The walk home from the gym happened in silence. Jimmy didn't look at him. Charlie kept a hand loose on Jimmy's shoulder the whole way, not gripping, just present, like he thought Jimmy might lunge again if he let go entirely. Arnold walked half a step behind everyone, saying nothing, which was somehow louder than anything he could have said. Jamson kept glancing at Ashen sideways, then away, then back again, like he was trying to find the right moment to say something and never finding it.
Nobody found the right moment. They split off at their usual corners with none of the usual noise — no jokes, no shoving, no "see you tomorrow" thrown over a shoulder. Just a row of quiet goodbyes, each one smaller than the last.
Before they could part, Ashen stopped and said, "I'm sorry. I was being selfish." They all looked at Jimmy, but he didn't respond — just kept walking. Ashen looked down, the punch mark still visible on his face, swollen now, and didn't push further. He said goodbye to everyone and went on his way.
His pace was slow and steady. It was almost night, the sky split half orange, half dark — the kind of sky that told no bad stories, only joy. But that was far from the truth.
You're a stupid, selfish idiot.
The words followed him the whole way, matching his footsteps like something walking just behind him. He didn't disagree with them. That was the strange part. He'd expected to feel angry, defensive, something with teeth in it. Instead he just felt the truth of it sitting in his chest, heavy and plain, right next to the other thing that hadn't moved an inch because of it.
Every word Jimmy had said kept circling back through his head, over and over. As he walked, goosebumps rose along his arms and his chest went tight with something close to panic — a flash of purple light at the very corner of his eye, there and gone, like something was closing in. He spun around, heart hammering, but the streets were as empty as the night his grandmother had been taken from him. His pulse wouldn't slow, though he couldn't say why. Sweat rolled down his cheeks. The air, warm only a moment ago, had gone suddenly, impossibly cold.
"What was that? What's happening?" he muttered, turning in place, hoping for something — anything — that would explain it. It was only then he noticed his cycle lying on the ground beside him, fallen from his hand the moment his body had gone rigid with fear. He grabbed the cold handle and pulled it upright, and ran. After some distance his breath came ragged, and he kept glancing back, again and again, but there was nothing behind him — no one, nothing — except a few birds startled into the dark. He didn't think to stay any longer. He got on the bike and rode home as fast as he could, his body slowly calming, until the jolt of terror he'd felt began to feel like something he'd only imagined.
He reached the gate, parked his cycle, and ran to the front door. He rang the bell — it rang twice — before he heard footsteps hurrying toward the door.
Nora opened it, drying her hands on her apron, and her face shifted the moment she saw him — the too-fast breathing, the color gone from his face, the way his hand was still locked around the cycle's handle like he'd forgotten to let go.
"Ashen? What happened? Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine," he said, too quickly. "I just — ran the last bit. Wanted to get back before dark."
She studied him a moment longer than the excuse deserved, the way she always did, but she didn't push. "Well, you're freezing. Come in, come in — I kept dinner warm."
He stepped inside, and the ordinary warmth of the house — the smell of something simmering, the low murmur of the television in the other room, Walter's voice calling out an absent "That you, kid?" — settled over him like a blanket thrown over something that hadn't finished shaking yet. He let it. He didn't have the energy to do anything else.
He ate. He said goodnight. He climbed the stairs to a room that still smelled faintly of someone else's paint, and he lay in the dark for a long time without sleeping, replaying not Jimmy's words now but the flash of purple and the sudden, bone-deep cold that had come with it.
It was nothing, he told himself. I imagined it. I'm tired. I haven't been sleeping. People see things when they haven't been sleeping.
He almost believed it by morning.
The next two days moved the way still water moves — technically forward, but so slowly it barely counted as motion. He went to school. He sat through classes without absorbing a single word of them. At lunch, the table was quieter than it used to be, but it held. Jimmy still sat across from him, and after a few stilted exchanges, he mumbled an apology for that day, and they slowly fell back into talking normally. Nobody brought up the gym, the punch, the number three scrawled across two pages of a notebook. They talked about nothing, the way they always had, and Ashen let the nothing wash over him and pretended it was enough.
At home, he helped Nora in the kitchen. He let Walter talk him into watching a match he had no real interest in. He did his homework at the same worn table where his grandmother used to stir the same slow circles into a pot, and some quiet, observant part of him noted that he was doing a very good impression of a boy who was healing.
Sometimes he went to his old home and just sat there, doing nothing. Dust gathered on everything now. The smell that used to rule the house had begun giving way to something older, something not fully known but not fully forgotten either. He ran his hand over the table — the wood felt the same as he remembered, though dust clung faintly to his palm now. He paid it no attention. The garden he and his grandmother had worked so hard to grow sat overgrown in the backyard. He'd always wanted it to grow wild like this; she'd never allowed it. Now that it finally had, he felt no joy in it at all — only the ache of wanting to see it overgrown with her, not instead of her.
He was not healing. He was waiting for the house to go quiet. His mind stayed fixed on revenge, the same thoughts circling no matter how well he performed getting better. He'd accepted the reality of what happened — he hadn't accepted losing. He didn't want to give up before he'd even tried; he wanted to test his luck, wanted to struggle the way a drowning man thrashes toward the surface on the chance it might save him. At least, that was what he told himself his own mind was doing. The desperation clung to him and wouldn't let go for even a second, and eventually he made his decision. He gathered a flashlight, and with money he'd saved, bought a combat knife from a local store called Pro Hikers. He tried to learn how to use it from videos online and learned almost nothing, but he kept it with him anyway, telling himself it was only for self-defense.
On the third night, it did. Walter's snoring settled into its steady rhythm down the hall. The refrigerator's hum became the loudest thing left in the building. Ashen lay still for another twenty minutes just to be sure, counting his own heartbeat in the dark. Then he got up. He dressed without turning on the light — shoes tied, face covered with a mask, the knife fastened at his waist — and, with slow and quiet steps, let himself out the back door with the careful, practiced silence of someone who had already decided this would not be the only night.
He closed the door carefully behind him and looked around. At first he considered taking his cycle, but he discarded the idea and decided to go on foot instead. He didn't know where to start now that he was actually outside, and his fear crept back in — every word Jimmy had said hit harder out here, alone, in the dark. His hands shook a little, nervousness piling up in his chest, but he slapped himself once and forced himself to move. The night sky was clear, the cold breeze flowing as always, the night simply being what a night should be — empty streets, flickering lights, some burning bright, some giving up entirely to age.
He walked slowly, almost carefully, looking around at every shadow like something could lunge at him at any moment. His heart pumped blood like there was no future in front of him, his body coiled and ready to sprint the second anything happened. The unknown scared him far more than any group of thugs could have. But he kept moving despite what he was feeling, his eyes darting from corner to corner, until he found himself somewhere he couldn't get out of his mind — the same alley where his grandmother had died.
He looked for something — anything. The police tape was still up, though parts of it had torn loose. "The police said they didn't find anything," he murmured. He looked around; the chalked outline of his grandmother's body was still there, visible clear as day. He searched the nearby corners, the trash cans, behind them, and scanned for cameras, but there was nothing. They must have made her come here on purpose, he thought. A dead spot. Somewhere no one would ever find anything.
Then something clicked. The police couldn't find anything, and the jewelry Grandma was wearing is still missing. If I could find that necklace, I could narrow my search down. His mind raced ahead of him. There are seven jewelry shops in town. I'll ask every one of them tomorrow. His hope climbed with every second. "I think I should do this," he said quietly, and left the site — he'd found nothing else there worth staying for.
Ashen lingered a while longer, then went home. He stayed in the next morning while Nora and Walter went about their routine — breakfast, then Walter off to work — and once enough time had passed, he decided to visit the shops. "I'm going to take a stroll. I'll be back in an hour or so," he told Nora. She nodded along, and he hopped on his bicycle and set off. The first shop he reached was neither modern nor particularly old.
He opened the door, and a young woman behind the counter greeted him. "How may I help you?" she asked, her tone polished into the kind of politeness reserved for customers.
"I want to know if someone came in to sell a necklace," he said.
She looked at him, faintly confused. "Can you tell me what it looked like?"
Ashen nodded and explained. "It was a silver chain, with two glass leaf charms and a small flower with a blue marble at its center."
"Let me take a look." She pulled out a notebook and paged through it slowly. "I'm sorry, but it looks like there's been no such purchase here," she said.
Ashen's face fell. "It's alright. Thank you for your help," he said.
She nodded and told him to come again.
He stepped back out and moved on to the next shop, and the one after that, and the one after that — but every shop gave him the same nothing. Hope was starting to slip. "Just three more. I need to keep going," he muttered, walking into the fifth shop of the day. He was already far past when he'd said he'd be back — he'd told Nora an hour, and he'd already been out for three.
The fifth shop sat wedged between a shuttered bakery and a tailor's that smelled permanently of starch. A bell over the door announced him, thin and tired, like it had rung too many times to bother sounding cheerful about it anymore.
An old man looked up from behind the counter, a jeweler's loupe still pressed to one eye, magnifying it into something faintly insectile.
"Help you?"
Ashen had said the same line four times already that day, and it came out smoother now than it had the first time. "I'm trying to find a necklace. Silver chain, two glass leaf charms, a small flower with a blue marble in the center. Someone might have sold it here recently."
The old man's loupe came down slowly. Something shifted behind his eyes — not recognition exactly, more like a door easing open a crack before someone decides whether to let you in.
"Why do you want to know?"
"It was my grandmother's," Ashen said. That much, at least, cost him nothing to say honestly.
The old man was quiet for a moment, turning a pen over in his fingers. Then: "Someone brought something like that in. Two days ago, maybe three." He said it carefully, the way you'd hand someone something breakable.
Ashen's pulse picked up before he'd even decided to feel anything. "Did you buy it?"
"No." The old man set the pen down. "I've been doing this for thirty years. You learn to read hands before you read the merchandise. His were shaking so bad he nearly dropped the thing on the counter. Kept looking at the door like he expected someone to walk through it. I don't touch jewelry that comes to me looking like that. Not worth what it could cost me."
"What did he look like?"
The old man studied him now, really studied him, the loupe forgotten on the counter between them. "Why does a boy your age want to know that?"
"Please." Ashen didn't have to fake the crack in his voice. "It's the only thing I have left of her."
Something in the old man's face softened, or maybe just tired further. He described him anyway — thin, patchy stubble, a jacket too heavy for the weather, a tattoo on the back of one hand that might have been a bird, might have been nothing, the old man's eyes weren't what they used to be. No name. No idea where he'd gone.
"He left in a hurry," the old man said. "Didn't even ask where else he might sell it. Just walked out like the building was on fire."
Ashen thanked him. He meant it more than the old man could have known.
Outside, the street had gone gray with early evening, and for the first time, he had something.
A tattoo. A jacket too heavy for the weather. Someone scared enough to run from a shop that wasn't even buying.
It wasn't a name. It wasn't a face he could put anywhere yet.
But it was a thread. And threads, if you pulled them long enough, led somewhere.
So he started staying out longer at night than before. He looked visibly sleepier now, dark circles settling under his eyes, but he kept pushing through, day after day — he finally had something to aim for, some direction to search in. A week passed since it had all started.
He was back home one afternoon, looking at the garden his grandmother had once tended with her own hands. "The plants are growing way too fast," he said. A man's voice answered from behind him. "Yeah, it's happening all over town," Walter said, looking over the garden too. "Just the season, probably. Clearer days, maybe more sunlight." Neither of them thought much of it — they'd only come outside to clean up around the house. His school life improved as well. His friends slowly settled back into their old rhythm, Jimmy becoming his usual self again, and for a while, everything seemed to click back into place.
The nights soon fell back into the same steps, the same routine — but one thing had changed. He no longer hesitated before slipping out. The fear he'd first felt had been replaced with something colder, more resolved. He practiced with the knife every night, and though his progress was slow, he was fairly certain he could at least hold his own against someone his own size.
One night he reached a corner of town he hadn't explored yet, and he stopped to rest, pulling out the water bottle he always carried with him now. I hope I find something today, he thought. I've been stuck for a week.
As he sat there, he heard someone talking — a voice on a phone, just a few meters away. He looked over and saw a man in a long coat, long-haired, leaning against a fence, his face turned away and hidden from view. What is someone doing out here at this hour, shouting into a phone like that? he wondered. Then he caught what the man actually said, and the ground seemed to slip out from under him.
"Yeah, I know those stupid fuckers killed the old lady, but pay it no attention — we've got more important work," the man said into the phone.
"YOU!" Ashen screamed at him.
The man went still. Not startled-still — deliberate-still, the stillness of someone who has been surprised many times in his life and has trained himself out of flinching.
"Someone say something?" he said, not to Ashen — into the phone, almost bored. Then, after a pause: "Call you back." The line clicked dead.
Only then did he look at Ashen properly. Whatever he saw — a teenager, alone, shaking, in the wrong part of town at the wrong hour — didn't seem to concern him much.
"You," Ashen said again, quieter this time, like the word had used up everything he had. "What do you know about my grandmother?"
The man tilted his head. "Your grandmother." He said it slowly, testing the shape of it. "Kid, I don't know your grandmother."
"I heard you." Ashen's hands had curled into fists without his permission. "I heard what you said. About the old lady. About the people who—" His voice cracked and he hated it, hated that it cracked now of all times.
Something shifted in the man's face — recognition, maybe, or just the recalculation of a man realizing the conversation was more interesting than he'd assumed. He studied Ashen the way the old jeweler had, except there was nothing kind underneath it.
"Ah." He almost smiled. "That old lady."
"Tell me who did it." Ashen took a step forward. "Tell me their names."
The man laughed — short, dry, entirely without humor. "You've got some nerve, walking up to a stranger at midnight and demanding things." He leaned back against the fence again, unbothered, like Ashen was a mild inconvenience rather than a threat. "Go home, kid. This isn't a conversation you want to be having."
"I'm not leaving until you tell me." Ashen's voice was shaking now, but he didn't move.
"You're not leaving." The man repeated it like he found the idea almost charming. "Alright." He pushed off the fence, unhurried, and started walking toward him instead of away — which was somehow worse than if he'd run. "Let's talk, then."
Ashen's hand went to the knife at his belt before he could stop it.
The man's eyes flicked down, caught the motion, and this time he did smile. "Oh, you brought a toy."
"Stay back."
"Kid." The man kept walking, closing the distance like the knife simply didn't register as a variable. "Do you know how many people have pulled a knife on me? Do you know how many of them are still walking around with the same number of fingers they started with?"
"I said stay back!" Ashen lunged.
It was over faster than he could process it. A hand closed around his wrist before the knife had covered half the distance, twisted it aside, drove a knee into his stomach, and the knife was gone — clattering somewhere in the dark — before the pain even registered. The second thing he registered was the ground meeting his back hard enough to knock the air out of him.
He lay there, gasping, staring up at the man standing over him, entirely unbothered, adjusting his coat like he'd stepped over a puddle rather than put down an attacker. Terror settled into Ashen fully now, and every word Jimmy had said suddenly made complete sense — if someone could kill an old woman with this little effort, they could kill him just as easily.
"There it is," the man said, almost gently now, almost bored again. "That's the part where you should've stopped and thought about who you were talking to."
Ashen tried to get up. A boot on his chest put him back down — not hard, just final.
"Please." The word came out of him before he could stop it, raw and humiliating. "Please. I just want to know who killed her." Tears rolled down his face now, and he was nearly begging outright.
The man crouched down slowly, forearms on his knee, studying Ashen's face the way you'd study something you were deciding whether to keep or throw away.
"Why does it matter to you?" he asked. Not cruel. Almost curious.
"She's all I had left." Ashen's voice broke entirely now. "Please. I'll give you anything. I have money — I got a scholarship, I can—"
"Money." The man said the word like it tasted strange in his mouth. He laughed again, quieter this time. "Kid, I don't need your school money." He tilted his head, considering. "But I'll tell you what. I like nerve. Don't see much of it anymore — not the real kind, anyway, the kind that gets a boy to pull a knife on a man twice his size at midnight over a dead woman."
He stood, and the boot lifted off Ashen's chest.
"Get up."
Ashen did, slowly, every part of him aching.
"I don't know the names," the man said, and something in his voice made clear this was, unusually, the truth. "That's not my business. But I know people who deal in that kind of trash, and trash like that doesn't just vanish into thin air after a job goes bad." His voice stayed calm as he studied Ashen, one hand coming up to his chin, a smirk settling across his face. "I don't need your money. But I'd like you to do something for me — and when it's done, I'll tell you whatever I know."
Ashen looked at him, caught for a moment between the urge to run home and pretend none of this had happened, and something colder that was already taking its place. This is the chance, he thought. The chance to find those bastards.
He looked at the man. "I will do it."