The pigeons arrived before the man did.
Yaz watched them from the fence, fingers threaded through the cold chain-link, as they gathered on the empty bench across the street. Three of them. Then five. Then seven. They pecked at the metal slats, at the concrete beneath, at nothing he could see. Their heads bobbed in that strange mechanical way pigeon heads bobbed, forward and back, forward and back, like they were agreeing with something only they understood.
He had been watching the bench for twenty minutes. This was not normal. Normally he watched the street, the families, the children with parents who held their hands. But today his eyes kept returning to the bench. To the pigeons. To the space where someone should be sitting.
The man appeared at 10:07.
Yaz did not have a watch. He had counted the minutes since outdoor hour began, which was thirty-two, and outdoor hour began at 9:35, which meant it was 10:07. Or close to it. Close enough to count.
The man walked slowly. Not the slow of someone who was tired, but the slow of someone who had nowhere to be. His coat was brown, or had been brown once, before weather and time had turned it the color of old leaves. His hair was gray and thin, combed back from a forehead lined like paper that had been crumpled and smoothed out too many times. His hands shook.
Yaz watched him sit.
The pigeons did not scatter. They stayed where they were, pecking, bobbing, as if the man was just another part of the bench. Part of the concrete. Part of the street they lived on.
The man reached into his coat pocket. His shaking hand emerged with something. Bread, maybe. Or seeds. Yaz was too far away to tell. He scattered it on the ground, and the pigeons descended, and then there was just a man on a bench surrounded by birds, doing nothing, being no one.
Yaz's stomach growled. Breakfast had been porridge, as always, but he had not eaten much of it. The skin had formed before he could bring himself to start, and by the time he broke it, the taste had gone from nothing to worse-than-nothing.
He ignored the growl. Kept watching.
"Who is that man?"
Mrs. Okonkwo was crossing the yard, her orange headwrap bright against the gray of everything else. Her bracelet clicked as she walked. Clk clk clk. The sound of someone who came from somewhere.
She stopped beside him. Not too close. Adults never got too close to children at the fence, as if proximity might make them catch whatever the children had. Loneliness, maybe. Want.
"Which man?" she asked.
Yaz pointed. The bench. The coat. The pigeons.
Mrs. Okonkwo's face did something. A small movement, like a cloud passing over the sun. There and gone.
"No one," she said. "Just a vagrant."
No one.
The words settled in his stomach beside the hunger. Cold and hard, like stones.
"He's there every day," Yaz said.
"Many people do the same things every day." Her voice was different now. Softer, maybe. Or sadder. "It doesn't mean they're someone."
"But everyone is someone."
She looked at him then. Really looked, the way she had looked at Émile when he was crying, the way she had looked at Yaz once, years ago, before he learned not to expect looking. Her eyes were tired. Her mouth was a line that wanted to be kind but had forgotten how.
"Yassine," she said. "Some people... they become no one. They stop mattering. The world forgets them, and they forget themselves, and then..."
She did not finish. She did not have to.
"Is that what happens to us?" Yaz asked. "If no one picks us?"
The silence was long. The wind moved through the fence, rattling the chain-link. Shk shk shk. Behind them, children played. The rusty swings complained their endless complaint. Eee-errr. Eee-errr.
"No," Mrs. Okonkwo said finally. "That's not what happens."
But her eyes had moved to the wall again. The way they always moved when she was saying something that wasn't quite true.
She walked away. Her bracelet clicked. The pigeons kept pecking.
Yaz stayed at the fence and watched the man who was no one do nothing for a very long time.
Saturday was for watching.
He had decided this in the night, lying awake beneath the forty-seven tiles, his mind circling the bench the way the pigeons circled bread. He would watch. He would learn. He would understand what "no one" meant, what it looked like, how it happened.
The man arrived at 10:03. Earlier than yesterday. Or maybe Yaz had miscounted. He did not think he had miscounted.
The coat was the same. The hair was the same. The hands still shook when they reached into the pocket, when they scattered whatever was in the pocket onto the ground. The pigeons came. Seven, then twelve, then too many to count without losing track.
The man sat.
That was all. He sat. His eyes looked at something across the street, but it was not the orphanage. It was not the fence. It was not the children in gray clothes playing gray games in the gray yard. His eyes looked at nothing. At a point in space that meant nothing to anyone but him.
Yaz watched him for four hours.
He learned:
The man never talked. Not to the pigeons, not to the people who walked past, not to himself. His mouth stayed closed except once, when he coughed, and then it opened and sound came out that was not words.
The man never smiled. His face stayed the same, like stone, like the fence, like things that did not change because there was nothing left to change into.
The man never looked at anyone. People passed in front of him, behind him, on both sides, and his eyes stayed where they were. Fixed. Empty.
At 6:34, the sun started to sink. The light changed from yellow to orange to the particular pink that meant day was ending. The man stood. Slowly. His knees made sounds that Yaz could not hear but could imagine. Crk. Pop. The sounds old things made when they moved.
He walked away. The same slow walk. The same direction he had come from, wherever that was.
The pigeons stayed for a while, pecking at the last crumbs. Then they flew away too.
The bench was empty.
Yaz stood at the fence until the bell rang, his fingers numb, his stomach a knot that had nothing to do with hunger.
That's what no one looks like, he thought. Sitting. Waiting. Staring at nothing. Feeding birds because birds are the only things that notice you.
The thought was cold. Colder than the fence.
Sunday the bench was empty.
Yaz noticed immediately. The pigeons were there, walking their nervous circles on the concrete, but the man was not. The coat was not. The shaking hands and the fixed eyes and the silence were not.
He stood at the fence and waited. 10:00. 10:15. 10:30. 10:47.
No one came.
The pigeons gave up eventually. They flew away in a scatter of wings, disappointed, looking for someone else to feed them.
Yaz kept waiting.
Something was wrong with his chest. A tightness. A pressure. The feeling you got when you expected something to happen and it didn't, when the pattern broke and left you standing in the space where the pattern should have been.
He's not coming.
The thought should have been relief. No one to watch. No one to remind him of what he might become. The bench was just a bench again, metal and concrete, meaningless.
But it was not relief.
It was worse.
Because if the man could simply not appear, if he could vanish without warning, then he was even more no one than Yaz had thought. No one would notice he was gone. No one would wonder where he was. No one would stand at a fence waiting for him, hoping he was okay, feeling the strange hollow ache of his absence.
No one except Yaz.
And what did it mean that Yaz noticed? What did it mean that a seven-year-old boy in an orphanage was the only person in the world who cared whether an old man sat on a bench or not?
It meant nothing.
It meant everything.
He went inside when the bell rang. His fingers were stiff from gripping the fence. His chest still felt wrong. At dinner, Suki sat next to him, but he did not talk, and she did not push, and the silence between them was different now. Heavier. Full of things that could not be counted.
Monday he was back.
The man. The coat. The pigeons.
Yaz did not know why he felt relief. Did not understand the way his shoulders dropped, the way the knot in his stomach loosened, the way his breath came easier when he saw the brown shape on the bench. He should not care. This man was a stranger. A vagrant. A no one.
But he was there. He had come back. He had not vanished into whatever void swallowed people when the world forgot them.
Yaz watched from the fence, as always. Fingers through the chain-link. Eyes fixed on the bench.
Today was different.
He did not know what made it different. The light, maybe. The angle of the sun. The way the wind was blowing, or not blowing. Something in the air that made everything sharper, more real, more present.
The man was feeding the pigeons. The same motion as always. Hand to pocket, pocket to ground, crumbs scattering. The birds descended.
And then he looked up.
Not at the street. Not at nothing.
At Yaz.
Their eyes met.
It happened in a second. Less than a second. A fraction of a moment, a sliver of time so small it should not have mattered.
But it mattered.
The man's eyes were not empty. That was the first thing Yaz realized. He had thought they would be empty, hollow, like windows with no one behind them. But they were not. They were full. Full of something Yaz did not have a name for. Something that looked like tiredness but was more than tiredness. Something that looked like sadness but was deeper than sadness. Something that looked like Yaz's own eyes when he saw them reflected in the window glass at night.
The man looked at him.
And then the man looked away.
Not fast. Not like the boy in the blue jacket who had seen the orphanage and run. Slow. Deliberate. A turning of the head that said I see you, but I cannot keep seeing you, because seeing you means something I do not want it to mean.
The pigeons kept pecking. The sun kept shining. The world kept turning.
But something had shifted. Something small and huge at the same time.
He saw me.
The thought echoed in the empty places.
And he looked away.
That night, Yaz could not sleep.
He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling he could not see, and thought about the man's eyes. About the fullness in them. About the looking away.
The dormitory breathed around him. Nineteen other children in their nineteen other beds, dreaming nineteen other dreams. The radiator clicked. Tink. Tink. Tink. The night light glowed orange near the door.
Everything was the same as every other night.
But Yaz was not the same.
He looked away because it hurt.
The thought came from somewhere deep. Not the Maestro, not the warm voice that sometimes spoke to him. Just a knowing. A certainty that lived in his bones.
It hurt to see me. To see a child at a fence, watching him. To be seen by someone who was looking for patterns, for meaning, for the shape of a life.
He looked away because I reminded him of something.
What? What could a seven-year-old boy remind an old man of? What could Yaz, with his gray clothes and his messy hair and his too-old eyes, possibly make the man feel?
The answer came slowly. Like water seeping through cracks.
Himself.
He was me once. Young. Watching. Counting things. Waiting for someone to see him.
And no one did.
And now he sits on a bench and feeds pigeons and looks at nothing because there is nothing left to look at. Because he became no one. Because the world forgot him, and he forgot himself, and now he is just a shape on a bench that children stare at and adults call "no one."
Yaz's chest hurt.
Not the tight hurt of watching. Something else. Something that burned. Fear, maybe. Or anger. Or the place where fear and anger met and became something new.
That's my future.
The thought was a knife.
If no one picks me. If I stay here until I'm too old to stay here anymore. If I walk out those gates with nothing and no one and no story, I will become him. I will sit on a bench somewhere. I will feed birds. I will look at nothing because there will be nothing to look at.
I will be no one.
The burning spread. From his chest to his throat to his eyes. He blinked it back. Swallowed it down. Pressed his hands against the mattress until his knuckles ached.
No.
The word was not spoken. Not even thought, exactly. It was felt. In his bones. In his blood. In the place where the Maestro lived, warm and patient and waiting.
No.
I will not be him.
I will not sit on a bench and wait for nothing. I will not let the world forget me. I will not become a shape that children stare at and adults call no one.
I will be someone.
The burning changed. It was still there, still hot, but different now. Not fear. Not anger.
Something else.
He did not know the word for it. He was seven years old. The vocabulary for what he was feeling did not exist in his small, careful collection of words.
But he felt it. Felt it in his chest and his hands and his jaw, which was clenched so tight his teeth ached.
I don't want to be no one.
He thought it first. Then he whispered it, barely a sound, barely a breath.
"I don't want to be no one."
The darkness did not answer. The radiator kept clicking. The other children kept dreaming.
But something had shifted. Something small and stubborn and fierce.
I won't be, the Maestro said, soft and warm in the deep place. You won't be.
But wanting is not enough. You have to become.
You have to make yourself into someone they can't forget.
Yaz did not know how. Did not know what "becoming" meant or how you made yourself into something when you were only seven years old and nobody and nothing and found instead of surrendered.
But he knew he would figure it out.
He had to.
Thursday was bright.
The light fell through the dormitory window in warm slats, catching the dust, making the air glow. Yaz woke before the bell, as always, and lay still, watching the particles drift and swirl in the gold.
His body felt different today. Not lighter, exactly. But clearer. Like something had been decided in the night, and now his muscles and bones and blood knew it, even if his mind was still catching up.
He got up. He dressed. He counted the buttons on his shirt (five) and did not count the steps to the cafeteria because today, for the first time in weeks, he did not need to.
The counting had been a wall. He understood that now. A way of making the world small enough to hold. But walls kept things out, and they also kept things in.
He ate his porridge. All of it. The skin had formed, but he broke it and ate what was underneath, and when he was done, his stomach was full instead of empty.
Suki was not at breakfast. She had been called to the office again, which meant the family was back, which meant things were happening that Yaz could not control.
He did not count how many times he thought about her.
Outdoor hour came. He walked to the fence. The chain-link was warm today, heated by the sun, and when he pressed his fingers through the diamonds, they did not ache.
The man was there. On the bench. Feeding the pigeons.
Yaz watched him.
Not the way he had watched before. Not with fear, not with fascination, not with the desperate need to understand. He watched the way you watch a warning sign on a road you have already decided not to take.
You are what happens when no one sees you, he thought. When you give up. When you stop trying to matter.
But I will not give up.
I will not stop.
The man scattered crumbs. The pigeons pecked. The sun was warm on Yaz's back.
I won't be you, he thought. I won't become nothing. I won't sit on a bench someday and look at nothing and let children stare at me and think about what I might have been.
I will be something.
I will be someone.
I will make them remember me.
He did not know how yet. Did not know what shape his someone-ness would take, what form his mattering would wear. He was seven years old. He had no past and no family and no name that meant anything.
But he had this. This feeling in his chest, hot and bright and fierce. This refusal. This burning, stubborn, impossible no.
He looked at the man one more time.
The man did not look back. His eyes were on the ground, on the pigeons, on the crumbs he had scattered. His face was still. His hands still shook.
Goodbye, Yaz thought. Not out loud. Not even as a whisper.
I'm sorry you became no one.
But I won't.
The bell rang. CLANG.
He turned from the fence. Walked back toward the building. The sun was warm. The air smelled like spring.
And somewhere in the deep place, the Maestro was quiet, but the warmth was there, patient and proud and waiting.
He would not become a man who sat alone, forgotten, waiting for nothing.