Numbers are control.
When he finishes, the silence is different. Full instead of empty. The Practice Room holds what he has made, and in the holding, returns it to him somehow transformed.
He turns twelve in March.
The day arrives the way his birthdays always arrive. Unmarked by anyone but himself. A tick on a calendar no one sees.
But this birthday is different.
This birthday is halfway.
Thorne has promised the reveal will happen when Yaz is fourteen. Two more years of preparation. Two more years of cultivation. Two more years of being the Hidden Voice, the asset, the investment waiting to mature.
Halfway, Yaz thinks. He is sitting at the piano. The morning light comes through the high window, dust motes drifting in the beam like tiny worlds spinning in space. Twelve years old. Halfway to something that might be freedom or might be a different kind of cage.
He plays the song he has written. Not on the cello this time. On the piano. Transposing. Finding new textures. The quiet verses like rain on glass. The explosive bridges like storms.
"Behind Blue Eyes," he whispers to himself. The title has arrived. He does not know where it came from. It was simply there one morning, waiting, like something he had always known.
Behind blue eyes. Not his eyes. His eyes are dark brown, almost black. But the phrase is not about color. It is about hiding. About the wall between what people see and what is real.
The Maestro speaks.
The mask protects you. Just remember which face is real.
I will.
You say that. But masks are dangerous things. The longer you wear them, the harder they are to remove. And sometimes... The voice pauses. Weighs something. Sometimes people forget they're wearing them at all.
Yaz's fingers stop on the keys. The last note fades into the Practice Room's waiting air.
He knows the Maestro is right. He can feel it. The mask is getting comfortable. The calculation is becoming automatic. When Thorne visits, Yaz no longer has to think about what to say. The right words arrive without effort. The grateful prodigy. The maturing child. The boy who has learned his place.
It is working. Thorne believes it completely now. The surveillance has relaxed slightly. The freedoms have expanded, just a little, just enough to confirm that the strategy is succeeding.
But at what cost?
He stands in front of the mirror.
It is a small mirror, mounted near the vocal microphone for positioning practice. His reflection fills the glass. A twelve-year-old boy with his mother's cheekbones and his father's eyes and a face that has learned to be whatever the moment requires.
He smiles.
The smile looks real. It would fool Thorne. It would fool Mrs. Okonkwo. It would fool anyone watching through the cameras, anyone analyzing the footage, anyone looking for cracks in the performance.
Where are you?
The question comes from the Maestro, but it also comes from somewhere deeper. From the boy who wrote "7 Years" on yellow paper, who stood at a fence and ached to belong, who found the broken radio in the storage room and heard music where there was only silence.
Where are you under all of this?
Yaz looks at his reflection. At the mask that has become so convincing. At the face beneath it that is... where?
He drops the smile.
And there.
For just a moment.
He sees himself.
Not the grateful prodigy. Not the distant polite child. Not the ghost who moves through the orphanage gathering no attention. Just. Yaz. Eleven years old (no, twelve now, twelve as of today). Tired. Watchful. Angry in a way that has no outlet. Lonely in a way that has no name.
Alive.
He touches the mirror. The glass is cool under his fingertips. His reflection touches back.
Still there, the Maestro says. And there is relief in the voice. And something else. Pride, maybe. Or hope. Still you.
Still me, Yaz agrees.
He holds the gaze for a long moment. Memorizing. Anchoring. Reminding himself what is underneath before the mask goes back on.
Then he takes a breath. Straightens his shoulders. Lets the smile return.
The mirror shows a twelve-year-old boy with his mother's cheekbones and his father's eyes and a smile that means nothing at all.
That is the mask.
Somewhere underneath, the real Yaz waits. The one who wrote the song. The one the song is about. The one who will survive this.
He touches the glass once.
The reflection touches back.
Still there.
Still him.
The mask is necessary.
But it is not forever.
🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶
No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
And no one knows what it's like
To be hated
To be fated to telling only lies
But my dreams they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free
No one knows what it's like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you (you, you, you)
No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through
But my dreams they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free
No one knows what it's like
To be mistreated, to be defeated
Behind blue eyes
And no one knows how to say
That they're sorry and don't worry
I'm not telling lies
But my dreams, they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free
No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶