Three days after his birthday, Yaz discovered something.
The fence was not just metal. It was a language. A grammar of belonging and not-belonging, written in chain-link and rust and the particular way cold steel pressed diamond patterns into the pads of your fingers when you held on long enough. He had held on long enough many times now. The diamonds were becoming familiar. Like letters in an alphabet he was only beginning to read.
He stood there during outdoor hour, fingers threaded through the wire, and watched the street the way other children watched the television in the common room. With a hunger that had nothing to do with the stomach. The March wind cut through his gray shirt and raised bumps along his arms, small mountains of flesh that appeared and stayed and did not go away no matter how long he stood there. He did not move. Cold was just a fact. Like loneliness. Like the forty-seven tiles above his bed. You learned to live with facts. You learned to stand inside them like rooms you could not leave.
A man walked past on the sidewalk. Tall, dark-skinned, wearing a coat the color of coffee. His hand was wrapped around a smaller hand. A girl's hand. Five or six maybe. She wore pink shoes that flashed when they hit the pavement. Fwip. Fwip. Fwip. Little explosions of light with each step. She was talking, animated, her free arm cutting shapes in the air as she explained something urgent and incomprehensible. Adults never seemed to understand the urgency of incomprehensible things. But this man was nodding. Listening. His head tilted toward her like a flower toward sun.
The man stopped.
Not because of Yaz. Not because of anything to do with the orphanage or the fence or the boy gripping it with whitening knuckles. He stopped because the girl had stopped, pointing at something on the ground. A beetle, maybe. Or a crack that looked like something. Children were always finding cracks that looked like something. Yaz had found seventeen in the cafeteria floor alone. One looked like a bird. One looked like the number four. One looked like nothing at all, which was somehow the most interesting.
And then the man bent down, scooped the girl up with both hands, and lifted her onto his shoulders in a single motion. Easy as breathing. Like he had done it a thousand times. Like it was nothing.
The girl shrieked.
Delight, not fear. There was a difference. Yaz knew the difference. He had catalogued the sounds children made the way other children collected stones or trading cards. Fear shrieks went up and then cut off, like something sliced. Delight shrieks went up and kept going, spiraling, reaching for something higher.
This one reached.
The girl grabbed fistfuls of the man's coat collar. She was so high now. She could see over everything. Over the fence. Over Yaz. Over the whole gray world. The man said something Yaz could not hear, and they both laughed, and then they were walking again. The girl swaying on her perch like a small queen surveying her kingdom. The pink shoes dangling. Not flashing anymore because they were not touching ground. They did not need to touch ground. Someone was carrying them.
Yaz's hands tightened on the fence.
The diamonds pressed deeper. The metal was so cold it burned, but he did not let go. He watched them until they turned the corner, until the pink shoes stopped dangling, until there was nothing left but the empty sidewalk and the cracked pavement and the particular silence that came after. Silence had textures too. This one felt like the inside of an empty drawer.
His chest did something strange. Not pain, exactly. More like the space where pain would go if he let it. A room with the furniture removed. You could still see the marks on the floor where everything used to be.
That's what it looks like, he thought. Being someone's.
Behind him, the rusted swing chains squeaked their endless complaint. Eee-errr. Eee-errr. Like two old women gossiping about the same thing over and over. Children chased each other around the dead tree. The bell would ring soon. The day would end. Tomorrow would come, and the day after, and the day after that. Time moved forward whether you wanted it to or not. This seemed unfair. But no one had asked Yaz's opinion about time.
He stayed at the fence until his fingers went numb.
The next day was Tuesday.
Yaz knew it was Tuesday because breakfast had the watery scrambled eggs they served on Tuesdays. Yellow clumps sitting on the tray like something that had given up. The eggs had given up on being eggs. They had become instead a yellow substance that existed on Tuesdays, and everyone pretended this was fine. Yaz ate them mechanically. Fork to mouth. Chew. Swallow. The taste was nothing. Not bad nothing. Just nothing. Like eating the color beige.
The cafeteria noise washed over him in waves. Voices, clattering, the scrape of chairs on linoleum. Somewhere a younger child was crying. Somewhere else a caretaker was saying "eat your breakfast" in the particular tone that meant she had said it four hundred times before and would say it four hundred times again. Tomás sat three tables away, eating alone, eyes fixed on nothing. His spoon moved in the same rhythm as Yaz's. Up, down, chew, swallow. They were like two clocks set to the same time, running in separate rooms.
Outdoor hour. The fence.
The street was busier today. More people moving through, all of them with places to be. With lives that continued past the edges of what Yaz could see. He watched them the way he had learned to watch everything. Quiet. Still. Invisible. If you were invisible long enough, you could see things other people missed. This was either a skill or a tragedy. He had not decided which.
A woman appeared.
She was young, maybe twenty, with hair pulled back tight and a bag over one shoulder. Beside her walked a boy. Small. Maybe three or four. He held her hand with the kind of grip that meant he was afraid to let go. Yaz knew that grip. He had felt it in his own hands sometimes, late at night, when he held onto his blanket as if the blanket might leave too.
They stopped at the bench across the street. The same bench where the pigeon had pecked at invisible things on his birthday.
The boy had ice cream. A cone, already melting in the cool air, dripping down his wrist in pale brown rivers. He was crying. Not sobbing. Just the quiet, leaking kind of crying that children did when they were overwhelmed by something too big to name. Yaz did not know what had overwhelmed him. Maybe the ice cream. Maybe the cold. Maybe the terrible weight of being three or four years old in a world that did not explain itself.
The woman knelt.
Yaz's breath caught.
She knelt right there on the dirty pavement. Her good pants touched the grime, and she did not seem to notice or care. She took a tissue from her bag and wiped the ice cream from the boy's wrist. Gentle. Patient. Her mouth was moving. Words Yaz could not hear. Her free hand came up to cup the boy's cheek. Her thumb brushed away tears.
The boy stopped crying.
Just like that. A magic trick. The woman said something else, and the boy nodded, and she fixed the ice cream cone in his grip. Adjusting his fingers one by one. Showing him how to hold it so it would not drip. Then she stood and took his hand again, and they walked away.
The whole thing had lasted maybe thirty seconds.
Yaz's throat hurt.
Tenderness. That was the word. He had read it in a book once. Had not really understood it. Now he did. Tenderness was kneeling in the dirt. Tenderness was caring about sticky fingers and quiet tears. Tenderness was something given freely, without expectation, to someone small who needed it.
The wind picked up. His shirt pressed flat against his ribs. He could feel the ridge of each rib beneath the fabric, could count them if he wanted to. He was always counting things. Ribs, tiles, days. Numbers were safe. Numbers did not leave.
The boy with the ice cream was gone. Around the corner. Into some life Yaz would never know.
He thought about the last time anyone had touched his face like that. Tried to remember.
Could not.
Wednesday changed things.
The sky was the same dishwater gray. The wind still smelled like exhaust and metal. The fence still stood between Yaz and everything beyond it. But there was a boy on the other side now. Not walking past. Not hurrying somewhere. Standing. Looking.
He was Yaz's age. Maybe a little older. Korean features, or part-Korean. Hard to tell from this distance. He wore a blue jacket that looked new. That looked bought. That looked like someone had picked it out and paid for it and handed it to him saying this is yours, I chose it for you, I thought of you when I saw it. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder. School. He was walking home from school.
And he was looking at the orphanage.
Not past it. Not through it. At it. At the gate with its faded sign. At the beige walls with their peeling paint. At the yard with its cracked concrete and dead tree and children in gray clothes who moved in gray patterns through gray days.
At Yaz.
Their eyes met.
Something electric passed through the fence. Through the air. Through the space between them. The boy's face did something complicated. Recognition first. Then something else. Fear, maybe. Or pity. Or the particular discomfort of seeing something you were not supposed to see. Like walking into a room and finding someone crying. Like opening a drawer and finding a dead thing inside.
He looked away.
Quick, deliberate. His eyes cut to the side, found the pavement, found anywhere-but-here. His steps quickened. He adjusted his backpack. A nervous gesture. And then he was walking, then almost running, putting distance between himself and the building and the boy at the fence who had looked at him with too-old eyes.
Yaz's hands were still on the chain-link. Still cold. Still pressing diamonds into his skin.
They see us, he thought. The thought was new. Heavy. It settled in his stomach like a stone dropped into a well, falling a long way before it hit bottom. They see the orphanage. They know what it is. And they don't want to look.
The boy in the blue jacket disappeared around the corner.
Yaz stayed at the fence.
You're not less.
The voice came from somewhere deep. The back of his head, maybe. The place where thoughts lived before they became words. Warm and quiet and familiar, though he had only heard it once before. That night, in the dark, when he had whispered happy birthday to himself and something had answered.
You're not less. You're just... waiting for something they already have.
He did not know if he was hearing things or making things up or going slowly crazy in a way that would only become obvious later. Seven-year-olds did not hear voices. They did not have ghosts in their heads who said things that were true and terrible at the same time.
But the voice was there. And it stayed with him. And when the bell rang and the other children started moving toward the door, Yaz pulled his fingers from the fence and looked at the marks left behind. Red lines, grid patterns, the shape of a barrier pressed into his flesh.
Maybe waiting isn't the only way.
He did not know what that meant yet.
But he would.
Thursday was rain.
It started in the morning. A light mist that thickened through breakfast. By outdoor hour it was coming down steady and gray, turning the yard into a shallow lake and the fence into a curtain of silver beads. The caretakers kept everyone inside. Common room. Television. The bright, empty noise of AI-generated cartoons.
Yaz sat by the window.
Not the dormitory window. That faced east and showed only the side of the next building. This was the common room window. Larger. Smudged with fingerprints from children who had pressed their hands against it, leaving ghost-prints behind. Looking out onto the street where cars hummed past and people hurried under umbrellas they held like shields against the sky.
The fence was still there. Thirty meters away. Blurred by water on glass.
He pressed his forehead to the window. The glass was cold. Colder than the fence. And it fogged with his breath in small patches that appeared and faded and appeared again. Little clouds that lived and died in seconds. Through them, the world looked like a painting left out in the rain. Colors bleeding. Edges soft. Everything distant.
Distance, he thought. This is what distance looks like.
At the fence, he could almost reach through. Could almost touch. The gap between him and the world was the width of chain-link wire. The space between diamonds. The length of his own fingers.
Here, at the window, the gap was glass and air and the entire breadth of the yard. The fence was just a shape now. A line of gray against gray. The street was a smear. The people were ghosts.
He watched them anyway.
A family passed. Father, mother, two children. The father held an umbrella over all of them, tilting it against the wind. The mother had the smaller child in her arms. Face tucked against her shoulder. The older child was a girl, maybe eight. She was splashing in puddles. Splich. Splich. Yaz could not hear it through the glass, but he could see the water jumping, could imagine the sound, could feel the phantom wetness on legs that were not his.
The mother was saying something. Yaz could see her mouth moving. Probably something like stop splashing, you'll get wet, your father's pants are getting dirty. But she was smiling. And the father was laughing. And the girl splashed again and got water on his pants and he laughed harder.
They were together. Under one umbrella. Moving as a unit through the rain.
Yaz's breath fogged the glass.
He wiped it with his sleeve and watched them until they were gone. Until there was nothing but the rain and the blurred fence and his own reflection ghosted over the world outside. A boy in gray. Looking out. Always looking out.
Behind him, the television played. A cartoon dog chased a cartoon cat. Someone laughed. Not because it was funny. Because laughter was expected when cartoon dogs chased cartoon cats. That was the rule.
He stayed at the window until his forehead ached from the cold.
Friday brought sun.
It broke through the clouds around noon. Sudden and startling. Like something that had been lost and then found. The yard steamed as the puddles evaporated, sending little ghosts of moisture up toward the sky. The dead tree threw shadows it had not thrown all week. The air smelled different. Cleaner. Sharper. The rain-washed smell of a world that had been scrubbed and was trying to dry itself in the light.
Outdoor hour.
Yaz walked to the fence before the bell finished ringing. His feet found the same spot they always found. His hands found the same section of chain-link. The diamonds pressed into his palms like a greeting from an old, cold friend. The metal was warmer today. Almost pleasant. Almost welcoming.
He stood. He waited. The sun pressed against his back like a hand. He had read once that the sun was a star, very far away, burning. It did not feel far away now. It felt close. Like something that might be paying attention.
They came at 2:47.
A family. Whole and complete. Mother, father, daughter, son. The mother pushed a stroller even though the son was too big for it. Four, maybe five. Legs dangling over the edge. The father held the daughter's hand, and the daughter was skipping, pulling him forward. Her braids bounced with each step. Fwap fwap fwap. Little ropes of hair hitting her shoulders.
They were going to the park. Yaz could tell by their direction, by the way the daughter pointed at the stripe of green three blocks away, by the bag slung over the father's shoulder that probably held snacks and toys and all the small provisions of an ordinary outing. Juice boxes. Crackers. The things you packed when you were taking children somewhere and wanted to be prepared for hunger and boredom and the thousand small emergencies of being young.
The mother said something. The father laughed. The son in the stroller clapped his hands. The daughter started singing. Yaz could see her mouth moving, her whole body moving, joy radiating off her like heat. He did not know the song. Did not know if it was a real song or something she was making up as she went. Maybe both. Maybe all songs started as something made up.
They passed the orphanage without looking.
Why would they look? It was just a building. Beige walls. Missing letter. Nothing to see.
Yaz's fingers tightened on the fence.
The diamonds cut deeper. He could feel the wire testing his skin, the sharp edges pressing toward blood. It hurt. It hurt and he did not let go. Letting go meant accepting that this was all there was. This side and that side. Watching and being watched. Wanting and not having.
The family was almost to the corner now. Still laughing. Still together. Still whole.
They have what you're waiting for.
The voice again. From the deep place. Warm and sad and impossibly old for something that lived inside a seven-year-old boy.
But waiting isn't the only way.
Yaz's grip tightened. The metal bit into his palm. A hot line of sensation traced the shape of a diamond into his flesh. Not quite pain. Not quite anything else. Something in between. Something that said you are here, you are real, you exist even if no one sees you.
What do you mean? he thought. Or asked. Or prayed. He did not know which.
The voice did not answer.
The family turned the corner. Vanished into the green-and-ordinary world where parents lifted children and wiped their tears and held umbrellas over everyone at once. The sun kept shining. The yard kept steaming. Behind Yaz, the swing chains creaked their rusty song. Eee-errr. Eee-errr. Still gossiping. Still saying the same thing.
He looked down at his hands.
Red marks. Grid patterns. The shape of the fence pressed into his skin like a map of everywhere he could not go.
I could stay here forever, he thought. I could stand at this fence every day, watching, waiting, hoping someone sees me. I could grow old here. I could become the old man on the bench. Sitting. Waiting. Becoming no one.
The thought was cold. Colder than the fence had ever been. Colder than the window glass. Cold all the way through, like something frozen at the center.
Or.
He did not finish the thought. Did not know how to finish it. But the word stayed with him. Or. A door that was closed but not locked. A question that was asked but not answered.
Or.
The bell rang. CLANG.
Yaz pulled his hands from the fence. The marks stayed. Red lines across his palms. The shape of diamonds. The shape of a barrier. The shape of something that could be climbed or cut or somehow, someday, crossed.
He walked back toward the building. His hands hurt. His chest hurt more.
But something had shifted. Something small and stubborn and impossible to name. Like a seed that did not yet know it was a seed. Like the first note of a song that did not yet know it was a song.
He had watched the fence for five days. Had pressed himself against it. Had threaded his fingers through it. Had let it mark him. And now he knew what the fence was.
Not just metal. Not just wire.
A wall. A line. A division.
And the world was on the other side.
The fence was only metal and wire. But it divided the world in two: those who belonged to someone, and Yassine Kwon.