The janitor had always been there.
He moved like a ghost through the hallways—mop in hand, keys jingling, head down. Most students never noticed him. But lately, Lian had. Maybe because the man always lingered near the library after school, humming tunelessly as he swept.
Today, Lian didn't mean to follow him. He just… did.
He turned the corner expecting the janitor to be gone. Instead, he found the closet door slightly ajar, the humming louder. Lian hesitated, then knocked once.
The humming stopped. Silence.
Then a voice: "Come in, if you're coming."
Inside was cramped but oddly clean. Bleach, rags, metal shelves. The janitor was hunched over a small notebook balanced on an upside-down mop bucket. Lian recognized it immediately—not the content, but the way the man was sketching. Not words. Not people.
Animals.
The janitor glanced at him. "Didn't expect a visitor."
"I—I didn't mean to snoop," Lian said. "I just…"
"Curious." The man nodded. "Nothing wrong with that. Curiosity's just hunger in a different outfit."
He closed the notebook, but not hastily. No shame in it.
Lian sat on an overturned crate, unsure why he stayed.
After a pause, he said, "How long have you been seeing them?"
The janitor tilted his head. "You think you're the only one?"
Lian didn't answer.
The janitor chuckled. "I used to think they were warnings. That the fox meant trickery. The bear meant anger. But that's child thinking. The world's not a fable."
"So what are they, then?"
The janitor looked up at the flickering closet light. "Echoes. Masks. Sometimes they show you what someone's hiding. But more often, they show what you expect to find."
That made Lian go quiet.
He remembered when he first saw the spider around Casey—the twitchy kid who sat behind him in math. He'd avoided him for weeks. Only to realize, during a partner project, that Casey wasn't dangerous. Just anxious. Always afraid of saying the wrong thing.
Lian had never seen the spider again.
"Why do they go away?" he asked softly.
The janitor glanced at him. "Maybe because you finally see the person."
Later that evening, Lian sat in the kitchen with his mother. She was peeling vegetables slowly, humming a tune from her village—one Lian used to hate for its sadness.
He stared at her, trying not to see the familiar outline of the crane around her shoulders.
But it was still there.
Only, something about it had changed.
Its wings were tucked. Its neck curled in.
Less proud. More… tired?
He watched her hands as she worked. One finger bore a small scar from when she cut herself years ago. She never said how it happened.
She caught him staring.
"What?"
"Nothing," he said. "Just… you look like you're thinking of something far away."
"I'm always thinking of something far away," she said, not unkindly.
And then, in a rare moment, she added, "But lately, not so far."
She passed him a bowl of chopped vegetables. Her hand grazed his. Warm. Steady.
Lian looked down. No animals.
Just his mother.
That night, he didn't write a description. He didn't draw.
He opened to a fresh page and wrote:
They don't need to disappear for me to see clearly.
And then he added, beneath it, something even smaller:
Maybe they were never the story. Maybe I am.